Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (541 page)

“ ‘We simply can’t depend on you. ‘

“I could only answer, ‘Yes, sir. ‘

“That was as far as I could explain to him literally what happened — and it’s taken me years to figure it out for my own benefit. I had been playing listlessly. We had the other team licked by a couple of touchdowns, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might as well let the opposing end — who hadn’t so far made a single tackle — catch a forward pass, but at the last moment I came to life and realized that I couldn’t let him catch the pass, but that at least I wouldn’t intercept it, so I just knocked it down.

“That was the point where I was taken out of the game. I remember the desolate ride in the bus back to the train and the desolate ride back to school with everybody thinking I had been yellow on the occasion, when actually I was just distracted and sorry for that opposing end. That’s the truth. I’ve been afraid plenty of times but that wasn’t one of the times. The point is it inspired me to write a poem for the school paper which made me as big a hit with my father as if I had become a football hero. So when I went home that Christmas vacation it was in my mind that if you weren’t able to function in action you might at least be able to tell about it, because you felt the same intensity — it was a back door way out of facing reality. “

They go into a dining room now. The author walks through it in haste and a certain aversion.

“Don’t you enjoy food?” the visitor asks.

“Food — yes! But not the miserable mixture of fruit juices and milk and whole-wheat bread I live on now. “

“Are you dyspeptic?”

“Dyspeptic! I’m simply ruined. “

“How so?”

“Well, in the middle west in those days children started life with fried food and waffles and that led into endless malted milks and bacon buns in college and then a little later I jumped to meals at Foyot’s and the Castelli dei Caesari and the Escargot and every spice merchant in France and Italy. And under the name of alcohol — Clarets and Burgundys, Chateau Yqnems and Champagnes, Pilsener and Dago Red, prohibition Scotch and Alabama white mule. It was very good while it lasted but I didn’t see what pap lay at the end. “ He shivered, “Let’s forget it — it isn’t dinner time. Now this — “ he says opening a door, “is my study. “

A secretary is typing there or rather in a little alcove adjoining. As they come in she hands the author some letters. His eye falls on the envelope of the first one, his face takes on an expectant smile and he says to the visitor:

“This is the sequel to something that was rather funny. Let me tell you the first part before I open this. Well, about two weeks ago I got a letter under cover from
The Saturday Evening Post
, addressed not to me but to

Thomas Kracklin,
Saturday Evening post
Philadelphia
pennsylvania Pa

On the envelope were several notations evidently by the
Post’s
mail department.

Not known here
Try a story series in 1930 files
Think this is character in story by X in 1927 files

“This last person had guessed it, for Thomas Kracklin was indeed a character in some stories of mine. Here’s what the letter said:

Mr. Kracklin I wonder if you are any kin to mine because my name was Kracklin an I had a brother an he did not see us much any more we was worried about him an I thought when I read your story that you was that Kracklin an I thought if I wrote you I would find out yours truly Mrs. Kracklin Lee.

“The address was a small town in Michigan. The letter amused me and was so different from any that I had received for a long time that I made up an answer to it. It went something like this:

My dear Mrs. Kracklin Lee:

I am indeed your long lost brother. I am now in the Baltimore Penitentiary awaiting execution by hanging. If I get out I will be glad to come to visit you. I think you would find me all right except I cannot be irritated as I sometimes kill people if the coffee is cold. But I think I won’t be much trouble except for that but I will be pretty poor when I get out of the penitentiary and will be glad if you can take care of me — unless they string me up next Thursday. Write me care of my lawyer.

“Here I gave my name and then signed the letter ‘Sincerely, Thomas Kracklin. ‘ This is undoubtedly the answer. “

The author opened the envelope — there were two letters inside. The first was addressed to him by his real name.

Dear Sir I hope my brother has not been hung an I thank you for sending his letter I am a poor woman an have no potatoes this day an can just buy the stamp but I hope my brother has not been hung an if not I would like to see him an will you give him this letter yours truly Mrs. Kracklin Lee.

This was the second letter:

Dear Brother I have not got much but if you get off you can come back here an I could not promise to suply you with much but maybe we could get along cannot really promise anythin but I hope you will get off an wish you the very best always your sister Mrs. Kracklin Lee.

When he had finished reading the author said:

“Now isn’t it fun to be so damn smart! Miss Palmer, please write a letter saying her brother’s been reprieved and gone to China and put five dollars in the envelope. “

“But it’s too late, “ he continued as he and his visitor went upstairs. “You can pay a little money but what can you do for meddling with a human heart? A writer’s temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair.

“This is my bedroom. I write a good deal lying down and when there are too many children around, but in summer it’s hot up here in the daytime and my hand sticks to the paper. “

The visitor moved a fold of cloth to perch himself on the side of a chair but the author warned him quickly:

“Don’t touch that! It’s just the way somebody left it. “

“Oh I beg your pardon. “

“Oh it’s all right — it was a long long time ago. Sit here for a moment and rest yourself and then we’ll go on up. “

“Up?”

“Up to the attic. This is a big house you see — on the old-fashioned side. “

The attic was the attic of Victorian fiction. It was pleasant, with beams of late light slanting in on piles and piles of magazines and pamphlets and children’s school books and college year books and “little” magazines from Paris and ballet programs and the old Dial and Mercury and L’lllustration unbound and the St. Nicholas and the journal of the Maryland Historical Society, and piles of maps and guide books from the Golden Gate to Bou Saada. There were files bulging with letters, one marked “letters from my grandfather to my grandmother” and several dozen scrap books and clipping books and photograph books and albums and “baby books” and great envelopes full of unfiled items....

“This is the loot, “ the author said grimly. “This is what one has instead of a bank balance. “

“Are you satisfied?”

“No. But it’s nice here sometimes in the late afternoon. This is a sort of a library in its way, you see — the library of a life. And nothing is as depressing as a library if you stay long in it. Unless of course you stay there all the time because then you adjust yourself and become a little crazy. Part of you gets dead. Come on let’s go up. “

“Where?”

“Up to the cupola — the turret, the watch-tower, whatever you want to call it. I’ll lead the way. “

It is small up there and full of baked silent heat until the author opens two of the glass sides that surround it and the twilight wind blows through. As far as your eye can see there is a river winding between green lawns and trees and purple buildings and red slums blended in by a merciful dusk. Even as they stand there the wind increases until it is a gale whistling around the tower and blowing birds past them.

“I lived up here once, “ the author said after a moment.

“Here? For a long time?”

“No. For just a little while when I was young. “

“It must have been rather cramped. “

“I didn’t notice it. “

“Would you like to try it again?”

“No. And I couldn’t if I wanted to. “

He shivered slightly and closed the windows. As they went downstairs the visitor said, half apologetically:

“It’s really just like all houses, isn’t it?”

The author nodded.

“I didn’t think it was when I built it, but in the end I suppose it’s just like other houses after all. “

AFTERNOON OF AN AUTHOR

When he woke up he felt better than he had for many weeks, a fact that became plain to him negatively — he did not feel ill. He leaned for a moment against the door frame between his bedroom and bath till he could be sure he was not dizzy. Not a bit, not even when he stooped for a slipper under the bed.

It was a bright April morning, he had no idea what time because his clock was long unwound but as he went back through the apartment to the kitchen he saw that his daughter had breakfasted and departed and that the mail was in, so it was after nine.

“I think I’ll go out today,” he said to the maid.

“Do you good — it’s a lovely day.” She was from New Orleans, with the features and coloring of an Arab.

“I want two eggs like yesterday and toast, orange juice and tea.”

He lingered for a moment in his daughter’s end of the apartment and read his mail. It was an annoying mail with nothing cheerful in it — mostly bills and advertisements with the diurnal Oklahoma school boy and his gaping autograph album. Sam Goldwyn might do a ballet picture with Spessiwitza and might not — it would all have to wait till Mr. Goldwyn got back from Europe when he might have half a dozen new ideas. Paramount wanted a release on a poem that had appeared in one of the author’s books, as they didn’t know whether it was an original or quoted. Maybe they were going to get a title from it. Anyhow he had no more equity in that property — he had sold the silent rights many years ago and the sound rights last year.

“Never any luck with movies,” he said to himself. “Stick to your last, boy .”

He looked out the window during breakfast at the students changing classes on the college campus across the way.

“Twenty years ago I was changing classes,” he said to the maid. She laughed her debutante’s laugh.

“I’ll need a check,” she said, “if you’re going out.”

“Oh, I’m not going out yet. I’ve got two or three hours’ work. I meant late this afternoon.”

“Going for a drive?”

“I wouldn’t drive that old junk — I’d sell it for fifty dollars. I’m going on the top of a bus.”

After breakfast he lay down for fifteen minutes. Then he went into the study and began to work.

The problem was a magazine story that had become so thin in the middle that it was about to blow away. The plot was like climbing endless stairs, he had no element of surprise in reserve, and the characters who started so bravely day-before-yesterday couldn’t have qualified for a newspaper serial.

“Yes, I certainly need to get out,” he thought. “I’d like to drive down the Shenandoah Valley, or go to Norfolk on the boat.”

But both of these ideas were impractical — they took time and energy and he had not much of either — what there was must be conserved for work. He went through the manuscript underlining good phrases in red crayon and after tucking these into a file slowly tore up the rest of the story and dropped it in the waste-basket. Then he walked the room and smoked, occasionally talking to himself.

“Wee-l, let’s see — “

“Nau-ow, the next thing — would be — “

“Now let’s see, now — “

After awhile he sat down thinking:

“I’m just stale — I shouldn’t have touched a pencil for two days.

He looked through the heading “Story Ideas” in his notebook until the maid came to tell him his secretary was on the phone - part time secretary since he had been ill.

“Not a thing,” he said. “I just tore up everything I’d written. It wasn’t worth a damn. I’m going out this afternoon.”

“Good for you. It’s a fine day.”

“Better come up tomorrow afternoon — there’s a lot of mail and bills.”

He shaved, and then as a precaution rested five minutes before he dressed. It was exciting to be going out — he hoped the elevator boys wouldn’t say they were glad to see him up and he decided to go down the back elevator where they did not know him. He put on his best suit with the coat and trousers that didn’t match. He had bought only two suits in six years but they were the very best suits — the coat alone of this one had cost a hundred and ten dollars. As he must have a destination — it wasn’t good to go places without a destination — he put a tube of shampoo ointment in his pocket for his barber to use, and also a small phial of luminol.

“The perfect neurotic,” he said, regarding himself in the mirror. “By-product of an idea, slag of a dream.”

II

He went into the kitchen and said good-by to the maid as if he were going to Little America. Once in the war he had commandeered an engine on sheer bluff and had it driven from New York to Washington to keep from being A.W.O.L. Now he stood carefully on the street corner waiting for the light to change, while young people hurried past him with a fine disregard for traffic. On the bus corner under the trees it was green and cool and he thought of Stonewall Jackson’s last words: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” Those Civil War leaders seemed to have realized very suddenly how tired they were — Lee shrivelling into another man, Grant with his desperate memoir-writing at the end.

The bus was all he expected — only one other man on the roof and the green branches ticking against each window through whole blocks. They would probably have to trim those branches and it seemed a pity. There was so much to look at — he tried to define the color of one line of houses and could only think of an old opera cloak of his mother’s that was full of tints and yet was of no tint — a mere reflector of light. Somewhere church bells were playing
Venite Adoremus
and he wondered why, because Christmas was eight months off. He didn’t like bells but it had been very moving when they played
Maryland, My Maryland
at the governor’s funeral.