Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (447 page)

“On an Ocean Wave” was not a new departure for Fitzgerald. The treatment of Scheer is uncharacteristically hard-boiled; but the style is recognizable, as in the final paragraph which might have been written for one of Fitzgerald’s Twenties stories. Published in Esquire, February 1941.

DEARLY BELOVED

O, my Beauty Boy — reading Plato so divine! O, dark, oh fair, colored golf champion of Chicago. Over the rails he goes at night, steward of the club car, and afterwards in the dim smoke by the one light and the smell of stale spittoons, writing west to the Rosecrucian Brotherhood. Seeking ever.

O Beauty Boy here is your girl, not one to soar like you, but a clean swift serpent who will travel as fast on land and look toward you in the sky.

Lilymary loved him, oft invited him and they were married in St. Jarvis’ church in North Englewood. For years they bettered themselves, running along the tread-mill of their reach, becoming only a little older and no better than before. He was loaned the Communist Manifesto by the wife of the advertising manager of a Chicago Daily but for preference give him Plato — the Phaedo and the Apologia, or else the Rosecrucian Brotherhood of Sacramento, California, which burned in his ears as the rails clicked past Alton, Springfield Burlington in the dark.

Bronze lovers, never never canst thou have thy bronze child — or so it seemed for years. Then the clock struck, the gong rang and Dr. Edwin Bruch of South Michigan Avenue agreed to handle the whole thing for $200. They looked so nice — so delicately nice, neither of them over hurting the other and graciously expert in the avoidance. Beauty Boy took fine care of her in her pregnancy — paid his sister to watch with her while he did double work on the road and served for caterers in the city; and one day the bronze baby was born.

O Beauty Boy, Lilymary said, here is your beauty boy. She lay in a four bed ward in the hospital with the wives of a prize fighter, an undertaker and a doctor. Beauty Boy’s face was so twisted with radiance; his teeth shining so in his smile and his eyes so kind that it seemed that nothing and nothing could ever.

Beauty Boy sad beside her bed when she slept and read Thoreau’s Walden for the third time. Then the nurse told him he must leave. He went on the road that night and in Alton going to mail her a letter for a passenger he slipped under the moving train and his leg was off above the knee.

Beauty Boy lay in the hospital and a year passed. Lilymary went back to work again cooking. Things were tough, there was even trouble about his workman’s compensation, but he found lines in his books that helped them along for awhile when all the human beings seemed away.

The little baby flourished but he was not beautiful like his parents; not as they had expected in those golden dreams. They had only spare-time love to give the child so the sister more and more and more took care of him. For they wanted to get back where they were, they wanted Beauty Boy’s leg to grow again so it would all be like it was before. So that he could find delight in his books again and Lilymary could find delight in hoping for a little baby.

Some years passed. They were so far back on the treadmill that they would never catch up. Beauty Boy was a night-watchman now but he had six operations on his stump and each new artificial limb gave him constant pain. Lilymary worked fairly steadily as a cook. Now they had become just ordinary people. Even the sister had long since forgotten that Beauty Boy was formerly colored golf champion of Chicago. Once in cleaning the closet she threw out all his books — the Apologia and the Phaedo of Plate, and the Thoreau and the Emerson and all the leaflets and correspondence with the Roosecrucian Brotherhood. He didn’t find out for a long time that they were gone. And then he just stared at the place where they had been and said “Say, man … say man.”

For things change and get so different that we can hardly recognize them and it seems that only our names remain the same. It seemed wrong for them still to call each other Beauty Boy and Lilymary long after the delight was over.

Some years later they both died in an influenza epidemic and went to heaven. They thought it was going to be all right then — indeed things began to happen in exactly the way that they had been told as children. Beauty Boy’s leg grew again and he became golf champion of all heaven, both white and black, and drove the ball powerfully from cloud to cloud through the blue fairway. Lilymary’s breasts became young and firm, she was respected among the other angels, and her pride n Beauty Boy became as it had been before.

In the evening they sat and tried to remember what it was they missed. It was not this Hobbs, for here everyone knew all those things by heart, and it was not the little boy for he had never really been on e of them. They couldn’t remember so after a puzzled time they would give up trying, and talk about how nice the other one was, of how fine a score Beauty Boy would make tomorrow.

So things go.

PAT AT THE FAIR REUNION AT THE FAIR

Once when Pat Hobby was a boy a maiden aunt took him to the circus. The only fly in the ointment was that she wouldn’t give him a dime to see the bearded lady in the side show — which was Pats’ heart’s desire.

And now forty years later a somewhat parallel situation obtained with Mr. Pat Hobby at the Golden Gate World’s Fair. The lady of his desire was not bearded — no, no such incarnation would have been approved among Mr. Rosis Aquabelles — but the part of the maiden aunt was almost literally played by George Poupolous, motion picture producer.

The heel of the girls shoe come off without warning and she grabbed at the rolling chair for support. The attendant svayed her arm and sat her down beside Pat Hobby, a visitor from Hollywood!

“Could you drop me at the Aquacade?” she groaned.

Pat looked nervously at the door through which Mr. Poupolous had disappeared a minute before. Over was a sign which read “The Birth of Twins in Technicolor. The Golden Gates most Scientific Exhibit.”

Pat had no way of estimating how long the birth of twins took. He thought of her. Popolous who stood handsomely between him and starvation — then he looked at the girl.

“Aquacade,” he said to her attendant.

“I work there,” said the girl.

Pat introduced himself.

“I’m a writer — from Hollywood.”

“I swim at the Aquacade.”

They eyed each other sparring for advantage. She was nineteen. Pat was a somewhat shop-worn thirty mul.

Moreover the recent words of Mr. Poupolous — “George” to his face but referred to otherwose in his absense — rang in Pat’s ear.

“I want you should stay with me. Always when a producer takes a writer on a trip the writer is to stay with him. Suppose I have an idea — like now, a picture about a World’s Fair? Who would it be to write down the idea and remember it?”

Pat spoke urgently to the attendant.

“Push hard,” he said to the attendant. “I got to be back in ten minutes.”

The girl was straw-haired and appealing.

“Did you see the birth of twins,” he asked, and when she looked at him scalthingly he hurriedly added, “I just wondered how long it takes.”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I spend all the time I can get off in the Art Exposition.”

He looked at her again.

“I’m here with a producer,” he said, “He’s always looking for talent.”

Perhaps the Aquabelle had heard this one before because she did not answer — in fact made no further remark untill he had deposited her at the steps of the water carnival. Then she relaxed.

“Come and see us,” she said.

He looked at the Aquabelle longingly and hopelessly. Mr. Poupolous had seen the Aquacade in New York.

“Home, James,” he said.

On the way back he found himself reminded of a bearded lady. Not that Mr. Rose’s employee wore any more than the most conventional and invisible down, but once forty years ago his maiden aunt had refused him ten cents to see a bearded lady. And the present situation had a familiar ring. There was nothing he could do about it — in his present decline two weeks at two fifty were not to be despised.

He reached the midway just as Mr. Poupolous emerged from his scientific studies.

“Where now?” said Pat with proper joviality.

“That was Panorananama,”said Mr. Popolous.

Pat looking longingly at Sally Rands nude ranch.

“Humpfrey Bogart and his wife are here today,” volunteered the man behind the rolling chair. “They had dinner at the Golden Gate Restaurant.”

Pat and Mr. Poupolous exchanged a glance — known as George to his face and “Pupe” behind his back — took the news calmly. He pointed onto the building in front of them and said to his companion, Mr. Pat Hobby.

“Art Expedition.”

Mr. Poupolous had never been good at signs.

The youth pushing the chair spoke again.

“You do want to go to the Art Exposition? Humpfrey Bogart and his —  — “

“Stop!” cried Mr. Poupolous. “There’s Bruce Ligorna.”

Pat’s scelerotic heart was thrilled. After long neglect — broken by an occasional week at two fifty — he was in the swim again. Everybody was here — that was indeed Legorna, the director sitting alone on the steps of the Fine Art Building.

“He looks sick,” said Mr. Poupolous as they approached. “Hi there, Bruce.”

“I’m sick,” said Bruce.

“What’s a matter?”

Ligorna waved his hand despondently toward the picture gallery.

“Hung pictures,” he said, “They make me faint. I shouldn’t have gone in alone — they had to carry me out.”

“Why didn’t you tell them who you were?” demanded Pat indignantly.

“I was unconscious.”

“You mean the
pic
tures made you sick?” asked Mr. Poupolous.

“Always have,” said Bruce dismally, “I been psyked but they can’t find out why. I’m trying to get over it myself — but I should have had somebody with me.”

“Do moving pictures make you sick?” asked Pat.

“No — just hung pictures.”

Poupolous smiled suspiciously to think if he were drunk — but the fresh fine air of the Golden Gate was without a faint….

*****

From editor:
That’s all that survived of the text — the end of the story is missing.

THE MYSTERY OF THE RAYMOND MORTGAGE

When I first saw John Syrel of the New York Daily News, he was standing before an open window of my house gazing out on the city. It was about six o’clock and the lights were just going on. All down 33rd Street was a long line of gayly illuminated buildings. He was not a tall man, but thanks to the erectness of his posture, and the suppleness of his movement, it would take no athlete to tell that he was of fine build. He was twenty-three years old when I first saw him, and was already a reporter on the News. He was not a handsome man; his face was clean-shaven, and his chin showed him to be of strong character. His eyes and hair were brown.

As I entered the room he turned around slowly and addressed me in a slow, drawling tone: “I think I have the honor of speaking to Mr. Egan, chief of police.” I assented, and he went on: “My name is John Syrel and my business, — to tell you frankly, is to learn all I can about that case of the Raymond mortgage.”

I started to speak but he silenced me with a wave of his hand. “Though I belong to the staff of the Daily News,” he continued, “I am not here as an agent of the paper,”

“I am not here,” I interrupted coldly, “to tell every newspaper reporter or adventurer about private affairs. James, show this man out.”

Syrel turned without a word and I heard his steps echo up the driveway.

However, this was not destined to be the last time I ever saw Syrel, as events will show.

The morning after I first saw John Syrel, I proceeded to the scene of the crime to which he had alluded. On the train I picked up a newspaper and read the following account of the crime and theft, which had followed it:

“EXTRA”

“Great Crime Committed in Suburbs of City”

“Mayor Proceeding to Scenes of Crime”

On the morning of July 1st, a crime and serious theft were committed on the outskirts of the city. Miss Raymond was killed and the body of a servant was found outside of the house. Mr. Raymond of Santuka Lake was awakened on Tuesday morning by a scream and two revolver shots which proceeded from his wife’s room. He tried to open the door but it would not open. He was almost certain the door was locked from the inside, when suddenly it swung open disclosing a room in frightful disorder. On the center of the floor was a revolver and on his wife’s bed was a blood stain in the shape of a hand. His wife was missing, but on a closer search he found his daughter under the bed, stone dead. The window was broken in two places. Miss Raymond had a bullet wound on her body and her head was fearfully cut. The body of a servant was found outside with a bullet hole through this head. Mrs. Raymond has not been found.

The room was upset. The bureau drawers were out as if the murderer had been looking for something. Chief of Police Egan is on the scene of the crime, etc., etc.

Just then the conductor called out “Santuka!” The train came to a stop, and getting out of the car I walked up to the house. On the porch I met Gregson, who was supposed to be the ablest detective in the force. He gave me a plan of the house which he said he would like to have me look at before we went in.

“The body of the servant,” he said, “is that of John Standish. He has been with family 12 years and was a perfectly honest man. He was only 32 years old.”

“The bullet which killed him was not found?” I asked.

“No,” he answered; and then, “Well, you had better come in and see for yourself. By the way, there was a fellow hanging around here, who was trying to see the body. When I refused to let him in, he went around to where the servant was shot and I saw him go down on his knees on the grass and begin to search. A few minutes later he stood up and leaned against a tree. Then he came up to the house and asked to see the body again. I said he could if he would go away afterwards. He assented, and when he got inside the room he went down on his knees and under the bed and hunted around. Then he went over to the window and examined the broken pane carefully. After that he declared himself satisfied and went down towards the hotel.”