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What does she care for the atom bomb, the bed bugs, the cancer rent, Friendly Finance waiting to re- possess her delinquent flesh.... Sweet dreams, Panto- pon Rose." The real scene you pinch up some leg flesh and make a quick stab hole with a pin. Then fit the dropper over, not in the hole and feed the solution slow and careful so it doesn't squirt out the sides.... When I grabbed the Rube's thigh the flesh came up like wax and stayed there, and a slow drop of pus oozed out the hole. And I never touched a living body cold as the Rube there in Philly.... I decided to lop him off if it meant a smother party. (This is a rural English custom designed to eliminate aged and bedfast dependents. A family so afflicted throws a "smother party" where the guests pile mat- tresses on the old liability, climb up on top of the mat- resses and lush themselves out. ) The Rube is a drag on the industry and should be led out into the skid rows of the world. (This is an African practice. Official known as the "Leader Out" has the function of taking old characters out into the jungle and leaving them there. ) The Rube's attacks become an habitual condition. Cops, doormen, dogs, secretaries snarl at his approach. The blond God has fallen to untouchable vileness. Con men don't change, they break, shatter -- explosions of matter in cold interstellar space, drift away in cosmic dust, leave the empty body behind. Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside.... I left the Rube standing on a corner, red brick slums to the sky, under a steady rain of soot. "Going to hit this croaker I know. Right back with that good pure drug- store M.... No, you wait here -- don't want him to rumble you." No matter how long, Rube, wait for me right on that corner. Goodbye, Rube, goodbye kid.... Where do they go when they walk out and leave the body behind? Chicago: invisible hierarchy of decorated wops, smell of atrophied gangsters, earthbound ghost hits you at North and Halstead, Cicero, Lincoln Park, pan- handler of dreams, past invading the present, rancid magic of slot machines and roadhouses. Into the Interior: a vast subdivision, antennae of tele- vision to the meaningless sky. In lifeproof houses they hover over the young, sop up a little of what they shut out. |
