The Franchiser (17 page)

And a new discovery. At Mister Softee handling the tan cardboard carton of popsicles, as cold to the touch of his right hand as dry ice. He thought his blood had thickened and frozen. Something was wrong.

He got the name of a doctor from his Mister Softee manager, saw Dr. Gibberd that afternoon, and was oddly moved when the doctor told him that he would like him to go into Rapid City General for observation.

A black woman took him in a wheelchair to his bed.

It was very strange. Having voluntarily admitted himself to the hospital, having driven there under his own steam—his 1971 Caddy was parked in the Visitors’ lot—and answered all the questions put to him by the woman at the Admissions Desk, showing them his Blue Cross and Blue Shield cards, his yellow Major Medical, he had become an instant invalid, something seductively agreeable to him as he sat back in the old wheelchair and allowed himself to be shoved up ramps and maneuvered backward—his head and shoulders almost on a level with his knees—across the slight gap between the lobby carpet and the hard floor of an elevator and pushed through what he supposed was the basement, past the kitchens and laundry rooms, past the nurses’ cafeteria and the vending machines and the heating plant, lassitude and the valetudinarian on him like climate, though he had almost forgotten his symptoms.

“Where are we going? Is it much farther?”

“No. We almost there.” She shoved the brass rod on a set of blue fire doors and they moved across a connector through a second set of fire doors and past a nurses’ station, and entered a long, cinder-block, barracks-like ward in which there were perhaps fifteen widely spaced beds down each side of a broad center aisle. Except for what might be behind a folding screen at the far end of the ward, the beds were all empty, the mattresses doubled over on themselves.

“This is the boondocks,” Ben said. “Is it a new wing?”

“You got to ask your doctor is it a new wing,” she said and left him.

A young nurse came and placed a hospital gown across the back of the wheelchair. She asked Ben if he needed help. He said no but had difficulty with his shirt buttons. Unless he actually saw his fingers on them, he could not be sure he was holding them.

“Here,” she said, “let me.” She stooped before him and undid the buttons. She unfastened his belt. “Can you get your zipper?”

“Oh sure.” But touching the metal was like sticking his hand into an electric socket. The nurse made up the bed. He sat back down in the chair and, watching the fingers on his right hand, carefully attempted to interlace them with the fingers on his left.

“Modest?”

Ben nodded. It was not true. In sickness he understood what he never had in health, that his body, anyone’s, everyone’s, was something for the public record, something accountable like books for audit, like deeds on file in county courthouses. If he was ashamed it was because he couldn’t work his fingers. He stood to take off his pants and shorts. Then he smiled.

“Yes?”

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I’m Mister Softee.” She turned away and completed the last hospital corner. “No,” Ben said, “I am. I have the local Mister Softee franchise. It’s ice cream.” She folded the sheets back. “It’s true. Anytime you want a Mister Softee, just go down and ask Zifkovic.

Zifkovic’s my manager.”

“Please put your gown on.”

“Tell him Ben Flesh sent you,” he said and burst into tears.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Ben said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“That’s why you’re here,” she said, “so we can find out.” She helped him out of the chair gently, unfolded and held open the gown for him. “Just step into it,” she said, “just put your arms through the sleeves.” He had to make a fist with his right hand so his fingers wouldn’t touch the rough fabric. She came toward him with the gown. His penis moved against her uniform. “Can you turn around?” she said. “I’ll tie you up the back.”

“I can turn around.” He was crying again.

“Please,” she said, “please don’t do that. You mustn’t be afraid. You’re going to be fine.”

“I can turn around. See?” he sobbed. “Is it smeared? My ass? What there is of it. All belly, no ass. Is it smeared? Is it smeared with shit? Sometimes, I don’t know, I try, I try to wipe myself. Sometimes I’m careless.”

“You’re fine,” she said. “You’re just fine. Please,” she said, “if you shake like that, I won’t be able to tie your gown for you.”

“No? You won’t?” He couldn’t stop sobbing. He was grateful they were alone. “So I’d have to be naked. How would that be? This—this body na-naked. Wouldn’t that be something—thing? No ass, just two fl-flabby gray pouches and this wi-wide tor-tors-
torso
. They say if you can squeeze a half inch of flab between your forefinger and thumb you’re—you’re too fat. What’s this? Three
in-in-inch-ches?
What does that make
me?
I never looked like you’re supposed to look on the—on the beach. I’ve got this terrible body. Well, I’m not the franchise man for nothing. It’s—it’s like any middle-age man’s. I’m so
white
.”

“Stop,” she demanded. “You just control yourself.”

“Yeah? What’s that? Shock therapy? Thanks, I needed that? Well, why not? Sure. Thanks, I needed that.” He turned to face her. He raised his gown. “
Flesh the flasher!
” He was laughing. “See? I’ve got this tiny weewee, this undescended cock.”

“If you can’t control yourself,” she said.

“What? You’ll call for help? Lady, you just saw for yourself. You don’t need help.
You
could take me.” He sat on the side of the bed, his legs spread wide, his elbows on his thighs, and his head in his palms. But he was calm. “I just never took care of the goddamned thing, my body. I just never took care of it. And the only thing that counts in life is life. You jog?” he asked suddenly.

“What’s that?”

“Do you jog?”

“Yes.”

“I knew. I knew you did. You smoke?”

“No.”

“Right. That’s right. Ship-fucking shape.”

“I think one of the interns…”

“No,” he said calmly, “I’m okay now. No more opera. But you know? I hate joggers. People who breathe properly swimming, who flutter kick. Greedy. Maybe flab is a sign of character and shapelessness is grace. Sure. The good die young, right?”

“Why do you loathe your body so?”

“What’d it ever do for me?”

“Will you be all right now?”

“I told you. Yes. Yeah.” He got into bed. When he pulled the covers up his hand tingled. The nurse turned to go. “Listen,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Tell Gibberd he can skip the preliminaries, all the observation shit. Tell him to get out his Nation’s Leading Crippler of Young Adults kit. The kid’s got M.S.”

“You don’t know what you have.”

“Yes. Wolfe the specialist told me. He gave me egg salad and set me straight.”

The nurse left him. He tried to feel his pulse with the fingers of his right hand and couldn’t. He did five-finger exercises, reaching for the pulse in his throat, his hand doing rescue work, sent down the carefully chiseled tunnels of disaster in a mine shaft, say, to discover signs of life. He brought the fingers away from his neck and waved to the widows. He placed three fingers of his good hand along a finger of his right and, closing his eyes, tried to determine the points where they touched. He couldn’t, felt only a suffused, generalized warmth in the deadened finger. He took some change the nurse had put with his watch and wallet in the nightstand by his bed and distributed it on his blanket around his chest and stomach. Still with his eyes closed, he tried to feel for the change and pick it up. He couldn’t. He opened his eyes, scooped up a nickel, a dime, and a quarter with his left hand and put them in the palm of his right hand. Closing his eyes again, he very carefully spilled two of the coins onto the blanket—he could determine this by the sound—and made a fist about the coin still in his hand. Concentrating as hard as he had ever concentrated on anything in his life, and trapping the coin under his thumb, he rubbed it up his forefinger, trying to determine the denomination of the remaining coin. It’s the dime, he decided. He was positive. Yes. It’s the dime. The inside of his thumb still had some sensitivity. (Though he couldn’t be sure, he thought he had felt a trace of pulse under his thumb when he had held the dead necklace of his right hand against his throat.) Definitely the dime. He opened his eyes. His hand was empty. He shoved the change back in the nightstand and closed the drawer.

“I say, are you
really
Mister Softee?” The voice was British and came from behind the screen at the far end of the ward.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Jolly good. They’re rather splendid.”

“Thanks.”

“Mister Softee.” The name was drawn out, contemplated, pronounced as if it were being read from a marquee. “Apropos too, yes?”

“Why’s that?”

“
Well
, after your performance just now for Sister, I should have thought that would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m sick.”

“Not to worry,” the invisible Englishman said cheerfully. “We’re all sick here.” Ben looked around the empty ward. “Sister was right, you know. You
are
going to be fine. You’re in the best tropical medicine ward in either Dakota.”

“This is a tropical medicine ward?”

“Oh yes. Indeed. One of the finest in the Dakotas.”

“Jesus,” Ben said, “a tropical medicine ward.”

“Top drawer. Up there with the chief in Rapid City.”

“What do you have?” Ben asked.

“One saw you through the crack where the panels of my screen are joined. One saw everything. One saw your bum. It
is
smeared, rather. What do I have? Lassa fever, old thing. Came down with a touch of it last year. Year it was discovered actually. In Nigeria. Odd that. Well, I wasn’t in Nigeria. I was in Belize, Brit Honduras, with RAF. What I meant was, Lassa
fever
was discovered in Nigeria. Trouble with a clipped rather precise way of talking, articles left out, references left dangling, pronouns understood, is that it’s often imprecise actually, rather.”

“What was odd?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You said, ‘Odd that.’ What was odd?”

“Oh. Sorry. Well. That a disease could be said to be
discovered
. Of course all that’s usually meant is that they’ve isolated a particular virus. But I mean, if you
think
about it the virus must have been there all along, mustn’t it? And I should have thought that people, well, you know,
natives
, had been coming down with the bloody thing since
ages
. I mean, when Leif Erikson, or whoever, was discovering your States, some poor devil must have had all the symptoms of Lassa fever, even dying from it, too, very probably, without ever knowing that that’s what was killing him because the disease had never been
named
, you see. Now it has. Officially, I’m only the ninth case—oh yes, I’m in the literature—but I’ll bet populations have died of it.”

“I don’t think I understand what—”

“Well, only that I know where I stand, don’t I? Just as you, if you were right about yourself, know where
you
stand. Is that an
advantage
? I wonder. Quite honestly I don’t know. Yes, and that’s strange, too, isn’t it, that I know things but don’t know what to make of them? Incubation period one week. Very well. Weakness? Check. Myositis? Check. And the fever of course. And ulcerative pharyngitis with oral lesions. Yellow centers and erythemystositic halos. Rather like one of your lovely Mister Softee concoctions rather. Myocarditis, check. Pneumonitis, pleuritis, encephalophitathy, hemorrhagic diathesis? Check. Well, check some, most. What the hell? Check them
all
. Sooner or later they’ll come. I mean I
expect
they will. Gibberd’s been very straight with me. I think it pleases him how classic my case has been. Yet one can’t tell, can one? I mean, what about the sleeplessness?
I
sleep like a top. I was sleeping when you were brought in, wasn’t I? It was only your
racket
woke me. Well, what
about
the sleeplessness? Or the slurred speech? One has some things but not others. There was the headache and leg rash and even the swollen face, but where was the leg
pain?
And this is the point, I think: What I have is incurable and generally fatal. Generally fatal?
Generally? Fatal?
Will this classic condition kill me or not? Incurable.
Al
ways incurable. But only generally fatal. Oh, what a hopeful world it is! Even in hospital. So no more racket, you understand? No more whimpering and whining. Be
hard
, Mister Softee!”

“All right,” Ben said.

“Yes, well,” his roommate said. “Are you ambulatory? I couldn’t really tell. I saw you stand. But I saw Sister help.
Are
you?
Ambu
latory?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. I wonder if I could trouble you to come back of the screen. One is rather in need of help.”

“You want me to come back there?”

“If you would. If it isn’t too much bother. Oh, I see. The contagion. Well. There’s nothing to fear. Lassa can’t be contracted from anyone who’s had the disease for more than thirty-two days. One’s had it a year and a half.”

One could call the nurse, Ben thought. I have been orphaned and I have been blinded. I am Mister Softee here and Chicken from the Colonel there. Godfathers have called me to their deathbeds to change my life and all this has been grist for my character. I am in one of the go-ahead tropical medicine wards in Rapid City, South Dakota, and a Lassa fever pioneer needs my help. Oh well, he thought, and left his bed and proceeded down the long empty ward toward the screen at its rear. He stood by the screened-in sick man.

“Yes?” Ben said.

“What, here so soon? Well, you
are
ambulatory. Good
show
, Mister Softee! I’m Flight Lieutenant Tanner incidentally. Well then, could you come back of the screen, please just?”

“Come back of it.”

“Yes. Would you just?”

Flesh went behind the screen. The Englishman was seated beside his bed in a steel wheelchair. Heavy leather straps circled his weakened chest and wrapped his flaccid legs to hold him upright in it. Flesh looked down meekly at the mandala of spokes, then at the Englishman’s bare arms along the chair’s wide rests. They were smeared with a perspiration of blood. Tiny droplets of blood freckled the man’s forehead, discrete reddish bubbles mitigated by sweat and barely deeper in color than blown bubble gum. A sort of bloodfall trickled like tears from the hollow beneath his left eye and out over the cheekbone and down his face.