Previously in this sprawling masterwork by the legendary (“makes Norman Mailer look like Truman Capote” -- John Updike) Larry Winchester, our heroes -- the recently de-mobilized soldier Harvey and the glamorous strangers Dick and Daphne Ridpath -- survived through Harvey’s pluck and quick thinking a rather unpleasant encounter in the New Mexico desert with the now-deceased Thorndyke family.
However, as they ride back to Big Jake Johnstone’s ranch on this strangely grey day in September of 1969...
Finally Daphne saw a clump of the cute white flowers she’d lost in that quicksand thing and she swung down holding onto the edge of the saddle because the horn had gotten shot off and she had just pulled the clump up when she saw the snake looking at her and then it started to rattle and she knew it was a rattlesnake.
Without ever taking her eyes off of the snake, which was only about a eighteen inches from her pink-stockinged right foot, she very slowly raised herself back up into the saddle and then very gently she passed the flowers from her right hand to her left and then with her right hand she reached down and turned the clasp of the hard leather sandwich case hanging from her saddle and she lifted the flap and felt the butt of the little revolver wedged in between the Saran-wrapped sandwich and the inside of the case and very slowly and gently she drew the gun out.
She had certainly seen enough cowboy movies where this was done.
But what if she missed.
It could make for one angry rattlesnake.
Should she just nudge the horse on?
She glanced back to Dick and Harvey.
They were absolute miles away.
The snake rattled again and showed its ugly tongue and hissed.
She looked again toward Dick and Harvey. They had both halted and they sat on their horses perfectly still, looking toward her and at the snake.
The snake hissed again.
The hell with it.
She strethed out her arm, aimed the gun right between the snake’s eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Dick and Harvey galloped over, and she was putting the gun back into the sandwich case.
Harvey swung down, went over and picked up the dead snake.
“Damn. Right between the eyes.”
Daphne brought her cigarettes out of her vest pocket.
“Cut his rattle off, soldier boy. I want a memento. My very first snake.”
Dick reached over and gave her a light with his Ronson.
“My first non-human snake, anyway,” said Daphne.
****
(Click here for our next enthralling chapter. You will find links to other episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain on the right hand side of this page. Remember, finals are approaching!)
It has been a rainy stormy day in Cape May, NJ, this August of 1963, and the hero of our memoir Arnold Schnabel and his new inamorata, the bohemian Elektra, have had dinner with Arnold’s mother, his three maiden aunts and his young cousin Kevin. This was Elektra’s formal introduction to Arnold’s family.
Considering Arnold’s tender mental state, the dinner went fairly well.
Which isn’t to say that Arnold wouldn’t have preferred to skip the whole thing...
It started to rain again as we walked up Perry Street. Fortunately Elektra had her umbrella, and she opened it up over both of us. I was having one "first" after another these days, and in my forty-two years this was the first time I had shared an umbrella with a woman who was not my mother. I took the umbrella, it seemed the gentlemanly thing to do, walking on the street side of the pavement, as I had somewhere heard the gentleman was supposed to.
I felt as if we were in our own private world under the umbrella, with her bare arm in mine, and I found this feeling unaccountably exciting, in nearly every way one can imagine being excited, including sexually.
For some reason we hadn’t been talking as we walked; I can’t account for Elektra but for me it seemed redundant and meaningless to add anything to the sound of the rain drumming on the umbrella, the murmuring of the wind.
As we turned down the cracked slate path to the side of her house I felt overcome by the wet beauty of the rose bushes, the ivy crawling up the side of the house, the glistening grass, the caramel smell and the touch of this woman who for some reason was choosing to share my baleful broken presence, and as we turned the corner to go into the rear entrance I couldn’t control myself, and with my one free arm I embraced her and kissed her.
A minute later she said, “Whoa, tiger.”
I had dropped the umbrella. It lay upside down on the ground, filling with rainwater. We were both streaming wet.
“I can’t help it,” I said.
“I don’t want you to help it,” she said.
“Should we go up now?”
“Yeah,” she said.
Fortunately none of her friends seemed to be home, and we went right into her room.
She told me to stand still, and then she
(The next page of Arnold’s notebook has unfortunately been torn out, probably by Arnold himself in one of his occasional retrospective acts of modesty or prudence. We continue mid-sentence with the next extant page.)
breathing heavily and slowly, and, I confess, coughing a bit. She laid her dark head in my damp armpit, and sure enough, after a minute I heard the steady child-like breathing of her sleeping.
I looked at the illuminated dial of my watch: it was after 10. She seemed so sound asleep I decided to get up and go. Once again I found my clothes and put them on. They were damp, but I didn’t care.
As I was pulling my bermudas on she woke up and said, “You’re going?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “Unless you want me to stay.”
“Your mother will worry, won’t she?”
“I doubt it. She’s probably in bed by now herself.”
“You can go, Arnold. I want to sleep.”
“Okay.”
I felt it incumbent upon me to kiss her, so I leaned over and did so. She seemed to fall back to sleep even as I raised my face from hers.
I was lucky in leaving; her friends were still out.
I was also lucky in that the rain had stopped, although it was still rather windy.
I felt emptied of madness, and content, and wide awake. I really had no idea why this woman was allowing me to make love to her. It didn’t seem to me that I was any bargain.
I walked back to my aunts’ house, but just as I had my hand on the front gate I thought of poor Steve at the VFW.
I hesitated.
He wasn’t really my problem, just some random lonely drunken queer fellow, but, don’t ask me why, I felt sorry for him.
I was under no illusions about the Jesus thing. I knew all that had been hallucination. Or at least I knew this as well as I knew anything.
I thought I’d just walk down to the VFW anyway. If he was still there maybe I could get him to go back to the Chalfonte before he got in trouble. If he wasn’t there I’d have a quiet beer and then go home and try to read some more of The Waste Land till I got sleepy, which, if that poem continued as it had been, would be after three or four lines.
The VFW is off the beaten track, and generally speaking only locals go there. I’ve stopped in there off and on over the years, although I’ve never officially joined the post. It’s not really my cup of tea. I prefer the more touristy bars like the Ugly Mug, the Pilot House, Sid’s, even the god-awful Top of the Marq. I suppose I prefer those places because I feel more anonymous in them. If I go into the VFW it’s always the same locals I’ve seen there every other time I’ve been there on my yearly vacations, and unfortunately they know who I am, because my aunts have had their place here for about ten years, and even though they themselves would not be caught dead in any sort of bar, everyone in town knows them because everyone in Cape May knows everyone else.
Now why does this bother me, I wonder? Shouldn’t I like it that everyone knows me? But no, I don’t like it. If I must go into a bar, and apparently sometimes I must, I prefer to slip in quietly, the unknown quiet man quietly drinking his beer or Manhattan. The last thing I need is a bar full of hearty fellows clapping me on the back and asking me how it’s going.
It took me a long time but eventually I’ve come to realize that I am just not a regular guy. I can imitate one passably sometimes if I’m with casual strangers, but the more people know of me the more they know how hopelessly irregular I am.
Oh, sure, back home in Olney I would go with the other ushers to the Fern Rock Diner on Fifth Street after noon mass on Sundays, but the only ones that ever made any attempt to advance our ecclesiastical friendship tended to be even more hopeless and boring than myself. So I would drink my coffee and eat my fried mush and eggs and go home.
Same thing in the army. Same thing on the railroad.
Same thing with the Catholic Youth Organization and the Community Service Corps, even those hotbeds of chaste Catholic bachelors: the only guys who wanted to be friendly with me were the just the ones whose conversation made me (no Steve Allen or Jack Paar myself) want to go screaming in the streets with the excruciating boredom of it all.
I digress, but after all this is my memoir and no one will ever read it anyway, probably not even its author.
I walked down the windy dark empty street to Congress and turned right, and down to the VFW. It’s just a plain long building, dull and brown, it’s windows made out of filmy glass bricks like ice cubes. I opened the door and went in. The first thing I heard was Steve’s distinctive tenor, singing along to a song on the jukebox called “Be My Baby”. And there he was in the middle of the crowded bar, waving a beer mug in time to the music.
Amazingly, it didn’t look like anyone wanted to beat him up.
I thought, Okay, now I want to go, but of course Steve saw me, stopped singing, and began waving energetically at me, calling out my name. Or rather calling out the name Arthur, which I suppose is close enough. I let the door close behind me and came in.
(Click here for our next brilliant chapter. Turn to the right hand column of this page to find links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’sRailroad Train To Heaven, as well as to many of his fine poems.)
A young soldier named Harvey returns from Vietnam to his New Mexico hometown in the desert, to say goodbye to his mother and a friend or two, thence to go on to discover his own path through the cosmos.
Two days later, and five people have already died violent and meaningless deaths.
But on the other hand Harvey has been hired by the blowhard rancher Big Jake Johnstone to act as guide to the mysterious and beautiful Dick and Daphne Ridpath at the then-outrageous salary of $100 a day. So Harvey’s got that going for him, if he lives long enough to spend the money.
Meanwhile at the nearby air force base...
Lt. Perkins had reported as instructed directly to Col. Masterson in his office.
“It disappeared,” repeated Col. Masterson.
“Yes, sir. Or -- rather it -- it appeared to disappear.”
“It appeared to disappear.”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
Perkins had the unfortunate habit of stuttering and stammering and repeating random words when speaking to authority figures. He was painfully aware of this habit, and well aware that it made him seem to be lying even on those occasions when he was not. But this awareness only made him stutter and stammer all the more.
“And you’re sure it was an army truck.”
“W-well, it -- it might’ve been, uh, air force or m-marines. Or national guard? Or --”
“Right.”
“Except it had this this this --”
“What.”
“Weird camouflage pattern. Pattern. Pattern.”
“I heard you. Camouflage. Pattern.”
“Yeah. I mean yes. Sir. I -- I mean it l-l-looked to me like one of those, um, standard old, you know, um, S-studebaker, Studebaker, Studebaker army trucks. Sir.”
“So it might’ve been army surplus.”
“Th-that’s possible, sir. B-but there’s still a lot of those trucks being used, sir. W-we’ve got the same kind on this b-base. Base. Sir.”
The colonel was quiet for a few moments, tapping his right index finger on his desk blotter.
“All right. You haven’t told anybody else about this?”
“N-no, sir. According to your instructions, sir. Anything unusual, unusual --”
“Yeah, right. Well, keep buttoned up about this till I check it out. Good job.”
“Th-thank you, sir.”
“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
“Th-thank you, sir. G-good day, sir.”
As soon as that geek Perkins was out the door Masterson picked up the phone, ready to call that bastard General Halliday. Goddam army bastards and their goddam secret truck missions, he’d give them a piece of his mind about secret activities in his sector.
Then he put the receiver down.
No.
Why should he show his hand?
Did he really think Halliday would admit anything?
Not fucking likely.
No, better to sit tight.
There were ways to deal with these army bastards.
And besides, he’d better check first to see that none of his own little base’s trucks were missing.
Lt. Perkins walked across the shimmering asphalt toward the officers’ quarters, thinking about a shower and a cold beer.
This was a creepy place but it had to be a damn sight better than Vietnam, which country amazingly he had been able to avoid so far in his military career. He had volunteered for flight school, and completed it, in a state of lunacy having to do with proving himself a man and not a stuttering awkward geek, but he was long over that madness now and had no wish to be a hero. Two more years of this nonsense and with any luck still no Vietnam, and then he could get back to real life. Graduate school, get his MBA, start earning some bread. Just as long as he didn’t get sent to Nam, that was the main thing.
After a year in Korea he had been posted to this small unheard-of base a month ago. The duty was easy and the areas he patrolled were just beautiful, and it was true there wasn’t much to do around here except drive into Disdain and drink beer, but still, at least it wasn’t Vietnam. No one was trying to kill you here.
But.
But, why was everyone so strange around here? So grim and so worried-looking. And why did guys who’d been here for a while apparently keep volunteering for Nam? Were they nuts or did they know something he didn’t know? And was there anything to this rumor he’d heard that this base had the highest accident rate of any base in the air force?
Fuck it.
Shower and a beer, that was the thing.
Oh. Yes. And that new issue of Playboy, still virginally unopened on his night table. That was something to look forward to. His quiet moments alone with a Playmate of the Month were really the best moments of his life. His relationship with Miss August (“flower child-woman debbie hooper”) had been serenely profound, and she had been gloriously enthusiastic in the threesomes they had enjoyed with Miss September, whatever her name was. But now the October issue had arrived, and a new lovely young woman awaited him within it. He would not stutter and stammer and be an awkward geek with her. Oh no. No fucking way.
****
(Click here for our next thrilling chapter. Kindly turn to the right hand column of this page for a listing of handy links to other episodes in our serialization of this unrated director’s cut of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain.)
In our previous installment of these world-renowned memoirs (now rumored to be in development as a 14-part series from the BBC, starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz), our hero Arnold Schnabel’s new inamorata Elektra came to have dinner with Arnold and his mother and his three maiden aunts and Arnold’s young cousin Kevin.
Arnold and Elektra are enjoying post-prandial wine and cigarettes on the porch when who should come down the street but Steve, whom Arnold had previously taken for the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Cape May, NJ. August, 1963.
What can you do when someone just invites himself up? Say no?
We were trapped.
I started to say, “Sure, come on up,” but I hadn’t got past the “sh” sound in “sure” before Steve was already working on the gate latch, which after only about half a minute he managed to lift up.
Next thing you knew he was on the porch, giving Elektra a kiss on the cheek.
“Don’t tell me your name!” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“Alicia!” he cried.
“No.”
“No?”
“Nope,” she said.
“Okay, uh -- Jocasta?”
“No.”
“Am I warm?”
“A little.”
“Is it Medea?”
“Nope.”
“Hmmm, let me think. Lysistrata?”
I couldn’t take it any more.
“It’s Elektra, Steve,” I said.
“Elektra! I knew it! Thank you, Arthur!”
“Arnold,” I said.
“Arnold! So what are you two up to?”
“Uh, we were just going, actually,” I said.
“Is this where you live, Arnold?”
“Well, no, not really.”
My mother opened the screen door, holding a tray with cups of coffee, a little cream pitcher, a sugar bowl.
“Hello, madam,” said Steve.
“Hello,” said my mother.
“My name’s Steve. Here, let me take that tray.” He took the tray from her. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Arnold’s mother. Mrs. Schnabel.”
“Are you? Arnold’s only my best buddy, you know.”
“Really?”
She looked at me in puzzlement.
“Arnold,” said Steve, “I thought you said you didn’t live here, you big fibber.”
“Well, I -- I’m just -- staying here,” I mumbled.
“It’s my sisters’ house,” said my mother.
“Can I have a cup of that coffee, Steve,” said Elektra.
“Of course, darling.”
He went over and bent down with the tray; she took a cup and saucer, and with a gentle wave of her hand indicated she didn’t want sugar or cream.
“Arnold?” said Steve.
I took a cup, black also.
“Would you like a cup, Steve?” asked my mother.
“No, thank you, I’ve just had a gallon of coffee.”
“Can I get you something else?”
“Oh, no thank you, I’ve only popped up to say hi really. Don’t want to wear out my welcome.”
“You’re very welcome, Steve,” said my mother. “Any friend of Arnold’s is welcome here.”
“So kind of you to say that.” He handed her back the tray. “Besides, Arnold said he and Elektra had plans.”
“You do?” said my mother to me.
“Uh,” I said.
“We were just going to take a walk,” said Elektra, to my rescue.
“Well, don’t forget your umbrellas,” said my mother. “It might rain some more.”
Kevin came and opened the screen door.
“Hello, little man,” said Steve. “And who might you be?”
“Kevin Armstrong,” said Kevin.
“My name’s Steve.”
“Hello.”
My Aunt Edith appeared behind Kevin. This was really getting insane, and this time it wasn’t all me.
“Hello,” said Steve.
“Hello,” said Aunt Edith.
“My name’s Steve. Arnold’s friend.”
“I’m Edith. Arnold’s aunt.”
“Hello, Aunt Edith, and aren’t you just as cute as a button?”
At this Aunt Edith retreated back indoors but Kevin just stood there in the doorway.
“So!” said Steve. “I should be going. Arnold, where is this VFW club I’ve heard so much about?”
“Just go right down the street here till you get to the next corner, Congress Street, then go right and it’s another block or so on the right-hand side. You can’t miss it.”
“Care to come?” He looked hopefully at me, then at Elektra, then back to me again, with a sad half smile on one side of his face.
“Uh, no, Steve, thanks,” I said. “we, uh --”
“We just ate an enormous and delicious meal,” said Elektra. “We want to walk it off.”
My mother still stood there, holding her tray, and Kevin remained in the doorway.
“I should eat something,” said Steve, wistfully. “Do they have good food at this VFW?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Go for the meatball sandwich.”
“Steve, why don’t you let me fix you a plate?” said my mother.
See? Now I know where my insanity comes from.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Mrs. Schnabel.”
“You wait here, I’ll bring you out a tray. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“A glass of wine? Well, that would be nice.”
“Sit down and I’ll be right out.”
“I really shouldn’t.” He looked at me for guidance. I surrendered.
“Go ahead, Steve,” I said. “Pull up a chair.”
“I’ll only stay for a quick glass of wine. No food.”
“No. Bring him some food, Mom.”
“I’ll heat a dinner up.”
“Oh, please don’t, Mrs. Schnabel,” said Steve. “Just something cold is fine.”
“Would you like some roast beef?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.”
She went in, shooing Kevin in front of her.
“May I pull that over?” Steve said, pointing to another rocker on the other side of the doorway.
For some reason I couldn’t even answer him. And it didn’t really matter anyway.
He went over, picked the chair up, brought it over and set it down across from us, but closer to my chair than Elektra’s. The porch is not all that deep, and so his knees were only about a foot from mine. We were both wearing Bermuda shorts.
The misty rain had stopped, but the light that just a few minutes before had brightly colored the street had now fallen away. A silence fell, or was allowed to resume, but it was still rather windy out, so this was the silence of wet leaves hissing in the trees, of fallen leaves scudding along the street like flotsam in a river, and, from seemingly far away but only a few blocks away, the ocean endlessly crashing at the edge of the continent.
Then Steve started prattling again.
Twenty minutes later Steve had devoured a roast beef sandwich and downed a jelly glass of wine, all the while talking, although I’ve already forgotten about what , even though I am writing this the next afternoon.
Finally:
“Well, I really should be going,” he said at last.
Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to say what I know you’re supposed to say when someone says that, which is “No, stay”, and neither did Elektra.
“Are you sure you two wouldn’t like to have a drink with me? I’m buying.”
“Steve,” said Elektra.
“Yes, darling.”
“Lean closer.”
She gave him a come-hither wiggle with her index finger.
Steve leaned closer, holding his cigarette up and away.
“Arnold and I want to go to bed,” she said, quietly but distinctly.
Steve’s mouth made an “O”, then his head snapped back and the “O” became a thin line.
He stood up.
“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked. At first he was facing Elektra but then he looked at me.
“Forgive me, Arnold.”
“I forgive you, Steve.”
“Okay, give me directions for that VFW place again.”
“Steve,” I said, “do you really want to get drunk all over again?”
He said nothing for a couple of moments, blinking in the twilight.
“But what else is there to do? This is my vacation.”
“You could -- take a walk?”
“Oh please.”
“You could see a movie.”
“Arnold, this is my vacation. You understand, Elektra, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“You two are lucky. You have something to do besides drink. But who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“At the VFW, Steve?” I had to ask.
“Stranger things have happened, old boy.”
“Be careful there, Steve.”
“You mean don’t get beat up?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Arnold, for me getting beat up is an occupational hazard, so don’t you worry.”
He asked me again for the directions, I gave them again, and he went away.
“So that’s your Jesus,” said Elektra.
I wondered if I should tell her of the visions I’d had that afternoon, seeing Steve in my room, across the street, on the porch. I didn’t want to go into it, but I felt honor-bound to say something.
“I had a few more of those -- hallucinations, today,” I said.
“Are you having one now?”
“Not unless you’re one,” I said.
“I’m not a hallucination, Arnold. But I guess that’s what they all say, isn’t it?”
“Let’s go to your place,” I said.
“I have to say good night and thank you to your family first,” she said. “You stay here.”
Steve had left his plate and wine glass on a tray on the table. Elektra filled the tray up with our cups and saucers and our empty wineglasses, and took them inside.
A few minutes later Elektra came out. She got her purse off the table, put her arm in mine, and off we went.
We still had the whole evening ahead of us.
(Click here to see what happens next. Kindly go to the right hand side of this page to find an up-to-date listing of links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, as well as to many of his classic but accessible poems.)
In our previous episode of this unexpurgated edition of Larry Winchester’s sprawling masterpiece, our heroic trio ( the young recently-discharged soldier Harvey and the mysterious and glamorous Dick and Daphne Ridpath) were beset upon by the debased Thorndyke family, who wound up buried in the quicksand of an atomic sinkhole.
It’s September, 1969, a few miles outside a town called Disdain, in New Mexico. The #1 song in the country is “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones...
And as our protagonists ride their tired horses back to Big Jake Johnstone’s dude ranch, little do they know they are being watched by the international assassins (and fellow guests at the ranch) Hans Grupler and the woman known only as “Marlene”:
Grupler and Marlene had watched the entire Thorndyke family episode through binoculars from a butte some two miles distant.
“Well,” said Hans, “things are clearing up. We know now they are renegade. That was a US Army truck, albeit somewhat oddly camouflaged. And those soldiers were trying to kill them. If they are worth killing there must be a good reason for it.”
He spoke in the almost-extinct Bavarian village dialect he had spoken as a child and which he had taught Marlene.
“Perhaps they intend to steal an H-bomb from the air force base,” said Marlene, just to add something to the conversation.
“Perhaps. And oh my dear girl what we could do with an H-bomb.”
“Yes. That would be nice,” she said.
Not that she really cared so much about the details. She let Hans deal with all the silly intrigue. Marlene was an old-fashioned girl. Just let her know where to point her gun and she was happy.
****
Daphne was way off in front. Every once in a while she would swing down partway off her saddle like an Indian and grab up some plant or desert flower and swing back up again. She would ride along looking at the plant and sometimes she would toss it away and sometimes she would stick it in her saddlebag, and sometimes she would just keep it in her hand for a while.
Dick suddenly noticed that there were two holes in the breast pocket of his jacket, where he had put his little Philco transistor radio.
He took the radio out and saw that a rifle bullet had gone clean through it, entering the front at an angle that would have led straight into his right ventricle, but somehow the bullet had taken a left turn through the body of the radio and gone out the thin part on the side, making the second hole in Dick’s pocket.
Dick clicked the little dial, but the radio was dead, killed, kaput.
He put it back in his pocket.
****
(Click here for our next thrilling chapter, and kindly turn to the right hand column of this page for links to other episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain. )
(Special note: this novel, which had its origins in a screenplay Larry originally wrote in 1966, and was all set to direct in Almeyra, Spain, in September of that year (starring Michael Parks as Harvey, Laurence Harvey as Dick, Julie Christie as Daphne, Slim Pickens as Big Jake, and Gert Frobe and Capucine as Hans Grupler and Marlene) -- a production which sadly was cancelled when Larry's main backer was murdered in a Mafia turf war -- has now reportedly been greenlighted as a major motion picture by a major independent Hollywood production company, and Larry hopes to begin filming this long-delayed labor of love sometime early next year, with exteriors filmed on location in Sonora, Mexico. Nothing is set in stone yet, but the names Pitt, Jolie and Gyllenhaal have been bandied about, and the noted thespian John Goodman was spotted having lunch with Larry recently at Larry's favorite stopping place Musso and Frank's on Hollywood Boulevard. Goodman was later quoted in the Hollywood Reporter as saying he would "kill" for the part of Big Jake. All Hollywood was abuzz the next morning when Cate Blanchett told the good ladies on The View that she would be willing to play the part of Marlene for scale. As of press time the part of Grupler seems to be still up for grabs.)
Previously in this classic memoir (long available only in xeroxed samizdat form) of the man Harold Bloom has called “perhaps the only American poet worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare, with Dante, with Homer”, Arnold Schnabel retired to the living room to watch Popeye with his young cousin Kevin as his bohemian inamorata Elektra remained in the kitchen to help Arnold’s aunts and mother prepare duck’s blood soup.
A nor’easter spurts its last gasps against the shuttered front windows of this large Victorian boarding house in Cape May, New Jersey; August, 1963...
As soon as Popeye ended, with Popeye in the passionate embrace of Olive Oyl, it hit me for the first time in my life:
“Kevin,” I said, “Did it ever occur to you that Olive Oyl’s name is a play on words?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean her name is a joke.”
“What’s so funny about it?”
“Well, her name is the same as olive oil, the oil, like cooking oil. Except it’s spelled differently.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Olive oil. You know, oil made from olives.”
“What about it?”
“Well, there’s this oil made from olives, and it’s called olive oil. And Olive Oyl on the show has the same name, except it’s spelled differently.”
“Oh.”
“I had never realized that before now,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Had you?” I asked.
“No. Because I had never heard of olive oil before. What do I know about olive oil?”
“Good question,” I said.
“If her name was Crisco Oyl maybe then it would mean something to me.”
“Right,” I said.
John Facenda came on with the news. We watched it for a bit. Some gang in England had robbed a train of £2.6 million.
“When I grow up I’m gonna be a train robber,” said Kevin. “No offense; I know you used to work on the railroad.”
“No offense,” I said. I had almost finished my second glass of wine, and I felt much better than I had when the glass was full.
My mother came in and called us to dinner, so I turned the TV off.
Normally we all ate in the kitchen, but because we were having company we were eating in the dining room, which is just a small inconvenient room in between the living room and kitchen, with a table that’s actually no bigger than the kitchen table.
The ladies had also brought out the good china, which I find annoying to eat off of. It’s got all this fancy gilt along its scalloped edges which when you wield your knife and fork upon it makes for an awful scraping noise like desperate mice trapped behind a chalkboard.
Kevin and I sat; for some reason he always sits immediately to my left when we eat. Or is it I who always sits to his right?
I noticed a black leather woman’s purse on the table, and I realized it was Elektra’s. I hadn’t even noticed before that she was carrying a purse.
That’s me for you in a nutshell, I amble through life noticing only things like the smell of steam coming up from a sidewalk grill, or the rainbow colors in a puddle of gasoline in a gutter, or worms in the grass on a rainy spring day, and yet I fail to notice that my inamorata is carrying a black leather purse.
There was a bit of fuss about Elektra wanting to help bring in the food, but the old women kept telling her to go on and sit down.
Finally she did sit down, to my right. And thank God she had brought the Chianti bottle in and put it well within my reach. The rain had lessened, and so my aunts had opened the windows, and turned on the oscillating black fan on the little table by the windows, but it was still hot in there from all the cooking in the kitchen next door.
Elektra put her hand on my leg. I was wearing bermuda shorts. Her hand felt very warm. I glanced into her eyes, and she smiled. I could feel the warmth of her body, and she smelled sort of like French toast with maple syrup. Embarrassingly, I started to get an erection.
Thank God, my Aunt Greta brought out the big wooden salad bowl, and Elektra took her hand off my thigh before my erection could reach its full enormity.
The salad was dished out, or at least for me and Elektra and Kevin it was dished out. My aunts and my mother did their usual business of just sharing one plate, and either not sitting down at all or sitting down and then getting right up again.
My Aunt Elizabetta asked Elektra if her family was in the jewelry business.
Oh, great, I thought, this is somehow going to lead to her Jewishness. But fortunately her father was in the scaffolding trade, so that held Edith off at the pass.
For her own reasons Elektra volunteered that she had gone to NYU and majored in English, and then had gone on to complete her master’s degree in English Literature at Columbia. All four of the old women looked at her as if she were speaking Chinese.
“I’ll probably go back for my PhD, but I felt like taking a year or two off first,” she said.
This meant nothing to them. She might as well have been explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity, not that I myself would have understood the latter either.
Aunt Greta asked her where she was from. Elektra said she was born in Brooklyn, but moved to the Upper West Side of New York City with her family when she was eight. My aunts and mother had all lived in Brooklyn when they first came to America, so this precipitated a conversation about the old Brooklyn neighborhoods. My aunts and mother had lived in Bushwick, Elektra’s family had been from Williamsburg.
I’ll say one thing, at least I was finding out some things about Elektra that I hadn’t known before.
By this time we were on the duck’s blood soup with noodles, and I have to say it was delicious.
However, I guess the hammer had to fall eventually, and so it did.
“Your neighborhood was really very clean,” said my Aunt Edith.
“Was it? It never seemed that clean to me.”
“The Jewish people are clean,” said Aunt Edith.
“Oh, yeah, I guess they are,” said Elektra.
“Not like the Irish,” said Edith.
“Uh,” said Elektra, and she put her hand on my thigh again.
“Or the Schwarzen,” said Edith.
Elektra squeezed my thigh.
“Bushwick was a very clean neighborhood,” said Elektra.
“Not any more,” said Aunt Edith. “Nothing but the Schwarzen there now.”
“Okay, Edith,” said Elizabetta, who has certain liberal tendencies, as well as sounder ideas, or ideas at all, about acceptable dinner conversation.
“What?” said Edith.
“Help me bring the roast beef in,” said Elizabetta.
“Okay,” said Edith.
I refilled my wine glass. Or rather I refilled my Flintstones glass with wine.
“Don’t forget me,” whispered Elektra and I filled her up too.
“I want some grape juice,” said Kevin.
He tried to reach for the bottle but I moved it away.
He accepted the deprivation without comment, and took to quietly singing the theme song to 77 Sunset Strip.
My Aunt Elizabetta came in with the platter of roast beef, and my Aunt Edith followed with the gravy. My mother brought in the potatoes, Greta brought in the beets.
Elektra removed her hand from my thigh, which was good as despite myself I was starting to get another erection.
We made it through the meal somehow. I felt sorry for Elektra, continuing to try to talk to my aunts and to my mother, something I never tried to do. Normally I just ate my food while they talked among themselves and I paid no attention, indeed I often brought a book to the table. It was a sore point with Kevin that he was not able to bring comic books to the dinner table, although this was allowed at lunch by some obscure loophole in familial law.
At the end of the meal there was a great discussion about letting Elektra help with the dishes, and while it was going on I went out to the porch with a full glass of wine and my cigarettes. It was almost twilight now, the rain had abated to a a salty thin spray that seemed not to fall but to shimmer in the air. The air smelled of honeysuckle and gladioli, of wet dirt and the ocean. I sat down in my usual rocker, lit up a Pall Mall, and stared out at the street, covered like a forest floor with gleaming green leaves and fallen brown twigs.
Kevin was inside watching TV again. I could hear the theme song through the windows, which someone had unshuttered: The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
After a few minutes Elektra came out. She had a glass of wine too, and her leather purse. She sat down in the rocker next to me, put her glass down on the little glass-topped wicker table between us, and took out her cigarettes. I gave her a light.
“Well, that was interesting,” she said, quietly, blowing the smoke out the side of her mouth.
“I’m supposed to be the one with mental problems,” I said. “And yet you volunteered for that.”
“It wasn’t so bad. You don’t understand women. We’re always submitting ourselves to absurd situations. It’s our lot in life. Besides, your aunts and mother are nice.”
“They’re prejudiced,” I said.
“I know. But they don’t know any better.”
She smoked, staring out at the street. The sky and the air had been grey all day, but now, just as the day was ending, an illumination fell across the street through the dying mist, as if floodlights mounted on the gables of our house had all at once been switched on. I stared at Elektra’s face and remembered I hadn’t written her a poem yet.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Will you look at who’s walking down the street?”
Sure enough, coming down Perry Street was Steve. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella this time, but then by this point it was hardly raining.
This was disturbing; but wasn’t it a good sign if Elektra could see him also?
He crossed the street and turned left on North, towards us. My aunts’ house is one house in from the corner.
He gave no sign of knowing we were there until he was right abreast of us, then he stopped and stared.
“Arthur!” he said. “And your lady friend! Quelle surprise! May I come up and say hello?”
Apparently I was never to be set free.
(Click here for our next wacky chapter. And kindly turn to the right hand column of this page to find links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, and to many of his fine and easy-to-read poems.)
In our previous episode of auteur Larry Winchester’s sprawling (“great, American” -- Harold Bloom) epic, we finally met the notorious desert-trash Thorndyke mob: Old Man Thorndyke and his spawn Otis and Naomi, father, brother and sister to the late Bull Thorndyke, gunned down by our hero Harvey in a fair fight.
September, 1969, a few miles outside of a town called Disdain in the great state of new Mexico.
Harvey and his new friends Dick and Daphne Ridpath have ridden their horses to the edge of the top of a mesa, when who should they see driving up the far slope but...
“What is it,” asked Daphne.
“It’s the family of the guy I killed the other day.”
“Oh.”
The truck stopped out there at the far end of the mesa.
Three people got out of the truck, and they each had a rifle.
“Ah, shit,” said Harvey, “come on quick and get over this slope.”
He grabbed the reins of his palomino and the first shot cracked out just half a second after it spurted up the dirt at his feet.
Daphne got her horse to the verge first and another bullet took off her saddle horn.
Three more shots struck the dirt and two bullets whizzed over their heads as they scrambled with their panicking animals down onto the slope.
The way down was rocky and steep, impossible on horseback. Just getting down on foot without tumbling down and breaking a neck would be hard enough.
The horses slid and scuffled and whinnied.
Dick held the reins of his Appaloosa tight in his left hand and in his right hand was the Browning.
“Damn,” said Harvey, “You’re always heeled, ain’t ya?”
“Yeah,” said Dick. “What do ya say? We can lie down here and try to pick them off when they get closer.”
“Sir, they only got to flank us along this slope with one of them rifles and we’re dead. We gotta run.”
“All right then. You’re the army man.”
“I got an idea, but first we better try and slow ‘em down a bit.”
Daphne crouched there like a runner holding onto her mare’s reins. She still had the flowers in one hand, and her horse was the only one that was holding steady.
Harvey drew his revolver and cocked the hammer.
“Listen, both of us just reach over and fire a few rounds, then we hightail it down this slope. You two folla me and just go where I go if ya don’t wanta get yourselves killed.”
“Right,” said Dick.
“Ready?”
Dick jacked a round into the Browning’s chamber and cocked the hammer.
“Ready.”
They could hear the truck moving again.
They both ducked up and fired three rounds and then ducked back sticking their guns away and all three of them started scrambling down the slope, pulling on and hanging onto their horses’ reins, Daphne following Harvey and Dick following her, the three of them and their horses slipping and sliding, dust flying up and rocks and pebbles tumbling down and disappearing into the sinkhole down below.
Harvey got down to the base of the slope first and he pulled his horse back away from the sink and then Daphne came tumbling down with her whinnying horse pulling her as she held onto the reins, still holding the flowers in her left hand, and Harvey helped her turn the mare around and the mare nudged her and Daphne stumbled back, her right leg sank into the sand to the knee, she dropped the flowers, they disappeared.
Harvey grabbed her arm and pulled her, Dick grabbed her other arm and they pulled together, and her leg came out with a pink sock on her foot but without her riding boot.
Harvey helped Dick pull Daphne to her feet and then he pulled his horse closer and swung up onto the saddle and jogged the horse to the right.
Daphne and Dick mounted and followed him, he led them along the foot of the slope, then after about thirty yards the sinkhole started to fall away, curving out into the desert.
Harvey pulled to the left, staying a couple of yards outside the falling-away of the hole, and as he did he glanced up and back and saw and heard the truck at the top of the mesa.
He kicked his horse hard and took off, galloping at a curve along the edge of the sink, he could hear Dick and Daphne following him, a bullet whizzed by his nose, he fought the urge to keep riding straight out into the desert and kept bearing to the left following the curve of the hole.
He glanced back again and saw someone in the rear of the truck up there aiming a rifle at him over the roof of the cab, and he saw the muzzle flash against the grey sky and then the bullet snapped a cut like a whiplash across the back of his left hand as it whizzed by, and he kept on riding at a curve along the edge of the sinkhole.
When he got out to in line to where the truck was sitting up there he reined his horse sharp right and took off his hat and smacked the horse’s flank with it, leaning right down onto the horse’s neck and kicking it with his heels straight on out into the desert.
He heard three more shots but he didn’t hear the whiz of the bullets or see where they landed.
Then he heard the tortured sound of the truck’s motor and its strangled gears, and he knew the Thorndykes were driving their truck down the slope.
He kept riding and then he realized that the sound of the truck had gone muffled, and he turned the horse to the right a bit and glanced back, and he saw the truck plunging straight down into the sinkhole.
He allowed the horse very gradually to slow down to a walk, patting its wet dirty neck and feeling its lungs filling and emptying under his legs, feeling his own lungs filling and emptying in the dry air. He turned in his saddle and looked back, the truck was quiet, stuck now about five or six yards from the base of the mesa, the rust-colored sand up above its wheels.
Harvey turned his horse back around. Dick and Daphne came up on their horses, pulled them up and around on either side of him, and they all looked back to the Thorndykes in their truck, about a quarter of a mile away.
They could hear the them shouting. Someone started to squeeze out of the passenger window and Harvey saw it was fat Naomi Thorndyke, she was holding out her arm to scrawny Otis in the back, but Otis ignored her and just kept walking side to side at the back by the tailgate with his rifle.
Naomi tried to pull herself up onto the roof of the cab but she fell and landed in the sand and then she wasn’t there any more.
Now the fat old man was climbing out of the driver’s side, you could hear him yelling and cursing and calling for Otis to lend him a hand, but Otis just ignored him and then stopped pacing and climbed down off the back of the truck, and he sank in up to his thighs, but he got his balance, holding his rifle up over his head, and then in slow motion he started slogging towards the base of the mesa, slow and slower like a man in a dream.
Old Man Thorndyke wriggled and struggled his way out of the cab’s driver’s window just as the sand started to pour into it, and he clawed his way up onto the roof and then tumbled on back into the bed of the truck. He scrambled to the rear and seemed to hesitate a second as Otis kept slogging slowly closer to the border of the sink even though the sand was up to his waist now, and then the old man pulled out a handgun and yelled something at Otis but Otis just kept slogging.
The old man got quiet and then he climbed gingerly over the tailgate and stared down. Then he dived in feet first and the sand swallowed him to his waist as if he’d jumped into a burnt ochre river.
You could hear him cursing and shouting again.
Otis kept slogging on in slow-motion, the sand up to his chest now, but he had made it to only about six feet from the edge of the hole.
His father started slogging too, but he was much heavier, and with each slow grunting lurch of his body he sank lower, and now the sand was pouring into the back of the truck, and then just the roof showed, and then nothing, the truck was gone and the sand where it had been was perfectly smooth and all you could see was the old man with the sand up to his neck holding his pistol up in the air.
Otis was in almost up to his neck now, but he had reached the sloping edge of the sink. He threw his rifle up and grabbed onto a dead yucca root and pulled himself, you could see his body slowly slowly rising up out of the sand.
Dick and Harvey and Daphne sat on their horses side by side not saying anything and watching as Otis finally pulled himself out and then just lay there, his bony body wheezing. He turned over on his back and you could see him looking at his old man with the sand up to his throat holding his arms up above his head and shouting at his son with the pistol still in one hand.
Otis just lay there propped up on his elbows with his little bloated belly going in and out like a bellows under his t-shirt, and even at this distance you could hear the old man telling Otis to pull him in with the rifle, come out into the sand a little ways and pull him in you fucking miserable fucking coward, but Otis just lay there looking at him. He didn’t want to step into that sink again.
Then the old man pointed his handgun at Otis and Otis reached over and grabbed his rifle but the old man’s gun flashed and Otis doubled over as the gun’s bark shot across the desert. The old man fired twice more and Otis’s body shuddered twice, his rifle fell down into the sink and then he crumpled up and slid down after it like a rag doll and disappeared.
All you could hear now was the old man shouting and roaring and cursing life and death and man and God.
Harvey saw the old man twisting his head and shoulder around and looking across the breadth of the sink and the desert at him and Dick and Daphne, and stretching out his right arm and aiming the pistol in their direction. It flashed and the bullet fell spent like a thrown pebble in the dust ten feet in front of them and now they heard the shot and their horses didn’t even flinch.
The old man roared again and then put the gun to the side of his head, red sprayed out the other side of it, the old man’s mouth opened wide in a soundless scream, there came the muffled pop of the shot, the old man’s eyes open wide and then his head went under and the last thing you saw was the gun pointing up still in his hand, it flashed one last time and barked at the dead sky, and then it slipped under along with the dead hand that held it.
Then it was like nothing had happened, and the sand over the sinkhole lay as smooth as a sheet of old gold.
Daphne lit up a cigarette, not bothering to use her holder. She blew out the smoke and dropped the lighter back into a pocket of her vest.
“Well,” she said, “that was charming.”
She reached down and pulled off the one boot she still had on and tossed it away. She still had pink socks on both feet, anyway.
They heard the sound of a jet engine. They looked up and saw an air force F-100 Super Sabre zoom a few hundred feet over the mesa and over their heads and away, spooking the horses.
They settled down the horses, and then Harvey asked Dick and Daphne where they wanted to go now.
Daphne had her right foot up on the saddle, massaging the sole with her fingers.
“I don’t know about you fellas,” she said, “but I for one have had quite enough of the beauties of nature for one day.”
****
(Click here for our next chapter. Kindly turn to the right hand column of this page for links to other episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain, possibly soon to be a major motion picture event based on the soon to be-released smashing new computer game from Ha! Karate, featuring the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Lindsay Lohan, Pierce Brosnan, and Bill O’Reilly.)
In our previous episode of these chronicles of the man the late Norman Mailer called "The only 20th Century writer I’d be afraid to get in the ring with; well, him and Larry Winchester...” Arnold Schnabel met his new inamorata Elektra outside the sprawling Victorian boardinghouse of his three maiden aunts Greta, Elizabetta and Edith. Elektra is to have dinner with the family for the first time. Inside the house Arnold’s mother and aunts prepare the feast. Arnold’s young cousin Kevin watches Sally Starr’s Popeye Theatre.
It is a rainy, stormy day in Cape May, New Jersey; August, 1963.
So we went up the stairs and onto the porch. She partly closed and then opened her umbrella quickly a few times to shake the water over the rail.
“Should I just leave it out here?” she asked.
It was odd, but just watching her do something so simple as shaking the water off of her umbrella made me want to go to bed with her.
“Yeah, just leave it by the door,” I said.
She furled it but didn’t bother buttoning it tight, stood it next to the door, it fell down.
“You know, it’s just occurred to me,” I said. “It’s odd my aunts don’t have an umbrella stand out here.”
“A serious lapse on their part,” she said.
In a way it was, for them, anyway. But I knew that if I happened to mention this oversight to them it would become this enormous deal, like if they left their lawn unmowed for three weeks or forgot to trim the hedges.
“What are you thinking about, Arnold?”
We were both speaking quietly, because there was only the screen door between us and the living room, from which came the sounds of a TV cartoon.
“I was just thinking how insane my aunts are.”
“Insanity runs in your family?”
“I think it might,” I said.
“So shall we go in or just stand out here all night?”
“I’d rather just go back to your place.”
“Come on, Arnold.”
For some reason she said this in a more pronounced New York accent than usual, and she put her arm in mine.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
We went in and Kevin of course was there, sitting on the floor, watching the TV.
“Hi, Electric,” he said.
“Hi, Kelvin,” said Elektra.
“My name’s Kevin.”
“My name’s Elektra.”
“Hi, Elektra,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Whatcha watchin’, Kevin?” she asked.
“Astroboy.”
“Astroboy. I don’t think I’ve seen that.”
“It’s good. You wanta watch it with me?”
“I think I should say hi to the ladies first,” she said.
“They’re in the kitchen,” said Kevin, turning back to the show. “Cousin Arnold’ll take you.”
“Okay. See ya.”
“See ya,” he said, but he was concentrating on Astroboy again.
I took her back to the kitchen. It was hot and moist and meat-smelling, and all the women stopped what they were doing and looked at Elektra.
For a strange moment there was silence. Elektra squeezed my arm, I snapped out of it, and introduced her to my aunts and re-introduced her to my mother.
Just then Charlie Coleman came in the screen door, wearing a wet rubber coat and a rubber hat and rubber boots. He had an armful of three different types of lettuce, and a half-gallon mason jar of what I think was cream and a plastic container of butter. I hadn’t even heard his truck pull up.
He cheerily said something I couldn't decipher, and my Aunt Elizabetta took the stuff off him, put the lettuces in the sink, the jar and the container on the counter. Then my Aunt Greta dug into her apron and gave Charlie a few crumpled bills and some coins.
He thanked her, then he said something to me -- I couldn’t make it out, I thought he was saying something like, “Who got the gravy.”
“He wants to know who the lady is, Arnold,” said my Aunt Edith.
“Oh, this is Elektra, Charlie,” I said. “Elektra, this is Charlie. Charlie helps my aunts out around the house.”
“Hi, Charlie,” said Elektra.
“Charlie brought us the duck, too, Arnold,” said my mother.
Charlie said something else, God knows what. He went on for quite a bit.
Elektra nodded several times back at him.
Charlie left then and the older women went back to staring at Elektra.
“Elektra brought some wine,” I said, and I took the bottle out of the bag.
All four of the older women said variations of “You shouldn’t have,” Elektra said it was nothing, they said she shouldn’t have again, she said it was no big deal, then they all said the same things one more time, but before they could go through it again I asked where the corkscrew was.
My mother and aunts don’t really drink, but I was ready for one. My mother found me the corkscrew, and I opened the bottle. Elektra said she wouldn’t mind one, too, and I could see a glance going around the old ladies, but somehow under the glance I heard them thinking, “She’s Jewish, they probably drink wine all the time, like Italians.”
There were no wine glasses so we drank out of a couple of my aunts’ Flintstones jelly glasses.
By this time the women were getting back to work on the food. Elektra asked if she could help with anything, but they all said no. Elektra asked again, they said no again. Then one more time around.
I wondered if I could take getting married if it meant listening to all these repetitious verbal rituals, and it occurred to me that I would probably just be a typical man and leave the women to their own arcane devices.
While I was thinking these thoughts Elektra went over to the stove and somehow started to engage in conversation with my Aunt Elizabetta, something to do with a gravy she was making.
I just stood there like a lump, drinking my wine by the kitchen table, sweating in the kitchen heat.
After a minute Elektra came back over to me and touched my back with her fingers.
“How are you doing, Arnold?”
“Fine,” I said. To tell the truth I was feeling just a little bit crazy, but I figured I’d probably be okay after a glass of wine.
“What did that man Charlie say right before he left?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“He said he brought over the best duck he had,” said my Aunt Edith. I hadn’t even realized she was listening. She was holding a bowl of dark red blood. “And then he said he also raises chickens and pigs, and he has a cow, and if you ever want to buy any chickens or ducks or pigs or eggs or cream or fresh butter he would give you a good deal. Then he said you were really pretty and that it was about time Arnold married and settled down."
“Oh, okay,” said Elektra.
“Do you want to help me make the duck’s blood soup?” said Aunt Edith.
“Um, okay, sure,” said Elektra.
I was afraid this was going to happen, my Aunt Edith’s famous duck’s blood soup. I realized now that they had really gone the whole hog, reverting back to their dark past in a little village in Germany, and that Charlie had brought the duck over still alive. Thank God I had slept through that. I had stood witness once as my aunts killed a duck and then held it upside down to let it bleed into a bowl. It was not an experience I wanted ever to repeat.
Come to think of it, I didn’t particularly want to watch this next bit either, which involved some mysterious process of mixing the duck’s blood into the simmering and fragrant duck broth.
I don’t mind eating the duck’s blood soup, I just don’t want to watch any of these gruesome preliminaries.
I said I was going to go in to the living room and watch TV with Kevin until dinner was ready.
All of them, including Elektra, told me to go on in.
Elektra was already holding a wooden spoon and standing attentively next to my Aunt Edith and her bowl of blood which she had placed on the kitchen table. Elektra probably only stands about five foot four or so but still she seemed to tower over tiny Aunt Edith.
“Go on, Arnold,” she said, waving the spoon.
She didn’t have to tell me one more time. I refilled my glass, went on in and just caught the beginning of a Popeye cartoon, one of the good ones, with Bluto.
(Click here for our next thrilling chapter. Kindly go to the right hand column of this page to find links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, and to many of his brilliant poems.)
Previously in Larry Winchester’s critically-acclaimed (“Makes All The Pretty Horses look like Little Women.” -- Harold Bloom) masterpiece, our heroes Harvey, Dick and Daphne found themselves in a compromised position atop a mesa in the nuclear-blasted desert outside a town called Disdain.
September, 1969...
Sheriff Dooley waited until his hangover abated a bit on the afternoon of the day after Bull Thorndyke’s death before he drove out to the Thorndyke shack to give the family the news.
He would have preferred to telephone, but the phone company didn’t run lines out to Coyote Canyon where the Thorndykes lived, and the Thorndykes probably wouldn’t have got a phone in anyhow since they had no one to call and there was no one who would want to call them, either. And even if they had gotten a phone they wouldn’t have paid their bills and the service would have been shut off. That was just the type of people they were.
The sheriff told them plain and simple what had happened, and he also told them plain and simple that if any of them started anything with Harvey they’d have to deal with him.
Scrawny Otis the older brother and fat Naomi the young sister and bigger and fatter Old Man Thorndyke all swore up and down they understood and that that damn Bull always weren’t nothing but a no-account jackweed fuckwad no-how.
Then they offered the sheriff some of their moonshine tequila that looked like pig sperm and smelled like dead bugs and gasoline.
The sheriff declined, but after he left they sat around drinking and getting mean and talking about how they was gonna kill Harvey and get away with it too.
They didn’t really care about Bull, in fact they were glad he was dead. They didn’t give a fuck. They were just plain mean, that’s all, and now they had an excuse to be really mean. It felt good.
Later that day they drove into town in their ‘47 Hudson. They stopped at the Hideyway and had a few Falstaffs and blackberry brandies, and they told all and sundry that Bull had been looking to get his fool self killed ever since he was born, and they held no book against young Harvey, no sir.
They asked Mo and Keely and Quint how Harvey was making out, and Mo and Keely and Quint told them about Harvey’s new job on the Johnstone spread, and the Thorndykes all said they was glad to see a young returning soldier get a good job right away. (Not that any of them had ever worked an honest day in their lives.)
Then they left after shaking hands with everybody, and went out to get Bull’s army truck which was still sitting in Burt’s lot.
Otis wondered if they shouldn’t go claim Bull’s body and arrange for a burial or something.
Why, said Old Man Thorndyke.
Otis couldn’t think of a good reason, so they drove the truck and the Hudson back to their place and went in and ate some of Naomi’s critter stew and then drank their moonshine tequila and home-brewed pulque while they chewed jimson weed and cleaned and loaded their firearms.
The Thorndykes pretty much wrote the book on no-account lazy white desert trash, but they practically lived on that continuous stew into which Naomi would drop their dismembered poachings of quail and roadrunner and coyote and fox and bobcat and chuckwalla and kangaroo rat, and if there was one thing every one of them was good at it was shooting.
****
(Click here to see what these two-bit redneck peckerwoods get up to next. Kindly turn to the right hand column of this page for links to other episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain, soon to be a smashing new computer game from Ha! Karate (featuring the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ralph Fiennes, and Billy Bob Thornton.)
In our previous episode of these memoirs of the poet whom Harold Bloom called “Olney’s less boring answer to Walt Whitman”, Arnold Schnabel’s new inamorata Elektra agreed to come to dinner with Arnold and his mother, his Aunts Greta, Edith and Elizabetta, and his young cousin Kevin.
August, 1963. Cape May, New Jersey.
A nor’easter rattles the windows and shakes the trees and sends the waves crashing up against the stout pilings of Frank’s Playland.
After my bath I went to bed. I duly read some more of The Waste Land, making scarce head or tail of it.
I did like this one part:
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.
Kind of reminded me of dear old Olney, that bridge that goes over the Heintz factory, the burnt metal smell.
The whiskey reek when you walk by the taprooms, etc.
And indeed the gloom and doom of this reminds me of the poems I wrote about the old neighborhood after my breakdown.
Of course I at least made the effort to make my poems rhyme.
So I picked up The Cry of the Owlagain, and that I quite enjoyed. It's about a madly obsessive young man who seems to all intents and purposes normal but who is really insane. A good rainy day book. After a while I laid it down and closed my eyes, listening to the rain crackling and popping on the roof right above me, the crashing of waves of rain against the front of the house and my little casement window.
I fell asleep. After a while I woke up and I saw Steve sitting at my table, reading one of the scrapbooks in which I keep cuttings of my poems. He had the desk lamp on, and he was wearing glasses, presumably reading glasses.
I tried to speak but I couldn’t get any words out.
Steve turned and smiled. He somehow seemed less desperate wearing these horn-rimmed glasses.
“Hi, Arthur. Just thought I’d stop by. Go back to sleep! You want this light out?”
I still couldn’t say anything.
He flicked off the table lamp, just an old gooseneck desk lamp.
Even though the light was out he still seemed illuminated somehow, as if his skin and clothes and his hair were phosphorescent.
“I know! You were right! I’m Jesus! Ta-da!”
He waved his hands.
“I like your poems, by the way. They really got better after your little breakdown, didn’t they?”
I just couldn’t talk.
“And you know what, I think you’re being too kind to that T.S. Eliot fellow. No one needs to make a poem that hard to understand, I’m sorry. What a lot of pretentious crap!”
I felt like my mouth was paralyzed with novocaine.
“So look, I’ll go, don’t want to disturb your sleep.” He stood, up, stooping a little because of course my room is right under the gabled roof. “Have fun with Elektra tonight. Put it in once for me, pal!” He chuckled and went out the door, closing it behind him.
I closed my eyes.
I slept.
I woke up with a rush again.
Had I really just seen Steve? Was he Jesus? No, I was dreaming. It’s okay to have insane visions as long as you’re dreaming.
I fell back to sleep.
When I awoke again I felt much better, very rested. The rain was still coming down, but much more lightly now, and the wind had settled too. The green of the leaves on the oak tree outside my window sparkled dully, like seaweed in clear water.
I remembered my dream vividly but it didn’t scare me now. There was no possibility that Steve could have come up here, he didn’t even know where I lived. And there was no possibility that he could be Jesus, I just had to disabuse my poor brain of that notion.
I got dressed and went down to the bathroom. I peed, and then I brushed my teeth. I went downstairs. Kevin was in the living room, watching Sally Starr and The Three Stooges.
I went in to the kitchen where all three of my aunts and my mother were fussing with various foodstuffs. My mouth watered. Aunt Elizabetta was rolling and cutting noodle dough. I peeked in the oven, and there was a roast beef in it. A duck simmered in a pot on the range. I went over to where my mother was stirring chocolate batter in an enormous bowl. She told me to get away and not to spoil my appetite. I said okay and got a cup of coffee from the percolator.
I went back to the living room and watched Clutch Cargo with Kevin, then I went out onto the porch with my book. The rain had lessened quite a bit.
A yellow Oldsmobile hissed slowly by, and Steve stood across the street, under his now seemingly repaired umbrella, or perhaps another one. He waved, and then he disappeared, into thin air, or rather into thick rainy air.
So, there you had it.
I was still somewhat insane.
“Not insane,” said Steve. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Arthur.”
He sat in the rocker next to me, on my right, smiling, smoking a cigarette. A Pall Mall.
I turned and saw Elektra coming down Perry Street, holding up a black umbrella, wearing a blue dress, carrying a paper bag of something. I turned my head back to my right, and sure enough, Steve was gone again.
When she got near the front gate I stood up, and then, realizing she wouldn’t have a free hand for the gate I ran down to get it for her.
When I closed it behind her she turned and held the umbrella over both of us.
“Hi, lover.”
“Hi.”
“Brought you wine.”
She handed me the bag, it was a large bottle of Chianti in a wicker wrapping.
She looked beautiful in the wet grey light.
“What are we eating?” she said.
“Duck soup with noodles, and roast beef,” I said. “And chocolate cake.”
“Beef and duck and cake. Let’s go, big boy.”
Over her shoulder I could see Steve standing across the street under his black umbrella, waving at me. Well, at least he didn’t seem to be inviting himself to dinner. So I had that to be thankful for.
(Painting by Thomas Kinkade. Click here to find out more about the duck soup. And kindly turn to the right side of this page for links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, and to many of his classic poems.)
Two of our favorite bloggers, Kathleen Maher of Diary of a Heretic, and The Self-Styled Siren got close but no cigars in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Kathleen writes great serialized fiction and the Siren writes greatly about great old movies. So go to their respective sites and show some love. And don't forget to applaud.
Our recently discharged young soldier Harvey has been hired by the blowhard rancher Big Johnstone to act as guide for the mysterious and glamorous Dick and Daphne “Smith”.
The time is September, 1969. The place is the wasteland neighboring a small town called Disdain, in New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment”...
The sky had flattened out into a great great steel dome, and they sat on their horses on the eastern edge of a tall mesa, looking out at a tiny town like a toy-train village about five miles out there in the desert, clear and precise, a small square grouping of bone-colored split-level houses radiating from a grey empty square with a few larger buildings around it like building blocks. One of the buildings had a squat rectangular steeple with a tiny black cross on it.
“What’s that down there, Harve?” said Dick.
“That’s one of them atomic towns. Fake towns the government built to blow up in the A-bomb tests. Sometimes they got blown clean up and sometimes they was set far back enough so's they only got the glass blown out their windows. This was one of them kind of towns.”
“Let’s go have a look.”
Harvey paused a moment, looking at Dick. Daphne simply sat on her mare, one leg swung over the pommel, staring out at the desert.
“That’s all radioactive and shit down there,” said Harvey.
“How bad can it be?” asked Dick.
Harvey paused another moment.
“Mister, I grew up around here. And it can be pretty bad. See that little holler down below?”
The mesa sloped down fairly sharply a couple of hundred feet and at its base was a semi-elliptical depression about the size of a football field.
“Uh-huh.”
“Watch this.”
Harvey slid off his palomino, picked up an empty Falstaff beer can, reared back and tossed it down into the depression below.
The can disappeared into the rust-colored sand without raising any dust or leaving any trace.
“Atomic sinkhole,” said Harvey. “Got a bunch of ‘em round here. Most of the locals that got any sense know where they are, but we lose a few tourists in ‘em every year.”
“Harvey,” said Dick, “this is why we’re glad you’re our guide.”
“Ooh, look at those flowers,” said Daphne. “I’ll be right back, boys.”
She reared her horse around, kicked it, and galloped off toward the southern slope of the mesa. She brought the mare up short near the edge in a cloud of dust, dismounted, and bent over to look at a growth of some sort of white scrub blossoms.
“How about a cigarette break, Harve?” said Dick.
“Fine with me.”
Dick swung down from his Appaloosa, patted its neck and murmured something to it, then walked over to where Harvey now squatted, looking out into the desert. Dick sat down crosslegged, lit Harvey’s cigarette and then his own. He took off that stupid Australian hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
“I guess you’re wondering what this is all about, Harve.”
Harvey didn’t answer right away. But then --
“A hundred clear a day covers a lot of wonderin’, Mr. Smith.”
Dick put his hat back on.
“Harvey, I have to tell you. My name’s really not Smith.”
“Never thought it was.”
“It’s really Ridpath. Dick Ridpath.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir.”
For a moment or two they just sat and squatted there, smoking, staring out at the desert. From seemingly far away they could hear Daphne singing.
“Crimson and clover,” she was singing, “over and over. Crimson and clover, over and over...”
“Do you smoke pot, Harve?” asked Dick.
“Sure do.”
“Good.”
Dick had a few ready-rolled in the left breast pocket of his jacket, and he handed one to Harvey. Keeping his own cigarette lit, Harvey let Dick light up the joint with his Ronson.
Dick had trouble making friends with men. The sad fact was that men bored him. Even with some of the really brilliant men he had met -- Dr. Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Steve Allen, D.T. Suzuki, Hermann Hesse, that old brujo in Cuba -- he still got bored if he stuck around too long.
But oddly enough he felt un-bored around this laconic young fellow.
“I’m looking for something, Harve,” said Dick, toking. It was very strong Thai stick. Like Harvey he kept his tobacco cigarette lit in one hand while toking on the joint. “I just don’t know what it is.”
“Skip the cryptic talk, Mr. Ridpath, and give it to me straight.”
“Okay, sorry. Here, Harvey, see this thing?”
He took the transistor radio out of one of the many pockets of his jacket.
“I’ve been getting messages from this thing,” he said.
Harvey had the joint now, and he toked.
“Okay,” he said. “So you’re insane. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Harvey,” said Dick, “do I look like a nut?”
“No, but you talk like a nut.”
Dick looked at the transistor.
“I guess it does sound crazy.”
“Yep. Dat it do,” said Harvey, and he passed the joint back to Dick.
“Oh, well,” said Dick, and he put the transistor back into his pocket.
“Maybe I am crazy, but a voice did tell me to come down here, and it also told me to hire a good local guide with a military background. And there you were.”
“I thought Mr. Johnstone hired me.”
“Well, that’s true, but he hired you specifically for us.”
“Yeah. Why’d he do that, anyway, and for so much money?”
“He thinks we’re big-time drug dealers, so he’s sucking up to us.”
Harvey realized he had been toking on his cigarette, thinking it was the joint, which was now magically back in his other hand. He caught a taste of burnt filter and flicked the butt away over the slope.
“So you ain’t drug dealers?”
Dick stubbed out his own cigarette in the dirt, field-stripped it, and put the filter in his right side jacket pocket.
“No,” said Dick, “We’re not drug dealers, but I have a friend back in Frisco who is a big-time LSD manufacturer, and he does business with Big Jake, and Big Jake owes him a favor. My friend told him to give us whatever we needed.”
“Mr. Johnstone deals LSD?”
“Apparently, yeah. He’s a wholesaler for this whole section of the state.”
Harvey handed Dick the joint.
“So if you ain’t a drug dealer, what are you?”
“Well, I used to be career navy, but I had to retire a few years ago. I --” Dick toked, “fell afoul of --” and toked again, “certain powerful elements.”
“Got in trouble with the brass, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Dick, and he looked at his scarred fingers.
“Mr. Smith --” Harvey reached out for the joint and Dick gave it to him.
“Ridpath,” said Dick.
“Mr. Ridpath --”
“But call me Dick.”
“Dick -- you sure you ain’t just nuts?”
Harvey took a big long toke and held it in.
Dick fixed him with those beautiful blue eyes.
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure.
Suddenly, his lungs full of pot smoke, Harvey became possessed with hysterical laughter, and began spluttering and gasping, his face turning red.
Dick grabbed the joint out of Harvey’s convulsing hand.
“Easy there, boy.”
Daphne cip-clopped up to them on her mare, holding up a bouquet of white Spanish bayonet blossoms.
“Are you two talking about me? Look, Dick, look at the funny flowers I found. I’m going to put them in our room. Give me some of that joint.”
She floated down from the saddle like a fairy princess and she strode over to them like a warrior queen. Dick handed her up the joint and she toked.
As Harvey’s laughter subsided and drained away into the air the ground seemed to rumble under his feet, and the westerly wind smelling of creosote seemed to grumble.
Daphne had undone the top few buttons of her pink shirt, and Harvey stared at what he could see and what he couldn’t see of her breasts, which seemed to have grown larger as she filled her lungs.
He was very high.
Daphne exhaled the smoke.
“By the way, there’s some sort of very dodgy-looking truck riding up toward us.”
Harvey stopped laughing. And now he could hear a truck’s motor and he realized he had been hearing it for the past minute or so but had been too stoned to notice it.
“What kind of truck?” he said.
“I don’t know. It was like one of those sad trucks at that Hideyway place.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, kind of like an army truck. One that’s been through a few nuclear wars.”
“Ah, shit.”
“What’s the matter, Harve,” said Dick.
“Well, I think it might be --”
An old two-ton army truck nosed up over the west side of the mesa, lowing like some monstrous cow giving birth, and even at this distance of a quarter mile Harvey recognized that ugly cauterized paint job.
“Ah, shit,” he said again, and stood up, unclasping the flap on his pistol holster.
****
(Click here to go to our next thrilling episode. And do check out the right hand column of this page to find up-to-date listings of links to other chapters of A Town Called Disdain, as well as to appreciations of many of Larry Winchester’s classic films. And remember to check your local listings for the re-release of Larry’s restored 1962 cinematic Bildungsroman In the Graveyard of My Youth starring Dennis Hopper, Sandra Dee, Annette Funicello, and Paul Lynde.)
Previously in this long-awaited memoir from “the people’s poet”, Arnold Schnabel, our hero accompanied his new friend Steve to lunch at the Ugly Mug, a lunch which Steve partook exclusively in liquid form.
August, 1963. Cape May, NJ.
“What if I am Jesus?” said Steve. “I mean, that might explain a lot of things. It could be possible, couldn’t it?”
He tried to lean his elbow on the table but missed.
“Well, the thing is, if you were Jesus, you would probably already know it,” I said.
“Oh. Right. Because if I’m Jesus I’m the Son of God, which would mean I’m actually pretty darn close to being God. Which would mean I'd be -- what's the word, when you're a real Johnny Know-It-All."
"Omniscient."
"That's it. I'd be omnipotent, so I'd darn well I know I was Jesus, wouldn't I?"
"Yeah, I guess so," I said, but then what did I know.
"The son of God," he said. "But not really really as big a honcho as Old Man God, right?"
“Well -- according to the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus is God. Because God is made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
“Wait, so God is all three of those?”
“Well -- you’re not Catholic, I take it.”
“No. So, like, I’m God but those other two are God also?”
“Well, you’re all three part of the same Divine Being, indivisible and equal.”
“You’ve lost me, Arthur. Now I really need another drink.”
He held up his empty Manhattan glass and looked around for the waitress.
“Steve,” I said, “you really shouldn’t have another.”
“Oh, pish, are you flagging me?”
“You haven’t eaten,” I said. “You should go home and take a nap.”
He stared at me as if he were about to argue and then suddenly he seemed to slump within himself.
He stared at the table and then sheepishly peered up at me.
“I’m such a hopeless alcy,” he said.
“Let’s pay up and I’ll get you home.”
“Okay, Arthur. But you must let me pay.”
He strugglingly got out his wallet, and fumbling it open he spilled bills all over the table.
I wound up letting him pay for half the bill, but as we were leaving he forced another ten dollars into the waitress’s hand.
When we were at the door and opening our umbrellas I said, “That was an awful lot of money you gave her, Steve.”
“Arthur,” he said, “when you’re as big a drunk as I am you learn to be very generous to waitresses and bartenders now let’s go.”
He was stopping at the Chalfonte, just a few blocks away, but the rain was really coming down now, the storm blowing in hard from the ocean. We tried to keep our umbrellas aimed into the wind, but they still blew inside out a couple of times each.
Once Steve fell, and I had some difficulty getting him to stand up, but finally I did.
We made it to the Chalfonte. It’s a nice old-fashioned hotel, broad but not tall, white wood, a long porch with rockers.
We went into the lobby, lots of people were sitting around reading or chatting, playing board games.
“Should we drop in at the bar for one?” asked Steve, with a slight hopeful smile.
“No, go to your room now, Steve. Can you make it all right?”
“Yeah. I’m only on the second floor.”
He was drenched. His umbrella was blown-out, useless. He fumbled in his pocket and bought out a key attached to a numbered tag.
“See,” he said. “I’ve even got my key.”
“Great. Go right to bed, and when you wake up, eat something, Steve.”
“Right. I guess you’re going to see -- your lady friend?”
Actually I had no definite plans to see her, but I didn’t want to get stuck agreeing to meet him for a liquid supper that night, so I said, “Yeah.”
“Good. She’s very lovely.”
“Okay, see ya later, Steve.”
I held out my hand. Steve looked at his right hand; it held the hotel room key. He didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
I patted him on the shoulder and turned to go.
“Wait! Arthur!”
“Arnold,” I said.
“Arnold!”
“Yeah, Steve.”
He looked over both his shoulders. In fact the desk clerk and several other people in the lobby were staring at us now.
He put his hand to the side of his mouth and whispered:
“Don’t forget to yodel!”
“Thanks, Steve,” I said. “I won’t.”
I went out the screen door to the porch, and opened my still somewhat operable umbrella.
I still had the afternoon ahead of me. It would be nice to change out of my damp clothes and lie in bed and read for a while. I set out through the rain.
I decided to go down Jackson, just perhaps to peep into the window of my friends’ shop. Maybe I could at least say hello if Elektra was behind the counter. Or maybe not.
There was the shop. I paused under the awning. Sure enough there she was, so was Rocket Man, but the shop was busy, there were six or eight people in there, and Elektra was talking to a customer over the counter. I walked on.
I’d gone down to in front of the next house when I heard her rain-muffled voice behind me, calling my name.
I turned and went back, she pulled me in under the awning, and we stood off to one side of the entrance.
“You don’t say hello?”
“Well, you looked busy,” I said.
“They can wait.”
I held my open umbrella awkwardly off to one side.
“You’re all wet,” she said. “What are you doing walking around in the rain?”
“Well, I met that Steve guy in the coffee shop, next thing I knew he was dragging me into the Ugly Mug for lunch. Except all he did was drink, and then I had to walk him home in the rain, because he was drunk, and our umbrellas kept turning inside out.”
She looked at me.
“You realize he’s queer, don’t you, Arnold?”
“Oh,” I said.
“You really didn’t know?”
“Well, I thought he was just -- eccentric.”
“Well, no matter. Listen, lover, I owe you.”
“Really? What for?”
“For last night.”
“For the beer?”
“No, not for the beer. I mean for what we did after the beer. Because I fell asleep.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I figured you were tired.”
“No, Arnold.”
She pulled my wet shirt away from my chest.
“Go home and get out of these wet clothes,” she said. ”You’ll catch your death.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to have dinner tonight?”
“I have dinner every night.”
“With me, wiseguy.”
“Sure.” And then, I have no idea why I said this: “My mother and aunts want to have you over for dinner.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“I’d love to have dinner with your mother and aunts.”
“There’s also my young cousin Kevin.”
“He’s cute. I like him.”
“I don’t think you’d have very much fun,” I said.
“Why?”
“Well -- they’re already talking about us getting married.”
“Old women are the same everywhere, Arnold. Tell them I’ll come over tonight if it’s okay.”
“We eat really early,” I said. “Six o’clock or so.”
“Just like my parents. I’ll get out of the shop early and be over at six.”
“All right,” I said. “You’ve been warned.”
“I’ve been warned. Go home and get out of those wet clothes.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek. I’m not sure, but I think this may have been the first time she did this.
I walked home through the rain. When I came home I told my mother and aunts about Elektra. They peppered me with questions. Among other things they wanted to know her dietary requirements. I told them she didn’t have to have kosher food and that as far as I knew she ate anything.
I escaped upstairs and got out of my wet clothes, went back down to the third floor bathroom and took a bath. I brought The Waste Land with me. I’m afraid I still haven’t made much headway in that poem, and after a few lines, the sense of which pretty much escaped me (except for a general feeling of gloom), I reached out my arm and laid the book down on the toilet seat.
I lay back and listened to the sounds of the rain and the wind, the clattering and thrashing, the moaning and the singing of the storm.
It occurred to me that I still didn’t even know Elektra’s last name.
(Click here to go to our next chapter. Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for a listing of links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, and to many of his fine poems.)
We continue with our Schaefer Award-winning serialization of the uncut “director’s version” of Larry Winchester’s long-out-of-print epic (“Makes Moby-Dick look like a guppy.” -- Harold Bloom).
Come with us to the environs of the wretched town of Disdain, New Mexico, in that momentous September of 1969...
Our heroes the (recently discharged young soldier Harvey and the mysterious and beautiful couple Dick and Daphne Ridpath) have finally set out on horseback from the ranch of the blowhard rancher Big Jake Johnstone.
Little do they know that they are being spied upon by Moloch, the former Oxford don who commands the vile motorcycle gang called the Motorpsychos. (Two nights before Dick shot and killed one of Moloch’s men in self-defense, and humbled Moloch himself before his men...)
Moloch adjusted the telescope and saw them quite clearly cantering down the road from the ranch.
He stood behind a large crucifixion-thorn bush, and behind him on the mesa sat the Motorpsychos on their hogs.
Testicle tapped him on the shoulder.
“It’s them people, ain’t it?”
Moloch put down the glass and fixed Testicle coldly with his one good eye.
“You know I don’t like to be touched.”
“Uh, I’m sorry, Moloch.”
“They looked at each other and Moloch considered the possibilities:
Throw the swine into the thorns of the bush.
Smash him in the face with the butt of his knife.
Drive the knife’s blade into his fat gut.
Or let it pass.
He saw the pathetic fear in Testicle’s eyes and suddenly he was appeased. The acknowledgment of terror was enough. Enough for now. He turned away and raised the glass again.
“I mean,” said Testicle, “if you think we should, or --”
“Or what?”
“Or -- whatever you think we should do.”
“Yes. Quite.”
He turned and raised the telescope again.
“No. We’ll wait.”
His immediate reason for saying this was simply to put this arsewipe Testicle in his place. But something else inclined him to forestall the pleasure of wreaking a very nasty vengeance on these people. As much as he hated to think, he felt the need to think, to brood. Upon that man who had so humiliated him.
“Sometimes my dear Testicle you will find that if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were not done quickly.”
“Uh, yeah. Dat’s right.”
Moloch shut the scope up and put it back in its case.
“Come, let us find some teenagers and sell them hard drugs.”
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Our previousepisode of this memoir found our hero Arnold Schnabel having a chat over coffee with “Steve”, a fellow whom Arnold had thought was possibly the physical incarnation of Jesus Christ. But then Arnold was all too aware of the doubtful reliability of his own senses.
It is a rainy stormy day in Cape May, New Jersey, in August 1963.
Our setting: the Cape Coffee Shoppe.
The song on the jukebox: “You Don’t Own Me”, by Lesley Gore...
“Oh my God, I love this song,” said Steve.
He began to sing along to the jukebox:
You don't own me I'm not just one of your many toys You don't own me Don't say I can't go with other boys
Steve seemed oblivious to the mess he had just made all over the counter, so I grabbed a bunch of paper napkins out of the metal dispenser and wiped it up.
Steve just kept singing. At least he was on pitch.
And don't tell me what to do And don't tell me what to say And please, when I go out with you, Don't put me on display 'cause
He turned and pointed a finger at me:
You don't own me Don't try to change me in any way You don't own me Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay
The people on either side of us had stopped talking and were now staring at Steve, but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists and sang:
I don't tell you what to say I don't tell you what to do So, just let me be myself That's all I ask of you
I'm young and I love to be young I'm free and I love to be free To live my life the way I want, To say and do whatever I please
An instrumental part came on, and so he finally shut up. The people kept staring at him though. He looked at me and shrugged.
“Arthur,” he said, “I think I need a hair of the dog, and pronto. Will you join me for a cocktail at the Ugly Mug?”
“Well, Steve,” I said, “it’s a little early for me.”
“Oh, pish, come on, we’re on vacation, ness pa?”
“Ness pa?”
“It’s French. At least I think it’s French. Like, N, apostrophe, E, S, T, um, dash, uh, C, E, I think.”
“Oh. N’est-ce pas?”
“That’s it; you speak French, I’m so impressed.”
“Not really,” I said. “I took a course in the army, and I was in France for about six months in the war, so I picked up a little.”
“I’ll bet you were very brave.”
“I was an engineer. I never fired a shot.”
“I’m sure you were brave. Come have a drink with me.”
“No,” I said, “I should go home and have lunch.”
“Let me buy you lunch, Arthur. You’re the only friend I’ve made in this town.”
That was sad.
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t make me drink alone. I’ll buy you a tremendous cheeseburger.”
I felt sorry for him. And also I wanted to get out of there because people were still giving him glances, waiting for him to break into song again.
Steve insisted on paying for my coffee. We got our umbrellas and walked down the block in the lashing rain to the Mug.
It was barely noon, but even so the northeaster had filled the place up with people desperate for some sort of good time on their vacations.
There was one empty booth and Steve made a beeline for it.
We sat down, we got out our cigarettes and lighted up. The young waitress came over.
“A pitcher of Schaefer, please, darling,” said Steve. “Oh, and two Manhattans, up, and arctically cold.”
“No Manhattan for me,” I said, “I’ll just have a large club soda please.”
There was a boring part here, with Steve trying to talk me into having a Manhattan with him. Finally the waitress just looked at me.
“A club soda,” I said. “No Manhattan for me.”
“Okay!” she gave a strained smile and went away.
This song about people came on, people who need people being the luckiest people in the world, and Steve started singing again.
“Steve,” I said. “Steve. Steve.”
“What?”
“Steve, you have to stop singing.”
“But I love Barbra!”
“Then let her sing.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks so much for having lunch with me, Arthur.”
“Steve --”
“Yes?”
“My name is Arnold.”
“Arnold?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Arnold. Arnold Arnold Arnold. I’ll remember that now. So! Arnold, tell me the story of your life.”
“I went to work for the railroad at the age of sixteen. Except for when I was in the army I’ve been on the railroad my whole life. I never got married and I live with my mother. I’ve written a poem a week for my local paper in Philly, the Olney Times, every week since I was eighteen years old.”
The waitress came over with her tray. She laid down the pitcher of beer and two empty beer mugs, a Manhattan, and a large club soda.
“Would you like to order some food?” she asked.
There were menus on the table, but we hadn’t opened them.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger,” I said. “Medium rare, with French fries. Please.”
“Anything for you, sir?” she asked Steve.
“Oh, no, darling, I’ll drink my lunch.”
She went away again.
“Do continue,” said Steve. He picked up his Manhattan and sipped it.
“I had a mental breakdown last January, and was hospitalized for a while. Eventually I went back to work, but I wasn’t quite recovered, and so they put me on a leave of absence at half-pay. My mother decided it would be good for me to come to Cape May with her and stay at the boarding house her three sisters own.” I stopped. “That brings us up to date,” I said. “That’s the story of my life.”
Steve paused, still holding his Manhattan in mid-air. Then, no more sipping, he drank it all in two gulps.
He sighed.
“You don’t know how therapeutic that was,” he said.
He lifted the pitcher and filled his beer mug, then went to fill the other one. I put my hand over the mug.
“None for me, Steve.”
“Oh, all right.” He took a drink of beer. “A poem a week?”
“Yep. Every week. But don’t worry, they’re not very good.”
“I knew you were the artistic sort. I could tell. Did you ever read The Fountainhead, by what’s her name?”
“No,” I said.
“Anne something. The Fountainhead?”
“Nope, never read it.”
“Oh, you must read it. It took me more than a year, but I was riveted by that book. Riveted. What’s another good book I’ve read? How about Ship of Fools by Katharine Anne, um -- I haven’t quite finished that one. So, a mental breakdown. Very interesting. Personally I think the world is mad. I would like to read your poems. Do you want to hear my life story?”
“Sure.”
He told me his life story.
Boy, and I thought my life was dull.
Listening to him really made me want to drink some of that beer, and so finally I broke down and poured myself a mug.
Why had I come here with him?
I kept nodding my head as he went on and on.
I had felt sorry for him.
Now I felt sorry for myself, stuck here with him.
Fortunately my cheeseburger and fries arrived, so my lunch preoccupied me for a while. They make a good burger there.
But soon enough the burger and fries were gone, but Steve was still there. He’d ordered another Manhattan, and another pitcher of beer. Of course he also tried to order me a Manhattan, but I stood firm on that score.
I wouldn’t be able to put down more than a few scraps of Steve’s life story here, even if I wanted to, because frankly I was barely listening. And also because after a while I realized I was falling into, or rising into, one of those episodes of mine, becoming detached from the world and myself. I could see Steve’s lips moving but I couldn’t make out any words at all. Oddly enough though I was hearing that song that had been playing earlier, the one about people who need people.
I hate these episodes. There’s always the fear that the episode will never end. And so the thing to do is to force it to end, by doing something, anything.
“Excuse me, Steve,” I heard myself say. “I have to go to the men’s room.”
I got up in a sort of panic and made my way to the men’s room.
There was no one in it.
I stared at my face in the mirror.
“Okay,” I said, “snap out of it. Snap out of it.” I didn’t like my face. I was tired of my face. “Snap out of it.” Ever since my breakdown my method was to say the Hail Mary over and over again, and that usually worked after a while. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to say the Hail Mary now. And thinking about this, about not saying the Hail Mary, I felt the panic subside, and I felt myself relaxing into myself again.
I took a deep breath.
Then I really did have to pee, so I peed.
I felt better now.
I rinsed my hands and went back out.
“Are you okay?” said Steve. “You looked a little pale just then.”
“I’m fine,” I said. I sat and filled my mug. It was only my second one.
“So, I’ve been boring you,” said Steve.
“Oh, no,” I said.
I looked at him. He did somehow look like Jesus, although without the beard and long hair and robe. Could he really be Jesus? No, that was insane.
“Steve, I have to tell you something.”
“Fire away, old man.”
He was talking in a British accent now.
“The other night when we were here, I really thought you were Jesus.”
“How flattering.”
“You see, I’m not fully recovered. I’ve -- I’ve imagined that I was speaking to Jesus on several occasions.”
“Like Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette!”
“Well, she saw the Blessed Mother, not Jesus.”
“But just like her! Maybe you did see Jesus!”
“Yeah, maybe, but that one time I thought you were Jesus.”
He paused for a long moment. He was back to speaking in an American accent now.
“But could it be true?” he said.
“Could what be true?”
“I couldn’t be Jesus, could I?”
I decided right then that it was time to finish my beer and to take my leave. But as gently as possible.
(Click here for our next thrilling chapter, and kindly turn to the right hand column of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to other episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven, and to many of his fine poems.)
“Marlene”, disguised as Indonesian woman, Singapore, 1969
It is only the third day of Larry Winchester’s sprawling epic, now presented uncut for the first time.
A young soldier named Harvey has returned from Vietnam to his depressed and depressing New Mexico hometown. He is barely home an hour when he is forced to kill a nasty bully named Bull Thorndyke in self-defense. The local big rancher Big Jake Thorndyke promptly hires Harvey to act as guide to the mysterious strangers Dick and Daphne Smith (real surname: Ridpath). Later that night Dick is forced to kill a nasty motorcycle gang member in self-defense.
After sleeping for two nights and a day Dick recognizes two old adversaries at Big Jake’s lunch table: two international killers and spies named Hans Grupler and “Marlene”.
You now know as much as I do...
(This episode rated P for purple plot development.)
It was a grey afternoon, a little cool for September, the sky the color of the inner shell of a freshly opened clam, and Harvey sat smoking on the porch rail and chatting with Mrs. Smith. The three horses stood there saddled and waiting, hitched to the post, and Mrs. Smith was running her fingers through the mane of the chestnut mare she’d chosen for her own self. Tip and Ed Harris the foreman and Pedro the stable man stood over there by the corral looking at Mrs. Smith. She wore that Jungle Jim helmet and black boots and these tight tan riding pants and an embroidered paisley vest with a pink shirt under it and a red silk scarf around her neck.
Mr. Smith came out with Mr. Johnstone, and Harvey got off the railing. Mr. Johnstone yelled across to Tip and Ed and Pedro:
“You boys lookin’ for some work to do I’ll find ya some.”
Tip and Ed and Pedro took one more good look at Mrs. Smith and then tossed down their cigarettes and walked off back toward the stables.
Mr. Johnstone had a leather belt with a covered holster with a gun in it hanging over his shoulder.
“Harvey, I want you to take these good people anywhere they want to go and I want you to take this.”
He handed Harvey the gun belt.
Mr. Smith looked bored, and ready to go.
“Now I know you ain’t no pistolero,” said Big Jake, “but after what happened the other night with them bikers I figger it don’t hurt to be careful. You got six in the cylinder and a couple loaded speedloaders in the ammo pouches there. Ya know how to work ‘em?”
Harvey unclipped one of the pouches and looked in.
“Yeah, ya just plug it up against the cylinder and turn the gizmo, right?”
“That’s right. Reload ya in two seconds.”
Harvey buckled on the belt, then took the pistol out. He popped out the cylinder, emptied all the cartridges into one hand, put them into his shirt pocket, and then checked the pistol out, popping the cylinder back in and spinning it, cocking and uncocking the hammer, squeezing the trigger hard and then soft a few times, with the hammer cocked and with it uncocked.
“Nice weapon, huh, Harve?”
Harvey started reloading the gun.
“It’ll do, sir.”
“Good. Now I had Esmeralda pack your sandwich cases with some nice sandwiches, plus you’ll find a flask o’ fine old fino sherry in each one, but I want you folks to be sure and get back in time for dinner. We got a side o’ beef all set for roastin’ in the mesquite pit and we gonna have us a old style New Mexican barbecue.”
“What’s the occasion, Big Jake?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“Your arrival, dear lady,” said Jake.
“Well, we won’t be late then,” she said, and she swung herself up onto the mare in a motion so smooth that the animal didn’t even budge.
Mr. Smith and Harvey mounted up also, but with considerably less grace, and they all headed out toward the gate.
Before they reached the gate with the neon Johnstone Ranch sign hanging from a metal cross-pole over it a car came up fast behind them, spooking the horses, and it was that German couple, in an open Range Rover.
They all leaped about a bit on their horses in the dust, trying to hold on and to settle them down, and Harvey damn near got thrown.
The Range Rover turned horizontal to the entrance and stopped, and the two Krauts were smiling or grimacing ear to ear.
“I am sorry,” called the man. “We should have been more careful.”
Harvey felt an intense hostility as he patted the horse, which was still neighing and whinnying, pulsing under his legs and stamping at the dirt.
The Kraut waved, and then rammed the car around and out the gate, leaving a cloud of exhaust and dust behind it.
****
After the Brian Jones affair Grupler had deemed it best not to linger in Great Britain. Marlene was afraid she had left fingerprints on a whisky tumbler, the Krays still had an open contract out on them, and far too many people had seen them in London already. Marlene met the bag man outside the shop on Jermyn Street as planned, and as soon as she gave Grupler the signal that the money was correct Grupler followed the man, put an ice pick into his throat and up into his brain and then walked quietly on.
A week on the beach in Ibiza and they were both bored.
Marlene met a rich Dutch youth who was interested in entering the Vietnamese heroin trade.
A week later Grupler and Marlene arrived in Saigon via Bangkok disguised as West German missionaries. They proceeded to cheat their Dutch employer out of a hundred thousand dollars and fifty-nine kilos of raw heroin.
But Grupler made inquiries, blood was shed, and he found out that the bulk of his (he thought of it as his) shipment of Burmese heroin had been flown down to Singapore, there to be transported to the States in a private yacht. He also found out that the man hired to captain the yacht was none other than Dick Ridpath.
Grupler bribed passage aboard a C-47 Air America flight, and he and Marlene were in Singapore two hours before the Ridpaths.
Grupler, wearing an uncomfortable false beard, and Marlene, in a blond wig, trailed Dick and Daphne to the Palm Grove. They engaged the suite adjacent to the Ridpaths. They followed the Ridpaths down to the docks, and saw the policemen swarming over the yacht like bugs.
For two weeks Grupler and Marlene shadowed the Ridpaths. Grupler even set up listening equipment on the wall between their suites. Despite the grueling insipidity and even inanity of every conversation he overheard Grupler still refused to believe that Ridpath had nothing at all up his sleeve, let alone that Dick had been unaware that he had been hired to transport heroin and had no money and no prospects.
And Grupler was listening with his headphones that 4 AM when Ridpath received that strange message on his wireless.
So, to San Francisco.
****
(Go here to see what happens next. And check the right hand column of this page for links to other chapters of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain, and to appreciations of many of Larry’s fine films. Coming soon to a selected art theatres and campuses: the restored 35mm black-and-white mono version of Larry’s long-lost 1964 classic, In the Graveyard of My Youth, starring Michael Parks and Tuesday Weld.)
"Yeah, and you're crazy. And tomorrow I'll be sober but you'll be crazy for the rest of your life."
-- W.C. Fields
Dudes and Dudesses!
Our dear Arnold Schnabel's memoirs Railroad Train To Heaven are now being serialized from the beginning in the excellent online magazine TROUBADOUR 21. Go give this fine journal some love!
Any excessively critical remarks will be forwarded promptly to the Commissariat of Homeland Insecurity.
Join Dan's so-called "friends"
NUGGETS FROM THE VAULT By popular demand: below you will find tables of contents of various of our ongoing features; the most recent installments are listed first. Simply click on a particular item to be whisked magically to a very special place.
"Young Marcel" by Francis X. Armstrong (Oxford University Press, 649 pp, $39.99): Teenage Marcel Proust stows away on a freighter to the New World, joins Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, experiences war, malaria, and first love in the arms of the fiery daughter of a Cuban revolutionary.
Young Marcel's miltary i.d.
Liberal Fascists of the World: Unite and Take Over!
Previously in this sprawling masterwork by the legendary (“makes Norman Mailer look like Truman Capote” -- John Updike) Larry Winchester, our heroes -- the recently de-mobilized soldier Harvey and the glamorous strangers Dick and Daphne Ridpath -- survived through Harvey’s pluck and quick thinking a rather unpleasant encounter in the New Mexico desert with the now-deceased Thorndyke family. 
