The Dick Gibson Show

by Elkin, Stanley

  A light was blinking on the Arkansas line.

  “Night Letters,” Dick Gibson said.

  “Gibson bwana?”

  It was an old friend, the caveman from Africa, the last member of the mysterious Kunchachagwa tribe. He had been discovered by anthropologists near the Fwap-dali digs on the great Ennedi Plateau in eastern Chad. The last of his race, Norman—no one could pronounce his real name, an indecipherable gaggle of clucks and chirps—had been found by the scientists as he wandered helpless and distraught outside the opening of his cave. The night before, the very night his people had discovered fire—the story had come out slowly, painfully—they had panicked and been asphyxiated in the ill-ventilated cave when a group of young, zealous hunters, made too daring by the novelty of the flames, began to throw everything they could find onto the pyre. The anthropologists comforted him and taught him English.

  “Oh awful,” Norman had told Dick on the air one night, “eberyting hot, eberyting in flames. Burn up our mores, artifacts an’ collective unconscious. Eberyting go up hot hot. Young bucks burn totems, taboos, cult objects and value system, entire shmeer go up dat ebening. Whole teleology shot to shit.”

  Norman had spent a happy summer with the anthropologists who debriefed and photographed him. He slept in a tent under mosquito netting. “I don’t care what you say,” Norman confessed one night, “white fellers got to be gods. Dey introducing Norman to mosquito netting. In cabe we don’t hab dis convenience.” Now, he slept under the stuff on his farm in Arkansas even in winter, using the same netting the anthropologists had given him, though it was much worn and there were holes in it. Dick tried to convince him that it should be repaired, but Norman thought it was white man’s magic that made it work.

  In the fall, after that first pleasant summer, while Norman’s trauma slowly healed, the anthropologists could not decide what to do with Norman when they returned to their various universities.

  “It’s not fair to the poor fellow to take him back with us to civilization. His ways are not our ways. He’d only be lost in New Haven.”

  “A chap can be acculturated,” Norman had pleaded.

  “I don’t see what else can be done with him,” another of the scientists said. “He’s little better than an orphan now. Intelligent though he is, he wouldn’t be able to survive alone. He’d be just as miserable by himself here in Chad as he would in the States.”

  “No, Doctor. We live in two different worlds. It couldn’t work.”

  “Den dis las’ one take Norman by de han’ an’ lead him into de forest. Get funny look in he eyes an’ whistle ‘Born Free.’ But Norman find way back to digs.”

  The discussion went on until it was time for the anthropologists to leave. “Can we sell him to the circus, perhaps?” one of the scientists finally asked. They consulted Norman and he consented to be sold to the circus.

  “Poor Norman, him culturally disoriented,” Norman told Dick on one of the first evenings he called. (Norman owned no radio; as far as Dick could tell, he had no notion that he was even on the air. Dick supposed that when the phone was installed in his shack in Arkansas some practical joker had given him Dick’s number. Possibly Norman thought it was the only number he could get.) “Him all alienated thoo and thoo. How you like dat Norman for de culture lag?”

  “Were you really a caveman?” Dick asked him on another occasion.

  “Oh, sah,” Norman said passionately, “my people hab nuttin’. We so backward. We neber heard ob cars or planes or tools. We so backward we neber heard ob de wheel or trees. Shee-it, we neber eben heard ob air.”

  Norman had not been a success with the circus. His masters were kind—it was from them that he picked up much of the rest of what he knew of English—but the public dismissed him as a fraud. No amount of newspaper clippings or reprints from scientific journals could convince them of his authenticity. They didn’t have the patience to read them, and his gentle demeanor and essential passivity destroyed whatever confidence they might have placed in a wilder, club-swinging Neanderthal. “Norman too hip, too cool for dem public cats. Him speak to owners. Dey say hokey Wild Man of Borneo ruin it for legitimate cabeman like Norman, and advise him to go into different business. ‘What public really go fo’,’ dey say, ‘is if Norman sit up on platform above tank and let rubes th’ow baseballs at him.’ But Norman don’ like dat. Whut de hell? I son of Aluminum Siding Salesman when I back wit’ my people in de cabe.”

  “An Aluminum Siding Salesman?”

  “Yassuh. Dat’s our Kunchachagwa word for ‘chief.’ Yassuh”— Southerners had taught him all the rest of what he knew of English—“How you call in yo’ language—‘chief.’ Aluminum Siding Salesman way we say dat.”

  So when Norman refused to become a target for baseballs the circus owners had to let him go. He signed up with a lecture bureau and traveled briefly around the South giving talks, but fearing the same reaction he had received in the circus he took measures to improve his act. He appeared before them naked.

  “Folks,” he would say, “y’all see befo’ you a tragic essample ob de noble sabage. I looks out ober dis yere audience ob ladies an’ gennelmuns in yo’ all’s fancy finery an’ it gibs me de culture shock. Acherly, if No’man not be so perlite he lak to bust him sides laughin’ jest to look at yo’ all’s suits an’ coats an’ whatnot.

  “Shoot! Yo’all eber lib in a cabe? You prob’ly tink sech ting all dark an’ slimy. But I tell you sho as ah lib de Stone Age was de bes’. Ain’ no air pollution in de Stone Age, ain’ no angst, ain’ no sech ting as identity crisis. Course we had our shibboleths and societal taboos, dass true. Fo’ essample, we worship peanut shells, an’ ebery autumn when de leaves fall offen de trees we tink it’s gone be de end ob de wod’ for sho’. But whut dat mean? It all relatib. Eberyting relatib. Norman, him see fire an’ him see wheel, him see television an’ him see Indiana, an’ dere ain’ no comparison. When de blood ob Aluminum Siding Salesman run in yo’ veins, I guess yo’ neber be satisfied wit cibilization. But I say one ting fo’ yo’all—I sho’ laks dat mosquito netting. De proper study ob mankind is man.”

  Usually he was arrested.

  After the lecture tour he took a job in a foundry, and with the money he saved he was able to buy a little piece of bottomland in Arkansas.

  “Norman,” Norman told Dick one night, “trace de whole entire history ob western cibilization all in his own self. Start out in de Stone Age, in on de birt’ ob fire—may dey rest in peace—go into de foundry fo’ de Iron Age, an’ now he a farmer. Eben do some time in show biz. It jest goes to show dat it’s true whut dey say—ontogeny sho’ nuff recapitulates phylogeny an’ make no mistake! Him all tuckered out do. Tink dis nigger skip de Industrial Rebolution!”

  Dick wondered how Norman was feeling tonight. The caveman was a moody caller, and at times recently he had seemed almost deranged with gloom. “Norman, how are you?”

  “Norman all messed up, Gibson Bwana. Crop come up. Norman get him ’nudder culture shock.”

  “What’s happened, Norman?”

  “I buy farm fum white man, neber tink to ask what he planted. Norman just a jerk, neber make it in de white man’s worl’.”

  “Come on, Norman, that’s no way to talk. You’re very adaptive.”

  “You know whut dat son bitch planted?”

  “Well, let’s see—”

  “Peanuts! Him planted peanuts. I neber see so many peanuts. In cabe in Chad we got maybe altogedder five peanuts. My people worship little feller peanut. Now Norman got him more peanuts den de Kunchachagwa Pope. Make him nerbous to tink he got so many. If Mama only alibe to see …” His voice cracked and trailed off.

  “Norman—you’ve got to stop thinking like that. Your mother’s dead. She died when the tribe discovered fire.”

  “Sho, Norman know dat. Still, Mama very religious woman, very ortodox. Her stay in de temple all de day, make holy holy. Wouldn’t she be pleased to see her Norman wit all dem peanuts!”

  �
��She’d be very proud.”

  “Also—har, har—Norman in lub.”

  “What was that?”

  “Norman fall in lub.”

  “That’s wonderful, Norman. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Her—tee hee—her— No. Norman dassn’t say. Not ’llowed speak name ob female fo’ de marriage ceremony.”

  “Oh?”

  “I speak to she fadder do. Him ’gainst de marriage.”

  Dick could imagine what the prospect of a caveman in the family might do to a parent. “Well, sometimes these things happen,” he said soothingly. “Still, if the girl loves you—”

  “Dat’s jus’ whut Norman tell he sweetheart. She say she want to finish school.”

  “That isn’t unreasonable. If you both still feel this way after she graduates—”

  “Can’t wait much longer. Norman no chicken. Him be forty yar nex’ comet. An’ little girl just startin’ de kindergarten.”

  “You’ve fallen in love with a child in kindergarten?”

  “Otre temps, otre moeurs.”

  “Norman, that’s … You can’t—”

  “Gibson bwana prejudiced as de udder white man,” Norman said sourly.

  “Prejudiced? What’s prejudice got to do with it? … What other white man?”

  “Udder white man—de redneck. She fadder.”

  “The little girl’s white?”

  “Whut dat matter? After we married we go back to Chad. Whut dipperence color make in a cabe?”

  “Norman, you live in Arkansas! Listen to me. I want you to promise— Norman, listen to me. Listen to me, please.”

  “Norman got to go. Some fellers poundin’ at de cabin do’.” Gibson could hear it, an alarming Tattle and some confused shouting.

  “Norman?”

  But the line went dead.

  A newsbreak and a couple of commercials followed. Dick took the next call at seven minutes after three. It was from an Atlanta man who couldn’t sleep and called Dick to share with him the thought that had kept him up all night. He worked as an adjustor for an insurance company and was puzzled by the fact that people always told funny stories at lunch. “Why lunch? Why humor?”

  “Well probably you eat with your co-workers, and most of them are men, right?”

  “Yes, but you’re on the wrong track. These aren’t dirty jokes. Mostly they aren’t even jokes at all. They’re anecdotes, amusing things that happen to them in the business, or about odd people they used to know. Sure, sometimes people are smutty, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “My point is that you’re with your colleagues. It’s mostly an all- male company.”

  “That’s so, but just as often the secretaries come with us, or some of the girls from the typing pool. It isn’t just men. Why humor? Why lunch? That’s what I’m driving at.”

  “That’s what I’m driving at. You’re with colleagues. Isn’t it natural for people who know each other this way to talk about the oddball things that have happened to them?”

  “Sure, but why lunch? We see each other socially at other times and it isn’t like that. I see Schmidt. Schmidt’s probably my best friend. But when we go to parties or out to dinner, Schmidt’s a totally different person. We talk about issues, or the news, or maybe our kids. There isn’t all that laughing.”

  “I don’t understand. Does it bother you to hear a humorous story?”

  “I didn’t say it bothered me. I never said it bothered me. But don’t you see? Everything is funny; it’s always funny. Everybody in my department is an adjustor, but often we eat with underwriters or salesmen or computer personnel or even with the company physicians. We’re a big company, one whole floor is a clinic where people come to be examined for their policies. But it doesn’t make any difference if a man is a doctor or a salesman or an adjustor like myself. Whenever he speaks up at lunch it’s to tell a funny story or make some wisecrack. That’s the way it was with the last company I worked for, and the firm I was with before that when I was in another business. It’s universal.”

  “Well, if you enjoy these stories—”

  “Certainly I enjoy them. I laugh as hard as the next guy, but what is it? We’re adjustors. We see awful stuff. I mean, our nose is in it every day of the week. Probably the only time you ever saw an adjustor was when some guy sideswiped your car while it was parked outside your house. He looked at it and told you to go ahead and get it fixed. But that isn’t the half of it—it isn’t a tenth of it. Every day I see someone with his neck creamed or his leg torn off at the pocket, or his house up in flames and his kid third-degreed in her bedroom. You see pictures of accidents in the papers, but you don’t see these. They don’t show you the totals.

  “And the underwriters know what’s going on too. They know everything there is to know about casualty and percentages, and the docs the same. Either you’re realistic in the insurance business or you go under. Do you know that 39 percent of the people who apply for life insurance are uninsurable unless they pay some fantastic premium, and 7 percent are uninsurable no matter what the premium is? There isn’t a premium large enough they could pay to insure themselves. And they’d pay it too.”

  “Well, there’s your answer, then. You people see so much horror that you’ve got to have some sort of safety valve or you couldn’t take it. That’s why you tell each other funny stories.”

  “No! It’s the same in any business. It’s the same in your business. Don’t the announcers all kid around when you go to lunch?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Certainly. In every business. I used to be in the toy business before I went into insurance. It was the same there.”

  “Well, then, the pressures,” Dick Gibson said, genuinely interested now in the problem. “Or perhaps it’s the fact that it’s mid-day. The temperature is highest then. You’ve moved your bowels, you’re not tired out yet, you’ve got all your energy. You’ve—”

  “No. What is that? The temperature, your bowels? What is that, astrology? No. Why humor? I’m talking about good will—people wrestling to pick up checks or at least to leave the tip and the sky’s the limit, the world’s their oyster and good mood on them like the birthmark. No. No,” the caller said excitedly. “And all the fear that engines us gone, the personality seamless as brushstrokes on a painted wall. And to get as good as you give—the ears open and the heart as well. Lunch’s good democracy. The menu a ballot, you’re voting your appetite.”

  “Certainly,” Dick Gibson said, “that would put you in a good mood.”

  “What? Yes … But maybe a joke is a shyness, an anecdote no assertion and good will a finesse. I think maybe it’s strategy, a camouflage, some Asian nuance of delay. Sure. To miss profundity is to lose face.”

  “I’m glad I could help you.”

  “Well, you have. I think I’ll be able to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry to lose a listener.”

  “What? Oh. Yes. Ha ha. Why lunch? Why gags, humor, good will? Why can’t it always be lunchtime?”

  The voice cracked, trailed off, and the connection was broken. Dick took three more calls and signed off for the night.

  He left the studio and walked to the Fontainebleau where he garaged his car. Mopiani, one of the Negro night men, complimented him. “That was a good program, Dick. I listened on a ’68 Cadillac. Used both speakers. Drained the battery.”

  He got into his car and started up Collins Boulevard to the Deauville. He loved Miami Beach, as he admired and loved all excess. He was at home in inflation, and saw the bizarre luxury hotels along the strip as a unique and lovely manifestation. Air conditioning and paper bathing suits, celebrities, amphibious automobiles, the open bus-trains that pulled tourists up and down the shopping mall on Lincoln Road, marinas, eleven different varieties of bagel, the infinite quinellas of pancake combination in the delicatessens ( “Woolfie’s” and “Google’s” were his home cooking), glass-bottom boats, weather, Italian knit, sun-tan lotions and the parking problem. (Mopiani w
as only one of several personal attendants; indeed, he had never owned a car in his life and had purchased this one merely to have it parked.) He was visible in Miami Beach, a celebrity; he’d never been one before, not in this way. He was an intimate of bartenders, cigarette girls and wandering girl photographers (they still had them here; for all its modern patina, one of the Beach’s excesses was the past: thus, the entertainers were often older stars, the Tony Martins and Jimmy Durantes and Joe E. Lewises who were famous from a vintage of fame he had known as a boy). He enjoyed the vaguely North African sense of the place, its spanking whitewash and tiny Oriental-like shops. Though the vegetation was at first unreal to him—as though it too, like the bagel styles and lush, semi-kosher mood of the hotel kitchens, might have been imported—he had come to look upon palm trees as the very essence of tree, and to dismiss the familiar oaks and elms and maples of his past as spurious and faintly contrived. He knew beach boys, towel boys, the captains of fishing boats and their one-man crews, girl lifeguards, maître d’s, chambermaids, Cuban bookies, cops. And they knew him. To be a celebrity, he decided, was to be part of an intricately hierarchical staff, to know semi-secret passageways, backstairs, greenrooms, to have an inexhaustible supply of first names and exist placidly at last with one’s world, to belong to it as to a country club.

  He lived in the Deauville Hotel facing the Atlantic in a small celebrity suite which he got at a discount, and his pockets were always filled with Deauville matchbooks—changed regularly as the sheets each morning—a Vandyked cavalier, the hotel’s symbol, on the front cover. Though he was trying to give up smoking, for some reason he could not give up the matches, and when he offered a light it was always with a strange flourish that he tossed the matchbook on the table. There were Deauville matchbooks on top of the dash of his car, in his jackets, in his rooms, in the studio, everywhere, his small, semi-official litter. Similarly, he stuffed his pockets with the tiny, wrapped hotel soaps, using them as sachets, so that he always smelled faintly of Dial and Deauville. There were other things, cavalier-topped swizzle sticks— though he was not much of a drinker—and Deauville stationery on which he jotted down memos to himself and which he actually preferred for his business correspondence to the official WMIA letterhead. For some reason these souvenirs had become important to him; he did not know why.