To wit: What would happen if the Army found out that Wallingford Philips—who was writing all these terrible things about the hanky-panky their majors and up, and the dependents thereof, were in the practice of practicing during their off-duty hours—was really Technical Sergeant Philip W. Williams of the USAAMU?
The terrible and likely possibilities began with physical exercise twelve or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark, and got worse from there.
He confided his fears to his new author’s representative, Cushman Johns, who agreed it was a problem inasmuch that if Phil were making little rocks out of big ones at the Army Prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, twelve or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark, he would have precious little energy left to devote to his creative writing.
“I think what we should do, Phil, old chap, is call in the Rabbi. It will cost you a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! arm and a leg, but advice from the Rabbi is invariably worth every EXPLETIVE DELETED!! dime it costs.”
“Who’s the Rabbi?” Phil asked.
“You’ve never heard of the legendary Gustave Warblerman, L.L.D., literary legal counsel to the giants of literature?”
“Can’t say that I have. And why do they call him ‘the Rabbi’?”
“Because he has the soft eyes and benign ambience of a Jewish clergyman at one of the better temples. This masks of course his true persona. And right now, trust me, old chap, you need him.”
On being apprised of the problem, “Rabbi” Warblerman said he was quite sympathetic as once, in his youth, he, too, had been a common enlisted man and thus knew to what depths those EXPLETIVE DELETED!! West Pointers would go to stick it to some poor EXPLETIVE DELETED!! enlisted man who dared question their claim to semi-divinity.
He recommended a program of disinformation.
“I’m in your capable hands, Rabbi,” Phil said. “Do whatever you think should be done.”
“Only those whom I have skewered with my legal genius call me ‘Rabbi,’ Phil. My friends, and you may now include yourself in that select group, call me either ‘Gus’ or ‘Your Honor.’”
“Gus, Your Honor, please do what you think should be done,” Phil said.
He did.
Word was leaked to the publishing press that there was no such person as Wallingford Philips, and that Wallingford Philips was the nom de plume of Friar Aloysius of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, who resided at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky, and who did not give interviews to the press, because Trappist monks don’t even talk to each other, much less to the press.
This worked, and the Army never found out that Phil was really Wallingford Philips or vice versa as long as he was in the Army. When they did find out his true identity, that is to say Wallingford Philips’s true identity, Phil was out of the Army and it was too late for them to wreak vengeance upon him.
But this is getting a little ahead of the narrative of this romance novel, so back to it:
The other thing that bothered Phil was the necessity of concealing his newfound affluence from both the U.S. Army and from Brunhilde, the one he was married to. He had to conceal it from Brunhilde because he knew the moment she learned about it, the Brunhilde in diapers would find herself rolling around in a baby carriage manufactured by the Rolls-Royce Motor Car Company of Crewe, England, and the Army would wonder how the wife of Technical Sergeant Williams had come by the wherewithal to be so kind to her offspring.
He had told her that they could afford a newer Ford station wagon to replace the one he’d bought from Kenny McLain’s Previously Owned Motor Cars outside Fort McPherson and which now, at almost fifteen years of age, was in terminal shape. So shortly thereafter they carefully drove it to the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company in Columbus, Georgia, and bought, on time, a five-year-old Ford station wagon in less terminal shape.
While Brunhilde was discussing the financial terms of the deal, Phil’s eye fell upon something in the dealer’s new-car showroom with which he immediately fell in love, specifically a British racing green Jaguar motor car with chromed wire spoke wheels like a bicycle.
He learned that day that the pain caused by not having the money to buy something every fiber in your body wants is nowhere near as painful as not being able to buy something every fiber in your body wants when you do have the money to buy it but can’t because of other circumstances.
He managed to resist the temptation to buy the Jaguar that day—but it was a battle. He managed to resist it again six months later when their “new” Ford station wagon turned out to be more of a lemon than their old one, and they had to return to the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company for another one. The silver Jaguar then on display was even nicer than the first one he had seen, and he had been instantly enamored of it, as it had bloodred leather seats, chromed wire wheels, and, on its nose, the iconic hood ornament known to those in the know as the Jaguar Leaping Leaper.
He resisted the temptation to do something stupid like buy the silver Jaguar—which would really cause the Army to ask questions he didn’t want to have to answer—despite many sleepless nights thinking about that adorable little chromed Jaguar on the hood, which was of course the bonnet, as Jaguars were of English manufacture, until after Philip Wallingford Williams IV was born into this vale of tears.
It was at this point that they again returned to the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company, this time to buy yet another Ford station wagon, replacing the three-year-old lemon with a new one. The occasion was Brunhilde-the-wife’s announcement that she was again in the family way, having graciously moved him back into their bedroom as she had previously and with the same result.
Phil, without betraying the fact there was ample cash in the bank to pay cash, had told her that they had probably established enough credit for the Ford Motor Credit Company to loan them enough to buy a new vehicle, and she liked the idea, as in seven months they would have three little ones, not just two, to ferry from hither-to-yon.
While Brunhilde-the-wife was dealing with the salesman vis-à-vis the terms of the ten-year note Phil was later that day to sign, Phil sought out the proprietor of the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company and asked if he could have a quiet word with him.
“What would you say, sir,” Phil said when he had been led into a dark corner of the service department, “if I told you I am prepared to buy that silver car with the wire wheels and the chromed Jaguar on the bonnet on your showroom floor right now, providing that you let me keep it in your service department so that I can come here at night and on weekends and take my Jag for a little spin?”
“Let me get this straight. You want to buy the car and leave it here and then come and take it for a little spin every once in a while?”
“That is correct.”
“Then I would say, Sergeant, although I can’t smell anything, that you’ve been at the sauce and I will thank you not to waste any more of my valuable time. You know how much that Jaguar sells for?”
“To the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! penny,” Phil replied, and then thrust a pigskin leather folder before the proprietor’s eyes. “You know what that is?”
“I do indeed. I saw a story in Forbes magazine,” the man said. “It’s a City-Diamond pigskin leather checkbook holder, which the First National City Bank of New York issues to stinking rich people who maintain a minimum average balance of one million dollars in their City-Diamond checking accounts. I’m actually wondering where you found it, or more likely stole it.”
“If you would be so kind, sir, as to call the number on the check and say ‘Hotshot,’ I feel my charge account executive at the First National City Bank, whose name is Ellward T. Fobby, will quickly assure you not only that this is my checkbook, but also that the funds in my account were acquired through absolutely legal means that he is not permitted to divulge.”
“Let me get
you a cup of coffee, Sergeant, while I get on the phone.”
—
For the next seven months, Phil frequently visited the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company’s garage late at night, or sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, to visit with the adorable chrome Leaping Leaper on the bonnet of his Jaguar, and to polish him and the rest of the car with loving swipes, and every once in a while to take quick trips up and down the Georgia back roads.
But—even after Franz Josef Williams was born, when he had been sorely tempted to drive his second son home from the hospital in the Jaguar—Phil never drove it in the daylight or told Brunhilde-his-wife what he had done.
[ TWO ]
Foggy Point, Mississippi
Wednesday, December 15, 1954
Phil’s enlistment was finally over. He was discharged under Honorable Conditions from the U.S. Army.
“Brunhilde,” he said, when he returned for the last time to his—actually, their—quarters at 103B Bataan Death March Avenue in NCO Town, “before we go out to the USAAMU for the last time to say auf Wiedersehen to Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley and the boys, we have to make a quick stop at the Columbus Ford and Jaguar Motor Company to pick up my Jaguar, which I have somehow neglected to mention to you previously.”
“I knew the minute I laid eyes on you that you weren’t to be trusted,” Brunhilde replied. “But I am so happy to be able get the hell out of here that I will delay your punishment for the time being.”
Two hours later, Brunhilde-the-wife, driving the Ford station wagon with “Little Phil,” as he had come to be known, and Franz Josef aboard, and Phil, driving the Jaguar with “Little Brunhilde,” as she had come to be known, and four cases of Winchester AA 12-gauge shotgun shells containing 1⅛ ounces of #9 shot that had been Master Sergeant Quigley’s farewell gift aboard, departed the gate of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence for the last time.
They headed for Troy State University in Troy, Alabama, where Phil—presuming their offer to make him a junior assistant athletic coach (Archery) was still open—thought he might begin his new life as an academic until he could figure out how to disclose his undisclosed affluence to the woman with whom he and their three children were marching down the path of life.
—
Mrs. Brunhilde Williams took a good look at the campus of Troy State University and all the cultural and other advantages of the school and its campus, and announced that if Phil thought she would live here, he had best change his thinking, as rather than living here, she would rather spend the rest of her life at 103B Bataan Death March Avenue in NCO Town in Fort Benning.
“So, if you had another option, what would you like to do, Brunhilde?” Phil asked.
“As we came down that cow path—the one with potholes and signs that said U.S. Highway 231 South and was lined with cheap motels—I noticed another sign that said, Stay on US 231 South to the Sun-Drenched White Sandy Beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama. So get in that funny-looking car of yours and follow me. We’re off to Gulf Shores!”
—
Perhaps predictably—Phil had learned that the mother of his children could, and often did, get lost in a closet—rather than ending their drive that day in Alabama, they wound up in Mississippi, in a bucolic burb called Goodhope.
There, when Phil asked a local if he could recommend a place where for a low price they might rest their weary heads overnight, the Goodhopian—who quietly hated all foreigners and, even more, all Yankees, and to his joy realized he had one of each at his mercy—directed them to the Grand Hotel, which he said was in Foggy Point, just a couple miles down Mississippi Scenic Highway 98.
Phil questioned the “low price” business as soon as they drove up to the magnificent front door of the Grand Hotel. Then he saw the cars parked there, the most shabby of these being an enormous two-year-old glistening black Mercedes-Benz. There were more Jaguars than Phil had ever seen in one place before.
“Speaking of Jaguars,” Brunhilde said. “We’re going to get something to eat and rest our weary heads in here if you have to sell yours to pay for it.”
Brunhilde fell in love with the Grand Hotel the moment the tailcoat-attired maître d’hotel in the Grand Dining Room handed her a menu and then announced the special offering of the day was Weiner Schnitzel Auf Weiner Art, and the dessert of the day Sachertorte mit importiert vom Ausland Schlagsahne, which Phil knew, since he spoke German, meant a layer cake named after the hotel immediately behind the Vienna State Opera, and came topped with whipped cream imported from abroad.
Brunhilde told the headwaiter she was both thrilled and surprised that the menu featured such Viennese delicacies. He replied that this was because of Madame Violet Tenser-Schultz McNamara, who was a very good friend of Mrs. Gladys O’Hara, whose husband K.J. owned the Grand Hotel and just about all of the rest of Foggy Point, including the Foggy Point Country Club, and was—Madame Violet Tenser-Schultz McNamara was, or had in her bygone youth been—a Viennese.
When the headwaiter had left, Brunhilde said, “Say goodbye to your Jaguar, Phil. This is where we’re going to stay until we run out of money, including the money we’re going to get by selling that stupid Jaguar you never should have bought in the first place.”
Phil of course wasn’t worried about having to sell the Jaguar to pay the bill, because of the cash he had in his City-Diamond account. And anyway, the hotel cost was a deductible expense against his income tax. Rabbi Warblerman had told him that because of a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court (The Internal Revenue Service v. William Bradford Huie) all of his travel expenses, no matter where in the wide world he chose to go, or how much money he spent in so going, were deductible.
In what became known as “the Whorehouse Decision,” Rabbi Warblerman had told Phil, the Supreme Court had unanimously come down on the side of the plaintiff, the journalist and author Mr. Huie, who claimed that all of the expenses he had incurred making trips to a Nevada brothel called The Fly Inn for Fun Inn, Inc., which had its own landing strip and into which he had flown in a Cessna 172 aircraft to stay ten days, were deductible as legitimate research expenses as he planned to pen a report on what life was like in The Fly Inn for Fun Inn, Inc., said report to be published in one or more magazines in which Mr. Huie had previously published reports of other notable topics he had investigated.
The steadfast position of the IRS, in brief, was that everybody already knew what goes on in a whorehouse, and that it was simply outrageous and possibly criminal for Mr. Huie to expect the American taxpayer to subsidize his amoral and prurient interest in what goes on in a whorehouse by claiming it as a deductible research expense.
Mr. Huie’s law firm, which listed Mr. Warblerman as “of counsel” on its letterhead, countered that under Amendment I to the United States Constitution (“Freedom of the Press”) the IRS had no more right to question what Mr. Huie thought he should investigate and write about than it did to question the veracity of all those congressmen who denied doing all the multifarious amoral and illegal things everybody knew they were doing.
The effect of the decision with regard to Phil was that he could deduct all his travel expenses because he was a bona fide author.
“Your Honor,” as Phil was now permitted to call Mr. Warblerman, said that Phil now qualified as a published writer because he had actually published and sold books, not just bought a typewriter and announced his intention to someday write one, as a whole lot of people had done once the Whorehouse Decision became public.
[ THREE ]
On their fifth day in the Grand Hotel in Foggy Point, Brunhilde, as she had every day since they checked in, got in the Ford station wagon “to have a look around Goodhope.”
While she looked around, Phil spent the days watching their children as they splashed around the hotel’s enormous swimming pool, which was said to be the largest swimming pool east of the Mississippi and certainly looked like
it.
Upon her return on the fifth day, there was a man in a suit and tie with her. He carried a briefcase, from which he took a six-inch-thick stack of legal forms that Brunhilde then laid before Phil, handed him a pen, and showed him where he was to make his mark.
“What am I signing?”
“We’ve bought a house,” Brunhilde said. “Or will have bought a house just as soon as you sign these documents. You don’t have to worry about how we’re going to pay for it for two reasons. One, you’re getting it on a Veterans Administration loan, which means no money down and $136.70 a month for the rest of your life. And, two, because after we sell your Jaguar, we’ll have enough money to pay that $136.70 a month for a year, after which the Brunhilde Wienerwald School of Ballet should be up and running and in a position to pay the $136.70 every month ad infinitum. So sign it and shut up.”
XIII
FAMILY WILLIAMS MOVES QUICKLY UPWARD SOCIALLY
[ ONE ]
Goodhope, Mississippi
Sunday, January 16, 1955
Phil liked the house Brunhilde had found for them on Creek Drive in Goodhope, which had three bedrooms, two baths, and a one-car garage. Creek Drive was thus called because it was on The Creek, which previously had been Fly Creek, and which in turn had previously been called Bayou Volante, which Phil, because he spoke French, knew meant “Flying Creek.”
Investigation revealed that it had so been named by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville (February 23, 1680–March 7, 1767), who had spent a few days in what was now Goodhope, Mississippi, en route to establish a city that would come to be known as New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Sieur had apparently been in what was now Goodhope during a heavy rain, which had turned the gentle flow of the creek, or bayou, in what was now Phil’s backyard, from a trickle into something stronger, which the Sieur decided justified deeming the creek Bayou Volante.
The Hunting Trip Page 27