“This is the operation,” Mr. Gam said. “Where we do the actual pressing.”
It looked to Al like a tire-retreading outfit; he saw the same round machines, a man at each, the tops opening and shutting.
“You won’t be involved with this end,” Mr. Gam said. He led Al from the area and down another hallway.
Al said, “I consider Chris Harman the most inspiring human being I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. And in my business I see a good slice of mankind.”
“Yes, Chris said he ran into you at your car lot. You were obviously quite open with Chris, so we’ll be equally open with you. You came to us at exactly the right moment. You couldn’t have picked it better if you’d had some buddy planted in the organization.” He halted and eyed Al. “This job didn’t exist three days ago, and it has to be filled right now. It’s a good job, Miller. It’s ring-ding.”
“Fine,” Al said.
“Want to know what it was, Miller?”
“Yes,” Al said.
“Your sincerity,” Gam said. “Don’t ever lose that. It’s so God damn rare in this society of ours.”
“I could never lose it,” Al said. “Because I got it in a moment of supreme courage and danger. I got it in Korea. When the Commies had me pinned down. I got it when I faced death at the hands of a bayonet and the frenzied slant-eyes of a gook. I learned to know myself, Mr. Gam. I took a good look at myself, all I am, all my maker meant me to be. And that’s not something a man loses.”
After a moment Gam said, “I wish it could be shared. I wish it could be passed on to every man. I’ll never have what you have.”
“Afraid not,” Al said.
“You told Chris it wasn’t money. That reached him. For Chris, it isn’t money either. It never was and it never will be. Why did he go into the record business? Because he wanted to ameliorate the condition of the average man through the one thing that can ameliorate—not bigger cars or better TV sets, but through art, through music.” Mr. Gam pushed open a heavy door that led to a parking lot; he and Al slowly crossed the lot. “Naturally, there have had to be compromises. A business has to pay. We know that. It’s the harsh reality. That’s why there’s been Glee Records and—let’s face it—the Teach Catalog itself. You know the catalog, of course. It’s mostly trash. It’s supposed to be, because it serves the commercial market. Rock-and-roll, Negro jazz combinations, what they call race. Country, that is, Okie steel guitar. And pops. We’ve had a few hits. Teach has made the top ten, and made it often. Frank Fritch has been on Teach for years.”
“I’m familiar,” Al said.
“Frank Fritch’s piano meanderings has been one of our best sellers. And Georgia O’Hare and her Merrymen of Song. Our best-selling item in the catalog right now is ‘Pride.’ You’ve heard it in a thousand lunch counters all over America.”
They had entered another building now.
“Your concern,” Mr. Gam said, “will be the new label, the one that Chris Harman has always wanted to bring out but never could before. Its called Antiqua. The long-playing record has made it possible. You’ll be in charge of promotion. You’ll receive a salary of seven hundred and fifty a month, plus traveling expenses—the usual expense account system, which we’ll work out gradually, as we get to know you better. And your base salary will go up, in due time.”
“I see,” Al said.
“We’ve bought this building here,” Mr. Gam said, as they walked down a newly painted hall. “We’re making it over. It’s not quite finished. Your office will be here.” He took out a key and unlocked a door; Al found himself looking into an office which smelled of paint.
“What will be on the Antiqua label?” he asked.
“Mr. Harman’s great project,” Mr. Gam said. “The medieval and early-Renaissance masses and choral works. Palestrina, Des Pres, Orlando Lassus. Polyphonic and monody. Gregorian, if possible; if there’s a market.”
It was a long way from a used-car lot, Al thought to himself as he gazed at the barren, newly painted and decorated office. Is this what I got for my pitch to Chris Harman? Is this what he saw in me, and in what I said?
Is this the man that is trying to swindle Jim Fergesson? The man who peddles the dirty version of “Little Eva on the Ice”?
He felt ill and discouraged. The whole thing made no sense to him, and unfortunately he had no pills with him, no Dexymil or Sparine, to help him out. All he could do was go on listening to Mr. Gam. He had gotten too far in, too deep into Teach Records and Chris Harman’s organization, to back out.
10
That night, as Al Miller sat across the dinner table from his wife, the terrible thought came to him again and again that Chris Harman was a completely reputable man, not a swindler at all.
He offered me that job, Al thought, to rehabilitate me.
“I’ve got some news,” he said to Julie at last, breaking his mood of introspection. “I got offered a job.”
At once she said alertly, “What job?”
“For seven-fifty a month,” he said. “Plus expense account. And that’s just starting salary.”
“Seven hundred and fifty dollars?” she said, her eyes wide. “Tell me about it. What do you have to do? Who is it?”
“A phonograph record outfit,” he said. “It would be public relations.” His tone was so gloomy, so resigned, that her face fell. “It’s just a fluke,” he said. “I’m not qualified for it. I’d last about two weeks. Or two days.” He continued eating.
“But why not take it?” Julie said. “Maybe you’re wrong; you know you’re always so pessimistic, and you just sit around and let things happen—this job falls in your lap and you just sit there. You don’t exert yourself.”
“I exerted myself,” Al said. “I went out and got it.”
“Then you must think you can do it,” Julie said. “Isn’t that logical? You’re just having doubts, your usual doubts. I know you can handle it.”
Al said. “He just offered me the job because he felt sorry for me.” He could not rid his mind of the idea; it had been there ever since he had left Teach Records.
“What did you tell them? You didn’t turn it down, did you?”
“I said I’d consider it,” he answered. “I said I’d tell them by Monday morning.” That gave him three days.
“All right,” Julie said in a brisk, practical voice. “Suppose they do just feel sorry for you. What does that matter?” Her voice rose. “It’s still a good job; it still pays well. What do you care about their motives? That’s paranoiac!” She gestured excitedly with her fork. “What’s the name of the place? I’ll go down and talk to them; I’ll phone—that’s what I’ll do. And say I’m your secretary and you’ve decided after long consideration to accept the position.”
The whole world’s mad, Al thought. It’s all sham.
“If you have the gumption to go out and rustle up a high-paying job opportunity,” Julie said, “you have the gumption to take the job and do good at it. They wouldn’t offer it to you if they didn’t have faith that you could do it. Take it, or Al—I’m not exaggerating—if you turn it down, I know myself and I know I’ll react by considering that you won’t have been loyal to me. We took marriage vows. You’re supposed to honor and obey me.”
“It’s hard to obey in this case,” he said.
“Not obey, here,” she said. “But honor and respect. By taking a decent job so that we can have children, and do all the other things we want to do and deserve to do.” Her voice had become harsh with anxiety; he recognized the tone. “Don’t let me down again, Al; please don’t give way to your neurotic anxieties. Promise me.”
“We’ll see,” he said. It seemed to him that he had suffered some crushing defeat by being offered a straightforward, worthy job at a good salary, and now this reaction, this sense of things having gone wrong, began to worry him. On the surface, his reactions did seem odd, to say the least. Maybe Julie was right; maybe now that at last someone had decided to have confidence in him, to take
a chance on him, his own inner sense of worthlessness had begun to emerge. He was as neurotic as Julie said; it was true.
Defeat or success; it’s all the same to me, he decided. It’s all a grind. A snare and a delusion. Who wants it? Either one.
“You’re afraid,” Julie said, “to stick your neck out. If you fail, then you’ll sink even deeper into apathy; you’re conscious of that. You have that much insight. You’d prefer to stay as you are, because the risk of failure is so great; it has such dreadful consequences to you. Isn’t that so?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“So you’ll just go on like you are forever. Drifting. Getting nowhere. Al—” She faced him with a stony expression. “I really don’t know if I can go on. I just don’t know. I want to, but I can’t; I really think I can’t. If you let me down again, here.”
He grunted a meaningless response.
After dinner he dropped over to Tootie Dolittle’s apartment. Both Tootie and his wife were home; they were cleaning the burners of the kitchen stove. Newspapers had been spread out everywhere. The sink was filled with soapy, gray-gritty water.
Seating himself out of the way, Al discussed his job prospect with Tootie, who listened carefully to all the details.
“Maybe it’s a front,” Tootie said, when Al had finished.
That idea had not occurred to him, and it cheered him up; it put an entirely new interpretation on the situation, on the job offer and on Harman. “Maybe so,” Al said. “You mean they still don’t want to give me the real dope. They’re still holding up a smokescreen.”
“Sure, they’re going to break it to you after you’ve worked there awhile. After they know you real well. That’s natural.” He went on to recount to Al the details of a job he had had driving a woman around who ran an abortion mill. It had been months before he had out that it was not a Swedish massage place; they had kept it from him as long as possible.
He then took Al off into the other room, so that the two of them could talk in private.
“There’s one thing you may be missing,” Tootie said. “I happen to know about Teach Records, because of my interest in music. They got a good catalog, but you know why they call themselves that name. They are a pirate label.”
“What’s that?” Al said.
“They stole their master discs. I mean they pirated the original records and dubbed from them. They got no legal right to the masters they press from, but they always pick something where the company is out of business and the artist dead and so on. Or some foreign label. Anyhow, Teach was a pirate. That was Black-beard; his name was Edward Teach.”
“I see,” Al said, pleased. “I didn’t make the connection.”
“So there’s no doubt they’re up to that,” Tootie said. “So maybe this one fact enough to make you more cheerful. You obviously feel only somebody doing something crooked is going to pay you almost eight hundred dollars a month. If they honest, they’re not going to pay you anything hardly at all. That’s because you know perfectly well down inside you, and I say this from being a friend of yours and knowing you pretty well, you know you not worth anything.”
“You want your block knocked loose?” Al said.
“I knock your block loose right back,” Tootie said. “Now listen to me. You not worth anything because you got nothing to sell. You like a lot of colored boys who come up North, to cities, from the farmland in the South. You come from a farm town, up in Napa County. You more like those boys than you know. I know, though. I see a lot of the same things in you as in them, but you too ignorant to recognize that; I mean ignorant of what I happen to know, although you plenty smart in other ways. Here all they got to sell when they come to town. Their work. Laboring somewhere, like in the Chrysler plant or driving a truck or putting on tires at Monkey Ward. Why anybody pay them anything? Why you pay them? You hire them to wash your cars on your lot for you, if you had any money; other lots do that—other lots have a colored boy. You so poor you your own colored boy.”
“So what?” Al said.
“So other people not going to go on like that,” Tootsie said. “They want to rise and be well-to-do, so they figure out something they can sell; they find something they can do somebody else want enough to pay for. But you too dumb. You not learn nothing to do. In that respect you different from most people, white and colored. You got to learn to do something other people want. Like my dog Doctor Mudd. He learn to bat balloons with his nose, so everybody pay to watch; he a lot smarter than you. Nobody pay you to do nothing, because you dull. You miss out. You go on being what you are, instead of being what other people pay to watch. Maybe when you get old you realize this, but then it too late. You got to assume a vivid personality. Live like you a dangerous, terrific person, like a spy or something. You got to go around create mystery. Nobody know when you come or go or what you do. Listen. That exactly what Mr. Harman do. He make everybody tell tall tales about him, and they not really know what he do or what he is. But they know what Al Miller; it written all over him.”
Al was silent.
“You not got glamour,” Tootie said. “That it in one word. You nothing but ditch-water walking around on two feet.”
“Maybe so,” Al said.
“Life like Ed Sullivan’s program,” Tootie said. “I watch that every week on the TV. That the best TV show there is, now that Milton Berle retire. I watch these show people come up; they got no talent. That the truth. What they got is personality. Who got talent these days? Al Jolson; he never had no talent. Nat Cole; he can’t sing. Frank Sinatra never could sing. Fats Waller couldn’t sing; he croak like a frog. Johnny Ray terrible singer. Sammy Davis Jr. nothing but a big ham-bone, but he very popular. Kingston Trio; bunch of college kids. But they got personality. You have to learn how to do that.”
“I can’t.”
“You did for one minute, when you walked into that man’s office. Or he not have decided to hire you. You done it once, so you can do it again, and not for a second but all the time. You live like you some French foreign agent in Tangiers; you make up stories to keep yourself interested, and pretty soon they get interested in you. If by popping a couple of those goofballs you can do it, then you don’t need them; you throw away that little tin you carry and you make it alone, on your own. I know you can. And by God, you worth eight hundred a month starting salary; he right to pay you.”
Al was silent, thinking about what Tootie was saying.
“I be frank,” Tootie said. “I give my right arm to be where you are now. Getting an offer like that. But I never will. Partly because nobody hire colored for any big dough except in the entertainment industry, and partly because I am no-talent. That why I have to earn my living as clerk in the County Department of Health, writing up reports on outdoor toilets. I just a clerk. But you basically a big bullshitter; basically, you got a line already. All you need is to get it out.”
“I was taught it was good to tell the truth,” Al said.
“Sure, you get to heaven by being a truth-teller. Is that where you going to go? Is that your destination? Or you determined to live a happy life here? If the latter, you learn to give out with your line, and never stop; never let down. Not till you dead. Then you can tell the truth; you not actually a big butter-and-egg man from Boise, who own six oil wells and be president of local chamber of commerce.”
Al felt thoroughly crushed.
“The truth vastly overrated anyhow,” Tootie said, half to himself. “Actual truth is, everybody stink. Life a drag. Everything that live going to die. Truth is, nothing worth doing; all end badly anyhow. You tell that, you doing nobody a service.”
“That’s not the only side of reality,” Al said.
“Okay, maybe not. Other side is what? You tell me.”
Al considered, but he could not express it. However, he knew that Tootie was wrong. Tootie was embittered. Possibly rightly so. But his outlook had been poisoned years ago by his clerical job in fact and his dreams of glory in fantasy. No wonder he hu
ng around bars with Doctor Mudd, attracting attention as best he could, living it up when he could; he was right to do that, but surely there were other ways, better ways out.
“You’re basically a bitter man,” Al said. “I have a feeling you hate people. You hate me.”
“Hell you say,” Tootie said.
“You’d be pleased if I debased myself by becoming what Chris Harman wants.”
“What does he want?” Tootie said mockingly. “You don’t even know. Evidently you hit on it by accident for a minute. Maybe you could keep hitting on it, maybe not.”
“I’m not going to try,” Al said.
“Oh, I think finally you come around,” Tootie said. “If you can get your wits going and manage to figure it out. It take time, and you do a lot of talking, but you come around. Your fear is because you afraid you can’t hit on it; you afraid you try and fail. What’s so virtuous about that?”
Al could not give an answer to the question. Perhaps Tootie was right; perhaps he simply lacked the courage to try to tailor himself along the lines that Chris Harman sought. The courage and the talent.
“You jerk,” Al said. “You’re eaten up with envy because I got this good job offer. You’re just trying to make me feel bad. You’re getting back at me.”
“Listen, Daddy,” Tootie said. “You better be careful.”
“I’m careful,” Al said. “Careful enough not to bring any more good news to you.”
Tootie said, “So it is good news.” He grinned. “You really tickled pink down inside about this job; you secretly gloating away about it—couldn’t wait to get over here and tell me. Some cracker offers you eight hundred a month—you hardly able to sit still in your pants, thinking about all that bread. You really live good—you buy Old Forrester all the time, pretty soon, instead of that stuff the liquor store have on sale, that Colonel St. Masterson bourbon that taste like it come down a drainpipe from the roof.”
The door from the kitchen opened. Mary Ellen Dolittle put her head in. “Listen, you boys getting a little too much carried away. Better calm down.”