“Hey,” said the nature poet, “can I be really bad and ask you for one of those?”
“No,” said the cobbler.
Everybody laughed. The cobbler had the short, bitter laugh of a character whose stage directions said, He gives a short, bitter laugh.
“You can have a drag of this one.”
The cobbler held out threateningly, in the nature of a challenge, the soggy, crimped end.
“That’s okay,” said the nature poet.
Cookie and the nature poet walked home.
The town square was a mile away from their quarters over the dentist’s office in the strip mall and the walk required confronting some desolation under the stars, but usually they enjoyed the exercise.
Tonight they walked fast and felt agitated and insulted. Their hands wanted something to do. They had to shake the energy out through their hands.
“Wow,” said Cookie.
“I know,” said the nature poet.
“What was that about?” said Cookie.
“I guess I learned my lesson.”
“I guess you’ll never do that again.”
“I guess not.”
That night Cookie lay in bed and thought about taking the cigarette out of the cobbler’s hand and poking the red end into the cobbler’s cheekbone.
Just two days later he heard that the cobbler had been hospitalized with an intestinal parasite that nearly killed him.
A grudge was a petty shame. The cobbler had many good qualities and practiced the noble old trade of his forebears. He did not deserve to be struck down by an intestinal parasite, leaving behind a precious little son and grieving widow just because he had refused to fork over a cigarette to the woman Cookie loved.
Now the woman he loved had gone back to the big city, and why did Cookie think about that cigarette so much?
He should have taken better care of his wife. Was that proprietary and old-fashioned? Was it sexist? He wished he had been a better husband. It was like prodding at a wound, thinking of a world in which people could be dismissive toward her, try to put her in her place. She had a place all right. It was a great place, miles up in the air. Everybody else could suck it.
Pinkeye
I WAS STROLLING TOWARD THE HIGH SCHOOL ON THE OPENING DAY of football season when I saw a five-dollar bill fly out of the pocket of a little girl’s shorts. By the time I scooped it up, she had gamboled quite a distance down the block. I wanted to run up to her and say, “Little girl, you dropped this.” But then I pictured myself, a stout and ugly man of the town, a bachelor past my prime, wheezing as I dangled a five-dollar bill in the face of an unattended child in the town square on this busiest of days. Though I had no reason to be ashamed, the picture was too unseemly to contemplate. I put the money in my pocket and kept walking.
The little girl rushed forward to meet a group of friends, other little girls. Something else flew from her pocket, a single this time. I kept that too.
Now the girl had stopped. She and her knot of chattering playmates were concerned about something. They scowled and carried on, hands on hips in a miniature attitude of high drama that was quite charming, though my heart was chilled with fear that one of them had seen me picking up the bills from the sidewalk. I passed them without incident, however, and continued toward campus. On the way, I stopped at the Chevron station and bought a pack of cigarettes with a portion of my loot.
We have no opera house. Tailgating passes for art here. My friend’s mother always puts out a tempting spread. I wolfed down pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off, homemade fried chicken, sugary ham biscuits, and other finger foods. I drank gin from an enormous cup and worked on a sunburn. Nothing could have been lovelier.
Four or five nephews (not my own) sported about in the grass with their toy football, waiting for the game to begin. I popped a whole slippery deviled egg into my mouth in order to take the hand of an old woman I did not recognize. She mentioned that her granddaughter had just been accepted into the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I remarked in turn that the event was world famous, and she seemed surprised and delighted by the news.
“World famous!” she repeated. I did not trouble her with the fact that its true name is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Her garbling of the phrase is all too sadly common, even among the intelligentsia to whom I have been exposed in cyberspace.
It is a fact that I am more informed about entertainment and culture than many of my neighbors.
Something important had almost dawned on me the night before as I watched a crummy old movie about a French viscount escaping from a British prison.
The woman he loved helped get him across the channel, disguising herself as a shepherd and then as his “postboy.”
There was the snooty Englishman — in love with the same woman — tracking him down.
There was his decadent French cousin who was happy the viscount had been put into prison. He was weak and foppish and awash in debt. He coveted the fortune that belonged rightfully to the viscount, and was so spineless he was willing to poison his old benefactor to get it quick.
There were various supporting players, such as the girl’s feisty old aunt and an unshaven, double-crossing innkeeper.
It was awful.
The girl wore a tri-cornered hat and snug livery as she said, “Not now! Who has ever imagined a viscount kissing his postboy?”
“Everybody,” I ventured aloud.
I thought it the kind of witticism that would go over big at a sophisticated party where everyone drank cocktails and poked fun at an old movie, just one sort of event for which this area is not primarily known.
It was late. I kept thinking I would turn off the TV and go to bed. But I could not deny that I wanted to see the snooty Englishman bested and the decadent fop get what was coming to him.
I wanted to see the girl — the worst actress in the world — glowing with connubial happiness.
I had trouble sleeping. Something was flitting there, not merely the girl in her tight boy suit. The next day, amidst the bright revelry, I tried to grasp it still.
One of the little nephews of my friend bumped into my legs, distracted by squinting at the instructions on a medicine bottle with a pink cap. He neither begged my pardon nor acknowledged my existence.
“What’s wrong with that child?” I asked my friend. “Is he sick?”
“Pinkeye,” answered the old woman, who had overheard.
“So I should completely avoid him?” my burly friend asked in a jocular tone of voice. He is large and full of life and enjoys joshing about his supposed vulnerability to the vagaries of fate.
“I don’t worry about germs anymore,” said the old woman, whose hand I had clasped so warmly. What a luxury, I thought, to be an old woman who no longer cares about germs.
In a coffee shop I had witnessed a little boy ineffectually stifling his liquid cough in the crook of his arm as he stood over one container full of straws and another full of spoons. Nearby, his brother, smaller still, spun the postcard rack around and around with something like viciousness. Nonetheless, I took no pleasure in the cruelty of the marketing executive who had decided to put pinkeye medicine in a little white bottle with a bright pink cap.
“Children remind me of that once-famous achondroplastic fellow now in the shameful regional commercial,” I told my friend. “Have you seen it? He is forced to say, ‘I’m short on cash.’ I never cared for him at the height of his popularity, yet I am moved when I consider what he goes through. Ha ha, ‘height of popularity,’ that’s marvelous, his unusually short stature being the sole source of his notoriety.”
“Jen and I are going to have a baby,” my friend said.
“Have I ever told you about the couple my brother knew who had a pet chimpanzee with cancer?” I replied. “This was in New Orleans, the Crescent City. For a long time you could walk by their house and see the chimpanzee glaring out the window at you. It was very sick. The husband was a wine merchant. He traveled around the nation to fabulous restaurants and sometimes he would take his wife along. During one of these professional visits, a rather famous chef in Charleston asked where the wife was and the fellow answered very matter-of-factly, ‘She couldn’t come. She’s taking the chimpanzee for chemotherapy.’ The chef made a certain face, so my brother’s friend smashed a valuable champagne flute in his eyes. The traveling wine salesman felt insulted and judged. Perhaps he was sensitive. You may be asking yourself, ‘What were the consequences of his rash actions?’”