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Show 5sL &. GOES &mm JI PRATT W.N. U. RELEASE - THE STORY THUS FAR: Forty fonr-year-old Wilbert Winkle, who Is the proprietor pro-prietor of a modest general repair hop located In the alley back of his borne. Is notified by bis draft board that foe is In 1-A. He Is very despondent about It. He had thought that the doctor who examined him would not overlook his -dyspepsia, his near-sightedness and his aved-ln chest. He believes there must be some mistake. Anyway, he breaks the toad news to his wife, Amy, who has always domineered him. It Is quite a blow to her, too, for she Is threatened with not having WUbert around to order about. Winkle leaves the house to get busy with the day's work, but forgets to Jdss bis wife goodby. CHAPTER n ' Mrs. Winkle, upon learning that her husband planned to open a general gen-eral rapair shop practically in their living room, decried it bitterly. She felt that being the wife of what she termed a handy man lowered her social standing. She declared she would have nothing whatsoever to lo with the enterprise and would rather starve than to so much as glance at it. She took this decided stand despite the fact that she had a modest income from a small estate left by her parents and that on this account she and Mr. Winkle could have managed, though their standard stand-ard of living would have been sharply sharp-ly curtailed. , At that time Mr. Winkle still wore one leg of the trousers in his house, so he proceeded on the basis that it was more respectable for him to provide, and more reasonable to at well, than to have a social standing. stand-ing. He took his wife at her word mentarily and made him slightly dizzy. He could think only that he must be agreeable. "I expect 1 must." "Listen," the reportographer urged, "how about a smile on this one?" Mr. Winkle spread his hps and exposed ex-posed his teeth. He looked straight at the camera, holding his head a little high as previously instructed so that his glasses wouldn't refleel the light. "Do you think any sacrifice is worth making to defend your country?" coun-try?" Another flash went off. Mr. Winkle blinked and coughed unhappily. "Of course," he said. "Yes. Certainly." Mr. Onward gazed at him and then shrugged his shoulders, as if telling himself that nothing more could be done with this quizzical subject. Quite suddenly he went away. Mr. Winkle .worked on a bicycle, then on the motor of a washing machine. ma-chine. He ate his lunch, listened to the radio, and attacked the motor again. All the while he felt queasy about the visit of Mr. Onward, the reportographer, but at the same time wondered what he had concocted. concoct-ed. He learned sooner than he expected. expect-ed. Early in the afternoon he heard the newsboy calling his wares from afar and then down at the end of the alley. Evidently the paper was cashing in on the hot news In Mr. Winkle's vicinity. The boy appeared in the entrance of the shop, announcing excitedly, "Your pictqre's In the paper, Mr. Winkle! Right on the front page!" Mr. Winkle could not overcome his resolve to wait until he went home to see in the delivered paper there just what The Evening Standard had to say about him. And after all, it wasn't every day that you got your picture in the newspaper, especially on the front page. He purchased a copy and, after the boy left, he looked at it. It wasn't as big as what the Russians were doing in Russia, or what the United Nations were doing around the Mediterranean, or what the U. S. Navy was doing in the South Pacific, Pa-cific, but it was the next most important im-portant thing to those large events. There was a picture of Mrs. Winkle Win-kle standing outside' their house, just as he had seen her last that morning, with Penelope at her feet. There was a picture of himself, the one where he smiled. The smile looked rather ghastly, and set and stiff, but to anyone who didn't know him very well it might have been taken for happiness. Most of all, above this exhibit, there was a sizable black headline which said: WINKLE PROUD TO FIGHT Mr. Winkle felt not only conspicuous, conspicu-ous, but misrepresented. He was glad to learn that Mrs. Winkle had and-span concrete floor, the shining lathes and other power tools, the clean benches with every screw driver in its proper place, and the work in hand left and waiting in good order from the day before. Mr. Winkle and the other men of his age had assured each other that they would never be used as soldiers. sol-diers. They were of that lost generation gen-eration between rounds of the world war, too young for the first session, and too old for the second. Even after the draft registration for them, they had said the same things. "We couldn't stand the life," they proposed. ."Marching all night and crawling on your stomach in a ditch Is for the young fellows." Yet Mr. Winkle had wondered, If there wasn't some plan for using them, why were they registered? There followed a period of listening listen-ing to every scrap of further information infor-mation to be found in the papers, over the radio and in the magazines. Most of this was conflicting, with no one able to make up his mind. Finally a few bold facts became plain, at least In relation to Mr. Winkle's draft board in the town of Springville. , It began to call older men. Right now it had reached those married without children, but with wives who had independent incomes in-comes of their own. Mr. Winkle met the first requirement. require-ment. Mrs. Winkle lived up to the second regulation. Her small income, in-come, together with the fifty dollars a month allotment paid to the wives of soldiers, would be enough for her to support herself. Sitting there in his shop, Mr. Winkle Win-kle thought of his fighting background. back-ground. It had not been much. Up until the time he was ten, he was known in his neighborhood for having hav-ing won several fights. There was a certain group of boys he could bully and bluff, or lick, if it came right down to it. Then that prowess had come to a quick end. His teeth, growing in crookedly, were being straightened by that ignominious process of having hav-ing wire bands put around them to draw them Into place. Returning home from school one day with two other boys, a discussion rose among them as to whether or not he could lick one of them. During the experiment of proving he could not, the inside of his mouth was cut to ribbons by the copper bands the main contributing cause of his humiliating and painful defeat. de-feat. From then on Mr. Winkle, boy and man, ceased to be a warrior. That was the extent of Mr. Winkle's Win-kle's fighting history. Now, belatedly, belated-ly, at forty-four the moment made him think of his age as being only six years until he was fifty it seemed as if it were to have a future. Why, he thought, this is impossible. impossi-ble. It's really incredible. Mr. Winkle wasn't in the least sure about how he would fight. It would be different if he were younger, young-er, or happened to be a great big strapping sort of fellow. He wanted to uphold his country. He questioned not at all his country's coun-try's calling upon him to do it. But he felt doubtful . of what kind of soldier he would make. He hoped there was no question about this matter in the mind of anyone any-one who detected in him signs of not looking forward to going to war. Mr. Winkle roused himself and began be-gan to work on a bicycle. The representative rep-resentative from the newspaper arrived ar-rived in the middle of the morning. He was a tall, brash-looking young man with a wild mop of hair who introduced himself, "I'm Onward, the reportographer." "The what?" asked Mr. Winkle, staring at him with assurance that he was not going to like Mr. Onward On-ward any more than he cared for being interviewed. Mr. Onward set down the camera he carried and explained with broad patience, "Reportographer. It's a contraction of reporter and photographer. photog-rapher. Technically, I'm only the last part. But with so many reporters re-porters gone off to war, I got to be both. I made up the name myself. "Listen," he said as he opened his camera, "I got one divorced wife, two kids. I got one married wife, three kids. I haven't taken a vacation vaca-tion the last two years because I couldn't stand being home all day. I tried to enlist to get away from it. They wouldn't have me. I guess they figured if I got killed they'd have too much to support." The reasons why men went to war, Mr. Winkle thought, were varied. Mr. Onward regarded Mr. Winkle with some amusement. He seemed to think it a little funny that he was being drafted. When Mr. Winkle Win-kle protested that his activity was somewhat premature, and that he might not be accepted by the Army, Mr. Onward grinned and began ordering or-dering him to stand at different places about the shop. He proceeded proceed-ed to take a series of flashlight pictures, pic-tures, meanwhile asking questions in an indifferent, offhand manner. "How do you feel about being a soldier?" Mr. Winkle blinked as a flash went off in his face. "Why," he stammered, stam-mered, "I guess I feel all right." "Do you regard it as a privilege to be the first of your classification to be called on to defend the four freedoms?" "Privilege?" Mr. Winkle repented. The flashlight had Wrt-i him m.v He saw himself dying, painfully, gasping for water. -and built his shop across the rear of their property without an entrance en-trance or even a window on the house side. Mrs. Winkle had never visited him, even when she found it more comfortable not to starve. And from then on she developed into what he preferred to think of her instead of by any other word; a termagant. Each morning Mr. Winkle marched out the front door quite ris if he were going downtown to business. He walked up' the block, around the corner, and then to the alley. Along this he went to his shop, where he worked until dinner time, and then retraced his steps. The alley in which he had his shop was not a depressing thoroughfare, thorough-fare, but quite an attractive one. It was a dirt lane lined with trees and a number of private garages. Mr. Winkle's shop was no eyesore, but a substantial frame building painted a cheery blue, with wide double doors to permit the entrance of automobiles needing his attention, and tall windows. Above the doors was a sign announcing: THE FIXIT SHOP We Repair Anything Mr. Winkle had worried a little about the wording of this. Making fei promise In the plural was more Impressive, as tf there existed a large staff of workers. The fact that there was no one except himself him-self was perhaps deceptive. But he felt" all right about It when he considered con-sidered that he and the shop itself could be counted as two. He lived up to the boast on his sign. He was adept at finding out what the trouble was with any mechanical me-chanical gadget and, what is more, at putting it right. People from all over his section of town, and many from farther away, brought him their difficulties or called him in. He accepted with one exception any work that came along. The only thing with which he would have nothing to do was firearms. fire-arms. This morning, as Mr. Winkle walked a little over a block along his circuitous route t,o get the fifty feet away from where he started, he was a thoughtful man. He opened his shop methodically, throwing wide the doors and letting In the sun. Usually, every morning he looked at his place of work with pride while he changed his clothes, peeling all the way down before donning his working outfit. He admired ad-mired his own neatness. tb spick- "Listen." the reportographer urged, "now aDoui a smne on mis one?" made no comment, and in passing noted what a phenomenon this was. He was happy to see that Mr. Onward On-ward had kept his promise of not mentioning his method of carrying on his work, but he was astonished to read what he had written. " 'I'm proud to fight for my country," coun-try," WUbert Winkle, 44, of 711 Maple Ma-ple Avenue, first. married selectee tt the 36 to 45 draft age group to be called in Springville, declared today. Winkle, who operates The Fixit Shop, went on to say that he is anxious to defend the four freedoms, which he regards as the privilege of every American today. This,' he stated, 'is worth aiy sacrifice, if need be, my very life.' " Mr. Winkle was keenly Interested in learning if Amy's change of attitude atti-tude had persisted from morning until night or was simply the temporary tem-porary result of the first upsetting event of the day. Upon reaching home, he saw at once that its effect still had its hold on her. At least she was in something some-thing of a dither, a condition she had rarely entered ever since he had become a repair man instead of a respectable accountant. I (TO RE CONTIN'UEDl |
