The Water-Method Man

Ralph tried to guide him through the studio. 'This is the editing room where we ...' Bogus fought falling asleep on his feet. In the darkroom, the smell of chemicals was too much for him: the chemicals, the old bourbon, Mulcahy's coffee and the darkroom-reminder of Couth. His elbow slipped into a tub of stop bath, he slopped some fixer on his pants and threw up in a developer tank.

Ralph helped him out of his clothes, rinsed him off over the darkroom sink and searched through Trumper's suitcase for some clean clothes. He found none, but he had some old clothes of his own at the studio, and he dressed Trumper in them. A pair of yellow corduroy bell-bottom pants; Trumper's feet stopped at the knees. A cream-colored blouse with ruffles and puffed sleeves; Trumper's hands stopped at the elbows. A pair of green cowboy boots; Trumper's toes reached to their arch. He felt like a dwarf clown of Robin Hood's Merrymen.

'Great White Duck Hunter not feeling so good?' Ralph asked.

'I'd like to sleep for about four days,' Trumper admitted. 'Then I want to make movies, Ralph. Lots of movies, lots of money. Buy some new clothes,' he mumbled, stumbling in Ralph's yellow bell-bottoms. 'And a sailboat for Colm.'

'Poor Thump-Thump,' Ralph said. 'I know a good place for you to sleep.' He rolled up the absurd bell-bottoms so that Trumper could more or less walk, then called a cab.

'So that's the great Thump-Thump,' Kent said; he had heard stories. He sulked in a wing of the viewing room, holding a reel like a discus he would have liked to have thrown at Bogus. Kent saw his sound-tracking career being pre-empted by this clown called Thump-Thump who looked like an Elizabethan puppet in Ralph's big clothes.

'Get the suitcase, Kent,' Ralph said.

'Where are you taking him?' Kent said.

And Trumper thought, Yes, where am I going?

'Tulpen's,' Ralph said.

It was German. Trumper knew the word; Tulpen means tulips in German. And Trumper thought, That certainly sounds like a nice place to sleep.

35

Old Thak Undone! Biggie Puts on Weight!

BIGGIE AND COUTH were lovely to him. Without any talk about it, they made up the extra bed in Colm's room. Colm went to bed about eight, and Trumper would lie on the other bed, storytelling until Colm fell asleep.

The story he told was his own version of Moby Dick, which seemed appropriate for that sea-house. Colm thought whales were wonderful, so the story according to Trumper was the whale-as-hero, Moby Dick as unvanquished king.

'How big is he?' Colm asked.

'Well,' Trumper said, 'if you were floating in the water and his tail slapped you, you'd be worse off than an ordinary fly getting hit with a fly swatter.' A long pause from Colm. In the fishbowl above his bed, he watched the fragile orange fish from New York, the bus-ride survivor.

'Go on,' Colm said.

And Trumper went on and on. 'Anyone with any sense would have known enough to leave Moby Dick alone,' he said. 'All the other whaling men just wanted to hunt the other whales. But not Captain Ahab.'

'Right,' said Colm.

'Some of the other men had been hurt or had lost their arms and legs hunting whales, but it didn't make them hate whales,' Trumper said. 'But ...' and he paused ...

'But not Captain Ahab!' Colm cried out.

'Right,' said Trumper. The wrongness of Ahab grew clear.

'Tell me about all the things sticking into Moby Dick,' Colm said.

'You mean the old harpoons?'

'Right.'

'Well, there were old harpoons,' Trumper said, 'with ropes still hanging off them. Short harpoons and long harpoons, and some knives, and all the other kinds of things that men had tried to stick into him ...'

'Like what?'

'Splinters?' Trumper wondered. 'Sure, from all the boats he'd smashed, he picked up splinters. And barnacles, because he was so old; and seaweed all over him, and snails. He was like an old island, he'd picked up so much junk; he wasn't a clean white.'

'And nothing could kill him, right?'