McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (33 page)

 
          
 
He paused. "Why I gave you a
bargain," he said. "Bad luck to sell the same piece more than three
times. You get my age, things start following you around. Pets, I call 'em.
Take that thing to
Texas
and sell it. I got enough pets. Pretty soon I'll be like Bag
Hopkirk."

 
          
 
Bag Hopkirk was an aged dealer in
Cleveland
who had made a fortune by outliving his
customers, and their heirs, and their heirs' heirs. His shop was filled with
objects he had owned several times. His sales were more like rentals. No one who
knew him supposed he would ever die. He had sold things to customers forty
years younger than himself and then outlived them.

 
          
 
The bankrupt lawn store had had a lot of
leftover fertilizer. Even in bags it didn't smell too great. A huge pyramid of
it had risen in the auction room, while Brisling and I were upstairs. The
pyramid separated forty or fifty shiny new lawn mowers from about a hundred
tweed chairs. Brisling regarded the arrangement gloomily. If some pesky
customer punctured one of the sacks of fertilizer the auction room was going to
be fragrant for a while.
When I left.
Tuck and one or
two of the minions were erecting a sort of barrier of lawn mowers between the
public and the fertilizer.

 
          
 
"Thanks for the gun," I said, but
the gun was history, just a droplet in the river of objects whose flow had been
Brisling's life. He was contemplating a huge stack of dusty Oriental rugs, and
he didn't look up.

 
          
 
As I was cruising along in what I hoped was
the general direction of the Department of Transportation, where I was to meet
the mysterious Hobart Cawdrey, I suddenly found myself in front of a Wax
Museum. The reason I noticed it was because I was behind a bus and the bus
suddenly stopped and disgorged about a hundred high school kids with cameras.
Other buses were disgorging elderly couples, also with cameras. I politely
stopped and let a stream of young and old cross the street in front of me.

 
          
 
The old women had on print dresses and the old
men had the collars of their shirts turned back over the collars of their
sports coats. Some of the old men were holding hands with their wives. Most of
them looked keen to see the Wax Museum, outside of which was a sign advertising
WATERGATE FIGURES.

 
          
 
The kids seemed a good deal less eager. They
looked like they had been up all night, smoking dope and trying to fuck one
another. Several bedraggled teachers were grimly herding them along, watching
to see that none of the kids made a break for freedom. Having
bussed
them to the capital from remote parts of the country
they meant to make sure that they saw every damn thing they were supposed to
see, including wax replicas of Watergate figures.

 
          
 
"I hope they've got Martha
Mitchell," one old lady said. "I wanta see Martha."

 
          
 
A couple of blocks past the Wax Museum I
bumped right into the Department of Transportation. It occupied a full city
block, from comer to comer. It was
10:25
and I was supposed to meet Mr. Cawdrey at
10:30
. I found a phone and dialed the Department.
When the operator rang extension 1000 Mr. Cawdrey answered at once.

 
          
 
"Hobart Cawdrey,” he answered, in a very
slow voice.

 
          
 
"Hi, Mr. Cawdrey,” I said. "I'm Jack
McGriff."

 
          
 
He didn't say a word.

 
          
 
"I was going to meet you in regard to the
basketry," I reminded him.

 
          
 
"Well.
you're
too late, much too late," Mr. Cawdrey said "The baskets are being
moved today. Arrangements have been finalized. Fm surprised you called."

 
          
 
"We had an appointment." I said.
"That's why I called."

 
          
 
"Wait a minute." he said sternly.
"I better check my book."

 
          
 
"Oh lord." he said, a moment later,
aghast at what he'd found in his book,

 
          
 
"What's the matter?" I asked.

 
          
 
"You're right," he said. "I'm
wrong. I'm due to meet you in the cafeteria in to minutes. You'll look like a
cowboy."

 
          
 
"That's right," I said.

 
          
 
"Oh dear," he said. "I've been
guilt of miscalculation. I can't possibly get to the cafeteria in two minutes.
I can seldom even get down in the elevator in two minutes. It often takes four.
I'm very sorry about this. It's not like me at all. I forgot to look in my
book. I suppose you'll want to reschedule the whole business."

 
          
 
"Oh no," I said. "I'm in no
hurry. I've got plenty of time."

 
          
 
He was silent for a long time. The thought of
a cowboy with lots of time seemed to strike him as curious.

 
          
 
"All right, could you just stand near the
ice," he said. "I'll be there in four to six minutes."

 
          
 
Pretty soon I was following a stream of people
which was pouring down into the basement of the building, toward the cafeteria.
The stream was not exactly meandering aimlessly, either. I felt like I had
wandered into an ant colony, or perhaps a beetle colony. The people around me
had an insectlike quality, though it would have been hard to name the insect
they suggested.
Wood lice, probably.
They moved along
at a rapid clip and seemed to be responding to the directives of a collective
brain. All of them seemed to be dressed not merely poorly, but terribly, in the
cheapest available synthetic fabrics of the worst colors. None of them looked
like they owned so much as a good pair of socks.

 
          
 
There was a lack of light in their eyes that
would have won someone an Academy Award for great special effects if they had
all been in a zombie movie.

 
          
 
By the time we actually got down to the
cafeteria I had begun to feel odd. After all, I wasn't part of the colony. I
felt like a wasp that had accidentally gone down an anthill.

 
          
 
Fortunately the ice-maker where I was supposed
to meet Hobart Cawdrey was easy to spot. It was in the center of the room, near
a counter that seemed to contain millions of Styrofoam cups. The workers—I
guess they should be called bureaucrats—poured off the food line carrying
hamburgers on Styrofoam plates. Then they grabbed a Styrofoam cup, scooped up a
few ice cubes, and moved past a row of spigots that dispensed liquids on the
order of iced tea and Pepsi-Cola.

 
          
 
I don't eat in cafeterias much—just being in
the middle of such a vast one was a little daunting. The people shuffling along
in the food line didn't have the anticipatory look people usually have when
they're waiting to be fed. Most people assume that if they're going to be fed
the food will probably taste good, but nowhere in the cafeteria did I see a
face lit with the prospect of eating something that might taste good. Instead
of looking like people who were about to eat they looked like people who had
lined up to get polio shots, or something.

 
          
 
Someone touched my elbow and I looked down
into a round unwrinkled face under a woolen hat.

 
          
 
"Hobart Cawdrey," the face said.

 
          
 
From the first glance it was clear that Mr.
Cawdrey was a man of his profession. It wasn't merely that he wore a woolen hat
and a trench coat, but that he failed to wear an expression. His eyes lacked
many of the qualities that one normally associates with eyes. Though he was
looking right at me, I could not tell that he regarded me with the slightest
interest or curiosity.

 
          
 
"We better get in line," he said.
"This place is going to fill up soon."

 
          
 
Without further ado we joined the nearest food
line. At close range the people in line looked even more depressed than they
had from a distance. Mr. Cawdrey did not seem to feel the need to say anything.
His round face and blank eyes did not change expression, though since they had
not really attained an expression they couldn't very well have changed it.

 
          
 
"How’s the food?" I asked
,
to be conversational.

 
          
 
This simple question startled Mr. Cawdrey. He
looked around at me with something like a look of puzzlement— then he glanced
at the food counter as if he were being forced to take cognizance of it for the
first time.

 
          
 
"Why the food's right there," he
said. "You'll see for yourself. We're a new department, you know. I
understand they have more things over at State. I ate at the Treasury once and
they had quite a few things, too. But we seem to have all the normal things. I
usually eat a hamburger."

 
          
 
With that he picked up a Styrofoam plate and
ordered a hamburger and French fries. I did the same. When I asked if I could
have everything on my hamburger the woman who was doling out burgers looked at
me so truculently that I didn't repeat my request. As a result I got two buns,
a patty of meat, and one leaf of lettuce. Mr. Cawdrey got a Pepsi, I got iced
tea, and then we stood in line for about ten minutes at the cash registers.

 
          
 
Mr. Cawdrey had been right. People were
pouring into the cafeteria like beetles, armored with carapaces of total
indifference. The streams of beetle-people were beginning to back up into the
stairwells.

 
          
 
I was beginning to get depressed, partly
because I hate Styrofoam. To me, Styrofoam plates aren't even objects— they
belong in a revolting subclass of some kind, well beneath the level of an
honest paper plate. The one I was holding seemed to have pores. Also, it was
taking an awful long time to get to the cash registers, though I was the only
one who seemed to mind. Everyone else seemed to think it perfectly natural that
the food they were buying would be cold long before they could even pay for it,
much less eat it.

 
          
 
Finally we got past the cash registers and
took our food into another vast room, this one filled with tiny tables. The
tables and chairs were of some sort of plastic that was
itself
not far removed from Styrofoam.

 
          
 
The ice had long since melted in my tea, which
was watery, and when I took a bite of my hamburger it was as if I had taken a
bite of my plate: It tasted like Styrofoam. When I picked up a French fry it
folded limply down my finger, like a dead worm. I couldn't bring myself to eat
it so I eased it off my finger, back into the pile, and contented myself with a
little sip of watery tea. I felt dismal.
No wonder the people
in the food line didn't look anticipatory.
They knew perfectly well the
food they were waiting for would consist of impotent French fries and
hamburgers that tasted much like a Styrofoam plate.

 
          
 
Mr. Cawdrey was clearly not bothered by these
dismal reflections. He munched his way right through a tasteless hamburger,
eating every crumb.

 
          
 
"It's a pity you weren't a little
quicker," he said. "If I were a buyer I would have wanted the
baskets, because they're so easy to move. Baskets are light. We have many other
things, but they aren't very light."

 
          
 
"What sorts of things?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Well, the weapons, for example," he
said. "You could buy the weapons, but they aren't light, you know. We have
two thousand cannons, and they have to go with the weapons."

 
          
 
"How much are the weapons?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Six point two million," Mr. Cawdrey
said. "But you have to take the cannons."

 
          
 
"What else do you have that's
light?" I asked.

 
          
 
"Well, the pottery," he said.
"Much of it is light, but unfortunately the sarcophagi go with the pottery
and sarcophagi aren't light."

 
          
 
Then he noticed that I hadn't eaten my food.

 
          
 
"My goodness," he said. "You
didn't eat."

 
          
 
"It got cold while we were standing in
line," I said. "I don't like cold hamburgers."

 
          
 
"I guess mine got cold, too," he
said, as if trying to remember the hamburger he was even then digesting.

 
          
 
Then he fell silent. I fell silent, too. I was
getting very depressed. All at once I couldn't think of any reason to go on
doing what I was doing, if what I was doing could bring me to such a place. The
mere sight of the round blank face of Hobart Cawdrey was discouraging. For a
moment I saw my life in its most ridiculous light: Here I was, in a city I had
only come to on a whim, talking to a man who wanted to sell 2,000 cannons,
among other things. For the course of perhaps twenty seconds I felt I must be
virtually insane, not to have found a more sensible occupation in my
thirty-three years.