Skinny Legs and All

by Tom Robbins

  There was one painting left with which to deal: the portrait of Boomer with the seven various tongues. That one she delivered to the Sommervell Gallery. Ultima found it inferior to the I & I mural, into which she continued to read social and political meaning even while complaining that the mural accentuated feminism’s soft dark underbelly. Nevertheless, Ultima was certain that the portrait was commercially viable, due mainly to its subject. Boomer’s reputation loomed even larger on the New York art scene since he had deserted the scene for Israel. “Were he Jewish,” said Ultima, “his flight to Jerusalem would have produced only nods and clucks. But here we have a white southern hillbilly Gentile. . . . Well, my dear, our Mr. Petway does keep them guessing.” The portrait sold within forty-eight hours for five thousand dollars, allowing Ellen Cherry to escape eviction. It would have been awkward had Patsy arrived to find her camping in the streets on Christmas Eve.

  Prior to Patsy’s arrival, a letter had arrived from Boomer. Ellen Cherry had written to him, as well. Their letters had crossed, perhaps over the Atlantic (whose chops Conch Shell and Can o’ Beans had managed to negotiate just ahead of wintry storms), perhaps over Jerusalem itself, over Gaza, over intifada, over stones, sheep heads, honey cakes, rubber bullets, and the endless caravans of ancient superstitions.

  Boomer had reported that the Pales sculpture was finished and soon to be installed. Its unveiling was scheduled for the final week in January. After that, he would have some decisions to make. In the meantime, Buddy Winkler would be coming over, though probably not until after the inauguration, toward the middle of the month. In the last paragraph, Boomer wrote rather movingly about the sweet torture of having glimpsed her again, although only after first crowing over the success of his masquerade. “Looking at you in your kimono, it felt like some backyard chef was sprinkling meat tenderizer on my heart,” he scrawled. “A month-old baby could of gummed my heart up like pablum. An old boy with a bleeding ulcer could of digested it easy as cream.”

  As for Ellen Cherry’s note, it was succinct enough to fit on a Hallmark card. “Dear Husband and Master of Disguise,” it read. “Thanks for the lovely roses. I knew it was you all the time.”

  Patsy’s plane had been an hour late, touching down at noon on the day before Christmas. Her emotions were as frizzled as her hair. “Another hayseed blows into Big Town,” she announced as she came through the gate. “Lord, honey, why didn’t I stay down yonder where I belong? I’m way too old and got way too much insurance money to be let loose in a meat grinder like this. I feel like handing over my purse to the first ol’ boy I meet on the corner, save him the trouble of fleecing me.”

  “Aw, mama, you underestimate your shrewdness and overestimate your net worth. You’re going to be broke in no time, all right, but it’ll be landlords and Bloomingdale’s that get your stash.”

  That night they fried chicken and trimmed a delapidated little spruce that looked more lost and scared in New York than Patsy did. They drank a fair amount of eggnog with rum in it and ended up crying, mostly over Verlin, although a dozen tears were reserved for Boomer Petway and a half dozen for men in general.

  The next morning, Patsy was a bit more intact. “If Bud can get by in this huge ol’ place,” she said to her bacon, “then so can I.”

  “You’ll do fine, mama. But please let’s not talk about Uncle Bud.”

  “He’ll be expecting to see me.”

  “Okay, if you want to, but not under my roof.”

  They switched the topic of conversation to Isaac & Ishmael’s and Ellen Cherry went on at some length about Salome, her wide following and narrow calves, and the furious flap that was festering: the Dance of the Seven Veils vs. The Super Bowl. Patsy was fascinated and asked lots of questions. “I could of been a dancer myself,” she said plaintively, her fork circling the high-relief of her waffle like a disabled warplane circling a mountainous region, searching for a place to land.

  Her first week in New York, Patsy Charles refused to leave the Ansonia unless in the company of her daughter. While Ellen Cherry was at work, Patsy would clean the apartment and dance to Neville Brothers tapes, naked except for white go-go boots. Once, standing at the window, she’d said to Ellen Cherry, “It sounds so harsh out there. It’s a wonder it hasn’t rubbed calluses on you.”

  “It can do that,” said Ellen Cherry. “It can also polish you, make you shine. I remember what Boomer wrote to me once about the Middle East. ’The rougher the world gets around me, the sweeter I seem to myself.’ I guess it’s all in how you receive it.”

  “That Boomer.”

  “Yep,” she sighed. “That Boomer.”

  Eventually, Ellen Cherry began to take her mama to the I & I with her. Patsy helped out in the kitchen and bussed tables in the bar. It gave her something to do and allowed her both to study her daughter’s mural and to witness firsthand the terrible row over the dance and the game. She understood the magnetic pull of football since it had, in her opinion, been the death of her husband, but it wasn’t until she actually saw Salome perform that she could appreciate the spell the girl cast upon an audience.

  “Lordy mercy,” said Patsy. “She’s a half-cooked little fritter, but a fellow’d have to be coated with Teflon not to let her stick to his pan.”

  A few days later, there was a brawl in the bar. It started when a Super-Bowl-hating woman raked her husband’s cheeks with long crimson fingernails, and quickly spread to other tables before Detective Shaftoe broke it up by firing his snub-nosed .38 in the air. The slug ricocheted off a pipe in the ceiling and struck the mural. A sound came out of the bullet hole like the faroff howling of a wolf.

  “That settles it,” said Abu, when he and Spike showed up from the tennis club. Shaftoe and the security guards were still arguing over the detective’s right to bring a gun into the restaurant. “That settles it. We are canceling the election.”

  “Hoo boy!” said Spike. “We sound like a banana republic.”

  “But you have a plan,” Abu reminded him.

  “Correct. We’re kaputting the election and moving on to Plan B.”

  Plan B was Spike Cohen’s idea. So disturbed was he by the discord that the conflict between the game and the dance had generated that he had volunteered to purchase several large, expensive, industrial heaters and a canvas canopy so that the giant TV set might be moved temporarily into the courtyard behind the I & I. It wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable as indoors, but there would be food and beverage service at card tables, and those customers who still couldn’t settle on one event or the other might move back and forth, if it suited them, between the Dance of the Seven Veils and the Super Bowl.

  As the fateful Sunday was now only eight days away, almost everybody seemed grateful for the compromise. “Looks fine,” muttered Shaftoe. “On paper.”

  On Monday, January 17, patsy had lunch with Buddy Winkler. She begged Ellen Cherry to go with her, alas, in vain, so she ventured forth alone and, after nine or ten timid attempts, succeeded in flagging down a taxi. To Patsy’s surprise, the address where the cab deposited her was that of a Middle Eastern restaurant. “Why’re we eating this kind of food?” she asked, once she had flustered the good reverend by giving him a hug.

  “’Cause I’m going off to Jerusalem in the morning, and I need to accustom my taste buds. I got lots to do over yonder, and I can’t afford to be distracted by queer and unappealin’ sustenance. Your next question, I reckon, is why I didn’t choose to acclimatize my palate in that greasy Gomorrah where Verlin Charles’s only girl is breakin’ her dead daddy’s heart.”

  “Why no, Bud,” said Patsy, “I was fixing to ask who dressed you. I mean, that there’s a right pretty suit you got on, but that necktie looks like something the cat drug in, and isn’t your shirt a tad heavy on the starch? I was fixing to ask if you couldn’t use a woman’s touch. In regards to your wardrobe, I mean. But now that you’ve gone and tol’ me you’re lighting out for Is-ra-el, I reckon my question has got to be, ’Why?” What is it that
you’re aiming to do in that troubled place? I know why you wouldn’t take your lunch at Isaac and Ishmael’s, although Verlin Charles did eat there on one occasion. And that brings up another question, two other questions. Can hearts really break once they’re dead and gone? And do you suppose that when Jesus Christ comes back to rule in Jerusalem, the menu over yonder will then feature biscuits and ham gravy?”

  The Reverend Buddy Winkler just stared at her, shaking his head, as if he were a kindly but exasperated teacher of arithmetic regarding a pupil more interested in flipping spitballs than in mastering the life-enhancing practicalities of long division. The waiter appeared, and they each ordered shish tawook with cucumbers.

  “I reckon you find it better at Isaac and Ishmael’s,” Buddy said when it was served.

  “To be honest, no,” said Patsy. “Theirs tastes a bit like kerosene.”

  “How could anything taste right in that atmosphere? Where that hussy dances?”

  “You know about Salome?”

  “The whole blessed town knows ’bout that little harlot. Can you imagine? Namin’ herself after the second most evil woman in the Scriptures! A deliberate insult to the memory of John the Baptist. If I wasn’t sure the world was endin’ soon, this evil ’round about us would plumb spoil my appetite.”

  “It’s right around the corner, is it, Bud?”

  “Oh, Patsy, you can’t believe how slick everything’s fallin’ into place.” With a wooden kabob skewer, he tapped the tabletop (no bamboo place mats in that Middle Eastern restaurant). Tap tap tap. “All the prophecies.” Tap tap tap. “Fallin’ into place.” Tap tap tap. “One by one.” Tap tap tap. “Pretty as a speckled pup.” He laid the skewer down. “’Course the Kremlin is foulin’ things up, wouldn’t you know? New regime in there with ’glassnose’ or whatever, talkin’ peace and disarmament, tryin’ to cool things off. Naturally, the Russians don’t want the fiery end to come, they’re atheists, they’re gonna burn. Russia is deliberately slowin’ down the process. They’re the ones monkeyin’ with God’s timetable. And that’s why I got to do . . . what I got to do. Get things back on track. Over in Jerusalem, they eat these here cucumbers for breakfast. For breakfast! Have you ever . . . ?”

  “You’re gonna fool with that Dome of the Rock.”

  “Hush. I can’t say nothing further. That daughter of yourn has become a thorn in my side. She can’t be trusted. Let us lament the iniquities into which the paintbox of Jezebel has led her. Let us—”

  “Let us change the damn subject before I get my dandruff up. I’m not putting up with you bad-mouthing Ellen Cherry.”

  “Oh, Patsy.”

  They finished the meal in silence. As they waited for the bill, Buddy said, “I want you to know I’m real thankful that Verlin remembered my mission in his will.”

  “Your mission’s got a highly substantial cash flow, don’t it, Bud?”

  “Armageddons do not come cheap.”

  “Tell me this: what if your violent scheme succeeds and you blow the Arab thing to pieces and make the trouble over yonder even worse than it is already—and then the Messiah still doesn’t come?”

  After a short pause, during which he employed a kabob skewer to pry a microchip of green pepper from between his gold teeth, Buddy said, “Then I reckon I’ll have to step in and be the Messiah.”

  With such horrified disbelief did Patsy look at him that he drew his palm instinctively, self-consciously across the wafflescape of his face and said, “Don’t worry, the prophecies don’t fib, and if they do, then life don’t mean applesauce and never did.” He snatched up a saucer of baba ghanoug and held it so close to her eyes that she had no choice but to gaze at the dead civilizations submerged in its goop.

  THAT EVENING, about the time that Patsy was telling Ellen Cherry that Uncle Bud’s ambitions might well be bigger than she had ever imagined ("I thought he just wanted to see himself on the TV"), about the time that the reverend was laying out a bulletproof vest in the bottom of his traveling bag, there came a sharp rapping at his door. Two men stood there, one of whom Bud recognized as the fellow who’d engaged him in questionable conversation the evening of the fire at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Smiling politely, they displayed plastic cards identifying themselves as employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They asked to see first his driver’s license, then his passport and airline ticket to Jerusalem. The driver’s license they returned, the passport they confiscated, the ticket they tore into confetti.

  “We’d appreciate it, Reverend Winkler, if you’d please come with us,” said the familiar one.

  “Looky here, I got me a whole pisspot of the finest Hebrew lawyers in this city, and when they get through with you boys, you gonna wish you been home watchin’ ’I Spy’ reruns with the little woman.” He reached for the telephone, but a fist closed around his wrist, immobilizing it.

  “You don’t want to discuss this with your attorneys, believe me you don’t. In a few hours, you’ll understand why. Now get your overcoat. We got a plane to catch.”

  It wasn’t until he saw the Washington Monument, illuminated by floodlights, that Buddy realized in what direction they had been flying. (Their Lear jet, which bore the corporate logo of a newspaper chain that the evangelist believed to be headquartered out West somewhere, had taken off from a military airfield in New Jersey.) In a few minutes, they crossed the Potomac River and completed their descent.

  A stretch limo, so glossy black that Buddy mistook it for a shadow, was waiting on the tarmac. “Least you’re kidnappin’ me in style,” muttered Buddy, who’d been unusually subdued during the flight. The car already contained one passenger, a guy in sweats, or, more precisely, a gentleman in powder blue Gucci running togs. He was sipping from a can of Miller Lite. When Bud grew accustomed to the dim light, he recognized the boyish good looks of the vice president of the United States.

  “Care for a brewski, Reverend Winkler?”

  “Well . . . I don’t normally touch alcohol, but, okay, thank you, sir.”

  One of the agents, who had joined them in the gently rolling acreage of the backseat, pulled another can of Miller Lite from an inset refrigerator and popped its tab. Buddy took a long, anxious swallow.

  “Tastes great,” he said.

  “Less filling,” said the vice president.

  Buddy did not think to argue.

  For an hour they drove around in the frosty Virginia night, past subdivision after sleeping subdivision, each as restrained in temperament as the British-sounding name it bore (Pickwick Farms, The Greensward, Dippingdale Creek); past drive-in picture shows with lifeless screens, past massive shopping malls designed to resemble colonial towns, now dark and deserted, their cash registers cooling down like runners after a marathon. They drove the speed limit, no faster, no slower, stopping only once, in the parking lot of a colonial-style McDonald’s, where the vice president got out and urinated into the shrubbery.

  As they drove, the vice president talked. His voice was cheerful in a flat sort of way, but with an adenoidal edge that under the proper stimulus might whine with a kind of Eagle Scout hysteria. He thanked the preacher for his tireless ministries on behalf of God Almighty and Freedom Land. He was not only sympathetic, he said, to Buddy’s plot to bomb the Dome of the rock (with which he seemed to be familiar down to the last detail) but also grateful, he said, and admiring. It was a job that needed doing, according to the vice president. But, unfortunately, not just yet.

  “You see,” said the Veep, “and I’m speaking to you in strictest confidence, we have a president of this republic who’s a hypocrite.”

  “Now, Mr. Vice President . . .” cautioned one of the operatives.

  “A fine and good leader in many respects,” the young statesman continued, “but in certain matters of utmost concern to, ah, true Christians everywhere, he’s, sadly, not with us. He pays lip service to those, uh, matters of faith, but the truth is, Reverend Winkler, our President just does not believe even the teeniest bit in the prophe
cy. Well, that’s not quite a fact, he does believe a teeny bit in the prophecy in a, uh, abstract, distant, on-paper sort of way; he just doesn’t believe in the fulfillment of Ezekiel in our time. Why, I don’t think he wants the fulfillment of Ezekiel! I don’t think he wants the Rapture. You should see the way he rolls his eyes at me whenever I bring it up. I feel sometimes he’s mocking me. Mocking us.”