Dorothy stepped forward and raised her hand to grab Old Man. Gummy stopped her, mumbling, “ ’S all right. Leave em alone.”
“Look at that figurin female bein happy!” snorted Old Man. “You know why I have to beat the hell out a her, when all I want is peace and quiet? Cause I look like a figurin caveman, and they’re supposed to beat their hoors silly. That’s why she took up with me.”
“You’re an insane liar,” said Deena softly from behind the stove, slowly and dreamily nursing her pain like the memory of a lover’s caresses. “I came to live with you because I’d sunk so low you were the only man that’d have me.”
“She’s a retired high society mainliner, Dor’thy,” said Paley. “You never seen her without a longsleeved dress on. That’s cause her arms’re full a holes. It was me that kicked the monkey off a her back. I cured her with the wisdom and magic a the Real Folk, where you coax the evil spirit out by talkin it out. And she’s been livin with me ever since. Kin’t get rid a her.
“Now, you take that toothless bag there. I ain’t never hit her. That shows I ain’t no woman-beatin bastard, right? I hit Deena cause she likes it, wants it, but I don’t ever hit Gummy… Hey, Gummy, that kind a medicine ain’t what you want, is it?”
And he laughed his incredibly hoarse hor, hor, hor.
“You’re a figurin liar,” said Gummy, speaking over her shoulder because she was squatting down, fiddling with the TV controls. “You’re the one knocked most a my teeth out.”
“I knocked out a few rotten stumps you was gonna lose anyway. You had it comin cause you was runnin aroun with that O’Brien in his green shirt.”
Gummy giggled and said, “Don’t think for a minute I quit goin with that O’Brien in his green shirt just cause you slapped me aroun a little bit. I quit cause you was a better man ’n him.”
Gummy giggled again. She rose and waddled across the room toward a shelf which held a bottle of her cheap perfume. Her enormous brass earrings swung, and her great hips swung back and forth.
“Look at that,” said Old Man. “Like two bags a mush in a windstorm.”
But his eyes followed them with kindling appreciation, and, on seeing her pour that reeking liquid over her pillow-sized bosom, he hugged her and buried his huge nose in the valley of her breasts and sniffed rapturously.
“I feel like a dog that’s found an old bone he buried and forgot till just now,” he growled, “Arf, arf, arf!”
Deena snorted and said she had to get some fresh air or she’d lose her supper. She grabbed Dorothy’s hand and insisted she take a walk with her. Dorothy, looking sick, went with her.
The following evening, as the four were drinking beer around the kitchen table, Old Man suddenly reached over and touched Dorothy affectionately. Gummy laughed, but Deena glared. However, she did not say anything to the girl but instead began accusing Paley of going too long without a bath. He called her a flatchested hophead and said that she was lying, because he had been taking a bath every day. Deena replied that, yes he had, ever since Dorothy had appeared on the scene. An argument raged. Finally, he rose from the table and turned the photograph of Deena’s mother so it faced the wall.
Wailing, Deena tried to face it outward again. He pushed her away from it, refusing to hit her despite her insults—even when she howled at him that he wasn’t fit to lick her mother’s shoes, let alone blaspheme her portrait by touching it.
Tired of the argument, he abandoned his post by the photograph and shuffled to the refrigerator.
“If you dare turn her aroun till I give the word, I’ll throw her in the creek. And you’ll never see her again.”
Deena shrieked and crawled onto her blanket behind the stove and there lay sobbing and cursing him softly.
Gummy chewed tobacco and laughed while a brown stream ran down her toothless jaws. “Deena pushed him too far that time.”
“Ah, her and her figurin mother,” snorted Paley. “Hey, Dor’thy, you know how she laughs at me cause I think Fordiana’s got a soul. And I put the evil eye on em hounds? And cause I think the salvation a us Paleys’ll be when we find out where Old King’s hats been hidden?
“Well, get a load a this. This here intellekchooall purple-faced dragon, this retired mainliner, this old broken-down nag for a monkey-jockey, she’s the sooperstishus one. She thinks her mother’s a god. And she prays to her and asks forgiveness and asks what’s gonna happen in the future. And when she thinks nobody’s aroun, she talks to her. Here she is, worshipin her mother like The Old Woman In The Earth, who’s The Old Guy’s enemy. And she knows that makes The Old Guy sore. Maybe that’s the reason he ain’t allowed me to find the longlost headpiece a Old King, though he knows I been lookin in every ash heap from here to God-knows-where, hopin some fool G’yaga would throw it away never realizin what it was.
“Well, by all that’s holy, that pitcher stays with its ugly face on the wall. Aw, shut up, Deena, I wanna watch Alley Oop.”
Shortly afterward, Dorothy drove home. There she again phoned her sociology professor. Impatiently, he went into more detail. He said that one reason Old Man’s story of the war between the Neanderthals and the invading Homo sapiens was very unlikely was that there was evidence to indicate that Homo sapiens might have been in Europe before the Neanderthals—it was very possible the Homo Neanderthalensis was the invader.
“Not invader in the modern sense,” said the professor. “The influx of a new species or race or tribe into Europe during the Paleolithic would have been a sporadic migration of little groups, an immigration which might have taken a thousand to ten thousand years to complete.
“And it is more than likely that Neanderthalensis and sapiens lived side by side for millennia with very little fighting between them because both were too busy struggling for a living. For one reason or another, probably because he was outnumbered, the Neanderthal was absorbed by the surrounding peoples. Some anthropologists have speculated that the Neanderthals were blonds and that they had passed their light hair directly to North Europeans.
“Whatever the guesses and surmises,” concluded the professor, “it would be impossible for such a distinctly different minority to keep its special physical and cultural characteristics over a period of half a hundred millennia. Paley has concocted this personal myth to compensate for his extreme ugliness, his inferiority, his feelings of rejection. The elements of the myth came from the comic books and TV.
“However,” concluded the professor, “in view of your youthful enthusiasm and naivete, I will reconsider my judgment if you bring me some physical evidence of his Neanderthaloid origin. Say you could show me that he had a taurodont tooth. I’d be flabbergasted, to say the least.”
“But, Professor,” she pleaded, “why can’t you give him a personal examination? One look at Old Man’s foot would convince you, I’m sure.”
“My dear, I am not addicted to wild-goose chases. My time is valuable.”
That was that. The next day, she asked Old Man if he had ever lost a molar tooth or had an X-ray made of one.
“No,” he said. “I got more sound teeth than brains. And I ain’t gonna lose em. Long as I keep my headpiece, I’ll keep my teeth and my digestion and my manhood. What’s more, I’ll keep my good sense, too. The loose-screw tighteners at the State Hospital really gave me a good goin-over, fore and aft, up and down, in and out, all night long, don’t never take a hotel room right by the elevator. And they proved I wasn’t hatched in a cuckoo clock. Even though they tore their hair and said somethin must be wrong. Specially after we had that row about my hat. I woun’t let them take my blood for a test, you know, because I figured they was going to mix it with water—G’yaga magic—and turn my blood to water. Somehow, that Elkins got wise that I hadda wear my hat—cause I woun’t take it off when I undressed for the physical, I guess—and he snatched my hat. And I was done for. Stealin it was stealin my soul; all Paleys wears their souls in their hats. I hadda get it back. So I ate humble pie; I let em poke and pry all over and take
my blood.”
There was a pause while Paley breathed in deeply to get power to launch another verbal rocket. Dorothy, who had been struck by an idea, said, “Speaking of hats, Old Man, what does this hat that the daughter of Raw Boy stole from King Paley look like? Would you recognize it if you saw it?”
Old Man stared at her with wide blue eyes for a moment before he exploded.
“Would I recognize it? Would the dog that sat by the railroad tracks recognize his tail after the locomotive cut it off? Would you recognize your own blood if somebody stuck you in the guts with a knife and it pumped out with every heartbeat? Certainly, I would recognize the hat a Old Kind Paley! Every Paley at his mothers knees get a detailed description a it. You want to hear about the hat? Well, hang on, chick, and I’ll describe every hair and bone a it.”
* * *
Dorothy told herself more than once that she should not be doing this. If she was trusted by Old Man, she was, in one sense, a false friend. But, she reassured herself, in another sense she was helping him. Should he find the hat, he might blossom forth, actually tear himself loose from the taboos that bound him to the dumpheap, to the alleys, to fear of dogs, to the conviction he was an inferior and oppressed citizen. Moreover, Dorothy told herself, it would aid her scientific studies to record his reactions.
The taxidermist she hired to locate the necessary materials and fashion them into the desired shape was curious, but she told him it was for an anthropological exhibit in Chicago and that it was meant to represent the headpiece of the medicine man of an Indian secret society dedicated to phallic mysteries. The taxidermist sniggered and said he’d give his eyeteeth to see those ceremonies.
Dorothy’s intentions were helped by the run of good luck Old Man had in his alleypicking while she rode with him. Exultant, he swore he was headed for some extraordinary find; he could feel his good fortune building up.
“It’s gonna hit,” he said, grinning with his huge widely spaced gravestone teeth. “Like lightnin.”
Two days later, Dorothy rose even earlier than usual and drove to a place behind the house of a well-known doctor. She had read in the society column that he and his family were vacationing in Alaska, so she knew they wouldn’t be wondering at finding a garbage can already filled with garbage and a big cardboard box full of cast-off clothes. Dorothy had brought the refuse from her own apartment to make it seem as if the house were occupied. The old garments, with one exception, she had purchased at a Salvation Army store.
About nine that morning, she and Old Man drove down the alley on their scheduled route.
Old Man was first off the truck; Dorothy hung back to let him make the discovery.
Old Man picked the garments out of the box one by one.
“Here’s a velvet dress Deena kin wear. She’s been complainin she hasn’t had a new dress in a long time. And here’s a blouse and skirt big enough to wrap aroun an elephant. Gummy kin wear it. And here…”
He lifted up a tall conical hat with a wide brim and two balls of felted horsemane attached to the band. It was a strange headpiece, fashioned of roan horsehide over a ribwork of split bones. It must have been the only one of its kind in the world, and it certainly looked out of place in the alley of a mid-Illinois city.
Old Man’s eyes bugged out. Then they rolled up, and he fell to the ground, as if shot. The hat, however, was still clutched in his hand.
Dorothy was terrified. She had expected any reaction but this. If he had suffered a heart attack, it would, she thought, be her fault.
Fortunately, Old Man had only fainted. However, when he regained consciousness, he did not go into ecstasies as she had expected. Instead, he looked at her, his face gray and said, “It kin’t be! It must be a trick The Old Woman In The Earth’s playing on me so she kin have the last laugh on me. How could it be the hat a Old King Paley’s? Woun’t the G’yaga that been keepin it in their famley all these years know what it is?”
“Probably not,” said Dorothy. “After all, the G’yaga, as you call them, don’t believe in magic anymore. Or it might be that the present owner doesn’t even know what it is.”
“Maybe. More likely it was thrown out by accident durin housecleanin. You know how stupid them wimmen are. Anyway, let’s take it and get goin. The Old Guy In The Sky might a had a hand in fixin up this deal for me, and if he did, it’s better not to ask questions. Let’s go.”
Old Man seldom wore the hat. When he was home, he put it in the parrot cage and locked the cage door with the bicycle lock. At nights, the cage hung from the stand; days, it sat on the seat of the truck. Old Man wanted it always where he could see it.
Finding it had given him a tremendous optimism, a belief he could do anything. He sang and laughed even more than he had before, and he was even able to venture out onto the streets for several hours at a time before the sweat and shakings began.
Gummy, seeing the hat, merely grunted and made a lewd remark about its appearance. Deena smiled grimly and said, “Why haven’t the horsehide and bones rotted away long ago?”
“That’s just the kind a question a G’yaga dummy like you’d ask,” said Old Man, snorting. “How kin the hat rot when there’s a million Paley souls crowded into it, standin room only? There ain’t even elbow room for germs. Besides, the horsehide and the bones’re jampacked with the power and the glory a all the Paleys that died before our battle with Raw Boy, and all the souls that died since. It’s seethin with soul-energy, the lid held on it by the magic a the G’yaga.”
“Better watch out it don’t blow up ’n wipe us all out,” said Gummy, sniggering.
“Now you have the hat, what are you going to do with it?” asked Deena.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to sit down with a beer and study the situation.”
Suddenly, Deena began laughing shrilly.
“My God, you’ve been thinking for fifty thousand years about this hat, and now you’ve got it, you don’t know what to do about it! Well, I’ll tell you what you’ll do about it! You’ll get to thinking big, all right! You’ll conquer the world, rid it of all False Folk, all right! You fool! Even if your story isn’t the raving of a lunatic, it would still be too late for you! You’re alone! The last! One against two billion! Don’t worry, World, this ragpicking Rameses, this alley Alexander, this junkyard Julius Caesar, he isn’t going to conquer you! No, he’s going to put on his hat, and he’s going forth! To do what?
“To become a wrestler on TV, that’s what! That’s the height of his halfwit ambition—to be billed as the One-Armed Neanderthal, the Awful Apeman. That is the culmination of fifty thousand years ha, ha, ha!”
The others looked apprehensively at Old Man, expecting him to strike Deena. Instead, he removed the hat from the cage, put it on, and sat down at the table with a quart of beer in his hand.
“Quit your cacklin, you old hen,” he said. “I got my thinkin cap on!”
The next day Paley, despite a hangover, was in a very good mood. He chattered all the way to the west bluff and once stopped the truck so he could walk back and forth on the street and show Dorothy he wasn’t afraid.
Then, boasting he could lick the world, he drove the truck up an alley and halted it by the backyard of a huge but somewhat rundown mansion. Dorothy looked at him curiously. He pointed to the jungle-thick shrubbery that filled a corner of the yard.
“Looks like a rabbit coun’t get in there, huh? But Old Man knows thins the rabbits don’t. Folly me.”
Carrying the caged hat, he went to the shrubbery, dropped to all threes, and began inching his way through a very narrow passage. Dorothy stood looking dubiously into the tangle until a hoarse growl came from its depths.
“You scared? Or is your fanny too broad to get through here?”
“I’ll try anything once,” she announced cheerfully. In a short time she was crawling on her belly, then had come suddenly into a little clearing. Old Man was standing up. The cage was at his feet, and he was looking at a red rose in his hand.
S
he sucked in her breath. “Roses! Peonies! Violets!”
“Sure, Dor’thy,” he said, swelling out his chest. “Paley’s Garden a Eden, his secret hothouse. I found this place a couple a years ago, when I was lookin for a place to hide if the cops was lookin for me or I just wanted a place to be alone from everybody, including myself.
“I planted these rosebushes in here and these other flowers. I come here every now and then to check on em, spray em, prune em. I never take any home, even though I’d like to give Deena some. But Deena ain’t no dummy, she’d know I was gettin em out a a garbage pail. And I just din’t want to tell her about this place. Or anybody.”
He looked directly at her as if to catch every twitch of a muscle in her face, every repressed emotion.
“You’re the only person besides myself knows about this place.” He held out the rose to her. “Here. It’s yours.”
“Thank you. I am proud, really proud, that you’ve shown this place to me.”
“Really are? That makes me feel good. In fact, great.”
“It’s amazing. This, this spot of beauty. And… and…”
“I’ll finish it for you. You never thought the ugliest man in the world, a dumpheaper, a man that ain’t even a man or a human bein, a—I hate the word—a Neanderthal, could appreciate the beauty of a rose. Right? Well, I growed these because I love em.”
“Look, Dor’thy. Look at this rose. It’s round, not like a ball but a flattened roundness…”
“Oval.”
“Sure. And look at the petals. How they fold in on one another, how they’re arranged. Like one ring a red towers protectin the next ring a red towers. Protectin the gold cup on the inside, the precious source a life, the treasure. Or maybe that’s the golden hair a the princess a the castle. Maybe. And look at the bright green leaves under the rose. Beautiful, huh? The Old Guy knew what he was doin when he made these. He was an artist then.
“But he must a been sufferin from a hangover when he shaped me, huh? His hands was shaky that day. And he gave up after a while and never bothered to finish me but went on down to the corner for some a the hair a the dog that bit him.”
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