Джеймс Кейн - Career in C Major and Other Fiction

Let me tell you something, mister. I got elected for to git Flint Neck their new schoolhouse and I ain’t got no time to set around talking about monkeys.

Loman, what in the hell am I going to do about this?

I don’t know. I never seen nothing like it in my life.

Them people needs that schoolhouse, mister. They got hard times, and if some of them don’t git some money working on the new schoolhouse I don’t see how they’re going to eat.

Because look here, Loman, if we don’t get three to vote on it I ain’t so sure we can report the bill out at all. Anyway not without a whole lot of jockeying around the floor.

That’s the hell of it.

But how I’m going to keep this up I don’t know. I ain’t even got past the monkeys yet.

If he ain’t even got it straight about the monkeys he’s going to have a hell of a time with the Bible.

Hunh?

Nothing at all, Mr. Friend. We was just talking about how we could explain it to you a little better.

You was mumbling about that Bible.

That Bible! It ain’t only one Bible.

It weren’t my Bible! My Bible was in the house all the time!

Oh my God!

And it weren’t my still! I already told them it weren’t my still! It was on my place but I never knowed nothing about it! It was ’way down by the creek!

Anh-hanh. Anh-hanh.

Lemme alone! Quit putting on me about that Bible!

Anh-hanh. So you’re the guy the Flint Neck Ku Klux was talking about last month, hey? Using a Bible to prop up the pipe with, where it run down from the still to the coil? Anh-hanh. Well, a fine delegate to the Legislature you turned out to be!

Lemme alone! It weren’t my Bible!

Loman, I swear to God I don’t know which is the dumbest, you or this guy or the monkeys. Now look what you done. How the hell am I ever going to get this thing through his nut if you go on like this, scaring the hell out of him about his still? What do we care if he was running a still?

No, but what gets me is a bum like that that gets elected to the Legislature and then they find a still on his place. And propped up with a Bible.

I don’t care if it was propped up with a couple of Bibles and a hymn-book. I’m trying to get something done here and if you’ll just kindly keep your mouth the hell out of it, maybe we’ll get done by corn-planting time.

All right.

You got a spare handkerchief? Thanks. I ain’t sweat so much since I used to pitch hay.

Lemme alone! I’m going out of this place! I’m going home!

Set down! Set down and quit that blubbering and listen at what Mr. Hayes is telling you or I’ll take a poke at you. You hear me?

Now, Mr. Friend, I already told you about how them people says men is descended from monkeys!

Monkeys — you get it?

And that there monkey stuff is all crossed up with the Bible!

Bible — what you prop up your still with!

The Adam and Eve part, ’cause men couldn’t be descended from monkeys and Adam and Eve both!

Couldn’t be descended from both — you get it?

So this here bill says they can’t teach that stuff no more and then we throw out all the monkey books and buy new books in their place and that’s all there is to it!

That’s all. Just buy new books and that’s all there is to it!

So that’s the bill and now what do you say on it?

Lemme alone! I don’t know nothing about no bill!

Mr. Friend, listen. It don’t make no difference which way you vote, yes or no. ’Cause even if you’re in favor of this here monkey stuff it’ll be two to one the other way and all we want you to do is say yes or no for the record. Now will you please say one way or the other, yes or no?

Lemme alone!

Well, Hayes, there you are!

Loman, I’m going to report this guy to the Speaker. I don’t know if anything can be done about it, but I’m going to find out. I’m going to report him at the night session. You’re right. This here is a right down swindle on the taxpayers. Just think of it! A great moral measure like this here Evolution Bill being held up by a bum like that!

They ought to send him back to Flint Neck. That’s where he wants to go and they ought to let him.

I’m agin it.

What was that?

I’m agin this here bill. Paying out a whole lot of money for new books and—

Whoops!

By gosh we’re done! He’s voted, and he’s agin it, and we’re done!

All the time paying out money for books... Reading... Big words... Monkeys...

A courtroom. It is filled with the usual judge, jury, defendant, prosecutor, counsel, widow of the deceased, bailiff, and crowd of spectators. THE PROSECUTOR has just risen to deliver his summation and now walks slowly to a spot within a few feet of the jury.

Gentlemen of the jury, I now begin one of the most disagreeable, I may say thoroughly painful, duties that a officer of the court is ever called upon to perform. I come before you today, my friends, to ask for the life of a fellow citizen. I come before you to ask you to find a man guilty of murder, the greatest crime known to civilized society. My friends, it is indeed a painful duty. And as I have no desire to prolong it any longer than I have to, as I know you are all busy men, anxious to get back to your business, your families, your dear loved ones, I shall be as brief as I can. I shall confine myself to a plain recital of the facts, as revealed by the evidence, and then leave the case with you, confident that twelve men of such outstanding intelligence will not allow justice to miscarry.

Now, my friends, what does the evidence show? It shows first that the defendant Summers was not in the habit of going to church. That was his own affair, my friends. Whether Summers wanted to go to church or not, whether he chose to bow his head on Sunday or not, as you do and I do, I may say as any God-fearing man does, I don’t care whether he’s black or white or rich or poor, or whether he chose to abandon himself to a life of sneering, jeering, and contumacious atheism! — is a matter between him and his God. It is not for you and me to judge, my friends, whether Summers chose to go week after week, month after month, year after year , without once setting his foot inside the house of worship. That, I repeat to you my friends, is for God to judge. That is between him and his God! We’re here today to decide whether he did, as the indictment alleges, kill Pete Brody, the husband of this lady here, the father of this little boy, this little curly-headed boy you see sitting here, willfully and with malice aforethought!