He disappeared behind his inventory. “I’ve got the goods,” he shouted, “and that ain’t bad.” In half an hour the pile had diminished, and his father, still in the wagon, seemed to have grown taller. He waved to his son. “Are you learning anything?” he called to him over the heads of the crowd.
Gradually the people began to drift away. There were still two or three things unsold, and Feldman reached down and held a man’s arm. “Wait,” he roared, “where are you going? You think I’m through with you? This is winter I’m talking about. This is the cold, sad solstice. Just because the sun is shining over us now, you think it’s stuck up there? You take too much for granted. You buy something, you hear me?” He bent down and picked up a carved, heavy leg from an old dining-room table. “Here,” he said. “A wonderful club. For your enemies. You got enemies? No? Then build a table over it and invite your friends to supper.”
Finally there was nothing left to sell and the people had all gone. His father still stood in the wagon, tall, forlorn as a giant. The oxen passed beside him, led by their owners. “What’s to be done with the unsalable thing?” Feldman crooned.
His son, in the stands, stared at him without moving. “What is the unsalable thing?” he called.
“The unsalable thing? My God, don’t you know?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You never told me.”
They were shouting to each other.
“I didn’t?”
“Not once.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“I had to tell you? You couldn’t guess?”
“I never bothered.”
“Some son.”
“Well?”
“Well what? What well?”
“What is it?”
“What is what?”
“The unsalable thing.”
“It’s me,” he said.
A year later his father began to cough. The boy was always with him now on the wagon. During the choking, heavy seizures, brought on, it seemed, by the swelling, passionate spiels themselves, his son would take over the cries, shouting madder and madder things into the streets. The cough grew worse; it would begin as soon as he started to speak.
Feldman went to the doctor. “It’s cancer,” he told his son. “I’m dying.”
“Can he operate?”
His father shook his head. “It’s terminal.” He coughed.
“Terminal,” his son repeated the word.
“Sure,” his father said, coughing so that he could hardly be understood. “Last stop for the Diaspora. Everyone off.”
The boy went to the doctor and conferred with him.
Three months later, when the old man died, his son got in touch with the doctor. They argued some more, but it was no use. The doctor, on behalf of the tiny hospital, could offer him only fifteen dollars for the body.
6
Where are you going?” the guard asked.
“I’ve been sick in my cell, and I never got an assignment. I was told that I had to see a guard.”
“Plubo. You have to see Plubo.”
“Yes. Him.”
“Where’s your pass? You can’t get through here without a pass.”
“Where do I get a pass?”
“The Fink makes out the passes in this wing. Or the warden if he’s around.”
“Where do I find the Fink?”
“Through that door.” He pointed down a long corridor.
Feldman began to walk toward it.
“Wait a minute, you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll need a permission slip to get a pass from the Fink. The Fink is only a trusty. He can’t write one up on his own authority.”
“Where do I get a permission slip?”
“From a guard.”
Feldman waited.
“Oh, I can’t give you one if that’s what you think. You get permission slips from pencil men. There have to be rules,” he said.
“Where do I find a pencil man?”
“Return to your cell. Don’t you know anything? The pencil man is the counter.”
Oh, he thought. There were major counts four times a day when a bell rang and the prisoners had to freeze, as in a fairy tale or a child’s game. Minor counts occurred every half-hour, when a guard came through carrying a clipboard. He was the counter, the pencil man. Feldman went back to his cell. He found out he had just missed the pencil man and would have to wait twenty-five minutes for the next one.
He lay down on his cot to wait, but he fell asleep. When he woke he called out to some convicts playing Monopoly in the corridor. “Has the pencil man been through?”
“Ten minutes ago,” a man said.”
Feldman sat up and waited for the next pencil man. When he saw him he called out at once.
“Thirty-eight,” the pencil man said. “Remind me. I stopped at thirty-eight. What is it?”
Feldman explained what he needed.
He showed the permission slip to the Fink, and the Fink gave him a pass. Feldman started to walk off.
“Hold it, smart guy.”
“What?”
“Let’s have that permission slip back. That has to be destroyed. Got any cigarettes?”
“Yes.”
“Give us four smokes. What are they, plain-tipped or filters?”
“Filter.”
“Give us six smokes, and I’ll let you keep the permission slip.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You don’t need it now, but suppose you need it later? Suppose that? Suppose you miss your pencil man and have to wait half an hour?”
Feldman nodded.”
“You see?” the Fink said. “You can never find a pencil man when you need one.”
“But the slip is dated.”
“Only the quarter. It’s the loophole. There’s got to be rules and there’s got to be loopholes. You don’t know anything about this place, do you?”
“I guess not,” Feldman said.
“That’s all right,” the Fink said. “Some of the lifers don’t know much more than you do. The oldest lifers are still learning. Not even the warden knows everything about it.”
Feldman gave him the cigarettes.
The Fink winked. “At lunch rub it in the butter.”
“Why?”
“It preserves it. Otherwise the permission slip gets all yellow and wrinkled. You grease it down, that won’t happen.”
“Oh.”
“Usually I get a couple more cigarettes for that tip.”
“I see.”
“It’s not part of the service.”
“I gave you my last cigarettes.”
“Better yet. You owe me. In this place always get a guy to owe you.”
“I see. All right. I owe you two cigarettes.”
“Four,” the Fink said.
“Why four?”
“For the second tip. Get a guy to owe you.”
Feldman presented the pass that the Fink had made out for him to the guard. Saying nothing, the man unlocked the door. He was in a part of the prison he did not remember having been in before. Offices opened onto a long central corridor. He wondered if the warden’s office was in this building.
He knocked at a door marked “Personnel.” “Come in,” a voice called, and he opened the door. “You want Inmate Personnel,” a man said harshly.
At Inmate Personnel there was no answer and he had turned to go when the door opened. A large ruddy-faced man with white hair stood inside. He had loosened the knot on his tie, and his shirt collar was open. His jacket had been carelessly placed across the back of a chair.