Finnegan thought that he should go into either the army or navy (he was eighteen years old), serve a couple of years, and then try to get some benefits. Or just get a job, any job, and stay with it, not to want to change every two or three days.
“But that's what you do,” Howland said.
“I know it, but I don't want you to be like me.”
Finnegan had a dream one night before they reached Chicago. He had a lot of dreams now as his conscience was bothering him.
Well, Clio was there with trumpet and clepsydra. They were funny things to be carrying around, but she was a funny girl. There was Erato and Euterpe, in fact the whole blamed family of them. They tried to put a sort of stole around Finn's shoulders, and also something on his head.
“Go away, girls, you bug me,” he told them, but he couldn't wake up from them.
“We know,” they said.
They never did really get it on him, but they had it sort of draped over one shoulder before he managed to wake up from them. It burned like fire.
In Chicago, Finnegan had two or three dates with a pretty, dark girl he met in a bar. Her name was Francine. Then he introduced Howland to her. She thought that she could get him on as a kitchen boy in the hotel where she worked. It might take a couple of days. He would have to wait till one of the boys got drunk and didn't show up. Then she would throw a little gasoline on the fire of the employer's wrath and get him canned. If Howland turned out to be a steady boy he could stay as long as he wanted. And when he learned the business he could get a job as waiter in a supper club and make good money.
“Finnegan, I like that boy,” she said. “I'll get him situated and see if I can get him to stay with it. He's not spoiled a bit, and he's sweet. If it looks like I can raise him the way I want to I'll marry him.”
While they waited for one of the kitchen boys to get canned, Finnegan decided to take Howland and pay a visit to Casey. Finnegan had money now, or at least someone had money. It may have been Francine's money. The three of them were very close at that time and they always remained so. In latter years, Finnegan often lived with the Howlands when he was in Chicago.
Howland had turned out to be a comedian, so they made the visit up good. Finn had a new 1946 model sport coat and it didn't take much to make a flash out of him. He got a pair of canary-colored gloves and a swagger stick for Howland.
He told Casey that Howland was his valet. Howland's job, he told Casey, was to carry his bottle. Finnegan would slump deep in an easy chair and spin a long series of lies to Casey. Then he would raise one finger. Howland would take a bottle out of a hamper, uncork it elaborately, and hand it to Finnegan. Finn would take a swig and hand it back. It would be corked and hampered again with ceremony.
Finnegan was in very good form, and when he was in good form he couldn't be topped. He told a number of high stories. Most of them hadn't happened; some of them couldn't possibly happen. But others of them, which hadn't happened, were to happen in the future. Finnegan often went to great lengths to make happen the stories which he had told for truth. Casey had always been his best audience for the reason that he enjoyed the stories and didn't care whether they were true or not.
But, to come down to earth, what did he do for a living?
Finnegan talked of the art dealers who were after him for pictures. Casey was puzzled. He knew that Finnegan was good, but he also knew that he was averse to working at what he did best. Well as he knew Finn, still there was the chance that he had caught on somehow and was in the money. And, if he had, then what more natural than that he should have a valet just to take care of his bottles?
They both stayed with Casey for four days, good days. Casey had nearly gotten out of the habit of having real fun, but he still liked to get back to it.
Then Francine came for Howland to go work. As she left, she called that she would have the agency try to get Finn another valet but that good ones were hard to find.
4.
Casey was into it all right. His eyes were open and he was right in the middle of it. Finnegan stayed on there for about three weeks. He set himself up a cot in the back of the print shop. He felt that he was in the way in the apartment where the conspirators met. He worked a little, but not in full seriousness at his art. He had not forgotten how the stole burned when it was draped over his shoulder. But there is nothing to prevent a great artist from doing novelty work for money, not if he does it well.
Finnegan carved four life-size cigar store Indians. They were authentic and at the same time humorous, with just the right touch of burlesque in them. He disposed of them for a hundred dollars each to a certain rich man. These were great bargains at the price. Nobody could carve a cigar store Indian like Finnegan.
Hillary Hilton ended up with one of them years later. He keeps it for the love he bore Finnegan. Money couldn't buy it from him, and he is the man who would sell anything. If you know him well enough you can see it at his place. It is not known what happened to the other three. And Finnegan wasn't a man to do very many of anything.
Casey had money. He had always liked money more than the rest of them. It was Legitimate. He was given opportunities to make money by those who thought as he did. He talked to Finnegan a little about money. He could get Finnegan into the money too.
If you have talent, you market it. If you are right, then a market will be found for you, not necessarily the public market. As a drunken New Orleans painter Finnegan would get nowhere. Drunken painters are in great supply and they all come from New Orleans. But let him get himself sponsored as the pet of this particular set of liberals and he was in. With party sanction, he would get commissions running into many thousands of dollars. He could work on murals in any of the new Federal Buildings. This was the best. If one was right, it did not even take ability, though it was fortunate that Finnegan had this.
Or really he need not paint at all. They would just give him the name of being a great proletarian painter. Then he could spend the rest of his life making cocktail parties and being house guest of all the well-heeled heels. His only duties would be to sign a manifesto now and then.
This is actually what the Life of Riley consists of: of living with the best, of being fêted, of hearing the bright wits crackle and seeing them spark; of turning the phrase that people in Pasadena and Passaic would think was their own three months from now; of having one's choice of various sets of liberal morals and even being able to improvise one's own and have them imitated. And ultimately the bill to be paid by either the government or the foundations.
Why, Finnegan would be a natural here. People liked him, and he had always gotten along. He could be a Bohemian with the Bohemians and a toper with the topers. And the thing to remember was that these were the people who counted. They were the real people; all the others were imitations.
The way to get along was to figure which way the world was going, and to be waiting for it when it got there. Then you would have the cream. And these people knew which way the world was going. It was going their way.
“But are these people not, pardon the word Casey, rats?” Finnegan asked.
“Yes, from one point of view. Wolverines is a better word. They are full-sized slashers. They are bigger than rats and rougher. They are wolves from your viewpoint, and you are sheep from theirs. But animal comparisons will not get it. The world is going their way; it isn't going yours. You will have to join them, the sooner the better.”
“Hell, Casey, they haven't a Chinaman's chance.”
“The Chinaman at least hasn't a chance, only a couple of years. And the States can't outlast China by thirty years. This figure is given by those on both sides. Remember that: it is the outside figure. We'll be middle-aged, even a little old then, Finn. We can't afford to be on the wrong side of the balance. It's no time of life to be a martyr when you're past fifty. Believe me, it means a lot if you get right early.”
“Casey, I wouldn't say it if we hadn't both always known it, but you were the soft-headed one of the
crowd.”
“I was not the soft-headed one. I resent that. And partly because I resent it I have turned the way I have. Listen Finn, the weather bureau, some bureau anyhow, sends up balloons to see which way the wind is blowing. We send up balloons too, and we get a lot of information from them. We are making progress month by month. Once they shot our balloons down right away. Now they drift over low and easy, and the gentry rush out to paste testimonials on their sides as they pass.
“The Balloon analogy is getting out of hand. It's more like an echo cave. Here is the idea. There is a phrase among the initiates: The Baby has to have a Name. Suppose that something very raw is planned or pulled: the phrase-makers go to work. No matter how red the baby is when it's born, still it has to have a name. This naming is considered strictly as a work of art by those who do it. There is at first no expectation of acceptance.
“But, to give it a little semblance of substance, several echoes are set up to go off according to a timetable. If the Baby gets its name in the Worker, then there will be christening parties in a few of the sheets, all in the family, of course.
“But an odd thing began to happen. The acoustics in this cave were far better than anyone had dared hope. There was always a long series of echoes from sources apparently not in on the prompting. They came from the literate and the arty, from the professorate and the clergy. They came from a great physicist and from a trenchant wit, from a noted widow, from a famous educator, from an elder statesman, and from a chocolate soldier.
“It is weird when, for instance, I myself do the naming in the least of the sheets, the Crock, to see how it is picked up and echoed by these great persons just as though it had meaning: but I did not give it any meaning.”
“Do all these belong to yours then?”
“Not in the same sense or on the same level that I do. This thing is complex. But they follow the timetable perfectly, and they are played by the same keyboard. They are with us to the bottom of their souls; and they never gag, even when we are repelled ourselves.”
“Wouldn't it, pardon the word Casey, be more manly to face them out even if (and I think it is not the case) the odds were in their favor?”
“No it wouldn't. And the word ‘manly’ is used only by boys; and you are still a boy, Finn. The point that you cannot get straight is that I believe in this. You all say, and you have it from Duffey, that nobody able to dress himself without help or to count to ten without prompting could really believe this. That's wrong. If you have lost the One Thing, and you have even a trace of logic (and I do have a trace) then there is nothing left but the Other Thing. Believe me, there is no middle ground and there should not be. It is so simple, and you make it complex.”
“It is so complex and you try to make it sound simple. But we cannot agree.”
They could not. So, after spending several days more in each other's company and on the town, they separated. But not before they had a couple of real rousers for old time's sake.
Then Finnegan gathered his gear and left town.
5.
Not long afterwards there was a drink that didn't taste right to Casey. He sent it back, but the second one was likewise lacking in something: so he knew it not the drink that was insipid, but himself. And Hans had discovered a certain savor gone.
Vincent had a vague feeling of something amiss, but it was not so strong with him: he had Teresa who was of much the same savor.
Henry attributed his incomplete feelings to the fallen nature of man. There was a more salient detail, he knew, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
Finnegan had been the salt of their lives, and now he had gone out of them.
Was Finnegan a simple schizo in his living several lives? No. He was a complex schizo. His travels ended only with his life, though X (who claimed to have later congress with him) said they did not end even then. The apocryphal of the Finnegan adventures cannot be separated from the canonical. They raise the question: are there simultaneous worlds and simultaneous people?
Anything that Finnegan told of his travels, inside or outside of the States, is suspect. His friends know most of the stories, but they do not always know the same stories in the same versions. Only Show Boat understood what Finnegan meant when he said that he was of a different recension than strictly human. And what was she?
The bloody idyll of Anastasia was also told by Mr. X. It had a certain Grecian magic; but both X and Finnegan were liars and the effect may have been cumulative.
There are improbabilities in the account of Saxon X. Seaworthy who swore that he would have Finnegan killed. And a certain ship on which a weird voyage is said to have been made is not to be found in any registry. X said that the ship that Finnegan sailed on was the ship named Delay, or World, or Argo. He said that most of the details of the voyage as told by Finnegan were imagined by Finnegan.
Finnegan did have a fetch or double named Doppio de Pinne, Dopey the Seaman. But which one of them did Papa Devil kill in the cabin of the Brunhilde without leaving a body?
Finnegan did make a deal in diamonds with Joseph the Haussa boy in Sierra Leone. He did know Papadiabolous alive, after he had helped bury him dead. He did drink brandy in style on the Grand Canary, and he learned about mermaids from one of them. He knew the Golden Ogress and other archetypes. He touched eternity at Naxos. And he buried Don Lewis in the sand near Tangier.
He was party, with Le Marin and Don Barnaby and Johnny Duckwalk, in a society that was the dark counterpart of the Dirty Five, that went further and did worse.
He did know the exact location of the Terrestrial Paradise. And he did know in what grave the Devil himself was buried.
Finnegan once stole the most valuable suitcase in the world.
He knew Angela Cosquin, and he knew about two sunken ships.
He was onto the secret of two men buried in one grave. But, since this was also known by Mr. X, it may not longer be a secret.
In the transmarine adventures of Finnegan there is wild stuff. It cannot safely be given here.
Chapter Eight
Land of the Cyclops
1.
This was in Buffalo and Finnegan was a door-to-door salesman. He was selling one of the finest developments of modern science, selling it for two dollars a bottle, and his profit was seventy-five cents. The name of the product is a secret. Its purpose was to housebreak dogs. One whiff and the response was instantaneous. It worked.
But Finnegan wasn't selling very many: two or three a day, barely enough to keep body and soul together. Most of the customers were housewives; and when Finnegan whistled up his shill to give a demonstration he was always overcome with shame.
And then a dog is only flesh and blood. Finnegan and McGregor the dog gave about fifteen demonstrations an hour which is around a hundred and twenty a day. McGregor lost weight and could not sleep at night.
And the take was not large, two dollars and a quarter a day if they made three sales, and that was a good day; and it to be divided between man and dog. Finnegan's first attempt at a white collar job, that of commission salesman, was not too successful. Besides the indelicacy of the product, there were the sore feet and frequent hunger.
But Finn had the qualities of perseverance and adaptability and imagination; the qualities, as the boss salesman had said, that had made America great. Possibly this called for a new marketing technique. It certainly did not call for surrender.
The answer came to Finnegan in a blinding flash. For several evenings in his droll way he had been playing with the stuff in bars. He would carelessly dribble a few drops into the cuffs of a neighbor's trousers. Then he would just as carelessly go to the door and whistle in McGregor and his friends. This usually caused a near-riot. The man would just plain go crazy with the suddenness and magnitude of the attack. You have to hear how one of those men hollers and carries on; there is no believing it otherwise.
This ended in the banishment of Finnegan and McGregor from many of the taverns, but it did endear him to the confrate
rnity of the ribbers.
Now the sudden idea that came to Finnegan was this: sell the product to the ribbers. Do not sell it to the housewife. It should be in the possession of every practical joker.
There were four basic formulae from which an infinitude of jokes, stunts, and sensations could be devised. There was the hotel-lobby or plush-joint ploy. There was the smart-shop counter display sensation. There was the park-bench sleeper device; and its variant, the bus-waiter trap. And there was the under-table-crawl which threatened to become the successor to the hot foot.
From these basic maneuvers, the ribbers themselves took off with a display of inventiveness and variety that startled. Adaptability and imagination are the qualities of the jokers, even more than the rest of Americans.
We urge you to get a bottle and use it today. The free play of your imagination should lead to the howling results that are so good for the soul. You may have an undeveloped genius for this sort of thing.
A city ordinance has since been passed outlawing the use of the product for any other purpose than that for which it was originally intended. Buffalo, New York is the only city in the country that has such an ordinance and it is worded so oddly that the uninitiate would be puzzled as to what it might refer. It refers to the product which Finnegan sold which had such a rapid and direct effect upon dogs.
Finnegan sold three thousand bottles in one week. Then he retired from the business. He had proved his point: that perseverance brings success to even the most humble endeavor, and that a little imagination can bring dignity to the marketing of even the most indelicate product.
From Buffalo, Finnegan carried away two thousand dollars and the undying memory of hilarious episodes and droll gentlemen and ladies and the curious capers that could still be enjoyed after the money was spent. And thereafter, for the rest of his life, Finnegan always carried a bottle of the stuff: but he never used it for profit; only for fun.
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