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One On One
Jerry Segal
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ONE ON ONE
Jerry Segal
Based on the screenplay by Robby Benson Jerry Segal
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A Warner Communications Company
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1977 by Warner Bros., Inc. All rights reserved
ISBN 0-44684450-
Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y.
QAWamer Communications Company Printed in Canada.
Not associated with Warner Press, Inc. of Anderson, Indiana
First Printing: August,
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BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
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BOOK TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
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BOOK THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
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BOOK ONE
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I
When Uncle Sam drafted him in 1949, Jerome Steele was a twenty-two-year-old country boy, as green as summer apples. The farthest he had ever been from his parents’ farm was an annual fifty-mile pilgrimage to the nearest town, Nacogdoches, Texas. There, on the first Saturday of each September, his daddy unfailingly bought Jerome school clothes for the year—two blue Chambray shirts, two pairs of khaki pants, one pair of high-top work shoes—as well as several ducking cotton sacks, which Jerome, his brothers and sisters and his parents would use that fall when the family Steele went to its knees to pick cotton from their meager acres.
A child during the great depression, Jerome gained his formal education in a one-room school. His fellow pupils ranged in age from six to twenty. The school did not meet during the autumn harvesting or the spring planting. As the Bible says: Without bread there is no knowledge. The scriptures were much quoted in Jerome’s county.
The year the Enola Gay atomized Hiroshima, Jerome received his high-school diploma and registered for the draft. However, Hitler and Tojo had just fallen, and Mussolini hung upside down from a tree in ignominious death. America did not need Jerome. So between 1945 and 1949 he worked shoulder to shoulder with his daddy, plowing, planting and picking. So far as was known, not one high-school graduate from Jerome’s sparsely populated school district had ever gone on to college. Thus, quite naturally, Jerome nurtured no ambition or life plan beyond following in his daddy’s loamy footsteps. But in 1949 came Harry Truman’s greetings. Jerome’s commander-in-chief ordered him to ‘Dallas for induction into the army.
Jerome had never been to a big city. The uprooted boy who got off the bus at the Dixie Trailways station in Dallas was filled with ignorance and fear.
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His first fifteen minutes in the army reversed the course of Jerome’s young life.
The sergeant in charge of the inductees was an evil crag of a man, meaner than dry August. His swinish eyes measured the new recruits sitting bewildered on benches before him, and his malignant leer made it quickly obvious that the veteran soldier despised the better dressed city boys and bespectacled college men. When his gaze had completely raked the entire group, the sergeant’s eyes came back to‘ Jerome, the seediest of all the hayseeds in the assemblage. A grin deepened the malevolence on the old-timer’s face. Jerome was exactly the man the sergeant sought.
“You!” he thundered at Jerome.
Poor Jerome could barely breathe. Adrenalin exploded through his body, constricted his gut, raced his heart.
“Yeah, you! Stand up!” the topkick roared at Jerome.
Jerome stood on shaking legs. But none of his fellow recruits noticed his trembling. In years past, Jerome had handled many recalcitrant plow horses. If such a plow horse knows his handler is frightened of him, the beast will kick or bite, depending on which end of the horse its victim is nearest. Consequently, Jerome learned early on, the hard way, not to show fear. So now, though terrified, he looked at the topkick with apparent equanimity.
The sergeant sneered at all the city and college types in the room, then said to Jerome, “All right, country.
You’re the squad leader of this bunch of marshmallow asses.“
Jerome forced himself to focus on the sergeant’s face, fought to keep from fainting dead away.
“What’s your name, country!”
Remembering the plow horses, Jerome screamed right back, “Jerome Steele!”
The topkick seemed pleased that Jerome screamed back. “Steele,” the old soldier bellowed, “me and you is gonna wean this bunch of sissies from their mommies’ sugar tits! Right?”
“Right,” Jerome bellowed back.
“Whenever I tell you somethin‘, you tell them! Right?”
“Right!”
The sergeant charged to the street door of the induction center and stepped a step outside.
“Get ‘em up on their feet, Steele,” the sergeant roared from the sidewalk.
The next five seconds changed the course of Jerome’s life.
“Get up on your feet,” he yelled.
Miracle! Jerome knew how Joshua felt at Jericho, how Moses felt on Mount Sinai. No sooner had the words reverberated from Jerome’s mouth than—they all got up on their feet!
“Tell ‘em to pick up their gear,” the topkick shouted.
“Pick up your gear,” Jerome shouted.
Instantly, the draftees all picked up their gear. The fury of Jerome’s heartbeat abated. His breathing became more normal. The hot fear began to mellow into aglow.
“Line ‘em up single file ’gainst the wall,” roared the sergeant.
“Line up single file ‘gainst the wall,” roared Jerome. One bespectacled recruit was slow in following Jerome’s order. “Line up ’gainst the cotton-pickin‘ wall, I said!” Jerome roared again. The tardy recruit jumped a little, then lined up with alacrity. Jerome suppressed a smile.
“Tell ‘em to come this way,” the topkick thundered.
“Go that way,” Jerome shouted, his voice even more thunderous. “And move it! Move your asses!”
As the squad marched out of the induction center and boarded the bus for camp, the sergeant grinned at Jerome. Jerome decided the topkick did not look at all like a red-faced catfish when he smiled. He’s beautiful, thought Jerome, and I want to be just like him. Thanks to him, I ain’t scared no more. Thanks to him, I’ve discovered I’m a leader of men.
Nine months later, when his division shipped out to Korea, Jerome was a corporal. In Korea, Jerome Steele, who had never commanded anything more than a bird-dog or a work mule prior to his army days, discovered that when he led the way into combat, his men followed faithfully. By the time Ike stopped the war in ‘53, the former hayseed was Staff Sergeant Jerome Steele. The lean boy had thickened into muscled manhood. The two rows of ribbons and medals he wore caused nearly every soldier he passed to do a double take. When Jerome’s Colonel awarded him one of hi
s several battle stars, the officer said, in front of the entire battalion, “Sergeant Jerome Steele, our country is grateful and fortunate that you were innately anointed with a MacArthuresque ability to inspire others.”
Damn right, thought Jerome. When I order my people to do something they do it. On the double.
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Thanks to the GI Bill, Jerome enrolled in the University of Texas when his military career ended. Twenty-six at the time, he had known danger, starvation and privation in glacial Asian winters. He had killed. His fellow students, fuzz-faced college boys and carefree college girls, made Jerome feel like a man among children. They amused him. He regarded their academic achievements with the same appreciation one reserves for a pet terrier’s tricks. He was not at all self-conscious about his lack of scholastic background, for he did not think that what they knew, compared to what he knew, was important. As for lie hypothesizing, theorizing instructors, Jerome quickly felt contempt for these “mumbly eggheads,” as he called them. He made life unbearable for his English prof, a timid little aspiring poet, by constantly calling out, “Cain’t hear ya. Talk up.” He asked embarrassing questions of his social studies instructor, a man who advocated peaceful resistance but who had never had to fight for his life, face-to-face, when attacked by a murderous enemy. During his first month’s exposure to an institution of higher learning, Jerome Steele acquired a disdain for academe and academics which would abide with him for life.
He would have left school before the end of his first semester had it not been for Eunice. Eunice Sowers. He had already written to Washington about a small GI loan that would enable him to open a business for which he felt himself suited, such as a gas station or a gun store. But kismet, and an alphabetical seating arrangement, put Steele, J. and Sowers, E. side by side in Geometry 101. .
During the very first weeks of class, Jerome noticed that the pretty, dark-haired girl in the seat next to his never took her gaze off him. She’s fallen in love with me at first sight, he thought. He was correct.
Although love was alien to him, Jerome was no stranger to intercourse. As he informed his awed college dorm-mates, “I’ve had me lotsa women. Lotsa farm girls. Animals, too, heh-heh. Country boys grab what’s handy. I’ve done it in sweet East Texas haystacks and smelly Korean hell-holes. I’ve done it from Houston to Honolulu to Hong Kong to Hokkaido.”
But despite Jerome’s worldwide experience, no sex partner had ever meant anything to him until he met Eunice.
She was seventeen—a well-read small town girl, also a freshman and an art major. She painted in delicate watercolors—outdoor scenes, bowls of fruit on unusual tablecloths, flowers in copper teakettles. Later, Jerome professed a liking for her ‘artistic endeavours, but privately he never understood going to the trouble of painting an object “when a Kodak takes such an accurate pitcher.”
He made her on their first date. They did not even perform the ritual of going to the movies first, or having a burger or a coke. Just bang. In the bushes in front of the Texas History Museum. While he was having her, Jerome was very proud of himself. It was an easy conquest.
But Eunice was a virgin. Afterward, when Jerome realized this sensitive, bright girl had chosen him as her knight, had saved the cathedral of her body for him, had freely given him the most precious thing she had to give, he held her and kissed her damp forehead and pulsing temples. Then and there, in the soft dirt, in a clump of crepe myrtle in front of the Texas History Museum, he knew it had not been Eunice who’d surrendered. He’d surrendered. There he was, tenderly holding that dear, vulnerable, darling girl and wanting never to let go of her, ever again.
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On Thanksgiving she took him home to meet her papa, who lived in Elroy, Texas, on the edge of the high plains in the westernmost part of the state.
Initially, Jerome disliked both West Texas and Elroy. He and Eunice traveled by train, and the Austin to Fort Worth all-night coach ride was passionate and wild. They necked all the way, with Eunice reaching such sizzling peaks that she whispered to Jerome, “Yes! Yes!” He could have had her on the train seat, sitting in his lap facing him, covered by her spreading peasant skirt, right there in front of God, the conductor and all their fellow passengers. Her panties had been off since Round Rock. But he loved her totally, respected her too much; he saved her from her heat, restrained himself, protected her propriety.
In Fort Worth the tedium began. They changed to an ancient milktrain that zigzagged northwest through the sun-scourged plains on an all-day crawl toward New Mexico. As soon as Jerome heard the names of some of the train stops—Wink, Shallowater, Muleshoe—he guessed correctly what kind of a ride it would be. Still, the vastness of the empty land shocked him. Miles and miles of unrelenting miles and miles. In the army, whenever Jerome had been called upon to cross country, he had hitched rides on air force transports. Never before had he suffered on an oven-like coach for a full day; he groaned from dusty town to dusty town. He watched balefully as runty mesquites, dead sage, rocks and sand slowly passed his window in eternal procession. The cattle he saw, one to every five acres, were, to his expert eye, the scrungiest, mangiest livestock he’d ever observed. Every few miles, the barbed-wire fence was draped with a coyote carcass, a warning, by the ranchers for the dead animal’s brethren to keep out.
Near sundown, at the Elroy depot, Jerome decided on first sight that Eunice’s home town was no different from Wink, Shallowater and Muleshoe. Her papa met them in a brand new Caddy El Dorado, however, and Jerome’s natural gregariousness quickly regenerated itself. When Eunice introduced her two men to each other, the chemistry seemed perfect. Jerome called Mr. Sowers “Papa Sowers”; Papa Sowers called Jerome “son.” As they drove up to the Sowers’ abode, Jerome suddenly loved West Texas. The house was a substantial two-story brick that squatted regally on one of the few green plots in Elroy.
Next day, as they enjoyed the ritual turkey and cranberries, Papa Sowers asked Jerome all about Korea. Eunice’s father had been too young to fight the Kaiser in 1917, too old to personally avenge Pearl Harbor in 1941, and he said that, aside from his wife’s early death, these two missed adventures were the major regrets of his life. The old man was fascinated by war and would have made Jerome talk of battle all day had it not been for the annual Texas-Texas A M game on tv at three o’clock.
As the teams were being introduced, Papa Sowers told Jerome all about himself and Eunice. Eunice was an only child. Her mother had died ten years ago. Since then, Papa Sowers’ life had orbited around two cherished planets—his daughter Eunice and his thriving automobile agency. By the end of the first quarter, Jerome had captured both of Papa Sowers’ cherished planets as easily as he had thrust through Eunice’s hymen in the crepe myrtle before the Texas History Museum.
By the time the Longhorns had two second-quarter touchdowns, it was agreed that Jerome and Eunice would wed at Christmas. The couple would live in Elroy, in the two-story brick with Papa Sowers. And Jerome would enter the auto agency as Papa Sowers’ eventual half-partner, and take over the business entirely when Papa Sowers retired in a few years.
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Poor Papa Sowers retired much earlier than any of them anticipated. It happened a few months after the wedding. The old man woke one morning complaining, “Ah cain’t seem to pee none.” That night he was dead of uremic poisoning.
It took Eunice months to recover from the shock of her papa’s sudden passing. Jerome babied and gentled her with bucolic patience, born of nursing ailing animals in his youth. His patience was sweetened, however, by great love. He adored her in every way, and she knew it. By their first wedding anniversary, he had her smiling and normal again.
The day Papa Sowers’ will was read was another milestone in Jerome’s life. The old man’s death had truly saddened him. He and Papa Sowers had been more than in-laws. During their brief friendship there had been an easygoing role reversal, in which battle-hardened Jerome was the sage and old man Sowers sat wide-eyed at hi
s knee. At times, they had been like brothers. The old man had taken care, when teaching Jerome the auto agency business, never to penalize him for his lack of mercantile background. Jerome felt the loss of his father-in-law deeply.
But when the lawyer’s creaky voice intoned the terms of the will, Jerome’s sadness was engulfed in tidal waves of jubilation. He bid his joy, of course. But inwardly he reasoned, “Hell, why should I feel guilty because I’m happy. It wasn’t me who stopped up his bladder so’s he couldn’t pee. God stopped it up. Anyway, all this woulda been mine sooner or later. God decided ‘sooner,’ not me.”
Papa Sowers’ will had several tingling surprises in it for Jerome. There were, as expected, the two-story brick house, the auto agency and a tidy bank account. But the industrious old man also owned a couple of nice insurance policies naming Eunice and Jerome as beneficiaries, a modest portfolio of hot stocks and several tracts of five-bucks-an-acre West Texas Land. A new chapter began in Jerome’s life. Now, to accompany his leadership qualities, he had possessions to match—cash in the bank, a home, a business, land. Respect. Status. Power.
As the aged lawyer read the will, Jerome began to weep, then to sob uncontrollably. Eunice, thinking her husband was lamenting her father’s death, was hysterically grateful. She was at the nadir of her despair, yet she had never loved Jerome more than that day when they wailed together in the barrister’s office—not knowing that her gratitude was based on a partial truth. Jerome was, indeed, sad about their loss. But he cried that day principally for the same reason a newborn baby cries. That day, as the mantle of wealth wafted down upon him, Jerome felt himself reborn.
By the time Eunice became pregnant with Henry in 1958, four years later, Jerome had used his inspirational ability and inherited wealth to conquer the willing town of Elroy. He was elected president of the chamber of commerce. He won a seat on the school board by telling the voters, “I not only was raised on the three r’s, but the three p’s—plowin‘, plantin’ n‘ pickin’. I don’t hold with some o‘ what they’se teachin’ kids nowadays, like sex n‘ anti-Christian philosophies. The bible says, ’Too much learnin‘ doth make thee mad!’ ” Soon after, he became a church deacon. He was chosen county chairman of the “Democrats for Ike and Dick in ‘56.” On election night, Jerome and Eunice threw a wingding victory bash to celebrate Ike’s carrying Elroy, 342 to 7, over the man Jerome called, “that mumbly college perfesser, Stevenson.”
Segal, Jerry Page 1
