You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: British Eric Knight is best remembered as the author of "Lassie Come-Home", the best selling animal novel; he also write the whimsical fantasy "Sam Small Flies again". This novel shows just how versatile he was: it's a hard-boiled "noir" novel of the USA depression, authentic in style and downbeat in tone, and he wrote it in 1938, BEFORE the other two. Knight died in WW2.

YOU PLAY THE BLACK

AND THE RED COMES UP

Eric Knight

1897-1943

(as by Richard Hallas)

1938

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 11 | Chapter 12

Chapter 13 | Chapter 14

Chapter 15 | Chapter 16

Chapter 17 | Chapter 18

Chapter 19 | Chapter 20

Chapter 21 | Chapter 22

Chapter 23 | Chapter 24

Chapter 25 | Chapter 26

Chapter 27 | Chapter 28

Chapter 29 | Chapter 30

Chapter 31 | Chapter 32

Chapter 33

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Chapter 1

Welcome To California

WHEN I CAME DOWN off the midnight shift I saw there wasn't any light in the restaurant window, And that was how I knew Lois had left me.

I knew it sure, just like l knew there'd be that note on the pillow.

When I read it I didn't smash anything, I just closed up the house and went up the hill to the restaurant again. I kept hoping that there'd be a light in the window and that everything would be all right again; but there wasn't.

It was all dark inside and when I looked through the window I could see from the streetlight that there was a wiping cloth on the counter where she had flung it. She hadn't bothered to clean up before she left.

I kept thinking she might have cleaned up, at least, even though it didn't matter. It was a good little place. Inside I had fixed it all up with signs like: We Don't know Where Mom Is But We Have Pop on Ice and If Your Wife Can't Cook Keep Her for a Pet and Eat Here, and things like that.

Outside I'd painted the front in blue and yellow squares like a checkerboard so that the truck drivers on the way down to Dallas would always remember it, and I had a big swing-sign out that said: Dick's Place, Lois's Cooking, and I'd figured some day I'd get a neon light on it.

After a while I went on down the hill again. I didn't go in the restaurant. I knew it was no good; because I knew what had happened. I didn't think it out. It was just like something made me know as sure as if I'd been there and seen it all.

Lois must have quit the minute I'd gone to work that afternoon and she'd taken the two hundred and thirty dollars we'd saved out of the little safe. Then she'd dressed Dickie in his best clothes and left me the note on the pillow and had hopped the 5:18 for the Coast.

I knew she'd gone there. Lois always was crazy for Hollywood. She had cousins in Los Angeles. I knew that was where she'd gone. Even though she said in her note I'd never find her, I knew I would. Her note said that she was leaving me because of my nagging and cruelty and because I never did want her to have any fun, so she was taking Dickie where he could grow up in some place better than this lousy Oklahoma mining town and I'd never find them because they were going far away. But I knew she'd gone to Hollywood because she was crazy to get in the pictures. I went down to the tracks and waited there in the dark and when the 3:20 westbound freight came through I hopped it. I got up on top of a box car and lay there, looking back. You could see the glow of the smelters a long way off, maybe fifteen miles.

I lay there, and it was cold, but I couldn't think about it. The way I felt I didn't care if school kept or not. That's the way I felt.

That night I came so near to freezing that when the freight stopped to water at Apache Gap round sun-up and I started to get down, I was so stiff with cold I couldn't hold onto the iron rungs and I dropped about ten feet smack on my can. A fellow said:

"Ola, que cosa?"

“Nada," I said.

This Mex and I went down the line to a box car that was open. There was a bunch of floaters inside who were all heading for California because there was a man there going to be elected Governor who would take all the money away from the millionaires and give fifty dollars a week to every man without a job. They were kicking because the train was slow. They wanted to be out there in time.

When we got rolling again we just sat there with the car door open watching the flat country go by and listening to the train clicking over the ties. There was an old bum in a corner who was groaning. I asked what was wrong with him.

"He can't take it," a fellow said. Then he yelled at the old man, "Pipe down, lousy!"

"I'm hungry," the old man said, sitting up. He looked dirty as a goal.

"Well, for crissakes, you don't mean to tell me!" the fellow said. He said it mocking, in a high voice, like a daffodil.

"He's been like that for two days," the guy said.

"Well, we'll all eat when we get to California."

They all started off like a bunch of clucks at a sewing circle, talking about what they'd do with the first fifty dollars this Governor would give them. Then I lit a cigarette, and they all stopped talking and crowded round me like I was a drunken sailor in a hookshop, so I passed out all I had.

That afternoon we stopped by a little jerk burg and I hopped off and bought twelve cans of beans for a dollar. When I got back and shared them round they raised hell with me for being a dummy and not getting a can-opener. But one man had a strong knife and we all punched the cans open; only when it came to the old man they pretended they'd lost the knife. He got so mad he cried and tried banging the can open. They kept pretending they'd lost the knife for a couple of hours before they let him have it. About dark we stopped at a switch and a bum came running up and said there were two girls in another car. They all went hopping out and running down the track for a chain ride, all except the Mex and the colored boy. The old man went, too, but just as we started up he came running back and said the others wouldn't let him in on account of he was too Old.

That left just four of us in the car, the Mex, the colored boy, the old man, and me. We each picked a corner of the car and went to sleep. Once in a while the old man started moaning again, although he'd had his can of beans. I'd keep waking up and hearing him, but after a while he got to sleep too.

The next day we hit the range country, and it got hot; It was a hot country: nothing but cactus on the ranges and the stock was poor and thin, standing out in the heat. At one place I saw some cowhands with a blowtorch, burning the spines off the cactus so the cattle could eat it, but the stock seemed too far gone from the drought to care about eating any more. But I thought that was a clever stunt about the cactus. It was all right—if the stock would eat it.

That was sure a dry country—hot and dry, and we were dying for a drink. But there wasn't anything we could do about it but wait and hope we'd stop near a water tower.

It was some time the next night I woke up with the freight stopped by a tank and a big light shining strong in the dark. I jumped up to get some water, but a bull rapped my legs with a long billy and made me stay inside.

At first I thought they were railroad police and would pinch us, but they weren't pinching floaters any more. There were so many hobos the train crews were scared to tackle them, and the jails in the towns were so full the police wouldn't arrest any more. Instead they were driving them back on the freights and making them keep on going. They wouldn't let you get off in their county.

In this town they'd cleaned about fifty of the out of jail and were making them get on the freight. They hustled them to the box car I was in, and as each one climbed in, a bull would crack him over the behind with a billy, and he'd put everything he'd got into the wallop.

He walloped everyone except a big hobo who looked like Man Mountain Dean. This big bozo just turned around and looked at the cop. The cop stared back in a sort of ashamed way and then he laughed and pulled a gun quick and jabbed it in the big guy's belly. So the hobo got aboard, but the bull didn't whack his behind.

They crowded us in till the box car was jammed full. I knew I had to have a drink, so I called to one of the guys in a ten gallon hat and told him I hadn't had a drink in two days.

"That's no skin off my neck," he said.

"Look, I'll give you a dollar if you'll let me get a drink somewhere," I said.

"I can't let you get off," he said. "But give me the dollar and I'll bring you a drink."

I was so thirsty I had to take the chance, so I gave him the dollar but he didn't come back. The other bulls slid the door shut and we could hear them locking it. It was a dirty trick to lock that box car crowded tight full of men. The bums banged on the door and called the cops bastards and everything they could lay their tongues to, but it didn't make any difference. And soon the train started away with a jerk and we all went sliding down, jammed and fighting, in the back of the car.

We got sorted out and after, a while we began to see a little bit in the dark. I could hear the old man beefing and moaning again, and the new bums told him to shut up. He kept it until the big hobo told them to dose his trap. I could hear them slugging him until he piped down.

That big hobo as a sort of king and the others did everything he told them.

I lay there in the comer that night thinking about Dickie and how I would get him back. I'd make a real man out of him, and send him to school and make him get plenty of education. I'd teach him to box and make a real man out of him.

I thought about that as long as I could. Then the king hobo told everyone to bring him their newspapers. They all had newspapers buttoned in their coats to keep them warm and Some had put papers over them for blankets. One hobo came to me in the dark, but I told him I didn’t have any newspapers.

Then the king hobo said he wanted a couple of coats. They took the coat off the old man and I could hear him moaning, real low. But it didn't do him any good.

A hobo came to me and told me to hand over my coat.

"Says who?" I asked.

"Says Big John.”

"Let him come and take it," I told him.

I stood in the corner and waited. I'm not so little myself, and I was almost champion light heavyweight of the Marines once. And shoveling zinc ore eight hours a day doesn't make a man soft. And on top of that I was wanting to let loose on something what with everything that’d happened about Lois and all.

After a while the hobo came back and made out he was double-tough.

"Listen brother," he said. "Big john is waiting. He don't like to wait. Now a word to the wise is sufficient."

"Sure," I said. "And a sock on the foot is worth two in the jaw."

"Okay, punk. Like Grant took Richmond, that's how I need you," he said.

"You stink," I told him. "Your father stinks. Your mother stinks, too. Your whole family stinks."

"Okay" he said finally. "If that's the kind of punk you want to be."

He went away and I could hear him talking to the colored boy. The shine knew he didn't have a chance among all those whites, so he was taking his coat off and saying "Yes, suh! Yes, suh!" and his voice was very soft and polite.

After a while they quieted down and we all slept, almost piled up on top of one another. I thought they might gang up on me, but I was too thirsty and tired to give a damn and I went to sleep.

After that I don't know much what happened. It's funny, when you're in the dark you can't get things very straight. Sometimes I knew it would be daytime, because I could see light through chinks in the boards. I tried to figure out when we'd get out, but I couldn't tell where we were. Sometimes I'd smell desert and alkali dust, and I'd think we were in Arizona. Then we'd feel them coupling on another engine and we'd be going up a mountain and we all like to froze to death because it went down to zero and only being crowded together kept us all alive.

I couldn't remember how many mountain ranges there were in New Mexico and Arizona, but finally it began to get hotter than it had ever been and I figured we were over the divide. And then being so many in the car made it worse instead of better and we all pulled off our shirts and lay half naked with the sweat pouring out of us and the guys that were strongest slugged the others so's they could get to cracks in the floor and lie with their mouths against them to breathe fresh air.

I lay there, trying not to move, and kept chewing my thumb to get my mouth wet; but it was no good and I could feel my throat dry and cracking far back down my gullet and my lips were split right open. And that's the way it was until all of a sudden we were stopped and the whole gang began howling and banging on the door. Then we heard someone at the lock and a fellow slid it open. We all stood there at first because we were blinded with the sunlight. And the fellow that had slid the door open said, pretending to be very cheerful and polite:

"All right, gentlemen. This is your stop. All out for sunny California."

And it was California. We were on a sort of mountainside, and down below us was a valley where you could see the palm trees in a long row, and orange ranches and houses—all looking pretty as a fiddler's floozie and smelling twice as good.

And when we could see in the sunlight again, we saw all that, and we saw the switch house and a water spigot beside it. And we all came off that train like a bunch of stampeding drought cattle that smells a river, and we went charging over that yard slugging and fighting each other like a bunch of wild animals to get at the spigot, and everyone was fighting so much no one could drink because the minute anyone got to the spigot the others walloped him and pulled him away and they wouldn't even let Big John drink first. Everyone was fighting and I kept slugging away till I got to the spigot and held on to it and put my head under it and ran it all over myself, and I drank until they pried me loose.

Then I climbed up the bank to the highway and tried to straighten myself up. I was all wet and lousy and now I was out in the clear air again I was able to smell that I stank.

And that's the way I came to California, going down that road toward Los Angeles and suddenly not feeling tired any more but as if I were drunk and walking on air and feeling I would soon get Dickie back or I'd tear the whole town apart and throw it in the ocean. That's the way I felt.

Chapter 2

Tough To Take

WHEN THE WOMAN told me Lois wasn't there I stood on the doorstep, and all of a sudden I felt so bad I like to sit on the step and cry. I knew she was telling the truth somehow, but I wanted her to be lying.

"Well, let me come in, will you?" I said. "I'm Lois's husband and I've just got in from Oklahoma, and I want her to come back and get in gear with me again. She ought on account of we've both got a right to the kid."

"It won't do you any good to come in, because they're not here. They've gone away."

"Well, where've they gone away to?"

"They've gone to San Diego to stay with some friends."

"Whereabouts in San Diego?"

"I'll see if I can find the address," she said.

She went away, and after a long time she came back again to the little peephole like they have in all doors of California houses.

"It's 137 3/4 Las Olas Drive," she said. "They're staying with some friends of Phyllis's. But don't tell them I told you the address, because I don't want no trouble. I don't say but what Lois is wrong, but I don't want to get mixed up in it."

"Okay," I said. "I won't make any trouble."

Then she shut the trap door and I went down the street and sat under a date-palm on the curb and I like to have died I was so low. I'd counted so much on seeing Dickie that I'd lasted out, and now I felt I couldn't last out any more. I felt so bad that finally I had to talk to myself like I used to in the ring when I was taking it. So I said:

"Come on, be a man and get up on your feet! Just because you didn't get it your own way, don't sit on your can! Get on your feet!"

I went on that way, calling myself everything I could think of until I got so sore I could get up again. But I couldn't think and I couldn't feel my feet when I started walking, so then I knew I had to get something to eat.

I went to a drive-in hamburger stand, but I found my money was gone. I'd had about a dollar fifty left and it was gone. I guess that was how Big John had got back at me. He'd had someone lift it while I was asleep. Some of those hoboes are so clever they can pinch your socks without taking your shoes off, and you never know it.

So I didn't get anything to eat and I started off down the pike toward the shore, hardly knowing what I was doing; but by God I was determined to get to San Diego somehow and get Dickie back.

It was down on Route 101 that goes along the shore that I first met Quentin Genter. By that time it was dark and I wasn't even bothering to thumb the cars any more, because very few people will stop after dark anyhow, and I looked so much like a bum that nobody had even slowed down all afternoon.

So I didn't even thumb this car and it went down the pike a way; but then it came back in reverse and this bird told me to hop in. I hadn't even asked him for a lift.

The fellow driving looked somewhere around forty or fifty. You couldn't tell. He had a white beret cap and white flannel trousers and a blue coat with big pearl buttons, and he had bare feet and sandals. He told me he was Quentin Genter, the movie director.

"Don't tell me you've never heard of me," he said.

"Well, I don't live round here," I said.

Then he laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. It wasn't kidding. I could tell he was really tickled.

I sized him up as a funny bird. He didn't seem to mind me being lousy dirty, or anything, and he kept looking at me and laughing like he was very pleased with me. He had a funny laugh. His mouth would laugh, only his eyes stayed like they were—very sober. His eyes were blue but sort of white right in the center.

He asked me where I was going, and I told him San Diego.

"Oh, that's a pity," he said. "I wish you were going farther. I'm going to Caliente. I need a little excitement. I wish I had someone to go down with me."

"I couldn't, mister. Look at these clothes."

"Oh, I've got lots of clothes back there in the suitcase," he told me. "More than I ever need. I have more of everything than I'll ever need more clothes, more money, more brains, more genius, more friends, more sweethearts. I'll pay all the bills."

"I can't, mister. I've got to go to San Diego."

"What for?"

"To find my wife. She left me. She's in San Diego."

"Oh, don't worry about that. There are lots of wives."

"Yeah, but she has my kid. He's a swell kid."

"A little boy, hey? Of course, then, you're right. What did she leave you for?"

"I don't know. She said I was cruel."

"And were you?"

"I don't think so. Only once I slapped her over the fanny—it was a joke, like, as I was passing. We were in the restaurant. I slapped her and she slipped and cut her forehead on the edge of the stove. But it was an accident."

"All women should be slapped on the fannies," he said.

He seemed to get a big bang out of that.

He stepped on the gas suddenly, and we went sky- hooting along. I hated to see a car treated like that. It was a swell car. I can't stand seeing machines treated rough, but I didn't say anything. After a while he slowed down again. He began asking me about getting to California by freight. He was very educated and polite and interested. I guess being hungry made me shoot off my mouth plenty. I was telling him everything I knew and giving my right name. All of a sudden he stopped the car. He got a bottle of whisky out of his bag and made me take a shot. Then we drove to a restaurant and I had a steak and French fried and coffee. Then, back in the car, we had another drink. I began to get so's I didn't know what I was doing. He didn't drink. He just kept pouring it into me. We got to San Diego and I kept saying, "Remember, 137 3/4 Las Olas Drive." That's the one thing I kept holding onto in my mind. He said he'd drive me there, and somehow he did find it. I said I was taking him out of his way but he said he wanted to see me get there.

He waited at the curb while I knocked at the door. It was a little bungalow, and the door had one of those little trapdoor peepholes. Someone looked through it and saw me. It was Phyllis, Lois's cousin. She didn't say anything. She just ran back inside. I kept knocking but no one would come to the door. I felt sick.

It was tough to take, after that trip over the mountains and everything, and going hungry. It was double-tough. I guess I went haywire, because I started to kick the door in. That got some action. A sailor opened the little trap and said:

"What the hell do you think you're doing there?"

I said, "I'm kicking this goddam door in and after I do that I'm going to kick you in, too. Open up. Come on, open up!”

I got to shouting, I was so tired and so mad, and the movie director was honking his horn and yelling, "Bravo! Bravo!"

Then Phyllis came back and looked through the peephole. I told her I'd stop if she'd tell Lois to come to the door. She went back in and I waited. They didn't do anything. I knew they were stalling for time. I kicked the door again, but I couldn't break it. Then I went round the back. They had all the lights off, and I tried a kitchen window.

It was while I was at the back that I heard the police car screaming, and I knew they'd stalled for time while the police got there.

I heard the movie director shouting. His voice was funny, like he was yelling in a whisper.

He was saying, "He's a huge brute, officer. He's over six feet tall, and he's fully armed. He has a Tommy gun."

And then I heard Lois's voice. She shouted:

"He's round the back, officer. Arrest him. He deserted from the Marines three years ago. He's a deserter."

I heard them coming and I ran down the back and downhill over the fields. I was feeling bad, getting so near Lois and then her pulling that dirty trick and telling about me deserting. I had only done it because she kept after me and kept saying she wouldn't marry me unless I'd take off the uniform and go over the hill. And now she was using that against me.

I kept thinking, That's the way things go, and all the time running down the hill. I kept running till I hit the pike. Then I went north, going along the ditches and hitting up into the hills until I was clear of San Diego. I knew that town was too hot.

What with everything I felt pretty low. I don't think I'd ever felt quite as bad before, I kept on going up and never stopping, until behind me I could see San Diego lying down below with the street lights pretty and glimmering like beads and the lights of the battle-wagons lying out in the harbor with their blinkers going. I waited up there and hopped a truck into San Pedro. Then I kept on going out of that town, too, and walked till nearly morning. I was just about out on my feet and I don't know what I did after that.

Chapter 3

Ten Bucks For A Stunt

WHEN I WOKE UP I was in the middle of a field and some Japanese truck farmers were looking at me, the women little and bandy-legged with their skirts kited up to their knees, and the sun just beginning to get warm through the mist.

There was nothing to do but move on somewhere. I was so hungry I could hardly feel it any more. I was in terrible shape. I hadn't shaved in a week, and I'd washed only once. I didn't know where I should head for, so I just kept on going north feeling so miserable I wanted to die.

Middle of the afternoon I sat down on the sands in a little town and watched the kids in bathing. It got late, and I knew I'd have to figure out some way to eat. I wasn't hungry any more, but I was feeling daffy, so I knew I ought to eat.

As I sat there a fellow came and sat down on the beach. I watched him. He took off his pants and shirt. He had a bathing-suit underneath. He lay on the sand, getting a tan. He lay on his face peeking at the women sitting on the sand with the kids. I could see him looking through his hands sideways, pretending he wasn't. But I knew he was.

I went over and hit him up for a dime for some coffee, but I truly didn't care whether he said yes, no, or kiss my neck. I didn't care about it any more. He said he had no change, so I went back and lay down. After a while he came over and asked me if I wanted to make some money.

"On what?" I asked.

He looked at me a long time.

"Would you do anything for money?" he asked.

"Pretty near anything," I said. I didn't care.

"There's ten bucks in it for you if you'll go through with a stunt."

"What kind of a stunt?"

"A holdup."

"A holdup?" I said. "What do you think, I'm nuts?"

"Well, this isn't really a holdup," he said.

"I get it. It isn't a holdup but it is."

"That's right. I'll tell you how it is."

He had a long story about how he was a messenger for some gambling-houses. They had them on the shore front there—roulette wheels going full blast and wide open, only they had some trick to the law that proved it wasn't real gambling. But it was gambling just the same.

"So what," I said.

"So this. Round one-thirty in the morning I take the money up to the night deposit at the bank. What I've got to have is a fake holdup where someone can maybe see it. I've got it all figured. You stop me, see, and take the bag. Then you run. I'll give you lots of chance to get a good start. Then I'll yell."

"And what do you get out of it if I get the money?"

"I've got that figured out. I'll show you a garden where I want you to throw the money. It's in an old empty house. Then I'll pick it up later, after the noise quiets down."

I began to think of all the flaws in it.

"What if the police or somebody find it before you do?"

"Then no one is hurt. They'll think the holdup man got scared and ditched it. It'll help out my story."

"That's so. But how do you know I won't double-cross you and keep right on going with the money?"

"Because," he said, "I'll have a gun and if I see you go past the yard without ditching the bag, I'll let you have it."

"Stout feller," I said. "But say, if you have a gun how come they won't ask you why you didn't use it anyhow?"

"I got that figured out. Because as I pass the yard I'll throw my gun in there, and then I'll say later you had a gun and got me unawares and took mine from me as you were holding me up."

He seemed to have everything figured out. He sat there in the sun, waiting.

"Well, what do you say?" he said.

I told him I had to think about it. He seemed to have it worked out to perfection. I was trying to figure out where the catch was.

"Look," I said. "How come they let you carry so much money?"

"Don't ask so many questions," he said. "Will you or won't you?"

I kept thinking somehow he wasn't on the level with me, but I couldn't find out why. And I was crazy for something to eat.

"Okay," I said finally. "I don't give a damn what happens to me anyhow. Give me the ten so's I can get a square meal. Like I am now I couldn't run a block if fifty cops were after me."

He didn't want to do that but he couldn't see any way round it, so he gave me the ten, and then he pulled on his pants and shirt and told me to follow him, only walking a hundred feet behind. When he got to the comer where I was to hold him up, he'd light a cigarette; and when he got to the place where I was to throw the bag, he'd throw the cigarette there. That was the signal we fixed up. But he said I was to be sure not to speak to him in town, in case anyone should see us.

When it came time for the holdup, I wished I'd never had anything to do with it. But I'd taken the guy's ten and I'd had a meal. The meal was what made me feel okay and not wanting to pull anything like this—but I had to play square. He'd paid for the meal.

So I stood on the corner, and first I'd say I wasn't going to go through with it, and then I'd decide I might as well. And finally I decided I'd see. If any cops or anything showed, I'd push off and leave the town. But if it was all quiet, I'd go through with it.

And then, right on the dot of 1:30, he showed up, coming up the hill from the shore front. The town was all quiet. Way down on the comer there were a couple of guys in a car trying to pick up two girls. I could see them by the street light. The girls were kidding and giving the Johns a stall. It was perfect. They were just close enough to see the holdup, but not close enough to worry us.

I watched him coming up the hill toward me, swinging the bag and looking innocent. I stood back in the doorway and then I couldn't see him, but I could hear his feet, clear in the night. Then, right when he was by the doorway, I stepped out. I said, "Stick 'em up!" but I was laughing. I poked my finger out like a gun, and stuck it in his side. I was laughing, but he looked so scared you'd thought it was a real holdup.

"Okay, you zombie," I said. "Let's have it."

But he didn't offer to give me the bag. He seemed like he was struck slap-happy by what was happening. So I said, "Come on, you're standing on your foot," and then I grabbed the bag and lit down the street. I hadn't gone quite as far as I figured he ought to have let me get before he yelled:

"Holdup! Holdup! Police! Police!" He yelled it plenty loud once he got started.

I could just hear my own footsteps tearing down the street, and my breath coming. I wanted to get rid of the bag.

And then I heard the police car come roaring round the comer.

It was just my luck, anyhow. No police had showed up all night, and now they'd come just at the wrong time. They started the siren, and I could hear the whistles going.

Then someone cut loose with a gun and the bullets went skipping past. I looked back, and there, not twenty feet behind me was the guy who'd faked the holdup. He had his gun out, and he was firing at me. That was the kind he was. Now the police were wise, he was trying to bump me off.

And that's the thing I hadn't figured out: that he'd know if I were caught I might spill the whole story. But he'd figured it. I hadn't, but he had. He'd figured that if anything did go wrong, he'd still have the gun and he could croak me, so I couldn't tell the police he'd faked the holdup with me. He'd figured that out, but I hadn't. And there he was trying to knock me off.

All I could think was: You dirty bastard! Oh, you dirty bastard! But I didn't say it; I was just thinking it, and keeping on running like my lungs would catch on fire. And then I heard a noise, spilling, behind me; someone falling, and a gun clattering. I looked round, and there was the guy I'd held up, rolling on the pavement.

I ran on, right past the yard. I didn't throw the bag in. I kept thinking, All right you dirty bastard. You city-slicked me. So I'll city-slick you.

So I didn't throw the bag in the yard. I turned up a side street. I could hear the police car siren. I kept on running and slung the bag up into an acacia tree. A few doors up I saw a beer joint open. I went right in. I couldn't have run any farther or I'd have keeled over. I was out on my feet, but I managed somehow to walk over to a woman sitting in a booth. She was alone but there were two glasses and a pitcher of beer on the table. I walked right over and sat down opposite her.

"Hello, big boy," she said.

She was boiled. You could tell that right away. She kept blowing upward past her nose onto her forehead to keep her hair back. I sat there, hurting inside my lungs and my belly. I couldn't speak.

"It's just a little bit hot in here," she said.

She was plenty drunk.

I sat there trying not to pant. I took a big breath and drank what beer there was left. I drank it but it only made me shorter-winded.

"Oh, you drank Pat's beer," she said.

I knew I'd have to do something. I was listening for the cops outside.

"Who's Pat?" I said.

"She's my girl friend," she said. She giggled like a kid. "Her kidneys is no good. But 'at's all right, big boy. You're my boy friend, ain't you?"

"Sure," I said.

I was listening for the police. I could hear the car siren and then the cops shouting on the street, and somebody yelling, "He went in there!"

I poured another glass of beer from the pitcher, and lifted it to hide my face. Out of the comer of my eye, I saw the cops come in. They came tearing in, three cops in khaki uniforms, with their guns ready.

I didn't make a move, because I knew if I tried it my knees would cave in on me.

They made a dash right for the back of the hall. I had to get up and look round the booth. Everyone else was standing and looking. It would have looked funny if I hadn't. All of a sudden I saw a fellow in the back of the room light out and go head-first through the window. The cops went after him.

Right off I figured I'd better get moving; only just then the other woman showed up. Anyhow, I couldn't have walked a block, the way I felt.

This other woman was the same kilter as the first— plumpish and about thirty-five and they'd both decided to be blondes. They were both slopped to the gills. I figured I would be safer there than out on the street alone.

"This is my girl friend, Pat," the first one said. "Pat, this is my old boy friend. We used to know each other back in Chicago—think of that."

They were both drunk as a ring-tailed filly. Neither one knew what it was all about, and since no one else seemed to have seen me come in I figured I was just as safe with them as anywhere else. So I just kept them talking.

They were both from Camden, New Jersey. They told me they'd lived in the same apartment house, and they'd become friends. Their husbands had become friends, too. Now both the men had gone to Reno to get divorces. The husbands had sent the girls on to the Coast for a vacation while they got the divorces. It all seemed fixed up nice and friendly.

We stayed there, drinking beer, until they were both rolling. They began to argue.

"This is my boy friend. He's my boy friend," the first kept saying. "He's going to take me home."

"Where'm I gonna sleep?" Pat asked. She couldn't keep her eyes straight.

"You call up the Walt Whitman and order a suite," the other kept saying.

They were both so drunk they didn't know what they were doing, so we blew. They had a Buick outside, a swell new Buick. They were too drunk to drive, so I got the keys away from them and they told me how to take them home. They'd keep saying, "Now round the next corner—no. No, that's wrong. Go back two blocks, then round the corner." I'll tell you, if I hadn't been so dead on my feet, it would have been funny.

We finally got to the place down on the beach front. I had to lug them up somehow to the apartment.

"Look, we'll both sleep in Pat's bed, and you stay in my bed," the first one said.

I said I'd beat it, but they both started yelling. So I figured anyhow I didn't want to be out on the streets that night— me with my clothes like a bum's—the same working clothes I'd walked off the shift in back at the zinc smelter—and my week's growth of beard, and feeling like I'd pass out if I walked one more step.

So I stayed there.

That's how come I took up with Mamie Block—it was on account of that guy and the holdup and ducking the cops. That's how I took up with her.

Chapter 4

Too Tired To Run

IT WAS NEARLY NOON when I woke. I had been dead to the world. Mamie brought me breakfast to bed on a tray—orange juice and toast and boiled eggs and bacon.

"I didn't know if you liked your eggs too soft," she said, "so I did them medium."

I didn't care how they were. I was hungry. She watched me eat. She looked cheerful and up on her toes and different from the night before. She was all clean and shining and her hair brushed back and a ribbon tied round it the way school-kids do, and she had on a pair of red beach pajamas.

"Don't you have any hang-over?" I asked her.

"Not me, boy friend," she grinned. "I can take it."

"I always get 'em."

"I don't. I can take it."

"Where's Pat?" I asked her.

"Her?" She sniffed. "She got up and went out. Good riddance to her."

She watched me eat.

"I like to cook," she said.

I didn't say anything, just ate.

"You know, I miss cooking for Block. He was a regular horse on food. He used to like breakfast in bed after we'd had a party."

"You know the way to a man's heart," I said.

She went out and I got dressed. When she came back she said, "I thought you'd like these."

She had a toothbrush and some razor blades, and a newspaper.

"You can use my razor," she said. "Put a new blade in it. You don't mind, do you?"

I was thinking about the newspaper. I wanted to look at it, but I didn't dare. I wondered if she was wise. She didn't seem to be. While I was shaving, she shouted:

"Listen to this, big boy. Right in the Jolly Time Parlor, they pinched a holdup man. That's the place where we were last night."

I came out, still shaving, and looked at the paper over her shoulder.

"That's right, so it was," I said.

She gave me the paper and I read it. The guy I'd held up was dead. It said that Hernandez Felice, a Mexican, had been captured by the police, charged with the holdup and murder of Maurice Gottstein. It said how Felice had held him up and then shot him.

How the police do cover up when they've pulled a boner! The cops themselves had shot the guy by mistake, but they wouldn't ever let that out. I couldn't have shot him. I didn't have any gun.

But in the paper they had it how this Mexican had killed him, and how Gottstein was a brother of Mannie Gottstein, operator of concessions on the beach front.

Then it said the holdup money of nearly ten thousand dollars had disappeared, but they were grilling Felice to make him tell what he'd done with it.

That started me thinking about the bag up in the acacia tree. They hadn't found it, I thought. Or maybe they had and there was some city-slicking going on. I thought about that. Then I thought, Maybe they know this Felice didn't do it and they're just holding him to fool me. Maybe they know it is someone else. Maybe they have spotted the bag. Maybe they've taken the money out and left the bag there. Maybe they'll have someone watching the place night and day, waiting to see if anyone shows up to get the bag.

It was all city-slicking from beginning to end. I couldn't make head or tail out of it. I couldn't figure why the Mex had taken that dive through the window. Whatever he did it for, it saved my skin.

I went back and finished shaving, thinking all this over. When I was through Mamie looked me over.

"You want to go down the beach?"

"No, I think I'll stay in a while," I said.

She looked at me and I began to wonder if she was wise—about me being leery of showing up on the streets.

"I know why you won't go out," she said.

"Oh, yes?" I said. "How come you know so much?"

"Because I know men," she said. "Look, you wait here. I'll go out and get you a suit and a shirt and things. Then you'll look all right."

She went out in the beach pajamas. She didn't ask me where I came from or why I was broke or anything. I was pretty leery of it all, I'll tell you. I thought maybe she'd gone to get the cops. But after what I'd been through I was too tired to beat it. I couldn't think of another week like I'd had.

I stayed there and after a while Mamie showed up with a regular layout of new clothes for me.

Patsy moved into an apartment of her own, but she came around to see us. I was still living with Mamie, because I didn't know what else to do.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to stay near San Diego, because I kept thinking I might hit on some way to get Dickie back. I knew Lois wouldn't move far away from Hollywood. She was crazy for Hollywood.

And then, too, I kept thinking about this Mexican, Felice, and what they'd do to him. They were hanging a murder charge on his chin and really it wasn't him—nor even me. It was the police killed Gottstein.

And then I kept thinking about the bag I'd thrown up in the acacia tree. I kept thinking about all those things.

So I stayed on.

We didn't do much. Mamie and Patsy and I would go down and drink beer in the evenings, and we even went down to the roulette games that Gottstein's brother owned. No one seemed to recognize me or bother me. So I felt easier, but I'd keep thinking about the Mexican guy that they'd pinched.

Anyhow, it was comfortable. The girls had plenty of money. Mamie told me they both were drawing fifty a week alimony—even before they got the divorces. That's what their husbands had promised them if they'd let them get divorces.

We'd sit home days. Mamie liked to cook. She was a swell cook. Then in the evenings we'd hang around the beer parlors, dancing. I kept thinking I'd shove off, but I didn't. I just hung around.

Chapter 5

New Prophet

WE WERE SITTING in the Nude Eel Cafe, drinking beer and dancing, when I saw Genter, the movie director, again. I hardly knew him at first. He didn't have on his blue coat and sandals, but he was wearing an old bum's outfit—an old brown suit and a cap and no necktie. But his voice was the same.

He came right over and sat down as if nothing had happened—about him shouting to the police that I had a Tommy gun that night at San Diego. He just said:

"Well, well! I knew we should meet at Philippi!"

"Oh, yeah," I said. I didn't know what else to say. What could you say to a guy like that? Mamie and Pat were staring at him, so I just introduced him as a friend of mine. He didn't say anything about San Diego.

He ordered up a couple of pitchers of beer and got interested in Patsy's second name, which was Perisho. She started off telling him all about how it was originally spelled Perishault. Then we all danced. He danced with Patsy and seemed to have a good time.

"This is marvelous," he kept saying. "It's almost terrific."

The girls got pretty gay on the beer, and then he decided we all ought to go to his place. We went out and he had a big limousine down the street, with a Filipino chauffeur. The girls were tight enough so they didn't seem to think it funny, a guy dressed like a bum having a chauffeur and limousine.

We went tearing along, up the coast, the Filipino pushing her along well over eighty. He didn't seem to worry about getting pinched. We went right through the towns that way, through Santa Monica and then along Sunset Boulevard, and up into the hills. He lived way up on the top of a hill. We went into a big house. Next thing Genter was all changed and wearing a kimono with a dragon embroidered on the back in gold.

He said, "Now, my house and all in it is yours."

And it was. The butler came out with a wagon and all sorts of drinks on it, and we sat in the patio. I had three or four Scotch and sodas and was feeling pretty well oiled. He kept insisting we have more, and he was such a good guy you couldn't say no. Then he showed Patsy his house.

Maybe half an hour later, they came back.

"It's marvelous," he said. "She's a new prophet!"

He was that way—the minute you started talking to that fellow you seemed to tell him your life's history. Pat had been talking to him. She had crazy ideas, anyhow.

"Tell them," he said.

"Well," Pat said, "Mr. Genter doesn't think my ideas are crazy." She gave both me and Mamie a dirty look. "Mr. Genter thinks I have a wonderful idea. I don't see why it wouldn't work. All you do is give everyone five dollars the first week, on condition they've got to spend it within a week. Then the next week you give them six dollars each. And each week you give them a dollar more than last week."

"Who's going to pay the money and where does it come from?" I asked her.

"The State'll pay it, dumbell," she said. "We'll just have a sales tax. Then with everyone buying more and more each week, we'll have bigger and bigger sales taxes each week to pay off the payments, won't we? We'll raise it a dollar a week until in about a year everyone will be drawing fifty dollars a week."

"Children, too?" asked Mamie.

"Every last grownup, chick, and child," Pat said. "Everyone. We won't stint anyone."

"It's Armageddon," Genter kept saying. He was beginning to yell in a whisper again. "It's Armageddon!" The funny thing was that when he got excited he yelled, but his voice only came out like a whisper. He yelled in a whisper.

"Well, try and start it," I told her.

"She will," Genter said. "I've given her my word she has a miraculous sociological plan that beats anything any hitherto blasted economist has dared to dream of. All it needs is just a little injection of showmanship."

He went into a huddle with his brain for a while and Pat sat there, beaming at him.

"I have it!" he shouted after a while. "The religious touch. You'll lead everyone to the new economic Canaan. We'll call it the Ecanaanomic Party. That's it! The Ecanaanomic Party—Riches For All! And we'll make it a religion."

Then he went on about how they'd build a temple and Pat should be the high priestess and wear robes of white samite and sandals. And he said they'd have a choir of a thousand voices and seven bronzed boys at the seven corners of a temple swinging censers of frankincense and myrrh, and girls would be garbed in golden sandals and kirtles of floating white silk, and forty virgins with jasper chain-belts would be acolytes at the altar.

He got to yelling in a whisper again.

"I'll have Togomi design the costumes," he yelled. "It's Armageddon, I tell you—Armageddon!"

He talked so's you almost believe it—he was that way. If you talked to him, you told him everything you knew. If he talked to you, you believed it even though it sounded crazy. He was that way. He kept on talking, and we kept on drinking. But the more I drunk the less I could thing about what Genter was saying. I got so that all I could think about was this Mex going to be knocked off maybe for murder.

He was a Mex, all right, but some of those Mexes have been pretty decent to me, especially when I was a kid. And

I couldn't think of anything except him taking the long ride when it wasn't him—or even me—that had done it.

Genter sent us home in his car—but all I could think of was this Mex.

Chapter 6

Advice From A Genius

IT WAS WORRYING about Felice that made me go up and see Genter again.

I read in the paper that a bunch of people in the Jolly Time all swore that Felice had been in the joint for two hours and couldn't have shot Gottstein.

But then the two girls and the Johns who had been on the make that night came up and identified Felice positively as the man who'd done the job. That made it bad, because the people who were testifying for Felice were all Mexicans, so the police didn't believe them. It looked like that Mex was really going on the spot.

When I heard that I knew I had to do something. I wanted to ask Genter what to do, because he was smart, all right. But I didn't want to tell him everything. And then, all of a sudden, I got the idea of how I could get Genter to help out. I could tell him the whole story from beginning to end, only instead of letting on it was all true, I would pretend it was a story I was writing for a movie plot and that I couldn't get the right ending, and then I'd ask him what I ought to do.

I felt better after I'd thought that up, and I borrowed the Buick from Mamie and drove up to Beverly Hills. It was late in the evening, but Genter. wasn't in. The butler let me wait inside, so I sat round till after midnight, just waiting and looking at the magazines he had there all in foreign languages. I could get along pretty good with the ones that had Spanish in them.

When Genter came in he was with three young fellows who were actors. He got rid of them soon and I told him the story—making out, of course, it was a plot for a movie I was thinking up. He listened, really carefully, not saying anything all the time. He was calm this time and didn't yell or whisper or anything.

"Look," I said. "Now that's as far as I've got. The wrong man is in prison and we've got to get him out."

"Well, that's easy," he said. "Why don't you have the sweetheart of the first man prove him innocent—maybe you could have her turn detective and find the real guilty man."

"But he doesn't have a sweetheart," I said. "And the real guilty man isn't guilty, either. The cops really shot the guy that's dead."

He walked up and down a long time, looking at me and then walking.

"It's a terrific plot," he kept saying. "It's terrific. But I don't know what to suggest. Whatever it is, it must be a great, smash climax that you build to."

"Yeah, that's it," I said, pretending. "I think I could fix up a big climax if I could only figure out some way to get this first bird freed."

He thought a while and then he said he wouldn't want to suggest anything, because he was saturated with movie concepts and cinematic structures and couldn't think anything new; while my mind, fresh and untutored he said it was, would probably hit on something beyond the realms of fiction.

"Well, tell me anything you think," I said. "I've got to think up something or go nuts."

He walked a long time. Then he said, "Well, why don't you get the money out of the tree and send it to the police?"

"You mean, have my hero do that?" I asked. I was quick on that one.

"Of course," he said. "What else could I have meant? You have your hero send the bag to the police—that will show them that the man they've arrested is innocent."

"That's what I'll do," I said. It sounded like a swell idea.

"Do you have to run right now?" he said.

"Well, it's late," I said. "And Mamie is alone."

"All right," he said. "Now promise me one thing. I've done you a favor—now will you do me one?"

I said sure I would.

"Then," he said, "don't take your story idea to anyone else. Remember, if you're my friend, I have first call on it. Now keep in touch with me on everything that happens, and get it all written down. How soon could you let me have a draft of the story?"

"Gees," I said. "I write pretty slow. Maybe it'll take a month."

"That's all right," he said. "Take your time. Don't hurry. But remember, I'm always ready to help you."

He was the friendliest fellow I ever saw, that Genter.

Chapter 7

The Hoodoo Bag

IT WAS FUNNY how I got that bag down out of the tree. It just goes to show you how you figure and figure on something, and make it hard for yourself, and all the time it comes out as easy as pie.

The way I had planned it was that I would go along disguised as a gardener—get an old Lizzie from somewhere, and put a lawn mower in it like the Japs do, and get a saw, and then drive right up to the tree and start pruning it. I could climb up the tree and lop off a few branches and then drop the bag into the car somehow.

But I figured I'd better look the ground over first, so I strolled, sort of casual, down the street and past the Jolly Time, and I got a shock that like to stop my heart. There were two kids, looking up into the tree where I'd thrown the bag.

I said, "What's the matter?"

"He lost his airplane up there," one said.

Then, right off, I saw how simple it was. I blew a big breath, and I said, "I'll get it for you."

I knew I was all right. If any cops were watching, I had a real alibi. It was luck playing right into my hands. I could say the kids had asked me to get up in the tree. I jumped up and caught a branch and pulled myself up, and all the dry pollen and gold blobs of the acacia tree came showering down on me.

I got a bit of a scare, for almost right away one of the kids yelled that the airplane had fallen down. I said, "Well, maybe there's another up here—or a ball, or something."

I saw the bag and grabbed it and stuffed it in my pants, and buttoned my coat over the top part.

Then I dropped right down all covered with yellow stuff from the blossoms.

"Gee, mister, thanks," one of the kids said.

I dusted myself off quickly and beat it home as fast as I could, but Mamie was in when I got there so I went right into the bathroom and stuffed the bag in the linen closet.

I chinned with Mamie a while, waiting for her to go out. I knew she'd go soon because she and Pat had gone hook, line, and sinker for this crazy Ecanaanomic gag, and they'd even rented desk space in a real estate man's office. They'd go there every day, sending out letters and making out they were important and serious about it. Mamie was all full up of it as she got ready to go out.

When she went, I locked the door and began to figure out what to write. Finally I had it. I printed all the letters so's the police couldn't trace my handwriting. I said:

To Whom It May Concern:

Hernandez Felice, who you are holding for the holdup and murder of Maurice Gottstein, did not do it. In order to prove it, I am sending you the bag and money I took from Gottstein to show you Felice did not do it.

Then I signed it Chicago Ed, just to mix police up a bit. I had never been to Chicago.

Then I got to thinking about mailing it. I'd have to go somewhere to have it mailed and I'd have to have the package weighed. Then the man who weighed it would be sure to see it addressed to police, and he'd remember what I looked like. So I figured I'd better buy about a dollar's worth of stamps, which would be sure to cover it. And then I figured, too, I'd better go up to L.A. and mail it, so's the police wouldn't think to look right in town for the man who sent it.

I got that all figured out and then Mamie came home, and she was all of a twitter.

"Look, Handsome," she said, excitedly. "Look what the paper says. You know that Mexican, Felice, who was pinched in the jolly Time—you remember? That was the night I met you? Well, he didn't hold up that fellow who was killed."

"Well, what did he run for?" I said.

"That's funny—he thought they were after him for something else, so he just run. It was a statutory offense, that was all. That's attacking a girl under age, isn't it?"

"I don't know," I said.

I grabbed the paper and read it. It said:

Hernandez Felice, 42, was cleared of implication in the murder and holdup of Maurice Gottstein by police yesterday.

Jesus Angeles, owner of the Jolly Time Cafe, together with a dozen patrons of the cafe, told police that Felice had been in the cafe for at least two hours before he was arrested that evening, and could have had no part in the fatal shooting.

Felice, it is alleged, ran when police entered because he thought they were in search of him in connection with a statutory offense committed several days prior to the holdup.

"It was just a case of guilty conscience with Felice," Chief Mullarney declared. "We are sure he had nothing to do with the holdup. We have new clues leading to the real criminal, and expect important action within a few days."

Rosalinda Falcono, 14, is the girl implicated in the case. Her parents were loath to file complaint against Felice. Police, however, declared that action will follow and Felice stands liable both to prison sentence and to deportation.

I read that through over and over, and I kept thinking, Now, it's all cleared up. It's all cleared up.

I was a sucker for thinking that everything was settled after the police had cleared Felice. It wasn't settled. It was worse. Because now I had the bag and the money, and it was one bad thing to have around. If the police had let Felice go, they would sure be looking for someone else. I knew I had to find some way to get rid of that bag.

I tell you, that bag of money kept me awake nights, and it got like a hoodoo. I was afraid Mamie would find it. So I'd keep moving it new places. It sure had the Indian sign on me.

It was like I knew there was one particular thing I had to do with that money. I thought and thought and got nowhere for a while. But when I did get the answer it was so simple that I almost laughed.

I said to myself, Look, you dummy. All you've got to do is get that money back where it belongs and then the Indian sign will be off you. All you've got to do is get that money back to Gottstein. And that was simple.

When Mamie was out down at the Ecanaanomic office, I got the bag from behind the bathtub. It was a soft leather bag with a chain running through eyelet rings at the top and a padlock on the end of the chain. It was simple to open. I just got Mamie's scissors and cut it open. There wasn't ten thousand in it like the papers said. There was only one thousand three hundred and eighty dollars in it.

After I counted the money I cut the leather bag into thin strips and flushed them down the toilet, one after another. I took the chain part and stuffed it in my pocket. I planned to throw that off the end of the pier in deep water.

Chapter 8

A Night To Howl

I WALKED into Gottstein's place. It was like a bar—a long bar—with a roulette layout in front of every two seats. The roulette wheel wasn't a real one. It was on the wall, but instead of a ball it had an electric light going round and stopping at the winning number. It wasn't a real wheel, but you played the game just like roulette.

And that's what I had figured out. All I had to do was to play the money until I lost it back to Gottstein. It was his money and once he got it back the hoodoo would be off me and I'd be free. I'd be able to get some sleep and stop worrying about police. I'd be able to start figuring on how to get Dickie back again.

I knew I could lose the money fast, because the boards in these sucker joints not only have a zero, but a double zero and also a diamond. That makes the odds thirteen to twelve against you if you play the numbers, and if you play the odds and evens or the reds and blacks, it's even worse. They work out twenty-one chances for the house to eighteen for the sucker—or seven to six against you. Even if the wheel isn't coked up, you can't beat seven to six against you for very long. I knew that, so I decided to play the colors.

I sat down on a stool and a fellow with black sleeve-protectors came hustling over.

I said, "Got any five-dollar chips?" making out I was a little oiled.

The bird looked hard at me, then he went away and brought another fellow. I knew they didn't have much playing as high as that, especially in the afternoons. When the second fellow came, I put on I was a little drunk, as if I was too foolish to care. The second fellow said: "What do you want to play?"

"Five-dollar chips," I said. I counted off five twenties.

"All right," he said. "The browns are five dollars."

He pushed me twenty chips and then put a chip marked with a five on top of the pile of browns. I decided to play slow at first, and then pretend to get reckless. There were three or four people came up and stood behind my stool. There are always people at those shore places out for a cheap thrill on someone else's money.

I played slow, just betting two or three chips, and the odds, sure enough, started to get at me. In five minutes I'd lost the twenty chips. I got twenty more, and they started to go. Then I'd lost them.

I decided I'd better pretend I was sore so I could work up and push it out a little faster. I wanted to get that hot money off my hands.

I got more chips and started playing the red. It came up black five times running. I could hear the kibitzers back of me sucking in their breath. I pretended I was sore. I got another hundred dollars' worth.

"God, what lousy luck," I said. "The damn wheel doesn't give me a break at all. All right if I play the pile?"

"It's your money," the man said.

The people crowded close in back of me, and another fellow came up behind the counter to watch. I figured sure now that the red must start turning up, so I decided to play the black. Then I'd lose like I wanted to. I pushed the pile on the black. It had just been black six times running.

The light started to slow down on the wheel so's you could see it. You couldn't see the light at first when it was going fast—only when it slowed down. We all watched. It came up black again for the seventh time.

"Gees, that's the old fight," I said, pretending to be glad. "I'll leave it there. Okay?"

"Okay," the man said.

He piled up twenty beside my first twenty. The wheel went round. It came up black again. That made eight blacks.

"Leave it there," I said. I was sure it couldn't come up nine times running.

That made four hundred on the black. I said to myself that it must come up red now. I'd leave it there until it came up red, then they'd win.

The light went round. It came up black for the ninth time. The people behind me all went: "Aa-a-a-ah!"

Everybody started to crowd round.

"Leave the eight hundred there," I said.

"Whyn't you pull down some," someone said.

"Look here, he can play without any advice," the man behind the counter said. "If you can't keep quiet, get out of here."

"Well, the man's drunk. He isn't fit to handle his money."

I turned round. It was a little old man, his hat all full of gray hair and mustache sticking out.

"I can play it," I said. "All on the black."

They started the light. It came up black again. That was ten times straight black had come up. The wheel had gone crazy and could only come up black.

That was sixteen hundred dollars I had.

By this time I didn't know what to do. I had kept playing the black, and the red wouldn't show up. I'd never seen a wheel come up one color ten times running. The old saying is that you play the black and the red comes up—but the saying wasn't true this time.

The man behind the counter piled up the chips. They were stacked all over the black square. And I didn't want to win.

"Play it all again?" he asked. He didn't seem too anxious.

"No, put it all on the red," I said. I figured the wheel was hoodooed and the black would come up forever.

"A bet—the pile on the red," he said.

The light slowed up behind the wheel on the wall. Everyone was staring. It clicked, slower and slower. And it went on the red!

The first time red in eleven turns—and I had changed. I could hear all the people letting their breath out. I didn't know what to do.

"Leave it on the red," I said. There was thirty-two hundred dollars there. I didn't know what to do.

"No bet," the man said. They didn't start the wheel.

Then, right off, an argument started. The little guy back of me started it. He started shouting that they had to take the bet and spin the wheel.

"Come on, spin that wheel!" he kept yelling. "Spin that wheel!"

A smooth-looking little bird came up, and the men behind the counter kept talking, low, to him. The people were all poking their noses in, saying they had to run the wheel.

"Look here," said the smooth-looking little bird, "we don't have to take any bets we don't want to."

"Well, this is a crooked game," shouted the gray-haired guy. He was old, but full of ginger. He kept yelling it was crooked.

"It's not crooked," the other fellow said. "We are open and above board. But we are not forced to take any bets. We have a ten-dollar limit."

"Well, you were ready to take his hundred bucks if you'd won," the little guy said, full of fight.

"Is that so? Well, we don't have to take this bet—or any bet we don't want to at any time. You see that?"

The smooth bird pointed to a sign on the wall that said: We reserve the right to refuse accommodation.

All right, I thought. I was going to see this dump got its money back. All right, just for that I'll see you in hell first.

"Come on, you heel," I said. "Pay me off."

"I'd like to talk to you," the smooth bird said.

"Listen, I don't want any talk. I want three thousand two hundred bucks," I said. "And I want it right here and right now."

"I'm going to pay you."

"You're goddam right you're going to pay me!" I said. "And you ain't going to talk me out of one thin dime of it. You're goddam right you're going to pay me."

I was talking plenty loud, and the little gray headed guy wasn't making the place any calmer.

"We'll stay right here until we see him paid, too," he said. "You'll not get away with any hanky-panky business right in open daylight."

There was so much noise that a cop showed up and wanted to know what was happening. The crowd all started telling him at once.

"Now what's it all about?" the cop started, talking at me. I pulled a twenty from my pocket and edged it into his hand.

"It's just like they said. I just won thirty-two hundred bucks."

He pretended to cough, so's he could put up his hand and see how much I'd slipped him.

"And we're all witnesses that he won, officer," the gray headed old man kept shouting. "We're witnesses, and we'll stand on our Constitutional rights."

"What do you mean?" the copper asked.

"The Constitution of these United States declares that it is the bounden duty of every citizen to see that the law is observed and that justice is done. That's in the Constitution! And if you don't observe that you're a Red," the little man said.

The cop didn't know what to say to that. It had him stopped.

"I'm sorry, Manny, you'd ought to pay this gentleman off," the cop said finally.

So I guessed that the smooth bird was Manny Gottstein, brother of the fellow who was killed. He suddenly changed. I guess he figured he might as well do it the right way since he had to.

"Gentlemen," he said. "This establishment has never failed to pay off any winner. I will have to send to the bank— but I want all you gentlemen to stay here until the messenger returns, and then you will be able to see that this gentleman is paid in good United States dollars for every cent he's won. That's the kind of place this is, gentlemen."

So we all stood around there for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then Gottstein showed up again and counted out the money. Three thousand two hundred dollars he counted out, all in hundreds. Then I slipped the copper one, and the bunch of people followed me out. I slipped one to the little gray-headed guy. He didn't want to take it. So I said:

"All right. Share it among the others."

That got rid of them and gave me a chance to get away. I left them by the honky-tonks, all down there by the shooting-galleries and the smell of hot dogs and buttered popcorn, all crowded round the old man.

It wasn't till I got home I realized what I'd done. Just because I got sore, instead of fourteen hundred dollars I now had about four thousand dollars.

But I got to thinking, Now it's my money, anyhow. Didn't I give him a chance to get it back?

I went on like that, and first thing you know I had myself convinced that it was my money.

Then Mamie came home, and right off I had to tell her about it. I couldn't keep quiet. I told her I'd worked up from a few dollars. She got excited. She wanted to celebrate, so we went right on down the shore boulevard, down beyond Laguna until we hit a beer joint. We sat in there playing slot machines, and I hit the jackpot on the quarter machine, and Mamie got a big bang out of it. She kept yelling, "I'm a great big curly wolf and this is my night to howl."

It was cold when we started driving home. I can always drive right no matter how full I am. I hate to see a machine get treated badly.

We were driving home, and she said:

"Tell me, my big lucky handsome boy, how'd you get money to start on?"

"Oh," I said. "I had a couple of dollars."

"Oh, my big lucky handsome guy! Making five thousand out of a couple of bucks. I knew you were my sweetheart the moment I saw you. When you came running in the night that guy was killed I knew it. That night when the cops came in, I knew you were my good boy friend. I knew it. I did, right that night the guy was killed, I did."

She kept on like that until I got the willies—her talking about me running in and the police coming in right after me and Gottstein getting killed. And first thing you know I was cold sober.

"Come on, think up another tune," I said. "Tell me the one about the curly wolf."

"Does my big boy want to hear about the curly wolf?"

"Sure I do."

"Really, really truly?"

"Sure."

"No, say really really truly. Say really really truly big boy wants to hear Mamie do the big bad curly wolf."

"Okay."

"No, say it."

"Okay. I want to hear Mamie do the big bad curly wolf."

"Say really really truly you do."

"Really really truly I do."

"All right, hold your hats, boys, here we go again."

Then she started saying she was a big bad curly wolf and this was her night to howl, and every time at the end she'd throw her head back and yowl with a sort of yodel in it.

And we were like that, her drunker than a filly and howling and me cold sober, and us both coming down along the steep windy road from Palos Verdes in the morning, with the mist floating solid over the valleys so's you couldn't see the land, and the ocean gray and with hardly any waves breaking, and my head aching and my teeth sort of feeling loose. That was the way we came home that morning.

Chapter 9

Some Sort Of Love

WHEN I WOKE UP I lay listening to Mamie in the kitchenette. Then I remembered the chain and lock from the bag. I had forgotten to throw it away.

I was so scared I jumped right up and went to my clothes. I felt at the coat pocket. It was still there. The chain and the lock were heavy inside the pocket.

As I was standing there Mamie came in.

"Feeling for your money?" she asked.

She sounded bright and cheerful. I never knew anyone like that woman for not having a hangover, ever.

"Oh, yes," I said. "I was scared I'd lost it."

"I took it out this morning and put it in the top bureau drawer—way at the back," she said.

She went on walking about, getting breakfast, and gabbing about how a man wasn't to be trusted and how careless men are and how they never hang their clothes up. I sat on the bed, watching her in that red beach pajama set. I never knew a woman who could be so cheerful in the morning.

"Snap out of it, big boy," she said. "Come on. I've got tomato juice and waffles and honey and little sausages."

"I don't want anything," I said.

"Oh, come on. Drink your tomato juice. Then you'll feel better. Hurry up—waffles can't wait for no man."

I ate my breakfast feeling sure she must have seen the chain and lock when she went through my pockets after the money, but she didn't say anything. She kept on gabbing my ear off and I got to thinking about how she was drunk when we got in and now she felt all right, while I was sober when we got in and now I felt terrible. I couldn't figure that one out. Women are different, I guess.

I felt better after breakfast, just like she kept saying I would. I got dressed and went out. I went down on the pier. There weren't many people there. There were only a few kids fishing. I walked way out to the end. It was a little misty but the air was coming in fresh, and the waves were rolling in, and it made my head feel better.

I looked at the water a long time, with the pelicans swimming around waiting to steal bait off the fishing lines. Then I dropped the chain and the lock into the water. It went splash, and the pelicans swam over thinking it was something to eat, but that chain and lock had gone way down and the pelicans just looked sort of puzzled a minute, and then they paddled away.

Right after that I felt better. I began thinking that even if Mamie had seen it, she wouldn't know what it was—maybe just think it was a piece of junk like a man sometimes picks up and sticks in his pocket for no reason at all.

If I'd been wise I guess I would have blown out of town right the minute I got that money. But I couldn't do it. I had to stay on account of Mamie. She had taken me in when I didn't have a dime and had spent money on me and hadn't asked any questions. I would have been a heel to run out on her just because I had the money. That's the way I figured it. I didn't want to stay, but I couldn't run out on her with the money.

So I stayed on and we lived high. I didn't care about the money. I was glad to see it go, because I had it figured out that when it was all gone then I was square up with Mamie and I could beat it.

I don't know where all the money went; but how it went! Every day was like payday in the Navy and Sunday on the farm. First off, I bought a little Bugatti. You know those sweet little foreign cars. Can they travel! I meant to fix it up. All it needed was new rings and that would have stopped it pumping oil.

I guess that's how money is. Like the movies say, it spoils you. I never got to working on the car. It wasn't so much I was lazy, but the minute I got it, Mamie went sour. She didn't say anything, just went round looking offended all day. I thought she would have been tickled to see me interested in something. But she sulked.

Finally I couldn't stand it any longer.

I said, -"What's eating you?"

She just sat on the bed and couldn't say anything.

"Just because I buy a little boat to run around in, you act like I'd kicked your mother in the belly," I said.

Right off she started to cry. Then I felt sorry. I thought it was because I'd said that about her mother.

So I said, "Well, I'm sorry I said that about your mother."

"That's not it," she said. Then she started telling me what she was crying about. She said she knew I was going to use the car so I could go running round with young girls.

"You're nuts," I said. "Why, you treat me swell. What should I want to run round with young girls for?"

"You will," she said. She was still crying. "You'll run around with these little floozies! I know you will. Just because I'm a few years older than you are, you'll ditch me. I know you will. Men don't appreciate a home and love and care. They just want to go racing round with young floozies."

"You're crazy as a goat," I said. "I won't ever ditch you like that."

"Then what do you want another car for? Don't I let you have the Buick any time you want? My goodness, you're always welcome to it and never any questions asked why. Do I ever ask you any questions why?"

I couldn't begin to tell her why I had the Bugatti—how I wanted to fool round with it and work on it. You can't explain that to women. You can't explain it to another fellow, not even if he feels like you do about cars and machinery. You can't explain it, and if he is like you about it you don't have to. He knows how you feel. But you can't explain it. I guess it's like some sort of love, that's all.

So I said, "Well, you and Patsy need the Buick. You know, you're both hepped on this Ecanaanomic gag, and you want to go round together sometimes. And if I had my car—"

"All right. I'll cut out going with Patsy if that's what you want," she said. "Honest, big boy, I'll just stay with you and I won't have no other friends. Honest, I won't. I will just live for you and nobody else. I'll always keep you comfortable and happy. Honest I will. I'd do anything for you, big boy."

"That's all right," I said. "I don't want you to give up your friends."

"I want to, for you," she said.

She kept on like that, till I couldn't stand any more.

"All right," I said. "All right. I'll sell the car first chance I get. I'll never go near it. I'll sell it. Now cut out crying and wash your face and let's get out of here."

She brightened right up then.

"Big boy, you're a real sport," she said. "I'll do anything for you. You just wait and see."

She began fixing herself up right away.

"Come on, we won't never argue anymore," she said. "Let's forget it. Let's go to Hollywood and see the Passion Play. Patsy's seen it already and she says it's really elegant."

So we drove over and saw the Passion Play. I didn't think it was so hot.

Chapter Ten

Something In The Climate

PATSY HAD FALLEN like Niagara—for this crazy idea Genter had cooked up. She said it didn't look good for her to be doing clerical work, so she'd hired a girl to type letters and things at the office, and she started going round in a white robe and beach sandals painted with gold radiator paint like Genter had outlined. Not only at home and at the office she was that way; she wore the rig all the time, on the streets and everywhere.

She stopped going out with us to the Nude Eel and around, because she said it would look bad for her followers. I couldn't see she had any followers, but that's the way she was.

Just once in a while she would put on her regular clothes, and we'd drive toward L.A. and stop somewhere and have a party just like old times. Then she'd let out plenty, but she wouldn't drink near home.

Even Mamie started to get all goofy about these Ecanaanomics.

"It's marvelous," she said. "Patsy has it all figured out. It's the biggest thing since Sinclair."

"Yeah—and he didn't get elected," I said.

"Well, he didn't have as good a plan as Patsy," she said.

She kept talking that way, till one night the three of us went out on a party. For once the girls laid off the beer, and I could see they were cooking up something.

Finally Mamie started:

"Whyn't you become a member of Patsy's Party, big boy?" she said.

"All right," I said. "I'm a member, if that'll help."

"No, foolish," she said, "you've got to sign. Look, you sign this blank."

And Patsy really had blanks all printed up, about how the Ecanaanomic Party would bring new incomes to all and redistribute the wealth through revaluation and revolving weekly payment systems. And at the bottom where you signed it, it said you hereby paid ten dollars full Membership fees.

"Ten dollars?" I said. "For what?"

"To start the Party on," Patsy said. "Look, I have it all figured. There are two million people in California eligible to join. That would make twenty million dollars. Think of that!"

"I can multiply," I said. "Then what?"

"Well, lookit," said Patsy. "Each man puts in ten dollars. That's to start the Party."

"You said that already," I said. "Why should anyone give you ten bucks so's you'll have twenty millions?"

"You don't give it to Patsy. It isn't a gift, it's an investment," Mamie said. "Isn't it, Patsy?"

"An investment in what?" I said.

"An investment in the economic future," Patsy said. She was beginning to know all the words and she was learning the tune fast. "An investment in something that brings back a return. You invest ten dollars; in return for that the Ecanaanomic Party works to give each living person in this state a payment of five dollars the first week, and a dollar addition each week until at the end of the 46th week he's getting fifty dollars a week. Just think of that. In the first forty-six weeks you get one thousand two hundred and sixty-five dollars. That's a hundred and twenty-six times your investment."

"Yeah," I kidded, "but what a chance we take!"

"Hey, look," she said. "You'd put ten dollars on a roulette wheel which only pays you thirty-five to one. Why wouldn't you play ten dollars on the nose of the Ecanaanomic Plan, which pays off at more than a hundred and twenty-six to one?"

"Because," I said, "I've got some chance to win at roulette, but I wouldn't have one chance in a million of winning on your idea."

"Nonsense," Patsy said, "it's only everyone who says that who stops it from going into operation. If everyone joins, and everyone votes for it, we will elect all our party to office in the state, and then we've got to have the wealth shared just as we outline. It's sure to win, anyhow. Nothing can stop us.

When she said that she got a sort of holy look in her eyes—gazing way out into space as if she was seeing things we couldn't see.

"All right," I laughed. "If it's so sure to go through, I'll sign up, and you can take my membership fee out of the first two weeks' payoff when you're elected."

"You shouldn't kid like that," Mamie said.

"This is a big thing Patsy's on. It's a mission in life, and you ought to be glad she's asked you in person. Why, if she asked most people who had your money, they'd be glad to put up a thousand dollars to help."

"So that's it," I said. "That's what you're after. You want me to cough up a thousand bucks just to puke away on your silly idea?"

"It isn't silly," Mamie said.

Patsy stood up like she was the archangel Gabriel. "Silly?" she said. "Silly? Are all the followers of mine silly and you sane?"

"What followers?" I came back.

She stared through me, and then threw on the table a bunch of blanks. They were all signed. There must have been at least a hundred of them. I kept thinking that the goofier the plan the more quickly people seem to fall for it in California.

"Well, if all these people have paid ten bucks, what do you want my money for?" I asked.

"To spread the seed," Patsy said. She was talking loud, now, as if she were a minister, and a lot of people stopped drinking and listened to her. She started saying real loud that corruption and mismanagement and crooked politicians had all plowed the ground.

"The time is ripe for our plan," she said. "Discontent and depression have been but a fertilizer on the soil. All the people wait for is the seed—to be scattered far and wide. By mail, by radio, by public address, we must sow the seed of the Ecanaanomic Party; and then, when the crop is grown, what a harvest three will be! Ah, what a harvest! But before the harvest, there must always be the seed."

"Yeah, and before the tree there must always be the sap," I said.

Some of the people started grinning to each other in the beer parlor. Patsy sat down. She didn't seem to mind.

"She means, she's got to have money to print up books and things like that, telling about the plan," Mamie explained.

"Well, she's not going to get it from me," I said. "And that's final."

I wouldn't have given in, either, not if they'd kept chinning at me for forty-eight hours, except that I got a new slant on it.

That night, when we got home, and Mamie stopped chinning and went to sleep, I lay awake thinking. I thought again about how I wished I was out of this town and back into gear with Lois and seeing Dickie. Then, all of a sudden, I saw it clear. The money was the real jinx at the bottom, of it all. It was on account of the money that Gottstein was dead. It was on account of the money that Felice got pinched for that statutory offense. Well, the money had got them. But it wasn't going to get me. It had been holding me in this town. As long as I had the money I had to stick by Mamie. But once it was gone, I would have some peace and then I'd be able to go on my way and get going again and find Dickie.

You chump, I thought. All you've got to do is get that money off your hands and you'll stop seeing pink elephants. Why not let Patsy have a thousand? You've got to get rid of it one way or another, and then you'll come out from behind the eight-ball and be square with the world.

I thought about that, but then I got to thinking that in the morning I would change my mind. You know how it is. Sometimes at night, trying to sleep, you can think things out so clear; and then in the morning you think different again. And I knew I was right—it was like that money was holding me and once the money was gone I was free again.

So I woke up Mamie.

"Listen—it's okay," I said. "I'll let Patsy have the thousand if she wants it."

She just made some noise or other and went back to sleep. I thought she hadn't heard. But when I woke the next morning I found she'd heard all right. She was cooking a big breakfast in the kitchenette and was all smiles and telling me how she'd never forget it and how Patsy would be always grateful.

When I walked into the apartment there was Quentin Genter sitting there, and there was Mamie looking proud and pleased, and on the couch was Jira Mayfair. It stopped me like that—a movie star sitting right in the same room with me. I knew those people really existed, but it seems funny when you, meet them and they are really there. It is as if you've dreamed something.

"Hello, Dick," Genter said. "Greetings and salutations. You know Jira, of course, don't you?"

She said howdedo, and shook hands with me. I guess I stood like a dummy.

"Oh, honeyboy," Mamie said. "Do run down the drugstore and get a couple more bottles of Shasta Water. I didn't know we were so low," she said to Jira, "or I would have stocked up."

"Never mind," Genter said. "Now Dick's here, let's all go out and get a drink. We'll pick up Patsy Perisho. I want Jira to meet Patsy."

So we all piled into Genter's car, and the chauffeur drove us to Patsy's apartment. She was there, wearing her robes and busy writing in a penny notebook, but the minute she saw Jira she was ready to come along. She wanted to change, but Genter insisted she come along as she was.

We drove all the way up to Beverly Hills, and Genter took us into a night club.

"Say, this place is too swell for me," I told him.

"Nothing's too swell for you, Richard."

He had a tux on, and I didn't want to go in.

"Nonsense," he said. "You're my friend, and whither I go, there also thou goest—whether it's haywire, native, or the way of all flesh."

We went to the table and the waiters kept bowing to Genter and pulling the chair out for Jira. And they hustled round and pulled the chair out for Patsy. She was getting so that robe and the gold sandals didn't cramp her style at all.

Then Genter got Patsy talking about the Ecanaanomic Plan, and Jira listened all the time. Patsy surprised me the way she could dish it out. She had all the answers ready no matter what you asked her, and when she'd talk she'd get that holy sort of look.

"Didn't I tell you?" Genter said to Jira. "Isn't it as good as I said?"

"It's heavenly," Jira said. "Unbelievably heavenly!"

"It's really terrific. It's Armageddon!" he said. "Don't you think Patsy's absolutely Apocalyptic?"

"If you ask me," I said, "I don't think she knows enough to spell Jesus with a little g. And her nut plan is dumb as she is. Plain goofy crazy, if you ask me.

"That's it," he said. "You've hit it on the head. That's why it will succeed." He dropped his voice so he had that funny excited whisper again. "You see, I'll tell you a secret. No one is sane here. No one is sane and nothing is real. And you know what it is?"

"Sure, it's the climate," I said, kidding.

"That's it—exactly," he said. His eyes were going sort of funny in the middle, and he was shouting in a whisper. He got real excited. "Dick, you know, you're the only man beside me in the whole world who's discovered it. It's the climate—something in the air. You can bring men from other parts of the world who are sane. And you know what happens? At the very moment they cross those mountains," he whispered real soft, "they go mad. Instantaneously and automatically, at the very moment they cross the mountains into California, they go insane. Everyone does. They still think they're sane, but they're not. Everyone in this blasted state is raving mad. I'm mad. You're mad. So is Jira. We're all perfectly, gloriously mad.

"You know,' he whispered again, real low, "we see things. Do you see things?"

"Sure," I kidded. "I've never acted right since I've been here."

"That's it. It's the climate," he said. "Now look, you see those mountains?"

He pointed out to where the hills went up, blue-black against the darkness, and with lights winding round on the roads like fire-pearls.

"Sure," I said.

"There! That proves it," he said.

"Proves what?" I asked him.

"Proves you're mad," he said. "You see those mountains too just like I do. And you know what?"

I shook my head.

"They're not there," he whispered. "We only think they're there. And they're not. It's just a movie set. If you go round the other side of that mountain, you'll see nothing but two-by-fours that hold up the canvas.

"And you see this restaurant? Well, it isn't here. It's a process shot. All Hollywood is a process shot. It's a background just projected on to ground glass. And the only reason nobody knows that is because we're all mad."

"Why do you stay here then?" Mamie asked.

"Ah, that's it," he said. "Those who are mad think they are sane. And I'd rather have my insane belief in my sanity than a sane recognition of my insanity. And then, too, I like the money they pay me for being mad. We all like money. That's what we all want. You want money. Jira wants money. Richard wants money.

"I don't," I said. And I didn't. I wanted to get rid of what I had.

"What do you want in California then?" Jira asked me.

"I want my son," I said. I let it out just like that.

Mamie didn't quite catch it. "You want a what?" she said.

"A son," Jira said. She had her lips back and her teeth showed, tight together. "That is right. You should have a son. It is a big and fine and brave idea. You are big and strong. You are very strong. You should have a son."

"I would like to have one, too," Mamie said. She looked as if she was frightened of something.

"Indeed?" Jira said. "Then why don't you?"

"They are not truly married," Patsy said. I saw that look coming into her eyes. "No union can prosper without the sanction of God's blessing. It is evil. I see evil lying before them. It can only be removed by lawful wedlock of man and woman."

"Pipe down, Patsy," I said. "Who are you to talk?"

"Wait, I've got an idea," Genter yelled in a whisper. "We'll have a wedding. Dick and Mamie shall be married right tonight. It shall be at my home. We'll have the biggest party I ever had. The elite of Hollywood shall attend. The celebration shall last for days."

He kept raving on, talking so much I couldn't hear anything he said. I tried to think, but I couldn't. I kept saying to myself that Genter knew I was married to Lois down in San Diego, and he couldn't have forgotten it. Yet he was all for me marrying Mamie.

Then I looked at Mamie, and I got to feeling sorry. She was looking at me like she'd cry any moment, and watching me to see what I'd say.

So I thought, If you do marry her you'll never be able to get away when the money’s gone. Then I thought, But it won't be a real marriage because you're married already. And so you can leave her when the money's gone just like you've figured out, because you won't be deserting a wife because she won t really be your wife.

Maybe that is cock-eyed thinking, but that's what I was thinking. And anyhow, things were moving fast and I got so rattled I couldn't have told shavings from wild honey.

I don't know. Maybe it is just as Genter was saying—that something in the climate makes everyone in California ready to cut out paper dolls. Anyhow, I was trying to find somebody to explain it to, but everyone was so busy fixing the wedding nobody paid any attention to me. I was only the guy getting married.

Genter was so excited he like to bust a nut. He had a telephone plugged in at the table and called people up. I don't know how he did it, but around midnight he had everything fixed up, and we were at his home and I was signing papers and a bird was reading the wedding ceremony over me and Mamie and he said he pronounced us man and wife. And by that time Genter's place was full of people- some of them movie stars you've seen on the screen. And Mamie got to crying right as soon as we were married, and everyone started yelling and laughing. She did look funny at that, crying there and looking different from all the rest of the dolls, but I didn't like them laughing. Mamie was only being herself.

There we were married, in Genter's garden with the lights all colored and shining on the fountains with everyone laughing fit to die and Genter yelling, "More champagne. More champagne!" And everyone whooping and yelling and laughing, and we all got more and more oiled and Jira kept saying, "I want to give him advice on married life—I demand le droit de señora"

And everyone started laughing up there with the air all soft and warm and smelling of orange blossoms from the garden, the smell coming right up, warm, from the grass, and the grass smelling of night. There was Jira falling into the swimming-pool and a bunch all going in after her with their clothes on, and then staying in but taking their clothes off and swimming wound and yelling drunk.

I stood there and smelled the smell of water. I could smell even that, all mixed in with the grass and the sweetness of the orange trees all in blossom. And I stood there, drunk and wishing I could die.

That's how I came to marry Mamie.

Chapter 11

Cop Scare

FIRST THING you know the money was gone. I couldn't tell you where it went to, but it was all gone. There had been a thousand to Patsy's Party, and five hundred for the Bugatti, and we'd lived plenty high for two months. We'd bought ourselves new outfits. I had some trick suits and Mamie had a white fur coat which she couldn't wear because it never got cool enough except late at night, and then no one could see it.

The Bugatti was gone. I never rode in it once. I sold it to the young fellow at the garage I'd got it from. I got four hundred for it, and that four hundred was gone, too.

We were broke.

"Don't you fret about it, big boy," Mamie said. "When we had it, we dished it out. It was a good time while it lasted. We've just got to cut down, that's all. We can be like we used to and get along on my alimony."

I didn't know she was still getting that.

"Oh, yes?" I said. "How come you're still getting that when you're married to me?"

"Well, Block doesn't know about me being married. I just haven't told him yet."

"Well, that's sweet of you," I said. "If you think I'm going to live off another man's money you're nuts."

She started to get teary then. "I only did it for you, big boy," she said. "I just wanted us to go on living comfortable together."

"Well, I won't be a pimp," I told her. "I've done lots of things in my time, but that's one thing I won't do."

"Well what do you think you're going to do, then?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "But I'll do something."

"I know what you're thinking of," she said. "I know— you're planning to ditch me. That's what you're planning."

"Oh, you're nuts," I said. "No such plan ever came into my head."

"Well, it had better not ever come into your head," she said.

"Why not?" I asked her.

"Never mind why not."

"And why shouldn't I?"

"Never mind why shouldn't you."

"And supposing I do, then what?"

"Never mind then what; you'd find out."

"And what would I find out?"

"Never mind what you'd find out. You'd find out all right."

She kept on saying that, just as if she knew something. But she wouldn't let on if she did. She just kept saying I'd better not try it. All of a sudden I got a scare, and I felt sure Mamie knew all about me and Gottstein.

I walked off and left her and sat down on the beach, right about the place I sat that day when Gottstein offered me the ten-spot to hold him up. I hadn't been thinking of leaving Mamie. I had begun to forget all about wanting to go. But the way she had talked got me to thinking about it again.

But then I kept wondering if Mamie did know anything. She'd kept hinting as if she did.

It got late and I decided to go back and have a showdown. Mamie wasn't in when I got there. I sat there about an hour, playing solitaire and trying to make up my mind what to do. And then Mamie walked in with the cops.

I just sat there and stared, looking at the two cops, watching them, and waiting for a break. They both had their guns strapped outside their coats. I just sat there, waiting. Then Mamie started laughing.

"Gees, don't look like you was a murderer, big boy. These boys are friends of mine. We just met down in the Nude Eel, and I asked them up to have a drink of real liquor."

Then I saw all three of them were fairly well loaded.

"This is my husband," Mamie said. "And this one is Sam and the big handsome boy is Eddie. And they're both nice boys."

They were both big enough. They took their belts and guns and coats off and Mamie got a bottle of Scotch and we sat there drinking. We started a penny ante game. I played right along, listening to them gab. The one named Sam was a big windbag. He kept saying:

"How long since we went into action, Eddie?"

Then Eddie would say, "You haven't shot a man in two months, Sam."

"I'll be getting all out of practice. I'll have to get into action soon or I'll be all rusty," Sam kept blowing.

This Sam, who was Irish, was getting plenty oiled. Finally he couldn't even hold his cards. And he kept letting his hand fall on the floor. We quit playing, and Eddie started kidding him. He got Sam to tell about the shotgun he kept under his bed in case enemies attacked him, and how he always slept with two guns under his pillow.

They were both windbags, but this Sam was yellow, too. You could see that. He was afraid day and night that somebody would get him. He was a big bag of wind.

After they'd gone I sat there thinking.

"What's the matter, big boy?" Mamie said, "Jealous?"

I was thinking that maybe it was just chance Mamie had picked up with the two cops. But then maybe she did know something. If she did, she had picked a good way to get me identified by police, so's they'd know me.

"No," I said, "I don't mind you having a good time any way you want. But personally I'd sooner go round with a coyote than a cop."

"What are you afraid of cops for?" she asked me.

"I never said I was afraid of them," I said. "I just don't like lice round my house."

"Well, anyone would think you were afraid of them—that you'd committed a crime or something and was afraid they'd find out."

"Say, I've never committed any crime," I said.

"I didn't say you had, did I? I only said you acted like you had. Gosh, what are you getting so flustered about?"

"I'm not flustered," I said.

Then I figured I'd better stop talking. If I had kept on talking two more minutes I'd have spilled the beans to Mamie.

Then I got thinking she acted like she knew all about it anyhow. I kept going back over what she'd said and remembering her words. And one time it would sound sure as if she knew everything, and the next time I could prove to myself that she'd said nothing that wasn't just an innocent remark. And that's the way it went, back and forth. I could prove either way I wanted: that she had to know all about me to say and do the things she'd done, and the next minute proving she could have done and said everything by chance.

That's the way I sat there, not saying anything, and Mamie sitting there in her new dressing-gown, brushing her hair and smiling. Then that got me to worrying over whether her smiling meant that she had me cornered or that it was just an innocent smile meaning she wanted to be pleasant and make up again.

That's the way it was.

Chapter 12

Shoot-The-Shoot

I WAS DOWN on the amusement pier riding on the shoot- the-shoot when the turntable motor went off. The turntable is up at the top. The gondolas come up the ramp on an endless chain which puts them on the turntable. Then the bird at the top throws the lever and the table turns the gondola round so it points head-first. Then he pulls another lever and the table tilts and slides the gondola down to the water plunge.

When the motor kicked dead, we were on the turntable. The bird started pulling the lever and fussing until the people began to get leery.

A girl started to get out, but the fellow said, "Retain your seats, please. Do not climb from the car."

He said it like he was a talking machine or a kid saying something he'd learned.

Another fellow ran up the ramp, and said the same thing. He said, "Retain your seats, please."

But the girl started to get out. She was scared. Then the man said, "You will descend by the staircase, please. Your money will be refunded at the ticket office."

They are always polite like that in California.

I got out and watched the fellow fiddling with the motor. He was pulling on the lead wires as if they were loose. You could see they were bolted in all right. It was just a simple motor, about twenty-horse.

I said, "Let me get there."

All it was, was dirt on the carbons. I shut off the switch and fixed it in two minutes. Then I threw on the switch.

"There she goes," I said. "Put her in gear."

He slid her in gear and the gondola-table turned. Both the guys looked as pleased as if they'd invented electricity.

"Shoot her down," the boss said.

They sent her down empty.

"Gees, you know motors, feller," the man said.

"No, I'm just sort of handy round machinery," I said.

I stood there and watched the cars coming up. The boss went on down again. I just chinned with the fellow at the top. He had been a gob. His name was Al  Smith—just the same as the fellow who ran for President—you know, the brown derby man. He had been on the battle-wagons—on the Pennsylvania.

We stood there talking all afternoon, gabbing about the service and one thing and another.

It was good up there, way high up. There was just a little sort of cabin at the top and the motor turning. The gondola would come up and he'd throw in the lever and clutch to turn the table, and then throw another lever and clutch to tilt the slides and send it off down the chute.

It was lonesome up there, he said. I guess he liked to have someone to yarn with, especially someone who'd been in the service. I don't think I'd had as good a time since I'd got to California, sitting up there and smelling the oil and the funny sort of ozone smell that an electric motor puts out. I forgot all about worrying over Mamie and

Gottstein getting croaked and whether or not Mamie knew about me being the holdup man.

I hung around there till we had no more cigarettes, not saying too much, but just wisecracking about someone who'd been in a car, or saying, "Did you ever know Johnny Reed who was on the Pennsylvania?" And he'd say, "The little sand-headed guy? Sure—him and me got plenty drunk in Cuba one time. He took his discharge and married a dame in Stamford, Connecticut."

We just yarned on like that until we had no cigarettes left. Then he showed me the steps to get down. He said:

"Drop up here any time, Dempsey."

"Okay, Smitty," I said.

He was the first fellow I felt really at home with in California. I got so's I would go up there afternoons. We'd sit up there, way high up above the ocean, not saying much, just smoking and sitting. Once in a while he would make a wisecrack.

This Smitty was a funny guy. He'd only pop off about once every half hour, but when he did it would be a good one. Like the time a girl grabbed her hat and almost fell over. He pushed her in and didn't say anything till the car had gone. Then he said, "That's the way they make angels, lady." It wasn't funny, maybe, just the words, but Smitty could say it and make it sound like you'd want to do nothing but sit there and wait until he pulled the next one.

Smitty said one day, "I ain't going to see you much more, Dempsey."

He always called me Dempsey right from the first because he said I was sort of built like the Champ. I got used to it.

"What you mean?" I asked. "What's wrong?"

"I got to go back to Iowa. My old man's ill. There's only my mother and my sister. I got to go run the farm."

"I don't get that," I said. "You a farmer."

"Neither do I," he said.

"Well, it's tough about your father. But it'll be swell for you, going home to your folks."

"No, it won't," he said. "Living on a farm is what made me join the Navy. But I got to go. And I haven't said anything yet to the boss. I was wondering how's about you."

"Here?" I said.

"Sure, you dumb lug. Here."

"Okay by me."

"Okay then, Dempsey," he said. "I'll tell them you know the racket."

And that's how come I got to working up on the top of the water-chute concession. It was something to do, and it got me away from hanging round the apartment listening to Mamie.

The way I figured it, a man ought to be out working, and there's no other way to keep things going in gear.

Chapter 13

A Plot Comes Home To Roost

QUENTIN GENTER came knocking at our door God knows what time it was in the morning. We woke up and Mamie kept him outside till she put on her new flowered beach pajamas.

Genter came in. He was dressed in his blue coat with pearl buttons and baggy white flannels and sandals. He had a young fellow with him named Charlie Liefson. I knew I'd seen this Liefson somewheres before. I tried to puzzle out where.

Mamie set up the drinks and Genter got talking. It was funny the way he talked. He talked a streak and he always made you laugh, and yet he seemed like he was always looking for something and was unhappy because he couldn't find it.

It was always hard to remember what he said. While he was talking you'd sit there and it would seem like he was saying the most important and magnificent and funniest things you'd ever heard. And then afterward you could hardly remember ten words he'd said.

He just kept that up and we sat there till we all felt pretty good. I knew Mamie was high, because she started acting up with this Charlie Liefson. She was like that. Sober, she was the properest person you would want to meet, but the minute she got high she would act up with any pair of pants that came along. She kept calling him "Handsome," but this Charlie Liefson never gave her a tumble. I almost got to laughing about it, and Genter was watching her too, and he'd keep smiling his funny smile as if he knew something none of the rest of us did.

Then he said, "Well, Richard, how's the scenario coming along?"

"What scenario?" I said. I'd forgotten all about it.

"The one about the man held for murder."

"Oh, that," I said. "I sort of never finished it."

"Oh, but you should," Genter said. "It's a piece of stark Americana. It's raw and vital. It's terrific."

"What scenario is it?" Mamie asked. "I never knew you were writing a movie scenario."

"Forget it," I said. "It was terrible."

"It wasn't," Genter said. "It was the realest story I'd heard in a long time. It was a pure primitive, not hogwash without guts like these Hollywood authors write."

"Why, what was it about, big boy?" Mamie said. "Tell me the plot."

"Oh, I've forgotten it," I said.

"Why, I remember it," Genter said. He was smiling and looking at Mamie and then at me. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren't. "It was about a young American coming over the Mountains in a box car to California to find his wife in San Diego."

"That wasn't it," I said. I wanted to shut him up.

"Oh, pardon me," he said. "Of course not. How could I have mixed it up. It was about a holdup. That was it."

"Oh, a gangster story," Mamie said.

"No, a tragedy," Genter told her. "Brutal folklore, as fine as anything Shawn O'Casey or Joyce ever wrote, but indigenous to our own soil."

He was watching Mamie. She wasn't drinking now, but sitting on the bed, looking sort of blowsy-eyed and serious like a drunk does when he wants to be sober.

"It was about a man, hungry, exhausted from lack of sleep, a magnificent animal, puzzled and hurt by the outrageous arrows of misfortune, just as a Muira bull stands baffled and stung by the first sharp agony of the banderillas that plunge into his aware body.

"Weary and with his somewhat handsome head bloodied by fate, he takes part in a fake holdup which a deceitful messenger wished to stage to rob his own employers. He waits at the appointed comer, and the footsteps of the messenger come, shuttling warp and woof in the tapestry of life and death that is to be woven."

I sat listening. The way he was telling it made me feel goose-pimply. I felt worse listening to him tell it than I had when I was in the holdup.

"Oh, it's a hell of a story," I said. "Let's have another highball."

"No, big boy," Mamie said. She looked like a baby that had been crying. "I want to hear it. It's a good story."

I didn't want him to tell it, but another part of me wanted him to go on.

"There's the scherzo enactment with cupidity leering from behind the shadows," Genter whispered. "And then, we wheel tragedy forward, suddenly lumbering, like a cannon rolling over the boards of a stage. The police appear. Our hero runs. Shots are fired. The messenger feels a bullet tearing into his back, cutting like a white-hot knife over his kidneys, his colon, splintering bone, smashing and ripping all the quivering, feeling, agonized cells of his flesh. Then he isn't any more—only his body there and feet running, in the night.

"Our hero runs into a saloon and hides. Police run in. They arrest another man. They have several reasons for believing him guilty. He is to be hanged for murder.

"And there's our hero, the magnificent Muira bull with a soul flowering like an infinitely small blossom on the desert. How can he save himself and yet save the man in prison?"

He stopped and I didn't want to say anything.

"Well, what then?" Mamie said. She was sitting trying to balance her head straight.

"Well, what then?" Genter asked me.

"I didn't get any further," I said. "I couldn't figure it out so I didn't work any more on it."

"Ah, but that's a waste of life and effort and being," he said. "It is important. You must finish it. That's why I came down here. I waited and waited for you to finish it, but weeks go by and nothing happens. Life is racing past me. I'm getting old—I'm getting old! I can't wait! Even at the risk of spoiling the purity of design I must reach forward one lean, attenuated, white finger, and press the button that makes the current flow again.

He had been yelling in a whisper again, but then he stopped and looked at me like he was laughing. But only his mouth was laughing. His eyes were like he was being cut to little bits.

"Well, let's have another drink," he said. "We will beat down our crying, shouting cells, beat them down with alcohol, show them who is master."

"You mean, we'll get cockeyed?" Mamie asked him.

"Marvelous," he said. "You turn everything I say into the epitomized soul of wit."

We sat there, punishing the Scotch. I wanted us all to get fried. I wanted Mamie to get so boiled she wouldn't remember anything Genter had said. She looked too drunk to know what anything was all about.

I sat there pushing drinks into her and wishing Genter had kept his mouth shut and wondering if Mamie could have got suspicious.

Mamie was putting the old bee on Charlie Liefson but he wasn't giving her a tumble at all. I sat watching them and then I remembered where I'd seen this mug. He was a lifeguard down on the beach.

It's funny how when you're drunk you'll suddenly remember something you couldn't when you were sober.

The minute I thought that I got scared. I thought, Suppose Mamie is the same way and remembers better when she is drunk—remembers all of a flash like I did without reasoning it out, remembers all that Genter said about my story?

Then I wished I'd kept her sober. I wanted to get them out of there. So I picked on Liefson, letting on I was sore he was fooling round with Mamie. I told him to get out. He put up an argument and the people in the other apartments began banging on the walls. Then I got really sore. I clipped him on the button and slung him out on the sidewalk.

Genter ran after him and went hopping up and down on the sidewalk and yelling real high at the top of his lungs, "It's Armageddon! It's Armageddon!"

I went up to bed, and soon I heard Genter talking to Liefson, and then I heard his car in gear and driving away.

All I could do was lay there awake, wondering if Mamie knew the police wanted me for murder.

If I hadn't had a job I would have gone nuts. As it was I went around almost talking to myself. I began to think of beating it again.

I kept thinking that I couldn't beat it, because now Mamie had me on the spot. She had had the cops up and now they knew me by sight. If she was wise, maybe that was her way of saying that I'd better behave myself and stay put.

But I kept thinking that maybe it was chance. When Mamie was oiled she would take up with anyone she met, and maybe she'd just run into those two cops that way.

At home, I'd sit watching her, trying to figure out what she was thinking, but I couldn't ever get any edge on her.

Finally one day at the chutes I got it figured out. I had to find out. I would ask her what she thought of my movie plot. If she was wise to everything, she'd be sure to let on she'd forgotten it. She'd pretend she had been too drunk to remember. I was sure that was the right way to figure it.

The next morning, eating breakfast I said, "Say, what did you think of that movie plot of mine?"

She said, "The one that Genter was telling us?"

"Sure," I said. "That one."

"Why, I think it's a damn sight better than they've got in lots of movies," she said. "You ought to write it all out, big boy. You'd maybe make some money on it. They get big money for those plots."

That made me feel fine. She hadn't pretended that she had forgotten the plot. That meant she didn't suspect anything.

I began thinking what a chump I'd been, worrying like that. I decided to give up worrying and live longer.

I said to myself, You've got a home and a job and this is a swell climate—and Mamie likes to cook, too. And you've got rid of all the money. What more do you want?

I couldn't answer myself on that.

Chapter 14

The Naked Mermaid

IT WAS AFTER two in the morning and I was out at the end of the pier. All the people had gone home and the concessions were closing down. It was quiet out there, except for the waves coming in. You could hear them going under the pier, hitting the pilings like a kid rattling a stick on a picket fence, only slower. I used to like to watch the waves at night. They were never the same.

I was looking down at them, rolling in to hit the end of the pier, when I saw a girl swimming. Only I didn't know it was a girl at first.

Sometimes people do swim at night, but I'd never seen anyone so far out. This girl was heading in from the ocean.

Sometimes I could see her, swimming a slow crawl, and then a roller would swell up and I couldn't see her for so long I'd think she'd gone under. Then I'd see her again.

I kept watching her and I could see she was tired. She was lifting her arms slow, but she kept crawling right on for the end of the pier.

I went down the steps to the little landing where the day- boats dock to take out the fishing parties, and I called to her. At first she didn't hear, but after a while she changed direction and came swimming steadily toward the landing.

I thought she'd never make it, she came on so slow. I could just see her arms coming out and over, steadily, and looking so white in the moonlight they'd sort of flash.

But she made it all right. Then she couldn't reach the platform because it was a good two feet above the water. I lay flat and reached down, and when a wave lifted her I grabbed her arms and pulled her up. When I got her up there I saw she had no clothes on at all.

Sometimes people do go in swimming naked for fun at night, but I couldn't figure this girl out. She didn't act like she was naked, but just sat on the edge of the platform with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. She sat there a while resting, then she moved her hands up and began running her fingers through her hair to lift it up. She didn't have any bathing-cap on, and her hair was long and black and hanging way down her back, wet and stuck together.

I said, "Where did you leave your clothes?" but she didn't say anything. It was just as if I wasn't there. She didn't seem to mind me being there. She began fluffing her hair out and running her fingers through it.

Finally I took off my coat and put it round her shoulders.

She looked up as if she'd seen me for the first time, and said, "Thank you." That was the first word she'd spoken. She looked at me, but she didn't pull the coat round her. I could see the water running down in drops from behind her ears, and onto her neck and shoulders and then down onto her breasts. The water drops went shining across her skin, and when they'd gone her skin was dry again. It was just like when I was bathing Dickie. She had the same kind of skin Dickie had.

I said to myself, This is a hell of a note—you and a naked girl out here.

So I said, "Where did you come from?"

"Out there," she said. She pointed straight out to sea. I got a sort of shiver.

"Well, where are your clothes?" I said.

"Out there," she said. And she pointed again. She spoke like a nice girl—her voice was real soft, and I could tell she was well-educated. But it all sounded a little goofy.

"Do you often go swimming and leave your clothes out in the ocean?" I asked her.

"I had a nightgown on but it made me tired. It stuck to my legs and I had to take it off."

She didn't explain anything more.

"Do you live round here?" I said.

"I live way up on top of a mountain."

"Not out there in the ocean?" I asked.

"No, on a mountain," she said.

"What mountain?" I asked.

"At Palos Verdes," she said.

That stopped me. Palos Verdes is miles down the coast.

"Did you swim from Palos Verdes to here?"

"No. I started out there" she said. And she pointed out to the ocean again.

"From Catalina, you mean?"

"No," she said. "Out there."

When she pointed again the coat slipped off her shoulders, but she didn't grab it and put it on. She just sat there naked and didn't cover herself up, but the funny thing was that it seemed all right.

"Well," I said finally. "You must be just a mermaid. But if anyone finds you here they'll think different. Aren't you cold?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm cold."

"Well, put the coat on, then," I said. I pulled the coat round here. "How do you think you're going to get home— with no clothes?"

"I don't know," she said.

"I could go to the house and get you some."

Then I kept thinking if I left her someone else might come and find her all naked like that. I didn't want to leave her with no clothes, not even for five minutes.

"Look," I said. "Put my clothes on."

I slipped off my pants, but she didn't look the other way. She just sat watching me. Then I took off my shirt.

"Stand up," I said.

She stood up, naked as the day she was born. I had to dress her like a baby. She just turned round and held out her arms backward for me to put the shirt on her. It was just like dressing Dickie.

She got into the pants, but we had to tie my belt in a knot because there wasn't any holes small enough. We had to turn the pants up at the bottom and roll the sleeves back on the coat. She looked like a scarecrow. I never knew my clothes were so big.

"I live right on the beach down there," I told her. "I'll just swim in. My underpants will make it look like I have swimming trunks on. You stay here and I'll get you something to wear."

She stood looking at me, so I dove in. The water wasn't too cold, once you got in. I swam round to the beach, and walked across the street, and went in the back way. Mamie was fast asleep, so I got dressed and grabbed a pair of Mamie's beach pajamas and went back.

But when I got there the girl wasn't there any more. I stood there on the platform, trying to figure it all out. It seemed as if I'd dreamed it—but I couldn't have.

I went home thinking, You must have dreamed it. But then I said, Well, anyhow; you're a suit of clothes missing, and try and dream those back again.

I couldn't figure the whole thing out.

Chapter 15

Heaven On Wheels

MAMIE WAS waving her glass and talking. "I'm feeling happy. But you're not feeling happy."

She was pretty tight.

"I feel happy," I said.

"No," she said. "You won't get happy. I'm happy. Whyn't you get happy? Come on! Have just one little drinkie with your old Mamie."

"All right. Just one if it'll make you happy."

"No. I'm happy already. It's you that's got to get happy.

She was funny, there sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Where did you get this edge on?" I asked her.

"Just sitting home here, all alone. I sit here all alone and there's nobody to talk to. We used to have good times, big boy."

"Well," I said, "I got my job now—and you've got your Party. You're busy on that all the time, and I'm busy down the pier."

"I know," she said. "But you don't have to be down the pier. What you want to work down that old pier for and leave Mamie alone? Whyn't you quit your old pier?"

"Yes," I said. "Why don't we hire a special yacht and go on a trip round the world?"

"No, stop kidding, big boy. Look, whyn't you come and work for us?"

"For you?" I said.

"Yes. Look, you can be Patsy's press representative."

"I don't want to be any press representative."

"Well, it's better than that old pier. And look, we'll give you much more money. Why. Patsy has me on her staff at fifty dollars a week. That's twice as much as you get at the pier."

"What do you do?" I asked her.

"Oh, I'm contact man," she said. "When Patsy's going to make a speech she sends me down and I arrange everything and make business arrangements, and after the speech I sign up new members.

"But we need a man like you. Honest, big boy, I know you don't like the Party, but it's going to be a big thing. You know how many members we've got? Last Thursday we signed member number four hundred. And we've got seven people on the staff now, sending out literature and things. And we've got two new Encampments starting out of town and Patsy's made eight addresses in Los Angeles. They had an article about her in the paper."

"In the Los Angeles paper?" I asked.

"Sure. It's pasted in the publicity book down at the office. It said she was a voice crying alone in the wilderness."

"What she want to cry for?"

"I don't know—it means she's a prophet. That's what this tangle of economics needs, is new prophets."

"Yeah, you look like a new prophet, too, sitting on the edge of a day bed with a glass in your hand and showing all you've got," I said.

"Don't you like all I've got?"

"It's fine. Billy Watson would have liked it, too."

"Who's Billy Watson?"

"A friend of mine. He was interested in figures."

"Well, my figure's all right."

"Sure it's all right."

"It's a good figure for a woman my age. Look, it isn't fat. It's just I'm built solid. You don't believe that, do you?"

"Sure I believe it."

"You're not interested."

"Sure I’m interested. I'm practically excited about it."

"You're not. You're not interested in my figure."

"Sure I am. What time do the balloons go up?"

"You don't appreciate me."

"I bet I do."

"Well, who has a good figure, then?"

"You."

"No, no kidding. Who do you think has a good figure?"

"Cleopatra and George Raft."

"No, somebody We know. I have a better figure than Patsy."

"You're better all ways than Patsy."

"No, I'm not. Patsy has brains."

"Says who?"

"Oh, she has brains, big boy."

"Brains? She hasn't got enough brains to drink willie water from a boot, not even if the directions was printed on the heel."

"Oh, she's smart, big boy. You know, she's just moved to a whole suite in a hotel."

"It doesn't need any brains to do that."

"Well, that's what I wanted to mention to you. We ought to move out of this dump and get a new apartment. I want one with some style. You know—a regular suite with a place where we can meet people. We've got to meet people. And I ought to have a maid—I can get one with a cap on and an apron for fifteen a week. I've got to live up to the Party."

She was so serious about the Ecanaanomic gag it was funny. She took it all seriously, even when I kidded.

She was so funny I nearly died laughing.

But we got our new apartment. We moved over to the Seaview and Mamie had a colored maid to come in daytimes. After that she kept after me to quit the pier.

"It isn't dignified, like, you being down there," she'd say.

"Don't be scared," I'd tell her. "I won't hurt your social life. None of your friends need to know me if you're ashamed of me."

"It isn't that, big boy," she said. "But I'd like you in with me."

"I'm for you," I said.

"Oh, you're not. That's always the way. A man never takes any interest in anything his wife is doing. You never come to any of our meetings."

"I would," I said. "But I never have a chance."

"Well, we're having a meeting tonight and it's Wednesday and that's your day off," she said. "That's a chance."

So I couldn't get out of it. It isn't giving in. It's only that when a woman gets after you like that, I figure it's best to let her have her own way. She will sooner or later, anyhow.

When we got to the meeting-hall the girls left me and I sat in the last row. The girls had rented a mission hall and all around it they had mottoes like: Wealth Shared Is Wealth for All, and The Ecanaanomic Party Guarantees the Birthright of All. Right over the top of the platform they had a photo of Patsy ten times as big and twice as natural. It was decorated with a frame of roses and neon lights that kept blinking on and off. I sat there watching, and all I could think of was what Genter had said that night about everyone going goofy exactly the minute they came over the mountains.

The people came in: old people and women, and sometimes whole families.

Pretty soon the whole place was crowded and people were even standing at the back. A fellow from the fire department was going round, and warning the ushers that people weren't allowed to stand in the aisles.

All of a sudden everyone started to applaud, and I saw Mamie was up on the stage. She started talking, just in a plain voice, sort of joshing the people. She called them Sisters and Brothers they laughed and applauded everything she said.

She would say like:

"Good news from our battle-front to the North, Ten Brothers and Sisters are spreading the gospel of Ecanaanomics in West Los Angeles, and send an epistle to the Mother Fort to say that they expect to start an Encampment there within a short time."

Then everyone would applaud and look happy.

"And this will make the sixteenth Encampment started Since the Mother Camp and our dear Sister Patsy started the great message going out into the world less than three months ago."

Then they would applaud again.

She read off a lot of announcements like that—how Sister This had been to Santa Barbara spreading the word, and how Brother That in Pomona had taken a collection at the place he worked and raised thirty-eight dollars to add to the War Chest. And how Station Something or Other had promised to broadcast the weekly rallies and singsongs on Friday nights.

Each time they would applaud.

"And now, dear Sisters and Brothers," Mamie said. "Tonight is goodwill offering night for our dear Sister and Leader. Let us give freely and well, to show her our appreciation of her unfailing toil in our great work."

Imagine that. I thought sure people would jump up and give her the horse laugh out loud, but they all applauded and never cracked a smile. Those people were so slap-happy they couldn't have told the difference between Thursday and a fan dancer.

Then Mamie walked off, and all of a sudden four girls dressed in white and with sandals on walked out and sang something about "Let fleecy flocks the hills adorn and valleys smile with wavy corn."

That line kept coming over and over. One would sing it, then another would sing it out of tune.

After they were finished they walked off and the stage went dark. Then, when you couldn't see anything a trumpet blew a long call and after it finished a drum began rolling, soft at first, then louder and louder. Then you could see something in the middle of the dark stage. It grew lighter and lighter, and sort of bluish, and you began to get the creeps. All the time the soft blue lights were coming up and the drum kept rolling louder and louder, but the audience was quiet as mice.

Then, all of a sudden, you could see what it was. It was Patsy in her white robe and gold sandals, and they had a couple of blue lights turned on her from the side. She was standing stock still with her arms stretched out and her hands turned up and with her head looking up in the air, like she was Christ on the cross.

She just stood still, not moving, and they started opening up golden-yellow lights from the back of her, making her all blue but her hair and robe like it was outlined in fire. Then they began burning up still stronger lights on the front, and these threw a great big shadow like a cross on the background at the back of the stage.

They kept turning the lights up and the drum kept rolling and then the trumpets started: Tan-tan-tara-tara-ta-ta-ta-ta- tara-tan-tan-tan! By the time they stopped she was standing there all lighted like gold with the blue shadow of the cross, big, at the back of her. It was dead quiet and she just stood there. When the people saw that, they all began applauding like mad.

She waited until the applause was over, then she brought her head down slowly, and smiled. She stretched her hands forward, turning the palms down. She acted like she was a Saint, or something, and she said:

"My dear, faithful, beloved people; may the dear God above us all bless you."

Then they all began applauding again, and somebody started to sing. The piano and the trumpets picked it up, and Patsy just stood as she was and smiled while they sang. It was a song something about:

The Ecanmnomic Party

Will aid both weak and hearty

Po-verty we’ll banish,

When the E. P. Plan goes through.

They sang that to a tune that was like "Yes We Have No Bananas." But nobody laughed. They were all very serious.

Then Patsy got them calmed down and she started to talk. The minute she spoke they were quiet as mice, except every once in a while they'd applaud like mad, and Patsy would just stand as she was until they stopped.

Whatever she said they'd applaud. Like how the Party had grown so much they needed a bigger meeting-hall and She prayed the Divine Helper would find some way of building them one of their own. And how with a strong central organization the idea would go on sweeping and sweeping across the state like the great waves of the Pacific roll to our shores and when the Plan went through everyone would receive a weekly income, and then they'd have so much to spend that the prosperity would be so great the sales taxes would soon be growing faster than you would give out the weekly money. All they had to do to get that was to go out and fight along the Ecanaanomical Front and each member must promise to get two members within a week who would promise to also get two members in a week, who would get two more members, and so on.

They all got up, crossing their hands cross-way over their breasts and promised to get two members. Then Patsy crossed her hands the same way, and lifted up her head to look at the ceiling. The lights started to go down and they all began singing one of their songs. Maybe it was a hymn. It was to the tune of "Lead Kindly Light." It was easy to remember. It went:

Lead, Patsy, Lead,

Through economic gloom,

Lead thou us on.

Thy pathway lies

Toward a business boom,

Lead thou us on.

Though others sneer

Vie place our lasting trust in thee;

For us thy plan

Will soon bring back prosperity.

By that time the lights were all off and it was dark. When they went up, Patsy wasn't on the stage any more. Then the people all applauded like mad again—as if they were either pleased at the way she disappeared or because they liked their own chance to make a noise. Then Mamie came out again and they sang some more, and then they took up the collection for Patsy.

I pushed through the people and went round the backstage. There was a fellow wouldn't let me through and he started giving me an argument.

"I just want to see Patsy Perisho," I said.

"The Leader is exhausted. She sees no one after a meeting," he said. He was very snotty and important.

I was going to bop him one, but he looked so funny and he wore glasses. So I just took one finger and jabbed him quick right over the solar plexus. If you know how to do that, you can set a soft guy on his heels. This bird was funny. He just folded and he couldn't get his breath.

Mamie was in the dressing-room with Patsy and a slew of females and one man. She introduced me to this bird. He had a thin beard and she said he was professor of economics at the M. C. S. University of the radio. He said:

"And what do you think of your wife?"

"She was pretty good," I said.

"Pretty good?" he said. He smiled like I was a dimwit. "I think that hardly describes it."

"Well, husbands, you know, professor," said Mamie, smiling like she'd eaten a lemon.

The females all started cooing, and talking about new encampments and battle-fronts. I got tired and I blew. I was full up of it. I got to thinking again and I felt bad.

I went down the beach and watched the people down there, sitting there with fires going. There were some Japs on a party with some Hawaiians. The Hawaiians all had guitars and were singing. The Japs were getting the Hawaiians stewed. The Hawaiians began dancing. One fellow and one girl were good. They were dancing close together, but not touching; wiggling their fingers round each other like they were stroking each other, but never really touching. They were dancing like the strip acts, only they danced facing each other.

The Japs kept feeding them more liquor till they got plenty drunk.

Then someone shouted, "Come on, Kehoni. Do us a Siva."

The big fellow that was so good got up and started dancing, slow. All of a sudden he stopped and went over and grabbed a guitar and smashed it. Then he started to cry.

He was crying and he said, "I'm homesick enough as it is."

He was plenty drunk.

The fellow whose guitar he busted didn't get sore.

After that they all went home, and I hung around until there was only one fire left down the beach, where a fellow and a girl were wrapped in a blanket.

I don't know why, but I felt awful bad.

Chapter 16

This Girl Is Different

WAY PAST MIDNIGHT I was on my way home from the chute concession, crossing Shore Front Boulevard, when I saw the swimming-girl again. She was all dressed this time. She looked different but I knew her. I could always remember her face. She was sitting in a Packard roadster, not saying anything; just sitting there watching me. I went over.

"Hello," I said. "Been swimming lately?"

She didn't pay any attention to that. She said, "I've been looking for you."

"I was looking for you, too, the other night," I said. "Where did you go?"

"Home," she said.

"Fine," I said. "I went and got you some clothes, and when I got back you'd blown. How'd you get home?"

She didn't say anything. So I said, "You went home in my suit?"

"I've been trying to find you to give it back to you. I couldn't find where you lived."

"Oh, I moved," I said.

I kept looking at her. She just sat in the car, looking straight ahead. She had clothes on, but she looked just the same—as if they didn't mean anything. She had on a blue beret and a white roll-neck sweater and flannel trousers. But she didn't look like the chippies who go up and down the pier wearing those things and showing everything they've got. She looked like they didn't mean anything any more than when she had no clothes on at all.

She just sat there, not saying anything.

"It doesn't matter about the suit," I said. "It was just an old one."

She took a breath, then she said, "I wanted to return it. It's home now, if you want to come and get it."

I got in, and she turned the car round.

"Where do you live?" I asked her.

She pointed down the shore.

"Not out there?" I asked, and I pointed out to the ocean.

She didn't answer. She just went on driving, looking steady at the road. I could see her face by the dash-light. She looked sort of frightened, and I knew she knew I was looking at her.

We went way down the shore and then started climbing up over Palos Verdes. She turned on a dark side road and then into a drive and stopped the engine. It was quiet then, and in the dark I could smell the place, the wet grass and dampness underneath eucalyptus trees.

"Funny, how when you live by the sea, you can smell green stuff so much clearer," I said.

She looked at me almost for the first time and smiled. "You know that, too?"

"Sure. I know a lot of things," I said.

She didn't answer then, but snapped off the headlights and started down a path. I followed her. Now the headlights were gone it was darker still, but I could hear her heels and I followed the sound.

I didn't know how to jolly along a girl like this, so I figured I'd better say nothing.

We went through an archway, and round a long path and then over a flagged walk up onto a big veranda.

"Wait here," she said, and went in.

You could see why they built the veranda there. It looked right through a clearing in the eucalyptus grove, out over the ocean from way high up. You could see the shore lights curving round the bay, and off inland the crisscross of lighted streets, and far away, and twinkling like stars, all the lights of Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

She came back with a little suitcase. She put it down and sat beside me on the porch swing. She didn't say anything, and I didn't know what to say. I think we sat for half an hour, maybe. Then all of a sudden I said:

"I work on a concession on the pier, switching gondolas round. I get twenty-five a week."

I don't know why I said that. I just bust right out with it. She didn't move. She said: "My grandfather operated a bawdy house in Carson City."

I didn't know what to say. She didn't say it tough. Most nice girls I've known—like the few back in high school—never let on they know about those things. But this girl did, and yet it made no difference to her. It was just as if because it was true it didn't make any difference her knowing it and saying it. I hadn't ever known anybody like this girl was. I didn't know what to say.

She sat very still, close beside me, but sitting up straight and looking ahead. Then she got up.

"Now," she said.

We walked back to the car.

"Where are your folks?" I said.

"Mother's away," she said.

She opened the door to the car.

"You want to drive, don't you?" she said.

I did want to drive, but it was funny how she found that out. It was a sweet boat. I started down the hill, just braking down on compression, and out along the shore boulevard. It was a sweet car. I hated getting there. I drove by the pier and got out.

"You love machinery, don't you?" she said.

"I like this car," I said.

I got the suitcase out.

"Look," I said. "What's your name?"

"Sheila," she said.

"When shall I see you again?"

"Must you see me again?"

"Well, I ought to get this suitcase back to you."

"Oh, of course," she said. "I drive past here sometimes. I have driven past here every night since that night. But I couldn't find you."

"I don't get through till around one-thirty," I said. "Then I generally sit out on the end of the pier for a while."

She didn't say whether or not she'd come. She just started the car and drove off, real fast.

I couldn't get that girl out of my head. First off I'd think she was nuts. Then I'd think I didn't want to see her again. But after a while I could hardly believe that seeing her had ever happened. Then I'd wish I could see her again so that I would know it was true and it had happened.

And then one night she was there. Her car was on the boulevard. She was sitting in the car, but not in the driver's seat. I got in quickly and drove away, because I didn't want any of the bohunks on the pier to see her with me.

That Packard was a sweet car. You could push it up to eighty-five and it would still be going sweet with no over-vibrations. I drove way up the Lincoln Boulevard and through Santa Monica and up along the shore route with the hills hitting up high on your right and the ocean down on your left.

We just went along not saying anything, just looking out at the white stripes on the road and watching the mirages like when another car comes toward you and it looks like it's traveling over a lake of water with the headlights all reflected underneath.

Way up past Malibu I parked a while and Sheila ran down on the beach. Before I knew it she was in swimming. She didn't say anything—just got undressed and first thing I knew she was in the water. I went in swimming after her and we went way out. It was warm, and we would dive under the water. When we did that we could see each other all outlined in a sort of cold fire that comes from the phosphorus in the water. When we came out Sheila got a long piece of kelp and went running up and down the beach and dancing with the kelp waving behind her.

I said, "Come on, let's get dressed. Someone might see us."

She didn't answer at all. It was funny; when she was down by the ocean you could talk to her but she just paid no never-minds.

That first night we had been swimming, after we got in the car she waved good-by to the ocean.

"You like the sea, don't you?" I said.

She nodded. I remember what she said. She said:

"Man can do anything to the land. But his domination stops right at the beach. He can't do anything out there. He can't spoil it. His power stops right exactly at that place where the deep waves begin."

When she said that her voice was funny. It sounded like

Genter's voice when he was telling me about the mountains not being there.

We drove down by a barbecue joint and got coffee. It was a slum place. The bird running it jumped round and waited on Sheila like she was a queen. She was that way—the minute she came into,'$ place it seemed to make it all different.

I drove her home and we sat in the car by the eucalyptus trees.

"You can come in," she said.

The house was all dark and I followed her in. She walked through all the rooms, turning on lights, going through every room like she wanted me to see the whole house. On the piano was a big photograph of a beefy bird with a funny jaw.

"Is that your father?"

"No," she said.

"It seems like I've seen him somewhere," I said.

"It's Lamport," she said. She said that as though I ought to know who Lamport was. "He's my mother's friend," she said. Then she walked away.

We went upstairs and she showed me a room with all the walls covered with books.

"That's where I used to study," she said.

"Don't you study any more?" I asked her.

"No," she said.

"Why?"

"They made me stop. They were afraid."

She didn't say afraid of what. She walked into a bedroom and stood there. It was all white and pretty and smelled nice like lavender. It was funny being in the bedroom of a girl like that.

She walked to a photograph on the wall. "This is my father," she said. It was just an enlarged snapshot of a man wearing a derby, standing on some steps outside a house.

"He's a swell-looking guy," I said. "Is he dead?"

"No," she said. "He's living in Nevada. He's a State Supreme Court Judge."

She was very proud of her father. I could see she was tickled because I'd said he was a swell-looking guy. She seemed happy. It wasn't like you'd think about a girl asking you into her bedroom. It was just as if she was showing me a garden.

"Now," she said.

Then she walked out. We went down to the car and I drove back to the pier and got out, and stood there while she drove away again.

I walked home. It was near four in the morning. I thought over everything we'd said and done. Her running on the beach with the kelp; I could remember that plain like a moving picture I could see in my mind.

Then I got to thinking it was funny—about no one being in the house at all this late at night, and her father, and her mother, and her mother's friend. It gave me the shivers.

Chapter 17

The Way Things Were

I WAS WORKING on top of the chute when who should come up the stairs but old Smitty.

"Well, well," I said. "What do you know if it ain't the Navy. The fleet's in again."

He didn't say anything. He just grinned like he was glad to be back and he'd been a long time getting here and all that time he'd been thinking of reaching here. We were right glad to see each other again.

"Well, well," I said. "How was Iowa or Idaho or wherever it was?"

"Iowa," he said. "Best part of it's blown down to Texas. But at that there ain't as much sand in Texas as there used to be."

"How come?"

"I got about half of it in my ears right now."

"You come through Texas? Why did you make it that way?"

"An Army guy gave me a lift down to Fort Bliss. I come through Gila Bend and Yuma and El Centro, bumming rides. Boy, the roads are lousy with hitchers."

It was like old times, except he looked so bad like he'd had a tough time coming through. I gave him a cigarette. He was hungry for a cigarette. You could tell that from the way his hands started shaking when he tried to light it. But I could see he didn't want me to say anything about it.

I said, "How was the old man. He get better?"

"That sonofabitch," he said. "He's tougher'n an old boot. He'd live out of plain meanness. And the better he got the worse he was. I couldn't stand it no more."

"Sure, I know," I said. "Once I had a stepfather like that."

We sat there smoking and not talking and Smitty passed right out and went to sleep. I went on shifting the gondolas round, and I got to thinking about my own father. He was a sharecropper from Alabama and we followed the cotton out West. I can't remember much of that, except I know we had an old Model-T lizzie. It seemed like each year we piled in it and moved to another place. | can remember that lizzie plainly, and how it always boiled coming over the mountains. I can remember it with all the buckets and pans and the mattress tied on the back, going one-lunging up the hills. Some of it I can remember only in spots and some is clear. One of the first things I remember is standing by the roadside one day in a place, I don't know where, and my old man standing there and my brother and mother in the car. I was with my old man, and I know we were standing there waiting, with no gas and no money, waiting for the cars to come past. Only when the cars came the old man wouldn't make any move. It was like he couldn't. He'd try to, then he'd just stand and watch the car go past and the dust streaking up behind and hanging in the air for five minutes after the car was gone.

I remember that place plain as if it were yesterday, because there was a big range that was gold and orange and blue. I never saw mountains that had more color in them. And we had to go over that range, and I was thinking, just as a kid, that if ever we got over those golden mountains everything would be different and the land would be different—like the promised land in the Bible. I guess I am like my old man, because he was always that way, figuring if we could get a little farther west things would be better and all different and we'd get plenty of sourbelly in the beans.

I remember those mountains so plain, and the road going up to them, and the old man standing there, sort of helpless and proud. I can remember the way. he looked, too; like the way his hat was and the way his arms hung down, and when I think about it I can smell the hot-oil smell of that old Model-T and the smell and the taste of the dust when the other cars went past with the old man trying to lift up his arm to flag them and it was like his pride wouldn't let his muscles do it, not even with Mother giving him hell.

I'll always remember that place and how my kid brother finally flagged a car, tiny like he was. The man was sore at first and I remember he said that this was the first state he'd ever been in where the beggars worked in automobiles. Then the old man walked away to the other side of the car like he had to fix something there, and my mother and my kid brother talked to the guy and finally he took the old man with him. I don't remember what happened after that. I can only remember the old man riding away, and saying nothing. I guess he must have begged some money and bought gas, because we must have got over the golden mountains somehow. But I don't remember that.

I've always looked for that place since, but I never saw it again on my travels. I couldn't ever miss out if I saw it again. I remember it so plain.

It's funny how you remember. And I remember after that when we were down near Lawton in Oklahoma, and even today I know just how the cotton gin looked and how it smelled, and I remember the Indians walking on B street on Saturday afternoon and the soldiers from Fort Sill and the trolley line and all that I remember plain. I remember my father working then and being behind the plow and going so fast I couldn't keep up with him. He was a great hand with horses or mules. There wasn't a team of mules ever born that could walk him ragged. He'd outwork any team there was. He was even a bigger man than I am, and I'm plenty built. I'm double-built, but he was bigger than I am even now. And I remember him behind that plow at Lawton, and the way he wore the same hat all the time.

Then we must have moved again, because we were near Roswell in New Mexico living in an adobe shack and there was El Capitan mountain always blue, and up beyond the Sierra Blancas, white with snow all the time, and I remember the way the light was there, very clear and the mountains sharp-edged and the air always looking like there was extra light behind the mountains. I won't forget that year. It was the year the roots of the apple trees hit hardpan and the orchards began to die off and folks were all broke or began moving farther west, and the dams they'd built were no good because somehow the water just went on down into the soil in hidden passages and never would fill up the dams. They had been opening up that country and building towns and spur railroads, but everyone went broke.

That was the way it was. Something always happened; like the season went dry or some new kind of bugs came or the cotton didn't make and the fields all stood brown and ugly as a Mexican puta and we were licked again; or if the cotton did make it was so cheap it wouldn't pay to haul it to the gins.

That's the way things went, with the country somehow drying up and the big shots in the cattle business always stealing the water rights.

I remember Mother talking about that, only the old man wouldn't say anything. He never could get to talking any time. If you said anything to him it was like he took a quarter of an hour to get words together to make the answer come out, and then generally it was too late, because mother would be talking of something else, so it wasn't any use answering. But I remember she was always after him about the water rights. He never said anything but I guess he tried to do something, because he was found dead up by the Assequia, right where it flowed off from the dam, and the Assequia was all busted and kicked in.

I remember running up there and seeing him face down right by the water, and they got a bunch of the Mexican neighbors to come down and help move him. He was a big man.

That's why I've never forgotten Mexicans. They were plenty good to us then. They came round and helped us dig a hole in the high ground to bury my old man in, and they even got their priest to come and say something although we weren't Catholics.

But the sheriff never did get anyone for shooting my old man. Anyhow, nobody worried much about a cotton cropper in those parts, especially at that time. The cattle men were the big shots, and cattle had to have the water. The little guys didn't stand a chance.

I don't remember leaving that place, but I remember being down near Dallas afterward and we were at school there. I was pretty good at school, and most of what they taught sort of took on me. But I found that nothing I learned ever came in very handy afterward in life. But you don't know that at school, and you study what they teach you, and I was pretty good. My kid brother was better though. He was real smart. Mother used to keep after us. She was from Arkansas, but her family came from Virginia. I guess they were a pretty good family. She always used to say so and try to make us believe we were something.

That was before she married Huckman. After that she started having kids and we moved up to Bisbee to the mines, and I quit high school. It was pretty crummy in Bisbee and it seemed like she got tired and began letting things go hang. Not that I blame her. It was mostly after my kid brother got run over and was killed. He was swiping coal on the tracks and got killed right out. He was smart, all right. He could have been a smart man. I remember after that Mother sort of let go and she didn't keep after me much about things any more—like taking off my hat in the house and using a handkerchief and saying please and thank you and not saying ain't and okay, or not putting your elbows on the table at meals or not drinking when your mouth was full. I guess every mother goes for things like that in her kids.

Anyhow, it was cheesy up in that shack at Bisbee, and Huckman was as full of what makes the tall com grow as a man could ever be. Even when I was a kid I could see that. I was glad to get away when he kicked me out and that's how I joined the Marines. I was a big kid and I passed for eighteen but I was only turned fifteen. I'll always remember that Huckman, and I'm always thinking some day now I'll run into him. I was back in Bisbee once but they must have moved on because I couldn't find him in town. I guess I'll run into him one of these sweet days.

I can remember all those things, the places I've been, only at first it is in spots, and then, after Roswell, it's continuous all the time. But most of what I remember of my father is in spots. But I remember it all right, and I remember Huckman. And I was remembering all that and thinking it as I sat up there that afternoon with Smitty, with him being asleep and looking very contented as if even in his sleep he was glad to get back at that chute.

I don't know how to explain about how it was on top of that chute, but it was a place where you liked to be and when you were there you'd be satisfied inside you; like wanting a woman, only better, because when you got it you went on wanting it and never got full up of it or tired of it. And I knew Smitty felt the same way and had been thinking about it all the time he'd been thumbing his way west again.

I thought about all those things that afternoon while he slept. When he woke up I went down and got coffee and hamburgers and Smitty ate and kept looking round like he was seeing if everything was the way he remembered it. Finally he said:

"You know, I was always going to build me a little platform out there. You could cut a little door here and have a front porch, and put a cot out there and sit there looking out over the ocean. It would be sitting on top of the world."

He sounded like he had been homesick for this place.

"Whyn't we do it?" I said. "The crossbeams are solid and we could have a swell hide-out."

He seemed so set on the place.

"Gees, it's good to be back here! I've been near three weeks on the way," he said.

"Look," I said. "This is your job. You ought to take it back."

"No," he said. "Not on your life. I just dropped in to see what the old place was like. I guess I'll blow along."

"I'll sock you on the snoot," I said. "And I can do it, too."

"No Marine ever could sock a gob," he said.

"No?" I asked him." Well, you try beating it.

"Look," I said. "I have some dough set by. You take the job and I'll find another."

He wouldn't agree to that, so finally we decided to split the job fifty-fifty, working every other night. He went down to see Gowan, who owned the concession. He said Gowan crabbed a bit until he figured out that he'd only have to pay us each twelve-fifty a week, and that way he'd save himself the three-fifty extra he had to pay a relief man on my night off.

And that's the way we left it. I was glad to have Smitty back. I had half my days free, and Sheila and I would drive up along the shore and sometimes back into the mountains and out onto the desert, driving all day and half the night.

Mamie didn't know but what I was working on the pier. I know it was a sort of raw deal on Mamie, but that's the way it was. And there was never anything wrong between me and Sheila, so I wasn't cheating on Mamie.

When Sheila would come she would be sitting in the same place, parked on the boulevard, waiting. Sometimes she didn't show up for a week or ten days. Then she'd be there two or three days running.

She would never say why she didn't come. If she was there she just sat over from the driver's seat. Then we'd drive. That's the way it was.

Chapter 18

The Flesh Is Master

ALL MY MIND would let me think of was that Mamie had gone to Santa Barbara to organize a new Encampment of the Ecanaanomic Front and wouldn't, be back that night. I kept thinking that. My mind wouldn't let me stop thinking about it.

When I got into the car with Sheila that night I drove up the shore and then turned right and went over Topanga Canyon, swinging the car round the curves where it drops off straight down at the edge. Then I kept on across the San Fernando Valley and on until we got to the San Fernando mission with all the long arches by the camino real.

It was quiet there in the night and Sheila seemed to like it. You could walk under the arches on the adobe bricks that were there just the same as they'd been laid there a hundred and fifty years ago.

We walked there, and Sheila started making out we were Spaniards, and that the mission fathers were walking there, and that on the road outside there were horses with bells on going past, and Californios on palominos with saddles studded with silver and with bells on the stirrup leathers that hung to the ground almost, and Indians going past barefoot carryings baskets of grain from the milpas and grapes for the wine presses.

She told me all that. The way she talked you could almost think it real and when we got out on the road, there out under the moon-shadows of the pepper trees, I got the shivers, because I could almost hear the bells tinkling.

She was always imagining like that, and she would make it very real. When we started the car again I went real slow, because she said we shouldn't drive fast.

"We shouldn't go any faster than the old dons traveled on the camino real," she said.

"I bet no one ever thought of a thing like that outside of you," I said. "Everyone else goes skyhooting on the concrete."

"That's very sad," she said. "If I could be Governor I'd not let anyone drive past the mission faster than four miles an hour."

It made me laugh, because I was thinking of Sheila being Governor.

I said, "Shall we go home?"

"Do you want to?" she said.

"No," I said. "It's a swell night."

I didn't have to be home.

"Won't your mother worry?" I asked her.

She didn't answer for a long time. Then she said, "She's away visiting."

"Where?"

"On Lamport's yacht."

I stepped on it and we went on humming along the roads, miles over the flat long roads between the palm trees, and then up along by the railroad and through Saugus and then climbing up through the Bouquet Canyon, and up the winding road and under the live-oak trees and into the hills by the reservoir, with the jack-rabbits and the mice skipping across the road in front of the headlights, and once a deer standing still and plain in the headlights, standing by the side of the road and not frightened.

We went on until we got to a jerk town and I had to stop for gasoline. A little old bird came out after a while. He had been asleep. He said:

"Do you want a cabin?"

"No, just some gas," I said. "Fill her up."

"Where you headin' for?"

"Up north."

"Well, you got a long trip," he said. "There's no place to stop this side of Bakersfield. I got some good cabins."

"I don't want a cabin. I just want a tank full of gas."

He filled her up and we sat there. Sheila didn't say anything. We drove out of that town with the dust flat on the roads and got way up on top of a mountain until my ears popped from the change in height. Then I stopped the car. We looked a long time at the valleys. There was only a half-moon, but the valleys were clear as day

We waited, then finally I said:

"What do you want to go round with a punk like me for?"

She said, "You could make anything of yourself if you wanted to. You could be something."

That sounded just like Mamie. She was always after me to be something; but I couldn't ever be anything but myself as I am. I don't know how.

I was thinking that, and Sheila said:

"You are like music by Debussy. I don't know what piece. Perhaps he never wrote it."

I didn't know what to say. I don't know anything about classical music.

She turned on the car radio. I didn't think she'd get anything but there were some all-night stations on playing records. She got some music finally and we listened to it. It wasn't hard to take. It was very noble and big and sort of uncomfortable. It went on for a long time, and Sheila sat there staring straight ahead, and sitting very tense. When it was over she shut the radio off.

"Leave it on," I said.

"No, that's enough," she said.

"Was that this Debussy?"

"No," she said. "That was Wagner."

Then she told me it was the Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan, and how this Tristan went on a ship to bring to England the bride for his brother who was king, and how Tristan and the girl fell in love.

She sat there. I don't know what it was, but all of a sudden I took hold of her face and kissed her.

Kissing her wasn't like doing it to anyone else. It was like being a kid again and feeling that your chest is going to burst and that you can't breathe fast enough for your heart. I kissed her and she lay there with her head back on my arm. Then I drove back to the gasoline place and the old bird got up again and I got a cabin.

Sheila didn't say anything. She went in to the cabin and I drove the car round the side to park it. When I got in she was standing still in the middle of the floor. I kissed her, but she didn't kiss me. I tried to think, but I couldn't. I went to the door and stood a while.

I said, "If you want to go home, let's go. Now!"

"Do you want to go home?" she said.

"I wasn't saying what I wanted," I said. "I said, do you want to go?"

"We can't," she said. "I am chained to my body and you are chained to yours. I thought we could escape them, but we can't."

I didn't want to go near her. I turned my back and looked out of the window. I could see how dirty the panes were.

"I wish I could put myself in a drawer and let someone else get inside my useless body and walk around in it," she said.

"Let's go, then," I said.

"No."

I turned round and she was kneeling down beside a stove low on the floor. Then she asked me for a match.

I gave her a pack and she lit the gas in the stove. She knelt on there.

"Now I am a vestal virgin lighting a fire."

I didn't say anything.

"Be very patient with me," she said.

"Let's go if you want."

"I didn't know it would be in a place like this that I would become a woman."

She looked round, then she put her hands out toward the stove, only it was like she was stroking the warmth. She smiled and looked very happy. It was like she was glad it was all happening. I knew it was happening but I couldn't do anything about it. It was like being clipped on the button and going on fighting and making all the motions and knowing you're making them but not being able to do anything about it.

"Because I, Sheila, do love Richard," she said.

She wasn't saying it to me. She was saying it to herself by the stove.

I went back to looking through the window. I didn't know what to say. I heard her moving and when I turned round she was standing up and she'd taken her dress off. While I was watching her she sort of dropped her shoulders and her things dropped down from her and lay in a circle at her feet. I always remember how they looked in a little ring round her feet and the gaslight from the stove shining on them and her standing there. And then I went to her and kissed her, and she smiled, but like she was worried and said:

"Why do men seek me as a sanctuary? They tremble, and I can't stand their suffering."

"You mean you're only sorry for me, then?" I said.

"I am sorry for all men," she said. "But the others I am sorry for and send away. You I am sorry for and I let you come. That's how I know I love you."

If ever I wanted to do anything, it was to walk away, but I didn't.

Chapter 19

"You Gotta Eat, Too."

AFTERWARD, down at the pier, I made up my mind. I'd never see Sheila again. I planned that the next time I crossed the boulevard and she would be waiting I'd walk up to the car and say hello, and then go home instead of driving around with her. Because now she was like all the rest.

I planned it all out and had everything set, and I wasn't going to let myself slip. It was funny, but I got to thinking then that Sheila wasn't all the crazy things my mind had made up about her, but she was just a girl like anyone else. And I didn't want to see her any more.

I had it all planned out, that even if she begged I wasn't going to see her any, more, and I'd explain that it was better for both of us if she'd just keep away from me.

I had it all planned out, but when we closed down and I went down the pier, her car wasn't anywhere around.

It wasn't there the next night, either. I hadn't figured on her dropping me like that, and I began to worry. I wished she would show up so I could tell her it would be best for her not to see me any more; but she didn't come.

That got me so worried that instead of not wanting to see her any more, I got to wanting to see her worse than ever. Finally I couldn't stand it any more, so I got a bus and rode down to Palos Verdes and went to see her. I really meant to tell Sheila, but before I could start talking she just went over to the piano and began playing. I didn't ever know anyone could play a piano like that, filling the room with music and filling all the house with it so it was like as if we were deep under it like being under water and swimming. And that made me feel she was just like she'd been before.

So I never told her that it would be best for us if we never saw each other any more.

That evening the sky was very red. You don't often have clouds in California, and so the sunsets never look like anything much. But that night there were clouds, and the sun was going down fast; so we sat looking at it from the porch. And then finally there was nothing but the eucalyptus trees showing up against a faint glow and the evening wind started to come in from the ocean.

So we went inside.

"We'll stay here and be comfortable," Sheila said.

I never felt right sitting in her house, ever. So I said, "Wouldn't you like to drive somewhere?"

"I'm tired tonight," she said. "Why don't we stay here?"

I was thinking about that, then she came over and kissed my forehead and stroked it.

"I can't help it," she said. "I don't always have as much energy as you. You are always so full of strength. But I'll go if you like."

"No," I said. "It wasn't that. What about your mother?"

"She's away."

"She's always away. Where does she go?"

Sheila laughed, then she sat down on the rug by my feet.

"Poor Mother," she said. "You see, it isn't easy for us to understand; but she's the modern generation. It's hard for us to understand what that was like. They were all young when the war was on, and I suppose that made them very serious. Then when the war was over at last, they just had to let off steam, and they became the modem generation. All sorts of concepts were tumbling and shattering, and so they were rather helpless in it all. It's hard for us to understand how it was; but if you did understand Mother and what her life had been like, you'd forgive her. That's what we've got to do. Forgive them all."

"That sounds cockeyed to me," I said. "Forgiving your parents."

"Nonsense. It's just as human for a child to forgive its parents as a parent to forgive its children. Wouldn't you want our children to forgive us for all we've done?"

I didn't know how to think about that. So I just sat there, and I stroked her hair. It was so shiny and smooth I could feel it sliding under my hand.

"No," she said. "That makes me stop thinking. Don't caress me. Let's talk."

"I don't know what to talk about," I told her.

"Tell me what you think about."

I thought a long time.

"I think you didn't ought to ever have anything more to do with me," I said.

"That's a silly thing to think," she laughed.

"No, I'm serious," I told her. "I'm a bohunk—I'm not made for a nice girl like you."

"You're not a bohunk, Dick," she said. "Don't you see, you're whatever my eyes and my spirit behold; and as long as I love you and you love me, all the other things are silly and small and petty, and you'll stay exactly as I see you."

"It's too much to ask of love, perhaps. What if you woke up and saw me like I am?"

She got up.

"Don't worry," she said, laughing. "My love for you, Richard, will last quite as long as my life does."

"It gives me the willies when you talk like that," I said. "Gee, you're a funny girl."

"Of course I am. You see, you are beginning to understand me."

"What can you see in a guy like me, though?"

"I see you're brave, and strong, and honest, and handsome," she said.

"Sure, I'm a statue in the museum."

"And all your senses are fine and alert and alive."

"Yeah. I started working before I finished grade school"

"Education is silly. What does that matter? When you're a child you think it does. Look at me. I've so much education—so much—too much. That's it. They gave me too much. My only salvation is you. Someone who is exactly you. Don't change, Richard. Don't want to change. Don't change me. Let me see you as I do, with beauty and serenity in your mind. And don't talk of education that is just reading books. You're more educated than I, because you're more prepared to live in the world, and more fit to exist in the world."

"That's cuckoo," I said.

"It isn't. You'll see. You're a strength that I cling to. The strength of being able to live, and being fitted to live."

"That's a cinch—going on living," I said. "It's one of the easiest things in life."

"I suppose that's why I love you," she said. "Because you believe that so beautifully. I never wanted much to live. But now I know you I do. I want to go on living. It seems important."

She looked so serious I wanted to cheer her up.

"Sure," I said. "But you gotta eat, too."

She didn't smile at all.

"I guess you don't know that one," I told her.

"What one?"

"It's a story. Everybody knows it."

"Well, tell me."

"Oh, no! If you don't know it, I can't tell it to you."

She was laughing again.

"You must," she said." I'm a woman now. You can tell me."

I felt funny about it.

"Well," I said. "It's just a story they tell. A fellow and a girl get married and they go on their honeymoon down at a Southern place he has, and in the morning the colored mammy makes breakfast; but they don't come down. So at lunch she makes a swell lunch, but they don't come down to lunch, either. So she gets dinner ready, and the girl comes down and looks out of the window, and the scenery is very beautiful. So she says, 'Oh, it's marvelous.' And the mammy, she says, 'I know, honey, but you gotta eat, too.' So you always say that line for a joke, like. Now, you made me tell you."

Sheila wrinkled up her nose.

"I think it's a very wicked story," she said. Then she laughed, and I felt good for her. "I shall always remember that story, and just because you told it to me, I'll get you some dinner here."

"Hadn't we better go out somewhere?"

"No, we'll have it here. We'll make dinner and cocktails. Do you know how to make cocktails?"

"Not very good."

"Well, what do you drink?"

"Me? Oh, almost anything."

She laughed as if that were the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

"Well, I do," I said.

I couldn't get her stopped laughing.

"But you don't understand," I told her. "What I mean is, I'm not fussy about it. Beer is okay. Whisky is all right—especially Scotch, that's pretty good."

That made her laugh so much that I got laughing, too. So she got a bottle of swell Scotch from a trick sort of folding bar. I poured one for both of us. She only drank a bit of hers and then I finished it. She said just that sip made her feel funny. I don't know whether it did or it was just part of the kidding. So I finished hers, and then we went in the kitchen, and I made a swell omelet, while Sheila set the table. I kept telling her not to jump around or slam the drawers because the omelet would sink. She was telling me how I was a wonderful cook, and I told her all about running the restaurant back in Oklahoma and what we called the different orders, like two on a raft with their eyes open, when we wanted eggs on toast; and graveyard stew, for a bowl of milk toast.

I told her all that, though, of course, I didn't say anything about Lois or Dickie. But I kept thinking about them, and first thing you know it was like the liquor went dead inside me, and neither of us were laughing any more. We weren't laughing. We were sitting down there at a breakfast nook, with a beautiful thick white tablecloth, and all the fine shining silver, and expensive cut glass tumblers, and napkins and a silver coffee pot and cream pitcher—everything all so beautiful that every time I tried to eat a piece of omelet I'd choke on it and couldn't swallow it. When I looked up there was Sheila with tears running down her cheeks, only she was making no sound. But she was trying to laugh, and she said:

"Tell me again about we gotta eat, too."

"I can't," I said. "I've told it to you once."

"Well, I'd be happy if you'd tell it to me again," she said.

But I didn't say anything, and we both sat there, not eating anything, and both looking at all the beautiful things on the table.

Chapter 20

Prince Of Evil

WE WERE DRIVING up through the Beverly Glen one night when Genter saw us. I knew someone would see us sooner or later. Genter's chauffeur was honking the horn and he cut in ahead of us with Genter waving his cane through the window. I had to pull up.

Genter got out of his own car and got in with us and we drove to his home. I could tell he was excited about Sheila. At first I was scared he'd be sure to say something about Mamie, but he didn't.

Up in his house we sat in the patio and when he was talking he'd keep interrupting himself and saying to Sheila, "Do you mind me using rather a vulgar word?" And then he'd go on talking. It wouldn't be anything rough he'd say, anyhow. Not like the usual things he could say, very raw things like he'd say when Mamie or Patsy were round, but saying them so's you couldn't get sore. It was like he was afraid even the least thing would hurt Sheila.

He asked her how she liked his house, and if she had any suggestions for redecorating it. He said he was going to pull down a wall and make two rooms into one, and he showed it to her and asked her how she thought the walls would look done in gold brocaded silk.

Then he said, "I have one room I am proud of. It is done in white velvet panels with ivory-finished woodwork and the floor of intense black with white bearskin rugs. I consider it very successful."

He showed us the room, a bedroom it was, next to his bedroom. He kept looking at Sheila and asking her if she liked it.

"It looks entirely feminine," she said.

"Ah, it is," he said. "Often girls visit me and I put them here." He stood looking very sad. "As often as not I lock the door there and go driving off to San Pedro or to San Diego when the fleet's in. Ah, forgive me. Let us talk of other things."

He went and got a bunch of things and gave them to Sheila. There was a white silk kimono all embroidered in white silk, stitched so heavy you could hardly see the design. And he kept bringing out other things—he had a walrus-ivory necklace and a jade bracelet and some women's Russian boots made of white leather and trimmed at the top with white fur. She didn't want to take them, but he insisted.

"They lie here unexisting with no one to ennoble them," he said. "And you should have them—they have been waiting for you. You shall wear them; Snegoritchka, the snow maiden, always virginal in white. You should wear white always."

He made her wear them all, and he made her walk in the patio. He ran out to a flower bed and plucked dozens and dozens of big calla lilies and put them in Sheila's arms. He made her stand there and I can't ever forget how she looked all in white with only her hair black and the lilies in her arms with the long stalks, and the yellow pollen stuff spilling down from the big tongues in the middle of the lilies, spilling down and smudging down the white silk of the kimono.

"Now," he said, "You should go."

It sounded funny, but Sheila just walked away like she understood.

"Say, I can't thank you for giving those things to Sheila," I said.

"I did not give them. You gave them to her."

I didn't know what to say. I just went after Sheila and we got in the car. I said:

"Isn't he a prince?"

She looked at me a long time. Then she said:

"He is evil. Don't you know that he is evil?"

"Say, after he gave you all those things!"

She stood up in the car and threw them all out on the road, pulling off the kimono and throwing it away so that I was scared she'd fall out. I stopped the car and wanted to go back and get them, but she wouldn't let me.

I said, "Well, even if he's evil, you don't have to throw good things away like that. He really wanted you to have them. I know he did."

But she wouldn't talk about it any more.

Chapter 21

On Ice

WE WERE SWIMMING in Sheila's pool in the dark. I could hear her coming through the water with her feet going a steady beat. She pulled herself up on the edge and sat beside me and I kissed her hair, all wet. She took my hand and put it on her belly.

"Do you know what is there?" she said.

I could feel her belly, hard and small, and the skin getting warm under my hand.

"It's a baby," she said.

"Are you sure?" I said. That's all I could think to say.

"Of course I'm sure," she said. She seemed pleased. But I began to think very fast and not able to think any one thing clearly.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said. She didn't seem to be worried at all.

We sat there close together, and I couldn't think about it happening. All I could think about was the way Sheila didn't seem to worry; as if everything that was going to happen had to happen.

Mamie was getting ready to go out. She had on her white robe and the gold sandals. Everybody who was any sort of a leader in Patsy's Party wore them now.

"Look, Mamie. I've got to talk to you," I said.

"I've got to beat it, big boy," she said. "I'm late for Battle Council now."

"Well, it can wait a minute," I said. "Sit down."

She sat down and I began to think hard. I knew I had to get it over with. But I didn't know how to start.

"Now look, Mamie," I said. "You've been swell to me. You took me in when I didn't have a dime. And I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it. I appreciate everything you've done, and I want you to know that."

She jumped up.

"So what?" she said. "You think you're going to take a runout on me, like any dirty heel?"

"I'm not trying to run out on you," I said. "I'm just telling you square, that's all. I'm a heel, all right; I'm anything you say. But I want to split up—you and me."

That started her off for half an hour. She called me every name she could lay her tongue to, and that was plenty. Then she started crying. She said how good she had been to me, and always faithful to me and how men never appreciated it. Then she said it would ruin her career with Patsy's followers.

I'll tell anyone I felt like everything she said I was, sitting there and taking it all. But I had to play square enough to tell her after the way she'd been decent to me. Finally she got through, and lay on the couch, face down, and crying. I said to myself it mustn't make any difference.

"Please, big boy, stay with me," she said, crying.

"Mamie," I said. "I can't."

"Oh, won't you change your mind, please?" she said.

"I can't, Mamie."

"Is that final?"

"That's final," I said.

She got up from the couch and stopped crying.

"Okay, then," she said. "Okay. You think you're tough. Well, tough or no tough, you won't get away with this."

"Why not?" I said.

She just gave a nasty grin.

"I'll show you why not," she screamed.

She ran into the bedroom. I was scared she was going to get a gun or something and shoot herself—or maybe me. I was so miserable I began to hope it would be me. I heard her slamming a drawer open and shut. Then she ran back into the room.

"That's why not, mister smart boy," she said. "Now laugh that off."

She slung something in my face. It fell onto the carpet. It was a strip of leather from the holdup bag.

I sat looking at it. I'd forgotten all about it; I suppose it was because of Sheila, thinking about her every minute I was awake. I must have thought about her so much my mind hadn't any room to remember the holdup and Gottstein getting killed.

"Where'd you get this?" I said, like a stupid.

"So you recognize it, do you?" she said. She started to laugh. "Well, the plumber pulled them up after you stopped up the toilet at the old place. And I've got the rest of them. And I've got them where you can't put your hands on them. I got them in different places. I got them guarded by people and you can't ever find them all."

I didn't say anything.

She sniffed and began to laugh real loud.

"Oh, quiet down," I said.

"So, you want me to quiet down now, hey?" she said. "You don't want to talk so loud as you did before? You don't want me to put my head out of the window and yell for police?"

I sat there a long time, not saying anything. Finally she sat beside me.

"Honest, big boy, I didn't want to have to do that. I'm sorry I did it. Look, just forget it. Stay here with me always, and I'll never let on. just stay here like we’ve been and I'll be good to you and take care of you and work for you or anything. I'd even go out on the streets for you if I had to."

"Okay," I said.

"Well, kiss me, then," she said.

I kissed her. She got up and went to the bedroom and washed her face and powdered her nose and then went off to the meeting.

I sat there, still looking at the piece of leather, and I kept thinking that Mamie had known it all along—I had thought she hadn't but she had. All the time she'd had me on ice. And then I got to thinking that it didn't help me any. I kept thinking of Sheila and her taking my hand and putting it on her belly, and I could feel how firm her muscles were there and how smooth her skin and how it was chilly from the water and night air but afterward it got warm under my hand.

Chapter 22

The Simple Problem

WE SAT IN the car, watching the sea and the lights winking out on the gambling-ship and the waves coming up. Sheila was always content and happy as long as we were by the sea.

I had to get things straightened. Police or no police, I was ready to take a chance.

"Look, Sheila," I said, "Will you go away with me?"

"Where?" she said.

"Far away," I said. "We'll get married."

"What about the other women?"

"What other women?"

"You know—the others."

She said it just as if it didn't make any difference. I was going to deny it all, but I knew it wasn't any use.

"What makes you think there's other women?"

"There must be," she said. "Very, very many women must love you. They couldn't help it. You see, I know now what music you are of Debussy. You're the Afternoon of a Faun. You can't help it."

"I don't care," I said. "Won't you come away with me?"

"I couldn't leave my mother."

"Your mother!" I said. "She doesn't worry about leaving you. She's always away with Lamport, on the yacht or something. Say! I know! You were on his yacht the first time I saw you—that night. You jumped off his yacht and were swimming ashore. Did you have to do that?"

She didn't answer me. She sat a while. Then she said, real low:

"You don't understand my mother. She admires me. She thinks she has created me. I am her good self. If I go away she will think I am like she is. Then she will have nothing left."

"Well, what do you want to do?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said.

"Well, you can't go on like you are. What will your mother say then?"

"I don't know. We can't help it."

I got a little sore, just sitting there and saying we couldn't help things. We could help it, and I was going to do something about it.

I didn't know what I could do, but I had to do something. It was only Sheila that mattered. That's all I could think of. Sheila—and that when I was with her always it was like being a kid again and not being able to get my breath and inside me just like that Tristan music we listened to on the radio that night.

Smitty had finished up the private porch on top of the chute. He'd put in flooring and we'd got a canvas army cot where you could lie and look right out over the ocean for miles.

I was sitting up there when Genter showed up. He sat on the cot beside me and we could hear the cars coming up and Smitty throwing the gears to turn them round.

"How'd you get up here?" I asked him.

"The aerie of the eagle," he said. "How is the Goddess Diana?"

"Sheila?" I said. "Look. We want to get married."

"I see," he said. "You are the body; she is the soul. It is the harmony of perfect complements. And so it should be."

"That's all right," I said. "But there's Mamie—and Lois. Lois doesn't worry me much any more, but there's Mamie."

"Ah, yes, of course there's Mamie," he said. "But since you have a wife Mamie is not your wife so your moral responsibility there is nil. Don't consider it. The real harmony of perfect love such as flowers between you and Sheila needs no book, bell, candle, rite, or document. It blossoms and is."

"That may be okay. But I want to marry her."

"Then why not?"

I thought a while.

"Well, Mamie has something on me."

"Ah, I see," he said. He got real excited and his voice went funny. "The curve descends and the threads plait to the design. There is a design. I knew there would be." He turned to me. "And what can I do?"

"Well," I said. "I've thought till my head can't think any more. I thought maybe you could suggest something."

"I'm sorry," he said. "You see, I daren't. My effeminate hand would ruin the rugged texture and destroy the stark boldness of the primitive pattern. You alone must think."

"Christ, I've thought," I said.

"Well, think some more," he said. "It is a simple plot. You, A, love Sheila, B, but are barred from the goal by Mamie, C. How can you remove C from the structure? That's all you've got to decide."

Then he got up and smiled and shook hands with me.

"Come and see me soon," he said.

He went down the steps and I sat looking out over the ocean. Right then it came into my mind what I had to do. But I didn't let on even to myself.

Chapter 23

The First Try

I GOT MAMIE to take a day off from the Ecanaanomic work. "But it's going over big now," she said. "We have ninety- seven Encampments in California and some now even out in Iowa and Nevada. We're going to plan a campaign to build a meeting-hall for five thousand people in Los Angeles alone. It's a big thing."

"I know," I said. "But you'll work yourself into the grave if you don't watch. You've got to keep your health, haven't you?"

"Sure, I’ve got to keep my health all right."

"Well, then."

"Well, then, what?"

"Well, then, what? You deserve a day off, that's well- then-what. You need fresh air—a sea ride. Look, whyn't we run over to Catalina this afternoon and have all day tomorrow there? It will do you good."

At first she wouldn't but I kept at her. So finally she got all fixed up, wearing a sweater and slacks instead of her robe and sandals, and we caught the Catalina boat.

We kept walking round the deck and going to the back rail, and I'd stand with her, looking at the water, but it was daylight and almost all the time there'd be someone walking round the deck or standing near us.

When we got to Catalina we went to the hotel. Mamie didn't want to go out that evening. She was set on dancing, so all the evening we danced. I thought the evening would last forever. Then we went to bed.

Next morning was warm. So I said:

"What a swell day! Let's take a swim."

I thought she was going to say no, but she didn't. She said, "If you want to."

"No, not if you don't wait to," I said. "Don't you like swimming?" "It's okay if you like it" she said.

"Well, you never go down the beach," I said. "You'd ought to. The sun will do you good."

We got suits and went down on the beach. Then I got her to walk way along with me to where there were rocks. I could see the rip tide going out and the undertow pulling plenty strong.

Finally I found a good place. I waded in and said:

"Come on, take a dip, Mamie. It's warm."

"Isn't there an undertow there?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Look, I can stand straight. I'll hold you up. Come on in."

She started in, and I looked way down the beach. There was no one around at all. It was so lonesome the sea gulls were sitting on the sand.

Come on out," I said. "You can swim a bit, can't you?"

"Pretty good," she said.

A big breaker came in, and I turned to dive through it. If they hit you standing you get thrown about pretty badly, especially against rocks.

When I came up the other side, I saw Mamie's head. I swam over, but I couldn't quite get to her. Another big one came, and when I came up through it again, Mamie was out ahead of me. She was swimming steadily, and going out with a slow eight-beat. I went after her, and she went right out, nearly a quarter of a mile I should say. Then she turned and headed back. When we got to land, I was all in. That water gave me a pretty bad beating, and I'm no dunce at swimming.

But Mamie wasn't even puffing. You know how plump women are sometimes in the water? That's the way Mamie was.

She lay on the sand and just took a sunbath. Once in a while I'd think she was laughing. I had to say something.

"You've got a pretty good crawl," I said finally.

"Yes," she said. "When I was a girl I was good. I was the first woman to do the round-Manhattan swim. I was thirty-nine hours in the water. That's what sickened me on swimming. It sickened me so much on swimming I don't care for it any more. But it was pretty good today. I think I'll have to take it up again."

She lay there, just smiling like she was happy remembering about it all when she was younger.

We went back to the hotel and packed. On the boat going back Mamie would keep going to the stern and looking at the wake. It was fairly dark and there was no one around, but I didn't make a move. That woman could have swum all the way from Catalina to the coast.

Chapter 24

She Just Sat There

I WAS LOOKING to see if Sheila had showed up when Genter waved to me. I went to where his car was parked and got in. He was dressed in the funniest get-up I'd seen him in yet. The chauffeur started up.

"I've just walked out on a fancy dress party," Genter told me. "Do you know who I'm supposed to be?"

"Don't tell me," I said. "Let me guess. You're Burton Schutt."

"Who's he?" Genter said.

"I don't know," I said. "I just heard someone say he's the best architect in Hollywood."

"That's interesting," Genter said. "I must remember that. But that isn't it. Who am I?"

"You tell me," I said.

He said, "I'm Dr. Crippen."

"Okay, Dr. Crippen," I said. I could see he was pretty drunk. "What do we do now?"

He started that whispering again like he did sometimes.

"We're going to put quick lime on the body of Ethel Le Neve, too. He forgot to do that."

That got me thinking about Mamie again and how I'd had it in my mind to drown her. After that I didn't talk. He went on gabbling, and when he got to his house he brought out Scotch and soda and we started in drinking. He was drinking and watching me, then he said:

"How is the triangle situation?"

"It's still there."

He seemed to get mad.

"How can you bear it? Don't you want to clench your fist and smash life in the face, beat its inane illogicalities to a pulp?"

"I guess I do, but I can't do anything."

"But you could, if you'd think," he said.

"Look, Genter. I've thought and thought till my goddam mind is purple, but thinking don't change anything and wishing don't put whiskers on a statue. I can't think any more."

"Well, let's forget it and have a good time."

We sat quite a while and did some plain and fancy drinking and got a real edge on. Genter got another bottle of Scotch. I remember that. Then he got up and said he wanted to show me something. We went to a room he'd never shown me before. He unlocked the door. It was like a museum inside.

"This is just a little hobby of mine," he said.

"What're all those things?"

"Just odds and ends. They're not important."

"What's the idea of the hooks on the whip?"

"Oh, the old monks used to use those to castigate the unruly flesh."

He got the whip and started to swing it. He nearly clipped me a clout with it. He was pretty drunk.

I said, "Look out with that thing. You're too pie-eyed to swing that."

"I am not."

"All right, you're not. But put it up anyhow."

He seemed like he remembered something.

"Oh, yes," he said.

He calmed down and showed me some other things—an iron thing he said was a chastity belt the Crusaders used to lock on their wives. What an idea that was! And he had a knife he said was used in the murder of Dorothy Smith when the guy cut her up and stuffed her full of sawdust. And then he got to a shelf all full of bottles. He said they were all deadly poisons and he told me what poisons had been used by what famous murderers.

All the bottles had labels with letters on them, and he began telling me about how they worked. He said oxalic acid would kill in a few minutes, and cantharides got people all excited before it killed them, and strychnine made a guy's head jerk all around before he died, and a spoonful of Prussic acid would kill anyone, and belladonna gave you a laughing jag before you died.

"This is the quickest poison," he said. "This is the wolfsbane or blue rocket or monkshood."

"What does it say on the bottle?" I asked him.

"Acontium Napellus," he said. "It's aconite. Just one- sixteenth of a grain of this has been known to kill a man."

"If you wanted to pop a guy off that would be the stuff."

"Exactly," he said, and his voice got funny and he whispered like he did sometimes. "But, of course, most poisons are easily identified by the doctor or coroner after death. The easiest one to fool them, and one of the commonest of poisons is this—arsenic."

He held up a bottle with white powder in it. I saw it said on the label just As. I was making myself get sobered down so I could remember the label.

"Just a small dose of this is enough to kill," he said. "Ah, but I bore you with my hobby?"

"No. Go ahead. I want to hear about it."

"Well, after they take this, the symptoms are exactly like inflammation of the stomach. Many doctors diagnose the death as due to cholera. It has all the appearances of cholera."

"How do you know all that?"

"Oh, just a hobby of mine."

He stood still a while. I wondered what he was staring at. Then he said:

"Did you hear someone at the front door?"

"No," I said. "I didn't hear anything."

"I'll just go look to make sure."

The moment he was gone I got the bottle off the shelf. It was marked As. I remembered that. I shoved the bottle in my pocket and walked out quickly. As I came out I met Genter.

"No one was there," he said. "Well, let's do something more cheerful than look at my silly collection. Let's have a drink."

He switched off the lights and locked the door. He didn't notice the bottle was gone.

"I guess I'd better beat it right home," I said. "I'm tired."

He said he was sorry I had to hurry, and then he called his chauffeur to drive me home.

Next day I was sobered up some and I wished I hadn't taken the bottle. I decided I wouldn't do anything about it, but then I got, to thinking of Sheila. I hadn't seen her for nearly a week. I couldn't go on not seeing her, and yet I didn't want to see her until everything was fixed.

When Mamie went out to the Ecanaanomic office, I went down the comer and bought two bottles of Scotch and put them in the kitchenette. Then I went to the pier.

All that night at the pier I thought I wouldn't do anything about the bottle. I kept feeling it in my pocket. I thought I wouldn't do anything about it.

After we closed the pier I went home. Mamie was in bed, reading. I pretended I had a big edge on.

"Where'd you get it, big boy?" she said.

"Get what?" I said. I was pretending to be indignant. "I haven't had a single drink."

"Not a single one," Mamie said. "You've had double ones."

"Well, you used to like a drink once in a while until you got that important work to fill up your life. And now we never have any good times any more like we used to. I've got to drink alone. And you know it's drinking alone that makes drunkards."

"Is that what does it?"

"Sure—drinking alone."

I went to the kitchen and got the Scotch and two glasses and a pitcher of water.

"Come on, Mamie," I said. "Let's just have a little one."

"Okay," she said. And she got out of bed.

We sat there drinking, and Mamie began to get an edge on. She was telling me all about the Pep Paper that they'd started for the Party. The P.E.P. was her idea—it stood for Perisho's Ecanaanomic Party.

I kept wondering how to get the stuff into her drink.

Suddenly she said, "Gee, I'm hungry."

"What's the use of starting a fire and putting it out again?" I said.

"It'll be fuel for a new fire," she said.

She went to the kitchen to the icebox. Quick I took the bottle and shook some of the white stuff into her glass and swished it round. I made it a good big shot.

She came back with what was left of a roast chicken and some French bread and butter.

"Gees, I like cold chicken," she said.

She kept eating the chicken and bread, but I thought she'd never take the drink. I began to get scared she was wise, and I could see now that the powder had sort of collected in the bottom of her tumbler.

I wanted to get the tumbler out of the way, but suddenly she lifted it and drank it nearly all down.

"Let me fix you another," I said. I grabbed it quick before she could look in the bottom of it, and poured out another stiff drink. Then I swashed Shasta Water from the siphon into it. It all mixed up.

I sat watching her, but she didn't seem to be any different. She went right on gabbing, and pretty soon she took the next drink and downed that. And she still was all right.

I thought, Maybe with this poison you have to give big doses.

But God knows I'd given her a big enough dose.

She sat there, looking babyish like she did when she drank, her face all fat and flushed.

"You aren't thinking of leaving me any more, big boy, are you?" she asked.

"Is that nice, right when we're having a good time? Pulling stuff like that?"

"I'm not pulling anything. I was just saying. See how nice it is when you're nice to me? And if you're always good and don't make any breaks I'll never do anything about it, as long as you're nice to me, I won't."

"Okay," I said. I began to sweat all over, because she wouldn't die.

She began punishing the liquor and soon was real drunk. But that was all.

Suddenly she burped. Then she said, "My God, I'm thirsty. Get me a glass of beer, big boy."

I went to the kitchen. I knew now I'd have to finish her. I opened a bottle of beer and poured it in a glass. I put in nearly all the bottle of powder, and stirred it all up. It looked funny, but I was hoping she was too drunk to notice.

I took it back, and she drunk it right down. I sat there watching her, waiting for her to fall dead.

That woman just sat there.

And all of a sudden I knew it was no use. You just couldn't poison that woman. She should have been dead ten times over, but she just sat there. I was running sweat, and I thought I'd go nuts. It was like that woman wasn't human. She had the Indian sign on me all the time.

She just sat there, punishing the liquor.

I don't know why it was Mamie didn't die from that poison. But she didn't. Right the next morning she was moving round bright and early. I never saw anything like that woman.

To rights she should have been dead; but here she was awake, with not even a hang-over, and singing one of the Ecanaanomic songs about "the very thought of you, reminds us what to do, to make our Ecanaanomic Party's plans go through," and cooking breakfast.

I said, "How do you feel?"

"Okay," she said. "I was pretty sick last night, though, after you passed out."

"I'll bet it was the beer you drunk," I said.

"I guess. I should know better than to mix my drinks. But my God, I was thirsty."

"But do you feel all right now?"

"Sure. The beer made me sick, but I got it all off my chest last night, and then I took a good dose of milk of magnesia. You ought to try that, big boy. There's nothing like milk of magnesia for settling your stomach."

She kept on talking, and I couldn't eat any breakfast. All I could think of was that there she was walking around and kidding, and she ought to be dead.

I couldn't stand it. I had to get out. I went down the beach and sat there, watching the low tide. If I'd had any more stuff in the bottle I'd have taken it myself.

I thought maybe it was a rotten poison that had got old and didn't work any more. Or maybe it wasn't poison and Genter had been kidding me. I didn't know. Kidding or not, I figured I ought to try to get that bottle back without him knowing it. But' I thought that it didn't matter now, because the poison hadn't worked and it didn't matter much about getting the bottle back.

But I got thinking about Sheila and her putting my hand on her belly. I was always thinking that. Right then if there'd been any poison left and I'd known for sure it was real poison I would have taken it myself.

I couldn't stop thinking about Sheila.

Chapter 25

Love Letter

IT HAD BEEN my night to work, and I sat up on top of the chute long after the place closed.

I didn't want to go home, I couldn't go back there and see Mamie, and then lay there listening to her breathing in her sleep.

I just sat there on the cot, looking out over the darkness of the ocean and now hearing the waves plain. I had got like Sheila. I was never tired of looking out there and watching the sea and the lights on the gambling-ship. If was never the same, the sea. It was always changing.

Then I heard some feet coming slow up the wooden steps, and Mamie was there.

"Hello," I said. "How did you get up here?"

'"Walked," she said. "I was parked down the end of the pier and everyone came off and you didn't, sol figured you must still be up here. What are you doing?"

I thought, Now she's begun to spy on me. She's on to me, and she's going to watch me every minute.

I said, "I'm just getting a little fresh air."

"I should think you get plenty of that up here."

"Well, I look at the view, too."

"Say, it is a swell view at that. Move over."

She plumped down beside me on the cot and we sat there, with me thinking that I would give anything if it were Sheila beside me and not Mamie. Thinking of Sheila made me hate Mamie. I hated the way she breathed loud from coming up the stairs, and the way her voice was high and sort of hard, and the way her face would get red and shiny from sweat.

And I wished and wished to God it was Sheila beside me, Sitting quiet like she often did, arid just being.

If it had just been me alone, I could have taken it on the lam and taken a chance on the caps ever finding me for the holdup even if Mamie did tip them off. But I had to stay on account of Sheila. That was funny. It was because of Sheila that I was going on staying with Mamie. I had to stay, and all the time the only way I wanted it was to be married really to Sheila. If Mamie weren't there I could get a divorce from Lois any time. Or I thought I could.

I was thinking all that and answering Mamie in an offhand way. Finally she got up.

"Well, let's get home," she said.

She got up and walked along by the rail.

When she did that I knew all of a flash what I had to do. I sat there not daring to think about it, and then Mamie went in through the little door.

She called, "Come on, big boy!"

I followed her, thinking what a fool I'd been to miss my chance.

Then she said, "It was Swell up there."

But I had my mind made up. I knew there'd be another chance.

I lay there that night listening to Mamie snoring. I stood it as long as I could and I began to get the jeebies. I got up and went over to her bed. She was sleeping with her mouth open. I thought how I could choke her, but then I knew if I did they'd be sure to find out afterward.

I just stood there, looking a long time. She didn't wake up.

I was. afraid I'd do something anyhow. So I went into the front room and shut the door so I wouldn't see her. I got a pencil and paper and started writing to Sheila. I, tried to write, how I loved her, but I couldn't. I couldn't do it because I could hear Mamie breathing. All I could write was:

I would like to see you again and I would like to see you as soon as you get this letter. I have something important to tell you. You must come. I want to see you very much.

That's all I wrote. Mamie had some stamps in the drawer. I slipped on a bathrobe and went down the corner and mailed the letter, special delivery.

When I got back Mamie was just sleeping the same as ever. But I felt better because I'd written Sheila, even though I couldn’t get to sleep.

Chapter 26

Like Whisky And Mountains And Music

THE NEXT DAY was my day off. I got up early. Mamie was still asleep. I went up to the hide-out and began to figure it all out. I got a wrench and began working on the bolt that held the upright of the railing. The nut was so tight I could hardly move it.

Smitty came out and said, "What are you doing?"

"That was a little bit loose and I was just tightening it up," I said.

"Gosh, I thought I put it in so tight I froze it."

I pretended I was tightening it up. He said:

"Gosh, if that railing gave way and a guy went over he'd make a nice splash down there on the pier. There'd be nothing but a grease spot and ten ounces of spit."

He kept talking like that and I wished he would stop. But he kept on until he heard a gondola coming up, so he ducked back in to throw the switch.

Then I went downtown and bought a railroad ticket to Frisco. I wanted to get Sheila out of the way so's she wouldn't hear about anything. I got the ticket and went back up on the chute.

After that I got to thinking about what would happen. Smitty had seen me with the wrench—but if anyone found out that would show that the railing was really shaky. It would help me out. I sat there thinking.

It came lunch time, but I couldn't eat. I lay back on the cot, smoking and worrying about how I'd work it. I began trying to figure out ways I could get Mamie up there without her being suspicious.

I woke up and I knew I'd fallen asleep and Smitty was shaking me.

"Hey, Dempsey." Smitty was shouting. "Hit the deck. There's someone here to see you."

I was still half asleep and dopey from the sun, and somehow I was thinking it was Mamie. Then I opened my eyes and I saw it was Sheila. She was standing there, just smiling at me. I lay there, my eyes open, just seeing her face above me smiling. From where I lay her face was set against the sky, all back of her blue and her head there and her wearing a blue beret and her hair black and her eyes smiling.

When Smitty ducked inside, she sat beside me and just stroked my head and smiled like I was a baby.

"How did you get up here?" I said.

"I found the way. I got your letter and you said you wanted to see me right away. So I came."

"I wanted to see you."

"I know. What's the matter? Tell me."

"Nothing's the matter. Nothing."

She stroked my head.

"You mustn't worry about me," she said. "I don't matter. You must just be happy."

"Look, I ought to marry you, Sheila."

"Hush."

"Look, here's a ticket to Frisco."

"What for?"

"Look, you go up there a few days. Then I'll come up and we'll get married."

She wouldn't take the ticket.

"No," she said, very softly. "We'll never be married. It would never do. Things would happen. To us. We won't be married."

"But, gosh, Sheila, what about you?"

"I tell you it doesn't matter. I won't be a worry to you. I won't have you suffer. It was a great adventure—a very very great adventure. Now, you look tired—you look so, tired. Just sleep and let me watch you."

She began stroking my head again.

"I can't sleep."

"Yes, you can."

She knelt beside the cot and kissed my eyes and made soft noises as if I was a baby. She kept kissing my eyes so I had to keep them shut. I could smell her hair, close to me and smelling sweet.

"Just tell me once you love me," she said.

I held her head close and I said:

"I do love you. I love you like I can hardly breathe when I see you, and like hot whisky coming down my throat and into my lungs and heart."

"Like whisky?" she said. I could hear her laughing like she was pleased.

"Oh, I'm no good at that stuff, Sheila, really."

"Tell me some more."

"I love you like you was music—that music on the radio that night, and like you played on the piano."

"Like music? And what else?"

"Well, I love you like those shadows on the road that night by the mission."

"My, you do very well as a lover."

"I don't, I'm not good."

"Yes, you are. You're my best lover."

"No, I'm no good at it."

"You are. Tell me some more things you love me like."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not. I want to hear. I love to hear."

"You want some more?"

"Everything you can think of."

"Well, I love you like mountains that are blue and gold, and like the smell of the sea up here, and like the bugle playing taps late at night."

"And like whisky, too."

"Sure, like whisky, too. The first drink. And like getting up in the morning after it's been raining but now the sun is out, and like being in the forest where the big trees are, and like a Rolls Royce engine. I love you like all those things."

"Why, you're wonderful."

"I'm no good at it."

"You are. You're a poet, really. I shan't ever forget. Never, ever."

"I wish I was better at it."

"Oh, you're my very best lover. Do say some more, please. I'll never ask you again."

I held her head tight against my neck as she knelt beside the cot, and I tried to tell her how I loved her.

"I love you mornings and nights," I said. "I think all night about you, I can't sleep for thinking and figuring and worrying."

"There, there," she said, like I was a baby.

She had been kissing my eyes again, then she kissed my mouth and then my forehead, and I felt I was falling asleep and I never wanted it to change.

I woke and saw the guard rail was missing.

I looked over the edge and saw people running and heard them screaming and saw them, tiny, below, looking up, and heard a police whistle and saw something lying there.

And I went running down the steps, jumping down and swinging round the wooden uprights to make the corners, jumping down whole flights and running into someone trying to stop me from getting there, and fighting to get down to the bottom of the steps to get to Sheila and fighting till they beat me cold.

That's how afterwards they said I tried to escape after the crime and battled police for five minutes until subdued. I wasn't trying to escape. All I wanted to do was to get to Sheila and tell her I was sorry I hadn't told her more how much I loved her when she asked me; but I never got to Sheila at all. I never ever saw her at all after that.

Chapter 27

Tiger Man

THOSE COPS sweated me but I wouldn't say aye, yes, or no. I am plenty tough, and I didn't care what they did. I tell you, all I could think of was Sheila and I hoped they would kill me. I didn’t care.

One time I got sore and went into action. I saw a paper afterward and it said how the tiger man had attacked four police and tried to escape. That was what they were calling me—the tiger man. I didn't try to escape. I just cleaned up the room till some more coppers came in and they got me down. But they didn't get a word out of me. I am plenty tough and I didn't care. I hoped to die anyhow, thinking about Sheila.

They got poor Smitty, too, and sweated him. I guess they gave him plenty. I saw them bringing him out of the office and he looked dead to the world. I said, "Hi, Smitty!" but the coppers hustled him away right off. He just gave me a look and waved me the highball with his hand and smiled, but boy, it was a sick smile.

Then they took me in and said he'd told them I had planned it all and he'd seen me loosening up the guard rail.

I guess Smitty told them the truth—that he'd seen me and I'd said I was tightening it. I didn't think they'd got much out of Smitty, so I wouldn't say anything. The coppers got plenty sore at me before they were through.

They kept going day and night, and then up on the chute they found the arsenic bottle. I'd put it up on a crossbeam there. They asked me if I knew it, and I said, "Sure. I found it up on the chute one day."

"Oh," they said, "so it just walked up there?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just found it."

They got fingerprints off it and said I had stolen it from some drugstore and had tried to poison Sheila. They dug her body up again and looked for poison. Two doctors said there was no trace, but one doctor said he had a special test which showed minute traces. Figure that out.

Finally a lawyer came in to see me, and he sat down and asked me to tell him the real truth so's he could prepare a defense. I thought maybe he was a stool pigeon, so I wouldn't tell him anything except what I'd told police.

It was funny. The only one that stuck by me was Mamie. That was funny. She was the one I'd tried to murder, if they'd only known it, and she was the only one stuck by me.

She got in one day with the lawyer, and she had on her white robe and gold sandals. And the lawyer was much more interested then. The Ecanaanomic Party was going over like wildfire and thousands of people were joining. The papers were full of it. They didn't call me the tiger man any more. They said: PEP Leader to Stand By Spouse in Chute Slaying.

And they had pictures of Mamie and Patsy and a Big story about how Mamie said she would stand by her husband.

Then one day they came in with photographers and took pictures. They took pictures of Mamie kissing me through the bars, and then of Mamie and Mr. Beckster, the lawyer, talking to me through the bars, and then pictures of Mamie and Patsy in their robes kneeling outside the bars and praying for me with their hands crossed over their chests.

Mamie told me the Ecanaanomic Party had held a big prayer meeting for my release and how Patsy had made the greatest speech ever known, and five women had fainted, and they'd collected three thousand dollars for a defense fund. The papers said twelve thousand, but Mamie told me really it was only three thousand. With that money Mr. Beckster got another lawyer, a big shot named Mr. Rocleigh, to help him.

They asked me to tell them everything I could remember. I told them the truth except I didn't let on about trying to murder Mamie. I couldn't do that with her standing by me and everything and sitting right there. I even told them about Lois and Dickie. They went right off down to San Diego, but they were too late. Lois had seen it in the papers, and she'd gone to the police, and they got everything out of her they could. She had showed them the scar on her forehead where she'd fallen against the stove. She told them I'd beaten her with a poker back in Oklahoma. And the papers all started calling me Tiger Man again, and said how I had left a trail of wives across the country.

Of course, Mamie was sore about Lois, First off she started to yell and call me everything she could think of. I thought she was going to blab all about the holdup, and I was so sick and tired of it all I didn't care whether she did or not. She went out of the police room where we were and the lawyers went after her. Beckster came back after a while and said I wasn't to worry.

"We've talked to her," he said, "and she's going to stand right beside you through thick and thin. That's the kind of woman she is. And Patsy Perisho is going to stand beside you loyally, too."

"I don't give a goddam what they do," I said. And I didn't.

"Well, get that off your chest now," he said, "but don't talk like that in court. After the case is over you can do what you want, but remember, if we're going to have a ghost of a chance, you've got to let Mamie be loyal to you; through it all. We've got to have her sitting in court—and Patsy, too. Get that in your head."

Chapter 28

Murder In The First Degree

THE THING that got me was the way it all fitted together. That district attorney had everything right back from the beginning.

He started off with how I had gone over the hill from the Marines and he would show that and what respect I had for an oath.

Then he would show how I married an unsuspecting girl and how I mistreated her until she couldn't stand it any longer and had to run away. Then he would prove how dangerous I was by showing that I threatened the life of the people who protected her from me.

Then, he said, that unable to reach her because of loyal friends, I took up with Mamie and never told her about my real wife. He told the jury that they had better be careful how they became sympathetic to me because I had such a lying exterior that even when my real character was unmasked women still believed in me, like the poor misguided woman whose pathetic loyalty even now brought her to sit in court with me. That was Mamie he meant.

Then, he said, he would prove that I was a tiger seeking what I could devour and not content with the infamy I had brought to two women I practiced my wiles: upon another one.

Then he got started about Sheila. He said:

"I want you to picture this girl. I want you to remember that she came to him pure and undefiled. Although above his own station in life this trusting, gentle soul, seeking the affection that all young American womanhood is taught to expect, was soon entirely under this man's spell."

"In all my long years of service as prosecuting attorney I have never felt more impelled to shield from the eyes of the pitiless world the private soul of pure womanhood than I do in this case. But this is a court of law, and I must ask you to bear with me, to follow me into the story of hopeless passion which ultimately blighted this girl's life.

"And I shall not lead you by inference. I shall bring you proof—always proof. Reluctant though we may all be, we must hear the testimony of medical experts who will tell you how the trusting love of this girl brought to her, alas, the natural outcome of this man's passion.

"We will bring you witnesses to swear of the time and place when this man practiced his wiles on the girl who saw this monster only as a Sir Galahad—a knight.

"We will show that, when he learned of the natural consequences of his association with this girl, the prisoner's mind turned to one horrible solution. Murder!

"We will bring you a poison bottle from his haunts. We will bring you testimony that his fingerprints, and his alone, were on that bottle. We will bring you medical testimony that traces of that poison were present in the body of the deceased.

"But poisons, gentlemen of the jury, are not always effective in the hands of the inexperienced. We will bring you evidence by toxicologists to show that overdoses of this poison often are as harmless as no poison at all.

"Thus, his first attempt failing, he laid in his evil mind an even more horrible plot.

"First he loosened the guard rail of the tower on which he worked. We will bring you a witness who saw him at that work. Then, step by step, we will show you the details of a cold, premeditated crime. Not one committed in anger, but one in which the accused laid his plans with calculating skill.

"We will bring you proof that will give you the picture of this man the night before the crime. Alone in his bed, his foul mind still planning, he heard in the next room that the trusting woman who thought she was his wife was asleep.

"Rising, he wrote the letter decoying the girl he had seduced to her doom. Some time between midnight and six a.m. he mailed that letter—when no one could see him.

"The next morning he rose and purchased himself a railroad ticket in preparation for his escape. He went to his haunts on the tower, waiting. He had not told the poor girl where to meet him, but he knew that her love would lead her to him no matter where he was. So, like the spider, he waited until the trusting girl who loved him before even her own honor appeared.

"And then, what happened? Gentlemen of the jury, I will tell you. This man with his own hands pushed the girl who loved and adored him to her death in one of the blackest and foulest first-degree murders committed in my memory of over twenty years of service in the courts of this fair state of California!"

He went on with some more stuff about California and its fair name, and American womanhood, and its fair name, and then he asked the jury to be sure to remember to bring in a first-degree conviction.

It all sounded so perfect that it looked silly to go on with the trial at all. It was just a waste of time, because even I knew that they were going to hang me.

The trial took an awful long time, what with everyone making speeches before we could really get going.

When it started, Mamie sat in court with me. She had bought a special new white robe and sandals that she wore. Patsy was busy for me too. She held big meetings and made speeches, and the people of the Ecanaanomic Party paraded outside the court while the trial was on. I saw a picture in the paper where they were all marching with cardboard signs about the Ecanaanomic Party and me, and then there was another picture of them all praying in the street outside the court house. They were kneeling and praying and most of them were women wearing white robes like Patsy. Patsy was right in the front of the picture praying only instead of kneeling she was standing and had her hands turned up to the sky.

Mamie used to clip the pictures out, and she had a big scrapbook of them. Sometimes they were the same pictures that ran in different papers, but she pasted them all and wrote in the dates and the papers they came from.

But all that marching and stuff didn't do any good. The State had its story too good. They had everything.

They had Lois, and I was hoping she'd bring Dickie into court so's I could see him; but she didn't and afterward I thought maybe it was just as well.

Then they had the little guy that rented us a cabin that time, and he was all dressed up in his best clothes so's he could tell about it.

They got Smitty up, too, and he did his best not to say what the prosecuting attorney wanted him to. So the prosecutor called him names, like he said he was a hostile witness, and he shouted at Smitty until the poor guy got all balled up. And when he was through Smitty was sweating like a bull, but I waved a highball at him to tip him off like I knew he hadn't wanted to talk. I never saw a guy look so sick as poor Smitty did when he got down off that chair.

They had Sheila's mother there, too. She didn't testify or anything, but only wore a black veil and fainted in court and was carried out. She didn't look like Sheila at all. She looked like a pretty tough, worn-out dame to me.

And that's the way they went on, linking up all the things together just like the prosecutor said they would.

Some of it was wrong and some of it was right and some of it was what I had planned to do to Mamie; but they patched up what was and what wasn't and what might have been till you couldn't tell which was which, and even I could hardly remember which way things went.

Then the jury went out and a special guard of Ecanaanomic women in robes prayed outside the courthouse for my freedom. They prayed all night. And in the morning the jury found me guilty and I was sentenced to be hanged.

Chapter 29

Death Row

I WAS in the death row when Genter came to see me. I had seen him in the courtroom lots of times, but he'd never made any sign, not even when they put his poison bottle on exhibit.

The guard brought him up and let him into the cell with me, and then locked us in and stood by the door.

I didn't say anything, and Genter came and sat on the cot beside me. He put his hand on my knees and said, "Richard. You look terribly sick."

I laughed. I said, "Well, the sun don't shine on you where I am now."

"Do you think about the sunshine?" he asked me.

"No. I don't think so."

"What do you think about?"

"I don't know."

"Try and remember. You must try to remember what you think about."

"I don't think of anything mostly," I told him.

"But you must try to tell me. It's important. What do you think of each day -knowing you are going to die soon? What were you thinking just before I came in. Try to remember, please."

"Before you came in? I don't know. I was reading this letter from a lawyer that said Lois has got a divorce in Nevada and they've awarded her the custody of the child, it being proven I am an unfit parent."

"Oh, and what were your reactions to that?"

"I don't know."

"But you must know. Try to think how you feel."

"I tell you I don't feel nothing," I shouted. I was getting sore. "I don't feel. It's like I'm dead. I don't give a darn about anything. It's like I'm dead already and don't feel anything any more. When you don't feel anything you must be dead. And that's the way I am now. I feel like I'm dead."

"Oh," he said. "Now I know. It is true. I know how it is now. You can't feel anything and you can't taste anything, and no matter what you do your senses can't react. No matter what you try life doesn't taste any more. And that means you must be dead."

All of a sudden he began to cry. The guard looked round, but I didn't give a damn, because you know no one can do anything more to you. So I tried to make Genter feel better.

He was crying and saying Latin to himself. He was very religious sometimes and believed in God. He cried into his hands and kept saying "Mea maxima culpa." He said that over and over. “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

"Come on, don't be that way, Genter," I said, and I patted him on the back. "Anyhow, you've been a good friend to me."

"I, a good friend?" he said, and he started to cry worse. "Oh, may God and the Holy Saints have mercy on me! I a friend!"

"Sure you are," I said. "Ain't you the first friend I ever had when I come to California? Why, you're the only one that's ever come in here and cried for me. Even Mamie don't come any more. Look, even if I've got to die I feel good about you. Didn't you try to help me figure out those troubles? Weren't you always nice to me and Sheila? Didn't you give her all those pretty things that time?"

He was crying bad. "Don't," he said. "I'm not your friend."

"Oh, nuts, you are too," I said. "So don't feel bad about me. Come on, quit crying."

"Don't you cry?" he asked me.

"No. I guess I wasn't made that way. Honest, I don't feel bad. Truly I don't care what happens. Now Sheila isn't here it feels like it doesn't matter whether school keeps or not."

"You truly loved her?"

"I loved her like nothing ever was. You know how it is, I guess."

"No," he said, "I never loved anyone. I can't. Tell me how it is."

“Gosh," I said. "You can't tell. There's just not anything else in your mind but the one you love. Like all day long I wouldn't see things I was looking at, only I would see Sheila's face; and all the time I was away from her I would be pretending I was talking to her; and any time I saw anything nice I would pretend I was showing it to her and listening to what she said back; and when I did see her it was like I started breathing something different instead of air and the world wasn't like an ordinary place. I guess it was like what you said once, that I was a body and she was a soul. I guess now she's dead I’m just a body again and there's nothing else left inside me"

He began to cry again, and I didn’t know what to do to stop him. Then he said, gabbling very fast:

"And she stood there garbed in white silk, with the aura of her asphodel soul about her nobly, and the pollen cascaded from the lilies and plundered her loins, I always see that, Richard."

Then he started saying "Mea maxima culpa" again, and I had to do something to stop him. So I said:

"Well, don't worry. I guess I got what was coming to me. If I didn't do what they said, I guess I tried to do as much to someone else. So I guess that when one door opens another door closes, like. I planned things and if seems like justice works out and I get if anyhow, even if I didn't do it. I guess it was justice."

“That's it," he said, and his voice went funny and whispery. "That's what I can't stand. It's all too pat. It's like a Hays-office ending to a movie plot. The dramatic balance is there. Even life is becoming like a movie plot. And it shouldn't be. It should be illogical, unbalanced, bravely strong. I wanted it like that. And now even life is trite."

"Don't worry," I said. I wanted to talk of something else. So I said, "How are the movies?"

"’Look," he whispered. "I'll tell you something. I made my last picture, and it was so bad that I thought even the company would know it. And you know what they did? They sent for me and said it was the greatest box-office bet of the year. And every phase was false and bad. But they offered me fifty thousand dollars a picture for three more pictures in a year."

I had got him stopped crying now.

"Well, you're sitting, pretty, then" I said. "That's great." "I'm not. I refused it."

"Gosh, what'll you do?''

"I have an offer of seventy-five thousand dollars to do a picture abroad."

"That's better still."

"No. I can't go abroad, either. You know why?"

"No."

"It's because," he whispered, “because the rest of the world is a movie. I know. I've tried. I've made a picture in Baffin's Bay and I made one in Sumatra. And it's no good.

Because the places are exactly like a movie travelogue. They won't be different. Wherever I go the world won't be itself. It becomes a movie set the moment I get there. And I can't go any farther. If I go to Europe that will become a movie, too. Everywhere I went it would become a process shot or a travelogue, until there'd be no world left. Only a movie of the world. Then the world would die—it would become two-dimensional—it would be the end of the world. It would be Armageddon. Armageddon, I tell you! You don't know what it's like!"

He yelled that out real high. It was the first time I ever heard him yell when it wasn't in a whisper. It was so loud that the guard tamed round and told him time was up and smacked back the bolts so they went like a pistol shot.

Genter said, "I shall pray for you, Richard."

"Don't worry," I said. "I feel all right. I don't feel like I've got to die. I just feel like I died when Sheila did, and they can't do anything to me any more."

"But I'll pray for you."

"Okay, if it makes you feel good."

"But don't you want me to pray for you?"

"Sure," I said. "I would like it very much if you would pray for me."

Chapter 30

Mea Culpa

I SPENT most of the time sleeping or just lying on the cot in the death row. Mostly I didn't know whether I was sleeping or not. That's the way it was until the day before the execution. Then it was night and I really went to sleep, only waking up every hour or so and taking a smoke and then going back to sleep again.

I was asleep when Beckster's yelling waked me up. He was at the bars, yelling and shaking them and shouting, "Wake up, wake up!"

And then the turnkey came down and the head warden and they took me up to the office. Beckster kept slapping my back and saying, “You're going to go free, you're going to go free!"

Then they got me in the office and the District Attorney was there and two detectives, and the State's Attorney was getting the Governor on the telephone.

I kept asking what it was all about but nobody paid any attention to me, all yelling and shouting and Beckster running to the man on the phone and saying, "Have you got him?" and then running back to me and slapping my back. After a while they got the Governor and he talked to the State's Attorney and the warden and to Beckster and then they hung up.

I said, "What's going on?"

"You're going free," Beckster said.

“Wait a minute," the State's Attorney said. “Hold your horses." He made me sit in a chair.

"Now," he said. "Do you know Quentin Genter?"

"Sure. He was in to see me a week or ten days ago."

"How long have you known him?"

"Oh, gees, I couldn't tell exactly. Ever since I came to California."

"Before you met Sheila Devon?"

"Sure. He was the first person I met in California. He gave me a lift down to San Diego the first day I was here— the time I went to see Lois."

Then they started arguing. Beckster said he had a right to talk to me first, and the State's Attorney said he couldn't. And then they argued about a stenographer. They yelled at each other and nobody paid any attention to me. Then it was decided that they'd have a stenographer in, so they brought in a cop who was police stenographer, and it was agreed that Beckster could tell me not to answer if he thought it would tend to incriminate me.

So they asked me all about Genter and where I'd met him. Then they got excited about the time I took Sheila up to see him. Then they asked me if I was sure Genter knew the way up to the top of the chute. Then they asked if I was sure I was asleep when Sheila fell off the chute. Then they asked if I ever heard of Sheila making a date with Genter.

I got plenty sore.

“She hated him, but don’t tell him so," I said. And I told them how she'd taken the things he'd given her and thrown them from the car.

"Look here, what's wrong?'' I asked Beckster.

"Nothing's wrong," he said. He was grinning like an owl. "Just tell these gentlemen the truth as you've always told it to me. All I want my client to do, gentlemen, is just tell the truth. Ask him any question. I have no fear."

They went on asking me questions all night. They asked me about the arsenic bottle. I looked at Beckster, and I told them the story I'd told at the trial—that I'd found it on top of the chute.

"Was that after Genter had been up there?" the State's Attorney asked,

"I guess so," I said. "I couldn't say for sure."

"Well, you must remember."

"I don't remember for sure," I said.

"My client's answered," Beckster said. "He found the bottle. The symbol for arsenic meant nothing to him. It was just an unimportant bottle and there was no reason why he should attach Importance enough to it to remember the date. He merely put it on a crossbeam and forgot it. Isn't that it?" he asked me.

"I guess so," I said.

"But you did take Sheila Devon to the cabin in the mountains?" the State's Attorney asked me.

"Oh, we admit the seduction," Beckster said. "We've never denied it."

They asked me questions until morning, and then they seemed satisfied, and Beckster slapped me on the back.

"We've got them on ice," he said. "You're free."

"For what?" I said. "What's the idea?"

He said to the State's Attorney, "Okay now?"

"Sure, spill it," the State's Attorney said.

"Well," Beckster said, "Quentin Genter has committed suicide and left a full confession of the murder of Sheila. And you're going free."

I didn't know what to say. Then my mind got working again just as they were locking me in the cell.

"But he couldn't have done it," I yelled. "He couldn't have done it"

Beckster came back. "Listen," he whispered, "will you pipe down? And keep your tongue quiet!" He sounded real sore. "Now just keep your damned trap shut. If you're nuts yourself, just remember there's other people in this. There's my reputation—and there's Mamie—and Patsy's reputation and the Party's trust in you. That Party's a great organization, and it's stood by you, and now you want to spoil the parade."

I didn't know what to say.

Chapter 31

Dr. Genter And Mr. Hyde

THEY DIDN'T turn me free right away. First they had to get a reprieve so I wouldn't be hanged, and then they had to have a hearing on the death of Genter and then they had other hearings. They had a lot in the papers about the hearings, and how every time things didn't suit him Beckster charged that the octopus of the movie industry was trying to whitewash one of the foulest spots in its nest. There was even more in the papers about that.

Then all of a sudden there wasn't much in the papers any more.

They took me in to the hearing and asked me if I was asleep when Sheila was killed, and I told them just what I'd said at the trial and they read out what I'd said at the trial too.

Then they asked Smitty if anyone could have gone out on the lookout porch without him seeing them, and Smitty said they could, because he knew I was having a date out there and he kept his back turned so's he wouldn't see us.

They asked him why he did that, and Smitty said:

"When a fellow has a date it's only etiquette to look the other way and give him all the privacy you can."

That made everyone laugh, and Beckster looked happy.

Then they brought in the arsenic bottle and proved that it belonged on Genter's shelf, and showed how it matched the other bottles.

After that they read out some of Genter's plots and how he had written down an outline about a man being falsely imprisoned for murder and how the man that really did do it wanted to get him free. It was the idea of the fake plot I'd told him when the Mex was in prison for the holdup of Gottstein, but they said it was his own feelings when I was in prison and he knew I was innocent and he was guilty. It was funny how that fitted in.

Then they read his confession letter, which said in the beginning that he was in his right mind and confessed that he was ethically, morally, and actually responsible for the murder of Sheila. He had written down there how it was his desire to make life different from a movie plot that had first got him interested in the love triangle between Mamie and Sheila and me, and how he wanted to be God and arrange the ending differently because he saw it coming out just like a movie script, and he wanted a different ending.

He said how when he came up the stairs that day and saw her by the rail and me asleep he'd pushed her over, and then had run down the steps again unobserved.

They figured that all out, about how he could have escaped, and that I didn't wake up until some time after when the screams of the people below woke me.

They had in the cop I fought with, and he was very friendly now, and he told how he had met me on the very last turn of the steps and how if anyone had been just a few seconds ahead of me he wouldn't have seen him.

I thought it was much higher up I met him, but I didn't remember clearly anything about that time, knowing Sheila was down there dead and only wanting to get at her.

Genter also had in the confession that I wasn't really married to Mamie, and that he'd played God again and staged the wedding for a joke, and that the people who had married us had just been dressed up and acting a part for a big laugh.

Then they had in Jira and another actress named Sylvia Carlin who testified that Genter had them in to witness a paper, and that he seemed happy and sane. Then they looked at the confession and said the signatures were theirs. The newspapers had a lot more pictures when Jira and Miss Carlin testified. They said they'd witnessed another paper, too, and they found that and it was Genter's will.

His will said that he had no relatives alive, so he left his entire estate as a fund to build a primary school for the education and enlightenment of the motion-picture executives and producers, except that the sum of ten thousand dollars should be set aside and paid directly to me to repay me for the mental suffering and anguish he had caused me, and another ten thousand dollars to pay for a memorial to Sheila. He had all the plans drawn for the memorial. It was to be set on a rock that stood in the sea on some property he owned by the beach, and it was to be the bronze figure of the young goddess Venus standing in a shell, and the figure was to be done by a Japanese sculptor named Togomi, and he had down how it was to be set so that at high tide the waves would lap around the feet of the figure, and that underneath there was to be a bronze plate that said on it just: To Beauty.

Then he had a fund set aside to maintain it forever, and he had down the name of a trust company that was to do all that he said.

They took a long time getting through it all until Beckster made a speech and said Genter was a combination of genius and maniac and how he had delusions of grandeur and had wanted to play God and had failed, and how he had even come to the cell to gloat over the sufferings of an innocent man.

Then he said that Genter was a sadist and pervert and took dope and that he had two sides, and a split personality because of schizophrenia. Finally he explained that Genter was just like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the movie. And then everyone seemed to understand better and looked like they knew what he was talking about, so he stopped.

Then they brought in a verdict that Genter was guilty.

Chapter 32

No Time For Crime

THE DAY I was freed I went right down the shore and walked along and walked for hours, till I got to Palos Verdes and sat there looking at the waves like I used to do with Sheila. And I knew Genter's letter was something he'd made up. I knew that, because it was just like the case they'd proved against me. Some of it was true and some of it might have been true and some of it was lies, and it was fitted together so that the true parts made the untrue parts look straight.

I knew it had to be haywire, because Genter must have known I took his arsenic bottle, and when he said he left it up on the lookout at the top of the chute he knew I had taken it.

I sat there all night, looking at the waves and trying to figure it out. I tried to think I was talking to Sheila and asking her what I should do. But I could only feel that Sheila wasn't there, and I'd never see her any more. And I couldn't do anything any more. Even looking at the waves didn't work out right.

I sat all night trying to think, but all I could do was want to see Sheila.

In the morning I watched the pelicans flying in a line like seaplanes. Then, suddenly, I knew what I had to do, I got up and walked up the shore and went to the police station. I said;

"I've come to give myself up for the attempted murder of Mamie Block."

So they phoned the District Attorney and he came in, and I made a confession to him of how I'd tried to murder Mamie—how I'd tried to drown her and the straight about how I'd tried to poison her and then how I'd planned to push her off the chute.

They had a conference, and then finally the District Attorney said: "Go on. You've had your headlines, brother. Now give someone else a chance. Beat it."

I could see they didn't believe me. So I told them to get Mamie and I'd prove it to them—how I'd tried to drown her and how she'd been sick the morning after I'd given her the arsenic.

So they went out and found Mamie, and she came in with Beckster. They asked her all about it, and she looked me square in the eye and said it wasn't so,

"He's gone haywire," she said. "How could he try to drown me when I was a champion swimmer and swum all the way round Manhattan once? He knows that."

So the District Attorney said:

"Listen, brother. You'd better go somewhere and rest for a while. Go on a trip, or something, and get your mind straightened out."

And Beckster laughed and said, "It's the old publicity complex. It gets them all."

And the police captain said, "Sure, why we have nuts in here every day confessing to every murder from here to New York. One guy the other day had a line about how Dillinger wasn't really dead because he was Dillinger and could prove it."

I could see they didn't believe me.

"All right," I said. "Then here's one. I was the guy that held up Gottstein the night he was killed by the cops. And I got his money, too."

When I said that they all started to laugh as hard as they could. They just sat there and laughed till they were crying.

"Okay, laugh, you bohunks. I'll prove it to you. She knows," I said, pointing at Mamie. "That's what she had on me. She still has part of the bag cut up in strips. She's kept them so she'll have something on me. She has one part of the bag home now."

She shook her head at the D.A. pretending she was sad for me.

“You can search my home at any time, Mr. District Attorney," she said.

"That won't be necessary, madam," he said.

"Okay, then," I said, "That means you've got scared and ditched them. But you can prove it another way. There were two fellows and two girls down the street when I took the bag off Gottstein. Get them. They saw me."

That stopped the D.A„ and the police went out and showed up with two of the witnesses. They couldn't find the other two. The witnesses, a fellow and a girl, looked at me and then said I didn't look anything like the guy. They said they were sure he was smaller and darker—just like the Mex that they'd pinched.

"They're wrong," I said. "I can prove it. You know that movie plot that Genter had about a man being in jail and another man did it."

"Don't tell me that was your plot," the captain said.

"Sure it was," I said. But when I said that they all lay back and laughed till the tears came and the captain said:

"Take him away, he's killing me."

Suddenly he got serious and told me to scram.

"And don't come back any more," he said. "If you do, you'll be sent up to the booby hatch for a rest cure."

Mamie said, "I'll take care of him, Captain."

He said, "You're a straight ace, lady. Especially after the way he treated you."

So I said "All right, then. There's the bigamy charge, if you want."

"You never committed bigamy" Beckster said, laughing. "You've only had one wife, because your marriage to Mamie was one of Genter's big jokes."

"Then how about desertion from the Marines?" I said.

They all started screaming, laughing again.

"God, this man does want to get back in them sweet little cells," the captain said. "Take him out of my sight. Let the Marines come after him if they want him."

And they led me Out with Beckster and Mamie holding my arm like I was an invalid. We walked home and I didn't say anything. We went into the house and sat down there a while and they watched me.

Finally Beckster said, "Now, Richard, you've got to stop carrying on like that, or you'll be adjudged incompetent to handle your own affairs and it gives our Party a bad name, too."

"Our Party?" I said. I started laughing. It reminded me of the story of the orange peel on the Mississippi. "Where do you get that 'our' stuff?"

"Oh, I'm working with Patsy and Mamie," he said, and he grinned. "Since your escapade the Party has become nationally known and now we've got two hundred thousand members, and don't you forget that two hundred thousand votes are an important weapon. You may not realize it, but With good handling the Ecanaanomic Plan can become a national issue in the next Presidential campaign. That's how important it is. And it will be an issue. I'm going to see to that. I'm going to be adviser to Patsy and Mamie."

"That's no skin off my nose," I told him.

"But there's other things. You know, since your delivery a lot of members are now convinced of the efficacy of prayer and the particular potency prayer under Patsy, You see, now the plan has all the advantages of a religious movement plus the strength of a political party. That's why you're important. So you've got to behave, or else."

"Or else what?"

"Well, there's Genter's will. It leaves you ten thousand dollars, you know."

"If I get it."

"Well, that's it. I can get it for you, but we'll have a long fight. You see, we've got to see if there's any contest on the will, and if there is it will be a hard fight and mean lots of legal work."

"And you want your share."

"Well, if you put it that way. I didn't say anything about money when I was defending your life, did I?"

I saw what he was after, so I thought, Let him have it. Then I had an idea, so I told him I wanted part of it to go to Dickie when he got of age. And he said he could do that but it would take a lot of work and everything, and then, too, Mamie ought to receive something for the suffering I'd caused her. I couldn't argue with him. So I let it go, and right off he called up his office and a girl brought up agreements for us to sign. The agreement said Beckster was to get half of whatever money came to me from the Genter will, and Mamie was to get a quarter of it, and the other quarter was to be placed in a trust for Dickie. It took a long time to get it fixed up.

All of a sudden I was sick crazy just to see Sheila's face.

But I couldn't think about it, because Mamie and Beckster were there, watching me, and I didn't want to think about Sheila as long as anyone could watch me.

Chapter 33

The Golden Mountains

I TOOK THE BUS up to Los Angeles and walked around. I went to a shooting-gallery along honky-tonk row and started shooting down the little white birds. I shot a long time till I'd knocked down all the little birds on one side and my money was pretty nearly gone. I had two dollars and some change left, and I gave it to the kid that worked at the shooting-gallery.

Then I left Los Angeles and found the road I came in on. I walked all afternoon and around evening I caught a freight going out.

And that's the way I left California, just the same way I came in, sitting in that boxcar with my legs hanging down and the train bucking slow up the mountainside.

I guess it was true what Genter once said: that the minute you crossed into California you went crazy. And I think that the minute you cross the mountains coming back, you change again. Because the next morning, sitting in that boxcar and the freight heading down to a flat desert, all of a sudden something happened to me.

It was like all I had done in California was just a dream. And at first it felt good, and then it felt worse, because Sheila was only a dream with everything else. And that was bad.

I could remember everything about California, but I couldn't feel it. it tried to get my mind to remember something that it could feel, too, but it was no use. It was all gone. All of it. The pink stucco houses and the palm trees and the stares built like cats and dogs and frogs and ice-cream freezers and the neon lights round everything. I tried to remember everything, to make Sheila real again. But it was all gone now: the hide-out at the top of the chute with the sunshine making a honeyed smell come up from the wood; and the women all going round with trousers on or shorts; and the big dirt cliffs beside the ocean with the seagulls screaming very high up and on Sunday the stinking lines of auto traffic; and the way people were always nutty over some religion, like the night they sang those Ecanaanomic songs and cheered when the blue light went on Patsy; and the way they knelt in the streets with the cardboard signs and prayed for my delivery.

And I thought about coming over the Santa Monica mountains and seeing Hollywood all lighted up like a fairy city; and the way the men in yellow smocks stood on Sunset Boulevard waving bags of Krispy-Korn and trying to sell movie guides to the homes of the stars and how I never saw anyone ever stop to buy one; and the smell at night of orange blossoms and night-blooming jasmine; and the geraniums growing ten feet high, and the smell of lawns in the long summer with the sprinklers going on them all through the dry season to keep them alive; and the drive-in hamburger stands where the girls wore top hats and trousers that were always tight over their behinds.

And the smell of eucalyptus trees with the bark always shagging away; and the mountains always there only sometimes hazy and faint but always with big signs on them so that the mountains were advertising boards that you could see miles away; and the way people always stuck signs everywhere without being ashamed like fuerte avocados for sale and goats at service.

I thought about at night when the people all built fires on the shore and you smelled the sea and wood smoke of eucalyptus logs all mixed together; and the way the seals swum around in packs and the way the pelicans flew like squadrons of seaplanes; and how the helldivers always flew as if they were in a hurry, or else sat on the waves, calm, until a breaker came in and then dove down under the wave and came up at the other side pert as you please.

I thought about the way the grunion run, and I thought about how one night Sheila took off her shoes and stockings, and when the wave went out she would run right down and pick up the grunion off the sand where they were laying eggs, and skip back before the next wave came in.

I remember the way we went after them, laughing and getting wet, just catching the fish with our hands and letting them go again, and how the fish flashed silver in the moonlight, because they only run at full moon; and I can't forget how Sheila looked, laughing and holding up her hands full of fish, shining and wiggling.

And I thought about Genter and how he gave Sheila the lilies, and how he cried in my cell, and how he was the night he told me about California being only a moving picture. I remember him saying that some lands were a father to a man, and beat him; and some were a mother to him, and loved him; and some were a wife, and had to be loved; but California was just a whore who dropped her pants down to the first man that came along with a watering-pot.

And I thought about all the things they'd said about Genter after he was dead, but it didn't matter; because he knew more than they did. Anyhow, he was the only man in California with enough sense to know he was crazy.

And I thought about Dickie, and how I'd fixed up things for him when he got to be a man.

I thought about all those things, day and night, sitting there with my legs hanging out that boxcar; but it was no good. I could think about them, but I couldn't feel them, and that was what was bad. Because Sheila was gone with everything else, and I couldn't feel anything about her, either.

And I knew there was something I had to do and something I had to wait for, and it wasn't till I saw it that I knew.

But when I did see it, I knew all right. Because I looked out of the boxcar and there it was—my mountains that I'd seen when I was a kid and that I'd always wanted to see again.

There they were across the desert with its sage and chaparral and Joshua trees and organ cactus, all gold and purple in the afternoon sun just like they were that day when my father stood by the road, trying to get his pride to let his muscles lift his arms to flag a car.

And I knew that if I didn't go there now they'd escape me forever again, and that it was only magic luck that had brought them; so without thinking a second I flipped myself off that boxcar and hit the ground and went rolling over and over with the breath knocked out of me and my body hurting inside from crashing into the ground, and feeling everything was torn apart and the last thing I remembered was thinking that it couldn't be me that this was happening to.

It was night when I woke up, so I must have given myself a good wallop coming off that freight car. But I couldn't feel that I was hurt anywhere and I could walk all right.

It was pitch-dark but I wasn't afraid of losing my way. I knew where I had to go, and somehow it was like something would be sure to tell me how to get there.

So I walked all that night, not getting tired at all, and at sun-up I was on a road going up through a canyon. I couldn't see my golden mountains, but something told me I was going the right way. So I climbed up and up on this road, through this canyon, and all along the roadside everything was green and in bloom. There were fields that were all scarlet and yellow with Indian-blankets and there were paper-white poppies and desert flowers by the thousands. Even the cactus was in bloom with red, waxy flowers, and the Joshua trees had great white flowers and all up the hillside were the big yucca blossoms growing up twenty feet high and so straight that you could see why the Mexicans call them the candles of God.

I never saw so many flowers, and they were all very much bigger than I'd ever seen them before; so big that they made me feel as if I'd grown suddenly little.

And I went on up that road to the top of the pass, and the rocks there were all scarlet and purple and very rugged.

Then, as I came round a corner, I saw an old Mexican, sitting on a burro. He was just sitting there, looking very old with his white beard. He had a white serape and his thin cotton trousers were old, too, but very clean.

He didn't say anything, because most Mexicans have learned that Americans don't worry about being polite and greeting each other when they pass. But I learned from the Mexicans their way of being polite—and this was a very old man. So I said:

"Good morning, Don Uncle."

I said that in Spanish, and I call him Don because although he was a peon he was very old and you should show respect.

And when I said that he lifted off his big straw sombrero and swept it across his chest with the most beautiful gesture I have ever seen. And he said:

"Vaya con Dios."

"Walk thou with God also," I said.

Right when I said that I was over the pass and the sun came through the veil-mist and way across a big desert I could see my golden mountains.

And the minute I saw them I was me again and I could feel again, and I could feel Sheila was gone. I could feel my insides hurting me where they were empty because Sheila was dead and I knew as long as I lived that pain would always be there. It was the only thing left of her. The only thing I could have. And having it made me so happy that I began running down the slope.

I ran down through the fields, through the great white paper poppies and the Indian-blankets, and I snatched them up in my arms as I went. And I ran on and on, down the hillside to the big desert that I had to cross to get to my golden mountains.

End

Table of Contents

- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33