Roughneck - An Autobiography Part 13

If only there was some way of letting him know, of making him think that...

I swayed unconsciously. The action seemed to tap something in my mind, to set in motion the horror-frozen cells. And I swayed again, exaggeratedly, and spoke: "Tha.s.s the knife you were tellin' me about? Le's see the d.a.m.n thing."

I put out my hand, slowly. I held it there, the tips of my fingers almost touching the tip of the blade.

"Well, come on," I said. "You wanted to show it to me, didn't you? Can't see it with you hangin' onto it."

"M-mister, I-" His hand jerked convulsively, and the blade described an arc. Then, still holding the haft, he let it come down in my palm.

"Nice knife," I said. "But y'know something? Some people see you carryin' that an' they might think you were goin' to hold 'em up."

I gave a gentle tug on the blade. I said, "Le's throw it away, huh?"

He let go.

I threw it away, flipped it over the precipice.

...We reached his hometown around midnight, and his folks, simple, good-hearted people, insisted that I stay over until morning. They were delighted, incidentally, that he had been dismissed from the camp. His father had landed a job that very day and there was one waiting for him, the boy, at the same place.

The kid and I slept in the same big old-fashioned bed that night. And, yes, I slept soundly. Why not? He was no criminal. Opportunity and necessity had conspired to make him one, but it was doubtful that he would ever again be gripped in such a sinister conjunction. Or, if he was, he had this recent experience to remember and to strengthen him.

The next morning I drove the car into San Francisco and turned it over to the dealer-owner. My arrival interrupted a telephone call he was making.

"Wired me you were coming in yesterday," he explained. "Figured you might have been hijacked, so I was putting out an alarm with the highway patrol."

"I'm glad you didn't have to," I said.

22.

The War Boom, or, rather, the boom incident to the impending war, was just getting under way in San Diego. There was still a great deal of unemployment. Prices, following the oldest of economic laws, were racing far ahead of wages.

The seven of us-Mom, Freddie and my family-had to squeeze into a three-and-a-half room apartment. Freddie's job, as a switchboard operator, just about paid the rent on it. I was faced, then, with meeting our other living expenses, and I responded to the emergency quite ign.o.bly.

I had been proud of my research grant, one of the two awarded yearly in the United States. It was an unusual honor for a man without a college degree, and the field I had been a.s.signed-the building trades-was an important one. The immediate financial return was not large, but that did not matter. A book was to be published from my findings; there would be substantial royalties. Not only that, but it was entirely possible that I might receive academic recognition-an honorary degree. Maybe even a doctorate. I, Jim Thompson, the stupidest guy in high school, the college misfit and b.u.mbler-that Jim Thompson would no longer be, nor his painful memories and gnawing, growing self-doubts. And into his place would step a redoubtable 'Doctor' Thompson.

Having always detested affectation, I would never have used the t.i.tle. But I needed it for what it represented-to disprove the almost unbearable implications of a long list of failures. If, I told myself, I could just this once achieve a real distinction-an honor unmarred by fluke or my own shortcomings-if I could just this once do a job that allowed me to keep my pride, meanwhile rewarding me handsomely...

Well, I got the bad news a few days after we settled in San Diego. The war boom, with its immense leavening of the nation's economy, had made or would make my material obsolescent. The six-room, five-thousand-dollar house permanently vanished. So also did the dollar-an-hour building craftsman. It was "extremely regrettable" and I was not to consider it a reflection on my research or writing...but the book could not be published.

I started looking for a job.

I could find nothing-no position that paid even reasonably well or that carried any semblance of responsibility. I felt dispirited, licked, and looked it. Appet.i.teless and unable to sleep, I had begun to drink great quant.i.ties of cheap wine. The stuff told on my appearance. It also, so thoroughly had I become impregnated, smelted.

I began applying for menial jobs '("Just anything at all, mister.").' I found one just in time to keep us from starving.

One of the San Diego aircraft factories had begun an extensive expansion program. The building was being carried on simultaneously with the making of planes; and they needed a man to go around on his hands and knees, chipping up the spatterings of plaster and paint.

I leaped at this "opportunity," to use the personnel manager's term. If I made good (his phrasing again) I would be promoted to a full-fledged janitor. For the present, I would draw twenty-five dollars a week.

Well, poke fun at it though I do, the job was good for me. It kept me from drinking for at least eight hours a day. Through it, my interest in life was rearoused.

Roaming the plant from one end to the other, I got a broad and original conception of the workings of a great factory. The s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation I overhead, the things I saw, began to intrigue me. I tried to resist, but the constant challenge to the imagination was too strong to be ignored. I had to-as we used to say down south-"get in the big middle" of things.

One day I got up from the floor, wiped my hands against my pants and accosted the general manager. "I understand you're having a lot of trouble with your parts records," I said. "I'd like to have the job of straightening them out."

He gave me a quick glance. Grinning out of the corner of his mouth, he started to turn away.

"Give me a chance," I pleaded. "I've held some pretty important jobs in my time. What-"

"Have, huh?" He gave me another look. "You wouldn't be an expert accountant would you? Or a CPA?"

"Well, no, but-"

"You're an engineer, then."

"No, I'm-"

"But, of course, you read blueprints?"

"Well..."

"Better get back to your work," he said.

As soon as dinner was over that night, I hastened down to the public library. I drew out every book I could find on accounting and blueprint reading and took them home. I was still reading the next morning when my wife set toast and coffee before me.

Red eyed, and with a top-heavy feeling in my head, I accosted the general manager again.

"I can do any accounting job you've got around here, now," I said. "And I can sight-read blueprints. I sat up all night studying."

Before he could turn away or order me back to my work, I reeled off the t.i.tles of the books I'd read. Some of them apparently struck a familiar chord, for he gave me an appraising look.

"All right. What do you think our trouble is?"

"Everything," I said. "Whoever installed your record system didn't know what they were doing."

"That's pretty hard to believe. It was installed by a very good firm of industrial engineers."

"Well, however good they were," I said, "they didn't know much about people. The system's good enough in theory, but it doesn't work out in practice. It overlooks the human element; it would take a corps of high-paid experts to keep it going. Now what you need is something simple, foolproof, and I can..."

While he fidgeted, wavering between interest and irritation, I went on talking. In the end, doubtless as the only way he saw of shutting me up, he gave me my chance. I was put in the parts-control department for a week at my regular salary. During that week, I was to study the system and recommend changes which I felt would rectify the trouble.

I did better than that. In less than a week, I invented and installed a new system. And I gave such a convincing demonstration of its advantages that the former involved and expensive system was permanently discarded.

In the seven-odd months I remained at the factory, I was steadily promoted to better jobs and I received five pay increases. I quit at the end of that time.

I had progressed to a point where I was in compet.i.tion with the professionals of aircraft building, men who had made and were making it their life's work. I couldn't hope to compete with them; I had no strong desire to. After all, I had my own profession, and I had spent almost twenty years in it. I would have to capitalize on that experience, and quickly, or remain the rest of my life in a modestly padded rut.

I had managed to labor out two short detective stories. With the slender proceeds from these, my wife and children returned to Nebraska for a visit, and I caught a bus for New York. I was confident that I could turn up some kind of writing or publishing job there. Also, by being able to talk directly with editors and publishers, I would improve my chances for doing some really worthwhile freelancing.

I took a bargain-rate bus, and the fare included meals. You can probably guess what those meals were like. I became violently ill after the first one, nauseated and racked with dysentery. And if there is any worse complaint to have on a cross-country bus-with, of course, no toilet and infrequent rest stops-I cannot think what it is. I began buying my meals but the poison was already in me, and it continued to manifest itself, painfully and embarra.s.singly.

The bus driver became annoyed, then infuriated. Due to my getting off "at every d.a.m.ned bush and signboard," he was hours behind in his schedule. The next time I made him stop, he declared, he would go off and leave me and I could by G.o.d walk to New York.

"But I can't help it," I said. "I'm sick."

"Well, yet yourself some medicine, then! Get a jug of whiskey an' sip on it-that oughta help. Do 'somethin',' for G.o.d's sake!"

I bought a bottle of anti-colic compound. Its only effect was to put me to sleep...with almost disastrous results. So I tried sipping whiskey, and that did help. The griping stopped and stayed stopped-as long as I drank.

We arrived in Oklahoma City the third day out, and I laid over there a day to see Pop. He could not believe it was I when I first walked in on him. The seven long, lonely months must have seemed like years to him, and I think he had begun to feel that we had abandoned him.

I made him understand the truth: that his remaining here was due to circ.u.mstances beyond our control. He began to brighten up.

"Well, it's all over now," he said. "You just help me get my things together, and I'll clear out of here right now."

"Pop," I said. "I-"

"Well?" He looked at me. "You're going to take me away, aren't you? Th-that's why you've come back?"

I hesitated. Then, I said, yes, that was why. "But I can't go with you. Pop, I'm on my way to New York."

"Oh?" He frowned troubledly. "Well, I guess I could travel by myself if-"

"I've got a swell job there," I lied. "Give me a-well, just give me a month and I can send you to California by stateroom. Get you a nurse if you need one. But the best I can do now is a bus ticket."

"I don't know," he said dubiously. "I'm afraid the doctor...I'm afraid I couldn't..." He sat back down on the bed. "You're sure, Jimmie? If I wait another month, you'll-?"

"That's a promise. And I never break a promise."

"No," he nodded, and his face cleared, "you never do...That'll be fine, then. I won't mind so much now that I know I'm really leaving."

He was very weak, but organically, considering his age, his condition was at least fair. As to the acute mental depression he had sunk into, the doctor felt that this would be greatly relieved once he was back with his family.

I stayed over in Oklahoma City that night. The next morning, leaving Pop happily laying his plans for his trip, I caught another bargain-rate bus for New York.

I had not counted on having to buy my meals on the trip, nor, of course, the purchase of some twenty dollars' worth of whiskey. And I arrived in the big town with one lone quarter in my pocket. It was November of 1941, a cold, bitter night. I was still violently ill, and the cold seemed to congeal my California-thinned blood.

I stood on a street corner for a time, shivering, frightened by the crowds, wondering what to do. It was like a bad dream, like one of those nightmares where one is plunged into a strange world-where running is both imperative and impossible. I had to have rest. I had to have some whiskey. I had to, in a month's time-in less than a month, now...My family had not been in Nebraska for several years, and they wanted to make a long visit. So there was no big hurry where they were concerned. But Pop-there could be no delay there. I could not fail him.

Meanwhile, first things first.

My baggage, a briefcase and Gladstone, was worn but substantial looking. I had no trouble in checking in at a first-cla.s.s hotel and charging a quart of whiskey to my room. I gave my quarter to the bellboy. Slugging down a few drinks, I tried to map out a plan of action.

It would be impossible to hold a job until this bowel ailment was cleared up. At any rate, a job would not get me the money I had to have as quickly as I had to have it. I thought and thought, turning a thousand wild schemes over in my mind. And the one I finally settled on was probably the wildest of them all.

I would write and sell a novel.

This solution to my dilemma seemed even more preposterous the next morning. But I gave myself a pep talk-and several stiff drinks-and sallied forth into the city. After all, I was a writer, wasn't I? And publishers needed books, didn't they? And it was no crime to be broke, was it? So what was the difference if the proposition I had to make was just a trifle unusual?

It made quite a bit of difference, it seemed. I never got past the receptionists at the first few publishers I called on. At the fifth-or maybe it was the sixth-an editor heard me out sympathetically, and suggested that I wire whatever friends or relatives I had for a ticket back to California. He lent me two dollars for this purpose. I spent it for breakfast, cigarettes and a few more drinks. Then, I tackled another publisher.

This was a small but reputable firm which had published many first novels. I was promptly admitted to an editor's office. He listened to me incredulously, burst into laughter and took me in to see the publisher. That gentleman also listened, a frown of wonder creasing his forehead.

"Let's see," he said at last. "You want us to bail you out of your hotel, then-"

"It's just a small bill."

"Then you want us to lend you a typewriter and stake you while you're writing a novel, a book which you yourself don't have very clearly in mind."

I said I had it clear enough. "I talk a very bad story. And you only need to stake me for two weeks. When I turn in the novel, you can deduct anything you've given me from your usual advance."

'"When' you turn it in, and 'if' it's publishable."

"You'll have it," I said, "within two weeks. And it will be publishable."

He hesitated, moved against his better judgment. "I'm sure your intentions are good, but I don't think you will. I don't see how you can. But perhaps..."

I walked out of that office with a battered typewriter in one hand and a check in the other. I checked out of my hotel, rented a three-dollar-a-week room on Seventh Avenue and started to work. Working an average of twenty hours a day, I finished the book in ten days.

It got a mixed reception at the publishing company. Some of the editors were very enthusiastic about it; others were just as unenthusiastic. So, as is often done, the ma.n.u.script was farmed out to another writer for reading and opinion.

This young man was the scion of a wealthy Hollywood family, and the author of one novel. He reported that I showed promise "for a beginning writer" but that I obviously did not know enough about life to attempt a novel. I needed to "meet the stark realities of existence at first hand"-not merely to read about them in books, as (he added) I patently had.

Sick and nearly hysterical with worry as I was, I burst into laughter when I read that report. The publisher gave me a friendly wink. He was no more impressed with the young man's opinion than I was. He would, he said, pa.s.s the ma.n.u.script on to a couple of other writers.

"Louis Bromfield and Richard Wright. I'm sure they'll like it. And now, as long as we're holding you up on the thing..."

He advanced me another twenty-five dollars. Since I had been practically living on whiskey, and whiskey was very cheap in those days, I still had part of the original advance left. If I had to, I could live two weeks with no additional money.

"Do you think-" I hesitated as I shook hands with the publisher. "Do you think you'll have your reports in within the next two weeks?"

"Well, we'll certainly try to. If we can't, and you should need a few more dollars, we can-"

"It isn't that," I said. "It's something that would be pretty hard to explain, and I won't try to. I've burdened you enough with my personal problems. But-"

"Sure." He clapped me on the back. "I'll let you know just as soon as I can."