Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life Part 4

As his own existence took a grinding downturn Mac toyed more and more with the idea of recreating Whitey's, investing it with the life that was slipping away from him.

First he had to think of a name for his protagonist. He didn't want to use the name Whitey, nor Whitey's stage name of Bill or William Duke. These had already proven unsuccessful for the actual juggler. Whitey's full name had been William Claude Dukinfield. Claude was unusable: Mac remembered how much Whitey hated the name. But the last part of the last name a" Field a" that had promise. Fields was already an honored vaudeville moniker shared by many: Lew Fields, the comedian; "Happy f.a.n.n.y" Fields (her name described it all); Ben Fields; Mrs. Nat Fields, a singer and dancer; Joe Fields, an impersonator; and Harry Fields, the Hebrew dialect comic.

Yes, Fields would do nicely. And for the first name . . . why not just put the two initials together and leave it at that? William Claude: W. C. Fields. Mac drew rather than wrote the letters with a flourish and smiled. He liked it. He liked it very much. That was the hardest part. From here on in all the rest was drawing.

The strip debuted as The Life and Times of W. C. Fields.

The first months of the strip were effortless for Mac. He mined what he already knew of Whitey's life for episodes and drew them easily in the tiny niches of time he nibbled from his busy work schedule.

There was an episode of the tiny W. C. Fields hawking vegetables and fruit with his father from the cart drawn by that venerable old pony White Swan, juggling romantic foods and their exotic names with equal ease. There was W. C. running away from home and living in holes in the ground, which Mac turned into fabulous treasure caves equal in splendor to anything he'd drawn for Little Nemo. Strips ill.u.s.trated the sojourn at the pool hall and W. C.'s flair for juggling cues and b.a.l.l.s and subsequent mastery of the game of billiards. The dishonorable Methodists, the Coney Island "drownings," the standing-in as "Little Nell" . . . it was all grist for the mill. When Mac drew the lunch cage episode at the Chillicothe railway station he laughed so hard he cried. And then he drew himself into the strip, laughing himself into tears in a corner of the bar as he sketched away.

Mac felt younger, lighter again. He felt as though he were tap dancing around Hearst and Brisbane's efforts to bury him under avalanches of humorless pictorial commentary.

The episode in the Peebles station was crucial. Rather than himself as Whitey's saviour, Mac had the sleepy, grumpy dispatcher lend W. C. the money. Just like Whitey, W. C. wept at the kindness. But unlike Whitey, W. C. was so touched by this trust and vote of confidence from a man who'd never even seen his skills that he returned to New York.

Mac was slowly shepherding W. C., strip by strip, to vaudeville. But he didn't let him succeed immediately. First came hilarious episodes where W. C. found work for the rest of the winter at the Old Globe dime museum. He had to hone his comedic skills to a level that matched his juggling, for the sword swallower and Trixie the Dog Girl were always conspiring to upstage him.

When summer's warmth arrived W. C. was hired by a circus. Alack and alas, the big-top already boasted a juggler, and this man was too jealous of his position to allow W. C. to share the billing with him. He barely tolerated the boy's presence as an understudy.

W. C. spent most of the season caring for the elephants. Mac loved doing this sequence, for he was terrific at drawing elephants. Unfortunately W. C. was not fond of the beasts. After he'd freed several mice in their vicinity the pachyderms decided to take their revenge, hosing down W. C. every chance they could get.

At last Mac arranged for the main juggler to get the chicken pox, and W. C. went on at the last minute to save the show. W. C. almost did not survive his triumph, however. Flushed with success, he didn't see Gunga Din, Rajah and Elsie waiting for him in the wings, trunks and tusks ready, until it was almost too late.

Mac found nice resonances in these strips with his earlier work. Little Nemo too had been overwhelmed time after time in encounters with elephants, alligators, polar bears, lions and chimpanzees.

In the fall, Mac finally allowed W. C. Fields to arrive on the vaudeville scene by being spotted by an agent for the Benjamin Franklin Keith Circuit. Flaming brands, swords and white mice were added to the objects W. C. juggled a" the mice so that he'd always have them on hand should he run into elephants again. W. C. further developed his natural flair for both humor and hyperbole in his act. He insisted on being billed as "W. C. Fields, Distinguished Comedian."

He went from success to success until he arrived at June of 1906.

W. C. hummed a tune to himself as he strode down the narrow corridors of the backstage rabbit warren, swinging his ebony cane. The tune was an old and rather disagreeable one, but it had stuck in his head, buzzing about like a fly there, and he couldn't get rid of it.

Except for that minor irritation W. C. was in a capital mood. The European tour had been a triumph, helping him to extort another raise from F. F. Proctor, his current agency. And he had thought of a capital trick to play on the newest member of the ensemble. W. C. was not being cruel a" such an initiation was an honored tradition in the entertainment industry and he didn't want the fellow to feel left out.

He knocked on the door. He smiled to himself when a voice quavery with fear answered. Perfect!

He peered in at the newcomer, a "chalk-talk" artist. Great G.o.dfrey Daniel! The man was no bigger than a churchmouse, and four times as trembly.

Upon enquiry, it turned out the fellow's name was McCay. W. C. winked at him and pulled a flask from the inside pocket of his silver morning coat. "I believe what is called for here is a little scotch for my little Scotch friend."

As the fellow took a long, desperate gulp W. C. palmed his trick cigar and pushed a b.u.t.ton on the fake head of his cane, which ingeniously resembled a carved rosewood snake.

Rolling off a line of arcane patter to the artist, W. C. "puffed" on the trick cigar, launching the slowly hardening foam "smoke-snake." At the same time the ersatz cane head ignited inside and slowly burned and dissolved away into smoke.

W. C. left the fellow babbling away in the closet-sized dressing room just in time for his own curtain call. Then he watched from the wings as McCay came out and gave his presentation.

Aaah yas, aaah yas, the little man gave quite a performance. Fields nodded to himself and smiled. Once again he'd inspired a fellow illusionist to the heights of his art, and had rather a merry time himself in the process. Wait till he told the boys about this one at the bar tonight after the show.

Rather a nice bit that McCay did there, with his chalk and his erasers. It gave W. C. an idea. McCay had a box of spare supplies at the ready near the inside edge of the curtain, in case he snapped a chalk or dropped an eraser into the orchestra pit during his act. W. C. picked up several erasers and a few sticks of chalk. He tossed the chalk up in the air in intricate juggling pattern, then in between catches scribbled cryptic symbols in the air. He started feeding erasers into the design, then built up a rhythm: erase the symbols with one hand, catch chalk with the other, draw new symbols, at the same time catch the erasers again, then erase, then repeat.

It had promise. Maybe he'd use it when they played Poughkeepsie.

Fields continued in vaudeville for years. He quickly put his pool hall experiences to good use. Building on borrowed (some might say stolen) ideas, W. C. designed a trick pool table and, as an accessory, a cue as twisted and contorted as any s.h.i.+llelagh.

After weeks and weeks of practice, what he could finally accomplish with the apparatus bordered on the miraculous.

Exaggerating the hyper-refined, effete etiquette of habitus of the billiard parlor, W. C. bent ritualistically to the table to meditate upon the b.a.l.l.s' configuration, his remarkable nose grazing the emerald felt. Then he jumped, startled, his concentration broken by the placement of the chalk he'd seasoned his cue with. After fussing with the offending chalk (a leftover from the batch he'd pilfered from Mac McCay) he bent again with reverence to his game.

He sighted critically down the length of his stick at the coveted ball. Unfortunately the cue was so twisted that its end came to rest before a completely different sphere. And it would be that ball, not his heart's desire, which would bounce and carom around the table in balletic display. W. C. would stand back, baffled at this outcome.

It took almost half of his performance to realize and come to terms with the fact that his cue stick was crooked.

At that point the nature of the game changed. As he finally lined up appropriately for his shots, the other b.a.l.l.s, to the public's amazement and delight, slowly and shyly rolled across the table toward W. C. as if begging him to propel them instead. He cursed them away like bothersome street urchins. The b.a.l.l.s rolled off and cl.u.s.tered together in a far corner, obviously plotting revenge for this rejection.

When he was deeply immersed in his most difficult shot they launched their attack. W. C.'s following howled with laughter at the contortions he performed as he ducked and defended himself against the ricocheting hail of billiards, all the while stubbornly refusing to give up his shot.

Fields' success with this act not unsurprisingly excited the jealousy of other comedians, especially those who had to share the billing with him.

One night his chief rival, Ed Wynn, contrived to sneak under the pool table while W. C. was carrying on chalking up and examining his unlikely cue stick. As soon as Fields began his performance, Wynn commenced mugging and capering beneath the table. Fields' obvious bewilderment at the laughter erupting at inappropriate times in his act was cause for even more hilarity.

He finally figured out the source of his woes. Keeping a sharp eye on the front edge of the table, he waited for Wynn to get careless. A moment later the other comedian allowed his head to emerge, turtlelike. W. C. leapt lightly onto the table and in one motion brought the rococo pool cue down on Wynn's head with a singularly gorgeous golfing swing. Wynn keeled over into unconsciousness to thunderous applause.

Being of a magnanimously forgiving nature, not to mention gratified by the tremendous response of the public to this variation in his performance, Fields not only forgave Wynn but offered to incorporate his shenanigans into the act on a regular basis. It was reported that the still-recovering Wynn slammed his dressing room door on W. C. in a fury.

Fields enjoyed travelling abroad so much that he insisted that his contracts stipulate that he spend a good two-thirds of his time performing overseas. Not for him the stifling constraints of hearth, home or the daily grind. Besides broadening his view of the world, his ramblings allowed him to be surrounded by exotic backgrounds and fall into dubious and picaresque situations.

In one memorable set of episodes he arrived propitiously in South Africa just in time for the Boer War. W. C. wrote home to an acquaintance that the dour bearded burghers of Johannesburg exhibited all the cheerfulness of a bunch of midwestern farmers at a good hanging.

Furthermore, there was a curfew due to martial law, stranding and idling several theatrical troupes. It just so happened that all of these companies featured internationally famous jugglers: W. C., Valazzi, Frank Le Dent, Silvo and Selma Braatz. The antics of this bored and therefore dangerously creative crew began to resemble, to the horrified denizens of Jo'burg, an infestation not unlike that of a plague of giant, frolicsome fleas.

The stint in South Africa also witnessed the beginning of Field's involvement with cowboys. In Cape Town he ran into a young cowpoke who'd sailed over from the States with a herd of range ponies to sell. The fellow demonstrated some dazzling rope tricks and turned out to have a truly fine sense of humor a" ultimately offending W. C. by upstaging the juggler.

Alas for Fields! The bovine overseer, a likeable fellow with a tw.a.n.gy accent who went by the handle of Will Rogers, was fated by the Creator to, like a black cat, cross the juggler's path time and time again.

A few weeks later Will showed up in Durban. Impressed with W. C.'s history, he had joined a local circus. Later they would appear together in the Ziegfeld Follies and other venues. They eventually became good friends, though W. C. could never forgive the cowboy for the gall of being so talented.

Fields did not feel threatened by another expatriate cowboy, equally talented but thankfully laconic and humorless. This terse fellow's name was Tom Mix. He showed up in South Africa to check out and get in on what he'd heard was a good fight. It didn't matter to Mix that he hadn't the vaguest notion what the quarrel was about and hadn't decided which side to throw in with.

W. C. admired such even-handed pugnaciousness. At the same time it allowed him to not feel intimidated by the cowboy because it seemed to indicate that Mix was none too bright. But then, that was a belief that Fields held about most of the rest of the world.

Though he'd never admit it, W. C. was often lonely on his overseas tours. Unless he ran into other American expatriates, he was lost in a sea of foreign tongues. So, like many entertainers of that era, he took up sketching as a hobby.

As with any art that required dexterity, patience and skill, he became quite good at it. Besides allowing him the means to entertain himself while whiling away the hours in foreign bistros, W. C. found that it provided him with a currency of communication to exchange with non-English speakers. Considering his exaggerated verbal flair, he actually got to where he could draw faster than he could talk, and express any wishes he might have with just a few taut pen strokes.

He also used his new skill to further his studies of the human race. His talent as a somewhat savage caricaturist got him into several splendidly satisfying barroom brawls.

But W. C. didn't spare himself either. His self-portraits were cruelly hilarious. The kindest ones were of himself as a rotund, top-hatted, pugnacious, cigar-smoking urchin. Some of his friends noted that his self portraits were often accompanied by drawings of a tiny, foppishly dressed, morose little pixy scribbled into the margins.

"Who's that, W. C.?" they'd ask.

"My muse, of course," the juggler growled. To prove his point he drew a picture of himself drawing the pixy drawing him drawing the pixy, till the images dwindled down to tiny scratch marks on the page.

"Why do you draw the little fellow so small?"

"Because as long as something is small enough to pick up and throw around, you'll probably be able to keep the upper hand with it," snarled Fields.

Charlie J. Wuest took off his ceremonial robes, folded them carefully and slipped a flask from his inside pocket. Rituals over, it was time to relax and be sociable. There was more than one benefit to being a Mason.

He spotted Mac McCay across the a.s.sembly hall. Charlie studied his old friend before approaching him. Mac was dressed more elegantly than ever, a sure sign of prosperity. A cheroot tipped at a lively angle from between his lips a" he'd taken to smoking those thin, expensive cigars wrapped in pink paper, layered into hand-stamped tin boxes.

But Mac didn't look good. It wasn't just the years . . . h.e.l.l, none of them were getting any younger. Charlie, friends with Mac since the pre-Maude days, was one of the few that knew Mac lied about his age.

But even taking into consideration that Mac was older than he claimed to be, the man looked worn beyond his years. His face, though thin, was flabby with fatigue. His eyes still tried to sparkle with leprechaunish mischief; the mischief looked frightened and desperate to get out.

Charlie took another long swig of gin from his flask before going over to talk to Mac.

"Mac! Haven't seen you in, what, three years?"

Mac seemed cheered by Charlie's greeting, but he winced when Charlie pumped his hand up and down. Charlie softened his grip, shocked that Mac even felt fragile.

"Hearst's kept me too busy drawing political commentary on the war to get to the annual meetings," Mac said. "I was lucky to make this one."

Charlie nodded. There had been a lot fewer newspapermen attending since the beginning of the Great War. And most of the younger members of the Order were over in Europe as soldiers, fighting the Hun.

"Is that why I don't see so many of those fantastic comic strips of yours anymore?"

Mac looked more pained, and Charlie regretted bringing the subject up.

Mac forced a smile. "I suppose so. Mr. Hearst always seems to be able to find more than enough to keep me busy."

"Does that mean you've had to shelve your moving picture work for the duration too?" Charlie knew that would be a safe question to ask. He'd heard rumors Mac was up to something.

Mac smiled. "One of the few benefits of being kept on a short leash is it's meant more chances to work in my own studio. I'm developing an important animation, Charlie. Something serious, an adult topic a" the sinking of the Lusitania."

Mac brightened further. "My son Robert's been helping me. He's turned into a talent, a fine artist in his own right. His a.s.sistance has been invaluable." Mac's face fell again. "Or I should say was invaluable. Robert joined the armed services two months ago." The creases of a father's worry joined the other lines rumpling Mac's face.

Charlie squirmed. What could he talk about with Mac that wouldn't cause the other man pain? He wanted to ask after Mac's daughter, and his wife Maude, but was afraid to.

Mac could tell he was making his old friend suffer; it would be unkind not to make the conversation easier for Charlie. He reached up and patted the other man's shoulder. "Just listen to me! I sound like a fussy old hen. I doubt that Robert will even make it out of the country, let alone to the front, before this rumpus is cleared up."

Charlie looked relieved that Mac had bounced back. "You're right. He'll be fine, Mac. And when he gets back maybe he'll be able to take over your animation projects so you can get on with whatever brilliant innovation you decide to concoct next. You know, there's times when I see what you've done that I really regret getting out of the pictorial side of the business." He shook his head. "But who am I kidding? I just never had the vision and talent that people like you and some of the others a" Outcault, Bud Fisher a" have."

Outcault, that other artist who had emerged from Cincinnati, equally favored by the Queen of Cities. Why in G.o.d's name did Charlie have to bring up Outcault, Mac wondered?

Outcault had haunted Mac's life like a precognitive ghost. Comic strips, vaudeville sketching tours, musicals based on comic strips, merchandising schemes (Buster Brown Shoes were household catchwords) and even animation: Outcault had always preceded Mac, until Mac wondered if the man was clairvoyant, or if he was somehow privy to Mac's thoughts and stealing his ideas. Had Outcault found a way of coasting ahead on the creative energy of Mac's life?

And not for the first time Mac wondered if that was what his brother Arthur had meant when he'd accused Mac of stealing his life.

Had Outcault been visited upon Mac as repayment in kind? And was that only one of the rest.i.tutions life was demanding from Mac? His comic strips, his animation, his vaudeville act; his wife, his daughter, his son; all that Mac loved was slipping from his control.

And in reaction, as a defense, had he just begun the cycle all over again? The more he lost from his own life, the more he had invested of himself in his secret, pseudonymous comic strip. Mac wondered, guiltily, if in living vicariously through his strips of the life of W. C. Fields if he'd also stolen the life Whitey might have had. But he knew that it was the life that Whitey would have wished for himself. It was different. It was like a gift to the long-lost vagrant boy. Mac kept telling himself that over and over again.

Charlie looked embarra.s.sed and disconcerted. Mac realized an uncomfortable length of time had elapsed; that he'd let the repartee flounder again. He could imagine the expression on his face after thinking about Outcault. No wonder Charlie seemed so chagrined. Mac would have to turn this conversation around.

He pretended that Charlie had just finished speaking. "Oh, I don't know about that, Charlie. It looks to me as though making editor-in-chief has agreed with you. I've heard nothing but great things about your work the last few years. Maybe this is what you were destined to do a" to bring that keen, perceptive artist's eye of yours to bear on the written word. Not to mention that offbeat sense of humor you were famous for even back in our National Printing and Engraving company days."

Wuest looked surprised that Mac knew about his promotion. He blushed with pride at Mac's compliments.

From there both men, with great relief, let the conversation lead naturally into reminiscences of what seemed to be, in the nostalgic glow of retrospection, the all too brief period of time when they were printing and engraving apprentices together.

They reclaimed the years, their faces younger and their voices lighter as they remembered their run-ins and adventures together after they'd both left Chicago and become newspaper ill.u.s.trators.

"Remember the lynching in that tiny town . . . what was it called?" Charlie recalled.

"Logan. Outside the town, by a long wagon ride." The incident should have been unnotable to Mac; just one of many steps to an elevated success. But for some reason everything surrounding the hanging had always filled him with profound unease.

"Well, of course the hanging itself was grim, the way all hangings are." Charlie had misread, in part, Mac's reaction. "But everything else about the affair was so, well, wild and unexpected. Remember how the farmers hid the outlaws from us? The tornado? Getting stranded and having the world's longest and most drunken poker game?"

"I'm surprised you remember it so charitably," Mac said drily.

Charlie nudged Mac in the ribs. "Think I forgot how you outfoxed us all? Not d.a.m.n likely! Took me years to get over being annoyed with you. But I knew I was really more irritated with myself for not having thought of it first."

Mac realized that he'd never mentioned to Charlie that he had pa.s.sed through Peebles in the course of his coup. "Charlie," he said, "did you ever get to see that Great Serpent mound you talked about on that trip?"

The other newsman s.h.i.+vered. "Yes, I did. Years later. I wish I hadn't. You know, it's one thing to conjecture about mysterious powers, to play with them around the edges, like we do here." He gestured around the meeting hall at the other Masons. "But it's another thing to come up against them face to face. Unnerving. Especially being an artist.

"I got a feeling about all those Indians who'd worked so hard to build that mound a" that somehow their souls got appropriated in the process. That's what made the thing seem so d.a.m.ned alive. It made me understand how art could really take on a life of its own. I think only artists like us can truly understand that," he s.h.i.+vered again, "and maybe be vulnerable to it. It was beautiful, but I got away as fast as I could. That's when I made the decision to get into editing instead." He looked at Mac curiously. "What made you think of it?"

"Because I saw it, too, when I was stealing the thunder from you fellows at the Logan lynching. You can see the Serpent mound just south of Peebles, from the train. It was all lit up by moonlight after the storm. I couldn't have put it into words as well as you just did, but that's exactly how that barrow made me feel."

Charlie smiled uneasily, as if Mac were making a joke at his expense. "That's impossible, Mac. You couldn't have seen the Great Serpent mound. It's north and east of Peebles, nowhere near the train line."

By 1915 The Life and Times of W. C. Fields had become a popular and lucrative enough draw to come to the attention of legitimate theater. In that year the plot s.h.i.+fted: The Ziegfeld Follies hired W. C. away from vaudeville. For several years the episodes of his life revolved around escapades in this new venue. Often they centered around conflicts with his new boss, Flo Ziegfeld.

Bill Catlett peered out into the hallway from W. C.'s dressing room.

"Is it all clear?" came a nasal caw behind him. Catlett turned to look at his partner and grinned. Fields was dressed for golfing; or at least golfing as Fields played it. A cap like a collapsed omelette draped the top of W. C.'s head. The cap was so large it shaded but didn't dim what Fields wore beneath: a deep pink bow tie, lavender s.h.i.+rt, yellow and green argyle knit vest, voluminous black and white checkered knickers, short socks and spats. W. C. teetered as he stood: His golfing shoes sported three inch spikes.

Catlett would have considered his colleague the epitome of sartorial disaster if his own wardrobe hadn't been even more dreadful. His caddie's outfit started off with a plaid tam-o-shanter no self-respecting Scotsman would be caught dead wearing, and went to worse from there. Catlett couldn't look down at himself without breaking out of character into laughter.

"No sign of Ziegfeld." He reported to Fields. "I can hear them getting ready to change the sets. We'd better get out there."

"The timing has to be perfect," Fields growled as he hoisted the main prop, an outsized golf bag, onto his shoulder. "We must array ourselves as soon as that blasted set is up, before Ziegfeld's dancing beauties prance on stage."

W. C. had approached Ziegfeld about doing a golfing skit months before. The impresario had initially agreed, then decided that one tiny change must be made. W. C. Fields would have to change the golf act into a fis.h.i.+ng act on a yacht. That way Flo Ziegfeld could slide his ubiquitous showgirls on stage as bathing beauties.

Fields was livid, but Ziegfeld wouldn't budge. He never did when it came to his beloved dancers. But Flo Ziegfeld was about to discover that his comedian was more stubborn than he.

"Now," muttered W. C. They scuttled their way down the corridor to the wings. Their timing was impeccable. The yacht set was in place behind the curtains. f.a.n.n.y Brice, spotlighted in front, was winding down her routine. In a minute the music would segue into the prologue for their act, curtains would go up on an empty stage and dancing girls would sashay slowly into place. After the lovelies had cut a few fancy figures Catlett and Fields were supposed to walk on with their fis.h.i.+ng equipment.