“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 78: long ball

Previously in our serialization of this “sprawling, dare I say rollicking” (Harold Bloom) epic, our plucky heroine Daphne Ridpath pressed a certain button on the command console of a certain flying saucer...

Oh, but what about Lefty Schiessen, in the midst of an extraordinary contest over at the Ira Hayes Memorial Athletic Field, in a small and depressed New Mexican town called Disdain?

It was the twenty-third inning and Lefty was at bat. He still had his perfect game going. And he still felt in the zone, but the other guys on the team were getting sloppier out there in the field. Guys were passing joints on the bench, and everybody was drinking Big Jake’s beer; Lefty had drunk a can of Tree Frog himself while waiting for his at-bat.

So: two outs, nobody on.

Lefty was going to look for his pitch and try to pull one out and get this motherfucker over with.

The guy pitching was the sixth Twins pitcher. Their manager had taken the starter out after the ninth despite his shut-out, not wanting to endanger the kid’s arm in what was after all a meaningless game.

Lefty would wait on something low and away, something he could pull into the right field stands.

First pitch was a piece of crap that bounced off the plate. Ball one.

Next pitch came right down the pike, high and hard. Lefty twitched and raised his right foot, but then took the strike. One and one.

Next, a curve ball inside. Two balls, one strike.

Then another curve, damn nice pitch on the low inside, and Lefty followed it in and could have knocked it hard for a single to left, but he let it go by. Two balls, two strikes.

Next pitch should have been another curve, or a slider, but Lefty figured the guy would try to fool him with a fastball, and he saw this one all the way like it was slow-motion, hard and coming in low just where he wanted it, and he swung smooth and met it hard but he knew as soon as he hit it he was just a fraction too high on the ball and he could tell it was going to land in right center, oh well, maybe it would fall in for a double, but just as he finished his swing this great big glowing green thing swooped over his head and out toward center, and the ball suddenly swerved away from the right and followed the green thing, up and over the center field bleachers, and off and up into the sky, and then all the lights in the stadium went out as if some giant had blown out the candles of a giant birthday cake.

Everyone looked up and watched the baseball disappear, and you could see this green thing zooming up and away and getting smaller and smaller, and then it seemed like a section of the starry sky just got blacked out, and the green thing zoomed into the black space and vanished.

Then the black space vanished, and all you could see was the night sky, the stars, some wispy grey clouds.

The only lights in the ballpark were the tiny red pinpoints of the cigarettes and cigars and reefers of the people in the stands and the players and coaches in the dugouts.

Lefty dropped his bat and trotted down through the darkness toward first base.

He had his perfect game now, and the sound of his spikes hitting the dirt resounded throughout the otherwise silent ballpark.

****

Just terrific. Because whereas before we were flying all over the place but still staying rather close to the earth, well, now we seem to be just zipping off at a slight angle but basically right up into space at this absolutely dizzying speed, I mean just shooting along, and there on the big screen in front of me I see the earth getting smaller and smaller by the second.

Fabulous, I know.

But just when I thought this was the absolute limit I notice this funny smell, and I turn around and now there’s this awful sort of green steamy smoke coming out of the grill I had just peed into...

I mean it’s just one thing after another!

****

(Go here for our next exciting chapter. And kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all extant episodes of Larry Winchester’s A Town Called Disdain™, a Max Fleischer Production.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part Eighty-Three: great big old house up on the hill

When last we saw the saintly poet Arnold Schnabel, author of these Merck Award-nominated memoirs, he was on his way to the beach, walking arm in arm with the lovely young Daphne MacNamara, on a hot August day in Cape May, New Jersey, in that faraway world known as 1963...

When we got to Washington Street I said, “Do you mind turning down here?”

“No,” she said, and as we strolled along the pavement past the shops, I noticed people looking at us. Then I realized they were looking first at Daphne, and then at me. She was still holding my arm. So this is what it was like to walk with a beautiful woman. And I retroactively realized that the same thing had happened on the few occasions when I had walked somewhere with Elektra.

I don’t remember people looking at me much back when I walked everywhere alone (or with my mother). What was there to look at? But walk with a beautiful woman and you leave the anonymous horde and join the aristocracy of the race.

When we got to Jackson we turned right, and when we reached Elektra’s shop I asked Daphne to wait while I went inside.

Elektra was behind the counter, with Rocket Man, and they were both talking to prospective customers.

Elektra was wearing a loose dress I hadn’t seen before, pale blue, with a cloth belt, her arms and throat bare. She had most of her hair tied back somehow and she was showing some rings to two ladies. She smiled at me and gave me a nod, and I waited, looking at the jewelry in the display cases.

After a minute she left the ladies to discuss the rings between themselves and she came over to where I stood.

“Hello, lover. What brings you in here?” she said softly.

“You,” I said.

“Let me come around, big boy.”

She came out from around the counter, took my arm and led me over to the corner of the shop, by some cases that held necklaces and bracelets made with Cape May diamonds.

“What’s up, Arnold baby?”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m going swimming with Daphne. From the party last night. The badminton girl.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, she’s right outside.”

Elektra looked out the window, and there was Daphne, smoking a cigarette, and blatantly looking at us. Daphne waved, and Elektra gave her a little wave back.

“Lucky you,” said Elektra.

“I didn’t want you to think I was doing something behind your back,” I said. “But she asked me to go swimming with her.”

“Oh, Arnold. It’s okay. You are going to try not to have sex with her though, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I was joking.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Although I wouldn’t blame you. She’s a doll.”

“Don’t worry,” I said.

“How’s your chin?” She put her hand on the spot where the coast-guardsman had socked me.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Did you hurt your leg last night? I notice you seem to be limping a bit.”

“I —” I had decided to try to be totally honest with Elektra, but in this case I just couldn’t do it. So I gave her the short version. “I took a slight fall,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

“Okay, good. Look I gotta get back to my ladies over there. Do you want to do something tonight?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good, drop by around eight, we’ll go get a beer. Now, go swim with Daphne.”

She gave me a pat on the arm and went back around the counter to deal with the ladies again. I went back out to Daphne.

We walked on up Jackson to the beach, and the nice thing about her, she didn’t ask me any nosy questions about Elektra, just as she hadn’t questioned me about why I wanted to turn onto Washington Street instead of heading straight up Perry to the beach.

She did ask me if I was reading anything interesting, and I mentioned The Waste Land, and Miss Evans’s novel.

“But I’m really more interested in this book This Sweet Sickness,” I said.

She asked me what it was about, and I told her.

“That does sound good,” she said. “I”m reading this new Salinger book, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters?”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Have you read any Salinger?”

“I don’t think so. But he sounds familiar. Does he write detective novels?”

“No, I don’t think so. This book’s made up of two long stories. The first one’s about this guy during World War II who gets a pass from the army to go to his brother’s wedding, except the brother doesn’t show up. At the wedding.”

“Mm-hm. Why?”

“Beats me. Cold feet I guess. But I’m only about halfway through it, so who the hell knows?”

“He wasn’t murdered?”

“No, I don’t think so. And then there’s another story in the same book, called 'Seymour: An Introduction'. Seymour is the missing brother, I believe.”

“Ah. Maybe that one explains why he didn’t show up at the wedding.”

“Maybe. But I’m afraid even less will happen in that one than in the first one. I kind of wish I were reading your book. Call me old-fashioned, but I like books where people get murdered.”

“Me too,” I said.

So much for literary dialogue.

She asked me if I had a beach I liked to go to, and I told her about my near-deserted beach in that long cove sweeping down toward the Point. She said that sounded swell.
By the time we got down there I had well digested my lunch, and although I was still limping from my fall I felt ready for a good swim. The sky had grown overcast, and the air was hot and heavy. We stuck our towels and stuff behind some scrub, and then we splashed out onto the pebbly sand into the surf, and after we’d strode in to waist-deep we both dove in simultaneously, just as if someone had fired off a starter’s pistol.

She wasn’t kidding about swimming like a seal. I’ve gotten pretty good, but she kept up with me all the way as I headed straight out for a couple of hundred yards or so. I stopped and turned, and she was bobbing right there beside me, barely out of breath, the water streaming down her face, her dark hair shining like the coat of a seal.
She spat a stream of water in my face.

“Which way now, Aquaman?”

“I like to swim down toward the Point.”

Without a word she flipped around and swam away, with great smooth strokes, her shiny green suit coursing through the darker green water. I took off after her.

We swam all the way without a stop to past the old beach-defense bunker, and as we came parallel to the convent with its long white walls and its burnt-umber roof, Daphne at last turned on her back and gasped, “Oh, my God, you’re relentless! Look, I have to rest, let’s go in here.”

And before I could say anything she was shooting like a torpedo in to the nuns’ beach.
I followed her in.

She staggered up out of the surf, shaking her hair, went up past the pebbly shingle and onto the sandy part of the beach, fell to her knees and then dropped onto her back just above the reach of the tide. I walked up and sat beside her.

“Look at me,” she said.

I did.

“Look at my chest absolutely heaving.”

I did, and then tried to make myself look past her, at the dark green water, at the steely sky.

Her hand reached up and picked a bit of seaweed off my knee. She sighed deeply. I looked at her again, and she turned towards me on her hip, the side of her face in her hand and her elbow in the sand.

“What would you do if I made a pass at you?” she said.

“I would run back into the ocean,” I said.

“Good. Because I’m not going to. Because you’re Dick’s friend. And because you have a perfectly nice girlfriend with Elektra.”

“Right,” I said.

The air seemed suddenly still, and even heavier than before, almost palpable.

“I’m going to close my eyes for just a bit,” she said. “But don’t let me sleep for more than five minutes.”

“Okay.”

She lay back with her arm over her eyes.

I sat and looked out at the dark green water, here where the great bay met the ocean. A heavy mass of purplish cloud was coming up from the right, from the continent. I lay back in the sand, with my hands behind my head, and closed my eyes.

I felt something on my chest, and opened my eyes again. Daphne, sound asleep, had thrown her right arm over me, and her head, partially covered by her left arm, had snuggled next to chest.

Oh well. I closed my eyes. And fell asleep.

I dreamt I was being rained on, lying in our tiny back yard back home in Olney, but the raindrops were black from the smoke of the nearby Heintz factory. I woke up and realized I was being rained on in real life.

I threw Daphne’s arm off me, and shook her shoulder, woke her up.

“Oh, my God, it’s pouring,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Come on, let’s go up to that big house and sit under the porch.”

“Can’t we just go back into the ocean?”

“What, and be struck by lightning? Come on.”

“But that’s a convent.”

“So what?”

And she was up and off, padding quickly up the beach through the rain to the rear porch of the convent. I got up and followed her.

A great crack of thunder shook the earth, and so I broke into a trot, when suddenly all the world lit up all around me with bright white light and the earth flew away from my feet and the world went black.

I opened my eyes and Jesus was standing there. He had that eternal cigarette in his fingers. The rain had stopped, although the sky was still overcast.

“You okay, buddy?”

“Yes, I think so,” I said.

He was still in his casual seashore attire, except now he had an old denim jacket on over his faded blue t-shirt.

“Here, grab a hand,” he said.

I took his hand and he yanked me to my feet.

I looked around.

We weren’t on the beach any more.

We were at the foot of a green hill, with lots of shrubs and trees, scattered rosebushes here and there, some geraniums and rhododendrons seemingly planted at random, blotches of pink and red and pale blue against the green.

The rich dark grass was slightly overgrown.

We stood by a wrought-iron gate, beyond which a cobblestone path wound up to a very large Victorian house, dark yellow and green and brown, with a broad columned porch, and spires, gables, chimney pots, balconies, a slated roof the color of dull garnet.
I was still wearing my bathing trunks, but they were dry, and I was dry.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“That’s my father’s house,” he said.

“Am I dead?”

"That is a very good question, Arnold.”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew for sure I’d tell you. Between you and me it doesn’t look too good, but, look, we’d better go talk to Peter and my old man. You want a cigarette?"

"I might as well have one," I said.

He patted the pockets of his wrinkled trousers and his jacket.

"Damn. I'm out." He held out the cigarette he was smoking. "Do you want to finish this one?"

"No thanks," I said.

"There should be smokes up at the house."

He opened the iron gate.

“Come on,” he said. “Sooner we go up there, sooner we know what’s up."

I went through, he shut the gate behind me. We started walking up the winding path to the house.

“By the way, Arnold, I am so sorry about that lightning bolt. Believe me, I had nothing to do with that.”

“That’s okay. I guess we all gotta go sometime.”

I didn’t want him to feel bad.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have saved you from falling out that window if I knew that an hour later —”

“Really, it’s okay,” I said.

“Well, okay then. I must say I’m a little surprised you’re taking this so well.”

“Well, it could be worse,” I said.

“How could it be worse, Arnold? You’re probably dead.”

“True, but the thing is, it did happen pretty soon after I went to confession. So, I guess

I’m still in a state of grace, because — well —”

“Because you didn’t have time to have sex with Elektra again.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Good. So you’ve got that going for you.”

We came to the porch steps. A grey-bearded older guy wearing a plaid hunter’s cap and a worn yellow canvas jacket or short coat was apparently napping in a rocking chair by the front door. There was a small wooden table in front of him, with what looked like a big thick leather-bound ledger of some sort, a jar of ink, a black fountain pen.

“That’s Peter,” said Jesus.

We went up the steps.

“Peter!” he called. “Wake up. Company.”

The old guy opened his eyes, blinking.

(Go here for our next Chestertonian adventure. Please turn to the right hand side of this page for a complete listing of all available episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, a Rank Production.)

And now, a fab clip from the classic It’s Trad, Dad! (which seems like it should have been a Larry Winchester movie, but was in fact directed by that other Philadelphian, Richard Lester) featuring the vocal and dancing stylings of Craig Douglas and the ever-charming Miss Helen Shapiro:

“A Town Called Disdain”, Episode 77: up and away

Before getting back to the lovely Daphne in that runaway flying saucer, Larry Winchester returns his Technicolor gaze to Enid, sculptress and proprietor of a little café in a town called Disdain...

Enid stood and watched the glowing green thing go up, up, up, getting smaller and smaller and smaller against the starry night sky, and then it started to come down again, swerving and twirling, getting bigger and brighter.

Sometimes it would dip out of sight behind a hill or rise, but then it would swoop up and all around again.

Then it pulled a K-turn and headed in a curvy line over to the west toward the mountains, flying low, ducking in between the foothills like a football player with the ball, and then it disappeared.

Enid stood there looking out toward the dark mass of the mountains, waiting to see the green disc shoot up, but there was nothing.

Then all of a sudden it just seemed to come out of nowhere from up above, diving right toward her, and she tensed up, frozen, it came closer, getting bigger and bigger, and it whooshed right by a few feet over her head in a wave of electric heat that made her scalp tingle, and she turned and saw it veer up and over the neighboring hill and then disappear again off in the direction of the Johnstone spread.

She stood there a minute, looking up, turning all around, feeling slightly dizzy, her neck aching, her hair feeling like a cheap wig on her head.

The thing was gone and it didn’t come back. Had it crashed somewhere out there?

A big dark cloud passed overhead, blocking out the stars, and she sensed something behind her. She turned and saw a big circle in the dirt where the saucer had been. Everything on the ground within the circle was green, and glowing. Then the cloud passed by, the stars came out, the circle lost its color as if someone had thrown a switch.

She headed over to her truck, digging her keys out of her jeans pocket.

She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes, and the hair felt funny. She held the strand out and looked at it. It was frizzy as all hell.

****

So the new spaceman on the TV gives me these instructions and I duly start punching buttons again and twirling knobs and dials but I’m so nervous and I have to pee so badly that I guess I screwed it up again because now his screen goes blank. Nothing. Blank. And not a sound. You see this ship was really very quiet, just a faint deep humming noise, but I can see on the big wraparound TV that we are still flying madly all over the place.

Okay, Daphne, I say to myself. Just get a hold of yourself. First off, you simply must pee.

So, I look around. And I see this metal grill on the floor over there. I go over to it, pull my pants and drawers down, squat down and let loose. I let it loose and I take out my cigarettes and light one up. And I can feel myself getting a grip on myself finally. I mean, what a relief. Sometimes it’s so simple, isn’t it? Just to take a good quiet pee when you really have to, and then if you have a cigarette also -- I don’t know, you just feel as if you can face the world and its travails with renewed vigor.

So, finally, I pull my pants back up and go over to this console thing. Now I see by the big TV screen that we seem to be roller-coastering down toward this town, and no, we seem to be heading for this baseball park just outside the town, a game in progress, and I’m thinking, Oh, great, crash right into the grandstands, Daphne, that’ll give everyone a great big thrill.

So, what the hell, I press this really big button that I didn’t recall having pushed yet.

Zoom.

****

(Zoom over here for our next exciting chapter. And please turn to the right-hand column of this page to find an up-to-date listing of links to many other fine episodes of Larry Winchester’s Pabst Blue Ribbon-winner A Town Called Disdain™.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven", Part Eighty-Two: Arnold Schnabel's great escape

August, 1963. Cape May, New Jersey.

Once again (go here to review our previous episode) our hero Arnold Schnabel finds himself in a potentially compromising situation with the attractive novelist Gertrude Evans, author of the classic melodrama of “beat” “hipster” Greenwich Village, Ye Cannot Quench (later made into a feature film directed by Larry Winchester, starring Sandy Dennis, Michael Parks and John Philip Law)...

At last Miss Evans seemed to have all her stuff collected and she walked up to me and said, “Do you think I’m frivolous?”

Even I know that if someone asks you if you think they’re anything less than perfect that the absolute last thing they want to hear is the truth.

So I said, “Oh, no, not at all.”

“You’re so kind,” she said, taking a step closer.

I backed up and hit the edge of the open door.

“Shall we go then?” she asked.

“Um, I think I’d better use the bathroom first,” I said.

It’s true to say that I had just then realized that I needed to urinate, but, more pressingly, I felt the need to escape from this woman, even if it was only for a couple of minutes.

I staggered backwards out the door, turned and quick-marched to the bathroom down the hall.

Inside I turned the bolt and stood for a moment with my back to the door. I was sweating again, and now I needed a cigarette more than I had all day, or all my life. I felt like I was about to be led to a firing squad. Didn’t they give the condemned man a cigarette with his blindfold?

I went to the bowl and proceeded to do what I had supposedly come in here for. This was the first time I had emptied my bladder since leaving the house that morning, and what with all the iced tea I’d drunk, special and otherwise, plus that one strong highball and one beer, it took a while, and as I stood there I had the strongest feeling that Miss Evans was standing right outside the bathroom door, waiting, listening. It was most disconcerting. I swear, if it weren’t for Elektra I would have decided just to let Miss Evans have her way with me and be done with it. After all, she was very attractive, physically anyway, and at least then I wouldn’t have to deal with the continual anxiety of running into her in the hallway. And here she was, waiting out there, listening to me peeing; waiting, for me.

What would she say, or do, when she saw that it was Daphne downstairs with whom I was going to the beach? What if she pulled a switchblade from that big beach bag and attacked Daphne, or me?

I finished my business, flushed the toilet, and, as it performed its usual symphony of a truckload of pots and pans being dumped down the side of a rocky slope, I washed and dried my hands.

I went to the door, but then I stopped. Was Miss Evans out there? I leaned the side of my head forward, listening, but I couldn’t hear anything.

I turned the bolt on the lock, as quietly as I could, then put my hand on the doorknob, but then I paused and put my ear even closer to the door.

Not a sound.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t standing right out there, holding her breath.
I took my hand off the doorknob and went to the bathroom window. It was a casement window, open, with an adjustable screen in it. I took out the screen and stood it on the floor against the wall. I stuck my head out the window.

Running down the side of the house, just to the right of the window, was a drain pipe, fastened to the house by rounded brackets every four feet or so, both pipe and brackets painted many times over through the hundred and four years of this house’s history.

Directly below the window on the ground down there was a purplish-pink cloud of rhododendrons in full bloom.

I have experienced much insanity over the past seven months or so, but I must say that usually the insanity felt like something that was happening to me, that had descended upon me, rather than something I myself willingly chose to embrace. What happened next I’m afraid fell in the latter category.

I threw my towel through the window, and, without letting myself think about it too much, I climbed out after it. Halfway through it occurred to me that it might have been better to force myself out feet-first, but I didn’t feel like hesitating, so I continued to wriggle through the little window, while simultaneously reaching to my right with my left hand to grab ahold of the pipe.

With one last heave my legs came out and seemed to drop past me while I swung my right hand over to join the left on the pipe. Unfortunately the weight of my body and the force of gravity and the fact that I was neither Batman nor Spider-Man resulted in my hands bursting away from the pipe and my body falling backwards away from the house, and I saw the blue sky spinning above me and I caught what I presumed was my last glimpse of life, the upside-down fleeting image of the yellow-shingled, green-shuttered house across the way as I plummeted head-first, when suddenly I stopped just above the first floor windows.

Floating right before me, right-side up, meaning upside-down to my way of looking, was Jesus, in his khakis and old t-shirt, with his usual lit cigarette in his hand.

“Oh Arnold,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“Is this any way to die? Jumping out of a third-storey window just to avoid walking to the beach with some goofy woman?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

He shook his head, I guess in bewilderment, put his cigarette in his mouth, reached out, grabbed me, and twirled me around so that I was now right-side up.

“All right,” he said. “Try to bend your knees and roll when you hit those rhododendrons.”

“I will,” I said, sheepishly, and I dropped without further ceremony into the shrubs and tumbled out onto the stone pathway.

I lay there on my back for a few moments. Above me I saw only that pristine blue sky.
I seemed to be okay. I pushed myself to a sitting position. I had a bruise along my right calf, and my swimming trunks were stained from the flowers I had just crushed.

I reached over, grabbed my towel, and got to my feet.

I tried to fluff up the rhododendrons, and I kicked some of the destroyed flowers under the bush.

Then I hobbled around to the front of the house, and went up the steps. I tapped on one of the cross-slats of the screen door.

“Daphne,” I said.

She was sitting in there, chatting with my mother and aunt, and Kevin was sitting next to her on the couch.

“Arnold,” she called, “how did you get out there?”

“I, uh, went out the side way,” I said.

“Oh.”

Neither Daphne nor my kin questioned why I would come out the side way and all the way around to the front porch instead of just coming through the house from the starirway like a normal person. But then of course no one there thought me a normal person, and quite justifiably so.

I held the screen door open, Daphne got up, said goodbye to my mother and aunt and Kevin, and came out through the door past me.

“See ya,” I said to my family members, and I let the door close.

We went down the steps.

“You’re limping,” said Daphne.

“Yeah, I fell.”

“Are you okay to go swimming?”

“Sure, let’s go.”

I started to limp even faster. I was afraid that Miss Evans would come running out the door after us.

Daphne took my arm and we headed up Perry Street in that thick August sunlight.

I wondered how long Miss Evans would wait outside that bathroom door. But I couldn’t worry about that now.

(Go here for our next thrilling chapter. And kindly turn to the right hand side of this page for an exhaustive listing of links to all possible episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train to Heaven™, a Joe Boyd Production.)