Breakfast of Champions Page 0,62
Two. The old Keedsler Automobile Works became an armory instead of an appliance factory. All that survived of the Robo-Magic itself was its brain, which had told the rest of the machine when to let the water in, when to let the water out, when to slosh, when to rinse, when to spin dry, and so on.
That brain became the nerve center of the so-called “BLINC System” during the Second World War. It was installed on heavy bombers, and it did the actual dropping of bombs after a bombardier pressed his bright red “bombs away” button. The button activated the BLINC System, which then released the bombs in such a way as to achieve a desired pattern of explosions on the planet below. “BLINC” was an abbreviation of “Blast Interval Normalization Computer.”
22
AND I SAT THERE in the cocktail lounge of the new Holiday Inn, watching Dwayne Hoover stare into the bosom of the shirt of Kilgore Trout. I was wearing a bracelet which looked like this:
WO1 stood for Warrant Officer First Class, which was the rank of Jon Sparks.
The bracelet had cost me two dollars and a half. It was a way of expressing my pity for the hundreds of Americans who had been taken prisoner during the war in Viet Nam. Such bracelets were becoming popular. Each one bore the name of an actual prisoner of war, his rank, and the date of his capture.
Wearers of the bracelets weren’t supposed to take them off until the prisoners came home or were reported dead or missing.
I wondered how I might fit my bracelet into my story, and hit on the good idea of dropping it somewhere for Wayne Hoobler to find.
Wayne would assume that it belonged to a woman who loved somebody named WOI Jon Sparks, and that the woman and WOI had become engaged or married or something important on March 19th, 1971.
Wayne would mouth the unusual first name tentatively. “Woo-ee?” he would say. “Woe-ee? Woe-eye? Woy?”
• • •
There in the cocktail lounge, I gave Dwayne Hoover credit for having taken a course in speed-reading at night at the Young Men’s Christian Association. This would enable him to read Kilgore Trout’s novel in minutes instead of hours.
• • •
There in the cocktail lounge, I took a white pill which a doctor said I could take in moderation, two a day, in order not to feel blue.
• • •
There in the cocktail lounge, the pill and the alcohol gave me a terrific sense of urgency about explaining all the things I hadn’t explained yet, and then hurtling on with my tale.
Let’s see: I have already explained Dwayne’s uncharacteristic ability to read so fast. Kilgore Trout probably couldn’t have made his trip from New York City in the time I allotted, but it’s too late to bugger around with that. Let it stand, let it stand!
Let’s see, let’s see. Oh, yes—I have to explain a jacket Trout will see at the hospital. It will look like this from the back:
Here is the explanation: There used to be only one Nigger high school in Midland City, and it was an all-Nigger high school still. It was named after Crispus Attucks, a black man who was shot by British troops in Boston in 1770. There was an oil painting of this event in the main corridor of the school. Several white people were stopping bullets, too. Crispus Attucks himself had a hole in his forehead which looked like the front door of a birdhouse.
But the black people didn’t call the school Crispus Attucks High School anymore. They called it Innocent Bystander High.
And when another Nigger high school was built after the Second World War, it was named after George Washington Carver, a black man who was born into slavery, but who became a famous chemist anyway. He discovered many remarkable new uses for peanuts.
But the black people wouldn’t call that school by its proper name, either. On the day it opened, there were already young black people wearing jackets which looked like this from the back:
• • •
I have to explain, too, see, why so many black people in Midland City were able to imitate birds from various parts of what used to be the British Empire. The thing was, see, that Fred T. Barry and his mother and father were almost the only people in Midland City who could afford to hire Niggers to do the Nigger work during the Great Depression. They took over the old Keedsler Mansion, where Beatrice Keedsler,