Every Third Thought (7 page)

“Do I have to come up there and find that Christmas stuff myself?” Mr. Prosper inquired up the stairwell.

“No need, Dad. We’ve got our hands on it right now.”

 

So where am I? Ah, yes: at G.I.N.’s worktable all these winters later, making note of at least three more items from this early season of his and (the late!) Ned Prosper’s story, out of the many prompted by that recent solstice-vision:

For starters, their early discovery of
books
as a source of extracurricular and sometimes even curricular pleasure. Those “Big Little Books,” e.g.: hardcovers the size of half a brick, text on their left-hand 3” × 4” pages, black-and-white illustrations on their right, retailing the adventures of Dick Tracy, Tailspin Tommy, Tom Mix, Terry and the Pirates. Also a larger, radically abridged and expurgated edition of
The Arabian Nights
, handsomely illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Plus innumerable comic books, more pictures than text, whose literally colorful depictions of Superman, Batman, and the rest drove Big Little Books off the market. And, as the pair graduated cross-creek from Bridgetown Elementary to Stratford Junior High and at Ned’s parents’ urging frequented the Avon County Public Library, the shelves of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
Tarzan
and Victor Appleton’s
Tom Swift
novels. Stories, stories, stories! Much as they enjoyed watching Saturday-afternoon double features at Stratford’s Globe Theater and listening to radio serials like
The Shadow
(“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows
. . . ”), in those pre-television, pre-video-game days it was stories “told” in printed words that most appealed to them—the silent, privileged transaction between Author and individual
Reader (the boys regularly swapped books, but never read aloud to each other). Good old print: a shared early addiction that by their college years would become—unreservedly for Ned, halfhopefully for his sidekick—a calling, a true
vocation
....

Second, Ned’s habit already by sixth grade of proposing something—an illicit dive off the Matahannock Bridge, maybe—then saying, unless Gee said it first, “On
second
thought, we’ll be in hot water if Ruthie squeals on us,” and deciding finally, “On
third
thought, that damn water’s too cold today: Let’s go splash Ruthie and her friends instead.” Or, on a wartime waste-paper-collection drive with fellow members of Bridgetown Boy Scout Troop #158, “Let’s see what old man Thorpe [a local news dealer] has for us in this pile of stuff,” and upon discovering therein a discarded trove of coverless
Spicy Detective
pulp magazines illustrated with line drawings of naked women in erotic peril, “On
second
thought, let’s cop a couple of these for later,” and having done so, “On
third
thought, to hell with the war effort: Let’s go work on our Jack-Off merit badges.” Whereupon, as the Nazis overran Europe, shipped its Jews off to extermination camps, invaded the Soviet Union, and poised to invade Great Britain, and as Imperial Japan, having surpriseattacked Pearl Harbor, extended its military dominion in the Pacific, Ned Prosper and George Newett practiced masturbation in the afore-described attic of 213 Water Street, the empty former woodshed of 210, and other secluded venues. It was his friend’s “third thoughts,” G.I.N. noticed early, that the pair most often acted upon.

And finally (regarding things Third and Last), Retired O.F.F.-Prof Newett is reminded of his Prosper-pal’s predilection, even back then, for remarking Last Things, a habit that by his undergraduate years would become a virtual obsession:

“Last time you’re gonna see
me
in these stupid corduroy knickers and kneesocks!
Long pants
from now on, or bare-assed!”

“Last ride on our dumb old junior bikes: Race you to the bridge, Gee!”

“Last day of Miz Brinsley’s fifth grade. Boo-hoo! Whoopee!”

“Last week of vacation; better make the most of it!”

“Last year of President Roosevelt’s second term!”

“Last day of the 1930s!”

“Last birthday before we’re teenagers. Let’s do Stupid Kid Stuff!”

“Better get some sledding done while we can: Last day of winter coming soon!”

Indeed. And almost seventy years later, as Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois campaigned exhaustingly against each other to be either the first female or the first African-American presidential nominee, the winter of C.E. 2007/08 ran its unhurried, inexorable course, and at least two dwellers on Planet Earth began to wonder, vis-à-vis G. I. Newett’s narrative-
in-utero
, “Just what the fuck
is
this, pray tell?”

Thus asked one of them, Poet/Professor A. Todd, of the other, her palms-up husband, who, as he not infrequently did,
had requested that his mate please take a look at the paperclipped pages that she now tossed back into his lap. Responded he, “That’s what I hoped you’d help
me
figure out.”

“Well, for starters, is it meant to be a novel or a memoir or what? How much of this silly stuff really happened?”

“Don’t ask me; I just work here.” Shrug. “Shit happens. And now I remember that I forgot to include a certain memorable First among all those Lasts.” Namely, that it was on the afore-noted Last Day of fifth grade in Bridgetown Elementary that Yours Fictively George Irving Newett made his literary debut, in the form of a naughty poem about their stern, fat, and busty teacher. Scribbled in #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencil on a torn-out sheet of blue-ruled composition-book paper as Miss Brinsley, standing before a large wall map, held forth on global time-differentials and the inversion of seasons between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and meant to be passed surreptitiously over to Ned P. but noticed and pounced upon by its eagle-eyed subject before its recipient could finish reading it, Gee’s
aabb
quatrain was spun off from an anonymous one considered funny by male Bridgetown fifth- and sixth-graders when shared orally at recess-time. The original:

“Let me get this straight,” now said Amanda Todd. “You’re telling me that as late as 1941, at least a few fifth-grade boys in Bridgetown, Maryland, imagined that female sexual arousal involved mammary engorgement?”

“Some of us must’ve. What did we know?” What Narrator knew, and now reported, was that the formidable Miss Brinsley had been unamused. Crumpling the poem-script without expression and tossing it into her desk-side wastebasket (from which its author would manage later to retrieve it, he being assigned blackboard-erasure and trashcan-emptying as supplementary penance at that school-day’s close), she had sternly summoned him to the front of the classroom, pronounced him guilty of indecency and illicit note-passing, ordered him to bend forward over the desk, and directed the poem’s interrupted first reader to come forward and administer five hard whacks to the poet’s posterior with a large wooden paddle kept prominently on display in a front corner of the classroom to discourage misbehavior. Why five? Opinions differed in subsequent playground discussion of the incident, some maintaining that it was one whack for each grade, others that it was one for each line of the already much-repeated quatrain plus one for good
measure, and others yet that it was one for each snap-hook on Miss Brinsley’s bra (more than the usual number, Ruth Prosper would inform us from her more knowledgeable perspective on such esoterica—but then, think of the size of Miz B.’s . . .
boobs
!). Author’s punishment having been smartly delivered by Reader, at Subject’s order the tables were then turned and three whacks laid by Scurrilous Sender upon Ready Recipient’s backside, Miss Brinsley explaining to both and to the class that accessories to any misdeed, while perhaps less guilty than its perpetrators, must bear their share of responsibility.

In a put-on Eastern Shore drawl, “Sounds to me,” Mandy allowed, “like yer ole Miz B. there was right smart of a teacher.”

That she was, if a less than lovable one: She even explained to us the difference between Accessories Before and After the Fact. And we knew our Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn long before we discovered Henry Miller’s naughty novels in college days.

“Which however I believe were first being published in France at just about the time you tell of. And what did Future Fictionists Prosper and Newett take away from this experience, other than sore
derrières
?”

Didn’t hurt all that much, actually, in the physical way, and more of a scalding embarrassment to G. I. Newett, who knew he’d be in deep shit at home when word reached his parents, than to Ned P., whose folks, being educators themselves, were as a rule more understanding in the Classroom Mischief department. To all hands’ surprise, however, there were no further
unpleasant consequences. For whatever reasons, Miss Brinsley chose not to report the incident to either set of parents. Nor did Ned’s sister “tell on them” when she quickly got chapter and verse, so to speak, through an extracurricular grapevine that extended from Bridgetown Elementary up through Stratford Junior High, where she was in eighth grade. She merely shook her head in disgust, promised much worse retribution than a mere handful of hiney-whacks to anyone who dared write such shit about
her
, and made the gossiped bra-hook-number correction mentioned above.

“You should know,” one of us teased her—Gee, G. suspects, inasmuch as Ned was already remarking that a
handful
of whacks was exactly the right number: yet another possible explanation of the five-count.

“Don’t think I’m going to show
you
,” came back pert Ruthie, whose budding breasts, as far as Gee could judge, were not yet cupped: “Those peep-show days are in the attic for keeps.”

“On
second
thought,” Ned suggested on the school playground shortly after, where he and Gee and an approximate handful of their dodge-ball-playing classmates were yet again invoking what they’d come to call “the B.B.B. poem” (Brinsley/ Burlesque/Brassiere), “shouldn’t it go ‘
But
when the boys began to cheer’ instead of ‘
And
when the boys’ et cetera?” Not only because
but
adds yet another
b
to the line and the poem, he went on to explain, but because
but
(“Three more
B
’s, guys, get it?”) better suits the sense of the situation: She “sneaks into”
the burlesque show; she sits “way back in the very last row,” not to be noticed—
but
the popping of her bra-snaps blows her cover.

“Not his exact words, of course,” G. said now: “He and I are only eleven years old here, and people didn’t ‘blow their cover’ back in 1941, and who remembers anyhow? What I
do
remember is that ‘and/but’ business, and agreeing that he was Right On (as we didn’t say yet back then) about both the sense of the line and the alliteration—although of course we didn’t know
that
term yet.”

“In short,” offered Ever-Helpful Spouse, “Fledgling Author and Fledgling Critic sprout their first feathers. I wish
I’d
had fifth-grade pals like you guys.”

“Fledgling O.F.F. and about-to-fledge Capital-A Author,” in her husband’s opinion, “who alas had his wings clipped early. I wish
I’d
been your fifth-grade pal.”

“Likewise. But when you were in fifth grade I was just getting conceived, and didn’t know from bra hooks yet. I think I’m supposed to ask now: If that was your late buddy’s Second Thought about your maiden literary effort (which I gather soon became your-and-his collaboration), what was his Third?”

Thanks for asking. If nipped-in-the-bud-novelist Ned Prosper were alive today to hear about George Newett’s recent post-equinoctial vision and subsequent solstitial illumination, one can imagine his proposing on Third Thought that whatever else G.’s well-deserved fifth-grade paddle-whacks might be said to signify, they echoed also the five platform-stops of our
birthday fire-tower climb back in first-grade days, of which the fifth and last before the tower-top had been declared to mark the inauguration of their friendship. “What he said at the time, however—unless I’m just dreaming all this?—was something like ‘On
third
thought, Gee, that’s the last time I’m getting paddled for being the damned Reader. From now on, whether I get whacked or whoopeed, I want it to be for my
own
scribbles, not somebody else’s.’ End of quote, paraphrase, misrecollection, whatever.”

“And none too soon, in your helpmeet’s helpful opinion. But if you’re really doing this whatever-it-is, you might as well mention that that particular Third Thought of his was the first we’ve heard so far that’s also one of those Last Things that you say he liked to make note of, if that happens to be the case. Excuse all those
that
s.”

“May your grateful husband kiss your hand?”

“Whatever anatomical item he pleases. And before she
washes
her hands of this dubious enterprise, pray tell your ever-less-patient Reader what further relevance, if any, this extended naughty-poem recollection has to anything?”

Relevance? Ah yes,
that
. Well: Eight or nine years later, when Ned Prosper is a flourishing undergrad here at StratColl, and G. I. Newett is hanging on by his fingernails over at Tidewater State, and both are pretty much persuaded that their Capital-C Calling is the writing of Capital-L Literary fiction, Ned will enjoy maintaining that future lit-historians will trace the pair’s epoch-making careers back to that initially
humiliating but eventually inspiring day in Miss Brinsley’s fifth grade, which introduced them to both the pains and the pleasures of literary creation. In his retrospective opinion, it will have been the B.B.B.-poem’s subsequent notoriety, as it passed from furtively scrawled note into jointly revised and raucously repeated Playground Oral Tradition, that really fired both boys’ passion not only for reading (especially
novels
: no longer Tom Swift and
Tarzan of the Apes
after elementary school, but Zane Grey’s
Riders of the Purple Sage
, Jack London’s
White Fang
, even Dumas
père
’s
The Three Musketeers
and
The Count of Monte Cristo
), but for
writing
made-up stuff: in Stratford Junior High, a satirical mock-Nazi underground “newspaper” called
Der Berlin Times
with crude cartoons of Hitler & Co., its handwritten single-sheet copies circulated among their classmates; in Avon County High, a pseudonymous gossip-and-humor column in the school’s biweekly
AvCoHi Eagle
called “The Osprey,” bylined
PN
(for Prosper/Newett, their joint “PNNAME”) and motto’d, “The
Eagle
soars; the
Osprey
pounces.”