I'm Dying Laughing Read Free Page A

lad, thought I; and did not know it was an informed analysis. I went after this drudge, named Woodworm and deserted this one named Fireball. It was a chit’s cowardice. I figured I couldn’t rope in Fireball, I guess. Well—B. Dark is one of the reasons I’m going to Europe; to wipe out the shame. And lo, here is Fireball! Is it a reward, is it Fate? I wish I knew. Forget it girl. You’re sure to lose.’ She was always making mistakes—she had an impulsive nature.
    ‘Hi! You’re from Seattle,’ she said.
    ‘Yup. Just been there to see my father-in-law.’
    ‘What’s your name? I remember you. You fought fist-fights with three of the faculty; two for Sacco and Vanzetti, one for Karl Marx. Then you left.’
    ‘I got a job as a stevedore. Then I became a sailor.’
    ‘That was a big general fist-fight that Sacco-Vanzetti event. Even I at last knocked on doors for the shoemaker and the fishman versus the United States. Even Mussolini, to get down to the dregs, was obliged to tell Italy and the world, “I did everything humanly possible to save Sacco and Vanzetti.” It was our first international trial. I mean Judge Thayer tried them, another word for the bum’s rush, in this instance, and then the world tried us. The first but not the last, no doubt. Dreadful. Why was it? Why do we do it? They burned the American flag in Tokyo and Johannesburg. Thomas Mann and John Galsworthy and other worthies said, “Sacco and Vanzetti are our blood brothers.” If there’s one thing we know, it’s how to get the banner headlines.
    ‘The USA was in the usual red scare; people being rounded up and deported. In the 1790s it was the French who were the dangerous reds we had to round up and expel,’ said he.
    ‘Why are we such scaredy-cats?’
    ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said, pushing himself up. She remembered more about him now. Most of the girls had avoided him, though he was a magnificent animal; because he roared, went on benders, didn’t shave, didn’t dance and would come towering in, full of drink, smiling strangely, separate, threatening, ready to smash-hit, or shout rough laughter, or topple. Drunk or sober, he argued and fought. He was going to London for his Ph.D.
    ‘Why London? Plenty of Ph.Ds. at home.’
    ‘I like it where it’s tougher. And I’ve got to talk to someone.’
    ‘What about?’
    He did not tell her then. His father-in-law was paying the minimum sum for the trip. His wife, Sue, who was at home in Seattle at present, studying for her MA, still believed he could make a good professor: but if not, they’d separate and she’d teach. When he said this, he grinned like a good-humoured lion.
    She told him the home facts. Her father was a small inventor and manufacturer. He made boilers, stoves, ovens, heaters. He had invented a few things, especially noted the Wilkes Boiler. She had brought her brother Arnold from Seattle to New York, unemployed, to get a job she had found for him.
    ‘What did he do?’ She hesitated.
    ‘He was on … WPA.’
    ‘Good.’
    She laughed, ‘I hope it’s good. He was in a small PR agency. He helped the other hucksters stuff the holes of reputations with flannel. You know, Imperial Caesar, alas, poor Yorick. Ugh, I hate and fear the name. I always felt I was poor Yorick. I am always concealing from myself that I am poor Yorick. Besides, Hamlet was poor Yorick. Clown at court; what future but a naked skull?’
    He snarled, ‘Who knows who’s Hamlet? Hamlet’s anyone. He’s all moods, any moods. He’s a wind-and-water adolescent. It’s a phase of youth I don’t like. I was through it by fifteen. I was a Catholic, a choirboy. Then I changed.’
    She heeded the belligerent tone and said hastily, ‘My father remarried and I was mostly brought up by my granny, at least ideologically. She was a battling old lady who subscribed to the Clarion and heard Elizabeth Gurley Flynn when she first went out west. I got all my history of the West from her and I’ve