Man Who Was Not With It

by Gold, Herbert

  “No sir,” he said, “I’m going. I hope you find what you’re looking for, sir.”

  “You think I’m going to spend all my money on a bum with a Hahvahd accent?”

  “I already explained about that. I’m truly sorry.”

  “Get out! Get!” I screamed.

  He started back down the road to the patch of grass where I had found him. I put down my suitcase and chased after him, crazy mad, and said, “Here!”

  He didn’t protest. I put the rest of my dollar-six into his palm, turned pale up at me like his gaze. He never allowed himself to suspect that it was all I had and now I didn’t allow myself even penny-one. I wanted him to hate me, because a little gratitude would dilute his blood even more. Not that it made any difference. He looked at my fraying cardboard suitcase as if it bulged with treasure, or at least pencils and laces to sell. “Thanks again for the handout, Mr. Peel,” he said, “but say, did you notice how that waitress looked at the cream pitcher when we got up?”

  Then he lowered himself to sit after the palest star-flicker of a smile. Yes, it was a pleasure to see that even Andy was human; therefore I could hardly be a dog forever.

  I turned without goodbye and headed toward my privileged place at the crossroads, singing and tasting ketchup and cream, sure that I had already hit bottom. I would never see Andy again. I stood hexing the cars on Route One, humming them by and not impatient because suppertime was still some hours away:

  “Do ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?

  Do ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

  Do ye ken John Peel when he’s far far away

  With his ‘ounds and ‘is ‘orn in the mo-or-ning.”

  Naturally the ride came along. It was a colored man, plump and sweating in a white linen suit, who laughed at my talk and finally asked me: “Did yall know I have a juck joint of mown? A fish fry?”

  “No, I never knew in my whole life before.”

  “Yall lookin for a job?”

  “I want to get back on my feet, sir.”

  “Ahd jest love to have a fine old wide boy washin dishes for me.”

  He must have liked me right off to talk that way and lean on that love with such a friendly tongue. I accepted, saying, “I’m not a white man, I’m a former dog.”

  “Can yall wash in hot, rinse in hot, nevah touch the cold? Fish makes a turrible scum and greasiness.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yall is hired, wide boy.”

  I stayed with him two weeks. Mr. Sammon was good to me, feeding me and giving me a dollar a day besides. He lent me the vaseline bottle when my hands were burned. He gave me an aspirin, too, when I had a headache thinking about my pop. The dog that I was stayed with me, but I put it out on a leash. I waited on tables and picked up tips, besides. The colored are generous. I plucked my new little boodle and finished my grass-eating and got ready to rejoin the show in Georgia. I knew their schedule. I waited to get with Grack and Pauline and the rest. I slept in the back of Mr. Sammon’s place and ate up good. Not scared anymore, I knew Pittsburgh was done, done, done. Andy had showed me that no one could ever hit absolute bottom until dead, no matter what, and I would always have some sense and take the cream if it was for the taking. Waitress frowning or not.

  I said goodbye. I thanked Mrs. Sammon, too. He drove me to a truck stop.

  “Ah knew Ah couldn’t hold you, wide boy. Yall is smart. Yall go far.”

  I went for Athens, Georgia, and Bossman Stan’s, which this season was called the Wide World and Tuscaloosa Too Shows, because it had not been going peacefully and had tried to score on every night but setup night. There was trouble on the show.

  12. Can’t step down the same midway twice, the philosopher said

  FROM outside the fairgrounds there’s a stomach ache of music of the calliope and carousel; it churns and stretches, trying to relieve itself. I took a breath of the salty air. There is also pocket music in the marks’ pants, quarters jigging dimes, jigajig. I listened for Grack’s come-on and the hee hee hee.

  Now you might guess I then sauntered with my restaurant cheeks and other fat right through the fume of sawdust and the haw and yaw of the midway and said to the first man I saw, “Listen to me now, old Ferdie, and let me tell you how I am glad to see you.” And he would say, “Bud! You back with it?” And I would grin and touch my new hat and say, “With it and for it, friend.” And he would say, “Wait’ll they hear you’re back. Wait’ll Grack sees you. Let’s cut up a jackpot, Bud. Listen, that little Joy, Pauline’s little Joy, she ain’t stopped bleeding for you, kid, and”—winking and rubbing a finger on the stubble of beard—“and kid, that little Joy there, she went and grew up since you left us. Got a cigarette?” And I would say, “Smoke nothing but big two-for-thirty-five cigars now, Ferdie. Here, have one. Got a boxful in my duff.” And he would say, “Figuring on taking over the countstore again?” And I would say, “Course I’m figuring. Owner will always make room for an old countstore hand.” And he would say, “Then come on in! Lug it in! Get with it, Bud!” And he would put his hands to his mouth and give a tremendous screech:

  “Hey you first-of-Mayers, Bud Williams is back!”

  Well, you might guess that way, but how wrong you’d be. We were in Georgia, many counties from where I had left. Ferdie at the gate, on the lookout for hey-rubes and smart kids and the county cops for their birthday payoffs, was no longer doing duty. He had evaporated. Ferdie had just dropped away. The carnival smelled the same, and the rain-streaked sign swung there—WIDE WORLD AND TUSCALOOSA TOO SHOWS—but another fellow stood lookout at the gate, a cracker this time, skinny and suspicious, hateful of marks, not seeing me at all. They know a carnie when they see one. He didn’t see me. I was just another mark to him.

  I strolled past, hoping to catch his eye. I stopped with my cigars sticking out of my Texas shirt, the cigars I had ready for Ferdie and Grack and the rest of them, and he didn’t even stop spitting. He had unhappy wiseguy hands that kept finding his pants, fleeing, finding and sticking again.

  “I’m with it,” I said softly.

  He looked and spit and his hands grabbed himself.

  “With it and for it,” I said.

  He showed his gums and covered his mouth and turned away. “Been reading books lately, feller?” he wanted to know. “Go in and have yourself a time anyway. Best thing for a feller. We got games of chance and skill, pleasures, girls, everything you could want or desire.”

  It was only months since I had left. A carnie can tell by the tilt of the hat and the walk if you are of the carnie, with it and for it, and he had not told about me. I was of the crowd and went in.

  Parked on a low flat just outside town, the fair had its two wings of trucks drawn about it as for Custer’s last stand. The sawdust was sprinkled so stingily that bald patches kept poking through, smelling bad, and snake-holes, rat-holes, gopher-holes or whatever were enough to make you turn your ankle just from looking at them. The earth showed for poverty under the carnival chips. It was late afternoon, nothing much doing but everything running. I mixed with the kids. Pink cotton candy muffled a few sticky mouths. Finally I saw Sam the Popcorn Man and asked him, “Where’s Grack?”

  “Grack who?”

  “Sam! It’s Bud, don’t you remember me?”

  “Grack ain’t with it no more,” he said, and went on pouring the raw corn into his popper. I stood and waited and he said nothing but: “Danged chicken corn. No good for nothing. Wetness inside and out. Gives me the heaves. Sure, how could I forget you? Last name of Williams, you always claimed.”

  I moved down the midway, remembering how they were all friends during our hey-rube and I bloodied my nose for Wide World and Tuscaloosa Too Shows. It wasn’t natural to be put out and away so fast.

  “Hey, Chet!” I yelled. Warily he turned around slowly at my repeating his name. “Chet Hayworth, it’s Bud!”

  “Ain’t I got eyes?”

  “How you been, boy? They biting?”

  He l
ooked drier and older. He had never had any love for me, jealous of my talent as a talker. “We’re sticking it,” he said.

  The sweat was running down my back and my hands were slippery on my suitcase. No one said to put it down. No one said how about a mess of something and coffee. Was this because I hadn’t stuck it out? Because I had left the life? Didn’t they see I wanted to be with it and for it again? “Where’s Grack?” I asked.

  “Grack who?”

  “Grack who? What’s the matter with you, Chet?”

  He shrugged and walked away. “Don’t give me no lip, marko. Been back to college?”

  I moved on down to the owner’s trailer. Stan would have some sweet talk for a good countstore man. He’d yawn and show his swollen tongue and tell me where Grack was and why he hadn’t rejoined the show. It beat me and made me hotter how I didn’t seem to know anyone. Even Joy wasn’t around. Nobody wanted to know me under the clash of afternoon sun, the mote-laden rays striking guiderope and stand while I wandered about with my forehead burning at the creases. Stan’s trailer was closed up tight and he wasn’t for the asking. Maybe he had gone to the fixer, maybe he had just heard I was coming. I headed around, puzzled, hearing a strange talker in Grack’s place before the zoo, while the growl and roar of the record clamored below him: “We got Siamese twins, friends, they’re from Siam and joined at the vital organs. We got a ape talks real good, friends. We got a Wild Man from Brainwashing, China, he eats live rats. We got all things educational and instructive, step right up.…”

  Grack would never do it. They had a geek in the show, biting off chicken heads and rats, some poor boozer. I felt a flush of anger under the Georgia heat that they let a dead-head like that voice take Grack’s place. Maybe the jail trouble he wrote about was more serious than the usual carnie peddling, boosting, or unlawful refusal to work. I worried and poked down the midway, no better than a rube. A tuft of shirt trailed from my suitcase where the hinge had buckled after many wettings. The kids with coins in their pockets grinned and elbowed each other at my coming. If the Show wasn’t for me, I would soon be carrying my bindle in a shirt like any poor Andy.

  Sometimes a show dies under you and you don’t know until it begins to smell bad or is simply rained down into a gully. Carnies tell of such shows, a four-trucker that blew up for no reason at all out in Corvallis, Oregon; a certain Benedict who now pushed French postcards but was once bossman on the biggest power-generator Sunday school show in the Southland. Losing a Grack could diminish us sorely.

  The velveteen Georgia dusk was coming on, dreamy, rosy, frayed at the edges where the heat of earth had worn it away. I could have been invisible. I was alone. No one knew me, and I was starting back down the midway when I suddenly thought, Pauline, and there she was. Her tent, all colors, purpled and silvered, spattered with stars, astrological enough for kitchen maids and cautious matrons: PAULINE SEES THE TRUTH! Yes, she reads your palm and tells you. She deals the cards and makes you know. She plays the horoscope for you.… Set off and away, her tent was a distant thing by several feet and an angle of planting, magically clean, magically nightfallen amid the bustle and palaver of carnival doings. She had more mystic figures than a Masonic convention, more half-moons than a manufacturer of outhouses, more glory and queerness to her tent than the Milky Way. There was nobody around. I stopped to buy a ticket outside.

  In the little booth I saw that furry, bristly, swarthy animal called Joy. She was scowling and smiling and she had grown. She was a girl, she was a female already, and I knew I had been away for many months. She turned red at the sight of me. At last someone meant welcome home. I opened my eyes to look better and saw that she was no taller than before, or only a little. But she was a lady. There were bird-buds of breasts blossoming, cheeping, and her mouth was parted over her teeth. I had been away only a couple of months, but they were those couple months in a girl’s life when her funny sprouts become woman things and her ideas get womanly and her legs begin to scratch. She was hot and hungry. She said in a soft husky voice, that of a child who is shy before its old friend after a week’s absence: “Hello, Bud, you come for a reading?”

  “You doing palms, Joy?”

  “No, Mama still does it.”

  “How’ve you been?”

  “The very same, Bud.”

  “That’s a lie. You’ve went and grew up on me while I was gone.”

  “Did it on purpose, Bud.”

  There was a silence. She was blushing and squirming and glad to see me.

  “Tear me a ticket from the roll, I want to see Pauline.”

  “Bud, oh dear, you don’t need a ticket.”

  “Give me anyway.” I was talking big for no good reason. I paid my quarter and she shrugged and gave me the ticket. She was displeased by my swagger (I knew it), as if she could read my hard times in it. I turned and left her without saying so long.

  Pauline was in her gypsy headdress and smoking her cigar, which she stubbed out rapidly, breaking off the ash and then blowing to clean it for the next lighting. She started to push herself from the deep pillows. “Buddy boy!”

  “Wait a sec, Moddom Pauline,” I said, “I bought a ticket and want my answers straight.”

  “Buddy, what the hell you been doing with yourself?”

  “Business first, moddom.” And I extended my hand over her glass-jeweled, sequined, sweaty-from-palms table. “I paid my way in.”

  She sat down and looked at me with a fat grin on her face. I could see a speck of cigar leaf, stuck between her teeth and waggling as she breathed through her mouth. She took my hand in her paws, ready for the joke, but it was no joke to me. If they thought I was a marko from the other world, I’d never get in, I’d never hear the news. But if I could tease Pauline into telling me, engaging her in a play at reading my palm, then she might break the rule of the carnie and treat me as one with it. She began: “I see a lifeline that trails from Capricorn to Pittsburgh, sir. I see many loves intersecting thees lifeline. The future is cloudy, the past is disarranged. For feefty cents payment I will cast the cards, which never fail, which always tell, which conform my diagnosis. You maybe bite?”

  “Where’s Grack?”

  “I see a talker in a great show very very onhappy when he lose his friend. I see him not himself no more. I see pins and needles—”

  “Grack got himself a habit?”

  “I see snow white as sugar—”

  “Cocaine? Heroin?”

  “I see snow white as pain.…”

  “What’s he doing now? Where is he?”

  “I see blackness, darkness, the swift deep—”

  The words and words of the game were not funny to me now. “Pay attention,” I said, pressing my hand to hers, “pay attention to my palm and tell me what happened to Grack.”

  “In the night there is a noise. Whsst. Someone cries. Someone lights. The talker is gone with a box under his arm and his arm spotted with holes.”

  “Listen, Pauline, did Grack steal from someone on the show? No, I don’t believe it.” This is the unpardonable sin in the carnie universe. To betray the rest of the world is business and pleasure; to betray a comrade is black as nightbane. It could poison everyone. It could kill a show—just the thought of it. Now I understood why they were not glad to see me and why the show was limping. They connected me and my habit with Grack and his habit, and my leaving with his leaving, and my memory with the sin and malediction under which the show labored when the Great Grack did this. “Listen, Pauline,” I said, forgetting my game, near to tears, “when a man has a habit he don’t know what he’s doing. He can’t be with anything but his habit. He’s dead, he’s gone when he’s got that thing on his back—”

  Fat and impassive, but her upper lip beaded by the effort of gypsy mummery, she went on without listening. “I see a Greek man shouting and weeping—”

  “Casanopopolous! The ironer! That guy always hangs his money out to dry, just waiting to be took. It’s his own goddamn fault, Pauline, but I know
Grack didn’t do it the other times. It was rubes did it.”

  She rubbed my hand to comfort me. I put my head down on my arms. “So, so, Buddy boy,” she said. “The Grack turned bad after many years of good. So. It’s rough and tough, but we’re getting along. We picked up a new talker—not as good as the Grack, sure, but we’re getting used to him. The Grack shouldn’t have done it. Now, now. Grack should have held on to himself better. Now, now, Buddy boy. Grack should have just gone on, but maybe he felt he wasn’t going noplace. I never saw his palm or pulled the cards on him, but that’s my estimate. Stop taking it so hard now, baby Buddy boy.…”

  I did. I peeked through a slit in the curtain and saw the careering sun turn orange and brave before nightfall. Joy turned at the waist on her stool to see what we were talking about so long in the dusk of Pauline’s domain.

  “It must be a funny show without Grack,” I said finally.

  “Is.”

  “I don’t get him as thief at all.”

  “Neither did any of us.”

  “It’s the habit that did it.”

  “It is surely the habit,” she said.

  There might be business waiting for Pauline, and yet we sat and looked at each other across the table. She was soft on me. People claimed she still had a no good man someplace, a man to grieve for. She had always been a friend to me. “Whatever happened to your crystal ball?” I asked, fingering the worn spot on the table where it had rested.

  “Broke,” she said. “Rolled off on my toe once when we were just setting up.”

  “Lots of changes. Poor Grack. I been away longer’n I thought.”

  She shrugged her weighty shoulders and leaned toward me, spreading perfume and cigar and showing me the dark cleft of her breasts. “I’ve got a new speciality, Buddy boy. Head raping.”

  “Phrenology?”

  “Tells the truth through contact with the spirits that live on dandruff. Moneyback guarantee if you don’t like your fortune—that’s the gimmick. Want me to try?”—and she reached for my scalp.