Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales

by Budd Schulberg

  They moved in before the remodeling was finished. They were having the house repointed to restore the original stone facing, and they were taking old pine planks from the barn to panel a study for Carl. Dormer windows were inserted in the slanting walls of the attic, and Peg had begun to transform it into a wonderland nursery for Benjy, painting a prettified barnyard fresco dominated by a charming owl that smiled down on Benjy protectively.

  Near Benjy’s window was an old maple tree, and it was there that Benjy decided his real Owl was to sleep. Carl had taken him into the barn and told him to look up and see if he could find any owls. He thought he could see them way, way up at the top.

  “See their little white faces?” Carl asked.

  “I want Owl to sleep in the tree by my window,” Benjy said.

  “All right, I’ll tell him,” Carl answered. “If you’re a good boy and go to bed without complaining every night, Owl will watch over you in the big tree by your window.”

  It was an ideal arrangement. Just about the time Benjy started fretting that he didn’t want to go to bed, Carl would say, “It’s time to say good night to Owl.” It was magic. Nothing in any of their child-psychology books worked so swiftly and satisfyingly as Owl. Benjy would begin his delaying action in prayer: “God bless Mommy and Da-da and Grandpa and Grandma and Mr. Milkman and Mr. Postman … and Mr. Moon [“Now you’re getting silly,” Carl or Peg would reprimand him] and Owl.” Then when the jig was up, Benjy would go to the window and peer out. “Good night, Owl,” he would say into the dark.

  Outside, the night was full of country sounds, the oohs and moos of barn life busily settling down for the night, which might easily have been mistaken for Owl’s end of the goodnight ritual. Satisfied, Benjy would climb into bed and fall asleep. At breakfast, before Carl caught the commuter train to the city, Benjy often described his Owl dreams. He would be locked up in a cave by a Bad Giant, and Owl would fly in when the ogre went out to catch other little boys. In Owl’s mouth was a doughnut so Benjy wouldn’t be hungry. Because Owl could see in the dark he was able to show Benjy a secret passageway in the back of the cave. By the time the Bad Giant returned, Benjy was already back safe and cozy in his bed.

  “There’s nothing like the country for a little boy,” Carl boasted to the head of one of the big companies for whom he was laying out a new advertising program. They were lunching in the Oak Room of the Plaza, and subconsciously Carl was using his new country experiences to charm his client. “I mean, in the suburbs all my son could do was read about wildlife. Out at the farm he can actually live with it. You begin to get a feeling of what Thoreau was talking about …” The charm-of-the-country talk was not only a pleasing respite for the client, but it made Carl feel there was some sense to this Madison Avenue martini race.

  During his first days in the country Carl was so green that he had just left the garbage cans out by the kitchen door and expected them to disappear as magically as they had in Scarsdale. But when he got home for dinner Peg described how George and his wife had laughed at their city ways when they stopped by that afternoon. “Out here we have to handle it ourselves,” George had explained. “We throw the slop to our pigs and bury the trash in a trench at the far end of the cornfield.”

  The idea of buying young pigs to fatten with table scraps was a novelty that Carl found himself enjoying. But the disposal trench turned out to be more than he bargained for. The ground was much harder than he had expected it to be, and after hacking at it for half an hour he managed only a shallow wedge barely two feet deep. There, rather proud of this pioneering effort, he deposited the trash. It looked quite neat when covered over with loose earth and then tamped down with the new boots he had brought home the day before from Abercrombie & Fitch. But that evening Peg reported that Bounder, their German shepherd, had dragged discarded chicken bones back to the kitchen door and had scattered shreds of brown paper. Carl went out with a flashlight and studied the mess strewn along the edge of the woods. He had been late getting home because the client had turned down the whole new ad campaign and there had been a long crisis conference in his office. The last thing in the world he needed was to be digging a garbage trench at night. In fact, his associates in the office would never believe it if he told them how he was spending his evenings in the country.

  “Craaw … need any help?”

  Carl was so concentrated on his labors that he had not heard Bassey coming up behind him. Carl had placed his flashlight on the ground at the edge of his crude ditch, and Bassey, in his baggy clothes, big floppy hat, and hip boots rolled to the knee, looked like a magnified long black shadow.

  “Good evening, Mr. Bassey,” Carl said, trying to put that certain country heartiness into it.

  Bassey just stood at the edge of Carl’s shallow trench. “Ain’t much of a hole, is she? Guess you city fellers could use a lesson in old-fashion’ diggin’.” With a brusque gesture Bassey took the shovel from Carl’s hand and stepped down into the hole. “Dig a hole around you—it’s a lot easier on your back.”

  Carl felt the blisters that were beginning to rise on his palms. “Thanks, Mr. Bassey. This is very kind of you.”

  “Craaw.” Bassey dug in silence for a few minutes with awesome efficiency. Then he paused with his heavy foot poised on the spar of the shovel. “Tom Jefferson,” he barked.

  “Pardon?” Carl said.

  “Yessiree. He’s been to this farm. Come t’ see Cap’n Bassey when he was runnin’ for president. Tom helped get him his pardon after the Rebellion. Even loaned him a little money. After a spell Bassey got back on his feet and even got himself elected to Congress. Guess you remember that Tom only beat out Aaron Burr by one vote. So you could reckon it was Cap’n Bassey put him in the White House. Over in the historical museum you c’n see the letter Tom sent my kin. One of the first letters written by the President from his new capital in Washington.”

  Carl liked American history, but never before had he felt it wrapped intimately around him like this. The way Bassey talked, it was no longer mere history, but something altogether personal that had just happened to him. He was beginning to appreciate Bassey. Here was your true early American in the flesh, Carl thought, almost a lost type—actually a throwback to the days when a man could be a thinker, a scholar, a writer and at the same time live by his own muscle, sweat and skill of hand.

  It had been cold, and now a wind was building up. An enormous, shapeless cloud was blacking out the moon. “You better get back to your house,” Bassey said. “The weatherman is fixin’ to spit.”

  “That’s awfully kind of you,” Carl said again.

  Bassey hunched his big shoulders. “Well, we’re neighbors, ain’t we? If we don’t scratch each other’s backs, it’s a pretty sad day.”

  Pleased with Bassey’s quaint phrases and neighborly service, Carl bent into the wind and walked back to his house through the gaunt November field. As he passed his huge, empty barn he heard the hoo-wah hoo-wah of the barn owls. Upstairs he found Benjy already in bed but, as usual, resisting sleep.

  “I want to say good night to Owl,” the child begged.

  “Now, Benjy, dear, you said good night to Owl ten minutes ago,” Peg said impatiently.

  “But I want to say good night to Owl with Da-da,” Benjy insisted.

  “Well, all right, but after that no nonsense,” Carl said, giving in as always. The boy was irresistible in his flannel bunny pajamas. Carl carried him to the window, and Benjy looked out as if he could really see his nocturnal friend. “Good night, Owl,” he said, and then he added something new: “I love you, Owl.”

  Carl felt his eyes going wet. It had been such a perfect country evening. First Bassey’s gesture of warm, neighborly spirit, and now the simple love of a child for his wildlife friend. “It restores my faith,” Carl said to Peg in bed that night. “After a day with those elegant cutthroats who’ve got the ethics of sewer rats, little things like this restore your faith.”

  Carl was late getting back to the
country next evening. B.B.&R. had lost a big account, some eight million dollars’ worth, and Carl had worked very late. Peg met him at the door, nervous and upset.

  “Oh, Carl, I’m glad you’re here. That terrible man has been waiting for you in the den.”

  “Oh?” Carl’s mind was still on his bleak afternoon with the dissatisfied client. “What terrible man?”

  “He came in through the kitchen and tracked mud all the way through the house. You can follow his tracks. He’s such an animal. It’s like having one of his filthy pigs in the house.”

  “Oh, so that’s it—Bassey’s here. Now, Peg, it isn’t anything to cry about.”

  “I can’t help it. That man makes me terribly upset.”

  “Now, darling, don’t get yourself into a mood. Bassey is a character, but he certainly isn’t dangerous. I’m sorry about the mud he tracks in, but the way he lives American history is—”

  “You know what they say about him around here? That he’s crazy. That insanity runs in his family. His mother used to keep a loaded shotgun handy because she was afraid the British were coming to burn her house down.”

  Carl smiled. “Well, you never can tell. They did set fire to the White House not so long ago—1814, to be exact.”

  “I don’t think it’s a bit funny. Did you ever notice his eyes? He gets an awfully peculiar look. From now on I want you to keep your quaint Mr. Bassey out of our house and back in the pigpen where he belongs.”

  Carl never liked Peg when she got this way. She had a childish way of heaping personal blame on him when she was upset with things that neither of them could help.

  “Benjy all right?”

  “He tried to wait up for you but he finally fell asleep. He was simply darling with Owl tonight. He said his usual good night, and then he went back to the window and said, ‘Don’t forget now, if you get lonely out there, you can come in and sleep with me.’ Everytime I get to thinking that living in the country is more trouble than it’s worth, I think of Benjy and Owl and I begin to feel better about everything.”

  “Mmmm-hmmmm,” Carl agreed. “Every kid needs something like that, an old spaniel to boss or an imaginary owl to talk to.”

  “Imaginary? Benjy makes Owl so real I find myself talking to him too!”

  As if in agreement there came the haunting, familiar call from the barn.

  “I love that sound,” Peg said. “It makes Benjy feel Owl is really talking to him. I’m sure he’ll remember it all his life.”

  “Bassey says barn owls are better than cats for keeping rats away.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fun if we could tame one and keep it in the house, like a parrot?”

  Carl smiled again. “Maybe. Meanwhile, let’s see if we can tame Mr. Bassey.” He kissed his wife on the cheek as a sign of truce and went on into the study he had paneled in golden pine lovingly removed from the barn. This time Peg had not been exaggerating. You could follow Bassey’s mud tracks, all right. The man did have a maddening contempt for civilized living. He was a fascinating old character—Carl could see him in one of George’s future plays—if only someone could house-break him.

  In the study Bassey was sitting in Carl’s favorite red leather reading chair, his large, unkempt, bearded head bent toward a book in his lap.

  “Got some good books here,” Bassey said. It sounded as if he were barking angrily at Carl.

  Carl noticed that Bassey had selected Beard’s The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy

  “This fella Beard knows his Jefferson,” Bassey said approvingly. “Mind if I borra this book?”

  It was a rare book, long out of print, and Carl had a thing about lending books. “Well, I never like to …”

  “Neighbors is neighbors, ain’t they?”

  “You came to see me about something?”

  “That’s right. My money.”

  “Your money?”

  “For the slop trench I dug for you. Ten dollars.”

  “Ten dollars! I thought you were doing it out of the goodness—as a neighbor.”

  “Craaw. We’ve got to watch you city fellers. You’ll skin us every time.”

  “Just how do you figure ten dollars?”

  “I put in three and a half hours last night. The rate’s two dollars an hour, after dark. If I was in a union, I’d be getting overtime.”

  “Now, Mr. Bassey—”

  “Then I come back this afternoon and hauled away today’s garbage and dug—”

  “Did Mrs. Aarons ask you to?”

  “She saw me doin’ it and she sure didn’t stop me.”

  Carl felt that captains of industry were easier to deal with.

  “Now if you’ll give me my money, I’ll be getting home to supper.”

  Carl swallowed hard and handed him a ten-dollar bill.

  “You’ve got a fine ditch there,” Bassey barked as he shambled through the living room to the kitchen. “Four foot deep and ten foot long. You don’t have to worry. From now on I’ll look after your garbage.”

  “At those prices we could put in an automatic disposal system,” Carl said. But Bassey didn’t seem to hear him. He just kept on tracking mud through the kitchen to the back door. It was only when Carl stood looking after him that he realized Bassey had taken the Jefferson book with him.

  At the end of the first week Carl had paid Bassey twenty-seven dollars for a few hours of hauling and digging. Carl was sure he was exaggerating about the hours he was putting in. But it was too much for Carl to take care of and still make his morning train.

  “It’s getting ridiculous,” he said to Peg at dinner on Monday of the second week. “In Scarsdale we paid the garbage collector ten dollars a month. Talk about city slickers—he’s the country slicker taking us big-city hicks!”

  “And in Scarsdale the garbage collector didn’t track mud through the living room,” Peg said.

  “And he didn’t borrow my books.” Carl said.

  “Well, you were the one who said he was so fascinating,” Peg reminded him.

  “I hate him,” Carl said.

  “Carl.” Peg had a finicky theory that hate created bile in the stomach and led to ulcers. This was all wrong, Carl thought. If it was ulcers he was in for, he was supposed to get them from those madmen on Madison Avenue. The country stood for Thoreau and peace and inner growth, a sense of being in harmony with the elements. That’s what he liked to tell associates at the office. But Bassey was the black bootprint of mud across the harmonious carpet. If only Bassey would change his clothes! If only Bassey would work for an equitable minimum wage like an accommodating suburban hired hand! Damn Bassey. Bassey was beginning to take up too much of his conscious time. Carl had come into possession of Bassey’s house; but Bassey—unless Carl could find some way of fighting back—was beginning to possess the possessor.

  These troubled thoughts were interrupted by the cries of hoo-wah hoo-wah they had grown accustomed to hearing from the barn. Only this time the sound seemed louder, closer, as if one of the barn owls were actually perched in the two hundred-year-old maple tree that spread toward the house. When Carl went up to say good night to Benjy the little boy was excited by the closeness of the owl sound. “Owl wants to come in,” Benjy said. “I think maybe he’s getting cold outside.”

  “Owl has nice warm feathers,” Carl said. “Owl is fine. He’s been sleeping in the barn all day and now he’s getting up to have his breakfast.”

  “Owl has his breakfast when it gets dark and I have my breakfast when it gets light,” Benjy said.

  “Right,” Carl said. “Now say good night and hop into bed.”

  “Good night, Owl,” Benjy said, his face serious. And then, with his nose against the glass for a hoped-for last glimpse of his friend, he said, “I love you, Owl. Forever and ever.”

  Carl picked the boy up and hugged him hard, carried him to his bed and lovingly tucked him in. “Now get under the covers, like a good little owl.”

  “Owl doesn’t have covers; he has feathers
,” Benjy corrected him. “Nice soft warm feathers. I want Owl to come in the house so I can pet him on his nice soft feathers.”

  “All right. Someday you can do that. Off to dreamland, now.”

  “I love him,” Benjy said.

  Carl kissed the little boy on his warm, sweet-smelling forehead. “And he loves you. Now close your eyes. Owl says, ‘Sweet dreams, Benjy-boy.’ ”

  On his way down the stairs Carl could hear Benjy contentedly hoo-hoo-hooing himself to sleep.

  When Carl came home from the office next evening, the big country kitchen looked warm and inviting. A fire was blazing in the corner fireplace, and Peg was busy at the old-fashioned eight-burner stove she had carted home triumphantly after overbidding at a back-road auction. She was making her own cranberry sauce for the turkey George had given them from his flock down the hill. Benjy was playing on the floor with one of the empty glass jars Peg had sterilized for the cranberries. He had discovered that when he put his mouth to the open neck of the jar and blew, he could make a deep, echoing sound like a real owl. “Hoooooo, hooooo,” he kept repeating.

  Carl made himself a highball. It had been another jagged day at the office.

  “All right, Benjy, dear, that’s enough Owl for one night,” Peg pleaded as she poured the steaming cranberry juice.

  “Benjy, please, give Owl a rest,” Carl seconded.

  Stubbornly concentrating on his discovery, Benjy was just putting his mouth to the lip of the jar again when Bassey burst in. Peg glared at his filthy boots. The smell of him seemed too strong to be human. His small, shiny eyes in his heavy, bristled face made him look like a giant boar reared up on its hind legs. He wasn’t as erect as usual. He was weaving slightly, and Carl was sure he had been swigging homemade applejack.

  “Mr. Bassey,” Peg said boldly, “we’re trying to keep this kitchen clean for the holidays.”