The Franchiser

by Stanley Elkin

  “ ‘The mechanics?’

  “ ‘Yep.’

  “The countryman nodded.

  “ ‘And the same,’ the neighbor said, ‘if it was pistons or rods or a transmission or a carburetor or if the battery was to die.’

  “ ‘The mechanics.’

  “ ‘Sho.’

  “The countryman paused for a moment, then turned in his seat to face the neighbor. ‘Where,’ he asked, ‘do them mechanics get all that ’ere machinery?’

  “ ‘Spar parts,’ the neighbor said.

  “ ‘Spar parts?’

  “ ‘Sho. You got you a intricate, complicated thing like a pickup, you got to be sure you can get your spar parts if somethin’ should to go wrong and she should need replacin’. They’s whole entire catalogues of spar parts. Not just for this pickup but for ever entire one we done passed or done passed us on the way to the city here, and not just for pickups but for sedans and coupes, too, and for convertibles and delivery trucks and the big rigs highballin’ it down the turnpikes and byways. For motorcycles and bicycles and everthin’ that moves.’

  “ ‘I’ll be,’ the countryman said, ‘I’ll be.’

  “ ‘Sho,’ his neighbor said.

  “Well, they continued on into the city, and when they came to where the countryman’s brother lived and were told by his wife, the countryman’s sister-in-law, which hospital her father-in-law, her husband’s and brother-in-law’s Paw, was at, they went there at once.

  “ ‘You go on in,’ the neighbor said. ‘I’ll find me a spot in the lot.’

  “ ‘The lot?’

  “ ‘The parking lot. They’s plenty sick folks in yonder hospital and they all have kin want to visit with ’em and cheer ’em up or’—and here he looked down, averting his eyes from the countryman—‘if it’s too late for that—to say goodbye.’ The neighbor looked up to see how the countryman had taken this last part, but instead of the sorrow he had expected to see on the guy’s puss, what was his, the neighbor’s, surprise to see not sorrow but a curiosity so sharply defined it might have been language.

  “ ‘Go on,’ the countryman said, ‘about the parking lot.’

  “ ‘Well,’ the neighbor said, ‘they’s nothing to go on about. The hospital knows that sick folks’ kin want to come visit and have to have a place to park so they put up parking lots. That’s all they is to it.’

  “ ‘They charge money?’

  “ ‘They do.’

  “ ‘The mechanics with the spar parts, they charge money, too?’

  “ ‘Course they charge money. Sho they do. You born yesterday, or what?’ he asked with some impatience.

  “ ‘Seems like,’ the countryman said. ‘Seems like an’ that’s a fac’.’ The neighbor looked at the countryman, who now seemed preoccupied. ‘Well,’ the countryman said abruptly, bringing himself back from wherever it was he had been woolgathering. ‘You go on and park in the parking lot while I straightway attend to my bidness.’ The neighbor let the countryman out of the pickup and drove off. When he returned, what was his surprise to see the countryman still standing where he had left him. If it were not for the fact that he now held a small white paper bag that he had not had before, he would have sworn that the countryman had not moved a muscle.

  “ ‘It’s ’leven fifty-two,’ the countryman said.

  “ ‘No,’ the neighbor said, ‘cain’t be. I heard the noon lunch whistle when we was still back in the pickup waitin’ on the engine to cool.’

  “ ‘No,’ the countryman said, ‘not that ’leven fifty-two. Where Paw’s at.’

  “ ‘Oh.’

  “ ‘When you druv off to the parking lot I got to studyin’ on how we ’us gone to find my Paw in a gret big ol’ hospital like this ’un. I seen the winders. Take a full day to hunt in ever room, and s’pose he already dead an’ they fixin’ to bury ’im an’ there I ’us stumblin’ roun’ huntin’ ’im down in his room like some ol’ coon with a bad cold. What I do then, his ol’es’ boy an’ not even on time for his buryin’. And even if he still alive, ther I be bargin’ in ’mongst all them sick folks, goin’ roun’ to wher they sleepin’, all scrunched down in they beds, the sheets up over they heads an’ shiv’rin’ from they chills an’ fevers an’ me aksin’, “You my paw, mister? It’s me, you Paw?” ’

  “ ‘Well, that’s not the—’

  “ ‘That’s not the way they do it,’ the countryman said. ‘I remembered all you to’d me ’bout the spar parts and the parking lots and all them kin drops by to tell goodbye to all them sick folks an’ I thunk, Why they mus’ be some place right chere on the fust floor right wher you fust come in wher they keep the names and rooms wher them sick folks is. And I’ll be swacked if it weren’t jus’ the way I s’posed. I go in and right way ther’s this nice lady in a uniform settin’ at a table an’ she aks me whut do I want.

  “ ‘How much you charge to tell me wher my paw is dying?’ I aks and I start to give her my name an’ stop, thinkin’, No, that’s not the way they do it, they’d use his name ’cause he’s the one dyin’ an’ I give her my paw’s name an’ she smiles an’ looks him up in what she to’d me later was a d’rectory an’ ther it is—’leven fifty-two.’

  “ ‘How much she charge?’ the neighbor asked.

  “ ‘Well, that’s the bes’ part. She don’t charge nothin’. That part’s free.’

  “ ‘I be,’ he, the neighbor, said.

  “ ‘Aks me ’bout this chere paper bag I’m ho’din’.’

  “ ‘I ’us goin’ to.’

  “ ‘It’s little chocolates. For Paw. Paw likes chocolates.’

  “ ‘Chocolates.’

  “ ‘I got to studyin’ whut you said ’bout all them kinfolks—’

  “ ‘You to’d me that part.’

  “ ‘I to’d you the part ’bout you sayin’ how they come to tell they sick folks goodbye. I ain’t to’d you nothin’ ’bout how I remembered the part where you said they come to cheer ’em up.’

  “‘Oh.’

  “ ‘And I studied on that part and I got the idea that they mus’ be some place right close by that they’d call it somethin’ all cheery like the Wishing Well wher kin could get some baubles fur their sick folks, an’ I aks the lady an’ she points it right out an’ it ain’t but thutty foot from wher I’m standin’ an’ she says, “Oh, that would be the Wishing Well,” an’ I went to it and they had everthin’ you could want—toys and little ol’ lacy nighties an’ comical books an’ chewin’ gum an’ the very same chocolates that my paw so dearly loves. Hershey Kisses they call ’em.’

  “And with that the countryman tells the neighbor that it was time he went up to see his father and asks him, the neighbor, to come along, he’s come this far. The neighbor agrees and starts toward the stairway, but the countryman calls him back, telling him that if it’s a building where they put sick folks, then it would have to have an elevator or how would folks sick as his paw get up eleven stories and they would ride where the sick folks ride and it would have to be close by and if there was a charge why he, the countryman, would pay for them both since he, the neighbor, had been so nice already.

  “They found the elevator and rode to the eleventh floor and the countryman asked the colored girl who ran the elevator what it would cost them and she said it was free and he, the countryman and his friend, the neighbor, got off without a word, their faces solemn as they could make them. When the elevator doors closed behind them, the countryman hooted in wild laughter and the neighbor, seeing the joke at once, joined in.

  “ ‘Fool nigger,’ the countryman said, laughing so hard his nose began to run, ‘she thinks you’re sick.’

  “ ‘She thinks you sick, you mean. You the one aks her how much she charge.’

  “ ‘ ’Cause I ’us makin’ out you too sick to talk for your own self.’

  “Well, they giggled on this for a while and at last a nurse came up to them and asked if she could help them.

  “ ‘We’s Paw’s kinfolks,’ the
countryman said, recovering himself, ’come to see sick folks in ’leven and fifty-two.’

  “ ‘This way, please,’ the nurse said, and she led them to the room where his, the countryman’s, father lay, not dying as it, the letter, had said, but sitting up in bed watching afternoon game shows on TV and laughing every time folks in New York or out on the coast answered the question wrong and lost their money.

  “ ‘Dumb Eastern and Coastern fucks,’ the old man roared and laughed fit to bust. ‘Look that Eastern fuck, give the Captain the wrong answer and he just lost his car.’

  “ ‘I brung chocolates, Paw,’ the countryman said.

  “ ‘Thanks, son, they’s my favorites. Don’t never be like them Eastern and Coastern fucks, don’t never gamble.’

  “ ‘I won’t, Paw,’ the countryman said.

  “ ‘Saw a man this mornin’, Coastern fuck he was, dumber ’n dog shit, an’ he lost his dream house ’cause he didn’t know which curtain it ’us standin’ behind. His own house, an’ thet dumb Coastern fuck couldn’t remembers its address! Got all confused an’ all he could remember was where he’d left his pig. Don’t never gamble, son. You neither, neighbor. Special when you don’t stand to gain nothin’ by it. Have a chocolate.’

  “ ‘Thanks, Paw. The letter said you ’us dyin’. You don’t seem like you dyin’.’

  “ ‘Ain’t dyin’,’ his father said.

  “ ‘You ain’t?’

  “ ‘Naw. They run some tests. Figured what I got.’

  “ ‘Yes?’

  “ ‘Well, once they could name its name, there was a medicine for it that could fix it.’

  “ ‘Can I aks you sumfin’?’ his boy, the countryman, said after a while.

  “ ‘Sho,’ his father said. ‘Shoot.’

  “ ‘This here medicine—they charge money for it?’

  “ ‘Fool! Course they do.’

  “ ‘That’s jus’ what I thought,’ his visitor’s neighbor’s neighbor, his son, the countryman, said.”

  Ben Flesh paused. They were staring up at him.

  “Because,” he said, “distance demands its road, the bowel its vessel, the disease its medicament. It is the lesson learned by the countryman the day he thought his paw would die. I have not mentioned it, but even after he saw his father on the mend, this too went through his mind: ’He’s got a body. If it dies it will have to be boxed, have to be buried. They ain’t through with us even after we quit of them. And it was as if he, a countryman, a farmer, a dealer in earth all his working life, thought about it—earth—for the first time. It was as if, my friends, he had discovered the uses of real estate. He had learned the secret of being—that existence has its spare parts, that the successful life is only a proper knowledge of accessory!

  “I am Benny in the Bucket, the spirit of Bernie Baruch upon me. Baruch. Atoh. Adonai. Bless this enterprise, oh, Lord. Bahless it. Give us a bahreak! Whet appetites left and right, visit cravings on the pregnant for carry-out chicken, impress upon Mums giving birthday parties the advantages of convenience foods and inscribe everywhere upon the universal palate a taste for the Colonel’s white meat and dark, hanging it there like wallpaper or a fixed idea; tangle its aromatics with the hairs of the nose and make consumers to go in the streets with fried skin chewy as gum in their mouths and licking on bones as on all-day suckers. Doggy my Americans, Pop, foxify them for me and the Colonel.” And looked up.

  “Well, folks, I felt I couldn’t ask my manager, Sigmund-Rudolf Finsberg there, to open our doors for business without first making a few remarks appropriate to the occasion. Now I know you’re getting hungry, I know you’re anxious to get in there and find out for yourselves what all the fuss is about, why I and my colleagues have gone to such pains to bring Kentucky Fried Chicken to Yonkers—‘Meals the Whole Family Will Enjoy at Prices Every Family Can Afford.’ And in a few moments I’ll be giving Mr. Finsberg a high sign worked out between us just the other day. You’ll find special grand-opening specials that will have you picking chicken out of your teeth for a week, but first—uh—first—first…”

  He wondered what he was up to. Even as he’d told them his story, he’d wondered. What was he doing? What was being done to him? It was nothing like stage fright, no amateur’s last-minute wish to be elsewhere, anywhere. He wondered something else. Not only why he was doing this, but what prevented him from stopping. He could not let them go. He couldn’t stop talking. He hadn’t prepared, he’d meant only to get their attention, Benny in the Bucket a simple stunt of welcome. But why this logorrhea? He suspected his character, a vessel thrust forward by resentment, his stalled personality waiting on anger like a player of a board game waiting on a pair of thrown fours, say, to advance his counter. And why resentment? He remembered when he had shouted over the long-distance telephone at his commanding officer. He grew in fits and starts, lived in phases and stages like a classic kid in Spock or Gesell. Why couldn’t he stop? What did he resent? And if he was angry, then why was he so happy?

  “Anyone want a ride in the bucket?”

  “Then I think it’s time we—”

  “Know what? This is hallowed ground. It is. I was here last weekend checking our equipment. There was this fantastic crowd. In the parking lot, the mall. I couldn’t figure it out. Then there were these—these sirens. I thought, Jesus, what is it, is it burning down? The shopping center? Is Macy’s burning? I got a ladder and climbed up the bucket to see. There was a motorcade, limos. What the hell? That’s what I thought—what the hell? Nixon stepped out and was helped up on the roof of a big black Lincoln. I wondered if he could see me in the bucket. What about the Secret Service guys? What did they make of me? ASSASSIN POPS CANDIDATE FROM FRIED CHICKEN AERIE! Hallowed ground. Jack Kennedy a few days after. The media. Dave Brinkley up close, Cronkite standing. The truth squads of both parties, shadow cabinets. Paul Newman’s been by, Bob Montgomery. This is hallowed American ground of the twentieth century. A shopping center in a white suburb with good schools. One day it will be remembered like an old-time battlefield—some, some Gettysburg of the rhetorical. You heard ’em here first, all the campaigners to whose thumbs we entrust our red buttons and our black boxes. It’s the Lyceum here, the new stump! What merely civil acts could follow such performance and presence? What quotidian acts of the market basket and shopping cart? What out-on-a-limb toe balances and triples? How can I top them? My God, friends, it’s Colonel Sanders who should be here today! The Colonel himself in his blinding whites. Standing where I stand and tossing chicken parts like lollies from the float. Not Ben Flesh in the flesh but him. No surrogate—not after Nixon, not after Kennedy. Him! His State of the Union! But you know?” He beat his breast with his fists. “You know? When you come right down to it, this—this is the State of the Union! BEN IN THE BUCKET! BENNY IN THE BARREL!

  “Open up! I’m the truth squad! The secret ingredients of Colonel Sanders’ Fried Chicken from far-off Kentucky are, well, chicken of course, sage, onion, salt and pepper, flour, cornmeal, eggs, and shortening—And plenty of ACCENT!

  “Open the doors, it’s opening day. Go on, go in. We ask only that you take a number!”

  He pulled himself up to the lip of the bucket and threw his arms over its sides. He hung there suspended. He would appear to them, he thought, exactly like a man lying facedown on a diving board would appear to swimmers directly beneath him.

  “They asked me,” Flesh said, “they asked me, ‘Ben, why chicken?’ ‘Everybody has to eat,’ I told them. ‘Each must eat, all must bite the calorie and chew the carbohydrate. We must be nourished. This is a need. The play goes to the man who makes necessity delicious.’

  “Mrs.,” he called down to a woman in white shoes, “people have feet. There’ll always be a demand for shoes.” He saw a young man. “They have bodies which have to be clothed. The Washington clothing lobbies are among the most powerful in the country.” And another man: “They’ve got to live somewhere—houses, apartments. A landlord prospers.” He spotted an old la
dy: “Human feeling, the sense of family—there’s a bond. Greeting cards. The long distance. Cemetery plots. Real estate is real.” And a girl: “They have to be distracted. Books, records, trips to Nassau on the Youth Fare.” And a teenage boy: “Pornography is a growth industry!” He had his eye on a husband and wife, the man’s arm around the woman’s shoulder: “The course of true love never runs smooth. There are lovers’ quarrels. People fight. They kiss and make up. Say it with flowers. Sweets to the sweet.” There was a boy with glasses: “They have eyes that wear out with all there is to look at. You couldn’t go wrong in optometry!”

  And just then he went blind in his left eye.

  He was not with the Wine and Spirits Association of America people, not with the Toyota Dealers, not with the Midwest Modern Language Association. He paid top dollar for his room and walked the corridor of restaurants and expensive boutiques, tiny, some of them, as roomettes on trains, that linked the lobbies of the Chase and Park Plaza Hotels. He smiled at everyone. Without a name tag, in his sober suit of natural fibers he must have looked like one of the managers of the hotel, or like Koplar himself perhaps, or even a well-turned-out house detective. Except that there were no more house detectives. They were security personnel now, and some he knew in the better hotels spoke with cultured European accents. Whatever happened to the house detective, whatever happened to the house physician? The hotel dicks were all from Interpol and the docs were revolving pool personnel, family doctors on retainer. Less romantic than the old days of Dr. Wolfe. Oh yes.

  He went into one of the shops and bought a purse of softest calf’s leather, paid for it with an American Express card which the girl checked against the February 1974 list of closely printed American Express numbers, American Express Deadbeats of February 1974. It was like a musical comedy. (“Do you take Diners? Master Charge? Carte Blanche? American Express? BankAmericard?” “Yes, sir, oh yes.” He could have paid for it—an $85 purse—with his driver’s license or Blue Cross card. He carried his credit cards in his inside jacket in a Bicycle Playing Cards packet.) He gave the woman Kitty’s address—she was Mrs. Roger Sayad now—and asked that it be sent.