With A blissful smile Mr. Rewbarb tripped the three switches. The noise was deafening. It swelled up like a mighty river of sound and poured through the room in a hideous symphony of noise, noise and more noise. The horse had started lurching rhythmically and Mr. Rewbarb was forced to hang on desperately.
“Got enough?” he managed to yell over the frightful din.
The radio was emitting tortured blasts and squawks that were unintelligible for the most part. One jumbled sentence did seep through however to Mr. Rewbarb’s befuddled brain.
“T-U-rn i-T o-FF!”
Mr. Rewbarb cut the switches happily. The sounds faded into oblivion.
“What do you want?” moaned the radio.
“I jush want you to keep quiet,” Mr. Rewbarb said sleepily. “You’ve caused me too much trouble. I want you to keep out of my life from now on. If you don’t I’m afraid I’ll jush have to give you the works.”
“Supposing I say no,” the radio said surlily.
Mr. Rewbarb smiled foggily.
“This,” he said. He threw all three switches again and hung on frantically as the horse began its electric gyrations.
The radio squawked wildly and hoarsely, but Mr. Rewbarb realized with drunken wisdom that the time for mercy had passed. A lesson was needed and this was the time to administer it.
He locked his legs under the horse’s belly and found himself enjoying the ride. He waved the egg beater merrily around his head as he lurched back and forth and, with his other hand, he made a great fuss with the vacuum cleaner.
“Hi-ho Silver!” he cried joyously. This was fun, he was discovering excitedly. “Awaaaaaay!” he hiccoughed dramatically.
Suddenly the front door of the living room opened and Mr. Glick, Mrs. Rewbarb and a white-haired doctor swarmed into the room. There was a startled, dismayed gasp, as they saw the wildly bizarre scene confronting them.
Mr. Rewbarb became aware that spectators had arrived.
“Jush in time for the second show,” he bawled cheerfully. He doffed the egg beater in a gallant bow. Bending was a bad mistake. Everything fused together crazily for an instant and then he pitched forward from the horse, and landed with a pleasant thud on the top of his head.
“Good night,” he muttered.
Mrs. Rewbarb knelt tearfully beside him.
“It’s all my fault,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”
Mr. Glick turned off the electric equipment. No one noticed the relieved gasp from the radio.
“What do you suppose the trouble is, Doctor?” Mr. Glick asked anxiously.
“It is really somewhat simple,” the Doctor said with professional modesty. “I recognized the symptoms when he visited me yesterday. The man is suffering from frustration. You see how he mounts a horse and pretends to be a conquering hero when he is left alone. That is because he is not given sufficient opportunity to express his personality. The cure is simple.
“From now on he must not be hampered in any way. He must be the dominant one, particularly in the home. Consult him on all points, no matter how trivial. Accept his judgment, his opinion on everything. Let him have his own way completely. There must be no bickering, no nagging, no harping. He is and must remain undisputed master. That is the cure. You must all be careful to obey it.”
Mr. Glick nodded miserably.
“I’ll have to give him a better job now. I can’t leave him where he is.” Mrs. Rewbarb sighed peacefully.
“I always wanted a masterful husband, and now I’ve got one.”
Mr. Rewbarb suddenly opened one eye. Then very cautiously he opened the other. He still felt fine, but he was getting awfully sleepy. There was one thing he had to know however. “Jennifer,” he said.
“Yes, darling?”
“Turn on the radio.”
“Y — yes darling.”
A few seconds later Mr. Rewbarb heard the click of a switch. Then a voice broke in, “Thish ish the Standard Broadcasting Company.”
Mr. Rewbarb sat up on one elbow. “Whash that?”
The voice from the radio said petulantly, but carefully, “I said this is the Standard Broadcasting Company.”
“Oh that’s fine,” Mr. Rewbarb said. Then he fell asleep.
Howie Lemp Meets an Enchantress
First published in Fantastic Adventures, February 1942.
The meteoric rise of Howie Lemp to the head of Colossal Films was one of those things that happen too frequently in Hollywood to cause a great deal of excitement.
The City of Celluloid has come to accept Boy Wonders in the same spirit they would any natural phenomenon. That is, as something inexplicable, but inevitable. Usually the human eccentricities that thrive in the eccentric atmosphere of Hollywood are speedily eclipsed and forgotten.
For that reason it is a remarkable fact that the feminine star Howie Lemp brought to Hollywood with him will never be forgotten. It would be easier to forget an earthquake than to forget the amazing girl who precipitated the chain of events that finally led Howie Lemp to Bagdad-on-the-Pacific.
Looking back, the first link of the chain was forged, so to speak, when Howie Lemp was jerking sodas for Rupp’s Drug Store in Chicago. It was during the morning rush when Howie looked up and suddenly noticed Mazie Slatter for the first time. He had seen her before, for Mazie was a waitress at Rupp’s, but it wasn’t until this particular morning that he realized that her hair was the exact shade of the deviled egg he was spreading dexterously between two slices of toasted white.
He stopped spreading the deviled egg and swallowed the sudden lump in his throat.
“Mazie,” he said awkwardly, “would — would you like to go to a show tonight?”
Mazie tossed two lumps of ice cream into a tall glass before looking up at him. By ordinary standards Mazie would not be considered beautiful. To be blunt, it is doubtful that Mazie would have been considered beautiful by any standards. Her skin was sallow and her hair was a streaky blonde and her figure might remind you of an overstuffed pillow that had been tied together at the middle.
But to Howie she was suddenly The Girl.
He looked anxiously at her.
“Well?” he said weakly. “I thought you might like to.”
Mazie’s eyes traveled unenthusiastically over Howie’s lanky frame, past his out-sized adam’s apple and on to his horn-rimmed spectacles, watery blue eyes, receding forehead and thin brown hair.
Then she laughed sarcastically.
“Why should I go to a show with you?” she asked, “when I can take in a side-show by just looking at you.”
She stuck a cherry on top of the soda she was concocting and waddled off, leaving Howie staring after her, crimson-cheeked and miserable.
After a few seconds he returned to the deviled egg sandwich but his heart was not in his work. For suddenly and completely he had fallen in love with Mazie Slatter. Even her sarcastic rejoinder was only additional evidence of her wit and cleverness.
He finished the sandwich and started another mechanically.
“I can’t let myself go to pieces,” he thought grimly.
For the rest of the morning he filled orders heroically, and no one could have told from his sad, melancholy expression that the pangs of unrequited love were gnawing away at his soul.
For Howie Lemp always looked sad and melancholy.
At lunch time he got out of the store quickly and crossed to the park where he invariably drank his quart of milk and ate his two hard boiled eggs in the forty-five minutes allotted him by the proprietor of Rupp’s Drug Store.
He ate an egg in solemn silence and thought wistfully of Mazie Slatter. With each passing second it seemed his devotion and love increased. He ate his second egg and polished off a pint of milk and then dropped his head into his long bony hands.