Three Days Before the Shooting ... (219 page)

Yes, mam, Miss Kindly
, we said all at once.
Whales is chilldreen is ani-mules is—mam? Ma-aam!

Thus, chill-dreen
, M
iss
Kindly said,
whale babies drink good rich milk. Isn’t that truly wonderful
, Miss Kindly said.

Yes, mam! we
said.
Good rich fish milk is good for you. Yes, mam
.

And now chill-dreen
, Miss Kindly said,
would you like to ask any questions about the great big beautiful whale?

So while we looked dumb and tried to think up some questions Miss Kindly made big eyes at the whale and turned around and sah-shayed back and forth with her eyebrows arched and walking as proper as the queen of Spain then all of a sudden she dropped her handkerchief on the cinders right in front of us and when a little girl dressed in apple green started to pick it up, Miss Kindly stamped her foot and her voice got high as a flute saying, “Nu nu nu nu nu!” and she stamped her foot again and froze that little girl like she’d been struck by the frost and a great big worm. Then she pointed at me, looking very grand, and said, Let
heeeem
pick it up. You are uh lay-di! And I stooped down to try it and fell flat on my face in the cinders and the heathens all snickered, but Miss Kindly was back picking on the poor whale again, talking about,
Well, I’m still waiting for your questions, chill-dreen. Use your imaginations
.

And that’s when a little bowlegged, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, mariney son-of-a-gun named Bernard said, Yes, mam, Miss Kindly I’ve got one.

And Miss Kindly said, Now that’s very good, Bernard. That’s how we learn chill-dreen, by asking questions. I’m surprised that with this great big wonderful
whale brought all the way from the ocean for you to see you have so little to ask about this wonder of nature. Now you just listen to Bernard and learn from him. Bernard is
highly
intelligent. What is your question, Bernard?

And old Bernard asked it. He said, Miss Kindly, if that there whale is an ani-mule, what gives rich milk, where do she carry her tits?

Miss Kindly lit up and turned a boxcar red, and lucky for old Bernard, that was when the door to the little house with the tall smokestack where the man who watched the crossing used to sit came open and out comes a little red-headed man smoking a crooked pipe and hobbling on an ole beat-up wooden leg—who right away charged us all a nickel a piece just to listen to him lie. Said he caught that whale as easy as falling off a log or digging a crawdad out of a hole. Then he turned right around and swore that the whale bit off his leg. And Miss Kindly didn’t say a word. So we watched him hobbling along lying a mile a minute from that whale’s head to his tail and around and back again, telling us all about Jonah, whale oil, corset stays and bone hairpins. And then he showed us that big cud of ambergris that looked like something he’d fetched from the profoundest depth of the sea but which smelled like he should’ve left it right where it was.

That’s when ole hoarse-voiced Tyree looked it over real close and wrinkled up his nose and whispered so everybody in half-a block could hear:

Lissen here, y’all, that
there is
whale hockey; I don’t care
what
th
at
white man says!

And here the man had just been telling us that the stuff was worth ten times its weight in gold and made the very best perfume.

Now isn’t that amazing, child-reen, Miss Kindly said.

Yes, mam, we all said. We ‘mazed. And the great big high-headed whale just lay there winking his bloodshot light-bulb eyes.

Now isn’t that wonderful, Chill-reen, Miss Kindly said. See the great whale blinking his eyes. That proves he’s an animule
.

Yes mam, Miss Kindly
, we all chimed in,
we see him winking his animules
.

He’s animule
.

He’s a mule
.

He’s fish eyes
.

He’s an animaleyed fish, that’s what he is
.

And that’s when the little man took him a chew of tobacco and ducked down under the flatcar and turned the valve. And the next thing we knew, a spout of water was shooting from the top of the great whale’s head. And the little man yelled, “Thar she blows,” and the whole class broke and ran for cover, but because of me you got all wet.

You remember that, I said, and Severen was laughing a real down home laugh. He took out a pack of cigarettes then and said, Cliofus, do you smoke? And I told him no and he took one out and lit it and took a puff then laughed some more. And then he was kind of crying and I asked him why. And he said, “For the whale; for the poor old whale.”

CADILLAC FLAMBÉ

AMERICAN REVIEW 16
(
FEBRUARY
1973): 249–69

It had been a fine spring day made even pleasanter by the lingering of the cherry blossoms and I had gone out before dawn with some married friends and their children on a bird-watching expedition. Afterwards we had sharpened our appetites for brunch with rounds of bloody marys and bullshots. And after the beef bouillon ran out, our host, an ingenious man, had improvised a drink from chicken broth and vodka which he proclaimed the “chicken-shot.” This was all very pleasant and after a few drinks my spirits were soaring. I was pleased with my friends, the brunch was excellent and varied—chili con carne, cornbread, and oysters Rockefeller, etc.—and I was pleased with my tally of birds. I had seen a bluebird, five rose-breasted grosbeaks, three painted buntings, seven goldfinches, and a rousing consort of mockingbirds. In fact, I had hated to leave.

Thus it was well into the afternoon when I found myself walking past the Senator’s estate. I still had my binoculars around my neck, and my tape recorder—which I had along to record bird songs—was slung over my shoulder. As I approached, the boulevard below the Senator’s estate was heavy with cars, with promenading lovers, dogs on leash, old men on canes, and laughing children, all enjoying the fine weather. I had paused to notice how the Senator’s lawn rises from the street level with a gradual and imperceptible elevation that makes the mansion, set far at the top, seem to float like a dream castle; an illusion intensified by the chicken-shots, but which the art editor of my paper informs me is the result of a trick copied from the landscape architects who designed the gardens of the Bellevedere Palace in Vienna. But be that as it may, I was about to pass on when a young couple blocked my path, and when I saw the young fellow point up the hill and say to his young blonde of a girl, “I bet you don’t know who that is up there,” I brought my binoculars into play, and there, on the right-hand terrace of the mansion, I saw the Senator.

Dressed in a chef’s cap, apron, and huge asbestos gloves, he was armed with a long-tined fork which he flourished broadly as he entertained the notables for whom he was preparing a barbecue. These gentlemen and ladies were lounging in their chairs or standing about in groups sipping the tall iced drinks which two white-jacketed Filipino boys were serving. The Senator was dividing his attention between the spareribs cooking in a large chrome grill-cart and displaying his great talent for mimicking his colleagues with such huge success that no one at the party was aware of what was swiftly approaching. And, in fact, neither was I.

I was about to pass on when a gleaming white Cadillac convertible, which had been moving slowly in the heavy traffic from the east, rolled abreast of me and suddenly blocked the path by climbing the curb and then continuing across the walk and onto the Senator’s lawn. The top was back and the driver, smiling
as though in a parade, was a well-dressed Negro man of about thirty-five, who sported the gleaming hair affected by their jazz musicians and prize-fighters, and who sat behind the wheel with that engrossed, yet relaxed, almost ceremonial attention to form that was once to be observed only among the finest horsemen. So closely did the car brush past that I could have reached out with no effort and touched the rich ivory leather upholstery. A bull fiddle rested in the back of the car. I watched the man drive smoothly up the lawn until he was some seventy-five yards below the mansion, where he braked the machine and stepped out to stand waving toward the terrace, a gallant salutation grandly given.

At first, in my innocence, I placed the man as a musician, for there was, after all, the bull fiddle; then in swift succession I thought him a chauffeur for one of the guests, a driver for a news or fashion magazine or an advertising agency or television network. For I quickly realized that a musician wouldn’t have been asked to perform at the spot where the car was stopped, and that since he was alone, it was unlikely that anyone, not even the Senator, would have hired a musician to play serenades on a bull fiddle. So next I decided that the man had either been sent with equipment to be used in covering the festivities taking place on the terrace, or that he had driven the car over to be photographed against the luxurious background. The waving I interpreted as the expression of simple-minded high spirits aroused by the driver’s pleasure in piloting such a luxurious automobile, the simple exuberance of a Negro allowed a role in what he considered an important public spectacle. At any rate, by now a small crowd had gathered and had begun to watch bemusedly.

Since it was widely known that the Senator is a master of the new political technology, who ignores no medium and wastes no opportunity for keeping his image ever in the public’s eye, I wasn’t disturbed when I saw the driver walk to the trunk and begin to remove several red objects of a certain size and place them on the grass. I wasn’t using my binoculars now and thought these were small equipment cases. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

For now, having finished unpacking, the driver stepped back behind the wheel, and suddenly I could see the top rising from its place of concealment to soar into place like the wing of some great, slow, graceful bird. Stepping out again, he picked up one of the cases—now suddenly transformed into the type of can which during the war was sometimes used to transport high-octane gasoline in Liberty ships (a highly dangerous cargo for those round bottoms and the men who shipped in them)—and, leaning carefully forward, began emptying its contents upon the shining chariot.

And thus
, I thought,
is gilded an eight-valved, three-hundred-and-fifty-horsepowered air-conditioned lily!

For so accustomed have we Americans become to the tricks, the shenanigans, and frauds of advertising, so adjusted to the contrived fantasies of commerce—
indeed, to pseudo-events of all kinds—that I thought that the car was being drenched with a special liquid which would make it more alluring for a series of commercial photographs.

Indeed, I looked up the crowded boulevard behind me, listening for the horn of a second car or station wagon which would bring the familiar load of pretty models, harassed editors, nervous wardrobe mistresses, and elegant fashion photographers who would convert the car, the clothes, and the Senator’s elegant home, into a photographic rite of spring.

And with the driver there to remind me, I even expected a few ragged colored street urchins to be brought along to form a poignant but realistic contrast to the luxurious costumes and high-fashion surroundings: an echo of the somber iconography in which the crucified Christ is flanked by a repentant and an unrepentant thief, or that in which the three Wise Eastern Kings bear their rich gifts before the humble stable of Bethlehem.

But now reality was moving too fast for the completion of this foray into the metamorphosis of religious symbolism. Using my binoculars for a closer view, I could see the driver take a small spherical object from the trunk of the car and a fuzzy tennis ball popped into focus against the dark smoothness of his fingers. This was joined by a long wooden object which he held like a conductor’s baton and began forcing against the ball until it was pierced. This provided the ball with a slender handle which he tested delicately for balance, drenched with liquid, and placed carefully behind the left fin of the car.

Reaching into the back seat now, he came up with a bass fiddle bow upon which he accidently spilled the liquid, and I could see drops of fluid roping from the horsehairs and falling with an iridescent spray into the sunlight. Facing us now, he proceeded to tighten the horsehairs, working methodically, very slowly, with his head gleaming in the sunlight and beads of sweat standing over his brow.

As I watched, I became aware of the swift gathering of a crowd around me, people asking puzzled questions, and a certain tension, as during the start of a concert, was building. And I had just thought,
And now he’ll bring out the fiddle
, when he opened the door and hauled it out, carrying it, with the dripping bow swinging from his right hand, up the hill some thirty feet above the car, and placed it lovingly on the grass. A gentle wind started to blow now, and I swept my glasses past his gleaming head to the mansion, and as I screwed the focus to infinity, I could see several figures spring suddenly from the shadows on the shaded terrace of the mansion’s far wing. They were looking on like the spectators of a minor disturbance at a dull baseball game. Then a large woman grasped that something was out of order and I could see her mouth come open and her eyes blaze as she called out soundlessly, “Hey, you down there!” Then the driver’s head cut into my field of vision and I took down the glasses and watched him moving, broad-shouldered and jaunty, up the hill to where he’d left the fiddle. For a moment he stood with his head back, his white jacket taut across his
shoulders, looking toward the terrace. He waved then, and shouted words that escaped me. Then, facing the machine, he took something from his pocket and I saw him touch the flame of a cigarette lighter to the tennis ball and begin blowing gently upon it; then, waving it about like a child twirling a Fourth of July sparkler, he watched it sputter into a small blue ball of flame.