Barking Man (29 page)

“Sweet Jesus, what you do that for?” Loman was crouching over the dealer, lengthily outstretched parallel to the fence. “This man not giving out any sign of life at all …”

“He came in my place,” Hal said.

He picked up the rail from where he had dropped it and fit it back into its slot. His hands had gone numb, whether from the blow or just the cold he wasn’t sure.

“Place, what place?”

Loman’s eyes tracked up and down the street. There were people passing on the sidewalk within a hand’s reach of them, but it appeared that their invisibility had so far been preserved.

“Anywhere I’m standing.” Hal rubbed his thumb along his jaw, considering. “It’s like my house.”

Loman stood up. “You don’t got a house.”

“No,” Hal said. “But I got a place to be.”

“That’s good,” Loman said. “’Cause what I’m telling you, you better not stay here.”

He left the park by the east side and walked up Baxter Street and continued his way. He pounded his hands against his thighs until they warmed and then he sank them in his pockets. Dark ribbons of sidewalk fell away behind him; he told off the names and numbers of the passing streets like beads of some long rosary. Because he had no destination he didn’t know how long it took to get there, but it was later, much, much later, when he turned on Forty-third Street and bore down on the west entrance to Grand Central. From the corner back toward him a long line of men and women of his kind stood shuffling and waiting to enter the vans that would take them away to the armory or elsewhere. Hal stopped on the upper side of the street and looked. From out of the black cavity of the nearest van a voice came booming, “Move on up.” The line went staggering forward, then halted again. “Move on up,” the voice cried, and Hal began to walk, turning the corner onto Vanderbilt Avenue, going up toward the wall at Forty-seventh Street.

He could still get off the street if he wanted, he thought, and flicked the hidden packet of bills. There was still enough left to buy him control of a set of walls for the night. Enough for booze or a hit of dope or three or four meat meals, but not enough to bury anybody, not as much as that. He had wanted to see Judith buried somewhere, would have put her, if he could, in the ancient cemetery below Chatham Square. But it would make little difference to her now. The city of the dead is older and more vast than the city of the living, and the dead possess the power and patience of infinity. Turning east, he saw the street open the long way across town. He watched his shoes striking down ahead of him on the mica glitter of the sidewalk, and believed that there was no stopping his progress. He had been on his feet the whole day long, but he was still not tired.

… I
T ISN’T REALLY
so
much like one, but—take the ears, for instance, they’re more like cauliflower; still, they might be little embryonic potatoes that didn’t quite manage to break free of the main lump: the mealy irregular oblong of his head. It’s mostly bald, but sprouts of chill white rubbery hair rise up from unexpected patches of his cranium, twisting and writhing, following their own dark and secret tropisms … Eyebrows like cracked brown knuckles ground with dirt; the eyes pale protuberances tipped with black. The long bumpy jaw is topologically twisted out of line from his pate, and the whole of it’s thrust forward and up at eighty-odd degrees on the permanently stiff neck. Doctors can’t fix it, the neck
never moves
. Mr. Potatohead!

When his hands are busy you don’t notice any of this. His hands are beautiful, Flemish; van der Weyden would have been proud of them. Mr. Potatohead never has to do head fakes; his hands are so lovely they distract you from themselves. He works with his head cocked up away from them on the inflexible neck, eyes always slightly averted. A bit of juggling, a few tricks from mime, but mostly prestidigitation.

A bright clear Friday in the park, plenty of people here. It’s spring—no, summer—very warm. People wear shorts, some men are barechested. The fountain is set in a swivel pattern that now and then throws a little burst of spray on people at the back of Mr. Potatohead’s crowd. He’s always looking a little up and over them. Above the arch the sky is blue and through it Fifth Avenue goes away and away forever.

Things appear, things disappear, but Mr. Potatohead doesn’t even seem to notice. People are consuming all sorts of strange things while they watch him; it’s a good day for spending money. A good day for buskers: Tony the Fireman’s here, Charlie Barnett’s here, there’s a new
a cappella
group doing Dion and the Belmonts. He hasn’t seen the Dance Be-Jabbers, but then they’re never quite reliable. A lot of animals are here and about, a good day for them too. Someone with a monkey, someone with a snake. Earlier the guy with three ferrets on leashes came through, all of them ferreting in three different directions.

Right in his own front row is this lovely tall woman, big-boned, big-fleshed, generously featured, who wears on one bare shoulder a parrot that matches the iridescent green ribbon wound through the strong black braid of her hair. Mr. Potatohead plays to her a little, sidling up, sidling back, rolling his eyes to the bottom of their sockets to draw her into the field of his sight. He pulls a bluebird’s egg from her ear while keeping his fingers well clear of the parrot—they bite. When the show’s over she flashes him a marvelous smile and strolls off without giving any money. Her mouth is red from kissing, not lipstick. Mr. Potatohead doesn’t care.

His hat is a parti-colored thing with a long bill, which rides in his back pocket, never on his head. Extending the hollow crown of it, he quarters his circle, magicking the money as it falls. Coins walk across the back of his hands, great handfuls of them come corkscrewing in and out of the hat, twisted, involuted, spiraling like strands of DNA. There’s some folding money, not a whole lot. When the crowd has thinned, he fades out with it, no matter if it’s early. Got to knock off early today; it’s imperative he be drunk before five o’clock.

He zigs across Greenwich Avenue on his long stilted legs, then zags up Seventh, forever looking only up. He sees out of the concrete canyon. Behind the blue shroud of the daylit sky the stars are still secretly plotting his course. His hands revolve in front of him like dish antennae, testing the way ahead. He never bumps into anything.

At Fourteenth Street there’s a bar, and who could remember the name of it? Nobody calls it anything but Mangan’s. Fixed on his high stool, Mr. Potatohead counts his coins into paper tubes, a beer glass and a shot glass before him. He’s got a couple pounds of quarters, eleven ones, and one lucky five that he folds away in the watch pocket of his breeches. The long dim interior is dried-blood red and brown-lung brown. At the rear, the swaybacked spavined booths buckle under the weight of drunks and derelicts, sleeping or comatose or maybe dead … If they
were
dead, how long before anyone noticed? Above the front window a TV set cackles. Mangan’s ancient grizzled head grimly faces it down from the far end of the bar.

Mr. Potatohead buys Viola a drink when she comes in, changing his coin rolls for paper. Sixty-two fifty the quarters come to, not bad for only three afternoon shows. Viola takes a cigarette, they talk awhile. She’s a brassy black lady, good looking too, excepting the one top tooth that’s set in sideways there at the front. When her friends arrive she moves to their table. Mr. Potatohead buys a drink for himself, or maybe two, beer and a shot, beer and a shot—

“Hey Mangan,” he cries. “Where’s the freaks?”

Two doors down is a school where the
handicapped
people are brought to overcome their
deficits
; they become cobblers, things like that. They are respectable. But now and again they’ll come in here, to wear a little of the new sheen off their good repute, come tapping with canes or rolling in wheelchairs, some walking in on their tongues, just about. Always a mob and no room for the merely ugly among them.

“Not their night,” Mangan grunts. “They come in Thursdays now.”

Catching a sight of his own image in the mirror, eyes turning aside from themselves, Mr. Potatohead ducks and loses it behind the rows of bottles. He goes on drinking busily, speedily, chain smoking and watching the sunlight lower on the street outside.

“Might cut you off,” Mangan allows.

“Never,” says Mr. Potatohead. His cigarette laces amongst his five digits, the hot head of it dipping and stitching and never burning or grazing the skin. A snap of his fingers sends it end over end back into the prehensile clasp of his lips. He blows out a tidy smoke ring.

“All right, then,” Mangan says, tilting the bottle to the glass. Some feckless stranger sits down and claps a hand on Mr. Potatohead’s shoulder.

“Hey there, Mr. Potatohead,” he begins.

“
Dontcallmethatdontevercallmethat
!” Mr. Potatohead says, viciously slicing around on his stool.

The stranger’s moon face is deeply perplexed. “But you
told
me that was your
name
,” he says. “Yesterday, right here, you know, you bought me a drink, I bought you one, come on, Mr. Potatohead, don’t tell me you don’t remembaarghaarghgllhhgglllhhhh—” as Mr. Potatohead’s arms strike out like twin anacondas, wrapping around the stranger’s throat and thorax. One sharp elbow bats the stranger about the eyes and nose, not doing any serious damage but hurting plenty, yes. Mr. Potatohead is surprisingly quick and strong, but Mangan can surprise you even more—

 … flying out the door, Mr. Potatohead collides with all five of the Dance Be-Jabbers, who seem to have gotten off a stop too soon, possibly meaning to shoplift a late lunch or early supper at Balducci’s on their way down to the park. Mangan snarls from the doorway and brandishes his big square fist, his face coronary red. It’s a familiar scene. The Dance Be-Jabbers dance Mr. Potatohead back onto his feet. Each wears a T-shirt with a number. Switching around from the door to face them, Mr. Potatohead observes that Dance Be-Jabber number 5 is rotating around on his coccyx, arms and legs tucked in, somewhat resembling a potato. Dance Be-Jabber number 4 is making power slides that take him back and back again to the selfsame place, his arms winding through air in reptilian loops, his head snapping from one queer angle to another. Dance Be-Jabber number 3, his arms and legs tucked in, is rotating around on the top of his head, looking like, well,
another
potato. Dance Be-Jabber number 2 does stationary power slides, his eyes googling down at invisible workings of magic mimed between his long pale palms. Dance Be-Jabber Numero Uno keeps up an easy four-step shuffle, chanting as the others continuously bone and unbone themselves: “Mistapotatohead, he
lean
and
mean
. He fake to the
leff
. He fake to the
right
. And wham! boppo! lunchmeataphobia!
Watch out fo’ MistaPotatohead
!”

“Gentlemen, I thank you,” Mr. Potatohead says, his hat appearing expressively in his hands. “You make my poor life into poetry.” Dance Be-Jabbers 2 through 5 have just become a subway train. Numero Uno slaps him a handful, then flings himself into the last car. Mr. Potatohead gathers his legs up under him, and as the Dance Be-Jabber train bumps and grinds downtown, he goes spindling off in his own directions …

… before the little mirror in the Magic and Costume Shop, not too far from the Flatiron Building, Mr. Potatohead is accessorizing himself with wigs, hats, rubber ears, rubber noses, Groucho glasses, a pipe and a trick bow tie … But no, but no, nothing is right. He shucks it all off and tries the boar’s-head mask again, bending from the waist to see the effect: he’s all wild boar from crown to gullet.

“All right, Vic, I’ll take this one …” Mr. Potatohead thumbs a couple of bills up onto the counter. The mask is expensive, thirty bucks.

“How’s the rats?” Victor inquires smoothing his cue-ball hair with one hand and making change with the other.

“Beautiful, perfect,” says Mr. Potatohead. “I couldn’t imagine better rats. Oh, and I need the black tux too, swallowtails, dress shirt, studs, the works.”

“Hundred dollar deposit on that.”

“Come on, can’t you front it to me?” Butterflies flutter in Mr. Potatohead’s stomach, he’s
counting
on that tux.

“F’what,” Victor says. “You got a funeral?”

“Birthday party,” says Mr. Potatohead, prestidigitating the notion from air. “Rich kid, you know. Upper East Side.”

“Some lucky kid,” Victor says moodily, peering into the boar’s rubber eye sockets. “Nightmares till his
next
birthday, probably. I don’t know, Mr. P., you smell a lot like a brewery tonight. I’m wondering are you really in a responsible frame of mind?”

“Come on, Victor,” Mr. Potatohead says. “I’ll let you hold the rest of my gear. Didn’t I always come back before? You
know
I couldn’t go too far without you …”

… slightly flattened by the rush-hour subway, Mr. Potatohead re-expands himself, flowing along with the commuter stream toward the Grand Central Station main waiting room. He plucks the white handkerchief from the tux’s breast pocket—with a flourish it becomes a gardenia, a bold boutonnière fixed to his lapel. Adjusting the boar’s lusty throat to his high collar, he strides out under the great concrete vault, where all the light bulb stars are gleaming down on him from the ceiling’s gilt heaven. Already he sees her near the information booth, dressed in a deep blue one-piece garment that shimmers with some constellated pattern, and she’s already begun to sing, that
-O-
, the one note so profound and powerful it makes the whole huge hall her instrument.

The cops have already cut through to her; they never let her get any further than that. No buskers in Grand Central Station, not allowed. Before, he’s seen them treat her with a kind of grudging courtesy, but tonight it looks like they might take her in—as Mr. Potatohead draws nigh, two mechanical rats descend on spider-web filaments from his palms, to scuttle and chitter across the shining shoes of all the good citizens bound for Larchmont. Screaming and scrambling ensue, and all of a sudden the cops have quite a bit to think about. Mr. Potatohead tweaks the fish lines; the rats yoyo back into his pockets; he moves on.