Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (491 page)

Doris. Joseph, I asked you to have some respect for the missing.
[To Jerry.]
You see there’s a fella missing here and it’s his wife that needs the letter.

Fish
[jealously].
Who’s
your
letter from?

Doris
[reading it].
It’s from my last fiance. It says he didn’t mean to drink the perfume, but the label was off the bottle and he thought it was bay rum.

Fish. My God! Will you forgive him?

Jerry. Don’t worry, my boy. Bay rum or perfume, he killed her love with the first swallow.
[He goes toward the door.]
Good-by. I’ll try to find that letter for the lady here that needs it so bad.

Doris. Good-by — and thanks.

Fish. Let me open the door.

He opens the door. Jerry goes out. Doris and Fish stare at each other.

Doris. Isn’t he wonderful?

Fish. He’s a peach of a fella, but —  —

Doris. I know what you’re going to say; that you’ve seen him somewhere before.

Fish. I’m trying to think where. Maybe he’s been in the movies.

Doris. I think it’s that he looks like some fella I was engaged to once.

Fish. He’s
some
mailman.

Doris. The nicest one I ever saw. Isn’t he for you?

Fish. By far. Say, Charlie Chaplin’s down at the Bijou.

Doris. I don’t like him. I think he’s vulgar. Let’s go and see if there’s anything artistic.

Fish makes an indistinguishable frightened noise.

Doris. What’s the matter?

Fish. I’ve swallowed my gum.

Doris. It ought to teach you a moral.

They go out. Charlotte comes  in drearily. She glances first eagerly, then listlessly at the letters and throws them aside.

Clin-ng! The door-bell. She starts violently, runs to open it. It is that astounding product of our constitution, Mr. Snooks.

Charlotte
[in horror].
Oh, what do you want?

Snooks
[affably]. 
Good morning, lady. Is your husband around?

Charlotte. No. What have you done with him, you beast!

Snooks
[surprised].
Say, what’s biting you, lady?

Charlotte. My husband was all right until you came here with that poison 1 What have you done with him? Where is he? What did you give him to drink? Tell me, or I’ll scream for the police! Tell me! Tell me!

Snooks. Lady, I ain’t seen your husband.

Charlotte. You lie! You know my husband has run away.

Snooks
[interested].
Say now, has he? I had a hunch he would, sooner or later.

Charlotte. You made him. You told him to, that night, after I went out of the room! You suggested it to him. He’d never have thought of it.

Snooks. Lady, you got me wrong.

Charlotte. Then where is he? If I’m wrong, find him.

Snooks. [after
a short consideration].
Have you tried the morgue?

Charlotte. Oh-h-h! Don’t say that word!

Snooks. Oh, he ain’t in the morgue. Probably some Jane’s got hold of him. She’ll send him home when she gets all his dough.

Charlotte. He isn’t a brute like you. He’s been kidnapped.

Snooks. Maybe he’s joined the Marine Corpse… Howsoever, if he ain’t here I guess I’ll be movin’ on.

Charlotte. What do you want of him now? Do you want to sell him some more wood alcohol?

Snooks. Lady, I don’t handle no wood alcohol. But I found a way of getting the grain alcohol out of iodine an’ practically eliminatin’ the poison. Just leaves a faint brownish tinge.

Charlotte. Go away.

Snooks. All right. I’ll beat it.

So he beats it.

Charlotte’s getting desperate from stick encounters. With gathering nervousness she wanders about the room, almost collapsing when she comes upon one of Jerry’s coats hanging behind a door. Scarcely aware of what she’s doing, she puts on the coat and buttons it close, as if imagining that Jerry is holding her to him in the brief and half-forgotten season of their honeymoon.

Outside a storm is come up. It has grown dark suddenly, and a faint drum of thunder lengthens into a cataract of doom. A louder rolling now and a great snake of lightning in the sky. Charlotte, lonesome and frightened, hurriedly closes the windows. Then, in sudden panic, she runs to the ‘phone.

Charlotte. Summit 3253… Hello, this is me. This is Charlotte… . Is Doris there? Do you know where she is?…  Well, if she comes in tell her to run over. Everything’s getting dark and I’m frightened… Yes,
maybe
somebody’ll come in, but
nobody
goes out in a storm like this. Even the policeman on the corner has gotten under a tree… Well, I’ll be all right. I’m just lonesome, I guess, and scared… Good-by.

She rings off and stands silently by the table. The storm reaches its height. Simultaneously with a terrific burst of thunder that sets the windows rattling the front door blows open suddenly, letting in a heavy gust of rain.

Charlotte is on the verge of hysterics.

Then there is a whistle outside
—
the bright, mellow whistle of the postman. She springs up, clasping her hands together. Jerry comes in, covered with a rain cape dripping water. The hood of the cape Partially conceals his face.

Jerry
[cheerfully].
Well, it certainly is a rotten day.

Charlotte
[starting at the voice].
It’s awful.

Jerry. But I heard there was a lady here that was expecting a letter, and I had one that I thought’d do, so no rain or anything could keep me from delivering it.

Charlotte [
greedily].
A letter for me? Let me have it.

He hands it to her and she tears it open.

It’s from Jerry!

She reads it quickly.

Jerry. Is it what you wanted?

Charlotte
[aloud, but to herself].
It doesn’t say where he is. It just says that he’s well and comfortable. And that he’s doing what he wants to do and what he’s got to do. And he says that doing his work makes him happy.
{With suspicion.] I
wonder if he’s in some dive… . If I wrote him a letter do you think you could find him with it, Mr. Postman?

Jerry. Yes, I can find him.

Charlotte. I want to tell him that if he’ll come home I won’t nag him any more, that I won’t try to change him, and that I won’t fuss at him for being poor.

Jerry. I’ll tell him that.

Charlotte
[again talking to herself].
I was trying to nag him
into
something, I guess. Before we were married I always thought there must be some sort of mysterious brave things he did when he wasn’t with me. I thought that maybe sometimes he’d sneak away to hunt bears. But when he’d sneak away it was just to roll dice for cigars down at the corner. It wasn’t forests — it was just — toothpicks.

Jerry. Suppose that he was nothing but a postman now — like me.

Charlotte. I’ll be proud of him if he’s a postman, because I know he always wanted to be one. He’d be the best postman in the world and there’s something kind of exciting about being the best. It wasn’t so much that I wanted him to be rich, I guess, but I wanted him to do something he wouldn’t always be beat at. I was sort of glad he got drunk that night. It was about the first exciting thing he ever did.

Jerry. You never would of told him that.

Charlotte
[stiffening].
I should say I wouldn’t of.

Jerry rises.

Jerry. I’ll try to get him here at six o’clock.

Charlotte. I’ll be waiting.
[Quickly.]
Tell him to stop by a store and get some rubbers.

Jerry. I’ll tell him. Good-by.

Charlotte. Good-by.

Jerry goes out into the rain, Charlotte sits down and bows her head upon the table.

Again there are steps on the porch. This time it is Dada, who comes in, closing a dripping umbrella.

Dada
[as one who has passed through a great crisis]
. I borrowed an umbrella from a man at the library.

Charlotte
[in a muffled voice].
Jerry’s coming back.

Dada. Is he? A man at the library was kind enough to lend me his umbrella.
[He goes over to the bookcase and begins an unsuccessful search for the Scriptures. Plaintively].
Some one has hidden my Bible.

Charlotte. In the second shelf.

He finds it. As he pulls it from its place, several other books come with it and tumble to the floor. After a glance at Charlotte, he kicks them under the bookcase. Then, with, his Bible under his arm, he starts for the stairs, but is attracted by something bright on the first stair, and attempts, unsuccessfully, to pick it up.

Dada. Hello, here’s a nail that looks like a ten-cent piece.

He goes upstairs. When he is half-way up, there isa sound as if he had slipped back a notch, then silence.

Charlotte
[raising her head].
Are you all right, Dada?

No answer. Dada is heard to resume his climb.

Oh, if I could only sleep till six o’clock!

The storm has blown away, and the sun is out and streaming in the window, washing the ragged carpet with light. From the street there comes once again, faint now and far away, the mellow note of the postman’s whistle.

Charlotte
[lifting her arms rapturously].
The best postman in the world!

CURTAIN

“SEND ME IN, COACH”

This short play was published in
Esquire
magazine, November 1936.

“SEND ME IN, COACH”

The scene is a recreation cottage of a summer camp, crossed paddles over the fireplace, shelf of cups, large plain table and several plain chairs and a blackboard. On the board is being written a word in large sprawling letters by a small, undersized boy in a bathing suit. The word is “Wedoodle.”

As the curtain rises a rather stout, overgrown boy of thirteen, also in a bathing suit, comes into the room and says “Hey,” causing the other boy to seize the eraser hastily and obliterate his mysterious polysyllable.

CASSIUS: (the stout boy) What does “Wedoodle” mean?

BUGS: (visibly embarrassed) Wedoodle? That’s just a camp my sister goes to.

CASSIUS: Must be a swell camp. Where’s the Old Man?

BUGS: I was just writing Wedoodle because there was some chalk here and I’m supposed to write her a letter because I got a letter this morning which said if I don’t write her a letter I wouldn’t get my quarter’s allowance.

CASSIUS: The Old Man not showed up?

BUGS: I don’t know. Say, I know my part — do you know yours?

CASSIUS: I know some of it but I’ll bet we don’t have any play.

BUGS: Why?

CASSIUS: Because Bill’s father was just tried in court and the guys in my tent say that Bill will probably be fired from camp.

Bugs: What do you mean?

CASSIUS: I got half of it; somebody else got the other half. (He finds a piece of newspaper from his pocket and reads.) “The acquittal of Cyrus K. Watchman” — that’s Bill’s father’s name — “had had — had had — had had, had had — “

BUGS: What did he have?

CASSIUS (a stupid boy, slow on the uptake) Well, he had this thing, see?

BUGS: Well, if his father had this thing happen to him he’ll get fired because the Old Man isn’t in any good humor now and I guess if any of us did anything that wasn’t all right he’d fire us right away. I tell you I’m glad I made up my tent right this morning.

Henry Grady comes in.

HENRY: Where’s the Old Man?