Roughneck (14 page)

       Of all my critics, he is the only one ever to call me 'immortal!'

In the spring of 1936, I heard of a chief of police who was making a big name for himself in a small Oklahoma city. I queried a magazine about him, and was given the go-sign. I paid him a visit. He seemed to be everything that rumor said, and then some. In fact, his exploits were so many and so well handled as to comprise the stuff for a long serial. I wrote the magazine to that effect, and again I got a go-ahead.

       They did not give me a flat promise to buy, of course. Irrevocable commitments are almost unheard of in the publishing world. But they did think it would make a swell serial, and they were anxious to see it. And that was good enough for me.

       I moved my family to Oklahoma City (there would be much research to do in the capital's appeals court files). I did my writing there, traveling back and forth to the police chief's town for the numerous interviews we had to hold. It was a long, drawn-out job. What with my traveling and research, I was almost three months getting it done and my slender financial resources were exhausted. I was anything but worried, however. I had forty thousand words of the best damned detective story I had ever written. Counting payments for the pictures, I would receive around two thousand dollars for it, and two thousand in those days was equal to six or eight thousand now.

       I was very happy as I caught the bus for the police chief's city. I knew that there would be no difficulty in getting his approval of the story, and once that formality was taken care of, my work was finished. It would take a couple weeks to get my check, but that was all right. I could hock my typewriter for enough to ride a couple weeks.

       I arrived at my destination. Grinning dreamily, I mounted the steps to the police station. Two thousand dollars—'wow!' And it couldn't come at a better time. My wife and I could have a real home for the second baby we were expecting.

       Well, I went into the police station, grinning like a fool. I came out staggering, so sick and faint that I almost fell down the steps. My story was worthless. No magazine in the world would have it as a gift. For throughout its forty thousand words, it held the chief as a model of public officialdom—a man unflinchingly honest, unswerving in his devotion to duty. And those things were exactly what he was not. He had lived a lie for years, and the lie had at last caught up with him.

       I came to a trash receptacle, tossed the thick, carefully prepared manuscript inside. I boarded a bus for Oklahoma City.

       A police chief—and he had been head of an interstate auto theft ring! A police chief—and now he was locked up in his own jail! It was a ludicrously comic situation, but somehow I couldn't laugh a bit.

       Back in Oklahoma City, I broke the bad news to my wife. The next morning, after pawning my typewriter, I started looking for a job. I had to have one, at least temporarily. Free-lance writing, like any other business, requires capital.

       I was briskly turned down at the first newspaper I applied to, the city's leading daily. I went on to another one, and the city editor, while pretty crotchety and curt, invited me to sit down.

       "Might have something opening up on rewrite," he said. "Nothing certain about it, but...how long you lived here?"

       "About ten years," I said, omitting to mention that those years were mainly during my childhood. "I know the city well."

       "Wouldn't be much good to us if you didn't," he grunted. "Don't want any floaters, anyway. This is a home-town paper for home-town people."

       I told him that I was his man, a bona fide home-town boy. "I was away at college for a couple of years, but..."

       "All right. Give me your telephone number, and I'll call you in a day or two."

       He picked up a pencil. He waited, looking at me impatiently. Helplessly, I looked back at him.

       I had no telephone of my own, and I couldn't remember my landlady's number as many times as I had called it. In most respects, I have a pretty good memory but telephone numbers have always eluded me.

       "I—I guess I'll have to look it up," I said. "I just moved recently, and—"

       "Give me your old number, then. The operator will make the switch."

       "Well, I—" I cursed myself. I should have told him that I didn't have a phone, but I hadn't been able to think that fast.

       "Hmmmm." He stared into my reddening face. "This place you're living now, that address. Right down on the edge of the business district isn't it? What is it, a rooming house?"

       "Y-yes, sir. But—"

       "You've got a wife and baby—you're a permanent resident—and you're staying in a rooming house? Where'd you live before that?"

       It was useless to lie to him. Now that his suspicions were aroused, he would run a check on me in the file of city directories which every newspaper maintains, and a lie would be promptly detected.

       "All right, I said. "I'll be frank with you, sir. I—"

       "Thought so," he grunted, bending back over his desk. "Sorry, nothing for you. Nope, nope, that's all. Don't have a thing."

       I started for the door, very dejected as you may guess.

       An elderly copy-desk man followed me out into the hall.

       "Too bad, son," he said. "If you're not too particular about money, I may be able to put you next to another job."

       I said that I would be grateful for anything at all, for the time being. He told me where the prospective job was, and my face fell again.

       "Writers' project? But that's relief work, isn't it? I'm not a relief client."

       "They have a few non-relief people—men who really know writing and editing. Sort of supervisors, you know, for the non-professionals. One of the fellows who got laid off here is over there now."

       "Well," I said dubiously, "I suppose it won't hurt to look into it."

       "Sure it won't." He gave me an encouraging slap on the back. "They've got a big set-up over there, a hundred and twenty-five people, I understand. Maybe you can get to be boss of the whole shebang!"

       I grinned weakly at the jest, and thanked him for his kindness. Reluctantly, and without any real hope of landing a job, I applied at the writers' project office.

       I was hired immediately.

       Eighteen months later I was appointed director—"boss of the shebang."

       That was how it happened, how the whole course of my life was changed: because I couldn't remember my telephone number...

       Except for a very small executive staff, which I did not become a member of for almost a year, project employees worked only two weeks a month. The wage wasn't enough for me to live on, with my increased responsibilities, and I originally intended to quit as soon as I sold a story or two. But my work was appreciated—something which means a great deal to a writer. And having some kind of steady income, however small, meant a great deal to my wife. She had become justifiably bearish on the business of freelance writing after the police chief fiasco. If a story like that could blow up, she pointed out, then there was none we could be sure of, and with two children we had to be reasonably sure of something. I thoroughly agreed with her.

       I stayed on the job, writing detective stories in my off-weeks. Little by little, we acquired a degree of solvency. She and the kids returned to Nebraska the following spring for a visit. I went down to Fort Worth to cover a story. My folks were living in rather cramped quarters, so I stayed at the house of my married sister, Maxine.

       I was back in the bedroom one afternoon, putting the finishing touches to the story, when Maxine announced that I had a caller.

       "An awfully nice young man," she said innocently. "A Mr. Allison Ivers. He's driving a brand new convertible, and—"

       "—and it's probably hot," I cut in grimly. "That guy will snitch your silverware and throw it away. Just for the hell of it!"

       Allie had showed up in Fort Worth during my tour of duty as a doorman, and I knew that he was now managing a wildcat taxi and rental car service. In view of the constraint that existed between us, I was surprised that he had traced me here to my sister's house. I was also far from pleased by the visit.

       I still liked him and was anxious to patch up our misunderstanding. But this, I felt, his coming here to a stranger's house, was damned presumptuous. He was taking advantage of me, as I saw it, putting me in a position where I would be compelled to be polite whether I chose to or not.

       I shook hands with him coldly. He took a tall paper sack from his coat pocket and politely pressed it upon Maxine.

       "A cold bottle of prepared cocktails," he explained. "Perhaps if father doesn't mind, we might all have a drink."

       "My father?" Maxine looked blank, then tittered delightedly. "Did you hear that, Jimmie? He thinks you're my father!"

       "He doesn't think anything of the kind," I said. "He's the biggest goddamned liar in the country, and he's got a hell of a lot of guts coming out—"

       "Dearie me!" Allie rolled his eyes. "Such language to use in front of a young girl."

       He and Maxine stared at me reprovingly. She brought glasses from the sideboard, and I glumly accepted a drink. Allie made primly polite conversation with Maxine.

       "It's such a beautiful day," he said in his piping choirboy voice. "On a day like this, I love to be out in the country with the birds and the flowers."

       He sighed and fluttered his eyelids. Maxine gave him a fond look. "You hear that, Jimmie? Why can't you ever be interested in nature and—uh—nice things like Mr. Ivers?"

       "Mr. Ivers," I said, "is just about three sheets in the wind."

       "Why, he is not! I guess I could tell if a person was drunk."

       "You couldn't tell with Allie," I said, "not unless you knew him as well as I do. Now, if he'll just tell me why he came out here—"

       "Why—" Allie seemed honestly hurt. "I just thought we might take a little ride, Jim. Thought we might be able to iron out a few things. I know you've come up a long way in the world, and I'm still in the same old rut. But—"

       "Now, wait a minute," I said uncomfortably. "You know I wouldn't high-nose you, Allie. It's just that—"

       "Then how about that ride? It's a company car. You can see the commercial license plates from here."

       I looked out through the screen door. "All right," I said, not too graciously. "Let's get going."

       We pulled away from the house and headed out West Seventh Street. Allie drove superbly—a reassuring but by no means surprising fact. Drink had never seemed to do the things to him that it does to most people. Its sole effect on Allie was to excite his fantastic sense of humor.

       We reached the outer limits of the city and sped down the highway. Allie began to talk quietly. He said I had become stiff-necked, a stuffed shirt, too uncompromising in my dealings with onetime associates. The publishing swindle in Oklahoma City was a case in point. It had been an error on his part, and he would have been quick to admit it—if I had possessed the live-and-let-live attitude which I had once had. But I had lost my tolerance. Instead of kidding with him I had humbled him, made him feel cheap and of no account. And I had persisted in my high and mighty air in our subsequent meetings.

       "What about you?" I said. "You got pretty rough yourself that night in Oklahoma City."

       "That's different, and you know it. I can rough talk you and it doesn't mean anything. Who in the hell am I, anyway? But when you start pouring it on me, like you did there at your sister's house—"

       "Aaah," I scoffed, "I was just kidding, Allie. You know that. Anyway, you started it yourself."

       "I told you," said Allie, "that was different. A man with a club foot, you don't kid him because he limps."

       I could see his point vaguely, but I didn't know quite what to do about it. I said so.

       "You could laugh occasionally for one thing. You could crawl out of that shell you're in, and start acting like a human being."

       "I laugh when there's anything to laugh about," I said, "and quite a few people think I act like a human being."

       "Well, I don't," said Allie. "I—hey! Look at that!"

       I turned and looked out over the prairie in the direction he had pointed. "Look at what? I don't see—"

       "That airplane—over there in that patch of clouds! A guy just fell out of it!"

       I cupped my hands over my eyes, stared intently at the clouds. I could see nothing resembling an airplane nor a falling body.

       "What the hell are you trying to—to—" I turned back around in the seat. "Allie!" I yelled. '"Allie!"'

       The blood drained from my face. I almost dropped dead from sheer fright. For the car had suddenly gathered speed, and Allie was no longer at the wheel.

       He was slumped in the back seat, a lap robe thrown over his knees, his head lolling foolishly.

       The car swerved suddenly and shot toward the ditch. Righting itself at the last instant, it sped toward the opposite ditch. I yelled and flung myself on the steering wheel. It wouldn't turn. It was jammed.

       This last circumstance should have been the tipoff for me, but I was not thinking clearly. As the car shot down the road, swinging crazily from side to side, I could only think of one thing: the booze had at last caught up with Allie, and this hideous predicament was the result.

       We were traveling far too fast for me to jump. My terrified shouts and screams elicited nothing from Allie but foolish, slit-eyed grins. I tried to apply the brakes. There was no response. I turned the ignition switch—and the car kept right on going. Faster and faster.

       I don't know what other motorists must have thought as we roared in and out of the traffic: probably, I suppose, that their eyes were playing tricks on them. I was yelling at the top of my lungs, fighting frantically with the useless wheel. Allie remained slumped in the back seat, apparently unconscious that anything at all was amiss.