Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“Wait, I’ll get it,” Walls said.

“Never mind,” Feldman said, “I will.”

He took away the famous kinds and allowed those he had never heard of to remain. He was very discriminating. There were seventeen boxes of Licorice Brittle, two dozen tubes of Flower Balls. Rose, Gardenia, Gray Orchid, Pine — some of the other flavors. He gave prominent space to some curious unwrapped bars of hardened confectioners’ sugar. They had precisely the texture and taste of the candy sockets that support the candles on a child’s birthday cake. They had jelly centers. Not by bread alone, Feldman thought.

He opened the soft-drink cooler and peered inside. He removed the Coke and Pepsi Cola and 7Up and all the fruit flavors except guava. He held up a bottle of bright mauvish liquid. There was no label. He read the cap. “Fleer’s,” it said. Hits the spot, Feldman thought, and returned it to the cooler.

Then he picked through the tray of combs, leaving out only the wide, eight- and ten-inch ones and removing all the tightly toothed pocket combs. These he placed in a large cardboard box into which he had already put writing paper, packets of envelopes, ball-point pens and all the number-two pencils. He covered the box and shoved it under the counter out of sight. He found a single box of number four hard-lead pencils, and these he built in a rectangular construction on the top of the counter.

He discovered some shoetrees, which he hung on a tall revolving razor-blade stand from which he had first removed all the double-edged blades. (He allowed a few packages of odd-shaped injector blades to be displayed.) He arranged the greeting cards, first transferring to the cardboard box all those cards whose messages of sympathy or celebration seemed rather ordinary. He was left with a small, curious assortment: “Get Well Soon, Stepmother”; “Bon Voyage, Cousin Pat”; “Best Wishes for the April Primary”; “Too Bad Your Dog Was Run Over”; “Welcome Back to Civilian Life, General”; “Congratulations, Comrade, on the Success of Your Strike!”

He took away all the Kleenex and white pocket handkerchiefs, substituting five carefully folded floral-pattern babushkas the men sent as gifts. There were other gift items: three travelling clocks, a portable iron and several umbrellas. Then, in a massive ziggurat, he arranged six dozen bottles of suntan lotion that had arrived yesterday by mistake. He stood back to appraise what he had done. “How do you like it?” he asked Manfred. Sky stared at him.

The canteen opened for an hour and five minutes in the afternoon. (The scheduling of canteen hours was among the more complicated arrangements at the prison. This was Thursday. On Thursday those men who hadn’t taken their free hour at ten in the morning on Monday could take it with an increment of five minutes at two-thirty in the afternoon.)

A convict holding an envelope came up to the wire cage behind which Feldman was waiting. “Give me a stamp,” he said.

“Certainly,” Feldman said. He took a special-delivery stamp from the special drawer he had prepared and slipped it to the man through the opening in the cage. “Thirty cents, please,” he said politely.

“Not this,” the man said, “a stamp . A regular stamp. A nickel stamp.”

“All out,” Feldman explained.

“What do you mean all out? I want to send a letter.”

Feldman glanced down at the stamp the convict had just returned to him. “They deliver it any hour of the day or night with this,” he said. “This is one of the best stamps there is.”

“I don’t want it delivered any hour of the day or night. It’s a letter to my mother. I say I’m feeling fine and that I’m glad Uncle had a nice time in Philadelphia.”

Feldman nodded sympathetically.

“Look,” the man said, “have you got an air-mail stamp? I’ll send it air-mail.”

“All out,” Feldman said. He considered the problem for a minute. “ I know,” he said suddenly. “Do you know anyone in Europe?”

“Why?”

“Well, if you know someone in Europe, I could sell you an overseas air letter for eleven cents. You write your mother the air letter, and your pal in Europe redirects it to your mom. If he does it right away, she’ll have it in under two weeks.”

“I don’t know nobody in Europe,” the man said.

“ Asia . These air letters go to Asia too. It takes a little longer, but—”

“I never been to Asia. I don’t know nobody in Asia. Just give me the goddamned special-delivery.”

“Coming right up,” Feldman said sweetly.

The next customer, a young man, wanted a stamp too. He was holding some documents. They looked important. Probably they were legal forms he was sending to his lawyer.

Feldman shook his head sadly. “I’ve only got this cent-and-a-quarter precanceled job for nonprofit organizations,” he said.

The young man made some private calculations. “Well, give me seven of them. That’d make more than the eight cents it costs for an air-mail.”

“Gee, I’ve got only one left. There’s not much call for them.”

“What would happen if I put a cent-and-a-quarter stamp on this?”

“You’d have to send it open, unsealed,” Feldman said expertly. “It goes surface mail. Rail, bus, that sort of thing.”

“These are important confidential papers,” the convict said. “My appeal rides on this.”

“Uh huh,” Feldman said.

“They have to go out today.”

“Do you know anybody in Europe?”

Finally the man had to take his chances. He stuffed the papers into the envelope and started to lick it.

“Unh unh, unh uhn,” Feldman warned, waving his finger.

“I forgot,” the man said. He handed the unsealed envelope to Feldman reluctantly, anxious and very doubtful. Feldman dropped it cheerfully into the mailbag.

“How about a drink?” Feldman asked. “To relax you.”

“All right,” the convict said. “A Coke.”

“All out. Here,” Feldman said, “try this. Just got in a shipment. A new taste sensation.” He extended an open bottle of the mauve soda pop.

The young man took a few swallows. “It tastes like bubble gum,” he said.

“That’s what they’re drinking today,” Feldman said. “The kids. They’re doing the twist and drinking bubble-gum soda.”

“Yeah.”

“Say,” Feldman said, “if that appeal comes through, you’ll be getting out soon.”

The young man looked troubled again. “Maybe you’d better give me back my letter,” he said. “Maybe my friend has a stamp.”

“You kidding ” Feldman said. “You kidding me? That’s a federal rap, buddy. Me tamper with the mails? I’m not sticking my hand into that mail bag. What, are you kidding? That’s federal .”

“Well, let me back there. I’ll do it.”

“I can’t,” Feldman said. “You never heard of an accessory? Forty-two percent of the guys in here are accessories. Besides, I can’t let unauthorized personnel back here. That would be an infraction of prison decorum. Jesus, the Feds would want me, and the warden would want me too.”

“Well, what about me?” the convict said. “I already committed a federal offense.”

“You did?”

“I’m not a nonprofit organization,” the man said gloomily.

“I didn’t hear that,” Feldman said. “You never said it, and I didn’t hear it.” He looked at Sky and Flesh and Walls. “You guys are witnesses. I didn’t know. To me he looked nonprofit.” He turned back to the young man. “Look, relax. Try to see the bright side. Maybe the papers won’t fall out. Maybe the transportation strike will be over soon. They’re not too far apart. The President is sending an arbitrator in a private plane. As soon as the fog lifts. If your appeal goes through you’ll be out soon.”