Let's go For Broke

by Mary Lasswell

  “He already told Old-Timer he would fix it for him and that he could work it out. He’s only going to help out five days a week, that way he can do any hauling and trailer-hitching that comes his way,” James said.

  “I’m iss-cairt we’ll be rich,” Mrs. Feeley grumbled. “Won’t nobody like us then.”

  “Not much danger,” James laughed, “the way you spend it all on other people.” The two working men stopped for beer and cheese. “Say, I brought my twenty-two along. The other night we saw a few big rats. Old-Timer and I could get in a little target practice.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen came out with a pan of milk and set it on the porch:

  “If the cats breed any more, they’ll be the nuisance. Them tabbies musta all been makin’ kittens when we brought ’em out here.”

  “First the rats and mice had a population explosion,” Miss Tinkham said. “Our feline friends have just about done away with the rodents, as well as the salable squabs. I don’t think the Public Health inspectors could find anything to object to now, unless it might be the cats. Perhaps we can give some of them away as a bonus with every purchase from the antique shop.”

  “The Ladies’ Auxiliary runs a series of bridge parties at the Club. The chairman was asking me about your shop the other day. They want to buy a few things for prizes,” James said to Miss Tinkham.

  “That’s a splendid idea,” she replied. “Perhaps if we ran a small advertisement in the Shopper’s News, and if I appeared before some of the Women’s Clubs we could dispose of the rest of the merchandise.”

  “Ug!” Mrs. Feeley scowled.

  “Don’t you approve of clubs for women, Mrs. Feeley?” James said.

  Mrs. Feeley laughed: “As Feeley always said: ‘Clubs is fine for women…if kindness fails.’”

  Tuesday afternoon Mrs. Rasmussen was pounding flour, pepper, and salt into small oblongs of sirloin tip with the edge of a saucer. On the stove an iron skillet held a savory stuffing made from hard bread crumbs, onions, and herbs. There was a little grated Roman cheese mixed in with it.

  “I’ll just put the garlic through the press after these here is baked. Don’t care for cooked garlic much. Tastes so much better raw an’ don’t come back on you like cooked.”

  N. Carnation was sorting over the feathers and tying them in bunches. She nodded as though she understood every word Mrs. Rasmussen was saying.

  The chef browned the pieces of meat in a mixture of butter, bacon grease, and olive oil. Then she spread them with dressing, rolled them up neatly and fastened them with toothpicks. They filled an oblong baking dish and Mrs. Rasmussen be-dewed the meat rolls with a little red wine and lemon juice. The wood stove was wonderful for slow baking.

  “Guess you really like somebody when you fix ’em somethin’ you don’t like yourself.” She smiled as she prepared the casserole of mashed sweet potatoes with orange juice and rind, chopped pecans, and marshmallows. She set her teeth as she arranged the marshmallows on the top. “It ain’t that it’s bad or nothin’, just kinda like a dessert puddin’ instead o’ vittles. But James loves it, he told me. I got somepin’ good for us.”

  She showed N. Carnation a casserole of scalloped tomatoes with plenty of hot green peppers showing through. The leftover hot biscuits from the day before dotted the top and she had asked N. Carnation for three leaves of fresh sweet basil. “With a nice slaw mixed in with celery seeds, and sour cream thinned with just a tetch o’ that white wine Bim bought, good an’ cold, this here will be a good supper.”

  Miss Tinkham came in with a big new copybook. She could use it for general planning now that N. Carnation’s vital statistics had been written down. They took up pitifully small space, less than half a page.

  “We had better plan the flower or fruit production now,” she said. “Those people will be back any day for more. I think,” she looked around the kitchen, “that except for mixing the dye, we had better move the flower factory to the upper floor.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen put her hands on her hips and nodded: “I seen you herded ’em off to the glass porch whenever they was here.”

  “It would destroy the illusion completely if they caught us in the process of making ‘genuine imported Aztec feather fruits,’” Miss Tinkham laughed. “How much paper have we? And what colors?” N. Carnation got up and went with her to a big carton where she kept the paper. There was very little left—and only in bright indigo blue.

  “Pears?” Miss Tinkham queried. “Peras? Azules?”

  N. Carnation nodded and was about to speak when a car drove in. It was the violet station wagon. Mrs. Rasmussen took off her apron hastily and Miss Tinkham shut the door from the kitchen to the porch. She went out to meet the decorators. Maybe she could unload some of the planted bowls.

  “We’ve hit pay dirt, if you will cooperate with us,” the older one said. Miss Tinkham had difficulty controlling her face. Mrs. Feeley had referred to him the night before as the stud duck of the firm and Miss Tinkham’s left side still ached from laughing.

  “We have received no shipment this week,” Miss Tinkham said. “I warned you, if you remember, that the arrival of shipments is sporadic and rather uncertain.”

  “That’s why we came. We have this terrific order, if you can get the flowers for us. We’d have to know for sure, as we can’t take the job until we know we can deliver the goods. This Texas oil man that wants the Chinese vases for ash trays around his pool, you know? Well, his daughter is making her debut before long and he wants one thousand blue feather camellias.”

  Miss Tinkham stared hard and thought of one of her little couplets:

  Worse than blue noses

  I hate blue roses.

  “What on earth for?” she asked.

  “To wire onto the trees around his garden…oaks and such, for the ball.”

  “They would go with the vases,” the younger man simpered.

  Miss Tinkham had to respect, if not admire, such persistence.

  “A thousand blue camellias,” she murmured.

  “Two thousand dollars,” the older one reminded her.

  “You remember how temperamental these artists are,” she said. “Since your client is from Texas, one would expect him to want ‘pank’ camellias.”

  “Blue. One thousand. Blue like the pears.”

  “When?” Miss Tinkham asked, shuddering inwardly.

  “Three weeks from now.”

  She was sure the flowers wouldn’t be needed that soon, but this agate-eyed dealer wasn’t taking chances. Blue or ‘pank,’ a thousand camellias meant a lot of work and a lot of feathers. They were harder to make than pansies or morning-glories because there were so many small round petals to be cut out.

  On the other hand, two thousand dollars was more money than she used to make a year as a music teacher. It was more than the four friends, now five, had ever seen at one time. She juggled the facts quickly in her head, setting the pros against the cons. In a big decision like this, she did not feel it right to act alone.

  “Wouldn’t you like to look at the new planters that have just come in?” She waved them into the antique shop. “I’ll have to consult my associates and look at the inventory a moment before I can give you a firm reply. Excuse me.”

  She went to Mrs. Rasmussen and N. Carnation with the proposition. How could they make N. Carnation understand what a thousand was? Even if she told her in Spanish, mil camelias, wasn’t so hard, but N. Carnation could not encompass the number of flowers that made up a thousand.

  “Muchas, muchas camelias,” Miss Tinkham said. Lots and lots would have to do. “Tres…what is that word for weeks? Hand me the dictionary, Mrs. Rasmussen.”

  There it was, and why did they print dictionaries in such fine print? “Semanas! En tres semanas? Posible?”

  “Cómo no?” N. Carnation smiled. “Apretamos mucho.”

  “Oh, oh! I do wish I had paid attention to Katy! Apretamos! Apretar?”

  She looked in the dictionary. Apretar: to press, to squeeze, to bear
down.

  “Apretamos! We will bear down hard? Trabajar mucho? Apretamos mil camelias?”

  “Cómo no?” N. Carnation was gleeful over Miss Tinkham’s progress. “Pooty goo! Pooty goo! Too muchee worky!”

  “She means ‘purty good,’” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I kin make out some o’ what she means already.”

  “‘Too much work,’ she says.” Miss Tinkham consulted the dictionary again. “Demasiado? Too much trabajar? No poder?”

  “No.” N. Carnation wagged her forefinger in front of her face. “Too muchy worky. En tres semanas se puede. Apretamos mucho.”

  “I think she means lots of work,” Miss Tinkham sat down perspiring. “Just give the baby his bottle, Mrs. Rasmussen, dear.”

  “Nothin’ but cans today, baby,” Mrs. Rasmussen opened three beers. “This lingo will really wear you down.”

  “If I write out a sentence, maybe I can read it to her,” Miss Tinkham said. “There. That ought to do it. ‘Demasiado trabajar mil camelias en tres semanas posible? Sí or no?’”

  “Sí, es posible.” N. Carnation made all the affirmative gestures known and invented a few new ones. “Bueno! Con mucho gusto! Compramos calderas grandes!” She stretched her arms into as big a circle as they could make.

  “She’s wantin’ bigger boilers for that there dye,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “I betcha anythin’.”

  Mrs. Feeley came in with a bushel basket full of freesias that had come into bloom. The spearlike small leaves had been unnoticed in the grass. Their delicate lemony fragrance filled the room.

  “Just when we need you most,” Miss Tinkham said. “What’s your opinion on taking their order for one thousand blue camellias?”

  “If you wasn’t ladies an’ I wasn’t a lady, I’d tell you short enough. I seen their banana wagon. What’s N. Carnation say?”

  “She says it can be done if we all bear down hard,” Miss Tinkham said. “It will gross two thousand dollars.”

  Mrs. Feeley sat down with a thump and reached for the beer.

  “You know what that means? The movie-hearse money is enough to pay the half year’s taxes we owe. Ol’-Timer’s got steady work to pay for his truck an’ the dents took out. We got hot water, lights, a roof that don’t leak…Gawd, woman, just think o’ the beer two thousand dollars will buy!”

  “Be like that time we done that nasty stretch o’ hard work at the tuna factory. They ain’t nothin’ for it but to buckle down, git it done, an’ then don’t do a tap o’ work for two whole years,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “I think you are right,” Miss Tinkham replied at last. “Set up a workshop in the second story, light and airy, get big dye kettles, and I think commercial dye would be easier than fooling with the shredded crepe paper. It will take a little experimenting. But, dear God, for what sins in some other incarnation are we condemned to make and contemplate one thousand blue camellias?”

  “No worse’n blue pears,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  “Blue flowers won’t light up at night,” Miss Tinkham said, “but tied onto trees to match the blue vases…hand me a beer to settle my stomach.”

  “You gonna let ’em have the vases?” Mrs. Feeley said.

  “In for a dime, in for a dollar.” Miss Tinkham nodded wearily. “Knowing us, we are bound to think of something else to sell and we’ll never get such a good offer again.”

  She walked out to meet the decorators. Both carried a planted ruby-glass bowl in each hand. She figured they only took them to influence her decision. “The delivery of so many…” she paused midway. A boy on a bicycle rode up the bumpy lane with a telegram.

  “This Five Points Associates?”

  Miss Tinkham signed for the telegram.

  “Excuse me,” she turned to leave the decorators, “it is from our scouts in Mexico. It may help us to reach a decision. Con permiso!” She walked back quickly to the kitchen to share the news with the three.

  “Open it quick!” Mrs. Feeley said. “It can’t be from nobody but Jesse and Bim. Danny and Katy don’t even know where we’re at.”

  “In the bag!” Miss Tinkham read. “All in order. You got it made, gals. Love to all. An extra hug to Mrs. Encarnación V. Heinz. Jesse and Bim.”

  “Papeles!” Miss Tinkham cried. “Papeles Usted bueno. Jesse dice todo bueno!”

  N. Carnation’s eyes brimmed as Miss Tinkham handed her the telegram. She understood and embraced all the ladies in turn.

  “And I remembered afterwards it was documentos, not papeles, but she understood me. I’ll go and lay our heads on the block to those decorators,” Miss Tinkham sighed. “We are signing ourselves up for the salt mines of Siberia without even an assist from the Communists!”

  “We’ll make a kinda party out of it, like an ol’-fashioned sewin’ bee or somethin’,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We better go buy a ham an’ cook up a storm.”

  The decorators were sitting in their car.

  “You are in luck, sirs.” Miss Tinkham was damned if she would call their type of decorators gentlemen. “Our agents have informed us that the artists are awaiting our latest order. We shall telegraph tonight canceling the previous order, which has not yet been started. Instead we will ask for delivery of one thousand camellias, blue. To assure earliest possible delivery we shall ask our agents to wait for the flowers and to bring them back for us when they come. We require a deposit of one third in advance. In cash. Bring it as soon as possible.”

  The elder was savoring in his mind the gorgeous profit he would make off the father of the debutante. He opened his mouth to say something.

  “You can have them,” Miss Tinkham said wearily. “You may take the vases, at three hundred the pair, when you bring the cash deposit.”

  “We owe you for the planters,” the younger said.

  “Ten dollars.” Miss Tinkham held out her hand. By rights, she should have thrown them in for pilón, lagniappe, cumshaw, or something. But she remembered Mrs. Feeley’s business motto: “Nothing for nothing, and damn little for a dollar.”

  When James arrived after five the ladies told him the news. After supper he drove them into San Diego.

  “We need large dye containers,” Miss Tinkham said.

  “What about secondhand washtubs?” James suggested. “Another thing, working like that, you need an old gas stove of some kind, now that the service is turned on. Mrs. Rasmussen can’t fool with a wood stove when her time is all taken up. We can get one real cheap.”

  “There is no substitute for genius,” Miss Tinkham agreed. “We need green wire stems from the florist-supply house, and regular commercial dye. Those rounded centers in the camellias are very time-consuming. I wonder if we couldn’t glue a large wooden bead onto the stem first, then cover it with feathers, glued down? Curling the center takes too long.”

  “Production-line method is what it’s going to take,” James agreed.

  “Do all the dyeing at one time, then the cutting…And that reminds me: we need half a dozen pair of new sharp scissors. Two tubes of glass glue and ten of the largest cardboard cartons we can find. Put one hundred bunches of feathers in each carton and then attack. Just stay with it until all are done! Isn’t it a ghastly prospect? But there is one consolation: no styrafoam snowballs are involved.”

  “You all made those flowers and fruit awfully fast,” James said. “Don’t be discouraged, Miss Tinkham. If you play the radio and TV it will help.”

  “It’s like Marmee reading aloud while the girls hemmed sheets in Little Women,” she laughed. “And we have to learn Spanish and teach N. Carnation English at the same time, don’t forget. If we keep in mind the beautiful security that nice little bank accounts give, we won’t mind the monotonous labor.”

  “Security,” Mrs. Feeley piped up from the back seat, “that’s what the bank takes away from you when you borry money.”

  “I’m gonna cook a ham, a big rump roast, and ten pounds o’ good beef stew,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “Easy to warm up, ’specially if we get that gas stove.�
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  “I’ll hook it up tonight,” James said. “I’ll bet there’s a dumbwaiter somewhere in that house you could use to hoist your beer on.”

  “Tomorrow we better get more feathers. Wouldn’t do to run out o’ white feathers long about the middle o’ the job!” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “We better buy some grass sacks to hold ’em. Say, why wouldn’t them plastic bags that laundries use be better? Get us a bunch o’ them.”

  N. Carnation picked out three nice wash tubs while Mrs. Rasmussen looked at the gas stoves. She got a nice white one, an apartment size range for ten dollars. “It’s got a legulator on the oven. I always like that.”

  Miss Tinkham found silver glass balls for the camellia centers, cheaper than wooden beads. To her surprise, N. Carnation purchased two hundred of them out of her own pocket. Also two extra-large hanks of red raffia.

  “I’m consumed with curiosity,” Miss Tinkham whispered to James, “but we must respect her privacy.”

  “I came downstairs for a beer about two A.M. and the light was on in her room,” James said. “I didn’t take any notice of it, though, and went right on back upstairs. It’s not likely she was reading.”

  N. Carnation and Mrs. Rasmussen prepared the dye as soon as the purchases were unpacked. James connected the gas stove quickly and expertly. “The dye called indigo blue gives the same resulting color on the feathers that Prussian blue paper did,” Miss Tinkham said. “Fortunately there was one pear left as a sample. I am hoping they will dry a shade lighter, because a dark flower simply will not show against the dark green leaves of trees at night. Not that that would hurt my feelings!”

  “You’re an artist,” James said. “Even if you don’t like them, you want them to be right. It’s like Mrs. Rasmussen making the sweet potatoes for me.”

  Mrs. Rasmussen had the ham and the roast in the wood stove where they would cook until the fire died out. She was browning the meat for stew and it would simmer all night. Vegetables were quick and easy, and they would do the dishes once a day. She was laying out a cold snack and would pour out a cold nightcap for everybody as soon as James came down. He had taken two empty boxes and some long planks to the southeast upstairs big bedroom and made a fine assembly table, just the right height for ladies to work at. Then he carried the television set upstairs and hooked it from the central light fixture with the aid of extensions. When the blackboard was installed, resting on the frame of a seatless chair, he came down.