“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 76: smoked

When last we saw Arnold Schnabel he had just brightened up the day of one Father James Reilly by allowing this good priest the privilege of hearing his confession. Freshly shrived and at least for the moment aglow once again with sanctifying grace, Arnold marches out into the sunlight of Cape May, New Jersey on an August morning in the year of our Lord 1963.

Another beautiful day lay glittering and pulsing before me as I paused at the top of the church steps; happy or presumably happy vacationers walked up and down the sidewalks of Washington Street, going to the beach or wandering into and out of the shops, and even though I no longer really believed in Catholicism I still felt that old feeling of accomplishment on leaving confession, that feeling of starting anew, of attempting to get through at least the next hour before falling into a state of black sin all over again.

Contentedly I patted my pockets for my cigarettes.

Then I remembered that I had decided to try to start quitting today, that I had told myself I wouldn’t have another cigarette till after lunch, and that, even more horrifying, in my insanity of good intentions I hadn’t brought my cigarettes with me.

At once a tidal wave of nausea rose up from my stomach into my throat. I choked it back down and then I felt an overweight mouse inside my skull chewing greedily at my brain cells.

My spit tasted like used motor oil. I swallowed it down and at once was racked with another brutal surge of nausea.

I grabbed the cast iron rail and staggered down the steps, barely keeping in what had so recently been a quite enjoyable breakfast of scrapple and eggs, home-fries and breaded fried tomatoes washed down with my usual copious cups of strong black Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee. My legs felt as if they were made of Silly Putty, and my bermuda shorts and polo shirt had become soaked with icy sweat in a matter of seconds.

I found myself sitting on a wooden bench on the corner by the church, bent over, staring down at the shimmering sidewalk. Many wonderful cigarette butts lay like precious little tubes of ecstasy upon the concrete, jetsam of another beer-drenched summer Friday night at the shore. I saw one fat unfiltered butt, only half smoked at best, perhaps even my own brand, Pall Mall, although my eyes were so clouded I could not be sure. I reached down, almost vomiting again, and picked it up. Breathing heavily, licking my parched lips with my swollen leathery tongue, with trembling fingers I smoothed out the butt. It would do. It would do just fine, thank you very much. Just two or three drags, that sharp strong tarry smoke filling my mendicant ravaged lungs, and I would be whole again, human again, or at least as human as I could reasonably expect to be.

I patted my pockets again. But no, no, of course not, I had had to be a tough guy. I had left my lighter at home with my cigarettes.

The aforementioned vacationers marched to and fro before me, dressed in their hideous seaside attire of flaming dacrons and polyesters, strutting men with murderous scowls and frightened eyes, women with stiff sprayed hair like the headdresses of pagan priestesses, and screaming feral children veering dangerously off the curb, apparently intent on throwing themselves underneath the burning tires of an endless stream of enormous dirty belching automobiles packed with yet more family groups of Nazis, carnival hucksters, thieves, murderers, and maniacs.

All I had to do was bum a light.

Half the people going by me were smoking. Happily, contentedly smoking in the shining hot sunlight, the pale smoke swirling up and disappearing into the bright blue indifferent sky, into that great bottomless maw of a universe without meaning.

But then I sat up a little straighter and I thought: is it really true I can’t go more than two hours without a cigarette? That I would stoop so low as to fish a butt from the sidewalk?

Then of course I remembered some other occasions when I had done just that, usually when stumbling home drunk, the only other passersby my fellow wretched inebriates wandering the haunted night-time streets like some exiled race of the damned.

I took a deep breath, and coughed only a little bit. My mouth had gone bone dry over the past few minutes, but now I could actually feel a drop of moisture in there, and it did not even taste of death and ashes.

The corpulent mouse was still ensconced in my head, but he had stopped chewing. I supposed he was full, and taking a post-prandial nap.

My breakfast had receded from my chest to a defensive position just below my solar plexus, nervously awaiting instructions from HQ.

I looked at the butt. It was a Camel, not my brand. I flicked it away.

I took another deep breath, and stood up. The world rocked and moaned but did not fly apart or implode.

I felt my soaked shirt drying on my shoulders and back.

I launched myself forth into the stream of ambulatory humanity, my legs once again feeling if not quite like legs then at least not like something you would find sticking out of a beached octopus or squid, and the pavement unfolded obediently under the soles of my Keds, with only the occasional slight ripple or tilt.

I thought it best to head straightaway for Mrs. Biddle’s house and my appointment with Larry Winchester.

(Please check out the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all extant episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, an Irwin Allen Production.)

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 70: embarkation

In our previous episode of this Tony Rome Award-winning masterwork, a small grey fellow dressed in a sailor suit appeared at the height of a peyote ceremony and invited Dick, Daphne and Harvey to come with him. Harvey declined...

September, 1969, southeastern New Mexico, just on the other side of the borderline to nowhere...

Dick and Daphne had put on their coats and gone with the sailor out the door. They had left the door open a little bit and Harvey, sitting on the floor, could lean over and see them walking toward the green thing and a ramp that ran up into a bright purple opening in the thing’s sloping side.

His cigarette ash dropped onto his jeans and he brushed it off.

Ah, shit, he thought, and he grabbed his hat and his field jacket and got up.

“Where are you going, Harvey?” asked Enid.

He put on his hat and shrugged himself into the jacket, its pockets heavy with the revolver and the two packed speedloaders.

“With them,” he said.

“Oh, Harvey, don’t.”

“Fuckin’ ‘ell,” said Derek. You got more bottle ‘n I ‘ave, mate.”

Paco had returned to watching On the Waterfront.

“Paco,” said Enid. “Tell him no.”

“Boy wants to go with Peyotito,” said Paco. He’ll come back. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Paco shrugged.

“Boy wants to be a man. He gotta take a chance. Gotta make journey. Vision quest.”

Harvey stopped in the doorway and turned to Enid.

“Later, Miss Enid.”

And he went out.

"Fuckin’ ‘ell,” said Derek. Fuckin’ bloody ‘ell.”

They were already going up the ramp and Harvey double-timed on over there. He watched the little sailor and then Dick in his pea coat and Daphne in her shiny red trench coat disappear into the purple light of the thing’s inside.

What the fuck.

He tossed away his cigarette and went on up.

****

Enid sat on the floor feeling the weight of a billion mad worlds on her shoulders.

Harvey had closed the door behind him but you could still see that emerald glow through the front windows. The only sound from the outside was the furious howling of a coyote, the wistful barking of a dog, the disturbingly humanoid wailing of a bobcat.

Paco got up and turned the TV’s sound on.

Marlon Brando said to Eva Marie Saint:

“There’s too many guys around here with only one thing on their mind.”

Paco sat back down and Derek took up his guitar again and strummed an E-minor chord.

Christ, thought Enid, I’m going. With them.

She got up, the inside of her head swaying around inside her skull.

“Oy,” said Derek.

“I’m going,” said Enid. “With them. And please don’t say ‘bloody fucking hell’ again.”

Derek stared up at her.

“Well, I think I’ll stay with the chief, love. Watch the telly.”

“All right.”

Paco glanced up at her and then turned back to the TV.


The saucer sat there in the dirt, solid and green and glowing. It looked about sixty feet in diameter and it sloped up to a height of maybe twenty feet. She couldn’t see an opening into it. She walked slowly all the way around it. Then she reached over and touched the surface of the thing. It was warm and it felt like birch bark. It smelled like a toy electric railroad set. She saw no sign of a doorway or hatch opening.

“Hello?” she called.

No one answered.

****

(Kindly refer to the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other extant episodes of a Town Called Disdain by Larry Winchester, the man whom Harold Bloom called “the only American writer equal to Arnold Schnabel”.)


Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Donovan Phillips Leitch:

“Railroad Train to Heaven,” Part 75: I confess

In the summer of 1963, Arnold Schnabel, a forty-two year-old bachelor brakeman and poet from the Olney section of Philadelphia, after suffering a mental breakdown the previous winter, and on a mandatory leave-of-absence from the Reading Railroad, comes with his mother to convalesce in the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, New Jersey.

This is his story, in his own inimitable words. Harold Bloom has called it “a noble, sprawling monument”. Noble? Perhaps. Sprawling? Absolutely.

Read it and weep:

Luckily I got to the church shortly after confessions started at ten, and hardly anyone was there.

For a moment I considered not going to Father Reilly. It’s true he was the most lenient and broad-minded priest here, but on the other hand, did he really deserve to have to deal with my nonsense two weeks in a row?

But, on another other hand, perhaps he, having been exposed to my madness in full flower last Saturday, would perforce be better able than one of his unblooded colleagues to give me spiritual guidance.

What the heck, I decided, this is what he gets paid for.

So I marched right up to his confessional and went in.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it has been one week since my --”

“Oh, no, it’s you.”

“Yes, Father.”

He sighed.

“Should I go on, Father?”

He sighed again.

“I can leave,” I offered. “I really don’t mind. I can go to Father Schwartz, or --”

“No, no,” he said. “Stay.”

“Okay.”

I settled down. I realized I wanted a cigarette. I had denied myself my usual luxurious post-breakfast smoke. Not to mention my briskly bracing post-shower smoke. Or my walk-to-church smoke, savoring that last good drag before flicking it into the always butt-littered gutter beneath the church steps.

“Did you hear me?” his voice said, from the other side of that black screen.

“Pardon me?”

“I asked you if you would tell me your first name.”

“Oh, sorry, Father --”

“You certainly don’t have to.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. It’s Arnold. Arnold Schna-”

“Just your first name.”

“Okay. Arnold.”

“Arnold. Good. My name’s Jim.”

“I know. Father Reilly. Hi, Father.”

“Call me Jim.”

“Okay. Father Jim.”

“Just Jim.”

“Just Jim?”

“Just Jim. I’m just a man. Just like you, Arnold.”

I doubted this very much. But just to move things along I ceded the point. I did have an appointment with Larry Winchester after all. So:

“Okay, Jim,” I said.

“I remember you well from last week, Arnold. I felt bad about -- about dismissing you so abruptly.”

“I didn’t mind, Father.”

As indeed I had not. I’m always happy to be dismissed, abruptly or not, it’s all the same to me, as long as I get to leave.

“Yes, but still. I feel I was shirking my duty. I apologize.”

“Okay.” I shrugged, but of course he couldn’t see that. “Should I start my confession now?”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“Well, first off, I’m afraid I had sexual intercourse again. Outside the sacrament of marriage, that is.”

“Oh. Uh, more than once?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m afraid so. It was, what? Three times? Four? Wait. Let me see --”

“Don’t worry about the number, Arnold.”

“Okay, and also we did some other things that weren’t exactly intercourse I guess, but --”

“You touched each other impurely.”

“Uh, yeah, you could say that, you see I --”

“That’s okay. I don’t need all the details.”

“Oh, good.”

“So, was this all with the same woman, Arnold?”

“Yeah. And actually that’s another thing I wanted to ask you about, Father, because she’s Jewish, and, well, not a practicing Jew, but, anyway, she doesn’t think sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a sin.”

“Uh-huh --”

“So I’m wondering if that makes it less of a sin for me. Since I’m not making another person commit a mortal sin.”

“Arnold, according to Church doctrine it’s a mortal sin either way. And it’s a mortal sin for her even if she doesn’t think it is.”

“Well that doesn’t seem fair. I mean, what about some -- I don’t know -- headhunters in the Amazon -- who never knew about Christianity? It’s a sin for them too?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But they can’t even get properly married in the first place because they don’t have any priests to marry them.”

“Oh. I see your point.”

“I mean --”

“But forget about the headhunters, Arnold. The fact is, Arnold, that you, Arnold, are in a state of mortal sin.”

“Okay. So, uh, I guess I didn’t have too many other sins this week, no mortal ones anyway. Oh, I guess I masturbated a few times. That’s mortal,” I said. “Which is weird.”

“What’s weird, Arnold?”

“That you can get sent to hell for masturbating and it’s the same punishment for extra-marital intercourse.”

“Well, that’s the way it is.”

“Yeah. Okay. Uh, I got drunk two or three times.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot, the sin of doubt. I have to tell you, for this whole past week or more I’ve really had my doubts about religion. So, yeah, a lot of doubt. But what do I know?”

“Did you --”

“Yes?”

“Last week you said Jesus had appeared to you.”

“Oh, right.”

“Has he, have you, did you --”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so. He’s appeared to me, uh, several times.”

“And is he still telling you to go ahead and have extra-marital intercourse?”

“Well -- uh -- he’s -- uh --”

“Don’t you think this Jesus could just be a figment of your imagination, Arnold?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely, but --”

“What?”

“I mean who’s to say Bernadette of Lourdes wasn’t just seeing things? Or those kids at Fatima?”

“Those were certified miracles, Arnold.”

“Okay, but what if my Jesus sightings got certified? I mean, who’s to say?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Like what if I brought proof of a miracle.”

“What kind of proof?”

I was thinking of that cigarette from 1890s France. But that miracle didn’t have anything to do with Jesus. Or did it?

“Answer me this, Arnold. Has anyone else seen this Jesus of yours?”

“No. But, like, all these other saints that Jesus or Mary appeared to -- Jesus or Mary always only appeared just to the saints, right? Not to everybody, but. Just. To the saints. That’s why the saints are saints. Because they’re the only ones who can see Jesus. Or Mary. Or whomever. Right?”

“So you think you’re a saint.”

“Hey, I don’t know. That’s not for me to say, Father.”

“Jim.”

“Jim.”

“Listen. You’re not a saint, Arnold.”

“Well, okay, if you say so.”

“But -- what do I know, right?”

“Hey, that’s your opinion. You’re entitled to it, Father.”

“Jim.”

“Jim.”

“So --” I said.

“So,” he said.

Somebody started knocking on the wall of the booth on the other side of Father Reilly.

A muffled voice said, “Hey, Father Reilly, what’s goin’ on?”

“Wait your turn!” yelled Father Reilly.

“Sorry, Father.”

“Kneel there and examine your conscience and I’ll be with you when I’m ready.”

“Sorry,” said the voice.

“Now,” said Father Reilly, to me, “where were we?”

“Well --” I did have that appointment with Larry, and I hate to keep people waiting -- “I guess that’s about it, Father. I mean Jim. I mean, that’s about it for my sins.”

“Okay. Are you going to try not to have sexual intercourse with this woman again, Arnold? This -- Jewish girl?”

“Um, I don’t know, Father. I really doubt that I’ll try not to.”

“I can’t give you absolution unless you at the very least intend to try.”

“Well, what about all those other weeks I came in and confessed to the sin of self-abuse? We both knew I was going to do it again, and you always gave me absolution for that.”

“That’s different.”

“How’s it different? They’re both mortal sins.”

There was silence. I could hear Father Reilly breathing. I almost fancied I could hear that other poor guy in the other booth breathing, or sighing.

“Is she pretty, this girl?” Father Jim asked, in a low voice.

“Uh, yes, Father. Very. Dark hair. Deep dark eyes. Smooth skin. And she smells -- she smells like --” I tried to remember, but she had various smells, all of them good. “She smells like pound cake sometimes. Like, right from the oven --”

“Okay, look, I absolve you,” he said abruptly. “Ego te absolvo ab omnibus censuris, et peccatis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

“Oh. Thanks, Father.”

“Three Hail Marys, three Our Fathers.”

“Okay.”

“Now go. Go now. Go and sin.”

“Go and sin?”

“As I’m sure you will.”

He slid the little shutter shut.

I got up and went out. Poor guy. And he still had Miss Evans to deal with.

I grabbed a pew, said my penance, crossed myself, and got out of there.

(Go here for our next deeply spiritual chapter. And kindly refer to the right hand side of this page to find an up-to-date listing of links to all extant episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, a Selmur Production. Nihil Obstat: Bishop John J. "Big Jack" Graham.)

Since you gotta go:

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 69: invitation

Larry Winchester (“America’s answer to Tolstoy” -- Harold Bloom) now cuts away from Dick Ridpath and his apparent achievement of samãdhi (hat-tip to Kathleen Maher) and back to the nefarious Grupler and Marlene, last seen dispatching four US Government agents on a hill overlooking a small Native American reservation just several miles of dangerous road outside of a town called Disdain...

Grupler and Marlene, crouching behind a resiny-smelling creosote bush at the foot of the hill, had watched the big green luminous beret-shaped thing land and then the door sliding open and the ramp sliding down and the little sailor gliding lightly down the ramp and going over to the Quonset hut. He had entered the hut without bothering to knock, and a minute or so later the door seemed to close of its own volition behind him.

Somewhere a coyote howled, a dog barked shyly, a bobcat cried like a human infant with colic. The cool dry breeze smelled of electricity.

“So,” whispered Grupler. “The US Navy has a part in this as well.”

“That was the strangest-looking sailor I have ever seen,” whispered Marlene.

“Probably the victim of nuclear experimentation,” said Grupler.

“No matter,” said Marlene.

They looked at the beautiful glowing green thing in the yard, surrounded by junked automobiles and mechanical parts, baby carriages, 1930s iceboxes, and an old Dr Pepper vending machine lying on its side, this vision of industrial detritus made somehow beautiful and serene and whole by the soft emerald glow emanating from the thing.

“Let’s take that sucker,” said Marlene in English.

“Right on, baby,” said Hans, and they cocked the hammers of their pistols simultaneously.

“Bang bang,” said Hans, his eyes full of the green light.

“Shoot shoot,” said Marlene.

****

Dick braced himself to land with a thud if not a splat -- he had after all just been whooshing in, just sailing in at way, oh, way beyond the speed of light -- but then after all here he still stood in Paco’s hut, shaking hands with this expressionless little sailorman.

“Dick, I think you can stop shaking his hand now,” said Daphne.

“Oh.” He withdrew his hand. It felt like someone else’s hand. “Sorry, fella,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” said the little being, through the transistor.

Dick glanced around at the others, who were all looking alternately at him and at the creature.

“Do, uh, do you want us to come with you?” asked Dick.

“That’s why I’m here, fella,” said the little guy.

Daphne had picked up the talking transistor radio.

“Go where?” she asked, speaking directly at the radio.

“Ha ha,” said the radio.

“What?”

Dick held out his hand for the transistor, and she handed it to him.

“I believe he’s got a craft of some sort.” Dick sighed. “Out there.”

“You mean like a flying saucer?” she asked.

“Well, yes, actually.”

Dick slipped the little radio into his shirt pocket.

“Oh my God, we have to go up in it, Dick! I’ve always wanted to go up in one.”

“Now wait a bleedin’ minute,” said Derek.

“Yeah,” said Harvey. “Let’s just hold the fuck on.”

“We have to go,” said Daphne.

“Oh my fucking God,” said Enid, lighting a cigarette.

Paco said nothing. He had never before seen Peyotito behave in such a fashion. Well, this is what you might expect if you introduced white people to Peyotito.

“Mister,” said Daphne. “Mister sailor?”

“Yes, sweety,” said the sailor.

“Dick and I would just love to go up in your saucer.”

“Fabulous,” said the little guy.

Oh, boy, thought Dick. Here we go again.

“And the young fella, too,” said the sailor. “We can swing by the ranch and pick Hope up on the way.”

“Hope?” said Dick.

“Yeah,” said the sailor. “By the way, how come she’s not here?”

“Well,” said Dick, “we’re hardly going to take an emotionally-disturbed seventeen-year-old to a peyote ceremony.”

“Why not? That girl was born tripping.”

“Well --”

“Look,” said the little guy, “it’s really no problem. Like I said, we’ll swoop by the ranch, hover by her window, I slide through. Boom --”

“Excuse me, sir?” Daphne raised her finger. “Um, why are we picking Hope up?”

“Frank said to bring her too. I just do what I’m told.”

“Frank,” said Daphne. “And who is Frank?”

“Frank’s the boss. And he said to bring you and Mr. Ridpath and Hope and Harvey. I’m just following orders --”

“Now wait just a minute,” said Harvey.

“Sure, fella.”

The little guy stood there, staring at Harvey, waiting.

“Okay, look,” said Harvey. “I ain’t goin’.”

“But it’s your karma, fella.”

“Fuck that,” said Harvey. “No way. No fucking way in the world.

The little sailor just stood there.

****

(Please click here to go to our next mind-bending chapter.  And kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for an allegedly up-to-date listing of links to any and all other episodes of Larry Winchester’s Miller High Life Award-winning A Town Called Disdain™, all contents inspected and passed by the Commissariat of Homeland Insecurity.)


A word from Jack Nicholson:

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 74: the end of the longest day and the beginning of a possibly even longer day...

Return with us now to that sultry August night in 1963, to the seaside resort of Cape May, New Jersey, and to the inimitable memoirs of that saint, that poet, that madman, Arnold Schnabel...

Suffice it to say we bade each other a fond goodnight, and I went my way. Elektra didn’t ask me to stay the night, but I’ve been feeling so wild these days I think I might actually have done so had she asked. What did it matter after all? If God was going to strike me dead he would already have done it by now.

But still I must admit I preferred just going home to my little attic room. This had been by far the longest day of my life, and I was ready for some quiet solitude. Speaking of which I decided not to go directly home up Jackson Street and past the Ugly Mug. If the battle royal was still in progress in any way I had no desire to get involved. Let them fight on without me until they dropped one by one. Henceforth Arnold Schnabel would be the Switzerland of human beings. So I walked down to the beach and turned right on Beach Drive. The ocean crashed obliviously and darkly and, tired as I was, for two cents I would have stripped down on the other side of Frank’s Playland and gone in for a swim. But I remembered the promise I had made to Elektra, no more solitary night-time swims, and I couldn’t bring myself to go against my word to her.

As I walked past Sid’s Tavern I noticed it was still open and thriving, its front doors open and beckoning, the lights inside twinkling on a happy bar full of people, the jukebox playing a song about let’s dance, let’s dance, let’s do the twist, the stomp, the mashed potato, too.

Again I was tempted. The siren call of oblivion, how often had I obeyed its summons, marching like a zombie into how many low dives? But I walked on and turned up at Perry Street and back to home.

After climbing the side stairs as quietly as I could I stopped on the third floor and stood by Miss Evans’s door. If she was still out at the bars then that probably meant she would be all the more likely to stage an all-out assault on my room at three in the morning. If she were in and please God already asleep then maybe I wouldn’t have to nail my door shut with railroad ties.

Fortunately I heard deep female snoring. Good.

I went up to my room, but you may be sure, dear reader, that I did lock my door, although after thinking it over a minute I decided not to prop a wooden chair against the knob.

I got undressed and into bed and picked up The Waste Land, trying to find where I left off, not that it seemed to matter a whole lot. At the end of one passage was this:

'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'

-- the last two phrases of which Miss Evans had quoted when she inscribed her book to me.

I read the footnote and saw that T.S. Eliot was quoting Charles Baudelaire; yet another famous poet I suppose I’ll have to read some day. So Miss Evans might have been quoting Baudelaire directly. Or she could have been quoting Eliot quoting Baudelaire. Or both. This too did not matter, really; what mattered was that she was nutcase. Contrary to what might seem logical, nutcases do not necessarily like to associate with other nutcases. I suppose I should only speak for myself, but I find my own insanity to be more than sufficient unto the day. I don’t need any help.

I put The Wasteland aside for some other time and picked up Miss Evans’s novel, Ye Cannot Quench. At least this I was able to understand. In the sense that I knew what was going on. On the other hand, after finding my place and reading about three lines I realized that although I could follow what the characters were doing I couldn’t really understand the characters themselves because they behaved and talked so oddly, which is saying something coming from me. They seemed like characters in a movie, and it occurred to me that maybe I would enjoy the book more, or at all, if I tried to imagine the characters as movie stars. So I decided that the Rock Hudson-like guy would be Rock Hudson and that the Montgomery Clift-like guy would be Clift, the younger Montgomery Clift, like from around A Place in the Sun. The girl, Emily, I had to think about for a minute. Debbie Reynolds? No, she was not quite that innocent. Definitely not Doris Day either, even if it was a Rock Hudson movie. I settled on Natalie Wood, and that seemed to work. I also made the movie black-and-white, although some of the Rock Hudson parts seemed like they should be in Technicolor.

I still hadn’t read more than a few lines while I was working all this out. I was mostly just lying there thinking about what I’d already read, or what I could remember of it, as it was already rapidly disappearing from my brainscape.

The Clift guy, Porter Walker, was still making out with the Natalie Wood girl, Emily. Boy, in the old days I wouldn’t even let myself read these kinds of scenes. At least not ones that went on for so long. But then the sort of books I tended to read usually kept it to the basics. “He drew her scarlet mouth roughly to his. She did not resist. Far from it.” “She took the cigarette from my lips and flicked it out the window. I wondered if it landed on anybody. But I didn’t wonder for long.” “She turned and locked the door. She put the key in the top of her dress. I wondered if she was locking everyone else out or locking me in. I wondered but I didn’t care.” That sort of thing. But Miss Evans’s scene really went on and on. I decided to save it for later and picked up the murder story I’m reading, This Sweet Sickness.

I woke up around my usual time, eight or so, and all in all I didn’t feel too much like squeezing myself through my small window and hurling myself from the roof. Fortunately I had had only the one Manhattan. In fact if I hadn’t had that ale in 1890s France I would probably feel much better than I did. It’s always that one extra that pushes you over the borderline, even if you did have it in a different century.

My jaw ached from where the coast guard guy had socked me, but I didn't seem to have any teeth loose.

I threw my legs resignedly over the side of the bed and as usual reached for my cigarettes and lighter.

And here something really unusual happened. First off, after lighting up I went into a coughing fit, but this wasn’t the unusual part. Well, maybe slightly unusual in that this fit was a bit more severe than usual, perhaps due to that powerful French stinkweed I’d duly consumed the night before only because it was the only cigarette around.

What was unusual was that I finally decided that smoking was stupid unless you were really planning to commit suicide in the very near future, and that I was quitting cigarettes now, after going through a minimum of a pack a day ever since I was overseas in the army. Amazingly I had never smoked regularly before going into the service. But there I was in England going through all this boring training, the cigarettes were free, everybody else smoked, I had lots of free time, so I started smoking. It was something to do. And here I was eighteen years after the war, still puffing away.

The only thing was, I was just about to stub out this last cigarette forever when I was already missing it. So I took another small drag, and this time I only coughed a little bit. Well, all right, I’d start cutting down today. This would be my last one till after lunch. Then I’d take it from there.

I got dressed and went out, taking Miss Evans’s book with me. It wouldn’t do to be seen with another novel until I managed to get through hers, if I could get through it.

I stopped again outside her door and pricked up my ears. She was no longer snoring, but at least there were no other and alarming sounds, no keening or wailing or gnashing of teeth that I could hear.

Breakfast passed pleasantly enough. My bruised jaw went unmentioned and perhaps unnoticed, possible proof that I was not the center of the universe after all. Kevin kept his nose in his Tom Swift book, and I read Ye Cannot Quench while my mother and my aunts sat and drank their coffee. They probably knew I was hungover. They were talking gardening and I remembered that I was supposed to pass on Mrs. Biddle's compliments on their garden, but I was not quite ready for such polite conversation. The ladies must have heard about Frank Sinatra being at the party I had gone to, but none of them asked me about him. If it were Bishop Sheen or President Kennedy or Lawrence Welk or Arthur Godfrey I think they would be impressed, but I don’t think Sinatra means much to them.

Finally Emily and Porter finished making love, and now, as Porter slept a “deep, poet’s sleep”, Emily picked up his epic poem again:

Slam bang goes the drummer slackjawed above his traps
Wang wang wang wails the sax man arching his back like a snake
Bwah bwah bwah goes the trumpeter straight up
At that smoky Heaven where churn the dreams of the damned
And the screams of the saved propelled by the
Boomp boomp boomp of the bassman, and the
Chinkle tinkle pinkle of the piano fellow
As I pound my beersopping table in glorious time,
Hearken! Hearken ye fools, and dig
This crazy sound...

Suddenly I remembered my appointment with Larry Winchester. I checked my watch. He had said ten or ten-thirty. I didn’t know how long he wanted to work (or whatever it was we were going to do) and I had to meet Mrs. Biddle for tea at four; so, as this was Saturday, I figured as soon as I'd had my shower I’d better head right over to church and go to confession. For some reason this seemed to be another habit I wasn’t quite ready to quit.

I managed to take my shower successfully, and I was coming down the third-floor hall after changing when, you guessed it, I ran into Miss Evans coming out of her doorway.

“Oh, Arnold,” she said.

She was wearing a bathrobe, and nothing else apparent except for rubber flip-flops.

“Hello, Miss Evans.”

“Gertrude, please, Arnold, for the last time.”

“Gertrude.”

She held some bottles of unguents and lotions, and she had a towel over her arm, even though my aunts provide clean towels.

“Where are you off to, Arnold?”

“Confession.”

“How nice.”

I didn’t really know what to say to this. I said nothing.

“I wish I were Catholic,” she said. “It would be nice to tell someone my sins and then to be cleansed. To start again. Anew.”

She reached over and touched my polo shirt.

“Are you allowed to go to confession wearing a sport shirt and bermudas?” she asked.

“The rules are relaxed in the summer, at the seashore anyway,” I said.

“Perhaps I should go.”

“Sure, give it a try,” I said, and I started to pass.

“Will you wait for me? I don’t know how to do it.”

“Well, I can’t go in with you, Miss Evans, I mean Gertrude.”

“No, of course not. But what do I say? To the priest.”

“Say, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been such-and-such a time since my last confession.'”

“But I’ve never been to confession.”

“Oh, well, tell him it’s your first time then.”

“He won’t think it’s odd?”

“Priests are trained to deal with oddness.”

“I’ll tell him it’s been a year.”

“Okay.”

“He won’t be cross with me?”

“Probably not. Go to Father Reilly, he’s pretty easy-going.”

“Okay, I will. Goodbye, Arnold. Perhaps I’ll see you later in the day.”

And the way things were going she undoubtedly would see me. Unless I was kidnapped by Communist agents or creatures from outer space.

I headed downstairs and out and out into the beautiful warm day, off to the Star of the Sea. Off to see Father Reilly with my own boatload of sins. It occurred to me that his easy-goingness was surely to be challenged today.

(Click here for our next deeply spiritual chapter. Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for a complete listing of links to all other legally available episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, soon to be a major mini-series event on the Lifetime Channel, starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters. A Larry Winchester/Dick Powell Production.)


We give you Chris Montez:

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 68: alone?

A brief recap of this unexpurgated sprawling masterwork by the man Harold Bloom called “the American Shakespeare”, Larry Winchester:

A recently discharged young soldier named Harvey returns to his depressed hometown of Disdain, NM, in early September 1969. The dodgy local rancher Big Jake Johnstone hires Harvey as a guide for his mysterious and glamorous guests Dick and Daphne Ridpath. A couple of nights later, Dick, Harvey and Daphne, accompanied by the local sculptress Enid and the English rock star Derek Squitters, attend a peyote ceremony in the Quonset hut of Paco, a Native American brujo, or medicine man.

A strange grey little creature in a sailor suit appears in Paco’s doorway. He greets Dick by name and offers his hand. Dick takes it...

Here he was, in the thick of it this time, in the thick of nothingness, blackness, emptiness -- this was it. His own body was nowhere in sight, he could feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, he couldn’t even smell a damn thing.

Just this empty awful blackness.

And he thought, Okay, this is it, here’s where I finally go insane, and he braced himself for it, thinking at the same time, How can you brace yourself for going insane?

But oddly enough he felt himself not panicking, not going insane.

For one thing he was remembering everything now, especially the six days he had spent with the little sailor and the little sailor’s friends in some sort of aircraft, back in January of ‘65, those six days which had resulted in his being kidnapped a week later and tortured, drugged and interrogated for another week by persons unknown, and he remembered last night being in this strange aircraft again, and Hope being there, and their being urged to have sex in that bright room, and their not being afraid for some reason.

And he remembered everything else in his life, every moment of his life both waking and dreaming, every moment when he’d sat staring into space waiting for the next moment to come and go. He remembered sitting in the Clef Club down in South Philly listening to Coleman Hawkins with Daphne’s father Mac and Mac saying he would have a word with his old friend Admiral Quigley about getting Dick into naval intelligence. He remembered every time he had ever had sex and the smell and feel of every girl or woman he had ever been with and all their names except for the names of the ones he hadn’t quite caught in the first place. He remembered going back in time to Belle Époque France with his friend Arnold Schnabel. He remembered being born, the bright lights and the smell of his mother’s blood. And before that the womb, the warm wet darkness, the sound of his mother’s heart, those mysterious muffled sounds from outside. He remembered each moment of his life all at once as though his life were one long moment including this present endless moment of darkness and silence.

He realized he felt oddly phlegmatic about it all.

Well, and now what?

Was he dead? Was he insane?

No, he was going somewhere, and, oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid.

****

(Click here for our next spine-tingling chapter. And please check out the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other extant episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, an Irwin Allen production.)

A word from Scott Walker:

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 73: summer nights

Return with us now to a warm August night in 1963, and to the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, NJ, to which Arnold Schnabel, the author of this Pabst Blue Ribbon Award-winning memoir, has gone with his mother to convalesce after suffering a mental breakdown the previous winter...

Somehow it happened while we were going through the laborious procedure of saying goodnight to everyone that Miss Rathbone and Steve got up to go also, and, sure enough, Miss Evans too.

So now for some mysterious reason we had to wait until this latter group said goodnight to everyone. I lit up another cigarette, one of my Pall Malls this time, even though my lungs and throat were still scorched and befogged from that French cigarette.

Frank came over to me.

“You got my card, right?”

“Got it, Frank.”

“I appreciated how you didn’t walk out in the middle of my song.”

“My pleasure.”

(Although it did occur to me that if we had slipped out quietly then we would have been a half hour gone by now.)

“I could see that your lady friend -- what’s her name, Ariadne?”

“Elektra.”

“I could see Elektra was ready to go. She’s got the hots for you, boy.”

“Oh, I don’t know --”

“Arnold, if there’s one thing I know it’s dames.” Elektra was kissing Sammy goodnight on the cheek. “And believe me, that kid’s got it bad for you. She reminds me of Ava.”

“Ava?”

“Gardner. My second wife. Third wife? Whatever. She reminds me of Ava. God how we used to fight. And God how we used to --" He finished his sentence with a sigh. "So, Arnold, you gonna call me?”

“Well, I don’t know, Frank.”

“Call me any time. I want a lyric from you.”

“Well, I can’t promise anything.”

“Yeah, I know. So I hear you’re gonna work with Larry?”

“Um, maybe --”

“Good man, Larry. He could be an A-list director, but he’s got a bad habit of telling studio heads to go fuck themselves, you should pardon my French. I’ve wanted to work with him for years. Maybe you could write me a part. What’s the movie about?”

“Something about a young soldier on leave in Paris who gets involved in a murder, I think.”

“Maybe it could be an older soldier.”

“Well, I don’t know --”

“Okay, I don’t wanta be pushy. Oh, here she is.”

Elektra came over.

“Take care of this girl, Arnold.”

“Okay,” I said.

It went on like this for a while, but finally we made it downstairs, with Steve and the Misses Rathbone and Evans in tow.

So now we just had to make it through the dining room and the valley of the old people and we were free. But even this maneuver took at least another twenty minutes. I assured Mrs. Biddle that I would indeed be there for tea the next day, and that in fact I had an appointment there tomorrow morning to get together with Larry Winchester to find out if we were simpatico enough to write a movie together.

“Why do you want to write a movie? They’re such drivel. You should stick to your poetry.”

“He’s offering me two thousand dollars upfront,” I said.

“Oh, that’s different then I suppose. All right, I can see you’re chafing at the bit, and your girlfriend is eyeing you ravenously, so go.”

Finally we all made it out of the house. We went down the walk to Windsor and made the left on North Street, Elektra and I in front. I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Arnold,” said Steve, “I want to thank you! That’s the most fabulous party I’ve ever been to!”

“Glad you liked it, Steve.”

I noticed that he was swaying a bit, sort of like Popeye the sailorman, even though he had Miss Rathbone on one arm and Miss Evans on the other. Then I noticed that all three of them were swaying, although not in unison.

“Oh, by the way, who wants to go to the Ugly Mug for a nightcap?” said Steve.

Not me, that was sure, but about eight or nine minutes later we were all milling about outside the Mug, and somehow Steve and Miss Evans and Miss Rathbone seemed to have gotten even drunker on the way.

Elektra said she wanted to go home, she had to work in the morning. Me, I just wanted to be no more hungover than I was already fated to be. Steve was pulling on my right arm. Miss Evans grabbed my other arm. Elektra pulled her arm away. Miss Evans then yanked her own arm away from Elektra’s grasp, accidentally hitting Miss Rathbone in the nose. Miss Rathbone sat down on the pavement. Miss Evans grabbed my arm again. Elektra told her to leave me alone. Steve went around to help up Miss Rathbone, but he tripped on the curb and fell. Miss Evans called Elektra a floozy. Elektra slapped Miss Evans, and then things got so chaotic that it wearies me even thinking of how to recount it all.

But another interesting thing happened during the ensuing brawl, which soon included several young coast guardsmen who had apparently just been thrown out of the bar, plus the bouncers and bartenders who had thrown them out.

What happened was I began to float up, slowly, to about twenty feet off the ground. I looked down on it all, at the tumbling and stumbling bodies, and as I did the shouts and screams faded away as if someone had turned the volume down on God’s television set, or rather switched the sound to another channel, because what I could hear and very clearly was the gentle rushing and hushing of the ocean several blocks away. I rose myself up just a little higher so that I could see the ocean, enormous and dark and alive. And then I looked down again at the humans swirling all around and against each other, not like animals, not like insects, no, but like human beings, and one of them was me. I was trying to pull one of the coast guard boys off of Steve, and then one of the other coast guard guys socked me on the jaw.

I came down, and rejoined my body, sitting on the pavement, next to Miss Rathbone, who had still not gotten up.

She put her arms around me and kissed me.

Next thing I knew Elektra was pulling me to my feet and dragging me up Jackson Street. Then Miss Evans came running up and grabbed my arm for what seemed the eleventh time that night. Elektra hit her on the shoulder with her handbag, and now Miss Evans sat down, holding her shoulder and looking bewildered.

Soon enough, but not soon enough for me, we were at Elektra’s house, at the rear entrance behind her shop.

She turned her back to the door and pulled me to her.

We were both out of breath, both sweating. My jaw was numb where the coast guardsman had punched me, but it didn’t hurt, at least not yet. Elektra’s warm butterscotch smell mingled with the moist scents of honeysuckle and ivy and roses and the clean seaweedy smell of the ocean.

“My hero,” she said.

I suppose modesty forbids me to go into what happened next. I could go ahead and write it out; after all it was interesting, and included some things I had never done before, not to mention some things that had never before been done to me, but what’s the point, I know I’ll only end up crossing it all out. God forbid my mother should find it. But now that I think about it, even if I could be absolutely sure my mother would never see it, it seems to me perhaps that some things become less once I put them into words. And I wouldn’t want that to happen.

(Click here for our next PG-rated chapter. And please consult the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other extant episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, a Sheldon Leonard Production.)

And now a word from Miss Marianne Faithfull: