Skinny Legs and All

by Tom Robbins

  Spike was as thin and pale as the hoarfrost trim on wolfmother wallpaper when he at last resumed his station behind the reservation desk at Isaac & Ishmael’s. It was a peppery Friday evening in early August, and the restaurant was gearing up for a crush of pita snappers and Salome gawkers. Regulars, such as the team of Moroccan irrigation specialists, the UN’s Kurdish translator, and Detective Shaftoe, were at their customary bar stools and tables by five o’clock, prepared to wait a full four hours for the first jingle-bang of the tambourine. By six-thirty, a few smitten Romeos already loitered out front, hoping to catch the dancer’s eye when she stepped from the black sedan that always delivered her and picked her up, although the only eye that ever regarded them was the pugnacious one of her chaperon, the bandleader’s stout sister. Salome neither looked at nor spoke to anyone, but hugged herself, bashful, remote, self-contained, until the band sounded her opening number, at which point she would throw apart her arms and let the glow spread wherever it might, heating the freshly shaved cheeks of diplomats, ripening the green olives in their martinis. “Belly dancers are nothing new in New York,” reported the Village Voice. “They have bumped and shimmied here since Little Egypt’s gyrations upstaged the revolutionary flickers of the prototype television at the 1939 World’s Fair. From 1940 on, there have been in the city a minimum of two or three Middle Eastern or Greek clubs featuring practitioners of that ancient art. But Manhattan has never seen a belly dancer such as Isaac & Ishmael’s young Salome.”

  At 6:50, the telephone rang. “Isaac and Ishmael’s,” Spike answered. “We’re full up already.” He listened for a moment, then signaled Ellen Cherry. “For you,” he called, wagging the receiver. “Sounds like your mama.”

  “I’ll take it in the kitchen. I’m sorry, Spike. I told them never to call here during dinner.”

  “Not to worry. We’re full up.”

  “Yeah, but I got a ton of falafel to sling.”

  “Not to worry. So, I’ll take your tables. It’s only for the dancing lady what they’re hungry.”

  “Well now, don’t you overdo and have a relapse on me. I want to go buy paints and canvas tomorrow.”

  Brushing aside a succession of anonymous hands that reached to pat her buttocks or squeeze her thighs, Ellen Cherry made her way to the kitchen, where she lifted the receiver from the wall extension and learned that her daddy was dead.

  Embalmed and in his coffin, Verlin Charles still smelled of mildewed washcloth, a defiance of sorts that somehow comforted Ellen Cherry. Verlin was taking it with him, so to speak.

  She hovered over the open casket, reminiscing about things they’d done together, things he’d done for her: the dolls and paint sets he provided, the movies she watched from his lap, the drives to Florida during which he so frequently inquired if “daddy’s girl” needed a Coke or a hamburger or to pee-pee (when all she really wanted was to perfect her eye game). Tearfully, she shuffled the deck of memory, dealing out the cards of thoughtfulness, fun, and sacrifice that demonstrated his love—yet over and over again the black ace turned up to take the trick: the reminder of that day he had yanked her out of art class, rubbed raw her face, and called her “Jezebel.” It seemed to obscure everything else he had contributed to her development and happiness. She wondered if that was natural, if others harbored grudges against essentially loving parents, even after they were gone. If she were to die tomorrow, would she be remembered for a few good paintings, a few acts of kindness, or for her selfishness and spite, particularly in regard to Boomer Petway? She was weeping as much for herself as for her father. When she noticed that the mortician had applied a considerable amount of cosmetics to Verlin’s countenance, an ironic smile sliced through the tears.

  Patsy came to stand beside her. “It was the football that killed him,” Patsy said.

  “What’re you talking about, mama? Daddy hasn’t played football since he was a kid.”

  “Not playing it, watching it. He used up his heart in front of that blessed set.”

  Later, one of the pallbearers told Ellen Cherry that Verlin had been watching a Washington Redskins exhibition game when he stood and clutched his chest. “Wasn’t the excitement,” the man confided. “It was the long hours and the snacks.”

  The Reverend Buddy Winkler avoided any mention of football or television in his eulogy, although he did relate a couple of incidents that had to do with the jigging of frogs. The preacher was eloquent, even Ellen Cherry had to admit it. His saxophone blew joy into the dead man’s eyes, blew peace into his exploded ticker. With hypnotic cadences, he reproduced for the bland Baptist mourners the shadow that a newborn baby casts, then made the shadow grow long and pointed until it ended like a church spire back in God’s own sky. “The way down is the way up,” he said, quoting a Greek philosopher to a group of people who seldom accepted as truth any word that hadn’t come directly from the Bible or a southern politician.

  Ellen Cherry wanted to ask Buddy what he was doing mouthing the aphorism of a pagan in the house of Jehovah, but she didn’t dare get close to him. At the Charles house following the burial, he spent most of his time with his arm around Patsy, occasionally pulling her distraught face to his Armani lapel. Whenever he looked in Ellen Cherry’s direction, his teeth would grind like a slow divorce. Fortunately, he returned to New York the next morning.

  The day after that, in the late afternoon, Ellen Cherry went back. Patsy had insisted. “You got your job, honey. Your daddy wouldn’t want you to miss any more work. You know how he felt about shirkers and loafers.”

  Even so, Ellen Cherry was reluctant to leave until Patsy revealed her own plans to come to Manhattan. “I’m in shock right now. Oh, mercy, I’m in a pile of shock. But I’ll get over it in time, and when I do, well, there’s not diddly-squat for me in Colonial Pines. Maybe I’ll come up there and live around you for a while. Would that be okay? Your daddy’s insurance’ll provide a dollar or two and, who knows, maybe I’ll turn a right smart profit on this ol’ barn.”

  On the flight from Byrd Field, Ellen Cherry tried unsuccessfully to imagine Patsy without Verlin. For that matter, she couldn’t picture the world without him, as insignificant a player upon the world stage as he may have been. The permanent absence of someone who (from her perspective) had always been there, shaping her fundamental experience, her tissue and blood, was overwhelming and unreal. She felt older, more vulnerable, as if a buffer had suddenly crumbled between her and the mortal brink.

  The day after the funeral, while she and her mother had sat in front of the floor fan sipping iced tea, Patsy alluded to two miscarriages she had suffered when Ellen Cherry was a tot, one of the lost fetuses, apparently, having been fathered by someone other than Verlin. It was information that Ellen Cherry neither solicited nor desired, but when she tried to change the subject, Patsy had announced, “Now’s the time for you to have babies, honey. Directly. And you know why? Having babies messes up your life, but when you’re young your life’s already messed up, so it’s easy to fit in a baby or two.”

  She supposed Patsy was right about the messed-up part. Her life so far certainly hadn’t been any clockwork artichoke, although all around her she saw lives far more scattered and confused. Anyway, unless it was another false alarm, the drawstring on her emotional pajamas seemed to be cinching up.

  The skyline of Manhattan came into view. Its towers pierced her grief, her introspection, giving her an unexpected thrill. Richmond was so flat in comparison, Colonial Pines such an innocuous splinter on the maypole of the world. She felt rather like a bee returning to a great busy hive, but a hive where the drones pilfered the royal jelly, the workers moonlighted as litterbugs, and the queen reigned only so long as she got good reviews in the Times. Jerusalem might be on everybody’s mind, but New York was thrill enough for her. “Anything could be happening down there,” she marveled, but from her present altitude, of course, she could discern nothing specific. Not one jay feather of smoke, one tabby wail of siren reached her aircraft from the fire t
hat was burning in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  "EITHER ONE OF YOU ever have social interaction with a bullet?"

  Can o’ Beans’s inquiry had gone unanswered. Dirty Sock and Spoon had been preoccupied with the crowd that was gathering by the cathedral steps to heed or observe the Reverend Buddy Winkler. A Village Voice reporter, the same enterprising newshound who had written about Salome, had published a feature on the preacher, and several TV stations had picked it up (as eventually they would also do with the Salome story). As a result, regular passersby were paying Buddy more attention, and some people were visiting that block of Fifth Avenue deliberately to see the notorious radio evangelist who, in the sandal steps of his Lord Jesus, was now making his pitch in the streets. The resulting increase in pedestrian congestion concerned municipal officials, but due to the prevalence of millennial hysteria and the political power of the Christian right, they had been reluctant to interfere. Secretly, City Hall was hoping that some group such as Freedom From Religion would file a complaint.

  “I daresay Miss Spoon would not have crossed paths with a bullet of any caliber, but you, Mr. Sock, did relate that you’d once gone along on an expedition to bag bullfrogs. . . .”

  “Jigging,” growled Dirty Sock. “They didn’t blow ’em out of the goddamned water for Christ’s sake.” He returned his attention to the sidewalk. “That ol’ boy Norman could flat out turn around, but this here fellow knows how to butter his bread.”

  “Personally, I’d enjoy the opportunity to speak with some bullets, find out what goes on inside those little pointed heads.”

  The bean can’s interest in bullets had been sparked by a news broadcast that had drifted in through the grate. In a widely publicized effort to reduce fatalities among unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, the Israeli military had begun to fire wooden or plastic bullets in its rifles. To the contrary, however, fatal shootings had increased. American and European nurses and doctors doing volunteer service in West Bank hospitals reported that Israeli soldiers, deprived of the power of lead, were now shooting the young Arabs in the head at such close range that even a plastic bullet could cause death or brain damage. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” said Can o’ Beans disparagingly. He/she decided that if he/she succeeded in reaching Jerusalem, he/she would endeavor to interview a bullet or two. Beneath the facade of absolute stoicism that they, like all objects, presented to the animate-dominated world, did bullets have hopes, dreams, and fears? Did the inner life of a wooden bullet differ greatly from that of the one that wore a full metal jacket?

  If I ever make it to Jerusalem. That thought (tinged with fatalism, perhaps) scarcely had passed through what, in a bean can, amounted to a brain, when Painted Stick and Conch Shell called him/her, and the sock and spoon, away from their corroded little window on the world to announce that upon that very day they were going to make their move.

  “Our timing must be exact,” said Conch Shell. “Even so, danger will be upmost. None of you should feel obligated to participate.”

  So eager were Can o’ Beans and Dirty Sock to hit the road (they were mutants now, no longer able to be satisfied with the sedentariness of their kind) that they committed themselves even before they heard the plan. Spoon gave a tinkly little shiver and weakly cast her lot with the rest.

  Painted Stick was going to set a fire in the basement. It would have to be set while there was still enough light for smoke to be seen pouring out of the grate, yet close enough to nightfall so that the objects might take advantage of darkness once they were outside the cathedral. Calling upon his knowledge of matters celestial, Painted Stick would calculate the precise moment of truth. Ideally, the smoke should be observed by passersby no more than two minutes before the final colors of twilight faded. An alarm would have to be sounded at once, of course: if the blaze got out of control, the objects might perish, one and all. Spoon alone had a chance to survive an inferno, yet even she might melt into a metallic lump more unaesthetic and more undistinguished than the present configuration of Can o’ Beans. Spoon shuddered again. They each heard the tinkle.

  “Well now, how in tarnation do you expect to start this here fire?” asked the sock.

  “Friction,” replied the stick.

  “And how . . .” began Can o’ Beans. He/she fell silent. Because, as usual, he/she was curious about such things, he/she was about to ask Painted Stick how he would feel if this famous cathedral burned to the ground just to facilitate their escape. But the can decided not to burden Painted Stick, who had whipped one man and tripped a second, with another “moral” issue. Besides, Can o’ Beans was well aware that more than one destructive fire of “unknown origin” secretly had been started by inanimate objects. Even humans referred to “spontaneous combustion.” They just didn’t realize that it could be an act of will.

  In a far corner of the cellar, Painted Stick had overturned an old packing crate. The wood shavings that had spilled out were then spooned by the spoon and tamped by the stick into the shell and the stocking, who transported the stuff in their respective cavities to a spot on the floor beneath the grate. “Mr. Sock looks as if he’s been taking steroids,” said Can o’ Beans of his bulging comrade. “Or else he’s been fattened for pâté de sock gras.” Spoon giggled. Dirty Sock growled.

  Atop the heap of curly shavings, which Dirty Sock said reminded him of Miss Charles’s hairdo, they had nudged, pushed, and shoved, each according to his or her or his/her own abilities, several dry, dusty hymnals. In the same manner, they added several lengths of wood from a broken pew. Then they stepped back to survey their pyre. “I daresay no scout troop could do better,” remarked Can o’ Beans.

  “You dare said it,” said Dirty Sock.

  Spoon had giggled again, more from nervousness than amusement.

  At twilight, they had assumed their stations. Spoon and Dirty Sock, she all ashiver, he irritated by a piece of wood shaving that had caught in his threads, perched on the ledge before the grate. Conch Shell and Can o’ Beans were by the door, positioned so that when it swung open, they would be hidden behind it. Painted Stick was at the edge of the pyre itself, balancing upright on his tapered tip.

  They waited.

  And waited.

  And when the angle and composition of the dying light was to his satisfaction, the stick commenced to twirl. For some reason, each of the others, watching him, thought briefly of Turn Around Norman, although Norman obviously was a slow train to Leadville compared to the rapidly spinning stick. Around and around the ancient talisman twirled, twirling in a frenzy, like a blind man’s cane in a whirlpool, like the bit of a diamond cutter’s drill.

  They watched.

  And watched.

  And grew anxious.

  But at last a shaving began to smolder. Then another. And another. The first spark popped like a baby’s bloody head emerging from an oxygen womb. Twins. Quintuplets. Then, an entire population flared, and the shadow of the scorched stick was thrown, tall and mysterious, against a fire-lit wall.

  By the time that Ellen Cherry Charles—husbandless, loverless, and now fatherless—returned her seat back to an upright position in preparation for landing at La Guardia, an advance wave of firefighters was cautiously opening St. Patrick’s sub-basement door. Precisely at that moment, Spoon, Dirty Sock, and Painted Stick squirmed through the bars and out onto the sidewalk. There they were concealed in a hedgerow of smoke. Policemen already had cordoned off the block. So far, so good.

  “If only it will go half this smoothly for the others,” said Spoon.

  “Yep,” said Dirty Sock. “We got it made compared to them two.”

  Hardly had the objects spoken when a man appeared out of the smoke, a tall, gaunt man who, though attired in a fifteen-hundred-dollar suit, managed to look as cheap as chewing gum. A shock of recognition was followed by the greater shock of capture. Before she could say “Mother Mary” or “white chocolate mousse,” Spoon was yanked from the pavement by the man’s right hand. Just as suddenly, his
left hand snatched up Painted Stick. He squatted for a moment to consider Dirty Sock, but drew back with a show of disgust. Leaving the begrimed garment where it lay, he walked away, clutching and studying the utensil and the wand.

  Buddy Winkler had lingered near St. Patrick’s that dusk somewhat beyond his usual hour of departure. He had been conversing with a professed supporter, a well-dressed stranger who’d intimated interest in financially supporting any cause that might expedite Armageddon. “Let’s you and me talk us some turkey,” said Buddy, and, indeed, they had been all agobble when they noticed smoke streaming from a grate at the base of the cathedral. The preacher had been rather surprised by the speed and efficiency with which the stranger used a police call box to summon the fire department.

  When the first squad car had arrived, its driver had wanted to question Bud about the fire.

  “No, no. This is the Reverend Buddy Winkler,” the stranger intervened.

  “And who da fuck are you?”

  In response, the stranger had removed his wallet and flashed some token of identification that looked suspiciously less like a Visa Gold Card than a badge. The cop nodded and turned his attention to clearing the area. “Reckon I should mosey on out of the way,” said Buddy. “Maybe you and me can chew the fat on some more collected occasion.” He nodded at the smoking cathedral. “Sure hope the cod-chompers don’t lose no prime real estate.”