High Time (18 page)

Johnny bought the bungalow for Darleen. True it was that the exterminator had to work three days and nights before it was habitable. But as Mrs. Feeley said, there was very little that a couple of coats of paint wouldn’t kill.

Darleen scoured the shops and with the help of Miss Tinkham and Mrs. Rasmussen turned the place into a creditable little home.

‘That girl’s as handy as a pocket in a shirt!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said with pride.

Daphne Garfunkle returned from the hospital twenty pounds heavier and minus her tic. She spent one week at home furnishing the bedroom that her children shared. Darleen arranged the house in such a way that there were three bedrooms. It meant giving up her dining room, but it was cozier to eat in the kitchen, anyway. After the furniture was arranged and the curtains hung, Mrs. Garfunkle returned with the news that she had a job: washing the parts of gyros. The ladies at the Ark were delighted. It looked as though their friends were all getting squared away at last.

‘There is no satisfaction so great as that of having helped someone to a better life, is there?’ Miss Tinkham mused as she scraped carrots.

‘Damned if that ain’t right!’ Mrs. Feeley agreed. ‘Lookit them fellers we’re feedin’! They was the peakiest, puniest bunch o’ dough-bellies I’d ever saw when they come here.’

‘Yeah. They hadn’t got the stren’th!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said. ‘Might’s well o’ been eatin’ sawdust as that pukey restaurant chow!’

‘Ain’t you noticed?’ Mrs. Feeley mused. ‘It’s the devil’s own time we have gettin’ ’em to go home of a night after they’ve et!’

‘It’s the hospitable atmosphere of our cozy hearth and home,’ Miss Tinkham explained.

‘I know that,’ Mrs. Feeley replied. ‘But does a body have a mind to take off her dress an’ sit around in her slip of an evenin’, it can’t rightly be done with them fellers sittin’ there gawkin’!’

‘An’ if we goes in our rooms, they think we’re sulkin’, ain’t it?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

‘What we really need,’ Miss Tinkham said dreamily, ‘is a recreation room!’

No one said a word for several minutes. Ideas began to scurry across Mrs. Feeley’s face like cockroaches when the light is turned on suddenly. Then she grinned.

‘Wreck-reation room is right! Some little shanty o’ their own where they can raise hell an’ horse around without bein’ in nobody’s way!’

‘Lumber’s froze,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.

‘We’ll think o’ somethin’! We always do! They ain’t a beer left, by any chance?’

‘Yeah. But it ain’t by any chance!’ Mrs. Rasmussen had a few bottles hidden under the sink. These trying days one could never tell when inspiration might lag—and there was nothing like a bottle of beer to start the old thinker ticking.

‘Now if we had the stuff to build one,’ Mrs. Feeley said, wiping the foam-mustache off with the back of her hand, ‘would we have to bother with a building permit? They act awful feisty about stuff like that at times!’

‘Not if you puts it thirty inches from the property line an’ it has a flat, not a pitched, roof.’

In all the time Mrs. Feeley had known Mrs. Rasmussen, she had never figured out where she gleaned these gems of practical information. She apparently picked them up hither and yon, and stored them in her cheek the way a squirrel hoards nuts. The ladies wagged their heads in admiration.

‘Well, I reckon that’s that!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

‘It would be on the order of a social club, would it not?’ Miss Tinkham asked.

‘Somethin’ like that! A place where they could read their papers, smoke, an’ drink their beer, an’ relapse generally,’ Mrs. Feeley explained.

‘What shall we call it?’ Miss Tinkham clapped her hands in excitement.

‘Seems like The Pink Grotto’d be kinda nice,’ Mrs. Feeley suggested.

The ladies thought that over.

‘That rather suggests a spaghetti-house, don’t you think?’ Miss Tinkham said.

‘It does, at that!’ Mrs. Feeley agreed.

‘Orta call it The Skenkstuen!’ Mrs. Rasmussen suggested. ‘That’s Danish for rathskeller.’

‘It’ll be enough like a skunk’s den without callin’ it that!’ Mrs. Feeley laughed. ‘First time one o’ them fellers turns out the lights an’ hollers “Ten minutes rough-house!” it’s gonna be a skunk’s den for real.’

Mrs. Rasmussen guessed that was about the size of it. Suddenly Miss Tinkham clapped a hand to her forehead.

‘Eureka! I have it! The fitting name in these eventful days! May I propose “The Four Freedoms Bar and Social Club”?’

‘Just to look at you,’ Mrs. Feeley said in awed tones, ‘a body would never guess you was subject to them brainstorms! Do they come to you in the middle o’ the night?’

Miss Tinkham smiled in appreciation. Come to think of it, it was rather distingué.

‘Four Freedoms Bar an’ Social Club!’ Mrs. Rasmussen repeated. ‘Real fancy name! Sure got class!’

‘We can’t have no bar in there, or we’ll be in Dutch with them revenuers! But I guess ’long as it’s a club the charty members has a right to bring their own stuff an’ drink it there!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

‘Dues, they gotta pay.’ Mrs. Rasmussen would think of that.

‘Gawd! That’s right!’

‘Oh yes!’ Miss Tinkham seconded. ‘We must have dues to keep it exclusive! Paid in advance, as we don’t ant a lot of rabble—we want to keep it select and in-time!’

‘Who the hell is Ann Teem?’ Mrs. Feeley wanted to know. ‘We sure as hell don’t want them draggin’ no twists in there! Not after all them vitamins!’

‘Oh no!’ Miss Tinkham cried, horrified. ‘That’s French for intimate.’

The ladies guessed it was all right, but the first skirt anybody tried to bring in would sure bring the vice squad down on them in a hurry. The ladies were almost late with dinner, so deeply had the plans absorbed them.

The boarders were informed of what was afoot and met the proposal with cheers. They said they would do all the manual labor and leave the ladies only the decorating to do. They wanted to begin at once, but Mrs. Feeley nipped that in the bud, as she had not had a chance to check the oddments that were left around the junk-yard. She refused to consider any plan that required new and essential materials.

‘I got a swell record-player an’ radio that’s never been hooked up yet. I hereby donate it to the cause!’ one of the boarders said.

‘No slot machines!’ Mrs. Feeley warned.

‘An’ what I’d like most of all,’ Oscar said, ‘would be some little desks, just any kind at all, where we could sit down an’ write letters home.’

Jasper said he had been a plumber’s apprentice at home and was capable of installing the rest-rooms.

‘What’s a club without a rest-room?’ he asked.

‘What’s any place without a rest-room?’ Mrs. Feeley challenged.

The red-head said he would do the electric wiring. Each of the boarders was full of clever ideas about the club and the ladies could see that the project had already become vitally important to the men.

Next morning Mrs. Feeley went out to the junk-yard all by herself. She had to give her imagination full play and did not want anyone along to distract her. The outlook was pretty bleak. There was not much left in the way of building materials. The club had to accommodate at least a dozen men—and she knew how men were, always bragging and bringing other fellows home to show off their club room. Be a regular band of Indians there every night. For a while she thought she was stymied. Katy would be ashamed of the resourceful, the indomitable Mrs. Feeley if she couldn’t figure out a way to dig up enough old rubbish to build the boys a playhouse!

All at once she had it.

‘Be a little unusual,’ she said, aloud, ‘but then nothin’ we ever does is exactly run o’ the mill!’

She hurried over to the pile of doors, large paneled wooden doors that Mr. Feeley bought when they tore down some of the buildings at the Exposition. With narrowed eyes she counted them. Then she made her way quickly to the Ark. The others were getting lunch ready. By Mrs. Feeley’s face they knew she had reached a solution.

‘’Tain’t for nothin’ Mr. Feeley always said I was born with a horseshoe in the seat o’ my pants! Them doors!’

‘What good’s the doors with no house to hang ’em on?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

Mrs. Feeley looked mysterious. ‘I was watchin’ two bees out there, an’ they gimme a idea!’ she said.

‘Please don’t tantalize us any longer!’ Miss Tinkham cried, ‘We’re expiring of curiosity!’

‘Well, the dawn has about came!’ Mrs. Feeley said. ‘I sees them bees workin’ away, an’ my eye lights on them doors an’ I says what’s to keep us from buildin’ a eight-sided room out of ’em?’

‘An octagonal room! How charming!’ Miss Tinkham gasped, fluttering her eyelids.

‘Too small,’ Mrs. Rasmussen dissented. ‘Be no bigger than a summer-house in a garden!’

‘That’s where nature-study helps,’ Mrs. Feeley grinned.

Miss Tinkham did not quite get the connection, but she had faith in Mrs. Feeley’s ideas.

‘Nature shall not pause nor falter, though nations shatter!’ she said.

‘Them damn bees don’t pause,’ Mrs. Feeley agreed. ‘You know how they make combs? One little cell onto another?’

The ladies nodded.

‘Well, that’s the idea! We’ll join three parts together. Just like a honeycomb—we got enough doors to do it—I counted ’em!’ Mrs. Feeley announced proudly.

‘What an inspiration!’ Miss Tinkham said. ‘The octagon is one of the most economical of geometrical figures; the bees use it because it is a great space-saver.’

Mrs. Rasmussen was eye-minded. She found a piece of paper and a stub of pencil and started drawing. Slowly the light broke.

‘There won’t be nothin’ like it this side o’ Kingdom Come,’ she said admiringly. ‘You aim to hook ’em up one after the other like rooms in a railroad flat, ain’t it?’

Mrs. Feeley nodded.

‘Three eight-sided rooms! Where the two end ones joins the middle, you won’t use no doors—leave it open like a archway?’ Once she got a pencil in her hand she caught on. ‘Just one entrance door—in the front o’ the middle room!’

‘Yeup!’ Mrs. Feeley chirped. ‘Be closed all the way around ’cept for two doors that will get hinges.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, they’s two little Vs, little angles, where the side rooms joins the middle one, ain’t they? Now I’m talkin’ about the ones at the back side o’ the house.’ The ladies nodded. ‘Well, we’re gonna seal them back angles up on the outside with scrap lumber an’ use them two places for the rest-rooms!’

‘Jeez!’ Mrs. Rasmussen sat down suddenly, overcome by the sight of genius at work. ‘Be awful small, won’t they?’

‘That’s all right! Ain’t but one person supposed to be in there at a time, anyway!’ Mrs. Feeley settled that.

‘I don’t know where your ideas spring from,’ Miss Tinkham complimented.

‘Well,’ the architect replied modestly, ‘we gotta cut our coat accordin’ to our cloth these days!’

When the boarders were shown the plan for the club, they said Mrs. Feeley should be designing airplane carriers with a brain like that.

‘An’ cozy, too!’ Oscar said. ‘Won’t be a lotta long bare walls to decorate neither! Be duck soup to build! Them doors already made!’

Jasper thought it would be cute to have built-in upholstered seats around some of the walls with little tables in front of them.

‘An’ a movable bar at one end!’ the red-head said.

‘An awning canopy over the front door,’ another suggested.

‘What about the roof?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

Mrs. Feeley said there was enough tin left from
what had once been a large bill-board.

‘You can’t stump her!’ Oscar said with pride.

‘An’ the roof an’ awnings is gonna be painted in blue an’ yellow stripes, like a circus tent!’ the genius continued.

‘What about the window glass?’ somebody asked.

Mrs. Feeley tried not to look smarty as she answered:

‘I’d thought about cuttin’ out the upper sections of a few o’ them doors, puttin’ ’em back with hinges at the top, an’ proppin’ ’em with window-sticks when we need ’em open—don’t need no glass thataway.’

Saturday afternoon the boarders arranged to get off early and begin work on the Four Freedoms. Oscar said there was no use doing it unless it was done right, so he took a few boards, laid out a foundation, and poured the concrete. They thought it would make a fine floor by the time they got it painted and waxed. Mrs. Rasmussen fixed an extra super de luxe dinner for the workers. Since they planned to work all day Sunday, she told them she would serve dinner at noon; there would be no time lost that way and they could pick up a snack at night.

All day Sunday the hammers banged and the saws whined. Somebody said it looked rather scrappy, all those doors different colors and what-not.

Mrs. Feeley snorted: ‘Never show children an’ fools anythin’ half-finished!’

She knew how the Four Freedoms would look in her mind’s eye from the very first—beautiful azure-blue walls, and the roof and awnings the same except for a wide lemon-yellow stripe.

Since Mrs. Feeley had donated the lumber and the tin Oscar said it was only fair that the club should pay for the nails, the paint, and the concrete for the floor. The men bought some small round tables at a second-hand store and some auto-top covering for the upholstery of the built-in benches.