Sweet Thursday

16 The Little Flowers of Saint Mack[75]

Doc laid ten big starfish out on a shelf, and he set up a line of eight glass dishes half filled with sea water. Although he was inclined to carelessness in his living arrangements his laboratory technique was immaculate. The making of the embryo series gave him pleasure. He had done it hundreds of times before, and he felt a safety in the known thing—no speculation here. He did certain things and certain other things followed. There is comfort in routine.

His old life came back to him—a plateau of contentment with small peaks of excitement but none of the jagged pain of original thinking, none of the loneliness of invention. His phonograph played softly, played the safe and certain fugues of Bach, clear as equations. As he worked, a benign feeling came over him. He liked himself again as he once had; liked himself as a person, the way he might like anyone else. The self-hatred which poisons so many people and which had been irritating him was gone for the time. The top voice of his mind sang peacefulness and order, and the raucous middle voice was gentle; it mumbled and snarled but it could not be heard. The lowest voice of all was silent, dreaming of a warm safe sea.

The rattlesnakes in their wire cage suddenly lifted their heads, felt the air with their forked tongues, and then all four set up a dry buzzing rattle. Doc looked up from his work as Mack came in.

Mack glanced at the cage. “Them new snakes ain’t got used to me yet,” he said.

“Takes a little time,” said Doc. “You haven’t been here much.”

“Didn’t feel no welcome here,” said Mack.

“I’m sorry, Mack. I guess I’ve been off my feed. I’ll try to do better.”

“You going to let up on them devilfish?”

“I don’t know.”

“They was making you sick.”

Doc laughed, “It wasn’t the octopi. I guess it was trying to think. I’d got out of the habit.”

“I never got the habit,” said Mack.

“That’s not true,” said Doc. “I never knew anyone who devoted more loving thought to minusculae.”

“I never even heard of them,” said Mack. “Say, Doc, what do you think of the Patrón—your honest, spit-in-the-lake opinion?”

“I don’t think I understand him. We’re kind of different.”

“You ain’t kidding,” said Mack. “He ain’t honest.”

Doc said, “I’d call that expert testimony.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you bring some experience to bear.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Mack earnestly, “but you search your heart, Doc, and see if I ain’t dishonest in a kind of honest way. I don’t really fool nobody—not even myself. And there’s another thing—I know when I’m doing it. Joseph and Mary can’t tell the difference.”

“I think that might be true,” said Doc.

“What I’m wondering is—well, I don’t think the Patrón wants any trouble around here, do you?”

“Nobody wants any trouble.”

“He’s got a stake here,” Mack went on. “If the whole Row took a scunner to him, why, he just couldn’t take that chance, don’t you think?”

“If I knew what you were talking about, it might help,” said Doc.

“I’m just trying to figure something,” said Mack.

“Well, if you mean that the Patrón is in kind of a sensitive position—”

“That’s what I do mean,” said Mack. “He can’t afford to have no enemies.”

“Nobody wants enemies,” said Doc.

“I know. But he could get his ass in a sling. He got a business and he’s got property.”

“I see what you mean,” said Doc. “You’re going to pressure him and you want to know what he’ll do. What are you going to try to take away from him, Mack?”

“I’m just thinking,” said Mack.

“I never knew you to think idly. When you think, somebody gets hurt.”

“I never hurt nobody, Doc.”

“Well, not bad. I will say your bite is not deadly.”

Mack was uneasy. He had not intended the conversation to turn to him. He changed the subject.

“Say, Doc, did you hear? The whole country club took a loyalty oath on the eighteenth green. Whitey No. 2 was caddying. Them members all took off their hats and swore they would not destroy the U.S. government.”

“I’m glad,” said Doc. “I was worried. Did the caddies take the oath too?”

“Some of them did, but not Whitey. He’s kind of an idealist, you might say. He says if he gets an idea to burn down the Capitol he don’t want no perjury rap to stand in his way. They won’t let him caddy no more.”

“Does he want to burn down the Capitol?” Doc asked.

“Well, no. He says he don’t want to now, but he don’t know what he’ll want to do next month. He gives us quite a talk about it. Says he was a Marine, went through a lot of fighting for the country, figures he’s got a kind of personal interest. He don’t want nobody to tell him what to do.”

Doc laughed. “So he can’t carry golf clubs anymore because of his ideals?”

“They say he’s a security risk,” said Mack. “Whitey claims he ain’t got a good enough memory to be a security risk. Besides, they don’t talk about nothing out there on the golf course except money and dames.”

Doc said, “Heroes always get punished at first.”

“Speaking of dames, Doc—”

“Let’s,” said Doc.

“What ever happened to that swell-looking babe in the fur coat used to come over?”

“She’s not been very well.”

“That’s too bad,” said Mack. “What’s she got?”

“Oh, something obscure. Can’t seem to track it down.”

“I guess with that kind of dough—”

“What do you mean?”

“I seen it happen so many times,” said Mack. “You take a dame and she’s married to a guy that’s making twenty-five bucks a week. You can’t kill her with a meat ax. She’s got kids and does the washing—may get a little tired but that’s the worse that can happen to her. But let the guy get raised to seventy-five bucks a week and she begins to get colds and take vitamins.”

“That’s a new theory of medicine,” said Doc.

“It ain’t new. Hell, just use your eyes. Guy gets up to a hundred a week and this same dame reads Time magazine and she’s got the newest disease before she even finished the page. I’ve knew dames that can give doctors cards, spades, and big casino about medicine. They got stuff called allergy now. Used to call it hay fever—made you sneeze. Guy that figured out allergy should of got a patent. A allergy is, you get sick when there’s something you don’t want to do. I’ve knew dames that was allergic to dishwater. Married guy starts making dough—he’s got a patient on his hands.”

“You sound cynical,” said Doc.

“No, I ain’t. You just look around and show me one well dame with her old man in the chips.”

Doc chuckled. “You think that’s what happened to my friend?”

“Oh, hell no,” said Mack. “That’s big stuff. When you get dough like that it’s different. She got to have something that don’t nobody know what it is. She can’t have nothing common that you can take salts for. She goes around puzzling doctors. They stand around her and they shake their heads and they scratch and they never seen nothing like her case before.”

“I haven’t heard you go on like this for a long time,” said Doc.

“You ain’t been in the mood to listen. You think them doctors is honest?”

“I haven’t any reason to doubt it. Why?”

“I bet I could fix rich dames up,” said Mack. “At least for a while.”

“How would you go about it?”

“Well, sir, first I’d hire me a deaf-and-dumb assistant. His job is just to set and listen and look worried. Then I’d get me a bottle of Epsom salts and I’d put in a pretty little screw-cap thing and I’d call it Moondust. I’d charge about thirty dollars a teaspoonful, and you got to come to my office to get it. Then I’d invent me a machine you strap the dame in. It’s all chrome and it lights colored lights every minute or so. It costs the dame twelve dollars a half-hour and it puts her through the motions she’d do over a scrub board. I’d cure them! And I’d make a fortune too. Of course they’d get sick right away again, so I’d have something else, liked mixed sleeping pills and wake-up pills that keeps you right where you was when you started.”

Doc said, “Thank God you haven’t got a license to practice!”

“Why?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t know why,” said Doc. “How about preventive medicine?”

“You mean how to keep them from getting sick?”

“Yes.”

“That’s easy,” said Mack. “Stay broke!”

Doc sat silent for a while. He glanced at the starfish and saw the reproductive fluid beginning to ooze from between their rays. “Say, Mack,” he asked, “did you come over to try to get something out of me?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mack. “If I did I’ve forgot what it was. I’m sure glad you got over it, Doc.”

“Got over what?”

“Oh, them goddam sooplapods.”

“Look, Mack!” Sudden anger welled up in Doc. “Don’t get any funny ideas. I am going to write that paper. I am going to La Jolla for the spring tides.”

“All right, Doc, all right. Have it your own way.”

But back in the Palace Flop house Mack reported to the boys, “Seemed like he was better, but he ain’t over the hump yet. We got to help him not to write that goddam paper.”