Mark Dunn - We Five

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.”