Not could have been, was, in the consanguinity of the fiction magazines: you would not have had to turn many pages before finding Walters who, having earned the disfavor of their fellows by toiling alone on the garage time machine, take the blueprints of the two-stroke engine or the Zippo lighter or the Real Estate Investment Trust into the dark past, and retire in the fashion of an Eastern Potentate, or at least an August Belmont.
To be sure, these Walts Protagonistes would never walk away from their sisters (however often those sisters told them to stop playing with that warsurplus junk out back and take the job at Pump ‘n’ Wash).
Which points us down another turn in the crosstime subway, a tale-of-the-tale as might equally well have suited an editor’s needs: the version in which the Wooden Indian Society, far from being a crowd of off-center joiners bent on fixing history’s error with a Pure Vision and a case of forty-percent dynamite (not that we know anyone like that), but reasonable men driven forward by the good of humanity—as they see themselves in the story-that-is.
You can probably plot this one yourself. Alfred Nobel’s invention certainly figures, as this would come from the school of No Climax Without a Corresponding Explosion. There would be a thrilling chase through gaslit Brooklyn, pursued by such and sundry, with Mr. Rat Nolan involved (for indeed there is always he) ostensibly for the cause of Fenian liberation but with his true allegiance in doubt till the end. All fuses would burn to Demuth’s, and the vanishment of Dusty Benedict in the apocalyptic kaboom that stands in so eloquently for plot resolution. A wooden fly-figure of Dusty, chisel in its lowered hand, is erected on the site. If the author is in an ironical mood, Dusty watches the unveiling from a nearby alcove, and goes off whistling. Possibly a lady, not necessarily named Aura Lee, accompanies him, twirling a parasol. Did I forget to mention that the class system has exploded as well, without any naughty Bolshevism being required? Well, one does forget.
A good idea, that. Forget the other versions, for those writers are the waves of the sea. While we have only so much Davidson and no more, like the coast of Monterey, it is there in its length and breadth, let the waves do as they will.
TAKE WOODEN INDIANS
DOWN FROM THE STREETS (morning air already gray and bitter with motor exhaust and industrial fumes), into the jampacked subway he passed. His clothes, though mildly incongruous in that unhappy throng, brought him no special measure of attention. Weary, wary, cynical, grim, displeasured indifference lying on each countenance like an oily film, the folk stared not so much at him as over and through him.
He fought to keep his feet, struggled to maintain his balance. This, merely the antechamber to everyday existence, was difficult enough. Add to it the need to be constantly on the lookout for the Wooden Indian Society and he felt he had reason to be tense and jumpy. “Benedict, a leading modern free-form sculptor in wood—” Ha!
Twice he had been aware that they had tailed him as far as Times Square. Twice he had lost them. A third time—
The man in the faintly funny-looking clothes (his name was Don Benedict, but some called him “Dusty”) paused for a minute under one of the red-lettered wooden signs, took a quick look at the paper in his hand (more, it almost seemed, to reassure himself that it was still there than to scan the contents), did an about-face and started back the way he had come. By and by he came to a stairway which he ascended for five steps, then turned around and went down. At the bottom—
At the bottom of it all was Elwell, and Elwell was dead: not from the cough which had been tearing him apart for years, but dead of a slippery little patch of ice no bigger than a man’s hand. Elwell, dying, with blood in the corners of his mouth, holding Don’s hand in a grip which the younger man could feel the heat going out of.
“But it belongs to the WIS,” Don had protested.
And Elwell: “No, Don, no—it belongs to me. I formed it. I proved it.”
“They’ll never allow—”
With a desperate, slow intensity, shaking his head, Elwell had explained. Reluctantly, Don agreed. It seemed to him that he was agreeing to no more than the first risk. But then, with Elwell dead, and the WIS turning against them both—first with coldness, then with clamor, then with a silent tenacity more disturbing than either—Don Benedict came to see that it was not only the beginning which was his, but that it was all his. Forevermore.
At the bottom of the stairs, he saw the man out of the corner of his eye, eye intent upon feet, feet pacing out the pattern. He stopped for a moment, intending only to turn. And stayed stopped. The man (it was Anders) took hold of his arm as if to urge him on.
“I’m coming with you, Benedict.” Eyes burning, voice iron-hard.
“I’m going alone.”
“You’ve betrayed the trust, used what belongs to all of us, used it for yourself alone. The WIS—”
As always, so now, the Wooden Indian Society undoing themselves: Anders, trembling with fury, unawarely released his grip. Don placed the cushion of his palm under Anders’ chin, thrust forward and upward with all his strength. And at once, swift—but not forgetting himself, not breaking into a run—he finished what he had to do. Anders staggered back, arms flailing, feet failing at purchase; then Don, turning his head at the last, saw him fall, the electric lights glaring on the white-tiled walls.
His foot jarred, as always, missing the familiar flooring by an inch. He adjusted his gait to the flagstone pave of the alley. It stretched before him and behind him for twenty feet in either direction. There was no one in sight.
About halfway along, there was a deep recess, a bricked-up door, and here Don hid until he was quite sure that Anders was not coming through. There was never any certainty that the WIS had not pieced it together, spying—somehow—pieced it together, bit by bit. There was always that tension, even here—though less, much less. After all, if they did get through, it would no longer be him that they were primarily after. It would be Demuth’s. And Demuth’s could look out for themselves.
Waiting, ears alert, he recalled the last meeting of the WIS he had dared attend. Mac Donald, eyes blazing deep in their sockets, had broken into Derwentwater’s measured phrases, thrust a shaking finger into Don’s face.
“Do you call yourself a Preservationist? Yes or no? Stand up and be counted!”
Staunchly, he had faced him, had answered. “I consider myself a philosophical Preservationist. I do not believe in violent—”
Face convulsed, fists clenched in the air, “Traitor! Traitor!” Mac Donald had screamed.
Not yielding, Don started to speak, got no further than Elwell’s name, when Mac Donald—and Anders, Gumpert, De Giovanetti, almost all of them, in fact—had drowned him out with their outcry, their threats. How much had Demuth’s paid him? How much had he sold out for?
Demuth’s! Don mouthed the name scornfully. As if he would touch their tainted money. He had learned, the hard way, that Elwell was right all along, that the WIS were fanatics who would shrink from nothing. Well, he wasn’t doing any shrinking, either.
Don Benedict came out of the niche—Anders wasn’t going to get through this time, that was clear—and walked on down the alley. In less than a minute, he came out into a courtyard where heaps of chips and sawdust lay on one side and heaps of hay on the other. A man in dung-smeared boots came out of the building to the left with a bucket of milk in his hand. He paused, squinted, tugged his tobacco-stained beard and put down the bucket.
“Hey, Dusty! Glad to see you,” he greeted the newcomer. “You just get into town?”
“Ee-yup,” said Don/Dusty. “How you, Swan?”
Swan said he was fine, and inquired about things up in Sairacuse.
“Capital,” said Dusty. “Hay’s bringing a fine price—”
Swan groaned, spat into the sawdust. “Good for dem, maybe. Not for me. I tink you been at de bottle, hey, Dusty? You look yumpy, like always, ven you yust come in.”
“Bottle? I get little enough out of any bottle I buy. My damned brother-in-la
w” (it was true—he had forgotten about Walter; it would be nice if he never had to remember) “drinks my liquor, smokes my cigars, wears my shirts, and spends my money.”
Swan groaned sympathetically, picked up the bucket. “Vy don’t you kick him de hell out?”
Nice advice, would be a pleasure to take it. Of course, Mary wouldn’t be able to stand it. Poor rabbity Mary.
“All I need is to get back to work. That’ll fix me up.” Don/Dusty waved, continued on his way across the yard and went into the doorway of the tall brick building to the right. Inside, it was cool and dark and smelled of wood and paint.
Dusty took a deep breath and began to smile.
He started up the stairs, ignoring the painted hand with outstretched finger and word Office on the first floor. By the time he reached the second floor, his smile was very broad. Softly, he began to sing “Aura Lee” and went in through the open door.
The big loft was dark; little light came in through the small and dirty windows, but at regular intervals a gas-jet flared. Dusty paused to greet his friends. Silently they stared down at him, peering from underneath the hands shading their eyes, stretching out their arms in wordless welcome, plumage blazing in a frenzy of colors.
“Hello, there, Tecumseh! How, Princess Redwing! Osceola, Pocahontas—”
A red-faced little man in a long striped apron trotted out into view, two tufts of snowy hair decorating his cheeks, a hat of folded newsprint on his head.
“Dusty, Dusty, I’m darned glad to see you!” he exclaimed.
“Hello, Charley Voles. How’s everything at C. P. Hennaberry’s?”
Charley shook his head. “Good and bad,” he said. “Good and bad. Oscar snagged his hand on a nail moving some plunder at home and it festered up something terrible. We was feared it was going to mortify at first, but I guess he’s on the mend at last. Can’t work, though, no-o-o-o, can’t work. And Hennery was too numerous with the drink, fell off the wagon again and I think he must still be in the Bridewell, unless’n maybe his sentence is up today. Meanwhile, the work is piling high. Thunderation, yes—fly-figures, rosebuds, pompeys, two Turks under orders—”
“Two?” Dusty paused with his arms half out of his coat sleeves, whistled.
Charley nodded proudly. “Gent in Chicago opening up a big emporium, two Turks and two Sir Walters. Only thing is—” his ruddy little face clouded—“gent is clamoring for delivery, says if he don’t get ‘em soon he’ll order from Detroit. And you know what that means, Dusty: Let trade get away and it never comes back. Why, the poor Major is pulling his whiskers out worrying. ’Course, with you back in town—”
Dusty, tying his apron, pursed his lips. “Well, now, Charley—now you know, I never did fancy my work much on the special figures. I want to help Major Hennaberry all I can, but—” He shook his head doubtfully and started to lay out his tools.
Charley Voles tut-tutted. “Oscar and Hennery was working on the Turks when they was took sick or drunk. I had the top three of a Sir Walter done, but I had to leave off to handle a couple of prior orders on sachems. Now if you’ll take on the sachems, I can finish the specials. How’s that strike you?”
Dusty said it struck him fine. He strode over to the hydraulic elevator shaft and gave two piercing whistles.
“Boy!” he shouted. “Boy! Benny?”
A treble from the office floor inquired if that was him, Mr. Dusty, and said it would be right up. A noise of gasping and stomping from below indicated that someone else would be right up, too.
“I want some breakfast, Benny,” Dusty said, tossing him a coin. “Here’s a quarter of a dollar. Get me the usual—eggs, pancakes, sausages, toast, coffee and crullers. Get some beer for Mr. Voles. And you can keep the change. Hello, Major Hennaberry!”
The elevator cage surged slowly into view. First came Major Hennaberry’s bald spot, then his custard-colored eyes, magenta nose and cheeks, pepper-and-salt whiskers, and, gradually, the Major himself, breathing noisily. In his hand he held a booklet of some sort.
Slowly and sybillantly, the Major moved forward, shook Dusty’s hand.
“Don’t know what’s come over the American mechanic nowadays,” he said at last, asthmatically. “Can’t seem to keep himself safe, sober, or in the city limits, and acts as if Hell has let out for noon… Got some lovely white pine for you, my boy, fresh up from the spar yards. Don’t waste a minute—soon’s you get outside of your victuals, commence work. Draw on the cashier if you want anything in advance of wages: a dollar, two dollars, even a half-eagle.
“Never had so many orders nor so few men to execute them since starting in business,” the Major wheezed on. “Even had Rat Nolan on picket duty for me, combing South Street and the Bowery—offered him three dollars apiece for any carvers he could find. Nothing, couldn’t find a one. It’s the catalog that’s done the boom, my lad. The power of advertising. Here—read it whilst you eat; be pleased to have your opinion.”
Hissing and panting, he made his way back to the elevator, jerked the rope twice, slowly sank from sight.
Dusty turned to the old artisan. “Charley,” he said, slowly, as if he hadn’t quite determined his words, “hear anything about Demuth’s?”
Charley made a face. “What would you want to hear about that ugly, pushy outfit?”
Changing, somewhat, his point of inquiry, Dusty asked, “Well, now, have you ever thought about the significance of the wooden Indian in American history?”
The old man scratched the left fluff of whisker. “By crimus, that’s a high-toned sentence,” he said, rather dubiously. “Hmm. Well, all’s I can tell you—history, hey?—the steam engine was the makings of the show-figure trade, tobacco shop or otherwise. Certainly. All of us old-timers got our start down on South Street, carving figureheads for sailing craft. That was about the time old Hennaberry got his major’s commission in the Mercantile Zouaves—you know, guarding New York City from the Mexicans. Yes, sir. But when the steam come in, figureheads went out. Well, ’twasn’t the end of the world.”
And he described how he and his fellow-artists had put their talents at the disposal of the show-figure trade, up to then a rather haphazard commerce. “History, hey? Well, I have had the idea it’s sort of odd that as the live Indian gets scarcer, the wooden ones gets numerouser. But how come you to ask, Dusty?”
Carefully choosing his words, Dusty asked Charley to imagine a time in the far-off future when wooden Indians—show figures of any sort—were no longer being carved.
Had, in fact, suffered for so long a universal neglect that they had become quite rare. That gradually interest in the sachems revived, that men began to collect them as if they had been ancient marble statues, began to study all that could be learned about them.
That some of these collectors, calling themselves the Wooden Indian Society, had been consumed with grief at the thought of the debacle which overtook the figures they had grown to love. Had claimed to see in the decline and death of this native art a dividing line in American history.
“It was like, Charley, it was like this was the end of the old times altogether,” Don went on, “the end of the Good Old Days, the final defeat of native crafts and native integrity by the new, evil forces of industrialism. And they thought about this and it turned them bitter and they began to brood. Until finally they began to plan how they could undo what had been done. They believed that if they could travel from their time to—to our time, like traveling from here to, say, Brooklyn—”
How much of this could Charley grasp? Perhaps better not to have tried.
Don/Dusty spoke more rapidly. “That if they could reach this time period, they could preserve the wooden Indian from destruction. And then the great change for the worse would never occur. The old days and the old ways would remain unchanged, or at least change slowly.”
“You mean they got this idea that if they could change what happened to the wooden Indians, they could maybe change the course of American history?”
D
usty nodded.
Charley laughed. “Well, they were really crazy—I mean they would be, if there was to be such people, wouldn’t they? Because there ain’t no way—”
Dusty blinked. Then his face cleared. “No, of course there isn’t. It was just a moody dark thought… Ah, here comes Ben with my breakfast.”
Charley lifted his beer off the laden tray, gestured his thanks, drank, put down the glass with a loud “Hah” of satisfaction. Then a sudden thought creased his face. “Now leave me ask you this, Dusty. Just what could ever happen to destroy such a well-established and necessary business as the show-figure business? Hmm?”
Dusty said that these people from the Wooden Indian Society, in this sort of dark thought he’d had, had looked into matters real thoroughly. And they came to believe very deeply, very strongly, that the thing which killed the wooden Indian, and in so doing had changed American history so terribly for the worst, had been the invention and marketing of an Indian made of cast-iron or zinc. An Indian which would have no life, no soul, no heart, no grace—but which would never wear out or need to be replaced.
And so it would sell—sell well enough to destroy the carvers’ craft—but would destroy the people’s love for the newer show figures at the same time.
Charley looked shocked. “Why, that’d be a terrible thing, Dusty—a thing which it’d cut a man to the heart! Cast-iron! Zinc! But I tell you what—If there ever was to be an outfit which’d do a thing like that, there’d be only one outfit that would. Demuth’s. That’s who. Ain’t I right?”
Dusty lowered his head. In a low, choked voice, he said, “You’re right.”
Dusty propped the catalog against a short piece of pine, read as he ate.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said to old Charley, “but I have such an appetite here. I never eat breakfast at all when I’m—” He stopped, put a piece of sausage in his mouth, intently began to read.
We would respectfully solicit from the Public generally an inspection of our Large and Varied Assortment of WOODEN SHOW FIGURES which we are constantly manufacturing for all classes of business, such as SEGAR STORES, WINES & LIQUORS, SHIP CHANDLERS, INSTRUMENT MAKERS, DRUGGISTS, YANKEE NOTIONS, UMBRELLA, CLOTHING, CHINA TEA STORES, GUNSMITHS, BUTCHERS, &C, &C. Our Figures are both carved and painted in a manner which cannot be excelled, are durable and designed and executed in a highly artistic manner; and are furnished at noncompetitive low prices. We are constantly receiving orders for statues and emblematic signs, and can furnish same of any required design with promptness.
The Avram Davidson Treasury Page 11