Now and on Earth (12 page)

Well, when the defense boom struck, the town just couldn't throw off its lethargy. It did ultimately, but for a long time the city fathers' idea of taking care of a 100 per cent increase in population was to up the price of rents and other living incidentals by a corresponding increase. Living isn't cheap here now, or even moderately reasonable, but the Government has stepped in and- But here's the story:

A newly arrived aircraft worker walked into a bar and ordered a cheese sandwich and a bottle of beer. The waitress took the dollar bill he proffered in payment and gave him back a dime in change.

Ruefully the aircrafter asked her if there wasn't some mistake.

Oh no. Sandwich, fifty. Beer, forty. No mistake.

"Funny," said the aircrafter in a tone that said it wasn't. And his eyes settled on the buxom mounds of her bosom. "What's those?"

The waitress colored. "Why they're my breasts, you fool! What'd you think they were?"

"Didn't know. Everything else is so high in here I thought they might be the cheeks of your ass."

Offhand, I'd say that two-thirds of the men are under thirty; half of them, probably, under twenty-five. And intelligence is much higher than the average. Once in a while a misfit like Gross or myself slips in, but not often. And you can be reasonably sure that the misfits are not without certain valuable talents. The plant believes that, in them, it has something to work on, and it is willing to risk a little money on the belief.

Practically every production worker who is not already a skilled mechanic must be a trade-school graduate, which means, invariably, that he is a high-school graduate also. In non-production work, such as I am in, two years of college or the equivalent are required. Degrees are so numerous around here as to be commonplace. An average of only one out of every twenty-five applicants is given a job, and fully a fourth of those are discharged during or at the end of the thirty-day probationary period.

I mention all this, not by way of giving myself an indirect pat on the back, but because of the newspaper talk to the effect that the aircraft plants have made the WPA and other relief agencies unnecessary. Nothing could be further from the truth. You find no dispossessed share-croppers or barnyard mechanics here. They get no farther than the office-boy in the Personnel Department.

Well, there's the whistle. So a final drag on a cigarette and back we go again for four more hours…

The office crowd has begun to get its breath by now and is hollering for something more to worry about. The auto-call roars. The phone begins to ring:

"Dilly? How about a shortage report on Position 4 by three-thirty?"

"I'll try. For how many ships?"

"Well-where are we now?"

"We've got fifty in the yard, but we're not through with 'em, you know. We need props on about fifteen, and the cockpit leathers and- -"

"We've got an acceptance on fifty, though? Make it for the next twenty-five, then."

"All right. Say-I notice you're still figuring thirteen wing inspection-hole covers to a ship. We're using twenty-two."

"We'll catch it. You'll get the report for us? Swell!"

One thing I like about this plant: You don't have to hem and haw and be sugar-tongued with anyone. They don't want you to. If you've got a criticism or some information to pass on, you do it in the quickest possible fashion, and no formalities. I "Mister" our Superintendent, Dolling, and try to choose my words because, without doing or saying anything, he insists upon it. But with anyone else-the chief inspector, the production manager, or whoever-it's "Here's the dope," and on to something else. And if someone, regardless of his position, butts in on something that he knows less about than you do, you tell him where to get off.

A few days ago, while Moon and I were at the window checking through some travelers, one of the many vice-presidents stalked up. There was a pile of leading edges on the floor; he nodded at them, looked at me. I am older than Moon; I also dress less roughly. I suppose the v.p. thought I was in charge.

"Nice bunch of edges you've got there," he said.

I said, "Yes, what about them?"

"Get them off the floor this instant! What do you think those racks are for?"

I looked at Moon.

"Tell him to go piss up a rope," said Moon idly.

The v.p. choked, spluttered, and rushed away. A few minutes later our phone rang and Moon answered it.

"Yeah, I told him that," he said. "Only I didn't say pee. Those edges are drilled wrong. We're waiting for a move-boy to pick 'em up."

That was the end of the matter.

I spoke of having turned out fifty planes. The Government has accepted that many, but only a few of them are complete. We're short of props, instrument panels, tailwheels, and dozens of smaller items. A few of the things may actually be in the plant; the majority, I believe, are not. Every day searching parties from Dispatch, Inspection, and Material Control go through. But they rarely find anything any more. No one can be sure that an order we received hasn't been scrapped or loaned to another plant. No one can be sure of anything.

Some of the things that happen in here are nothing less than fantastic. One Monday morning while I was posting my travelers, I ran across three, for a certain type of fairing, that had no count on them. I checked with all the boys, trying to find out who had put them up, and they all denied that they had. I went through the fairing section, piece by piece, and I couldn't find anything that matched the description on the travelers. I checked my books; I wasn't carrying any fairing under those three numbers. I checked with the foremen on Final Assembly; they'd never heard of any fairing like that. Certainly they'd never put any on the planes-I could see that for myself. I began to get cold chills.

According to the travelers, those fairings had been used from the start. Fifty pieces of each had cleared through me and should have gone on the planes-but they hadn't and I didn't have them. As I say, I didn't even have a record on them. I went to Moon with it. He got kind of pale around the gills and went to Baldwin. Baldwin tore his hair out by the handful and began calling Material Control, and Sheet-metal, Inspection, Dispatching, Painting and Dope Shop. And the various foremen and superintendents came rushing up to his office to study the travelers and-nope, they'd never seen anything like that.

I won't give you all the painful details. Blueprint-crib finally solved the puzzle. The travelers bore work-order instead of finished- parts' numbers. They actually covered only one part which we carried on our books under an assembly number. Some overly-fastidious (and new) routing clerk, averse to the idea of crowding one traveler with the delineation of the hundreds of processes involved in making the assembly, had innocently spread the information through sub-division numbers which he had picked off the blueprint.

Well, I'll admit it. I don't see how I could possibly have anything to be afraid of. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed. It sounds foolish, childish; but it's been my experience that I can avoid a potential disaster by worrying about it enough. Anyway, it's just as well to think that I do have to stay here. Because, of course, I must. At least until I can get my story sold, and Pop settled, and Frankie toned down a little, and-

As to why the Government accepts planes that can't be flown, I don't know. The way I figure it is that we've either got a darned good sales manager or someone in the government procurement office is overly anxious to make a showing.

I'm getting sixty-five cents an hour now. That's supposed to be very good for a man who has been here such a comparatively short time, and Dolling made it very clear that the company wasn't obliged to give it to me. It's as much as Murphy gets; it's five cents more than Gross's wage. I think I'm underpaid, naturally, but I can't say anything so long as the records are in their present shape. It isn't my fault, but I can't say anything.

If anyone has been mistreated here, it's Murphy. That really is his right name. He's half-Irish, half-Mexican. When he ruined his hands fighting, he took what money he had and studied mechanical engineering for two years. Some small, cheap, and not very good school that few have ever heard of. Graduating, he was unable to get a job at his profession and he worked as a messenger, soda-clerk, and whatever he could get to do for a few years. When WPA opened up, he got a job as a cartographer on one of the records' projects. And, with the beginning of defense work, he applied and was accepted here.

I don't suppose he was outstanding as a draughtsman. On the other hand he was probably no worse than dozens of others, and, given time, he doubtless would have become a valuable man. But he didn't mix well, and he looked like a Mexican, and-and he's down here now… At one o'clock my head begins to swim. I pour out half of the cup of coffee I have saved, and toss it down. At a quarter of two my head snaps up and I look at the paper in my typewriter. There are two lines more of type than there should be.

When I last looked-saw- there were three lines; now there are five. They all seem to be all right though. I get a drink of water and come back again.
just enough to sleep on and not hear and no morning and write no morning and write but drink and sleep but write
… "Dilly!… Oh Dilly!" Moon is at my side. Not looking at me; not noticing. Moon is good. Much kinder to me than he should be. "Want to take a walk upstairs, Dilly? Get us some carbon- (or pencils, or take these reports up)?" I go upstairs. You can smoke up there. You can light up as soon as you hit the foot of the stairs. Two-thirty, and the rest of the coffee. Three..
half tonight and half in the morning write and sleep no job job
… The low voice again. It has to be low to get under the noise; you soon learn that you can't get above it: "Got about ten minutes, Dilly. Dilly, about through? Ten minutes?" "Huh-sure. Sure. Just about set." I rip out the five copies: one for us, one for Dispatching, one for Production, and one for the expediter. God, will he catch it! What

about the extra copy-a thousand times, and you've forgotten. Can't ask anyone. They'll think you're crazy… Material Control? No. Sheetmetal? Sub-assembly? Factory manager? No, no, no. Plating, Painting, Planning, Lofting? No! No! No! Drophammer, Plannishing? Oh God, no; what would they want with it! Punchpress, Sewing, Singing, Praying…

"Dilly, you made a copy for Inspection, didn't you?"

Inspection, Inspection!

"Oh-sure, sure. Taking 'em around right now."

The five-minute whistle blows. Upstairs and back- four blocks-and five minutes to do it in. They want you out of here when that second whistle blows. If you're caught inside without an overtime pass, you can't get out.

"… matter, Dillon? You tired?"

I sit up. Murphy is grinning sympathetically, and we are crossing Pacific Boulevard.

"Kind of."

"Kind of a hard day."

"Say, Murph, I know I must have-but did you notice whether I punched out?"

"Yeah. You punched out all right. I was right behind you… well, here we are. See you in the morning, huh?"

"Yup."

"I may be a little late. Got to bring the wife in, and-"

"Now not too late, Murph! One more ride like that this morning-"

"Ha, huh! Okay, Dillon. So long."

"So long, Murph."

The whistle is blowing, and Moon is talking to me.

"Want to help me take some stuff down to the express office, Dilly? We can get a couple hours for it."

Two hours of overtime-two dollars. It won't really be working, and that doctor bill of Shannon's…

"Why sure. Thanks."

"I thought maybe you and your wife and Frankie and me might do something tonight."

"I don't know about Frankie, Moon. I think she said something about-"

"Aw, she can't always be tied up."

"Well…"

He waits for me to say it.

"Well. All right."

"Seen any policemen around?"

They grinned and shook their heads.

"Well, there's some in the neighborhood," he declared solemnly, and he fumbled in his pocket and produced two dimes. "You take these and stay out here and sort of keep on the lookout for 'em. If you see any, run in and tell me. I'll come out and beat 'em up."

"Get ice cweam?" said Mack.

"Good ice cream at my store," said Shannon, looking at Moon hopefully.

"Sure," said Moon. "But look out for the policemen."

I said, "Hadn't you better wait until after dinner?"

But of course no one paid any attention to me.

Shannon dashed off, Mack churning along behind her, his usual three paces to the rear. Moon went on into the kitchen and put the packages down.

"Hi, Mom," he said.

"Why it's Mr. Moon," said Mom, pleased. "You would catch me looking like this!"

"Got enough skillets to cook four pounds of pork chops?"

"You didn't get four pounds!" said Mom. "Jimmie, what did you let Mr. Moon get so much for?"

"Now, never you mind," said Moon, opening another sack. "Just get 'em cooked or you don't get any of this sherry."

It was ten years old. I was kind of ashamed of, but more sorry for, Mom-the way her eyes glittered when she tasted it. She's had so few good things, and she enjoys them so much. Only-well, maybe I'm a snob. But what right had he to come into my house and call my mother anything but Mrs. Dillon, and take it for granted that she'd be as glad to get the wine as-as she was?

I guess I've answered my own question. I am too thin-skinned; everyone says so.

He fixed rye highballs for himself and me, getting down the glasses and making himself perfectly at home. We went back into the living room, and he opened the hall door and shouted for Roberta. Well, perhaps shout is the wrong word. He never raises his voice very much.

Roberta opened the bedroom door. "Is that you, Mooney? I'm not dressed yet."

"Goody," said Moon. "Come right on out."

Roberta laughed, and above the sizzle of chops and the clinking of glass I heard Mom laugh. I laughed too- Moon was looking at me. And he hadn't said anything out of the way. Moon is all right.

Roberta came in and shoved him playfully.

"Hi, Mooney."

"Hi, Sunny."

She laughed; different from the way she usually laughs. "What're you drinking?… Oh phoot! Why didn't you get gin? You know how I like Tom Collinses."

"I didn't know it."

"You did, too. You knew-" She paused, seeing Moon wink at me. "You did get some, didn't you?"

"Did we, Dilly? I can't remember."

"Why you mean thing!" said Roberta, and she pushed him again.

I went out into the kitchen and fixed her a Tom Collins. No; please get that straight. I am not, never have been, jealous of Roberta. Sometimes, when I have been looking for a reason to escape, I have wished that I had cause to be jealous. But I know I haven't-that I never will have. Actually, I suppose, I was angry with myself. Angry because any outsider could make himself more at home than I could.

When I took Roberta's drink to her, I brought along another stiff drink for myself. I began to thaw a little after I'd got it down.

Jo came in and sat down on the arm of my chair.

"Can't you say hello to Mr. Moon?" said Roberta.

"Hello," said Jo.

Moon said, "Hello, Jo. How are you?"

Jo smiled at him silently.

Moon ran his hand into his pocket. "You don't know any dances do you, Jo? I'd give a quarter to see a real good dance."

"I don't know any," said Jo.

"You do, too, Jo," said Roberta. "You know a-"

"I've forgotten, Mother."

"But you've been dancing around here all day! You couldn't have-"

"I'm tired, Mother."

"Jo!"

It was probably a very good thing that Frankie arrived at that moment. She dropped down on the divan next to Moon, pushing her hat back, and kicking off her shoes. She removed the drink from his hand and, gripping her nose with two fingers, killed it at a gulp.

"Ugh! I don't see how you can drink rye mixed."

"Like one straight?" said Moon.

"Well, okay."

He got the bottle and we all had another drink. Frankie had a new story. It was the one about the old king who had three beautiful daughters, one of whom he was going to award to a knight for doing something or other. The question was: Which one did the knight choose. And the answer: None. He took the king. This was a fairy story.

Moon didn't laugh very hard. I got the impression that he didn't like to hear Frankie talk like that, and I wondered what business it was of his how she talked. I don't wonder now because I know that, despite everything, he was in love with her.

"Got a date tonight?" he said.

"Yep."

"Thought we all might go down to Tia Juana."

"Well… gee…" said Frankie, and glanced at me.

"I'd sure like to go," said Roberta. "You ought to go, too, Jimmie. All the time we've been here and you've never been across the border. Maybe you could get an idea for a story."

I laughed, probably not very pleasantly. "Do you suppose I could get the time to write it, too?"

"Do you good to get out, Dilly," said Moon.

"And it wouldn't do me any harm," said Roberta. "I've not been out of this house in weeks. I may not be as smart as some people, but I'm still human."

"Now, honey," I said.

Mom came in from the kitchen. "If you all want to go, I'll take care of the kids."

"I guess I could break my date," said Frankie.

Well…

"Well, it suits me fine," I said. "Let's go."

We didn't eat much dinner. Frankie and Roberta had a lot of getting ready to do, and Moon and I had drunk too much to be very hungry. None of us was drunk, though. Just feeling good. Roberta and Moon and Frankie were feeling good, and I felt less bad than usual.

As we rushed through the night toward the border, Roberta snuggled close to me and tucked my hand under her breast.

"You're not mad at me, are you? I thought we just about had to come."

"I suppose we did."

"Moon's been by so many times, and he's your boss and all, and I thought-"

"We had to," I said.

"Got any money with you?"

"All of seven cents."

"I've got a dollar but let's not spend it unless we have to. We need so many things, Jimmie."

"Look," I said, "whose idea was this, anyway? How do you expect to go down here and spend an evening without money?"

"Moon's got plenty of money. You just let him pay for things."

"I guess I'll have to."

She stiffened in my arm and looked straight ahead, and I knew that I was as bewildering and unreasonable to her as she was to me. I pulled her head down in my lap, and put my mouth over hers. And after a moment her lips parted, and her hands were twining in my hair. She rolled from the waist, bringing her feet up into the seat, and the wind dropped her dress around her thighs, and in the moonlight they were pure ivory. She had no girdle on (I think they make a woman look cramped), only the frilly white panties which she buys-or used to buy-by the dozens because she knows I am disturbed by the potential uncleanliness of colors; and she used no perfume because I object to that for much the same reason. And I thought, bending over her, knowing that her eyes were closed so that mine might be open, how many ways, in this one way-the one way she understood-she had tried to make herself over to my pattern. And I thought how thankless the task must seem to her, and I longed, for the moment at least, to look only on those efforts and their results-to look, to forget, and to want no more.

And I knew, before the wish was full-formed, that I couldn't. I couldn't because I had been down to the bottom and I knew what was there, and I knew each pleasant and deceptive curve of the descent. I couldn't because of a tall overweight farm boy who had entered the first grade when he was sixteen, and who was admitted to the bar at twenty-one; an absent-minded untidy fat man who won 129 of his first 135 cases; a man who forgot to pay grocery bills, but who would borrow money for the
Letters of the Presidents
or
American History in Romance
; a broke and friendless old man who had told me to leave him and go to school.

We didn't stop at the Mexican Customs Office. Moon merely slowed the car a little, honked, and sped by. The two guards, in their multi-buttoned uniforms, looked after us smilingly, although, it seemed to me, a shade crestfallen.

In another two minutes we were entering the long main street of the town.

Moon said Wednesday wasn't a very good night. "We ought to come down some Saturday." But it was good enough for Roberta. She sat up, leaning first out of my window, then hers. Laughing excitedly. Pointing. Asking questions.

"Oh look, honey! Look Frankie! That woman-isn't she a movie star? No,
that
one. Oh she's gone now!… Are all those places saloons, Mooney? How do they all make a living? Do you suppose that stuff on the pushcarts is good to eat? I guess there'd be a law if it wasn't, don't you, honey? Oh Frankie"-with a long sigh-"look at those hats! Did you ever – why they're as big as umbrellas!"

"Like to have one?" said Moon, turning the car into the curb.

"I guess not," said Frankie.

"How much are they?" asked Roberta.

"I'll make them give us some," said Moon. "Come on. Leave your hats in the car."

As we got out, a dozen or so ragged children swarmed around us. "Give us penny, misters. Ladies, give us pennies. Penny, penny, penny!" they screamed.

Roberta and Frankie automatically began fumbling with their purses, but Moon pushed us on ahead into one of the dozens of curio and souvenir shops.

"It's not the money. You give one of them anything and we'll have a parade behind us all evening wherever we go."

Moon speaks Spanish or, I should say, Mexican, fluently. The kind of Mexican that the Mexicans speak. He and the proprietor were haggling in a friendly fashion all the time we were trying on hats.

I don't know what he paid for them, but I think it was a dollar each. They weren't as big as umbrellas; they were bigger. There wasn't room for two of us on the sidewalk when we had them on, so we took them off and carried them.

We walked across the street to the "longest bar in the world." There were only a few people in it, all non-Mexican except for the employees; but the marimba band was playing away as vigorously as if the place had been packed.

The girls went back to the restroom and Moon and I had Scotch and sodas. They hadn't returned by the time we had finished them, so we had tequila with salt and lemon. And then because it slid down so nicely, we had another. Things began to get pretty rosy about that time.

A drunk, hatless and with a filthy vest, staggered out on the floor and approached the end marimba player. The latter, a plump elf-like fellow, tried to shoo him away; but the drunk wouldn't be shooed. He kept shouting for "Home on the Range," and the more he was disdained, the more determined he became. Finally he started to climb up on the platform.

The marimba-player moved his sticks off into space a few inches and, without the barest flicker of a smile, tapped out the remainder of the score on the drunk's bald head. The drunk went down on his knees and was hustled out by two waiters.

Well-it doesn't sound funny now. But I laughed so hard that I would have fallen off my stool if Moon hadn't caught me. He wasn't as drunk as I was, I guess. In fact I'm sure he wasn't.

Roberta and Frankie came out and had drinks, and then we strolled up and across the street to the Mona Lisa. It's run by Chinese, as many of the places in Tia are, and the prices are pretty stiff. Of course, you can get beer for fifteen cents a glass and a shot of tequila for the same. But you're liable to find that your table is needed shortly if you do. The hosts of Aunt Jane aren't at all inhibited about things like that. They feel not the slightest shame in telling you that you're not drinking fast enough to be a good customer. If you want to fight about it, that's all right too. You'll never want to brawl again after you've been in Tia jail once.

Moon ordered Sunrise Specials at fifty cents a piece. Before they could be brought, Roberta and I got out on the dance floor, but we needn't have done so. Moon had made a deposit with the cashier when we came in, and no checks were ever brought to the table. I don't know how large the deposit was. Roberta and I could never make anything more than a rough estimate as to the size of our bill. But I think it must have been twenty dollars anyway.

I don't know, either, when Moon and Frankie left. The place began to fill up, and the orchestra was playing steadily. We'd go back to the table and Frankie and Moon wouldn't be there, and we'd just suppose they were out on the dance floor. For that matter we weren't bothered about anything much but having a good time. I was drunk-not staggering drunk, I never stagger; but totally irresponsible. Roberta, who doesn't have much capacity, was tipsy. It'd been two or three years since I'd seen her enjoy herself so much. It'd been that long since we could really cut loose without scrimping for a month afterwards. Tonight we didn't have to worry about money.