Mr. Ito grants the flash card in his mind a silent thank you. Thank you, Arthur Flegenheimer, you have been of enormous help, but you are free now to cash your own ticket. As for Mr. Dewey and Senator Kefauver, one trusts that you are not too displeased with this day’s work. However, Nagoya Ito would prefer to take it from here.
The Dutchman is beginning to sag at the knees. His eyes are fanning quite rapidly, but he is paying very careful attention as Mr. Ito thrusts out his hand and says with brusque animation.
“Well, twirl my turban, man alive, can this be Mister Five by Five?”
James Lee Snyder
Shopping Cart Howard
James Lee Snyder has been writing for fifteen years, but "Shopping Cart Howard”is the first story he has sent out for publication because, as he puts it, “I wanted to refine my work first… Now, on good days, I feel like I have complete control of my writing.”
“Shopping Cart Howard' is an amalgam of two or three people Mr. Snyder knows. “Living in New Orleans, you are exposed to a broad range of people and experiences," he observed. Though a private detective has a prominent role in the story, it is not about crime and thus would not normally be included in NBM. But we felt the rules should be stretched in this case.
Dick Tracy’s been following me for days. I know if s him because of those awful, baggy suits he wears and the way he acts, a real funny-paper hero, this one. He slides in and out of doorways and window-shops enough for ten country wives come to town. Brother. So what I do is I take him down to the Quarter, down on Bourbon Street and him always a block behind, and I park him in front of one of those male strip joints down there. Then I'm rearranging my cart for an hour or so while the tourist jerkers slither out and work him over. It’s pitiful what those leech bastards can do to you with that much time. Once, Dick just up and left. They all started calling him Peeping Tom and a couple of the boys came out in their wigs and nighties, running their fingers beneath that official Dick Tracy hat, and he vamoosed. Now the last couple of days he doesn’t follow me in. He waits on Canal, has a Coke at Woolworth’s lunch counter, and I pick him up on my way out. I’ve about decided he’s actually with the Internal Revenue. They must have heard about all that money I was making, not paying taxes on, and sent him down. Duke and Reese might have tipped them off. They’re convinced I have a buried treasure somewhere, and it would be just like those fools to ask the government for help, if they thought it would do any good.
Of course, he may be with one of those social houses. Some loafer on the state payroll or, even worse, one of those goddamn Jesuits in disguise. Brother Marti’s been trying to get me to stop by and partake a free lunch for years. It breaks his heart to see me managing out on the street all by myself. He likes to walk among his herd at meal times, all those street jerks kissing his behind while cramming down his baloney and Wonder Bread sandwiches. He turns into Jesus once he passes out the cellophane-wrapped sweet rolls. Everybody falls to their knees and prays, then he runs them back outside so they can line up again. Pitiful. You see, the Brothers and the welfare people think I'm crazy, and I let them. It enhances my freedom of movement. They're always stopping me here and there to “inquire” about my well being. That's when I sort of roll my eyes around in my head — go all trancelike, I mean — and try to run them over. I'll chase them down the street with my cart while they’re begging me to let them give me a hand. I sure hope Dick’s not one of them. That would destroy all my romantic notions about him.
I’ve come to decide it’s my unique lifestyle that gives them their opinions about me. Ever since I drifted into New Orleans, ten years or more ago, I’ve lived out on the street. Well, a few days during the cold snaps I’ll go into some boardinghouse, but it’s right back out after that. The difference is I'm always clean and neat. I see filth, under most any circumstances, as inexcusable. Twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, I go over to the Y on Lee Circle and pay a buck twenty-five for a hot one. First time I did so, just after hitting town, the clerk grilled me about it. Did I not have access to bathing facilities elsewhere? “Plumbing’s broke,” I told him. “I’m on the landlady now, but she’s old and moves like a caterpillar.” After a while they took me for granted and didn't say a word. Then a few years later, when the old clerk was quitting, he introduced me to the new fellow and explained the situation. “Plumbing’s down at home,” he said. “The landlady’s very old and slow.” “Slow as a caterpillar,” I backed him.
After Saturday’s scrubdown I drop by this washerteria on Prytania and do my laundry. I always maintain three sets of khakis. That gives me a clean one after each bath. Then every other month I’ll have my old felt slouch cleaned and blocked, and I’m ready. The point is it’s not hard to maintain yourself, unless you’re just plain lazy.
Another sore point with those that have is my manner of doing business. I’m into metals recovery, scrap aluminum over to the recycling plant on Tchoupitoulas, and my particular approach just kills Brother Marti. He’s a shuddering, red-eyed mountain of fat every time he swigs down one of his ever-present Coca Colas and tries to hand me the empty bottle, and I refuse. You see, other street jerks go for a dime wherever, garbage cans, gutters, phone booths. I don’t just mean cans and bottles, but also old batteries, rags, newspapers, hubcups, tires, you name it; and none of them, of course, are beneath panhandling or just plain begging for that night’s dew. They all have that wandering, hungry look about them that sets them apart. Animal desperation that Marti loves.
Not me.
“I only do cans,” I tell him, while that pudgy hand’s extended, just praying I go for the wooden nickel. “That’s aluminum — bagged and ready to go.”
Just kills him.
See — getting here, I go around to all these businesses, bars, restaurants, warehouses, even some of the big office boys downtown, and I tell them my story. I’m neat and polite, and it's usually not too hard to get them signed up. Then I always leave a brand-new garbage bag, tie wrap included, and tell them what their pickup date will be. I kind of make them feel wanted — that old hometown milk-route atmosphere — and it works like a charm. People stop me going by now, really wishing they could be on the list too, and I have to turn them down. “Filled up, sorry,” I tell them. Then I’ll take out my note pad and jot down their names “just in case.” I’ve got a whole page of hopefuls.
I push around this old Winn-Dixie “We’re The Beef People!” shopping cart. Now don’t think I stole the damn thing. I found it over near the expressway, all beat up and a wheel missing. A little colored boy sold me an original Dixie caster for fifty cents (he had a whole display case to choose from), and I oiled and cleaned the whole thing up like new. Now it’s kind of famous around town. “Here comes Shopping Cart Howard,” all the old bags holler out the windows of their shotguns. I don’t mind too much. Though it does have a senile sound to it that gets under my skin. Brother Marti tells me I should return it to its rightful owner. “Then you might make yourself a nice wooden one,” he advises. I consider pushing that heavy-ass board tank all over the place and give him my crazy eye-rolling routine, and he drops the subject.