Now and on Earth (9 page)

Oh, Christ…

They rose to the top of the cot. They mounted higher and higher around me. And as they mounted the rings drew in to form a sort of beehive. Drew in. Drew in. And, finally-finally-there was only a speck of light left (they always left enough light for me to see by). And then the pile began to sag, sag down.

I pleaded with them. I told them funny stories. I sang to them. I pleaded and sang and told funny stories all at once. And then they dropped down on me in a mass, and their weight stopped my heart and I ceased to breathe…

Whatta they keep that crazy bastard around for?

Ahh, he's a good kid. I been through this myself. Come on, Slim. Snap out of it.

He needs a drink. Anyone gotta drink?

Got a can of heat he can have.

Well squeeze it out for him… Slim, goddam yuh, get this down your gullet. Huh, huh! Don't yuh know it's bad luck to die in a tent?

At night, when I went out on the line, they were still with me, the real ones, and the others, and I could never be sure which was which. I had thirty generators to oil, gas, and water; a ditcher and a dragline; so I needed to keep moving. And I did not know when it was safe to walk through the things in front of me and when it was not. Sometimes, most times, my feet would melt through their bodies. But- sometimes a diamond-shaped head would lash out at my eighteen-inch boot, or a great furry mass would leap straight toward my face. And then I would stumble backwards, run, knocking over fuel cans, tripping over pipe, battering myself against the generators; run and run and run until I could run no more.

Good men were scarce in those days; that's probably obvious. I was getting fifty cents an hour for twelve hours, seven days a week, with only a dollar a day out for board and flop. So I stayed on after I got well; after homesickness was beginning to take the place of the other. A hundred and fifty dollars a month clear to be sent home; so I stayed.

After two years-something more than two years- a few days before Thanksgiving, we put the button on the job, and I beat my way home. I got there Thanksgiving Day. The folks were over at Marge's for dinner, and I was broke, and there wasn't anything to eat in the house. I got cleaned up and put on some other clothes. An hour later I had bought back my job on the installment plan and was hopping bells again.

Yes, as the lawyers say, I'm going to connect all this up. I've laid the groundwork for it, or am laying one for something else.

I worked at the hotel another year and a half, and then the bug began to bite me again. I had to lay off a lot. Frankie was thirteen that summer and big for her age, and I got her a job slinging hash in the coffee shop. But it worried me so much to see her walking around in her sleep, to see her insulted and propositioned and bawled out, that I made her quit after a few weeks. So there we were. We had to make a jump and we didn't know which way.

Then, one evening while I was killing time in the library, I picked up a copy of the
Texas Monthly
. And there on the title page was a line "
Oil Field Vignettes_ By James Dillon
." I had written that story almost a year before, one bitter night down on the Pecos- written it by lantern-light with the sleet beating down against the nickel tablet and my hands swathed in mittens. And I had sent it to town with the provision truck and promptly forgotten about it. I called on the editor and we spent a whole afternoon talking-it was that kind of magazine. He couldn't pay me in money, but he had

a lot of advice to offer, chiefly to the effect that I had better get myself some more schooling.

How? We-eli-he just might be able to help me there. His alma mater was Nebraska. He had a great many friends on the faculty. If he could arrange a loan for the tuition…

I told Pop about it that night. I wanted to hurt him,. I guess. All I did was to prove something that I had always known down in my heart-that I was small and he was big.

"You'll go, of course," he said. "Don't let anything stop you. Go."

"But what about-about you?"

"I'll get by. I wouldn't want to live, anyway, if I thought I'd made you miss a chance like this."

And Mom and Frankie?

Well, Mom had a sister in Nebraska. She and Frankie could stay with her a while. I didn't want her to, because I remembered what that sister was like, but-

But the decision was taken out of our hands. I learned, one morning, that I had sold a quart of whisky to a Federal man, one of those singular prohibition agents who couldn't be bought off. A warrant was being drawn for my arrest. We were on our way out of town by noon. Destination, Nebraska.

Now, to connect up…

I think I've explained or partially explained a number of things. How I came to be in Nebraska, and thus had the opportunity to meet Roberta. Why I was with her as I was. Why I am like I am and why Roberta is like she is, perforce. Why, in a way, we have had such a completely messy existence. Why I-we-are in a mess now. And why we will not get out of it, unless it is to get into something worse.

I haven't said anything about Marge? That is the only way I can say anything about her-to say nothing.

As far back as I can remember-not quite but almost-Marge was blinding herself to facts which she did not care to recognize. And at twelve, when the family's fortunes took a turn for the better, it was as if her mind had been swept free of what misery and poverty she had known before. Swept free, for that matter, of everything else.

A mean thing to say, but largely true. She had Bright's disease. She was an invalid for a couple years. It interrupted her schooling. She forgot things that she was never able to remember.

I shouldn't feel toward her as I do, because I recall with terrifying clarity how the disease was brought on. But, to use an oil-field phrase, I'd as soon be smothered with dung as wild honey. When I last saw her a couple of years ago, I was never sure whether I wanted to pat her head or wring her neck. Now I'm afraid the pull will all be in one direction.

She's incapable of doing anything useful. She has no idea of the value of time or money. And-and she insists on telling everyone she's three years younger than I am!

If she breaks up with Walter, I don't know what we'll do. Because she'll come here, of course. I'll ask her to come. I'll insist upon it, because she's my sister and I love her. But I don't know how we'll put up with it.

Mom will spend three-fourths of her time cooking special dishes for her, and the other fourth working over her clothes. And Roberta will be mad, boiling mad and jealous from one week to the next- "See here, James Dillon; if you think for a minute I'm going to do without just so your sister-"

I don't even want to think about it.

There'll be Turkish cigarettes everywhere you turn. The bathroom sink will be full of henna, always. There'll be fudge in the ashtrays, and lipstick on the drinking glasses, and moving-picture magazines from hell to breakfast. I'll never be able to write or read. The house will be filled constantly with the "handsomest fellow" and the "most refined man," and the phone will ring unceasingly and the doorbell likewise. And always, always in that timid half-hesitant drawl of hers Marge will give us her views, her advice, on everything from intercourse to the international situation.

Well-maybe Pop is better. After all it's been almost eight months since we saw him. But I don't think so. Things just don't work out that way for us. As soon as we straighten out one problem, we're faced with another. I sometimes wonder if we wouldn't do just as well if we simply sat back and did nothing.

I tried to discuss this with Mom the other night.

"Mom," I said, "what do you suppose would have happened back there when I was fifteen if I hadn't gone to work as a bellhop. 'What would we all have done?"

"Well, you know how I always felt about that," she said. "I knew it wasn't the right thing for a growing boy to be out all night. I didn't want you to do it. Don't you remember how I used to fuss at Pop, and-"

"Now, don't get on your high horse," I said. "Good God, Mom! Can't we talk to each other any more?"

"I guess I know what you mean," said Mom. "I used to wonder the same thing. I don't think we should, though. When I think of how I used to take you kids to a five-cent movie and sit in it all day to save fuel. And of how we skimped on food. Do you remember the games we used to play? I'd break up the bread on your plates at breakfast, and pour coffee over it, and each piece would be a fish, and we'd be big sharks ourselves. And then at noon the bread and gravy would be cars and our mouths would turn into tunnels-"

I laughed. "Yeah. And where were we living when you chased down the alley that day and got those two road workers for boarders? I remember Marge and I had a pet chicken named Dickie, and how we bawled when you took it to the store and swapped it for fifty cents' worth of groceries to give these guys their first meal with."

"Yes, and then Pop came home, and he never noticed anything, and he could talk with his mouth full. Our boarders didn't get anything but their coffee. They never came back."

We sat looking at the floor, not wanting to meet each other's eyes. Mom got up.

"I guess it had to be done," she said. "I'm going to fix myself a cup of tea and go to bed. I think I ought to be entitled to a cup of tea, at least."

I jumped up and followed her out into the kitchen.

"Sure it had to be done," I said. "It does make sense. It has to. Why, if it didn't-"

"Jimmie."

"Yes, Mom."

"Don't be like Pop was. Don't always be looking for an excuse to run away from your obligations."

"But, Mom, if it didn't make any difference-if everyone got along just as well-better-"

"Got along, how? By doing without food and clothes? By living with relatives and sponging off the neighbors? You mustn't even think about it, Jimmie."

You remember that I mentioned certain parts which we never saw and yet were required to keep a record on? And that something seemed to be wrong with this if I could only think of what it was? Well, it finally came to me, and as a consequence I've got about fifty less parts to deal with.

If we know, say, that a fuselage must be equipped with a firewall before it reaches motor-preparation, what reason is there for keeping a record on firewalls? Absolutely none. You can forget about them.

Then I've got Moon to get the Chief Dispatcher to issue an order that all parts must clear the other stockrooms-Sub-assembly, Sheet-metal, and so on-before they touch us. This will, or should, stop parts that don't belong in our stockroom from getting there. At least, if any do get to us, we can lay the blame on the other stockrooms.

Finally, at my insistence, Moon has put Murphy to taking inventory along the assembly line, and as he finds out what they have out there, I am able to solve many of the tangles that had been baffling me. Vail was supposed to have taken the inventory, because he has more time to spare than Murphy, but he declared that Busken couldn't take care of the purchased end of things by himself, so Murphy got stuck. He didn't like it very well. He and Vail are barely speaking. But I don't see that that's my fault.

I have never worked in a place where it was assumed that I knew so much more than I actually did. Now Moon and Murphy-yes, and Gross-knew that a new part would be integrated in one ship before we received a quantity order of it. And, I suppose, common sense should have told me as much. All I had to do was to take the part and go up and down the assembly lines until I found a ship that had a part to match it. The part would be effective from that ship-number on.

Everyone knew this but me. And so sure were they that I knew it that they could not understand my fretting over the effective- numbers of new parts. Or, perhaps, they thought it would do me good to find out such things for myself. Every man is pretty much on his own here. Every man has just a little bit more to do than he can get done in eight hours, and there's no time to help another man even if you want to. You may give a fellow worker a hand-up or a quick word of advice, but if he's slow to take either, you keep right on going. You have to. I've received much more assistance and cooperation than I'm entitled to by the rules of the game. Partly because, I believe, they are getting tired of changing bookkeepers; largely because Moon can humiliate Gross by keeping me on. That was the catch in the job.

I have found out why Moon has it in for Gross.

Moon has been in aircraft work for almost five years; relatively speaking, he's a veteran. Not only that, not only does he have more experience than 95 per cent of the men in the plant, but he has a natural and unusual talent for the business. He's worked in Final Assembly, Sub-, Wing, even in Engineering. Part numbers don't bother him. He can look at one small part and reconstruct an entire assembly of several hundred.

A day or so ago, during the lunch period, he and Vail played a game for dollar stakes. By turns, one would go outside the fence and down the assembly line to a plane which the other could not see. Then he would call out something like this: "Six inches inboard from the right wing tip, and three inches down!"

And the other would answer, say (I can't produce their words verbatim): "Compression-rib bracket; one sixty-fourth of an inch dural with a quarter-inch hole and a one-coat green prime!"

Or: "Five inches up from tail-cone bottom, tail-fairing connecting?"

And: "That's easy. Aren's tab-control, minus control rod!"

Vail knows something about planes himself. He's got two years behind him and seventy hours in the air. Moon finally stuck him, though, on rivet sizes.

Now, a man like that is extremely valuable at any time and particularly at a time like this. It would actually be impossible to replace him. And Moon is not inclined to underestimate his worth.

About three months ago, or just before I came here, Moon was getting a dollar and four cents an hour, and he was none too well satisfied with it. But the company was negotiating with the union at the time, and he was content to wait for developments. Well, then, the agreement was signed and it specified that the wage of a leadman need be only 20 per cent higher than that of the highest paid worker in his department. In this case the highest paid was Vail, at eighty cents. So the personnel office, in their penny-wise fashion, cut Moon's wage to a dollar.

Moon made no complaint. He simply went over to another plant where he was promptly hired at a dollar sixteen. Then he handed in his resignation here. Of course, Production had to hear about it and when they did, they hit the ceiling. What in hell was Personnel trying to do? Didn't they know we were here to build planes? Did they think five-year men could be picked up off the street every day? You guys had better wake up!

Moon was advised that his pay, from that moment, was a dollar-sixteen.

He called up the other plant. They offered him a dollar-twenty-five.

Our plant saw the raise and twelve and a half cents more.

The other made it one-fifty even.

Our plant began to see red. You can't do us this way, they declared. We'll report you to Knudsen. We'll make it warm for you in the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce. It's bad ethics; it's sabotage; J. Edgar Hoover shall hear about it.

Well, the other plant didn't want that. They told Moon, very firmly, that they couldn't accept his application for employment-unless our plant decided they didn't want to keep him.

Moon started coming to work late. The timekeepers didn't notice.

He began eating apples and throwing cores at the guards. The guards were instructed to think this was funny.

He arranged the crates of pilot-seats into a pyramid, with an aerie at the summit, and he would lie there all day long, reading and eating candy bars and blowing smoke through the skylight…

Officially, no one noticed. They didn't want to. They knew him, and they were sure that in time he would become bored by the game and give up.

Busken and Vail liked Moon and tried-unnecessarily-to cover for him. Murphy, who told me the story, was on the inside, and, at any rate, wouldn't have played stool-pigeon. Gross, however, didn't have the lowdown, and he didn't particularly care for Moon. It seemed to him that his good friend, the personnel manager, would be shocked if he knew what was going on; also, that with Moon out of the way, he, Gross, with all his experience in football, would be the logical candidate for lead-man.

Well, it was pitiful in a way. Personnel had forgotten who Moon was. They sent him a discharge notice on the spot and a copy to Production. The latter caught Moon just as he was going out the gate, and they had to give him one-fifty to get him to come back. And ever since then they've had to let him do about as he pleased.

Moon found out about Gross. And, while Gross did do him a favor, he doesn't like him very much.

There is one thing about this place: If you are good enough at your job you can get away with anything.

Three weeks ago, the week Shannon took sick, we began moving into the extension to the plant. Everything was in twice the usual uproar. The production lines were running full blast; Final Assembly was running extra shifts; Engineering and Experimental were working as furiously as ever; we were receiving and throwing out parts more frantically than usual. And amidst all this we had to move. You'd see a fuselage roll by on a jig, with half a dozen men swarming over and inside it. We threw out and received parts while the racks were rocking along on the dollies. Nothing stopped for a moment.

Well, you might have thought that at such a time allowances would have been made for any disarray or untidiness. But the day we started to move the front office announced a clean-up campaign. When we went outside at noon, there, suspended by his neck from one of the hoist-tracks was a dummy of a man-the ugliest most scabrous object I have ever seen-placarded SLOPPY SAM. Underneath his title was another placard that read I AM AT HOME IN THIS DEPARTMENT. On the adjacent bulletin board there was a notice saying that Sloppy Sam would be awarded to the department which was adjudged the dirtiest by a committee composed of so-and-so and so-and-so, the award to be made the following Monday.

I don't know just how far Sloppy Sam set back production, but it must have been considerable. Rivet guns were replaced by brooms. The unishear men went around picking up scraps. Moon wouldn't even let me post my travelers. I had to get a dust cloth and start polishing the racks.

When we came through the plant entrance Monday, we all shuddered a little because it looked like Sam was suspended over our space. But when we came closer, we saw that it was Tooling, the department next to ours, that had drawn him. And still there was no let- down. We'd got by this week, but we might get him next, and Moon, like any good lead-man, had his pride.

Now, tooling men, in their own eyes at least, are a race apart. They go around spitting out tobacco and fractions, and they sometimes-not often-become so absorbed in what they are doing that they don't hear the quitting whistle. Incidentally, there aren't many of them. Not nearly as many as the plant would like to have.

Living somewhat in a world above us, they were not treated to the jeers and jokes that we doubtless would have received. But they were outraged nonetheless, and they brought all their fine art to bear to show just how they felt about things.

At some time during the morning they lowered the dummy. When they raised it again, it was equipped with a giant phallus-so gigantic, in fact, that Sloppy Sam required both hands to hold it upright. Or, to be more exact, outright. For, by changing a line here and shading one there, they had given the detestable creature a look of lewd beatitude that gave the lie to any innocent theory that he was urinating or acquiring a sun-tan.

Perhaps the high-hats didn't know about it. Perhaps they chose to ignore it. At any rate Sloppy Sam remained there until quitting time.

The following morning he had a companion. She was facing Sam, and her skirts were up, and so cunningly had the night-shift artists wrought rubber and red lead and excelsior that you could tell, from fifty yards away, why Sam was no longer using his hands.

Inside of a half-hour the chief of the company police was there. A moment later he was joined by the first vice-president, the second and third vice-presidents and the factory manager. The department foreman was called.

Who was responsible for this-this-this-

"That? Oh, I guess all the boys had a hand in it."

"So! Then you can inform your men-each of them- that they are to get a three-day layoff without pay."

"Well. I kinda think they won't come back if you do that. Myself, I've sorta been looking around…"

Baldwin, the production manager, came up, harried of face, prematurely gray, his pockets bulging with papers.

"Now see here! What the hell is this? Are we getting out planes or running a restaurant… what? What!!! These men?! Well, you can write mine out, too. I go all the way to Jersey to get a good man-just one good man-and you…! By God, I give up!"

They all walked away except the chief of police, who remained to cut the dummies down.

We've heard and seen nothing more of Sloppy Sam and the clean-up campaign.

I would like to be as indispensable as that. Not here. It is too much like home here; this is the one place I've been that was as crazy as my home. And I couldn't stand two such places very long. But if I could get back into writing again-real writing…

I had about 750 words done when Shannon became sick. Since then I've only done around three hundred. The only place I could think of to write where the typewriter wouldn't bother her is the bathroom, so I've been trying to write in there, and I haven't been very successful. For one thing, there isn't enough room for a table and the typewriter is a little too large to fit over the toilet seat. For another, the family seems to have to go every few minutes. Before that, I'll swear that Roberta would go for a day at a time, and Mom and Frankie were in the same class. But, now, well, just let me get settled good and about ready to hit the keys, and there they are beating on the door. I told them last night that they were going to have to get some pots, but that brought up the question of who would form the sanitation detail. And no one would. So we're in the same shape we were.

I wish Shannon would get well. I don't think any of us can go much longer without letting off some steam.

And-I guess I've made a pretty bad show of being funny. I am worried about her. I couldn't write anywhere so long as she is like this.

Well, to mention something cheerful, I've got a ride to and from work now. I started riding with Murphy, Wednesday. Gross laid off that day, throwing us shorthanded, so we worked overtime until five-thirty. Moon didn't have his car for some reason, and he asked Murphy to take him home. Murphy just about had to say yes, of course, and since the three of us were together, he also just about had to ask me to ride, too. Moon got in the back seat and put his feet up. Murphy and I rode in front.

We stopped in front of our house just as Frankie was going in, and she turned and waved.

"Your wife, Dilly?" said Moon.