about killings, paranoia, danger, and finishing drinks, Sweeney Among the Nightingales.
Heated and poisonous, the atmosphere. The erotic surroundings and glamour are agog at the easy brutality with which girls and music may be made: “He got an all girl orchestra and when he says ‘Strike up the band’, they hit it”. There is an air of purchasable sexual favours (“a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money”), and of diffused lust, “soft silky skin”, that sort of thing. It comes as something of a surprise, though a fair cop, when, after his fountain and his soft silky skin, there immediately comes, not “He got that mistress”, but “He got that fortress”. Sensible man.
There is instilling and distilling of fear in this gangsterish world. Question and answer can mount to interrogation or inquisition. A question is countered not with an answer but with a question.
You’ll say, “What are ya made of?”
He’ll say, “Can you repeat what you said?”
You’ll say, “What are you afraid of?”
He’ll say, “Nothing neither ’live nor dead”
That whole You’ll say / He’ll say routine is as if someone is being instructed in a code of behaviour, or coached not to blow it, some meeting with someone scary. And when you are asked to repeat your question (“Can you repeat what you said?”), perhaps asked threateningly, you will wisely substitute, thanks to the rhyme (made of / afraid of), words that just might make your listener think that he misheard you the first time. “What are ya made of?” might have been asking about the human qualities of which a man is made, compacted. (Chaucer: “A man maked all of sapience and virtue” – not our Handy Dandy, clearly.) But “What are you afraid of?” is a set-up, a silver salver with a brandy on it, an ingratiation pretending to be a challenge, perfectly happy with the answer that it knew it would precipitate: “Nothing neither ’live nor dead”.
But say we stay a moment with that first question: “What are ya made of?” One answer is as plain as the hard nose on Handy Dandy’s face: he is made of money. And sure enough, in no time at all the word can be heard to clink and to clinch. “Handy dandy, he got a stick in his hand and a pocket full of money”. The line takes much weight in the song, partly because this is the moment when the hand of Handy Dandy extends itself – and is immediately underlined by and.
“What are ya made of?” Well, this is a song that includes an all-girl orchestra and a girl named Nancy and “Boy, you talking crazy” and “Okay, boys”, so why not summon the traditional question and answer?
What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails
And puppy-dogs’ tails,
That’s what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
And all that’s nice,
That’s what little girls are made of.
Handy Dandy chimes all through the song with “sugar and candy”. This may suggest that he is sexually ambiguous, in with the sugar and spice girls. For there is a whole underworld or undergrowth of sexual equivocation here. The man who “got an all girl orchestra” and who “got that soft silky skin” may or may not be made of sugar and spice. A candy-bar punk is “a convict who has become a passive homosexual in prison”.106 “A girl named Nancy” might make us think of what a nancy boy would be (“an effeminate male homosexual”). “‘Anybody plays a guitar’s a goddamned nancy,’ said Lensky” (Sheldon, 1951). “He got a basket”: “Esp. Homosex. the scrotum and penis, esp. as outlined by the trousers”. And as for that “bag of sorrow”: notum the scrotum, an item there in Evan Hunter (1956), who, like Sheldon, shows us Handy Dandy types: “I was hooked clean through the bag and back again” – which just happens to chime with “around the world and back again”. Whereupon I call to mind that “around the world” is “to kiss or lick the entire body of one’s lover”.
Okay, boys, I’ll pull myself together. But Handy Dandy is an itchy scratchy raunchy song that does have affinities with an earlier world of Dylan’s, that of The Basement Tapes, of Million Dollar Bash and Please Mrs. Henry and Tiny Montgomery. The linguistic underworld may further remind us that the world of Handy Dandy might have a soft spot for hard drugs. Candy all around my brain. Sugar and candy are drug words, and so is crystal (“Narc. methamphetamine in powdered form”), and a stick, and a bag: “Narc. a small packet, typically an envelope or folded paper, containing heroin, marijuana, or the like”. He got “a bag full of sorrow”. Sorrow, not the ecstasy that you were hoping for.
But then candy is wonderfully capacious, happy not to exclude anything whatsoever that is “excellent, easy”: “Fine and dandy. You’re all the candy”.107 A candy kid is “a fellow who is lucky, successful, or held in high favor, esp. with women”, and a candy-leg “a wealthy fellow who is attractive to women”.
The point of all this rooting around in suspect words is not that Handy Dandy tells a clear story about the drug world or the gangster world or the polymorphous perverse world. An unclear story is the point, with sharp vignettes glimpsed within the murk. There is a multitude of sins swilling around in the song: envy and covetousness, plus greed – “sugar and candy”, “Pour him another brandy”108 – and a touch of sloth: “Handy dandy, sitting with a girl named Nancy in a garden feelin’ kind of lazy”. That undulating line is long and languorous, with all the time in the world, honey, and with the participles “sitting” and “feelin’” stretching their legs, and with the rhymes stretching themselves too: Handy dandy . . . Nancy . . . lazy . . . crazy. Many sins, and some guilt perhaps, and all this then set against a disconcerting reminder of innocence. For nursery rhymes – “What are little boys made of?” – recall innocence, even if it is innocence lost. And Under the Red Sky, the album that houses Handy Dandy, is a combination of ancient nursery rhymes and of modern malaise: cursery rhymes (not cursory ones). Such is the title song itself, Under the Red Sky, and such is 10,000 Men, and 2 x 2. Ding Dong Bell: Cat’s in the Well.109
Handy Dandy is a game, one that Handy Dandy is happy to play rough.
A person conceals an object in one of his two closed hands, and invites his companion to tell which hand contains the object in the following words: Handy-Bandy, sugar-candy, Which hand wun yo have?110
Often the game has a further act of hiding in it, hiding the hands behind one’s back before offering them. One oddity is that the figurative application of “handy dandy” gets an earlier citation in The Oxford English Dictionary than does the game itself (1579 as against 1585). Sugar-candy has long been the due rhyme (“Handy pandy, Sugary candy, / Which will you have?”), but other jinglings like “prickly prandy” have found themselves called on.111 “Handy-spandy, Jack-a-dandy, / Which good hand will you have?” The conjunction of this question – “Which hand?” – with that other nursery-rhyme question, “What are little boys made of?”, underlies the run of four questions in the song’s bridge, beginning “What are ya made of?” And it is apt to the atmosphere of the song that “handy dandy” came to have the meaning “Something held or offered in the closed hand; a covert bribe or present.” He got “a pocket
