12
Two days later, it was nearly time for Eliot to get on a Greyhound Bus at the Saw City Kandy Kitchen, to go to Indianapolis to meet Sylvia in the Bluebird Room. It was noon. He was still asleep. He had had one hell of a night, not only with telephone calls, but with people coming in person at all hours, more than half of them drunk. There was panic in Rosewater. No matter how often Eliot had denied it, his clients were sure he was leaving them forever.
***
Eliot had cleared off the top of his desk. Laid out on it were a new blue suit, a new white shirt, a new blue tie, a new pair of black nylon socks, a new pair of Jockey shorts, a new toothbrush and a bottle of Lavoris. He had used the new toothbrush once. His mouth was a bloody wreck.
Dogs barked outside. They crossed the street from the firehouse to greet a great favorite of theirs, Delbert Peach, a town drunk. They were cheering him in his efforts to stop being a human being and become a dog. "Git! Git! Git!" he cried ineffectually. "God damn, I ain't in heat."
He tumbled in through Eliot's street-level door, slammed the door on his best friends, climbed the stairs singing. This is what he sang:
I've got the clap, and the blueballs, too.
The clap don't hurt, but the blueballs do.
Delbert Peach, all bristles and stink, ran out of that song halfway up the stairs, for his progress was slow. He switched to The Star Spangled Banner, and he was gasping and burping and humming that when he entered Eliot's office proper.
"Mr. Rosewater? Mr. Rosewater?" Eliot's head was under his blanket, and his hands, though he was sound asleep, gripped the shroud tightly. So Peach, in order to see Eliot's beloved face, had to overcome the strength of those hands. "Mr. Rosewater—are you alive? Are you all right?"
Eliot's face was contorted by the struggle for the blanket. "What? What? What?" His eyes opened wide.
"Thank the good Lord! I dreamed you was dead!"
"Not that I know of."
"I dreamed the angels had come down from the sky, and carried you up, and set you down next to Sweet Jesus Himself."
"No," said Eliot fuzzily. "Nothing like that happened."
"It'll happen sometime. And the weeping and wailing in this town, you'll hear it up there."
Eliot hoped he wouldn't hear the weeping and wailing up there, but he didn't say so.
"Even though you're not dying, Mr. Rosewater, I know you'll never come back here. You'll get up there to Indianapolis, with all the excitement and lights and beautiful buildings, and you'll get a taste of the high life again, and you'll hunger for more of it, which is only natural for anybody who's ever tasted the high life the way you have, and the next thing you know you'll be in New York, living the very highest life there is. And why shouldn't you?"
"Mr. Peach—" and Eliot rubbed his eyes, "if I were to somehow wind up in New York, and start living the highest of all possible lives again, you know what would happen to me? The minute I got near any navigable body of water, a bolt of lightning would knock me into the water, a whale would swallow me up, and the whale would swim down to the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi, up the Ohio, up the Wabash, up the White, up Lost River, up Rosewater Creek. And that whale would jump from the creek into the Rosewater Inter-State Ship Canal, and it would swim down the canal to this city, and spit me out in the Parthenon. And there I'd be."
***
"Whether you're coming back or not, Mr. Rosewater, I want to make you a present of some good news to take with you."
"And what news is that, Mr. Peach?"
"As of ten minutes ago, I swore off liquor forever. That's my present to you."
***
Eliot's red telephone rang. He lunged at it, for it was the fire department's hot line. "Hello!" He folded all the fingers of his left hand, except for the middle one. The gesture was not obscene. He was readying the finger that would punch the red button, that would make the doomsday horn on top of the firehouse bawl.
"Mr. Rosewater?" It was a woman's voice, and it was so coy.
"Yes! Yes!" Eliot was hopping up and down. "Where's the fire?"
"It's in my heart, Mr. Rosewater."
Eliot was enraged, and no one would have been surprised to see him so. He was famous for his hatred of skylarking where the fire department was concerned. It was the only thing he hated. He recognized the caller, who was Mary Moody, the slut whose twins he had baptized the day before. She was a suspected arsonist, a convicted shoplifter, and a five-dollar whore. Eliot blasted her for using the hot line.
"God damn you for calling this number! You should go to jail and rot! Stupid sons of bitches who make personal calls on a fire department line should go to hell and fry forever!" He slammed the receiver down.
A few seconds later, the black telephone rang. "This is the Rosewater Foundation," said Eliot sweetly. "How can we help you?"
"Mr. Rosewater—this is Mary Moody again." She was sobbing.
"What on earth is the trouble, dear?" He honestly didn't know. He was ready to kill whoever had made her cry.
***
A chauffeur-driven black Chrysler Imperial pulled to the curb below Eliot's two windows. The chauffeur opened the back door. His old joints giving him pain, out came Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana. He was not expected.
He went creakingly upstairs. This abject mode of progress had not been his style in times past. He had aged shockingly, wished to demonstrate that he had aged shockingly. He did what few visitors ever did, knocked on Eliot's office door, asked if it would be all right if he came in. Eliot, who was still in his fragrant war-surplus long Johns, hurried to his father, embraced him.
"Father, Father, Father—what a wonderful surprise."
"It isn't easy for me to come here."
"I hope that isn't because you think you're not welcome."
"I can't stand the sight of this mess."
"It's certainly a lot better than it was a week ago."
"It is?"
"We had a top-to-bottom house cleaning a week ago."
The Senator winced, nudged a beer can with his toe. "Not on my account, I hope. Just because I fear an outbreak of cholera is no reason you should, too." This was said quietly.
"You know Delbert Peach, I believe?"
"I know of "him." The Senator nodded. "How do you do, Mr. Peach. I'm certainly familiar with your war record. Deserted twice, didn't you? Or was it three times?"
Peach, cowering and sullen in the presence of such a majestic person, mumbled that he had never served in the armed forces.
"It was your father, then. I apologize. It's hard to tell how old people are, if they seldom wash or shave."
Peach admitted with his silence that it probably had been his father who had deserted three times.
"I wonder if we might not be alone for a few moments," the Senator said to Eliot, "or would that run counter to your concept of how open and friendly our society should be?"
"I'm leaving," said Peach. "I know when I'm not wanted."
"I imagine you've had plenty of opportunities to learn," said the Senator.
Peach, who was shuffling out the door, turned at this insult, surprised even himself by understanding that he had been insulted. "For a man who depends on the votes of the ordinary common people, Senator, you certainly can say mean things to them."
"As a drunk, Mr. Peach, you must surely know that drunks are not allowed in polling places."
"I've voted." This was a transparent lie.
"If you have, you've probably voted for me. Most people do, even though I never flattered the people of Indiana in my life, not even in time of war. And do you know why they vote for me? Inside of every American, I don't care how decayed, is a scrawny, twanging old futz like me, who hates crooks and weaklings even more than I do."
***
"Gee, Father—I certainly didn't expect to see you. What a pleasant surprise. You look wonderful."
"I feel rotten. I have rotten news for you, too. I thought I'd better deliver it in person."
Eliot frowned slightly. "When was the last time your bowels moved?"
"None of your business!"
"Sorry."
"I'm not here for a cathartic. The C.I.O. says my bowels haven't moved since the National Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional, but that's not why I'm here."
"You said everything was so rotten."
"So?"
"Usually, when somebody comes in here and says that, nine times out of ten, it's a case of constipation."
"I'll tell you what the news is, boy, and then let's see if you can cheer up with Ex-Lax. A young lawyer working for McAllister, Robjent, Reed and McGee, with full access to all the confidential files about you, has quit. He's hired out to the Rhode Island Rosewaters. They're going to get you in court. They're going to prove you're insane."
The buzzer of Eliot's alarm clock went off. Eliot picked up the clock, went to the red button on the wall. He watched the sweep secondhand of the clock intently, his lips working, counting off the seconds. He aimed the blunt middle finger of his left hand at the button, suddenly stabbed, thus activating the loudest fire alarm in the Western Hemisphere.
The awful shout of the horn hurled the Senator against a wall, curled him up with his hands over his ears. A dog in New Ambrosia, seven miles away, ran in circles, bit his tail. A stranger in the Saw City Kandy Kitchen threw coffee all over himself and the proprietor. In Bella's Beauty Nook in the basement of the Court House, three-hundred-pound Bella had a mild heart attack. And wits throughout the county poised themselves to tell a tired and untruthful joke about Fire Chief Charley Warmergran, who had an insurance office next to the firehouse: "Must have scared Charley Warmergram half out of his secretary."
Eliot released the button. The great alarm began to swallow its own voice, speaking gutturally and interminably of "bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum."
There was no fire. It was simply high noon in Rosewater.
***
"What a racket!" the Senator mourned, straightening up slowly. "I've forgotten everything I ever knew."
"That might be nice."
"Did you hear what I said about the Rhode Island people?"
"Yes."
"And how does it make you feel?"
"Sad and frightened." Eliot sighed, tried a wistful smile, couldn't manage one. "I had hoped it would never have to be proved, that it would never matter one way or another—whether I was sane or not."
"You have some doubts as to your own sanity?"
"Certainly."
"And how long has this been going on?"
Eliot's eyes widened as he sought an honest answer. "Since I was ten, maybe."
***
"I'm sure you're joking."
"That's a comfort."
"You were a sturdy, sane little boy."
"I was?" Eliot was ingenuously charmed by the little boy he had been, was glad to think about him rather than about the spooks that were closing in on him.
"I'm only sorry we brought you out here."
"I loved it out here. I still do," Eliot confessed dreamily.
The Senator moved his feet slightly apart, making a firmer base for the blow he was about to deliver. "That may be, boy, but it's time to go now—and never come back."
"Never come back?" Eliot echoed marvelingly.
"This part of your life is over. It had to end sometime. I'll thank the Rhode Island vermin for this much: They're forcing you to leave, and to leave right now."
"How can they do that?"
"How do you expect to defend your sanity with a backdrop like this?"
Eliot looked about himself, saw nothing remarkable. "This looks—this looks—peculiar?"
"You know damn well it does."
Eliot shook his head slowly. "You'd be surprised what I don't know, Father."
"There's no institution like this anywhere else in the world. If this were a set on a stage, and the script called for the curtain to go up with no one on stage, when the curtain went up, the audience would be on pins and needles, eager to see the incredible nut who could live this way."
"What if the nut came out and gave sensible explanations for his place being the way it is?"
"He would still be a nut."
***
Eliot accepted this, or seemed to. He didn't argue with it, allowed that he had better wash up and get dressed for his trip. He rummaged through his desk drawers, found a small paper bag containing purchases he had made the day before, a bar of Dial soap, a bottle of Absorbine, Jr., for his athlete's foot, a bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo for his dandruff, a bottle of Arrid roll-on deodorant, and a tube of Crest toothpaste.
"I'm glad to see you taking pride in your appearance again, boy."
"Hm?" Eliot was reading the label on the Arrid, which he had never used before. He had never used any underarm deodorant before.
"You get cleaned up, cut down on the booze, clear out of here, open a decent office in Indianapolis or Chicago or New York, and, when the hearing comes up, they'll see you're as sane as anybody."
"Um." Eliot asked his father if he had ever used Arrid.
The Senator was offended. "I shower every morning and night. I presume that takes care of any fulsome effluvium."
"It says here that you might get a rash, and you should stop using it, if you get a rash."
"If it worries you, don't use it. Soap and water are the important things."
"Um."
"That's one of the troubles with this country," said the Senator. "The Madison Avenue people have made us all more alarmed about our own armpits than about Russia, China and Cuba combined."
The conversation, actually a very dangerous one between two highly vulnerable men, had drifted into a small area of peace. They could agree with one another, and not be afraid.
"You know—" said Eliot, "Kilgore Trout once wrote a whole book about a country that was devoted to fighting odors. That was the national purpose. There wasn't any disease, and there wasn't any crime, and there wasn't any war, so they went after odors."
"If you get in court," said the Senator, "it would be just as well if you didn't mention your enthusiasm for Trout. Your fondness for all that Buck Rogers stuff might make you look immature in the eyes of a lot of people."
The conversation had left the area of peace again. Eliot's voice was edgy as he persisted in telling the story by Trout, which was called Oh Say Can You Smell?
"This country," said Eliot, "had tremendous research projects devoted to fighting odors. They were supported by individual contributions given to mothers who marched on Sundays from door to door. The ideal of the research was to find a specific chemical deodorant for every odor. But then the hero, who was also the country's dictator, made a wonderful scientific breakthrough, even though he wasn't a scientist, and they didn't need the projects any more. He went right to the root of the problem."
"Uh huh," said the Senator. He couldn't stand stories by Kilgore Trout, was embarrassed for his son. "He found one chemical that would eliminate all odors?" he suggested, to hasten the tale to a conclusion.
"No. As I say, the hero was dictator, and he simply eliminated noses."
***
Eliot was now taking a full bath in the frightful little lavatory, shivering and barking and coughing as he sloshed himself with sopping paper towels.
His father could not watch, roamed the office instead, averting his eyes from the obscene and ineffectual ablutions. There was no lock on the office door, and Eliot had, at his father's insistence, shoved a filing cabinet against it. "What if somebody should walk in here and see you stark naked?" the Senator had demanded. And Eliot had responded, "To these people around here, Father, I'm no particular sex at all."
So the Senator pondered that unnatural sexlessness along with all the other evidences of insanity, disconsolately pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. There were three cans of beer in it, a 1948 New York State driver's license, and an unsealed envelope, addressed to Sylvia in Paris, never mailed. In the envelope was a love poem from Eliot to Sylvia, dated two years before.
The Senator thrust aside shame and read the poem, hoping to learn from it things that might defend his son. This was the poem he read, and he was not able to keep shame away when he was through:
"I'm a painter in my dreams, you know,
Or maybe you didn't know. And a sculptor.
Long time no see.
And a kick to me
Is the interplay of materials
And these hands of mine.
And some of the things I would do to you
Might surprise you.
For instance, if I were there with you as you read this,
And you were lying down,
I might ask you to bare your belly
In order that I might take my left thumbnail
And draw a straight line five inches long
Above your pubic hair.
And then I might take the index finger
Of my right hand,
And insinuate it just over the rim of the right side
Of your famous belly button,
And leave it there, motionless, for maybe half an hour.
Queer?
You bet."
The Senator was shocked. It was the mention of pubic hair that really appalled him. He had seen very few naked bodies in his time, perhaps five or six, and pubic hair was to him the most unmentionable, unthinkable of all materials.
Now Eliot came out of the lavatory, all naked and hairy, drying himself with a tea towel. The tea towel was new. It still had a price tag on it. The Senator was petrified, felt beset by overwhelming forces of filth and obscenity on all sides.
Eliot did not notice. He continued to dry himself innocently, then threw the tea towel into the wastebasket. The black telephone rang.
"This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"
"Mr. Rosewater—" said a woman, "there was a thing on the radio about you."
"Oh?" Eliot now began to play unconsciously with his pubic hair. It was nothing extravagant. He would simply uncoil a tight spring of it, let it snap back into place.
"It said they were going to try to prove you were crazy."
"Don't worry about it, dear. There's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip."
"Oh, Mr. Rosewater—if you go away and never come back, we'll die."
"I give you my word of honor I'm coming back. How is that?"
"Maybe they won't let you come back."
"Do you think I'm crazy, dear?"
"I don't know how to put it."
"Any way you like."
"I can't help thinking people are going to think you're crazy for paying so much attention to people like us."
"Have you seen the other people there are to pay attention to?"
"I never been out of Rosewater County."
"It's worth a trip, dear. When I get back, why don't I give you a trip to New York?"
"Oh God! But you're never coming back!"
"I gave you my word of honor."
"I know, I know—but we all feel it in our bones, we smell it in the air. You're not coming back."
Eliot had now found a hair that was a lulu. He kept extending and extending it until it was revealed as being one foot long. He looked down at it, then glanced at his father, incredulously proud of owning such a thing.
The Senator was livid.
"We tried to plan all kinds of ways to say goodbye to you, Mr. Rosewater," the woman went on. "Parades and signs and flags and flowers. But you won't see a one of us. We're all too scared."
"Of what?"
"I don't know." She hung up.
***
Eliot pulled on his new Jockey shorts. As soon as they were snugly on, his father spoke grimly.
"Eliot—"
"Sir—?" Eliot was running his thumbs pleasurably under the elasticized belly-band. "These things certainly give support. I'd forgotten how nice it was to have support."
The Senator blew up. "Why do you hate me so?" he cried.
Eliot was flabbergasted. "Hate you? Father—I don't hate you. I don't hate anybody."
"Your every act and word is aimed at hurting me as much as you possibly can!"
"No!"
"I have no idea what I ever did to you that you're paying me back for now, but the debt must surely be settled by now."
Eliot was shattered. "Father—please—"
"Get away! You'll only hurt me more, and I can't stand any more pain."
"For the love of God—"
"Love!" the Senator echoed bitterly. "You certainly loved me, didn't you? Loved me so much you smashed up every hope or ideal I ever had. And you certainly loved Sylvia, didn't you?"
Eliot covered his ears.
The old man raved on, spraying fine beads of spit. Eliot could not hear the words, but lip-read the terrible story of how he had ruined the life and health of a woman whose only fault had been to love him.
The Senator stormed out of the office, was gone.
Eliot uncovered his ears, finished dressing, as though nothing special had happened. He sat down to tie his shoelaces. When these were tied, he straightened up. And he froze as stiff as any corpse.
The black telephone rang. He did not answer.