What Is All This?

by Stephen Dixon

  The store bell rang, everyone got to his post, the doors opened and the usual early-morning surge of customers, eager to get what they believed were daily-delivered fresh produce, bought grapefruits, oranges, peaches and tomatoes and raspberries that had been in the boxes and bins out here, or in the refrigerated cases in back, for a few days.

  “It’s getting so exciting outside,” Mary Sarah said, coming by after the early rush had ended and squeezing and thumping a melon to see if it was ripe enough for dinner tonight. “Could you put this away for me?” she said, which I did. “And the newspaper article said it was all because of those things—those berries there,” and she pointed, to the four crates of different kinds of berries that in a half hour I was going to dump into the street and destroy. I’d already figured out how I was going to do it. I’d wait till Finerman went in back for his every-half-hour-on-the-half-hour smoke, and then I’d stack the crates on one another and carry them outside.

  “Morning, Kevin.” It was Mrs. Blau, another morning regular. For six months in the cold season, she bought nothing but anise, artichokes and apples; and during the warmer months, it was plums, peaches and carrots with their tops. “You shouldn’t be selling those things,” she said, meaning the berries.

  “I know that, Mrs. Blau.”

  “I should be boycotting your store for selling them, because by having them, you only encourage people to buy. Haven’t you seen the television reports?” I told her I hadn’t and she said the educational network last week devoted an entire hour to the plight of the berry-pickers and the cynicism and greediness of the growers. The pickers are the most underprivileged and underpaid workers we have. Because of that, they’re forced to live in hovels and have too many children, thereby causing even more future problems for them and the world. I shouldn’t even be in this store, do you realize that? And maybe I won’t,” and she handed me the plums, peaches and carrots I’d weighed for her and bagged, clipped and marked, said “I’m sorry for putting you through so much unnecessary work, Kevin,” and left the store.

  It was nearly ten. The cameras were set up and a couple of policemen were keeping pedestrians away from the equipment and newsman, whom I recognized from a local evening news show as one of the most well-known television reporters on the city scene. People were trying to get his autograph while he held a sheet of paper up in front of him and was practicing his report to an unmanned camera. Suddenly, Mary Sarah was right on top of me, excited and out of breath and saying “You know what Paul Dougherty of WYBT just said outside about you, Kev?” And Larry, the youngest food clerk, said “What, Mary, what?”

  “He said that you, Kevin Wilmer, have just smashed all the grower-grown berries that hadn’t been picked by union-member pickers, as an act of protest against the growers and as a form of allegiance or something to the boycott movement, though I don’t know if he was talking about you or the pickers, now, Kev.”

  “What’s all that about?” Finerman said, his cigarette pack and matches already out of his pocket and in his hands, as he was on his way to the stockroom for a smoke.

  “What’s all what about?” I said, stacking a crate of raspberries on a blackberry crate.

  “What Mary Sarah said.”

  “Paul Dougherty said you dumped and smashed berries outside,” she said. “But you didn’t do that, did you Kev? I would have seen it from number six, or at least heard about it.”

  That’s true, you would’ve.” I had three crates stacked now, lifted them up, told Larry to put the fourth and last crate on top of the three I held, and started for the door.

  “Where you going with those?” Finerman said. “Now, put them down and explain to me, Kev.”

  I would have, the situation was getting too unsettling and scary for me now, but everything had been arranged, which I had agreed to, and I’d feel even worse and more stupid having had all those television men come out here and set up their equipment for nothing. “I’ve got to put these berries away, under manager’s orders,” I said.

  Then you’re going the wrong way, if that is what you’re doing,” Finerman said. “Storeroom’s in back. Kevin?

  Now, you come back here this instant, Kevin.”

  I was walking through the door. Finerman, as I’d thought, didn’t try to stop me physically, though by now he must have known what was happening. Larry, Mary Sarah and all the delivery boys followed me outside, mumbling to one another that something fantastic was about to happen.

  “Okay, fellas,” Paul Dougherty said, and the cameras began shooting film of me. Paul Dougherty was reporting off camera that I was leaving the market to demonstrate my solidarity with the pickers’ movement for higher wages and better living and working conditions. Behind me, Mary Sarah said “Now I get it; now I understand,” and Larry said “Oh, Jesus, and I was the one who put the last crate in his hands. You think I’ll be fired?”

  I looked around for Blackspot, but there was a whole slew of ordinary-looking pedestrians grinning and smiling as I almost never saw them do on the street. I walked to the curb, set down the crates, lifted the top crate and was about to turn it over into the street, when one of the three boys standing beside me and hamming it up for the cameras said “As long as you’re going to throw those away, can we have some?” I said no, though I honestly didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t planned for anyone to bring up what I could see was a perfectly legitimate request, and when he said They’re just going to go to waste, anyhow,” I told him “All right, but only one basket apiece, understand?”

  They took a basket each from one of the crates on the sidewalk and then it seemed that everyone in the crowd other than my coworkers and the television people and one unhappy, ungrinning, very ordinary-looking man except for a purple birthmark the size of a glass coaster in the middle of his forehead began grabbing baskets of berries out of the crates and carefully sticking them into their shopping bags or just eating handfuls of berries right on the street, as the three boys were doing. The crowd emptied the three crates in less than a minute and were grasping for the berries in the crate I was holding away from their reach, when I threw that crate to the ground and quickly stepped on and smashed the berries rolling every which way and then almost everyone in the crowd joined in stepping on the berries with me.

  “We’re pressing wine,” someone said. “Down with the illegal growers,” Blackspot shouted at the cameras.

  “Up with the C & L fruit men,” a woman said, and that was the cheer the crowd liked best. “Up with the C & L fruit men,” people shouted. They give away free berries for nothing.”

  The cameras picked up on all this. Paul Dougherty was reporting the story as if a last-ditch game-winning touchdown had just been scored. It was almost a surprise to me not to be hoisted to someone’s shoulders and paraded around and hip-hip-hoorayed to.

  Later, Jennie and I sat down for the evening news.

  I’d told her something special was going to be on that we should watch, as I hadn’t mentioned what had happened at work today. She said she better see how the chicken was doing in the oven, but I said “Sit tight, just for a second.”

  There were a lot of reports about Vietnam and Africa and the UN and our country’s gold crisis and the city’s impending school crisis and then the store I was in. “Oh, gosh, I can’t believe it; you were right,” Jennie said. I told her to can it, I couldn’t hear. Off-camera, Paul Dougherty, while the screen showed me leaving the store, was telling a different story from the one he’d begun to recite when the incident actually took place. Now he said that what had started out to be one individual’s protest against the major city supermarkets’ nonadherence to the ras-, black-and loganberry boycott turned into a major neighborhood fun-in. “Kevin Wimer was the principal figure in the demonstration. But the neighborhood, a polyglot of race, creed and culture, wouldn’t let Mr. Wimer have his protest without them eating it, too.” The television showed the loud frantic activity of people stealing the baskets and popping berries into their mouths fo
r the benefit of the cameras, and Paul Dougherty said it was like a “modern-dress Cecil B. De Mille-presents scene of Bacchanalian Rome.” The last shot showed me walking back to the market with the empty crates and Paul Dougherty, in the foreground, and for the first time on camera, saying “So what began as a plucky individual’s protest against a segment of the giant corporate structure ended up as the best gesture of neighborhood goodwill and all the free publicity that accompanies it that a supermarket chain could hope to get. I guess you can say ‘Berry sweet is revenge.’”

  “What’d he mean with that last remark?” Jennie said.

  “I don’t know; too highbrow for me. Maybe that my stunt backfired.”

  “Did they can you?”

  The manager said he’d speak to upper management about it. Meanwhile, because they’re short of help in the produce section, I should stay on. But there are always other jobs.”

  “We got bills, you know, a baby coming on, and chicken costs money, especially if you don’t get it at twenty-percent off.” She went to the kitchen, yelled out “You’re a fool and a showoff, Kevin Wimer,” and, a little later, that dinner would be ready in five minutes.

  Blackspot called. “You weren’t at first forceful enough with those three kids, but thanks, anyway. Nobody won or lost, but it at least drew some much-needed nonviolent attention to the movement. I was wondering if you’d join our picket line tomorrow against a pro-grower Food-O-Rama on a Hundred and Sixty-eighth. We need marchers badly.”

  “I’m still working,” I said. “But because of my general all-around foul-up today and sympathy for the movement, I’d like to give a few dollars to the pickers. Where do I send it to?”

  “We’re having a full-page ad in all the city’s newspapers on Sunday. It’ll mention just that matter and also the address of national headquarters where the donations should go.”

  The phone rang a minute later. “Let it ring,” Jennie said. “Even pull out the jack, since there’ll be no end to those calls,” but I left the table and answered it. It was Nelson’s wife, Rita. She said she hadn’t seen the story on television herself, but a couple of her friends called to tell her that one of Nelson’s coworkers had come on television to say that not only did Nelson deserve to get burned but the whole city should be torched if the mayor and city council and all the supermarkets and their customers don’t support the berry boycott. I told her that wasn’t true about one of Nelson’s coworkers and wondered what news program her friends could have been watching. “It certainly wasn’t the one my wife and I saw, and the other station covering it filmed the same scene.” Then I asked how Nelson was and she said “Oh, fine, absolutely fine. How else would he be with half his body charred to shreds and all the pain that goes with it, which no amount of drugs seems to help.”

  “But is he improving any? I mean, Nelson and I were friends at work, so I’m interested. Everybody at the market’s concerned, customers too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, “a lot you all care.”

  “We do, a lot, me, especially. That television report your friends gave was totally false.”

  “Well, the doctors say he’ll live, thank God, though with so much of his body burned, they say he’ll have to get skin grafts on the parts burned most,” and it occurred to me that she if anybody would know the answer as to which of the two degrees was worse. I first said “Listen, and I swear to this, I’d be glad to give some of my skin to Nelson, if the doctors think the color is right and all, as I’ve big thighs and an even bigger behind and I know that’s where they take the donor’s skin from.” Then I told her about the question that had been bothering me for two days now and which was worse, if she didn’t mind my asking, second-or third-degree burns?

  “Well, the main difference, Nelson’s main doctor told me—” but then she broke down. I felt very bad for her and said “Now, come on, don’t cry, Rita. It’ll be all right; everything’ll work out okay,” but she said “I can’t talk anymore; I’ve been like this since the firebombing. Oh, what’s wrong with this world, anyway?” and hung up.

  I stood there a few seconds with that sobbing plea of hers still in my head, then went to the dictionary in the living room while Jennie was calling me back to the table in the kitchen, but all it had in it were the words “second” and “third” and “first” and “burn” and “-s” for the plural, but no word “degree” after them, neither with hyphens, separated nor anything. I decided I’d never get to know the answer to this question. That none of my friends knew and nobody at work knew and that maybe the only person who could tell me would be one of those great skin-doctor specialists like the one working on Nelson, who wouldn’t give me the time of day on the phone if I called him, he’d be so busy. Then I remembered my promise to Rita and I said out loud “Good God, what the hell you get yourself into this time?” and I all of a sudden felt stomach-sick and woozy, because just the thought of being operated on for skin for Nelson’s grafting scared me to no end now. I hoped Rita would forget my suggestion, or maybe in her condition she hadn’t even heard me make it, but I had promised her and I knew I’d have to go along with it if I was asked.

  THE YOUNG MAN WHO READ BRILLIANT BOOKS.

  At the state unemployment office this morning, David met a woman in line who told him, after giving him the once-over and then deploring the long wait and interminable California rain, that she had five beautiful daughters at home from whom he could just about take his pick if he liked. “You seem that good-natured and sensitive to me,” she said, “and just look at the way you read those brilliant books. And then, strange as this sounds, sonny,” and she looked around the room suspiciously and then stretched on her toes to speak into his ear, “I think it’s high time they began seeing men who aren’t always so stupid and wild.”

  David thought the woman was a little eccentric, so he politely told her he wasn’t interested. “What I’m saying is that, enticing as your offer sounds, I’m really much too busy with my studies to go out with some women I don’t even know.”

  “Girls,” she said, “not women. Young gorgeous, unattached girls, the homeliest of which looks like nothing short of a glamorous movie starlet. And who said anything about going out with all five of them? One, just one, we’re not perverts, you know. And my daughters are smart and obedient enough to realize that what I say is usually the right thing for them, so you can be sure you’ll have your choice, like I say.”

  Thanks again,” he said, as he was trying to finish the last few pages of the paperback he was reading and then get to the one sticking out of his jacket pocket, “but I’m afraid I’ll still have to say no.”

  “Why no? Listen some more before you shut me off. One’s even a blonde, though with fantastic dark black eyes. You ever go out with a blonde with fantastic dark black eyes? Ever even seen one, no less? Take it from me, they’re the most magnificent female creatures on God’s earth, bar none. Writers write endless sonnets about them, swoon at their feet. One handsome young biochemist actually wanted to commit suicide over my Sylvia, but I told him he was crazy and he’d be better off discovering new cures for cancer, instead. And listen: Each of them has a beautiful body. You interested, perhaps, in beautiful bodies?”

  “Of course I am,” and he closed the book on his finger. “I mean”—he tried to harden his face from showing his sudden interest—“well, every man is.”

  “Like Venus and Aphrodite they have beautiful bodies,” she said dreamily. “And cook? Everything I know in the kitchen and my cordon bleu mother before me knew, I’ve taught to my daughters. Now, what do you say?”

  She was next in line now and the clerk behind the window asked her to step forward. “Listen to that jerk,” she whispered to David. “Someone like that I wouldn’t let one foot into my house. Wouldn’t even let him say hello on the phone to my daughters, even if he was pulling in five hundred a week from his job. But you?”

  “Madam,” the clerk said irritably, “if you don’t mind?”

  “You,”
she continued with her back to the clerk, “sandals, long hair, mustache, face blemishes and all, I’d make an elaborate dinner for and introduce to my girls one by one. Then I’d give you a real Cuban cigar and Napoleon brandy and show you into our library till you made up your mind as to which of my beauties you want to take for a drive. And you want to know why? I like brains.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that,” David said. “Because nowadays—”

  “Brains have always been taught to me by my father as the most important and cherishable part a man can bring to a woman. Clerks like that dullard don’t have brains, just fat behinds with sores on them through their whole lives. But you I can tell. Not only because of your intelligent frown and casual way you speak but also how you concentrate on your brilliant English novel here,” and she slapped the book he held. “So, come on, sonny, because what do you really have to lose?”

  “Okay,” he said, smiling for the first time since he met her, “you broke my arm. But just for dinner, if that’s all right. And only to meet your lovely family and have a good home-cooked meal for a change, with some stimulating conversation.”

  “Now you’re being smart.” She wrote her name and address on the inside cover of his book, told him to be at her home around six and went up to the clerk’s window to sign the form for her unemployment check.

  “You act like you don’t even need the money,” the clerk said, shoving the form in front of her.

  This paltry sum?” she said for everybody to hear. “Peanuts. But I and my employer put good money into your insurance plan, so why shouldn’t I make a claim for it if I’m looking for work?”

  “Next,” he said over her shoulder, and David walked up, said good morning extra courteously, as he didn’t want to give this man even the slightest excuse for becoming unfriendly and ultimately overinquisitive about him, and answered the same two questions he’d been asked since he started getting the checks.