Deadeye Dick Page 0,40
teeth, uppers and lowers.
Felix now refers to his first marriage as a “shotgun wedding.” Her relatives and friends felt it was his duty to marry her, whether he loved her or not—and Felix says that he felt that way, too. Usually, when people talk about shotgun weddings, they have pregnancy in mind. A man has impregnated a woman, so he has to marry her.
Felix didn’t get his first wife pregnant before he married her, but he put her through a windshield. “I might as well have got her pregnant,” he said the other night. “Putting her through a windshield came to very much the same sort of thing.”
• • •
Very early on at Schramm’s, long before I ran off to New York City to see my play produced, a drunk came in at about two A.M., maybe, and he squinted at the sign on the prescription counter which said, RUDOLPH WALTZ, R.PH.
He evidently knew something of our family’s distinguished history, although I don’t think we had ever met before. And he was drunk enough to say to me, “Are you the one who shot the woman, or are you the one who put the woman through the windshield?”
He wanted a chocolate malted milkshake, I remember. Schramm’s hadn’t had a soda fountain for at least five years. He wanted one anyway. “You just give me a little milk and ice cream and chocolate syrup, and I’ll make it myself,” he said. And then he fell down.
• • •
He didn’t call me “Deadeye Dick.” Very rarely did anybody do that to my face. But my nickname was said often enough behind my back in all sorts of crowds—in stores, at movies, in eating places. Or maybe somebody would shout it at me from a passing car. It was a thing for drunks or young people to do. No mature and respectable person ever called me “Deadeye Dick.”
But one unsettling aspect of the all-night job at Schramm’s, one I hadn’t anticipated, was the telephone there. Hardly a night passed that some young person, feeling wonderfully daring and witty, no doubt, would telephone to ask me if I was Deadeye Dick.
I always was. I always will be.
• • •
There was plenty of time for reading on the job, and there were any number of magazines on the racks. And most of the business I did at night wasn’t at all complicated, didn’t have anything to do with pharmacy. Mainly, I sold cigarettes and, surprisingly, watches and the most expensive perfumes. The watches and perfumes were presents, of course, for birthdays and anniversaries which were remembered only after every other store in town had closed.
So I was reading Writer’s Digest one night, and I came across an announcement of the Caldwell Foundation’s contest for playwrights. The next thing I knew, I was back in the stock room, pecking away on the rattletrap Corona portable typewriter we used for making labels. I was writing a new draft of Katmandu.
And I won first prize.
• • •
Sauerbraten à la Rudolph Waltz, R.Ph.: Mix in a saucepan a cup of wine vinegar, half a cup of white wine, half a cup of cider vinegar, two sliced onions, two sliced carrots, a rib of celery, chopped, two bay leaves, six whole allspice, crushed, two cloves, two tablespoons of crushed peppercorns, and a tablespoon of salt. Bring just to a boil.
Pour it hot over a four-pound rump roast, rolled and tied, in a deep bowl. Turn the meat around and around in the mixture. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for three days. Turn the meat in the mixture several times a day.
Take the meat out of the marinade and dry it. Sear it on all sides in eight tablespoons of beef drippings in a braising pan. When it is nicely browned, take it out of the pan and pour out the drippings. Put the meat back in the pan, heat up the marinade, and pour it over the meat. Simmer for about three hours. Pour off the liquid, strain, and remove the excess fat. Keep the meat hot in the braising pan.
Melt three tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, and blend in three tablespoons of flour and a tablespoon of sugar. Gradually pour in the marinade, and stir until you have a uniform sauce. Add one cup of crushed ginger-snaps, and simmer the sauce for about six minutes.
That’s it!
• • •
For three days I did not tell Mother and Father that I had won the contest. It takes that long to