A Confederacy of Dunces (22 page)

George, who was wandering up Carondelet with an armload of packages wrapped in plain brown paper, heard.the cry and went up to the gargantuan vendor.

"Hey, stop. Gimme one of these."

Ignatius looked sternly at the young boy who had placed himself in the wagon's path. His valve protested against the pimples, the surly face that seemed to hang from the long well-lubricated hair, the cigarette behind the ear, the aquamarine jacket, the delicate boots, the tight trousers that bulged offensively in the crotch in violation of all rules of theology and geometry.

"I am sorry," Ignatius snorted. "I have only a few frankfurters left, and I must save them. Please get out of my way."

"Save them? Who for?"

"That is none of your business, you waif. Why aren't you in school? Kindly stop molesting me. Anyway, I have no change."

"I got a quarter," the thin white lips sneered.

"I cannot sell you a frank, sir. Is that clear?"

"Whatsa matter with you, friend?"

"What's the matter with me? What's the matter with you? Are you unnatural enough to want a hot dog this early in the afternoon? My conscience will not let me sell you one. Just look at your loathsome complexion. You are a growing boy whose system needs to be surfeited with vegetables and orange juice and whole wheat bread and spinach and such. I, for one, will not contribute to the debauchery of a minor."

"Whadda you talking about? Sell me one of them hot dogs. I'm hungry. I ain't had no lunch."

"No!" Ignatius screamed so furiously that the passersby stared.

"Now get away from me before I run over you with this cart."

George pulled open the lid of the bun compartment and said,

"Hey, you got plenty stuff in here. Fix me a weenie."

"Help!" Ignatius screamed, suddenly remembering the old man's warnings about robberies. "Someone is stealing my buns! Police!"

Ignatius backed up the cart and rammed it into George's crotch.

"Ouch! Watch out there, you nut."

"Help! Thief!"

"Shut up, for Christ's sake," George said and slammed the door. "You oughta be locked up, you big fruit. You know that?"

"What?" Ignatius screamed. "What impertinence was that?"

"You big crazy fruit," George snarled more loudly and slouched away, the taps on his heels scraping the sidewalk.

"Who wants to eat anything your fruity hands touched?"

"How dare you scream obscenities at me. Someone grab that boy," Ignatius said wildly as George disappeared into the crowds of pedestrians farther down the street. "Someone with some decency grab that juvenile delinquent. That filthy little minor. Where is his respect? That little guttersnipe must be lashed until he collapses!"

A woman in the group around the mobile hot dog said, "Ain't that awful? Where they get them hot dog vendors from?"

"Bums. They all bums," someone answered her.

"Wine is what it is. They all crazy from wine if you ast me.

They shouldn't let people like him out on the street."

"Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand," Ignatius asked the group, "or are you mongoloids really talking about me?"

"Let him alone," someone said. "Look at them eyes."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" Ignatius asked viciously.

"Let's get outta here."

"Please do," Ignatius replied, his lips quivering, and prepared another hot dog to quiet his trembling nervous system. With shaking hands, he held the foot of red plastic and dough to his mouth and slipped it in two inches at a time. The active chewing massaged his throbbing head. When he had shoved in the last millimeter of crumb, he felt much calmer.

Grabbing the handle again, he shoved off up Carondelet Street, waddling slowly behind the cart. True to his promise to make it around the block, he turned again at the next corner and stopped by the worn granite walls of Gallier Hall to consume two more of the Paradise hot dogs before continuing on the last leg of his journey. When Ignatius turned the final corner and saw again the PARADISE VENDORS, INC., sign hanging out over the sidewalk of Poydras Street at an angle, he broke into a relatively brisk trot that brought him panting through the doors of the garage.

"Help!" Ignatius breathed pitifully, bumping the tin hot dog over the low cement sill of the garage.

"What happened, pal? I thought you was supposed to stay out a whole hour."

"We're both fortunate that I have returned at all. I am afraid that they have struck again."

"Who?"

"The syndicate. Whoever they are. Look at my hands."

Ignatius shoved two paws into the man's face. "My entire nervous system is on the brink of revolt against me for subjecting it to such trauma. Ignore me if I suddenly go into a state of shock."

"What the hell happened?"

"A member of the vast teen-age underground besieged me on Carondelet Street."

"You was robbed?" the old man asked excitedly.

"Brutally. A large and rusty pistol was placed at my temples.

Actually, was pressed directly upon a pressure point, causing the blood to stop circulating on the left side of my head for quite a while."

"On Carondelet Street at this time of day? Nobody stopped it?"

"Of course no one stopped it. People encourage this sort of thing. They probably derive some sort of pleasure from the spectacle of a poor and struggling vendor's being publicly humiliated. They probably respected the boy's initiative."

"What did he look like?"

"A thousand other youths. Pimples, pompadour, adenoids, the standard adolescent equipment. There might have been something else like a birthmark or trick knee. I really can't recall. After the pistol had been thrust against my head, I fainted from lack of circulation in the brain and from fright.

While I was lying in a heap on the sidewalk, he apparently ransacked the wagon."

"How much money did he get?"

"Money? No money was stolen. After all, there was no money to steal, for I had not been able to vend even one of these delicacies. He stole the hot dogs.

"Yes. However, he apparently didn't take them all. When I had recovered, I checked the wagon. There are still one or two left, I think."

"I never heard of nothing like this."

"Perhaps he was very hungry. Perhaps some vitamin deficiency in his growing body was screaming for appeasement. The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts? I see nothing unusual in the matter."

"You're full of bullshit."

"I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society. The youth, crazed by suggestive television programs and lascivious periodicals had apparently been consorting with some rather conventional adolescent females who refused to participate in his imaginative sexual program.

His unfulfilled physical desires therefore sought sublimation in food. I, unfortunately, was the victim of all of this. We may thank God that this boy has turned to food for an outlet. Had he not, I might have been raped right there on the spot."

"He took all but four," the old man said, peering down into the well in the hot dog. "That son of a bitch, I wonder how he could carry all them hot dogs away."

"I really don't know," Ignatius said. Then he added indignantly, "I awakened to find the lid of the cart open. Of course no one would help me up. My white smock stamped me as a vendor, an untouchable."

"How about making another try?"

"What? In my present condition, do you seriously expect me to take to the streets again and hustle? My ten cents is going to be deposited in the hands of a St. Charles streetcar conductor.

The remainder of the day

I intend to spend in a hot tub trying to recapture some semblance of normality."

"Then how about coming back tomorrow, pal, and trying it again?" the old man asked hopefully. "I really need vendors."

Ignatius pondered the proposal for some time, scrutinizing the scar on the old man's nose and belching gassily. At least he would be working. That should satisfy his mother. The work offered little supervision and harassment. Ending his meditations with a clearing of the throat, he belched, "If I am functioning in the morning, I shall perhaps return. I cannot predict the hour at which I will arrive, but, more or less, I imagine that you can expect to see me."

"That's fine, son," the old man said. "Call me Mr. Clyde."

"I shall," Ignatius said and licked at a crumb that he had discovered in the corner of his mouth. "Incidentally, Mr.

Clyde, I shall be wearing this smock home to prove to my mother that I am employed. You see, she drinks rather heavily, and she needs reassurance that money from my labors will be forthcoming in order that her supply of spirits won't be cut off.

My life is a rather grim one. One day I shall perhaps describe it to you in detail. For the moment, however, you must know a thing or two about my valve."

"Valve?"

"Yes."

Jones was blindly running a sponge along the bar. Lana Lee had gone on a shopping trip, her first one in a long time, locking the cash register loudly and warningly before leaving.

After he had wet the bar a little, Jones tossed the sponge back into the bucket, took a seat in a booth, and tried to look at the latest Life Darlene had given him. He lit a cigarette, but the cloud of smoke made the magazine even more invisible. The best reading light in the Night of Joy was the small one on the cash register, so Jones went over to the bar and flipped it on.

He was just beginning a study in-depth of a cocktail party scene in a Seagram's V.O. advertisement when Lana Lee pushed into the bar.

"I thought I shouldn't leave you in here alone," she said, opening a bag and taking out a box of classroom chalk which she put in the cabinet under the bar. "What the hell are you doing with my cash register? Get back on my floor."

"I already finish on your flo. I turnin into a expert on flos. I think color cats got sweepin and moppin in they blood, it come natural. It sorta like eatin and breathin now to color peoples. I bet you give some little color baby one-year-old a broom in he han, he star sweeping his ass off. Whoa!"

Jones returned to the advertisement while Lana locked the cabinet again. Then she looked at the long tracks of dust on the floor that made it look as if Jones had plowed rather than mopped it. There were linear streaks of clean floor for the furrows, and linear streaks of dust, the hillocks. Although Lana did not know it, this was Jones's attempt at some subtle sabotage. He had some larger plans for the future.

"Hey, you there. Take a look at my goddam floor."

Jones reluctantly looked through his sunglasses and saw nothingness.

"Whoa! You got a fine flo. Ooo-wee. Everthin in the Night of Joy firs rate."

"You see all that crap?"

"For twenny dollar a week, you gotta expec a little crap. The crap star disappearin when the wage going up around fifty or sigsty."

"I want performance when I put out money," Lana said angrily.

"Listen, you ever try living on my kinda wage? You think color peoples get grossries and clothin at a specia price? What you thinkin about half the time you sitting up here playin with your penny? Whoa! Where I live, you know how peoples buy cigarette? Them peoples cain affor a whole pack, they buy they cigarette separate two cent apiece. You think a color mother got it easy? Shit. I ain foolin. I gettin pretty tire of bein vagran or tryina keep my ass alive on this kinda wage."

"Who took you off the streets and gave you a job when the cops was about to lock you up for vagrancy? You might think about that sometime when you're goofing off behind them goddam glasses."

"Goofin off? Shit. Goofin off ain cleanin up this motherfucking cathouse. They somebody in here sweepin and moppin up all the shit your po, stupor customer drippin on the flo. I feel sorry for them po peoples comin in here thinkin they gonna have theyself some fun, probly gettin knockout drop in they drink, catching the clap off the ice cube. Whoa! And talkin about puttin out money it seem to me maybe you be puttin out a little more now that your orphan frien stop coming aroun. Since you cut out the chariddy, maybe you slip me some of the United Fun money."

Lana said nothing. She clipped the receipt for the box of chalk to her ledger book so that she could list it in the column of itemized deductions that always accompanied her income tax returns. She had already bought a used globe of the world.

That, too, was stored in the cabinet. All she needed now was a book. When she saw George next, she would ask him to bring her one. He must have some kind of book left over from the days before he had dropped out of high school.

Lana had taken some time to assemble the little collection of props. While the plainclothesmen had been coming in at night, she had been too worried and preoccupied to attend to this project for George. There had been the major problem of Darlene, the vulnerable point in Lana's wall of protection against undercover policemen. But now, the plainclothesmen had gone away as suddenly as they had appeared. Lana had spotted each one as soon as he had entered, and with Darlene safely off the stools and practicing with her bird, the plainclothesmen had nothing to go on. Lana had seen to it that they were actively ignored by everyone. It took experience to be able to spot a cop. But a person who could spot a cop could also avoid a lot of trouble.

There were only two things to be settled. One was getting the book. If George wanted her to have a book, he could get it for her himself. Lana wasn't about to buy a book, even a used one.

The other was getting Darlene back on the stools now that the plainclothesmen were gone. Having someone like Darlene on commission was better than having her on salary. And what Lana had seen Darlene do on the stage with the bird told her that, for the moment, the Night of Joy might do better if it decided not to cater to the animal trade.

"Where's Darlene?" Lana asked Jones. "I got a little message for her and that bird."

"She telephone and say she be in sometime this afternoon to do some more rehearsin," Jones said to the advertisement he was researching. "She say she takin her bird to the veternaria firs, she think it losin some of its feather."