Authors: Rob Levandoski
Gus called Sheriff Barnes a checkered-shirt cowboy several more times during the next commercial break. Act Three began. The Handsome Hobo had dug all night. Drank lots of lemonade, the sound of which I made by pouring Canada Dry into a coffee cup, about an inch away from the microphone, and then gulping it down myself like a noisy bullfrog.
GLADYS
(as the Georgia Peach)
Oh Mr. Hobo, you have found the gold just in time. The sun is rising and I can hear that Yankee tax collector's big black Oldsmobile coming up our dusty country road.
This drivel led of course to the inevitable saying-goodbye scene.
WILL
(as the Handsome Hobo)
Sure, it would be easy for me to stay. To fall in love with you. Especially the way the sun makes your hazel eyes sparkle.
GLADYS
(as the Georgia Peach)
That sparkle is my love for you.
WILL
(as the Handsome Hobo)
I'm a hobo. It's in my blood. In my soul. I could stay, shave my two days of stubble. We'd get married. Settle down. Have a couple kids. But, drat it, sooner or later my old wanderlust would return, as certain as the tax man always returns. And I'd have to leave. Break both our hearts. No, I gotta travel on.
GLADYS
(as the Georgia Peach)
Good-byeâmy handsome hobo.
I, by the way, got to play more than the door and the lemonade. I was also the girl's granddaddy and the Yankee tax collector, as well as a couple of Negro sharecroppers passing by with fishing poles. Clyde didn't get to play any parts. He was in the corner humming. I remember wondering if the studio microphones were picking up his humming. I wondered how many people were sitting in their parlors trying to slap that hum out of their radios?
I was exhausted. But we weren't finished yet. After Gus lit into Sheriff Barnes for another ten minutes, we launched into “The Saintly Soldier,” followed by a reprise of “The Dashing Stranger.” Our performance ended with a final harangue by Gus and a few closing words from Lloyd: “Unless Sheriff Barnes comes and riddles Gus, we'll be back tomorrow night with the three same episodes of
The Gladys Bartholomew Theater
.”
We snacked on cheese sandwiches and Canada Dry. Will sat with his arm around Clyde, rocking him, telling him he wasn't going to die.
In Valparaiso, Will's Aunt Mary was just getting home from the movie house. She'd gone with a neighbor lady to see
Cleopatra
starring Claudette Colbert. “Mary dear,” Fritz said when she came in, “guess who wus on der radio yust now!”
In Weebawauwau Center Sheriff Barnes herded the whores from the room and made love to Millie. Pruitt sat in his hotel room making a list of all the laws Gus Gillis had broken.
We slept pretty sound. Except Clyde. Sunday dawned. The Reverend Donald Aylesworth showed up for the
Hour of Reflection
.
The Reverend Aylesworth was a crackerjack preacher. He knew how to take a current event and run with it. For an hour he dashed back and forth between the Old and New Testaments, digging out biblical truths that might bring Gus to his senses. Gus sat in the control booth, shotgun between his legs, thoughtfully taking it all in. Toward the end of the hour the reverend launched into a description of an earthly paradise, which would materialize overnight, he said, if only people would love their neighbor more and themselves a little less. “The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb,” he said, “and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together.”
Gus was watching the wall clock, wanting the
Hour of Reflection
over. He rapped his fingers impatiently on his gun barrel, leaned into the microphone. “That's all fine and dandy, Mr. Preacher man, but even Jesus said you can't unscramble an egg.”
The Reverend Aylesworth rippled with Christian indignation. “Where in the scriptures does our Lord say that?”
Gus didn't want an argument. “Play some music, Lloyd.” He escorted the reverend out, shotgun pointing in the general direction of his head.
Gus did not expect Sheriff Barnes to come after him right away that morning. He knew everyone in a place like Weebawauwau County went to church on Sunday. But he was sure the sheriff would show up after lunch. “Any minute now you'll see that corn start to dance with lawmen and vigilantes, closing in with pockets full of bullets.”
The afternoon slipped by. Clyde's head continued to swell. He was humming full bore. We sat on the lawn and watched the corn. It wasn't dancing. Gus paraded back and forth, making a target out of himself. The corn still wasn't dancing at suppertime. Gus looked sad enough to cry. He sent Will and Gladys inside to rehearse with Lloyd. He sent me to pick field corn.
We'd eaten the last chicken the night before, so we didn't have any meat. Just field corn, canned corn, rye bread, and Canada Dry. Gus wasn't as disappointed as you might imagine. “That Barnes is a sneaky bastard,” he said, buttery niblets flying. “He'll wait until we start the broadcast, then barge in, guns blazing. Y'all make sure you duck.”
At seven
The Gladys Bartholomew Theater
went on the air. Between harangues from Gus, we worked our way through our three Daphne Darnell masterpieces. Sheriff Barnes didn't barge in. Gus had survived another day. He dragged Gladys off to bed depressed. Will gave Clyde a boiled rag to hold on his face. “Something's got to be happening back in Bennett's Corners by now, don't you think?” Will whispered. “I bet Mother called out the dogs when we didn't show up last night.”
“If she didn't I bet my folks did,” I said.
“What dogs?” Clyde asked.
“Not dogs,” Will said. “The authorities. Mother's probably called out the authorities.”
“Authorities on what?” Clyde asked.
“The police,” I said. “She's probably called out the police.”
“Let's hope they don't show up wearing checkered shirts,” Clyde said. Both Will and I were impressed with his sarcasm. Clyde wasn't as dumb as we thought. Later I learned that both Mrs. Randall and my parents had called out the dogs. But not until after church on Sunday. Had they called them out Saturday night, or even before church, things might have been different. But they didn't. Things also might have been different if Will's Aunt Mary had believed Uncle Fritz when he told her he'd heard us all on WEEB. But she didn't. Neither Mrs. Randall or my parents would arrive in Weebawauwau until late Monday afternoon. Too late. Too goddamn late. Sonofabitch.
“
Scientific and sanitary meat preparation for the market is shown by a mechanical bacon slicer with a capacity of 1,000 pounds an hour. Girls in spotless uniforms wrap and pack the bacon as it flows from the machine
.”
O
FFICIAL
G
UIDE
B
OOK OF THE
W
ORLD
'
S
F
AIR
Twenty-One/Overpopped
Sheriff Barnes made his move. Not because he wanted to. He wanted the game to go on a while longer. Millie Macmillan later told me he was prepared to wait us out all week. “It'll be like a whole week of February 29ths,” he told Millie.
Others weren't as enthusiastic. His cousin Albert Finley in particular. Immediately after the Sunday night performance he called the sheriff at Millie's and asked him to come by the movie house. “Albert sounds suicidal,” the sheriff told Millie. He scooped up his marbles and called Pruitt. Figured mixing the no-nonsense government man with his nervous cousin would be fun.
They met in front of the Weebawauwau Palace. The Marx Brothers'
Duck Soup
was playing. It was only a little past nine but there wasn't a car on the street. The sheriff small-talked his way to the ticket booth. “You enjoying your stay, Pruitt?”
“It's a fine little town,” Pruitt said.
“It's the finest town in America. Finer than wherever you're from.”
“Bucksnort, Tennessee.”
“Finer than Bucksnort, Tennessee,” the sheriff said.
He small-talked the ticket girl. “How's your momma and daddy, Lucy?”
“Fine as fine can be,” Lucky said.
“Tell your daddy I'm going to bowl his britches off tomorrow night.”
“I will.”
They went inside. He small-talked down the long empty lobby. “Bucksnort got a bowling alley, Pruitt?”
Pruitt told him it didn't.
“Didn't sound like it did,” the sheriff said. “You can come bowl with us tomorrow night if you'd like.”
“I'm not a bowler.”
“Didn't think you were.” They found Albert Finley behind the concession counter. The crack under the theater door was flashing. Groucho was wisecracking. Nobody was laughing.
The sheriff introduced Pruitt to his cousin. “Albert, this is Pruitt. Government man down from Chicago, to tell us how to live our lives.”
Pruitt told me in 1968 that shaking Albert Finley's hand was like grabbing a bluegill under water.
“So what's the problem, Albert?” the sheriff asked. “You catch Donny Fish drawing talking assholes on the bathroom wall again?”
“Talking assholes, Mr. Finley?” Pruitt asked through his iron lips.
“You know, assholes with words coming out in those cartoon balloons,” Albert Finley said.
Pruitt pressed the investigation. “What are these assholes saying?”
“Usually just âHi,'” Albert Finley said.
“Donny's lonely but safe enough,” the sheriff assured the government man. “Good drawer, too.”
Albert Finley dragged his clammy hands down his face. Started to quiver. “I didn't call you because of Donny Fish's talking assholes, Orville.”
Sheriff Barnes knew Albert's quivering was nothing to mess with. His cousin had been a bed-wetter right through puberty; hid in a barn for three days after getting a C-minus in high school Latin; over the years his breakdowns and depressions had cost the Finley and Barnes families an arm and a leg in doctor bills. “Then what's the problem, Albert?”
His cousin pointed at the pyramid of red-and-white boxes on the counter. “All this popcorn for starters.”
“It does look like you overpopped a bit.”
“No more than usual for a Sunday night. But you can't sell popcorn if people don't come to see the movie.” He swung his sweaty finger toward the theater door. “There's not a soul in there, Orville. Not a one.”
Pruitt offered federal assistance. “Maybe you should change movies, Mr. Finley. I never thought the Marx Brothers were that funny.”
The government man's stupidity emboldened Albert. “Everybody loves the Marx Brothers. I could run the Marx Brothers backwards and sell out the house. It's that Gus and Gladys. Everybody's stayed home to listen on the radio. Last night, too. All of Weebawauwau County's gone goo-goo over those two.”
The sheriff jerked out a bottom popcorn box without making the pyramid collapse. He rammed his mouth full of corn and pushed sideways through the theater doors. When the box was empty he came out, chuckling. “That Harpo laughs me to hives,” he said. He started down the lobby. “Let's go, Pruitt.”
Pruitt raced after him. “Where we going?”
“We're going to make Gus Gillis the unhappiest man in the state of Indiana. That's where we're going.” Being the sonofabitch he was, Pruitt figured they were going to shoot Gus down like Dillinger. But the sheriff had no such intention. “I don't get it,” Pruitt said as they rushed toward the door. “For two days he's been out there, calling you aâ”
“You can say it, Pruitt. Calling me a checkered-shirt cowboy.”
“Now a few boxes of unsold popcorn andâ”
Both Pruitt and Millie Macmillan told me what the sheriff said next. Millie said it with pride. Pruitt with cold disgust. I wished I could have heard it myself. “Those aren't just a few unsold boxes of popcorn in there,” the sheriff told the government man. “That popcorn represents the economic well-being of Weebawauwau County. The lives of the hard-working men and women I have been elected to protect. Woebegone men and women with scruffy little children who've had their hopes and dreams shattered by four long years of depression, degradation, and despair.”
Unaware he was being played like a jug-band fiddle, Pruitt came very close to crying. “I think I understand,” he said.
The sheriff looked into Pruitt's watery eyes and bent over in a dry laugh. “You don't understand shit from Shinola, Pruitt. I own 51 percent of this movie house. And I'll be damned if that crazy Gus Gillis or his floozy girlfriend are going to put me in the poorhouse.”
So that's what finally did it. A pyramid of unsold popcorn. When I first discovered that during my trip back to Weebawauwau in 1942, I was mad enough to kill someone. Mad enough to kill myself. Since then I've realized that unimportant things like unsold boxes of popcorn often have a greater impact on your life than big things like war, disease, or acts of Congress:
If that recruiting sergeant in Akron hadn't had a quota of cooks to fill, I might have ended up an ace like Eddie Rickenbacker, at the very least on a bomber crew; maybe I'd have been the guy on the
Enola Gay
who let that first A-bomb go.
If it hadn't been for that double-decker Big Boy sandwich with that secret sauce, I might have hung onto the R&R Luncheonette all my working life; stayed married to Lois Cobb and had a son named Will.
If Miss Ina Blanche hadn't told us to start reading newspapers, Will might never have learned about the World's Fair being planned in Chicago. What if that farmer's melons had been ripe and not green? We'd have bought a couple and been on our way long before Gus and Gladys drove up in their yellow Auburn. Think of the trouble Clyde's earwax caused. Unsold popcorn boxes are more dangerous than a loaded gun.