Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction by Vonnegut Kurt

Author:Vonnegut, Kurt [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780795318719
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2011-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

The Powder-Blue

Dragon

A thin young man with big grimy hands crossed the sun-softened asphalt of the seaside village’s main street, went from the automobile dealership where he worked to the post office. The village had once been a whaling port. Now its natives served the owners and renters of mansions on the beachfront.

The young man mailed some letters and bought stamps for his boss. Then he went to the drugstore next door on business of his own. Two summer people, a man and a woman his age, were coming out as he was going in. He gave them a sullen glance, as though their health and wealth and lazy aplomb were meant to mock him.

He asked the druggist, who knew him well, to cash his own personal check for five dollars. It was drawn on his account at a bank in the next town. There was no bank in the village. His name was Kiah.

Kiah had moved his money, which was quite a lot, from a savings account into checking. The check Kiah handed the druggist was the first he had ever written. It was in fact numbered 1. Kiah didn’t need the five dollars. He worked off the books for the automobile dealer, and was paid in cash. He wanted to make sure a check written by him was really money, would really work.

“My name is written on top there,” he said.

“I see that,” said the druggist. “You’re certainly coming up in the world.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kiah, “it’s good.” Was it ever good! Kiah thought maybe the druggist would faint if he knew how good that check was.

“Why would I worry about a check from the most honest, hardworking boy in town?” The druggist corrected himself. “A checking account makes you a big man now, just like J.P. Morgan.”

“What kind of a car does he drive?” asked Kiah.

“Who?”

“J.R. Morgan.”

“He’s dead. Is that how you judge people, by the cars they drive?” The druggist was seventy years old, very tired, and looking for somebody to buy his store. “You must have a very low opinion of me, driving a secondhand Chevy.” He handed Kiah five one-dollar bills.

Kiah named the Chevy’s model instantly: “Malibu.”

“I think maybe working for Daggett has made you car-crazy.” Daggett was the dealer across the street. He sold foreign sports cars there, and had another showroom in New York City. “How many jobs you got now, besides Daggett?”

“Wait tables at the Quarterdeck weekends, pump gas at Ed’s nights.” Kiah was an orphan who lived in a boardinghouse. His father had worked for a landscape contractor, his mother as a chambermaid at the Howard Johnson’s out on the turnpike. They were killed in a head-on collision in front of the Howard Johnson’s when Kiah was sixteen. The police had said the crash was their fault. His parents had no money, and their secondhand Plymouth Fury was totaled, so they didn’t even have a car to leave him.

“I worry about you, Kiah,” said the druggist. “All work and no play.

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