The Thurber Carnival

by James Thurber

  Reporters, who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smurch’s plane was first sighted over the little French coast town of Serlyle-Mer, to dig up the story of the great man’s life, had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed. His mother, a sullen short-order cook in a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourists’ camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry ‘Ah, the hell with him; I hope he drowns.’ His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and laprobes from tourists’ automobiles; his young brother, a weak-minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa, Reformatory and was already wanted in several Western towns for the theft of money-order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that Pal Smurch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear-eyed, dead for sleep, half-starved, was piloting his crazy junk-heap high above the region in which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known.

  The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man’s career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was of course impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favour of the young hero had sprung up, like a grass fire, when he was half-way across Europe on his flight around the globe. He was, therefore, described as a modest chap, taciturn, blond, popular with his friends, popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smurch, taken at the wheel of a phoney automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant smile. The truth was, in this way, kept from the youth’s ecstatic compatriots; they did not dream that the Smurch family was despised and feared by its neighbours in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself, because of numerous unsavoury exploits, had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace. He had, the reporters discovered, once knifed the principal of his high school – not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him; and on another occasion, surprised in the act of stealing an altar-cloth from a church, he had bashed the sacristan over the head with a pot of Easter lilies; for each of these offences he had served a sentence in the reformatory.

  Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding Providence might, however awful such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot, whose unheard-of flight had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the world, as a congenital hooligan mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame. ‘I trust,’ said the Secretary of State, at one of many secret Cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma, ‘I trust that his mother’s prayer will be answered,’ by which he referred to Mrs Emma Smurch’s wish that her son might be drowned. It was, however, too late for that – Smurch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were millponds. At three minutes after two o’clock on the afternoon of 17 July 1937, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three-point landing.

  It had, of course, been out of the question to arrange a modest little reception for the greatest flier in the history of the world. He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world. Fortunately, however, the worn and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane, and was spirited from the field without having opened his mouth once. Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of this first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of the Secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J. Moriarity of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governors Fanniman, Groves, McFeely and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats. Smurch did not, in fact, come to in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for the next day. He was rushed to a secluded nursing home and confined to bed. It was nine days before he was able to get up, or to be more exact, before he was permitted to get up. Meanwhile the greatest minds in the country, in solemn assembly, had arranged a secret conference of city, state, and government officials, which Smurch was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in the ethics and behaviour of heroism.

  On the day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up and dress and, for the first time in two weeks, took a great chew of tobacco, he was permitted to receive the newspapermen – this by way of testing him out. Smurch did not wait for questions. ‘Youse guys,’ he said – and the Times man winced – ‘youse guys can tell the cock-eyed world dat I put it over on Lindbergh, see? Yeh – an’ made an ass o’ them two frogs.’ The ‘two frogs’ was a reference to a pair of gallant French fliers who, in attempting a flight only half-way round the world, had, two weeks before, unhappily been lost at sea. The Times man was bold enough, at this point, to sketch out for Smurch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of this kind; he explained that there should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of foreign nations. ‘Ah, the hell with that,’ said Smurch. ‘I did it, see? I did it, an’ I’m talkin’ about it.’ And he did talk about it.

  None of this extraordinary interview was, of course, printed. On the contrary, the newspapers, already under the disciplined direction of a secret directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave out to a panting and restless world that ‘Jacky’, as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only that he was very happy and that anyone could have done what he did. ‘My achievement has been, I fear, slightly exaggerated,’ the Times man’s article had him protest, with a modest smile. These newspaper stories were kept from the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising malevolence of his temper. The situation was, indeed, extremely grave, for Pal Smurch was, as he kept insisting, ‘rarin’ to go’. He could not much longer be kept from a nation clamorous to lionize him. It was the most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since the sinking of the Lusitania.

  On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of July, Smurch was spirited away to a conference-room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviourist psychologists, and editors. He gave them each a limp, moist paw and a brief unlovely grin. ‘Hah ya?’ he said. When Smurch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose and, with obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and how he must act when presented to the world, ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero’s courage and integrity. The Mayor was followed by Governor Fanniman of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced Cameron Spottiswood, Second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, the gentleman selected to coach Smurch in the amenities of public ceremonies. Sitting in a chair, with a soiled yellow tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved, smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smurch listened with a leer on his lips. ‘I get ya, I get ya,’ he cut in, nastily. ‘Ya want me to ack like a softy, huh? Ya want me to ack like that — — baby-faced Lindbergh, huh? Well, nuts to that, see?’ Everyone took in his breath sharply; it was a sigh and a hiss. ‘Mr Lindbergh,’ began a United States Senator, purple with rage, ‘and Mr Byrd— ’ Smurch, who was paring his nails with a jackknife, cut in again. ‘Byrd!’ he exclaimed. ‘Aw fa God’s sake, dat big – ’ Somebody shut off his blasphemies with a sharp word. A newcomer had entered the room. Everyone stood up, except Smurch, who, still busy with his nails, did not even glance up. ‘Mr Smurch,’ said someone sternly, ‘the President of the United States!’ It had been thought that the presence of the Chief Executive might have a chastening effect upon the young hero, and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference-room.

  A great, painful silence fell. Smurch looked up,
waved a hand at the President. ‘How ya comin’?’ he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette. The silence deepened. Someone coughed in a strained way. ‘Geez, it’s hot, ain’t it?’ said Smurch. He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest and the tattooed word ‘Sadie’ enclosed in a stencilled heart. The great and important men in the room, faced by the most serious crisis in recent American history, exchanged worried frowns. Nobody seemed to know how to proceed. ‘Come awn, come awn,’ said Smurch. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here! When do I start cuttin’ in on de parties, huh? And what’s they goin’ to be in it?’ He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly. ‘Money!’ exclaimed a state senator, shocked, pale. ‘Yeh, money,’ said Pal, flipping his cigarette out of a window. ‘An’ big money.’ He began rolling a fresh cigarette. ‘Big money,’ he repeated, frowning over the rice paper. He tilted back in his chair, and leered at each gentleman, separately, the leer of an animal that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in a bird-and-dog shop. ‘Aw fa God’s sake, let’s get some place where it’s cooler,’ he said. ‘I been cooped up plenty for three weeks!’

  Smurch stood up and walked over to an open window, where he stood staring down into the street, nine floors below. The faint shouting of newsboys floated up to him. He made out his name. ‘Hot dog!’ he cried, grinning, ecstatic. He leaned out over the sill. ‘You tell ’em, babies!’ he shouted down. ‘Hot diggity dog!’ In the tense little knot of men standing behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up. An unspoken word of appeal, of command, seemed to ring through the room. Yet it was deadly silent. Charles K. L. Brand, secretary to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be standing nearest Smurch; he looked inquiringly at the President of the United States. The President, pale, grim, nodded shortly. Brand, a tall, powerfully built man, once a tackle at Rutgers, stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and pushed him out the window.

  ‘My God, he’s fallen out the window!’ cried a quick-witted editor.

  ‘Get me out of here!’ cried the President. Several men sprang to his side and he walked hurriedly escorted out of a door toward a side-entrance of the building. The editor of the Associated Press took charge, being used to such things. Crisply he ordered certain men to leave, others to stay; quickly he outlined a story which all the papers were to agree on, sent two men to the street to handle that end of the tragedy, commanded a Senator to sob and two Congressmen to go to pieces nervously. In a word, he skilfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief-stricken world the sad story of the untimely, accidental death of its most illustrious and spectacular figure.

  The funeral was, as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and the saddest ever held in the United States of America. The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft of marble and the simple device of a tiny plane carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims, in deep reverence, to visit. The nations of the world paid lofty tributes to little Jacky Smurch, America’s greatest hero. At a given hour there were two minutes of silence throughout the nation. Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town of Westfield, Iowa, observed the touching ceremony; agents of the Department of Justice saw to that. One of them was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourists’ camping ground just outside the town. There, under his stern scrutiny, Mrs Emma Smurch bowed her head above two hamburger steaks sizzling on her grill – bowed her head and turned away, so that the Secret Service man could not see the twisted, strangely familiar, leer on her lips.

  The Evening’s at Seven

  He hadn’t lighted the upper light in his office all afternoon and now he turned out the desk lamp. It was a quarter of seven in the evening and it was dark and raining. He could hear the rattle of taxicabs and trucks and the sound of horns. Very far off a siren screamed its frenzied scream and he thought: it’s a little like an anguish dying with the years. When it gets to Third Avenue, or Ninety-fifth Street, he thought, I won’t hear it any more.

  I’ll be home, he said to himself, as he got up slowly and slowly put on his hat and overcoat (the overcoat was damp), by seven o’clock, if I take a taxicab, I’ll say hello, my dear, and the two yellow lamps will be lighted and my papers will be on my desk, and I’ll say I guess I’ll lie down a few minutes before dinner, and she will say all right and ask two or three small questions about the day and I’ll answer them.

  When he got outside of his office, in the street, it was dark and raining and he lighted a cigarette. A young man went by whistling loudly. Two girls went by talking gaily, as if it were not raining, as if this were not a time for silence and for remembering. He called to a taxicab and it stopped and he got in, and sat there, on the edge of the seat, and the driver finally said where to? He gave a number he was thinking about.

  She was surprised to see him and, he believed, pleased. It was very nice to be in her apartment again. He faced her, quickly, and it seemed to him as if he were facing somebody in a tennis game. She would want to know (but wouldn’t ask) why he was, so suddenly, there, and he couldn’t exactly say: I gave a number to a taxi-driver and it was your number. He couldn’t say that; and besides, it wasn’t that simple.

  It was dark in the room and still raining outside. He lighted a cigarette (not wanting one) and looked at her. He watched her lovely gestures as of old and she said he looked tired and he said he wasn’t tired and he asked her what she had been doing and she said oh, nothing much. He talked, sitting awkwardly on the edge of a chair, and she talked, lying gracefully on a chaise-longue, about people they had known and hadn’t cared about. He was mainly conscious of the rain outside and of the soft darkness in the room and of other rains and other darknesses. He got up and walked around the room looking at pictures but not seeing what they were, and realizing that some old familiar things gleamed darkly, and he came abruptly face to face with something he had given her, a trivial and comic thing, and it didn’t seem trivial or comic now, but very large and important and embarrassing, and he turned away from it and asked after somebody else he didn’t care about. Oh, she said, and this and that and so and such (words he wasn’t listening to). Yes, he said, absently, I suppose so. Very much, he said (in answer to something else), very much. Oh, she said, laughing at him, not that much! He didn’t have any idea what they were talking about.

  She asked him for a cigarette and he walked over and gave her one, not touching her fingers but very conscious of her fingers. He was remembering a twilight when it had been raining and dark, and he thought of April and kissing and laughter. He noticed a clock on the mantel and it was ten after seven. She said you never used to believe in clocks. He laughed and looked at her for a time and said I have to be at the hotel by seven-thirty, or I don’t get anything to eat; it’s that sort of hotel. Oh, she said.

  He walked to a table and picked up a figurine and set it down again with extreme care, looking out of the corner of his eye at the trivial and comic and gigantic present he had given her. He wondered if he would kiss her and when he would kiss her and if she wanted to be kissed and if she were thinking of it, but she asked him what he would have to eat tonight at his hotel. He said clam chowder. Thursday, he said, they always have clam chowder. Is that the way you know it’s Thursday, she said, or is that the way you know it’s clam chowder?

  He picked up the figurine and put it down again, so that he could look (without her seeing him look) at the clock. It was eighteen minutes after seven and he had the mingled thoughts clocks gave him. You mustn’t, she said, miss your meal. (She remembered he hated the word meal.) He turned around quickly and went over quickly and sat beside her and took hold of one of her fingers and she looked at the finger and not at him and he looked at the finger and not at her, both of them as if it were a new and rather remarkable thing.

  He got up suddenly and picked up his hat and coat and as suddenly put them down again
and took two rapid determined steps toward her, and her eyes seemed a little wider. A bell rang. Oh that, she said, will be Clarice. And they relaxed. He looked a question and she said: my sister; and he said oh, of course. In a minute it was Clarice like a small explosion in the dark and rainy day talking rapidly of this and that: my dear he and this awful and then of all people so nothing loth and I said and he said, if you can imagine that! He picked up his hat and coat and Clarice said hello to him and he said hello and looked at the clock and it was almost twenty-five after seven.

  She went to the door with him looking lovely, and it was lovely and dark and raining outside and he laughed and she laughed and she was going to say something but he went out into the rain and waved back at her (not wanting to wave back at her) and she closed the door and was gone. He lighted a cigarette and let his hand get wet in the rain and the cigarette get wet and rain dripped from his hat. A taxicab drove up and the driver spoke to him and he said: what? and: oh, sure. And now he was going home.

  He was home by seven-thirty, almost exactly, and he said good evening to old Mrs Spencer (who had the sick husband), and good evening to old Mrs Holmes (who had the sick Pomeranian), and he nodded and smiled and presently he was sitting at his table and the waitress spoke to him. She said: the Mrs will be down, won’t she? and he said yes, she will. And the waitress said clam chowder tonight, and consommé: you always take the clam chowder, ain’t I right? No, he said, I’ll have the consommé.

  One is a Wanderer

  The walk up Fifth Avenue through the slush of the sidewalks and the dankness of the air had tired him. The dark was coming quickly down, the dark of a February Sunday evening, and that vaguely perturbed him. He didn’t want to go ‘home’, though, and get out of it. It would be gloomy and close in his hotel room, and his soiled shirts would be piled on the floor of the closet where he had been flinging them for weeks, where he had been flinging them for months, and his papers would be disarranged on the tops of the tables and on the desk, and his pipes would be lying around, the pipes he had smoked determinedly for a while only to give them up, as he always did, to go back to cigarettes. He turned into the street leading to his hotel, walking slowly, trying to decide what to do with the night. He had had too many nights alone. Once he had enjoyed being alone. Now it was hard to be alone. He couldn’t read any more, or write, at night. Books he tossed aside after nervously flipping through them; the writing he tried to do turned into spirals and circles and squares and empty faces.