by Tom Robbins
“But, Mr. Hadee, it isn’t fair!”
“And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe—and go on about our tasks. . . .”
“Abu, you know from nothing. Such injustice—”
“Quiet, Spike. What does Boomer’s success, or lack of it, have to do with Ellen Cherry’s art? Forgive me, but she reminds me of those crybabies—professional athletes and entertainers are the worst—who are always whining because somebody else in the same position is earning more money than they are. Greed compounded by egomania. It should not concern us what rewards others may reap.”
“Okay, but it isn’t a question of Boomer getting more recognition or a better show than me. I haven’t got recognition or a show at all.”
“Only last week you informed me that you have hardly painted since you arrived in New York. Perhaps you need to pay less attention to Boomer’s business and concentrate on your own. Rejoice that someone about whom you care has done well. If his work is inferior and undeserving, then let that inspire you to do even better. Take it as a challenge, not an insult. As my father used to say, ’Do not turn slights into bedsores.’ A little poem, eh? Rejoice! Paint pictures! Paint, perhaps, something to cover this affliction of bamboo that causes our Middle Eastern restaurant to resemble the hut where Confucius composed fortune cookies. Scenes of Jerusalem would fit the bill.”
Between the sympathy of Cohen and the exhortations of Hadee, Ellen Cherry gathered enough traction to spin her tires out of the mud. She thanked her employers, squeezed them, and then set a course for Fifth Avenue, where she suspected the example of Turn Around Norman might give a jet assist to her creakily rising mood. Could she have imagined what other examples were lurking there, there’s no predicting at what speeds or in what directions her mood might have spun.
As it was, passing the Japanese restaurants along East Forty-ninth Street, she was reminded that disposable diapers had been invented by Eskimos. It was true. They made them out of seaweed. Someone with a good seaweed supplier ought to open a combination diaper service and sushi bar, she thought. It would be only appropriate for the menu to stress bottom fish, but good taste might preclude the listing of yellowtail.
SPOON WAS THE FIRST to recognize her. “Look!” she squealed. “Look there! It’s her.”
“Look where, Miss Spoon?” asked Can o’ Beans. “To whom are you referring?”
The stocking saw her next. “Well, hang me by the chimney with care!” it exclaimed. “Damned if it ain’t. I’d recognize that haystack anywheres.”
“Haystack?” asked Can o’ Beans. Then he/she spotted a careless harvest of hair-sheaves bobbing in the crowd along Fifth Avenue, and immediately understood. “Amazing!” he/she marveled. “My Miss Charles! Imagine seeing her again! Seeing her in the swarm of New York City! Do you know how long I sat on her shelves?”
The three objects pressed closer to the grid of the grate.
“She’s stopping,” said Spoon. “I think she’s watching our gentleman.”
“I’d better notify the leaders,” said Can o’ Beans, and he/she dropped down from the window grate and wobbled away into the half-lit gloom of the cathedral cellar.
As dusty as it was dark, the sub-basement of St. Patrick’s was littered with cardboard boxes, carpet ends, coal buckets, snow shovels, flower baskets, discarded hymnals, blown fuses, and broken sections of pews. To the mobile inanimates, it offered a profusion of hiding places in the event that a custodian or somebody should come snooping around, but so far no one ever had. All in all, it constituted a much safer refuge than most of the barns, silos, junkyards, burnt-out warehouses, pigsties, toolsheds, cemeteries, abandoned cars, freeway ramps, groves, thickets, culverts, and swamps where the quintet had rested days during its eighteen-month march from the Far West to the Atlantic.
Their trek had been long, slow, and perilous, and had taken its toll on each of them. Driven by a mutually held vision of their destiny in the Third Temple of Jerusalem, Conch Shell and Painted Stick had never wavered. Simple curiosity had kept the banged-up bean can going. Dirty Sock, frayed and burr infested, persisted because he thought it would have been sissy to give up. “A winner never quits and a quitter never wins,” he reminded himself on those many occasions when he felt like jumping into a Salvation Army clothing bin and forgetting it all, although he lacked any clear notion of what it was that he might be winning. As for Spoon, her delicate features tarnished and scratched, her impetus resulted in large measure from the gratitude she felt to the Virgin Mary for having answered her prayers and saving Can o’ Beans.
To the secularly inclined, it was Dirty Sock who deserved credit for that rescue. It was the sock, after all, that had noticed the welding shop on the outskirts of that little Wyoming town on whose opposite side they had said good-bye to the bean tin. And it was the sock that had rather casually suggested that it had learned enough about welding during its time with Boomer Petway to seal the can’s split seam, if only there was a way to physically manipulate the equipment.
Throughout the day, concealed in a deserted chicken coop (a place that still stank not only of old hen droppings but of the incessant imbecilic cluck-cluck platitudinizing that would make chickens the perfect constituency for any number of aspiring demagogues), the objects mulled it over. That night, instead of continuing eastward, they backtracked to the churchyard, where, to Spoon’s overflowing joy, they found Can o’ Beans present and reasonably intact, although industriously beset by a determined battalion of ants. Talk about a work ethic! Ants don’t even sleep, perchance to dream. They are the original workaholics. An eminent social scientist has offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who will bring him a lazy, laid-back ant. It would be worth every penny, for it would demonstrate that in our unspoken but desperate competition with insects, there is still hope for the human race, especially the Japanese.
At any rate, Conch Shell splashed puddle water on the ants, and Painted Stick dragged Can o’ Beans away. They maneuvered him/her through the dark village streets to the welding shop, which they entered by smashing a window.
From the igniting of the oxyacetylene torch to the puddling of the filler rod, from the tacking of the can’s separated sides to the forming of a lap joint, Boomer’s lost sock knew exactly what needed to be done—and under its expert direction, Painted Stick proved dexterous enough (just barely) to do it.
Once the metal was fused, the seam in the can was actually stronger than when it had come fresh from the factory. Dirty Sock, having absorbed some of Boomer’s pride along with his proficiency, insisted that they dress the weld, smoothing down the nicks, burrs, and blisters with a disk sander-grinder. That operation was soon aborted, however, for the sander-grinder threw off a shower of sparks and debris that frightened Spoon, threatened to set Dirty Sock afire, and caused Conch Shell to worry that they might attract attention from passing motorists.
So, Can o’ Beans went out into the world with a rough, high-relief scar running from his/her top to his/her bottom. Along with the deep dimpling dents and the shambles of what had been a label, the can was not a pretty sight. But it was safe, healthy, free—and back with its comrades on the road to Jerusalem. If happiness was daylight saving time, Can o’ Beans would have been the twenty-first of June.
“Mr. Sock, dear Mr. Sock, how can I ever thank you?”
“Ferget it, perfesser. Now we’re even.”
From the very first moment that the inanimates had looked through the street-level grate of their new refuge and spotted Turn Around Norman, he had held a maximum of fascination for them. Of all the human beings that they, singularly or together, had ever encountered, he was the most like them. Heretofore, they had neither known nor imagined a human animal who operated on something so similar to object time. Maybe the man or woman in the street could not register his movements, his glacial rotations, but to th
e five inanimates, they were overt, familiar, and up to speed.
His movements may have conveyed a shock of recognition, but the street performer himself was a novelty to them. He caught their fancy for the inverse reasons that the animated cookie jar in the first Disney cartoons had caught the fancy of human moviegoers. It was anthropomorphism in reverse. And it was refreshing.
Having met not a single priest nor priestess of the Goddess during their cross-country odyssey, having observed but a mere handful of people who openly expressed the values of the Great Mother—who demonstrated affection, respect, or concern for forests, rivers, deserts, marshes, and the moon—Conch Shell and, especially, Painted Stick had lost much faith in the American race. So, although Turn Around Norman in no apparent way embodied the wild old ways, still he was such an exception to what they perceived as the contemporary human rule that shell and stick both paid him the compliment of daily attention. As for the others, they were just about ga-ga: ready to line up for him like pimpled schoolgirls lining up for a rock star.
Beyond identity and entertainment, there was also a practical interest in Norman. The objects had reached the edge of the continent. Between them and Jerusalem were over five thousand miles of open sea. They could not envision how they might escape the crush of New York City (where even midnight had wide eyes) and conquer the broad Atlantic without aid. Painted Stick and Conch Shell had grown used to human assistance in the past, had come to rely on it just as many in the priesthood had come to rely on them, and despite their disappointment in modern Americans, they maintained an inclination to seek some kind of human help. This strange fellow, who looked like a cross between a cherub and a fiend, and who behaved like a cross between a stone idol and a teapot, was a long shot, but he was all they had.
Then, Ellen Cherry Charles appeared.
In the dimmest corner of the dim sub-basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in the darkest grotto to be found within that granite and marble reef, that atoll exuded by the affluently pious and in whose crust so many guilts and longings lay embedded; in a snuggery so somber and deep that no ray of prayer had ever penetrated to it nor any nun come there to secretly dance the boogaloo; in soft, safe shadow insured by obscurity against the knife edges of votive candle flames and the artillery of flashbulbs that fired when newly wed or newly dead celebrities made their exits through the God-size doors; down there where God’s little vermin, excluded by force from the congregation, partook of his dank hospitality; there in a homogeneous, socialistic blackness that suppressed the rights of individual colors for “the greater good,” there Painted Stick and Conch Shell huddled together in conference or embrace.
“What do you suppose them two do when they slip off like that?” Dirty Sock had once inquired. “They up to something cee-lestial, as they call it, or is it"—he grinned at Spoon—"s-e-x?”
“What’s the difference?” Can o’ Beans had asked.
“Probably none where you’re concerned. You don’t even know which sex you are.”
“I happen to be both. Which, I daresay, is two more than you. Besides,” he/she huffed, “gender is not the same thing as sex.”
“Yes, Sock,” the spoon had chimed in. “Just because technically you once had a mate doesn’t mean you’ve had experience in carnal matters.”
“And I suppose you have?” He had leered at her fiercely.
“Certainly not!” she protested, and if any memory of jelly—the way that jelly jiggled or the way that jelly teased—was aroused in her, she promptly purged it of possible erotic connotation by announcing that she served the Blessed Virgin and would likely choose celibacy even were she of that animate nature where such a choice would have been more than academic.
As for Can o’ Beans, he/she, at that point, might have accused Dirty Sock of being jealous of Painted Stick, but he/she was reminded of his/her eternal debt to the foul footwear and had backed off. “Mr. Sock is less mean than grumpy,” he/she told him/herself, “and while meanness is a function of the insensitive, grumpiness is merely a function of the dissatisfied.”
In any case, returning to the moment, whatever it was that the ancient fetishes were doing there in the lightless corner, sheltered by the splayed dog leg of a long-cold furnace, Can o’ Beans interrupted them. Too excited to be discreet, he/she blurted out the news of the sighting of Miss Charles and bade them return to the grate at once.
“Is she still there?” the can called as it doddered near.
“Oh, yes,” answered Spoon. “She’s watching him. She seems entranced.”
“That’s her,” said Can o’ Beans, nodding, with a mashed and scalloped rim, toward Ellen Cherry. “She knew all three of us. Miss Spoon, she knew intimately. And she’s an artist, not your usual, orthodox young woman. If we’re really going to dare to risk human contact, I couldn’t imagine a more likely candidate than she. I mean, what do we know, really, about that strange fellow out there?”
“That is her on the steps? The pretty one with the unfortunate hair?”
“Exactly. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to act.” Sauce gurgling, Can o’ Beans was uncharacteristically bouncing up and down. “We can’t just let her walk away.”
“Calm down, dear friend. That woman will return. She has been here almost every day.”
“She has?”
“Really and truly?”
“No shit?”
Conch Shell laughed. “You three have been so intent upon our semianimate gentleman that you have completely overlooked your old mistress. She comes here of an afternoon, late, about this time. She stands there and fixes upon him almost as steadfastly as you.”
“There exists a connection ’twixt those two,” said Painted Stick. “I cannot suppose what it is; it may be no more than the force that pulls a planet into the path of a star. Yet, where our future voyage is concerned, I take it as an omen most fair.”
“And I,” said Conch Shell. “The fact that she has such interest in him could mean that she may be capable of accepting us. In any case, she will be back on the morrow, never fear. And the morrow after. We have ample time to meditate on her potential service to us.”
The lot of them nodded in harmony. They grew quiet, pressed to the sooty, rusty grate, watching Ellen Cherry watching Turn Around Norman.
“You know,” Spoon whispered after a while, “she doesn’t seem as merry as she used to be.”
Conch Shell was wrong. Ellen Cherry failed to reappear on the morrow—or the morrow after. The bean can and the spoon panicked and had to be assured over and over by Conch Shell that their erstwhile mistress would, indeed, return. Dirty Sock didn’t seem to care. “I don’t know where you birds get the notion that that woman’s some kinda fairy godmother that’s gonna whisk us off first-class to Jerusalem. Personally, I think she’s damn near a bimbo.”
“Sock!”
“Now, Mr. Stocking . . .”
“Hey, she took off and left us in that killer cave. If it wasn’t for the luck of the draw, I’d be right now up to my ass in dry rot. And don’t forget, little Spoonzie, what she was doing in that cave.”
“She’s a married woman.”
“Uh-huh.” Dirty Sock broke into an artificial falsetto. “Call me Jezebel! Oh, please, please call me Jezebel.”
“That’s unfair.” The bean can drew up its contents with indignation. “Jezebel was an honorable woman.”
“So? What’s that gotta do with it? And if Miz Charles is so all-fired married, what’s she doing here every day, making eyes at that ol’ boy on the street? Where’s Boomer Petway, that’s what I’d like to know.”
Like the mother of a bratty brood, Conch Shell scolded, separated, and soothed. She promised them that they might expect Miss Charles’s imminent encore. And she hinted that Painted Stick and she were formulating a plan that would utilize their past relationship with the woman to their best advantage. “Now, be good and watch the grate,” she said.
Not surprisingly, Ellen Cherry did turn up at St. Patrick
’s again, although it was not for several days. Her previous visit had seen her sail a twenty-dollar bill into Turn Around Norman’s donation box, only to sense immediate disapproval. Norman said nothing, naturally, nor did he make any gesture, yet from his eyes he projected rebuke, projected it so strongly that Ellen Cherry felt it like an actual slap on the wrist. Maybe I’ve been hanging around too long and tipping too much, she thought. Maybe he’s worried that he’s got himself a groupie. She was pleased, though, that he’d become aware of her. She doubted that he had taken particular notice of her before.
A second factor in her decision to boycott Fifth Avenue for a while was the apprehension that she might bump into Buddy again. The preacher had been on TV recently, saying spooky biblical things about the latest bloodshed in Israel, saying those things with a kind of smugness, trying to make the shooting and beating of Palestinian teenagers sound peachy, unavoidable, and right as rain. The idea that some holy prophecy was being fulfilled and that true Christians should be jubilant about it, she found repulsive, and she dreaded having to face the so-called kinsman of hers who was perpetuating that idea.
Thus, for a couple of reasons, she thought it would behoove her to curtail her trips up Forty-ninth Street for at least a week, and she made a vow to that effect. In four days, however, she was back on the cathedral steps. It happened to be the evening that Boomer’s show was to open at the Sommervell Gallery, and if she couldn’t rely on Turn Around Norman for distraction, for comfort, there was no telling what she might do. She might even get drunk and go to the opening.
Braced against the November chill, hands in coat pockets, legs apart, Ellen Cherry found herself turning with Turn Around Norman, very gradually altering her position so that his back was always toward her. It may be best that he doesn’t see me, she thought. I wouldn’t want to make him self-conscious. Deprived of the ambivalent allure of his face—that plowed moon sewn with seeds of nettle and narcissus, that pink grapefruit carved with an assassin’s dagger—she was free now to concentrate on his feet, and she focused on his grubby Converses, sometimes separately, sometimes both together, alert to their position vis-à-vis one another, vis-à-vis a crack in the pavement. Yet, even as those positions shifted, she was unable to intercept a single signal from brain to muscle or to detect the slightest violation of skeletal freeze. They were like potentates of dirty ice, his sneakers, borne in a circle upon the backs of heated molecules, passengers aboard an imperceptible subhuman squirm.