Babbit (17 page)

  They bobbed more violently, and groaned, "That's so,
there is a danger of that."

  Chum Frink chanted, "Oh, say, I got hold of a swell
new receipt for home-made beer the other day. You take - "

  Gunch interrupted, "Wait! Let me tell you mine!"
Littlefield snorted, "Beer! Rats! Thing to do is to ferment cider!"
Jones insisted, "I've got the receipt that does the business!"
Swanson begged, "Oh, say, lemme tell you the story - " But Frink
went on resolutely, "You take and save the shells from peas, and
pour six gallons of water on a bushel of shells and boil the
mixture till - "

  Mrs. Babbitt turned toward them with yearning
sweetness; Frink hastened to finish even his best beer-recipe; and
she said gaily, "Dinner is served."

  There was a good deal of friendly argument among the
men as to which should go in last, and while they were crossing the
hall from the living-room to the dining-room Vergil Gunch made them
laugh by thundering, "If I can't sit next to Myra Babbitt and hold
her hand under the table, I won't play - I'm goin' home." In the
dining-room they stood embarrassed while Mrs. Babbitt fluttered,
"Now, let me see - Oh, I was going to have some nice hand-painted
place-cards for you but - Oh, let me see; Mr. Frink, you sit
there."

  The dinner was in the best style of women's-magazine
art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and
everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something
else. Ordinarily the men found it hard to talk to the women;
flirtation was an art unknown on Floral Heights, and the realms of
offices and of kitchens had no alliances. But under the inspiration
of the cocktails, conversation was violent. Each of the men still
had a number of important things to say about prohibition, and now
that each had a loyal listener in his dinner-partner he burst
out:

  "I found a place where I can get all the hootch I
want at eight a quart - "

  "Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a
thousand dollars for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing
but water? Seems this fellow was standing on the corner and fellow
comes up to him - "

  "They say there's a whole raft of stuff being
smuggled across at Detroit - "

  "What I always say is - what a lot of folks don't
realize about prohibition - "

  "And then you get all this awful poison stuff - wood
alcohol and everything - "

  "Course I believe in it on principle, but I don't
propose to have anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No
American 'll ever stand for that!"

  But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste
for Orville Jones - and he not recognized as one of the wits of the
occasion anyway - to say, "In fact, the whole thing about
prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the
humidity."

  Not till the one required topic had been dealt with
did the conversation become general.

  It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch,
"Gee, that fellow can get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw
One in mixed company and all the ladies 'll laugh their heads off,
but me, gosh, if I crack anything that's just the least bit off
color I get the razz for fair!" Now Gunch delighted them by crying
to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed
to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me
sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got
something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important to tell
you!"

  The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like
naughtiness. "Say, folks, I wished I dared show you a book I
borrowed from Doc Patten!"

  "Now, George! The idea!" Mrs. Babbitt warned
him.

  "This book - racy isn't the word! It's some kind of
an anthropological report about - about Customs, in the South Seas,
and what it doesn't SAY! It's a book you can't buy. Verg, I'll lend
it to you."

  "Me first!" insisted Eddie Swanson. "Sounds
spicy!"

  Orville Jones announced, "Say, I heard a Good One
the other day about a coupla Swedes and their wives," and, in the
best Jewish accent, he resolutely carried the Good One to a
slightly disinfected ending. Gunch capped it. But the cocktails
waned, the seekers dropped back into cautious reality.

  Chum Frink had recently been on a lecture-tour among
the small towns, and he chuckled, "Awful good to get back to
civilization! I certainly been seeing some hick towns! I mean -
Course the folks there are the best on earth, but, gee whiz, those
Main Street burgs are slow, and you fellows can't hardly appreciate
what it means to be here with a bunch of live ones!"

  "You bet!" exulted Orville Jones. "They're the best
folks on earth, those small-town folks, but, oh, mama! what
conversation! Why, say, they can't talk about anything but the
weather and the ne-oo Ford, by heckalorum!"

  "That's right. They all talk about just the same
things," said Eddie Swanson.

  "Don't they, though! They just say the same things
over and over," said Vergil Gunch.

  "Yes, it's really remarkable. They seem to lack all
power of looking at things impersonally. They simply go over and
over the same talk about Fords and the weather and so on." said
Howard Littlefield.

  "Still, at that, you can't blame 'em. They haven't
got any intellectual stimulus such as you get up here in the city,"
said Chum Frink.

  "Gosh, that's right," said Babbitt. "I don't want
you highbrows to get stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a
fellow right up on his toes to sit in with a poet and with Howard,
the guy that put the con in economics! But these small-town boobs,
with nobody but each other to talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy
and uncultured in their speech, and so balled-up in their
thinking!"

  Orville Jones commented, "And, then take our other
advantages - the movies, frinstance. These Yapville sports think
they're all-get-out if they have one change of bill a week, where
here in the city you got your choice of a dozen diff'rent movies
any evening you want to name!"

  "Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing up
against high-class hustlers every day and getting jam full of
ginger," said Eddie Swanson.

  "Same time," said Babbitt, "no sense excusing these
rube burgs too easy. Fellow's own fault if he doesn't show the
initiative to up and beat it to the city, like we done - did. And,
just speaking in confidence among friends, they're jealous as the
devil of a city man. Every time I go up to Catawba I have to go
around apologizing to the fellows I was brought up with because
I've more or less succeeded and they haven't. And if you talk
natural to 'em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might
call a broad point of view, why, they think you're putting on side.
There's my own half-brother Martin - runs the little ole general
store my Dad used to keep. Say, I'll bet he don't know there is
such a thing as a Tux - as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in
here now, he'd think we were a bunch of - of - Why, gosh, I swear,
he wouldn't know what to think! Yes, sir, they're jealous!"

  Chum Frink agreed, "That's so. But what I mind is
their lack of culture and appreciation of the Beautiful - if you'll
excuse me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class
lecture, and read some of my best poetry - not the newspaper stuff
but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass,
there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang
and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the
gate so fast it would make his head swim."

  Vergil Gunch summed it up: "Fact is, we're mighty
lucky to be living among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize
artistic things and business-punch equally. We'd feel pretty glum
if we got stuck in some Main Street burg and tried to wise up the
old codgers to the kind of life we're used to here. But, by golly,
there's this you got to say for 'em: Every small American town is
trying to get population and modern ideals. And darn if a lot of
'em don't put it across! Somebody starts panning a rube crossroads,
telling how he was there in 1900 and it consisted of one muddy
street, count 'em, one, and nine hundred human clams. Well, you go
back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a swell little hotel
and a first-class ladies' ready-to-wear shop-real perfection, in
fact! You don't want to just look at what these small towns are,
you want to look at what they're aiming to become, and they all got
an ambition that in the long run is going to make 'em the finest
spots on earth - they all want to be just like Zenith!"

  III

  However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley
Frink as a neighbor, as a borrower of lawn-mowers and
monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was also a Famous Poet and a
distinguished advertising-agent; that behind his easiness were
sultry literary mysteries which they could not penetrate. But
to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them to the
arcanum:

  "I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to
death. I'm doing a series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to
make each of 'em a real little gem - reg'lar stylistic stuff. I'm
all for this theory that perfection is the stunt, or nothing at
all, and these are as tough things as I ever tackled. You might
think it'd be harder to do my poems - all these Heart Topics: home
and fireside and happiness - but they're cinches. You can't go
wrong on 'em; you know what sentiments any decent go-ahead fellow
must have if he plays the game, and you stick right to 'em. But the
poetry of industrialism, now there's a literary line where you got
to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow who's really THE
American genius? The fellow who you don't know his name and I don't
either, but his work ought to be preserved so's future generations
can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why, the
fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to
this:

  It's P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say -
bet you've often bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping
from five to f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by "stepping on her a bit!" Guess
that's going some, all right - BUT just among ourselves, you better
start a rapidwhiz system to keep tabs as to how fast you'll buzz
from low smoke spirits to TIP-TOP-HIGH - once you line up behind a
jimmy pipe that's all aglow with that peach-of-a-pal, Prince
Albert.

  Prince Albert is john-on-the-job - always joy'usly
more-ISH in flavor; always delightfully cool and fragrant! For a
fact, you never hooked such double-decked, copper-riveted.
two-fisted smoke enjoyment!

  Go to a pipe - speed-o-quick like you light on a
good thing! Why - packed with Prince Albert you can play a joy'us
jimmy straight across the boards! AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT
MEANS!"

  "Now that," caroled the motor agent, Eddie Swanson,
"that's what I call he-literature! That Prince Albert fellow -
though, gosh, there can't be just one fellow that writes 'em; must
be a big board of classy ink-slingers in conference, but anyway:
now, him, he doesn't write for long-haired pikers, he writes for
Regular Guys, he writes for ME, and I tip my benny to him! The only
thing is: I wonder if it sells the goods? Course, like all these
poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his idea run away with him.
It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing. I'd never go
out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading it, because it
doesn't tell me anything about the stuff. It's just a bunch of
fluff."

  Frink faced him: "Oh, you're crazy! Have I got to
sell you the idea of Style? Anyway that's the kind of stuff I'd
like to do for the Zeeco. But I simply can't. So I decided to stick
to the straight poetic, and I took a shot at a highbrow ad for the
Zeeco. How do you like this:

  The long white trail is calling - calling-and it's
over the hills and far away for every man or woman that has red
blood in his veins and on his lips the ancient song of the
buccaneers. It's away with dull drudging, and a fig for care. Speed
- glorious Speed - it's more than just a moment's exhilaration -
it's Life for you and me! This great new truth the makers of the
Zeeco Car have considered as much as price and style. It's fleet as
the antelope, smooth as the glide of a swallow, yet powerful as the
charge of a bull-elephant. Class breathes in every line. Listen,
brother! You'll never know what the high art of hiking is till you
TRY LIFE'S ZIPPINGEST ZEST - THE ZEECO!

  "Yes," Frink mused, "that's got an elegant color to
it, if I do say so, but it ain't got the originality of
'spill-of-speech!'" The whole company sighed with sympathy and
admiration.