Mr. Oyster: I would cross out that “unless amended.” We don’t want them Semper Fidelises trying to amend the charter. Things is bad enough like they are.
Mr. Hinsch: That’s right “—therefore be it resolved, that the Board appropriates the sum of twenty-five dollars for a wreaf to be placed on the grave of the said beloved brother, Winfield Scott Akers, May thirtieth, Decoration Day, account of him dying in line of duty, same as a soldier, and hereby calls on both fire companies to hold a parade and lay the said wreaf on the grave, and further recommends that a festival be held that night, to be assisted in by both fire companies and all fraternal orders and civic societies, and that the Rotary Club take charge of same and see it is put over right. And be it further resolved, that this resolution be spread on the minutes of the Board and a copy sent to the sorrowing family of the said beloved brother, Winfield Scott Akers, and advertised in the press. Done under our hand and seal.” How’s that?
Mr. Oyster: Seems to me we could get some more fancy stuff in it. Something like “borne aloft to his reward for his labors on this earth.” Only Scotty never labored none, if he could help it.
Mr. Hinsch: I’m going to write the first part over again. I got some Odd Fellow resolutions home that has got some good stuff in them.
Mr. Oyster: That’s right. Some of them Memorial Service resolutions would have a whole lot of that stuff in them.
Mr. Hinsch: Well, that fixes it, don’t it? Damn, I sure thought they had us in a hole for a while. Now let them goddam Rotary buttinskis take off their coat and go to work.
Mr. Oyster: That there’ll fix them.
Mr. Matchett: Boys, did you ever stop to think what a real good fraternal order can do for a man?
Theological Interlude
Characters:
Mr. Nation
Mrs. Nation
Mr. Barlow
The scene is the porch of “The Anchorage,” a boarding-house run by the Nations in a Christian summer resort in the state of Delaware. It is about nine o’clock of an evening in late spring. Few sounds relieve the loneliness, except the restless swash of waves on the nearby beach. In the gathering darkness Mr. Barlow has been peering around in an interested way, asking questions now and then about the things that meet his eye. He is Mrs. Nation’s brother, and apparently has not visited the locality in a long time. He gets only mechanical answers to his queries, both Mr. and Mrs. Nation seeming distracted. When it is quite dark, he knocks the ashes out of his pipe in a businesslike way, and puts it in his pocket.
Mr. Barlow: Well, now, what’s this all about? ’Cause you two sure did pick a bad time to bring me all the way up here from Delmar, and I want to get to it. What I mean, I don’t want to spend no more time up here than I have to.
Mr. Nation: I reckon Laura can tell you.
Mrs. Nation: Tell him yourself. You sent for him.
Mr. Nation: You’re the one has got the squawk. Go on and tell him.
Mr. Barlow: Now, now, that ain’t no way to talk. Come on, Laura, let’s have it.
Mrs. Nation: It’s about Eva.
Mr. Barlow: Where’s she at? I been waiting for her, and I ain’t saw her.
Mr. Nation: Never mind where she’s at. We’ll get to that part in a minute. She ain’t here, anyway.
Mrs. Nation: Well, it all started with what happened last summer. You remember that?
Mr. Barlow: I heard them talking about it at home, but I kinda forgot how it was. I reckon you better start at the beginning, so I can get it all straight.
Mrs. Nation: She had the typhoid fever. She was took just this time a year ago.
Mr. Barlow: Yeah, I remember that.
Mr. Nation: She was took a little earlier than this. First part of May, and she was getting better around the middle of June.
Mrs. Nation: She was getting better when the first boarders begin to come. Dr. Winship said all danger was past, and we was all set she should get well.
Mr. Nation: Only we was kidding ourself.
Mr. Barlow: How old is Eva now? I ain’t saw her in five or six years, I do believe.
Mrs. Nation: Eva’s sixteen now. But she was only fifteen then.
Mr. Barlow: Sixteen! Who could believe it! And last time I seen her she was a little bit of a thing.
Mrs. Nation: So she was took sick again.
Mr. Nation: Sudden.
Mrs. Nation: Real sudden. Dr. Winship said maybe it was something she et, on account their stomach is always tender after typhoid fever.
Mr. Barlow: Yep, I tell you, you got to watch them after typhoid fever.
Mrs. Nation: But anyway, she looks at me one night and says “Ma!.. Ma!” just like that, and I knowed she had a sinking spell. And lands sakes, I was legging it down the boardwalk to Dr. Winship’s office before I really knowed I was out the door!
Mr. Nation: And me trying to raise him by telephone! I’ll never forget that night.
Mrs. Nation: So when Dr. Winship got here she was white as a sheet and he didn’t hardly get his gripsack open before she up and died.
Mr. Barlow: (vastly surprised): Hanh?
Mr. Nation: Almost before you could say Jack Robinson.
Mr. Barlow: Who? You mean Eva?
Mrs. Nation: Yes, Eva.
Mr. Barlow: Eva dead and I ain’t heared nothing about it?
Mrs. Nation: Well of course she ain’t dead now, if that’s what you mean.
Mr. Barlow: (staggered): Well... this beats me!
Mr. Nation: There’s a-plenty more to it yet. Go on, Laura.
Mrs. Nation: So when Dr. Winship listened to her heart and it didn’t beat no more—
Mr. Nation: He pronounced her dead, don’t forget that. Official.
Mrs. Nation: That’s right. When he pronounced her dead, then he left. And then Hal called up the undertaker, the one in Greenwood.
Mr. Nation: I was blubbering same as a baby. I couldn’t hardly talk.
Mrs. Nation: So then a young fellow what was one of the boarders, he come in the room.
Mr. Nation: Mr. Travis. He was a doctor. Anyway, he went to the medical school.
Mrs. Nation: He took a look at her, and then he shook Hal by the arm and sent him down the beach where they keep the pulmotor, what they use when somebody gets drowned.
Mr. Nation: And I run. I hope my die I did.
Mrs. Nation: And then Mr. Travis, he commence to work on her. He run up to his room and got a gripsack and when he come back I don’t think I hardly ever seen anybody work like he did.
Mr. Nation: We never took no more offen Travis after that. We give him his board free.
Mrs. Nation: And when Hal come back with the pulmotor he went to work on her with that too. And then he stuck a needle in her. And pretty soon she came to.
Mr. Barlow: Gosh! I’m glad you come to that part at last!
Mrs. Nation: So when the undertaker come she was setting up.
Mr. Nation: That there finished me with undertakers. You know what that boy done? He got sore because she wasn’t dead no more. Can you beat that?
Mrs. Nation: So then, after a couple of weeks, she begun to tell me about—
Mr. Nation: You forgot something. You forgot them pieces in the papers.
Mrs. Nation: Oh yes. You see we was so excited we forgot all about Dr. Winship. To call him up, I mean, and tell him about it. And before he went to bed that night he wrote up the death certificate and dropped it in the mailbox and it come out in the papers she was dead. And maybe Eva weren’t sore! ’Cause some of them papers from Dover and Salisbury, they had it in about the funeral and how many flowers there was. And Eva, she said, she hear tell all her life you couldn’t believe nothing you seen in the papers, but that time they sure did have a crust.