It was a reply Phil would grow very accustomed to as the years passed.
[ EIGHT ]
Fort Dix, New Jersey
Tuesday, October 10, 1950
They had no sooner gotten off the bus that delivered them to the Transient NCO Quarters at Fort Dix when Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley took Technical Sergeant Williams’s arm and said, “We have to talk!”
He led him to a small room and closed the door.
“Phil, did you see that EXPLETIVE DELETED!! sign?”
“Which EXPLETIVE DELETED!! sign was that, Master Sergeant Quigley?”
“The one that said ‘Welcome USAAMU Skeet Team.’ That EXPLETIVE DELETED!! sign.”
“Yes, I did. I thought it was a nice gesture on the part of Fort Dix.”
“Phil, the people we brought with us are not on the USAAMU Skeet Team. They are on the Fort Benning Skeet Team.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“We are going to compete against the U.S. Coast Guard Skeet Team. You know what that means, of course.”
“I’m not sure.”
“The EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Coast Guard has two hundred and thirty-five EXPLETIVE DELETED!! installations around the world, each of which has a skeet field and a skeet team. They also have a bunch of EXPLETIVE DELETED!! boats from which they shoot at birds off the back.”
“That’s very interesting.”
“The result of what I just told you is that the Coast Guard team against which what they think is the USAAMU team will compete consists of the best EXPLETIVE DELETED!! shooters in the entire EXPLETIVE DELETED!! U.S. Coast Guard. There is little question in my mind that the USAAMU Skeet Team could take them in fair conflict, but we don’t have the USAAMU Skeet Team here with you and me. What we have is the Fort Benning Skeet Team, which is sort of the Junior Varsity to the USAAMU Skeet Team.”
“You’re suggesting there is a chance we could lose?”
“Indeed I am. And those EXPLETIVE DELETED!! sailors in the funny hats and the pants with thirteen buttons on the fly know that. The USAAMU Skeet Team is about to be grossly humiliated by the Junior Varsity of the U.S. Navy, a/k/a the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! U.S. EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Coast Guard. Unless . . .”
“Unless what, Master Sergeant Quigley?”
“Unless, against the odds, I manage to break my third one hundred straight.”
“Good luck, Master Sergeant Quigley.”
“And you, Technical Sergeant Williams, go three hundred straight.”
“What makes you think I could accomplish such an amazing feat of marksmanship?”
“Because, Technical Sergeant Williams, the U.S. Army skeet world is a small world and I know who you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“Where are you hiding those two Diamond Grade Brownings with full factory engraving, gold triggers, and selective ejectors, Williams, under your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! mattress?”
Phil blushed.
“Well, I guess my secret is no longer a secret. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Are you asking why didn’t I drag your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! over to the NCO Academy and tell my friends there to really sock it to you, subjecting you to physical training ‘eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark’?”
“I admit the thought may have crossed my mind, Master Sergeant Quigley.”
“I was going to wait for you to humiliate me with your superior marksmanship before our teammates and then I was going to drag your EXPLETIVE DELETED!! over to the NCO for twelve hours of physical training to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark.”
“I see.”
“But you didn’t do that. You were a team player. Not only did you keep your average well below mine, but you gave your teammates little pointers so they could up their averages.”
“I thought that was the right thing for me to do.”
“So the choice is yours, Technical Sergeant Williams. You can go three hundred straight tomorrow and save the USAAMU from humiliation at the hands of the EXPLETIVE DELETED!! U.S. Coast Guard, in which case all will be forgiven, I will name you deputy chief marksmanship instructor of the USAAMU and you can have just about anything else your little heart desires. Alternatively, if you do not go three hundred straight tomorrow, say hello to the NCO Academy of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence and twelve hours of physical training to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark, until your period of enlistment concludes.”
“Would that anything else my little heart desires include a forty-eight-hour pass?”
“What an odd question.”
“I have a friend in New York City, a chap I went to school with, who has been after me, if I had happened to be in the neighborhood, to drop in for a chat.”
“You go three hundred straight tomorrow and you can have two weeks to go to New York to chat with your friend.”
“Forty-eight hours will be more than enough, as I am anxious to return to Fort Benning and my darling Brunhilde, the one in diapers.”
[ NINE ]
The Harvard Club
27 West 44th Street
New York City, New York
Thursday, October 12, 1950
Phil, two days later, at the noon hour, turned off West Forty-fourth Street and passed through the portals of the Harvard Club of New York, Inc., and told the man at the desk that he was to be the luncheon guest of Mr. Cumings Bradshaw.
“Would that be the Bradshaw Hedge Fund Cumings Bradshaw the Third, sir? Or the Old American Library Cumings Bradshaw the Fourth? Both gentlemen are honoring the Harvard Club with their patronage today.”
“The latter.”
“You’ll find Bradshaw Four drinking his luncheon in the bar, sir.”
“Long time no see, Phil, old boy,” Cumings Bradshaw IV greeted Phil. “May I offer you a vodka martini, no vegetables, to cut the dust of the trail?”
“Don’t mind if I do, Cumings, old chap.”
The waiter appeared and took ol’ Cumings’s order, which he immediately modified: “You’d best make those libations doubles, as when this gentleman hears how shoddily this Groton Old Boy has treated him, another Groton Old Boy, he’ll need it.”
The waiter left, whereupon Mr. Bradshaw IV turned to Phil and said, “Our libations will go on my tab, that is to say the Old American Library’s tab, old boy, inasmuch as I wish to make amends for the shoddy way in which I, as editor in chief of the ol’ Old American, have been treating you.”
“How shabby? You’re going to publish four of my novels and have advanced me fifteen hundred dollars per book for the privilege of doing so. As we sergeants say, that ain’t too shabby.”
“Alas, it is. That fifteen hundred dollars per book is, I mean.”
“Tell me more, Cumings, old boy.”
The waiter delivered their double vodka martinis, no vegetables, and left.
“Mud in your eye, old boy,” Cumings said, raising his glass.
“Up yours, Cumings,” Phil responded. “Tell me how you’ve been treating me shabbily at fifteen hundred per book.”
“Well, old boy, when Daddy bought me the Old American Library as a graduation present on my graduation from Fair Harvard, he offered me some professional advice based on his years as a hedge fund biggie.
“‘Cumings,’ he said, ‘the key to success in any business is to screw not your customers or your suppliers, but both.’ He was speaking figuratively, of course, not physically.
“I of course took Daddy’s advice to heart from the day the ol’ Old American opened its doors for business. And I must say, with all modesty, we’ve been doing very well following that ‘screw not your customers or your suppliers, but both’ business philosophy.”
“Why don’t you get to the point, old boy?” Ph
il said evenly.
“Righto! You understand, of course, that as an author you fall into the ‘supplier’ category. If publishers didn’t have a supply of manuscripts from authors, where would they be?”
“I see your point.”
“Well, one day a couple of weeks ago, sitting at the bar at ol’ Winged Foot, I had an epiphany, which I don’t have to tell you, because you are an author who knows many big words, means a sudden realization: a sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence.”
“I know the word.”
“What I suddenly realized was that when I came across a first draft of a manuscript, yours, that showed great potential, I followed Daddy’s advice to screw the supplier whenever possible and got you to sign a contract, actually contracts, plural, which screwed you royally.”
“You’re talking about the fifteen hundred?”
“That, too, but also with regard to other contractual details. For example, if Comfort Me With Love is sold to Hollywood for adaptation into a motion picture, the proceeds therefrom go five percent to you and ninety-five percent to the Old American Library, which is to say, me.”
“That sounds a bit unfair.”
“Of course it is, but first-time novelists are so thrilled with getting a contract that they’ll sign anything I send them.”
“So that’s what this is all about, Cumings, old boy, you want to tell me you’re sorry you screwed me?”
“That, too, of course, but primarily to tell you what I’ve done to rectify the screwing I’ve given you.”
“More money, perhaps?”
“That, too, of course, but primarily to tell you that I’ve talked the matter over with ol’ Cushman Johns. You remember him, of course, from dear old Groton?”
Phil searched his memory. “Tall, thin drink of water, played the harmonica, looked like a skinny Abraham Lincoln?”
“Right. He was two years ahead of us at Groton, and then two years ahead of me at Harvard, because you never got to go to Harvard.”
“What about him?”
“Well, ol’ Cushman is now a literary agent, one of the better ones. So I popped the galleys of Comfort Me With Love over to ol’ Cushie-Baby, as he’s known in publishing, and asked him what he thought could be done with it. He promptly replied he was sure he could unload it onto J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, for a price in the five-figure range. That means a figure between $10,000.01 and $99,999.99. A penny more and it becomes six figures.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I EXPLETIVE DELETED!! you not, Philip, old chap. So I told Cushie-Baby to have a shot at seeing what he could work out. And he did. And as we speak he’s on his way here, to speak with you, enormously relieved he’s not going to have to go all the way to wherever the hell you live in the Deep South to do so.”
—
Cushman Johns, of Cushman Johns & Associates, Authors’ Representatives, came into the bar of the Harvard Club fifteen minutes later.
“I vaguely recognize the face,” he said to Phil, “but can’t put a name to it. I deduce further that since you’re sitting here in the bar of the Harvard Club wearing a very nice J. Press tweed jacket, you’re one of us. But what I’m here for is to deal with some sergeant ol’ Cumings here has turned up who, truth being stranger than fiction, has come up with a manuscript that’s going to make me some real money, so I don’t have time to stroll down memory lane with you. Perhaps some other time.”
“Still wearing those really ugly blue suede shoes, I see, Cushman,” Phil said.
“Then we do know one another? Harvard, perhaps?”
“Try Groton. My name is Philip Williams.”
“Of course it is!” Cushman Johns said. “And I really would like to swap stories of dear Old Groton with you, Philip, old boy, but I can’t, as I am here to deal with this Sergeant Wallingford Philips who ol’ Cumings here has turned up.”
“You’re looking at him,” Phil said.
—
“Let me give you,” Cushman Johns counseled Phil ten minutes later, “the lay of the land over at J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, before we go to meet Chauncey S. ‘Steel’ Hymen, vice president, publisher, and editor in chief of J. K. Perkins & Brothers, and the other members of the triumvirate at the 21 Club.”
“Why are we going there?” Phil asked.
“Because the Harvard Club now lamentably lets practically anyone in, which cannot be said of the 21 Club. If you take my point, I will proceed with giving you the lay of the J. K. Perkins business landscape.”
“Please do.”
“It is run by a triumvirate, anchored by ‘Steel’ Hymen. He is a great editor and publisher, but knows zilch about money. The money is handled by ‘Two Gun’ David Gobbet, so called because he is the current Fast Draw Champion of the Upper East Side of Manhattan Chapter of the Single Action Colt .45 Fast Draw Association.
“David knows zilch about literature or editing, but is a good man with a dollar. The third corner of the most successful management triangle in publishing is a woman whose name escapes me at the moment. Formidable female. She knows zilch about money or editing or publishing, but, being a woman—it’s the nature of the beast—manages to take credit for all of the good work done by Steel and Two-Gun.”
“I understand.”
—
Readers of a romance novel such as this understandably would be bored with the details of what happened that afternoon in the 21 Club, so they will not be chronicled in detail here.
Suffice it to say that sitting at the bar right under the picture of the actor David Niven, who before he went on to cinematic glory sold intoxicants for the 21 Club and is fondly remembered by the proprietors, Phil signed a forty-eight-page new contract that among other things provided for the repurchase from the Old American Library of all the contracts for books save that of Comfort Me With Love and their resale to J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, for a price in the very, very high five-figure range. Each.
When Two-Gun Gobbet handed him all the checks with all those zeros on them, he asked if Phil, since he was around soldiers, and soldiers have guns, if Phil might be interested in becoming an out-of-town associate member of the Upper East Side of Manhattan Chapter of the Single Action Colt .45 Fast Draw Association.
Phil told him he would give the invitation serious consideration, as he didn’t want to do anything at all to annoy “the Perkins money man” until he had deposited all the checks with all the zeros on them—and ensured that they indeed cleared—in the account he had maintained in the Park Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street branch of the First National City Bank of New York since he was six years old.
—
On the way back to Fort Benning, Phil decided he would have to tell Brunhilde (the one he was married to) about his good fortune. Then he decided that maybe telling her how much good fortune there was might be a mistake and decided instead to tell her they could now afford a slightly newer, say three-year-old, Ford station wagon to replace the one they had now and leave it at that.
She was delighted with that news, and that may—on the other hand, may not—have had something to do with the surprise she had in store for him.
That was that when he started to retire to his bed in the nursery, he heard a sharp piercing whistle, and when he went to investigate what his wife wanted, found Brunhilde in her bed wearing nothing but a rose between her teeth.
“Guess what your prize is if you can guess which baby has moved into the nursery and who gets to move back in here,” Brunhilde said.
A second child was born to Technical Sergeant and Mrs. Williams nine months later.
He was named Philip Wallingford Williams IV.
XII
PHIL BECOMES SECRETLY FAMOUS
[ ONE ]
Afte
r Phil’s return to Fort Benning and the USAAMU from his meeting with ol’ Cushman Johns and the star of the J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, Management Troika, Chauncey S. “Steel” Hymen, to find, so to speak, Brunhilde (the one he was married to) waiting for him with a rose in her teeth, a good deal happened. Including, of course, the birth of Philip Wallingford Williams.
Comfort Me With Love by Wallingford Philips had been published and found immediate success. It started out as #6 on The New York Times Cheap Paperbacks Best-Seller List, rose in three weeks to #1, and stayed there for three more weeks, when it moved to the Times’s General Paperback Best-Seller List at #2.
Suspecting this was going to happen, the Old American Library published the fifth et seq editions with a new cover price of $0.35 and a new cover. The latter was far less lurid than the original cover, which permitted sale of the book to the general public, rather than only in the Adult Toys & Naughty Books outlets that had previously been the only points of sale.
Then it set publishing history.
Chauncey S. “Steel” Hymen invited the publishing press (The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, et cetera, and book reviewers from major newspapers) to a luncheon at Sardi’s in Manhattan.
There, to the popping of champagne corks, the vice president, publisher, and editor in chief of J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, announced that J. K. Perkins & Brothers, Publishers since 1812, had acquired the hardback rights to Comfort Me With Love from the Old American Library and would publish it with an embossed cover just as soon as it could be rolled off the presses of R.R. Donnelly & Company as a public service to those lovers of literature who wished to add it to their collections of great books in their personal libraries.
This was the first time in publishing memory that a hardcover book had been published as a result of the sales of a paperback work. Previously, it had always been the other way around, i.e., hardcover, then paperback.
On the one hand, these developments were naturally pleasing to Phil, because they meant there would be more checks with lots of zeros on them forthcoming. On the other hand, the concomitant publicity this generated vis-à-vis Wallingford Philips scared the living EXPLETIVE DELETED!! out of him.
The Hunting Trip Page 26