Cheerful By Request by Edna Ferber

E >> Edna Ferber >> Cheerful By Request

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Sergeant Keith smiled a grim little smile. "Keep your shirt on, kid,"
he said, "and remember, this isn't a fist fight you're going into. It's
war."

Buzz, fumbling with his hat, put his question. "When--when do I go?" For
he had signed his name in his round, boyish, sixth-grade scrawl.

"To-morrow. Now listen to these instructions."

"T-to-morrow?" gasped Buzz.

He was still gasping as he reached the street and struck out toward
home. To-morrow! When the Kearney girl again stepped out of the
tree-shadows he stared at her as at something remote and trivial.

"I thought you tried to give me the slip, Buzz. Where you been?"

"Never mind where I've been."

She fell into step beside him, but had difficulty in matching his great
strides. She caught at his arm. At that Buzz turned and stopped. It was
too dark to see his face, but something in his voice--something new, and
hard, and resolute--reached even the choked and slimy cells of this
creature's consciousness.

"Now looka here. You beat it. I got somethin' on my mind to-night and I
can't be bothered with no fool girl, see? Don't get me sore. I mean it."

Her hand dropped away from his arm. "I didn't mean what I said about
havin' you up, Buzz; honest t' Gawd I didn't."

"I don't care what you meant."

'Will you meet me to-morrow night? Will you, Buzz?"

"If I'm in this town to-morrow night I'll meet you. Is that good
enough?"

He turned and strode away. But she was after him. "Where you goin'
to-morrow?"

"I'm goin' to war, that's where."

"Yes you are!" scoffed Miss Kearney. Then, at his silence: "You didn't
go and do a fool thing like that?"

"I sure did."

"When you goin'?"

"To-morrow."

"Well, of all the big boobs," sneered Miss Kearney; "what did you go and
do that for?"

"Search _me_," said Buzz, dully. "Search _me_."

Then he turned and went on toward home, alone. The Kearney girl's silly,
empty laugh came back to him through the darkness. It might have been
called a scornful laugh if the Kearney girl had been capable of any
emotion so dignified as scorn.

The family was still up. The door was open to the warm May night. The
Werners, in their moments of relaxation, were as unbuttoned and highly
_negligee_ as one of those group pictures you see of the Robert Louis
Stevenson family. Pa, shirt-sleeved, stocking-footed, asleep in his
chair. Ma's dress open at the front. Minnie, in an untidy kimono,
sewing.

On this flaccid group Buzz burst, bomb-like. He hung his hat on the
hook, wordlessly. The noise he made woke his father, as he had meant
that it should. There came a muttered growl from the old man. Buzz
leaned against the stairway door, negligently. The eyes of the three
were on him.

"Well," he said, "I guess you won't be bothered with me much longer." Ma
Werner's head came up sharply at that.

"What you done, Ernie?"

"Enlisted."

"Enlisted--for what?"

"For the war; what do you suppose?"

Ma Werner rose at that, heavily. "Ernie! You never!"

Pa Werner was wide awake now. Out of his memory of the old country, and
soldier service there, he put his next question. "Did you sign to it?"

"Yeh."

"When you goin'?"

"To-morrow."

Even Pa Werner gasped at that.

In families like the Werners emotion is rarely expressed. But now,
because of something in the stricken face and starting eyes of the
woman, and the open-mouthed dumbfoundedness of the old man, and the
sudden tender fearfulness in the face of the girl; and because, in that
moment, all these seemed very safe, and accustomed, and, somehow, dear,
Buzz curled his mouth into the sneer of the tough guy and spoke out of
the corner of that contorted feature.

"What did you think I was goin' to do? Huh? Stick around here and take
dirt from the bunch of you! Nix! I'm through!"

There was nothing dramatic about Buzz's going. He seemed to be whisked
away. One moment he was eating his breakfast at an unaccustomed hour, in
his best shirt and trousers, his mother, only half understanding even
now, standing over him with the coffee pot; the next he was standing
with his cheap shiny suitcase in his hand. Then he was waiting on the
depot platform, and Hefty Burke, the baggage man, was saying, "Where you
goin', Buzz?"

"Goin' to fight the Germans."

Hefty had hooted hoarsely: "Ya-a-as you are, you big bluff!"

"Who you callin' a bluff, you baggage-smasher, you! I'm goin' to war,
I'm tellin' you."

Hefty, still scoffing, turned away to his work. "Well, then, I guess
it's as good as over. Give old Willie a swipe for me, will you?"

"You bet I will. Watch me!"

I think he more than half meant it.

And thus Buzz Werner went to war. He was vague about its locality.
Somewhere in Europe. He was pretty sure it was France. A line from his
Fourth Grade geography came back to him. "The French," it had said, "are
a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines."

Well, that sounded all right.

The things that happened to Buzz Werner in the next twelve months
cannot be detailed here. They would require the space of what the
publishers call a 12-mo volume. Buzz himself could never have told you.
Things happened too swiftly, too concentratedly.

Chicago first. Buzz had never seen Chicago. Now that he saw it, he
hardly believed it. His first glimpse of it left him cowering,
terrified. The noise, the rush, the glitter, the grimness, the vastness,
were like blows upon his defenceless head. They beat the braggadocio and
the self-confidence temporarily out of him. But only temporarily.

Then came a camp. A rough, temporary camp compared to which the present
cantonments are luxurious. The United States Government took Buzz Werner
by the slack of the trousers and the slack of the mind, and, holding him
thus, shook him into shape--and into submission. And eventually--though
it required months--into an understanding of why that submission was
manly, courageous, and fine. But before he learned that he learned many
other things. He learned there was little good in saying, "Aw, g'wan!"
to a dapper young lieutenant if they clapped you into the guard-house
for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and
refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for
doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He
learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a
dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an
olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so
sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from
limb, during the night, and never put together again. He stood out with
a raw squad in the dirt of No Man's Land between barracks and went
through exercises that took hold of his great slack muscles and welded
them into whip-cords. And in front of him, facing him, stood a slim,
six-foot whipper-snapper of a lieutenant, hatless, coatless, tireless,
merciless--a creature whom Buzz at first thought he could snap between
thumb and finger--like that!--who made life a hell for Buzz Werner.
Until his muscles became used to it.

"One--_two_!--three! One--_two_--three! One--_two_--three!" yelled this
person. And, "_In_hale! _Ex_hale! _In_hale! _Ex_hale!" till Buzz's lungs
were bursting, his eyes were starting from his head, his chest carried a
sledge hammer inside it, his thigh-muscles screamed, and his legs, arms,
neck, were no longer parts of him, but horrid useless burdens, detached,
yet clinging. He learned what this person meant when he shouted (always
with the rising inflection), "Comp'ny! Right! _Whup_!" Buzz whupped with
the best of 'em. The whipper-snapper seemed tireless. Long after Buzz
felt that another moment of it would kill him the lithe young lieutenant
would be leaping about like a faun, and pride kept Buzz going though he
wanted to drop with fatigue, and his shirt and hair and face were wet
with sweat.

So much for his body. It soon became accustomed to the routine, then
hardened. His mind was less pliable. But that, too, was undergoing a
change. He found that the topics of conversation that used to interest
his little crowd on the street corner in Chippewa were not of much
interest, here. There were boys from every part of the great country.
And they talked of the places whence they had come and speculated about
the places to which they were going. And Buzz listened and learned.
There was strangely little talk about girls. There usually is when
muscles and mind are being driven to the utmost. But he heard men--men
as big as he--speak openly of things that he had always sneered at as
soft. After one of these conversations he wrote an awkward, but
significant scrawl home to his mother.

"Well Ma," he wrote, "I guess maybe you would like to hear a few words
from me. Well I like it in the army it is the life for me you bet. I am
feeling great how are you all--"

Ma Werner wasted an entire morning showing it around the neighbourhood,
and she read and reread it until it was almost pulp.

Six months of this. Buzz Werner was an intelligent machine composed of
steel, cord, and iron. I think he had forgotten that the Kearney girl
had ever existed. One day, after three months of camp life, the man in
the next cot had thrown him a volume of Kipling. Buzz fingered it,
disinterestedly. Until that moment Kipling had not existed for Buzz
Werner. After that moment he dominated his leisure hours. The Y.M.C.A.
hut had many battered volumes of this writer. Buzz read them all.

The week before Thanksgiving Buzz found himself on his way to New York.
For some reason unexplained to him he was separated from his company in
one of the great shake-ups performed for the good of the army. He never
saw them again. He was sent straight to a New York camp. When he beheld
his new lieutenant his limbs became fluid, and his heart leaped into his
throat, and his mouth stood open, and his eyes bulged. It was young
Hatton--Harry Hatton--whose aristocratic nose he had punched six months
before, in the Hatton Pulp and Paper Mill.

And even as he stared young Hatton fixed him with his eye, and then came
over to him and said, "It's all right, Werner."

Buzz Werner could only salute with awkward respect, while with one great
gulp his heart slid back into normal place. He had not thought that
Hatton was so tall, or so broad-shouldered, or so--

He no more thought of telling the other men that he had once knocked
this man down than he thought of knocking him down again. He would
almost as soon have thought of taking a punch at the President.

The day before Thanksgiving Buzz was told he might have a holiday. Also
he was given an address and a telephone number in New York City and told
that if he so desired he might call at that address and receive a
bountiful Thanksgiving dinner. They were expecting him there. That the
telephone exchange was Murray Hill, and the street Madison Avenue meant
nothing to Buzz. He made the short trip to New York, floundered about
the city, found every one willing and eager to help him find the address
on the slip, and brought up, finally, in front of the house on Madison
Avenue. It was a large, five-story stone place, and Buzz supposed it was
a flat, of course. He stood off and surveyed it. Then he ascended the
steps and rang the bell. They must have been waiting for him. The door
was opened by a large amiable-looking, middle-aged man who said, "Well,
well! Come in, come in, my boy!" a great deal as the folks in Chippewa,
Wisconsin, might have said it. The stout old party also said he was glad
to see him and Buzz believed it. They went upstairs, much to Buzz's
surprise. In Buzz's experience upstairs always meant bedrooms. But in
this case it meant a great bright sitting room, with books in it, and a
fireplace, very cheerful. There were not a lot of people in the room.
Just a middle-aged woman in a soft kind of dress, who came to him
without any fuss and the first thing he knew he felt acquainted. Within
the next fifteen minutes or so some other members of the family seemed
to ooze in, unnoticeably. First thing you knew, there they were. They
didn't pay such an awful lot of attention to you. Just took you for
granted. A couple of young kids, a girl of fourteen, and a boy of
sixteen who asked you easy questions about the army till you found
yourself patronising him. And a tall black-haired girl who made you
think of the vamps in the movies, only her eyes were different. And
then, with a little rush, a girl about his own age, or maybe younger--he
couldn't tell--who came right up to him, and put out her hand, and gave
him a grip with her hard little fist, just like a boy, and said, "I'm
Joyce Ladd."

"Pleased to meetcha," mumbled Buzz. And then he found himself talking to
her quite easily. She knew a surprising lot about the army.

"I've two brothers over there," she said. "And all my friends, of
course." He found out later, quite by accident, that this boyish, but
strangely appealing person belonged to some sort of Motor Service
League, and drove an automobile, every day, from eight to six, up and
down and round and about New York, working like a man in the service of
the country. He never would have believed that the world held that kind
of girl.

Then four other men in uniform came in, and it turned out that three of
them were privates like himself, and the other a sergeant. Their awkward
entrance made him feel more than ever at ease, and ten minutes later
they were all talking like mad, and laughing and joking as if they had
known these people for years. They all went in to dinner. Buzz got
panicky when he thought of the knives and forks, but that turned out all
right, too, because they brought these as you needed them. And besides,
the things they gave you to eat weren't much different from the things
you had for Sunday or Thanksgiving dinner at home, and it was cooked the
way his mother would have cooked it--even better, perhaps. And lots of
it. And paper snappers and caps and things, and much laughter and talk.
And Buzz Werner, who had never been shown any respect or deference in
his life, was asked, politely, his opinion of the war, and the army, and
when he thought it all would end; and he told them, politely, too.

After dinner Mrs. Ladd said, "What would you boys like to do? Would you
like to drive around the city and see New York? Or would you like to go
to a matinee, or a picture show? Or do you want to stay here? Some of
Joyce's girl friends are coming in a little later."

And Buzz found himself saying, stumblingly, "I--I'd kind of rather stay
and talk with the girls." Buzz, the tough guy, blushing like a shy
schoolboy.

They did not even laugh at that. They just looked as if they understood
that you missed girls at camp. Mrs. Ladd came over to him and put her
hand on his arm and said, "That's splendid. We'll all go up to the
ballroom and dance." And they did. And Buzz, who had learned to dance at
places like Kearney's saloon, and at the mill shindigs, glided expertly
about with Joyce Ladd of Madison Avenue, and found himself seated in a
great cushioned window-seat, talking with her about Kipling. It was like
talking to another fellow, almost, only it had a thrill in it. She said
such comic things. And when she laughed she threw back her head and your
eyes were dazzled by her slender white throat. They all stayed for
supper. And when they left Mrs. Ladd and Joyce handed them packages
that, later, turned out to be cigarettes, and chocolate, and books, and
soap, and knitted things and a wallet. And when Buzz opened the wallet
and found, with relief, that there was no money in it he knew that he
had met and mingled with American royalty as its equal.

Three days later he sailed for France.

Buzz Werner, the Chippewa tough guy, in Paris! Buzz Werner at Napoleon's
tomb, that glorious white marble poem. Buzz Werner in the Place de la
Concorde. Eating at funny little Paris restaurants.

Then a new life. Life in a drab, rain-soaked, mud-choked little French
village, sleeping in barns, or stables, or hen coops. If the French were
"a gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," he'd like to know where
it came in! Nothing but drill and mud, mud and drill, and rain, rain,
rain! And old women with tragic faces, and young women with old eyes.
And unbelievable stories of courage and sacrifice. And more rain, and
more mud, and more drill. And then--into it!

Into it with both feet. Living in the trenches. Back home, in camp, they
had refused to take the trenches seriously. They had played in them as
children play bear under the piano or table, and had refused to keep
their heads down. But Buzz learned to keep his down now, quickly enough.
A first terrifying stretch of this, then back to the rear again. More
mud and drill. Marches so long and arduous that walking was no longer
walking but a dreadful mechanical motion. He learned what thirst was,
did Buzz. He learned what it was to be obliged to keep your mind off the
thought of pails of water--pails that slopped and brimmed over, so that
you could put your head into them and lip around like a horse.

Then back into the trenches. And finally, over the top! Very little
memory of what happened after that. A rush. Trampling over soft heaps
that writhed. Some one yelling like an Indian with a voice somehow like
his own. The German trench reached. At them with his bayonet! He
remembered, automatically, how his manual had taught him to jerk out the
steel, after you had driven it home. He did it. Into the very trench
itself. A great six-foot German struggling with a slim figure that Buzz
somehow recognised as his lieutenant, Hatton. A leap at him, like an
enraged dog:

"G'wan! who you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to
say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his
grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz
laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then
something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had
thrown his last bomb, and it had struck home.

Buzz Werner would never again do a double shuffle on Schroeder's
drug-store corner.

Hospital days. Hospital nights. A wheel chair. Crutches. Home.

It was May once more when Buzz Werner's train came into the little
red-brick depot at Chippewa, Wisconsin. Buzz, spick and span in his
uniform, looked down rather nervously, and yet with a certain pride at
his left leg. When he sat down you couldn't tell which was the real one.
As the train pulled in at the Chippewa Junction, just before reaching
the town proper, there was old Bart Ochsner ringing the bell for dinner
at the Junction eating house. Well, for the love of Mike! Wouldn't that
make you laugh. Ringing that bell, just like always, as if nothing had
happened in the last year! Buzz leaned against the window, to see. There
was some commotion in the train and some one spoke his name. Buzz
turned, and there stood Old Man Hatton, and a lot of others, and he
seemed to be making a speech, and kind of crying, though that couldn't
be possible. And his father was there, very clean and shaved and queer.
Buzz caught words about bravery, and Chippewa's pride, and he was fussed
to death, and glad when the train pulled in at the Chippewa station. But
there the commotion was worse than ever. There was a band, playing away
like mad. Buzz's great hands grown very white, were fidgeting at his
uniform buttons, and at the stripe on his sleeve, and the medal on his
breast. They wouldn't let him carry a thing, and when he came out on the
car platform to descend there went up a great sound that was half roar
and half scream. Buzz Werner was the first of Chippewa's men to come
back.

After that it was rather hazy. There was his mother. His sister Minnie,
too. He even saw the Kearney girl, with her loose red mouth, and her
silly eyes, and she was as a strange woman to him. He was in Hatton's
glittering automobile, being driven down Grand Avenue. There were
speeches, and a dinner, and, later, when he was allowed to go home,
rather white, a steady stream of people pouring in and out of the house
all day. That night, when he limped up the stairs to his hot little room
under the roof he was dazed, spent, and not so very happy.

Next morning, though, he felt more himself, and inclined to joke. And
then there was a talk with old Man Hatton; a talk that left Buzz
somewhat numb, and the family breathless.

Visitors again, all that afternoon.

After supper he carried water for the garden, against his mother's
outraged protests.

"What'll folks think!" she said, "you carryin' water for me?"

Afterward he took his smart visored cap off the hook and limped down
town, his boots and leggings and uniform very spick and span from Ma
Werner's expert brushing and rubbing. She refused to let Buzz touch
them, although he tried to tell her that he had done that job for a
year.

At the corner of Grand and Outagamie, in front of Schroeder's drug
store, stood what was left of the gang, and some new members who had
come during the year that had passed. Buzz knew them all.

They greeted him at first with a mixture of shyness and resentment. They
eyed his leg, and his uniform, and the metal and ribbon thing that hung
at his breast. Bing and Red and Spider were there. Casey was gone.

Finally Spider spat and said, "G'wan, Buzz, give us your spiel about how
you saved young Hatton--the simp!"

"Who says he's a simp?" inquired Buzz, very quietly. But there was a
look about his jaw.

"Well--anyway--the papers was full of how you was a hero. Say, is that
right that old Hatton's goin' to send you to college? Huh? Je's!"

"Yeh," chorused the others, "go on, Buzz. Tell us."

Red put his question. "Tell us about the fightin', Buzz. Is it like they
say?"

It was Buzz Werner's great moment. He had pictured it a thousand times
in his mind as he lay in the wet trenches, as he plodded the muddy
French roads, as he reclined in his wheel chair in the hospital garden.
He had them in the hollow of his hand. His eyes brightened. He looked at
the faces so eagerly fixed on his utterance.

"G'wan, Buzz," they urged.

Buzz opened his lips and the words he used were the words he might have
used a year before, as to choice. "There's nothin' to tell. A guy didn't
have no time to be scairt. Everything kind of come at once, and you got
yours, or either you didn't. That's all there was to it. Je's, it was
fierce!"

They waited. Nothing more. "Yeh, but tell us--"

And suddenly Buzz turned away. The little group about him fell back,
respectfully. Something in his face, perhaps. A quietness, a new
dignity.

"S'long, boys," he said. And limped off, toward home.

And in that moment Buzz, the bully and braggart, vanished forever. And
in his place--head high, chest up, eyes clear--limped Ernest Werner, the
man.

IV

THE ELDEST

The Self-Complacent Young Cub leaned an elbow against the mantel as
you've seen it done in English plays, and blew a practically perfect
smoke-ring. It hurtled toward me like a discus.

"Trouble with your stuff," he began at once (we had just been
introduced), "is that it lacks plot. Been meaning to meet and tell you
that for a long time. Your characterization's all right, and your
dialogue. In fact, I think they're good. But your stuff lacks _raison
d'etre_--if you know what I mean.

"But"--in feeble self-defence--"people's insides are often so much more
interesting than their outsides; that which they think or feel so much
more thrilling than anything they actually do. Bennett--Wells--"

"Rot!" remarked the young cub, briskly. "Plot's the thing."

* * * * *

There is no plot to this because there is no plot to Rose. There never
was. There never will be. Compared to the drab monotony of Rose's
existence a desert waste is as thrilling as a five-reel film.

They had called her Rose, fatuously, as parents do their first-born
girl. No doubt she had been normally pink and white and velvety. It is a
risky thing to do, however. Think back hastily on the Roses you know.
Don't you find a startling majority still clinging, sere and withered,
to the family bush?

In Chicago, Illinois, a city of two millions (or is it three?), there
are women whose lives are as remote, as grey, as unrelated to the world
about them as is the life of a Georgia cracker's woman-drudge. Rose was
one of these. An unwed woman, grown heavy about the hips and arms, as
houseworking women do, though they eat but little, moving dully about
the six-room flat on Sangamon Street, Rose was as much a slave as any
black wench of plantation days.

There was the treadmill of endless dishes, dirtied as fast as cleansed;
there were beds, and beds, and beds; gravies and soups and stews. And
always the querulous voice of the sick woman in the front bedroom
demanding another hot water bag. Rose's day was punctuated by hot water
bags. They dotted her waking hours. She filled hot water bags
automatically, like a machine--water half-way to the top, then one hand
clutching the bag's slippery middle while the other, with a deft twist,
ejected the air within; a quick twirl of the metal stopper, the bag
released, squirming, and, finally, its plump and rufous cheeks wiped
dry.

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