The Dick Gibson Show

by Elkin, Stanley

  ”I want my patients to want my hands on their bodies,” Miriam said. “How else can I help them? Men in their fifties—I suppose you’re up there now yourself—whose stomachs have gone soft, who don’t try to hide their bald spots with fancy hair styles, and if they don’t shave for a couple of days, what of it? Who aren’t always squeezed up tight to keep their gas in, and are smooth on their chests as babies—those are your interesting men.”

  He could not picture her as she had been. He remembered her voice, but couldn’t recall her face or the shape of her body. He didn’t know if she had been tall or heavy or anything about her. Nevertheless, though he had not seen her in thirty years, he had what he was sure was an exact impression of what she had become. He saw her dowager’s hump, the features of her face, the nose rounded and gently comical, the crow’s feet and wide mouth, the precise color of her hair, the immense rounds of breast, full as roasts, the wide lap beneath her nurse’s white uniform with its bas-relief of girdle and garter like landmarks under a light snow. He had removed his shirt and slipped out of his pants and underwear, and was almost as naked as he had been in Morristown when she had bathed him in bed, or as she herself had been when she padded about their small room doing her little chores and telling him stories of her life in Iowa. He closed his eyes for just a moment, content, irritated only by the distortion of her voice on the telephone.

  “Well,” Miriam said, “it’s awfully late. I have to give my little man his pill. Maybe before I leave Ohio I’ll call again. I’m proud you made such a success, Marshall.”

  He thanked her comfortably. He had pulled off one stocking and was rolling the other down his leg. “Ohio?”

  “Yes. I told you that.”

  “Cincinnati?” Behr-Bleibtreau, if that’s who the anthropologist had been, had made a pointed reference to the caller from Cincinnati.

  “That’s right, Marshall. How’d you know that?”

  “Your patient—what’s your patient’s name?”

  “Well, that’s a matter of professional ethics, Marshall.”

  “Does he know you listen to this program?”

  “Why, yes, of course he does. He’s the one who told me about it. We’re listening to it together right now.”

  “Listen,” he said, “his name’s Behr-Bleibtreau, isn’t it?”

  “Marshall, I can’t tell you a patient’s name when I’m on a case, and that’s final.”

  “It is Behr-Bleibtreau, isn’t it?”

  “Final is final. You don’t know me when I make up my mind. I can be pretty darn stubborn. Goodnight now, Marshall.”

  He looked down and saw that he was undressed. One knee-length sock, bunched over his heel, was all he was wearing.

  “Listen—” he said.

  “Goodnight now.” She hung up. Dick Gibson angrily pulled the sock the rest of the way off his foot.

  “Your feet stink.”

  He was talking to an old fellow. The man had been driving along the rough back road between Aliosto, Georgia, and Clendennon, Alabama, on his way to visit his son-in-law who was foreman of the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Anniston, when he spied a tree, uprooted and lying across some power lines near the side of the road. The tree was not a large one, but its weight was great enough to bow the lines, pressing them down to about the level of a man’s shoulders.

  Before the old man retired he had worked for many years as a drill-press operator in a factory which manufactured and assembled playground equipment. He said that this is what had given him his great love for children. During his last five or six years with the company he had been appointed by his union to be the shop safety officer, and it was his responsibility to be on the lookout for potentially hazardous situations and to figure out means by which accidents could be cut to a minimum. Not only had he supervised the posting of several dozen instructive signs throughout the plant, but he had developed what he called a “check list,” a series of precautionary steps which a worker took before ever turning on his machine.

  When the old man saw the tree lying in its treacherous sling, he said his first thought was that here was a terrific potential for an accident if he ever saw one. If the lines snapped, live wires would go jumping and bucking all over the place. The lines were close enough to the side of the road to hook a passing car. Even more urgent was the fact that some kid might be lashed by the energies in the broken cables. “There’d been a terrific wind up in Aliosto the night before last,” the old man said, “and I figured maybe some tornado had touched down in the woods and just picked up that old tree and set it down on them lines.

  “Well, sir, I was at that point in my journey where I didn’t know would it be better to turn back to Aliosto or press on to Clendennon. I drive an old Hudson which the feller I got it from turned back the odometer, and it ain’t worked proper since. It don’t register at all except every ten thousand miles the first two numbers over on the left change, so was no way to tell how far I already come. That’s all woods and dirt road between Aliosto and Clendennon. You don’t pick up County double ‘S’ to Anniston till the other side of Clendennon, so one mile don’t look no different than another. Speedometer’s bust, too, so I couldn’t tell how fast I’d been coming, and I don’t wear no watch so I didn’t know how long neither. Anyway, I decided to continue along to Clendennon. Which it turned out come up a good deal faster than I thought it would.

  “There’s a general store in Clendennon, and I went inside and asked the feller could I use his pay telephone. I called the phone company business office down to Anniston and told them what I seen. The girl there put me through to the service department, and I told them again.

  “‘Well,’ says the feller in the service department, ‘we didn’t get no reports of any interruption in service. Whereabouts this happen?’

  “‘On the road between Aliosto and Clendennon.’

  “‘No,’ he says, ‘in which state, Alabama or Georgia?’

  “‘Why, there ain’t no state line marker on that road,’ I told him. I didn’t see one.’

  “So he asks me where I’m calling from and I tell him Clendennon, and he says Clendennon’s pretty close to the Georgia line and that if that tree was down on those wires in Georgia no Alabama truck could go out there and fix it.

  “‘Well, man,’ I said, ‘somebody better. Them lines ain’t gonna hold up that tree much longer. Some kid could get hurt.’ This was summertime. There’s fishing all along back in them woods in the lakes. I’d already passed some boys on bicycles. So he says, well, could I do this much for him then—could I go back and get the shield numbers on the two poles holding up the wires that tree was flung across, and call him back.

  “‘What shields are those?’ I asked.

  “‘Why, the shields,’ he says. ‘The little tin plates that are on every telephone and power pole. They’re fixed about five and a half foot up the west side of the pole.’

  “You know I never noticed them? I’m seventy-one years old and been around telephone poles all my life and I never did see that they had any tin plates on them. Well, I thought all this was his business and not mine and I told him so, but he tells me he just ain’t got no trucks available at this time. I probably would have dropped the whole thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout them kids that could get hurt. My son-in-law didn’t know I was coming, he didn’t expect me, and it didn’t make no difference what time I finally got there, so I decided I’d go back.

  “Well, that’s what I did, and a good thing too, because now those lines were no higher than a man’s belt, and when I looked up I could see that where they was attached at they was under more strain than ever. They could have bust loose from their connections right while I was standing there. Well. I looked for the plates the feller told me about and there they was, on the west side just like he said, and five and a half foot up, too. You ever see one?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they’re just like—what do you call it—insignia on a train conductor’s hat,
and they’re tin, and they got these letters and numbers stamped on them, raised up like the figures on a license plate. Some kind of code. I wrote down the numbers and went back to Clendennon and called the fella again and give him the information.

  “‘That’s Georgia,’ he says. ‘That’s a Georgia pole. You’ll have to call them.’”

  “What a lot of red tape,” Dick Gibson said.

  “No, no, that ain’t the point. Hang on a minute. You see, just like you, I thought it was all one company, but it isn’t. Georgia is Southern Bell, and that part of Alabama where I was is Talladega County Telephone Company.”

  “Well, you went to a lot of trouble.”

  “Wait. I called the phone company in Marietta, Georgia. That’s where they come out from to service Aliosto where I live, so I called them. This time I didn’t tell my story to the girl who answered the phone but asked to be put right through to the service department. I had the numbers of the shields right in front of me, and as soon as the man got on the line I told him, ‘Sir, I’m a stranger who while driving along the back road between Aliosto, Georgia, and Clendennon, Alabama, this morning happened to notice a tree pressing down on the lines between poles LF 644 and LF 643. When I first noticed the tree it was lying on the lines at about five and a half foot. When I went back, I would estimate about an hour and a half later, it had sunk to about three foot off the ground. That’s about one foot, three inches each hour. That tree is straining desperately at them wires, and I fear for the children in the area if the lines should snap. In fact, they may already have snapped.’ You know what he told me?”

  “What?”

  “That if the lines did snap, all that would happen is that the phone service in the area would be interrupted, and that they couldn’t have snapped or I wouldn’t be talking to him right now. He said there was no danger from exposed telephone cable, but that I’d better call the electric company because if there were power lines there—see, I thought power lines had something to do with phones, but it turns out they’re two different things—and they broke down, then there could be trouble. I asked him for the number of the electric company, and he said I’d have to get it from Information.”

  “What a lot of—”

  “Wait. I got the number of the electric company from Information and I asked for the service department. I told my story. Do you know what they told me in the service department?”

  “What?”

  “That I wanted the maintenance department.”

  “I’ll be,” Dick said.

  “No. Don’t you see? What’s the service department at the phone company is the maintenance department at the electric company.”

  “Did you finally get the right department?”

  “Sure I did. Once I knew what to ask for, sure I did.”

  “Did you have any more trouble?”

  The old man laughed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I can see you just don’t understand. I called the maintenance department. See, I thought I knew what was coming. That they’d want to know was there any power lines between them two poles in addition to the telephone cables. That they’d have to tell me what to look for and I’d have to go back again. Well, they asked me if I got the shield numbers and I told them I did and they said let’s have them, and I gave them to them and they said well, sir, thank you very much, we’ll look into it right away.”

  “You certainly had yourself a morning,” Dick said.

  “I said to this fella, ‘How do you know whether there’s power lines as well as phone cable along in there?’

  “‘Why, sure there are,’ he said. ‘The F in the code tells us that.’”

  “They took care of it, then?”

  “I drove back from visiting my son-in-law the next day. The tree was gone. Not a sign of it. The lines was all taut as good fencing. For my own satisfaction I stopped the car to check the poles. I’d stopped at LF 663, so I counted the poles and finally come down to LF 644 and 643 and everything was clean as a whistle. That’s a terrific system. It’s better than an address. Course it is an address; that’s what those shields actually are.”

  “Well, I’m glad they got it before somebody was hurt,” Dick Gibson said.

  “Sure,” the man said. “This didn’t happen yesterday or last week.”

  “No? From the way you were talking I thought it was a recent experience.”

  “No. This was three years ago. I’m retired eight years and this was five years after I retired. It’s been three years since this happened.”

  “I see.” He was anxious to take the next call. Perhaps Behr-Bleibtreau was trying to get through.

  “There’s order,” the old man said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There’s order. There’s procedure. There’s records on everything. There’s system.”

  “I suppose there is.”

  “You bet your life. When I was in Anniston that time I asked my son-in-law to take me through the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. He showed me how everything worked. I asked a lot of questions. I couldn’t take it all in just that one time, so I went back. I had to go back two or three times. I found out all about it. There’s system, there’s order. I’m in a gas station anywhere in the country and I look at the bottom of the soda bottle and I see where it came from and I know how it got there. I know what happens to that bottle when they take it back. I look for certain tell-tale signs and I know approximately how many more times they’ll be able to use it. I know what happens to the glass when they throw it away.

  “Then there’s cans. I know about them too. It’s what I do now. I find out about things. If I don’t understand something I get somebody to explain it to me till I do. I don’t rest till my curiosity is satisfied. I know how a letter gets from this place to that, just what the zip code does, who handles it. There’s organization, there’s process, procedure. There’s steps—like that check list I made up for the men in my plant. There’s a system and intersecting lines and connections. There’s meaning. My son-in-law gave me a shirt for Father’s Day. I put it on yesterday for the first time. You know what I found in the pocket?”

  “What?”

  “A slip of paper. ‘Inspected by Number 83.’ The shirt’s a Welford, 65 percent polyester, 35 percent cotton. It’s union-made in Chicago. I read the tags on it, the instructions they give you for washing. How can some shirt outfit you never heard of have eighty-three inspectors? And I’m taking eighty-three as an inside figure, mind you; probably the numbers go higher. I’m going to find out. I’ll find out what that number actually represents. I wrote Eighty-Three today. If I don’t get an answer I’ll write Eighty-Two. I’ll find out. I’ll see how it works, how it’s all connected. Everything’s connected. There’s order, there’s process, there’s meaning, there’s system. It ain’t always clear, but just stick with it and you’ll see. Then you’ll be amazed you never saw it. It’ll be as plain as the nose on your face. If it was a snake it would bite you.”

  Behr-Bleibtreau didn’t call.

  Richard Swomley-Wamble called.

  “How are you, Henry?” Dick asked distantly.

  “You still don’t trust me, do you?”

  “Oh, well.”

  “It no longer makes any difference whether you trust me or not,” Henry said. There was a catch in his voice.

  “Come on, Henry,” Dick Gibson said, “you needn’t cry just yet. We’ve barely started our conversation.”

  “I’m a child. Children cry.”

  “Very well. Let’s drop it. What’s been happening, Henry?”

  “Richard’s my name.”

  “Richard, then.”

  “I’m active.”

  “Your charities?”

  “You make it sound ignoble. Please don’t pick on me. Why must we always be so irritable with each other? I’m not saying all of it’s your fault. I’m responsible too. If I’ve been fresh, I apologize. I respect my elders—I do, though I suppose sometimes I say things that gives them the impre
ssion I’m conceited or think I know more about life than they do. I know you have experience and maturity, whereas I have only my idealism. Children can be pretty narrow sometimes. Look, I’m really very grateful to you. You took me into the Listening Post when I needed it very badly. I’ll never forget that. I’d really like very much for us to be friends.”

  “All right,” Dick said, “so would I.” It was true. He had been uncertain of his ground with Richard from the first; even as he had baited him he felt himself in the wrong. And he had other things to worry about. “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “These past two weeks have been wonderful,” the boy said enthusiastically. “The Mail Baggers have been marvelous. You know, a lot of them just want to be cheered up, or if they do need something it’s usually very small. There’s a woman in Lakeland who’s bedridden. Her TV picture tube blew out last month and she wrote to ask if I could let her have thirty-five dollars to replace it. Thirty-five dollars may not be much to you or me, but when you’re trying to live on just your Social Security payments I guess it can seem like all the money in the world. I didn’t replace the tube but I did get her a new color set.”

  “That was very kind of you, Richard.”

  “I hope she doesn’t think I throw my money around to impress people. I thought she’d enjoy it.”