Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0316769517\")
, by J.D. Salinger<\/b><\/p>\nI was staring, as I remember, directly in front of me, at the back of the driver’s neck, which was a relief map of boil scars, when suddenly my jump-seat mate addressed me: “I didn’t get a chance to ask you inside. How’s that darling mother of yours? Aren’t you Dickie Briganza?”<\/p>\n
My tongue, at the time of the question, was curled back exploratively as far as the soft palate. I disentangled it, swallowed, and turned to her. She was fifty, or thereabouts, fashionably and tastefully dressed. She was wearing a very heavy pancake makeup. I answered no – that I wasn’t.<\/p>\n
She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza’s boy. Around the mouth. I tried to show by my expression that it was a mistake anybody could make. Then I went on staring at the back of the driver’s neck. The car was silent. I glanced out of the window, for a change of scene.<\/p>\n
“How do you like the Army?” Mrs. Silsburn asked. Abruptly, conversationally.<\/p>\n
I had a brief coughing spell at that particular instant. When it was over, I turned to her with all available alacrity and said I’d made a lot of buddies. It was a little difficult for me to swivel in her direction, what with the encasement of adhesive tape around my diaphragm.<\/p>\n
She nodded. “I think you’re all just wonderful,” she said, somewhat ambiguously. “Are you a friend of the bride’s or the groom’s?” she then asked, delicately getting down to brass tacks.<\/p>\n
“Well, actually, I’m not exactly a friend of–”<\/p>\n
“You’d better not say you’re a friend of the groom<\/i>,” the Matron of Honor interrupted me, from the back of the car. “I’d like to get my hands on him for about two minutes<\/i>. Just two minutes<\/i>, that’s all.”<\/p>\n
Mrs. Silsburn turned briefly – but completely – around to smile at the speaker. Then she faced front again. We made the round trip, in fact, almost in unison. Considering that Mrs. Silsburn had turned around for only an instant, the smile she had bestowed on the Matron of Honor was a kind of jump-seat masterpiece. It was vivid enough to express unlimited partisanship with all young people, all over the world, but most particularly with this spirited, outspoken local representative, to whom, perhaps, she had been little more than perfunctorily introduced, if at all.<\/p>\n
“Bloodthirsty wench,” said a chuckling male voice. And Mrs. Silsburn and I turned around again. It was the Matron of Honor’s husband who had spoken up. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife’s left. He was seated directly behind me, at his wife’s left. He and I briefly exchanged that blank,uncomradely look which, possibly, in the crapulous year of 1942, only an officer and a private could exchange. A first lieutenant in the Signal Corps, he was wearing a very interesting Air Corps pilot’s cap – a visored hat with the metal frame removed from inside the crown, which usually conferred on the wearer a certain, presumably desired, intrepid look. In his case, however, the cap didn’t begin to fill the bill. It seemed to serve no other purpose than to make my own outsize, regulation headpiece feel rather like a clown’s hat that someone had nervously picked out of the incinerator. His face was sallow and, essentially, daunted-looking. He was perspiring with an almost incredible profusion – on his forehead, on his upper lip, and even at the end of his nose – to the point where a salt tablet might have been in order. “I’m married to the bloodthirstiest wench in six counties,” he said, addressing Mrs. Silsburn and giving another soft, public chuckle. In automatic deference to his rank, I very nearly chuckled right along with him – a short, inane, stranger’s and draftee’s chuckle that would clearly signify that I was with him and everyone else in the car, against no one.<\/p>\n
“I mean<\/i> it,” the Matron of Honor said. “Just two minutes – that’s all, brother. Oh, if I could just get my two little hands<\/i> -”<\/p>\n
“All right, now, take it easy, take it easy,” her husband said, still with apparently inexhaustible resources of connubial good humor. “Just take it easy. You’ll last longer.”<\/p>\n
Mrs. Silsburn faced around toward the back of the car again, and favored the Matron of Honor with an all but canonized smile. “Did anyone see any of his people at the wedding?” she inquired softly, with just a little emphasis – no more than perfectly genteel – on the personal pronoun.<\/p>\n
The Matron of Honor’s answer came with toxic volume: “No<\/i>. They’re all out on the West Coast<\/i> or someplace. I just wish I had<\/i>.”<\/p>\n
Her husband’s chuckle sounded again. “What wouldja done if you had, honey?” he asked – and winked indiscriminately at me.<\/p>\n
“Well, I don’t know<\/i>, but I’d’ve done some<\/i>thing,” said the Matron of Honor. The chuckle at her left expanded in volume. “Well, I would have!” she insisted. “I’d’ve said some<\/i>thing to them. I mean. My gosh.” She spoke with increasing aplomb, as though perceiving that, cued by her husband, the rest of us within earshot were finding something attractively forthright – spunky – about her sense of justice, however youthful or impractical it might be. “I don’t know what<\/i> I’d have said to them. I probably would have just blabbered something idiotic. But my gosh<\/i>. Honestly! I just can’t stand to see somebody get away with absolute murder. It makes my blood boil.” She suspended animation just long enough to be bolstered by a look of simulated empathy from Mrs. Silsburn. Mrs. Silsburn and I were now turned completely, supersociably, around in our jump seats. “I mean<\/i> it,” the Matron of Honor said. “You can’t just barge<\/i> through life hurting people’s feelings whenever you feel like it.”<\/p>\n
“I’m afraid I know very little about the young man,” Mrs. Silsburn said, softly. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t even met him. The first I’d heard that Muriel was even engaged -”<\/p>\n
“Nobody’s<\/i> met him,” the Matron of Honor said, rather explosively. “I<\/i> haven’t even met him. We had two rehearsals, and both times Muriel’s poor father had to take his place, just because his crazy plane couldn’t take off. he was supposed to get a hop here last Tuesday night in some crazy Army plane, but it was snowing<\/i> or something crazy in Colorado, or Arizona<\/i>, or one of those crazy places, and he didn’t get in till one o’clock in the morn<\/i>ing, last night. Then<\/i> – at that insane hour – he calls Muriel on the phone from way out in Long Island<\/i> or someplace and asks her to meet him in the lobby of some horrible hotel so they can talk<\/i>.” The Matron of Honor shuddered eloquently. “And you know Muriel. She’s just darling enought o let anybody and his brother push her around. That’s what gripes me. It’s always those kind of people that get hurt in the end … Anyway, so she gets dressed and gets in a cab and sits in some horrible lobby talking with him till quarter to five<\/i> in the morning.” The Matron of Honor released her grip on her gardenia bouquet long enough to raise two clenched fists above her lap. “Ooo<\/i>, it makes me so mad!” she said.<\/p>\n
“What hotel?” I asked the Matron of Honor. “Do you know?” I tried to make my voice sound casual, as though, possibly, my father might be in the hotel business and I took a certain understandable filial interest in where people stopped in New York. In reality, my question meant almost nothing. I was just thinking aloud, more or less. I’d been interested in the fact that my brother had asked his fiancee to meet him in a hotel lobby, rather than at his empty, available apartment. The morality of the invitation was by no means out of character, but it interested me, mildly, nonetheless.<\/p>\n
“I<\/i> don’t know which hotel,” the Matron of Honor said irritably. “Just some hotel<\/i>.” She stared at me. “Why?” she demanded. “Are you a friend of his?”<\/p>\n
There was something distinctly intimidating about her stare. It seemed to come from a one-woman mob, separated only by time and chance from her knitting bag and a splendid view of the guillotine. I’ve been terrified of mobs, of any kind, all my life. “We were boys together,” I answered, all but unintelligibly.<\/p>\n
“Well, lucky you!”<\/p>\n
“Now, now,” said her husband.<\/p>\n
“Well, I’m sorry<\/i>,” the Matron of Honor said to him, but addressing all of us. “But you haven’t been in a room watching that poor kid cry her eyes out for a solid hour. It’s not funny – and don’t you forget it. I’ve heard about grooms getting cold feet, and all that. But you don’t do it at the last minute<\/i>. I mean you don’t do it so that you’ll embarrass a lot of perfectly nice people half to death and almost break a kid’s spirit and everything! If he’d changed his mind<\/i>, why didn’t he write to her and at least break it off like a gentleman, for goodness’ sake? Before all the damage was done.”<\/p>\n
“All right, take it easy, just take it easy,” her husband said. His chuckle was still there, but it was sounding a trifle strained.<\/p>\n
“Well, I mean it! Why couldn’t he write to her and just tell her, like a man<\/i>, and prevent all this tragedy and everything?” She looked at me, abruptly. “Do you have any idea where he is, by any chance?” she demanded, with metal in her voice. “If you have boyhood<\/i> friends, you should have some -”<\/p>\n
“I just got into New York about two hours ago,” I said nervously. Not only the Matron of Honor but her husband and Mrs. Silsburn as well were now staring at me. “So far, I haven’t even had a chance to get to a phone.” At that point, as I remember, I had a coughing spell. It was genuine enough, but I must say I did very little to suppress it or shorten its duration.<\/p>\n
“You had that cough looked at, soldier?” the Lieutenant asked me when I’d come out of it.<\/p>\n
At that instant, I had another coughing spell – a perfectly genuine one, oddly enough. I was still turned a sort of half or quarter right in my jump seat, with my body averted just enough toward the front of the car to be able to cough with all due hygienic propriety.<\/p>\n
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Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction<\/p>\n