“So why? Why are you so interested in the Family Funnies?”
“It’s my family,” I said.
“You’re telling me that strip is more interesting than the genuine article?”
“There is no genuine article.” This had the ring of gloomy, fatalistic truth to me.
Tyro shook his head. “Bullshit,” he said.
* * *
We went to the buffet together. I was still hungry, even after the burritos, and loaded my plate with Italian sausage and pierogies, which anywhere else in the world but New Jersey would have been an unacceptable contradiction. We sat at a table with some Fans, who didn’t talk to us. Many of them wore Dogberry T-shirts, with Kearns’s looping signature under the drawing.
“I hear he still has horses on the ranch.”
“Is that so? Does he ride?”
“Oh, I’d imagine he must. Wouldn’t you?”
“Well, naturally.”
I watched Tyro eat. His exterior calm was astonishing, though it was clear this was not his natural, primeval state: under the table his feet twitched to an obsessive internal rhythm, and he fussed at his jeans and shirt surreptitiously, not out of vanity, it seemed, but of minor yet irrepressible discomfort. I could guess at his childhood: pure nerd until his junior year in high school, when suddenly he became bony and dangerous, a sexual beacon to girls who months before would have had nothing to do with him — cheerleaders, honor students. It made him wary of people who expected things from him. He ignored the Fans and absorbed himself in his food until Kearns was introduced by, of all people, Leslie Parr.
Parr stood massively on the plywood stage, hunched over the lectern like an Army colonel preparing to outline battle plans with his quirt. What he said about Kearns probably looked respectful enough on paper — some saccharine blather about the strip’s immeasurable influence and timeless appeal — but his voice reeked so strongly of contempt that I half-expected riot. Nobody else seemed to notice, though.
“Of course, I could stand up here yammering all day, give y’all time to polish off that chicken tertrazzini or whatever you got there”—polite laughter—“but you wanna see the genuine article, and lucky for you we got ‘im right here, the mangy old goat of the funny papers, Art Kearns!”
Thundering applause, from all quarters including mine. My cogitations on the curb, which already in the glum aftermath of artificial stimulants seemed no more or less significant than a low-wattage light being switched on in a musty attic full of junk, had no effect on my slavish devotion to Kearns, whom I still considered tack-sharp and dignified, even in his weakened state. His progress to the lectern was prolonged and excruciating, and the applause flagged and reinvigorated several times before he finally arrived, supported by his assistant. She took a moment to steady him before the mike, then sat down upstage on a folding chair.
“Well thanks,” said Kearns, his voice thin and crusty as an old piece of wire, and everyone clapped again. Tyro picked up a sausage with his fingers and chomped off a thumb-sized chunk.
“It’s a real honor, speaking to you here. I’ve been in this business a long time. Longer’n you can imagine. And I’ve drawn a lot of strips, for sure. But it’s all ‘cause of you all that ‘Art’s Kids’ is still popular. ‘Smuch as it was fifty years ago.” His oratory trickled out over the crowd like a leak in a cellar wall. All his sentences were of uniform length. I looked around me and found people eating quietly, cleaning off their eyeglasses or squinting earnestly at Kearns, as if in an effort to see the words better. I waited for the introduction to stop and his speech, per se, to begin. But minutes passed, and pretty soon he stopped talking, and after a pause that lingered a beat or two too long, everyone caught on that this had been his speech, it was over, and it was time to start clapping. So they did. Kearns turned from the lectern and his assistant leapt to her feet to support him, and together they walked off, to further applause.
Les Parr was quick to retake the mike. “All right!” he screamed, as if it had not been Kearns on stage at all, but Elvis Presley. His grin was less celebratory than triumphal, and he pointed at Kearns’s receding form with what looked, from where I was sitting, like open mockery. “Y’all finish eating, and Art’s gonna move over to this table here”—he pointed to where some people were unfolding a buffet table, stage right—“and draw y’all some pictures, okay? All right, let’s give the old boy one more hand!”
More clapping, weaker this time. Kearns, who had nearly made it to his seat, half-turned and accepted it, nodding. And then the noise retreated into scabrous mumbled conversation and giggling. Tyro held up his empty plate and nodded his head at it.
“Seconds?” he said.
* * *
Afterward, I wanted to wait and meet Kearns. Tyro would have none of it. “I’m history,” he said. “More than thirty-six hours in Jersey gives me the willies.”
“I understand,” I said.
To my surprise, he stuck out his hand to be shook. It was an ironic gesture, accompanied by a pompous fake smirk, but his grip on my fingers was strong and honest. “It was good meeting you, Mix. I thought I’d have to hate everybody.”
“Glad to be of service.”
“Let me know how things go,” he said.
“You’ll see me in the funny papers.”
He made a face. “Shit, Mix, I can’t read that trash. Drop me a note or something.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, but we didn’t exchange addresses or telephone numbers. He didn’t say goodbye either, only made a little pistol with his hand, cocked his thumb and shot me right between the eyes.
* * *
The line to see Kearns was nearly fifty yards long, but I got in it anyway. People seemed to be holding things for Kearns to sign or draw on. Was it possible that there was no paper for the cartoonist?
“They ran out,” someone told me. “He keeps making mistakes and starting over.”
“So, do you have anything…extra? You could give me?”
His name tag read STEVE GOPP, WASHINGTON POST. “Nah, I just got these two.” He held up a couple of magazine subscription cards, one with a grease stain on the corner. “One of ‘em’s for my kid.”
I scanned the floor for dropped programs or dinner napkins. My own program had somehow gotten away from me. The line, which had seemed stuck, was moving now, and as I came closer to the table I set to the task of persuading myself that asking for autographs was crass and demeaning, and a handshake and pleased-ta-meetcha would be sufficient. Then I remembered I had some paper with me after all.
“Now, you look familiar,” Kearns said to me, smiling. His right eye was milky with growths and it was a wonder to me that he could see at all.
“I’m Tim Mix,” I said. “Maybe you knew my father Carl. He drew the Family Funnies.”
“Nah, that ain’t it. You look like my granddaughter’s boyfriend. You ride a motorcycle?”
“No, sir.”
He nodded slowly. “Kill yourself on one of them things. So,” he said. “Whatcha got for me?”
I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and set it on the table in front of him. He turned it over and read the address. “To your sweetie?”
“Kind of.”
“Well, we’ll give you a little something for luck here.” He brought his felt-tipped marker to the envelope and began to draw. His hand shook, teetering at the very edge of his control. When lines appeared, they did so in a rhythmic fuzz, like pipe cleaners bent into shapes by a child. For some time, I waited for the patterns to become recognizable, then finally gave up. Eventually Kearns handed the envelope back to me.
“There you go,” he said. “Little shaky, but it’s the real McCoy.”