The Zebra Derby

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  The Zebra Derby

  A Novel

  Max Shulman

  This book is an inadequate tribute to

  KEN McCORMICK

  Everything in this book is fictitious. As a matter of fact, I dreamed the whole thing during an attack of dengue fever brought on by eating unripe dengues. Let my misfortune be a lesson to the reader. When buying dengues, remember that there is a heap of difference between a ripe dengue and a ripe-looking dengue.

  M.S.

  chapter one

  When the lights went on again all over the world, I came home from Tokyo and kissed my mother vigorously about the head and shoulders.

  “Mother,” I said, “I have come home from the wars to live and prosper in a new world of peace, opportunity, and universal plumbing facilities.”

  “That’s real nice, Son,” said Mother.

  “Myself upon the green earth,” I continued, “my finely chiseled, wind-swept head jutting unafraid into the future. Excelsior!”

  “Don’t you want to put your barracks bag down, Son?” asked Mother.

  “Same old considerate Mother,” I said tenderly.

  “Oh, go ’long with you,” she cried with mock severity, and pulled her apron over her face. But I could tell she was pleased when she clicked her heels and leaped up on the chiffonier.

  Father came into the room. “How many times have I told you to keep off that God-damn chiffonier?” he snapped.

  “Our son is home, Max,”* cried Mother.

  “Asa,” said Father to me. “Asa, my son, my only sib.”

  “Father,” I said simply.

  We embraced manlily.

  “You are thin and wan, Asa,” he said, prodding my rib case. “How ghastly it must have been in the miasms of the Pacific. But of course you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I do.”

  “That’s all right, Son,” said Father. “You don’t have to. I’ll understand.”

  “But I want to.”

  “No, Son, no. Don’t wake a flood of horrendous memories on my account. I know how it was. Didn’t I see Don Ameche get it in the guts in Perils of the Pacific, in the head in The Beast of the East, in the thighbone in Hara-Kiri for Two, in the spleen in My Mother Was a Flat-Top, and true in the heart in I Love to See Dat Risin’ Sun Go Down? Do you think I don’t know how it was?”

  “But—”

  “Be still, my boy. Come rest your war-racked bones and I will tell you how it was on the Home Front in the long months of your absence.” He took my hand and drew me down to the settee, a bandy-legged period piece that bridged the time gap between our Louis Seize escritoire and our Swedish Modern occasional chair. This unmatched suite, combined with a brass samovar, a wicker swing, a neo-Bayeux tapestry depicting the founding of Minnesota by Harold Stassen, a china pug dog, and a wire rack for Pocket Books, was the result of Father’s habit of buying all our furniture at unclaimed freight auctions. (One afternoon he had come home from a grab-bag auction with a gross of harmonicas.)

  “It wasn’t easy, Son,” Father began, pulling out his pipe and filling it with a blend he fancied—burley, latakia, and hominy grits. “Just because you never heard a murmur of complaint out of us Home Front soldiers, don’t think it was easy. Of course we never had it as bad as you boys Over There—”

  “You said it,” I interrupted. “One time I—”

  Father laid a finger on my lips. “It’s all right, lad. You don’t have to talk. Just you rest and you’ll be yourself again in no time. Regular hours, plenty of fresh air, and thin broths will work wonders for you. To continue: we had our share of problems. Food shortages and travel difficulties and a cigarette famine and OPA forms and crowded conditions. Why, would you believe it, even in our little town of Whistlestop, you couldn’t find a room for love nor money. As a patriotic duty I converted part of our house into a lovely two-room apartment—bedroom and closet—and rented it to a war worker and his wife for $150 a month, which I put into war bonds. It was the least I could do as a Home Front soldier.”

  We shook hands, not trusting ourselves to speak.

  “But the worst of all,” Father went on, “was the food problem. As you know, I’m a plumb fool about victuals, and every time I went down to the butcher shop there was nothing in the counter but pork jowls and sow teats. Well, sir, I finally said to myself I’m going to take my trusty old twenty-gage, muzzle-loader, rapid-action, fowling-piece musket shotgun and go out and shoot me a deer.

  “So I went and found Max Flowers growing, the Sac Indian guide, and I said, ‘Max, let’s go out and shoot us a deer.’

  “But Max wouldn’t go unless he could take his squaw Mary Ellen along with him. She was expecting a baby any minute, and he wanted to be around when it came. So I said all right, and we hitched Mary Ellen to his surrey with the hinge on top—for lifting when the weather was fine—and with many a laugh and cheer we trotted off to the salt lick north of Bemidji to shoot us a deer.

  “We pitched a tent and laid Mary Ellen down and started off to shoot us a deer. We had gone no more than ten feet when standing in a clearing we saw an enormous four-thousand-point buck.”

  “Four thousand points!” I cried. “The deer never lived with antlers that big.”

  “I am referring to his value in ration stamps,” Father explained. “Well, sir, I raised my gun and got him dead in the sights and was all ready to pull the trigger when a horrible scream came from Mary Ellen.

  “I dropped my gun and rushed with Max to her side. Pulling the surrey for eighty miles had hastened her labor, and she was already in the last stages of giving birth. Max was frantic.

  “‘Quick-um!’ cried the sad Sac. ‘Boil-um plenty-um water-um.’

  “I rushed to a stream and filled every available vessel with water. Then I felled eight trees, hollowed out their trunks, and filled them with water. I built a roaring fire and set all the water boiling.

  “Max, meanwhile, had delivered the child, plaited a granny knot in its umbilical cord, and put it on a four-hour Carnation Milk and Dextri-Maltose No. 2 formula. The child thrived and today is a sutler’s apprentice on the Chippewa reservation near Sleepy Eye.

  “The puzzling thing about the whole episode is this: of all that water I boiled, we never used one damn drop. Tell me, Asa, you went to college, why do they always boil water when they’re delivering a baby?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, Father,” I confessed.

  “Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” said Father. “Every time you see a movie where a baby is born everybody is always running around boiling water. Why? I know a few things about first aid: you keep the patient from swallowing his tongue and try to interest him in handicraft. But that boiling water baffles me.”

  “Did you get the buck?” I asked.

  “No, he got away. I had to go eat at the U-Choos-It cafeteria. Stood in line for four hours waiting to get in. There was a fellow named Maffick who made a good living for a long time outside the U-Choos-It, selling people box lunches to eat while they waited to get inside. The pure-food inspector finally put Maffick out of business when he found him using a butter substitute substitute.

  “Yes, Asa, we had our little Home Front problems. And there was precious little to break the cruel, hard rigor of wartime living. We couldn’t go to the movie, we—”

  “You couldn’t go to the movie?” I interrupted. “What happened to the Bijou Theater?”

  “It was ordained a cathedral after showing The Song of Bernadette, Going My Way, and The Keys of the Kingdom all in one week.”

  “
That reminds me,” I said, “of the time I met an atheist in a foxhole. He was—”

  “Oh, my poor boy,” cried Father, “don’t try to tell it. Don’t pour salt into your soul wounds on my account. Now, as I was saying, we didn’t have much in the way of entertainment. Occasionally a troupe of soldiers from Fort Snelling would come out and put on a show to keep up civilian morale. I recollect the fine band concert they gave one day in honor of the one millionth trailing antenna to be manufactured at the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation. It was a lovely concert. They dedicated each number to a different branch of the service. For the air forces there was “Coming in on a Prayer—No Wings”; for the field artillery there was “I’ve Got Your Picture Pinned Up on My Long Tom, Baby”; for our gallant British allies there was “We’ll Tie Hirohito to the Inboard Magneto of an RAF Mosquito.” A lovely concert.

  “But that’s all water under the bridge now. The war is over and you have come home. Things are different now.”

  “A time of social ameliorization,” I proclaimed, rising, “of new horizons, of disappearing borders, of light, of speed, of new skills, new industries, new techniques, new opportunities beckoning, of straight men upon a tranquil earth.”

  “That’s right, Son. I’ll get you a disk harrow. No more hand plowing for you. I haven’t farmed since you went away; been making trailing antenna at the Whistlestop Wagon Tongue and Trailing Antenna Corporation. My patriotic duty. Duty and a half on Saturdays. The farm’s gotten pretty run down. But with your new disk harrow you’ll have it shipshape in no time.”

  “I, farm?” I cried. “Farm in this age of scientific miracles, of unprecedented prosperity, of plastics, of diminishing distances, of hope and hope’s fulfillment, of single-unit kitchens, of the end of grief and strife and woe? Father, I cannot farm. I needs must go and make my rendezvous with destiny.”

  “Well, now, Son, you’re a little tired,” said Father. “Why don’t you turn in? A bed will feel mighty good right now, I’ll wager.”

  “Indeed it will. How I used to dream of a bed those nights in—”

  “Hush, my little soldier man. Don’t try to talk about it. Run off to bed now.”

  “All right, Father. But there’s something I must do first.”

  “Of course, Son,” Father chuckled. “It’s out in the south forty where it always was. Good night.”

  But lovable old Father was wrong. What I had to do was get Mother down off the chiffonier.

  “Son,” she said quietly as I lifted her down, “I’m real glad you’re home even if those allotment checks don’t come no more.”

  I held her closer.

  *AUTHOR’S NOTE: There are twenty-four characters in this book named Max. Let there be an end to this silly business of authors never giving their own names to characters in their novels. False modesty, faugh!—M.S.

  chapter two

  The next morning I went to see Lodestone la Toole. With love-quickened steps I scampered up the knoll where I knew she would be waiting for me. “Here on this spot I will return to you,” I had said on the day I had gone off to war. “Will you be waiting for me, my own?”

  “Huh?” Lodestone had answered.

  Then I had been angry. “Lodestone,” I had said, “put that rabbit down and listen to me.”

  “But Harvey is so soft,” Lodestone had complained, “and he’s still warm.”

  I had removed the rabbit from her reluctant hands. “We can’t wait for rigor mortis to set in, Lodestone. Time grows short and there is much to be said.” I had taken her hands in mine. “Only the Lord can tell what tribulations lie ahead, Lodestone,” I had said softly. “Know this: whatever must be done I shall do. I shall think of you always. The thought of you and our life together after the war shall sustain me. Your face shall sweeten my dreams and support my days. Whatever the carnage in which I am engaged, I shall be thinking of you, of coming home to you, of holding you again in my arms, of growing old with you in our little white house on the green hill.”

  Lodestone had clapped her hands. “A house!” she had cried. “Huzzah! I don’t mind this knoll in the summer, but, by God, there’s nothing like a house when old Jack Frost comes around.”

  “Indeed there isn’t, Lodestone,” I had said. “And when I come back we’ll have a house of our own.”

  “A house,” she had repeated.

  Then our lips had been together. Then I had been enveloped in the striving rapture of her and, unseeking, had sought release and, unfinding, had found it. And then a sublime lassitude had come, and at length I had bestirred myself and had gone off to war.

  And now, safely out of the war and the past-perfect tense, I was coming back to her. And there, framed in a shaft of sunlight atop the knoll, she sat. Lodestone! Lodestone of the tawny hair and creamy skin. Lodestone of the sturdy limbs and calico gown. How sturdy those limbs! How calico that gown! Running now, I drank in her loveliness through tear-filmed eyes … the ingenuousness of her face, the forked billowing of her bosom, the gentle spatulating hands now stroking a rabbit, the honest pelvis that had never known confinement and would reject it as an outrage, the prehensile toes, also stroking a rabbit.

  Now I was beside her and she was in my arms. “Lodestone,” I breathed, “I am returned.”

  “We’re gonna have a house,” she breathed.

  “Let me look at you,” I said, holding her at arm’s length. Then suddenly, jet-propelled, I was seeking her again and my hands, remembering, were repeating old caresses and the transport of old was upon me, within me, and I was the transport and then I was vanished and there was only the transport, the unworlded delight, the painful reward, the rewarding pain, the rewarding painful deed that was its own pain and its own reward, the awake oblivion, the oblivious awakeness, the sense-poem, at once overdrawn and truncated. Then total peace.

  “We’ll make the whole house out of plastics,” said Lodestone.

  “Lodestone,” I said, “I want to tell you something about that house.”

  “You mean we ain’t gonna have it?” she asked in alarm.

  “Of course we will, darling,” I assured her. “We’ll have our house.”

  “Ah, fine,” she said. “I been reading up on postwar houses in the Heap o’ Livin’ Quarterly. Land’s sakes, the stuff they got is enough to make a body’s head swim.”

  “We’ll have our house, my love. We’ll have our postwar house, and we will be postwar people,” I said.

  “They got what they call ‘dynamic’ furniture,” Lodestone continued. “The chairs vibrate all the time so dust can’t never settle on them.”

  “That’s right, Lodestone,” I said. “You plan our home, for you are our home planner. My mission will be to secure our place in the postwar world. I must leave you, Lodestone, to seek my fortune—our fortune.”

  “They got a fireplace on a track that revolves around you while you sit; your back never gets cold.”

  “When I say I am going to seek my fortune, I do not mean it in its old, prewar sense. I do not mean that I will go pit myself against economic odds, that I will go struggle against the jungle laws that used to govern business, that I will embark on a long uphill climb littered with the bones of failures. No, Lodestone. Things are different now. People have learned, Lodestone. Humanity has progressed.”

  “Chemical wallpaper that turns yellow and brown in the fall and green in the spring. A chromium Venus with electronic nipples that regulate room temperature.”

  “War has shown us what we can do, Lodestone. War has retaught us that which all of us except the wicked and timid have always known: that there is no problem which American ingenuity cannot solve. War has been a busy time for our people, but it has been a thoughtful time too. While some of us assured our country’s destiny on the battlefields of the world, others stayed home and builded our future. An inventory was taken. The perspective of time revealed our old errors. Swept out now are the ills which made our nation imperfect. Erased are the infamies. Strong
, healthy, and wise, we stand on the threshold of tomorrow.”

  “In the bathroom they got a warm floor. They’s coils under it like a toaster. The same thing with the seat of the water closet.”

  “That has long been needed,” I remarked.

  “Then they’s a Murphy bath—a bathtub when it’s horizontal; fold it and you got a shower.”

  “‘What does a man want?’ the planners asked. ‘Let him tell us what he wants and he shall have it.’”

  “In the bedroom they got an Alarm-O-Mattress that shakes you awake in the morning and an electric closet that gives moths the trauma.”

  “So now, Lodestone, I must leave you for a time. I must go and pick out one of the nice things that the planners have got ready for me. I hope there isn’t too much to choose from; I might get confused.”

  “They got robot radios shaped like a person that dances with you while it plays music. They got man radios for ladies and lady radios for mans.”

  “And when I have selected my postwar position, I shall come and get you, and together, we two, we shall thrive and prosper in the new, fulfilled America.

  “Now, Lodestone, kiss me and bid me Godspeed, for I must hurry to the city and pick my postwar position while there are still some good ones left.”

  She raised her countenance to mine, and as the bee feeds I probed her lips. Then there was the swelling of inchoate bliss, a mounting exaltation, a sweet frenzy, a taut yielding, a yielding tautness, a denied realization, a realized denial, an empty fullness, a filled void, a churning, yearning, turning burning. And all was still.

  I rose gingerly and started away, not looking back until she was small in the distance. I waved my handkerchief. She waved a rabbit.

  Then I was gone.

  chapter three

  There was no anxiety in my beating heart as I stood on the station platform waiting for the old Cannonball to take me to Minneapolis, but there was curiosity. I knew that whatever I found would be good, but I could not help wondering what I would find. What had the planners planned for me? What delights were in store for me? What visions, born of the finest minds of the land and perfected through the long years of the war, would I realize?