Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

“Boy!” he shouted. “Boy! Benny?”

A treble from the office floor inquired if that was him, Mr. Dusty, and said it would be right up. A noise of gasping and stomping from below indicated that someone else would be right up, too.

“I want some breakfast, Benny,” Dusty said, tossing him a coin. “Here’s a quarter of a dollar. Get me the usual — eggs, pancakes, sausages, toast, coffee and crullers. Get some beer for Mr. Voles. And you can keep the change. Hello, Major Hennaberry!”

The elevator cage surged slowly into view. First came Major Hennaberry’s bald spot, then his custard-colored eyes, magenta nose and cheeks, pepper-and-salt whiskers, and, gradually, the Major himself, breathing noisily. In his hand he held a booklet of some sort.

Slowly and sybillantly, the Major moved forward, shook Dusty’s hand.

“Don’t know what’s come over the American mechanic nowadays,” he said at last, asthmatically. “Can’t seem to keep himself safe, sober, or in the city limits, and acts as if Hell has let out for noon… Got some lovely white pine for you, my boy, fresh up from the spar yards. Don’t waste a minute — soon’s you get outside of your victuals, commence work. Draw on the cashier if you want anything in advance of wages: a dollar, two dollars, even a half-eagle.

“Never had so many orders nor so few men to execute them since starting in business,” the Major wheezed on. “Even had Rat Nolan on picket duty for me, combing South Street and the Bowery — offered him three dollars apiece for any carvers he could find. Nothing, couldn’t find a one. It’s the catalog that’s done the boom, my lad. The power of advertising. Here — read it whilst you eat; be pleased to have your opinion.”

Hissing and panting, he made his way back to the elevator, jerked the rope twice, slowly sank from sight.

Dusty turned to the old artisan. “Charley,” he said, slowly, as if he hadn’t quite determined his words, “hear anything about Demuth’s?”

Charley made a face. “What would you want to hear about that ugly, pushy outfit?”

Changing, somewhat, his point of inquiry, Dusty asked, “Well, now, have you ever thought about the significance of the wooden Indian in American history?”

The old man scratched the left fluff of whisker. “By crimus, that’s a high-toned sentence,” he said, rather dubiously. “Hmm. Well, all’s I can tell you — history, hey? — the steam engine was the makings of the show-figure trade, tobacco shop or otherwise. Certainly. All of us old-timers got our start down on South Street, carving figureheads for sailing craft. That was about the time old Hennaberry got his major’s commission in the Mercantile Zouaves — you know, guarding New York City from the Mexicans. Yes, sir. But when the steam come in , figureheads went out . Well, ’twasn’t the end of the world.”

And he described how he and his fellow-artists had put their talents at the disposal of the show-figure trade, up to then a rather haphazard commerce. “History, hey? Well, I have had the idea it’s sort of odd that as the live Indian gets scarcer, the wooden ones gets numerouser. But how come you to ask, Dusty?”

Carefully choosing his words, Dusty asked Charley to imagine a time in the far-off future when wooden Indians — show figures of any sort — were no longer being carved.

Had, in fact, suffered for so long a universal neglect that they had become quite rare. That gradually interest in the sachems revived, that men began to collect them as if they had been ancient marble statues, began to study all that could be learned about them.

That some of these collectors, calling themselves the Wooden Indian Society, had been consumed with grief at the thought of the debacle which overtook the figures they had grown to love. Had claimed to see in the decline and death of this native art a dividing line in American history.

“It was like, Charley, it was like this was the end of the old times altogether,” Don went on, “the end of the Good Old Days, the final defeat of native crafts and native integrity by the new, evil forces of industrialism. And they thought about this and it turned them bitter and they began to brood. Until finally they began to plan how they could undo what had been done. They believed that if they could travel from their time to — to our time, like traveling from here to, say, Brooklyn—”

How much of this could Charley grasp? Perhaps better not to have tried.

Don/Dusty spoke more rapidly. “That if they could reach this time period, they could preserve the wooden Indian from destruction. And then the great change for the worse would never occur. The old days and the old ways would remain unchanged, or at least change slowly.”

“You mean they got this idea that if they could change what happened to the wooden Indians, they could maybe change the course of American history?”

Dusty nodded.

Charley laughed. “Well, they were really crazy — I mean they would be, if there was to be such people, wouldn’t they? Because there ain’t no way—”

Dusty blinked. Then his face cleared. “No, of course there isn’t. It was just a moody dark thought… Ah, here comes Ben with my breakfast.”

Charley lifted his beer off the laden tray, gestured his thanks, drank, put down the glass with a loud “Hah” of satisfaction. Then a sudden thought creased his face. “Now leave me ask you this, Dusty. Just what could ever happen to destroy such a well-established and necessary business as the show-figure business? Hmm?”

Dusty said that these people from the Wooden Indian Society, in this sort of dark thought he’d had, had looked into matters real thoroughly. And they came to believe very deeply, very strongly, that the thing which killed the wooden Indian, and in so doing had changed American history so terribly for the worst, had been the invention and marketing of an Indian made of cast-iron or zinc. An Indian which would have no life, no soul, no heart, no grace — but which would never wear out or need to be replaced.

And so it would sell — sell well enough to destroy the carvers’ craft — but would destroy the people’s love for the newer show figures at the same time.

Charley looked shocked. “Why, that’d be a terrible thing, Dusty — a thing which it’d cut a man to the heart! Cast-iron! Zinc! But I tell you what — If there ever was to be an outfit which’d do a thing like that, there’d be only one outfit that would. Demuth’s. That’s who. Ain’t I right?”

Dusty lowered his head. In a low, choked voice, he said, “You’re right.”

Dusty propped the catalog against a short piece of pine, read as he ate.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said to old Charley, “but I have such an appetite here. I never eat breakfast at all when I’m—” He stopped, put a piece of sausage in his mouth, intently began to read.

We would respectfully solicit from the Public generally an inspection of our Large and Varied Assortment of WOODEN SHOW FIGURES which we are constantly manufacturing for all classes of business, such as SEGAR STORES, WINES & LIQUORS, SHIP CHANDLERS, INSTRUMENT MAKERS, DRUGGISTS, YANKEE NOTIONS, UMBRELLA, CLOTHING, CHINA TEA STORES, GUNSMITHS, BUTCHERS, &C, &C. Our Figures are both carved and painted in a manner which cannot be excelled, are durable and designed and executed in a highly artistic manner; and are furnished at noncompetitive low prices. We are constantly receiving orders for statues and emblematic signs, and can furnish same of any required design with promptness.

The sausage was fresh and savory; so was the coffee. Dusty chewed and swallowed with relish, slowly turned the pages of the catalog.

OUR NUMBER 23. Fly-figure, male 5 ft. high, bundle of 20 in outstretched hand (r.), usual colors. A nice staple type Show Figure no moderate-sized bus. need feel ashamed to display. At rival establishments, UP TO $75. C. P. Hennaberry’s Price: $50 even (with warbonnet, $55).