The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

by James Thurber

  I found Marcia pale, but calm, and as firm in her stand as Gordon was in his. She insisted that he had deliberately tried to humiliate her before that gawky so-called novelist, whose clothes were the dowdiest she had ever seen and whose affectations obviously covered up a complete lack of individuality and intelligence. I tried to convince her that she was wrong about Gordon’s attitude at the Clarkes’ party, but she said she knew him like a book. Let him get a divorce and marry that creature if he wanted to. They can sit around all day, she said, and all night, too, for all I care, and talk about their precious Donald Duck, the damn comic strip! I told Marcia that she shouldn’t allow herself to get so worked up about a trivial and nonsensical matter. She said it was not silly and nonsensical to her. It might have been once, yes, but it wasn’t now. It had made her see Gordon clearly for what he was, a cheap, egotistical, resentful cad who would descend to ridicule his wife in front of a scrawny, horrible stranger who could not write and never would be able to write. Furthermore, her belief in Garbo’s greatness was a thing she could not deny and would not deny, simply for the sake of living under the same roof with Gordon Winship. The whole thing was part and parcel of her integrity as a woman and as an – as an, well, as a woman. She could go to work again; he would find out.

  There was nothing more that I could say or do. I went home. That night, however, I found that I had not really dismissed the whole ridiculous affair, as I hoped I had, for I dreamed about it. I had tried to ignore the thing, but it had tunnelled deeply into my subconscious. I dreamed that I was out hunting with the Winships and that, as we crossed a snowy field, Marcia spotted a rabbit and, taking quick aim, fired and brought it down. We all ran across the snow toward the rabbit, but I reached it first. It was quite dead, but that was not what struck horror into me as I picked it up. What struck horror into me was that it was a white rabbit and was wearing a vest and carrying a watch. I woke up with a start. I don’t know whether that dream means that I am on Gordon’s side or on Marcia’s. I don’t want to analyse it. I am trying to forget the whole miserable business.

  A Couple of Hamburgers

  It had been raining for a long time, a slow, cold rain falling out of iron-coloured clouds. They had been driving since morning and they still had a hundred and thirty miles to go. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. ‘I’m getting hungry,’ she said. He took his eyes off the wet, winding road for a fraction of a second and said, ‘We’ll stop at a dog-wagon.’ She shifted her position irritably. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call them dog-wagons,’ she said. He pressed the klaxon button and went around a slow car. ‘That’s what they are,’ he said ‘Dog-wagons.’ She waited a few seconds ‘Decent people call them diners,’ she told him, and added, ‘Even if you call them diners, I don’t like them.’ He speeded up a hill. ‘They have better stuff than most restaurants,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I want to get home before dark and it takes too long in a restaurant. We can stay our stomachs with a couple hamburgers.’ She lighted a cigarette and he asked her to light one for him. She lighted one deliberately and handed it to him. ‘I wish you wouldn’t say “stay our stomachs”,’ she said. ‘You know I hate that. It’s like “sticking to your ribs”. You say that all the time.’ He grinned. ‘Good old American expressions, both of them,’ he said. ‘Like sow belly. Old pioneer term, sow belly.’ She sniffed. ‘My ancestors were pioneers, too. You don’t have to be vulgar just because you were a pioneer.’ ‘Your ancestors never got as far west as mine did,’ he said. ‘The real pioneers travelled on their sow belly and got somewhere.’ He laughed loudly at that. She looked out at the wet trees and signs and telephone poles going by. They drove on for several miles without a word; he kept chortling every now and then.

  ‘What’s that funny sound?’ she asked, suddenly. It invariably made him angry when she heard a funny sound. ‘What funny sound?’ he demanded. ‘You’re always hearing funny sounds.’ She laughed briefly. ‘That’s what you said when the bearing burned out,’ she reminded him. ‘You’d never have noticed it if it hadn’t been for me.’ ‘I noticed it, all right,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When it was too late.’ She enjoyed bringing up the subject of the burned-out bearing whenever he got to chortling. ‘It was too late when you noticed it, as far as that goes,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘Well, what does it sound like this time? All engines make a noise running, you know.’ ‘I know all about that,’ she answered. ‘It sounds like – it sounds like a lot of safety pins being jiggled around in a tumbler.’ He snorted. ‘That’s your imagination. Nothing gets the matter with a car that sounds like a lot of safety-pins. I happen to know that.’ She tossed away her cigarette. ‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘You always happen to know everything.’ They drove on in silence.

  ‘I want to stop somewhere and get something to eat! she said loudly. ‘All right, all right!’ he said. ‘I been watching for a dog-wagon, haven’t I? There hasn’t been any. I can’t make you a dog-wagon.’ The wind blew rain in on her and she put up the window on her side all the way. ‘I won’t stop at just any old diner,’ she said. ‘I won’t stop unless it’s a cute one.’ He looked around at her. ‘Unless it’s a what one?’ he shouted. ‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘I mean a decent, clean one where they don’t slosh things at you. I hate to have a lot of milky coffee sloshed at me.’ ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll find a cute one, then. You pick it out. I wouldn’t know. I might find one that was cunning but not cute.’ That struck him as funny and he began to chortle again. ‘Oh, shut up,’ she said.

  Five miles farther along they came to a place called Sam’s Diner. ‘Here’s one,’ he said, slowing down. She looked it over. ‘I don’t want to stop there,’ she said. ‘I don’t like the ones that have nicknames.’ He brought the car to a stop at one side of the road ‘Just what’s the matter with the ones that have nicknames?’ he asked with edgy, mock interest. ‘They’re always Greek ones,’ she told him. ‘They’re always Greek one’s,’ he repeated after her. He set his teeth firmly together and started up again. After a time, ‘Good old Sam, the Greek,’ he said, in a singsong. ‘Good old Connecticut Sam Beardsley, the Greek.’ ‘You didn’t see his name,’ she snapped. ‘Winthrop, then,’ he said. ‘Old Samuel Cabot Winthrop, the Greek dog-wagon man.’ He was getting hungry.

  On the outskirts of the next town she said, as he slowed down, ‘It looks like a factory kind of town.’ He knew that she meant she wouldn’t stop there. He drove on through the place. She lighted a cigarette as they pulled out into the open again. He slowed down and lighted a cigarette for himself. ‘Factory kind of town than I am!’ he snarled. It was ten miles before they came to another town. ‘Torrington,’ he growled. ‘Happen to know there’s a dog-wagon here because I stopped in it once with Bob Combs. Damn cute place, too, if you ask me.’ ‘I’m not asking you anything,’ she said, coldly. ‘You think you’re so funny. I think I know the one you mean,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It’s right in the town and it sits at an angle from the road. They’re never so good, for some reason.’ He glared at her and almost ran up against the kerb. ‘What the hell do you mean “sits at an angle from the road”?’ he cried. He was very hungry now. ‘Well, it isn’t silly,’ she said, calmly. ‘I’ve noticed the ones that sit at an angle. They’re cheaper, because they fitted them into funny little pieces of ground. The big ones parallel to the road are the best.’ He drove right through Torrington, his lips compressed. ‘Angle from the road, for God’s sake!’ he snarled, finally. She was looking out her window.

  On the outskirts of the next town there was a diner called The Elite Diner. ‘This looks –’ she began. ‘I see it, I see it!’ he said. ‘It doesn’t happen to look any cuter to me than any goddam –’ she cut him off. ‘Don’t be such a sorehead, for Lord’s sake,’ she said. He pulled up and stopped beside the diner, and turned on her. ‘Listen,’ he said, grittingly, ‘I’m going to put down a couple of hamburgers in this place even if there isn’t one single inch of chintz or cretonne in the whole –’ �
�Oh, be still,’ she said. ‘You’re just hungry and mean like a child. Eat your old hamburgers, what do I care?’ Inside the place they sat down on stools and the counterman walked over to them, wiping up the counter top with a cloth as he did so. ‘What’ll it be, folks?’ he said. ‘Bad day, ain’t it? Except for ducks.’ ‘I’ll have a couple of –’ began the husband, but his wife cut in. ‘I just want a pack of cigarettes,’ she said. He turned around slowly on his stool and stared at her as she put a dime and a nickel in the cigarette machine and ejected a package of Lucky Strikes. He turned to the counterman again. ‘I want a couple of hamburgers,’ he said. ‘With mustard and lots of onion. Lots of onion!’ She hated onions. ‘I’ll wait for you in the car,’ she said. He didn’t answer and she went out.

  He finished his hamburgers and his coffee slowly. It was terrible coffee. Then he went out to the car and got in and drove off, slowly humming ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’ After a mile or so, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘What was the matter with the Elite Diner, milady?’ ‘Didn’t you see that cloth the man was wiping the counter with?’ she demanded. ‘Ugh!’ She shuddered. ‘I didn’t happen to want to eat any of the counter,’ he said. He laughed at that comeback. ‘You didn’t even notice it,’ she said. ‘You never notice anything. It was filthy.’ ‘I noticed they had some damn fine coffee in there,’ he said. ‘It was swell.’ He knew she loved good coffee. He began to hum his tune again; then he whistled it; then he began to sing it. She did not show her annoyance, but she knew that he knew she was annoyed. ‘Will you be kind enough to tell me what time it is?’ she asked. ‘Big bad wolf, big bad wolf – five minutes o’ five – tum-dee-doo-dee-dum-m-m.’ She settled back in her seat and took a cigarette from her case and tapped it on the case. ‘I’ll wait till we get home,’ she said. ‘If you’ll be kind enough to speed up a little.’ He drove on at the same speed. After a time he gave up the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ and there was deep silence for two miles. Then suddenly he began to sing, very loudly, H-A-double-R-I-G-A-N spells Harrr-i-gan –’ She gritted her teeth. She hated that worse than any of his songs except ‘Barney Google’. He would go on to ‘Barney Google’ pretty soon, she knew. Suddenly she leaned slightly forward. The straight line of her lips began to curve up ever so slightly. She heard the safety-pins in the tumbler again. Only now they were louder, more insistent, ominous. He was singing too loud to hear them. ‘Is a name that shame has never been con-nec-ted with – Harrr-i-gan, that’s me! She relaxed against the back of the seat, content to wait.

  Doc Marlowe

  I was too young to be other than awed and puzzled by Doc Marlowe when I knew him. I was only sixteen when he died. He was sixty-seven. There was that vast difference in our ages and there was a vaster difference in our backgrounds. Doc Marlowe was a medicine-show man. He had been a lot of other things, too: a circus man, the proprietor of a concession at Coney Island, a saloon-keeper; but in his fifties he had travelled around with a tent-show troupe made up of a Mexican named Chickalilli, who threw knives, and a man called Professor Jones, who played the banjo. Doc Marlowe would come out after the entertainment and harangue the crowd and sell bottles of medicine for all kinds of ailments. I found out all this about him gradually, toward the last, and after he died. When I first knew him, he represented the Wild West to me, and there was nobody I admired so much.

  I met Doc Marlowe at old Mrs Willoughby’s rooming-house. She had been a nurse in our family, and I used to go and visit her over week-ends sometimes, for I was very fond of her. I was about eleven years old then. Doc Marlowe wore scarred leather leggings, a bright-coloured bead vest that he said he got from the Indians, and a ten-gallon hat with kitchen matches stuck in the band, all the way round. He was about six feet four inches tall, with big shoulders, and a long, drooping moustache. He let his hair grow long, like General Custer’s. He had a wonderful collection of Indian relics and six-shooters, and he used to tell me stories of his adventures in the Far West. His favourite expressions were ‘Hay, boy!’ and ‘Hay, boy-gie!’, which he used the way some people now use ‘Hot dog!’ or ‘Doggone!’ He told me once that he had killed an Indian chief named Yellow Hand in a tomahowk duel on horseback. I thought he was the greatest man I had ever seen. It wasn’t until he died and his son came on from New Jersey for the funeral that I found out he had never been in the Far West in his life. He had been born in Brooklyn.

  Doc Marlowe had given up the road when I knew him, but he still dealt in what he called ‘medicines’. His stock in trade was a liniment that he had called Snake Oil when he travelled around. He changed the name to Blackhawk Liniment when he settled in Columbus. Doc didn’t always sell enough of it to pay for his bed and board, and old Mrs Willoughby would sometimes have to ‘trust’ him for weeks at a time. She didn’t mind, because his liniment had taken a bad kink out of her right limb that had bothered her for thirty years. I used to see people whom Doc had massaged with Blackhawk Liniment move arms and legs that they hadn’t been able to move before he ‘treated’ them. His patients were day labourers, wives of streetcar conductors, and people like that. Sometimes they would shout and weep after Doc had massaged them, and several got up and walked around who hadn’t been able to walk before. One man hadn’t turned his head to either side for seven years before Doc soused him with Blackhawk. In half an hour he could move his head as easily as I could move mine. ‘Glory be to God!’ he shouted. ‘It’s the secret qualities in the ointment, my friend,’ Doc Marlowe told him, suavely. He always called the liniment ointment.

  News of his miracles got around by word of mouth among the poorer classes of town – he was not able to reach the better people (the ‘tony folks’, he called them) – but there was never a big enough sale to give Doc a steady income. For one thing, people thought there was more magic in Doc’s touch than in his liniment, and, for another, the ingredients of Blackhawk cost so much that his profits were not very great. I know, because I used to go to the wholesale chemical company once in a while for him and buy his supplies. Everything that went into the liniment was standard and expensive (and well-known, not secret). A man at the company told me he didn’t see how Doc could make much money on it at thirty-five cents a bottle. But even when he was very low in funds Doc never cut out any of the ingredients or substituted cheaper ones. Mrs Willoughby had suggested it to him once, she told me, when she was helping him ‘put up a batch’, and he had got mad. ‘He puts a heap of store by that liniment being right up to the mark,’ she said.

  Doc added to his small earnings, I discovered, by money he made gambling. He used to win quite a few dollars on Saturday nights at Freck’s saloon, playing poker with the marketman and the rail-roaders who dropped in there. It wasn’t for several years that I found out Doc cheated. I had never heard about marked cards until he told me about them and showed me his. It was one rainy afternoon, after he had played seven-up with Mrs Willoughby and old Mr Peiffer, another roomer of hers. They had played for small stakes (Doc wouldn’t play cards unless there was some money up, and Mrs Willoughby wouldn’t play if very much was up). Only twenty or thirty cents had changed hands in the end. Doc had won it all. I remember my astonishment and indignation when it dawned on me that Doc had used the marked cards in playing the old lady and the old man. ‘You didn’t cheat them, did you?’ I asked him. ‘Jimmy, my boy,’ he told me, ‘the man that calls the turn wins the money.’ His eyes twinkled and he seemed to enjoy my anger. I was outraged, but I was helpless. I knew I could never tell Mrs Willoughby about how Doc had cheated her at seven-up. I liked her, but I liked him, too. Once he had given me a whole dollar to buy fireworks with on the Fourth of July.

  I remember once, when I was staying at Mrs Willoughby’s, Doc Marlowe was roused out of bed in the middle of the night by a poor woman who was frantic because her little girl was sick. This woman had had the sciatica driven out of her by his liniment, she reminded Doc. He placed her then. She had never been able to pay him a cent for his liniment or his ‘treatments’, and he had given her a
great many. He got up and dressed, and went over to her house. The child had colic, I suppose. Doc couldn’t have had any idea what was the matter, but he sopped on liniment; he sopped on a whole bottle. When he came back home, two hours later, he said he had ‘relieved the distress’. The little girl had gone to sleep and was all right the next day, whether on account of Doc Marlowe or in spite of him I don’t know. ‘I want to thank you, Doctor,’ said the mother, tremulously, when she called on him that afternoon. He gave her another bottle of liniment, and he didn’t charge her for it or for his ‘professional call’. He used to massage, and give liniment to, a lot of sufferers who were too poor to pay. Mrs Willoughby told him once that he was too generous and too easily taken in. Doc laughed – and winked at me, with the twinkle in his eye that he had had when he told me how he had cheated the old lady at cards.