Authors: James Jones
It wasn’t really much work, actually. But Frank made more work of it than there was in it, deliberately. Doing all the buying and everything by himself, while at the same time, he was breaking in a new man to later on take over the management of it. He dreaded that moment—when the new man would take it over. But, along with that, there was nevertheless an important silver lining: Next spring, the Greek and the old man and he were planning on starting the motel out next to the shopping center—the motel-and-restaurant. And when that happened, Frank told himself hopefully all winter, he would be right back into it up to his neck again. And he planned to take over the overall management of the motel and of the restaurant—which would be under separate sub-managers—himself, and coordinate the whole thing into one whole. He kept telling himself that all winter while he fiddled around at the old store to keep his mind from thinking.
And, sure enough, when the spring did open up, that was what happened. And gratefully, Frank plunged into it. And more so than he had been since the shopping center opened, he was happy—and proud, and successful. Almost all the time—except, of course, when he was home.
A new plan had interested him during the winter, and he had brought it up with Agnes. This was the building of their big new home they had talked about all during the year before—when they had been so happy. He hoped it would at least give Agnes an interest—if she would only start the handling of it by herself. He, he told her, would not be able to do it; there was just too much coming up for him to do with the motel. And, in fact, Agnes had decided to do it, and had started checking plans and talking with architects. But it did not change the atmosphere at home any.
But then, when the Korean War came up in June, it scotched the house plans, and Agnes went back to watching the new TV set in the living room most of the time, although the only station they could get was Bloomington Indiana’s WTTV, and only poorly at that.
But the Korean War, in June, did not really affect the motel-restaurant. Luckily, they had got started with the building early in the spring, before the crisis came. Actually, after June, there was quite a while when they could not get materials to finish it. But the Greek, with his ubiquitous hand in so many pies was able to expedite this by August. There were always ways of getting materials, if you knew where to go. Steels, of course, were the hardest to come by. But almost all their framing on the motel-restaurant was already completed by the time the war broke out. So they were able to go ahead and complete the job.
Frank, working in high gear all the time, worked with them on it—with the Greek and the old man. It necessitated many trips to Springfield. And each time he went, he was, of course, always invited out to the old man’s for dinner, and as often as not, Clark and Betty Lee would be there. Needless to say, Frank enjoyed that tremendously. The secret picture was still there, emblazoned on his mind. And every time he looked at Betty Lee, he’d see her, once again, in the nude, as he had seen her that one time.
It took a lot of work to keep the motel-building going—for which, of course, Frank was very grateful. But actually, outside of that, the Korean War had almost no effect on him at all. It didn’t touch his personal life at all. How could it? He had too much misery of his own, at home, to occupy him. He would come home, dead-tired, after a hectic driving day of work, and Agnes—back upon her feet now (except when she wanted to be sick)—would be there to meet him and stare at him accusingly. Or else, which was worse, would suddenly burst forth over nothing in some tirade that would disjoint him completely—and then take to her bed, in pain. So he would put up with it. What else was there to do? He had to get drunk every night to do it, but he put up with it. And this was his life. She had taken everything, destroyed everything. He was making more money than he had ever made in his life—was, in fact, well on his way to becoming—magic word—a millionaire—and yet what did it avail him? He had not slept with a woman in almost a year. He could not escape a feeling that he had his neck in an as-yet-untightened hangman’s noose clutched tightly in the hands of the Law, just waiting to catch him. And whenever he was home, he was miserable.
Marriage, he thought bitterly; the happy marriage of two years ago. Hah! What a lie. This was the
real
marriage. He knew the truth now. And he had it stretching away out ahead of him for the rest of his life. The marriage. The real marriage.
What a winter! What a
year!
How
could
the Korean War possibly mean anything to him, when he was faced with a situation like he was faced with?
F
OR A MAN WORKING IN
a defense plant, however, the Korean War could not help but be something important. And, after a year of married life, that was where Dave Hirsh was working: in a defense plant. And making more money than he had ever made in his life before. Except when he and ’Bama had been at their very peak.
The shell factory—for that was what it was—was located just south of Terre Haute not far from the big federal prison there; and, in fact, whenever you stepped outside the plant, you could see the prison in the distance. The shell factory itself was a newer installation, built right at the end of World War II; and in August of 1950 Dave was a paint foreman in it. His job was to operate the machine that painted the unprimed shell casings, and to oversee the two women who fed the casings into the conveyer belt unpainted and took them off after they came out of the dryer. He had not started out like that, of course; he had started out cleaning shells, but he had been promoted quickly, back in May before the war had even started.
Every day, he and five other men with whom he pooled his car would drive the fifteen miles to Terre Haute and then the seven and a half miles south to the shell factory. And every evening after work, they would drive back to Parkman together. Not an especially long trip, actually. Compared to some of the people who came to work there. Some came from as far as fifty miles away, driving both ways. And after the war in Korea started, it became even more hectic as they put on more and more people to boost production.
It was a strange thing to think about, really. And Dave never failed to have a sense of mild astonishment and near-disbelief every time he got up so early in the morning to go and pick up the other men and make the trip. They were all strangers to him, actually. Oh, he knew them, but they were strangers. While they talked and laughed all the way over to the shell factory, or back, they were still strangers. Strangers to his life, and to what he had always been. Dave had, somehow or other, in the year he had been married, become respectable: a respectable workingman. It was such a far cry from the life he had used to live with ’Bama that he could not help but feel a sense of strangeness. And with it, also, a definite sense of shame: at being so respectable. But when he stood beside his automatic paint machine, wearing the new glasses he had bought recently to improve his eyesight, while the shell casings set up by the women revolved by on their spindles, he could not help but feel a sense of greater strangeness still. And, whenever he stepped outside and saw again the big federal prison buildings in the distance, he would wonder darkly how all those nameless prisoners who were in there had come to be there? just as he wondered how he himself had ever come to be
here?
Oh, he knew the factual events that had, step by step, brought it about. That is, he could recall the factual progression of the events themselves: each time when outwardly a change, a definite change, was made. What he could not see, or understand, were the reasons which brought each event about. Because, after all, it
needn’t
have turned out like it did. And yet it had.
As far as the money went, that was fine. He was actually making more money than he had ever made. After June and the war which came from it, he was working sometimes as much as ninety hours a week: fifty hours of overtime a week at time-and-a-half. This was because he and his two women did the painting of all of the factory’s output. The plant did not carry an extra painting crew. So Dave was doing it all; and making that much more because of it. But then he was spending it just as fast, too. Payments on the little house that he and Ginnie had bought, payments on the furnishings they had had to buy for it; and now Ginnie wanted a new car: The Plymouth was no longer in keeping with their raised financial status. Once, working—standing in his new glasses beside his steadily moving painting machine and watching nearly thoughtlessly to see that nothing upset the rhythm—all of a sudden, it was as if he seemed to be looking at himself from the vantage point of another person, and what he saw was such a strange apparition that it shocked him into motionlessness: This was not the Dave Hirsh he had lived with all his life at all. And through the glasses that still felt new on his face, he had looked all around at this strange unearthly interior of the plant, and a feeling of such strangeness came over him that he could not even describe it to himself. Dave Hirsh: paint foreman. The paint machine was working well, and he had walked away from it for a moment, over to the window and looked out across at the prison in the distance, wondering again with a kind of awe how all those men had come to be over there? Why? How had each man’s particular, personal crisis come about? And then he remembered again that night that seemed so long ago: when he, drunk and lying beside Ginnie out on the porch, had heard Lois Wallup crying inside the house on Lincoln Street.
Oh, he knew how it had all come about. Really, it had started when the novel had been rejected in New York. That was the first “factual-event” of change. He had, working hard and steadily, finished the novel up three months after they got married in September, while Ginnie supported them. Then he had sent it off to the NLL lady editor in New York. By that time, that second story “The Peons” had come out in the fall paperback anthology: and with an added biographical note which lauded him highly as a new and coming voice. The other paperback, the short novel anthology, had come out with “The Confederate” in it again shortly before that. (And both these times, Ginnie had brought her copies of both that she had
him
autograph to her friends, instead of doing it herself.) With both stories out like that, he had been full of confidence when he sent the novel in. He had worked on it hard, working in the sad little love affair, finishing and toning up the really diabolic humor of the combat and death. Why shouldn’t he have been full of confidence?
And so when he heard from it—and it was a long time before he did hear: two whole months of total silence, all of November and December—and found it had been rejected by them, the seeming confidence made the news even more shocking to him. It threw him into a state of near terror. The NLL lady editor wrote him a puzzled letter. She could not, she said, just exactly point out what was wrong with the book. But something was. She had gone through the whole thing two or three times, and she still could not place her finger on the flaw. But somehow the book just did not come off. She herself felt it had to do somehow with the combat material: In spite of the really rich humor, it was just almost too horrible to take, that humor, especially when contrasted with the really beautiful little love affair, which she had liked exceedingly. She, herself, felt he had overdone the humor of the combat and it ought to be toned down. Perhaps if the diabolical humor of the combat were toned down, and the love affair heightened more—perhaps that would fix it up. But perhaps even that wouldn’t do it. She did, in fact, she said, feel so really unsure about the whole novel that she did not feel NLL could even offer him an advance on revising it.
This was not, the lady editor wrote, entirely a woman’s opinion, either. She had had the book read by several of her male associates. Without exception, they all agreed with her. She would, she said, be glad to send the novel around to some other publishers, if Dave wanted her to. Perhaps some other publisher would see something more in it than she did, and would want to take it. But she could not honestly accept it; and indeed, could not even offer him an advance to do further work on it.
This was the first “factual event.” Dave had, hopefully, agreed for her to send it around. This time the answers came back quickly: Nobody knew just what was wrong with it, but something was; and nobody wanted it. Without exception, everyone liked the love affair part of it the best. With these comments, she had returned the manuscript to him.
It was an awful blow to Dave. He had put more than two years of his life into it, and a great deal of his heart’s blood. Pretty hopelessly, he got it out and tried to go back to work on it. But he couldn’t see anything to do to it. Perhaps Bob French had been right about the love affair after all. And yet without exception, every publisher in New York who read it, liked the love affair the best. As for the combat material, if he “toned that down” as the lady editor had suggested, he wouldn’t have the same book at all.
And it was then, in January of 1950, that the second “factual-event” happened. Ginnie quit her job and refused to support him anymore. If he couldn’t sell his book, she said, then he could get a job and support
her,
like other men did their wives. Of course, it had been coming on for some time. She had been making nasty cracks about her working while he didn’t ever since the first rejection from NLL. And so it was then, in January, that he had got the job (more to keep Ginnie quiet than for any other reason; but to allay his own desperate feeling of terror, too), but determined in the evenings to work on the book, to go back over and do something—although he didn’t know what—with it.
Maybe he shouldn’t ever have gone and got the first job? But in some odd way, ever since they had been married, Ginnie had the Indian sign on him in a way she had never had before. She could always make him do what
she
wanted. In the beginning, she had wanted him to finish the book and make a lot of money; now she didn’t care if he finished it or not because she had lost faith in it. What she wanted now was for him to take the job. So he had taken it. Thank God, at least, they didn’t have to worry about having any damned kids, too; Ginnie’s gonorrhea when she was a kid had made her sterile. But Dave had—without realizing it—become afflicted with that odd pointless sense of panic that married men who are settled get whenever they think of being without their wives. Of course, he could see Ginnie’s side of it, too; and that very ability made him even more incapable of being able to defend his own. She had had such rosy dreams about what they were going to do when they sold the novel and got all that money. He had tried once or twice to delicately get across to her that if the novel did sell, it still wasn’t going to make anywhere near the kind of money she was dreaming of. But she didn’t even hear what he said. No wonder she became so bitter when it was turned down. So you couldn’t blame Ginnie really, and he knew it. And added to that was his own panic over the rejection. So, he had gone and got the job; and that was the third “factual-event.” The fourth was that he got promoted. And the fifth was that they, at Ginnie’s insistence, moved out of the cheap apartment and bought the house.