He zigs across Greenwich Avenue on his long stilted legs, then zags up Seventh, forever looking only up. He sees out of the concrete canyon. Behind the blue shroud of the daylit sky the stars are still secretly plotting his course. His hands revolve in front of him like dish antennae, testing the way ahead. He never bumps into anything.
At Fourteenth Street there’s a bar, and who could remember the name of it? Nobody calls it anything but Mangan’s. Fixed on his high stool, Mr. Potatohead counts his coins into paper tubes, a beer glass and a shot glass before him. He’s got a couple pounds of quarters, eleven ones, and one lucky five that he folds away in the watch pocket of his breeches. The long dim interior is dried-blood red and brown-lung brown. At the rear, the swaybacked spavined booths buckle under the weight of drunks and derelicts, sleeping or comatose or maybe dead … If they were dead, how long before anyone noticed? Above the front window a TV set cackles. Mangan’s ancient grizzled head grimly faces it down from the far end of the bar.
Mr. Potatohead buys Viola a drink when she comes in, changing his coin rolls for paper. Sixty-two fifty the quarters come to, not bad for only three afternoon shows. Viola takes a cigarette, they talk awhile. She’s a brassy black lady, good looking too, excepting the one top tooth that’s set in sideways there at the front. When her friends arrive she moves to their table. Mr. Potatohead buys a drink for himself, or maybe two, beer and a shot, beer and a shot—
“Hey Mangan,” he cries. “Where’s the freaks?”
Two doors down is a school where the handicapped people are brought to overcome their deficits; they become cobblers, things like that. They are respectable. But now and again they’ll come in here, to wear a little of the new sheen off their good repute, come tapping with canes or rolling in wheelchairs, some walking in on their tongues, just about. Always a mob and no room for the merely ugly among them.
“Not their night,” Mangan grunts. “They come in Thursdays now.”
Catching a sight of his own image in the mirror, eyes turning aside from themselves, Mr. Potatohead ducks and loses it behind the rows of bottles. He goes on drinking busily, speedily, chain smoking and watching the sunlight lower on the street outside.
“Might cut you off,” Mangan allows.
“Never,” says Mr. Potatohead. His cigarette laces amongst his five digits, the hot head of it dipping and stitching and never burning or grazing the skin. A snap of his fingers sends it end over end back into the prehensile clasp of his lips. He blows out a tidy smoke ring.
“All right, then,” Mangan says, tilting the bottle to the glass. Some feckless stranger sits down and claps a hand on Mr. Potatohead’s shoulder.
“Hey there, Mr. Potatohead,” he begins.
“Dontcallmethatdontevercallmethat!” Mr. Potatohead says, viciously slicing around on his stool.
The stranger’s moon face is deeply perplexed. “But you told me that was your name,” he says. “Yesterday, right here, you know, you bought me a drink, I bought you one, come on, Mr. Potatohead, don’t tell me you don’t remembaarghaarghgllhhgglllhhhh—” as Mr. Potatohead’s arms strike out like twin anacondas, wrapping around the stranger’s throat and thorax. One sharp elbow bats the stranger about the eyes and nose, not doing any serious damage but hurting plenty, yes. Mr. Potatohead is surprisingly quick and strong, but Mangan can surprise you even more—
… flying out the door, Mr. Potatohead collides with all five of the Dance Be-Jabbers, who seem to have gotten off a stop too soon, possibly meaning to shoplift a late lunch or early supper at Balducci’s on their way down to the park. Mangan snarls from the doorway and brandishes his big square fist, his face coronary red. It’s a familiar scene. The Dance Be-Jabbers dance Mr. Potatohead back onto his feet. Each wears a T-shirt with a number. Switching around from the door to face them, Mr. Potatohead observes that Dance Be-Jabber number 5 is rotating around on his coccyx, arms and legs tucked in, somewhat resembling a potato. Dance Be-Jabber number 4 is making power slides that take him back and back again to the selfsame place, his arms winding through air in reptilian loops, his head snapping from one queer angle to another. Dance Be-Jabber number 3, his arms and legs tucked in, is rotating around on the top of his head, looking like, well, another potato. Dance Be-Jabber number 2 does stationary power slides, his eyes googling down at invisible workings of magic mimed between his long pale palms. Dance Be-Jabber Numero Uno keeps up an easy four-step shuffle, chanting as the others continuously bone and unbone themselves: “Mistapotatohead, he lean and mean. He fake to the leff. He fake to the right. And wham! boppo! lunchmeataphobia! Watch out fo’ MistaPotatohead!”
“Gentlemen, I thank you,” Mr. Potatohead says, his hat appearing expressively in his hands. “You make my poor life into poetry.” Dance Be-Jabbers 2 through 5 have just become a subway train. Numero Uno slaps him a handful, then flings himself into the last car. Mr. Potatohead gathers his legs up under him, and as the Dance Be-Jabber train bumps and grinds downtown, he goes spindling off in his own directions …
… before the little mirror in the Magic and Costume Shop, not too far from the Flatiron Building, Mr. Potatohead is accessorizing himself with wigs, hats, rubber ears, rubber noses, Groucho glasses, a pipe and a trick bow tie … But no, but no, nothing is right. He shucks it all off and tries the boar’s-head mask again, bending from the waist to see the effect: he’s all wild boar from crown to gullet.
“All right, Vic, I’ll take this one …” Mr. Potatohead thumbs a couple of bills up onto the counter. The mask is expensive, thirty bucks.
“How’s the rats?” Victor inquires smoothing his cue-ball hair with one hand and making change with the other.
“Beautiful, perfect,” says Mr. Potatohead. “I couldn’t imagine better rats. Oh, and I need the black tux too, swallowtails, dress shirt, studs, the works.”
“Hundred dollar deposit on that.”
“Come on, can’t you front it to me?” Butterflies flutter in Mr. Potatohead’s stomach, he’s counting on that tux.
“F’what,” Victor says. “You got a funeral?”
“Birthday party,” says Mr. Potatohead, prestidigitating the notion from air. “Rich kid, you know. Upper East Side.”
“Some lucky kid,” Victor says moodily, peering into the boar’s rubber eye sockets. “Nightmares till his next birthday, probably. I don’t know, Mr. P., you smell a lot like a brewery tonight. I’m wondering are you really in a responsible frame of mind?”
“Come on, Victor,” Mr. Potatohead says. “I’ll let you hold the rest of my gear. Didn’t I always come back before? You know I couldn’t go too far without you …”
… slightly flattened by the rush-hour subway, Mr. Potatohead re-expands himself, flowing along with the commuter stream toward the Grand Central Station main waiting room. He plucks the white handkerchief from the tux’s breast pocket—with a flourish it becomes a gardenia, a bold boutonnière fixed to his lapel. Adjusting the boar’s lusty throat to his high collar, he strides out under the great concrete vault, where all the light bulb stars are gleaming down on him from the ceiling’s gilt heaven. Already he sees her near the information booth, dressed in a deep blue one-piece garment that shimmers with some constellated pattern, and she’s already begun to sing, that -O-, the one note so profound and powerful it makes the whole huge hall her instrument.
The cops have already cut through to her; they never let her get any further than that. No buskers in Grand Central Station, not allowed. Before, he’s seen them treat her with a kind of grudging courtesy, but tonight it looks like they might take her in—as Mr. Potatohead draws nigh, two mechanical rats descend on spider-web filaments from his palms, to scuttle and chitter across the shining shoes of all the good citizens bound for Larchmont. Screaming and scrambling ensue, and all of a sudden the cops have quite a bit to think about. Mr. Potatohead tweaks the fish lines; the rats yoyo back into his pockets; he moves on.
She’s moving out ahead of him, maybe four or five people away. She’s in good shap
e except for a slight hunchback and one hip set higher than the other. It appears that her hands have been broken off at the wrists and reattached at right angles to her arms. She goes up the western stairway like a crab, and turns along the heavy balustrade into a large square space that no one requires for anything except to overlook the echoing floor below. Here he catches up with her.
“Hey, lady”
She turns to him. Close-cropped hair, little mouse ears, sweet and tranquil face of a dark madonna.
“Hey lady, you know? You got a nice voice.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you so much.”
The lucky five appears in his hand, turns into an origami crane and flies to her—where it disappears, for everybody has to know a little rough magic nowadays. She smiles at him, her teeth small, perfect, brilliantly white, her brown eyes bright as she looks for him down in the boar’s floppy eye holes.
“Hey mister? You’re something yourself.” With a helical movement she takes his hand, and -O-, that grace note thrills down through him, searching out his loneliness, his longing, his exaltation …
“… he’s blowing beets.”
His head cranked high, Mr. Potatohead watches the Staten Island Ferry’s ramp hydraulically lower onto the dock. Not far from him some abandoned soul is puking pale pink waves, stinking of Boone’s Farm and stomach bile. “He’s blowing beets,” the witness remarks once more. Mr. Potatohead does not see or hear or smell a bit of it. When the crowd surges forward, he surges too.
It’s a bit cold and a bit windy out on the bay, so Mr. Potatohead has the prow of the boat all to himself. The sky has dropped its disguise by this time. His head is naturally in position, so as soon as he pulls off the boar’s-head mask he can see all of his stars to perfection, here for him again and always, exactly as he knew they would be. Swan and Dragon, Eagle and Dolphin, Great Bear, Hercules, Asclepius, the Scorpion … monsters and heroes intermingled, how strangely, how wonderfully they move.
A Biography of Madison Smartt Bell
Madison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as Harper’s Magazine and the New York Times Book Review. His books have been finalists for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award among other honors. Bell has also taught at distinguished creative writing programs including the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Johns Hopkins University, and Goucher College. His work is notable for its sweeping historical and philosophical scope matched with a remarkable sensitivity to the individual voices of characters on the margins of society.
Bell was born on August 1, 1957, near Nashville, Tennessee. His parents were intellectuals who mingled with poets and artists. Not long after being taught to read, Bell decided to become a professional writer, as he viewed authors as the most powerful and important people in the world. His excellent academic record earned Bell a scholarship to attend Princeton University. There he studied fiction in one of the first creative writing programs for undergraduates in the country, graduating summa cum laude and earning numerous writing awards from the school.
After Princeton, Bell moved to New York City and took on various jobs including security guard and sound engineer. Many of his urban experiences and observations became subject matter for his first published works. At twenty-two, Bell moved to Virginia to pursue an MA at Hollins University, where he wrote his first novel and many of his early collected stories. The Washington Square Ensemble (1984) depicts New York at its grittiest and most dangerous in the late seventies, and showcases Bell’s astonishing eye for detail, ear for dialogue, and compassion for people on the margins of society. Waiting for the End of the World (1985) is a more ambitious and complex novel that also explores the teeming city.
After moving back to New York for a short time, Bell settled in Baltimore, Maryland, to teach at Johns Hopkins and Goucher College. At Goucher, he met and married poet and teacher Elizabeth Spires. During a particularly prolific period, Bell produced a hard-boiled crime novel, Straight Cut (1986), his first collection of stories, Zero db (1987), and a novel made of interconnected perspectives of New York residents, The Year of Silence (1987).
Bell’s subsequent books began exploring broader territories, geographically and historically. Soldier’s Joy (1989) examines race, the South, and the impact of the Vietnam War on veterans’ lives. The story collection Barking Man (1990) follows characters around the globe, and Save Me, Joe Louis (1993) brings a pair of Bell’s Manhattan reprobates to rural Tennessee. Next, Bell turned to historical epics, such as his fictionalization of Haiti’s slave rebellion and early years, All Souls’ Rising (1995), a work that earned him National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award nominations, and the two subsequent novels that completed his trilogy of Haitian history, Master of the Crossroads (2000) and The Stone That the Builder Refused (2004). In the last decade he has also produced fiction and nonfiction books including a biography of Toussaint Louverture and a walking guide to Baltimore, Charm City (2007). In 2008 Bell was awarded the prestigious Strauss Living Award, which grants distinguished authors five years of funding to focus on their writing.
Bell continues to write and teach in Baltimore, where he lives with his wife and daughter.
Bell with his mother and Wotan the Doberman in 1957.
Bell at age three, the age his mother taught him to read. He credits this early start for his development as a writer later in life.
Bell with the family’s first sheep, Backson. Bell himself named the sheep based on a dream he had about “Backson the buffalo, with trailing blue wings.”
Bell as a young writer, age eleven.
The Bell family on their Tennessee farm in 1970.
Bell, pictured at age thirteen with a brood sow, was responsible for the care of the animals.
Author photos taken in New York in the early 1980s for the publication of Bell’s first novel, The Washington Square Ensemble. Selections from this shoot were eventually used for Bell’s second novel, Waiting for the End of the World. (Photo courtesy of Peter Taub.)
Bell on a visit to Haiti in 1999. He occasionally stayed at this particular lakou (a communal compound where several families live and share a common space) and here is learning how to plant and weed with a machete.
Bell in 1999, teaching his daughter to shoot. Here they are practicing on mistletoe.
Bell teaching a class at Ensworth School, his former elementary school in Nashville.
Bell in a rowboat on a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, in 2005. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had just moved to Paris a few months prior.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The following stories in this collection have previously appeared elsewhere: “Holding Together” and “Dragon’s Seed,” Boulevard; “Black and Tan” (formerly “Going to the Dogs”), The Atlantic monthly; “Customs of the Country” (revised for this volume), Harper’s Magazine, The Best American Short Stories 1989 (Houghton Mifflin), and New Stories from the South 1989 (Algonquin Books); “Finding Natasha,” Antaeus and Louder Than Words (Atlantic Monthly Press); “Barking Man,” The Northwest Review; “Witness,” Harper’s Magazine; “Mr. Potatohead in Love,” broadcast on National Public Radio (PEN Syndicated Fiction Project).
copyright © 1990 by Madison Smartt Bell
cover design by Julianna Lee
978-1-4532-3545-4
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY MADISON SMARTT BELL
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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