Jolly by John Weston

Author:John Weston
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1966-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Jolly cut across the plaza on the courthouse square. Several families of early tourists who didn’t know of the good picnic spots were eating hot dogs and drinking pop and sleeping, their children flitting over the fresh lawns like bits of bright paper in the wind.

He stopped beside the goldfish pond, black-railed more for the safety of the fish than the children. From the fountain, green and slime-coated, the water splashed sporadically, keeping the fish in a state of constant agitation. Jolly watched for Old Whitey, a giant by goldfish standards and bleached white from age and poor sunlight, to come to the edge of the pond.

“There you are, you old scavenger,” Jolly laughed. “And I haven’t got anything for you.” He tore a match from its packet and struck it. When it blazed he dropped it directly upon the fish, who seemed to hang suspended on an invisible wire just beneath the surface. The fish didn’t flinch as the match hissed onto the water. “Can’t fool you, can I,” Jolly said.

He left the pond and stopped to gaze at the bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt presumably charging San Juan Hill, sword drawn, his horse’s hooves pawing the air, its neck arched as if it had just been struck in the nose by a musket ball, or whatever the enemy fired at San Juan Hill. The city fathers were once at the point of removing the statue at the insistence of a tourist, something of an equestrian expert, if not a sculptor, but they hesitated at the last moment for two reasons; one, what do you do with a four-ton statue when you have removed it? and two, about forty flesh-and-blood horsemen rode in from the country in the style best reminiscent of a time a hundred years previous when city fathers were allowed to survive at all only by luck. Given time, the tourists’ children would pull the whole thing down around their heads anyway.

Jolly passed along the final lane of the plaza, the one that received the most generous share of the afternoon sun. On the benches in two’s and three’s sat all the old men of the town who gathered there (from where, no one knew exactly) each Sunday to watch the town. They hushed their talk as Jolly walked by and only tapped their canes, impatient for him to be gone. He pulled out his cigarette pack and after choosing one let the package drop, as if by accident, onto the sidewalk between the two rows of benches.

“They’ll fight like hell over those,” he chuckled. He stepped from the curb to cross over to Doogle’s.

“Did you want something?” the straggle-haired girl asked in a tone that said “You have a nerve.”

“I did and I still do. A Coke and some cigarettes. Luckies.”

“You get the weeds over yonder,” she said, dipping a glass in the ice bin.

At the over-yonder counter Mr. Doogle himself presided, nervous and gold rimmed. His fidgets were constant, as if he feared some

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