by Max Shulman
“You still had the ball in your temple?”
“Yes, I had that until 1911, when it popped out during a rough train ride near Pierre, South Dakota. It seems that the Indian section hands who laid the tracks in that stretch didn’t understand English and confused their orders. They put the ties on top of the rails. Damn redskins.”
“That was a shoddy thing they did to Custer,” I said.
“Hard Rock, that is the blackest page in American history,” said the colonel. “George was a great-minded man. Always had his wits about him. I recall one time George and I were in Vera Cruz on an important government mission. In the evenings, for a little relaxation, you understand, we trifled with a pair of acquiescent young women who lived on the water front. One night their husbands, who ordinarily worked on the swing shift at a bean gleanery, returned unexpectedly. George and I fled with the heavily armed Mexicans in close pursuit. We finally eluded them, jumped into a fishing sloop, and sailed out into the tuna-fishing waters off the coast. For days we stayed hidden in the bottom of our boat while the vengeful husbands scoured the bay. At last one day they pulled up beside our tuna boat. ‘Who’s in there?’ they demanded. I thought we were done for. But not George. ‘Nobody here but us chickens of the sea,’ he answered.”
“A great-minded man,” I admitted.
“Great-stomached, too. I recollect one time George had got a gallon of bourbon that he was saving for his birthday. The night before his birthday, for a prank, I poured the bourbon out of the jug and filled it with the fluid that drains off a keg of nails. Came his birthday, George drank that whole jug without even making a face. It didn’t affect him a bit, either, except for the rest of his life whenever he saw a hammer he’d scream and cover his head.”
“A great-stomached man,” I concurred.
“Great, hearted, too. I remember one night we were out driving in a new surrey that George had just bought from P.B. Gelt, the elder, when George’s horse saw a mare in a yard across the street. He whirled around, leaped a picket fence, and smashed that surrey to kindling.
“‘George,’ I said to him, ‘you ought to have that horse gelded.’
“‘For shame, Cosmo,’ he answered. ‘How would you like someone to do that to you?’”
“There will now be a brief interlude of organ music,” interrupted the announcer hastily.
“Come on into the locker room,” said John Smith, who was waiting for me at the ball park. “I want you to meet some of the athletes.”
I followed him into the locker room, where the players were relaxing before the opening game. “This is our starting pitcher, Lefty Gemutlich,” said Smith, introducing me to a venerable gentleman who was sitting in a rocker while his grandson read him the Sporting News. “Lefty was with the Cubs for many years.”
“I’d still be with ’em,” quavered Lefty, “only I thrun my arm out in ’28.”
“And this is Lefty Febrish, our catcher. This is his first year with the club.”
“Hi, Danny Boy,” said Lefty Febrish. “I still can’t make up my mind.” He was the kid who had stopped at the recruiting booth in the morning.
“And here’s a shortstop I’m sure you know—Lefty Mashoulam.”
Of course I knew him. Who hasn’t heard of Wagner to Cobb to Mashoulam?
“I’m going to have a comeback this year,” said Lefty Gemutlich, the pitcher. “I got a new floater pitch. I don’t have to thrun so hard.”
“This is one of the most unusual athletes in baseball,” said John Smith. “In spite of losing his left arm up to the shoulder in a railroad accident, he is one of the finest third basemen in the business. I want you to meet No Lefty Monahue.”
“I been pitchin’ with my head since I thrun my arm out,” said Lefty Gemutlich.
“And here is Lefty Paternoster, the only unfrocked priest in baseball.”
“Pax,” said Lefty Paternoster.
“This is Lefty Frotheringham, the noted British athlete.”
“I say,” said Lefty Frotheringham, “this baseball is like cricket, isn’t it?”
“And here is Lefty Goldfarb, our right fielder.”
“Right fielder, shmight fielder,” shrugged Lefty Goldfarb. “One day I am delivering the team’s uniforms from mine shop, and the next minute I am a right fielder, right shmielder.”
“If they change the rules like they was talkin’ about, so you can thrun underhand,” said Lefty Gemutlich, “I will be soon back in the majors. I thrun underhand good.”
“Here is our center fielder, Lefty Chisholm, who should turn into a great attraction,” said John Smith, introducing me to a mounted gentleman.
“Hiya, podner,” said Lefty Chisholm. “They’re lettin’ me play on my hoss. Been ridin’ sincet I was two. Never did learn to walk.”
“I thrun a ball to a man once from the top of the Washington Monument,” said Lefty Gemutlich. “Drove him two feet into the pavement.”
The trainer came in with a pot of beef tea and a flagon of adrenalin. “Time for your pre-game booster, boys,” he said.
In a little while they were strong enough to go out on the diamond. I went out and threw the first ball, a sidearm curve that broke nicely over the outside corner. Then, rejecting a contract, I took a hasty departure.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
One day remained before the grand finale, and I intended to spend it wisely. As soon as I was able to move after Mama’s breakfast, I hied myself off to the public library, took out three books on demolition for amateurs, and sat down to bone up as much as I could before the next day’s ordeal.
It was a cold day. The reading room was filled with unemployables who had left the Missions too late to get seats at District Court. Those with neckties read Fortune, those without neckties read newspapers, and those without shirts looked up dirty words in Webster’s International.
The character sitting next to me was somewhat difficult to classify. He had a necktie but no shirt, and he was reading an astrology book written in French. Moreover, he wore pince-nez and had a carefully trimmed goatee. He gave me three minutes to get settled before he began the inevitable conversation.
“How do you do, my good?” he said. “Permit me. I am Jean-Pierre d’Estoppel.”
“Name of Miller,” I said, shaking his unwashed hand.
“Sergeant, no?”
“Yes.”
“I can tell by your sleeve. There were many Americains in my village during the Great War. My father was in the French Army. He was shot twice in the poilu at Verdun. Killed, of course.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It is the life,” he shrugged. “Who can tell what will happen?” He held up the astrology book. “I now study this astrology. Perhaps here is the answer. Ah, my young, if one could only know what is in the future. If one could only know. Do you think I would be here today in these rags if I could have know, eh? Let me tell you.”
What the hell, I said to myself as I closed my demolition book and got comfortable.
“If I could have know, I would never have got on the packet Duncan Leprechaun II and sailed away from my native Provence that day in 1921. My maman done told don’t go, but I said, ‘Don’t you worry, Maman, I will be back a rich man, and meanwhile you will soon get the pension for poor dead Papan.’ If I could have know!
“But Maman’s pleas were soon forgotten. I became absorbed in the gay whirl of steerage life aboard the Duncan Leprechaun II, and soon I was making hot Gallic overtures to a young Americain widow who had lately been freed for shooting her husband because he kept saying to her, ‘Why can’t you be like Mabel Normand?’ Yes, my little, it was a bon voyage and it seemed to foretell all good things. How droll!
“For when I arrived in New York I learned quickly that the streets were not paved with gold. For months I trudged the unfriendly streets looking for work while my meager savings dwindled and finally disappeared. I would certainly have starved had I not finally secured a job as a food taster for an apprehensive Tammany alde
rman.
“Then one morning I happened to look at a newspaper that had been my blanket the night before as I slept on a park bench. It was a Minneapolis newspaper, and in it I found an advertisement for a teacher of French at the Harold Stassen High School. The heart within me leaped. I sent off an application by first post and was shortly answered with an acceptance and a railroad ticket to Minneapolis.
“How I blessed my good fortune then! Ha! What a mockery. If I could have know, I would have torn that ticket to bits. Instead I boarded the first train to Minneapolis. In the smoking car I became involved in a conversation with a man who, if I could have know, I would have avoided as the pox. We talked casually of this and that, and then I introduced myself.
“‘How do you do?’ he said, ‘My name is Duncan Leprechaun.’
“‘But what a coincidence!’ I cried. ‘The ship that brought me to this country was also called Duncan Leprechaun.’
“‘Well, well, well,’ he said.
“We talked on. Because of the simple wonder of a duplication in names I felt closer to this stranger than to anyone since I had come to this unfriendly land. Without meaning to I was soon pouring out my whole story to Duncan Leprechaun. He listened with more attentiveness than is ordinary in a chance acquaintance, but that I did not notice. His close questions I answered with friendly alacrity. If I could have know!
“Then he invited me to the club car, where over a bottle of Florida water he told me a most strange tale. He told me that as a boy he had attended Harold Stassen High School and in the very French classroom where I was to teach he had met and loved a girl named Mary Ellen Nye. She, sadly, had perished in the early blight of ’07, brought on, some say, by Halley’s comet. Now he asked this of me: would I give him a duplicate key to my classroom so that he could come in the evenings and sit alone and dream sadly poignant dreams of his departed Mary Ellen?
“My young, I am a Frenchman. I promised him the key. If I could have know!
“Now, let me get a little ahead of my story, so that you can better understand what transpired. These things I tell you now I did not learn until much later. Duncan Leprechaun, if I could have know, was a most unscrupulous rogue. Instead of sitting at night in my classroom pining for Mary Ellen, if there ever was such a person, he began to operate a gambling hall. Through means best known to men of his stripe, he let it be known that gambling of all varieties could be had nightly in the French classroom of the Harold Stassen High School. Before long he had an enormous clientele, and the wages of his base profession mounted prodigiously.
“I knew nought of this. Each night I went home to my humble flat, cooked an anchorite’s meal on a primus stove whose mechanism I never fully understood, and went to sleep on my pallet. I never went to my classroom at night because I did not want to intrude on Duncan Leprechaun’s tender reverie. Ha! I never should have learned of his deception had it not been for Tekla Torkelquist.
“Again I must get ahead of my story. Tekla Torkelquist was a young but lavishly developed woman who was a student in my French class. She was an excitable student because her mind was always on a loose-moraled drayman named Marvin Glander, with whom she was carrying on a sordid affair. One winter night when it was too cold out of doors for that which was on their minds Tekla suggested to Marvin that they utilize her French classroom. He made no objections. They entered the high school, paused in the corridor for some erotic byplay, and then ran hotly into the French classroom. They found Duncan Leprechaun’s activities in full session. Alarmed by their sudden intrusion, he rushed over to them, but they assured him that his secret was safe with them and said, as a matter of fact, that they would like to join the play. Nothing loath, Leprechaun seated them at a gaming table. From that night on they were steady patrons.
“But what has this to do with my discovery of Duncan Leprechaun, you are thinking. Listen, my good. Tekla—she did not know it, although it should have been obvious to her that it would one day happen—was with child. As is common with women in such a condition, she felt a strange craving. She wanted to eat chalk—a preference not unknown among pregnant women. Each night while gambling in my classroom she slyly reached out and snatched pieces of chalk from the trays alongside the blackboards and, unobserved, popped them into her mouth.
“That is how I found out. Each morning when I came to class I noticed that there was more and more chalk missing. Finally, in spite of not wishing to disturb Duncan Leprechaun as he mourned the passing of Mary Ellen, I determined to investigate. I concealed myself under a desk one evening after school and waited for the chalk thief to make his appearance. It so happened that I had been kept awake most of the previous night by the wailing of a flatulent infant next door, and I was tired. After an hour’s vigil under the desk I dozed off.
“When I awoke I saw all. The room was filled with people recklessly gambling away their substance for the enrichment of Duncan Leprechaun. That brigand strolled about the tables, smilingly taking his percentages, from the play. I wanted to cry out in rage, but prudence kept me silent. Choosing a moment when nobody was looking, I crept out of the room.
“I went immediately to a telephone and notified the gendarmerie. Now, I said to myself, that wretch will pay for his treachery. Now he will get his deserts. If I could have know!
“I reckoned, my young, without the cunning of such as Duncan Leprechaun. Upon apprehension he immediately said that he was but a hireling in his low enterprise, that I, Jean-Pierre d’Estoppel, was the brains of the outfit. What could I, a poor immigrant Frenchman, do against such a devil? No matter how I protested, no matter how often I repeated my story, they would not believe me. ‘Damn wops,’ said the magistrate. ‘I can tell ’em a mile away.’
“And when Tekla Torkelquist, with unspeakable debasement, charged me with the paternity of her child, my doom was sealed. Ten years at hard labor, my little. Ten years.
“And in the village of Provence, where my maman waited for the French civil service to finally begin paying her the pension for my poor dead papan, there occurred the crowning infamy. Maman was about to get the pension when the claims’ administrator, a fanatic moralist, learned of my incarceration. ‘For mothers of criminals,’ he cried, ‘the Republic of France has no money.’ Instead, then, of living out her life in moderate comfort, Maman was forced to eke out a precarious living laying poultices at the local four-bed hospital until the day of her death.
“If I could have know!”
I patted Jean-Pierre’s shoulder. “Now, if you don’t mind, I will return to my books,” I said.
“By all means,” said Jean-Pierre. “May one ask what kind of books they are?”
“Demolition.”
“Well, good reading, my young.”
I read about three pages when I heard Jean-Pierre mumbling. “Sergeant. Miller. Demolition.” Suddenly he slapped the table and cried. “You are Sergeant Miller, the great demolitionist, the hero of Morocco. You are the one who will blow up the bridge at the arms factory tomorrow, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Ha, ha!” he roared. “How droll! You, the great demolitionist, are sitting here reading about demolition. As though there were something you didn’t know about it. How droll! I must tell the fellows. Say, Gimpy, No-Nose, T.B., Sterno, Dehorn, come over here. I will show you a droll thing.”
“Buy bonds!” I called, and was gone.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The cold snap precluded canoeing that night, so Estherlee and I spent a quiet evening at home. Before I arrived she had lit the gas log, moved the settee in front of the fire, cooked a cake and sent her parents to a late movie. Now, in a slinky house coat, she was leaning on my shoulder while I persistently ate cake.
“I’m so thrilled about tomorrow,” she said. “Aren’t you thrilled?”
“Thrilled isn’t precisely the word,” I said morosely.
“You know, darling, it’s really hard to picture you blowing up a bridge. You’re such a fine, sensitive person—so unlike the typ
e person who blows up bridges.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“That’s what’s so wonderful about you, dear. Although you’re not a bit warlike, the urgency of the occasion has made you a fierce and terrible fighter. A great man of peace has become a great man of war.”
“Let me tell you about soldiers who work in offices, Estherlee.”
“Oh, my poor darling! Your plate of cake is empty. I’ll get you some more.”
Unhappily I watched her undulate into the kitchen after more cake. Unhappily I watched her return. I knew already how the evening would end, how much deeper I would sink into the quicksand of deception in which I had been placed by Sam Wye’s malice and my own weakness. What a despicable guy I was really. How could I subject this superb young woman to such duplicity? How could I find it in myself to dupe this excellent creature? How could I take from her that which she treasured most under such basely false pretenses? How, I asked myself, how?
She put down the plate of cake, pressed against me, and kissed me. She was unconfined underneath her house coat. Her lips clung.
My question was answered.
“By God, that’s good cake!” I cried hysterically as I pried loose. I started throwing pieces of it down my throat like peanuts. “More!” I bellowed. “More!”
“I’m sorry, dear, there’s only enough left for Mother and Dad.”
“To hell with them!” I shouted. “Bring me more cake!”
“All right, dear. You’re so masterful, so dominating, so frightening. I love it.”
She slithered off for more cake. Now she would be coming back with the last of the cake. Now what could I use to stall the inevitable? What a weak wretch I was. What fraudulent gestures I made to salve my flaccid conscience. When you came right down to it, I treated this woman—my true love—exactly the way I would treat a trollop in whom my interest, however acute, was only transient. Was Estherlee, then, a ship that passed in the night? Was she some strumpet, some pickup? “No!” I cried. “No!”