The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [52]
O'Connor or Larry the Aviator or Bugsy Gonzalez whom he admired. "Fall in a ditch, stupid, and stay there," Einhorn said to him. "But the state troopers will have them rounded up before you're on the train, and the worst you'll have is a crowded ride and beans to eat." - The Commissioner, whose health hadn't been good lately, called from bed, "Let's see you, Cholly Chaplin, before you leave," and when Dingbat, looking wronged, and leg-bound in the deforming breeches, stood up to him, he said, colossally amused, "Ee-dyot!"--Dingbat drawn up in a consumption of misunderstood feelings. Mrs. Einhorn was frightened by the uniform and wept, hanging on Lollie Fewter's neck. Dingbat was bivouacked around Joiiet in rainy weather for a few days and came back leaner, blacker, ground into tiredness, with provoked eyes squinty from fatigue. But he took up with Nails immediately. He had gotten him a match in Muskegon, Michigan. Einhorn sent me along to get the lowdown on what happened to Dingbat and Nagel in the sticks. He said, "Augie, I owe you a holiday. If your friend Klein, whom I don't trust too much, will pinch-hit for you here a couple of afternoons, you can go and have an excursion. Maybe it'll give Nagel confidence to have somebody in his corner. Dingbat cracks the whip over him too much and gets him down. Maybe a cheerful third party--sursum corda. How good's your Latin, kid?" Einhorn was happy as the devil with his idea; when what he wanted coincided with a good deed, it made his emotions warm. He called his father and said, "Dad, give Augie here ten bucks. He's going on a trip for me"--thus to show that his generosity had an obstacle to pass. The Commissioner gladly gave, being openhanded and bland about any amount; in parting with dough he was exemplary. Dingbat was glad I was coming, and he made a speech to all, with that animal effrontery of his whenever he was in charge. "All right, fellas; we've got to click this time..." Poor Nails, he didn't look good in the Wasps AC mulberry jacket bagging over his muscles, and his togs in the bag hung down to his bowed giant gams as heavy as plumber's tools. An immense face like raked garden soil in need of water. And in this porous dryness, a pair of whity eyes fearing the worst, and a punch-formed nose. The worst, for that day, had already happened to somebody else; one of the Aiello brothers had been found shot to death in his roadster. There was a big spread on it in the Examiner; we read it in the pier bound trolley, and Nails thought he had played softball once against this Aiello. He was downcast. But it was still very early,. right after dawn, when the slum distances of the morning streets were hollow, with only a white drop of sun on the brinks of buildings. When we walked down the pier to the City of Saugatuck and came out of the shed, suddenly the town gloom ended in a flaming blue teeter of fresh water, from the black shore-ends down into the golden whiteness eastward. The white-leaded decks had just been washed down and were sparkling with colors of water in a Gulf of Mexico warmth, and the gulls let the air currents carry them around. Dingbat was finally happy. He got Nails to do his road work around the ship before the decks became too crowded. Eight hours on the water without exercise and he'd be too stiff to fight that night. So Nails threw himself into a trot, smiling; he was a changed man in this swift-water sunshine and the gulls dropping almost from a standstill to the surface for pieces of bread. He unpacked a few jabs from the top of his chest, ginger, technical, and dangerous, and Dingbat, in stripes like a locust's leg, advised him to put more shoulder into them. They were pretty convinced they were sailing to a victory. The two of them went into the rosy carpeting of the lounge for coffee. I stayed on deck in joy of the sun, the colors, up in the hay odors from the hatch where there were the horses of a yokel-circuit circus; it sent my blood happy to sit there in the blue and warm, with the slow air coming up against me from my feet in pretty much frazzled