Further Adventures (26 page)

The high privilege of this! “Sure. What have you got in there Cookie?”

She took out a wristwatch on a brown leather strap. Most of the stitches were split nor it did not tick. “It’s my antique.”

“What time does it say on there?”

“Not a time.”

“It’s exactly right twice a day then.”

Her other prize article was a shiny Silver Dollar which she rubbed on her shirt before she displayed it to me. “It’s lucky.”

“How lucky has it been so far?”

“Lucky.” She shrugged.

“Tell me something lucky that happened with it.”

She sat up & remembered. “The fossil we found.”

I hugged that little girl. “You’re my lucky charm.” She dug it out of her pocket. I was very proud our fossil rated so high next to her lucky coin. Then a sour idea rose in my mind. “Your papa gave it to you?” She nodded yes. “Just this one?”

Dolores kept on nodding. “So I always have a dollar.”

“From now on you’ll always have a fossil too.”

My true role in her Life started from this Episode. As far as Dolores went I was there for Loco Parentis and as far as I went I took this Responsibility very serious. I do not regret it if it looks like I forced things this way & took over from her legal Guardians so what look at the unbiased Evidence. How all of the memories I brought to her Mind are happy ones (besides that Catastrophe I could not help). I will dare & say further also I added something beautiful in the World i.e. I added a Child to the population with enough Hope & education & good memories inside her they balanced out the rotten.

“You always want somethings different. You run around and catch somethings then you want things different.”

“Who?”

“You.” Amelia pointed a dripping spoon at my chest. “Mens.”

“That’s your opinion. Are you including pygmies and our friends the Eskimos?”

“All mens. Sure. The same way.”

“Boloney. Half a billion men in China. Half a billion in India. Over a hundred million Americans? In the entire masculine population not a single specimen…”

She stopped stirring the refrieds & concentrated on the name & face of a man who said what he meant & meant what he said start to finish. Then she gave up and went back to cooking.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m not like those other men.” She buzzed her lips & belittled my Remark.

“Don’t feel bad Ray. Is normal hm?”

“I am not a normal man!”

“You run around this way sure. You chase somethings like a normal man. You catch it then you see this other things over there so you run and catch him too. I think men don’t want to get satisfy ever. Afraid you stop. You stop then you can no get this other things all the other mens can go catch.” Then she said to the frying pan, “Waste of love. Waste of womens.”

I worked out on a piece of paper by pure Logic all of our possible Choices which I narrowed down to a Grand Total:

By PLAN A we stay in Mexico but not in Tres Osos. Amelia & Dolores can change their Identity etc. but no matter where I take them we are only going to be a jump or so ahead of John Newberry.

BY PLAN B we go back to the U.S.A. together & ruin him with his tender Love Letters. Let him try & drag me into it if he summons my Testimony for the Prosecution of Amelia I have a trick to stop him—

“Amelia I think it’s a good idea if you marry me.”

She stood back very Astonished. “You crazy Ray. Crazyman.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. Crazy.” She clicked her tongue at this Idiot’s proposal.

“Listen to me. We can settle this business. Get it under our control if we do this.”

“
You
go fight him.” She said this very sharp & pushed the Letters across the kitchen counter.

“What do you think? I can just go back home to my apartment after all this? I can sit comfy cozy on my sofa and I don’t even know where you are? Say I get back to Pecan St. with these…”—I stabbed at the
pile of yellow paper—“only I can’t get in touch with our mutual friend so he doesn’t know I’ve got them. He still thinks
you’ve
got them. So while I’m trying to get Newberry to answer his phone some anonymous meathead with a sledgehammer & the morality of a trash compactor is banging on your front door to finish the job Nilo started. In my opinion Dolores has been in and out of enough bedroom windows already.”

Amelia jutted her chin but this was only her instinct defying my argument. “He want to put me in jail. Finish. Blame everythings on me. No…”

“He has to prove it in court. In
court
Amelia. You know what that means? He can’t condemn you in public. He’s involved. And you can prove it. With the letters. With Dolores. With me. I’m a witness for the Defense get it?” She was not 100% sure on this point. “Court is perfect for us. We can dominate him. It’s where we can bring this to the wonderful ending everybody deserves. Listen. I’m a United States citizen. This what I’m telling you is in the Constitution. Nobody can make a husband testify against his wife. If you marry me it’s your protection for the rest of your life.”

“Is crazy,” she said but started to doubt her own words.

I planted the scrap of paper with my Plans under Amelia’s nose. This is it:

“I’m not going to disappear.” Whatever we have to do we will do together I told Amelia. Furthermore I admit what caught me was the Chain Reaction of Emotions which I misthought was pure Logic on my part. I ask you what is Logic compared to the Emotions of a man when he sees his chance to prove how he is loyal & strong how he will be glad to Fight & earn a woman’s Love how he found her out of the millions of millions. This Glory with the physical side for a crown. “Marry me and everything is going to change.”

“For more trouble in my life hm?”

“No. The end of your trouble.”

Furthermore I am a bully I learn. Amelia shied away from me like it hurt her ears to hear my Proposal & she bowed her head under the disbelief how Events could swerve by such a sharp turn.

A relief arrived in the shape of Dolores who appeared by my side with a toy puppet flopped over her arm & the strings all tangled. “Will you help me fix this?”

I leaned over her & said, “Only if you marry me.”

“I can’t. You’re too old. I’m only 8.”

“I forgot for a minute.”

I do not look at
Variety
anymore I can not work up the interest. Ever since I departed from that glamorous field the appeal disappeared for me. I learn via the Grapevine (Sal my barber) about modern acts who rise very high in the Public eye but by his description (a girl who sings in her Brassiere! They pay her millions of $!) this Talent would not make it on the Airwaves when I was in the business. If there is such a thing as progress in the Entertainment trade by me a person singing in her underwear is not it. Shirley Temple rising all the way to the height of Ambassador to Ghana that is what I call Progress. Besides this kind of exception the realm of Stage & Screen is a ungrateful place and
Variety
is the Seal Of Approval.

I discovered right off the bat I can get a better picture of what is go
ing on our world form the pages of the
Mason Examiner
. Here is another difference between
Variety
and the
Mason Examiner
—the
Examiner
does not lure the Hopeless or tempt the Defenseless to leave home & lose his personality. By the corny way
Variety
entered my Life I should have known it had to end up in tears!

Take a look at me:

I am sitting forlorn on the street corner. Why am I forlorn? Because I just failed my entire Freshman year of college. Why am I sitting? Because I am loaded so heavy under Guilt & Shame I do not have the strength to go home & face my Family i.e. my Mama & Papa their brokenhearted faces. So I sit on the corner dangling my feet in the gutter which is a place I think I have to get used to. A puff of warm Breeze pushes the ripe smell of the mud & moss & turds in my face—and it sweeps open a page of Variety against my legs. The next gust of Breeze wraps that flapping sheet around me I can not get rid of it! It sticks like fly-paper & while I am trying to wrestle it off a Classified Ad circled in red jumps out at me—

Etc. la-dee-doo-dah so instead of taking the bus home I take it all the way to New York City right to the door of Mr. Howard Silverstein. Who pictures me a Plan for my Future Happiness. Then I live to discover this:

At the end of the Broadcast Day when you are not required further what you are is Mr. Nobody you are the Little Man Who Is Not There (he was not there again today and so on) you are a scraped-out Shell of who you think you are when you walk into a room for instance or in a public street. If Dolores ever got her legs wrapped in a page of
Daily Variety
the
same I would be a decent stepfather & by no way a party who encourages her to go into Show Business. Even if they gave me a Guarantee she was going to grow up & be the United States Ambassador to Venus.

Reincarnation is not for Human Beings. You do not get buried in the dirt & after get a fresh-baked Life in the body of another. At 73 Years I learn this sad Reality. Ergo it is not a Mystery why I am sitting under my kitchen table watching reruns from my Life. To wit—people do not get reincarnated no it is Events. They pass & get reincarnated while you are alive on the Earth they are the designs of your living days so they come back. Because of the kind of person you are i.e. your personal Complications nor I did not get inoculated when I was a baby against Event Reincarnation. These things happened to me on account of the kind of Human Being I was. Twice.

So this Story I figure out in my Final Minutes! Here it is the reason NOW I UNDERSTAND how come I am telling you of the Events of my Radio days side by side of the Events concerning Amelia & Dolores & John Newberry etc. they are the same. If I thought of this angle 3½ weeks ago in that Blackout maybe I would save myself this heartache & trouble! No I am not vigilant like Peter Tremayne nor I do not possess the fighting powers of The Green Ray which is a Lesson this bonehead had to learn over again—The Final Episode of The Adventures Of The Green Ray also what happened in the studio & upstairs was my preview of the Final Episode of The Adventures Of Ray Green. Amen.

Every twist & surprise ambush Betrayal & fight to the death. Because people hide certain Facts to save themselves Trouble but it squeezes in by the cracks it rises up to return because Trouble can not wait quiet forever inside a Human Act. I did not think of Annie LaSalle
and David Arcash when I contemplated Amelia Vasquez and John Newberry but they treated me practically identical. So to say the hand of Lamont Carruthers wrote both Stories! No escape for The Green Ray on March 5th 1946 the same for Ray Green on October 11th 1989.

Lest I am sounding off like a foghorn on my favorite topic here I present you with a bona fide quote by “Artie” McGovern a old master on the study of Physical Fitness. “AMERICA IS THE MOST CONSTIPATED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD”—! His work entitled The Secret Of Keeping Fit is my Holy Bible on the subject today the same way it was since 1936. “Artie” McGovern espouses further on “The Great American Plague” of constipation he digs down & gets inside the reasons behind it. Reason Number 1 is the American habit of hurry. “WE SIMPLY DO NOT TAKE TIME AT A REGULAR HOUR OF THE DAY FOR A COMPLETE EVACUATION WHICH IS THE
SINE QUA NON
OF GOOD HEALTH”—! Except this is not the end of the story.

I respect his teachings but I must proclaim “Artie” McGovern was a prisoner of his times. Going back to the date of question his expert advice prompted millions of well-behaving livers abdomens arms & legs in all walks of Life therefore it behooves us we should sit up & pay him attention when he speaks out on constipation but I say he never knew of the sinister party responsible for America being constipated from Coast to Coast who I unmask now none other than the Revered Industrialist—P. K. SPILLER.

I judge him on the variety of phlegm-causing foods he foisted on the U.S. population which he also foisted very generous on the banquet table of the farewell party he laid on for us. On the night of the Final Episode that putty-jowled stiff-necked corset-wearing pillar of Society got away with blue murder—he was playing God with my entire purpose in life also shooting craps with my bowels—
and he wanted me to enjoy a pleasant evening too
.

Try & tell me everybody has a Conscience try & tell me P. K. Spiller did! Bring up the fact he manufactured Spiller’s High Energy Buckwheat Breakfast Flakes
with their gentle laxative effect
. From his good conscience he did this? Go whistle Dixie! From his experts advising him “Look P.K. your snacks clog people up like cement so you better put something on the market that loosens them up again!” Better you should whistle Heigh-Ho Heigh-Ho because to P. K. Spiller all it is is Good Business. So he sleeps innocent as a baby.

In the Dark Ages those people knew what they were doing when they built a Cathedral so huge & towering with stained glass lining the walls they knew of the Message such a sight brings forth. How God is so big & a person is so small. How something beautiful is in Power. In my opinion a Cathedral is a Sky Scraper of those times. Maybe the Dark Ages are not over yet because I got the same message from the Executive Dining Room in the Liberty Building.