The Dick Gibson Show

by Elkin, Stanley

  DICK: Do you mean to sit there and tell me you’ve actually been to Saturn on a flying saucer? Come on now, Mr. Beckendienst.

  HERMAN BECKENDIENST: I have too. I have. The Martians chose me. They come down to my field while I was plowin’ and taken me aboard. Then, whoosh, up we went to Saturn. I’d say it taken ’bout half an hour. We didn’t land. I ain’t claimin’ we ever landed. Not on Saturn proper we didn’t. But we set down on one of the rings. The blue one. Yes sir.

  DICK: Well why? Why did they choose you, Mr. Beckendienst?

  HERMAN BECKENDIENST: Well, I don’t know why.

  DICK: Didn’t you ask them?

  HERMAN BECKENDIENST: No sir. They don’t have our language.

  DICK: Then how do you know they were from Mars?

  HERMAN BECKENDIENST: Well, I seen their license plates.

  And when Dick leaned over and hugged the farmer, the man had been more startled by Dick’s embrace than by the approach of the Martian saucer itself. He could have hugged all of them—all the zealots and crusaders and saints to obsession, as well as the reasonable ones, the juristic Bernie Perks. Ah, God, would there were an auditorium to hold them all, to always be there with them, to keep them forever talking.

  He received the signal from his engineer. “A minute to air time, people,” he said. They all stopped chatting and looked at him. A couple of the panelists coughed. Behr-Bleibtreau smiled. Dick rubbed the skin along his throat, and watched for Jerry—there was something vaguely athletic about the gesture, his engineer’s arm up like an official’s with a gun above runners—to throw his finger at him. “Thirty seconds,” he said on his own. “All right, be ready.”

  In his head he knew the exact instant that Jerry would signal, and was already talking before the finger came down the full arc of his engineer’s arm.

  DICK: Good midnight. I’m Dick Gibson. Till dawn us do part. Forgive the glibness, please. I’ve been in radio practically since it was invented, but I’ve never been comfortable about introductions. There’s just no appropriate style. UNH UNH UNH, DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL! You see? I don’t know you, you don’t know me. We’re strangers. One of us has to make a beginning. Why don’t I just give you the lineup? My colleagues and comrades tonight are Professor Jack Patterson, Pepper Steep of the Pepper Steep Charm School, Bernard Perk of the corner drugstore, and Mel Son of Amherst.

  JACK: Mel, son of Amherst. (laughter)

  MEL: Jack patter, son. (laughter)

  DICK: Come on, you guys. I haven’t introduced our Special Guest. Who is—

  BERNIE: Boy, with jokes like that I’d give up.

  DICK: … the noted psychologist, Edmond Behr-Bleibtreau. Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau is an author who has written extensively on the problem of Will—not as a philosopher but as someone pragmatically concerned with the problems of people.

  JACK: That’d be like Will’s will.

  DICK: If my panel will restrain itself long enough for me to get through this introduction, we can find out about it from the guest himself. Oh. Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau, one of the things we do on this show is to invite the audience to send in telegrams to the station. We accept about half a dozen collect wires a night, so I have to ask those people who won’t be paying for them to keep their messages within a ten-word limit. Later on we’ll discuss their comments on the air.

  Dick gave his listeners his cable code; then, displeased with his voice—he thought it too high-pitched tonight—and to calm down his panel, he talked some more about the program’s format. He watched Behr-Bleibtreau for signs of irritation, but the man merely smiled and seemed to follow everything that was said with great attention. Sometimes a guest tried to make an alliance with Dick against the panel, but Behr-Bleibtreau seemed perfectly at ease, more so even than the people in the theater seats.

  Still distrustful of the panel’s mood, Dick made some further summary statements about Behr-Bleibtreau’s work, for though it was true that he had not read Behr-Bleibtreau’s books he had the public person’s superficial grounding in all things; he could have gone on for fifteen minutes or so giving his creditable layman’s presentation of the psychologist’s position. He knew, however, that he was boring his listeners. (The thing about me, he thought even while still speaking, is that I have no humor. And that’s because I like being where I am and doing what I do. Why, then, am I so unhappy?) He knew he had to bring his speech to an end, but he saw Jack Patterson’s lips pursing for a joke. (They were skitterish tonight; he didn’t know why.) Anything was better than this, however, and he addressed himself directly to Behr-Bleibtreau, making it seem at the last moment as if his remarks had all been part of a dialogue.

  DICK: … by which I take it you mean the mind. Every day in every way I get better and better. That sort of thing.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Yes. But not so piecemeal. I would take the element of time out of it. We are too patient.

  JACK PATTERSON: I’m surprised to hear you say that, Dr. Behr- Bleibtreau. As patient as you were during Dick’s program notes. As positively benign as the guest of honor at a banquet.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: I’m not in favor of rudeness, Mr. Patterson.

  JACK PATTERSON: I think I must call you on that, Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau. I don’t wish to be stuffy, but I’m as much Ph.D. as you are, and if I’m going to address you as Doctor, I think I deserve the same courtesy.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: And shall our druggist friend here insist on being called Doc?

  BERNIE PERK: Hey, wait a minute, I’m out of this.

  JACK PATTERSON: That was meant for me, Bernie.

  PEPPER STEEP: Oh good. Two Doctors and a Doc.

  MEL SON: And a Dick.

  Dick broke in to introduce a commercial. As Jerry put on the loop in the control booth Dick asked, “What’s wrong with you people? Come on, Jack, stop being so damned snotty. You’ve been horsing around since the program went on the air. Be professional, for God’s sake.” He looked apologetically at Behr-Bleibtreau. (Guests had walked out. It was not unheard of.) “We’re going on again now, and I’m going to try to draw you out, Edmond, about some of your ideas. All right everybody. Here we go.”

  DICK: I’d like to get down to something a bit more specific, sir.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Yes.

  DICK: What troubles me is the role of determinism in all this. You don’t seem to leave any room for it.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: I prefer to use the word “determination.” It’s—

  JACK PATTERSON: Oh, please.

  DICK: Jack, let the man finish his sentence, will you? I don’t know how this hostility built up, but I want to tell you I think you’re sabotaging the program.

  JACK PATTERSON: Do you want me to leave?

  DICK: No, of course not. I just want you to calm down a little—that goes for all of you—and give Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau a chance to explain himself.

  JACK PATTERSON: Because all you have to do is say the word and I’ll get the hell out of here.

  BERNIE PERK: Come on. Jack. Dick isn’t saying anything like that.

  MEL SON: Of course not.

  PEPPER STEEP: And they say women are temperamental.

  JACK PATTERSON: Don’t give me any of that cant, you.

  PEPPER STEEP: Well, I beg your pardon, I’m sure.

  JACK PATTERSON: Big charm school operator. Charming.

  BERNIE PERK: Please, everybody.

  JACK PATTERSON: Because that’s how the hostility built up. Cant. Cant and crud. I think this is Jack Patterson’s farewell appearance on these shows. Either you get the goofs who think all the world has to do is sit around listening to how they were carved out of wood by elves in the forest, or quick-buck artists like the Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau here who make their pile out of positive thinking or some other such claptrap. Nothing real happens. You’ve got the extremists on the one hand and the self-taught, gift-from-the- sea people on the other. I’m thirty-eight years old. I’m a Ph.D. from Harvard. Harvard! And all I am is an Associate Professor at Hartford Community College. Oh, God.r />
  DICK: Ladies and gentlemen—a commercial.

  He got up and walked around the long table to where Jack Patterson was sitting, his forehead pressing against the microphone in front of him. “Jack, are you okay? Are you? Are you feeling all right?”

  “I think the man’s having a nervous breakdown,” Pepper Steep said.

  “Give him room.”

  “Is he all right? Should we call his wife?”

  “Annette, was Jack unwell this evening?”

  “Why are you all picking on him?”

  “Oh boy, two of a kind.”

  Only Behr-Bleibtreau’s people remained seated. The others had all come up to the table.

  “I’ll have to ask the guests in the audience to take their seats.”

  Sitting modestly in his place, Behr-Bleibtreau stared placidly at Jack’s slumped figure.

  “We’re on again. We’re on the air.”

  “What’s going to happen about Jack?”

  “Shh.”

  “Well, we can’t just do nothing. Isn’t it dangerous for him to be touching a live microphone like that?”

  “Shh,” Mel Son said, “be quiet.”

  DICK: Uh—Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau?

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Yes?

  DICK: I was wondering …

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: … if I could develop the point I was making about determination?

  DICK: Yes.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: I think our friend Patterson here could do that even more effectively than I.

  BERNIE PERK: Perhaps I might. I’ve been rather deeply involved with the fluoridation campaign here in New England. The average person doesn’t realize it, but there’s an awful lot of money spent by the anti-fluoridation people on this. Those of us who favor a program of caries prevention, and who have nothing like the funds of those who oppose it, sometimes wonder—

  JACK PATTERSON: It’s okay, Bernie. I can handle this.

  MEL SON: Perhaps Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau—

  JACK PATTERSON: No, Mel, really, I’m fine. I apologize to our audience and our guest as well as to the rest of you for flying off the handle like that. Why don’t we put it down to a bad kipper? I only hope I haven’t embarrassed Annette.

  PEPPER STEEP: Uh oh.

  DICK: I think we ought to—

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: I would be interested in exploring what Dr. Patterson meant before when he spoke disparagingly about autodidacts.

  JACK PATTERSON: Well, I’m afraid I have to stand by that. Dr. Behr-Bleibtreau. It takes all kinds, and we get all kinds.

  BERNIE PERK: That’s true.

  PEPPER STEEP: Tell him about the memory expert.

  JACK PATTERSON: I’ll tell him about Laverne Luftig. Do you remember Laverne Luftig, Bernie? Were you on that show?

  BERNIE PERK: No, I don’t think so.

  JACK PATTERSON: You do, Dick.

  DICK: The child star.

  JACK PATTERSON: That’s the one.

  BERNIE PERK: I couldn’t have been on that night or I’d remember.

  MEL SON: That’s right, I played her record a few times.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Go on, Jack.

  JACK PATTERSON: Well, as Dick says, she was a child star—not an actress, a singer. And not a star, I guess, just someone who cut a few records. The thing about this little girl, though, was that she wrote her own material.

  BERNIE PERK: Does she sing under another name?

  JACK PATTERSON: No.

  BERNIE PERK: I don’t think I ever heard her.

  JACK PATTERSON: Well, you mightn’t have done. She was just starting out in the business, and to tell you the truth I don’t really know what’s happened to her.

  MEL SON: “The Orphan’s Song.”

  JACK PATTERSON: Yes. That’s how she came to be on Dick’s program.

  DICK: I got a call from New Jersey, and was told that Laverne was going to be in Hartford. They played the record for me right on the phone, and when I learned the kid was only ten and a half years old I said she could come on the program.

  JACK PATTERSON: Then Dick had some trouble or something—

  DICK: There’d been a fire in my apartment.

  JACK PATTERSON:—and couldn’t meet her the day she came in. He asked if I’d go down to the train and pick her up. This was on a Thursday and I didn’t have any classes. Anyway, I agreed to go down to the terminal. I’d been on the show often enough by then so I could fill her in on anything she needed to know, or what she might expect from the panel.

  DICK: This program is unrehearsed, so I don’t usually do that, but this was a little girl. I wasn’t even sure she could stay up all night.

  JACK PATTERSON: Have you been to the Hartford railroad station, Professor Behr-Bleibtreau?

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: No, Jackie.

  JACK PATTERSON: It’s very difficult to find a place to park down there. There’s a lot of reconstruction going on, everything’s all broken up. I asked one of my students—Miss Tabisco; you know her, Annette—if she’d come down with me and sit in the car while I went into the station. If a cop asked her to move she could drive around the block till we came out.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Someone in this studio is carrying a gun.

  JACK PATTERSON: I don’t know what I was expecting, possibly a Shirley Temple type—you know, all dimples and ante-bellum curls. Anyway, when the train from New York arrived I didn’t see the little girl anywhere. I stood right on the platform when the passengers came out of the train, but I suppose I must have missed her. I had just decided to have her paged when this very strange- looking little girl came up and asked if I were Mr. Gibson.

  I say she was strange-looking, but I don’t really mean that exactly. It was summer, so of course she wore no coat. One could see that she was … well, that she was a child. Still, her face, all beauty and bone and intelligence, was all that it would ever be. The face of a woman, you see, with less baby fat on it than Annette’s. Most kids in show business—particularly if their acts are adult, if they’re singers, say, or they play the drums— dress like children, and the reason they look so awful is that their clothes are costumes. I mean, they’re not dressed like children so much as dressed up as children. Or they go the other way. You’ve seen the kid tap dancers with their top hats and canes. This little girl was different, though. I don’t recall what she was wearing, but there wasn’t any … well, there wasn’t any starch in it. I didn’t see petticoats. When she went up the stairs I didn’t see underwear.

  I suppose another reason I may not have noticed her was that instinctively I had been looking for her mother, some stage-aunt or stage grown-up, but she’d come alone.

  “No, honey,” I told her, “Mr. Gibson couldn’t come, and he sent me to look after you. I’m Professor Patterson.” I asked if she’d brought luggage, and she told me that all she had was the overnight bag she was carrying. When I reached out to take it she said she could manage.

  We went to the car. Which was gone. I figured a cop had made Miss Tabisco drive it around the block, and I stood in the street so she’d be sure to see me when she came past. We waited about seven minutes, and I found myself explaining about the parking arrangements—as one would to an adult, you see. I apologized for the snag, but though she didn’t say anything and was very polite, I sensed she was annoyed. Finally Miss Tabisco arrived on foot to tell us that the car had been towed away. She’d tried to explain I’d only be in the station a few minutes. “Trains are late,” the tow man said; the space was needed for the mail trucks. She said she’d drive around the block, but the fellow told her he’d already been called out by the cops. It’s a racket. She could see he meant business, that if she stayed with the car she’d just be towed off in it. The man gave her a card where the car could be picked up.

  “Well, this is a damn nuisance,” I said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I told the girl.

  BEHR-BLEIBTREAU: Which girl? Miss Tabisco? Laverne?

  JACK PATTERSON: Oh, I’m sorry. Laverne. Miss Tabisco gave me the card and I saw
that the garage was all the way across town. When I mentioned this, Laverne looked at her watch. “Listen,” she said, “I feel pretty grubby after that train ride. I think I’ll just get into a cab and go to my hotel.”

  “Well, I can’t just let you go off by yourself like this,” I said.

  “Look, really,” she said, “don’t bother. You’d better go and reclaim your car. They charge for storage after the first hour. I’ll manage. Perhaps I’ll see you afterward. I see the taxi stand.”