Middle C

by Gass, William H

  Wither her husband went, she goes, Miriam said in her quotational voice. He’s busy planting potatoes. She can’t drive. So she drops a line, sends a card.

  She went into another county, not another country.

  Deborah has her proper social number … somehow … I’m sure.

  With this ID I thee wed, said Joseph in a copycat voice that managed to be harsh.

  She’ll be by … I’m sure.

  Joseph called around and was told to pick up some more forms at the post office.

  An applicant for an original social security number card must submit documentary evidence of age, United States citizenship or alien status, and true identity.

  Evidence of age could be supplied by a birth certificate, a religious or hospital record, or a passport. He returned to the office of Miriam Skizzen with a request for his birth certificate. Who do you think I am, she said, bristling at what Joey thought was a routine request. Who do you think I am? a clerk of the city? a recorder of deeds? This is not the house of courts. Days went by during which Joey kept a prudent silence but an intimidating presence. From a shoe box, wrapped in rubber bands that the postman had once slipped around bundles of mail, she withdrew an official-looking paper—not a birth certificate but a hospital record of the arrival at a London lying-in of one Yussel Fixel, infant, to Yankel and Miriam Fixel, weight six pounds five ounces, baby blue eyes, trace of brown hair, print of foot. Oooh, look at that, so small!

  Liberal feelings, a desire to help the unfortunate, led to sloppy record keeping and sorry observation of the law, with the present confusion its unhappy result. If he submitted this certificate as proof of who he was (“who” is good, he heard Ms. Bruss say), he’d be Yussel Fixel forever—butt of jokes, object of scorn and derision, laughingstock. Yussel. Yussel. Yussel. Mother of God, Miriam exclaimed, I am a Mother Fixel. Undo this calamity, Joey, do undo it please, undo it, she said, unaware of any oddness in her words. He stared, as if thoughtful, at the unbanded box and the wormy rolls of elastic. It can’t be undone, he told her, but it can be ignored.

  Just then a bit of grammar bit him: “as proof of whom” or “who he was”? What would Ms. Bruss say? Stay with “who he was.” That had been a close call. It would not do to be caught in an un-Americanism. And be found out.

  An applicant for an original social security number card must submit documentary evidence of … true identity.

  Ignoring statements and citations was a skill both Fixels had perfected. They would quite forget this shitty piece of paper: fold it as it had been folded, slip it back into its box, lid it, and snap rubber bands about its cardboard bulk, six to each end, find a remote spot to lodge it, stiffen their backs before decisively turning them, pinch each nose, squinch each eye, zip up lips, shutter minds. The carton with its new elasticated cover would be shelved in a closet behind hats, gloves, and mufflers, so that soon—thus wooled, furred, and felted—it would cease to exist. However, the fix Joey found himself in would not hide itself away as simply. He would need a new “true identity.” Further research, which Joey sullenly undertook, suggested that the salary Miriam had ridiculed was probably so small he would not have to file a tax return, or the library to admit the presence of his person to any authority. Joey could catalog and shelve as if he had rung the doorbell and asked to rake the lawn of its leaves. Moreover, driver’s licenses were regularly used to cash checks or to prove your age if you wished admission to a dance hall, bar, or club, and they did not have to have your sosec number on them. However, if your license number wasn’t your sosec number, wouldn’t that be suspicious? But at a glance, who would know? He had to manage a license somehow. To have an identity in this country you had to be considered capable of driving a car. Otherwise you had to have a husband who did. And if you opened an account at a bank, you would soon receive, in the mail, an application for a credit card. Your identity would then be as secure as a dime in a dollar.

  There are several pluses to being poor, Joey assured his mother: you can remain unknown to the government who will have no concern for your existence, nor will you ever have to contribute to its wars or its plunder of the planet. Since you are powerless, blame for most of the world’s ills must lie like an iron crown on other heads. His identity, Joseph Skizzen slowly realized, was wholly his affair. Further, the best security for that secret self was the creation of a faux one, a substitute, a peephole pay-for-view person. Did we not have two hands so that one of them could wipe our ass while the other remained unsullied and ready to be clasped? That was what his father had attempted, Joseph now felt certain. Why hadn’t he—when he had been a simple Joey—taken advantage of the driving lessons his high school had provided? But how could he have guessed so simple a secret? He did feel excused. So … establish credit. How? Go into debt. Get a loan. Buy a car. Learn to drive. Pass a test. Receive a license: with a face on it that says, Hi! I am the guy I say I am, see my smile? read my date of birth? my weight? my height? in my head, brown eyes are brown, make no mistake, I am that guy—there—under the laminate.

  Students had vacated the dorms. Now only athletes—or so they said they were—choristers, bookstore clerks, and cafeteria servers were clearing out their lockers, returning their gowns, counting stock one final time before leaving the Augsburg campus for the summer; and Joseph Skizzen was foremost among them, since he had, in a manner of speaking, lived in the church for two years and even had a cache of candy near the organ that it wouldn’t look well to leave half eaten and thereby lead Pastor Ludens on a chase through indecent dreams. It was Chris Knox whom Joseph approached about the momentary loan of Chris’s driver’s license. Because Chris the K (for “King”) was taking his spoiled serve to another school. Because Chris the K had been deposed. Because said Chris was waiting by a pile of bags for his parents to pick him up. And consequently, he appeared handy. Joseph was as honest as he dared to be.

  Hey, Chris, I’m glad to see you because I need a favor.

  Yeah? You are? You do? How come?

  I’ve got a chance at a job for the summer, but it’s at a bar—you know, cleaning up—and you’ve got to be twenty-one to work there, so I need to raise my age a little.

  You? Yeah? So? There’s no exercise for that.

  Yes, there is. It’s called living longer. But I can’t live longer if I don’t have a job.

  I can’t help. We live in Indiana.

  A short drive home for you then.

  My dad’s not hiring. I don’t have a job either. If he was hiring maybe I would have a shot.

  Well, you’ve got a driver’s license, haven’t you?

  My dad does the driving when we’re together in the car, but we’re not together a lot.

  Well, see … I need one to imitate—a license—to be a model for the one I’m going to make—the one that says I’m twenty-one. If I could borrow yours just for a minute—to copy, you know—there’s a machine in the rectory.

  Oh, hey, I couldn’t do that. My dad won’t give you a job either.

  I don’t want to actually use yours. I only want the form to follow. I’d white you out, put in my own name, and paste my photo over yours—where yours is—was. Your identity wouldn’t do me any good, would it?

  I don’t want to be whited out. You want a job in a bar? You don’t have a license? You can’t work around alcohol, you’re underage.

  My mom won’t let me drive. She’s afraid. Of collisions.

  I don’t think so. That’s funny, though. Mine aren’t … my dad isn’t … afraid of collisions. My quick reflexes, I suppose. On the court.

  Insurance is expensive.

  Is that right? My dad says he doesn’t make enough. He sells it. He’s got no job even for me, even sweeping up.

  Come on—it’s nothing—and it would only take a sec.

  I don’t think I can. Anyway, my parents will be here any minute. My dad is prompt. The bird in the clock doesn’t beat him. I’m standing here—I’m early—because I don’t dare be late. He’s strict, but he
was never in the military.

  A minute is all it’ll take. I’ll run like a rabbit both ways and be back before your parents know it, before you can load the car when it comes. Besides, you owe me. Come on. I know what you did, and I haven’t said a word. I need the license for just a minute. That’s all.

  Owe you …? Did what? Say … how … what do you mean owe …?

  You know … that time … when you … when you … you know …

  Chris Knox had an ear that turned red then like a stoplight. He fumbled for his wallet, let Joseph, who was instantly off and running, whisk the card from his fingers. He hollered but did not pursue. Joseph, with panting hands, made a number of copies, both front and back, and returned in time to see Chris’s ride arrive—a large black car that contained specimens of wealth and possibly glory.

  Thanks a lot. I took only a minute like I said. Joseph waved sheets on which the copies appeared to be large blots. These will be a big help.

  I don’t want you to meet my parents, okay? Chris shoved his license in a trouser pocket as if even its plastic were ashamed of what he had allowed it to do.

  Don’t forget where you’ve put that.

  I don’t—

  Okay. I won’t. Many thanks, though. I’m gone.

  Joseph walked rapidly away through the gate with his copies, his own ears red now. He gave a wave that featured paper flutter and thanked the Lord for the craven nature God had given us, as well as that primordial sense of guilt that makes patsies of us all, including those with reflexes and a good serve.

  15

  You’re doing what your father did, you know that?

  You said he bought his.

  You paid nothing for this? It came that cheap?

  I don’t know how I can use these copies anyway. The rectory didn’t have a decent copier. See how DRIVER OHIO LICENSE is printed in blue on a white band that seems to scroll across the top?

  Mein Gott, you’ve sold your soul!

  Then there’s a kind of sepia background, I remember from Chris’s—the seal of the state in a web of globelike lines, faint, yes, to imitate a watermark—

  Worse … your body …!

  And another little red stamp by the photograph where the director of revenue has signed his name in something like the same ink … see … so many things to get right … the photo has a bright blue background … so many facets, none of which I can reproduce without a genuine license in front of me. Even then …

  Don’t get yourself in more trouble, Joey. Give it up. Just buy a cheap car on credit and drive careful. If you don’t have a permit—well—won’t you be careful then? you’ll be careful; you’ll take every curve as if you were drawing it.

  Drawing was what Joseph tried. The back of the permit was a snap; it held codes concerning driving restrictions (C for daylight, F for forty-five miles per hour) that the copier reproduced quite well. He’d shrunk a picture of himself taken in a photo booth at the five-and-dime. It would do. But the sepia tone and the director’s signature, the faint thin global lines … these were impossible to realize. Onto some heavy paper, cut from a candy box, he pasted the faked back and front of the license, applied the snapshot with watercolored blue around it—not too bad—then inked in the appropriate typewritten data where he’d whited out King Knox—M | 507 | 135 | HAZ—a process that had required him to reproduce the altered permit yet again. I’ve rubbed you out, Chris K, he said, during his only moment of satisfaction since his own shame had eaten him, red and raw. At least His Majesty had granted Joey’s request—rewarding his guess that the guy had some sort of embarrassing prank—at least an episode—hidden in his history. Despite Knox’s athletic swagger, despite that bunch of big bags … dark car, vast trunk … there was a tiny Achilles in the heel of him. Finally Joseph placed his counterfeit license facedown on a sheet of self-adhesive laminating plastic—it was sold in a four-by-five-inch-card size as if the manufacturers expected its illegal use—bought also at the five-and-dime; then on the back of the license he pressed another piece of the plastic, sealing the crime whose edges he then carefully cut around, releasing the completed permit to lie to the careless eye at least with some chance of success.

  How is it? Is it good?

  I don’t know how it’s supposed to look. How can I be a judge? But it looks bad, Joey, what you’re doing. It’s bad. Bad. Better to get caught without papers than to get caught with a forged set. American cops aren’t bobbies, Joey: they are beery; they beat people; they are short and fat, not like tall polite bobbies; they are bound with belts they loosen in secret to black and blue their prisoners; unlike bobbies, guns hang from their hips, they shoot to kill, and their killings are common; they lay the bodies in front of saloons on tilted boards to frighten people, cars, and horses. I’ve seen photos of it. They wire tags to dead toes.

  In his own wallet, itself almost a makeshift item, and unusually fat with funds he had borrowed from his mother, Joseph nevertheless felt comforted to have slid the card. Indeed, it made him feel as if he knew how to drive; after all, he had a permit with his picture on it and the seal of the state. Having not yet been dishonest about anything, Joseph boldly wrote, Have no ss num on the employment forms he’d been given and reboarded the bus to Urichstown in order to deliver the papers in person, secure his situation, hunt for a room, and prepare to assume his duties. Could he interrupt his journey by getting out in Lowell and continue it by catching the next bus, he asked the Afro-headed driver. Sure, I’ll just punch a hole alongside “Lowell,” but remember to hang on to the ticket. The Afros have hair they feel they have to do something about, Joseph thought, taking his position on the left side of the aisle, by his count halfway back to the back of the bus. He was remembering Miss Spiky, but only with amusement. She wouldn’t be coming from Woodbine. Still, it would be prudent to doze.

  He remembered then to be curious about why he thought of this immense and immensely shapeless lady as Miss Spiky, as if her hair outweighed the rest of her. Did others think of him in terms of some body part? nose or thumb? as Mr. Featureless, he hoped.

  The bus stopped at an oil drum that had been painted bright yellow. This was Lowell. Joseph had remembered rows of possibly wrecked cars lined up alongside the highway, but maybe they were merely very used because they had, he thought, signs in their windshields that might have been prices. He was right both ways because a few yards back of this rank was a junkyard, crammed with looted bodies, stacks of tires, and rusty parts. Sitting in cinders were bumpers of chrome and a scattering of wheel covers. Joseph saw many soggy cardboard boxes in which wipers, window rollers, and door handles had been collected. They could still give off a smart shine in the sunlight. Up front, nose to the road, was an off-orange vehicle with an iridescent side-view mirror whose price—fifty dollars—seemed written on its window in soap. He noticed with some satisfaction that all its tires were full as hogs and went to ask anyone if the car still ran.

  A battered Airstream trailer that sat now on cinder blocks served for an office, and there, literally darkening the doorway, was Miss Spiky, abloom in an amazing flower-within-flower dress—that is, a cream-colored cotton shift covered with large lavender petals into which roses had been thrown as if by a lady angrily disposing of her former beau’s bouquet. Heehee, if my name aint Ant Hellan, what do I see? she sort of sang, fortune smiles. You couldnt get ennuf of me. So it seems, Joseph said, trying not to stammer, because he was suddenly embarrassed. You work here? I own this junk, evry jink uv evry jonk. Really? My husban willed it to me, evry peece uv evry peece. Well, gee, I thought you moved about more. I was willed one uv these here in LouElla—which you see cuze you are standin in it—an one in Gale, an one in Whichstown, which is where I thought you was.

  Three? gee. No wonder you have to bus about. That’s a lot.

  It all comes to this. Miss Spiky waved her right arm grandly. We take what we have, we make cars outta it, and then when we run the cars hard all around till theres no more desire in the wheels to roll, th
en we junk em, whole mines uv ore, wells uv oil, tanks uv gas, plushes for the floors, plastics leather for the seats, glass in the windas, rubburr for the mats, it all ends up here, thats why theres so many yards of lizzie iron in this cuntry, on account uv cars.

  She moved from the doorway toward him as smoothly as the shadow of a passing cloud. Joseph thought you could play ringtoss with the stiff spires she had made of her hair. Later he would learn that her hairdo was called a mullet. Nevertheless, for him, her name remained Miss Spiky.

  Where is you cummin from, sonny?

  Well, up to now I’ve lived in Woodbine, but I have a new job in Urichtown.

  Whichstown, you know it is.

  Which—?

  Whiches is what it was named for, crowds and covens of them one time. They still flies through the trees in the night, but they is in dreams and does no harm.

  I didn’t know Uhrichsville—sorry, town—had such a lively history.

  History aint lively, my pinyun. History is dead as the nex chicken I eat. Whatshoe want?

  Miss Spiky had ripe fat red lips and a smile that stretched across her face from one cheekside to the other. It was an honest smile and went with her wide white eyes and her large active hands that seemed to be conducting her emotions. Young man? He was being respectfully prodded. Ah … I was wondering if that car over there was for sale? Joseph heard her say “man,” not “mahn.” He had always been sensitive to such differences.

  You see a sum writ on the winnshield?

  Yes, ma’am, I did.

  What was that sum that was writ on the winnshield there?

  Fifty dollars.

  Okay. Thats what the car will cost you. In munny. In chokin and stallin and buckin and in genneral disappointmens itll cost a lot more. That’s a Rambler there, that one for fifty.

  I was thinking about it. Does it run?

  It has plates, four tires, an a battry. For fifty its a good buy.