They Shoot Horses, Don_t They?

by Horace McCoy

  HORACE MCCOY THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?

  (1935)

  The prisoner will stand…

  Chapter One

  I stood up. For a moment I saw Gloria again, sitting on that bench on the pier. The bullet had just struck her in the side of the head; the blood had not even started to flow. The flash from the pistol still lighted her face. Everything was as plain as day. She was completely relaxed, was completely comfortable. The impact of the bullet had turned her head a little away from me; I did not have a perfect profile view but I could see enough of her face and her lips to know she was smiling. The Prosecuting Attorney was wrong when he told the jury she died in agony, friendless, alone except for her brutal murderer, out there in that black night on the edge of the Pacific. He was as wrong as a man can be. She did not die in agony. She was relaxed and comfortable and she was smiling. It was the first time I had ever seen her smile. How could she have been in agony then? And she wasn’t friendless.

  I was her very best friend. I was her only friend. So how could she have been friendless?

  … is there any legal cause why sentence should not now be pronounced?

  Chapter Two

  What could I say?… All those people knew I had killed her; the only other person who could have helped me at all was dead too. So I just stood there, looking at the judge and shaking my head. I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  ‘Ask the mercy of the court,’ said Epstein, the lawyer they had assigned to defend me.

  ‘What was that?’ the judge said.

  ‘Your Honour,’ Epstein said, ‘—we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. This boy admits killing the girl, but he was only doing her a personal favour—’

  The judge banged on the desk, looking at me.

  There being no legal cause why sentence should not now be pronounced…

  Chapter Three

  It was funny the way I met Gloria. She was trying to get into pictures too, but I didn’t know that until later. I was walking down Melrose one day from the Paramount studios when I heard somebody hollering, ‘Hey! Hey!’ and I turned around and there she was running towards me and waving. I stopped, waving back. When she got up to me she was all out of breath and excited and I saw I didn’t know her.

  ‘Damn that bus,’ she said.

  I looked around and there was the bus half a block down the street going towards Western.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I thought you were waving at me… ‘

  ‘What would I be waving at you for?’ she asked.

  I laughed. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You going my way?’

  ‘I may as well walk on down to Western,’ she said; and we began to walk on down towards Western.

  That was how it all started and it seems very strange to me now. I don’t understand it at all. I’ve thought and thought and still I don’t understand it. This wasn’t murder. I try to do somebody a favour and I wind up getting myself killed. They are going to kill me. I know exactly what the judge is going to say. I can tell by the look of him that he is going to be glad to say it and I can tell by the feel of the people behind me that they are going to be glad to hear him say it.

  Take that morning I met Gloria. I wasn’t feeling very good; I was still a little sick, but I went over to Paramount because von Sternberg was making a Russian picture and I thought maybe I could get a job. I used to ask myself what could be nicer than working for von Sternberg, or Mamoulian or Boleslawsky either, getting paid to watch him direct, learning about composition and tempo and angles… so I went over to Paramount.

  I couldn’t get inside, so I hung around the front until noon when one of his assistants came out for lunch. I caught up with him and asked what was the chance to get some atmosphere.

  ‘None,’ he said, telling me that von Sternberg was very careful about his atmospheric people.

  I thought that was a lousy thing to say but I knew what he was thinking, that my clothes didn’t look any too good. ‘Isn’t this a costume picture?’ I asked.

  ‘All our extras come through Central,’ he said, leaving me…

  I wasn’t going anywhere in particular; I was just riding along in my Rolls-Royce, having people point me out as the greatest director in the world, when I heard Gloria hollering. You see how those things happen?

  So we walked on down Melrose to Western, getting acquainted all the time; and when we got to Western I knew she was Gloria Beatty, an extra who wasn’t doing well either, and she knew a little about me. I liked her very much.

  She had a small room with some people over near Beverly and I lived only a few blocks from there, so I saw her again that night. That first night was really what did it but even now I can’t honestly say I regret going to see her. I had about seven dollars I had made squirting soda in a drug store (subbing for a friend of mine. He had got a girl in a jam and had to take her to Santa Barbara for the operation.) and I asked her if she’d rather go to a movie or sit in the park.

  ‘What park?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s right over here a little way,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I got a bellyful of moving pictures anyway. If I’m not a better actress than most of those dames I’ll eat your hat—Let’s go sit and hate a bunch of people… ‘

  I was glad she wanted to go to the park. It was always nice there. It was a fine place to sit. It was very small, only one block square, but it was very dark and very quiet and filled with dense shrubbery. All around it palm trees grew up, fifty, sixty feet tall, suddenly tufted at the top. Once you entered the park you had the illusion of security. I often imagined they were sentries wearing grotesque helmets: my own private sentries, standing guard over my own private island…

  The park was a fine place to sit. Through the palms you could see many buildings, the thick, square silhouettes of apartment houses, with their red signs on the roofs, reddening the sky above and everything and everybody below. But if you wanted to get rid of these things you had only to sit and stare at them with a fixed gaze… and they would begin receding. That way you could drive them as far into the distance as you wanted to…

  ‘I never paid much attention to this place before,’ Gloria said.

  … ‘I like it,’ I said, taking off my coat and spreading it on the grass for her. ‘I come here three or four times a week.’

  ‘You do like it,’ she said, sitting down.

  ‘How long you been in Hollywood?’ I asked.

  ‘About a year. I been in four pictures already. I’d have been in more,’ she said, ‘but I can’t get registered by Central.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ I said.

  Unless you were registered by Central Castings Bureau you didn’t have much chance. The big studios call up Central and say they want four Swedes or six Greeks or two Bohemian peasant types or six Grand Duchesses and Central takes care of it. I could see why Gloria didn’t get registered by Central. She was too blonde and too small and looked too old. With a nice wardrobe she might have looked attractive, but even then I wouldn’t have called her pretty.

  ‘Have you met anybody who can help you?’ I asked.

  ‘In this business how can you tell who’ll help you?’ she said. ‘One day you’re an electrician and the next day you’re a producer. The only way I could ever get to a big shot would be to jump on the running board of his car as it passed by. Anyway, I don’t know whether the men stars can help me as much as the women stars. From what I’ve seen lately I’ve about made up my mind that I’ve been letting the wrong sex try to make me… ‘

  ‘How’d you happen to come to Hollywood?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said in a moment—’but anything is an improvement over the life I l
ed back home.’ I asked her where that was. ‘Texas,’ she said. ‘West Texas. Ever been there?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I come from Arkansas.’

  ‘Well, West Texas is a hell of a place,’ she said. ‘I lived with my aunt and uncle. He was a brakeman on a railroad. I only saw him once or twice a week, thank God… ‘

  She stopped, not saying anything, looking at the red, vapourish glow above the apartment buildings.

  ‘At least,’ I said, ‘you had a home—’

  ‘That’s what you call it,’ she said. ‘Me, I got another name for it. When my uncle was home he was always making passes at me and when he was on the road my aunt and I were always fighting. She was afraid I’d tattle on her—’

  ‘Nice people,’ I said to myself.

  ‘So I finally ran away,’ she said, ‘to Dallas. Ever been there?’

  ‘I’ve never been in Texas at all,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t missed anything,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get a job, so I decided to steal something in a store and make the cops take care of me.’

  ‘That was a good idea,’ I said.

  ‘It was a swell idea,’ she said, ‘only it didn’t work. I got arrested all right but the detectives felt sorry for me and turned me loose. To keep from starving to death I moved in with a Syrian who had a hot-dog place around the corner from the City Hall. He chewed tobacco all the time… Have you ever been in bed with a man who chewed tobacco?’

  ‘I don’t believe I have,’ I said.

  ‘I guess I might even have stood that,’ she said, ‘but when he wanted to make me between customers, on the kitchen table, I gave up. A couple of nights later I took poison.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said to myself.

  ‘I didn’t take enough,’ she said. ‘I only got sick. Ugh, I can still taste the stuff. I stayed in the hospital a week. That was where I got the idea of coming to Hollywood.’

  ‘It was?’ I said.

  ‘From the movie magazines,’ she said. ‘After I got discharged I started hitch-hiking. Is that a laugh or not?… ‘

  ‘That’s a good laugh,’ I said, trying to laugh… ‘Haven’t you got any parents?’

  ‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘My old man got killed in the war in France. I wish I could get killed in a war.’

  ‘Why don’t you quit the movies?’ I asked.

  ‘Why should I?’ she said. ‘I may get to be a star overnight. Look at Hepburn and Margaret Sullavan and Josephine Hutchinson… but I’ll tell you what I would do if I had the guts: I’d walk out of a window or throw myself in front of a street car or something.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ I said; ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

  ‘It’s peculiar to me,’ she said, ‘that everybody pays so much attention to living and so little to dying. Why are these high-powered scientists always screwing around trying to prolong life instead of finding pleasant ways to end it? There must be a hell of a lot of people in the world like me—who want to die but haven’t got the guts—’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ I said; ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  Neither of us said anything for a couple of seconds.

  ‘A girl friend of mine has been trying to get me to enter a marathon dance down at the beach,’ she said. ‘Free food and free bed as long as you last and a thousand dollars if you win.’

  ‘The free food part of it sounds good,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not the big thing,’ she said. ‘A lot of producers and directors go to those marathon dances. There’s always the chance they might pick you out and give you a part in a picture… What do you say?’

  ‘Me?’ I said… ‘Oh, I don’t dance very well… ‘

  ‘You don’t have to. All you have to do is keep moving.’

  ‘I don’t think I better try it,’ I said. ‘I been pretty sick. I just got over the intestinal flu. I almost died. I was so weak I used to have to crawl to the John on my hands and knees. I don’t think I better try it,’ I said, shaking my head.

  ‘When was all this?’

  ‘A week ago,’ I said.

  ‘You’re all right now,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so—I better not try it, I’m liable to have a relapse.’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ she said.

  ‘… Maybe in a week—’ I said.

  ‘It’ll be too late then. You’re strong enough now,’ she said…

  … it is the judgment and sentence of this court…

  Chapter Four

  The marathon dance was held on the amusement pier at the beach in an enormous old building that once had been a public dance hall. It was built out over the ocean on pilings, and beneath our feet, beneath the floor, the ocean pounded night and day. I could feel it surging through the balls of my feet, as if they had been stethoscopes.

  Inside was a dance space for the contestants, thirty feet wide and two hundred feet long, and around this on three sides were loge seats, behind these were the circus seats, the general admission. At the end of the dance space was a raised platform for the orchestra. It played only at night and was not a very good orchestra. During the day we had what music we could pick up with the radio, made loud by amplifiers. Most of the time it was too loud, filling the hall with noise. We had a master of ceremonies, whose duty it was to make the customers feel at home; two floor judges who moved around the floor all the time with the contestants to see that everything went all right, two male and female nurses, and a house doctor for emergencies. The doctor didn’t look like a doctor at all. He was much too young.

  One hundred and forty-four couples entered the marathon dance but sixty-one dropped out for the first week. The rules were you danced for an hour and fifty minutes, then you had a ten-minute rest period in which you could sleep if you wanted to. But in those ten minutes you also had to shave or bathe or get your feet fixed or whatever was necessary.

  The first week was the hardest. Everybody’s feet and legs swelled and down beneath the ocean kept pounding, pounding against the pilings all the time. Before I went into this marathon dance I used to love the Pacific Ocean: its name, its size, its colour, its smell—I used to sit for hours looking at it, wondering about the ships that had sailed it and never returned, about China and the South Seas, wondering all sorts of things… But not any more. I’ve had enough of the Pacific. I don’t care whether I ever see it again or not. I probably won’t. The judge is going to take care of that.

  Gloria and I had been tipped off by some old-timers that the way to beat a marathon dance was to perfect a system for those ten-minute rest periods: learning to eat your sandwich while you shaved, learning to eat when you went to the john, when you had your feet fixed, learning to read newspapers while you danced, learning to sleep on your partner’s shoulder while you were dancing; but these were all tricks of the trade you had to practise. They were very difficult for Gloria and me at first.

  I found out that about half of the people in this contest were professionals. They made a business of going in marathon dances all over the country, some of them even hitchhiking from town to town. The others were just girls and boys who came in like Gloria and me.

  Couple No. 13 were our best friends in the dance. This was James and Ruby Bates, from some little town in northern Pennsylvania. It was their eighth marathon dance; they had won a $1,500 prize in Oklahoma, going 1,253 hours in continuous motion. There were several other teams in this dance who claimed championships of some kind, but I knew James and Ruby would be right in there for the finish. That is, if Ruby’s baby didn’t come first. She expected a baby in four months.

  ‘What’s the matter with Gloria?’ James asked me one day as we came back to the floor from the sleeping quarters.

  ‘Nothing. What do you mean?’ I asked. But I knew what he meant. Gloria had been singing the blues again.

  ‘She keeps telling Ruby what a chump she would be to have the baby,’ he said. ‘Gloria wants her to have an abortion.’

  ‘I can’t
understand Gloria talking like that,’ I said, trying to smooth things over.

  ‘You tell her to lay off Ruby,’ he said.

  When the whistle started us off on the 216th hour I told Gloria what James had said.

  ‘Nuts to him,’ she said. ‘What does he know about it?’

  ‘I don’t see why they can’t have a baby if they want to. It’s their business,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to make James sore. He’s been through a lot of these dances and he’s already given us some good tips. Where would we be if he got sore?’

  ‘It’s a shame for that girl to have a baby,’ Gloria said.

  ‘What’s the sense of having a baby unless you got dough enough to take care of it?’

  ‘How do you know they haven’t?’ I asked.

  ‘If they have what’re they doing here?… That’s the trouble now,’ she said. ‘Everybody is having babies—’

  ‘Oh, not everybody,’ I said.

  ‘A hell of a lot you know about it. You’d been better off if you’d never been born—’

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘How do you feel?’ I asked, trying to get her mind off her troubles.

  ‘I always feel lousy,’ she said. ‘God, the hand on the clock moves slow.’ There was a big strip of canvas on the master of ceremonies’ platform, painted in the shape of a clock, up to 2,500 hours. The hand now pointed to 216. Above it was a sign: ELAPSED HOURS—216. COUPLES REMAINING—83.

  ‘How are your legs?’

  ‘Still pretty weak,’ I said. ‘That flu is awful stuff.’

  ‘Some of the girls think it’ll take 2,000 hours to win,’ Gloria said.

  ‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe I can hold out that long.’

  ‘My shoes are wearing out,’ Gloria said. ‘If we don’t hurry up and get a sponsor I’ll be barefooted.’ A sponsor was a company or a firm that gave you sweaters and advertised their names or products on the backs. Then they took care of your necessities.

  James and Ruby danced over beside us. ‘Did you tell her?’ he asked, looking at me. I nodded.