The Thurber Carnival

by James Thurber

  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.

  Once I went for a walk with him out Town Street on a Saturday afternoon. It was a warm day, and after a while I said I wanted a soda. Well, he said, he didn’t care if he took something himself. We went into a drugstore, and I ordered a chocolate soda and he had a lemon phosphate. When we had finished, he said, ‘Jimmy, my son, I’ll match you to see who pays for the drinks.’ He handed me a quarter and he told me to toss the quarter and he would call the turn. He called heads and won. I paid for the drinks. It left me with a dime.

  I was fifteen when Doc got out his pamphlets, as he called them. He had eased the misery of the life of a small-time printer and the grateful man had given him a special price on two thousand advertising pamphlets. There was very little in them about Blackhawk Liniment. They were mostly about Doc himself and his ‘Life in the Far West’. He had gone out to Franklin Park one day with a photographer – another of his numerous friends – and there the photographer took dozens of pictures of Doc, a lariat in one hand, a six-shooter in the other. I had gone along. When the pamphlets came out, there were the pictures of Doc, peering around trees, crouching behind bushes, whirling the lariat, aiming the gun. ‘Dr H. M. Marlowe Hunting Indians’ was one of the captions. ‘Dr H. M. Marlowe after Hoss-Thieves’ was another one. He was very proud of the pamphlets and always had a sheaf with him. He would pass them out to people on the street.

  Two years before he died Doc got hold of an ancient, wheezy Cadillac somewhere. He aimed to start travelling around again, he said, but he never did, because the old automobile was so worn out it wouldn’t hold up for more than a mile or so. It was about this time that a man named Hardman and his wife came to stay at Mrs Willoughby’s. They were farm people from around Lancaster who had sold their place. They got to like Doc because he was so jolly, they said, and they enjoyed his stories. He treated Mrs Hardman for an old complaint in the small of her back and wouldn’t take any money for it. They thought he was a fine gentleman. Then there came a day when they announced that they were going to St Louis, where they had a son. They talked some of settling in St Louis. Doc Marlowe told them they ought to buy a nice auto cheap and drive out, instead of going by train – it wouldn’t cost much and they could see the country, give themselves a treat. Now, he knew where they could pick up just such a car.

  Of course, he finally sold them the decrepit Cadillac – it had been stored away somewhere in the back of a garage whose owner kept it there for nothing because Doc had relieved his mother of a distress in the groins, as Doc explained it. I don’t know just how the garage man doctored up the car, but he did. It actually chugged along pretty steadily when Doc took the Hardmans out for a trial spin. He told them he hated to part with it, but he finally let them have it for a hundred dollars. I knew, of course, and so did Doc, that it couldn’t last many miles.

  Doc got a letter from the Hardmans in St Louis ten days later. They had had to abandon the old junk pile in West Jefferson, some fifteen miles out of Columbus. Doc read the letter aloud to me, peering over his glasses, his eyes twinkling, every now and then punctuating the lines with ‘Hay, boy!’ and ‘Hay, boy-gie!’ ‘I just want you to know, Dr Marlowe,’ he read, ‘what I think of low-life swindlers like you [Hay, boy!] and that it will be a long day before I put my trust in a two-faced lyer and imposture again [Hay, boy-gie!]. The garage man in W. Jefferson told us your old rattle-trap had been doctored up just to fool us. It was a low down dirty trick as no swine would play on a white man [Hay, boy!].’ Far from being disturbed by the letter, Doc Marlowe was plainly amused. He took off his glasses, after he finished it and laughed, his hand to his brow and his eyes closed. I was pretty mad, because I had liked the Hardmans, and because they had liked him. Doc Marlowe put the letter carefully back into its envelope and tucked it away in his inside coat pocket, as if it were something precious. Then he picked up a pack of cards and began to lay out a solitaire hand. ‘Want to set in a little seven-up game, Jimmy?’ he asked me. I was furious. ‘Not with a cheater like you!’ I shouted, and stamped out of the room, slamming the door. I could hear him chuckling to himself behind me.

  The last time I saw Doc Marlowe was just a few days before he died. I didn’t know anything about death, but I knew that he was dying when I saw him. His voice was very faint and his face was drawn; they told me he had a lot of pain. When I got ready to leave the room, he asked me to bring him a tin box that was on his bureau. I got it and handed it to him. He poked around in it for a while with unsteady fingers and finally found what he wanted. He handed it to me. It was a quarter, or rather it looked like a quarter, but it had heads on both sides. ‘Never let the other fella call the turn, Jimmy, my boy,’ said Doc, with a shadow of his old twinkle and the echo of his old chuckle. I still have the two-headed quarter. For a long time I didn’t like to think about it, or about Doc Marlowe, but I do now.

  The Wood Duck

  Mr Krepp, our vegetable man, had told us we might find some cider out the New Milford road a way – we would come to a sign saying ‘Morris Plains Farm’ and that would be the place. So we got into the car and drove down the concrete New Milford road, which is black in the centre with the dropped oil of a million cars. It’s a main-trunk highway; you can go fifty miles an hour on it except where warning signs limit you to forty or, near towns, thirty-five, but nobody ever pays any attention to these signs. Even then, in November, dozens of cars flashed past us with a high, ominous whine, their tyres roaring rubberly on the concrete. We found Morris Plains Farm without any trouble. There was a big white house to the left of the highway; only a few yards off the road a small barn had been made into a roadside stand, with a dirt driveway curving up to the front of it. A spare, red-cheeked man stood in the midst of baskets and barrels of red apples and glass jugs of red cider. He was waiting on a man and a woman. I turned into the driveway – and put the brakes on hard. I had seen, just in time, a duck.

  It was a small, trim duck, and even I, who know nothing about wild fowl, knew that this was no barnyard duck, this was a wild duck. He was all alone. There was no other bird of any kind around, not even a chicken. He was immensely solitary. With none of the awkward waddling of a domestic duck, he kept walking busily around in the driveway, now and then billing up water from a dirty puddle in the middle of the drive. His obvious contentment, his apparently perfect adjustment to his surroundings, struck me as something of a marvel. I got out of the car and spoke about it to a man who had driven up behind me in a rattly sedan. He wore a leather jacket and high, hard boots, and I figured he would know what kind of duck this was. He did. ‘That’s a wood duck,’ he said. ‘It dropped in here about two weeks ago, Len says, and’s been here ever since.’

  The proprietor of the stand, in whose direction my informant had nodded as he spoke, helped his customers load a basket of a
pples into their car and walked over to us. The duck stepped, with a little flutter of its wings, into the dirty puddle, took a small, unconcerned swim, and got out again, ruffling its feathers. ‘It’s rather an odd place for a wood duck, isn’t it?’ asked my wife. Len grinned and nodded; we all watched the duck. ‘He’s a banded duck,’ said Len. ‘There’s a band on his leg. The state game commission sends out a lot of ’em. This’n lighted here two weeks ago – it was on a Saturday – and he’s been around ever since.’ ‘It’s funny he wouldn’t be frightened away, with all the cars going by and all the people driving in,’ I said. Len chuckled. ‘He seems to like it here,’ he said. The duck wandered over to some sparse grass at the edge of the road, aimlessly, but with an air of settled satisfaction. ‘He’s tame as anything,’ said Len. ‘I guess they get tame when them fellows band ’em.’ The man in the leather jacket said, ‘’Course they haven’t let you shoot wood duck for a long while and that might make ’em tame, too.’ ‘Still,’ said my wife (we forgot about the cider for the moment), ‘it’s strange he would stay here, right on the road almost.’ ‘Sometimes,’ said Len, reflectively, ‘he goes round back o’ the barn. But mostly he’s here in the drive.’ ‘But don’t they,’ she asked, ‘let them loose in the woods after they’re banded? I mean, aren’t they supposed to stock up the forests?’ ‘I guess they’re supposed to,’ said Len, chuckling again, ‘But ’pears this’n didn’t want to.’

  An old Ford truck lurched into the driveway and two men in the seat hailed the proprietor. They were hunters, big, warmly dressed, heavily shod men. In the back of the truck was a large bird dog. He was an old pointer and he wore an expression of remote disdain for the world of roadside commerce. He took no notice of the duck. The two hunters said something to Len about cider, and I was just about to chime in with my order when the accident happened. A car went by the stand at fifty miles an hour, leaving something scurrying in its wake. It was the duck, turning over and over on the concrete. He turned over and over swiftly, but lifelessly, like a thrown feather duster, and then he lay still. ‘My God,’ I cried, ‘they’ve killed your duck, Len!’ The accident gave me a quick feeling of anguished intimacy with the bereaved man. ‘Oh, now,’ he wailed. ‘Now, that’s awful!’ None of us for a moment moved. Then the two hunters walked toward the road, slowly, self-consciously, a little embarrassed in the face of this quick incongruous ending of a wild fowl’s life in the middle of a concrete highway. The pointer stood up, looked after the hunters, raised his ears briefly, and then lay down again.

  It was the man in the leather jacket finally who walked out to the duck and tried to pick it up. As he did so, the duck stood up. He looked about him like a person who has been abruptly wakened and doesn’t know where he is. He didn’t ruffle his feathers. ‘Oh, he isn’t quite dead!’ said my wife. I knew how she felt. We were going to have to see the duck die; somebody would have to kill him, finish him off. Len stood beside us. My wife took hold of his arm. The man in the leather jacket knelt down, stretched out a hand, and the duck moved slightly away. Just then, out from behind the barn, limped a setter dog, a lean white setter dog with black spots. His right back leg was useless and he kept it off the ground. He stopped when he saw the duck in the road and gave it a point, putting his head out, lifting his front leg, maintaining a wavering, marvellous balance on two legs. He was like a drunken man drawing a bead with a gun. This new menace, this anticlimax, was too much. I think I yelled.

  What happened next happened as fast as the automobile accident. The setter made his run, a limping, wobbly run, and he was in between the men and the bird before they saw him. The duck flew, got somehow off the ground a foot or two, and tumbled into the grass of the field across the road, the dog after him. It seemed crazy, but the duck could fly – a little, anyway. ‘Here, here,’ said Len, weakly. The hunters shouted, I shouted, my wife screamed. ‘He’ll kill him! He’ll kill him!’ The duck flew a few yards again, the dog at his tail. The dog’s third plunge brought his nose almost to the duck’s tail, and then one of the hunters tackled the animal and pulled him down and knelt in the grass, holding him. We all breathed easier. My wife let go Len’s arm.

  Len started across the road after the duck, who was fluttering slowly, waveringly, but with a definite purpose, toward a wood that fringed the far side of the field. The bird was dazed, but a sure, atavistic urge was guiding him; he was going home. One of the hunters joined Len in his pursuit. The other came back across the road, dragging the indignant setter; the man in the leather jacket walked beside them. We all watched Len and his companion reach the edge of the wood and stand there, looking; they had followed the duck through the grass slowly, so as not to alarm him; he had been alarmed enough. ‘He’ll never come back,’ said my wife. Len and the hunter finally turned and came back through the grass. The duck had got away from them. We walked out to meet them at the edge of the concrete. Cars began to whiz by in both directions. I realized, with wonder, that all the time the duck, and the hunters, and the setter were milling around in the road, not one had passed. It was as if traffic had been held up so that our little drama could go on. ‘He couldn’t o’ been much hurt,’ said Len. ‘Likely just grazed and pulled along in the wind of the car. Them fellows don’t look out for anything. It’s a sin.’ My wife had a question for him. ‘Does your dog always chase the duck?’ she asked. ‘Oh, that ain’t my dog,’ said Len. ‘He just comes around.’ The hunter who had been holding the setter now let him go, and he slunk away. The pointer, I noticed, lay with his eyes closed. ‘But doesn’t the duck mind the dog?’ persisted my wife. ‘Oh, he minds him,’ said Len. ‘But the dog’s never really hurt him none yet. There’s always somebody around.’

  We drove away with a great deal to talk about (I almost forgot the cider). I explained the irony, I think I explained the profound symbolism, of a wild duck’s becoming attached to a roadside stand. My wife strove simply to understand the duck’s viewpoint. She didn’t get anywhere. I knew even then, in the back of my mind, what would happen. We decided, after a cocktail, to drive back to the place and find out if the duck had returned. My wife hoped it wouldn’t be there, on account of the life it led in the driveway; I hoped it wouldn’t because I felt that would be, somehow, too pat an ending. Night was falling when we started off again for Morris Plains Farm. It was a five-mile drive and I had to put my bright lights on before we got there. The barn door was closed for the night. We didn’t see the duck anywhere. The only thing to do was to go up to the house and inquire. I knocked on the door and a young man opened it. ‘Is – is the proprietor here?’ I asked. He said no, he had gone to Waterbury. ‘We wanted to know,’ my wife said, ‘whether the duck came back.’ ‘What?’ he asked, a little startled, I thought. Then, ‘Oh, the duck. I saw him around the driveway when my father drove off.’ He stared at us, waiting. I thanked him and started back to the car. My wife lingered, explaining, for a moment. ‘He thinks we’re crazy,’ she said, when she got into the car. We drove on a little distance. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s back.’ ‘I’m glad he is, in a way,’ said my wife. ‘I hated to think of him all alone out there in the woods.’

  4

  FROM THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE

  The Departure of Emma Inch

  Emma Inch looked no different from any other middle-aged, thin woman you might glance at in the subway or deal with across the counter of some small store in a country town, and then forget forever. Her hair was drab and unabundant, her face made no impression on you, her voice I don’t remember – it was just a voice. She came to us with a letter of recommendation from some acquaintance who knew that we were going to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer and wanted a cook. We took her because there was nobody else, and she seemed all right. She had arrived at our hotel in Forty-fifth Street the day before we were going to leave and we got her a room for the night, because she lived way uptown somewhere. She said she really ought to go back and give up her room, but I told her I’d fix that.

  Emma I
nch had a big scuffed brown suitcase with her, and a Boston bull terrier. His name was Feely. Feely was seventeen years old and he grumbled and growled and snuffled all the time, but we needed a cook and we agreed to take Feely along with Emma Inch, if she would take care of him and keep him out of the way. It turned out to be easy to keep Feely out of the way because he would lie grousing anywhere Emma put him until she came and picked him up again. I never saw him walk. Emma had owned him, she said, since he was a pup. He was all she had in the world, she told us, with a mist in her eyes. I felt embarrassed but not touched. I didn’t see how anybody could love Feely.

  I didn’t loose any sleep about Emma Inch and Feely the night of the day they arrived, but my wife did. She told me next morning that she had lain awake a long time thinking about the cook and her dog, because she felt kind of funny about them. She didn’t know why. She just had a feeling that they were kind of funny: When we were all ready to leave – it was about three o’clock in the afternoon, for we had kept putting off the packing – I phoned Emma’s room, but she didn’t answer. It was getting late and we felt nervous – the Fall River boat would sail in about two hours. We couldn’t understand why we hadn’t heard anything from Emma and Feely. It wasn’t until four o’clock that we did. There was a small rap on the door of our bedroom and I opened it and Emma and Feely were there, Feely in her arms, snuffing and snaffling, as if he had been swimming a long way.