I Remember Monster

by AL CAPP

ONE of “Li’l Abner’s” most enthusiastic fans — and this is a pretty humiliating thing to admit — is me. But I don’t like it for the same reason other people do — for the clean enormousness of “Li’l Abner’s” heart and feet; for Daisy Mae’s incredible purity (and anyone who thinks Daisy Mae’s purity is incredible is unAmerican); for Mammy Yokum’s never failing and, frankly, rather irritating wisdom. I don’t like “Li’l Abner” for the good people in it. I like it for the bad ones. The Monsters.

Any cartoonist can create good people. Any cartoonist has known plenty of ‘em in his lifetime, to use as source material. But it’s the monsters — those unsanitary, uncouth, unregenerate, unspeakable apes, fiends, and human horrors whose lechery, treachery, and skulduggery make the golden goodness of the Yokums shine even more brightly by contrast — that I’m most proud of. It’s their constant triumphs over these monsters that make readers love the Yokums, and that’s why I love the monsters.

However, when fans ask me, “How does a normal-looking fella like you think up all those—b-r-r!!! — creatures? I always evade a straightforward answer. Because the truth is I don’t think ‘em up. I was lucky enough to know them — all of them — and what was even luckier, all in the person of one man. One veritable gold mine of human swinishness.

It was my privilege, as a boy, to be associated with a certain treasure-trove of lousiness, who, in the normal course of each day of his life, managed to be, in dazzling succession, every conceivable kind of a heel. It was an advantage few young cartoonists have enjoyed — or could survive.

I owe all my success to him. From my study of this one li’l man, I have been able to create an entire gallery of horrors. For instance, when I must create a character who is the ultimate in cheapness, I don’t, like less fort unate cartoonists, have to rack my brain wondering what real bottom-of-the-barrel cheapness is like. I saw the classic of ’em all. Better than that, I was the victim of it.

All I have to do is remember back to the morning when my Benefactor and I were reminiscing about the sort of half-forgotten Old World tidbits our mothers used to feed us when we were kids. When we got to the part about fried salt herring mv Benefactor, a man of strong passions, rose and roared, “ We shall have fried salt herring, kid!!! Look through the phone book and find me a sail herring store!!!” I found one which even in cold print seemed to have the aura of a Saltherringorium. I called. They had it. Plenty of it.

“Tell ‘em to send over a barrel,” cried my Benefactor. “Today, kid — we live!!!”

The barrel of salt herring arrived, and he ordered his cook to put plenty of salt on it and fry it.

The little Filipino looked worried. “Appears as it have plenty of salt on it already,” he mumbled.

“Salt herring never has enough salt on it,” said my patron, and he dumped the entire contents of a ten-pound bag of salt into the barrel.

“Now, fry it,” he instructed the cook — and ordered me to sit opposite him at the table. “Today. kid, you are my luncheon guest,” he said.

I was thrilled. Not at being his guest, but at having luncheon. He paid me $22 a week, and although I had no responsibilities but just one wife, one baby, one cellar apartment, and only one kid brother at Ohio State who needed $3 a week to live (he lived on carrots and unguarded milk), I wasn’t a good manager, I guess, I was always broke near the end of the week and this was the last, or no-lunch, day of the week.

The Filipino served the fried sait herring. We both dug in at once. I put a slice of it in my mouth, tasted it, but I didn’t scream. Even though I knew it would be instant death to swallow it. The herring was solid hot salt. I held it carefully between my teeth, rolled my tongue back away from it, and looked across the table at my host.

He hadn’t been as lucky as I was. His look of green nausea indicated that he had swallowed a bit of it.

But he was the perfect host. He arose. “I just remembered I’ve got to see a fella at Charlie s steak house,” he gasped. “But don’t mind me, kid — go ahead and finish your lunch. Give the kid all the — ugh!!!—fried herring he wants!!! he shouted to the cook as he clapped a hand over his mouth and staggered into the bathroom.

Well, by evening I wasn’t sick any more. In fact I fell pretty good, for this was payday.

When my Benefactor returned, I reminded him of that. I always had to remind him. And he was always astonished. He would invariably say “ Payday? Already?” and look at me with suspicion and resentment. I always felt a little apologetic and, somehow, a little crooked.

He always paid me in cash, pulling a five from one pocket, a ten from another, and hunting around irritably, through his other clothes, for the extra small change to make up the total. It was a pretty humiliating experience for me.

He gave me a fistful of crumpled bills and loose change. I counted it. It came to exaclly $30.75.

“You owe me $1.25,”I said.

My Benefactor wheeled around and looked at me. I could see that he’d been hurt. “But, kid,”he said, his voice choked with emotion, don’t you figure that lunch was worth something?

And he was right. In later life, that lunch was worth a great deal more than $1.35 to me. For when I came to create “Soft-Hearted John, that paragon of penuriousness and gall, I didn’t have to dream him up out of thin air. I knew him like a book.

The “Li’l Abner” stories I like best to do are those in which our hero, pure in heart and utterly without suspicion or guile, is neatly taken over, outrageously exploited, and in the end thoroughly bilked by some slick and shifty monster who, actually, doesn’t need the pitiful little thing he cheats the poor lout out of.

I don’t make up these stories. They are all variations of one classic source story. The story of Stubby Wilson and my patron.

It happened back when the country was still deep in the depression — when decent, unskilled, but willing little guy’s like Stubby Wilson had by the thousands given up the fight and could be seen, every night, shivering in the soup lines on times Square. Stubby was, at the time I met him, still fighting. He wasn’t quite in the soup line. But you could see from the perilous shabbiness of his clothes,

from the cornered, desperate look in his eye, that one more bad break, one trifling miscalculation, would snap the thread by which he hung on to respectability, and drop him into the gray-faced line of the shivering and shamed and hopeless.

As a youngster — Stubby was fortyish — he’d been a cow hand. He still had a vague Western air about him and he made a hard and infrequent buck doing odd jobs for the rodeos that came to Madison Square Garden. Somehow, he had become acquainted with my Benefactor and when I first saw him had come up to the apartment with a huge Western lasso, to teach him how to twirl, Western style. It seemed an odd sort of thing for this nightclubbing bon vivant to get interested in, but later on it developed that he had a sound practical reason for it.

He was breakfasting the morning Stubby arrived. “Sausages!!” exclaimed Stubby, drooling. “Real Western sausages!!! Been a long time since I smelt any o’ them, Boss,” he said, smiling hopefully.

“They do smell good, don’t they!!” agreed the Boss heartily, stuffing a few more down. He didn’t care how many of his sausages Stubby smelled. He ate all he could, and then told the Filipino to put the rest of ‘em away . He confided to Stubby that they were even better warmed over, and Stubby wistfully agreed that they were.

The lasso lesson was to take place on the sun roof. The Boss began to peel his clothes off, from the waist up. Eager to please, so did Stubby. The Boss glanced at him. Stubby wasn’t pothellied; his shoulders were broader, his arms more muscular. He looked a lot better with his miserable clothes off.

“You needn’t take the trouble to peel,” said the Boss rather crossly.

Eager to please, Stubby put all his clothes back on. Then they went out onto the roof.

“Yippay!!!” roared the Boss, Western style, as he twirled the rope.

Several girls, sunbathing on adjoining roofs, rose, removed their dark glasses, and looked to see where the noise was coming from.

The Boss pulled in his stomach, threw out his chest, leered, and bowed.

The girls all threw up their noses, put their sunglasses on again, and lay back. But the Boss didn’t mind. He saw it as a long-time proposition, and by the law of averages one of them, one day, was bound to be lonesome enough to smile back.

The lasso lesson went on for an hour, the Boss thanked Stubby heartily, and Stubby said gosh that was all right, he didn’t mind, and they agreed to meet the next day. The Boss went off to his cool shower and Stubby started back to whatever sweating little hole he lived in. He palmed a banana before he left, turned furtively as he realized that I was sitting at a desk behind him, caught my eye — and I winked. From then on we were friends.

The lasso lessons went on for several mornings, with Stubby being paid off in freely given thankyous and stolen bananas.

Stubby kept up, doggedly, with his breakfastadmiring, but he didn’t have much luck. Morning after morning, he remarked to the Boss that, amazingly enough, the corned beef hash, the ham and eggs, the small steak with fried potatoes, were all fixed real Wstern style, and what was even more amazing, in just the style of just that part of the West Stubby came from. “Bless me,” he’d say. “Gefüllte fish — Western style! Why, that’s just like my maw used to make.”

The Boss let Stubby smell away at the food all he pleased. Stubby took in some mighty fine smells but not a single actual morsel of it did he get— until the morning he pulled that raw subterfuge. At least, I’ve always suspected it was a subterfuge. But maybe I’m being unfair. You be the judge.

The Boss was breakfasting on lamb chops. Stubby completely ignored them, however, and expressed the warmest admiration for the English muffins. “Real Western-style English muffins,” he slavered. Bewildered by Stubby’s sudden shift to admiring a type of food that costs practically nothing, the Boss lost his head, and before he knew what he was saying, he cried, “Have one, Stubby!!!”

But, as I said, this looked to me like a pretty raw subterfuge, and apparently the Boss realized this, too; for although on succeeding mornings Stubby craftily ignored the chops and steaks and eggs, and lavished the warmest praise on the inexpensive items, such as the cream of wheat and the coffee, the Boss never fell for that cheap trick again.

Well, the lessons continued and the Boss became an accomplished rope-twirler. One morning he remarked, I wish I had a rope like yours, Stubby — one with a fancy weave.”

“ Yessirree!!! ” chirped Stubby, eagerly. “I’ll get it for you!!!" You see, this was the moment Stubby had been waiting for. He’d confided to me that if, in a couple of weeks, the Boss became interested enough in lasso-twirling to want a rope of his own, he stood to make a fast five-spot. He could get ’em wholesale for seven dollars and he sold ‘em for twelve —the price the retail stores charged. Now, five dollars may not seem much for two weeks of hard labor on a sweltering New York City roof, but remember — this was during the depression, when hard labor wasn’t hard to get and a fivespot was.

There was Stubby, the next morning, beaming, expectant. The Boss was delighted with the new rope, thanked Stubby profusely, slapped him on the back — and —that was all.

Stubby stood there, bewildered.

Then the Boss said he had a date, and he guessed he couldn’t take a lesson that morning.

“ Shall I come up tomorrow morning?” asked Stubby, trying to hide the anxiety in his voice.

“Oh, shucks, pal — don’t bother,” replied the Boss. He was going to be pretty darned busy mornings from now on, he said, but when he wanted another lesson from Stubby he’d phone him, that’s what he’d do. And while Stubby was desperately trying to explain that gosh, he didn’t have a phone and that he’d just as soon come up tomorrow at any time, he left.

Stubby looked sick. And while I played Robin Hood, feeding him cold peas out of my Benefactor’s icebox, he told me that he was mighty worried about that rope deal. He’d gotten it without laying out any cash (Stubby didn’t have any cash — he didn’t have anything) on the solemn promise that he’d pay for it, in full, that afternoon. But Stubby wasn’t sore at the Boss. “A big shot like he is,” he explained to me, “probably isn’t even conscious he’s holding up a pore slob like I am, for a few bucks.”

I assured him that my Benefactor was exactly the kind of big shot who was entirely conscious of what he did to pore slobs like him, and that the only way of getting any money out of him was my way; you simply demanded it, and stayed right there until he forked it over.

“All right then,” said Stubby grimly, I’ll ask him for it tomorrow morning.”

Stubby was nervous that morning. When the Boss came out of his bedroom and saw Stubby standing there, squirming and sweating and trying to smile, he glared at him. “I told you I’d be busy this morning,” he snapped, sat down at the breakfast table, and buried his face in mail.

Stubby looked around to me, helplessly. I signaled to him to go ahead. He cleared his throat once or twice, but when the Boss, somehow sensing the approach of that greatest of all dangers, a. request for money, suddenly looked balefully up at him, Stubby lost, his nerve, mumbled something apologetic, and shambled off.

Instantly my Benefactor cheered up. He laid his mail aside, wolfed down his breakfast, and then twirled for an hour or so out on the roof. After his shower, he called eight or ten girls, saying that it was too beautiful a day to stay in the city, and how about coming for a nice peaceful ride in the country. Apparently they’d all been out for nice, peaceful rides in 1 he country with him before, because they all said no.

He came over to my desk. “ Kid,” he said, “it’s too beautiful a day to stay in the city. How about we take a nice peaceful ride in the country? For an hour. He added, “You can make up the time tonight.”

I called home to say not to wait dinner for me, explaining that I was going for an hour’s ride in the country and I’d have to make up the hour from six to ten that night. It was a way we had, my Benefactor and I, of figuring things out, fair and square.

We walked out to get the elevator, and there was Stubby. He hadn’t left the building. I could have cheered. “Look, sir,” he said, in a strangled, desperate voice. “About that there rope. It cost me seven dollars — wholesale. I usually sell ’em like in the regular stores — for twelve. Hut — with a friend —it’s different. Just pay me the seven, sir — and that’ll be fine.”

The elevator door opened. In it were three other people. We entered, and the elevator started down.

Then the Boss spoke. The tone was loud, but the inflection was kind of intimate, so that all of us had the feeling that a shameful whispered secret was being hideously amplified. “Stubby,” he said, “if you want to borrow money from me — as a friend —all you have to do is ask me for it. You know that.”

Everyone looked at Stubby. He looked at the Boss, stricken.

“But, Stubby,” —and the Boss’s voice now had an edge of wounded reproach when you give me a gift in the name of friendship, don’t go and spoil that friendship by coming around later and asking for” — he choked on the distasteful word “moneyIII” He gave his closing remark a sad and faintly British reading: “It just isn’t — cricket!!!!

I didn’t have the courage to look at Stubby. Because I could feel, inside me, everything Stubby was feeling. I could feel him dissolving into one sweating, trembling, inarticulate li’l human hell.

The elevator landed and Stubby scooted out. I never saw him again. My Benefactor continued his rope-twirling though. He was frequently photographed, with his lasso, at hospitals, entertaining the helpless. He always had a flair for handling the helpless.

And so, when my fan mail tells me that you, the wholesome, horror-loving American people, like “Li’l Abner” best, because the monsters in it are the worst, I always feel just a wee bit ashamed. I owe it all to having had the misfortune to associate

with the daddy of ‘em all. I’m sure that any other cartoonist, with the same disadvantages, could have done just as badly.

That was supposed to be the end of this memoir. But when I finished, I had the uneasy feeling that it hadn’t come out correctly. I had told the story of an Evil man. In all the other stories of Evil men that I had ever written, they were punished in the end; in all the books and plays and movies about Evil men I had ever read or seen, they were punished in the end. How come this Evil man had not been ?

I thought about that, and I found the answer. This Evil man was real, and the ones I’d written about, or read about, were not.

In plays and novels and comic strips the Evil are always, in the end, paid off. We grow, therefore, to believe that all Evil, in the end, will, somehow, be paid off. It helps us to endure Evil.

But, on the other hand, it helps the Evil. They know they are not trapped in a book that’s got to come out right, or a play that must have a Curtain that rewards the Good Ones and frustrates the Bad Ones. They know that in life the chances are damned good that they’ll get away with it.

For the real Evil operate in a vast, ever changing life-stream. Those they hurt, as their lives touch, cry out in pain, lick their wounds, and pass on. Because life must be lived, and there is no time to stop and take revenge. Especially when the wounded have been beguiled by books and sermons and comic strips into believing that something called Life Itself will, itself, punish the Evil.

Mostly, it doesn’t. It didn’t punish my Benefactor. He grew richer and healthier, more famous and more honored. He kept no old friends, but he made lots of shiny new friends. Nothing happened. He just grew older and eviler.

(Mr. Capp’s next story, “ Young Van Schuyler's Greatest Romance,” will appear in the May Atlantic.)