Now and on Earth Read online

  “But didn’t you tell them—didn’t they know—”

  “They don’t give a damn. They’ve not got any editorial work down there. They’re building airplanes.”

  “But, couldn’t they—”

  “I don’t know anything about airplanes.”

  Roberta started on, her mouth set in a tight line. “You’re not going back,” she said. “You just go down there in the morning and get whatever you’ve got coming, and tell ’em they can keep their old job.”

  “Thought of how we’re going to eat? And—incidentally—pay rent?”

  “Jimmie. The kids just had to have shoes. I know we’re hard up, but—”

  “Okay, okay. But how are we going to pay the rent? I suppose you told the landlady we’d have it at the end of the week?”

  “Well,” said Roberta, “we will, won’t we? Don’t you get paid on Friday?”

  “O Jesus,” I said. “O Christ and Mary. O God damn!”

  Roberta got red, and her nostrils trembled. “Now James Dillon! Don’t you dare swear at me!”

  “I’m not swearing. I’m praying for forebearance.”

  “And don’t get smart, either.”

  “Dammit,” I said, “how many times have I asked you not to talk about me getting smart? I’m not six years old.”

  “Well—you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I don’t know half the time what you mean. Why don’t you ever peek inside a dictionary? Can’t you ever read anything besides the Catholic Prayer Book and True Story? Why, Jes—my God, honey.…Oh, God! Don’t cry out here on the street! Please don’t. It seems like every time I open my mouth lately someone starts bawling.”

  She pushed on ahead of me into the house, letting the screen door slam in my face. Mom opened it for me.

  “Now don’t say anything,” I said. “She’ll be all right in a minute. Just don’t pay any attention to her.”

  “I’m not saying anything,” said Mom. “What difference would it make if I did? Can’t people open their mouths around here any more?”

  “Please, Mom.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  I put Mack down on the lounge and went back into the bedroom. Roberta had taken off her dress and hung it up, and was lying on the bed, hands over her face. I looked down at her and began to tingle. I knew how it was going to be, and I hated myself for it. But I couldn’t help it. Roberta didn’t need to do anything to win an argument with me but let me look at her. I knew it from the moment I saw her. She knew it after a few years.

  I sat down and pulled her head into my lap. And she turned, so that her breasts pressed against my stomach.

  I wish, I thought, that Mom could understand what Roberta means to me—why I am like I am with her. I wish Roberta could understand what Mom means to me. Maybe they do understand. Maybe that’s why things are like they are.

  I said, “I’m terribly sorry, honey. I’m just awfully tired, I guess.”

  “I’m tired, too,” said Roberta. “It’s certainly no fun to drag that Mack and Shannon around all day.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” I said.

  “I am worn out, Jimmie. No fooling.”

  “That’s too bad, dear. You’ve got to get more rest.”

  She allowed me to stroke her for a few moments; then she sat up brightly and pushed me away.

  “And you’re tired, too,” she declared. “You’ve already said you were. Now you lie down while I help Mom get dinner.”

  She pulled an apron over her head, and I flopped back on the pillows.

  “Give Mom a dollar,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “For the groceries I got.”

  Roberta seemed to see the sack for the first time. “What’d you get that stuff for? We’ve got two pounds of beans up in the cupboard. Why didn’t Mom cook them?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”

  “They were right there in the cupboard. She must have seen them.”

  “No harm done. We can eat them some other time. Now please go on and do whatever you have to do, and give Mom that dollar.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Roberta.

  Somehow I was on my feet, and the veins in my throat were choking me.

  “God damn it! Give Mom that dollar!”

  Mom opened the door.

  “Did someone call me?” she asked.

  “No, Mom,” I said. “I was just telling Roberta about supper—about the groceries. To give you the dollar I borrowed.”

  “Why, I don’t need it,” said Mom. “If you’re short why don’t you just keep it?”

  “Oh, we’ve got plenty, Mom,” said Roberta. “We’ve got all kinds of money. You just wait a minute.”

  She began fishing around in her purse, fetching out nickels, dimes, and pennies, and spreading them out on the dresser.

  “Why don’t you give her a dollar bill?” I said.

  “Now I’ll have it for Mom in just a moment,” said Roberta in a neat voice. “I’ll get it, all righty…here you are, Mom. There’s twenty. Twenty-five. Forty. Sixty. Eighty-three. Ninety-three. Oh, I guess I’m seven cents short. Do you mind if I give it to you tomorrow?”

  “Just keep it all until some other time,” said Mom.

  Roberta picked up the change. “You can have it now if you want it.”

  Mom went out.

  I lay staring at Roberta in the mirror. She met my eyes for a moment, then looked away.

  “How much were the groceries?”

  “Seventy cents. I’ve got thirty cents left, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “I suppose you’re going to buy something to drink with it?”

  “I won’t disappoint you. I’m going to get a quart of wine.”

  “You shouldn’t, Jimmie. You know what the doctor told you.”

  “Death, where is thy sting?” I said.

  Roberta went out, too.

  Pretty soon Mack came toddling back, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There isn’t an ounce of fat on him, but he’s practically as broad as he is long.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, boy. What’s the good word?”

  “Save-a money.”

  “What’d you do downtown? Ride an airplane?”

  “Yop. Saw a bitey, too.”

  “A real honest-to-God bitey?”

  “Yop.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  Mack grinned. “Look like a bitey.”

  Then he went out. I have bitten on that joke of his a thousand times, but it is the only one he knows and I think a sense of humor should be encouraged.

  Roberta shut herself up in the bedroom with the kids about nine, and Mom was busy in the bathroom working on her bunions. Frankie was still out, so I had the front room to myself. Not that I minded. I arranged a couple of chairs—one for my feet—just like I wanted them. Then I went around to the liquor store and bought my wine.

  I thought the clerk was rather patronizing; but it could have been my imagination. Wine-drinkers aren’t regarded very highly in California—not when they drink the kind of stuff I bought. The better California wines are largely exported. The cheaper ones, sold locally, are made of dregs, heavily fortified with raw alcohol.

  In Los Angeles there are places where you can buy stiff drinks of this poison for two cents and a full pint for as little as six. And you can count as many as fifty addicts in a single block. “Wine-o-s,” they are dubbed, and their lives are as short, fortunately, as they are unmerry. The jails and hospitals are filled with them always, undergoing the “cure.” A nightly average of forty dead are picked up out of flophouses, jungles, and boxcars.

  So—I got home, sat down with my feet up, and took a big slug. It tasted watery, but strong. I took another slug, and I didn’t mind the taste. I was leaning back against the cushions, smoking and wiggling my toes and anticipating the next drink, when Frankie came in.

  She made straight for the divan and too
k off her shoes. She is the big hearty perfectly composed type, the counterpart of Pop except for her blonde hair.

  “Drunk again?” she inquired conversationally.

  “Getting. Want a shot?”

  “Not that stuff. I’ve already had three Scotches anyway. ’S’matter? Roberta?”

  “Yes—no. Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well,” said Frankie. “I like Roberta, and I’m crazy about the kids. But I must say you’re a fool. You’re not being good to her. She doesn’t like things like this any more than you do.”

  I took another drink. “By the way,” I said. “When is your husband joining you?”

  “I guess I asked for that,” said Frankie.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just feeling mean.”

  “That wine won’t make you feel any better. You’ll have the grandfather of all hangovers in the morning.”

  “That’s in the morning,” I said. “Tonight—here’s looking at you.”

  Frankie snapped open her purse and pitched me a half-dollar. “Go get yourself a half-pint of whisky. It won’t tie you up like that wine will.”

  I looked at the money. “I don’t like to take this, Frankie.”

  “Oh, go on. Hurry up and I’ll have a drink with you.”

  I put on my shoes and went out. When I came back Frankie was holding a letter in her hand, and her eyes were red.

  “What do you think about Pop?” she asked.

  “What about him?”

  “Didn’t Mom show you this letter she got today? I thought she had.”

  “Let me see it,” I said.

  “Not now. I want to take it back to the bedroom with me. You can read it tomorrow.”

  “Look,” I said. “Whatever it is, it won’t worry me any more to know about it than not to know about it, now that I know there’s something wrong. Please don’t argue. And if you’re going to bawl, go hide some place. I’ve been laved in tears ever since I came home.”

  “You’re a dog,” said Frankie, wiping her eyes. She chuckled. “Did you hear the one about the rattlesnake that didn’t have a pit to hiss in?”

  “Shut up a minute.”

  I skimmed through the letter. It didn’t say much. They didn’t want to keep Pop at the Place he was in any longer. He was—he was too much trouble.

  “We’ll have to take him away, I guess,” I said.

  “Bring him out here, you mean?”

  “Why not?”

  Frankie gave me a look.

  “All right, then,” I said. “What do you suggest?”

  “We can’t have Mom live with him. Even if we did have the money for a place in the country and everything.”

  “What about his own folks? They’ve got dough.”

  “They were holding on to it, too,” said Frankie, “at the last writing. You know how they are, Jimmie. You write one of ’em a letter, and he reads it dutifully, writes a note of his own, and sends the two on to another twig on the tree. The note, incidentally, begins exactly five spaces from the top right of one page, and ends five spaces from the left bottom of another. And of course it doesn’t—it wouldn’t—refer to Pop at all. That would be indelicate. Long before the sixteen-hundred-and-eightieth Dillon is reached, our letter is worn out and nothing but theirs remains. The result? Well—Aunt Edna’s third-oldest girl, Sabetha, has her adenoids removed, and Great-Uncle Juniper gets a copy of Emerson’s Essays.”

  That’s about the way it would be. I’ve always believed that the Dillons originated the chain-letter.

  “Let’s have a drink and sleep on it,” I said.

  “Just a short one,” said Frankie. “How do you like your job?”

  “Swell.”

  “Got a good bunch to work with?”

  “Oh, swell.”

  “Such enthusiasm. Let’s have all the lurid details.”

  “Well, there are six of us altogether, counting the foreman—or leadman, as they call him. The stockroom is divided into two departments—purchased parts, that is, parts manufactured outside the plant, and manufactured parts—but we’re all inside the same enclosure. The two fellows in Purchased Parts are Busken and Vail. Busken is dapper, very nervous. Vail is the sure, enigmatic type. They’re two of a kind, however.”

  “O—oh,” said Frankie.

  “I was on my hands and knees all day, and naturally I was sweating a lot. At some time during the day these clowns in Purchased—they’ve got the stenciling machine in their department—taped a neat little chromo upon my buttocks. I must have worn it for hours. It said, WET DECALS. NO STEP.”

  Frankie laughed until the seams of her dress threatened to split.

  “Why Jimmie! That’s clever!”

  “Isn’t it? Then, there’s Moon, our leadman. He came around tonight at quitting time and gave me a few words of comfort. He said not to worry if I didn’t seem to be doing anything; the company expected to lose money on a man for the first month.”

  Frankie slapped her knees. “And you getting fifty cents an hour!”

  “Oh, it’s funny,” I said. “Now for a really brainy fellow we have Gross, the bookkeeper. He’s a graduate of the University of Louisiana and a former All-American. I asked him if he knew Lyle Saxon.”

  “Well?”

  “He asked me what year Lyle was on the team.”

  “So that fixes him in your book.” Frankie didn’t laugh this time.

  “The remaining member of our sextette,” I said, “is named Murphy. He was laying off today so I didn’t meet him.”

  Frankie picked up her shoes and got up. “You’ll never make it down there, Jimmie. Not the way you feel. Don’t you really think you can write any more?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to do, then?”

  “Get drunk.”

  “Good-night.”

  “Good-night.…”

  I thought about Pop: Now what the hell will we do, I thought. I thought about Roberta, about Mom. About the kids growing up around me. Growing up amidst this turmoil, these hatreds, this—well, why quibble—insanity. I thought and my stomach tightened into a little ball; my guts crawled up around my lung and my vision went black.

  I took a drink and chased it with wine.

  I thought about the time I’d sold a thousand dollars’ worth of stories in a month. I thought about the day I became a director for the Writers’ Project. I thought about the fellowship I’d gotten from the foundation—one of the two fellowships available for the whole country. I thought about the letters I’d got from a dozen different publishers—“The finest thing we have ever read.” “Swell stuff, Dillon; keep it coming.” “We are paying you our top rate.…”

  I said to myself, So what? Were you ever happy? Did you ever have any peace? And I had to answer, Why no, for Christ’s sake; you’ve always been in hell. You’ve just slipped deeper. And you’re going to keep on because you’re your father. Your father without his endurance. They’ll have you in a place in another year or two. Don’t you remember how your father went? Like you. Exactly like you. Irritable. Erratic. Dull. Then—well, you know. Ha, ha. You’re damned right you know.

  I wonder if they are mean to you in those places. I wonder if they put the slug on you when you get to cutting up.

  Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha. They’ll give you a spoon to eat with, bud. And a wooden bowl. And they’ll cut your hair off to save on shampoos. And after the first month they’ll make you wear mittens to bed.…They can’t get you there? They got Pop there, didn’t they? Not they. You. You and Mom and Frankie.

  Remember how easy it was? Come on, Pop, we’ll have a bottle of beer and go for a little ride. Pop didn’t suspect. He’d never think his own family would do a thing like that to him. You had to? Of course you did! And they’ll have to. And you won’t know until it’s too late—like Pop did.

  Remember the startled look on his face as you sidled out the door? Remember how he knocked upon the panels? Knocked; then pounded? Clawed? Remember his hoarse voice f
ollowing you down the hall? The quavering and cadenced tones—“Frankie, Jimmie, Mom, are you there? Mom, Frankie, Jimmie, are you coming back?” And then he began to cry—to cry like Jo might. Or Mack or Shannon.

  Or you.

  “M-mom. I’m afraid, Mom. Take me out of here. T-take—me—out—of—here! Mom…Frankie…Jimmie. JIMMIE! Take—me out.…”

  I screamed and sobbed and my head rose to a peak and flopped back in a sickening mush.

  “I’m coming, Pop! I won’t leave you! I’m coming!”

  And Mom was shaking me by the shoulder, and the clock on the mantel said five-thirty.

  The whisky flask was empty. So was the wine bottle.

  “Jimmie,” said Mom. “Jimmie. I don’t know what in the world’s going to become of you.”

  I staggered to my feet. “I do,” I said. “How about some coffee?”

  4

  We didn’t have anything in the house to take with me for lunch, and I lost my coffee before I’d gone a block. I coughed and choked and vomited, and then I began to cramp and I knew I ought to go to the toilet. But I was afraid I’d be late, so I went on.

  It wasn’t so bad going down the hill. All I had to do was stand still and keep lifting my feet and the sidewalk rolled under them. But when I reached Pacific Boulevard, I began to have trouble. They’ve got six-lane traffic on Pacific, and every lane was filled with aircraft workers going to the plants. Most of them were in jallopies because cars are higher than get-out on the West Coast, and you knew their brakes couldn’t be too good. And they were all traveling fast, bumping and crowding into each other to get to the plants ahead of the others. It was still early, but you have to get there early if you want a parking space within walking distance.

  It would’ve been hard for me to get through that traffic even if I’d felt—well—normal, and I didn’t. I wasn’t just so sick and tired I wanted to lie down in the gutter and go to sleep. The wine was playing tricks on me. I couldn’t co-ordinate my impulses with my limbs and muscles.

  I’d start to step into the traffic, but my reactions were so slow that I couldn’t move until the opportunity was gone. Several times I was unable to halt the impulse I’d started, and I walked into moving cars, banging my knees against fenders and wheels. I couldn’t judge distance at all. A car that seemed to be a block away would, in the same instant, have its bumper against my legs, its driver shouting what the hell.