Rally Round the Flag, Boys!
Page 21
“Just a minute, I’ll get my hat,” said Harry, and did, and ran to the nearest travel agent, and flew with Grace the following week to Veradero Beach and checked into the Oasis which was, indeed, beautiful and new and air-conditioned, and had the sea on one side and a salt water pool on the other, and the cuisine was superb, and the breezes were balmy, and the punches were planter’s, and Grace and Harry—dancing under the tropical moon, toasting in the warm white sand, having siesta in the still afternoon—laughed often and held one another tight and exchanged kisses both ardent and tender and were happier than they had ever been even in the first days in Greenwich Village.
Then they came home. Grace, with her heart in her mouth, watched to see whether Harry was finally ready to settle down after this big fling. At first there were no changes, and Grace was filled with despair. Then, little by little, things began to happen. One evening Harry came home with a copy of Good Housekeeping. “What’s that?” cried Grace, astounded. “I happened to pick it up in my dentist’s office this afternoon,” explained Harry. “Look here,” he said, pointing to a page in the magazine. “Why can’t we have a barbecue like this? It doesn’t look too hard to build.” And—what do you know!—he went and built it!
Another evening Harry was at a PTA meeting with Grace when, suddenly, to everyone’s astonishment, he leaped to his feet and made a passionate plea for a stop-and-go sign at the school crossing on Main and Locust. The Yankees, of course, opposed it, but Harry argued so cogently, so forcefully—indeed, so tiresomely—that he finally pushed in through.
And another time—it was four o’clock in the morning—Grace heard voices in the house and woke up. She reached over to shake Harry, but he was not in bed. Then it occurred to her that the voices in the house belonged to Harry and Martha—then eight months old. Grace sat up and listened. She heard Harry explain to Martha that there was really nothing to cry about, wet pants were a common enough hazard and easily repaired. There, he said, didn’t that feel better? And wasn’t that powder nice and soft? And wasn’t Martha the sweetest, handsomest, brightest child ever born? And didn’t she love her old dad? And wouldn’t it be fine soon when she learned how to walk and her old dad would put her in a pretty yellow dress and take her down the street and everybody would gnash their teeth with envy because they didn’t have a daughter so beautiful, intelligent, winsome, fetching, graceful, charming, virtuous, seemly, and wholly estimable? Grace listened and chuckled silently and dropped a tear or two and when, after thirty minutes of this conversation, Harry came back to bed, Grace slid under the covers and pretended she was asleep.
Just the other night when Grace and Harry were reading before the fire, she suddenly put down her book and said, “Harry?”
“Yes?” he said.
“I love you,” she said.
“That’s nice,” he said.
“You’ve changed, you know,” she said.
“In what way?” he said.
“The best way,” she said. “After all these years you’ve finally acquired maturity.”
“Like hell I have,” replied Harry with a horrendous scowl. “What I’ve finally acquired is senility,” he said, “and I’ll thank you not to talk about it.”
“Yes, dear.”
“There’s a lesson here,” continued Harry, “for you and for all womankind. If your husband isn’t shaping up the way you like, just be patient. Always remember that time is on your side.”
“Yes, dear,” said Grace solemnly and climbed into his lap.
Oscar Hoffa is happy too—or, at any rate, as happy as Oscar Hoffa gets. Six out of the top ten TV shows last month were his, but, actually, the show that made him happiest ranked so low that it wasn’t even in the listings. This was a program called “The Life of the Mind”—a cultural hour featuring such divertissements as sonatas by Hindemith, readings from Finnegans Wake, and discussions of the art of Jackson Pollock. Oscar, with violent reluctance, had agreed to produce the program for only one reason: the Federal Communications Commission has a rule that a certain number of hours per week must be devoted to non-profit broadcasts in the public interest.
So what happened? Last June, Oscar, giggling wildly, got called up to Brandeis University and presented with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
He still wears his academic robes around the office sometimes.
Angela Hoffa got just what she deserved: she ended up as Mrs. Walker Hoxie.
She ran into Walker on the Merritt Parkway one September afternoon. Literally, that is. She drove her Coupe de Ville up the back of his jeep, and he came running at her with such cursing and glowering that for a moment she thought it was Oscar reborn.
There followed a long, abrasive courtship, but she finally wore him down. They live today in Angela’s house in Putnam’s Landing without a television set. They fight most of the time—chiefly because Walker keeps trying to persuade Angela to join the WAC.
Grady Metcalf was sent off to an excellent military academy in Massachusetts. It is now the only military academy on the Eastern Seaboard with sideburns.
Opie Dalrymple and Comfort Goodpasture are going steady, united in a love so deep, so lyrical, so wholesome, that even Isaac cannot object to it.
Opie never did get court-martialed. Shortly after the night of the runaway Nike, there was a kind of general amnesty, and Opie, among others, was pardoned.
What brought about this new era of good feeling was some fast footwork by Colonel Thorwald. The town, of course, was wild with rage after the Nike ran away. Wildest of all was George Melvin, realtor, because when the Nike came back to earth, it landed smack in the old Yarbro property on the Shore Road—a property belonging to George Melvin.
The Nike did not explode when it landed, but all the same, a ton of metal falling from 70,000 feet digs itself rather a commodious hole. George Melvin screamed blue murder. He was suing everybody, he cried, from the President on down.
Colonel Thorwald, recognizing the need for dramatic countermeasures, flew to the Pentagon and got an authorization to purchase the old Yarbro place from George Melvin—at George Melvin’s price. This pacified George Melvin. Then the Colonel turned around and presented the old Yarbro place to the town of Putnam’s Landing. This pacified the town—especially after Betty O’Sheel leapt up in town meeting and demanded the old Yarbro place for the new garbage disposal plant. This time Betty had the votes, and today Putnam’s Landing, thanks to Betty O’Sheel, the United States Army, and the Garba-Crunch Corporation, has one of the slickest, quickest, cheapest systems of putrescible and non-putrescible waste disposal in all of this great, broad, free land of America.
About the Author
Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play co-written with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premi
er humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1954, 1957 by Max Shulman
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2783-0
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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