Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  “Cut it out,” Marylin said sharply.

  “—confer upon the eminent-to-be scientist the honorary degree—”

  “Stop it,” the girl said.

  “—of Master of Meager Fishes, Honoris Causa. Dr. Binney. Well done!” Ramsay had accepted the start of this ribbing with his usual, rather meek grin. Marylin’s interference made him blush. Crunch, watching him with the others, thought that—for an instant—he was angry. There are limits beyond which no human patience will bear up.

  However, after the toast was drunk, Ramsay stood up, smiling again, and said, “I wish to thank one and all, and Pierce in particular, for this undeserved recognition. His prowess in the piscatorial field, along with his prodigious feats in other fields of sport, make this honor unique for me. I only wish there were fields in which Pierce and I might compete on more even terms. Unfortunately, my forte lies in the realm of intelligence.”

  It was a biting riposte and everybody laughed—excepting Pierce who was, probably, the most intellectual of the Brush brothers. His knuckles went white around his glass and he glared at the doctor.

  Olivia said quickly, “Why doesn’t somebody toast me? caught a sailfish, after all.”

  Mrs. Brush took that up.

  Dodson framed the toast for Olivia.

  But as the meal continued, even the Webers realized that there were strained relations amongst their hosts. Crunch signaled approval to Binney when he got the chance: the doctor could dish it out, when he felt like it, as well as he could take it. But he appeared to be discomfited by his speech. He ate uneasily.

  All that could be expected to follow the rather insulting toast and its still more insulting rejoinder was a heightening of antagonisms. Pierce was now personally peeved at Binney. Marylin was sore at Pierce. Mr. Brush senior was annoyed. His wife became unnaturally gay and chatty. Dr. Binney held his embarrassed flush. Dodson attacked a turtle steak with violence. The waiters poured more wine.

  “I wish I had never let Ramsay go on this trip,” Marylin whispered to Crunch. “I wish I’d never urged him to try to learn to fish.”

  “Too late.” Crunch glanced at the doctor. “He’s determined to learn, now—and when he gets determined—well… .”

  “I know,” she said. “Stubborn people are wonderful when they’re helping you out.

  When they’re not… !”

  These were expectable circumstances. But, wherever Ramsay Binney went, something unexpected was likely to happen.

  The band filed in as the dinner guests were served coconut ice cream. It was a rumba band and a good one. As it began to play, a blissful expression came over Dodson’s freckled face. He looked at Olivia and inclined his head. She nodded. They danced. Crunch asked Marylin to dance. Mr. and Mrs. Brush danced. Pierce took one of the Weber girls, and Des the other. Patrons—among them some Cubans who were expert--filled the floor.

  Ramsay watched them, for some time. His eyes were interested and yet, Crunch thought, after a glance or two, a little sad. Here was another Brush accomplishment that left him out.

  Crunch liked to rumba. He and his wife, Sari, had won several amateur contests in that dance and Marylin was a skillful partner. Lot of professional lessons, Crunch thought. He went into a fast spot turn, reversed it, walked his girl around, and closed again. The tempo changed. The music stopped, presently, and they switched partners.

  Crunch was dancing with one of the Miss Webers—and not in a place where he could see the band—when the music itself became somewhat different. It was the bongos, Crunch thought—the small, double drums. Somebody else was playing them and the whole band was following. Whoever it was had terrific rhythm and a beat Crunch had never heard, in spite of his familiarity with the rumba bands of Miami. The new player made the drums roar with hands that flew like sticks on a snare drum. He made a loud, sharp, exclamation for the long beat. He played briefly in that cadence and shifted to contra-tempo—roaring all four beats, rattling them, hesitating minutely before the last-and drumming them squarely and lightly when the song grew softer. Then he changed to a kind of syncopation-loud and soft and loud—that sounded less like the civilized and sophisticated rumba music of modern bands and far more like the African bush music from which rumba, like jazz, has been derived.

  Crunch knew, then. He danced around the side of the floor and up to the band.

  Already, some of the Cuban couples had stopped dancing to admire. Ramsay had taken off his coat. He had tucked in his necktie. He held the two little drums between his knees, like a professional. But he played them like a native—a native of faraway Poaki, who had recognized the kinship of Afro-Cuban rhythm with his own, elemental drumming.

  Ramsay had learned something on Poaki, after all; he had learned to drum barehanded so well that the present band leader conducted with enchantment and every man in the orchestra played with a kind of reverence.

  Dodson danced up with his mother—and stopped. He looked. “Ye gods!” he said.

  “El professor!”

  Crunch saw Marylin—standing with Ronney. She was smiling a little, not surprised, her eyes slightly shut, looking as if she had always known, always understood Ramsay to be capable of such bizarre virtuosity. His hair flew. His eyes closed. He seemed not to realize anybody was watching. The walls quivered. The building throbbed.

  The night and the very ground seemed to beat. And that, Marylin obviously felt, was all right in the man she was crazy about. It was, too, Crunch thought.

  The piece came to a sudden, crashing climax. People yelled and whistled. The orchestra leader asked Ramsay, in Spanish, if he would like to suggest something.

  Ramsay was still only vaguely conscious of his audience in spite of the noise it had made.

  He nodded and shut his eyes again.

  The leader let Ramsay drum alone for a moment. Then he brought in maraccas, a violin, and a big drum. The pianist and trumpeters stayed out of it. Nobody knew what Ramsay was playing. It began slowly. It accelerated. It created feelings—dim, primordial sensations of fear and loneliness and rising excitement—which civilized people brush out of their minds in childhood. The beat was, still, the same as the rumba beat. It could have been danced. Crunch—and perhaps others—could imagine that it undoubtedly was danced--by men wearing feathers, clay daubed, barefooted—and women with grass skirts. It reached a speed and violence almost beyond tolerability—and then, swiftly, whispered to silence.

  Again there were cheers. From the night outside, people began sifting into the Pearl of the Caribbees to listen—many of them dark-visaged Cubans. The music continued.

  Marylin moved through the standing listeners. “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  Crunch said, “Yeah,” and meant it. He thought that—on familiar grounds—Ramsay had ample co-ordination.

  But Pierce heard her and said, “Damned cannibal jam session! I want to dance.”

  “It’s interestin’,” Olivia agreed, and she looked at Dodson. “But I much prefer to dance, myself.”

  That was enough for Pierce. He walked up to Ramsay and waited for him to finish his next tour de force. “Look, pal. The ladies would like to dance—and your concerto has stopped the fun.”

  Ramsay shook himself slightly. He saw the room again, and Pierce. His rapt expression faded away and his amiable smile took its place. “Why—sure,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hold up the show. I just saw those drums—and they’re like the kind we had in—”

  “Poaki. I know.”

  Ramsay stepped down.

  There was immediate, bilingual protest. Pierce had not calculated the effect of the drumming on its Key West audience and, particularly, on the Cuban faction of that audience. A thin, excited gentleman with dark sideburns took Pierce by the arm and turned him a little. His Spanish was incomprehensible in detail but easily enough understood in purport: he was furious at the interruption. Pierce yanked away from the man—who seized him again. Two more came to his verbal aid. People were yelling, “More!” and “Encore
!” and “Bravo!”

  Mr. Brush senior sought out the proprietor and told him that the floor should be cleared, the regular music should be played, and he and his guests should be permitted to take their coffee—and to dance without further hubbub. The proprietor, who had himself been enchanted by the bongos, somewhat loftily suggested that if Mr. Brush wished this to be done, Mr. Brush should undertake it himself.

  Whereupon Mr. Brush, who had once enjoyed exactly such problems, turned to the clamorous dance floor, narrowed his eyes, and said, “The way I feel this evening, I have half a mind to.”

  “Half a mind to what?” Dodson asked, who had seen his father in altercation and pushed up to his side.

  “Throw these monkeys out and finish dinner decently.”

  Dodson studied the scene. “Not a bad idea.”

  People were trying to push Ramsay back to the bandstand. He was now visibly horrified by the pandemonium he had so innocently caused. He kept shaking his head and refusing to play any more. When the shouting and the pressure reached a level that, for him, was intolerable, he pulled himself free of the press of people, jumped awkwardly behind a pillar in the Pearl of the Caribbees, and stepped quickly through a side door. He felt that his playing had been another faux pas—another foolish spectacle—and, as a man will under such circumstance, he stepped rather savagely into the deep, pungent night, and stayed there.

  Meanwhile a burly citizen of Key West—not Cuban, but an enthusiast of the rumba-had overheard Dodson’s statement that throwing a few people out of the restaurant would not be a bad idea. He was a little drunk and he presented himself. “My name,” he said, “is Coxley. Will Coxley. I never saw you around Key West before. It’s our town, though, and we like good musicians down here. We don’t like strangers threatening to throw us out of our own eating joints. If you insist on trying-suppose you begin with me.”

  This startled the usually good-natured Dodson. “Oh—hell,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Coxley poked Dodson with a thick forefinger. “You should be sorry. Good and sorry. You might get hurt, otherwise.”

  This caused Dodson to slant his head. “Really?”

  Mr. Brush senior said, “Come away, son. This is absurd.”

  Mr. Coxley now turned to the father. “Stay out of it, you hippopotamus.”

  People were gathering, now, around this new nucleus of trouble. Dodson eyed Coxley and tried to walk through the crowd. “Throw him out,” somebody said.

  And somebody tried.

  “Throw out the whole bunch!” another voice shouted, as the scuffling began.

  Crunch, from old experience in such situations, knew that there were enough people who were drunk enough, and enough Cubans who were sufficiently excitable, to make a very quick shambles of the Pearl of the Caribbees. Fists were already smacking and shouts were rising in the knot of men around Dodson. Mr. Brush, senior, was taking off his coat, calmly—and Pierce was already hammering his way in toward his brother.

  Crunch took charge, then, of the Weber ladies, of Mrs. Brush, of Marylin and Olivia.

  Aided by Des, he conducted them rapidly to, and through, the side door. Other ladies were leaving, frenziedly, by the same route. Some were screaming for the police ana some were just screaming. The ladies from the Poseidon and the Sea Pike, however, retired in an orderly, if indignant, manner.

  Crunch and Des, joined then by Ronney and Skid, moved thereafter toward the fray. “Don’t hit anybody if you can help it,” Crunch ordered. “Just haul them off.”

  It was strenuous. Crunch began peeling away the outer rim around Pierce, Dodson and their father. One of the vine-covered bowers was smashed and fell upon the combatants. A guitar was raised and shattered on Pierce-without effect. Somebody commenced throwing electric light bulbs—which burst loudly and accomplished nothing. Des saw a man take a knife surreptitiously from beneath his trouser leg and look at it. He took the knife away from the man and, on second thought, knocked the man beyond any further contemplation along such lines.

  The four charter boatmen reached the center of the mill at about the same time.

  “Come on—Dod—Pierce!” Crunch yelled.

  They began struggling and fighting their way toward the door. Mr. Weber, on the outside of the crowd, opened the door. And so, presently, they were ejected into the street-partly by design and partly with the violent co-operation of various customers of the Pearl of the Caribbees.

  They stood there, panting, under a wan electric light. “Anybody hurt?” Mr. Brush asked calmly.

  Nobody was hurt—beyond bruises, a few small cuts, and large damage to habiliments.

  “When things calm down,” Mr. Brush went on, “I’ll come back and pay up. Too bad to ruin a nice dinner party. On the other hand—I rather enjoyed it. That lug who called me a hippopotamus will hold his tongue another time, I believe.”

  “I wonder what happened to Binney?” Pierce asked, between breaths.

  A voice came from the gloom near-by. “I’m right here. I was watching through the window.”

  “Watching!” Pierce sounded aghast. “And you didn’t come?”

  “Why should I? I can’t box. I’d probably have been a liability.”

  “Have you ever thought of trying to box and wrestle—when your own gang was in trouble?” Pierce’s voice was bitter.

  “No. I was brought up to believe that sort of thing shameful.” Ramsay felt that the statement satisfied nobody, including himself. “I would have gone for the police, but you all seemed to be protecting yourselves well enough.”

  “What a pal!”

  “You mean,” Dodson asked incredulously, “you won’t get in a fight, even when you’re responsible for it?”

  His father stopped that. “Be fair, son. He didn’t start it. You did. If you and Pierce had let him go on playing, we’d have been life buddies of every rumba fiend in the joint.”

  He started walking toward the hotel.

  The others followed.

  “My folks,” Ramsay tried to explain, “were peaceable. Part of their creed. And I, personally, detest to hurt people. If I’d known my playing would make so much trouble, I’d never have dreamed of starting it.”

  In the bright, air-conditioned lobby of the Hotel Tropic of Cancer the ladies waited nervously. When, one by one, the men filed through the revolving door, each woman made her own census, and reacted with her own brand of relief. Each, save Marylin. She was the first to notice that Ramsay Binney, though missing his jacket, was untouched—while all the others bore the bruises and scratches, the incipient black eyes, the torn pockets and rent shirts which are the stigmata of minor brawling.

  “What didn’t happen to you?” she asked, ignoring the interest of forward-pressing strangers.

  “He stayed outside,” Pierce answered, “and watched through the window.”

  Marylin didn’t say a thing. A strange expression came on her face. It wasn’t contempt or anger, Crunch decided. It was a kind of humiliation, coupled with a faraway look that went beyond Ramsay into distant time. Crunch realized that she was thinking—not that he was a coward, which her family had obviously concluded, but that she was going to have to suffer a good deal with Ramsay Binney as a husband. And something about Marylin’s sudden set of her jaw, her indignant glance at her family, gave Crunch a deep feeling of sympathy for the girl. Sympathy—and understanding of just how much she liked the doctor. It came, perhaps, from the fact that Crunch’s own wife, in marrying him, had taken a man for whom her background hadn’t exactly suited her.

  And it had worked out mighty well, Crunch thought. He winked encouragingly at Marylin—and at Binney—when he got the chance.

  The Poseidon was softly creaking her hawsers as Ramsay came aboard. It was pretty dark, but Crunch could see, in the feeble rays of a lamp on a near-by street, that the doctor’s cheeks glittered. He’d been crying. At least, he’d shed tears. Walking around town, probably.

  “Hate to disturb you fellows,” he said in a
low tone. “But I left a suitcase on board… .”

  Crunch got up. Des followed. They came out into the cockpit, in pajamas.

  “Suitcase?” Crunch repeated.

  “Yeah.” Ramsay sat down. “I thought I’d take the night bus back to Miami. Slip out. They’ll have a better time without me.”

  “Marylin won’t,” Crunch said.

  “I talked with her earlier. Mind if I sit down?’ I’m kind of—I guess, exhausted.”

  Crunch sat and so did Ramsay. Des lighted a cigarette and leaned against the cabin.

  “Marylin,” Ramsay went on, after a while, “did her best to persuade me to stick it out. She has an all-time high crush on me. And, being sort of spoiled, she won’t give it up. ‘She’s right and the world is wrong.’ That sort of viewpoint. But the truth is—I’m an ass.”

  There was silence. Lapping water broke it—and stilled itself. “How do you feel about her?” Crunch finally asked.

  Ramsay started as if greatly surprised. “I’m here. I’ve done the things she told me—or tried to. Doesn’t that explain how I feel?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “I will love that girl,” he said stiffly, almost primly, “till my dying day. And if it were a question of just the two of us—I could manage. I may seem unsophisticated to people like you. But I know something about women. She has the makings of one of the best. But it isn’t a question of just two of us. It’s a question of a big family—those bright, athletic brothers—big houses in a half dozen places—a hundred times as much money as I have—and more. It’s a question of being the hereditary donors and managers of a great Foundation. Of taking it for granted that they are dedicated—and their wealth is—to human service. And then, on top of that, of becoming spectacular sportsmen just for fun.