The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories (66 page)

ULSA: (
Sullenly
) I can't sleep except in a box. And I've heard that you were cashiered from your club.

MR. ICKY: A cashier? . . .

DIVINE: (
Hanging his head
) I
was
cashiered.

ULSA: What for?

DIVINE: (
Almost inaudibly
) I hid the polo balls one day for a joke.

MR. ICKY: Is your mind in good shape?

DIVINE: (
Gloomily
) Fair. After all what is brilliance? Merely the tact to sow when no one is looking and reap when every one is.

MR. ICKY: Be careful. . . . I will not marry my daughter to an epigram. . . .

DIVINE: (
More gloomily
) I assure you I'm a mere platitude. I often descend to the level of an innate idea.

ULSA: (
Dully
) None of what you're saying matters. I can't marry a man who thinks it would be Jack. Why Frank would——

DIVINE: (
Interrupting
) Nonsense!

ULSA: (
Emphatically
) You're a fool!

MR. ICKY: Tut—tut! . . . One should not judge . . . Charity, my girl. What was it Nero said?—“With malice toward none, with charity toward all——”

PETER: That wasn't Nero. That was John Drink-water.
³

MR. ICKY: Come! Who is this Frank? Who is this Jack?

DIVINE: (
Morosely
) Gotch.

ULSA: Dempsey.

DIVINE: We were arguing that if they were deadly enemies and locked in a room together which one would come out alive. Now I claimed that Jack Dempsey
⁴
would take one——

ULSA: (
Angrily
) Rot! He wouldn't have a——

DIVINE: (
Quickly
) You win.

ULSA: Then I love you again.

MR. ICKY: So I'm going to lose my little daughter. . . .

ULSA: You've still got a houseful of children.

(CHARLES, ULSA'S
brother, coming out of the cottage. He is dressed as if to go to sea; a coil of rope is slung about his shoulder and an anchor is hanging from his neck.
)

CHARLES: (
Not seeing them
) I'm going to sea! I'm going to sea! (
His voice is triumphant.
)

MR. ICKY: (
Sadly
) You went to seed long ago.

CHARLES: I've been reading “Conrad.”

PETER: (
Dreamily
) “Conrad,” ah! “Two Years Before the Mast,” by Henry James.

CHARLES: What?

PETER: Walter Pater's version of “Robinson Crusoe.”
⁵

CHARLES: (
To his feyther
) I can't stay here and rot with you. I want to live my life. I want to hunt eels.

MR. ICKY: I will be here . . . when you come back. . . .

CHARLES: (
Contemptuously
) Why, the worms are licking their chops already when they hear your name.

(
It will be noticed that some of the characters have not spoken for some time. It will improve the technique if they can be rendering a spirited saxophone number.
)

MR. ICKY: (
Mournfully
) These vales, these hills, these McCormick harvesters
⁶
—they mean nothing to my children. I understand.

CHARLES: (
More gently
) Then you'll think of me kindly, feyther. To understand is to forgive.

MR. ICKY: No . . . no. . . . We never forgive those we can understand. . . . We can only forgive those who wound us for no reason at all. . . .

CHARLES: (
Impatiently
) I'm so beastly sick of your human nature line. And, anyway, I hate the hours around here:

(
Several dozen more of
MR. ICKY'S
children trip out of the house, trip over the grass, and trip over the pots and dods. They are muttering “We are going away,” and “We are leaving you.”
)

MR. ICKY: (
His heart breaking
) They're all deserting me. I've been too kind. Spare the rod and spoil the fun. Oh, for the glands of a Bismarck.
⁷

(
There is a honking outside—probably
DIVINE'S
chauffeur growing impatient for his master.
)

MR. ICKY: (
In misery
) They do not love the soil! They have been faithless to the Great Potato Tradition! (
He picks up a handful of soil
passionately and rubs it on his bald head. Hair sprouts.
) Oh, Wordsworth,
⁸
Wordsworth, how true you spoke!

 

(
They all groan and shouting “Life” and “Jazz” move slowly toward the wings.
)

CHARLES: Back to the soil, yes! I've been trying to turn my back to the soil for ten years!

ANOTHER CHILD: The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?

ANOTHER CHILD: I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

ALL: Life! Psychic Research! Jazz!

MR. ICKY: (
Struggling with himself
) I must be quaint. That's all there is. It's not life that counts, it's the quaintness you bring to it. . . .

ALL: We're going to slide down the Riviera. We've got tickets for Piccadilly Circus.
⁹
Life! Jazz!

MR. ICKY: Wait. Let me read to you from the Bible. Let me open it at random. One always finds something that bears on the situation. (
He finds a Bible lying in one of the dods and opening it at random begins to read.
)

“Anab and Istemo and Anim, Goson and Olon and Gilo, eleven cities and their villages. Arab, and Ruma, and Esaau——”

CHARLES: (
Cruelly
) Buy ten more rings and try again.

MR. ICKY: (
Trying again
) “How beautiful art thou my love, how beautiful art thou! Thy eyes are dove's eyes, besides what is hid within. Thy hair is as flocks of goats which come up from Mount Galaad—” Hm! Rather a coarse passage. . . .

(
His children laugh at him rudely, shouting “Jazz!” and “All life is primarily suggestive!”
)

MR. ICKY: (
Despondently
) It won't work to-day. (
Hopefully
) Maybe it's damp. (
He feels it
) Yes, it's damp. . . . There was water in the dod. . . . It won't work.

ALL: It's damp! It won't work! Jazz!

ONE OF THE CHILDREN: Come, we must catch the six-thirty. (
Any other cue may be inserted here
.)

MR. ICKY: Good-by. . . .

They all go out.
MR. ICKY
is left alone. He sighs and walking over to the cottage steps, lies down, and closes his eyes.

The curtain goes up and down several times to denote the lapse of several minutes. A good comedy effect can be obtained by having
MR. ICKY
cling to the curtain and go up and down with it. Fireflies or fairies on wires can also be introduced at this point.

Then
PETER
appears, a look of almost imbecile sweetness on his face. In his hand he clutches something and from time to time glances at it in a transport of ecstasy. After a struggle with himself he lays it on the old man's body and then quietly withdraws.

The moths chatter among themselves and then scurry away in sudden fright. And as night deepens there still sparkles there, small, white and round, breathing a subtle perfume to the West Issacshire breeze,
PETER'S
gift of love—a moth-ball.

(
The play can end at this point or can go on indefinitely.
)

This don't pretend to be “Literature.” This is just a tale for red-blooded folks who want a
story
and not just a lot of “psychological” stuff or “analysis.” Boy, you'll love it! Read it here, see it in the movies, play it on the phonograph, run it through the sewing-machine.

It was night in the mountains of Kentucky. Wild hills rose on all sides. Swift mountain streams flowed rapidly up and down the mountains.

Jemina Tantrum was down at the stream, brewing whiskey at the family still.

She was a typical mountain girl.

Her feet were bare. Her hands, large and powerful, hung down below her knees. Her face showed the ravages of work. Although but sixteen, she had for over a dozen years been supporting her aged pappy and mappy by brewing mountain whiskey.

From time to time she would pause in her task, and, filling a dipper full of the pure, invigorating liquid, would drain it off—then pursue her work with renewed vigor.

She would place the rye in the vat, thresh it out with her feet and, in twenty minutes, the completed product would be turned out.

A sudden cry made her pause in the act of draining a dipper and look up.

“Hello,” said a voice. It came from a man clad in hunting boots reaching to his neck, who had emerged from the wood.

“Hi, thar,” she answered sullenly.

“Can you tell me the way to the Tantrums' cabin?”

“Are you uns from the settlements down thar?”

She pointed her hand down to the bottom of the hill, where Louisville lay. She had never been there; but once, before she was born, her great-grandfather, old Gore Tantrum, had gone into the settlements in the company of two marshals, and had never come back. So the Tantrums, from generation to generation, had learned to dread civilization.

The man was amused. He laughed a light tinkling laugh, the laugh of a Philadelphian. Something in the ring of it thrilled her. She drank off another dipper of whiskey.

“Where is Mr. Tantrum, little girl?” he asked, not without kindness.

She raised her foot and pointed her big toe toward the woods.

“Thar in the cabing behind those thar pines. Old Tantrum air my old man.”

The man from the settlements thanked her and strode off. He was fairly vibrant with youth and personality. As he walked along he whistled and sang and turned handsprings and flapjacks, breathing in the fresh, cool air of the mountains.

The air around the still was like wine.

Jemina Tantrum watched him entranced. No one like him had ever come into her life before.

She sat down on the grass and counted her toes. She counted eleven. She had learned arithmetic in the mountain school.

Ten years before a lady from the settlements had opened a school on the mountain. Jemina had no money, but she had paid her way in whiskey, bringing a pailful to school every morning and leaving it on Miss Lafarge's desk. Miss Lafarge had died of delirium tremens after a year's teaching, and so Jemina's education had stopped.

Across the still stream still another still was standing. It was that of the Doldrums. The Doldrums and the Tantrums never exchanged calls.

They hated each other.

Fifty years before old Jem Doldrum and old Jem Tantrum had quarrelled in the Tantrum cabin over a game of slapjack. Jem Doldrum had thrown the king of hearts in Jem Tantrum's face, and old Tantrum, enraged, had felled the old Doldrum with the nine of diamonds. Other Doldrums and Tantrums had joined in and the little cabin was soon filled with flying cards. Harstrum Doldrum, one of the younger Doldrums, lay stretched on the floor writhing in agony, the ace of hearts crammed down his throat. Jem Tantrum, standing in the doorway, ran through suit after suit, his face alight with fiendish hatred. Old Mappy Tantrum stood on the table wetting down the Doldrums with hot whiskey. Old Heck Doldrum, having finally run out of trumps, was backed out of the cabin, striking left and right with his tobacco pouch, and gathering around him the rest of his clan. Then they mounted their steers and galloped furiously home.

That night old man Doldrum and his sons, vowing vengeance, had returned, put a ticktock on the Tantrum window, stuck a pin in the doorbell, and beaten a retreat.

A week later the Tantrums had put Cod Liver Oil in the Doldrums' still, and so, from year to year, the feud had continued, first one family being entirely wiped out, then the other.

Every day little Jemina worked the still on her side of the stream, and Boscoe Doldrum worked the still on his side.

Sometimes, with automatic inherited hatred, the feudists would throw whiskey at each other, and Jemina would come home smelling like a French table d'hôte.

But now Jemina was too thoughtful to look across the stream.

How wonderful the stranger had been and how oddly he was dressed! In her innocent way she had never believed that there were any civilized settlements at all, and she had put the belief in them down to the credulity of the mountain people.

She turned to go up to the cabin, and, as she turned something struck her in the neck. It was a sponge, thrown by Boscoe Doldrum—a sponge soaked in whiskey from his still on the other side of the stream.

“Hi, thar, Boscoe Doldrum,” she shouted in her deep bass voice.

“Yo! Jemina Tantrum. Gosh ding yo'!” he returned.

She continued her way to the cabin.

The stranger was talking to her father. Gold had been discovered on the Tantrum land, and the stranger, Edgar Edison, was trying to buy the land for a song. He was considering what song to offer.