Cardinal Numbers: Stories (7 page)

“
HE
wanted the best of both worlds,” said a bureau insider.

Donna, Benkelman’s estranged wife, disagrees. Living in San Diego now, she has legally adopted Fran’s two sons and works as a commercial illustrator.

“Gas spectrometry is fine. Fiber analysis is fine. But people want a good, human story, and in this case they didn’t get it.”

SUSPICION of multiple sodomy focused on a “drifter” with a history of bronchiectasis. Someone had caused Jud Musil’s feed troughs to be infected with hog cholera. These were theories congruent with mutual distrust.

“We lacked a fallback position,” one resident later observed. “Pictures just didn’t tell the story.”

AND
then on a crisp October morning, during the final hour of Ingo Feed’s
Stop & Swap
radio show, a strangely insistent man phoned in to offer his entire collection of bat-wing fans in exchange for “the global freezing design.”

BY
now people were beginning to ask hard questions about the investigative reporter in their midst. Complicitous terrorist supplying atrocity photos to clients in Melbourne, Rome, Pernambuco, and Dubai? Semiliterate impostor becalmed in a delusional world of
Mod Squad
reruns?

OVER
treacherous, ice-glazed roads, normally temperate, circumspect farm families drove the forty-five miles to Arbeiter Mall so they could dine at a Polynesian restaurant. Owner Gus Triandos would boast once too often about his acquaintance with high-level research. The baby back ribs were moist, tender, imaginatively sauced.

TRIAL
proceedings, convened at the county seat of Bogota, began the first week of the new year under the guidance of Judge Pangloss LaFollette, no relation.

Dr. Shah, for the prosecution, explained that, as an “outsider,” he’d had little success in convincing the authorities, even in the face of corroborative evidence from a degreed caseworker, that the dozens of cigarette burns on the chest were cause for alarm. Dr. Zweig, for the defense, described Ron as “a man without qualities.” Fran, according to the testimony of a Chicago psychic, was operating a barge on the Loire.

“QUITE
simply, there are no words to describe what Mrs. Maddox has already paid in suffering,” said a friend of the family.

BONNIE
appeared each day in the same oyster-gray ensemble, occupied the same front-row seat. Her only change of expression, a slight moue disarranging normally serene features, came as a result of Kallinger’s breakdown on the stand, his admission that “I never learned to hit the curveball.”

THE
jury, perhaps overly sequestered, imposed its inability to reach a verdict.

by

Rico V. Poons

[BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: RICO V.
Poons (born Abe Attel) was a member of the New York State Legislature, for Ulster County, from 1948 until 1955. In November of that latter year, he told companions at a Slide Mountain hunting camp to “deal me out while I go write in the snow.” He was never seen again.

Poons’ only other published work, “The Otter That Swam in the Soup,” appeared, in two parts, in the fortnightly
Lads’ Gazette
for June 23rd and July 8th, 1917, at which time the author was eleven years old.]

H
ERE IS THE CLUB
Onyx, at the same location thru two World Wars. The house band has a contract with Decca. The complementary matchbooks were designed by a cousin of Reginald Marsh.

HERE
is Snuffy Howe, of the Bar Harbor Howes, the all-Ivy wressler with pins in both knees, a Stage Door Johnny with a heavy portfolio.

WHILE
studying at Brown, Snuffy took employment with the Mastic Gum Co. of Providence. For them he composed a series of Trading Cards titled “Cameos Of American Conversation.” He still carries a specimen in his wallet, #18 in a series of 50.

The Blizzard Of ’88 … Only two men had ventured thru the driving snow and wind to partake of their customerry noon repast at The Murray Hill Chop House. These stanch men, Scanlon, a hotelier, and Shapiro, a tunesmith, sat in complete silence until the fowl was served, Capon With Currant Sauce.

Shapiro: Nothing goes straight to the heart like good food.

Scanlon: I never met a man to say no.

Shapiro: Not for all the rice in China.

HERE
is Dodie at the hatcheck stand, singing to herself about honeysuckle vines and tall sugar pines. She walks to work 37 blocks from her flat on Terpsichore Street. There her drapes are festive with donkeys and watermelons embroydered on. She has a closetful of shoes. Dodie collects footwear of all kinds. And who
doesn’t
tell she looks like Betty Hutton—everybody’s Jitterbugging Daughter, ooo yess, and the girl who made the Miracle At Morgan’s Creek.

HERE
is the band at a long table in the Onyx kitchen. They are eating elk wieners and kraut, drinking ale. Guido (C-Melody Sax) says he is the only person to ever go broke on Florida Real Estate. A kid making roux for the Gumbo burns himself bad.

ONLY
one customer at the bar, Chick Lazslo, the City Hall Reporter. He’s been snooping for scandle all day, and no luck. He’s drinking rock-and-rye doubles, and pretending to be in Afrika. Over the backbar there’s a desert landscape, lozenge shapes and minarets under a red sun, basic-ly. Like the artist got swacked on a carton of Camels.

HERE’S
this gnarly Cop poking his nitestick into the big man sleeping on a bench at the RR station. The big man rubs his black face and sits up. His clawhammer coat is torn and his shoes are somewhere else. He rubs his great low-thumbed meathooks together and smiles. This is Snuffy Howe, the Bar Harbor scion and range pistol champ. Snuffy Howe is a Gorilla.

JANUARY
, ’26, and the Turley Howes are returned from their Afrikan rubber plantation to the castle overlooking the textile mills on the river. It has been snowing furtively for days, and it looks like Connecticut or Michigan or Pennsylvania from the window of a bus. Dr. Livesy, a GP of the very first water, sexologist, fly fisherman, and Ambassador-To-Be, wears his pince-nez on a ribbon. He calls for boiling vinegar and arranges instruments on a tray, chaynsmoking as he works. After the long delivery, they read the papers and don’t say a thing. Mrs. Howe stops crying and hangs herself.

HERE
is the hexagonal brass check Snuffy receives in exchange for his Borsalino. Dodie looks into his sunken black eyes. He tells her they could be First in History to be married underwater. How’s about Chesapeake Bay? Dodie says, well, anyway, you look durable enough. And the way she says it is so offhand, like she’s home frying up some cutlets and a little cigarette ash falls in the pan.

BETWEEN
sets Doghouse Riley (Bass Fiddle) creeps into the pantry to glom some reefer. The only thing he can smell is sacked onions. Doghouse is thinking with his voice he ought to throw over this nowhere gig and move into radio. He experiments with some intros: From the Fabulous Assagai Room … Vulcan Tire Radio Breaks in With the News!

RIGHT
behind him, between the onions and the wall, Dodie’s satin heels are hooked over the furred Howe shoulders on which the future of a Dynasty rests. She says in his ear: I’ve never had anybody like you. And no Sweet Talk here, but a matter of fact. Like she’s telling her butcher to trim off the fat.

HERE
is the enormous Solaryum of Marmalade Hospital, an aroma of moss, a canopy of fronds. Dr. Livesy, still sharp in his 90’s (he is allowed to treat himself), arrives for an interview with Mr. Lazslo of The Bugle. Absolutely, son, always a head for figures. Could have been Mr. Memory in the Vaudeville. Reciting imagined names and addresses, false bank account numbers, he rolls the gift cigar between acid-scarred fingers.

ON
NBC’s “Metropolitan Matinee,” a new Decca release is having its Debut. Dodie sings the little eight-bar piano break, and all the reed parts. Crouching on the bathroom tile, she oyls her new riding boots from Snuffy, and the feel of it makes her heart pound.

PLANE
trees are dropping their leaves in the park. The nannys in the playground are erect and unsmiling. Snuffy Howe, the Milk Fund Man of the Year, climbs down from his sleeping nest and cannot remember where he is. He inspects fresh manure on the bridle path, drinks water from a stump, using wadded grass as a sponge. Crouching, alert, he watches men hoping for the price of breakfast pitch pennys at a wall.

T
HE DARKROOM IS A
good place to work on my theory that electrons move faster as you travel south towards the Equator. Four rolls of Tri-X are turning slowly in developer, part of the project out of which my tangent theory came like a bee from the hive. Am I going too fast?

I meant to track on film and in words, improvisationally, the New York-Key West highway experience. Note the verb tense. Germ idea and what it becomes through process should be discrete.

Already you will be wanting context. Fair enough. I am a man in early middle age, precise to a fault in my habits, but given no less to loose talk. My marriage is nine years old. I am lugubrious; Daphne is the one with the fizz. She likes me to threaten her over the phone. I am happy to do this.

The serial windshield narrative makes lists.

Wigwam Village

molded fiberglass colossi

Caves of Mystery

auto bazaar

Big Boy

Tile Town

dinosaur park

Tower of Pizza

chalet motel

Toto’s

Zeppelin Diner

drive-thru bank

I know that tempo is important and I constantly watch the clock. Looking a magazine over, I calculate how many minutes it will take to read this or that article. Normally, I will have the TV on as well and possibly be talking on the phone. Daphne says, unfairly, that I’m afraid to sit still and concentrate. But I am well known for hand-tinted still-life arrangements.

Modus operandi: montage, collage, bricolage.

Scratch ’n’ sniff stickers

fruit-shaped gumballs

rubber animals

copper jewelry

pocket guides

budget tapes

cedar boxes

pennants

ashtrays

keyrings

posters

decals

Art is a business, but not so the reverse. I talk on the phone, have lunch, that’s it. I don’t sleep with curators.

On the phone to Daphne, I speak in a natural voice.

“Believe it. Frankie knows how to put edge on a knife. Thin oil and a smooth stone.”

I often call from the booth in the Ramayana while my koftas, dal, and chapatis are being prepared. This booth is right next to the kitchen; its aromas inspire me. Later, when I’m having coffee, Preva or Subash, one of the brothers, will sit down with me to talk. They share my Salem Lights and ask me to clarify words. Recently, the brothers have invested in a record label. “Picture wallah,” one of them will say. “We are confused by ‘rock the house.’” I try to caution them, but they will not be cautioned. The label, dealing in rap music only, has offices in Jersey City.

Painting has destroyed “landscape,” and left us with “map.”

Trenton

onion rings

Havre de Grace

crabcakes

Virginia Beach

sausage po’ boy

Greenville

chess pie

Savannah

drop biscuits

Opa-Locka

moros y cristianos

I like to draw parallels. Daphne calls this “laying track.” I reply that converging rails teach perspective to small children. Perhaps, Daphne says, this is why as adults their definitions blur. Stella, our daughter, is six and takes no side.

“I’m
sooo
exhausted,” she says, collapsing theatrically at our feet.

But of course, right there, by posing she makes a parallel, an alter ego.

Daphne says, “Mimicry is not analogy.”

Yes, we are being insufferable. Lunch resumes with humorless laughter; the salad dressing features basil from our window box, the coffee is brewed very dark.

“Stella! Will you come out from under the table?”

“Just as a for instance,” I begin. My wife chews grimly. Are these the glinting eyes I fell in love with? “Just as a for instance, isn’t it amazing that at one time in Ireland they bled their cows to mix with milk just as the Masai do in Kenya today?”

“No.”

When Daphne has the last word, it is usually of one syllable.

park-way
n. a broad roadway bordered by trees and shrubs. (soften curves, plantings to guard from dazzle and wind, harmonize design)

free-way
n. a multi-lane divided highway with fully controlled access.

(eliminate curves, invite glare, engineer velocity)

One idea was, What would Frankie see? How would he react? Would Frankie on the road be restless or deliberate? With a ballpoint I wrote
L-O-V-E
on the knuckles of my left hand and
H-A-T-E
on the right, but it wasn’t the answer. Eye-level compositions were not the answer. Should I try not to focus at all?

Increasingly, my sensible Datsun was an embarrassment, a timid signature. Frankie would drive some kind of muscle car with tachometer, Frenched headlights, a hood scoop. I pictured an expanse of tailfin in thirty coats of hand-rubbed candy-apple red. I thought of the acute angle as an abstraction of speed, thrust, dynamism. What is it to understand a language and still not be able to speak it?

ALBERT FRANCONA

AKA “FRANKIE”

White Male

Age: 29

Height: 5’ 10”

Weight: 160

Color of Eyes: Black

Color of Hair: Black

SUBJECT IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH SERIES OF AGGRAVATED SEXUAL ASSAULTS IN NEW ENGLAND AND MID-ATLANTIC STATES. KNOWN TO FREQUENT PHOTO STUDIOS, GREASE PITS, BOWL-A-RAMAS. SCORNS FIREARMS, BUT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.