Deadeye Dick: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0385334176
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Published: 1982-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

18

KATMANDU, my contribution to Western civilization, has been performed three times before paying audiences—once at the Theatre de Lys in New York City in 1960, in the same month that Father died, and then twice on the stage of Fairchild High School in Midland City three years later. The female lead of the Midland City production was, incidentally, none other than Celia Hildreth Hoover, to whom Father had tried to present an apple so long ago.

In the first act of the play, which was set in Midland City, Celia, who in real life would eventually swallow Drno, played the ghost of John Fortune’s wife. In the second act, she was a mysterious Oriental woman he meets at the Taj Mahal. She offers to show him the way to Shangri-La, and leads the way over mountains and through jungle on the path to Katmandu. And then, after Fortune speaks his message for the people back in Midland City and dies, she doesn’t say anything, but she reveals herself as the ghost of his wife again.

It isn’t an easy part, and Celia had never done any acting at all before. She was only the wife of a Pontiac dealer, but I think she was actually at least as good as the professional actress who did it in New York City. She was certainly more beautiful. She hadn’t yet been made all raddled and addled and snaggletoothed and haggard by amphetamine.

I forget the name of the actress in New York City now. I think maybe she dropped out of acting after Katmandu.

• • •

Speaking of amphetamine: Father’s old friend Hitler was evidently one of the first people to experience its benefits. I read recently that his personal doctor kept him bright eyed and bushy tailed right up to the end with bigger and bigger doses of vitamins and amphetamine.

• • •

I went straight from pharmacy school to a job as all-night man at Schramm’s Drugstore, six days a week from midnight to dawn. I still lived with my parents, but now I was able to make a substantial contribution to their support and my own. It was a dangerous job, since Schramm’s, the only business establishment of any sort that was open all night, was a sort of lighthouse for lunatics and outlaws. My predecessor, old Malcolm Hyatt, who went to high school with my father, was killed by a robber from out of town. The robber swung off the Shepherdstown Turnpike, and closed old Hyatt’s peephole with a sawed-off shotgun, and then swung back onto the Interstate again.

He was apprehended at the Indiana border, and tried and convicted, and sentenced to die over at Shepherdstown. They closed his peephole with electricity. In one microsecond he was hearing and seeing all sorts of things. In the next microsecond he was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness again.

Served him right.

• • •

The drugstore was owned by a man named Horton in Cincinnati, incidentally. There weren’t any Schramms left in town. There used to be dozens of Schramms in town.

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