Free The Magic Christian by Terry Southern Page A

but also producing several rather large cracks in the sidewalk.
    Within a few minutes the area was swollen with onlookers—all but the nearest of whom had to crane their heads wildly or leap up and down to get a glimpse of the man in the tin hat now as he squatted to examine the almost invisible dust of the cracker. “Sure mashed it, didn’t it?” he muttered, as to himself, in a professional manner.
    “What’d he say?” demanded several people urgently of those near the operation.
    “Said it ‘sure mashed it,’” someone explained.
    “ ‘Mashed it’?” snorted another. “Boy, you can say that again!”
    Guy Grand was on the scene as well, observing the diverse comments and sometimes joining in.
    “Hey, how come you doin’ that?” he asked directly of the man in the tin hat.
    The man laid out another cracker, placing it with great care.
    “This?” he said, standing and raising the big sledge. “Oh, this is all technical.”
    “What’s he say?”
    “Says it’s technical.”
    “What?”
    “Technical.”
    “Yeah, well, what’s that he’s hitting with the hammer? What is that? It looks like a cracker.”
    “Naw, what’d he hit a cracker for—you kiddin’?”
    “Boy, look how that sledge busts up the sidewalk! Man, that’s some sledge he’s got there!”
    Within a very short time indeed, the gathering had spilled over into the street, interfering with the traffic there and causing the tough Forty-Second Street cop to wade growling into the heart of the crowd. “Okay, break it up!” he kept saying. “Shove off!” And when he reached the center where the operation was being carried out, he stood for a long while with his cap pushed back on his head, hands on hips, and a nasty frown on his face, as he watched the man in the tin hat smash a few more crackers with the giant sledge.
    “Are you workin’ for the city, bud?” he finally asked in an irate voice.
    “That’s right,” said the tin-hat man without looking up. “City planning. This is technical.”
    “Yeah,” said the cop, “well, you sure picked a hell of a place to do it, that’s all I got to say.” Then, adjusting his cap, he started pushing at the crowd.
    “Okay, let’s keep movin’!” he shouted. “Break it up here! Get on to work! This is technical— shove off!”
    Diversion is at a premium at this hour however, and the crowd was not to be dispersed so easily. After a while the hoses had to be brought. When the ruse was discovered, Grand had a spot of bother clearing it.

XIV
    “P ERHAPS G INGER COULD slip into one of your things,” suggested Guy.
    Esther childlishly covered her mouth to hide a laugh, and darted glances of mischief and glee at the others, while Agnes drew in her breath before speaking:
    “I’m afraid we do not take the same size, Guy!”
    Agnes, thin as a whip, was perhaps a size nine; Ginger’s great size must have been well into the sixties.
    Ginger, too, shook her head emphatically.
    “Charles would simply die if I wore a frock he hadn’t done!” she said.
    “Has Charles done any chemises for you?” Guy inquired.
    “I wanted Charles to do some little Roman chemises for me, Guy,” Ginger confided. “I think I have the fullness for them—well, it would have meant giving up all my little feminine frills and laces, of course, and Charles simply would not hear of it! He said it would be a perfect crime —and he does so love to work with his laces, Guy, I simply didn’t have the heart! But then what’s your feeling on it, Guy?” she asked finally, giving a Carmenesque toss of her head.
    “Charles could be right, of course,” said Guy, after allowing it a moment’s thought.
    Grand gave a bit of a shock to the British white-hunters along the Congo (as well as to a couple of venerable old American writers who were there on safari at the time) when he turned up in a major hunting expedition with a 75-millimeter howitzer.
    “She throws a muzzle-velocity of twelve thousand f.p.s.,”