Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

I hang up, slip the contract I’ve already drawn up out of my desk, sign it, have Mr. Crainpool witness it and tell him to pop it by the university on his way to work tomorrow. Mr. Crainpool lives out that way. A respectful, very soft-sell letter accompanies the document spelling out our mutual undertakings. Chances are nothing will come of it, but in these times who can tell? I do take the campus newspaper; something like what I outlined to the chancellor could happen. A bright bondsman stays on top of things.

“What’s on, Mr. Crainpool? Anything come up while I was at court?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all? Sometimes the merest inquiry or the most innocuous information can lead to the biggest action.”

“No, sir.”

“Where’s all this fucking crime in the streets I keep hearing about? I sometimes think the people around here aren’t pulling their oar.”

“No, sir.”

“They’re letting us down, Mr. Crainpool.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember when Covington was wide open?”

“Oh, yes.”

“That’s what this reminds me of.”

Covington is across the Ohio River in Kentucky. Till they cleaned it up a few years ago it used to be the wildest town in America. Gambling, strip joints, after-hours places, whorehouses, the lot. It may have been the only small town in the country with its own press bureau. Articles used to come out regularly in the men’s magazines—“Covington, Kentucky: Sin City, U.S.A.” It was terrific. It was terrific, but it was an optical illusion. Organized crime, you could starve to death. The only licensed bondsman in town used to complain to me. He’d cross the river and sing the blues. I told him when he first moved out there, “Harry, you’re wasting your time in the suburbs. They’ll never amount to a hill of shit. That’s syndicate money, that’s family. That’s no place for the little man.”

“Button your sweater, Mr. Crainpool, please. How many times do I have to tell you?”

I like him to look cold. It gives him the look of a clerk in Dickens and lends tone to the place. I even made him a high stool he can sit on when a client comes into the shop. He slips on these arm garters and a little green eyeshade. I try to get him to wear a muffler but he’s allergic.

“You’re supposed to call Edna,” Mr. Crainpool says.

“Right, Mr. Crainpool. Thank you.”

There’s no need for Mr. Crainpool to dial it for me; I remember the number. Oh, my flat Phoenician head, my definitive, paradigmatic eyes like the cutouts in masks — all my archaeological features like the beaked profiles of birds, the ledges of my lids deep as window sills, my ears, pressed back as a hairdo: all this information in me, my face built for remembering, my black eyes that can hold accusation and grudge in them, commodious, flexible as the infinity of configurations in the interiors of airplanes. Of course I remember the number.

“Is Edna up, Mrs. Shea?…What, don’t recognize my voice yet? And meself after callin’ yer daughter these many times these many months?…Well, if you don’t, you don’t. You’re a good woman, Mrs. Shea, sad fortune gave you your daughter and your cross.…What’s that?…No no, ’tisn’t Fatha, Mrs. Shea, ’tis Mr. Main. Through whose good offices your daughter sleeps under your roof instead of in some godless cell, or walks where you and me both know she oughtn’t! Be so good as to wake her for me, Mrs.…Edna? Alexander, Edna. Mother tells me you were in bed. Been taking those pills then, have you, Edna? Good, sweetheart. How many have you got left?…What’s that?…Then go see at once, you filthy pig. Wait. Put Mom on the extension.…Mrs. Shea, hasn’t Edna gone through the bottle Mr. Crainpool left? How many?…As much as that? Edna, you fiend, Mummy tells Uncle Al you’ve still got twelve tabs in the bottle. You haven’t been taking your medicine, dear.…Oh, la, you answer pretty good for a girl who’s supposed to be doped up. You haven’t been taking the pills, Eddy. Never mind putting on that where-am-I voice for me. You came to the phone too quick. You want me after you, girl? You want me to have you fixed? You want your tongue rolled in the acid bath, or the knife taken to your taste buds? That’d fix you pretty good, wouldn’t it, dearie? Don’t you know even the first thing about appetite — a girl with one like yours? Think, sweetheart, if you beat this rap and they let you out in the streets again, you wouldn’t even be able to smell a playground. You’d rub up against the first diamond wire fence you came to. Pathetic, pathetic, child. You’d wait for recess and find when the whistle blows it’s only some factory you’ve been hanging round.”

“They make me sleepy,” Edna whines. “I can’t think. They make me goofy.”

“Mnephenedrin? They relax you, doll. They keep you away from the bus stations and off the superhighways, and Uncle Al doesn’t have to worry about you. Enjoy the pills. Pretend you’re on vacation.”

“I get nervous.”

“All right, Edna, if you’re not going to cooperate I’ll have to send Mr. Crainpool out with the cold serum. You’re leaving me no alternative. One injection and your nose will run till your trial comes up. Your head will be stuffed. Your throat will tickle like poison ivy. You want that, darling?”

“I’m not going off anywhere.”

“Mama, you still on the phone?”

“I’m here.”

“ Two pills for Edna today. One with her orange juice, another tonight. Drop it in the back of her mouth yourself so you can see she’s really swallowing it. All right, Edna, listen dear, it’s only another two weeks. Do as I say. You think all I’m trying to do is protect an investment? Kid, I like your style. I take an interest in your case. You’re a credit to the deviates, darling. I don’t want to see a really innovative cookie like you shut up with a lot of tough broads. They menstruate, Edna. Every babe in the Ohio whoresgow — that’s my name for it, daughter, the whoresgow — has blood on her. An odor so strong it would come right through Mr. Crainpool’s serum. I’m telling you, Eddy, the state gives out sanitary napkins. The toilets are choked with ’em. More egg in the air than at all the breakfast tables in the world. You want to go to a place like that? Now stop that crying, Edna; don’t go soft, kid. I’m just laying the cards out on the table for you, covering aspects you might have missed. You’ve got a good lawyer. With your psychiatric record you don’t have a thing to worry about. Chances are they won’t even lock you up; you’ll be an outpatient right in Cincinnati. Do you know where the clinic is, Edna? I’ve saved the best for the last, dear. Do you have any idea at all where they built that clinic? Right next to a nursery school! …Of course I’m not kidding, sure I’m telling the truth. Take your pill, doll. Go back to bed. In a couple of weeks we’ll wake you and take you to court. Okay? Say okay, sweetheart. Tell me okay.”

“Okay.”

“Good. That’s a promise, Edna. That’s a bond, honeybunch. Sleep now, sweetie. Night night.…Mama, are you still there? The orange juice, Mama. Go get it for her please.”

Mr. Crainpool grins slyly when I replace the receiver. “There’s no such serum,” he says.

“Botheration, Mr. Crainpool, this is intolerable! Listening to my private conversation, were you?”

“Wasn’t private, was a business call.”

“Blow on your hands, sir. Button your sweater. Look cold.”

“It’s almost April.”

“Out there, Mr. Crainpool.” I point to the Venetian blinds, so tightly shut that their louvers make a solid creamy wall. “Out there it’s almost April. In here it’s the Dark Ages. There’s capital punishment, men languish in prison for debt, hang for a stolen horse, poaching, a loaf filched for love. Severed heads, could you but see them, perch taking the weather on the flagstaffs above Riverfront Stadium, and not the pennants of the National League. The executioner’s head like a black bullet in its hood. Yes and class divides like the surgeon. It Moseses us left and right. You eat too much, Mr. Crainpool, you’re too well-fed. Easy on the starch and sauces, sir. Make yourself wan and drawn, if you’d be so kind.”