The 42nd Parallel (7 page)

“Let’s see one,” said a little man with protruding ears who sat in the corner. He opened the book and started reading greedily. Fainy stood in the center of the car, feeling pins and needles all over. He caught a white glint in the corner of an eyeball as the little man looked down the line of cigars through the crinkly smoke. A touch of pink came into the protruding ears.

“Hot stuff,” said the little man, “but two dollars is too much.”

Fainy found himself stuttering: “They’re nnnot mmmine, sir; I don’t know . . .”

“Oh, well, what the hell . . .” The little man dropped two dollar bills in Fainy’s hand and went back to his reading. Fainy had six dollars in his pocket and two books left when he started back to the daycoach. Half way down the car he met the conductor. His heart almost stopped beating. The conductor looked at him sharply but said nothing.

Doc Bingham was sitting in his seat with his head in his hand and his eyes closed as if he were dozing. Fainy slipped into the seat beside him.

“How many did they take?” asked Doc Bingham, talking out of the corner of his mouth without opening his eyes.

“I got six bucks . . . Golly, the conductor scared me, the way he looked at me.”

“You leave the conductor to me, and remember that it’s never a crime in the face of humanity and enlightenment to distribute the works of the great humanists among the merchants and moneychangers of this godforsaken country . . . You better slip me the dough.”

Fainy wanted to ask about the dollar he’d been promised, but Doc Bingham was off on Othello again:

If after every tempest there come such calms as this

Then may the laboring bark climb hills of seas

Olympus high.

They slept late at the Commercial House in Saginaw, and ate a large breakfast, during which Doc Bingham discoursed on the theory and practice of book salesmanship. “I am very much afraid that through the hinterland to which we are about to penetrate,” he said as he cut up three fried eggs and stuffed his mouth with bakingpowder biscuit, “that we will find the yokels still hankering after Maria Monk.”

Fainy didn’t know who Maria Monk was, but he didn’t like to ask. He went with Doc Bingham round to Hummer’s livery stable to hire a horse and wagon. There followed a long wrangle between the firm of Truthseeker Inc., and the management of Hummer’s Livery Stable as to the rent of a springwagon and an elderly piebald horse with cruppers you could hang a hat on, so that it was late afternoon before they drove out of Saginaw with their packages of books piled behind them, bound for the road.

It was a chilly spring day. Sagging clouds moved in a gray blur over a bluish silvery sky. The piebald kept slackening to a walk; Fainy clacked the reins continually on his caving rump and clucked with his tongue until his mouth was dry. At the first whack the piebald would go into a lope that would immediately degenerate into an irregular jogtrot and then into a walk. Fainy cursed and clucked, but he couldn’t get the horse to stay in the lope or the jogtrot. Meanwhile Doc Bingham sat beside him with his broad hat on the back of his head, smoking a cigar and discoursing: “Let me say right now, Fenian, that the attitude of a man of enlightened ideas, is,
A plague on both your houses
. . . I myself am a pantheist . . . but even a pantheist . . . must eat, hence Maria Monk.” A few drops of rain, icy and stinging as hail, had begun to drive in their faces. “I’ll get pneumonia at this rate, and it’ll be your fault, too; I thought you said you could drive a horse . . . Here, drive into that farmhouse on the left. Maybe they’ll let us put the horse and wagon in their barn.”

As they drove up the lane towards the gray house and the big gray barn that stood under a clump of pines a little off from the road, the piebald slowed to a walk and began reaching for the bright green clumps of grass at the edge of the ditch. Fainy beat at him with the ends of the reins, and even stuck his foot over the dashboard and kicked him, but he wouldn’t budge.

“Goddam it, give me the reins.”

Doc Bingham gave the horse’s head a terrible yank, but all that happened was that he turned his head and looked at them, a green foam of partly chewed grass between his long yellow teeth. To Fainy it looked as if he were laughing. The rain had come on hard. They put their coat collars up. Fainy soon had a little icy trickle down the back of his neck.

“Get out and walk; goddam it to hell, lead it if you can’t drive it,” sputtered Doc Bingham. Fainy jumped out and led the horse up to the back door of the farmhouse; the rain ran down his sleeve from the hand he held the horse by.

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” Doc Bingham was on his feet bowing to a little old woman who had come out of the door. He stood beside her on the stoop out of the rain. “Do you mind if I put my horse and wagon in your barn for a few moments? I have valuable perishable materials in the wagon and no waterproof covering . . .” The old woman nodded a stringy white head. “Well, that’s very kind of you, I must say . . . All right, Fenian, put the horse in the barn and come here and bring in that little package under the seat . . . I was just saying to my young friend here that I was sure that some good samaritan lived in this house who would take in two weary wayfarers.” “Come inside, mister . . . maybe you’d like to set beside the stove and dry yourself. Come inside, mister-er?” “Doc Bingham’s the name . . . the Reverend Doctor Bingham,” Fainy heard him say as he went in the house.

He was soaked and shivering when he went into the house himself, carrying a package of books under his arm. Doc Bingham was sitting large as life in a rocking chair in front of the kitchen stove. Beside him on the wellscrubbed deal table was a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. The kitchen had a warm cosy smell of apples and bacon grease and lamps. The old woman was leaning over the kitchen table listening intently to what Doc Bingham was saying. Another woman, a big scrawny woman with her scant sandy hair done up in a screw on top of her head, stood in the background with her red-knuckled hands on her hips. A black and white cat, back arched and tail in the air, was rubbing against Doc Bingham’s legs.

“Ah, Fenian, just in time,” he began in a voice that purred like the cat, “I was just telling . . . relating to your kind hostesses the contents of our very interesting and educational library, the prime of the world’s devotional and inspirational literature. They have been so kind to us during our little misfortune with the weather that I thought it would be only fair to let them see a few of our titles.”

The big woman was twisting her apron. “I like a mite o’ readin’ fine,” she said, shyly, “but I don’t git much chanct for it, not till wintertime.”

Benignly smiling, Doc Bingham untied the string and pulled the package open on his knees. A booklet dropped to the floor. Fainy saw that it was
The Queen of the White Slaves.
A shade of sourness went over Doc Bingham’s face. He put his foot on the dropped book. “These are Gospel Talks, my boy,” he said. “I wanted
Doctor Spikenard’s Short Sermons for All Occasions
.” He handed the halfopen package to Fainy, who snatched it to him. Then he stooped and picked the book up from under his foot with a slow sweeping gesture of the hand and slipped it in his pocket. “I suppose I’ll have to go find them myself,” he went on in his purringest voice. When the kitchen door closed behind them he snarled in Fainy’s ear, “Under the seat, you little rat . . . If you play a trick like that again I’ll break every goddam bone in your body.” And he brought his knee up so hard into the seat of Fainy’s pants that his teeth clacked together and he shot out into the rain towards the barn. “Honest, I didn’t do it on purpose,” Fainy whined. But Doc Bingham was already back in the house and his voice was burbling comfortably out into the rainy dusk with the first streak of lamplight.

This time Fainy was careful to open the package before he brought it in. Doc Bingham took the books out of his hand without looking at him and Fainy went round behind the stovepipe. He stood there in the soggy steam of his clothes listening to Doc Bingham boom. He was hungry, but nobody seemed to think of offering him a piece of pie.

“Ah, my dear friends, how can I tell you with what gratitude to the Great Giver a lonely minister of the gospel of light, wandering among the tares and troubles of this world, finds ready listeners. I’m sure that these little books will be consoling, interesting and inspirational to all that undertake the slight effort of perusal. I feel this so strongly that I always carry a few extra copies with me to dispose of for a moderate sum. It breaks my heart that I can’t yet give them away free gratis.”

“How much are they?” asked the old woman, a sudden sharpness coming over her features. The scrawny woman let her arms drop to her side and shook her head.

“Do you remember, Fenian,” asked Doc Bingham, leaning genially back in his chair, “what the cost price of these little booklets was?” Fainy was sore. He didn’t answer. “Come here, Fenian,” said Doc Bingham in honied tones, “allow me to remind you of the words of the immortal bard:

Lowliness is your ambition’s ladder

Whereto the climber upward turns his face

But when he once attains the topmost round

He then unto the ladder turns his back

“You must be hungry. You can eat my pie.”

“I reckon we can find the boy a piece of pie,” said the old woman.

“Ain’t they ten cents?” said Fainy, coming forward.

“Oh, if they’re only ten cents I think I’d like one,” said the old woman quickly. The scrawny woman started to say something, but it was too late.

The pie had hardly disappeared into Fainy’s gullet and the bright dime out of the old tobaccobox in the cupboard into Doc Bingham’s vest pocket when there was a sound of clinking harness and the glint of a buggylamp through the rainy dark outside the window. The old woman got to her feet and looked nervously at the door, which immediately opened. A heavyset grayhaired man with a small goatee sprouting out of a round red face came in, shaking the rain off the flaps of his coat. After him came a skinny lad about Fainy’s age.

“How do you do, sir; how do you do, son?” boomed Doc Bingham through the last of his pie and coffee.

“They asked if they could put their horse in the barn until it should stop rainin’. It’s all right, ain’t it, James?” asked the old woman nervously. “I reckon so,” said the older man, sitting down heavily in the free chair. The old woman had hidden the pamphlet in the drawer of the kitchen table. “Travelin’ in books, I gather.” He stared hard at the open package of pamphlets. “Well, we don’t need any of that trash here, but you’re welcome to stay the night in the barn. This is no night to throw a human being out inter.”

So they unhitched the horse and made beds for themselves in the hay over the cowstable. Before they left the house the older man made them give up their matches. “Where there’s matches there’s danger of fire,” he said. Doc Bingham’s face was black as thunder as he wrapped himself in a horseblanket, muttering about “indignity to a wearer of the cloth.” Fainy was excited and happy. He lay on his back listening to the beat of the rain on the roof and its gurgle in the gutters, and the muffled stirring and chomping of the cattle and horse, under them; his nose was full of the smell of the hay and the warm meadowsweetness of the cows. He wasn’t sleepy. He wished he had someone his own age to talk to. Anyway, it was a job and he was on the road.

He had barely got to sleep when a light woke him. The boy he’d seen in the kitchen was standing over him with a lantern. His shadow hovered over them enormous against the rafters.

“Say, I wanner buy a book.”

“What kind of a book?” Fainy yawned and sat up.

“You know . . . one o’ them books about chorus girls an’ white slaves an’ stuff like that.”

“How much do you want to pay, son?” came Doc Bingham’s voice from under the horseblanket. “We have a number of very interesting books stating the facts of life frankly and freely, describing the deplorable licentiousness of life in the big cities, ranging from a dollar to five dollars.
The Complete Sexology of Dr. Burnside
, is six fifty.”

“I couldn’t go higher’n a dollar . . . Say, you won’t tell the ole man on me?” the young man said, turning from one to another. “Seth Hardwick, he lives down the road, he went into Saginaw onct an’ got a book from a man at the hotel. Gosh, it was a pippin.” He tittered uneasily.

“Fenian, go down and get him
The Queen of the White Slaves
for a dollar,” said Doc Bingham, and settled back to sleep.

Fainy and the farmer’s boy went down the rickety ladder.

“Say, is she pretty spicy? . . . Gosh, if pop finds it he’ll give me a whalin’. . . Gosh, I bet you’ve read all them books.”

“Me?” said Fainy haughtily. “I don’t need to read books. I kin see life if I wanter. Here it is . . . it’s about fallen women.”

“Ain’t that pretty short for a dollar? I thought you could get a big book for a dollar.”

“This one’s pretty spicy.”

“Well, I guess I’ll take it before dad ketches me snoopin’ around . . . Goodnight.” Fainy went back to his bed in the hay and fell fast asleep. He was dreaming that he was going up a rickety stair in a barn with his sister Milly who kept getting all the time bigger and whiter and fatter, and had on a big hat with ostrich plumes all round it and her dress began to split from the neck and lower and lower and Doc Bingham’s voice was saying, She’s Maria Monk, the queen of the white slaves, and just as he was going to grab her, sunlight opened his eyes. Doc Bingham stood in front of him, his feet wide apart, combing his hair with a pocketcomb and reciting:

“Let us depart, the universal sun

Confines not to one land his blessed beams

Nor is man rooted like a tree . . .