John Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

At last, sometime after one o’clock, a white smock billowed off the trolley and whipped into the garage. A few minutes later the oddball vendor wheeled his wagon out onto the sidewalk. He was still wearing the earring, scarf, and cutlass, George noticed. If he put them on in the garage, they must be part of his sales gimmick. You could tell by the way that he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him. George had been wise enough to get out of school as soon as possible. He didn’t want to end up like that guy.

George watched him push the wagon a few feet down the block, stop, and tape a piece of tablet paper to the front of his wagon. George would use psychology on him; he’d play up to the vendor’s education. That and the money should make him rent out his bun compartment.

Then an old man stuck his head out of the garage, ran up behind the vendor, and struck him across the back with a long fork.

“Get moving, you ape,” the old man shouted. “You’re already late. It’s already afternoon. Today you’re gonna bring in a profit or else.”

The vendor said something coolly and quietly. George couldn’t understand it, but it lasted a long time.

“I don’t care if your mother takes dope,” the old man answered. “I don’t wanna hear no more bullshit about that automobile accident and your dreams and your goddam girl friend. Now get outta here, you big baboon. I want five dollars minimum from you today.”

With a push from the old man, the vendor rolled to the corner and disappeared onto St. Charles. After the old man returned to the garage, George slouched off in pursuit of the wagon.

Unaware that he was being trailed, Ignatius pushed his cart against the traffic down St. Charles toward the Quarter. He had stayed up so late the night before working on his lecture for the kickoff rally that he hadn’t been able to move from his yellowed sheets until almost noon, and then it had only been his mother’s violent pounding and screaming that had awakened him. Now that he was out on the streets, he had a problem. Today the sophisticated comedy was opening at the RKO Orpheum. He had been able to bleed ten cents out of his mother for carfare home, although she had even begrudged him that. Somehow he had to sell five or six hot dogs quickly, park the wagon somewhere, and get to that theater so that his disbelieving eyes could drink in every blasphemous technicolored moment.

Lost in speculation about means for raising the money, Ignatius did not notice that for quite some time his cart had been traveling in a straight and unswerving line. When he attempted to pull closer to the curb, the cart would not incline to the right at all. Stopping, he saw that one of the bicycle tires had lodged in the groove of a streetcar track. He tried to bump the cart out of the groove; it was too heavy to be easily bounced. He bent and tried to lift the cart on one side. As he slipped his hands beneath the big tin bun, he heard through the light mist the grinding of an approaching streetcar. The hard little bumps appeared on his hands, and his valve, after wavering for a moment of frantic decision, slammed closed. Wildly Ignatius pulled upward on the tin bun. The bicycle tire shot up out of the tracks, rose upward, balanced for a second in the air, and then became horizontal as the cart turned over loudly on its other side. One of the little lids in the tin bun opened and deposited a few steaming hot dogs on the street.

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius mumbled to himself, watching the silhouette of the streetcar forming a half-block away. “What vicious trick is Fortuna playing on me now?”

Deserting the wreck, Ignatius lumbered down the tracks toward the streetcar, the white muu-muu of a uniform swishing around his ankles. The olive and copper trolley car ground slowly toward him, leisurely pitching and rocking. The motorman, seeing the huge, spherical, white figure panting in the center of the tracks, slid the car to a halt and opened one of the front windows.

“Pardon me, sir,” the earring called up to him. “If you will wait a moment, I shall attempt to right my listing craft.”

George saw his opportunity. He ran over to Ignatius and said cheerily, “Come on, prof, let’s you and me get this off the street.”

“Oh, my God!” Ignatius thundered. “My pubescent nemesis. What a promising day this appears to be. I am apparently to be run over by a streetcar and robbed simultaneously, thereby setting a Paradise record. Get away, you depraved urchin.”

“You grab that end and I’ll get this one.”

The streetcar clanged at them.

“Oh, all right,” Ignatius said finally. “Actually, I would be perfectly happy to let this ridiculous liability lie here on its side.”

George took one end of the bun and said, “You better close that little door before more of them weenies falls out.”

Ignatius kicked the little door closed, as if he were playing to win in a professional football game, neatly severing a protruding hot dog into two six-inch sections.

“Take it easy, prof. You gonna break your wagon.”

“Shut up, you truant. I didn’t ask you to make conversation.”

“Okay,” George said, shrugging. “I mean, I’m just tryna help you out.”

“How could you possibly help me?” Ignatius bellowed, baring a tan fang or two. “Some authority of society is probably hot on the scent of your suffocating hair tonic right now. Where did you come from? Why are you following me?”

“Look, you want me to help you pick up this pile of junk?”

“Pile of junk? Are you talking about this Paradise vehicle?”

The streetcar clanged at them again.

“Come on,” George said. “Up.”

“I hope you realize,” Ignatius said as he breathlessly lifted the wagon, “that our association is only the result of an emergency.”

The cart bounced back onto its two bicycle tires, the contents of the tin bun rattling against its sides.

“Okay, prof, there you go. Glad I could help you out.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you waif, you are about to be hooked on the cowcatcher of that streetcar.”

The streetcar rolled by them slowly so that the conductor and motorman could study Ignatius’s costume more closely.

George grabbed one of Ignatius’s paws and stuck two dollars in it.

“Money?” Ignatius asked happily. “Thank God.” He quickly pocketed the two bills. “I’d rather not ask the obscene motive for this. I’d like to think that you’re attempting to make amends in your simple way for slandering me on my dismal first day with this ludicrous wagon.”

“That’s it, prof. You said it better than I ever could. You’re a really educated guy.”

“Oh?” Ignatius was very pleased. “There may be some hope for you yet. Hot dog?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then pardon me while I have one. My system is petitioning for appeasement.” Ignatius looked down into the well of his wagon. “My God, the hot dogs are quite disordered.”

While Ignatius was slamming doors and plunging his paws down into the well, George said, “Now I helped you out, prof. Maybe you can do the same for me.”

“Perhaps,” Ignatius said disinterestedly, biting into the hot dog.

“You see these?” George indicated the brown paper packages he was carrying under his arms. “These are school supplies. Now this is my problem. I gotta pick them up from the distributor at lunchtime, but I can’t deliver them to the schools until after school’s closed. So I gotta carry them around for almost two hours. You understand? What I’m looking for is a place to put these things in the afternoon. Now I could meet you someplace about one and put them in your bun compartment and come get them out sometime before three.”