A Walk on the Wild Side (18 page)

And every bughouse had one little usurer hidden away in a cell all his own where he did nothing but figure percent with his fingernail on the wall, day after day after day.

In less time than it takes to say God with your mouth open, the go-getting door-to-door canvasser became the backbone of the American economy. He went to work for Realsilk Hose or Hoover Vacuum long enough to go-get himself a dozen pair of Realsilk hose or a second-hand sweeper by stealing it part by part. There was also small change, milk money and such, left lying about on shelves and sills while housewives studied one proposition or another. Change-snatching too came under the head of go-getting, for hundreds subsisted upon it week in and week out.

However, the secretary of the Federation of Labor pointed out, Business was resisting further decline.

Self-reliance for the penniless and government aid to those who already had more than they could use was the plan. But park benches were wet of a morning whether it rained or no; and it was possible to tire even of bananas.

Still and all times weren’t as hard as some people grew fond of pretending. All that had happened really was a withdrawal from abnormal prosperity with business progressing on a downward grade toward new planes of normality and increasing equalization of opportunity. In short, we were going full steam ahead. Only this time one exciting opportunity was precisely as good as the next exciting opportunity. Which was to say, simply, that nobody got paid any more.

The pimps alone didn’t seem to catch on that the country was progressing downward to new rates of normality. They had been progressing downward for some time without even knowing that they were in style. Now of a sudden they discovered themselves with more girls than beds to put them on. Scarcely-twenties looking for a daddy, any old daddy who’d tell them where to lie down. Landlords and landladies passed them on to the cabbies and the cabbies passed them on to the pimps. It was then, between prostitution and Prohibition, that the ancient color line was finally breached.

Negro bellboys had gained a virtual monopoly on the delivery of illicit alcohol and had found that white male guests either wanted a woman with the bottle or a bottle with the woman. This errand boys’ work evolved into soliciting. Immediately, he looked with scorn upon his own women. Like the Negro policeman, the Negro ponce was harder on his own people than was the white pander.

He saw now at first hand, that what his Mama had told him wasn’t true after all: that ‘good’ white folks never acted like bad black ones. For he saw men and women with the best names in town, the do-right names, howling like wolves in the Saturday stews, panties on the bedpost and pants on the floor, yet knew Do-Right Daddy would be back with his family, come Sunday morning, in the pew with the best name in town.

The Negro began losing his awe of the white women there and then. He gave her the choice of moving over or being turned in to the law. The errand boy became an informer as well as solicitor. Times weren’t as bad, he felt, as the papers made out.

Everyone was out soliciting in one commodity or another. Everyone was pecking somebody else’s door. The whole town was out pecking, nobody stayed home to buy. Either you rapped doors on commission or you organized a chance of fools even sillier than yourself into crews and took your commission out of theirs. And since theirs was purely theoretical, it followed yours must be theoretical too.

If, for example, you swindled a housewife into signing for delivery of two pounds of coffee twice a week for twelve weeks, you received two theoretical dollars for perpetrating the swindle. Actually, however, you had swindled her for nothing, because the driver accredited himself with the order – ‘that party changed her mind. You know how women are,’ he advised the door-to-door man.

The driver in turn was victimized by the device of deducting two dollars from his regular salary in lieu of that same housewife’s deuce. By the time that the deuce had found its way from wife to owner’s pocket, there wasn’t a man on the street crew who had been on it the week before.

Dove Linkhorn, now in a seersucker suit and sea-green tie, stood on the corner of Calhoun and Magnolia. That here stood a man far above the blue jean and Bull Durham class was plain to be seen, for he was smoking a
Picayune
. Indeed, he lacked only something to sell to start making his own way down the Ladder of Success as fast as the next ambitious boy. So when he saw men encircling someone or something down the street he hurried there as fast as his butter-colored shoes could make steps, in hope that someone was throwing a fit.

But all it was was a little round man with something glistening in his hand. Dove elbowed in to see what glistened so nicely.

Cawfee pot.

Hello, pot.

Shor a purty old pot.

‘Wreneger’s the name,’ the little round man was telling his crew, ‘but you boys call me plain old “Smiley” because that’s what
all
my goodbuddies call me. And you know what I tell my goodbuddies? I tell them, “Goodbuddies, if you aint sellin’ you just aint tryin’,”
that’s
what I tell my goodbuddies. And that’s what I’m tellin’ every one of you,’ cause you all my goodbuddies too.’

Little old red ’n green cawfee pot. Well I be dawg. Bet you make right good cawfee.

‘The idea aint to see how many doors you can rap of a morning –
that
aint sellin’. That aint even tryin’. If you only rap two doors a whole morning and sell both,
then
you’re tryin’.’

I had me a cawfee pot like you, cawfee pot, I’d know where to get the chicory for you.

‘Heed the housewife’s woes, boys. Give ear to her trials and little cares. Make her joys your joys, her tears your tears. If you listen long enough sooner or later she’s going to ask, “Young man, whatever is that contraption in your hand?”’

‘Look like a cawfee pot to me,’ Dove helped the man out.

‘Thank you, Red. You work with me. The rest of you men split up two to a block, one down one side and one down the other and meet me back here at noon. If you aint sellin’ you just aint tryin’, all you good old goodbuddy buddies.’

‘Dirt-eatin’ buggers, every one,’ Smiley assured Dove the moment they’d scattered. ‘Don’t you think
I
know what they’re up to? Got a pencil and a receipt book so they’re going to make out five or six phony orders with addresses of empty lots ’n then go drink derail in Lafayette Square thinkin’ Old Dominion pays off on
their
lousy word.’ He banged Dove’s big back good-naturedly – ‘They’ll find out better soon enough, won’t they goodbuddy?’

‘They sure will, mister,’ Dove agreed gleefully.

‘That’s why I was so careful about choosing you,’ Smiley grew serious. ‘I told myself, “There now is one face I can truly trust.”’

‘I truly trustes you too, Mister,’ Dove replied, feeling happier by the minute.

‘I want you right beside me while I pitch, Red. Because when you pitch for Old Dominion you’re pitchin’ for the red, white and blue!’

‘Mister,’ Dove stopped short to offer Smiley his hand, ‘you’re talkin’ about
my
team now!’

Smiley shook perfunctorily. He wasn’t used to being taken literally, it made him unsure of himself. ‘The first thing to remember, son, is our own Confederate dead. When the housewife asks you how much coffee does she have to buy before the pot is legally redeemed – some are sharper than you might expect – tell her you’re J. E. B. Stuart’s grandson and your daddy is dying in Memphis. Tell her anything
except
that she has to take fifty pounds before she owns the pot. If she wants to know what percent of chicory we use say something about Chancellorsville.’

‘I’LL SAY I WORK FOR OLD DOMINION!’ Dove cried with so genuine a pride that Wreneger, one of those men who like to say ‘It can’t get hot enough for me,’ felt curiously wilted.

‘Stand to one side, son, I’ll show you how it’s done,’ he invited Dove into the shade of a small unpainted porch, allowing him to guard one of the pots.

‘We aint buying no coffee pot, mister,’ the housewife assured Smiley the moment she saw the hardware in his hand.

Smiley fixed his face as if to eat mush out of a churn. ‘It’s not a pot, Madam. And it’s strictly not for sale. It’s a French Dripolator and it’s a goodwill gift, no strings attached, from Old Dominion to you. Take it. It belongs to you.’

‘I’m greatly obliged, but we already got a pot.’ The woman’s eyes shifted to the lopsided figure in the yellow-knob shoes.

‘Jeb Stuart’s grandson!’ Dove came to attention.

‘At ease,’ Smiley ordered below his breath and hurried into his pitch. ‘Madam, this here genuine French Dripolator is shortly goin’ on the market nationally for three-dolla-eighty-five cents with a national campaign behind it. What we need now is kindly folks who won’t be selfish about it when they find they got the best cup of coffee in town. The kind who’ll want to share with their neighbors and spread the word about our offer. That’s the friendly sort of thing is going to give our national campaign a headstart – I said
at ease
 – of course if you don’t care to cooperate I’m sure the lady next door will be interested.’

She’d sooner risk the black death than have her next-door neighbor own something she didn’t. Dove watched her sign for receipt of the pot wistfully.

‘Just a mere formality,’ Smiley explained the need of her signature to the woman, ‘so’s the company won’t think I sold it to my wife.’ Even to Dove the laugh that followed sounded hollow.

The fraud consummated, Smiley handed Dove a pencil, receipt book and pot. ‘But don’t let go of that thing till you got that signature,’ was his parting warning. And off he went to lie in the shade and dream up new ways to beat Old Dominion.

Dove was relieved that his goodbuddy hadn’t asked him if he knew how to use the pencil. It was real nice to have it to carry behind his ear all the same.

He came to an intersection where one road led to town and the other away. The town road was festooned, street lamp to street lamp, with welcoming pennants; it was wide and newly paved. The other was lampless and pennantless and plainly led nowhere at all. Without hesitation Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go.

Shuffling loosely along in his proud bright shoes, occasionally tucking in his sea-colored tie, he came to an iron-wrought fence where a Negro woman was shearing a bush; and waited in hope she would look up and ask, ‘How do I get a pot like that?’

But all she did was study him, shears in hand, as if Old Dominion might have sent him out to rape and rob her and she was nicely put together at that. He shifted the pot to his other hand. It was hanging so heavy he scolded it, ‘Pot, you give me the wearies.’ And his shoes gave him such a punishing pinch, as though they were on the side of the pot.

He came to a four-story tenement built flush to the broken walk to get the last inch of space, where another Negro girl, her face still full of an easy sleep, leaned an arm against a patched and rusted screen.

Dove held up the pot to catch the sun.

‘Little ol’ cawfee pot. Git it fer free.’

She opened the door and grasped the pot’s handle, taking his word as fast as that. But Dove was a little too smart for her. He kept hold of the spout.

‘Got to sign your name for you gits it.’

‘Signs you anythin’, cawfee pot man.’ She plucked the pencil off his ear and scribbled a name on a receipt blank. Old Dominion was going to like his work, Dove knew.

‘Awntie and Mothaw might like pots too,’ the girl told Dove, and hollered up the stair.

Two older women, as if waiting for just such a call, came clumping so eagerly down the steps that they wedged in the narrow way – for a moment neither could gain an inch. Then worked themselves free and the winner came up breathlessly.

‘Whut you got
now
, lucky girl?’

‘Got me a goddamn pot.’

‘You write for us, Minnie-Mae, then we gits too.’

‘My own handwrite is so poorly, Miss,’ Dove confessed, ‘I’d be most obliged if you’d do just that.’

Minnie-Mae snatched his receipt book, tore out two order blanks, scribbled on both and handed them back.

‘Old Dominion thanks you, Miss,’ Dove assured her, ‘I’ll deliver both pots tomorrow.’

‘My girlfriend might like one too,’ Minnie-Mae invited Dove to step one landing up.

‘You oblige me again,’ Dove assured her as she urged him ahead, with Awntie and Mothaw following heavily. It was just one of those days when everyone is on your side.

For from window to window, lightless passage to lightless hall, the wakening whisper went – ‘Come git you a cawfee pot.’ Doorway to door, to friend to foe, Awntie and Mothaw went spreading the word. Whether it was Huey Long or Old Dominion giving things away again, nobody cared a doodle in a wood. Negroes dark or Negroes light, high-yellow, blue-black, gold-toothed or toothless, everyone liked coffee. Minnie-Mae was ripping receipts and handing them for upreaching hands to sign and return as fast as she could reach and tear.

‘Come git yo’ goddamn pot!’

Dove couldn’t make out a word of the lingo ringing about – it was that Negro-to-Negro jargon that accents English like French and French like English then slurs the rest when white ears of any nation listen.

Dove didn’t care – he was getting rich. When Minnie-Mae ran out of blanks he raced down to the street for more. Business was progressing on a downward grade to new rates of normality, opportunity was being equalized, time was money.

Wreneger, with two of the crew, were waiting for him at the corner.

‘Where you been, son?’ Without a word Dove handed him fifty orders, signed and sealed. Smiley’s aides, one a towering Florida cracker and the other a pint-sized Georgian, crowded in to see how Texas did it.

Smiley thumbed through the packet swiftly, thumbed part way back as though to make certain of something scarcely credible, then ripped it straight down the middle and fifty French Dripolators went blowing like confetti down Elysian Fields Avenue.