The New Black Mask (No 5)

James Lee Snyder Shopping Cart Howard

James Lee Snyder has been writing for fifteen years, but "Shopping Cart Howard”is the first story he has sent out for publication because, as he puts it, “I wanted to refine my work first… Now, on good days, I feel like I have complete control of my writing.”

“Shopping Cart Howard' is an amalgam of two or three people Mr. Snyder knows. “Living in New Orleans, you are exposed to a broad range of people and experiences," he observed. Though a private detective has a prominent role in the story, it is not about crime and thus would not normally be included in NBM. But we felt the rules should be stretched in this case.

Dick Tracy’s been following me for days. I know if s him because of those awful, baggy suits he wears and the way he acts, a real funny-paper hero, this one. He slides in and out of doorways and window-shops enough for ten country wives come to town. Brother. So what I do is I take him down to the Quarter, down on Bourbon Street and him always a block behind, and I park him in front of one of those male strip joints down there. Then I'm rearranging my cart for an hour or so while the tourist jerkers slither out and work him over. It’s pitiful what those leech bastards can do to you with that much time. Once, Dick just up and left. They all started calling him Peeping Tom and a couple of the boys came out in their wigs and nighties, running their fingers beneath that official Dick Tracy hat, and he vamoosed. Now the last couple of days he doesn’t follow me in. He waits on Canal, has a Coke at Woolworth’s lunch counter, and I pick him up on my way out. I’ve about decided he’s actually with the Internal Revenue. They must have heard about all that money I was making, not paying taxes on, and sent him down. Duke and Reese might have tipped them off. They’re convinced I have a buried treasure somewhere, and it would be just like those fools to ask the government for help, if they thought it would do any good.

Of course, he may be with one of those social houses. Some loafer on the state payroll or, even worse, one of those goddamn Jesuits in disguise. Brother Marti’s been trying to get me to stop by and partake a free lunch for years. It breaks his heart to see me managing out on the street all by myself. He likes to walk among his herd at meal times, all those street jerks kissing his behind while cramming down his baloney and Wonder Bread sandwiches. He turns into Jesus once he passes out the cellophane-wrapped sweet rolls. Everybody falls to their knees and prays, then he runs them back outside so they can line up again. Pitiful. You see, the Brothers and the welfare people think I'm crazy, and I let them. It enhances my freedom of movement. They're always stopping me here and there to “inquire” about my well being. That's when I sort of roll my eyes around in my head — go all trancelike, I mean — and try to run them over. I'll chase them down the street with my cart while they’re begging me to let them give me a hand. I sure hope Dick’s not one of them. That would destroy all my romantic notions about him.

I’ve come to decide it’s my unique lifestyle that gives them their opinions about me. Ever since I drifted into New Orleans, ten years or more ago, I’ve lived out on the street. Well, a few days during the cold snaps I’ll go into some boardinghouse, but it’s right back out after that. The difference is I'm always clean and neat. I see filth, under most any circumstances, as inexcusable. Twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, I go over to the Y on Lee Circle and pay a buck twenty-five for a hot one. First time I did so, just after hitting town, the clerk grilled me about it. Did I not have access to bathing facilities elsewhere? “Plumbing’s broke,” I told him. “I’m on the landlady now, but she’s old and moves like a caterpillar.” After a while they took me for granted and didn't say a word. Then a few years later, when the old clerk was quitting, he introduced me to the new fellow and explained the situation. “Plumbing’s down at home,” he said. “The landlady’s very old and slow.” “Slow as a caterpillar,” I backed him.

After Saturday’s scrubdown I drop by this washerteria on Prytania and do my laundry. I always maintain three sets of khakis. That gives me a clean one after each bath. Then every other month I’ll have my old felt slouch cleaned and blocked, and I’m ready. The point is it’s not hard to maintain yourself, unless you’re just plain lazy.

Another sore point with those that have is my manner of doing business. I’m into metals recovery, scrap aluminum over to the recycling plant on Tchoupitoulas, and my particular approach just kills Brother Marti. He’s a shuddering, red-eyed mountain of fat every time he swigs down one of his ever-present Coca Colas and tries to hand me the empty bottle, and I refuse. You see, other street jerks go for a dime wherever, garbage cans, gutters, phone booths. I don’t just mean cans and bottles, but also old batteries, rags, newspapers, hubcups, tires, you name it; and none of them, of course, are beneath panhandling or just plain begging for that night’s dew. They all have that wandering, hungry look about them that sets them apart. Animal desperation that Marti loves.

Not me.

“I only do cans,” I tell him, while that pudgy hand’s extended, just praying I go for the wooden nickel. “That’s aluminum — bagged and ready to go.”

Just kills him.

See — getting here, I go around to all these businesses, bars, restaurants, warehouses, even some of the big office boys downtown, and I tell them my story. I’m neat and polite, and it's usually not too hard to get them signed up. Then I always leave a brand-new garbage bag, tie wrap included, and tell them what their pickup date will be. I kind of make them feel wanted — that old hometown milk-route atmosphere — and it works like a charm. People stop me going by now, really wishing they could be on the list too, and I have to turn them down. “Filled up, sorry,” I tell them. Then I’ll take out my note pad and jot down their names “just in case.” I’ve got a whole page of hopefuls.

I push around this old Winn-Dixie “We’re The Beef People!” shopping cart. Now don’t think I stole the damn thing. I found it over near the expressway, all beat up and a wheel missing. A little colored boy sold me an original Dixie caster for fifty cents (he had a whole display case to choose from), and I oiled and cleaned the whole thing up like new. Now it’s kind of famous around town. “Here comes Shopping Cart Howard,” all the old bags holler out the windows of their shotguns. I don’t mind too much. Though it does have a senile sound to it that gets under my skin. Brother Marti tells me I should return it to its rightful owner. “Then you might make yourself a nice wooden one,” he advises. I consider pushing that heavy-ass board tank all over the place and give him my crazy eye-rolling routine, and he drops the subject.

Dick Tracy’s closing in. With Duke and Reese, that makes three hot on my trail. Now the motivation of those two neighborhood brands is as obvious as hogs in a sweet potato patch. They know my operation and want their share, or the whole damn thing. Not so Dick. He's asking questions around, and it’s got me puzzled. I normally take my noon meal at the Lovebug Grill on Rampart Street. I go in, and Leroy Henderson sets down a steaming plate of red beans and rice, two juice-popping sausages, and a cup of chicoried jake alongside that’s one of life’s joys and wonders. Now Leroy tells me some “weird, funny-talkin’ dude” has been around inquiring. It’s Dick, of course, and he’s asking all about me. Wants to know my name and anything about my background. Wants to know about my family, and Leroy, black as bituminous coal, informs him he’s my one and only brother, which sends Dick packing.

“He fuzzy,” Leroy tells me. “But he ain’t off no local peach.”

“Where from?” I ask, shoving in the beans.

“Nawth, maybe,” says Leroy. “He sound all bullshit jive — don’t talk no sent-zes. Just dis n’ dat — like Kojak.”

“Or Dick Tracy,” I add.

“Who dat?” Leroy inquires.

Now I find he’s been asking around elsewhere, talking to my customers along the route. Of course I can’t have that, because it makes some people nervous, and business is just that. Then, I consider my past and the reasons for the way things are my business. I prefer to have people think I’ve been a rustic, bearded old coot forever. It makes things simple, and if there is one thing I’ve sought my last twenty or so years of roaming about, it’s simplicity.

So what I do is I begin to stalk Dick Tracy.

I find him over on the comer of Camp and St Joseph, talking with none other than Duke and Reese. Now this crossroads happens to be one of the great hobo gathering places, not only of New Orleans, but of the entire world. And Dick’s polyester pinstripes stick out more than ever.

I come up behind him and say, "Listen, Dick, I’d like to ask you to stop bothering my customers.”

He turns around, his hawk face all gagging surprised, and nearly swallows the Lucky Strike dangling between those thin, cruel lips. “Nail it, canman,” he says, and walks away with his own personal fifty-mile-an-hour arctic tail wind pushing him along.

“Listen, Shoppin’ Cot,” says Duke, grinning, “whut choo done now?”

'‘Robbed the Poydras Whitney,” I reply and start getting out of there myself.

Reese, a scrawny, pock-faced white, as opposed to Duke’s sprawling jungle blackness, hisses, “Save it, you old geek. What are you doing down at Western Union each month? You send money out don’t you! Don’t you! Listen—”

By now, I’m vamoosed.

After that odd enough, Dick’s a little more open about things. The elusive atmosphere dwindles; that is, his sneaky ratlike demeanor calms somewhat I find that regretful, but it’s easier on the both of us. For whatever reason, he has to trudge after me all over the city, I accept it and it becomes something of a routine. I have nothing to hide, and I finally begin to enjoy our little game. Dick, it seems, has a job to do, and I've never been one to interfere with any poor soul’s livelihood.

So we strike up sort of an unspoken agreement, and it’s fine after that. Dick doesn’t have to duck foolishly down any more alleyways, and I don’t have to keep worrying about losing him in the crowd, because a tailsman he’s not. From dawn to dusk he stays close. He comes to know my pattern so well, he can drop out at any moment, say, into a bar for a cool one, then merely check his watch and head across town to catch up with me. He walks only a short distance behind me now. He smokes, chews gum, and maintains his expression of utter boredom. After introductions, my customers also greet him, which he openly resents, but, being such a prominent part of my day, I begin to worry about his feeling left out We eat together at Lovebug’s counter, although he always makes sure there’s a couple of stools between us. One day I buy him lunch, and the next day, resentfully, he returns the favor, with Leroy telling me, “Kojak say tighten up, canman.”

“Just being hospitable,” I turn to him and say. He ignores me and busies himself looking through the toothpick jar for a clean one.

Saturday nights, as is my routine, we go to the movies. For years I’ve gone to this Cuban picture show up on Magazine. They show all the old stuff up there, double-feature westerns and adventures and coppers, which I enjoy. Of course everything’s in Spanish which, initially, I see drives Dick crazy. That first time, with Don “Red” Berry up there babbling away, he sort of looks over at me and shakes his head. But after that he loosens up. The following week is Gable night and, believe me, you can hardly get a seat because of it. The first one’s a real rough-and-ready and, halfway through, I glance over and see Dick cheering things on with the rest of them. He’s sharing his popcorn, and they’re all slapping him on the back like one of the boys. During intermission I find him talking pidgin English at the candy counter, buying everyone Snickers and cold drinks, then back inside they go.

After the show a funny thing happens. Dick saunters over and says, “Cuppa jake, canman?”

“Why not,” I reply. I figure this is the big moment, anyway, so I say, “Let’s go back to my place.”

Which shocks the hell out of Dick. He’s using his little finger to pick corn kernels out of his teeth when he hesitates, then catches himself and blends it real nice. “Machts nichts, canman.” Of course I’m confused with myself, then realize I’ve had enough and want to get everything out in the open where I can see it. The truth is no one knows where I live. Not a soul. Dick knows that from asking around and reacts accordingly. Oh, he’s tried to follow me home often, but I would just get him down into the warehouse district which I know like mom’s face, and cut him loose. One night Duke and Reese were tagging along too, and it was a regular night at Mardi Gras. I stayed on the streets an hour longer than usual because I was having so much fun. And the real killer was, just as I was ready to do my Harry Houdini, this crummy Camp Street special floats by, pushing his cart. Now, it wasn’t nearly the same, but I guess the three after me were too tired to see that, and, I’ll tell you, it was a sight to behold. There he headed up River Road, which just winds on and on forever, and those three right after him. Dick didn’t show up for a day or so and was sore as hell because of it

But now I’ve got a feeling about him. I don’t know who he is or why he’s doing this, but I don’t think he means me any harm. And, if he did, I would just pack up and move on, because, like I’ve said, I stay real close to the ground.

So I take him over beneath the big New Orleans bridge and show him my compound. It’s tall Cyclone fencing, and we slip in through this rear corner. Inside is a lot of weeds and bushes, and right in the middle is my camp. What it is, is this stack of oil-well pipe. There are a dozen sections and they’re huge, each one about three feet across. I imagine by now anyone's forgotten it’s even here, because, as I’ve said, I’ve never had any visitors.

With the street lighting nearby there’s a continuous mercury vapor glow over everything, and Dick takes his time looking around. Meanwhile, I fire up the Coleman and get our coffee ready.

“Bedroom, canman?” Dick asks, peering into one section of pipe. My folded linen and accessories are within.

“I move around,” I tell him. “Get bored with one hole and move on to the next.”

Dick finds my little fluorescent camplight and clicks it on. Then he’s rummaging through my book box, reading the titles. He finally pulls out one of my port bottles. “I figured you hit it,” he says with a sneer.

“Old habits,” I reply. “When I was, shall I say, respectable, evenings I would sit back in my recliner with some cold Jack London and warm ruby. It was pleasant.”

We sit there on a couple of cinder blocks, and Dick insists we have the port with our coffee. Then, afterward, we just sip on the wine, passing the bottle back and forth. Dick’s smoking one Lucky after another, and I don’t say a word. Soon he’s had enough and blurts out, “Canman, you’re something else.”

“What do you mean, Dick?”

“Name’s Blue,” he comes back. “Bob Blue.”

“Like Dick better.”

“Don’t care too much for Howard myself, canman.”

I nod and say, “All right then, what’s the scoop?”

And that's when he hands it across, and I’m just floored. It’s a letter, you see, from my sister Alice. Haven’t seen her since I took off, around twenty-two years ago. I was thumbing my way out of town the day the first Kennedy boy was murdered.

“You’re working for Alice?”

He motions for me to read the letter. Which is not the easiest thing for me to accomplish, but I do so.

After this I’m contemplating the ground before me very hard. I tell Dick, “I thought she was on welfare. Someone I ran into told me that. Or that she filed bankruptcy. I can’t remember exactly.”

Dick’s cracking open a Lucky and shaking his head. “No stories today, Mr. Greenjeans. You wake up one morning and think you’re the Invisible Man: poof — El Splits-o. Couple of birthdays later your sister gets this phone call, collect, mind you, from Windy City.”

“It was dead of winter, Dick,” I say without reason.

“It was breakfast time in sunny California,” he says. “Sis and hubby are eating their corn flakes, minding their own, when suddenly the horn blows, and she’s hearing some old sot crying about the good old days, singing ‘The Way We Were,’ and how can he make it up now.”

For a while I’m speechless, trying to understand what’s going on. I’m remembering that phone call and say, “I was thinking then about when we were kids, her and I; us playing together, then being older and her going away to the institute, then her coming home and being delighted with my little winery and family and my leased Ford station wagon.”

“Charming,” says Dick, yawning and blowing smoke at the same time. He was different, all right. “Reminiscing with a rummy at daybreak must have been just peaches and cream for her. But let’s talk about now. Like the letter says, canman, she needs you, not your score note a month and a question mark.”

Then I’m shaking my head. “You’re wasting your time.”

“I get it,” he says. “You’d rather turn into Grandpa Prunes one day and wax line one of your stovepipes over there.”

“What’s in it for you?” I snap back. “I suppose, I go back, you get yourself a nice bonus?”

He was smiling, dangling that Lucky. “Ditto. I get five more Cs on my report card if I bring you back alive — but not kicking.”

“Well I damn sure would be,” I say. “She knows I could never do that again. Damn her, anyway.”

“Easy, Howard, I promised sis I’d leave my shotgun home.” He stands up now, stretching and looking around. “Anyway, your pet rats are getting on my nerves. What say we beat it for a quick nightcap?”

“Sorry, I’m limiting my social drinking these days.”

“One for the road,” he says. “Tomorrow I fly the friendly skies.”

“Is that right?” I reply. For some reason, this news bothers me. In any event, after hearing this I have to agree, and we end up at this seaman’s bar over by the river, which I know all the way there is a mistake. We have a drink, then two or three more, and I’m starting to tell Dick how it happened. Luckily, he stops me. I hadn’t talked about it for a while, but, as I should have known, it never did leave me in the best of spirits. Talking about it, that is.

So Dick’s blowing smoke, raising his hand and saying, “Save it, old-timer, sis gave me all the painful details before I left.”

By then I am feeling pretty rude and say, “Oh, yeah? What the hell does she know about it? What makes her so damn smart?”

Dick’s eyeing me real close now through those half-closed eyes of his. I hear him say, “Your problem is you’ve got a case of the sorries for yourself you’ve never been able to shake.”

“Go to hell,” I reply.

“No, I’m going over to the Monteleone and go to bed,” he says. “I’ve got a full tank trying to figure out why such a nice lady as that wants an old coot like you hanging around.”

Then he just disappears and there I am alone again. I start feeling guilty about it after a while, what I’d said and the way I’d acted. It was Dick still working on me. He was so damn sure of things, which made it even worse. Miserable puritan.

“Get you anything?”

It was just the bartender and me left. “Oh, hell,” I say. “A big cup of the blackest, meanest coffee you got.”

After he sets it down, he hangs around and we talk. Soon I start feeling the pressure ease up inside me. The beer jerker’s telling me about a catfish farm he wants to get going. It’s the big dream of his life, so we chew on it for fifteen minutes or so. Then he asks me what I do and, all clear headed, I start telling him about the winery. The one, I’m saying, I used to own. The funny thing is, it is the first time I’ve talked about it without being tight. For some time now I had equated sobbing and drooling into my whiskey glass with the running of a winery.

Now I am fresh and loose as sheets flapping in an autumn breeze in Maine.

I tell him carefully about how the thing used to run. I was recalling how much hard work and fun it had been, and I think he picked up on it. Then he asks me, if it was that good, why wasn’t I still there? In former times this would have been the cue to pull all stops. I’d learned a hundred ways to milk sympathy from some stranger, and the details of my personal tragedy got them every time. And, at that moment, more by habit than intention, I almost do the same thing again. I open my mouth to speak and suddenly feel the notion disappear. Of course it's all still there. It's picture perfect within my mind: how my wife Mary and our two boys — Brad was four and Danny was six — had got up early one morning and gone down to the city shopping. My birthday was around then, and I think they were going to get a present for me. Then I’m over in my warehouse moving empty casks around when Harry (who was chief of police in town) comes up crying his eyes out. It seems this car had pulled across the highway in front of our car and everyone was dead. The other folks, I found out later, had been to an all-night wedding shindig and were on their way home. I remember I kept thinking how, just before it happened, everyone in both cars must have been happy. They must have been smiling and feeling very pleased about things in general. I recall it was a beautiful day.

But now I only look at the bartender and say, “Change of luck, I’m afraid. You know how that is.”

He does and goes into familiar detail about some woman leaving him for another guy, and what he’d do if he ever ran into them. But I’m polite, letting him finish before I get the hell out of there.

The next thing I know I’m back at camp, but nothing looks right anymore. It’s like, after bringing Dick around, nothing’s the same anymore. So I leave again and just go walking. I end up at the Moonwalk, which is this elevated boardwalk overlooking the Mississippi. Behind me is Jackson Square and the Pontalbas, and, what I do is, I spend the rest of the night there. Just sit there and think. I recall how I’d moved in with Harry and Alice for a few days before I took off. I woke up one morning and felt short of breath. I sort of stumbled about the house, not being able to breathe properly. I was gone before Harry got up to start the coffee. Damn her, I was thinking now. Damn her.

In the morning I’m there watching the light appear around me. The ferries start crossing the river, and there’s a mist hanging over the river and through Algiers. In the square behind me people are starting to come out. The pigeons are sitting on Andrew Jackson, ruffling their feathers and yawning. The French Quarter streets pull away in either direction. They look low and mean and very lovely in the gray mist. Now I’m seeing this motley little faubourg with all its cracks and humps and distortions, and I know it’s not telling all of the truths about itself. That would be too painful, I guess. Its mask is affixed, and it wakes up each day and slowly stretches and doesn’t say too much about yesterday. Then there’s the carts rolling in on their wooden wheels, and the rosy faces having breakfast over at Royal Orleans, and I know it’s all right and I can lean back again.

Alice, I’m thinking, always had a good sense of timing and was always dangerous to be around for that reason. She encouraged you to do things where you knew damn well the odds were stacked against you. Like the time she talked Mary into going up in one of those gliders. Now high heels usually made my wife dizzy, but there she was one day, floating all over the valley, with her instructor before her and Alice in one right behind. Harry and I were sitting out on my patio having scotch and sodas when they went over. I couldn’t believe it, but they sure enough tipped their wings before heading up-valley again. Harry and I laughed like birthday boys when that happened.

But that was Alice. She reminded me of Lucille Ball, except she kept the whipped cream in the can. I couldn’t imagine her now, slowing down, but I could figure she still had something left. After all, she dug up Bob Blue and sent him to me. When that came to mind, I knew I suddenly wanted to talk to her about it. About all of it. It was a nice thought, us sitting out on the porch, chewing the fat. It was such a hell of a nice thought, all right. Talking with Alice again was a challenge that suddenly appealed to me. Seeing her again. I didn’t see it as a question of having paid one’s dues, but I knew this was the first thing I had really wanted to do in some time. It was not a routine motion. It was a quest. After that, it was only a matter of keeping my ass out of those gliders. I guessed she would have one tucked back somewhere.

So I call up Dick and tell him it's a go. There are a few things I have to do, I tell him. Want to turn over my route to Leo, who's this mildly retarded Quarter fellow I know. He scrounges cans but doesn't have the sense to organize. But this would be set up, and otherwise Leo is very professional. Then I have to pick up my things and say adios to a face or two.

“I’m going with you,” says Dick.

“That’s not necessary. I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

“Look, canman, you’re sitting in my new Monte Carlo.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be there shortly.” And I hang up on him and get busy. I spend an hour or two making the arrangements and doing my tidying up. Leo is pleased as hell with the offer and is hugging me and promising me the world he'll take care of my, or his, cart. Since Leo is one of the world’s great amateur spray painters (always catching the can sales at Ben Franklin’s), I picture something in translucent blue with wheels akin to Joan Crawford’s lipstick. I hurry on, giving the nod to Brother Marti, and he holds out, one last time, that squatty little Coke bottle of his. And so I take it, thinking it may be the appropriate memento to my time down under.

Back at camp, things are not so cheerful. Duke and Reese are there, having made a thorough inspection of the place and my possessions and evidently not finding what they came after. They’ve finished off my final bottle of port, and Duke is telling me how they saw me wandering around the night before and followed me back. I look around and say, “So what now?”

Reese spits and hisses his displeasure. “This is it, you old geek. You got money hid here somewheres. You sold enough cans to go to fucking Panama. Where’s it at?”

“Mailed it off to my sister,” I tell him. “You know I do, Reese. You’ve seen me.”

“All of it?”

“All but necessities. I’ve got some pocket money you can have.”

“You sumbitch,” says Duke. “We don’t want no raggedy-ass dime ’n nickel. We want dem dollahs. Say, Reese.”

I stand there a moment, then make some idle comment about seeing what I can do for them. I start backing away when Reese lunges at me, and I take a swing at him with Brother Marti’s bottle. It comes down a good one across his head, and he hollers out loud and curses me. Duke is there, and I feel the bottle knocked away while his big arms come around me. It suddenly feels like an Oldsmobile is parked across my chest and I can’t breathe at all. Now they start dragging me off into the bushes with Reese hitting and kicking at me as we go. Then it crosses my mind about Alice, and I’m sorry, knowing she’ll believe, for the rest of her days, that her timing was off on this one.

They got me in the bushes now, really giving me hell-for, when I hear this real smooth voice saying, “Table open?” It's Dick, you see, a fresh Lucky stuck between his lips and palming the prettiest nickle-plated .38 I think I’ve ever seen. Duke and Reese drop me like a wormy apple, with Reese going on about what right the other had sticking his nose in.

“I got six rights, pizza face,” Dick tells him, then raises the revolver up to make his point. “You and your friend should really go play someplace else — like Kentucky.”

I think that’s a good one, even in my condition, and I enjoy watching the both of them back out of there. They hit the street at a brisk shuffle and disappear.

“You coming?” he asks, putting his gun away. “Or maybe you want to go play hopscotch on Canal Street?”

“All right, Dick,” I finally say, letting him help me up. I’m sore as hell all over but can’t help getting in the mood. “Let’s make like a tree and leave.”

“Ditto, canman.”

We vamoose.