I looked up at last. I managed a fairly pleasant smile.
“Don’t worry any more about it,” I said. “The newspapers can’t keep up their racket much longer. Talbert’s going to be all right.”
“Talbert?” she said blankly. “Tal—Oh, of course! I’m so sorry, darling. I guess I was thinking of someone else.…”
Herself.
14
Donald Skysmith
It was about five in the morning when I reached the office. The charwomen had just finished their cleaning, leaving the Venetian blinds drawn high and all the lights burning.
I got the bottle out of my desk and drew a chair up to the windows. I sat there, drinking and smoking, staring out over the city, watching the red spears of sunlight stab through the horizon and splinter into shimmering motes of silvery yellow. Dawn, the slow unsheathing of a sword; then, the untempered effulgence of day, rapacious, brutal, striking away the merciful shadows, challenging the pygmy man to battle, daring him to look yet again upon his handiwork and pronounce it good.
I sat there for a long time—until it was not I who looked out at the city but the city that looked in at me. I moved back. I got up and wandered aimlessly around the room, and still it looked in at me. Appraising me, thoughtfully, studying the Rhodes scholar, the Guggenheim fellow, the Pulitzer prize-winner, the managing editor; those things—this thing—this peculiar and puzzling animal that was Donald Skysmith.
Able bodied? Yes, he was able-bodied. Intelligent? Well, yes. One would have to assume so. Kindly, a man of good heart? Of course. Certainly.
Well, why then? Why had the Donald Skysmith become this Donald Skysmith? What had happened to him? What had he been trying to get?
And what had he got?
I looked around the office. I lowered the blinds and drew their slats tight, and I turned off all the lights.
That was better. The burning in my eyes grew less painful, and there was some small surcease from the blinding brain-splitting headache.
I sat down at the desk, and pillowed my head on my arms.
I hadn’t had any sleep last night. Teddy had taken a sudden turn for the worse shortly after I reached home, and it was not until one in the morning that—that the doctor had left. The children were very wakeful and in need of reassuring about Teddy. By the time I got them sufficiently soothed to be turned over to their nurse, sleep was impossible for myself. Probably it would have been impossible, anyway.
Teddy…Theodora…poor teddy-bear…
But she was all right, now. She’d be swell from now on. As good now—in a way—as she used to be, laughing and cutting up, carrying on as much over a sack of popcorn as you would a ten-course banquet. God, I could hear her, now, the shrieks and squeals, the oohs and ohs and ahs, the giggles and snickers, the wondrous and wondering delight in simply being alive. I could feel the thin arms hugging around my neck, see the too-large eyes laughing innocently into mine. I marveled that I could ever have got annoyed with her, a little irritated and ever-so-slightly bored. It was such a short time, really, since we’d been together. Hardly more than yesterday, it seemed, since our marriage.
I was working in Oklahoma City—no, it was Tulsa. Hell, how could I get mixed up on a thing like that? And, Teddy, well, let’s see…oh, yes…Teddy was going to the university there and working as a part-time teller in a bank. That’s how I met her. I cashed my paycheck there, and it just seemed a step from that to getting her in bed. And I didn’t know until it was too late that she was virginal. Teddy thought it was a wonderful joke on me. She thought it was wonderful period. She squealed and groaned so ecstatically that my landlady came up and pounded on the door…Well, I had a short payday that week. Some lousy loan shark had garnisheed my wages. But Teddy had a pretty good watch and a heavy gold crucifix, so we hocked those and caught a bus into Kansas. We barely had enough for the trip, the license and the j.p.’s fee.…She was pregnant the first month, and I think that must have marked the beginning of the cancer, because, of course, anything but an abortion was out of the question, and we didn’t have the money for a good one. She bled for days on end until I didn’t see how a drop of blood could be left in her. And long after the bleeding stopped, the pain continued. Night after night, I sat with her on my lap, holding her and rocking her as you might rock a baby. It was the only way she could go to sleep, the only thing that helped the pain. It was as though part of the pain went out of her and came into me, and we shared it together. Some nights we were like that all night long, and with every creak of the rocker the one thought burned deeper and deeper into my mind. I made a song out of it, a song that was a promise…Never again, Teddy, never again, my teddy-bear. No more pain for Don’s sweet Teddy, never, never ever, teddy-bear. That was the way it went, something along that order, and then there was the refrain…Bye, bye, bye-oh-beddy, sleep, sleep, my little Teddy. Sleep, sleep, my sweet…
…The phone was ringing. I snatched up the receiver and answered before my eyes were opened. Habit, you know: the fire-horse lunging into harness at the sound of the bell. There was no practical reason for politeness and promptness.
It was the Captain. He went on talking to the operator.
“You’re very sure, now, miss? He’s the genuine Donald Skysmith?”
“He, hee, hee! Y-Yes, sir. It’s Mr. Skysmith, sir.”
“You’re positive, are you? There’s no chance that he might be an impostor?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. Tee, hee, hee…”
I raised the receiver up to arm’s length, took careful aim and crashed it down into the cradle as hard as I could. I hoped it burst their God damned eardrums. I hoped it knocked that bitch off her chair and that son-of-a-bitch out of his half-acre bed. The lousy, filthy, rotten, bastardly, Fascistic old fart. I’d get that whoremonger, yet! By God, I’d get him yet! I’d swing those God damned floozies by the heels, beat the piss out of him with his own floozies. And then I’d make a pile out of them with him at the top and burn the whole shideree to a cinder. I’d…
The phone was ringing again. I looked at it dully.…Beat him, burn him? Why, when he was already doing so much worse to himself? He must be, you know. He had to be. Sensibility presupposes sensitivity. One cannot be at once sensible and insensible. He did nothing without thinking it through carefully, without complete realization of the consequences. He had to know what he was doing. Knowingly, he created a hell of wretchedness and violence, bigotry, ignorance and class hatred, and the knowledge of what he had deliberately created must be more searing than the hell itself.
But why? Why was he the way he was? Well, why was I? And don’t we all dig our hells?
I lifted the receiver and said, “Hello, Captain.”
“Ah, Don,” he said. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
“And Teddy? What about Teddy, Don?”
“She’s all right, now,” I said. “She was never better, in fact. She gave me a little message to pass on to you just before she—went to sleep last night.”
“That’s very touching, Don. What was the message?”
I told him. And, no, I wasn’t making it up. I used her exact words.
“Here it is, Captain. She said, ‘Tell the old horse’s ass to kiss mine.’ ”
“Wonderful!” he laughed softly. “A wonderful girl, Teddy. I liked her from the moment I met her, and I don’t like many people.”
“That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” I said.
The phone seemed to go completely dead for a few moments. If anyone but the Captain had been on the wire, I’d have thought he’d hung up. But the Captain never did things that way. When the Captain was through with you, he said so. Until he did say so…
My heart began to pound with a kind of dull excitement, with hope and something akin to self-horror. I still wanted my job? I was still willing—anxious—to go on, if I was allowed to?
He cleared his throat, hesitated for a second to get my attention. “It’s diffi
cult, isn’t it, Don? A graphic illustration of Darwin’s soundness. Man may be uncomfortable in the trees, but he’s by nature a climbing animal. He—you still must live, get ahead.”
The excitement was growing, and the horror with it. I wanted to stay on here, work, live, get ahead, climb—and I hated myself for wanting to.
“I don’t know, Don,” he said, quietly. “I’d like to think about it a few minutes. Meanwhile—what happened on this Talbert story? I never intended for you to go to such extreme lengths. You knew I didn’t. We were after our opposition, not the boy. Why did you make such a thoroughgoing botch of things?”
“I…” I stared down at the desk, trying to come to a decision. “It’s jumped our circulation, Captain.”
“As much as it’s lost? Does the temporary jump in newsstand sales offset what we’ve lost, the alienation of a large block of solid, regular readers? I don’t think so, Don. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t think I need to,” I said. “You already know just as you know everything else that happens here.”
“Yes,” he said, “I already know. But there’s one thing I don’t know, Don. I can’t understand why you allowed a man like Willis to remain on the Star, a man who apparently was shrewder than you. That was very bad management. One of the first concerns of an efficient executive is to eliminate potential competition.”
“Willis is a good newspaper man,” I said. “I had no reason to fire him.”
“Ah, Don. You disappoint me more and more.”
“I tried to promote him,” I said, “when he was organizing the union. He laughed at me.”
“Perhaps you didn’t offer him anything good enough, Don.”
“Perhaps I didn’t.”
He sighed. I could picture the thoughtful, calculating look on his vulture’s face. “Getting back to the Talbert story, Don. You were over a barrel, but why stay over it? Why haven’t you swung the other way, gone over to the boy’s side, started a defense fund for him—given him the treatment in reverse? That would give us another jump on the opposition. It would get back our solid circulation, and we’re going to have to do it. We’re going to free the boy. Why haven’t you done it before this?”
A story, that’s all the boy was. The story had run out, and we needed another. “Only one reason,” I said. “I said. “I wasn’t smart enough.”
“I see…” he murmured. “Well, the realization itself contains a great deal of wisdom. Perhaps…”
“Yes, sir,” I said. And was there eagerness in my voice? “Yes, Captain?”
“I don’t know, Don. Perhaps you’ve never needed to be prodded, to have a club swung at you. It was at my hand so I used it, but possibly it wasn’t necessary. You might even do much better without it. I think…I think I’d like to have you step over to the windows, Don. Stick your head out.”
“Sir?” I said.
“You heard me. Put your head out the window. Then come back and tell me whether it is raining.”
“No!” I said. “No I—it’s not necessary, sir. I know it isn’t raining.”
“Don.”
“No! I tell you it isn’t—”
I heard it, then. The gust of wind, the drops striking against the panes.
I waited. And again there was that long dead silence. And then, at last, another sigh. “You’re guilty of a very common failing, Don. Fear of symbols. You think I make a puppet out of you. You don’t like it. You’re humiliated. Degradation by association. And yet, all I’m doing is testing you, your powers of observation. To get ahead, to climb, you’ve got to observe. Still…You must be very tired. You must be very, very tired. I suggest you go downstairs and get yourself a cup of coffee.”
“N-No! No,” I said. “Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Who the hell do you think you are? Do you think you’re God?”
“Yes. Don’t you think that you are? Get the coffee, Don.”
“Y-Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, Captain.”
I laid the receiver on the desk. Very gently. I went out through the city room, and down on the elevator to the lobby. I walked blindly down the street toward the lunchroom.
I came to it, and I passed it by. And I entered a bar.
I sat down on one of the leather-covered stools, and ordered a double Scotch with water.
I was down near the bottom of the drink when a waiter touched my shoulder.
I followed him to the telephone.
“Yes, Captain?” I said.
“The club was necessary, wasn’t it, Don?” he said. “You have to be driven, and now I have nothing to drive you with. No way of bringing pressure on you. I can’t use Teddy’s health any more. Nothing to tempt you or make you afraid or make you work harder.”
“Nothing,” I said, “and it feels good.”
“Your desk is being cleared out, Don, and the business office is preparing your check. If you’ll just remain where you are, a copy boy will be down with everything within the next few minutes.”
“It’s nine-thirty,” I said. “I expect to be paid for every damned minute I have to wait.”
“I assumed you would. You’ll find the check takes care of your salary through nine-forty-five. And, Don…”
“Well?” I said.
He was silent.
“Spit it out!” I said. “What have you got to say?”
He coughed apologetically. He didn’t sound at all like the Captain.
“I’m afraid I can’t say it, Don. I don’t seem to be able to find the words to express what I feel. All I can say is that I’m sorry. I was very sorry to learn of Teddy’s death.”
About the Author
James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906. In all, Jim Thompson wrote twenty-nine novels and two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Films based on his novels include The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and After Dark, My Sweet.
…and South of Heaven
In July 2012, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson’s South of Heaven. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.
South of Heaven
As dawn speared across the Far West Texas prairie, the last of the night’s heavy dew fell. I sat up shivering, looking down along the twisting bed of the dried-up creek where six hundred of us were jungled up while we waited for the pipeline job to start. The line was to be one of the biggest jobs in years—all the way from out here in this high-lonely gas field to Port Arthur on the Gulf. But word of it had gone out weeks ago, and the men had been drifting in here all those weeks—jailbirds, mission stiffs, hoboes—and hardly a man-jack among ’em with more than an empty gut and the raggedy-ass clothes he wore. One of the few exceptions (and he wasn’t much of one) was the guy I traveled with, Fruit Jar.
He was dozing a few feet away from me, sprawled out on the cushions of his Model-T Ford. I toed him in the ribs, jerking my foot back fast as he sat up, cursing and flailing his arms.
“Huh? Hey? Whassa matter?” He glared wildly out of his red-rimmed eyes. “Whatcha doin’, Tommy?”
“Thought I’d tell you I was going into town,” I said. “See if I can get us something to scoff.”
He stared at me a moment longer, figuring out what I’d said. Then, he suddenly winced and groaned and put on his smeary sunglasses. Fruit Jar was on canned heat—about half the boes you saw out here were heat-heads. They eventually went blind from drinking it, and while they were getting that way even a very little light drove them crazy.
“You’re a good boy, Tommy,” he said, at last. “See if you can stem a little heat, huh?”
I said no, I wouldn’t; hustling scoff grub was my limit. “You and me rubber-tramp it together, but that doesn’t make me your punk.”
“Aah, now, Tommy.” He rubbed shaky hands over the stubble of his bloated face. “Well, maybe you can pick up a can of tin cow, huh? And maybe just about a quart of gasoline? The way I feel, a little milk and gas would make a mig
hty fine drink.”
“No,” I said.
He was still whining and begging as I walked away from him, and I decided that it was past time that we parted company. I’d be on a job soon, and I didn’t owe him anything. Having a way of getting around was awfully handy out here, but I’d more than paid for any rides I’d got by changing tires and keeping the T-Ford running, and doing all the things that Fruit Jar was too drunk or lazy to do for himself.
I walked on up the creek bed toward town, stepping over and around the sleeping boes, brushing the twigs and dirt off my jeans and shirt. I was wearing a good hat, a gray city-style Stetson with the brim turned up front and back, and of course I had good stout shoes with an extra pair of soles nailed on them. That’s one thing you learn when you make the big labor camps. Always wear a good hat and good shoes, so even if you don’t have much in between, folks will know you’re not a bum. A bo—hobo—yes, but not a bum. There’s a big difference between the two.
Just around a turn in the creek bed, three boes were huddled around a little fire, warming up a can of last night’s coffee grounds. I nodded to them, kind of hesitating, but they didn’t nod back, and one of them took out a match and handed it to me. That’s the hobo way of saying you’re not welcome—that you’re to start your own fire, in other words. So I kept on going, rounding another bend. And then I came up short, my mouth falling open in surprise.
He was a tall, good-looking guy in his middle-thirties, lounged back against the grassy hillside. He was drinking from a half-pint bottle of bonded whiskey, and smoking a tailor-made cigarette. And he gave a lazy grin and a wink.
“Tommy, boy,” he drawled, “ ’light and look at your saddle, friend.”