"The God’s Honest Truth"

Yes, our dedicated staff of interns and graduate assistants are still in the painstaking process of preparing Volume One of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs for publication in good time for the holiday gift-giving season – and so, in lieu of any new episodes of Arnold's chef-d'œuvre at this time, we present the first page of another classic and sadly out-of-print novel by Arnold's good friend Horace P. Sternwall:  The God’s Honest Truth.

“Sure, Lieutenant, I’m a drunk, and a two-bit grifter, I’m a defrocked priest and a disgraced cop, I’m a deserter and a coward and a traitor, I’m a hop-head and a three-card monte artist and a race-horse juicer – but I’m tellin’ ya and it’s the God’s honest truth – I didn’t bump Kincaid and I don’t know who did!”

“You forgot one little thing,” said Stein, and he blew cigar smoke into my face.

“Oh,” I said, blinking. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said.

He tapped his cigar ash onto my lap. I had just had this suit dry-cleaned at the Chinaman’s not a month before, too.

“One little thing,” he said again.

I would’ve brushed the ash off my lap except my hands were handcuffed behind my back.

“One tiny little thing,” he said.

“Just one little thing, Lieutenant?”

He blew on the lit end of the cigar and it glowed ruby red.

“Yeah,” he said. “One thing.”

Some guys’ll keep it up all night unless you feed them their cues. I didn’t feel like having that stogie stubbed out on my arm so I gave him his goddam cue.

“What’s that thing, Lieutenant? I mean if you don’t mind my asking.”

“You forgot to mention you’re a goddam liar, Molloy, a compulsive liar, a habitual liar. A liar.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah. I forgot. You’re right. I’m a liar. And that’s the God’s honest truth, too, Lieutenant.”

The God’s Honest Truth, by Horace P. Sternwall; an Atlas paperback original, 1949; republished as A Most Mendacious Fellow, by “Hank P. Sterne”, a Panther paperback “original” (UK), 1952.

(Scroll down the right-hand column of this page to find a listing of links to the opening passages of  many other fine but sadly out-of-print novels by Horace P. Sternwall. Our serialization of the memoirs of Arnold Schnabel will resume in the near future, as soon as Volume One has been published.)

"Two Hoofers Named Helen"

Our dedicated staff are in the final stages of preparing Volume One of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs for publication in time for the holiday gift-giving season, and so, in lieu of any new episodes of Arnold's saga at this time, we present the first page of this sadly out-of-print novel by Arnold's good friend Horace P. Sternwall.

“I’m tellin’ ya, doll,” said Big Helen, “my gams are so sore, for two cents I’d chop ‘em off and start sellin’ cigars on the sidewalk.”

“You’re tellin’ me, babe,” said Little Helen. “I need me some liniment, and not the kind you rub on your skin, neither.”

“Boy, I could go for a snort or three, too, girl. Whaddaya say we stop off at Johnny Mac’s?”

“You got a date, sister. Maybe we’ll find a couple of live ones.”

“At Johnny Mac’s? I’ll tell ya, doll, we’ll be happy to find one in that place that ain’t two weeks dead.”

“Ha ha, you said it, babe. Them guys are so square they don’t know enough to fall off the damn barstool when they’re croaked.”

“Yeah, who gives a damn, anyway, girlfriend. The beers are a nickel a glass and our trap is right up the stairs.”

“Let’s collect our shekels and blow.”

“Big” Helen Jones and “Little” Helen Moscowitz collected their pay from Matty the house manager and headed out the stage door and up the alley to 42nd Street.

“Hey, dolls,” said a dude standing on the sidewalk. He wore a blue zoot suit and a snap-brim fedora, and he swung a chain with a gold coin on its end.

“Dig Ricardo Cortez,” said Big Helen.

“Hey, fella,” said Little Helen, “Didn’t you get the memorandum? It’s 1952, not 1942.”

“Very funny,” said the dude. He reached into his trousers pocket and brought out a pearl-handled switchblade and flicked it open. “Maybe you think this stiletto is out of style.”

“That’s not what that cop behind you thinks,” said Little Helen.

The dude turned his head, and as he did Little Helen drove the pointed toe of her pump into the man’s crotch. As he doubled over with a groan Big Helen struck him over the head with her purse, which she always made sure held a stout pint jar of cold cream for just such eventualities as this.

The man crumbled into the entrance of the alleyway.

“Quick,” said Little Helen, “let’s grab his wallet for our trouble.”

“Good idea, sister,” said Big Helen. “I’m grabbing the switchblade, too. It’s cute.”

Two Hoofers Named Helen, by “Hannah P. Sauvage” (Horace P. Sternwall); a Midwood paperback original; 1952.


(Scroll down the right-hand column of this page to find a listing of links to the opening passages of many other classic but nearly impossible-to-find novels by Horace P. Sternwall.)

"Dialogue in the Confessional"

Our staff is still busily preparing Volume One of  Arnold Schnabel's memoirs for publication in time for the holiday gift-giving season, and so, once again, in the temporary absence of new episodes of Arnold's saga, we present one of his classic poems.

The following brilliant sonnet – which sheds a bemusing light on Arnold Schnabel’s sexuality – was submitted by Arnold to the Olney Times for the August 10th, 1963, issue. Not surprisingly  – considering its bold treatment of a subject matter which Arnold had always previously dealt with in the most thickly-veiled terms, if at all – the poem was rejected by the paper’s editor, Silas Willingham III. What is slightly surprising is that after almost twenty-five years of publishing Arnold’s poems on a weekly basis (Arnold had continued to submit poems by V-mail even when serving in the European Theatre in WWII), Willingham had only rejected one other poem, “Committed Bachelor”, which Arnold had submitted apparently just a few weeks previously. Upon finding “Dialogue in the Confessional” unsuitable for the family audience of the Olney Times, but not wanting to leave Arnold’s fans bereft, Willingham had second thoughts about “Committed Bachelor” and ran that in the August 10th issue instead.

“Dialogue in the Confessional”, one of Arnold’s most humorous yet flowing and masterfully composed sonnets, remained unpublished until it was recently discovered in the files of the Arnold Schnabel Society at the Oak Lane Library in Arnold's old Philadelphia neighborhood.

“Dialogue in the Confessional”

I went to confession and told the priest
about what I had done and that Jesus
had said it was okay; I heard the least
intake of breath; “Sex is not to please us,”
he said after a long pause, “but to bring
children into the world, within the state
of holy matrimony.” “But the thing
is,” I said, “no man and wife procreate
each time they perform the act; is it wrong
then, when they do it and fail conception?”
“No, no, of course not,” he said, “Just so long
as they’re wed, their love is no exception
to the rule.” “Right,” I said, “But what if, say –”
“Three Hail Marys,” he said. “Now go away.”

(Kindly go to the right hand column of this page for links to many other Arnold Schnabel poems as well as to our on-going serialization of his previously unpublished memoir Railroad Train to Heaven. New episodes will be forthcoming as soon as Volume One has been published.)

Arnold's friend Big Ben Blagwell: a retrospective

As our dedicated staff is still busily preparing Volume One of Arnold Schnabel's memoirs for publication as an actual "book" (in time for the holiday season!), and in lieu of any new episodes of  Railroad Train to Heaven for the time being,  we hope to forestall any groans of disappointment with today’s submission, a brief backward look at the exciting career of Arnold Schnabel’s friend, that hearty adventurer Big Ben Blagwell.

Ben’s first known appearance was in They Called Her Clementine, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Gold Medal paperback original published in 1949, which opens with these immortal lines:

I liked her face; it was a sweet, open face, a face that seemed to say springtime and flowers and happiness; oh, how wrong I was.

It was almost three years (during which time our hero’s hair somehow turned from “black as engine oil” to “red like dirty rust”) before Ben’s next appearance, in The Magic Pen Wiper, by Horace P. Sternwall; a Popular Library paperback original, 1952 (republished as Port of Passion, by "Hank Peter Savage", a “Perma Book Original”, 1954):

Big Ben Blagwell had whored and boozed and brawled his way through every two-bit dive in the South Seas, but he hadn’t really hit rock bottom until that day he strolled into a little place down Baguio way on the isle of Luzon, a little joint called the Magic Pen Wiper.

A scant two months later Ben showed up again, in My Friend the .45, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Behemoth Books paperback original, 1952:

He had a face that looked like it had been run over by a truck a few times; I turned away but then he spoke, the face spoke: "Hey, buddy, no disrespect, can I ask ya a question?

Ben’s next starring role was in Hell in the Amazon, by Horace P. Sternwall, an “Ace Double” paperback original, paired with Five Elegant Hit-Men, by “Henry Per Swenson” (yet another Sternwall nom de plume), 1953:

When my old navy buddy Buzz Maxwell called me up and asked me if I wanted to take a boat trip up the Amazon just for the hell of it with our other navy buddy Chip Weatherby, I said sure, it sounded like fun.

Boy, was I wrong.

Dead wrong.

Like flesh-eating piranha wrong.

We find Ben again, apparently fully-recovered from the numerous wounds incurred in his previous adventure, in Princess of the Bowery, by Horace P. Sternwall, an Ace paperback original, 1954:

She had a face that reminded me of my mother's face in the casket at the funeral home: painted, hard, and dead, with just the ghost of a smile. I decided to buy her a drink.

Again little worse for the wear, we find Ben a year later in Big Gun For a Little Lady, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Ballantine paperback original, 1955 (originally serialized in abridged form as "Little Lady With a Large Gun" in Savage Tales for Men, August and October, 1954):

“Hey, buddy,” said the dame sitting to Ben Blagwell’s right. “You wanta do me a favor?”

She was a redhead, but not with orange hair like a normal redhead. Her hair really was red, just like her dress.

She didn’t wait for Ben to say anything, but she opened up her sparkly red purse on her lap and brought out a .45 automatic, locked and cocked.

“Here,” she said. “Hold this for me a minute.”

Ben looked up and down the bar. Nobody was paying attention, and the kind of joint this was, even if somebody was paying attention they probably wouldn’t give a damn.

Ben took the gun out of her hand and held it on his thigh.

“Pretty big gun for a little lady,” he said.

“Sometimes a little lady needs a big gun,” she said. “Now put that thing away and let me buy you a drink.”

Still “a sucker for a good-looking dame, and the deadlier the better” we find Ben for the first time in sunny Los Angeles, in A Broad Named Maude, by Horace P. Sternwall, a Signet paperback original, 1956 (“Not a reprint”, but actually serialized in abridged form as “Devil’s Flight” in Torrid Tales, October-November-December, 1953, by “Harry P. St. James”):

It was a long walk back from the Santa Anita racetrack to downtown Los Angeles. Every once in a while Ben Blagwell would stick his thumb out, but nobody stopped. What the hell, Ben wouldn’t have picked himself up either if he saw himself standing on the side of the road in his cheap Robert Hall suit, a big ginger bruiser who looked like he’d kill you just as soon as look at you. It was almost midnight by the time he got back to Bunker Hill, and all the lights in the rooming house were out, which was good -- maybe he could avoid the landlady at least until morning. But someone was sitting on the porch glider up there in the dark. Ben started climbing the creaky wooden steps, hoping to hell that the someone wasn’t Mrs. McGrath, the mean old harridan. And then the someone struck a match, and lit a cigarette, and Ben stopped where he was at the head of the steps.

“Hello, big boy.”

Maude. Maude Collins. Three thousand miles he had traveled to get away from this broad, and here she was.

“You look like hell, big boy,” she said.

I look like hell, thought Ben.

And now I am in hell.

Ben apparently appeared in at least fourteen other Horace P. Sternwall novels, but we have not yet been able to track a single one of them down. If any of our faithful readers does happen to chance on any of them in a garage sale or moldering in a cardboard box in a grandparent's basement, the present writer would love to hear from you.

But in the meanwhile can any of us forget Ben’s first appearance in Arnold Schnabel’s heroic and massive memoir, Railroad Train to Heaven? Yes, it was way back in Chapter 251, when Arnold idly picks up a paperback titled Havana Hellcats (Horace P. Sternwall, publisher and date unknown):

I turned it over and looked at the back cover.

“Trapped in a tropical paradise that turns into a burning inferno of passion and betrayal, Yank soldier-of-fortune Ben Blagwell goes up against a harem of lesbian murderesses whose only motto is ‘More!’”

“By Horace P. Sternwall, author of Say It With a .38, Two Ways to Tuesday, and The Magic Pen Wiper.”

“I couldn’t put this book down, and neither will you!"-- Bennett Cerf

“Not for nothing has Sternwall been compared with Maugham and Conrad." -- Bernard DeVoto

“Sternwall’s Big Ben Blagwell deserves a place in the pantheon of the great heroes of literature, right up there with Leatherstocking, Ivanhoe, D'Artagnan, and Humphrey Clinker.” -- Lionel Trilling

I opened the book to the first page of the novel. I brought the opened book to my nose and breathed in the reassuring smell of the pulpy paper. Then I lowered the book and read the opening lines.

“Your name Ben Blagwell?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’d like to buy you a drink if you’re Ben Blagwell.”

“I only drink with my friends,” said Big Ben Blagwell.

“And what’s a chap got to do to become your friend?”

“Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you.”

“Innkeeper!” called the fat man in the wrinkled white suit. “Another drink for my friend here. What’re you drinking, Ben?”

“Planter’s Punch, with a float of ‘151’.”

“Two Planter’s Punches,” said the fat man.

“With a float of ‘151’,” Ben reminded him.

“And a float of ‘151’,” said the fat man.

“Sit down, my friend,” said Big Ben Blagwell….

“All right, buddy,” said someone behind me, in a deep, gruff voice.

I turned. It was a big muscular, sun-bronzed guy with four or five days’ growth of a ginger beard, a crushed and dingy white yachting cap, a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt, equally wrinkled denim trousers, dirty white deck shoes. He had a tattoo of an anchor on one forearm, and there was some sort of a bird on the other. He took a drag from a cigarette...

****

(Portrait of Ben and unknown woman by Vic Prezio. Ben and Arnold Schnabel both will be back with all-new episodes of Railroad Train to Heaven as soon as Volume One is published.)