The Avram Davidson Treasury (69 page)

Back at Fred’s new apartment-to-be, lo! the painters were no longer painting; the painters were no longer, in fact, there; and neither was the painting finished. Only, in the middle of the drainboard of the kitchen sink sat a white bread and sardine sandwich with a single symmetrical bite missing out of it. Another unsolved mystery of the sea; or had it come there by a fortuitous concourse of the atoms: why not? Down went Fred and rang Mrs. Keeley’s bell. By and by the door opened a crack long enough to transmit heavy breathing and the odor of gin and onions; almost at once the door closed shut again and by and by the volume of the radio went up. Mrs. Keeley was not one of your
picky
listeners out there in Radioland who require very fine tuning, and Silberman was unable to say if she was listening to an old recording of the Tasty Yeast Jesters or maybe one of a love song by President Harding. He went away.

A côte chez Brakk
, an aunt said, as he came in, “I saved you some fruit stew,” and also Wes poured him something powerful-looking. Evidently the conventicle/potlatch was still going on, with Fred’s presence still acceptable. Al
though
—A newspaper was lowered; behind it was
Nick
. “Don’t make the Old Lady show ya that jee-dee
stove
no more,” he said. “She’s all wore out.”

Fred said, easily, “Okay, Nick.—Who else has got one?” he asked the world at large. There was a thinking pause. Wes said, No one that
he
knew of.

“It’s the last of the Mohicans,” Wes said.

Nick slapped down the paper. “She better get
rid
da it. Y‘hear me? I’m gonna smash it up, I’m gonna throw it offa the bridge; I don’ wanna even
hear
about it—no wonder they make funna us all the time!” No one said a word, so Nick said a word, a short and blunt one; and then, as though shocked himself, slammed out of the room. In a moment a car drove rapidly away. Wes was expressionless and, seemingly, emotionless.

Fred sampled the fruit stew. Was it the same as stewed fruit? no it
was
n’t. Good, though. As soon as his spoon scraped the bottom, a bowl of something else was set down beside him. And a plate of something else. “Here is beaten-up bean soup with buttermilk and vinegar. This is lamb fritters with fresh dill.” Golly, they sounded odd! Golly, they were good!

In a corner across the room an old man and an old woman discordantly sang-sung religious texts from, shared between them, an old wide book in Old Wide Huzzuk or something of the sort. “That’s supposed to benefit the soul of the late deceased,” said a very young man with a very large and shiny face, in a tentatively contentious tone.

“College boy,” said Wes. “Could it hurt?”

Fred Silberman put down his spoon. (Eating fritters with a
spoon?
Sure. Why not? Hurts
you?
) “Listen, where was ‘the Old Home Place by the Big Water’?” he asked.

The college boy instantly answered, “Gitche Gumee.”

Wes said, with a shrug of his own, far heavier than Mat. Grahdy’s, “Who the hell knows? Whoever
knew?
You think they had
maps
in those days? I suppose that one year the crops failed and there was no nourishment in the goat turds, so they all hit the road.
West
. And once they crossed a couple mountains and a couple of rivers, not only didn’t they know where they
were
, they didn’t even know where they’d
been.
”

Fred said, “Listen. Listen. Nick isn’t here, the Huzzuks aren’t here, nobody is here but us chickens,
cut
-cut-cut-
cut
, God should strike me dead if I laugh at you:
Where did the stoves come from?
The
Slovo
stoves?
”

“Who the hell knows?”

“Well, did they have them when they
left
…wherever it was? Lake Ontario, or the Yellow Sea? Did they…?”

Wes just sighed. But his, probably, sister took to answering the question, and the further questions, and, when she didn’t know, asked her elders and translated the answers. According to old stories, yes, they
did
have the stoves before they left the Old Place. The black parts they came from the mountain and the blue parts they came from the Big Water. From the
inside
of the mountain, what mountain, nobody knows what mountain, and from the bottom of the Big Water. How did they get the
idea?
Well, Father
Yock
im said that the angels gave it to them. Father
Yock
im said! That’s not what the
old
people use to say…what
did
the old people used to say? The old people used to say it was the little black and white gods but Father Yockim he thought people would think that meant like devils or something, so he changed it and—Well, there aren’t any little black and white
gods
, for God’s sake!—Oh, you’re so smart, you think you—

“Maybe they were from outer space,” said Silberman, to his own surprise as much as anyone else’s.

Silence the most profound. Then the “college boy,” probably either a nephew or a cousin, said, slowly, “Maybe they
were
.” Another silence. Then they were all off again.

The trouble all began with Count Cazmar. Count Cazmar had, like, a monopoly on all the firewood from the forest. The king gave it to him. Yes, but the king didn’t just “give” it to him; he had to
pay
the king. Okay, so he had to
pay
the king. So anybody wanted firewood
they
had to
pay
Count Cazmar. Then he got sore because the Slovo people weren’t buying enough firewood, see, because he
still
had to pay the king. Which king? Who the hell knows which king? Who the hell cares? None of them were any damn good anyway. What, old King Joseph wasn’t any good, the one who let Yashta Yushta out of the dungeon? Listen, will you for
get
about old King Joseph and get on with the story!

So Count Cazmar sent out all the blacksmiths to go from house to house with their great big sledgehammers to smash up all the Slovo stoves to force the Slovos to buy more firewood and—What? Yeah, that’s how Gramma’s stove is, like, broken. They
all
got, like, broken. Of
course
you could still use them. But dumb Count Cazmar
he
dint know that. So, what finely happen, what finely happen, everybody had to pay a firewood tax irregardless of how much they used or not. So lotta the Slovo people they figured, ya gotta pay for it anyway? so might as well
use
it. See? Lotta them figure, ya gotta pay for it anyway, so might as well use it. And so, lotta them quit usin’ their Slovo stoves. Y’see.

“That’s your superior Huzzuk civilization for you,” Wes said. Just then the deacon and deaconess in the corner, or whatever they were, lifted their cracked old voices and finished their chant; and everybody said something loudly and they all stamped their feet. “Here, Fred,” said Wes, “have some more—have another glass o’ mulberry beer.” And promptly an aunt set two more bowls down in front of Fred. “In this one is chopped spleen stew with crack buckwheats. And in udder one is cow snout cooked under onions. Wait. I give you pepper.”

Eventually Silberman got moved into his new apartment and eventually Silberman got moved into his new job; his new job required (among other things…among
many
other things) a trip to the diemakers, a trip to the printers, a trip to the suppliers:
how
convenient that all three were located in a new or newish commercial and industrial complex way out on the outskirts of. As he drove, by and by such landmarks as an aqueduct, a cemetery, an old brick foundry, reminded him that, more or less where the commercial and industrial complex now was, was where old Applebaum used to be. Lo! it seemed: still was! Shabby, but still reading
M
.
APPLEBAUM CASH AND CARRY WHOLESALE GROCERIES
. The complicated commerces and industries perhaps didn’t
like
shabby Old Applebaum’s holding out in their midst? Tough. Let them go back where they came from.

Afterwards, business finished elsewhere, thither: “Freddy. Hel
lo
.”

“Hello, Mr. Applebaum. How are
you?
”

“How should I be? Every week seems like another family grocery bites the dust. Nu. I own a little swamp in Florida and maybe I will close up the gesheft and go live on a houseboat with hot and cold running crocodiles. Ahah, here comes an old customer with his ten dollars’ worth of business if we are both lucky; Mat. Grahdy.”

Sure enough. Beat
him
to the punch. “Hey, Mr. Grahdy, did it get hot yet?”

Grahdy
laughed
and laughed; then gave the counterword: “It didn’t even get
warm!
Ho ho ho ho.” He gestured to another man. “This is Petey Plazzek, he is a half-breeth. Hey, Petey, did it get hot yet? Ho ho ho ho!—Mosek!”—this to Old Applebaum. “A little sugar I need, a little semolina I need, a little cake flour, licorice candy, marshmallow crackers.” M. Applebaum said he could give him a good buy on crackers today. They went inside together.

Petey Plazzek, a worn-looking man in a worn-looking lumber jacket, came right to the point. “If you’re driving by the
bus dee
po, you could give me a ride.”

“Sure. Get in.” Off they went. Silberman’s glance observed no Iroquois cheekbones. “Excuse me, but what did he mean, ‘A half-breed’? No offense—”

“Naa, naa. Half Huzzuk, half Slovo.”

A touch of the excitement. “Well, uh, Mr. Plazzek—”

“Petey. Just Petey.”

“Well, uh, Petey, how many people have one of those old Slovo stoves anymore?”

“Nobody. Them stoves are all a thing o’ the past nowadays. Watch out for that truck.”

“How come, Petey? How come they are?”

Petey rubbed his nose, sighed very deeply. “Well.
You
know. Some greenhorn would come to America—as we used to say, ‘He had six goats and he sold five to get the steamship ticket and he gave one to the priest to pray for a good journey.’ I’m talking about a
Slovo
now. Huzzuk, that’s another thing altogether. So the poor Slovo was wearing high boots with his pants tucked innem and a shirt smock and a sheepskin coat and a fur hat. This was before Ellis Island. Castle
Gar
den in those days.
He
didn’t have a steamer trunk,
he
didn’t have a grip, he only had a sort of knapsack; so what was
in
it? A clean smock shirt and some clean foot rags, because they didn’t use socks, and a little iron pot and some hardtack-type bread and those two stove parts, the black part and the, uh, the, uh—”

“The
blue
part.”

“—the
blue
part, right. Watch out for that Chevy. Well, he’d get a job doing the lowest-paid dirtiest work and he’d rent a shack that subsequently you wouldn’t dast keep a dog in it, y’understand what I’m telling you, young fellow? Lights, he had no lights, he didn’t even have no
lamp
, just a tin can with some pork fat and a piece of rag for a wick. And he’d pick up an old brick here and an old brick there and set up his Slovo stove and cook buckwheat in his little iron pot and he’d sleep on the floor in his sheepskin coat.”

But by and by things would get better; this was
America
, the land of opportunity. So as soon as he started making a little money he brought his wife over and they moved into a room, a real room, and he’d buy a coal-oil lamp and a pair of shoes for each of them, but, um, people would still laugh attem, partickley the
Zunks
would still be laughing at them because of still using the Slovo
stove
, y’see. So by and by they’d buy a
wood
stove. Or a
coal
stove. And they’d get the gaslight turned on. And they’d even remember not t’ blow it out.”

“Yes, but, Petey. The wood and coal cost
money
. And the Slovo stove was
free
. So—”

Petey sighed again. “Well. To tell you the truth. It could
cook
: sure. Didn’t give out much
heat,
otherwise. Boil up a lotta water, place’d get
steamy.
”

Fred Silberman cried, “Steam heat! Steam
heat!
”

Petey looked startled, then—for the first time—interested. Then the interest ebbed away. He sighed. “None of them people were plumbers.
They
never thought of nothing like that, and neither did anybody else. The Slovo stove, what it come to mean, it come to mean
poverty
, see? It come to mean
rid
icule. And so as soon as they quit being dirt-poor, well, that was
that
.”

Fred asked, eagerly, “But aren’t there still a lot of them in the attics? Well…
some
of them? In the
cellars
?”

Petey’s breath hissed. “Where you going? You going to the
bus dee
po, y’ shoulda turned
leff!
Oh. Circling the block. Naa…they juss, uh, thrown’m
away
. Watch out for that van.”

The new job and its new responsibilities occupied and preoccupied most of Silberman’s time, but one afternoon as he was checking an invoice with the heating contractor fitting up the plant, lo! the old matter came abruptly to his mind.

“Sudden thought?” said Mr. McMurtry.

“Uh. Yuh. You ever hear of a… Slovo stove?”

Promptly: “No.
Should
I have?”

Suppose Fred were to
tell
him. What then? Luddite activity on the part of McMurtry? “Let me ask you a make-believe question, Mac—”

“Fire when ready.”

So…haltingly, ignorantly… Fred (naming no names, no ethnic groups) described matters as well as he could, winding up: “So could you think, Mac, of any scientific explanation as to how such a thing could, or might, maybe, work? At all?”

Mac’s brow furrowed, rolling the hairs of his conjoined eyebrows: a
very
odd effect. “Well, obviously the liquid in the container acts as a sort of noncontiguous catalyst, and this amplifies the vortex of the force field created by the juxtaposition of the pizmire and the placebo”—well of
course
McMurtry did not say
that
: but that was what it sounded like to Silberman. And so McMurtry might just as well have said it.