Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk. He leaned against the bar of the Old Home Sample Room, the most gilded and urbane saloon in Cato, Missouri, and requested the bartender to join him in “The Good Old Summer Time,” the waltz of the day.
 Blowing on a glass, polishing it and glancing at Elmer through its flashing rotundity, the bartender remarked that he wasn’t much of a hand at this here singing business. But he smiled. No bartender could have done other than smile on Elmer, so inspired and full of gallantry and hell-raising was he, and so dominating was his beefy grin.
 “All right, old socks,” agreed Elmer. “Me and my roommate’ll show you some singing as is singing! Meet roommate. Jim Lefferts. Bes’ roommate in world. Wouldn’t live with him if wasn’t! Bes’ quarterback in Milwest. Meet roommate.”
 The bartender again met Mr. Lefferts, with protestations of distinguished pleasure.
 Elmer and Jim Lefferts retired to a table to nourish the long, rich, chocolate strains suitable to drunken melody. Actually, they sang very well. Jim had a resolute tenor, and as to Elmer Gantry, even more than his bulk, his thick black hair, his venturesome black eyes, you remembered that arousing barytone. He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. He could make “Good morning” seem profound as Kant, welcoming as a brass band, and uplifting as a cathedral organ. It was a ‘cello, his voice, and in the enchantment of it you did not hear his slang, his boasting, his smut, and the dreadful violence which (at this point) he performed on singulars and plurals.
 Luxuriously as a wayfarer drinking cool beer they caressed the phrases in linked sweetness long drawn out:
 
 Strolling through the shaaaaady lanes, with your baby-mine,
 You hold her hand and she holds yours, and that’s a very good sign
 That she’s your tootsey-wootsey in the good old summer time.

 Elmer wept a little, and blubbered, “Lez go out and start a scrap. You’re lil squirt, Jim. You get somebody to pick on you, and I’ll com along and knock his block off. I’ll show ‘em!” His voice flared up. He was furious at the wrong about to be suffered. He arched his paws with longing to grasp the non-existent scoundrel. “By God, I’ll knock the tar out of um! Nobody can touch my roommate! Know who I am? Elmer Gantry! Thrash me! I’ll show um!”
 The bartender was shuffling toward them, amiably ready for homicide.
 “Shut up, Hell-cat. What you need is ‘nother drink. I’ll get ‘nother drink.” soothed Jim, and Elmer slid into tears, weeping over the ancient tragic sorrows of one whom he remembered as Jim Lefferts.
 Instantly, by some tricky sort of magic, there were two glasses in front of him. He tasted one, and murmured foolishly, “’Scuse me.” It was the chaser, the water. But they couldn’t fool him! The whisky would certainly be in that other lil sawed-off glass.

From the book Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis, ©1927 by Harcourt, Brace and Company Inc.