But when he got to my fine scheme, my frozen food, he almost had a spell with his breath, he hated it so. “If there’s one side of the Americans that arouses only my contempt, it’s their genius for standardization, their acceptance of it, their pride in it, as though there were merit in their damned assembly line. Glory be to God, is this what you’ve arrived at, with your conquest of oil, your bravery in France, all the other things you’ve done, that you’ll put Detroit on a trailer, and haul it to Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, and places that have been fit, until now, for a man to live in! Ford going to Dixie—there’s a project for you! I hate every part of it, from the way it sounds to the way it looks to the way it tastes to the way it smells!”
“Well, thanks.”
“You’re wholly welcome.”
“I wasn’t asking you, however.”
“You’re still welcome, and many of them.”
We must have come closer though, because it didn’t upset me much. Then, some days later, just like he’d never blown his top at all, he said: “I’ve thought of your scheme, the central kitchens, the distribution, the advertising, Miss Dumb and Miss Bright, and I feel they’re an inspiration, that you’re on the right track. As I say, the whole thing revolts me, but it’s your life we’re planning, not mine. As your friend, your very amusing friend, Mrs. Branch, so cogently observed, you’re a romantic.”
“This is business.”
“This is penance.”
“This is—what did you say?”
“This is the act of contrition you feel you must make to all these women you seduced, or think you did. In my own opinion, it was a plain case of abduction, with you in their arms, the victim of their wiles. I don’t subscribe to your notions of women—they’re quite as prehensile as man, as physical, as grasping, and as ruthless. I feel you were taken, as they say. But in yourself, there’s some sense of guilt. Perhaps it’s my fault, for letting you sing as a child, and acquire a special picture of yourself, in a blue velvet suit, with flowing tie and rolled-down collar, and women figuring maternally, as though you were too holy to defile. Whatever the reason for this macula, you’ve been touched. Now, you want to make up for it. You want to strike the shackles from women, to free the sex from the labors it’s heir to, redeem man, by this sacrifice, for the wrongs he has done them, at least in your imagination, forever and ever, in sœcula sœculorum, amen. But at the same time you want to give them a piece of your mind, lecture them on the waywardness of their characters, tell them what you think, get them down on their knees. You seek to feed them and emancipate them and raise them to the heights with one hand, and give them a good spank on their delicious little bottoms, with the other. ’Tis a strange conceit, but yours, and it’ll work. I loathe it, and wish it well. It’s yours, and will bring you health, happiness, and success.”
And so far he’s been right. As I correct the last of this, there has been a price break, with things, stocks, and bonds tumbling all down the line, and plenty of people are nervous. I guess I am. But I’m not afraid, bitter, or helpless any more. Whatever you think of this idea I’ve got started on, I like it, which is what my father couldn’t say for the idea he got started on. I like it, I know how to pull it off, and I believe in it. If I can haul a bunch of American women out of kitchens and put them somewhere else, I don’t care if it’s only picture shows, I’ll settle for that, because I think picture shows are a better place for them to be. And whether it’s worth doing or not worth doing, the country I’m doing it in seems mine, which it didn’t before. I did some work for it and I helped fight for it —one night, no more, but also one bullet, no less. It’s not, from where I sit at least, a mess I didn’t make but have to take the rap for. There’ll be tough times, I don’t kid myself about that, if not this year then another year. But, unless I louse myself some way I don’t foresee now, I’ll have the heart to face them.
All that time, free as he talked about women, my father never once brought up Helen, the girl in Charleston, or anything in connection with them, which I thought was funny, as they were the key to everything else. But then one day he said: “I’ve located your little friend Helen.”
“... Did I ask you to?”
“I took it upon myself.”
“Taking things upon yourself, you might have found out by now, isn’t always indicated. I appreciate your interest, but something has intervened.”
“The little lady in Charleston?”
“Finding her would have been a help.”
“I still bet on Helen.”
“Why, may I ask?”
“The context of your narrative. Over all that you’ve written she presides like some little divinity. She’s in your blood, she’s part of you. It’s the fool who doesn’t know when a woman is part of him, that lets specious things, small, meaningless things, come between.”
“It’s over. Try minding your business.”
“I won’t.”
I wrote on, and patched, and rewrote, as he corrected. And then one day I heard his bell. I came down from my workroom, crossed the back yard, and found him on the sun porch. He had me sit down, looked shifty, and fidgeted for several minutes. Then: “She’s in there waiting for you. You’d better see her.”
“Who?”
“The little one. Helen. In my study.”
“There it goes! Goddam it, why did you do this to me?”
I blew my top, but good. I wanted to know if he’d ever let my life alone, so I could live it, and not have it loused. “And especially as I’ve told you repeatedly, that’s over. If it wasn’t over, the Charleston thing would have killed it. Why did you do this?”
“I did what I thought best. She was away all winter, but at last she came home, and I got her on the phone. She holds things against you, most grievously. But, when I told her she was the only woman in your life, it seemed to me I’d made an impression. Then when I made a personal matter of it, explaining I was too feeble to visit her, she consented to visit me. And discuss it with me. Sheila and Nancy are out on an errand I arranged, and you, so far as she knows, are still in the Army, somewhere in the South. But, before I left her just now and wheeled myself out here, I made progress with her on a number of matters, and cleared up some things. I think, when you learn how I pieced them together, you’ll have some admiration for me.”
“My admiration could be sufficiently expressed with a poke in the jaw, and anything short of that comes under the head of a gentle caress.”
“Jack, I’m going to die, and I—”
“Shall I start Rock of Ages?”
“And I ask that you see her.”
“I heard of these cowards, that die a thousand times, the brave man only once, but they ought to see one of these Irish busybodies, that dies every hour and a half by the clock, with music—but unfortunately won’t stay dead.”
“That, as de Koven said to Gilbert, is something that time will cure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s an element of truth in it, but there are other reasons, too. Because what, after all, has loused you, as you put it? Me? Yourself? Circumstances? All three, to some extent. But mostly the time in which you’ve lived—a calendar. Now, thank God, it’s shed its leaves, to kiss me out, to kiss you in—and her in if you’ll let it. As you observed, she was guilty of a crime, that she was twelve years old. Now she’s twenty-five, and a luscious twenty-five, at that.”
“I told you, there’s somebody else.”
“She may be in there, too.”
“She—? What are you talking about?”
“I’m not sure, I dared not ask something that might have straightened it out, but it could be—this is pure conjecture— that I have found that one for you, too. Ah, that makes it different, doesn’t it?”
30
I KNOCKED, GOT NO answer, opened the door, and went in. My heart skipped three beats when I saw her, as he said, the girl from Charleston, sitting behind his desk, in a dark dress, mink coat, and big floppy hat that mad
e her hair look like it had been lit. I looked around for Helen, but nobody else was there. When I saw the glitter of tears I knew she still held her grievance, whatever it was, from the night she left me on the beach. So I picked it up where we’d left off. I closed the door, then marched over in front of her in the rough shoes, flannel pants, and sweat shirt I wore when I was working. I said: “I asked you if you didn’t think we should tell names. I thought that was a good idea then and I think it’s a good idea now. My name is Jack Dillon. Who the hell are you?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
“Then I was just a girl you picked up?”
“I didn’t pick you up. You came to my table and asked if we shouldn’t speak, and as I’d been peeping at you a half hour I said yes, and asked you to sit down, and you did. Then we went driving, and I don’t know what you did, but I fell in love.”
“I was already in love.”
“So was I.”
She burst out crying and I pitched a handkerchief at her. She pressed it to her eyes. “Jack, I’m Helen Legg.”
I had to sit down quick, and did, and stared at her. Of the girl I had known before, when she was twelve and I was twenty-two, I couldn’t see a trace. But then I remembered the graceful walk, in Savannah, that had caught my eye first, and what my father had told me. After a long time I said: “Then if I was already in love with you, and fell in love all over again, all I can say is, it seems like something pretty terrific, that had to take over, no matter where we found it.”
“I don’t. It makes me just sick. I could hardly breathe, when I saw you there in Savannah, and supposed you didn’t quite know what to expect, so sent Drusilla on her way and came on over. I thought it was amusing to call you Major, and laughed when you called me Lieutenant. I didn’t talk about what had happened—it seemed better to make a fresh start, somehow. And then, when I found out you didn’t know me, that to you I was just a pick-up—”
“How did you find that out?”
“You said—”
“I said let’s put it on the line. And now—”
“I’m going home.”
“No, you’re not.”
She had got up, but I blocked the way. “We’re not talking about something, we’re talking about nothing, and I won’t have it. I found you and you’re mine. And at last we both found out how dumb you are. We—”
That did it, and she was in my arms, laughing, and her tears and mine were getting mixed and at last it was over, my long voyage home.
The Leggs, when I took her back that evening, were pretty meek, and didn’t put up much argument about our getting married. We saw each other morning, noon, and night then, while Mrs. Legg began getting ready in a big way, for the wedding, there at their new home, or what to me was their new home, on University Parkway, near Charles. Then Margaret was there, putting the fine touches on, specially the artistic points, like which orchestra. Then one night, in my father’s study, I began going over it, and said: “Listen, Helen, why the big show? Can’t we just get married?”
“But they want a wedding, like Margaret had, and—”
“Well, who’s getting married?”
“... What’s your idea?”
“My idea is, it’s one o’clock now, we get in the car, point her south, and head for this job, this pretty big job, I’ve picked out for myself. That we get married on the way, in whatever place we happen to be in around breakfast time, and—”
“But what about clothes ?”
“Stores sell clothes.”
“And your father?”
“Will make it, where he’s going, without any help from us. And if you ask me, he will like it, when we ring him today —after we’ve gone and done it, to have that special call, all for himself—better than a super-duper production he won’t be able to attend.”
“Now that, that makes sense.”
“At last, I’m glad I thought of something that—”
But she slammed me down on the couch, the way she had when she was little, and began beating me up, and laughing, and at last I saw the little rowdy I had fallen for, when she was a kid, and I was. Then I hollered uncle and we didn’t wait, but went outside, without even a toothbrush, and got in my car, and started off on our life.
Acknowledgments
THIS STORY WAS SOME years growing and required help from more people than I can mention here, though I hereby tender them my very best thanks. I should like, however, to express my special debt to these: Frank F. Hill, formerly of the Union Oil Company, who conceived, tried, and developed the cement process for sealing water out of wells, a milestone as important to the oil business as the Whitney gin was to cotton, and who patiently instructed me in matters petrolic, both before and after completion of a script; Louis J. Brunei, of the Bishop company, who made valuable suggestions and opened doors for me that usually stay tightly closed; H. L. Eggleston and Wilton Shellshear, of the former Gilmore company, now part of General Petroleum, for the rationale of petroleum manufacture; Samuel E. Furman, of the Ohio company, who has wrestled out-of-control wells, and gave me the benefit of these grim experiences; David M. Anderson, C. M. Cotton, C. P. Cotton, and J. H. Abramson of the Jergins company, for geological fundamentals; J. C. Chuck, Bert Harrison, and Margery Proctor, of the Jerkins realty organization, for introductions, appointments, and field contacts of great value; A. L. Schmidt, of the Long Beach fire department, for methods of controlling burning wells; scores of superintendents, foremen, drillers, and roughnecks not known to me by name, for elucidation of drilling, cracking, and selling, as well as various shoves and seizures which prevented me, on more than one occasion, from getting killed; William Moran, George Seitz, Ike Person, as well as many boes, known to me only as Joe, Luke, or Don, for initiation, sometimes painful, into the life of jungles, box cars, missions, and flop joints; F. F. Phillips, of the Santa Fe Railroad, and Earle W. Smith, of the California Employment Service, for data on the floating population of the ’30s; Ernest Ballard, of St. James’s P. E. Church, Los Angeles, for checking musical episodes; John A. Wood, of Honor Brands, for methods of freezing foods; Evaristo Diaz, of the Murphy Friendly Fields, for information about fruit ranches; Maj. Lewis Simons, of The Citadel, for suggestions as to episodes centering in Charleston, S. C; Helen and Morris Markey, for checking Southern backgrounds; Thelma Jackman, of the Los Angeles Public Library, for her usual invaluable help on research; the late Vincent Lawrence, for story suggestions; my sister, Rosalie McComas, for checking episodes occurring in Maryland; my mother, Rose Mallahan Cain, for the musical background, acquired in childhood, that underlies a large part of the story.
J. M. C.
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copyright © 1948 by James M. Cain
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