The Ink Truck

by William Kennedy

  “You’re not participating, Bailey,” said Stanley. “You’re not playing. You’re not even eating. I’m disappointed.”

  “You’re a perfect host, don’t blame yourself.”

  Stanley smiled and mopped sweat on his hairless chest with his rose-embroidered napkin. He sniffed the wine, sipped it.

  “Your wife seems to be enjoying herself,” he said.

  Bailey turned to see Grace dancing erotically with Popkin.

  “Grace has the capacity for a good time,” Bailey said.

  “I think the whole thing is disgusting,” Shirley Rosenthal said.

  “I’m with you,” Irma said.

  “Likewise,” said the executive wife.

  Rosenthal stared at the executive wife. When she became conscious of this she stared back.

  “Would you care to dance?” Stanley asked Irma.

  “Go cut your throat,” Irma said.

  “Why don’t we then,” he said to Shirley. He stood and touched her shoulder. “Do the host a favor. Strike’s over, you know.”

  “You’re an incredible louse,” Shirley told him. But Bailey saw a smile around her lips, waiting to break. Rosenthal touched hands with the executive wife. Bailey saw Irma staring across the room at Deek, who was entwined with the half-dressed nurse. Bailey snapped his fingers, and Irma blinked, looked at him, then went back to looking at Deek.

  When Bailey went over to his Uncle Melvin and suggested politely that the old man go home instead of risking a heart attack by such vigorous behavior and was told to mind his own pints and quarts, and when he suggested to Irma that it was impolite for her to sit on the sofa and stare into Deek’s eyes as he made love to his nurse, and was ignored, Bailey knew that what was happening had been induced. And since he alone was in possession of his senses, he understood Stanley had drugged the food, or the wine: a little grass, perhaps; or a dash of hash; or some mild acid. And so he knew he could do nothing about it except avoid eating or drinking anything, and thereby avoid putting himself in Stanley’s hands. Since both food and drink had probably been modified, he would have no meaningful communication with friend or enemy, for they would eat and drink until they fell, or went home. So he sat alone at the table, watching the interplay of the unshackled. He faulted no one, ugly as it all seemed to him. He felt like a beneficent deity: aloof, perceptive of the nature of frailty. He sensed that he knew at last how ascetics used hunger to induce mystical experience. He looked about the room with a lofty view of the passionate explosion. He listened to the moans of rapture. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, wiped away thoughts as they rushed into his mind, cut off their heads before they could sprout into ideas or visions. He wanted to blanch his brain, let in the whiteness that illuminates, the peace that calms the heart. He felt nearer than ever to the arhat Skin had wanted him to be. He pictured himself as he thought he looked and became aware of his folded arms, crossed ankles.

  Priestly crisscrossings.

  Sanctimonious son of a bitch.

  He uncrossed his ankles, unfolded his arms, opened his eyes, raised his head. He tore a roll in two, a Potato Water Feather Roll, Stanley had announced, and buttered it. He bit into its softness, and his tongue came back to life. He tasted the Alexandra Consommé: tepid but delicious. He tasted the wine: exquisite. Stanley watched with a gloating eye. Bailey raised the glass.

  “Up your symbiosis,” Bailey said and drained the wine.

  Stanley rolled to the floor, laughing, kicking his legs high in glee. Bailey poured more wine, then saw Smith sitting across from him, shirtless, wearing a wig and beard that made him look like Jesus. Bailey ate in silence for a few minutes, occasionally raising his head to see Smith staring at him.

  “Jesus is a bald gypsy,” Bailey said, and he snatched the wig from Smith and threw it across the room. Stanley laughed in unrestrained whoops. Smith retrieved the wig and sat down again at the table. He picked up a knife.

  “You really want to look like Jesus?” Bailey asked.

  “None of your business if I do.”

  “Don’t talk like a kid, Smith. If you’re going to be Jesus, be Jesus. Don’t talk like a kid. Jesus wasn’t a kid. Jesus was never a kid. Even when he was a kid he wasn’t a kid. And he never needed a knife. Where the hell do you get off making up like Jesus?”

  “Bailey,” Irma said, sitting down beside him. She said it soothingly.

  “He’s got no right being Jesus, a bum like him.”

  “Forget it,” Irma said. “Here. Have a Potato Water Feather Roll.”

  “I already had a Potato Water Feather Roll.”

  “Have another. Live it up.”

  “I note you’ve been living it up, eyeball-wise.” He took the roll from her. “Woman,” he added, “is often the bread of man.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “In the construction of the human sandwich, woman is also generally the butter half. Man, you might say, is the meat.”

  “Baloney,” Irma said.

  Through the room there suddenly came the ominous wail of a siren. A police car? A fire engine? An ambulance? A raid? Bailey turned to see the orgy mob righting itself, tucking in its shirts, covering up its viewables. Stanley, heaving his chest in superior mirth, lifted the arm of the record player and the siren stopped. Had Stanley learned from Skin? Vice versa?

  “No need to be formal,” Stanley said. “But the party must move along. The celebration continues now into the health phase.” He swallowed some wine and resettled himself at the head of the table. Slowly the guests drifted back to their places, to the cold food and half-empty glasses, to a Bailey glazed with the flush of nourishment in his blood, alcohol in his brain and Stanley’s secret substance attacking the center of his inhibitory structure. Bailey greeted the returnees with heart and spirit, but said nothing.

  For some guests the drug was wearing off, and as it did they looked around to see who was looking at them. A scab wife began putting on her dress but halfway through said “The hell with it” and took it off again.

  Stanley ordered all wine glasses refilled and then stood to make a toast. “I have noted,” he began, “that some of you are more inhibited than others. You there, pretty lady,” and he motioned to Shirley Rosenthal with his glass, “are far from the city of joy. You can’t participate. How sad. But I have a remedy for such sadness. Dr. Stanley knows the answers. Won’t you listen to him? Follow him? Give him your allegiance? Dr. Stanley showed you the beginning, won’t you let him show you the rest of the way?”

  Bailey had never seen Stanley so serious. He seemed evangelistic, a man in possession of a great truth whose weight compels its revelation to multitudes.

  “You are all here tonight,” he continued, “because the company’s behavior in the strike was directed by a man who understands the need for direct action, who will not shirk from violence when violence is called for, who is not a milksop humanist stricken to immobility by conscience when survival is the order of the day, who is not …”

  He paused.

  “But why, my friends, my guests, my erstwhile opponents, why should you care what I am not? It is what I am, what the company is, what a man like Smith here is, that has made the difference in events. Our mandate is clear, and it would be a simple matter for such overwhelming victors to view the losers as a cargo of outcasts, a battery of rabble. But that would assume, oh so very wrongly, that the company has no heart. But look—here we huddle in the heat of this room, and by now you must have noted that it is growing hotter and hotter, in much the same way the caveman probably huddled beside the fire in times of storm and stress, huddled with strangers or even men he presumed yesterday to be his enemy. Under the human roof there can be no lasting enemies. Reconciliation, my friends, is the order of the day. Love thy neighbor, that is the call of the Christian. Joy to the world, that is the anthem of the Christs of every age. And so I offer you here tonight, my very good friends, an abundance of love, a very mountain of joy from the bottom of the company’s enormous heart.”
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  Stanley raised his glass, then drank. All but Bailey, Irma and the Rosenthals drank with him. When everyone was finished toasting, Bailey drank. He was drinking too much and he knew it. The wine was reaching him and Stanley’s drug was alienating his body from his mind. Still, he could think clearly, without dizziness, and knew this was all he needed to remain the equal of Stanley.

  “You are all suffering,” Stanley said, “and I ask you to let me palliate that suffering. You are all afraid, and I ask that you let me give you courage. You are all confused, and I ask that you let me bring clarity to your days. Miss Blue, O lovely dove, will you lead us to the house of health, the high altar of joy? Will you do that for us, Miss Blue?”

  “Boop-boop,” Miss Blue said with a heavenly smile, and moving away from the table, naked but for her high heels, she opened a door off the dining room and waited for people to follow. Miss Bohen was the first, followed by the captain, then Stephanie and a scab wife and Smith and on and on until all were moving through the door. Stanley’s troupe of servants came out of the kitchen, unbuttoning and loosening their clothes as they came, and followed the guests.

  “Should we join the healthy ones?” Irma said.

  “Either that or admit we can’t face it.”

  “He’s up to no good.” Her eyes followed Deek and the nurse as they left the table.

  “Magic,” said Bailey, “is in the hat of the magician,” and when he and Irma stood up the table was at last empty.

  They moved out of the old house and along a shoveled sidewalk toward a small wooden building standing at the edge of a garden. The heat as they entered the building took away their breath. People were removing more of their clothing as Miss Blue coaxed them into total nudity, the only way, she said, to let the body breathe in such heat. She told them to hang their clothing in an anteroom. In the large central room a stove and hot rocks gave off the intense, dry heat.

  “Should we strip?” Irma asked.

  “When in Rome.”

  “I’ve still got our ace in the hole,” she said, and she opened her purse to again let Bailey see the antique pistol.

  He smiled but wasn’t sure his face moved. He felt paralyzed, though he was not, for he could move his legs, pull himself out of his clothing, hang it on a hook. Yet time seemed at half-speed. That others were as drugged as he became clear when he looked at the naked multitude, their faces stiff with smiles, moving with exaggerated slowness. Stanley stood on an elevated wooden platform that like the floor was slatted for drainage. Beside him an old woman servant in a leather apron, but otherwise unclothed, poured two dipperfuls of water over the rocks, creating new steam. From the rear she seemed other than human to Bailey with her fold after fold of black and purple skin, so stretched that with the flesh gone from under it it hung on her backside and thighs like dead matter.

  Stanley told the crowd to sit on the benches and platforms and enjoy their sweat. They could do little else in the unbearable heat. Steam condensed on bodies, people collapsed, gasped for air. Then servants opened two doors and a rush of frigid air, barely cool to the mob, eased the tension and froze each man and woman for an instant into a tableau Bailey suddenly felt the urge to paint: Popkin, hairless, and Morelli, apelike with hair; one of Stanley’s maids with only one breast and beside her an Old Mother Hubbard’s pair hanging to the waist like overstuffed satchels; a chickenbreasted scab with a long, dangling prong, and an executive’s beer-bellied vat with an almost invisible faucet under its great curve; a hump growing out of a gray-haired executive wife’s back, and Reilly beside her, standing crookedly, wearing a high shoe on his club foot; Miss Bohen, so thin her shoulderblades took wing; and on other women, freckled bosoms, veins like blue spaghetti, dimpled rears, parted, coiffed and flying pubes. And Stephanie with rouged nipples. Some men had womanly sags to their chests, knobby navels, hairy backs, boils and cultured muscles. Some women had pimples, face-lift scars, stretch marks. And an executive wife wore a lavender-gray merkin. Stanley displayed tattooed foreskin, and blond wives proved out with lampblack crotches. There were women with oiled skin, surgical scars, acne and Man Tan, men with scarlet splotches, warts, wens, moles, birthmarks and blister flakes.

  Bailey saw the servants gathering in a semicircle, holding hands. Gradually they moved across the room like a flowering maypole ballet, encircling the vagrant guests, holding them in bounds with smiling faces, silently manipulating the weakened, sweating and drugged crowd into what seemed the beginning of a game. Soon all were inside the semicircle, backed against log walls. A few asked: What’s this? What’s it all about? But the protest mechanism was fogged by the drug. The servants said nothing. They smiled and gradually began to push until the guests were all in motion, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, immobilized like canned things, lubricated by their own sweat, swaying, swaying, back and forth, waves in a bottle.

  Bailey looked beside him into the eyes of his wife, whose breasts floated between them, and saw the beginning of terror. Anger at Stanley rose in his throat. As he was about to speak Grace shrieked hysterically, shriek upon shriek. The shoving increased in force, arms were raised, elbows shoved into ribs. It seemed the beginning of violence and Bailey could only think: all of this erupting out of Stanley’s mind, all this a configuration that in an instant would be memorable as nightmare or imagined paroxysm, that lacked logic, reality. But the violence failed from the crowd’s weakness. The rage rose into a crescendo of screams and cries, then ebbed into moments of containment, then near silence. The servants smiled, swayed. And in the midst of motion flesh became flesh in a new and primal way, although Bailey guessed that disorders adrift on imagined seas of flesh would anchor themselves in some on this night.

  Bailey heard one man cry out “inhuman” and another cry out “beasts” and another plead weakly on behalf of his heart condition. On the platform Miss Blue swayed in time with the tidal motion of the crowd, eyes closed, immersed in ecstatic flood. “Flesh and skin,” she cried, “flesh and skin. Stanley makes our joy begin.”

  Bailey saw the chickenbreasted scab giving all of his attention to the maid with one breast as she leaned against him, part of the servant chain. Bailey looked for other opportunism but found none so flagrant. He saw only heads bobbing on the swamp of flesh. Grace had moved like flotsam back into the depth of the crowd, and Irma came into view little more than an arm’s length away yet with half a dozen bodies between them.

  “Are you all right?” he called when he caught her eye. She gave him a resigned tilt of the head and raised her purse for him to see. He smiled, his life ever more absurd, ever richer from her antic strength. Irma: ready to shoot somebody, anybody. For what? For love.

  Deek came into view, leaning on his nurse and one crutch. Then Rosenthal, arms around Shirley at shoulder level, holding her away from whatever quicksand, yelled to Bailey: “Don’t let go!” The captain, face puzzled but smiling, gave Bailey a wink.

  Bailey tried to stand motionless, turning to avoid elbows, hands, hips when he could, giving the steamy surge his side instead of his belly or his back, trying to hold dominion over the spot where his feet touched the hot slats. He held his head aloft, at times on tiptoe, and became conscious of the aloofness that this betrayed: a foolish faith: They cannot reach me if I don’t falter. But without dignity, hadn’t he already been reached? I shouldn’t have let them divest me of that, he thought. He tried to think in glory terms, always an antidote, but could muster nothing that would stay in his mind. Only Stanley stayed, standing on the platform, wearing a pigtail, his skin a brilliant yellow, his eyes Orientally cast: Fu Manchu incarnate, yellow peril reading Oriental warnings to the swaying crowd in incantatory tone:

  “I spit in the cottage cheese of your father. I untimely pluck your mother’s lotus blossoms. I wet on your aunt’s blanket. I color your children’s milk. I run your dog through the soil pipe. I befoul your wife with warm fatback. I put borax in your rice bowl, rubber bands in your tobacco, ticks on your cat. I shatter your grandmother
’s reading spectacles. I glue together the dentures of your sleeping grandfather. But I never hurt you.”

  Stanley strapped a metal box on his back and came down from the platform wearing a football helmet and padded jockstrap. In his hand he carried a long rod connected by wire to the metal box. When his rod touched a scab wife, who had collapsed on the shoulder of a servant, she straightened and smiled.

  “Are you awake my dear?”

  “I’m a chaste woman.”

  “I’m sure you are. And do you prize your chastity?”

  “Oh, indeed.”

  “And is that why you stand before me naked as a fish-worm?”

  “I didn’t want to be the only one dressed for dinner.”

  “Excellent plan. But conformity befouls us all. Sweet dreams, madam.”

  He drew a circle on her stomach with the rod. When complete, the circle fell to the floor. The woman tried frantically to retrieve it but when she bent over, her entrails slipped out. She pushed them back in with her hand, tried to pick up her stomach with her toes. As it slithered out of her grasp a fox terrier ran off with it.

  Stanley moved along to Popkin, touched his hairless chest with the rod, which Bailey now understood to be a cattle prod. Popkin shivered and smiled.

  “Had any trouble at home?” Stanley asked.

  “Once,” said Popkin.

  “Tell us about it.”

  “I found my wife in bed with a fellow with a lot of hair.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got horny.”

  “Wonderful,” Stanley said. He stung Popkin’s chest a dozen times with the device and long yellow hairs sprouted. Amazed, Popkin pleaded for more. Stanley touched him again and again and more hair sprouted like cornsilk. In seconds it had grown a foot. Stephanie, beside him, began to braid it as Stanley moved on to Clubber Reilly and Fats Morelli. He touched Reilly, who yelped; then Morelli, who squealed.