Ted circles "c, "but not because that is necessarily what he'd do in that situation. On the whole he tends to think that he'd go for "a, "presuming he could at least ask the "Young Man "a few questions about where the loot came from. And if outright torture wasn't involved (and he would know, wouldn't he, no matter what the "Young Man" might have to say on the subject), sure, here's your money, Vaya con Dios. And why? Because Ted Brautigan happens to believe that the owner of the defunct candystore had a point: THEIR KILLING THE LITTLE MAN.
But he circles "c", and five days later he finds himself in the anteroom of an out-of-business dance studio in San Francisco (his train-fare from Sacramento prepaid), along with three other men and a sullenlooking teenage girl (the girl's the former Tanya Leeds of Bryce, Colorado, as it turns out). Better than four hundred people showed up for the test in the gym, lured by the honeypot ad. Goats, for the most part.
Here, however, are four sheep. One per cent. And even this, as Brautigan will discover in the full course of time, is an amazing catch.
Eventually he is shown into an office marked PBRKTE. It is mostly filled with dusty ballet stuff. A broad-shouldered, hard-faced man in a brown suit sits in a folding chair, incongruously surrounded by filmy pink tutus. Ted thinks, A real toad in an imaginary garden.
The man sits forward, arms on his elephantine thighs. "Mr.
Brautigan, "he says, "I may or may not be a toad, but I can offer you the job of a lifetime. I can also send you out of here with a handshake and a much-obliged. It depends on the answer to one question. A question about a question, in fact."
The man, whose name turns out to be Frank Armitage, hands Ted a sheet of paper. On it, blown up, is Question 23, the one about the Young Man and the Satchel of Money.
"You circled 'c,' "Frank Armitage says. "So now, luith absolutely no hesitation whatever, please tell me why."
"Because 'c' was what you wanted," Ted replies with absolutely no hesitation whatever.
"And how do you know that?"
"Because I'm a telepath," Ted says. "And that's what you 're really looking for. "He tries to keep his poker face and thinks he succeeds pretty well, but inside he's filled with a great and singing relief. Because he's found a job? No. Because they'll shortly make him an offer that would make the prizes on the new TV quiz shows look tame? No.
Because someone finally wants what he can do.
Because someone finally wants him.
SEVEN
The job offer turned out to be another honeypot, but Brautigan was honest enough in his taped memoir to say he might have gone along even if he'd known the truth.
"Because talent won't be quiet, doesn't know how to be quiet," he said. "Whether it's a talent for safe-cracking, thoughtreading, or dividing ten-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It never shuts up. It'll wake you in the middle of your tiredest night, screaming, 'Use me, use me, use me! I'm tired of just sitting here! Use me, f**khead, use me!'"
Jake broke into a roar of pre-adolescent laughter. He covered his mouth but kept laughing through his hands. Oy looked up at him, those black eyes with die gold wedding rings floating in them, grinning fiendishly.
There in the room filled with the frilly pink tutus, his fedora hat cocked back on his crewcut head, Armitage asked if Ted had ever heard of "the South American Seabees." When Ted replied that he hadn't, Armitage told him that a consortium of wealthy South American businessmen, mostly Brazilian, had hired a bunch of American engineers, construction workers, and roughnecks in 1946. Over a hundred in all. These were the South American Seabees. The consortium hired them all for a fouryear period, and at different pay-grades, but the pay was extremely generous-almost embarrassingly so-at all grades.
A 'dozer operator might sign a contract for $20,000 a year, for instance, which was tall tickets in those days. But there was more: a bonus equal to one year's pay. A total of $100,000. If, that was, the fellow would agree to one unusual condition: you go, you work, and you don't come back until the four years are up or the work is done. You got two days off every week, just like in America, and you got a vacation every year, just like in America, but in the pampas. You couldn't go back to North America (or even Rio) until your four-year hitch was over. If you died in South America, you got planted there-no one was going to pay to have your body shipped back to Wilkes-Barre. But you got fifty grand up front, and a sixty-day grace period during which you could spend it, save it, invest it, or ride it like a pony. If you chose investment, that fifty grand might be seventy-five when you came waltzing out of the jungle with a bone-deep tan, a whole new set of muscles, and a lifetime of stories to tell. And, of course, once you were out you had what the limeys liked to call "the other half to put on top of it.
This was like that, Armitage told Ted earnestly. Only the front half would be a cool quarter of a million and the back end half a million.
"Which sounded incredible," Ted said from the Wollensak.