Free A Bad Man by Stanley Elkin Page A

plates?”
    “No sir.”
    “How about molds for manhole covers, have you poured any of those?”
    “No sir.”
    “Stop signs? ‘Busses Must Halt at Railroad Crossings, Open Doors and Blow Horn’? ‘Caution—S Curve’?”
    “No sir,” Feldman said.
    “Well now,” Plubo said. “That’s all right. Don’t be nervous. We’ll find something for you. I know. Have you bristled brushes?”
    “Sir, I owned a department store.”
    “Well, if you’ll forgive me, Feldman, we don’t have much demand for that kind of experience in here. Stand up straight a moment. Turn around.”
    Feldman did what he was told.
    “You’re a pretty big fella, aren’t you?” Plubo said.
    “I’m heavy, yes,” Feldman said. “I’ve always eaten all I’ve wanted of the things I’ve liked.”
    “Yes,” Plubo said. “Of course you have. Have you played much sports?”
    “No sir,” Feldman said. “I haven’t lived very physically.”
    Plubo considered him, and then came around from behind his desk. “Let me feel those arms,” he said. He squeezed Feldman’s arms, digging hard into the flabby biceps. He put both hands around Feldman’s left arm and increased the pressure steadily.
    He knows, Feldman thought. He knows about the homun-culus.
    Plubo let go of Feldman’s arm. “A man your size, I see you on the football field,” he said ominously. “No? You don’t think so?”
    Feldman rubbed his arm.
    Plubo had seated himself behind his desk again. He put on his glasses and studied some papers. “Report to the canteen,” he said. “ Dismissed .” He hissed the word contemputously. “Jerk,” he said, “jerk clerk. Bad man. You make me sick—you and your comfortable kind. All the bad men in here are clerks. Like you. They’re not in the foundries, not in the shops. None of them. They’d be a danger to themselves, to others. Glutton. Pig. Sedentary piece of shit. You’re dismissed, I said! ”
    Feldman turned to go.
    You salute me, you jerk clerk jerk. And you say ‘Thank you, Major Plubo, sir.’”
    “Thank you, Major Plubo, sir,” Feldman said. He was terrified.
    “We’ve got your number,” Plubo shouted as Feldman closed the door. “We’ve got your number, and it’s zero. It’s nothing. Jerk clerk, clerk jerk. Nothing! ”
    Feldman, breathless, stood beyond Plubo’s door and cursed the surreal. Well, it was cheap , he thought.
    Calm again, he asked a guard to unlock the door for him, but the man wouldn’t let him back into the other wing until he had gotten another pass. For a pass he needed another permission slip. He was afraid to show the permission slip he already had; he didn’t know if it was valid in this wing. He waited twenty minutes for a pencil man to get another one.
    “Not on this side,” the pencil man said angrily when Feldman told him what he wanted. “On this side you get permission slips from the opposite number.”
    “I don’t understand,” Feldman said.
    “Who’d you just see?”
    “Major Plubo.”
    “Major Plubo is in charge of Inmate Personnel. His opposite number is Major Joyce in Personnel. Rap three times and jiggle the doorknob twice so he’ll know what you’re there for.”
    Feldman nodded.
    “It’s a cross-check. There’s got to be cross-checks. Otherwise a con could float around in here indefinitely without ever reporting to the man he’s been given the pass to see. It’s an angle.”
    “There’s got to be curves and there’s got to be angles,” Feldman said ardently. He understood. The place was not surreal; it was a place of vicious, plodding sequiturs , though not even the oldest lifers fully understood it, not even the warden.

7
    I ’11 explain the operation,” Manfred Sky told him when he reported to the canteen. “Mr. Flesh is my assistant. And Walls here is in charge of stock. You’re his assistant.”
    Feldman nodded. Walls was arranging packages of gum in a pyramid.
    “You had a department store on the outside. That’s very