“ ‘We’s Paw’s kinfolks,’ the countryman said, recovering himself, ’come to see sick folks in ’leven and fifty-two.’
“ ‘This way, please,’ the nurse said, and she led them to the room where his, the countryman’s, father lay, not dying as it, the letter, had said, but sitting up in bed watching afternoon game shows on TV and laughing every time folks in New York or out on the coast answered the question wrong and lost their money.
“ ‘Dumb Eastern and Coastern fucks,’ the old man roared and laughed fit to bust. ‘Look that Eastern fuck, give the Captain the wrong answer and he just lost his car.’
“ ‘I brung chocolates, Paw,’ the countryman said.
“ ‘Thanks, son, they’s my favorites. Don’t never be like them Eastern and Coastern fucks, don’t never gamble.’
“ ‘I won’t, Paw,’ the countryman said.
“ ‘Saw a man this mornin’, Coastern fuck he was, dumber ’n dog shit, an’ he lost his dream house ’cause he didn’t know which curtain it ’us standin’ behind. His own house, an’ thet dumb Coastern fuck couldn’t remembers its address! Got all confused an’ all he could remember was where he’d left his pig. Don’t never gamble, son. You neither, neighbor. Special when you don’t stand to gain nothin’ by it. Have a chocolate.’
“ ‘Thanks, Paw. The letter said you ’us dyin’. You don’t seem like you dyin’.’
“ ‘Ain’t dyin’,’ his father said.
“ ‘You ain’t?’
“ ‘Naw. They run some tests. Figured what I got.’
“ ‘Yes?’
“ ‘Well, once they could name its name, there was a medicine for it that could fix it.’
“ ‘Can I aks you sumfin’?’ his boy, the countryman, said after a while.
“ ‘Sho,’ his father said. ‘Shoot.’
“ ‘This here medicine — they charge money for it?’
“ ‘Fool! Course they do.’
“ ‘That’s jus’ what I thought,’ his visitor’s neighbor’s neighbor, his son, the countryman, said.”
Ben Flesh paused. They were staring up at him.
“Because,” he said, “distance demands its road, the bowel its vessel, the disease its medicament. It is the lesson learned by the countryman the day he thought his paw would die. I have not mentioned it, but even after he saw his father on the mend, this too went through his mind: ’He’s got a body. If it dies it will have to be boxed, have to be buried. They ain’t through with us even after we quit of them. And it was as if he, a countryman, a farmer, a dealer in earth all his working life, thought about it — earth — for the first time. It was as if, my friends, he had discovered the uses of real estate. He had learned the secret of being—that existence has its spare parts, that the successful life is only a proper knowledge of accessory!
“I am Benny in the Bucket, the spirit of Bernie Baruch upon me. Baruch. Atoh. Adonai. Bless this enterprise, oh, Lord. Bahless it. Give us a bahreak! Whet appetites left and right, visit cravings on the pregnant for carry-out chicken, impress upon Mums giving birthday parties the advantages of convenience foods and inscribe everywhere upon the universal palate a taste for the Colonel’s white meat and dark, hanging it there like wallpaper or a fixed idea; tangle its aromatics with the hairs of the nose and make consumers to go in the streets with fried skin chewy as gum in their mouths and licking on bones as on all-day suckers. Doggy my Americans, Pop, foxify them for me and the Colonel.” And looked up.
“Well, folks, I felt I couldn’t ask my manager, Sigmund-Rudolf Finsberg there, to open our doors for business without first making a few remarks appropriate to the occasion. Now I know you’re getting hungry, I know you’re anxious to get in there and find out for yourselves what all the fuss is about, why I and my colleagues have gone to such pains to bring Kentucky Fried Chicken to Yonkers—‘Meals the Whole Family Will Enjoy at Prices Every Family Can Afford.’ And in a few moments I’ll be giving Mr. Finsberg a high sign worked out between us just the other day. You’ll find special grand-opening specials that will have you picking chicken out of your teeth for a week, but first — uh — first — first…”
He wondered what he was up to. Even as he’d told them his story, he’d wondered. What was he doing? What was being done to him? It was nothing like stage fright, no amateur’s last-minute wish to be elsewhere, anywhere. He wondered something else. Not only why he was doing this, but what prevented him from stopping. He could not let them go. He couldn’t stop talking. He hadn’t prepared, he’d meant only to get their attention, Benny in the Bucket a simple stunt of welcome. But why this logorrhea? He suspected his character, a vessel thrust forward by resentment, his stalled personality waiting on anger like a player of a board game waiting on a pair of thrown fours, say, to advance his counter. And why resentment? He remembered when he had shouted over the long-distance telephone at his commanding officer. He grew in fits and starts, lived in phases and stages like a classic kid in Spock or Gesell. Why couldn’t he stop? What did he resent? And if he was angry, then why was he so happy?
“Anyone want a ride in the bucket?”
“Then I think it’s time we—”
“Know what? This is hallowed ground. It is. I was here last weekend checking our equipment. There was this fantastic crowd. In the parking lot, the mall. I couldn’t figure it out. Then there were these — these sirens. I thought, Jesus, what is it, is it burning down? The shopping center? Is Macy’s burning? I got a ladder and climbed up the bucket to see. There was a motorcade, limos. What the hell? That’s what I thought — what the hell? Nixon stepped out and was helped up on the roof of a big black Lincoln. I wondered if he could see me in the bucket. What about the Secret Service guys? What did they make of me? ASSASSIN POPS CANDIDATE FROM FRIED CHICKEN AERIE! Hallowed ground. Jack Kennedy a few days after. The media. Dave Brinkley up close, Cronkite standing. The truth squads of both parties, shadow cabinets. Paul Newman’s been by, Bob Montgomery. This is hallowed American ground of the twentieth century. A shopping center in a white suburb with good schools. One day it will be remembered like an old-time battlefield — some, some Gettysburg of the rhetorical. You heard ’em here first, all the campaigners to whose thumbs we entrust our red buttons and our black boxes. It’s the Lyceum here, the new stump! What merely civil acts could follow such performance and presence? What quotidian acts of the market basket and shopping cart? What out-on-a-limb toe balances and triples? How can I top them? My God, friends, it’s Colonel Sanders who should be here today! The Colonel himself in his blinding whites. Standing where I stand and tossing chicken parts like lollies from the float. Not Ben Flesh in the flesh but him. No surrogate — not after Nixon, not after Kennedy. Him! His State of the Union! But you know?” He beat his breast with his fists. “You know? When you come right down to it, this — this is the State of the Union! BEN IN THE BUCKET! BENNY IN THE BARREL!
“Open up! I’m the truth squad! The secret ingredients of Colonel Sanders’ Fried Chicken from far-off Kentucky are, well, chicken of course, sage, onion, salt and pepper, flour, cornmeal, eggs, and shortening — And plenty of ACCENT!
“Open the doors, it’s opening day. Go on, go in. We ask only that you take a number!”
He pulled himself up to the lip of the bucket and threw his arms over its sides. He hung there suspended. He would appear to them, he thought, exactly like a man lying facedown on a diving board would appear to swimmers directly beneath him.