THE SAWING BOYS
There was a place in the woods where three paths came together and turned into one big path heading south.
A bearded man in a large straw hat and patched bib overalls came down one. Over his shoulder was a tow sack, and out of it stuck the handle of a saw. The man had a long wide face and large thin ears.
Down the path to his left came a short man in butternut pants and a red checkerboard shirt that said Ralston-Purina Net Wt. 20 lbs. on it. He had on a bright red cloth cap that stood up on the top of his head. Slung over his back was a leather strap; hanging from it was a big ripsaw.
On the third path were two people, one of whom wore a yellow-and black-striped shirt, and had a mustache that stood straight out from the sides of his nose. The other man was dressed in a dark brown barn coat. He had a wrinkled face, and wore a brown Mackenzie cap down from which the earflaps hung, even though it was a warm morning. The man with the mustache carried a narrow folding ladder; the other carried a two-man bucksaw.
The first man stopped.
“Hi yew!” he said in the general direction of the other two paths.
“Howdee!” said the short man in the red cap.
“Well, well, well!” said the man with the floppy-eared hat, putting down his big saw.
“Weow!” said the man with the wiry mustache.
They looked each other over, keeping their distance, eyeing each others’ clothing and saws.
“Well, I guess we know where we’re all headed,” said the man with the brown Mackenzie cap.
“I reckon,” said the man in the straw hat. “I’m Luke Apuleus, from over Cornfield County way. I play the crosscut.”
“I’m Rooster Joe Banty,” said the second. “I’m a ripsaw bender myself.”
“I’m Felix Horbliss,” said the man in stripes with the ladder. “That thar’s Cave Canem. We play this here big bucksaw.”
They looked at each other some more.
“I’m to wonderin’,” said Luke, bringing his toe sack around in front of him. “I’m wonderin’ if’n we know the same tunes. Seems to me it’d be a shame to have to play agin’ each other if’n we could help it.”
“You-all know ‘Trottin’ Gertie Home’?” asked Felix.
Luke and Rooster Joe nodded.
“How about ‘When the Shine comes Out’n the Dripper’?” asked Rooster Joe.
The others nodded.
“How are you on ‘Snake Handler’s Two-Step’?” asked Luke Apuleus.
More nods.
“Well, that’s a start on it,” said Cave Canem. “We can talk about it on the way there. I bet we’d sound right purty together.”
So side by side by bucksaw and ladder, they set out down the big path south.
What we are doing is, we are walking down this unpaved road. How we have come to be walking down this unpaved road is a very long and tiresome story that I should not bore you with.
We are being Chris the Shoemaker, who is the brains of this operation, and a very known guy back where we come from, which is south of Long Island, and Large Jake and Little Willie, who are being the brawn, and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie, who is Chris the Shoemaker’s doll, and who is always dressed to the nines, and myself, Charlie Perro, whose job it is to remind everyone what their job is being.
“I am astounded as all get-out,” says Little Willie, “that there are so many places with no persons in them nowise,” looking around at the trees and bushes and such. “We have seen two toolsheds which looked as if they once housed families of fourteen, but of real-for-true homes, I am not seeing any.”
“Use your glims for something besides keeping your nose from sliding into your eyebrows,” says Chris the Shoemaker. “You will have seen the sign that said one of the toolcribs is the town of Podunk, and the other shed is the burg of Shtetl. I am believing the next one we will encounter is called Pratt Falls. I am assuming it contains some sort of trickle of fluid, a stunning and precipitous descent in elevation, established by someone with the aforementioned surname.”
He is called Chris the Shoemaker because that is now his moniker, and he once hung around shoestores. At that time the cobbler shops was the place where the policy action was hot, and before you can be saying Hey Presto! there is Chris the Shoemaker in a new loud suit looking like a comet, and he is the middle guy between the shoemakers and the elves that rig the policy.
“Who would have thought it?” asked Little Willie, “both balonies on the rear blowing at the same time, and bending up the frammus, and all the push and pull running out? I mean, what are the chances?”
Little Willie is called that because he is the smaller of the two brothers. Large Jake is called that because, oh my goodness, is he large. He is so large that people have confused him for nightfall—they are standing on the corner shooting the breeze with some guys, and suddenly all the light goes away, and so do the other guys. There are all these cigarettes dropping to the pavement where guys used to be, and the person looks around and Whoa! it is not night at all, it is only Large Jake.
For two brothers they do not look a thing alike. Little Willie looks, you should excuse the expression, like something from the family Rodentia, whereas Large Jake is a very pleasant-looking individual, only the pleasant is spread across about three feet of mook.
Miss Millie Dee Chantpie is hubba-hubba stuff (only Chris the Shoemaker best not see you give her more than one Long Island peek) and the talk is she used to be a roving debutante. Chris has the goo-goo eyes for her, and she is just about a whiz at the new crossword puzzles, which always give Little Willie a headache when he tries to do one.
Where we are is somewhere in the state of Kentucky, which I had not been able to imagine had I not seen it yesterday from the train. Why we were here was for a meet with this known guy who runs a used furniture business on South Wabash Street in Chi City. The meet was to involve lots of known guys, and to be at some hunting lodge in these hills outside Frankfort, where we should not be bothered by prying eyes. Only first the train is late, and the jalopy we bought stalled on us in the dark, and there must have been this wrong turn somewhere, and the next thing you are knowing the balonies blow and we are playing in the ditch and gunk and goo are all over the place.
So here we are walking down this (pardon the expression) road, and we are looking for a phone and a mechanically inclined individual, and we are not having such a hot time of it.
“You will notice the absence of wires,” said Chris the Shoemaker, “which leads me to believe we will not find no blower at this watery paradise of Pratt Falls.”
“Christ Almighty, I’m gettin’ hungry!” says Miss Millie Dee Chantpie of a sudden. She is in this real flapper outfit, with a bandeau top and fringes, and is wearing pearls that must have come out of oysters the size of freight trucks.
“If we do not soon find the object of our quest,” says Chris the Shoemaker, “I shall have Large Jake blow you the head off a moose, or whatever they have in place of cows out here.”
It being a meet, we are pretty well rodded up, all except for Chris, who had to put on his Fall Togs last year on Bargain Day at the courthouse and do a minute standing on his head, so of course he can no longer have an oscar anywhere within a block of his person, so Miss Millie Dee Chantpie carries his cannon in one of her enchanting little reticules.
Large Jake is under an even more stringent set of behavioral codes, but he just plain does not care, and I do not personally know any cops or even the Sammys who are so gauche as to try to frisk him without first calling out the militia. Large Jake usually carries a powder wagon—it is the kind of thing they use on mad elephants or to stop runaway locomotives only it is sawed off on both ends to be only about a foot long.
Little Willie usually carries a sissy rod, only it is a dumb gat so there is not much commotion when he uses it—just the sound of air coming out of it, and then the sound of air coming out of whomsoever he uses it on. Little Willie has had a date to Ride Old Sparky before, only he was let out on a technical. The technical was that the judge had not noticed the big shoe box full of geetas on the corner of his desk before he brought the gavel down.
I am packing my usual complement of calibers which (I am prouder than anything to say) I have never used. They are only there for the bulges for people to ogle at while Chris the Shoemaker is speaking.
Pratt Falls is another couple of broken boards and a sign saying Feed and Seed. There was this dry ditch with a hole with a couple of rocks in it.
“It was sure no Niagara,” says Little Willie, “that’s for certain.”
At the end of the place was a sign, all weathered out except for the part that said 2 MILES.
We are making this two miles in something less than three-quarters of an hour because it is mostly uphill and our dogs are barking, and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie, who has left her high heels in the flivver, is falling off the sides of her flats very often.
We are looking down into what passes for a real live town in these parts.
“This is the kind of place,” says Little Willie, “where when you are in the paper business, and you mess up your double sawbuck plates, and print a twenty-one-dollar bill, you bring it here and ask for change. And the guy at the store will look in the drawer and ask you if two nines and a three will do.”
“Ah, but look, gentlemen and lady,” says Chris the Shoemaker, “there are at least two wires coming down over the mountain into this metropolis, and my guess is that they are attached to civilization at the other end.”
“I do not spy no filling station,” I says. “But there does seem to be great activity for so early of a morning.” I am counting houses. “More people are already in town than live here.”
“Perhaps the large gaudy sign up ahead will explain it,” says Little Willie. The sign is being at an angle where another larger dirt path comes into town. From all around on the mountains I can see people coming in in wagons and on horses and on foot.
We get to the sign. This is what it says, I kid you not:
BIG HARMONY CONTEST!
BRIMMYTOWN SQUARE SAT MAY 16
$50 FIRST PRIZE
Brought to you by Watkins Products
and CARDUI, Makers of BLACK DRAUGHT
Extra! Sacred Harp Singing
Rev. Shapenote and the Mt. Sinai Choir.
“Well, well,” says Chris. “Looks like there’ll be plenty of e’trangers in this burg. We get in there, make the call on the meet, get someone to fix the jalopy, and be on our way. We should fit right in.”
While Chris the Shoemaker is saying this, he is adjusting his orange-and-pink tie and shooting the cuffs on his purple-and-white pinstripe suit. Little Willie is straightening his pumpkin-colored, double-breasted suit and brushing the dust off his yellow spats. Large Jake is dressed in a pure white suit with a black shirt and white tie, and has on a white fedora with a thin black band. Miss Millie Dee Chantpie swirls her fringes and rearranges the ostrich feather in her cloche. I feel pretty much like a sparrow among peacocks.
“Yeah,” I says, looking over the town, “they’ll probably never notice we been here.”
* * *
They made their way into town and went into a store. They bought themselves some items, and went out onto the long, columned verandah of the place, and sat down on some nail kegs, resting their saws and ladders against the porch railings.
Cave Canem had a big five-cent RC Cola and a bag of Tom’s Nickel Peanuts. He took a long drink of the cola, tore the top off the celluloid bag, and poured the salted peanuts into the neck of the bottle. The liquid instantly turned to foam and overflowed the top, which Canem put into his mouth. When it settled down, he drank from the bottle and chewed on the peanuts that came up the neck.
Rooster Joe took off his red cap. He had a five-cent Moon Pie the size of a dinner plate and took bites off that.
Horbliss had a ten-cent can of King Oscar Sardines. The key attached to the bottom broke off at the wrong place. Rather than tearing his thumb up, he took out his pocketknife and cut the top of the can off and peeled the ragged edge back. He drank off the oil, smacking his lips, then took out the sardines between his thumb and the knife blade and ate them.
Luke had bought a two-foot length of sugarcane and was sucking on it, spitting out the fine slivers which came away in his mouth.
They ate in silence and watched the crowds go by, clumps of people breaking away and eddying into the stores and shops. At one end of town, farmers stopped their wagons and began selling the produce. From the other end, at the big open place where the courthouse would be if Brimmytown were the county seat, music started up.
They had rarely seen so many men in white shirts, even on Sunday, and women and kids in their finest clothes, even if they were only patched and faded coveralls, they were starched and clean.
Then a bunch of city flatlanders came by—the men all had on hats and bright suits and ties, and the woman—a goddess—was the first flapper they had ever seen—the eyes of the flatlanders were moving everywhere. Heads turned to watch them all along their route. They were moving toward the general mercantile, and they looked tired and dusty for all their fancy duds.
“Well, boys,” said Luke. “That were a right smart breakfast. I reckon us-all better be gettin’ on down towards the musical place and see what the otherns look like.”
They gathered up their saws and ladders and walked toward the sweetest sounds this side of Big Bone Lick.
* * *
“So,” says Little Willie to a citizen, “tell us where we can score a couple of motorman’s gloves?”
The man is looking at him like he has just stepped off one of the outermost colder planets. This is fitting, for the citizen looks to us vice versa.
“What my friend of limited vocabulary means,” says Chris the Shoemaker to the astounding and astounded individual, “is where might we purchase a mess of fried pork chops?”
The man keeps looking at us with his wide eyes the size of doorknobs.
“Eats?” I volunteers.
Nothing is happening.
Large Jake makes eating motions with his mitt and goozle.
Still nothing.
“Say, fellers,” says this other resident, “you won’t be gettin’ nothing useful out’n him. He’s one of the simpler folks hereabouts, what them Victorian painter fellers used to call ‘naturals.’ What you want’s Ma Gooser’s place, straight down this yere street.”
“Much obliged,” says Chris.
“It’s about time, too,” says Miss Millie Dee Chantpie. “I’m so hungry I could eat the ass off a pigeon through a park bench!”
I am still staring at the individual who has given us directions, who is knocking the ashes out of his corncob pipe against a rain barrel.
“Such a collection of spungs and feebs I personally have never seen,” says Chris the Shoemaker, who is all the time looking at the wire that comes down the hill into town.
“I must admit you are right,” says Little Willie. And indeed it seems every living thing for three counties is here—there are nags and wagons, preggo dolls with stair-step children born nine months and fifteen minutes apart, guys wearing only a hat and one blue garment, a couple of men with what’s left of Great War uniforms with the dago dazzlers still pinned to the chests—yes indeedy, a motley and hilarity-making group.
The streets are being full of wagons with melons and the lesser legumes and things which for a fact I know grow in the ground. The indigenous peoples are selling everything what moves. And from far away you can hear the beginnings of music.
“I spy,” says Chris the Shoemaker.
“Whazzat?” asks Little Willie.
“I spy the blacksmith shop, and I spy the general mercantile establishment to which the blower wire runs. Here is what we are doing. William and I will saunter over to the smithy and forge, where we will inquire of aid for the vehicle. Charlie Perro, you will go make the call which will tender our apologies as being late for the meet, and get some further instructions. Jacob, you will take the love of my life, Miss Millie, to this venerable Ma Gooser’s eatatorium where we will soon join you in a prodigious repast.”
The general mercantile is in the way of selling everything on god’s green earth, and the aroma is very mouth-watering—it is a mixture of apple candy and nag tack, coal oil and licorice and flour, roasted coffee and big burlap sacks of nothing in particular. There is ladies’ dresses and guy hats and weapons of all kinds.
There is one phone; it is on the back wall; it is the kind Alexander Graham Bell made himself.
“Good person,” I says to the man behind the counter, who is wearing specs and a vest and has a tape measure draped over his shoulder, “might I use your telephonic equipment to make a collect long-distance call?”
“Everthin’s long-distance from here,” he opines. “Collect, you say?”
“That is being correct.”
He goes to the wall and twists a crank and makes bell sounds. “Hello, Gertie. This is Spoon. How’s things in Grinder Switch? . . . You don’t say? Well, there’s a city feller here needs to make a co-llect call. Right. You fix him up.” He hands me the long earpiece, and puts me in the fishwife care of this Gertie, and parks himself nearby and begins to count some bright glittery objects.
I tells Gertie the number I want. There are these sounds like the towers are falling. “And what’s your name,” asks this Gertie.
I gives her the name of this known newspaper guy who hangs out at Chases’ and who writes about life in the Roaring Forties back in the Big City. The party on the other end will be wise that that is not who it is, but will know I know he knows.
I hear this voice and Gertie gives them my name and they say okay.
“Go ahead,” says Gertie.
“We are missing the meet,” I says.
“Bleaso!” says the voice. “Eetmay alledoffcay. Ammysays Iseway! Izzyoway and Oemay erehay.”
Itshay I am thinking to myself. To him I says:
“Elltay usoway atwhay otay ooday?”
“Ogay Omehay!”
He gets off the blower.
“I used to have a cousin that could talk Mex,” says Spoon at the counter. I thank him for the use of the phone. “Proud as a peach of it,” he says, wiping at it with a cloth.
“Well, you should be,” I tell him. Then I buy two cents worth of candy and put it in a couple of pockets, and then I ease on down this town’s Great White Way.
This Ma Gooser’s is some hopping joint. I don’t think the griddle here’s been allowed to cool off since the McKinley Administration. Large Jake and Miss Millie Dee Chantpie are already tucking in. The place is as busy as a chophouse on Chinese New Year.
There are these indistinguishable shapes on the platters.
A woman the size of Large Jake comes by with six full plates along each arm, headed towards a table of what looks like two oxdrivers in flannel shirts. These two oxdrivers are as alike as all get-out. The woman puts three plates in front of each guy and they fall into them mouth first.
The woman comes back. She has wild hair, and it does not look like she has breasts; it looks like she has a solid shelf across her chest under her work shirt. “Yeah?” she says, wiping sweat from her brow.
“I’d like a steak and some eggs,” I says, “over easy on the eggs, steak well-done, some juice on the side.”
“You’ll get the breakfast, if’n you get anything,” she says. “Same’s everybody else.” She follows my eyes back to the two giants at the next table. Large Jake can put away the groceries, but he is a piker next to these two. A couple of the plates in front of them are already shining clean and they are reaching for a pile of biscuits on the next table as they work on their third plates.
“Them’s the Famous Singin’ Eesup Twins, Bert and Mert,” says Ma Gooser. “If’n everybody could pile it in like them, I’d be a rich woman.” She turns to the kitchen.
“Hey, Jughead,” she yells, “where’s them six dozen biscuits?”
“Comin’, Ma Gooser!” yells a voice from back in the hell there.
“More blackstrap ’lasses over here, Ma!” yells a corncob from another table.
“Hold your water!” yells Ma. “I only got six hands!” She runs back towards the kitchen.
Chris the Shoemaker and Little Willie comes in and settles down.
“Well, we are set in some departments. The blacksmith is gathering up the tools of his trade and Little William will accompany him in his wagon to the site of the vehicular happenstance. I will swear to you, he picks up his anvil and puts it into his wagon, just like that. The thing must have dropped the wagon bed two foot. What is it they are feeding the locals around here?” He looks down at the plates in front of Large Jake and Miss Millie. “What is dat?”
“I got no idea, sweetie,” says Miss Millie, putting another forkful in, “but it sure is good!”
“And what’s the news from our friends across the ways?”
“Zex,” I says.
He looks at me. “You are telling me zex in this oomray full of oobrays?”
“No, Chris,” I says, “the word is zex.”
“Oh,” he says, “and for why?”
“Izzy and Moe,” I says.
“Izzy and Moe?! How did Izzy and Moe get wise to this deal?”
“How do Izzy and Moe get wise to anything,” I says, keeping my voice low and not moving my goozle. “Hell, if someone could get them to come over, this umray unningray biz would be a snap. If they can dress like women shipwrecks and get picked up by runners’ ships, they can get wind of a meet somewhere.”
“So what are our options being?” asks Chris the Shoemaker.
“That is why we have all these round-trip tickets,” I says.
He is quiet. Ma Gooser slaps down these plates in front of us, and coffee all round, and takes two more piles of biscuits over to the Famous Singing Eesup Twins.
“Well, that puts the damper on my portion of the Era of Coolidge Prosperity,” says Chris the Shoemaker. “I am beginning to think this decade is going to be a more problematical thing than first imagined. In fact, I am getting in one rotten mood.” He takes a drink of coffee. His beezer lights up. “Say, the flit in the Knowledge Box got nothing on this.” He drains the cup dry. He digs at his plate, then wolfs it all down. “Suddenly my mood is changing. Suddenlike, I am in a working mood.”
I drops my fork.
“Nix?” I asks nice, looking at him like I am a tired halibut.
“No, not no nix at all. It is of a sudden very clear why we have come to be in this place through these unlikely circumstances. I had just not realized it till now.”
Large Jake has finished his second plate. He pushes it away and looks at Chris the Shoemaker.
“Later,” says Chris. “Outside.”
Jake nods.
Of a sudden-like, I am not enjoying Ma Gooser’s groaning board as much as I should wish.
For when Chris is in a working mood, things happen.
* * *
They had drawn spot #24 down at the judging stand. Each contestant could sing three songs, and the Black Draught people had a big gong they could ring if anyone was too bad.
“I don’t know ’bout the ones from ’round here,” said Cave Canem, “but they won’t need that there gong for the people we know about. We came in third to some of ’em last year in Sweet Tater City.”
“Me neither,” said Rooster Joe. “The folks I seen can sure play and sing. Why even the Famous Eesup Twins, Bert and Mert, is here. You ever hear them do ‘Land Where No Cabins Fall’?”
“Nope,” said Luke, “but I have heard of ’em. It seems we’ll just have to outplay them all.”
They were under a tree pretty far away from the rest of the crowd, who were waiting for the contest to begin.
“Let’s rosin up, boys,” said Luke, taking his crosscut saw out of his tow sack.
Felix unfolded the ladder and climbed up. Cave pulled out a big willow bow strung with braided muletail hair.
Rooster Joe took out an eight-ounce ball peen hammer and sat back against a tree root.
Luke rosined up his fiddle bow.
“Okay, let’s give ’er about two pounds o’ press and bend.”
He nodded his head. They bowed, Felix pressing down on the big bucksaw handle from above, Rooster Joe striking his ripsaw, Luke pulling at the back of his crosscut.
The same note, three octaves apart, floated on the air.
“Well, that’s enough rehearsin’,” said Luke. “Now all we got to do is stay in this shady spot and wait till our turn.”
They put their instruments and ladder against the tree, and took naps.
When Chris the Shoemaker starts to working, usually someone ends up with cackle fruit on their mug.
When Little Willie and Chris first teamed up when they were oh so very young, they did all the usual grifts. They worked the cherry-colored cat and the old hydrophoby lay, and once or twice even pulled off the glim drop, which is a wonder since neither of them has a glass peeper. They quit the grift when it turns out that Little Willie is always off nugging when Chris needs him, or is piping some doll’s stems when he should be laying zex. So they went into various other forms of getting the mazuma.
The ramadoola Chris has come up with is a simple one. We are to get the lizzie going, or barring that are to Hooverize another one; then we cut the lines of communication; immobilize the town clown, glom the loot, and give them the old razoo.
“But Chris,” says I, “it is so simple and easy there must be something wrong with your brainstorm. And besides, it is what? Maybe a hundred simoleons in all? I have seen you lose that betting on which raindrop will run down a windowpane first.”
“We have been placed here to do this thing,” says Chris the Shoemaker. We are all standing on the porch of Ma Gooser’s. “We cut the phone,” says Chris, “no one can call out. Any other jalopies, Large Jake makes inoperable. That leaves horses, which even we can go faster than. We make the local yokel do a Brodie so there is no Cicero lightning or Illinois thunder. We are gone, and the news takes till next week to get over the ridge yonder.”
Miss Millie Dee Chantpie has one of her shoes off and is rubbing her well-turned foot. “My corns is killing me,” she says, “and Chris, I think this is the dumbest thing you have ever thought about!”
“I will note and file that,” says Chris. “Meantimes, that is the plan. Little William here will start a rumor that will make our presence acceptable before he goes off with the man with the thews of iron. We will only bleaso this caper should the flivver not be fixable or we cannot kipe another one. So it is written. So it shall be done.”
Ten minutes later, just before Little Willie leaves in the wagon, I hear two people talking close by, pointing to Miss Millie Dee Chantpie and swearing she is a famous chanteuse, and that Chris the Shoemaker is a talent scout from Okeh Records.
“The town clown,” says Chris to me in a while, “will be no problem. He is that gent you see over there sucking on the yamsicle, with the tin star pinned to his long johns with the Civil War cannon tucked in his belt.”
I nod.
“Charlie Perro,” he says to me, “now let us make like we are mesmerized by this screeching and hollering that is beginning.”
The contest is under way. It was like this carnival freak show had of a sudden gone into a production of No, No Nanette while you were trying to get a good peek at the India Rubber Woman.
I am not sure whether to be laughing or crying, so I just puts on the look a steer gets just after the hammer comes down, and pretends to watch. What I am really thinking, even I don’t know.
* * *
There had been sister harmony groups, and guitar and mandolin ensembles, three guys on one big harmonica, a couple of twelve-year-olds playing ocarinas and washboards, a woman on gutbucket broom bass, a handbell choir from a church, three one-man bands, and a guy who could tear newspapers to the tune of “Hold That Tiger!”
Every eight acts or so, Reverend Shapenote and the Mt. Sinai Choir got up and sang sacred harp music, singing the notes only, with no words because their church believed you went straight to Hell if you sang words to a hymn; you could only lift your voice in song.
Luke lay with his hat over his eyes through two more acts. It was well into the afternoon. People were getting hot and cranky all over the town.
As the next act started, Luke sat up. He looked toward the stage. Two giants in coveralls and flannel shirts got up. Even from this far away, their voices carried clear and loud, not strained: deep bass and baritone.
The words of “Eight More Miles To Home” and then “You Are My Sunshine” came back, and for their last song, they went into the old hymn, “Absalom, Absalom”:
Day-Vid The—He-Wept—and Wept
Saying—Oh My Son—Oh my son . . .
and a chill went up Luke’s back.
“That’s them,” said Rooster Joe, seeing Luke awake.
“Well,” said Luke Apuleus, pulling his hat back down over his eyes as the crowd went crazy, “them is the ones we really have to beat. Call me when they gets to the Cowbell Quintet so we can be moseying up there.”
I am being very relieved when Little Willie comes driving into town in the flivver; it is looking much the worse for wear but seems to be running fine. He parks it on Main Street at the far edge of the crowd and comes walking over to me and Chris the Shoemaker.
“How are you standing this?” he asks.
“Why do you not get up there, William,” asks Chris. “I know for a fact you warbled for the cheese up at the River Academy, before they let you out on the technical.”
“It was just to keep from driving an Irish buggy,” says Little Willie. “The Lizzie will go wherever you want it to. Tires patched. Gassed and lubered up. Say the syllable.”
Chris nods to Large Jake over at the edge of the crowd. Jake saunters back towards the only two trucks in town, besides the Cardui vehicle, which, being too gaudy even for us, Jake has already fixed while it is parked right in front of the stage, for Jake is a very clever fellow for someone with such big mitts.
“Charlie Perro,” says Chris, reaching in Miss Millie Dee Chantpie’s purse, “how’s about taking these nippers here,” handing me a pair of wire cutters, “and go see if that blower wire back of the general mercantile isn’t too long by about six feet when I give you the nod. Then you should come back and help us.” He also takes his howitzer out of Miss Millie’s bag.
“Little William,” he says, turning. “Take Miss Millie Dee Chantpie to the car and start it up. I shall go see what the Cardui Black Draught people are doing.”
So it was we sets out to pull the biggest caper in the history of Brimmytown.
“That’s them,” said Rooster Joe. “The cowbells afore us.”
“Well, boys,” said Luke, “it’s do-or-die time.”
They gathered up their saws and sacks and ladder, and started for the stage.
Miss Millie Dee Chantpie is in the car, looking cool as a cucumber. Little Willie is at one side of the crowd, standing out like a sore thumb; he has his hand under his jacket on The Old Crowd Pleaser.
Large Jake is back, shading three or four people from the hot afternoon sun. I am at the corner of the general mercantile, one eye on Chris the Shoemaker and one on the wire coming down the back of the store.
The prize moolah is in this big glass cracker jar on the table with the judges so everybody can see it. It is in greenbacks.
I am seeing Large Jake move up behind the John Law figure, who is sucking at a jug of corn liquor—you would not think the Prohib was the rule of the land here.
I am seeing these guys climb onto the stage, and I cannot believe my peepers, because they are pulling saws and ladders out of their backs. Are these carpenters or what? There is a guy in a straw hat, and one with a bristle mustache, and one with a redchecked shirt and red hat, and one with a cap with big floppy earflaps. One is climbing on a ladder. They are having tools everywhere. What the dingdong is going on?
And they begin to play, a corny song, but it is high and sweet, and then I am thinking of birds and rivers and running water and so forth. So I shakes myself, and keeps my glims on Chris the Shoemaker.
The guys with the saws are finishing their song, and people are going ga-ga over them.
And then I see that Chris is in position.
“Thank yew, thank yew,” said Luke. “We-all is the Sawing Boys and we are pleased as butter to be here. I got a cousin over to Cornfield County what has one uh them new cat-whisker crystal raddio devices, and you should hear the things that comes right over the air from it. Well, I learned a few of them, and me and the boys talked about them, and now we’ll do a couple for yew. Here we’re gonna do one by the Molokoi Hotel Royal Hawaiian Serenaders called ‘Ule Uhi Umekoi Hwa Hwa.’ Take it away, Sawing Boys!” He tapped his foot.
He bent his saw and bowed the first high, swelling notes, then Rooster Joe came down on the harmony rhythm on the ripsaw. Felix bent down on the ladder on the handle of the bucksaw, and Cave pulled the big willow bow and they were off into a fast, swinging song that was about lagoons and fish and food. People were jumping and yelling all over town, and Luke, whose voice was nothing special, started singing:
“Ume hoi uli koi hwa hwa
Wa haweaee omi oi lui lui . . .”
And the applause began before Rooster Joe finished alone with a dying struck high note that held for ten or fifteen seconds. People were yelling and screaming and the Cardui people didn’t know what to do with themselves.
“Thank yew, thank yew!” said Luke Apuleus, wiping his brow with his arm while holding his big straw hat in his hand. “Now, here’s another one I heerd. We hope you-all like it. It’s from the Abe Schwartz Orchestra and it’s called ‘Beym Rebn in Palestine.’ Take it away, Sawing Boys.”
They hit halting, fluttering notes, punctuated by Rooster Joe’s hammered ripsaw, and then the bucksaw went rolling behind it, Felix pumping up and down on the handle, Cave Canem bowing away. It sounded like flutes and violins and clarinets and mandolins. It sounded a thousand years old, but not like moonshine mountain music; it was from another time and another land.
Something is wrong, for Chris is standing very still, like he is already in the old oak kimono, and I can see he is not going to be giving me the High Sign.
I see that Little Willie, who never does anything on his own, is motioning to me and Large Jake to come over. So over I trot, and the music really washes over me. I know it in my bones, for it is the music of the old neighborhood where all of us but Miss Millie grew up.
I am coming up on Chris the Shoemaker and I see he has turned on the waterworks. He is transfixed, for here, one thousand miles from home he is being caught up in the mighty coils of memory and transfiguration.
I am hearing with his ears, and what the saws are making is not the Abe Schwartz Orchestra but Itzikel Kramtweiss of Philadelphia, or perhaps Naftalie Brandwein, who used to play bar mitzvahs and weddings with his back to the audience so rival clarinet players couldn’t see his hands and how he made those notes.
There is maybe ten thousand years behind that noise, and it is calling all the way across the Kentucky hills from the Land of Gaza.
And while they are still playing, we walk with Chris the Shoemaker back to the jalopy, and pile in around Miss Millie Dee Chantpie, who, when she sees Chris crying, begins herself, and I confess I, too, am a little blurry-eyed at the poignance of the moment.
And we pull out of Brimmytown, the saws still whining and screeching their jazzy ancient tune, and as it is fading and we are going up the hill, Chris the Shoemaker speaks for us all, and what he says is:
“God Damn. You cannot be going anywhere these days without you run into a bunch of half-assed klezmorim.”
For Arthur Hunnicutt and the late Sheldon Leonard.
Glossary to “The Sawing Boys”
Balonies—tires
Bargain Day—court time set aside for sentencing plea-bargain cases
Beezer—the face, sometimes especially the nose
Bleaso!—1. an interjection—Careful! You are being overheard! Some chump is wise to the deal! 2. verb—to forgo something, change plans, etc.
The Cherry-colored Cat—an old con game
Cicero Lightning and Illinois Thunder—the muzzle flashes from machine guns and the sound of hand grenades going off
Do a minute—thirty days
Dogs are barking—feet are hurting
Fall Togs—the suit you wear going into, and coming out of, jail
Flit—prison coffee, from its resemblance to the popular fly spray of the time
Flivver—a jalopy
Frammus—a thingamajig or doohickey
Geetas—money, of any kind or amount
Glim Drop—con game involving leaving a glass eye as security for an amount of money; at least one of the con men should have a glass eye . . .
Glims—eyes
Goozle—mouth
Hooverize—(pre-Depression)—Hoover had been Allied Food Commissioner during the Great War, and was responsible for people getting the most use out of whatever foods they had; the standard command from parents was “Hooverize that plate!”; possibly a secondary reference to vacuum cleaners of the time.
Irish buggy (also Irish surrey)—a wheelbarrow
Jalopy—a flivver
Lizzie—a flivver
Mazuma—money, of any kind or amount
Mook—face
Motorman’s gloves—any especially large cut of meat
Nugging—porking
The Old Hydrophoby Lay—con game involving pretending to be bitten by someone’s (possibly mad) dog
Piping Some Doll’s Stems—looking at some woman’s legs
Pull—gas and oil
Sammys—the Feds
Zex—Quiet (as in bleaso), cut it out, jiggies! Beat it!
Laying zex—keeping lookout
Rules of pig Latin: initial consonants are moved to the end of the word and -ay is added to the consonant; initial vowels are moved to the end of the word and -way is added to the vowel