The Free-Lance Pallbearers (7 page)

“Say he come in lass night talkin' all out hee head. Nurse Rosemary D Camp say who evah takes care o him good gone get a five-dollar raise.”

There was a rap at the door of the orderlies' lounge. The men hurriedly stamped out their cigarettes and pushed the fumes through the opened window. Nurse Rosemary D Camp peeked in and her singsong voice said, “Mr. Doopeyduk, will you please come into my office?”

“Yes, Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp,” I replied nervously. “I'll be down as fast as I can.”

When I entered the room she invited me to sit in a chair next to her desk. She was a fat woman with a round doll-like face with rouged cheeks. Her arms were thick as hams and showed small dents here and there from the shoulders to her fingers resting on the desk. Hanging from beneath her cap were long twisted pigtails; pinned to the blouse of her uniform she wore a purple orchid upside down.

“Mr. Doopeyduk,” she began, “mishaps are bound to happen in an operation such as the one in which we are engaged on Unit Five. So I think that we might have been a little harsh with you after your accident with the patient who was here a few weeks ago.” She smiled at me while I squirmed in the chair. “Otherwise we've found that you've been conscientious in many other matters arising in the course of your duties. So we've decided, Mr. Doopeyduk, to give you a special assignment for this evening. Your performance on this assignment will indicate to us whether you're ready for larger responsibilities.”

“Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp,” I said, “I will certainly do my best to warrant your confidence.”

“Good, then,” she replied. “This is your assignment. There was an old man admitted to the floor last night I'm afraid he's delirious and raving. We want you to get samples so that we can analyze them. He has meningitis and typhoid complicated by double pneumonia. You will be given a surgeon's mask and we want you to give him lots of fluids and rub his back with powder. Then at the conclusion to your shift we want you to make out a report on him.”

I jumped to my feet and started for the door.

“One minute, Mr. Doopeyduk, we have a little surprise for you.” She opened the drawer and pulled out A GOLDEN BEDPAN WITH MY INITIALS ENGRAVED ON THE BOTTOM.

I was all choked up. “I don't know what to say, Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp.”

“That's all right, Mr. Doopeyduk,” the nurse said. “We're sure that you will prove yourself worthy.”

I opened the door, knocking over the three orderlies who had their ears fastened to the keyhole. Ignoring them I walked to the old man's room with my nose upturned and holding the bedpan engraved with my initials.

The old man had been placed in a secluded ward. He lay under an oxygen tent in the bed, next to which was a floor lamp exuding a soft violet glow. He wore a damp waist-length nightgown and his bony knees were propped up under his hamstrings by pillows. His wrists were bound to the side rail and his eyes were two black dots. A thin layer of skin stretched around the small skeletal outlines of his face. I read the chart which hung at the foot of his bed.

I changed the man every five minutes until the corner of the room was filled with sticky wet sheets. I applied the powder and gave him a rubdown.

He finally went off to sleep. The room was quiet. I sat in a chair next to his bed leafing through a magazine. At about 6:30
P.M
. he suddenly rose, lurched forward and pointed a long bent finger toward the open door of the room.

“Save me! They're in the door! The Free-Lance Pall-bearers are in the door! Look, look! The long frock coats and shiny black boots, the black box! It's them! They're going to try to take ol Roger Ist away from here! Please save me, ooooo, save me, no! Get back! Get back! Arra! Ggggg! Grggrrrrgrrg! Rrgrgrgrrrrrrrrgrgrrrgrrrrrrr g … …. r … … ….!”

I ran through the door of the room and into the nurses' quarters. “Mrs. Nurse Rosemary D Camp! Please hurry—the old man is hallucinating; he seems to be having an attack of some sort”

All the orderlies and doctors ran clomping down the hall toward the room. But it was too late. The old man had given up the ghost.

We washed him, wrapped him in a shroud and placed him in a basket. He was then rolled into the morgue and placed in an ice-cold tray. (One of the morgue attendants was to say later that upon making a routine inspection he found the corpse holding the can of news-reel in a death clutch.)

It was the end of my shift. I filled out the report on the deceased and gave it to the nurse. “Thank you, Mr. Doopeyduk,” she said. “You made the poor ol man's last hours as comfortable as possible. We'll be calling on you in the future for more tasks like these.”

One of the orderlies helped me with my coat. “I will do my best to justify your faith in me,” I told the nurse. (I detected a snicker from the orderly who was helping me with the garment, but I ignored him, attributing it to jealousy on his part.) I walked out into the streets of Soulsville toward home. The crisis over, the convoys of plumbers in battleships headed from Harry Sam Island toward the pier. They leaned over the rails of the ships guffing down the hot dogs and beer.

In Soulsville banners hung over the street. WELCOME SOULSVILLE'S OWN ECLAIR PORKCHOP. Barricades had been set up and Screws linked hands holding back the crowd which had come out to greet the newly appointed bishop. They were not to be disappointed because the parade turned out to be quite a spectacle. I lined up with the crowd to get a better view of the goings-on.

The first car in the procession was a big sleek Rolls-Royce. The body of the car was painted lavender and the hood was a frieze depicting the Nazarene apocalypse. It was painted in wild wiggy colors.

It showed HARRY SAM the dictator and former Polish used-car salesman sitting on the great commode. In his lap sat a businessman, a Nazarene apprentice and a black slum child. These figures represented the Just Standing on each side of the dictator were four washroom attendants. In their hands they had seven brushes, seven combs, seven towels, and seven bars of soap, a lock of Roy Rogers' hair and a Hershey bar. Above the figures float Lawrence Welk champagne bubbles. Below this scene tombstones have been rolled aside and the Nazarene faithful are seen rising in a mist with their hands reaching out to the figure sitting on the commode.

There were purple velvet curtains on the windows of the car. Through the drapes of the back window was a wrinkled yellow hand. On one of the fingers was a large sardonyx ring.

It was Nancy Spellman, Chief Nazarene Bishop. It was a crime punishable by death to look at him directly so the people bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Following the automobile on foot were the Nazarene Bishops. They wore Dobbs hats and double-breasted suits with ball-point pens sticking from their pockets. Carnations were pinned to their lapels.

Next came a black Pierce-Arrow. A chauffeur's velvet glove gripped the car wheel. He sat next to a bottle of Fleischmann's which was as large as his body from the waist up. A spindly old woman sat next to him waving a long cigarette holder and dangling her leg over the car door.

She was holding her hands together responding to the cheers of the crowd. In the rear half of the car, through the roof, some plastic antlers appeared. The woman wore a green satin dress under a black bolero jacket She wore a diamond ring on every other finger of her hands. Sparkling green mascara was smeared to the edge of her plucked-out eyebrows. Her hair was tinted blue-silver and frizzed in a permanent wave. A white ermine stole with black tails was thrown across her neck and dripped down her back. A heavy beaded necklace hung to her stomach. It was my father-in-law's mother and the bitch was dressed to kill. The automobile pulled to a halt. The chauffeur climbed out and went to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. Children who were poking their noses through the spokes of the tires were shooed away.

He brought a case to the side of the car and gave her a bottle. She held up a bottle of the anti-hoodoo lotion. Suddenly da hoodooed leaped from alleys and jumped from the windows of fleabag hotels, and dropped their forks and Chicago caps (which had been pulled down over their eyes) into their bean soups in restaurants as they left trails of screaming waitresses who tossed check pads into the air and jumped on tables, and the beasts bent bars of jails and hurdled the lamps of police stations, and nurses shrieked disbelief as da hoodooed knocked over trays in hospitals where they were undergoing the hoodoo kick, and they loped from the beds and toppled confessional booths in churches where they were being expunged of the fever—causing the priests to fling themselves upon the coins which had spilled from falling collection baskets, and da hoodooed bolted through the doors of churches, hospitals, jails, cellar apartments, jumped from rooftops, leaped out of alleyways, and jaunting to the forefront of the crowd snatched bottles from her hand before she could deliver her pitch. The chauffeur held fistfuls of dollar bills they slapped into his hands as the old woman stood up in the seat of the Pierce-Arrow, rolled up her sleeves and ran down her game.

“Come and get your anti-hoodoo lotion! Get rid of those ugly fangs, that tired hair. Be a delight to the womenfolk.”

While she went into her thing I walked to the rear of the car to examine the plastic antlers of my father-in-law. I pressed my nose against the window and saw my father-in-law dressed in a tuxedo and resting his hand upon an ebony cane. He was swinging the antlers from side to side while talking to some ladies in cotton dresses who remembered him as the head of the colored Elks in 1928.

“How you, Miss Lucy?” he drawled, giving one woman a limp handshake and exposing his gold teeth. “How's the youngins? Hopes they's fine.”

“Father-in-law, father-in-law,” I shouted. He turned to the rear window and momentarily flashed anger; but remembering the women standing next to the car, he spoke for their edification.

“Well, my goodness, if it ain't my son-in-law. What you wont, dear son-in-law?” The women smiled at this exhibition of family affection. He rolled the car window down and beckoned me to come closer. “Look, my man,” he said out of the hearing range of his admirers. “Make it. It'll mess up what you might call our ‘image' if we are seen in the company of an orderly.” I fell back to the curb and shoved my hands into my orderly's uniform which was still soiled from the old man's juices.

All the merchandise sold, the old woman had returned to her place next to the chauffeur. She clapped her hands and the car moved on. The car was followed by a battalion of old men wearing derbys and aprons with mystic signs sewn on them. Others were wheeled along by nurses who held up the old men's arms occasionally so that they could respond to the good wishes of the festive crowd. They were part of that celebrated contingent who in glittering ceremony underneath the watchful eyes of the founders of the nation—who wore frills on their wrists and fake moles on their cheeks—stood in solemn silence as their leader, my father-in-law, knelt, unsheathed his sword and kissed Calvin Coolidge's ass. At that time a minor stir was created when a protocol officer ran up and pulled my father-in-law from the President. He said that the proper procedure was to pull aside one flap and kiss the President between the cheeks instead of smacking the Chief of State all over his bottom like some kind of madman. My father-in-law nearly went to blows with the protocol officer for embarrassing him before his following and all those “fine white peoples.” But the President saved the day, pulling up his trousers and saying, “We Americans are known for our informality.”

For saving my father-in-law from a humiliation that could have set back “the struggle” fifty years,
Ebony
magazine hailed Calvin Coolidge as the second emancipator.

The old men were roundly applauded by the onlookers. Suddenly a woman fell into the arms of a man standing behind her. Another woman swooned. People began dropping like flies. A rank stench filled the air and the spectators held handkerchiefs to their noses and puked on each other. Up ahead was a 1938 Oldsmobile flanked by a V-shaped entourage of Screws on motorcycles. The Screws wore gas masks. Standing in the back seat of the car and wearing damp peppermint-striped pajamas and a cone-shaped hat was none other than Eclair Porkchop, newly crowned Bishop of Soulsville, direct from his negotiations with Dictator HARRY SAM, former Polish used-car salesman. Those who could withstand the odor which filled the street like quicksand fumes bowed their heads or held up their babies to receive Eclair Porkchop's blessing. The Bishop lighted from the automobile and walked on a red carpet toward the door of the Church of the Holy Mouth. Some young men on the sidelines teased the Bishop by playfully pinching his buttocks. He spun away, sticking out his hand like a quarterback dodging tackles. He executed pirouettes, arabesques, grands jetés saying, “Stop, hee, hee, that tickles. Now stop, now, hee, hee.”

Those who could take the stench followed him until he was swallowed by the door of the church. He was shadowed by those men HARRY SAM assigned to protect his bishopric. They wore pantaloons and brogans. They were stripped to the waist and peering through the terrifying eyeholes of their masks they beat back the crowd with their whips.

All at once a man elbowed his way through the crowd. The hem of a long vicuña coat reached his ankles. He paced up and down in front of the crowd with his hands behind his back. Once in a while he glanced at his watch. He had a heavy mustache and a cigar jutted aggressively from between his teeth. A dwarf hunchbacked Negro ran through the crowd and joined the man. The Negro wore a raccoon coat and a straw hat. He waved a pennant which read “Fisk 1950.” Underneath his arm he carried a small black case. “Hurry up, hurry up,” the first man said to the dwarf as the little fellow opened the case, pulled out a mouth organ and began to play the Protestant hymn “The Old Rugged Gross.” It was the mad slum lord Irving Gooseman and his Negro dwarf assistant Slickhead Fopnick. Irving cupped his thick red trap and addressed the crowd.