Sweet Thursday

30 A President Is Born

Of all our murky inventions, guilt is at once the most devious, the most comic, the most painful. Was it planted by the group pressure of the tribe to keep the potentially dangerous individual off balance? Is it set in the psychotissue, watered and cultivated by ductless glands? Is guilt the unconscious device by which a man cries for attention in an unperceiving world, or can it be that the final human pleasure is pain? What ever its origin, we scream like cats in copulation, wolf-bay the moon, whip ourselves with the exquisite thorns of contempt, and generally have a hell of a good time at it.

In the pleasure and passions of guilt, Hazel should have been voted the human least likely to succeed. Guilt is a selfish pastime and Hazel had never been aware enough of himself to indulge in it. He watched life as a small boy watches a train go by—mouth open, breathing high and light, pleased, astonished, and a little confused.

Hazel had never amounted to a damn. Mack once described Hazel’s education: “He done four years in grammar school and four years in reform school—and he didn’t learn nothing either place.”

Reform school, you see, where vice and crime are not extracurricular, failed to have any more effect on Hazel than the fourth grade had. He came out as innocent as he had gone in. Hazel didn’t pay enough attention to be evil. If Mack and the boys and Doc hadn’t been friends, there’s no telling what might have happened to him. Hazel thought Mack was the world’s greatest human, while Doc he didn’t consider human at all. Sometimes he said his prayers to Doc.

But Hazel was changing. Imperceptibly he had begun to pay attention. Perhaps Fauna had planted the germ by reading Hazel’s horoscope. After his first protest he never mentioned it again, which should in itself have been suspicious.

Hazel did not want to be President of the United States. If there had been any avenue of escape he would have taken it, but his horoscope closed all doors. When a man is finally boxed and he has no choice, he begins to decorate his box. So Hazel, condemned to the presidency, since he could not escape it, began to ornament it. A man can climb high on the steps of responsibility.

Hazel began to prepare himself for the time when his call should come. He read every word of a copy of Time magazine, then went back to the beginning and read it again. He thought about it a great deal and came to the conclusion that it was nuts—which proves that Hazel’s problem had been inattention, not unintelligence.

He bought a World Almanac and read the lives of the Presidents, and he began to wonder what he would do if the British impressed our sailors[111] or the “Fifty-four-Forty”[112] issue ever came up again.

He had accepted his duty and it made him sick. Sometimes in the morning he would awaken happy in the thought that it was a bad dream. Then he would count his toes and relapse into acceptance of his fate and his duty. What made it worst of all was the loneliness. He couldn’t discuss it with anyone. He was set apart and above ordinary experience. When he had offered to fight Mack it was not in anger. He was preparing to defend the weak. When he had flown in the face of his friends, and refused to be a dwarf, and insisted on being Prince Charming, Hazel was not being vain. The dignity of his position was greater than himself. He could not let his future down.

In an ordinary time one of the boys would have noticed Hazel’s suffering face, the weariness, the pained nobility, and they would have given him two tablespoons of Epsom salts. But in these times all men’s souls were being tried, and women’s too, and a tried soul doesn’t look around much.

Hazel’s attempts to figure out what had happened at the masquerade were fruitless. He remembered how he had been dignified and beautiful and then all hell had broken loose. And the aftermath was horrible. The spirit of the Palace Flop house, tested under the torques and stresses of so many years, was broken, shattered like granite, which withstands so long as the hammer blows, then suddenly disintegrates.

Mack, who considered life hardly worse than a bad cold, was sickened to death—his eyes were lackluster and his valiant soul was shot. And if Mack was that way, you can imagine what the boys were like—jellyfish washed up on an inhospitable shore.

“What happened?” Hazel asked, and eyes glanced at him and glanced away and no one had the will to explain. For several days Hazel thought it might be the bull-bitch hangover of all time, but it continued into the day of reviving thirst and there was no thirst. Hazel began to be afraid for his friends.

He sat under the cypress tree and he not only kept his mind on the subject, he actually thought about it. It was a time for greatness, and only Hazel had the strength to rise to that bright bait. When he stood up and brushed the cypress dirt from his jeans, he had completed the change. No longer was he Hazel the Innocent, Hazel the Unaware, Hazel the Dope. His shoulders squared to take the weight, and the calm beauty of strength shone from his eyes.

It was dusky in the Palace, moldy and sad. The boys lay on their beds, listless and ruined. Mack stared up at his canopy, and he was the worst of all, for there was no expression in his face. He had not crashed in flames, he was eroding away.

When Hazel sat down quietly on the side of his bed Mack didn’t even take a kick at him, although his shoes were on.

Hazel said, “Mack, Mack darling, you should shake the lead out of your pants now.”

Mack did not answer, but he closed his eyes and two tears squeezed out and hung there until they dried.

Hazel said gently, “Mack, you want I should kick the hell out of you?”

Mack moved his head quietly back and forth in negation.

Hazel did not hold back. He threw his trump card in, and the hell with it. “I been over to Doc’s,” he said. “He’s setting there with a pencil in his hand. He ain’t wrote nothing. He ain’t done nothing. He ain’t thought nothing. Get off your behind, Mack, he needs us.”

Mack spoke sepulchrally. “He needs us like a mud-dauber’s nest up his pants leg. Don’t blame me, Hazel. I can’t fight back no more. I’m down for the count.”

“What’s happened, Mack?”

Mack’s voice was hollow. “When we done it before we wrecked his joint and busted him, but that was mere chaff.”

“How do you mean, mere chaff?”

“Oh, it was things busted—glass, records, dishes, books, stuff like that. But this time we’ve put a knife in his belly. If you keep trying to pat a guy on the head and instead you knock his brains out, you lose confidence.” He sighed and turned over and covered his face with his arms.

“You ain’t got the right to give up,” Hazel said.

“I got the right to do any goddam thing I want.”

“Now that sounds better!”

“Or not do nothing,” said Mack.

“Look, Doc got to go to La Jolla, you know that. He got to make the spring tides next week. Then, when his new microscope comes, he’ll have devilfish and write his paper. We got to help him, Mack.”

“Fauna says she used to manage a welterweight name of Kiss of Death Kelly. That’s me—Kiss of Death Mack. Everything I touch withers like the sere and yellow leaf.”

“Get up!”

“I won’t,” said Mack.

“Get up, I tell you!”

Mack didn’t even respond.

Hazel went outside and looked around. He walked to a broken tar barrel lying in the weeds and pulled out a curved oaken stave. He went back and stood beside Mack’s bed.

He judged distance and lift. He hit Mack so hard that his pants split. And only then did Hazel realize how serious it was, for Mack didn’t even move. He only groaned.

Hazel fought down panic, and then he remembered his Fate—a sacrifice to Washington where he would have to eat oysters. “All right, Mack,” he said softly. “I’ll have to do her myself.”

He turned and walked out of the door with quiet dignity.

Mack rolled up on one elbow. “Did you hear what that crazy bastard said? Oh, what the hell! Can’t do no worse than I done. Mother, make my bed soon, for I’m sick to the death and I fain would lie down.”

“You’re already down,” said Whitey No. 2.