Getting Rich

Old Moccasin Joe had a mind like the sky, and a mood like the sun or the moon. He worked at the old hardware store on the edge of town. Sometimes he invited us kids inside on the way to church and talked to us. He said life was a bench, told us, "Yeah, I been ridin' this Bench the last 65 years!" Old Joe wore an eyepatch and he chewed this tobacco that smelled like raspberries. "Your world's in terrible shape," he let us know. "If I was you, I'd plant a garden. You need to make an investment."

 

 

It was better than church, hangin' out with ole Moccasin Joe at the hardware store, leanin' back against the counter eatin' candy while he chewed his tabacky and batted his ears in the air and told us his crazyass stories.

 

But that was a long time ago.

Sitting here in the Wally Crazar waiting room reminds me of waiting in line for the bathroom in grade school, when I was in the special kids group, before I knew my chances. Another guest named Stumpy is spitting some yellow juice into a plastic bucket. His crackhead wife is gay, and she's sleeping with his sister Lulubelle, a prostitute. We get five hundred dollars apiece just for showing ourselves in the lineup today.

 

"There ain't no script on Crazar!" Stumpy bawls delightedly between bitter mouthfuls of the fluid, "I'm gone tell the TRUTH about Lorraine!"

 

"That's right, the truth."

 

It's about to start, I'll rub shit on my head, I'll do whatever it takes. Whatever the audience dares me to do. To win the commitment and trust of my unsuspecting bride-to-be, Tuftina. I gotta come clean. I have AIDS, and that's not my dick, it's a dildo! I had sex with your grandmother once, and you HAVE to forgive me! I love you SO much, oh Tufts!

 

There was a whole group of us special kids in grade-school, then over the years it got smaller and smaller. The others all called me "The Chin." We had to stand and wait to use the toilet instead of coming and going at will like the others; we might make a mistake, I suppose, or frighten someone.

 

But it doesn't matter now, I'm on the Wally Crazar show, where even our souls are on sale. I'm not crazy, we're all sucking blood, and it's blood that we're sucking, that hot, sweet taste. Each day more people are born, and more people die. And here we are selling our souls on TV. We sure do suck. I can already hear the crowd chanting next-door, money-crazed and buy-mad and cash-register-jawed-"CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR!"-it's about to start.

 

Tuftina's in another room right now, getting ready to go onstage too. They're probably telling her about the beads, and I know she won't like it. She must wonder what the hell she's doing here, a nice girl like her, on the Wally Crazar Show, of all places, fuck. But she came because she trusted me. And I gotta come clean.

 

Clark Quasar was the mayor of Tupelo City, Indiana years ago. On the final day of his sovereignty he was arrested with a hooker in the clammy shadows of a stoolie's backseat. "Hmmm, I thought this was some kind of escort service," he stammered incoherently as the pigs in blue hauled him away.  He gave up politics and turned into one of those bulldog accident lawyers you see on TV in the cities. "I'm Clark QUASAR," he promised, "and I'll get you as MUCH as I can  . . . as FAST as I can!"

 

After a few years, that shtick  even caught on with Tupelo City's teenagers. His name became part of their slang; if one skater attempted a trick with too much haste or zeal, the others would say he had "gone all Quasar on that shit." Clark reciprocated with balloons that showed his smiling face zipping along atop a skateboard, and commercials full of skater buzzwords (like he said he'd "shred" all insurance companies). After a while, all this seemed tired and old and played. He gave himself a nickname-he was Clark "The Crowbar" Quasar now-and several more ads were produced which featured it prominently.

 

Moccasin Joe could have had his own talk show too, I guess, but all he was selling was gumballs. Once he told us about the Other Night. In the Other Night, it wasn't dark, and you saw forever. Everything reflected something else, it was very tiny and very, very delicate, very very. But it was still night. But it was the Other Night. I don't think he was crazy at all, just extra-sensitive. Tuftina had a fight with him the night before they took him away, and he burned her arm pretty

good with a kerosene lamp. She had to use a special ointment for a month, and it smelled pretty bad, like fish or rotten mushrooms. You could smell it up and down

the motel hallway.

 

Joe started shredding his money and smoking it all in a corncob pipe. He said smoking your money made thinking feel good, and it turned his eyeballs pink

"That comes from a special pigment, one of the dyes they use!" He said there'd be a run on the banks, the economy would tank. I tried getting rich with him once

(that's what he called it), but it didn't taste good, and I didn't get high. It wasn't very rewarding. That's why I'm here.

 

"CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR!"

 

 

How did Clark Quasar get into showbiz? Hard to say. I think maybe he's addicted to something, like imaginary success or the illusion of triumph or something, and this show is how he gets his imaginary power fix. He changed his name to Wally Crazar, and now he walks around with that mike in his hand, in his glasses and brown tweed suit─he's an auctioneer, you can step right up. He keeps nodding and smiling and making wry comments, so diffident, lovable, sterile. It's a con, it's a con, it's a con. It's hard to think he was mayor of Tupelo City once. He never talks about it.

 

He's got a lot of rules. When a girl in the audience flashes her tits, one of Quasar's security guards will toss her a string of beads. Women come from all

over the country for that-"Ah'm just here for mah Crazar beads!" And there's a bell they ring to cue the fights. You have to at least PRETEND to fight or it's not

entertaining enough. He even has a go-go dancer now. She wiggles her ass in a leapordskin thong on a pedestal next to the stage. In a way his show's alright,

since it lets you know how fucked-up most people are. How scroungy and filthy and greedy and dumb we can be, what a crisis we're in, we people. It's honest, it

shows you the absolute bottom. But it's unfair to limit yourself or your neighbors like that. It's better than football games or soap operas or beauty contests,

because it's more honest. But Clark Quasar's exploiting the underdog. It's ten times worse than a script.

 

I was never really special except for my chin. But that was enough to blacklist me, and I didn't care. I didn't fit in, so I taught myself in secret. That's how I figured it out. That's why I'm here on the excellent, wonderful Wally Crazar show: to sell my chin.

 

 

"CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR! CRAY-ZAR!"

 

 

Moccasin Joe he said life was a bench. He said, "Yeah, I been ridin' the Bench for 65 years. Before that I was in the Park. You never seen a Parker sharp as I was. See, I ran and played, played played. I was in the Park. Then they put me on the Bench and I been ridin' that sweet thing from ever since. Hokey Madokey, here I am on the Bench, thass right, thass right . . ."

 

Money was big at the hardware store, and I guess it got to his mind. He put a gumball machine by the door, all the gumballs had dollar signs on them, and every month he'd paste a new invoice on the wall and tote each sale. Tuftina ran a daycare center out of the back room summers, and all the little kids would crawl around on the floor with the play-money Joe handed out, putting it into their mouths and tearing the corners, getting ready for the economic treadmill. Money was big with ole Moccasin Joe. I don't think he was crazy at all. Sure, they locked Joe up for being crazy, in a "home for the crazy," but I don't think he really was. Not even if it means I'm sane.

 

"Right this way, sir . . . "

 

An usher. He's pointing the way. Around here to the stage. Then up these stairs, to the stage. Right this way to a thousand eyes, and a thousand minds like knives.