Now and on Earth (11 page)

"Which-what other-is there another-?"

Then the doctor, chuckling: "Martha, Martha!… By the way, Jim. I've just received my copy of the
Prairie Schooner
. Your story is very well done. Too bad there isn't some money in that sort of thing. Too bad."

That's the way it had been at Lois' house. They didn't hide in the kitchen there. They seated you in a room with a baby grand and more books than a branch library, and then they pelted you with words until your hide became so sore that you began to shout and snarl even before you were touched, until you made such a fool and a boor of yourself that you could never go back.

But at Roberta's:

I got up and began to pace the floor, and finally, call it eavesdropping if you will, I stopped where I could hear:

"Why Mother! You don't mean it!"

"Yessir, that's just what she did! She took a little cornmeal and beat it up with some canned milk and water, and she dipped the bread in that. And it made the finest French toast you ever saw!"

I thought, well for the love of- But it went on and on:

"Mrs. Shropshire's husband came back."

"No!"

"Yes. I was standing out in the-no, I was coming up from the cellar-when I saw him getting out of the car. I don't know where he'd get the money to buy a car with, do you?"

"Now I just wonder, Mother."

And:

"You can't guess how much I paid for eggs today."

"Well, now-how much was that last dozen?"… When we were outside in the car, I said, "Do you always keep your dates waiting while you discuss the price of eggs?"

Roberta said, after a minute, "I don't have very many dates." She flared out, too, with, "But if they don't want to wait, they know what they can do!"

"This one knows," I said, and I drove back around the block and opened the door of the car.

"I didn't mean to make you mad," she said, not stirring.

"It's hereditary. You didn't do it."

"You know what I mean. Mother and I have always been pals. I'm about the only person she really enjoys talking to. I'm away all day, and she looks forward to being with me at night."

"What about your father?"

"He's not much company. Anyway, he's on the night shift with the police department."

"Well, look," I said, "suppose I hadn't come around; suppose no one had come around. What would you have done all evening? Just sat there and talked about nothing?"

"We weren't talking about nothing. I enjoy being with Mother just as much as she enjoys being with me."

"But-but don't you ever read anything, girl?"

"Mother can't-Mother doesn't care much for reading."

"But, you! What about you, Roberta?"

"I guess I'd be a fine one to sit with my nose in a book when Mother couldn't-didn't have anyone to talk to! Now wouldn't I?"

She did like to read-I found that out after we were married-but nothing that would help her to a better understanding of herself and me. I was working on an assignment for a string of puff sheets-a cent a word six weeks before publication, and I had to pay travel out of that. Across Iowa, the Dakotas, and Missouri, down through Oklahoma and Texas. When we wanted amusement, we had to fall back on the public libraries. And I was a long time in learning not to be exasperated; I suppose I never learned.

"But why can't I have what I like, Jimmie?"

"Why? Because Edgar Wallace is only a man, not a factory."

"Now you tell me why."

"Oh, my-! Roberta, here's an adventure story. It's all about a city way off in Africa, and goddesses, and battles, and stuff like that. A guy named Flaubert wrote it. I think he's going places. I think you'll like him better even than Max Brand. Now please read it, honey."

"I did read it."

"When?"

"Well-I sort of looked through it."

"Roberta! Why, in the name of God, won't you just once read a
book?
"

I knew why, in time-the why of the books and everything else. She was afraid. She wasn't sure of me, and she was afraid that in traveling those paths which might make her sure, which would bind us together, she would only fail in front of me. Now, I only thought-I didn't know. It was better to leave it that way.

She didn't mind my reading aloud. Not a bit. Not until Jo came.

"But, Jimmie, you're keeping her awake. You'll make her nervous."

"No, I won't. She'll go to sleep when she gets tired listening."

"Listening! A three-months-old baby!"

"What's the matter? Are you afraid she'll learn something?"

"Oh, go ahead. I suppose she may as well get used to it early."

Then:

A one-room apartment in Fort Worth, or Dallas, or Kansas City. Jo watching my face; Roberta, lying on the bed, watching both of us:

"Now, listen carefully, Jo. What's the little girl's name next door?"

"Woof."

"That's fine. Ruth. And the other little girl-the one down the hall?"

"Mawy?"

"That's right. You're all little girls, but you've got different names. Isn't that funny?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Three little girls, and… now look at this thing again-this thing here on the wall. Remember what I told you about the little girls? Three different names? All right, what is this?"

Cwack?

"Crack. We already had that. Now what's another name? Remember the three-"

"Kwe-vis?"

"Why of course! Crevice! One more, now. Fis- Fish-"

"Fis-ser?"

"Fissure! That's doing it! Want to see if you can find it in the dictionary?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well… No, No! A-B-C-D-E-F- You remember that! You wouldn't look for my shoes up around my neck, would you? Well. Why look for an
f
with the
a
's."

And then:

"Ha, ha. Clever youngster you've got, Dillon. Very. Has she really read
La Fitte
?"

"Yes, and
Children of Strangers
, too."

"Poor child. Probably hold a grudge against me all her life-ha, ha. Very clever. Are you giving me dinner, by the way? I think I'll insist on it. I really shall. If I told you about the luncheon I had- Ugh! Revolting! Actually revolting, old man."

"Well-Mrs. Dillon won't be-I can get some stuff from the delicatessen-"

"Oh, horrors!… Ha, ha. Never mind. Just my way of speaking. Got to run, anyway. Really must."

And then:

"Of course he knew you were here. Do you think he's deaf? Why the hell did you have to start running the vacuum cleaner, anyway?"

"Because I wanted to, that's why. And I thought it'd be a doggone good hint to him that someone around this house had something to do!"

"I guess he took it."

"If you can't hold your job without feeding everyone that drops in from Washington or New York or New Orleans, you'd better get another one."

"I may have to."

"Jimmie-you don't mean that, do you?"

"What difference does it make? What difference does anything make? What's the use in having the best job I ever had in my life, in selling everything I can write? What's the use in anything?… Oh Christ! Let's take a drink and forget about it."

"I couldn't do it, Jimmie. I just can't do things like that. I can't sit there like a bump on a log and when someone says something not know what-I just can't, Jimmie!"

I'm not blaming anyone, unless it's myself. Not Roberta. I've only been telling you about Roberta, not blaming her. She couldn't have been any different, under the circumstances, just as Jo couldn't have been any different, or I couldn't have been any different. Abe Lincoln could have, but I couldn't. Maybe he couldn't…

And, no, it would have been the same story with a different twist with Lois. We found that out the hard way.

One day, after she was married and I was married, we met on the street in Lincoln. And I undressed her with my eyes and she me with hers. And nothing mattered but that we should be together again. We drove to Marysyule, Kansas, and registered at a hotel. We even wrote letters-unmailed, fortunately-explaining why we had had to do what we had done. Then the physical reunion, and after that, talk, lying there together in the dusk. She had it all planned. She had a sorority sister whose husband owned a big advertising agency in Des Moines, and he was a perfectly gorgeous person. If I would just be nice to him-

"What do you mean, nice? I've never spit in anyone's face yet."

"Well, that's what I mean, dear. You say so many things that are misunderstood. They give people the wrong impression of you. They think that-"

"-that I've been in some pretty nasty places. Well, I have been. And anyone who doesn't like it can lump it."

"Please, dear. I think it's marvelous the way you've worked to make something of yourself-"

"-with so little success, is that what you mean? Well, what do you want me to do? Never mind-I'll tell you…'Ooh, my deah Mrs. Bunghole, what a delightful blend of pee-excuse me, tea! And what are your beagles doing this season, Mrs. Bunghole? Beagling? Why how gorgeously odd! Do tell me-'" "Now you're becoming impossible!" "Perhaps I always was." "Perhaps." We went back to Lincoln that same night. Five years later I would have admitted, in the security I had then, that she was not superficial, and she would have conceded that the

common streak in me was no broader than it needed to be. And each would have borrowed from the other, and profited by it.

And yet I wonder… I'm pretty sure that those five years did things to me which made her wince when she thought of our one-time intimacy. And I can say positively that I felt the same way about her. If I had been her husband, I think I should have put a saddle on her and trotted her around the countryside until she had worked off about forty pounds.

The fool shouldn't have let her get that way. She wouldn't have with me.

I arise at four, shave, wash and dress, and at four-thirty I start writing. Or, at least, I sit down to my typewriter. I sit there until six- and I usually get something done- by which time Mom has such breakfast as I care to eat. When I have eaten, I lie down on the lounge and rest and smoke until about a quarter of seven. Then I go outside and wait for Murphy to arrive.

He seldom gets here with any time to spare. (We've been more than five minutes late twice.) I can hear him coming several blocks away, and when I do, I get over on the other side of the street and hop in as he slows down.

I grit my teeth and close my eyes as we start down the hill to the bay, and I have a theory that he does, too. We make the descent in twelve jumps-one for each intersection. A good half of the time either the front or rear wheels, or both, are in the air. Stop-signs, children playing ball, switch engines across our path mean nothing. Maybe we jump over them.

At the boulevard he forces his left front wheel between the bumpers of two other cars. Usually, one is forced to give way. If not, he shoots the car into reverse, then darts ahead with the right wheels on the sidewalk and the others scraping fenders with those in the procession until he sees another "opening." And so on until he is able to crash through.

The road leading to the plant is only two-lane, and the night shift is coming off duty at the time. But Murphy doesn't mind them. He stays on the left side of the road, and if the night workers want to eat breakfast at home instead of in the hospital, they will pull off on the bay shore. Well, Murphy will give way, but I think he feels imposed upon when he has to. After all, he is only a few seconds in getting to the plant while they are minutes on the road.

We arrive at the plant midway between the first and last whistle and punch in as the last one is blowing.

He smiles with satisfaction. "Thought we were going to be late, didn't you?"

"I thought we were going to be dead."

"Ha, huh. Didn't scare you, did I?"

"Oh, no!"

The stockroom floor is covered with piles of parts that have come in during the night. I list the travelers on each pile, then check the list with my books. Any parts that are short on the assembly lines are sent out at once. I have to see that the travelers match the parts they accompany-the move-boys delight in dropping the right traveler on the wrong part-and that lefts and rights of a certain part have not come in on the same traveler. Frequently, a part that has been universal is changed into left and right or inboard and outboard without our being notified. Engineering forgets about it, or the office makes one of its many slips, and we have the same number on more than one part. This, obviously, won't do.

But my chief trouble is with the stock chasers or expediters.

There is one expediter for every two positions on Final Assembly, and one each for Wing and Control Surfaces. It is their job to see that there is a continuous flow of parts from the manufacturing departments to their assemblies or "projects"; to see that never, at any time, is there a delay in production because of parts' shortages.

It is my opinion and the opinion of every other stockroom worker that they are damned nuisances who actually slow things down instead of speeding them up. But I suppose we're prejudiced. Practically every defense plant has them; if they weren't a necessity, they wouldn't be there. Blueprints and work orders get mislaid; foremen keep putting off a difficult job for an easy one; parts become buried in the various stockrooms; move-boys pile finished parts in with unfinished. So the expediters, who speed from one end of the plant to the other, who keep themselves informed of plans before they are reduced to paper, who are bursting with knowledge of every phase of production connected with their project-they really are necessary.

Any shortage means a reproof for them. Many shortages mean dismissal. So shortages are their only concern.

They pour through the gate the moment it is opened, grab up such parts as they need to stay an immediate shortage, and dash out again-without the formality of telling me what they have taken.

I or Murphy or one of the others will call out:

"Hey, there! Where you going with that?"

"Position 4," the stock chaser calls back. "They're waiting for-"

"Let 'em wait. What you got, anyway?"

"Oh, hell. Just a half dozen pieces. I'll tell you about it after-"

"Half a dozen, hell! I can see eight from here. What are those anyway? Tank-support brackets?"

"Yeah. I'll give you the number after-"

"You'll give it right now. What's the matter with you guys? Don't you know we have to keep records here? That'd throw us off in two places. The traveler'd be short and Final'd be long."

Sometimes it will go like this:

"Now wait a minute! Wing's already got plenty of that! You tell 'em to look around down there."

"No, they haven't, Dilly. I'll swear to God they've been crying for this stuff for a week. Let me take it now, and if I find any down there-"

"Moon! Oh Moon!"

"What's the matter, Dilly?"

"Our friend here is trying to get out with these static tubes. Wing's got enough already."

"Put them back where you got them," says Moon, eyeing the stock chaser somberly.

"I can't, Moon. By God, I just got to have them."

"No, you don't. They've already got enough static tubes down there."

"Yeah, but they're short on pitots. I was going to-"

"Just what I thought," says Moon grimly. "You were going to change the tape on them and use 'em for pitots. Just wait until Material Control hears about this."

"Aw, now, Moon..

"Put 'em down, then." And the old harried question. "What's the matter with you guys, anyway? Don't you know what that would do to our records? We'd show fifty statics out and no pitots when we'd actually have twenty-five of each."

One of the most infuriating tricks of the stock chasers is the taking of parts from the paint shop or plating direct to the assemblies without telling us about it. Another is to have parts reworked into other parts without a rework order. Yes, there are rules against this sort of thing, but the plant authorities wink at them. Anything to solve an emergency, regardless of whether the solution creates another emergency or not.

I suppose I should be glad that things are like this, because it would be extremely difficult to hold me culpable for any costly mistakes or delays that occur. I'm not breathing any too easily, but I think it would be. But, despite that fact, I would rather find some other way out. I don't like so much turmoil; so many arguments. I think there is an easier, less nerve-wracking, and better way of doing things.

I think the essential difficulty is our system of keeping records. And I don't think there will ever be any improvement until we change it. As it is, the parts are classified according to positions and assemblies, and a part may be carried in one position one day and another the next. This makes for a lot of erasing and scratching out. It makes it possible for us to show a shortage on a part when we actually have more than we need, and vice versa. It means that the only way you can be sure that you have not overlooked a part is to start searching for it at the top of the first page of the release book and search right through to the last.

Worst of all is this business of breaking everything up into ship-units of twenty-five. What is gained by that? I wonder if the fellow who set up this system thought of the work it would involve? That to receive a quantity of only one part, the bookkeeper would have to make as many as thirty entries?

And there are no places to show dates of arrivals and issues. No wonder we can never win an argument with the other departments. It's simply our word against theirs, or, rather, their many words against ours; so we're always to blame.

But to get on:

I spend an hour or so out on the assembly lines, checking for parts that may have been short-circuited around us, and tracing out the effective numbers on new parts. I may have made this last seem a little too simple when I first spoke of it. You see, many parts on a plane are concealed.

I come back to the stockroom and usually find a number of parts which do not belong there. Yes, the moveboys did and do have instructions to bring nothing to us until it has been turned down by the other stockrooms; and they'll always swear that they've done so. But if they don't, and obviously they don't, there's little to be done. Moving is pretty much a beginner's job; few stay on it after their probationary period is over. By the time you reported a move-boy-and I've never done it-he'd probably be in some other department. So, to repeat, there's little to be done. And, of course, these mistakes aren't always the move-boys' fault. Probably not more than half the time.

Speaking frankly, Moon gives me more trouble than any man outside the department. He usually forgets to write down the parts he issues. Invariably, instead of setting down the part number, he uses the name. And, no, that doesn't do just as well. We've got three or four hundred different kinds of brackets, for instance, and it's impossible to distinguish one from the other by name or description. Particularly when your vocabulary is as limited as Moon's. You can do it by number.

Gross is a constant source of trouble, too. But with him it's deliberate. I can never take his count on anything. I have to make a re- check.

As for Murphy, well, he's careful and conscientious and he's friendly toward me. But there's a flaw in his vision, a peculiar quirk, which makes him write backwards and upside down: 31 for 13, and
w
for
m
.

In a way, of course, the situation has its bright side- in the same way that my difficulties with the expediters have their bright side. But I still don't like it. In fact, I feel some days that I can't stand it. I want to shake Moon, and tell Gross to straighten up or get out, and advise Murphy to see an oculist. But, of course, I don't. I've got to get along.

I never go to the toilet or take a drink of water on my own time. I don't have enough of it. The lunch period is only thirty minutes, and it takes about five minutes to get out of the plant and find a spot to sit, and another five to get back in again. Obviously, unless I want to swallow my food whole and do without smoking, I drink and go to the toilet on the company. Everyone does.

Well, the whistle blows, and I race for the door. And two thousand other men are racing with me. By the time I get outside, sitting space against the sheet-metal sides of the building is already at a premium. I see an empty space far down the wall and run for it.

"Hey, turd-head!" someone calls.

I don't look around.

"Hey, prick!"

I hurry on. By stopping I would admit that "I knew my name."

I go on down the wall, and if the space I come to is not marked RESTRICTED AREA, I sit down. I unscrew the vacuum bottle as I reach into my lunch sack, so that not one of the precious twenty minutes will be wasted.

Yes, I mind.

The first time I was called by "name," I got white in the face and stopped and demanded to know "Who said that?" It was a boy of twenty or so, clean-cut, good will shining out of his face, embarrassed and very much astonished. He muttered something about kidding, and someone near by said, "Can't you take a joke?" So I went on, and I've never stopped since.

But I mind. It's not that I've never been called things like that before. You hear some pretty salty talk around hotel locker-rooms and in the pipeline camps. You hear so much that, if you are like me, you will do almost anything to get away from it. And when you do, and have to come back, it is all the harder. Particularly if you are thirty-five and see no way of getting away again.

While we are on this subject: In the ten weeks I have been here I have heard the word
f-k
used more often than I had in my life heretofore. Everyone uses it, from the factory manager down to the maintenance men. Upstairs in the office you will hear it fifty times in an hour, and the women and girls have become so accustomed to it that they never so much as raise an eyebrow.

A part is
f-ked up
. Sheet-metal is
f-king around again
.
If those f-kers in Engineering don't do this, we'll do so and so
. A design is
f-king well all right (or not all right)
. If you're in error, you've
f-ked things
. You're
f-ked (stumped)
.

I don't know why the word should be so much more popular in aircraft than it is elsewhere, but there must be a reason. I've been dallying with the idea of writing Ben Botkin about it-perhaps doing a little paper on it-but, of course, I won't. If I do any writing, it'll be on my story. It's about finished, and I can get some money for it. I hope.

Generally, you don't hear as much off-color talk around the plant as you would elsewhere. (I know I've given a contrary impression.) What you do hear is less sordid, seemingly, than the brand outside. There is something light-hearted about it. I have heard only one shady story since I have been here-only one that you couldn't tell in church.

San Diego, prior to the establishment of the aircraft factories, was not inappropriately dubbed the "City of the Living Dead." There were no industries, there was no construction; the town's one asset was its climate. If you were young and wanted excitement and had a living to make, why, the town wouldn't want you and you wouldn't want it. If you were old and had a small income or pension, you couldn't have found a more attractive place to live (or die) in.