In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [101]
The movies shown on Bank Night unreeled before uncomprehending, glazed eyes, their pupils contracted to pinpoints glowing in the darkness, their breath coming in the telltale short pants of the near-hysteric. Seventeen hundred dollars meant the difference between actual Life and gnawing, grubbing, penny-scrabbling, bare Existence. On Bank Night there were no friends, only solitary sparks of human protoplasm—alone—plotting, scheming, hoping against hope that no one else would win.
“… is Number Two-Two-Nine-Five!”
Silence. A stunned, watchful, waiting, fearful silence. Will the $1700 be claimed? Is Two-Two-Nine-Five here? A single thought in each Depression-ridden mind. Judy Canova, Jack Oakie, and even Clark Gable drowned in a dark, swirling sea of anxiety.
“Is the holder of that card in the house?”
Silence.
“I repeat, Number Two-Two-Nine-Five. Is the holder of that card in the house? Once.”
An usher on the right of the stage, in a blue spotlight, raised a padded mallet and struck a gong.
BOOOONNGGG
The clangorous boom rolled out over the multitude like some cataclysmic death knell, echoing and re-echoing from Coke machine to gilded cherubim, high above the arched stage and down into the depths of the hearer’s subconscious, a sound that must be something like the one that will be heard on Judgment Day before the great trumpets blow and Gabriel rises to summon the Faithful from their graves.
“Once.”
A dramatic pause.
“Twice.”
BOING!
Another dramatic pause.
“TWO-TWO-NINE-FIVE. Three times and out.”
BOING!
A deep collective sigh of relief, blessed, numbed, tremulous relief rose from the darkness. The audience settled back into their seats. Already plans were under way in fevered minds on how to grub together next Tuesday’s admission.
Somewhere, someplace, in some dark mortgaged hut, Number Two-Two-Nine-Five, who had decided to stay home this one night in order to save the forty cents’ price, tossed uneasily in his sleep, unknowing, as the great ship of Fortune sailed by him, unseen, unheard, into the darkness forever. The bedsprings creaked as he shifted in his sleep. He slept on.
Mr. Doppler played on the vast organ of human emotions like a master musician, twittering on the Acquisitiveness stop as one possessed of an evil genius.
Wednesday night was Amateur Night. Between features a long file of banjo players, mouth-organ virtuosi, clog dancers, Bing Crosby imitators, and other Talented out-of-work steelworkers would engage in mortal artistic combat for another list of Grand Awards, including a free, all-expenses paid two-day trip to Chicago, a full thirty miles away, ten vocal lessons at the Bluebird Music School—Accordion Our Specialty—and fifty dollars top prize, as determined by the applause of the audience. At least that’s what the poster in the lobby called it—applause. Applause is not exactly the word that described the pandemonium, acrimony, catcalls, distain, obscene noises of enormous variety and general commotion that accompanied each act as claque battled claque. It set the earth to jiggling so that the vibrations alone could be felt over a radius of thirty miles.
The Orpheum on Amateur Night gave many of us who were fortunate enough to be in attendance at these cabalistic rituals a glimpse of Life that left us with a vague understanding of that thing, that stuff of which riots and great historical movements are made.
One night stands out in particular. A bulky bricklayer clumped onstage. In the pit the piano player began a flower intro to “Neapolitan Nights.” The bricklayer pursed his lips wetly and began to whistle in a high, thin, bird-like trill, his hairy chest perspiring, cheeks popping, eyes bulging. An instant wave of pseudo-feminine whoops rolled out from the audience and crashed like a riptide of derision around the Hod Carrier. He stopped in mid-trill.