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The Zebra Derby

A Novel

Max Shulman

This book is an inadequate tribute to

KEN McCORMICK

Everything in this book is fictitious. As a matter of fact, I dreamed the whole thing during an attack of dengue fever brought on by eating unripe dengues. Let my misfortune be a lesson to the reader. When buying dengues, remember that there is a heap of difference between a ripe dengue and a ripe-looking dengue.

M.S.

chapter one

When the lights went on again all over the world, I came home from Tokyo and kissed my mother vigorously about the head and shoulders.

“Mother,” I said, “I have come home from the wars to live and prosper in a new world of peace, opportunity, and universal plumbing facilities.”

“That’s real nice, Son,” said Mother.

“Myself upon the green earth,” I continued, “my finely chiseled, wind-swept head jutting unafraid into the future. Excelsior!”

“Don’t you want to put your barracks bag down, Son?” asked Mother.

“Same old considerate Mother,” I said tenderly.

“Oh, go ’long with you,” she cried with mock severity, and pulled her apron over her face. But I could tell she was pleased when she clicked her heels and leaped up on the chiffonier.

Father came into the room. “How many times have I told you to keep off that God-damn chiffonier?” he snapped.

“Our son is home, Max,”[*] cried Mother.

“Asa,” said Father to me. “Asa, my son, my only sib.”

“Father,” I said simply.

We embraced manlily.

“You are thin and wan, Asa,” he said, prodding my rib case. “How ghastly it must have been in the miasms of the Pacific. But of course you don’t want to talk about it.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I do.”

“That’s all right, Son,” said Father. “You don’t have to. I’ll understand.”

“But I want to.”

“No, Son, no. Don’t wake a flood of horrendous memories on my account. I know how it was. Didn’t I see Don Ameche get it in the guts in Perils of the Pacific, in the head in The Beast of the East, in the thighbone in Hara-Kiri for Two, in the spleen in My Mother Was a Flat-Top, and true in the heart in I Love to See Dat Risin’ Sun Go Down? Do you think I don’t know how it was?”

“But—”

“Be still, my boy. Come rest your war-racked bones and I will tell you how it was on the Home Front in the long months of your absence.” He took my hand and drew me down to the settee, a bandy-legged period piece that bridged the time gap between our Louis Seize escritoire and our Swedish Modern occasional chair. This unmatched suite, combined with a brass samovar, a wicker swing, a neo-Bayeux tapestry depicting the founding of Minnesota by Harold Stassen, a china pug dog, and a wire rack for Pocket Books, was the result of Father’s habit of buying all our furniture at unclaimed freight auctions. (One afternoon he had come home from a grab-bag auction with a gross of harmonicas.)

“It wasn’t easy, Son,” Father began, pulling out his pipe and filling it with a blend he fancied—burley, latakia, and hominy grits. “Just because you never heard a murmur of complaint out of us Home Front soldiers, don’t think it was easy. Of course we never had it as bad as you boys Over There—”

“You said it,” I interrupted. “One time I—”

Father laid a finger on my lips. “It’s all right, lad. You don’t have to talk. Just you rest and you’ll be yourself again in no time. Regular hours, plenty of fresh air, and thin broths will work wonders for you. To continue: we had our share of problems. Food shortages and travel difficulties and a cigarette famine and OPA forms and crowded conditions. Why, would you believe it, even in our little town of Whistlestop, you couldn’t find a room for love nor money. As a patriotic duty I converted part of our house into a lovely two-room apartment—bedroom and closet—and rented it to a war worker and his wife for $150 a month, which I put into war bonds. It was the least I could do as a Home Front soldier.”

We shook hands, not trusting ourselves to speak.

“But the worst of all,” Father went on, “was the food problem. As you know, I’m a plumb fool about victuals, and every time I went down to the butcher shop there was nothing in the counter but pork jowls and sow teats. Well, sir, I finally said to myself I’m going to take my trusty old twenty-gage, muzzle-loader, rapid-action, fowling-piece musket shotgun and go out and shoot me a deer.

“So I went and found Max Flowers growing, the Sac Indian guide, and I said, ‘Max, let’s go out and shoot us a deer.’

“But Max wouldn’t go unless he could take his squaw Mary Ellen along with him. She was expecting a baby any minute, and he wanted to be around when it came. So I said all right, and we hitched Mary Ellen to his surrey with the hinge on top—for lifting when the weather was fine—and with many a laugh and cheer we trotted off to the salt lick north of Bemidji to shoot us a deer.

“We pitched a tent and laid Mary Ellen down and started off to shoot us a deer. We had gone no more than ten feet when standing in a clearing we saw an enormous four-thousand-point buck.”

“Four thousand points!” I cried. “The deer never lived with antlers that big.”

“I am referring to his value in ration stamps,” Father explained. “Well, sir, I raised my gun and got him dead in the sights and was all ready to pull the trigger when a horrible scream came from Mary Ellen.

“I dropped my gun and rushed with Max to her side. Pulling the surrey for eighty miles had hastened her labor, and she was already in the last stages of giving birth. Max was frantic.

“‘Quick-um!’ cried the sad Sac. ‘Boil-um plenty-um water-um.’

“I rushed to a stream and filled every available vessel with water. Then I felled eight trees, hollowed out their trunks, and filled them with water. I built a roaring fire and set all the water boiling.

“Max, meanwhile, had delivered the child, plaited a granny knot in its umbilical cord, and put it on a four-hour Carnation Milk and Dextri-Maltose No. 2 formula. The child thrived and today is a sutler’s apprentice on the Chippewa reservation near Sleepy Eye.

“The puzzling thing about the whole episode is this: of all that water I boiled, we never used one damn drop. Tell me, Asa, you went to college, why do they always boil water when they’re delivering a baby?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Father,” I confessed.

“Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” said Father. “Every time you see a movie where a baby is born everybody is always running around boiling water. Why? I know a few things about first aid: you keep the patient from swallowing his tongue and try to interest him in handicraft. But that boiling water baffles me.”

“Did you get the buck?” I asked.

“No, he got away. I had to go eat at the U-Choos-It cafeteria. Stood in line for four hours waiting to get in. There was a fellow named Maffick who made a good living for a long time outside the U-Choos-It, selling people box lunches to eat while they waited to get inside. The pure-food inspector finally put Maffick out of business when he found him using a butter substitute substitute.

“Yes, Asa, we had our little Home Front problems. And there was precious little to break the cruel, hard rigor of wartime living. We couldn’t go to the movie, we—”

“You couldn’t go to the movie?” I interrupted. “What happened to the Bijou Theater?”

“It was ordained a cathedral after showing The Song of Bernadette, Going My Way, and The Keys of the Kingdom all in one week.”

“That reminds me,” I said, “of the time I met an atheist in a foxhole. He was—”

“Oh, my poor boy,” cried Father, “don’t try to tell it. Don’t pour salt into your soul wounds on my account. Now, as I was saying, we didn’t have much in the way of entertainment. Occasionally a troupe of soldiers from Fort Snelling would come out and put on a show to keep up civilian morale. I recollect the fine band concert they gave one day in honor of the one millionth trailing antenna to be manufactured at the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation. It was a lovely concert. They dedicated each number to a different branch of the service. For the air forces there was “Coming in on a Prayer—No Wings”; for the field artillery there was “I’ve Got Your Picture Pinned Up on My Long Tom, Baby”; for our gallant British allies there was “We’ll Tie Hirohito to the Inboard Magneto of an RAF Mosquito.” A lovely concert.

“But that’s all water under the bridge now. The war is over and you have come home. Things are different now.”

“A time of social ameliorization,” I proclaimed, rising, “of new horizons, of disappearing borders, of light, of speed, of new skills, new industries, new techniques, new opportunities beckoning, of straight men upon a tranquil earth.”

“That’s right, Son. I’ll get you a disk harrow. No more hand plowing for you. I haven’t farmed since you went away; been making trailing antenna at the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation. My patriotic duty. Duty and a half on Saturdays. The farm’s gotten pretty run down. But with your new disk harrow you’ll have it shipshape in no time.”

“I, farm?” I cried. “Farm in this age of scientific miracles, of unprecedented prosperity, of plastics, of diminishing distances, of hope and hope’s fulfillment, of single-unit kitchens, of the end of grief and strife and woe? Father, I cannot farm. I needs must go and make my rendezvous with destiny.”

“Well, now, Son, you’re a little tired,” said Father. “Why don’t you turn in? A bed will feel mighty good right now, I’ll wager.”

“Indeed it will. How I used to dream of a bed those nights in—”

“Hush, my little soldier man. Don’t try to talk about it. Run off to bed now.”

“All right, Father. But there’s something I must do first.”

“Of course, Son,” Father chuckled. “It’s out in the south forty where it always was. Good night.”

But lovable old Father was wrong. What I had to do was get Mother down off the chiffonier.

“Son,” she said quietly as I lifted her down, “I’m real glad you’re home even if those allotment checks don’t come no more.”

I held her closer.

*AUTHOR’S NOTE: There are twenty-four characters in this book named Max. Let there be an end to this silly business of authors never giving their own names to characters in their novels. False modesty, faugh!—M.S.

chapter two

The next morning I went to see Lodestone la Toole. With love-quickened steps I scampered up the knoll where I knew she would be waiting for me. “Here on this spot I will return to you,” I had said on the day I had gone off to war. “Will you be waiting for me, my own?”

“Huh?” Lodestone had answered.

Then I had been angry. “Lodestone,” I had said, “put that rabbit down and listen to me.”

“But Harvey is so soft,” Lodestone had complained, “and he’s still warm.”

I had removed the rabbit from her reluctant hands. “We can’t wait for rigor mortis to set in, Lodestone. Time grows short and there is much to be said.” I had taken her hands in mine. “Only the Lord can tell what tribulations lie ahead, Lodestone,” I had said softly. “Know this: whatever must be done I shall do. I shall think of you always. The thought of you and our life together after the war shall sustain me. Your face shall sweeten my dreams and support my days. Whatever the carnage in which I am engaged, I shall be thinking of you, of coming home to you, of holding you again in my arms, of growing old with you in our little white house on the green hill.”

Lodestone had clapped her hands. “A house!” she had cried. “Huzzah! I don’t mind this knoll in the summer, but, by God, there’s nothing like a house when old Jack Frost comes around.”

“Indeed there isn’t, Lodestone,” I had said. “And when I come back we’ll have a house of our own.”

“A house,” she had repeated.

Then our lips had been together. Then I had been enveloped in the striving rapture of her and, unseeking, had sought release and, unfinding, had found it. And then a sublime lassitude had come, and at length I had bestirred myself and had gone off to war.

And now, safely out of the war and the past-perfect tense, I was coming back to her. And there, framed in a shaft of sunlight atop the knoll, she sat. Lodestone! Lodestone of the tawny hair and creamy skin. Lodestone of the sturdy limbs and calico gown. How sturdy those limbs! How calico that gown! Running now, I drank in her loveliness through tear-filmed eyes … the ingenuousness of her face, the forked billowing of her bosom, the gentle spatulating hands now stroking a rabbit, the honest pelvis that had never known confinement and would reject it as an outrage, the prehensile toes, also stroking a rabbit.

Now I was beside her and she was in my arms. “Lodestone,” I breathed, “I am returned.”

“We’re gonna have a house,” she breathed.

“Let me look at you,” I said, holding her at arm’s length. Then suddenly, jet-propelled, I was seeking her again and my hands, remembering, were repeating old caresses and the transport of old was upon me, within me, and I was the transport and then I was vanished and there was only the transport, the unworlded delight, the painful reward, the rewarding pain, the rewarding painful deed that was its own pain and its own reward, the awake oblivion, the oblivious awakeness, the sense-poem, at once overdrawn and truncated. Then total peace.

“We’ll make the whole house out of plastics,” said Lodestone.

“Lodestone,” I said, “I want to tell you something about that house.”

“You mean we ain’t gonna have it?” she asked in alarm.

“Of course we will, darling,” I assured her. “We’ll have our house.”

“Ah, fine,” she said. “I been reading up on postwar houses in the Heap o’ Livin’ Quarterly. Land’s sakes, the stuff they got is enough to make a body’s head swim.”

“We’ll have our house, my love. We’ll have our postwar house, and we will be postwar people,” I said.

“They got what they call ‘dynamic’ furniture,” Lodestone continued. “The chairs vibrate all the time so dust can’t never settle on them.”

“That’s right, Lodestone,” I said. “You plan our home, for you are our home planner. My mission will be to secure our place in the postwar world. I must leave you, Lodestone, to seek my fortune—our fortune.”

“They got a fireplace on a track that revolves around you while you sit; your back never gets cold.”

“When I say I am going to seek my fortune, I do not mean it in its old, prewar sense. I do not mean that I will go pit myself against economic odds, that I will go struggle against the jungle laws that used to govern business, that I will embark on a long uphill climb littered with the bones of failures. No, Lodestone. Things are different now. People have learned, Lodestone. Humanity has progressed.”

“Chemical wallpaper that turns yellow and brown in the fall and green in the spring. A chromium Venus with electronic nipples that regulate room temperature.”

“War has shown us what we can do, Lodestone. War has retaught us that which all of us except the wicked and timid have always known: that there is no problem which American ingenuity cannot solve. War has been a busy time for our people, but it has been a thoughtful time too. While some of us assured our country’s destiny on the battlefields of the world, others stayed home and builded our future. An inventory was taken. The perspective of time revealed our old errors. Swept out now are the ills which made our nation imperfect. Erased are the infamies. Strong, healthy, and wise, we stand on the threshold of tomorrow.”

“In the bathroom they got a warm floor. They’s coils under it like a toaster. The same thing with the seat of the water closet.”

“That has long been needed,” I remarked.

“Then they’s a Murphy bath—a bathtub when it’s horizontal; fold it and you got a shower.”

“‘What does a man want?’ the planners asked. ‘Let him tell us what he wants and he shall have it.’”

“In the bedroom they got an Alarm-O-Mattress that shakes you awake in the morning and an electric closet that gives moths the trauma.”

“So now, Lodestone, I must leave you for a time. I must go and pick out one of the nice things that the planners have got ready for me. I hope there isn’t too much to choose from; I might get confused.”

“They got robot radios shaped like a person that dances with you while it plays music. They got man radios for ladies and lady radios for mans.”

“And when I have selected my postwar position, I shall come and get you, and together, we two, we shall thrive and prosper in the new, fulfilled America.

“Now, Lodestone, kiss me and bid me Godspeed, for I must hurry to the city and pick my postwar position while there are still some good ones left.”

She raised her countenance to mine, and as the bee feeds I probed her lips. Then there was the swelling of inchoate bliss, a mounting exaltation, a sweet frenzy, a taut yielding, a yielding tautness, a denied realization, a realized denial, an empty fullness, a filled void, a churning, yearning, turning burning. And all was still.

I rose gingerly and started away, not looking back until she was small in the distance. I waved my handkerchief. She waved a rabbit.

Then I was gone.

chapter three

There was no anxiety in my beating heart as I stood on the station platform waiting for the old Cannonball to take me to Minneapolis, but there was curiosity. I knew that whatever I found would be good, but I could not help wondering what I would find. What had the planners planned for me? What delights were in store for me? What visions, born of the finest minds of the land and perfected through the long years of the war, would I realize?

For postwar planning in these United States was no Johnny-come-lately. Our people had not waited for the last shot of the war to be fired before they began to plan for peace. No siree. Not our people. Why, some of our more foresighted industrialists had thought of peace even as they tooled for war. Yes siree. No peace was going to catch old Uncle Sam with his gaiters down. By gum.

I remember, for instance, a night in 1943, a few weeks after I had been inducted. My buddies and I were all sitting around the barracks. There was a war movie on at the post theater, so we were all sitting around the barracks. Someone turned on the radio and (this was 1943, mind you) we heard a round-table discussion of the National Association of Rich Millionaires. Their topic (in 1943 yet) was “Planning for the Postwar World.”

What a galaxy of tycoons was assembled before the microphone that night! There was Max Ballanfont (oil) and Max Pilfering (steel) and Max Clodde (textiles) and Max Hawing (railroads) and Max Onus (tools) and Max Nipthung (abrasives). Without ado they plunged into the problem at hand. “Gentlemen,” said the moderator, “our topic tonight is ‘Planning for the Postwar World.’ Who would like to open the discussion?”

HAWING (railroads): I would like to tell a little anecdote that I think illustrates very well the importance of planning. When my little son Money was five years old I said to him, “Money, you’re old enough to learn a few things now. I’m going to teach you the value of thrift and foresight. From now on you are going to receive a weekly allowance. You must plan your expenses according to your allowance, because if you run out of money before the end of the week, Mummy and Daddy won’t give you any more.”

Well, sir, at first it didn’t work out at all. Little Money would go out on Monday morning with all his allowance and buy every foolish thing he set his eyes on, and by Tuesday he was broke. He would come crying to me for more money, but I would say, “No, Money, no money. You’ll have to learn to plan your expenses. You’ll have to stop frittering away all your allowance on foolishness. Money, why don’t you pick something you really want, something big and lasting, and save up for that instead of buying all this nonsense?”

Well, sir, after that several weeks went by and Money didn’t ask me for a cent. I knew he was saving up for something. Finally he came home with a large package and unwrapped it and took out a fine hunting gun. “There, Money,” I said, “you see what comes of being thrifty and planning for the future? Wasn’t Daddy right?”

“All right, you sonofabitch,” said Money, “get your mitts in the air. Now tell me the combination of the wall safe.”

And through careful planning that little tyke made off with eight million dollars.

NIPTHUNG (abrasives): Your little story certainly does illustrate the value of planning, Mr. Hawing. You’re absolutely right. We must plan right now. How can we be sure the war is going to last until 1944? It may be over in six months; it may be over tomorrow. That’s why we must plan now.

MODERATOR: We are agreed, then, that the time to plan is now. Next let us take up the question of who is to do the planning. By latest count there are 435,804 government and private agencies planning for the postwar. Don’t you think that such a situation might result in chaos? Wouldn’t it be better to have one master plan?

BALLANFONT (oil): No! A master plan necessitates a master. That is totalitarianism. That is not the American way. I say you cannot take away the right of the people to plan. This nation was built on individual planning and private enterprise. American boys gave their lives at Bunker Hill and Shiloh and the Marne and Tarawa to preserve free capitalism. I say that this nation, under God and free private enterprise, shall never bow beneath a tyrant’s yoke. I say that if individual planning means chaos—and, mark you, I don’t believe it does—but if it does, I say, better chaotic democracy than efficient totalitarianism.

CLODDE (textiles): I would like to say that I agree one thousand per cent with what Mr. Ballanfont said and that Mrs. Clodde and I would be honored to have him and Mrs. Ballanfont to dinner next Friday evening if they don’t mind simple food.

BALLANFONT (oil): Indeed we don’t, Mr. Clodde, indeed we don’t. Simple food and homely virtues, we always say.

CLODDE (textiles): Mrs. Clodde and I always say, I’d rather be solvent than president.

PILFERING (steel): Mrs. Pilfering and I always say, it takes a heap o’ heapin’ to make a heap a heap.

MODERATOR: Mrs. Moderator and I always say, stuff a cold and starve a fever. But to get back to postwar planning, what do you gentlemen think about government regulation after the war?

HAWING (railroads): First of all, taxes that throttle initiative and stem the healthful flow of commerce must be reduced at once.

ALL (oil, steel, textiles, tools, and abrasives): Yes!

ONUS (tools): And there must be a high tariff to protect our infant industry.

NIPTHUNG (abrasives): All government regulation must cease the minute the war is over. In war we accepted government regulation cheerfully. Why, my associates and I were actually laughing and singing when the troops carried us out of our plant. But when this emergency is ended, then government regulation must cease without delay.

BALLANFONT (oil): Absolutely. Government regulation is the way to totalitarianism. It is not the American way. It is not the way that made this nation the mightiest on the face of the earth. The silent graves at Valley Forge and Chickamauga and Château-Thierry and Guadalcanal are monuments to the system of free private enterprise. Shall we desecrate those graves? Shall we profane those monuments? I say that if the end of government regulation means chaos—and mark you, I don’t believe it does—but if it does, I say, better chaotic democracy than efficient totalitarianism.

CLODDE (textiles): I agree two thousand per cent with what Mr. Ballanfont says and I would like to inform him that we will have a bottle of domestic wine with dinner next Friday evening.

PILFERING (steel): And I agree too. The first requisite of a prosperous postwar America is the immediate end of government regulation.

HAWING (railroads): My feelings exactly.

NIPTHUNG (abrasives): Me too.

MODERATOR: Fine. Then we are all agreed that the government should keep its hands off business. Now let us take up the question of labor.

NIPTHUNG (abrasives): The government has got to step in and regulate unions. We simply cannot have this intolerable labor situation. I speak as a lifelong friend of labor; why, at my plant the company police carry truncheons made of soft rubber. (There was an article about it in Fortune last month.) But I feel that the time has come when the government must put a stop to the abuses of labor. If unions would come to their senses, they would realize that they are only cutting their own throats by their present conduct. They are upsetting our whole economy and they will suffer for it. They are kindling a fire of public indignation that will someday destroy them. I hate to see it happen. If labor was wiser, it would ask for government regulation. As one who loves labor and wants to see it survive, I say that there must be government regulation of labor.

ONUS (tools): Me too, and I’m mad about labor.

CLODDE (textiles): And I, who long have felt a searing passion for labor.

HAWING (railroads): I agree, even as a father agrees to discipline a wayward son he loves.

PILFERING (steel): Yes, and I love labor more than Mrs. Pilfering.

BALLANFONT (oil): Me too, and I eat in the employees’ cafeteria.

MODERATOR: We are unanimous, then. Now, gentlemen, our time is getting short. Would you like to tell our listeners what plans your own companies have made for the postwar?

ONUS (tools): My company uses a lot of abrasives. In a small way we are already making our own abrasives, and we think that after the war we’ll expand our abrasive facilities and really go out and compete in the abrasive market.

NIPTHUNG (abrasives): Oh, is that so, you big fat octopus trust? Well, it may interest you to know that we are going to open a tool division, and if we can’t drive you out of business, you big blob of phlegm, my name ain’t Max Nipthung.

PILFERING (steel): We are planning to build our own railroad from the ore pits to our steel mills.

HAWING (railroads): Oh, are you? Well, let me tell you, you double-dealing bastard, that we happen to be planning to forge our own rails.

BALLANFONT (oil): Our chemists have discovered a way to make fabrics out of oil, and we’re going to add a side line of textiles.

CLODDE (textiles): Yeah? Well, if you and that bag you married show your ugly faces around my house on Friday night, I’ll bash your mealy mouths in. And my company is going to dig oil wells.

And the organist played “Rock of Ages” from the motion picture Going My Way and the forum was over.

chapter four

But this was no time to be woolgathering about the past. The future was before me, and coming down the track was the old Cannonball to take me to Minneapolis and the future.

How good it was to see the old Cannonball once more! Well did I remember the drama-fraught day when the Cannonball made its first run. It was a day such as Whistlestop has never experienced since. Nor, I’ll venture, has any other city.

The Natchez, Mobile, and Duluth Railroad had laid the tracks for the Cannonball from two directions—north from Minneapolis and south from Duluth. It was planned to join the northern and southern halves of the line at Whistlestop on July 4.

The construction of the line progressed without mishap.

On the morning of July 3 the northern and southern road gangs met in Whistlestop and laid the last link of track. Only one small thing remained: a short spur line to a siding at the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation. The road gangs fell to with a will, and by midafternoon the spur was laid and the route of the Cannonball was complete. A jubilant telegram was sent to the Minneapolis office of the Natchez, Mobile, and Duluth Railroad serving notice that Whistlestop awaited the Cannonball.

On the morning of July 4 the Cannonball left Minneapolis on its maiden run. Aboard were officials of the railroad. The train was scheduled to arrive at Whistlestop at noon, and there it would stop for a brief ceremony. A symbolic golden spike would be driven, there would be speeches, and the Cannonball would proceed to Duluth.

Mayor La Hernia of Whistlestop was chosen to drive the golden spike. By eleven o’clock on the morning of July 4 everybody in Whistlestop—men and women, young and old—was assembled by the tracks. Mayor La Hernia, splendidly clad in top hat, cutaway, and striped trousers, stood over the golden spike holding a sledge hammer. At eleven-thirty a telegram was received saying that the Cannonball had just passed Dividend, the town before Whistlestop, and would arrive within twenty minutes. The crowd drew closer to Mayor La Hernia and he raised the sledge hammer over the spike.

Then began as strange a drama as has ever been witnessed in Whistlestop and probably all of northwestern United States. As Mayor La Hernia stood poised over the golden spike, out of the crowd came a man named Yussuf Swannekamp. He walked over to Mayor La Hernia’s side.

Mayor La Hernia raised the sledge hammer. “Get away, Swannekamp,” he cried, “or I’ll bash in your head with this here sledge hammer.”

It would be useful to explain here the antipathy between Mayor La Hernia and Yussuf Swannekamp.

It all started during the municipal election two years earlier. Swannekamp had been mayor of Whistlestop for three consecutive terms. When he announced his intention of seeking a fourth term, La Hernia threw his hat into the ring. “Swannekamp,” said La Hernia, “has been in office too long. He has grown old, tired, and quarrelsome. It’s time for a change.”

To which Swannekamp replied, “This is no time to turn over the helm of the ship of city to untried, inexperienced hands. In an emergency like this, when the sidewalk between Twelfth and Thirteenth on Walnut Street is in a deplorable condition, it is wise to stick to tried and tested government. Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.”

And so it went, charge and countercharge, accusation and denial, recrimination and rebuttal. It was the liveliest campaign that Whistlestop had experienced in years. Everybody in town was outspoken in favor of one candidate or another; a one-hundred-per-cent turnout was assured at the polls.

On the day before election Swannekamp took an informal but accurate survey of the voters. He found a dead heat—fifty-three for him and fifty-three for La Hernia. Swannekamp knew that the official balloting the next day would show the same results, for at this late hour he could expect nobody to change his vote. If only there were another voter in town, thought Swannekamp.

Then he remembered. On the edge of town lived a recluse, a deranged tree worshiper named Kilmer Boles. Boles seldom ventured into town, took no interest in civic affairs, and had no friends. He lived alone in a small house surrounded by trees, among which each evening he performed his rituals.

Swannekamp determined to win Boles’s vote. He went to the library and spent several hours reading about tree worshipers in the encyclopedia. He learned about the evening ritual of worshiping trees. It was a high Mass, during which a scroll, kept buried at the foot of an oak tree all day, was unearthed and a prayer inscribed on the scroll was chanted in a peculiar four-note singsong.

Swannekamp left the library triumphantly, stopped for a sandwich at the U-Choos-It café, and then went out to Kilmer Boles’s house.

Boles answered his knock suspiciously. “I’m Yussuf Swannekamp,” he said, smiling, “mayor of Whistlestop and candidate for re-election.”

“I don’t vote,” snarled Boles.

“Suit yourself about that, Mr. Boles,” smiled Swannekamp. “That isn’t what I wanted to see you about.”

“What, then?” asked Boles.

“Well,” said Swannekamp, “I don’t tell this to many people, because they wouldn’t understand, but I’m a tree worshiper. I came out here thinking maybe we could say a Mass together.”

“Well, well, well,” said Boles happily. “Fancy that. I thought I was the only one in town who had been awakened to the true cause. You have no idea how happy I am to have found you.”

“Us tree worshipers got to stick together,” said Swannekamp.

“Yes indeed,” Boles agreed. “Well, Mr. Swannekamp, you’d better say your Mass in a hurry. The sun will be down before long.”

“Won’t you join me?” asked Swannekamp.

“No, I’ve already said my Mass. You know that if you say two Masses in one night you get the blight.”

“Of course,” said Swannekamp.

“But I’ll come along and watch you,” said Boles, taking his arm.

They walked out into the copse friendlily. Swannekamp spied an oak with freshly dug earth at its roots. He wisely surmised that the prayer scroll was buried there. He dug it up and unrolled it. Then his face grew dark with consternation.

For Swannekamp had been outwitted. He had dropped a few indiscreet words about his plan at the U-Choos-It while he was having a sandwich before going out to Boles’s house. A La Hernia supporter had overheard him and quickly informed La Hernia. La Hernia had jumped on his motorcycle and rushed to Boles’s house. He had found the prayer scroll buried beneath the oak and defaced it until every word was illegible. Then he had silently stolen away.

Now Swannekamp stood looking with dismay at the scroll. The sweat poured from his brow as he tried to make out the words. He coughed and cleared his throat time after time as he strove to read the defaced scroll in the fading light of day.

Boles stood by, growing more and more impatient. His anger mounted steadily while Swannekamp turned the scroll this way and that, smiling wanly at Boles the while. At length Boles could bear it no longer.

“Get out of here!” he screamed. “I’m going to vote for La Hernia. No man gets my vote who doesn’t know his Mass from a scroll in the ground.”

And Swannekamp lost the election by one vote.

He never forgave La Hernia for that. On every possible occasion he attacked him, both verbally and physically. That is why when Swannekamp came up to him at the ceremony opening the route of the Cannonball, La Hernia raised his sledge hammer and cried, “Get away, Swannekamp, or I’ll bash in your head with this here sledge hammer.”

Swannekamp raised an arm in protest. “Your honor,” he said soothingly, “I can understand why you should be suspicious of me. Heaven knows I’ve given you plenty of reason. I’ve been a bad loser and a bad sport, and if you never talk to me again I can’t blame you.”

“What do you want?” asked La Hernia, his suspicions by no means allayed.

“To shake hands. Today is the greatest day in the history of Whistlestop. Today the Cannonball goes through and the eyes of the whole nation are upon us. On a day like this I think all citizens of Whistlestop should forget their petty hates and all be friends. Your honor, I’d be proud if you forgave me and shook my hand.”

La Hernia examined him closely. Convinced at last, he put down the sledge hammer and grasped Swannekamp’s hand. A cheer rose from the crowd, and there were few dry eyes among them.

Suddenly there was a rumbling far away and a cloud of smoke appeared on the horizon. “The Cannonball!” shouted everyone, and jumped up and down with unconfined excitement.

Mayor La Hernia raised the sledge hammer over the spike. “Your honor,” said Swannekamp, “I don’t care who hears me say this. I’m glad you won the election. On this, Whistlestop’s great day, a great leader is required. You are that leader.”

“Thanks, Yussuf,” said Mayor La Hernia simply.

The Cannonball grew larger in the distance.

“I know you’re going to drive in that spike nice and clean and make us all proud of you,” said Swannekamp.

Mayor La Hernia blushed and shuffled his feet.

The Cannonball drew closer.

“I’ll tell you something, your honor,” said Swannekamp. “It’s important to have a good stance when you’re swinging a sledge. I used to work in a quarry and I know.”

“How’s this?” inquired La Hernia, taking a stance.

“Well, your honor,” Swannekamp answered, “it could be better if you put your left leg over there.”

Mayor La Hernia was standing at the point where the spur line to the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation branched off from the main line. He put his foot where Swannekamp had indicated—in the switch between the main track and the spur.

“Here?” asked La Hernia.

The Cannonball was a hundred yards away.

“Yes,” cried Swannekamp wildly, and threw the switch, trapping La Hernia’s foot between the rails.

“Murderer!” screamed La Hernia. “Help! Help!”

The Cannonball was fifty yards away, and Swannekamp fled into the woods. The crowd stood petrified.

And inside the locomotive of the Cannonball, as though there were not enough drama on the tracks, another struggle of elemental passion was being enacted. It seems that the fireman and the engineer had long been good friends. They were wont to go about together drinking and carousing during their off-duty hours. On the night before the Cannonball’s maiden voyage they had been at a Minneapolis night club called The Sty. Here they had met a beauteous orthopedic nurse named Hygiene Bandaid. Both had been smitten with her. At first they engaged in a friendly rivalry for her favors. As is so often the case, the rivalry soon changed from friendly to serious. The next morning, when they took the Cannonball out of Minneapolis, they were scarcely speaking to each other. On the way to Whistlestop a trivial occurrence sparked their enmity into full flame. The fireman picked up a lump of coal and hurled it at the engineer. The engineer, neglecting his open throttle, turned and threw a lump of coal at the fireman. The fireman threw another at the engineer. The engineer threw another at the fireman. For thirty miles before Whistlestop they stood and threw coal at one another.

And now, as hapless Mayor La Hernia screamed imprisoned on the tracks, inside the locomotive the engineer and fireman pelted each other with bituminous, and the Cannonball, untended, roared full speed ahead.…

chapter five

But this was no time to be woolgathering about the past. The future was before me, and the conductor of the Cannonball was calling, “All aboard!” I boarded the train and chugged away to Minneapolis and the future.

chapter six

In its day the Cannonball was the fastest train in Minnesota, but time and wear had left their marks. Now it took the Cannonball eleven hours to travel the 178 miles between Minneapolis and Whistlestop. Now the Cannonball was probably the only train in the United States that had mice.

To pass the long hours of the journey I played a favorite game of mine. I studied my fellow passengers, trying to divine from their appearances what kind of people they were. (In Minnesota this is a very popular pastime, and one often finds whole trainloads of people just sitting and staring at each other.)

First I examined a portly, clean-shaven, conservatively dressed gentleman in the seat across from mine. Everything about him bespoke wealth, culture, breeding. Obviously he was a man of high estate—a banker, an executive of a corporation, perhaps a lecturer. Yes, I decided, a lecturer.

Next I turned to a woman sitting behind me. I got up on my knees and peered at her over the back of my seat. She looked about thirty—large-boned, bespectacled, and stringy. A bandanna handkerchief covered most of her coarse blond hair. She was wearing blue denim slacks and blouse. Her sleeves were rolled up, displaying rippling biceps, one of them tattooed with an anchor. She was chewing tobacco.

“I’ll bet you’re a stevedore,” I said.

“Guess again, dearie,” she grinned. “I’m a sand hog. I had a job in the sewers up in Duluth after the war ended and they closed the Acme Aircraft plant. But I quit. I’m going home to Minneapolis now. Why don’t you come sit by me? I won’t hurt you.”

“A pleasure, madam,” I said, and joined her.

“Cut plug?” she offered.

“No, thanks. How about having one of my cigarettes?”

“No, thanks. Got out of the habit, during the war. I had to. There wasn’t a cigarette to be found in all Duluth. Did you have trouble getting cigarettes during the war?”

“No,” I said, “there were plenty of cigarettes out there in the Pacific where I was. But there were plenty of other things that we didn’t have. Why, weeks would go by when we didn’t see a—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, Mac,” she interrupted. “I understand.” She took my hand. “You’re home now, safe among your own people.”

I tightened my grasp on hers. “Miss,” I said, “I know I speak for every veteran when I say thanks to you on the Home Front. Thanks to you who forged the tools of victory and kept the home fires burning. Thanks for the better world we came home to.”

“My name is Nebbice,” she said. “Nebbice Upcharles.”

“Asa Hearthrug,” I answered. “I haven’t had time to have cards printed yet.”

We laughed at my little mot.

“Well, Asa, we did our bit. As for me, though I am a mere woman, a little frilly thing, when the call went out for workers at Acme Aircraft, I responded.”

“Good girl,” said I, stroking her muzzle.

“I don’t complain, you understand, but it was far from easy working at Acme. I was busy every minute honing gaskets, shearing sprockets, grinding grommets, turning sumps, brazing couplings, coupling brazes, boring bearings, beveling bushings, reaming elbows, buffing shims, tamping ducts, threading cams, sanding scuppers, grit-blasting nipples, Babbitting shackles, and occasionally extricating a midget who had been riveted into a wing section.

“And the only rest we had from this routine was once a week when the man would come and give us the Army-Navy ‘E’ and we would go outside and sing the ‘Acme Aircraft Rouser’:

“Acme! Acme!

Back me! Back me!

I’ll always do my work

And never, never shirk.

If I become a jerk,

Sack me,

Acme,”

sang Nebbice in a well-tempered baritone.

I brushed aside a tear.

“Not to brag,” said Nebbice, “but I wrote that song myself. The company gave me a Stillson wrench with a handle of lapis lazuli.”

“You deserved a wrench for that one,” I said feelingly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied modest Nebbice. “Poetry just comes easy to some people, I guess. Even as a child—although that wasn’t so long ago,” she put in, giggling, “I could write poems. In grade school, for instance, I wrote the graduation class poem for commencement exercises:

“How do I feel on Commencement Day?

Query this question and I will say,

Nothing on earth doth me dismay.

“Is not high school with terror fraught?

Inquire this interrogation for aught.

I’m armed with the things that I’ve been taught.

“Aren’t you afraid to go out in the world?

Ask this scrutiny. My flag’s unfurled.

The rod’s been spared, but the child’s not sperled.”

“Tell me something about yourself,” I said. “It is easy to see that you weren’t brought up to be a sand hog.”

“No,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I was a schoolteacher once. But it’s such a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“More than anything in the world,” I answered.

“Sweet,” she said, giving my hand a little squeeze that caused my knuckles to jump one on top of the other. And as the Cannonball chugged through Blue Earth, Big Arm, Bivalve, Cheesequake, Calcium, Decorum, Deaf Smith, Embarrass, Electric Mills, Federal, Hardware, Looking Glass, Meat Camp, Plum, Quick, Reform, Sleepy Eye, Truce, What Cheer, and Zigzag (in Minnesota cities are arranged alphabetically) she told me the story of her life.

Nebbice was a victim of environment. Though her soul was free and her spirit as a bird’s, she was forced by her petit-bourgeois family into a pattern of painful normalcy. Her parents were classically middle class—they lived in a six-room house in which five separate eras of furnishing vied for prevalence; had an iron deer on the lawn; slept in pajama tops only or bottoms only or sometimes both; did not undress in the same room, the husband going into the bathroom but leaving the door a few inches ajar and the medicine-chest mirror angled toward the opening; owned a two-door Chevrolet sedan with seat covers on the seat covers; had a highboy radio that got two stations, one clear, one faint, on every space-band; carried low-premium insurance policies on which the fine print, if they had read it, specified that no benefits could be collected unless the insured were killed in Outer Mongolia while riding in a rickshaw drawn by a coolie suffering from enuresis on even-numbered days of the month; read one book a month chosen for them by four strangers, and never took the jacket off the book.

From babyhood Nebbice’s life conformed to the norm. Her mother was much influenced by the then popular book on child care, The Wee Folk, by the noted lady pediatrician, Dr. Ova Barren. “Routine,” wrote Dr. Barren, “often so odious to we grownups, is the very key to the happiness of infants. The infant must have a prescribed time to eat, to sleep, to play, to evacuate. You must never, never, never change the schedule of these activities. If, for instance, the infant wants to sleep and you force him to eat, if he wants to play and you force him to evacuate, it will only cause confusion in his little mind, confusion that leads to terror and eventual mental breakdown, and just as sure as you are sitting there, he will end up a public charge, begging alms in the courthouse square.”

Saved from mendicancy in front of the courthouse, Nebbice passed a stolid childhood and studied with minor distinction at Webster Grade School, where she delivered the previously noted poem at graduation. In high school she made creditable grades, played the second lead in The Rivals, was appointed a monitor in the lunchroom, and would have been elected treasurer of the senior class had not the girl running against her captured the male vote by blossoming noticeably into puberty on the day before election. (Nebbice’s own puberty occurred suddenly a few months later at a school police picnic.)

When Nebbice was graduated from high school her parents sent her to a teachers’ college in St. Cloud for two years, after which she secured a teaching position at a rural school in northern Minnesota. She taught for a year and then said the hell with it, sixty-five dollars a month wasn’t enough for fending off pimple-faced louts all week long and then submitting to a pelvic examination by the school board physician on Saturday.

She went home to Minneapolis and after a search found a job as a file clerk. Here, too, she was unhappy, mainly because of a maxim-minded office manager who hung placards all over the office proclaiming: THE GIRL WORTH WHILE IS THE GIRL WHO CAN FILE and EARLY TO BED AND EARLY TO RISE OR YOU’LL GET REPORTED BY COMPANY SPIES. When war came and the Acme Aircraft plant in Duluth called for workers, Nebbice accepted readily.

Working in Duluth, away from the inhibiting influences of her family, freed of the restrictions of teaching, liberated from the etiquette of offices, long-dormant forces in Nebbice exploded. She became a hellion. The night didn’t pass when Nebbice wasn’t out roaring with some of her fun-loving cronies. Sometimes the girls would go to a bowling alley, bowl a few lines and slop up some beer, and then go down the street kicking over hydrants. Other times they would go to a night club and dance with each other until four in the morning and then go out and steal milk bottles. Sometimes they went to a movie and poured popcorn over the balcony.

“But,” said Nebbice, “it began to pall. Fun’s fun, but there are other things in life.”

“Indeed there are,” I agreed.

“Men,” said Nebbice, and seized my arm in a wristlock. “Mac, do you know what it is to spend three years praying, hoping, panting, pining, aching for a man?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“Thinking of men. Dreaming of men. Men, men, men. And not a man to be had. Not even a nut Hershey. In three years, Mac, I had one date, and that was with a maniac named Kilmer Boles. We spent the whole night in hollow oak trees—each in a separate oak, yet.

“I finally decided that when the war was over I was going to get myself the first man I ran across I don’t care what it is,” she cried, bounding into my lap.

“Well, you’ve certainly had an interesting life,” I said. “Are you the only child in your family?”

“No, I’ve got a brother named Alaric. As a matter of fact, I’m going to live with him when I get to Minneapolis. He’s a rebel too. He had more sense than I did; he ran away from home when he was ten. He’s been all over the country, done millions of things. Alaric’s always had big plans. He’s got a head on him, that boy. He’ll be a rich man someday. You’ll like Alaric.”

“I’m sure of it,” I said. “Planners are what made America what it is today. How fundamentally American it is to plan! Even in the midst of the late horrible struggle there were those at home who calmly, quietly, planned the future—the future that is now the present. And I am on my way to Minneapolis to realize my share of the bright, new present.”

“Go no further, Mac,” she said. “Alaric will take good care of you. Your search is ended. Destiny brought you to Alaric—and me.”

We were pulling into Minneapolis.

Nebbice gathered up her luggage and mine, put it under one arm, and took my hand. “Come,” she said, “dear veteran.”

As we walked hand in hand down the aisle, I brushed against the portly, well-shaven, conservatively dressed gentleman (the lecturer).

“Excuse me, sir,” I said.

“That’s all right, Mac,” he answered. “Say, could youse use some neckties? Brilliantine? Razor blades? Dr. Dehorn’s Elixir for Men Past Twenty?”

chapter seven

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” said Nebbice as we entered her apartment above Peetwig Brothers’ Hardware Store, the World’s Largest Seller of Ax Handles on One Floor. She dropped our suitcases and turned on the light bulb that hung on a cord from the ceiling. “Alaric picked these things up at an unclaimed freight auction,” she said, pointing out a wicker love seat, two chromium-and-leather bar stools, a baize-covered baccarat table, a Regulator wall clock with a long brass pendulum, a knee-high china shepherdess, and a gross of harmonicas.

“Don’t fret,” I said. “You’ll soon have postwar furniture.”

“I could be happy with any kind of furniture,” said Nebbice, “and a man.”

She drew me down to the love seat and climbed into my lap.

“You know,” I said, “I haven’t been to Minneapolis since I was at the University of Minnesota before the war.”

“I suppose,” she said, “that I could have had a man during the war if I had wanted to throw myself at somebody. But I got pride.”

“We certainly have a fine university in this state,” I said. “Why, did you know that some of the greatest work on butterfat enzymes was done right here at our university?”

“I believe that a man thinks more of a woman who is demure, retiring, circumspect—in short, feminine.”

“Yes sir. There was a stirring account of it in the Spring 1940 issue of the Curd and Butterfat Quarterly under the title ‘Aye, Tear Her Tattered Enzymes Down.’”

“And you see,” Nebbice said, “I was right. I waited. I suffered. I followed my conscience. And today I have a man.”

She slipped off her spectacles and held my face immobile between her hands. Her lips descended on mine, clung, pressed. I felt the wicker behind my head give and then splinter. (That’s the way it is with wicker. It’s O.K. for ordinary use, but give it a little rough treatment and it’ll go bad on you every time.)

The door opened and a man walked in. “Nobody can play fast and loose with my sister without he marries her,” he said, pointing a finger smudged with pool-hall chalk.

“Nix, Alaric,” said Nebbice, releasing me. “It’s not necessary. I got this one.”

“Yeah? You thought you had that divinity student back in 1938 too.”

“Was it my fault?” she protested. “I took him to the beach for the first time and he ran off with a girl he said he saw walking on water. I tried my best to explain, but the damn fool couldn’t get it through his head about surfboards.”

“Well, I think you ought to let me handle this one. Somehow they all get away on you.”

“Quit worrying, Alaric. I tell you this one is in the bag. He’s got a head like a potato.”

She turned to me. “Dear, I’d like you to meet my brother Alaric. Alaric, this is Asa Hearthrug.”

“Charmed,” I said simply.

“Nebbice,” said Alaric, “let me handle it.”

“Now, don’t worry, Alaric. The romance end is all sewed up. But there’ll be plenty for you too. Asa is interested in a postwar opportunity.”

“Indeed I am,” I said. “I have come to Minneapolis to fill my niche in the new civilization.”

“Let us sit down,” said Alaric. He hoisted up his black pinstriped trousers neatly and climbed up on a bar stool. He loosened the collar of his black shirt and pulled down his yellow necktie. “Now then,” he said. “The gentleman has some money to invest?”

“Well, not exactly,” I replied. “I have come to Minneapolis to claim my position in the postwar world. I have come to choose what was made ready for me by those who stayed at home and planned and builded.”

“And you have no money?” said Alaric.

“Well, some,” I admitted. “My mustering-out pay, a couple of thousand I saved during the war, some bonds.”

“Well, then,” said Alaric briskly, “let’s get down to cases. What type business were you planning to invest in?”

“Invest? To tell the truth,” I said, “I wasn’t thinking of investing in anything. I was thinking more of a job.”

“Do you mean,” asked Alaric, aghast, “that you went through the mud and hell of the war and then you intend to come back home and work for somebody, to let somebody boss you around?”

“It certainly was mud and hell,” I agreed. “I remember a night on Okinawa when—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, poopee,” said Nebbice.

“Brother, that isn’t what I was fighting for,” said Alaric. “No more of them damn jobs for me. I’m going into business for myself.”

“Where did you fight?” I asked.

“I was a guide in the Pentagon,” he said.

“Oh. And you think all jobs are bad?”

“Every damn one of them,” said Alaric. “And I’m speaking from experience. I’m a connoisseur of jobs. I never was one to take just any old job. Even before the war I was choosy. I took only those jobs that I thought would interest me—none of that factory or grocery-store stuff. And still I never found a job I wanted to keep.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“What did he not?” said Nebbice.

“To name a few,” Alaric began, “I’ve shilled for a traveling evangelist, been a news butcher on a scenic railway, laced corsets for a Wagnerian soprano, chased kids off a skylight at an art school, served as an amicus curiae in sodomy cases, been a spear bearer’s voice in a marionette show, inserted drawstrings at a pajama works, been a donor at an artificial-insemination clinic—Do you want to hear some more?”

“No,” I said. “Obviously you know what you are talking about when you talk about jobs. But what have you got in mind now?”

“I’m thinking of a small business that could be handled by a couple of intelligent, farsighted men. Us, for example. There are thousands of new ideas for small businesses. Do you remember the contest the Reader’s Digest conducted during the war? Some wonderful ideas were entered. Einar Nidrick of Sacred Mind, Kentucky, sent in a plan to make hatracks out of old banana stalks. The beauty part of it was that the hatrack withered in a few weeks and you had to buy another one. Secundus Pillory of Sod, West Virginia, suggested selling peppermint-flavored pebbles to people who wanted to be cured of stuttering. Noah Finster of Opportunity, Washington, had an idea for a mobile urinalysis booth in communities where there was a high incidence of diabetes, and Max Salvarsan of Bee Log, North Carolina, suggested using peach fuzz to resurface bank blotters.”

“American ingenuity,” I said simply.

“My idea for a postwar business,” continued Alaric, “goes further than these. I want to go into business with a new kind of product. My business will be with one of the brand-new commodities that science has developed. People are looking for new things. This is a new world.”

“Oh, I know! I know!” I cried. “A time of new horizons, new frontiers, of great social strides and the end of human misery, of the fulfillment of the universe’s dream.”

“What better time to get married,” said Nebbice, “to a fine, strapping woman?”

“All I need,” said Alaric, “is just a little capital, and then watch my smoke. Some intelligent, farsighted young man who financed me now would live in ease for the rest of his life.”

“Alaric,” I said, “I’ve only just met you tonight, and etiquette forbids that which I am about to say. But, after all, we are both, in a sense, veterans. You in the Pentagon, I in the Pacific. We have, after all, a kind of kinship.”

“Soon to be a legal one,” said Nebbice, and took my hand.

“Let the man talk,” said Alaric.

“Bluntly, Alaric, I want to ask you to let me invest in your plan. There. It’s said. If I have offended you I can only ask your pardon and leave as gracefully as I can.”

Alaric leaped up and locked the door. “Well, Asa,” he said, “this is kind of sudden. You understand that I don’t know you from Adam. Still, I’m a judge of character and I’d say you had an honest face.”

“He’s cute,” said Nebbice.

“Pshaw,” I mumbled, and reddened with confusion.

Alaric looked at me for a long moment. “Asa, I’m going to do it.” He extended his hand.

“My partner!” I cried, grasping his hand.

“My partner’s sister!” I cried, and grasped Nebbice’s hand.

“How much were you planning to invest?” asked Alaric.

I pulled out a silk purse Mother had made me out of a sow’s ear and counted my money. “There’s five hundred dollars here, but I’ll need some for room and board.”

“Indeed you won’t,” said Nebbice firmly. “You’re staying right here.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.”

“Nonsense. We’re partners now.”

And if my eyes were moist then, who can blame me?

chapter eight

“Have you ever played before?” asked Alaric.

“A little,” I said. “We used to have a table at the Y.M.C.A. and I played once in a while. They made me stop when I ripped the felt off.”

“I see. You understand the game, then? Each ball has a number, and when you knock it into the pocket, it counts as part of your score.”

“Oh, sure. I know that. And when the cue ball goes into the pocket, you call that an itch.”

“Yes,” said Alaric, “an itch. You know, of course, that it’s customary to place a little side bet on the game. Just to make it sporting.”

“How gay! How much shall we play for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Let’s keep it friendly. Say five dollars,” Alaric suggested.

“All right. That’s a nice friendly sum.”

We laughed.

“Who shoots first?” I asked.

“You usually decide by comparing cues. The man with the longest cue shoots first.”

“How ingenious. Let’s do that.”

“Well, I guess I’m the longest,” said Alaric.

“Yup, looks like it—Oops, wait a minute. You’ve got your cue standing on top of your toe. How silly of you.”

“I wonder how that happened? Well, you go first.”

“All right. Here I go. Whee! Look at all those balls fall in the pockets. There’s the nine, the fifteen, the three, the eleven—”

“You itched,” said Alaric.

“But you picked up the cue ball, Alaric.”

“It was going to itch.”

“It was? I thought it stopped in the middle of the table.”

“No, it was going to itch. You had a lot of English on it. It was rolling right for the pocket.”

“English, eh?”

“Yeah. I’ve never seen so much English. Are you sure you never played anywhere but the Y.M.C.A.?”

“Honest,” I chuckled. “I guess it just comes easy to me. Well, you shoot now.”

“Tomorrow,” said Alaric, shooting, “we’re going out and knock ’em dead. This postwar world is going to be our oyster.”

“I’m so glad I met you, Alaric, if a man may speak.”

“My feelings exactly, Asa. I’m lucky I ran into such an intelligent man. The market is ripe for a couple of guys like us. There goes the one ball.”

“Didn’t you hit the six ball first?”

“No,” said Alaric.

“English, eh?”

“Yeah, English. You know, we’re not going into this thing half cocked. I made a thorough survey of the consumer situation before I laid my plans.”

“Gee.”

“Yes sir. I got a report from the Bureau of Real Smart Economists that would knock your eye out. Here are the actual figures they got from a poll of the American public taken during the war: each family would spend an average of $7,800 for a helicopter, $9,000 for a new home, $768 for household appliances, $3,100 for property improvements, and $4,600 for river and harbor drainage. There go the eleven and twelve balls.”

“That English is amazing. How come they call it English?” I asked.

“It’s named after the Englishman who invented it, Guy Chickingcrut. Later, Sir Guy Chickingcrut, as the result of a witticism uttered at a London flower show, according to an account in the British tabloid, Carter’s Little Liverpool. Chickingcrut, the newspaper reported, was at the flower show and saw a bosomy young woman in a low-cut gown bend over to smell a pot of roses. ‘Lucky for her they’re not snapdragons,’ he remarked. Fun-loving Edward the Seven happened to be passing by at that moment and knighted him on the spot.”

“Oh. The six and nine balls just fell in too,” I said.

“So they did. And here’s another figure that will give you something to think about: In 1900 four per cent of the population was sixty-five or older. In 1970 twelve per cent of the population will be sixty-five or older. On the other hand, in 1900 forty-four per cent of the population was twenty or younger, but in 1940 only twenty-seven per cent of the population was twenty or younger.”

“That sure is interesting. But what’s that got to do with postwar business?”

“It’s something to think about, isn’t it?”

“Oh, indeed it is,” I replied. “Indeed it is.”

“What do you know, there go four more balls.”

“Simpler pushing them in with your hand, isn’t it?” I said.

“So you see, Asa, everything is all set. The whole country is ready to buy things, new things, new scientific miracles. Science is ready to provide new things. And we are ready to sell. Perfect.”

“Exciting.”

“Whole new worlds are open to us, Asa. Products that people never dreamed of. Plastics. Electronics. Atomics. Supersonics. New alloys. New uses of energy. New transformations of matter. There goes the fifteen ball. That’s all I need. I win.”

“It sounds wonderful, Alaric. What are we going to sell?”

“Cooky cutters,” said Alaric.

chapter nine

“Is it any wonder they’re called Little Dandy?” asked Alaric.

I examined the box of cooky cutters. There were six in the box, all made of the new miracle material, Moron, the only plastic containing Vitamin A. One of the cooky cutters was shaped like a B-32, one like a penicillin flask, one like an atomic bomb, one like the Hayden planetarium, one like a radar antenna, and one like a relief tube.

“They sure are little dandies,” I said.

“What housewife is going to stick with hearts, clubs, and diamonds when we show her the cooky cutter of the future? The Little Dandy makes all other cooky cutters obsolete.”

“Progress,” I murmured.

“Do you know your sales talk, Asa? Are you ready to start?”

“Lead on,” I cried, my merry blue eyes twinkling.

“All right. You take this side of the street and I’ll take the other. Let’s go.”

I extended my hand and he clasped it silently. Then I walked up to the first door and pressed the bell. A sweet-faced, white-haired little lady answered. She was wearing a freshly starched printed cotton house dress and had an apron tied neatly around her waist.

“Hello, young man,” she said with a motherly smile. “Won’t you come in?”

“Thank you,” I said. I followed her into the sunny living room and laid my sample case on a chintz-covered sofa. “Madam,” I said, “I am the Postwar Man. I bring you your future today.”

“Land’s sakes,” she said.

“Yes. I have here the fruit of the labors of the finest scientific minds in the country, the result of year on year of painstaking research, the answer to humanity’s cry for better living—the Little Dandy cooky cutter.”

“Well, bless my soul. Sit down, young man, won’t you? Can I get you a glass of milk and some cookies? They’re homemade.”

“Oh, don’t bother—”

“No bother at all,” she said, and before I could protest she was back from the kitchen with a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. “If you’d rather wait a little while, there’s a green-apple pie baking in the oven.”

“Oh no, thank you, this is fine.”

“I’ll bet you’re a veteran,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. Three years in the Pacific. I went through the battle of—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, son. Eat your cookies. My boy was a soldier too. He came home last week, but he left immediately for Brooklyn. He said he wouldn’t be back until fall. He said he’d been fighting for the right to boo the Dodgers.”

“These sure are good cookies,” I said, “even if their shape is obsolete. Why, next to cookies cut with a Little Dandy cooky cutter, these would look like a Stanley Steamer next to this year’s Ford.”

“Yes, son, I guess I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned.”

“Madam, there is no need for you to be. With the Little Dandy you could be baking the cooky of the future right now. Here, let me show you.” I opened a box of Little Dandies and gave it to her.

She looked them over carefully. She examined them inside and out, ran her finger tips over every inch of the surface, tugged and yanked at them, held them up to the light, sniffed them. Then, shaking her head, she returned the box to me.

“I’m sorry, young man,” she said. “I’m afraid these won’t do. They’re spot-welded at the seams, their tensile strength is not more than .005, the tolerance on the ratchets is off at least three millimeters, the tongue and groove joints have too much play, the aneroids don’t compensate automatically, and the threads on the expander rings are stripped.

“Here, son, put some cookies in your pocket before you go. And when you call on your next customer, make sure first that she didn’t spend the war working in a machine shop.”

Undaunted, I tried next door. A dripping matron wrapped in a bath towel answered the bell. “Did you work in a machine shop during the war?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s all,” I said, and went to the next house. I got this one out of the tub too.

“Did you work in a machine shop during the war?” I asked.

“No. What do you want?”

“Ah, good. I am the Postwar Man. I bring you your future today. I have here the fruit of the labors of the finest scientific minds in the country, the result of year on year of—”

Her eyes, which had been staring at me with dull hostility, suddenly lit up. A smile transformed her face. “Are you,” she asked, “a salesman?”

“You might call me that,” I admitted.

“Am I glad to see you!” she cried. “Listen. I hate salesmen. Before the war so many salesmen used to ring this doorbell that sometimes months went by when I didn’t get a chance to finish a bath. I got to despise salesmen. The very sight of a salesman used to throw me into a frenzy. Finally, in desperation, I got a Salesman’s Bane door mat.”

“A Salesman’s Bane door mat?”

“Yes. You’re standing on it right now. I’ve never had a chance to try it out. I no sooner bought it when war came and all the salesmen either went into the Army or went to work in war plants. All through the war not a single salesman rang my bell. You’re the first salesman I’ve seen since 1941. Now at last I’m going to get to try the door mat. Will you stand still, please? I’ll go in and push the button.”

“Certainly,” I said.

She went inside. An instant later I felt the door mat thrust violently upward and backward. I went flying end over end across the porch, crashed through the trellis, caromed off a box elder, slid across a gravel path, and stopped in some brambles.

She came out smiling. “Works fine, doesn’t it? I was afraid it might have gotten rusty or something from lack of use. Do you think it needs oil?”

“Perhaps a drop,” I suggested.

“I’ll have my husband take care of it as soon as he gets home. Thank you very much.”

“Not at all,” I said, and limped off to the next house.

Here a man answered the door. “Is the lady of the house in?” I inquired.

“I’m a bachelor,” he said.

“Oh. Do any baking?”

“Some.”

“Cookies?”

“That’s what I do best.”

“Fine. I am the Postwar Man. I bring you your future today. I have here the fruit of the labors of the finest scientific minds in the country, the result of year on year of painstaking research, the answer to humanity’s cry for better living—the Little Dandy cooky cutter. Next to the Little Dandy cooky cutter your old cooky cutter would look like a Stanley Steamer next to this year’s Ford. There’s—”

“Funny you should mention this year’s Ford,” he interrupted. “My business is selling this year’s Fords.”

“Quite a coincidence. Well, as I was saying—”

“I imagine a car would be a big help to a man in your line of business,” he continued. “You must cover a lot of territory.”

“Well, yes. But to get back to the Little—”

“There are three things a man who uses a car as much as you do should look for: mileage, durability, and comfort. The mileage and durability features of the Ford are so well known that I won’t insult your intelligence by commenting on them.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“As for comfort, I need only say that the birth rate among Ford owners is nearly two and a half times that of the general population.”

“Another feature of the Little Dandy,” I said, “is—”

“Triscuit is my name. Mishak Triscuit.”

“Hearthrug,” I said, taking his hand.

“Well, Mr. Hearthrug, you caught me at the right time. I just happen to have a brand-new Ford sitting out in the garage. Come along.”

I followed him around the house to the garage, where a new Ford was parked. “There she is,” he said proudly. “The new postwar Ford, combining all the features that our engineers developed in the war years, years in which science made its greatest advances.”

“Sure looks like the 1942 model, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Notice the streamlining,” he said. “And look at these features—sealed-beam headlights, chromium radiator grille and hubcaps, two taillights in the back, shatterproof glass in all windows.”

“It seems to me the 1942 model had all these things,” I said.

“Let’s take a look at the inside,” he said, opening the door. “Notice that comfortable front seat. Seats three easily. And no gearshift lever to make the fellow in the middle uncomfortable. No sir. Gearshift lever right under the steering wheel. Here’s another new development—the starter button on the dashboard. And look down there beside the clutch pedal. See that little button? That’s to dim your lights when somebody is coming toward you at night. Here we have windshield defrosters, and over here on the right under the dashboard is a heater. Notice also the dial-type speedometer and gas and oil gages. Look at the roominess of that glove compartment.”

“I could have sworn,” I said, “that all these things were in the 1942 model.”

“The hood,” continued Triscuit, “is opened from inside the car. Like this. See? This other lever over here opens the ventilator. Keeps your feet cool in the summer. Listen to the horn. Loud, eh? It’s a Klaxon. Now, let’s start the motor up. Just push the little button and—there. How’s she sound to you?”

“Like the 1942 model,” I said.

chapter ten

I parked my new Ford in front of the next house and walked to the door. This house was somewhat different from the others I had called at. It was painted bright red. Hammer-and-sickle designs were outlined on the shutters. Above the door hung a pennant proclaiming “SOLIDARITY FOREVER.” I pushed the bell and heard the first three notes of the “Internationale” chime within the house.

A dark-eyed, finely mustached woman in a close-knit burlap dress came to the door. “What is it, comrade?” she asked.

“Yetta!” I cried. “Yetta Samovar!”

For it was she. What a profusion of memories raced through my mind as I looked at her! How quickly those days came back to me when we were fellow students at the University of Minnesota! We had even been lovers for a time, but she had thrown me over when I had refused to resign from my fraternity.

“Fraternities are counterrevolutionary,” she had said.

And I had answered in anger, “Yetta, I won’t have you talking like that. Alpha Cholera is a darn swell frat and it’s loads of fun.”

We had both been stubborn and our romance had withered. We had gone our separate ways—I through a whirl of campus activities that rounded out my personality and gave me the poise that now served me so well; she following her leftist bent, attending meetings of the Subversive Elements’ League, distributing leaflets, writing letters to the editor of the student newspaper, burning the dean of the business school in effigy.

“Yetta,” I said, “don’t you remember me? I’m Asa Hearthrug.”

“I remember you,” she said. “You menshevik.”

“Come now, Yetta, surely you don’t still hold my fraternity against me.”

“Kulak,” she spat. “Why did you come to see me?”

“Well, I didn’t come to see you particularly. I was just looking for the lady of the house. I’m selling Little Dandy cooky cutters. I am the Postwar Man. I bring you your future today.”

“Cooky cutters,” she sneered. “How typical! That’s what the new world means to you. Selling cooky cutters.”

I drew myself up. “Madam,” I said, “I know very well what the new world means. It means peace and prosperity without parallel. It means well-being in all the far recesses of the earth. It means new opportunities, new freedoms, new comforts. It means the end of strife, hatred, and prejudice, the death of evil over the world. It means unity that denies time and mocks space. It means the reinstatement of the world’s dispossessed. That’s what it means.”

“So you sell cooky cutters. What a jerk! Ah, Asa, Asa, you haven’t changed a bit. Come into the house, gaspadin, we’ll have a glass tea.”

I followed her in and took a seat in a room papered with photomurals of Lenin, Stalin, and a woman I did not recognize. “Who is this?” I asked, pointing at the woman’s picture.

“‘Who is this?’ he says,” mocked Yetta. “Oh well, what can you expect from a fraternity man turned cooky-cutter salesman?”

“Now just a minute,” I cried, the hackles rising on my neck. “The cooky cutters I sell happen to be the answer to humanity’s cry for better living.”

She laughed sharply, without mirth. Then she took my hand and said softly, “Asa, do you really want to benefit mankind?”

“More than anything in the world.”

“Then listen to me.” She poured two glasses of tea, gave me one and put a lump of sugar between her teeth. “Russian style,” she explained.

I nodded and put a lump of sugar between my teeth.

She said, “I see by your discharge button that you’re a veteran.”

I started to tell about my war experiences, but she held up her hand. It was just as well; I couldn’t talk anyhow with the lump of sugar between my teeth.

“For you,” she continued, “the war is over. For me it has scarcely begun. As long as there is oppression in the world, I fight on. As long as one man exploits another, the battle continues. As long as there is sweat in one shop, I cannot rest.”

Deeply moved, I took a sip of tea. It washed against the lump between my teeth and cascaded over my bosom.

“Organization,” she said. “That’s the answer. Workers of the world, unite. The people must be brought together. They must be educated. They must be taught the power of collective action.”

I tried drinking the tea through the corner of my mouth, but I could not open wide enough and it ran down my neck, soaking my hackles and trickling under my collar.

“Nor is it all grimness. A struggle, yes. But there is joy in the people’s movement, joy in communal labors, joy in sharing the fruits of toil, joy in the folk arts. Strong, bronzed people working side by side, singing as they work, clapping one another on the back with simple heartiness, dancing madrigals in the village green on feast days.”

I tried setting the glass down on the table and sucking, but it only sprayed in my eyes.

“That’s my postwar world, Asa. And yours too, if you will only open your eyes. What are you doing to yourself? Think, man. You are knocking on the doors of petit-bourgeois slatterns, trying to sell cooky cutters, suffering their idle, shrewish abuses that you may someday amass enough money to become a petit bourgeois yourself and abuse who knocks on your door. Shame, Asa. That you should betray your own working class.”

I took out my lump and protested. “But what of the technological advances, the new sciences, the new industries, the new skills, the new comforts, the new—”

“All new ways to make money for the bosses,” interrupted Yetta. “New opiums of the people. New ways to trample down the masses. New sops to forestall the inevitable revolution.

“Asa, humanity is at the crossroads. You must choose now which direction you will follow. Will you travel the snare-lined path of capitalism that leads you to the abyss, or will you march triumphantly up the people’s way into the sun?”

“March triumphantly up the people’s way into the sun,” I said promptly.

“Comrade,” she said.

“What shall we do first?” I asked.

“First we must show the way to the rest of the country. We must set an example for all to follow. The Minneapolis Central Committee has decided to set up a model collective community near here. We are now negotiating for the land. We will establish a complete self-sustaining proletarian community. The eyes of the nation will be opened by this experiment. Collective communities will spring up all over the land. After that the People’s State will soon be a fact.”

“It sounds wonderful, Yetta, and I am proud to be one of you.”

“Proud to have you, comrade,” said Yetta.

“There is just one question I would like to ask.”

“Of course, comrade.”

“Who is the woman whose picture is on the photomural?”

“That is Popula Shopishnok, winner of the Soviet Union fertility medal. She was the mother of twenty-nine children.”

“Twenty-nine children!” I exclaimed. “Where is she now?”

“Siberia. She murdered her husband.”

chapter eleven

“I’ve missed you,” said Nebbice, lifting me up and kissing me.

“How’d it go, boy?” asked Alaric.

“I have something to tell you both,” I said.

“Won’t it keep until we’ve had dinner?” Nebbice asked. “I fixed something special for you. I wanted to show you what kind of cook you were getting into.”

“No, I must tell you now.”

“But dinner will be ruined,” protested Nebbice. “I made otter haunches and mangrove salad and shirred plovers’ eggs—everything a man likes.”

“What’s up, Asa?” asked Alaric.

“Oh, good friends,” I cried, “wake before it is too late. We are at the crossroads and you must choose. Where will you be when the millennium comes?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alaric asked.

“How blind we all have been! How stupid to think of the new world as a place to enrich ourselves! How easily we fell dupes to the schemes of the bosses! Cooky cutters! Ha!”

“Oh, I see,” said Alaric. “You don’t like to sell cooky cutters. Well, Asa, to tell the truth, I’m a little sick of it myself. I’m willing to write the whole thing off to experience and go after some real dough. Now, I was talking to a fellow this afternoon—”

“That’s just the point!” I exclaimed. “Going out after some real dough, as you put it, is precisely what they want us to do.”

Alaric turned to Nebbice. “Where’d you pick up this jerk?”

“I told you. On the train.”

“Couldn’t you have been a little more selective?”

“Look at me,” she said.

“No, I guess not. Now, Asa, who wants us to go out after some real dough?”

“The bosses, of course. They’re the ones who make the real money on what you sell. Don’t you see? They keep you contented with crumbs from their table—just enough to keep you peaceful and tractable. Just enough to keep you from trying to break out of your chains.

“Is that what the war was for? Is that why I crawled through the swamps and jungles of the Pacific? Is that why you plodded through the trackless wastes of the Pentagon? To come home and find new exploitation disguised in new trappings? No!

“I say the day of the common man is at hand. This is the hour of action. This is the time of decision. Strike! We have nothing to lose but our chains. Thank you.”

There was polite applause from Nebbice, but Alaric frowned. “Asa,” he whispered, “what you said—that’s communism.”

Nebbice raced to the windows in alarm and pulled the shades.

“That’s red communism,” repeated Alaric.

“Call it what you will,” I said, “my eyes have been opened. I’m leaving tonight to become a member of the model collective community of the Minneapolis Central Committee.”

“Bolsheviks!” exclaimed Alaric. “They’ve all got beards and they carry bombs.”

“Come now,” I chuckled. “I spent the afternoon with one of them and didn’t see a single bomb. Moreover, her mustache was scarcely visible.”

“You were with a woman,” wailed Nebbice. “Why, you little—”

“Shut up,” said Alaric. “Beating him up isn’t going to do any good. Let me handle this.” He took me by the shoulders. “I wouldn’t have thought,” he said, “that this could happen to a man of your intelligence. It just goes to show that you can never relax. You can’t let your guard down even for a minute. It’s insidious poison, Asa, this communism. If we don’t keep fighting it every second, it may yet undermine the American way.

“Asa, this country was made great by free private enterprise. From its very beginning, America has stood for free private enterprise. Why did your ancestors first come to America?”

“They were wanted for pederasty in Lapland,” I said.

“Oh. Well, at any rate, this country was settled by people who came here to exercise the right of free private enterprise. Free private enterprise opened the West, drove the savage red Indians from the plains into Tulsa. Free private enterprise drew sustenance from the earth and ores from beneath the earth. Free private enterprise built our great industries, our great transportation network, our great cities, schools, theaters, museums, banks, dams—in short, America.

“Everything you are, everything you do, reflects free private enterprise. Take a day in the life of an average man and you will see. What does Mr. Average Man do when he gets up in the morning?” asked Alaric.

“Goes to the toilet,” I said.

“Built by free private enterprise and installed by a freely enterprising plumber.”

“Then he eats breakfast,” I said.

“Grown by free farmers and milled by free Kelloggs.”

“Goes downtown to work,” I said.

“In a car built by free private enterprise from materials mined by free private enterprise.”

“Sits down at his desk,” I said.

“Built by free private enterprise from trees felled by free private enterprise.”

“Can’t escape it, can you?” I said.

“No more,” said Alaric, “than you can escape the air you breathe. Free private enterprise is the very essence of America, the strength of America, the wellspring of America. It is the fountainhead and the matrix of that which we all hold dear. It has made us the light of the world. It has carried us through the late great crisis so that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of free private enterprise. Thank you.”

Nebbice and I applauded until our palms smarted. Then we carried Alaric around the room on our shoulders. Then Nebbice carried Alaric and me on her shoulders.

“I’ve been a fool,” I said after Nebbice put us down and went in the kitchen to get dinner ready to serve.

“Forget it,” said Alaric.

“You’re awfully patient with me.”

“We’re partners, aren’t we? And that reminds me. I tried to tell you before. I was talking to a fellow this afternoon who gave me a tip on where to pick up some surplus war materials for a song.”

“Let’s make it a duet,” I said, my brooding gray eyes crinkling with laughter.

Laughing, we sat down to Nebbice’s otter haunches.

chapter twelve

“I couldn’t sleep,” said Nebbice, climbing over Alaric and snuggling up close to me.

“It is difficult with three in a bed,” I said.

“I was thinking,” said Nebbice.

“About what, Nebbice?”

“Oh, lots of things. Love, mostly.”

“Love,” I mused. “Quite a subject.”

Nebbice grasped my arm in a quarter nelson. “It’s mysterious and exciting,” she breathed. “It comes over you swiftly and silently and leaves you helpless.”

“Yes, love does funny things to people.”

“It turns your bones to water,” she breathed. “It destroys the will.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed, “but other times it works just the opposite. It makes a tiger out of a jellyfish.”

“Not with me!” Nebbice shouted. “When I’m in love there’s nothing a man can’t do to me. Nothing, d’you hear?”

“Shh! We’ll wake Alaric.”

“Don’t worry. I put four grams of nembutal in his coffee.”

“Oh. Well, as I was saying, it sometimes makes a tiger out of a jellyfish … Say, that’s rather well put, don’t you think? A tiger out of a jellyfish.”

“Sure, Asa, you’re a wizard with words. I can’t resist you when you talk. Or when you don’t talk.”

I chuckled. “Yes, I suppose I do have a bit of a knack with language. I’ve often thought of writing professionally. I’d like to do a novel based on my own life.”

“What an unusual idea!”

“Isn’t it, though? I’ve often wondered why nobody else has ever thought of it. You know, when you stop to consider, just about everybody’s life would make a good novel.”

“I’d never thought of it that way before.”

“Yes. Well, to get back to love—”

“By all means,” she cried, throwing one leg over mine.

“This jellyfish I had in mind who was turned into a tiger by love was a friend of mine named Tristram Shandy. Most timid fellow you ever saw. If you so much as spoke to him, he would blush and fly in confusion.

“Tristram’s life was not an easy one. A stenographer by trade, he could never hold a job more than a few days. He was all right as long as nobody talked to him, but as soon as somebody said one word, he’d go into utter panic. He would simply lose control of himself. One time he was sitting at his typewriter and a girl at the next desk remarked to him that it was a nice day. Whereupon Tristram inserted his necktie into the roller of his typewriter, wound it up, and typed, ‘Yrs. of the 16th inst. received and contents noted’ on his forehead.

“Well, sir, he finally got a break. The only people who didn’t unnerve Tristram were young children, and he found a job running the nursery of a large department store. Mothers would leave their children there while they went shopping.

“Tristram did well at his job. All day long he happily pushed tykes down slides, played with them in the sandbox, rode with them on the carousel, cut out paper dolls for them, read them the poems of A. A. Milne.

“One day a beautiful young woman came in and left her five-year-old son. Tristram was smitten with the woman instantly. Naturally he was too shy to approach her. It was only after she had left the boy there more than a dozen times that he could summon up enough courage to say hello.

“She answered him affably and then she said, ‘I’ve been meaning to thank you for the way you’ve taken care of Junior. He’s gotten quite fond of you. You see, his own daddy is dead.’

“A widow! Tristram’s heart sang with joy. Inside of a year he found himself able to ask her whether she and Junior would like to have dinner with him. She accepted, and in the months that followed Tristram took out the widow and her son regularly. The three of them went to the theater, to the beach, to art museums, to the races—everywhere.

“Well, sir, one Sunday afternoon they all went on a picnic. Tristram found a lovely spot overlooking a cliff and they spread their lunch on the lush grass.

“‘Isn’t this heavenly?’ said the widow.

“Tristram nodded wordlessly.

“‘I want to explore,’ said Junior.

“‘All right, dear,’ the widow replied, ‘but don’t go near the cliff.’

“Junior skipped off, and the widow lay back with her arms behind her head, her eyes closed against the warm sun.

“‘This is wonderful,’ she breathed.

“Tristram nodded wordlessly.

“Suddenly there came a horrendous cry.

“‘It’s Junior!’ shrieked the widow. ‘He’s fallen off the cliff! Quick, Tristram, do something.’

“Tristram leaped to his feet. ‘At last,’ he roared with a full-throated cry, ‘we’re rid of the little bastard.’

“And then and there he assaulted the widow four times, you should excuse the expression.”

“Holy cow!” whistled Nebbice. “Four times!”

“Will you two,” said Alaric, “either shut up or give me some more nembutal?”

chapter thirteen

After a breakfast of otter haunch hash Alaric and I got into my new Ford and drove off on our latest venture.

“Sure looks like the 1942 model,” said Alaric.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the Bon-Ton junk yard,” Alaric replied. “This fellow I was talking to yesterday said that the whole yard is full of surplus war materials. The damn fools are selling it for scrap. Six and a half cents a pound. Well, if they want to be stupid about it, let ’em. It’s all grist for our mill, eh, Asa?” He winked and nudged me.

“You bet,” I said, winking back.

I drove a little farther. “What are we going to do with the stuff?” I asked.

“We’re going to make a barrel of dough, that’s what.”

“Fine,” I said.

I drove a little farther. “How?”

“Look,” said Alaric, “there’s stuff in that junk yard that shouldn’t be scrapped—perfectly good stuff that you can convert to civilian uses without any trouble. All it needs is a little fixing and you can turn it into all kinds of home products.”

“What kind of home products?”

“You know—stuff that you use in the house. Like lamps and—and well, thousands of things. See what I mean?”

“Sure,” I said. “All kinds of things you use in the house. For instance, lamps and—and—and any number of things.”

“That’s right. When we look at the stuff we’ll get a million ideas for what kind of home products to turn it into. Naturally we won’t tell the Bon-Ton what we want the stuff for. Them poor fools. We’ll just go in there and pick what we want and pay six and a half cents a pound for it. Then we’ll turn around and sell it as home products at a fancy profit. Can we help it if the Bon-Ton is stupid?”

“All grist for our mill,” I grinned.

“Here’s the junk yard,” said Alaric.

“The gold mine, you mean,” I said, giggling.

We parked and entered the gold mine. Row on row of war materials lay piled along the yard, extending for miles and disappearing beyond the horizon.

“Big, isn’t it?” I said.

“You ought to see their main yard,” said Alaric. “This one would fit into a corner of it. And even the main yard is small compared to thousands of other war-material junk yards around the country. One fellow has got the Grand Canyon filled with War Department filing cabinets.”

“Early in 1945,” I said, “the noted news analyst, A. K. Hockfleisch, broadcast that our War Department filing cabinets were Hitler’s secret weapon. According to Hockfleisch, Hitler figured that if he could make the war last two years longer, the War Department would require so many more filing cabinets that there wouldn’t be room in the United States for anything else. Filing cabinets would cover every inch of our territory, and the people would starve to death.”

“Interesting,” said Alaric. “Well, let’s rent some bicycles and go look at this stuff. There must be a million different home products we can convert all these things into.”

We rented bicycles and pedaled slowly up and down the rows, looking for equipment that would be easy to convert.

“Here’s some bazooka barrels that ought to be good for something,” said Alaric.

“Sure,” I said. “They’d make swell lamps.”

“You got a head on you, Asa. We’ll take a couple of hundred of those. Look over here—these belly turrets.”

“Boy, they’d make keen lamps. Great big ones.”

“Yes sir. We’ll get some of those too. How about those machine-gun water jackets over there. Think we could use them?”

“Of course,” I said. “Bed lamps.”

“For a guy who didn’t get much sleep last night, you sure got a clear head this morning,” said Alaric admiringly.

“It’s nothing,” I replied. “I got used to going without sleep over there. Why, I remember one week when—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, partner. How about these tank treads?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t hardly see how we could make lamps out of those.”

“Anything you say, Asa. Do you see any possibilities in this camouflage netting?”

“Lamp shades,” I replied promptly.

“Swell,” said Alaric. “By the way, you ought to see me at a party when I get a lamp shade on my head. I’m a panic.”

“I can picture it now,” I laughed.

“There’s some jeep headlights that would make fine lamps,” said Alaric. “There; I thought of that one myself.”

I pouted.

“How about those land mines over there? They look kind of flat for lamps.”

“That’s all you know about it,” I said. “Put wicks in them and you’ve got kerosene lamps.”

“What a brain,” whispered Alaric, awed.

“Just American ingenuity,” I murmured.

“Well, let’s see what you can figure out for these three-bladed propellers.”

“Simple. Attach them to the ceiling by the hub, put bulbs on the tips, and you’ve got a ceiling lamp.”

“That’s great, kid.”

“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t we fix them to whirl around—a sort of combination fan and lamp? The fan-lamp. The Upcharles-Hearthrug Patented Fan-Lamp!”

“Revolutionary! We’ll make millions. Well, what do you say, Asa? Think we’ve got enough?”

“Yes, I believe that better be all for today. My funds are getting pretty low. Those cooky cutters ran into money.”

“Cooky cutters,” laughed Alaric. “Kid stuff. What saps we were!”

“Live and learn,” I said.

“How well you put it,” said Alaric. “Let’s get the manager and buy this stuff.”

We called the manager on a field telephone. He arrived after an uneventful journey. A scout was dispatched after my car, and we drove along gathering up the war materials Alaric and I had picked up—bazooka barrels, belly turrets, machinegun water jackets, camouflage netting, jeep headlights, land mines, and three-bladed propellers—paying the poor ninny six and a half cents a pound for the lot. I could hardly keep a straight face when I handed him the money.

“All grist for our mill, eh, Asa,” laughed Alaric as we drove away.

“You bet,” I cried, my rich brown eyes narrowed with mischief.

“Now we’ll go home and you’ll go down to the basement and fix up this stuff and then you’ll go out and sell it, and then, boy, we’ll just sit back and let the money roll in.”

“After we get home,” I said, “before I go down to the basement, I wonder if there’s something you’ll do for me.”

“Sure, Asa, sure.”

“Will you put a lamp shade on your head and show me?”

“Sure thing,” said Alaric, “partner.”

chapter fourteen

Two weeks later the Bon-Ton bought four thousand lamps from us at three and a quarter cents a pound.

“I’ve figured it out, Asa,” said Alaric when the last lamp had been carted away. “I know what we’ve been doing wrong.”

“What?”

“It’s so obvious that I’m embarrassed to admit it. It’s been staring us in the face all along.”

“What?”

“A blind man could have seen it.”

“What?”

“This: this is the air age.”

“I’m not going to sell airplanes,” I said.

“Who said anything about selling airplanes? Here’s my point: this is the air age, but we, like a couple of saps, have been trying to get rich on the ground. The world has taken wings and we are still earth-bound.”

“Of course,” I said. “A blind man could have seen it.”

“We must seek our fortune in the air,” said Alaric. “The airplane has become an integral part of the commercial life of America—not just in carrying freight and passengers, but in a million new ways. New vistas are open to men of vision; new opportunities abound.”

I pointed out that neither of us could fly.

“So what?” poohed Alaric. “Any damn fool can fly. Pilots are a dime a dozen, but men of vision are still a rarity.”

“Like us, huh, Alaric?”

“Yes, Asa, like us. Now, here’s what I’ve got in mind. I read an article in a magazine last week about hunting tuna from the air off the California coast. The pilot flies low over the tuna-fishing waters, scanning the surface. When he sights a school of tuna he radios their position back to the fishing fleet. The fleet goes out, hauls in the tuna, and pays the pilot a commission of ten dollars per ton. Sweet, eh?

“Now, if they can do that out in California, why can’t we do it right here in Minnesota? We can hire a pilot and get a contract to hunt whitefish in Lake Superior. Think of it, Asa. Just cruising around in the sun all day and coming in at night to collect our two or three hundred dollars. Just think of it.”

While I was thinking of it Alaric went out and hired a pilot at twenty-five dollars a day plus gasoline expenses. He went to the fishing company to get a contract, but they were a little skeptical, so Alaric agreed to work the first week free.

Bright and early the next day we went down to the airport to meet our pilot and take off for Lake Superior. The airplane was already revving up; we got right into the cabin and took off. When we were clear of the field and on our way, Alaric introduced me to the pilot. “Asa,” he said, “I’d like for you to meet Max Aileron. He’s a veteran too.”

“So you were Over There too?” I said. “Myself, I was a private in the 734th Infantry Division, late of the Pacific theater. Went through the battle of—”

“Pleased to meet you, Private,” interrupted Max Aileron. “I was a lieutenant colonel myself—917th Fighter Squadron. Eighty-four missions over Japan, not to speak of three hundred hours in the Link trainer. Those were the days, eh, Private?

“I wish now that I’d taken that tech sergeant’s rating and stayed with the air force,” he continued. “Instead I got mustered out and went to get a job with an airline. I was too late. The cops wouldn’t let the line of applicants get longer than six blocks. City ordinance, they said.

“I waited a couple of weeks, but the line didn’t move, so I went and bought me this airplane and tried to get some work dusting crops. Too late again. The sky was black with airplanes out dusting crops. Thousands of pilots dusting crops. Dusted every acre in Minnesota, whether anyone asked them to or not. I finally got a job for a couple of days undusting a field. The farmer’s privy had been buried.”

Then we remembered that the roar of the engines made conversation impossible and we were silent all the way to Lake Superior.

Max Aileron swooped low on the lake, leveled off, and cut the engines to the minimum speed. We flew slowly over the lake, dipping occasionally to one side or the other so that Alaric and I could get a good look out of the windows.

“Reminds me of a low-level reconnaissance mission over New Guinea one time,” said Max Aileron, forgetting again about the noise of the engines. “I was out alone one afternoon, just looking around to see what I could see. I was just about to go back home when I saw a little clearing in the jungle with smoke coming out of it. I came in low to investigate.

“What I saw there froze my blood with horror. A group of savages were preparing to sacrifice an elderly white woman! She stood before a roaring fire with the savages pressed closely all around her. I could see her lips moving, obviously begging for her life. But her entreaties only whetted the natives’ blood lust. Every time she said something, they stoked the fire more, causing great billows of smoke to pour out.

“Gentlemen, I am an American. Without a moment’s hesitation I dropped into the clearing in a belly landing. I leaped from my airplane, drew my pistol, and rushed toward the savages. ‘What’s going on here?’ I demanded.

“‘It’s puffectly all right, Colonel,’ said the white woman. ‘I was just dictating “My Day” and my friends heah were sending it by smoke signal to the cable office at Port Moresby.’”

“That reminds me of a night on Bougainville,” I said. “I—”

“Look!” yelled Alaric. “Fish!”

We looked below. Alaric had hit the jack pot! There were fish as far as the eye could see, hundreds of tons of fish.

Max Aileron switched on the radio transmitter. Alaric and I put on headsets so we could hear. “Pilot to fishing fleet. Pilot to fishing fleet,” said Max Aileron. “Are you receiving me? Are you receiving me? Over.”

“Fishing fleet to pilot. Fishing fleet to pilot,” came the reply. “We are receiving you. We are receiving you. Over.”

“Just sighted tremendous school of fish. Just sighted tremendous school of fish. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Over.”

“Will you give us that position again? Will you give us that position again? Over.”

“Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Over.”

“You are over the state pike hatchery at Lake Winnibigoshish. You are over the state pike hatchery at Lake Winnibigoshish. Lake Superior is eighty miles east. Lake Superior is eighty miles east. Over.”

“Roger,” said Max Aileron.

“This is Sam. This is Sam,” came the reply. “Roger is at the cannery. Roger is at the cannery. He don’t go out on the boats. He don’t go out on the boats. He gets seasick. He gets seasick.”

But the next day we found Lake Superior, all right, and by nightfall we had radioed the positions of six whitecaps, the wake of a garbage scow, and three thousand Dixie cups that were thrown off of a Great Lakes excursion boat.

The third day I did not go out with Alaric and Max Aileron. Instead I went to the library and read up on whitefish. “The whitefish,” said the encyclopedia, “Coregonus clupeiformis, found in the large, deep lakes of northern United States, is sometimes called the six-fathom fish because it always swims at least thirty-six feet under the surface of the water.…”

chapter fifteen

“Asa,” Nebbice hissed, “I looked all over the bed for you. What are you doing sitting out here in a chair in the dark?”

“Just thinking, Nebbice.”

“About what, snookums? Love?”

“No. I was thinking maybe Alaric is on the wrong track. Maybe Yetta Samovar was right.”

“Oh, nonsense, Asa. You and Alaric just haven’t gotten the breaks so far. Keep pitching, boy. You’re bound to connect sometime.”

“I don’t know. Cooky cutters, lamps, fish—”

“You’re just discouraged, dear. Here, let me get up on your lap and soothe your cares away.”

“Let’s have a cigarette,” I said hastily. “I’ll go get some.”

“I’ve got some right here in my negligee. My sheer, revealing negligee, I might add,” she giggled.

“I’ll get some matches.”

“Never mind. Here’s a lighter.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Quite an unusual lighter, isn’t it?”

“A phallic symbol,” said Nebbice, “if you know what I mean.”

“I had an odd experience with a cigarette lighter during the war,” I said. “I was—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, stud.”

“I will,” I shrieked. “I will. I will too talk about it.”

“All right, Asa. I was only thinking of you.”

“Well, sir,” I began, “it happened in Honolulu in 1944. I was in town for a short furlough and I went for a walk one afternoon to kill some time. I was walking along a deserted stretch of Waikiki beach when I saw a shiny object in the sand. I bent over and picked it up. It was a cigarette lighter, but a cigarette lighter such as I had never seen before. Its case was made of pure platinum. On each side was engraved a curious symbol, inlaid with precious stones. Its base was one single, flawless emerald.

“There were a few people about, and I approached them and asked whether they knew to whom the lighter belonged. But everyone I asked responded in a most fantastic manner. Their eyes rolled, they began to sweat, and they ended up by running away from me as fast as they could.

“I shrugged. If nobody wanted to claim this handsome lighter, I thought, well, then, I guess I could find use for it.

“It was the dinner hour and I was hungry. I had originally intended to grab a sandwich at one of the stands along the beach, but finding the lighter changed all that. Now that I had this valuable lighter I thought it would be more fitting if I dined expensively—at the Royal Hawaiian, for instance. In my mind I could see the polite stares that would come my way after dinner when I pulled out the lighter and lighted a cigarette. I chuckled and made for the Royal Hawaiian.

“An obsequious waiter slithered across the carpeted floor as I entered the dining room. ‘One?’ he asked.

“My green-flecked golden eyes twinkled with deviltry. ‘Unless you know some nice young lady who wants to make it two,’ I said.

“We laughed.

“The waiter led me to a table behind a post and gave me a large menu, all written in French. I studied the menu briefly and then said, ‘This looks good,’ pointing at the Marcel de la Rochambeau.

“‘It should look good,’ said the waiter. ‘It spends every afternoon on the beach. That’s the manager.’

“How we laughed at that!

“‘Oh, just bring me some otter haunches and a bottle of white wine,’ I said carelessly.

“After the waiter brought my dinner, I ate quickly. I was in a hurry to get to the part where I lighted the cigarette. As soon as I finished the haunches and the wine, I put a cigarette between my lips. Slowly, deliberately, I lifted the lighter to the level of the cigarette. I pressed the cunning mechanism and a long flame shot forth. I inserted the tip of the cigarette and puffed languorously. Then, holding the lighter by its base so that all of it was visible, I lowered it slowly to my pocket.

“As soon as the lighter was back in my pocket, I felt a faint tap on my shoulder. I looked up. A woman in a cloth-of-gold evening gown was standing beside me. Her hand was clutching a small sequined bag that bulged suspiciously. On one finger she had a signet ring, engraved with the same curious symbol that was on the lighter. Her face was pale as chalk; even her eyes were pale. She was biting her lower lip steadily, oblivious of a trickle of blood that ran out of the corner of her mouth.

“‘I couldn’t help noticing your lighter,’ she said in a flat, toneless voice. ‘May I see it?’

“‘Of course,’ I said cordially. ‘Sit down, ma’am.’

“With a breathed thank-you she sat and examined the lighter.

“‘Say,’ I said. ‘this isn’t yours, is it? I found—’

“‘No!’ she cried in terror. ‘No!’

“Then she leaned closer to me, her lips scarcely three inches from my ear. ‘Hochartig is here,’ she whispered. ‘I had to tell you.’

“She rose and left silently.

“I shrugged and lighted another cigarette.

“The waiter suddenly appeared beside me. ‘Don’t try to leave,’ he said. ‘He’s seen you.’ The waiter moved on.

“A short, swarthy man with a ring in his nose approached my table. He was dressed in impeccable evening clothes but, oddly enough, he was barefoot. His face was smiling except for his hard blue eyes. ‘What’s the good word?’ he said to me.

“‘Save your money?’ I replied genially.

“He sat down. He called the waiter over. ‘Two rum collins with lime,’ he said. ‘And buy yourself one.’

“‘NO!’ cried the waiter, his face screwing up in horror. ‘NO!’

“‘You got it right,’ said the man.

“The waiter left, but not in the direction of the bar.

“‘Nice place,’ I said conversationally.

“‘When the flax hits the tracks get your sacks,’ said the man.

“I continued. ‘Of course their prices aren’t exactly what you would call cheap, but when you come to a place like this, you got to expect. After all, overhead, things like that, it adds up.’

“The man frowned. He tugged at the ring in his nose for a moment and then he said, ‘The wren met the hen in the glen.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess I’ll be moving along. Reveille tomorrow, you know. Heigh-ho, for a soldier’s life.’ I looked around for the waiter.

“‘It’s mine,’ said the man, putting his hand over my check. ‘The pig did a jig for a fig,’ he added.

“‘Much obliged, friend,’ I said.

“I walked toward the door. Two flat-faced, loose-hung Eurasians fell in beside me. As we reached the door, each dealt me a precise blow on the temple. I toppled down a flight of stairs leading to the street. The two Eurasians came slowly after me.

“‘Quickly. In the car,’ said the pale woman who had spoken to me upstairs. With surprising strength she lifted me from the sidewalk and pushed me in the open door of a black sedan parked by the curb with motor running.

“The two Eurasians broke into a run. They reached the sidewalk just as the car was pulling out. With swift, familiar gestures they pulled revolvers from shoulder holsters and fired at the disappearing car, heedless of a near-by policeman who stood with arms akimbo, his very posture, if they had noticed, spelling disapproval.

“I settled back in the deep cushions of the car. ‘Sure looks like the 1942 model,’ I said to the driver.

“He did not answer but drove intently on. He drove smoothly through the business district and then turned into a trunk highway leading out of the city. He increased his speed as he left the city’s traffic behind.

“‘Where are we going, friend?’ I asked.

“He did not answer. He drove straight ahead for perhaps ten miles, then turned into a macadam road branching off the highway.

“‘Macadam was named after its inventor, a Scot named McAdam,’ I said.

“When he did not answer that, I took my Soldiers’ Guide to the Hawaiian Islands out of my pocket and soon became engrossed in its simply written, copiously illustrated text.

“In about a half hour the driver turned off on a twisting dirt road. Soon we came to a large walled estate. He drove through an opened wrought-iron gate onto a graveled driveway. Four hooded figures stood on the driveway singing a Gregorian chant. The driver stopped and got out of the car. The four hooded figures took me out of the back seat, staked me to the ground in a supine position, and kicked me for twenty minutes. Then they took me into the house and left me in a hall hung with expensive tapestries.

“‘Anybody home?’ I called.

“‘Come right in,’ boomed a voice from a lighted doorway about twenty feet down the hall. I went into a tastefully furnished den. Sitting at a card table were the pale woman I had seen at the Royal Hawaiian and a tall, lean man in a red toupee, the toupee made more obvious by being on backward. They were playing Authors. The pale woman left as I came in, first casting me a meaningful glance.

“The man in the red toupee approached me and with a quick downward lunge clapped manacles around my ankles. ‘There’s a fox in a box at the docks,’ he said.

“‘This place must have cost you a nice piece of change,’ I said. ‘Of course, I suppose when you get out of the city, real-estate values are a little cheaper.’

“The man in the red toupee put a poker into the fireplace. He held it until its end glowed red. ‘I’ll give you one more chance,’ he said. ‘A bear ate a pear at the fair.’

“‘It’s that way around New York,’ I pointed out. ‘Lots of people build homes out on Long Island. It’s so much cheaper than in town.’

“The man lifted the poker. Suddenly the door burst open and in came the man with the ring in his nose and the two Eurasians.

“‘Hochartig!’ gasped the man in the red toupee. “Hochartig replied with a burst from a sub-machine gun he carried under his arm.

“‘This is it,’ said the man in the red toupee, and died.

“Hochartig turned to me. He was wearing shoes now, high button shoes. “Don’t you think that a mink needs a drink?’ he said.

“‘What did you have to go and do that for?’ I asked, pointing at the corpse in the red toupee.

“Hochartig gritted his teeth. ‘A cat caught a rat in his hat,’ he said, and then he motioned the Eurasians toward me.

“‘Oh no, you don’t,’ came a voice from above us.

“We all looked up. There in the chandelier was the pale woman. She held a vial of colorless liquid in her hand. ‘I’ve got enough nitroglycerin in this vial to blow us all to kingdom come.’

“‘You’re bluffing,’ said Hochartig.

“‘You know me better than that. I’ll give you three seconds to get out of here, or else I’ll let this go. One, two—’

“The Eurasians tugged nervously on Hochartig’s sleeves. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ll go. But you haven’t seen the last of us.’

“‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘I know.’

“They left. The woman tossed me the vial of nitroglycerin and then leaped lightly down from the chandelier. ‘A spot of brandy?’ she said to me.

“‘That would be nice,’ I replied.

“She poured me a glass of brandy. I raised it and drank it down. The room started to spin, I was on the floor, then oblivion.

“It was dawn when I came to. I was on the beach near an old abandoned pier. Not a soul was about. I moved without hesitation. I rose to my feet and walked quickly to the end of the old pier. I took the cigarette lighter out of my pocket and flung it out over the water, as far as I could. I watched the ripples shimmer as the lighter sank. Then the water was quiet again.

“‘There,’ I said, dusting my palms together, ‘I’m better off without the God-damn thing.’”

chapter sixteen

“I know what we’ve been doing wrong,” said Alaric.

“What?”

“It’s so obvious that I’m embarrassed to admit it. It’s been staring us in the face all along.”

“What?”

“A blind man could have seen it.”

“What?”

“This: in all our thinking about the postwar world, we’ve ignored intellectual progress. We’ve been thinking only of material things—new inventions, new improvements, new techniques. We haven’t given a thought to the force behind all these advances—the great intellectual awakening of America.

“The war, Asa, for all its evils, removed the shackles from the American mind. The realization that the world was a single community dispelled the mystery of far-off lands. Americans found that all men were their neighbors. Now they want to know more about their neighbors—their cultures, their civilizations, their philosophies, their histories. At the same time Americans want to know more about themselves—how they are different from their neighbors, how they are alike. And finally, Americans, awakened to the fact that humanity is one family, want to know more about humanity as humanity, want to know more about men as individuals—the hopes, the dreams, the drives that motivate mankind.

“Asa, more than they want plastics, more than they want helicopters, more than they want single-unit kitchens, Americans want knowledge.”

“Of course,” I said. “A blind man could have seen it.”

“Our next business, Asa, is going to be more than a business; it will be a mission. We are going to bring knowledge to Americans who hunger for knowledge.”

“Goody,” I said.

“In our larger cities it is not difficult for the people to find knowledge. There are well-stocked bookstores and libraries; there are frequent lectures and forums. But in rural communities these blessings do not exist. We,” said Alaric, “will leap into the breach. We will fill the gap.”

“Exciting,” I whispered.

“We will buy a trailer and fill it with books and hitch it to the back of your car. We will go into the hinterlands of America—a library on wheels. The peasants will greet us gratefully, for we bring them the commodity they want above all things—knowledge. How their eyes will light when they see our cargo of fine books! Timidly they will press money on us, fearful lest we refuse to sell them their hearts’ desire. And if we charge four bucks for a three-buck book, them yokels will never know the difference.”

“Carrying the torch of learning to the benighted,” I breathed. “Glorious!”

“Say, that’s good, Asa. ‘The Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium.’ Sensational! I’ll have a big neon torch made and put on top of the trailer—red, green, blue, and yellow. We’ll knock their stupid eyes out.”

“I can see them now,” I said, “sitting far into the night filling the thirsty fibers of their souls with knowledge, reading our books by the flickering light of the R.E.A.”

The first stop of the Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium did not go as planned.

“Alaric,” I said as we drove away, “I don’t like to criticize, but frankly I was not pleased with what happened.”

“Oh, Asa, you know how farmers’ daughters are.”

“Yes,” I mused, thinking of Lodestone. Patient, patient Lodestone. Was she still waiting for me? Yes, I thought, she was. She was still waiting. Still waiting in the same spot, as a matter of fact. All through the war she had waited for me on that spot, just as she had waited on that spot while I spent a year at the University of Minnesota. Come to think of it, I had never seen her anywhere else. Patient, patient Lodestone.

“Yes,” I said to Alaric, “I know how farmers’ daughters are, but somehow a culture emporium doesn’t seem the right place. I hope you won’t do that any more.”

“O.K., Asa. From now on it’s strictly business. Here, pull into this farm. This looks like a likely place—clean and modern and prosperous-looking.”

I pulled in and parked. The farm wife came out in a tidy house dress. Alaric went into his sales talk. The farm wife listened politely until he had finished. Then she said, “Sorry, boys. You’re too late.”

“Somebody has called on you before?” asked Alaric.

“Well, not exactly,” she answered. “But since the war ended I’ve been getting mail every day from new book clubs—the Book of the Fortnight, the Book of the Week, the A. and P. Book Club, the Fuller Brush Book Club, the Epworth League Book Club, the A.T. and T. Book Club, the U.S. Post Office Book Club—hundreds of new book clubs.

“And each new club offered me more for my money. As more and more clubs sprang up, the books got cheaper and the premiums got bigger. But I waited. I bided my time and yesterday it finally happened. I got a letter from a new club where you don’t have to buy any books at all. They’re all premiums.

“Sorry, boys, but you see how it is.”

“This isn’t so good,” I said when we were back on the highway.

“We’re not licked yet,” said Alaric. “We’ll go where the book clubs don’t reach—up forgotten side roads where there is no mail delivery. Here, look. Over here. See this little dirt road? Let’s try that.”

I swung off onto a tortuous, rutted cowpath. The trailer leaped and lurched and bounded behind us. For six miles we tossed like a man in a fever dream. Once we had to get out and hack away some underbrush. There were two streams that had to be forded. Luckily I knew how to build temporary bridges from my war experiences which Alaric wouldn’t let me talk about.

At last we were rewarded. We saw a farmhouse—weather-beaten, ramshackle, and sagging, but definitely inhabited.

“After a trip like this,” said Alaric, “we don’t want to miss. We’ll both work on this customer. You give her the main spiel and I’ll fill in the details. Lay it on thick.”

I stopped the car, got out, and tipped my hat to the farm wife, who was staring dully at me from a broken-down porch, twelve grown children with their thumbs in their mouths peering from behind her.

“Madam,” I said, “we have come to relieve your ignorance.”

“That’s it, Asa,” said Alaric. “Flatter ’em first. Now sock it to her.”

I said, “In the Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium we have the answers to the millions of questions that are racing through your newly awakened mind.”

“I’ll switch on the torch,” said Alaric. “That’ll get ’em.”

“Grope no more, my lady,” I said. “Whatever it is you want to know about this broad earth or, more particularly, about its inhabitants, you will find the answer in the Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium.”

Alaric threw the switch and the torch blinked red, green, yellow, and blue. The twelve children started to scream in utter terror.

“Don’t be frightened, children,” Alaric laughed. “It’s only an electric light.”

They all fell to the floor in convulsions.

“Better turn it off, mister,” said the farm wife. “One of ’em swallowed his tongue last time.”

Alaric switched off the torch and the children’s screams subsided to a steady sobbing.

“Is history your particular interest?” I said. “If so, we have the Beards, Swain, Carlyle, Duruy, Froude, Bulwer-Lytton, Prescott, von Ranke, Tacitus, Robinson, de Laboulaye, St. Bede, Livy, de Barros, Breasted, and, of course, many others.”

One of the children, a huge, adenoidal fellow, came out from behind his mother.

“Hello, big boy,” grinned Alaric. “What’s your name? Eh? What’s the matter? Can’t you talk?”

“Naw, he can’t,” said the farm wife. “That’s the one who swallowed his tongue.”

“Perhaps you’re curious about philosophy,” I said. “We have Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Hume, Locke, Kant, Berkeley, Albertus Magnus, von Fichte, James, Royce, Anaxagoras, Dewey, Santayana, and, of course, many others.”

Two spavined, hirsute girls came out from behind the farm wife.

“I bet you’re twins,” said Alaric friendlily.

“Naw, they ain’t,” said the farm wife. “Born four months apart. Doctor said he never seed the like of it.”

“Some,” I said, “favor anthropology. If you are such a one, we have Deniker, Mead, Hrdlička, Lombroso, Schliemann, Champollion-Figeac, Bertillon, Curtius, and, of course, many others.”

Four hulking anthropoids stepped forward.

“What fine boys!” exclaimed Alaric. “Do you go to school?”

“Naw, they don’t,” said their mother. “A football scout tried to take ’em to the university last fall but they got out of the cage.”

“It was just chicken wire,” they giggled.

“Perhaps psychology is your dish,” I said. “If so, we have Freud, Jung, Adler, Levin, Kwalwasser, Dykema, Good-enough, Baldwin, Hall, Hering, Skinner, and, of course, many others.”

Three microcephalic girls emerged.

“Well, well, well,” said Alaric. “I’ll bet you three are going to be movie stars when you grow up.”

“Naw, they ain’t,” said the farm wife. “They’re spoken for—Johns Hopkins.”

“Maybe geography is your forte,” I said. “We have Hakluyt, Harrison, Anson, Behring, Dompier, Bougainville, Baffin, Frobisher, Kropotkin, and, of course, many others.”

Two popeyed boys lumbered forth.

“Well, well,” smiled Alaric. “Now we have the whole family.”

“Naw, it ain’t,” said the mother. “They’s six more. A woman named Margaret Sanger has got ’em on exhibit.”

“So many people these days,” I said, “are thinking of economics. For those we have Hansen, Hadley, Keynes, Garver, Malthus, de Sismondi, Ruml, Quesnay, George, Ricardo, Gresham, Jevons, Marshall, and, of course, many others.”

“Well,” said the farm wife, “if you’ll ask all them folks to come out of the trailer, I’ll fix a little potluck.”

“Why, bless you,” laughed Alaric, “he wasn’t talking about people. Those are all books.”

“Books!” she exclaimed, drawing her children behind her. “Books is the instrument of the devil. Abner, fetch me the shotgun.”

chapter seventeen

I packed my clothing in my suitcase and closed the lid. Nebbice sat in the love seat brooding over a newspaper. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider, Asa?” she said.

“No,” I answered definitely. “I’m leaving, and if you try to tie me to the bed again, I’ll scream.”

“Oh, go on, then,” she snapped. “Who cares?” She rustled the newspaper irritably.

I picked up my suitcase and walked to the door. “Good-by, Nebbice. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m afraid it was never meant to be. We are worlds apart, Nebbice. There is a—”

“Oh, get going, mealymouth,” she snarled.

“—gulf between us that cannot be bridged. Although I have found in you much to admire, there is—”

The door burst open and Alaric ran in. “I’ve got it, Asa,” he cried. “At last I’ve got it. I know what we’ve been doing wrong.”

“I got a letter from Yetta Samovar this morning,” I said. “I’m going.”

“It’s so obvious,” said Alaric, “that I’m embarrassed to admit it. It’s been staring us in the face all along.”

“My mind is made up,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

“A blind man could have seen it.”

“It’s no use. You can’t stop me this time.”

“Listen,” said Alaric. “What was everybody afraid of during the war? I’ll tell you: they were afraid that after the war was over men would be selling apples on the streets. The energies of the whole nation were directed to preventing men from selling apples on the streets. Selling apples on the streets became the great national bugaboo, a coast-to-coast phobia. Whatever happened, people said, men would not sell apples on the streets.

“So today there isn’t a single man selling apples on the streets. An entire phase of our national economy is absolutely untouched, a whole industry ignored.”

“Gee,” I said, “that’s right. A blind man could have seen it.”

Alaric slapped me on the back. “It’s waiting for us, Asa. A whole great virgin market waiting to be sewed up. We’ll do it right, Asa. We’ll sell apples as nobody has sold apples before. We’ll have non-upsettable applecarts made of plastic. We’ll have the most complete stock this city has ever seen—Jonathans, Winesaps, Delicious, Northern Spies, Baldwins, Yakimas, russets, Gravensteins, greenings, Duchesses, Roman beauties.”

“A veritable cornucopia,” I breathed.

“Say, that’s good, Asa. The Cornucopia Mobile Apple Emporium. We’ll have a big neon cornucopia made—red, blue, yellow, and green. We’ll clean up. And the beauty part of it is that our investment will be so small.”

“I have no more money,” I said.

“That’s all right,” said Alaric. “We’ll sell your car. It looks just like the 1942 model anyway.”

“The man came and took it back this morning.”

“Oh. How about your bonds?”

“Those went for the Torch of Learning Mobile Culture Emporium.”

“Your mustering-out pay?”

“Whitefish.”

“Your savings?”

“Lamps.”

“Not all of it?”

“Cooky cutters.”

Alaric sat down on the love seat. He turned to Nebbice. “Do you still want him?” he asked.

“No. Let the jerk go.”

“You’ll probably never find another.”

“I’ll take cold showers,” she said.

“It is not without a sense of sorrow,” I said, “that I take my leave. Although our association has netted me little materially, I feel nonetheless that I have been enriched by it.”

“Say, let me see that paper a minute,” said Alaric to Nebbice. “Something down in the corner of the page looks interesting.”

She gave him the paper.

“Look here,” he said excitedly. “A contest. Hey, this is a cinch. All you have to do is find all the Oxydol boxes concealed in this painting of the Sistine Madonna and, in ten words or less, complete this sentence: ‘I like Oxydol because—’”

“I go now,” I said, “to travel up the people’s way into the sun. I wish that I could prevail upon you, my friends, to come hand in hand with me. But you are intent upon following the snare-lined path of capitalism that leads to the abyss. Someday you will be awakened, and I hope the awakening is not too rude, for I am beholden to you for many kindnesses.”

“How’s this, Alaric?” asked Nebbice. “Listen: ‘I like Oxydol because it is delicious with some kind of canned or fresh fruit.’”

“That’s eleven words,” said Alaric. “How’s this? ‘I like Oxydol because of the finespun yet potent gossamer of its faerie suds.’”

“That’s beautiful, Alaric,” said Nebbice.

“O.K.,” said Alaric. “That’s done. Now you look for the Oxydol boxes in the painting, and I’ll look through the rest of the paper for some more contests.”

“A struggle, yes,” I said. “But there is joy in the people’s movement, joy in communal labors, joy in sharing the fruits of toil, joy in the folk arts. Strong, bronzed people working side by side, singing as they work, clapping one another on the back with simple heartiness, dancing madrigals in the village green on feast days.”

“Here’s another one,” said Alaric. “Oh boy, this is even better. You don’t have to find any boxes and you get twenty words to complete the sentence, ‘I like Quaker Oats because—’ Let me see now … I got it! Listen, Nebbice: ‘I like Quaker Oats because it makes breakfast such a tranquil interlude. No snap, no pop, no crackle—not a murmur. It’s quiet Quakers for me!’

“We’ll make millions,” said Alaric. “And to think I was wasting my time with that little jerk Ezra or Asa or whatever the hell his name was.”

“This is not good-by,” I said, “but rather au revoir. For we will meet again. We will be together again. You two will be one of us. When the eyes of the nation are opened by our achievements, so will your eyes be opened too. You will come unto us, and I say come not shamefaced for your deeds, but come proudly with heads high, for truly you have never strayed from us—how can one stray from humanity?—and what you come to claim is not another’s but yours, because it is all mankind’s and you are of mankind and it is duly yours to share. Nor come with fear and trembling at the new ways you will have to learn. The new ways will not be difficult of learning. It is the old ways that were difficult, for they were artificial ways, the ways of duplicity and deception, the ways of dissimulation and deceit, the hollow ways of a hollow culture. With us you will find naturalness, the expression of man’s potential, the realization of man’s destiny. With us you will at last come into the human estate.”

“Look,” said Alaric. “Here’s another one. Ten words or less. ‘If I were a rat I would rather be killed by Pomeroy’s Paris Green than any other poison because—’”

“Au revoir,” I whispered, and closed the door behind me.

chapter eighteen

Thirty-eight miles north of Minneapolis, on a section of land belonging to a man named Olaf Qvistbergholm, is a small but high-grade deposit of quartz. Before the war Qvistbergholm conducted a modest business of making quartz crystals for radio sets. He worked alone in a little shack at the mouth of the quartz mine, fashioning the crystals by hand. His business was not large. He worked slowly and carefully, and the price of his crystals, compared to those of other manufacturers, was high. A few special jobs from radio makers came his way, enough to provide him with a little ready cash. For the rest, he had a truck garden, two cows, some hogs and chickens. His dwelling was a log hut, built by hand.

Then came the war, and Qvistbergholm suddenly had more business than he could possibly handle. He fell hopelessly behind in his orders. One day an army officer came to see why he was so far behind schedule. The army officer looked over Qvistbergholm’s shack, his primitive hand tools, and said, “Mr. Qvistbergholm, I’m afraid we are going to have to change all this. Your quartz is of a very fine grade, just the kind we need for our Signal Corps radios and other communications equipment. We need at least ten thousand times as many crystals as you can produce by your present methods. We will have to have a big factory here, mass production, assembly lines, thousands of workers. Your country is at war, Mr. Qvistbergholm, and we are going to have to mobilize you.”

The next day a man came from the War Production Board and told Qvistbergholm that the government would lend him ten million dollars to build a factory and quarters for the workers. Then came surveyors who surveyed the land and marked off where the factory would be, where the workers’ dwellings would be, where the roads would run, and where the sewers would flow. Next came engineers to dig the cellars and the sewers and to lay the roads. Then carpenters and steelworkers came to build the factories and homes. Plumbers and painters and electricians followed.

In four months the job was done. Beside the mine entrance stood a large square factory, windows reaching halfway down all four walls, and filled inside with gleaming new machinery. Extending from the factory were six streets, each a mile and a half long. On each side of the streets were rows of one-story prefabricated houses. The houses were built on four-foot stilts and were divided into two three-room apartments each. They were so designed that the kitchens of the two apartments were back to back and in a small connecting vestibule stood an icebox that both families could use. The apartments were furnished with lodge-type pine furniture in the living room, pine double beds and chests of drawers in the bedrooms, and deal tables and coal stoves in the kitchens. In each house was one indoor flush toilet and a washstand, no bath. For every six houses there was a building containing showers, two on each side of a partition. There were entrances for men and women in each shower building. All the buildings, both showers and houses, were covered with green tar paper and roofed with black tar paper.

Directly in front of the factory stood the town square. Along this square were two-story buildings marked “Town Hall,” “Church,” “Infirmary,” “Movie,” and “School,” each appropriately furnished. There was one four-story building marked “Commissary,” where all manner of groceries, hardware, dry goods, and home furnishings were to be sold and which contained a bowling alley, a beer tavern, and an ice-cream bar.

Where the six streets ended was a large sector of arable ground for victory gardening.

Now that the town was completed, it remained to populate it, which was accomplished in this manner. Into Minneapolis rolled a huge trailer bearing forty Hollywood stars, the Ninth Naval District Band, and six marines who had been wounded at Guadalcanal. The trailer stopped on street corners in every precinct in Minneapolis. The Hollywood stars presented comic skits, and those who were singers sang and some who were not. Then the Ninth Naval District Band played several songs of the services and some dance tunes. Next the wounded marines from Guadalcanal spoke and said that it would be nice if more people at home would take war jobs. Then ushers passed among the spectators handing out application cards for jobs at Qvistbergholm’s quartz-crystal factory. Finally a man from the state Selective Service office spoke and said he was notifying local boards to induct all men under thirty-five not engaged in war work, and the trailer rolled on to the next precinct.

In nine weeks 5,968 workers enrolled and they were transported with their families in army trucks to the quartz-crystal factory. They were assigned their homes, and sandwiches for all were provided by the commissary. The next morning the workers joined the Quartz Crystal Workers of America (A.F. of L.) and reported to work at the factory. During the first week instructors from the War Production Board taught the workers their jobs. They learned quickly, for the assembly line made each individual job a matter of stepping on a treadle or turning a crank or watching a gage.

Qvistbergholm was installed in a tastefully furnished office in the rear of the plant. At first he moved his old worktable into the office and continued to turn out a few crystals himself, but he was interrupted so frequently to sign papers that he gave it up. He took to sitting at his desk and twirling his watch chain between signing papers.

When the factory was operating routinely, the workers turned fuller attention toward their civic life. They named their community Bonanza and organized a municipal government, electing as mayor an energetic and handsome young man named Prosper Feinhaut. A campaign of city beautification was conducted; shrubs and flowers were planted in front of the houses. An auxiliary fire department was organized. Social clubs were formed, and there were sometimes amateur theatricals at the movie theater. Births and marriages occurred, upon which occasions the entire community joined in celebration.

Bonanza worked and thrived. The life of the town moved busily and harmoniously. To be sure, there was one small strike at the factory, but Qvistbergholm quickly acceded to the demands for higher pay, making the extra payments deviously so as not to violate the Little Steel formula. Production was entirely satisfactory; an Army-Navy “E” waved beside Old Glory. A man from Life magazine came and took pictures of the town, which gratified the citizens although the photographer was curt in his refusal to supply prints to those who asked.

Early in 1945, orders for quartz crystals were cut back rather sharply. Nobody at the plant was laid off, but in most cases overtime ceased. There were worried expressions now in Bonanza, and much sober talk in the beer tavern. The mayor, Prosper Feinhaut, did not shy from the situation. He studied the circumstances carefully; he interpreted the portents honestly. When he had laid his plans, he called a mass meeting of the townsfolk.

“Citizens of Bonanza,” he said, “we are not here tonight to kid ourselves. The cutback at the plant is only an indication of what is coming. The war is ending. Soon it will be over, and it won’t be cutbacks that we’ll have to worry about—it will be shutdown. What are we going to do about it?

“Well, there are two things we can do. We can say that we’re helpless and wait for the end of the war and then go back to Minneapolis and look around for work. Or we can fight; we can keep Bonanza alive and prosperous.

“Bonanza has been a great experience for us. We’ve not only helped to win the war, we’ve had fun. We’ve gotten to know each other and like each other. We’ve built a fine little community here that we can all be proud of. Well, then, why must it end?

“We’re a swell team, citizens. We ought to stick together. We’ve shown what we can do during the war; now let’s show what we can do in peace. Let’s stick with Bonanza and grow with Bonanza, our own town.

“Yes, I know the factory will shut down. But look here. We are 5,968 workers and our families—roughly ten thousand people. How many communities of ten thousand people do you find where everyone is employed by one factory? Look at all the towns of ten thousand that don’t even have a factory. How do these people live? Simple. They live by selling each other goods and services. The shoemaker fixes the shoes of the lawyer who buys his meat from the butcher who has his shop built by the carpenter who buys his nails from the hardware merchant who has his tonsils taken out by the doctor—and so on. Each man has a service or commodity that another man wants. Some are employers, some are employees. Everybody works and makes a living.

“Here we have the ideal setup. Here is a city that was started by us. This is our city. Are we going to let it die? Are we going to walk out on Bonanza and go fight for work in Minneapolis? I say no!

“I’ve talked about this to Mr. Qvistbergholm. He is perfectly willing to let us buy our land and houses. He’ll charge us reasonable rates and give us plenty of time to pay. There’s also a lot of land outside the city that he’ll sell to anyone who wants to farm.

“Now, I’m not asking you to run to Mr. Qvistbergholm and lay your money on the line. I’m not asking you to go into this thing blindly, trusting me. What I want to do is make a scientific survey before we take any action. I want to poll everybody in this town. I want to find out what kind of businesses you would like to go into and how many people each of you will employ. Do you want to start a garage or a bakery or a grocery or a fixit shop or a haberdashery or a barbershop, or what, and how many people, if any, will you have working for you? Next, I want to find out how much money everybody in this town will want to spend for postwar commodities and services and what kind of commodities and services they will spend it for. Will it be for a new car, a new radio, a new roof, a college education, a vacuum cleaner, or what?

“When this poll is finished, we’ll have all the answers. We’ll know whether or not we can keep Bonanza alive. We’ll know how many people will be working at what kind of jobs. We’ll know how much money will be spent for what kind of goods and services. We’ll be able to make adjustments. Say, for example, that six people intend to sell new radios, but that the demand for radios will support only two merchants. Well, then, four of the merchants will go into some other line of business where the demand is greater.

“In other words, friends, we are going to make a blueprint for the future. Are you with me?”

“Yes,” thundered the crowd, and later in the beer tavern and on the stoops of the houses men were saying to their wives, “You damn right. Why go back to Minneapolis and look for work? We can stay right here and be independent. This is our town. He’s got a head on him, that Feinhaut.”

The Bonanza Blueprint Poll, as it came to be called in the press of the nation, was conducted by the ladies of the Parent-Teacher Association. They went about their work carefully and systematically. They asked each resident what kind of business he wanted to go into and how many people he would employ. They asked each family how much money they would spend for postwar commodities and services and what kind they would spend it for. (The names of all those questioned, of course, were kept confidential.) When the ladies had completed their poll they painstakingly tabulated the results, had them printed into a handsome brochure, and turned over the brochure to Mayor Feinhaut.

“Well done, ladies,” he said.

And after he had read the brochure he immediately called another mass meeting.

“Citizens of Bonanza,” he said, “I have here the results of the poll. I don’t mind telling you that I’m flabbergasted. Even in my wildest dreams I didn’t think it would come out this well. Listen:

“The postwar labor force of Bonanza, employers and employees, will be 6,561—593 more than are employed right now!”

There was a spontaneous roar from the crowd.

“Now, listen to these figures,” said Mayor Feinhaut. “New automobiles will be bought by 4,296 families at an average cost of $1,053!

“Five hundred and ninety-two new houses will be constructed at an average cost of $4,068!

“Repairs to 4,794 houses will be made at an average cost of $436!

“Seven hundred and eighty of our people who have decided to farm will buy 780 tractors at an average cost of $926; 780 farmhouses at an average cost of $3,859; 780 barns at an average cost of $1,473; and 780 electric services at an average cost of $325!

“Two thousand one hundred and twenty-five familes will buy refrigerators at an average cost of $157!

“Five thousand one hundred and eighty-four families will buy radios at an average cost of $83!

“Four thousand six hundred and eight families will buy vacuum cleaners at an average cost of $85!

“Oh, friends, I could go on all night telling you how much will be spent on alarm clocks and kitchen canisters and sewing machines and rubber bath stoppers and what not. But I won’t take up your time. Copies of this brochure will be distributed to all of you when the meeting is over.

“There’s just one thing I want to tell you, and that’s the best thing of all. According to this poll, there is going to be a shortage of merchants in every commodity, of practitioners in every service. We are all going to have more business than we can handle!”

Then there was wild cheering from the crowd. Hats flew into the air and people threw their arms about one another. One man rose and proposed that Prosper Feinhaut be given the office of mayor for life, but Feinhaut declined, saying it was contrary to democratic principle. The newsreel men came and the man from Life returned for another story.

And then the war ended and everyone in Bonanza moved back to Minneapolis except Olaf Qvistbergholm.

chapter nineteen

So the Minneapolis central committee (Yetta Samovar, secretary-treasurer) bought Bonanza from Olaf Qvistbergholm for twenty-five hundred dollars—ten dollars down and the rest payable in thirty days—and out to Bonanza moved the first American collective community.

Three weeks later I arrived. Reverently, with a sense of destiny, I walked into Bonanza. I removed my hat and let the wind sweep back my tawny hair as I made my way down the street. How serene was my Bonanza! Sun-bathed and silent, it lay before me. I was thankful that I had arrived in an idle moment. I had expected to come upon a scene of noise and bustle—the clatter of hammers, the whir of scythes, the singing of strong, bronzed workers toiling side by side. That would have been good too, but for my first view I was glad to be able to drink in the place in silence. A churchlike moment.

I walked farther into the town. There would be work for me, I noted with satisfaction. There would be use for my hands here. The tar paper was peeling off the houses. Johnson grass overran the lawns. Here was a broken sidewalk; there a plugged sewer spewed its refuse into the street. This garbage heap would have to be moved, and that fallen telephone pole was a hazard. Yes, I thought happily, there would be a place for me in Bonanza.

Then I saw a resident. He walked down the street in blue denims, his toil-knotted shoulders squared, his gnarled hands swinging freely at his sides. Every inch a worker, I thought, and suddenly I felt a bond of kinship with him that negated formality and I rushed to his side and clasped him in a fierce embrace and kissed his weather-roughened cheek. “Comrade!” I cried hoarsely.

“Ay’m Qvistbergholm,” he said, tearing loose.

“Oh.”

“You’re anudder vun of dem crazies,” he said. “Yesus Christ, dey take twenty acres of barley land and plant Tokay grapes. In Minnesota, Tokay grapes. Yesus Christ. In vun week vines is dead. So dey have harvest festival. All day and all night dey dance in streets.

“Den dey get cow. Yesus Christ. All day long dey milk poor sonofabitch. As soon as one get tired, anudder start milking. Cow finally run out on road and yump in front of truck. First time I ever see cow commit suicide. So dey bury cow and put sign on grave, ‘Hero of Soviet Union.’

“Den dey go out in voods to chop tree. Two men chops. De rest stand under tree and say, ‘How mayestic is yiant of forest!’ Tree falls down. Six more heroes of Soviet Union.

“Den dey go into veaving business. Dey get vun hand loom and vun sheep. Yesus Christ. Vun sheep. Dey shear poor sonofabitch five, six times a day. Sheep finally run to Svift and Company and give himself up.

“And every goddam day is dancing and singing and plays and speeches, Yesus Christ.”

“Where are they now?” I interrupted.

“Some is holding meeting in building over dere. De rest is down by river svimming naked. Come, ve’ll go see. Better dan zoo.”

“No, thanks. I’ll go look in on the meeting,” I said.

I entered the building Qvistbergholm had indicated and there saw Yetta and another girl and two men sitting at a table drinking tea out of glasses. Yetta saw me come in and rose to greet me.

“Come in, comrade,” she said. “I want you to meet my friends.”

She took my arm, but I held back. “Yetta,” I said, “before I am inaugurated into this new world, before I begin this golden experiment, there are a few things I must say. There is much in my heart as I stand here this moment. There is a tumult of emotion striving to be released in words. Language, unfortunately, is a poor vehicle to convey to you that which I presently feel. I could say that I am happy; I could say that I am grateful. Both would be true. True, but hardly adequate.

“For what I feel is more than happiness, more than gratitude. It is a sense of cosmic home-coming—a return to the world, a reunion with mankind. It is a realization, a fulfillment, a flowering, a fruition, a consummation. I know now that I am of humanity. I know that I am, in small, humanity. This being together and working together in common purpose underlines that fact. It is more than a comradeship, more than a brotherhood. It is an identification, a valid empathy. I am inextricably humanity; humanity is irreducibly I.

“No man is an Iland, Yetta, intire of it selfe; Every man is a peece of the Continent, Yetta, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the sea, Yetta, Europe is the lesse, as well, Yetta, as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, Yetta, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore, Yetta, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls, Yetta, for thee.”

“Sure, Asa, sure,” said Yetta. “Now I’d like you to meet my friends. This is Millie de Agnes, Commissar of Folk Dancing. This is Max Stagecraft, Commissar of the People’s Theater. And this is Bertram Lathe, Commissar of Labor. Asa Hearthrug, everybody.”

“Charmed,” I said.

They nodded.

“Have a glass tea?” asked Yetta.

“No, thanks,” I replied quickly.

“You came at a rather crucial time,” Yetta told me. “Our handicraft program isn’t going as well as we expected. We’re trying to solve the problem at this meeting.”

“The trouble is,” said Bertram Lathe, “that we’re all intellectuals. We’ve got to learn to work with our hands. It’s a simple matter of manual training. Let’s learn our jobs and stop talking about the nobility of working.”

“I disagree with Comrade Lathe,” said Max Stagecraft. “I think the trouble has been improper indoctrination. I think that before we begin another work project we must first conduct an educational program. Not until our people are made fully conscious of the issues in the class war will they be able to do their work well. And the way to indoctrinate the people, of course, is through the folk arts. We must have a play.”

“With dancing,” said Millie de Agnes.

“But we’ve already had six plays,” protested Bertram Lathe.

“Obviously that was not enough,” said Max Stagecraft. “Now, I’ve just written a little folk drama that will really bring home the message.”

“I’ve got a new folk dance too,” said Millie de Agnes. “It’s better even than my Pas de Biscuits, Pappy. This is a great pageant with dancers representing each of the United Nations—three for the Soviet Union, of course.”

“Sounds fine, comrade,” said Max Stagecraft. “I may have a little trouble working it into my play. My play takes place in a sharecropper’s cabin. But I’ll figure something out.”

I spoke up. “Excuse me, Comrade Stagecraft,” I said, “but if you should happen to need any help with your play, I’d be glad to do what I can.”

“No, thanks, comrade,” he said. “I’ve got it all done.”

“I just thought I’d ask,” I said. “I know how difficult this writing game is.”

“Particularly plays,” said Max Stagecraft. “The stage is such a limited medium that it’s often very hard to tell your story within its confines. Especially when you have lofty themes like I do. However, I’ve developed a few tricks that come in handy. Take exposition, for example. To some writers it’s such a problem to work in what happened before the action of the play begins. Not me. I’ve got it licked. I hit upon a method a few years back when I wrote a play called Love, and I’ve used it ever since. Love was the story of the failure of the marriage of two people named Max and Vesta Spondooley. By the way, my own name is Max, but I always have people in my plays called Max. False modesty, faugh!”

“What a revolutionary idea,” I said. “I’m afraid I could never do it.”

“As I was saying, I figured out a clever way to work in my exposition in Love. Here’s how I did it. The curtain opened on the living room of Max and Vesta Spondooley. There was nobody in the room and the phone was ringing. Maggie, the Spondooleys’ maid, came in and answered the phone. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘This is the grocery store? Fine. I want to order a few things. We’re having a little dinner party here tonight—just Mr. and Mrs. Spondooley. I guess you couldn’t hardly call it a dinner party, only it’s a special occasion. Their tenth wedding anniversary. Yes sir. Ten years. My, it don’t seem that long. But I guess time goes fast when folks are happy. Or think they’re happy. For in recent weeks I have detected an ominous note around here. Oh, nothing I can put my finger on, mind you. It’s just that everything don’t seem right. A body can tell when things don’t seem right. Just little things. A harsh word. A sharp look. Oh, it’s all forgotten quick enough, but those kind of things never used to happen before. Since that day when they first met in the lift of a loft building, the Spondooleys have been completely devoted. I would say that I have never seen a couple so perfectly mated. They’ve stuck together through good times and bad, through sickness and health, through poverty and riches. And now something vague and obscene has come between them. They don’t realize it yet, but mark my words: this marriage, apparently so perfect, is heading for the rocks. I’ll have five pounds of sugar, a stalk of celery, and a six-pound roasting chicken should be tender.’

“So you see, although the play has scarcely begun, already the audience knows that the Spondooleys have been married ten happy years but now something mysterious is breaking up their marriage.”

“Ingenious,” I said simply.

“In my field,” remarked Millie de Agnes modestly, “I have also contributed a few innovations, not the least of them a ballet performed entirely on bicycles.”

“I still think,” said Bertram Lathe, “that we’ve had enough plays. We ought to go to work. All we seem to be doing is having plays and folk dances and naked swimming.”

“Now, comrade,” said Yetta, “that’s not fair. We’ve had a vineyard and a cow and a sheep and we’ve chopped trees. The people deserve a little relaxation.”

“Especially when it indoctrinates them at the same time,” said Max Stagecraft.

“With dancing,” said Millie de Agnes.

“No,” said Bertram Lathe. “We’ve reached a point where we ought to stop indoctrinating each other. Let’s learn a trade. We’ve got to have workers to keep this place alive.”

“Don’t worry,” said Yetta. “The workers will come in droves when they hear about our experiment. We’ve got to be ready to educate them in the ways of the Movement.”

“With plays,” said Max Stagecraft.

“And dancing,” said Millie de Agnes.

“It’s just possible,” said Bertram Lathe, “that the Party would get more workers if we were workers ourselves. I’m beginning to think we frighten workers with all this indoctrination. I’m not sure that workers want to see class-war plays and dance folk dances and swim naked.”

“Do you really swim naked?” I asked. “All naked?”

“Why, of course, Asa,” said Yetta.

“Gee,” I said. “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“Ha!” laughed Yetta. “Don’t be bourgeois. There’s nothing more natural. Anything natural is good.”

“Of course, comrade,” said Max Stagecraft. “We don’t observe the narrow rules of capitalistic morality. We take our clothes off whenever we want to. If we felt like taking them off this very minute, we would.”

“Let’s,” said Millie de Agnes.

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Yetta, unlacing her bodice.

“I’m getting discouraged,” said Bertram Lathe. “I’m beginning to have doubts about the success of this experiment.”

“Why are you staring at me?” Yetta asked me.

“Am I?” I said. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just that you don’t see many girls wearing union suits any more.”

“I like them,” she said, “although they do present certain problems at times.”

“I was wondering about that,” I confessed.

“Aren’t you going to take off your clothes?” asked Max Stagecraft as he removed his trousers.

“Yes, aren’t you?” asked Millie de Agnes, who was down to her shift.

“It’s not nice,” I said.

“Nonsense,” said Yetta. “The human body is a depository of dignity.”

I looked at her depository of dignity. It was more depository than dignified.

“It lets your pores breathe,” said Max Stagecraft. “Good for your acne.”

“I don’t have acne,” I said.

“Don’t be silly,” said Yetta. “Who ever heard of a communist without acne?”

“I think I’ll resign,” said Bertram Lathe. “I think I’ll go look for a job.”

“Are you crazy?” asked Max Stagecraft. “You know what happened to you last time you applied for a job, when you got in line with those veterans and told them that you were a Civil Service employee during the war.”

“The feathers came off all right,” said Bertram Lathe, “but I’ve still got tar in some inaccessible places.”

“Take off your clothes,” said Yetta. “We’ll try to get it off.”

“No,” said Bertram Lathe. “I’m going.”

He left.

“Good riddance,” said Yetta. “He never really understood the Movement anyhow.”

“Come, Comrade Hearthrug, take off your clothes,” said Millie de Agnes, now mother naked.

“Good God, woman!” I cried. “What’s that?”

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen secondary mammaries before?”

“Of course,” I said, “but always in even numbers.”

“Take off your clothes, Asa,” said Yetta.

“I’m embarrassed,” I said.

“You should be used to being undressed,” said Yetta. “While you were in the Army you must have taken your clothes off thousands of times for small-arms inspection.”

“Well, let’s get on with the meeting,” said Max Stagecraft.

I said, “I’d like to ask something first. When you all have your clothes off, don’t—aren’t—well, are there ever any outbursts of passion?”

“Of course,” said Yetta. “That’s only natural.”

“And what do you do about it?”

“Anything natural is good,” she replied.

“I see,” said I. “You know, it’s a little stuffy in here. I think I’ll take my clothes off.”

“I’ll help,” said Millie de Agnes.

In a moment my garments lay in a shredded heap on the floor.

“Well,” said Millie de Agnes, “do you hear Nature calling?”

I looked at her. I shuddered. “That’s incredible,” I said, pointing.

“Earl Wilson said they had a sort of haunting beauty,” she replied.

“Hey,” said Yetta.

I looked at Yetta. I shuddered.

“Let’s get on with the meeting,” I said. “Comrade Stagecraft, you were talking about plays.”

“Yes,” said Max Stagecraft. He cleared his throat. “Another problem in writing plays is action. Sometimes you have a situation where nothing is happening. People are just sitting and talking. There is a great danger that the play will drag in such a situation, that it will become unbearably static. I’ve solved that problem too. Again, my play Love is an example. In Love I had three whole acts there was nothing but talk. No action whatever. So what did I do? I instilled the feeling of action into this sedentary situation. Thus:

MAX (rising and walking to the fireplace): Darling, do you feel that things aren’t entirely as they should be?

VESTA (dropping her handkerchief and picking it up): How do you mean, dear?

MAX (walking over to the table and rearranging a bowl of flowers): Oh, I don’t know exactly. Things just seem different, that’s all.

VESTA (going over and opening the window): Well, isn’t that natural? Things change in ten years.

MAX (going over and closing the window): Perhaps you’re right. But I somehow thought that the feeling between two people doesn’t change, even in ten years.

VESTA (going over and opening the window): Max, are you trying to say that you don’t love me any more?

MAX: Will you leave that God-damn window shut?

VESTA (crawling under the table): You used to like to have the windows open.

MAX (overturning a chair): I used to like a lot of things.

VESTA (leaping over the settee): Max, let’s face it. You don’t love me any more.

MAX (climbing up the portiere): Now, I didn’t say that.

VESTA (somersaulting on the rug): But you meant it, didn’t you?

MAX (diving into the fish bowl): Let me ask you something. Do you love me?

VESTA (hurling an andiron through the window): Max, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

“So for the remainder of the play they discuss the matter, never sitting still for an instant. Running, jumping, leaping, falling, rolling, turning, they agree that their ten years have been happy ones, that they can find no fault with each other, and yet—But let the curtain line speak for itself:

MAX (swinging from the chandelier): Vesta, I’m afraid the magic is gone.

VESTA (clawing off the wallpaper): Yes, Max, the magic is gone.

CURTAIN”

“All right,” said Yetta. “We’ll start rehearsing Comrade Stagecraft’s new play tomorrow. We’ll open Saturday night.”

“Do you hear Nature calling yet?” Millie de Agnes asked me.

“In God’s name, woman,” I said, “will you stop pointing those things at me?”

chapter twenty

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS

A new play by Max Stagecraft

Produced and acted by the Bonanza People’s Theater

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

MAX POVERTY—a sharecropper

MARY ELLEN—his wife

SWEET ALICE—their idiot daughter

NO-NOSE NOONAN—her fiancé

FRANCIS X. PLOITER—the landowner

THE STRANGER

BALLET DANCERS, OTHERS

SCENE

The cabin of Max Poverty.

As the First Act curtain rises MAX and his daughter SWEET ALICE are lying on the floor horsing. MARY ELLEN is bent over a black cast-iron pot on the wood stove.

MARY ELLEN: Hurry and finish horsing, Max. Your vitamin-deficient supper is almost ready.

MAX (looking up): Were we not oppressed by a capitalistic exploiter, we would have abundant, healthful food.

SWEET ALICE: Talk or horse, one.

MAX: And our poor daughter might be a credit to her community instead of a hapless, passion-ridden dolt if we had but had ample money for proper medical care.

MARY ELLEN: I don’t know, Max. I don’t trust doctors. That, of course, is due to my ignorance, which, in turn, is the result of being forced to leave school at the age of six to wrest a meager living from this nitrogen-poor soil.

SWEET ALICE: Here comes No-Nose. He’ll horse with me. Enter NO-NOSE, whose name is well deserved.

NO-NOSE: Howdy, Mr. Poverty. Howdy, ma’am. Howdy, Sweet Alice.

MAX: Talk plainer, boy. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.

NO-NOSE: Would that I could, Mr. Poverty. And I would have could had I had money to procure green, leafy vegetables in my childhood and stave off the dread pellagra that caused this nasal havoc.

Because of NO-NOSE’S condition, his preceding speech and all that follow are unintelligible. All that can be comprehended is a rushing air sound: “WHOOSH.”

SWEET ALICE: Horse with me, No-Nose.

MAX: Yes, son. Spell me for a while so I can get something to eat. Although there is no nourishment in this food, it fills one’s stomach.

MAX rises and NO-NOSE takes up horsing with SWEET ALICE.

MARY ELLEN: It will be nice when summer is here and Sweet Alice can horse outside. There’ll be more room in the cabin, and then perhaps we can get that spinet you promised me in 1903.

MAX (ladling himself a plate of soy paste and sitting down): And I mean to get it for you, Mary Ellen. As soon as I can get a few dollars ahead, you’ll have it.

MARY ELLEN: What a fund of comfort and satisfaction the spinet will be to me, even though I have lost all my aesthetic values in this grueling life to which I have been subjected by the exploitation of moneyed interests.

MAX: I wish you would wash the pot, Mary Ellen. This soy paste is full of rust.

MARY ELLEN: You know, Max, how primitive our sanitary facilities are, even though a scarce half mile away is the home of our landowner whose bathroom has been featured for three years now in the annual plumbing issue of Better Homes and Gardens.

NO-NOSE: Whoosh. (Meaning, “That is only an example of the incidence of luxury beside squalor which characterizes this civilization.”)

MAX: Rust or not, I must eat. Some more soy paste, Mary Ellen.

MARY ELLEN: There is no more, and moreover, I can get no more because the crossroads store that is owned by our landowner as well as all other real and personal property on this hectare will no longer extend us credit, and you well know that we cannot purchase for cash.

MAX: We are undone.

SWEET ALICE: I am tired. I think I will sleep now and have a dream sequence.

SWEET ALICE sleeps, and seventeen ballerinas, of whom she is dreaming, enter stage right and perform Millie de Agnes’s spirited “Entrechat de United Nations.” At the conclusion of their dance they form a hammer and sickle stage left, and a man and woman singer come forward. They sing this song:

GIRL: What can a girl do?

Not knit one and purl two

Or sit in a bar like a drunk cur.

What is a lass for

But to fight in the class war,

To grapple, to struggle, to conquer?

MAN: Is it a man’s place

To fill up divan space

Immobile as though he had rickets?

Where is his honor?

His mother is yon whore

If he doesn’t march with the pickets.

TOGETHER: Masculine and feminine,

We could pull the Bremen in

If we all would join hands together.

Wipe out all capital.

Let us now map its fall

And go marching forth in clear weather,

Clear weather,

Clear weather,

And go marching forth in clear weather.

The man and woman singer step back and the ballerinas dance another chorus and then exit stage right, some reluctantly.

SWEET ALICE (waking): Ah, I feel refreshed. Let’s horse, No-Nose.

NO-NOSE: Whoosh.

MAX: What a pass we have come to, facing starvation while in his house 2,630 feet away, or a trifle under a half mile, our landowner grows sleek on otter haunches and all manner of table goodies.

MARY ELLEN: If only we had a spinet so that we could starve in a shabby-genteel manner. But even that distinction along with all others is denied us.

MAX (passionately): Cursed be our landowner, Francis X. Ploiter, and cursed be the archaic socio-economic system that allows such as him to erect a temple of oppression on the traumatic backs of such as us.

MARY ELLEN: Shh, Max. I hear him coming.

Enter FRANCIS X. PLOITER stage left. There is no door here; he simply kicks down the wall. He strides into the room and slashes MAX and MARY ELLEN across the face with a riding crop. He sees SWEET ALICE on the floor and kicks NO-NOSE aside and proceeds to horse with her.

PLOITER: See what power I wield over you? Before your very eyes I take my pleasure with your daughter.

MAX (aside): That’s one on him. So does everybody else.

PLOITER (standing up): Now, my loathsome churls, I have news for you. You are being evicted. You owe me a year’s rent and I am throwing you out. I have picked this day to dispossess you because I am advised by the U.S. Weather Bureau in Winston-Salem that rapidly falling temperatures accompanied by snow flurries are due before sundown.

SWEET ALICE: Come back and horse, mister.

PLOITER: You have thirty seconds to clear out, and if you try to take anything with you, including the clothes on your backs, four bailiffs are waiting outside to clap you in irons.

SWEET ALICE (frantically): For God’s sake, somebody come horse with me. Pa, No-Nose, somebody.

MAX: You go, No-Nose.

NO-NOSE: Whoosh.

NO-NOSE horses with her.

PLOITER: Fifteen seconds now.

MAX: This is it. Mary Ellen, can you carry Sweet Alice and No-Nose?

MARY ELLEN: I reckon.

PLOITER: Eight seconds.

MARY ELLEN lifts SWEET ALICE and NO-NOSE. They all start for the door, speeded by vicious cuts about the rib case from PLOITER’S riding crop. Suddenly, as they are almost in the doorway, THE STRANGER enters.

STRANGER: Just a moment. Who is Francis X. Ploiter?

PLOITER: I am. Who are you?

STRANGER: (pulling a gun from his tunic and killing PLOITER): I am the people’s commissar for this district. The Communist party seized control of the government in a bloodless coup at ten twenty-five this morning. You are now living in the People’s State. A representative of the Bureau of Bountiful Living will be here shortly and provide you with food, clothing, and health-giving medicaments.

MAX: Oh, happy day.

STRANGER: There will also be a spinet for you. Now I must go and ameliorate the equally deplorable conditions among your neighbors. (Exits.)

SWEET ALICE: Now I will be cured of this unrelenting impulse to horse and go to sociables like a normal American girl.

NO-NOSE: And I won’t say whoosh all the time.

MAX: How fine it is to live in the People’s State. What joy there is in the people’s movement, joy in communal labors, joy in sharing the fruits of toil, joy in the folk arts. Strong, bronzed people working side by side, singing as they work, clapping one another on the back with simple heartiness, dancing madrigals in the village green on feast days.

MARY ELLEN: How my heart sings as I march triumphantly up the people’s way into the sun.

There is a knocking at the door.

MAX: That would be a representative of the Bureau of Bountiful Living with food, clothing, and health-giving medicaments.

MARY ELLEN: And a spinet.

MAX: Come in.

He comes in and says:

Ay’m not representative from Bureau of Bountiful Living and Ay got no food and no spinets, w’atever in hell dat is. Ay’m Qvistbergholm and Ay got eviction papers. You make thirty-day note for dis place and is thirty days gone and is no money and now, by Yesus Christ, you go.

chapter twenty-one

And as the setting sun cast its rosy hues over Bonanza, I took my leave of Yetta and her friends and the first American collective. “Aloha, Bonanza, aloha,” I cried as I stood on a hill in the middle distance watching Qvistbergholm and three deputy sheriffs herding the residents out at gun point.

Unrewarding as it had been, I did not regret the time I had spent in Bonanza. I have a deep-seated belief that anything that happens to you, no matter how bad, is a good experience. You learn from it. For example, once when I was digging for angleworms on our pasture at home, I was kicked in the head by a horse. This was a good experience, because I learned not to dig for angleworms when there are horses about, and since then I have never been kicked in the head by a horse while digging for angleworms. Of course I have been kicked in the head by horses on numerous other occasions, but never for the same thing twice.

After Bonanza I decided that I would no longer strike out by myself in my efforts to find my postwar position. There was no need for a man to try it alone. After all, there were various government agencies which had been established to aid returned servicemen. A grateful America was turning all her talents to finding security and opportunity for those who had preserved her. Why should I not take advantage of these agencies? Was it not my due?

So I went to the Veterans’ Administration, where I was sent to the U.S. Employment Service, where I was sent to the Selective Service Board, where I was sent to the Veterans’ Placement Service Board, where I was sent to the Retraining and Re-employment Administration of the Office of War Mobilization, where I was sent to the Veterans’ Service Committee, where I was sent to the Veterans’ Administration, where I was sent to the U.S. Employment Service, where I suddenly had a feeling that I was traveling in a circle.

I thought perhaps my confusion could be cleared up if I went to some of the veterans’ organizations for information. So I went to the Society of American Veterans, where they sold me a membership and a green uniform with yellow piping on the pants. Then I went to the Council of Ex-Servicemen, where they sold me a membership and a pink uniform with white piping on the pants. At the American Veterans’ Congress they sold me a membership and red uniform with green piping on the pants. At the Ex-Servicemen’s League they sold me a membership and a Zouave uniform with no piping on the pants, and at the American Veterans’ Mobilization they sold me a membership and a long fuchsia tunic, no pants. The Association of U.S. Ex-Servicemen sold me a membership and an off-white uniform with cudbear piping on the pants. At the Benevolent and Protective Order of Veterans they told me that they were about to disband so there was no use to buy a membership, but they sold me three thousand fourragères which they had been unable to dispose of.

I put on all my uniforms and walked colorfully down the street. Turning a corner, I saw a long line of men attired as I was. They stood in front of a building, motley and multihued, their eccentric striping garish in the afternoon sun.

“Looks like a zebra derby,” said a policeman standing beside me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Zebra derby,” mused the policeman. “Say, that would make a swell title for a book.”

But I wasn’t listening. I walked over to the end of the line to question one of the men, but before I could ask him anything he said, “That’s right, Mac. We all been through the mill too. But maybe we’ll get somewhere now. This is a new place, the Co-ordinator of Veterans’ Affairs. Get in line.”

I got in line with my fellow veterans, and it was good. We talked of old campaigns and repeated tales of feats heroic and comic. Turning to the present, we griped about the food we were getting at home. Then we talked of work and jobs.

“My name is Jones,” said a man whose name was Jones, “and the first thing I did when I got back was to tell my old boss what he could do with my old job. I didn’t risk my neck fighting this war so I could come back home and work in a grocery store. What lousy, backbreaking, feet-destroying work. And those customers! Jesus, those customers! Addled budget shoppers who think quantity buying is the highroad to economy; when carrots are six cents a bunch, they ask shrewdly, ‘Four for a quarter?’ Impoverished spinsters who claw through your wares looking for something a canary will like that they can eat too. Misers who lurk outside the door until you’re ready to close and then rush in, cast a disdainful look at your vegetable stand, and say, ‘You’ll have to throw all this stuff out in the morning. I’ll give you a nickel for the lot.’ Doubting Thomases who, whatever you show them, say, ‘Let’s see what you got in the back room.’ Food faddists who pester you into ordering twelve dozen cans of goat’s whey and then drop dead of malnutrition before they buy the first can. Nibblers who eat their way through a case of bing cherries while closely supervising the selection of the nickel’s worth of tomatoes they ordered (‘Not too ripe, not too green, no spots, and perfectly spherical’). Feelers who bruise the pears, crush the peaches, mash the cantaloupe, and even raise welts on the Hubbard squash. Rascally children who throw their grocery lists down a sewer on the way to the store, come in and buy four dollars’ worth of Hershey bars, and then go home sick and besmeared and swear to their mothers that they gave you the grocery list. Sanitation fanatics who make you wash your hands in a forty-per-cent lye solution and spray you with D.D.T. before they let you wait on them. Great strapping wenches who ask you to carry a bag of potato chips out to their cars four blocks away. Puffy-eyed newlyweds who reel in in the morning and urgently order protein-loaded foods to keep up their husbands’ strength.

“No sir,” said Jones, “that’s not what I was fighting for.”

Now spoke up another, Smith, who said, “My sentiments exactly. The first thing I did when I got home was to tell my old boss where to stick my old job. I’m through working on newspapers. Besides working sixteen hours a day and being stalled off with wrestling-match tickets every time I asked for a raise, I worked for a city editor who was an out-and-out maniac. He was unhinged. He thought Time magazine was the ultimate in journalism. He believed that all news should be written as Time writes it. Every noun, he said, must be modified with two adjectives. I used to have to write a simple news story like this:

“‘Writhing, pain-racked Madeleine Besom, wife of effusive, balding John Charles Besom, both of 1426 long, shady Ashland Avenue, gave birth this bleak gray morning to a yowling, slack-jawed son at six-story, iodoform-reeking Mercy Hospital. Gap-toothed, endemic Dr. Milton Hilton delivered the child with the aid of a gleaming, prehensile forceps.

“‘Besom is in the seasonal, uncertain holly-wreath business. Mrs. Besom, before their unpretentious, well-attended wedding, was hot-eyed, unmarried Madeleine Sputum of humid, bustling What Cheer, Iowa.’

“No more of that,” said Smith, “for me.”

Then a man named Green, an upholsterer, said that he was through with upholstering and had told his old boss what to do with his old job. Likewise Black, a bank teller, was through with bank telling, and Gray, a cobbler, was through with cobbling, and White, a plumber, was through with plumbing, and Blue, a sexton, was through with bell ringing, and all of these had told their old bosses what to do with their old jobs.

I said nothing, but I made a mental note that if I were ever faced with unemployment, I knew a very unlikely place to look for jobs.

The line moved slowly forward.

chapter twenty-two

A newsboy went by selling papers, and it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t read a newspaper since my discharge from the Army. I bought one from the boy. Now that the war was over, I thought, what were the newspapers printing on the front page? Instead of war news, I supposed, were proceedings of the United Nations Security Council, news of the diplomatic world, dispatches from foreign parliaments, and other such accounts. For in this shrinking world, now united for peace as never before, events in neighbor nations were of prime interest to Americans, and newspapers, which had kept our people so well informed during the war, would now, I thought, perform a like function in peace.

I looked at the front page.

The headline said: HUNT CONTINUES FOR BEAVER PELT KILLER, and here is the story that followed:

Jacques le Strap, the crazed cook of Otter Haunch, Saskatchewan, was still at large today, but Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials promised an early arrest.

Le Strap fled from Otter Haunch three days ago after murdering his employer, Jean-Batiste de Horn, a trapper, and de Horn’s common-law wife, Formidable Reynaud, in their bed. Le Strap took with him six dollars’ worth of valuable beaver pelts.

It is believed, however, that robbery was not the primary motive for the crime. For days before the murder, le Strap, who dabbled in occult sciences, had been telling the villagers of Otter Haunch that he had had a divine command to murder de Horn and Miss Reynaud. At this the villagers only laughed and slapped their thighs, crying, “Crazy old Jacques!”

Mackenzie Oncocken, chief of the Otter Haunch Mounted Police Constabulary, said to reporters yesterday, “Don’t worry. We’ll get le Strap. The Mounted Police always gets its shrdlu.”

The rest of the front page was filled with a kidnaping in Guatemala, arson in Trans-Jordan, adultery in Tierra del Fuego, breaking and entering in Monaco, sodomy in British Somaliland, embezzlement in Swat, and rustling in New South Wales. In addition there was a photograph of firemen removing a kitten from a tree in front of 419 Locust Street, Plentywood, Montana.

I turned the page and looked inside the newspaper. An ad caught my eye:

Having contributed in no small measure to the final defeat of our insidious enemies … LUCKY STRIKE GREEN IS BACK FROM WAR.

Another ad said:

After all that Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer did during the war to keep up your morale, you’d sure have to be an ungrateful sonofabitch to stop drinking it now.

Another ad said:

DON’T GET GAMY NOW THAT HE’S BACK …

All through the war we asked you to buy our perfume so that you would be fragrant when he came home.… Just because he’s back now, you don’t have to go around smelling like a polecat … keep buying and using …

HELOVA HOT NUIT PARFUM

This ad brought a tear to my eye:

DEAR G.I. JOE,

I waited for you. It was lonely and the days were long and the nights were without end. But I waited—faithfully.

Now you’re home. Your return is all the reward I ask for my long vigil. I want nothing more.

But there is something I think you will want for me. You fought the war and defeated our ghastly enemies so that you could come home and find me the same as I was when you left me. And you did find me that way. Now keep me that way—with PARD, the only dog food containing riboflavin.

All my love,

ROVER

I turned to the classified-ad page and read this ad:

FOR RENT: twelve-room apartment, three bathrooms, swimming pool, completely furnished including linens. Maid service provided. No lease required. Children allowed. Pets permitted. Keep chickens if desired. Wild parties encouraged. Rent $20 a month but will take less. Call Nestor 4767 any hour of day or night. Don’t worry about waking me.

The housing shortage must be letting up a little, I thought as I turned to the travel and resorts section. I read this ad:

FOR GOD’S SAKE, WON’T SOMEBODY COME TO MIAMI BEACH? Honest, fellows, we didn’t mean to treat you bad during the war. It was just war nerves, see? Just war nerves. We’re really swell when you get to know us. Why not let bygones be bygones? Come on down to Miami Beach. Let’s get somebody in the hotels besides chambermaids.

THE MIAMI BEACH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

I turned to the editorial page and read this editorial:

J’ACCUSE!

The guns of war are still. Everywhere men at peace are quietly working, building, planning, making a new life. Freed from the war-born need to think in terms of armies and nations, men are once more devoting all their thoughts and energies to private pursuits.

That is natural. It is natural that each man should concentrate on his own life and his own business.

It is natural, but it is not altogether good.

For there are those among us who lay in wait for times of civic indifference. They wait for a moment when the people are preoccupied with their own personal affairs. Then they strike.

Such a situation is now with us. This newspaper means to put an end to it.

This newspaper believes that its function is to be a watchdog for the little man, to protect his rights; to seek redress for his grievances.

That is our mission, and we accept it with pleasure. We love the little man. God, how we love the little man. The littler he is, the more we love him.

That’s the way it’s been from the beginning, and we guess that’s the way it always will be. Sure, some people call us stupid. “Why don’t you get wise to yourself?” they say. Why, only last week a vested interest came in and took a cigar out of his vest and said, “Why don’t you get wise to yourself?” We just shrugged and turned a Gioconda smile on him. No use to explain to the likes of him how we felt about the little man. He wouldn’t understand.

Well, that’s the way it is. It’s that way, and that’s the way it is.

But we digress. We were deploring a deplorable situation that has lately arisen because peace had lulled the people to indifference. This newspaper, thank God, was not lulled. Alert and straining at the leash like the little man’s watchdog that we are, we have uncovered this sink of municipal iniquity. And, that the little man might know, we mean to expose it here and now.

We refer to the flagrant nepotism in the office of the city poultry inspector.

This newspaper opposed the appointment of Louis Leghorn as chief poultry inspector from the beginning. To be sure, we never printed anything about Leghorn in our paper, but, if you will recall, at the time of Leghorn’s appointment our editorial columns were crowded with entries in our “My Biggest Fishing Thrill” contest. However, if any of you had taken the trouble to phone us, we could have told you then that Leghorn was not the man for the job.

Leghorn’s appointment was an out-and-out payment for a political debt. Leghorn had supplied bunting for Mayor La-Ganglia’s election-campaign rallies. [Photostatic copies of Leghorn’s canceled bills for the bunting may be found on the facing page, unless Walgreen’s decided at the last minute to take an eight-column ad instead of a six.] Leghorn was appointed as a reward for the bunting.

Well, let’s be realistic. This type political deal is common enough, and sometimes it even turns out to be a good thing. A man is appointed to a job about which he knows nothing, so he gets himself some competent help, and the office runs smoothly.

But do you think Leghorn got himself some qualified assistants? He should live so long.

Who do you think the deputy poultry inspector is? None other than Edna Leghorn, by a strange coincidence wife to Louis Leghorn. Mrs. Leghorn brings to her job twenty years’ experience—as a night clerk in the Fireproof Hotel.

Who is the new director of pinfeather research? One Sam Leghorn, out of Edna Leghorn by Louis Leghorn. Sam was last employed at the jute mill of the state penitentiary.

In charge of wings and drumsticks is Max Leghorn, brother of Louis Leghorn, whose previous occupation was posing for W.C.T.U. posters. The gullet and craw division is under the able supervision of Quintus Leghorn, another brother. Alfred Leghorn, ditto, runs the liver and giblet division. Quintus and Albert drove taxis before this job. The coxcomb division is headed by Morris Nidrick, brother-in-law, previously a mechanical-doll salesman.

We could go on and tell you more about the nepotism in the poultry inspector’s office. We could fill columns with the list of Leghorn kith and Leghorn kin who are now inspecting poultry at your expense. But there is no need to continue.

We have sounded the alarum, little man, for which we ask no thanks. It was nothing more than our duty. Now it is up to you.

The war for freedom has ended, but the war goes on. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. This newspaper will continue to expose malfeasance in high places, no matter what the cost. God helping us, little man, we can do no other.

chapter twenty-three

While I was reading the paper the line moved forward. By the time I was through with the paper most of the men in front of me had already gone into the office of the Co-ordinator of Veterans’ Affairs and come out. Jones, the ex-grocer, came out with a job in a grocery; Smith, the ex-reporter, came out with a job on a newspaper; Green, the ex-upholsterer, came out with a job as an upholsterer; Black, the ex-bank teller, came out with a job as a bank teller; Gray, the ex-cobbler, came out with a job as a cobbler; White, the ex-plumber, came out with a job as a plumber; Blue, the ex-sexton, came out with a job as a sexton.

Now I was in the Co-ordinator of Veterans’ Affairs’ office, and there was only one man ahead of me. I could hear him talking to the Co-ordinator as I sat waiting in the anteroom.

I heard the Co-ordinator say, “Now, as I understand it, you want your prewar job back.”

“Yes,” said the veteran. “The G.I. Bill of Rights says that I can have my old job back if I want it, and I want it.”

“To be sure,” said the Co-ordinator, “but your case isn’t as simple as all that. Remember, the law states that in order to have a claim on your old job you must have been a permanent employee. Now, my records show that you were hired at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works to replace one Sven Aslaksen. Aslaksen later was drafted. So Aslaksen has first call on the job, and he was here this morning and said he wanted it.”

“He’s a liar,” said the veteran. “It’s true that I took over Sven Aslaksen’s job at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works, but he took over the job from me in the first place. You see, I was working at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works when I heard they were giving fifteen-minute rest periods every hour over at the Flour City Gunpowder Company. So I quit my job at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works and got a job at the Flour City Gunpowder Company. Then when I found out that the Minneapolis Ordnance Works was giving outboard motors to any employee who worked a week without being absent, I quit my job and went back to work there. Meanwhile Sven Aslaksen had quit his job at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works and gone to work at the Gopher Cast Iron Foundry when he heard that they were showing movies during lunch hour. So I took over Sven Aslaksen’s job, which was my old job in the first place.”

“Yes, I know all that,” said the Co-ordinator. “But before you first got a job at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works, Sven Aslaksen had been working there. He quit to take a job at the Northern Armament Corporation when he heard that they had put in hostesses. So when you came there, you got the job that Sven Aslaksen had just quit.”

“I know that,” said the veteran, “but I was working there before he got the job that he quit to go over to the Northern Armament Corporation. I was working at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works first. I quit my job to go over to the Grainbelt Tank Armory, where I heard that there was soda pop in the drinking fountains. Then Sven Aslaksen took my job. Then I heard that the Minneapolis Ordnance Works was giving free flying lessons to employees, so I quit at the Grainbelt Tank Armory and went back to the Minneapolis Ordnance Works. Meanwhile Sven Aslaksen had quit and gone over to the Northern Armament Corporation. Then I quit and went to the Flour City Gunpowder Company, and Sven Aslaksen came back to the Minneapolis Ordnance Works. Then I quit at the Flour City Gunpowder Company and went back to the Minneapolis Ordnance Works where Sven Aslaksen, meanwhile, had quit and gone to the Gopher Cast Iron Foundry. Then we were both drafted. But I still had the job at the Minneapolis Ordnance Works before he did.”

“Well, I guess you did,” agreed the Co-ordinator. “But it doesn’t make any difference anyhow. The G.I. Bill of Rights says you can’t get your job back if ‘conditions have so changed as to make it unreasonable or impossible,’ and the Minneapolis Ordnance Works has gone back to making bottle caps with their original three employees. So I guess you’re out of luck. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“Oh, you make me sick,” said the veteran.

“Sick?” asked the Co-ordinator excitedly. “You say you’re sick. That’s just fine. Orderly, take this man to the Veterans’ Hospital immediately.”

While the man was carried out, kicking and screaming, to the Veterans’ Hospital, I entered the Co-ordinator’s private office.

“How do you do?” he said, rising. “My name is Rodney Unctious and I’m here to help you. We owe you boys a great debt—a great debt. Just tell me what you want and I’ll see that you get it.”

I brushed aside a tear.

“Would you like to start a small business?” asked Rodney Unctious. “We can lend you half of your capital up to two thousand dollars. The other half of your capital you will have to borrow from a bank. We want the banks to have a little business too; it’s the least we can do for them after the way they served the Home Front during the war. Never a murmur of complaint. No sir. You would have been proud of our banks, son, proud.”

“I don’t want to start a small business, please, sir,” I said. “I hate small businesses.”

“Then it’s a job you want,” he said, his face falling. “All right, where did you work last?”

“No place,” I said.

“Then you’re not claiming a prewar job?” he asked, brightening.

“No sir.”

“You want a new job, then?”

“I want,” I cried, “to fill my place in the new civilization, to secure my niche in the millennium, to take up my torch in the bright parade of humanity toward the Utopia that is at hand.”

“I see,” he said. “Now, what kind of work would you like to do?”

“That in which I can best serve my nation and all humanity,” I answered simply.

“Hmm,” he said. “What kind of work have you done before?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“A little farming.”

“Fine!” he exclaimed. “We’ll place you right away. Back to the land, eh, son? The sturdy, simple things. Ah, how I envy you. You’ve made a wise choice, young man.”

“You can’t keep me down on the farm,” I said. “I’ve seen Paree.”

“Oh. Let me see, now.” He looked through some papers on his desk. “Here’s a job as a cook in Otter Haunch, Saskatchewan. Interested?”

“No,” I said simply.

He looked through the papers some more and then shoved them aside. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Oh,” he said unhappily. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any college?”

“A year at the University of Minnesota,” I said modestly.

He slapped the desk. “Young man,” he exclaimed, “it’s back to college for you! And not a penny will it cost you. No sir. You’ll have tuition paid and sixty-five dollars a month to live as hilariously as you like. We haven’t forgotten our obligation to our dear veterans. No sir. What do you say, son? Will you go back to college?”

I nodded wordlessly, not trusting myself to speak. Then suddenly I could not contain my emotions and I fell to the floor, tears of gratitude pouring from my eyes.

In a moment the orderly had grasped my legs and was dragging me out.

“No, no,” said the Co-ordinator. “Not to the Veterans’ Hospital. This one goes to college.”

chapter twenty-four

THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA!

How fine it was to set foot again on the campus of my alma mater! Joy exploded inside me like a rocket. So great was my elation that I threw myself to the turf and rolled over and over on the green blanket of awnless brome. (It should be pointed out here that this demonstration of ecstasy occurred in front of the Mechanical Engineering Building. That is the only place on the campus where awnless brome grows. Most of the other grass at the university is bearded fescue, save for a smallish patch of dwarf poa in front of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, which was planted in honor of a Hawaiian dwarf named Edgar Allan Poa who served honorably as bursar of Sigma Alpha Epsilon from 1930 to 1933. At one time there was also a sizable tract of shama millet near the library, but this disappeared, quite unaccountably, in 1933. An investigation was ordered by the state legislature, but before the investigation was even under way a Republican landslide swept all incumbents out of office and the shama millet disappearance was forgotten in the commotion over an alien exclusion act that the new legislature passed. The Hawaiian dwarf, Poa, incidentally, was one of the first deported under this act. Later, when public opinion forced a repeal of the law, Poa was invited to return to Minnesota, but he declined with dignity, saying, “While I realize that the alien exclusion act was a hasty, ill-considered one and did not reflect the true temper of the people, and while I am without malice toward the residents of Minnesota, I cannot be unconscious of the possibility of a recurrence. My answer, gentlemen, is no.” Poa today operates a papaya-juice stand on Forty-seventh Street off Broadway, where he works on a plank supported by two sawhorses so as to be able to reach the papaya spigots.)

But I digress. I was telling about my delight at returning to the university. Oh, how happy I was! After I had rolled my fill on the awnless brome, I raced light-footed across the Mall and through the colonnades of Cyrus Northrup Memorial Auditorium and out upon the campus, my raven tresses flying in the wind, my inscrutable amber eyes glowing with excitement. I saw eleven young men coming toward me and I could not contain myself. Leaping upon the back of a medical student named Valsalva who was lying on the bearded fescue reading a copy of Haldane and Priestley’s Respiration, I called upon the eleven young men to join me in a cheer for Minnesota. They responded by hammering me into the ground until only my head showed, after which Valsalva told me that they were the University of Iowa football team, up for the game on Saturday.

Quieter now, I continued my tour of the campus. My wild joy upon first gazing on these hallowed acres now subsided to a slower, warmer passion. Now a realization of the goodness of it was upon me. Here was I back from the gore and peril of the war, back to take my place among America’s youth, the clean-limbed hopefuls, the clear-eyed boys and sun-browned girls, the children-become-men whom I could see all about me, easy and casual in conversation, gay, bright, strong, straight. How lightly they bore the burden of America’s future. But I knew as my eager eyes drank them in that underneath their frivolity (how typically American!) they were aware of their trust, conscious of their duties, sensible of their mission. Yet while they felt their responsibilities, they were not afraid of them. They were Americans, by God, and they would get the job done with a laugh and a song.

My native shyness overcome by a sense of ethnic kinship, I loped over and joined a group who were engaged in a lively discussion on the Knoll. “Brethren,” I cried. “Sistren. I am back to take my place among America’s youth, the cleanlimbed hopefuls, the clear-eyed boys and sun-browned girls, the children-become-men. I am Asa Hearthrug returned from the wars.”

“Hi, Asa,” said one of the young men. “Thought any about joining a fraternity?”

“No,” I said, “I haven’t. When I was at the university before the war, I was a member of Alpha Cholera, and although they were all darn swell kids and loads of fun, I hadn’t given any thought to joining a fraternity this time. Coming back to college now, when America is on the threshold of a millennium, fraternities seem a little unimportant somehow.

“I was thinking rather of college as a sort of crucible,” I said, “a crucible for combining and forging ideas, for fashioning a new wisdom that will make America even greater.”

“So you were an Alpha Cholera,” said the young man. “Well, well, well. Isn’t that a coincidence? We’re Alpha Choleras too. My name is Max Active, and this is Kermit McDermott. And these girls are Helene Updo and Wilma Hepp.”

“Charmed,” I said simply.

“Were you a paratrooper?” asked Helene Updo. “I think their boots are so darling.”

“No,” I said. “I was an infantryman. Fought in the battle of—”

“I’m so glad that icky war is over,” interrupted Wilma Hepp. “Now you can get all the scotch you want. There’s nothing I like better than scotch and coke with a scoop of raspberry ice cream.”

“Yum-yum,” said Kermit McDermott.

“I’ll bet you wouldn’t recognize the old Alpha Cholera house any more,” said Max Active. “We’ve got a roof on it now.”

“To me,” I said, “the future of America is in its colleges. Here young people will meet and mingle. Some will come from the wars with practical wisdom hard won on the battlefields. Others who have not been to war will come with bright and shining ideals. There will be an alloying of the two, and the result will be a new source of strength for the new America.”

“We’ve got all kinds of new records, too,” said Max Active. “Arturo Toscanini and his Rush City Four playing “Take Me, Morris, on the Awnless Brome.” Saxe Coburg and his Tooters in “Withdraw, Eric, the Morning Sun Is Nigh.” Herman Woodwind playing “I Bite Your Cheeks, Madame.” And thousands more. Not to brag, but there isn’t another frat house on campus can hold a candle to us.”

“A historic time,” I cried. “A world in concord. Youth, broadened by the lessons of war, marching arm in arm up the gleaming new peaceway.”

“Naturally,” said Max Active, “since you are a veteran and a former member of Alpha Cholera, we will waive the initiation. You won’t have to pay an initiation fee. Of course there will be a waiver fee, which is only slightly higher.”

“What a splendid panorama,” I breathed. “The youth of all the United Nations, millions upon millions, building, planning, realizing—and all together.”

“We’re gonna have a United Nations ball over at the Beta Thigh sorority house Saturday night,” said Helene Updo. “Everybody has to come dressed to represent one of the United Nations. Me, I’m gonna be Russia. I’m gonna wear a pair of kulaks.”

“I think it’s fine you’re going to be Russia,” I said. “It will help to build solidarity between the two nations.”

“I read an article about Russia in the Saturday Evening Post last week,” said Kermit McDermott. “It either said we were or we weren’t going to war with Russia, I forget which.”

“I never read the Post,” said Wilma Hepp. “That long-hair stuff is too deep for poor little me.”

“How fine it is,” I said, “to be back at college, thanks to a grateful nation which is sending me here tuition-free with sixty-five dollars a month yet to spend in any way I like with no man to say me nay. How utterly gratifying to merge my battlefield-matured knowledge with your lively, youthful intelligence.”

“If you join Alpha Cholera right away,” said Max Active, “we can still get you a date to the Beta Thigh United Nations party. You can still fix him up, can’t you, Helene?”

“Sure,” said Helene. “I’ll get him a date with Hermia Holstein, one of our smoothest pledges. You’ll love her, Asa. She’s your type—real intelligent. She’s taking animal husbandry.”

“Speaking of husbandry,” said Kermit McDermott, “there’s a fellow over at the Alpha Cholera house who was born through artificial insemination. Every Father’s Day he sends a necktie to a syringe in Provo, Utah.”

“Ah, the strides of science,” I murmured. “What miracles will not unfold before our eyes in the years ahead? What wonders born of American ingenuity and nurtured by the sun of peace will not be ours to behold?”

“Yeah,” said Wilma Hepp, “they sure got some keen stuff nowadays. I saw a breakfast coat downtown last week that had an electric brazier attached. Gee, it would be marvy to have a fire in your brazier on these cold fall mornings.”

“Have you seen the new reading lamps?” asked Kermit McDermott. “They can read English, French, Spanish, and German. More expensive models can read Russian and Calypso.”

“Come,” I said, “let us examine some burning issues. Forces are at work about us, mighty, deep-running forces that will not be denied. Which way the world—left or right?”

“I’m real interested in politics,” Helene Updo confessed. “I’m going to run for the Student Council in spring. Why, do you know that there isn’t a window stick in the whole sociology department? Maybe it would be easier to just overlook the whole thing, but I guess I’m just a crusader at heart.”

“I know where the window sticks went to,” giggled Kermit McDermott. “We swiped them for the Alpha Cholera initiation last year. We made stilts out of them and put them on the pledges and made them peep into the bedroom of the dean of women.”

“Just an example,” said Max Active, “of the crazy, mad things we do at Alpha Cholera. We’re a regular bunch of nuts. You’ll die laughing after you join, Asa.”

“What problems can thwart us,” I asked, “once we bring them under discussion? We will find the answers to everything. You will speak from the brave heart of youth, and I will temper your observations with wisdom hard won in the theaters of combat.”

“Speaking of theaters,” said Kermit McDermott, “have you kids seen Frankenstein Strangles Hopalong Cassidy over at the Bijou? It’s terrific. Frankenstein and Hopalong are both in love with a sheepherder’s daughter named Leah Lambfry. Hopalong is getting the best of the rivalry, so Frankenstein ambushes him behind a butte and starts to strangle him to death. Hopalong’s horse, Douglas, races into Tucson after aid. He runs into a saloon, neighing frantically. ‘We don’t serve horses,’ says the bartender, and he is about to throw Douglas out when some customers recognize him as Hopalong’s horse. ‘Lovable old Hopalong must be in trouble,’ they say. They organize a posse and follow Douglas back to the butte, where Frankenstein, apparently made sluggish by the sun, is still strangling Hopalong. The monster is apprehended and finally killed after some light fieldpieces are brought up. Then Leah Lambfry comes up and rubs noses with Hopalong. In seventy-five pictures Hopalong has never kissed a girl.”

“I don’t like that kind of picture,” said Wilma Hepp. “I love pictures like the ones with Joseph Cotten. Bro-ther!”

“I’m a Humphrey Bogart gal myself,” said Helene Updo. “Bro-ther!”

“I used to be,” said Wilma Hepp, “but I broke with Humphrey Bogart when I read in Fearless Hollywood Exposés that he had a partial plate.”

“The rugs on the floor at the Alpha Cholera house,” said Max Active, “are attached to rollers like window shades. When you want to dance, you don’t have to spend a lot of time rolling up the rugs. You just give them a yank and they roll right up against the wall. Say! Why don’t we all go over to the house now and do a little dancing? We can sign up Asa at the same time.”

“We’d love to,” said Helene Updo, “but we’ve got a class at four-thirty and it’s after four already.”

“After four!” I exclaimed. “Good heavens! I haven’t seen the veterans’ adviser yet about making out my program. I must run. Let’s meet again real soon and wed my hard, practical wisdom with your bright and shining ideals. Aloha, fellow students, aloha.”

And as the setting sun bathed my new friends in shafts of golden light, I made my way to the office of the veterans’ adviser, feeling warm and good inside, feeling secure and at home, at home at last among the clean-limbed, clear-eyed, sun-browned youth of America, home, home, home.

chapter twenty-five

Hat in hand, I entered the office of Max Ivycovered, one of the staff of veterans’ program advisers. I was at once impressed with Mr. Ivycovered, for he was an impressive figure with his suit of tweeds so luxuriant that there was a covey of grouse in the back pleats, his fluorescent Phi Beta Kappa key, his double-boiler pipe, his English woolen socks with clocks that actually ticked.

“How do you do?” I said. “I’m Asa Hearthrug and I’ve come for advice.”

Mr. Ivycovered sighed. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we might as well get right to work on this nasty problem.”

“Problem?” I asked.

“A nasty problem,” he repeated. “Nasty. How do they expect us to fit you people back into college life? You come back from the battlefields brutalized, narrow-eyed killers. You’re restless. You’re lawless. You crave violence. You’re impatient with the cloistered atmosphere of academic life.”

“To the contrary, sir,” I replied, “I want nothing more than to—”

“Shut up when I’m talking,” he said kindlily. “The ways of civilization are repugnant to you. The tranquillity of books is an anathema. Ideas bore you; theories make you chafe. What can be done with you people?”

“But, Mr. Ivycovered,” I said, “that’s not true. College life is exactly what I—”

“Don’t be silly, Hearthrug. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You listen to me. Long before you came back from the war I was studying this problem. I read hundreds of books on the subject not to speak of thousands of papers and articles in the scholastic journals. As a matter of fact, I did a little paper myself called From Camps to Campi: A Diagnostic Scherzo. It was very well received at the faculty dinner of the agricultural school, and I’m sure that it was no small factor in my being awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Butterfat Enzymes three weeks later. So you see, Hearthrug, I know this problem.”

“Indeed you do, Mr. Ivycovered,” I agreed. “But just the same, you did all your research on the subject before the veterans came home. Isn’t it possible that you could have been wrong?”

“No,” said Mr. Ivycovered.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, what is to be done with me, Mr. Ivycovered?”

Mr. Ivycovered shrugged. “We’ve got to let you go to school, Hearthrug. It’s your right, even if you have been turned into a ravening beast, a bloodthirsty engine of destruction.”

I snarled and kicked over a lamp.

“How can we expect to interest you in the liberal arts?” said Mr. Ivycovered. “How can the humanities and social sciences claim your attention? For you have been schooled in mayhem and uproar, in ferocity and tumult, in outrage and infraction.”

I upset a settee and clawed plaster from the walls.

“All barriers have been stripped from you,” said Mr. Ivycovered. “You demand commotion and frenzy, rampage and fulmination, turbulence and riot.”

I butted my head through a window and set fire to a bookcase.

“Alas,” said Mr. Ivycovered, “and alack. That the university has come to this. Well, we must make out a program for you. How about some courses in English literature?”

“Pap,” I shrieked, demolishing a wastebasket.

“Some sociology or economics, perhaps?”

“Milk and water,” I roared, and hurled a bust of Pallas Athene through the casement upon an old lady walking below.

“History and anthropology? Psychology?”

“Kid stuff,” I bellowed, twisting a metal filing cabinet with my bare hands.

Mr. Ivycovered threw up his hands. “You see,” he cried. “I was right. You have been brutalized. You are a ravening beast. I can do nothing for you. Perhaps one of the other veterans’ advisers can help you. Go into the next office and see Miss Berisha-Faertz.”

Ignoring the door, I kicked a hole in the wall and lunged into Miss Berisha-Faertz’s office.

chapter twenty-six

I crouched before Miss Berisha-Faertz’s desk and coiled to spring at her bodice.

“Stop!” she cried, whipping a revolver out of her tunic. “You must have been talking to Mr. Ivycovered. This always happens. Listen, young man, you’re not a killer.”

“Oh, happy day,” I said, much relieved.

Miss Berisha-Faertz put the revolver back in her tunic. “I’m sorry I had to pull a gun on you,” she said. “It’s just that they’re always so violent after talking to Mr. Ivycovered.”

“That’s all right,” I murmured. “You couldn’t have hurt me anyway. You were holding it by the barrel.”

“Far be it from me to run down my colleagues,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, “but I don’t think Mr. Ivycovered is the right man for the job. He oversimplifies. He jumps to conclusions. He doesn’t have the proper background in psychology to realize what a complex problem you returning veterans are.”

“Honest, lady,” I said, “I’m not a complex problem. I’m no kind of problem. All I want is to go back to school.”

“Nonsense,” she replied. “Don’t try to tell me. I’ve had three semesters of psychology.”

“Oh,” I said, impressed.

Miss Berisha-Faertz took off her trifocals and leaned forward friendlily. “Young man,” she said, “I’m going to rehabilitate you.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” I cried hoarsely.

“First of all,” she said, “we must establish rapport, as they say in Psychology Two. I want you to know that I am your friend and I am going to do my best to help you.”

I climbed up in her lap and laid my head on her bosom, shifting it later to her collarbone, which was softer.

“In order to rehabilitate you,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, “we must delve into your personality. We must probe patiently until we find all the scars that the Army has left upon your subconscious. We must heal those scars, and then we must prescribe a treatment that will make you a useful citizen again. With my vast knowledge of psychology and your co-operation, we shall succeed. You shall take your place in society once more.”

I planted a soft kiss on her collarbone.

“First,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, “let us analyze what the Army has done to you. You must understand, young man, that for the past few years you have been alienated from the world. You have been living in a world of your own—an army world, a world of peril, strife, and sudden death.”

“You said it,” I said. “I remember one night on Okinawa—”

“Don’t try to talk about it, dear schizoid,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz. “As I was saying, you’ve been living in a world of your own. All your thoughts, all your actions, have been conditioned by the Army. The mores of your civilian life have been stripped away; your set of values has been altered. Take your speech, for instance. You have become so used to profanity that it is now second nature with you.”

“Fudge,” I said. “Land o’ Goshen, heck, tarnation, crim-a-nentlies.”

“Not only profanity has crept into your speech,” she said, “but also the peculiar jargon of the Army.”

“Snafu,” I said, “tarfu, fubar, and weft.”

“And,” continued Miss Berisha-Faertz, “Mr. Ivycovered was partly right. It is true that you have been made into a killer. You have been taught cruelty.”

I pulled the wings off a fly.

“But at the same time,” she said, “you have learned to protect and rescue your comrades, to minister to the wounded. You have been taught compassion.”

I put the wings back on the fly.

Miss Berisha-Faertz went on. “You’ve learned fear.”

I trembled.

“You’ve experienced boredom.”

I yawned.

“You’ve known hunger.”

I bit her collarbone.

“You’ve been cold.”

I shivered.

“You’ve been hot.”

I perspired.

“You’ve been homesick.”

I sighed nostalgically.

“Oh my,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, rubbing her hands, “what a fine complex problem you are. What a fine paper I’ll write for the Journal of Educational Psychology when I’m through rehabilitating you. Oh my! Here’s where I get a chance to try out all that stuff I learned in those three semesters.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “everything would work out all right if you just let me go to classes like everybody else.”

“We’ll try everything,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, her good eye aglow. “I’ll make you whole again, have no fear. We’ll try handicraft and community singing and finger painting and tepid baths and maze running. Oh my!”

I slid off her lap.

“Perhaps,” mused Miss Berisha-Faertz, “insulin injections are indicated. Yes, I believe they are. This is a very difficult case. Then there’s that pressure-goosing technique that Oft-Krabbing developed at Purdue. I think we’ll have a go at that too. And Sang-Freud over at Vanderbilt has worked wonders with his thirty-day Ferris-wheel ride. It wouldn’t hurt to—Where are you going, young man?”

“Back home to Whistlestop, lady,” I said. “I know when I’m licked.”

chapter twenty-seven

Railroad traffic had eased somewhat, I noticed as I got on the Cannonball to go back to Whistlestop. There were, in fact, only six people on the train: the engineer, the brakeman, the conductor, two passengers, and a corpse in the baggage car.

“Don’t think for a minute,” said the conductor as he punched my railroad ticket, “that I mind these empty trains. I deserve a rest. I worked myself half to death during the war. And I’m not a young man. As you know, all conductors are eighty years old or more.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve noticed.”

“There was one callow youth of fifty-eight,” he admitted, “who got a job on the Nickel Plate last year by lying about his age. The conductors’ union discovered him, though, when they found him tying his shoe by himself. He’s back calling trains in Chillicothe now.”

“It will be nice to have new coaches on the railroads again,” I said. “Some of the cars they called back into service during the war were awful.”

“Yes,” the conductor agreed. “One of those old cars, incidentally, cost this railroad a lot of money. The passengers took the buffalo rifles off the rack and shot thirty head of white-faced cattle near Blue Earth.”

“Some of the whitest-faced cattle in the United States can be found near Blue Earth,” I said.

“Yes,” said the conductor. “Well, I’d better go back and finish my chess game with the brakeman.”

“Check, mate,” I giggled.

The conductor went out with many a laugh and cheer, and I turned to the other passenger in the coach, a tall, lean man in a black alpaca suit.

“My name’s Hearthrug,” I said friendlily.

“How do you do?” he said. “Have you provided a last rest for your loved ones? Or,” he sneered, “are you the type sonofabitch that would commit cherished remains to potter’s field?”

“Certainly not, sir!” I cried, my color rising.

“Who can tell when he will be called?” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “I am in mind of a gluten factor I knew in St. Paul named Andy Hearty. Great big fellow in the full bloom of health. Always had a smile and a pat on the back for everybody. Strong as an ox. Well, sir, one night Andy came home from work and his wife had a steak dinner waiting for him. ‘Say,’ said Andy, ‘I noticed some mushrooms growing at the foot of the tree in the front yard. They’d go fine with this steak.’ So Andy went out and picked the mushrooms and sautéed them and ate them with his steak. After dinner he went to a party at a friend’s house where he drank and caroused and put lamp shades on his head until three in the morning. Then he went home to sleep, and in the morning he was dead.”

“Sad,” I murmured. “If he hadn’t eaten those mushrooms he’d be alive today.”

“Nonsense,” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “The mushrooms were perfectly all right. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by wearing too tight a lamp shade.”

“Who can tell when he will be called!” I said simply.

“Max Interment is my name,” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “Mortician. Back in St. Paul they call me Max, the Lifelike Embalmer.”

“You do look almost lifelike,” I said.

He blushed modestly. “If you have any moribund loved ones,” he said, “I wish you’d keep me in mind.”

“When I get home, I’ll look to see if anyone is failing,” I promised. “Are you going far, Mr. Interment?”

“As far as Big Arm,” he answered. “I’m delivering the corpse in the baggage car. A beautiful embalming job, if I say so myself. You’d never know he was ninety-seven years old.”

“Was he a railroad conductor?” I asked.

“Bless you, no. This man was probably the most prominent citizen in Minnesota. This is Oliver Horsey.”

“Oliver Horsey!” I exclaimed. “When did he die?”

“Last week,” said Max Interment. “And, by the way, in his death there is contained a lesson for our times, a moral that must guide us always. Would you like to hear the story of Oliver Horsey?”

“Oh yes,” I cried, clapping my hands.

And as the Cannonball chugged through Zigzag, What Cheer, Truce, Sleepy Eye, Reform, Quick, Plum, Meat Camp, Looking Glass, Hardware, Federal, Electric Mills, Embarrass, Deaf Smith, Decorum, Calcium, Cheesequake, Bivalve, and Big Arm (in Minnesota cities are arranged alphabetically) Max Interment told me the moral tale of the life and death of Oliver Horsey.

“Well, sir,” Max Interment began, “Oliver was born ninety-seven years ago, the son of a well-to-do bed-slats manufacturer in Big Arm. After Oliver was born, the doctor told Oliver’s mother that she couldn’t have any more children. Actually she could have had many more children. There was nothing wrong with her. It’s just that the doctor didn’t want her to have any more. He hated obstetrics. Messy, he called it.

“Well, sir, Oliver was an only child, and his mother and father lavished care on him. They took great pains with his diet, feeding him nourishing gruels and scraped liver from white-faced Hereford calves. They dressed him in the finest clothing—pongee blouses and trousers of long-haired pile, stoles of marten and collars of Flemish lace. As he approached his third year, they engaged for him teachers of music, elocution, and interpretive dancing. He had governesses who had worked for the House of Savoy and tutors who had worked for the House of Plaza. Oliver, in short, had nothing but the best.

“But Oliver did not respond as well as his parents had hoped. When he was two years old he put the cat in the bird cage, and before anyone could answer the canary’s frantic cries of ‘Rinso white!’ he was a dead pigeon. When Oliver was three, he cut off his elocution teacher’s index finger with a hedge shears. The next year he strung a wire knee-high across the front lawn, causing a myopic postman named Bert Epistle to fracture both fibulae.

“On his fifth birthday Oliver set fire to the house. The following year he put Paris green in the upstairs maid’s farina. Then he took to forging his father’s name on small checks and later on large checks.

“In his eighth year he stole the family sterling, pawned it, and bought a single-shot Colt .45. Concealing his gun in his tunic, he went home and asked his mother and father to stand back to back so he could see who was the taller. When they obliged, he dispatched them both with one shot. Then he stole a gelding mare named Naomi and rode her all that night until she dropped dead of exhaustion on Ninth and Wacouta in St. Paul. My mortuary, incidentally, is on Tenth and Wacouta in St. Paul, which is not, perhaps, a fashionable neighborhood, but then what do you want in a funeral—froufrou or expert service?”

“Expert service,” I said promptly.

“Of course,” Max Interment agreed. “Well, sir, in St. Paul Oliver intensified his nefarious activities. He started by picking pockets in streetcars, and soon he was stealing streetcars. Then he began holding up filling stations, then banks, then subtreasuries. Next came dope-peddling, white-slaving, gunrunning, and kidnaping. Finally, barratry.”

“Barratry?” I asked.

“Arson at sea,” explained Max Interment.

“Ghastly,” I shuddered.

“Well, sir,” said Max Interment, “all these enterprises were bringing Oliver fabulous sums of money. He hired the architect of Fort Knox to design him a similar cache, but that was soon full to overflowing. Another replica of Fort Knox was built. When that was full, Oliver decided that he couldn’t use any more money. He went into retirement for a short while, but he couldn’t stand the inactivity. So he decided to enter politics.

“Oliver built himself a tremendously powerful political machine. First he got himself elected alderman, then mayor, then state senator, and finally governor of the state. After twelve terms as governor, he resigned to become chief justice of the State Supreme Court.

“Last year he retired from the bench at the age of ninety-six. He took a trip around Minnesota in his private train—the entire train carved from a single enormous cat’s-eye ruby. Everywhere he went thousands of wildly cheering people thronged around him. Parks, libraries, dams, and museums all over Minnesota were named for him. Wherever he stopped, the day of his visit was proclaimed ‘Oliver Horsey Day’ and the citizens stood in the streets all day and all night singing the ‘Oliver Horsey Hymn,’ a pulse-stirring anthem upon which the state’s five hundred leading composers had collaborated.

“Oliver returned from his trip, tired but happy, to spend his waning days in St. Paul in a two-hundred-story house that had been built for him by popular subscription.”

“Where is the moral of the story?” I asked.

“What’s the matter it’s burning by you?” snapped Max Interment. “Here comes the moral. Listen carefully.

“Last week in St. Paul, Oliver Horsey was walking slowly down the street on the way to the Civic Auditorium to receive an honorary degree from the Ingelbretsvold Accounting and Secretarial College. He came to a corner and started to cross the street. Traffic was heavy and he was making his way with difficulty.

“A policeman saw his bent old body struggling through the traffic. The policeman, naturally, recognized him at once and came over quickly to help him. He approached Oliver from the back and took hold of his elbow.

“Oliver, feeling the pressure of the policeman’s hand on his elbow, looked down to see what it was. He saw a blue-clad arm with the insignia of the law on it.

“After a lifetime of lawlessness, Oliver’s reaction was instinctive. He bolted out of the policeman’s grasp and ran. But in his blind flight from the law, Oliver failed to see a Mack truck speeding around the corner. He was instantly killed.

“CRIME DOES NOT PAY!”

chapter twenty-eight

Lovable old Father was waiting for me when I got off the Cannonball at Whistlestop. He shook my hand silently, as a man should, his emotion upon seeing me again betrayed only by a violent gyration of his goatee.

“It’s good to see you again, Son,” he said after we put my luggage on his coaster wagon and were pulling it home. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Tell me, what has transpired here in Whistlestop since my departure?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Father. “Dr. Spleen has written a book called Country Doctor, and Ed Mandamus has written a book called Country Lawyer, and Seth Pestel has written a book called Country Druggist, and Sam Begel has written a book called Country Baker, and Bonar Flushbox has written a book called Country Plumber.

“Otherwise things have been pretty quiet. Oh yes, Sheriff Carzer got shot stealing chickens. And Braunschweiger the butcher got his thumb chopped off by the Bureau of Weights and Measures. And Max Sexdrive was sent to jail for assaulting an airline hostess during a flight to Duluth.”

“High diddle-diddle,” I said.

“And,” continued Father, “Cosmo Learned, the high-school teacher, was fired for teaching that men came from monkeys. And the local Red Cross chapter had a million quarts of plasma left when the war ended, so they dumped them in an irrigation ditch, and now all the farmers in the country are getting blood from their turnips.

“And Luther McFood has written a book called Country Grocer, and Reverend Chalice has written a book called Country Preacher, and Al Nicotine has written a book called Country Tobacconist, and Willie Scales has written a book called Country Weighmaster.

“Otherwise things have been pretty quiet.” “What’s new at home?” I asked. “How’s Mother?”

“She’s fine. She would have come down to meet you but she’s busy plowing the west forty. By the way, remind me to stop at the hardware store on the way home. I got to get her a new yoke. She’s lost so much weight that the old one don’t fit her no more.”

“Why don’t you put my old football shoulder pads on her?” I suggested. “No use to throw away money.”

“You’ve got a head on you, Son,” said Father.

“Just American ingenuity,” I murmured.

“Oh, say,” said Father, “a very interesting thing happened at home a few weeks ago. I was sitting on the porch reading the Marquis de Sade and your mother was out in the yard digging a cistern when a man came walking through the gate. He was carrying a bundle wrapped in a bandanna on the end of a stick and he had a banjo under his arm.

“‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘I am Lindsay Satchel and I have some songs to be traded for bread. First I will sing a medley of three songs, and those will be free. If you want to hear any more, however, they must be traded for bread.’

“So he sang ‘The Strawberry Roan’ and ‘Red Wing’ and ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ and then he said, ‘Would you like to hear some more?’

“‘By all means,’ I answered. ‘Go right ahead.’

“‘You understand,’ he said, ‘that these are to be traded for bread?’

“‘Of course,’ I said.

“So he sang ‘Lord Rendel’ and ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘Death and Transfiguration’ and ‘K-k-katy’ and ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘Good King Wenceslas.’

“‘Would you like to hear more?’ he asked.

“‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘but wait just a minute.’

“I ran in the house and filled nine bottles to different levels with water and I brought them out and said, ‘Go ahead.’

“So he sang ‘The Chisholm Trail’ and ‘Who Put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?’ and ‘Eli, Eli’ and ‘The HutSut Song’ and ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ and ‘I Walk Alone’ while I played an obbligato on the bottles of water.

“‘Would you like to request any numbers?’ he asked.

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you play “A Tisket, A Tasket” and “Sophisticated Lady” and “Who’ll Buy My Violets?” and “The Lorelei” and “The Bam-Bam-Bamy Shore” and “Let My People Go” and “Over the Rainbow”?’

“‘Certainly,’ said Lindsay Satchel.

“‘Just a minute,’ your mother said, and she went into the house and got a comb covered with a piece of tissue paper.

“Then she joined in as I played on the bottles of water and Lindsay Satchel sang ‘A Tisket, A Tasket’ and ‘Sophisticated Lady’ and ‘Who’ll Buy My Violets?’ and ‘The Lorelei’ and The Bam-Bam-Bamy Shore’ and ‘Let My People Go’ and ‘Over the Rainbow.’

“Then he sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to signify that his recital was ended. He put down his banjo and stood waiting.

“Mother went into the kitchen and cut two slices of homemade bread. She smeared the bread thickly with fresh country butter. Then she cut a big slice of ham and laid it on top of one piece of bread. She smeared a gob of horse-radish mustard on the ham. On top of that she put a slice of cheese. Then she took a Bermuda onion and several olives and put them into a bowl and chopped them up finely and put the mixture on top of the cheese. She put a lettuce leaf on top of that and closed the sandwich with the other slice of bread. She brought it out and handed it to Lindsay Satchel.

“He took a bowie knife out of the top of his boot. He opened the sandwich and carefully scraped out the butter and ham and horse-radish mustard and cheese and Bermuda onion and olives and lettuce.

“Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I was singing for bread.’”

chapter twenty-nine

And now, in a world left unchanged by atomic energy and radar and the federating of nations, in a world static despite all that some men could do, I sought the most unchanging, the most static thing of all: Lodestone La Toole.

With eager confidence I made my way up to the knoll where I knew she would be waiting for me. And there she sat, as I knew the way blood knows and bones know that she would be sitting. There she sat on a mound of dead rabbits, placid with the placidness of growing things, calm with the calmness of green hills, receptive with the receptiveness of earth.

Lodestone! The name was on my lips, in my eyes, in my heart, as my legs closed the distance between us. Quickly, quickly now I neared the billowing softness of her, the undulating gentleness of her, the curvilinear Gemütlichkeit of her.

Lodestone! Only yards now separated us. Her perfume, essence of caramel corn, engulfed me, dizzied me, speeded my pulses. Only feet now between us. I could hear the rhythmic breathing of her heavy sleep, the little submucosal snores. She twitched the skin on her flank to dislodge a fly. Inches now between us.

Now I was beside her and she was in my arms, waking slowly under a deluge of kisses.

“Lodestone,” I breathed, “I am returned.”

She opened one eye, then the other. “We’re gonna have a house,” she sighed, and dropped off to sleep again.

“Lodestone! Lodestone! Lodestone!” The name cascaded from my lips, and then the name was gone and there were only sounds, deep-throated yet curiously tender. Then there was a sweet flailing, a dulcet thrashing, a soft probing. Urgency came and controlled desperation and desperate control. Then colors that were heard and sounds that were seen, a chromatic arpeggio, an audible pastiche. Then a settling. A fast settling. A slower settling. A slow settling. Settled.

“We’re gonna have a house,” said Lodestone.

“Well, perhaps not right away, Lodestone,” I said.

“I been reading some more about all the keen stuff they’re gonna have in postwar houses. Like atomic milkmen who explode when they make too much noise and—”

“I’m sure that can’t be right, Lodestone.”

“—and bathtubs with leg irons so you can’t fall down in them and—”

“That’s all very nice, Lodestone, but you mustn’t get so worked up about these things. It might be quite a little while before we have a house.”

But Lodestone, unheeding, was continuing her recital of household wonders, and I decided it would be cruel to shatter her dream. She was such a sweet child, such a faithful comrade. Through all these late troubled years she had stood staunch and true, always available, always waiting here for me on the knoll. Here I had ever found her. However I came to the knoll—in shining hope or blackest despair—she had been waiting, come wind, come weather. Never had I seen the knoll without her.

Never, on the other hand, had I seen her anywhere but on the knoll.

“Lodestone,” I said, “tell me. Have you ever left this knoll?”

“What for?” said Lodestone.

About the Author

Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play co-written with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

Copyright © 1944, 1945, 1946 by Max Shulman

Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2780-9

This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

About the Author

Copyright Page