by Clark Howard
“Sure,” Richie said, “I understand.” He felt his throat constrict, and fought back the urge to cry. Jesus, he hoped Stan could not tell.
Stan winked. “Take care of yourself, kid.”
“So long, Stan.”
Walking out of the big county jail, Richie found it hard to believe that he had seen Stan for the last time.
57
Today,” Mr. Crane said to the class, with a note of satisfaction in his voice, “we will critique the short story of our veteran. As you know, if you’ve read the mimeographed copies I distributed at the end of our last meeting, he has written a sports story for us. Its title, which sounds somewhat like an automobile accident, is ‘Hit and Run,’ and it is about the sport, if one can call it that, of boxing. I daresay that this will probably be the only work of this particular genre that we will have to critique, so for that reason alone we must admit that it smacks of originality. Unfortunately, as I’m sure you’ve already found out for yourselves, it has no other redeeming qualities . . . .”
Richie had in his pocket at that moment the uncashed check from the magazine for two hundred dollars; the endorsement side of the check stated that it was full payment for a short story entitled “Hit and Run.” Richie had been carrying the check for days, waiting for the class in which his story, the same story word-for-word that had already been sold for publication, would be critiqued. He was not sure exactly what he planned to do with the check; humiliate Crane in some way, he knew that. But now, when the moment was at hand, he was not even thinking about it. His session in which to be critiqued had come on the wrong day.
Stan Klein was due to go to the electric chair at ten o’clock that morning.
Glancing up at the wall clock, Richie saw that it was nine-thirty. Maybe, he thought, the governor would still come through. Ned Fields, the lawyer, was at the state capitol in Springfield to make a personal plea. Maybe Stan would get a commutation.
That was what Richie hoped. But he did not really believe it.
Forcing his mind to focus on the class, Richie learned without surprise that Crane’s evaluation of “Hit and Run” was merciless, almost brutal. He had absolutely nothing good to say about the story. His comments, stretched over a fifteen-minute period, attacked every element of the piece.
“The characterization, if we can call it that,” he intoned, “is hollow. I, for one, did not care in the least whether this young prizefighter named Ralphie won or lost. I’ll admit to being mildly surprised that he did lose, because I expected the typical twist ending—for him to score a knockout in the final round, or something equally as trite. But when that did not happen, when this young thug actually did lose—well, I merely shrugged and thought, so what?
“The story’s narrative I found to be totally flat, totally dull. The dialogue, well, can we really call this gym slang type of communication dialogue? I got the impression, in the conversations between Ralphie and Max, his trainer, of two Neanderthals grunting at each other. And the boy fantasizing that Max is his father, because his real father has abandoned him, is simply soap opera nonsense.
“The sentence structure of the story is atrocious, of course; there is nothing lyrical or rhythmic to carry the reader forward, only an endless line of stale words laid one after the other through which the reader has to wade. And, of course, without proper sentence structure, where does that leave our poor paragraph construction? In dire straits, I’m afraid. Story pace? There is none; the story drags like a small boat with a large anchor. The evocation of feeling? As I said earlier, the sum total of the emotion generated in me was, so what? Who cares? Forget it.”
As Crane strolled back and forth across the front of the classroom, Richie glanced at the clock again. Nine-fifty.
“Why,” Crane asked rhetorically, “does this boxing story have no style? Is there one shortcoming we can pinpoint, one defective element that we can say, ‘Improve this and the story will work’? Unfortunately, no. This piece of writing is like a malignancy; it is shot through with such inferiority that no amount of doctoring could save it.”
Crane halted in front of Richie, never more narcissistic than he was at that moment; tweed jacket pulled back, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his cardinal red vest, a protector of literature about to pour lime over one who would infect it with plague.
“I find it most distasteful to have to fail a student,” Crane said solemnly, “but there are circumstances that dictate that an academician hold true to his profession for the good of others who will follow him. I have no choice but to give our veteran an F. I can only hope, as I’ve already counseled him in private, that my grade might persuade him to direct his energies elsewhere than a writing career.”
Richie accepted the F-graded story that Crane handed him, and looked past the teacher at the clock. It was two minutes after ten. Stan was dying; Richie could feel it. The hard city, he thought. The hard city had broken another one.
But not me, he reminded himself. It will never—ever—break me. I am fucking alive! And in my pocket is a check for two hundred goddamn dollars that says I am a writer.
Looking back at the supercilious teacher, Richie’s mind urged: Do it! Flaunt that check in the son of a bitch’s smug face! Make him eat every goddamn word he just said about your story! Castrate the motherfucker—if he’s got anything down there to castrate! Do it!
Instead, Richie merely shook his head, briefly, causing Crane to frown. What for? he asked himself. He gathered up his notebook and papers, and rose to leave.
“Well, I must say,” Crane remarked in astonished delight, “I didn’t expect you to take my advice quite so quickly.”
Richie suddenly remembered some words he had heard many years before, from the stage of the Senate Theater on the West Side. There’s nothing you can’t do if you try hard enough. Don’t ever let anybody tell you different.
“I’m not taking your advice, Mr. Crane,” Richie said as he crossed the room. “I’m taking some advice that Buck Jones once gave me.”
“Buck Jones?” said Crane. “Who’s that?”
At the door, Richie looked back with a slight smile. “Somehow, Mr. Crane, I didn’t think you’d know.”
Glancing at Linda, he saw that she was looking at him incredulously. He pushed on out the door and walked down the hall. On his way to the exit, he dropped his books and study material into a trash can.
When Richie got home, there was another letter in his mailbox from the magazine. The editor wanted to buy the second story Richie had submitted. Called “The Last One To Cry,” it was about a boy in reform school who was killed by fire hose punishment. A great sense of accomplishment swept through Richie as he read and reread the letter. And he thought: McKey, you son of a bitch, I’ve told the truth about you! And it’s going to be published! This one, he told himself, was for Freddie Walsh.
He would be a writer now, he thought, no matter what. And he harbored no illusions that it was going to be easy; he had written, rewritten, and rewritten again the two stories he had sold. There was much for him to learn, a lifetime of it, and his love of the written word told him that he would probably still be learning when that lifetime was over, but he could, and would, learn how to write. It did not matter to him if he ever achieved fame and fortune from it; just to be able to do it was reward enough. All he wanted as a writer was for each thing he wrote to be a little better than the last thing.
Folding the letter and putting it in his pocket, Richie thought of Stan Klein and made up his mind about something else also. Without even going to his apartment, he went back outside and started down the street. Before he had gone a block, Linda pulled up at the curb in her old Studebaker. Leaning across the front seat, she rolled the passenger window down to speak to him. Ignoring her, Richie kept walking.
“Goddamn it, Richie,” he heard her say. Without turning off the engine, she opened the driver’s door and stood up out of the car. “Richie! Don’t walk past me like that!”
Richie turned back
and stood on the other side of the car from her. “What do you want, Linda?” There was no animosity, no hostility in the question. His voice was detached, impersonal.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out to the West Side.” These words had a hint of resolve in them.
“I’ll drive you,” she said. “Get in.”
Richie did not move. He was suddenly in a quandary. He still wanted to be with Linda; that feeling had never died. But every instinct he had warned against it. Especially now, at this moment. If he got into the car with her, he knew it would be like lighting a fuse.
“It’s on my way home,” Linda insisted. “There’s no sense in you taking a streetcar. Come on.”
He got into the car with her and they drove off.
“Drop me at Madison and Hamlin,” Richie said.
For several minutes they said nothing. Richie stared solemnly out the window as if he were riding a bus. Linda glanced at him several times, then finally broke the silence.
“Your story that Crane critiqued was already sold. You could have totally humiliated him, gotten even for every nasty thing he ever said. Why didn’t you?”
“You can’t get even with a person like Crane that way,” Richie replied. “Humiliation doesn’t change people like him.” He sighed quietly. “It seems like all my life there’s been somebody I wanted to get even with, somebody I wanted to hurt.” In his mind flashed images of George Zangara, Mr. McKey, the Hubbards, Rollie Chalk, Billy Pastor. “There’s always been a Crane in one form or another; there probably always will be.” He looked steadily at Linda. “But I think I’ve finally learned that you don’t get even with people by hitting them or humiliating them; you get even by overcoming what they’re trying to do to you. That’s the worst punishment you can give them: don’t let their influence have any effect on you. There was a man in reform school, a house father, that I swore I’d go back and kill someday, because of something he did to a friend of mine. I was a kid when I made that promise to myself; I didn’t know what the hell it meant to kill someone. Now I do. I could go back and kill McKey without batting an eyelid—only now I don’t have to. I wrote a story about him and about what he did; I’ve sold that story too, and it’s going to be published. I got even through my work, my writing. It’s the same with Crane; I got even with him by selling the story he said was worthless. I succeeded and he failed—because I didn’t let him influence me or change me. Crane’s a perfect example of someone who isn’t worth getting even with any other way.” Richie looked back out the car window. “He doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. I’m through with school.”
“Oh, Richie, no—” Linda bit her lower lip. “Books and reading have always meant so much to you.”
“I didn’t say I was through with books and reading; I said I was through with school.” He turned slightly in the seat to face her again. “Look, let’s be honest. I didn’t fit in that class any more than I fit in the little Southern high school I told you about. I’ve seen too much, done too much, to try to learn anything with a bunch of eighteen year olds who’ve never gone hungry, never stolen, never fucked, never killed. Everything I’ve learned, including how to survive, I learned out in the world, not sitting in a classroom. Crane’s creative writing class was completely worthless to me—and the other classes I’ve been taking were just requirements—I had to take them to take the writing class. I want to write; I am determined to be a writer. But what happened today convinced me that I can do it better without going to school.”
“I think you’re making a mistake,” Linda said stoically.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” he quickly retorted. The fuse had been lit. “According to you, everything I do is a mistake—unless it includes you or you approve of it. Especially if it has anything to do with my friends. Well, I’m through turning my back on people just because they don’t measure up to your standards.”
“I have never tried to do anything but help you, Richie, and you know it!” she snapped.
“Yeah, you’ve tried to help me, all right,” he accused. “You’ve tried to change me, that’s what you’ve done. You’ve tried to make me over into one of those nice young men types that you and your mother think are so wonderful. You have never—never—been able to accept the fact that I don’t fit that part. I am not, never have been, never will be, a fucking nice young man, Linda. I am a fucking street kid still trying to grow up. That’s probably all I’ll ever be. Even if I make it as a writer, which I intend to do, I’ll still be a fucking street kid inside!”
“You don’t have to be,” she pleaded. “If you’d break away from those hoodlum friends of yours—”
“Those hoodlum friends of mine,” he interrupted, “are people that I grew up with, went hungry with, depended on, and survived with. The guys I ran with on the streets of this city are part of me, just like the people down in Lamont are, just like the people I knew in Charleytown, in the Marine Corps, even the people in that class of Crane’s. . . and even Crane himself. Everybody who touches your life becomes part of it, Linda. You don’t have to like the person, you don’t have to know them long, they don’t even have to be good for you, but one thing they’ve got in common—they’re indelible. They leave their mark, whether it’s a scratch or a gash. The guys I grew up with on the streets are as much a part of what I am right now as anyone else who’s ever touched my life—including you. If I reject them, disclaim them, I’d be rejecting and disclaiming part of myself. I can’t do that, Linda. This may come as a big surprise to you, but I like myself. I like what I am and I like what I’m going to be. I won’t throw any of myself away.”
“I see,” she said stiffly. “You’re quitting school, you’re on your way out to the West Side where your friends hang out, and you don’t think that’s throwing part of yourself away? What do you call it?”
“I call it being myself. I’m on my way to see a guy named Bobby Casey. He’s a guy I don’t even like, and he doesn’t like me. But I’m going to offer to be his friend and I’m going to try to help him turn his life around. One of the reasons I’m doing it is because I promised Stan Klein I would. But the main reason, Linda, is because I’ve finally realized that I should do it.”
“Would he help you if you needed help?” Linda challenged.
Richie thought of Bobby with a gun in his hand, standing in the middle of Lake Street, ready to oppose anyone who interfered with Richie when he was trying to help poor, pathetic Vernie.
“Yes, he would,” he answered Linda.
“And you think this Bobby Casey is as much a part of your life as I am? As important to you as I am?” There was a tremor in her voice.
“I didn’t say he was as important as you are. There’s a difference.”
“If I said you had to choose between helping him and having me, what would you do?” They stopped for a red light and Linda turned to face him.
“I’d still try to help him, Linda,” Richie said quietly. “Because it’s something I have to do. And because it wouldn’t be right for you to make me choose.”
When the light changed, Linda drove through the intersection and pulled to the curb. “Maybe you’d better take a streetcar after all,” she said. The tremor was not in her voice anymore.
“Sure,” Richie said. He got out of the car and leaned down to look in the window. “Go back to your church group, Linda. Find another nice young man . . . like Glenn.”
Lips compressed in anger, she drove away, leaving him standing there.
On the streetcar, watching West Madison’s familiar blocks go by, Richie wondered for what seemed like the millionth time whether he would ever have anyone permanent in his life, or whether he was destined to be a loner into whose existence people came and went. Slowly shaking his head, he reviewed his losses. A demented farmer—or maybe Prohibition—took his father. Heroin took his mother. Old age took his grandmother. The class system took Jennie. The ghetto took Vernie. The electric chair took Stan.
Now he had
lost Linda because he would not compromise. It was a good thing, he thought, that he was going to be a writer. He had read a description of writers as lonely people in quiet rooms. If ever anyone was born to be alone, it seemed like it must be him.
As the streetcar churned through the lower West Side, Richie’s eyes took in life along the sidewalk. Winos, hookers, hustlers, panhandlers, junkies—the silt at the bottom of the vat. The hard city’s leftovers. He had been part of that bleakness for so long that the sight of it should have been too familiar to disturb him. Instead, it turned his spine cold and his mouth dry. The wino could be him twenty years in the future, just like the ragged kid delivering papers was him ten years in the past. The kids he had to get away from; the wino he had to keep away from. You could never let the hard city catch you off guard.
It won’t, Richie grimly promised himself. I’ve made it this far, I’ll keep on making it. Alone or not, it made no difference. All that mattered was making it.
At Hamlin Avenue, Richie alighted from the streetcar and started up the block. Before he got to the poolhall, he saw Linda’s car again, parked. She was standing in a doorway across the sidewalk, waiting for him. Richie saw that she was crying. He wanted to turn back, cross the street, go around her—but he could not. It was not in him to leave her standing alone, crying over something he was a part of.
Stepping into the doorway, he took her into his arms. She sobbed against his chest.
“Richie, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . . I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore . . . I just know that I want us to be together . . .” She turned her tear-streaked face up to him. “I guess I either love you or I don’t. And if I do, then I can’t go on criticizing the things, the people, the life that went into the person you are . . . .” She used the heel of one hand to wipe away her tears. “I just know that I love you and I want to be with you. Can’t we try? Please . . . .”
