by Jim Thompson
Viola—that was the woman’s name—washed the dishes. Afterwards, a little mopping-up was indicated so she mopped the floor. In so doing she got water across the threshold of the next room, so naturally that had to be mopped, too—and before it could be mopped it had to be swept, and while one was sweeping one room it was foolish to ignore another. After sweeping, the furniture had to be dusted, and…
Viola went to work for us.
Some relative of hers gladly took her son to board for a fraction of her wages, and Viola moved into our house. And while she was an angel, if there ever was one, she was a source of deep confusion—at least to Mom and me.
Mom had always had to be somewhat penurious to offset Pop’s generosity. She had become irrevocably sharp in money matters. When she was quoted a price on an object she automatically demanded a lower one, backing the demand with derisive comments on the potential purchase. Salesgirls hid when they saw Mom coming. When a huckster or peddler stopped at our house, he usually left with a bewildered look on his face and bitter curses on his lips.
That was Mom and that couldn’t be Mom where Viola was concerned. Viola was constantly belittling her own efforts. Mom had to scold her to keep her from working herself to death, and force presents and money upon her with naggings.
Mom became terribly upset. After a session with Viola she was apt to be kind to butchers, her pet abomination. One night when she had been skinned into accepting two pounds of bone and gristle masquerading as stew meat, Mom broke down and cried. She told Viola she was driving her crazy, and if Viola didn’t “stop it” she didn’t know what she was going to do.
Viola wept right along with her. She said she knew she hadn’t been earning her keep, but she would do better from now on. Moreover, she had saved most of her wages, and we could have the money back.
We were a northern family by heritage, but we had lived a big part of our lives in the South, and we—we children, at least—thought southern. Hence, the reason for my puzzlement with Viola.
It was obvious even to me that she was a far superior person to Mrs. Cole. She was, in fact, the mental and moral superior of many white people I knew. But she was black, and everyone knew that Negroes were a shiftless, lazy lot who couldn’t be trusted out of sight. Everyone knew that the lowest white was better than the best black.
The only way I could account for Viola’s superiority was on the basis that she was part white, but this she would not admit.
“No, sir, Mister Jimmie,” she laughed, when I plagued her. “I’m black, all right. All black.”
“But how do you know, Viola? You might not be.”
“I just know. I know the same way you know you’re white.”
I could not desist. Once I got some riddle on my mind, preferably one that was foolish or of no possible consequence to me, I could not expel it until it was solved.
So, in the end, I forced Viola to confess her whiteness.
She was peeling potatoes and she had just nicked her thumb with the knife. She held the bleeding digit up for me to see.
“You see there, Mister Jimmie? You don’t see any white blood like that. That’s all-Negro blood.”
“It is not either!” I exclaimed. “That’s white people’s blood! It’s just like mine!”
“You’re joking me, Mister Jimmie.”
“I am not! You’re white, Viola—partly white, anyways. I guess I ought to know what white people’s blood looks like!”
“I guess you should,” Viola admitted in an awed voice. “Well, what do you know!”
“I knew all the time I was right,” I said loftily.
Mom looked upon Viola more as a friend than a servant. But, as she was fond of saying, she didn’t want friends around all the time. Thus, as she recovered her health and the economic situation improved, Viola left us for another job. Once a week, however, she returned to us for a day to give the house a good cleaning.
She did not want to take any pay for this work, but Mom always forced her to take something; if not money, some discarded clothes. As for her new employers, Viola had very little to say about them. About all we could get out of her was that they were mighty nice people, but that she’d rather be with us.
It was Pop who finally let the cat out of the bag. Not, naturally, that he’d been trying to keep the truth from us. He just hadn’t thought it of any particular consequence.
“Why, she’s working for the governor,” he revealed. “He gave her some little job in the mansion on my say-so, but the family liked her so well she’s running the whole thing now. She—”
“The governor,” said Mom, blankly. “Oh, my goodness! I’ve had her coming over here on her day off to sweep and scrub and—”
When Viola next appeared, Mom rebuked her for the deception, then insisted on treating her as company.
Viola didn’t want to be treated as company. She just couldn’t bear it, she said. And, since Mom remained firm, her visits became more and more infrequent. Finally, they stopped altogether.
We missed her terribly.
10
Having achieved considerable success in his dual profession of attorney-accountant, Pop swiftly began to lose interest in it. That was Pop’s way. He was forever advising others—notably, me—to choose one line of endeavor and stick to it, but he himself was incapable of such singleness of purpose.
Political friends who learned of his feelings offered to obtain him an appointment as United States marshal. Pop declined. They offered him a Federal judgeship. He declined that, too.
Various lucrative ventures and positions were proffered him, and he consistently turned them down. He was quite capable of making his own way in life, he stiffly averred. And during the next two- or three-odd years he set about earnestly to prove it.
I could not name all the ventures he was active in during that period, but they included the operation of a sawmill, the proprietorship of a hotel, truck farming, running a bush-league ball club, the garbage-hauling contract for a certain Oklahoma metropolis and turkey ranching.
As each business or endeavor failed, we were left with certain mementos of it: assets—to use the term loosely—which were at once non-liquidatable but yet, for one reason or another, impossible to discard. Thus, by the time of the demise of the turkey ranch, our residence and its environs were so encumbered that one could hardly get into it, or, once in, out.
Zoning laws and health ordinances were unheard of or unenforced in those days, else all of us would certainly have been carted off to institutions—penal or protective. As it was, Mom finally became hysterical. She declared that she herself would see to Pop’s commitment if he did not come to his senses.
“G-garbage wagons!” she wept. “G-garbage wagons in the front yard, and—a-and h-horses in the garage, a-and ploughs on the front porch, a-and—”
She went on with her recital, becoming more and more agitated with the mention of each item. The incubators in the bedrooms. The gangsaws in the living room. The cigar showcases in the kitchen. The tomato plants in the bathroom. The dozens of newly hatched young turkeys, which roamed the house from one end to the other. The—
“And that ball player!” yelled Mom. “I swear, Jim Thompson, if you don’t get him out of here, I’ll—I’ll murder both of you!”
This last reference was to the occupant of our sleeping porch, a rheumy old party who combined an affection for chewing tobacco with very poor eyesight. He could not have hit a bull with a bass fiddle, as the saying is. Pop, of course, perversely regarded him as a second Ty Cobb.
“You get him out of here!” Mom shouted. “Get all this junk away from here. Either he and it goes or the children and I do!”
Pop gave in, not, naturally, because he could be swayed by threats, but because he was quite as weary of the situation as Mom was. He found some political sinecure for the ball player, and gave away the other animals and items. Good riddance it was—as none knew better than he. But you could never make him admit it.
For ye
ars, nay decades, no visitor came to our house without learning that Pop had once owned a very valuable ball player (“another Babe Ruth”) or some very valuable horses (“the same blood strain as Man O’ War”) or several hundred prize turkeys (“their eggs were worth a hundred dollars a dozen”). To hear Pop tell it, he had been on the point of cornering the world market in tomatoes or timber or hotel gaboons (“genuine antiques, mind you”). All the nominal dross which Mom had forced him to get shed of had actually been gold, and only her callous and ignorant interference had prevented his reaping untold wealth.
“Of course,” he would sigh bravely, in concluding his recital, “I don’t blame Mrs. Thompson in the least. It was my own fault for listening to her.”
He would laugh hollowly, then, his face fixed in a stoical mask. And while Mom choked and stammered incoherently, our guests would stare at her open-mouthed, pity and horror mingling in their eyes.
Of necessity, and as much as it irked him, Pop had continued to practice law and accountancy. But he was constantly on the lookout for some new field of activity, and he finally found it, or so he felt, in the booming Oklahoma oil fields.
I mentioned a few pages back that his first dabblings in this business were not too successful. This, on reflection, seems an unfair statement of the case. They were successful enough, but Pop’s generosity and trustingness turned them into failures.
On one occasion, after several shrewd deals, he gave a “friend” twenty-five thousand dollars to tie up some leases for him. Instead, the man bought an automobile agency and placed it in his wife’s name. There was nothing Pop could do about it. The law regards such an action as a breach of trust, and its attitude briefly is that anyone who suffers it has only himself to blame.
Another time, Pop accepted the word and the handshake of a pipeline executive in lieu of a written contract. As a result, when the pipeline company found it inexpedient to connect with his first oil well, he could only let the torrent of black gold pour into the nearest creek.
It was a few months after this last fiasco, when Pop was again hard at work at his now-detested law-accountancy practice, that he met a man named Jake Hamon. Or, I should say, re-met him. For he had known him casually during his early days in Oklahoma. At that time, Jake, a former roustabout with the Ringling Brothers Circus, had been a six-for-fiver around the pioneer tent and shack towns. That is, he bought wages from workers in advance of their due date, giving the needy borrower five dollars for each six he had coming.
Jake was still in the loan business at the time of his and Pop’s later encounter, though on a slightly different level. He owned a string of Oklahoma banks. He also owned a railroad, oil wells, refineries, office buildings—so much, in fact, that he had acquired the sobriquet of “John D. Rockefeller of the Southwest.”
He asked Pop to audit his banks and to equip them with a more efficient accounting system. Pop, having nothing better to do, gladly agreed.
“I won’t charge you anything, of course,” he said, casually. “Just my expenses.”
“Why?” Jake demanded.
“Well”—Pop was a little set back. His generous offers were not usually received in this fashion. “Well, after all we’re old friends and—”
Jake interrupted with a rude four-letter ejaculation. “Who the hell says we’re friends?” he snarled. “I haven’t seen you in years, and if you’re as big a dope as you act like I don’t want to see you again. Friend, hell! I’ve heard about some of your friends. Forget that friend crap. Name me a fee for this job, or get the hell out of my office!”
Smarting, Pop named him a fee—one that was outrageously high. And Jake chortled happily.
“You see?” he grinned. “All you need is a tough guy like me to ride herd on you. You stick with me, Jim, and you’ll wear diamonds.”
So Pop went to work for Jake, and for the first time in his life he held on to a large share of the money he made. The relation of the two men, at first, was that of employer and employee. From that it shifted to a point where Pop was Jake’s advisor on various deals, at a percentage of the profits. And in the end they became partners in the deals—usually oil—with Jake providing the lion’s share of the money and Pop carrying out the necessary negotiations. Pop became a familiar figure at lease auctions and distress sales. The transactions were frequently cash on the barrel-head. And on at least one occasion Pop’s briefcase contained a million dollars of Jake’s money.
While Pop made and continued to make a great deal of money with Jake, “the Southwest’s Rockefeller” himself profited vastly by the association. Even as he watched over Pop, so did Pop watch over him, checking the ugly temper and cynical attitude which, as Jake would surlily admit, had cost him millions and made him a public-relations man’s headache.
Unfortunately, no one likes to be reminded of his faults, real and harmful as they may be. And the closer their association became and the greater their familiarity, the more flaws they found with one another. Nothing that the other did was right. Pop was a “softie,” Jake an “illiterate boor.” Jake was a “slob,” Pop a “high-toned dude.” So it went.
Since Pop was genuinely fond of Jake, and vice versa, and both had given concrete proof of that liking, it always seemed incredible to me that they could have come to a parting of the ways.
Pop refused to talk about the breakup for a long time. When he finally did explain, I could only sit and gape, for the casus belli had been a suit of underwear.
It had happened—the breakup—in the sweltering hotel room of an Oklahoma boom town. They were there, pending the closing of a business deal, and during their stay Jake’s mistress had arrived. He got her a room across the hall from theirs, and spent the nights with her. During the day he stayed in his and Pop’s room, conferring upon business matters.
It was hot, as I have said. He seldom wore anything but his underwear. And one morning, when he was prowling restlessly about their room, he surprised Pop in a disgusted frown.
“What’s the matter with you?” he inquired gruffly.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Pop retorted.
“What do you mean? What are you staring at, anyway?”
“Since you asked me,” said Pop, coldly, “I was looking at your underclothes. When was the last time you changed them?”
“Why, you—” Jake’s face turned scarlet. “You two-bit bookkeeper, I ought to—!”
He exploded into a torrent of abuse.
Pop replied similarly.
Before they could see the ridiculousness of the situation and get control of themselves, each had said unforgivable—or at least unforgettable—things and their partnership was ended.
They saw one another after that, but there was a certain stiffness between them. And Pop had reason to suspect—or felt he had—that Jake still bore a grudge against him.
Next, Pop lost almost ten thousand dollars in a poker game with Jake, Gaston B. Means and Warren G. Harding.
The game took place on the Harding presidential campaign train, upon which, as two of the Southwest’s most prominent Republicans, Pop and Jake were guests of honor. It began with relatively low stakes which Jake, with much jibing and jeering, managed to steadily increase. Finally, with all the cash available in the pot, Means dropped out, and the contest was between Jake, Harding and Pop. In other words, since Pop was too stiffnecked and proud to demand a table-stakes game, it was no contest.
Jake could write his check for any amount. And certainly the I.O.U. of a future president was good for any amount. Only Pop’s betting was restricted.
He tossed in his hand, a club flush. Immediately, although he had anted heavily on the previous round, Jake laid down his hand—the value of which was absolutely nothing. Harding took the pot with three threes.
Pop was considerably, if not justifiably, irritated. He did not see Jake again until some two years later when the latter summoned him to his death bed. Then, with matters past mending, they sadly agreed that the biggest mis
take of their lives had been the ending of their association.
Pop, feeling that Oklahoma was not big enough for the two of them, had transferred his activities to Texas. And there he had drilled four oil-less wells in a row, at a cost of more than two hundred thousand dollars each.
Jake, sans any friendly restraint or guidance, had become increasingly misanthropic, and, finally, his mistress took a gun to him and he died of the wounds.
11
We moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in the fall of 1919, shortly before the coming of my thirteenth birthday. The city was riding a tidal wave of post-war wealth. New building was months behind the demand, and there were a dozen purchasers for every available house. So, for several weeks, we were forced to live in a hotel suite. The period was one of the most unpleasant in my checkered career.
For the first time in my memory, I was immediately under Pop’s eye day in and day out. And Pop, who had taken only a spasmodic interest in me until then, now began to make up for lost time. I was a rich man’s son, he pointed out, and some day I would inherit great wealth. I must be made into a proper custodian for it—sane, sober, considerate. I should not be allowed to become one of those ill-mannered, irresponsible wastrels, who behaved as though they had been put on earth solely to enjoy themselves.
No error in my deportment was too tiny for Pop to spot and criticize. No flaw in my appearance was too small. From the time I arose until the time I retired, I was subjected to a steady stream of criticism about the way I dressed, walked, talked, stood, ate, sat and so on into infinity—all with that most maddening of assurances that it was for my “own good.”
We had two cars in the hotel garage. Pop took me there and placed me under the supervision of the foreman mechanic, instructing him to treat me as he would any hired hand. For the ensuing week I assisted in the overhauling of our automobiles. Rather, I did the overhauling with some minor assistance from one of the mechanics. I was too outraged and sullen to discuss the work, so I did not dispute Pop’s bland statement that the experience would teach me a great deal. For that matter, it did teach me a great deal—namely, that repairing cars was a lousy way to make a living. And never again, except in the direst emergencies, did I so much as change a tire.