by Sam Toperoff
“How do you figure?”
Hammett leaned forward, program open on his knee and proceeded to show Mayer exactly how he figured, and what he foresaw. “It’s a classic situation, if you follow, L.B. First, the track condition. They’ve upgraded it to ‘fast,’ but it hasn’t dried out completely. Jack’s horse has run over such a track twice.” He indicated those races on his Racing Form. “Look, a fifth and a seventh. He won’t like the footing today either.”
Mayer leaned in attentively and smiled. “And my horse?”
“He’ll like the footing. He’ll run well, but I’m betting Bay View today.”
Mayer looked at his program. Bay View, number one on the program, was 20 to 1 on the morning line and now 30 to 1 on the tote board. Mayer said, “Thirty to one, not possible.”
“Very possible.”
“How?”
“Elemental, my dear Louis.” My god, how Hammett was enjoying himself. He whispered, “Let me share my secret. The one post, the rail, has the best, cleanest footing on this track. Nick Wall is the best jockey in this race. Any doubts? Who was the last jock to beat Sea Biscuit? Answer, Nick Wall. How did he get it done? Wall put his horse in the lead from the one post, controlled the pace, and even the great Sea Biscuit couldn’t catch him at the wire. Wall will do the same thing today, even easier, because (a) he is the only true front-runner in the race, and (b) Sea Biscuit is retired. And (c) just take a look at the weights. Your horse is 125. Warner’s is 128 …” He let Mayer check his program to find Bay View at 108. Mayer looked at the tote board. Bay View was now 40 to 1.
The sun, which had been out brightly for two hours, now seemed to burn with a pulse that matched the trumpeter’s call to the post. As the horses moved in single file onto the track, Jack Warner’s Box Office was the heavy favorite. Mayer’s Bindlestiff was now 9 to 2. Bay View was 50 to 1, the longest odds the automatic tote board could register.
If Hammett had any more cash, he’d have bet it all on Nick Wall and Bay View, but four hundred dollars was what he had left from last night’s romp. As he left the box to make his bet, he noticed that the girls were doing just fine. Ling and Angel Chung were gabbing away. Doris, even though her hand had been removed from Hoover’s knee, was trying on his fedora. Hammett bet all four hundred on number one to win.
After placing his bet, Hammett did not return to Mayer’s box. If he lost his bets with Jack Warner, he’d put a call in to Lillian and send a check over by messenger. If Bay View did not win the race outright—and given what other bettors thought as reflected in his odds, that was likely—Hammett would just drift away, find Kai in the parking lot, head back to the apartment, and drink himself to sleep. His lady friends were taking very good care of themselves.
If Bay View, in flaming red silks, broke out of the gate very well and got to the lead quickly, he would be easy to spot. If he is to win this race, he must get the lead quickly and stay there till the homestretch. If other colors blocked that redbloused jockey, Bay View and Hammett were cooked.
Nick Wall had his horse out of the gate a stride before the rest of the field. As planned. Entering the first turn, Bay View was in control of the pace as the field settled in tightly behind him, each horse and rider content to make his run much later. Hammett would learn a lot about the pace when the time for the first quarter-mile was posted on the infield tote board; however, the pace seemed very comfortable to Hammett’s trained eye. Then it went up—25.1 seconds—inordinately slow for horses of this quality. Hammett allowed himself some excitement; he began to whisper to the jockey: Hold him, Nickie, hold him tight. Which is what Nickie did. Amazingly, no other horse attempted to challenge so slow a pace.
Warner’s horse Box Office sat in second, content to stalk the leader. Bindlestiff sat on the rail in fourth.
As the field entered the backstretch, Hammett noticed a bit more daylight open between Bay View and Box Office. The second quarter-mile was even slower than the first. Hammett began to edge closer to the rail: Keep him there, Nickie, right there, right there.
The field ran down the backstretch without any change in order. The challenges from the late runners would begin on the far turn. That’s where he saw Box Office begin to pick up his pace and close some ground on Bay View. No, no, not yet, Nick, n-n-n-not yet. Hammett now was calling instructions aloud to his jockey. Midway into the turn he saw Box Office begin to falter, or perhaps it was just Nick Wall letting Bay View out a notch to hold him off.
Now, coming into the head of the stretch, every horse who had any run left was running all out. Jockeys were whipping and bringing their mounts out to the middle of the track, looking for a clear path to the wire. Box Office gave up first: Hammett’s big bet with Warner started looking very good. He would win the ten thousand. But Hammett wanted the artistic pleasure of seeing an unlikely scenario come true exactly as prewritten. Indeed, it was asking far too much from the gods, but one time, just one time, why not one time …? He began to say in cadence as Wall whipped Bay View past him down the stretch: One time … one time … one time …
It was exactly as he had foreseen. The path along the rail was the most firm. The brilliant front-running, pace-controlling ride by a jockey with “a stopwatch in his head,” lightest-weight in a top-heavy field—these things easily carried Bay View home by three lengths. Bindlestiff, Mayer’s horse, finished second. Box Office was last.
The churning in his stomach forced Hammett to find a place to sit down. He breathed deeply. His hands shook in his lap.
What Dashiell Hammett did today in predicting—no, more than predicting, seeing—the unfolding and the outcome of the 1941 Santa Anita Handicap, was almost beyond reasonable explanation, beyond the compass of logic. He had discerned cosmic design—or was it intent?—and it had been perfectly and profitably perceived. It rivaled his imagining The Maltese Falcon before actually writing it. Something he knew he would never be able to do again. Even Kassandra never hit a 50-to-1 shot. He went to get a drink.
When the race became official, L. B. Mayer wasn’t gloating over winning his big bet with Warner; he was telling everyone who would listen of Hammett’s uncanny prerace analysis and how perfectly jockey and horse executed the race plan. He waved the fifty-dollar ticket on Bay View he had Elise buy for him. Bay View paid $118.80 for a two-dollar bet, making Mayer’s ticket worth almost three thousand dollars. It gave him more pleasure than the fifty-thousand-dollar check Jack Warner would have to send him in the morning.
Hammett’s payoff on Bay View was more than $23,000, which with his Warner winnings was more than enough to finally make his down payment on Hardscrabble Farm. Hammett considered returning to Mayer’s box for a curtain call. He really hadn’t had his moment with either Edmunds or Spinetti, and there was much he wanted to say. Better, he thought, to leave in mystery and plant a racing myth in California.
The check issued by the Santa Anita Racing Association folded neatly away in his breast pocket, Hammett walked out of the clubhouse gate into a golden California evening. He stood at the curb and waved. Kai spotted him and came along with the car immediately. Kai said, “What about the girls?”
“I think they’re occupied. Let’s go home.”
Kai assumed his boss was leaving early and alone because he had lost all his money.
“GOOD MORNING, Mr. Childs. My name is Lillian Hellman. I just bought the farm down the road.”
“Yes, I saw that. Good luck with it.”
“Thank you. I’m calling because I heard you had a tractor for sale and they tell me I’m very much in need of one.”
Childs drove his tractor, a 1938 Series-B John Deere Whirlwind, over to Lillian’s place that afternoon. His farm was less than half a mile away. Both tractor and farmer were spiffed up, Childs in a suit and tie, the green-and-yellow machine polished and greased to perfection. Lillian, of course, did not know how to evaluate the condition of the tractor other than to be impressed with its immaculate appearance. She took a slow tour around the Whirlwind, touc
hed its oversized wheels, its perforated radiator grill, its motor housing, and finally the springs below the elevated seat. Childs showed her where to place her foot in order to climb up to that seat, but Lillian needed his help to actually get aboard. Childs, a well-built older man, didn’t quite know where to touch her and wasn’t sure her hip was in play until she placed his hand there.
Lillian said, “If I use it, do I have to buy it?”
“Hell, no.”
Childs stood behind Lillian on the tractor and released the brake. He explained that driving a tractor was exactly like her Town and Country stick shift. Clutch down, drop into first gear, give her some gas, let the clutch out, and off you go. Second and third gear came after that, and there you are, driving a tractor. At least in theory. When Lillian released the clutch, the tractor shuddered and the motor stalled. Childs laughed.
Lillian poured her neighbor and herself a beer as the two sat at her kitchen table looking out at the gleaming machine standing out in front of her barn. There was no doubt she intended to buy the tractor, but she wanted a narrative to go with it. Cedric Childs supplied that.
He’d made his money—a considerable amount—selling restaurant supplies in Manhattan until a day arrived when he could not stand the sight of another double boiler or a deep fryer and found the selling of water pitchers slightly demeaning. He wanted to grow things. He’d always wanted to grow things. He walked away from the restaurant supply business and bought his farm in Pleasantville six months before the Crash in ’29.
Lillian asked, “Smart or just dumb luck?”
“Neither.” Lillian expected elaboration. There was none, just “Neither.” It was something Hammett might have said.
Childs had never heard of Lillian Hellman and did not resent her purchase of the land. Other neighbors, he told her, were not so generous of spirit. That information merely confirmed the feelings she had when she shopped at the local market or stopped for gas. All the better: If Hardscrabble was going to be an island socially as well as emotionally, wasn’t that what she was looking for all along? She told Childs as she poured a second beer she didn’t give a shit about what her neighbors thought of her. All she really wanted to do was learn how to operate his damn tractor and learn to farm. When Childs tapped her beer glass with his and said, “Then you’ve come to the right guy,” the two had begun a working friendship.
There wasn’t time to waste. If she wanted to get her corn in, the time was now. He proposed to leave his tractor right where it was and walk her land on his way home. Farming lessons would begin first thing in the morning. He said, “Just please, please, don’t wear fashionable overalls.” Lillian knew that once again she had gotten lucky with a man.
Cedric Childs arrived in a Ford pickup loaded with tools and tall stakes just after seven. They had coffee, toast, and talked a bit. Then Lillian climbed the tractor by herself and Childs took his place behind her seat, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Lillian was pleased by his touch. When he touched her right arm, she knew to release the hand brake, put the machine in first gear, and then ease up on the clutch. The tractor rolled forward. Childs said, “Good.” Another soft tap meant second gear, and another third. “Excellent. All right, brake and throw it in neutral.” She did and didn’t remember ever feeling so pleased with herself.
Childs thought that if they worked hard, they could get in ten acres of sweet corn in two weeks. There wasn’t much standing groundwater so the time was now. Normally he didn’t believe in plowing deep for corn—it brought up the weeds and killed the worms—but the land had been fallow, the nutrients had sunk. He drained his coffee and stood: “I’ll be back early afternoon with the plow attached and you can get to real farming.”
“What the hell have we been doing?”
“That’s prefarming.”
When Childs returned that afternoon, two tillers were attached to the tractor. Their mass intimidated Lillian. Childs said, “Don’t give the equipment any thought. Drive the tractor like you did straight out to the field.” His hands were more comforting than his words and she did exactly as he said.
With Childs’s help Lillian raised her plows at the end of a row, turned the tractor, and dropped them for the return trip. “Overlap about half a foot or so and try to go a little faster.” And she did. The sun, which had been hidden all morning, came through brightly. After two more runs, his hands came off her shoulders. Lillian assumed he had turned the work over to her. She turned back. Childs was not there. He was in fact nowhere to be seen. This was her field now.
The day warmed even more. Lillian opened her blouse and took off her bandana. She looked up momentarily as the tractor rolled forward to see high clouds drawing toward one another and there, off to the west, a flock of Canada geese flying in V formation toward the lake. She was now part of this great mystery.
Lillian looked behind her at the dark earth she had turned—perhaps less than ten percent of her field—with enough satisfaction finally to call it a first day. She wasn’t yet thinking like a farmer; in fact she wasn’t thinking at all: instead of driving the tractor back to the barn shed, she shut it down and started walking back to the house, leaving it out there exposed to the elements, a possible rainstorm. Her body still vibrated as she walked. She was thinking only of a hot bath, a glass of wine, and some caviar. Life did not get better than this.
Cedric Childs was a little older than Hammett, shorter, but better built, rawboned, in fact stronger, more desirable. Lovemaking between farmer and neighbor was inevitable. It would come in its own time. Like the sweet corn.
Whenever Hammett called with Hollywood news and events, Lillian told him of her progress at Hardscrabble. Yes, a crew of men came in and weeded her field—he picked up the her. But she had graded and limed the entire field herself, hooked up and loaded the planter herself. Indeed, she laid in ten acres of sweet corn pretty much by herself. She spoke excitedly about choosing a four-inch depth and two-and-a-half-foot rows. “It rained today, isn’t it great?”
“You know, Lilly, they got you all wrong. You’re not Kassandra the oracle. You’re Demeter the harvest goddess.”
Being apart suited them both. Hammett was drinking, screwing, and pissing away his money. Hellman was farming, starting to write again, and getting ready to invite Cedric to stay the night. Lillian never mentioned Childs to Hammett. Hammett simply imagined there was someone like Childs.
Hellman’s father and aunts didn’t like the idea of her living alone in the country, so Hannah recommended a niece of Sophronia, her New Orleans nursemaid, a reliable young woman named Zenia Jackson who lived in New York and was looking for work. Lillian met her and liked her immediately. Zenia moved in with her boy Gilbert.
When the time came Lillian discovered that Cedric Childs was a surprisingly good lover, certainly as compared to Hammett. He was strong but gentle, thoughtful and insistent, pleasant and durable, and, important for Lillian, very well endowed. They made love in bed, on the floor, against the wall, on the stairs, and in front of the fireplace. After Childs left in the morning, Lillian slept until early afternoon.
Pleasant and satisfying as their liaisons were for each of them, Childs’s stayovers never became expectations or demands for either of them. Their nights together came easily and naturally. There seemed to be an unspoken rightness about them.
In late spring the orchard’s apple trees got trimmed and sprayed. During the summer the corn came in fully. Lillian found she had time to write most days and entirely on Sunday. One dramatic idea—perhaps better called commercial—attracted her strongly because of the pleasure she would have in writing it. A generational continuation of The Little Foxes. It had been great fun to recount and invent all those betrayals, even more fun to root them in her own family history; and very satisfying to collect the royalties that followed. Perhaps it was a little too soon for a sequel, but Lilly began to develop the idea in pencil on a steno pad near her bed.
Hammett called late one night while she was i
n bed scribbling away. He didn’t sound too drunk; in fact, he seemed intently curious about Lillian’s well-being, so she decided to get his opinion on the timing of a Foxes sequel. Previously when she went to Hammett for advice it had been from a position of an uncertain child asking for permission. This was no longer the case. After all, she was about to bring in ten acres of sweet corn for which she already had a buyer.
She told him her idea with tight lips. He made the sound of a cash register.
WHEN HAMMETT ARRIVED in November, all the farmwork—or most of it—had been done. Zenia Jackson and her eight-year-old were well established in a small apartment Lillian had restored downstairs. Lillian used to say proudly that she integrated the Pleasantville educational system since a yellow public school bus picked up Gilbert at Hardscrabble Farm each morning and brought him to Harding Elementary.
Lillian allowed it to become clear to Hammett that Childs was more than a neighbor, a friend, a farm mentor, so when she got around to telling him of her plan to build Hammett a cottage on the rise behind the farmhouse, there was no way for it not to sound—sincere as the offer was—like a gold watch offered to a valued retiree. He could not possibly accept. The two weeks he stayed at Hardscrabble were awkward in the extreme.
Hammett actually had some work. Sam Spade was becoming a weekly radio star. The format for the show wasn’t so different really from writing a comic strip. Three panels, seven minutes each: the setup in Sam’s office—a desperate client enters and tells Sam and his secretary, Effie Perrine, the reason for her—it was usually a her—desperation clarified with flashbacks, Sam takes case, client leaves, Sam and Effie banter, organ music, commercial for Wildroot Cream Oil. Panel Two: Sam goes to scene of the crime, tracks down and questions suspects, usually three of them, occasionally four if the show is short, next commercial. Panel Three: Sam lays a trap to catch the murderer and said murderer is indeed trapped and confesses or has to be shot, a drink back at the office and some light sexual banter with Effie. Last commercial and hook for next week’s show. Then, regularly each week, a check from his agent for two hundred and a quarter.
