“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 122: Arbuthnot

In our previous episode of this third-place prize-winner of the Plymouth Suburban Award for Creative Memoir, our hero Arnold Schnabel and his friend Dick Ridpath, trying to avoid the dreaded DeVores and the hot-blooded Miss Evans, have accepted the sanctuary of the little old proprietor of the Whatnot Shoppe on this fateful evening in August of 1963, in the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, New Jersey...

So up we duly went, spiraling up, the light growing less dim as we ascended.

“Just go on through,” said the old fellow, behind me.

The doorway on the second floor was open, Dick went through and I followed. We were in the living room of a cluttered apartment. In fact it looked much like the shop we had just left down below. There was even a knight in armor standing in a corner, holding a pike or a lance. Or I should say a knight’s suit of armor, as presumably there was no knight inside it.

A couple of lamps were lit, an old brass floor lamp with a tasseled yellow shade, and a table lamp with a shade made of multicolored rhombuses of glass.

The old guy came up the stairs behind me and closed the door.

“I suppose we should wait a little while until your pursuers go away?”

“If you don’t mind,” said Dick.

“Not at all, I could use the company. My name’s Arbuthnot, by the way. That’s my shop downstairs. Arbuthnot’s Whatnot Shoppe.”

“Ridpath,” said Dick, “Dick Ridpath,” and he took the old fellow’s hand. “And this is my friend Arnold. Arnold Schnabel.”

“Mr. Schnabel,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, taking my hand in its turn. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’ve seen you around town.”

Oh, great, I thought.

The old man withdrew his little hand and, waving it at an old tiger-striped sofa draped with yellowed antimacassars, he said, “Have a seat then, gentlemen. Who would like a drink?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” said Dick.

“Sherry?”

“Fine by me,” said Dick.

Dick and I took seats on the sofa, which turned out to be one of those sofas which absorb you like some living thing, drawing you down so that you’re sitting only an inch or two from the floor, with your knees almost at a level with your chin.

“Sherry, Mr. Schnabel?”

“Thank you, yes,” I said. I felt as if I would need some sort of fuel to give me the energy even to start to extricate myself from this sofa.

A small black cat jumped onto the sofa between me and Dick, and began examining me as Mr. Arbuthnot went across the room to a glass-doored cabinet.

“I know your aunts, Mr. Schnabel. Very nice ladies.”

Well, he probably knew about my breakdown, then. Fine. Someday I would just have a sign painted, “Madman”, and wear it around my neck.

He came back across the room with a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream and three glasses. He laid the glasses on the long low lace-covered coffee table that was there, uncapped the bottle and poured out three drinks. Dick and I were both struggling to reach the drinks from our sunken positions when Mr. Arbuthnot helped us out and, leaning across the coffee table, handed the glasses to us. He took one too and climbed up onto an easy chair to our left. This chair had been piled up with cushions, and so Mr. Arbuthnot, instead of being almost submerged in the furniture like Dick and me, sat quite high on his seat, the bottoms of his little feet at least a foot above the rug.

“And Mr. Ridpath,” he said, “you’re staying at Mrs. Biddle’s, over on Windsor Avenue?”

“Yes. I’m sort of a family friend,” said Dick.

“Ah! A family friend. Cheers!”

Dick and I cheered, and we all drank some of the sweet sherry. I would much rather have preferred a Manhattan, but the way this evening was going I would take any drink I could get and be grateful for it.

“A navy man, aren’t you, Mr. Ridpath?” asked Mr. Arbuthnot.

“Yes,” said Dick. He was straining his reach to tap his cigarette ash into a big glass ashtray on the coffee table in front of us.

“I hope you gentlemen won’t think me an old busybody.”

Dick smiled, but, as he settled back into the sofa -- he had almost had to stand up again in order to reach the ashtray -- he gave me a brief look which seemed to say, “We’ll see who the hat fits.”

The cat jumped on my lap and looked at me more closely. It had a white patch under its chin.

“He likes you, Mr. Schnabel,” said Mr. Arbuthnot. “Say hello.”

“Hello,” I said.

“His name is Shnooby.”

“Hello,” I said, “Shnooby.”

“So, Mr. Schnabel, you’re courting that young lady from the jewelry shop?”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

“Hubba hubba! What is her name? Adrasteia?”

“Um, Elektra,” I said.

“Elektra! Elektra. Ah. So beautiful. A vision. She walks in beauty like the night. More beautiful than the night, really, because you can’t, ahem, you know, whatever, with the night,” he said. “And, Mr. Ridpath, haven’t I seen you squiring Mrs. Biddle’s granddaughter around town?”

“Um, well -- we’re certainly friends,” said Dick.

“Ah, friends!” said Mr. Arbuthnot. “Ah, to be young like you two rapscallions. Ah yes. To be young.”

“Y’know, those people have probably moved on by now,” Dick said, working his body up from the absorbent sofa again, and, stretching his arm to its full length to reach the ashtray, putting out his cigarette. “We shouldn’t impose on your hospitality.”

“Not imposing at all!” said Mr. Arbuthnot.

“Well, but Arnold has to get back to --”

“To Aresteia!”

“Yes,” said Dick. “She’s waiting for him.”

“Can’t keep a lady waiting!”

“No,” said Dick.

“Do you want me to check?” asked Mr. Arbuthnot.

“Check?”

“To see if those people are still outside. Lurking.”

“Uh, sure, if you could,” said Dick.

“Don’t move!”

Mr. Arbuthnot put his drink down on a side table, jumped lightly off the easy chair, hurried across the room to a side table with an old globe of the Earth on it, picked up the globe, which was almost half as big as he was, and brought it over and set it down in its stand on the coffee table.

“Now, first, gentlemen, I must ask you please to give me your word never to speak of what I am about to show you.”

“Sure,” said Dick.

“Not even to each other.”

“Fair enough,” said Dick.

“Mr. Schnabel?”

“Yes?”

I’d been stroking the cat’s head, only vaguely paying attention.

“May I please have your word that you won’t speak of what I’m about to show you?”

“What if it’s something illegal?” I asked.

“It’s not. Not necessarily, anyway.”

“Well, okay,” I said.

“Good. Sit up straighter, gentlemen.”

“Well, that’s not so easy, Mr. Arbuthnot,” said Dick, stating the obvious.

“Oh, right, well, get up and let’s take it back to the other table.”

He grabbed up the globe again and took it back to the table he’d just removed it from.

Dick and I looked at each other, but we put down our drinks, struggled out of our seats and followed, and the cat followed us.

“This is the way I usually do it anyway,” said Mr. Arbuthnot. “Just stand by this little table and look at the globe. Here, you two fellows stand over there and there.”

He directed me to stand right in front of the globe, and for Dick to stand to my left, nearer the wall. Mr. Arbuthnot stood across from Dick to my right.

“Okay, just spin the globe, Mr. Schnabel.”

“Just spin it?”

“Sure, give it a good healthy spin.”

Finally I had met someone in Cape May who was at least my equal in lunacy. The globe was old and its colors had faded to shades of deep brown and greyish purple. I gave it a spin, and it spun, round and round.

“Zero in around here,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, pointing with his little finger, “that’s the latitude of Cape May, scenic Cape May.”

I stared at the globe at the place he was pointing and then the three of us, Dick, Mr. Arbuthnot, and I, were standing on the sidewalk outside his shop, looking at Miss Evans and Mr. and Mrs. DeVore.

Dick and I of course were flabbergasted, silent.

“Don’t worry,” said Mr. Arbuthnot, “we can see and hear them, but they they can neither hear nor see us.”

“Let’s try Sid’s Tavern,” said Mr. DeVore. “I hear that’s a fun place.”

“Do you think Arnold would go there?” asked Miss Evans.

“Well, Miss Evans, from what I’ve heard, there aren’t any very many bars that Arnold wouldn’t go to.”

“All right,” she said.

She shifted her balck shiny purse back on her hip and led the way, striding back down Washington.

(Go here for our next wacky chapter. Kindly look to the right hand side of this page to find an allegedly complete listing of links to all other published chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, portions of which are now available as cellphone ringtones for an extremely modest fee.)

Françoise Hardy:

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 116: warpath

Paco's station wagon with original owner

Larry Winchester*, responding to an overwhelming volume of cards and letters, now turns his focus on a couple of beloved characters we haven’t seen in a while, the Native American brujo Paco and that dissolute rock star and wit, Derek Squitters.

(Click here to see our previous chapter or here to re-start the whole damn thing.)

*”The anti-John Updike.” -- Harold Bloom

Paco and Derek roared through the desert in Paco’s scabrous green ’55 Plymouth station wagon.

Derek was loving it. It was all so -- American.

Paco was even letting him drive. Driving wasn’t so hard if you just stayed in one gear and there were no other cars around for miles. Paco gave Derek directions, they stayed on little trails and dirt roads and they roared along.

The Seeds were singing “Pushing Too Hard” on the radio and it was all so fucking beautiful. Derek felt like he was in a fucking western, a fucking John Ford or Larry Winchester movie, he felt like he was Burt Reynolds in Navajo fucking Joe. This fucking desert all around, these weird buttes or mesas or whatever the bleeding hell they were called. Bleeding cactuses. Fucking tumbleweeds for Christ’s sake. Driving out here with this real Indian. And with his own shotgun, man. Just like James Caan in El Dorado.

This was the best fuckin’ night he’d had since his group first headlined the Albert fucking Hall.


Paco had loaded his granddad’s old Winchester repeating rifle for himself and his own double-barreled Purdey 12-gauge for Derek to use. The spirits had spoken through his TV set, and it was time to go on the warpath. It was strange that he had to go on the warpath with the Englishman, but life was strange.

Just to be on the safe side he made the Englishman his blood brother before they left, cutting slits in the palms of both their right hands with a butcher knife and then clasping the wounds together, mixing their bloods, then sticking Band-Aids over the cuts. He sure hoped he wouldn’t catch syphilis or some other white man’s disease from the Englishman.

(Continued here. Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page to find a purportedly up-to-date listing of links to all other possible episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, soon to be a major motion picture featuring Burt Reynolds as "Paco" and Tom Courtenay as "Derek"; music by Ennio Morricone and the Spike Jones Orchestra; a Dino DiLaurentiis/Larry Winchester Production in association with Jack Webb. Rated R for vulgar language and excessive drug use.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 121: whatnot

Previously in this memoir, which the noted scholar Harold Bloom has called “the greatest literary work of the 20th Century (not to damn it with faint praise)”, our hero Arnold Schnabel, having run out of the Ugly Mug in order to escape the dreaded DeVores and Miss Evans, meets up with his new friend Dick Ridpath on Washington Street, in the quaint seaside resort of Cape May, on a hot Saturday night in August of 1963...

We were standing near the entrance to a shop called the Whatnot Shoppe. It’s been there ever since I first came to Cape May after the war, but I had never once entered it. (And indeed I’ve hardly ever entered any shop in Cape May or anywhere else except those selling cigarettes, alcohol, or lurid paperback novels.)

Normal people walked back and forth past us, unaware of our little drama.

“I could see Miss Evans was a little wackadoo,” said Dick. “What’s up with these other people -- what’s their name?”

“DeVore,” I said, and just to say the name was to feel as if something were sinking within me. “They’re staying at my aunts’ place, and I’m -- I don’t know.”

“Just can’t handle ‘em, huh?”

“No,” I said. “Or I’d prefer not to."

“I know what you mean,” said Dick. He took what might be called a contemplative drag of his cigarette, and I wished he would offer me one. “Some people just aren’t happy till they suck the life right out of you.”

“Well --”

I found myself stumbling once again in that never ending search for truth, hacking my way through jungles of falsehood with the dull machete of my conscience.

“What?” said Dick.

He took the cigarette from his mouth in an expectant way, smiling just slightly.

“It’s the sanity I’m afraid they’re going to suck out of me, Dick, the last bit of my sanity, and just leave me dribbling -- babbling,” I said. “That’s what I’m afraid of, anyway.”

Dick touched me once on the arm, looking me in the eye, then he tilted his head slightly.

“Who were you in the bar with, anyway, if I may ask?”

“I was with Elektra, my lady friend --”

“Charming girl --”

“Yes, and also Larry Winchester, and my, uh, friend Steve, you met him last night, and his friend Miss Rathbone.”

“The whole mob.”

“Yes.”

“So -- what were you going to do, Arnold? Just wait out here and see if these people leave?”

“Well, uh --”

“And what if they don’t leave?”

I said nothing. My idiocy spoke volumes for itself without any help from me.

“And how long were you going to wait?” he asked.

“Five minutes?”

As if I had actually given the matter any thought.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t turn around.”

I had been facing away from Decatur Street, away from the Ugly Mug.

“The Evans woman just came out,” he said, and he pulled me into the entrance area of the shop, which was set back a bit from the sidewalk.

We looked through the display windows and I could see the warped image of Miss Evans looking from side to side like a hunter as the DeVores also came out of the front entrance to the Mug. The three of them conferred briefly, and Miss Evans pointed up the block, toward where Dick and I hid.

“I hate to say it, Arnold,” said Dick, “but it looks like they might be coming this way.”

I looked at the door of the shop. It was closed and the interior of the shop was dark.

“I’ll make another run for it,” I said.

“They’ll see you.”

“Then I’m doomed.”

“Here’s the plan,” said Dick.

“A plan?”

“We turn around, stare into the window, try to look invisible.”

“Okay.”

We turned, side by side, and by the light of a street lamp we looked into the window display, which contained mostly what I assumed were antiques, or if not antiques then old or old-looking things, but also modern folderol like Slinkys, Play-Doh, and Hula Hoops, as well as little cast-iron toy cars and army men made of painted lead.

“Talk normally,” said Dick.

“Okay.”

“Two guys looking in the shop window.”

“Right.”

Then, to our right, the door of the shop opened, and a little old man looked out. He wore thick rimless eyeglasses of the sort I had only ever seen in movies made no later than 1934.

“May I help you gentlemen?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“Actually, perhaps you can,” said Dick. “My friend and I are trying to avoid some very boring people who are coming up the street. Do you think we could come inside for just a moment.”

“Of course,” said the old man.

He stepped back, holding the door open wider. We went into the darkened shop, he closed the door and turned a key in its lock.

“I was afraid you two were casing the joint.”

Despite the warm weather he wore a dark grey three-piece suit. He stuck the key in his vest pocket.

“We’d better move away from the front, don’t you think?” he said.

“Yes,” said Dick.

“Mind your step,” said the old fellow.

The shadowy interior was larger than it had seemed from outside, but it was crowded with tables and cases and shelves full of bric-à-brac, not to mention half a dozen old mannequins and tailor’s dummies dressed in clothes no older than the roaring twenties.

“Just stand still,” said the old man. “Pretend to be one of these mannequins.”

He joined us near the back of the store, and we all stood still, impersonating carved blocks of wood.

First we saw Miss Evans, striding purposefully in the vanguard. I noticed she was carrying a large silvery purse that matched her dress.

“There she is,” said Dick, in a low voice.

Miss Evans stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

“You fellows are hiding from her?” said the old man. “She’s a looker. A bit thin, maybe, by my lights --”

“She’s insane,” said Dick.

“Ah, well, that’s different.”

Miss Evans was now staring into the shop, her head cocked slightly to one side. Then came the DeVores, almost bumping into her.

“So, the famous DeVores,” said Dick.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Now all three of them seemed to be looking into the shop as they talked, although this gazing might have been absentminded, just something to look at while they schemed and plotted.

“Y’know, I think they’ve seen the light of your cigarette,” said the old man.

“Damn!” said Dick.

“Don’t move,” said the old man. “I think their eyes are drawn by the light, but they probably don’t know what it is. It could be a reflection from the street lamp, or a night light. Uh-oh. They’re coming closer. Quickly, follow me.”

He went silently through the shadows to the right rear of the shop, opened a door, turned and beckoned us with one hand.

Dick went first, and I followed him through the doorway and into a four foot passage at the foot of a narrow winding dark stairs with a faint light falling down from above.

The old fellow came in after us and closed the door.

“Go right on up,” he said.

(Continued here. Kindly look to the right hand side of this page to find an allegedly complete listing of links to all other published chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, portions of which will be read by Mr. Orson Bean next Tuesday evening on Book Chat With James Branch Cabell (featuring the jazz stylings of the Pete Condoli Combo), at 10:00 PM, EST, on the DuMont Television Network.)

Dave Berry: the crying game --

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 115: aftermath

Larry Winchester* now returns to the suave voice of Dick Ridpath, last seen floating in free-fall following a shoot-out in a flying saucer (see Episode 108) as it passed through dimensions, several thousand miles above a town called Disdain...

(Click here to see our previous chapter.)

*”The Homer of our age.” -- Harold Bloom

Well, by the time I came out of it I won’t say I couldn’t have used a martini.

We were out of free-fall now and I had somehow wound up back in my seat. To my right Daphne was slumped in her own chair, passed out. Harvey was passed out in his seat also, his head against the console.

“They’re okay, Mr. Ridpath. It always gets a little weird passing through dimensions. They’ll probably wake up in a minute or two. I stuck you and the lady back in your seats. The young fella was already strapped in, so he was okay.”

This was Brad, sitting to my left. Rather intently turning dials, toggling switches, punching buttons.

On the floor behind us Mr. MacNamara and Buddy lay stretched out on their backs side by side, their eyes closed, in a big pool of blood. Blood was splattered all over the place, actually. I suppose it had all slopped down like rain when we left free-fall.

Over by the refreshments nook Frank lay curled up in a slightly smaller pool of blood.

“Are they all dead?” I asked.

“I don’t think Frank’ll ever croon ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ again. Buddy and Mac, I dunno. They’re still breathing, but it don’t look good.”

Wait, have I mentioned all the TV screens? All these TV screens spread out above and around the pilot’s console. And by glancing from one to another you could get some idea of what was happening back on the Earth.

There was Enid’s truck sitting out in the dark desert somewhere.

Close-ups of Enid and Hope, smoking cigarettes in the cab of the truck, Hope at the wheel, Enid next to her.

That motorcycle guy, Moloch, unconscious with his nose smashed in, slumped next to Enid.

On another screen a wide-shot of all these motorcycle guys ranged along the outside edge of the atomic sinkhole below that mesa, the one that awful desert-trash family had disappeared into.

And my old friend Pym’s head sticking out of the sand.

At this point nothing surprised me.

On other screens I saw Big Jake and a thin bald man driving in Jake’s Cadillac. (Later I found out that the bald man was the town doctor, named Goldwasser.)

Another screen showed Paco and Derek driving together in an old Plymouth station wagon.

And on one screen I even saw the flying saucer we were in, it was flying away from the Earth, just zipping along, the Earth getting smaller and smaller.

I asked Brad what he was doing.

“Takin’ us back to the station, Mr. Ridpath. Soon as I build up enough steam, we’re crashing back through the dimensional wall again and heading back to the casino. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Unless you want to try to pilot this baby.”

I looked at the controls. They were rather daunting. But then I thought about the casino. I really didn’t want to go back there again. Especially considering the circumstances under which we had left it. And lugging back its boss’s bullet-ridden corpse to boot.

Also there was the question of Hope and Enid and those motorcycle fellows.

No, this was an untenable situation.

I saw my old Browning lying on the deck near my feat.

I got off my stool, picked up the gun, pointed it at Brad.

“Now what the fuck, Mr. Ridpath.”

“Get up, Brad.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re not serious.”

“I’m perfectly serious, Brad. Now move.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re gonna try and pilot this thing, and land it in one piece?”

“You betcha.”

“Fucking earthlings. Y’know something? I live another hundred thousand years I will never understand --”

“Just move it, Brad. You’re wasting time.”

“Ah, fuck, look, you win. I’ll bring the fucker in to earth, okay?”

“Well, no, not okay, because I want you to do that finger-healing thing with Mac and Buddy and try to save them.”

“Look, Mr. Ridpath.” He flicked another switch and then swiveled around on his chair to face me. “It’s like this. I can try to land this heap, which is the very latest model and which to tell the fucking honest truth even I am not familiar with, except for one article I skimmed through in Flying Saucer Mechanics -- let alone qualified -- and try to get all our asses down on the ground in one piece; or I can, say, turn the controls over to you who are shall I say even less eminently qualified while I try to do the laying on of hands bit with these two guys who are probably goners irregardless. Now -- you’re an intelligent man for a goddam earthling. You decide.”

Well, I chewed on this for a couple of seconds. He certainly had his points.

“Turn it around,” I said, “and point it at the Earth again, Brad, then I’ll take over.”

“Oh, right, and send us all maybe crashing into fucking Mount Everest at fifty thousand fucking miles an hour.”

Well, sometimes I’m just a little nutty, I admit. So I cocked the pistol, took a step closer and pointed it between Brad’s eyes and told him to do as he was told.

This seemed to scare him. He swiveled around again and did something with the dials. You felt the saucer lurch. I looked up at the screen and now the Earth was getting larger.

I told him to get up.

He got up.

This time I was thinking. I patted him down, and sure enough I found a snubnose .38 in his coat pocket. Mac’s gun. I put it in one of my own pockets. Then I found my Airweight in Brad’s trouser pocket, and I took that. I stuck it in my other pocket and told him to get to work on Mac and Buddy.

Then Daphne woke up.

And she was upset of course.

(Continued here. Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page to find a possibly up-to-date listing of links to all other extant chapters of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, soon to be an American International Picture starring Alain Delon.)

The Spencer Davis Group: can’t get enough of it: