Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

A day that found him just a bit tired of the items staple in breakfast found him ordering a cup of the soup du jour for starters. “How you like the soup?”—Rudolfo.

Fred gave his head a silent shake. How. It had gone down without exciting dismay. “Truthful with you. Had better, had worse. Hm. What was it. Well, I was thinking of something else. Uh — chicken vegetable with rice? Right? Right. Yours or Campbell’s?”

Neither.

“Half mine, half Abelardo’s.”

“ I beg your pardon.”

But Rudolfo had never heard the rude English story about the pint of half-and-half, neither did Fred tell it to him. Rudolfo said, “I make a stock with the bones after making chickens sandwiches and I mix it with this.” He produced a large, a very large can, pushed it over to Fred. The label said, FULL CHICKEN RICHNESS Chicken-Type Soup.

“Whah-haht?” asked Fred, half-laughing. He read on. Ingredients: Water, Other Poultry and Poultry Parts, Dehydrated Vegetables, Chickens and Chicken Parts, seasoning … the list dribbled off into the usual list of chemicals. The label also said, Canned for Restaurant and Institutional Usement.

“Too big for a family,” Rudolfo observed. “Well, not bad, I think, too. Help me keep the price down. Every little bit help, you know.”

“Oh. Sure. No, not bad. But I wonder about that label.” Rudolfo shrugged about that label. The Government, he said, wasn’t going to worry about some little chico outfit way down from the outskirt of town. Fred chuckled at the bland non-identification of “Other Poultry”—Rudolfo said that turkey was still cheaper than chicken—“But I don’t put it down, ‘chicken soup,’ I put it down, ‘soup du jour’; anybody ask , I say,”Oh, you know, chicken and rice and vegetable and, oh, stuff like that; try it, you don’t like it I don’t charge you.’ Fair enough? — Yes,” he expanded. “Abelardo, he is no businessman. He is a filosofo. His mind is always in the skies. I tell him, I could use more soup — twice, maybe even three times as many cans. What he cares. ‘Ai! Supply and demand! ’ he says. Then he tells me about the old Dutch explorers, things like that. — Hey! I ever tell you about the time he make his own automobile? (“Ab elar -do did?”) Sure! Abelardo did. He took a part from one car, a part from another, he takes parts not even from cars, I don’t know what they from—”

Fred thought of Don Eliseo and the more perfect tortilla making-and-baking machine. “—well, it work! Finally! Yes! It start off, yooom! like a rocket! Sixty-three mile an hour! But oh boy when he try to slow it down! It stop! He start it again. Sixty-three mile an hour! No other rate of speed, well, what can you do with such a car? So he forget about it and he invent something else, who knows what; then he go into the soup business. — Yes, sir! You ready to order?” Rudolfo moved on.

So did Fred. The paintings of the buildings 1895 were set aside for a while so that he could take a lot of pictures of a turn-of-the-century family home scheduled for destruction real soon. This Site Will be Improved With a Modern Office Building , what the hell did they mean by Improved ? Alice came up and looked at the sketches of the family home, and at finished work. “I like them,” she said. “I like you.” She stayed. Everything fine. Then, one day, there was the other key on the table. On the note: There is nothing wrong , it said. Just time to go now. Love . No name. Fred sighed. Went on painting.

One morning late there was Abelardo in the Bunne. He nodded, smiled a small smile. By and by, some coffee down. Fred said, “Say, where do you buy your chickens?” Abelardo, ready to inform, though not yet ready to talk, took a card from his wallet.

E. J. Binder Prime Poultry Farm

also

Game Birds Dressed To Order

1330 Valley Rd by the Big Oak

While Fred was still reading this, Abelardo passed him over another card, this one for the Full Chicken Richness Canned Soup Company. “You must visit me,” he said. “Most time I am home.”

Fred hadn’t really cared where the chickens were bought, but now the devil entered into him. First he told Abelardo the story about the man who sold rabbit pie. Asked, wasn’t there anyway maybe some horsemeat in the rabbit pie, said it was fifty-fifty: one rabbit, one horse. Abelardo reflected, then issued another small smile, a rather more painful one. Fred asked, “What about the turkey-meat in your chicken-type soup? I mean, uh, rather, the ‘Other Poultry Parts?’”

Abelardo squinted. “Only the breast,” he said. “The rest not good enough. — For the soup , I mean. The rest, I sell to some mink ranchers.”

“How’s business?”

Abelardo shrugged. He looked a bit peaked. “Supply,” he said. “Demand,” he said. Then he sighed, stirred, rose. “You must visit me. Any time. Please,” he said.

Abelardo wasn’t there in the La Bunne Burger next late morning, but someone else was. Miles Marton, call him The Last of the Old-Time Land Agents, call him something less nice: there he was. “Been waiting,” Miles Marton said. “Remember time I toll you bout ol stage-coach buildin? You never came. It comin down tomorrow. Ranch houses. Want to take its pitcher? Last chance, today. Make me a nice little paintin of it, price is right, I buy it. Bye now.”

Down Fred went. Heartbreaking to think its weathered timbers, its mellowed red brick chimney and stone fireplace, were coming down; but Fred Hopkins was very glad he’d had the favor of a notice. Coming down, too, the huge trees with the guinea-fowl in them. Lots of photographs. Be a good painting. At least one. Driving back, lo! a sign saying E. J. BINDER PRIME POULTRY FARM; absolutely by a big oak. Still, Fred probably wouldn’t have stopped if there hadn’t been someone by the gate. Binder, maybe. Sure enough. Binder. “Say, do you know a South American named Abelardo?”

No problem. “Sure I do. Used to be a pretty good customer, too. Buy oh I forget how many chickens a week. Don’t buy many nowdays. He send you here? Be glad to oblige you.” Binder was an oldish man, highly sun-speckled.

“You supply his turkeys and turkey-parts, too?” The devil still inside Fred Hopkins.

Old Binder snorted. “‘Turkeys,’ no we don’t handle turkeys, no sir, why chickens are enough trouble, cost of feeding going up, and — No, ‘guinea-fowl,’ no we never did. Just chickens and of course your cornish.”

Still civil, E. J. Binder gave vague directions toward what he believed, he said, was the general location of Mr. Abelardo’s place. Fred didn’t find it right off, but he found it. As no one appeared in response to his calling and honking, he got out and knocked. Nothing. Pues , “My house is your house,” okay: in he went through the first door. Well, it wasn’t a large cannery, but it was a cannery. Fred started talking to himself: solitary artists often do. “Way I figure it, Abelardo,” he said, “is that you have been operating with that ‘small measure of deceit in advertising, as you so aptly put it. I think that in your own naive way you have believed that so long as you called the product ‘Chicken-Type Soup’ and included some chicken, well, it was all right. Okay, your guilty secret is safe with me; where are you?” The place was immaculate, except for. Except for a pile of…well…shit…right in the middle of an aisle. It was as neat as a pile of shit can be. Chicken-shits? Pigeon-poops? Turkey-trots? ¿ Quien sabe ?

At the end of the aisle was another door and behind that door was a small apartment and in a large chair in the small apartment lay sprawled Abelardo, dead drunk on mescal, muzhik- grade vodka, and sneaky pet…according to the evidence. Alcoholism is not an especially Latin American trait? Who said the poor guy was an alcoholic? Maybe this was the first time he’d ever been stewed in his life . Maybe the eternally perplexing matter of supply and demand had finally unmanned him.