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  The Feather Merchants

  A Novel

  Max Shulman

  To

  CAROL

  my wife

  NOTE

  Every soldier knows that “feather merchants” means civilians, but few know why it does. The origins of the term are indeed cloaked in mystery. Theories abound. Only one, however, seems worthy of even provisional credence—that of Professor Herk Bettzimmer, the famous “one-horse philologist” of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., whose testimony, you will recall, was no small factor in deciding the McCullough vs. Maryland litigation.

  Says Professor Bettzimmer, “Circa 4500 B.C. two neighboring tribes, the Puntangi and the Snafu, went to war over the possession of a gap-toothed idol named Ed to whom they attributed widespread curative powers. At that time Ed was well concealed by the Snafu. Gluk-Os, chief of the Snafu, was taken prisoner and brought before Miklos the Scaly, prince of the Puntangi. Upon refusing to divulge the location of Ed, Gluk-Os was bound and subjected to a favorite torture of the day—tickling the soles of the feet with feathers. For weeks two shifts of Miklos’s warriors tickled Gluk-Os’s feet day and night, but he spoke not a word. All the feathers in Miklos’s court were worn to the nub. Miklos ordered more feathers brought to him at any cost so that the torture could continue. Civilians by the thousands plucked their fowl and wives’ hats and sold the feathers to the army. Hence, ‘feather merchants.’

  “Gluk-Os, incidentally, never did tell where Ed was hidden. The tickling bothered him not in the least, for, had the Snafu known, he was wearing history’s first pair of shoes.”

  —M.S.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I had a foolish feeling that everything was going to be all right as I walked up to the gatehouse at the air base. I set down my suitcase and gave the guard my furlough papers with a steady hand.

  I won’t deny that I had been scared stiff when I had boarded the train in Minneapolis; I had chosen a corner seat, put on a pair of dark glasses, and turned my collar up around my face. Whenever an M.P. had come through the train I had ducked quickly behind a book I had bought for concealment purposes.

  The M.P.s had become less frequent south of Kansas City. South of Wichita there had been none at all. With that menace gone, I had relaxed considerably. I had opened my book and begun to leaf through it with mounting interest. It was the best-selling diary of the lady war correspondent, Hepzibah Galtz, entitled I Been Everywhere.

  More correct than grammatical was Miss Galtz’s title. This intrepid little lady had been where burros fear to tread. She was true to the credo she stated on her opening page:

  “Before I left on this world assignment, my mother asked me not to go. ‘Hepzibah,’ she said, ‘don’t go.’ (She is the only one who calls me Hepzibah; to everyone else I am ‘Hellcat’ or ‘What have I got to lose’ Galtz.)

  “‘Leah,’ I answered (As you can see, I call my mother by her first name. This is only one of my unconventionalities. I am one hell of a kid.), ‘my first duty is to the people. I cannot think of danger to my person, and as for my reputation, I am not one to worry about such bourgeois affectations. There’s news in this here world, Leah, and I am going to get it or my name ain’t “Hellcat” or “What have I got to lose” Galtz.’”

  With fabulous derring-do, “Hellcat” or “What have I got to lose” explored the recesses of the world that the people might know. She scaled a perpendicular crag to interview the Grand Lama of Tibet:

  “I didn’t mess with him. ‘Lama,’ I said right off the bat, ‘are you or ain’t you coming in with Chiang?’

  “‘Daughter,’ he answered, peering into my bodice, ‘I’m an old man. Leave us go to my bower where we can rest.’

  “With a saucy toss of my head I accompanied him to his bower. It was a rough night, and I didn’t have a chance to ask him again. In the morning he was stone dead. The new Grand Lama, according to Tibetan custom, was a baby born at the exact moment of the old lama’s death.

  “Go ask questions from a baby.”

  Any hour of the day or night Miss Galtz was welcome at the homes of the great:

  “‘I came as soon as they told me you were here,’ said Stalin. ‘I was at a midnight conference with my generals, but I ran right over. Naturally I would rather be with you, “Hellcat” or “What have I got to lose,” than with a bunch of stuffy generals.’

  “He pinched my bottom and frisked about the room.

  “‘Can that crap, Joe,’ I said. ‘I wanna know what you’re going to do about Poland after the war.’

  “But before he would talk business, he made me sit down and have supper with him. We drank twenty-seven toasts to the United Nations, and he got pretty stinking, but I know how to hold the stuff.

  “‘Well, what about Poland, Joe?’ I said.

  “He wagged his finger at me. ‘You little minx. Nobody has been able to get a statement out of me, but I’m going to tell you. Tell the American people that what I am going to do about Poland depends on a lot of things.’

  “It was a clean-cut scoop for me. Boy, were Gunther and Duranty burned up!”

  I had read my book and the miles had clacked by without incident. Toward the end of the trip I had actually taken off my dark glasses and exchanged pleasantries with a fellow passenger, a nasal okra grower named Minafee. When the train pulled into the station, I had gotten off with confidence. With confidence I had proceeded to the air base.

  Now I stood blithely whistling the largo from Death and Transfiguration as the guard examined my furlough papers.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Sergeant Daniel Miller. We were wondering if you’d come back.” He unholstered his revolver. “Let’s get into the jeep, Sergeant. The provost marshal wants to see you.”

  The heart within me died. I climbed silently into the jeep and hung my head between my legs, maintaining that position until we reached the provost marshal’s office.

  “He came quietly, Captain,” the guard said to the provost marshal.

  “Good,” answered the provost marshal. “At least we don’t have to try him for resisting arrest.” He dismissed the guard and motioned me to sit down. “You know, Sergeant,” he said, “I’ve got a sister in Minneapolis.”

  “I didn’t know, sir,” I said.

  “I’m sure you didn’t. She sends me the Minneapolis papers regularly.” He opened his desk drawer and took out several copies. “Do you recognize these, Sergeant?”

  “Yes sir,” I said without looking at them.

  “Uh-huh. I suppose you’ve got a perfectly logical explanation.”

  “As a matter of fact, Captain, I have.”

  “Well, that’s fine. I knew you would. Perhaps you’d like to tell it to me.”

  “I’d love to. But it’s a rather long story.”

  “They always are, Sergeant. Go ahead.”

  “Well, sir, when I left for Minneapolis ten days ago I was just a happy soldier going home on furlough …”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The one-car train clacked northward through Oklahoma. From behind the green baize curtain separating the Jim Crow section of the car came the voices of darkies, as they are affectionately called in the South, droning in the throaty drawl peculiar to vitamin-D deficients. A disorganized fly beat his head wistfully against the window. I made myself comfortable on the flange of my pelvis and read an article about how you can cure syphilis in eight hours by getting into a steam cabinet and reading the Reader’s Digest.

  The sturdy little wood-burning engine chugged through the red country and part of the gray. In the shade of CCC-planted trees loo
se-hung farmers squatted in a position no city-bred man can even approximate and drew pictures of biological manifestations in the dirt with blunt sticks. Calico-clad farm wives, their supper sidemeat cooking in immemorial pots, sat sluggishly fanning themselves with parity checks. A turtle crossed the road to get on the other side.

  With a fierce, quiet pride that American ingenuity had at last bested another loathsome disease, I finished the article and dropped the magazine to the floor. Idly I surveyed my fellow passengers. Here a child cried fitfully because he couldn’t drive the train, while his mother credulously read a Superman comic book. An aging hostler smiled benignly and smote his thigh in gentle accord as his pimple-faced nephew sang “Roundup in the Sky,” accompanying himself on a guitar on which was inscribed “The Ponca Kid.” In front of me sat two Indians in dull, state-provided serge suits, the one next to the window trying in passionate gutturals to persuade the other to let him out in the aisle to go to the toilet.

  “Dinner!” called the conductor. “First call for dinner.”

  Since there was no dining car on the train, an ingenious system of serving meals had been devised. As the train neared a point five miles from Dry Prong, its next stop, the conductor went among the passengers, taking their orders for dinner. Then he leaped lightly from the train, trotted ahead to Dry Prong, and had the orders ready as the train pulled in.

  I placed my order, adjusted my seat to its full 85-degree incline, and settled back to await Dry Prong and dinner.

  My wholesome meal of hoecake and chitterlings resting as comfortably as a bar bell in my stomach, I lit a cigarette and proceeded to read a pamphlet entitled Babe Ruth Was Saved. Art You? which had come tucked between two pieces of hoecake in my dinner. I reached the part where the Yankees were one run behind in the last of the ninth, two men out and one on, the Bambino was at the plate with a three-two count on him, the opposing pitcher was preparing to throw the fateful ball (the pitcher’s name was not given, but I’m rather inclined to think it was George Earnshaw because of the almost tedious length of his windup), when the Babe had a divine visitation. As I raptly turned the page to discover the nature of the Sultan of Swat’s disturbance at this most crucial of moments, I was suddenly interrupted.

  “Is this here a good train, sojer?” asked the occupant of the seat next to mine, a lean, angular man with red dirt under his fingernails and skin like sunburned corduroy.

  “No,” I said.

  He nodded. “Hit don’t seem like a good train. Hit jerks.”

  He pulled out a cut plug and politely offered me the unbitten end. After I declined, he chewed off a healthy wad.

  “I ain’t one to wander,” he continued moistly. “Born on my pap’s farm—first breech-delivery baby in Oklahoma—and before now ain’t never left it. ’Cept every year I go to the county fair with My Own Lucy—that’s my heifer—fer the milkin’ contest.” He opened his coat and showed me eight blue ribbons and one red one pinned across his vest. “Won every year sincet ’34. ’Cept ’39. Took second that year. Governor of Iowa jedged the contest. Cain’t trust a Yankee. Where you from?”

  “Minnesota.”

  “Some’s all right,” he allowed. “Man and boy I stayed on thet farm sincet I was born. Hate to gad around. Travelin’s all right for them as don’t have lan’. Man with lan’ should stay put. Married a gal from the next farm. Purty ugly. Strong though. Got a boy. Name’s Billy Dickie. He’s simple.

  “Raise some corn, leetle okra, few beef critters. Got a mule, cistern, radio. Read the Book. Don’t bother nobody. Don’t nobody bother me.

  “’Til last winter. Man-oovers. Sojers all over the place. Gun crew on my farm. My Own Lucy layin’ there sleepin’, and they use her fer a gun emplacement. Open fire. Bang. Boom. Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-pow. Then they leave. Lucy acts funny. Won’t give milk. Ain’t no holes in her, but somethin’s wrong. Call a vet. He looks at her. ‘She’s got the trauma,’ he says.

  “Critter ain’t no good without she gives milk. I write to Washington. Git a letter back full of litacher on how to become a aviation cadet. Write another letter. This time I git a letter thankin’ me fer offerin’ My Own Lucy as a mascot—whatever thet is—to the Second Army but refusin’ because they already got a mascot—whatever thet is—a horned toad named Topkick. Picture of the horned toad is enclosed. My boy, Billy Dickie, he sees the picture and he gets so scared he won’t sleep with the lights off fer six weeks. Burned up half a bar’l of kerosene.

  “I write another letter. This time they answer thet I been accepted for aviation-cadet training.

  “Thet settles it. I git on the train and go to Fort Sill. Wander around fer days talkin’ to sojers. Cain’t make none of ’em understand. End up umpirin’ enlisted men’s softball tournament. Still cain’t understand thet.

  “Goin’ back home now. Never goin’ leave again. Might’s well slaughter Lucy. Damn fine heifer. Won eight blue ribbons with her. Should’ve won nine.”

  The train pulled into the farmer’s station. He rose and walked sadly away. “Keep ’em flyin’,” he called.

  I returned to my pamphlet, found my place, and was delighted to learn that the Babe, divinely guided, poled one into the left-field bleachers, 440 feet away.

  One section of the station at Wichita has been made into a USO lounge largely through the unstinting patriotism of the William Allen White chapter, Dames of Bloody Kansas, of Wichita. I made for this cheery, flag-festooned lounge as soon as I discovered that I had a two-hour wait for my Kansas City train.

  I entered the lounge and nodded pleasantly to a young matron sitting at the hostess’s desk reading the current Vogue. She began to act strangely almost immediately. The magazine dropped from her quivering hands. Her eyes darted wildly about the room. The color drained from her face.

  After a moment it occurred to me why she was behaving that way. It was past midnight, we were all alone in the lounge, I was disheveled from my train ride and had a twelve hours’ beard, and by her clothes and bearing it was easy to tell that she had not been brought up to spend the small hours in railroad stations with strange, disreputable-looking men.

  She clenched her palms on the edge of the desk, gathering strength. At last her USO spirit conquered her inbred revulsion, and she rose and walked toward me. Her lips moved soundlessly a few times. “Here is a ticket,” she blurted finally, thrusting a small white pasteboard into my hands. Then she ran wildly to a near-by post and hung on, trembling violently for several minutes.

  Having quieted down somewhat, she took several deep breaths and started toward me again. Her I. Miller-shod feet faltered as she came closer, and by the time she was at my side she was completely disorganized. “If you’ll present this ticket at the soda fountain”—and her voice began to rise dangerously—“YOU CAN GET COFFEE!” she shrieked and bolted away.

  She tripped on the rug and lay shuddering on the floor. At length she rose slowly to her feet. She set her patrician jaw, squared her shoulders, started forward, broke down again, saved herself from falling by grabbing the back of a fortunately placed settee, pulled a cigarette from her handbag, burned up a folder of matches trying to light it, cast away the cigarette, straightened up, looked directly and unswervingly in front of her, and walked past me.

  “Or a bottle of Coca-Cola,” she gasped as she went by, and then she broke into a clattering sprint, skidded out the door, and ran madly down the street screaming, “Taxi! For God’s sake, taxi!”

  A little unnerved myself, I had a cup of coffee at the fountain and then went back to the lounge. I sank into an easy chair, picked up a movie magazine, and by the time my train arrived I learned that Myrna Loy bathes daily in pure wombat’s milk, that Walter Pidgeon would sooner go out without his trousers than without his watch charm—the skull of a pygmy who saved his life some years before when Pidgeon was playing the Belgian Congo borsht circuit—and that Hollywood’s current crop of divorces were all accomplished without rancor and, in fact, in all cases resulted in improved relations betwee
n the estranged parties who, in their own words, forthwith became the “best of friends.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Before I came into the Army I had never been able to sleep on a train. Pullmans, I always told myself, thinking of the extra fare in terms of small-figure foulard ties and white button-down-collar shirts, were a needless luxury, if not downright un-American. So I always traveled in coaches and never slept a wink.

  Losing the sleep was the least of the trouble. It was the people you ran into. I remember riding the Pennsylvania a few years back. I was in a coach occupied mainly by clean-nailed local officers of the United Mine Workers on their way to a convention in Scranton. At night, as soon as the coach lights were turned off, they fell into a slumber as untroubled as though the combined Catholic and Protestant churches, supported by unanimous and enthusiastic public opinion, had begun proceedings to have John L. Lewis sainted.

  I closed my eyes and started counting sheep, but to no avail, because somehow each sheep had the face of Naomi, a machineless-permanent-wave operator who had thrown me over two seasons before in favor of a dance-band drummer in whose single-stroke rolls she detected something fine and vital. The whole affair, as it turned out, was without satisfaction. The drummer already had a wife, an overweening wench named Babe, who ultimately persuaded him to give up the band business and take a night-school course in pharmacy.

  Pitching and tossing thus, I saw a cigarette glowing in a far corner of the car. I picked my way over the recumbent labor chieftains and made for the red ash. It was a girl, I could see as I came closer. The seat next to hers was empty. I sat down and said, “I see you’re having a little trouble sleeping too. Heh, heh.”

  She drew deeply on her cigarette, and in the resultant glow I saw the pinched, intense features of her face. She flung away her cigarette in a swift, passionate gesture.

  “Mine has been a strange life,” she said.