“Well, morale is good,” he observed and, as he did so, noticed for the first time a large signboard mounted between the sidewalk and the right-hand curb, very near the precipice. This board read:
WEST SIDE SEWER IMPROVEMENT PROJECT
Hon. Bob J. Gibbon, Mayor
Hon. C. Roy Gibbon, Ch. of Police
Hon. Claude Humbold, Sponsor
Mr. Splendor G. Mainwaring, Sanitary Engineer
Col. Carlo Rinehart (Ret.) President
Perhaps because of his proximity to so many Negroes, Reinhart had fallen into a strange mood: about the general situation, now that he had a fairly definitive view of it, he had lost all concern. We will also one day die, but who finds it possible seriously to worry about it? On the other hand, he was fascinated by such particularities as his name and grade.
“‘Reinhart’ is misspelled,” he told Splendor, but never said a word about being listed last. “Also that o should be a p, in the rank. I was a corporal, not a colonel, but I would be obliged to you if the whole line were repainted, leaving out any reference to my being an ex-serviceman, which is not apropos.”
“To emphasize that you were a Veteran was the idea,” said Splendor. “You know the publicity value of the term these days. ‘Veteran Robs Candy Store,’ ‘Veteran Bites Dog,’ and so on, in the headlines. They used to do the same thing with the designation ‘Negro,’ although not so much nowadays in reference to the sort of incident that any human being might engage in.”
“Well, that’s the point here,” Reinhart said. “It rather embarrasses me to be labeled that way…. You say dynamite? How did that come about?”
“About four feet below the surface we encountered solid rock,” Splendor explained. “This person who is a friend of the individual that calls himself the Maker, claimed to have been in demolition work in the Army and undertook to ‘loosen up the dig,’ as I believe he put it.”
“You just had some dynamite lying around?”
Splendor shrugged. “For all I know of those gentry, I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept a stock on hand for the detonation of bank vaults. They are very bad men, Carlo, but one must use what he is given, or progress becomes impossible.”
Reinhart breathed in slowly, so as not to absorb too much of the illuminating gas that he now could see bubbling candidly up through the murky waters.
“You really have a vision of aspiration and expanse, haven’t you?” he asked. “I don’t think I ever quite realized that before, Splendor. You really are an opportunist, in love with the possibilities of life—and that necessarily involves the occasional meanness I have observed in you. My friend, you have out-Reinharted Reinhart—you are all I ever wanted to be, and twice as vivid. Whether or not that is because you are a Negro is beside the point.”
“Why?” said Splendor, not defiant but authentically curious.
“Why, because that is something nobody can do anything about.”
Splendor looked dubious for quite a long time, not seeing the hand Reinhart extended towards him. When it did come to his attention, he seized it ebulliently as if it were a reward for his ingenuity and daring. But in fact Reinhart was bidding him goodbye.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll make it,” said the president. “Certainly I can do nothing more for you—or ever have done, for that matter. The debt is all the other way. By demonstrating your freedom from limitations, you have shown me a prisoner of mine.” He had begun sincerely enough, for he did admire Splendor, but as he continued to praise him he grew ever more false. There was a reason for this: the other Negroes were coming out of their initial shyness and moving near the two executives, and Reinhart yielded to an impulse to play to the crowd.
Splendor finally understood, and when he did, dropped Reinhart’s hand in resentment.
“You’re walking out on me? You’re showing the white feather?”
“Of course,” said Reinhart. “I have been trying to make clear to you that you no longer need me.”
Splendor caught his head in his hands. “I have never been more astonished in all my life.” He turned and stared dumbly into the pit. “What am I supposed to do about all this water, not to mention the escaping gas?”
Reinhart chuckled. “Splendor, in modern society there are agencies to take care of these incidentals. You simply call the gas company and then call the water company.”
The crowd let him limp through to the car, which had stayed sound and in full possession of its accessories.
Chapter 23
So long as he was in Splendor’s presence he had kept the faith, but now that the Gigantic caused the West Side rapidly to dwindle in the rear-vision mirror, Reinhart had to admit this latest debacle left him with no stomach for more. Outwitted, beaten up, and now he was liable for what might be the subsidence of the whole Negro district. It seemed always to be true of him that he was unsuccessful and responsible at the same time: unfair combination; Splendor for example invariably failed but could not be held responsible; Claude had responsibilities but succeeded. Civilian life was shit.
In his despair he had, without even thinking about it, strong-armed the Gigantic onto the state highway that left town by the northwest—the same route he and Gen had followed a half year before to go get married. This was another way of reminding himself that for a grown man to fail in business was also to fail in love, which the longer you are married gets farther and farther from the simple idea of lips on lips, or even penis in vagina, while still comprehending those. There are things like authority and who has it, and money likewise, and respect; and moral emasculation, rather more deadly than the physical version. No, he could not face Gen now, and her very condition made it worse: he would now actually be under an obligation to crack up when she was in labor—the world imposed upon the failure a definitive script giving him both dialogue and movements until further notice: bent back, sick eyes, apologetic noises interspersed with a sort of plaintive venom. Into what kind of trauma was born an infant through whose misty first vision moved a hung-over, defeated dad?
That is to say, as Reinhart tooled briskly along the concrete he was seriously considering knocking himself off, doing the so-called Dutch act, though he was well aware that it was no longer popular as a means of reclaiming honor, just as honor itself was no longer conspicuously in vogue, although more of it may be around than one suspects, sub-terraneously or at least in B movies, or perhaps disguised as something else more fashionable. He had at any rate to rely on Gen’s understanding when she got the news: greater love hath no man than to lay his life down for his self-respect. His son would then start off with an enormous advantage: “Poor devil, lost his father before he was born; no wonder he turned out delinquent.” Or: “Splendid fellow, made out wonderfully though having no dad to guide him.” Similar gains if the child were a girl—which he did not go into now because thinking of the male Samaritans who would aid a daughter might weaken his resolution to do the right thing by her: namely, remove himself.
And as to Genevieve, a dear person who deserved far better than he had ever delivered, she would prosper so marvelously as a widow that he wished awfully he could be around to see it. His Veteran’s insurance came to ten thousand simoleons, rather more than he could bring on the hoof. Her twenty-year-old behind draped in black, and ten grand to boot. He believed she loved him as is and would miss him truly, but she was hardly the sort to mourn forever, or to become what you might call unhinged even temporarily. He had always cherished her common sense, for obvious reasons. Yes, he just wished he could be around to see it.
“There you are,” said Reinhart to Reinhart, “you no sooner get an idea than you also think of the fake corresponding to it, and the latter is always vastly more attractive to you than the former. What you are planning at this moment is not a genuine suicide, any more than you looked forward to the digging of a genuine sewer, or wanted to be genuine friends with a genuine Negro. You certainly have an enormous distaste for reality.” So Reinhart berated
himself aloud, even as he made a U-turn and headed south towards the Ohio River.
“Well,” he said at last in answer, “I think that while what you say has a superficial justification, it is basically unfair. I have had occasion more than once in the past to sense in myself a certain creative talent. True, I don’t draw or sing or write verse, but I do manage to get involved in situations that seem to have artistic form and I do frequently feel an exaltation for which no other explanation would suffice than that I am something of a poet. That is, while suffering the most grievous disappointments I am inclined to rise above them and actually enjoy the spectacle.
“Now, as to your comments about fakery. My position on that is Platonic: every earthly condition or entity is but the pale shadow of the perfect fake that stands for it in heaven, or America, which are for all practical purposes synonymous. Therefore to be is human; to seem, divine.”
His other self made no immediate rejoinder, because he had reached a stretch of highway flanked by used-car lots whose owners in collusion with the police had put a traffic signal every hundred yards to arrest the flight of prospective buyers; and when he stopped at each of these, the other motorists who pulled alongside might have seen him talking to himself, a practice which though widespread on the streets of New York is frowned upon in the Middle West.
Thus inhibited in his dialogue—it was perhaps evidence of advancing age that he could not continue it without moving his lips—Reinhart turned as a person will to practicalities: he needed money on the one hand and on the other he had the car, the title to which had been transferred to Cosmopolitan Sewers, Ltd., of which he was legal president. Morally his case was weaker, for the Gigantic was essentially the property of Claude, and Claude had actually dealt squarely with him on the personal level ever since the organization of Cosmo, paid him generously and on time, given him the use of the house and car, and so on: in civilian life there was always this discrepancy between public and private.
But if he were to commit suicide, he needed a few dollars for necessary expenses, but didn’t want to be seen around home or bank. Ergo, he whipped the Gigantic off the highway and into one of the lots, driving between parallel lines of prewar chariots until he reached a hut that evidently constituted the office, for it wore a sign: PSYCHO SAM: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MY LUNACY AND BUY QUICK BEFORE I AM HAULED OFF TO THE HATCH!
The poor old Gigantic, cowed by these exhortations, mumbled to a stop. Reinhart had pretty well licked it anyway by his highhanded driving since leaving the West Side, so naturally he felt guilty about what he was ready to do now. “You weren’t the worst car in the world,” he said graciously to the heater-grille, which might be taken as its ear, and climbed out. Two men were pawing the gravel several cars down, and several others at the back of the lot, but no one appeared for him. He opened the office door and poked inside.
“Never,” said a sweat-shiny, catchup-faced man who continued to wear a felt hat though he sat behind a desk. “I’ll put your name on a list, brother, but don’t look for it to come up before you’re old and bald. So long.”
But Reinhart had already steeled himself for the unpleasant encounter that any kind of commerce seemed to turn out to be for him.
“How do you do,” he said. “If you are Psycho Sam, I want—”
The man developed an interesting combination of snarl and grin. “No sirree, brother, you don’t want nothing, not one iota. It’s what I want all the way. Me, Myself, and I are the only three fellas I pay any attention to nowadays. You know what ‘sellers’ market’ means? It means I got the merchandise what you want and you’re going to have to crawl to get it.”
The same kind of situation they had had in real estate, except that not even Claude had exploited it in this fashion. There must be something abominable inherent in the idea of cars, which are also used as lethal weapons on the great national holidays and have made more casualties than all the wars since the dawn of man—or however it is phrased by the newspaper hacks on July 5th.
“All right, then,” Reinhart said pleasantly. “Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll sell my 1941 Gigantic to Max the Maniac, next door.”
The red-faced guy rose from his chair and swept towards Reinhart in one fluid motion, as if he were being swung aboard ship by breeches buoy.
“Friend, whyn’t you say so?” He made as if to kiss Reinhart, but dodged at the last moment, pinched the slats in the little door-blind, glanced perfunctorily through the window, and cried: “Beautiful vehicle! You get our top price.”
Anticipating some difficulty with the registration, Reinhart started to explain: “You see, it’s a company car, and—”
“Uh-huh,” said Psycho Sam (if indeed it was he), “never you mind, big fellow, that automobile will be in Flaarida before they know it’s gone, and in South America next week, where we peddle that class-type car to rich Spiks for an arm and a leg, and they don’t complain, getting nothing from Detroit for the whole war and they got the wherewithal, raising coffee and such, nothing a greaser woont do for a Gigantic Flameburst Straight Eight, he would sell his old lady on the street. … I can take all you get. Forget about Maniac Max. He will hump you on the price and if you holler, blow the whistle to the cops.”
Reinhart got out his driver’s license and the registration. “I can prove this isn’t a hot car—”
Psycho unlocked a desk drawer, took from it a metal cashbox, unlocked that, and counted off eight 100-dollar bills. Stretching forward to poke them at Reinhart, he let go a long, low, half-muted fart, and said to himself, aloud: “I hear you talkin’.”
Reinhart suddenly understood he was getting a good deal only because Psycho believed him to be an auto thief (strange when you considered that Negroes usually figured him for a policeman), so he took the cash and insolently flipped the ignition key onto the desk, the way underworld figures do in the movies.
This however offended Psycho, who gave him a pissy look and rasped: “You could use some etiquette, brother.”
“Sorry, Psycho.”
“Let me set you straight about that, too: I’m Harry. There ain’t no Psycho. Just a name, get it? Kind of a come-on.”
“Yeah,” answered Reinhart, who with the cash in his pocket found his mood changed: essentially he hated this type of person. “Yeah, a come-on, but when a guy takes you up on it and wants to buy a car, you give him a bad time because it’s a seller’s market. What’s the idea, or are you in this line of work just because you’re sadistic?”
Harry pushed back his hat. “Who?” he asked. “I happen to be Lithuanian, but that ain’t neither here nor there. No, after all, get it, you want to get a guy in here inna first place, no? If you already give him the works on the signs—’Frig You, Jack, Keep Going’—that’s what he’ll do. No, first you pull him off the street with his balls in a uproar, then tell him go jerk hisself off. Get it? Nobody can hold up under that kinda tension. He’ll buy anything and kiss your dilly for it. Course it won’t work for the rest of your life now they got rolling in Detroit again. Couple of years and lots of cars, we go back to patting their rosy rumps. I don’t know what’s so hard to grab about that. You just stick to the merchandising, brother, and leave the thinking to us.”
The phone rang at that moment and he stuck his face into it. Reinhart left the lot on shank’s mare, first time he had walked in ages. He seemed already to have a blister when he passed Maniac Max’s, so in front of the next establishment, a wholesale house for tires, he sat on the pile of discarded whitewalls that made a fence around the place and put up his thumb at the traffic—though his billfold held eight hundred dollars and he could well have afforded a cab. But it was rather pansyfied, he thought, to run away in a taxi like an eloping debutante. Also he didn’t want so precise a record of his trip as a taxi driver would be likely to make.
His fellow men showed their usual disinclination to be serviceable, passing by with accelerators to the floor and noses towards heaven. And who could blame them? Reinhart himself would not have
stopped for Reinhart—you could get held up, beaten to a pulp, and flung into a culvert that way. He tried to look like something smaller than he was, scrooching down against the tire, but then of course his arms seemed longer, apish.
He had put on his reading glasses and was surveying the immediate area for a piece of cardboard on which he could letter MINISTERIAL STUDENT RETURNING TO SEMINARY, when a squeal of brakes lifted his heart.
It was a late, prewar Buick four-door, with one whole fender covered in red lead as a preparation for repainting: the front bumper had been taken off no doubt for the same reason, and the hubcaps as well; newspaper, held by draftsman’s tape, masked the back windows. The radio aerial flew an enormous hairy tail, the size a fox might grow if he were big as a pony.
The driver stuck his head out the right-hand window—to do which he did not have to slide as far as another might: his neck seemed unusually long.
“Come on, boy!”—actually he said, “‘mon, bwa!”
He wore sideburns that fell to his jawbone, a mustache thin as a sprinkling of cigarette ashes, and a sort of blue cowboy shirt with white two-headed-arrow piping over the breast pockets.
Reinhart caught the door as it was flung open, got in and—
“Watch yass,” warned his host, but too late, and he fell through empty space onto the floorboards: no right-hand seat. “I bought this machine off a nigger,” his friend went on, “and you know what he did to it—used it right up, lived, eat, sleeped, shit in it, never got out the door from the time he bought it to when he sold it to me. I’m cleaning it up, boy, and putting in a new rear end. You never seen a machine like I’m going to have. I’m going to cut her down like a racer and run her at Indianapolis. I’m going to rebore her block, and I’m going to drive two hundred miles an ar, and run them p’lice off the road. One of ‘em old boys stopped me yesserday, come up and put his hand right here on the winda, and I said: ‘You bear pull it back, boy, or I’ll break it off rat at the wrist.’ You bear believe he pulled it right back too, boy, or I would of done it. You goddam right I would of done it.” He clawed some hair out of his eyes and drove a quarter mile in low gear. Neither did the car have a muffler. With his behind on the floor, and the dashboard above his eyes, Reinhart felt as though he were being shot out of a cannon.