Barefoot Boy with Cheek

by Max Shulman

  It was like walking into a movie set. Young men with hats on the backs of their heads and cigarettes dangling from their mouths rushed back and forth screaming “Hold the presses!” or “Leave me to a phone!” Lissome girls sat on desks, their silken legs dazzlingly extended, chain smoking and yelling “Hell” and “Damn” at frequent intervals. Nobody spoke below a shriek or was without a cigarette for a moment. One fellow, apparently someone of authority, sat in his shirt sleeves next to a telephone, screaming at the top of his lungs and punctuating his remarks with dangerous thrusts of a long-bladed shears. The phone rang. He put the receiver between his shoulder and his ear. “Rewrite,” he bellowed. He scribbled for a few minutes, slammed the receiver back on the hook, and yelled, “Tear out page one! Just got the dope on the officer election of the Audubon Club.”

  “This is the office of the student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily. Come along,” Yetta said.

  We left this scene of derring-do and proceeded down the hall. We passed a door out of which came peal after peal of riotous laughter. “Ski-U-Mah,” Yetta explained. “Campus humor magazine. They’re reading their own stuff in there.”

  Then we entered a small office illuminated only by the light of a twenty-watt cerise bulb in a wall icon. When my eyes were accustomed to the light I made out the figure of a huge, hairy, anthropoid fellow sitting at a desk in the front of the room and a thin young woman and a swarthy young man sitting on a bench at the side.

  “This is Asa Heathrug, Simian Gibbon,” said Yetta, introducing me to the fellow at the table. “Simian is the editor of Poignancy.”

  “I’m so happy to know you,” I said.

  “Sit down on the bench,” he growled. “I’ll hear you in a little while. Who’s next?”

  I sat down with Yetta. The thin girl stood up. “I’m Cynthia Soul,” she said. “I’d like to read some of my poetry. I have here a series of three poems which I call The Oestrus Cycle.” She cleared her throat and began to read:

  “Number one. Tread Quietly, Al.

  “Tread quietly, Al,

  For the moon is a half slice of lemon

  On the teacup of the world.

  Quietly, quietly.

  Among the alien dolomites

  Slumbers one unsleeping

  And his name is Now

  “Number two. Hold That Tiger.

  “Four young men were lined up against a wall and shot this morning.

  And the cosmic eye turned

  In oblique perpendicularity.

  “Number three. The Scent of an Ancient Rose.

  “Gamboling, gamboling.

  In the absence of presence of nothing

  Unbeing, uncreated, inchoate

  Like the slash of a knife

  Through the butter of eternity.”

  She stopped and waited for Simian to pass judgment. “Too intelligible,” he rumbled. “Everyone will know what you’re saying. What kind of poetry is that? Try again sometime.”

  She left sadly. The swarthy one stood up. “I’m Francis Sheboygan, an exchange student from Armenia,” he said. “I write plays in the New Thought manner. I am working on a revolutionary play right now. Instead of speaking lines in this play, the characters merely sniff meaningfully on benzedrine inhalers. But I’ve brought something a little more conventional to read today. It’s called Across the Street on Tuesday Evening. This play is set in a men’s room of a planetarium. As the play opens a three-fingered Negro named Everyman is lackadaisically mopping the floor and singing a mournful Estonian ballad in a minor key. He sings in the original Estonian. The door opens stage left and Abraham Lincoln comes in. ‘How long do you think a man’s legs ought to be, Mr. Lincoln?’ asks Everyman.

  “‘Why, long enough to reach the ground, my boy,’ says Lincoln.

  “‘That’s the most beautiful thing I ever heard in my life,’ replies Everyman, and resumes his singing. Lincoln assumes a nonchalant stance stage left and does a few laconic birdcalls. The door opens, and a girl, known starkly as Girl, enters. ‘Whuffo you doin’ in heah?’ asks Everyman. ‘Dis is a men’s room.’

  “Girl laughs bitterly. ‘I can’t read. I never had no schooling.’

  “‘My poor child,’ says Lincoln, abandoning his birdcalls.

  “‘Mr. Lincoln!’ cries Girl, new hope in her dead eyes. ‘You’re a big man. Can they shut off my water?’

  “Lincoln smiles sadly. ‘Yes, my child.’ She begins to cry. Lincoln strokes her hair. ‘Don’t you care, dearie,’ he says. An ice-cream vendor enters stage right. ‘Give her a chocolate cone,’ Lincoln says.

  “The vendor laughs bitterly. ‘They cut off my cones,’ he says. Everyman pulls out a harmonica and softly plays ‘They Cut Off My Cones.’ Girl does a soft-shoe dance completely out of time with Everyman’s music. Four unemployed puppeteers enter stage left and tacitly begin pitching pennies against the wall. ‘I’ll be back,’ says Lincoln quietly, exiting stage right.

  “A man made up as a dollar sign enters stage left. He pulls one hundred and twenty feet of foolscap from his tunic. ‘I have an eviction order,’ he says. He reads, ‘Whereas and whereas and whereas.’ Everyone slinks off the stage. A young man enters stage right. ‘Know where I can locate a party named Harris or Benuti?’ he asks.

  “‘Whereas and whereas and whereas,’ says Dollar Sign. The young man slinks off stage left. A cowboy enters stage right. He carries an ivory-headed cane. ‘Whereas and whereas and whereas,’ says Dollar Sign. The cowboy pulls a bowie knife and begins to whittle the ivory-headed cane.

  “‘Whereas and whereas and whereas,’ says Dollar Sign.

  “‘You know,’ says the cowboy, ‘the little people are kind and good and gentle and beautiful.’ The rest of the cast enters timorously from stage left and right. The cowboy continues, ‘The little people may be little, but they’re people.’ Everyman pulls out a harmonica and softly plays ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King.’ The cowboy goes on, ‘It takes a heap of livin’ to make a people little. The little people have a dream, and in this dream somebody is saying a word to them. It sounds something like “phlox” or “labial,” but it isn’t. The little people know it isn’t, and someday they are going to know what it is. Someday. Someday.’

  “Dollar Sign trembles. Five provost marshals enter stage right and clap him in irons. Lincoln descends from the ceiling on a guy rope. Gathering a heap of cedar chips, the cast builds a little fire. They vivaciously roast marshmallows. The curtain falls.”

  Simian considered. “It ain’t bad, but it needs a little more symbolism. You take it home and work on it.”

  Francis Sheboygan left. I stood up.

  “What you got? More poetry or plays?” asked Simian.

  “No sir,” I said. “I have a short story.”

  “All right. I could use a good robust short story. Go ahead.”

  “The title is ‘Men Are Like That.’”

  “It stinks,” pronounced Simian. “But go ahead. I’ll change it later.”

  I read, “Stephen walked up the path that lay coiled and fretted around the arbor.”

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Stephen! Of all the petit bourgeois, Ladies’ Home Journal names in the world, that is the number one. And what kind of path around what kind of arbor? What kind of a counter-revolutionist are you? You better beat it, kid. You’re wasting my time.”

  Yetta interceded. “Wait a minute, Simian. Those are only minor points. You can change the name of the character. Call him Sam.”

  “That’s a good name,” admitted Simian.

  “And you can change the locale,” she continued. “Give it a proletarian setting.”

  “An alley,” said Simian. “That’s it. O.K., go ahead, kid.”

  “The oblique rays of the afternoon sun silhouetted his broad shoulders, his flat hips, his long, lean legs, his finely molded head.”

  “Naaah,” said Simian. “What kind of a body is that for a proletarian character? Here is a guy named Sam in an alley. He is shriveled up, hunchback
ed. He got rickets because the capitalist bosses raised their prices on food and his mother couldn’t get him the proper vitamins when he was a baby. Now he is bitter. He can’t find work because he is a cripple. He hasn’t got money to eat. He is going down the alley—I got it—searching in garbage cans.”

  “Sensational,” Yetta said. “A graphic indictment of the system.”

  “Go ahead, kid,” said Simian.

  “Now Amelia came toward him trippingly, trippingly. Amelia of the golden hair, Amelia of the tawny green eyes, with her white, diaphanous dress, as pure as her soul, billowing in a gentle breeze.”

  “Amelia!” shrieked Simian. “Amelia yet. That’s enough, kid. Get out of here. Get goin’.”

  “Wait,” said Yetta. “You can call her Sarah.”

  “So all right, Sarah. So how comes by this scavenger a girl with golden hair, tawny eyes, a diaphanous white dress? What kind of diaphanous? You better get out, kid.”

  “So put a different kind of dress on her,” said Yetta. “It’s just a minor change.”

  “Everything is by you a minor change,” said Simian. “All right, I’ll call her Sarah, I’ll dress her in torn, dirty bed ticking. But what is she doing in the alley?”

  “Can’t she be picking garbage too?” Yetta asked.

  Simian looked interested. “That’s it. She’s a scavenger too. Sam opens up a garbage can, and there she is inside of it. She’s a dwarf. At first he snarls at her. He’s mad because she’s cutting in on his garbage, see? Then he notices that it’s a girl. Now another emotion comes over him. Passion. Go ahead, kid.”

  “‘My darling!’ she said. ‘At last you’ve come.’”

  “No talking,” said Simian. “Passion.”

  “He took the delicate contour of her cheek in his bronzed palm. The coolness of her lips was near, inviting. They kissed.”

  “What kind of bronzed palm? What kind of kissing? They been eating garbage. How can they stand to kiss? Listen. He lunges at her. She ducks. He lunges again. She whips out a bread knife from her tunic. All right. Go ahead, kid.”

  “She pressed his broad chest with firm gentleness. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘we mustn’t.’

  “That’s a pip,” sneered Simian. “This guy is out for blood and she tells him he mustn’t. Naaah, you better get out of here, kid.”

  “Wait,” said Yetta; “you can make a few changes.”

  “Aaaah, well, all right. He’s coming at her. She swings the knife. She slashes his arm. He belts her in the head. She falls back. He grabs her. She kicks him in the crotch. He falls back. Go ahead, kid.”

  “He smiled his crooked little smile. His eyes crinkled at the corners the way they did when she first saw him and lost her heart. ‘Then this is good-by?’ he breathed.”

  “Good-by is right,” snarled Simian, “and he ain’t got much breathing left either. She closes in on him. He’s groggy. She jabs the knife into his throat. He falls. But when he falls he grabs her legs and she goes down. She cracks her head on a rock. She’s groggy. He’s just about gone. With his last ounce of strength he grabs the knife from her hand and lets her have it four times in the groin. They’re both dead. Get the irony? They kill each other when they should be in the class war killing the other side.”

  “Powerful,” said Yetta. “Powerful.”

  “Go ahead, kid. Let’s hear the end.”

  “He turned. Slowly, erectly, he walked down the path. It started to rain.”

  “Naaah,” said Simian. “What kind of walking? He’s a dead pigeon. Listen. I got it. A capitalist banker walks past. He sees their bodies. He calls a policeman stooge. ‘These people owe me money,’ he says. ‘Take them to the tallow works and have them rendered. Turn over the proceeds to me.’ Then he turns and walks away. His footsteps echo hollowly in the distance.”

  “What a story!” said Yetta. “What an indictment! I told you Asa was a find.”

  “Maybe I can do something with him,” Simian admitted. “You make those changes I suggested and come back.”

  We walked down the hall from the Poignancy office. They were still laughing in the Ski-U-Mah office. At the Daily the rewrite man was yelling, “Tear out the front page! I just got the results of the intramural chess matches.”

  CHAPTER XI

  Mon oncle est mort. —BALZAC

  I had some difficulty getting tickets for the football game from Eino Fflliikkiinnenn. He didn’t come around the fraternity house much because he was so busy with training. I finally found him eating with the team at their training table. A corps of waiters were lined against the wall, not serving the team, but watching so they didn’t eat each other. Because I was his fraternity brother, Eino sacrificed two tickets behind the goal posts to me for $45.

  Noblesse picked me up before the game. She was with Bob Scream and Peggy Orifice in Bob’s convertible. There was a little time before the kickoff, so we sped festively around the stadium, shouting and waving, honking wildly, and raising lumps on pedestrians.

  Finally we went into the stadium and wedged ourselves into our seats. I bought Noblesse a balloon. She wrote her phone number on it and released it. Then came the kickoff. Sixty thousand throats shook the earth with their roars. The game was on!

  It was one of the most thrilling and colorful afternoons of my life. Although I could not see the field, I knew when I heard cheering that something significant was happening and I yelled as loud as I could. It gave me a sense of belonging. Noblesse joined me, gaily yelling, “I mean block that kick,” or “Hold that line, after all.”

  Between the halves there was a colorful ceremony in which a pick-and-shovel squad marched out into the field in formation and dug up the opposing backfield men whom the Minnesota linemen had driven into the ground. This ceremony had been regularly followed since 1931, when an unseasonal winter thaw had unearthed the body of a Purdue tailback on the 40-yard line where he had lain since the Minnesota-Purdue game the previous fall.

  Minnesota won the game 84 to 0. Of course everyone knew Minnesota was going to win. They were just interested in seeing how their jackpot numbers came out.

  After the game we met Bob and Peggy outside the stadium. “Let’s go over to the Collegiate Eat Shop. Carl Carnage is going to meet us there,” said Bob casually.

  “Not Carl Carnage, the halfback!” I cried.

  “Not his grandmother,” said Bob wittily. “He’ll be over as soon as he gets paid for today’s game.”

  We went to the restaurant, and Carl Carnage soon joined us. For all his fame and publicity, he was a regular fellow. He let me buy him dinner, and later, when we went to the Golden Grouse, he let me pay for his drinks all night.

  The Golden Grouse was a quaint little tavern just outside of Minneapolis that was frequented by the gay college crowd after football games. It was run by two genial Neapolitans, Snake and Trigger Caruso, who had formerly been with Capone. When we arrived the place was already crowded with shouting, singing college people. The waiters scurried energetically about serving the exotic mixed drinks that the college crowd fancied. Behind the bar stood Snake and Trigger Caruso, impassively watering the liquor. The band was playing “Minnesota Rouser.”

  We joined some friends of Bob’s at a large table. “Look at Ed,” shrieked a girl at the table, pointing at her escort. “He just drank a zombie, a sloe-gin fizz, a horse’s neck, a sidecar, and an old-fashioned—one after the other.”

  Ed smiled greenly.

  A waiter approached. “I’ll have a crème de menthe frappé with a beer chaser,” said Noblesse. We ordered the same.

  We sat around chatting animatedly and drinking. Bob had us in stitches with his imitation of a fat woman putting on her girdle. Carl Carnage talked with a girl at an adjoining table for a while and then took her outside to see an interesting metamorphic rock structure he said he had noticed up the road a piece. He was studying geology at school.

  The other tables, too, were scenes of hilarious abandon. At one a dental student, in an alcoholic dis
play of virtuosity, yanked out his girl’s teeth with a pliers. At another a young woman was solemnly putting ice cubes down her escort’s back. In the corner a fellow was arguing heatedly with an empty chair.

  “I mean I simply adore drinking,” Noblesse said to me. “I mean it’s so good for my inhibitions.”

  “Put your dress back on, lady. You’ll catch cold,” said Snake Caruso, who had come over to the table.

  Bob had the place in a panic when he danced with a hall tree. Carl brought his girl in and took another one out. Trigger Caruso restrained a young man who was beating his head against the bar. “But I like it,” protested the young man. The band kept playing the “Minnesota Rouser.”

  After we left the Golden Grouse we went to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for ribs. Lovable old Uncle Tom saw us coming and hurriedly scribbled doubled prices on the menu. We sang the “Minnesota Rouser,” and Bob almost made us split a gut when he insisted on lapping the water in his glass like a dog. By the time we were through eating it was light outside.

  Bob stopped in front of the Beta Thigh house, and I took Noblesse to the door. When we reached the door she lifted her face. I kissed her furiously about the chin and mouth. “Tonight will always remain fresh in my heart,” I whispered.

  She smiled tenderly, and then suddenly the smile disappeared. “The pin!” she exclaimed. “You were supposed to give me the pin today.”

  I thought frantically of something to say, but it wasn’t necessary. All at once her face turned one shade lighter than white, and her eyes rolled up in their sockets. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she bolted into the house.

  “Pssst. Yoo, hoo,” called Mother Bloor from behind a hedge.

  CHAPTER XII

  Avez-vous une cigarette? —MISTINGUETTE

  A great deal of nonsense has been written about college professors. It has been averred that they live cloistered lives, protected by their ivy-covered, academic walls from the harsh realities of the world. They are supposed to be concerned only with hairsplitting and niceties. They are said to look upon the grimness of our age with loathing.