‘Well, if you’re willin’, I sure as hell oughta be! But mush an’ milk is a awful dreary supper for a Saturday night!’ Mrs. Feeley saw in her mind’s eye those sixteen luscious brown bottles of the cheap beer a dollar would buy marching straight into the maw of the tax jar.
‘Sure! It’ll be fine. I’ll put plenty of salt in it. We gotta use up that gallon o’ milk I got for a quarter by goin’ after it. Even so, I guess I’ll have enough to make us a batch o’ pot cheese; with some parsley an’ them little chives an’ hot peppers chopped up in it, it’d sure go good with the b—’
‘Shut up!’ Mrs. Feeley couldn’t help laughing. ‘I thought we was gonna have mush an’ milk for supper. It’s gonna be hard enough to swaller without you talkin’ about beer an’ cheese!’
Miss Tinkham emerged from her room dressed for her Saturday-night foray on the night spots. She looked very elegant in her white crepe afternoon frock with the lovely accordion pleats in the front and back; the pleats floated out in panels when she walked. The dress could have stood dry-cleaning and there were two large cigarette burns on the bodice, but they were not noticeable because she had covered them up with a filmy black lace scarf. It was on account of the cigarette holes that she had got the dress at the Thrifty Shoppy for only half a dollar; real crêpe Romaine, too. Instead of doing her hair up as usual she let it hang loosely about her face. It wasn’t very gray…only in a few places; and she hated to pin up those lovely curls that had been the result of the experiments of the students at the Beauty School. It was wonderful of Mrs. Rasmussen to get her the free permanent.
‘My, you do look chick!’ Mrs. Feeley said admiringly as she came out and sat down at the table.
‘Thank you, my dear. Black and white is always sumptuous, don’t you think?’
‘Your hair looks good on you loose like that; more youthful-like.’ Mrs. Rasmussen was wishing her own face wasn’t so long, so she could wear her hair in a George Washington bob.
‘It is important for me to look my best tonight, just as seductive as I possibly can. We need to realize on all our assets to raise that money!’
Mrs. Feeley hoped Miss Tinkham would use discretion when it came to giving her all; you never could tell with these impulsive natures.
After the simple fare had been disposed of, Miss Tinkham rose to put on her hat and go to work. The hat was the final touch of elegance: a picture model of black velvet with a large red satin rose nestling coyly under the brim. Those hats had really been something just after the Armistice.
She carried a large damp pillowcase full of something. The ladies were all agog, but too polite to ask. Mrs. Rasmussen hovered about itching to know why the pillowcase instead of the usual shirt box for the corsages. Miss Tinkham savored her moment and then gave in graciously. She opened the pillowcase and took from it a fragrant flower garland made of deep red carnations. She draped it around her neck and turned to let her friends survey her. They were struck dumb with admiration.
‘Yes,’ said she modestly, ‘I thought up the idea when I noticed Danny’s paper lei on the wall the other day. You know the gardenias cannot stay in bloom all the time, so I made these leis, some out of four-o’clocks and some of sweet peas. The carnation leis are the most elegant, but they are the hardest to make. Think the sailor boys will like them?’
‘Will they like ’em?’ Mrs. Feeley echoed. ‘Boy, you’ll really clean their plow tonight!’
‘You’re just wonderful!’ Mrs. Rasmussen spoke fervently. ‘Wait a second!’ She dashed back to her room, emerged with an atomizer in her hand, and began spraying Miss Tinkham vigorously. She stood with her eyes shut, her head thrown back, drinking in the vile-smelling stuff.
‘Glamorous! Glamorous!’ she breathed. ‘What is it called?’
‘Named “The Tigress”; it’s sure nice c’logne!’
Miss Tinkham found things in full swing when she reached town. She knew the ropes well enough by now to know payday when she saw it. Before she had even displayed a single lei, she had been the recipient of three free drinks. One sailor had called her Hedy Lamarr. Always a stickler for the proper setting, she decided to sell her wares in a fitting background, so she strolled over to the Tropic. The place was jammed with men in uniform. As she stepped in the door she took half a dozen leis from their covering and hung them casually over her arm the way she had seen the native flower-vendors carrying them in the travel ads. Her entrance to the strains of ‘Sing Me a Song of the Islands’ could not have been more impressive if she had planned it herself. In the kindly light of the bar she looked quite beautiful and almost young. Suddenly inspiration struck: she walked with stately tread among the tables holding out her leis and intoning with quiet dignity:
‘Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember Pearl Harbor!’
It looked as though she had said the right thing. The men from the fleet mobbed her and paid a dollar apiece for the garlands without batting an eye. Miss Tinkham was delighted to see that the lads not only bought leis for their girls, but bought and wore them themselves. Evidently it was all right for a man to wear a lei even if he couldn’t wear a corsage. Two or three of her submarine sailors were there and called her over to their table as usual. They were disappointed because all the leis had been sold before she got to their table. She could have sold five times as many as she had.
‘I’ll make more next week,’ she said as she sat down to join them for a beer. ‘This was by way of experiment.’ The leis did look lovely on the dress blues of the sailors, she thought. One lad began telling her about the different kinds of leis they had in Honolulu and Miss Tinkham listened eagerly. She knew she could work this up into a real profession if she put her mind to it. She would make those little envelopes of banana leaves to hold the leis the way the boy described them. Mrs. Feeley had plenty of banana plants. Enchanting new possibilities opened before her willing heart and eager imagination. The boys were so sweet to her, she thought.
Suddenly the full impact of what Pearl Harbor had really meant struck her for the first time…beautiful boys like these; thousands of them! Miss Tinkham laid her head on the table and sobbed as if her heart would break.
‘Gee, Murphy,’ one of the boys said to another. ‘She must have been hittin’ the bottle on the side; she can usually hold her liquor pretty good! She ain’t had enough beers yet to get on a cryin’ jag! Reckon we ought to take her home?’
Miss Tinkham raised her head, touched by their solicitude.
‘It isn’t that, boys,’ she explained, still sobbing a little. ‘It’s just that the unutterable sadness and futility of war swept over me all of a sudden.’
‘Don’t you worry, m’am! We’ll cook the Mikado’s goose, all right!’
Miss Tinkham said she was sure they would, and had another beer. Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen would certainly be proud of her when she came home with fifteen dollars. The thought of them sitting at home alone after a supper of mush and milk, on Saturday night of all nights, gave her a guilty twinge. Here she was with these lovely boys, enjoying the crowd and the music, being treated to all the beer she could drink, while her benefactors ‘stood home,’ as they would have put it! Such was not Agnes Tinkham’s way of doing things. She rose to go and do something about it. The lads asked her to stay on, but when she remained firm they let her go with the promise to make them plenty of leis the next week.
‘Make me a pikake lei!’ a red-headed boy shouted as she left.
Miss Tinkham wasn’t at all sure what a peacocky lei was, but she promised anyway.
Outside, she summoned a taxi with a regal gesture.
‘Drive to the All-Night Market,’ she commanded.
When they got there she ordered the driver to come in and carry the things. Like a homing pigeon Miss Tinkham made for the liquor section.
‘I’ll take two cases of High Hat beer, please. One cold for immediate consumption and the other as is.’
The man got them and said it would be three dollars.
‘Is tha
t all?’ inquired Miss Tinkham casually. ‘Then I’ll take a dollar’s worth of that baked ham…and you might just give me that Edam cheese. Although I suppose it’s domestic?’ Might as well let him know she knew what was what.
The taxi driver staggered under the load. Miss Tinkham gave him the address and lay back to enjoy the ride, which wasn’t half long enough to suit her.
When the taxi door slammed, Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen stuck their heads out the door to see what the excitement could be. Their mouths flew open as they saw their friend come up the walk followed by the laden taxi driver.
‘I sold out early, so there was no use staying in town,’ she explained airily.
The driver said it would be six bits and she handed him a dollar and told him to keep the change.
Mrs. Feeley was the first to recover her wits.
‘What’d you do? Stick up the bank?’
‘No, but I think I’ve found a gold mine!’ Miss Tinkham replied, handing Mrs. Rasmussen nine dollars. ‘That is the amount we needed to complete this week’s quota, is it not?’
‘It is…and two dollars over!’ said the treasurer happily.
‘Well, that being the case,’ said Miss Tinkham, ‘would you ladies care to join me in a glass of cold beer?’
Chapter 12
BY THE last of May Mrs. Feeley had sold most of the worthwhile pieces of junk out of the yard. She was getting jittery because it had just occurred to her that once the best pieces were sold there would be little left that she could turn into actual cash. She realized also that if Mrs. Rasmussen had not turned her entire pension over to the purpose of feeding the lot of them, they could not have managed to get even as far as they had. Not one woman in a million would have done it. But they didn’t come any better than Mrs. Rasmussen; nor Miss Tinkham either, for that matter. Who would ever have thought that she would average ten dollars a week with the flower-selling? It just went to show that you never could tell what a body could do till they tried. Nothing like friends in this world! That was a fine saying Miss Logan had taught them up at Spanish class: ‘Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you what you are.’
Miss Logan had heard from Danny at long intervals, she said. But she also admitted blushingly that the great handful of letters she received was satisfactory evidence that Danny wrote often even though the mail could not be sent regularly. She didn’t know where he was, except that he was far away.
‘I could die happy if I knew Danny an’ her was married,’ Mrs. Feeley mused. ‘When he comes outa the navy, they’d have this place an’ his pension. He could open up a nice little business, an’ they could build ’em a classy house. She’s not the kind to run my friends off if I was gone! They could just move the Ark over where the junk yard is now, an ‘still have plenty o’ room for all of ’em.’ Mrs. Feeley’s passion for managing things extended even across the grave. In spite of her defiant words in the tax collector’s office, she realized that the task would have been utterly impossible for her alone; she would always be grateful to them, even after death.
Mrs. Rasmussen came out of her room with some mending and joined Mrs. Feeley.
‘I was thinkin’: if we’d a turned to sooner and worked the way we been doin’ lately, we sure would a been rich! We could a bought some fine lot o’beer! But ‘tain’t no use to talk about that; we aint’ out o’ the woods by a long shot yet!’
‘Yeup,’ Mrs. Feeley agreed. ‘I been settin’ here studyin’ about the same thing. If we make it into the clear, do you know I’ll be practically outa business? The yard’s picked naked as a jay bird now!’
‘Well, I wouldn’t worry none if I was you. You can always make your keep an’ the taxes from your boarders.’ Mrs. Rasmussen always seemed to be able to see over the top of obstacles.
‘I’ll think o’ somethin’ when the time comes; by rights you ought to live rent free for a couple o’ years till I get you paid back.’
‘Pshaw, we ain’t thinkin’ about gettin’ paid back! All we want to do is get the money in that there jar so we can go back to our old ways…carefree an’ only worryin’ where we can snag a case o’ beer the cheapest!’
Miss Tinkham came in from the garden to report that the flowers were drying up fast and if the gladiolas didn’t hurry and open up she’d be reduced to using marigolds in the leis next week. And the boys flatly refused to buy them; said they smelled bad.
‘That letter on the table come for you a little bit ago,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.
Miss Tinkham opened it excitedly; it was from her lawyer back home.
Soon she looked up, beaming:
‘The house is rented again, and next month have ten dollars coming to me! He had to spend two hundred dollars on repairs and they are paying it back at twenty dollars a month, so it only leaves ten for me. But even that will help in raising our quota, as every cent is going to count.’
‘It’s a downright shame to take your money,’ Mrs. Feeley said.
‘After all the time you and Mrs. Rasmussen supported me? When I didn’t have a penny? I hate to think what would have become of me!’
‘Not changin’ the subject,’ Mrs. Rasmussen broke in, ‘but that trip to Tia Juana Miss Logan’s plannin’ for the class in closin’ week sure sounds like a good binge. I sure love to go to Old Mexico! Them hot tomollys—’
‘—sure go good with the beer,’ the other two finished laughingly.
‘Yeup! Me an’ Mr. Feeley used to go to the races down at Cally-Enty…used to come home with a fistful o’ money some Sundays! Miss Logan says it won’t be but thirty-five cents apiece for the dinner, on account o’ she’s orderin’ it at a place she knows an’ they’re makin’ a special price for her…bein’ so many an’ all!’
‘Them that went last year said it was sure fine,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said wistfully. ‘Had six or seven different dishes an’ a bottle o’ wine for each table!’
Miss Tinkham said she would love to go too. The trip would be so cultural, and maybe she would get to see her friend who was a bartender at the Foreign Club. The other ladies looked with new respect at someone who knew a real live bartender.
‘But in our present emergency, we had best not even consider going…I suppose it really is out of the question, isn’t it?’
‘Well,’ Mrs. Feeley said sadly, ‘I dunno. Teacher said they wouldn’t be no transportation problem on account o’ she’s got places in the cars for all of us.’
‘Sure be fun! That old McSparry woman told me the other night that last year she rode in a Lincoln Zephyr belongin’ to a major in the Marines an’ his wife…said they treated her to cocktails! Free!’ Mrs. Rasmussen was indignant at the very idea.
‘Aw, she’s such a blow-hole you can’t believe a word she says! I don’t doubt but what she rode in the best car! She’d push herself in!’ Mrs. Feeley had taken a strong aversion to Mrs. McSparry the very first night.
‘I’d love to see a few of the sights under Miss Logan’s guidance, and buy a few curios, but we had just better put it out of our minds, I suppose!’
‘’Tain’t as if we could go an’ just spend that thirty-five cents,’ Mrs. Feeley explained. ‘We’d never be able to get by all them swingin’ doors! Be bound to stop for a few beers! An’ that runs into money! When you’ve had a few, you feel mighty rich an’ careless!’
The corners of Mrs. Rasmussen’s mouth turned down.
‘Well, I ain’t givin’ up yet! If we had the money for the taxes raised by some hook or crook before the fifteenth o’ June instead o’ the twenty-ninth we could go, couldn’t we?’
Miss Tinkham looked at Mrs. Feeley expectantly.
‘Sure! An’ cows could fly! If that was done, we could really throw a cloudburst! But what’s the use o’ talkin’ like that? Ain’t we just got through sayin’ that June’s gonna be the hardest month of all? The junk’s about gone, an’ Miss Tinkham just got through sayin’ the flowers is dyin’ down with the hot weather. Pretty soon they won’t be nobody in them bars; they�
��ll all be at the beach. God knows I’d like to get it over an’ done with…but ‘tain’t likely!’ Mrs. Feeley looked dashed.
‘Well, I’m aimin’ to go on that junket an’ you two are goin’ with! I been duckin’ out from under somethin’ since the start o’ this trouble, but my nerves is gonna be in high-sterics if we don’t get this thing finished quick! Seems like I just set a awful store on goin’ to Tia Juana with the class!’
‘We all do!’ Miss Tinkham said. ‘But how is it to be accomplished?’
‘I ain’t sayin’, till I know for sure; but I’ll know by tonight. Will you all foller my lead?’ Like a good general Mrs. Rasmussen wouldn’t ask her followers to do anything she wouldn’t do herself.
‘Yes!’ the others replied without hesitation.
Mrs. Rasmussen rose and went into her room. When she came out she was dressed for the street; as she went out the door she said she would be back in time for supper. The rest of the afternoon the other two were on pins and needles trying to imagine what they might be called on to do. Anyway, it was exciting to have something to look forward to.
Mrs. Rasmussen looked a bit grim but very determined when she returned at five.
Quietly and efficiently she took up the dinner and served it: an enormous eggplant stuffed with hamburger and bread crumbs, with rich tomato sauce of Mrs. Rasmussen’s own manufacture. Cole slaw with caraway seeds accompanied it. They were all rather quiet at dinner, as Mrs. Rasmussen had not tipped her hand yet. They goggled a little when she brought out an apricot upside-down cake made with honey and walnuts.
‘Eat hearty,’ she said. ‘We’re gonna need our strength.’
‘For Gawd’s sake spill it, Mrs. Rasmussen,’ Mrs. Feeley pleaded. ‘I’m about to die o’ curiosity!’
‘Well, tomorra at seven in the mornin’ we all become tuna queens!’
‘Tuna queens!’ cried Miss Tinkham, excited by the prospect of anything queenly. Maybe she would get to ride in a parade on a float!
‘Yeah,’ said Mrs. Rasmussen dourly. ‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’d work there again! Mister promised I’d never have to go back again when he took me outa there. But by us all workin’ there, we could clean this mess up in a hurry; it kinda simple-izes the money part.’
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