"Hello, August," Benny said.
"Got a nice gong," August said.
"Oh well," Benny said. "I've got quite a few gongs. About forty. What kind of gong is it?"
"Dinner gong," August said. "Got a turtle shell with a picture on it."
"What?" Benny asked, perking up a little.
"Big turtle shell," August said. "Picture ain't too good though."
Through the door I could see an old black pickup parked at the curb. It had wooden sideboards, but whatever it may once have boasted in the way of springs had long since had the spring crushed out of them. The pickup sagged far to one side with the weight of goods piled in it.
On the sidewalk near the pickup were two thin men dressed as August was. They were watching a dusty-looking mongrel relieve itself against the rear tire of the pickup.
"I better take a look at that shell," Benny said.
August took no interest in me at all. He led us out to the pickup, lowered the much-dented tailgate, and began to dig objects out of the clutter of goods the rear end contained. To my surprise, the objects were good. The dinner gong was silver, with a nice little felt mallet. The two thin men and the dusty mongrel came over and stood silently as we inspected it.
"Hello, Sept," Benny said. "Hello, Octo."
The two men nodded shyly, but didn't speak.
"How's your dog?" Benny asked. The dog was scratching at a tick. The two thin men looked down at it, embarrassed by Benny's politeness.
Nice as the gong was, it was a trifle compared to the turtle shell with the picture in it. The shell was the size of a washbasin, the shell of a sea turtle, obviously. The picture, on the inside of the shell, was a primitive showing two little black children with flowers in their hair. It was painted on the scraped surface of the sea turtle's shell. I had never seen such a painting, never heard of such a technique. It was a wonderful thing, but I carefully muted my interest. After all, it was Benny's buy, and the qualities of the painting were not lost on him either.
"My goodness," he said. "My goodness. Where'd you find this, August?"
"Down Carolina," August said.
"Well my goodness," Benny said. "Did they have any more?"
"Only one," August said.
"What would a man have to give for a thing like that?" Benny wondered.
August looked unhappy. Having to think up prices for oddities like a turtle shell with a picture on it was wearisome work. He fixed his one good eye on the-two thin men, but they were carefully noncommittal. They kept their eyes on the dog.
"Only one they had," August said. "Would you pay seventy-five?"
Benny didn't have to think that one over long.
"I'll go get the money," he said. "I don't really need the gong. I have quite a few nice gongs as it is."
He went in the house to get the money and silence fell. The three men were not very talkative. The dog, more animated than the rest of us, jumped up in the back of the pickup and crawled over the miscellaneous heap of goods to where it had a bed.
I was wondering if I ought to buy the gong, simply as a means of breaking the ice. It was obvious that I had stumbled on a little family of American traders, men who got around. The pickup had an Ohio license plate.
"My name's Jack," I said. "How much do you want for the gong?"
August looked unhappy. Some people are as shy about selling as others are about sex. Although he probably spent his whole life buying and selling, the making of prices did not come easy, particularly if the customer was a stranger.
"Silver gong," he said finally.
Then I noticed the end of a trunk, wedged beneath a pile of quilts. I could barely see it, but it looked like an interesting trunk. It looked very old, and it didn't look American.
"Hey," I said. "Can I see that trunk? I need a trunk."
The two tall men blinked. My erratic behavior made them nervous.
August was not so volatile. He was thinking about the gong and did not allow himself to be distracted. His left eye gazed off into Baltimore, while his right studied me.
"Like to get a hunnert an' twenty-five," he said.
I immediately handed it over.
"Thank you," I said. "That's a good price. What about the trunk?"
"It's under them quilts," August said, after a moment. Having $125 materialize in his hand startled him, and he waddled off around the pickup and put it in a safe place.
"I sure would like to see that trunk," I said, when he came back.
Benny arrived with $75 and took the turtle shell with the beautiful primitive on it.
"He wants that trunk," August said. "You want it?"
A true trader, he was sticking to protocol. He had come to see Benny, therefore Benny had first refusal on everything that was for sale.
"My goodness," Benny said. "I don't think so. I have over two hundred trunks."
It was true. Benny's house had trunks everywhere, most of them serving as storage bins for medals, seals, coins, watches, paperweights, netsuke, or other small objects.
August looked at the trunk thoughtfully.
"Take it out I won't be able to get it back in," he said, to test my seriousness. Removing the trunk would disrupt the balance of his load, which in his mind possessed an order not visible to the casual eye.
“I’ll probably buy it," I said.
Looking resigned, he extracted the trunk, while his companions stood by like two nervous birds, watching his every move but not daring to offer any assistance. August was clearly the boss.
The trunk, when it finally emerged, was wonderful. I couldn't immediately place the wood, but it was not American. From the leather and brass work I thought it was probably seventeenth century, though it might have been sixteenth. There was a crest stamped into the leather and the inside was lined with an ancient purplish velvet, dried to the thinness of Kleenex, but velvet still. Probably the trunk was Spanish, possibly Portuguese.
"Do you know this crest, Benny?" I asked. If it was a royal, as opposed to a ducal, crest, the chest might be worth thousands.
Benny was no help. Like many collectors, he is completely indifferent to objects he is not interested in buying.
"It's not familiar to me," he said rather formally. He had got what he wanted—an astonishing primitive—and a Spanish trunk could not interest him less.
August's good eye watched me unblinkingly as I studied the trunk.
"Gosh, I like it," I said. "Where'd you get it?"
"Over't Pensacola," August said.
"What would you take for it?"
"Two hunnert," August said. His expression didn't change at all, but the figure caused his companions to blink several times. I had a feeling August thought he was shooting for the moon this time.
"Fine," I said, paying him as quickly as I had paid for the gong.
My rapid acceptance caused a slight look of worry to cross his broad face. He had meant to overprice the trunk, but the fact that I hadn't even bothered to bargain could only mean that he had underpriced it after all.
Nonetheless, the deed was done. No doubt it would be discussed endlessly, as the three men rode up the road. They might debate the sale for weeks, and even persuade themselves eventually that they could have got an unheard-of sum, like three hundred, for the trunk.
In the meantime they closed the tailgate and got ready to leave for the next stop up the road, having just made four hundred dollars—not bad for Baltimore in the middle of the night. The tires of the old truck were so treadless they were shiny.
Watching it creak away up the bumpy street, the sideboards swaying with the weight of goods piled in it, I felt better for a moment. The three strange traders had made me feel that I was in touch with my vocation again. It was warming to think that all over America at this hour people were loading pickups and vans and setting off for flea markets and swap-meets. It was a peculiar solution to life, perhaps, but a surprisingly effective one. The treasure hunt must never stop, even if most of the folks who pursued
it were only able to offer humble treasures.
"Who were the thin guys?" I asked Benny.
"Sept and Octo," he said. "Octo's the youngest. That's as far as the old man got."
I looked puzzled.
"Named his kids after the months," Benny said. "He was hoping to get twelve but the old lady died after Octo."
"Were there any girls?" I asked.
"Why yes," Benny said. "April, May, and June. They run a nice flea market outside of Cleveland. You ought to stop and see them if you're up that way."
"I'll do that, Benny," I said.
Chapter XI
It was 4 A.M. when I pulled back into Washington—too late to sleep, too early to go to Jean's house. It wouldn't do to show up that early, even armed with an extraordinary trunk.
Thinking of Jean, I went into the cafeteria where I had persuaded her to eat breakfast with me the morning we met. It was an all-night cafeteria, but 4 a.m. was not its busiest hour. A few tired delivery men were drinking coffee, and two young hookers were hanging around the pay phone as if it were their office. There were a few pale young men in polyester suits who looked like they might have come off the graveyard shift in some far-flung wing of the bureaucracy. They were so pale as to be almost translucent. Perhaps they were only allowed out in the dark of night, and never experienced sunlight at all.
As I was about to sit down and eat a big plate of scrambled eggs I happened to look out the window and saw Eviste Labouchere. He was chugging slowly up the sidewalk on an ancient motor scooter, wearing evening clothes and a blue crash helmet.
Eviste carefully parked his scooter and came in, still wearing the blue crash helmet. The hookers didn't give him a glance—perhaps he often straggled through their office at four in the morning. He stood pensively in front of about fifty yards of food, a small solitary figure contemplating almost infinite gastronomic choices, but all he got was coffee and a croissant. Beneath his crash helmet he looked a little melancholy. I waved at him and he came over.
"Must have been a late party," I said.
Eviste shook his head. He tried to grin, but was too tired even to lift his small mustache.
"I speek to Poland," he said.
I didn't know if he meant the country, or if he had a new girl friend named Poland.
It turned out to be the former. Thanks to the fact that he spoke Polish, Eviste had a job at the USIA. Every morning from 2 A.M. to 4 a.m. he broadcast in Polish, for the benefit of the oppressed masses.
"Sometimes I read poems," he said. "Tonight I was reading Adam Mickiewicz."
To my horror, he began to cry. He had not taken off his crash helmet, either. Tears ran out of his eyes and dripped into the smudge of his mustache, then ran on beneath the chin strap of his helmet and stained the front of his dress shirt.
"I don't like to speek to Poland," he said, wiping his eyes with a paper napkin. "I am a re-porter! I need the sources. All the sources are taken up."
He was too disheartened even to be able to break his croissant in half.
Across the room the phone rang and one of the two hookers answered it. Their wait had paid off. A minute later they were going out the door.
It occurred to me that perhaps I could help Eviste out. I could be a source. After all, I knew what seemed to me like an important secret, although it wasn't too secret and no one else in Washington seemed to think it was important at all, or even unusual.
"Do you know about the Smithsonian?" I asked. "Do you know it's being sold?"
Eviste looked blank. In his tired state the concept didn't really penetrate.
"Here's your scoop," I said. And I explained to him about the sales to Third World countries. Peck Folmsbee's museums, and all the replicas being manufactured in secret factories in Hodges, South Carolina.
"It's the truth," I said. "I don't know why it hasn't been in the papers."
I really didn't know why. The only person I knew who considered the Smithsonian sale an important secret was Brisling Bowker, and that was probably because he hoped to auction some of it. The one journalist I had mentioned it to,
George Psalmanazar, had dismissed it contemptuously. "It's a page-six story in the New York Post," he had said, with some disgust.
Eviste was a fresher spirit. The minute I mentioned the Third World his eyes began to light up. In no time he had sluffed off his fatigue. This was it, the "sceup'* he had come to America to find. He began to scribble on napkins. Since he used a felt-tip pen with a broad tip his scribbles soaked into the napkins and became illegible almost immediately, but Eviste kept scribbling. Soon he had such a pile of ink-soaked napkins that it became embarrassing. Fortunately, the one busboy in the cafeteria was asleep, slumped against the milk machine.
Then, while I drank a second cup of coffee, he dashed off to a pay phone to phone in his story. This did not prove simple. While he was trying to get his paper in Rouen another hooker came in and looked indignant when she discovered a small Frenchman using the telephone.
The call took a long time. Eviste's editors probably weren't convinced. In all likelihood they had forgotten the very existence of Eviste. Eviste became excited. He was yelling in French into the phone.
I kept drinking coffee and thinking about Jean. Though small she had seemed rather demanding. Probably the least she would demand was stability, a quality I wasn't sure I had to offer.
While I pondered, Eviste chattered in French to his editors. They were probably sitting over in Rouen trying to decide if they wanted to make themselves the laughing-stocks of world journalism by printing a story emanating from a stringer so obscure they had long since forgotten him. As Eviste tried to persuade them, the city grew light. A street-sweeping machine, just finishing its nightly run, parked outside. The driver came in to have his breakfast. It was a misty morning, the streetlights amber circles in the mist.
Eviste finally came back, looking resigned. His editors had had no interest whatsoever in the Smithsonian or its fate.
"They want to know about Nanceey," he said. "They want to know about Haig. They think Haig will shoot a bomb."
He slumped in his seat, defeated. His scream had fallen on deaf ears.
"Let's take a ride," I said, thinking a trip to the Millers might cheer him up. The Millers were early risers.
Sure enough, they had risen, or at least Boss, Boog, and Josie had. Boog was sitting glumly at the table holding a telephone to his ear, while Boss cooked a sausage omelet. Josie was cheerfully making biscuits. She and Boss looked as friendly as sisters.
“I wondered where you went off to," Josie said, when I came in. "Boy, you brought me to the right place, all right. We seen a movie and then we went dancin'. Me and Micah danced half the night."
"Hi, Eviste," Boss said. "Welcome to breakfast."
Boog hung up the phone and sighed.
"What's wrong with you?" Boss asked. She looked somewhat testy.
"What ain't?" Boog said. "We got any tequila?"
"He's a little like Little Joe," Josie said to Boss. "Gets depressed all the time, right?"
Eviste was watching Josie, who was still wearing her yellow shirt. She had exchanged her Levis for some running shorts she had found somewhere.
"You wanta buy a Henry rifle?" I asked Boog, thinking a little action might lift his gloom.
"For how much?" he said listlessly.
When I introduced Eviste to Josie, Eviste bowed, which surprised Josie no end.
"I guess I better make some more biscuits, now that we got company," she said. In two minutes she was teaching Eviste the fine art of biscuit making. The fact that he was wearing a tuxedo didn't faze her at all.
"Eviste tried to break the story about the Smithsonian being for sale, but no one's interested," I remarked.
Boog shrugged. "I'm puttin' Winkler County up for sale pretty soon," he said. "If I was to buy that gun who could I shoot with it?"
"You might as well shoot yourself if you don't cheer up," Boss said. "The one thing I won't tolerate
is a gloomy man."
"Micah's gloomy," Boog pointed out. "He lays around crying half the time."
"Yeah, but it only takes Bob Newhart to cheer him up,"
Boss said. "I thought you were going to Saudi Arabia today.'*
She sounded put out with her husband—a normal thing for a wife to be, but Boss had never seemed like a normal wife. It had never occurred to me that the Millers' marriage might fray, like other marriages. Their long defiance of convention had been so successful that you tended to forget that no success is necessarily permanent.
The life of their household went on, as expansive as ever, accommodating Josie easily, and now Eviste, but the life of Boog and Boss seemed to have changed subtly.
"It's an unsubstantial pageant," Boog said. "A sleep and a forgetting. There ain't no peace nor help from care. Ignert armies clash by night, so's it's hard to sleep."
"Shut up," Boss said. "Go back to bed if that's the best you can do."
"I never went to bed," Boog said. He looked at me angrily.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"You wouldn't sell me that icon," he said. He was quite greedy, actually—not fond of being denied anything his eye had lit on.
"I've still got it," I said.
"I don't care," he said. He drank two beers in quick succession.
"It's hard to get drunk in the morning," he said. "Particularly on beer."
Boss was looking at him coldly, so coldly that he subsided, sat gloomily for a minute, and then went out in the yard.
"It's probably just a phase," Josie said, washing the biscuit dough off her hands. "Do you want orange juice, Eviste?"
Eviste just smiled. It was plain that he was enchanted with Josie. I decided it was a good time to leave.
I found Boog in the front seat of my car. The icon was in the back seat but he wasn't looking at it. He was just sitting.
"What's the matter with you?" I asked.
He stared dully at his own lawn for a time.
"I'm thanking of leavin'," he said. "Me and Boss don't get along like we used to."
"You got along last week," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but this week we don’t,” he said. "I thank I'll go to the Little Bomber's 'n get the whole line of specials, one after another. If that don't lift my spirits nothing will. Have you really got a Henry rifle in this car?"
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