by Max Shulman
“Could you have done better?” she asked.
“That’s not the point—”
“Come on,” she said impatiently. “We’ll miss the last show at the Bijou.”
I didn’t enjoy the show one bit. I enjoyed even less handing in my theme on Friday morning. As I laid the sheets on Mr. Hambrick’s desk, visions of policemen and hanging judges and prison gates sped through my head. My forehead was a Niagara of perspiration.
“You feel all right, Mr. Gillis?” asked Mr. Hambrick.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I feel fine, thank you.”
“I was just asking,” he said. “I don’t really care.”
The gaiety of the week end failed to cheer me up. Dressed as a buccaneer on Saturday night, I swashbuckled listlessly through a masquerade party, and on Sunday I sat like a lump all through a hayride, never once joining in the four hundred verses of “Sweet Violets.”
In my English class Monday morning I was resigned. I was prepared for the worst. I wasn’t even surprised when Mr. Hambrick told me to stay behind at the end of the class.
“I want to talk to you about the theme you turned in Friday, Mr. Gillis,” said Mr. Hambrick when we were alone in the room.
“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice hitting high C above middle E.
“Frankly,” he continued, “I was amazed at that theme. Until Friday, Mr. Gillis, I had merely thought of you as dull.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But now I know I was wrong. The trouble with you is that you’re archaic.”
“Huh?”
“You’re archaic. You’re way behind the times. You were born one century too late. And,” he added, “so was I. I tell you, Mr. Gillis, I have no regard for modern writing. It all seems like gibberish to me—all that clipped prose, that break-neck pacing, that lean objectivity. I don’t like it. I think writing should be leisurely and rich. Sentences should be long and graceful, filled with meaning and sensitive perception. Your theme, Mr. Gillis, is a perfect example of the kind of writing I most admire.”
“Call me Dobie,” I said genially.
“I’m going to give you an ‘A’ on that theme, and I hope in the future you will write some more like it.”
“You bet,” I said. “I know just where to get them.”
“And if you’re ever free on a Sunday afternoon, I’d be pleased if you’d stop at my place for a cup of tea. I’d like to talk to you about a novel I’ve been toying with. It’s a great deal like your stuff.”
“Sure, pal. Now if you’ll give me my theme, I’ve got to get on to my next class.”
“Ah,” he smiled, his neutral-colored eyes twinkling behind tortoise-shelled glasses, “I’m afraid I can’t do that I’ve got a little surprise for you, Mr. Gillis. I’ve entered your theme in the Minnesota Colleges Essay Contest.”
I just made it to a chair. “Again,” I gasped. “Say that again.”
“I’ve entered your theme in the Minnesota Colleges Essay Contest,” he repeated. “It’s a competition sponsored once a year by the State Board of Education for all the colleges in Minnesota—the university and Hamline and Macalester and St. John’s and all the rest. The contest is judged by the four members of the Board of Education and the winner gets a free cruise on the Great Lakes.”
“Please!” I screamed. “I don’t want to be in any contest. I don’t want to win a Great Lakes cruise. I get seasick. Even in a bathtub I get seasick.”
“Come, come, Mr. Gillis. You mustn’t be so modest. Let me give you a bit of advice, my boy. I was just like you are. I hid my light beneath a bushel too. Now look at me—teaching English to a bunch of little morons. No, Mr. Gillis, you’ve got to assert yourself, and I’m going to see that you do.”
“Please, Mr. Hambrick,” I begged tearfully.
“It’s too late anyhow. As soon as I read your theme last Friday night, I put it in the mail immediately. It’s already in the hands of the Board of Education. The results of the contest will be announced Thursday. Well, goodbye, Mr. Gillis. I must rush to my next class.”
I sat there alone in that classroom for two hours. Twitching. Just twitching. I couldn’t even think. I just twitched. Like a horse dislodging flies. Then, skulking behind trees, I walked to my room, crawled into bed, and moaned until sundown.
In the evening I found Clothilde and, with a great deal of bitterness, told her the whole story.
“That’s not good,” said Clothilde. Sharp, that girl.
“I wish,” I said honestly, “that I had never set eyes on you.”
“Don’t be vile, Dobie. Let’s figure something out.”
“Oh no you don’t. I’m through listening to you. Tomorrow I’m going to Mr. Hambrick and confess everything. There’s nothing else to be done, no matter what you say.”
“Dobie, you really work hard at being stupid, don’t you? That’s the silliest thing I ever heard. Really, I don’t see what you have to worry about. If Mr. Hambrick, a professional English instructor, didn’t suspect anything, what makes you think that the members of the State Board of Education are going to get wise?”
“Now you listen to me, Clothilde. Every minute I delay my confession just makes it worse for me. It stands to reason that at least one of those Board of Education members has read Elmo Goodhue Pipgrass’s Thoughts of My Tranquil Hours.”
“Fat chance,” sneered Clothilde.
“No, Clothilde. I won’t do it. I know I’m going to get caught, and I might just as well get it over with.”
“Honestly, I’ve never met such a yuck. You’ll never get caught, you poor goof. They’ll read the theme and reject it, and the whole business will be over with. The things you find to worry about.”
“Good God, girl. What if I win the contest?”
“With that corn?” she asked. “Ha. Honestly, Dobie.”
Then she argued some more, but I was firm as a rock. It took her more than twenty minutes to talk me into it.
For the next three days, as tragedy mounted on tragedy, I was numb with fear. I’ll tell you how numb I was: a practical joker in my political science class put a tack on my seat and I sat on it all through the class.
Tuesday Mr. Hambrick said to me, “Good news, Mr. Gillis. Your essay has advanced into the quarter-finals.”
I nodded mutely and went out into the hall and twitched some more.
Wednesday Mr. Hambrick said to me, “Great news, Mr. Gillis. Your essay is now in the semi-finals.”
I tried to confess everything to him then, but all that came out of my throat were hoarse croaks.
And Thursday the walls came tumbling down.
“Mr. Gillis,” said Mr. Hambrick, “Something very curious has happened. Your essay won out in the semi-finals and was entered in the finals. Your competition in the finals was an essay by a young man named Walter Brad bury from Macalester College. Mr. Bradbury’s essay is a description of iron mining in northern Minnesota. Now it happens that of the four members of the Board of Education, two are from the Iron Range district. Those two insist on awarding the prize to Mr. Bradbury. But the other two members want to give you the prize. Neither side will yield.”
“I’ll withdraw,” I said hastily.
“That’s noble of you,” said Mr. Hambrick, “but it won’t be necessary. The Board of Education has agreed to call in an impartial judge to pick the winner. You and Mr. Bradbury are to go over to the Board of Education office in the state capital this afternoon for the final judging. I’ve arranged transportation for you.”
“Mr. Hambrick,” I pleaded desperately. “Let them give the prize to Bradbury. The sea air will do him good.’
“Nonsense.” Mr. Hambrick laughed. “You’re sure to win. I know the judge they picked is going to favor you He’s a distinguished essayist himself, who used to write much as you do. He’s been in retirement for many year at a cottage near Lake Minnetonka. He’s very old. Possibly you may have heard of him. His name is Elmo Good hue Pipgrass.”
Click. I heard a distinct
click in my head. Then a terrifying calm came over me. I felt drained of emotion, no longer capable of fear or worry. I felt as a man must feel who is finally strapped into the electric chair.
“There will be a car in front of the Administration Building in thirty minutes to take you to the state capitol,” said Mr. Hambrick.
“Yes, sir,” I said. My voice seemed to be coming from far away.
“Good luck—Dobie.”
I found Clothilde and told her everything—told it to her evenly, coolly, without rancor.
“I’m going to the state capitol with you,” she said. “I’ll think of something.”
I patted her shoulder. “Thank you, Clothilde, but no. It will be better if we break clean—now. I don’t want you to be known as the consort of a criminal. Your whole life is ahead of you, Clothilde. I don’t want to be a burden to you. Try to forget me, Clothilde, if you can. Find somebody new.”
“You’re awfully sweet, Dobie.”
“And so are you, Clothilde, in an oblique way.”
“Then this—this is it?”
“Yes, Clothilde. This,” I said, the little muscles in my jaw rippling, “is it.”
“What are you going to do with those two tickets to Tommy Dorsey tonight?”
“They’re yours, Clothilde.” I handed them to her and added with a wry smile, “I won’t be needing them.”
We shook hands silently, and I went off to the Administration Building and got into the car and was driven to the state capitol.
I went into the Board of Education office and was directed to the conference room. This room contained a long mahogany table with five empty chairs behind it. There were two chairs in front of the table, and in one of them sat a young man wearing a sweater with “Macalester” emblazoned across the front.
“You must be Walter Bradbury.” I said. “I’m Dobie Gillis.”
“Hi,” he said. “Sit down. They’ll be here in a minute.”
I sat down. We heard footsteps in the hall.
“Here they come,” said Bradbury. “Good luck, Dobie.”
“Oh no, no, no!” I cried. “Good luck to you. I want you to win. With all my heart I do. Nothing would make me happier.”
“Why, thanks. That’s awfully decent of you.”
They came in, and the pit of my stomach was a roaring vastness. The four members of the Board of Education were dressed alike in dark business suits and looked alike—all plumpish, all bespectacled, all balding. With them, carrying a gnarled walking stick, was Elmo Good-hue Pipgrass, the littlest, oldest man I had ever seen. His side whiskers were white and wispy, the top of his head egg-bald. His eyes looked like a pair of bright shoe buttons. He wore a high collar with a black string tie, a vest with white piping, and congress gaiters. He was ninety-five if he was a day.
One of the Board members took Pipgrass’s arm to assist him. “Take your big fat hand off my arm,” roared Pipgrass. “Think I’m a baby? Chopped half a cord of wood this morning, which is more than you ever chopped in your whole life. Weaklings. The government is full of weaklings. No wonder the country’s gone to rack and ruin. Where are the boys?”
“Right over here, Mr. Pipgrass,” said a Board member, pointing at Bradbury and me. “See them?”
“Of course I see them. Think I’m blind? Impudence from public servants. What’s the world come to? Howdy, boys.” He nodded vigorously at a hall tree. “Sit down.”
“They are sitting down, Mr. Pipgrass,” said a Board member. “Over here.”
“Whippersnapper,” muttered Pipgrass. “I remember when they built this state capitol. Used to come and watch ’em every day. If I’d known they were going to fill it with whippersnappers, I’d have dynamited it.”
“Mr. Pipgrass,” said a member gently, “let’s get to the essays. The boys have to get back to school.”
“Essays? What you talking about? I haven’t written an essay since 1919.”
Suddenly hope was reborn within me. The man was senile. Maybe I’d get away with it. Maybe …
“The boys’ essays, Mr. Pipgrass. You’re to pick the best one, remember?”
“Certainly, I remember. Think I’m an idiot? Who’s Bradbury?”
“I, sir,” said Bradbury.
“Ah. You’re the fool who wrote an essay on iron mining. Iron mining! Why didn’t you write one on plumbing? Or garbage disposal?”
I felt a sinking sensation.
“Or roofing?” continued Pipgrass. “Or piano tuning? Iron mining! What kind of subject is that for an essay? And furthermore you split four infinitives. And don’t you know that a compound sentence take a comma between clauses? Great Jehoshaphat, boy, where’d you ever get the idea you could write?”
Bradbury and I trembled, each for his own reason.
“Gillis,” said Pipgrass. “Gillis, you pompous, mealy-mouthed little hack. Who told you that you were a writer?” He picked up my essay, held it a half inch before his face, and read, “‘Who has not sat in the arbor of his country seat …’” He threw down the essay. “I’ll tell you who has not sat in the arbor of his country seat. You haven’t. Bradbury hasn’t. All of these four fat fellows haven’t. Who the devil has got a country seat? What the devil is a country seat? Who talks about country seats these days? What kind of writer are you? Who said you were a writer? Can’t anybody write in this confounded state?
“It’s a sorry choice,” said Pipgrass, “that I have to make between these two wights. Neither of ’em can write worth a nickel. But if I must choose, give the prize to Bradbury.”
A great weight rolled off my back. A film dropped from my eyes. I smiled a real smile.
Now they were all around Bradbury shaking his hand, but none so heartily as I. I waited until they all left the room and then I got down on my knees and sent off six quick prayers. I mopped my forehead, my cheeks, my chin, my neck, and my palms, and then I went into the hall.
Pipgrass was waiting for me.
“You Gillis?” he asked.
I nodded, holding the doorjamb for support.
He took my arm. “I was tempted to give you the prize, boy. Mighty flattering to know that people are still reading Thoughts of My Tranquil Hours after all these years.”
Then he was gone down the corridor, chuckling and running his walking stick across the radiators.
She Shall Have Music
Ski-U-Mah was in a bad way.
“Something’s got to be done,” said Dewey Davenport, the editor. “There’s no time to waste. School starts in two weeks.”
“Let’s hear from the circulation manager,” said Boyd Phelps, the associate editor.
They looked at me.
“Oh. Pansy, Pansy!” I cried.
Dewey put a sympathetic arm around my shoulder. “Get hold of yourself, Dobie,” he said kindly. “Pansy is gone.”
“Gone,” I sighed. “Gone.”
“And Ski-U-Mah,” he continued, “is in trouble.”
“You must forget Pansy,” said Boyd. “Try to think about Ski-U-Mah.”
“I’ll try,” I whispered bravely.
“That’s my boy,” said Dewey, giving me a manly squeeze. “Now, Dobie, you’re the circulation manager. Have you got any ideas to build circulation?”
But I wasn’t listening. Pansy’s face was before me. The fragrance of her hair was in my nostrils, and I thought my heart would be rent asunder. Pansy, Pansy, lost and taken from me! “Pansy,” I moaned.
“Dobie, she’s not dead,” said Dewey with a touch of annoyance. “Don’t be so emotional.”
“I’m an emotional type,” I cried, and indeed I was. That had been the seat of my trouble with Pansy—my inability to contain my emotions in her presence. The very sight of her had made me spastic with delight. I had twitched, quivered, shaken, jumped, and whirled my arms in concentric circles. Pansy had looked kindly upon my seizures, but her father, a large, hostile man named Mr. Hammer, had taken an opposite view. He had regarded me with a mixture of loathing and panic, and finall
y, fearing for his daughter’s safety, he had sent her away from me.
I had met Pansy the year before at the University of Minnesota where we had both been freshmen. I had been immediately smitten. And who would not have been? What healthy male would not have succumbed to her wise but frolicsome eyes, her firm but succulent lips, her sturdy but graceful throat, her youthful but mature form? What man could have resisted her manifold graces, her myriad charms? Certainly not I.
I plunged headlong into the pursuit of Pansy, and I am pleased to report that my suit met with success. After she overcame her initial alarm at my exuberance, her affection for me burgeoned until it matched mine for her. Then I made a mistake: I asked to meet her folks.
“Gee, I don’t know, Dobie,” she said doubtfully. “Maybe we’d better wait awhile. I’m not sure how you and Daddy will get along.”
“If he’s your father, I’ll love him,” I replied, nibbling her fingers ecstatically.
“Maybe so,” she said, “but I’m worried about what he’ll think of you. He’s a gruff, sober type, and—no offense, Dobie—you’re kind of nuts.”
“Nonsense,” I cried, leaping goatlike around her. “Take me to him.”
“All right,” she said with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm. “But, Dobie, listen. Try to make your outbursts as minor as possible, will you? Nothing massive if you can help it.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I assured her, and we went forthwith to her costly home in South Minneapolis.
I must say that I have never behaved quite so calmly as on my first meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Hammer. I did not leap or spin; I did not cavort, dance, kick, whistle, or roll. Perhaps I twitched a few times, and I blinked a bit, and once I wrapped my hands around my head, but otherwise I was the very model of sedateness.
I cannot say, however, that the Hammers were impressed with my composure. Mrs. Hammer showed only slight evidences of nervousness—just an occasional shudder—but Mr. Hammer was openly agitated. He kept casting me looks of wild surmise; several times he inquired pointedly about my health. When I finally made my goodbyes, he was flagrantly relieved.
“Well, what did they think of me?” I asked Pansy when I saw her on campus the next day.
