The Thurber Carnival

by James Thurber

  About six o’clock next evening, I was alone in the house and sleeping upstairs. Barney rapped on the door of the front porch. I knew it was Barney because he called to me. I woke up slowly. It was dark for six o’clock. I heard rumblings and saw flickerings. Barney was standing at the front door with his storm at heel! I had the conviction that it wasn’t storming anywhere except around my house. There couldn’t, without the intervention of the devil or one of his agents, be so many lightning storms in one neighbourhood.

  I had been dreaming of Proust and the church at Combray and madeleines dipped in tea, and the rivalry between Francis I and Charles V. My head whirled and I didn’t get up. Barney kept on rapping. He called out again. There was a flash, followed by a sharp splitting sound. I leaped up. This time, I thought, he is here to get me. I had a notion that he was standing at the door barefooted, with a wreath of grape leaves around his head, and a wild animal’s skin slung over his shoulder. I didn’t want to go down, but I did.

  He was as usual, solid, amiable, dressed like a hired man. I went out on the porch and looked at the improbable storm, now on in all its fury. ‘This is getting pretty bad,’ I said, meaningly. Barney looked at the rain placidly. ‘Well,’ I said, irritably, ‘what’s up?’ Barney turned his little squinty blue eyes on me.

  ‘We go to the garrick now and become warbs,’ he said.

  ‘The hell we do!’ I thought to myself, quickly. I was uneasy – I was, you might even say, terrified – but I determined not to show it. If he began to chant incantations or to make obscene signs or if he attempted to sling me over his shoulder, I resolved to plunge right out into the storm, lightning and all, and run to the nearest house. I didn’t know what they would think at the nearest house when I burst in upon them, or what I would tell them. But I didn’t intend to accompany this amiable-looking fiend to any garrick and become a warb. I tried to persuade myself that there was some simple explanation, that warbs would turn out to be as innocuous as boats on rocks and grotches in the woods, but the conviction gripped me in the growling of the thunder that here at last was the Moment when Barney Haller, or whoever he was, had chosen to get me. I walked toward the steps that lead to the lawn, and turned and faced him, grimly.

  ‘Listen!’ I barked, suddenly. ‘Did you know that even when it isn’t brillig I can produce slithy toves? Did you happen to know that the mome rath never lived that could outgrabe me? Yeah and furthermore I can become anything I want to; even if I were a warb, I wouldn’t have to keep on being one if I didn’t want to. I can become a playing card at will, too; once I was the jack of clubs, only I forgot to take my glasses off and some guy recognized me. I …’

  Barney was backing slowly away, toward the petunia box at one end of the porch. His little blue eyes were wide. He saw that I had him. ‘I think I go now,’ he said. And he walked out into the rain. The rain followed him down the road.

  I have a new hired man now. Barney never came back to work for me after that day. Of course I figured out finally what he meant about the garrick and the warbs: he had simply got horribly mixed up in trying to tell me that he was going up to the garret and clear out the wasps, of which I have thousands. The new hired man is afraid of them. Barney could have scooped them up in his hands and thrown them out a window without getting stung. I am sure he trafficked with the devil. But I am sorry I let him go.

  If Grant had been Drinking at Appomattox

  (Scribner’s Magazine published a series of three articles: ‘If Booth Had Missed Lincoln’, ‘If Lee Had Not Won The Battle of Gettysburg’, and ‘If Napoleon Had Escaped to America’. This is the fourth.)

  The morning of the ninth of April, 1865, dawned beautifully. General Meade was up with the first streaks of crimson in the eastern sky. General Hooker and General Burnside were up, and had breakfasted, by a quarter after eight. The day continued beautiful. It drew on toward eleven o’clock. General Ulysses S. Grant was still not up. He was asleep in his famous old navy hammock, swung high above the floor of his headquarters’ bedroom. Headquarters was distressingly disarranged: papers were strewn on the floor; confidential notes from spies scurried here and there in the breeze from an open window; the dregs of an overturned bottle of wine flowed pinkly across an important military map.

  Corporal Shultz, of the Sixty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, aide to General Grant, came into the outer room, looked around him, and sighed. He entered the bedroom and shook the General’s hammock roughly. General Ulysses S. Grant opened one eye.

  ‘Pardon, sir,’ said Corporal Shultz, ‘but this is the day of surrender. You ought to be up, sir.’

  ‘Don’t swing me,’ said Grant, sharply, for his aide was making the hammock sway gently. ‘I feel terrible,’ he added, and he turned over and closed his eye again.

  ‘General Lee will be here any minute now,’ said the Corporal firmly, swinging the hammock again.

  ‘Will you cut that out?’ roared Grant. ‘D’ya want to make me sick, or what?’ Shultz clicked his heels and saluted. ‘What’s he coming here for?’ asked the General.

  ‘This is the day of surrender, sir,’ said Shultz. Grant grunted bitterly.

  ‘Three hundred and fifty generals in the Northern armies,’ said Grant, ‘and he has to come to me about this. What time it is?’

  ‘You’re the Commander-in-Chief, that’s why,’ said Corporal Shultz. ‘It’s eleven twenty-five, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ said Grant. ‘Lincoln is the Commander-in-Chief. Nobody in the history of the world ever surrendered before lunch. Doesn’t he know that an army surrenders on its stomach?’ He pulled a blanket up over his head and settled himself again.

  ‘The generals of the Confederacy will be here any minute now,’ said the Corporal. ‘You really ought to be up, sir.’

  Grant stretched his arms above his head and yawned.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said. He rose to a sitting position and stared about the room. ‘This place looks awful,’ he growled.

  ‘You must have had quite a time of it last night, sir,’ ventured Shultz.

  ‘Yeh,’ said General Grant, looking around for his clothes. ‘I was wrassling some general. Some general with a beard.’

  Shultz helped the commander of the Northern armies in the field to find his clothes.

  ‘Where’s my other sock?’ demanded Grant. Shultz began to look around for it. The General walked uncertainly to a table and poured a drink from a bottle.

  ‘I don’t think it wise to drink, sir,’ said Shultz.

  ‘Nev’ mind about me,’ said Grant, helping himself to a second, ‘I can take it or let it alone. Didn’ ya ever hear the story about the fella went to Lincoln to complain about me drinking too much? “So-and-So says Grant drinks too much,” this fella said. “So-and-So is a fool,” said Lincoln. So this fella went to What’s-His-Name and told him what Lincoln said and he came roarin’ to Lincoln about it. “Did you tell So-and-So I was a fool?” he said. “No,” said Lincoln, “I thought he knew it.”’ The General smiled, reminiscently, and had another drink. ‘That’s how I stand with Lincoln,’ he said, proudly.

  The soft thudding sound of horses’ hooves came through the open window. Shultz hurriedly walked over and looked out.

  ‘Hoof steps,’ said Grant, with a curious chortle.

  ‘It is General Lee and his staff,’ said Shultz.

  ‘Show him in,’ said the General, taking another drink. ‘And see what the boys in the back room will have.’

  Shultz walked smartly over to the door, opened it, saluted, and stood aside. General Lee, dignified against the blue of the April sky, magnificent in his dress uniform, stood for a moment framed in the doorway. He walked in, followed by his staff. They bowed, and stood silent. General Grant stared at them. He only had one boot on and his jacket was unbuttoned.

  ‘I know who you are,’ said Grant. ‘You’re Robert Browning, the poet.’

  ‘This is General Robert E. Lee,’ said one of his staff, coldly.

  ‘Oh,
’ said Grant. ‘I thought he was Robert Browning. He certainly looks like Robert Browning. There was a poet for you, Lee: Browning. Did ja ever read “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix”? “Up Derek, to saddle, up Derek, away; up Dunder, up Blitzen, up Prancer, up Dancer, up Bouncer, up Vixen, up –”’

  ‘Shall we proceed at once to the matter in hand?’ asked General Lee, his eyes disdainfully taking in the disordered room.

  ‘Some of the boys was wrassling here last night,’ explained Grant. ‘I threw Sherman, or some general a whole lot like Sherman. It was pretty dark.’ He handed a bottle of Scotch to the commanding officer of the Southern armies, who stood holding it, in amazement and discomfiture. ‘Get a glass, somebody,’ said Grant, looking straight at General Longstreet. ‘Didn’t I meet you at Cold Harbour?’ he asked. General Longstreet did not answer.

  ‘I should like to have this over with as soon as possible,’ said Lee. Grant looked vaguely at Shultz, who walked up close to him, frowning.

  ‘The surrender, sir, the surrender,’ said Corporal Shultz in a whisper.

  ‘Oh sure, sure,’ said Grant. He took another drink. ‘All right,’ he said ‘Here we go.’ Slowly, sadly, he unbuckled his sword. Then he handed it to the astonished Lee. ‘There you are, General,’ said Grant. ‘We dam’ near licked you. If I’d been feeling better we would of licked you.’

  The Remarkable Case of Mr Bruhl

  Samuel O. Bruhl was just an ordinary-looking citizen, like you and me, except for a curious, shoe-shaped scar on his left cheek, which he got when he fell against a wagon-tongue in his youth. He had a good job as treasurer for a syrup-and-fondant concern, a large, devout wife, two tractable daughters, and a nice home in Brooklyn. He worked from nine to five, took in a show occasionally, played a bad, complacent game of golf, and was usually in bed by eleven o’clock. The Bruhls had a dog named Bert, a small circle of friends, and an old sedan. They had made a comfortable, if unexciting, adjustment to life.

  There was no reason in the world why Samuel Bruhl shouldn’t have lived along quietly until he died of some commonplace malady. He was a man designed by Nature for an uneventful life, an inexpensive but respectable funeral, and a modest stone marker. All this you would have predicted had you observed his colourless comings and goings, in mild manner, the small stature of his dreams. He was, in brief, the sort of average citizen that observers of Judd Gray thought Judd Gray was. And precisely as that mild little family man was abruptly hurled into an incongruous tragedy, so was Samuel Bruhl suddenly picked out of the hundreds of men just like him and marked for an extravagant and unpredictable end. Oddly enough it was the shoe-shaped scar on his left cheek which brought to his heels a Nemesis he had never dreamed of. A blemish on his heart, a tic in his soul would have been different; one would have blamed Bruhl for whatever anguish an emotional or spiritual flaw laid him open to, but it is ironical indeed when the Furies ride down a man who has been guilty of nothing worse than an accident in his childhood.

  Samuel O. Bruhl looked very much like George (‘Shoescar’) Clinigan. Clinigan had that same singular shoe-shaped scar on his left cheek. There was also a general resemblance in height, weight, and complexion. A careful study would have revealed very soon that Clinigan’s eyes were shifty and Bruhl’s eyes were clear, and that the syrup-and-fondant company’s treasurer had a more pleasant mouth and a higher forehead than the gangster and racketeer, but at a glance the similarity was remarkable.

  Had Clinigan not become notorious, this prank of Nature would never have been detected, but Clinigan did become notorious and dozens of persons observed that he looked like Bruhl. They saw Clinigan’s picture in the papers the day he was shot, and the day after, and the day after that. Presently someone in the syrup-and-fondant concern mentioned to someone else that Clinigan looked like Mr Bruhl, remarkably like Mr Bruhl. Soon everybody in the place had commented on it, among themselves, and to Mr Bruhl.

  Mr Bruhl rather laughed it off at first, but one day when Clinigan had been in the hospital a week, a cop peered closely at Mr Bruhl when he was on his way home from work. After that, the little treasurer noticed a number of other strangers staring at him with mingled surprise and alarm. One small, dark man hastily thrust a hand into his coat pocket and paled slightly.

  Mr Bruhl began to worry. He began to imagine things. ‘I hope this fellow Clinigan doesn’t pull through,’ he said one morning at breakfast. ‘He’s a bad actor. He’s better off dead.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll pull through,’ said Mrs Bruhl, who had been reading the morning paper. ‘It says here he’ll pull through. But it says they’ll shoot him again. It says they’re sure to shoot him again.’

  The morning after the night that Clinigan left the hospital, secretly, by a side door, and disappeared into the town, Bruhl decided not to go to work. ‘I don’t feel so good today,’ he said to his wife. ‘Would you call up the office and tell them I’m sick?’

  ‘You don’t look well,’ said his wife. ‘You really don’t look well. Get down, Bert,’ she added, for the dog had jumped upon her lap and whined. The animal knew that something was wrong.

  That evening Bruhl, who had mooned about the house all day, read in the papers that Clinigan had vanished, but was believed to be somewhere in the city. His various rackets required his presence, at least until he made enough money to skip out with; he had left the hospital penniless. Rival gangsters, the papers said, were sure to seek him out, to hunt him down, to give it to him again. ‘Give him what again?’ asked Mrs Bruhl when she read this. ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said her husband.

  It was little Joey, the office boy at the syrup-and-fondant company, who first discovered that Mr Bruhl was afraid. Joey, who went about with tennis shoes on, entered the treasurer’s office suddenly – flung open the door and started to say something.

  ‘Good God!’ cried Mr Bruhl, rising from his chair. ‘Why, what’s the matter, Mr Bruhl?’ asked Joey. Other little things happened. The switchboard girl phoned Mr Bruhl’s desk one afternoon and said there was a man waiting to see him, a Mr Globe. ‘What’s he look like?’ asked Bruhl, who didn’t know anybody named Globe. ‘He’s small and dark,’ said the girl. ‘A small, dark man?’ said Bruhl. ‘Tell him I’m out. Tell him I’ve gone to California.’ The personnel, comparing notes, decided at length that the treasurer was afraid of being mistaken for Shoescar and put on the spot. They said nothing to Mr Bruhl about this, because they were forbidden to by Ollie Breithofter, a fattish clerk who was a tireless and inventive practical joker and who had an idea.

  As the hunt went on for Clinigan and he still wasn’t found and killed, Mr Bruhl lost weight and grew extremely fidgety. He began to figure out new ways of getting to work, one requiring the use of two different ferry lines; he ate his lunch in, he wouldn’t answer bells, he cried out when anyone dropped anything, and he ran into stores or banks when cruising taxi-drivers shouted at him. One morning, in setting the house to rights, Mrs Bruhl found a revolver under his pillow. ‘I found a revolver under your pillow,’ she told him that night. ‘Burglars are bad in this neighbourhood,’ he said. ‘You oughtn’t to have a revolver,’ she said. They argued about it, he irritably, she uneasily, until time for bed. As Bruhl was undressing, after locking and bolting all the doors, the telephone rang. ‘It’s for you, Sam,’ said Mrs Bruhl. Her husband went slowly to the phone, passing Bert on the way. ‘I wish I was you,’ he said to the dog, and took up the receiver. ‘Get this, Shoescar,’ said a husky voice. ‘We trailed you where you are, see? You’re cooked.’ The receiver at the other end was hung up. Bruhl shouted. His wife came running. ‘What is it, Sam, what is it?’ she cried. Bruhl, pale, sick-looking, had fallen into a chair. ‘They got me,’ he moaned. ‘They got me.’ Slowly, deviously, Minnie Bruhl got it out of her husband that he had been mistaken for Clinigan and that he was cooked. Mrs Bruhl was not very quick mentally, but she had a certain intuition and this intuition told her, as she trembled there in her nightgown above her broken husband,
that this was the work of Ollie Breithofter. She instantly phoned Ollie Breithofter’s wife and, before she hung up, had got the truth out of Mrs Breithofter. It was Ollie who had called.

  The treasurer of the Maskonsett Syrup & Fondant Company, Inc., was so relieved to know that the gangs weren’t after him that he admitted frankly at the office next day that Ollie had fooled him for a minute. Mr Bruhl even joined in the laughter and wisecracking, which went on all day. After that, for almost a week, the mild little man had comparative peace of mind. The papers said very little about Clinigan now. He had completely disappeared. Gang warfare had died down for the time being.

  One Sunday morning Mr Bruhl went for an automobile ride with his wife and daughters. They had driven about a mile through Brooklyn streets when, glancing in the mirror above his head, Mr Bruhl observed a blue sedan just behind him. He turned off into the next side street, and the sedan turned off too. Bruhl made another turn, and the sedan followed him. ‘Where are you going, dear?’ asked Mrs Bruhl. Mr Bruhl didn’t answer her, he speeded up, he drove terrifically fast, he turned corners so wildly that the rear wheels swung around. A traffic cop shrilled at him. The younger daughter screamed. Bruhl drove right on, weaving in and out. Mrs Bruhl began to berate him wildly. ‘Have you lost your mind, Sam?’ she shouted. Mr Bruhl looked behind him. The sedan was no longer to be seen. He slowed up. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  A month went by without incident (thanks largely to Mrs Breithofter) and Samuel Bruhl began to be himself again. On the day that he was practically normal once more, Sluggy Pensiotta, alias Killer Lewis, alias Strangler Koetschke, was shot. Sluggy was the leader of the gang that had sworn to get Shoescar Clinigan. The papers instantly took up the gang-war story where they had left off. Pictures of Clinigan were published again. The slaying of Pensiotta, said the papers, meant but one thing: it meant that Shoescar Clinigan was cooked. Mr Bruhl, reading this, went gradually to pieces once more.