The Avram Davidson Treasury (15 page)

“Never had so many orders nor so few men to execute them since starting in business,” the Major wheezed on. “Even had Rat Nolan on picket duty for me, combing South Street and the Bowery—offered him three dollars apiece for any carvers he could find. Nothing, couldn’t find a one. It’s the catalog that’s done the boom, my lad. The power of advertising. Here—read it whilst you eat; be pleased to have your opinion.”

Hissing and panting, he made his way back to the elevator, jerked the rope twice, slowly sank from sight.

Dusty turned to the old artisan. “Charley,” he said, slowly, as if he hadn’t quite determined his words, “hear anything about Demuth’s?”

Charley made a face. “What would you want to hear about that ugly, pushy outfit?”

Changing, somewhat, his point of inquiry, Dusty asked, “Well, now, have you ever thought about the significance of the wooden Indian in American history?”

The old man scratched the left fluff of whisker. “By crimus, that’s a high-toned sentence,” he said, rather dubiously. “Hmm. Well, all’s I can tell you—history, hey?—the steam engine was the makings of the show-figure trade, tobacco shop or otherwise. Certainly. All of us old-timers got our start down on South Street, carving figureheads for sailing craft. That was about the time old Hennaberry got his major’s commission in the Mercantile Zouaves—you know, guarding New York City from the Mexicans. Yes, sir. But when the steam come
in
, figureheads went
out
. Well, ’twasn’t the end of the world.”

And he described how he and his fellow-artists had put their talents at the disposal of the show-figure trade, up to then a rather haphazard commerce. “History, hey? Well, I have had the idea it’s sort of odd that as the live Indian gets scarcer, the wooden ones gets numerouser. But how come you to ask, Dusty?”

Carefully choosing his words, Dusty asked Charley to imagine a time in the far-off future when wooden Indians—show figures of any sort—were no longer being carved.

Had, in fact, suffered for so long a universal neglect that they had become quite rare. That gradually interest in the sachems revived, that men began to collect them as if they had been ancient marble statues, began to study all that could be learned about them.

That some of these collectors, calling themselves the Wooden Indian Society, had been consumed with grief at the thought of the debacle which overtook the figures they had grown to love. Had claimed to see in the decline and death of this native art a dividing line in American history.

“It was like, Charley, it was like this was the end of the old times altogether,” Don went on, “the end of the Good Old Days, the final defeat of native crafts and native integrity by the new, evil forces of industrialism. And they thought about this and it turned them bitter and they began to brood. Until finally they began to plan how they could undo what had been done. They believed that if they could travel from their time to—to our time, like traveling from here to, say, Brooklyn—”

How much of this could Charley grasp? Perhaps better not to have tried.

Don/Dusty spoke more rapidly. “That if they could reach this time period, they could preserve the wooden Indian from destruction. And then the great change for the worse would never occur. The old days and the old ways would remain unchanged, or at least change slowly.”

“You mean they got this idea that if they could change what happened to the wooden Indians, they could maybe change the course of American history?”

Dusty nodded.

Charley laughed. “Well, they were really crazy—I mean they would be, if there was to be such people, wouldn’t they? Because there ain’t no way—”

Dusty blinked. Then his face cleared. “No, of course there isn’t. It was just a moody dark thought… Ah, here comes Ben with my breakfast.”

Charley lifted his beer off the laden tray, gestured his thanks, drank, put down the glass with a loud “Hah” of satisfaction. Then a sudden thought creased his face. “Now leave me ask you this, Dusty. Just what could ever happen to destroy such a well-established and necessary business as the show-figure business? Hmm?”

Dusty said that these people from the Wooden Indian Society, in this sort of dark thought he’d had, had looked into matters real thoroughly. And they came to believe very deeply, very strongly, that the thing which killed the wooden Indian, and in so doing had changed American history so terribly for the worst, had been the invention and marketing of an Indian made of cast-iron or zinc. An Indian which would have no life, no soul, no heart, no grace—but which would never wear out or need to be replaced.

And so it would sell—sell well enough to destroy the carvers’ craft—but would destroy the people’s love for the newer show figures at the same time.

Charley looked shocked. “Why, that’d be a terrible thing, Dusty—a thing which it’d cut a man to the heart! Cast-iron! Zinc! But I tell you what—If there ever was to be an outfit which’d do a thing like that, there’d be only one outfit that would. Demuth’s. That’s who. Ain’t I right?”

Dusty lowered his head. In a low, choked voice, he said, “You’re right.”

Dusty propped the catalog against a short piece of pine, read as he ate.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said to old Charley, “but I have such an appetite here. I never eat breakfast at all when I’m—” He stopped, put a piece of sausage in his mouth, intently began to read.

We would respectfully solicit from the Public generally an inspection of our Large and Varied Assortment of
WOODEN SHOW FIGURES
which we are constantly manufacturing for all classes of business, such as
SEGAR STORES
,
WINES
&
LIQUORS
,
SHIP CHANDLERS
,
INSTRUMENT MAKERS
,
DRUGGISTS
,
YANKEE NOTIONS
,
UMBRELLA
,
CLOTHING
,
CHINA TEA STORES
,
GUNSMITHS
,
BUTCHERS
, &
C
, &
C
.
Our Figures are both carved and painted in a manner which cannot be excelled, are durable and designed and executed in a highly artistic manner; and are furnished at noncompetitive low prices. We are constantly receiving orders for statues and emblematic signs, and can furnish same of any required design with promptness.

The sausage was fresh and savory; so was the coffee. Dusty chewed and swallowed with relish, slowly turned the pages of the catalog.

OUR NUMBER
23. Fly-figure, male 5 ft. high, bundle of 20 in outstretched hand (r.), usual colors. A nice staple type Show Figure no moderate-sized bus. need feel ashamed to display. At rival establishments,
UP TO $75.
C. P. Hennaberry’s Price: $50 even (with warbonnet, $55).

Note: Absolutely impos. to cite trade-in values via mails, as this depends on age, size, condition of fig., also state of market @ time.

OUR NUMBER
24.
Same as above, with musket instead of tomahawk.

OUR NUMBER
36.
Turk, male 6 ft. high, for shops which sell the fragrant Ottoman weed, polychrome Turk holding long leaf betw. both hands, choice of any two colors on turban
.
A
.
C
.
P
.
HENNABERRY SPECIAL
: $165. (
with beard & long pipe, $5 extra
).

They went upstairs after Dusty had finished his breakfast, pausing on the third (or second-hand figures) floor, to greet Otto and Larry.

Young Larry was still considered a learner and was not yet allowed to go beyond replacing arms, hands, noses, and other extra parts.

Otto, to be sure, was a master carver, but Otto had several strikes against him. In his youth, in his native Tyrol, Otto had studied sacred iconography; in his maturity, in America, Otto had studied drinking. As a result, when he was mellow, unless he was carefully supervised, his Indians had a certain saintly quality to them, which made purchasers feel somehow guilty. And when, on the other hand, Otto was sobering up, a definite measure of apocalyptic horror invariably appeared in his sachems which frightened buyers away.

As a result, Otto was kept at doing extras—bundles of cigars, boxes of cigars, bundles of tobacco leaf, coils of tobacco leaf, twists of the same, knives, tomahawks, all to be held in the figures’ hands—and at equally safe tasks like stripping off old paint, sanding, repainting, finishing.

He nodded sadly, eyes bloodshot, to Dusty and Charley, as he applied ochre and vermillion to a war bonnet. “Ho, Chesus,” he groaned softly.

Up in the woodloft, they made an inspection of the spars. “Now you needn’t pick the ones I started, of course,” Charley said. “Take fresh ones, if you like. ‘Course, all’s I did was I drawn the outlines and just kind of chiseled ’em in. And put the holes in on top for the bolts.”

Dusty stood back and squinted. “Oh, I guess they’ll be all right, Charley,” he said. “Well, let’s get ’em downstairs.”

This done, Charley went back to work on the Sir Walter, carefully chiseling
Virginia Tobacco
in bas-relief on the cloak.

Dusty took up his axe and blocked out approximate spaces for the head, the body down to the waist, roughly indicated the division of the legs and feet. Then he inserted the iron bolt into the five-inch hole prepared for it, and tilted back the spar so that the projecting part of the bolt rested on a support. When he had finished head and trunk, he would elevate the lower part of the figures in the same way.

Finally, finished with blocking out, he picked up mallet and chisel.

“I now strike a blow for liberty,” he said.

Smiling happily, he began to chip away. The song he sang was “Aura Lee.”

Don/Dusty Benedict let himself into his studio quietly—but not quietly enough. The sharp sound of a chair grating on the floor told him that his brother-in-law was upstairs. In another second, Walter told him so himself in an accent more richly Southern, probably, than when he had come North as a young boy.

“We’re upstairs, Don.”

“Thank you for the information,” Don muttered.

“We’re
upstairs
, Don.”

“Yes, Walter. All right. I’m coming.”

Walter welcomed him with a snort. “Why the hell do you always wear those damn cotton-pickin’ clothes when you go away? Not that it matters. I only wish
I
could just take up and go whenever the spirit moves me. Where was it you went this time?”

“Syracuse,” Don mumbled.

“Syracuse. America’s new vacation land.” Walter laughed, not pleasantly. “Don, you really expect me to believe you? Syracuse! Why not just say to me, frankly,”I’ve got a woman’? That’s all. I wouldn’t say another word.” He poured himself several drams of Don’s Scotch.

Not much you wouldn’t, Don thought. Aloud, “How are you, Mary?” His sister said that she was just fine, sighed, broke off the sigh almost at once, at her husband’s sour look.

Walter said, “Roger Towns was up. Another sale for you, another commission for me. Believe me, I earned it—gave him a big talk on how the Museum of Modern Art was after your latest. So he asked me to use my influence. He’ll be back—he’ll take it. This rate, the Modern Art
will
be after you before long.”

Don privately thought this unlikely, though anything was possible in this world of no values. He wasn’t a “modern, free-form” artist, or, for that matter, any kind of artist at all. He was a craftsman—In a world which had no need for craftsmen.

“But
only
—” another one of the many qualities which made Walter highly easy to get along without: Walter was a finger-jabber—“but
only
if you finish the damned thing. About time, isn’t it? I mean vacations are fine, but the bills …”

Don said, “Well, my affairs are in good hands—namely, yours.”

Walter reared back. “If that’s meant as a dig—! Listen, I can get something else to do any time I want. In fact, I’m looking into something else
now
that’s damned promising. Firm sells Canadian stocks. Went down to see them yesterday. ‘You’re just the kind of man we’re interested in, Mr. Swift,’ they told me. ‘With your vast experience and your knowledge of human nature…’”

Walt scanned his brother-in-law’s face, defying him to show signs of the complete disbelief he must have known Don felt. Don had long since stopped pretending to respond to these lies. He only ignored them—only put up with Walt at all—for his sister’s sake. It was for her and the kids only that he ever came back.

“I’d like a drink,” Don said, when Walt paused.

Dinner was as dinner always was. Walt talked almost constantly, mostly about Walt. Don found his mind wandering again to the Wooden Indian Society. Derwentwater, ending every speech with
“Delendo est Demuth’s!”
Gumpert and his eternal “Just one stick of dynamite, Don, just one!” De Giovanetti growling, “Give us the Equation and we’ll do it ourselves!”

Fools! They’d have to learn every name of those who had the hideous metal Indian in mind, conduct a massacre in Canal Street. Impossible. Absurd.

No, Elwell had been right. Not knowing just how the Preservationist work was to be done, he had nonetheless toiled for years to perfect a means to do it. Only when his work was done did he learn the full measure of WIS intransigence. And, after learning, had turned to Don.

“Take up the torch,” he pleaded. “Make each sachem such a labor of love that posterity cannot help but preserve it.”

And Don had tried. The craft had been in him and struggling to get out all the time, and he’d never realized it!

Slowly the sound of Walter’s voice grew more impossible to ignore. “…and you’ll need a new car, too. I can’t drive that heap much longer. It’s two years
old,
damn it!”

“I’d like a drink,” Don said.

By the time Edgar Feld arrived, unexpectedly, Don had had quite a few drinks.

“I took the liberty not only of calling unheralded, but of bringing a friend, Mr. White,” the art dealer said. He was a well-kept little man. Mr. White was thin and mild.