Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Garth nodded. People had started to form themselves into a line.

“Should we be lining up, too?”

“No need. There’s plenty of beer in there for everybody. Besides, I’m tired of watching this country lining itself up: bread lines, unemployment lines. As a nation we’re always queuing ourselves up for one sorry reason or another.”

Garth licked his lips and winked. “But this is a good reason.”

“Now you take that accident last year,” said Ralph, who never had much regard for clean conversational transitions, “when the Akron tried to land in San Diego.”

“They said the sun heated up the helium too much — made the ship too buoyant.”

Ralph nodded. “You see the newsreel footage? They got this landing crew of inexperienced Navy men trying to hold the thing down with trail ropes. Then all of a sudden she starts to rise up into a nose stand, and they’ve got to free the mooring cable from the mast. In all the confusion most of those boys let go of their lines. But four sorry saps hang on.”

“One let go pretty quick, though, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe fifteen feet off the ground — the kid breaks his arm, I think. But the other three — they don’t let go. I mean, Garth, the Akron’s drifting higher and higher and those three boys — they’re still dangling from the ends of their ropes like maybe they’re hoping that ship’s gonna miraculously come right back down again. Jesus!”

Garth was well versed in the details of the story but pretended not to know too much about it. He knew that Ralph preferred it this way.

“So at about one hundred, two hundred feet, two of the kids just can’t hold on any longer and guess what happened to them .”

Garth shook his head, dutifully feigning ignorance.

“Splat, splat!” Ralph slapped the palm of his hand twice upon the roof of his car. “But the other kid — he ties himself in, and two hours later they’re able to reel him up into the ship. Man was not meant to fly by helium or hydrogen, Garth. Those German zeppelins are powder kegs just waiting for somebody to light a match.”

The crowd was getting boisterous. Both men, who had hardly been out of their teens when the legal spigot got turned off, edged a little closer to their fellow celebrants.

Ralph crushed his cigarette under his shoe. “When I heard that the ‘Queen of the Skies’ had gone down for good on Tuesday, I started thinking again about that kid Cowart — couldn’t have been more than eighteen — the way he hung on, the way it takes either a special person or a mighty dimwitted cluck to stick it out when a situation gets desperate like that. The rest of us — and that’s pretty much all of us, Garth — we reach points in our lives when we have to make those same kinds of fish-or-cut-bait decisions. Do we hang on, keep persevering in a bad situation, or do we cut ourselves loose and take a life lesson from the experience? That first boy did the sensible thing: he let go early. Broken arm, sure, but his whole life still ahead of him. Two sailors are dead because they didn’t bail out when they had the chance. That fourth kid, Cowart, is only alive because he was one lucky son of a bitch.”

“It isn’t because he knew how to tie himself in? That isn’t luck, Ralph. That’s rope smarts.”

“You’re missing my point.”

“Just what is your point, Ralph? What’s the story?”

“I’m shuttering the business, getting out of the ice-selling racket. It isn’t profitable anymore. I never got into the coal delivery line. I never diversified. I sell ice. Just like my father sold ice, and just like his father before him. But nobody’s buying ice these days. They’re buying refrigerators. I don’t blame them. Hell, Vivian and I just got a Frigidaire ourselves.”

“There will be people who won’t want to give up their iceboxes, Ralph.”

“But not nearly enough of them to keep me in the black.”

“Do you have a buyer?”

Ralph shook his head. “Just where would I find such a person? They gave the ice industry last rites two or three years ago. I’m selling buggies, Garth, while the country’s buying Duesenbergs. So I’m walking away while I’ve still a little something left in the family piggy bank. I owe that to Vivian and the kids. She loves the big house. And we both want the boys to go to college. I’m not gonna bleed myself dry just so a handful of Mrs. Broussards can hang onto their iceboxes for old times’ sake.”

“When did you make this decision?”

“I’ve been mulling it over for a few months now. Finally got off the pot and talked to Vivian a couple of nights ago. She agrees that it’s the right thing to do.”

“What am I supposed to do, Ralph?”

“Look for a job like everybody else.”

“You know what that means.”

“So let me get this straight: I’m supposed to keep losing money every Goddamned day just to keep you and Preston and Jibbs and all the rest of you fellas off the bread lines? And what happens when the company finally goes belly up and my bank account’s totally wiped out? I get to take my place in line with you? My father and grandfather were successful businessmen, Garth. They passed a thriving business down to me. It stopped thriving. But I’m still a Morris man. I don’t know the words to ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ and I’ve got no intention of ever learning them.”

Garth didn’t reply. The band was tuning up. The oompah-oompah of the tuba reminded Garth of Oktoberfest. He glanced at Ralph’s wristwatch. A minute till midnight. He looked at his friend.

“Caddy thinks you’ve always been this way,” said Garth. “I tell her: ‘No, baby. I can remember a time when we were both kids and we looked out for each other.’”

“My back’s against the wall. Can’t you see that?”

“Here’s what I see: You should have gone into fuel delivery. Your competitors did. You didn’t because you aren’t half the businessman your father and grandfather were. Caddy wanted me to get into another line of work, quit Morris Ice ages ago, back when I had a few prospects. I stuck with my friend. This is how I’m being repaid.”

“Now you wait just a minute there, Garth—”

“I don’t think I want to, Ralph. I think I want to get me a beer.”

Garth turned. As he started to walk away, the band began to play. Seconds later the sound of “Happy Days Are Here Again” was drowned out by the blare of steam whistles and the squall of sirens from the brewery. Several people honked their car horns to add to the festive cacophony. Garth took his place in line. It was a much different line from the one he’d be standing in a few days later.

He closed his eyes. He tried to imagine what that first swallow of beer would taste like. He tried to imagine, as well, what his life would have been like if he’d left Morris Ice when he had the chance. How much better things might be for Caddy and him now.

Or not. It was the Depression, after all. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t have lost that other job, too?

Garth glanced back at the car. Ralph was pulling out of his spot. He was going to have trouble getting his coupe through the dense crowd. But he’d come out of it all right; Garth had no doubt. Ralph was a Morris, after all.

The first conversation took place between Norman and Patsy inside the Amos and Andy rocket car of the Century of Progress Exposition’s Sky Ride. Their conversation was low-toned, almost whispered, and went virtually unnoticed by the other thirty-two passengers in the car, some of whom oohed and ahhed and nudged one another with glee and wonder, while others recoiled with a shiver, as still others bravely pressed their noses against the glass in hopes of getting a better view of the fairgrounds decked out in all its Art Deco splendor 215 feet below. The Sky Ride was the signature attraction of the World’s Fair, which had opened the previous year and was now bringing in tens of thousands of new visitors in its second successful season.