Night Gallery 1 (5 page)

"Do it?" Chatterje repeated softly.

"Make a miracle," Jackie said, his voice shaking. Chatterje gnawed on his lower lip. "This moment?"

"You gotta make a miracle by morning," Jackie said. "So make a miracle on me. Fix it so's I can make people laugh!"

Chatterje put a forefinger to his mouth. "It shall be done . . . but—"

"But," Jackie shouted out loud, "there's a 'but,' huh? But what? What comes now? The payoff, huh? The small print? The strings?"

Chatterje winced. "Yefendi," he said, "please—" He held up his hands again. "Candor dictates certain prior admissions. Before a miracle is wrought—it is necessary that I leave no truth unspoken. This is a cardinal rule amongst the Order of Working Miracle Gurus." He took a deep breath. "In the hierarchy of my art . . . how shall I say . . . I am something less than proficient. That is to say I am given to small imperfections in the miracles wrought."

Jackie blinked at him. The dream still hovered but was beginning to fade. "What kind of imperfections?" he asked breathlessly.

"Insignificant," Chatterje said with a shrug. He held up forefinger to thumb. "Small. Itsy-bitsy. But—it is necessary that I acquaint you with the fact that in the circle of my peers . . . amongst Working Gurus, I am known as a . . . a dum-dum. I am obliged to tell you of certain miracles performed by me where small ironies intruded, and the results were . . . unfortunate."

Jackie grabbed him again by the lapels of his silk vest. Two buttons popped off. "I don't care," Jackie said. "I want the miracle."

Chatterje gulped. "Indeed. And you shall have it. But first— my faith dictates this candor. There was a wrestling promoter in Vero Beach, Florida, who wanted to take an ocean trip. That was
his
dream. I booked him passage on the
Andrea Doria
."

"I wanna make people laugh," Jackde said.

"I have in mind," Chatterje said, as if Jackie weren't in the room, "another ill-starred situation. Having to do with a retired schoolteacher lady in Spokane, Washington. A Civil War buff. An admirer of the Great Emancipator. Wanted only one thing. To be in Lincoin's Cabinet." He closed his eyes. "Wound up in an asylum, claiming she was a sock with 'G.A.R.' embroidered along her side and had to be restrained from sticking darning needles into her head."

"I just wanna make people laugh," Jackie repeated, like a record needle caught in a groove. "Laugh—understand?"

"I had a transaction," Chatterje said, "with an elderly man in Los Angeles. Seventy-one years old. He had been forced to give up the act of love because of a cessation of male powers. We transacted for one glorious moment in which he might once again rise to the occasion." Chatterje looked off mournfully. "It occurred at a large Kiwanis banquet in front of a mixed audience of a thousand people while he was making a speech on 'Communists Cause Depression.' He actually lifted the speaker's table and spilled all the desserts. And as to finding a partner worthy of his ardor—that was quite impossible. Most of the women had fainted."

"I don't give a dam," Jackie said. "I wanna make people laugh!"

"But am I getting through to you, Mr. Slater? There are miracles . . . and there are risks."

The dream still hovered. "I'll take the risk," Jackie said. "Just go ahead and do it!"

Chatterje looked up toward the ceiling, closed his eyes, whispered something under his breath, then smiled.

"It is done," he said.

"What's done?" Jackie asked.

The bartender stood at the door, then suddenly smiled and then laughed. "What's done?" he said. "Did you get that? What's done?" He began to laugh, and stood there, laughing even louder.

Jackie walked over to him and gaped. "What did I say?" he asked.

The bartender screamed with laughter. "What did he say! Oh, Jesus—you knock me out. I swear—you knock me out!" He bent over double, catching his breath, as the laughter rolled out of him.

Jackie turned and looked across at Charterie. "I think you've done it," he said, as the dream floated down to embrace him. "Guru! You've done it! You've made the miracle."

The bartender sent out another spasm of laughter.

Chatterje smiled, swallowed, and tiptoed across the room past the shrieking bartender. He opened the front door, then turned and looked over his shoulder. "All things are possible."

He walked out into the streets, but paused long enough to look through the window at the convulsed bartender and Jackie standing there, bemused and bewildered. Chatterje closed his eyes, then slowly opened them and looked skyward. "Oh, Great Guru," he said reverently to the black canopy above him. "I have wrought another miracle. Please . . . in your infinite compassion . . . don't make this as piss-poor as all the others!"

On the following Tuesday he filled in for a barker on a roadshow outside of Syracuse and barely escaped a mob of concessionaires who were of a mind to beat the hell out of him. His pitch had drawn ninety percent of the audience away from everything else on the Midway. And while three hundred people screamed their laughter at him, the rest of the show died. Nobody looked at the freaks, played the games of chance, checked out the dancing girls, or bought the cotton candy. They stood there, elbow to rib cage, convulsing at the little fat man on the stand whose every gesture sent them into explosive gales of uncontrollable hilarity.

The carny owner gave him a week's pay, which he drank up by the next night. But he also gave him the name of a nightclub owner in New Rochelle. Jackie played that roadhouse beginning on a Friday night. By the following Wednesday, it was SRO in a club whose audience up to that point couldn't have supplied a ten-man minyan on the night of the Armistice.

It kept going.

He played the Copacabana in New York for a week's booking and a three-week holdover. Then he went on the
Ed Sullivan Show
and broke all precedents by being asked to come back on three weeks in a row.

He filled in for Johnny Carson on the
Tonight Show
. And NBC offered him twenty bills a week to do his own show.

His humor remained the same: Ancient. And he was constant: Fat, ungainly, ugly. But people laughed.

A year passed. He was playing the Dunes in Vegas when Jules Kettleman returned and walked into his dressing room between shows, looking like a runaway mongrel a step ahead of a dog catcher.

"Hey, Jackie," Jules said sorrowfully as he entered the sumptuous dressing room, "I've been out front. You killed 'em. Honest to God, Jackie, you killed 'em: I hope . . . I hope you understood why I had to cop out."

It was then he realized that Jackie was barely listening to him. He sat at his dressing table, staring at the letters and telegrams. Then the fat man looked up. "I always kill 'em, Julie. I fracture 'em. I lay 'em out."

"You're fantastic," Jules whispered. He took a step over and put his hands on Jackie's sloping shoulders. "I . . . I was proud of you, Jackie."

"What about the steel-guitar band?"

"Played a Fair date in Columbus, Ohio. They got booed off the stage." Jules closed his eyes. "I didn't have no choice in that, Jackie. I hadda take on somebody else—or starve."

Jackie reached up and patted Jules's fingers. "Forget it," Jackie said. "I understand." Then he folded his hands in front of him on the dressing table. "What I don't understand," he said softly, "is why I'm not getting any kicks."

"Whaddya mean, Jackie?"

"I mean . . . I'm boffo. No matter what I do . . . what I say . . . I open my mouth and everybody goes ape. They fall down. I tell a gag that's got spider webs on it. I don't mean just old, Julie I mean like a collector's item. And the people roll on the floor."

"That's great, Jackie."

Jackie turned to him. "It
should
be," he said tremulously. "It should be great. But it isn't, Jules. It isn't at all. It's—" He struggled for a word. "Dull. That's what the hell it is. It's dull."

Jules took a step back and looked around the paneled room. "Isn't that what you want?" he asked. "To make people laugh?"

Jackie nodded.

"Isn't that what you're doing'?"

Again Jackie nodded.

"I seen the
Variety
review when you did the
Carol Burnett Show
. It said you broke up the joint."

Again Jackie turned to him. "I broke up the joint. You wanna know how I broke up the joint? I walked out in front of the camera—and I took my hat off. That's it. I took my hat off. They screamed. They fell down. Then . . . at the end of the show, I put my hat back on. You shoulda heard 'em. I haven't had laughs like that since they used to push me off the dock."

Jackie looked at his reflection in the mirror.

"Julie—" he said softly.

"Yeah, Jackie?"

"I'm bored. I know it don't make any sense—but I'm bored. It used to be I had to work for it. Fight for it. Kill myself for it. And now . . ." He closed his eyes. "Now it's dullsville."

Jules stared at him. "Whaddya want, Jackie? I mean—you alla time wanted to make people laugh. Well, that's what's happened. What more do you want? A comic wants to get laughs."

Jackie got to his feet. Two hundred and eighty pounds of blubber, suet, accordion flesh. "That don't do it, Julie," he said positively. "Laughs aren't enough.
Anybody
can get laughs. A fat little Yo-Yo kid gets pushed off a dock. So, big deal—they laugh."

He paced back and forth across the room. "There's gotta be something more. A guy can't go through life just tickling people. A guy's gotta be more than just a clown." He paused by the table and grabbed for a fistful of letters and telegrams. "Looka these! Telegrams. Letters. Cables. Deals. Offers. Guarantees. But to do
what?
" He waved them in the air. "To be a rum-dum, baggy pants, horse's ass of a nitwit—well, I'll tell you something, Julie—"

He stopped in midair, staring down at a telegram in his hand. The other papers fluttered to the floor.

"What is it, Jackie?" Jules asked.

Jackie handed him the telegram. "Read that," he said.

Jules took the telegram and read it, then looked up, his intense little face mildly questioning. "Who's Daniel Merrill?" he asked.

Jackie ripped the telegram from his hand. "Jules," he said, his voice shaking, "you've gotta get outta the tent show. You gotta forget the carnival. You wanna handle donickers and rag-bag operators all your life?" He held up the telegram in his fist. "This is legit! This is Broadway!" He looked down at the telegram and read aloud. " 'Would like to discuss with you the possibility of your playing a straight dramatic role in play I have under option' " Then he slowly lowered the telegram and stared out at nothing across the room. "A passport to greatness— and there it sits on my dressing table. Julie—you dig?
A straight dramatic role!
Me! Jackie Slater! An actor!"

Jules scratched his jaw. "Jackie," he said somberly, "you never done no acting. You was never a straight man. You're a comic."

Jackie looked at him almost pityingly over the middle roll of a triple chin. "
Was
a comic," he said softly. "
Was
a clown.
Was
a joker.
Was
a funny man.
Was
a dolt, clod, dunce, klutz! But no morel Understand? No more! Jack Slater." He paused for a moment, looked up at the ceiling. "Make that John Slater."

He moved to a position in front of the mirror and looked at himself with a raised eyebrow. "Jonathon Slater."

Another dream was building. He wasn't in the dressing room. He was in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. There were three thousand people in the place—and not a sound.

"For the best actor," Jackie said in somber tones, "in a leading role—the envelope, please. And the winner is—"

Fireworks. Sky rockets. Bursting lights across the sky. The dream. The new dream. There goes Jackie Slater, Ma. Oh, God, what a man. What an incredible actor. What a brilliant talent.

The readings were held in a drafty, semidark Fifty-eighth Street theater.

Five rows back from the proscenium sat the director, the producer, and a couple of the show's backers.

On the stage a few actors lolled around, reading scripts. One or two of them looked at Jackie, who stood in their midst waiting expectantly.

The director leaned forward in his seat from the audience. "Page one of Act Two, Mr. Slater—from the top. Just keep in mind that you're a circus clown. You've just discovered that your wife has left you. You've just read her note, and at this moment there isn't a single thing on earth you want to live for."

"Right," Jackie said breathlessly, "right—I got it."

"Miss Wilson," the director called to a girl standing a few feet away on the stage. "Play the girl acrobat, if you will."

The pretty mini-skirted girl walked over to stand next to Jackie, carrying her script. She looked up toward the director, who nodded.

"What's the matter, Bozo?" the girl read from the script. "You look odd."

Jackie cleared his throat and unbuttoned the middle button of a shrieking houndstooth sport coat. "Sure," he announced in stentorian tones, "I'm odd. I'm a clown. A clown is supposed to look odd. But a funny thing happened to me on the way over to the circus. My life just got dissolved."

He closed his eyes and put a fist to his forehead and let out a short, strangled sob.

One of the actors chuckled. Another actor blew out his laughter after holding it back for a moment. One of the backers in the theater seats let out a loud, cackling giggle.

Jackie looked down at his script again. "A clown isn't supposed to cry," he said, putting a wavering quality to his voice. "A clown is supposed to laugh. Ha-ha-ha."

The director in the audience began to smile. Merrill, alongside, laughed softly. And after a moment, everyone in the theater was laughing.

Jackie had to shout to make his next line heard. "But the smiles are hand painted." He made a gesture of applying paint to his mouth.

That did it.

No more reading.

No more anything.

Only laughter. A thunderous, rolling, shrieking laughter.