The Franchiser

V

He turns the ignition key. Hey, he’s down a few gallons. He sees that one side of the island of pumps nearest him is clear, but keeps his Caddy idling in neutral until he knows what the fellow in the Pontiac Grand Am just pulling in off the street means to do. It, too, is an out-of-state car — Minnesota. The land of sky-blue waters.

Ben smiles and waves expansively at the Grand Am to go ahead of him. The bells ring as Minnesota drives over the rubber line that signals the attendant. Jack comes back out and goes up to the driver’s side of the Pontiac, clears the gas pump, and carries the heavy hose toward the gas tank. Ben presses down the electric window on his side and leans his head out. “Can you get to her, Jack, or should I back off some?” he calls.

Jack looks at him quizzically. “No,” he says, “there’s room.”

“There’s room? You sure? It wouldn’t be any trouble for me to back it up a bit.”

“No,” he says, “that’s all right.”

“Okay,” Ben says, “think I’ll just stretch my legs a bit while I’m waiting.” He gets out of his car with difficulty. Jack has begun to wipe the windshield and Ben goes up to him. “She’s a scorcher, ain’t she?”

“Radio said 92 at noon,” the young man says.

“Ninety-two degrees! At noon? Is that a fact? She could bust 100 then.”

“I guess,” Jack says.

“Say, look there, will you?” Ben Flesh points to an elderly woman on the sidewalk who is holding a parasol above her head. “You don’t see that up north much,” he says. “It’s a good way of preventing sunstroke. I wonder why more people don’t carry sun umbrellas in weather like this. It’s kind of pretty, too, don’t you think?”

“Pretty?”

“Well, old-fashioned. Reassuring. Pretty, yes. I think so. Many folks carry sunshades around here?”

“Mostly the older women, I guess.”

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Ben says. “It’s very charming and genteel. That sort of thing makes heat itself charming.”

Jack asks the driver if he wants him to check under the hood and the man nods. He pulls out the oil stick and wipes it with a rag.

“Gee whiz,” Ben says, “will you look at all the machinery down there?”

“You’re down just over a half,” Jack tells the driver. “Shall I put in a quart?”

“Please,” the driver says, “and could you check the water level in my battery?”

“That’s a good idea,” Ben tells the man. “It probably evaporates on a day like this. That young man told me it was already 92 at noon today.”

“ It feels it. It must be almost 100 now,” the man from Minnesota says.

“You probably aren’t far off,” Ben says. He looks at the man. “But you know,” he says, “the hottest I’ve ever been was once when I was up in your part of the country.”

“Minnesota?”

“Well, South Dakota. Rapid City. This was a few years ago. 1971.”

“Yeah,” his friend says. “I think I remember. It was hot that summer.”

“Hot? It was in violation of the Geneva Conventions, it was so hot. It was brutal. And the air conditioning wasn’t of any use.”

“No?”

“Heck no. There were power failures. I was in the hospital at the time. This was when I had my multiple sclerosis diagnosed — I’m a multiple sclerotic — and though the hospital had its own generators, it wasn’t enough to drive the air conditioning and—”

“She took sixteen gallons, sir. A dollar five for the quart of oil makes it $10.06.”

“You take Master Charge?”

“Sure.” Ben’s friend slips the card out of his wallet and hands it to Jack.

“Sixty-one and nine tenths for a gallon of Regular,” the man says. “Sixty-two cents.”

“It was really something. They put me in a ward with a young British lieutenant named Tanner. He was on detached duty from the Royal Air Force. He pronounced it ‘Raf.’ That’s the first time I ever heard it pronounced that way. God, the poor guy was in bad shape. He had a rare tropical disease called Lassa fever. It’s fatal. Ever hear of it?”

“No,” his pal says.

“Well, neither had I. As a matter of fact, he was only the ninth person in the world to come down with it. He actually sweated blood. That’s not a figure of speech, either. The man perspired blood. It was a symptom of the disease, though I don’t suppose the heat helped any. I would wipe it up for him. I’d use Kleenex or toilet paper. Well, you know how it is, guys get close in a situation like that. We really did anyway. We were the only people in the ward. I don’t think it would be too much of an exaggeration to say that he was the best friend I ever had.”

Jack has returned from the office with his clipboard. He goes around behind the Grand Am to take down the Minnesotan’s license number. “We were thick, my friend. He kidded the pants off me about how worried I was about my disease. I had the Mister Softee franchise up there, and every time I’d whimper about my bad luck he’d say, I remember, he’d say, ‘Be hard, Mister Softee.’ And you know? I was that scared I needed to be talked to like that back then. Oh gosh. We had some time of it.” Jack has brought the charge slip for the man to sign. Ben has to move his head, standing behind Jack’s back, talking to him over the young man’s shoulder. “There wasn’t much power to give the loonies their electric shock, so the poor guys were up all night screaming their heads off. We could hear them. It was awful.”

“Thank you,” Jack says. “There’s your card, sir. Come back and see us.”

The man nods and starts his car.

“Wait up,” Ben says. “I wanted to tell you something. Oh yeah. So, as I say, it was during those long hot nights when neither of us could sleep and the crazies were screaming like the damned and Tanner and I just, well, we just told each other everything. I’ve probably never been that close to anyone. I know he helped me. I hope I helped him.

“So. Anyway, to make a long story short, there wasn’t much they could do for my M.S. in the hospital and they discharged me.

“Well, sir, Tanner didn’t say much. I figured he must have figured, here I was going off, and there he was, strapped to a goddamn wheelchair and condemned to die. Friends or no, he must have thought, well, that I was deserting him. So…What can I tell you? I went back to where he was behind the screen to shake hands and say goodbye and to wish him luck and, well, he was — he was dead.”

The Minnesotan shakes his head. Ben understands. What else can he do? Ben acknowledges his friend’s sympathy with a nod of his own and backs away from the Grand Am to let it drive off. “Well,” he says cheerfully, turning to Jack, “I guess you can pump me full of Premium.”

“You’ll have to pull the car up, the hose won’t reach.”

“Oh, sure,” Ben says and, stumbling, gets back into his car to bring it abreast of the young man.

It’s while the tank is being filled that he remembers his promise to Tanner. Oh, Christ, he thinks, and his eyes moisten. Then he remembers something else.

There’s only a quarter in the shallow little dish on his dashboard where he keeps change. It would be too unpleasant to have to reach into his pocket to see if he has a dime. “Say, Jack,” he says to the attendant, “trade you this quarter for a dime.” He fumbles the coin into his left palm by brushing it with the side of his right hand. “What do you say, is it a deal?”

Jack gives him two dimes and a nickel for the quarter. He doesn’t want to hurt Jack’s feelings by insisting he keep the fifteen cents. Also, he remembers he’s already tipped him ten dollars to tell him what city this is. Ben smiles at him and thinks of him fondly. He’s not just another greedy kid. That’s good, Ben thinks. Moral fiber like that. The country’s in safe hands. “Thanks,” Ben says. “Is there a phone in the office?”

“Just to your left as you go in the door.”

“Thanks a million,” Ben says.

He has some difficulty lining the dime up with the slot, but finally he’s able to do it. He dials the operator.

“Operator,” he says when she answers, “could you please get me Rapid City, South Dakota, Information. I have some trouble with my fingers or I’d dial it myself. Thank you, dear. Oh, and Operator? Would you hang on, please? This will be a credit-card call. Thank you.”

“What city, please?” the operator in South Dakota says.

“Rapid City.”

“Yes, sir, go ahead.”

He gives the operator the name he had remembered in the car.

“Eight seven three, two zero nine six,” the South Dakota operator says.

“Did you get that, Operator?”

“Yes, sir.”

He gives the operator his credit-card information and in a moment he can hear the phone ringing all the way up the country in South Dakota. Ben smiles at Jack, who has come into the office, and he holds up a finger to indicate that he’ll just be a moment. The young man steps out to take care of a car that has just driven up to the pumps.

“Hello?”

“Yes,” Ben says, “hello there. Could I speak to Dick Mullen, please?”

“Dick Mullen?”

“Richard Mullen. Yes, please.”

“Who is this?”

“My name’s Ben Flesh. I was in the hospital with him that time he was so sick. I just wanted to know how he’s getting along.”

“My husband’s dead,” the woman said. She started to cry.

“Oh hey,” Ben said, “oh hey, listen, I’m sorry. Listen, I didn’t mean — I’m awfully sorry. Look, is there anything I can do? Anything at all? I mean, if I can help out money wise, I’d be more than happy…Life’s been good to me in that department. It wouldn’t be any hardship.”

Mrs. Mullen was weeping uncontrollably. Ben waited for her sobbing to subside, finally overrode it. “You must think I’m some kind of nut,” he said, “but I mean it about the money. Your son was very kind to me one time when I needed help — and, well, I just had nothing but good feelings for Dick. I mean, everybody did.”

“You knew Richard?”

“Well,” Ben said, “it’s just that we were in Rapid City General together.”

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Mullen said. “He was in Intensive Care. He died just after…How could you have…”

“Well, you know the Mister Softee on Rushmore? That’s my place. I…Look, I mean it about helping out,” Ben said, but all he could hear were the woman’s sobs and finally he had to replace the phone. Someone else was waiting to use it anyway.

So he paid Jack and left the gas station and drove off to check into a Holiday Inn.

All in all he felt pretty good. Not physically of course. Physically he’d never been worse. His hair was bothering him. Indeed, he hadn’t combed it for days because it felt as if current were running through it when he held a comb to it. His other facial symptoms were bad. Bright light made his eyes tear and he could not look at the sky. His lips were heavy and felt as if tiny chips of buckshot were sliding about inside them. Also, he felt a sort of girdle effect about his forehead. The sclerosis was amok. He had the odd sensation that there were paper cuts in his lungs and kidneys, and the queerest feeling that his thighs were filled with a sort of stuffing, like sensitized furniture. Though he had been the one to offer that the day was a scorcher, he actually felt cold. (He’d heard the same weather report Jack had. That’s how he knew it was hot.) He drove with the air conditioner off and his windows shut in order to trap what heat he could, and still his steering wheel was icy to the touch. He felt weakness in all his limbs and a kind of cushion of chilled air flowing beneath his skin.

Still, things weren’t so bad. He felt pretty good. Look at the way Mrs. Mullen had cried about her husband. Four years dead and she could still be moved merely by the sound of a stranger pronouncing his name. And how kind Jack had been. Not wanting to take the fifteen cents. Two dimes and a nickel for his quarter. Giving fair measure. People were good. His friend from Minnesota. The way he’d bought that oil when he was only down just over half a quart. He probably wanted to help the kid out. People were good. Life was exciting.

Think of all that had happened to him. His disease. It was a major disease, very big league. There was even a campaign on television now. And his parents had been killed in a highway crash; that was dramatic. And he’d served in the war, though he hadn’t seen action. Not that action. But there were other things. He couldn’t list them all. He’d been to Wharton, maybe the top school in the country in the business field. All the things he’d done. He’d stood in a bucket and given a speech. He’d smoked marijuana, broken a law. He’d owned probably two dozen Cadillacs and driven two million miles. He’d had a godfather. That was something. How many had godfathers? Or stood by at deathbed scenes? Or were left the prime interest rate? The twins and triplets. The boy Finsbergs and girl. The Insight Lady and Contest Lady and the Looks Like Lady who could look at anyone and instantly come up with someone that that person looked like. The You Could Make a Million Dollars Lady. All the others.

And musical comedy in his blood. What a heritage! Songs. Standards. Hits. Top of the charts. Whistled. Hummed. Carried on the common American breath. Coming down the street on a transistor held to a kid’s head like an earmuff of sound. Carried on the electrical American breaths of stereo, quad, the million swollen amplifications, speakers suspended like mistletoe in the archways of record shops or ringle-dingled in electric campaniles everywhere the air was. Melodies familiar as appetite and as pressed upon others as their habits. What a heritage! Ben Flesh himself like a note on sheet music, the clefs of his neon logos in the American sky. All the businesses he’d had. The road companies of Colonel Sanders, Baskin-Robbins, Howard Johnson’s, Travel Inn, all his franchises. Why, he belonged everywhere, anywhere! In California like the sound of juice, Florida like the color of sunlight, Washington and Montana like the brisk smell of thin height, and Missouri like the neutral decent feel of the law of averages.

Nope, he couldn’t complain. And ah, he thought. And looked forward to checking into the motel. Where he’d wait for dusk, have dinner in his room, open the thick-lined drapes, and watch out for his signs as they came on in nighttime Birmingham, all the blink-bulb neon and electric extravaganzas that stood out sharp against the sky and proved that every night Broadway opens everywhere.

Ah, he thought euphorically, knowing that his happiness was real, chemical, of course, symptomatic, but there, there under his disease, under the chemicals.

He was broken, they would kill him. The Finsbergs were an endangered species and his Travel Inn a disaster. They would kill him. Within weeks he would be strapped to a wheelchair. And ah, he thought, euphorically, ecstatically, this privileged man who could have been a vegetable or mineral instead of an animal, and a lower animal instead of a higher, who could have been a pencil or a dot on a die, who could have been a stitch in a glove or change in someone’s pocket, or a lost dollar nobody found, who could have been stillborn or less sentient than sand, or the chemical flash of somebody else’s fear, ahh. Ahh!