Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales

by Budd Schulberg

  He lay there on deck, with a bellyful of seawater, looking deader than a mackerel three days on the dock. And Deacon Brewster was all ready to give him the proper send-off for his trip to the Heavenly Gates. And way off in the distance some-whereas he could hear them saying the nice things they only say about you after you’re gone. But as he was lying there a little voice inside him began to tell him what a damnfool time this would be to quit the journey just when he was getting kind of interested to see how it would come out. And then he knew he was out of his head for fair, because he got the crazy notion that if he didn’t keep on living, this old ship of freedom would go to the bottom.

  So right in the middle of the prayer Deacon Brewster was saying over him, he suddenly managed to sit up and say, “Hellsfire, will one o’ ye stop prayin’ for my departed soul long enough t’ help a man up to his feet?”

  “Hallelujah! Our Lord’s performed a miracle and brought him back to us!” he heard a familiar voice cry out, and when he opened his eyes there were Silence’s buck-teeth smiling down on him and her big, warm hands stroking his hair.

  “Miracle my foot,” Obidiah said. “Jes’ took me a minute or two t’ git me wind back, is all.”

  “Hallelujah!” Silence said again, rubbing her warmth back into his hands. “He’s coming back to his old self again!”

  “Which still leaves plenty of room for improvement,” said John Carver, to which Deacon Brewster and Will Bradford and Miles Standish all solemnly agreed, though Captain Jones had to remind them to save their lectures for later, since right now, improvement or no improvement, they needed to dry off their carpenter and get him working to keep the old Mayflower rightside up.

  All through the night the storm kept raging, but early next morning it let up a bit and John Carver called the weary flock together. Dignified and seriouslike, he said, “From the look of things, seaweed ’n’ birds ’n’ such, we’re near a landing at last. But Captain Jones is now of a mind that we’re a way off our course for Virginia. That means the Virginia charter that’s supposed to govern us won’t hold good any more. So Deacon Brewster and Will Bradford and I have taken the liberty of writing up our own. Subject to the approval, of course, of all here on board.”

  John Carver took a deep breath and began to read:

  “In the name of God, amen, we whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, etcetery and etcetery, having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and covenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November. Anno Domini, 1620.”

  Some spoke right up and said it was the most liberty-loving document in the history of Englishmen and were all for signing it on the spot. Others wanted to hold off a bit and ask the meaning of this line or that.

  “Moly Hoses!” said Obidiah when he got it digested. “What that’s sayin’ is that even though we still be subjec’s o’ the King, we got the right to make our own laws!”

  “Aye, that it does,” John Carver agreed, “and since it be our faith that all men are equal before God, why shouldn’ it follow that all men be equal one with another?”

  “Well, I dunno now,” Obidiah said. “I never heered o’ such a thing afore.”

  “There has to be a first time for everything,” John Carver said.

  “I’m not so sure,” Obidiah objected. “Makin’ our own laws. Sounds kind o’ dangerous t’ me. If we ain’t got no royal commands, what’s to stop one man from doin’ jest as he pleases, murderin’ us in our beds f’ instance, or stealin’ our land?”

  “The rest of us,” John Carver said, “the civil body politic, as it says right here in black and white.”

  “I dunno,” Obidiah shook his head. “Guess there’s no use my signin’ it if I can’t get m’self t’ believin’ in it. Don’t see how ye c’n expect common ordinary folks like us to know how to rule each other.”

  “Don’t say ‘each other,’ ” John Carver said. “Say ourselves.”

  “Seems like an awful lot to ask o’ simple folk,” said Obidiah.

  Just then a great shout of joy broke over the ship, “Land! Land ho!” and everyone fell to hugging and kissing and laughing the way they thought they had forgotten how, and the sick jumped up out of their bunks and danced around, and folks that the voyage had made enemies out of got to smiling at each other and shaking hands and slapping each other on the back. And all of a sudden Obidiah got the spirit and ran up to John Carver and shouted, “Gimme that darn fool paper, Gov’nor, I’ll sign ’er all right. Probably the damnfoolest notion that was ever thunk up, but I guess it won’ hurt to give ’er a try.”

  Then he ran up on deck and sure enough, laying dead ahead, was the prettiest little bay he had ever seen, calm as beer in a barrel, with a narrow stretch of cape curving out to them as if it were the arm of the New World beckoning them to shore. And with all the husbands and wives standing there side by side, Silence ran up to Obidiah so happy she actually looked kind of pretty, and she said, “Obidiah, my betrothed, isn’t that a joyful sight?”

  “Betrothed?” said Obidiah. “That be no way for a decent gal to joke.”

  “Why, Obidiah,” she said, “don’t tell me you fergot your promise.”

  “Promise! What kind o’ promise? I don’t ’member no promise …”

  “Why you mos’ certainly did! I heard you with my own ears. Tellin’ Gov’nor Carver our marriage ’d have to wait till we reached the New World.”

  “Never said no sech thing,” said Obidiah.

  “Oh, what’s to become o’ me?” she cried, and he could see the wet come to her eyes. “The shame of it, to be publicly spoken for in front of all them witnesses.”

  Then Obidiah thought back on it, as hard as he could, and he kind of remembered saying something to Gov’nor Carver about Silence in the heat of anger, but it wasn’t exactly how she took it—the New World is about as far off as m’ marriage to Silence, is how he recollected it.

  But by this time Silence was bawling good and loud, and everybody was listening. “I suppose ye want to wait for one o’ them nekkid little heathen gals, like John Smith did,” she blubbered, and tears the size of sparrow eggs slid down her apple cheeks.

  Obidiah was silent. There was no answer for that kind of an argument. And as he looked across the bay at the green coast waiting for them to settle it, he started thinking to himself, An empty log cabin’ll be a lonely thing t’ come home t’ these cold winter nights. After a back-breakin’ day in the field, a woman in th’ doorway ‘twill be a warmin’ sight, like the fire blazin’ in th’ fireplace an’ the steamin’ bowl o’ porridge hangin’ over it. An’ Silence may not be the purtiest gal in the world, nor the fanciest in her ways nuther, but she looks like she’s built to the proportions o’ this country, large ’n’ sturdy ’n’ fertile ’n’ formidable to approach but with a lovin’ nature underneath, like the snow out yonder that’s a-coverin’ the rich yield-in’ earth.

  So he took Silence’s hand and put it in his, his head all full of the things they had been through. Only something told him this wasn’t the end of all their troubles neither, it was just the beginning. For they say some men are born to trouble and some others inherit it. Well, if trouble was money, Obidiah Flagg would be a millionaire three times over, once for the trouble that was in him by nature and twice for the trouble he’d find on the way. Seems like every time freedom’s in a scrap, the h
arder he’d try to stay out of it, the harder he’d fall kerplunk into the middle of it. And in case you haven’t noticed, freedom and trouble grow close together on the same branch, just like roses and thorns. If you want the one, you’ve got to take your chances of pricking your fingers on the other.

  “Silence,” said Obidiah, as he lifted her out of the shallows and carried her ashore, “I’m mighty proud o’ my foresight in choosin’ to j’in the Pilgrims and come to Americy, if I do say so m’self.”

  “Choosin’!” Silence exclaimed. “Why, Obidiah Flagg, if I hadn’t a-coaxed ye …”

  “Coaxed!” said Obidiah. “Jest like a woman, ain’t got no more memory’n a rabbit.” Then he set her down easy on that old Plymouth Rock.

  COUNTER-

  INTELLIGENCE

  IN

  MEXICO CITY

  “How much farther is it?” asked the younger one. His name was Chucho and he had never been to Mexico City before.

  “Just a little ways now,” said the older man. His name was Lupe and in his village he was considered widely traveled because he had been to the city several times before. “Just over the next hill. We will be there well before dark.”

  So they walked on, some fifteen miles farther. Their feet had almost worn through their ancient sandals, and their bodies were nearly bent in two under the load of melons they bore upon their backs. The melons were carried in enormous baskets lashed with thick ropes that looped around the belly of the baskets and then across a patch of sweat-stained leather on their foreheads.

  Like other beasts of burden, they had fallen into a slow but rhythmic pace. By the time the sun was directly above them they had begun to grow weary, but after stopping by the side of the road to eat the tortillas and cold beans their women had prepared for them in the village that morning, they had felt stronger. When they were less than ten miles from the capital, they quickened their pace a little so as to reach the city before dark. They were weary no longer. They were beyond weariness. Instead they moved in a kind of sleepwalking monotony, neither talking nor thinking.

  It was not until they reached the ridge and looked down into the valley where the city awaited them that they became men again.

  “Por Dios!” said Chucho. Through his mind passed many other words but he was not able to say the things he thought about the incredible geometric design of streets and buildings that stretched for miles below him.

  “Wait until you are in it,” said Lupe, smiling with the pride that seasoned tourists always take in guiding first-timers. “Wait until you see the long cars that roll along without horses to pull them. And the mountains of steel and glass they have built themselves to live in.”

  The road was downhill now and their worn-sandaled feet followed each other in more rapid succession. In less than two hours they were in the city. The streets were crowded with people who all seemed to be wearing twice as many clothes as they needed and who rushed along in a terrible hurry as if all of them had just been told that their mothers were dying.

  The buildings were so high that Chucho, with the melons preventing him from standing straight, could not lift his eyes to see the tops of them. Ahead of him was a new one half completed, a towering skeleton of steel that rose twenty stories into the sky.

  “And people are going to live in that?” said Chucho. “How do they manage to climb up into their homes?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lupe. “That is something I have often wondered at. Maybe with a rope.”

  Though they had penetrated far into the city they did not stop to rest and set their loads down so they could straighten up for a moment. Perhaps they feared lest such weakness would lead them to abandon their bodies to exhaustion and they would fall unconscious on the pavement. Or, more likely, it did not enter their heads to stop until they reached their destination. So they kept on until they reached the mercado público. Chucho had seen the open market in Cuernavaca that stretched through half a dozen narrow streets, but this market was like a great city in itself. Hundreds of farmers from Amecameca and Toluca and Texcoco were lying asleep in back of their stands with their wives and half a dozen children, waiting for their customers to come in the morning.

  Chucho and Lupe found a place to set down their loads, lay their heads among the melons, pulled their straw hats over their eyes and snored until the first rays of the sun woke them in the morning.

  In the sunlight the place swarmed with children, flies and people of the city who had come to buy. Lupe and Chucho squatted all day in back of their melons, laughing to one another at the funny way the people of the city looked and talked. Their own speech, the Nahuatal language of the Aztecs that had come down to them through the years, tinkled along like the flow of a brook. They had heard Spanish spoken before, but they could not understand it. It sounded to them as if it were being spoken by someone who was very nervous and always stuttering.

  The sun was just beginning to slip behind the man-made mountains when Chucho and Lupe sold their last melon. In the little pouch around Lupe’s neck was more money than he had ever seen at one time in his life, forty-four hundred and two pesos and seventy centavos. In the pouch was also a strange shiny coin that neither Chucho nor Lupe had ever seen before. It had been given to them by a fat man with a very red face although he had not wanted to buy the melons which Chucho and Lupe had offered him.

  “I just wanna get a picture of ya if you’ll just hold still a second,” he had said in a language which was neither as musical as Nahuatal nor as soft as Spanish.

  A sophisticated Indian from Xochimilco in the next booth who spoke Spanish with a Nahuatal accent and was so worldly that he could cry out at the gringos, “Hey, Meester, ’allo, meester,” explained the strange coin to Chucho and Lupe.

  “The gods are smiling at you today,” he said. “They have given you a gringo tostón.”

  “What is it worth in real money?” asked Lupe.

  “In our money, at least cien pesos. Maybe more.”

  Lupe looked at the coin slyly. According to their custom, the forty-four hundred and two pesos were to be shared among the farmers in the village who had planted and harvested the melons together. But the gringo who had pointed his little black box with the bulging glass eye at them had not photographed all the villagers together. Chucho and Lupe alone had taken the risk in case the foreigner’s little box had turned out to be a deadly weapon. So by every right the gringo tostón was theirs and theirs alone.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, compañero,” said Lupe, placing a conspiratorial arm around Chucho’s shoulder and feeling a little drunk already with the power of the strange coin in his hand. “We will take this coin and place it on the bar of the nearest cantina. It has been a fine day and we have sold all our melons and now we will celebrate our good fortune. Then we will get a good night’s sleep on a bench in the park and start back to our village in the morning.”

  The cantina was small and dark and crowded and reeked with the smell of stale clothing, bad breath and beverages whose odors were as strong as their effects. In the middle of the room the jukebox was playing a ranchero song at the top of its mechanical lungs. Half of the customers were helping the record along by singing in voices more voluminous than harmonious. The rest of the clientele was discussing serious matters in voices that had to be raised to ear-splitting shouts to be heard above the din. The name of the cantina was La Puerta del Sol, the gateway to the sun, and Lupe and Chucho were very happy to be there.

  Near them at the bar was a heavy-set, ox-faced fellow who wore with considerable pride if not with any particular grace the uniform of the policía of Mexico City. His name was Rodolfo Gonzales and he was already on his third double tequila añejo. Officer Gonzales, an honest and conscientious defender of the law, nine times out of ten, was trying to drown his conscience. The day before, while he was on his beat directing traffic, he had apprehended a norteamericano driving a Mexican car without a license. The fine for this, Rodolfo had pointed out, was five hundr
ed pesos. But the americano did not have that many pesos. He only had two hundred. And he was in such a hurry that he did not have time to accompany Rodolfo to the police station as Rodolfo requested. Would the officer be kind enough to take the two hundred and deposit it in the police station for him? the gringo had asked. After some persuasion, Officer Gonzales had agreed. And now a terrible thing had happened. Officer Gonzales had slipped the bills into his pocket and forgotten all about them. Now it was too late to rectify this lapse of memory and so there seemed nothing for him to do but invest the pesos in the kind of peace and forgetfulness that may be found at the bottom of a glass of tequila añejo.

  This was not the only thing that occupied the mind of Officer Gonzales. Although it did not show in his face, the twin rats of ambition and envy were gnawing in his brain. Only that day his friend Armando García had been promoted from the rank of ordinary policeman to that of sargento. And all because Armando had caught two Arabs in a bar who turned out to be members of a terrorist ring. Rodolfo had joined the force several years before Armando and it hardly seemed just for him to go on wasting his talents directing traffic while his friend Armando was promoted above him. He consoled himself with another tequila. He did not like to flatter himself but he was a much more capable protector of the peace than his friend Armando García. If only an opportunity like Armando’s would fall into his hands!

  Further down the bar Chucho’s and Lupe’s gringo tostón had dwindled to a fifth its original value. The other four-fifths had been changed into a currency more easily negotiable if one were negotiating as Chucho and Lupe were, with a glass in one hand and a slice of limón in the other. Lupe and Chucho were not drunk. If they were leaning on one another at a rather precarious angle it was simply an expression of the deep camaraderie that one Indian feels for another after accompanying him on a journey of many miles and sharing with him the sense of accomplishment one gets from selling all his melons at city prices.