High Time (20 page)
‘What’s a benefit?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.
‘It’s an affair to raise money in the name of some worthy cause. Actually, it is the biggest racket in the world. But people do not protest at being robbed if it is done in the name of Sweet Charity. Of course, very little of the proceeds ever reach the original beneficiary!’ Miss Tinkham had not taken part in benefits for years without knowing what went on at the box-office.
‘What’d we call ours—“Bundles for Brooklyn”?’ Mrs. Feeley grinned.
Miss Tinkham was evidently right in the groove that morning, for she smiled and said brightly:
‘Perhaps not exactly that, but how about “Bundles for Bluejackets”?’
‘Swell!’ Mrs. Feeley shouted.
‘I don’t get it,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said in that New England clip she used occasionally.
Miss Tinkham filched another beer and explained: ‘If we decide to do it, we’ll set aside a definite percentage of the money to buy bundles for bluejackets—we can decide what goes in the Christmas packages later—and everything over that sum goes to defray our traveling expenses to Brooklyn, New York.’
Mrs. Feeley shook her head rapidly as if to toss the fog out of her brain.
Mrs. Rasmussen just sat there with her mouth open. ‘Was you ever in the real-estate promotin’ business?’ she asked at last.
Miss Tinkham smiled and shook her head. ‘It’s just that I know how these things ought to be done,’ she said modestly. ‘I used to have a gentleman friend who was a Y.M.C.A. secretary!’
‘Gawd, I can’t figger out how you ain’t built you a Temple or somethin’ or other long ago, with all the suckers they is an’ all the ideas you got!’ Mrs. Feeley never did expect to reach the unplumbed depths of Miss Tinkham’s brain.
‘Oh, I have no ideas at all just for personal gain,’ Miss Tinkham said softly. ‘But if the cause is sufficiently worthy, then inspiration just seems to come from some higher source.’
Now that the benefit was settled, Mrs. Feeley wanted to know which bluejackets were to get the bundles—and why.
Miss Tinkham had that figured out, too.
‘There is no restriction, so far as I know, concerning the bestowal of gifts upon patients at the Naval Hospital! We could stipulate that the gifts were for men who had been on active duty.’
‘I coulda sat here for a month o’ Sundays an’ never thought o’ that!’ Mrs. Feeley sighed.
‘What goes in the bundles? We can’t put nothin’ needs no points!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said at last.
‘That can be decided upon later,’ Miss Tinkham said. ‘Right at the moment we must decide upon the type of benefit we are planning to put on.’
‘I was just thinkin’,’ Mrs. Feeley mused. ‘Remember them good ol’-time carnivals, where the men an’ ladies throwed baseballs at them cats on a fence?’
‘J’y suis!’ Miss Tinkham squeaked excitedly.
‘Gee swee? What the hell’s that?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.
‘That’s French for “I gotcha, Babe!”’ Miss Tinkham cried, pounding her friends on the back.
Saturday night the Bundles for Bluejackets Benefit had the entire neighborhood assembled in front of the Ark. The Four Freedoms Bar and Social Club had given their support, every man-jack of them. They had each dragged dozens of men and women to the jamboree. By eight o’clock a big crowd was milling around the sidewalk. Nearly a hundred workers came from the shipyard, and most of the women from Daphne’s plant. Those who had husbands brought them. The lone women soon found company. Darleen phoned up and passed the word to some of the hostesses at the Café—that got the word to the sailors fast enough! Mrs. Feeley closed the Ark and locked it. The club members took their friends into the club in little groups for a drink. Most of the people brought their own refreshments with them. There were odd-looking protuberances under some of the sport-shirts. Evidently a few bottles of liquor had hit town.
Mrs. Feeley went up to one man who had a suspicious-looking bulge in the back of his sweater.
‘What’s that in the back o’ your sweater, man?’ she asked.
‘That’s my hump,’ he said, grinning.
‘Damned if that ain’t the first hump I ever seen with a label on it!’ she laughed.
Oscar had given all for the cause: he even rigged a loudspeaker and hooked it onto the record-player so that the crowd could get the full benefit of the music, good and loud. Over and over, Bing moaned that there was a star-spangled banner waving somewhere and please not to mind his withered leg.
Miss Tinkham, Mrs. Rasmussen, and Old Timer had twisted streamers of red, white, and blue crêpe paper from the roof of the Ark to various trees about the yard. Large placards were posted here and there advertising the Fencewrecking Jamboree Benefit.
By nine o’clock most of the crowd was well in the weeds, for the bottles had circulated freely. The crowd wanted action, so Oscar turned on a small spotlight and Mrs. Feeley got up to make the speech of welcome.
‘Ladies an’ gennlemen: Guess you wonder what the hell this here is! No booths, no beer! Nothin’ for sale! Well, we can’t! Ain’t got none o’ them license! But if you got your own, you’re welcome to drink it here!’ Loud cheers came from the crowd in exactly the right place.
‘First off, we’re gonna tear down this fine fence o’ beer cans an’ give it to the scrap-drive! They got enough cans here to build a destroyer! An’, my friends, we’re gonna tear down this wall the same way we’re gonna tear down ol’ Shickel Burger’s castle!’
The applause was deafening, but Mrs. Feeley held up her hand for silence.
‘Now we are givin’, donatin’ this scrap free, for nothin’,’ she explained. ‘But we are chargin’ you fifty cents apiece for the privilege o’ knockin’ it apart! Ain’t it worth a hundred times that much to drive a nail in Ol’ Hitler’s coffin?’
The crowd agreed in no uncertain terms.
‘Before we start, we wanna let you know what’s gonna be did with the money: it’s gonna buy Christmas presents for wounded sailors right up in the Navy Hospital—an’ other purposes o’ Navy relief!’
The crowd was delighted. Miss Tinkham nodded and waved like mad: Mrs. Feeley had phrased that just right.
‘Oscar, gimme the axe!’ Mrs. Feeley shouted, and Oscar leaped up on the steps beside her brandishing an enormous sledgehammer with a bow of red, white, and blue ribbon tied to the handle.
‘Okay, folks!’ Mrs. Feeley cried, ‘step right up to the cashier an’ lay your money on the barrel-head! C’mon an’ do your stuff! Let’s all take a coupla whaxis at the Axis! Just pertend you’re bustin’ in a skull every time you strike!’
Without further ceremony she jumped down and began pounding on the fence right where it joined the gate. The cans crumpled under her mighty blows and the sand spurted out of them as she whacked.
‘Here, Grandma,’ a shipyard worker shouted, ‘lemme show you how to use that tack-hammer!’ He grabbed the hammer and dismantled another section of the fence.
Oscar was running around with a cigar-box collecting money right and left. The crowd was falling into line, well pleased with the new diversion.
Mrs. Feeley sat down to wipe her streaming face and drink a cold beer. Miss Tinkham had almost knocked herself out in her effort to knock off as many cans as anyone else. Mrs. Rasmussen pounded slowly and relentlessly, like a pile-driver.
‘Take it easy, sister!’ a man advised; ‘we’ll have to be diggin’ ’em back up outa the ground the way you pound!’
By midnight most of the crowd had gone down to lower Fifth Street for more beer or other potables, and had come back to attack the wall with renewed vigor. Some of the people were taking the blows to heart; one man paid and paid. At every whack he would yell and grunt: ‘That’s for my boy on the Lex! Uh-n-n-h! That’s for my cousin that’s a pris’ner!’ Each thump was dedicated to someone in the service, and was accompanied by a special grunt.
At half-past twelve all but one section of the wall had been torn down and piled in a large, shimmering heap. The last section had been reserved exclusively for all those classified as 4-F. After all, they claimed a right to some of the fun in the war. Monday morning the salvage trucks would haul off the remains of Mrs. Feeley’s once beautiful fence. She looked around the yard wistfully, like the old woman whose petticoats had been cut off while she was asleep.
‘Gawd! It just don’t seem like home without the
fence!’
Her friends came up and patted her on the back. They knew she loved the fence, but it had been sacrificed in a good cause.
‘Aw, c’mon, cheer up, Mrs. Feeley!’ Oscar said. ‘Let’s count the money!’
She perked up at the suggestion and they sat on the porch counting it. The red-head brought her some beer.
Oscar could hardly believe his eyes: ‘Somethin’ screwy here!’ he said. ‘I got close to nine hundred dollars in this box!’
The ladies gasped.
‘Well, they’s anyway two hundred people here,’ Mrs. Rasmussen said.
‘Accordin’ to that, they musta spent close to five dollars apiece!’ Jasper figured.
‘Hell! That ain’t but a hour’s pay to all them guys! That one old guy musta spent ten dollars if he spent a cent! I thought he never was gonna turn loose of that hammer!’
Oscar figured that every one of those people could afford to donate to the cause—and, besides, they had had fun.
A few people were out in the club listening to the music and drinking. Most of the crowd had formed little groups as crowds will when the excitement dies down.
Mrs. Feeley sat down in her rocker on the porch.
‘It’s no use,’ she said, ‘we can’t keep it!’
‘It was most too easy,’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed.
‘That is true,’ Miss Tinkham said solemnly. ‘Even if we keep a part of it, it is almost like accepting charity.’
‘Charity begins at home!’ Oscar remarked wisely. ‘An’ the ones that does all the work of puttin’ on one of these benefits is always entitled to a fifty-fifty cut!’
Mrs. Feeley brightened: ‘That the truth, Oscar?’
‘God’s truth!’ Oscar replied, solemnly raising his hand. ‘An’ do you think one o’ them people woulda paid money to knock them cans off if they wasn’t havin’ their money’s worth doin’ it? Wouldn’t make no difference how good the cause was—if they didn’t have fun doin’ it. That’s just the same as bowling or pitchin’ horseshoes! Just the same as a carnival—only patriotic!’
‘Guess that’s right!’ Mrs. Rasmussen was convinced.
‘Furthermore,’ he went on to ease Mrs. Feeley’s scruples, ‘what about the months of labor it musta took you to build that fence, lady? You ain’t considered that!’ Oscar was a fine salesman.
‘Hell!’ Mrs. Feeley cried, ‘took me a year, it did! Me an’ Ol’ Timer together!’
‘Well!’ Oscar said triumphantly, ‘you can just say no more about it, because at that rate, countin’ four hundred an’ fifty dollars for the two of you—workin’ one year steady, it comes out that you was workin’ at about twenty-five cents an hour apiece! An’ that ain’t considered a livin’ wage! You’ll be in trouble with the Union if you don’t take it! Shame on you! Workin’ for nothin’!’
‘Now that’s a candid fact!’ Mrs. Feeley said, reaching out for her share. She got to her feet and came to the edge of the porch.
‘Hey, you guys!’ she shouted. Knots of people gathered around the porch in hope of further entertainment: ‘This is where you came in, kids! We hate to run you off, but just remember a lot of you gotta work tomorra an’ I don’t wanna hear o’ nobody showin’ up in the factory or shipyard with no hangover! We’re all in it up to our necks, an’ we gotta fight till everybody’s dead an’ every dollar’s spent! We can’t lose, kids! The Guy in the sky won’t let us!’
THE END
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1944 by Mary Lasswell
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3671-9
Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
