The Reference

"Warp."

"In the character?"

"He warp ever' which way."

"You don't think we should consider him, then."

"My friend Shel McPartland, whom I have known deeply and intimately and too well for more than twenty years, is, sir, a brilliant OK engineer--master builder--cum--city and state planner. He'll plan your whole cotton-pickin' state for you, if you don't watch him. Right down to the flowers on the sideboard in the governor's mansion. He'll choose marginalia."

"I, sir, am not familiar, sir, with that particular bloom, sir."

"Didn't think you would be, you bein' from Arkansas and therefore likely less than literate. You are the Arkansas State Planning Commission, are you not?"

"I am one of it. Mr. McPartland gave you as a reference."

"Well, sir, let me tell you, sir, that my friend Shel McPartland, who has incautiously put me down as a reference, has a wide-ranging knowledge of all modern techniques, theories, dodges, orthodoxies, heresies, new and old innovations and scams of all kinds. The only thing about him is, he warp."

"Sir, it is not necessary to use dialect when being telephone-called from the state of Arkansas."

"Different folk I talk to in different ways. I got to keep myself interested."

"I understand that. Leaving aside the question of warp for (continued on page 186)the reference(continued from page 163) a minute, let me ask you this: Is Mr. McPartland what you would call a hard worker?"

"Hard, but warp. He sort of goes off in a his own direction."

"Not a team player."

"Very much a team player. You get you your team out there and he'll play it, and beat it, all by his own self."

"Does he fiddle with women?"

"No. He has too much love and respect for women. He has so much love and respect for women that he has nothing to do with them."

"You said earlier that you wouldn't trust him to salt a mine shaft with silver dollars."

"Well, sir, that was before I fully understood the nature of your interest. I thought maybe you were thinking of going into business with him. Or some other damn-fool thing of that sort. Now that I understand that it's a government gig. ... You folk don't go around salting mine shafts with silver dollars, do you?"

"No, sir, that work comes under the competence of the Arkansas Board of Earth Resources."

"So, not to worry."

"But it doesn't sound very likely, if I may say so, Mr. Cockburn, sir, that Mr. McPartland would neatly infit with our outfit. Which must of necessity, as I'm sure you're hip to, sir, concern itself mostly with the mundanities."

"McPartland is sublime with the mundanities."

"Truly?"

"You should see him tying his shoes. Tying other people's shoes. He's good at inking in. Excellent at erasing. One of the great erasers of our time. Plotting graphs. Figuring use densities. Diddling flow charts. Inflating statistics. Issuing modestly deceptive reports. Chairing and charming. Dowsing for foundation funds. Only a fool and a simpleton, sir, would let a McPartland slip through his fingers."

"But before you twigged to the fact, sir, that your role was that of a referencer, you signaled grave and serious doubts."

"I have them still. I told you he was warp and he is warp. I am attempting, dear friend, to give you McPartland in the round. The whole man. The gravamen and the true gin. When we reference it up, here in the shop, we don't stint. Your interrobang meets our galgenspiel. We do good work."

"But is he reliable?"

"Reliability, sir, is much overrated. He is inspired. What does this lick pay, by the way?"

"In the low forties, with perks."

"The perks include?"

"Arkansas air. Chauffeured VW to and from place of employment. Crab gumbo in the cafeteria every Tuesday. Ruffles and flourishes played on the Muzak upon entry and exit from building. Crab gumbo in the cafeteria every Thursday. Sabbaticals every second, third and fifth year. Ox stoptions."

"The latter term is not known to me."

"Holder of the post is entitled to stop a run-mad ox in the main street of Little Rock every Saturday at high noon, preventing thereby the mashing to strawberry yoghurt of one small child furnished by management. Photograph of said act to appear in the local blats the following Sunday, along with awarding of medal by the mayor. On TV."

"Does the population never tire of this heroicidal behavior?"

"It's bread and circuitry in the modern world, sir, and no place in that world is more modern than Arkansas."

"Wherefrom do you get your crabs?"

"From our great sister state of Lose-eanna, whereat the best world-class eating crabs hang out."

"The McPartland is a gumbohead from way back, this must be known to you from your other investigations."

"The organization is not to be tweedled with. Shel-baby's partialities will be catered to, if and when. Now, I got a bunch more questions here. Like, is he good?"

"Good don't come close. One need only point to his accomplishments in re the sewer system of Detroit, Mich. By the sewage of Detroit I sat down and wept, from pure stunned admiration."

"Is he fake?"

"Not more than anybody else. He has facades, but who does not?"

"Does he know the blue lines?"

"Excellent with the blue lines."

"Does he know the old songs?"

"He'll crack your heart with the old songs."

"Does he have the right moves?"

"People all over America are sitting in darkened projection rooms right this minute, studying the McPartland moves."

"What's this dude look like?"

"Handsome as the dawn. If you can imagine a bald dawn."

"You mean he's old?"

"Naw, man, he's young. A boy of fortyfive, just like the rest of us. The thing is, he thinks so hard he done burned all the hair off his head. His head overheats."

"Is that a danger to standers-by?"

"Not if they exercise due caution. Don't stand too close."

"Maybe he's too fine for us."

"I don't think so. He's got a certain common-as-dirt quality. That's right under his laser-sharp MIT quality."

"He sounds maybe a shade too rich for our blood. For us folk here in the down-home heartland."

"Lemme see, Arkansas, that's one of them newer states, right? Down there at the bottom edge? Right along with New Mexico and Florida and such as that?"

"Mr. Cohkburn, sir, are you jiving me?"

"Would I jive you?"

"Just for the record, how would you describe your personal relation to Mr. McPartland?"

"Oh, I think 'blood enemy' might do it. Might come close. At the same time, I am forced to acknowledge merit. In whatever obscene forms it chooses to take, McPartland worked on the kiss of death, did you know that? When he was young. Never did get it perfected, but the theoretical studies were elegant, elegant. He's what you might call a engineer's engineer. He designed the artichoke that is all heart. You pay a bit of a premium for it, but you don't have to do all that peeling."

"Some people like the peeling. The leaf-by-leaf unveiling."

"Well, some people like to bang their heads against stone walls, don't they? Some people like to sleep with their sisters. Some people like to put on suits and ties and go sit in a concert hall and listen to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, for God's sake. Some people----"

"Is this part of his warp?"

"It's related to his warp. The warp to power."

"Any other glaring defects or lesions of the usual that you'd like to touch upon----"

"No, I don't think so. He's working on his book now, I believe."

"What denomination of book is that?"

"Well, he was in that plane crash, you know? In the Himalayas? Where all those folk were huddled without food or water for thirty-eight days on the side of a mountain? Where in the last desperate hours they commenced to eat one another? Well, McPartland was one of the survivors, of course, and he signed a contract to write a book about it."

"A first-person account?"

"A cookbook."

"Warp city!"

"Yes. I always wondered why he carried that little bottle of thyme around with him. Now you, I perceive, have got this bad situation down there in the great state of Arkansas. Your population is exploding. It's mobile. You got people moving freely about, colliding and colluding, pairing off just as they please and exploding the population some more, lollygagging and sailboating and making leather moccasins from kits and God knows what all. And enjoying free speech and voting their heads off and vetoing bond issues carefully thought up and packaged and rigged by the Arkansas State Planning Commission. And generally helter-skeltering around under the gross equity of the democratic system. Is that the position, sir?"

"Worse. Arkansas is, at present, pure planarchy."

"I intuited as much. And you need someone who can get the troops back on the track or tracks. Give them multifamily dwellings, green belts, dayrooms, grog rations and pleasure stamps. Return the great state of Arkansas to its originary tidiness. Exert a planipotentiary beneficience while remaining a masked marvel. Whose very existence is known only to the choice few."

"Exactly right. Can McPartland do it?"

"Sitting on his hands. Will you go to fifty?"

"Fervently and with pleasure, sir. It's little enough for such a treasure."

"I take ten percent off the top, sir."

"And can I send you as well, sir, a crate of armadillo steaks, sugar-cured, courtesy of the A.S.P.C.? It's a dream of beauty, sir, this picture that you've limned."

"Not a dream, sir, not a dream. Engineers, sir, never sleep, and dream only in the daytime."