“What is it?”
“A book. She was reading it at the counter.” Uncle Whit opened a drawer to his desk and took out the book of mention.
Maggie accepted the volume from her uncle. “You are very kind to me, Uncle. In so many different ways.”
“I consider you my niece still. And do come back and see me again when you have the chance.”
“I will.” Maggie squeezed her uncle’s hand.
“And bring all your pretty friends with you.”
“Yes, well, of course. Good morning, Uncle Whit.”
Once outside the drugstore, Maggie put the book into Ruth’s hands without looking at it. “Uncle Whit knows a lot about me,” she said, “but he’s apparently forgotten that I don’t read for pleasure. You may have this—whatever it is.”
“Thank you, Mag,” said Ruth. As the four friends walked along California Street, Ruth opened the book to look at its title page. It was a novel with which Ruth was familiar, and she told this to Maggie.
“A Florida Enchantment,” said Molly, peering over Ruth’s shoulder. “But you haven’t read it yet?”
“No. But Miss Colthurst strongly recommended it,” replied Ruth, now leafing through its pages.
“What’s it about?” asked Molly.
“A magic seed that when eaten changes a woman into a man and vice versa. Not outwardly, but inside.”
Maggie snorted. “Yes, I can see why Miss Colthurst would ‘strongly’ recommend such a book.”
At that moment a cable car trundled noisily past. Ruth was given to think, as she sometimes did, of Maggie’s father stepping in front of it and ending his life in an instant. Today she pictured Maggie in her father’s place.
And didn’t feel guilty at all.
Chapter Eight
Zenith, Winnemac, July 1923
Cain Pardlow was always the first to arrive at Dodsworth Hall on that one morning a week in which he and his four college pals were able to grab a late breakfast together. Only on Monday mornings did their various lecture and lab schedules open up for long enough (from ten to noon to be precise) to afford the five longtime friends the chance to graze coevally in Winnemac Agricultural and Mechanical College’s revamped dining hall. (This semester marked the first time W A&M tried the relatively new “cafeteria dining concept,” which had been growing in popularity since the war.) Seated at their favorite table, they would trade stories from the week past, argue politics—national, state, and campus—and generally shoot a great deal of bull before being called away to afternoon classes covering such esoteric subjects as Cost Accounting, Mechanics of Trade, Machine Drawing, Agricultural Survey and Drainage, and Efficacies of Farm Manure.
Cain, the agricultural history student, had his unvarying “usual”: two cups of black coffee (Monarch—“Quality Seldom Equaled; Never Excelled”) and a bowl of Kellogg’s Shredded Krumbles with strawberries and cream.
Pat Harrison, who was usually the next to show up—Pat, the science education major (at least this was the degree path that interested him this particular semester)—ate cereal, as well: Quaker Quakies corn flakes. And because they looked appealingly plump and succulent this morning, Pat also topped his cereal with strawberries and cream. Having always been taught by his father that caffein frayed the nerves and impaired the digestion, Pat drank Postum, and, to the amazement of his friends, was able to do so with little facial indication of his absolute revulsion for the gritty, pulpy beverage.
Today it was Tom Catts who arrived next. Tom appeared slightly bleary-eyed from an evening of getting himself stewed, if not to the eyebrows, then perhaps to a point just below the cheekbones. Tom had a fried egg sandwich—or at least he bought a fried egg sandwich—but because of the condition of his stomach, he was destined to spend most of the time just staring at it, occasionally peeling back the toast to see if the eggs had turned into anything remotely palatable. Tom was working toward a degree in the relatively new field of agricultural economics.
Next came Will (a.k.a. “William,” “Willy,” and “Willy-Boy,” but never “Billy”) Holborne, who was in the mood for bacon, and was provisioned that morning with a tall glass of orange juice and a plate piled high with nothing but crispy rashers of the aforementioned. There was a logical explanation for this beyond the fact that Will was terminally hungry. He was presently taking a class in pork production. Perhaps no further elaboration is necessary.
And making his wonted straggling appearance sometime around 10:30 was Jerry Castle, who was studying for a degree in Business and Industry. Jerry had his customary king’s breakfast of cinnamon toast, corned beef hash with poached egg on top, a side of fried ham, a bowl of fruit-in-season (today it was those mouth-watering strawberries), and a short stack of Aggie flapjacks (which were just your garden-variety pancakes, with the chance of a little embedded ash from one of “Chef” Shemp’s ubiquitous Lucky Strikes).
Castle spoke for the others as he flumped down with his tray: “Tom Catts—you look like somebody the eponymous dragged in, you bedraggled ol’ whisker-licker. What kind of hootch did you get your little snub-snout into last night?”
“It wasn’t the quality of the beverage so much as the quantity. I’m a pushover for Golden Wedding, and the Gamma Delts were serving up quarts and quarts of it. Worse thing of it, I missed my co-operative marketing class this morning, and that’s my third absence. I’m going to have to throw myself on Prof’s mercy or take a deficiency. This one’s a must-have for graduation.”
Will threw his arm around Tom’s shoulder. “I got all my drinking out of the way at Saturday night’s game. You should know better, Catman, than to get yourself stinko on a Sunday night. What were you doing on Saturday when you should have been root-root-rooting for the home team?”
“I was at the pictures.”
“What picture?” asked Pat, who still hadn’t gotten out of his boyhood habit of seeing a new movie every weekend (or gotten himself out of any of his other boyhood habits, for that matter).
“The Lon Chaney thing. That Hunchback movie.”
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” said Cain. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it, although I’ve heard all about it. I also happened to have read the book. Victor Hugo wouldn’t have been very pleased with what they did to his story.”
“I enjoyed it,” countered Tom defensively.
At the same time Jerry said, “Since that frog’s probably long dead, I wouldn’t think he’d give two damns what was done with his story.”
“What’s wrong with the movie?” asked Pat.
“Twisted the thing all around,” replied Cain. “Turned it into preposterous melodrama. Although, admittedly, the novel’s a little melodramatic on its own merits—don’t know if maybe that was the fault of the translator—but I still don’t think the movie serves the original very well. And they made the archdeacon, Dom Claude Frollo, into one of the heroes of the thing.”
“He was a villain in the book?” asked Pat.
Cain nodded. “You see, in the book—”
Cain was silenced by a loud thwack—the result of Jerry slamming both palms flat and quite jarringly upon the table. “Can we just once, Pardlow, get through one of these breakfasts without you opening up the top of your egg-head and letting every fact and figure you’ve packed away in there just tumble out, until all of our eyes glaze over from boredom? You’re worse than all five of my profs put together.”
Pat jumped to Cain’s defense: “I thought what he was saying was interesting.”
“Of course you’d think that, Patty-Cake. You’re six. The rest of us have more important, grown-up things to chin about here. Tommy, as it has now been established, didn’t go to the game on Saturday night because he went to the flicks, but something happened after the flicks that’s worth telling. Tell them who you met, Tommy. Tell them everything you told me yesterday.”
“Well, I came out of the movie house and there she was—”
“She, brothers,” interrupted Jerry.
“See, now we’ve reached a topic worthy of serious consideration.”
Cain settled back in his seat, folding his arms into a bodily pout.
“Go on,” said Jerry, looking at Tom, who sat directly across the table from him. “We’re all ears. Especially Holborne, with his pachyderm mud flaps.”
Will wriggled both of his large ears with the help of his index fingers to show that he was comfortable with Jerry’s (nearly accurate) observation.
Tom took his time. He smiled mysteriously. He even managed a little nibble of his fried egg sandwich to get his think-pistons greased. “Her name is Jane. She runs that antiques store down the block from the Grantham, where they’re playing the Hunchback picture. Well, she and her brother, rather—they own it together. I see her standing in front of the store and there’s this fellow with her. He’s giving her a first-class bawl-out. I mean, he’s raking and razzing her at the top of his lungs. And you known the chivalrous way I was brought up, gentlemen. I’m not going to let some gutter-mouth swosher get away with treating a lady like that, so I step in and deliver the business, not knowing, you see, that it’s one of those ‘family-only’ kind of fallouts—the guy, turns out, is the brother, and they both live over the store and she’s trying to get him to go up for the night, but he’s not ready for the hay just yet, even though a couple of minutes later, he’s out like a light—oozes right down to the sidewalk like a blob of quicksilver and goes beddy-bye right then and there. So I make the suggestion that maybe the young lady might like me to lend a hand—help tuck her brother into a real bed. And she’s very grateful. This has become a nightly ritual for her, you see, and it’s wearing her down. So we get him up to his room, get him undressed and deposited beneath the sheets, and then she asks if I’d like to stay for a cup of coffee. And I say, sure, and there we are sitting at her kitchen table until nearly one in the morning.”
“Doing what?” asked Will, enrapt.
“Just talking.”
“That’s it?” Will’s face fell. “I thought this story was going somewhere.”
“It is,” said Jerry. “Finish the story, Tommy. It has an interesting twist.”
“Okay,” said Tom. “Here’s the twist. It turns out she’s one of those five girls who showed up on campus a couple of weeks ago handing out circulars for the big shindig that’s supposed to open up that behemothic brick cathedral they’re building downtown—the one the evangelist, Sister Lydia, will be preachifying at. Do you remember those girls?”
All four of Tom’s companions nodded. Of course, they remembered them…but only as a group. “Now which one was Jane?” asked Pat.
“Yeah,” put in Jerry, “you neglected to say the other night. Was she the hotsy-totsy blonde with the Marion Davies eyes?”
Tom shook his head. “Jane’s the tall one.”
“Oh. The tall one,” said Will, rolling his eyes.
“Oh yes. The tall one,” chimed in Jerry, opening his own eyes wide in a parody of great interest.
“That’s right,” said Tom, growing noticeably annoyed. “It turns out Jane and her friends don’t just pass out circulars for Sister Lydia. They’re in the choir. And because they’re church girls, I’d give you some pretty good odds they don’t have all that much experience…” Tom’s look suddenly became soiled. “…in the ways of love.”
“Love?” Jerry hooted.
“Shut up, Jerry,” snapped Cain. “Tommy, I think I know what it is you’re leading up to.”
Jerry grinned. “My dear Mr. Pardlow, you only know the half of it. Things are about to take themselves a nice little turn. I’ll pick up the ball here, Tommy, ol’ chap, because you talk too slow. So Tommy, he asks Jane what she’s doing on Friday night and she says she and her fellow canaries—they’re not doing nothing. But of course they are doing something Friday night—only at this point none of us knows it. See, Professor Prowse is throwing a big ol’ wingding birthday party for his brand-new wife on Friday and we’re all invited—all five of us and the songbirds, who, as it so happens, went to grammar school with bella Bella. Tommy just got our voice-vite from the missiz yesterday.”
“And the girls—just how do you know they’ll come?” asked Cain.
“Oh, they’ll fly their chancel cage, all right. Bella says one of them lives next door to her in the Heights, and she says she’ll flush her and the whole covey right over if she has to. Now, with our stage properly set…let the show begin.”
“Show? What show?” asked Pat, the perpetual literalist.
“Now wait just a minute,” said Cain, holding up his hand like a traffic cop. “We’re not doing anything that has anything to do with those girls.”
Jerry tossed a strawberry at Cain’s upheld hand. He batted it away.
“The rules say Tommy can come up with any kind of challenge he pleases,” Jerry gustily bayed. “And I’ve been waiting a long time at this stag institution for one of these silly intramural contests of ours to finally put me into a nice torso-lock with somebody that smells of Djer-Kiss lady talc. After all this time whiffing bay rum, gentlemen, don’t you think we’re due?”
Pat looked puzzled. “Are you sure it’s Tommy’s turn to make the challenge?”
“Positive, Patty-Cake,” replied Jerry, pinching Pat’s nose playfully. The pinch hurt and Pat yowled. “And Tommy can make us do whatever he likes—so long as there’s no threat to the health and safety of the participants. That’s the rule we all agreed to. And we all have to play. No exceptions allowed.”
“What if we seriously, sincerely do not want to play?” asked Cain, the lines of his face set in stone-faced severity—like Buster Keaton—a dramatic contrast to the looks of animated mischief to be found upon the fizzes of his table companions.
Tom took the floor again: “You want to know what happens, Cain? You get ostracized from the group, that’s what happens. Not to mention, we sneak into your dormitory room some night and douse you with a bucket of ice water in your sleep. Now we played your stupid game last semester and we all thought it couldn’t have been any more painful to our self-respecting manhood if we’d all been hung up in the middle of the quad by our BVDs. But we did it. We picked a damned Shakespearean character and we showed up at Mr. Herzer’s Shakespearean class dutifully dressed as that character—”
“I was Puck,” said Pat, beaming.
“Yes, Master Fauntleroy,” laughed Tom. “How could we ever forget?”
Tom, who was sitting next to Pat, reached behind him to create tiny horns over Pat’s head with two fingers. Pat flicked the fingers away as if they were pestering insects.
“And I speak for everybody but Puck here,” Tom swept on, “when I say there is no challenge I could ever put forth as humiliating as that one. So I dare you, Mr. Pardlow, to try to pull yourself out of this particular competition—I dare you in the name of fair play and common decency and the preservation of your warm, dry little dormitory cot.”
“So just what is it?” asked Cain, with a weary sigh. “Winner is the first to wheedle a kiss from one of these choir-girl innocents?”
Tom shook his head. A diabolical grin settled upon his lips. “Move farther around the bases, my friend. And send me a wire when you get to home plate.”
Cain dropped his cereal spoon. It struck the now empty ceramic bowl in front of him with a noticeable ping.
“Absolutely n—”
“One night of carnal passion. Just like what Captain Phoebus wanted from Esmeralda. See, I’ve read the damned Hunchback book too, Pardlow. The difference is that Phoebus, perverse little piece of work that he was, invited Frollo to sit himself right down there at the fifty-yard line to witness the seedy mechanics of his conquest—Cracker Jacks and all. But we aren’t going to play it that way—not going to turn this into a spectator sport, gentlemen. We’re going to take each other at his word. But that word is important. Because it’s going to tell everything. And the conquest that wins will be the one that takes one of these five virginal lasses farthest down the road
of depraved carnality.”
Cain glared at Tom. “I don’t know exactly what that means, but I’m guessing application of the word ‘rape’ wouldn’t be that far off base.”
Tom and Jerry spoke at the same time. Tom said, “Now hold on there!” while Jerry said, “Nothing of the kind, Pardlow. Seduction! That is the word. Seduction isn’t rape. Seduction is, well, seduction. It’s in all of your favorite petticoat novels. It’s in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, for crying out loud.”
Tom nodded. “Esmeralda wanted it. She begged for it. So that’s our mission—to make our five maidens want it just like oversexed Esmeralda.”
“What’s the prize?” asked Jerry, unaware that he was, at that moment, actually licking his lips like the villain in a Victorian melodrama.
Tom answered breathlessly: “My roommate Gill—you know, Gill of the ‘My dad may have more money than all the Rockefellers and the Mellons put together, but I’m for the good ol’ A&M!’—just got himself a new Stutz. And I can get him to lend it to me for a week. Winner gets to caress the wheel of an honest-to-God fire-engine-red 1923 model Stutz Bearcat for a whole damned week.”
“And what do you get if you win, Tom-Cat?” asked Holborne, his head tilted in canine-like anticipation.
“A sawbuck from each of you will suffice. Forty bucks in my pocket and a week with a Stutz—I’ll be the happiest one of us all.”
Three of Tom’s auditors smiled. The fourth stared out the window.
“I know what you’re thinking, Pardlow,” said Tom, his eyes narrowing on Cain. “You think you can get away with pretending to play the game and none of us will be any the wiser. Your shyness around women is, after all, legendary. But it isn’t going to work that way. We’re going to keep tabs. Close tabs. And if you don’t play, we’re all going to know about it.”
“I’ll tell you right now: I don’t want to play.”
“Then you know what this means, Pardlow.”
“Do whatever you’re going to do to me. It will be worth an ice-water bath to see at least one of these girls escape your contemptible designs.”