A Bad Man (16 page)

“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.

“Unless he’s enormously wealthy a man puts out just about what he takes in. Some people get behind and a few rare ones get ahead, but for the most part accounts balance. This is so no matter what a man earns. There’s something humorous about the plight of some young fellow struggling to get along on five thousand a year still struggling to get along on fifteen thousand a year ten years later. It’s because desire’s built into the human heart. Like the vena cava or the left ventricle. It’s there from the beginning. You never catch up. When I found this out I wanted to be in on the action. I asked myself: if all things are links in a chain, what must I do to control the chain itself? The answer was clear. I must own a department store! Did you know that in England, where they were invented, they used to be called ‘universal stores’? So that’s what I worked for, because the possibilities are unlimited in universal stores. There’s everything to sell.

“I’m telling you what’s what. That’s usually a mistake, but I don’t see right now how it can hurt me. I’ll surprise you. I’ve always been very fond of my employees. The boss usually is. He loves a man who works for him, who furthers his ends…

“What was I talking about? Yes. I like to wait on trade myself. Sometimes I try to see how far I can take a customer, if I can wrap him in the chain. Once a woman came to buy some gloves when I was behind the glove counter with my buyer. She spent four thousand dollars and had been on every floor in the store and in almost every department before she left. Admittedly that was unusual. The woman was wealthy and had almost no sales resistance, but wealthy or not, she got in over her head.
That’s
the test.

“Listen, it’s like odds and evens, men and women, Yin and Yang. I discovered—I had help, my father was moving toward this before he died—that there are casual items and resultant items. An object can be both, but usually it’s one or the other. Ice cream is casual because it generates thirst. But chewing gum is resultant. That’s why they put it by the cashier’s counter in an ice cream parlor. A hammer is resultant, but a two-by-four is casual as hell.”

“Tables and chairs,” Flesh said.

“That’s only the beginning,” Feldman said. “Cloths for the tables and silver for the cloths and plates for the silver and bowls for the plates and soup for the bowls and napkins for the soup and rings for the napkins.”

Ed Slipper was standing outside the cage of the canteen, watching.

“And what for the rings?” Manfred Sky asked.

“Fingers for the rings,” Feldman said, and stepped outside to greet Slipper. “You’re out of the infirmary,” he said. “I’m glad to see you.”

It was the first time he had seen the old man in daylight, and he felt doubts. When he had gone to his room to bribe him with the chocolate cherries, he had seemed in the dark commendably greedy, someone who could be dealt with. Now the light clarified the old man’s age, stunted his appetite, and he seemed in his infirmity a wanderer, someone loose, virtuous as the sick are virtuous. Feldman wondered if he had made a bad deal, if Slipper even remembered what the deal had been.

“I have something for you,” Ed Slipper said. “You have to come.”

Feldman was surprised to discover he was disappointed. He had sought an advantage, but since then he had not felt the need for it. He had been comfortable recently. Suppose the warden had sent the old man. If so, he was no longer safe, he was being threatened again. Something was always at stake.

The old man moved away from the canteen and through the corridor into the main part of the facilities wing. The fact that they were in the recreation area added to Feldman’s annoyance. Here were the classrooms, the chapels and dining and assembly halls. The gym was here and the TV rooms. The rooms had an air of having been donated. He looked for the brass plaques citing the givers. He stayed away from this area as much as he could, rarely spending any of his free time here. Indeed, nothing about the prison made him feel more a prisoner than its salons. Watching a movie with a thousand men who had not paid to get in made him feel terrible. He had always been uncomfortable if he could not ask for his money back. His cell, at least, despite its being shared and barred, was
his
cell; his cot; despite its discomforts,
his
cot. If anything, the very fact that the cell was locked added to his sense of being in possession there.

“This way,” the old man said. He moved down another corridor, and Feldman followed. They passed a guard, but luckily they were not challenged, for he had forgotten to get a pass. The old man bothered him; he seemed too calm. Sure, Feldman thought, he’s on Warden’s Business. He’s got the flag in his pocket.

They came to a chapel. “Wait,” Slipper said, “I have to sit down a minute.” He pushed open the door and found a seat on a back bench.

“Listen,” Feldman said, “I forgot to get a pass.”

“It’s all right,” Slipper said, “if you see a guard, pray.” He was referring to the privilege of sanctuary which the warden had introduced. If a prisoner could get to a chapel, he could remain there indefinitely—so long as he was praying aloud.

“Maybe I’d better go back and get one,” Feldman said uneasily.

“No,” the old man said, “we’re almost there. We already passed the guard. You don’t need a pass.”

Feldman was positive Slipper was working for the warden. The man had changed. Despite his obvious frailty and need to rest, he seemed very much in control of himself. “I thought for a while you forgot about me,” Feldman said.

“No, I didn’t forget.”

“I thought for a while you had. I gave you six days to get my file.”

“I was in the infirmary, Leo,” Slipper said.

He calls me Leo. “Sure, Ed. How you feeling?”

“Well, you know, I got some bad news when I was in the infirmary.”

Feldman looked at him.

“They took some tests.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got diabetes.”

Feldman felt relieved. “They can control that,” he said. Perhaps the old man’s manner was only concern for his health.

“Certainly they can. But it means something else.”

“Yes?”

“I’m off the chocolate cherries.”

“Oh.”

“Poison,” the old man said.

“Oh.”

“Rat poison,” the old man said. “I might as well swallow deadly rat poison.”

“I see.”

“I don’t need your five dollars a month. There’s nothing I want to buy except candy, and I want to live more than I want a sweet.”

“That’s right, Feldman thought. Slipper had
two
obsessions. They conflicted. That warden. “A deal’s a deal,” he said. “It still accumulates.”

“Well,” Ed Slipper said, “I’ll have an estate.”

“You’re still in my debt. You’re still my man,” Feldman said half-heartedly.

“Sure.”

“You don’t seem to mind much, being sick,” Feldman said. “I’m surprised.”

“Well, I got some good news too. I’m the second oldest con now, Leo. I moved up two guys. That bird in Atlanta died in his sleep a week ago, and the fellow in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was sprung when someone made a deathbed confession to his crime.”

That warden, Feldman thought. He knew I went after him with chocolate cherries, and invented chocolate-cherry disease. I exploit obsession; he instills it. “Listen, Ed, I have reason to believe you might not have what they say you have. The night I came to you, the warden—”

“Shh,” Slipper said, “I hear someone.”

“—saw me in the corridor—”

“Shh, it’s the guard.” Ed Slipper fumbled to his knees. “Dearest God, strike down that old bum in Leavenworth in his tracks. Restore my health and hold down the sugar in my blood and urine. Grant me a peaceful, wise old age.” He turned and tugged excitedly at Feldman’s sleeve, pulling him down beside him. “
Psst
. Pray.
Pray!
”

Feldman could think of nothing to pray for. He felt immensely stupid, but the old man was poking him in the ribs. “And God bless Mommy,” he suddenly blurted in a loud voice, “and Poppy and Uncle Ned and Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Julius and Cousin Frank and Dr. Bob and Baby Sue.” He reeled off fifty names. Who the hell
are
these people? he wondered, amazed at himself. Suddenly he was conscious that the old man had stopped praying and was looking at him.

“You got a big family, you know that, Leo?” Slipper said respectfully. Then he began to laugh, and he seemed greedy again. Avarice boomed out of his glee.

“Okay,” Feldman said. “I get it. There was no guard.”

“Leo,” Ed Slipper said, wiping his eyes, “I
swear
I thought I heard him. Anyway, I knew what you were going to say. The warden warned me, but I saw the results of the tests myself. I got it, Leo. I got it, kid. I
think
I got it. Anyway, can I take the chance? I want to live. I’m second oldest con in the country now if the warden didn’t lie about that. What would you do in my place?”

“What about my file?”

“Oh sure,” the old man said. “Come on, I’ll show you. That laugh was terrific.”

Feldman stood.

“Better brush your blue suit off,” Ed Slipper said. “Floor’s dirty. You got some dust on your knees.” He was still chuckling.

“Yeah,” Feldman said. “I pray sloppy.” Some shape I’m in, he thought. I make him laugh, the second oldest con in all the prisons. Relax, he told himself, life is ordinary. Nothing happens. “Rested up, old-timer?”