But he was just standing there, a young man in those fine clothes and definitely not an insurance collector or a Jehovah’s Witness, because he’s empty-handed and his eyes are asking instead of telling or demanding or working out a strategy to take advantage of a fool. Or trying to scare somebody to save his soul. In fact, he’s looking at me like I’m normal even though those words were working up such a head of steam that I’m already stuttering—which should have warned me because from the very beginning until he went away he always treated me like I was just like anybody else. But I swear that apart from those words I didn’t know him from Adam—or Lazarus, which is more like it, since Adam only had one time to die and Lazarus had him at least two. And as long as Severen had been gone from this town he might just as well been dead. The words knew though, and were going at him like a bunch of fools bursting out of a barbershop to watch a dogfight or to see the wind blowing a woman’s skirt up over her head.
So when I hear them saying, There was the big one in the union suit, I just wanted to forget it and get up right then and there and go watch me some trains.
But he just looked at me with a funny light in his blue eyes and that blue tie he was wearing gave them a deeper color than my own eyes could have remembered even if I’d recognized him and he just stood there in his white suit looking at me and listening to the words come crowding out:
That’s right, they said, Jack who one time cried, Hey Lawdy Mama, in the moving pic-ture show and almost caused a panic. Remember? As clear and present a danger as you ever could see. Beyond the faintest shadow of a shadow of a shadow of a doubt.
He frowned then and I could see that he was thinking.
Jack, Beau Jack, the words said, Boo Boo. You remember him. The big one. The burly one. The one they used to call ole Sacka Fat, ole Funky London, Mister Loud-fart-in-a-cyclone-with-a-derby-on. Ole Doggy Poppa? Boo-Boo Beau Jack, Weinstein’s Bear? Talk about a bull in a china shop, Weinstein, who was supposed to be so smart, had him a bear working in his jewelry store but had to fire him. Jack wouldn’t keep all those clocks running on time and then he brought a batch of cheap rings from the Five and Ten and gave them to some girls telling them he stole them from Weinstein’s best stock. Had more green fingers feeling and fumbling around this town than there’s Okies in California before they caught on … Dam’ near ruined Weinstein for the high school graduation trade.
So he looked at me and laughed at this and he said his first words:
I can’t place him …. Where did Jack live?
Out in the heights, we said, and a very famous character in those times. The same one who threw his voice and worked the class. Had a sweet tenor voice and could sing like a bird when he wanted to but preferred to sound like Satchel mouth with a bad cold. Once he took your marbles. Came storming across the schoolground yelling ‘Snatch-grabs’ and kicking up dust and unholy terror among the little kids, knocking people down and laughing at ‘em fall. Made you so mad you just lay on the ground and howled. Jack Boo-Boo Beau Jack, he was stealing the Communion grape juice from seven churches and was drinking it with his henchmen for three straight years before they caught the fool. Said he was teaching ‘em what wine was really for. Those were the olden days, before they hired those colored cops and brought some civilization to this town. You still can’t place him?
Severen shook his head then and I said Something must have happened to your memory.
It’s been a long time, he said, but yours seems O.K. Go on.
And I said, it’s not my recollection that counts, it’s what I can’t help but say.
Do you mean that you always tell the truth?
And I told him No, but the truth gets into it.
Then the words said, Look: Remember the little childrun sitting in rows, stinking and snorting and sniggling and snotting, knotty-headed and hockey-pants and stealing bites out of their bags of lunch whenever the old-maid teacher’s back went around or she dropped her weary eye? All small, all of y’all but Jack and me the biggest in the class. Miss Mable Kindly was her name. She used to talk real proper, rolling her rr’s and her eyes and wore her hair done up in three big buns with the rats always peeping out the skimpy back. And as flat-chested as Miss Janey’s best ironing board. Straight as a ram rod, man. Her corset stays stuck out round her narrow hips like umbrella spines in a strong mean April wind, and her powdered face was as grey as the blackboard behind her head. Swore all the kids were heathens and the cross she had to bear and Jack did all he could to prove she wasn’t lying. Used to see her walking sedately down the street as though she was carrying a thin-shelled egg between her knees and he’d yell out ‘Cherries are ripe! Cherries are ripe!’ then whistle like a crazy robin red breast. Poor woman ‘d start pulling down on her dress and patting herself on the chest and back of the neck and marching in double-quick time, and dark as she was her face’d turn cherry red.
You remember I said, Dust-Mop Mable, these big bad gals used to call her while they shagged their hot young nasties up and down the hall between classes, singing,
Oh Dust Mop Mable
She swears she would if she could
But she a-just aint able—Mable!
And there she was teaching arithmetic.
“What’s the difference between a multiplier and a multiplican?” her question was.
And shame on her! We were sitting there innocent and bland behind our second grade desks when Jack, who was facing the class in a chair for punishment, fell back on his shoulders and slouched way forward like he was throwing a faint and flipped a big hickey-headed sour pickle from his fly and shook confusion into her very soul. Her eyes got big as if she’d seen the devil come straight from hell and then Jack threw the pickle at the electric light and it hit the fixture and skidded across the ceiling and she rocked around and started to sway then caught herself and hit that hall screaming rape and resurrection—No now, don’t come asking me why, but ‘rape and resurrection’ just the same.
So then ole Jack fell off his chair from laughing and rolled on the floor like he was about to die, and here comes the principal. Dr. Peter Osgood Eliot, who usually looked no more human than a granite general astride a concrete horse but now his iron grey hair is standing up on end, his bowels are in a fair uproar, and his false teeth are rattling like a mixed-up telegraph. He started pointing at us all like his arm was a sabre and put the whole class under quarantine, accusing us all of flipping the pickle, singing “The Boy in The Boat,” writing nasty language on the schoolhouse walls and saying “spit” that dirty word. Then he hurried out to call the law.
And right away in leaps Blue Goose with his well-stropped head dragging half a tree limb behind him got to whipping Jack’s behind and all the boys in the first five rows—And most of us not even knowing what it was all about or even able to believe what our own dear eyes had seen. I tell you, Justice was deaf, dumb, blind and ball-headed that day, my weed.
Blue Goose is a name I remember, Severen said. And I stopped him right there.
Now you’re highballing, I said. And I knew then that I had to get closer to what those words were digging up and stretching out but I didn’t let on to him …
I said, Of course you remember. He used to knock on the classroom doors saying, Miss So-and-So, you have any boys you want me to beat—and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Just started to choosing us like picking sides to play a game: You and you and you over yonder on the aisle—Get on your devilish feet and march! And he’d stand there trembling in his striped tan suit and his yellow shoes, his dusty brown derby and glaring at us all out of his snuff-colored eyes.
Yes! And if the teacher said, “But not him Reveren Samson, he’s a good boy who makes all A’s,” Blue Goose would tell her, Is that right? Well I aim to keep him good and a little beating won’t hurt his A’s or B’s one single bit! I don’t aim to touch ‘em.
So for no good reason we all marched down into the basement among the pipes and pisserines where went the snows of then, and lined up
bottoms-up with lowered pants while Blue Goose laid on the strap—Strap hell! It was the thick solid rubber tire from the big wheel of a large tricycle that raised a welt like alligator hide! Dam’ his soul, dam’ his ball-headed soul to hell. Blue Goose, your nickname was our small revenge. Those fast, fleet-footed runners used to yell at him from under the viaduct when he rode his bicycle over and they’d honk at him, Blue Goose, from under the windows when he was preaching in his church but I could never move with enough control to even try it.
He whipped China Jackson that time and China ran down the tracks home and came racing back with his daddy’s forty-four and shot at Blue Goose six straight times, raising up steady and leveling down slow and busting those caps like Jesse James—Wham! wham-wham-wham-Wham!—and missed the snuff-dipping bastard every time.
Because, you see, poor China was pulling the trigger when the barrel was pointing at twelve o’clock instead of three on account of seeing too many of those shoot-em-up cowboy movies. One o’clock would have drilled him another eye; four would have hit his spareribs or his chitterlings; nine o’clock or three would have called for his last clean shirt right then and there. But it wasn’t in the cards, he choked on a fishbone one Fourth of July.
Just the same, when Blue Goose heard all that gunfire he took off honking bloody murder. In fact, he ripped his pants and swallowed his lipful of Garret’s Snuff and busted the soles loose from his brogan shoes. And when he stopped running and found he was all in one piece he preached the Book of Revelations down on poor China’s soul. What I mean is, Blue Goose put the badmouth on him.
Ah, but China boy, you’re gone but your aim is there on the ceiling to mark your glory. Little snotnose kid up the street told me the other day that the Indians put all those bullet holes up there in the ceiling. I said if they did one had to be named Chief China Lee Jackson. I said to Severen, You remember things like that, because these young ones try to make up history as they go along. Or else they think all the lessons are in the book; all the lessons are about the times they been taught …
And Severen said, But what about the one in the union suit?
I said in the union station, you mean. Well, that was the time Miss Kindly marched the whole class over to the Santa Fe Crossing holding hands to see the whale. Remember, you held my hand and your mittens were pinned to your sleeves with safety pins and we passed under Case’s golden eagle sitting on top of the world like he owned it and went past the ice cream factory and all those machine shops and through the smell of roasting coffee and baking bread and down there, in the bowels of town, surrounded by boxcars and factories we found the whale. It was laying up there on that long flatcar on planks and canvas painted blue and white to look like ocean waves, and him as big as three locomotives hooked end to end, as far from home as he ever could be and smelling sick-to-the-stomach sweetish like a whole ocean of embalming fluid. Miss Kindly made us gather round like we were about to sing Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow, while she strutted back and forth with her head cocked to one side, her finger pressed to her cheek and her eyes lit up and far away like Singapore.
See the great whale, chill-dreen, Miss Kindly said.
And we stood there straining our necks as though he was two miles in the air and flying like a bird.
See the Great whale, chill-dreen, Miss Kindly said. And we said,
Yes, mam, we sees him, mam, and stood there bugging out our eyes.
Remember he was roped all over with electricity wires and had two red light bulbs sticking where his eyes were supposed to be, one on one side and the other way, way around on the other side, and with those harpoons trembling in his hump whenever a truck rolled past it looked like somebody had been sticking needles and thread into a black rubber mountain—But great God-a-mighty, wasn’t that a fish! I mean wasn’t that a fish!
Well, Miss Kindly looked at the whale and got real frisky.
See, chill-dreen, how the great whale is made of blubber, Miss Kindly said.
Yes, mam, we said. Us sees all that blubber.
And she arched her eyebrows and her hand fell over backwards in a limp-wristed curve then her lips puckered up like she was sucking a lemon or pulling tight the string on a tobacco sack.
The whale, chill-dreen, Miss Kindly said, is an ani-mule. Do you understand? (Miss Kindly was a fool for natural science, teacups and fancy manners especially for girls).
Yes, mam, Miss Kindly, we said all at once. Whales is chilldreen is ani-mules is—mam? Ma-aam!
Thus, chill-dreen, Miss Kindly said, whale babies drink good rich milk. Isn’t that truly wonderful, Miss Kindly said.
Yes, mam! we said. Good rich fish milk is good for you. Yes, mam.
And now chill-dreen, Miss Kindly said, would you like to ask any questions about the great big beautiful whale?
So while we looked dumb and tried to think up some questions Miss Kindly made big eyes at the whale and turned around and sah-shayed back and forth with her eyebrows arched and walking as proper as the queen of Spain then all of a sudden she dropped her handkerchief on the cinders right in front of us and when a little girl dressed in apple green started to pick it up, Miss Kindly stamped her foot and her voice got high as a flute saying, “Nu nu nu nu nu!” and she stamped her foot again and froze that little girl like she’d been struck by the frost and a great big worm. Then she pointed at me, looking very grand, and said, Let heeeem pick it up. You are uh lay-di! And I stooped down to try it and fell flat on my face in the cinders and the heathens all snickered, but Miss Kindly was back picking on the poor whale again, talking about, Well, I’m still waiting for your questions, chill-dreen. Use your imaginations.
And that’s when a little bowlegged, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, mariney son-of-a-gun named Bernard said, Yes, mam, Miss Kindly I’ve got one.
And Miss Kindly said, Now that’s very good, Bernard. That’s how we learn chill-dreen, by asking questions. I’m surprised that with this great big wonderful whale brought all the way from the ocean for you to see you have so little to ask about this wonder of nature. Now you just listen to Bernard and learn from him. Bernard is highly intelligent. What is your question, Bernard?
And old Bernard asked it. He said, Miss Kindly, if that there whale is an ani-mule, what gives rich milk, where do she carry her tits?
Miss Kindly lit up and turned a boxcar red, and lucky for old Bernard, that was when the door to the little house with the tall smokestack where the man who watched the crossing used to sit came open and out comes a little red-headed man smoking a crooked pipe and hobbling on an ole beat-up wooden leg—who right away charged us all a nickel a piece just to listen to him lie. Said he caught that whale as easy as falling off a log or digging a crawdad out of a hole. Then he turned right around and swore that the whale bit off his leg. And Miss Kindly didn’t say a word. So we watched him hobbling along lying a mile a minute from that whale’s head to his tail and around and back again, telling us all about Jonah, whale oil, corset stays and bone hairpins. And then he showed us that big cud of ambergris that looked like something he’d fetched from the profoundest depth of the sea but which smelled like he should’ve left it right where it was.
That’s when ole hoarse-voiced Tyree looked it over real close and wrinkled up his nose and whispered so everybody in half-a block could hear:
Lissen here, y’all, that there is whale hockey; I don’t care what that white man says!
And here the man had just been telling us that the stuff was worth ten times its weight in gold and made the very best perfume.
Now isn’t that amazing, child-reen, Miss Kindly said.
Yes, mam, we all said. We ‘mazed. And the great big high-headed whale just lay there winking his bloodshot light-bulb eyes.
Now isn’t that wonderful, Chill-reen, Miss Kindly said. See the great whale blinking his eyes. That proves he’s an animule.
Yes mam, Miss Kindly, we all chimed in, we see him winking his animules.
He’s animule.
; He’s a mule.
He’s fish eyes.
He’s an animaleyed fish, that’s what he is.
And that’s when the little man took him a chew of tobacco and ducked down under the flatcar and turned the valve. And the next thing we knew, a spout of water was shooting from the top of the great whale’s head. And the little man yelled, “Thar she blows,” and the whole class broke and ran for cover, but because of me you got all wet.
You remember that, I said, and Severen was laughing a real down home laugh. He took out a pack of cigarettes then and said, Cliofus, do you smoke? And I told him no and he took one out and lit it and took a puff then laughed some more. And then he was kind of crying and I asked him why. And he said, “For the whale; for the poor old whale.”
CADILLAC FLAMBÉ
AMERICAN REVIEW 16 (FEBRUARY 1973): 249–69
It had been a fine spring day made even pleasanter by the lingering of the cherry blossoms and I had gone out before dawn with some married friends and their children on a bird-watching expedition. Afterwards we had sharpened our appetites for brunch with rounds of bloody marys and bullshots. And after the beef bouillon ran out, our host, an ingenious man, had improvised a drink from chicken broth and vodka which he proclaimed the “chicken-shot.” This was all very pleasant and after a few drinks my spirits were soaring. I was pleased with my friends, the brunch was excellent and varied—chili con carne, cornbread, and oysters Rockefeller, etc.—and I was pleased with my tally of birds. I had seen a bluebird, five rose-breasted grosbeaks, three painted buntings, seven goldfinches, and a rousing consort of mockingbirds. In fact, I had hated to leave.
Three Days Before the Shooting . . . Page 165
