Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

He listened unhappily to her losing her way between wanting him out of her misery and hoping that the unchangeable might change.

“Mary,” he broke in, “you don’t have to worry any more. I’m taking Walt along and setting him up — really setting him up. And listen—” he wrote a name and address on the back of her shopping list—“go see this man. I’ve been investing money with his firm and there’s plenty to take care of you and the kids — even if things go wrong with Walt and me. This man will handle all your expenses.”

She nodded, not speaking. They smiled, squeezed hands. There was no need for embrace or kiss-the-children.

Whistling “Dixie,” Walter returned. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Good-by, Don,” said Mary.

“Good-by, Mary,” said Don.

That afternoon, Don Benedict and Walter Swift, after visits to a theatrical costumer and a numismatist, entered the Canal Street subway station. Those who have had commerce with that crossroads of lower Manhattan know how vast, how labyrinthine, it is. Only a few glances, less than idly curious, were given them as they paced through the late Mr. Elwell’s mathematical map. No one was present when they passed beneath a red-lettered sign reading “Canarsie Line” and vanished away.

As soon as he felt the flagstones beneath his feet, Walter whirled around and looked back. Instead of the white-tiled corridor, he saw a wet stone wall. For a moment, he swore feebly. Then he laughed.

“A pocketful of long green and another of gold eagles!” he exclaimed. “What shall we try for first? Erie or New York Central Common? No — first I want to see this place where you work. Oh, yes, I do. Obstinacy will get you nowhere. Lead on.”

Wishing eventually to introduce Walt into Hennaberry’s, Don had first taken him out to Canal Street. Leopold Schwager’s second-hand establishment was opposite, the sidewalk lined with superannuated sachems. Other establishments of the show-figure trade were within stonethrow, their signs, flags and figures making a brave display. Horsecars, cabs, drays, private carriages went clattering by.

Walter watched the passing scene with relish, leering at the women in what he evidently thought was the best 1880 masher’s manner. Then he wrinkled his nose.

“Damn it all,” he said, “I hadn’t realized that the Hayes Administration smelled so powerfully of the horse. But I suppose you like it? Yes,” he sneered, “you would. Well, enjoy it while you can. As soon as I manage to dig up some old plans, I propose to patent the internal combustion engine.”

Don felt his skin go cold.

“John D. Rockefeller ought to be very, ver-ry interested,” Walt said exultantly. “Why, five years from now, you won’t know it’s the same street… What’re you pointing at?”

Don gestured to a scout-figure in full plumage outside a store whose awning was painted with the words, “ August Schwartz Segar Mfger Also Snuff, Plug, Cut Plug and Twist. ”

“One of mine,” he said, pride mixed with growing resolve.

Walter grunted. “You won’t have any time for that sort of thing any more; I’ll need you myself. Besides — yes, why not? Introduce cigarette machinery. Start a great big advertising campaign, put a weed in the mouth of every American over the age of sixteen.”

A drunken sailor lurched down the street singing “Sweet Ida Jane from Portland, Maine.” Automatically, Don stepped aside to let him pass.

“But if you do that,” he said, no longer doubting that Walter would if he could, “then there won’t be any more — nobody will need — I mean my work—”

Walter said irritably, “I told you, you won’t have the time to be piddling around with a mallet and chisel. And now let’s see your wooden-Injun mine.”

Acting as if he felt that nothing mattered any more, Don turned and led the way toward the brick building where C. E. Hennaberry, Show Figures and Emblematic Signs, did business. Ben the boy paused in his never-ending work of dusting the stock models to give a word and a wave in greeting. He stared at Walt.

In the back was the office, old Van Wart the clerk-cashier and old Considine the clerk-bookkeeper, on their high stools, bending over their books as usual. On the wall was a dirty photograph in a black-draped frame, with the legend “Hon. Wm. Marcy Tweed, Grand Sachem of the Columbian Order of St. Tammany” and underneath the portrait was the Major himself.

“So this is the place!” Walter declared, exaggerated Southern accent rolling richly. Major Hennaberry’s friend, Col. Cox, sitting on the edge of the desk cutting himself a slice of twist, jumped as if stung by a minié-ball. His rather greasy sealskin cap slid over one eye.

“Get all kinds of people in here, don’t you, Cephas?” he growled. “All’s I got to say is: I was at Fredericksburg, I was at Shiloh, and all’s I got to say is: the only good Rebel is a dead Rebel!”

The Major, as Don well knew, hated Rebels himself, with a fervor possible only to a Tammany Democrat whose profitable speculations in cotton futures had been interrupted for four long, lean years. Don also knew that the Major had a short way of dealing with partisans of the Lost Cause, or with anyone else who had cost or threatened to cost him money — if he could just be brought to the point.

The Major looked up now, his eye lighting coldly on Walter, who gazed around the not overly clean room with a curious stare. “Yes, sir, might I serve you, sir? Nice fly-figure, maybe? Can supply you with a Highlander holding simulated snuff-mill at a tear-down price; no extra charge for tam-o-shanter. Oh, Dusty. Glad to see you—”

“Dusty” mumbled an introduction. How quickly things had changed — though not in any way for the better — and how paradoxically: because he had refused the WIS demand to change the past by violence so that modernism would be held off indefinitely, he was now condemned to see modernism arrive almost at once. Unless, of course …

“Brother-in-law, eh?” said Major Hennaberry, beginning to wheeze. “Dusty’s done some speaking about you. Mmph.” He turned abruptly to Don/ Dusty. “What’s all this, my boy, that Charley Voles was telling me — Demuth’s coming up with some devilish scheme to introduce cast-iron show figures?” Dusty started, a movement noted by the keen though bloodshot eyes of his sometime employer. “Then it is true? Terrible thing, unconscionable. Gave me the liver complaint afresh, directly I heard of it. Been on medicated wine ever since.”

Walt turned angrily on his brother-in-law. “Who told you to open your damn cotton-pickin mouth?”

The Major’s purplish lips parted, moved in something doubtless intended for a smile.

“Now, gents,” he said, “let’s not quarrel. What must be must be, eh?”

“ Now you’re talking,” said Walt, and evidently not realizing that he and Hennaberry had quite separate things in mind, he added: “Things will be different, but you’ll get used to them.”

Watching the Major start to wheeze in an unreasoning attack of rage, Dusty knew catalytic action was needed. “How about a drink, Major?” he suggested. “A Rat Nolan special?”

Unpurpling quickly, now merely nodding and hissing, the Major called for Ben. He took a coin out of his change purse and said: “Run over to Cooney’s barrelhouse and bring back some glasses and a pitcher of rum cocktail. And ask Cooney does he know where Nolan is. I got some business with him.”

The boy left on the lope, and there was a short, tight silence. Then Col. Cox spoke, an anticipatory trickle already turning the corners of his mouth a wet brown. “I was at Island Number Ten, and I was at Kennesaw Mountain, and what I say is: the only good Rebel is a dead Rebel.”