Scoring Bertram Wiggly

by Man Martin

  Buddy’s remark, which I shall not print here, evidenced incredulity.

  “It’s true,” I said, wishing to console him. “An Italian named Petrarch came up with romantic love in the fourteenth century.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do say. It was on a Friday. April 6, 1327.”

  “Aww,” Buddy said incredulously, “you’re putting me on.”

  “I do no such thing,” I assured him. “This was back in the Dark Ages and people were making discoveries left and right without really knowing what they were up to. No doubt he stumbled on it quite by accident, fooling around in his workshop with some iambic pentameter. He knocks an octave onto a sestet and presto! ‘Hey,’ he thought, ‘I believe I’ve just discovered romantic love.’ He thought it was just a novelty at first. He had no idea it would catch on.”

  “But before that, didn’t people…?” He trailed off, I suspected, not out of a sense of delicacy, but because he couldn’t think of the word he wanted.

  “Of course they did, otherwise the species would have died out. Procreation has always been around. That much hasn’t changed; it was a necessity. Embracing naturally came into play from time to time, and also a certain amount of kissing when required, I suppose, but love – the sort of love you imagine you feel for Lottie – is a pure fantasy, like the Easter Bunny or government savings bonds.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” Buddy intoned thoughtfully, and I was pleased to see that his grief over Lottie was temporarily forgotten. “Petrarch, huh?”

  “Petrarch. Why, back when I was an appliance actuary,” I told him, “I wouldn’t have offered a warranty on romantic passion for one day. The most poorly built electric baloney-slicer has a better chance of lasting out a week than your average love affair.”

  Then Buddy’s head lifted, and he said, “Hey, here comes the band.”

  I looked up and saw to my astonishment that Sam’s orchestra, in the guise of a marching band, was indeed coming through the downs. Sam was in front, hoisting a baton and blowing a whistle. I confess myself impressed by this display of legerdemain. Somehow the entire crowd had contrived after performing for Buddy’s and Lottie’s duet to sneak out from behind whatever trees or bushes they had been hiding and get to the other end of town where they could re-enter. It seemed an easy enough proposition where some of the performers were concerned; oboists are notoriously stealthy and can slip in and out of the most unlikely places without being noticed. But how did they move those timpani drums without drawing my attention? And how did the pianist slide his baby grand – on which he was even now banging out “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the back of a flatbed truck – past me without my having seen him? For that matter, where had he hidden it in the first place? Some instruments would be relatively easy to conceal in a park: a basoonist behind a hickory tree, for example, could hoot away all day in concealment so long as he stood perfectly still and watched his posture. Pianos, however, are obstinately horizontal and attempting to secrete them behind anything vertical – such as a tree – is a fool’s errand.

  “Sam,” I said, running alongside him, “my name is Bertram Wiggly and –” Before could go into the particulars of my situation and request a temporary injunction on the musical accompaniment, a realization dawned on me so astounding that for a moment I stopped in my tracks. The musicians filed past me on either side; as I watched I realized it was true.

  They weren’t playing.

  Music came from somewhere, and the musicians pretended to make it, but the drummer’s sticks did not quite correspond to the rattling percussion I heard, and the trombones’ slides continued moving just a moment longer than the notes they supposedly produced. My jaw did not fall to the street, but it dropped a goodish way. Sam’s orchestra was either pretending to play music, which was being provided by someone else or else was actually playing the music in hiding as another group of performers impersonated them. To this day I cannot account for the purpose of this astonishing charade.

  My perplexity was tempered by another thought: as long as they were occupied in this parade, either performing the music or marching down the street in approximate rhythm as someone else performed (or doing both in some elaborate musical ventriloquism act?) they could not simultaneously be elsewhere, hidden in some water barrel or hanging unseen from the eaves to break untimely into a private conversation. Even Sam’s orchestra couldn’t manage to be three places at once. Now would be the perfect time to discuss the Super-Duper Mart with Jim Hansom.

  Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea where to find him.

  A Bargain Struck

  I found Jim Hansom where I expected, nailing shingles on the high-pitched roof of the McAllister’s Victorian on Main Street.

  “Hello, Jim!” I shouted from the second step of the front porch in my heartiest voice.

  He hesitated between blows, his hammer poised and elbow cocked at a forty-five degree angle, uncertain if he’d been addressed. Then he spotted me; he drove the nail home with one sound bang and stood, striding over the glossy tarpaper to the edge of the roof, fists on his hips, his clean chest glistening. Jim Hansom has no fixed occupation but performs various odd jobs around town – putting in fence posts, pitch-forking yellow hay into or out of barns, putting on shingles: anything, in short, that requires taking off his shirt, for I have never seen him at work when he was not naked from the waist up.

  “Hello, Bert,” he said, looking down at me.

  I admit I felt self conscious in my starched white shirt and bowtie addressing this half-nude person; it was not unlike speaking to a cannibal chieftain with a bone stuck through his nose while one is wearing white tie and tails. One feels overdressed. Nevertheless, I pushed my spectacles back into place and proceeded.

  “There’s a matter coming up before the town hall in a couple of days,” I said, “and I wanted to be sure of your support.”

  “Gee, Bert, I’m pleased you’re so interested in my opinion.”

  “Your opinion is the only one that matters in this town,” I said.

  Jim did not disagree but turned his head profile surveying the roof, calculating how much more of the job remained and how much time he could allot me. He dropped his hammer in a nail bucket and sat cross-legged on the shingles. “So what’s this about?”

  “A Super-Duper Mart,” I said. I briefly outlined the whole concept – a shopping arena so comprehensive that ultimately a person might live an entire life without ever leaving its doors.

  “Well,” Jim said, looking up with a squint and shielding his eyes as if the sun itself offered a rebuttal to such a scheme.

  “It’s very important,” I said. “I’m not shy about saying I would want to show my gratitude.”

  He looked at me again. “Just a second,” he said, “and I’ll be right down.” Then he did the most extraordinary thing; seizing the eave with both hands, he flipped forward, and – still grasping the eave – lowered slowly to the porch step beside me. He brushed his hands together and said, “Let’s have a seat and talk.”

  Mrs. McAllister opened the front door and said, “Jim, are you already done? Oh, hello, Mr. Wiggly.”

  “Hello, Mrs. McAllister,” I said. “I have something to talk over with Jim. I will only detain him from his duties a moment.”

  Mrs. McAllister put her hands in her apron pocket with a flustered, “Well, do you want some lemonade?”

  Jim and I agreed that lemonade would hit the spot and sat in the front porch glider while she went inside to get it. My Aunt Betty Ann had a favorite saying: “Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow.” Sitting on the glider across from Jim Hansom I realized that he, like one of the ladies in my aunt’s saying, did not perspire; he glowed. A single trickle worked its way down his temple, which he brushed away with the back of his hand. Everywhere else, though, you could not find any spot that was definitely wet; it was as if he had been evenly coated with the merest patina of moisture. Nor was dirt under his neatly trimmed nails or anywhere else. No
r did he stink. One knew that should he go without shaving for one day, his beard shadow would begin right at the edge of his jaw and rise precisely to his cheekbone where it would terminate in a line as clean as if had been ruled off with a straight edge.

  Mrs. McAllister brought out a pitcher of lemonade and two ice-filled glasses on a tray, and Jim and I got down to business.

  “Gee, Bert,” Jim began in his most earnest, homespun way, and I braced myself for a bigger-than-usual delivery of Jim Hansom malarkey. “I’d like to help you out, but I don’t know – A store where you’d spend your entire life? Of course, I’d like to help but…” He looked over the side of the porch, and I sensed he was searching for a long blade of sweet grass to dangle from his lip while he practiced his aw-shucks brand of charm on me. He found one, plucked it, stuck it in his mouth and continued. “If only there were something you could maybe do in return for me – ”

  “Name it.”

  He leaned forward and a calculating glint appeared in his eyes. “Well, you could let me take Mary to the Spring Festival.”

  “I don’t think it would be appropriate for her to go without me,” I said.

  “Well, of course I’d take you along, too, Bert.”

  I busied myself pouring lemonade over the crackling ice, keeping my head lowered so Jim would not detect my amused smile. Poor rascal, what he was up to was completely transparent, of course, but he had no idea of three cards I held in my hand. (The cards, of course, were purely metaphorical, as actual cards would have had little to no bearing on the situation.) To wit:

  1. I had fully intended all along to let Mary go to the Spring Festival anyway, and my refusal thus far had been merely a ruse.

  2. Mary was soon to be engaged to me.

  And

  3. – Most laughably of all – Mary loathed the very sight of Jim Hansom as evidenced by every look, gesture, and word whenever he was around or his name was mentioned.

  Jim planned to engage in hanky-panky with Mary but would discover too late that he had in actuality only bargained for the right to pay our admission to the Spring Festival in return for committing himself to my side of the Super-Duper Mart Controversy. It was almost too pathetic to witness such a display of misplaced self-confidence. It was I that Mary adored – heart and soul. How could anyone delude himself to such an extent about Mary’s feelings?

  I pretended to haggle, “So you’re proposing, that if I allow you to take me and Mary to the Spring Festival – with the understanding, of course, that you will pay for the tickets – you would say a few words on behalf of the Super-Duper Mart?”

  “I would,” he said.

  “There’s one other condition,” I said, setting down my lemonade with a businesslike clunk on the railing. “Under no circumstances can anyone know about this arrangement. Your support of the Super-Duper Mart must seem wholehearted and spontaneous. So you can’t tell anybody about this agreement.”

  Jim rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly. “Well, okay then.”

  “Done,” I said, and clasped his hand in a shake.

  Sober Reflections

  The morning of the Spring Festival, Jim picked us up as arranged. I intended to ride in the front seat to prevent any panky of the hanky variety between Jim and my niece, but when he offered me the rumble seat, I was too ill to protest. So pasty-feeling was I, that I could scarcely summon the strength to shoo away my little feathery nemesis that morning. Once was a fluke, twice might be a coincidence, but three times…

  After concluding my deal with Jim Hansom, I had gone home and smoked the cigar Pennyfeather had given me in celebration. I had never smoked a cigar but had seen it done, and the process looked like simplicity itself, and indeed it was easy to do, easy, as they say, as falling off a log. Why anyone would want to fall off a log in the first place is another question, a question which might well be applied to cigar smoking. For the first two puffs I felt marvelously cosmopolitan and luxurious, but then a greenish sensation began to work its way up from my stomach and stole its way over my body.

  Can a sensation be greenish, you ask; I assure you it can. Were I a physician with a patient complaining of greenish sensations, my diagnosis would be simple. “Oho,” I would say, “you have been smoking cigars, haven’t you?”

  For a time I continued smoking. These greenish sensations will subside, I told myself, give yourself some time to get used to it. I hated to waste what I was sure was a very expensive cigar, and vowed not to put it out until it was at least half-finished. As I examined my stogie, however, I discovered that instead of diminishing in length, it seemed to be growing, almost imperceptibly, before my eyes – like a garden squash after a heavy rain, and that what I thought was a double Corona was actually something more, a two-and-a-half Corona or even a triple. I stumped out the cigar in a saucer I had provided for the purpose and lurched to the bathroom where I knelt in front of the WC and confirmed my suspicions. Greenish.

  The next morning, I was still far from top form, and as I staggered down the front steps toward Jim’s waiting automobile, a trombonist greeted me with a bilious, sagging note swelling and then deflating again like a wave of nausea approaching and receding.

  Ha-ha. Let’s all have a laugh at Bertram Wiggly.

  What I dwelt upon on the ride, queasily watching scenery pass in review behind me, were metaphysical questions, to wit: was I free? If some unseen malevolent trombonist-wielding power decided, “Ha, you will be the town curmudgeon,” then the town curmudgeon I would be, and struggling to change my role would only further entangle me. Maybe there was no way out; maybe Sam the conductor had anticipated my every duck and dodge. I think I’m making up my life as I go along, saying and doing whatever pops into my head, but right now the invisible conductor was turning the page of his invisible libretto and my lines were already printed there, though I’ve never read them. If I stamped my foot and protested, “No, that can’t be true! I’m free to do what I want!” Sam’s finger at that moment would be running under the words,

  WIGGLY

  (Stamping foot): No, that can’t be true! I’m free to do what I want!

  Even if it were true, I decided, I would refuse to give in. I wouldn’t be a good sport. I’d rail against being part of their scheme; I’d thrash and kick. And if railing, thrashing, and kicking were part of their scheme to start with – I’d rail, thrash, and kick against that.

  But even I did not yet suspect all that Sam the conductor had in store.

  The Spring Festival

  By the time we arrived at the festival, I was feeling somewhat more like the old Bertram Wiggly, and the sensations in my abdomen had migrated from greenish to a more wholesome color. My sense of well-being was diminished as soon as I alighted from the rumble seat because I was accosted by Miss Terwilliger.

  “Bertram Wiggly,” she hallooed me with that peculiar macaroon-eating smile of hers, “you are attending our annual fete, I see.”

  “Yes,” I said sourly as I watched Mary take Jim’s hand as she emerged from the car. I had planned on opening Mary’s door for her when we arrived, but the delay occasioned by meeting the librarian gave Jim the chance to beat me to it. As Jim bought our tickets, Mary scanned the panorama of the fair with the tall Ferris wheel and the rollercoaster, her eyes aglow. The smells of roasted peanuts and the shouts of carny barkers blended in the air. “Oh, look, Mary,” I said, catching my niece’s gaze. “Games of skill!”

  I took her hand and led her by a line of booths for testing one’s acumen at landing rings onto bottle necks and plugging ducks parading on a conveyor belt. We came to a pyramid of milk bottles to be knocked over with a baseball.

  “I used to be quite a hand at this,” I said modestly, brushing my knuckles against my vest. “Back for the Otherton Ocelots I was once struck out by ‘Smokin’ Tim’ Thompson himself.”

  “Oh, Wiggly,” Mary said, clasping my arm and forgetting in her eagerness to call me plain Bert. “Look at that rabbit. It’s adorable!”

 
An oversized plush bunny with floppy ears hung displayed behind the bottles, staring at us with large, woeful eyes. On its tummy hung a sign:

  Knock em Over

  Win a prize

  3 throws 5¢

  Ignoring the egregious “em” in the top line, I gently extracted myself from Mary’s grip and handed my nickel to the operator.

  When I did my wind up and let fly, I was astonished to see the ball leave my hand, hurtle dead towards the milk bottles, then take an abrupt right turn, a left, another left, and a right before striking the canvass mat hanging in the back of the booth.

  I stood gawking at this circumvention of every known law of physics and looked around to see if others had witnessed the miracle. The operator evinced no surprise, and merely proffered a second ball for me to throw. Clearly he saw this sort of thing all the time; the balls, as I now deduced from my first unfortunate experiment, were loaded with some form of weight or magnet that made their trajectory resemble a moth in a headwind or else that had recently smoked its first cigar. I indignantly accepted the second ball to which my nickel entitled me.

  I pondered the path my first missile had taken and took two medium steps to the right, calculating this would place the ball so the middle of its J-shaped curve would be on a collision course smack in the center of the bottles.

  I went into my wind up, prepared to hurtle it with enough force that even if the bottles were anchored or glued together in some way, as I had begun to suspect they were, the ball would bowl through them, or failing that, uproot the table or the whole booth if need be. Unfortunately, this ball had been greased, and as my hand flew back, so did the ball. From a sou’ sou’ westerly direction, I heard a yelp of pain and a sound like coconuts knocking together – the latter, no doubt, provided by one of Sam’s percussionists.