The Feather Merchants

by Max Shulman

  “I just threw one away, dear.”

  “Do you mind if I have one?”

  “Of course. How thoughtless of me. You’ll have to teach me to be considerate, darling. You’ll have to teach me a lot of things. I’ve treated you so shoddily. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Estherlee,” I said stoutly, “I believe in forgive and forget. With all my heart I do. I believe that when two people are in love she can forgive him anything. Anything at all. That’s what I believe.”

  “You’re so good. So true. So kind. So generous. So brave. So modest. Haven’t you had enough of that cigarette?”

  “Good heavens, no,” I almost shouted. “We’ve got to make things last these days.”

  “You see, I never think of anything. You’ll have to punish me, dear. Take me in your arms and just squeeze the life out of me.”

  The ash on my cigarette was burning down as though somebody were chasing it. I took another one from my pocket.

  “Chain smoking!” she cried. “Oh, my poor darling. What they must have done to your nerves over there. I’ll make you well again. First I’ll put a stop to this chain smoking.”

  She took the fresh cigarette and the butt out of my hands and threw them in the water. Then she leaned forward expectantly so that I could put my arm behind her.

  A sudden burst of courage possessed me. “Estherlee,” I said, “there’s something I must tell you.”

  “All right, dear. But hurry. I’m cold.” She nuzzled against me, laid her cheek on mine. Her toes curled.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I slipped my arm behind her while the beast in me snuffed out my conscience with a huge, hairy paw.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The ladies of the Hearth and Hauteur Sodality looked at me placidly over the ramparts of their bosoms as I stepped to the rostrum of their meeting room in the Fjord Room of the Scandia Hotel. Mrs. La Hoont, who was easily in the dreadnought class, had just introduced me. “Girls,” she had said, “I have a treat for you today. As you know, Mrs. Malheur was going to review Rebecca today for her report on Worth-while Classics. We thank her for graciously giving up her time to our special guest.” Mrs. Malheur had stood and bowed to the extent of whalebone’s flexibility in acknowledgement of the applause. “Our guest today is, as His Honor La Hoont calls him, a true American,” Mrs. La Hoont had continued. “You have all read the stirring newspaper account of how his heroism saved an American army in North Africa from destruction by the fascists. The bastards. It is with a deep sense of honor and gratitude that I introduce to you Sergeant Daniel Miller of Minneapolis and the United States Army.”

  “Ladies,” I said with unusual presence of mind for me, “my little part in the war has already been publicized—you might say overly publicized. Heh, heh. There is nothing more I can tell you. Therefore, I propose a reversal in the usual order of these things. Heh, heh. Why don’t I stand here and listen while you ladies tell me about your part in the war?”

  “How utterly charming,” said Mrs. La Hoont.

  “Utterly,” agreed the Hearth and Hauteur.

  “Perhaps I’d better start by going back a way,” said Mrs. La Hoont. “On the afternoon of December 7, 1941, the Hearth and Hauteur was holding a smörgåsbord meeting to discuss plans for his honor La Hoont’s Christmas party for underprivileged Republican children. During the meeting we sent out for some bicarbonate for poor Mrs. Swedenborg, who has a tendency to bloat after eating.”

  Mrs. Swedenborg interrupted. “Them oysters was spoilt,” she belched.

  “Yes. Anyway, the bellboy came in with the bicarbonate a few minutes after two. ‘The bastards bombed Pearl Harbor,’ he said. Well! We were speechless, but only for a few moments. We soon regained our senses. “This is it,’ I said.

  “‘Yes,’ the girls agreed, ‘this is it.’

  “Having recognized the danger, we acted with lightning speed. Instantly the Hearth and Hauteur went all out. Several committees were formed on the spot. Mrs. Wripley was put in charge of a committee to study military organization.”

  Mrs. Wripley stood up. “All army officers are called ‘sir’ by enlisted men. In the Navy they are called ‘matey.’ It is considered good form to salute officers upon sight. The salute is executed by bringing the hand to the forehead—thus. In the event that a man is carrying a gun when the officer comes into view, he fires the gun—into the air, of course.

  “In the Army strict conformity is demanded in both officers’ and enlisted men’s dress. Enlisted men may wear only olive-drab blouses and trousers. Officers may wear only olive-drab or dark green blouses, and their trousers are limited to olive drab, dark green, light green, forest green, bottle green, aquamarine, flesh pink, salmon, mauve, fuchsia, tan, russet, or off brown. In the Navy enlisted men wear pocketless leotards of navy blue or white. Naval officers design their own uniforms.

  “The Army is divided into divisions, which in turn are divided into regiments, the regiments into companies, and the companies into platoons (pontoons in the engineers’ corps). This is slightly varied in the Air Force, where the men are divided into fighters and bombers.

  “His Honor President Roosevelt is commander in chief of the Army and Navy.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wripley,” said Mrs. La Hoont.

  “There’s some more, but I forget,” said Mrs. Wripley.

  “We also,” continued His Honor Mayor La Hoont’s wife, “named an Alert Committee under the leadership of Mrs. Pinkeye.”

  Mrs. Pinkeye rose. “In the event that Minneapolis is invaded while the Hearth and Hauteur is holding a meeting, my committee has formed a complete plan.” She pointed to a matron who had been leaning precariously out the window all through the meeting. “Mrs. Hambrick over there is our sentry. At the sight of enemy troops she will say, ‘Birnam Wood approaches.’”

  “Or cheese it, the copse,” laughed lighthearted Mrs. Hambrick.

  “That is our signal,” Mrs. Pinkeye said. “The older women will proceed in an orderly fashion to the basement of the hotel and lock themselves in the meat cooler. The rest of us will put on chambermaids’ costumes and go about the hotel dusting and affecting French accents.

  “We thought at first that it would be braver to face the bastards just as we were. But later we realized that we could better serve by going into hiding and carrying on our work from underground.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pinkeye,” said Mrs. La Hoont. “We also organized a Wartime Substitutes Committee with Mrs. Crutfellow as chairwoman.”

  Mrs. Crutfellow, a painted crone, reported. “My committee’s work was chiefly to study the relative merits of stick and liquid limb make-up. We performed an experiment. Being a good deal younger than most of these ladies, I volunteered myself as, you might say, the guinea pig.

  “On one of my limbs I put stick make-up and on the other liquid make-up. For two weeks there was no difference, but in the third week one make-up flaked away while the other was as good as new. Unfortunately, by that time I had forgotten on which limb I put which make-up.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Crutfellow. And we also—”

  “I remember some more,” interrupted Mrs. Wripley, the authority on military organization. “The artillery concerns itself largely with guns. Some of these guns are mounted on mechanized carriages while others are mounted on horses. The guns range in size from small machine guns to giant howitzers, which fire trajectories. There is also antiaircraft artillery or flak-flak.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wripley,” said Mrs. La Hoont. “A committee to study wartime language usage was set up with Mrs. Plantaganet as chairwoman.”

  “Wah,” said Mrs. Plantaganet in cultured accents, “has wrought vahst changes in the language. It is now propah—in fact à la mode—to speak of the enemy as ‘bahstards.’ ‘Ahss,’ too, is allowed in connection with an infantry retreat. One may say, “The infantry is hauling ahss.’ Howevah, this term is used only in speaking of our infantry. When the enemy, or bahstard, infantry haul their ahss,
we do not speak of it in that mannah.

  “What this new freedom of language will lead to one can only conjecture. My committee, howevah, is quietly preparing for the day when all barriahs are let down and the four-lettah functional words become propah usage. We are meeting for lunch once a week in a little tearoom and speaking to each othah in these terms. That is, we were meeting up to lahst week, when the tearoom proprietress had us arrested.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Plantaganet. And there are many more committees—too numerous to mention now,” said Mrs. La Hoont, to the ill-disguised dismay of the chairwomen of the slighted committees. “They are all, each and every one, doing work equally as important as those you have heard about. And, Sergeant Miller, all of these committees were formed the day of Pearl Harbor. The bastards might have caught the Hearth and Hauteur by surprise, but we were quick to rally.

  “The work goes on today. We will not rest until the bastards are beaten.”

  “That’s keen, Mrs. La Hoont,” I said.

  “I’ll be frank with you,” said Mrs. La Hoont, being frank with me. “The Hearth and Hauteur could carry on an ordinary type war program—rolling bandages, knitting and sewing, operating canteens, working in blood banks, baking cookies—that type thing. In its way that type work has a certain value. It certainly reflects credit on the type women who are doing it. But we ladies have enjoyed certain advantages. We are capable of a higher type war program. Really, Sergeant Miller, if we didn’t carry on this type war program, we would not be giving of ourselves to the fullest. And in this total war, as His Honor La Hoont calls it, one must give to one’s fullest. Don’t you agree?”

  “Clearly,” said I. “Well, thank you, ladies. I’ve learned a great deal.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Miller,” said Mrs. La Hoont, “for a most inspirational talk.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  At eight o’clock that night Sam Wye called for me in a Stutz Bearcat with which his father had won the presidency of Sigma Chi in 1920. “Put on your linen duster and let’s get going,” he called.

  I got in gingerly. “What’s that in the back seat?” I asked, pointing at a black wooden box.

  “Dynamite.”

  “Please, Sam, let’s take my car. It’s got brakes, springs, upholstery. Rides like a little dream. You don’t even know you’re moving.”

  “You ought to work for Gelt and Gelt,” said Sam as he pulled out from the curb with a roaring lurch.

  With closed eyes I heard a blast that I was sure must be the last trump. “Keep your eyes open, Roberto,” said Sam. “That one I just honked at was strictly your type. With slacks yet. She walked like a fat metronome.”

  I leaped into the back seat and got a death grip on the black box.

  “Careful you don’t get that stuff too warm holding it,” said Sam. “A little overheating and she’ll go blooie, just like that.”

  I leaped back into the front seat. “Sam,” I said thickly, “do me a personal favor and drive more carefully. Look at that stuff shaking around back there. NO! Don’t look around now. You can take my word for it. Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “That’s not easy,” said Sam. “Look at all those women on the sidewalks. Women without men. A spring evening. The goat song of the flesh. Ah, passion, passion. How quickly it can strip away the thin veneer of civilization.

  “Civilization,” he said, lighting a cigarette and carelessly tossing the match into the back seat, an act that speeded my demise by at least ten years, “what mockery. I am in mind of my Uncle Cantripp, probably the most civilized man I ever knew. An archaeologist by profession, he had degrees from a dozen universities. His home was filled with books, paintings, symphonic records. He spoke only in complete sentences, usually containing dependent clauses. Even in the bathtub he sang nothing more frivolous than a Gregorian chant. A civilized man.

  “Well, sir, one summer he went with an archaeological expedition into the jungles of Guatemala. Somehow he became separated from his party, and he wandered through the jungle until he was captured by a tribe of savages. Being the first white man they had ever seen, he was an object of much curiosity to the tribe—particularly to their princess, a café-au-lait wench named Mendel-Fendel. She took Uncle Cantripp to her scalp-festooned personal lodge, and there she kept him very well.

  “For years nobody back home heard of him. At length an intrepid New York reporter named Stanley went into the jungle to look for him. After many months of searching, Stanley was rewarded. It took all of his persuasive wiles, however, to get Uncle Cantripp to leave his Mendel-Fendel and go home.

  “Uncle Cantripp came home, but he didn’t stay long. His aging wife, my aunt Iris, was sufficiently ardent but not spry enough to please him after Mendel-Fendel. Within a year he was back in Guatemala.

  “He went to Mendel-Fendel’s lodge, persuaded Stanley that he ought to go home, and lived happily ever after.”

  We were near the edge of the city now, and I sighed with relief that there were no more women on the sidewalks to distract Sam. I settled back with a slight degree of comfort as we rolled onto the broad, smooth highway leading out of town. But suddenly Sam swung off the highway upon a rutted dirt side road. “Sam!” I screamed. “For God’s sake, why did you leave the highway?”

  “We’ll save twenty minutes on this cutoff,” he explained.

  The black box was bounding crazily on the back seat. “Sam! Sam!”

  “Peace, Roberto,” he said calmly. “There’s only three miles of this.”

  “Only three miles!”

  “All right, if you’re nervous I’ll step on the gas. It won’t take so long then.”

  The road was like a cardiograph of a Cheyne-Stokes respiration. At every bump the box leaped to the ceiling of the car, hit with a thud, and plummeted back to the seat Occasionally it bounced from the ceiling to the floor and back to the seat again with a plop, ploop, dong, ploop effect, a sort of grisly conga. I prayed rapidly to the Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan gods and then, to be on the safe side, to Buddha, Jupiter, and Vishnu. I had a go at Zoroaster, Isis, Osiris, and Re. I was on Dundik, an obscure Druid deity, when we got back on the pavement.

  “My God,” said Sam, “you’re tattletale gray. Look at you. You’re ghastly. Man, you need a drink.”

  I croaked assent.

  “Well, well,” said Sam, “there’s a tavern right up the road. Fancy that. Why, it looks like the Sty. You remember the Sty.”

  “Drive on!” I shrieked. “I don’t want to go to the Sty.”

  “There’s not another joint for miles, and you need something right now.”

  “No. I’m all right now.”

  “O.K., if you say so, friend. But I do think we ought to stop and let the dynamite rest for a while. Sometimes that stuff gets shaken up and nothing happens, but a few minutes later—BAM! But if you don’t want to stop here—”

  “Stop.”

  He pulled into the parking lot in front of the Sty. “A couple of Sty Stingers and you’ll be right back in the pink,” he said jovially.

  “Look, we’re just going to the bar. We’re not going in and sit down. And we’re going to leave in five minutes.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  I pulled my flight cap low over my face, which is a good trick, and we went inside to the bar. “Two Sty Stingers,” said Sam. The barkeep served us. I drained mine at a gulp and started away. “You’re being rather rude, you know,” said Sam. “I’ve scarcely tasted mine.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  “I wouldn’t,” he warned. “Better give that dynamite a few more minutes to cool off. That stuff’s treacherous. I saw a fellow pick up a stick of it once, and the next minute he was standing there without—”

  “Another one of these,” I said to the bartender without waiting for Sam to finish.

  “Well, for crying out loud!” boomed a voice behind us that could belong only to P. B. Gelt. “It’s Daniel Miller
and Montag Fortz. Isn’t it, Al?”

  “Yes,” said Al.

  “You rascal,” said P. B., whirling me around and pumping my hand. “The other night you told us your name was Robert Jordan.”

  “Modest,” explained Sam.

  “You boys are coming inside and sit at our table,” roared P. B. “No hero is going to pay for no drink while I’m around, by God. You neither, Fortz. It still bothers me about your mother.”

  “She was only in the way,” said Sam.

  “Thank you kindly,” I said, “but we have to be going.”

  “You should let that stuff sit for at least half an hour,” Sam hissed to me. “Why, sure, Mr. Gelt. Lead the way.”

  I was not surprised to see a pair of twin girls sitting at the Gelts’ table when we got there. “Daniel Miller and Montag Fortz,” said P. B., “I want you to meet a damn fine pair of girls. The Replevin twins, Ruth and Rachel. Only twins ever born on a Minneapolis streetcar.”

  The Replevins sat there with all the sparkle of dictionary illustrations. “How do you do?” they droned. “We read all about you in the paper, Sergeant Miller. We think you’re wonderful. Can we each take one of you home? We just bought two used cars from the Gelt brothers.”

  “Now, now, girls,” chided P. B. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to go home with the man you come with?”

  “We’re not very bright,” admitted the Replevins.

  “Yes,” said Al.

  P. B. ordered a round of Sty Stingers. “I was thinking of you this afternoon, Miller,” he said. “I happened to make a lucky buy today and I got hold of a car that’s just right for a hero. It’s a ’34 Chrysler with no top, so you can drive around and wave to admiring crowds. Good as new, too. Fellow that owned it got killed two days after he bought it in an argument with a Baptist fanatic over total immersion. I’ll sacrifice it to you for $950, cash or terms.”

  “I’ll think it over,” I told him.

  The waiter brought the drinks. I finished mine quickly. “We don’t like to drink,” the Replevins confessed. “Every time we drink we get helpless and men take advantage of us, and we can’t help it because we’re helpless.”