by Clark Howard
“Exactly the same except for the guards.”
“You spend it alone?”
“Yeah. New Year’s Eve too.”
“That’s what happens when you’re an asshole and lose your girlfriend.”
Richie had told him about breaking up with Linda, but had not told him why. Similarly, Stan had told Richie that a well-known criminal attorney, Ned Fields, was now handling the appeal of his death sentence, but Stan had never mentioned how Fields was being paid. Richie assumed that Stan figured Bobby Casey had something to do with it, but had no idea whether Stan even suspected that he himself had also been involved. Bobby’s name had never been mentioned during any of their dozen visits.
“How’s your mother?” Richie asked, to direct the conversation away from himself.
“Fine, fine. Yeah, the old lady’s finally doing all right for herself. After she married that guy with the little neighborhood bar, she really settled down. Helps him run the place and everything. She keeps thinking I’m gonna beat this rap and get out someday; got it all planned that I’ll go to bartender school and then work in the place. She never gives up.”
“You sound like you have,” Richie observed.
Stan shrugged. “I always expect the worst; that way I’m never disappointed. Anyway, I ain’t complaining. I took my chances and I lost. That’s the breaks.”
“You ever feel sorry about the cop?” Richie asked quietly. Stan shook his head emphatically.
“Nope. No more than he would have felt sorry for me. He took his chances too. We both lost. He just lost quicker.” Stan paused to light a cigarette, then changed the subject. “You really look like hell, Richie. You drinking too much?”
“What’s too much?” Richie asked. His words had the edge of a challenge. “I drink a little wine at night to relax. Anything wrong with that?”
Ignoring the question, Stan asked another of his own. “How’s school? You think that guy Crane will fail you?”
Grunting, Richie said, “No, he’ll give me a D and let me pass just so he’ll have me in the second semester of the class. I think I’m half the guy’s fun in life.”
Stan called Crane a few filthy names, then sat forward eagerly for the part of Richie’s visits that he liked best. “Okay, so tell me all about what you been writing the last two weeks.”
Richie leaned forward also; it was his favorite part of the visits too. The make-believe world was so much easier to talk about, and think about.
For both of them.
Richie was correct about his final grade in creative writing; he received a D-minus, the lowest possible passing grade, and went into the second semester of the class. In all his other subjects he received either A or B.
Life in the new class was no better for him than it had been in the previous one. When they were in the area of plotting, Crane judged Richie’s work to be uninventive. “Our veteran has used too many ordinary ploys in an attempt to keep the reader interested. That is what I refer to as ‘common’ writing. A really polished writer holds on to his reader with smooth, interesting prose that stimulates the mind, original phrasing that lures the reader ever onward. Our veteran’s writing is at best crude.”
Richie fared no better when they turned to characterization. “I’m afraid our veteran’s characters are much like his narrative prose—totally lacking in style. Characters in a story ideally should be on a higher plane than the reader, so that the reader can mentally reach up to them and, grasping those characters, raise himself to their level. Reading for pleasure is, after all, supposed to be an uplifting experience.”
Whatever phase of creative writing the class undertook, Richie’s work, in Mr. Crane’s estimation, always fell far short of even the most modest plane. Not that Crane criticized Richie exclusively; he did not. Several others in the class endured unfavorable review of their work on a more or less regular basis. But it was Richie who seemed to get it the most relentlessly.
Dedicating himself diligently to improving his understanding of what Crane was teaching, Richie borrowed other students’ essays that had been graded highly, and studied them at night for style and content. Most of them beautifully reflected the themes and topics that Richie recalled Crane emphasizing in class—but to him their sum total did not make a story. A vignette perhaps; a story, no. Richie’s concept of a story, born in dark movie theaters, nursed on comic books, fed by the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, maturing through the “best plays” of each year as far back as the 1930s, and finally buffed to a deep, shining belief by hundreds of paperback editions over the years—Richie’s concept was that a story had a beginning, a middle, and an end. So many of the papers that Crane praised had only a middle; they left Richie hungry to know what came before, what happened afterward. Richie did not believe in leaving a reader hungry.
Eventually Richie found that he could not contain his feelings; he began to argue openly with Crane. “I don’t see how,” he would challenge, “you can call that piece of writing good. It uses archaic language that ninety percent of the population today wouldn’t understand, and even though it’s supposed to be a modern setting, all of its characters exhibit outmoded values. People don’t think or talk that way anymore.”
“Well now, is our veteran presuming to speak for the world at large?” Crane asked.
“No,” Richie replied patiently, “just for myself. In my opinion, that kind of writing would not sell today.”
“It is also your opinion that the purpose of writing is to sell?” Crane asked.
“The end purpose is to be published,” Richie declared.
“One can be published without being paid,” Crane declared back.
“I would consider my work to have more value if I were paid by someone to publish it.”
“Have you ever been published?” Crane asked, looking down his nose at Richie.
“No, I haven’t,” Richie replied. “Have you?”
Crane put on his smuggest expression. “That is an impertinent question which I do not intend to address.”
After class, Linda fell in beside him for a few steps. “Why do you argue with him like that?” she criticized. “Challenging him isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
Richie stared incredulously at her. She had not spoken to him in more than three months, and now, without preliminaries, she was reproaching him. “I argue with him because I don’t think he’s right. What do you care anyway?”
“I don’t,” she snapped, and stalked away.
In the midst of this cheerless time, waiting for news on Stan’s appeal, estranged from Linda, alienated from his teacher in the one class in which he had hoped to learn so much, and now nightly overindulging in wine to try and forget all of it—in the midst of all this bleakness, came a small miracle. In his mailbox one evening he found an envelope with the return address of a magazine. Ripping it open without even closing his mailbox, he quickly unfolded a letter from an editor: an offer to buy “Hit and Run” for two hundred dollars. Richie’s eyes widened, his mouth dropped open.
I’m a writer, he thought.
In a daze, he closed the mailbox and went upstairs. Turning on the lamp, he sat in his overstuffed chair, schoolbooks on his lap, and reread the letter, over and over again. Across the top of the stationery was the name of the magazine in which his story, with his name on it, would actually appear. Something inside Richie’s chest was glowing; he felt like running into the seedy little street and shouting the wonderful news to everyone within earshot; or running through all the streets, telling all of Chicago, that goddamned hard city that was going to break him.
Suddenly he realized that he had no one to tell. No one with whom to share this incredibly magic moment. Not Linda. And certainly not Mr. Crane or anyone in the writing class. The only person Richie knew who would be really happy for him, probably as excited as he himself, was Stan—and Richie could not visit him again for eight more days.
But there was a better way, he thought, to celebrate. And he did
not need anyone else to do it with. Tomorrow morning before leaving for school, he would write a letter accepting the offer of two hundred dollars for “Hit and Run.” But tonight, he would revel in his success and exalt his magnificent accomplishment by sitting down and doing it again.
His celebration would be to write another short story.
The following week, Mr. Crane gave his creative writing class its next major assignment.
“I want from each of you a short story of no less than twenty-five hundred words,” he said. “I want it to incorporate everything you have learned in this class to date. Choose any subject, period, and locale you wish, but give me your very best work. The grade on this assignment will constitute one-third of your semester grade. And please be advised that this is a critique assignment; each story will be mimeographed and handed out to the class for group analysis, commentary, and criticism. So don’t fictionalize any personal or family secrets unless you’re prepared to discuss them with the rest of the class. That’s it. I expect good things from you—most of you, that is.” Looking at Richie, he added, “From our veteran, my minimum requirement is correct punctuation.” There was the usual laughter from the class sycophants.
When the class was dismissed, Richie did not move from his seat in the first row. Making no effort to get his study materials together, he remained absolutely still, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Crane. Linda looked back apprehensively as she left with the other students. At one point she paused, as if intending to say or do something, but finally she continued on out the door.
When the room was empty except for Richie and the teacher, Crane glanced up from his desk and asked, “Something I can do for you?”
“Do you know my name, Mr. Crane?” Richie asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“You never use it, either in addressing me or referring to me. Why is that?”
“A little idiosyncrasy of mine, perhaps.” Crane smiled slightly. “Does it bother you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Do you have something personal against veterans in general, or is it just me in particular?”
Crane drummed his fingertips soundlessly on the desktop. “Do you know how I got through college?” he asked rhetorically. “By washing dishes, mopping floors, emptying wastebaskets, shoveling snow, stoking the dorm furnace. It was during the Depression. From lack of sleep and lack of food, my weight, which was normally one-hundred sixty pounds, dropped to one-hundred twenty-five. I’m sure you don’t know what it is to go hungry—”
“Of course not,” Richie interjected.
“At any rate, it rather galls me, after all I went through, to see someone like you get a free ride. Oh, I can see educational benefits for handicapped veterans, and in moments of generosity I even extend my blessing to World War Two vets. But Korea? For God’s sake,” he belittled, “it wasn’t even a real war.”
“It seemed like one,” Richie said evenly. “Anyway, it was the only war I had. I’m sorry it didn’t meet your standards.” Gathering his study materials, he rose to leave.
“No plea for understanding?” Crane asked, eyebrows raised. “No entreaty to address you by name in the future?”
Richie shook his head. “I knew a kid once who died because he wouldn’t beg for mercy. I was remembering him just now. I don’t think he’d want me to ask you for anything, Mr. Crane.”
“A kid who died because he wouldn’t beg for mercy. That’s quite interesting,” Crane commented, ignoring Richie’s aspersion. “Perhaps you should write your short story about him.”
“I’ll write a story about him someday,” Richie said. “But it won’t be for any class you teach.”
Crane’s eyes narrowed, the first sign that anything Richie said had affected him. “You are becoming a very insolent and disrespectful student. Do us both a favor and don’t sign up for any more classes that I teach.”
Richie turned to leave, but Crane had one more thing to say.
“If I were you,” he advised, “I’d change my major too. You’re too shallow and crude a person to ever become a writer. I’d think about finding something else to do in life.”
Richie walked out, aware that Crane was glaring coldly after him. Just outside the door, he found Linda waiting. “You just never learn, do you?” she said tensely. “That man is going to fail you.”
“I don’t give a goddamn if he does,” Richie told her flatly. He kept walking and she fell in beside him.
“You think you’re so tough! Sometimes you make me sick.”
“I thought you said goodbye to me,” he reminded, stopping and facing her.
“Just because we’re not seeing each other, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t still like to see you make something of yourself.”
“I am going to make something of myself,” he declared. “I’m going to make a writer of myself. Remember that story I told you about? ‘Hit and Run’? Well, I sold it. Last week. I celebrated all by myself. Which is how I intend to do everything from here on out. I know how to say goodbye too.”
He walked away from her.
Richie never told Stan Klein about selling his first story. Before their next visit, Richie read in the newspaper that Stan’s appeal had been denied and that his death sentence was affirmed. Stan had immediately been taken back to the court that sentenced him and a new execution date was set. When Richie went to see him, Stan had thirty-one days left to live.
“Well, that high-priced lawyer tried like hell, I’ll give him that,” he said resignedly to Richie. “My on’y chance now is for the governor to commute me to life, which is like no chance at all. Never been a cop-killer commuted in the history of the state.”
“Maybe you’ll be the first,” Richie said without much conviction.
“I don’t think so,” Stan said. He was quieter, moodier, more contemplative than Richie could ever recall seeing him. “No, I think this is it for me, kid.” Sitting back in his chair, waist chain stark against the yellow coveralls, he lighted a cigarette and took a long, deep drag. “I been giving things a lot of thought since I heard the appeal was turned down,” he said reflectively. “You know why I think I ended up in here? I think I ended up this way because I never really tried not to end up this way. I just lived from day to day without ever thinking about where I was going.”
“That’s easy to do,” Richie told him. “It’s probably the easiest thing in the world.”
“You didn’t do it,” Stan said. It was almost an accusation.
“No, I didn’t do it.”
“Why? What made you different?” There was a plea in Stan’s voice, as if the question were critical to him.
“I honestly don’t know,” Richie replied.
“Was it the books?” Stan asked keenly. “Was it all them books you read?”
“Maybe,” Richie said. “I know they opened up a lot of new worlds for me. But I don’t think the answer is that simple. I think the books were just part of it.”
“Then what was the rest?” This was clearly something Stan had to know.
“Something in the blood maybe,” Richie said, shrugging, “in the genes, the past; maybe I had an ancestor who passed something on to me that I’m not even aware of. Or maybe it wasn’t even that far back; maybe I got something from my father, some of that quiet strength I remember in him; or my mother’s sensitivity—before the junk ruined her; or even some of my grandmother’s pragmatic good sense. Listen to me—I sound like a goddamn psychology major. But I honestly don’t have the answer, Stan. Hell, maybe it’s simply the difference in the people I came into contact with. The people and the books. I know that a lot of people—mostly women, now that I think about it—treated me extra well because they seemed to know or just sense that I had a . . . a hunger for something, and I was trying to feed that hunger through reading. Miss White, a teacher I had, and Miss Menefee, the welfare lady, and a librarian named Paula Hovey, and another teacher down south, Mrs. Reinhart, all gave me a
little extra something—attention, encouragement, friendship, a gentle nudge in the right direction.” Sitting back in his chair, Richie shook his head. “Or it might just have been plain old blind luck, Stan. Y’know, a random thing. Who can say?”
“No, man, it was more than luck,” Stan asserted. “I like what you said about having a hunger for something. You did have that. You always seemed to be going forward, moving, reaching. I never done that. All’s I was interested in doing was staying where I was at, not sinking down to a lower level. But I never tried to get no higher. You took steps; I stood still. An’ pretty soon,” he concluded resignedly, “life caught up with me.” Stan suddenly sat forward urgently. “I want you to do me a favor, Richie.”
“Sure.”
“I want you to see if you can help Bobby out.”
Richie was taken aback. It was the first time in any of their visits that Stan had mentioned Bobby Casey by name, or in any way alluded to him. Even now, he was careful not to use his last name. “I want you to see if you can make him take steps like you done; if you can steer him in another direction. Toward something better.”
“I don’t know,” Richie hedged. “I’ve never been Bobby’s favorite person, Stan.”
“Not when we was kids, I know. But we ain’t kids no more. Maybe if you and him started thinking of each other as men, you might be able to talk to one another. He ain’t a bad guy, really he ain’t. He’s worth helping, honest to God. You might save him,” Stan indicated his chains, “from this. Try, will you, Richie? Do me one last favor.”
There was no way Richie could say no. Not to this kid who helped him make a place to sleep in a pile of newspaper bundles. “I’ll try,” he promised.
When it was time for the visit to end, and two escort guards unlocked Stan’s cage to take him back to Death Row, he said quietly to Richie, “I’d just as soon you didn’t come see me no more this last month, kid. It’s gonna be hard enough to walk in there and sit down in that fucking chair without having a fresh memory of you going back out into the sunshine. Understand?”