This is Me, Jack Vance

by Jack Vance

  Hicks was not a patient man, and one night he declared that he would cure himself using a remedy dictated by certain precepts of folk medicine, and furthermore he would undertake the cure on this very evening. He consulted his friends; two of the carpenters agreed to participate in the venture. I, out of sheer curiosity, joined the group.

  We proceeded to the Sunset Saloon. Using the side door, we entered the parlor, where we received a flattering welcome from the ladies. After a time, Hicks and his two friends mounted the stairway, each accompanied by one of the ladies. I took refuge in a corner of a sofa and made myself as inconspicuous as possible. The ladies, however, were not discouraged in their many attempts to secure my participation; one of them even went so far as to sit in my lap. At last, they decided I was a no-goer and gave up.

  In due course, Hicks and the other two descended the stairs and we left the parlor, Hicks marching and swinging his arms. He seemed in fine fettle; out on the sidewalk, he inhaled rich deep draughts of air, and pounded his chest. With fervor he declared: “That wretched disease is gone and I’m well rid of it!” He went on to describe in detail where he had left his disease.

  We returned to the hotel and, next morning, to work. Hicks seemed to be in the best of health. I cannot endorse Hicks’ system of therapy; I can only report what I witnessed, and there the matter must stand.

  The Buckhorn Hotel served as the town’s social center. The staff was efficient, if somewhat formal, and here I refer especially to the dining room waitresses. These were mature ladies of obvious respectability. They wore conservative dark blue dresses, crisp white aprons, and black low-heeled shoes. They performed their duties politely, but without cordiality. One evening, Robby Hicks tried to jolly up one of these ladies. She stared at him in puzzlement, raising her eyebrows; then she walked away, shaking her head, as if saying to herself, “Now I’ve seen everything.” Later that evening, Hicks propounded a novel theory, which, all taken with all, seemed plausible. According to this theory, the ladies of Battle Mountain were segregated into rigid social classes. The social elite were employed as waitresses at the Buckhorn Hotel. Ladies of the lower classes worked elsewhere—some, even, at the Sunset Saloon.

  In due course the Battle Mountain job terminated. Western-Knapp had no other projects starting up, and once again I became unemployed. My mother, meanwhile, had moved to an old farmhouse in the country near Oakley, along with my brother and sister. I was happy to join them.

  For a time I enjoyed a period of idleness. I fell in love with one of my sister’s friends, a charming dark-haired little imp named Jean. The affair, such as it was, went on for several months until her family moved off to Mendocino.

  I had been reading P. G. Wodehouse, and so stimulated, I wrote a story, specifying a rather giddy summer resort as the locale. As I recall, the characters were silly; a lot of the story was improbable. In any case, I don’t know whatever happened to this story. If I could find it, and if anyone wished to read it, they might do so, upon my receipt of $1 million.

  During this period I listened to a lot music on the radio. The great swing orchestras were becoming popular. The magnificent Casa Loma Orchestra, which I revered then as I do now, was still on the ascendant, as was the Benny Goodman band.

  My sister Patricia was a pretty girl, and she had boyfriends by the dozen. One of these was a trombone player named Orin Blattner, who, like myself, was captivated by jazz. Orin and I spent many pleasant evenings playing records and listening to the radio, although I suspect that his presence was half due to me and the music, and half to the opportunity it offered for mooning around my sister.

  Tomato season started, and I found work at the Western California Cannery in Antioch, where truckloads of tomatoes arrived and were converted into catsup. There were several steps to this process: the tomatoes went first into a steamer, then after a certain amount of time fell out upon a conveyer belt which carried them to a discharge spout, where they fell into pans. These pans were distributed to ladies who removed the skins. The pulp was then compressed and the juice sent to a boiler, where sugar and vinegar were added, along with garlic and other spices, and in due course the result was catsup.

  The job to which I was assigned required both vigilance and agility. I was required to catch the steamed tomatoes in a pan as they fell out of the spout. When the pan was loaded I would transfer it to the conveyer belt which took it to the ladies, first of course putting an empty pan under the spout. The tomatoes would emerge from the spout sometimes one or two at a time, other times in a great gush, and if I was not on the alert, they would overload the pan and pile up in a big mess on the floor. Every morning, at exactly 8 o’clock, the tomatoes would be put into the steamer. I lived nine miles from the cannery, and sometimes I overslept or was otherwise delayed, so I would ride my motorcycle at great speed into Antioch, skid into the parking lot, slam the motorcycle down, run through the cannery and throw a pan under the spout just in time to catch the first tomato as it rolled out. This happened to me more than once.

  Tomato season ended; I worked a month at odd jobs. Then I had nothing to do until spring, when asparagus season started, and I went back to work at the cannery, where I lucked into a really pleasant job. I worked with four girls and a government inspector. Truckloads of asparagus would arrive from one of perhaps a dozen different branches; from each truckload a sample would be brought to the grading table, which the girls would examine for defective items. I then weighed the rejects and entered the results in a journal.

  The asparagus season came to an end. My uncle informed me that Western-Knapp was starting up a new job near the town of French Gulch, just south of Mt. Shasta. I called the San Francisco office and was hired as a laborer, and told to report at once.

  I had traded in my motorcycle, and now owned a Chrysler convertible, very sporty but rather long in the tooth. I drove north to French Gulch and took lodging at the French Gulch Hotel—which, by the way, is still in operation. At the Mountain King Mine, I became assistant to Sparky the welder, which meant carrying tanks of oxygen and acetylene up and down the steep hillsides—strenuous work.

  The Mountain King Job lasted only for two months before I was laid off, but as luck would have it I learned of another job near the town Helena, which was about ten miles west.

  This was a job unlike any I had ever held before. On the Trinity River, a doodlebug similar to the one I had seen on the mudflat near Kelseyville was in operation. It floated in a pond, and was held in position by four lines, two on either side, fore and aft. At the edge of the pond, a drag line worked, scraping material out of the bottom of the pond, lifting it and dropping it into the doodlebug hopper. The material would then be diverted into the chutes at either side of the boat, where it would be washed down over the riffles and ultimately discharged downstream into the river.

  The work had been proceeding using two shifts, but now a third shift was added. The crew of each shift consisted of three men: the operator of the dragline, and aboard the doodlebug, the operator and the oiler. I became the oiler on the new third shift.

  Duties were intermittent. I was required to keep the machinery of the doodlebug oiled and greased, then occasionally—usually not more than once or twice each shift—we would be required to move the doodlebug forward, which meant going ashore and shifting the lines to convenient trees, by which means we’d move the doodlebug into appropriate positions. I also used the bulldozer to move aside boulders and in general clear the area, so that the dragline could back up away from the pond when this became necessary. This again was a job which needed doing only once each or twice shift.

  A week passed, then two weeks, and the work proceeded smoothly. One moonlit night, I went ashore to use the bulldozer to move rubble from behind the draglines. For no particular reason, perhaps an excess of zeal, I was carrying out this job rather farther than was necessary, perhaps a hundred or hundred and fifty feet behind the dragline. I turned around, and to my astonishment, discovered a vacancy where th
e dragline had been working. I took the bulldozer back, and found that the edge of the pond had given way. The dragline had fallen forward into the water, and was now totally submerged. The operator had jumped free and had reached solid ground, but of course was in a state of dismay, as was everyone else.

  In the morning, the two partners who were the bosses and operators of the project, arrived and looked the situation over. They were not pleased. The problem was how to rescue the dragline from the pond and get it back on dry land. They conferred for a time, went away, and evidently used the telephone. About noon, two pickup trucks arrived with four men, whom I learned were lumberjacks, but also accomplished riggers. They unloaded equipment from the trucks: wire rope, several big blocks, pulleys, a pair of heavy slings, and now the rescue process began.

  The first step was to engage the slings around the back axle of the dragline, which of course was submerged under six feet of cold, muddy water. The question then arose as to who was to dive down and put the slings around the axle; the owners looked around the group, and their gaze fell upon me. One of them pointed. He said, “Vance, you look healthy and ready for a swim, so grab up those slings and let’s see some action.”

  Here I would like to make a digression in order to mention an episode from the work of Lewis Carroll, namely Alice In Wonderland. I refer to the occasion when Alice had eaten some of the mushroom and, having grown large, was crowded into the rabbit’s cottage with her foot up the chimney. Outside, the folks were gathered around wondering what to make of the situation, and someone suggested that Bill the Lizard should be sent to investigate. Despite Bill’s misgivings, he was induced to enter the house by the chimney. Alice, however, heard alarming noises and gave a sharp kick. The folks outside were now astonished to see Bill projected from the chimney and off through the air. I cite this case in order to mention that I now felt like Bill the Lizard while he was being urged to investigate the house.

  Still, with the owner pointing at me, I would lose face if I failed to follow the instructions. Therefore, pretending nonchalance, I removed my outer garments, and taking one of the slings jumped into the water. It was very cold.

  The slings were at last in place; I was out of the water, still quivering, but dry and dressed. The riggers now took over. They ran one end of the inch-thick wire rope to a stalwart tree and made it fast. The bight of this rope was passed through a block, and the other end was attached the other end to the bulldozer. The block was now engaged into the slings, so that when the bulldozer started up, its force would be magnified double.

  So the process began—to no avail. The treads of the bulldozer ground into the dirt. The riggers were not dismayed; they ran another wire rope to the same tree, brought it back, engaged the bight in another block, and attached this to the end of the first line. Now, the pull of the bulldozer would be magnified fourfold. The bulldozer set off, and the dragline was hauled inch by inch up from the pond. Once the dragline was secure, the owners fired not only the dragline operator, but also the operator of the doodlebug, and me, though we were both blameless.

  I collected my gear and drove into Redding, where I telephoned my uncle in San Francisco. He told me to wait by the telephone and that he would call me back. As it happened, that very morning, his friend Buck Finley had mentioned a small operation that was just starting up. An hour later my uncle called back and instructed me to drive to to the Nevada City Hotel in Nevada City, and there report to Martin Lawley.

  I obeyed these instructions. Mr. Lawley turned out to be a young engineer, intelligent, even civilized. He described the job. From a place named Sailor Flat, south of Nevada City, we would take a drill rig and lower it down some steep slopes to the bottom of a valley. There, we would set it up and start to prospect the soil in this area, which according to Lawley had never been prospected before. There were only three of us in the crew: Lawley, the drill operator, and myself. A pair of geologists, representatives of Buck Finley, would also be on hand. They would set up riffles to assess the amount of gold in what the drill rig extricated from this operation.

  The next morning we drove south to Sailor Flat, where we found the drill rig mounted on the back of a truck, and the operator, Joe Poston. We scouted out the terrain, and immediately realized that it would be no mean feat to lower the drill rig to the bottom of the valley. In fact, it took us six days of digging, felling trees, making bridges, performing some artful rigging when necessary, gradually easing the drill rig down the slope and finally setting it up at the bottom. The next job was to bring water to the site so that the geologists could work their riffles. We built long flumes to water sources a hundred yards distant, and the prospecting began.

  I could describe the drill rig in detail, but instead I will say only that it used three buckets—one about three feet in diameter, another about two in diameter, and another one foot in diameter, to accommodate different densities of soil. On each bucket were teeth, which dug into the soil. These were turned by a circular gear and weighted down by a heavy metal driving shaft.

  The work went on for about a month and a half. We moved the drill rig here and there. I don’t know what the geologists found in the riffles; they gave us no indication. I have the feeling that they were rather disappointed. Eventually they packed up their gear and left, and so the job closed down. This did not disturb me, since the tomato season was starting up and I had a job waiting for me at the cannery.

  The catsup production, as I described earlier, took place in big stainless steel boilers using steam coils for heat. For every batch that boiled, a residue remained encasing the coils. It fell to me to remove this residue. This was not a pleasant job; the tools were steel wool, sandpaper, a chisel, a scraping edge, and oil. If I were not careful, I would scorch my fingers. In any event, I managed to perform this job satisfactorily.

  The year was 1937, and I was twenty-one years old. The tomato season ended, and I enrolled as a freshman at the University of California at Berkeley when the fall semester started. Thus began a new phase of my life, unlike any which had passed before.

  Chapter 3

  Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;

  Breath’s a ware that will not keep.

  Up, lad: when the journey’s over

  There’ll be time enough to sleep

  A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

  My life at the university was for the most part pleasant and exciting but at times rather dreary, because I was chronically short of money, and often I had to resort to undignified expediences.

  During my first semester, I worked in the home of Hamilton Wolf, an artist associated with the California School of Fine Arts, where I put in, theoretically, four hours a day of housework in return for room and board. The Wolfs were nice people, but the four hours per day became onerous, and for the second semester I lived in the basement of a sorority, hashing during meals, and doing odd jobs. The summer passed, and in the fall I had found enough money so that I could rent a room near the campus. I hashed for my meals at a fraternity.

  I started the semester as a physics major. My classes included physics, mathematics, German, geology, and a required course of English. After a month or so, I changed my major for reasons which were perhaps frivolous. When I surveyed my classmates, I found them deadly dull and even a bit tiresome. I must mention that I started college not to secure an education, nor to train for a career, but for more or less social reasons. I did not fancy myself a typical college boy of the 1920s, in his raccoon coat, playing the ukulele, and ready to dance the Charleston at any provocation; but still, something of this concept lingered in my mind. In any event, I changed my major, first to English, then to journalism—not because I planned to become a reporter, but because I had joined the staff of the student newspaper, The Daily Californian, which presently became the focus of my existence.

  The offices of the Daily Cal occupied the lower floor of Eshleman Hall, across the court from the Student Union. As a journalism major, I became eligible for a quasi-WPA job
working for the journalism department. The job took little time and brought me in $60 a month. I won’t describe the work involved in bringing out a daily college newspaper, except to say that it is not far less complicated than producing a real newspaper and that the student staff was (and probably still is) dedicated, skillful and efficient.

  The staff organization was simple. The seniors were the editors, juniors the reporters, sophomores assistants to the juniors, and freshman consigned to dog-work.

  On the Daily Cal staff at this time was a junior named Marjorie Higgins, who later became a famous war correspondent and who was launched somewhere over the Pacific. Also on the staff was a sophomore named Anita Whistler, who also became a war correspondent and who was shot down over Cambodia. Among the sophomores were two individuals with whom I would come to have a lasting association. The first was Anne Pickering, better known as “Pick”, the daughter of an editor of a yachting magazine; the second was John West, a Berkeley native.

  West’s father was a realtor who had come into possession of a rather grand old Victorian house which, apparently, must be demolished to make way for new construction. So John, my brother David and I set to work taking this house apart, which we were supposed to do with great care in order to preserve the walnut paneling and black oak beams. John had thought of me as an effete impractical beer-drinking rascal, and was surprised to find that I was also a worker.

  During this first semester I became part of a group—it was too loose and tenuous to be called a clique—that consisted of myself and three other habitués of the Daily Cal office: Don Matthews, Jim Tierney, and Jerry Edelstein. We all shared similar inclinations, which could most easily be grouped under the general term ‘revelry’. These included beer-drinking, jazz music, and ‘staff parties’ which occurred at an isolated site in the hills east of town. In addition to the beer, there was also singing of college songs, and general jocularity. Yet these by today’s standards were quite innocent events, and great fun; no one ever had his feelings hurt.