“But Polly! It’s no joke! He’s got us!”
“Grab him by the ears! Ride him! Ha-ha, ha-ha!”
And Hornison, what did that big-hearted guy do? Soon as he saw who was in the water, he ran down to the edge of the float and began to bawl the girl out. “I knew it was you!” he says. “I knew it was you, soon as I heard the singing. What are you doing here? Who told you to come up here?”
“Mr. Hornison! Save me!”
“I can’t swim; and if I could, I wouldn’t save you!”
“Mr. Hornison! If you won’t save me, save your contracts!”
Soon as he heard “contracts,” it seemed that Hornison could swim after all, if he really put his mind on it. He jumped in, and Polly was right after him. “Contracts” seemed to do something to her too. But it was the hip’s show, and he didn’t mean anybody to bust it up. He began to bump all of them, and it was getting a little serious. Who do you think saved them? It was Hapgood. None other than Hapgood, the boy they all forgot!
Of course, he didn’t exactly figure out anything bright. When he heard the noise, he jumped out of bed and ran down there in his pajamas, and began throwing things in, so they could grab them and be saved from drowning. He threw in a couple of spare paddles that were standing there, and some cushions, and a couple of recliners, things like that. But the iron anchor he threw in hit the hip’ between the eyes, and that ended it. The State cops got there about that time, and hauled them out, and then they all sat on the float and told each other what they thought of them. The sergeant had to give them a call...
Well, it looked like everybody had lost. Of course after they fished her out, the girl didn’t have any checks or contracts or anything else. They were in her handbag, and they didn’t get that. So Hornison didn’t know where he was on his double-cross, and Polly didn’t know where she was on her double-cross, and Kennelly didn’t know where he was about Polly, and the girl didn’t know where she was about Hornison. All they knew was they hated each other with a hate supreme. After the others had gone back to the clubhouse, Polly polished off Kennelly. “I’m through, Tim! To think it was right in our hand — we were in the money at last, and you had to throw it away for the first girl that came along when my back was turned! I’d never be able to forget it. Good-by, Tim.”
“You feel like a swim?”
“So you think a little swim under the stars would fix it all up. I’m sorry. I don’t feel like a swim.”
“When he takes a girl out in a tippy boat, a guy takes some precautions. That is, if he’s got any sense.”
“What?”
“Like looping a handkerchief through her handbag and slipping it over the strut. If we were to tread water a little bit, we might get our feet on that canoe.”
“Do you think I would really tread water for it with a conceited ham that thinks every woman is nuts about him that ever looks at him?”
“Yeah, that’s just what I think.”
“Well, that’s just what I’m going to do. Come here, you sap! Put your arms around me and kiss me.”
The checks and contracts were a little waterlogged, but they did the work. When they proved that he had tried to shortchange them to the tune of three hundred and seventy-five dollars a week, Hornison settled and settled quick. They got their two grand and it took nine weeks of shooting. But don’t blame me if you don’t like the picture. Me, I’m not so keen on the animal stuff.
(Redbook, March 1936)
Everything But the Truth
It would be idle to deny that when Edwin Hope moved from Annapolis to Fullerton he definitely promoted himself. Around Annapolis he had been in no way unusual. But when his father got the big estate to manage, and decided to transfer his legal practice to Fullerton, and then moved the whole family there, Edwin’s status underwent a rapid and altogether startling change.
It started innocently enough. Among these boys in Fullerton he detected great curiosity about the more cosmopolitan town he had left, and particularly about that seat of learning, the United States Naval Academy. So he recited the main facts, not once but repeatedly: the puissance of the football team, the excellence of the band, the beauty of the regiment when reviewed by an admiral of the fleet, the prodigiousness of the feats performed at the annual gymkhana, the rationale of the sword ceremony as conducted in June Week. When skepticism reared its ugly head, he scotched it with a citation from the statutes: “Let me in? Sure they let me in. Let me in free. They gotta let me in, any time I want to go... Gov-ment propity.”
But by the end of a week the temptation became almost irresistible to cheat a little; to share, in some reflected degree, the glories he recounted. His audience was not entirely male. Sitting with him on the back stoop of the handsome house his father had taken, there was first of all a pulchritudinous creature by the name of Phyllis, who was about his own age, which was twelve, and certainly not bored by his company. Then there was a red-haired boy by the name of Roger, who had assumed Phyllis to be his own chattel. The others were of both sexes and divided into two factions: the scoffers, headed by Roger; and the true believers, headed by Phyllis, who heard each new tale with gasps and gurgles of appreciation. The males were almost solidly scoffers. It was from the females that Edwin got real support.
His first lapse from truth came as a slip. He had been expounding the might of the navy crew — its size, its stamina, its speed. And then he added: “Boy, I’ll say they’re fast. I’ll say they can lift that old shell through the water! Believe me, you part your hair in the middle when you ride in that thing!”
Roger bristled. “What do you mean, you? When did you ever ride in a shell?”
There could be only one answer: “Plenty of times.”
“When?”
“You heard me. Plenty of times.”
“You’re a liar. You never been in one! Part your hair in the middle — don’t you know they ride backwards in a shell?”
“You’re telling me?”
“Them seats are on rollers: there’s no place to sit! No place for anybody except them crew men. Yah, you never been in a shell! Where did you sit? Tell us that!”
“Cox.”
“What?”
Roger said it before he realized his error. But he said it. He betrayed he didn’t know what a cox was. The others laughed. Edwin smiled pityingly. “Cox. Coxswain. The guy that steers.”
“You steered the navy crew?”
“Not regular. They use a cadet for that. But sometimes they want a little warm-up before the coach shows up, and they got to have a cox. A cox, he’s got to be light. I suppose maybe that’s why they picked me. The cox, he rides frontwards, so he can see where he’s going... ‘Stroke!.. Stroke!.. Stroke!’”
He imitated the bark of a coxswain, illustrating with his hands the technique of the tiller ropes, and let the echo die in the back yard before he yawned and added: “That’s why he parts his hair in the middle.”
His exploits as a coxswain, it need hardly be added, were completely imaginary. Yet it was but a step to equally imaginary exploits as a diver. He spoke feelingly one time of the fine satisfaction to be felt when one came in after a spin with the crew, plunged from the boathouse roof, swam briefly in the Severn, and then cool, clean, and refreshed, went home to a gigantic dinner. This provoked such a storm of protest and involved him in such a grueling quiz about the navy boathouse that he had to shift his ground. He did not yield one inch on the dive, but he did think it well to move the fable into a locale where a certain vagueness might be permissible.