Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Mrs. McLatchy, who did not know this, cocked her head in edified amazement.

“So I seek out the ones who look hungry, who look down on their luck. I study the clothes they wear. Are the girl’s dresses faded? Are the boy’s trousers tattered and torn? Is there a hollowness to their faces? Are their eyes sunken in their sockets, as if retreating from all the pain they’ve seen? I choose to put my faith in those who seem the most deserving.”

“Your two couples are quite young.”

Mrs. Trestle nodded. “They’re just babies.”

“Mine are older, as you can see. I’m looking for the two couples who seem to have the best chance of winning. It’s just like sizing up thoroughbreds in the enclosure before a race. Take Couple Number 38 over there, for example. I very nearly picked them. See how they’re moving like stiff corks bobbing in the water? They appear to be conserving their energy.”

Mrs. Trestle nodded. “You can tell that they’ve been in marathons before. But they don’t look very hungry.”

Mrs. Trestle didn’t like it that the crowds in the evening came to see blood. When the sun went down, the Walkathon became all but gladiatorial. On some nights there was the “sprint.” “One fall and they’re both out!” the emcee would bray into his microphone. On other nights, there was the “grind”: continuous dancing without the customary fifteen-minute rest period every hour. The couples danced on and on until one member of a partnership dropped from sheer exhaustion. And the unfortunate dancer need not even make full bodily contact with the floor to be disqualified, along with his companion; a single knee touching the floor was sufficient to send the pair home.

“I sometimes feel guilty watching it,” confessed Mrs. Trestle during a particularly long-lived “grind.” It was nearing the five hundredth hour of the marathon and there were still fifty-one couples remaining on the dance floor. No one seemed fatigued to the point of imminent danger but all seemed painfully, wearily beaten down — even more so than usual. “I feel that I shouldn’t be watching, that I ought to turn away. There is so much suffering inside this hall.”

“Now, my dear,” said Mrs. McLatchy, setting down her pencil and crossword puzzle, having been stymied by a four-letter “tool” containing the letter “z.” “They’d be dancing here day in and day out whether we’re present to watch them or not. And, darling, you know that I have a great deal of money and I take every opportunity that is given to me to add my coins to those generous silver showers. I’m sure that’s why many of these young people have entered this competition, my dear. To win the top prize, well, certainly — but also to take some money home with them even in defeat. And I speak for the professionals as well. Vaudeville is dead. Where else has a dancer to go? The radio? And Hollywood is such a terribly difficult place to make a—”

Suddenly, something caught Mrs. McLatchy’s eye. Something awful. One of her two couples, Number 93, was in the soup. The woman, whom Mrs. McLatchy had come to know familiarly by her given name, Velma, was slipping through the arms of her partner, Antonio. Velma had bright red hair with only the remnant of a Marcel wave. Her build was slight — as slight and willowy as Antonio’s was solid. Yet Antonio was having trouble keeping her aright. Velma had sunk into the deepest recesses of sleep at just the moment that Antonio’s strength had begun to fail him. Mrs. McLatchy rose quickly to her feet and began to shout, “Hold onto her, Antonio! Don’t let her fall! For God’s sake, don’t let her fall!”

Antonio let her fall.

Velma lay on the floor, still fast asleep. Antonio dropped to his knees and wept. Mrs. McLatchy and Mrs. Trestle knew their whole story by now. He worked at the sawmill — the one where the strike was taking place. They had two little girls. Once, early in the Walkathon, Velma’s mother had brought the girls to see their mother and father compete. But the chastened grandmother was strictly forbidden ever to bring them back.

Two days later, one of Mrs. Trestle’s two favorite couples was also eliminated: Couple Number 13. They were the losing pair in the heel-and-toe derby. Unlike Mrs. McLatchy’s Couple, Number 93, Jake and Angeline weren’t married. But they had planned to wed as soon as the marathon was over, as soon as they won the $1,750 cash prize. Mrs. Trestle had shared in their high hopes. The duo often danced over to visit her at the box. Mrs. Trestle knitted a sweater for Angeline. Angeline had two deep scars on her face that she never talked about. They seemed invisible to Jake, who sometimes kissed her right on the cicatrix tissue.

Jake got a charley horse. It brought him down like a crippled pony. There was a pile-up on the track where he fell. Someone kicked him in the head. An athletic shoe came down hard upon his right shin. Mrs. Trestle found it difficult to watch.

The emcee encouraged the crowd to throw money at Jake and Angeline as Jake was being carried away on a stretcher. Angeline stayed behind to collect all the coins. Mrs. Trestle asked if Mrs. McLatchy would send them a silver dollar. The heavy coin hit Angeline in the head, but she smiled when she saw it on the floor and blew the two women a grateful kiss. Then she shambled off, the show smile having been replaced by a look of deep, hopeless despondency. Mrs. McLatchy wondered aloud if there would ever be a marriage.

It was over eight hundred and fifty hours into the competition that Mrs. McLatchy’s second couple met defeat.

It was a terrible thing.

Stella of Couple Number 47 went “squirrelly” upon her cot. It was “Cot Night,” in which the dancers took their hourly rest periods upon cots that had been pulled out in full view of the audience. Mrs. Trestle had overheard someone, tongue loosened, no doubt, by too much beer, remark that the dancers’ only bodily function still left to the audience’s imagination was taking a shit. His companion had cynically replied that public shit-taking generally came after hour one thousand.

Stella began hallucinating. She was seeing the sky. A bird-congested sky. At first the sight of the imagined birds fascinated her. She stood upon her cot and pointed and stared and smiled. But as the sky turned black with them, she became frightened and began to scream. She woke all of the other contestants, all thirty-one other couples still left in the competition. All watched the trainers and the nurses try to quiet squirrelly, screaming Stella. Her partner, Dermot, vaulted over the rope that separated the men’s public slumber quarters from the women’s, and hurried to her side. It was quite some time before she could be sedated by a doctor’s hypodermic; it took no time at all, though, for the contest managers to expel Couple Number 47 from the marathon.

Mrs. Trestle put her hands over her eyes while it was happening. “Poor, poor dear. Oh, poor dear.”

Mrs. McLatchy patted her friend on the knee. “The whole thing has become barbaric, Lydia. I’m not sure if I have it in me to come back tomorrow.”

“Is it also because your other favorite couple is now out of the competition?”

Mrs. McLatchy bridled. “No, my dear. I should certainly stay and root for your Number 62. But I just don’t know if I have the willpower. I agree with you that it’s become very hard to watch. You can take your hands down now, Lydia. The girl has been removed. All is quiet again. Have a Crackerjack.”

Mrs. Trestle pulled her hands from her eyes. She pushed the Crackerjack box away. “I would break a filling.”

The next morning Mrs. Trestle came and claimed her seat in the first row of the box she shared with Mrs. McLatchy. She took out her knitting and got to work. She waved at Gloria and Tom, the remaining couple on whom she had staked her hopes. They waved back. Gloria and Tom looked very tired. It had been a long night. It had been hard for them to sleep well during the rest breaks with so many eyes on them.