Career in C Major: And Other Fiction

by James M. Cain

  He swam to the edge in a second, but every time he would throw a paw over the gutter, Kennelly would jerk on the rope and pull him back in; and while he was doing that, he was edging around until he was on the end of the springboard himself. Then he reeled in his fish. When he had the lion up short down under the end of the board where he couldn’t reach the side of the pool any more, he had him right where he wanted him, and kneeled down to give the rope a couple of hitches around the board so he couldn’t give any more trouble.

  But that was where Happy got in it again. You see, when he went back in the house, he didn’t stop at just phoning the police and starting a panic. He kept right on, out front and down the drive, to where the cow-outfit were loading their stagecoach and horses on their truck, getting ready to go home.

  “Come on, boys, quick!” he yelled at them, and grabbed one of their pistols out of the holster, and legged it back to the pool. He got there just as Kennelly was winding the rope around the end of the board, and he cut loose at the lion with the gun.

  Well, when you begin shooting blanks at a lion, you don’t hurt the lion much, but you are liable to pull yourself off balance with the big recoil that a blank cartridge has, and that was what happened to Happy. The gun went up at the first shot, and jerked him right head-first into the pool, and he began to gulp, gurgle and sink. So Polly tumbled he couldn’t swim, and went in after him. So of course Happy gave her the drowning man’s grip, and the next Kennelly heard was her scream for help. He dived without waiting for more; and for a minute that pool was like you had tried to boil a live alley cat and a couple of Maine lobsters in a three-gallon wash-boiler; and then—all was still.

  They got Happy out. They got out themselves. Then they stood there, holding on to each other, waiting for the lion to jump. Nothing happened. They would have run, then, but there was Happy, lying at the side of the pool, and they couldn’t leave him to the lion.

  “Blow!” Kennelly says to her, after they had looked this way and that, and nothing had happened.

  “And leave you here with this man and that awful animal?” she says.

  “I said blow! Now’s your chance!”

  “I won’t!”

  “The lion’s dead! He’s in the bottom of the pool! He’s drowned!”

  She walked over to the light-switch and snapped a button. It was the underwater lights. The lion wasn’t down there. She snapped another one. It was the flood-lights. He wasn’t up in the trees.

  “Tim!”

  He ducked, but it wasn’t the lion she was looking at. It was his face, where she could see it, in the light. “You’re all scratched up! You’re all blood! You can’t work!”

  He felt his face, and looked at the blood on his hands. “Well, then?” he says. “I told you to blow, didn’t I? The key’s in the car. Tell Silbro I’m sorry.”

  She stooped down over Happy. “Come on,” she says. “We’ve got to get him in the house.”

  He went to help her, and then all hell broke loose. You see a lion, when things get too hot for him, he does just what any other cat does. He goes and crawls under something, and he starts to think. So that’s what this lion had done. He went and crawled under the filter-tank beside the pool, but when he started to think, he didn’t think about butterflies, or “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” or any of the stuff you might think about if you crawled under something. He thought about horse. That was what he’d started out to get when Happy left the door open, and that was what he was stalking before all this mess started. And pretty soon he saw it, not five feet from his nose.

  Because count on a bunch of cow actors. They never got a cue right yet, and when Happy came out there, and grabbed a gun, and told them to come on quick, they figured the show was about to start again, and began jamming the horses back in the stagecoach and throwing on saddles. When they heard the shots, and then saw the lights go on, they were sure of it; so in a minute here they came, prancing up under the lights in magnificent array. They didn’t stay magnificent long. The lion came out from under that filter-tank like he was shot out of a cannon, sank his teeth in the back of the wheeler of the stagecoach.

  But there were four horses on the coach, and when the wheeler plunged, the leaders and the off-wheeler jumped, and went right into the pool, with coach, men and lion. Nobody ever did know just what happened right after that. The lion was out of the pool almost as soon as he was in, and he must have gone after more horses, because a couple of them were ripped. But those horses had riders on them, and the riders seemed to wake up that water was a pretty good thing to be in about that time; so they put their horses right in the pool, and in a couple of seconds there they all were, men, horses and stagecoach, in the middle of the pool, the horses trying to keep their feet on the slippery tile bottom, and squealing as loud as they could; the men cussing and trying to handle them, and in between shooting blanks at the lion; the mob on the roof yelling in a regular panic now, and the lion charging up and down beside the pool, raising holy hell.

  Kennelly was trying to get Happy up, working like mad, and soon as the lion was balked on the horses, he went for him. But he still had the rope hanging to him, and Polly grabbed it. He wheeled, and bit at the rope, but that was enough for Kennelly to grab it away from her, and run off to one side with it. He snubbed it around a tree, and the lion wheeled again. Kennelly pulled on the rope, and that brought him face to face with the lion. That cat just murdered him. He ripped every stitch of clothes off him, and slashed him on the shoulders and chest, until Kennelly looked more like something in a slaughterhouse than a man.

  But he kept heaving on the rope, and at last he got the lion up tight against the tree, and wound the rope around him. He was just finishing up when the State police and a carload of newspaper reporters came around the bend, all sirens going and both feet on the gas. And then Happy got in it again. He had staggered up, from where he had been coughing water out of his lungs, and now he pointed at Kennelly.

  “Tozzan!” he yells at the newspaper guys. “Y’ got the gag, boys? Tozzan o’ th’ Apes! Tozzan th’ ape man? Tozz—”

  Kennelly sat down beside the lion then and began to bawl like a kid. “Tarzan,” he says. “Tarzan the Ape Man, a great gag! Yeah, a great gag two years ago when they thought it up for Weissmuller. Yeah, I’ll say it’s great.”

  They got him to bed after a while, and the doctors plastered him up, and they finally got a couple of guys from Goebels to come and get the lion, and take him back where he belonged; and even the rest of it was what you call a wild night. But next day Kennelly was smeared over every front page in town, with pictures of him weeping there beside the lion, and all the studios were ringing the telephone; and after a while they fixed it up that Hornison was to get it, on account that way Kennelly could fix it so Silbro could finish the picture. Hornison was pretty sore at Silbro, but he stood for it. And the new Kennelly picture was to be called “Mowgli,” and come to find out, that was Polly’s gag.

  “How did you come to think of that one?” Kennelly says to her, where they were holding hands over the side of the bed.

  “Oh, I read a book once,” she says.

  “You hear that, Happy?”

  “But Timmy,” says Happy, where he was cutting out clippings, stamping them “Management the Hapgood Agency, Inc.” and putting them in an envelope for a secretary to file. “But Timmy, I said it all along. Out of the black. I been trying to make you see it.”

  “Well, Polly,” says Kennelly, “I don’t know what the love-interest is, but it’s you, or they can strike the set.”

  She held onto his hand, and Hapgood began to walk around the room. “Timmy,” he says, “you got to hand it to me on that one. Out of the black. You can’t beat it.”

  (Redbook, June 1934)

  Hip, Hip, The Hippo

  THIS STUFF THE PAPERS had about what happened up to Lake Sherwood, they didn’t get the half of it; then what they did get, they balled it all up. So here is the low-down on it, once and for all:r />
  I think I told you how Kennelly came to be Kowgli, the Wolf Man. He used to be the Singing Cowboy, but thanks to some smart work by Hapgood—that’s his agent,—he hit the skids for a wipe-off, and Hollywood couldn’t seem to remember who he was any more. He tried a come-back, and it went sour when a lion chased him into a swimming-pool; but he roped the lion, and that made him Kowgli. He was to be Kowgli the Untamed, but they changed it to Kowgli the Wolf Man, and maybe it’s Kowgli the Sweet Singer of Bagdad by now; you couldn’t prove it by me. Bagdad—it’s not in India; but none of the rest of it was either, so they can’t go by what they put in it.

  Anyway, they started work on it after a while, and at last Kennelly could eat. He figured on five hundred dollars a week, eight weeks guaranteed, on account it takes plenty of time to shoot an animal picture, and full time for retakes. That is, he and this Polly Dukas figured on that between them. She was the girl that helped him rope the lion, and they had gone for each other pretty heavy, so they made it a team. But trust Hapgood to put the spot on it.

  “Listen,” he says to Hornison, when they met to close the deal. “I’m telling you what you’ve got to pay.”

  “O. K.,” says Hornison. “Anything you say.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it. I got a sick polo-pony home, Hap, and it’s got me so I can’t even think. I love that mare, and you know how I am when I really take something to heart.”

  “Which one? Sugar?”

  “Sugar.”

  “Say, that’s tough.”

  “Write your own contracts, Hap. Send them over, and if it’s anything in reason, there won’t be any trouble over it. In the meantime have that pair on the lot tomorrow morning nine o’clock, ready for work and packed for location.”

  “They’ll be there.”

  “O. K., then.”

  Hapgood, just to show he really meant it about Sugar, made the contracts out for one thousand dollars a week, ’stead of five hundred dollars, and all Kennelly had to do for that was ride a hippopotamus down the Ganges River. They never found out there’s no hip’s on the Ganges, but they did find out some things about hip’s they never knew before. Like when you try to work one in a warm lake, that’s where you’re going to have trouble. When you push him in, the first thing he does is go down under and stay down under till he feels like coming up, and maybe that’s in five minutes, and maybe it’s ten, and time going by all the time. And another thing they found out was, even when he does come up, a hip’ is so slippery you can’t ride him. That, and a lot of dirty tricks he knows, because he don’t want to be rode, and he’s not going to be, if he can help it.

  So the hip’ sweat blood, and Kennelly sweat blood; and at the end of a week, where they were at was nowhere. Hornison watched it from the bank, and then one morning he went off by himself and sitting on a stump, began chewing grass.

  “Tim,” says Polly, “I don’t like how he looks, sitting over there by himself.”

  “What do you mean?” says Kennelly.

  “I mean, you better ride this hip’.”

  “How? Will you tell me that?”

  “You better ride him.”

  “If he had hair, or a hump, or a horn, or anything I could hang on to—”

  “Come on. I’ve got an idea.”

  They were in bathing-suits, so they went out in the canoe and found the hip’, on bottom, where he generally was. They could see him down there, eating lilies, and they hung over him, and Polly shipped her paddle and swung her feet over the side.

  “Hey, what is this?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “You’re not going in the water with that thing. Maybe I didn’t tell you that. He’s dangerous.”

  “Is he?”

  “You tell me what this idea is, and I’ll be the one—”

  But right then the hip’ broke water, and Polly went over. The bow of the canoe shot up in the air, and it spun around, so Kennelly was almost on top of what happened. Polly grabbed for the hip’s ear, and got it. He squealed and jerked around so fast the water turned to foam. He squealed again, jerked again, and went under again. That was all. Polly went down, sucked up about a gallon of water and came up, a pretty scared girl. Kennelly went over, hauled her out on the bank, then went out and got the canoe.

  “I guess that’ll learn you.”

  “I’m sorry, Tim. It didn’t work.”

  “Bigger than he looks, isn’t he?”

  “I was scared to death.”

  “I told you.”

  “I thought I could ride him by the ears.”

  “He can wriggle pretty lively too.”

  “I thought a locomotive had hit me.”

  “All right, then? You going to be good? I’ll tell you something.”

  “I’ll be good.”

  “You did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “What we’ve been after. You showed me how to ride him. I’ve been looking at those ears for a week, and it never once entered my head I could hang on to them.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “Oh, yes, it will. You watch. Now we start.”

  So after lunch Kennelly went to work. He took Polly and the Bohunk that owned the hip’ and had them run him out on the bank. Then he roped the hip’—jumped in and slipped a rope on each front foot, and gave one rope to Polly and the other to the Bohunk, and had them run him back in the lake. When he got out where it was deep, he went down, and Kennelly had to yell quick to keep them from pulling him over on his nose. When he was down, they had to turn him around so he was pointed for shore and the ropes wouldn’t get twisted. Kennelly swam out and around with one rope, and had the Bohunk keep up a steady pull on the other, and that did it. Polly checked up how he was lying by going out in the canoe.

  Next was to do it so it would look like something in pictures. There was no cameras on it yet, you understand. Hornison wasn’t spending money on them till he found out how the gag worked. Just the same, it had to be in shape to shoot. Kennelly waded in up to his chest, began to beat the water with his hands, so it would look like a signal, then told Polly and the Bohunk to up with him. They heaved on the ropes; up came the hip’; Kennelly went aboard him like he was a range colt, grabbed his ears, and came riding in fine. The ropes were O. K., because they were under water and the camera wouldn’t get them, so they were off to a good start.

  Kennelly kept at it, and at the end of two hours he had that hip’ where he wanted him. The only thing that was giving trouble was how to get off, once he got on. In pictures, when you shoot a start, you got to shoot a stop, and there didn’t seem to be any. They were all right on the start, but the stop had them …

  Then they noticed a tree that was hanging down over the lake, and that gave Kennelly an idea. He had them slew him under the tree, and as he went by, he stood up, gave a jump, and caught the lowest limb, and it was a honey. I mean, they got something they didn’t expect. When Kennelly jumped, that socked the hip’ way down under, and when he came up, he had the most surprised look on his face you ever saw in your life, and looked up at Kennelly like he couldn’t understand how he would play him such a dirty trick. That made it great. Kennelly kissed his hand at him, and it was a sure laugh, worth plenty at the box-office.

  When they had that, they knew they were through, and started up to the clubhouse looking for Hornison.

  “Well,” says Kennelly, “we did it.”

  “And how!” says Polly.

  “And how. That’s the main part. That gag’s ready for the cameras right now.”

  “And who thought it up?”

  “You did.”

  “You love me?”

  “What do you think?”

  But when they got to the clubhouse, who was waiting for them was Hapgood, not Hornison. “Hello,” he says.

  “Hello,” says Kennelly. “When did you come up?”

  “Just now.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

 
“Fact of the matter, I got a little bad news.”

  “What kind of bad news?” says Polly.

  “Now don’t go off the handle,” says Hapgood. “I can place you any time I want; give me two or three days and I can have another job for you just as good as this one, so it don’t worry me a minute. Folks, we been flimflammed.”

  “Come on,” says Kennelly. “Get to it.”

  “He’s closed out the hip’,” says Hapgood then.

  “Who?”

  “Hornison. The Bohunk’s notice is in his letter-box waiting for him right now.”

  “Oh, my!” says Polly. “And right when Tim can ride him.”

  “Well,” says Kennelly, “if he’s closed out the hip’, that’s his loss. I can put on a show with him right now that’s a knockout; but if he don’t want it, it’s got nothing to do with us. We got our guarantee.”

  “No. That’s the bad part.”

  “What do you mean, bad part? We got it. He’s got to make good on it.”

  “I told you already. We been flimflammed. You know those contracts? Letting me draw them up—that’s where he’s got us. That’s why he’s been up at this lake, ’stead of back in his office, where he belonged. Because look: I sent the contracts right over. But he hasn’t read them yet. That secretary of his, she’s been calling up every day to tell me how busy he is at the lake, and how she’s going to send them up to him as soon as she makes the two extra copies she’s got to have, and a couple of more stalls she thought up; but it all adds up to the same. He hasn’t signed them, and he hasn’t even read them.”

  “All right. He gave his word.”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t. He made it sound like he gave his word, but he didn’t.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Oh, I forgot that. The secretary, she tipped him I was on my way up here. So of course he took a run-out. He beat it right back to Hollywood, so he can still say he never had one word with me about the deal.”