High Time

by Mary Lasswell

  ‘Just wait till I get my trottin’ harness on an’ we’ll go!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

  Miss Tinkham wrote a note for Darleen and Mrs. Rasmussen said to tell her there was potato salad in the icebox.

  ‘Where’ll it be, ladies?’ Mrs. Feeley asked as they set out.

  ‘Let’s go where we knows a gang,’ Mrs. Rasmussen suggested. ‘Today’s pay-day—an’ you don’t wanna forget that we just kissed sixty dollars a month good-bye ’long with them twins! No use spendin’ our own money!’

  ‘Damn if that ain’t right! An’ beer so high an’ so hard to get!’ Mrs. Feeley agreed.

  ‘Our prime aim is, of course, to serve our country! But we must look to our finances at the same time. We can be patriotic and still make a small profit—after all, the money goes right back into circulation—not to mention the taxes on everything!’

  Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen looked at Miss Tinkham as if they had never seen her before: they did not know that she had her eye on an almost new skunk chubby at the Thrift Shop, an absolute gift at fifteen dollars.

  By common consent the ladies turned in at the door of The Seven Seas. Mrs. Feeley cast a weather eye over the place: nothing but boots and a marine or two.

  ‘Don’t looks good,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said. ‘Maybe we shoulda stayed home!’

  ‘The night is young! Or perhaps I should say the afternoon! And a bad beginning always makes a good ending,’ Miss Tinkham comforted.

  ‘Don’t do to rush off in the heat o’ the day,’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘We’ll listen to the music an’ be nurses.’

  ‘Nurses?’ Miss Tinkham pricked up her ears. Nurses wore uniforms.

  ‘Yeup! We’ll kinda nurse our beer along till a pay-monkey shows up!’ She laughed loudly at her own sally, and two boots turned around to see what the excitement was.

  ‘See anythin’ green?’ Mrs. Feeley challenged them.

  ‘No, ma’am!’ the kids denied fervently and that was that.

  Mrs. Feeley began to brood again—seemed like luck just wasn’t with them: whatever they started just sort of petered out.

  ‘How’s about air-raid wardens?’ she suggested.

  ‘Nah.’ Mrs. Rasmussen deprecated. ‘They’re about a thing o’ the past.’

  Miss Tinkham was fumbling among her chains for her lorgnette.

  ‘Don’t look now, but that shipbuilder friend of Darleen’s has just come in—what was his name? Oscar! Remember? A lovely spender and quite a gay foot as a dancer!’

  ‘It sure is him!’ Mrs. Feeley agreed. Mrs. Rasmussen said he had a nice-looking fellow with him, too. Too bad they had chosen to sit ’way over there at the bar.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Miss Tinkham murmured, ‘I was just about to go in search of a room in which to rest a little!’ With languorous grace she rose from the table and sauntered towards the ladies’ room. In passing she practically knocked Oscar off his stool.

  ‘Why, howdy, girlie!’ he cried, righting himself.

  Miss Tinkham looked at him with almost convincing bewilderment.

  ‘Have I the pleasure?’ she murmured.

  ‘Sure! I’m Oscar! We was dancing together one night! Remember?’ he persisted.

  ‘Oscar!’ Miss Tinkham cried. ‘How utterly stupid of me! Can you ever forgive me? How could I ever forget you?’

  ‘How’s your pals?’ Oscar inquired politely.

  ‘Why don’t you inquire in person?’ Miss Tinkham suggested coyly, waving at their table.

  ‘Suppose they’d mind if me and my buddy was to join ’em?’ he asked.

  Miss Tinkham hesitated just long enough.

  ‘I am sure they would be delighted to renew your acquaintance!’ she said graciously, and returned to the table with the two men, her desire to rest completely forgotten.

  ‘Hi, Mrs. Feeley!’ Oscar cried jovially. ‘Lessee, lady! What was your name, now?’

  ‘Same now as ’twas then: Rasmussen!’ the lady in question replied dryly.

  ‘Ladies: this here is my buddy! Name’s Jasper!’

  ‘Jasper ’Fore the Battle, Mother?’ Mrs. Feeley inquired cutely.

  The gentlemen guffawed in a gratifying style.

  ‘You been holdin’ out on me!’ Jasper accused Oscar.

  ‘Been holdin’ out on myself, too!’ Oscar explained. ‘I sure thought of you ladies a lotta times! But I never did run into you again after that one night!’

  ‘We been busy helpin’ the war-effort,’ Mrs. Rasmussen explained.

  ‘Ain’t been out in a month o’ Sundays,’ Mrs. Feeley said.

  ‘When business interferes with pleasure!’ Miss Tinkham said vaguely.

  The waiter was hovering suggestively in the background.

  ‘Beer for me and my friends!’ Oscar ordered grandly.

  ‘They want anything?’ The waiter indicated the ladies with a scornful wave of his bar-clout.

  ‘Sure they do—an’ on the double!’ their host replied.

  ‘The trash they uses for help these days!’ Mrs. Feeley sneered.

  ‘Aw, he don’t know whether it’s bored or punched!’ Mrs. Rasmussen offered.

  The gentlemen laughed so violently that tears ran down their cheeks. Jasper vowed his sides were killing him and he had not had so much fun since the hogs ate his little brother.

  ‘What you need is a bar of your own, Mrs. Feeley!’ Oscar thought he had really hit the nail on the head.

  ‘I’ve thought of it,’ she admitted. ‘But there ain’t much in it! Time you buy them license, an’ give all the free beer to the cops! Hafta have a lotta drunks around an’ clean up after ’em! Ain’t no percentage in that! An’ you have to turn flips to get a little beer these days, let alone enough to run a joint!’

  ‘That’s the truth!’ Jasper put in. ‘But that ain’t nothin’ to what you gotta go through to get a bite to eat in this town. Stand in line, and by the time they get to you: “Sorry, but we’re all outa the hamburger steak!” I’ve ate hot-dogs an’ kraut till I’m ready to bark!’

  ‘A man can’t work on that!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  ‘You’re tellin’ me? I ain’t got hardly no hemoglobin!’ Oscar informed her.

  ‘You don’t look like one o’ them!’ Mrs. Feeley said kindly.

  ‘My dear man! How distressing!’ Miss Tinkham was all sympathy.

  Mrs. Rasmussen was beginning to wonder if this was a real nice conversation, when Oscar continued:

  ‘See, my brother’s a pharmacist mate down in New Cal—and after I got a letter from him, I went down to the Red Cross to give a pint of blood, an’ come to find out I couldn’t, because I didn’t have hardly a pint for myself, let alone to give away!’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘Was they lookin’ for somebody for a confusion?’

  ‘No,’ Oscar explained. ‘Down at the shipyard, as many of us as is able gives a pint of blood for the Bank!’

  ‘Hmpf! I knew the banks was blood-suckers, but I didn’t know the Red Cross would draw it outa your veins for ’em!’ Mrs. Feeley shook her head sadly.

  ‘Not that kind of bank, my dear!’ Miss Tinkham explained. ‘Don’t you remember that man on the radio who was asking for donors? They use the blood people give to prepare blood plasma for use on the battle-fields to supply blood to the wounded soldiers and sailors.’

  ‘Now, he did say somethin’ like that!’ Mrs. Feeley mused.

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ And Miss Tinkham began to chant: There is power, power: wonder-working power! There is power in the blood!’

  ‘Does they take it from any ol’ body?’ Mrs. Rasmussen wanted to know. ‘Seems like some o’ the blood floatin’ around would be worse’n no blood at all! Full o’ germans an’ stuff!’

  ‘Oh no!’ Miss Tinkham protested. ‘They test it very carefully—they try to find out how long it was since you even had a common cold! You have to have a pure blood stream.’

  ‘Sure!’ Oscar put in his two-bits. ‘They test your blood, then match it up on a lit
tle chart to see how red it is, and if it’s up near the top, that means you got a lot of hemoglobin and that’s what they need for the wounded guys, see?’

  ‘Canned blood, huh?’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.

  ‘Gawd! They think of everythin’!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

  ‘Can anybody give it that wants? Do you gotta have a birth stifficate?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked. The scene at Consocraft still rankled.

  ‘No,’ Jasper said. ‘All you have to do is be in rugged health and be able to spare the blood! It don’t even hurt! I been twice. Would ’a’ gone again, but they wouldn’t let me ’cause my blood was low in iron from not eatin’ right!’

  ‘You say it don’t hurt none?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.

  ‘Not a bit! You can feel the needle a little bit, but only for a second! They make you lie down an’ eat a lot of cookies afterward.’ Jasper made it beautifully simple.

  Mrs. Feeley finished her beer and set her glass down: ‘Ladies, I am afraid we’ve went an’ overlooked a bet,’ she said solemnly. They were nodding at each other slowly.

  ‘On’y one thing,’ Mrs. Rasmussen demurred, ‘it don’t sound Kosher to me! If every kinda person, black, white, yella, Jews, Irish, Swedes, and what-not gives blood, an’ they stirs it all up together, somebody is gonna kick up a fuss when they finds out about it!’

  ‘Bring me another beer an’ I’ll explain it to you,’ Mrs. Feeley said pontifically. ‘It’s all as plain as day to me now!’

  Oscar did not want any delay in the enlightenment that was to follow, so he pushed his beer over to Mrs. Feeley and signaled the waiter for re-fills.

  ‘Now, you see,’ Mrs. Feeley began, ‘it’s like this: The blood’s the thing! Without blood you can’t live! Without blood can’t nobody live—regardless o’ race, creed, or color! The blood is the life. Blood is the one thing all people got in common—an’ gotta have, if they wanna keep on livin’. So it don’t make a hell of a lot o’ difference if white or colored or Jew or Irish or Chinese or Rush’n soldier-boys gives their blood for us on the battle-fields, or whether their folks gives it at home for ’em in a bottle, now does it? For that reason spillin’ blood is a sin. The fightin’ an’ bloodshed in the war is a sin—it don’t make no difference whose blood’s gettin’ shed: it hadn’t oughta happen! It’s the life-fluid, that’s what it is!’ she cried, taking a large swig from another life-giving fluid. ‘That’s what the war’s for, an’ this here dried blood proves it! It don’t matter who the blood was gave by, it’ll do the work! That proves there ain’t no one blood better than another, provided it was took from clean healthy stock to begin with!’ She sank back in her chair, exhausted by her own eloquence.

  ‘My dear Mrs. Feeley!’ Miss Tinkham cried, ‘I have never heard a more inspired explanation of the Brotherhood of Man!’

  ‘You got some head on you, Mrs. Feeley!’ Oscar said admiringly.

  ‘Yeup!’ Mrs. Feeley admitted modestly. ‘There’s more in that head than a comb’ll take out! Is this here Red Cross open on Saturdays?’

  Oscar and Jasper took the ladies to the Red Cross in a taxi. They were a little nervous as they walked in, but otherwise in fine fettle. The nurse recognized Oscar and he explained that the ladies were prospective donors. Quietly and with little fuss the nurse filled out the questionnaires and made the blood tests.

  In a little while she was back, beaming. The weakest of the ladies at Noah’s Ark showed a ninety per cent hemoglobin content. The nurse complimented them on their fine, rich blood and asked them to come back Monday morning—and to omit breakfast.

  Mrs. Feeley smirked and bridled.

  ‘Sure, dear, we’ll be glad to! Nothin’ like beer to make good red blood! Don’t they give it to nursin’ mothers?’

  The nurse grinned.

  ‘You know we give a beautiful pin, like a medal, to those who give blood regularly,’ she said. ‘These chaps here have had to coast for a month or so! Guess they don’t live right!’

  ‘Hell!’ Mrs. Feeley cried, clapping the nurse on the back, ‘I feel happy an’ like we was really doin’ somethin’ for the first time since this stinkin’ war started! They didn’t want us for this! An’ they wouldn’t have us for that! But I’d like to see the son-of-a-bitch that can stop us from givin’ plenty of good, red blood, now that we found out about it! We got a right to give our blood same’s them guys landin’ on them Eye-talian beachheads! You can just expect us reg’lar!’

  ‘You can come in every eight weeks, Mrs. Feeley!’ the nurse said. ‘Blood like yours is really needed!’

  ‘I’m aimin’ to earn me one o’ them medals,’ Mrs. Rasmussen smiled, entranced by the idea of a premium.

  ‘And just to think of all the months we have wasted,’ Miss Tinkham lamented. ‘We could have saved hundreds of lives just among the three of us! It was indeed Providence that brought us out this afternoon to search for our niche in this war!’

  ‘Never mind! You’ll still be in time to help!’ the nurse said, winking at Mrs. Feeley. ‘Why don’t you take these fellows home and fill them up with some of the stuff that makes you girls so full of business?’

  ‘Yeah. Let us in on the secret,’ Oscar grinned.

  ‘C’mon! Time’s a-wastin’!’ Mrs. Feeley cried, grabbing Oscar by the arm, and the five of them went away, promising to be back bright and early Monday morning.

  Back at the bar the ladies crowed over the two crestfallen men.

  ‘Guess we’re too old for them fancy airplane factories, an’ them Wacs an’ Waves—but we ain’t so dusty when you get right down to what makes the ol’ wheels go round!’ Mrs. Feeley boasted.

  ‘Isn’t it marvelous?’ Miss Tinkham crowed. ‘We had no idea of our own natural riches!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mrs. Rasmussen grinned. ‘We didn’t know how good we felt till they told us! It’s them stews does it!’

  ‘Yeup! An’ all that cheese an’ liver an’ things don’t exactly run us down!’ Mrs. Feeley gloated.

  ‘All those wonderful minerals and vitamins Mrs. Rasmussen gives us!’ Miss Tinkham added.

  ‘Lentils! That’s what they gives nimmick people in the Ol’ Country!’ Mrs. Rasmussen cried, and then sneeringly remarked: ‘Peanut butter! Foo!’

  Poor Oscar and Jasper were so hungry by now that they were drooling.

  ‘I’m so hungry I could even eat meat-loaf!’ Oscar said.

  ‘Meat-loaf!’ Mrs. Rasmussen scoffed. ‘Kennel Ration is what they gives you in them lunch-counters!’

  ‘Yeah, but we can’t help it, Mrs. Rasmussen! We can’t find no other kinda place to eat,’ Jasper explained.

  ‘Sometimes after a salmon croquette, I think I’m likely to faint on the job!’ Oscar said.

  Mrs. Rasmussen looked as if she wanted to throw up at the mention of such disgusting viands.

  ‘Well, ladies,’ she said, ‘there ain’t nothin’ for it: we’re sabotagin’ the ships if we don’t feed ’em! You sure better have your ration books along with you!’ she said.

  They had. They not only had their ration books, they had money—lots of money. The ladies rode in state for the second time that day. Down to the Bay City Market they rode in the interests of war production. Jasper and Mrs. Feeley went on a reconnaissance tour of lower Fifth Street and came back grinning from ear to ear. Between the two of them they had acquired twenty-four bottles of tender, luscious brew. A whole case, in these degenerate days!

  Mrs. Rasmussen bought high, wide, and handsome. When she had a goose, nobody had to show her how to pick it. Because these poor creatures were so low in iron, she purchased calves’ liver—and a whole pound of bacon. She bought a standing rib-roast—four ribs. The points soared into astronomical figures, but she had two extra books. After the market had been thoroughly looted, the men carried the swag to a taxi and they all went home to the Ark.

  Darleen was at home and the children had already been put to bed. That was a big help, Mrs. Rasmussen thought, for Darleen could entertain the guys and keep them out from underfoot wh
ile she smothered vast quantities of onions to go with the liver and bacon. If there was anything she despised, it was two or three little scorched loops of onion draped on a dry piece of liver. Hers were always clear amber rings full of flavor and minerals.

  Miss Tinkham was entertaining the guests with music. Darleen helped Mrs. Feeley with the table and then rejoined the group near the piano.

  ‘Gosh! I didn’t know you was a musician!’ Oscar said. ‘What was that you was playin’ over and over?’

  ‘Sure pretty, ain’t it? Ain’t heard it before!’ Jasper said.

  ‘Oh, it’s just a little something that has been haunting me for weeks; just a little improvisation!’ Miss Tinkham fluttered.

  ‘You mean you made it up outa your head?’ Oscar asked.

  ‘Oh yes! I often do!’ the composer said modestly.

  ‘Hasn’t it got no name?’ Oscar insisted.

  ‘I’m thinking of calling it “We’ll Recapture Rapture.” Rather timely, don’t you think?’

  ‘Timely? I think it’s swell! You’re a genius, Miss Tinkham!’ Oscar cried.

  Mrs. Rasmussen appeared with a tray full of glasses of beer and a plate of hard-boiled eggs.

  ‘Just a little somethin’ to fill up the far comers,’ she said.

  The men needed no urging. Darleen ate an egg and got herself a soft-drink out of the icebox.

  ‘Gawd!’ Mrs. Feeley fumed, ‘how you don’t ruin your system with them filthy things is a wonder to me! Peel the linin’ off the inside o’ your mouth an’ take the tripe right outa your stomach, they will!’

  ‘Gee, Mrs. Feeley,’ Darleen said, ‘most people don’t know that! They think that’s what beer and likker does to you!’

  And Mrs. Feeley, backed up by the American Red Cross blood tests, proceeded to tell Darleen with indisputable authority exactly what beer really did for people. The teetotalers had better steer clear of her after those tests this afternoon.

  ‘An’ as Mr. Feeley always used to say, Darleen, when our Lord he went to that weddin’ that time, an’ they run out, he sure as hell never turned that water into no soda-pop!’