The Fireside Treasury of Modern Humor

Citation preview

|

rireside Treasury of Modern Humor —

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/firesidetreasuryOO0OOunse_m8z9


” said George. “How about another martini?” I said. “Have you noticed the martinis aren’t as strong as they used to be?” “Yes,” said George, “you said that twice before.” PO) gelsaid eoier I got to thinking about poor old George while I was shaving this morning, and I stopped for a moment and looked at my own reflection in the mirror. They don’t seem to be using the same kind of glass in mirrors any more.

The Bedchamber Mystery

“ie C. S. FORESTER Now that more than a hundred years have passed one of the scandals in my family can be told. It is very doubtful if Miss Forester (she was Eulalie, but being the eldest daughter unmarried, she of course was Miss Forester) and Miss Emily Forester and Miss Eunice Forester ever foresaw the world to which their story would

be told; in fact it is inconceivable that they could have believed that there ever would be a world in which their story could be told blatantly in public print. At that time it was the sort of thing that could only be hinted at in whispers during confidential moments in feminine drawing rooms, but it was whispered about enough to reach in the end the ears of my grandfather, who was their nephew, and my grandfather told it to me. Miss Forester and Miss Emily and Miss Eunice Forester were maiden ladies of a certain age. The old-fashioned Georgian house in which they lived kept itself modestly retired, just like its inhabitants, from what there was of bustle and excitement in the High Street of the market town. The ladies indeed led a retired life; they went to church a little, they visited those of the sick whom it was decent and proper for maiden ladies to visit, they read the more colorless of the novels in the circulating library, and sometimes they entertained other ladies at tea. And once a week they entertained a man. It might almost be said that they went from week to week looking forward to those evenings. Dr. Acheson was (not one of the old ladies would have been heartless enough to say “fortunately,” but each of them felt it) a widower, and several years older even than my great-great-aunt Eulalie. Moreover, he was a keen whist player and a brilliant one, but in no way keener or more brilliant than were Eulalie, Emily, and Eunice. For years now the three nice old ladies had looked forward to their weekly evening of whist-all, the ritual of setting out the green table, the two hours of silent cut-and-thrust play, and the final twenty minutes of conversation with Dr. Acheson as he drank a glass of old Madeira before bidding them good night.

346

C. S. Forester

The late Mrs. Acheson had passed to her Maker somewhere about 1830, and it was for thirteen years they had played their weekly game of whist before the terrible thing happened. To this day we do not know whether it happened to Eulalie or Emily or Eunice, but it happened to one of them. The three of them had retired for the night, each to her separate room, and had progressed far toward the final stage of getting into bed. They were not dried-up old spinsters; on the contrary, they were women of weight and substance, with the buxom contours even married women might have been proud of. It was her weight which was the undoing of one of them, Eulalie, Emily, or Eunice.

Through the quiet house that bedtime there sounded the crash of china and a cry of pain, and two of the sisters—which two we do not know—hurried in their dressing gowns to the bedroom of the third—her identity is uncertain—to find her bleeding profusely from

severe cuts in the lower part of the back. The jagged china fragments had inflicted severe wounds, and, most unfortunately, just in those parts where the injured sister could not attend to them herself. Under the urgings of the other two she fought down her modesty sufficiently to let them attempt to deal with them, but the bleeding was profuse, and the blood of the Foresters streamed from the prone figure face downward on the bed in terrifying quantity. “We shall have to send for the doctor,” said one of the ministering sisters; it was a shocking thing to contemplate. “Oh, but we cannot!” said the other ministering sister. “We must,” said the first. “How terrible!” said the second. And with that the injured sister twisted her neck and joined in the conversation. “I will not have the doctor,” she said. “I would die of shame.” “Think of the disgrace of it!” said the second sister. “We might even have to explain to him how it happened!” “But she’s bleeding to death,” protested the first sister. “Td rather die!” said the injured one, and then, as a fresh appalling thought struck her, she twisted her neck even further. “I could never face him again. And what would happen to our whist?” That was an aspect of the case which until then had occurred to neither of the other sisters, and it was enough to make them blench.

But they were of stern stuff. Just as we do not know which was the

injured one, we do not know which one thought of a way out of the difficulty, and we shall never know. We know that it was Miss Eulalie, as befitted her rank as eldest sister, who called to Deborah,

THE

BEDCHAMBER

MYSTERY

347

the maid, to go and fetch Dr. Acheson at once, but that does not mean to say that it was not Miss Eulalie who was the injured sister

—injured or not, Miss Eulalie was quite capable of calling to Deb-

orah and telling her what to do. As she was bid, Deborah went and fetched Dr. Acheson and conducted him to Miss Eunice’s bedroom, but of course the fact that it was Miss Eunice’s bedroom is really no indication that it was Miss

Eunice who was in there. Dr. Acheson had no means of knowing; all

he saw was a recumbent form covered by a sheet. In the center of the sheet a round hole a foot in diameter had been cut, and through the hole the seat of the injury was visible. Dr. Acheson needed no explanations. He took his needles and his thread from his little black bag and he set to work and sewed up the worst of the cuts and attended to the minor ones. Finally he straightened up and eased his aching back. “T shall have to take those stitches out,” he explained to the still and silent figure which had borne the stitching stoically without a murmur. “I shall come next Wednesday and do that.” Until next Wednesday the three Misses Forester kept to their rooms. Not one of them was seen in the streets of the market town, and when on Wednesday Dr. Acheson knocked at the door Deborah conducted him once more to Miss Eunice’s bedroom. There was the recumbent form, and there was the sheet with the hole in it. Dr. Acheson took out the stitches. “It has healed very nicely,” said Dr. Acheson. “I don’t think any further attention from me will be necessary.” The figure under the sheet said nothing, nor did Dr. Acheson expect it. He gave some concluding advice and went his way. He was glad later to receive a note penned in Miss Forester’s Italian hand: Dear Dr. ACHESON, We will all be delighted if you will come to whist this week as usual.

When Dr. Acheson arrived he found that the “as usual” applied only to his coming, for there was a slight but subtle change in the furnishings of the drawing room. The stiff, high-backed chairs on which the three Misses Forester sat bore, each of them, a thick and comfortable cushion upon the seat. There was no knowing which of the sisters needed it.

The Hardship of Accounting “= ROBERT FROST Never ask of money spent Where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did with every cent.

Sheet Music

“{ PAULINE GALE OF coursE, you don’t snore. Certainly not. However,

snoring is indulged in by mothers, fathers, children, dogs and just plain people. The reverberating sounds that arise from the trumpet nose at night are many.and varied, with equally interesting reasons for their differences. Let us examine these snore-types dispassion-

ately and with scientific detachment. Naturally you won’t find your-

self in any of these categories. But your wife—or husband? Better take a look, anyway. Now come our case histories, whose data was painstakingly gathered in the dark of the moon. I, STEADY-AS-SHE-GOES. Here is the reliable long-distance champion snorer. He goes to sleep quickly, starts his well-oiled motor and chugs through the night without a ping. UNHHH—SHOOOP! UNHHH—SHOOOP! UNHHH—SHOOOP! No change of pace save for an occasional grunt when he turns over. His wife easily becomes accustomed to his snore and can sleep comfortably, knowing he will not surprise her with a sudden difference in quality or sound. This is a man who, when he tells his wife he will work late at the office and be home at ten o’clock, comes home at ten o’clock, smelling slightly like carbon paper. He doesn’t roll in at two-thirty breathing of good Scotch and a faint flavor of Night in Paris. When such a man finds a mistake in his bank statement, he doesn’t have to

apologize. The bank does. His wife and children are lucky; they al-

ways know where their next meal is coming from. However, don’t expect him to bring home unexpected presents or suddenly tell his wife he is taking her to Europe. Slow and easy does it. He retires early—both to bed and from the business world. 2. THE ONE-SHOT. This is not a true snorer, but must be included in our careful study. He sleeps quietly enough, but at least once in the night he turns over, or twitches, and emits a thunderous SNAAKHT!! and then subsides, leaving his mate cowering under the coverlet, badly shaken. His sudden eruption resembles the sounds made when air gets into the water pipe, and is just as terrifying. This man’s timer is badly in need of adjusting. You will find his wife a

Pauline

350 nervous, thin little woman. No wonder!

Gale

He is the Executive Type.

He wants his meals on time, his office in perfect running order, and

his wife amenable to his sudden decisions to entertain twenty for dinner tomorrow or take a trip, including the children, at a moment’s notice. He fires as quickly as he hires and his political views are always available to anyone who will listen, though they are blistering. His world is difficult and beset by enemies.

3. SEWING MACHINE. Now we find the little woman

who tucks

herself in bed, turns on her motor, and stitches away all night with a

gentle but penetrating HUMM—piff/ know she snores and her husband there it is. She is a busy housewife day begins early and she picks up and dinner, mends, sews, cleans,

HUMM—pliff!

She doesn’t

is too fond of her to tell her, so and never stops for a minute. Her after the children, cooks luncheon and still finds time for The Girls

(her old club) and civic affairs. If you ask her to relax she just looks hurt. She is always Doing Something. Her husband would love to find her lying on the chaise longue reading a novel someday, but he never will. She is a Waltzing Mouse among women. But what would we do without her? 4. VARIETY sHow. The guy who never snores the same for two minutes. He starts out with a regulation SNAAA—WHOOF! SNAAA—WHOOF'! Do not be deceived. This is soon mixed with snorts, cheeps, bellows, and moans. His gas feed is intermittent and he obviously has sugar in the carburetor. His wife must needs lie awake, because who knows what will come next? Even words. Yes —he talks in his sleep as well. Never a dull moment for him. This man, when awake, is the Life of the Party. He is the one who puts the ladies’ hats on and postures. He, to believe his friends, keeps one in stitches. Far in the background one may find his wife, smiling wanly for the thousandth time at the shaggy-dog story. Need we add that he is a salesman and a good one? If you don’t like one sales talk he can quickly switch to another and get you—even if it takes a third. His children adore him but he can’t fix even a squeaky door in the house. His wife is resigned and gallant. Poor husband? Not at all. He’s so much fun you forgive the wet towels on the bathroom

floor and the extravagant fishing tackle he buys just when Junior needs to have his tonsils out.

5. MISSING CYLINDER. A steady-as-she-goes who is evidently full of carbon. Needs a tune-up this: AHHH—HOOOSHL!

job. His snores miss. They go like AHHH—HOOOSHL! GRACKLE

snfmpf! See? The poor man is trying to go up a hill, but his motor won't take it. This is a worried

man.

He worries

about his job.

SHEET

MUSIC

351

About his wife. About himself. Just as he gets set for a long haul,

his subconscious

plays a dirty trick and he remembers

to Worry

about the gas bill—hence the sufmpf! His wife is usually a calm,

serene and capable individual who soothes his troubled brow when awake and is so tired when he’s asleep that she often forgets to kick him and tell him to shut up. 6. THE KEENING soLo. Now we find a lady (it can be a man,

though) whose snore sounds like a high-powered saw going through

a log full of knots.

EEEE—HEEEESH!

EEEE—HEEEESH!

It

Sometimes amounts to a soprano wail. This sound carries through

hundred-year-old oaken doors. When young, such a snorer keens on a high note but not so loudly. After forty, however, a deeper tone

takes charge and approaches the sound of a threshing machine going

full blast. The owner of such a snore is a frustrated artist. She (or he) would have made a hit in the movies. Or as a writer. Or a

painter. They usually eat by candlelight and loathe their neighbors.

Definitely artistic. Now having categorized the main types of individual snorer, let us look into the team. Here is a duet that is difficult to imitate. The man snores deeply—his wife accompanies him with a high sing-

song that matches in mood and tempo his every change of pace. This is something to hear. He starts off with a low obbligato and she weaves her little song

around that base, rising and falling as he changes key. There are interesting breaks wherein he goes pianissimo and allows her to carry the soprano solo and then comes in with a low susurration that she matches, at once, with a gentle trill. When he snorts and changes pace—she gives a brief HUKK and they start on the second cantata. Most people who snore, when awakened, will deny it. The worst kind will admit it and say, “So what?” Nobody knows if he snores or not. It’s a mystery. You suspect it, but you aren’t sure. If you aren’t sure—you snore.

Day’s Work “ix JOHN GALSWORTHY Every morning when he awoke his first thought was: How am I? For it was extremely important that he should be well, seeing that when he was not well he could neither produce what he

knew he ought, nor contemplate that lack of production with equanimity. Having discovered that he did not ache anywhere, he would

say to his wife, “Are you all right?” and, while she was answering, he would think, ““Yes—if I make that last chapter pass subjectively through Blank’s personality, then I had better—” and so on. Not having heard whether his wife were all right, he would get out of bed and do that which he facetiously called “abdominable cult,” for it was necessary that he should digest his food and preserve his figure, and while he was doing it he would partly think, “I am doing this well,” and partly he would think, “That fellow in the Parnassus is quite wrong—he simply doesn’t see—” And pausing for a moment with nothing on, and his toes level with the top of a chest of drawers, he would say to his wife, “What I think about that Parnassus fellow is that he doesn’t grasp the fact that my books—” And he would not fail to hear her answer warmly, “Of course he doesn’t; he’s a perfect idiot.” He would then shave. This was his most creative moment, and he would soon cut himself and utter a little groan, for it would be needful now to find his special cotton wool and stop the bleeding, which was a paltry business and not favorable to the flight of genius. And if his wife, taking advantage of the incident, said

something which she had long been waiting to say, he would answer, wondering a little what it was she had said, and thinking, “There it is, Iget no time for steady thought.” Having finished shaving he would bathe, and a philosophical conclusion would almost invariably come to him just before he douched himself with cold—so that he would pause, and call out through the door: “You know, I think the supreme principle—’ And while his wife was answering, he would resume the drowning of her words, having fortunately remembered just in time that his circulation would suffer if he did not douse himself with cold while he was still

DAY'S WORK

353

warm. He would dry himself, dreamily developing that theory of the universe and imparting to his wife in sentences that seldom had an end, so that it was not necessary for her to answer them. While dressing he would stray a little, thinking, “Why can’t I concentrate myself on my work? It’s awful!” And if he had by any chance a button off, he would present himself rather unwillingly, feeling that it was a waste of his time. Watching her frown from sheer selfeffacement over her button-sewing, he would think, “She is wonder-

ful! How can she put up with doing things for me all day long?” And he would fidget a little, feeling in his bones that the postman had already come. He went down always thinking, “Oh, hang it! This infernal post taking up all my time!” And as he neared the breakfast room, he would quicken his pace; seeing a large pile of letters on the table, he would say automatically, “Curse!” and his eyes would brighten. If—as seldom happened—there were not a green-colored wrapper

enclosing mentions of him in the press, he would murmur, “Thank God!” and his face would fall. It was his custom to eat feverishly, walking a good deal and reading about himself and when his wife tried to bring him to a sense of his disorder he would tighten his lips without a word and think, “I have a good deal of self-control.” He seldom commenced work before eleven, for, though he always intended to, he found it practically impossible not to dictate to his wife things about himself, such as how he could not lecture here; or where he had been born; or how much he would take for this; and why he would not consider that; together with those letters which

began: My dear

’

Thanks tremendously for your letter about my book, and its valuable . You don’t seem criticism. Of course, I think you are quite wrong... quite do me jusever you think don’t I to have grasped. . . . In fact, TACE et pore Yours affectionately,

It was during those hours when he sat in a certain chair with a pen in his hand that he was able to rest from thought about himself, save, indeed, in those moments, not too frequent, when he could not help reflecting, ““That’s a fine page—I have seldom written anything better”; or in those moments, too frequent, when he sighed

354

John Galsworthy

deeply and thought, “I am not the man I was.” About half past one, he would get up, with the pages in his hand, and seeking out his wife, would give them to her to read, remarking, “Here’s the wretched

stuff—no

good at all”; and, taking a position where

he thought

she could not see him, would do such things as did not prevent his knowing what effect the pages made on her. If the effect were good he would often feel how wonderful she was; if it were not good he had at once a chilly sensation in the pit of his stomach, and ate very little lunch. When, in the afternoons, he took his walks abroad, he passed great quantities of things and people without noticing, because he was thinking deeply on such questions as whether he were more of an observer or more of an imaginative artist; whether he were properly appreciated in Germany; and particularly whether one were not in danger of thinking too much about oneself. But every now and then he would stop and say to himself, “I really must see more of life, I

really must take in more fuel”; and he would passionately fix his eyes on a cloud, or a flower, or a man walking, and there would instantly come into his mind the thought: “I have written twenty books—ten more will make thirty—that cloud is gray”; or: “That fellow X is jealous of me! This flower is blue”; or: “This man

is walking very—very—Damn the Morning Muff, it always runs me down!” And he would have a sort of sore, beaten feeling, knowing that he had not observed those things as accurately as he would have wished to. During these excursions, too, he would often reflect impersonally upon matters of the day, large questions, of art, public policy, and the human soul; and would almost instantly find that he had always thought this or that; and at once see the necessity for putting his conclusion forward in his book or in the press, phrasing it, of course, in a way that no one else could; and there would start up before him little bits of newspaper with these words on them: ‘No one, perhaps, save Mr. , could have so ably set forth the case for Baluchistan”; or, “In the Daily Miracle there is a noble letter from that eminent

writer, M Very often on things that must get away

, pleading against the hyperspiritualism of our age.” he would say to himself, as he walked with eyes fixed he did not see, “This existence is not healthy. I really and take a complete holiday and not think at all about

my work; I am getting too self-centered.” And he would go home

and say to his wife, “Let’s go to Sicily, or Spain, or somewhere. Let’s get away from all this, and just live.” And when she answered “How jolly!” he would repeat, a little absently, “How jolly!” con-

DAY'S WORK

355. sidering what would be the best arrangement for forwarding his letters. And, if, as sometimes happened, they did go, he would spend almost a whole morning living, and thinking how jolly it was to be away from everything; but toward the afternoon he would feel a sensation as though he were a sofa that had been sat on too much, a sort of subsidence very deep within him. This would be followed in

the evening by a disinclination to live; and that feeling would grow

until on the third day he received his letters, together with a greencolored wrapper enclosing some mentions of himself, and he would

say, “Those fellows—no

getting away from them!” and feel ir-

resistibly impelled to sit down. Having done so he would take up his pen, not writing anything, indeed—because of the determination to

“live,” as yet not quite extinct—but comparatively easy in his mind.

On the following day he would say to his wife: “I believe I can work here.” And she would answer smiling, “That’s splendid”; and he would think, “She’s wonderful!” and begin to write. On other occasions, while walking the streets or about the countryside, he would suddenly be appalled at his own ignorance, and would say to himself, “I know simply nothing—I must read.” And

going home he would dictate to his wife the names of a number of books to be procured from the library. When they arrived he would

look at them a little gravely and think, “By Jove! Have I got to read those?” and the same evening he would take one up. He would not, however, get beyond the fourth page if it were a novel, before he would say, “Muck! He can’t write!” and would feel absolutely stimulated to take up his own pen and write something that was worth reading. Sometimes, on the other hand, he would put down

the novel after the third page, exclaiming: “By Jove! He can write!” And there would rise within him such a sense of dejection at his own inferiority that he would feel simply compelled to try to see whether he really was inferior. But if the book were not a novel he sometimes finished the first chapter before one of two feelings came over him: Either that what he had just read was what he had himself long thought—that, of course, would be when the book was a good one; or that what he had just read was not true, or at all events debatable. In each of these events he found it impossible to go on reading, but would remark to his wife, “This fellow says what I’ve always said”; or, “This fellow says so and so, now I say—” and he would argue the matter with her, taking both sides of the question, so as to save her all unnecessary speech. There were times when he felt that he absolutely must hear music

356

John Galsworthy

and he would enter the concert hall with his wife in the pleasurable certainty that he was going to lose himself. Toward the middle of the second number, especially if it happened to be music that he liked, he would begin to nod; and presently, on waking up, would get a feeling that he really was an artist. From that moment on he was conscious of certain noises being made somewhere in his neighborhood, causing a titillation of his nerves favorable to deep and earnest thoughts, about his work. On going out his wife would ask him, “Wasn’t the Mozart lovely?” or, “How did you like the Strauss?” and he would answer, “Rather!” wondering a little which was which; or he would look at her out of the corner of his eye and

glance secretly at the program to see whether he had really heard them, and which Strauss it might be. He was extremely averse to being interviewed, or photographed, and all that sort of publicity, and only made exceptions in most cases

because his wife would say to him, “Oh! I think you ought”; or because he could not bear to refuse anybody anything; together, perhaps, with a sort of latent dislike of waste, deep down in his soul. When he saw the results he never failed to ejaculate, ““Never again! No, really—never again! The whole And he would order a few copies.

thing is wrong

and stupid!”

For he dreaded nothing so much as the thought that he might become an egoist, and knowing the dangers of his profession, fought

continually against it. Often he would complain to his wife, “I don’t think of you enough.” And she would smile and say, “Don’t you?” And he would feel better, having confessed his soul. Sometimes for an hour at a time he would make really heroic efforts not to answer her before having really grasped what she had said; and to check a tendency, that he sometimes feared was growing on him, to say “What?” whether he had heard or no. In truth, he was not (as he often said) constitutionally given to small talk. Conversation that did

not promise a chance of dialectic victory was hardly to his liking; so that he felt bound in sincerity to eschew it, which sometimes caused him to sit silent for “quite a while” as the Americans have phrased it. But once committed to an argument, he found it difficult to leave off, having a natural, if somewhat sacred, belief in his own convictions. His attitude to his creations was, perhaps, peculiar. He either did not mention them, or touched on them if absolutely obliged, with a light and somewhat disparaging tongue; this did not, indeed, come from any real distrust of them, but rather from a superstitious feeling that one must not tempt Providence in the solemn things of life. If other people touched on them in the same way, he had, not unnatu-

DAY’S WORK

TOL

rally, a feeling of real pain, such as comes to a man when he sees an instance of cruelty or injustice. And, though something always told him that it was neither wise nor dignified to notice outrages of this order, he would mutter to his wife, “Well, I suppose it is true—I can’t write”; feeling, perhaps, that—if he could not with decency notice such injuries, she might. And, indeed, she did, using warmer words than even he felt justified, which was soothing. After tea, it was his habit to sit down a second time, pen in hand; not infrequently he would spend those hours divided between

the feeling that it was his duty to write something and the feeling that it was his duty not to write anything if he had nothing to say, and he generally wrote a good deal; for deep down he was convinced that if he did not write he would gradually fade away till there would be nothing left for him to read and think about, and, though he was often tempted to believe and even to tell his wife that fame was an unworthy thing, he always deferred that pleasure, afraid perhaps of too much happiness.

In regard to the society of his fellows he liked almost anybody, though a little impatient with those, especially authors, who took themselves too seriously; and there were just one or two that he really could not stand, they were so obviously full of jealousy, a passion of which he was naturally intolerant and had, of course, no need to indulge in. And he would speak of them with extreme dryness— nothing more, disdaining to disparage. It was, perhaps, a weakness in

him that he found it difficult to accept adverse criticism as anything

but an expression of that same yellow sickness and yet there were moments when no words would adequately convey his low opinion of his own powers. At such times he would seek out his wife and confide to her his conviction that he was a poor thing, no good at all, without a thought in his head; and while she was replying, “Rubbish! You know there’s nobody to hold a candle to you,” or words to that effect, he would look at her tragically, and murmur, “Ah! you're prejudiced!” Only at such supreme moments of dejection, indeed, did he feel it a pity that he had married her, seeing how much more convincing her words would have been if he had not. He never read the papers till the evening, partly because he had not time, and partly because he so seldom found anything in them. This was not remarkable, for he turned their leaves quickly, pausing,

indeed, naturally, if there were any mention of his name; and if his wife asked him whether he had read this or that he would answer, “No,” surprised at the funny things that seemed to interest her.

Before going up to bed he would sit and smoke. And sometimes

358

John Galsworthy

fancies would come to him, and sometimes none. Once in a while he would look up at the stars, and think, “What a worm I am! This wonderful infinity! I must get more of it—more of it into my work;

more of the feeling that the whole is marvelous and great, and man a little clutch of breath and dust, an atom, a straw, a nothing!” And a sort of exaltation would seize on him, so that he knew that if only he did get that into his work, as he wished to, as he felt

just then that he could, he would be the greatest writer the world had ever seen, the greatest man, almost greater than he wished to be,

almost too great to be mentioned in the press, greater than infinity itself{—for would he not be infinity’s creator? And suddenly he would check himself with the thought, “I must be careful—I must be careful. If I let my brain go at this time of night, I shan’t write a decent word tomorrow!” And he would drink some milk and go to bed.

Do Re Mi

“= WOLCOTT GIBBS I musr have been ten when it came to me that never, this side of paradise, would I be able to carry a tune, and that even identifying one would tax my tiny powers unless I could hear the words. I was a pupil then at the Horace Mann School, up on 120th Street, and our class was an early venture in experimental education, being held outdoors, on a roof. We wore little woolly suits and hoods that gave a sort of startled and bloodthirsty pleasure to the

regular students downstairs, who were without our embarrassing advantages. We looked like rabbits and when we ventured recklessly

down from our roof during recess we were hunted like rabbits. We were like rabbits, too, in that we were the soft and foolish victims of a thousand grim experiments. It was a thin week that didn’t bring us at least one delegation of educators of a refined and scientific aspect, who came with their questionnaires and went away to write admir-

ingly about us in the journals of their trade. I never had to read these articles, but nevertheless I was grateful when one of the bloodless creatures slipped on the icy roof and broke his glasses.

The delegation which found out that I was tone-deaf consisted of two ladies, who wished to test the pre-adolescent reaction to music.

We were lined up in a solemn, woolly row while one of them wrote a line of strange words on the blackboard. Her handwriting was distinguished, requiring quite a lot of preliminary skirmishing with the chalk, and I had begun to itch by the tme the other one got up and sang the words. “Do re mi fa sol la ti do,” she sang.

“I can see down into the lady’s neck,” whispered the child beside me with horror. Our visitor sang the line two or three times more, and then two or three times backward. ‘Now, children,” she said. “Let’s all sing.” We all sang. At first we were uncertain, puzzled by the unfamiliar words. “Do I hear some little mice squeaking?” said the first lady,

360

Wolcott

Gibbs

cupping her hand gaily at her ear. “Oh, come, children, let’s have some really truly singing. Now louder . . .”

We sang louder, and presently, getting into the spirit of the thing, we were yelling our heads off. The ladies must have been new at

pre-adolescent research, because, having asked for. really truly singing, they seemed a little agitated when they got it. “That’s fine,” the first one said hastily. “Now we'll let each child see what he can do all by his lonesome. We'll start down at this end. What’s your name, little man?”

“Thomas,” said Thomas, “but I don’t sing.” “Why, Thomas!” said the second lady. “You don’t want to hurt Miss Edgerton’s feelings, do you? Now, ‘Do’. . .” “No,” said Thomas firmly, but the ladies were too tough for him, and in the end he executed an embarrassed scale. They moved down the line with varying results. Some of the children sang loud and clear, without self-consciousness and were disappointed

when

the ladies

moved

on.

Others

were

shy, and

their

singing was unhappy and almost inaudible. The ladies carefully noted these facts in their little notebooks. I was not at all nervous when they came to me. They had said they wanted volume, and I was confident that I could sing as loud as anybody. “And what is our name?” asked the first lady, who couldn’t possibly have had any idea what she was in for. I told her and then, as she tossed her head musically, I sang a hearty scale. Both ladies looked incredulous. ‘Perhaps we’d better try again,” said the second one, after a moment. It seemed clear that I had been a disappointment to her, although I couldn’t see why, because I was sure I had sung as loud as anybody else. I drew a deep breath and tried again. The ladies looked at one another. “No,” said the first, “I’m afraid we don’t quite understand. The little notes go up. Like this.” She sang me a sample scale, with gestures that went up. “Try to think of eight little men climbing a flight of stairs. Now. 23¢7 I sang again. The eight little men seemed to have no especial bearing on what I was doing, but I thought of them. “It’s amazing,” said the second lady, though clearly this was not praise. “The child just stays on the same note.”

DO RE

MI

361

“Completely tone-deaf,” said the other one, and wrote briskly in her book.

They were reluctant to give me up, and produced many ingenious and graphic illustrations of the fact that the diatonic scale goes up as it goes along. I did my best, too, getting quite damp and breathless

in my attempts to sing the way they wanted me to. My wool pants were itching like hell at the end, but I was still singing the same note, and the ladies were licked.

Later in life being tone-deaf had its advantages, but at Horace Mann it gave me a peculiar and grisly distinction. The children were not exactly sure what was the matter with me, but whatever it was

it had been sinister enough to alarm the investigators, and my playmates were impressed, For the rest of the year my singing had a fascination for them second only to the manual-training teacher’s thumb, which had been bitten off by a turtle he’d been annoying.

Etiquette

“t= WILLIAM SCHWENK GILBERT Tue Ballyshannon foundered off the coast of Cariboo, And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew; Down went the owners—greedy men whom hope of gain allured: Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured. Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew, The passengers were also drowned excepting only two: Young Peter Gray, who tasted teas for Baker, Croop, and Co.,

And Somers, who from Eastern shores imported indigo. These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast, Upon a desert island were eventually cast. They hunted for their meals, as Alexander Selkirk used, But they couldn’t chat together—they had not been introduced.

For Peter Gray, and Somers too, though certainly in trade, Were properly particular about the friends they made; And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth— That Gray should take the northern half, while Somers took the south. On Peter’s portion oysters grew—a delicacy rare. But oysters were a delicacy Peter couldn’t bear. On Somers’ side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick, Which Somers couldn’t eat, because it always made him sick. Gray knashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store Of turtle unmolested on his fellow creature’s shore: The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved, For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved. And Somers sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south, For the thought of Peter’s oysters brought the water to his mouth.

ETIQUETTE

WWN Ww

He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff; He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough. How they wished an introduction to each other they had had

When on board the Ballyshannon! And it drove them nearly mad To think how very friendly with each other they might get, If it wasn’t for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!

One day, when out a-hunting for the mus ridiculus, Gray overheard his fellow man soliloquizing thus: “I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on, M’Connell, S. B. Walters, Paddy Byles and Robinson?” These simple words made Peter as delighted as could be, Old chummies at the Charterhouse were Robinson and he! He walked straight up to Somers, then he turned extremely red, Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and said:

“T beg your pardon—pray forgive me if I seem too bold, But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old. You spoke aloud of Robinson—I happened to be by— You know him?” “Yes, extremely well.” “Allow me—so do I!” It was enough: they felt they could more sociably get on, For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew Robinson! And Mr. Somers’ turtle was at Peter’s service quite, And Mr. Somers punished Peter’s oyster beds all night.

They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs; They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs; They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives; On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives. They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night,

And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light; Each other’s pleasant company they reckoned so upon, And all because it happened that they both knew Robinson!

They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore, And day by day they learned to love each other more and more. At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day, They saw a vessel anchored in the offing of the bay!

364

William Schwenk

Gilbert

To Peter an idea occurred. “Suppose we cross the main?

So good an opportunity may not occur again.” And Somers thought a minute, then ejaculated, “Done! I wonder how my business in the City’s getting on?” “But stay,” said Mr. Peter; “when in England, as you know, I earned a living tasting teas for Baker, Croop, and Co., I may be superseded—my employers think me dead!” “Then come with me,” said Somers, “and taste indigo instead.”

But all their plans were scattered in a moment when they found The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound! When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind, To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined. As both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke, They recognized an unattractive fellow pulling stroke:

*T was Robinson—a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!! They laughed no more, for Somers thought he had been rather rash In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash, And Peter thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon In making the acquaintance of a friend of Robinson.

At first they didn’t quarrel very openly, I’ve heard; They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word: The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head, And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.

To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth. And Peter takes the north again, and Somers takes the south; And Peter has the oysters, which he loathes with horror grim, And Somers has the turtle—turtle disagrees with him.

Why | Never Bawl Out a Waitress

“Y HARRY GOLDEN I wAve a rule against registering complaints in a restaurant; because I know that there are at least four billion suns in the Milky Way—which is only one galaxy. Many of these suns are thousands of times larger than our own, and vast millions of them have whole planetary systems, including literally billions of satellites, and all of this revolves at the rate of about a million miles an hour, like a huge oval pinwheel. Our own sun and its planets, which include the earth, are on the edge of this wheel. This is only our own small corner of the universe, so why do not these billions of revolving and rotating suns and planets collide? The answer is, the space is so unbelievably vast that if we reduced the suns and the planets in correct mathematical proportion with relation to the distances between them, each sun would be a speck of dust, two, three, and four thousand miles away from its nearest neighbor. And, mind you, this is only the Milky Way—our own small corner—our own galaxy. How many galaxies are there? Billions. Billions of galaxies spaced at about one million light-years apart (one light-year is about six trillion

miles). Within the range of our biggest telescopes there are at least one hundred million separate galaxies such as our own Milky Way, and that is not all, by any means. The scientists have found that the further you go out into space with the telescopes the thicker the galaxies become, and there are billions of billions as yet uncovered to the scientist’s camera and the astrophysicist’s calculations. When you think of all this, it’s silly to worry whether the waitress brought you string beans instead of limas.

Come One, Come One

“i JACK GOODMAN and ALAN GREEN ¢

Our friends have taken a place in the country this summer—our place. As a result, my wife Phyllis is fit to be tied. And unless I can arrange to have someone do a capable job of tying her before she gets

into the car and meets me when I arrive on the 6:37 at Westport, there is going to be some small unpleasantness on the eastbound platform. Phyllis says that my hospitality is going to result in her hospitalization. But it isn’t really my fault. The blame lies in that great American institution, the summer weekend. You see, [ve just finished phoning to tell her that a couple of guests will be out with me on the train tonight, Friday. When she said, “Do you think Information could give me the number of a reliable concern in the trainwrecking business?” I was offended and decided to hang up. But she beat me to it, muttering something about my not even knowing what tomorrow is. Of course I know what tomorrow is. It is the day that Bill and

Tom

and I are getting up at six so that we

can play 54 holes

of golf. I must say that Phyllis has changed. When I married her last year (I’ve forgotten the exact date, it was somewhere around this time of year, maybe next week, maybe last), she was a gay little thing who liked people, even my friends. She enjoyed out pleasant bantering evenings with them, pitched with enthusiasm into the parlor games we played, and rarely failed to win enough to pay off my small losses. But these summer weekends have changed her. I’m sure it was no one specific incident. ’m quite convinced it wasn’t that business about Sidney and the early American glassware. True, it was our glassware, but it was Sidney’s forehead. Nor could it have been that little matter of Rita and the overstuffed chair. After all, Rita studied chemistry in school, and if she

COME

ONE,

COME

ONE

367

Says it was spontaneous combustion, who are we to doubt her word?

Nevertheless, Phyllis always starts biting her nails toward the end of the week. This works out for the best, because by the time our guests leave, she is trying to claw at me with them.

By now I’m an expert on Being a Host. I’ve devoted a lot of study

to both sides of the relieved Monday-morning farewell. I’ve seen a lot of hands still shaking after they’ve unclasped. And now I’m in a position to give the world the benefits of my experience. I’ve been at it all summer and I know that the perfect Host is someone whose heart is in the right place. This place is generally his mouth. A Guest, on the other hand, is someone whose heart is on his sleeve, which is generally in my butter. In my Guest days, I believed that Hosts lay in wait treacherously for the opportunity to get up in the middle of the night and rearrange all the furniture in the path between a hapless Guest and the bathroom. Now, as a Host, I see the basic truth: Guests are low, skulking, destructive types who like nothing better than to go out of their way to bump into a costly piece of furniture. There is no problem at all to being a Guest. All you need is a toothbrush and a razor to fit your Host’s razor blades in. But being a Host requires not only the toothbrush and razor your Guest has forgotten, but also a cluster of talents in the entertainment and diplo-

matic fields which could only be found in a character combining the best features of Sally and Talley rand. For instance, no Guest need be told the proper etiquette involved

in informing his Host that his bathing trunks have just been eaten by the Host’s dog. He just tells him, quickly and forcefully. But a whole course could be given on the proper methods of informing the Guest that a large segment of the trunks he has just appeared in at the pool were recently eaten by the Host’s dog. And still another could be given on what to do about the Guest who insists on getting up early. It does no good to lock him in. I tried this a few weeks ago and it was easily parried by my guest’s

simple gambit of taking a heavy, valuable object and banging it against the wall, unhurriedly and steadily, for the next hour. People who don’t want to face and conquer these and countless other problems involved in being a Host had better spend the sweltering summer weekends in the city, having a good time in some aircooled movie. Don’t for a minute think you can duck your responsibility by airily deciding not to have Guests at all. You will have them. Any Guest who knows his business realizes that the summer is the open season on open houses. He will merely wait for your in-

368

Jack Goodman

and Alan Green

vitation until the last minute and then drop in uninvited if it doesn’t come. Now let us see How to Be a Host by watching one in actual practice—me. To understand the endless war between Hosts and Guests, to comprehend Phyllis’ reaction to my announcement that I was bringing guests out this evening, it will be necessary for us to examine a couple of actual weekends. These weekends may not be typical. One can speak of a typical weekend only in the same sense that one can refer to a typical earth-

quake. In both there are great differences of intensity, total damage, and number of human beings trapped. But just as the scientist, picking himself off the floor and painfully working his way back to his

seismograph, can discover that what has caused his violent flight through the room has been an “earthquake,” so can we glean valuable information from samples of my summer weekends.

Our first weekend in July, for instance. I'll give it in brief instead of getting the whole transcript from the court stenographer. Phyllis and [ planned this one very carefully, and whatever people say about the best-laid plans of mice and men, I feel that any self-respecting mouse would have given itself up to the nearest cat if its plans had gone that much agley. We knew it was going to be a long weekend, what with the

Fourth of July falling on a Tuesday. So we saved it for the people we like best, Graham and Mary Terwilliger. This, I felt, would be ideal, since Graham could play golf every day with me, while Mary could do whatever it is women do all day with Phyllis. Then in the evenings we could play a few rubbers of bridge and go off to bed early, tired, happy and at peace with the murmurous country night.

It might have worked out that way if Mary hadn’t slammed the train door on Graham’s foot on the way out. “You should have been

holding it open yourself,” she apologized. From that point their conversation had moved rapidly toward a silence which became total by the time their train reached Westport. Since Phyllis and I are very loyal to our friends, we promptly took sides and soon we weren’t talking to each other either. Our conversation at dinner went something like this: “Phyllis,” Mary would say, “would you kindly tell Graham to pass the catsup? Tell him not to bother taking it off his vest—there’s still enough in the bottle.” “Of course, dear,” Phyllis would answer. “I’m so sorry you have

COME

ONE,

COME

ONE

369

such a little veal chop to put it on. I must tell the maid not to serve

Jack first next time.” With a hard laugh I’d say to Graham, “You'd think my salary certainly would be bitielcke to get enough veal chops to eat, wouldn’t

you, Graham?” “Tt was,” Phyllis, explained sweetly to Mary, “until veal went up a cent and a half a pound last week.” “There are certain people,” said Graham, drumming his fingers

musingly on the table, “that I would like to see trying to run a business office.” “That’s a good one, Graham,” I said, slapping my knee apprecia-

tively with my right hand, which unifortunately held a piece of wellbuttered toast. “There are certain peaptee? said Mary to Phyllis, “that I would like to see stop trying to run a business office and run one for a

change. By the way, Graham’s still not doing very well with that gold-mine stock he bought last year from the man they arrested in Chicago last week.”

“T know,” said Phyllis. “Jack isn’t doing any better with his, even though he has twice as much of it. It’s a shame, too, when you think of how much the boys spent on that airplane trip to buy the stuff.” Somehow or other we didn’t get to bridge that night. Instead we all sat around the living room and glared at each other. At eleven, Mary went upstairs and took a hot bath, using all the water in the tank. When Graham followed later and found no water coming out, he left the faucets turned on. Sometime in the night the hot water began to flow again, overran the tub, and created a small river along the bathroom floor to the hall. From there it cascaded prettily downstairs to the living room, where it formed a deep and peaceful pool.

In the morning, while Mary was on her hands and knees mopping it up, in Phyllis’ best negligee, Graham went out to the garage and drove my car through the wall, not realizing that it is a habit of mine to leave the car in gear with the brake off. Rushing through the garage door to help him, it did not occur to me that he would be rushing through the same door to tell me what had happened. We came to an abrupt stop, both of us standing on Graham’s foot. It was the same one Mary had slammed the train door on, and from that point Graham wouldn’t talk to me, either. Golf now out of the question, I decided to let my guests shift for themselves and busy myself about the house. I took some rubbish out

370

Jack Goodman

and Alan Green

in the back to burn it, little realizing that our stationery store would

deliver our Fourth of July fireworks in such old boxes and crumpled newspaper.

For the next two days, Graham sat around with his bandaged foot on a chair while I plied myself with healing oils and’ preserved a stony silence while Phyllis told Mary that, with my eyebrows off, my forehead didn’t look quite so low. The next weekend we naturally set aside for a little peace and quiet. There were to be just the two of us—and there were—right through until Saturday midnight. It was then who were driving down from Maine, stopped off.

that

the Wialburs,

They had their garter snakes with them. Mrs. Wilbur did not know this. All she knew was that she didn’t want Milton to drive any more because the night air was definitely not sobering him up. Milton had found the garter snakes beside the road when he got out to look at a tire or something and naturally did not want to leave them so far from town. So he helped them into the tonneau among the luggage. And when we sleepily admitted him and his wife, he bedded them down in our kitchen, modestly refraining from mentioning this good deed. The first inkling we had of the snakes’ presence came in the morn-

ing when the maid tossed the butter crock through the kitchen window. This crash so startled Milton’s process of sleeping it off that he leaped from bed, tore out into the hall, and easily cleared a low rail-

ing which stood in his path. This, at the rate of 32 feet per second, brought him into our living room downstairs. He had the good fortune to land on our divan. Or, as Phyllis put it, “Why did that divan have to be right there where he would break its valuable springs instead of his own worthless neck?” Let us pass quickly over the weekend with Mr. Megglesworth and his wife. He was my biggest customer, and we simply had to have him out. They arrived Friday evening with six children and departed the following Thursday with seven. After they left, Phyllis murmured something about our weekend house being a family-waystation. She also added musingly that up to this point she thought she had seen every possible method by which an uninvited guest could drop in for the weekend. . . . Altogether, you may now be able to see why Phyllis maintains that if a man’s home is his castle, his summer one should have a good, deep moat around it. You can also see that it is easy to be a Host. All you need is an un-

limited income, a capacity for going three days without sleep or the

COME

ONE,

COME

ONE

Bek use of your bathroom, and an air of good-fellowship that your guests can cut with a knife and probably will.

If you haven’t all these qualities, you might solve the summer problem by taking two places. One could be a tiny affair of one

room and a bath for yourself, the other a large, drafty manor some 20 miles away for the misuse of your guests. Phyllis and I toyed with

this idea for next summer. We thought of calling the big place To-

bacco Roadhouse. The little one would be known as Cold Shoulde r Arms. But we’ve already abandoned this notion. We are undoubtedly tak-

ing this same place again next year. After all, our guests are accustomed to it. And they are such creatures of habit.

The Law of the Bungle “i= JACK GOODMAN and ALBERT RICE How, you may inquire, does one make a faux pas? Let’s see. You are, shall we say, at a party. There is a moment’s lull in the gay chatter. You make a remark to the person nearest you—a

re-

mark that rings clearly through the room. There is an immediate dead silence—more ominous than the one which had occurred before you spoke. Surprised, you look about to find a cluster of faces staring at you—in amazement—in amusement —or in high dudgeon. Hastily you check over what you have just said. To your horror, you find that it was not at all what you meant. You cannot move. You cannot speak. You look despairingly at the floor, hoping to heaven that it will open up and swallow you. But it remains grimly shut—and oh, how you wish your mouth had! You have, in short, committed a faux pas. And the only comfort you can get out of it is the knowledge that you have joined the great army of foot-swallowers—and that someone, at some time, has undoubtedly said something far worse. There are plenty of foot-swallowers. The road to hell may, as the old saw put it, be paved with good intentions, but it is a safe bet that it is likewise colored bright carmine with the blushes of those who have committed faux pas—and then violently wished that they were home having nice comfortable nightmares.

Not only are there blunderers, there are master blunderers. Just as there are great wits, with few blots on their bright verbal escutcheons, so there are great nitwits, with no bright spots on theirs.

There was a congressman many years ago, John Wesley Gaines by name, who must have ranked high among those who could turn an inappropriate phrase alluringly. His exploits, unfortunately, have not come down to us—but they are indicated in a poem written to

THE

LAW

OF

THE

BUNGLE

him by a sly, unknown

genius of a colleague—and

ails)

this poem

sufficient to immortalize John Wesley Gaines. It goes like this:

is

John Wesley Gaines! John Wesley Gaines! Thou monumental mass of brains! Come in, John Wesley— OU itmainss=. ee

The faux pas is repartee which has become accidentally entangled with hara-kiri. It is far more insidious than the most vicious type of repartee. Repartee at its very best demolishes only the person at whom it is directed, but a really juicy faux pas will pick off, not only its object, but its horrified creator as well.

A well known example of this treacherous, omnivorous quality of the faux pas is the story of the lady and the famous financier whom she had invited to tea. The lady was naturally a nervous type, and she became more than usually high-strung upon the sudden appearance of her small son during the conversation that preceded the serving of refreshments.

She was sure that the little boy was going to make some devastating comment upon the abnormally large nose possessed by her visitor. Time and again she saw her child eyeing the nose curiously. And it was large, that she was forced to admit to herself. Several times, she was convinced, she had cut short one or another frank reflection with a frantic, but judiciously timed: “Sh-h-h-h, Johnny, little boys should be seen and not heard!” Finally, to her intense relief, the nurse appeared and summarily

ushered the child to the nursery. Just then, the maid came in with the tea. With a happy sigh, the hostess turned to her guest and said: “And now, Mr. X, will you have one or two lumps with your nose?” Blunders of that sort have been known to disrupt anything from a casual friendship to a peace treaty between nations. Things that never, never should have been said have played their part in changing the course of history and the contours of maps, from Von Bethmann-Hollweg’s “scrap of paper” comment to the footswallowing efforts of rulers and statesmen back through the mists of time. There are three fundamental causes for verbal bungling. These causes overlap fraternally, so that one may play a sturdy part in assisting another. But on the whole, the types of verbal boners fall roughly into three divisions. The first general cause of foot-swallowing is ignorance—igno-

Jack Goodman

374

and Albert Rice

rance either of the nitroglycerin possibilities in the words and sentences we employ, or of the fact that many situations in which we find ourselves contain all the elements needed to generate spontaneous social combustion. Boners caused by our unwitting and unwilling shortsightedness can range from the merely: laughable to the genuinely pathetic. Generally the latter are the funniest of all faux pas, yet our laughter, upon contemplating them, may be tinged with emotions which vary from “Serves him right!” to “Oh, the poor thing!” Certainly,

“Serves

him

right!”

is the universal

reaction

when

you pause to consider the disaster which overtook the young American who found himself seated next to the eminent Chinese, Wellington Koo, at a diplomatic banquet. Completely at a loss as to what to say to a Chinese, this young man, with a touch of genius such as may be detected only in real faux past-masters, said: “Likee soupee?”’ Mr. Koo smiled and nodded. Several moments later, when called

upon to say a few words, he delivered a brilliant little talk in flawless English, sat down while the applause was still resounding, turned to the young man and said: “Likee speechee?” Here the victim’s bungling was so obviously caused by stupidity that our natural reaction is that he thoroughly deserved the consequences. Nor do we feel any particular sympathy with the pronouncement made by a certain easily recognizable mayor of a great city, who,

when he was being harried by the press to make a statement regarding the current crime wave, hemmed and hawed, and finally trumpeted, to a group of delighted reporters: ‘““The police are fully able to meet and compete with all criminals!” Occasionally, however, a situation will arrive in which our sympathies are wholly with the troubled victim of his own tongue, who has said practically the same thing anyone else would have said in the same pickle, only to have it mushroom suddenly into a Frankenstein’s monster. Our sympathy is piqued quite as much as our interest by the little

slip made by Austria’s champion woman swimmer whose knowledge of English was somewhat limited. Asked by a Time reporter what her specialty was, she answered simply, “I am backside champion.” What would you have done, for instance, if you had been in the position of the socially prominent lady in the transcontinental train?

Her plight has long since become popular legend, more terrifying than any ghost story. The writers remember seeing it in The New Yorker at least four years ago.

THE

LAW

OF

THE

BUNGLE

She knew she had somewhere

375

before seen the woman

who had

just got on the train. And she was in a complete dither when that

woman, catching her eye, came rushing over, all smiles, exclaimed, “Why, my dear, how wonderful to find you here!” and then pro-

ceeded to indulge in a stream of intimate reminiscence which patently

showed a thoroughly close previous relationship with our friend. Clawing frantically into her memory in a desperate effort to recall who under the sun her companion was, the poor woman sud-

denly heard the unknown say, “—and my brother was mentioning

you just the other day!” In her panic, she seized this scrap of information with pathetic

eagerness. She said: “Yes—yes—your brother! What—what is he do-

ing now?” The unknown appeared momentarily puzzled. Then she stiffened. “He is still,” she said icily, “President of the United States!” In most of the blunders made because of ignorance—not that par-

ticular one, incidentally—it will be found that a touch of the very

simple, easily managed ingredient of silence will work wonders.

other, and blunter words, when in doubt, shut up.

In

You certainly feel sorry for the lady on the train. But you just as certainly don’t for the small-town politician who had just been informed of a murder in one of his precincts. Fearing to step on the toes of certain prominent parishioners in the church in which the murder had taken place, he took particular care in choosing his words when asked to comment. “The recent killing of Miss Amanda Perkins in the basement of this church,” he said firmly, “has caused some criticism.” Such errors should be confined to the very young, those who are having their first adventures in the exciting jungle of words. We don’t criticize, we hail, the schoolboy quoted in Boners who, when asked to give the reason for Achilles’ invulnerability, informed his teacher that “Achilles was dipped into the River Stynx until he was intolerable.” Similarly do we admire the definition given by another promising lad when asked to outline his Opinion as to just what a surefooted animal was. “A sure-footed animal,” he said bluntly, “is an animal that when it kicks it does not miss.” But in the case of the adult who has floundered beyond his depth, our amusement is for the most part combined with gratification—as in the stock faux pas, which probably occurs at least once each day somewhere in the world, in which the young woman says, “Aren’t you the man I met at that horrible party at those impossible Wil-

376

Jack Goodman

and Albert Rice

loughbys’?” and is answered with the frigid “Quite possibly—I am Mr. Willoughby.”

There is one story of this type—already a classic—which affords a different kind of chuckle. It concerns

a young man at a party who,

upon mention of the name of a certain college president, launched instantly upon a violent and abusive denunciation of that gentleman. In the course of his attack he touched acidly upon the latter’s beliefs, personal convictions and habits. When the stream of his remarks slowed down to an eddy, the attractive young woman who had re-

mained seated at his side throughout this diatribe said, “Do you happen to know who I am?” The young man expected no blow. The lady had smiled pleasantly

at his sallies. “Why, no,” he said. “I don’t believe I caught your name.” “T,” she said sweetly, “am the wife of the gentleman you have been discussing.” The young man blanched. Out of the thundering silence which ensued he heard himself murmuring, “And do you know who I am?” The lady admitted she didn’t.

“Thank God!” he said fervently, and disappeared into the night. The second major cause of foot-swallowing is plain, everyday hastiness. Those callous citizens among us who derive a good deal of fun from the contemplation of other people’s plights should be grateful to the modern speedy tempo. It has given us some of the very best blunders. It is difficult to imagine, for instance, any other civilization which could have produced the hurried politeness of the young hostess who, when seeing one of her guests to the door, remarked, “It was so nice to have met you for such a short time!” Or the irritable statement of the harassed police inspector justify-

ing himself to his superior: “How can I be expected to solve these murders,” he grated, “when the victims won’t cooperate with the authorities?”’ Hastiness gives rise to the eagerness blunder, the sort made by the young hostess. Sometimes this is eagerness to please, sometimes eagerness to impress. Eagerness to please, of course, caused the boner pulled by the mayor of a small English town when he introduced Stephen Leacock, the Canadian teacher and author, to the townsmen. “To think,” he mused impressively, “that years ago England populated Canada with felons, rogues and convicts—and now they are coming back to us!” Eagerness to impress has led to several choice morsels, among

THE

LAW

OF THE

BUNGLE

By

them the statement of the pompous doctor, about to inspect a lunatic

asylum. “Don’t forget,” he admonished his friend who was accompanying him—and who had taken no previous part in the conversation, “that an idiot is a human being like you or myself!” And the preacher hurrying through his sermon accounted for a beauty as he placed his hand upon his heart and gave a puzzled but interested congregation the following information:

“My friends, I have in my heart a half-warmed fish.” Only a few present realized that the good man was not expressing a preference for his evening meal, but had actually meant to say “‘half-formed wish.” A policy of leaping and then looking back in consternation at what one has said is responsible for unnumbered blunders of this type. All

of us are forever scrambling words, twisting sentences, mixing our metaphors—and only because our brain is turning over at a rate too rapid for our tongue to keep pace with it.

Fantastic figures of speech often result from blind haste. “My friends,”

warned

one

speaker, addressing

a young

mens’

business

club, “every man should stick to his trade. When he goes prowling about in strange pastures he spoils the broth!” The laughter which followed did not disconcert him. “Let your thoughts and your ideals soar upwards!” he continued, a moment later. “Let them speed as steadily and as truly as a bow released from its arrow!” It is charitable to assume that the same general hastiness was also responsible for the statement recently propounded by a senator, who shall be nameless. Made during an Independence Day oration, it was in newspapers throughout the nation.

“The Fourth of July is a peculiarly American institution!” was his deathless contribution to our political literature. From the business world an occasional tasty example is culled. Here are two faux pas which nicely blend eagerness to please with eagerness to impress. One is the story of the somewhat histrionic salesman of corn plaster who had reached a dramatic climax in his sales talk.

“The minute you've applied it, the pain stops like magic!” he said enthusiastically. “Now you keep the corn wet for one minute! Now it’s ready! Now just start peeling it off—foot and all.” The other concerns a young insurance agent who was proudly outlining his company’s methods to a prospect. The prospect, as is not unusual, was going down fighting. “But sir,” said the salesman earnestly, in answer to still another ob-

378

Jack Goodman

and Albert Rice

jection, “it has always been the policy of our company to give the family back some money out of their insurance.” Most treacherous of all is the third major cause of faux pas, the subconscious mind. No respecter of people, the subconscious has been responsible for some amazing blunders. It has a penchant for rearing its sly head in the midst of a téte-d-téte or an important social event with a lack of discrimination and an insouciance which forever sadden the particular person whose subconscious it unfortunately happens to be. From it flower the blunders which betray the innermost secrets of our minds, the strange outpourings of queer ideas which are evolved in the tiny, uncontrollable, mischief-making segments of the brain. No one is immune to the faux pas which results from the overflow of the subconscious. The story told at the beginning of this piece, that of the lady and the financier, is typical. So is the mistake made by the guest who was debating the advisability of going home. His host looked out of the window and said, “You simply can’t go. It’s raining. You must stay for dinner.” The guest glanced through the window and said, “Oh, no, it isn’t raining that hard.” And so is that of the man who was pressing his reluctant friend to come to his house for dinner. ‘Do come up,” he urged. “My wife and I argued about it all last evening—and it’s settled!” There is, too, the famous instance of General Joe Wheeler, Confederate veteran of the Civil War. Many years later he found himself storming Las Guasimas, during the Spanish-American War. The General forgot himself completely in the excitement. Turning to his men, he shouted: “Come on, boys, we’ve got the damn Yankees on the run!” Into this category of the subconscious faux pas can be pigeonholed also all of the good old standbys about the absent-minded professor, none of which will be repeated here—although they do call to mind the little tale of the young man of our acquaintance who was never noted for his ability to concentrate. Bolting from his home one morning (he lived, let’s say, at 1467 Main Street) he bounded into a taxicab at the corner. “Quick!” he barked at the driver. “Fourteen-sixty-seven Main Street—and hurry!” He then settled back into the seat, completely absorbed in his thoughts. The driver turned wearily and said, ‘““That’s where you're at now, buddy.”

THE

LAW

OF

THE

BUNGLE

379

“Never mind!” said the young man, still preoccupied. “Make it as fast as you can!” Boners of this kind are really too mild to be called faux pas. There is a certain gentle insanity to them, it is true, but a better term for

them might be faux pastels. No one ever knows when he is going to startle his hearers with one of them. Only recently an eminent man of letters, giving a lecture to a group of intellectuals, fascinated

them with the touching statement: “I have one small son—a boy.”

The faux pas is not entirely verbal. There are literary footswallowers as well as oratorical ones. Some of the very fruitiest blunders are found bound into permanence between the covers of books. And daily, the sharp-eyed are rewarded for their vigilance by the discovery of happy little errors, in newspapers and magazines, which contribute a good deal to the gaiety of nations. Consider the pleasure afforded the person who first discovered, in a book of etiquette, of all places, the dogged statement that “A

gentlemen invariably follows a lady upstairs.”

The causes of the written blunder are precisely the same as those for the spoken one. Who is to say, for instance that the reporter was not saying precisely what his subconscious dictated when he wrote, in an account of a babies’ beauty contest, that “not one of the babies on whom the judge bestowed a kiss shed a single tear.” Generally speaking, the written slip-ups which occur because the writers are not very adept at handling the language (the ignorance

type) are far funnier than those which result from typographical errors. The writers’ particular pet of this sort was penned several years

ago, but achieved a certain amount of fame through being reprinted, not only in that alert journal, The New Yorker, but in a book published by that magazine which was devoted to mistakes in the daily news. If memory serves, it was occasioned by the departure of the Graf Zeppelin from Lakehurst. The reporter’s vivid description went something like this: “Among the last to enter was Mrs. Clara A , of Erie, Pa., lone woman passenger. Slowly her huge nose was turned around into the wind. Then, like some great beast, she crawled along the grass.” Poor Mrs, A. , reading this spectacular story of her departure, must have felt a certain kinship to the executive, reading of himself in the following little note on the care and feeding of governors: “After the Governor watched the lion perform, he was taken to

380

Jack Goodman

and Albert Rice

Main Street and fed twenty-five pounds of raw meat in front of the Fox Theatre.” As has been said, the simple typographical error produces smiles, rather than chuckles or absolute guffaws. However, there is an occasional rare one. There was the New Zealand paper, for example, which stated that “The departing Mr. S was a member of the defective branch of the police force,” and then, in response to the vociferous and outraged demands of the constabulary, ran the following apology the next day conspicuously boxed off:

“By an unfortunate typographical error, we were made to say yesterday, that ‘the departing Mr. S—— was a member of the defective branch of the police force.’ Our apologies. Of course this should have read: “The detective branch of the police farce.’ ” It would be very simple to invent a set of rules for the prevention

of all kinds of blunders. It would also be rank skullduggery to do so. Such a set of rules could be riddled with holes large enough to march an entire army of bunglers through—in their characteristic

step, foot in mouth. There is no cure-all for the verbal lapse. In Utopia, perhaps, a vastly superior race to our own may always say

the right thing at the right time—which is one thing that the present civilization will have over Utopia. It is fairly safe to assume, however, that as long as there are tongues, there will be slips of the tongue—and as long as rain exists,

there will be men like John Wesley Gaines disporting themselves in it. The reasoning individual must resign himself to the fact that he is going to commit faux pas. The very act of admitting the fact to himself will help him in some small, incalculable way to cut down his output of boners. He will then try, perhaps, to edit his conversation mentally before permitting it to emerge into a hostile world. That can help cure the hastiness blunder—but not the other types. And, if he is expecting to make a boner because of ignorance—or because of his subconscious—he will be more alert to counteract its effect with some tactful comment or witty squirming. It was probably an inveterate blunderer who had finally seen the light who coined the proverb “Silence is golden.” But who can

really keep silent? Certainly not the authors.

Traveler’s Curse After Misdirection “i= ROBERT GRAVES May they stumble, stage by stage On an endless pilgrimage, Dawn and dusk, mile after mile, At each and every step withal May they catch their feet and fall; At each and every fall they take

May a bone within them break; And may the bone that breaks within Not be, for variation’s sake, Now rib, now thigh, now arm, now shin, But always, without fail THE NECK.

A Moving Picture “te C. A. E. GREEN I nave always thought well of art. I even have a special stance for viewing pictures—with a soft collar I can hold it for minutes at a time, and people tiptoe round after me to see what pictures I deem worthy of notice. Only the other day I met as ardent a lover of art as you could wish. He was craning in rapt attention before a picture, peering minutely into the canvas as at a keyhole. Now, you generally find that a man who wears a stringy tie, knotted to about the size of a pea, has a very tense nature, well suited to art, and I thought it worth while spending a little time with him. [| coughed and took up my stance beside him. “Just look at them black currants,” he said, pointing with an ecstatic middle finger. “I'll show you a beauty along here.” He sidled along the wall and pointed again.

“Just look at that,” he said. “Apples!” ‘Not a school I care for,” I said, taking his arm. “Now here we have something rather better—a Pissarro.” “It’s all little blobs of paint,” he complained, thrusting his face within two inches of the canvas. “Of course it is, at that distance,” I said. “The way to look at a picture is to stand well back—about here.” “T can’t see a bloomin’ thing now!” “Don’t you find that the meaningless blobs take on a pattern now?” I asked. “Look at the picture as a whole.” “What picture?” he said, staring vaguely into space. Then I divined his trouble—he was extremely short-sighted. His eyes were round and shone with a slightly baffled melancholy, like

those of a goldfish when you flip an ant’s egg into the bowl. Yet it seemed a pity not to show him what he was missing. I suffer from the same trouble. I removed my glasses and fitted them on him. It was obviously a revelation to him. He pivoted slowly on his heels, gazing round the gallery in wonder. “Cherries!” he exclaimed.

A MOVING

PICTURE

383

I clicked my tongue in annoyance. He was looking at one of the poorest things in the place. As far as I could see without my glasses,

it was a crude portrait of a woman in a Gainsborough hat with cherries on it—very badly done. “A very poor thing,” I said loftily, “but at least you can see it as a whole. Notice how badly that arm hangs, and the splayed feet too. The foreshortening of the face is all wrong.” “Like a horse,” he said.

“Very like.” “Her face has gone very red,” he observed. “Strange you should notice that too,” I said. “Some trick of the light perhaps. By jove, it seems to be moving now!” Horrified, I snatched back my glasses and put them on just in time. The woman with the hat was rising majestically from her seat. She was brandishing an umbrella. I side-stepped smartly, but there was no time to warn my friend. Without a word she caught him a crack on the bare part of his neck at the back. He stared vacantly around.

“Pll have to get my eyes seen to,” he remarked ruefully. “I’ve got a shocking headache coming on—a sort of shooting pain at the back of me head.” “Like a smart blow from an umbrella?” I asked, ducking again. “Yes,” he said, staring in the direction of my voice, although I was no longer there. “How did you guess?” “I’ve just got one myself—above the ear,” I said quickly. “I think we had better go at once.” “Yes,” he said, reeling slightly as the umbrella came down again.

“T think I'll go and have a lay down.” I hurried out of the gallery. Glancing back, I noticed that my friend was already lying down—at the foot of a rather fine piece of modern sculpture. It made quite a striking group, although I thought his upturned boots gave it a slightly flamboyant note. There was no time however to adjust them, as the woman was bearing down on me, but it left a very pleasing memory in my mind as | lightly descended the marble staircase four steps at a time.

Looey, Dot Epsom-Minded Dope, Nearly Buys a Huss “— MILT GROSS @

Seconp FLoor—Wot was de rizzon wot it was reenging by you a whole day de telaphun yesterday, Meesus Feitlebaum?? First FLrook—Hmm—dun’t esk!!! Sotch tings wot it heppens by oss on accont from mine Looey, dot dope, you'll wouldn’t find in de whole America. SECOND FLoor—So, wot was? First FLoorn—Was so: Mine Looey he takes all from a sodden a motion in de hempty had wot he should recite in de contry. So he puts in de noospaper a hedwertisement wot it should ridd so: “Copple wot dey now reciting in ceety would like wot dey should poichiss a one-femily houze in soboibs.” Seconp Froor—Hmmm—A “Hone you hone home” beezness it stodded opp, ha? So wot was? First FLoor—Wait yet. So dot dope wot he’s so epsom-minded wot he don’t looking wot he does, so instat he should spell howze with a hache, witt a ho, witt a yoo, witt a hess, witt a hee—so he makes a hache-ho-HARR-hess-hee—wot it spalls huss!/—Noo-noo —so dun’t esk!!! It geeves a reeng de telaphun so I geeve a yell, “Hollo, who you weesh, plizze?” So it geeves me a henswer a woice wot it saz, ““Ginsboig’s Leevery Staple spicking. We sanding opp a huss!!”” So I sad, “Who ordered here a huss, plizze??” So you should hear a cursory lengwidge witt oats wot he was swering— SECOND FLooR—Y1 yi yl yi yi— First FLoor—So you should hear wot it was calling opp a whole day all kinds from timmsters witt paddlers witt hocksters witt a weteranary sturgeon yet, wot was trattening all kinds from liable suits witt demeges— Turrp FLoor—So Isidor (SMACK) de momma’s seelk stockings you feeling dem opp witt flour already ha? (SMACK) A Hollowin beezness we nidd it yat, ha? (SMACK)—Witt chuck you got to

LOOEY,

DOT EPSOM-MINDED

DOPE, NEARLY

BUYS

A Huss

385

make mocks ulso on de front from de houze, ha? (SMACK) Wot it should stott opp witt de jenitor hoguments wot he should make me maybe a bleck heye, yat, ha (SMACK)? Tomorrow’ll be maybe

anodder holiday (SMACK) wot you'll feel opp maybe witt plester from Peris de hot wodder beg, ha (SMACK), wot you should

geeve witt it batter de bums on de had a knock (SMACK). FourtuH Froor—Oohoo, nize baby, itt opp all de Pust Tustizz, so momma’ll gonna tell you a ferry tale from Bloobidd. Wance oppon a time was leeving a nubbleman in a kestle wot it was by heem blue de wheeskers. So all de keeds from de neighborhoot dey gave heem a neeckname, “Bloobidd.” (Nize baby, take anodder spoon Pust ‘Tustizz.) POT

TWO

So he tried witt all kinds from proxit witt hanna—witt lemons, witt tee-livvs, witt hair tyes wot he should make maybe de wheeskers idder dey should be rad odder blound, odder ivvin grinn. Bot de more wot he tried de woister it bicame blue. So was a conseederable sauce from annoyance wot it gritted heem from de keeds so: “Yoohoo, hollo Bloobidd! Hollo keed!! Filling blue in de wheeskers, maybe?” und all kinds from odder tsimilar tunts. POT

TREE

So he gredually got merried. So de neighbors began to nuttice wot it deesapeared mysteerously foist one wife, den gredually anodder wife, den a toid wife till it made a tuttle from savan wifes wot dey deesapeared. So he merried gradually a hate wife. POT

FUR

So wan day he sad, “Dollink, I got to go on de road for a leedle treep on beezness. So here is mine kizz. In all de rooms you could go bot rimamber in de leedle room in de hend from de hall you shouldn’t dare to wanture. You hear me, ha? So take hidd a warning. Rimamber de mutt witt de flame!! Ulso wot cooriosity keeled wance a ket. Goodpye. I'll sand you from Etlentic Ceety some sult-wodder teffy!!” POT

FIFE

So de wife was werry henxious to know wot it was going on dere in de room so she tutt, “Hm, I’ll geeve jost wan tinny-winny pick in de room so who'll gonna nuttice de deeference?” So all in a flotter she pushed in de key in de door so she gave a look insite

Milt Gross

386

so dere it was hall de wifes wot dot doidy goot-for-notting dem—dot weeked critchure!!! So on de key it rimmained a she tried witt all kinds from supp witt wodder with scarring witt Old Dutch Clinzzer she should take it huff bot it deedn’t POT

keeled spot so podder helped.

SEEX

So it arrifed home Bloobidd. So he sad, “Noo, Fatimma, mine kizz.” So he sad, “Wat’s dees? It’s meesing a key! Hm, you gatting pale? Ha! Ha! C’mon keed—punny opp!!” So she gave him de key wot it was de mock on it yat so he sad, “Hm, 1s diss a system?? It simms wot I must chop you off de had!!” So she plidded witt

heem und cuxxed heem. So she sad, “Geeve me at list a hour I should write mine pipple!” So dot hot-hotted ting sad, “Notting doong.” So she sad, ‘So make it trickwodders from a hour.”

So he sad, “Notting doong.” So she sad, “Make it a heff from a hour.” So he sad, “Notting doong.” So she sad, “Make it feeftin minnets.” So he sad: “Hm. Go hoggue witt a woman. Ho K—feeftin minnets. So in de minntime it came along on hussbeck two soldiers wot dey roshed in queeck so dey cut a hold from Bloobidd so dey chopped him off de had witt de wheeskers togadder. (Hm, sotch a dollink baby, ate up all de Pust Tustizz.)

A Confession

“Y= GIOVANNI GUARESCHI Don Camitio had come into the world with a constitutional preference for calling a spade a spade. His parishioners

remembered the time he found out about a local scandal involving young girls of the village with some landowners well along in years. On the Sunday following his discovery, Don Camillo had begun a simple, rather mild sermon, when he spotted one of the offenders in the front pew. Taking just enough time out to throw a cloth over the crucifix at the main altar so that Christ might not hear what was going to follow, he turned on the congregation with clenched fists and finished the sermon in a voice so loud and with words so strong that the roof of the little church trembled. Naturally, when the time of the elections drew near, Don Camillo was very explicit in his allusions to the local leftists. What happened was not surprising, therefore: one fine evening as the priest was on his way home, a fellow muffled in a cloak sprang out of a hedge and, taking advantage of the fact that Don Camillo was handicapped by a bicycle with a basket of eggs on the handle bars, dealt the priest a mean blow with a heavy stick and then disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed him. Don Camillo kept his own council. He continued to the rectory and, after putting the eggs in a safe place, went into the church to talk things over with Christ, as he always did in moments of perplexity. “What should I do?” asked Don Camillo. “Anoint your back with a little oil beaten up in water and hold your tongue,” Christ answered from the main altar. “We must forgive those who offend us.” “Very true, Lord, but here we are discussing blows, not offenses.” “And what do you mean by that? Surely, Don Camillo, you don’t mean that the injuries done to the body are more painful than those to the soul?” “I see your point, Lord. But You should bear in mind that an at-

388

Giovanni

Guareschi

tack on me, Your priest, is also an offense against You. | am really more concerned for You than for myself.” “And wasn’t I a greater minister of God than you are? And didn’t I forgive those who nailed me to the cross?” “There’s no use arguing with You!” Don Camillo exclaimed. “You are always right. May Your will be done. I will forgive, but don’t forget that if these ruffans, encouraged by my silence, crack my skull open, it will be Your responsibility. I could quote You several passages from the Old Testament . . .” ‘Don Camillo, do you propose to teach me the Old Testament? As for this business, I assume full responsibility. And just between ourselves, that little beating this evening did you some good. It may teach you to let politics alone in My house.” Don Camillo forgave in his heart, but one thing stuck in his mind and needled him—curiosity as to the identity of his assailant. Time passed. Then, late one evening as he was sitting in the confessional, Don Camillo recognized through the grille the face of Peppone, the leader of the extreme left. That Peppone should come to confession at all was a sensational event, and Don Camillo was duly gratified. “God be with you, brother; with you who, more than others, needs His holy blessing. When did you make your last confession?”

“In 1918,” replied Peppone. “In all those years you must have committed your head so crammed with crazy ideas. . . .”

a lot of sins with

“Quite a few, I’m afraid,” sighed Peppone.

“For example?” “For example, two months ago I gave you a beating.” “That is very serious,” replied Don Camillo, “since, by assaulting one of God’s priests, you have offended God himself.” “Oh, but I have repented,” Peppone exclaimed. “And anyway it was not as God’s priest that I beat you up but as my political adversary. Anyhow I did it in a moment of weakness.” “Besides this and your activities in that devilish party, have you any other sins to confess?” Peppone spilled them out, but all in all Don Camillo found nothing very serious and let him off with twenty Our Fathers and twenty Hail Marys. While Peppone was at the altar rail saying his penance, Don Camillo went and knelt before the crucifix. “Lord,” he said, “forgive me but I’m going to beat him up for You “You'll do nothing of the kind,” replied Christ. “I have forgiven

A CONFESSION

389

him and you must do the same. After all, he’s not such a bad soul.”

“Lord, you can’t trust a red! They live by lies. Just look at that face—Barabbas incarnate!” “One face is the same as another. It’s your heart, Don Camillo, that is venomous!”’ “Lord, if I have been a worthy servant to You, grant me one small favor. Let me at least hit him with this candle. After all, Lord, what is a candle?”

“No,” replied Christ. “Your hands were made for blessing.” Don Camillo sighed wearily. He genuflected and left the altar. As he turned to make a final sign of the cross, he found himself exactly behind Peppone, who still knelt at the altar rail and appeared absorbed in prayer. “Lord,” groaned Don Camillo, clasping his hands and looking up at the crucifix, “my hands were made for blessing, but not my feet.”

‘““There’s something in that,” replied Christ, “but I warn you, just one.” The kick landed like a thunderbolt. Peppone didn’t After a minute he got up and sighed. “Pve been expecting that for the past ten minutes,” casually. “I feel better now.” “So do I,” exclaimed Don Camillo, whose heart was and serene as a May morning. Christ said nothing at all, but it was easy enough to too was pleased.

bat an eye. he remarked now as light

see that He

On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness

“= ARTHUR GUITERMAN The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just Is ferric oxide, known as rust. The grizzly bear whose potent hug Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf, And I don’t feel so well myself!

The Ruined Maid

“t= THOMAS

HARDY

“O ’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed J should meet you in town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?”— “O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.

—“You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three.”— “Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she. —“At home in the barton you said ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ And ‘thik oon,’ and ‘theas oon,’ and ‘t’other’; but now Your talking quite fits ’ee for high company!”— “Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she. —Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak, But now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!”— “We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she. ! oe)

—*"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!”— “True. There’s an advantage in ruin,” said she.

—*I And “My Isn’t

wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, a delicate face, and could strut about town! ”— dear—a raw country girl, such as you be, equal to that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.

Collaboration with Kaufman “i= MOSS HART Ar FIve minutes of eleven, I rang the bell at 158 East

Sixty-third Street. The rather modest brownstone house was a little disappointing to my fancy of how a famous playwright should live, but the street was fashionable and the maid who opened the door was a reassuring sight. She was in uniform, a starched white cap perched correctly on her head. More like it, I thought, as she held the door open for me to pass her. I walked in and glanced quickly down the hall at a dining room leading out into a little garden. There was a bowl of flowers on the polished table flanked by silver candle-

sticks. Just right, I told myself satisfactorily and looked inquiringly at the stairway. “Mr. Kaufman is waiting for you,” said the maid. “The top floor,

just go right up.” I walked up the stairs and stopped briefly at the second landing to look at a drawing room and library divided by the stairwell. Both

rooms might have come straight out of the movies as far as my innocent eyes were concerned. I knew at once that my first goal the moment the money began to roll in, beyond the taking of taxicabs wherever and whenever I wanted to, would be to live like this. It was an illuminating and expensive moment. The doors on the third floor, evidently bedrooms, were all tightly closed, and as I reached the fourth-floor landing, Mr. Kaufman stood awaiting me in the doorway of what turned out to be his own bedroom and study combined. After the elegance and style of the drawing room and library, this room was a great blow. It was small, rather dark room furnished sparsely with a studio couch, a quite ugly typewriter desk and one easy chair. It was hard for me to believe that a stream of brilliant plays had come out of this monklike interior. I am not certain what I expected the atelier of Kaufman and Connelly would be like but it most certainly was the opposite of this. There was no hint of any kind that this room was in any way concerned with the theater. Not a framed photograph or program hung on its walls, and except for an excellent etching of Mark Twain, it

COLLABORATION

WITH

KAUFMAN

393

might well have been, I thought regretfully, the bedroom and workroom of a certified public accountant. My initial disappointment was to deepen into an active loathing of that room, but at the

moment my eyes after the first quick look were focused on its occupant. Mr. Kaufman was in the process of greeting me with what turned out to be his daily supply of enthusiasm so far as the social amenities

were concerned; that is to say, one finger was being wearily lifted and his voice was managing a tired “Hi.” He had moved to the window after this display of cordiality and now stood with his back to the room and to me, staring out at the gardens of the houses on

Sixty-second Street. I had not been asked to sit down, but I was too uncomfortable to remain standing and after a moment of waiting I sat down in the armchair and stared at his back. His arm now reached around his neck to scratch his ear, a gesture | was to come to

recognize as a prelude to a rearrangement of a scene or the emergence of a new line; now he remained for a few moments engrossed in the movements of a large cat slowly moving along the garden fence as it contemplated a sparrow on one of the leafless trees. ‘This back-yard spectacle seemed to hold him in deep fascination until the cat leaped up into the tree and the bird flew off, whereupon he turned from the window with a large sigh. I looked at him, eager and alert, but there were still other things of moment that caught and held his attention before he addressed me directly. As he turned from the window he spied two or three pieces of lint on the floor, and these he carefully removed from the carpet with all the deftness of an expert botanist gathering specimens for the Museum of Natural History. This task completed, he turned his eyes toward a mound of sharpened pencils on the desk, found two whose points were not razor-sharp or to his liking, and ground them down in a pencil sharpener attached to the wall. In the process of do-

ing so, he discovered some more lint at the side of the desk and this, too, was carefully picked up, after which he held up and inspected a few sheets of carbon paper, found them still usable, and placed them neatly beside a pile of typewriter paper, which he neatly patted until

all its edges were perfectly aligned. His eyes darted dolefully around

the room again, seeming to be looking for something else—any thing at all, it seemed to me!—to engage his attention, but the carpet being quite free of lint, his gaze finally came to rest on the armchair in which I sat, and he addressed me at last. “Fr ...” he said, and began to pace rapidly up and down the room. This, too—the word Er used as a form of address and fol-

394

Moss Hart

lowed by a rapid pacing—I was to come to recognize as the actual start of a working session: a signal that lint-picking, cat-watching and pencil-sharpening time was over and that he wanted my attention.

During all the time we were engaged together on Once in a Lifetime, he never once addressed me by any other name but ‘“‘Er,” even in moments of stress or actual crisis. Perhaps he felt, being the innately shy and private person he was, that “Moss” was too intimate

a name to call me; and to address me as “Mr. Hart” seemed a little silly, considering the difference in our ages and positions. But somehow or other I recognized at this first meeting that “Er” meant me and not a clearing of the throat, and I waited attentively untul Mr. Kaufman stopped his pacing and stood in front of the armchair looking down at me. “The trouble begins in the third scene of the first act,” he said. “Tt’s messy and unclear and goes off in the wrong direction. Suppose we start with that.” I nodded, trying to look agreeable and knowing at the same time; but this, like my disappointment with the workshop of the master,

was my second blow of the morning. I had been looking forward with great eagerness to that first talk on play-writing by the celebrated Mr. Kaufman. I had expected to make mental notes on everything he said each day and put it all down every evening in a looseleaf folder I had bought expressly for that purpose. But this flat, unvarnished statement that something was wrong with the third scene of the first act seemed to be all I was going to get, for Mr. Kaufman was already moving past me now on his way to the bathroom. I turned in my chair and looked at him as he stood by the washbasin and slowly and meticulously washed his hands, and I was struck then and forever afterward by the fact that his hands were what one imagines the hands of a great surgeon to be like. This impression was further implemented by the odd circumstance that he invariably began the day’s work by first washing his hands —a ritual that was, of course, unconscious on his part, but which he would sometimes perform two or three times more during each working session, usually at the beginning of attacking a new scene as though the anatomy of a play were a living thing whose internal organs were to be explored surgically. | watched him dry his hands and forearms carefully—he took the trouble, I noticed, to undo the cuffs of his shirt and roll them up—and as he came back into the room, walked briskly toward the desk and selected a pencil with just the right pointed sharpness, I was again startled by the inescapable

COLLABORATION

WITH

KAUFMAN

395

impression that the pencil held poised over the manuscript in those long tensile fingers was a scalpel. The pencil suddenly darted down onto the paper and moved

swiftly along the page, crossing out a line here and there, making a

large X through a solid speech, fusing two long sentences into one, indicating by an arrow or a question mark the condensation or transference of a section of dialogue so that its point was highlighted and

its emphasis sharpened; the operation was repeated with lightninglike precision on the next page and the next, until the end of the scene. Then he picked up the manuscript from the desk and brought it over to me. “Just cutting away the underbrush,” he said. “See what you think.” I took the manuscript and read with astonishment. The content of the scene remained the same, but its point was unmuddied by repetition, and the economy and clarity with which everything necessary was now Said gave the scene a new urgency. The effect of what he had done seemed to me so magical that I could hardly believe I had been so downright repetitive and verbose. I looked up from the manuscript and stared admiringly at the waiting figure by the desk. Mr. Kaufman evidently mistook my chagrined and admiring silence for pique. “I may have cut too deeply, of course,” he said apologetically. “Is there something you want to have go back? “Oh, no,” I replied hastily, “not a word. It’s just wonderful now. Just great! I don’t understand how I could have been so stupid. The scene really works now, doesn’t it?” It was Mr. Kaufman’s turn to stare at me in silence for a moment, and he looked at me quizzically over the rims of his glasses before he spoke again. “No, it doesn’t work at all,” he said gently. “I thought the cuts would show you why it wouldn’t work.” He sighed and scratched his ear. “Perhaps the trouble starts earlier than I thought.” He took the play from my lap and placed it on the desk again. “All right, Page one—Scene One. I guess we might as well face it.” He picked up a pencil and held it poised over the manuscript, and I watched fascinated and awestruck as the pencil swooped down on page after page. If it is possible for a reminiscence of this sort to have a hero, then that hero is George S. Kaufman. In the months that followed that first day’s work, however, my waking nightmare was of a glittering steel pencil suspended over my head that sometimes turned into a scalpel,

396

Moss

Hart

or a baleful stare over the rims of a huge pair of disembodied tortoise-shell glasses. I do not think it far-fetched to say that such success as I have had in the theater is due in large part to George

Kaufman. I cannot pretend that I was without talent, but such gifts as I possessed were raw and undisciplined. It is one thing to have a

flair for play-writing or even a ready wit with dialogue. It is quite

another to apply these gifts in the strict and demanding terms of a

fully articulated play so that they emerge with explicitness, precision and form. All of this and a great deal more I learned from George

Kaufman. And if it is true that no more eager disciple ever sat at the feet of a teacher, it is equally true that no disciple was ever treated with more infinite patience and understanding. The debt I owe is a large one, for it could not have been easy for him to deal with some of my initial blunderings and gaucheries, particularly in those first days of our collaboration. He was not at heart

a patient man or a man who bothered to tolerate or maintain the fiction of graceful social behavior in the face of other people’s infelicities. In particular, easy admiration distressed him, and any display of emotion filled him with dismay; the aroma of a cigar physically sickened him. I was guilty of all three of these things in daily and constant succession, and since he was too shy or possibly too fearful of hurting my feelings to mention his distress to me, I continued to

compound the felony day after day; filling the room with clouds of cigar smoke, being inordinately admiring of everything he did, and in spite of myself, unable to forbear each evening before I left the making of a little speech of gratitude or thanks. His suffering at these moments was acute, but I construed his odd behavior at these times as being merely one more manifestation of the eccentricities that all celebrated people seem to have in such abundance. And the next morning, as I sat down, I would cheerfully light a cigar without pausing to wonder even briefly why Mr. Kaufman was walking as quickly and as far away from me as it was possible for him to get within the confines of that small room. It did not occur to me, I cannot think why, to be either astonished or confounded by the fact that each time I rose from the armchair and came toward him to speak, he retreated with something akin to terror to the window and stood breathing deeply of such air as was not already swirling with blue cigar smoke. Nor could I understand why, after I fulsomely admired a new line or an acid turn of phrase that he had just suggested that seemed to me downright inspired, he would scratch his ear until I thought it would drop off and stare at me malignantly over the top of his glasses, his face contorted with

COLLABORATION

WITH

KAUFMAN

397

an emotion that seemed too painful to find expression. Even his passion to remove each dead cigar butt from the room almost before my hand had reached the ashtray with it, and his obsession with keeping the windows wide openon even the most frigid days, did nothing to alert me to his suffering, and I was seemingly deaf as well as dense when his diatribes against people who made speeches at each other took on added strength and fervor with each passing day.

I suppose his worst moment of the day came at my leave-taking,

when he could sense another little speech coming on. I know now that he evolved various stratagems of his own to escape these eulo-

gies, such as rushing into the bathroom and with the water taps turned full on calling out a goodbye through the closed door, or go-

ing to the telephone and with his back to me hurriedly calling a number; but with something approximating genius I nearly always managed to find the moment to have my say. He seldom escaped! Mr. Kaufman spent a good deal of his time, particularly in the late afternoons, stretched out full length on the floor, and it was usually at one of these unwary moments when he was at his lowest ebb and stretched helplessly below me that I would stand over him and deliver my captivating compendium of the day’s work. Something like a small moan, which I misinterpreted as agreement, would escape

from his lips and he would turn his head away from the sight of my face, much the way a man whose arm is about to be jabbed with a needle averts his gaze to spare himself the extra pain of seeing the needle descend. All unknowing and delighted with my eloquence, I would light a new cigar, puff a last fresh aromatic cloud of smoke down into his face, and cheerfully reminding him of the splendid ideas he had had for the scene we were going to work on tomorrow, I would take my leave. I have never allowed myself to think of some of the imprecations that must have followed my retreating figure down the stairway, but if I was torturing Mr. Kaufman all unknowingly, the score was not exactly one-sided. Quite unaware that he was doing so, he was on his part providing me with a daily Gethsemane of my own that grew more agonizing with each passing day, and though his suffering was of the spirit and mine was of the flesh, I think our pain in the end was about equal, for I was as incapable of mentioning my distress to him as he was of mentioning his to me. The cause of my agony was simple enough. Mr. Kaufman cared very little about food. His appetite was not the demanding and capricious one mine was—indeed, his lack of concern with food was quite unlike anyone else’s I have ever known. The joys and pleasures

398

Moss Hart

of the table seemed simply to have passed him by in the way that a dazzling sunset must escape the color-blind. He apparently needed very little food to sustain him and cared even less when and how it was served. He had his breakfast at ten o’clock in the morning, and work was enough to nourish him thereafter until evening. His energy, unlike my own, seemed to be attached not to his stomach but to his brain; and his capacity for work, which was enormous, seemed to flourish and grow in ratio to the rattle of a typewriter. True, every afternoon at about four o’clock, apparently as a concession to some base need he knew existed in other human beings but did not quite understand himself, tea would be brought in by the maid. Six cookies, no more and no less, and on gala occasions two slices of homemade chocolate cake would lie on a plate naked and

shimmering to my hunger-glazed eyes; and, as I could sniff the tea coming up the stairs or hear the teacups rattling on the tray outside the door, my stomach would rumble so loudly and my ravenousness would be so mouth-watering that I would get up and walk about the room, pretending to stretch my arms and legs, in order to control myself, for it was all I could do not to grab and stuff the minute the maid set the tray down. My predicament was further complicated by the fact that Mr. Kaufman was always scrupulously polite and devilishly insistent that I help myself first, and since I was only too aware that he took only a sip or two of tea and never more than one cookie, which he absentmindedly nibbled at, I could never bring myself to do more than slavishly follow his example for fear of being thought ill-mannered or unused to high life—until one day, maddened by hunger, I gobbled up every single cookie and the two slices of chocolate cake while he was in the bathroom washing his hands. Whether it was the mutely empty plate or my guilt-ridden and embarrassed face staring up at him as he approached the tea tray, I do not know; but from the day onward, little sandwiches began to appear, and tea time, to my vast relief, was moved up an hour earlier.

The Whistling Corpse “f+ BEN HECHT (AutHor’s Nore: I am indebted to the writers of myster y books for many hours of diversion. In part payment of this debt I offer them this Chapter One, gratis and unencumbered, to use as a begin-

ning for any of their subsequent works. )

Dedication

To Maybell, Gladys, ger, Ethyl, Gussykins, Gugu, Greta, My Wife understanding and jolly never have been written.

Hortense, Marianne, Mathilda, Tinee, GinHelena, Chickie, Bernice, Fifi, Dorothea, and Mom, without whose love and tender evenings at Grapes End this book would

Author’s Note

The characters in this book bear no resemblance to anyone living or dead with the exception, of course, of Colonel Sparks and the charming Eulalia. I have used their red barn as a scene for two of the murders but Marroway Hall is entirely fictional and, as everyone knows, there is no such state in the U.S.A. as Bonita.

CHAPTER

ONE

I sHALL never forget the bright summer afternoon when poor Stuffy found the green button under Grandma Marnoy’s knitting bag—on the lawn out there, a stone’s throw from Indian Creek that bisects the rolling Marpleton grounds where Toppet, Ruby and I used to play pirate and chase butterflies. I have often wondered what would have happened if Stuffy had given me the button instead of swallowing it. For one thing, Consuela Marston

Ben Hecht

400

would never have met the man with the pickax and I would never,

of course, have gone to that dreadful carnival which was the beginning of everything. Had I known, of course, even after the button, what seems so obvious to us all now—I mean, about Uncle Massie’s love for that curious creature during his mining days in Texas when he founded the great Micheljohn fortune—I might have prevented some of the disasters which for a time threatened to wipe out the descendants of Nathaniel Colby. But poor Madelaine had always misunderstood Percival Massie’s reasons for selling the great coffee warehouses that

had been in the family—even before Jebby was born. Percival loved Madelaine—in his own way, of course—arrogant, thin lipped and even sneeringly. But it was love, as we all were to

discover when the green button came home to roost and poor Stuffy was no more. That afternoon of the autopsy still brings a chill into my bones. Poor Stuffy! How can I ever blot out the memory of his bewildered face when the dead rose up and whistled at him—that whistle that changed Marroway Hall into a charnel house! The events are still too fresh in my mind for me to write without

a shudder as I recall that summer afternoon when Loppy and Coppy, Grandma Marnoy’s favorite twins, arrived on the 3:18 at MaskinCott, in answer to her imperial summons.

so festive as on that moment

Marroway Hall was never

when these two ill-fated youngsters

came laughing down the baronial staircase that led from Cousin Marshall’s secret laboratory—as we were to find out—straight into the old colonial living room that had once been a fort—the fort where the British had massacred the last of the Green Mountain boys on that Sunday hundreds of years ago before Bonita had yet become a State.

As children we used to be proud of the bloodstains over the man-

telpiece which neither old Jebby nor any of the staff was allowed to efface. Little did we think that those bloodstains would someday become the clue that would put a rope around the necks of three people we all loved. But, to return to the green button and poor Stuffy’s untimely

gourmandizing. I knew, of course, on that afternoon that Jennifer and Siegfried Mersmer had left two sons at the time of their tragic death in the south of France, although Delmar had disappeared when he was twelve and Happy (as we called him) had inherited the entire Marvin fortune, including the great stables of Marvingrovia. Word of Delmar’s marriage to the ill-fated Agatha had been brought to us much later by Uncle Mooney when he returned with

THE

WHISTLING

CORPSE

401

faithful Jebby after settling his affairs in the Transvaal. It was much too late for any of us to do anything, and I’m afraid we did just

that—nothing. We all knew, of course, that the young wife had died in childbirth and that the twins Loppy and Coppy belonged to a previous marriage. But none of us—with

the exception, of course,

of the dead man who whistled through those awful nights—had any

inkling of Uncle Morehead’s last will and testament. But I am getting

ahead of my story a wee bit. It all really begins with the finding of the green button. We were all sitting on the veranda, the Countess Marsley, Spike Hummer, catcher for the Giants, and Uncle Murchison’s two nephews—Milton and the irrepressible Pliny. And Grandma Marnoy was knitting

away, laughing and agile despite her 102 years. And poor ill-fated Cousin Mullineaux was poring over his famous stamp collection. We

sat sipping those adorable juleps that only old Jebby knew how to make and listening to Joel, the wittiest and yet cruelest man I have

ever known, describe his recent trip to Charlestown. I detected a curious tightening of Aunt Molby’s eyelids as Joel talked and, despite the languorous mood of that moment, I felt a

number

of undercurrents.

Jerry’s hatred of the lovely Marianne

and Uncle Milford’s twenty years of silent rage against the woman

who had left him for that impecunious art student—poor Jon Mungo whose lovely portrait of Senorita X hangs before me even now as | write—these were some of the undercurrents. There were others that I was to learn of later. But we were all gay and frightfully witty as we sat there, lis-

tening to the chatter of the twins and watching Stuffy playing pirate

on the lawn by himself. Suddenly something green flashed in the Bonita sun. I remember hearing a sharp intake of breath behind me, as if someone were stifling a gasp of terror. And then the flash of

green was gone. The green button had disappeared down Stuffy’s

throat. I turned, wondering who had gasped, and looked into the blazing eyes of Cousin Maynard—lank, easygoing Maynard with his patrician nose and the ne’er-do-well droop to his sensual mouth. A knowing chuckle came from Grandma Marnoy’s esoteric face! And then we were all chatting gayly again. All but Madelaine. Poor Loppy! Maynard’s love for her is something that still brings a glow to me as I recall him whittling that first boomerang—the one we found later at the bottom of Indian Creek, covered with her blood. It lies before me on my desk as I write, together with the green button, the cross-bow, the little torn laundry list, the pile of

402

Ben Hecht

empty envelopes, and the old-fashioned fireless cooker that were all to open our eyes before that awful summer in Bonita was over.

I have always had a distaste for family reunions—and despite my interest in Grandma Marnoy’s declaration that she had decided to change her will, I felt bored. Which may explain why I was the first to leave the veranda and why it was I, of all people, who first saw the daintily shod pair of feet dangling over the baronial staircase. For a moment I was too overcome to scream! A woman, still beautiful, still voluptuous, hanging in our ancient living room! I stared in horror at the lovely dead face now contorted in agony. And I had

barely time to realize that this dangling corpse was whistling— whistling an old French-Canadian nursery song—“Arouet, Ma Jolie Arouet”—before the room turned black and I felt myself plunging

into an abyss.

Nature Study “t= THOMAS HEGGEN Tue anchoring of the Naval Auxiliary U.S.S. Reluctant was accomplished without incident. The anchor chain banged and rattled in the hawse pipes and the ship shuddered as it stampeded out. The word, “Secure the special sea detail,” was blatted over the P.A. system and five seconds later the engine room called the bridge for permission to secure the main engines. The captain made the appropriate reply, “Goddamit, they’ll secure when I get good and ready to let them secure,” but he did it without enthusiasm, and he only muttered for perhaps two minutes about those bastards down there who sit on their tails waiting to secure. It was a very hot, sweaty day, about three in the afternoon, and it seemed just another

island: so nobody’s heart beat very much faster at being anchored.

The port routine commenced, a matter of loosening the ship’s belt a notch or two. The gun watches stayed on, but the lookouts were secured and ran below to find the crap game. A boat was lowered to

go over and get the mail. Back on number four hatch the canvas screen was rigged for the night’s movie. Stuyzulski, a seaman in the third division who wouldn’t get out of his clothes under way, took a bath; and at chow everyone remarked on how much better he smelled. Ensign Pulver mixed himself what he called a Manhattan— a third of a water glass of brandy, a splash of vermouth, and a couple of ice cubes—and lay in his bunk and sipped it admiringly. The crew leaned on the rail and looked around incuriously at the little bay and the naval base ashore. Becker, a seaman received on board in the last draft, was moved to remark to Dowdy: “This ain’t a bad place, you know it?” Dowdy said something obscene without even turning his head. Becker bumbled on: “No, I mean it ain’t as bad as most of the places we been to. It’s kind of pretty.” Becker was right, though; it was kind of pretty; it was really a rather lively little bay. The water off the reef was terribly blue, a showy light-ink blue. The bay was enclosed by a chain of islands, and instead of the usual flat barren coral these were green with lush and heavy foliage, and on two sides of the anchorage they ran up to

404

Thomas Heggen

impressive hills that were remote and purpling in the late afternoon sun. And the channel at the end of the bay wound away into the deep shadow between the islands and reappeared flashing in the secret and smoky distance. The crew, lined along the rail, began to feel obscurely good at being here; and even Dowdy was probably aware that, aesthetically, this was quite a superior place. Its intrinsic and most spectacular virtue fell to Sam Insigna to discover. (Although if Sam hadn’t found it one of the other signalmen would have soon enough.) Sam was a little monkey of a man, not quite five feet tall, long-armed and bowlegged like a monkey, with a monkey’s grinning, wizened face, who had achieved considerable fame aboard the ship by once attacking, unprovoked and with the intention of doing physical violence, a six-foot-four marine. Sam was up on the flying bridge with the other signalmen and he was idly

scanning the beach through the ship’s telescope, a large, mounted glass of 32 power. The ship was anchored perhaps 200 yards from the beach, and just off the starboard bow, the way she was heading now, there was a base hospital. The hospital flag was flying over

three rows of Quonset huts; there was well-trimmed grass between the huts, and straight neat coral paths that looked like sidewalks. Farther off to the right was the rest of the naval base; clapboard buildings and Quonsets scattered between coconut palms, and down at the waterfront there was a long wooden two-story house, painted

yellow; long and low, with a veranda running the entire length. There was a swing on the veranda and several cane chairs, there was a fine green lawn running down to the beach, and there were two green wooden benches on the lawn under the trees. It was an old house, obviously long antedating American occupation of the island, it was a formless, bleak, and even ugly house; yet, in these surroundings, in the middle of the Pacific, it seemed to the signalmen a thing of great magnificence. “Tt must have been the governor’s house,” Schlemmer explained. Sam swung the telescope around to have a look at this. At first he trained it carelessly around the grounds, then he turned it on the house. For perhaps a full minute nothing happened, and then it did. Sam had been leaning with one elbow on the windshield; all of a sudden he jerked upright, sucked in his breath and grabbed at the glass as if he were falling. The idea flashed through the mind of Schlemmer, standing beside him, that Sam had been hit by a sniper.

“Holy Christ!” Sam said. He seemed to have difficulty in speaking. “What is it?” Schlemmer said, and he grabbed for a long-glass.

NATURE

STUDY

There was only reverence bare-assed!”

405

in Sam’s voice. “Holy Christ!

She’s

One of the many anomalies of our ponderous Navy is its ability to

move fast, to strike the swift, telling blow at the precise moment it is needed. There were accessible in the wheelhouse and charthouse

seven pairs of binoculars; on the flying bridge were two spy glasses and two long-glasses, and the ship’s telescope; and on a platform above was the range finder, an instrument of powerful magnification. Within a commendably brief time after Sam had sounded the alarm, somewhere between 15 and 20 seconds, there were manned six pairs of binoculars, two spyglasses, two long-glasses, of course the ship’s telescope, and the range finder. The glasses were all on

the target right away, but the range finder took a little longer, that instrument being a large unwieldy affair which required considerable frantic cranking and adjusting by two men in order to focus on a

target. Through a rather surprising sense of delicacy, considering

that two quartermasters and the talker were left without, one pair of binoculars remained untouched: the ones clearly labeled “Captain.” In future scrutinies, it was found necessary to press all glasses into service, exempting none. Sam’s discovery was basically simple, natural, reasonable. He had discovered that nurses lived in the long, yellow house. He had discovered two large windows in the middle of the second-story front, and that these windows had none but shade curtains, retracted. He had discovered (the telescope is a powerful glass and the room was well illumined by sunlight) that the windows belonged to the bathroom. It is, of course, redundant to say that he had also discovered a nurse in the shower stall in the far left-hand corner of the room. All of this would seem to be a model of logic, of sweet reasonableness; what could possibly be more logical than that there be a hospital at this base, that there be nurses attached to this hospital, that these nurses lived in a house, that this house have a bathroom, that this bathroom have windows, that these nurses bathe? Nothing, you would think. And yet to these signalmen and quartermasters (who had last seen a white woman, probably fat, certainly fully clothed, perhaps 14 months ago) this vision was literally that, a vision, and a miracle, and not a very small miracle, either. Like Sam, they were stricken with reverence in its presence, and like Sam, their remarks were reverent; those who could speak at all. “Holy Christ!” a few of them managed to breathe, and “Son of a bitch!” That was all. Those are the only legitimate things a man can say when suddenly confronted with the imponderable.

406

Thomas Heggen

The word spread fast, although how it is difficult to say: cer-

tainly no one left the bridge. The four-to-eight signal watch, Niesen

and Canappa, never known to relieve before the stroke of the hour,

appeared at three-thirty and met an equally incredible thing; a watch

that refused to be relieved. “Get the hell out of here,” Sam told the newcomers. “We're staying up here till chow.” There was some bitterness and much indignant insistence by the oncoming pair of their right to relieve the watch, but the old watch, firmly entrenched at the glasses, stayed by them until chow was piped. There was a splendid run of bathers. The shore station blinked for half an hour trying to rouse the ship, a bare two hundred yards away; and, finally succeeding, sent out a nasty message about keeping a more alert signal watch. Accordingly, the glass of the striker Mannion

was taken away from him and he was detailed to watch for signals. It seemed that Sam had just gone below for supper when he was back again, demanding and getting his telescope. He and the rest of the watch stayed on until after sunset, when lights went on in the bathroom and the curtains were pulled chastely down for the night; all the way down, leaving not the merest crack. That first day was chaotic, comparable perhaps to the establishing of a beachhead. It was ill-organized; there was duplication and wasted effort. The next day went much better. A system and a pat-

tern appeared. The curtain was raised at 0745 and was witnessed by Sam, Schlemmer, Canappa, Mannion, Morris, Niesen, three quarter-

masters, and the officer-of-the-deck. For perhaps 45 minutes there was a dazzling crowd of early-morning bathers; almost a surfeit of them, sometimes three or four at a time. Then there was a long slack period (no one in the room) that extended to ten o’clock. Sam or-

ganized for the slack period. It is fatiguing to stand squinting through an eyepiece for long periods, so Sam arranged that one man, by turns, keep the lookout during the off hours and give the word when ac-

tion developed. But he refused to let Mannion take a turn. “That son of a bitch watched one strip down yesterday and didn’t open his mouth,” he accused.

It was possible by this time to establish the routine of the house. After the big early-morning rush there was only an occasional and accidental visitor until around ten, when the night watch would begin to get up. From ten to eleven was fairly good, and eleven until noon was very good. From lunch until two was quiet, but from two

until 2:45 there was the same rich procession as in the morning. After four, things dropped off sharply and weren’t really much good again for the rest of the day. It was shrewdly observed and duly

NATURE

STUDY

407

noted that watches at the hospital evidently changed at eight in the

morning and three in the afternoon. All glasses were manned during

those periods; pathetic little two-power opera glasses made their ap-

pearance then, and the windshield and splintershields of the flying

bridge presented a solid wall of variously magnified eyeballs. By this time, also, the watch—as it came to be known—assumed a routine of its own. The assignment and ownership of glasses came to be understood. Three pairs of binoculars belonged down below for the officer-of-the-deck and two quartermasters. The other four pairs of binoculars, the spyglasses and the long-glasses, belonged to the signalmen; to use themselves or lend to radiomen, storekeepers and cooks in return for future favors. The range finder came to be recognized as officer property and was almost continually manned by a rotating team of two officers; Lieutenant Carney and Ensign Moulton being the most constant. The big telescope, of course, was a

prize. It magnified 32 times. There was a box of Lux soap sitting on a

shelf on the far wall of the bathroom, and with the telescope Sam could make out with ease the big letters LUX and below them, in

smaller letters, the word Thrifty. He could even almost make out

the much smaller words in the lower left-hand corner of the box. The long-glass could barely make out the word Thrifty and couldn’t begin to make out the words in the corner. The spy glasses and the binoculars couldn’t even make out the word Thrifty. From the first, Sam’s right to the telescope had been strangely unchallenged, perhaps in intuitive recognition of his zeal. Turncliffe, the first-class signalman, gave him a brief argument once—more of a token argument, really, than anything else—and then retired to the

long-glass. For quite a while Sam was indisputably on the telescope; then one morning Lieutenant (jg) Billings chanced on the bridge. Lieutenant Billings was the communications officer and Sam’s boss, and he relieved Sam briefly on the telescope. That was all right

the first time; Sam was good-natured in yielding; he liked Mr. Billings. But then Mr. Billings began to chance on the bridge frequently and regularly, and every time he would relieve Sam. Not only that, he had an uncanny talent for arriving at the most propitious moment. Sam got pretty sore over the whole business. As he complained to his friend Schlemmer: “Sure, he’s an officer. All right. If we was in a chow line together, sure, he could go in ahead of me. All right. But I sure can’t see where that gives him the right to take a man’s glass away from him!” To Sam, a man’s glass was an inviolable thing. By the third day personalities began to emerge from the amorphous group that flitted past the bathroom windows. Despite the fact

Thomas Heggen

408

that the light was usually bad up around the face, thus eliminating facial identifications as a method, the boys were able to distinguish one nurse from another with considerable accuracy. There appeared to be nine consistent users of this particular bathroom. Canappa insisted there were only eight, but then he denied the validity of the two-blonde theory. The two-blonde theory was Sam’s and it was supported by the consensus. Canappa pointed out that the two had never been seen together; but this was rather a foolish argument, as both had been examined separately from the same angle, which happened to be a telling one. Canappa, who had not seen both from this angle, stuck to his discredited opinion. Undeniably, there were grounds for confusion. Both girls were young, both were pretty (although, as mentioned before, facial characteristics were inexact), and both wore red-and-white-striped bathrobes—or maybe even the same bathrobe. That is no doubt what threw Canappa off. Because, actually, there was conclusive evidence of their separate identity; evidence of the most distinctive sort which one of the girls carried. As Mannion put it, looking. up from his glass: “What the hell is that she’s got?” Sam didn’t look up from his glass. “You dumb bastard, that’s a birthmark.” Mannion was convinced, but he was irritated by Sam’s tone. “Birthmark!” he said scornfully. “Who the hell ever heard of a birthmark down there? That’s paint; she’s gotten into some paint. Or else it’s a burn. That’s what it is—it’s a burn!” Sam’s rebuttal was simple and unanswerable: “Who the hell ever heard of a burn down there?” It routed Mannion satisfactorily, and after a moment Sam disclosed: ““Why, Christ, I had an uncle once who had a birthmark . . .” He went on to tell where his uncle’s birthmark was situated. He described it in some detail.

The two blondes were the real stars; as the result of comparison the other girls came to be regarded as rather run-of-the-mill and were observed with condescension and even some small degree of indifference. There was one, rather old and quite fat, who absolutely disgusted Schlemmer. Whenever she put in an appearance, he would leave his glass and indignantly exhort the rest of the watch to do the same.

“Don’t look at her,” he would say. “She’s nausorating!” He

got quite angry when he was ignored. With the emergence of personalities came the recognition of personal habits. The tall skinny brunette always let the shower water run for several minutes before a bath. The stubby little brunette with the yellow bathrobe always used the bathtub; would sit in the

NATURE

STUDY

409

tub and drink what looked like coffee, but might have been tea. The girl with high, piled-up hair would fuss for an hour extracting hairpins, and then take a shampoo in the washbasin by the window without removing her robe. “That’s a stupid goddamn way to take a shampoo,” Sam commented.

But by far the most notable idiosyncrasy belonged to the blonde

with the birthmark. It was one which endeared her to all the watchers and drove Morris to rapturously announce: “I’m going to marry that gal!” Like everything about the place it was plausible, normal, and really not at all remarkable. It occurred before every bath and con-

sisted simply of shedding the red-and-white bathrobe and standing for several minutes (discreetly withdrawn from the window), look-

ing out over the bay.. Undoubtedly,

this was a girl who loved

beauty, and certainly the view was a fine one. The bay in the afternoon was shiny blue plate glass, really perfect except where the wake of a lazily paddled native canoe flawed the illusion. The tall coconut palms along the beach were as poetically motionless as sculpture. A little way out from the bay was the thin white line of the surf at the reef, and far, far out was the scary, almost indistinguishable line of the horizon. Perhaps the girl’s thoughts, as she stood admiring all that beatitude, ran something like this: “What

peace! There is no effort anywhere. See the canoe drifting lazily across the bay. Observe the trees with not a leaf stirring, and the ship riding peacefully at anchor, her men justly resting after the arduous days at sea. What utter tranquility!” From there she could not hear the cranking of the range finder. There was one ghastly afternoon when not a soul, not a single soul, came in for a bath. The watchers were bewildered and resentful; and, finally, disgusted. Sam probably spoke for all when he said: “Christ, and they call themselves nurses! They’re nothing but a goddamn bunch of filthy pigs. A nurse would at least take a bath once

in a while. Jesus, I pity those poor sick bastards over there who have to let those filthy pigs handle them!” But that happened only once, and by and large it could not fairly be said that the nurses were disappointing. In fact, Sam himself was once moved to observe: “This is too good to last.” It was one of the most prophetic things Sam ever said. Lieutenant (jg) Langston, the gunnery officer, had been having a good bit of trouble with his eyes. He wasn’t at all satisfied with his glasses. One day he had a splitting headache and the next morning he went over to the base hospital to have his eyes refracted. They were very nice over there. The doctor was very nice, and there was a

410

Thomas Heggen

pleasant-faced nurse who helped, and she also was very nice. It took only about an hour and a half to find just the right lenses, and while he was waiting for his pupils to contract, Langston began talking with the nurse. In a very short time it came out that she was from a town not twenty miles from Youngstown, Ohio, where he lived. Langston felt that a certain bond was established, and on the strength of it he invited the nurse, whose name was Miss Williamson, to dinner on the ship that night. It is well known that shipboard food is several cuts above shore-based food, and this consideration was perhaps a factor in Miss Williamson’s ready acceptance. She did add one clause, though: she asked if she could bring a friend, “a terribly cute girl.”

Langston, a personable if rather courtly young man, of course said yes, and mentioned that he would assign her to a friend of his, an Ensign Pulver, whom he described as a “very handsome young man.” Everything was most friendly. When the girls came aboard that night, escorted by two officers, the entire crew was massed along the rail and on the bridges. As the white-stockinged legs tripped up the gangway, one great, composite, heartfelt whistle rose to the heavens and hung there. Ensign Pulver’s girl, Miss Girard, had turned out to be a knockout. At dinner in the wardroom he could scarcely keep his eyes off her, and no more could

the other officers, who feigned eating and made self-conscious conversation. Miss Girard had lovely soft blond hair which she wore in bangs, wide blue innocent eyes, and the pertest nose there ever was. The total effect was that of radiant innocence; innocence triumphant. Only Ensign Pulver noted that when she smiled her eyes screwed up shrewdly and her mouth curved knowingly; but then only Ensign Pulver would. For Langston, it was enough to have what he felt to be the envious admiration of his messmates; but there began to grow in the mind of Ensign Pulver, himself a young man

of deceptively guileless appearance,

visions of a greater reward.

Once in a while he would catch and hold Miss Girard’s glance, and when he did he thought he detected interest there. After dinner, when the party repaired to his room for further polite conversation, he felt more and more sure of it. There were only

two chairs in the room and so he and Miss Girard sat together on the edge of the bottom bunk. That gave a certain intimacy, he thought; a certain tie of shared experience. He was moved to break out a quart of Old Overholt, four-fifths full, which he had kept hidden for two months in the little recess under the drawer of his bunk. With Coca-Cola which Langston provided it made a nice drink. Ensign Pulver was then emboldened to tell what he privately called his “test

NATURE

STUDY

411

story,” the decisively off-color tale of “ze black chapeau.” Miss Gi-

rard’s response was excellent; she laughed delightedly. Then, craftily

aware of the impressiveness of the unfamiliar, he proposed a tour of the ship, and both girls enthusiastically approved. The plan now be-

gan to shape itself in Pulver’s mind:

after the tour, a few more

drinks; then a little dancing in the wardroom; then a few more drinks; then get Langston to take the other one off somewhere, As they started out, Miss Girard gave him her small hand. First they toured the main deck, the offices and the galley and sick

bay. Then they dropped down into the cavernous engine room, and

Pulver, who was an engineering officer, talked casually of the massive turbines and terrifying boilers. The girls were very much im-

pressed. From the engine room they went up to the bridge, through

the wheelhouse, through the charthouse, through the radio room, and on up to the flying bridge. That was a thoughtless thing for the two officers to do, but fortunately an alert quartermaster had pre-

ceded them. The inspection party found the signalmen clustered in

an

innocent

group

under

the

canvas

awning,

and

the telescope

trained at an angle of 90 degrees from the yellow house. The signal-

men presented a curious sight. They were absolutely speechless; they seemed welded to the deck with awe. The two nurses giggled a little, no doubt over the prospect of these men so obviously dumbfounded at seeing a woman that they could only gape. Ensign Pulver later claimed that he felt something ominous in that group, but whether or not he actually did is unimportant. Langston led the party to the forward splintershield, where it could look down the sheer drop to the main deck, and the even more scary distance to the very bottom of number three hatch. The girls

were really impressed with that. When they started to walk around

behind the funnel, Ensign Pulver noticed that Sam Insigna was trailing them. He was a little annoyed, but, being a young man of poise, he made a sort of introduction. “This is Sam,” he said, “one of the signalmen.” Miss Girard smiled at Sam. “How do you do, Sam,” she said graciously. Sam was evidently too shy and flustered to speak; he just stood there and grinned foolishly. When they had gone on, Miss Girard squeezed her escort’s hand and whispered, “He’s darling.” Pulver nodded dubiously. They took a turn around the funnel, came forward again, and went over to the port wing to look at the 20millimeters. By this time the signalmen had gotten their tongues back and were having a bitter and quite vocal argument under the awning. It was obvious that they were trying to keep their voices guarded,

412

Thomas Heggen

but, as often happens, the restraint only intensified them. Sam’s voice in particular carried well. “Goddamit,” the party heard him say, “T’ll bet you one hundred bucks!” Lieutenant (jg) Langston nodded

his head in the direction of the signalmen, smiled superiorly, and said to the nurses: “Seems to be an argument.” Then Sam’s voice came to them again. That voice was several things: it was shrill, it was com-

bative, it was angry; but most of all it was audible. There have been few more audible voices, before or since. It traveled out from under the awning in an unfaltering parabola, fell on the ears of the inspection party, and broke into words of simple eloquence. “You stupid son of a bitch, I tell you that’s her! I got one hundred bucks that says that’s the one with the birthmark on her ass! Now put up or shut up!” Sam may have been right, at that. No one ever knew; no one on the ship ever saw that birthmark again. The curtains of the two middle upstairs windows were not raised next morning, and when the ship sailed three days later they were still down. It was three weeks before a sizable membership of the crew would speak to Sam except to curse him, and it was longer than that before Ensign Pulver would speak to him at all.

The Ransom of Red Chief “iO. HENRY (WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER) Ir LookeEp like a good thing; but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later. There was a town down there, as flat as flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole. Bill and me had a joint capital of about $600, and we needed just $2000 more to pull off a fradulent town-lot scheme in Western IIli-

nois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semirural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables, and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the

Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So it looked good. We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the newsstand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of $2000 to a cent. But wait till I tell you. About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening after sundown we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s

414

O. Henry

house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.

“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?” The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick. “That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill, climbing over the wheel. That boy put up a fight like a welterweight cinnamon bear; but at last we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain. Bill was pasting court plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard-tail feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says: “Ha! Cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?”

“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. “We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. ’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! That kid can kick hard.” Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun. Then we had supper, and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech

something like this: “T like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate

up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like

girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?

Have you got beds to sleep on in

THE

RANSOM

OF

RED

CHIEF

415

this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes, A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it take to make twelve?” Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. The boy had Bill terrorized from the start. “Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?” “Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to

go to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?”

“Not right away,” says I. “We'll stay here in the cave a while.” “AIL right!” says he. ““That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life.” We went to bed about 11 o’clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid

he’d run away. He kept us awake for three hours, humping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,” in mine and Bill’s ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to

his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps,

such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But from that moment Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed for a while, but along toward sunup I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid, but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock. “What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.

416 “Me?”

O. Henry says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I

thought sitting up would rest it.” “You're a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?” “Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoiter.” I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks

beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!” says I, and went down the mountain to breakfast. When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a coconut. “He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?” I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. “T’ll fix you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!” After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it. “What’s he up to now?” says Bill anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?” “No fear of it,” says I. “He don’t seem to be much of a homebody. But we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they think he’s spending the night with

Aunt Jane or one of the neighbors. Anyhow, he’ll be missed today.

THE

RANSOM

OF

RED

CHIEF

417

Tonight we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”

Just then we heard a kind of war whoop, such as David might have

emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head. I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A rock the size

of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened him-

self all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour. By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you know who my favorite Biblical character is?” “Take it easy,” says I. “You'll come to your senses presently.” “King Herod,” says he. “You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?” I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled. “If you don’t behave,” says, I, “Ill take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?” “I was only funning,” says he sullenly. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout today.” “I don’t know the game,” says I. “That’s for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.” I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid. “You know, Sam,” says Bill, “Pve stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire, and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?” “Pll be back sometime this afternoon,” says I. “You must keep the

418

O. Henry

boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorsey.” Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and

down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to

make the ransom $1500 instead of $2000. “I ain’t attempting,” says he, ‘‘to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give

up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.” So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we ran this way:

collaborated

a letter that

EBENEZER Dorset, Esq.: We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilled detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand $1500 in large bills for his return: the money to be left at midnight at the same spot and in the same box as your reply—as hereinafter

described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger tonight at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the righthand side. At the bottom of the fence post opposite the third tree will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit. If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again. If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted. Two DEsPERATE MEN

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says: “Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you

was gone.” “Play it, of course,” says I. “Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?” “Tm the Black Scout,” says the Red Chief, “and I have to ride to

THE

RANSOM

OF

RED

CHIEF

419

the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. ’m tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.” “All right,” says I. “It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.” “What am I to do?” asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously. “You are the hoss,” says Black Scout. “Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?” “You'd better keep him interested,” said I, “till we get the scheme going. Loosen up.”

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap. “How far is it to the stockade, kid?” he asks, in a husky manner of voice. b) “Ninety miles,’ says the Black Scout. “And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!” The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side. “For heaven’s sake,” says Bill, “hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or Pll get up and warm you good.” I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post office and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit. When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response. So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments. In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wobbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him. “Sam,” says Bill, “I suppose you think I’m a renegade, but I couldn’t help it. ’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him

420

O. Henry

home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times,” goes on Bill, “that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of ’em was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there . came a limit.” ‘“What’s the trouble, Bill?” I asks him. “I was rode,” says Bill, “the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his

clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I’ve got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized. “But he’s gone—” continues Bill—‘‘gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. ’'m sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse.” Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features. “Bill,” says I, “there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is there?” “No,” says Bill, “nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?”

“Then you might turn around,” says I, “and have a look behind ou.”

; Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid of his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of smile and a promise to play the Russian in a

Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little better. I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being

caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left—and the money later on—was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for anyone to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, siree! At half past eight I

THE

RANSOM

OF

RED

CHIEF

421

was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence post, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit. I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with

a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this: Two DesPERATE MEN

GENTLEMEN: I received your letter today by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counterproposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me $250 in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbors believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully, EBENEZER DoRSET

“Great pirates of Penzance!”

says I. “Of all the impudent—”

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or talking brute. “Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred

and fifty dollars, after all?

We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dor-

set is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?” “Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves, too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom, and make our getaway.”

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day. It was just 12 o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the $1500 from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition,

Bill was counting out $250 into Dorset’s hand. When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a

422

O. Henry

leech to Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster. “How long can you hold him?” asks Bill. “T’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I can promise you ten minutes.” “Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes I shall cross the central, southern, and middle western states, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.” And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as | am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.

The Texan

“is JOSEPH HELLER YossarIan was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn’t quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn’t become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this just being short of jaundice all the time confused them. Each morning they came around, three brisk and serious men with efficient mouths and inefficient eyes, accompanied by brisk and serious Nurse Duckett, one of the ward nurses who didn’t like Yossarian. They read the chart at the foot of the bed and asked impatiently about the pain. They seemed irritated when he told them it was exactly the same. “Still no movement?” the full colonel demanded. The doctors exchanged a look when he shook his head. “Give him another pill.” Nurse Duckett made a note to give Yossarian another pill, and the four of them moved along to the next bed. None of the nurses liked Yossarian. Actually, the pain in his liver had gone away, but Yossarian didn’t say anything and the doctors never suspected. They just

suspected that he had been moving his bowels and not telling anyone. Yossarian had everything he wanted in the hospital. The food wasn’t too bad, and his meals were brought to him in bed. There were extra rations of fresh meat, and during the hot part of the afternoon he and the others were served chilled fruit juice or chilled chocolate milk. Apart from the doctors and the nurses, no one ever disturbed him. For a little while in the morning he had to censor letters, but he was free after that to spend the rest of each day lying around idly with a clear conscience. He was comfortable in the hospital, and it was easy to stay on because he always ran a temperature of ro1. He was even more comfortable than Dunbar, who had to keep falling down on his face in order to get his meals brought to him in bed. After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the

424

Joseph Heller

hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a

very dangerous mission. “They asked for volunteers. It’s very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back.” And he had not written anyone since. : All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was

disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting than the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective.

The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutations and

signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation “Dear Mary” from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, “I yearn for you tragically, A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, US. Army.” A. T. Tappman was the group chaplain’s name. When he had exhausted all possibilities in the letters, he began at-

tacking the names and addresses on the envelopes, obliterating whole homes and streets, annihilating entire metropolises with careless flicks of his wrist as though he were God. Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer’s name. Most letters he didn’t read at all. On those he didn’t read at all he wrote his own name. On those he did read he wrote, “Washington Irving.” When that grew monotonous he wrote, “Irving Washington.” Censoring the envelopes had serious repercussions, produced a ripple of anxiety on some ethereal military echelon that floated a C.I.D. man back into the -ward posing as a patient. They all knew he was a C.I.D. man because he kept inquiring about an officer named Irving or Washington and because after his first day there he wouldn’t censor letters. He found them too monotonous. It was a good ward this time, one of the best he and Dunbar had ever enjoyed. With them this time was the twenty-four-year-old fighter-pilot captain with the sparse golden mustache who had been shot into the Adriatic Sea in midwinter and had not even caught cold.

THE

TEXAN

425

Now the summer was upon them, the captain had not been shot down, and he said he had the grippe. In the bed on Yossarian’s right, still lying amorously on his belly, was the startled captain with malaria in his blood and a mosquito bite on his ass. Across the aisle from Yossarian was Dunbar, and next to Dunbar was the artillery captain with whom Yossarian had stopped playing chess. The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish. Then there was the educated Texan from Texas who looked like someone in Technicolor and felt, patriotically, that people of means—decent folk—should be given more votes than drifters, whores, criminals, degenerates, atheists and indecent folk—people without means. Yossarian was unspringing rhythms in the letters the day they brought the Texan in. It was another quiet, hot, untroubled day. The heat pressed heavily on the roof, stifling sound. Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll’s. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead. They put the Texan in a bed in the middle of the ward, and it wasn’t long before he donated his views. Dunbar sat up like a shot. “That’s it,” he cried excitedly. “There

was something missing—all the time I knew there was something missing—and now I know what it is.” He banged his fist down into his palm. ““No patriotism,” he declared. “You're right,” Yossarian shouted back. “You're right, you're right, you're right. The hot dog, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mom’s ap-

ple pie. That’s what everyone’s fighting for. But who’s fighting for the decent folk? Who’s fighting for more votes for the decent folk? There’s no patriotism, that’s what it is. And no matriotism, either.” The warrant officer on Yossarian’s left was unimpressed. ‘““Who

gives a shit?” he asked tiredly, and turned over on his side to go to sleep. The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him. He sent shudders of annoyance scampering up ticklish spines, and everybody fled from him. In less than ten days the Texan cleared the ward. The artillery captain broke first, and after that the exodus started. Dunbar, Yossarian and the fighter captain all bolted the same morning. Dunbar stopped having dizzy spells, and the fighter captain blew his nose. Yossarian

426

Joseph Heller

told the doctors that the pain in his liver had gone away. It was as easy as that. Even the warrant officer fled. In less than ten days, the Texan drove everybody in the ward back to duty—everybody but the C.I.D. man, who had caught cold from theEES captain and come down with pneumonia.

To the Lady Behind Me at the Theater

“J SIR A. P. HERBERT Dear Madam, you have seen this play; I never saw it till today, You know the details of the plot, But, let me tell you, I do not. The author seeks to keep from me The murderer’s identity. And you are not a friend of his If you keep shouting who it is. The actors in their funny way Have several funny things to say, But they do not amuse me more If you have said them just before; The merit of the drama lies, I understand, in some surprise; But the surprise must now be small Since you have just foretold it all. The lady you have brought with you

Is, I infer, a half-wit too, But I can understand the piece Without assistance from your niece. In short, foul woman, it would suit Me just as well if you were mute,

In fact, to make my meaning plain, I trust you will not speak again. And—may [add one human touch?— Don’t breathe upon my neck so much.

Careless Talk wtw=

MARK HOLLIS Bill Was ill. In his delirium He talked about Miriam. This was an error As his wife was a terror Known

As Joan.

When Adam Day by Day...

“Ys A. E. HOUSMAN When Adam day by day Woke up in Paradise, He always used to say * “Oh, this is very nice.”

But Eve from scenes of bliss Transported him for life. The more | think of this The more | beat my wife.

Ascension and Declination of Sirius

“i= COLIN HOWARD THERE was enormous excitement when it became known that “they” were shooting a scene for a film outside a large house locally. After breakfast I decided I would stroll along for a look with Marcus, my St. Bernard dog. I have complained about Marcus in print before. He is huge, handsome and affable. He is also incredibly and supernaturally lazy. I allowed him his usual half-hour siesta after breakfast to recover from the strain of getting up, and then summoned him for his walk. He lurched to his feet with a sigh of self-pity, and stumbled somnambulistically after me. As a rule, we go only as far as the first corner, by which time we are both tired out—Marcus with the exertion, myself with the effort of keeping him going. When, after some argument, I made it clear to him we were going even farther afield this morning his reproachful eyes filled with tears. The scene was one of frantic activity. A throbbing mobile roared deafeningly in a corner of the big garden. Herds of technicians were shoving around a camera built like a self-propelled gun, unreeling tape-measures, training things like a searchlight, fooling about with yellow reflector screens, swilling mugs of tea, and bustling about apparently just for the sake of looking busy. The spectacle of so much energy had a depressing effect on Marcus, and realizing he was about to pass out on his flipperlike feet, I turned to take him home. We hadn’t got far when I heard somebody shouting and walking to catch us up. You don’t have to run to catch up a man with a St. Bernard. I straightened my tie. Just at first, I confess, I thought—but it wasn’t me; it was Marcus. “Say!” said a young man with tousled hair and horn-rimmed glasses. “That’s quite a dog!” Marcus is responsive to admiration. He simpered, and even pranced a bit in a galumphing sort of way.

ASCENSION

AND

DECLINATION

OF

SIRIUS

431

“We could use him,” said the young man. “Would you hire him for the day fora couple of guineas?” I said I would, and was instructed to bring Marcus back in a couple of hours. Two hours to get Marcus home, rest him up, and bring him back, was cutting it fine. We were nearly a quarter-mile from home. However, we set off. My wife was wildly excited by our news. She and I both went to work to groom Marcus for stardom. It is not easy to groom a dog who is lying under the kitchen table in a state of physical prostration, but, with my wife on her knees on one side, myself on the other, and our heads meeting under the table, we managed to get him done, all except the bits of himself he was lying on. Then came the terrific task of getting him back on location. We accomplished this by a little mild deceit. We pretended he had slept the clock round twice and it was now tomorrow. My wife came with us, partly because she wasn’t going to miss Marcus’s triumph, partly to push behind. “We're shooting a crowd scene—a garden party,” explained the director. He paused and tugged at his foot, on which Marcus had subsided in slumber. My wife and I deferentially prised up the appropriate portion of Marcus’s body, and the director, having withdrawn his foot and found to his surprise no bones were broken, continued: “I want him to mingle with the crowd. I suggest your wife waves to him from the other side, and you release him when I nod and let him walk across the set.” At the word “walk”? Marcus shuddered in his sleep. My wife and I worked on Marcus like a couple of seconds on a boxer who has been saved by the bell. We got him to his feet, and I managed to hold him up while my wife took up her position. When the director nodded she waved and I let go of Marcus. He fell down, bumping his nose, and went to sleep. “What’s the matter—is he ill?’’ demanded the director. “No, no—it’s just temperament,” I laughed. “Right, now! We’re going to shoot this time!” The hubbub was quadrupled. Men yelled “Okay!” at each other through a network of telephones. Buzzers sounded. Two lads without shoes shoved the camera slowly forward. The recording men dangled microphones on things like fishing rods overhead. All the extras in their smart clothes minced and smiled. The clapper boy stepped in front of the camera, exclaimed “Scene ninety-two, Take one,” snapped his board, and stepped back.

432

Colin Howard

“Shoot!” cried the director, and nodded at me. Marcus took a game of five steps forward toward my wife, faltered and slumped to the ground. The cruising camera bumped into him and bounced back. “Cut!” cried the director. By the late afternoon the clapper boy was still the only one to have made anything like an extended appearance before the camera. After the first half-dozen takes we gave up trying to get Marcus away from scratch, and let him carry on from where he’d lain down Jast time. He was still only a third of the way across the set. The clapper boy took a voice pastille, hoarsely recited, “Scene ninety-two, Take twenty-one,” and retired to get his chalk for Take 22. The director grimly muttered “Shoot.” I don’t really think he expected anything to happen. But it did. My wife, seeing fame and fortune slipping from Marcus, had been inspired. She had found a cat

and was holding it out enticingly. Cats and food are the only things that ever induce Marcus to work

like a real dog. I believe he confuses the two. He sighted the bait in my wife’s arms. When the director said “‘Shoot!” he shot. If Scene 92, Take 21, ever gets as far as the can the rushes will

show a dazzling and aristocratic garden party apparently smitten by a typhoon. One will see fair women and brave men, grave footmen and laden tea trays, bowled over left and right by some mysterious agency moving too fast for the camera. My wife popped the cat into safety behind a wall with a split second to spare. Marcus hurtled into the wall, which rocked a bit but stood up well. My wife and I, just for a change, went around picking up extras. And then the sun went in and rain spots began to fall. “Thank heaven!” said the director devoutly. “That’s all for today. Same time tomorrow, please.” “Ask him if he wants Marcus again tomorrow,” whispered my wife.

I glanced at the director, and decided not to. I took my wife’s hand, and we started to sneak away. “Please don’t forget your dog,” said the director. Marcus of course was in his usual position—flat on the ground, resting. The extras bore no malice. They realized they had Marcus to thank for another day’s work. They helped us to lift him more or less tenderly into the bus waiting to take them to the station and he was driven home in style, occupying three seats and a couple of laps, and absolutely insensible. They thought he had been stunned by the wall. They did not understand St. Bernards.

ASCENSION

AND

DECLINATION

OF

SIRIUS

433

Marcus is now slowly recovering from his tremendous day, on the front doormat where the extras dumped him. His film career, I cannot help feeling, is at an end.

Uncle Jimbo’s Marbles

“i EVAN HUNTER Lasr summer they quarantined the camp two weeks after we'd arrived. Uncle Marvin called all us counselors into the dining room one July night and announced briefly that there was a polio scare at a nearby camp. He went on to say that whereas all of our campers had of course been vaccinated, he nonetheless felt it would be in the best interests of public safety if we voluntarily agreed not to leave the camp grounds until the threat had subsided. The words “public safety” were Uncle Marvin’s own. He was the principal of a junior

high school in the Bronx, and he also happened to own Camp Marvin, which is why it was called Camp Marvin and not Camp Chippewa or Manetoga or Hiawatha. He could have called it Camp Le-

vine, I suppose, Levine being his last name, but I somehow feel his

choice was judicious. Besides, the name Marvin seemed to fit a camp whose owner was a man given to saying things like “public safety,”

especially when he became Uncle Marvin for the summer. I was Uncle Don for the summer. The kids in my bunk had never heard of Uncle Don on the radio,

so they never made any jokes about my name. To tell the truth, I'd barely heard of him myself. Besides, they were a nice bunch of kids, and we were getting along fine until the voluntary quarantine in the best interests of public safety was declared by Marvin, and then things got a little strained and eventually led to a sort of hysteria. Marvin’s wife was named Lydia, and so the girls’ camp across the lake from Camp Marvin was called Camp Lydia, and the entire complex was called Camp Lydia-Marvin, which was possibly one of the most exciting names in the annals of American camp history. I was Uncle Don last summer, and I was nineteen years old. Across the lake in Camp Lydia was a girl named Aunt Rebecca, who was also nineteen years old and whom I loved ferociously. When the quarantine began, I started writing notes to her, and I would have them smuggled across the lake, tied to the handles of the big milk cans. I love you, Aunt Rebecca, my notes would say. And I would look across the still wa-

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

435

ters of the lake and try to imagine Becky opening my note, her dark

eyes lowered as she read the words, her quick smile flashing over her

face. I imagined she would look up hastily, she moved

hastily, her

eyes would dart, the smile would widen, she would stare into the distance at the pine trees towering over the boys’ cabins, and maybe her heart would skip a beat, and maybe she would murmur softly under her breath, J love you, too, Uncle Don. T hated Camp Marvin. I will tell you what I loved. I loved Rebecca Goldblatt, that’s all. I had loved Rebecca Goldblatt long before I met her. I had loved her, to tell the truth, from the day I was twelve years old and was allowed to join the adult

section of the public library. I had clutched my new card in my

hand that bright October day, the card unmarked, every space on it

empty, and wandered among the shelves. It was very warm inside

the library, warm and hushed, and as I walked past the big windows I could hear the wind outside, and I could see the huge tree out front with its leaves shaking loose every time there was a new gust, and

beyond that on the other side of the street some smaller trees, bare

already, bending a little in the wind. It was very cold outside, but I was warm as I walked through the aisles with a smile on my face,

holding my new library card, and wondering if everyone could tell I was an adult now, it said so on my card. I found the book on one of the open shelves. The cover was red, tooled in gold. The title was Ivanhoe. And that night I fell in love with Rebecca, not Rebecca Goldblatt, but the girl in Ivanhoe. And then when they re-released the movie, I fell in love with her all over again, not Elizabeth Taylor, but Rebecca, the girl in Ivanhoe. I can still remember one of the lines in the movie. It had nothing to do with either Ivanhoe’s Rebecca or my own Rebecca Goldblatt, but I will never forget it anyway. It was when Robert Taylor was standing horseless, without a shield, trying to fend off the mace blows of the mounted Norman knight. And the

judge or the referee, or whatever he was called in those days, looked at Robert Taylor, who had almost hit the Norman’s horse with his sword, and shouted, “Beware, Saxon, lest you strike horse!” That was a rule, you see. You weren’t allowed to strike the horse. Oh, how I loved Rebecca Goldblatt! I loved everything about her, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Her eyes were black. I know a lot of girls claim to have really

black eyes, but Rebecca is the only person I have ever known in my entire life whose eyes were truly black and not simply a very dark

436

Evan

Hunter

brown. Sometimes, when she was in a sulky, brooding mood, her eyes

got so mysterious and menacing they scared me half to death. Girls’ eyes always do that to me when they’re in that very dramatic solitary mood, as if they’re pondering all the female secrets of the world. But usually her eyes were very bright and glowing, like.a black purey. I shouldn’t talk about marbles, I suppose, since marbles started all the trouble that summer—but that was how her eyes looked, the way a black purey looks when you hold it up to the sun. I loved her eyes and I loved her smile, which was fast and open and yet somehow secretive, as if she’d been amused by something for

a very long time before allowing it to burst onto her mouth. And I

loved her figure which was very slender with sort of small breasts and very long legs that carried her in a strange sort of lope, espe-

cially when she was wearing a trench coat, don’t ask me why. I loved her name and the way she looked. I loved her walk, and I loved the way she talked, too, a sort of combination of middle-class Bronx Jewish girl with a touch of City College Speech One thrown in, which is where she went to school and which is where I met her. I think I should tell you now that I’m Italian. That’s how I happened to be at Camp Marvin in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, with a girl named Rebecca Goldblatt across the lake in Camp Lydia. I know that’s not much of a problem these days, what with new

nations clamoring for freedom, and Federal troops crawling all over the South, and discrimination of all sorts every place you look. It’s not much of a problem unless you happen to be nineteen years old and involved in it, and then it seems like a pretty big problem. I’m too

young to have seen Abie’s Irish Rose, but I honestly don’t think I will ever understand what was so funny about that situation, believe me. I didn’t think it was so funny last summer, and I still don’t

think it’s funny, but maybe what happened with Uncle Jimbo’s marbles had something to do with that. I don’t really know. I just know for certain now that you can get so involved in something you don’t really see the truth of it any more. And the simple truth of Becky and me was that we loved each other. The rest of it was all hysteria, like with the marbles. I have to tell you that I didn’t want to go to Camp Marvin in the first place. It was all Becky’s idea, and she presented it with that straightforward solemn look she always gets on her face when she discusses things like sending food to the starving people in China or disarmament or thalidomide or pesticides. She gets so deep and so involved sometimes that I feel like kissing her. Anyway, it was her

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

437

idea, and I didn’t like it because I said it sounded to me like hiding.

Slesnot hiding,” Becky said. “Then what is it if not hiding?” I answered. “I don’t want to be a counselor this summer. I want to go to the beach and listen to records and hold your hand.” “They have a beach at Camp Marvin,” Becky said. “And I don’t like the name of the camp.” “Why not?”

“It’s unimaginative. Anybody who would name a place Camp Marvin must be a very unimaginative person.” “He’s a junior high school principal,” Becky said. “That only proves my point.” She was looking very very solemn just about then, the way she gets when we discuss the Cuban situation, so I said, “‘Give: me one good reason why we should go to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to a camp named Marvin, of all things, would you please?” “Yes.” “Well, go ahead.” “We would be together all summer,” Becky said simply, “and we wouldn’t have to hide from my father.” “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard in myvlite,; Insaidt “You want to go away and hide from him just so we won't have to hide from him.” “That’s not what I’m saying,” Becky said. “Then what is it, if not hiding from him?”

“It’s not my fault he’s a bigoted jerk!” Becky said angrily, and I didn’t realize how much this meant to her until that minute, because tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. I never know what to do when a girl starts crying, especially someone you love. “Becky,” I said, “if we run away this summer, we’re only confirminephises * “He doesn’t even know you, Donald,” she said. “He doesn’t know how sweet you are.” “Yes, butif we hide from him . . .”

“Tf he’d only meet you, if he’d only talk to you.

. .”

“Yes, but if we run away to hide, then all we’re doing is joining

in with his lunacy, honey. Can’t you see that?” “My father is not a lunatic,” Becky said. “My father is a dentist and a prejudiced ass, but he’s not a lunatic. And anyway, you have to remember that his father can still remember pogroms in Russia.” “All right, but this isn’t Russia,” I said. “T know.”

438

Evan

Hunter

“And I’m not about to ride into the town and rape all the women and kill all the men.” “You don’t even know how to ride,” Becky said. “That’s right,” I said, “but even if I did know how to ride, I wouldn’t do it.” “I know, you're so sweet,” Becky said.

’

“Okay. Now if your father believes that ’'m some kind of assassin with a stiletto, that’s bis fantasy, you see, Beck? And if I sneak away

with you this summer, then I’m joining his fantasy, I’m becoming as crazy as he is. How can you ask me to do that?” “T can ask you because I love you and I want to be alone with you without having to sneak and skulk all the time. It isn’t fair.” “What isn’t fair?” “Sneaking and skulking all the time.” “That’s right.” “When I love you so much.” ? “T love you, too, Beck,” I said. “But . . . “Well, if you love me so much, it seems like a very simple thing to do to simply say you'll come with me to Camp Lydia-Marvin this summer.” I didn’t say anything. “Donald?” Becky said. “This is a mistake,” I said, shaking my head. “We'll be alone.” “We'll be surrounded by eight thousand screaming kids!” “The kids go to sleep early.” “We'll be hiding, we'll be—” “We'll be alone.” ”? “Damn it, Becky, sometimes . . . “Will you come, Donald?” “Well, what else can I do? Let you go alone?”

“T think that’s what scares my father,” Becky said, the smile coming onto her mouth, her black eyes glowing. “What are you talking about?” “That fiery Italian temper.” “Yeah, go to hell, you and your father,” I said smiling, and then I kissed her because what else can you do with a girl like that whom you love so terribly much? That’s how we came to be at Camp Lydia-Marvin last summer. The quarantine was very ironic in an O. Henry way because we

had gone to camp to be together, you see, and when Uncle Marvin had his bright quarantine idea, he really meant quarantine, the girls

UNCLE

JIMBO’S

MARBLES

439

with the girls and the boys with the boys. So there was Rebecca clear the hell over on the other side of the lake, and here was I with a

bunch of counselors named Uncle Bud and Uncle Jimbo and Uncle

Dave and Uncle Ronnie and even Uncle Emil, who was a gym teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School in Manhattan. All the uncles took the quarantine in high good spirits for the first week, I guess. I must admit that even I found a sense of adventure in tying my love notes

to the handles of the milk cans. I never once questioned the validity

of a quarantine that allowed milk to be passed from one side of the Jake to the other. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the milk cans, | would have gone out of my mind immediately. As it was, I almost went out of my mind, but not until much later. And by that tume everybody was a little nutty. I think it all started with the kids. Everything usually starts with kids. I once read a Ray Bradbury story called “Invasion” or something, about these Martians, or aliens, anyway, I don’t remember which planet, who are planning an invasion of Earth, and they’re doing it through the kids. Boy, that story scared me, I can tell you, since I have a kid brother who gets a very fanatical gleam in his eye every now and then. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. The thing that started with the kids was the marbles. Now, every kid who goes to camp for the summer takes marbles with him. There’s usually what they call Free Play or Unassigned, and that’s when the kids go to ping pong or tether ball or marbles. Marbles were very big at Camp Marvin, especially after the quarantine started, though I’m still not sure whether the quarantine really had anything to do with the craze. Maybe there was just an unusual number of marbles at camp that summer, I don’t know. At the end there, it sure seemed like a lot of marbles. The most marbles I had ever seen in my life before that was when I was eight years old and still living in Manhattan, before we moved up to the Bronx. My mother and father gave me a hundred marbles for my birthday, and they also gave me a leather pouch with drawstrings to put the marbles in. I went downstairs with the hundred marbles, and I lost them all in a two-hour game. I almost lost the pouch, too, because a kid on the block wanted to trade me forty immies and a steelie for it, but I had the wisdom to refuse the offer. I'll never forget my mother’s face when I went upstairs and told her I’d been wiped out. “You lost al] the marbles?” she asked incredulously. “Yeah, all the immies,” I said. “Howe “Just playing immies,” I said.

Evan Hunter

440

They didn’t play immies at Camp Marvin, they played marbles. They used to draw a circle in the dirt, and each kid would put five or six marbles in the circle and try to hit them out with his shooter. I didn’t know how to play marbles because all I played as a kid was immies, which is played by the curb, in the gutter. In fact, it was best to play immies after a rainstorm because then there would be puddles all over the street, and you never knew where the other guy’s immie was. You just shot and prayed and felt around in the dirty water with your hand spread, trying to span the immies. It used to be fun when I was a kid. A city street is something like a summer camp all year round, you see. There are always a thousand kids on the block and a hundred games to choose from: stickball, stoopball, skullies, Johnny-on-a-Pony, Kick the Can, Statues, Salugi, Ring-aLeavio, hundreds of games. I sometimes wonder why the Herald Tribune sends slum kids to the country. I think somebody ought to start sending country kids to the slums. In a way, when the marble

craze started at Camp Marvin, it was very much like a craze starting on a City street, where one day a kid will come down with his roller skates, and the next day the roller-skating season has started. It was the same thing with the marbles at Camp Marvin. A couple of kids started a game, and before any of us were really completely aware of it, there were marble games being played all over the camp. It would have been all right if the craze had restricted itself to the kids. But you have to remember that we were quarantined, which meant that we worked with the kids all day long, and then were not permitted to leave the grounds at night, on our time off. Children are very nice and all that, and someday I hope to have a dozen of my own, but that summer it was important to get away from them

every now and then. I mean, physically and geographically away from them. to have an do, in fact, of course The funny

It was important to have other interests. It was important emotional and mental respite. What it was important to was to hold Becky in my arms and kiss her, but Marvin had made that impossible with his stupid quarantine. thing was he didn’t seem to miss his wife Lydia at all.

Maybe that’s because they’d been married for 14 years. But most of the rest of us began to feel the strain of the quarantine by the end of

the second week, and I think it was then that Uncle Jimbo ventured into his first game of marbles.

Jimbo, like the rest of us, was beginning to crave a little action. He was a very tall man who taught science at a high school some-

place in Brooklyn. His real name was James McFarland, but in the

UNCLE JIMBO’S MARBLES

sel

family structure of Camp Marvin he immediately became Uncle Jim.

And then, because it is fatal to have a name like Jim at any camp, he

was naturally renamed Jimbo. He seemed like a very serious fellow, this Jimbo, about thirty-eight years old, with a wife and two kids at home. He wore eyeglasses, and he had sandy-colored hair that was al-

ways falling onto his forehead. The forehead itself bore a perpetual

frown, even when he was playing marbles, as if he were constantly try-

ing to figure out one of Einstein’s theories. He always wore sneakers and Bermuda shorts that had been made by cutting down a pair of dun-

garees. When the quarantine started, one of the kids in his bunk

painted a big PW

on Jimbo’s dungaree Bermuda shorts, the PW

standing for “prisoner of war”—a joke Jimbo didn’t think was very comical. I knew how he felt. I wasn’t married, of course, but I knew

what

it was

like to be separated

from

someone

you

loved, and

Jimbo’s wife and kids were away the hell out there in Brooklyn while we were locked up in Stockbridge.

I happened to be there the day he joined one of the games, thereby

starting the madness that followed. He had found a single marble near the tennis courts and then had gone foraging on his free time

until he’d come up with half a dozen more. It was just after dinner, and three kids were playing in front of my bunk when Jimbo strolled over and asked if he could get in the game. If there’s one

thing a kid can spot at fifty paces, it’s a sucker. They took one look at the tall science teacher from Brooklyn and fairly leaped on him in

their anxiety to get him in the game. Well, that was the last leaping any of them did for the rest of the evening. Jimbo had seven mar-

bles. He put six of them in the ring, and he kept the biggest one for his shooter. The kids, bowing graciously to their guest, allowed him

to shoot first. Standing ten feet from the circle in the dust, Jimbo

took careful aim and let his shooter go. It sprang out of his hand with the speed of sound, almost cracking a marble in the dead center of the ring and sending it flying out onto the surrounding dirt. The kids weren’t terribly impressed because they were very hip and knew all about beginner’s luck. They didn’t begin to realize

they were playing with a pro until they saw Jimbo squat down on one knee and proceed to knock every single marble out of the ring without missing a shot. Then, because there’s no sucker like a sucker

who thinks he knows one, the kids decided they could take Jimbo anyway, and they spent the rest of the evening disproving the theory by losing marble after marble to him. Jimbo told me later that he’d been raised in Plainfield, New Jersey, and had played marbles prac-

Evan

442

Hunter

tically every day of his childhood. But the kids didn’t know that at

the time, and by the end of that first evening Jimbo had won perhaps two hundred marbles. I wasn’t sure I liked what Jimbo had done. He was, after all, a grown man, and he was playing with kids, and one of the kids he’d beaten happened to be a kid in my bunk. I watched that kid walk

away from the game after Jimbo collected all the marbles. His name was Max, which is a funny name for a kid anyway, and he was walking with his head bent, his hands in the pockets of his shorts, his

sneakers scuffing the ground. “What’s the matter, Max?” I asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Come here, sit down,” I said. He came over and sat on the bunk steps with me. I knew better than to talk about the marbles he had lost. I talked about the baseball game that afternoon and about the

volleyball tournament, and all the while I was thinking of those hundred marbles

I had got for my

eighth birthday, and the leather

pouch, and the look on my mother’s face when I climbed to the third floor and told her I’d lost them all. It was getting on about dusk, and

I said to Max, “Something very important is going to happen in just a few minutes, Max. Do you know what it is?” “No,” Max said. “Well, can you guess?” “I don’t know. Is it the boxing matches tonight?” he asked. “No, this is before the boxing matches.” “Well, what is it?” he asked. “It happens every day at about this time,” I said, “and we hardly ever stop to look at it.” Max turned his puzzled face up to mine. “Look out there, Max,” I said. “Look out there over the lake.” Together, Max and I sat and serenely watched the sunset.

The madness started the next day.

It started when

Uncle Emil, the gym teacher from Benjamin

Franklin, decided that marbles was essentially a game of athletic skill. Being a gym teacher and also being in charge of the camp’s en-

tire sports program, he naturally decided that in order to uphold his

honor and his title, he would have to defeat Uncle Jimbo. He didn’t

declare a formal match or anything like that. He simply wandered up to Jimbo during the noon rest hour and said, “Hey, Jimbo, want to shoot some marbles?”

Jimbo looked at him with the slow steady gaze of a renowned

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

443

gunslick and then said, “Sure. Why not?” Lazily he went back to his own bunk. In a few minutes he returned with a cigar box contain-

ing his winnings of the night before. They drew a circle in the dust, and each put twelve marbles in the circle. I was only sitting there writing a letter to Becky, and I guess they decided I wasn’t do-

ing anything important, so they made me referee. Jimbo was wearing a yellow short-sleeved sports shirt and his sawed-off dungarees.

Emil was wearing spotless white shorts and a spotless white T shirt, as if he were about to settle the Davis Cup at Wimbledon or some-

place. They flipped a coin to see who would shoot first. Emil won

the toss. Standing behind the line they had drawn in the dust some

ten

feet from the ring, Emil held his shooter out and sighted along the length of his arm. Jimbo stood watching him with a faintly amused look on his face. I looked up from my letter because I was supposed

to be referee, even though I’d been in the middle of telling Becky I loved her, which I always seemed to be in the middle of doing

whenever I got the chance. Emil licked his lips with his tongue, cocked his thumb against the big marble in his fist, and then triggered his shot. The marble leaped from his hand, spinning across the open air in a direct, unwavering, deadly accurate line toward the middle of the circle. It collided with one of the marbles in the ring, which richocheted off onto another marble, which struck two more marbles, which knocked out yet another marble for a total of five marbles knocked out of the circle on the first shot. I must admit I felt a slight thrill of pleasure. I can remember thinking, All right, Jimbo, this time yowre not playing with kids. But I can also

remember looking over at Jimbo and noticing that he didn’t seem at all disturbed, that he was still wearing that same faintly amused expression on his long face. Emil walked to the ring and, grinning, turned to Jimbo and said, “Want to forfeit?”

“Shoot,” Jimbo said. Emil grinned again, crouched in the dust, picked up his big marble, and shot. He knocked two more marbles out of the ring in succession and then missed the third by a hair, and that was the end of the game.

I say that was the end of the game only because Jimbo then shot and knocked out all the remaining marbles in the circle. And then, because he had won this round, it was his turn to shoot first in the next round. He shot first, and he knocked four marbles out with his opening blast, and then proceeded to clean up the ring again. And

Evan

444 then, because he’d won

Hunter

this round as well, he shot first again, and

again cleaned up the ring, and he kept doing that all through the rest

period until he’d won 75 marbles from Uncle Emil. Uncle Emil muttered something about having a little rheumatism in his fingers, throwing his game off, and Jimbo. listened sympa-

thetically while he added the 75 marbles to the collection in his bulging cigar box. That afternoon Emil came back with a hundred marbles he had scrounged from the kids, and Jimbo went to the mess hall to pick up a cardboard carton for his marble winnings. And, also that evening, he became a celebrity. I guess I was the only person, man or boy, in that camp who

didn’t want to try beating Uncle Jimbo in the hectic weeks that followed. To begin with, I am not a very competitive fellow, and besides, I only knew how to play immies, not marbles. Marbles re-

quired a strong thumb and a fast eye, Jimbo explained to me. My thumbs were pretty weak and my eyes were tired from staring across the lake trying to catch a glimpse of a distant figure I could identify as Becky. But everyone else in camp seemed to possess powerful thumbs and 20/20 vision, and they were all anxious to pit these assets against the champion. When you come to think of it, I suppose, champions exist ovly to be challenged, anyway. The chal-

lengers in this case included everybody, and all for different reasons. Uncle Ronnie was a counselor whom everyone, including the kids,

called Horizontal Ronnie because his two favorite pursuits both re-

quired a bed and a horizontal position. He wanted to beat Jimbo because the quarantine had deprived him of the satisfying company of

a girl named Laura in Camp Lydia. Jimbo won two hundred marbles from Ronnie in an hour of play. Uncle Dave taught mathematics at Evander Childs High School, and he thought he had figured out a foolproof system that he wanted

to try in practice. The system worked for 15 minutes, at the end of which time Jimbo blasted the game from its hinges and then barged on through to win 150 marbles. Uncle Marvin, too, had his own reason for wanting to beat Jimbo. Before the season had begun, when

Marvin was still hiring coun-

selors, he had offered Jimbo $1200 for the job. Jimbo had held out for $1300, which Marvin eventually and grudgingly paid him. But the extra $100 rankled, and Marvin was determined to get it back somehow. You may think it odd that he decided to get back his $100 by win-

ning marbles from Jimbo. After all, marbles are marbles, and money is money. But a very strange thing had happened in the second week

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

445

of the madness. Marbles, which up to that time had only been round pieces of colored glass, suddenly became the hottest item of currency in the camp’s vast and complicated trading system. Before then, dimes were very hot property because the Coke machine in the counselors’ shack took only dimes. The kids weren’t allowed to enter the counselors’ shack, nor were they allowed to drink Cokes, all

of which made it absolutely necessary for them to have dimes so they could sneak into the counselors’ shack and drink Cokes. Almost every

letter home, before the marble madness began, started with the words, “Dear Mom and Dad, I am fine. Please send me some dimes.”

But suddenly, because Jimbo kept winning marbles with such frequency, there was a shortage of marbles in the camp. Marbles became a precious commodity, like gold or silver, and the basis of the camp economy. If you had marbles, you could trade them for all the dimes you needed. You could, in fact, get almost anything you

wanted, if you only had marbles. Uncle Jimbo had a lot of marbles. Uncle Jimbo had a whole damn suitcase full of them, which he kept locked and on a shelf over his bed. He was surely the richest man in camp. He became even richer the afternoon he played Uncle Marvin and won 500 marbles from him, a blow from which Marvin never recovered. By this time, beating Jimbo had become an obsession. Jimbo was the sole topic of camp discussion, overshadowing the approach-

ing Color War, eclipsing the visit of a famous football player who talked about the ways and means of forward passing while nobody listened. The counselors, the kids, even the camp doctor, were in-

terested only in the ways and means of amassing more marbles to pit against Jimbo’s growing empire. They discussed shooting techniques, and whether or not they should play with the sun facing them or behind their backs. They discussed the potency of the mass shot as against a slow deliberate one-at-a-time sort of game. They discussed different kinds of shooters, the illegality of using steelies, the current exchange rate of pureys. The kids loved every minutes of it.

They awoke each morning brimming with plans for Jimbo’s ultimate downfall. To them, beating him was important only because

it would give them an opportunity to prove that adults, especially adult counselors, were all a bunch of no-good finks. On Monday of the third week of the madness, the smart money entered the marbles business—and the gambling element began taking over. But before that, on Sunday night, I broke quarantine.

446

Evan

Hunter

I am usually a law-abiding fellow, and I might never have broken quarantine were it not for Horizontal Ronnie, who, I later came to learn, had very definite criminal leanings. “Look,” he said to me, “what’s to stop us from taking one of the canoes and paddling over to the other side?” “Well,” I said, “there’s a polio scare.” “Don’t you want to see What’s-her-name?” “Rebecca.” “Yeah, don’t you want to see her?” “Sure I do.” ‘Has every kid in this camp and also in Camp Lydia, by Marvin’s own admission, in his very own words, been inoculated against polio?” “Well, yes,” I said. “Then would you mind telling me how there is a polio scare?” “T don’t know,” I said.

“Fine. Pll meet you at the boat dock tonight at nine o’clock. I'll take care of getting word to the girls.”

I guess I didn’t trust him even then, because I took care of getting word to Becky myself that afternoon, by sending over one of my notes tied to an empty milk can. That night, at nine o’clock on the dot, Ronnie and I met at the boat dock and silently slipped one of the canoes into the water. We didn’t talk at all until we were in the middle of the lake, and then Ronnie said, ““We’ll come back around eleven. Is that all right with you?” “Sure,” Isaid. “Boy, that Laura,” he said, and fell silent again, apparently contemplating what was ahead. Laura, whom I had only seen once or twice before the quarantine, was a very pretty blond girl who al-

ways wore white sweaters and tight white shorts. She also wore a perfume that was very hard to avoid smelling, and the few times I had seen her was in the counselors’ shack where she kept playing the

“Malaguefia” over and over again on the piano. She was a very mysterious girl, what with her sweater and shorts and her perfume and her “Malaguefia.” She was eighteen years old. “I think I know how to beat him,” Ronnie said suddenly. “Huh?”

“Jimbo, I think I know how to beat the bastard.” “How?” J asked. “Never mind,” Ronnie said, and then he fell silent again, but it seemed to me he was paddling more furiously. I met Rebecca under the pines bordering the lake. She was wear-

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

447

ing black slacks and a black bulky sweater, and she rushed into my

arms and didn’t say anything for the longest time, just held herself close to me, and then lifted her head and stared into my face, and then smiled that fast-breaking smile, and fleetingly kissed me on the cheek, and pulled away and looked into my face again. We skirted the edge of the pine forest, the night was still, I could feel her hand tight in my own. We sat with our backs to one of the

huge boulders overlooking the lake, and I held her in my arms and told her how miserable I'd been without her, and she kept kissing my closed eyes as I spoke, tiny little punctuating kisses that made me weak.

The night was very dark. Somewhere across the lake a dog began barking, and then the barking stopped and the night was still again. “I can barely see you, Becky,” I whispered. I held her close, I held her slender body close to mine. She was Becky, she was trembling, she was joy and sadness together, echoing inside me. If I held her a moment longer my heart would burst, I knew my heart would burst and shower trailing sparks on the night. And yet I held her, wanting to cry in my happiness, dizzy with the smell of her hair, loving everything about her in that timeless, brimming moment, still knowing my heart would burst, loving her closed

eyes and the whispery touch of her lashes, and the rough wool of her sweater, and the delicate motion of her hands on my face. I kissed

her, I died, I smiled, I listened to thunder, for oh, the kiss of Rebecca Goldblatt, the kiss, the heart-stopping kiss of my girl. The world was dark and still. “T love you,” she said. “T love you,” I said. And then she threw her arms around my neck and put her face against mine, tight, I could feel her cheekbone hard against mine, and suddenly she was crying. miley, “slisaid:W hat \,«..) honeyswhatasitey, “Oh, Donald,” she said, “‘what are we going to do? I love you so much.” “T think we ought to tell him,” I said, “when we get back.”

“How can we do that?” Becky said. “T can go to him. I can say we’re in love with each other.” “Oh yes, yes,” Becky said breathlessly. “I do love you, Donald.” “Then that’s what we’ll do.” “He .. .” She shook her head in the. darkness. I knew that her eyes were very solemn, even though I couldn’t see them. “He won't listen,” Becky said. “He'll try to break us up.”

448

Evan

Hunter

“Nobody will ever break us up,” I said. “Ever.” “What—what will you tell him?”

“That we love each other. That when we finish school we're go-

ing to get married.” “He won't let us.” “The hell with him.” “He doesn’t know you. He thinks Italians are terrible.” “T can’t help what he thinks,” I said. “Donald . . .” She paused. She was shaking her head again, and she began to tremble. “Donald, you can’t do it.” “Why not?” “Because he believes it, don’t you see? He really believes you are

some—some terrible sort of person.” “I know, but that doesn’t make it true. And simply because he believes it is no reason for me to behave as if J believe it.” I nodded

my head in the darkness. I felt pretty convinced by what I was saying, but at the same time I was scared to death of facing her father. “Tl tell him when we get back,” I said. Becky was quiet for a long long time. Then she said, “If only I was Italian.”

I held her very close to me, and I kissed the top of her head

very gently. Right then I knew everything was going to be all right. I knew it because Becky had said, “If only I was Italian,” when she

could just as easily have said, “If only you were Jewish.” Horizontal Ronnie swung into action the very next day. He had been inordinately silent the night before on the trip back across the lake, and I hadn’t disturbed his thoughts because I as-

sumed he was working out his system for beating Jimbo. Besides, I was working out what I would tell Becky’s father when we got back to the city. The course of action Ronnie decided upon was really the only one

that offered the slightest opportunity of defeating Jimbo and destroying his empire. He had correctly concluded that Jimbo was the best marble player in camp, if not in the entire world, and had further reasoned it would be impossible to beat him through skill alone. So, discounting skill, Ronnie had decided to try his hand at luck. At eight o’clock that Monday morning, as the kids lined up for muster, Ronnie came over with his fist clenched. He held out his hand to one of the senior boys and said, “Odds or evens?” “Huh?” the senior said. The senior boys at Camp Marvin weren’t exactly the brightest kids in the world. In fact, the junior boys had

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

449

written a song about them which went something like “We’ve got seen-yuh boys, dumpy, lumpy seen-yuh boys, we’ve got seen-yuh

boys, the worst!” Besides, it was only eight o’clock in the morning, and when someone thrusts his fist in your face at eight o’clock in the morning and says, “Odds or evens?” what else can you reply but “Huh?” “My fist is full of marbles,” Ronnie explained. “Yeah?” the senior boy said. Mention of marbles seemed to have awakened him suddenly. His eyes gleamed. “They’re either an odd number of marbles or an even number,”

Ronnie went on. “You guess odds or evens. If you're right, I give you the marbles in my hand. If you’re wrong, you match the marbles in my hand.” “You mean if I’m wrong I give you the number of marbles you’re holding?” “That’s right.” The senior boy thought this over carefully for a moment, then nodded and said, “Odds.” Ronnie opened his fist. There were four marbles in his hand. “You pay me,” he said, and that was the beginning of the Las Vegas phase of the marble madness. If Uncle Marvin saw what was going on, he made no comment

upon it. The common opinion was that he was still smarting from his loss of 500 marbles to Jimbo and deliberately avoided contact

with everyone in the camp. It is doubtful that he could have stopped the frenzy even if he’d wanted to. The kids, presented with a new and exciting activity, took to it immediately. Here was a sport that required no skill. Here was a game that promised and delivered immediate action: the closed fist, the simple question, the guess, the payoff. Kids who were hopeless washouts on the baseball diamond suddenly discovered a sport in which they could excel. Kids who

couldn’t sing a note in a camp musical set the grounds reverberating

with their shouted “Odds or evens?” A large shipment of marbles from home to a kid named Irwin in bunk nine only increased the

feverish tempo of the gambling activity. The simple guessing game

started at reveille each morning, before a kid’s feet had barely touched the wooden floor of his bunk. It did not end until lights out, and even after that there were the whispered familiar words, and the surreptitious glow of flashlights.

Uncle Jimbo, startled by this new

development, stayed fastidi-

ously away from the gambling in the first few days. Ronnie, meanwhile, exhibiting his true gambler’s instincts, began by slowly win-

450

Evan Hunter

ning a handful of marbles from every kid he could challenge, and

then became more and more reckless with his bets, clenching his fists around as many marbles as they could hold. Before too long, a bookie system became necessary, with counselors and campers writing down a number on a slip of paper and then folding the slip, so that a challenger had only to guess odds or evens on a written figure rather than on an actual fistful of marbles. That week, Ronnie successfully and infalliby called bets ranging from a low of three mar-

bles to a high of 152 marbles. It became clear almost immediately that

if Jimbo were to defend his title, he would have to enter this new phase of the sport or lose by default. I think he was beginning to like his title by then. Or perhaps he was only beginning to like his wealth. Whatever it was, he could not afford to drop out of the race. He studied the new rules, and learned them. They were really quite simple. If someone challenged you, you could either accept or decline the challenge. But once you had accepted, once the question “Odds or evens?” was asked in earnest, you either called immediately or lost the bet by default.

In the beginning, Jimbo took no chances. He deliberately sought out only those campers whose luck had been running incredibly bad. His bets were small, four marbles, seven marbles, a dozen marbles. If he won a bet, he immediately pocketed a portion of his initial investment and then began playing on his winnings alone. And then, because he thought of himself as a blood-smelling champion closing in for the kill, he began to bet more heavily, taking on all comers, swinging freely through the camp, challenging campers and coun-

selors alike. Eventually he wrote a bookie slip for 507 marbles and won the bet from a kid in bunk seven, knocking him completely

out of the competition. Jimbo’s luck was turning out to be almost as incredible as his skill had been. He lost occasionally, oh yes, but his winnings kept mounting, and marble after marble poured into the

locked suitcase on the shelf over his bed. It was becoming apparent to almost everyone in the camp—except Uncle Marvin, who still didn’t know what the hell was going on—that an elimination match

was taking place, and that the chief contenders for Jimbo’s as yet unchallenged title were Ronnie and the nouveau riche kid in bunk nine, who had parlayed his shipment from home into a sizable fortune. Irwin, the kid in bunk nine, was a tiny little kid whom everybody

called Irwin the Vermin. He wore glasses, and he always had a runny nose and a disposition to match. Ronnie, correctly figuring he would have to collar every loose marble in the camp before a showdown

with Jimbo, went over to bunk nine one afternoon and promptly

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

451

challenged Irwin the Vermin. The number of marbles being wagered on a single bet had by this time reached fairly astronomical proportions. It was rumored that Irwin owned 1750 marbles. Ronnie, whose

number of marbles now totaled 904, sat on the edge of Irwin’s bed and wrote out a slip of paper with the number 903 on it. He folded the slip of paper and then looked Irwin directly in the eye. “Odds or evens?”’ he said. Irwin blinked behind his glasses, grinned maliciously, licked his lips with his tongue and said, “Odds.” Ronnie swallowed. ‘“‘What?” “Odds,” Irwin repeated. “Yeah,” Ronnie said. He unfolded the slip, and together they

walked back to his bunk where he made payment. “I’ve got a few marbles left,” he lied; he had only one marble to his name. “Do you want to play some more?” Irwin looked at him steadily and then, true to his nature, said, “Find yourself another sucker, jerk.” Ronnie watched Irwin as he left the bunk loaded down with his winnings. He must have seen in that tiny figure retreating across the grounds a symbol of all his frustration, the quarantine that kept him

from the mysterious Laura, the defeat of his system to beat Jimbo. It was late afternoon, and the cries of the boys at Free Play sounded from the ball diamonds and the basketball courts far off in the camp hills. Ronnie must have watched little Irwin walking away with his shattered hopes and dreams in a brown cardboard carton, and it must have been then that he made his final decision, the decision that brought the marble madness to its peak of insanity. I was coming back from the tennis courts, where I was trying to help little Max with his backhand, when I saw Ronnie striding across

the grounds toward Jimbo’s bunk. He was carrying an old battered suitcase, and there was something odd about his walk, a purposeful, angry stride which was at the same time somewhat surreptitious. I looked at him curiously and then followed him past the flagpole and watched as he entered the bunk. I stood outside for a few minutes, wondering, and then I quietly climbed the front steps.

Ronnie was in the middle of forcing the lock on Jimbo’s suitcase. He looked up when I entered the bunk and then went right back to work. ‘What are you doing?” I said. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?” he answered. “Tt looks like you’re trying to break open Jimbo’s suitcase.”

Evan

452

Hunter

“That’s right,” Ronnie said, and in that moment he broke the lock and opened the lid. “Give me a hand here,” he said. MINION: “Come on, don’t be a jerk.” » You're stealing his marbles,” I said. “That’s just what I’m doing. It’s a gag. Come on, “give me a hand here.” The next second was when I almost lost my own sanity because I said, I actually heard myself say, “You can go to jail for that!” as if even J had begun to believe there was a fortune in that suitcase instead of hunks of colored glass. “For stealing marbles?” Ronnie asked incredulously. “Don’t be a jackass.” His answer startled me back to reality, but at the same time it puzzled me. Because here he was, a grown man, twenty years old, and he was telling me these were only marbles, and yet he was thoroughly in-

volved in all this frantic nuttiness, so involved that he was in Jimbo’s bunk actually stealing marbles which he claimed he knew were only

marbles. He opened his own suitcase and then, seeing I was staring at him with a dumfounded expression, and knowing I wasn’t about to

help him, he lifted Jimbo’s bag himself and tilted it. The marbles spilled from one bag to the other, bright shining marbles, yellow and red and striped and black and green; glass marbles and steelies and glistening pureys, marbles of every size and hue, thousands and

thousands of marbles, spilling from Jimbo’s bag to Ronnie’s in a dazzling, glittering heap. I shook my head and said, “I think walked out of the bunk. Ronnie came carrying his own full suitcase, bending watched him as he struggled across to the camp. He put the bag down at his ing, he cupped his hands to his mouth McFarland?” There was no answer.

you’re all nuts,” and then I out after me a minute later, over with the weight of it. I the flagpole in the center of feet and then, his eyes gleamand shouted, “Where’s Jimbo

“Where’s Jimbo McFarland?” he shouted again. “Stop yelling,” I called from the steps of the bunk. “He’s up at the handball courts.’

“Jimbo McFarland!” Ronnie screamed. “Jimbo McFarland!” and the camp public address system picked up the name, shouting it across behind the bunks and down by the gully and through the na-

ture shack. “Jimbo McFarland!” and over to the lake where some

kids were taking their Red Cross tests, and then up into the hills by

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

453

the mess hall, and across the upper-camp baseball diamond, and the

volleyball court, and finally reaching Jimbo where he was playing handball with one of the counselors.

Jimbo came striding down into the camp proper. He walked out of the hills like the gunslick he was, his back to the sun, crossing the

dusty grounds for a final showdown, stopping some twenty feet from where Ronnie stood near the flagpole. “You calling me?” he said. “You want to play marbles?” Ronnie answered.

“Have you got any marbles?” Jimbo said. “Will you match whatever I’ve got?” Jimbo hesitated a moment, weighing his luck, and then said, “Sure,” tentatively accepting the challenge. “Whatever’s in this bag?” Ronnie asked.

Again Jimbo hesitated. A crowd of kids had begun to gather, some of whom had followed Jimbo down out of the hills, the rest of whom had felt an excitement in the air, had felt that the moment of truth had finally arrived. They milled around the flagpole, waiting for

Jimbo’s decision. The gauntlet was in the dust, the challenge had been delivered, and now they waited for the undisputed champion to

decide whether or not he would defend his title. Jimbo nodded. “However much you want to bet,” he said slowly, ‘Ss all right with me.” He had irrevocably accepted the challenge. He now had to call or lose the bet by default. “Okay, then,” Ronnie said. He stooped down beside his suitcase. Slowly, nonchalantly, he unclasped the latches on either side. He

put one hand gently on the lid, and then he looked up at Jimbo,

grinned, quietly said, “Odds or evens, Jimbo?” and snapped open the lid of the bag.

From where I sat, I saw Jimbo’s face go white. I don’t know what

crossed his mind in those few terrible moments as he stared into the bag at those thousands and thousands of marbles. I don’t know whether or not he even made a mental stab at calculating the number of glistening spheres in the suitcase. I only know that he staggered back a pace and his jaw fell slack. The kids were silent now, watching him. Ronnie kept squatting beside the suitcase, his hand resting on the opened lid, the sun glowing on the marbles. “Well, Jimbo?” he said. “Odds or evens?” asbdie So

“Odds or evens, Jimbo?” Perhaps Jimbo was feverishly calculating in those breathless moments.

Perhaps he was realizing he had walked into a trap from

Evan

454

Hunter

which there was no return: he would either call correctly and become the marble king of the entire world; or he would call incorrectly or not at all, and lose his fortune and his fame. “Odds or evens?” Ronnie demanded. Odds or evens, but how to call? How many thousands of marbles were in that suitcase, and really what difference did it make when it all narrowed down to a single marble, the real difference between odds and evens, one solitary marble, call wrong and the empire

would come crashing down. Jimbo took a deep breath. The sweat was standing out on his face, his eyes were blinking. The kids around the flagpole stood silently awaiting his decision. Ronnie squatted by

the suitcase with his hand on the lid. “Odds or evens?” he asked again.

Jimbo shrugged. Honestly, because it was what he was really thinking, he said, “I. . .

[don’t know.”

“Did you hear him?” Ronnie said immediately. “He loses by default!” “W ait.a minute;

I...’

?

“You refused to call, you said you didn’t know! I win by default!” Ronnie said, and he snapped the lid of the bag shut, latched it and immediately lifted it from the ground.

“Now just,a second,” Jimbo protested, but Ronnie was already walking away from him. He stopped some five paces from the flagpole, turned abruptly, put the bag down, grinned, and said, “You stupid jerk! They were your own marbles!” For a moment, his announcement hung on the dust-laden air. Jimbo blinked, not understanding him at first. The kids were silent and puzzled in the circle around the flagpole. Ronnie picked up the bag of marbles again and began walking toward his bunk with it, a

triumphant grin on his face. And then the meaning of what he had said registered on Jimbo’s face, his eyes first, intelligence sparking there, his nose next, the nostrils flaring, his mouth then, the lips pull-

ing back to show his teeth, and then his voice, bursting from his mouth in a wounded roar. “‘You thief!” His words, too, hung on the silent air, and then one of the kids said, “Did he steal them from you, Uncle Jimbo?” and another kid shouted, “He’s a crook!” and then suddenly the word “Thief!” was shouted by one of the senior boys and picked up by a junior, “Thief!” and the air rang with the word, “Thief!” and then it was shouted in unison, “Thief! Thief!” and all at once there was a bloodthirsty mob. A kid who had come down from the ball diamond waved his bat in the air and began running after Ronnie. Another kid

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

455

seized a fallen branch and rushed past the flagpole with it. The others bellowed screams of anger and rage, hysterically racing toward Ronnie, who had dropped the suitcase and turned to face them. There was a pale, sickly smile on his mouth, as though he hadn’t expected

this kind of backfire. “Look,” he said, but his voice was drowned out

in the roar of the kids as they rushed forward with Jimbo. Ronnie turned and tried to run for his bunk, but Jimbo caught his collar from behind, and pulled him backward to the ground. I saw the kid raise his baseball bat and I leaped to my feet and yelled, “Stop it! Goddamn you, stop it!” The bat hung in midair. Slowly they turned toward me. “It’s only marbles,” I said. The camp was silent. “Tt’s only marbles,” I repeated. “Don’t you see?” And then, because I had intruded upon a fantasy and threatened to shatter it, because the entire spiraling marbles structure was suddenly in danger, they turned from Ronnie, who was lying on the

ground, and they ran toward me, shouting and screaming. Jimbo, the champion, struck me on the jaw with his fist, and when I fell to the ground, the kids began kicking me and pummeling me. There was more than anger in their blows and their whispered curses. There was conviction and an overriding necessity to convince the unbeliever as well. I refused to be convinced. I felt each deliberate blow, yes, each fierce kick, but I would not be convinced because I knew, even if they didn’t, that it was only marbles. I quit Camp Marvin early the next morning. Not because of the beating. That wasn’t important. I carried my two suitcases all around the lake to Camp Lydia. It was raining, and I got soaking wet. I waited at the gate while one of the girl campers ran to get Rebecca. She came walking through the rain wearing her dirty trench coat, walking with that peculiar sideward lope, her hair wet and clinging to her face. “Come on, Beck,” I said. “We’re going home.” She looked at me for a long time, searching my face with her dark solemn eyes while the rain came down around us. I knew that word of the beating had traveled across the lake, but I didn’t know whether she was looking for cuts and bruises or for something else. “Are you all right?” she said at last. “Yes, I’m fine,” I said. “Becky, please go pack your things.” And then, as she turned to go, I said, “Becky?” She stopped in the center of the road with the rain streaming on

Evan Hunter

456

her face and she looked at me curiously, her eyebrows raised, waiting. “As soon as we get back,” I said, “today, this afternoon, I’m going to talk to your father.” She stared at me a moment longer, her eyes very serious, and then she gave a small nod, and a smile began forming on her face, not the usual fast-breaking smile, but a slow steady smile that was somehow very sad and very old, even though she was only nineteen. “All right, Donald,” she said. That afternoon I went to see her father at his dental office on Fordham Road in the Bronx. It was still raining. When he heard who was calling, he told his receptionist he didn’t want to see me, so I

marched right in and stood beside his chair while he was working on a patient, and I said, “Dr. Goldblatt, you had better see me, because youre going to see a lot of me from now on.” He didn’t want to make a very big fuss because a patient was sit-

ting in the chair with her mouth open, so he walked over to his receptionist and quietly asked her to get the police, but I just kept standing by the chair very calmly. He didn’t know it, but I had been through the hysteria bit before, in spades, and this mild case didn’t faze me at all. Finally, when he realized I wasn’t going to leave, he

again left his patient sitting in the chair, and he told his receptionist to never mind where we sat on He looked at ca’s, and he said,

the police, and he led me to a private little office opposite sides of a desk. me with dark solemn eyes, almost as black as Rebec“What the hell do you want from my life?”

“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said, “I don’t want anything from your life.” “Except my daughter,” he said sourly.

“Yes, but that’s not from your life, that’s from hers.” “No,” Dr. Goldblatt said. “Dr. Goldblatt,” I said politely, “I didn’t come here to ask your permission to see her. I came here to tell you that we’re getting engaged, and as soon as we graduate we’re going to get married.”

“No,” Dr. Goldblatt said. “You’re a Gentile, she’s a Jewish girl, it would never work. Don’t you know the trouble you're asking

for? Different religions, different cultures, how will you raise the children, what will you . . . >” “Dr. Goldblatt,” I said, “that’s only marbles.”

“What?” “T said it’s only marbles.” The office went very silent, just the way the camp had when I’d shouted those words the day before. Dr. Goldblatt looked at me for

UNCLE

JIMBO’S MARBLES

457

a long time, his face expressionless. Then, all he said was “Marbles.”

“Yes,” I said, “marbles. Dr. Goldblatt, I’m going to pick up Becky

at the house tonight at eight o’clock. At the house, Dr. Goldblatt. ’m

not going to meet her in some dark alley any more.” Dr. Goldblatt said nothing. “Because she’s too nice to be meeting in dark alleys,” I said, “and I love her.” Dr. Goldblatt still said nothing. “Well,” I said, “it was nice talking to you.”

I got up and offered my hand to him, which he refused. I shrugged

and started for the door. I had my hand on the knob when I heard him say behind me, “Marbles. This is what my daughter picked. Marbles.” I didn’t let him see me smile. I walked downstairs to the street. The rain had tapered off to a fine drizzle. The gutters ran with water, and large puddles had formed in the hollows near the curb. I could remember sticking my hand into puddles just like those long ago when I was a kid, when the loss of a hundred immies had meant a great deal to me. I called Becky from a telephone booth in the corner drugstore. The nut—she cried.

Weasels in the Corn Meal

“ts JOSEPH HENRY JACKSON Wuen Marta CAME To us, complete with impeccable letters, we knew we had a treasure. Her graying hair was neat; it framed a pink, plump, confident face. Her china-blue eyes, wide like a doll’s, were clear evidence of physical health. One child in the house, she said comfortably, was nothing; she took to our cat instantly, and it took to her. There remained one small worry. My mother-in-law, who had said, “I’ll never be found with my feet under a son-in-law’s table!” and meant it lived down the block in her own bungalow. It would be part of Marta’s duty to clean for her once a week, my wife taking over in our own house on that day. And on Tuesdays and Fridays Marta was to see that good, really nourishing dinners were cooked there. The old lady liked to do for herself, she insisted, but far too often she ate out of cans. Marta was easygoing and she seemed the soul of tact. But, well, my mother-in-law had her ideas, one of them being that she didn’t like people she didn’t like. It was never wholly certain what governed her in the views she took, dim or otherwise, but there was never any doubt what those views were. For a day or two the problem did not arise. It was evident at once that Marta could cook, though she liked to go her own way. The aspect of the kitchen was immediately changed, spices and staples rearranged according to a mysterious pattern that suited her. My wife began to adjust herself to Marta’s conversation, too, and was not as startled as she might have been when Marta told her that she had found weasels in the corn meal. It was good to know they had been discovered and promptly dealt with. “I got rid of ’em,” Marta said briskly, “every single sanitary one!” Then the first Tuesday arrived, and the first dinner Marta would cook for my mother-in-law. My wife took her to the bungalow, introduced her, and left. It would work out or it wouldn’t. Next night after dinner she told me how it had gone. Marta had come back smiling. She was frank about the little shin-

WEASELS

IN THE

CORN

MEAL

459

gled bungalow: it was a kind of old ramble-shack, she said. But the

old lady was sweet; she put Marta in mind of that famous painting of Hitler’s Mother. It was nice to do things for people who didn’t mind lending a hand; my mother-in-law had helped Marta wrench out the cups after the coffee, which showed she had her heart in the right end. They had talked a good deal, too, Marta reported, and it was a pleasure to discuss things with her; she never went off on a tandem the way so many ladies did. It was plain that they had much in common, for Marta had mentioned my mother-in-law’s science trouble. It was the fog, Marta explained; some people were just septic to it. They shared another idiosyncrasy, too: strawberries gave them both whelps all over their arms. One thing had bothered Marta. The old lady ought to eat more. They had talked this over, and although Marta’s chubbiness made their agreement fantastic, they had concluded that both had the

same difficulty: neither of them assumed their food properly. After that first day, Marta took to carrying special dishes over to the bungalow. The second week she slipped out for ten minutes at dinnertime on the Friday. When she came back we learned why. She had taken over to my mother-in-law the dessert in which she took the greatest pride—her Baked Elastic. She never claimed to be a bet-

ter cook than the old lady, however. The two had exchanged secrets from their store of kitchen tricks, and Marta admitted they had come out nick and tuck. As it worked out, it turned into a close friendship; but while this

was pleasant in its way, we found that we were getting less and less of Marta’s time. She was always just stepping over to see how things were; she said firmly that the old lady had told her to drop in for a snag whenever she felt like it. In the end, it all added up: we lost our treasure. It began when my mother-in-law gave Marta an old evening dress. Marta was enormously pleased with its style—black velvet, covered with Seagram’s. And the gift led directly to evening dances at Oakland’s most popular social ballroom. There, properly introduced by the lady manager, Marta met a man, and from that moment romance had the upper hand. She hadn’t known him from Adams, she told us, but he had met her once before in Southern California. They agreed that they really liked Los Angeles better, and

he was returning to his old job there. He said The Right Things, and

he wanted Marta to go with him as his wife when he left. She would have liked to stay with us, particularly with my mother-in-law. But

460

Joseph Henry Jackson

anybody knew that it was silly to cut off your nose in spite of your face.

Perhaps it was just as well; for, as Marta told my wife with a selfconscious giggle, he was a man who liked to step out; he was a great one for burning the camel at both ends. It may have been this propensity of his that eventually parted them. Marta had admitted that he was the kind that carried things to the inch degree. Whatever the reason, she was her own woman again in six short months. She sent us a postcard telling us she had

gone back to work for her old employers, a family named Trott. She thought of us often, though, especially my mother-in-law, who had been a garden angel to her. We passed on the message, and it was only then that we realized how really close the two women had been. For my mother-in-law made it quite clear that we had been a pair of simpletons to let Marta go. She was the best cook we’d ever had or were likely to have, the old lady said, and for a simple reason: Marta had been taught right; she knew the principles of homey comics.

The Third Baby’s the Easiest

“SHIRLEY JACKSON EverYOongE says the third baby is the easiest one to have, and now I know why. It’s the easiest because it’s the funniest, because you’ve been there twice, and you know. You know, for instance, how you're going to look in a maternity dress about the seventh month, and you know how to release the footbrake on a baby carriage without fumbling amateurishly, and you know how to tie your shoes before and do knee-chests after, and while you're not exactly casual, you’re a little bit offhand about the whole thing. Sentimental people keep insisting that women go on to have a third baby because they love babies, and cynical people seem to maintain that a woman with two healthy, active children around the house will do

anything for ten quiet days in the hospital; my own position is somewhere between the two, but I agree that the third is the easiest. The whole event is far too recent for me to be deluded. Because it was my third I was saved a lot of unnecessary discomfort. No one sent me any dainty pink sweaters, for instance. We received only one pair of booties, and those were a pair of rosebudcovered white ones that someone had sent my first child when he was born and which I had given, still in their original pink tissue paper, to a friend when her first child was born; she had subsequently sent them to her cousin in Texas for a second baby, and the cousin sent them back east on the occasion of a mutual friend’s twins; the mutual friend gave them to me, with a card saying “Love to Baby” and the pink tissue paper hardly rufHled. I have them carefully set aside, be-

cause I know someone who is having a baby in June. I borrowed back my baby carriage from my next-door neighbor, took the crib down out of the attic, washed my way through the chest of baby shirts and woolen shawls, briefed the two incumbent children far enough ahead of time, and spent a loving and painstaking month packing my suitcase. This time I knew exactly what I was taking with me to the hospital, but assembling it took time and eventually required an emergency trip to New York from our home in Vermont. I packed it, though, finally: a yellow nightgown

462

Shirley Jackson

trimmed with lace, a white nightgown that tied at the throat with a blue bow, two of the fanciest bed jackets I could find—that was what I went to New York for—and then, two pounds of home-

made fudge, as many mystery stories as I could cram in, and a bag of apples. Almost at the last minute I added a box of pralines, a bottle of expensive cologne, and my toothbrush. I have heard of people who take their own satin sheets to the hospital but that has al-

ways seemed to me a waste of good suitcase space. My doctor was very pleasant and my friends were very thoughtful; for the last two weeks before I went to the hospital almost

everyone I know called me almost once a day and said, ““Haven’t you gone yet?” My mother- and father-in-law settled on a weekend visit to us when,

according to the best astronomical

figuring, I should

have had a two-weeks-old baby ready to show them; they arrived, were entertained with some restraint on my part, and left, eying me with disfavor and some suspicion. My mother sent me a telegram from California saying, “Is everything all right? Shall I come? Where is baby?” My children were sullen, my husband was embarrassed. Everything was, as I saw, perfectly normal, up to and including the frightful moment when I leaped out of bed at two in the morn-

ing as though there had been a pea under the mattress; when

I

turned on the light my husband said sleepily, “Having baby?” “T really don’t know,” I said nervously. I was looking for the clock, which I hide at night so that in the morning when the alarm rings I will have to wake up looking for it. It was hard to find it without the alarm ringing. “Shall I wake up?” my husband asked without any sign of pleased anticipation. “T can’t find the clock,” I said. “Clock?” my husband said. “Clock. Wake me five minutes apart.” I unlocked the suitcase and took out a mystery story, and sat down in the armchair with a blanket over me. After a few minutes the cat, who usually sleeps on the foot of my son’s bed, wandered in and settled down on a corner of the blanket by my feet. She slept as peacefully as my husband did most of the night, except that now and then she raised her head to regard me with a look of silent contempt. Because we live in a small country town and our hospital is five miles away I had an uneasy feeling that I ought to allow plenty of time, particularly since neither of us has ever learned to drive and consequently I must call our local taxi to take me to the hospital. At

seven-thirty I called my doctor and we chatted agreeably for a few

THE

THIRD

BABY’S THE

EASIEST

463 minutes, and I said I would just give the children their breakfast and wash up the dishes and then run over to the hospit al, and he said that would be just fine and he’d plan to meet me later, then; the unspoken conviction between us was that I ought to be back in the fields before sundown. I went into the kitchen and proceeded methodically to work, hum-

ming cheerfully and stopping occasionally to grab the back of a

chair and hold my breath. My husband told me later that he found his cup and saucer (the one with Father written on it) in the oven, but I am inclined to believe that he was too upset to be a completely

reliable reporter. My own recollection is of doing everything the

way I have a thousand times before—school-morning short cuts so familiar that I am hardly aware, usually, of doing them at all. The

frying pan, for instance. My single immediate object was a cup of

coffee and I decided to heat up the coffee left from the night before, rather than take the time to make fresh; it seemed brilliantly logical to heat it in the frying pan because anyone knows that a broad shallow container will heat liquid faster than a tall narrow one, like a coffee pot. I will not try to deny, however, that it looked funny. By the time the children came down everything seemed to be moving along handsomely; my son grimly got two glasses and filled them with fruit juice for his sister and himself. He offered me one, but I had no desire to eat, or in fact to do anything which might upset my precarious balance between two and three children, or to interrupt my morning’s work for more than coffee, which I was still doggedly making in the frying pan. My husband came downstairs, sat in his usual place, said good morning to the children, accepted the glass of fruit juice my son poured for him, and asked me brightly, “How do you feel?” “Splendid,” I said, making an enormous smile for all of them. “I’m doing wonderfully well.” “Good,” he said. “How soon do you think we ought to leave?” “Around noon, probably,” I said. “Everything is fine, really.” My husband asked politely, “May I help you with breakfast?” “No indeed,” I said. I stopped to catch my breath and smiled reassuringly. “I feel so well,” I said. “Would you be offended,” he said, still very politely, “af I took this egg out of my glass?” “Certainly not,” I said. “I’m sorry, I can’t think how it got there.” “Tt’s nothing at all,” my husband said. “I was just thirsty.” They were all staring at me oddly, and I kept giving them my re-

assuring smile; I did feel splendid; my months of waiting were nearly

464

Shirley Jackson

over, my careful preparations had finally been brought to a purpose, tomorrow I would be wearing my yellow nightgown. “I’m so pleased,” I said. I was slightly dizzy, perhaps. And there were pains, but they were authentic ones, not the feeble imitations I had been dreaming up the

past few weeks. I patted my son on the head. “Well,” I said, in the tone I had used perhaps 500 times in the last months. “Well, do we want a little boy or a little boy?” “Won’t you sit down?” my husband said. He had the air of a man

who expects that an explanation will somehow be given him for a series of extraordinary events in which he is unwillingly involved. “I think you ought to sit down,” he added urgently. It was about then that I realized that he was right. I ought to sit down. As a matter of fact, I ought to go to the hospital right now, immediately. I dropped my reassuring smile and the fork I had been carrying around with me. “Td better hurry,” I said inadequately. My husband called the taxi and brought down my suitcase. The children were going to stay with friends, and one of the things I had planned to do was drop them off on my way to the hospital, now, however, I felt vitally that I had not the time. I began to talk fast. “You'll have to take care of the children,” I told my husband. “See that . . .” I stopped. I remember thinking with incredible clarity and speed. “See that they finish their breakfast,” I said. Pajamas on the line, I thought, school, cats, toothbrushes. Milkman. Overalls to be mended; laundry. “I ought to make a list,” I said vaguely. “Leave a note for the milkman tomorrow night. Soap, too. We need soap.” Ves, dear,” my husband kept saying. “Yes dear yes dear.” The taxi arrived and suddenly I was saying goodbye to the children. “See you later,” my son said casually. “Have a good time.” “Bring me a present,” my daughter added. “Don’t worry about a thing,” my husband said. “Now, don’t you worry,” I told him. “There’s nothing to Worry

about.” “Everything will be fine,” he said. “Don’t worry.” I waited for a good moment and then scrambled into the taxi without grace; I did not dare risk my reassuring smile on the taxi driver but I nodded to him briskly. “Pll be with you in an hour,” my husband said nervously. “And don’t worry.”

THE

THIRD

BABY’S

THE

EASIEST

465

“Everything will be fine,” I said. “Don’t worry.” “Nothing to worry about,” the taxi driver said to my husband, and we started off, my husband standing at the curb wringing his hands and the taxi tacking insanely from side to side of the road to avoid even the slightest bump. I sat very still in the back seat, trying not to breathe. I had one arm lovingly around my suitcase, which held my yellow night-

gown, and I tried to light a cigarette without using any muscles except those in my hands and my neck, and still not let go of my

suitcase. “Going to be a beautiful day,” I said to the taxi driver at last. We

had a 20-minute trip ahead of us at least—much longer, if he continued his zigzag path. “Pretty warm for the time of year.” “Pretty warm yesterday, too,” the taxi driver said. “It was warm yesterday,” I conceded, and stopped to catch my breath. The driver, who was obviously avoiding looking at me in the mirror, said a little bit hysterically, “Probably be warm tomorrow, too.” I waited for a minute, and then I was able to say, dubiously, “I don’t know as it will stay warm that long. Might cool off by tomorrow.”

“Well,” the taxi driver said, “it was sure warm yesterday.” “Yesterday,” I said. “Yes, that was a warm day.” “Going to be nice today, too,” the taxi driver said. I clutched my suitcase tighter and made some small sound—more like a yelp than anything else—and the taxi veered madly off to the left and then began to pick up speed with enthusiasm. “Very warm indeed,” the driver babbled, leaning forward against the wheel. “Warmest day I ever saw for the time of year. Usually

this time of year it’s colder. Yesterday it was terribly—” “Tt was not,” I said. “It was freezing. I can see the tower of the hospital.” “I remember thinking how warm it was,” the driver said. He

turned into the hospital drive. “It was so warm I noticed it right away. “This is a warm day,’ I thought, that’s how warm it was.” We pulled up with a magnificent flourish at the hospital entrance, and the driver skittered out of the front seat and came around and opened the door and took my arm. “My wife had five,” he said. “I'll take the suitcase, Miss. Five, and never a minute’s trouble with any of them.” He rushed me in through the door and up to the desk. “Here,” he said to the desk clerk. “Pay me later,” he said to me, and fled.

466

Shirley Jackson

“Name?” the desk clerk said to me politely, her pencil poised. “Name,” I said vaguely. |remembered, and told her. “Age?” she asked. “Sex? Occupation?” “Writer,” I said. “Housewife,” she said. “Writer,” I said. “[’ll just put down housewife,” she said. “Doctor? How many children?” “Two,” I said. “Up to now.” “Normal pregnancy?” she said. “Blood test? X-ray?” “Look—” I said. “HHusband’s name?” she said. ““Address? Occupation?” “Just put down housewife,” I said. “I don’t remember his name, really.” “Legitimate?” “What?” I said. “Is your husband the father of this child? Do you have a husband?” “Please,” I said plaintively, “can I go on upstairs?”

‘Well, really,” she said, and sniffed. “You're only having a baby.” She waved delicately to a nurse, who took me by the same arm everybody else had been using that morning, and in the elevator this nurse was very nice. She asked me twice how I was feeling and said “Maternity?” to me politely as we left the elevator, I was carrying my own suitcase by then. Two or more nurses joined us upstairs; we made light conversation while I got into the hospital nightgown. The nurses had all been to some occupational party the night before and one of them had been simply a riot; she was still being a riot while I undressed, because every now and then one of the two other nurses would turn around to me and say, “Isn’t she a riot, honestly?”

I made a few remarks, just to show that I too was lighthearted and not at all nervous; I commented laughingly on the hospital nightgown, and asked with amusement tinged with foreboding what was the apparatus they were wheeling in on the tray. My doctor arrived about half an hour later; he had obviously had three cups of coffee and a good cigar; he patted me on the shoulder and said, “How do we feel?” “Pretty well,” I said, with an uneasy giggle that ended in a squawk. “How long do you suppose it will be before—” “We don’t need to worry about that for a while yet,” the doctor said. He laughed pleasantly, and nodded to the nurses. They all bore

THE

THIRD

BABY’S

THE

EASIEST

467

down on me at once, One of them smoothed my pillow, one of them held my hand, and the third one stroked my forehead and said, “After

all, you’re only having a baby.”

“Call me if you want me,” the doctor said to the nurses as he left. “Tl be downstairs in the coffee shop.” “TIl call you if I need you,” I told him omino usly, and one of the nurses said in a honeyed voice, “Now, look, we don’t want our husband to get all worried.” I opened one eye; my husband was sitting, suddenly, beside the

bed. He looked as though he were trying not to screa m. “They told

me to come room.”

in here,” he said. “I was trying to find the waiting

“The other end of the hall,” I told him grimly. I pounded on the bell and the nurse came running. “Get him out of here,” I said, waving my head at my husband.

“They told me—’ my husband began, looking miserably at the

nurse. “Te’s all-]-I-I-]-] right,” the nurse said. She began to stroke my forehead again. “Hubby belongs right here.”

“Either he goes or I go,” I said. The door slammed open and the doctor came in. “Heard you were here,” he said jovially, shaking my husband’s hand. “Look a little ale.” - My husband smiled weakly. “Never lost a father yet,” the doctor said, and slapped him on the back. He turned to me. “How do we feel?” he said. “Terrible,” I said, and the doctor laughed again. “Just on my way downstairs,” he said to my husband. “Come along?” No one seemed, actually, to go or come that morning; I would open my eyes and they were there, open my eyes again and they were gone. This time, when I opened my eyes, a pleasant-faced nurse was standing beside me; she was swabbing my arm with a piece of cotton. Although I am ordinarily timid about hypodermics I welcomed this one with what was almost a genuine echo of my old reassuring smile. “Well, well,” I said to the nurse. “Sure glad to see

you.”

“Sissy,” she said distinctly, and jabbed me in the arm. “How soon will this wear off?” I asked her with deep suspicion; I