Hunger and the Hate

by Dixon, H. Vernor

  “We’re going to get plastered. And I mean stinking.”

  “Say, you look like you’re on cloud eight. What happened?”

  “Tell you later. Drinks come first.”

  They went to the cocktail room at the Lodge, which, at that early hour, was almost full. Dean noticed the way heads turned, and he was proud of Ruth and her mink coat and her sheer seamless hose and the extra-high heels, so that she walked like a slightly chubby ballet dancer, and the diamonds and other jewelry flashing on her wrists and the tight-fitting gown with its daringly low V at the bosom. Ruth, he thought, sure has class. He beamed broadly and waved to people he knew with the best of humor.

  They sat at a small table in a corner and Ruth ordered a double Martini and Dean had his usual champagne and brandy.

  He squeezed Ruth’s hand and told her, “I’m going to get drunk and you’re going to put me to bed. That’s a switch, for a change. Jees, I really feel like celebrating tonight.”

  Ruth’s curiosity was driving her mad, but he would tell her nothing until he had put away three drinks and felt himself getting slightly lightheaded. Then he explained, “You know my goal, honey. Mr. Number One, that’s for me. But with old Tom around, well, it simply couldn’t be done. He just had too many irons in the fire. So he kicked the bucket and for a couple of days there I figured I had a clear field. I was just kidding myself. All that happened was that the Moore outfit changed hands to two other Moores. The power was still there, the dough, the land, prestige, everything. Worst of all, Freeman Mitchell was still in the saddle. That guy — ”

  Ruth nodded. “I know. You don’t have to tell me. Freeman can outthink any ten men in the business.”

  “You’re so right. He’s the best. Something maybe you didn’t know, for the last eight or nine years he’s the one been giving orders to old Tom and running the whole works.”

  Ruth shrugged. “I can believe it.”

  “It’s true. So you know what happens?” He paused, until he was sure she was hanging on his every word, then said, “Moore’s will was read today. The name of Freeman Mitchell is not in it.”

  Ruth put down her drink and frowned at Dean. “That can’t be.”

  “It is. The old boy double-crossed him. Just stringing him along all these years. Everything was left to Steve and his sister. No one else got a red cent, including Freeman. You can imagine the state he’s in. Jees, I just thought of something. I’d sure hate to be in his shoes and have to face his wife tonight.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Good. We’ll skip that horrible thought. Anyway, Freeman walked out on Steve. He’s through. He isn’t going back. And you know what? He came to me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Dean raised his hand and said solemnly, “Honest to God, it’s the truth. But wait’ll you hear the rest of it. We made a deal.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s going to work for you!”

  “That’s exactly what he’s going to do. I’m telling you. We made a deal. Of course, it’s not for peanuts. Any outfit in the business would jump at the chance to get him. He drove a hard bargain.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-four thousand a year in salary and a fifteen-per-cent bonus on my annual net.”

  Ruth took her glasses off, wiped them with a napkin, and put them back on to stare at Dean. “What did he use on you, a gun? The salary isn’t too much for him, but that bonus — ”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s rough. But here’s the way I look at it: I got a certain reputation and Freeman’s got a certain reputation. They’re not the same.”

  Ruth laughed and said, “People do business with you because they’re afraid of you. They do business with Freeman because they trust him. I’ll say it’s not the same.”

  Dean gave her a pained expression, but nothing could smother his good spirits. “All right, so they’re not. But I’ll make a hell of a lot more than that fifteen per cent I have to give him in the extra profits he’ll bring in. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: That guy is worth his weight in diamonds. Can’t you just picture the Moore accounts he’ll bring to my office?”

  Ruth had not thought of that, and when she did she was unhappy. “Gosh, Dean, this is going to hurt Steve, right when he needs ail the help he can get.”

  “Look, baby. We’re not running a kindergarten over there. Steve takes his chances with the rest of us. Now I got Freeman and, naturally, I’ll get some of his accounts. That’s the way it goes.”

  “I don’t care. I like Steve and Betty and I’d like to see them get a chance to get started right.”

  Dean said, “Damn it,” so loudly that people at other tables turned to look at him. “I didn’t take Freeman away from Steve. Will you please get that through your thick skull? Freeman quit and came to me. Understand?”

  Ruth squared her shoulders and said huffily, “You don’t have to insult me and you certainly don’t have to shout like that.”

  He dropped his voice and patted her hand. “Sorry, baby. I guess I got a little excited. But every time something happens, everyone always accuses me of pulling a fast one.”

  “Well, actually, you are. You don’t need Freeman and you don’t need his accounts. You sell all the lettuce you can grow right now. If you take him in, you’ll have to lease more land to pay for his extra expense. You won’t come out ahead on the deal, not this year, anyway. You’re just doing it for one reason. This is your chance to whittle down on Moore and build up yourself. Why can’t you be honest and admit it?”

  Dean called the waiter over for another round, finished what was left in his glass, gulped down the new one when it arrived, and ordered more. He grinned at Ruth. “Let’s not argue. Let’s just celebrate.”

  She looked at his broad smile and finally returned it. “Well, all right. I’d probably do the same thing, in your shoes.”

  “Sure you would. Let’s just drink. Baby, I got Freeman and I got the world by the tail on a downhill pull.”

  She had to laugh. “You’re sure feeling good.”

  “That, my little dove, is the understatement of the year.”

  They continued drinking and they forgot to eat. They talked and laughed and drank and the room thinned out and finally they were the only ones left to face the yawning waiters. They staggered out into the night, each supporting the other. When Dean tried to start his car he dropped the keys a half-dozen times before finding the right one and getting it in the ignition switch. His rear wheels skidded and rubber burned as he pulled out of the parking area. He roared out of Pebble Beach and drove through the sleepy village of Carmel and came to a skidding halt at the Mission Ranch, between the village and the Carmel River.

  The big barn, where dances were held on holidays and week ends, was closed, but the dining room and bar of the club were open and packed with late drinkers. It was a small room, with tables between the bar and the fireplace, and a right-angle annex to the room filled with other tables. There was a piano at one end of the room, near the windows, with a bored player banging out old tunes and a large group of people hanging about the piano singing them. None of them, at that hour, was in very good voice.

  Dean and Ruth picked up their drinks at the bar and made their way immediately to the piano. Dean bellowed at everyone else to shut up and asked the piano player, “Do you know ‘In a Li’l Spanish Town’?”

  The man nodded, but Ruth tugged at Dean’s sleeve. “Tha’s not my bes’ s’lection.”

  “O.K. How ’bout ‘My Man’?”

  The piano player shrugged, tinkled off a few opening chords, and started playing “My Man.” Ruth clasped her hands before her bosom, leaned back against the piano, smiled owlishly at everyone, and started to sing. Her voice had little strength and was overly sweet, but there was a certain professional quality that caught the attention of the other drunks. Dean thought she had the finest voice he had ever heard. He had tears in his eyes as she finished the song and star
ted another, amidst the enthusiastic applause of all the customers grouped cozily about the bar.

  Ruth had always been the leading singer during her grammar-school years and her one year in high school. She had looked forward, with no reservations whatever, to a great career as a singer, and had left school to join a small orchestra playing the beer taverns around Philadelphia. The orchestra had moved on and on, and in less than a year she was stranded in San Francisco. Ruth got a few jobs that enabled her to eat and keep going, but they were all in honky-tonks. She would never admit to herself that her voice was third-rate, but she had to face the fact finally that she was getting nowhere.

  She took a job in a San Francisco restaurant that catered almost exclusively to men and was an immediate success there. She was slim then, and with her wide, nearsighted eyes and her willingness to exchange off-color banter with the customers, she made a big hit with the men. She had all the dates she could handle, but the goal of the evening was always the same, a motel down on the peninsula or a cheap hotel room in town. She became tired of the unequal battle of the sexes and quit her job at the restaurant.

  But not without a place to go. She had learned that cocktail waitresses made better money than the garden variety, and she had been offered a job at Curry’s, in Salinas. She moved down to Salinas and took the job, and for the first few days was sure she had made the greatest mistake of her life. She had no liking for the small town and the preponderance of Mexican and Filipino field workers on the streets, she hated the wind that blew dust constantly down the valley, the oppressive heat irritated her, and she missed the excitement of a big city.

  But there were compensations. Men who were drinking were inclined to overtip a good-looking waitress, and she soon noticed that her income had tripled. She also became aware of the fact that these small-town men did not look upon her as one of the servant class, but as one of themselves. They liked her, they accepted her, and they were her friends. And when they learned she could sing they took her to their hearts. The saccharine sweetness and overly melancholy tone of her voice sounded like perfection to a sentimental drunk. They rained dollars upon her whenever she sang, which was usually late at night. She prospered, she was happy, and she became a locally famous fixture at Curry’s.

  That was where she had met and married Ralph Tinsley, principally on the strength of his favorite song, “Penthouse Serenade.” Whenever she started singing, “In our little penthouse way up in the sky,” she could depend on Ralph to get a glassy look in his eyes and later to tuck a folded twenty-dollar bill in her hand. Ralph had always been a farmer and had never seen a penthouse, except in the movies, but there was something about Ruth and a penthouse that struck a romantic chord in his mind. So he married her.

  Now, at Mission Ranch, singing for drunks again, she felt a wave of nostalgia sweep through her, and she whispered to the pianist, “Penthouse Serenade.” She finished the song with tears running down her cheeks, as the bar closed at two A.M.

  Dean staggered with her out to the convertible and had to help her onto the seat. When he got behind the wheel she leaned against him and cried on his shoulder as if her heart would break. He patted her back awkwardly and a bit too hard, wondering what had brought on the crying jag. “Now, now, baby.”

  “Can’t help it,” she sobbed. “Pool ol’ Ralph. That poor ol’ son-a-bitch never did have no fun. Poor Ralph.”

  “How’d he get in our cel’bration?”

  “That song. Poor ol’ bastard jus’ loved ’at song. Did somepin to him, y’ know.” She straightened and giggled. “Y’ know what he did, the ol’ coot? He was so nuts ’bout penthouses he built one top our farmhouse. ’Magine that! A penthouse fifteen feet off the ground. Jee-zuss!” She leaned over and laughed uncontrollably.

  Dean managed to get the car started, but still he sat there, blinking into the dark at the other cars pulling out of the parking area. He was feeling wonderful, at peace with the world and everyone in it, but he was not so far gone as to overlook the way he was going to feel in the morning. He knew he would have a hangover and a bad one. And he had a heavy schedule to meet, with Freeman Mitchell and attorneys and an unstable market and various plans to put into effect. He would need a clear head to face the day.

  There was one place where that could be achieved. Slade’s Hot Springs, about thirty-five miles south down the coast road, was a small establishment of dining room, lounge, and a number of guest cottages. The important feature was a number of open sheds built on the cliff just above the ocean, with bathtubs that could be filled with mineral water from a hot spring in the mountainside. Dean had used it before and was well aware of the curative powers of the water. If he could spend the night there and soak in one of the tubs in the morning, he knew he would be able to face the day with clear eyes and steady nerves. It seemed the sensible thing to do, in spite of the fact that he was much too drunk to drive the snakelike coast road.

  He told Ruth, “Now we go to Slade’sh.”

  She adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose and squinted into his eyes. “Hmmm?”

  “Slade’sh. Good idea? Shack up for the night and soak out all this boosh t’morrow.”

  She put an arm about his neck and gave him a wet, alcoholic kiss. “You’re genius, shwee’heart. Le’s go.”

  Dean drove out of Carmel and started south down the coast road. He got to the Highlands, three miles away, before he decided he needed a drink. He pulled off to the side of the road, almost running over a cliff, and yanked on the brake. He staggered around to the rear of the car and, after fumbling a bit, got the trunk open. Inside were twelve bottles of champagne and six bottles of brandy he had bought to replenish his bar at home. He took out one of each, closed the trunk, and went back to his seat. He got the bottles open, drank a mouthful of brandy, and chased it down with champagne. He passed the bottles to Ruth and she followed suit. They made another round and beamed joyously at each other. The world could offer them nothing. They had everything. Dean laughed and drove on.

  They stopped again and again and again, about every three or four miles, and passed the bottles back and forth. The brandy was half gone and they were on a second bottle of champagne when they reached the redwood-choked canyon of Big Sur. The radio was going full blast and Dean had been driving with careless abandon, oblivious of the fact that on a dozen occasions the right wheels of the car had knocked gravel from the edge of the cliff road. But at Big Sur he was so drunk that he could hardly see the road and had to slow down. He crept along through the canyon, blinking his eyelids rapidly, fighting the overpowering urge to fall back and sleep.

  When he emerged from the canyon and was again on the road above the sea he could go no farther. Dimly he was aware of the fact that at any moment his eyes would close and they would simply drive off a cliff. He shook his head and glanced at Ruth. She was huddled down on the other side of the seat, her mink coat pulled over her head, already passed out. Dean slowed the car, saw a wide spot in the road in the beams of his headlights, and pulled into it on his right. He stopped and turned off the engine. The heater quit and he felt the night chill creeping into the car. He reached to the back seat for a woolen car blanket and draped it over his lap. That felt better. He turned off the headlights and was plunged into blackness. He got out a cigarette and managed to get it going, but after the first puff his eyes closed and he passed out. The cigarette fell to the blanket.

  Ruth was the first to awaken. Ten thousand devils were beating on tom-toms inside her brain, but there was something else that was alien, that alarmed her. It took a vast effort to do it, but she shoved herself erect, adjusted her glasses, and squinted about in the dark. The smell of burning wool was in her nostrils and she leaned over to peer at the blanket on Dean’s lap. It was not yet on fire, but it was smoldering around a large hole. The cigarette had fallen on through and expired on the floor.

  Ruth grabbed Dean by the shoulder and shook him violently. He merely slumped deeper in the seat. His mouth fell open
and he started snoring. Ruth shook him again and kicked him and shouted at him and he snored on. “Damnit,” she mumbled. She found the champagne bottle, tilted it in the air, and took a long swallow. The tom-toms subsided and she was able to act.

  She opened the right door of the car, pulled the blanket from Dean’s lap, and stepped out — into black space. There was nothing under her feet. The car was parked directly on the edge of a steep bank that dropped fifty feet into some chaparal brush and a small cluster of stunted trees. From there a sheer cliff dropped two hundred feet to the ocean. Ruth landed about twenty feet down the incline and bounced into the brush, which stopped her and cushioned the fall.

  She lay there for some time afraid to move. But at last she extricated her hair from a thorny bush and sat up on the rocks and gravel. She had lost her glasses and could see nothing. The blanket, too, had gone sailing off into the trees below. It was now on fire, but Ruth could not see the glow. She raised her right arm and was astonished to find her fingers still clutching the champagne bottle, which was miraculously intact. She flipped it about and heard liquid splashing and lifted it to drain what was left in the bottom. Then she hurled it off into space.

  She made an exploration with her fingers and could feel the stickiness of blood on her face and her skinned shins, but she could find nothing broken. She could see nothing of her location, but she knew she had tumbled down a slope and that it had to be fairly steep. She got shakily to her feet and felt about in the brush and bumped against one of the small trees. Just two feet beyond was the black drop to the ocean. She peered blindly in that direction for a moment, then fortunately turned about, stumbling through the rocks, groping ahead with her hands extended. She slipped and fell down again, but she was against the face of the slope and could feel it. She sighed with relief and waited there a moment to rest and gather strength.

  Then she tackled the slope. Her efforts were futile. Every time she climbed ten feet she got into loose gravel and tumbled back down again. She sat down to take stock of her situation and heard a crackling noise. She turned about as the flame from the blanket licked at a tree and it burst into flame. That she could see. She saw the rest of the trees take fire and then the brush, and could feel the blistering heat. Panic swept through her and she got to her feet and started screaming.