Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“In a few months,” the young man said doubtfully.

“What have you done about your shoes?” Feldman asked.

“What shoes?”

“Your shoes ,” Feldman said. “That you came in with.”

“I don’t know. They took them away.”

“Well, certainly they did. They hold them down in wardrobe for when you get out. Were they new?”

“I don’t remember. Yes. I got them just before I was framed.”

“I see.”

“They were Italian.”

“I see.”

“They didn’t have laces.”

“Oh?”

“They had these little gold zippers.”

“They sound very nice,” Feldman said.

“They were comfortable. Very light,” he said wistfully.

“Soft leather,” Feldman said.

“Yeah. Very soft.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why? They were very comfortable.”

“No, I mean soft leather collapses. It doesn’t hold its shape.”

“Oh.”

“Shoetrees would save them,” Feldman said. “Of course the wardrobe guard doesn’t tell you that when he takes your shoes. Sure, he’s looking out for himself. He tries to save himself a little work. What does the wardrobe guard care? A man gets out and his shoes are shot. It’s a goddamn fucking pity.”

The young man pulled on his soda. When Feldman hooked his finger at him he leaned forward.

“Get a pair of shoetrees,” Feldman said confidentially. “What is it, a three-dollar investment? If you’re talking about the style I think you’re talking about, you’d be protecting something worth many times more.”

“They cost twenty-five bucks.”

“There, you see?” Feldman’s face became very serious. “Save your shoes,” he said slowly. He might have been a dentist warning schoolchildren about their teeth. He reached behind his back, detached a shoetree from the razor-blade stand, brought it around his body quickly and slapped it with a smart, ringing clap into his palm. Startled, the young man jumped back. Feldman’s eyes were closed. “ What is it preserves in this world that decays? Where age always withers and time’s never stayed? ” The young man stared at him. Feldman opened his eyes. “What, friend, do the ancients say makes perfect?”

The convict shook his head.

“Come on,” Feldman said, “this is basic. What do the ancients say makes perfect? Practice , that’s what. Practice. Practice does. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Practice. ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.’ ‘How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?’ Practice, pal, makes perfect, pal. Practice! Habituality conquers reality. See the athlete: every muscle a maneuver. Unused, things collapse. Occupancy is a life principle. What else explains the growth of the caretaker industry in this country? They leave rangers in the forests in the wintertime. Use. Use use! Who’s talking about your creepy zippered dago shoes? This is life I’m talking about, friend, character I’m pushing for three dollar bills. Your shoes need practice. Let my shoetrees walk your shoes! Stuff them with my proxy feet and let them run around down there!” He shoved the shoetree into the young man’s hand.

“Leather dehydrates. Did you take chemistry? Did they tell you that in chemistry? The shoetree you hold in your hand has been treated with a thin emollient possessing exactly the consistency and molecular structure of human foot oil. Save your shoes! Save them!”

“But they’re locked up. How could I get them into the shoes now?”

“The guard,” Feldman said.

“He’d never let me.”

Feldman reached behind him. “Slip him this candy and wink.” He forced a bar of the confectioners’ sugar into the young man’s other hand.

When Feldman had finished with him the young man had spent three dollars seventy-six and a quarter cents in prison chits. It was a goddamned shopping spree, Harold Flesh said. He had never seen anything like it.

It went on like that for days. Feldman sold things in half-dozens that had never been sold before at all. He pushed the number-four pencils, and when the men discovered that these produced unsatisfactory, almost invisible lines, he sold them ink into which they could dip their pencils like old-fashioned pens. He had luck, too, with the flower balls, which was the only thing that could neutralize the taste of the guava soda. The mauve soda neutralized the taste of the flower balls. Only the suntan lotion neutralized the taste of the mauve soda.

He told the men that the difference between success and failure lay in education.

“I know,” one said, “I’m taking a course for college credit.”

“College credit? College? Don’t kid me.”

“I am. European Literature in Translation.”

“Then why are you here? It’s Saturday afternoon. Why ain’t you at the game? Where’s your pledge pin? Who’s your date for the big dance?”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I’m calling you a fool,” Feldman said. “Tell me, Professor, what is the capital of South Dakota, please? Which is smaller, the subtrahend or the minuend? Give me the words of ‘The Pledge of Allegiance.’”

“What are you talking about?”

“Fifth grade,” Feldman said.

“Hey—”

“Hey, hey,” Feldman said. “What’s the matter? You never heard of the formative years?”

“The formative years?”

“Sure the formative years. Of course the formative years. It makes me sore the way you guys are taken for a ride. Why are you here now, do you suppose? Because you stole a car, pointed a gun, beat up a grocer? You’re here now because you had lousy formative years. Mal formative years is what you had. I won’t fool you — you’re a grown man. What’s done is done. I can’t make you nine years old again, but I can give you a tip. Listen to me, college boy. The only education that counts is the education you get in those formative years. The difference between you and the squares is that the squares know ‘The Pledge of Allegiance.’ Imagine someone pointing a gun who can tell you the capital of Iowa.”

“You know, you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. Go back, go back. Learn what everybody learned that you didn’t learn. There’s a program for men who didn’t complete grammar school. Sign up for that . It’ll be your reformative years. Here,” Feldman said, “you’ll need paste. There’s no time to lose. Here’s blunt scissors. Take notebook paper. A ruler. Here’s crayons. Here’s gummed reinforcements.”

In a week all that was left was what Feldman had hidden. Gradually he began to reintroduce cigarettes, books of matches, edible candy, the toiletries. These he let Flesh and Walls and Sky sell.

“You hate these guys,” Flesh said.

“No,” Feldman said. It was true. He loved a good customer. Feldman himself was sometimes an easy mark for a good salesman. The formative years, he thought.

“It’s as though they had to spend money,” Sky said.

“That’s right. That’s right , Sky.” Feldman felt expansive. Without fear, the mood of his safety still on him, he had begun to miss his life, to feel a sort of homesickness for the habit of being Feldman. He was tempted to talk to them as he had sometimes talked to his employees. (Gradually he had begun to think of the three as his employees. Criminals. The best staff he had ever put together.) “Anticipate the consequences of desire, and you’ll be rich. All things are links in a chain. All the things there are. Objects take their being from other objects. A salesman knows. This is the great incest of the marketplace.” This was the way he spoke to his employees — after hours, the store closed, before a weekend perhaps, or a holiday. There was something military about it. He might have been an officer who had just brought his men through a great battle. There had been blood. Money and blood. All shoptalk, all expertise had a quality of battle about it, of exultation in the escape from danger. Something was always at stake, every moment you lived. No one could ever really afford to tell the truth. Even after hours, when the store was closed. But sometimes the truth was so good you couldn’t keep it to yourself.