Roughneck

by Jim Thompson

  All was peace for a time, while Alberta pounded the steak and I peeled potatoes. Then, abruptly, she too let out a yipe, and dropped the frying pan she was holding to the floor.

  "Jimmie! L-look at that!"

  I looked. And my skin crawled. For a small army of centipedes was oozing up from the stove, dropping down from its sides and slithering over the floor.

  I got rid of them, stomped on every one in sight. But Alberta remained shuddery and nervous. Probably, she admitted, a thing like this was to be expected in a house long unoccupied; but couldn't we have a cold dinner tonight?

  I said we could, naturally, and drove to a nearby delicatessen. When I returned some thirty minutes later, she and the kids were all out in the front yard. And all were squirming and scratching uneasily.

  "Jimmie," said Alberta desperately, "we just can't stay in there! The place is literally crawling. The beds and the chairs and the tables and—and they're even in the refrigerator! The more we move around the worse they seem to get."

  "Oh, now," I said, "surely they can't be that bad. We'll all get busy killing them, and—"

  "Well, they 'are' that bad, and the centipedes are only part of it. That house is just absolutely alive with bedbugs, millions of 'em! You can't even sit down in a chair without getting all bitten up."

  Well, I investigated personally, and found that she had not exaggerated the situation. Every stick of our brand-new furniture was infested. Just looking at it closely, at the swarms of ugly brown bugs, made me itch from scalp to toes. I could think of only one explanation, that they must have been in the furnishings when we bought them.

  Since it was not yet six o'clock, I called the manager of the furniture store and told him what had happened. Or, I should say, what I believed had happened. He sputtered indignantly.

  Vermin in the great B—furniture store? Incredible! Outrageous! "I think it much more likely, Mr. Thompson, that—"

  "You made the delivery from your warehouse," I said. "Probably they were in there. Some of the second-hand furniture you handle was infested, and they got from it onto mine."

  "B-but—" he hesitated uncertainly, "but all our secondhand items are thoroughly fumigated before storing! It's one of our strictest rules. I'm sure that none of our workmen would ever be so remiss as to—"

  "Let's face it," I said. "I've had this furniture barely three hours, and it's damned near jumping with bugs. It couldn't have got that way out here, so they must have been in it all along. It's the only plausible explanation."

  "Well—" he coughed uncomfortably—"if we are at fault, and it seems we must be..."

  "Get the stuff out of here," I said. "Get it out tonight, and replace it with new. And for God's sake look it over good before you deliver it."

  "Yes, yes," he said hastily. "But—uh—tonight, Mr. Thompson. I'm not sure that we can—"

  "You'd better," I told him. "You won't get another penny out of me unless you do, and I'll sue you besides."

  He surrendered, mumbling apologetically. Within less than two hours the buggy furniture had been removed and replacements installed. The family and I examined them carefully. Satisfied that they were bug-less, we ate our long-delayed dinner and retired.

  I can't say which of us hollered first, who was the first to leap scratching and clawing from his bed. The insect attack seemed to have been launched on all of us simultaneously, and we reacted en masse.

  Cautiously, our hides smarting with welts, we reexamined the furniture. Only Sharon seemed unsurprised at the result.

  "Tol' you," she said placidly. "Buds unner house, inna house. Wiv wight inna bwicks an' wood."

  Alberta and I looked at her, looked worriedly at each other. "Jimmie, do you suppose—I mean, could it be that way?"

  "I don't know," I said. "But I'll sure as hell find out."

  I called the real estate dealer who had sold me the place. He was completely blunt and unapologetic.

  "I sold you that house as is, Mr. Thompson, remember? If you don't remember, you'll find the fact stated clearly in your sales agreement."

  "Then you knew it was like this?" I said. "You deliberately and knowingly—"

  "As is, Thompson. There were no guarantees. It's your house...as long as you make your payments. The bugs are your problem, not mine."

  He slammed up the telephone. I tried to call him back and got no answer. Cursing, I called an insect exterminator who advertised night service.

  It would cost several hundred dollars, I supposed, to get a house this size renovated. But if I didn't spend it—and, offhand, I didn't know where in the hell I could get it—I would lose everything I had invested.

  The owner of the exterminating company answered my call. He promised to send some men out right away, and then he broke off abruptly and asked me to repeat the address.

  I repeated it.

  "Oh, oh," he said, softly. "Mister, you are stuck."

  "How do you mean?" I said. "How do you know when you haven't even—"

  "I've been out there. Been there twice in the last year, and the job looked worse the second time than it did the first. For one thing, that house is built right on top of a centipede city—a big colony—and God only knows how far and how deep it extends. And them bedbugs, now; when they get dug in like they are, you've practically got to take a place apart to get 'em...I'm not saying that the job can't be done, understand. It could be, but—"

  "Yes?"

  "It would cost you more than the place is worth."

  I hung up.

  Pretty drearily, we shook out our blankets and bedded down in the backyard.

  For a week after that, until I could scrape up the money for an apartment, we camped out there, cooking over an open fire and sleeping on the ground.

  With so much space available, Sharon enlarged her animal classes and Pat staged theatrical spectacles and Mike's practical joking expanded to ultra-hideous proportions. In a word, the kids loved every minute of it, and we were only able to get them to move with threats of flagellation and promises of expensive treats.

  As for Alberta and me, with a small fortune in savings and borrowings gone down the drain, the less said about our feelings the better.

  21

  Pop, Mom and Freddie settled in Oklahoma City about a year after my return. Freddie got a cashier's job and Mom found part-time work as a saleswoman. Pop also got a job, but he held it briefly. It was menial and monotonous. He could not, willing as he was, give it the necessary attention. He became increasingly absent-minded, retreating into the memories of better days, and his employers fired him.

  Poor as the job had been, its loss was a severe blow to Pop's morale. He felt useless and cast aside, and his distress saddened and worried me as nothing else could. As boy and youth, it had been impressed upon me that I fell far short of Pop's standards. He was always kindly, but I was obviously not the son he had hoped for. Well, that was past, and I could do nothing about it. But I felt now that I had to do something to lift him out of his despondency. Help given now, when no one else could give it, would do much to offset my failings of the past.

  Pop had always been a rabid and knowledgeable baseball fan. And, at this time, baseball betting books ran wide open in Oklahoma City. The gambling was unorganized—the syndicate boys who tried to move in got the fast heave-ho. But a "local" who wanted to set up a small book was unmolested, nor was he required to pay off to the authorities.

  I asked Pop if he would be interested in such an enterprise. He was not only interested but enthusiastic. I talked the proposition over with an acquaintance of mine, a man who ran a pool hall-beer parlor, and found him glad to oblige. He wouldn't take any cut from the book, he said. He had plenty of space for the setting up of a blackboard and Western Union ticker, and the betting would bring him trade.

  So the installations were made, and, with a hundred dollars in cash, Pop began business. Like all books around the town, he took the long end of the bets: six to five, say, regardless of the team bet on. And
the wagers were limited to a five-dollar top. Operating in this way, he was certain to win—he could not possibly make any serious inroads into his hundred. It was more as a formality than because I had to leave town for a week, that I asked the proprietor of the establishment to take care of him if he needed anything.

  The week passed. Pop called on me my first morning back in the office. The betting had gone fine, he said absently. He had managed the bets as he should and wound up each day a modestly comfortable winner...

  But he was broke.

  "But you couldn't be!" I said. "Even if you'd lost every day you couldn't be. Did you"—I looked at him sharply—"did you give it away? Have some of your old friends been around to see you?"

  Pop immediately took umbrage at my tone. Certainly he'd given nothing away, he said; his friends were not beggars. Perhaps he had seen fit to extend a few "small loans," but—

  I was pretty bitter about it. Pop's generosity with his "friends" was largely responsible for reducing him from millionaire to pauper, and for years during my childhood it had forced us—his family—to make our home with relatives.

  "All right," I said at last. "It took every penny I had to set you up, but I'll refinance my car and bankroll you again. But this time, Pop..."

  "I know," he said, a little testily. "You don't need to say anything more on the subject."

  "I'm going to make sure of it," I said. "If any of those bums come around you again, there's going to be trouble."

  I arranged for the loan by telephone. Then, leaving Pop stiff-necked and hurt, I went to see my beer parlor friend.

  I was pretty sure of the identity of the men who had "borrowed" from Pop. Relatively young and able-bodied, they simply sponged because they preferred not to work; they were the kind who would beg with a bankroll in their pockets. I described the pair and the proprietor of the place nodded grimly.

  "They've been around, all right. Showed up the first day your dad operated, and they've been here every day since. Two of the worst chiselers I ever seen. Why, I'd never seen the characters before, but they even tried to put the bite on me!"

  "I'll tell you what," I said. "I'm going to sit in your back room for a while this afternoon. If they show up today, they'll get worked over with a pool cue."

  "Well, now—" He scratched his head uneasily. "Don't think I could let you do that, Jim. Run a nice clean store here, never no trouble or anything, and I want to keep it that way. Anyhow—"

  "All right. I'll catch 'em outside, then."

  "—anyhow," he continued, "it wouldn't do much good. I dropped some pretty strong hints to your dad, and it didn't stop him. Just got huffy with me. I reckon he's been a pretty big man at one time, huh? Well, he can't get over the idea that he ain't one now—and maybe it's just as well that he can't. Prob'ly couldn't live with himself any other way."

  "But look," I said, "I can't let him—"

  "Better forget about this book or anything else where he's got to handle money. Know it cost you a nice little wad for that ticker and everything, but—oh, yeah, speaking of money..."

  He punched the keys of his cash register, took several small slips of paper from the drawer. They were I.O.U's—Pop's. The total just about equaled the pending loan on my car.

  "Didn't think I ought to do it, Jim," he said apologetically, "but you said to take care of him, y'know, an' I done it."

  I paid him, of course. And subsequently, unable to meet the loan, I lost my car. Needless to say, Pop's book did not reopen.

  There was nothing much wrong with Pop physically, according to the doctors. But no man who feels useless and can see nothing to look forward to can long remain in good health. Pop's condition worsened rapidly. He came to require a great deal of looking after. When I, with my grant-in-aid about to expire, decided to go to California, he was in no condition to make the long trip.

  This posed quite a problem, for Freddie's job was about to play out and she and Mom also wanted to make the move to California. Finally, since no other solution offered, Pop entered a small sanitarium.

  We hoped that he would be able to come out on his own in a month or so. If that proved impossible, we meant to have him brought out with a nurse in attendance, just as quickly as we could get the necessary money.

  For the time being, we had no such sum and no way of getting it. The car I drove was borrowed from a friend; he himself had borrowed it from his brother while on a visit to California. As payment for its use on the trip, I was to return it to that brother, a San Francisco car dealer.

  Well, we arrived in San Diego where I intended to headquarter. After getting the folks settled there, I headed on toward San Francisco. It was only about five hundred miles distant—an easy day's drive, I supposed. But to one unfamiliar with the fantastic California traffic, five hundred miles can be a very long way. It was noon before I reached Los Angeles. Hours later, not long before sunset, I was just edging out of the city.

  Being very short on money and still shorter on time, I had picked up a snack to take with me at a highway-side delicatessen. It consisted of cheese, crackers, a dill pickle and a bottle of port wine. I opened these purchases, now that I was through the city traffic, and ate and drank as I drove.

  Not since I was a child at my grandfather's house had I drunk any wine. And this, by comparison, seemed wonderfully mellow and mild. I gulped it down, feeling the tenseness flow out of me as it flowed into me. I came to another wayside store and purchased another bottle. It sold for twenty-five cents a quart, cheaper than almost any drink but water. Since it was drawn from a keg into an unlabeled bottle (you can't buy it that way any more), I could only judge its potency by taste. And my taste said it was innocuous.

  The error had almost fatal consequences.

  Without realizing it, I drifted into a rosy haze. I came out of it just in time to keep from going off the highway. I stopped the car immediately, and rubbed my eyes. They didn't want to focus, it seemed, while my head showed a stubborn tendency to nod. I drove on slowly, intending to fill up on black coffee at the first lunch stand I came to.

  Mile after mile passed. No lunch stand appeared. Night came on and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open, then suddenly, a few hundred yards ahead of me, the headlights picked out the figure of a man.

  He was signaling for a ride. Possibly, I thought, he was the answer to my predicament. I slowed the car to a crawl, looking him over.

  Young—seventeen or eighteen, perhaps. Pretty hardbitten and rugged looking...but what of it? I had looked a hell of a lot worse many times.

  I came even with him and stopped. "How far you going?" I called blearily.

  "San Francisco." He hesitated with his hand on the door. "I mean, almost to San Francisco. A little place this side of—"

  "Can you drive? Well, pile in, then," I said; and he piled in.

  He was a fast driver but a good one. After watching him a few minutes, I uncorked the wine and leaned back.

  "Sure glad you stopped for me, mister," he said. "It was beginning to look like I was going to have to stand there all night."

  "Glad to have you along," I told him. "But how come you're out on the highway this late?"

  "CCC camp." His face tightened with bitterness. "You know, relief work. Thirty bucks a month to your family, and they treat you like you were a convict. They kicked me out tonight."

  "That's too bad. How did it happen?"

  "Well, I had this knife, see, and this other kid claimed it was his. And me and him got to fighting, so they kicked 'me' out."

  I murmured sympathetically. He went on talking.

  He didn't know what his folks were going to think of him. Probably that he was just no good, and probably they would be right. He'd quit high school to work two years ago and since then he'd had three jobs—not counting the CCC—and they'd all blown up on him. The guy he was working for would go out of business or he'd get jumped about something he hadn't done, or—well, something would happen. It looked like there just wasn't any use i
n a fellow trying to do the right thing. The harder he tried the harder he got it in the neck.

  "You've just hit a run of hard luck," I said. "Just stay in there pitching, and you'll come out of it."

  "Yeah," he muttered. "It's pretty easy for you to talk. A swell car an'—" He caught himself. "Sorry, mister. Feeling pretty sorry for myself, I guess."

  He lapsed into silence for a time. I grinned, boozily, in the darkness.

  'Easy for me to talk.' Me with "my" swell car and my one good suit of clothes and little more than enough money for a wildcat bus ticket back to San Diego! My plight was many times worse than this youngster's. I had driven myself too hard, too long; I had become soul-sick with the drivel!—the unadorned commercial writing—which I had poured into the popular magazines. And now I could do no more, even if my life depended on it.

  Yet if I did not do that...?

  It was quite a question. What does a man of thirty-five do who has lost his one negotiable talent? What does he do, this man, with his history of alcoholism, nervous exhaustion, tuberculosis and almost uninterrupted frustration? What about his wife and three children? What about his father, whom he has promised to—

  Abruptly, I cut off this chain of thought. Pop had cried when we left him.

  But—I took a long drink of the wine—this was certainly a good joke on my hitchhiker. I should be envying him, instead of the other way around.

  "...kind of work you do, mister?"

  "What?" I said. "Oh, I'm a writer."

  "Must be pretty good money in that."

  "Well, I've made quite a bit," I said.

  "How do you—uh—how do you do it, anyway? Just drive around the country looking at things until you get an idea, and—"

  I laughed, choking on the drink I was taking. He gave me a sour look.

  "I don't get it, by gosh," he said. "Me, I don't drink or smoke or, well, anything like that. Never even could afford to take a girl to a show. And all these other people, they go zipping around in big cars havin' a heck of a time for themselves an'—. It just ain't right, mister. You know it ain't!"