“I’m in charge of the operation,” Manfred Sky said sullenly.
“I know that, Manfred. I know that. Listen to me a minute. Did you ever see a general?”
“What is this? Why rake over the past? Just because I once sold phony Prisoner-of-War Insurance—”
Feldman had forgotten about the man’s war experience. He didn’t believe for a minute in Sky’s sore spot, but understood that it was fashionable just then in the prison for bad men to assume long, penitent faces, to “make warden’s mouths,” as the phrase had it. (He had thought it a chink in the warden’s armor when he realized that the man would settle for insincerity, but he had been quickly straightened out about that in Warden’s Assembly. “Forms, gentlemen,” the warden had roared over the convicts’ forced applause and cheers, “civilization is forms.” There was even some talk that the warden would soon reinstitute an experimental measure that had been abandoned shortly before Feldman’s arrival. When the practice was in force, a convict encountering a guard in the corridor had to greet the guard formally, inquire after his health, and his family’s if he had one. Then the guard had to do the same for the convict. Each was required to offer some minor complaint, some small concern—these didn’t have to be real—for the other to be solicitous about. The system had been discontinued, Feldman understood, because the prisoners were helpless to project a believable insincerity.)
“Did you ever see a general?” Feldman repeated. “Did he carry an M-one? Was he issued a trenching tool? Did he, except on formal occasions, wear as many ribbons as his driver, say? Manfred, I’ve seen a general. I sat with one across a conference table when the store was promoting defense bonds for the government. He had assistants—captains, majors, a full colonel. Manfred, those junior officers looked Toyland next to this fellow. Do you understand? West Point cadets, senior prom, Flirtation Walk. They looked like men who had never done anything more military than hold a sword above some R.O.T.C. lieutenant and his pretty bride. But that general, that general was a dream of power! In a khaki uniform, very plain, unribboned, almost a business suit. He deputed his messkit, Manfred, he delegated his knapsack. Just the stars on each shoulder like awry stick pins, like something in a brown firmament. He looked like the United States sitting there. He never opened his mouth. This was a complicated thing. I had lawyers from my staff; he had his judge-advocate people. I was asking concessions for the space. Many things had to be worked out. Decisions. He never said a word. With the eyes, everything with the eyes. He never made a sound. Well, that’s an exaggeration. I was sitting across from him and I heard this faint hum. Like a generator or a transformer. Oh, the power in that man. Don’t kid yourself, Manfred. He was in charge of his operation too.”
“Wow,” Manfred Sky said.
“I ask for your power of attorney, Manfred. Give me your hand on this.”
“Why? What’s in it for you?”
“Me?” Feldman said, “I’m a workhorse, Manfred, a grind. Feldman the fetcher, the rough and tumbler. This is true, Manfred. I have no executive gifts. I haven’t the gift of silence. Hear how I talk. It’s a failing.”
Flesh and Walls were listening. Feldman had simply promised them he would do their work.
“How about it, Manfred?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Look, Flesh, look, Walls. Look at Manfred. With the eyes, everything with the eyes.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Manfred said.
“What would you say to a bribe, Sky?”
“Done,” Sky said.
Then Feldman took down the chewing-gum displays. Walls, who had taken some trouble with the arrangement of these, objected. “Wait,” Feldman told him, “you’ll see.”
He cleared away the toothpaste tubes. He had Flesh hide the cigarettes, and he removed the shaving creams and aerosol deodorants. He stood back critically and looked at the shelves. “My God,” he said, “the candy!”
“Wait, I’ll get it,” Walls said.
“Never mind,” Feldman said, “I will.”
He took away the famous kinds and allowed those he had never heard of to remain. He was very discriminating. There were seventeen boxes of Licorice Brittle, two dozen tubes of Flower Balls. Rose, Gardenia, Gray Orchid, Pine—some of the other flavors. He gave prominent space to some curious unwrapped bars of hardened confectioners’ sugar. They had precisely the texture and taste of the candy sockets that support the candles on a child’s birthday cake. They had jelly centers. Not by bread alone, Feldman thought.
He opened the soft-drink cooler and peered inside. He removed the Coke and Pepsi Cola and 7Up and all the fruit flavors except guava. He held up a bottle of bright mauvish liquid. There was no label. He read the cap. “Fleer’s,” it said. Hits the spot, Feldman thought, and returned it to the cooler.
Then he picked through the tray of combs, leaving out only the wide, eight- and ten-inch ones and removing all the tightly toothed pocket combs. These he placed in a large cardboard box into which he had already put writing paper, packets of envelopes, ball-point pens and all the number-two pencils. He covered the box and shoved it under the counter out of sight. He found a single box of number four hard-lead pencils, and these he built in a rectangular construction on the top of the counter.
He discovered some shoetrees, which he hung on a tall revolving razor-blade stand from which he had first removed all the double-edged blades. (He allowed a few packages of odd-shaped injector blades to be displayed.) He arranged the greeting cards, first transferring to the cardboard box all those cards whose messages of sympathy or celebration seemed rather ordinary. He was left with a small, curious assortment: “Get Well Soon, Stepmother”; “Bon Voyage, Cousin Pat”; “Best Wishes for the April Primary”; “Too Bad Your Dog Was Run Over”; “Welcome Back to Civilian Life, General”; “Congratulations, Comrade, on the Success of Your Strike!”
He took away all the Kleenex and white pocket handkerchiefs, substituting five carefully folded floral-pattern babushkas the men sent as gifts. There were other gift items: three travelling clocks, a portable iron and several umbrellas. Then, in a massive ziggurat, he arranged six dozen bottles of suntan lotion that had arrived yesterday by mistake. He stood back to appraise what he had done. “How do you like it?” he asked Manfred. Sky stared at him.
The canteen opened for an hour and five minutes in the afternoon. (The scheduling of canteen hours was among the more complicated arrangements at the prison. This was Thursday. On Thursday those men who hadn’t taken their free hour at ten in the morning on Monday could take it with an increment of five minutes at two-thirty in the afternoon.)
A convict holding an envelope came up to the wire cage behind which Feldman was waiting. “Give me a stamp,” he said.
“Certainly,” Feldman said. He took a special-delivery stamp from the special drawer he had prepared and slipped it to the man through the opening in the cage. “Thirty cents, please,” he said politely.
“Not this,” the man said, “a stamp. A regular stamp. A nickel stamp.”
“All out,” Feldman explained.
“What do you mean all out? I want to send a letter.”
Feldman glanced down at the stamp the convict had just returned to him. “They deliver it any hour of the day or night with this,” he said. “This is one of the best stamps there is.”
“I don’t want it delivered any hour of the day or night. It’s a letter to my mother. I say I’m feeling fine and that I’m glad Uncle had a nice time in Philadelphia.”
Feldman nodded sympathetically.
“Look,” the man said, “have you got an air-mail stamp? I’ll send it air-mail.”
“All out,” Feldman said. He considered the problem for a minute. “I know,” he said suddenly. “Do you know anyone in Europe?”
“Why?”
“Well, if you know someone in Europe, I could sell you an overseas air letter for eleven cents. You write your mother the air letter, and your pal in Europe redirects it to your
mom. If he does it right away, she’ll have it in under two weeks.”
“I don’t know nobody in Europe,” the man said.
“Asia. These air letters go to Asia too. It takes a little longer, but—”
“I never been to Asia. I don’t know nobody in Asia. Just give me the goddamned special-delivery.”
“Coming right up,” Feldman said sweetly.
The next customer, a young man, wanted a stamp too. He was holding some documents. They looked important. Probably they were legal forms he was sending to his lawyer.
Feldman shook his head sadly. “I’ve only got this cent-and-a-quarter precanceled job for nonprofit organizations,” he said.
The young man made some private calculations. “Well, give me seven of them. That’d make more than the eight cents it costs for an air-mail.”
“Gee, I’ve got only one left. There’s not much call for them.”
“What would happen if I put a cent-and-a-quarter stamp on this?”
“You’d have to send it open, unsealed,” Feldman said expertly. “It goes surface mail. Rail, bus, that sort of thing.”
“These are important confidential papers,” the convict said. “My appeal rides on this.”
“Uh huh,” Feldman said.
“They have to go out today.”
“Do you know anybody in Europe?”
Finally the man had to take his chances. He stuffed the papers into the envelope and started to lick it.
“Unh unh, unh uhn,” Feldman warned, waving his finger.
“I forgot,” the man said. He handed the unsealed envelope to Feldman reluctantly, anxious and very doubtful. Feldman dropped it cheerfully into the mailbag.
“How about a drink?” Feldman asked. “To relax you.”
“All right,” the convict said. “A Coke.”
“All out. Here,” Feldman said, “try this. Just got in a shipment. A new taste sensation.” He extended an open bottle of the mauve soda pop.
The young man took a few swallows. “It tastes like bubble gum,” he said.
“That’s what they’re drinking today,” Feldman said. “The kids. They’re doing the twist and drinking bubble-gum soda.”
“Yeah.”
“Say,” Feldman said, “if that appeal comes through, you’ll be getting out soon.”
The young man looked troubled again. “Maybe you’d better give me back my letter,” he said. “Maybe my friend has a stamp.”
“You kidding” Feldman said. “You kidding me? That’s a federal rap, buddy. Me tamper with the mails? I’m not sticking my hand into that mail bag. What, are you kidding? That’s federal.”
“Well, let me back there. I’ll do it.”
“I can’t,” Feldman said. “You never heard of an accessory? Forty-two percent of the guys in here are accessories. Besides, I can’t let unauthorized personnel back here. That would be an infraction of prison decorum. Jesus, the Feds would want me, and the warden would want me too.”
“Well, what about me?” the convict said. “I already committed a federal offense.”
“You did?”
“I’m not a nonprofit organization,” the man said gloomily.
“I didn’t hear that,” Feldman said. “You never said it, and I didn’t hear it.” He looked at Sky and Flesh and Walls. “You guys are witnesses. I didn’t know. To me he looked nonprofit.” He turned back to the young man. “Look, relax. Try to see the bright side. Maybe the papers won’t fall out. Maybe the transportation strike will be over soon. They’re not too far apart. The President is sending an arbitrator in a private plane. As soon as the fog lifts. If your appeal goes through you’ll be out soon.”
“In a few months,” the young man said doubtfully.
“What have you done about your shoes?” Feldman asked.
“What shoes?”
“Your shoes,” Feldman said. “That you came in with.”
“I don’t know. They took them away.”
“Well, certainly they did. They hold them down in wardrobe for when you get out. Were they new?”
“I don’t remember. Yes. I got them just before I was framed.”
“I see.”
“They were Italian.”
“I see.”
“They didn’t have laces.”
“Oh?”
“They had these little gold zippers.”
“They sound very nice,” Feldman said.
“They were comfortable. Very light,” he said wistfully.
“Soft leather,” Feldman said.
“Yeah. Very soft.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why? They were very comfortable.”
“No, I mean soft leather collapses. It doesn’t hold its shape.”
“Oh.”
“Shoetrees would save them,” Feldman said. “Of course the wardrobe guard doesn’t tell you that when he takes your shoes. Sure, he’s looking out for himself. He tries to save himself a little work. What does the wardrobe guard care? A man gets out and his shoes are shot. It’s a goddamn fucking pity.”
The young man pulled on his soda. When Feldman hooked his finger at him he leaned forward.
“Get a pair of shoetrees,” Feldman said confidentially. “What is it, a three-dollar investment? If you’re talking about the style I think you’re talking about, you’d be protecting something worth many times more.”
“They cost twenty-five bucks.”
“There, you see?” Feldman’s face became very serious. “Save your shoes,” he said slowly. He might have been a dentist warning schoolchildren about their teeth. He reached behind his back, detached a shoetree from the razor-blade stand, brought it around his body quickly and slapped it with a smart, ringing clap into his palm. Startled, the young man jumped back. Feldman’s eyes were closed. “What is it preserves in this world that decays? Where age always withers and time’s never stayed?” The young man stared at him. Feldman opened his eyes. “What, friend, do the ancients say makes perfect?”
The convict shook his head.
“Come on,” Feldman said, “this is basic. What do the ancients say makes perfect? Practice, that’s what. Practice. Practice does. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Practice. ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’ ‘How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?’ Practice, pal, makes perfect, pal. Practice! Habituality conquers reality. See the athlete: every muscle a maneuver. Unused, things collapse. Occupancy is a life principle. What else explains the growth of the caretaker industry in this country? They leave rangers in the forests in the wintertime. Use. Use use! Who’s talking about your creepy zippered dago shoes? This is life I’m talking about, friend, character I’m pushing for three dollar bills. Your shoes need practice. Let my shoetrees walk your shoes! Stuff them with my proxy feet and let them run around down there!” He shoved the shoetree into the young man’s hand.
“Leather dehydrates. Did you take chemistry? Did they tell you that in chemistry? The shoetree you hold in your hand has been treated with a thin emollient possessing exactly the consistency and molecular structure of human foot oil. Save your shoes! Save them!”
“But they’re locked up. How could I get them into the shoes now?”
“The guard,” Feldman said.
“He’d never let me.”
Feldman reached behind him. “Slip him this candy and wink.” He forced a bar of the confectioners’ sugar into the young man’s other hand.
When Feldman had finished with him the young man had spent three dollars seventy-six and a quarter cents in prison chits. It was a goddamned shopping spree, Harold Flesh said. He had never seen anything like it.
It went on like that for days. Feldman sold things in half-dozens that had never been sold before at all. He pushed the number-four pencils, and when the men discovered that these produced unsatisfactory, almost invisible lines, he sold them ink into which they could dip their pencils like old-fashioned pens. He had luck, too, with the flowe
r balls, which was the only thing that could neutralize the taste of the guava soda. The mauve soda neutralized the taste of the flower balls. Only the suntan lotion neutralized the taste of the mauve soda.
He told the men that the difference between success and failure lay in education.
“I know,” one said, “I’m taking a course for college credit.”
“College credit? College? Don’t kid me.”
“I am. European Literature in Translation.”
“Then why are you here? It’s Saturday afternoon. Why ain’t you at the game? Where’s your pledge pin? Who’s your date for the big dance?”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m calling you a fool,” Feldman said. “Tell me, Professor, what is the capital of South Dakota, please? Which is smaller, the subtrahend or the minuend? Give me the words of ‘The Pledge of Allegiance.’”
“What are you talking about?”
“Fifth grade,” Feldman said.
“Hey—”
“Hey, hey,” Feldman said. “What’s the matter? You never heard of the formative years?”
“The formative years?”
“Sure the formative years. Of course the formative years. It makes me sore the way you guys are taken for a ride. Why are you here now, do you suppose? Because you stole a car, pointed a gun, beat up a grocer? You’re here now because you had lousy formative years. Malformative years is what you had. I won’t fool you—you’re a grown man. What’s done is done. I can’t make you nine years old again, but I can give you a tip. Listen to me, college boy. The only education that counts is the education you get in those formative years. The difference between you and the squares is that the squares know ‘The Pledge of Allegiance.’ Imagine someone pointing a gun who can tell you the capital of Iowa.”
“You know, you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. Go back, go back. Learn what everybody learned that you didn’t learn. There’s a program for men who didn’t complete grammar school. Sign up for that. It’ll be your reformative years. Here,” Feldman said, “you’ll need paste. There’s no time to lose. Here’s blunt scissors. Take notebook paper. A ruler. Here’s crayons. Here’s gummed reinforcements.”
A Bad Man Page 12