Barefoot Boy with Cheek

by Max Shulman

  Sam returned to the table. “How many of us who are active in the Movement are really familiar with the full significance of it? Do we really know what we are working for? Are we aware of the backgrounds of the class war? The next speaker is one who can enlighten us on these subjects. His topic is ‘The Writings of Marx and Veblen.’ I want to introduce our comrade and fellow student, Bruce Proletariat.”

  Bruce came forward and smiled in acknowledgment of the applause. When the hand clapping ceased he said, “I am proud and happy to be here tonight to talk to you about the writings of Marx and Veblen. I’m afraid, though, that my talk may be a little disappointing to some of you. You see, I had intended to do a lot of reading in Marx and Veblen during the last summer vacation, but I was so busy working at Daddy’s bank that I really couldn’t do all the reading I wanted to.

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t get to read Veblen at all. But I did find out a few things about him. It will interest you to know that Veblen lived a good many years right here in our Minnesota.”

  There was a burst of applause. Bruce held up his hand. “And he married a girl from Northfield, Minnesota.”

  The applause grew louder, and some hats flew into the air.

  “As for Marx”—his eyes twinkled slyly—“I can tell you this much. He wasn’t one of the Marx brothers!”

  The room echoed with appreciative laughter.

  Bruce held up his hand. “But seriously, folks, I did read some of Marx, and it was mighty worthwhile reading, marx my words.”

  We howled until the tears came to our eyes.

  “Well, a good laugh never hurt anybody,” Bruce said. “But seriously, I want to recommend both Marx and Veblen to you. You will do well to read these two men so that you can become familiar with what we are fighting for.

  “You know, a lot of our critics sneer and say that we college people don’t even know what we are talking about. Well, you read Marx and Veblen and then let them try to say something like that. Just let them try. Then you can turn on them and give them tit for tat.

  “I cannot stress too strongly the need for being well informed. Only if we, ourselves, know the facts can we hope to go out and educate others. I know that you are all busy with schoolwork and this and that, but try to set aside a little time each day for Marx and Veblen. Read one page a day, or half a page, if that’s all you have time for. I’m not going to tell you it’s light reading. It’s not. It’s awfully heavy. And I’m not going to stand here and pretend that I know what it’s about. What I do is memorize it, and then when some reactionary fascist gets me in an argument I just give him a couple of pages of it point-blank and watch him run for cover.

  “Marx and Veblen didn’t write the only books on the subject. You should also read Herbert Spencer’s Decline of the West and Looking Backward by Ralph Bellamy and many others. You can also find a good list of books in the Catholic Index. So don’t try to make the excuse that you can’t find a book to read because there are plenty.

  “In conclusion let me recite a little slogan I made up on the way to the meeting tonight: ‘The more books read, the quicker capitalism dead.’”

  Bruce retired amid thunderous applause, and Sam returned. “The final speaker of the evening is Brenda Molotov. As you know, each summer we sponsor a summer camp for our members. Last summer Comrade Brenda was in charge of our camp, and she is going to tell you all about it.”

  A spavined, pock-marked girl stepped up. “Last summer we had our camp on beautiful Lac Qui Parle in northern Minnesota. We all had a real nice time. There were many healthful exercises and games, in addition to which we had many discussion groups and seminars concerning Marxian dialectics. We also had many interpretative dances. Also we had a communal garden in which we grew what we believed to be cabbage.

  “In the evenings we built a camp fire around which we sat and had discussions and sang many songs, such as ‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Industrialist, You’ and ‘Let the Bosses Take the Losses.’ We also burned many prominent capitalists in effigy.

  “We broke camp September first and went into New York Mills, a near-by town, where we picketed a church and broke the windows in the Chamber of Commerce. Although we all agreed that it was a very nice summer and we had many good times, we were also happy to come back to the University and carry on our work. Thank you.”

  When the applause had subsided Sam said, “Now we will sing ‘Workers, Workers,’ and the meeting will adjourn. On your way out you will find a collection box for contributions to descendants of martyrs of the Hay-market massacre.”

  We all stood and sang the stirring song, “Workers, Workers.” I didn’t know the words, but after the first rendition I, too, joined in the singing. Yetta’s hand crept into mine as our voices joined.

  “Workers, workers,

  Don’t be shirkers,

  There’s a job we have to do.

  Flee your prison,

  Collectivism

  Is the thing for you and you.

  “Don’t be stooges.

  Subterfuges

  Is all the bosses ever give.

  They make millions,

  Sometimes billions,

  But do they care how you live?

  “Seize the power

  At this hour,

  Fight with all your mights and mains.

  Strike the blow now,

  Onward go now,

  You have nothing to lose but your chains,

  But your chains,

  But your chains,

  You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

  Yetta and I came from the crowded meeting room into the crisp autumn night. She put her hand beneath my arm and we walked silently along. Only our footsteps marred the stillness of the night, the hard tattoo of mine and the scuffing of her rope soles. Somehow I felt no need for words as I let myself be caressed by the velvet of the night and the presence of her.

  Soon we were on the campus, serene in the pale moonlight. A pile of fallen leaves lay under a dark, stately oak. We sank into it with a sigh. She rolled a cigarette and lit it.

  “Yetta,” I said softly, “I’ve been a fool, a fool, an utter fool.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “The meeting tonight has opened my eyes. I had no idea, Yetta, I didn’t know.”

  She emitted smoke from her nostrils noncommittally.

  “You’re angry with me,” I said, making a moue. “Please don’t be, Yetta. I didn’t know about the forces of reaction. Honestly, I didn’t. And now that I do, I want to fight them. I want to be one of you.”

  “Oh, you do,” she said bitterly. “And how do you want to fight them?”

  “I want to read books, and go to summer camps, and sing songs like all of you do.”

  “And what about your precious fraternity?”

  What, indeed, about my fraternity? I picked up a leaf and slowly tore it to bits. “My fraternity is a force of reaction, huh?” I asked.

  She laughed humorlessly. “What do you think?”

  “Then I—I will give it up.”

  There. It was said.

  She took my hands in hers. “Asa,” she said with curious tenderness, “you are giving up a fraternity, but you are joining a greater fraternity, the fraternity of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the wage slaves. You will not regret it.”

  I looked deep into her eyes, noticing for the first time a cast in the left one. “I will not regret it, Yetta, if it will bring me closer to you.” Suddenly words that had been forming in my heart since I first saw her cascaded out. “Yetta, you are of the true nobility, the nobility of heart. For you are of the world, and the world is you. When a Mexican peso bends over to glean beans your back aches for him. When an underpaid seamstress works all day in a sweatshop your eyes smart for her. When a Spanish peasant dies in the name of humanity your bell tolls for him. You are the soul, the one-ness, of mankind.”

  “I am?” she asked.

  “Yetta—my darling, I know that we have m
et but today. Perhaps you think we have not known each other long enough for me to speak the way I must. But, no, you are not one to be concerned with the pettiness of time. What, then, is time? It is an invention of man, no more.”

  “Capitalists invented overtime,” Yetta interjected.

  “Let him who dwells on convention say what he will,” I cried. “I am compelled to speak. Yetta, let me but love you. Let me serve you. Let me march by your side, uplifted in the glory of your eyes.”

  “Sure, Asa, sure,” said Yetta.

  We kissed.

  A wondrous thing happened. In Minnesota, in October, I heard the song of a nightingale. “Did you hear it, Yetta?” I whispered.

  “The nightingale? Yeah. There’s a lot of them over in the medical building. They cut them open and pull out their pancreas. It contains a fluid that’s supposed to be good for the bends.”

  We sat silent for a time. She rolled another cigarette. “Yetta,” I said at length, “now that we’re going steady, would you wear this?”

  I removed my Alpha Cholera pin from my vest and held it before her.

  “Bourgeois bauble,” she smirked, snatching it from my hand and pinning it on her bodice.

  “I’d like to pin it on,” I said shyly.

  “Sure you don’t want to cop a feel?” she said suspiciously.

  “Yetta!” I cried reproachfully.

  But I did.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Asseyons-nous un moment à la terrasse. —DAUDET

  When I came into the Alpha Cholera house that night Roger and Shylock were sitting in the living room looking at Petty girls and licking their lips. They called hello to me, but I walked right past them without answering.

  I went directly to my room and started to pack. In a few minutes Roger and Shylock burst in. “Say, what’s the idea of not answering us downstairs?” Roger demanded.

  “Begone, forces of reaction!” I cried.

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Shylock angrily. “Are you forgetting that you’re a pledge in this fraternity?”

  “I was a pledge. Now I am an active in the greater fraternity of mankind.”

  They circled me warily. “You been drinking,” accused Shylock.

  “Yes, drinking indeed. Drinking from the cup of love for my fellow man, drinking the bitter draught of human oppression.”

  “Where you been tonight?” said Roger.

  “If you must know, I’ve been to a meeting of the Subversive Elements League. Now, are you satisfied?”

  They looked relieved. “Oh, no wonder you’re talking like you are,” Roger said. “An evening with those icks would make anybody crazy.”

  “Please!” I cried. “I will not listen to you slander my fellow toilers in the cause of liberation.”

  Shylock took Roger’s arm and led him to the corner of the room where they whispered for a short time. They came back smiling amiably.

  “We’re sorry, Asa. We didn’t mean to make you mad,” said Roger. “Tell me, how’d you happen to go to that meeting tonight?”

  “I was invited.”

  “By whom, Asa?” asked Shylock gently.

  “I’d rather not say,” I replied coldly.

  “Are you ashamed to tell, Asa?” Roger teased.

  “Ashamed! Proud, rather. Yetta Samovar is the finest young woman I know,” I said stoutly.

  “See? What did I tell you,” Shylock said to Roger.

  “Yetta Samovar. I know her,” Roger said. “Cockeyed broad with a mustache.”

  “Hers is the true beauty of soul and compassion,” I said haughtily.

  “A Red,” Roger continued. “Wants to destroy the American institutions of democracy and freedom.”

  I laughed bitterly. “Freedom! Freedom to be enslaved by the capitalistic masters. Freedom to—”

  “Asa!” Roger interrupted harshly. “Now you listen to me for a minute. Come over here by the window.” His tone grew softer. “Look at it, Asa. There it is. The University of Minnesota, calm, strong, peaceful. An American institution, Asa, built by Americans to educate American youth in the American way of life.

  “And look below you on the street. See the people, some driving in American cars built by American workmen in American factories, others walking, enjoying an American evening. They are free, Asa, free to ride or to walk, to work or to play, to do whatever they like in the good old, common-sense American manner.

  “And who wants to destroy this American way of life? The people you were with tonight. And why? Oh, I know, they tell you they want to liberate the working class and all the rest of their filthy Red lies, but that isn’t the reason. They want to destroy because they are warped, bitter, unhappy. And why are they warped, bitter, and unhappy? I’ll tell you why.”

  He paused thirty seconds for emphasis. “Because they can’t get into a fraternity.”

  Now Shylock put his arm around me. “That’s right, Asa,” he said. “Not a fraternity on campus will have them. And the sororities won’t take their girls. That’s why they’ll tell you that fraternities and sororities are the forces of reaction. Frustration, simple frustration. Sour grapes.

  “Why, you and I know that fraternities are as American as apple pie. What could be more democratic than a group of fine young men living together, sharing each other’s problems, enjoying each other’s company, working together for the good of all? And the most democratic thing of all about fraternities is the privilege to select whom it wants and reject whom it doesn’t want. Why, that’s the very basis of democracy. How would it be if just anyone who wants to be President walked right into the White House and sat down at the desk and said he was President? What a fine state of affairs that would be.

  “And I suppose they told you that fraternities don’t have any social consciousness. Well, you just go back and tell them that every Christmas our own Eino Fflliikkiinnenn plays Santa Claus at the Sara K. Malnutrition Foundling Home. See what they have to say to that.”

  “Eino Eflliikkiinnenn himself is a good illustration of democracy in action,” said Roger. “Four years ago he was an unknown boy roaming around the North Woods precariously keeping body and soul together by stealing bait from bear traps. Then a Minnesota football scout saw him, lassoed him, put shoes on him, taught him to sign his name, and brought him to the University to play football. And last year Eino Fflliikkiinnenn was an All-American. An All-American!”

  “Let’s go downstairs. I want to show you something,” Shylock said.

  We went into the living room. He pointed at the well-stocked bookshelves that lined one wall. “I suppose they told you to read books too. Well, if you can’t live without reading books we’ve got plenty of red-blooded American literature right here. Complete Rex Beach, everything he ever wrote. Autographed too. Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Lloyd C. Douglas, and many others. Plus we’ve got bound volumes of interesting and entertaining periodicals like the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and, if you go in for heavier stuff, Cosmopolitan.”

  Roger was putting a record in the phonograph. “Listen,” he said.

  I snapped to attention. It was Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” My eyes smarted with unspilled tears, and a lump filled my throat. Not until several minutes after the record had stopped playing did I trust myself to speak. “Can you ever forgive me?” I choked.

  They each took one of my hands. “It’s all right, Asa,” said Roger.

  “Sure,” said Shylock.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing this happened,” Roger mused. “Now you really know what fraternity means.”

  “Oh, I do. I do!” I cried.

  “You must promise never to see those people again,” said Shylock.

  “I promise,” I said simply.

  “And that girl, that Yetta Samovar, you’ll have to give her up,” said Roger.

  “If—if you say so,” I replied.

  “Now don’t look so glum,” chided Shylock. “We’ll get you a girl, and a darn smooth one, don’t you worry.
She’ll be a good American sorority girl.”

  “Say, Shy,” said Roger, “maybe we can get Asa a date for the Beta Thigh party Saturday night.”

  Shylock snapped his fingers. “I’ll bet we can. What time is it? Is it too late to call their house?”

  Roger looked at his watch. “Not even two.”

  Shylock left to make the call. “Beta Thigh is the best sorority on campus,” Roger explained. “We have a dating arrangement with them. We take care of their extra girls and they take care of our extra fellows. And if one of our fellows has a girl in from out of town she stays at the Beta Thigh house, and we accommodate any out-of-town fellow who comes to visit a Beta Thigh. Just another example of good old American working together.”

  “I’ve been such a fool, Roger,” I said. “I wish I could thank you for all you’ve done for me tonight.”

  “You can thank us best by being a good Alpha Cholera, Asa. You must remember now that your actions do not reflect on you alone, but on all of us. In the true democratic tradition, being an Alpha Cholera entails not only privileges, but obligations. The pin you are wearing—By the way, where is your pin?”

  “Oh, ah, er, eh, I left it up in my room.”

  “You must wear it constantly, Asa,” he said with gentle reproachfulness. “The pin you should be wearing is a standard, an emblem of Alpha Cholera and all it stands for, and as long as you wear that pin you must do nothing to make Alpha Cholera ashamed of you.”

  Shylock returned from the phone. He slapped my back. “You lucky dog, I got you a date with as smooth a little number as you’ll ever want to meet. Her name is Noblesse Oblige. You be at the Beta Thigh house at nine-thirty Saturday night. It’s a song-title party. You come dressed to represent the title of a popular song. There’ll be a prize for the best costume. Those crazy kids always think up some clever stunt.”

  A sense of shame and penitence swept over me, so strong that I thought I should not bear it. “Thank you, thank you,” I cried in a strange voice.

  Looking neither to the right nor to the left, I walked stiffly to the stairs and ascended. As I reached the top they called me. I turned around.

  “Good night,” they said. They were smiling.