Career in C Major: And Other Fiction

by James M. Cain

  She walked away, and began testing the high ladder she used for her dive. “That’s a nice way to talk,” I said. “And specially to her.”

  “What’s the matter? You stuck on her?”

  “No, I’m not stuck on her. But she’s a nice girl, and the least you could do is to treat her decent, and call her by her name. Sister! If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a guy that calls a woman ‘sister.’”

  “Sure she’s a nice girl, and she gives me a pain in the neck. It’s no racket for a nice girl. It’s for bums that can take it on the chin, and maybe cuss you out if you get too tough. Her doing a dive act, that’s just a pest.”

  “Well, you need whatever trade she draws.”

  “What’s that, a crack?”

  “Yeah, it’s a crack. Why didn’t you stick to the Wild West show, and things you could understand? But no. You had to have a pool. Right in the middle of a resort that has an ocean for a front yard, and a bay for a back yard, you had to have an open-air salt-water swimming-pool. Why didn’t you buy some fur coats and try to sell them in Florida?”

  “Give it time. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “No, but it was built in the right place. And then, when a girl comes along with something that might put it over, you treat her like smallpox. If you ask me, you’re a pretty dumb cluck.”

  “Nobody’s asking you. And lay off the dumb part. I know what I’m doing.”

  “All right, then. Just a cluck.”

  She came over again. “The pool will be full at twelve, Miss Dixon,” I said. “I’m starting the pump now, and it takes two hours.”

  “I was afraid something was out of order,” she said.

  “Everything is O. K. We have to drain it once a week to sluice it out with the hose.”

  “Oh.”

  She stood there, and looked around like she had lost something. All of a sudden Mort picked it up, and handed it to her. It was a lipstick.

  “Thank you,” she said, and left us again.

  “Well,” I said, soon as I had started the pump, “that was a little better. You treat her like a lady once, maybe she won’t give you such a big pain in the neck.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He was looking out to sea. I looked, and then I saw there were a lot of people running down to the beach. We ran too, and when we got there, we saw a little fishing steamer about two hundred yards out, towing something in the water.

  “What you got there?” somebody sang out.

  “We got a whale,” came the call from the boat. “He got tangled up in the net, and we ketched him alive.”

  “Come on, Dave,” says Mort. “We’re going out there.”

  We pushed a lifeguard’s skiff through the surf and rowed out. “Give you a hundred dollars for your whale,” Mort yelled out as soon as we got close enough to talk.

  “Ha-ha-ha!” says the Captain. “That just makes me laugh.” It sure did that, all right. You could hear him to Henlopen Light.

  “All right,” says Mort. “No harm asking, though. By the way, what you going to do with him?”

  That stopped the laughing pretty quick. The Captain went into a huddle with his crew, and then came back to the rail. “Five hundred,” he says.

  Mort began to beat him down, and pretty soon offered two hundred and fifty dollars.

  “Sold,” says the Captain. “Come get your whale.”

  We swung in closer, but then I began to back water on the oars. Because that whale, anybody could see he was alive, all right. He wasn’t a big whale—just a young whale, about twenty feet long and four feet thick; but he was plenty big enough. When he began to buck, and blow, and hit the water with his tail so it sounded like a cannon-shot, our skiff, that had seemed almost as big as a washtub when we started out, all of a sudden wasn’t any bigger than a soap-dish.

  “Cluck!” I says. “You’re not even a cluck; you’re just plain balmy. Take your paw off my knee. I’m going home.”

  But he just shook his head, where he was scrawling a check with my knee for a desk; and about that time the whale yawed the steamer around so it was almost on top of us. Mort passed the check up to the Captain, then shoved his watch, fountain-pen, checkbook and pocketbook into my hand, and kicked off his shoes. “All right, Dave,” he said. “Now all you got to do is get the whale into the pool.” And with that he went overboard and cut for shore.

  Did you ever try to move a whale? I sat in that skiff and got so mad I had to screw my eyes shut to keep from crying. The crowd on shore began to give me a razz, and the crew of the fishing-boat kept yelling: “Where you want this whale put? You don’t say something pretty soon, we’re going off and leave him.” I was just getting ready to tell them they could take their whale and boil him for glue, if they wanted to, but when I opened my eyes I didn’t say it. Because I was looking square at a way to get the whale into the pool, and it came to me I would get more satisfaction out of it, when I finally got a chance to cuss out Mort, if he couldn’t say the job had got my goat. It wasn’t anything but a tramp steamer, tied up to the steel pier about a mile away, but I knew it must have a winch on it, and it gave me an idea I thought might work.

  “You take that whale,” I said, “and tow him to the pier. Lay near the steamer, and I’ll be there and tell you what to do next.”

  They wanted twenty-five extra for that, and I paid them and went ashore. I called up a guy that had a truck with a big trailer on it, that he used to haul lumber, and told him to go down to the pier with it. I bought me a couple hundred feet of two-inch hemp hawser, and a couple rolls of one-inch rope, and I sent them down. I rounded up ten bums that didn’t have any more sense, and I sent them down. Then I got into a cab and went down myself to look things over.

  There was plenty to look at, all right. My ten bums were there, and my truck and trailer, and my hawser and rope, and about two thousand people, and the Boy Scout band, that had been practicing for Fourth of July, and did one good deed anyhow when they quit blowing their horns and went down to see the whale. He was just coming in under the bows of the ship; and when I saw him, I knew I better get a move on. Because the net, that had been all around him before, had worked up on him like a nightshirt does on a fat man, until all that was holding him was big bunches around the head and flukes.

  But Captain Jennings, the skipper, snapped into it pretty quick to help me out, and in a few minutes he and his Finns had made a running noose out of my hawser, and we had two boats over, he in the bow of one and I in the bow of the other, and we were creeping up on the whale. He had a chain link on the noose, to spread it under water, and a float on the free end, just in case we lost it overboard—and it looked like we might make it. The Finns had shipped their oars and were using them as paddles, and we weren’t making a sound. We got to within twenty feet of him, to ten feet, to five feet; then we were up even, and the noose was just going past his tail.

  Then I saw Captain Jennings look up. There were a bunch of people in boats, by that time, watching the show, and one of them, a guy in an old clinker-built launch, had drifted within a couple of feet of my boat, and in a second we would hit. He had a camera and was taking pictures. I found out afterward he was a newspaper photographer. I looked at the Captain, and the Captain looked at me. We were afraid to speak, on account of the whale. And when the guy seemed to wake up he was in a pretty bad spot himself. He reached out, caught the stern of my boat, and pushed himself back. The Captain yelled, but it was too late. Because half of that push sent him back, and the other half sent me ahead, and that meant right into the whale.

  If he had thrown a spike into a buzz-saw, he couldn’t have stirred things up quicker. Next thing I knew, I was in the water, and I thought it was Niagara Falls, the way it was churning around. I came up, saw a big tail swirling over me, and ducked under. Something hit the water so hard I thought my ears would pop. I came up again, saw the boat bottom-up about three feet away, grabbed for it, missed, and went under again. Something hit my leg an awful wallop. It stood m
e on my ear so bad I didn’t know which was up and which was down and I began to grab wild. I felt something in my hand, and held on. It was a bumper the crew of the fishing boat had thrown out. They pulled me in, and I stood on deck and looked around.

  It was a shambles, all right. Both boats were floating bottom-up, and around them were oars, lifeboats and seats. Finns were climbing out on both sides of the fishing-boat. But what broke your heart was the whale. That last flurry was all he needed. The net was hardly holding him at all now, and he seemed to feel he was pretty near loose, because he kept jerking and fighting, and you could see it was just a matter of minutes.

  Captain Jennings stepped up beside me, all wet, and it did my heart good to hear that man cuss. But then he began to yell at another boat the ship had put out to gather up the wreckage. “Look,” he says to me. “It’s got him! The hawser is on his tail!”

  I looked, and our float, on the end of the noose, bobbed up for a second and then went under. We jumped in the boat and began to grab for it. It was like trying to catch a frog in a slippery bathtub. Every time we would get to where it was, it would come whip under again, and we wouldn’t have any idea where it would come up. And all the time they were yelling from the pier, and the fishing-boat, and everywhere, that the net was almost gone and he was going to break loose.

  We didn’t get it. We never would have got it. But then something flashed down from the pier and cut the water not five feet from the boat. It was this girl, this Mabel Dixon that did the live act in the pool. She was up there with the rest, saw it was an under-water job, and went right over. In a second or two, there was the float, about five feet under, and her red cap beside it, where she was wrestling the hawser. We pulled it in, and her with it.

  “He’s loose! The net is gone!”

  We went boiling out to sea about fifty miles an hour, then slammed down on the seats and stopped with a jerk, because they had kept the falls swinging over us all the time, and Captain Jennings had thrown the hawser over the hook. There was just enough slack to bend it and catch the end under, and then, thank god, I heard the steam go in the winch.

  The first pull left him half in and half out of the water, because our hawser was so long that was as far as the boom could lift. But we got another loop on him, a short one, and they dropped another falls to finish the job. Captain Jennings gave the word, and up he went, across the deck, his blow-hole going like the pop-valve of a locomotive, and both flukes fanning the air like propeller-blades. The crowd cheered, and it was a sight to see, all right; but I didn’t have time to look at it.

  I scrambled across the ship to the pier, backed my trailer in, and had them let him down until his head was just touching. Then I had them lower him an inch at a time, and as he came down, I had my ten bums rope him. It was ticklish work, because those flukes were nothing to monkey with. But we got done pretty quick, all except his tail, and I had to let that hang down because the trailer was too short and I had nothing to rope it to. So we started out. First came the Boy Scout band, that came to life and began to play “Shine, Little Glow Worm.” Then came me. Then came the truck, going slow and backfiring about every six feet. Then came the whale, blowing like he would explode, and smashing the ground with his tail. Then came my ten bums. Then came the two thousand people. We were a hot-looking parade, and sounded like a reunion of the field artillery.

  When we got to the pool, things were going on pretty lively. Out back was a truck, putting up a strip of canvas all around, that had been around the Wild West show. Out front were a couple of roustabouts from the Wild West show, and a bunch of cops, yelling at a big crowd of people, trying to make them get in line. And up top was another pair, hoisting up a big sign that read like this:

  ALIVE! IN THE FLESH!

  Giant Sperm Whale of the Arctic Seas

  ONLY SPECIMEN IN CAPTIVITY

  Captured by Scientific Expedition

  After Furious Struggle

  And

  HEAVY LOSS OF LIFE

  See

  JONAH

  Mighty Leviathan of the Deep

  Admission $1

  Children 50 Cents

  I headed for the shallow end, unhooked the trailer, rolled it into the pool on some planks, sent my bums in, and cut the whale loose, all except a little piece of net that was hanging to his tail—and there didn’t seem to be much to do about that after he jerked free and began swimming around. And then, while I was hauling the trailer up and fishing out the ropes, I heard somebody yell. I looked just in time to see this truck, the one that was putting the canvas out, back into one of the guy-wires of the ladder the girl used for her dive. You could only see that guy about a mile, on account it was all strung with flags for the Fourth of July, but of course this truck, it would have to back into it. It snapped, and the ladder began to lean, from the pull of the other guy. I just had time to yank one of my bums out from under it, and then it hit with a crash you could hear ten blocks.

  I had lost track of the girl at the pier, but she must have got to the pool ahead of me, because she came running over, and Mort was right behind her.

  “Gee,” he says, “that sure is tough.”

  They went over to where the ladder was lying, all smashed to kindling-wood, and Mort kept mumbling how tough it was. “But I got nothing to do with it,” he says pretty soon. “It’s right there in the agreement. Not responsible for anything that happens to you or your equipment; so that lets me out. Don’t it?”

  She didn’t say anything, and he went off.

  “So he’s got nothing to do with it, hey?” I said, as soon as I could get to her. “First he’s got nothing to do with the whale, and then he’s got nothing to do with the ladder. He’ll find out. Come on.”

  She just stood there, looking at the ladder.

  “Say, didn’t you hear what I said?” I asked. “Let’s go. You’re going to hear something.”

  “And what am I going to hear?” she snapped. “We go in there, and you bawl him out. He says he’s busy, and then we come out again. No, thanks. I do this my way.”

  “Yeah? And how do you do it?”

  “Do you really mean it? Do you want to get even, or are you just talking?”

  “Mean it? I mean it so hard I could sing it.”

  “Then it’s our whale too, isn’t it? Didn’t we catch it? We’re going to claim our part of it. We’ll fix that young man. And we’ll fix him in the pocketbook, where it hurts.”

  “Well, now say! He bought this whale.”

  “I thought so. You don’t mean it.”

  “I know, but I work for this guy—see.”

  “Say it. Yes or no. Because I’m going to.”

  The first customers had come through by then, and the roustabouts were dumping herrings into the pool for the whale to eat, and they were gaping at us, and I would have said anything to make her shut up.

  “All right, then. Yes.”

  “Then you keep your mouth shut, and I’m going to find a lawyer. And don’t make any mistakes. I mean business.”

  She went, and I changed my clothes and kind of took charge of things, and didn’t say anything to Mort. But then I began to get worried. I wasn’t so sure I wanted a piece of this whale. You see, he didn’t seem to like herrings very well. By three o’clock he hadn’t touched a one, Mort sent the truck down for a load of seaweed. Well, he didn’t seem to like that either. So Mort sent to the packinghouse for a side of beef, and dumped that in. He didn’t seem to like that very well, either. So by sundown the pool was the worst mess of herrings, seaweed and beef you ever saw in your life, and had an aroma about like you would imagine. The crowd couldn’t stand it. They had been fighting to get in, but little by little they melted away until there was nobody coming through at all. Even the whale couldn’t stand it. At first he had nosed around in that stuff, looking for a clean place to blow, but now he didn’t even do that. He just lay there, and it didn’t take any fish doctor to see it was just a question of how long he could last. />
  About nine o’clock Mort came back to where I was, on the far end of the pool. “I think I’ll take a little run out of the city tomorrow, Dave,” he said. “I feel awful tired. You can keep things going.”

  “Out of town? The Fourth? And you with a whale?”

  “He’s run me ragged. I’ve got to rest.”

  “You mean he’s run me ragged.”

  “I mean he’s broke my heart. I’ve give him fish, Dave. I’ve give him grass. I’ve give him beef. I’ve give him the best that money can buy, and still he won’t eat. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “And what do I give him?”

  “Nothing. Just keep an eye on him. Of course, if anything happens, use your judgment. Just use your judgment.”

  “Oh. Now I get it. First I got to move a live whale, and then I got to move a dead whale. And you, you dirty double-crossing heel, you know if you’ve got a dead whale in that pool tomorrow, they’ll Ku Klux you out of town, and that’s why you’re running away. Two hundred thousand people due here, worth a couple million dollars to the town, and watch them leave when the sun hits that thing. Well, I don’t bite, see? You can find another fall guy.”

  “You got to do it for me, Dave. It’s got me scared blue.”

  Then I let him have it. I let him have it about everything, especially the ladder. “Think of that! She even catches your whale for you. You take in all this dough. And then you’re too measly cheap even to pay for her ladder that broke up.”

  He thought that over a long time. “Well, I won’t pay for it, see? And it’s not because I’m too cheap.”

  “And why is it?”

  “Never mind, I gotta reason.”

  “The reason is money, like it generally is and that’s all I want to know. Listen, you made a mistake. It’s not you that’s taking a run-out tomorrow. It’s me.”

  I went to where she was staying, and took her to a little restaurant, and told her everything that had happened. She listened, and when I got to the part where he had some reason for not coughing up she looked at me kind of queer, but didn’t say anything. “Oh, he’s all right,” I says. “He’ll come through, after he’s made everybody so sore they could kill him. That’s how he is. The main thing is we’re out from under the whale.”