Now and on Earth Page 14

  “No thank you.”

  “I don’t think I want any,” I said.

  “Jimmie and I have to be going,” said Roberta. “We should have gone a long time ago.”

  “So should I,” said Moon. “We’ll go as soon as Frankie and I have one.”

  He and Frankie had double bourbons, straight—and they did look like they needed them—then we left.

  The ride home wasn’t exactly pleasant. There were probably thirty cars ahead of us at the U. S. Customs Office, and we were almost an hour getting to the head of the line. And the silence, while we waited, was pretty heavy. Frankie got off a joke or two, but they didn’t go over. Roberta was mad, Moon was getting, and I was trying, out of a sense of duty, to work up to it.

  At last a door on each side of the car was jerked open, and two khaki clad patrol officers turned their flashlights on us.

  United States citizens?

  Yes.

  Birthplace?

  We told them.

  Anything to declare? Cigarettes, liquor, clothing.…

  No, no. Well, we did have those hats.

  “We won’t charge you for those. Let’s take a look in your back end.”

  Moon pulled his bunch of keys from the switch and handed them out.

  “How about hurrying it up a little?” he said.

  “How about getting out and opening it yourself?” said the guard.

  Moon muttered something under his breath and got out. I felt constrained to get out also. I followed him around to the back of the car and watched while he tried each of the keys in the lock. He straightened up for a minute, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and began trying them over again.

  “Can’t you find the right key?” said the stern-faced gray-haired guard.

  “Sure,” said Moon. “I’m just stalling you guys. I’ve got six Chinks and a ton of opium in here.”

  “Better snap into it.”

  “Snap into my ass,” said Moon.

  The younger guard took a step toward him, but the other put out his hand.

  “Step in the station, Bill,” he said. “And bring out the hacksaw.”

  “Now you’re not going to saw that lock,” said Moon.

  “Can you open it?”

  “No, I can’t. I must have left the keys at home.”

  “Too bad.”

  The other guard came back with the saw. Frankie climbed out of the car.

  “What’re you going to do, anyway?”

  “We’re going to saw the lock, lady.”

  “Well of all things! What are you going to do that for? We don’t have anything in there.”

  “We don’t know that, lady.”

  Roberta stuck her head out. “If you ask me, there isn’t much you do know.”

  The two guards looked at each other. The oldest one turned to Moon. “Pull over here under the shed.”

  “Now what the hell—”

  “And cut out the cursing. We don’t take it.”

  “But—”

  “We can’t bother with you now. You’ll have to wait until we get rid of these other cars.”

  We waited. Hours passed and still we waited. As long as the guards could see a car approaching, they made us wait. And then, taking their time, they sawed the lock. It was five-thirty when we pulled up in front of our house in San Diego.

  Moon went on home, saying that he thought he’d lay off that day. Frankie said she thought she would, too; she works on a straight salary, not an hourly rate as I do.

  Roberta said, “Jimmie, you know you can’t work today. What’s the use of being stubborn about it?”

  I said, “Oh, hell!”

  When you’re working forty-eight hours, the day you lose is your overtime. My rate was only a little over five dollars a day; but if I lost a day, my check would be short eight dollars. We couldn’t get along without it.

  I fussed and swore around until she finally dug down in the trunk and got the little brown bottle she’d hidden. Then she went to bed crying, saying that she j-just hoped I blew the top of my d-damned head off.

  Now there’s nothing wrong with this drug. The trouble is with the people who take it. Two tablets in a glass of coke will put you on such a wildly delicious drunk that you’ll never want to come out of it—and you may not. A tablet and perhaps a fraction of one, the morning after, will convince you that you have the hangover problem licked. (And, of course, you never do.) A dose—the same dosage produces different effects on different days—will have you believing that sleep and food are nonessentials.

  I started off with half a tablet, and added to it by eighths. At a tablet and a quarter my eyelids snapped open so hard that it was like two doors slamming. There was a lull then, so I took another quarter.

  My scalp prickled and the hair seemed to rise and drop back to my head. My back and shoulder muscles flexed themselves. My nostrils trembled and I could smell a thousand scents I had never smelled before. My eyes coned outward, the pupils narrowing, and I knew without really looking that there were exactly 122 bricks in the fireplace and that the corner of the rug beneath the divan was turned up. And I was filled with such furious energy and impatience that to be idle was agony.

  Unlike alcohol, this drug doesn’t leave you stupid and drowsy. It makes you want to work, and you can literally work yourself to death while under the influence. You are suddenly impelled to do all the forbidding tasks you have been putting off, and you do them well, too, because your mind is wearing itself out at the rate of about an hour per minute.

  That day shot past so swiftly that the scenes of its composition, while perfectly clear and unblurred at the time, are impossible to recall—there were so many thousands of them and they were moving so rapidly. For that matter, however, only a few are really pertinent.

  I remember:

  Asking Murphy if it was characteristic of the Mexican temperament always to be late; whether or not he had ever consulted an oculist about his eyes; and whether or not he did not think it would be better for him to take any job he could get and go back to school for a few years. (Of course, I wasn’t trying to insult him. At the time, I simply wanted to know; had to know.)

  That Vail told me to mind my own goddamned business and he’d mind his; and that I neither protested nor was disturbed—there were so many things that needed doing.

  That I had a huge mass of index cards spread out in front of me; and that I wasn’t having the slightest difficulty in operating the typewriter with one hand while I turned the pages of the release books with the other.

  That a prematurely gray man, Baldwin, the production manager, was leaning over my desk, frowning:

  “I don’t know, Dilly. Did you ask Dolling about this?”

  “What’s the use? He doesn’t know anything. What goddamned fool set this system up anyway?”

  “I did.”

  And I remember that when I went outside that night Murphy had gone.

  17

  Memorial Day came that weekend, and we had a three-day holiday beginning on Friday. I had time to get straightened out after a fashion. I’d finished my story a few weeks before and didn’t have that to contend with. And the folks had decided among themselves that I was “entitled” to a rest. Rest and such things are always spoken of, around our house, as luxuries. Which I guess they are. Around our house. Anyway—

  Well, Roberta had said the story was marvelous. And Mom said, well, Jimmie, aren’t you glad you tried now? But I knew. It was rotten, unbalanced. The way I felt lay over the pages like a black shadow. We sent it off to MacFaddens first, and when it bounced, to Fawcetts; then, to Moe Annenberg’s string, and on to—but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t care whether it sold or not. In fact, I hoped it wouldn’t. I knew that if it sold, they’d be after me to write another one, and the next one would be worse. And having it constantly impressed upon me how much I’d slipped and was slipping would kill that last feeble desire to really write.

  But I’m getting off the track again.
br />   The folks decided I was entitled to a rest, so they fixed a lunch and went down to the beach early Saturday morning and stayed all day. And they all got frightfully sunburned. They were going around for days afterward covered with cornstarch and walking spraddle-legged. And I wasn’t very sympathetic.

  I’d come home in the evening, all jumpy and fagged out from the mess I’d started at the plant, and there wouldn’t be anything to eat because no one had felt up to going to the store; and I’d be expected to examine backsides and shake out talcum powder and speak with a sob. I never got so thoroughly sick of looking at hindends in my life, and I’ve looked at quite a few what with changing diapers for two families, and—and one thing and another. I wanted to blister them a lot worse than they were.

  “What in the name of Christ were you doing all day?” I snarled. “Standing on your heads?”

  “We were trying to keep out of the way so you could rest.”

  “Couldn’t you have done it with some long slacks and an umbrella? Did you think you’d make me feel better by getting barbecued?”

  “Well…we didn’t know it was so hot, and—anyway my slacks were dirty, and Shannon took the umbrella over to—”

  “Why didn’t you stay under the cliffs then? Good God, girl! I fell thirty feet into the Pecos one night when it was covered with ice, and our nearest camp was twelve miles away. But I didn’t just accept things. I didn’t say, well, I’ve got my matches wet and lost my lantern, so I’ll have to freeze. I started one of the generators and—”

  “Oh don’t tell me about that again! We’re not all as smart as you are.”

  “I know why you did it. You wanted to make me feel responsible, sorry for you. You wanted to appear ten times as dumb and helpless as you really are, so that I’d think that I had to stick around—”

  “You don’t need to stick around me,” said Mom. “I’m sorry I even mentioned getting sunburned. Let’s not say another word about it, Roberta. I’ll go to the store tomorrow night and—”

  “No, I’ll go, Mom. You feel worse than I do.”

  The kids would start screaming, could they go along? And pretty soon everyone would forget how it all started. And the next night I’d go to the store again and have to take “just a peek” at the spots that had peeled that day. And it was like that for ten or twelve days.

  I hated myself for being that way; they are all more than solicitous about me when I am sick. And I have been pretty sick. I have had the doctor twice in the past month. I didn’t want him because I knew how it would turn out, but they called him anyway.

  The first time was about two weeks after I got hopped up. I was eating supper when a piece of bread went down the wrong way, and the next thing my plate was filled with blood.

  The doctor came and listened to my chest and asked a lot of questions about what I ate and drank and how much I smoked and how many hours I slept. And the following evening I had to go downtown for an X-ray and urinalysis and blood test. They didn’t show anything, of course.

  He called up a few days later, while I was at work, and gave Roberta the report. Pretty disgusted, he was, I gathered. There wasn’t any lung infection; the old scars were healed. There wasn’t anything at all wrong with me except that I smoked and drank too much, didn’t sleep enough, and didn’t eat the right things.

  When the folks gave it to me with a lot of “you see, Jimmie” and “I told you so,” I thought they were trying to kid me. It was so goddamned funny. I laughed until I got another coughing fit, and everyone said, “Oh Jimmie thinks he’s so smart! He knows more than the doctor does.” And I finally stopped laughing. They really were sincere. They didn’t understand.

  I started going to bed—not to sleep—at ten o’clock. I didn’t drink anything. I consumed a lot of eggs and milk. I smoked only five cigarettes a day.

  Well, that week was about the same as any other, except that I practically stopped sleeping and my digestion was worse than it had ever been. I don’t mean that the same things happened. I mean it just wasn’t any worse. Maybe some—but not much.

  On Sunday morning, about the time I’d gone to sleep, I heard Roberta up stirring around. I sat up and asked her what was the matter.

  She said, “Nothing’s the matter. I’m just going to church, that’s all.”

  “But it’s only four-thirty,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve got to walk down there, don’t I? Or have you got taxi fare?”

  “They were still running busses the last I heard.”

  “I’m getting sick of riding busses. I’d rather walk.”

  “And I suppose they don’t hold Mass except at six o’clock.”

  “They don’t for people with half a dozen kids to look after. You know I can’t go after they get up.”

  “It’s never stopped you before. You went at ten o’clock last Sun—”

  “Well this Sunday I’m going now.”

  She went into the bathroom to fix her face, and I tossed around for a few minutes and finally followed her.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out,” I said, “what you were getting even with me for.”

  She whirled on me, surprised. Yes, actually surprised. For she didn’t know, I’m sure. She only felt.

  “Now spill it,” I said. “What am I charged with? Going outside while you were listening to Walter Winchell? Telling Jo that she probably wouldn’t die if she didn’t brush her teeth three times a day? Passing Frankie the bread before I passed it to you? Or what?”

  She stared at me, getting whiter by the second.

  “You know I like Frankie. You know how good I try to be to Mom.”

  “I think you want them around,” I admitted, “even when you’re pretending hardest that they’re a burden. If you didn’t want them, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be here. They are closer to you than they are to me. You can hold me in line with them. You can hurt me through them, just as they can hurt me through you. You all hold that threat over me constantly.”

  “Say,” she snapped, “just what is this all about, anyway.”

  “I’ve got a little off the subject,” I said. “I wanted to know what you were getting even with me for. Not that it wasn’t about time for you to break over. You’ve been holding in much longer than I expected you to.”

  She began unbuttoning her dress. “All right. I won’t go.”

  “No, no. I want you to go. Don’t mind anything—”

  She slammed into the bedroom waking Mack up, and got in bed. And, of course, he wanted to get in our bed, too, so she was in the position of “not even being able to go to bed any more”; and I was sorry as hell, but I couldn’t help what I’d said. I couldn’t help it any more than she could help waking me up at four-thirty to go to Mass.

  I took Mack out in the kitchen to fix him some breakfast. But I dropped the skillet on the floor, and that awakened Shannon. So pretty soon all of us were out there, except Jo and Roberta; and Shannon and Mack were chasing each other around the table, and I was trying to explain what the trouble was.

  “Well, why didn’t you let her go to church?” said Mom. “Good lord! A person’s got a right to their own belief. She’s got the money, I know that. She didn’t give me back the change when she paid the paper boy.”

  “It wasn’t church. It was—and I’ll give you the change—”

  “No, no. I don’t want the change. I was just saying that—”

  “But, dammit, she’s got money. She’s got my whole check. She’s just trying to make me—”

  “Oh I know how it is,” said Frankie. “But it’s nothing any worse than the rows Chick and I used to have or anyone else has. Jimmie just needs to put his foot down, that’s all.”

  That is as close as Frankie can come to understanding. Relatively speaking, Frankie caught more of the Spartan training and life than I did. She’s never known anything but trading punches with chain-store customers and keeping the desk between her and the boss, and she pretty much believes that if you get the worst of a
deal, you’ll change it when you get tired enough of it.

  I finally went back and pleaded with Roberta until I was forgiven, and she went off to Mass at ten o’clock.

  At twelve, just before she returned, Clarence and five other Portuguese arrived.

  We’d asked Clarence over for dinner because he’d been so good about bringing us fish and the like. But we’d forgotten that it was this Sunday, and we certainly hadn’t counted on these others. They were cousins, I believe. When Roberta walked in, her mouth dropped open almost a foot. She did manage to speak and smile before she went through to her bedroom, but it was rather grim.

  No, our guests didn’t notice. It was beyond their understanding that any friend of another friend could drop into a third friend’s house and be unwelcome. I remember Clarence picked me up one Sunday, when he was supposed to have a date with Frankie and she’d gone off, and he toured me around Point Loma. We picked up fresh passengers at almost every block, it seemed, until we were packed in the car three deep. We must have stopped at a dozen houses, and no one seemed to think a thing of our all trooping in. In fact, I gathered that they would have been hurt if we hadn’t.

  We were pressed with Port—and there’s nothing wrong with it the way the Portuguese make it—and if we declined that, there was whisky (the best) or beer or something you did want. And food. Big plates of chicken and ham and tuna; pickles; a half a dozen kinds of bread. You felt that they had known you were coming for a week and had spent the time preparing for you. That’s the way they were, are, so they naturally couldn’t see why anyone should be disturbed over only five unexpected guests. Tuna fishermen, in case you’re wondering, do pretty well for themselves. Those who aren’t yanked overboard to the sharks or who don’t die from exposure or exhaustion average from five to ten thousand dollars a year. Right now a number of them, like Clarence, have been beached. The Government has bought up a lot of the boats for mine sweepers.

  As I say though, there they were and they had to be fed; and we only had enough short ribs and browned potatoes for ourselves. I went around to the little neighborhood grocery and got extra bread and a lot of canned meat—it came to two dollars—and all in all we had a pretty good meal. (Mack, whose appetite is excellent, had to be taken back in the bedroom to “look at a pretty book.”) Mom didn’t eat and Frankie and I only made passes at things. Roberta stayed in our bedroom.