Brass Bed

by Flora, Fletcher

  “Bondage?” Fran said. “Are you out on bail or something?”

  “Not at all.” Harvey spoke with dignity and drained the glass that had contained his third drink. “What I mean is, school is out, and this is a happy occasion that is generally celebrated one way or another by all concerned. When I was a kid, I used to celebrate it by taking off my shoes. Now I celebrate it in the company of a true friend by submitting my throat to Sylvester’s painless butchery.”

  Fran snorted, “Well, come and submit it across the room. Jolly’s waiting for us there.”

  “Do you mean that you and Jolly are here at Sylvester’s by yourselves?” I asked her.

  “Of course not, Felix. It wouldn’t be proper for Jolly and me to come here unescorted, and moreover Sylvester wouldn’t permit it. Sid has come with us, and I can’t understand, anyhow, why you have to be so curious. The point is, you are invited to come and sit with us at our table, and I am here to deliver the invitation.”

  “We accept with pleasure,” Harvey said.

  “Speaking for myself,” I said, “I decline with regret.”

  “Well, that makes no sense whatever,” Fran said. “If you decline with regret, why decline at all?”

  “It may have slipped your mind,” I said, “that Jolly has only recently buried a husband, and it is my opinion that a new widow is no asset to a celebration.”

  “But you are absolutely mistaken,” she said. “As you surely remember, Kirby never contributed much to a party, and things are likely to go much better and livelier without him.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Isn’t it? Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me what the point is.”

  “I’ll be happy to. The point is, it seems damn indecent for a live widow to be cavorting around so soon after burying a dead husband.”

  “As one who may himself become a dead husband in the future,” Harvey said, “I am inclined to be rather sympathetic to that view.”

  “Oh, poop!” Fran said. “I’ve never before heard such nonsense in all my life. If you want my opinion, Kirby has had all the mourning he deserves, and I myself urged Jolly to come out on a party and be gay.”

  “Come to think of it,” Harvey said, “Kirby was certainly a fellow who went around hitting far too many people, and I am now in sympathy with your point of view, Fran, as opposed to Felix’s. I am definitely in favor of joining Jolly and Sid.”

  “There you are, Felix,” Fran said. “Although you are supposed to be Harvey’s friend, you are depriving him of a simple pleasure because of a perfectly ridiculous personal feeling. What kind of friend is that, I’d like to know.”

  “Would it give you pleasure to go?” I said to Harvey.

  “It truly would,” he said. “In fact, I see the prospect of an exciting time. I have not shaved since morning, and if the celebration extends itself sufficiently there’s a chance I may be able to produce discernible whiskers before it’s over.”

  “Oh, say,” Fran said, “that would be exciting! Felix, you are simply obligated to come, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll come in order to give pleasure to Harvey, but first I must have another drink.”

  “I’m agreeable to that,” Harvey said. “I wouldn’t at all object to another drink myself.”

  “I confess that I wouldn’t, either,” Fran said. “We’ll all have one together to prepare ourselves for others that will come later.”

  We had the drink and then went over to the table where Jolly was sitting with Sid. Jolly was wearing a black dress that was cut quite low between her small breasts, and she looked very young and a little tired, and this appearance of youngness and tiredness was somehow paradoxical, or at least unusual, and made her strongly appealing.

  Sid stood up and made a business of shaking hands. He seemed to have forgotten all about the last thing I’d said to him the morning we last saw each other at Jolly’s.

  “How are you, Felix,” he said.

  “I’m very lonely,” I said, “and longing for love and comfort.”

  “They’re actually celebrating,” Fran said.

  Sid scowled briefly at Fran’s remark, and then he signaled a waiter to bring two more chairs, which the waiter did, and we sat down. While the waiter was there, everyone ordered a drink, and Harvey started telling how he was a country boy and was going back to the farm to eat watermelons. I was sitting next to Jolly, and she put one of her knees against one of mine and held it there.

  “Isn’t it odd,” she said, “how we just happened to come here the same night and all, especially when neither of us hardly ever comes here at all?”

  “It is,” I said. “It’s destiny or something.”

  Fran was talking with Harvey, and now she looked at him with an incredulous expression.

  “Naked?” she said. “Actually naked?”

  “Certainly naked,” Harvey said. “It’s only a lousy little creek with no one around for miles.”

  “Nevertheless,” Fran said, “I find it incredible and fascinating that a grown man would swim in anything whatever with absolutely nothing on.” She turned to me. “Tell the truth, Felix. Have you ever swum naked in a creek?”

  “As a boy,” I said, “I regularly swam naked in a creek, and as a man I have done it off and on as the opportunities presented themselves.”

  “It’s a common practice,” Harvey said.

  Sid observed that the conversation was silly, and that started an argument between him and Fran. As usual.

  “I suggest we all have another drink,” I said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Jolly said. “Let’s all have another drink, as Felix suggests, and then go somewhere else where it’s a little more exciting. I must say that I find Sylvester’s quite dull and disappointing. It’s overrated, that’s what it is.”

  “Everyone knows that,” Fran said. “Everyone knows it’s overrated, but everyone keeps coming here just the same. Isn’t that odd?”

  “It’s a habit,” Harvey said. “People are creatures of habit.”

  Sid had got the attention of a waiter, and everyone began saying that he would have the same as before, and eventually the waiter got it straight as to what it was that everyone had had.

  “Does everyone consent to going somewhere else where it is more exciting?” Jolly asked.

  “Well,” Harvey said, “I was rather counting on catching Gloria Finch in a late act.”

  “Don’t bother, Harvey,” Jolly said. “Gloria Finch is a cow.”

  “Is that so?” Harvey said. “She doesn’t look like a cow in her pictures.”

  “Her pictures are deceptive. It’s the way they use lights and things. It’s downright criminal the way they use lights and things to make women like Gloria Finch look like they aren’t cows.”

  “Is it true that she sometimes improvises on the act in the way of discarding articles of clothing?”

  “I understand that it’s true, but I maintain that it is no particular pleasure to see a cow without clothing.”

  “That would depend on the cow,” Harvey said, “and I still think it might be interesting to see it.”

  “Oh, come on, Harvey,” Fran said, “give it up. Perhaps I can arrange something for you a little later in the evening.”

  “In that case,” Harvey said, “I’ll give it up.”

  “Well, I’ll be God-damned,” Sid said.

  Fran looked at him and started to say something, but at that moment the waiter brought the drinks, and everyone started drinking instead of talking.

  “Since it’s agreed that we will go somewhere else,” Jolly said after a while, “it is now necessary to decide where it will be. Does anyone have an idea?”

  “I have an idea,” Sid said.

  Fran lowered her glass and stared at him for a moment with wide eyes.

  “Really, Sid? Is it actually true that you have an idea?”

  “I do,” Sid said with dignity. “It is my idea that w
e should go to Prince Sam’s Hallelujah House.”

  “Hallelujah House?”

  “That’s what it’s called. The reason it’s called that is because it’s a bar in front and a kind of tabernacle in back. There’s a preacher there who keeps exhorting about the evils of drink, and the thing to do is to drink in the front part and then go back and listen to the preacher, and after the preacher has worked up a good sweat sending you to hell for drinking, it becomes a kind of moral obligation to go back and drink some more in the front room so that he can have another whack at you, and all in all this keeps going on and on, and it’s very good for business. Besides the money he takes up in collections, it’s reported that the preacher gets a weekly salary from the till at the bar.”

  “Sid,” Fran said, “you’re drunk on sociable drinks, and there isn’t a word of truth in you.”

  “It’s true,” Sid said. “It’s true, and I can take you there to prove it.”

  “Yes,” Harvey said, “it’s definitely true. I remember hearing of the place myself, now that Sid has mentioned it, and I admit that I am anxious to go.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Fran said. “Imagine old Sid knowing about a place like that.”

  “I propose that we leave for the Hallelujah House immediately,” Jolly said. “Do you have your car, Felix?”

  “No. We’re in Harvey’s.”

  “Well, anyhow, we will have to divide into two groups, and Sid will have to go in the first car in order to guide us.”

  “I’ll go with Sid and Fran,” Harvey said, “and Jolly and Felix can follow in my car.”

  We finished the drinks and went outside and across the street to the garage where we had left the cars. Jolly and Fran and Sid had come in the Caddy that had been Kirby’s and was now Jolly’s, and Fran and Sid and Harvey got into it. Jolly sat very close to me in the front seat of Harvey’s old crate, and we followed the shining Caddy out into the country to the place that Sid had told us about.

  15

  IT WAS a big wooden building that looked like a barn, except that the roof wasn’t hipped as a barn’s usually is, and all around it was a gravel parking area with a lot of cars parked in it. We stopped our own among the others and got out and went inside, and the interior was divided almost equally by a partition into the front room, which was the bar, and the back room, which was what they called the tabernacle. The bar ran along the partition side of the front room, and apparently the pulpit in the back room was also right against the partition, and sometimes when the preacher was going good and loud, it was necessary to bellow at the bartender in order to make him understand what it was you wanted. The entrance to the tabernacle was at the right end of the bar as you faced it, and this arrangement was deliberately contrived so that those at the bar could catch a few words of exhortation if they cared to listen and slip easily around behind the partition to be personally threatened with hell’s fire if the spirit moved them.

  There was a huge and gaudy juke box in the room, but it was disconnected at night when the tabernacle was open, because it interfered with the singing of hymns. The bartender was a massive black man with a completely naked scalp and a high shine and an incredible number of glittering gold teeth which were constantly in evidence, and it turned out that this bartender was no one but Prince Sam himself. The patrons were light and dark, about evenly divided, and they sat at the bar and at tables in a sea of sawdust. The sawdust was shaped to form a narrow path around the end of the bar and through the door into the tabernacle, and there was a big sign with a flaming arrow pointing toward the door, and printed in red block letters below the arrow were the words: THE SAWDUST TRAIL.

  “This is obviously an interesting and busy establishment,” Jolly said, “and it is my opinion that it would greatly simplify matters if we were all to order the same thing to drink.”

  “I agree, Jolly,” Fran said, “and I am also convinced that we had better keep the drink itself on the simple side, for I have a feeling that Prince Sam would be impatient with such things as martinis and manhattans and similar elaborate mixtures.”

  “True,” Jolly said. “Prince Sam, in spite of his passion for gold teeth, is obviously a simple fellow, and I have an idea that he might take it as an insult if we were to order anything more complicated than a highball. I require a little sweetness with my whiskey, and I therefore suggest bourbon in ginger ale.”

  “Is bourbon and ginger ale satisfactory to everyone?” Fran asked.

  “Hell, no,” Harvey said. “There’s a very popular theory that people who put ginger ale into whiskey drinks ought to be shot. I want soda.”

  I asked for soda too, and murmured that I subscribed to the shooting theory. Nobody seemed to hear me.

  There were no waiters or waitresses, and it was clearly the custom for people at the tables to go to the bar for their own drinks, so we found a table and sat down, all of us except Sid, and Sid remained at the bar to deliver the order. The preacher behind the partition was exhorting loudly at the moment about the evils of hard liquor, and it was his position that it was the devil’s drink, which was not in my opinion a particularly original position among preachers, and every once in a while the exhortation would be punctuated by someone in the congregation shouting amen or hallelujah, and one penitent kept disturbing the sermon by shouting that he was nothing but a bum and had always been nothing but a bum from an early age but that he had now seen the light and was resolved to do better in the future, and this penitent made such a nuisance of himself that he was finally ejected forcibly from the tabernacle. He returned to the bar and started drinking again, and at that time Sid came over to our table with the five bourbons in ginger ale on a tin tray. He sat down and spread the glasses around, and Fran looked at him sternly.

  “Sid,” she said, “you sneaky little bastard, you’re always talking about being a sociable drinker and turning up your snotty nose at honest folk who drink for sensible reasons, and all the time you knew all about this Hallelujah House and have obviously been coming here regularly, because you call Prince Sam by name and are clearly acquainted with him.”

  “I come here now and then to study human nature,” Sid said.

  “Did you hear that?” Fran appealed to the rest of us. “I have absolutely devoted years of my life to establishing a spirit of confidence and trust between me and this little sneak, and now I discover that he has the effrontery and ingratitude to lie to me in a perfectly brazen manner.” She turned and concentrated on Sid again. “What’s the matter with you, Sid? In what way have I failed you? Why is it that you can’t simply confess that you’ve been an underhanded alcoholic all this time you’ve been trying to act so virtuous and everything?”

  “Damn it,” said Sid, “I am not an alcoholic. I come here to study human nature, and take an infrequent drink in the process out of deference to Prince Sam’s business. I am a very serious student of human nature, to tell the truth, and you have simply never understood me.”

  “I certainly concede that,” Fran said. “I concede that I have not fully understood you, and I don’t mind admitting that I am positively stunned. I really can’t understand how you could have been a confirmed alcoholic all this time without my even suspecting it.”

  Sid gulped some of his drink desperately, and Fran drank some of hers sadly, and the rest of us drank some of ours in our own ways for our own reasons. In the tabernacle, someone banged out a few chords on a piano, and the congregation began to bawl out the words of a hymn.

  Jolly contacted me with a knee and said, “I find that quite appealing, Felix, I really do. Don’t you find it appealing?”

  “It’s good and loud,” I said.

  “The thing about it is,” she said, “it just shows what can be done in the matter of getting along with each other when people only try. I consider Prince Sam truly noble to permit the tabernacle to exist in his back room.”

  “He is not only noble but also very shrewd, and I would bet dollars to dimes that this combination is
one that results in a fat bank account.”

  “Are you being cynical, Felix? I wish you wouldn’t be cynical.”

  “I am not being cynical. I am only pointing out that those who have repented and received salvation are apt to have a drink in their rejoicing, and those who have been convinced of their damnation are apt to have several in their despair.”

  “Well, I confess that it may be incidentally true, but I can’t accept it as Prince Sam’s calculated purpose. His brow is far too noble for it. I am tremendously impressed by his noble brow. Have you noticed it?”

  “I am of the opinion that the nobility of his brow is exaggerated by the baldness of his head.”

  “Felix, darling, you depress me. This is because I love you and am vulnerable where you are concerned, and it disturbs me to see the deterioration of your character. I have noticed this deterioration especially in our personal relationship.”

  “Is that so? I was under the impression that my character had lately become irreproachable in our relationship.”

  “That’s because you are chronically befuddled, Felix, and can’t tell the difference between nobility and simple pig-headedness.”

  “Do you feel, perhaps, that I should take turns with Sid?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I concede that I’m a degenerate in order to end this discussion.”

  We had by this time finished the first round of drinks, and Sid gathered the glasses and put them on the tin tray and returned to the bar for refills. Fran watched him go and made a tch-ing sound with her tongue against her teeth.

  “I absolutely cannot comprehend the monstrous deception of that little devil,” she said. “It is terribly disconcerting to think that you know someone like the palm of your own hand and then to discover suddenly that you have been deceived all along.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t been deceived after all,” Harvey said. “Maybe he was telling the truth about being a student of human nature and all that. Sometimes these small quiet guys turn out to be something you’re least likely to suspect.”

  “I accept your final remark as being incontrovertible,” Fran said, “and what Sid has certainly turned out to be that I didn’t suspect is a barfly at best. This is evident from his confession that he has been frequenting Prince Sam’s Hallelujah House for some time, and anyone who has even an infrequent drink from the hands of Prince Sam must have a powerful taste for whiskey because, except for a couple of ice cubes, that’s practically all the drinks consist of. Have you noticed that?”