America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction (32 page)

He liked comfort and the chairs in the lab were stiff and miserable. His bed was a redwood box laced with hemp rope on which a thin mattress was thrown. And this bed was not big enough for two. Ladies complained bitterly about his bed, which was not only narrow and uncomfortable but gave out shrieks of protest at the slightest movement.

I used the laboratory and Ed himself in a book called Cannery Row. I took it to him in typescript to see whether he would resent it and to offer to make any changes he would suggest. He read it through carefully, smiling, and when he had finished he said, “Let it go that way. It is written in kindness. Such a thing can't be bad.”

But it was bad in several ways neither of us foresaw. As the book began to be read, tourists began coming to the laboratory, first a few and then in droves. People stopped their cars and stared at Ed with that glassy look that is used on movie stars. Hundreds of people came into the lab to ask questions and peer around. It became a nuisance to him. But in a way he liked it too. For as he said, “Some of the callers were women and some of the women were very nice-looking.” However, he was glad when the little flurry of publicity or notoriety was over.

It never occurred to me to ask Ed much about his family background or his life as a boy. I suppose it would be easy to find out. When he was alive there were too many other things to talk about, and now—it doesn't matter. Of course I have heard him asked the usual question about his name. Ricketts. He said, “No, I was not named after the disease—one of my relatives is responsible for its naming.”

When the book Studs Lonigan came out, Ed read it twice very quickly. “This is a true book,” he said. “I was born and grew up in this part of Chicago. I played in these streets. I know them all. I know the people. This is a true book.” And, of course, to Ed a thing that was true was beautiful. He followed the whole series of Farrell's books after that and only after the locale moved to New York did he lose interest. He did not know true things about New York.

I became associated in the business of the laboratory in the simplest of ways. A number of years ago Ed had gradually got into debt until the interest on his loan from the bank was bleeding the laboratory like a cat in the basement. Rather sadly he prepared to liquidate the little business and give up his independence—the right to sleep late and work late, the right to make his own decisions. While the lab was not run efficiently, it could make enough to support him, but it could not also pay the bank interest.

At that time I had some money put away and I took up the bank loans and lowered the interest to a vanishing point. I knew the money would vanish anyway. To secure the loan I received stock in the corporation—the most beautiful stock, and the mortgage on the property. I didn't understand much of the transaction but it allowed the laboratory to operate for another ten years. Thus I became a partner in the improbable business. I must say I brought no efficiency to bear on it. The fact that the institution survived at all is a matter that must be put down to magic. I can find no other reasonable explanation. It had no right to survive. A board of directors' meeting differed from any other party only in that there was more beer. A stern business discussion had a way of slipping into a consideration of a unified field hypothesis.

Our trip to the Gulf of Lower California was a marvel of bumbling efficiency. We went where we intended, got what we wanted, and did the work on it. It had been our intention to continue the work with a survey of the Aleutian chain of islands when the war closed that area to us.

At the time of Ed's death our plans were completed, tickets bought, containers and collecting equipment ready for a long collecting trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands, which reach so deep into the Pacific Ocean. There was one deep bay with a long and narrow opening where we thought we might observe some changes in animal forms due to a specialized life and a long period of isolation. Ed was to have started within a month and I was to have joined him there. Maybe someone else will study that little island sea. The light has gone out of it for me.

Now I am coming near to the close of this account. I have not put down Ed's relations with his wives or with his three children. There isn't time, and besides I did not know much about these things.

As I have said, no one who knew Ed will be satisfied with this account. They will have known innumerable other Eds. I imagine that there were as many Eds as there were friends of Ed. And I wonder whether there can be any parallel thinking on his nature and the reason for his impact on the people who knew him. I wonder whether I can make any kind of generalization that would be satisfactory.

I have tried to isolate and inspect the great talent that was in Ed Ricketts, that made him so loved and needed and makes him so missed now that he is dead. Certainly he was an interesting and charming man, but there was some other quality which far exceeded these. I have thought that it might be his ability to receive, to receive anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully and to make the gift seem very fine. Because of this everyone felt good in giving to Ed—a present, a thought, anything.

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice.

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well.

It requires a self-esteem to receive—not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.

Once Ed said to me, “For a very long time I didn't like myself.” It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. “It was a very difficult time,” he said, “and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that. Then gradually,” he said, “I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why cannot I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right.”

This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person “Ed” as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking. They cannot see themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

Once Ed was able to like himself he was released from the secret prison of self-contempt. Then he did not have to prove superiority any more by any of the ordinary methods, including giving. He could receive and understand and be truly glad, not competitively glad.

Ed's gift for receiving made him a great teacher. Children brought shells to him and gave him information about the shells. And they had to learn before they could tell him.

In conversation you found yourself telling him things—thoughts, conjectures, hypotheses—and you found a pleased surprise at yourself for having arrived at something you were not aware that you could think or know. It gave you such a good sense of participation with him that you could present him with this wonder.

Then Ed would say, “Yes, that's so. That's the way it might be and besides—” and he would illuminate it but not so that he took it away from you. He simply accepted it.

Although his creativeness lay in receiving, that does not mean that he kept things as property. When you had something from him it was not something that was his that he tore away from himself. When you had a thought from him or a piece of music or twenty dollars or a steak dinner, it was not his—it was yours already, and his was only the head and hand that steadied it in position toward you. For this reason no one was ever cut off from him. Association with him was deep participation with him, never competition.

I wish we could all be so. If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away. Maybe we would not have to hurt one another just to keep our ego-chins above water.

There it is. That's all I can set down about Ed Ricketts. I don't know whether any clear picture has emerged. Thinking back and remembering has not done what I hoped it might. It has not laid the ghost.

The picture that remains is a haunting one. It is the time just before dusk. I can see Ed finishing his work in the laboratory. He covers his instruments and puts his papers away. He rolls down the sleeves of his wool shirt and puts on his old brown coat. I see him go out and get in his beat-up old car and slowly drive away in the evening.

I guess I'll have that with me all my life.

IT'S A HARD THING to write about a dead man who doesn't seem dead to you. Ernie Pyle didn't want to go back to the war. When he left France, he set down his disgust and fear and weariness. He thought he could rest a little, but he couldn't. People told him what to do and what he should do. He could have overcome that but he couldn't overcome his own sense of responsibility. He had become identified with every soldier in the army. Ernie died every time a man was killed, and his little body shriveled every time a man was wounded. He'd done it so often, it is probable that his own death was just a repetition. In Africa he said, “The percentage is pulling down on me. You stand in the line of fire long enough and you're going to get hit. It's in the figures.” And after that he went through Italy and France. And his percentage grew smaller and smaller. In San Francisco before he went to the Pacific he seemed a little numb. The rest hadn't rested him. His eyes were deep and tired and restless. He sat with a glass of whiskey in his hand and his jaw muscles were tight. He looked sick. The phone rang all the time. He must speak, he must write this and this. And he was utterly weary. “I don't know why I have to go back but I do,” he said. “It's my business.” He was wearing a new uniform and cap. “These are a waste of money,” he said, “I won't need them.” His percentage had disappeared and he knew it. And he didn't resent it. He had done everything else with the soldiers except this last thing. “I don't know whether I can write anymore,” he said. “I thought I'd get rested but I didn't. Anyway, it will be warm in the Philippines.” He had made his usual neat arrangements—old friends, written to or telephoned. Gifts sent or delivered. He was always like that. When he got back from France, he came in excitedly with a scarf. “A real French silk handkerchief. I bought it in Paris right after the city was taken.” The scarf was bad rayon. The French salesman had started early. “It's beautiful, Ernie.”

“There was a soldier with only one leg, on the hospital ship,” Ernie said. “He was hopping about like a cricket—up and down stairs. It was wonderful. I can't stand hurt men,” he said. “I'm going to Albuquerque and forget the whole damn thing. There's nothing to write about. It's the same thing over and over. I'm through. Maybe I'll start going around the country the way I used to.

“It's just piled up dead men,” he said, “millions of them. And it's crazy because the war is over. They can't win. All they can do is kill more people. Jesus I'm tired.” Then he saw the President and Stevenson and Forrestal and lots of congressmen. Everyone expected him to go back. Everyone except Ernie thought Ernie was imperishable. But he knew his time was up. It's in his letters and in his last articles. He was so tired and disgusted that he almost welcomed it. In the San Francisco Hotel he poured himself a good stiff drink. “Got to go now,” he said. “They're going to give me some new shots. I'm half blood and half serum already.” He went out of the hotel and a woman shouted—“There's Ernie Pyle!” A crowd collected about him and he worked his way slowly through the milling group—a tired little man with his percentage all run out—going to toss his carcass on the great heap.

THE FIRST TIME I saw Windsor Drake it was evening, and it was raining. I drove into the migrant camp, the wheels of my car throwing muddy water. The lines of sodden, dripping tents stretched away from me in the darkness. The temporary office was crowded with damp men and women, just standing under a roof, and sitting at a littered table was Windsor Drake, a little man in a damp, frayed white suit. The crowding people looked at him all the time. Just stood and looked at him. He had a small moustache, his graying, black hair stood up on his head like the quills of a frightened porcupine, and his large, dark eyes, tired beyond sleepiness, the kind of tired that won't let you sleep even if you have the time and a bed.

I had a letter to Windsor Drake. It was passed on to him by the crowding people, since moving through them was out of the question. He read the letter, stood up and said, “Let's go to my shack and make some coffee.”