Roughneck

by Jim Thompson

Dr. Crawford refused my offer to give him a note for the money. "Now why would I want that?" he said; and thus another simple truth was pointed up to me...why 'would' he want it? When a man's sole collateral is his word, why bother with his signature?

  With my tuition taken care of, I applied at the newspapers for part-time work; I applied at the radio stations, the advertising agencies, the publicity firms—at every place which conceivably might be in need of literary talent. I was expensively dressed. The fast-money circles in which I had moved had compelled a fine head-to-foot wardrobe, and my attire represented an original investment of several hundred dollars. I suspect that many of the important executives who received me thought that I was either a majority stockholder in the company or wished to become one. Most of them were brusque and some were pointedly unpleasant when they discovered the true and humble purpose of my call. Just why did I think they would want to hire me? What did I have to offer, an ex-bellboy, ex-oil field worker, et cetera, with a few months' newspaper experience and a few unimportant manuscript sales? They could get better men than me for nothing. There were college graduates here in Lincoln—men with graduate degrees in journalism—who were glad to work without salary, solely for the practical experience it gave them.

  I left some of these interviews cringing and more than a little shamed. Hell, I was actually sick, for my twenty-two-year-old hide had worn thin, instead of toughening, from the almost incessant onslaught of an outrageous fortune. I winced at each new blow to my pride, and the blows fell hard and fast.

  Being very stubborn—and, no doubt, stupid—I persisted in my patently hopeless quest. And, finally, at the last place I expected to, I met with seeming success.

  It was at a farm magazine. The two young editors looked me over fondly, ascertaining that I was entering the university, and, after a significant glance at one another, took me into firmly courteous custody...So I was from Texas, eh? (Here an awed look into the lining of my forty-dollar Borsalino.) And I wanted a job, eh? (A glance at label of imported tweed topcoat.) Well, they could understand that. It gave a man a certain independence, helping his standing on the campus. Now, of course—'naturally—'I had enrolled in the College of Agriculture?

  "My God, no!" I said, and then, seeing the pained looks on their faces, "Why would I want to do that? I'm in Fine Arts."

  They shook their heads. I had made a terrible mistake, they said. No one enrolled in Fine Arts, absolutely no one. The degree was worthless, you know; one might as well have a diploma from a barber college. The thing to do—and they would take immediate steps to arrange it—was to switch to the College of Agriculture. I could take journalism there, also as much English as I liked; and with a B.Sc.A., I would be fixed for life. It was practically as good as an M.D.

  Now, I was to become very cross with these young men in ensuing months, but I will say—although I say it grudgingly—that I believe they were sincere. A man with a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture 'can' invariably get a job, and usually at a very handsome beginning salary. He can and he should, for he's damned well earned it. To begin with, he needs to have been raised on a farm and to have taken an active part in 4-H work. He will also find it helpful if he attends a vocational high school specializing in agriculture. Then he goes to an agricultural college—Nebraska is one of the three or four best in the world—and he enrolls for a heavy science curriculum, 'plus.' He doesn't take just physics, which is plenty tough in itself, but 'agricultural' physics. Not just botany, but 'agricultural' botany. And so on down the line. Practically every subject is a laboratory course. When he isn't peering through a microscope or working a slide rule, he will probably be wielding a surgical knife—dissecting the diseased and malodorous innards of some animal.

  Well, I had less than no business in such a college; even less, say, than I would have had in a theological seminary. So, of course, I enrolled in it. Or, rather, the two editors enrolled me. And I suspect that they came to regret it as much as I. They were also on the "rush" committee of an ag college fraternity, and they regarded me as a highly solvent, and hence desirable, prospect. They invited me to their "house" for dinner, and the next thing I knew I was pledged and a student in the College of Agriculture.

  Came the dawn—as they used to say in movies—and there were curses and recriminations as bitter as they were mutual. I felt that I had been swindled. They, my fraternity brothers, felt that they had been. And it was too late to correct matters. We had to put up with one another, and make the best of it.

  They crammed me at every opportunity to get me though my courses (a failing student could not belong to a fraternity). But naturally they could get me no job. How could they, a guy as dumb, agriculturally, as I was? It was up to me to find work for myself, and I couldn't be choosy about it. For the fraternity dues and assessments had added almost a third to my contemplated living costs.

  Eventually, and largely among the faculty members, I made some wonderful friends at the Agricultural College of the University of Nebraska, and I actually learned quite a bit about agriculture. But my first few months there were the most miserable in my life. I detested everyone, or so I convinced myself. Everyone appeared to detest me. I lived in a turmoil of worry, disappointment, disgust and self-doubt. Meanwhile, I had taken the first job I could find—as night attendant in a funeral establishment.

  4

  I went to work at six o'clock at night, and remained until seven in the morning. My pay was fifty dollars a month. My duties were mainly confined to answering the telephone, and to receiving the occasional callers who dropped by to look upon their late loved ones.

  Since I was permitted to sleep at the place—thus saving the price of a room—and since there was plenty of time to study, the job was nominally a good one. But for me, ever squeamish and imaginative, it was a small-scale nightmare. I couldn't sleep in the eerie, softly-lit quiet. I couldn't concentrate on my books. My jittery nerves were always on the point of popping through my skin, and when Bill, the ambulance driver, would creep up behind me and address me in ghostly tones, I literally hit the ceiling.

  A southerner and a college student like myself, Bill was the other night employee. He had practically as much time on his hands as I had, and when he wasn't pestering me he was usually down in the basement casket room. He said that I should join him down there—the coffins were beautifully padded and made excellent beds. And it was so peaceful, too, just like being in a nice quiet grave.

  "You come along with me, Jim, boy," he would warmly insist. "You jus' let old Bill tuck you in. I got one all picked out for you—a big bronze job with a real heavy lid. I'm tellin' you, man! You get in that good old casket and I close down that good old lid, and you just naturally 'got' to relax..."

  I was horrified, then puzzled by his antics. It just didn't seem reasonable that any man could be so perpetually merry in such depressing surroundings. The suspicion grew in my mind that there must be some attraction in the basement besides the caskets.

  One night when Bill had laid hands upon me and was insisting that I climb into one of those "good ol' coffins," I grabbed him by the shoulders. Pulling him close to me, I ordered him to expel his breath. He did so, grinning guiltily.

  "You sure won't tell no one, will you, Jim?" he pleaded. "The boss man'd just naturally pop his pumpkin if he found out about it."

  "Lead the way," I said firmly. "We're wasting time."

  He led the way, back into the deepest recesses of the basement. Reaching into a dust-covered pine casket, he withdrew two quarts of homemade beer. His landlady made it, he said, and he always arrived at work with a goodly supply.

  We drank. He looked into my face expectantly.

  "Not bad," I said. "Of course, it's pretty warm."

  "Not bad, pretty warm!" Bill exclaimed. "Now, ain't that just like a Texas fella? Always belittlin' something!"

  "Well, it 'is' warm," I said. "Why don't you go over to the restaurant and get a bucket of ice? I'll pay for it."

  "Huh-uh!
" Bill rolled his head. "They'd wonder what it was all about, and the first thing we knew—wait a minute! I know what we can do, Jim boy!"

  "Yeah?" I said.

  "Why sure. Now that we're both in on the deal, there ain't a thing in the world to stop us."

  He explained. I choked and almost dropped my bottle.

  "For God's sake," I said. "We can't do 'that!' It's—well, it's just not right."

  "You mean it ain't respectful? What about the Egyptians—I guess they didn't have plenty of respect for the dead, huh? What about the Chinese, all them fine ol' civilizations?"

  "Well, sure," I said, "but that's different."

  "Sure, it's different. The stuff they put around their dead folks was wasted. This ain't gonna be."

  Bill went on to remark that I could drink my beer warm, if I liked, or I could do without entirely. Then, he gathered the remaining bottles from the casket, and trudged off up the stairs.

  I followed him. He went into the cooling room, and pulled out one of the two long drawers that were set into the wall. Tenderly, he began tucking beer around the refrigerated body inside. He laughed scornfully as I snatched a bottle away from him.

  "You just ain't makin' sense, Jim. Now, just looky here at this nice old fella. Am I botherin' him? Is it hurtin' him any? Why, I bet he likes it—looks like a fella that guzzled plenty himself."

  I had to admit that the occupant of the drawer did look that way. His genially ruddy countenance spoke of many gay jousts with the so-called Demon Rum, and the bottles which nestled around him seemed anything but incongruous. There was a certain rightness about them. He looked much more natural in the close company of beer than he had without.

  Still, I didn't like it, and I said so. Which, of course, was all I could do by way of protest. Certainly I couldn't report Bill to the management for what was no more than a breach of good taste.

  The long night passed. The following night Bill came to work with a dozen quart bottles, giving four to me and placing the other eight in the cool custody of the "nice old fella." He had to go out around nine on an ambulance call. I was dozing comfortably in the chapel, with a half gallon of warm beer in me and another half at my side, when the night bell rang.

  I shoved the bottles under my chair, and went to the door.

  It was a party of three people, two middle-aged women and a man. They had just arrived from out-of-state, and must start back that very night. Cranky with weariness and sorely pressed for time, they demanded to be shown the remains of you-know-who.

  I stammered inane excuses. I urged them to sit down for a few minutes. I was by myself at the moment, I stuttered, and it was against the rules to—to—

  The door to the rear opened. Bill strolled in, a quart of beer tilted to his mouth. "How about a cold one, Jim boy?" he said. "Come on back an' see how nice this ol' fella is—"

  He broke off, open-mouthed. He looked from the three people to me, and my contorted features told him the terrible truth. Very unwisely, although I could well understand the action, he turned and ran.

  Grim and suspicious, our visitors followed him.

  Now, seven quarts of beer can be very hard to handle, even if one is not frantic with alarm...as, of course, Bill was. They slid from his stricken fingers. They dropped out of his shirt front where he was futilely trying to stuff them. And save for one which burst on the floor, they all went back around the bosom of their recent host.

  Our visitors discovered him thus. The ladies shrieked. The gentleman cursed and threatened to cane us. They stamped out then, to a telephone; some twenty minutes later the owner of the establishment arrived.

  He fired Bill and me on the spot.

  Somehow, while I do drink it, I have never cared much for beer since then.

  5

  My next job was in a bakery. The hours were from six p.m. until midnight five days a week, plus all day Saturday and Sunday. The pay was twelve dollars a week. The work was hard and virtually incessant.

  I was what is known as a "batch man," the employee who works in the storeroom and puts together the ingredients necessary for the various bakery products. The bakers and floor workers could rest between jobs, but there was no rest, no between, with mine. I had to "set up" for both the day and night crews. As fast as one batch was out of the way, the floor was crying for another. Bread dough, sweet dough, cake dough, pie dough, filling, topping, icing, frosting, eggwash, oil, and so on into infinity.

  The work was not only backbreaking—try juggling hogsheads of lard and ninety-eight-pound sacks of flour and one-hundred-and-eighty-pound sacks of salt, if you doubt my word—but it was also extremely exacting. There was almost no margin for error. A few ounces too much of this or that, and hundreds of dollars worth of dough would be ruined. It seemed to me that for work as difficult and demanding as this I should get more money.

  I suggested as much to the manager of the place. He looked me up and down coldly. There was a depression coming on, he said, and he had a long waiting list of job applicants. So, if I was at all dissatisfied, if I felt that I wasn't making enough...

  I told him I was entirely satisfied; I loved the job and the pay was more than enough. I apologized humbly for bothering him.

  Now eventually, and indirectly, the job paid me a great deal of money. It provided the source material for numerous trade-journal articles, and the background for my ninth novel, 'Savage Night.' In all, I suppose, I cashed in at the rate of several hundred dollars for every week I spent at the bakery. But that was later—more than twenty years later in the instance of the novel—and it did me no good whatsoever at the time. With rent to pay and with all my other expenses, the twelve dollars I received for each seven-day period was ridiculously inadequate.

  I considered dropping out of the fraternity. But that would be an involved and painfully embarrassing procedure, and besides, I simply couldn't do it. My "brothers" had their faults, as I was ever ready to point out, but poor scholarship was not among them. I had to have their help scholastically. For the time being, at least, it was impossible to do without it. Moreover, I seriously doubted the wisdom of severing relations with a "house" which had many alumni on the faculty.

  Meals were my biggest expense. The hard work gave me a terrific appetite, and it seemed that I could never get enough to eat. Nevertheless, since I could think of no place else to cut down, I cut down on meals. In fact, I practically eliminated them—stuffing myself instead with the various edibles in my stock room. I still get a little ill when I think of some of the messes I put together.

  The basic item of my diet was bread—the "crippled" loaves damaged in the machinery. The garnish (or whatever you want to call it) might be raw frozen eggs and lard, mince meat and malt syrup, or some truly weird concoctions such as cooking oil, chopped chocolate, caraway seeds and raisins. I made myself sandwiches of these things, eating them on the job and sneaking them out when I left. And when my stomach revolted, as it frequently did, I bought it into subjection with stiff cocktails of lemon and vanilla extract.

  I survived in this fashion for several months. Then, shortly after the college mid-term, when I had barely squeaked by the semester examinations, I was stricken with acute appendicitis.

  I was rushed to a hospital. When I emerged from it, some six days later, I was appendix-less, penniless, jobless and considerably in debt. I felt pretty good about the situation. With things that bad, it seemed that they must take a turn for the better. And they did.

  6

  Up until then I had scorned anything less than a steady salaried job. Now, since nothing of this kind was available to me, I began taking anything that was offered—a few hours work in one place, an hour or so in another. Some of these odd jobs cost me far more than I earned. As a cafeteria bus boy, for example, I spent sixty hours in paying for a huge tray of dishes which I had broken. Gradually, however, I eliminated such jobs from my agenda and substituted new ones, and finally—and after no great elapse of time—I had several which not only paid rea
sonably well but also were reasonably to my liking.

  I read papers for the English department. I wrote campus news for the Lincoln 'Journal.' I sold radios on commission. I worked as floorman in a dance hall. All irregularly, yes: seven or eight hours a week on each job. But my total pay aggregated more than I had been making at the bakery, and in my various bustlings about the city I ran across a salaried position. It was in a small department store, one of the midwestern chain of installment-sales houses. The hours were noon to six weekdays and all day Saturday. The pay was a magnificent eighteen dollars a week. I rearranged my classes to fit this schedule, and went to work.

  Since I held on to my other jobs, there was little time for rest or relaxation in the months that followed. I seldom got to bed before midnight, and I had to be up at dawn to make my seven o'clock classes at the university. But I had never slept when I could find anything else to do (I still don't), and there were ample compensations for the unending round of work.

  Mom and Freddie were able to join me. We took a large house, renting out part of the rooms to defray expenses. I studied harder and began to do better in my classes. It was easier to study, now that I was relatively free of financial worry, and with my education costing so much in money and effort I valued it more. I started writing again—free-lancing for myself. And I worked harder at that, too. As a result I sold a serial and several short stories to farm magazines, and placed two stories in the literary quarterly. 'The Prairie Schooner.' Almost overnight, the outlook for the future turned from black to bright.

  I worked at the store as a collection correspondent, and my immediate superior was the credit manager, a man named Durkin. We admired each other greatly. Barely literate himself, he thought I was a wonderful writer. I thought he showed exceptional wisdom in holding this opinion. Our mutual admiration was to end disastrously, but not until many pleasant months had passed. During this time, about the only discord in the smooth harmony of my affairs was a re-encounter with Allie Ivers—the impish, larcenous, fantastic friend of my Texas nonage.