The Feather Merchants

by Max Shulman

  “No what, dear?” called Estherlee from the kitchen.

  “Nothing, Estherlee. I was just talking to myself.”

  “Your poor nerves,” she said. “I’ll be right out to soothe you.”

  She was my mate, my life companion, the meaning and purpose of my existence. She would someday be my wife and perpetuate my name. She was the woman I loved and honored. A cad’s love! A cad’s honor! What an unspeakable lump I was to play fast and loose with such exalted values as virtue, honor, and integrity. How much longer must I act the beast? There must be an immediate end to this cake. There must be a full confession right now.

  I rose to my feet. Here and now. This very minute. And not another crumb of cake.

  She came in with the cake. “Estherlee,” I said, “listen carefully and don’t stop me until I’m done.”

  “All right, dear.”

  “First I want you to know that I love you.”

  “I love you too, dear.”

  “Don’t interrupt, please. I love you. My love for you is the motivating force in my life. It explains all my actions—including those which seem incapable of explanation.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “Please. If I am misguided at times, it is only because I let my love for you overshadow my reason. I ask you to judge my conduct in that light. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly, dear. You love me and I love you.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Of all the damn times,” I muttered.

  Estherlee answered the door. It was her mother and father. “We got all the way out there,” her father said, “and then we remembered that we’d seen the picture.”

  “It was Murder the Bastards,” said her mother. “Have you seen it?”

  “Yes,” Estherlee answered. “It was wonderful.”

  They came into the living room. “Hello, Dan,” said her father. “It’s good to see you. We haven’t had a chance to congratulate you.” He shook my hand.

  “We’re terribly proud of you,” said her mother.

  “It was nothing,” I said.

  “What’s that? Cake?” asked her father. “May I have some, Estherlee?”

  “Well, Dad, I don’t—”

  “Please do,” I said hastily.

  “Take it upstairs, dear,” said her mother. “Good night, children. Aren’t you cold in that flimsy house coat, Estherlee?”

  “No, Mother. Good night.”

  “Good night,” said her mother.

  “Well,” said Estherlee when they had gone, “wouldn’t you know someone would interrupt while you were proposing?”

  “Proposing!”

  “And it’s a good thing you did, too. I was afraid you’d never get around to it. I would have been horribly embarrassed if you hadn’t. You see, Mayor La Hoont is announcing our engagement at the bridge blowing tomorrow. He’s giving us an engagement ring on behalf of the city. It’s supposed to be a secret, but I guess I can tell you now.”

  I sat down slowly.

  “My darling,” said Estherlee, drawing me to her breast. “My fiancé. My husband.”

  She kissed me for a spell, then leaped to her feet and ran to the staircase. “Mother, Dad!” she called. “Come downstairs. We’re engaged!”

  In all fairness it must be said that I tried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Do officers blow up bridges like my son?” demanded Mama, thus ending the argument that had arisen the next morning when I tried to explain to her why I couldn’t wear the officer’s uniform that she had bought me to wear at the bridge-blowing ceremony. The argument was academic, anyway, because she had taken my G.I. uniform out of the closet while I slept and given it to an old-clothes man.

  “There’s some silver eagles in the pocket. The man said you wear them on your shoulders. They look nice,” she said, and left my bedroom so that I could dress.

  What the hell, I told myself as I put on the flesh-pink trousers and the bottle-green coat, I might as well look nice when I end it all. Not that I was panicky about my impending demise; I was beyond panic. The panic had come and gone during the night. Now I was calm in a clammy sort of way. There’s no use being scared, I said to myself. The best way to go is the quickest, and what does it all mean anyhow, and life is but a vision between a sleep and a sleep, and (toward the end I began to ramble a little) money doesn’t grow on trees, and stuff a cold and starve a fever. Except for occasional pangs that darted into my consciousness like snakes through a fissure, I was calm.

  After I dressed (I finally decided not to pin the eagles on my shoulders. No use overdoing it.) I took pen in hand and wrote a will leaving what monies I had to Army Emergency Relief. I left a note for Estherlee bidding her be of good cheer and after a decent interval marry a man of sound eugenic properties. To Sam Wye I wrote a letter assuring him that in my last minutes I bore him no grudge and expressing the hope that he would be able to live a full, happy life even with my blood on his hands. In another letter I implored Mama and Papa to pay closer attention to rationing regulations for the sake of other soldiers, still living. I left instructions for a simple, come-as-you-are interment.

  Papa walked in after I had sealed the letters and stacked them on my dresser. “You look nice,” he said. “I can’t understand why you don’t wear that kind of uniform all the time.”

  “You look nice too,” I replied. Indeed he did. He was wearing a new victory suit which included a Sam Browne belt. Binoculars in a leather case hung from the belt.

  We went downstairs, where, to Mama’s profound delight, I ate a hearty breakfast. Then, while Mama dressed, Papa gave me a fanciful explanation of radio detection, and I assured him that Rand McNally, with whom he contemplated doing some business, were reliable people. Mama came back in her wedding-and-funeral black silk dress, adorned this morning with a huge lavaliere in the shape of a cannon.

  “It actually shoots,” said Papa.

  The shriek of sirens outside announced the arrival of the official party. We went out where a procession of fifteen black limousines escorted by motorcycles was parked at the curb. In the first car sat an animated campaign poster whom I recognized as Mayor La Hoont. As befits a hero, I sat with him. Mama and Papa got in the second car with Estherlee and Mrs. La Hoont. I saw John Smith, Colonel Swatch, and O. Merriam Phyfe in the third car. The rest were filled with civic leaders, aldermen, and suchlike.

  “Son,” said Mayor La Hoont, giving me a Dale Carnegie handshake, “it’s a fine thing you did.” He paused to kiss a passing baby.

  “God damn it,” said the baby. “I work for Philip Morris.”

  “A fine thing,” repeated His Honor as we screamed out from the curb. “Gad, son, I’d like to be with you boys, but”—he spread out his hands—“the people won’t let me go.”

  The procession traversed the city street by street. Wherever three or more people were gathered the cars stopped while the mayor stood up and led a cheer:

  “Win, Minn

  Win, Minn

  Win, Minn

  EAPOLIS!”

  Then he threw a handful of cigars in the air and we rolled away.

  Halcyon La Hoont could be called a self-made man. His mother, Cosette La Hoont, had not wanted children for two reasons: first, because she was inordinately afraid of pain, and second, because she rightly maintained that her husband Florian’s laughable salary as an egg candler was insufficient to raise a child. Nonetheless, on the night of Halley’s comet Cosette gave birth to Halcyon. He weighed twenty-two pounds. “Big sonofabitch, ain’t he?” remarked Florian, trying to ease the situation with a little jest. Cosette did not answer. Nor did she ever speak another word to Florian. She was that mad.

  The infant Halcyon grew up in a sociologist’s nightmare. Cosette refused alike to change or nurse him, took up skeet shooting, and began to run with a fast crowd. Florian, doubly despondent because of his wife’s behavior and his son’s patent hunger, was utterly crushed when the egg candlery installed an electric candler an
d fired him. Soon after he died of a common cold in three days.

  Halcyon lived off his fat for the first year. During his second year, unperceived by his mother, he learned to walk and ran away. He toddled into a saloon, did a self-taught clog, and was rewarded with a pig’s knuckle and a glass of bock. Then, as now, no fool, Halcyon stayed. As time went on he added a soft-shoe number and Swedish-dialect stories to his routine. His fame spread. One night a childless alderman named Nate Nye caught his act and bought him.

  For the next ten years Halcyon lived with Nate Nye and his infertile wife Norma. He went to school for a time but soon dropped out to spend his days hanging about pool halls and brothels. His foster parents did not discourage him. Nate, who had an alderman’s morals, thought it rather cute; Norma, who had never welcomed Halcyon because she believed in her heart that it was Nate, not she, who was barren, didn’t give a damn one way or the other.

  Halcyon took an early interest in politics. Before he shaved he was a junior ward heeler for Nate Nye. At the age of eighteen he invented a voting machine that automatically defaced opposition ballots. This brought him favorably to the attention of party headquarters. His rise from then on was rapid.

  Almost immediately he turned on his benefactor and wrested the alderman’s seat from Nate Nye. Brokenhearted, Nate took Norma and retired to Los Angeles, where lo! they were presently blessed with a pair of twins and Nate forthwith became an articulate member of the Chamber of Commerce.

  Halycon progressed. He studied elocution; he learned table manners; he memorized a quarto of Edgar Guest; he married a young socialite whom he caught on the rebound from a shattered romance with a polo enthusiast who had eloped with a woman who owned a secret saddle-soap formula. Inevitably he became the mayor of the city.

  Perceiving that Minneapolis was expanding, he acquired through nefarious means the title to a huge swamp outlying the northern city limits. In a gala public ceremony he christened the bog Sunrise Aerie and proclaimed a new housing program. His scheme died a-borning. Prospective builders took one look at Sunrise Aerie and lost interest on the spot. La Hoont was about to write off Sunrise Aerie as a total loss when war came.

  Now we were driving up the road to the tremendous ammunition plant that La Hoont had built on Sunrise Aerie. The cars crossed a small wooden bridge (the bridge I was to blow up, I suddenly realized, and the sweat gushed out of my armpits and ran the color in my fuchsia officer’s shirt) and pulled up in front of the plant. We got out and took seats on a wooden platform. A crowd jammed the muck in front of the platform, save for one sector where the presence of crocodiles had been reported.

  I sat and perspired and stared at the bridge. Its fifteen-foot length looked to me at least as long as the San Francisco Bay bridge; its timbers appeared as solid as the Rock of Ages. A formidable bridge. The grandmother of all bridges. I felt myself turning green.

  O. Merriam Phyfe stepped to the front of the platform. “Citizens,” he said, “this may well be the greatest day in the history of Minneapolis. For today we are celebrating the completion of the world’s largest factory for small-bore ammunition—built in Minneapolis by Minneapolis labor with Minneapolis capital. From this plant in a short time will be rolling more ammunition for more small bores than from any other plant in the world—pending, of course, acceptance of the plant by the War Department, of course, which is, of course, a mere formality, of course.

  “I find my words inadequate when I try to tell you of the significance of we Minneapolis folks building this wonderful factory with Minneapolis labor and Minneapolis capital. Therefore I will now call on Minneapolis’ poet laureate, John Smith, to read his poem written especially for today’s dedication.”

  Beside the bridge lay a black wooden box, the same kind with which Sam Wye had duped me. Today, however, there would be no hoax. There was dynamite in the box. Death and destruction in a black package. The box lay obscenely in the road and clearly leered at me.

  John Smith cleared his throat. “Bullets, by John Smith,” he announced. He read:

  “A building?

  Four walls, a floor, a roof?

  Nay.

  A challenge, an answer, a promise to young men who blithely risk their lives and live on chow that we who would but cannot join them in the fray.

  “‘Banzai!’ cries the Nip.

  ‘Umlaut!’ yells the Hun.

  From this building, from these four walls, will come the instrument to silence their triumphant expostulations.

  “Bullets.

  Bullets. Bullets. Bullets.

  Bullets. Bullets.

  Bullets. Bullets.

  Bullets. Bullets. Bullets. Bullets. Bullets.

  Bullets.

  “Bullets that flew from longbows in colonial times and made of us a nation free.

  On San Juan Hill our President’s father spoke softly and carried a big bullet.

  And what of Sergeant York, huh, what of Sergeant York?

  “Here in this place is made revenge.

  When an American boy drops into the muzzle of his gun one of the bullets that will soon come from this plant, pending, of course, acceptance by the War Department, he can know that he is ready to fire the wrath of Minneapolis.

  “Bullets.”

  “You certainly expressed the feeling of all of us, Mr. Smith,” said O. Merriam Phyfe, resuming the platform. “Now it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the eminent soldier and military analyst, Colonel Cosmo Fairfax Swatch, who will explain to us the significance of small-bore ammunition in war.”

  Estherlee, who sat beside me on the platform, tried to hold my hand, but it slipped out like a wet bar of soap. My eyes were fastened on the bridge and the box of dynamite. I watched them shimmer and inflate until the sky was filled with bridge and box, and from far off I heard a diapason of hellish laughter. I licked my lips and my tongue running over them made a sound like rustling leaves.

  “I would like a lady from the audience,” said Colonel Swatch, “to come up on the platform to aid me in a demonstration.”

  A thin woman started forward.

  “Begone, you scrawny wench!” cried the colonel, brandishing his cane. “You over there—the fat one—come up here.”

  The woman he had indicated waddled up to the platform. The colonel took her arm, then both arms, then he gathered a fold of her back in his hand. “Zum,” he murmured. “Satisfactory.” He released her and placed a rifle bullet in her hand. “Hold this,” he said. “Now, another lady. You in front, come up here.”

  A globular harridan came to the platform. The old warrior prodded her, took a reading on her behind, pronounced her qualified, and handed her a bullet. Then he called another mountain of flesh, and another and another, until he had exhausted the supply of corpulence. He hummed happily as he worked. When the women were all on the creaking platform he arranged them in ranks. He marched past them in review, stopping before each one to pinch and tweak. One, a retired circus performer, he bit.

  With obvious reluctance he finally quit. “Ladies,” he said, “you each have in your hand a bullet. This is the product which this plant will produce, pending, of course, acceptance by the War Department. Thank you.”

  He sat down.

  “At this point,” said O. Merriam Phyfe in a hushed and solemn voice, “it becomes my almost unbearable pleasure to introduce to you the man who more than any other can be called the soul and essence of Minneapolis, a man who has devoted his years and his energies, without thought of recompense, to the city he loves, to the city that loves him. My dear people, His Honor, may I say His Excellency, Mayor Halcyon La Hoont.”

  The mayor held up his hand to silence the applause, although, to be sure, there wasn’t any. A few people slapped futilely at the swarms of mosquitoes which rose, even in April, from the bog. “Citizens,” said His Honor, “my administration has been notable for many things. Four years ago I installed parking meters that clamped manacles around the ankles of people who put in slugs. Two years ago I erec
ted a pillory in front of City Hall for people who said that Minneapolis was too cold in winter, too hot in summer, too wet in spring and fall. Last year, through my efforts, Life magazine sent photographers to cover a Scandinavian wedding in Minneapolis; that the bride’s first husband, who had disappeared several years before and was presumed dead but had actually succumbed to a deep-seated urge for a real, old-country smörgåsbord and had gone back to Sweden without remembering to notify his wife, would suddenly reappear during the wedding could not, of course, be foreseen.

  “And now this plant, this crowning achievement, this monument to my years of faithful public service. From this plant will soon flow the world’s largest output of ammunition, pending, of course, acceptance by the War Department. A mere formality, of course. There has been, I’ll admit, some loose talk about the War Department’s rejecting this plant because of the ground it is built on. This is plain foolishness.

  “There is no better ground in the whole country on which to build a factory of war. For this is hallowed ground. Here were fought battles that made this republic what it is today. Here on this very spot George Custer met and defeated the legions of the treacherous Indian chief, Big Mouth Bigger Nose, who had gone on the warpath because he claimed a passing locomotive had frightened his pregnant squaw and caused her to bear him a son with a tender behind.”

  “Damn redskins!” shouted Colonel Swatch.

  “Here on this very ground was organized the first company of Minnesota volunteers in the Civil War. One day in late 1865 two hundred young Minnesotans bid their friends and families good-by on this spot and marched South, singing and swinging their carpetbags as they went.

  “Now, this is hard to believe, but a naval battle was once fought right here. Yes sir. Impossible as it may seem, there was once a river here. During the War of 1812 the French sloop Duncan Leprechaun I sailed up from New Orleans with a cargo of gold bullion with which the French garrison here was to buy the assistance of some Indian tribes.”

  “Damn redskins!” roared Colonel Swatch.