James Cain - The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction

ROB’T P. PLUMMER, JR.

And for a whole week we were so groggy that our faculties were practically paralyzed. But then duty called: we had to organize some sort of counteroffensive. And presently we had one that we thought very neat. It was called the Foggy Club, and it was formed for the sole purpose of affording the members an opportunity to foregather occasionally for the sociable smoking of cigarettes. And the beauty of it was that Bob, since his father was a minister, could not very well join.

The next thing, of course, was to select a propitious moment for inviting him to join, and we decided that none could be better than when he was reclining in Johnny Vandergrift’s best chair, having himself shaved out of his precious blue mug. The next Saturday night accordingly, having made sure that the operation had actually started, we all trooped into the shop.

Red Lucas led off. He yawned awhile, and then put down his magazine and looked over at Johnny.

“Who’s that you got in the chair?” he asked, in a puzzled sort of way.

For answer, Johnny held up the mug.

“Oh,” said Red. “Bob Plummer. Damn, I didn’t know that was Bob Plummer. Hello, Bob. How you was?”

“Hello,” said Bob. “I’m all right.”

“Say, that reminds me,” Red went on. “We haven’t got your ante yet for the Foggy Club. You’ll let me have it in the next couple of days, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I heard about the Foggy Club,” said Bob. “If you don’t mind though, I think I won’t join.”

“What, not join?” said Red. “Why, we were counting on you.”

“No, thanks, I’d rather not.”

“Well, gee, I sure am sorry. Old man won’t let you smoke, hey?”

“No, that’s not it. He says I can smoke, if I want to. But you know how it is. He’s a minister, and it would make trouble, so I just don’t do it. Not regular, anyway.”

Well, there we were, licked before we started. Somebody said something about Mamma’s boy, but just then Johnny dipped a brushful of lather out of the mug, and it wilted away to a few weak snickers. The game was over and we hadn’t scored a point.

“No,” said Bob, after he had got up out of the chair, and carefully inspected his face, “it’s not so easy, being a minister’s son. There’s a lot of things you can’t do.”

He leaned close for a look at his chin. We had an uneasy feeling that more was coming, and that we wouldn’t enjoy it a bit. And in a moment, we saw what it was. He had given Johnny a quarter, had received fifteen cents, and was fingering his change. He was going to tip Johnny Vandergrift!

The room reeled around us. Johnny Vandergrift, who had brought the first automobile to town! Johnny Vandergrift, who had once seen an airplane! Johnny Vandergrift, who wore a brown derby hat on Sunday!..

“Here you are, John,” said Bob. “That’ll pay for the wear on the razor.”

“Keep it,” said Johnny. “There’s no wear on the razor, because I’ve shaved you three times now and haven’t clinked a whisker yet.”

There was more, but on the whole I prefer to draw the veil at this point.

MARCH 2, 1930

In the war I put in some time on observation post, and it was in top of the tallest tree in France, and you climbed up by a ladder, and they had a little iron box up there what look like a coffin, and you could go in there when the shells was falling, and they generally was. And how we done was to have two hours in that box and six hours off. Only a guy name of Foley got sick, and that give us two hours on and four off, on account we only had three men instead of four. And that there wasn’t so good, because even doing two and six we didn’t never get no good sleep, and doing two and four we didn’t hardly get no sleep at all.

So it went on like that for two days. And then Katz, he called up headquarters on the telephone again to ask them to come get Foley, and they put up a argument or something, and he kind of got a little wild.

“So you ain’t got no car you can spare, hey?” he hollers. “Well, you better get one, and get it quick. Because this guy is sick. He’s got the flu or something and if you think three men can run this post and take care of him too you made a mistake and you can tell the Captain I said so.”

So Foley, he was laying right there in the bunk in the little shack we had under the tree, and of course, he heared everything that Katz was saying. So after he hung up, Katz begun to blubber, on account he didn’t want Foley to think we minded bringing him water, and bathing his head, and all like of that, and he asked Foley not to pay no attention to what he said. So Foley, he wasn’t paying no attention to nothing, and all he done was nod his head a little bit and wave his hand like he didn’t want nobody to bother him.

So then me and Katz went over to draw the rations, and where we drawed them was from a infantry field kitchen, and it was in a trench about a half mile from where the tree was at. So we ain’t hardly started before he begun some more of his wild talk.

“Damn this thing!” he says. “Damn all of it! How did it ever get started anyway?”

“It won’t be so bad,” I says, “after they send for Foley and give us another man so we can get some sleep.”

“Sleep!” he says. “Ha, ha, ha!”

“Well,” I says, “what else seems to be bothering you?”

“Plenty,” he says. “Them shells, for one thing. Always going off. I got so I jump every time a twig falls off one of them trees on the ground. And another thing: That would be fine, wouldn’t it, to get knocked off right at the end?

“Two weeks!” he keeps on. “After a while only one week. After a while only one day. Then pft! Just like that. Knocked off. And then this.”

“This what?” I says.

“All of it.” And he waves his hand over the whole front, where it was kind of stretched out in front of us. “Yeah, that’s the worst. The rest, that ain’t nothing alongside of that.”

I didn’t have no idea what he meant, but I give a kind of a look around and says: “Oh, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be no bad-looking country if they would fill up them shell holes and leave the grass grow a little.”

“Not by daylight,” he says. “But at night, ha, ha, ha! Listen.” And he stopped still and looked at me with a kind of a crazy look in his eye.

“Listen,” he says. “You know this whole thing is alive? You know it’s alive and it breathes?”

“Well,” I says, “I never noticed it.”

“That’s because you ain’t got that two o’clock watch,” he says. “Oh, my God, when that fog comes down and you can’t hear a thing, and all of a sudden it turns over and breathes! And me up there all alone in that tree—”

“Katz,” I says, “it ain’t a thing the matter with you except you’re blotto from not having no sleep, so—”

“Blotto!” he says. “Yeah, I’m blotto, plenty blotto. But that ain’t all. I’ve been feeling like this a long time, and—”

“And,” I keeps on, “you can damn well snap out of it. Hell,” I says, “you think you’re the only one that’s got it tough?”

And I spoke pretty short, because I was good and tired of listening to him bellyache. So we fixed it up that we would switch that two o’clock watch and I would take it ’stead of him. And at first he didn’t want to, but I made him do it because if it would make him shut up, the two o’clock watch was same to me as any other watch.

And that night when two o’clock come I went up and started the watch. And I wasn’t hardly up there than I seen what he meant, all right. A whole lot of people, they got the idea that on a battle front it’s a hell of a lot of noise going on all the time. And most of the time it is, like shelling in the afternoon when the balloons is up, and machine guns at night when they’re sending up flares to spot raids, and all like of that. But from two o’clock in the morning on to dawn it ain’t nothing so still as a battle front.