Boswell by Stanley Elkin Page A

One was of the lower part of his body, his waist and legs; the other was of everything above the waist.
    I looked at the photographs and then at Sandusky. “They’re nice,” I said.
    “Don’t you get it?” he said. “Don’t you get it?”
    I shrugged.
    “Lower Sandusky,” he said, pointing to the picture of his legs. Then, touching the other photograph, “Upper Sandusky! The town in Ohio! Get it?”
    He handed me a full-length portrait of himself. “Greater Sandusky?” I said.
    “Yeah,” he laughed, “yeah, yeah. Greater Sandusky!” He clapped me on the back. He laughed and laughed. “Greater Sandusky,” he wheezed through his laughter.
    “Greater Sandusky.” I laughed with him. “Greater Sandusky! Greater Sandusky! Yeah. Yeah.”
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “Greatest Sandusky!” I roared, putting all three pictures in a pile.
    “Yeah,” he laughed, “Greatest Sandusky!”
    He fell back on the bed, one arm flung heavily across his forehead. The other he raised weakly to his lips, trying to contain his laughter. He looked like someone who knew he would be sick, and the sight of him beside me, beneath me, the strong man wrestled to his bed by laughter, made me laugh more. You’d have had to have been there, I kept thinking, already trying to explain to someone else afterwards what it had been like. You’d have had to have been there. I tried to say “Greatest Sandusky” again to keep the joke going. Sandusky saw me and shook his head in warning. He took his hand away from his lips long enough to say, “Do-o-n’t. Doannt. Don’t. No. D-dd-doonnt.”
    I was made ruthless by my laughter. “Greatest Sandusky,” I said.
    He giggled.
    “Greatest Sandusky,” I said.
    Sandusky roared.
    “Greatest Sandusky!” I yelled at him.
    He collapsed in laughter, the water rushing from his eyes. Startled, I saw that he looked like the Sandusky of old, the Sandusky of the photographs, his cheeks blown out in a rage of pain, his eyes drowned in his effort’s flood. Sandusky beneath the barbell, beneath the world’s gross weight, who held that weight from the ground, who was all we had between it and us. Sandusky’s face, its urgent effort, angered me. The heroic effort, the bald look of strain. There it was, the history I pursued and pursued, the moment I chased to see George do it. I gazed down at the straining Sandusky and wondered if it was possible to kill a man by making him laugh.
    “Sandusky,” I yelled, screaming to make him hear me, “Sandusky, why does a strong man wear a jock?”
    “D-d-do-on-nnt. Doannt.”
    “To hold his bells up.”
    “D-o-o-n’t. Ple-plee—leeze.”
    “Mr. Sandusky, how is a strong man like a man who serves food in a restaurant?”
    “D-on’t.”
    “They’re both weighters!” He laughed, strangling, but I saw that he was regaining control. It was too bad, I thought. “If you can’t join ’em, kill ’em.” The new Boswell: Boswell the Bad. Aesthetically it was a pity. I could imagine Sandusky dead, and calling the police myself to report it, and their coming and finding Sandusky’s corpse. The Corpse of Sandusky, the heroic mold, all muscles and laughs. “Of course, gentlemen, he died out of his prime, but the essential materials are still there,” I would tell them, lifting a loose flap of skin and pulling it taut. “We could take him to a taxidermist and have him stuffed. It’s what he would want.” I would explain to the Inspector that I had told him a joke and he had died. But it was too late; already Sandusky was sitting up, his feet over the edge of the bed. He looked like someone who might wake with a hangover. He was disreputable, torn, and seemed as seedy as he had when I first came in.
    “That was a good laugh,” he said stupidly. He smiled, remembering it.
    “Yes.”
    “It’s been years since I had a laugh like that.”
    “It’s good for you to laugh like that once in a while. It clears the system.”
    “Well, sure,” he said, “I know.