I Want Carruthers' Job

There is a scene common from the movies that invites consideration. Let us sink right in.

We were all gathered at Sheldon’s that evening, a dank London night with snow not far behind.

Willoughby was there, best sharpshooter in the service, bar none, also Paulson whom I knew slightly from his work in subterfuge during the war.

Fitzsimmons was a regular at these gathering, bluff and hearty as he ever was, and quiet, watchful Anton, on leave from the mathematics wing of the National Academy where he was making great strides in encryption, great strides indeed. As was his nature, he loitered by the mantle taking it all in.

One or two others were there, whose names escape me right now, though when you hear the nature of my tale you will not wonder that I have forgotten some minor details.

Our host had been abroad, and this gathering was his homecoming. But it bore little of the joy of a homecoming; it rather had a dire and dark air to it.

Sheldon looked drawn, distracted. He couldn’t seem to get enough of the fire as though there was something cold within him that couldn’t be warmed.

“Rum part of the world, Africa, bloody rum. We think we know ancient things here, but our history is that of a child’s compared to the ancient foundations of that unmapped world.”

He seemed to shudder.

“You learn things there.” He gazed off into the middle distance. “Things that don’t bear speaking of. Take the matter of the Jade Goddess and the Curse of The Dead Blue Hand that was laid upon it.”

He mused for a moment.

“Perhaps you’d like to hear the story. But first, oh, Carruthers, there you are. A splash of whiskey for our friends, it is the kind of story best heard with some liquid courage in your hand. Good fellow, most appreciated. You see, this all began when I docked on the Ivory Coast. I was met there by a man, a beautiful woman, and a creature, I know not what else to call him, swaddled from head to toe in….”

And this is where I would like to stop.

This is where I would like to take a deep breath, very early in this tale.

I don’t much care about the pale man, nor the beautiful woman, nor you might be surprised to hear, this creature, I know not else what to call him, whom we are about to find is swathed in funeral wrapping bandages, or mink, or I suppose, athletic tape spread with the Ben Gay knockoff we used to wrap our ankles in before track meets.

No, my main interest is in this Carruthers fellow.

I want his job.

I want it in the worst possible way.

As near as I can tell his main purpose in life, his reason for being, and his complete means of employment is to walk into the room with whiskey, a flask of water, and a set of tumblers on a platter whenever Sheldon starts to tell one of his ghost stories, pour the liquids into glasses in correct proportions, and pass them out.

This is it.

This I can do.

My thinking, always subtle, hasn't merely leapt to this conclusion. I’ve put pen to paper and done some calculations in this matter. Am I really suited to this position? What are the job requirements? Will I find filling up glass tumblers with whiskey now and again on fog-shrouded nights fulfilling over the long run? Will I be overworked?

I think not on the last item.

First, how many eerie adventures tales of this nature could the old fellow have? Four? Five? They each seem to take a total of four to five years of adventuring to play out in real life. Well, a grown man has only so many four to five year stretches of time to work with in even a long life. That puts an upper limit on this tale-telling right there.

And besides, there is a limited market for these things, even among friends. Soon enough people stop coming over all together, easing the load of the whiskey-bearer.

You know how it is.

You get a card saying that the pleasure of your company is requested at the house of Jonas Sheldon, Esq., at such and such a time, and you like the fellow and all but you recall that of the last three times you were over at his house:

(1) once you ended up digging Dracula up from his grave all the way to 245th and Plowed Ground in Transylvania and staking him through the heart.

 (2) another time you were shanghaied onto a tramp steamer by a tribe of wild assassins come to undermine the Empire at its very heart, and... 

(3) the third time you spent the whole weekend being chased by a large lumbering fellow who it turned out had been pieced together from a large number of other fellows, a knee here, a nose and earlobe there, not all of whom had signed the requisite paperwork allowing such use of their components.

It is in reflecting upon these recent past occasions and the great danger and pains that came your way thereby that past a point you send word back “no can do, old man, drat it all, the church bake sale is that night and I promised to work the Brownies and Chocolate Chip Cookie table. Some other time.”

Back to this Carruthers character. He is a remarkably local phenomenon. A delicate household specimen, he is never seen in the wild.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen him on the heath as the wind howled around you and brought tears to your eyes, or in the dockside taverns in pursuit of this mysterious man with a scar over one eye and a pronounced limp who is rumored across at least one hemisphere to be the Napoleon of Crime, nor have I spied him being pursued as a trophy by a madman who has taken up hunting and killing humans as a kind of hobby or perhaps 'avocation' is a better word.

No, Carruthers is back in the library of that house or nearby, waiting to see if he is called in to bring whiskey to the group.

This is called specialization of labor, with a vengeance, and I want to be part of it.

I can’t say during which era this story takes place as it differs from movie to movie, but it is made very clear near the beginning via a long tracking shot showing the fog and the cobblestones and what not, that there are a large number of workmen in period costumes, laying brick, putting the horses away, cleaning the chimney, hauling sacks of goods to the cellar, plowing the arable land on the grounds, gardening the lush vegetation, heaving heavy stones off the property, in other words, a good deal of what you might call backbreaking peasant or simple villager work of the traditional variety.

You do not exactly learn the names of these fine people, but I can tell you one thing for certain: none of them is named Carruthers.  

As far as I can tell, the vast world of work and weariness is an entirely Carruthers-free zone.

You may look high and low wherever people are sweating and cursing and hauling and heaving and you are in little danger of running across the fellow. Well, no danger at all, really.

See, he's got this important gig back at the fellow's library with the whiskey and the tumblers and what not. 

He's got to be ready!

Takes it out of a fellow, and you can't expect him to put in an honest day's work when he's already laboring under the burdens he has taken on.

Nice. Nice.

Now I have done my share of this boulder-heaving and brick-laying side of work. I bring it up now only because the people around me seem intent on forgetting that my big brother and I at one time had eighteen lawns that needed cutting every week.

Let that sink in.

Eighteen.

Every week.

And I am not talking these postage stamp-sized lawns like you see in town, but full-grown stretches measured in acres as were common here on the verge of the rural part of this county.

This was not, and then I’ll leave the subject alone, this was not the splash-of-whiskey life that consumes the professional life of our friend Carruthers and seems by all accounts to more or less use him up by the end of the evening.

I'd like to see him presented with one of these village-sized yards, stretching away boundless to the horizon, with nothing to mow it with but a heavy beast of a boy-propelled machine whose engine belched and sputtered like a bulldog with pleurisy who had accidentally swallowed a bone and was attempting to bring it back into the light of day. I wonder what he would do with that lawn, good old Carruthers?

I think we know what he would do. He would look at the situation and cry like a big baby.

And we had eighteen of them.

The job description for this position, the one that Carruthers currently holds, were it to show up in the paper or on one of these online sites, would, I suppose, read:

On dark stormy nights bring drinks, most usually whisky with a splash of water, into the library while the old fellow starts a ghost story.

I’ve got my eye out for such a description and if I followed instructions correctly, have asked the computer system to keep me informed if the key words ‘splash,’ ‘ghost,’ ‘old fellow,’ or ‘library’ show up, but nothing yet.

Nothing yet. 

You have come to know me, so you may suppose as I do that I may not have filled the form out right for one thing.

Still, not a single hit, which shows just how specialized these jobs are.

I don’t imagine there is any career training available to prepare a young man for such an occupation.

Even in the larger school districts, it would be the rare guidance counselor who had the wherewithal or the simple tools to help a young person pursue his dreams. These programs are exactly the ones being cut back just when we need them the most.

 It may be the type of job that is passed down from father to son through the ages, from Carruthers, to Carruthers Junior, to Carruthers the Third, splash of whiskey men one and all.

Like I say, as near as I can tell, Carruthers sits quietly in his room, perhaps watching TV, perhaps reading widely in his favorite books, perhaps thinking back on the adventures that these other non-Carruthers type people seem to get themselves caught up in, more or less waiting for the bell to ring, at which point he gets up, sprightly enough I have to admit, and administers the glasses and whiskey and splash of water thing.

Once that big excitement is over, it’s back to his room to see if he can find his place in the novel he was reading.

Nice work if you can get it, that's all I'm saying.