In God We Trust_ All Others Pay Cash Part 17

He said nothing more. Finally, after what seemed like hours, she came into the kitchen and without saying a word began making supper. That night we ate quickly. Almost immediately after the dishes were washed we were sent to bed, and for the first time in a long while did not cause the usual protesting uproar.

Late that night I could hear my mother and father talking in low tones in the living room, through the closed door, until I fell asleep.

Somehow the sun always s.h.i.+nes on Sat.u.r.days in Indiana. Outside the bedroom window a yelling crowd of spatsies, the generic Kid name for sparrows, argued, swore, made clattering love. Out in the kitchen water ran and pots banged.

At first when the full delicious impact swept over me that it was Sat.u.r.day-no school today-blessed, fantastic Sat.u.r.day and that this afternoon Flick and Junior and I would ride the range with Roy Rogers and Trigger at the Orpheum, I reached over in ecstasy, belting my brother in the ribs, ready for action. He groaned almost at the same time that I remembered something funny was going to happen today.

I got up and padded into the kitchen where breakfast was already on the table. The Old Man, dressed in his Sat.u.r.day clothes, was halfway through his eggs. Drifting through the kitchen window from somewhere outside came the roar of a truck motor backing and s.h.i.+fting. My mother, over near the sink, looked out.

"They're here."

My father dropped his fork, circled the table, and peered from the other window. I stood on tiptoes.

At an angle, almost filling the whole of their sandy, weedy backyard stood a tall, gray official-looking truck, behind the Kissel's house. Men in overalls moved in and out the back door, carrying boxes and barrels. Already piled high in the sunlight, warped, cracked, and stained with the chewing of the years, stood the Kissel furniture. The men struggled under loads of nondescript junk, back and forth, from the bas.e.m.e.nt to the attic, from the garage to the kitchen.

The sheriff drove up in a black Ford with a white star on the door and got out. He didn't look like a movie sheriff at all, being fat and wearing a long, grayish overcoat. He really looked more like a dentist than a sheriff. He had two men with him; one a tall, thin, red-faced man with eyes that popped, who began making a list in a notebook. The other set up a kind of platform behind the back porch. It folded, and looked as though it had been used. One of the workmen brought out a microphone and hooked up a leatherette-covered speaker on the ground near the truck. We watched from behind the geraniums.

From behind geraniums all over the neighborhood other eyes watched. Strange people began arriving in dented blue cars, panel trucks; some just wallking, carrying baskets and bags. They were the first Auction Followers we had ever seen. There is a race of Human Vulture that lives off the disaster and defeat of others, picking the bones clean. They perform a necessary function, just as any scavenger does. Those on the scene early were rummaging through the piles of coffee pots, old tires, potted ferns, and Mr. Kissel's toolbox which he carried to the roundhouse on the few days he worked every month.

"There's Mr. Kissel's bottle-capper," I said, breaking the silence in the kitchen.

"Yeah," my father answered, continuing to stare into the bright suns.h.i.+ne.

Mr. Kissel made Home Brew and when we played in Junior Kissel's bas.e.m.e.nt we always fooled around with his bottle-capper, capping bottles of water, pretending we were bootleggers. Now the bottle-capper lay in the yard next to Mrs. Kissel's old Hoover vacuum cleaner.

Old furniture under the light of a bright sky seems more tired and worn than anything else I know. In an eerie way more human, too. The crowd was getting bigger by the minute. Some carried lunches; others babies. They were excited and anxious for the action to begin. None of the neighbors showed up. At least they weren't in the crowd that pushed and waited around the platform. They were strangers. It doesn't pay for vultures to make friends.

My kid brother wanted to go out and join in the fun, but the Old Man said: "We'll go out and play Catch after the people go. You stay here until they leave."

He was a dedicated Catch player. Any time he announced that we were going to play Catch kids listened, and hunted for their mitts. His slider was the best I've ever seen outside of Comiskey Park.

The sheriff got up on the platform to begin the proceedings, his voice echoing hollowly among the sagging garage doors, the drooping clothespoles, and the limp wetwash. The auctioneer began with a bra.s.s table lamp, the one we used to see through their dining-room window, with the green shade. It was quickly bought. The crowd moved in excitement as the auctioneer went into high gear. Mrs. Kissel's enamel kitchen table went for seventy cents.

Once my father turned to my mother and said: "I guess they're not home. I don't see them anywhere."

She didn't answer, but I knew that Junior Kissel wasn't around.

Someone bought Grandpa Kissel's World War I helmet which Mr. Kissel had hung on the inside of the bas.e.m.e.nt door. It was a great thing to play with. I guess someone bought it for their kid. No one wanted the mattress, a lumpy, yellow-stained, blue-striped heirloom that had come down from Mrs. Kissel's parents and had seen the raising of ten kids. It lay under the truck bed, shoved out of the way while the more valuable items were bartered off.

Rusty saws, an old single-barreled 12-gauge shotgun that brought four dollars, a spectacular oil tablecloth with red ornamental lettering: A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR A CENTURY OF PROGRESS. CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR, with a gold picture of the Hall of Science. The bidding for this one was sharp and bitter.

Finally it was over. It didn't last long, maybe forty-five minutes or so, but when it was over the end was definite. The sheriff got up and announced that the auction was now officially completed. He mentioned an address where another was scheduled in a day or two, on the west side of town. The people got back into their cars, trucks, station wagons and left as quickly as they had come, loaded down with their loot.

Without confusion or hesitation the men and the sheriff packed away their gear like a well-practiced team, and were gone. All that remained in the backyard was a jumble of lunch bags, pop bottles, chicken bones, crushed cartons, empty barrels, and the mattress.

By now it was almost lunchtime and I was already getting hungry. My mother, watching the final truck disappear, said: "Oh well."

The Old Man went down into the bas.e.m.e.nt to get his glove for the game of Catch.

Later that afternoon someone said that the Kissels had gone to Lowell, a town a few miles away, to spend the weekend with Mrs. Kisser's brother-in-law and sister. They never came back. Somewhere along about the middle of the next week a FOR RENT FOR RENT sign appeared on the Kissels' front door. Not long afterward a new family moved in. We never saw Junior Kissel again. sign appeared on the Kissels' front door. Not long afterward a new family moved in. We never saw Junior Kissel again.

XXIX

THE POSSE RIDES AGAIN THE POSSE RIDES AGAIN I glanced at my stainless-steel Rolex, noting that it was getting along toward 4:00, s.h.i.+ft-Change time. I could see that Flick was showing the tenseness of a man about to swing into action.

"I'll tell you one thing," Flick said, "I keep up with the bills. I don't owe n.o.body. Just a minute; I'll be right back."

He moved on down the bar, checking his ammunition for the first wave of serious drinkers, which would arrive within the half hour. I looked again at my Rolex. For some reason I didn't quite recognize it at first as belonging to my my arm, and to be honest I wasn't sure that it arm, and to be honest I wasn't sure that it was was even my arm. Somehow that sleeve and that watch all belonged in New York. Another world. Back there they probably would not even believe there even my arm. Somehow that sleeve and that watch all belonged in New York. Another world. Back there they probably would not even believe there was was such a man as Flick. Or Stosh, or Kissel, or Yahkey. They'd probably figure I made 'em all up. such a man as Flick. Or Stosh, or Kissel, or Yahkey. They'd probably figure I made 'em all up.

I fleetingly thought, Maybe I should try to tell Flick about Les Miserables des Frites Les Miserables des Frites, and Henri, the lascivious headwaiter. How could I tell him about the expense account, and how hardly anybody I knew ever paid for anything, ever, and that the vast Gravy Train they were on considered cash itself to be vaguely insulting and out of date. I figured it was no use.

In the booth, the three Sheet-Metal men began hollering at Flick, who looked up from his inventory and yelled back: "HOLD YER WATER, FER CHRISSAKE! I GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO THAN FEED YOU b.a.s.t.a.r.dS ALL DAY!"

The red-faced one wearing an orange safety helmet shouted: "TURN ONNA TV, FLICK! WHAT THE h.e.l.l YOU GOT IT FOR?"

This exchange took place at full voice, since the jukebox was shaking the floor.

"I'LL TURN IT ON WHEN I'M d.a.m.n GOOD AND READY!"

I wondered briefly how Flick would get along with Henri, the effete and painfully elegant headwaiter who controlled the entire East Side of New York.

Flick finally reached up and snapped on the switch of the monster color TV set that hung high over the bar mirror. It seemed to warm up instantly. A thundering herd of posse riders roared across the screen. Mister Clean appeared briefly, and disappeared. Again the posse thundered, this time in the opposite direction, their guns roaring above the booming polka. Obviously conversation was out of the question, or at least it had become somewhat hazardous.

There is something about TV sets in bars that makes even sane people look at them. I sipped what seemed to be at least my thirtieth beer of the afternoon, staring upward at a moonfaced cowboy strumming a guitar. Behind him I could see old familiar country that I knew like the back of my hand. Those Hollywood back lots were as familiar as my own backyard, when I was a kid.

Flick finished his bottle-checking, armed himself with a clean bar rag, and stood briefly looking up at another posse, this time roaring directly at us, the puffs of their guns, their square jaws, the flying hoofs blending well with the eternal jukebox. We both watched for a long moment.

"I seen it."

"So have I. If I remember correctly, Flick, that fat guy on the left is going to get shot. He...."

Just as I said it, the fat guy spun into the air, dying spectacularly as cowboy extras always do, clutching at the clouds, slipping into the sagebrush, milking his scene as far as he could under union rules.

"Yep. I seen it."

Flick turned back from the set with the air of a man adding a period at the end of a sentence.

I, however, continued to stare at the set. It seemed one of those eerie coincidences that happen once in a while, and that cause ladies who wear tennis shoes to believe in ESP, flying saucers, and swamis. I was not sure whether I should bring it up, else Flick suspect that I had had at least one beer too many. I could see he was the kind of bartender who did not serve drunks, but probably tossed them by the scruff of their neck out into the gale.

"Flick, I have seen that picture, too."

"Yep. I seen it," Flick said.

"You know, I have a feeling that I saw it with you." you."

He looked back up at the set again for a long moment, as though to check his memory. The posse thundered down a ravine, diagonally this time, from left to right. Finally he said reflectively: "By G.o.d, I think you're right. It played with Rhythm on the Prairie Rhythm on the Prairie, with d.i.c.k Foran. And they had Bob Steele, in person."

We both disappeared briefly into our own dream world, eventually broken by Flick, who said: "That was the day Schwartz threw up in the drinking fountain in the lobby."

"Correct! That's right."

We returned to the posse for a bit, and finally I had to ask a question that was on my mind ever since the first gunshot.

"Flick, did Doppler ever show his face around here again?" He turned back to me, his expression as grim as any of those hard-faced men riding in that eternal posse, pursuing endless Badguys through the wilds of MGM Land.

"Doppler?"

His voice snapped like Ken Maynard biting out the name of a sheep rustler.

"He wouldn't dare dare show up around here. They'd string him up in a minute." show up around here. They'd string him up in a minute."

x.x.x

LEOPOLD DOPPLER AND THE GREAT ORPHEUM GRAVY BOAT RIOT LEOPOLD DOPPLER AND THE GREAT ORPHEUM GRAVY BOAT RIOT Five thousand years from now, when future archaeologists are picking and sc.r.a.ping among the shards and the midden heaps, attempting to put together the mosaic of the rich, full life led by twentieth-century man, they will come across many a mystery that is impenetrable even to those who lived through it. A cracked fragment of a Little Orphan Annie Ovaltine Shake-Up Mug, a s.h.i.+rley Temple Cream Pitcher, a heavily corroded Tom Mix Lucky Horse-Shoe Nail Ring, an incomplete set of Gilbert Roland/Pola Negri/Thomas Meighan Movie Star Sterling Silver Teaspoons with Embossed Autographs will undoubtedly be key items in files marked: INEXPLICABLE ABORTIVE RELIGIOUS OBJECTS FOUND IN GREAT NUMBERS, YET WITH NO SEEMING DIRECT CONNECTION WITH THE GREATER PHILOSOPHICAL CURRENTS OF THE TIME.

But we will know, won't we?

Not long ago, in a shabby motel in New England, I sat down on a cold, rainy dawn to a bowl of soggy Wheaties and found myself suddenly, and for no reason, thinking of Roch.e.l.le Hudson. Roch.e.l.le Hudson! She had not entered my conscious musings since the age of eight. The sound of traffic roaring by on the Maine Turnpike reminded me that Reality was only a hundred yards away. As I spooned up more of the cereal that Jack Armstrong ate and that Hudson High won its football games for, I hurled Roch.e.l.le Hudson from my mind. Instantly she was replaced by Warner Oland, the original and definitive Charlie Chan. He grinned at me from under his Homburg, enigmatically, and disappeared. There stood Judge Hardy, about to have a man-to-man talk with either me or Mickey Rooney. The thump of a football, and roly-poly Jack Oakie, wearing a white sweater with a big block C, picked up his megaphone and started a Locomotive as Tom Brown, his arm in a sling, June Preiser clinging to his jersey, trotted out on the gridiron-Center College six points behind and only four seconds left in the game! The crowd roared, blending with the sound of a huge Diesel bellowing by on its way to Augusta.

I was yanked back to the Now momentarily as a plate of toast was clanked down next to my coffee. But I could not fight it. Without reason or rhyme the film unwound in my subconscious, picking up the tempo of the thundering traffic on the great turnpike, as Jimmy Cagney, his Maserati in flames, roared past the immense grandstands at Indianapolis, the mob screaming for blood, his oil line broken, his faithful mechanic-Frank McHugh-dying of burns in the c.o.c.kpit next to him. The checkered flag fell as Jimmy, his goggles misted from streaming gasoline, a thin, ironical smile on his lips, swerved into the pits. Out stepped Alan Hale, rugged, silver-haired, beaming, in the full-dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted. With him, riding easy in the saddle, was d.i.c.k Foran. And a string of broad-chested Malemute dogs howled as they headed into the great forest after another Fugitive from Justice.

With an enormous conscious wrench of will power I struggled to break this ridiculous montage of fantasies that continued to crowd irresistibly in upon me. I could not get my mind off these s.h.i.+fting, kaleidoscopic images. I tried to concentrate on my road map as I finished the Wheaties, and the harder I stared at the red lines the more they seemed to resemble Pat O'Brien, in the uniform of a Navy Chief, barking out orders to Wallace Beery.

What the h.e.l.l is this!? I am a grownup, hard-hitting, Hip contemporary man, and I have no time for such transient, imbecilic time wasters.

I swished my plastic spoon around the bottom of the bowl to scoop up the last few spongy flakes, and it was at that instant that I knew knew. It was the bowl itself itself that had caused Roch.e.l.le Hudson to make an unscheduled guest appearance! that had caused Roch.e.l.le Hudson to make an unscheduled guest appearance!

I stared hard at it. It was unmistakable, a bowl of remarkably aggressive ugliness, made of a distinctive type of dark green gla.s.s, embossed with swollen lumps and sworls representing the fruits of the vine and the abundance of Nature. A bowl that had but one meaning. I peered at it long and hard. Yes, there was no mistake. It was genuine-a mint-condition, vintage Movie Dish Night Premium Gift Bowl.

I glanced the length of the lunch counter at the proprietor who lounged listlessly next to the coffee urn, watching the rain fall outside on his gravel driveway. We were alone. I could not resist it.

"Excuse me, but what kind of bowl is this?" I asked.

He looked up.

"What do you mean what kind of bowl? Gla.s.s."

"Yeah. I know know it's gla.s.s. But where did you get it?" it's gla.s.s. But where did you get it?"

"Whattaya mean....are you an Inspector?"

I never knew there were Cereal Bowl Inspectors working the Maine Turnpike.

"No. It's just that you don't see bowls like this very often."

He looked back out at the rain and I knew that our conversation was at an end. I stirred my coffee and examined the green-gla.s.s monstrosity lovingly as I faintly heard Myrna Loy's mocking voice twitting William Powell through the sounds of the radio in the kitchen, which was playing a Beatle record.

Yes, in attics and cellars and kitchen cupboards throughout the length and breadth of America there are still remnants, bits and pieces of Movie Dish Night DeLuxe Dinnerware Sets, some green gla.s.s, others blood red, a few a strange, pearlescent orange, but all united in universal ugliness. Ugliness unfettered, unrestrained by effete taste, as direct and uncluttered as a Johnny Weissmuller scenario. The kind of ugliness so pure and distilled that it s.h.i.+nes with the golden, radiant light of the Pure in Heart and the Simple of Mind; ugliness so stark and clean that it becomes beautiful in its clarity. And the sellers of beauty have never had it easy in this, or any other, age. Mr. Doppler was no exception.

Mr. Doppler! My G.o.d, I even remembered his name. But then, how could I forget it? I gazed mistily into the cloudy depths of the gla.s.s receptacle and the images of that fateful night began to emerge from the milky film that lined the bottom. Mr. Doppler and the Great Gravy Boat Riot! Eerily, faintly, the radio in the kitchen began to play Artie Shaw's "Begin the Beguine," and the story slowly all came back to me.

Mr. Doppler operated the Orpheum Theater, a tiny bastion of dreams and fantasies, a fragile light of human aspiration in the howling darkness of the great American Midwest where I festered and grew as a youth. Even now the word "Orpheum" sends tiny s.h.i.+vers of antic.i.p.ation and excitement up the ventilation pipes of my soul. And Mr. Doppler, like some mythical G.o.d, reigned over his magnetic palace of dreams, fighting the good fight alone and uncheered. He was rarely seen in person. His name, however, always stood at the head of the program throwaways that landed on the porch every Monday afternoon, outlining the Orpheum's schedule of mirages for the following week. In Roman letters surrounded by cherubs blowing trumpets and a kind of Egyptian architectural arch, festooned with grapes and tiny cornucopias and presided over by a pair of blurred Greco-Zanuck Tragedy-Comedy masks, would appear the proclamation: LEOPOLD DOPPLER PRESENTS.

This smudgy, dog-eared schedule was kept next to every icebox in the county, for ready reference and to settle arguments of a Theological nature.

Mr. Doppler was in direct communion with Dennis Morgan, and he, personally, had a hand in Roy Rogers' affairs. Hollywood was a mysterious thing in those days, even more so than today, and for good reason. It was was more mysterious, and it was the time of the Great Depression. People read more mysterious, and it was the time of the Great Depression. People read Photoplay Photoplay and and Screen Romances Screen Romances and other dream journals as seriously as today they digest the and other dream journals as seriously as today they digest the New Republic, Time New Republic, Time, the Realist: Realist: contemporary fantasy almanacs. One time my Aunt Clara lapped the entire field at Christmas by giving my grandmother a two-year subscription to contemporary fantasy almanacs. One time my Aunt Clara lapped the entire field at Christmas by giving my grandmother a two-year subscription to Real Screen Tales Real Screen Tales.

So night after night the Faithful would gather, bearing sacks of b.u.t.terfinger bars and salami sandwiches, to huddle together in the darkness, cradled in Mr. Doppler's gum-encrusted seats, staring with eyes wide with longing and lit with the pure light of total belief at the flickering image of Ginger Rogers, dressed in a long, flowing, sequin-covered gown, swirling endlessly atop a piano with wasp-waisted Fred Astaire, flicking an ivory cane carelessly and spinning his tall silk hat as he sang, in a high, squeaky voice, "The Carioca." In the darkness the sound of girdles creaking in desire and the cracking of Wrigley's Spearmint in excitement provided a soft but subtle counterpoint to Sam Goldwyn's hissing sound track.

Outside those sacred doors crouched the pale gray wolf of Reality and the Depression. On the skyline the dark, sullen hulk of the steel mills lay silent and smokeless, like some ancient volcano that had burnt itself out, while the natives roamed the empty streets and told wondrous tales of the time when the skies were lit by the fires of the steel crucibles. And there was something that occupied them all, called Work. Even the word "Work" itself had an almost religious, mythological tone.

On Sat.u.r.days the congregation consisted entirely of kids. At least during the daylight hours. The carved Moorish doors of the Orpheum were flung wide from 10 A.M A.M. on to the moiling rabble who came to spend the entire day, and weekend if possible. Three cowboy pictures, featuring such luminaries as Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, and Ken Maynard galloping endlessly over the back lots of dusty Los Angeles real estate, firing countless rounds of black-smoke blank cartridges, the sound track turned up to deafening volume, the thunder of movie horses, the screams and grunts of the wounded and dying mingled with the steady uproar of the popcorn machine and the occasional outbreak of a fistfight in the balcony and an incessant two-way traffic up and down the aisles to the plumbing facilities. The m.u.f.fled curses of the ushers clubbing the more violent into submission provided those of us who were there with a great and accurate foretaste of life to come. More than one kid, caught up in the inchoate intricacies of a Republic picture Cowboy plot, found himself torn between answering an urgent call of Nature or missing the final defeat of the treacherous sheep ranchers, and had to make a bitter and crucial decision. It almost invariably went one way. Many a kid had to skulk damply down back alleys on the way home in total darkness to avoid public humiliation, his corduroy knickers squis.h.i.+ng limply as he crept from garage to garage, from chicken house to chicken house, hoping against hope that the spanking breeze from the lake would dehydrate him in time.

Clamped in his seat from 10 A.M A.M. to well past 7 P.M P.M., or just before the Greasy Love Stuff came on, a kid swirled in a maelstrom of excitement and convulsive pa.s.sion that has left a lasting mark on all who sat in attendance. There are countless men today, and not a few women, who have what they euphemistically call "bad knees," resulting from a malady just recently diagnosed as Triple Feature Paralysis, a knee permanently a.s.suming a lambent L shape with concomitant bruises and contusions resulting from action in the seat ahead, accompanied by a quick, snapping cramp of the upper b.u.t.tocks. Its symptoms are unmistakable.

Strategically s.p.a.ced between the Cowboy epics were episodes of Flash Gordon and Superman serials to quell the troops between rounds of gunfire and volleys of guitar-playing. Outright anger rolled in waves from the audience invariably the instant Gene Autry took up his Sears Roebuck melody box to sing "Red River Valley" through his n.o.ble Roman nose. It was a distinctly Anti-Sentimental crowd. Luckily Autry worked in the pre-Switchblade era, but there were other means to vent aggression on a beaded screen. As the first notes of the steel guitar rolled out over the throng, a shower of bottle caps and chocolate-covered raisins arched through the hazy, flickering beam of light that cut the darkness above our heads. The ushers leaped forward at the ready, but by then the gunfire had rea.s.serted itself and blessed Violence stilled the mob. It was early TV, but with far more audience partic.i.p.ation.

A colossal high point came along about the third running of Thunder on the Prairie Thunder on the Prairie starring Johnny Mack Brown. The lights would go up in the house illuminating a scene of carnage and juvenile debauchery unrivaled in the most decadent day of the Roman downfall. Knee-deep in Baby Ruth wrappers, sated with popcorn, jaws aching from a six-hour session of bubble-gum chewing, we sat holding our Ticket Stub, waiting for the fateful drawing. On stage was wheeled a chicken-wire drum, filled with torn tickets, and behind a silver, bullet-shaped microphone appeared the slight but commanding black-clad, balding figure of the great, legendary Mr. Doppler himself. In person. Behind him was piled the Loot for that day: Chicago roller bearing roller skates, Hack Wilson model fielders' mitts, Benjamin air rifles, and, of course, the Grand Prize-a Columbia bicycle with balloon tires and two-tone iridescent paint job. starring Johnny Mack Brown. The lights would go up in the house illuminating a scene of carnage and juvenile debauchery unrivaled in the most decadent day of the Roman downfall. Knee-deep in Baby Ruth wrappers, sated with popcorn, jaws aching from a six-hour session of bubble-gum chewing, we sat holding our Ticket Stub, waiting for the fateful drawing. On stage was wheeled a chicken-wire drum, filled with torn tickets, and behind a silver, bullet-shaped microphone appeared the slight but commanding black-clad, balding figure of the great, legendary Mr. Doppler himself. In person. Behind him was piled the Loot for that day: Chicago roller bearing roller skates, Hack Wilson model fielders' mitts, Benjamin air rifles, and, of course, the Grand Prize-a Columbia bicycle with balloon tires and two-tone iridescent paint job.

Mr. Doppler grabbed his audience hard and fast with his opening line, the instinct of a sure-born Showman blazing through: "Shut up in the balcony!"

To a kid we scrunched forward in our teetery seats, Hershey bars clasped frozen in midair, dripping between unheeding fingers. Ticket stub held at ready, we waited expectantly for our number to be called.

Two ushers on stage spun the drum and a volunteer, usually a wiry, pimply-faced lout from the first two or three rows, pulled the tickets while Mr. Doppler, milking each drawn number for all it was worth, built the drama of expectancy and chance as surely and skillfully as only a true Dramatist can.

At long last, the Grand Prize. The house lights dimmed and went out. Wheeled center stage in the brilliant blue-white vaudeville spot, it stood alone and coldly inaccessible. A vast hush fell on the huddled throng, broken only by the soft, muted squis.h.i.+ng of Mary Janes being ground to bits by loose milk teeth. All things hung suspended as the drum spun and slowed and finally stopped. Doppler raised his hand imperiously in the way that Mighty Casey must have, quelling the mult.i.tude as the crucial moment approached. Absolute silence as the volunteer's grubby claw fished among the ticket stubs, searching for his own, no doubt, finally drawing from the chicken-wire cage a tiny orange fleck of torn paper. He solemnly handed it to the usher, who ceremoniously presented it to Mr. Doppler. The sun stood still in the firmament.

Mr. Doppler gazed for a moment at the stub and then looked meaningfully out over the audience and back again to the stub.

His voice, ringing with feedback, intoned: "The winning number is...D...."

A pregnant pause. We hunched forward as one man, seats creaking in unison. All All our tickets began with D! our tickets began with D!

"D...Seven...."

m.u.f.fled groans, anguished outcries, seats slammed angrily in isolated spots. Doppler raised his eyes menacingly. Again silence.

"D...Seven...Oh...."

More screams and thumps. My palm itched sweatily. I was still in the running. This could be the week!