The Fires of Spring (52 page)

The new job entailed reading some forty manuscripts a week. They were dreadful affairs, laden with musky passion that took place in the back of bars, in the back of automobiles, or in the sullen back places of the mind. More than a third of the manuscripts were so illiterate that they had either to be discarded on sight or completely rewritten. It was then that David discovered the value of an editor’s paste pot. He would sit at his typewriter and bang out copy as fast as he could type. With long scissors he would cut apart his own work and paste it over the worst sections of the story. Finally he would have a mangled hodge-podge, but that was the only way to get a good story, one filled with suggestive movement and sexy passion.

Well-written manuscripts usually lacked the force of reality. They were not brutal enough. Morris Binder said, “Tell all your love stories with an eye to using the same characters a couple of years later in a murder magazine.” He was not pleased with David’s first issue. “You don’t have enough of the murderous passion,” he said judiciously.

“What do you mean?” David asked.

“Love. Haven’t you ever known a girl you loved and yet you’d like to break her neck. Actually?”

“Yes,” David said.

“That’s the way love is,” the big man puffed. “Get it into you stories.”

Yet when true stories of the murderous passion arrived, David found they were too gross to be used. They came in dirty envelopes bearing brutal stories told in the unsophisticated words of the outhouse. The came mostly from women, and phrases from them lingered in David’s mind for weeks: “He beat me until his arm must of ached.” “If you was here I could show you my bruises.” “No matter what happened after that, I always remember that one heavenly night. Who could forget?”

In real embarrassment David bundled up such stories and returned them. In time he learned to rely upon a few trusted authors—Alison Webster had once been one—who knew how to hit a high standard of pornography and to maintain it. These writers were usually from small towns in the South or West. They wrote a standard product that played in morbid fascination upon the multiple forms of rape. Their characters, too, were standard brands, engaged in the involved game of suggesting everything and saying nothing.

So without David’s ever acknowledging it, he became immersed in the filthy business of polite pornography. He slipped into his evil responsibilities as easily as he had slipped into the thieving tricks of Paradise Park. Yet there was this difference: at Paradise he had been attacking property, and he realized that if he persisted in stealing he would land in jail; whereas at Tremont Clay’s he was attacking only men’s minds, and it was obvious that no one cared about that.

To his surprise David found that his most valuable mentor was not brilliant Morris Binder but drab, acid Miss Adams. She supervised his work with care, helped him to avoid errors, taught him the systems used within the publishing house. She steered him to the most salacious illustrators and showed him how to fake letters to the editor which would be sure to call forth a flood of angry responses, which in turn permitted him to take a righteous editorial stand: “Yes, indeed, we think girls under seventeen should be home and in bed by ten o’clock!”

The more he worked with Miss Adams the more impressed he became with the subtle way in which she ran Tremont Clay’s business. She was his introduction to that marvel of
American industrial life: the pompous front man supported by the obscure, deft woman behind him. And as he moved from one New York office to another—say, the paper plants or the engravers’—he found there too some quiet woman standing behind the blustering boss, and it was to these women he went for crucial decisions; so that when he rode in subways and saw thousands of these prim withdrawing women, he was not fooled. He knew that they were running much of the business of the great city.

When David had made a success of
Passionate Love
, he was given the editorship of
Secret Detective
as well. His salary was raised to $26. The new magazine was different from the first. Now he had to comb the annals of repulsive crime, especially those that had been well photographed. He used ten a month and rigorously fitted them into the established pattern: Describe the crime in two dripping pages. Use the words
lurid
,
ghastly
,
thigh
,
sawed-off shotgun
,
decaying
,
breast
. Indicate the complete bewilderment of the law. Establish a definite suspect, but use a fictitious name. Then have superior police work clear the doomed man. Enter the crime on the list of those that will never be solved. Then have an ordinary detective—show him in at least three poses—solve the crime. End with somebody being hanged.

The formula was so well established that David wondered how he could ever find enough cases, but with Miss Adams’ help he managed to fill his magazine month after gory month. Once more he found that he had to rely upon three or four dependable writers. He learned to ignore ruthlessly articles which began, “This here is a true story. You can read about it in the
Detroit Free Press.
”

But surprisingly soon he fell into line with Tremont Clay and Morris Binder. If a particularly bloody murder came along, Clay used it first. Then Binder. Then David. Morris Binder laughed and said, “Sure we print the same stuff year after year. But if you uncover a really good murder, make a note of it. Use it two or three times a year. But always call it ‘New Light on the Chandler Case.’ I have about six gory jobs I use all the time. If a witness moves, or a policeman who worked on the case dies, I brush off the type and run in a new lead: ‘Last week a central witness in the Chandler Case went to meet his Maker. When Louis Denman stands face to face with God, what will he confess?’ Then you run the same old guff.”

Miss Adams, as usual, provided a substantial system. “We
keep a file. If we get a really good murder with sex angles we use it up to four times a year in the different murder magazines. But we like to avoid needless repetition, so when we see that any one magazine has used up all the standard stuff, we change its name and start all over again.”

After three months of exhuming loathsome deeds, David was given his third magazine and a salary of $28. The additional rag was
Real Western
. Of it Morris Binder said, “It’s a clean family magazine. Your villain must always be a half-breed, a Mexican, or a banker. Good girls get into the stories because their fathers are in trouble. Bad girls are always dance-hall girls, and let it go at that. No description. For comedy use Chinamen, Easterners, or very fat men. It’s best to have the chase center on actual property: cows, horses, a written deed, some gold, or a map. If the chase centers on something abstract, like honor, our readers lose interest. And use a heavy sprinkling of words like
corral
,
dogie
,
sage
 …”

“A college professor taught me those words,” David laughed.

“Then use ’em!” the big editor commanded. He pointed out that simple though the Western story might seem, it was by far the most complex of the pulp yarns. “For example,” he puffed, “you have the villain, a no-good, half-breed killer who uses a knife. He’s got to die! But you also have the bad man, who uses a decent revolver and kills men face to face. The bad man doesn’t have to die! He can be regenerated, especially by a good woman, and he can become sheriff and shoot down a dozen villains. I guess I make about fifty per cent of my bad men sheriffs. The rest I kill off.”

Like most editors, David quickly tired of the Westerns, and he did not understand why until one day he recalled what Wild Man Jensen had said of Kansas: “The best people I knew were the women.” That was it! The Westerns were frightfully dull because women were omitted, and David realized with dismay that Western magazines were so popular because all over America men in lonely rooming houses were sick to death of women and wanted to read about brave men and horses. “We leave out the best half of life!” David protested to Morris Binder.

“A lot of men want it that way,” the editor observed.

“Even the stupid women who read
Passionate Love
are better off,” David reasoned, “because at least they’re reading about men.”

“If you’re going to accept substitutes for real living,” Binder grunted, “horses are just as good as paper men.”

“I don’t know,” David reasoned. “This use of symbols for real things perplexes me. For example, I stink up every edition with sage, and I have no idea what it smells like.”

“Neither do I!” the fat editor admitted. He stamped on the floor and Miss Adams appeared. “What does sage smell like?” he demanded.

“I’ll bring some tomorrow,” she said primly, but when she held a pinch for David to smell he was overcome and said nothing, for that was the way the poorhouse turkeys had smelled on the two great feast days each autumn. He turned away from Miss Adams and Morris Binder and considered how much a prisoner of memory men are. They spend their lives accumulating sensory impressions: sights, smells, the feel of things, sounds, the taste of food. And when they are older these sensations overwhelm them with longing and despair. In the barren room of Tremont Clay’s filthy rags David was overcome by the smell of poorhouse turkeys, and he recalled how happy he had been in the poorhouse. The sound of a merry-go-round could bring back the image of dead Nora. The sight of green fields made his heart pound for Marcia Paxson, and the feel of books reminded him of Doc Chisholm. He was a prisoner of his sensory memories, and he would not have it otherwise, for through them he lived deeply, carrying with him to each new experience the full burden of his life up to that moment. He had never realized before how dependent his brain was upon its senses, and he loved the tangible world in which he had lived. He thought: “I’d like to see Paradise again on a rainy night. I’d like to smell the poorhouse once more. I’d like to see that old couple dashing at one another in the morning light.” The world was upon him and in him, for he was one of the fortunate ones who carry their worlds with them. He was the man who as a boy had seen and listened and touched and smelled and tasted with love, and the treasure trove was with him forever.

“That’s what sage smells like,” Miss Adams whined.

“That’s some smell,” David replied, and for the rest of the day he was ashamed of himself for working in that office. But at the close of the day Tremont Clay took him aside and pointed with a manicured finger at a line in
Passionate Love
. “Did you write this?” he asked nervously.

David licked his lips and looked at the offending passage. A woman was trying to describe sexual intercourse. Her
words had been too plain and David had substituted,
“You can guess what happened next.”

“Yes, sir,” David admitted guiltily. “I did it.”

“It’s wonderful!” Clay exploded. “It’s as good as Morris Binder! Hold on to that line! Use it two or three times an issue. It says everything, but they can’t pin anything on you.”

And David did use it. It had a fine insinuating leer. It was especially titillating to young readers, since it flattered their experience, and if they didn’t know what happened next, Tremont Clay jolly well intended that they should find out.

When David saw himself among the little Italians of Third Street he suspected that he had become a man; but when he now considered himself he was sure that he must be. For always before he had lived with one simple, comprehensible group of people. Now he was plunged deeply into several worlds, and the complexity of his life assured him that he had assumed manhood’s full responsibilities.

He was involved with the shadowy outlines of a novel. He was part of Mom’s and Claude’s hilarious life. At Tremont Clay’s he was becoming daily more attached to Morris Binder and Miss Adams. He was editor of three cheap magazines. And he was in love with Alison Webster.

In spite of her having walked out on him during their meal, he still wanted to be with her. Sometimes at night it became unbearable for him to realize that Alison lay sleeping only a few floorboards away. When she grudgingly allowed him to take her to the movies he could not keep his hands off her. “Don’t paw me!” she commanded.

On the way home he said, “I don’t mean to offend you. But you’re so darned lovely!”

She laughed and said, “I don’t believe in trying to reform men. Not after what my mother went through. But if you want to date me, Dave, why don’t you write something real instead of those flimsy sketches? Miss Clint says she’ll take that story on Arizona.”

“She will!” Dave cried. When he got back to the house he took Alison to her room and then dashed to tell Mom the news. “I’m going to write a story about Arizona!” he announced.

“Was you ever there?” Mom asked, leaning her elbows on a table.

“Sure. When I bummed across country.”

“Well, if you was there, why’n hell do you want to tell anybody else about that lousy pile of sand?”

“I stayed three nights in a hobo camp near Phoenix. I’ll never forget it.”

“Don’t bother anybody else about it,” Mom advised. “I know all of Arizona, and there ain’t a story worth tellin’.”

“Where is there one, in your opinion? MacDougal Street?”

“Writin’ is the bunk!” Mom insisted.

“Then why were you so excited when Alison published a story?” David argued.

“Because I like to see people do what they want to do. You should of seen the party we threw when the little Jewish girl across the street married the Italian boy. They were doin’ what they wanted to do.”

On the first night that he was supposed to write, he talked with Mom till two. They kicked around theories of life, why people get drunk, should two people of like interests get married, and the prospects of repeal. It was much the best talk David had participated in for months. Claude joined them at midnight and swung the topics around to immortality and birth control. In the morning Alison asked, “How’d the story go?” and David blinked.

“I … I was planning it,” he said.

He planned it the next night, too, with more help from Mom and Claude. They drank beer till one and Mom spoke of the early days in Arizona. She said that the only person in God’s earth she knew who was lower than the MacDougal Street fire inspector was an Indian garage mechanic in Tucson. “He had three monkey wrenches. He used the big one to wreck big cars, the little one to wreck little cars, and the middle-sized one to ruin radiators. And he’d look at you with big black eyes. I hauled off and knocked him out one day,” she said. “Cost my old man two thousand dollars. That damn fool Indian had sense enough to claim I had ruined his sacroiliac!”