Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

Going home, his father, elated, taught him the calls as they walked along. “Not ‘rags,’ not ‘ old clothes .’ What are you, an announcer on the radio? You’re in a street! Say ’regs, all cloze.’ Shout it. Sing it. I want to hear steerage, Ellis Island in that throat. I’ll give you the pitch. Ready, begin: Rugs, oil cloths! Wait, stop the music. Greenhorn , you’re supposed to be a greenhorn! What, you never saw the Statue of Liberty through the fringes of a prayer shawl?”

He hadn’t and neither had his father.

“All right, from the top. Rocks, ill clots . Better, beautiful, very nice, you have a flair.”

“ Rex, wild clits ,” Feldman sang out. A hick stared at him from behind a lawn mower. He could smell preserves in the air.

“Terrific,” Feldman’s father shouted, “‘wild clits’ is very good. We’ll make our way. I feel it. I know it’s a depression, once I built a railroad, made it run. I know this is Illinois, America. I know the rubble is not the destruction of the second temple, but just today’s ashes. Never mind! We are traveling Jews in the latest phase of the new Diaspora. We will be terrific.”

He stopped and pulled his son close to him. “Listen, if anything happens you’ll need wisdom. I can’t help you. Father’s a fathead. Dad’s a dope. But in lieu of wisdom— cunning . These are bad times — bad, dreckish , phooey! But bad times make a bullish market for cunning. I’m no Red. From me you don’t hear ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ From me you hear ‘from them to me.’ I know the world. I know it. I fight it one day at a time. This is your father speaking. This is advice.

“ Rogues, wooled clouds ,” he roared down the American street.

So they sold and sold. “It’s the big sellout,” his father said. “What did you sell today?” he would ask people he met in the street. “Trade, traffic, barter, exchange, deal, peddle, purvey,” he called ecstatically to the house fronts.

They’d go into Woolworth’s — Woolworth’s was one of his father’s chief suppliers; “My wholesaler,” he’d say — and his father would gasp at the abundances there, the tiers of goods, the full shelves, the boxes on high platforms lining the walls. “Commodities,” he’d sigh. “Things. Thing City.” Staring like a stricken poet at an ideal beauty. “Some operation you’ve got here,” he said to the girl who sold the clusters of chocolate peanuts. He stared passionately at the penny weighing machine, the Foot-Eze machine. “Nothing for something,” he groaned jealously.

He turned to his son. “The beggars. Ah, the beggars and cripples. The men who sit armless and stumpless on a spread-out sheet of newspaper with the pencils in their caps. They have it made. They do. Take the nickel and keep the pencil! Delicious, delightful! The freaks stashed in cages, getting gelt for a gape. My son, my son, forgive me your health, your arms and your legs, your size and strong breathing, your unblemished skin. I chain you forever to invoice and lading, to rate of exchange, to wholesale, to cost.” He’d wink. “Sell seconds,” he’d say, “irregulars. Sell damaged and smoke-stained and fire-torn things. Sell the marred and impaired, the defective and soiled. Sell remnants, remainders, the used and the odd lot. Sell broken sets. That’s where the money is.”

He would pick up a pair of ladies’ panties from the lingerie counter. “Look, look at the craftsmanship,” he’d say distastefully, plunging his big hand inside and splaying his fingers in the silky seat, “the crotchmanship.” He’d snap the elastic. “No sag, no give,” he’d say to the startled salesgirl. “Give me give, the second-rate. Schlock, give me. They’re doing some wonderful things in Japan.

“ Because ,” he’d say, explaining, “where’s the contest in sound merchandise? You sell a sound piece of merchandise, what’s the big deal? Demand has nothing to do with good business, not good business. Need, who needs it? In England — come closer, miss, you’ll enjoy this — they have a slang term for selling. ‘Flogging,’ they call it. Flogging, fantastic. But that’s it, that’s it exactly. Beating, whipping. Every sale a scourge. Sell me envelopes.”

“That’s the stationery counter. Aisle four.”

“You hear, Leo? A stationary counter. Wonderful, wonderful. Not like with us with the wheels on the wagon, the rolling Diaspora. What a thing it is to be a gentile! A goy, gorgeous!”

He leaned across the counter and took the girl’s hands in his own. He moved with her like this to the break in the counter and pulled her toward him gently. They were like sedate figures in an old dance.

“It’s not my department,” the girl objected.

“You drive a hard bargain,” his father said. “It’s a pleasure to do business with you.”

“No, really — listen—”

“Envelopes, forty. One pack, wide white. Here’s the quarter. It’s a flog. Now, please, beat me a box pencils.”

Then, incredibly, he would sell the envelopes. One at a time. He would go into the office of the farm agent. “Have you written Mother this week?” he might ask, and sell him an envelope for two cents.

“What have you got for us today, Isidore?” an old man would call from the bench at the courthouse. His father sold him an envelope.

He lived by sufferance, his son saw. His father saw too. “They owe me,” he explained. “Fuck them.”

Little children suffered him. He would stride up to them in their games in the schoolyard. Perhaps he would intercept the ball, running after it clumsily, knees high, awry, hugging it ineptly. Holding it high. “Want to buy a ball?” he shouted. The children laughed. “What did you sell today?” Leering awfully, asking Helen, a girl in his son’s class, eleven and breasted, eleven and haired. The children roared and touched each other.

“What have you got for us today, Isidore?” a child yelled. It was what the old men called.

He tossed the ball aside, pushing it as a girl would, and reached into his pocket. “ White ,” he whispered, pulling a crayon from the pocket, holding it out to them, a waxy wand. “White!”

“I’ll tell you about white. White,” he’d say, his loose, enormous lids heavy, slack wrappings for his eyes, “is the first thing. White is light, great God’s let was, void’s null. You can’t go wrong with white. You wouldn’t be sorry you took white. Ask your teacher, you don’t believe me. It reflects to the eye all the colors in the solar spectrum. How do you like that? This is the solar spectrum I’m talking about, not your small-time local stuff. You take the white — the blue, yellow, red and green go with it. Some white! A nickel for the rainbow, I’m closing it out.”

“What could you do with it?” a boy asked.

“Color an elephant and sell it,” his father said. “Put up a flag. Tell a lie. Ah, kid, you know too much. You’ve seen the truth. It’s the color of excuse and burden. I’ve got a nerve. You’re too young. Why should I saddle you with white? But have you got a big brother maybe? Nah, nah, it’s a grownup’s color. Buy better brown. Go green, green’s grand. You want green? Here—” He stuck his hand into his pocket and without looking pulled out a green crayon. The boy gasped and moved back. “No? Still thinking about the white? Naughty kid, you grow up too fast today. White-hot for white, are you? All right, you win, I said white for sale and I meant white for sale. White sale here. All right, who wants it? ”