In God We Trust

by Jean Shepherd

  Joke Tellers rarely have even a barely perceptible sense of humor. Uncle Ben was no exception. It is very hard to know how to listen to a Joke Teller. What kind of look do you put on your face when he is telling a joke, and hitting you on the arm at the same time? Do you smile in preparation for the punch line? Or do you look sad, which is the way you feel? Or just uncomfortable?

  Joke Tellers can be dangerous. I’m about seven years old, and I’m in the sun parlor of Aunt Glenn’s apartment. Uncle Ben is over, and one wing of the family is having an Afternoon.

  Uncle Ben was the kind who would always sit in another room. When all of the family’s having a big thing, he would sit out in another room, drinking beer, coming out only to draw another stein and tell a joke. And then, finally, when the pinochle game was organized, he would play. Badly. In true Joke Teller fashion, everything he did seemed to have some comic or violent overtones. Whenever he played pinochle he would slam his hand down on the table with:

  “That’s it!”

  BANG!

  “Seven spades! That’s it!”

  POW!

  He also was a great one for trick shuffles.

  On the day in question, Uncle Ben and the men are playing double-deck pinochle. My kid brother and I are out in the sun parlor, knee-deep in ferns. Uncle Ben starts telling jokes, in his Joke Teller’s voice. One of the men says:

  “Hey, you know the kids are here.”

  And Uncle Ben says:

  “Ah, they’re old enough to hear this. And if they’re not old enough to hear it, it won’t make any difference anyway. Hahaha.”

  And he plows ahead:

  “And so the bartender says to the guy.…”

  Of course, my ears are like two giant cabbages hanging out of the side there, because I know I am Hearing Something. And boy, did I!

  Well, it went like that for about twenty minutes. Ben is telling them the story. Of course, one thing about a family Joke Teller—it’s downhill all the way. It rarely is uphill, because these guys, being notably non-talented, do not know how to pace themselves. They usually pad their stories too much, and often tell the punch line before they get to the end of the story.

  He’s struggling away with his act. What happens with a Joke Teller is that when they don’t get a big laugh, they immediately leap in with a longer story, instead of a shorter one. They pour it on with a longer one. And then they try their dialects. This is always the last resort of a scoundrel, using the Jewish and the Irish dialect in a story. This is almost invariably the stamp of the non-talented but desperate Joke Teller.

  Uncle Ben is pouring it out. I’m listening to the stories—the Jokes. And soaking them up like a two-dollar sponge. Remember, I’m seven, and my knowledge of the Seven Deadly Sins was somewhat hazy. In the ensuing years this has cleared up somewhat, but not much.

  About four days later I’m out in the backyard with good old Casmir. Casmir came from a very good, basic, wonderful, totally antiseptic Polish Catholic family. I mean the kind that had drapes on top of their drapes. Every third or fourth day his mother would wash down the whole neighborhood, on her hands and knees, wearing a shawl over her head. Go all the way down the street, wash the sidewalks, sweep up the curb, hose down the fences, and brush off all the kids. She was that sort of a Polish lady. She spoke no English at all, discernible. This was Casmir’s family. His father wore round black hats and black suits, and for some reason always buttoned his white shirts clear to the top, but wore no tie. Except on Sundays.

  Casmir and I are playing by the fence. We are fooling around and hitting things, and just messing around, when I suddenly remember Uncle Ben’s great joke. Which I proceed to tell to Casmir, including all the words I could remember, and the Irish dialect that the bartender had.

  I had only a vague inkling of what it was about. All of these words meant nothing to me. In fact, I thought one of them had something to do with Hockey.

  So I told Casmir the joke, and Casmir laughed because he knew it was supposed to be a funny joke. Both of us are laughing up a storm, and hitting each other on the back, and cackling lasciviously. We mess around some more, and it is time now to go home. It is about four in the afternoon.

  The following traumatic experience slowly began to unfold. About five in the afternoon, my mother is out on the back porch, and she rarely spent much time on the back porch. She is talking to Mrs. Wocznowski. They rarely talked much together because Casmir’s mother spoke no English, discernible, and my mother spoke no Polish. But the two of them are jabbering away out there. I am paying no attention, because I am inside listening to the radio.

  Suddenly my mother comes whamming through the back screen door, and let me tell you, there was blood in her eye. Blood! I mean BLOOD! There was smoke coming out of her ears.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  I knew it! You know when there’s disaster.

  “What?”

  “I want to talk to you. Come into the bedroom. I don’t want your brother to hear this.”

  Uh oh. This is the big one. You know when the jig is up—

  “I don’t want your brother.…”

  We have both been sitting there listening to Steve Canyon or something, and the instant this fatal line came out, it goes off inside of me. I start to break up. I’m crying and hollering like mad.

  She drags me into the bedroom and closes the door. There was a silence that went on for, I’d say, about a year and a half. I didn’t know anything then about what is commonly known as a “pregnant pause.” I wouldn’t have known what that word meant, but this silence is really hanging there, like big ripe grapes. Containing seeds. Finally:

  “Were you just out with Casmir? By the fence?”

  “Yah … yeah, we were playing, we didn’t do nothing!” I said.

  “Now wait a minute. Do you know what this word means?” And she says this word, which, by the way, to this day I have never again heard my mother use.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know … ah.…” Long pause.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Ah … well, it’s about a Hockey thing there!”

  “Oh. I see.” And there is another long pause.

  “Go back out and listen to the radio, will you.”

  Well, I went out and sat on the ottoman next to my kid brother. The radio is playing. He knows something has gone wrong, and I know something has gone wrong, but I can’t figure it out. I had no idea what it was about. Both of us are sitting there, and it’s going back and forth between us.

  My mother goes back out in the kitchen, and she’s stirring away at the red cabbage. The hamburger is on. Supper is being made.

  About half an hour later I hear her out in the back, talking over the fence to Mrs. Wocznowski. And I am frantically trying to hear what she is saying. I’m out in the kitchen, next to the icebox. This is terrible, because I know I have done something awful, and yet I don’t really know. You know what I mean? You don’t really know, you just know that what you have done is unspeakable. Unspeakable! You not only feel that it was unspeakable, you feel untouchable. I mean, you’re just really rotten! To the core. You are never going to make it up the ladder of human virtues. You are never again going to be accepted into the race. Ever. You know that sickening feeling? It takes a hundred years to grow out of that one, if ever!

  So I am crouched next to the icebox, sweating. And listening. I catch one line, and it came winging through the screen door like a shot.

  “I don’t think either of them know what it means.”

  Mrs. Wocznowski is struggling in broken Polish, and she has been crying. My mother is struggling along in broken South Chicago-ese, and she has not been crying; she has been laughing. Which is the difference between the types of family, and the whole Ethnic business that they both came from. I did not know ‘til some time later that my mother was a retired Flapper.

  Between the two of them they somehow got it all straightened out. All I know is that Casmir had trouble sitting down for a month. Appa
rently he had gone home and told Uncle Ben’s story to his kid brother. Loudly.

  We’re sitting around the supper table that night when it began to dawn on me the enormity of what I had perpetuated. My mother all the while has not said anything to me. I have not been given the business, I have not been hollered at. I would have felt better somehow if I had been given the treatment. So, naturally, I can’t eat.

  One of my great favorite delicacies at the time was mashed potatoes thoroughly mixed with red cabbage. Oh boy! It looks terrible, I have to warn you. It looks like the worst glop, but it’s great. Tonight, however, I was just fiddling with my fork.

  “Why aren’t you eating your red cabbage?”

  “Ah … I’m not very hungry.”

  And then, of course, she knew that it was really biting me, down where it counts. She turns to my father and says:

  “Look, the next time we see Ben, I want you to talk to him.”

  When she called Ben “Ben” it was Ben. Whenever she thought he was all right, she called him “Uncle Ben.” Now it was just straight Ben.

  “I want you to talk to Ben.”

  My father looks up from the Sport page.

  “What about?”

  “You know what about. You know very well what about.”

  My Old Man started to laugh, and she says:

  “Yeah. Him. Today. Casmir.”

  “Well, what did he say?”

  “Ouyay owknay utway.”

  “Oh no!”

  They’re both laughing, and that made it even worse. I had no conception, and that made it even worse, to have two grownups laughing at something I did. I mean, they’re really laughing. All I knew was that it had something to do with Uncle Ben’s joke. And Hockey.

  XIX WE HAVE TWO SMALL VISITORS

  “You know, this isn’t a bad drink,” said Flick.

  “Indeed it isn’t. You maybe could sell a few here.”

  “The only thing is, we might have trouble with the ladies around here if I told ’em why I put the olives in it.”

  Flick, I could see, was Public Relations conscious. He fished with his swizzle stick for one of the olives; speared it neatly.

  “That reminds me, Ralph, of the time my mother made a cake for the PTA, and she squeezed the icing out of one a them squeezers, making roses and all that stuff on the PTA cake. And my Old Man snuck in and squeezed something else on it, only she didn’t know it until Miss Shields opened it up at school and they put it out in front of all the ladies at the Penny Supper.”

  “I presume it was a well-known four-letter word.” Flick chuckled at the memory of what his father had written on the cake.

  “Flick, speaking of food, do you remember the time you rushed into the kitchen in your house when you were hot as hell, when we were playing ball, and grabbed that bottle out of the refrigerator? And you thought it was cider and drank down a quart of vinegar before you knew what hit you?”

  “Oh God! I heaved for about an hour!”

  “As I recall, all over my new tennis shoes.”

  Flick laughed. “And Schwartz’s knickers.”

  “Did you ever find out why your mother put the vinegar bottle in the icebox?”

  “I was too busy heaving to worry about that!”

  All this talk of food had made me acutely aware that I had not had anything to eat all day, since that dinky little toy Airline breakfast of plastic eggs that they had served me on the plane.

  “Hey, Flick, you got anything to eat around here? I am willing to pay.”

  He turned away from the bar and with a casual wave of his hand indicated a couple of cardboard posters carrying cellophane bags of dried peanuts, pork rinds; the usual bar junk.

  “That’s about it,” he said. “We have those electric sandwiches, though. You stick ’em in the infra-red machine and it cooks ’em.”

  “No, old buddy. I think I’ll pass.”

  I was looking forward to a plate of good old Indiana frogs’ legs which I intended to devour later on in the evening.

  Two kids trooped in through the front door at this point, letting in a big blast of frigid air and a strong whiff of Refinery gas, an aroma so much part of the everyday life in Hohman that it is called “fresh air.” They were wearing heavy skeepskin coats and giant stocking caps. Their noses ran copiously. The larger of the two got right to the point.

  “Can we have a glass of water, please?”

  Impassively Flick stared down at the scruffy pair.

  “I can’t serve kids here.”

  I could see he was putting them on. The smaller of the two started to whimper weakly. Flick drew a large glass of water, handing it over to me. I passed it on to the elder of the pair.

  “You kids can split it. And don’t tell your mother that you’ve been hanging around Flick’s Tavern, you hear me?”

  They silently drank the water, doggedly, finally handing the glass back to me. Without a word they turned and headed for the door. Flick stopped them in their tracks:

  “All right, you guys. Whatta you say?”

  The smaller one squeaked:

  “… thank you.…”

  They were gone. Flick rinsed out the glass.

  “Boy, all day long they’re in and out of here. I’m surprised they don’t ask me for a beer.”

  Outside, in the unfriendly air, the two struggled out of sight, clinging to one another.

  “Flick, that little one with the runny nose looked suspiciously like he belonged to your lodge.”

  Flick snorted:

  “That kid ain’t no Elk.”

  “No, that isn’t what I mean. I know a Root Beer Barrel Man when I see one. Did you notice that suspicious bulge in his right cheek? I suspect that he was loaded.”

  Flick sat down heavily on his high stool behind the bar. He rubbed his hands over his white shirt front. I swear his eyes clouded noticeably, although it could very well have been all the beer, as well as the vodka I had put down, not to mention the other stuff.

  “You know, Ralph.…” he said at long last, “… I haven’t had a really good root beer barrel in a hell of a long time.”

  “To be honest with you, Flick, I never fully understood just what you saw in root beer barrels.”

  Flick did not answer, being off in a world by himself. I pushed on:

  “As you recall, I, personally, was a Jawbreaker man. And I am proud to say that I have the silver inlays to prove it.”

  XX OLD MAN PULASKI AND THE INFAMOUS JAW-BREAKER BLACKMAIL CAPER

  There is a vast, motley mob of Americans, untold millions, who even today, years after the consummation of their original sin, are paying the Piper. Paying in many ways, the most notable of which is sheer, stark, shrill, agonizing, bone-shattering pain which sometimes strikes its debauched victim late at night and sends his shuddering frame into the gray fringes of near-madness. The agony sometimes becomes so poignant that men, strong men, unweeping men, have been known to toy actively with suicide and even worse as the only escape. And in some instances, not as rare as might be thought, have actually taken that final, fatal step, the pain unbearable that made the sharp, crashing impact of a Thirty-Eight slug behind the ear child’s play by comparison.

  Yes, the sinners are paying, as they have always paid in the end, and will always pay. There is no escape!

  These poor, innocent citizens are Victims, and they seldom even know the origin of their ordeal by fire of what has lately become known in some of the more advanced medical textbooks as “The Juju Baby Plague,” sometimes termed “The Root Beer Barrel Rot.”

  Anyone who has ever experienced a first-degree, Big League, card-carrying dedicated toothache in a major molar at 3 A.M. in the quiet solitude of night has stood at the very gates of Hell itself. There are no words in the language that can adequately describe the ebbing and swelling, ebbing and swelling and then rising to even greater heights, then again deceptively receding, only to turn again to the attack; insistent nagging, dragging, thudding, screaking ache of a
tooth that has faced more than its share in a hard, rough and tumble lifetime of Juju Babies, Root Beer Barrels, Jawbreakers, and countless other addictions devoured during the innocent days of childhood. And like all sinners, Orgiasts of all stripes, he looks back upon the very thing that reduced him to a shuddering, denture-ridden, cavity-wracked hulk with bleary-eyed, teary nostalgia. Everywhere, daily, dentists—cackling fiendishly—reap the harvests sown years ago in Penny Candy stores across the land.

  Well I remember the Pusher that sent me on that long rocky road that finally led to $765 worth of silver alloy and various plastic compounds which I now carry in my skull as a mute reminder of past, fleeting pleasures. The fillings are not permanent, but the cavities are!

  In the throes of a toothache, all men are one. It is the one affliction known to Man that is truly the Great Leveler. Kings and commoners, Generals and simple peasants of the field all bow to this basic, somehow singularly humiliating curse that has been known and endured as long as there has been Man on earth. George Washington became a Revolutionist because of a bad set of incisors. And no wonder!

  Recently there was a dispatch from Burma that told of a rampaging tiger that in a single night, without warning, killed twenty-eight Burmese in a quick dash down the main street of a jungle village. The native hunter who later bagged him simply said: