The Water-Method Man

  A momentous moment. Worshipful Lydia Kindle, adoring me - a man of my talents and tastes, big and unsnobbish enough to stoop to help the most lowly vender. A humanist comes into young Lydia's life! At this peak of glory, I am even not above lifting the showboard upright while the Glork fumes beside it, fumbling the button out of his pocket, murmuring 'Come on, Lid, we'll miss the game.'

  Then I see Fred Paff, hawkish concession sales head for Hawkeye Enterprises, cruising the end-zone gate. Seeing how things are selling, no doubt. And he spots me and my mauled board. And I'm not wearing my proper identification pin, and I am not girdled in my stunning yellow change apron.

  'I say, your boy's right, you know,' I tell Lydia quickly. 'Better get going or you'll miss the kickoff.'

  But her adoration is too great; she just gapes at me.

  'Go on!' I beg them, and the Glork takes Lydia's elbow.

  But it's too late; Fred Paff is upon us. I smell his approaching tweeds nearby; I hear his jowls flapping in the wind; he is athletically deodorized and powdered, sucking big-winded breaths beside me, robust, on the prowl.

  He booms, 'Trumper! So where's your Hawkeye pin, boy? Where's your change apron? And what in filthy hell has happened to your board?' I can't look at him as he flicks at the string of buttons trailing on the ground. He draws in his scented breath at the sight of that fine cloth strip that's been ripped. I simply can't talk. Fred Paff clomps on my shoulder. 'Trumper?' he says, almost brotherly. It's more than I can bear; he's fondling me like a wounded dog. He gropes in my parka pouch, pulls out the awful evidence - my yellow change apron and my ID badge, No. 501. 'Fred?' he says gently. 'Fred, what's wrong with you, boy?'

  'Ha?' cries the Glork. 'He's the vender!'

  And Paff asks, 'Fred? Do these people want to buy something? Aren't you selling today, Fred?'

  If only Lydia Kindle had hoo-roared at me too I could have stood it. If only she'd been the true compatriot of her Glork, I could somehow have borne up to this. But I felt her there, a sympathetic shiver beside me.

  She said, 'Oh, Mr Trumper. You shouldn't be ashamed. Some people have to work, you know, and I think it's very strong of you, really!'

  It's such stupid and innocent pity that hurts me.

  Paff says, 'My God, Fred, get hold of yourself.' Even Paff! That he should care about what's wrong. (In our orientation meeting he told us he looked out for all his 'boys', but I never believed he meant it!) It's too much.

  They're around me, Paff and Lydia, and out in front of my board is that leering Glork. Him I can understand! And behind him, I swear, is a gathering throng. Seeing this drama before the game, better than a half-time show. The crowd is thinking, after a crowd's fashion. Now if they would only put on something like this during the half. If only they displayed the venders, fed them to Iowa hogs, let them humbly try to defend themselves with their goofy snowboards - that would be genuine half-time entertainment!

  I bolt.

  I tackle my tray of wares and batter myself and my board into and over the wailing Glork. Off into the vile crowd, then; I shift the board, carrying it like a broad knife through the masses. I shift again; I bear it on my back, stooped and pitched forward; my shield protects me from rear attack. I see terror-struck faces loom up ahead of me, veer out of my charging path; insults are hurled after me. Sometimes my shield is struck or, more often, picked at. I am being picked clean from behind! I feel them like predatory birds, snaring a button here, a pennant there. There is a terrible jangle: all my cowbells are gone in a swoop.

  Rounding the last edge of the end-zone gate, I see - too late to avoid him - an awestruck campus cop. I can only lower my head; I hear his breath sucked right out of him, and I watch his blue face dipping away from me, floating down between my pumping knees. Somehow I avoid stepping on his chest badge. Running on, I wait for his bullet to pierce my shield and shatter my spine. But I'm safely at the home-team gate and nothing happens. Perhaps, I think with dread, my board decapitated him; perhaps, when I saw his head falling, it was falling unattached.

  I batter into the stadium concession room, sagging to my knees under the board. Someone is kind enough to lift it off me. It's No. 368, wearing his football tie. 'God! 501!' he says, looking at my bare board. 'You really cleaned up! Where was your stand?'

  Others mill around me. The head counter starts to tally up my board, determining sales and percentage. I'm too weak to explain. He discovers I've 'sold' all but one pennant, all but four of the big go hawks! buttons, every one of the little Iowa pins with the little gold footballs attached, and all my cowbells. He announces, then, that I've 'sold' more than three hundred dollars' worth of wares. He's tallying up the mathematical wonder which is to be my 'commission' when I hand over my actual earnings: $12.75.

  'I was picked clean,' I confess. 'They got me.'

  'They?' says 368, shocked.

  'The mob,' I groan, and struggle off my knees. 'Mad fans,' I tell them. They steady me; their concern destroys me.

  '501,' says 368, 'you mean they took all your things?' And I weakly gesture to my ragged board, and to my tattered, gravel-embedded knees.

  But feeling my wind return, I realize I should be moving along. Fred Paff will no doubt be here in a jiffy. There's a roar above me; kickoff time. Most of the other venders scatter; even 368, an avid fan, is tempted to leave me. In fact, I gesture that I'm all right, that he needn't stay to support me.

  'We've got to do something about this,' he mumbles, but his mind is really on the kickoff return. If I weren't so weary, I'd tell him that we must unionize all hawkers. I'd speak to him about profit sharing and the victimization of the proletariat. Give a primer to the man in the football tie! Freshman Marx! Hawkers of the world, unite!

  But at this moment, five yards deep in his own end zone, the Notre Dame kickoff and punt-return specialist - fleet No. 25 - receives the ball like a solid touch from a magic wand. And 368 says, 'We should have two men with every board.'

  'Then you'd have to split the commission,' says the head counter.

  'Hell, no,' says 368. 'You'd double the commission. Don't tell me someone's not making any money off this junk ...' No doubt 368 is a business major who picked up his football tie dirt-cheap.

  But this speculation is cut off. The stadium above us gives off an animal din. No. 25 of Notre Dame has burst up the middle, over his own 40, a very solid and gold-helmeted patron saint blocking in front of him. And our own 368 takes off down the sidelines of the stadium underground, heading for the nearest ramp, while the head counter dashes to a dungeonlike portal in the back of the concession room.

  Wishing I had the speed of 25 of Notre Dame, I make my timely escape. This time the traffic is heavier. The masses who've missed the kickoff are flooding the gates. A cross-body block on a soft man swaddled in blankets squirts me loose from the underground panic, out the press-box gate, as free as No. 25 of Notre Dame who now finds himself all alone, across midfield, one Iowa lineman lagging behind and nothing but the Iowa end zone in front of him. The hometown roar stifles to a death rattle and a shrill fringe cheer goes up from the rabid Catholics in the stands. The Fighting Irish Band sends out a bright green note.

  I simply run away, down toward the other end zone - away from where No. 25 is drawing first blood, away from where I suspect the campus cop lies headless, and where an army of ROTC volunteers is mustering to rout me out. I cross the intramural soccer field successfully, except for whacking my knees on the bumpers of all the parked cars and having to avoid the stare of the ROTC car-parker, wearing his suspicious eyes low, barely showing under his white MP helmet. Why do they wear 'MP' just to park a car?

  Then I'm weaving through the deserted upper campus, wending down to the Iowa River, past the appalling quiet university hospitals. In front of the Children's Hospital entrance, several farmers sprawl on the hoods and front fenders of their pickups, waiting for their wives and kids who've gone inside for this social service the university offers. Treating pigbite and miscarriages and co
untless strange animal diseases that somehow are communicated to the farmers and their families.

  I run blindly for an instant, struck with an awful, senseless image of Colm mauled by one of those demented sows who gobble up their own piglets.

  Past the quadrangle of boys' dorms now. I hear only one phonograph in operation, playing a Scarlatti harpsichord piece defiantly - harsher and more religious than shattered stained glass. Obviously not a football fan. There's no one to see me stop and listen, or see me take up my pace again when I hear steps behind me.

  They're scuffed steps, all tired out. Perhaps the upended campus cop, with his precarious head held by a sinew. Even so, he couldn't be as tired as I am. I stop. I wait for the steps coming up behind me and when a hand lights gently on my arm, I kneel; I touch my forehead to the sun-warmed cement in the dorm quadrangle and feel the Scarlatti play up and down my spine - as this hand does, too. I see one fine, fragile pair of legs. When the legs see that I'm looking at them, they draw together; two knees come down, like the bright cheeks of a baby's fine bottom. A weak hand tries to lift my head; I help. I lay my gravel-pocked chin in the hem of her skirt.

  And Lydia Kindle says, 'Oh, Mr Trumper,' in a sad little voice. And brightening her tone, she adds, 'Wie gehts dir jetzt? Hoffentlich gut ...'

  But I can hardly match her songster German. I revert to Old Low Norse. 'Klegwoerum,' I tell her thickly. She slips her cold, brittle hand under the collar of my parka, down the back of my neck, and squeezes as best as she can.

  Then, from the towering, near-empty dorms round us, I hear the harpsichord cut off. The last chord hangs above me so long that I half expect it to crash on both of us. I help myself and Lydia up, and hold her flush against me; there's so little thickness to her that I can feel her heartbeat at her spine. She lifts her young, wet face to me: such a fine-boned face. If I had a face that angular, I'd be afraid to roll over in my sleep, fearing I'd break off a piece. Yet she lifts her vulnerable face to me.

  My mustache doesn't bear such close scrutiny, so I kiss her quickly. She can't keep her lips still, so I back off, keeping her hand. When I start to walk her along, I pull her closer beside me. Down the boardwalk to the river, I feel her slight, sharp hip jab me; she tries to fit her angles and her springy step to my bearlike swaying. Over the river and into town; after wordless practice, we finally walk well together.

  I see our reflection in the storefront windows. We are superimposed over a mannequin with flowered panties and a matching bra, a purse on her arm. Then our image changes. See the next frame; we are superimposed, over the face of a sullen beer drinker, over the pale neon of a flashing pinball machine, over the heavy back of the pinball player, who appears to be furiously mounting the machine. Next frame: we are superimposed over nothing at all - over a dark vacant storefront window, with only a sign in the bottom corner of our image. The sign says: to let. I've read it twice before I realize I've stopped walking and am aiming our faces at this storefront glass. Her face and mine, close together. She looks surprised at herself, but happy.

  But see me! My hair is wild, my eyes are mad, my mouth is uncontrollably grinning; my face is a grimace, as tight-skinned and as blotchy as a clenched fist. Behind our faces a small crowd slows and gathers, pausing just long enough to squint into this storefront, to see what's caught our eyes; they hurry on as soon as they see our unmatched faces - practically bolting away, as if my askew features scare them.

  'I can see you anytime,' says Lydia Kindle, speaking down to the sidewalk, 'Just you tell me when.'

  'I'll call you.'

  'Or you can give me a note,' she says, '... in the language lab.'

  'Sure, a note,' I say, thinking: Jesus! Notes in the language lab?

  'Or anything.'

  'Sure, anything,' I say, and she fidgets a moment, waiting for me to take her hand again.

  But I don't. I manage a smile - a dissected face in the storefront, with a grin as convincing as a skeleton's. Then I watch her swish off the curb, dally to the crosswalk, turning to give me a wave; I watch the window glass and see me raise my arm stiffly, from the elbow, as if the wires which help me to bend are somehow overwound or crossed.

  Then I dally along behind her, pretending aloofness to the proud flick of her rump. But I notice people staring at my knees, and when I stoop to wipe off the tatters, the blood and gravel, I lose sight of Lydia.

  Oh, sympathy and comfort. It's a queer thing that when you're given a little, you only want a lot.

  Because I went home to Biggie and caught her stooped in the hall outside the bathroom door, flopping braless in one of my T-shirts, crammed into a pair of my Levis, so tight on her that she couldn't do up the fly. Colm played in the hallway between us, intent on smashing together two trucks. And Biggie, rolling a pail of ammonia cleanser out the bathroom door, caught me looking at her as if her strength at that moment had overcome me and left me gaping at her as if she were some animal, ugly and scary and able to eat me whole.

  'What are you gawking at?' she asked.

  'Nothing, Big,' I said. But I was aware of the vision of myself in the storefront window and couldn't meet her eyes.

  'Well, I'm sorry if I don't look pretty enough for you,' she said, and I winced. She advanced on me, down the hall, prodding the ammonia pail along with her foot, having to bend her body to do this and sending one of her boobs askew - one swung out at her side while the other rode high and straight at me. As if I wasn't already intimidated enough.

  She said, 'Bogus? What's wrong with you, anyway? Did they call off the game?' She lifted my face up with her broad hand.

  Then I saw her mouth go slack, and at first I thought it was the sight of my storefront face that shocked her. Not recognizing, at first, that it was an angry look she gave me, and not tasting - until just that moment, with my tongue licking over my dry lips - Lydia Kindle's pale-orange lipstick at the corners of my mouth and on the bristles of my mustache: tangerine love.

  'You bastard!' said Biggie, and brought up from the pail a soggy cleaning rag, first swatting my face with it, then wiping it smartly across my mouth. Perhaps it was the ammonia that started my eyes watering, with those fumes so strong under my nose.

  I blubbered, 'I lost my job, Big.' She gaped at me and I repeated, 'I lost my job, Big. I lost that fucking job ...' And I felt myself dropping down to my raw knees, brought to them, I felt, too many times in just one day.

  Biggie started to brush by me, but I caught her around the hips and hugged her, repeating over and over, 'I lost the job, the job!' But she snapped her knees up and caught my chin; I bit my tongue and felt the sweet blood trickle down my throat. I grabbed her again, looking for her face and found her suddenly close to me, down on her knees too, and saying in her quiet, calm way, her other way, 'Bogus? What was the job to you, Bogus? I mean, it was a bad job, wasn't it? And it was never bringing in enough so that we'll notice it's gone ... Right, Bogus?'

  But that ammonia is strong stuff. I was beyond the hope to talk; I could only grab the waist of Biggie's T-shirt to dab my gory mouth. Biggie pressed me against her; she's so solid I hardly made a dent, but I found my usual spot, hugged between bosom and thigh. I let Biggie croon to me there in her low, flat-sung voice, 'It's all right, Bogus. Now really, it's OK. It's all right ...'

  Perhaps I would have contested the point with her if I hadn't seen Colm, all through with bashing trucks and coming our way - quite curious to know what sort of helpless creature his mother was mothering now. I hid my face against Biggie and felt Colm lightly poking my back and ears and feet to try to find exactly where I must have hurt myself. For the life of me, I can't say for sure where it was.

  'I've got a present for you ...' Biggie's rich voice drifts down the hall, comes back, sinks in. She hands it over. A job-losing present for the oddly unfaithful! Colm paws at the label while I translate the Hungarian. From Milo Kubik's Peoples Market one precious eight-ounce tin of my favorite Ragout of Wild Boar in Medoc Sauce. Milo Kubik, the refugee gourmet. He esca
ped from Budapest with memories, and actual tins of this and other ragouts. Thank God he made it, I say. I know that if I had been in Budapest - a bottle of boar-marinade in my pocket, a snifter of paprika in my crotch - I would have been caught.

  12

  Do You Want to Have a Baby?

  TULPEN WENT HOME early, but Bogus and Ralph Packer stayed late at the Christopher Street studio, playing with the sound track of Down on the Farm.

  The hippie commune called the Free Farm had taken over about four acres of undeveloped land belonging to a local liberal arts college. They planted a garden and invited real farmers in the area to come share their harvest and plant gardens of their own. The college had several hundred acres of undeveloped land. The college authorities asked the Free Farmers to leave, but the Free Farmers said they were simply using unused land. Unused land was a crime against humanity; all over Vermont there are farmers without enough land. The Free Farmers would stay on college land until the pigs threw them off.

  Ralph screened some new shots of the latest developments; Bogus played with the sound.

  (Medium shot; no sync sound; interior, day; general store. The Free Farmers are shopping, fanning out through the store aisles, picking up things and putting them back, as if these foodstuffs and hardware were rare gifts)

  NARRATOR (Bogus, voice-over): The Free Farmers buy wheat germ, honey, brown rice, milk, oranges, apple wine, cigarette paper, corncob pipes, Camels, Marlboros, Winstons, Luckies, Salems ...

  (Medium shot; sync sound; exterior day; general store. The Free Farmers mill around their psychedelic Volkswagen panel truck parked outside the store. The boy holding the grocery bag has long hair tied back in a ponytail; he wears a pair of farmer's overalls. He is pawing around in the bag, pulling things out)

  BOY: Whose Salems? (He holds up the pack) Come on! Who got the Salems?

  Then they view the scene with the president of the local college. The president is useful to the movie because he blatantly foreshadows what's going to happen.

  (Medium shot, moving; no sync sound; exterior, day; college campus. We follow the college president across the parking lot, up a path through the campus mall. He is sharply dressed; he nods graciously to several passing students)