Stephen Dixon - Letters to Kevin

“California? Why I got just what you want.”

“Sure you do. Everybody does,” and I walked away.

He clutched my elbow and wrote the address of a man in New York who he said has a trapdoor in his basement. “Now this door doesn’t just go down to his workshop. But to a hand-built two-man submarine that travels under the Atlantic Ocean and St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes to Chicago, where it then goes by uncharted underwater waterway to the San Francisco Bay.”

“No more schemes,” I said. “Because none of them work. Only way to get to Palo Alto is to go like I did in last night’s dream. I buy a ticket, fly to San Francisco, take the airport limousine to Palo Alto and cab to this boy’s home.” “If you got all the money for that, do it.” “I haven’t. But starting right now I’m going to find me some better rags, get a crummy job, rent a cheap flat, buy better secondhand clothes, get a better-paying job and save up enough money in a few years to buy a plane ticket to San Francisco and pay for the limousine and cab to Kevin’s house.” “And where will you sleep nights till you get the security deposit and first month’s rent for your cheap flat?” “On that subway grating. In this doorway. But some place equally warm and clean.” “And your shaves and baths?” he said. “Your wrinkled clothes? You’ll wake up looking and smelling like a grizzly bear. And maybe get arrested for impersonating a derelict. You think then you could find a job? No chance. Take the submarine.” “I’ll get a hotel room and keep my clothes and me clean that way.” “Get a hotel room and your whole salary will be spent for food and rent. Come on. What’s to lose? And I know a way to get you the ride free.” “Sure.” I said. “A free submarine ride straight under the states to San Francisco.” “Not so straight. A little curve here. A big dip there. More like a winding hilly road in the water, as it follows Interstate 80 once it leaves from Chicago. But always under the earth, when there are no rivers and lakes to go in, and it never comes up till the end. It’ll get you there in ten to fifteen days maximum, depending on the currents and weather conditions below. Now what do you say?”

“Pardon me,” I said, trying to step around him. “As I really got to start checking the trash cans for clothes.” “Took the same ride myself several times,” he said. “And always free because I always answered the same three questions this kind of eccentric submarine captain makes you answer to get his rides for nothing. So there’s a hundred percent chance you’ll get the ride free, if I tell you the answers and some other passenger doesn’t get to him first.” I walked away. He caught up with me and put his arm around my shoulder. “First question the captain will ask you,” he said, “is ‘How many fingers do we have altogether?’ Now you look like a pretty clever guy. So naturally you’ll give his hand the once over and see nine. And then count your own fingers and find ten. And nine and ten makes for nineteen. So you’ll say to him: ‘We got nineteen fingers altogether.’” “Wow, that was a mind-grinding question.” “But you’d be wrong, smart guy. Because the answer to ‘How many fingers do we got altogether?’ is ‘Ten.’ Because Dewey is the name of his son. And Dewey’s only gotten fingers, understand?” “You bet,” I said, digging out yesterday’s newspaper from a trash can. I dumped the coffee grounds wrapped inside and opened the paper to the Help Wanted section. Unless, in the next few hours, I could gain five years’ experience in inventory and production control or master the alphanumeric punch and verify system of a 360 DOS/OS computer, there were no jobs for me. “Now the second question he’ll ask for his free submarine ride,” the man said, “is ‘What’s the color of green peas?’” “Cooked, parboiled or raw?” “Wrong. Though most people, you’d be surprised to know, would have said ‘Green.’ As green peas are green just as yellow canaries are yellow, right? But they’d also be wrong with their answer ‘Green.’ Because Green Peas is the name of Dewey’s yellow canary. So you’ve got to give ‘Yellow’ as your answer to the second question, got it?” “Exactly. When the captain asks ‘How many fingers do we got altogether?’ I say ‘Yellow.’ And when he says ‘What’s the color of green peas?’ I say ‘Nineteen fingers.’” “Okay, big shot. But another joke like that and I don’t tell you the third question and answer.” “Now there’s a big loss.” I turned to the newspaper’s Rooms for Rent section to see if there might be a hotel that would give me a few months’ credit for my room, meals, laundry and shoe repairs while I looked for a job. “The third and final question the captain will ask is ‘Who’s considered the father of our country?’ It would of course be too easy to say ‘George Washington’ to that one, right?” “I suppose so,” I said. “You suppose so? After those last two questions, you’d have to assume that this one was tricky too. So I’d think you’d be smart enough to say to the captain ‘Well. Since do we turned out to be your son Dewey. And green peas turned out to be Dewey’s yellow canary. Then our country in that last question is probably the name of a pet monkey or dog or some animal like that.’” “You might have a point.” “I might? How dumb can you be? I’m trying to tell you the answer can’t be just ‘George Washington.’ The captain’s not giving these free trips to the first person who asks for it, you know. Because his are the rarest of rides. A trip any traveler in the know would swindle a fortune to take. So thinking ‘our country’ is the name of a dog or something, you’d probably come up with a popular name for one, like Rover or Spot. And you might think long and hard on these two and settle on Spot. Because maybe Spot rhymes with rot, which boats are prone to. So you’d say to the captain ‘Spot’s considered the father of Our Country,’ right?” “Right.” “Well, you’d be wrong again, because ‘Our Country’ is the name of Dewey’s cat and Green Peas’s worst enemy. And the father of Our Country just happens to be a scruffy tom named George Washington. So if you had been smart enough to say ‘George Washington’ to begin with, you would have had the right answer and your free ride sewed up.” “I got it now,” I said. “‘Ten’, ‘Yellow’ and ‘George Washington.’ All I have to do is give them in that order and I win one free underwater ride to the part of Palo Alto that’s on the San Francisco Bay.” “I said nothing about the extra miles to Palo Alto. That you’d have to work out with the captain. But very comfortable quarters he has also. Gourmet meals. Movie theater. Game and exercise room. Library. All sorts of incredible sea creatures to see from your bedroom’s bubbletop observation glass and through your bathtub. Only chores are to wash your dishes and make your bed. But that’s all. A very safe trip. He practically invented the term ‘under-America American submarine ride.’ Now what do you say? I’d take the trip myself, but I don’t know a soul in California anymore. And I’ll walk you to the captain’s house.” “Truth is,” I said, “your story about the captain is the biggest chunk of bunk and baloney I’ve run across in a dog’s age. What do you take me for, a dumb ox?” I pushed him aside and headed for a hotel along the docks which a newspaper ad said would give me free bed and board if I cleaned all the rooms and halls. The man hobbled after me, grabbed my newspaper and slapped me on the head with it. “Dumb ox,” he screamed. “Dunce. First-class junkhead and second-class jerk. You can tell me the captain and his sub aren’t real when in the past month you’ve spoken to pixies and logs and ridden a three-legged horse named Mo?” “Just Plain Mo. And it’s a proven fact that there has never been documented proof that pixies existed in any civilization or historical age.” “I know. You saying I said they ever did? But I’m living proof, just as you’re soon to be, that the captain and his sub are as real as you and me.” He took my hand, and old and weak as he looked, dragged me against my will to a house at the end of this street by the river’s edge. The house, made of steel, was shaped and painted like the raised part of a submarine periscope. “And how’d you know about me and the logs and stuff?” I said. He lifted a porthole in the door and said into it “Yo ho, blow the tank.” Then he saluted me, said “Have a spiffy crossing, matey, and give your best to the adorable Aunt Belle Mae de Momma Devine,” and sprinted around the corner. “I said how’d you know about the logs, you lying phony? You big fake. Because there isn’t any captain. And the only subsyou’ve ever seen were those replacement teachers you used to taunt to tears in grade school because you were too chicken to razz your regular ones.” The door he left me before opened. “Aye?” a man said. He had on a navy captain’s suit and cap and held a cage with a yellow canary inside, which was being pawed and hissed at by the cat perched on his shoulder. “Down, Our Country,” he said. “You a submarine captain?” I said. “At your service, sir.” “And you give free rides to San Francisco under America if the correct answers to your questions are given by a person who only then might decide to become your passenger?”