Confederacy of Dunces, A - John Kennedy Toole [70]
“You wouldn’t be working in here, son. I mean as a vendor.”
“What?” Ignatius bellowed. “Out in the rain and snow all day long?”
“It don’t snow here.”
“It has on rare occasions. It probably would again as soon as I trudged out with one of these wagons. I would probably be found in some gutter, icicles dangling from all of my orifices, alley cats pawing over me to draw the warmth from my last breath. No, thank you, sir. I must go. I suspect that I have an appointment of some sort.”
Ignatius looked absently at his little watch and saw that it had stopped again.
“Just for a little while,” the old man begged. “Try it for a day. How’s about it? I need vendors bad.”
“A day?” Ignatius repeated disbelievingly. “A day? I can’t waste a valuable day. I have places to go and people to see.”
“Okay,” the old man said firmly. “Then pay me the dollar you owe for them weenies.”
“I am afraid that they will all have to be on the house. Or on the garage or whatever it is. My Miss Marple of a mother discovered a number of theater ticket stubs in my pockets last night and has given me only carfare today.”
“I’ll call in the police.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Pay me! Pay me or I’ll get the law.”
The old man picked up the long fork and deftly placed its two rotting tongs at Ignatius’s throat.
“You are puncturing my imported muffler,” Ignatius screamed.
“Gimme your carfare.”
“I can’t walk all the way to Constantinople Street.”
“Get a taxi. Somebody at your house can pay the driver when you get there.”
“Do you seriously think that my mother will believe me if I tell her that an old man held me up with a fork and took my two nickels?”
“I’m not gonna be robbed again,” the old man said, spraying Ignatius with saliva. “That’s all that happens to you in the hot dog trade. Hot dog vendors and gas station attendants always get it. Holdups, muggings. Nobody respects a hot dog vendor.”
“That is patently untrue, sir. No one respects hot dog vendors more than I. They perform one of our society’s few worthwhile services. The robbing of a hot dog vendor is a symbolic act. The theft is not prompted by avarice but rather by a desire to belittle the vendor.”
“Shut your goddam fat lip and pay me.”
“You are quite adamant for being so aged. However, I am not walking fifty blocks to my home. I would rather face death by rusty fork.”
“Okay, buddy, now listen to me. I’ll make a bargain with you. You go out and push one of these wagons for an hour, and we’ll call it quits.”
“Don’t I need clearance from the Health Department or something? I mean, I might have something beneath my fingernails that is very debilitating to the human system. Incidentally, do you get all of your vendors this way? Your hiring practices are hardly in step with contemporary policy. I feel as if I’ve been shanghaied. I am too apprehensive to ask how you go about firing your employees.”
“Just don’t ever try to rob a hot dog man again.”
“You’ve just made your point. Actually, you have made two of them, literally in my throat and muffler. I hope that you are prepared to compensate for the muffler. There are no more of its kind. It was made in a small factory in England that was destroyed by the Luftwaffe. At the time it was rumored that the Luftwaffe was directed to strike directly at the factory in order to destroy British morale, for the Germans had seen Churchill wrapped in a muffler of this sort in a confiscated newsreel. For all I know, this may be the same one that Churchill was wearing in that particular Movietone. Today their value is somewhere in the thousands. It can also be worn as a shawl. Look.”
“Well,” the old man said finally, after watching Ignatius employ the muffler as a cummerbund, a sash, a cloak, and a pair of kilts, a sling for a broken arm, and a kerchief, “you ain’t gonna do too much damage to Paradise Vendors in one hour.”
“If the alternatives are jail or a pierced Adam’s apple, I shall happily push one of your carts. Though I can’t predict how far