Robert Coover - Pricksongs & Descants

“Now, tell me, son, what happened here?” The policeman’s face was thin and pale, like a student’s, and he wore a trim little tuft of black moustache under the pinched peak of his nose.

I’ve just been hit, Paul explained, by this truck, and then he realized that he probably didn’t say it at all, that speech was an art no longer his. He cast his eyes indicatively toward the cab of the truck.

“Listen, I asked you what happened here! Cat got your tongue, young man?” “Crazy goddam fool he just walk right out in fronta me no respect just burstin for a bustin!”

The policeman remained crouched over Paul, but turned his head up to look at the truckdriver. The policeman wore a brilliant blue uniform with large brass buttons. And gold epaulettes.

“Boy I seen punchies in my sweet time but this cookie takes the cake God bless die laboring classes I say and preserve us from the humble freak!”

The policeman looked down at Paul, then back at the truck-driver. “I know about truckdrivers,” Paul heard him say.

“Listen lays and gentmens I’m a good Christian by Judy a decent hardworkin fambly man earnin a honest wage and got a dear little woman and seven yearnin younguns all my own seed a responsible man and goddamn that boy what he do but walk right into me and my poor oletrike. Track, I mean.”

There was a loose tittering from the crowd, but the policeman’s frown and raised stick contained it “What’s your name, lad?” he asked, turning back to Paul. At first, the policeman smiled, he knew who truckdrivers were and he knew who Pauls were, and there was a salvation of sorts in that smile, but gradually it faded. “Come, come, boy! Don’t be afraid!” He winked, nudged him gently. “We’re here to help you.”

Paul, Paul replied. But, no, no doubt about it, it was jammed up in there and he wasn’t getting it out.

“Well, if you won’t help me, I can’t help you,” the policeman said pettishly and tilted his nose up. “Anybody here know this man?” he called out to the crowd.

Again a roar, a threatening tumult of words and sounds, shouts back and forth. It was hard to know if none knew him or if they all did. But men one voice, belted out above the others, came through: “O God in heaven! It’s Amory! Amory Westerman! ” The voice, a woman’s, hysterical by the sound of it, drew near. “Amory! What… what have they done to you?”

Paul understood. It was not a mistake. He was astonished by his own acumen.

“Do you know this young man?” the policeman asked, lifting his notebook. “What? Know him? Did Sarah know Abraham? Did Eve know Cain?” The policeman cleared his throat uneasily. “Adam,” he corrected softly.

“You know who you know, I know who I know,” the woman said, and let fly with a low throaty snigger. The crowd responded with a belly laugh.

“But this young man—!” the policeman insisted, flustered.

“Who, you and Amory?” the woman cried. ‘”ican’t believe it!”

The crowd laughed and the policeman bit his lip. “Amory! What New persecutions are these?” She billowed out above him: old, maybe even seventy, fat and bosomy, pasty-faced with thick red rouges, head haloed by ringlets of sparse orangish hair. “My poor Amory!” And down she came on him. Paul tried to duck, got only a hot flash in his neck for it. Her breath reeked of cheap gin. Help, said Paul.

“Hold, madame! Stop!” the policeman cried, tugging at the woman’s sleeve. She stood, threw up her arms before her face, staggered backwards. What more she did, Paul couldn’t see, for his view of her face was largely blocked by the bulge of her breasts and belly. There were laughs, though. “Everything in order here,” grumped the policeman, tapping his notebook. “Now, what’s your name, please… uh… miss, madame?”

“My name?” She twirled gracelessly on one dropsied ankle and cried to the crowd: “Shall I tell?”

Tell! Tell! Tell!” shouted the spectators, clapping rhythmically. Paul let himself be absorbed by it; there was, after all, nothing else to do.

The policeman, rapping a pencil against his blue notebook to the rhythm of the chant, leaned down over Paul and whispered: (“I think we’ve got them on our side now!”)

Paul, his gaze floating giddily up past the thin white face of the police officer and the red side of the truck into the horizonless blue haze above, wondered if alliance were really the key to it all. What am I without them? Could I even die? Suddenly, the whole world seemed to tip: his feet dropped and his head rose. Beneath him the red machine shot grease and muck, the host rioted above his head, the earth pushed him from behind, and out front the skyscrapers pointed, like so many insensate fingers, the path he must walk to oblivion. He squeezed shut his eyes to set right the world again — he was afraid he would slide down beneath the truck to disappear from sight forever.

“My name—!” bellowed the woman, and the crowd hushed, tittering softly. Paul opened his eyes. He was on his back again. The policeman stood over him, mouth agape, pencil poised. The woman’s puffy face was sequined with sweat Paul wondered what she’d been doing while he wasn’t watching. “My name, officer, is Grundy.”

“I beg your pardon?” The policeman, when nervous, had a way of nibbling his moustache with his lowers.

“Mrs. Grundy, dear boy, who did you think I was?” She patted the policeman’s thin cheek, tweaked his nose. “But you can call me Charity, handsome!” The policeman blushed. She twiddled her index finger in his little moustache. “Kootchy-kootchy-koo!” There was a roar of laughter from the crowd.

The policeman sneezed. “Please!” he protested. Mrs. Grundy curtsied and stooped to unzip the officer’s fly. “Hello! Anybody home!”

“ Stop that!” squeaked the policeman through the thunderous laughter and applause. Strange, thought Paul, how much I’m enjoying this.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“The story!” the policeman insisted through the tumult

“Story? What—?”

“This young fellow,” said the policeman, pointing with his pencil. He zipped up, blew his nose. “Mr, uh, Mr. Westerman… you said—”

“Mr. Who? ” The woman shook her jowls, perplexed. She frowned down at Paul, then brightened. “Oh yes! Amory!” She paled, seemed to sicken. Paul, if he could’ve, would’ve smiled.

“Good God!” she rasped, as though appalled at what she saw. Then, once more, she took an operatic grip on her breasts and staggered back a step. “O mortality! O fatal mischief! Done in! A noble man lies stark and stiff! Delenda est Carthago! Sic transit glans mundi!”

Gloria, corrected Paul. No, leave it.

“Squashed like a lousy bug!” she cried. “And at the height of his potency!”

“Now, wait a minute!” the policeman protested.

“The final curtain! The last farewell! The journey’s end! Over the hill! The last muster!” Each phrase was answered by a happy shout from the mob. “Across the river! The way of all flesh! The last roundup!” She sobbed, then ballooned down on him again, tweaked his ear and whispered: (“How’s Charity’s weetsie snotkins, enh? Him fall down and bump his little putsy? Mumsy kiss and make well!”) And she let him have it on the — well, sort of on the left side of his nose, left cheek, and part of his left eye: one wet enveloping sour blubbering kiss, and this time, sorrily, the police man did not intervene. He was busy taking notes. Officer, said Paul.

“Hmmm,” the policeman muttered, and wrote. “G-R-U-N-ah, ahem, Grundig, Grundig — D, yes, D-I-G. Now what did you—?”

The woman labored clumsily to her feet, plodded over behind the policeman, and squinted over his shoulder at the notes he was taking. “That’s a ‘Y’ there, buster, a ‘Y.’” She jabbed a stubby ruby-tipped finger at the notebook.