Main Street - Sinclair Lewis (little red riding hood ebook .txt) 📗

the cabbage and Mrs. Calibree’s monotonous “I don’t know what we’re coming to with all this difficulty getting hired girls” were gumming her eyes with drowsiness. She sought to clear them by appealing to Calibree, in a manner of exaggerated liveliness, “Doctor, have the medical societies in Minnesota ever advocated legislation for help to nursing mothers?”

Calibree slowly revolved toward her. “Uh⁠—I’ve never⁠—uh⁠—never looked into it. I don’t believe much in getting mixed up in politics.” He turned squarely from her and, peering earnestly at Kennicott, resumed, “Doctor, what’s been your experience with unilateral pyelonephritis? Buckburn of Baltimore advocates decapsulation and nephrotomy, but seems to me⁠—”

Not till after two did they rise. In the lee of the stonily mature trio Carol proceeded to the street fair which added mundane gaiety to the annual rites of the United and Fraternal Order of Beavers. Beavers, human Beavers, were everywhere: thirty-second degree Beavers in gray sack suits and decent derbies, more flippant Beavers in crash summer coats and straw hats, rustic Beavers in shirt sleeves and frayed suspenders; but whatever his caste-symbols, every Beaver was distinguished by an enormous shrimp-colored ribbon lettered in silver, “Sir Knight and Brother, U.F.O.B., Annual State Convention.” On the motherly shirtwaist of each of their wives was a badge, “Sir Knight’s Lady.” The Duluth delegation had brought their famous Beaver amateur band, in Zouave costumes of green velvet jacket, blue trousers, and scarlet fez. The strange thing was that beneath their scarlet pride the Zouaves’ faces remained those of American businessmen, pink, smooth, eye-glassed; and as they stood playing in a circle, at the corner of Main Street and Second, as they tootled on fifes or with swelling cheeks blew into cornets, their eyes remained as owlish as though they were sitting at desks under the sign “This Is My Busy Day.”

Carol had supposed that the Beavers were average citizens organized for the purposes of getting cheap life-insurance and playing poker at the lodge-rooms every second Wednesday, but she saw a large poster which proclaimed:

Beavers

U.F.O.B.

The greatest influence for good citizenship in the country. The jolliest aggregation of red-blooded, openhanded, hustle-em-up good fellows in the world.

Joralemon welcomes you to her hospitable city.

Kennicott read the poster and to Calibree admired, “Strong lodge, the Beavers. Never joined. Don’t know but what I will.”

Calibree adumbrated, “They’re a good bunch. Good strong lodge. See that fellow there that’s playing the snare drum? He’s the smartest wholesale grocer in Duluth, they say. Guess it would be worth joining. Oh say, are you doing much insurance examining?”

They went on to the street fair.

Lining one block of Main Street were the “attractions”⁠—two hotdog stands, a lemonade and popcorn stand, a merry-go-round, and booths in which balls might be thrown at rag dolls, if one wished to throw balls at rag dolls. The dignified delegates were shy of the booths, but country boys with brick-red necks and pale-blue ties and bright-yellow shoes, who had brought sweethearts into town in somewhat dusty and listed Fords, were wolfing sandwiches, drinking strawberry pop out of bottles, and riding the revolving crimson and gold horses. They shrieked and giggled; peanut-roasters whistled; the merry-go-round pounded out monotonous music; the barkers bawled, “Here’s your chance⁠—here’s your chance⁠—come on here, boy⁠—come on here⁠—give that girl a good time⁠—give her a swell time⁠—here’s your chance to win a genuwine gold watch for five cents, half a dime, the twentieth part of a dollah!” The prairie sun jabbed the unshaded street with shafts that were like poisonous thorns the tinny cornices above the brick stores were glaring; the dull breeze scattered dust on sweaty Beavers who crawled along in tight scorching new shoes, up two blocks and back, up two blocks and back, wondering what to do next, working at having a good time.

Carol’s head ached as she trailed behind the unsmiling Calibrees along the block of booths. She chirruped at Kennicott, “Let’s be wild! Let’s ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring!”

Kennicott considered it, and mumbled to Calibree, “Think you folks would like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?”

Calibree considered it, and mumbled to his wife, “Think you’d like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?”

Mrs. Calibree smiled in a washed-out manner, and sighed, “Oh no, I don’t believe I care to much, but you folks go ahead and try it.”

Calibree stated to Kennicott, “No, I don’t believe we care to a whole lot, but you folks go ahead and try it.”

Kennicott summarized the whole case against wildness: “Let’s try it some other time, Carrie.”

She gave it up. She looked at the town. She saw that in adventuring from Main Street, Gopher Prairie, to Main Street, Joralemon, she had not stirred. There were the same two-story brick groceries with lodge-signs above the awnings; the same one-story wooden millinery shop; the same firebrick garages; the same prairie at the open end of the wide street; the same people wondering whether the levity of eating a hotdog sandwich would break their taboos.

They reached Gopher Prairie at nine in the evening.

“You look kind of hot,” said Kennicott.

“Yes.”

“Joralemon is an enterprising town, don’t you think so?”

She broke. “No! I think it’s an ash-heap.”

“Why, Carrie!”

He worried over it for a week. While he ground his plate with his knife as he energetically pursued fragments of bacon, he peeped at her.

XXV I

“Carrie’s all right. She’s finicky, but she’ll get over it. But I wish she’d hurry up about it! What she can’t understand is that a fellow practising medicine in a small town like this has got to cut out the highbrow stuff, and not spend all his time going to concerts and shining his shoes. (Not but what he might be just as good at all these intellectual and art things as some other folks, if he had the time for it!)” Dr. Will Kennicott was brooding in his office, during a free moment toward the end of the summer afternoon. He hunched down in his