Can and Can'tankerous (20 page)

CHANCE FAVORS THE PREPARED MIND

IT TAKES A HEAP O’ LIVIN’

TO MAKE A HOUSE A HOME

DEATH COMES WITHOUT THE THUMPING OF DRUMS

I LIKE YOUR ENERGY

THE AVALANCHE HAS ALREADY STARTED;

IT’S TOO LATE FOR THE PEBBLES TO VOTE

EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING

DON’T LOOK BACK. SOMETHING MAY BE GAINING ON YOU

YES, LIFE IS HARD; BUT IF IT WERE EASY,

EVERYBODY WOULD BE DOING IT

LIFE IS A FOUNTAIN

TRUST IN ALLAH, BUT TIE YOUR CAMEL

THE BARKING DOG DOES NO HARM TO THE MOON

THE MAN WHO BURNS HIS MOUTH ON HOT MILK

BLOWS ON HIS ICE CREAM

NO ONE GETS OUT OF CHILDHOOD ALIVE

SO NEAR, AND YET SO FAR

MAN IS COAGULATED SMOKE FORMED

BY HUMAN PREDESTINATION…

DUE TO RETURN TO THAT STATE

FROM WHICH IT ORIGINATED

French Fries are á la carte.

Colman drew a deep, painful breath. To get to this point, and to blow it because of a few words…unthinkable. His mind raced. There were deep thoughts he could call up from a philosophy base on the laptop, the aphorisms and rubrics of six thousand years of human existence, but it was only one of them, only one—like a prime number—that would stand alone and open to him the portals of wisdom; only one that would be accepted by this gatekeeper of
Universal
Oneness; only one unknown core jot of heartmeat that would serve at this moment.

He tried to buy himself a cæsura: he said to the saffron-robed counterman, “Uh…one of the those…‘Life is a fountain’? I know that one; you’ve got to be kidding, right? ‘Life is a fountain…’”

The counterman looked at him with shock.

“Life
isn’t
a fountain?” Colman stared at him. He wasn’t amused.

“Just fooling,” the counterman said, with a huge smile. “We always toss in an old gag, just to mix it up with the Eternal Verities. Life should be a bit of a giggle, a little vaudeville, whaddaya think?”

Colman was nonplussed. He was devoid of plus. He tried to buy another moment: “So, uh, what’s your name?”

“I’ll be serving you. My name’s Lou.”

“Lou. What are you, a holy man, a monk from some nearby lamasery? You look a little familiar to me.”

Lou chuckled softly again, as if he were long used to the notoriety and had come to grips with it. “Oh, heck no, I’m not a holy man; you probably recognize me from a bubble gum card. I used to play a little ball. Last name’s Boudreau.” Colman asked him how to spell that, and he did, and Colman went to his rucksack, dropped on one of the tables, and he pulled out the laptop and did a Google search for the name
Lou Boudreau.

He read what came up on the screen.

He looked at what he had read on the screen for a long time. Then he went back to the counter.

“You were the player-manager of the World Champion 1948 Cleveland Indians. Shortstop. 152 games, 560 at bats, 199 hits, 116 runs. You were the all-time franchise leader with a .355 batting average, slugging and on-base percentages and a .987 OPS! What are you doing here, for gawdsakes?!”

Boudreau removed the little paper hat, scratched at his hair for a moment, sighed, and said, “Rhadamanthus carries a grudge.”

Colman stared dumbly Zeus had three sons. One of them was Rhadamanthus, originally a judge in the afterlife, assigned the venue of the Elysian plain, which was considered a very nice neighborhood. But sometime between Homer and Virgil, flame-haired Rhadamanthus got reassigned to Tartarus, listed in all the auto club triptychs as Hell. Strict judge of the dead. No sin goes unpunished. From which the word “rhadamanthine” bespeaks inflexibility.

“What did you do to honk him off?”

“I went with Bearden instead of Bob Lemon in the first game of the series against the Boston Braves. We lost one to nothing. Apparently he had a wad down on the game.”

A slim black man, quite young, wearing a saffron robe and cardboard garrison cap, came out of the back. Lou aimed a thumb at him. “Larry Doby, left fielder. First Negro to play in the American League.” Doby smiled, gave a little salute, and said to Colman, “Figure it out yet?”

Colman shook his head.

“Well, good luck.” Then, in Latin, he added, “
Difficilia quae pulchra.
”
Colman had no idea what that meant, but Doby seemed to wish him well with the words. He said thank you.

Lou pointed toward the rear. “That’s our drive-thru attendant, Joe Gordon, great second baseman. Third baseman Ken Keltner on the grill with our catcher, Jim Hegan; Bob Feller’s working maintenance just till his arm gets right again, but Lemon and Steve Gromek’ll be handling the night shift. And our fry guy is none other than the legendary Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige…hey, Satch, say hello to the new kid!”

Lifting the metal lattice basket out of the deep fryer filled with sizzling vegetable oil, Satchel Paige knocked the basket half-full of potatoes against the edge of the tub to shake away excess drippings, and grinned hugely at Colman. “You see mine up there?” he said, cocking his head toward the signage of wise sayings. Colman nodded and smiled back.

“Well,” said Lou Boudreau, saffron-robed counterman shortstop manager of the 1948 World Series champion Cleveland Indians, who had apparently really pissed off Rhadamanthus, “are you ready to order?”

Time had run out. Colman knew this was it. Whatever he said next would be either the gate pass or the bum’s rush. He considered the choices on the menu, trying to pick one that spoke to his gut. It had to be
one
of them.

His mind raced. It
had
to be one of them.

He paused. It was the moment of the cortical-thalamic pause.
Why
did it have to be one of them?

Life
wasn’t
a fountain.

There was only one thing to say to God, if one were at the Gate. At the Core, the Nexus, the Center, the Eternal Portal. Only one thing that made sense, whether this was God or just a minimum-wage, part-time employee. Colman straightened, unfurrowed his brow, and spoke the only words that would provide entrance if one were confronting God. He said to Lou Boudreau:

“Let me talk to the Head Jew.”

The peppy little shortstop grinned and nodded and said, “May I super-size that for you?”

Afterword

Before Michael Chabon and Dave Eggars bought this story for
McSweeney’s
, I honored a longstanding request for a submission from Francis Ford Coppola’s
Zoetrope All-Story
by sending “Goodbye To All That.” It was scheduled soon to be published in the Wesleyan University Press original anthology Envisioning the Future, edited by Prof. Marleen Barr, but the First Periodical Rights were free, and I liked “Goodbye…” so much I thought it would fit right into the “Utopia” issue of
Zoetrope
. Synchronicity.

So I sent it off to the managing editor, Justine Cook, a lovely and gracious woman who had steadily
nuhdzed
me for a story  for almost a year. Well, she only
loved
it, she told me, and she wanted it, and she was going to submit it to the “staff of editors,” she told me, who made group decisions about what went into the magazine. I confess my blood ran cold when I learned that the Sanhedrin of
Zoetrope All-Story
was something like thirteen young white women, most of whom had graduated from the Seven Sisters universities. It is nearly impossible to get thirteen Jews to agree on anything, much less thirteen
shiksas
.

But I bided my time for several weeks till her call.

Yes, the Cultural Council of Coppola Critics, each one the very incarnation of Calliope,
adored
the story. Yes, they wanted very much to publish it. Yes, they would pay a larger fee if I would sign the
Zoetrope
contract giving them first option on the film/tv rights. But first, if I didn’t mind a conference call with two or three others, would I mind answering a couple of questions about the story? Blood runs cold; but I agreed to do my best to unsnarl their skein.

The first question: “Mr. Ellison, is this story supposed to be, like,
funny
?”

I replied that I did indeed hope the telling of the tale would bring a chuckle or two, particularly the part about the yak; and the menu listing. “Uh-huh,” she said.

The second question, from another woman: “Why did you put the Cleveland Indians in this story? Does it have reference to some archetypal image?”

I replied that I put the 1948 Indians in the story because I was very fond of the 1948 Indians. “I see,” she said.

The third question, from yet another Calliope: “What is this story supposed to be? How are we to think of it?”

I replied exactly thus: “Well, let me see. If, say, James Hilton had written, instead of Lost Horizon, say, Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros…it would be this story. Or, no, wait; let me put it this way. If, instead of having written The Razor’s Edge, Somerset Maugham had written, for instance, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot…it would be this story.”

There was silence. A trio of silence.

“It’s absurdist,” I said, struggling for rapprochement. “Dickens, as written by Donald Westlake.”

“Who is Donald Westlake?” one of them asked.

Oh
,
dear
, I thought.

But then yet came The Final Question: “Can you tell us what the punchline means?”

I paused only a nanoinstant. “It means, uh, nothing,” I said. “It is what it is. The ultimate punchline. It stands alone.”

They were trigonally taciturn. That went on for a while. Then I sighed, because I really did like Ms. Cook, and I knew she was trying to do me a solid, and I felt sorry for her, as well as for the other young women. And I said, “You’re not Jewish, are you?” I meant no disrespect. Truly.

And they asked, with only a smidge of ’tude, “Why would you ask that?” And I asked it again, politely; and they all three averred that they were not, to be sure, of a Semitic persuasion. So I said, “I’m afraid I can’t let you publish my story.” Goodness, what a lot of air bubbles and
fumfuh
’ing.

“Why not?!?”

“Because you don’t understand it, and I’m afraid you never will, and it’s somehow wrong to sell a story as close to the heart as this one is, to even nice people who just don’t
get
it. So I’d appreciate it if you’d just send it back, and I’ll try to write something else for you another time.”

The letter from Justine Cook that accompanied return of the manuscript began like this: “Dear Harlan, As I hope you realize, I am disappointed not to have ‘Goodbye To All That’ in our Utopia issue. Unfortunately, I was not only constrained in the end by our contract…but you would have had to revise your story, and I know that you do not accept editing of your work.” Etcetera. Nice letter, actually. Wanted
another
story as quickly as I could offer one. (She was wrong about me rejecting editorial suggestion out of hand, however. All I require is that the editor be smarter and more knowledgeable than I. At least about the story in question.)

As it turns out, it isn’t a matter of Jewishness or Gentileness. Because Silverberg didn’t get it, either, and Gene Wolfe laughed his ass off.

It is, I suspect, a matter of being a little loopy in the head. People who think “a sense of humor” and “wit” are the same thing, probably won’t like it. People who never heard the old joke that ends, “Life
isn’t
a fountain?” also will scratch their heads. I am not, repeat not, saying with some arrogant elitist hubris that people who don’t like this story are any less beautiful, cogent, well-dressed, righteous, or intellectually expansive than those who do. All I’m saying is that this is a
great
short story, written by a humble journeyman on the road to the mountaintop whereat resides Kafka, Borges, Dali, Daniel Manus Pinkwater, and Antonin Artaud.

The rest is up to you. I’m watching.