Frank Gruber - The Talking Clock

“Come on, Sam!” he ordered.

Sam piled in, complaining. “Car stealing, now!”

“Better than a murder charge, Sam!”

He roared the car up the graveled road at the terrific speed of thirty-two miles an hour. Two miles ahead, he turned right, went three miles, then turned right again.

“Hey, you’re going back north!” Sam cried.

“I know. That’s one direction they won’t expect us to go. If the gas will only hold out… Damn, it shows empty.”

He stopped the car and investigated the tank. There were two or three gallons in it. They did not register because the indicator was broken.

Relieved, Johnny started out again. Stopping again, after a few miles, he consulted his road map acquired from Clarence Hackett, the lemon extract man. He located their position, then turned due east.

Twenty minutes later, still rolling along a secondary graveled road, he said, “Well, here we go into Wisconsin. The cops here shouldn’t be fussy about us, since we haven’t done anything in their state.”

He didn’t know that by crossing a state line in a stolen automobile he had violated a Federal statute. It was just as well that he didn’t know it, for after a few minutes the motor of the flivver coughed and spit and then expired. The gas tank was bone dry.

They pushed the car to the side of the road. “Here we go, again,” Johnny said.

“It’ll be dark in a few minutes,” Sam said, suggestively.

“Yes? Well, as nearly as I can figure, we’re ten to fifteen miles from Spooner, Wisconsin.”

“Never heard of it.”

“That shows your ignorance, Sam. Spooner, Wisconsin happens to be a railroad division point. All the freight trains stop there. Catch on?”

“So now we ride the rods,” Sam said, in disgust.

“We don’t have to. We can walk. I’d guess that it wasn’t more than fourteen hundred and fifty miles to New York.”

“We ride the rods. But what about food?”

“Tomorrow, pal. Tonight we travel.”

Fourth Avenue, between Hennepin and Nicollet in Minneapolis, looked exactly like Market Street in St. Louis, West Madison in Chicago, and the Bowery in New York. The bums and hoboes congregated here by the hundreds and thousands. They gathered about the signs put out by the employment agencies, sat on the curb soaking up the sun and perhaps thinking of their lost years.

These streets always discouraged Johnny Fletcher. He’d been on them before and they were ever present, as horrible examples. He led Sam Cragg back to Hennepin and headed uptown.

Passing under the canopy of the Hennepin Theater, a man stepped out and beckoned to them. “You fellows,” he said, sharply, “you want jobs?”

“Ha!” exclaimed Johnny. “Do we want jobs? We do, Mister. What sort of jobs do you have?”

“What the hell do you care what the work is? You get paid two dollars at nine o’clock tonight.”

“From now until nine tonight for two bucks?” Sam protested.

The man fell back. “Okay, wise guys, if that’s the way you feel… I can get a hundred men…”

“We’ll take the job!” Johnny said, smartly. “Lead on.” The man led them into the darkened theater, where the ushers were just going through their morning drill. They went down a long tunnel, then climbed a short flight of stairs and were backstage. There their guide pointed to a door. “Your uniforms are in there. Be ready in five minutes.”

“Uniforms?” Johnny Fletcher’s nostrils flared. He pushed open the door and recoiled.

In the room were three gigantic caricatures of Pinocchio. Live caricatures. They wore huge shoes, short wool socks, had bare knees and above the knees short pantaloons with suspenders that covered flaming yellow shirts. Papier-mâché masks blessedly covered the wearer’s faces and were surmounted by saucy little hats.

“No!” Johnny whispered.

One of the Pinocchios leered at them. “You the other chumps? There’re your outfits.”

“I won’t,” moaned Sam Cragg. “I won’t go out in public wearing an outfit like that.”

“That’s what we said,” another Pinocchio offered, “but two bucks is two bucks and they just threw off five thousand more men from the WPA.”

Johnny stumbled into the room and from a chair picked up one of the costumes. He looked at Sam Cragg and a shudder ran through him. “How hungry are you, Sam?”

“Too hungry,” Sam groaned. He began stripping off his coat.

They had scarcely finished dressing when Simon Legree, alias the manager of the theater, pounded on the door. “Come on, you Pinocchios, you’re late.”

Like condemned men the quintet of Pinocchios filed out of the dressing room. They followed the manager to the lobby of the theater, where he gave them their instructions.

“We’re showing Walt Disney’s Pinocchio this week, see,” he said. “This is a publicity stunt to attract attention. The main thing to remember is to act like Pinocchios. Pinocchio was a lively youngster. He jumped and hopped and skipped. He was never still a moment. Catch on? I could use dummies just as well as you birds… I’m paying you two bucks a day to move around. And remember, I’ll be watching you. Now, go out there and give me a good day’s work. You bring enough people into the theater and I may hire you all again tomorrow. Scram!…”

There was a small queue of ticket buyers already lined up before the ticket window when the Pinocchios finally reached the sidewalk. At sight of the Pinocchios, passers-by on the sidewalk stopped.

“Oh, look!” a young thing exclaimed to her escort, a broad-faced Swede. “Aren’t they cute!”

Cold sweat broke out all over Johnny Fletcher’s body. A thick-bodied Pinocchio reeled against him. “God, what a man’ll do when he’s hungry!”

The manager of the theater came out and signaled to the Pinocchios. They shuffled over. “You’re standing around like a bunch of dopes,” he snapped. “Put some ginger into it or I’ll fire the whole lot of you right away… and you can sue me for the wages. Go on, now!”

Back to the sidewalk they went. They did little jigs, stamped their feet and bobbed up and down. They played a game of leapfrog. And hundreds and hundreds of people stopped and blocked the sidewalks and the traffic on the street.

Policemen blew whistles and could not break the traffic snarl. After a while an emergency squad came and began regimenting the crowds. The manager of the theater stood beside the ticket office, a broad smile on his mean face as customers plunked down their money and bought tickets.

The Pinocchios played Ring Around the Rosie, London Bridge Is Falling Down and other little games that kept them moving about. They played until they were exhausted, then shuffled about on leaden feet until the manager came out and urged them on again. After two hours of it, he finally decided to let them rest in stretches of fifteen minutes each.

When it came Johnny’s turn he staggered to the dressing room. There was no couch in the room but he stretched out on the floor. He was too tired even to remove his mask. He had been lying on the floor for ten minutes before he was aware that there was a folded newspaper in the small of his back. He rolled over and removed the paper. A headline caught his eye and he took off his mask and opened the door.

Most of the front page was devoted to the Brooklands affair. According to the paper, one Tom Quisenberry, aged twenty, had been strangled in the Brooklands Jail, by three tramps who called themselves, respectively: John Doe, John Smith and John Jones. John Doe, according to a statement made by Ora Fitch, the Brooklands constable, was a superannuated, feeble-minded bindle stiff. John Smith and John Jones, however, were young, vicious characters. They had attacked Fitch, the constable, and one or the other of them had stabbed him, inflicting a painful though not a serious wound.