Roughneck - An Autobiography Part 6

I shook my head. "Allie, what makes you go on like this? Why don't you do something with your life? You're smart. You've got a nice personality and you make a good appearance. If you'd act sensible, stop making like a cheap crook-"

He was grinning at me thinly, looking me up and down. "Yeah, Jimmie? What would it get me? Rides on freight trains? Ten-cent meals and a job digging ditches? Rags for clothes and a weedpatch for a bed?"

"Well, all right," I said, stubbornly. "Maybe I'm not doing so good right now, but I'll pull out of it. I-"

"Right you are," Allie nodded. "You're on your way to pulling out of it right now. After tonight you'll be sitting pretty."

"How? Just what am I supposed to do, anyway?"

"You know all about publicity, don't you? How to put out a small magazine?"

"Well, I don't know 'all' about it, but-"

"You know enough. Just let these guys that I introduce you to know that you know. I'll do the rest."

Again, I could get no more information from him. He did insist-he swore to it-that he would involve me in no trouble, and I had to be satisfied with that.

We finished eating. Urging me to help myself to the liquor, he went down to the locker room and changed clothes. He returned with a briefcase which he filled with bottles from the bar.

By this time, naturally, I had had more than a little to drink and the qualms which I usually felt in Allie's presence were fairly well desensitized. As I have indicated, I was very fond of him. In his own peculiar way, he had always tried to be kind to me; and now, I hoped, in my hour of need, he might pull a plump rabbit from the fiscal hat.

I accompanied him downstairs, and we taxied to an address on upper Broadway. We debarked there, and I followed him upstairs to the second-floor lodge rooms. The men he introduced me to, as I saw them, were semi-prosperous, lower middle-cla.s.s citizens-master barbers, delicatessen owners, head bookkeepers and the like. Genial men, wise enough in their own way, but not too well-informed when they strayed outside of it. Allie seemed very popular with them. With him vouching for me as "the well-known author and editor," I was looked upon with almost embarra.s.sing awe.

After a score or so of introductions, Allie ushered me into a kind of board room and seated me at the head of the long table therein. Then, having distributed the bottles around at strategic points, he advised me that everything was going nicely and departed for the outer rooms.

Some thirty minutes elapsed before the door reopened and Allie ushered in a group of the brothers. They ranged themselves around the table, and the bottles began moving from hand to hand. As the room filled with tobacco smoke and the gentlemen with high-grade bourbon, Allie got down to the business of the evening.

For some months past, he pointed out, the lodge had considered the establishment of a small magazine or newspaper-something which every self-respecting fraternal order had and which this one certainly must have if the brothers were to go on holding their heads high. The delay in inaugurating such a periodical had reached the point of becoming a lodge disgrace; there was no longer any excuse for it. Here before them sat one of the country's most renowned publicists and editors. Purely out of friends.h.i.+p and the desire to help along a good cause, he '(me, that is)' had consented to get the publication started without fee...except, of course, his personal expenses. All that was required now, was that the good brothers present, these more substantial members who comprised the backbone of the lodge, should underwrite the proposition.

One of the brothers cleared his throat. Just how much was this-uh-this thing going to cost?

"Three thousand dollars," said Allie. And then, as his eyes swept the table, weighing the brothers, seeing a troubled expression spread from one face to another-"That's Mr. Thompson's offhand estimate, I should say.

"What about it, Jim? Could we put out something a little smaller for about-uh"-another lightning-sharp glance at the brothers-"about two thousand?"

I nodded, looking, I suspect, not a little troubled myself, for I had given him no offhand estimates nor any other kind. Before I could do more than nod, Allie was proceeding: "Call it two thousand. That'll be one hundred and fifty each for you gentlemen, or a total of eighteen hundred, and I'll throw in the remaining two hundred. Until the loan is repaid, we'll hold a lien on all advertising and subscription fees-that's Mr. Thompson's suggestion-and each of us will receive a lifetime subscription free of charge. In other words, we'll have the honor of funding the publication and be liberally repaid for-"

"Allie," I said, rising to my feet. "You can't-I can't-"

"Of course," said Allie smoothly, "I'd forgotten you had another appointment. You run right along now, and I'll see you later."

"But-"

"You don't have to apologize. We all understand," said Allie. "Go right ahead, and I'll get on with the meeting."

He got on with it, drawing the attention of the brothers away from me to him. After a moment of standing there awkwardly, with the group but not of it, I left. It was all I could do, as I saw it. There would be later opportunities to block Allie's swindle, and I would crack down on him then.

Waiting at the foot of the stairs outside, I wondered what his next step would be, how he intended to extract eighteen hundred dollars from a group such as this. Certainly they wouldn't have so much cash on them tonight. Neither, with their slender resources, would they hand over their checks for one hundred and fifty each. They were doing very well for the times, yes, but they were still very small fish in the puddle. To men like these, the loss of one hundred and fifty dollars would be a severe financial blow.

I was still wondering how Allie intended to swing it when he came hustling down the stairs. He was obviously expecting an a.s.sault of reproaches and questions, so, just to confound him, I said nothing at all. We returned to the penthouse in an almost dead silence, and silently I went into the bedroom and redressed in my own clothes. Allie looked at me quizzically as I returned to the living room.

"Well, we pulled it off, Jim."

"We did?" I said.

"Sit down and have a drink and I'll tell you about it."

I hesitated but I sat down and accepted a drink. Allie told me about it. The lodge brothers would draw personal notes in our favor, co-signed by one another. Since they were all good credit risks there would be not the slightest trouble in discounting the notes for cash. All he and I had to do was accompany the various lodge members to the bank and collect the money.

"We can wind it all up in a day or two, and then-"

"And then we skip town?"

"I'm telling you," said Allie. "These little job printing shops are all screaming for work. We go to one of 'em and sign him up to put us out a little throwaway for a year-a few dozen copies each month of the cheapest thing he can put together. He does everything, see, even collects news from the lodge. We give him maybe three hundred bucks, and he bills us for a thousand. The rest of the eighteen hundred is your expenses."

I sat staring at him. Allie's pleased grin slowly changed to an uncomfortable frown.

"Well, what's the matter with it? Just show me where there's room for a rumble."

"There isn't any," I said. "It's airtight. Your friends at the lodge may squawk, but there's nothing they can do."

"Friends, h.e.l.l! They're chumps. I've been trying to figure out a way of taking 'em ever since I joined the outfit...We're the only friends in this deal, just you and me. I've known you half your lifetime and I've always liked you, and-"

"And I've always liked you," I said. "You were always on the make, but you did it in such a way that it seemed more humorous than criminal. When you took anyone it was usually a sharpie or a least someone who could afford to be taken...Guys like these tonight, poor trusting b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with some little job or business-you wouldn't have touched them in the old days, Allie. I can't really believe that you'd do it now."

I set my gla.s.s down and stood up. Scowling, he stepped in front of me.

"You're not going to play, Jim? You come in here today flat on your a.s.s and I practically hand you a grand-h.e.l.l, I'll make it a grand; you can have a thousand for your end and I'll-"

"I'm not going to play," I said.

"This isn't the old days, Jim. We can't call our shots any more. Why, Christ, I'm really doing this for your sake, anyway. You can't back out on me, leave me to try to explain to those birds, after all the trouble I-"

"I'm not backing out," I said. "I was never in. I warned you in the beginning that I wouldn't go for any swindle."

"What the h.e.l.l are you going to do, then? Dig ditches or sponge off your friends? I've got a pretty sweet setup here, but if you think I'm going to-to-"

I gave him a level look. He turned his head, scowling but shamefaced. "Aahh, h.e.l.l, Jim, you know I didn't mean that. It's that I'm pretty d.a.m.ned disappointed. You know how you'd feel if a guy you'd always kind of, well...?"

"I know exactly what you mean," I said. "Now, do I walk downstairs or do you take me on the elevator?"

We rode down on the elevator. Diffidently, each of us hurt by the other, we parted at the entrance. We had several casual encounters in Oklahoma City after that, but the diffidence, the stiffness, remained. Allie was ashamed of himself. He was angry with me for making him ashamed.

Years pa.s.sed before we met again in another city, and Allie, still sore and ashamed, yet wanting to crack the ice between us, found a way of reestablis.h.i.+ng our friends.h.i.+p. The medium he chose virtually frightened me witless-more so, I should say, than I ordinarily am. But though it almost turned my hair gray, I think it was worth it.

I'll tell you about it at the proper time.

14.

Shorty and Jiggs knew the location of a pot of gold, figuratively but none the less golden: an abandoned oil well with a mile of high grade pipe in it. The well was deep in the heart of eastern Texas on part of a one-time plantation. For years past the worn-out soil of the area had gone unfarmed, and was now a jungle of weeds, bush and second-growth timber. Its present owner would gladly permit the removal of the pipe for a fraction of its resale value.

As Shorty told the story, the plantation owner had been so embittered at the drilling contractor's failure to strike oil that he had chased him and his employees from the property at gunpoint. The contractor had sued for recovery of his machinery and equipment. The plantation owner had filed counter suit. Having more money than the contractor, he won after years of litigation. But his victory was an empty one. News of the gentleman's bad temper and stubbornness had spread among the oil field fraternity, and no one would touch the job on a share-salvage basis. It was cash-on-the-line or no deal. So, with the land owner now nearly bankrupt and still as stubborn as ever, it was no deal.

When he died, his heirs split and sold off the property as small farms. As the land went bad, the farms moved from one owner to another. One of them was no longer sufficient to support a family. It took several, and the original forty-acre plots were consolidated and reconsolidated. And even then large areas were so depleted as to be not worth tilling. Thus, the case with the land on which "our" well stood.

"I don't know, Shorty," I said, when he first told me the story. "It sounds like another oil field fairy tale, just too d.a.m.ned good to be true. You actually saw it yourself?"

"d.a.m.ned right I did. I didn't believe the story myself when I first heard it, so not having nothing else to do, I looked the place up. I talked to the guy that owns the land, and then I waded on out through the jungle and looked at the well. It's there, by G.o.d. More than five thousand feet of highgrade casing. And it's free-I mean, it ain't frozen in the hole. I rocked it and I know."

"But it might be cemented part way down. If it was cemented, say at a thousand feet, you could still get some sway."

"Why the h.e.l.l would it be cemented? They didn't strike oil."

"Well," I shrugged, "I don't know. Maybe that plantation owner did it. He might have been afraid that someone would steal the pipe, so-"

"But he couldn't have got it out himself if he did that! Ain't that right?...I know how you feel, Jim. It sounds so bee-yoo-tiful you figure there's just got to be something wrong, but there ain't a danged thing."

"The derrick and the rig and the tools are still there? They're still in good shape?"

"Good enough to do the job. Naturally, they ain't first-cla.s.s after all these years."

"Why couldn't we just truck the above-ground stuff off and sell it?"

"Aah-" Shorty gave me a disgusted look. "An oil field hand like you asking a question like that? It ain't oil country down there. What'd you have left by the time you hauled twenty tons of machinery out of the backwoods and s.h.i.+pped it a thousand miles? Pipe-casing-is different. There's a dozen pipe yards within a hundred miles. We get it trucked to the railroad on credit and sell our bill of lading."

Shorty was a driller and Jiggs a tool dresser-a full cable-rig crew. They needed a third man-I was their candidate-to help with the rigging up, and serve as boilerman and roustabout when the job proper began. They also needed about three hundred dollars for supplies, repairs and fuel oil for the boiler.

Three hundred dollars. That was all that stood between us and the three-way split of a small fortune!

We talked about it endlessly. It got so that we could talk about nothing else. We would sit around our freezing rooms at night, dining off of stale bread and tea, squeezing the last crumbs from a nickel sack of tobacco and pa.s.sing the b.u.t.t from hand to hand: three half-starved ragam.u.f.fins talking and dreaming of riches. We got out pencil and paper, and we argued and we haggled and we figured and we 'figured.' And that awesome, that terrible and frustrating three hundred dollars began to shrink...Food? Well, we would get that farmer to help us out for an increased share in the profits. Travel and other expenses? Well, we would travel by foot and freight, and nuts to the other expenses. New parts for the machinery? Well, Shorty and Jiggs both had hand tools and our time was worth nothing. We would simply rebuild the old parts.

We cut the three hundred down to one hundred, but there we seemed to be stuck. For we would need at least a hundred for fuel oil, and that was something we could neither beg, borrow nor invent.

Since we didn't stand a chance of raising a hundred, I gave up at this point. But my mechanically inclined friends were not so easily defeated. After conferring together several days, and making liberal use of paper and pencil, they came to me with a solution to the problem.

There were acres of brush and timber around the well. We would simply convert the oil/gas feed boiler to a wood burner, rigging a blower to obtain the necessary high degree of heat...So that was taken care of, but I still hung back. I had several promising ma.n.u.scripts in the mail (ma.n.u.scripts which 'I' felt were promising) and I was about to complete a novel. Too, and this I suppose was my main reason for delaying, I was reluctant to exchange my present situation, poor as it was, for weeks and perhaps months of certain and undiluted hards.h.i.+p.

I begged for time, and grudgingly Jiggs and Shorty gave it to me. It was the aforementioned Trixie who sped me, or caused me to be sped, upon my way. And when I say sped I mean exactly that.

Trixie had come to my door in the guise of a necktie peddler, a waif with a heart-shaped face, indiscernible b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a pair of the largest feet I have ever seen. Naturally I was not buying any neckties, nor was I interested in the commodity which she was actually selling. But I invited her in anyway for a cup of tea I had just fixed, and she remained to chat and rest her outsize feet.

The poor girl was undoubtedly a moron; I have seen very few prost.i.tutes who were not. But as she began dropping in on me daily and we got to know each other better, I acquired a high regard for her intelligence in at least one respect. Moron or no, Trixie was a d.a.m.ned good literary critic.

She would lie on my bed, her toes hanging over the footrail like bananas, while I read to her from my latest efforts. And always her response was the one I had hoped to achieve. She laughed in all the right places, she wept in all the right places. By turns, as I turned the pages, she was pensive, gay, frowningly thoughtful. And when I got a rejection, ah, then indeed was she a tonic beyond price for my withering ego.

I have heard some pretty good cussing in my time, but never anything like the epithets which Trixie applied to the editors in faraway New York-those malicious imbeciles who turned down my ma.n.u.scripts. The obscenities which spewed effortlessly from her rosebud lips were occasionally such as to make me blush, and I would suggest that she was allowing partisans.h.i.+p to carry her away. But Trixie, deferential as she usually was, would have none of this milksop att.i.tude.

Trixie and I became very fond of each other. But she was depressed and disturbed by my insistence on a purely platonic friends.h.i.+p. I had been "awful nice" to her. Now why wouldn't I let her be nice to me return favor for favor, in the only way that she could?

I tried to persuade her that her company and conversation were more than ample recompense for any small kindness I had extended, but this she was unwilling to believe...Was there something-uh-wrong with me, perhaps? Didn't I like "it"? Did I think she wasn't clean? Well, then?

Not only did my continence trouble Trixie, it was also, she advised me, seriously upsetting her "boyfriend, Al" ("Owl," she p.r.o.nounced it). Al, it seemed, had a great deal of pride. He liked to keep things even-Steven, and he didn't take nothing off of no one. Unless I allowed her to do the "right thing," he was going to call a halt to her visits.

Well, I had some ideas about the pride of a man like Al-if a pimp can be called a man-and I pa.s.sed them along to her. And that, of course, was a serious mistake. Trixie's face turned white, then red, then white again. She cursed me, she raked, she wept...Al was "wunnerful," she scream-sobbed. He was the finest, kindest, nicest man in the world and no one had better say he wasn't because she'd kill 'em if they did!

Finally, she stamped out, tearfully vowing that I was nine kinds of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and that she would never speak to me again as long as she lived. Two days later, around noon, she returned.

Her little head was high in the air. In place of the customary plough shoes, her gondola feet were squeezed into runover satin slippers, and she was otherwise decked out in rummage-sale finery. There had been a big change in her life's station, she haughtily informed me. She was now a "hostess" in a combination wh.o.r.e house-blind pig, a position which the all-wise and kindly Al had obtained for her. And if I didn't think I was too G.o.dd.a.m.ned good, she and he hereby invited me to attend the grand opening.

I murmured congratulations, squeezing out a compliment to be conveyed to Al. Immediately, Trixie's haughtiness vanished, and weeping, she flung her arms around me...Honest, she'd been just sick about the way she'd acted, calling me all those dirty names. But she simply hadn't been able to help it. Anything that hurt Al, it hurt her a thousand times worse. It just drove her out of her mind, and-and, well, would I please come? Al would be there, and I could see how wunnerful he was. By accepting their hospitality for the evening, I would free them of their onerous feeling of obligation toward me.

"But-" I hesitated, uncomfortably. "But what about your boss, Trixie? The guy who owns the place?"

"It's all fixed, Tommy. You an' Al are gonna get all you want to drink all evening long, and it won't cost you a penny!"

"But I can't let you pay for-"

"I already 'did' pay for it. You know." She blushed prettily. "I spent all last night paying for it. Me an' the boss-well, he took it out in trade and I'm taking it out in trade, and if you don't come..."

She looked up at me anxiously.

I told her I would come, and she squealed with delight. "An' you be sure and drink plenty, too," she said, as she gave me the address of the establishment, "because plenty's what I paid for."

The place was a barn-like old building, a former residence on upper Was.h.i.+ngton Street. The thug who looked me over and admitted me waved me toward the living room area which was now equipped with tables, chairs and a homemade bar. A sign behind the latter fixture announced that choc beer was fifteen cents, whiskey two shots for a quarter. Beneath this announcement was the large lettered word C-A-S-H and the legend, In G.o.d We Trust And You Ain't G.o.d.

Although it was still early in the evening, the room was already crowded with guests-largely of the type one would shun from meeting in a dark alley. Trixie spotted me in the doorway, greeted me with a hug and led me back to a rear table. At it was seated a burly, slack-jawed giant, none other than the wunnerful "Owl."

Trixie introduced us and scurried away for refreshments. He looked me over and I looked him over, and it was one of those things...hate at first sight. Probably I would have detested him just as much if I had not known what he was.

We were still giving each other the cold-eye when Trixie returned, but she was too happy at having brought us, her dearest ones, together to notice the congealing atmosphere. Advising us to holler when we ran dry, she gave us each a bright smile and returned to her party.

The whiskey was white corn and was served in heavy gla.s.s jelly jars of about three and a half ounces capacity. Owl took his down at a swallow, and without any change in expression, and chased it with an infinitesimal sip from the choc pitcher. He set his gla.s.s down with a look that dared me to repeat the performance. I did so and somehow, miraculously, managed not to strangle or cough. Then, by way of pointing up my feelings about him, I poured my chaser into the gla.s.s instead of drinking from the pitcher.

A brief flash of his eyes told me that the insult had scored, but ostensibly he took no notice. Turning suddenly genial, he obtained another round of drinks from a pa.s.sing hostess, and called for bottoms up again. We downed them. A third round arrived. We downed that, too.

He weaved slightly in his chair, then leaned forward bracing his elbows on the table.

"T-Tommy-" he coughed, "Tommy, you're a nice guy an' it's a real pleasure to meet you."

"Swell," I said, flatly.

"Y-you like me, too, Tommy?"