“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 210: the joke

After twice discomfiting the Prince of Darkness (AKA “Mr. Lucky) in the most humiliating manner, our hero Arnold Schnabel has been exiled by that vindictive fallen angel to the pages of an all-but-forgotten novel called Ye Cannot Quench, a lusty bildungsroman of 1950s New York City written by another of Arnold’s nemeses, Gertrude Evans, author of many other volumes such as Kingdom of Passion; Suburb of Lost Souls; Set Sail for Tomorrow; and No Tears for Tessie.

Let’s rejoin Arnold on a rainy Tuesday night in the summer of 1957, deep in the heart of Greenwich Village at that Bohemian hotspot the Kettle of Fish, where in his current persona of “Porter Walker, handsome and romantic young poet” he has been declaiming from his epic poem The Brawny Embraces...

(Please go here to read our previous episode; the bewildered may wish to click here to return to the very first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning multi-volume memoir. ”Arnold Schnabel -- the very name dilates the pupils of the eyes of littérateurs worldwide.” -- Harold Bloom, in Mechanics Illustrated.)

Suddenly the audience burst as one into a great churning roar, and for a moment I thought they might all be shouting at me in justifiable outrage at the imbecility of my poem, but then out of this multifarious deafening babble I made out the by now all too familiar phrase “Go, daddy, go!” and its dozens of permutations.

Meanwhile in answer to this tidal wave of huzzahs the band in back of me played louder and more frenetically still, all five musicians seemingly playing unrelated solos at once.

I became aware that I was now absolutely oozing with sweat, even more so than earlier when I had been stuck alone with Emily; my clothes felt as sodden and glutinous as if I had just been chased by a pack of bloodhounds through some fetid southern swamp. Unconsciously I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, and the salt entered into them, stinging and almost blinding me.

“More! More! More!” chanted the crowd.

I lifted the enormous poem to within inches of my face, just to one side of the microphone. I wiped my eyes again, and that just made it worse. I blinked repeatedly, but the print swarmed unintelligibly over the page like an army of drunken ants.

“Go! Go, man, go!” cried the ghostly crowd in front of me. “Daddy!” “Go!” “Go, go, daddy-o!”

Piercing through the hubbub I distinguished Pat’s and Carlotta’s voices calling in unison: “Por-ter! Woo hoo!”

“Maw,” said Maxie, who was standing only a couple feet away from me; through my fogged eyes I could make out that he was not even bothering to hold his bleeding ear any more. “Maw.”

“Maw?” I said.

“Yeah, maw,” he said.

I put one hand over the nubbly head of the microphone and leaned toward him.

“You mean maw like the mouth of an tiger, or a whale or something?”

“Huh?”

“Or, like I’m staring into the great gaping jaws of the universe, maybe, waiting to be swallowed up and devoured? That kind of maw?”

“Nah, I just meant read some maw of your poem, Mr. Walker.”

“Oh,” I said. “’More’.”

“Yeah, maw,” he said. “Wudja think I said?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

The crowd was still going crazy. I took my hand off the microphone and tried looking at that great flopping slab of a poem again, but I might as well have been trying to read an epic poem in Swahili.

I considered trying to reason with the mob, to explain to them that due to causes entirely beyond my control and not my fault I was literally unable to read any more of this nonsense, but then suddenly I had another one of my occasional brainwaves. It was true that in this world I might be “Porter Walker, bohemian poet”, but inside I was still Arnold Schnabel and a bad poet in my own right. Perhaps I could recite one of the many thousands of poems I had actually written, all of which, although they were just as asinine as Porter’s epic poem, had at least the decency of being short, not to mention rhyming.

I cast around in the mossy Carlsbad Caverns of my skull and came up with one of my more recent poems, written not long after my mental breakdown. I lowered Porter’s massive poem, and, stepping close to the microphone and feeling like my own little island between the frenzied audience and the “smoking” combo, I spoke, very slowly and measuredly as I pulled each word and phrase from my memory, but nonetheless with the confidence that my own rubbish could hardly be much worse than Porter’s:

I who was sane if perhaps slightly strange
Have now been reborn as a maniac,
And with this new life in me comes a change
In the world around and in the eyes
Of the people in that world. I look back
On a life in which I had my own place;
But then came a night when to my surprise
That life ended and I became unreal.
Who is this new actor behind this face?
If someone would only give me a script
I’d sit right down and start to memorize.
It’s sad, but now I’m beginning to feel
It’s me who’s going to have to write it;
Otherwise I’ll just have to improvise.

That was the end of the poem.

The combo continued to play behind me, but in a much softer way, and whereas shortly before they seemed to be playing five different songs simultaneously, they were now playing, if not the same song, at least in the same key and tempo.

As I was reciting my little sonnet I hadn’t been particularly aware of anything visual, but now my eyes had cleared somewhat, and I looked out at my audience through those slowly drifting cumulus clouds of tobacco smoke.

Everyone was crying.

Some were openly sobbing; a few, both men and women, had even fallen to their knees; some sniffled; others gasped, as if bravely, trying to choke back the outward display of raw emotion; people dabbed at their eyes and noses with handkerchiefs and shirt-sleeves and Kleenex. Emily stood there with tears coursing down her face, her shoulders shaking. Julian took his display handkerchief from the breast pocket of his blazer, shook it out and handed it to her. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. I noticed that Nicky, Edward R. Murrow, John Cameron Swayze and Ralph Edwards were all simultaneously offering handkerchiefs to Pat and Carlotta, who each took two.

Maxie still stood practically right in front of me. He had removed his sunglasses, and he mopped his cheeks with his cap.

“Gee, Mr. Walker,” he said, “that was really, like, moving.”

Then I heard that same old buzzing, and I felt the tiny sentient creature land right inside the intertragic notch of my right ear.

“Great,” whispered the fly. “Swell, pal. And now that you’ve depressed the hell out of everybody, what are you gonna do for your next number?”

(Not a dry eye in the house! But don’t worry, continued here.)

(Please turn to the right hand side of this page to find a purportedly current listing of links to all other publicly accessible chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©. Yet another trove of Arnold’s notebooks has been discovered underneath a pile of old issues of the Catholic Standard & Times in the disused coal chute of his mother’s house at B and Olney in the Olney section of Philadelphia, so God only knows when this will all end. This project made possible in part by the good people of Xe Services LLC : "We may have changed our name, heh heh, but we’re still the same old Blackwater -- so if you’ve got the money, we’ve got the guns!”)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 60: curtain call

We now present the thrilling conclusion of our story...

(Please click here to read our previous chapter, or go here to return to that faraway beginning of Uncle Buddy’s House™. “I laughed, I cried, I groaned, and finally I collapsed into a hysterical fit of giggles.” -- J.J. Hunsecker in Vogue.)

She looked at him for about ten seconds.

Then she came over and sat on his lap, putting her arms around his neck.

“Ow,” said Buddy.

“What?”

“I forgot that I got shot in my leg. Here, just shift more to my right leg.”

“Is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s great.”

“I can’t believe you stopped calling me just because of that stupid guy.”

“Well, you could have called me.”

“I know. I meant to.”

“Yeah, well --”

“Yeah,” she said.

She kissed him. It was a good kiss, it was the first time they’d kissed since almost eight months before, outside the Hotel Vancouver, on the sidewalk in a windy light rain, right before he’d gotten into his cab to the airport, and that had been a good kiss too.

She pulled back and looked at him.

“I’ll give you this,” she said. “You are a good kisser.”

“Let’s do it again,” said Buddy. “I like how you taste like good bourbon.”

And they did it again.

Then, a couple of minutes later, “Okay, I really have to get dressed now,” she said, but she made no move to get up off his lap.

“Cordelia.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

He put his nose into her neck and his hand on her breast. She made a groan.

“You still smell good,” he said. “I love the way you smell.”

“I smell like sweat,” she said. “I sweat like a pig onstage in that costume.” She put her hand on his hand on her breast. “Stop it, Buddy.”

“Mm-hm?”

“I have to get dressed.”

“Okay.”

“Take your hand off my boob.”

“All right.”

He took his hand off her boob and put it on her hip, and they kissed again. She grabbed the hair at the back of his head. He slid his hand down her thigh and under her slip.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Don’t start that again.”

But he did, and she let him.

“Do you mind?” he said.

“No,” she said.

She put her face in his shoulder. He could feel her breath on his throat. He stroked her hair with his free hand. She lifted her face and they kissed some more. After a minute she whispered in his ear:

“This other guy? The doctor?”

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

“I thought it was going to --”

“What?”

Her neck, her chest, her little tattoo Saturn --

“-- like be in the movies, you know, walk around, with a normal person, and hold hands, and then go home and have normal sex like a normal person --”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s not asking a whole lot, is it?” Looking at him.

“No.”

“But we ended up not really even fucking at all.”

“Really?” Looking at her.

“Yeah, because he only wanted to -- well, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right.”

“All right what?”

“Just -- all right.”

He pulled his hand out from under her slip.

“Hey, why’d you stop?” she said.

“I don’t know. Do you want me to do it some more?”

“Wait.”

“Okay.”

She looked at him and gnawed her upper lip.

“I love the way you gnaw your lip,” said Buddy.

Of course she immediately stopped doing it.

“Y’know, I absolutely never do that when I’m onstage?”

“You should. It’s a nice bit of business.”

“It makes me look like an idiot.”

She looked down and away. Buddy’s hand was on her hip. He looked at her face, watching her breathe. She raised her eyes to his. How long was it, what, eight months on, and here they were again, and with this feeling as if he’d just seen her yesterday.

“Okay,” she said.

She pulled his hand off her hip and she got off him.

“I know, I’ll turn around,” said Buddy.

“No. Wait.”

She picked up the white plastic purse and opened it up. She rummaged in it, and then she turned it over and with five good shakes disgorged its contents onto the table. She stirred through the pile of stuff with her finger, and came up with a shiny black condom packet. She handed it to Buddy.

“Here, I’m sure you know how to do it.”

She stepped out of her pink slippers, then she reached under her slip, pulled down a pair of white panties, got them off, and tossed them onto the table.

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” said Buddy.

Then came a knocking on the door.

“Oh, now what?” said Cordelia, quietly.

“Cordelia.”

It was Thelma’s voice.

“What, Ethel? We’re talking in here! Jesus Christ!”

“Don’t you get snippy with me, missy. You have another visitor. Are you decent?”

“Of course I’m decent. Who is it?”

The door opened, Thelma Ritter opening it and with her free hand gesturing offstage and saying, “Enter the Father.”

And entered the Ancient Mariner, replete with leather-armpatched overcoat in tweed, a long nubbly grey scarf, and a Russian sable pillbox hat, Thelma slamming the door shut behind him, and --

“Darling, I -- oh! Buddy! Quelle surprise!”

Buddy in one swift movement pocketed the condom and crossed his legs.

“Oh, hiya, Stephen.”

“Ché bella fortuna! I had no idea you were in town.” Swooping over and taking and pumping Buddy’s hand with both of his own hands while Cordelia stood back with her fingers making a church over her mouth. “When did you arrive?” asked the Mariner.

“Uh, just this morning --”

“You must lunch with us, old man.” Holding tightly onto Buddy’s hand.

“Well --”

“Papa,” said Cordelia, now clasping her hands together over her bosom, “I left a message on your cellphone --”

“Oh! Did you?”

The Mariner tossed Buddy’s hand aside, whipped a cellphone from the pocket of his overcoat and began pressing buttons.

“Well. So you did.” He turned to Buddy. “I had disengaged the ring because I was at another matinée. I saw this simply marvelous production of Titus Andronicus. Marvelous. A very interesting use of -- space. And shadow.” (Fuck you, thought Buddy.) “So, did you see Cordelia’s performance and what did you think.”

“I did see her and I thought she was gr--”

“Of course she was, of course she was, of course -- oh, but Buddy, I have a bone to pick with you.”


“Oh. I mean, ‘oh?’”

“Yes. You said you would let me know when our latest film would be opening.”

“Oh. Well, we still don’t have an exact release date. So I haven’t --”

“Why so terribly long a wait? I am on tenterhooks!”

“Well, as I told you the last few times you called me, Stephen, the studio decided to wait till after Christmas, because --”

“The studio!”

“Yeah --”

“But you will call me.”

“Sure, like I said the last time, it looks like early Febru--”

“Yes, yes, early Feb--, but see here, you must join us for lunch.”

“Uh --”

“There’s no use demurring, I quite insist.”

“But, Papa --” said Cordelia.

“What. Yes.”

“Um, Buddy and I were, um --”

“Yes, go on, child.”

“-- thinking of just having like a quiet like lunch together.”

“Oh.”

“Just the two of us.”

“Ah.”

“Together.”

“Yes.”

“Like, alone.”

“I see.”

“Which is why I called you.”

“Oh.”

Fuck you.

“I mean,” said Cordelia --

“Yes?”

“-- we --”

“Yes?”

“-- you and I, we can still get together later --”

“I should hope so. It is --” he paused, milking it -- ”Christmas Eve you know. And I did fly all the way out here solely to see you.” The Mariner cast his gaze, and his benignity, toward Buddy. Then, full of brisk plucky good humor, “I spent one day with Joan and Deirdre on the familial farm in Nebraska, and then I simply had to flee. I have this strange aversion to the Midwest. Oh, what is this?”

He was staring at Cordelia’s make-up table and for a horrible moment Buddy thought the Mariner meant Cordelia’s crumpled white panties in full view there, but seemingly oblivious to or not giving a shit about them the Mariner went over and picked up the bottle of Elijah Craig 18-year-old.

“So, have you two been having a tipple? And may I?” he asked Buddy.

“It’s Cordelia’s.”

“I’m sure she won’t mind.”

Before she had a chance to say help yourself he did so, pouring four or so fingers into a plastic cup and not bothering with the Evian. Time stood horribly still while he swirled, sniffed, sipped, chewed cud, and swallowed. And then, staring at Buddy, or at least staring in the direction of Buddy’s face, he exhaled, his mouth as open wide as if a dentist had just said to him: “Wider.”

“Ah,” said the Mariner, when that was all over with. And then quickly, “But I’m not so sure as I don’t prefer a good sturdy Armaganac. What do you think, Buddy?”

“Well, it’s, uh --”

The Mariner tossed down the remainder, without the ceremony this time, and tossed the cup toward the wastebasket, but onto the floor.

“Ah, but New York at Christmas! And with my only beloved daughter! So,” he said, smiling bravely, and full of the nobility of self-sacrifice, “where are you two lunching?”

He was still wearing his siege of Stalingrad hat, and a trickle of sweat made its way from under it and down the side of his face. Behind him Cordelia inched closer to the make-up table.

“Well --” said Buddy, “we haven’t really --”

“What sort of cuisine were you interested in?” he asked, as if he were interested, his eyes blinking every half-second.

“I hadn’t really --”

Cordelia reached over, grabbed the panties, and flicked them under the table.

“French?” said the Mariner, and, perhaps somehow hearing or sensing the gentle fall of underwear he turned, only to see Cordelia pretending to touch one of the bouquet of roses, or more precisely actually touching one of the roses. The Mariner quickly grabbed up the bouquet and shoved them to his nose.

“Uh, no,” said Buddy, “nothing so -- French --”

The roses dropped back down to the table and the Mariner cast a weather eye Buddy’s way.

“Italian perhaps?”

He sat himself down in Cordelia’s chair.

“Uh, sure,” said Buddy, “Italian’s good.”

Cordelia started to sit in the one other chair in the room, on the opposite wall from Buddy, but realized it was occupied with clothes, books, a Discman and headset, CDs in and out of their cases --

“Northern Italian?” ventured the Mariner, one eyebrow cocked, as if this were an exam question.

“Uh, yeah, northern, southern --”

Cordelia remained standing, barefoot, her arms folded across her chest, biting her upper lip, looking intently into the farthest possible corner of the tiny room.

“May I recommend an excellent place?” asked the Mariner.

“Yeah, sure,” said Buddy.

“It’s --” He closed his eyes, as if summoning a voice from beyond. Buddy glanced at Cordelia, she looked at him, gave a sort of shrug then returned to staring into the corner. “It’s in the Village,” said the Mariner, suddenly opening his eyes.

“Ah,” said Buddy.

“It’s -- on -- MacDougal?”

“That’s in the Village.”

“Yes. I can’t -- quite -- recall -- the name. The most lovely authentic Tuscan cuisine. I go there every time I visit New York.”

Buddy noticed that the Mariner was wearing great high rubber boots, shiny brown, a yellow wooly trim at the top, with his wide-waled grey corduroy trousers tucked in.

“Papa,” said Cordelia, “you haven’t even been here in years and years. Maybe it’s closed --”

“Oh, but this place is an institution! It will never close! And I’m sure they’ll remember me. They make the most wonderful baccalà with artichokes and squid ink. I should call to make sure they have it on the menu today.”

“But you don’t know what the place is called, Papa.”

“Yes. Quite. But I do remember precisely where it is.”

“Well, if you give us the address --” said Buddy.

“I would know it precisely if I were in the neighborhood.” He closed his eyes again. “I can visualize it quite clearly in my mind. Tablecloths...checked...red-and-white checked tablecloths...” His eyes opened, questioningly, blinking. “Perhaps it was Thompson Street?”

“Well, look,” said Buddy, “I’m happy just whipping over to the Carnegie Deli --”

“No!” said the Mariner. “The Carnegie has gone so downhill! I had lunch there yesterday and they gave me such attitude simply because I asked them to trim the fat from my pastrami! No! You must try this trattoria! It is the finest Northern Italian restaurant in New York by far!”

“I’m sure it is, Stephen, but since you can’t remember --”

The Mariner threw up his hand like a traffic cop.

“There is only one solution.”

“Oh.”

“I will take you there in a taxicab. Once I am in the neighborhood I am sure I can find it.”

“No, I mean, really, Stephen --”

“Yes yes yes, I insist! And on the way perhaps you and I can have a word about this new project I hear you have in the works.”

“Oh.”

“A little item I happened upon in the august pages of Variety, you naughty man.”

“Oh -- I’m -- well, we’re still working on the script, Stephen, it’s --”

“An adaptation of Crime and Punishment!”

“Yeah, pretty loose, actually --”

“One of my favorite novels,” said the Mariner. “An absolute favorite.” And then, as if very much by the way, “And Dusty Hoffman is attached?”

“Oh, yeah, I mean, no, not exactly attached--”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, but --”

“Yes?”

“Uh, somehow he got ahold of our first draft and he expressed an interest--”

“In the part of Fropfiry Fropfirovich.”

“Who?”

“Fropfiry Fropovich.”

“Um --”

“The detective. In charge of the case.”

“Ah --”

“Fropfiry Fropfirororovich.”

“You mean -- Porfiry Petrovich?”

“Yes, as I said, the police detective. In the book. By Tolstoy.”

“Ah.”

“Dustin Hoffman.”

“Yeah,” said Buddy. “Uh, Hoffman’s interested in the, uh --”

“Yes. Well -- he’s quite good, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Quite quite good.”

“Right.”

“So he is as you say ‘attached’ to the project at this stage.”

“Oh, no. Like I say, he only just read a --”

“So he’s not signed yet?”

“Hoffman? No --”

“No?”

“No, I wish he was, but --”

“Yes.”

“-- like I say, we’re --”

“I understand.”

“-- we’re just --”

“Of course.”

“-- still working on the script, trying to --”

“To make it good.”

“Right. Make it --”

“The throes of creation. But -- and I say this hoping, no, knowing that Hoffman will undoubtedly want the part of the detective -- and did I ever tell you that Dusty and I shared the stage one time, oh, back in ‘67 I believe, in a workshop production of Ubu Roi -- and even then one could see his talent, although I must say he did have a bit of an -- oh shall I say -- an attitude -- but that’s neither here nor there, I’m sure he’s fine to work with now, but -- if there is some small supernumerary part suitable for an old ham like me, I warn you, Buddy, I fully intend to camp on your doorstep! Ha ha just kidding. But seriously, Cordelia, dear, throw something on, and do apply a bit of make-up, and then we shall hail a hansom and wend our way Villageward. Perhaps I shall pop in and join you for a quick bowl of bean soup and a glass of wine and then I promise I will leave you two to -- to catch up, as they say.” He rose from Cordelia’s chair. “Now, Buddy, let’s you and I step outside and let Cordelia get into her costume. Chop-chop, my dear, and remember, a touch of rouge! You look so pale.”

The Mariner waved a beckoning hand in Buddy’s direction, but --

“Stephen, look, I think we’re good.”

“Pardon me.”

“I think Cordelia and I can find a nice place to have lunch on our own.”

“But, I -- but I only wanted to show you this place. It really is quite exquisite. The veal! I don’t know how you feel about veal but they have this one dish -- it’s not on the menu, but I am sure the chef will prepare it if I ask him to -- the veal is pounded, macerated, then it is air-dried for three days -- then, and only then -- it is encrusted --”

“Stephen, we’re cool, really. We’ll find some place.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. We’ll be okay.”

“You’d -- rather I did not -- accompany you.”

“Well, it’s just --”

“Yes?”

“It’s just it’s been a while, since we’ve seen each other, and we’d --”

“Oh. I understand.”

“Good.”

“I quite understand.”

“Great.”

“I’ll -- I’ll wander about.”

“Sure.”

“I love New York this time of year.”

“Great.”

“Of course it has started to snow, but I -- I like walking in the snow.”

“Good.”

“I am reminded of my first cold winter in New York. So many moons ago. Just a -- a penniless wraith with a dream from Atco, New Jersey. How well I remember my first apartment, not far from here in fact, Hell’s Kitchen, a sixth-floor walk-up infested with cockroaches the size of rats --”

“Papa, fuck off!” said Cordelia.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Go!”

“Go?”

“Leave! Do we have to spell it out? Go!”

“Oh,” said the Mariner. “All right then. And on -- on Christmas.”

“Go!”

“Well, Christmas Eve to be precise. And after I flew all the way out here.”

“No one asked you to come! I hate you!”

“Oh. You don’t mean that.”

“No! I do! I really do! Now go! Go! Go!”

She went over to the Mariner and began pushing at his chest.

“Buddy,” said the Mariner. “Can you believe a daughter would behave like this?”

“Well, you know -- kids,” said Buddy.

“Go!” screamed Cordelia, and she began pounding on the Mariner’s chest with her fists.

“I think I get the message, Cordelia,” said the Mariner, his voice quavery with the chest-pounding. “I think I get the message loud and clear. But, perhaps if you --”

Cordelia stopped pounding on the Mariner’s chest, but she kept her fists balled up, chest high.

And now, her eyes closed, she began to scream, loudly.

“Oh dear,” said the Mariner.

Cordelia kept on screaming. It sounded like Tarzan being castrated. Buddy put his hands over his ears.

The door opened. Enter Thelma Ritter.

“What the fuck, Cordelia?”

Cordelia screamed some more. You could tell she had a trained and a powerful voice.

The Mariner turned to Thelma.

“It’s quite all right,” he projected. “I am an actor too.”

Cordelia pointed her finger at the Mariner and cut loose with another long scream which surely resounded all the way through the corridors of the old theatre, through the ironclad stage door and down the alleyway to 42nd Street, causing last-minute holiday shoppers to drop their packages and whip out their cellphones to dial 911.

“Okay,” said Thelma, “time to go, Olivier.”

She took his arm and led him out, leaving the door open.

Cordelia stopped screaming. Buddy removed his hands from his ears.

Then the Mariner’s face and one shoulder appeared in the doorway again.

“You’ll call me, dear. Perhaps we can go to that trattoria for dinner -- and Buddy, too, of course, if --”

Cordelia said nothing. She was panting, sweating, her chest heaving. Some of her ringlets had gone wild and curled down over her face.

“Good, then. Call my cell,” said the Mariner. “And, Buddy, even if I can’t find that Tuscan place I know a superb little bistro Lyonnais in -- in Chelsea I believe --”

Thelma must have given him a yank because he disappeared.

After a couple of seconds Cordelia went over to the door and closed it. She leaned back against it, still breathing heavily, her eyes closed.

“So,” said Buddy. He stood up. His leg gave him a twinge, but that was okay. “Still up for some lunch?”

Cordelia opened her eyes.

“Yes,” she said. The tiny tattoo Saturn on her breast rose and fell with her breathing. “I’m fucking starving.”

And
the curtain
falls
to thunderous
applause.

(Thanks so much to everyone who has read and kindly commented on this story. It means a lot to me, and to Buddy and to Cordelia. And you know the Ancient Mariner absolutely thrives on the attention!)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 209: gone daddy

On February 2, 1960, the New York firm Smythe & Son published Ye Cannot Quench, the first novel of Gertrude Evans (subsequent author of many other titles, such as A Dream of Fair Men; Rainstorm in Rangoon; The Willing Slave; Mambo Fever; and Up Two Flights and Down the Hall). The 978-page book topped out at number 72 on the New York Times bestseller list, and this edition has been out of print since its second printing. The following year Hi-Tone Books republished the novel in paperback, drastically-shortened and retitled I Came I Saw I Conquered; this edition too was out of print within a year. This saga of young love and lust in the big city might have gone forgotten for centuries were it not for our ongoing publication of Railroad Train to Heaven©, in which Arnold Schnabel describes in chilling detail his transformation by the price of darkness into a character in Miss Evans’s novel, the handsome “beat poet” Porter Walker...

(Click here to read our previous episode; the idly curious looking for some relaxing beach reading may go here to return to the very first chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning sixty-nine volume memoir. ”American literature -- nay, world literature, may be handily divided into two parts: pre-Schnabel and post-Schnabel.” -- Harold Bloom, in Women’s Day.)

Freddy had reseated himself on his stool with his accordion. I nodded to him, since he apparently knew me. He smiled and squeezed out a merry chord.

I took my position before the microphone stand.

“Good to see you again, handsome,” said Ursula, standing to my left, this tiny old woman with her large saxophone.

“Always good to see Porter,” said Magda, over her shoulder, and, using her left hand, she tinkled the high keys of her piano.

“Keep your frock on, darling,” said Ursula. “Only possible thing worse you could do than hooking up with a musician would be a poet. No offense, Porter.”

“Oh, no, I would agree,” I hastened to say.

Without looking at her instrument but looking at me with half-closed eyes Magda tickled the keys of her piano again with her elegant long fingers.

“I like Porter,” she said.

“I like him too,” said Ursula. “But he’s not the sort of man a smart girl marries.”

“I never said I wanted to marry him,” said Magda.

Gabriel blew a single note from his trumpet, a note that blossomed into the room like a spurt of blue ink in a pool of water, the bongo man answered with a flurry of taps like a handful of marbles thrown against a wall, and the bass man thumbed another deep note that pushed the cigarette smoke up and away over the heads of our audience.

“Hey, daddy, read your damn poem!” somebody yelled.

“Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Walker,” said Maxie.

“Yeah, go, daddy,” yelled someone else.

“Like a sacred wind!” called Emily.

“Good evening,” I said, into the microphone, and I heard my voice booming through the crowd. “I should like to read to you now a page or so from my new epic poem, titled The Brawny Embraces, soon to be published by Smythe & Son and available at better book shops everywhere.”

I was amazed at how well my voice sounded, how calm and euphonious, and then I remembered that I was someone else, someone who spoke with the trained confident voice of an actor, not someone who spoke as I had my whole life, i.e., in a halting and quite often nonsensical mumble.

“Go! Go, daddy!” someone yelled again, which was really getting annoying, to tell the truth.

And suddenly I had an awful stabbing memory of the one other time in my life that I had read my poetry aloud. A Catholic women’s club back home had set it up. It was in this local bookshop, McGrath’s, on 5th Street, on the second floor. On a rainy cold Tuesday evening I read my bad poems to a bunch of desperate-looking ladies. When I had finally finished they clapped and looked less desperate. They all shook my hand. Finally I escaped and ducked around the corner to the VFW and had a quick Four Roses with a mug of Schmidt’s, and I swore never again.

But here I was.

I raised up that thick sheath of typescript and looked at the top page, I adjusted the microphone on its pivot to a more comfortable angle, and I spoke:

Yea, you people ask me,
Yes, you wearers of the button-down Arrow shirt,
As well as you sporters of the black beret
And the Greek fisherman’s cap, you all ask me
Why? Why do I write and for whom and from whence?

For whom, you ask? For what?
I’ll tell you --

“Tell us, Daddy-o!” someone yelled.

“Yeah! Go! Go!” yelled some other idiot.

“G’ahead, Mr. Walker,” said Maxie, encouragingly.

“Okay,” I said. I had lost my place, I ran my finger over the page. “Oh, here we go --”

For the great pounding sea I write
For the black blinking sky I write;

For the dirt in an empty lot
For the broken beer bottles there
For the weeds that force themselves
Up through the dirt and broken glass
And into the stench of a bright sun-blasted day;

For the cracked sidewalk outside my building
For the gutter and the butts and chewing gum in it
For the filthy bricks of my tenement
For the creaking wood of its stairs
For its smell of rotting food and of sweat,
For the peeling wallpaper in my pad
For the roaches that scurry across my cracked linoleum
For the linoleum too
And for the ancient newspapers that lie beneath it
Cracked and brown and covered with dead words and with
Faded photographs of the dead,
And for the moldy wood that lies beneath that,
For the termites in the wood
For the termites’ dream of the world
For the world’s dream of a termite
For the air in front of my face
For just about anything I write
Even for human beings
You strange creatures who walk along these sidewalks
And occasionally with whom I exchange words
Yes, even for you I write
But mostly I write because I must
Just as I must eat and drink
And perforce must defecate and urinate
Just as I must sleep and then awaken
Just as I must breathe
As well as sometimes cough or belch or fart.
Just as I must someday die.

“Go, daddy! Go! Go!” my fans yelled.

“Yeah, go, Mr. Walker,” said Maxie.

I continued:

Take these words, O ocean, O sky
Take these words, O air and walls and dirt and mud
Take these words, O cockroaches, O dreaming termites
Take these words, yes, even you,
You beings who call yourselves human,
Take them as you would a tasty meal of beans and beer
Consume them
Consume me
Digest them
And me
And then these words
And I
Will become part of you.

This seemed like maybe a good spot to quit while I was still ahead.

I lowered the sheath of poetry and stared out at the crowd.

“Go! Go, daddy!” and various permutations of those two words were again shouted, and it sounded as if several more people had joined the chorus.

Even Ralph Edwards and Edward R. Murrow and John Cameron Swayze had gotten up and come over to the performing area, along with Carlotta and Pat, and Nicky, although I didn’t see Emily.

Pat put two fingers in her lips and let out a great shrill whistle.

“Woo hoo! Porter!” yelled Carlotta, pumping her fist in the air.

Over at the bar Bunny was yelling “Bravo!”, while Betsy just sat there with her lovely legs crossed, smoking and looking at me.

I realized that the whole band had been playing jazz music behind me, and that they were still playing.

Ursula drew the saxophone’s mouthpiece away from her lips and tapped me on the arm.

“Give them some more, Porter,” she said. “They’re eating it up.”

I raised the sheath of epic poetry again, and read:

I who know nothing much
Will speak much of nothing much
I who see little and who make little
Sense of what I see
Will speak much of the little I see
And of what little sense I make of it;

I who have not the faintest idea
Of the meaning of anything
Will speak much of the meaning
Of everything;

I who will someday lie on my deathbed
Looking back on a life which has passed
As a dream
Will speak much of life irregardless --

“Regardless!” yelled Emily, shoving her way through the crowd again with what looked like a fresh drink. “I meant to red-pencil that ‘ir’!”

“Hmm,” I said, “You’re perfectly right, Emily.”

I resumed:

Will speak much of life, regardless.

“Much better!” yelled Emily.

“Hey, let him read, doll-face,” said Maxie.

“Who you calling doll-face, shrimp?” said Emily, and she swung her purse at his head, hitting him on the ear. He staggered backwards into the crowd and she went after him, drawing her purse back again. Fortunately Ralph Edwards jumped forward and grabbed her by the waist and she just missed Maxie with her second swing.

“Let go of me!” yelled Emily.

“Now, now, dear,” said Ralph.

“No little homunculus is going to call me doll-face,” she said, struggling and kicking.

“I’m sure he meant nothing disparaging,” said Ralph, gripping her tightly and smiling with gritted teeth.

Two or three other shoving matches had started up in the area that Maxie had stumbled into, people shouted angrily, the audience now buzzed and swarmed within itself like a hornets’ nest that a child has poked with a stick.

“Keep reading, Porter,” called Freddy.

“You think I should?”

“Sure,” he said. “Best way to settle down a bar brawl is just to keep playing as if nothing is happening.” Which indeed he and rest of the band had continued to do.

I lifted up that heavy stack of paper again and read, loudly and firmly:

I do not know why.
Nor do I care.
Nor do I know why
I do not care,
Nor do I care why
I do not know or care why I do not know
Or care.
But I will speak much nonetheless
None the more
Or less
I will speak much
Of the more
And of the less.
I will speak much
Of the less that is more
Than the less
And much will I speak
Of the more
That is less
Than much.

I will speak much.

I looked up from the poem. The band played on behind me. The scuffling had quieted down. The people all stared at me. Maxie was back in the front row, holding a bleeding ear, but he looked content. Even Julian had finally got up from his bar seat and come over, probably to keep an eye on Emily, whose arm he held, keeping her at a safe distance from Maxie.

“Gone, daddy,” said Maxie. “Gone.”

(Continued here, because I have a mother and two bartenders to support.)

(Kindly look to the right hand side of this page to find what we hope is a reasonably up-to-date listing of links to all other publicly available chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©; grateful thanks to the Arnold Schnabel Society for access to the Arnold Schnabel Archive in the basement of the Olney Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia; special thanks for the sponsorship of Evan Williams Bourbon™: ”The bourbon that quite decidedly does not taste of old shoe leather.”)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 59: come sit

It’s the day before Christmas in New York City in the year 2003, and our hero Buddy Best finds himself in a dressing room in an old theatre off 42nd Street, in the company of the fabulous Cordelia...

(Please click here to read our previous chapter, or go here to return to the beginning of Uncle Buddy’s House™. “A laugh-filled fun-fest for the whole family, depending of course on what kind of family you have.” -- J.J. Hunsecker in The Family Circle.)

“Okay, let’s see --” Buddy got out the old Ronson butane, reached over, and gave her a light. “-- so, uh, you haven’t been talking to Deirdre lately?”

“Oh, sure. Do you want one of these?” She tapped the cigarette box.

“No thanks. Well, you probably know all there is to know then. In fact you probably know more than I do.”

“Well -- when did we last talk?”

“I don’t know. August?”

“Right,” she said. “That sounds right.”

“So I told you about Madge -- Shakira -- and her husband and kid moving in with us.”

“Right. But you didn’t say why.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I didn’t know. Still don’t really.”

“You don’t?”

“Well, I just gathered they weren’t getting along too well with the head monk --”

“Buddy --”

“What?”

“Shakira was having an affair with the head monk.”

“She was?”

“Yes. And her husband -- Om?”

“That’s right. Om. But I call him Al.”

“Why do you call him Al?”

“’Cause that’s his real name. Albert, Al. I can’t call someone Om.”

“Anyway, Om, or Al, found out about the affair and punched the head monk in the nose, Buddy.”

“Really?”

“And broke it.”

“Cool.”

“So the head monk kicked him out of the ashram, and Shakira and the little boy -- Mukund?”

“Mukund, right, I call him Mookie, or Mook.”

“Anyway the head monk told Shakira that she and Mukund could stay but she decided to go with Om. Or Al.”

“Wow. So Deirdre --”

“Told me all this.”

“Nobody tells me nothing.”

“Ha. And how’s it working out with all these people in your house?”

“It’s -- crowded. Liz moved in with Deirdre in Deirdre’s room, and Madge-or-Shakira and Om-or-Al are in Liz’s room. Philip’s still got his room, and Mookie’s in the attic.”

“You’re really sweet, Buddy.”

“Well, what could I do? They had no money, no place to go.”

“No other relatives?”

“Um -- well -- I don’t think either of them has any relatives who have as much space as I do --”

“No other relatives as nice as you are. And you’re not even a relative.”

“Madge is my ex-wife, Philip’s and Liz’s mom. I couldn’t turn them away.”

“Yeah, so how long do you think Shakira and Om and Mukund are going to stay?”

“Well, nobody’s said anything about moving yet.”

“Oh.”

“But, it’s okay. Al got a job working in a pottery place and Madge works in a health food store, so, you know, they kick in a little.”

She put out the cigarette in the tin ashtray. With her head lowered she looked at Buddy, and he thought perhaps she was going to say something serious about how she felt about him, or then again maybe she was just going to tell him some more about how great a guy he was.

“Y’know, you’ve lost weight, Buddy.”

“Yeah,” said Buddy, “I did actually. I lost twenty pounds in the two weeks after I got shot.”

“Oh my God, how?”

She leaned forward, her head cocked rigidly to one side.

“I don’t know. Hospital food, enforced deprivation from beer and wine. Pain, painkillers. Then when I started to feel better I just decided to try to keep it off.”

She nudged her chair a few inches closer to Buddy.

“Okay, you have to tell me how you keep it off.”

“Well, first step, you have to get shot.”

“Okay, skip the first step.”

“This is embarrassing, but I hired a personal trainer at the gym for a while.”

“That’s not embarrassing.”

“Yeah, well. So I got in the habit of working out regularly at the gym --”

“How often?”

“I go four times a week usually, plus I swim at home most days.”

“Okay what about diet?”

“Well, I really didn’t change my diet --”

“What?”

“Um -- wait, drinking is diet, right?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, and this was the hard part, really -- I went down to three drinks a day. Usually.”

“Three! That’s a lot!”

“Maybe for you it is.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Um --”

“What about snacks?”

“Well, I’ve never been a big snack eater.”

“What about sugar? Chocolate?”

Okay.

Buddy soldiered on:

“I lay low on the sugar and chocolate, but there’s not a complete -- interdiction.”

“Well, all right, go on.”

“That’s about it, really.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“What about red meats and stuff?”

“Oh, right, I try to lay off red meat, beef anyway, but I eat everything else.”

“You mean even starches, pasta, bread? Carbs?”

“Oh, sure, I can’t give that stuff up. And, besides, this really good bakery opened up down Ivar --”

“It’s not fair,” she said.

“What’s not fair?”

“That you can keep off twenty pounds just by swimming a little and going to the gym a few times a week.”

“Well, actually I only kept off around fifteen pounds --”

“That’s a lot! I could never keep off fifteen pounds! I don’t understand! Three drinks a day -- I barely have one a day. It’s not fair. And I exercise like a maniac every day. Every day. I go to dance class, I work out, I walk --”

“Cordelia --”

“What?”

“You’re not fat.”

“Oh, right.”

“You don’t need to lose weight.”

“Maybe you think so.”

“I know so.”

“Ha.”

“Look, Cordelia, you know what? You’re never going to be stick-thin. And you know what else? This is a good thing. You’ve got curves. You look like a woman. You look great. You’ve got Robert Altman wanting you to star in his next picture. I mean, wake the fuck up.” He took a breath. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being fat. It’s just you’re not. So get over it.”

She did that lower-lip biting thing. Her eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. Then --

“Oh, hey!” she said. “Do you want a drink? I have this.”

She opened a drawer under her make-up table and pulled out a never-opened bottle of eighteen-year-old Elijah Craig.

“Hey, cool, where’d you get that?”

“One of the producers gave it to me opening night. I think he wanted to get in my pants. It didn’t work though. Is it any good?”

“All bourbon is good, but I suspect this one is really good.”

“Goody goody then.”

She pulled off two of the pink plastic cups from the stack on the table and set them up.

“Here, let me,” said Buddy, and he took the bottle and started removing the seal.

“Should we add water?” asked Cordelia.

“Just a drop,” said Buddy.

He uncorked the bottle and poured out a couple. She ripped the plastic cap off of the full bottle of Evian, backhanded the cap against the outside of the wastebasket, and then carefully added one drop of water to each cup.

“Okay,” said Buddy.

“Here’s mud in your eye,” said Cordelia, and she drank hers down at a gulp. Buddy swirled his, sniffed it, then sipped it, while Cordelia waved her hand at her gasping mouth.

“Oh my God, should I have sipped it?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. Whew!”

Waving her hand at her mouth.

“Drink some water,” said Buddy.

She lifted up the Evian bottle and drank four big gulps out of it. After a brief hyperventilation exercise she returned abruptly to normal for her and said:

“So, Deirdre’s fine?”

“Baby, I’m sure you know infinitely more about her life than I do.”

“How about Liz?”

“Liz is great. Writing her memoirs --”

“Cool. And Philip?”

“He’s good, working for me, helping me write this new script. He got me to read Dostoyevsky, believe it or not --”

“Oh, your cat, your cute cat, how is she?”

“Ming? She’s, uh, she’s --”

“And how’s Marjorie?”

“Fine,” said Buddy. “Great. Super.”

Cordelia put her hand over her mouth and, sliding her face slowly side to side, said:

“Are you still seeing her?”

Buddy put his hand over his own mouth and fake-whispered:

“It’s part of my job to see her. She’s my publicist.”

She lowered her hand.

“Jerk, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, sorry, no, we’re not boning any more.”

“Oh really why?”

“Well, she found a new, uh, extracurricular activity.”

“What? Who? When?”

“It was like September, she dumped me like a hot potato for some twenty-four-year-old teen heartthrob.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“An actor?”

“Well, that’s how he makes a living. He’s on that TV show, what’s it called --”

“I wouldn’t know it, Buddy, I don’t watch TV. So,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“So.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Have you been seeing anyone else?”

“Believe it or not, no.”

“Oh. Really. I thought you were supposed to be such a big lady’s man.”

“Oh yeah, that’s me.”

“So why no ladies?”

“I don’t know. But. Y’know, I’ve discovered something about not being involved with a woman. It was something that I guess it was hard for me to discover before because I’ve practically always been involved with a woman. Or women.”

“Or a hundred women.”

“I’ve discovered that being celibate is very -- restful.”

“Restful?”

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

“Restful.”

“Yeah.” (Although, truth be told, sitting here talking with and looking at Cordelia sitting there wide-eyed in her slip: restful be damned.) “And how about you, baby?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Your love life. What about that guy you told me all about last time we talked.”

“Oh, him.”

“Yeah, the guy you were all --”

“I wasn’t all --”

“Well, you sounded pretty all the last time we talked on the phone.”

“Wait, who was this, the actor guy?”

“Yeah, the actor guy.”

“Oh, him. I was over him in a week.”

“Oh.”

“Did you stop calling me because of him?”

“Uh, no --”

“Oh, Buddy.”

“Well, y’know, you talked about that dude for like an hour.”

“Oh. Was I boring?”

“Everybody is boring when they talk about someone they’re stuck on.”

“Well, he wasn’t worth talking about for an hour, I’ll tell you that. A minute maybe. I thought you meant this other guy.”

“Oh, another guy.”

“Yeah, I met him right after the first guy. A doctor. La de da --”

“Yeah, so --”

“So?”

“So what’s up with this other guy?”

“I don’t want to talk about him, Buddy. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“But let me just ask you something.”

“All right.”

“Just ask you.”

“Fire when ready.”

“Is it normal -- no, maybe that’s not the right word -- is it nice, to, to only want a woman to, oh, God, I can’t even say
it --”

She put her hands over her face.

“Well, you don’t have to say it if you’re uncomfortable --”

She put her hands down.

“Well, maybe I won’t. But, you know, here’s the thing --” She leaned forward, and Buddy got a glimpse of cleavage, and, just like in the good old days, he tried not to look -- “you know I’m trying, I mean I have been trying -- I mean, I was ready to, to, for once, try to have like a real adult, you know, sexual relationship -- you know, I mean, I was ready to give that a try -- and I was attracted, and I thought he was attracted to me -- but --”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“Look, Cordelia, it didn’t work out with this dude, right? Ben Casey?”

“Ben Casey?”

“Bachelor number two. Dr. Kildare.”

“You’re strange, Buddy. But, no, it didn’t work out, and it was all because he turned out to be such a weirdo, weirdo, I don’t know -- pervert weirdo --”

“So, okay, chalk it up to experience. There’ll be plenty more dudes down the road.”

She turned her gaze to the floor and Buddy sipped the last of his excellent whiskey. Then:

“Buddy,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She looked up.

“When is your train?”

“There’s trains all day. We have time for a nice lunch.”

“Okay.” She stood up, took off the bathrobe. She had on the ivory-colored slip she’d worn in the play. She dropped the robe over her chair. “Let me get dressed and we’ll go have lunch. Turn around.”

“I’ve seen you undressed, baby.”

“I know. Now turn around.”

“Okay, but one thing first.”

“What?”

The slip had white lace trim at the bodice and hem. Buddy reached over and put his empty plastic cup on the table.

“Come sit on my lap.”

(Please click here for the thrilling final episode of Uncle Buddy’s House.)

(Kindly check the right-hand column of this page for a listing of links to all other electronically-accessible chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™; soon to be presented by the Mercury Theatre in a special adaptation written and directed by Orson Welles and starring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello.)