The Salt Eaters (17 page)

Buster changed positions on the stepladder and glanced at the doodles and scribbles on his note pad as if considering how to take down what Doc was lecturing about. He’d never become a good journalist. He never got what he went after. Maybe he’d just make up something. His instructor wouldn’t know the difference. Probably couldn’t care less.

Which was exactly the decision an equally demoralized young man who was using the name Donaldson had come to sipping flat beer at the sidewalk café less than a block away. There’d been no word on the street about the armory heist. No lead anywhere on who might be sitting on the cache of rifles. And trying to infiltrate the Academy was not that simple, he’d tried to explain. Those guys were close blood relatives, had grown up together, had ties from way back. And the women were not a type he’d run across before. Played everything close to the chest, didn’t open up. The times were different. A few years ago, picking up info, picking brains was the easiest thing in the world. Everybody was running off at the mouth at the drop of the hat, eager for a “press conference” at any time of day or night. Things were different now.

With his record it was not likely he’d be invited to go to school, get trained, become a regular. The special police task
force and the FBI recruited openly now on the Black campuses, set up booths even during career week. What did they need with him? He laughed in his beer. And here he was—ready, willing and able. But how was he going to get onto a campus with his record? So how could he get anywhere unless he came up with a solid tip, a big one?

Five days and nights Donaldson had been on the street, smoked out every breezy mouth in town, laid his super-deluxe rap on three foxes up at the Academy, spread what little bread he had around hoping to spring something loose. Nothing. Less than nothing, trouble. He’d almost blown it, so anxious to pull from the joker in the Pit Stop diner who had seemed to know a lot about the vets who ran the Academy’s sports programs for the kids, and the vets being prime suspects, Donaldson had aroused suspicion. It had taken quite a bit of fast thinking on his feet to cover himself when the joker started asking him where’d he grown up, what kind of work he did in Claybourne, who’d he know, where’d he hang out. And some fancy footwork to cover his tracks when the man turned up on page one face down on the diner floor. But what to report? What did he have to turn in? He could make something up. He’d done that before. Hell, it was done all the time. Even the pros did it when sources dried up. They’d already made their minds up anyway. He knew who they were after. And the bloods up at the Academy were probably the ones anyway. So what the hell. He’d wing it. Decided. Done.

Buster had not as yet made his decision. Doc had turned suddenly, interrupting his train of thought, and leaned out the door of the linen closet.

“Bantu Bootehhh! heh heh.” Doc had hooked one arm around the shelf divider and was leaning his body against the doorknob, flirting with the nurses in the hall.

“We’re going to report you, Doc.”

“Who to? I’m the man in the shoes around here, heh, heh, heh.”

Doc seemed to have forgotten all about him, looked ready to stroll out after the women. Buster was not prepared to sit there and wait. It was all kind of stupid anyway, trying to get an interview in a linen closet. And there wasn’t time for much delay. Doc was due in the auditorium soon as Old Lady Ransom did her thaang. He examined his notes. All Doc had talked about was money.

“Now, you take that little one with the test-tube rack,” Doc Serge was saying, gesturing for Buster to come to the door or at least lean forward. “A pathologist. More to the point, a hummingbird. Looks fragile. But those dainty wings can carry her on some long-distance flights on some long-distance nights, heh heh. All she needs is good management.”

“Sir?” Buster had stood up then sat back down.

Doc Serge turned and resumed his position, one elbow on the shelf with the pillowcases, one elbow opposite against a pile of blankets, one crane leg crooked in front of the other. All he needed was a straw hat and cane. Some doctor. But then he wasn’t a real doctor, Buster reminded himself. He ran the Infirmary, kept it going, and they called him “Doc” just as years ago when he ran a gambling joint, his father had told him about, they called him “Faro.” What his father had not told him but Buster had found out after some snooping was that he’d had a few other names in his day like “Candy Man” and “Sweet Bear.”

“I don’t care who you are or what your aspiration—doctor, poet, elevator operator, milkman, barber, reporter—it pays to study The Law. And I don’t mean the man’s law—course that pays too, heh, heh—I mean The Law. The problem with the man is that he always gets half the story and then bungles it. Dates right back to the Greeks. They go to all that trouble to
ransack Alexandria and then blow it, fumble the ball, miss the message. ‘Equal before the law.’ Fine. Bet you think you know what that means.”

Buster shrugged while the man unbuttoned his jacket, jerked his wrists free of his cuffs, took up a cake of soap in one hand and presented it to his audience, took up a blanket roll in the other with a flourish. “See these? One black, one white?”

“Yessir.”

Doc held his gaze for an uncomfortably long time. Buster met it, but it was a strain to keep still and not shift his eyes. It was a pity Doc didn’t have a bigger audience. He was too much for one. He let go and the roll and the soap hit the floor.

“Notice.”

Buster noticed that the soap shattered and the floor was a mess. He noted that the blanket roll had come undone. He wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to be observing.

“Landed at the same time. That’s equality in the law, in the law. Nature’s Law. Gravity, Butch.”

“Buster.”

“Now, take supply and demand. You probably think you know that one, studied it in high school economics class, right?” And I bet you think it has something to do with capitalist economics, right?” He wasn’t waiting for answers or any other kind of response. “Has very, very little to do with capitalist economics. More to do with the ministry, with marriage, with—”

“Pimping?” Buster was feeling brave. He doubted that anyone had ever dared to get that familiar with Doc Serge about his past. But the man had gotten into
his
business, hadn’t he? Come right to his house and sat him down with his father and launched into a long rap about Nadeen and the baby. “Does
it occur to you that that baby you are considering aborting might be the very one who will deliver us?” That had worked fine with his father but had cut no ice with Buster and his mother. Buster still maintained the baby wasn’t his. “What difference does that make?” Doc had argued. “Law of averages says you take care of this one, some other young man will wind up taking care of yours and so forth.” His mother had called that sheer illogic and left the house. Buster had to admit he’d been grateful for the visit, though, because shortly after that Nadeen’s uncle had come by with a pistol. And while Thurston had a rep for being a very reasonable and peaceful type, the type that usually could be depended on to cool out the hotheads on LaSalle Street, still there was no telling what he might have done, given that Nadeen was not only his niece but more a daughter.

“Yeh, like pimping,” Doc said, not skipping a beat. “A woman in the hands of an undisciplined player is very nearly as dangerous a situation to all concerned as atomic energy in the hands of capitalists, as any kind of power in the hands of the psychically immature, spiritually impoverished and intellectually undisciplined.”

He was warming to his subject, had unbuttoned his vest and changed the position of his legs.

“Yeh, pimping too. If you’re going to be a player and not just some mooching miscreant and misuser of women and women’s knowledges, you’ve got to study the principles that govern the game.”

It might have been a paper he was delivering at a national conference on physics. Buster was beginning to enjoy the performance. Doc held out his hand, or rather held it up out of the pillowcases and wagged one finger at a time.

“Principles such as the law of reciprocity, the principle of attraction and repulsion, good ole supply and demand
again …” His watch was now in view and Buster sensed this could go on for hours.

“Sir? What I wanted to know—and I realize your time is short and all—what I’m doing my report about—”

“I’m getting to that. Okay. If you are not curious about the difference between a prime player and a mere pussy peddler, then let me come at this another way, Butch. Because it is important to understand the basis for the Brotherhood and its activities. No sense half-knowing a thing. Cause half-knowing is not sufficient. Look at the mess the half-knowers have got this country in—got this world in. Now check this out”—fishing a dollar bill out of his watch pocket—“know Latin, Butch?”

“Bus … no sir.”

“The man thought the new age and the new order began with his arrival on these shores. Hah! They convinced us they knew about this country’s manifest destiny. Clearly they were totally ignorant about its latent destiny, its occult destiny. Understand? Now, its latent destiny is a Neptunian thing, a Black thing, an us thing. Following?” He waved the dollar until Buster leaned forward and took it, examined it. “And the new age has only just begun to be ushered in. So to understand the depth of the question you so nonchalantly ask about the Brotherhood, you need to understand many things about the times. Do you know what time it is?”

Buster was not about to go for the chump bait and look at his watch and then have the man yell Duuumeee at him in a linen closet.

“It’s the third year of the last quarter of the twentieth century, Buddy. A very crucial moment in human history. Six years, six short years away from 1984—and I don’t mean Orwell. The last quarter …” He was examining his manicure it seemed, and deciding, evidently, to change manicurists. “You
play basketball, so you know a lot can happen in the last quarter. All sorts of surprises, upsets, right?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, all right.” Now he was lifting his pocket watch up like a yo-yo. Maybe it wasn’t as late as Buster had thought. Maybe the wrist watch was just a piece of jewelry, something he wore to complete his ensemble and the vest pocket timepiece the functional piece. Though what would complete the picture, Buster was thinking, studying the three-piece suit, the vest, tie, pocket hanky, was a gun holster. Administrator or no, Doc Serge always dressed like a first-class gangster in a foreign movie. There was probably a slouch-down white hat that went with this suit.

“It’s late. I’m due in the auditorium in less than five minutes, if I read Miss Ransom right. Now, Buddy, if you’re half the young man I take you for, you’ll track down Dr. Arias, who is one shrewd cookie. And then, if you’re smart and very, very lucky, you’ll try to see The Hermit.” He was fastening his vest and jacket now and shaking down his sleeves. “You did say you wanted to talk with Cleotus Brown?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, dismissed.”

Doc Serge sucked in so the student could squeeze past. And it was just as he’d said, the kid was half the man he took him for. He left without asking where Dr. Arias might be found or how to get to see The Hermit. Doc watched him go down the hall and brushed his ring against his chin. And it was just as Cleotus had said, there was no charge, no tension, no stuff in these young people’s passage. They walked by you and there was no breeze of merit, no vibes. Open them up and you might find a skate key, or a peach pit, or a Mary Jane wrapper, or a slinky, but that would be about all. Or maybe you’d find something totally unidentifiable. Might just as well be aliens from
another planet. Definitely directed by energies from elsewhere.

Doc felt momentarily deficient. He knew a lot of things, but he was nonplused by the new people. New, unattached, unobliged. They were either adrift or freed up, it was difficult to figure. And the new women were even more confounding than the men. He couldn’t do a thing with them. He no longer trusted his knowledge of their language of gesture and rhythm. When he walked up to groups of young women at the Academy talking with each other, he felt an intruder, felt he was missing their timing somewhere. But this was not his province. Sophie and Cleotus had the gift in that area. His gift was managing the Infirmary.

Doc patted down his bush, raked among the silver hairs around his ears and strolled out of the linen closet as if stepping from the barbershop fresh and fragrant. He needed to look in on Minnie and tell her to shake a leg. It wasn’t like her to run overtime like this. He would do the abridged version of his lecture for the visiting medical folk, for this was the night he did his rounds on LaSalle Street like Doc John among the lepers.

Doc listened to the smart click click of his Spanish boots on the tiles. He nodded toward the maintenance crew in such a way as to signal he didn’t much appreciate their lollygagging around the juice bar. He bowed deeply whenever he met one of the women workers he thought needed his special brand of attentiveness. He headed in the general direction of the treatment room, feeling that familiar wave of energy surge through him. In another minute, he sensed, he would generate enough energy to found a dynasty, lift a truck, start a war, light up the whole of Clayborne for a week.

“I am one beautiful and powerful son of a bitch,” he told himself. “Smart as a whip, respected, prosperous, beloved and valuable. I have the right to be healthy, happy and rich, for I
am the baddest player in this arena or any other. I love myself more than I love money and pretty women and fine clothes. I love myself more than I love neat gardens and healthy babies and a good gospel choir. I love myself as I love The Law. I love myself in error and in correctness, waking or sleeping, sneezing, tipsy, or fabulously brilliant. I love myself doing the books or sitting down to a good game of poker. I love myself making love expertly, or tenderly and shyly, or clumsily and inept. I love myself as I love The Master’s Mind,” he continued his litany, having long ago stumbled upon the prime principle as a player—that self-love produces the gods and the gods are genius. It took genius to run the Southwest Community Infirmary. So he made the rounds of his hospital the way he used to make the rounds of his houses to keep the tops spinning, reciting declarations of self-love.