In God We Trust_ All Others Pay Cash Part 13

Again the door slammed and silence reigned. I tottered into the kitchen, weak and shuddering with relief. I peeked out of the back window and I could see my mother and father angrily stalking back and forth around the rear fender. They came up the back porch, with my mother saying: "That's terrible. Isn't there something you can do with the Better Business Bureau? Why don't you call the Better Business Bureau? Don't let them get away with it. You're just too easy on people."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'EASY'!? I HOLLERED FOR TWENTY MINUTES! The guy says that car wasn't touched! The lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d!!"

"Well, I'm going to call them myself. I'm going to call them."

She sweeps past me into the dining room, to the phone. My father plumps down at the kitchen table, white with rage. Off in the living room, the sound of my kid brother crying could be heard. He always did this when there was trouble.

I did nothing, just looked innocent. My mother slammed back into the kitchen.

"You're going to get satisfaction now. I really told them. It's that lot across from the Real Estate office, right? Across from the Real Estate office?"

"Yeah."

Never in my life, before or since, have I enjoyed meat loaf so much. Mashed potatoes and peas and carrots-a magnificent repast!

The next day my father came home from work beaming, radiating victory from every pore.

"They paid off, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Ten bucks for a repaint job! The guy said he'd paint it himself. I said 'No.' In a pig's ear. I want the dough. I'll get it fixed myself. I've got to admit you were right. They called up that phony and really burned his ear. He paid up!"

Once again I felt at home at the kitchen table. I belonged in this well-ordered, virtuous environment. Justice had been done, and I could proceed again along the great highway of Life, sun s.h.i.+ning, birds singing, with a clean winds.h.i.+eld and a full tank of Phillips 66.

XXIII

FLICK BAITS THE HOOK FLICK BAITS THE HOOK "You remember the time I stripped the second gear in my Old Man's Pontiac? He kicked me three times around Harding School without stopping."

"Yep, we've all been through it, Flick."

He reached behind him and flipped a switch. An orange-red neon sign hanging in the window flickered and sputtered into life: BEER.

Flick was baiting his trap for the Swing-s.h.i.+ft crowd who probably already were nursing a fierce thirst. A pair of the vanguard had just clumped in, their safety shoes thumping the floor loudly. They had settled into one of the booths. Life in Flick's Tavern was picking up.

Flick took a couple of schooners over to them. They laughed together for a few moments, and he returned, wiping his hands on his clean ap.r.o.n. The phone behind the bar rang. He picked up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo, Jake? You'll handle the bar yourself tonight. Yeah. I'm going to the game tonight. Okay, Jake. I'll see you later."

He hung up. He explained to me: "That was Jake."

"So I heard."

"Going to the game tonight."

The Game, of course, meant Basketball, which in Indiana is far more a mystique than an athletic contest. Basketball has been responsible for suicides, divorces, and even a few near-lynchings. I well remember one coach who left the county heavily disguised in dark gla.s.ses, beard, and the trappings of a Talmudic scholar after a disaster in a Sectional tournament. In recent years I had not kept up with the Basketball fortunes of our mutual high school.

"Who are they playing?"

"La Porte Slicers. It's a breather."

"La Porte? Do you remember the time we went to the Marching-Band contest at La Porte? And we took First Place in the Cla.s.s A Division?"

"Your spit valve stuck halfway through the "National Emblem" and you d.a.m.n near drowned when your sousaphone backed up on you."

I chuckled: "And Duckworth told you what you could do with your trombone after you screwed up on a countermarch and knocked over three clarinet players. He d.a.m.n near did it for for you!" you!"

"It wasn't my fault. Schwartz swung left. He faked me out."

"You know, Flick, some nights even in New York, when I wake up at three in the morning, I can still hear Duckworth's whistle. It scares me."

"You're not the only one!"

"Flick, there's no doubt about it. Duckworth was a genuine, absolute, gold-plated Ga.s.ser!"

"In spades!" Flick capped me.

XXIV

WILBUR DUCKWORTH AND HIS MAGIC BATON WILBUR DUCKWORTH AND HIS MAGIC BATON When the bitter winds of dead winter howl out of the frozen North, making the ice-coated telephone wires creak and sigh like suffering live things, many an ex-Bb sousaphone player feels an old familiar dull ache in his muscle-bound left shoulder, a pain never quite lost as the years spin on. Old aching numbnesses of the lips, permanently implanted by frozen German silver mouthpieces of the past. An instinctive hunching forward into the wind, tacking obliquely the better to keep that giant burnished Conn bell heading always into the waves. A lonely man, carrying unsharable wounds and memories to his grave. The b.u.t.t of low, ribald humor; gaucheries beyond description, unapplauded by music lovers, the sousaphone player is among the loneliest of men. His dedication is almost monk-like in its fanaticism and solitude.

He is never asked to perform at parties. His fame is minute, even among fellow band members, being limited almost exclusively to fellow carriers of the Great Horn. Hence, his devotion is pure. When pressed for an explanation as to why he took up the difficult study and discipline of sousaphone playing, few can give a rational answer, usually mumbling something very much like the famed retort of the climbers of Mount Everest.

There is no Sousaphone category in the renowned jazz polls. It would be inconceivable to imagine an LP ent.i.tled: HARRY SCHWARTZ AND HIS GOLDEN SOUSAPHONE BLOW.

COLE PORTER.

IN STEREO.

And yet every sousaphone player, in his heart, knows that no instrument is more suited to Cole Porter than his beloved four-valver. Its rich, verdant mellowness, its loving, somber blues and grays in tonality are among the most sensual and thrilling of sounds to be heard in a man's time.

But it will never be. Forever and by definition those brave marchers under the flas.h.i.+ng bells are irrevocably a.s.signed to the rear rank.

Few men know the Facts of Life more truly than a player of this n.o.ble instrument. Twenty minutes in a good marching band teaches a kid more about How Things Really Are than five years at Mother's granite knee.

There are many misconceptions which at the outset must be cleared up before we proceed much further. Great confusion exists among the unwashed as to just what a sousaphone is. Few things are more continually irritating to a genuine sousaphone man than to have his instrument constantly called a "tuba." A tuba is a weak, puny thing fit only for mewling, puking babes and Guy Lombardo-the better to hara.s.s balding, middle-aged dancers. An upright instrument of startling ugliness and mooing, flatulent tone, the tuba has none of the grandeur, the scope or sweep of its ma.s.sive, gentle, distant relation.

The sousaphone is worn proudly curled about the body, over the left shoulder, and mounting above the head is that brilliant, golden, gleaming disk-rivaling the sun in its glory. Its graceful curves clasp the body in a warm and crus.h.i.+ng embrace, the right hand in position over its four ma.s.sive mother-of-pearl capped valves. It is an instrument a man can literally get his teeth into, and often does. A sudden collision with another bell has, in many instances, produced interesting dental malformations which have provided oral surgeons with some of their happier moments.

A sousaphone is a worthy adversary which must be watched like a hawk and truly mastered 'ere it master you you. Dangerous, unpredictable, difficult to play, it yet offers rich rewards. Each sousaphone individually, since it is such a ma.s.sive creation, a.s.sumes a character of its own. There are bad-tempered instruments and there are friendly sousaphones; sousaphones that literally lead their players back and forth through beautiful countermarches on countless football fields. Then there are the treacherous, which buck and fight and must be held in tight rein 'ere disaster strike. Like horses or women, no two sousaphones are alike. Nor, like horses or women, will Man ever fully understand them.

Among other imponderables, a player must have as profound a knowledge of winds and weather as the skipper of a racing yawl. A cleanly aligned sousaphone section marching into the teeth of a spanking crosswind with mounting gusts, booming out the second chorus of "Semper Fidelis" "Semper Fidelis" is a study of courage and control under difficult conditions. I myself once, in my Rookie days, got caught in a counter-clockwise wind with a clockwise instrument and spun violently for five minutes before I regained control, all the while playing one of the finest obbligatos that I ever blew on the "National Emblem March." is a study of courage and control under difficult conditions. I myself once, in my Rookie days, got caught in a counter-clockwise wind with a clockwise instrument and spun violently for five minutes before I regained control, all the while playing one of the finest obbligatos that I ever blew on the "National Emblem March."

Sometimes, in a high wind a sousaphone will start playing you you. It literally blows back, developing enough back pressure to produce a thin chorus of "Dixie" out of both ears of the unwary sousaphonist.

The high school marching band that I performed in was led by a maniacal zealot who had whipped us into a fine state of tune rivaling a crack unit of the Prussian Guards. We won prizes, cups, ribbons, and huzzahs wherever we performed; wheeling, countermarching, spinning; knees high, and all the while we played. "On the Mall," "The Double Eagle," "El Capitan," "The NC-4 March," "Semper Fidelis"-we had mastered all the cla.s.sics.

Our 180-beat-to-the-minute cadence snapped and cracked and rolled on like the steady beating of an incessant surf. Sharp in itchy uniforms and high-peaked caps, we learned the bitter facts of life while working our spit valves and bringing pageantry and pomp into the world of the Blast Furnace and the Open Hearth, under the leaden wintry skies of the Indiana prairie land.

The central figure of the scene was our Drum Major. Ours was a Spartan organization. We had no Majorettes, Pom-Pom girls, or other such decadent signposts on the roadway of a declining civilization. In fact, it was an all-Male band that had no room for such grotesqueries as thin, flat-chested, broad-bottomed female trombone players and billowy-bosomed clarinetists. A compact sixty-six man company of flat-stomached, hard-jawed Nehi drinkers, led by a solitary, heroic, high-kneed, arrogant baton twirler.

Drum majors are a peculiarly American inst.i.tution, and Wilbur Duckworth was cast in the cla.s.sic mold. Imperious, egotistical beyond belief, he was hated and feared by all of us down to the last lowly cymbal banger. Most drum majors of my acquaintance are not All-American boys in the Jack Armstrong tradition. In fact, they lean more in the general direction of Captain Queeg, somehow tainted by the vanity of a Broadway musical dancer, plus the additional factor of High School Hero.

In spite of legend, many drum majors are notably unsuccessful with women. Wilbur was no exception, and his lonely frustration in this most essential of human pursuits had led him to incredible heights in Baton Twirling. He concentrated and practiced hour upon hour until he became a Ted Williams among the wearers of the Shako. His arched back, swinging shoulders, lightning-like chrome wands; the sharp, imperious bite of his whistled commands were legendary wherever bandsmen rested to swap tales over a Nehi orange. At a full, rolling, 180-beat-per-minute tempo, Duckworth's knees snapped as high as most men's shoulders. He would spin, marching backward, baton held at ready port, eyes gleaming beadily straight ahead in our direction. Two short blasts of his silver whistle, then a longer one, a quick snap up-and-down movement of the wand, and we would crash into "The Thunderer," which opened with a spectacular trombone, trumpet, and sousaphone flourish of vast medieval grandeur. Precisely as the last notes of the flourish ended and "The Thunderer" boomed out, Wilbur spun like a machine and began his act. Over the shoulder like a stiffened silver snake with a life of its own, under both legs, that live metal whip never lost a beat or faltered ever so slightly. Catching the sun, it spun a blur high into the Indiana skies and down again, Wilbur never deigning so much as to watch its flight. He knew where it was; it knew where he was. They were one, a spinning silver bird. Even as we roared into the coda, attacking the sixteenth notes crisply, with bite, we were always conscious of the steady swish of that baton, cutting the air like a blade, a hissing obbligato to John Philip Sousa.

Like all champion Drum Majors-and Wilbur had more medals at seventeen than General Patton garnered over a lifetime of combat-Wilbur's act was carefully programmed. Almost in the same way that an Olympic skater performs the cla.s.sical School figures, Wilbur had mastered years before the basic baton maneuvers, the cla.s.sical flips and spins, and performed them with razor-sharp, glittering precision. He would begin with a quick over-the-back roll, a comparatively simple basic move, and then, moment by moment, his work would grow increasingly complex as variation upon variation of spinning steel wove itself through the Winter air. And then finally, just as his audience, nervously awaiting disaster, to a man believed there was nothing more that could be done with a baton, Wilbur, pausing slightly to fake them out, making them believe his repertoire was over, would give them the Capper.

Every great baton twirler has one thing that he alone can perform, since he alone has created and honed and shaped his final statement. Midway in his repertoire, Wilbur would whip a second baton from a sheath held by a great bra.s.s clip to his wide white uniform belt. Using the dual batons, he worked upward and upward until the final eerie moment. As the last notes of "The Thunderer" died out, a drummer, on cue, beat out the rhythm of our march, using a single stick on the rim of his snare.

Tic tic tic tic tic tic tic As we marched silently forward, Wilbur then, with great deliberation, holding both batons out before him, began to spin them in opposite directions.

Synchronized! Like the blades of a twin-engine plane, twin propellers interleaved before him, gaining speed. Faster and faster and faster, until the batons had all but disappeared into a faint silver film, the only sound the "tic tic tic" of Ray Janowski's snare and the steady, in-step beat of feet hitting the pavement.

His back arched taut as a bow, knees snapping waist-high, at the agonizingly right instant, with two imperceptible flips of the wrist, Wilbur would launch his twin rapiers straight up into the icy air, still in synchronization. Like some strange science fiction bat, some glittering metal bird, the batons, gaining momentum as they rose, would soar thirty or forty feet above the band. Then, gracefully, at the apex of the arc, spinning slower and slower, they would come floating down; Wilbur never even for an instant glancing upward, the band eyes-front. Down would come the batons, dropping faster and faster, and still Wilbur marched on. And then, incredibly, at the very last instant, just as they were about to crash into the street, in perfect rhythm both hands dart out and the batons, together, leap into life and become silver blurs. It was Duckworth's Capper!

The instant his batons picked up momentum and spun back to life, Janowski "tic'd" twice and the drum section rolled out our basic cadence, as the crowd roared. Unconcerned, unseeing, we marched on.

Wilbur rarely used the Capper more than once or twice in any given parade or performance. Like all great artists, Wilbur gave of his best sparingly. None of us realized that Duckworth had not yet shown us his greatest Capper.

The high point of our marching year traditionally came on the Thanksgiving Day Parade. And that fateful Thursday dawned dark and gloomy, full of evil portent. The last bleak week in November had been literally polar in its savagery. For weeks a bitter Canadian wind had droned steadily off Lake Michigan, blowing the blast-furnace dust into long rivers and eddies of red grime on the gray ice that bordered the curbs and coated the bus stops and rutted the streets. These are days that try a sousaphonist's soul to the utmost. That giant chunk of inert bra.s.s gathers cold into it like a thermic vacuum cleaner. Valves freeze at half-mast, mouthpieces stick to the tongue and lips in the way iron railings trap children, and the blown note itself seems thin and weak and lost in the knife-like air.

The a.s.sembly point for the parade was well out of the main section of town, back of Harrison Park. Any veteran parade marcher knows the scene, a sort of shambling, weaving confusion. The Croatian-American float, the Friends of Italy, the Moose, the Ladies of The Moose, the Children of The Moose, the Queen of The Moose, the Oddfellows' Whistling Brigade, the Red Men Of America (in full headdress and buckskin), the Owls, the Eagles, the Wolves, the Imperial Katfish Klan, the Shriners (complete with Pasha and red fezzes), the A. F. of L., the C.I.O., Steelworkers Local 1010, all gathered to snake their way through the ambient Indiana-Sinclair Refinery air, for glory and to thank G.o.d that there is an America. Or maybe just to Parade, which seems to be a basic human urge.

This gathering point is always known as a "rendezvous" in parade-ese. On the bulletin board the week before, the usual notice: THE BAND WILL RENDEZVOUS AT 0800 ON HOHMAN AVENUE OPPOSITE HARRISON PARK. EACH UNIT WILL BE NUMBERED. LOOK FOR THE NUMBER PAINTED ON THE CURB-TWELVE. WE WILL STEP OFF PROMPTLY AND SMARTLY AT 0915.

Of course by twelve-thirty we are still milling around, noses running, and way off in the distance, always, the sound of some band or other playing something, and still we stood. The thin trickle of glockenspiel music came back to us through the frozen trees and bushes as the Musicians' Local Marching Band tuned up. Megaphones bellowing, cars racing back and forth over the disorganized line of march, until finally, slowly and painfully, we moved off. Wilbur Duckworth shot us aggressively into our a.s.signed march position, and we were under way.

Rumors had gone from band to band, from drummer to drummer, that the Mayor up ahead on the reviewing stand was drunk, that we were delayed while they sobered him up, that he had chased a lady high school princ.i.p.al around the lectern. But these are just Parade rumors.

The Thanksgiving Day Parade is really a Christmas rite. Behind us on a huge white float rode Santa Claus, throwing confetti at the crowd as we moved through town.

It's hard to tell from a Marcher's standpoint just what Parade Watchers think, if anything. As we got closer to the center of town, the crowd grew thicker; m.u.f.fled, hooded, mittened, ear-m.u.f.fed, gray staring faces of sheet metalworkers, iron puddlers; just standing in the dead zero air. This is where you begin to learn about Humanity. Their eyes look like old oysters. They just look. Once in a while you see a guy smoking a cigar; he spits, and from time to time a kid throws a penny or a Mary Jane or a Cherry Bomb into the bell of your sousaphone.

All the bands, of course, are marching to their own cadence. Up ahead the Ladies' Auxiliary of the Whales shuffles on. In the cold winter of the Midwest you can hear a girdle squeak for three blocks.

We march past the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude, Duckworth never glancing to right or left, straight ahead, brow high, paper-thin black kid gloves worn on his baton hands. Up ahead the flags and banners of all kinds are fluttering in the icy-cold breeze.

LITHUANIAN-AMERICAN CLUB. HOORAY FOR AMERICA! G.o.d BLESS ALL OF US.

The steelworkers just stand there silently, looking. From somewhere far behind a glockenspiel in the German-American Band tinkles briefly and stops, and all around the steady drumbeats roll. We were on the march.

Strung overhead from lamppost to lamppost across the main street were strings of red and green Christmas lights. Green plastic holly wreaths with imitation red berries hung from every other lamppost.

We are now right in the middle of town. This is the big moment. It's like Times Square in Hohman, Indiana. The crossroads. A streetcar line ran right down the middle of the main street, and I am straddling a track, trying to keep up the 180-beat-per-minute cadence; blow our own special version of "Jingle Bells" on my frozen sousaphone. Bitter frozen, sliding along the tracks with the ice packed in hard. I have lost all feeling. My ears, my nose, my horn are frozen; my hands are frozen.

We moved haltingly ahead. Slowly, slowly. We'd b.u.mp into the Italian ladies ahead, and the German plumbers behind would b.u.mp into us. Somewhere the Moose would swear, and the Eagles would yell. And then we were right at Ground Zero, the reviewing stand to our right, the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude cheering the National Champions on to further heights.

Wilbur spun and faced us with his old familiar stare, and suddenly the cold was forgotten. We were On! Two sharp rips of the whistle, a sustained, long, rising note, baton at port; two quick flips of the wrist, and our great fanfare boomed out. The parade had come alive. The Champs were on the scene. The American Legion Junior Fife and Drum Corps faded into oblivion. The Firemen's Scottish Bagpipe Company disappeared into limbo. Wilbur Duckworth was in command.

Ray Janowski's beat was never sharper, leading his drum section to heights that rivaled our best performances. Duckworth about-faced and went into action. His great shako reaching up like a giant shaving brush with plume into the sullen gray sky. A magnificent figure, his gold epaulets glinting as we wove at half-tempo over the hard-caked ice, little realizing we were about to partic.i.p.ate in an historic moment that has since become part of the folksongs and fireside legends of Northern Indiana.

"The Thunderer" echoed in that narrow street like a cannon volley being fired in a cave. Blowing a sousaphone at such a moment gives one a sense of power that is only rivaled, perhaps, by the feel of a Ferrari c.o.c.kpit at Le Mans.

Spitzer, our ba.s.s drummer, six feet nine inches tall, caught fire. His sticks spinning into the air, his drum quivering, the worn gold and purple lettering on its head: NATIONAL PRECISION MARCHING CHAMPIONS CLa.s.s A.

The crowd is subdued into a kind of tense silence. They were viewing greatness; the panoply of tradition and pomp, and they knew it. The fourteen-inch merchant mill and the cold-strip pickling department at the steel mill rarely see such glory. Children stopped crying; noses ceased to run, eyes sparkled, and blue plumes of exhaled breath hung like smoke wreaths in the air as we slammed into the coda.

Already I was beginning to wonder whether Duckworth would dare try his Capper on such a dangerously cold day as this, with those sneaky November crosswinds, and numbed fingers. His ramrod back gave no hint. One thing was sure, and everybody in the band knew it. Wilbur had never been sharper, cleaner, more dynamic.

By now he was three-quarters through his act. His figure eight and double-eagle had been spectacular. The trombones just ahead of me, usually a lethargic section, were blowing clean and hard. Wilbur's twin batons were alive. His timing was spectacular.

We arrived at the dead center of the intersection precisely as the last note of "The Thunderer" echoed from the plate-gla.s.s windows of the big department store and died out against the gray, dirty facade of the drugstore on the opposite corner. For a moment the air rang with the kind of explosive silence that follows a train wreck, or the last note of "The Thunderer" played by a band with blood in its veins and juice in its glands. And then it began. Janowski "tic'd" his solitary beat. We marched forward almost marking time in place. The crowd sensed something was about to happen.

Duckworth towered ahead of us, weaving slightly left, right, left, right, as his twin batons, in uncanny synchronization, began to spin faster and faster.

Sound carries in cuttingly cold air, and even the Mayor up on the reviewing stand could hear the sound of those spinning chromium slivers: zzzzzzzsssssstt zzzzssssssssssst zzzzzzzssssttt Wilbur held it longer than any of us had ever seen him do before, stretching the dramatic tension to the breaking point and beyond. Beside me, Dunker muttered: "What's the h.e.l.l's he doing?"

Wilbur spun on. Janowski "tic'd" off the rhythm.

Tic tic tic tic tic...

We marched imperceptibly, like some great glacier, across the intersection. And then, like two interlocked birds of prey, Duckworth's batons rose majestically in the hard November gloom.

Higher and higher they spun, faster than even the day that Wilbur had won the National Champions.h.i.+p. It was unquestionably his supreme effort. He was a senior, and knew that this was his last full-scale public appearance before the hometown rabble. His last majestic Capper.

Every eye in the band staring straight ahead followed the climbing arc of those two beautiful interleaved disks as they climbed smartly higher and higher above the street. Wilbur, true to his style, stared coldly ahead, knees snapping upward like pistons. He knew his trade and was at the peak of his powers.

And then it happened. Instinctively, every member of the Ba.s.s section scrunched lower in his sousaphone at the awesome sight.

Running parallel with our path and directly above Wilbur's shako, high over the street, hung a thin, curving copper band of wire. The streetcar high-tension line. Slightly below it and to the left was another thin wire of some nondescript origin. The two disks magically, in a single synchronous action, seemed to cut the high-tension wire in half as they rose above it, without so much as touching a single bit of copper. Then, ten or twelve feet above the high-tension wire, they reached their apex and in a style cleaner and more spectacular than any of us ever had suspected was in Duckworth, they slowed and began their downward swoop. We watched, the crowd watched, and Wilbur marched on, eyes straight ahead. My G.o.d, what a moment!

The Mayor leaned forward slightly on the reviewing stand and even the children sensed that History was about to be made.

For a fleeting instant it appeared as though the two batons would repeat their remarkable interleaving, dodging, weaving avoidance of that lethal wire on their way down. In fact, the one on the right did. But the left baton hovered for just an instant, spinning slower and slower above the copper band, and then, with a metallic "ting," it just ticked, barely kissed the current carrier with its chrome-silver ball. The other end fell across the other nondescript wire, gently. And for a split second nothing happened.

Janowski "tic tic tic'd" bravely on. Our cadence never varied as our feet sounded as one on that spiteful, filthy ice.

Then an eerie transparent, cerulean blue nimbus, a kind of expanding halo rippled outward from the suspended baton and from some far-off distant place, beyond the freight yards, past the Gra.s.selli Chemical Plant, an inhuman, painful quickening shudder grew closer and closer, as though a wave were about to break over all of us.

BOOM BOOM BOOM!.

Hanging over the intersection was a gigantic, unimaginably immense Fourth of July sparkler that threw a Vesuvius, a screaming shower of flame in a giant pinwheel down to the street and into the sky, over the crowd and onto the band. The air was alive with ozone. It seemed to flash with great thunderbolts, on and on. Time stood still. It could have been ten seconds, or an eternity. It just hung up there and burned and burned, ionizing before our eyes.

Janowski "tic'd" on. A few m.u.f.fled screams came from the crowd. Fuses were blowing out over the entire county, as far away as Gary. High-tension poles were toppling somewhere miles away. Steel mills stopped; boats sank on the river. It was as though some ancient, thunderbolt-hurling G.o.d had laid one right down in the middle of Hohman on Thanksgiving Day The ground shuddered. Generators as far south as Indianapolis were screaming. Duckworth had hit the main fuse. It was the greatest Capper of all time!