Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“I suppose so,” the man said, laughing nervously.

“Ah, don’t be afraid. It’s a personal question, of course. What’s the use of any other kind, eh, brother?”

The crowd laughed. “All right, friend, what I want to know is whether you own your home or rent?”

“I rent.”

“Fine. That’s fine. You rent, you say.”

“That’s right.”

“Never made it?” Lome asked suddenly, looking at the man sharply.

“What’s that? What do you mean?”

“Never made it. Never broke through. Obligations kept you a tenant. No, no, don’t be ashamed. Please. We understand. Here’s your opportunity. Clay. Clay is land, a plot. A plot for you.” Lome took another piece of clay from his pocket and molded it to the first piece. “The plot thickens,” he said, and the crowd laughed again. He pulled the piece of clay apart. “Or subdivide.” He held the piece of clay out to the man.

“It’s just clay,” the man said.

“Well, of course it is. That’s what I’ve been telling you. But don’t say it like that, brother. Don’t let me hear you say, ‘It’s just clay.’ Take that ‘just’ out. Be just. Say, ‘Why, it’s clay!’ Because that’s what it is. The emphasis is on clay. This is the stuff. Old Adam’s in that clay. Come on, brother. A souvenir, a remembrance of the earth. And here’s something else. I don’t know where it’s from and I don’t make any claims for it — I will not misrepresent. But that clay could be Chinese clay or Polish clay or Canadian or Argentine clay. Who can say who walked these old hills? Jesus Himself maybe, eh?

“All right, give me a nickel. That’s my price for the earth. That’s from the earth, too. We’ll trade, even steven. Clay for nickel. What’s Hecuba to me? Hey? And this is something you can take with you, friend — make no mistake about that. Beware of substitutes. Keep that nickel in your pants and they’ll turn you upside down when you die. They’ll shake you, brother. They’ll shake that nickel loose. They’ll never bury you with a nickel still in your pocket. But the clay stays. Ashes to ashes, pal, dust to dust. How about it? I’m waiting for your decision.”

“It’s worthless,” the man said.

Lome turned to the crowd. “This man has resistance. I like that in a man.” He turned back to the man suddenly and placed his hands on his lapels. “So you say it’s worthless, do you?” he shouted. “Well, I breathed meaning into it! What’s that worth? How much meaning you got in your life, friend, you can afford to let even five cents’ worth go by without jumping at it? You’re suspicious, are you? You’re afraid if you give me the nickel I’ve taken you. Well, maybe I have. You get taken every day, pal. Renter! Tenant! Where’s the gas you bought? Where are the phone calls? the electric? the food? What have you got to show me for the money you’ve spent? Show me something. Show me! Receipts? You hold on to that clay, you hear me? It’s dirt cheap. Cheap dirt. Give me the nickel. Give it to me!”

Hypnotized, the man dug into his pocket and handed Lome a nickel. Turning to the others, Lome took up the clay from the newspaper and broke off pieces and handed them out as people forced their nickels on him. He laughed, taking their money, and at last held up his hands. “All gone, folks,” he said. “No more clay. I thank you for your attention.”

He came up to me. “How’d you make out with yours?” he asked.

“I’ve still go it.”

“With the great demand for clay? It’s a seller’s market, friend.” He took the change out of his pocket and looked at it. “Not bad,” he said. “I made fifteen cents on your three packages and a dollar-twenty on mine. Deducting forty-five cents for expenses, that makes a profit of ninety cents. I doubled my money.”

“You were very good.” I was genuinely moved.

“Pigeons,” he said. “That was the lesson of the clay pigeons.”

Last night the drought ended. There were violent, sudden storms, lightning crackling, thunder clapping, signs and portents. The people came into the street to look at the rain.

I was with Lome in the limousine when the storm broke; he had allowed me to accompany him to the airport. He stared at the heavy rain. “I’ve got to be in Cleveland,” he said. “There’s a deal.”

“They’ll never let you take off in this weather,” I said hopefully.

“We’ll see about that.”

By the time we got to the airport it was raining even harder. Lome brooded about his vanishing opportunities. He went into the tower to plead his case, but it was no use. When he came down he was glum.

“I’ve got to be in Cleveland,” he said. “It’s an act of God, a damned act of God.” He said this as though God might be some competitor who had to make sure that Lome didn’t get to Cleveland first. “What are you grinning about?” he asked me.

“The weather works in my favor,” I said. In the limousine I had been urging him to help me.

“Bull,” he said. “You’ll get nothing out of my prolonged stay.”

We sat silently. Suddenly Lome looked up. “It has to break,” he said. “It has to.” He stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To the tower. I want to look at those radar screens again.”

I started to follow him. “Look,” he said, “I don’t need you right now.”

I saw him stop to talk with one of the airport executives. I was miserable; I almost wished Lome might be allowed to take off. This was the end, I thought. My money, except for the sum I had set aside to invest on Lome’s advice, was all gone, and I no longer had any hope that he would help me.

More than most men I needed to be free. My controlling vision demanded it. It was grand to be a self- made man, but bliss to be an heir, a gentleman farmer, a hereditary lord, to be fixed in some sinecure where effort bred the soul’s reward. It was simple biology which finally caught up with you; it was economics that dealt the death blow. And duty was simply the food in the icebox, the roof over your head, your lousy needs, your growling upstart stomach and all the rest.

So goodbye, great men, you whose needs are met, all the folks with money in the bank and clothes in the closet, whose duty had been done, whose honorable intentions could be counted in diseases forestalled by health insurance, in down payments of one sort or another, in funds for their children’s educations. They were out of my league now, out of my neighborhood, my life. They lived in drier climates where the penny for the rainy day was a superfluity. I could, of course, continue to show up at their back doors, my hand outstretched in the pauper’s salute. but why should they listen any more than Lome had listened?

If I met the great now, it would have to be in the way others met them, at a humiliating second-hand, conducted into their presence by ushers with flashlights to watch their images on screens, or hear them in concert halls, or applaud them at rallies while arc lamps played across the sky, or read about them in books or hear their voices on the radio. The life I had chosen for myself — or had had thrust upon me by reasons of temperament — was over now. It had been a grand idea, a great idea, a noble idea for a life — I still insisted on that. But, like many before me. I didn’t have the price.

I could still see Lome talking to the official, arguing special privilege, blandishing, terrorizing in his great salesman’s way. They will have to let him go, I thought. I could imagine his arguments, compelling, urgent, single- minded, and I pitied the official who did not know what I knew: that his single-mindedness, his force, his logic, were shammed, his motives all ulterior. I thought of his pitch to the crowd. He knew. He knew. He had the intimations, the hints. The ungodly voices whispered in his ear too. “Save yourself.” Lome knew about death. They would not leave the nickel in his pants either. He knew that, yet he persisted. Perhaps that was it; perhaps that’s what lay at the core of all greatness — a willingness not to abide by logic, to shrug it off in the soul’s own optimism. He was an inspiring sight. If only I knew how to respond, if only I could learn the lesson of the clay and other pigeons that the sight of Lome, grounded in Dallas halfway to Cleveland and death, stirred in me. He sold the clay and had accepted mere money, defying the very arguments he invented, the very truths he alone understood.