"Don't mind?" said Murra. He held out his arms. "John--" he said, "you'll break my heart if you walk out me now--without-- "
"Without what, Father?" said the boy. He was cold as ice.
"Without forgiving me," said Murra.
"Never," said the boy. "I'm sorry--that's one thing I'll never do." He nodded. "Whenever you're ready to go, Father," he said, "I'll be waiting in the car."
And he walked out of the house.
Murra sat down in a chair with his head in his hands. "What do I do now?" he said. "Maybe this is the punishment I deserve. I guess what I do is just grit my teeth and take it."
"I can only think of one other thing," I said.
"What's that?" he said.
"Kick him in the pants," I said.
So that's what Murra did.
He went out to the car, looking all gloomy and blue.
He told John something, was wrong with the front seat, and he made John get out so he could fix it.
Then Murra let the boy have it in the seat of the pants with the side of his foot. I don't think there was any pain connected with it, but it did have a certain amount of loft.
The boy did a kind of polka downhill, toward the shrubbery where his father and I had been looking for thistles the night before. When he got himself stopped and turned around, he was certainly one surprised-looking boy.
"John," Murra said to him, "I'm sorry I did that, but I couldn't think of anything else to do."
For once, the boy didn't have a snappy come-back.
"I have made many serious mistakes in my life," said Murra, "but I don't think that was one of them. I love you, and I love your mother, and I think I'll go on kicking you until you can find it in your heart to give me another chance."
The boy still couldn't think of anything to say, but I could tell he wasn't interested in being kicked again.
"Now you come back in the house," said Murra, "and we'll talk this thing over like civilized human beings."
When they' got back in the house, Murra got the boy to call up his mother in Los Angeles.
"You tell her we're having a nice time, and I've been terribly unhappy, and I am through with Gloria Hilton, and I want her to take me back on any terms whatsoever," said Murra.
The boy told his mother, and she cried, and the boy cried, and Murra cried, and I cried.
And then Murra's first wife told him he could come back home any time he wanted to. And that was that.
The way we settled the bathtub enclosure door thing was that I took Murra's door and he took mine. Actually, I was trading a twenty-two-dollar door for a forty-eight-dollar door, not counting the picture of Gloria Hilton.
My wife was out when I got home. I hung the new door. My own boy came up and watched me. He was red-nosed about something.
"Where's your mother?" I said to him.
"She went out," he said.
"When's she due back?" I said.
"She said maybe she'd never come back," said the boy.
I was sick, but I didn't let the boy know it. "That's one of her jokes," I said. "She says that all the time."
"I never heard her say it before," he said.
I was really scared when suppertime rolled around, and I still didn't have a wife. I tried to be brave. I got supper for the boy and me, and I said, "Well, I guess she's been delayed somewhere."
"Father--" said the boy.
"What?" I said.
"What did you do to Mother last night?" he said. He took a very high and mighty tone.
"Mind your own business," I said, "or you're liable to get a swift kick in the pants."
That calmed him right down.
My wife came home at nine o'clock, thank God.
She was cheerful. She said she'd had a swell time just being alone--chopping alone, eating in a restaurant alone, going to a movie alone.
She gave me a kiss, and she went upstairs.
I heard the shower running, and I all of a sudden remembered the picture of Gloria Hilton on the bathtub enclosure door.
"Oh my Lord!" I said. I ran up the stairs to tell her what the picture was doing on the door, to tell her I would have it sandblasted off first thing in the morning.
I went into the bathroom.
My wife was standing up, taking a shower.
She was just the same height as Gloria Hilton, so the picture on the door made kind of a mask for her.
There was my wife's body with the head of Gloria Hilton on it.
My wife wasn't sore. She laughed. She thought it was funny. "Guess who?" she said.
(1962)
DEER IN THE WORKS
THE BIG BLACK STACKS of the Ilium Works of the Federal Apparatus Corporation spewed acid fumes and soot over the hundreds of men and women who were lined up before the redbrick employment office. It was summer. The Ilium Works, already the second-largest industrial plant in America, was increasing its staff by one third in order to meet armament contracts. Every ten minutes or so, a company policeman opened the employment-office door, letting out a chilly gust from the air-conditioned interior and admitting three more applicants.
"Next three," said the policeman.
A middle-sized man in his late twenties, his young face camouflaged with a mustache and spectacles, was admitted after a four-hour wait. His spirits and the new suit he'd bought for the occasion were wilted by the fumes and the August sun, and he'd given up lunch in order to keep his place in line. But his bearing remained jaunty. He was the last, in his group of three, to face the receptionist.
"Screw-machine operator, ma'am," said the first man.
"See Mr. Cormody in booth seven," said the receptionist.
"Plastic extrusion, miss," said the next man.
"See Mr. Hoyt in booth two," she said. "Skill?" she asked the urbane young man in the wilted suit. "Milling machine? Jig borer?"
"Writing," he said. "Any kind of writing."
"You mean advertising and sales promotion?"
"Yes--that's what I mean."
She looked doubtful. "Well, I don't know. We didn't put out a call for that sort of people. You can't run a machine, can you?"
"Typewriter," he said jokingly.
The receptionist was a sober young woman. "The company does not use male stenographers," she said. "See Mr. Dilling in booth twenty-six. He just might know of some advertising-and-sales-promotion-type job."
He straightened his tie and coat, forced a smile that implied he was looking into jobs at the Works as sort of a lark. He walked into booth twenty-six and extended his hand to Mr. Dilling, a man of his own age. "Mr. Dilling, my name is David Potter. I was curious to know what openings you might have in advertising and sales promotion, and thought I'd drop in for a talk. "
Mr. Dilling, an old hand at facing young men who tried to hide their eagerness for a job, was polite but outwardly unimpressed. "Well, you came at a bad time, I'm afraid, Mr. Potter. The competition for that kind of job is pretty stiff, as you perhaps know, and there isn't much of anything open just now."
David nodded. "I see." He had had no experience in asking for a job with a big organization, and Mr. Dilling was making him aware of what a fine art it was--if you couldn't run a machine. A duel was under way.
"But have a seat anyway, Mr. Potter."
"Thank you." He looked at his watch. "I really ought to be getting back to my paper soon."
"You work on a paper around here?"
"Yes. I own a weekly paper in Dorset, about ten miles from Ilium."
"Oh--you don't say. Lovely little village. Thinking of giving up the paper, are you?"
"Well, no--not exactly. It's a possibility. I bought the paper soon after the war, so I've been with it for eight years, and I don't want to go stale. I might be wise to move on. It all depends on what opens up."
"You have a family?" said Mr. Dilling pleasantly.
"Yes. My wife, and two boys and two girls."
"A nice, big, well-balanced family," said Mr. Dilling. "And you're so young
, too."
"Twenty-nine," said David. He smiled. "We didn't plan it to be quite that big. It's run to twins. The boys are twins, and then, several days ago, the girls came."
"You don't say!" said Mr. Dilling. He winked. "That would certainly start a young man thinking about getting a little security, eh, with a family like that?"
Both of them treated the remark casually, as though it were no more than a pleasantry between two family men. "It's what we wanted, actually, two boys; two girls," said David. "We didn't expect to get them this quickly, but we're glad now. As far as security goes--well, maybe I flatter myself, but I think the administrative and writing experience I've had running the paper would be worth a good bit to the right people, if something happened to the paper."
"One of the big shortages in this country," said Dilling philosophically, concentrating on lighting a cigarette, "is men who know how to do things, and know how to take responsibility and get things done. I only wish there were better openings in advertising and sales promotion than the ones we've got. They're important, interesting jobs, understand, but I don't know how you'd feel about the starting salary."
"Well, I'm just trying to get the lay of the land, now--to see how things are. I have no idea what salary industry might pay a man like me, with my experience."
"The question experienced men like yourself usually ask is: how high can I go and how fast? And the answer to that is that the sky is the limit for a man with drive and creative ambition. And he can go up fast or slow, depending on what he's willing to do and capable of putting into the job. We might start out a man like you at, oh, say, a hundred dollars a week, but that isn't to say you'd be stuck at that level for two years or even two months."
"I suppose a man could keep a family on that until he got rolling," said David.
"You'd find the work in the publicity end just about the same as what you're doing now. Our publicity people have high standards for writing and editing and reporting, and our publicity releases don't wind up in newspaper editors' wastebaskets. Our people do a professional job, and are well-respected as journalists." He stood. "I've got a little matter to attend to-- take me about ten minutes. Could you possibly stick around? I'm enjoying our talk."
David looked at his watch. "Oh--guess I could spare another ten or fifteen minutes."
Dilling was back in his booth in three minutes, chuckling over some private joke. "Just talking on the phone with Lou Flammer, the publicity supervisor. Needs a new stenographer. Lou's a card. Everybody here is crazy about Lou. Old weekly man himself, and I guess that's where he learned to be so easy to get along with. Just to feel him out for the hell of it, I told him about you. I didn't commit you to anything--just said what you told me, that you were keeping your eyes open. And guess what Lou said?"
"Guess what, Nan," said David Potter to his wife on the telephone. He was wearing only his shorts, and was phoning from the company hospital. "When you come home from the hospital tomorrow, you'll be coming home to a solid citizen who pulls down a hundred and ten dollars a week, every week. I just got my badge and passed my physical!"
"Oh?" said Nan, startled. "It happened awfully fast, didn't it? I didn't think you were going to plunge right in."
"What's there to wait for?"
"Well--I don't know. I mean, how do you know what you're getting into? You've never worked for anybody but yourself, and don't know anything about getting along in a huge organization. I knew you were going to talk to the Ilium people about a job, but I thought you planned to stick with the paper another year, anyway."
"In another year I'll be thirty, Nan."
"Well?"
"That's pretty old to be starting a career in industry. There are guys my age here who've been working their way up for ten years. That's pretty stiff competition, and it'll be that much stiffer a year from now. And how do we know Jason will still want to buy the paper a year from now?" Ed Jason was David's assistant, a recent college graduate whose father wanted to buy the paper for him. "And this job that opened up today in publicity won't be open a year from now, Nan. Now was the time to switch--this afternoon!"
Nan sighed. "I suppose. But it doesn't seem like you. The Works are fine for some people; they seem to thrive on that life. But you've always been so free. And you love the paper--you know you do."
"I do," said David, "and it'll break my heart to let it go. It was a swell thing to do when we had no kids, but it's a shaky living now--with the kids to educate and all."
"But, hon," said Nan, "the paper is making money."
"It could fold like that," said David, snapping his fingers. "A daily could come in with a one-page insert of Dorset news, or--"
"Dorset likes its little paper too much to let that happen. They like you and the job you're doing too much."
David nodded. "What about ten years from now?"
"What about ten years from now in the Works? What about ten years from now anywhere?"
"It's a better bet that the Works will still be here. I haven't got the right to take long chances any more, Nan, not with a big family counting on me."
"It won't be a very happy big family, darling, if you're not doing what you want to do. I want you to go on being happy the way you have been--driving around the countryside, getting news and talking and selling ads; coming home and writing what you want to write, what you believe in. You in the Works!"
"It's what I've got to do."
"All right, if you say so. I've had my say."
"It's still journalism, high-grade journalism," said David.
"Just don't sell the paper to Jason right away. Put him in charge, but let's wait a month or so, please?"
"No sense in waiting, but if you really want to, all right." David held up a brochure he'd been handed after his physical examination was completed. "Listen to this, Nan: under the company Security Package, I get ten dollars a day for hospital expenses in case of illness, full pay for twenty-six weeks, a hundred dollars for special hospital expenses. I get life insurance for about half what it would cost on the outside. For whatever I put into government bonds under the payroll-savings plan, the company will give me a five per cent bonus in company stock--twelve years from now. I get two weeks' vacation with pay each year, and, after fifteen years, I get three weeks. Get free membership in the company country club. After twenty-five years, I'll be eligible for a pension of at least a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, and much more if I rise in the organization and stick with it for more than twenty-five years!"
"Good heavens!" said Nan.
"I'd be a damn fool to pass that up, Nan."
"I still wish you'd waited until the little girls and I were home and settled, and you got used to them. I feel you were panicked into this."
"No, no--this is it, Nan. Give the little girls a kiss apiece for me. I've got to go now, and report to my new supervisor."
"Your what?"
"Supervisor."
"Oh. I thought that's what you said, but I couldn't be sure."
"Good-by, Nan."
"Good-by, David."
David clipped his badge to his lapel, and stepped out of the hospital and onto the hot asphalt floor of the world within the fences of the Works. Dull thunder came from the buildings around him, a truck honked at him, and a cinder blew in his eye. He dabbed at the cinder with a corner of his handkerchief and finally got it out. When his vision was restored, he looked about himself for Building 31, where his new office and supervisor were. Four busy streets fanned out from where he stood, and each stretched seemingly to infinity.
He stopped a passerby who was in less of a desperate hurry than the rest. "Could you tell me, please, how to find Building 31, Mr. Flammer's office?"
The man he asked was old and bright-eyed, apparently getting as much pleasure from the clangor and smells and nervous activity of the Works as David would have gotten from April in Paris. He squinted at David's badge and then at his face. "Just starting out, are you?"
"Yes sir. My first
day."
"What do you know about that?" The old man shook his head wonderingly, and winked. "Just starting out. Building 31? Well, sir, when I first came to work here in 1899, you could see Building 31 from here, with nothing between us and it but mud. Now it's all built up. See that water tank up there, about a quarter of a mile? Well, Avenue 17 branches off there, and you follow that almost to the end, then cut across the tracks, and-- Just starting out, eh? Well, I'd better walk you up there. Came here for just a minute to talk to the pension folks, but that can wait. I'd enjoy the walk."
"Thank you."
"Fifty-year man, I was," he said proudly, and he led David up avenues and alleys, across tracks, over ramps and through tunnels, through buildings filled with spitting, whining, grumbling machinery, and down corridors with green walls and numbered black doors.
"Can't be a fifty-year man no more," said the old man pityingly. "Can't come to work until you're eighteen nowadays, and you got to retire when you're sixty-five." He poked his thumb under his lapel to make a small gold button protrude. On it was the number "50" superimposed on the company trademark. "Something none of you youngsters can look forward to wearing some day, no matter how much you want one."
"Very nice button," said David.
The old man pointed out a door. "Here's Flammer's office. Keep your mouth shut till you find out who's who and what they think. Good luck."
Lou Flammer's secretary was not at her desk, so David walked to the door of the inner office and knocked.
"Yes?" said a man's voice sweetly. "Please come in."
David opened the door. "Mr. Flammer?"
Lou Flammer was a short, fat man in his early thirties. He beamed at David. "What can I do to help you?"
"I'm David Potter, Mr. Flammer."
Flammer's Santa-Claus-like demeanor decayed. He leaned back, propped his feet on his desk top, and stuffed a cigar, which he'd concealed in his cupped hand, into his large mouth. "Hell--thought you were a scoutmaster." He looked at his desk clock, which was mounted in a miniature of the company's newest automatic dishwasher. "Boy scouts touring the Works. Supposed to stop in here fifteen minutes ago for me to give 'em a talk on scouting and industry. Fifty-six per cent of Federal Apparatus' executives were eagle scouts."
David started to laugh, but found himself doing it all alone, and he stopped. "Amazing figure," he said.