The Zebra Derby

by Max Shulman

  “You’ve been hot.”

  I perspired.

  “You’ve been homesick.”

  I sighed nostalgically.

  “Oh my,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, rubbing her hands, “what a fine complex problem you are. What a fine paper I’ll write for the Journal of Educational Psychology when I’m through rehabilitating you. Oh my! Here’s where I get a chance to try out all that stuff I learned in those three semesters.”

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “everything would work out all right if you just let me go to classes like everybody else.”

  “We’ll try everything,” said Miss Berisha-Faertz, her good eye aglow. “I’ll make you whole again, have no fear. We’ll try handicraft and community singing and finger painting and tepid baths and maze running. Oh my!”

  I slid off her lap.

  “Perhaps,” mused Miss Berisha-Faertz, “insulin injections are indicated. Yes, I believe they are. This is a very difficult case. Then there’s that pressure-goosing technique that Oft-Krabbing developed at Purdue. I think we’ll have a go at that too. And Sang-Freud over at Vanderbilt has worked wonders with his thirty-day Ferris-wheel ride. It wouldn’t hurt to—Where are you going, young man?”

  “Back home to Whistlestop, lady,” I said. “I know when I’m licked.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  Railroad traffic had eased somewhat, I noticed as I got on the Cannonball to go back to Whistlestop. There were, in fact, only six people on the train: the engineer, the brakeman, the conductor, two passengers, and a corpse in the baggage car.

  “Don’t think for a minute,” said the conductor as he punched my railroad ticket, “that I mind these empty trains. I deserve a rest. I worked myself half to death during the war. And I’m not a young man. As you know, all conductors are eighty years old or more.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ve noticed.”

  “There was one callow youth of fifty-eight,” he admitted, “who got a job on the Nickel Plate last year by lying about his age. The conductors’ union discovered him, though, when they found him tying his shoe by himself. He’s back calling trains in Chillicothe now.”

  “It will be nice to have new coaches on the railroads again,” I said. “Some of the cars they called back into service during the war were awful.”

  “Yes,” the conductor agreed. “One of those old cars, incidentally, cost this railroad a lot of money. The passengers took the buffalo rifles off the rack and shot thirty head of white-faced cattle near Blue Earth.”

  “Some of the whitest-faced cattle in the United States can be found near Blue Earth,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the conductor. “Well, I’d better go back and finish my chess game with the brakeman.”

  “Check, mate,” I giggled.

  The conductor went out with many a laugh and cheer, and I turned to the other passenger in the coach, a tall, lean man in a black alpaca suit.

  “My name’s Hearthrug,” I said friendlily.

  “How do you do?” he said. “Have you provided a last rest for your loved ones? Or,” he sneered, “are you the type sonofabitch that would commit cherished remains to potter’s field?”

  “Certainly not, sir!” I cried, my color rising.

  “Who can tell when he will be called?” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “I am in mind of a gluten factor I knew in St. Paul named Andy Hearty. Great big fellow in the full bloom of health. Always had a smile and a pat on the back for everybody. Strong as an ox. Well, sir, one night Andy came home from work and his wife had a steak dinner waiting for him. ‘Say,’ said Andy, ‘I noticed some mushrooms growing at the foot of the tree in the front yard. They’d go fine with this steak.’ So Andy went out and picked the mushrooms and sautéed them and ate them with his steak. After dinner he went to a party at a friend’s house where he drank and caroused and put lamp shades on his head until three in the morning. Then he went home to sleep, and in the morning he was dead.”

  “Sad,” I murmured. “If he hadn’t eaten those mushrooms he’d be alive today.”

  “Nonsense,” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “The mushrooms were perfectly all right. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by wearing too tight a lamp shade.”

  “Who can tell when he will be called!” I said simply.

  “Max Interment is my name,” said the man in the black alpaca suit. “Mortician. Back in St. Paul they call me Max, the Lifelike Embalmer.”

  “You do look almost lifelike,” I said.

  He blushed modestly. “If you have any moribund loved ones,” he said, “I wish you’d keep me in mind.”

  “When I get home, I’ll look to see if anyone is failing,” I promised. “Are you going far, Mr. Interment?”

  “As far as Big Arm,” he answered. “I’m delivering the corpse in the baggage car. A beautiful embalming job, if I say so myself. You’d never know he was ninety-seven years old.”

  “Was he a railroad conductor?” I asked.

  “Bless you, no. This man was probably the most prominent citizen in Minnesota. This is Oliver Horsey.”

  “Oliver Horsey!” I exclaimed. “When did he die?”

  “Last week,” said Max Interment. “And, by the way, in his death there is contained a lesson for our times, a moral that must guide us always. Would you like to hear the story of Oliver Horsey?”

  “Oh yes,” I cried, clapping my hands.

  And as the Cannonball chugged through Zigzag, What Cheer, Truce, Sleepy Eye, Reform, Quick, Plum, Meat Camp, Looking Glass, Hardware, Federal, Electric Mills, Embarrass, Deaf Smith, Decorum, Calcium, Cheesequake, Bivalve, and Big Arm (in Minnesota cities are arranged alphabetically) Max Interment told me the moral tale of the life and death of Oliver Horsey.

  “Well, sir,” Max Interment began, “Oliver was born ninety-seven years ago, the son of a well-to-do bed-slats manufacturer in Big Arm. After Oliver was born, the doctor told Oliver’s mother that she couldn’t have any more children. Actually she could have had many more children. There was nothing wrong with her. It’s just that the doctor didn’t want her to have any more. He hated obstetrics. Messy, he called it.

  “Well, sir, Oliver was an only child, and his mother and father lavished care on him. They took great pains with his diet, feeding him nourishing gruels and scraped liver from white-faced Hereford calves. They dressed him in the finest clothing—pongee blouses and trousers of long-haired pile, stoles of marten and collars of Flemish lace. As he approached his third year, they engaged for him teachers of music, elocution, and interpretive dancing. He had governesses who had worked for the House of Savoy and tutors who had worked for the House of Plaza. Oliver, in short, had nothing but the best.

  “But Oliver did not respond as well as his parents had hoped. When he was two years old he put the cat in the bird cage, and before anyone could answer the canary’s frantic cries of ‘Rinso white!’ he was a dead pigeon. When Oliver was three, he cut off his elocution teacher’s index finger with a hedge shears. The next year he strung a wire knee-high across the front lawn, causing a myopic postman named Bert Epistle to fracture both fibulae.

  “On his fifth birthday Oliver set fire to the house. The following year he put Paris green in the upstairs maid’s farina. Then he took to forging his father’s name on small checks and later on large checks.

  “In his eighth year he stole the family sterling, pawned it, and bought a single-shot Colt .45. Concealing his gun in his tunic, he went home and asked his mother and father to stand back to back so he could see who was the taller. When they obliged, he dispatched them both with one shot. Then he stole a gelding mare named Naomi and rode her all that night until she dropped dead of exhaustion on Ninth and Wacouta in St. Paul. My mortuary, incidentally, is on Tenth and Wacouta in St. Paul, which is not, perhaps, a fashionable neighborhood, but then what do you want in a funeral—froufrou or expert service?”

  “Expert service,” I said promptly.

  “Of course,” Max Interment agreed. “Well,
sir, in St. Paul Oliver intensified his nefarious activities. He started by picking pockets in streetcars, and soon he was stealing streetcars. Then he began holding up filling stations, then banks, then subtreasuries. Next came dope-peddling, white-slaving, gunrunning, and kidnaping. Finally, barratry.”

  “Barratry?” I asked.

  “Arson at sea,” explained Max Interment.

  “Ghastly,” I shuddered.

  “Well, sir,” said Max Interment, “all these enterprises were bringing Oliver fabulous sums of money. He hired the architect of Fort Knox to design him a similar cache, but that was soon full to overflowing. Another replica of Fort Knox was built. When that was full, Oliver decided that he couldn’t use any more money. He went into retirement for a short while, but he couldn’t stand the inactivity. So he decided to enter politics.

  “Oliver built himself a tremendously powerful political machine. First he got himself elected alderman, then mayor, then state senator, and finally governor of the state. After twelve terms as governor, he resigned to become chief justice of the State Supreme Court.

  “Last year he retired from the bench at the age of ninety-six. He took a trip around Minnesota in his private train—the entire train carved from a single enormous cat’s-eye ruby. Everywhere he went thousands of wildly cheering people thronged around him. Parks, libraries, dams, and museums all over Minnesota were named for him. Wherever he stopped, the day of his visit was proclaimed ‘Oliver Horsey Day’ and the citizens stood in the streets all day and all night singing the ‘Oliver Horsey Hymn,’ a pulse-stirring anthem upon which the state’s five hundred leading composers had collaborated.

  “Oliver returned from his trip, tired but happy, to spend his waning days in St. Paul in a two-hundred-story house that had been built for him by popular subscription.”

  “Where is the moral of the story?” I asked.

  “What’s the matter it’s burning by you?” snapped Max Interment. “Here comes the moral. Listen carefully.

  “Last week in St. Paul, Oliver Horsey was walking slowly down the street on the way to the Civic Auditorium to receive an honorary degree from the Ingelbretsvold Accounting and Secretarial College. He came to a corner and started to cross the street. Traffic was heavy and he was making his way with difficulty.

  “A policeman saw his bent old body struggling through the traffic. The policeman, naturally, recognized him at once and came over quickly to help him. He approached Oliver from the back and took hold of his elbow.

  “Oliver, feeling the pressure of the policeman’s hand on his elbow, looked down to see what it was. He saw a blue-clad arm with the insignia of the law on it.

  “After a lifetime of lawlessness, Oliver’s reaction was instinctive. He bolted out of the policeman’s grasp and ran. But in his blind flight from the law, Oliver failed to see a Mack truck speeding around the corner. He was instantly killed.

  “CRIME DOES NOT PAY!”

  chapter twenty-eight

  Lovable old Father was waiting for me when I got off the Cannonball at Whistlestop. He shook my hand silently, as a man should, his emotion upon seeing me again betrayed only by a violent gyration of his goatee.

  “It’s good to see you again, Son,” he said after we put my luggage on his coaster wagon and were pulling it home. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell me, what has transpired here in Whistlestop since my departure?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” said Father. “Dr. Spleen has written a book called Country Doctor, and Ed Mandamus has written a book called Country Lawyer, and Seth Pestel has written a book called Country Druggist, and Sam Begel has written a book called Country Baker, and Bonar Flushbox has written a book called Country Plumber.

  “Otherwise things have been pretty quiet. Oh yes, Sheriff Carzer got shot stealing chickens. And Braunschweiger the butcher got his thumb chopped off by the Bureau of Weights and Measures. And Max Sexdrive was sent to jail for assaulting an airline hostess during a flight to Duluth.”

  “High diddle-diddle,” I said.

  “And,” continued Father, “Cosmo Learned, the high-school teacher, was fired for teaching that men came from monkeys. And the local Red Cross chapter had a million quarts of plasma left when the war ended, so they dumped them in an irrigation ditch, and now all the farmers in the country are getting blood from their turnips.

  “And Luther McFood has written a book called Country Grocer, and Reverend Chalice has written a book called Country Preacher, and Al Nicotine has written a book called Country Tobacconist, and Willie Scales has written a book called Country Weighmaster.

  “Otherwise things have been pretty quiet.” “What’s new at home?” I asked. “How’s Mother?”

  “She’s fine. She would have come down to meet you but she’s busy plowing the west forty. By the way, remind me to stop at the hardware store on the way home. I got to get her a new yoke. She’s lost so much weight that the old one don’t fit her no more.”

  “Why don’t you put my old football shoulder pads on her?” I suggested. “No use to throw away money.”

  “You’ve got a head on you, Son,” said Father.

  “Just American ingenuity,” I murmured.

  “Oh, say,” said Father, “a very interesting thing happened at home a few weeks ago. I was sitting on the porch reading the Marquis de Sade and your mother was out in the yard digging a cistern when a man came walking through the gate. He was carrying a bundle wrapped in a bandanna on the end of a stick and he had a banjo under his arm.

  “‘How do you do?’ he said. ‘I am Lindsay Satchel and I have some songs to be traded for bread. First I will sing a medley of three songs, and those will be free. If you want to hear any more, however, they must be traded for bread.’

  “So he sang ‘The Strawberry Roan’ and ‘Red Wing’ and ‘Ich Liebe Dich’ and then he said, ‘Would you like to hear some more?’

  “‘By all means,’ I answered. ‘Go right ahead.’

  “‘You understand,’ he said, ‘that these are to be traded for bread?’

  “‘Of course,’ I said.

  “So he sang ‘Lord Rendel’ and ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘Tea for Two’ and ‘Death and Transfiguration’ and ‘K-k-katy’ and ‘All the Things You Are’ and ‘Good King Wenceslas.’

  “‘Would you like to hear more?’ he asked.

  “‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘but wait just a minute.’

  “I ran in the house and filled nine bottles to different levels with water and I brought them out and said, ‘Go ahead.’

  “So he sang ‘The Chisholm Trail’ and ‘Who Put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?’ and ‘Eli, Eli’ and ‘The HutSut Song’ and ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ and ‘I Walk Alone’ while I played an obbligato on the bottles of water.

  “‘Would you like to request any numbers?’ he asked.

  “‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you play “A Tisket, A Tasket” and “Sophisticated Lady” and “Who’ll Buy My Violets?” and “The Lorelei” and “The Bam-Bam-Bamy Shore” and “Let My People Go” and “Over the Rainbow”?’

  “‘Certainly,’ said Lindsay Satchel.

  “‘Just a minute,’ your mother said, and she went into the house and got a comb covered with a piece of tissue paper.

  “Then she joined in as I played on the bottles of water and Lindsay Satchel sang ‘A Tisket, A Tasket’ and ‘Sophisticated Lady’ and ‘Who’ll Buy My Violets?’ and ‘The Lorelei’ and The Bam-Bam-Bamy Shore’ and ‘Let My People Go’ and ‘Over the Rainbow.’

  “Then he sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to signify that his recital was ended. He put down his banjo and stood waiting.

  “Mother went into the kitchen and cut two slices of homemade bread. She smeared the bread thickly with fresh country butter. Then she cut a big slice of ham and laid it on top of one piece of bread. She smeared a gob of horse-radish mustard on the ham. On top of that she put a slice of cheese. Then she took a Bermuda onion and several olives a
nd put them into a bowl and chopped them up finely and put the mixture on top of the cheese. She put a lettuce leaf on top of that and closed the sandwich with the other slice of bread. She brought it out and handed it to Lindsay Satchel.

  “He took a bowie knife out of the top of his boot. He opened the sandwich and carefully scraped out the butter and ham and horse-radish mustard and cheese and Bermuda onion and olives and lettuce.

  “Thank you,’ he said, ‘but I was singing for bread.’”

  chapter twenty-nine

  And now, in a world left unchanged by atomic energy and radar and the federating of nations, in a world static despite all that some men could do, I sought the most unchanging, the most static thing of all: Lodestone La Toole.

  With eager confidence I made my way up to the knoll where I knew she would be waiting for me. And there she sat, as I knew the way blood knows and bones know that she would be sitting. There she sat on a mound of dead rabbits, placid with the placidness of growing things, calm with the calmness of green hills, receptive with the receptiveness of earth.

  Lodestone! The name was on my lips, in my eyes, in my heart, as my legs closed the distance between us. Quickly, quickly now I neared the billowing softness of her, the undulating gentleness of her, the curvilinear Gemütlichkeit of her.

  Lodestone! Only yards now separated us. Her perfume, essence of caramel corn, engulfed me, dizzied me, speeded my pulses. Only feet now between us. I could hear the rhythmic breathing of her heavy sleep, the little submucosal snores. She twitched the skin on her flank to dislodge a fly. Inches now between us.

  Now I was beside her and she was in my arms, waking slowly under a deluge of kisses.

  “Lodestone,” I breathed, “I am returned.”

  She opened one eye, then the other. “We’re gonna have a house,” she sighed, and dropped off to sleep again.

  “Lodestone! Lodestone! Lodestone!” The name cascaded from my lips, and then the name was gone and there were only sounds, deep-throated yet curiously tender. Then there was a sweet flailing, a dulcet thrashing, a soft probing. Urgency came and controlled desperation and desperate control. Then colors that were heard and sounds that were seen, a chromatic arpeggio, an audible pastiche. Then a settling. A fast settling. A slower settling. A slow settling. Settled.