A Bad Man by Stanley Elkin Page A

emergency supplies. The warden wanted Shipman’s crew to go, but old Dean said, ‘Fuck Shipman’s crew. Does Shipman’s crew take the stuff off the cars down to the depot when the stock is rolling? Does Shipman’s crew wind the toilet paper after a riot?’ You should’ve heard him. This was one screw talking about another screw in front of the warden. But Dean stands up for his boys, and the warden went along. So we got our ride in the deuce and a half all the way into Melbourne. I asked Dean if I could drive, and he let me for fourteen miles. Well, the part I wanted to tell you about is this. We picked up the stuff in a big supermarket. I pushed one cart, and Millman the other. And Dean come along behind us with the shotgun. You should’ve seen them housewives. We scared them whores right out of their panties. ‘It’s a stickup,’ Millman would tell them, and one time he reached right into this whore’s cart who’d got the last box of Duz and took it right away from her. I’d take the ammonia bottles and hold them up with the top unscrewed and I’d turn to Millman. ‘Do you think this wine will go good with dinner, dear?’ I’d ask him. ‘Delicious,’ Millman would say. Even Dean had to laugh. It was something.” He paused, chuckling. “You ever been in one of them supermarkets?” he asked Feldman.
    “Yes.”
    “ They got the products, Gleam, Oxydol, Shine, Spic and Span , Jesus. I don’t see how they keep them all straight. Dean let us take one of everything just to sample. You know what we done? We give Shipman’s crew all the pansy, perfumy kind.” Lurie laughed. “You should of seen. They had a time, those bastards, trying to get this place clean with all that shit the broads use on their cruddy underwear. That must have been something. I got down on the floor where Shipman’s crew works, and it smelled like some fucking cunt-castle. Jesus! ”
    Feldman stretched out on his cot.
    “Sick?” Lurie asked him.
    “Yes.”
    “Go on sick call?”
    “I’m taking care of it myself.”
    “That’s it,” Lurie said. “Stay away from these sawbones. A man with your history. They wouldn’t be allowed to patch a tire on the outside. I haven’t gone on sick call since Brunner left. He was terrific. He really knew medicine. He was a genius.”
    Feldman had wearied of the man’s incredible loyalties, his fierce spites. This was prison, he thought. In his office there were a million ways to defend against bores. He could make a telephone call, go to lunch early, plan a trip, have an appointment, get off a letter. There were things to do with his hands. He remembered filling his water carafe, taking a cigar from a humidor that played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” lighting it with a lighter shaped like a cash register (you punched No Sale), adjusting the Venetian blinds, slanting the sun in a visitor’s eyes. Or the toys—the absurd executive toys: the gold Yo-Yo’s on silken strings, the pointless machines with visible moving parts, the kaleidoscopic paperweights, the office golf (he only played golf in the office), the tiny TV set on which he caught the noon news. There were conferences, committee work (he was a downtown merchant, public-spirited, the inventor of the Free Friday Bus Ride and the Shopper’s Nursery Service in the public park). And there was his basement. But here he could not even pull down a shade or open the window. He lived in a cage, bored as a beast.
    Lurie was still talking. Feldman had a thought, a wish so clear and incisive it could almost have been an idea. He wanted Lurie to die. He wished desperately that this bore might be suddenly seized with something angry and irrevocable, that he would disintegrate! But he had thick forearms and hadn’t gone on sick call since Brunner. A collapse was unlikely, but Feldman knew that if he had a gun and the opportunity to get away with it, he would kill Lurie. It didn’t surprise him. It was the system which shaped these