“No.”
“I hoped you had. I had word out that I needed another off-beat salesman and you might have been the man. You're an artist, and we do a lot of artwork in our peddling, though not in the sense you might take it. It'd be the artist's mind rather than his hands that I'd want. You'd fit in several ways. But if you didn't come to see me about a selling job, then I don't want to see you at all.
“Naturally I know who you are. We live in a small world. We have more mutual acquaintances than one. Several of them have hung some humorous stories onto you; you're a peg for them. But the only other thing you could have come to see me about is our worthless mutual acquaintance. I don't know why people think that I could do anything about him, or why anyone thinks he's worth saving. You're an alky, aren't you?”
“Yes.”
“Let's go out for a drink then. One more won't hurt you if you're already dead. I'll tell you a story.”
It was still early in the morning.
“It's over a year since it happened,” said Hilary when they were settled down, “and this is the first time it ever seemed funny. But Judas Priest it is funny! It just struck me how funny it is, and I'd literally cried over it before.
“It was a snowy night. I got to town late from a trip and I wasn't expected. Your no-good friend Casey was with my no-good wife Mary Jean. I don't know why I didn't kill him. I weigh two hundred and sixty pounds, and I'm the fastest big man you ever saw. I've always believed that I could whip any man in the world, and I've met none to change my view. I could have killed him with my hands, but I didn't.
“I caught him by one heel and jerked him out of bed. He was naked as a plucked duck. I dragged him across the room, through the door, down the stairs, out the front door, through the snow (and it was deep), and into the middle of the road. I left him there and went back into the house.
“It was just midnight and just zero. That is estate country out there, and it was at least two hundred yards to the next house. But Casey didn't go to any of the houses in the region at all; I checked later. I've always wondered how he got out of that one. Lord how I've wondered! For that alone I look forward to the Last Day; I know I'll never know it before then. He's resourceful, but I bet that taxed him. And you know, this is the first time it ever seemed funny. Till now I've just been thankful that I didn't kill him.”
“I'm sure he'd rather you had, Hilary. I've no doubt Casey worked it out by the dialectic principle. That can solve anything.”
“The action of cold snow on ardor produced a cool feeling towards me. The boy dislikes me to this day, Finnegan, and I do not love him overly.
“I moved out, and in the settlement I gave Mary Jean the house. And Casey moved back in. I guess he's ahead of me after all. I've never gotten over being amazed at it. Why, when she had me, would she want him? Do you understand women?”
“Yes.”
“Then you're the only man in the world who does.”
“Yes, I know that. I'm unique in several ways, but it doesn't do me any good. I only understand them. I can't cope with them.”
“Now and then, when I'm moody, I call him up and scare him liverless. And the next day he always has to go to his doctor for a session.”
“Poor Casey.”
“I can't understand why you all like him, for he's worthless. And yet I kind of like him myself. That nice Mary Catherine has never given up on him.”
“Now all I've got to do, Hilton,” said Finn, “is get you to throw him out again and take your wife back. Then we will have one more try at straightening him out. You understand that I have come to this town on this mission at great personal sacrifice. The least you can do is cooperate.”
“What personal sacrifice are you referring to?”
“Why, Hilary, I could be back in Basse Terre or St. Kitts, or in Tahiti, or on the Riviera. I am studying to be a playboy and you are holding me up.”
“Be back there? Have you been to those places?”
“I'm nearly sure that I've been to one of them. It is such a vivid episode in my life that I'm almost sure that it actually happened.”
“I am half-tempted to throw him out and take her back. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't want her again. I never did give up on her either. But Oh she is a hellish one! I'm sure she's too much for him. I am too much in the salvage business to write off such a property. How will we do it?”
“The same way as before. Tonight is a good night.”
“It's better weather now. He won't freeze to death. But whatever luck saved him the last time might forsake him now. I'll move him out again and move right in. And to Mary Jean I'll give the good tanning that her father always told me I should. Besides, she may see the humor this time and give up the little monster. She always gets jokes the second time they're told her. I think she saw it that last time but was too mad to realize it.”
“It will be partly a Finnegan production this time,” said Finn, “so naturally it'll be funny. We'll have to add a couple of gadgets.”
“But work comes first, Finnegan. We have to peddle four cars of acid and a thousand gross of Little Daisy Pancake Turners. Then we have to drive down to Grundy County to buy a bridge. It's a good bridge. We can cut it up and come out all right. Then we go to Cicero for some Tampa Reefers.”
“Cigars?”
“A distressed stock. They're dried out and starting to flake, three hundred thousand, unbranded and unwrapped. If I can get them for a cent and a quarter each I can come out ahead. I'll give them a light coat of tar, and I can wrap and brand and box them for three quarters of a cent, and market them for four cents. Boy, that's a profit of a cent-and-a-half a stogie, damned near five thousand dollars.
“I handle distressed cigars quite a bit. It's better than doubtful canned goods. The most nervous of all is distressed eggs. Never get in a distressed egg deal if you can help it, Finnegan. It just isn't worth the worry at any price.”
They sold the sulfuric acid and the Little Daisy Pancake Turners. They went down to Grundy County and bought the bridge. On the way back they bought the distressed stogies for one and one-eighth cents each.
“You think an eighth of a cent isn't much, Finnegan. That's right at four hundred dollars on the lot. You've got to learn to pick up these little sums.” “You like making money a lot?”
“If I didn't like it I wouldn't do it. When I was in Prep School four of us made a pact. We decided that a man who couldn't make a million dollars before he was thirty wasn't much of a man. We pledged that if any of us wasn't able to pull it off he'd have the decency to kill himself. One of us did kill himself when near this line. It was generally attributed to a scandal, but I think it was due to this failure. He hadn't made a million; he had hardly made half of it.
“One of us, me, made it handily. The other two backed out. One used a lot of inflated statements to make it seem that he had it, but he sure didn't fool me. He just barely has it now, five years later. And the other one tries to laugh it off. He always was the weak sister of our bunch.”
“A lot of people don't care too much about making money.”
“If that were true, and it isn't, I'd be glad, Finnegan. It'd keep the field from being overcrowded. But I think that everyone would like it if he were any good at it. It's common to say that you don't care for something that you're a duffer at. But this business is compelling. I get my hackles up when I'm onto something that's good.
“I've been a big game hunter. But I once did a deal in rotting elephants’ hides, and it was more fun. I've bought spoiled bananas and consignments of wormy sesame seed, run-down radio stations, and stranded whales. I once moved a half a million baby alligators in thirteen days. There were those who said it couldn't be done.”
“Is everything in your business distressed, Hilary?”
“Everything that doesn't move through regular channels is distressed. Florida lots, steam power plants, estate close-outs, old hotels, tropical birds, German clay, uncased Swiss movements, private libraries
, compromised furs, nervous race horses, high school quarterbacks. I buy and sell nearly everything. I've fixed up three garbage scows and sold them to an Arabian Gulf potentate. Now they are like floating palaces. A deal is hottest just before someone gets burned. Never be the last man on a deal, Finn. But it sure is fun to be the next to last man on a deal and to pull it off. I've sold dragons’ teeth from real Chinese dragons. I've even handled Finnegan diamonds. I'd deal direct with you but I know you wouldn't want me to go around your contract. I can move marked money or Navajo pottery.
“There is also a good business in distressed brains. I move a lot of brains in businesses other than my own. I can spot a man with a headful of distressed brains; you're such a man yourself. And oddly I have deal in Van Ghis. Knowing the origin of them, I understood that the market would always be in short supply.
“My business, you see, is not restrictive. You put your eggs in several baskets. And if they do not sell, you can rotate baskets, and eggs. Or you give away the eggs with the basket, or the basket with the eggs. I have become something of a tycoon. I even deal in distressed tycoons. Now let us go into town and develop our conspiracy.”
Hilary Hilton got through a call to the maid at his wife's house and set up a signal system. Then Hilary and Finnegan went to dinner.
“Did you ever have yourself analyzed, Finn?” Hilary asked him.
“Yes. The Shaman read me without too much trouble, and I believe he read me correctly.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he gave it all to me. He spun it out in fine fashion, and I admired. Then, underestimating my degree of literacy, he gave it to me in layman's terms. He said I was a natural-born bum.”
“That's what I thought you were. Sometimes it's hard to tell nowadays. There's a new sort of bum about, a pretty intricate sort. A man is likely to be taken in by them, bums with a touch of genius. Hell, everybody has a touch of genius. You have to admire them though. As a bum, YOU are almost in a class by yourself.”
They were joined at dinner by a little skull-headed man named Askandanakandrian. Askandan had some distressed fish sticks that had turned an unhealthy green. Hilary bought the fish sticks from him.
“This time I have the better of you, Hilary,” said the odd old man. “How will you market these unhealthy green fish sticks?”
“I will create a fad for green fish sticks. No smorgasbord should be without them.”
“What will you do with the fuzz on them?”
“I will present them as aerated fish sticks,” Hilary said.
“I have also,” Askandan confided, “some unscented soap base. I have eighty-three thousand pounds of it in a boxcar. This does not act like any other soap base. When mixed with water it becomes very sticky and foul, so that other soap, very strong soap, is needed to wash it off. In addition it has a rotten smell. Do you want to buy it?”
“Twenty cents a hundred pounds.”
“But that's only a hundred and sixty-six dollars a car load. I paid nearly that much, and I owe sixteen dollars demurrage. What will you do with it?”
“Askandan, I won't tell you that,” Hilary insisted. “It would imperil the whole spirit of bargaining. Do you want to sell?”
“No. Not yet. I was just asking.”
‘I was just asking’ was a phrase that Askandanakandrian used often, for which reason, and the coincidence of his name, he was often called Asking Dan.
Hilary left them then, to go about the details of his reestablishment. And then for several hours Finnegan sat beside Askandan the great little man and imbibed knowledge and a drink made of goats’ milk and a wine of the Urals.
Both Askandan and Hilton used the terms distressed and nervous in referring to their merchandise; but Askandan was more of a nervous man and Hilton more of a distressed man. Askandan explained a lot to Finnegan.
“We deal in complex fields with simple processes. We attempt always to bring confusion out of chaos. Less than confusion is too easy and it lets in the lightweight competition and permits any upstart to become a nervous merchandise man. More than chaos is intolerable. It is on the road between that fame and fortune wait.
“In the rehabilitation of nervous merchandise, whether organic or inorganic, there are seven sovereigns. For all dealers they may not be the same sovereigns, but for me they are: One acid, lye, formaldehyde, ammonia, a kaoline affiliate of a nature so secret that I tremble every time someone mentions it lest they understand its importance, amyl acetate, and one of the lesser gums which I will not name. These are the minimum, and they will serve for everything from rescuing nervous fish to nervous furniture. And if I were to be cast on a desert island and told that I had to select only four of them for companions, I think that I would sweat blood over the decision. But after I had sweat the requisite amount of blood, I would take the acid, the base, the clay, and the gum.
“Really nervous merchandise, like the soft fruits, wilted lettuces, turning meats and fishes, and rancid oils, must be trimmed, cooked, frozen, canned, or otherwise processed. Furs and jewelry are in the pseudo-nervous category; they are often moved by our peddlers who fictionize them as hot. I am also known as a weevil man from the miracles I can perform with weevily grain. I am, perhaps, the foremost weevil man in the Chicago area.”
Then Askandanakandrian looked at Finnegan oddly and asked:
“When are you going to die, Finnegan?”
“I understood that such things were veiled,” Finnegan said nervously. “Are they not also veiled from you?”
“Not entirely. You know that you will be murdered?”
“I have not admitted it to myself. But, yes, I know it.”
“There is a special aspect about a man who will be murdered, Finnegan: not a nervousness exactly, but still a difference about him. We all go through that door, but we do not all go in the same manner. You have crossed a man, and he will have you followed and killed. Who is the man?”
Finnegan told the name of the man to the little Armenian. Then he asked him: “Do you know him? That man and I are both of the other blood, which you wouldn't understand.”
“I know him a little,” Askandan said, “and I know much more about him. He is the sort of man that anyone of any weight will at least have heard of. And I do understand about the other blood. The secluded center of it is now Mr. Ararat in my own Armenia. That old remnant gives a different meaning to the story of the Flood. But I would not have crossed that man, Finnegan. I would not have crossed him for a million dollars.”
“It was a slightly larger sum,” said Finnegan. But whether this was true or only Finnegan talk is uncertain.
“You are yourself a piece of nervous merchandise,” said Askandan. “I believe that I should have reconditioned you myself had I found you earlier. Now I am not sure.”
“Is it essential that all merchandise be reconditioned? And that a profit be shown on everything, even souls?” Finnegan asked.
“Yes, it's essential. Even on souls, Finnegan.”
“I am a Teras,” Finnegan declared. “Have I a soul?”
“I knew you were a Teras,” said Askandan who knew everything, “and you do have a soul. Is God limited? There is God in you, and you will find It only at your death. What will you say when the Master comes and asks how you have used your ten talents? It amuses me that the Greek and the English words should give such a double meaning to the parable?”
“They are from the same root, and it means To Weigh. So also is Tolerant.”
“The Master knows more etymology than you. How will you answer Him?”
“I will tell Him that I still have them jingling in my pocket.”
“He will not like that answer.”
“No, He will not like that answer.”
After this, Finnegan cooked up a fast plot with Askandanakandrian the little old Armenian who could read souls and who was master of all dialects and roles.
5.
It was two o’clock in the morning and the moon was high and bright. A be
wildered young man picked himself up stitchless from the middle of the road and moaned: “Not again! Oh God, not again!”
It is the one nightmare that is universal to mankind, and it had come to his waking a second time.
Though unencumbered in any way, he was oddly embarrassed and seemed not to know what to do with his hands, which should have been the least of his worries.
There is no other dilemma like this. None. Really, what can a sheer naked man do when he finds himself in the open and every door locked to him. To need help, and to be more afraid to cry out for it than anything in the world is an unsolvable problem.
There was a rustle. There was someone or something near, and no place to hide. If it were an animal the young man would have skinned it on the spot and worn the hide. If it was a human he could only sink into the road, and the road was very hard.
But when it finally emerged to view he was not sure which it was. It may have been a little bald-headed man or it may have been a gnome or spirit sent to mock him; but it stepped out of the bushes.
“Hey, Mac, you want to buy a suit?” the gnome asked. He may have been a human, there was no way of telling; but he had a garment draped over his arm.
“God yes, nobody ever wanted to buy a suit more than I do.”
“Oh, then you have heard of my suits? Old Dan sells fine suits. Let's go down where it's real light and see what a fine suit this is.”
“No, no, I don't care how fine it is. And I sure don't want to go down where it's real light. Lord, let me put the thing on here, Lord! Dammit, man, let go the pants.”
“You seem nervous. Do I make you nervous? I will go away again if I make you nervous.”
“No, no, only hurry and let me put on the suit. Oh for God's sake, old man, let me have the thing!”
“I have never seen a man so anxious to try on a suit. It is testimonial indeed to my wares. This is a suit that not everybody would want to buy. But it is the last suit I have, and when I sell it I can go home.”
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