The Brass Bed

“Yes, I do,” Fran said. “He was charming and polite.”

“As for me,” Jolly said, “I am determined to attend the next service out of courtesy to Brother Shark. Will anyone attend the next service with me?”

“Not I,” Sid said. “I consider it sacrilegious to have services in the back room of a tavern, and I don’t intend to go.”

“The trouble with you, Sid,” Jolly said, “is that you have no imagination and no spirit of cooperation whatever.”

“Nevertheless,” Sid said, “I don’t intend to go.”

Jolly shrugged and turned to me. “How about you, Felix? Will you attend the next service with me?”

“I’m willing to go,” I said, “but I confess that it is more out of curiosity than out of courtesy to Brother Shark.”

“As a scientific teacher of mathematics,” Harvey said, “I am personally of the opinion that Brother Shark is an unmitigated rascal whose only interest is in the till.”

“Well, never mind, Jolly,” Fran said. “Felix and Harvey, as you know, are confirmed heathens and cannot be expected to behave in a Christian manner.”

“I suppose,” Sid said to Fran, “that you count yourself among the Christians?”

“Certainly,” Fran said. “I am not so religious as Jolly, who will not even tolerate a vulgar parody of a sacred hymn, but I am nevertheless a true Christian in my own way.”

Sid said a dirty word and drained his glass. The strong drinks of Prince Sam on top of the medium drinks of Sylvester were making him exceptionally independent. They also seemed to be making him rather sleepy. His eyes looked foggy and the lids hung down over them about half way. He sat slumped in his chair with his arms stretched out straight in front of him and the empty glass in his hand and his eyes focused on the glass.

“I suggest that we all have another drink,” Harvey said.

Sid roused himself and gathered the glasses and carried them off to the bar. Because of his previous contacts with Prince Sam, he had assumed the right to act as waiter and would not relinquish the job to anyone else. After a while he came back with the third round, and we started working on it, and we finished it in good time and somehow got started on another, and about that time someone started playing the piano in the tabernacle again, and it was time for the service that Jolly and I were going to.

We decided that it would be a good idea to take a fresh drink to service with us, since it would probably be quite a while before we would have an opportunity to buy another, so we stopped at the bar and got the drinks and carried them down the sawdust trail into the tabernacle and sat down on a hard bench. There was a small pulpit standing near the partition, and Brother Shark was standing behind the pulpit, and about six or eight people came to the service besides Jolly and me, but Jolly was the only woman. Brother Shark was very tall and thin and had enormous ears and a conspicuous and active thyroid cartilage, and at first I thought it was only because I was drunk and inclined to see things in a grandiose way, but Jolly said afterward that she was of the same impression, and I am prepared to swear that Brother Shark was in fact seven feet tall if an inch.

This was really rather alarming under the circumstances because he kept weaving back and forth and was prevented from falling only by the presence of the pulpit, and it was pretty obvious all in all that he had taken advantage of the intermission between services to bend his elbow several times. It was my opinion, in fact, that he was as drunk as a lord, and I recall that I expressed this opinion in good faith and was called a heathen by Jolly, who expressed the belief that Brother Shark was merely exhausted from his labors, and I wish I could recall the sermon, what was said and all, but the truth is, all I can remember clearly is finishing my drink immediately after the invocation and putting a dollar in the collection plate when it came past just before the benediction. Jolly told me that I shook hands with Brother Shark at the end and introduced myself as a scout for the Harlem Globe Trotters, but I consider this unlikely, though I can’t actually deny it.

We went back into the tavern and found a couple of empty stools at the bar and spent some time on them, and it was actually quite a bit of time, I think, which encompassed the consumption of several of Prince Sam’s good strong drinks, and then we went on back to the table and found Fran examining Harvey’s cheek to see if the whiskers were yet discernible and Sid sitting slumped over with his head on his arms on the tabletop. Every once in a while, he would shudder and make a strange bubbling sound, something like a death rattle, and it was pretty terrible to hear but did not seem to be in the least disconcerting to Fran and Harvey.

“What’s the matter with old Sid?” I said.

“He sounds as if he might be dying,” Jolly said.

Fran looked up at us and patted Sid’s head without shifting the direction of her gaze.

“Nothing of the sort. He has simply passed out, and I am quite relieved about it, to tell the truth, because now it is certain that I accused him unjustly of being an alcoholic.”