A Confederacy of Dunces (19 page)

"Slowly," Ignatius said, extending his big toe downward with great caution. "Well, so it is. All right. When I have steadied myself, you may release your hold upon my body."

Ignatius was at last vertically atop the long table, holding the bundled bed sheet over his pelvis to hide from his audience the fact that during the process of being lifted, he had become somewhat stimulated.

"Friends!" Ignatius said grandly and lifted the arm that was not holding the sheet. "At last the day is ours. I hope that you have all remembered to bring your engines of war." From the group around the cutting table there issued neither confirmation nor denial. "I mean the sticks and chains and clubs and so forth."

Giggling in chorus, the workers waved some fence posts, broomsticks, bicycle chains, and bricks. "My God! You have really assembled a rather formidable and diffuse armory. The violence of our attack may surpass my expectations. However, the more definitive the blow, the more definitive the results.

My cursory inspection of your arms, therefore, confirms my faith in the ultimate success of our crusade today. In our wake, we must leave a sacked and pillaged Levy Pants, we must fight fire with fire."

"What he say?" one worker asked another.

"We shall storm the office very shortly, thereby surprising the foe when his senses are still subject to the psychic mists of early morning."

"Hey, Mr. R., pardon me," a man called out from the crowd.

"Somebody tell me you in trouble with a po-lice. Is that right?"

A wave of anxiety and uneasiness broke over the workers.

"What?" Ignatius screamed. "Where did you hear such slander? That is totally false. Some white supremacist, some upstate red-neck, perhaps even Gonzalez himself no doubt began that vile rumor. How dare you, sir. All of you must realize that our cause has many enemies."

While the workers were applauding him soundly, Ignatius wondered how that worker had learned of the mongoloid Mancuso's attempted arrest. Perhaps he had been standing in the crowd before the department store. That patrolman was the fly in everyone's ointment. However, the moment seemed to have been saved.

"Now this we will carry with us in the vanguard!" Ignatius shouted over the last sprinkled applause. He dramatically whipped from his pelvis the sheet, flapping it open. Among the yellow stains the word FORWARD was printed in high block letters in red crayon. Below this Crusade for Moorish Dignity was written in an intricate blue script.

"I wonder who been sleepin on that old thing," the intense woman with the spiritual bent, who was to be the leader of the choir, said. "Lord!"

Several other prospective rioters expressed the same curiosity in more explicitly physical terminology.

"Quiet now," Ignatius said, stomping one foot thunderously on the table. "Please! Two of the more statuesque women here will carry this banner between them as we march into the office."

"I ain puttin my hand on that," one woman answered.

"Quiet! Everyone!" Ignatius said furiously. "I am beginning to suspect that you people are not actually deserving of this cause. Apparently you are not prepared to make any of the ultimate sacrifices."

"How come we gotta take that old sheet with us?" someone asked. "I thought this suppose to be a demonstration dealin with wages."

"Sheet? What sheet!" Ignatius replied. "I am holding before you the proudest of banners, an identification of our purpose, a visualization of all that we seek." The workers studied the stains more intensely. "If you wish to simply rush into the office like cattle, you will have participated in nothing more than a riot. This banner alone gives form and credence to the agitation. There is a certain geometry involved in these things, a certain ritual which must be observed. Here, you two ladies standing there, take this between you and wave it thus with honor and pride, hands held high, et cetera."

The two women whom Ignatius indicated ambled slowly to the cutting table, gingerly took the banner with their thumbs and index fingers, and held it between them as if it were a leper's shroud.

"That looks even more impressive than I had imagined,"

Ignatius said.

"Don wave that thing around me, gal," someone said to the women, creating another ripple of giggles from the crowd.

Ignatius flipped his camera into action and aimed it at the banner and the workers. "Will all of you please wave your sticks and stones again?" The workers complied merrily.

Myrna would choke on her espresso when she saw this. "A bit more violently now. Brandish these weapons fiercely. Make faces. Scream. Perhaps some of you could jump up and down, if you don't mind."

They laughingly followed his directions, everyone, that is, but the two women who were sullenly holding the banner.

In the office Mr. Gonzalez was watching Miss Trixie bump into the door frame as she made her entrance for the day. At the same time he was wondering what the new and violent outburst from the factory meant.

Ignatius filmed the scene before him for a minute or two more, then he followed a post upward to the ceiling for what he imagined would be an interesting and rather recherché bit of cinematography suggesting aspiration. Envy would gnaw at Myrna's musky vitals. At the top of the post the camera focused upon several square feet of the rusted interior of the factory's roof. Then Ignatius handed the camera down to a worker and asked to be photographed. While the worker aimed the lens at him, Ignatius scowled and shook a fist, entertaining the workers greatly.

"All right now," he said benevolently when he had taken the camera back and flipped it off. "Let us control our riotous impulses for the moment and plan our stratagems. First, the two ladies here will precede us with the banner. Directly behind the banner comes the choir with some appropriate folk or religious melody. The lady in charge of the choir may choose the tune. Knowing nothing of your musical folkways, I shall leave the selection to you, although I wish that there had been time enough to teach all of you the beauties of some madrigal. I will only suggest that you choose a somewhat forceful melody. The remainder of you will compose the warriors' battalion. I shall follow the entire ensemble with my camera in order to record this memorable occasion. At some future date all of us may realize some additional revenues from the rental of this film to student organizations and other similarly appalling societies.

"Please remember this. Our first approach will be a peaceful and rational one. As we enter the office, the two ladies will carry the banner to the office manager. The choir will then form about the cross. The battalion will remain in the background until needed. Because we are dealing with Gonzalez himself, I suspect that the battalion will be called upon in short order. If Gonzalez fails to respond to the emotion of this spectacle, I shall call, 'Attack!' That will be the signal for your onslaught. Are there any questions?"

Someone said, "This a lotta shit," but Ignatius ignored the voice. There was a happy hush in the factory, most of the workers eager for the change of pace. Mr. Palermo, the foreman, appeared drunkenly between two of the furnaces for a moment and then disappeared.

"Apparently the battle plan is clear," Ignatius said when no questions were forthcoming. "Will the two ladies with the banner please take their positions over there by the door? Now the choir please form behind them and then the battalion." The workers formed rapidly, smiling and sticking one another with their engines of war. "Fine! The choir may now begin singing."

The lady with the spiritual bent blew a pitchpipe and the choir members began singing lustily, "Oh, Jesus, walk by my side, Then I always, always be satisfied."

"That really sounds rather stirring," Ignatius observed. Then he shouted, "Forward!"

The formation obeyed so rapidly that before Ignatius could call anything else, the banner had already passed through the factory and was rising up the stairs to the office.

"Halt!" Ignatius screamed. "Someone come help me off this table."

Oh, Jesus, you be my friend

Right, oh, yeah, right up till the end.

You take my hand

And I feel grand

Knowing you walking

Hearing me talking

I ain't complaining

Though maybe it's raining

When I'm with Jesus.

"Stop!" Ignatius called frantically, watching the last of the battalion file through the door. "Come back in here immediately."

The door swung closed. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the table. Then he swung around and, after a long while spent in maneuvering his extremities, managed to sit on the edge of the table. Noticing that his feet were swinging only a few inches from the floor, he decided to risk the jump. As he pushed himself free of the table and landed on the floor, the camera slid from his shoulder and hit the cement with a hollow, cracking sound. Disemboweled, its film entrails spilled onto the floor.

Ignatius picked it up and flipped the switch that was supposed to set it in motion, but nothing happened.

Oh, Jesus, you pay my bail When they put me in that old jail.

Oh, oh, you always giving A reason for living.

"What are those maniacs singing?" Ignatius asked the empty factory while he tried to stuff foot upon foot of film into his pocket.

You never hurt me,

You never, never, never desert me.

I never sinning

I always winning

Now I got Jesus.

Ignatius, trailing unwound film, hustled to the door and entered the office. The two women were stonily displaying the back of the stained sheet to a confused Mr. Gonzalez. Their eyes closed, the choir members were chanting compulsively, lost in their melody. Ignatius pushed through the battalion loitering benignly on the fringes of the scene toward the desk of the office manager.

Miss Trixie saw him and asked, "What's happening, Gloria?

What are all the factory people doing in here?"

"Run while you're able, Miss Trixie," he told her with great seriousness.

Oh, Jesus, you give me peace

When you keeping away them po-lice.

"I can't hear you," Miss Trixie cried, grabbing his arm. "Is this a minstrel show?"

"Go dangle your withered parts over the toilet!" Ignatius screamed savagely.

Miss Trixie shuffled away.

"Well?" Ignatius asked Mr. Gonzalez, rearranging the two ladies so that the office manager could see the lettering on the other side of the sheet.

"What does this mean?" Mr. Gonzalez asked, reading the banner.

"Do you refuse to help these people?"

"Help them?" the office manager asked in a frightened voice.

"What are you talking about, Mr. Reilly?"

"I am talking about the sin against society of which you are guilty."

"What?" Mr. Gonzalez's lower lip quivered.

"Attack!" Ignatius cried to the battalion. "This man is totally without charity."

"You ain give him a chance to say nothin," observed one of the discontented women holding the sheet. "You let Mr.

Gonzalez talk."

"Attack! Attack!" Ignatius cried again, even more furiously.

His blue and yellow eyes protruded and flashed.

Someone halfheartedly whizzed a bicycle chain over the top of the file cabinets and knocked the bean plants to the floor.

"Now look what you've done," Ignatius said. "Who told you to knock those plants over?"

"You say, 'Attagg’" the owner of the bicycle chain answered.

"Stop that at once," Ignatius bellowed at a man who was apathetically making a vertical slash in the DEPARTMENT

OF RESEARCH AND REFERENCE-I. REILLY,

CUSTODIAN sign with a pen knife. "What do you people think you're doing?"

"Hey, you say, 'Attagg,' " several voices answered.

In this lonesome place

You give me grace

Giving your light

Through the long night.

Oh, Jesus, you hearing my woe

And I never, I never, never gonna let you go.

"Stop that awful song," Ignatius shouted at the choir. "Never has such egregious blasphemy fallen upon my ears."

The choir ceased its singing and looked hurt.

"I don't understand what you're doing," the office manager said to Ignatius.

"Oh, shut up your little pussymouth, you mongoloid."

"We goin back to the factory," the spokesman for the choir, the intense lady, said angrily to Ignatius. "You a bad man. I believe a po-lice looking for you."

"Yeah," several voices agreed.

"Now wait a moment," Ignatius begged. "Someone must attack Gonzalez." He surveyed the warriors' battalion. "The man with the brick, come over here at once and knock him a bit about the head."

"I ain't hittin nobody with this," the man with the brick said.

"You probly got a po-lice record a mile long."

The two women dropped the sheet disgustedly on the floor and followed the choir, which was already beginning to file through the door.

"Where do you people think you're going?" Ignatius cried, his voice choked with saliva and fury.

The warriors said nothing and began to follow the choir and the two standard bearers out of the office. Ignatius waddled swiftly behind the warriors straggling in the rear and grabbed one of them by the arm, but the man swatted at him as if he were a mosquito and said, "We got enough trouble without gettin throwed in jail."

"Come back in here! We're not finished. You can get Miss Trixie if you want," Ignatius cried frantically to the disappearing battalion, but the procession continued to move silently and determinedly farther down the stairs into the factory. Finally, the door swung closed on the last of the crusaders for Moorish dignity.

*********

Patrolman Mancuso looked at his watch. He had been in the rest room a full eight hours. It was time to check his costume in at the precinct and go home. He had arrested no one all day and, in addition, he seemed to be catching a cold. It was chilly and damp in that booth. He sneezed and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't give. He shook it, fumbled with the lock, which appeared to be stuck. After a minute or so of rattling and pushing, he called, "Help!"