Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (338 page)

“You teach ‘em to use brassknuckles?”

“Yes mamm, if necessary. Look here, you take a girl and she goes into some café where she’s got no business to go. Well then, her escort he gets a little too much to drink an’ he goes to sleep an’ then some other fella comes up and says ‘Hello, sweet mamma’ or whatever one of those mashers says up here. What does she do? She can’t scream, on account of no real lady’ll scream nowadays--no--She just reaches down in her pocket and slips her fingers into a pair of Powell’s defensive brassknuckles, débutante’s size, executes what I call the Society Hook, and
Wham!
that big fella’s on his way to the cellar.”

“Well--what--what’s the guitar for?” whispered the awed Amanthis. “Do they have to knock somebody over with the guitar?”

“No,
mamm!
” exclaimed Jim in horror. “No mamm. In my course no lady would be taught to raise a guitar against anybody. I teach ‘em to play. Shucks! you ought to hear ‘em. Why, when I’ve given ‘em two lessons you’d think some of ‘em was colored.”

“And the dice?”

“Dice? I’m related to a dice. My grandfather was a dice. I teach ‘em how to make those dice perform. I protect pocketbook as well as person.”

“Did you--Have you got any pupils?”

“Mamm I got all the really nice, rich people in the place. What I told you ain’t all. I teach lots of things. I teach ‘em the jellyroll--and the Mississippi Sunrise. Why, there was one girl she came to me and said she wanted to learn to snap her fingers. I mean
really
snap ‘em--like they do. She said she never could snap her fingers since she was little. I gave her two lessons and now
Wham!
Her daddy says he’s goin’ to leave home.”

“When do you have it?” demanded the weak and shaken Amanthis.

“Three times a week. We’re goin’ there right now.”

“And where do I fit in?”

“Well, you’ll just be one of the pupils. I got it fixed up that you come from very high-tone people down in New Jersey. I didn’t tell ‘em your daddy was a judge--I told ‘em he was the man that had the patent on lump sugar.”

She gasped.

“So all you got to do,” he went on, “is to pretend you never saw no barber.”

They were now at the south end of the village and Amanthis saw a row of cars parked in front of a two-story building. The cars were all low, long, rakish and of a brilliant hue. They were the sort of car that is manufactured to solve the millionaire’s problem on his son’s eighteenth birthday.

Then Amanthis was ascending a narrow stairs to the second story. Here, painted on a door from which came the sounds of music and laughter were the words:

JAMES POWELL; J. M.

“Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar”

Mon.--Wed.--Fri.

Hours 3-5 P.M.

“Now if you’ll just step this way--” said the Principal, pushing open the door.

Amanthis found herself in a long, bright room, populated with girls and men of about her own age. The scene presented itself to her at first as a sort of animated afternoon tea but after a moment she began to see, here and there, a motive and a pattern to the proceedings.

The students were scattered into groups, sitting, kneeling, standing, but all rapaciously intent on the subjects which engrossed them. From six young ladies gathered in a ring around some indistinguishable objects came a medley of cries and exclamations--plaintive, pleading, supplicating, exhorting, imploring and lamenting--their voices serving as tenor to an undertone of mysterious clatters.

Next to this group, four young men were surrounding an adolescent black, who proved to be none other than Mr. Powell’s late body-servant. The young men were roaring at Hugo apparently unrelated phrases, expressing a wide gamut of emotion. Now their voices rose to a sort of clamor, now they spoke softly and gently, with mellow implication. Every little while Hugo would answer them with words of approbation, correction or disapproval.

“What are they doing?” whispered Amanthis to Jim.

“That there’s a course in southern accent. Lot of young men up here want to learn southern accent--so we teach it--Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Eastern Shore, Ole Virginian. Some of ‘em even want straight nigger--for song purposes.”

They walked around among the groups. Some girls with metal knuckles were furiously insulting two punching bags on each of which was painted the leering, winking face of a “masher.” A mixed group, led by a banjo tom-tom, were rolling harmonic syllables from their guitars. There were couples dancing flat-footed in the corner to a phonograph record made by Rastus Muldoon’s Savannah Band; there were couples stalking a slow Chicago with a Memphis Sideswoop solemnly around the room.

“Are there any rules?” asked Amanthis.

Jim considered.

“Well,” he answered finally, “they can’t smoke unless they’re over sixteen, and the boys have got to shoot square dice and I don’t let ‘em bring liquor into the Academy.”

“I see.”

“And now, Miss Powell, if you’re ready I’ll ask you to take off your hat and go over and join Miss Genevieve Harlan at that punching bag in the corner.” He raised his voice. “Hugo,” he called, “there’s a new student here. Equip her with a pair of Powell’s Defensive Brassknuckles--débutante size.”

I regret to say that I never saw Jim Powell’s famous Jazz School in action nor followed his personally conducted tours into the mysteries of Dice, Brassknuckles and Guitar. So I can give you only such details as were later reported to me by one of his admiring pupils. During all the discussion of it afterwards no one ever denied that it was an enormous success, and no pupil ever regretted having received its degree--Bachelor of Jazz.

The parents innocently assumed that it was a sort of musical and dancing academy, but its real curriculum was transmitted from Santa Barbara to Biddeford Pool by that underground associated press which links up the so-called younger generation. Invitations to visit Southampton were at a premium--and Southampton generally is almost as dull for young people as Newport.

The Academy branched out with a small but well-groomed Jazz Orchestra.

“If I could keep it dark,” Jim confided to Amanthis, “I’d have up Rastus Muldoon’s Band from Savannah. That’s the band I’ve always wanted to lead.”

He was making money. His charges were not exorbitant--as a rule his pupils were not particularly flush--but he moved from his boarding-house to the Casino Hotel where he took a suite and had Hugo serve him his breakfast in bed.

The establishing of Amanthis as a member of Southampton’s younger set was easier than he had expected. Within a week she was known to everyone in the school by her first name. Miss Genevieve Harlan took such a fancy to her that she was invited to a sub-deb dance at the Harlan house--and evidently acquitted herself with tact, for thereafter she was invited to almost every such entertainment in Southampton.

Jim saw less of her than he would have liked. Not that her manner toward him changed--she walked with him often in the mornings, she was always willing to listen to his plans--but after she was taken up by the fashionable her evenings seemed to be monopolized. Several times Jim arrived at her boarding-house to find her out of breath, as if she had just come in at a run, presumably from some festivity in which he had no share.

So as the summer waned he found that one thing was lacking to complete the triumph of his enterprise. Despite the hospitality shown to Amanthis, the doors of Southampton were closed to him. Polite to, or rather, fascinated by him as his pupils were from three to five, after that hour they moved in another world.

His was the position of a golf professional who, though he may fraternize, and even command, on the links, loses his privileges with the sun-down. He may look in the club window but he cannot dance. And, likewise, it was not given to Jim to see his teachings put into effect. He could hear the gossip of the morning after--that was all.

But while the golf professional, being English, holds himself proudly below his patrons, Jim Powell, who “came from a right good family down there--pore though,” lay awake many nights in his hotel bed and heard the music drifting into his window from the Katzbys’ house or the Beach Club, and turned over restlessly and wondered what was the matter. In the early days of his success he had bought himself a dress-suit, thinking that he would soon have a chance to wear it--but it still lay untouched in the box in which it had come from the tailor’s.

Perhaps, he thought, there was some real gap which separated him from the rest. It worried him. One boy in particular, Martin Van Vleck, son of Van Vleck the ash-can King, made him conscious of the gap. Van Vleck was twenty-one, a tutoring-school product who still hoped to enter Yale. Several times Jim had heard him make remarks not intended for Jim’s ear--once in regard to the suit with multiple buttons, again in reference to Jim’s long, pointed shoes. Jim had passed these over.

He knew that Van Vleck was attending the school chiefly to monopolize the time of little Martha Katzby, who was just sixteen and too young to have attention of a boy of twenty-one--especially the attention of Van Vleck, who was so spiritually exhausted by his educational failures that he drew on the rather exhaustible innocence of sixteen.

It was late in September, two days before the Harlan dance which was to be the last and biggest of the season for this younger crowd. Jim, as usual, was not invited. He had hoped that he would be. The two young Harlans, Ronald and Genevieve, had been his first patrons when he arrived at Southampton--and it was Genevieve who had taken such a fancy to Amanthis. To have been at their dance--the most magnificent dance of all--would have crowned and justified the success of the waning summer.

His class, gathering for the afternoon, was loudly anticipating the next day’s revel with no more thought of him than if he had been the family butler. Hugo, standing beside Jim, chuckled suddenly and remarked:

“Look yonder that man Van Vleck. He paralyzed. He been havin’ powerful lotta corn this evenin’.”

Jim turned and stared at Van Vleck, who had linked arms with little Martha Katzby and was saying something to her in a low voice. Jim saw her try to draw away.

He put his whistle to his mouth and blew it.

“All right,” he cried, “Le’s go! Group one tossin’ the drumstick, high an’ zig-zag, group two, test your mouth organs for the Riverfront Shuffle. Promise ‘em sugar! Flatfoots this way! Orchestra--let’s have the Florida Drag-Out played as a dirge.”

There was an unaccustomed sharpness in his voice and the exercises began with a mutter of facetious protest.

With his smoldering grievance directing itself toward Van Vleck, Jim was walking here and there among the groups when Hugo tapped him suddenly on the arm. He looked around. Two participants had withdrawn from the mouth organ institute--one of them was Van Vleck and he was giving a drink out of his flask to fifteen-year-old Ronald Harlan.

Jim strode across the room. Van Vleck turned defiantly as he came up.

“All right,” said Jim, trembling with anger, “you know the rules. You get out!”

The music died slowly away and there was a sudden drifting over in the direction of the trouble. Somebody snickered. An atmosphere of anticipation formed instantly. Despite the fact that they all liked Jim their sympathies were divided--Van Vleck was one of them.

“Get out!” repeated Jim, more quietly.

“Are you talking to me?” inquired Van Vleck coldly.

“Yes.”

“Then you better say ‘sir.’“

“I wouldn’t say ‘sir’ to anybody that’d give a little boy whisky! You get out!”

“Look here!” said Van Vleck furiously. “You’ve butted in once too much. I’ve known Ronald since he was two years old. Ask
him
if he wants
you
to tell him what he can do!”

Ronald Harlan, his dignity offended, grew several years older and looked haughtily at Jim.

“Mind your own business!” he said defiantly, albeit a little guiltily.

“Hear that?” demanded Van Vleck. “My God, can’t you see you’re just a servant? Ronald here’d no more think of asking you to his party than he would his bootlegger.”

“Youbettergetout!” cried Jim incoherently.

Van Vleck did not move. Reaching out suddenly, Jim caught his wrist and jerking it behind his back forced his arm upward until Van Vleck bent forward in agony. Jim leaned and picked the flask from the floor with his free hand. Then he signed Hugo to open the hall-door, uttered an abrupt “You
step!
” and marched his helpless captive out into the hall where he literally
threw
him downstairs, head over heels bumping from wall to banister, and hurled his flask after him.

Then he reentered his academy, closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it.

“It--it happens to be a rule that nobody drinks while in this Academy.” He paused, looking from face to face, finding there sympathy, awe, disapproval, conflicting emotions. They stirred uneasily. He caught Amanthis’s eye, fancied he saw a faint nod of encouragement and, with almost an effort, went on:

“I just
had
to throw that fella out an’ you-all know it.” Then he concluded with a transparent affectation of dismissing an unimportant matter--”All right, let’s go! Orchestra--!”

But no one felt exactly like going on. The spontaneity of the proceedings had been violently disturbed. Someone made a run or two on the sliding guitar and several of the girls began whamming at the leer on the punching bags, but Ronald Harlan, followed by two other boys, got their hats and went silently out the door.

Jim and Hugo moved among the groups as usual until a certain measure of routine activity was restored but the enthusiasm was unrecapturable and Jim, shaken and discouraged, considered discontinuing school for the day. But he dared not. If they went home in this mood they might not come back. The whole thing depended on a mood. He must recreate it, he thought frantically--now, at once!

But try as he might, there was little response. He himself was not happy--he could communicate no gaiety to them. They watched his efforts listlessly and, he thought, a little contemptuously.