Pugnax joined them, tail still, gaze expectant.
* * * * * * * * * *
Oh look! There's Pugnax! I was wondering where the reader got off to. I suppose this is as good a description of any current Against the Day reader when they get to this line. Tail still. Gaze expectant. Just waiting to experience Miles and Lindsay's day at the Fair.
Also, "tail still, gaze expectant" is standing at attention for a dog. He's a smart little military boy.
When Miles had been rendered as fit to be seen by the populace of "The Windy City" as he would ever be, the two boys came smartly to attention, dressing right at close interval in the circle of firelight, to await inspection.
* * * * * * * * * *
Well now I know more about military inspection than I ever thought I would. I mean, I knew, vaguely, what it meant to stand at attention and could probably pull it off well enough for anybody who wasn't a huge dick Sergeant (I mean a mean jerk and not a Sergeant packing a large pistol). But I had no idea what "dressing right" and "close interval" were. But now I've read a bunch of military manuals! So now I know that dressing right is how one gets into the close interval formation. I take it Lindsay stood in the firelight and Miles then took up position next to Lindsay by either measuring with his arm or just estimating the distance to be stood at close interval. Interval is the length of an arm extended to touch the shoulder of the man next to you. Close interval is the distance to your elbow with your hand on your hip.
I think. I could have some of that wrong because I wasn't really super passionate about reading the military manual. The knowledge will be gone by lunch. Which is probably good because, as I've noted, I'm not even sure how correct it is!
I forgot to get an image of the boys' dress uniforms during the last line so thought I'd look it up now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Miles's dickey with the forty-four buttons is just one of those incomplete shirts you wear with a tuxedo because, I don't know, it was too expensive to make a full shirt when most of it would be hidden by the jacket anyway? I'm always happy to learn new Cockney rhyming slang so I was overjoyed to learn that the term "dickey" comes from rhyming slang for shirt. Those of you unfamiliar with Cockney rhyming slang might be wondering how "dickey" and "shirt" rhyme and if maybe Cockneys aren't just total morons. Well the way it usually works is that some Cockney takes a common name or phrase that has at least two words, the last word of which rhymes with the word the slang will replace, and then drops the actual rhyming word and just uses the first word as the rhyming slang. So "dicky dirt" (I have no idea what that means. I guess some Cockneys were just, "Oy! Take a guy's name and some other object in your vision and use that as rhyming slang! It's all dumb code anyway because you never know when you have to talk about a shirt secretly amid non-Cockneys!") rhymes with "shirt" and so a "shirt" became known as a "dicky."
Here's my favorite example of Cockney rhyming slang that you should skip if you don't like the word "cunt." "Berk" is rhyming slang for "cunt" based off the name of an old fox hunting club "Berkshire Hunt." Usually there isn't any connection between the word being replaced by the slang and the word/name/phrase used to come up with the slang but I'm willing to bet all those guys in the Berkshire Hunt organization were assholes.
My main understanding of Cockney rhyming slang is that Cockneys just have too much time on their hand and maybe are a bit paranoid of other people knowing all of their mundane business.
Each in his own way excited at the prospect of attending the Exposition, the two lads shifted rapidly into dress uniform, although Miles encountered such difficulty in lacing his leggings, knotting his neckerchief with the needed symmetry, and securing correctly the forty-four buttons of his dickey, one for each State of the Union, that Lindsay, after having applied a few drops of Macassar oil to his own locks and combing them carefully, was obliged to go to his unskilled shipmate's assistance.
* * * * * * * * * *
The sentence begins by highlighting how Miles and Lindsay couldn't be any more different, each having their own reasons for their excitement about the Exposition. I assume Lindsay cannot wait to be intellectually stimulated by lessons of languages far flung or learning of the varied cultures across the globe while Miles can't wait to tuck into the various "treats" cherished by those same cultures.
I suppose I should stop referring to Miles as a "klutz" because I think there's actually something physically wrong with him that hampers his ability to do physical tasks others take for granted. He might have cerebral palsy or "Little's Disease." Although he also just might have fat fingers and a child's general impatience with concentrating long enough to correctly button forty-four fucking buttons.
I don't know if Lindsay used Rowland's Macassar Oil or some other brand but here's a nice advert for it.
It ends with a reference to Miles as being "unskilled" but who is "unskilled" in the art of dressing? Perhaps Miles just rarely has a chance to put on his dress uniform. Or maybe "unskilled" is just the narrator's attempt at a kindness by avoiding mentioning Miles's fat fingers.
Although I suppose I'm unsiklled at dressing! I still have the first tie I ever purchased, still tied from the only time I ever wore it, by my Uncle Jerry. It's a Grateful Dead tie.
That evening Chick and Darby, as the port section of the crew, had watch-duty, while Miles and Lindsay were to be allowed "ground-leave" in Chicago.
* * * * * * * * * *
Is this a bit of class consciousness aboard a ship? Those who work the "port" section are of lower class than those who work the starboard? I suppose if your ship doesn't have a substantial above and below deck working environment which makes it much easier to tell your place in the class structure, you need to judge the crew by simply left and right, or fore and aft. So those on the left side of the ship are lesser than those on the right. Left is bad while right is good; that's simple logic (if you're mind is bound in the social logic of a current point in time and history that is 1893, give or take a century or maybe even two). And, obviously, fore is good and aft is bad.
But don't get too comfortable with those beliefs, my non-reading friend! Ideas like this are only brought up by an author like Pynchon or Vonnegut or Heller or Kesey so that they can be subverted! They're brought up casually so that the reader thinks, "Oh yeah, I see that. Darby and Chick are totally the low men on the totem, both being either new or young. Therefore by mentioning that they're the 'port' section of the crew, I can now equate location with the lower class qualities that come with youth and rookie standing." Then when you least expect it, feeling comfortable in your status quo reclining chair of comfortable social beliefs, Pynchon will kick one leg off the chair and you'll tumble out of it, at first maybe angry that your life has been upended but—soon if you're capable of self-reflection; perhaps never if you're a dumb Republican jerkface—quickly you'll see the light and think, "Hey! I've been bamboozled by traditional ideas that aren't actually based in any kind of universal law! I've just lived with them so long that they seemed natural! What a tool of the system I have been!" Then you will drink a V-8 and feel proud of your spiritual and social and maybe intellectual growth. Good for you!
Pynchon puts "ground-leave" in quotes because it's a made up word for an airship's crew that equates to "shore-leave." Get it? This line suggests Miles and Lindsay are going on "ground-leave" together which I can't imagine is something either of them is looking forward to. Maybe I'm wrong and they have a good relationship. But if I were Miles, I'd be looking to ditch Lindsay at the first smell of a funnel cake stand.
There's fellows live in little towns,
And those who live on farms,
And never seem to wander far
From smiles and loving arms—
They always know just who they are
And how their lives will go—
And then there's boys like us, who say
Good-bye before hello,
For we're the
Aces of Altitudes
Vagabonds of the Void. . . .
When some folks shrink with terror, say,
We scarcely get annoyed.
Let the winds blow clear off the Beaufort Scale,
And the nights grow dark as can be,
Let the lightning lash,
And the thunder thrash,
Only cheerful young hearts have we!
For . . .
the Chum of Chance is a pluc-ky soul,
Who shall neither whine nor ejac-u-late,
For his blood's as red and his mind's as pure
As the stripes of his bla-a-zer immac-u-late!
* * * * * * * * * *
If you've been wondering up until this point, "What makes these Chums tick?", wonder no more! They've got a song about it! They're carefree wanderers who can't be tied down to any farm or town! They're hard boys who don't need a mother's hug or a father's proud pat on the back! They need no schedule nor plans for their futures selves! They've got the courage of those few hardy souls who aren't afraid of the unknown! They're all basically James Tiberius Kirk.
Also, we've learned that their red, white, and blue uniforms are symbolic of their bodies and minds. Red is for the blood that streams through their veins by an adventurous heart! White is for their young minds pure and free from any earthly constraints or social expectations! And their balls are as blue as the testicles of plucky young souls who never ejaculate!
I would explain what the Beaufort Scale is but if you're reading this blog, you're probably a big nerdy Billy Joel fan and you learned what that was in 1989 when you ran out to get his new album with the hit song from the MTV video, "We Didn't Start the Fire."
Since their Hawaiian escapades a few years previous (The Chums of Chance and the Curse of the Great Kahuna), Miles had become an enthusiastic ukulelist, and tonight, after securing the scullery and restoring the mess decks to their usual spotless state, he produced one of many of the four-stringed instruments which he kept in his sky-chest, and, after strumming a brief introduction, accompanied the boys as they sang, [To be continued]
* * * * * * * * * *
The Chums of Chance adventure in Hawaii was probably pretty close to when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii and suffered a curse. I wonder why Don Ho never sued the writers of The Brady Bunch for portraying an accidental run-in with him as a curse. Since only bad things happen to people with the cursed Tiki idol, it means Bobby and Cindy running into Don Ho while Bobby has the idol is a bad thing. It could have ruined his entire career!
Miles is kind of a dopey klutz but he also seems to be a cleanly boy and a hard worker with an aptitude for the most annoying instrument in the world. That's a personal opinion formed by my environment and my environment is Portland, Oregon, where every hipster thinks it's quirky and cool to play the ukulele. I wonder how often more than one person turns up at a Portland party with a ukulele and I wonder if any of them have an aptitude for self-reflection which causes them to feel embarrassed for themselves rather than thinking, "Hey! I just made some new friends who also play the stringy island jam box!"
Pynchon hasn't given the Chums any ages except as a bit relative to each other—Darby being the baby; Randolph seeming the oldest as captain—and relative to their time on the airship—Counterfly has been aboard merely two weeks—so I can't really guess as to their ages except they're all teenagers or pre-teen, seeing as how they've been described as "lads." But they've been in the air for at least "a few years," according to the statement about when the Hawaiian adventure took place. My theory that all or some of them are either not human or not mortal could explain why Pynchon is being so tight with the details of their ages. Also, remember that Lindsay—if not all of them—has no smell, according to the dog. Like a ghost! Or an angel? Or, almost certainly, a hideous non-carbon based alien!
Maybe the Chums are all just figments of somebody's imagination and Pugnax the dog, representing the reader, the only "real" one of the group.
This sentence just runs right into the song so I decided to cut it off before the song and place the song in its own blog post. Does it break the rules of the blog? I don't know. Who cares?! Let's just get to the song!
