The Zebra Derby Read online

  “Tristram nodded wordlessly.

  “‘I want to explore,’ said Junior.

  “‘All right, dear,’ the widow replied, ‘but don’t go near the cliff.’

  “Junior skipped off, and the widow lay back with her arms behind her head, her eyes closed against the warm sun.

  “‘This is wonderful,’ she breathed.

  “Tristram nodded wordlessly.

  “Suddenly there came a horrendous cry.

  “‘It’s Junior!’ shrieked the widow. ‘He’s fallen off the cliff! Quick, Tristram, do something.’

  “Tristram leaped to his feet. ‘At last,’ he roared with a full-throated cry, ‘we’re rid of the little bastard.’

  “And then and there he assaulted the widow four times, you should excuse the expression.”

  “Holy cow!” whistled Nebbice. “Four times!”

  “Will you two,” said Alaric, “either shut up or give me some more nembutal?”

  chapter thirteen

  After a breakfast of otter haunch hash Alaric and I got into my new Ford and drove off on our latest venture.

  “Sure looks like the 1942 model,” said Alaric.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the Bon-Ton junk yard,” Alaric replied. “This fellow I was talking to yesterday said that the whole yard is full of surplus war materials. The damn fools are selling it for scrap. Six and a half cents a pound. Well, if they want to be stupid about it, let ’em. It’s all grist for our mill, eh, Asa?” He winked and nudged me.

  “You bet,” I said, winking back.

  I drove a little farther. “What are we going to do with the stuff?” I asked.

  “We’re going to make a barrel of dough, that’s what.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  I drove a little farther. “How?”

  “Look,” said Alaric, “there’s stuff in that junk yard that shouldn’t be scrapped—perfectly good stuff that you can convert to civilian uses without any trouble. All it needs is a little fixing and you can turn it into all kinds of home products.”

  “What kind of home products?”

  “You know—stuff that you use in the house. Like lamps and—and well, thousands of things. See what I mean?”

  “Sure,” I said. “All kinds of things you use in the house. For instance, lamps and—and—and any number of things.”

  “That’s right. When we look at the stuff we’ll get a million ideas for what kind of home products to turn it into. Naturally we won’t tell the Bon-Ton what we want the stuff for. Them poor fools. We’ll just go in there and pick what we want and pay six and a half cents a pound for it. Then we’ll turn around and sell it as home products at a fancy profit. Can we help it if the Bon-Ton is stupid?”

  “All grist for our mill,” I grinned.

  “Here’s the junk yard,” said Alaric.

  “The gold mine, you mean,” I said, giggling.

  We parked and entered the gold mine. Row on row of war materials lay piled along the yard, extending for miles and disappearing beyond the horizon.

  “Big, isn’t it?” I said.

  “You ought to see their main yard,” said Alaric. “This one would fit into a corner of it. And even the main yard is small compared to thousands of other war-material junk yards around the country. One fellow has got the Grand Canyon filled with War Department filing cabinets.”

  “Early in 1945,” I said, “the noted news analyst, A. K. Hockfleisch, broadcast that our War Department filing cabinets were Hitler’s secret weapon. According to Hockfleisch, Hitler figured that if he could make the war last two years longer, the War Department would require so many more filing cabinets that there wouldn’t be room in the United States for anything else. Filing cabinets would cover every inch of our territory, and the people would starve to death.”

  “Interesting,” said Alaric. “Well, let’s rent some bicycles and go look at this stuff. There must be a million different home products we can convert all these things into.”

  We rented bicycles and pedaled slowly up and down the rows, looking for equipment that would be easy to convert.

  “Here’s some bazooka barrels that ought to be good for something,” said Alaric.

  “Sure,” I said. “They’d make swell lamps.”

  “You got a head on you, Asa. We’ll take a couple of hundred of those. Look over here—these belly turrets.”

  “Boy, they’d make keen lamps. Great big ones.”

  “Yes sir. We’ll get some of those too. How about those machine-gun water jackets over there. Think we could use them?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Bed lamps.”

  “For a guy who didn’t get much sleep last night, you sure got a clear head this morning,” said Alaric admiringly.

  “It’s nothing,” I replied. “I got used to going without sleep over there. Why, I remember one week when—”

  “Don’t try to talk about it, partner. How about these tank treads?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t hardly see how we could make lamps out of those.”

  “Anything you say, Asa. Do you see any possibilities in this camouflage netting?”

  “Lamp shades,” I replied promptly.

  “Swell,” said Alaric. “By the way, you ought to see me at a party when I get a lamp shade on my head. I’m a panic.”

  “I can picture it now,” I laughed.

  “There’s some jeep headlights that would make fine lamps,” said Alaric. “There; I thought of that one myself.”

  I pouted.

  “How about those land mines over there? They look kind of flat for lamps.”

  “That’s all you know about it,” I said. “Put wicks in them and you’ve got kerosene lamps.”

  “What a brain,” whispered Alaric, awed.

  “Just American ingenuity,” I murmured.

  “Well, let’s see what you can figure out for these three-bladed propellers.”

  “Simple. Attach them to the ceiling by the hub, put bulbs on the tips, and you’ve got a ceiling lamp.”

  “That’s great, kid.”

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t we fix them to whirl around—a sort of combination fan and lamp? The fan-lamp. The Upcharles-Hearthrug Patented Fan-Lamp!”

  “Revolutionary! We’ll make millions. Well, what do you say, Asa? Think we’ve got enough?”

  “Yes, I believe that better be all for today. My funds are getting pretty low. Those cooky cutters ran into money.”

  “Cooky cutters,” laughed Alaric. “Kid stuff. What saps we were!”

  “Live and learn,” I said.

  “How well you put it,” said Alaric. “Let’s get the manager and buy this stuff.”

  We called the manager on a field telephone. He arrived after an uneventful journey. A scout was dispatched after my car, and we drove along gathering up the war materials Alaric and I had picked up—bazooka barrels, belly turrets, machinegun water jackets, camouflage netting, jeep headlights, land mines, and three-bladed propellers—paying the poor ninny six and a half cents a pound for the lot. I could hardly keep a straight face when I handed him the money.

  “All grist for our mill, eh, Asa,” laughed Alaric as we drove away.

  “You bet,” I cried, my rich brown eyes narrowed with mischief.

  “Now we’ll go home and you’ll go down to the basement and fix up this stuff and then you’ll go out and sell it, and then, boy, we’ll just sit back and let the money roll in.”

  “After we get home,” I said, “before I go down to the basement, I wonder if there’s something you’ll do for me.”

  “Sure, Asa, sure.”

  “Will you put a lamp shade on your head and show me?”

  “Sure thing,” said Alaric, “partner.”

  chapter fourteen

  Two weeks later the Bon-Ton bought four thousand lamps from us at three and a quarter cents a pound.

  “I’ve figured it out, Asa,” said Alaric when
the last lamp had been carted away. “I know what we’ve been doing wrong.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so obvious that I’m embarrassed to admit it. It’s been staring us in the face all along.”

  “What?”

  “A blind man could have seen it.”

  “What?”

  “This: this is the air age.”

  “I’m not going to sell airplanes,” I said.

  “Who said anything about selling airplanes? Here’s my point: this is the air age, but we, like a couple of saps, have been trying to get rich on the ground. The world has taken wings and we are still earth-bound.”

  “Of course,” I said. “A blind man could have seen it.”

  “We must seek our fortune in the air,” said Alaric. “The airplane has become an integral part of the commercial life of America—not just in carrying freight and passengers, but in a million new ways. New vistas are open to men of vision; new opportunities abound.”

  I pointed out that neither of us could fly.

  “So what?” poohed Alaric. “Any damn fool can fly. Pilots are a dime a dozen, but men of vision are still a rarity.”

  “Like us, huh, Alaric?”

  “Yes, Asa, like us. Now, here’s what I’ve got in mind. I read an article in a magazine last week about hunting tuna from the air off the California coast. The pilot flies low over the tuna-fishing waters, scanning the surface. When he sights a school of tuna he radios their position back to the fishing fleet. The fleet goes out, hauls in the tuna, and pays the pilot a commission of ten dollars per ton. Sweet, eh?

  “Now, if they can do that out in California, why can’t we do it right here in Minnesota? We can hire a pilot and get a contract to hunt whitefish in Lake Superior. Think of it, Asa. Just cruising around in the sun all day and coming in at night to collect our two or three hundred dollars. Just think of it.”

  While I was thinking of it Alaric went out and hired a pilot at twenty-five dollars a day plus gasoline expenses. He went to the fishing company to get a contract, but they were a little skeptical, so Alaric agreed to work the first week free.

  Bright and early the next day we went down to the airport to meet our pilot and take off for Lake Superior. The airplane was already revving up; we got right into the cabin and took off. When we were clear of the field and on our way, Alaric introduced me to the pilot. “Asa,” he said, “I’d like for you to meet Max Aileron. He’s a veteran too.”

  “So you were Over There too?” I said. “Myself, I was a private in the 734th Infantry Division, late of the Pacific theater. Went through the battle of—”

  “Pleased to meet you, Private,” interrupted Max Aileron. “I was a lieutenant colonel myself—917th Fighter Squadron. Eighty-four missions over Japan, not to speak of three hundred hours in the Link trainer. Those were the days, eh, Private?

  “I wish now that I’d taken that tech sergeant’s rating and stayed with the air force,” he continued. “Instead I got mustered out and went to get a job with an airline. I was too late. The cops wouldn’t let the line of applicants get longer than six blocks. City ordinance, they said.

  “I waited a couple of weeks, but the line didn’t move, so I went and bought me this airplane and tried to get some work dusting crops. Too late again. The sky was black with airplanes out dusting crops. Thousands of pilots dusting crops. Dusted every acre in Minnesota, whether anyone asked them to or not. I finally got a job for a couple of days undusting a field. The farmer’s privy had been buried.”

  Then we remembered that the roar of the engines made conversation impossible and we were silent all the way to Lake Superior.

  Max Aileron swooped low on the lake, leveled off, and cut the engines to the minimum speed. We flew slowly over the lake, dipping occasionally to one side or the other so that Alaric and I could get a good look out of the windows.

  “Reminds me of a low-level reconnaissance mission over New Guinea one time,” said Max Aileron, forgetting again about the noise of the engines. “I was out alone one afternoon, just looking around to see what I could see. I was just about to go back home when I saw a little clearing in the jungle with smoke coming out of it. I came in low to investigate.

  “What I saw there froze my blood with horror. A group of savages were preparing to sacrifice an elderly white woman! She stood before a roaring fire with the savages pressed closely all around her. I could see her lips moving, obviously begging for her life. But her entreaties only whetted the natives’ blood lust. Every time she said something, they stoked the fire more, causing great billows of smoke to pour out.

  “Gentlemen, I am an American. Without a moment’s hesitation I dropped into the clearing in a belly landing. I leaped from my airplane, drew my pistol, and rushed toward the savages. ‘What’s going on here?’ I demanded.

  “‘It’s puffectly all right, Colonel,’ said the white woman. ‘I was just dictating “My Day” and my friends heah were sending it by smoke signal to the cable office at Port Moresby.’”

  “That reminds me of a night on Bougainville,” I said. “I—”

  “Look!” yelled Alaric. “Fish!”

  We looked below. Alaric had hit the jack pot! There were fish as far as the eye could see, hundreds of tons of fish.

  Max Aileron switched on the radio transmitter. Alaric and I put on headsets so we could hear. “Pilot to fishing fleet. Pilot to fishing fleet,” said Max Aileron. “Are you receiving me? Are you receiving me? Over.”

  “Fishing fleet to pilot. Fishing fleet to pilot,” came the reply. “We are receiving you. We are receiving you. Over.”

  “Just sighted tremendous school of fish. Just sighted tremendous school of fish. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Over.”

  “Will you give us that position again? Will you give us that position again? Over.”

  “Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Latitude 47 degrees 15 minutes; longitude 94 degrees 5 minutes. Over.”

  “You are over the state pike hatchery at Lake Winnibigoshish. You are over the state pike hatchery at Lake Winnibigoshish. Lake Superior is eighty miles east. Lake Superior is eighty miles east. Over.”

  “Roger,” said Max Aileron.

  “This is Sam. This is Sam,” came the reply. “Roger is at the cannery. Roger is at the cannery. He don’t go out on the boats. He don’t go out on the boats. He gets seasick. He gets seasick.”

  But the next day we found Lake Superior, all right, and by nightfall we had radioed the positions of six whitecaps, the wake of a garbage scow, and three thousand Dixie cups that were thrown off of a Great Lakes excursion boat.

  The third day I did not go out with Alaric and Max Aileron. Instead I went to the library and read up on whitefish. “The whitefish,” said the encyclopedia, “Coregonus clupeiformis, found in the large, deep lakes of northern United States, is sometimes called the six-fathom fish because it always swims at least thirty-six feet under the surface of the water.…”

  chapter fifteen

  “Asa,” Nebbice hissed, “I looked all over the bed for you. What are you doing sitting out here in a chair in the dark?”

  “Just thinking, Nebbice.”

  “About what, snookums? Love?”

  “No. I was thinking maybe Alaric is on the wrong track. Maybe Yetta Samovar was right.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Asa. You and Alaric just haven’t gotten the breaks so far. Keep pitching, boy. You’re bound to connect sometime.”

  “I don’t know. Cooky cutters, lamps, fish—”

  “You’re just discouraged, dear. Here, let me get up on your lap and soothe your cares away.”

  “Let’s have a cigarette,” I said hastily. “I’ll go get some.”

  “I’ve got some right here in my negligee. My sheer, revealing negligee, I might add,” she giggled.

  “I’ll get some matches.”

  “Never mind. Here’s a lig
hter.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Quite an unusual lighter, isn’t it?”

  “A phallic symbol,” said Nebbice, “if you know what I mean.”

  “I had an odd experience with a cigarette lighter during the war,” I said. “I was—”

  “Don’t try to talk about it, stud.”

  “I will,” I shrieked. “I will. I will too talk about it.”

  “All right, Asa. I was only thinking of you.”

  “Well, sir,” I began, “it happened in Honolulu in 1944. I was in town for a short furlough and I went for a walk one afternoon to kill some time. I was walking along a deserted stretch of Waikiki beach when I saw a shiny object in the sand. I bent over and picked it up. It was a cigarette lighter, but a cigarette lighter such as I had never seen before. Its case was made of pure platinum. On each side was engraved a curious symbol, inlaid with precious stones. Its base was one single, flawless emerald.

  “There were a few people about, and I approached them and asked whether they knew to whom the lighter belonged. But everyone I asked responded in a most fantastic manner. Their eyes rolled, they began to sweat, and they ended up by running away from me as fast as they could.

  “I shrugged. If nobody wanted to claim this handsome lighter, I thought, well, then, I guess I could find use for it.

  “It was the dinner hour and I was hungry. I had originally intended to grab a sandwich at one of the stands along the beach, but finding the lighter changed all that. Now that I had this valuable lighter I thought it would be more fitting if I dined expensively—at the Royal Hawaiian, for instance. In my mind I could see the polite stares that would come my way after dinner when I pulled out the lighter and lighted a cigarette. I chuckled and made for the Royal Hawaiian.

  “An obsequious waiter slithered across the carpeted floor as I entered the dining room. ‘One?’ he asked.

  “My green-flecked golden eyes twinkled with deviltry. ‘Unless you know some nice young lady who wants to make it two,’ I said.

  “We laughed.

  “The waiter led me to a table behind a post and gave me a large menu, all written in French. I studied the menu briefly and then said, ‘This looks good,’ pointing at the Marcel de la Rochambeau.