Roughneck

by Jim Thompson

"Didn't lose nothin'," he pointed out, as he fed us a farewell banquet of jackrabbit stew. "Didn't have nothin' to begin with."

  16

  I received several small manuscript checks in a row that summer, and Mom fell heir to a modest sum. She and Freddie came down to Oklahoma City, bringing my wife and baby with them, and we continued on together to Fort Worth, Texas. Pop had got a job of sorts there. I got one, shortly after my arrival, as a hotel doorman. It was easily the lousiest job I have ever had.

  I worked a seven-day, eighty-four-hour week. My salary was fourteen dollars per, less certain arbitrary deductions by my employer which usually totaled two or more dollars. Even with the low prices prevailing in those days, it was a starvation wage for a man with a wife and child.

  I was not allowed to sit down during the shift, nor did I have any relief period. I 'could' go to eat or to the toilet if I chose to. But if the motoring guest checked out during my absence, his garage charges were on me. After paying one gentlemen's nine-dollar bill out of my twelve-dollar wage, I chose to stick to my post.

  The omission of a lunch period didn't bother me; I couldn't afford to eat anyway. But the interminable and unrelieved standing on a hard sidewalk, and the compulsion to ignore the demands of nature, were something very nearly like torture. Let it go at that. This is one period of my life I don't like to talk about.

  A few pennies at a time, I saved enough money to rent a typewriter and buy some fancy letterheads. I circulated the quality business magazines, and got a number of assignments. Mom and Freddie did the necessary interviewing for me. I wrote their findings up in my "spare time." From business writing, I gradually moved into the relatively high-paying field of fact-detective stories. And after more than a year, I was able to quit the doorman job. I still have numerous mementoes of it, swollen joints and weakened kidneys being the least unpleasant of the lot.

  I had for a long time inclined to a youthful bemusement with the 'genus Texan,' and as a result I failed to achieve the high Texas standards of character and intelligence. Now, years later, as I moved about the state in search of detective stories, there seemed to be signs that I had improved, or that the professional Texan had. I got along very well with the type, and they were at least tolerant of me. I was beginning to have high hopes of a solid permanent rapprochement when, one day in Dallas, the futility of such fond imaginings was ignominiously borne home to me.

  Fact-detective stories cannot be sold without pictures, and I had found it convenient to become acquainted with many newspaper photographers. They were invariably first-class workmen. They could get stuff from their morgues that was ordinarily unobtainable, and they didn't charge me anything. We were always ol' friends—ol' Texas friends—after a few drinks, and were thus above paying each other for favors. The loans to them and the liquor that went into them got to be a rather frightening item of expense. But in view of my ol' friends, magnanimity, I shut my eyes to it.

  Well, after an afternoon's "shooting" expedition with one of these ol' friends, during which we had imbibed a quart of whiskey and started on a second, he suggested a call upon some practitioners of the oldest profession. I demurred. He asked for a loan.

  "Jus' lend me a couple dollahs, Jim, ol' boy. That's all it takes. You can come up an' wait in the hall, and have some nice drinks for yourself."

  "But I haven't got two dollars—dollahs—Hank, ol' boy," I said. "I spent—I done went an' spent all the money I had on that last jug of whiskey."

  "You ain't got no money, 'a'-tall?"

  "Well, I got this—this here—four-bit piece," I said.

  "Well, gimme it, then. I'll match this gal, double or nothin'. I feel pretty lucky."

  "But what if you lose?"

  "Why, I'll just do without. Naturally."

  I murmured that this hardly seemed ethical. "Do you really think you ought to, Hank? I mean, if you lose you'll have to back out. You'll be cheating her."

  "Faugh! Fie!" he said, disgusted at this insult. "I'll be teachin' her a very valuable lesson. No tellin' how much it'll be worth to her in future years!"

  I went along with him, and he matched the girl and won.

  She was a large, bloated woman, somewhat past the first flush of youth. I would hesitate to say exactly how much somewhat. But I think it safe to state that however old the oldest profession is, she must have been a charter member.

  Cursing her luck, she led my friend into a room and slammed the door. I sat down on a bench, took a big drink and began fooling with the camera. I lit a cigarette and had another drink. I took a couple more. I examined the camera again.

  What seemed like a very brilliant idea popped into my mind.

  Creeping across the hall, I turned the doorknob silently and eased the door open an inch or two.

  Slowly, I raised and posed the camera.

  I don't know whether the "girl" was merely unconventional, or whether she was trying to acquire a suntan. Or whether, perhaps, having worn out her original equipment, she was now employing ersatz. It was impossible to tell whether her pose was a whim or dictated by necessity. At any rate, she was kneeling crosswise on the bed, her stern to my ol' friend, and gazing languidly downward into a crockery chamber pot.

  It occurred to me that I would need a flash bulb, and I turned to go back to the bench.

  Of course, I bumped and rattled the door.

  The woman turned, startled. She stared at me stupidly for a moment. Then, choking with anger, she opened her mouth and let out a bellow of rage. The bellow ended in a sibilant splash as her teeth fell out and dropped into the pot.

  Crawling from the bed and holding her hand over her mouth so that we might not see her indecently exposed, she made motions for my colleague to get his clothes on and get to hell out. I beat him down the stairs by a few paces.

  "Jim," he said stonily as he buttoned his shirt, panting, "Jim—me an' you, we ain't friends no more."

  "Aw," I said, "don't take it that way, Hank. Come back to my hotel with me and I'll get another five for you. You can go to a good place."

  "Naw, sir," he declined firmly. "I wouldn't borry another nickel from you, Jim, if you was the last man alive. I thought you was a friend of mine..."

  "Well, I am."

  "From Texas."

  "Well, I've lived here for a long time," I said.

  "But you ain't a 'Texas' man." He shook his head in gloomy triumph. "You couldn't give a Texas man enough liquor to make him look in on a fella while he was with a gal. Why, Jim, you ain't—you're im—im—" He faltered, then came out with the hideous epithet.

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

  17

  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 diff
iculty 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."

  "W
hy, 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."