Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“ ‘The mechanics.’

“ ‘I see. Thank you.’

“ ‘You we’come.’

“ ‘Suppose the engine itself?’

“ ‘Same thing.’

“ ‘The mechanics?’

“ ‘Yep.’

“The countryman nodded.

“ ‘And the same,’ the neighbor said, ‘if it was pistons or rods or a transmission or a carburetor or if the battery was to die.’

“ ‘The mechanics.’

“ ‘Sho.’

“The countryman paused for a moment, then turned in his seat to face the neighbor. ‘Where,’ he asked, ‘do them mechanics get all that ’ere machinery?’

“ ‘Spar parts,’ the neighbor said.

“ ‘Spar parts?’

“ ‘Sho. You got you a intricate, complicated thing like a pickup, you got to be sure you can get your spar parts if somethin’ should to go wrong and she should need replacin’. They’s whole entire catalogues of spar parts. Not just for this pickup but for ever entire one we done passed or done passed us on the way to the city here, and not just for pickups but for sedans and coupes, too, and for convertibles and delivery trucks and the big rigs highballin’ it down the turnpikes and byways. For motorcycles and bicycles and everthin’ that moves.’

“ ‘I’ll be,’ the countryman said, ‘I’ll be.’

“ ‘Sho,’ his neighbor said.

“Well, they continued on into the city, and when they came to where the countryman’s brother lived and were told by his wife, the countryman’s sister-in-law, which hospital her father-in-law, her husband’s and brother-in-law’s Paw, was at, they went there at once.

“ ‘You go on in,’ the neighbor said. ‘I’ll find me a spot in the lot.’

“ ‘The lot?’

“ ‘The parking lot. They’s plenty sick folks in yonder hospital and they all have kin want to visit with ’em and cheer ’em up or’—and here he looked down, averting his eyes from the countryman—‘if it’s too late for that — to say goodbye.’ The neighbor looked up to see how the countryman had taken this last part, but instead of the sorrow he had expected to see on the guy’s puss, what was his, the neighbor’s, surprise to see not sorrow but a curiosity so sharply defined it might have been language.

“ ‘Go on,’ the countryman said, ‘about the parking lot.’

“ ‘Well,’ the neighbor said, ‘they’s nothing to go on about . The hospital knows that sick folks’ kin want to come visit and have to have a place to park so they put up parking lots. That’s all they is to it.’

“ ‘They charge money?’

“ ‘They do.’

“ ‘The mechanics with the spar parts, they charge money, too?’

“ ‘Course they charge money. Sho they do. You born yesterday, or what?’ he asked with some impatience.

“ ‘Seems like,’ the countryman said. ‘Seems like an’ that’s a fac’.’ The neighbor looked at the countryman, who now seemed preoccupied. ‘Well,’ the countryman said abruptly, bringing himself back from wherever it was he had been woolgathering. ‘You go on and park in the parking lot while I straightway attend to my bidness.’ The neighbor let the countryman out of the pickup and drove off. When he returned, what was his surprise to see the countryman still standing where he had left him. If it were not for the fact that he now held a small white paper bag that he had not had before, he would have sworn that the countryman had not moved a muscle.

“ ‘It’s ’leven fifty-two,’ the countryman said.

“ ‘No,’ the neighbor said, ‘cain’t be. I heard the noon lunch whistle when we was still back in the pickup waitin’ on the engine to cool.’

“ ‘No,’ the countryman said, ‘not that ’leven fifty-two. Where Paw’s at.’

“ ‘Oh.’

“ ‘When you druv off to the parking lot I got to studyin’ on how we ’us gone to find my Paw in a gret big ol’ hospital like this ’un. I seen the winders. Take a full day to hunt in ever room, and s’pose he already dead an’ they fixin’ to bury ’im an’ there I ’us stumblin’ roun’ huntin’ ’im down in his room like some ol’ coon with a bad cold. What I do then, his ol’es’ boy an’ not even on time for his buryin’. And even if he still alive, ther I be bargin’ in ’mongst all them sick folks, goin’ roun’ to wher they sleepin’, all scrunched down in they beds, the sheets up over they heads an’ shiv’rin’ from they chills an’ fevers an’ me aksin’, “You my paw, mister? It’s me, you Paw?” ’

“ ‘Well, that’s not the—’

“ ‘That’s not the way they do it,’ the countryman said. ‘I remembered all you to’d me ’bout the spar parts and the parking lots and all them kin drops by to tell goodbye to all them sick folks an’ I thunk, Why they mus’ be some place right chere on the fust floor right wher you fust come in wher they keep the names and rooms wher them sick folks is. And I’ll be swacked if it weren’t jus’ the way I s’posed. I go in and right way ther’s this nice lady in a uniform settin’ at a table an’ she aks me whut do I want.

“ ‘How much you charge to tell me wher my paw is dying?’ I aks and I start to give her my name an’ stop, thinkin’, No , that’s not the way they do it, they’d use his name ’cause he’s the one dyin’ an’ I give her my paw’s name an’ she smiles an’ looks him up in what she to’d me later was a d’rectory an’ ther it is—’leven fifty-two.’

“ ‘How much she charge?’ the neighbor asked.

“ ‘Well, that’s the bes’ part. She don’t charge nothin’. That part’s free.’

“ ‘I be,’ he, the neighbor, said.

“ ‘Aks me ’bout this chere paper bag I’m ho’din’.’

“ ‘I ’us goin’ to.’

“ ‘It’s little chocolates. For Paw. Paw likes chocolates.’

“ ‘Chocolates.’

“ ‘I got to studyin’ whut you said ’bout all them kinfolks—’

“ ‘You to’d me that part.’

“ ‘I to’d you the part ’bout you sayin’ how they come to tell they sick folks goodbye. I ain’t to’d you nothin’ ’bout how I remembered the part where you said they come to cheer ’em up.’

“‘Oh.’

“ ‘And I studied on that part and I got the idea that they mus’ be some place right close by that they’d call it somethin’ all cheery like the Wishing Well wher kin could get some baubles fur their sick folks, an’ I aks the lady an’ she points it right out an’ it ain’t but thutty foot from wher I’m standin’ an’ she says, “Oh, that would be the Wishing Well,” an’ I went to it and they had everthin’ you could want — toys and little ol’ lacy nighties an’ comical books an’ chewin’ gum an’ the very same chocolates that my paw so dearly loves. Hershey Kisses they call ’em.’

“And with that the countryman tells the neighbor that it was time he went up to see his father and asks him, the neighbor, to come along, he’s come this far. The neighbor agrees and starts toward the stairway, but the countryman calls him back, telling him that if it’s a building where they put sick folks, then it would have to have an elevator or how would folks sick as his paw get up eleven stories and they would ride where the sick folks ride and it would have to be close by and if there was a charge why he, the countryman, would pay for them both since he, the neighbor, had been so nice already.

“They found the elevator and rode to the eleventh floor and the countryman asked the colored girl who ran the elevator what it would cost them and she said it was free and he, the countryman and his friend, the neighbor, got off without a word, their faces solemn as they could make them. When the elevator doors closed behind them, the countryman hooted in wild laughter and the neighbor, seeing the joke at once, joined in.