The World Is the Home of Love and Death (20 page)

Daddy said at some point, “S. L. Silenowicz here—and son, Wiley—”

Everyone’s being
friendly-but
—i.e., watchful, coy, dignified, sly—breath and voices honk with life and
foreignness
—foreign to us—an obvious foreignness of manias, habits, maybe even principles—and laws. Certainly, incomes.

One salesman has a face made of dishes and cups of flesh like pink sand. One is
silly
with pomaded hair with very tight waves in it very neatly combed and an insanely pleasant half-smile and eyes with no focus.

And one is thin as if made of wires and blue veins and white skin. He is inspired by some kind of male spirit that is entirely new to me. It is not like Daddy’s in any conceivable way. This man is big-mouthed and taut—even a little jumpy; he has big eyes set in narrow sockets: he is really present.

The fat one has a fat man’s specialized
buried-a-private-treasure
vanity and
one guy there who thought he was a snappy dresser but he was a very simple guy, and there was one live wire; Mclntyre always keeps one live wire on the payroll but he doesn’t keep them long; Mclntyre only uses fools.

The thin one is the live wire—that means like the tungsten filament in a lightbulb:
he’s turned on, he’s a bulb,
i.e., shrewd and clever—adventurous, bribable, not worn down, maybe tireless. His physical vanity is pungent.
He’s got a smile that knocks you right over, you got to grab your wallet and hang on to it. It’s funny, too, he’s a funny-looking man.

Daddy was fascinated by other men sometimes—some other men.

The salesman has a restless smile—S.L. has no real smile: S.L. is darkly humorous;
he’s a humorous guy.
The thin man is so tightly expressive and self-promising and restless that he makes the room ache, it’s a kind of danger he radiates, there’s a steady butting at you, a sense of precipice.

I stare at them head-on. Part of me is private and dark and oblique here.

Dad said, “Well, now, we all love children, they got such good hearts, and this little fella’s real nice. And I’m the king of the hill, I’m the cock of the walk, and I’m gonna teach him how to spend money, I’m gonna see to it that this fella’s a big spender, he’s going to buy a car for his mom, she didn’t take care of the oil level, and she tore hell out of the engine block, and the car acted up, and she ran it into a bridge girder—now how about that? But she didn’t end up in the Mississippi, we ended up here, ain’t that nice, and everybody loves kids and everybody loves a mother, and he certainly does love his mother, ’cause he’s a scholar and gentleman, he’s an officer of the palace guard, he’s going to buy a car for his mom—ain’t that nice? Let’s make it nice for him, what do you say? You wouldn’t insult motherhood, would you? You wouldn’t insult a little kid with big money to spend, would you? Say hello to him, his name is Wiley. He wants the best that money can buy for his lady-mom.”

Their day’s labor is to be placed at my disposal.

Dad’s eyes are humid, sentimental, innocent, partly withdrawn, gentle … Dishonest. His meanness showed. His nobility, too.
He sweeps the feet right out from under you.
Two of the salesmen looked blank—the thin one caught on and looked ironic at Dad’s wish to be peaceably, sacredly important in this way. Not that he, either, knew what game this was. But he was in the world in a way different from the way S.L. was—the thin guy was poised watchfully, tautly, but he tried not to show that: he was sort of very cold-tempered, sort of
hot-bodied like a hair-trigger—a hick, a redneck:
that’s S.L. describing him.

Daddy sighed patiently because people were dumb and didn’t understand what he said, didn’t understand his projects, his enterprises, didn’t understand the king’s metaphysics or concern for his subjects’ happiness. Daddy said, “Now lookee here—” and he reached into his pants pocket sadly. The sadness is his politeness, his rural etiquette; he has a rural mournfulness at men’s being difficult and making life difficult; it’s not ghetto lament, it’s the real thing but a crazy version—the thin man’s eyes are really sane; they’re like carpenters’ levels with green liquid in them; but his intensity is kind of nuts the way the filament in a lightbulb that buzzes and burns white can seem nuts. Blond Daddy, with false naïveté on his face, and some of the real, and them with their versions of male false naïveté mixed with the real thing,
we were all hicks, that much cash money turns people into hicks, believe me,
Daddy slowly, in great luscious hammy pantomime, took a wad of bills from his pocket: “I won’t say this is big enough to choke a horse, less’n you gotta horse nearby we can try it on and see if he chokes. Now I’m telling you fellas, this kiddy here wants a car, and he has cash, he has
this
cash, fifteen hundred dollars, gentlemen—gentlemen, I believe we have here fifteen hundred dollars—that can buy any car in this place, right?”

“Right,” the thin one said, shaking very faintly and grinning as if Daddy was bait for a shark—it was kind of an invitation, and very knowing, I didn’t understand it at the time.

The other salesmen said little things, like “Aw” and “Ahhhh” and “Uh.”

Dad said later,
They looked greedy as sin. They work on commission. If they split it, that’s maybe fifty dollars each, enough to buy a used car, a Model-A or to have a real good time in Chicago, a binge for a couple of weeks, whores, whiskey, the works, or to buy a couch and a washing machine and other little things for the little woman.

Dad counted the corners of the bills, new bills, fifteen of them: they were stiff.

He put them folded, they crackled, into my shirt pocket.

“Now, I know you guys are ace number one crackerjack salesmen, I want you to give the kid real good service—” To me he said, “Now, here you go; now you have a little money to spend. You go buy the car you want, you go pick a machine to give your mother.”

I am to be like a full-grown man, it seems, and command the attention of these men.

I can remember my eyes getting
funny,
hard and round like fists. My despair is wobbling like a ball between my legs in water when I try to sit on that ball. It’s going to escape me. Dad is inhibited and respectful and interested and he is liberal-hearted and an exhibitionist. “We’re holding little services, services for feeling
good.
O.K., sweetheart, now I want a little cooperation from you, I want to see
you
feeling better.”

The presence of that much cash is like the gleam of naked skin. I bite my lip with surprise and suspicion. I feel sick—the moment is profound for me, vertiginous.

Daddy said, “This little king here, our Valentino, be nice to him. My brother-in-law the mayor, my friend and brother-in-law the fire chief, we all want you to be nice to our friend, extend him
every courtesy
‘cause you know he’s got the cash and he can do what he wants with it; we want one and all to be happy in this town; you can trust us.”

Two of the salesmen are smiling uncertainly as if they are willing to be happy at his say-so. I am powerful in a way, I have real power for the moment at Daddy’s say-so.

The fat salesman and the empty one are eager: they somewhat laboriously assume an atmosphere of jolly truce, a broad pleasure dealing
idealistically
with a kid in this grown-up place, hot weather, the Great Depression, and all. I am numb and brutal with rank and secretive delight. I’m a little the way Nonie was when she hit me, in the few, cold minutes in which she hurt me. I thought harm was near now and real in them, too, and that Daddy should be careful and guard us. Him and me.

Daddy said, standing straight and noble, “I’ll tell you nice fellas something, money doesn’t matter but kindness surely does—” His voice buzzed, beelike but big, summery and
large.
My chest hollowed out behind the money in my pocket.

I felt the rancorous envy of the skinny man, his pride and dislike and contempt for Daddy and the rigmarole.

It’s not just judgment, though—it’s a kind of wrestling for eminence.

I felt S.L.’s strength-in-the-world, his mind as power; its
stupidity
—his intelligence had a bend in it, a dud quality:
he was no better than a child sometimes.
A potent child, however.

Fathers are singular men behind the name
Father.

I felt I had money for a face. I saw myself in the slightly darkened chamber inside the mirror; I saw an altered face.

Things stir in me and suffocate me internally. I am truly equal now to a good dog or horse, that agile, that strong, that marvelous, I have the rippling silver-and-green paper at my disposal—even if only as a joke.

I loved money so. I looked up at Daddy and he squatted to be nearer me; I leaned toward him but I kept my face turned away.

With his lecher’s sensitivity, he knew what I was feeling, sort of. He reached his large fingers into my shirt pocket, he pulled the money out. I sighed abruptly. He said, “See that.” He took one bill, “It says, one hundred, it’s a hund
er
d dollars—” I leaned against him and I sighed really deeply; he said, “This isn’t just ordinary money, Wiley, ordinary money’s mean, this is
money
that’s got heart’s blood in it, this is for you to be happy. When you’re king, you can put your face on it and make the whole world happy.” He took his cigar out of his mouth. “Or when I’m king, I’ll do that for you. Hows about you giving me onesy-twosy little kisses?” I shook my head no. “Be mean, it’s all right. Here, crinkle it up.” The hundred-dollar bill. He closed my fist around the wad. The peculiar paper felt more like cloth to me than paper. “It’s all yours, honey—”

I stared at him. Slowly he straightened the bill, put it with the others, folded them, put them in my hand, he guides my hand so that the money is in my pocket, over my heart. He aimed my hand, he had to loosen my fingers one by one, the money is my pocket.

We look at each other, he and I. I turned away from him—slowly—I put one foot in front of the other. The crazed and intense and unfocused affection I felt for money, for automobiles, displaces the unslaked disgust I still feel at a world of wounds and pain, Nonie’s too, and Daddy’s, and strangers who smell of food unlike the food I eat and know and of different kinds of clothes from those I know now.

I feel
real happiness
(of a kind).

Daddy: “We’re just a pair of no goods, we’re putting on the Ritz, we’re putting on the dog—”

Electric fans push air like setters’ tongues over me.

Daddy’s voice at the other end of the showroom says, “That fucker Hoover’s done us in.”

He’s talking to the skinny man, as I expected.

The skinny man’s voice has baritone depth, and a will to be rapid, but its depth of near bass makes it sluggish with an urging-on breath in it.

He says, “That fuck, Hoover.”

The fat salesman says in a weird tone, piously but murderous: “It ain’t right, letting people starve; death’s too good for some of them bastards.”

Daddy said, with a sigh, “That’s right. But I’ll tell you gentlemen something, you spend your life fightin’ the bastards, you got no life left at all.”

The skinny man asks pointedly, “Is that a fact? I guess that’s fact: you want to win, you got to be meaner than they are.”

Daddy said, “Everyone wants a hero to be mean for them—”

The skinny salesman said, “Heh-heh, well, yeah, Mean Jesus with a Sword for president; go get things done for me, J.C.”

Daddy said, “Well, we’re all clowns and cocksuckers in the end, I’m telling you men the truth.”

“I’ll say amen to that,” the fat one said.

Daddy said, “I’ll tell you what, lookit there—” Dad turns his head. On the other side of the big plate glass window, a blowsy big-boned woman is swaying past in the heat—sashaying. The salesmen follow his lead. Dad said, “That’s ripe. Listen, you like movies? Make your life like the movies and devil take the hindmost. Live nice, that’s my motto, I’m a good-hearted man.”

One of the salesmen says, “How about that? You want I should go give the tot a hand?”

“Naw, naw, let him have his day; it ain’t no fun to be a child: let him be a man, a
little
man.”

The skinny salesman has an odd look. He leans against a car trunk.

Daddy says to him, “You’re a devil of a fella. I’m right, wouldn’t you say I was right?”

“Why, sure—hell, a man buys Buicks is right.”

Daddy and the other man speak with what seems both love and hate in their voices.

“No, no,” Daddy insists, “in your heart, you know I’m right, you know kids are O.K. and this other stuff is filth. Filth.”

“If you say so—hell, you’re the boss; you want me to shoot anyone for you, I’m your man—” His large eyes refer to Daddy’s cash by being jocular and impious.