Love, Action, Laughter and Other Sad Tales
Page 16
Well sir I keep thinking about this idea of cooperation and being a sort of man of action I decide to start right in because it is never too late and I noticed in the paper just today that Henry Ford was congratulating some employee of his that was sixty-six years old and had just been given another raise. So yesterday morning I didn’t go down to the floor and start loading at nine like I’ve been doing for the past five months. No sir, I went right up to the superintendent’s office and there was a lady sitting at a desk there nice and cool and her talk was just as cool as she was saying Whom do you wish to see and Have you an appointment and I got so excited I couldn’t answer right off but just kept looking at her until I guess she thought I was just some crazy fool that had no business in the office at all but then all of a sudden I was saying I’m Mr. Fulton and I must see Mr. Nelson at once and I guess I must have said it like I meant it and if I do say it I have always been able to rise to situations like this. I have always known that this is the place I should have, making contacts and being in offices where I could use my brains and leave jobs like the one on the loading floor to someone who hasn’t got the same ideals that I have. I guess that explains why I am able to grasp those ideas of yours in those editorials. So maybe this whole thing I am telling you about happened for the best after all.
Now I’m coming to the life and death part, Mister Macfadden. Ever since I lost my store I was waiting for a chance to walk into an office like Mr. Nelson’s with a good idea, and finally this was it. And I suppose that now that the whole thing is over and I am writing you like this you must think I am sore because in a way it was your fault, advising me to cooperate and then having all this happen. You must think I am just writing because I think you owe me something for making all this happen. No sir, Mister Macfadden, I am just writing because here is a slick chance for you to really make those ideas of yours work, and I know that you would not want to pass up a good chance like this. So I will try to tell what did happen when I saw Mr. Nelson, just kind of sum up and then we can maybe get together on what is to be done.
I walked into Mr. Nelson’s office like I was floating and my voice sounded so loud I couldn’t believe it was me and it got louder and louder like it was coming through one of those big loud speakers on a truck coming towards me. Mister Nelson, I said, my name is Fulton and I work down in the warehouse department. Why come right in sir said Mr. Nelson, smiling with lots of teeth, what can I do for you, and I began to feel all warm inside like I do when I look over your editorial. Well, well, that’s kind of you, that’s certainly mighty kind of you, I answered, trying to think how to begin, and we both stopped, feeling awkward. Then suddenly I blurted out, Mister Nelson I came up here today because I can think of a lot of improvements I believe you should hear about. What’s the matter, Fulton, what’s the matter, any complaints? Mr. Nelson snapped before I could go any further. I felt a large lump pump up in my throat. I saw his fingers beating on that long shiny desk and I knew I had to talk fast because I certainly didn’t want him to think I was just complaining because that wouldn’t be very good cooperation would it. Well you see Mister Nelson, I said after a long time, I’ve been reading a fine editorial by Mister Macfadden, maybe you read it in Liberty, and it was all about cooperation between Labor and Capital and how they could build a solid nation if they only worked hand in hand like it showed them in the picture.
You work on the shipping room floor don’t you said Mr. Nelson and there was something about the way he looked at his watch I didn’t like and he didn’t smile any more and come up and shake hands with me like you showed that boss doing in the picture of yours, so I guess I kind of lost my head and all those good ideas I had been thinking about all the time like having a joint board of picked workers and the heads of the factory meet once a week to get better cooperation and a few other good ideas I had for saving time, etc. I can’t think of now because of all the things that have happened, well anyway all these ideas just got stuck inside me and wouldn’t come out. I must have even said “Divided we fall” again because I can still hear Mr. Nelson barking You have just finished saying that Mister Fulton and now if you have nothing further to say, I’m a very busy man.
Then I was walking past the neat cool lady again, only I don’t seem to remember if I walked or ran, and I guess Mr. Nelson must have thought I was drunk, at least that is what the fellows on the floor around me said and at first I thought they were kidding because they always joke with me and call me Grandpop. Then I got my notice and I was through. That is a laugh isn’t it, getting canned for trying to do a little more than the next fellow and use my head and take a real interest in the organization? It certainly is, Mister Macfadden if it wasn’t for what I am going to tell you now, although one thing about me is that I can always see the humor in things and my Ma used to say Bill (that’s me) will be laughing at his own funeral.
Gosh, Mister Macfadden, this is what I want to ask you, this is the matter of life and death I am coming to now.
Gosh, I know you are a very busy man but I wouldn’t think of writing if I couldn’t see how you are really a friend of Labor (the right kind of Labor at least) and want to give everybody who is a Real American like me a square deal so they can get into offices like Mr. Nelson’s where they belong.
But when I told Sarah what happened she kind of gave a little scream, only it stopped right away, and then her face puffed all up but she didn’t say nothing, she didn’t bawl me out but I almost wish she did, and this is the third day and she still hasn’t opened her mouth and nobody says anything and even Emmie’s baby seems to know something is wrong and stopped bawling and I couldn’t stand it any longer I just can’t so I am writing this because I know you will help me get that job back when you find out that the only reason I lost it was because I thought that editorial you wrote was so fine. My address is 1658½ Embarcadero. I will be waiting anxiously for your answer.
Yours for Cooperation and a Greater America,
William Fulton
HOLLYWOOD
VERSUS
CHRIS SAMUELS,
AGE NINE
Chris Samuels, nine years old and not particularly big for his age either, was writing a poem. Bicycling home from school, even while he was riding no-hands, Chris was composing a poem about motherhood. “Mother mine so good and true …” is the way it started. Pumping home through the sunlight of Wilshire Boulevard, turning left into Windsor Square with its rows of date palms and box hedges—fashionable then, in the early 1920’s—he went on composing.
The poem was nearly complete by the time he pedaled up the driveway of the Samuelses’ relatively modest mansion. It rhymed and had a beautiful sound to it when he said it out loud. It gave him a feeling that was unlike anything he could remember.
As soon as he had finished his milk and graham crackers he hurried to a special place to write down his poem. This hideaway was under the piano in the living room, as far back under the piano and into the corner as he could crawl. There he felt safe, alone and cozy, a feeling summed up in his own word guzzy. He liked the idea that nobody knew where to find him. What made it even more exciting was that his mother had warned him not to go into the living room unless a grownup was there. That was because of all the breakable valuables around. One of Mrs. Samuels’s talents was interior decorating; the living room was full of precious hazards in Bristol glass and Staffordshire china.
Under the piano Chris worked hard on his poem. First he wrote it down and then he thought of some better words to put into it and he did some erasing. Then he made a clean new copy, but soon that became smudged. Finally he made a nice, neat, finished copy with the fanciest writing he could do.
Chris had been working so hard that he did not hear his mother come into the living room. She was a pretty woman whose sturdy peasant origin had been modified by a wistful preoccupation with refinement, a consistent devotion to self-improvement. She had gone forward from Coué to Brill, she attended regular classes in psychology at the university and she
was the founder of a local child-study group. A procession of visiting lecturers had bent a knee to her tea table. She was busy improving her mind and Chris’s mind and all the minds she could get hold of.
She had come into the living room to “steal a cigarette.” The coy sense of admitting the vice was a throwback to Victorian restrictions only recently lifted, even here in Hollywood. As she sneaked a cigarette from the palm of a glass hand she noticed Chris’s feet under the piano.
“Chrissy, I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I’ve been in here, Mom.”
“How many times must I tell you not to come into the living room when no one is here?”
“I wrote a poem, Mom. It’s a poem for you.”
Her pleasure at this artistic development overcame her anger at disobedience.
“Why, Chris, how nice! Will you read it to me?”
Chris crawled out from under the piano and straightened himself as he did at school when he was called on to recite. He read his poem with proud emphasis on every syllable. It contained six unabashed couplets in praise of his mother and of motherhood in general. Before he was halfway through, Mrs. Samuels’s eyes had become soft and shiny.
When Chris finished he looked into his mother’s eyes and there was a long and delicious pause. Then she said: “Chrissy, did you write that? Did you really write that?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Why—why I think it’s beautiful.”
She put her arms out and Chris went to her for an intimate celebration of hugging and kissing.
“Simply beautiful,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Why, I had no idea—simply no idea you could write a poem like that. Such a beautiful poem!”
She took the sheet of paper from Chris and read it to herself, shaking her head in awe at this sign of genius in her own flesh and blood.
“Chris, I’m going to save this. When you’re a famous, grownup writer I will always remember hearing your first poem.”
“Is Daddy coming home for dinner?”
“I imagine so. He hasn’t called.”
“I want Daddy to read it too.”
“Oh, you must read it to Daddy. Daddy will be so proud of his little writer.”
“Gee, I wish he could come home early.”
His father was the head of a motion-picture studio. The kids at school told Chris they wished their fathers could be the big cheese of a Hollywood studio because then they could get to see free movies and meet all the movie stars. “Boy, would that be keen!” they said. Chris pretended that it was. He had never been able to tell them that it wasn’t so keen having your father a famous motion-picture executive. For one thing, the hours were awful. Chris would go days and days without even seeing his father, who had to stay at the studio having conferences and running rushes until long after Chris’s bedtime. And while the stars had always been nice to Chris, his low opinion of them was a mild reflection of his father’s. According to Mr. Samuels, they were a selfish, ungrateful, stupid and difficult lot. Chris was used to hearing his father say, “To become a movie star you have to be a bitch and what kind of a man wants to be a movie actor except a damned jackass.”
Chris respected his father and although—or perhaps because—he didn’t see him as often as he wished, he was always eager for his father’s approval of whatever he was doing. On the occasional Sunday when there were no dinner guests from the studio, his father would read aloud to him. Mr. Samuels admired Melville, Twain, Dickens, Conrad and Galsworthy. Chris almost fell asleep on Galsworthy but he liked Omoo and Typee and Huck Finn and Youth; and The Old Curiosity Shop made tears in his eyes. His father had started out as a writer. He had won a prize in a city short-story contest and then he had written scenarios for the early movies. Then he had worked his way up to being a producer and finally the head of the studio. Chris had heard the story several times from his mother. Although his father was a producer of silent pictures he liked to talk about the sound of words and Chris knew from his mother that “Daddy has excellent taste.”
Now that he had written his first poem, Chris got all jumpy inside, wondering what his father would think of it. Would the poem make Daddy cry the way it had Mom? Maybe his father would give him a gold piece after reading it. He had a habit of keeping gold pieces to hand out on special occasions.
Chris didn’t know what to do with himself while he waited for his father to come home. He went outside and watched his pigeons circle the house for a while, he played with his dog Bunk, and then he got into an argument with Julian, the boy next door. Julian was the son of another movie producer at a smaller studio.
Across the hedge Julian began a ritualistic debate.
“My father makes better pictures ’n your father makes.”
“He does not.”
“He does too.”
“He does not.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Sometimes they would elaborate this stylized dispute by challenging picture for picture, but this afternoon Chris’s heart wasn’t in it. With a token intraindustrial sneer, he broke it off and went into the house. He looked at his poem again and got his crayons out to frame it in a border of red and blue. If his father wanted to take it to the studio, to show it to his stars and directors, it had to look right.
He was just finishing it when he heard someone in the hall.
“Dad?”
His mother called, “No, Chris, it’s just a chauffeur dropping off a script.”
Chris groaned. Chauffeurs were always dropping off scripts. Scripts that people, all sorts of people, were trying to sell to his father. “Chris, I’d love to go out and see your new squabs, but I promised someone I’d read this script right away,” his father would say. When he saw a script Chris could almost smell the cigar smoke that curled around his father as he rapidly turned page after page. After the last page his father would almost always throw the script down and say, “God-damn it, the lousiest script I ever read.” Chris would wonder why his father kept on reading them if each one was worse than the one before.
Poem in hand, Chris sat in the living room, waiting for his father.
“Do you think Daddy will like my poem?” he said to his mother.
Her answer was what he wanted to hear: “Of course, he’ll like it. It shows unusual talent. Chris, I can’t tell you how proud I am.”
“It was easy to do,” Chris said. “Lots of times I make them up to myself when I’m falling asleep.”
“I had no idea,” his mother said. “You know, your father used to write poetry when he was a young man. I’ll show you some of it, when you’re a little older. It must run in the family.”
“I am going to write a poem every single day until I grow up,” Chris announced.
“Songs from the heartstrings of a little boy,” his mother said softly. “Why, perhaps Father could have them published. Wouldn’t that make a lovely title?”
“Oh, I wish Daddy would come home,” Chris said.
“Poor Daddy has to work so hard at the studio.”
“I wish he was in a regular business,” Chris said. “Like Jimmy. Jimmy’s father has a store on Pico and he comes home for dinner every single night.”
“Your father is a very successful man. A very famous man.”
“Gee, I know,” Chris said sadly.
James, the butler, came in to announce dinner.
“We’ll wait just a few more minutes,” his mother said, “and then if Mr. Samuels isn’t here we’ll sit down without him, James.”
“Darn it, I wish he didn’t have to stay so late with those bitch movie stars,” Chris said.
“Christopher!”
It wasn’t his fault. He had heard his father come roaring in from the studio so often that he could never think of movie stars without putting the other word on in front. Stupid bitches—ungrateful bastards—in the Samuelses’ home these were mild terms for movie stars.
“Well, Mom, you know what Daddy says.”
“He’s gotta read my poem before I go to sleep, he’s just gotta.”
“Now, Chris, I know how anxious you are, but you have to be patient.”
They went into the big dining room together. His father’s place was very empty at the head of the long mahogany table.
“I know what I’ll do,” Chris said. “I’ll put my poem right on his plate so it’ll be the first thing he sees when he sits down.”
“My, you anxious authors,” his mother said, smiling.
They were finishing the main course when they heard the car roaring up the drive and then the heavy, hurried tread of Sol Samuels’s feet running up the steps to the porch. Then there was a long, loud ring and James went quickly to the door.
“Hello, dear,” his mother called. “You forgot your keys?”
“Flo, do you think I’d ring if I hadn’t forgot my keys?” his father shouted. He was a dynamic, ruddy-faced man in his early forties, an age that would have made him a prodigy in any business but this prodigy field he had chosen to pioneer.