The Feather Merchants Read online

  She prospered immediately. Before long she was living with her faro dealer, a dextrous Eurasian named Chinese Gordon, who ultimately diddled her out of the bulk of her substance, leaving her only enough to get back to Minneapolis and buy an electric car on which she had painted “MEN STINK.”

  I recalled Aunt Placenta’s words about the inscrutability of the future the next morning at five-thirty as I sat in a boat on Lake Winnihoopah fishing for crappies with Sam Wye. He had come into my bedroom at 4 A.M. carrying fishing rods and a tackle box and singing a sea chanty about a shad’s change of life entitled “No Mo’ Roe.” He had informed me that he was on a three-day furlough before he went overseas with his engineers’ company and that he wanted to do the things he loved best—fishing and drinking. Nothing loath, I went along.

  And here we were, on a cool, gray, choppy lake under a dawning gray sky, with a gunny sack full of beer tied to the end of the boat, a package the size of a wardrobe trunk (“Lunch,” Mama had explained) in the bottom of the boat, and the crappies were biting. Sam looked happy and fit. His shoulders had broadened in eighteen months of engineer’s training, and his bucktoothed, mischievous, squirrel’s face was brown underneath his crew haircut.

  Hundreds of previous trips had taught us the fish haunts of Lake Winnihoopah. We pulled up fat crappies as quickly as we could fix minnows to our hooks and drop the lines back into the water. When we had our limit of crappies we moved to a weedy inlet and cast for bass. Sam got three and I got two. Now the sun was high. We rowed out to the deep middle of the lake, attached June-bug spinners and weights to our lines, let out about thirty feet, put the oars inside the boat, took off our shirts, opened two bottles of beer, and drifted. “Ah,” said Sam.

  “Ah,” said I.

  I was enjoying myself while I could because I knew that somehow, before this day was over, something bad would happen to me. Except for the night he had goaded Estherlee into kissing me for the first time, no good had ever come to me from Sam Wye. Not that he wasn’t my friend; he probably liked me as well as anyone. It was just that the mischief which governed his every action was completely impersonal. Anyone who was around Sam long enough—a whole day, for instance—would get involved in his machinations. Not even his own mother and father were exempt. Those two had been living acutely incomplete lives since Sam had convinced them that normal relations past forty result in curvature of the spine.

  His dog, Nero, was also a study in neurosis. By walking past Nero every day for weeks with a plate of hamburger, then going into his room, closing the door, and purring, Sam had persuaded the hapless beast that he was discriminating against him in favor of a cat. He further rocked Nero’s sanity by feigning inadvertence and calling him Kitty.

  Sam’s torts against me included signing my name to letters he sent to the Atlanta Constitution urging the practice of miscegenation, alienating a young woman with whom I was making good progress by telling her that all my forebears were midgets, and prevailing upon me to make a fourth in a quarter-of-a-cent bridge game with three strangers who he knew full well were a touring bridge-exhibition team. On these occasions and many more I had soberly considered breaking with him, but with a world full of dullards, you don’t cast off Sam Wyes.

  I wondered idly, as we drifted and drank beer, what Sam had in store for me this day. “Sam,” I asked “how are you planning to wrong me today? Or haven’t you got any plans; are you just figuring that some opportunity will come up?”

  He finished his bottle before he answered. “Pal, you got me wrong. You’ll find me a changed man: I’ve given up needling people for the duration. It’s part of my austerity program.”

  I hooted.

  “Really. I’ve been in the Army long enough to have learned that unprincipled frivolity is not becoming in times like these. It is a duty I owe to my brothers in arms.”

  “Tell me more,” said I, reeling in a catfish and throwing it back with alacrity. Until I went South I didn’t know that people ate catfish. The Minnesota Game and Fish Commission spends more than a million dollars a year just to teach catfish to swim out of the state. Catfish, okra, turnip greens, sorghum.

  “How unseemly it would be,” continued Sam, “for me to pursue the irresponsibility that characterized my undrafted years when the men about me have forsworn all but grimness. Let me give you an example.”

  “Say, I wish you would,” I said. And they fry steaks. Hookworm, freight-rate discrimination, Ku Klux Klan, boll weevil, lynching, erosion—what can they expect if they eat catfish and fry steaks?

  “One night a few weeks ago I was lying on my bunk in the barracks contemplating some mayhem. A few of the men were in a corner talking. I half listened to what they were saying, and then suddenly it struck me. I gave up my nefarious thoughts and turned full attention on their conversation.

  “A man named New Hampshire (as you know, of course, all soldiers are called by the names of their native states) was holding forth on the subject of New Hampshire women. ‘There’s something about New Hampshire women,’ said New Hampshire, ‘some warmth, some inner fire.’

  “‘What about Wyoming women?’ asked Wyoming.

  “‘They’re all bowlegged from riding horses,’ said Ohio.

  “Wyoming countered with a utilitarian observation.

  “And so it went, each man extolling the women of his own state, save Utah, whose silence was caused by his state’s adherence to the horrendous practice of female infanticide. But even Utah, foiled on one count, put in a plug for the Great Salt Lake. Finally it grew late, and the sergeant, District of Columbia, came in and turned off the lights.

  “I lay in the dark for a long time and pondered what I had heard. Here were these young men about to go off perhaps to their deaths, and their thoughts were ever on the places of their births. How deep-rooted, how American. Here were men who clung to the real, simple things in these perilous times, who knew deeply and without being told what were the issues of the conflict. And here was I, still thinking in terms of hot-foots and Katzenjammer pranks, refined, to be sure, for with me it is a science.

  “And all at once I knew that I had no right to be with them, to wear the same uniform as they did. I was not a soldier; I was a buffoon, an addlepate, an impostor. It was a hard thing to learn, Dan, hard.

  “I resolved that night that I would henceforth change my ways. Instead of contributing to the mental anguish of the populace, I would turn into a living advertisement for Minnesota women. I too, by God, was a soldier.”

  “That’s real nice, Sam,” I said.

  “So you see, you no longer have anything to fear from me.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I was hoping you would be,” he said simply.

  We drifted into shore. We threw the anchor up on the beach and carried the lunch out. There were sandwiches of salami, cheese, tongue, liver sausage, bologna, veal loaf, spiced ham, corned beef, and sardines. There were dill pickles, potato salad, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, green olives, ripe olives, and hard-boiled eggs. For dessert there was chocolate cake, fig bars, raisin cookies, candied apples, brown Betty, and éclairs.

  “You know,” said Sam as we ate with mess-hall delicacy, “it is an unending wonder to me how civilians have managed to subsist on wartime rations.”

  “In this total war,” I said, “we must all make sacrifices.”

  “True,” he agreed. “But privation rests lightly on our people.”

  “We are the stock of pioneers,” I reminded him.

  “Aye, a sturdy folk, fond of smörgåsbord and competitive sports,” he said. “Minneapolis will hold out. I can see it in the faces of the people. ‘War,’ you say to them, and they answer, ‘War?’ and the air is rent by their full-throated laughter.”

  “To laugh is to win,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Sam continued. “I have seen their faces. I have seen tall, loose-hung farmers at the teats of their milch kine and I have said to them, ‘How now?’ and they have answered, ‘I milk that every
Hottentot shall thrive, and to me parity is a word but partly understood, but I am a member of a nation at war, and come what may, I shall get fourteen cents a quart for my milk, which is three cents more than in the days of Calvin, the silent, than whom I thought there could be none better. You speak to me of Japanese on Pacific atolls, and I answer simply, “I milk.”’

  “I have encountered tall, loose-hung arc welders, their eyes bulging appreciatively at the flamboyant pectorals of a feminine cartridge loader, and I have said, ‘Say then,’ and they have answered, ‘For fifty minutes of each hour, which, you will agree, is a full five sixths, I fashion the instruments of retribution against those who have essayed to break our peace. For ten minutes of each hour I am allowed to relieve myself, a humane interval in years past when such functions did not require the aid of tobacco, but, you must agree, scarcely long enough now. I am paid again as much as I earned setting pins in a bowling alley, and when I properly learn this vexing craft of welding, I shall get even more. And when you speak to me of conflicts beyond the sea, I answer, “In my fashion, I weld.”’

  “I have spoken to tall, loose-hung brokers on the floor of the exchange, and I have said, ‘What, sirs?’ and they have answered, ‘Wheat becomes flour, and corn becomes feed, and my commission remains constant and constantly increases as the prices of those things in which I deal increase. But the object, I recognize, is neither to fatten hogs nor the populace (and my commissions are pleasant incidentals), but to win the struggle into which we have been plunged. The corrugated-iron sheds called ever-normal granaries, which were conceived by an ever-abnormal man, I say are vicious importations from Red Russia, our gallant ally. Laissez faire was good enough, etc., and by God, it’s good enough for me. You speak to me of equitable distribution, and I say, “I sell grain.”’”

  “Try one of these low-calorie goose-liver sandwiches,” I suggested.

  Sam complied. “Yummy,” he pronounced. “And I have spoken to tall, loose-hung dealers in foodstuffs, and I have said, ‘Well, and—’ and they have answered, ‘Today I am told to sell for this and tomorrow for that, and price ceilings bob like a thing alive, and red and blue stamps haunt my dreams, and that is the cross I bear, who have been schooled in what the traffic will bear. My friends will sustain my contention that I am a reasonable man, and to me it appears more seemly that I know better what to sell and for how much, and let the so roundly discredited academicians in our nation’s capital befog themselves with highfalutin theories and red and blue oblongs. If I have, I sell, cash, and carry, quick turnover, caveat emptor, and competitive bidding is the life of trade. You describe to me a hobgobblin called inflation, and I reply, “I am a grocer.”’

  “I have talked with tall, loose-hung industrialists, and I have said, ‘I listen,’ and they have answered, ‘I converted from buggy whips to gun mounts when my own wife said I couldn’t do it. I have slept tandem with total strangers in Washington while I was floating a million-dollar loan from the RFC, I, who two years ago employed a single employee named Olaf who stayed with me only because I knew he was wanted for sodomy in his native Lapland. I have solved the absentee problem by not taking attendance. An “E” pennant flutters atop my administration building. Contracts for shackle joints, nose fuses, ball turrets, .37-millimeter barrels, gear housings, sleeve bearings, and shell casings clog my files, I, whose very life is testimony to my belief in the evanescence of self-propelled vehicles. My secretary gets and earns $30,000 a year. I have not seen my wife since Christmas last. I am bound for Washington again next week to float another million-dollar loan, and I will get it. It would be idle to deny that my safety-deposit vault is gorged with currency, but that, by God, is mine. You speak to me of fox holes and pillboxes, and I say, “I converted from buggy whips.”’

  “Yes,” said Sam, “Minneapolis will hold out.”

  By now only two pieces of cake and two hard-boiled eggs remained. We made a sandwich of them, ate it, and fell insensible to the turf.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  That night we went to the Sty, a charming little tearoom on the edge of town run by a retired madame. Red, green, and yellow neon lights bathed the front of the place in a soft glow, and cheery signs blinked: “CHECKS CASHED,” “BEST FLOOR SHOW IN TOWN,” “OPEN ALL NIGHT,” “DRINK OLD SPECIMEN,” and “BUY BONDS.” The proprietress, looking old-worldly in a red satin gown slit down one side to expose a flaccid thigh, bid us welcome at the door. “Just in time, gents,” she said. “Floor show’s just going on.”

  And indeed it was. We paid our three-dollar couvert and were relegated to a newly built, but as yet unenclosed, addition within artillery range of the dance floor. Renting binoculars from a cigarette girl in a rather daring costume (she was mother naked), we adjusted the lenses and watched the first number.

  It was entitled simply “America.” A line of lasses clad in red, white, and blue G-strings and a dab of phosphorus on each nipple advanced to the center of the floor, kicked once to the left, once to the right, about-faced, touched buttocks by pairs, about-faced, and screeched the following ditty:

  “We are the Styettes.

  We’re here to entertain you;

  We’re here to entertain you.

  We are the Styettes.

  “Our country is at war with a treacherous foe.

  We’ll stick with our boys through thick and thin.

  We’ll give ’em hell, we’ll make ’em yell, and soon they will know

  That Uncle Sammy-Whammy’s going to win.

  “Guns and tanks and jeeps and ships and airplanes that fly

  Will lick the dirty, rotten so-and-so.

  On the land, on the sea, and up in the sky,

  Come on, U.S.A., come on, we’ll show

  ’Em.

  “We are the Styettes.

  We’re here to entertain you;

  We’re here to entertain you.

  We are the Styettes.”

  The Styettes waited for the laggards among them to finish, kicked once to the left, once to the right, about-faced, touched buttocks by pairs (a routine they knew consummately), and retired from the floor.

  “By God,” said Sam, “there’s some music coming out of this war. That last was every bit as good as ‘The Jap’s a Sap; We’ll Slap His Yap.’”

  “Or ‘Hiddler, the Piddler, Will Soon Play Second Fiddler,’” I added.

  Now a pair of comics came out and rocked the joint with some snappy patter concerning a baseball game: “Who’s on first base?” “No, Who’s pitching. Why’s on first base.” “Why?” “Because he’s the first baseman. What’s on second base.” “What?” “Yes,” etc., etc.

  We ordered drinks from a waiter who was about to get nasty about it. “Can’t live off’n people just settin’ around,” he chided gently as he brought our watered whisky and water.

  Two ripe matrons came over to our table. The bolder one said, “We been watching you two soldiers, and we thought you might be lonesome, so we thought we’d join you if you don’t mind.”

  “For patriotic reasons,” said the other.

  They sat down. “I’m Mrs. Spetalnik,” said the first, “and this is my girl friend, Mrs. Gooberman.”

  “Blanche and Madge,” supplied the second.

  “Which is which?” asked Sam.

  His little jest dispelled the formality, and we fast became friends. We ordered drinks, whisky for us, sloe-gin fizzes for the ladies. “I seldom ever drink,” said Blanche, whom I had drawn. “It just helps sometimes to get away from the war. Know what I mean?”

  “I understand,” I said simply.

  “What’s your gentlemen’s names?” asked Madge.

  “Oh, excuse me,” Sam said. “This is Robert Jordan, and I am Montag Fortz.”

  “Pleased, I’m sure,” they said.

  “I’ll bet you gentlemen have seen plenty of action,” Blanche said.

  “I, nothing. But Robert—” said Sam. “Tell them of the bridge, Robert.”

  “The floor show,�
� I said.

  The m.c. was at the microphone calling for order. During the preceding number, a routine in which the Styettes wandered among the tables patting customers’ heads, one of them had failed to return, and there was some confusion. At length the m.c. restored quiet. “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “let’s get serious for a moment. We’re all having a lot of fun tonight, but our hearts are with the boys over there.” A blue spot was thrown on him, and the pianist played soft chords. “Everybody here has got somebody near and dear to them over there,” he continued. “Let’s take time out for a minute and think of them. They haven’t got it easy in the mud and filth of their fox holes. They never know when death will strike them, but they don’t complain. They’ve got a job to do.”

  Blanche’s hand stole into mine.

  “We’re all doing all we can on the home front.” There was a round of applause. “But we must do even more, although it don’t hardly seem possible. So tonight Miss Emma Fligg, proprietress of the Sty, has arranged a little added attraction.”