Norwood (12 page)

It got hotter and white town soon ran into nigger town. Norwood heard movement in one of the beer joints and he tried the door and it opened. A Negro woman was standing on a chair in there painting the wall dusty pink with a roller. “We closed, hat man,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“It's off limits for you anyhow.”

“It ain't nothing off limits for me. I ain't even in the service.”

“Let in all civilians, Ernestine,” said a funny quacking voice. “All save one.”

Norwood was already inside. A big window fan was blowing hot air across the room. The woman got down from the chair grumbling and went to the door and made a fuss getting it latched. “You the last one coming in till I get that wall Kem-Toned, I don't care who it is. You better not be over the hill either.”

The man with the funny voice was a midget of inestimable age. He was sitting on the end of the bowling machine runway with his legs crossed. On his face there was a Sydney Greenstreet look of weary petulance. He was wearing a seersucker suit, an untied black bow tie and some black and white wingtip shoes. “Do go on with your work, Lily,” he said. “I'll keep tabs on this young man.” He seemed to be drunk, or at least tight.

Norwood got a can of beer from the green cooler, which was an old Dr Pepper box with a chunk of ice in it and some rusty cold water that made his hand hurt.
Do Not Set On Drink Box
said a handwritten sign that was taped to the side. Another one on the wall behind the counter, a bought one, said, IF YOU CAN GET CREDIT AT THE POST OFFICE YOU CAN GET CREDIT HERE. Norwood leaned on the box and drank his beer. It was good and cold.

“Are you staring at me, you lout?” said the midget.

Norwood turned away from him and watched the paint being rolled on.

“It's very rude, you know. No, you probably don't know.... Tell me, what is your I.Q.? It would interest me to know that figure. Do you even know? No, that's a foolish question.”

Norwood turned back to him. “My service GCT was a hundred and twenty-five, shorty. All you got to have to get in OCS is a hundred and twenty. I thought it was a right good score myself.”

“Ah, a rise. Now I demand to know your name.”

“Yeah, well I'd like to know yours first.”

“I see. So that's the way it is. I don't suppose you've ever heard of Edmund B. Ratner, the world's smallest perfect man?”

“I can't say I have, naw.”

“That's a pity.” He shook his can. “Look here, this is quite empty. Be a sport and fetch me one of those tall Buds. My foot is asleep.”

Norwood looked at him for a moment, then got a beer out of the cooler and took it to him. “You're too kind,” said the little man. “Sit down, sit down. Here's to your wonderful country.” He took a long pull from the can. Norwood sat at a table. The man pooched his belly out and slapped it with both hands. It was a sizable paunch. “Disgusting, isn't it,” he said. “I told you a lie a minute ago. I am not actually the world's smallest perfect man. Not any more. I
do
have reason to believe I am the world's smallest perfect
fat
man.”

“Well, my GCT ain't a hundred and twenty-five either.”

“That's very good. You're a better sort than I took you for.”

“You not from around here, are you?”

“Good heavens no. I'm in show biz.”

“I figured you must be with some circus.”

“Yes, funny little chaps cavorting under the big top. Do you think all midgets work for circuses?”

“I figured
you
did.”

“It's true enough, I did. I worked for all the best ones too. The Cirque d'Hiver, the Moscow State Circus, Ringling Brothers. All the rest are rubbish. But the truth of the matter is, my friend, I am now on the way down.”

“I'm trying to get in show business myself. Hillbilly music. You probably don't like it.”

“On the contrary, I do. Some of it. Hank what's his name—?”

“Hank Williams?”

“No.”

“Hank Thompson?”

“No.”

“Hank Locklin?”

“No.”

“Hank Snow?”

“That's it, Hank Snow. . . . '
cause I got a pretty mama in Tennessee and I'm movin' on, I'll soon be gone. . . .
I once lived in a trailer with a geek, a man of heroic depravity, who played that record over and over. He couldn't hear it enough. He was a nasty drunk, a hopeless sort of fellow, always falling asleep with a cigarette and burning his blankets. Well, they wanted burning, I daresay, but I couldn't put up with that. Live with a firebug? It was out of the question. An absolute human wreck.”

“Hank Snow's from Canada. The Singing Ranger.”

“What, are you booked in some club here?”

“I never even been on a stage yet. I'm trying to get started.”

“Oh, you'll make it. Stick with it. A matter of time, that's all.”

“I hope so.”

“No doubt about it. It's really quite funny in a way, our paths crossing like this. You're on the way up and I'm on the way down. Two curves on a graph intersecting at . . . this place. Well, that's a bit fanciful. I know I've had too much. But I'm not one of your garrulous, sentimental drunks, so you needn't worry on that score. Dramatizing themselves, as if anyone else cared. No, I've been on my own since I was a child. My father sold me when I was just a pup.”

“Sold you?”

“Yes.”

“I don't believe that.”

“It's true, yes. He sold me to a man named Curly Hill. Those were
dreadful
times! My father, Solomon Ratner, was not an uneducated man but he was only a junior railway clerk and there were so many mouths to feed. And imagine, a midget in the house! Well, Curly came to town with his animal show—he toured all the fairs. He saw me at the station and asked me how I would like to wear a cowboy suit and ride an Irish wolfhound. He had a chimp named Bob doing it at the time. I directed him to my father and they came to terms. I never learned the price though I expect it was around twenty pounds, perhaps more. Now understand, I don't brood on it. Curly was like a second father to me, a very decent, humorous man. He came from good people. His mother was the oldest practical nurse in the United Kingdom. I saw her once, she looked like a mummy, poor thing. The pound was worth five dollars at that time.”

“Are you with a circus here?”

“No, no, I thought I told you, I left circus work. Now that was a silly business. I let my appetite run away with me. I can't account for it, it came and it went. Pizzas, thick pastramis, chili dogs—nothing was too gross and I simply could
not
get enough. Some gland acting up. I grew four inches and gained almost two stone. Well, the upshot was, they took away my billing as World's Smallest Perfect Man and gave it to a little goon who calls himself Bumblebee Billy. I ask you! Bumblebee Billy! All his fingers are like toes. Needless to say, I was furious and I said some regrettable things to the boss. The long and short is, I was sacked altogether.”

“Them are regular little hands you got.”

“Of course they are.”

“If you were out somewhere without anything else around, like a desert, and I was to start walking toward you I would walk right into you because I would think you were further off than what you were.”

“I've never heard it put quite that way. Well, it's a matter of scale. I'm not a dwarf, you know.”

“Maybe you don't like to talk about it.”

“No, it's all right, I'm not the least bit sensitive. I do dislike the way newspapers throw the word around. ‘Governor So-and-so is a moral midget.' That annoys me.”

“What are you doing now?”

“What indeed. A good question. I would have to say nothing. I lived in New York for the past two years. Opening supermarkets, you know, with second-rate film cowboys. I was an Easter bunny for Macy's and a leprechaun in the St. Patrick's Day parade. That sort of thing.
Terrible!
I thought I had touched bottom. Then last month my agent persuaded me to join a U.S.O. troupe as stooge for this perfectly impossible comedian. You never heard such embarrassing blue jokes in your life. He has little pig eyes that glitter and burn with malice. Just an impossible man to work for. After last night's performance at the Marine post here we were driving back to town and whenever he would say anything I would answer, ‘Yes, Mr. Pig Eyes' or ‘No, Mr. Pig Eyes' or ‘Is that so, Mr. Pig Eyes?' He slapped my face—he didn't hit me with his fist—he slapped me and I gave notice immediately and wired my agent for train fare to the Coast. I'm hopeful of getting some television work.”

“You been here drinking all night?”

“Well, no, not here. In my room at the hotel. I was up there drinking gin and 7UP and pacing about and trying to read a paperback book but I was much too upset to keep my mind on it. When the gin was gone I came out for some air and that colored lady there, Lily, God bless her, was kind enough to let me in. I'm still waiting for the money order.”

They drank some more beer and ate boiled eggs and pickles. Edmund showed Norwood some clippings, a couple of them in laminated plastic, and some photographs. There was a picture of him and the beloved Curly surrounded by dogs, and one of him and a midget woman, both in fur hats, standing in front of the Kremlin. “I hated Russia,” he said. “Such a dreary place! I'm bound to say though, in all fairness, that midgets are exempt from taxes there. Don't ask me why. One of Stalin's whims, I suppose.” He also had a deck of miniature cards and he demonstrated a royal shuffle. Norwood told him about his trip and his plans and about waiting for Rita Lee.

“I guess that sounds pretty dumb to you.”

“Not at all,” said Edmund. “It rather depends on the girl, doesn't it? Do you love her?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then there's nothing more to be said. I take the simple view. You must marry her. Everyone should be married, and particularly in a vast and lonely country like this. I say that because I was once married myself.”

“If she shows up.”

“We had three lovely years together. She was Lithuanian, a fair girl, a little Baltic pearl. She was mad for sour cream. It all fell apart as things will, but still we had the three years. Such memories! She left me for my good friend, Laszlo the Cyclist. At least I thought he was my friend. It was very shabby treatment they gave me. Laszlo pretended to an interest in dominoes—that's my game—and it gave him access to our quarters, and opportunities. The thin end of the wedge. Perhaps I was to blame, I don't know. I have my moods. Well, afterward he came to me and said, ‘I hope you are not angry.' There's cheek for you! I said, ‘No, Laszlo, I am not angry, but I
am
hurt. You might have said something, you know. We can no longer be friends.' I was very sharp with him.”

There was a barbecue shack across the street and Norwood wanted to get some spareribs but Edmund insisted on going back to the hotel because he was anxious to find out about the money. Also, he said, his “seat” was in the hotel dining room. He retied his bow tie without a mirror, put on a tan porkpie straw hat with colorful band, and they sauntered down the street in the noonday sun, this curious pair, Norwood throttling back on his normal pace.

The money had arrived. The desk clerk at the hotel gave Edmund the notice and said he would have to pick up the money itself at the Western Union office.

“Very good,” said Edmund. “But I think Norwood and I shall have our lunch first. Can you recommend anything?”

“The meat loaf is all right.”

“Splendid.”

Edmund had dietetic pear salad and onion soup with croutons and the meat loaf and fried eggplant and blackberry cobbler with whipped cream. He sat up high on his padded riser. It was the kind of seat used to elevate small boys in barber chairs, except that Edmund's was a customized, collapsible model. Norwood had a DeLuxe Cheeseburger. The food was good and they ate without talking. From time to time there was laughter from an adjoining room where the local Lions were listening to a speech.

Shortly, out of a thoughtful silence, Norwood said, “What's the most you ever made as a midget?”

“Net or take-home?”

“That first.”

“Two seventy-five a week.”

“I thought it would last forever.”

“That's a lot of money a week.”

“I didn't save a dime.”

“How was that meat loaf?”

“Very good. It wasn't jugged hare at Rule's but it was very good. The cobbler was excellent. You're not taking the train, are you?”

“The bus.”

“How far west?”

“Well, to Memphis first.”

“Do you know if the bus is a Vista-Dome?”

“I imagine it'll just be a regular bus.”

“Well, see here, I don't know how to put this, exactly. I'm just a bit apprehensive about traveling cross-country in the States alone. It's silly, I know. Civilized country and all that. But you see, I once had a bad experience in Orange, New Jersey. I was all alone. It could have happened anywhere, of course. Mischievous boys, that's all. One of those things. What I'm driving at is this: Would you and your girl friend mind terribly if I sort of tagged along with you? That is, as far as Memphis?”

“Yeah, be glad to have you. The only thing is, I don't know when we'll be leaving. I might have to go out there to the base after her.”

“It's an awful intrusion, I know. Still, I thought, better for you to be inconvenienced than me in a state of terror. I won't get in the way. Trust me on that. I realize three's a crowd.”