December 13, 2013
“We’re going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice
breaking. He wore his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap
pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s
spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.” “I’m not asking you, Lieutenant
Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500!
We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders increased:
ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the
ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of
complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8
auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted
the Commander. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their
various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at
each other and grinned. “The Old Man’ll get us through,” they said to one
another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of Hell!” . . .
“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said
Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast for?”
“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife,
in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly
unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up
to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t like to go more than forty. You
were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the
roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying
fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re tensed up again,”
said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you
over.”
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the
building where his wife went to have her hair done. “Remember to get those
overshoes while I’m having my hair done,” she said. “I don’t need overshoes,”
said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag. “We’ve been all through
that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young man any longer.”
He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost
your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He
put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had
driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!”
snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and
lurched ahead. He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he
drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.
. . . “It’s the millionaire
banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?” said Walter Mitty,
removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Benbow,
but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Dr.
Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long, cool
corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello,
Mitty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the
millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the
ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.
In the operating room there were whispered
introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.”
“I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking
hands. “A brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t
know you were in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle,
bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary.” “You are very kind,” said
Mitty. A huge, complicated machine, connected to the operating table, with many
tubes and wires, began at this moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new
anaesthetizer is giving way!” shouted an interne. “There is no one in the East
who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet, man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He
sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep.
He began fingering delicately a row of glistening dials. “Give me a fountain
pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston
out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. “That will hold for ten
minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.” A nurse hurried over and
whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,”
said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty looked at him
and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain
faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a
white gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed
him shining . . .
“Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!”
Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. “Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot
attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee. Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously
to back out of the lane marked “Exit Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the
attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of the car. “Hey, better leave
the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key. The attendant
vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it
belonged.
They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty,
walking along Main Street; they think they know everything. Once he had tried
to take his chains off, outside New Milford, and he had got them wound around
the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a
young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a
garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I’ll wear my
right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my right arm in a
sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked
at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began
looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the
overshoes in a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other
thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him, twice, before they
set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way he hated these weekly trips to
town—he was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s,
razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative
and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the
what’s-its-name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the
what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury
trial.
. . . “Perhaps this will refresh
your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the
quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this before?” Walter
Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my Webley-Vickers 50.80,”
he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The Judge rapped for
order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?” said the
District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We
have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that
he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.”
Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled.
“With any known make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory
Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium
broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s scream rose above the bedlam and
suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty’s arms. The District
Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the
man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!” . . .
“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped
walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and
surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. “He said ‘Puppy
biscuit,’ ” she said to her companion. “That man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to
himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. & P., not the first
one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some biscuit
for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The
greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for
It’ on the box,” said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s
in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble
drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the
hotel first; she would want him to be there waiting for her as usual. He found
a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he put the overshoes and
the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and
sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World Through the Air?”
Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
. . . “The cannonading has got
the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant. Captain Mitty looked up
at him through touselled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said wearily. “With the
others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It
takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell out of
the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got to
get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He
poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined
around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and
splinters flew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty
carelessly. “The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live
once, Sergeant,” said Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He
poured another brandy and tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his
brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain
Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty
kilometres through hell, sir,” said the sergeant. Mitty finished one last
brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding of the cannon
increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from somewhere
came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers. Walter
Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Auprès de Ma Blonde.” He turned
and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said. . . .
Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this
hotel for you,” said Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair?
How did you expect me to find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty
vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said. “Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy
biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put
them on in the store?” “I was thinking,” said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur
to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She looked at him. “I’m going to take
your temperature when I get you home,” she said.
They went out through the revolving doors that
made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks
to the parking lot. At the drugstore on the corner she said, “Wait here for me.
I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.” She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty
lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up
against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put
his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,”
said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and
snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips,
he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter
Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.