Title: The Day of the Locust (1939)
Author: Nathanael West
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0609041.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: November 2006
Date most recently updated: November 2006

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title: The Day of the Locust (1939)
Author: Nathanael West




1


Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside
his office. The groan of leather mingled with the jangle of iron and over
all beat the tattoo of a thousand hooves. He hurried to the window.

An army of cavalry and foot was passing. It moved like a. mob; its lines
broken, as though fleeing from some terrible defeat. The dolmans of the
hussars, the heavy shakos of the guards, Hanoverian light horse, with
their fiat leather caps and flowing red plumes, were all jumbled together
in bobbing disorder. Behind the cavalry came the infantry, a wild sea of
waving sabretaches, sloped muskets, crossed shoulder belts and swinging
cartridge boxes.. Tod recognized the scarlet infantry of England with
their white shoulder pads, the black infantry of the Duke of Brunswick,
the French grenadiers with their enormous white gaiters, the Scotch with
bare knees under plaid skirts.

While he watched, a little fat man, wearing a cork sun-helmet, polo shirt
and knickers, darted around the corner of the building in pursuit of the
army.

"Stage Nine--you bastards--Stage Nine!" he screamed through a small
megaphone.

The cavalry put spur to their horses and the infantry broke into a
dogtrot. The little man in the cork hat ran after them, shaking his fist
and cursing.

Tod watched until they had disappeared behind half a Mississippi
steamboat, then put away his pencils and drawing board, and left the
office. On the sidewalk outside the studio he stood for a moment trying
to decide whether to walk home or take a streetcar. He had been in
Hollywood less than three months and still found it a very exciting
place, but he was lazy and didn't like to walk. He decided to take the
streetcar as far as Vine Street and walk the rest of the way.

A talent scout for National Films had brought Tod to the Coast after
seeing some of his drawings in an exhibit of undergraduate work at the
Yale School of Fine Arts. He had been hired by telegram. If the scout had
met Tod, he probably wouldn't have sent him to Hollywood to learn set and
costume designing. His large, sprawling body, his slow blue eyes and
sloppy grin made him seem completely without talent, almost doltish in
fact.

Yes, despite his appearance, he was really a very complicated young man
with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of
Chinese boxes. And "The Burning of Los Angeles," a picture he was soon to
paint, definitely proved he had talent.

He left the car at Vine Street. As he walked along, he examined the
evening crowd. A great many of the people wore sports clothes which were
not really sports clothes. Their sweaters, knickers, slacks, blue flannel
jackets with brass buttons were fancy dress. The fat lady in the yachting
cap was going shopping, not boating; the man in the Norfolk jacket and
Tyrolean hat was returning, not from a mountain, but an insurance office;
and the girl in slacks and sneaks with a bandanna around her head had
just left a switchboard, not a tennis court.

Scattered among these masquerades were people of a different type. Their
clothing was somber and badly cut, bought from mail-order houses. While
the others moved rapidly, darting into stores and cocktail bars, they
loitered on the corners or stood with their backs to the shop windows and
stared at everyone who passed. When their stare was returned, their eyes
filled with hatred. At this time Tod knew very little about them except
that they had come to California to die.

He was determined to learn much more. They were the people he felt he
must paint. He would never again do a fat red barn, old stone wall or
sturdy Nantucket fisherman. From the moment he had seen them, he had
known that, despite his race, training and heritage, neither Winslow
Homer nor Thomas Ryder could be his masters and he turned to Goya and
Daumier.

He had learned this just in time. During his last year in art school, he
had begun to think that he might give up painting completely. The
pleasures he received from the problems of composition and color had
decreased as his facility had increased and he had realized that he was
going the way of all his classmates, toward illustration or mere
handsomeness. When the Hollywood job had come along, he had grabbed it
despite the arguments of his Mends who were certain that he was selling
out and would never paint again.

He reached the end of Vine Street and began the climb into Pinyon Canyon.
Night had started to fall.

The edges of the trees burned with a pale violet light and their centers
gradually turned from deep purple to black. The same violet piping, like
a Neon tube, outlined the tops of the ugly, hump-backed hills and they
were almost beautiful.

But not even the soft wash of dusk could help the houses. Only dynamite
would be of any use against the Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts,
Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor
cottages, and every possible combination of these styles that lined the
slopes of the canyon.

When he noticed that they were all of plaster, lath and paper, he was
charitable and blamed their shape on the materials used. Steel, stone and
brick curb a builder's fancy a little, forcing him to distribute his
stresses and weights and to keep his corners plumb, but plaster and paper
know no law, not even that of gravity.

On the corner of La Huerta Road was a miniature Rhine castle with
tarpaper turrets pierced for archers. Next to it was a little highly
colored shack with domes and minarets out of the Arabian Nights. Again he
was charitable. Both houses were comic, but he didn't laugh. Their desire
to startle was so eager and guileless.

It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how
tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to
sigh. Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.


2


The house he lived in was a nondescript affair called the San Bernardino
Arms. It was an oblong three stories high, the back and sides of which
were of plain, unpainted stucco, broken by even rows of unadorned
windows. The façade was the color of diluted mustard and its windows, all
double, were framed by pink Moorish columns which supported turnip-shaped
lintels.

His room was on the third floor, but he paused for a moment on the
landing of the second. It was on that floor that Faye Greener lived, in
208. When someone laughed in one of the apartments he started guiltily
and continued upstairs.

As he opened his door a card fluttered to the floor. "Honest Abe Kusich,"
it said in large type, then underneath in smaller italics were several
endorsements, printed to look like press notices.

"...the Lloyds of Hollywood"--Stanley Rose.

"Abe's word is better than Morgan's bonds"--Gail Brenshaw.

On the other side was a penciled message:

"Kingpin fourth, Solitair sixth. You can make some real dough on those
nags."

After opening the window, he took off his jacket and lay down on the bed.
Through the window he could see a square of enameled sky and a spray of
eucalyptus. A light breeze stirred its long, narrow leaves, making them
show first their green side, then their silver one.

He began to think of "Honest Abe Kusich" in order not to think of Faye
Greener. He felt comfortable and wanted to remain that way.

Abe was an important figure in a set of lithographs called "The Dancers"
on which Tod was working. He was one of the dancers. Faye Greener was
another and her father, Harry, still another. They changed with each
plate, but the group of uneasy people who formed their audience remained
the same. They stood staring at the performers in just the way that they
stared at the masqueraders on Vine Street. It was their stare that drove
Abe and the others to spin crazily and leap into the air with twisted
backs like hooked trout.

Despite the sincere indignation that Abe's grotesque depravity aroused in
him, he welcomed his company. The little man excited him and in that way
made him feel certain of his need to paint.

He had first met Abe when he was living on Ivar Street, in a hotel called
the Chateau Mirabella. Another name for Ivar Street was "Lysol Alley,"
and the Chateau was mainly inhabited by hustlers, their managers,
trainers and advance agents.

In the morning its halls reeked of antiseptic. Tod didn't like this odor.
Moreover, the rent was high because it included police protection, a
service for which he had no need. He wanted to move, but inertia and the
fact that he didn't know where to go kept him in the Chateau until he met
Abe. The meeting was accidental.

He was on the way to his room late one night when he saw what he supposed
was a pile of soiled laundry lying in front of the door across the hall
from his own. Just as he was passing it, the bundle moved and made a
peculiar noise. He struck a match, thinking it might be a dog wrapped in
a blanket. When the light flared up, he saw it was a tiny man.

The match went out and he hastily lit another. It was a male dwarf rolled
up in a woman's flannel bathrobe. The round thing at the end was his
slightly hydrocephalic head. A slow, choked snore bubbled from it.

The hall was cold and draughty. Tod decided to wake the man and stirred
him with his toe. He groaned and opened his eyes.

"You oughtn't to sleep there."

"The hell you say," said the dwarf, closing his eyes again. "You'll catch
cold."

This friendly observation angered the little man still more.

"I want my clothes!" he bellowed.

The bottom of the door next to which he was lying filled with light. Tod
decided to take a chance and knock. A few seconds later a woman opened
it part way. "What the hell do you want?" she demanded. "There's a
friend of yours out here who..." Neither of them let him finish.

"So what!" she barked, slamming the door.

"Give me my clothes, you bitch!" roared the dwarf.

She opened the door again and began to hurl things into the ball. A
jacket and trousers, a shirt, socks, shoes and underwear, a tie and hat
followed each other through the air in rapid succession. With each
article went a special curse.

Tod whistled with amazement.

"Some gal!"

"You bet," said the dwarf. "A lollapalooza--all slut and a yard wide."

He laughed at his own joke, using a high-pitched cackle more dwarflike
than anything that had come from him so far, then struggled to his feet
and arranged the voluminous robe so that he could walk without tripping.
Tod helped him gather his scattered clothing.

"Say, mister," he asked, "could I dress in your place?"

Tod let him into his bathroom. While waiting for him to reappear, he
couldn't help imagining what had happened in the woman's apartment. He
began to feel sorry for having interfered. But when the dwarf came out
wearing his hat, Tod felt better.

The little man's hat fixed almost everything. That year Tyrolean hats
were being worn a great deal along Hollywood Boulevard and the dwarf's
was a fine specimen. It was the proper magic green color and had a high,
conical crown. There should have been a brass buckle on the front, but
otherwise it was quite perfect.

The rest of his outfit didn't go well with the hat. Instead of shoes with
long points and a leather apron, he wore a blue, double-breasted suit and
a black shift with a yellow tie. Instead of a crooked thorn stick, he
carried a rolled copy of the Daily Running Horse.

"That's what I get for fooling with four-bit broads," he said by way of
greeting.

Tod nodded and tried to concentrate on the green hat. His ready
acquiescence seemed to irritate the little man.

"No quiff can give Abe Kusich the fingeroo and get away with it," he said
bitterly. "Not when I can get her leg broke for twenty bucks and I got
twenty."

He took out a thick billfold and shook it at Tod.

"So she thinks she can give me the fingeroo, hah? Well, let me tell..."

Tod broke in hastily.

"You're right, Mr. Kusich."

The dwarf came over to where Tod was sitting and for a moment Tod thought
he was going to climb into his lap, but he only asked his name and shook
hands. The little man had a powerful grip.

"Let me tell you something, Hackett, if you hadn't come along, I'da broke
in the door. That dame thinks she can give me the fingeroo, but she's got
another thinkola coming. But thanks anyway."

"Forget it"

"I don't forget nothing. I remember. I remember those who do me dirt and
those who do me favors."

He wrinkled his brow and was silent for a moment. "Listen," he finally
said, "seeing as you helped me, I got to return it. I don't want anybody
going around saying Abe Kusich owes him anything. So I'll tell you what.
I'll give you a good one for the fifth at Caliente. You put a fiver on
its nose and it'll get you twenty smackeroos. What I'm telling you is
strictly correct."

Tod didn't know how to answer and his hesitation offended the little man.

"Would I give you a bum steer?" he demanded, scowling. "Would I?"

Tod walked toward the door to get rid of him.

"No," he said.

"Then why won't you bet, hah?"

"What's the name of the horse?" Tod asked, hoping to calm him.

The dwarf had followed him to the door, pulling the bathrobe after him by
one sleeve. Hat and all, he came to a foot below Tod's belt.

"Tragopan. He's a certain, sure winner. I know the guy who owns him and
he gave me the office."

"Is he a Greek?" Tod asked.

He was being pleasant in order to hide the attempt he was making to
maneuver the dwarf through the door. "Yeh, he's a Greek. Do you know
him?"

"No."

"No?"

"No," said Tod with finality.

"Keep your drawers on," ordered the dwarf, "all I want to know is how you
know he's a Greek if you don't know him?"

His eyes narrowed with suspicion and he clenched his fists.

Tod smiled to placate him.

"I just guessed it."

"You did?"

The dwarf hunched his shoulders as though he were going to pull a gun or
throw a punch. Tod backed off and tried to explain.

"I guessed he was a Greek because Tragopan is a Greek word that means
pheasant."

The dwarf was far from satisfied.

"How do you know what it means? You ain't a Greek?"

"No, but I know a few Greek words."

"So you're a wise guy, hah, a know-it-all."

He took a short step forward, moving on his toes, an Tod got set to block
a punch.

"A college man, hah? Well, let me tell..."

His foot caught in the wrapper and he fell forward on his hands. He
forgot Tod and cursed the bathrobe, then got started on the woman again.

"So she thinks she can give me the fingeroo."

He kept poking himself in the chest with his thumbs.

"Who gave her forty bucks for an abortion? Who? And another ten to go to
the country for a rest that time. To a ranch I sent her. And who got her
fiddle out of hock that time in Santa Monica? Who?"

"That's right," Tod said, getting ready to give him a quick shove through
the door.

But he didn't have to shove him. The little man suddenly darted out of
the room and ran down the hall, dragging the bathrobe after him.

A few days later, Tod went into a stationary store on Vine Street to buy
a magazine. While he was looking through the rack, he felt a tug at the
bottom of his jacket. It was Abe Kusich, the dwarf, again.

"How's things?" he demanded.

Tod was surprised to find that he was just as truculentas as he had he
had been the other night. Later, when he got to know him better, he
discovered that Abe's pugnacity was often a joke. When he used it on his
friends, they played with him like one does with a growling puppy,
staving off his mad rushes and then baiting him to rush again.

"Fair enough," Tod said, "but I think I'll move."

He had spent most of Sunday looking for a place to live and was full of
the subject. The moment he mentioned it, however, he knew that he had
made a mistake. He tried to end the matter by turning away, but the
little man blocked him. He evidently considered himself an expert on the
housing situation. After naming and discarding a dozen possibilities
without a word from Tod, he finally hit on the San Bernardino Arms.

"That's the place for you, the San Berdoo. I live there, so I ought to
know. The owner's strictly from hunger. Come on, I'll get you fixed up
swell."

"I don't know, I..." Tod began.

The dwarf bridled instantly, and appeared to be mortally offended.

"I suppose it ain't good enough for you. Well, let me tell you something,
you..."

Tod allowed himself to be bullied and went with the dwarf to Pinyon
Canyon. The rooms in the San Berdoo were small and not very clean. He
rented one without hesitation, however, when he saw Faye Greener in the
hall.


3


Tod had fallen asleep. When he woke again, it was after eight o'clock. He
took a bath and shaved, then dressed in front of the bureau mirror. He
tried to watch his fingers as he fixed his collar and tie, but his eyes
kept straying to the photograph that was pushed into the upper corner of
the frame.

It was a picture of Faye Greener, a still from a two-reel farce in which
she had worked as an extra. She had given him the photograph willingly
enough, had even autographed it in a large, wild hand, "Affectionately
yours, Faye Greener," but she refused his friendship, or, rather,
insisted on keeping it impersonal. She had told him why. He had nothing
to offer her, neither money nor looks, and she could only love a handsome
man and would only let a wealthy man love her. Tod was a "good-hearted
man," and she liked "good-hearted men," but only as friends. She wasn't
hard-boiled. It was just that she put love on a special plane, where a
man without money or looks couldn't move.

Tod grunted with annoyance as he turned to the photograph. In it she was
wearing a harem costume, full Turkish trousers, breastplates and a monkey
jacket, and lay stretched out on a silken divan. One hand held a beer
bottle and the other a pewter stein.

He had gone all the way to Glendale to see her in that movie. It was
about an American drummer who gets lost in the seraglio of a Damascus
merchant and has a lot of fun with the female inmates. Faye played one of
the dancing girls. She had only one line to speak, "Oh, Mr. Smith!" and
spoke it badly.

She was a tall girl with wide, straight shoulders and long, swordlike
legs. Her neck was long, too, and columnar. Her face was much fuller than
the rest of her body would lead you to expect and much larger. It was a
moon face, wide at the cheek bones and narrow at chin and brow. She wore
her "platinum" hair long, letting it fall almost to her shoulders in
back, but kept it away from her face and ears with a narrow blue ribbon
that went under it and was tied on top of her head with a little bow.

She was supposed to look drunk and she did, but not with alcohol. She lay
stretched out on the divan with her arms and legs spread, as though
welcoming a lover, and her lips were parted in a heavy, sullen smile. She
was supposed to look inviting, but the invitation wasn't to pleasure.

Tod lit a cigarette and inhaled with a nervous gasp. He started to fool
with his tie again, but had to go back to the photograph.

Her invitation wasn't to pleasure, but to struggle, hard and sharp,
closer to murder than to love. If you threw yourself on her, it would be
like throwing yourself from the parapet of a skyscraper. You would do it
with a scream. You couldn't expect to rise again. Your teeth would be
driven into your skull like nails into a pine board and your back would
be broken. You wouldn't even have time to sweat or close your eyes.

He managed to laugh at his language, but it wasn't a real laugh and
nothing was destroyed by it.

If she would only let him, he would be glad to throw himself, no matter
what the cost. But she wouldn't have him. She didn't love him and he
couldn't further her career. She wasn't sentimental and she had no need
for tenderness, even if he were capable of it.

When he had finished dressing, he hurried out of the room. He had
promised to go to a party at Claude Estee's.


4


Claude was a successful screen writer who lived in a big house that was
an exact reproduction of the old Dupuy mansion near Biloxi, Mississippi.
When Tod came up the walk between the boxwood hedges, he greeted him from
the enormous, two-story porch by doing the impersonation that went with
the Southern colonial architecture. He teetered back and forth on his
heels like a Civil War colonel and made believe he had a large belly.

He had no belly at all. He was a dried-up little man with the rubbed
features and stooped shoulders of a postal clerk. The shiny mohair coat
and nondescript trousers of that official would have become him, but he
was dressed, as always, elaborately. In the buttonhole of his brown
jacket was a lemon flower. His trousers were of reddish Harris tweed with
a hound tooth check and on his feet were a pair of magnificent,
rust-colored bluchers. His shirt was ivory flannel and his knitted tie a
red that was almost black.

While Tod mounted the steps to reach his outstretched hand, he shouted to
the butler.

"Here, you black rascal! A mint julep."

A Chinese servant came running with a Scotch and soda.

After talking to Tod for a moment, Claude started him in the direction of
Alice, his wife, who was at the other end of the porch.

"Don't run off," he whispered. "We're going to a sporting house."

Alice was sitting in a wicker swing with a woman named Mrs. Joan
Schwartzen. When she asked him if he was playing any tennis, Mrs.
Schwartzen interrupted her.

"How silly, batting an inoffensive ball across something that ought to be
used to catch fish on account of millions are starving for a bite of
herring."

"Joan's a female tennis champ," Alice explained.

Mrs. Schwartzen was a big girl with large hands and feet and square, bony
shoulders. She had A pretty, eighteen-year-old face and a
thirty-five-year-old neck that was veined and sinewy. Her deep sunburn,
ruby colored with a slight blue tint, kept the contrast between her face
and neck from being too startling.

"Well, I wish we were going to a brothel this minute," she said. "I adore
them."

She turned to Tod and fluttered her eyelids.

"Don't you, Mr. Hackett?"

"That's right, Joan darling," Alice answered for him. "Nothing like a
bagnio to set a fellow up. Hair of the dog that bit you."

"How dare you insult me!"

She stood up and took Tod's arm.

"Convoy me over there."

She pointed to the group of men with whom Claude was standing.

"For God's sake, convoy her," Alice said. "She thinks they're telling
dirty stories."

Mrs. Schwartzen pushed right among them, dragging Tod after her.

"Are you talking smut?" she asked. "I adore smut." They all laughed
politely.

"No, shop," said someone.

"I don't believe it. I can tell from the beast in your voices. Go ahead,
do say something obscene."

This time no one laughed.

Tod tried to disengage her arm, but she kept a firm grip on it. There was
a moment of awkward silence, then the man she had interrupted tried to
make a fresh start.

"The picture business is too humble," he said. "We ought to resent people
like Coombes."

"That's right," said another man. "Guys like that come out here, make a
lot of money, grouse all the time about the place, flop on their
assignments, then go back East and tell dialect stories about producers
they've never met."

"My God," Mrs. Schwartzen said to Tod in a loud, stagey whisper, "they
are talking shop."

"Let's look for the man with the drinks," Tod said.

"No. Take me into the garden. Have you seen what's in the swimming pool?"

She pulled him along.

The air of the garden was heavy with the odor of mimosa and honeysuckle.
Through a slit in the blue serge sky poked a grained moon that looked
like an enormous bone button. A little flagstone path, made narrow by its
border of oleander, led to the edge of the sunken pool. On the bottom,
near the deep end, he could see a heavy, black mass of some kind.

"What is it?" he asked.

She kicked a switch that was hidden at the base of a shrub and a row of
submerged floodlights illuminated the green water. The thing was a dead
horse, or, rather, a life-size, realistic reproduction of one. Its legs
stuck up stiff and straight and it had an enormous, distended belly. Its
hammerhead lay twisted to one side and from its mouth, which was set in
an agonized grin, hung a heavy, black tongue.

"Isn't it marvelous!" exclaimed Mrs. Schwartzen, clapping her hands and
jumping up and down excitedly like a little girl.

"What's it made of?"

"Then you weren't fooled? How impolite! It's rubber, of course. It cost
lots of money."

"But why?"

"'To amuse. We were looking at the pool one day and somebody, Jerry
Appis, I think, said that it needed a dead horse on the bottom, so Alice
got one. Don't you think it looks cute?"

"Very."

"You're just an old meanie. Think how happy the Estees must feel, showing
it to people and listening to their merriment and their oh's and ah's of
unconfined delight."

She stood on the edge of the pool and "ohed and ahed" rapidly several
times in succession.

"Is it still there?" someone called.

Tod turned and saw two women and a man coming down the path.

"I think its belly's going to burst," Mrs. Schwartzen shouted to them
gleefully.

"Goody," said the man, hurrying to look.

"But it's only full of air," said one of the women.

Mrs. Schwartzen made believe she was going to cry. "You're just like that
mean Mr. Hackett. You just won't let me cherish my illusions."

Tod was halfway to the house when she called after him. He waved but kept
going.

The men with Claude were still talking shop.

"But how are you going to get rid of the illiterate mockies that run it?
They've got a strangle hold on the industry. Maybe they're intellectual
stumblebums, but they're damn good businessmen. Or at least they know how
to go into receivership and come up with a gold watch in their teeth."

"They ought to put some of the millions they make back into the business
again. Like Rockefeller does with his Foundation. People used to hate the
Rockefellers, but now instead of hollering about their ill-gotten oil
dough, everybody praises them for what the Foundation does. It's a swell
stunt and pictures could do the same thing. Have a Cinema Foundation and
make contributions to Science and Art. You know, give the racket a
front."

Tod took Claude to one side to say good night, but he wouldn't let him
go. He led him into the library and mixed two double Scotches. They sat
down on the couch facing the fireplace.

"You haven't been to Audrey Jenning's place?" Claude asked.

"No, but I've heard tell of it."

"Then you've got to come along."

"I don't like pro-sport."

"We won't indulge in any. We're just going to see a movie."

"I get depressed."

"Not at Jenning's you won't. She makes vice attractive by skillful
packaging. Her dive's a triumph of industrial design."

Tod liked to hear him talk. He was master of an involved comic rhetoric
that permitted him to express his moral indignation and still keep his
reputation for worldliness and wit.

Tod fed him another lead. "I don't care how much cellophane she wraps it
in," he said--"nautch joints are depressing, like all places for deposit,
banks, mail boxes, tombs, vending machines."

"Love is like a vending machine, eh? Not bad. You insert a coin and press
home the lever. There's some mechanical activity inside the bowels of the
device. You receive a small sweet, frown at yourself in the dirty mirror,
adjust your hat, take a firm grip on your umbrella and walk away, trying
to look as though nothing had happened. It's good, but it's not for
pictures."

Tod played straight again.

"That's not it. I've been chasing a girl and it's like carrying something
a little too large to conceal in your pocket, like a briefcase or a small
valise. It's uncomfortable."

"I know, I know. It's always uncomfortable. First your right hand gets
tired, then your left. You put the valise down and sit on it, but people
are surprised and stop to stare at you, so you move on. You hide it
behind a tree and hurry away, but someone finds it and runs after you to
return it. It's a small valise when you leave home in the morning, cheap
and with a bad handle, but by evening it's a trunk with brass corners and
many foreign labels. I know. It's good, but it won't film. You've got to
remember your audience. What about the barber in Purdue? He's been
cutting hair all day and he's tired. He doesn't want to see some dope
carrying a valise or fooling with a nickel machine. What the barber wants
is amour and glamor."

The last part was for himself and he sighed heavily. He was about to
begin again when the Chinese servant came in and said that the others
were ready to leave for Mrs. Jenning's.


5


They started out in several cars. Tod rode in the front of the one Claude
drove and as they went down Sunset Boulevard he described Mrs. Jenning
for him. She had been a fairly prominent actress in the days of silent
films, but sound made it impossible for her to get work. Instead of
becoming an extra or a bit player like many other old stars, she had
shown excellent business sense and had opened a callhouse. She wasn't
vicious. Far from it. She ran her business just as other women run
lending libraries, shrewdly and with taste.

None of the girls lived on the premises. You telephoned and she sent a
girl over. The charge was thirty dollars for a single night of sport and
Mrs. Jenning kept fifteen of it. Some people might think that fifty per
cent is a high brokerage fee, but she really earned every cent of it.
There was a big overhead. She maintained a beautiful house for the girls
 to wait in and a car and a chauffeur to deliver them to the clients.

Then, too, she had to move in the kind of society where she could make
the right contacts. After all, not every man can afford thirty dollars.
She permitted her girls to service only men of wealth and position, not
to say taste and discretion. She was so particular that she insisted on
meeting the prospective sportsman before servicing him. She had often
said, and truthfully, that she would not let a girl of hers go to a man
with whom she herself would not be willing to sleep.

And she was really cultured. All the most distinguished visitors
considered it quite a lark to meet her. They were disappointed, however,
when they discovered how refined she was. They wanted to talk about
certain lively matters of universal interest, but she insisted on
discussing Gertrude Stein and Juan Gris. No matter how hard the
distinguished visitor tried, and some had been known to go to really
great lengths, he could never find a flaw in her refinement or make a
breach in her culture.

Claude was still using his peculiar rhetoric on Mrs. Jenning when she
came to the door of her house to greet them.

"It's so nice to see you again," she said. "I was telling Mrs. Prince at
tea only yesterday--the Estees are my favorite couple."

She was a handsome woman, smooth and buttery, with fair hair and a red
complexion.

She led them into a small drawing room whose color scheme was violet,
gray and rose. The Venetian blinds were rose, as was the ceiling, and the
walls were covered with a pale gray paper that had a tiny, widely spaced
flower design in violet. On one wall hung a silver screen, the kind that
rolls up, and against the opposite wall, on each side of a cherrywood
table, was a row of chairs covered with rose and gray, glazed chintz
bound in violet piping. There was a small projection machine on the table
and a young man in evening dress was fumbling with it.

She waved them to their seats. A waiter then came in and asked what they
wanted to drink. When their orders had been taken and filled, she flipped
the light switch and the young man started his machine. It whirred
merrily, but he had trouble in getting it focused.

"What are we going to see first?" Mrs. Schwartzen asked. "Le Predicament
de Marie."

"That sounds ducky."

"It's charming, utterly charming," said Mrs. Jenning. "Yes," said the
cameraman, who was still having trouble. "I love Le Predicament de Marie.
It has a marvelous quality that is too exciting."

There was a long delay, during which he fussed desperately with his
machine. Mrs. Schwartzen started to whistle and stamp her feet and the
others joined in. They imitated a rowdy audience in the days of the
nickelodeon.

"Get a move on, slow poke."

"What's your hurry? Here's your hat."

"Get a horse!"

"Get out and get under!"

The young man finally found the screen with his light beam and the film
began.

LE PREDICAMENT DE MARIE
ou
LA BONNE DISTRAITE

Marie, the "bonne," was a buxom young girl in a tight-fitting black silk
uniform with very short skirts. On her head was a tiny lace cap. In the
first scene, she was shown serving dinner to a middle-class family in an
oak-paneled dining room full of heavy, carved furniture. The family was
very respectable and consisted of a bearded, frock-coated father, a
mother with a whalebone collar and a cameo brooch, a tall, thin son with
a long mustache and almost no chin and a little girl wearing a large bow
in her hair and a crucifix on a gold chain around her neck.

After some low comedy with father's beard and the soup, the actors
settled down seriously to their theme. It was evident that while the
whole family desired Marie, she only desired the young girl. Using his
napkin to hide his activities, the old man pinched Marie, the son tried
to look down the neck of her dress and the mother patted her knee. Marie,
for her part, surreptitiously fondled the child.

The scene changed to Marie's room. She undressed and got into a chiffon
negligee, leaving on only her black silk stockings and high-heeled shoes.
She was making an elaborate night toilet when the child entered. Marie
took her on her lap and started to kiss her. There was a knock on the
door. Consternation. She hid the child in the closet and let in the
bearded father. He was suspicious and she had to accept his advances. He
was embracing her when there was another knock. Again consternation and
tableau. This time it was the mustachioed son. Marie hid the father under
the bed. No sooner had the son begun to grow warm than there was another
knock. Marie made him climb into a large blanket chest. The new caller
was the lady of the house. She, too, was just settling down to work when
there was another knock.

Who could it be? A telegram? A policeman? Frantically Marie counted the
different hiding places. The whole family was present. She tiptoed to the
door and listened.

"Who can it be that wishes to enter now?" read the title card.

And there the machine stuck. The young man in evening dress became as
frantic as Marie. When lie got it running again, there was a flash of
light and the film whizzed through the apparatus until it had all run
out. "I'm sorry, extremely," he said. "I'll have to rewind."

"It's a frameup," someone yelled. "Fake!"

"Cheat!"

"The old teaser routine!"

They stamped their feet and whistled.

Under cover of the mock riot, Tod sneaked out. He wanted to get some
fresh air. The waiter, whom he found loitering in the hall, showed him to
the patio in back of the house.

On his return, he peeked into the different rooms. In one of them he
found a large number of miniature dogs in a curio cabinet. There were
glass pointers, silver beagles, porcelain schnauzers, stone dachshunds,
aluminum bulldogs, onyx whippets, china bassets, wooden spaniels. Every
recognized breed was represented and almost every material that could be
sculptured, cast or carved.

While he was admiring the little figures, he heard a girl singing. He
thought he recognized her voice and peeked into the hall. It was Mary
Dove, one of Faye Greener's best friends.

Perhaps Faye also worked for Mrs. Jenning. If so, for thirty dollars...

He went back to see the rest of the film.


6


Tod's hope that he could end his trouble by paying a small fee didn't
last long. When he got Claude to ask Mrs. Jenning about Faye, that lady
said she had never heard of the girl. Claude then asked her to inquire
through Mary Dove. A few days later she phoned him to say there was
nothing doing. The girl wasn't available.

Tod wasn't really disappointed. He didn't want Faye that way, not at
least while he still had a. chance some other way. Lately, he had begun
to think he had a good one. Harry, her father, was sick and that gave him
an excuse for hanging around their apartment. He ran errands and kept the
old man company. To repay his kindness, she permitted him the intimacies
of a family friend. He hoped to deepen her gratitude and make it serious.

Apart from this purpose, he was interested in Harry and enjoyed visiting
him. The old man was a clown and Tod had all the painter's usual love of
clowns. But what was more important, he felt that his clownship was a
clue to the people who stared (a painter's clue, that is--a clue in the
form of a symbol), just as Faye's dreams were another.

He sat near Harry's bed and listened to his stories by the hour. Forty
years in vaudeville and burlesque had provided him with an infinite
number of them. As he put it, his life had consisted of a
lightning series of "nip-ups," "high-gruesomes," "flying-Ws" and
"hundred-and-eights" done to escape a barrage of "exploding stoves." An
"exploding stove" was any catastrophe, natural or human, from a flood in
Medicine Hat, Wyoming, to an angry policeman in Moose Factory, Ontario.

When Harry had first begun his stage career, he had probably restricted
his clowning to the boards, but now he clowned continuously. It was his
sole method of defense. Most people, he had discovered, won't go out of
their way to punish a clown.

He used a set of elegant gestures to accent the comedy of his bent,
hopeless figure and wore a special costume, dressing like a banker, a
cheap, unconvincing, imitation banker. The costume consisted of a greasy
derby with an unusually high crown, a wing collar and polka dot
four-in-hand, a shiny double-breasted jacket and gray-striped trousers.
His outfit fooled no one, but then he didn't intend it to fool anyone.
His slyness was of a different sort.

On the stage he was a complete failure and knew it. Yet he claimed to
have once come very close to success. To prove how close, he made Tod
read an old clipping from the theatrical section of the Sunday Times.

"BEDRAGGLED HARLEQUIN," it was headed.

"The commedia del arte is not dead, but lives on in Brooklyn, or was
living there last week on the stage of the Oglethorpe Theatre in the
person of one Harry Greener. Mr. Greener is of a troupe called 'The
Flying Lings,' who, by the time this reaches you, have probably moved on
to Mystic, Connecticut, or some other place more fitting than the borough
of large families. If you have the time and really love the theatre, by
all means seek out the Lings wherever they may be.

"Mr. Greener, the bedraggled Harlequin of our caption, is not bedraggled
but clean, neat and sweet when he first comes on. By the time the Lings,
four muscular Orientals, finish with him, however, he is plenty
bedraggled. He is tattered and bloody, but still sweet.

"When Mr. Greener enters the trumpets are properly silent. Mama Ling is
spinning a plate on the end of a stick held in her mouth, Papa Ling is
doing cartwheels, Sister Ling is juggling fans and Sonny Ling is hanging
from the proscenium arch by his pigtail. As he inspects his strenuous
colleagues, Mr. Greener tries to hide his confusion under some much too
obvious worldliness. He ventures to tickle Sister and receives a powerful
kick in the belly in return for this innocent attention. Having been
kicked, he is on familiar ground and begins to tell a dull joke. Father
Ling sneaks up behind him and tosses him to Brother, who looks the other
way. Mr. Greener lands on the back of his neck. He shows his mettle by
finishing his dull story from a recumbent position. When he stands up,
the audience, which failed to laugh at his joke, laughs at his limp, so
he continues lame for the rest of the act.

"Mr. Greener begins another story, even longer and duller than his first.
Just before he arrives at the gag line, the orchestra blares loudly and
drowns him out. He is very patient and very brave. He begins again, but
the orchestra will not let him finish. The pain that almost, not quite,
thank God, crumples his stiff little figure would be unbearable if it
were not obviously make-believe. It is gloriously funny.

"The finale is superb. While the Ling Family flies through the air, Mr.
Greener, held to the ground by his sense of reality and his knowledge of
gravitation, tries hard to make the audience think that he is neither
surprised nor worried by the rocketing Orientals. It's familiar stuff,
his hands signal, but his face denies this. As time goes on and no one is
hurt, he regains his assurance. The acrobats ignore him, so he ignores
the acrobats. His is the final victory; the applause is for him.

"My first thought was that some producer should put Mr. Greener into a
big revue against a background of beautiful girls and glittering
curtains. But my second was that this would be a mistake. I am afraid
that Mr. Greener, like certain humble field plants which die when
transferred to richer soil, had better be left to bloom in vaudeville
against a background of ventriloquists and lady bicycle riders."

Harry had more than a dozen copies of this article, several on rag paper.
After trying to get a job by inserting a small advertisement in Variety
("...'some producer should put Mr. Greener into a big revue...' The
Times"), he had come to Hollywood, thinking to earn a living playing
comedy bits in films. There proved to be little demand for his talents,
however. As he himself put it, he "stank from hunger." To supplement his
meager income from the studios, he peddled silver polish which he made in
the bathroom of the apartment out of chalk, soap and yellow axle grease.
When Faye wasn't at Central Casting, she took him around on his peddling
trips in her Model T Ford. It was on their last expedition together that
he had fallen sick.

It was on this trip that Faye acquired a new suitor by the name of Homer
Simpson. About a week after Harry had taken to his bed, Tod met Homer for
the first time. He was keeping the old man company when their
conversation was interrupted by a light knock on the apartment door. Tod
answered it and found a man standing in the hall with flowers for Faye
and a bottle of port wine for her father.

Tod examined him eagerly. He didn't mean to be rude but at first glance
this man seemed an exact model for the kind of person who comes to
California to die, perfect in every detail down to fever eyes and unruly
hands.

"My name is Homer Simpson," the man gasped, then shifted uneasily and
patted his perfectly dry forehead with a folded handkerchief.

"Won't you come in?" Tod asked.

He shook his head heavily and thrust the wine and flowers at Tod. Before
Tod could say anything, he had lumbered off.

Tod saw that he was mistaken. Homer Simpson was only physically the type.
The men he meant were not shy.

He took the gifts in to Harry, who didn't seem at all surprised. He said
Homer was one of his grateful customers.

"That Miracle Polish of mine sure does fetch 'em."

Later, when Faye came home and heard the story, she was very much amused.
They both told Tod how they had happened to meet Homer, interrupting
themselves and each other every few seconds to laugh.

The next thing Tod saw Homer staring at the apartment house from the
shadow of a date palm on the opposite side of the street. He watched him
for a few minutes, then called out a friendly greeting. Without replying,
Homer ran away. On the next day and the one after, Tod again saw him
lurking near the palm tree. He finally caught him by approaching the tree
silently from the rear.

"Hello, Mr. Simpson," Tod said softly. "The Creeners were very grateful
for your gift."

This time Simpson didn't move, perhaps because Tod had him backed against
the tree.

"That's fine," he blurted out. "I was passing...I live up the street."

Tod managed to keep their conversation going for several minutes before
he escaped again.

The next time Tod was able to approach him without the stalk. From then
on, he responded very quickly to his advances. Sympathy, even of the most
obvious sort, made him articulate, almost garrulous.


7


Tod was right about one thing at least. Like most of the people he was
interested in, Homer was a Middle-Westerner. He came from a little town
near Des Moines, Iowa, called Wayneville, where he had worked for twenty
years in a hotel.

One day, while sitting in the park in the rain, he had caught cold and
his cold developed into pneumonia. When he came out of the hospital, he
found that the hotel had hired a new bookkeeper. They offered to take him
on again, but his doctor advised him to go to California for a rest. The
doctor had an authoritative manner, so Homer left Wayneville for the
Coast.

After living for a week in a railroad hotel in Los Angeles, he rented a
cottage in Pinyon Canyon. It was only the second house the real estate
agent showed him, but he took it because he was tired and because the
agent was a bully.

He rather liked the way the cottage was located. It was the last house in
the canyon and the hills rose directly behind the garage. They were
covered with lupines, Canterbury bells, poppies, and several varieties of
large yellow daisy. There were also some scrub pines, Joshua and
eucalyptus trees. The agent told him that he would see doves and plumed
quail, but during all the time he lived there, he saw only a few large,
black velvet spiders and a lizard. He grew very fond of the lizard.

The house was cheap because it was hard to rent. Most of the people who
took cottages in that neighborhood wanted them to be "Spanish" and this
one, so the agent claimed, was "Irish." Homer thought that the place
looked kind of queer, but the agent insisted that it was cute.

The house was queer. It had an enormous and very crooked stone chimney,
little dormer windows with big hoods and a thatched roof that came down
very low on both sides of the front door. This door was of gumwood
painted like fumed oak and it hung on enormous hinges. Although made by
machine, the hinges had been carefully stamped to appear hand-forged. The
same kind of care and skill had been used to make the roof thatching,
which was not really straw but heavy fireproof paper colored and ribbed
to look like straw.

The prevailing taste had been followed in the living room. It was
"Spanish." The walls were pale orange flecked with pink and on them hung
several silk armorial banners in red and gold. A big galleon stood on the
mantelpiece. Its hull was plaster, its sails paper and its rigging wire.
In the fireplace was a variety of cactus in gaily colored Mexican pots.
Some of the plants were made of rubber and cork; others were real.

The room was lit by wall fixtures in the shape of galleons with pointed
amber bulbs projecting from their decks. The table held a lamp with a
paper shade, oiled to look like parchment, that had several more galleons
painted on it. On each side of the windows red velvet draperies hung from
black, double-headed spears.

The furniture consisted of a heavy couch that had fat monks for legs and
was covered with faded red damask, and three swollen armchairs, also red.
In the center of the room was a very long mahogany table. It was of the
trestle type and studded with large-headed bronze nails. Beside each of
the chairs was a small end table, the same color and design as the big
one, but with a colored tile let into the top.

In the two small bedrooms still another style had been used. This the
agent had called "New England." There was a spool bed made of iron
grained like wood, a Windsor chair of the kind frequently seen in tea
shops, and a Governor Winthrop dresser painted to look like unpainted
pine. On the floor was a small hooked rug. On the wall facing the dresser
was a colored etching of a snowbound Connecticut farmhouse, complete with
wolf. Both of these rooms were exactly alike in every detail. Even the
pictures were duplicates.

There was also a bathroom and a kitchen.


8


It took Homer only a few minutes to get settled in his new home. He
unpacked his trunk, hung his two suits, both dark gray, in the closet of
one of his bedrooms and put his shirts and underclothes into the dresser
drawers. He made no attempt to rearrange the furniture.

After an aimless tour of the house and the yard, he sat down on the couch
in the living room. He sat as though wailing for someone in the lobby of
a hotel. He remained that way for almost half an hour without moving
anything but his hands, then got up and went into the bedroom and sat
down on the edge of the bed.

Although it was still early in the afternoon, he felt very sleepy. He was
afraid to stretch out and go to sleep. Not because he had bad dreams, but
because it was so hard for him to wake again. When he fell asleep, he was
always afraid that he would never get up.

But his fear wasn't as strong as his need. He got his alarm clock and set
it for seven o'clock, then lay down with it next to his ear. Two hours
later, it seemed like seconds to him, the alarm went off. The bell rang
for a full minute before he began to work laboriously toward
consciousness. The struggle was a hard one. He groaned. His head trembled
and his feet shot out. Finally his eyes opened, then widened. Once more
the victory was his.

He lay stretched out on the bed, collecting his senses and testing the
different parts of his body. Every part was awake but his hands. They
still slept. He was not surprised. They demanded special attention, had
always demanded it. When he had been a child, he used to stick pins into
them and once had even thrust them into a fire. Now he used only cold
water.

He got out of bed in sections, like a poorly made automaton, and carried
his hands into the bathroom. He turned on the cold water. When the basin
was full, he plunged his hands in up to the wrists. They lay quietly on
the bottom like a pair of strange aquatic animals. When they were
thoroughly chilled and began to crawl about, he lifted them out and hid
them in a towel.

He was cold. He ran hot water into the tub and began to undress, fumbling
with the buttons of his clothing as though he were undressing a stranger.
He was naked before the tub was full enough to get in and he sat down on
a stool to wait. He kept his enormous hands folded quietly on his belly.
Although absolutely still, they seemed curbed rather than resting.

Except for his hands, which belonged on a piece of monumental sculpture,
and his small head, he was well proportioned. His muscles were large and
round and he had a full, heavy chest. Yet there was something wrong. For
all his size and shape, he looked neither strong nor fertile. He was like
one of Picasso's great sterile athletes, who brood hopelessly on pink
sand, staring at veined marble waves.

When the tub was full, he got in and sank down in the hot water. He
grunted his comfort. But in another moment he would begin to remember, in
just another moment. He tried to fool his memory by overwhelming it with
tears and brought up the sobs that were always lurking uneasily in his
chest. He cried softly at first, then harder. The sound he made was like
that of a dog lapping gruel. He concentrated on how miserable and lonely
he was, but it didn't work. The thing he was trying so desperately to
avoid kept crowding into his mind.

One day when he was working in the hotel, a guest called Romola Martin
had spoken to him in the elevator.

"Mr. Simpson, you're Mr. Simpson, the bookkeeper?"

"Yes."

"I'm in six-eleven."

She was small and childlike, with a quick, nervous manner. In her arms
she coddled a package which obviously contained a square gin bottle.

"Yes," said Homer again, working against his natural instinct to be
friendly. He knew that Miss Martin owed several weeks' rent and had heard
the room clerk say she was a drunkard.

"Oh!..." the girl went on coquettishly, making obvious their difference
in size, "I'm sorry you're worried about your bill, I..."

The intimacy of her tone embarrassed Homer.

"You'll have to speak to the manager," he rapped out, turning away.

He was trembling when he reached his office.

How bold the creature was! She was drunk, of course, but not so drunk
that she didn't know what she was doing. He hurriedly labeled his
excitement disgust.

Soon afterwards the manager called and asked him to bring in Miss
Martin's credit card. When he went into the manager's office, he found
Miss Carlisle, the room clerk there. Homer listened to what the manager
was saying to her.

"You roomed six-eleven?"

"I did, yes, sir."

"Why? She's obvious enough, isn't she?"

"Not when she's sober."

"Never mind that. We don't want her kind in this hotel."

"I'm sorry."

The manager turned to Homer and took the credit card he was holding.

"She owes thirty-one dollars," Homer said.

"She'll have to pay up and get out. I don't want her kind around here."
He smiled. "Especially when they run up bills. Get her on the phone for
me."

Homer asked the telephone operator for six-eleven and after a short time
was told that the room didn't answer. "She's in the house," he said. "I
saw her in the elevator."

"I'll have the housekeeper look."

Homer was working on his books some minutes later when his phone rang. It
was the manager again. He said that six-eleven had been reported in by
the housekeeper and asked Homer to take her a bill.

"Tell her to pay up or get out," he said.

His first thought was to ask that Miss Carlisle be sent because he was
busy, but he didn't dare to suggest it. While making out the bill, he
began to realize how excited he was. It was terrifying. Little waves of
sensation moved along his nerves and the base of his tongue tingled.

When he got off at the sixth floor, he felt almost gay.

His step was buoyant and he had completely forgotten his troublesome
hands. He stopped at six-eleven and made as though to knock, then
suddenly took fright and lowered his-fist without touching the door.

He couldn't go through with it. They would have to send Miss Carlisle.

The housekeeper, who had been watching from the end of the hall, came up
before he could escape.

"She doesn't answer," Homer said hurriedly.

"Did you knock hard enough? That slut is in there." Before Homer could
reply, she pounded on the door. "Open up!" she shouted.

Homer heard someone move inside, then the door opened a few inches.

"Who is it, please?" a light voice asked.

"Mr. Simpson, the bookkeeper," he gasped.

"Come in, please."

The door opened a little wider and Homer went in without daring to look
around at the housekeeper. He stumbled to the center of the room and
stopped. Al first he was conscious only of the heavy odor of alcohol and
stale tobacco, but then underneath he smelled a metallic perfume. His
eyes moved in a slow circle. On the floor was a litter of clothing,
newspapers, magazines, and bottles. Miss Martin was huddled up on a
corner of the bed. She was wearing a man's black silk dressing gown with
light blue cuffs and lapel facings. Her close-cropped hair was the color
and texture of straw and she looked like a little boy. Her youthfulness
was heightened by her blue button eyes, pink button nose and red button
mouth.

Homer was too busy with his growing excitement to speak or even think. He
closed his eyes to tend it better, nursing carefully what he felt. He had
to be careful, for if he went too fast, it might wither and then he would
be cold again. It continued to grow.

"Go away, please, I'm drunk," Miss Martin said.

Homer neither moved nor spoke.

She suddenly began to sob. The coarse, broken sounds she made seemed to
come from her stomach. She buried her face in her hands and pounded the
floor with her feet.

Homer's feelings were so intense that his head bobbed stiffly on his neck
like that of a toy Chinese dragon.

"I'm broke. I haven't any money. I haven't a dime. I'm broke, I tell
you."

Homer pulled out his wallet and moved on the girl as though to strike her
with it.

She cowered away from him and her sobs grew stronger.

He dropped the wallet in her lap and stood over her, not knowing what
else to do. When she saw the wallet, she smiled, but continued sobbing.

"Sit down," she said.

He sat down on the bed beside her.

"You strange man," she said coyly. "I could kiss you for being so nice."

He caught her in his arms and hugged her. His suddenness frightened her
and she tried to pull away, but he held on and began awkwardly to caress
her. He was completely unconscious of what he was doing. He knew only
that what he felt was marvelously sweet and that he had to make the
sweetness carry through to the poor, sobbing woman.

Miss Martin's sobs grew less and soon stopped altogether. He could feel
her fidget and gather Strength. The telephone rang.

"Don't answer it," she said, beginning to sob once more. He pushed her
away gently and stumbled to the telephone. It was Miss Carlisle.

"Are you all right?" she asked, "or shall we send for the cops?"

"All right," he said, hanging up.

It was all over. He couldn't go back to the bed.

Miss Martin laughed at his look of acute distress.

"Bring the gin, you enormous cow," she shouted gaily. "It's under the
table."

He saw her stretch herself out in a way that couldn't be mistaken. He ran
out of the room.

Now in California, he was crying because he had never seen Miss Martin
again. The next day the manager had told him that he had done a good job
and that she had paid up and checked out.

Homer tried to find her. There were two other hotels in Wayneville, small
run-down houses, and he inquired at both of them. He also asked in the
few rooming places, but with no success. She had left town.

He settled back into his regular routine, working ten hours, eating two,
sleeping the rest. Then he caught cold and had been advised to come to
California. He could easily afford not to work for a while. His father
had left him about six thousand dollars and during the twenty years he
had kept books in the hotel, he had saved at least ten more.


9


He got out of the tub, dried himself hurriedly with a rough towel, then
went into the bedroom to dress. He felt even more stupid and washed out
than usual. It was always like that. His emotions surged up in an
enormous wave, curving and rearing, higher and higher, until it seemed as
though the wave must carry everything before it. But the crash never
came. Something always happened at the very top of the crest and the wave
collapsed to run back like water down a drain, leaving, at the most, only
the refuse of feeling.

It took him a long time to get all his clothing on. He stopped to rest
after each garment with a desperation far out of proportion to the effort
involved.

There was nothing to eat in the house and he had to go down to Hollywood
Boulevard for food. He thought of waiting until morning, but then,
although he was not hungry, decided against waiting. It was only eight
o'clock and the trip would kill some time. If he just sat around, the
temptation to go to sleep again would become irresistible.

The night was warm and very still. He started down hill, walking on the
outer edge of the pavement. He hurried between lamp-posts, where the
shadows were heaviest, and came to a full stop for a moment at every
circle of light. By the time he reached the boulevard, he was fighting
the desire to run. He stopped for several minutes on the corner to get
his bearings. As he stood there, poised for flight, his fear made him
seem almost graceful.

When several other people passed without paying any attention to him, he
quieted down. He adjusted the collar of his coat and prepared to cross
the street. Before he could take two steps someone called to him.

"Hey, you, mister."

It was a beggar who had spotted him from the shadow of a doorway. With
the infallible instinct of his kind, he knew that Homer would be easy.

"Can you spare a nickel?"

"No," Homer said without conviction.

The beggar laughed and repeated his question, threateningly.

"A nickel, mister!"

He poked his hand into Homer's face.

Homer fumbled in his change pocket and dropped several coins on the
sidewalk. While the man scrambled for them, he made his escape across the
street.

The SunGold Market into which he turned was a large, brilliantly lit
place. All the fixtures were chromium and the floors and walls were lined
with white tile. Colored spotlights played on the showcases and counters,
heightening the natural hues of the different foods. The oranges were
bathed in red, the lemons in yellow, the fish in pale green, the steaks
in rose and the eggs in ivory.

Homer went directly to the canned goods department and bought a can of
mushroom soup and another of sardines. These and a half a pound of soda
crackers would be enough for his supper.

Out on the street again with his parcel, he started to walk home. When he
reached the corner that led to Pinyon Canyon and saw how steep and black
the hill looked, he turned back along the lighted boulevard. He thought
of waiting until someone else started up the hill, but finally took a
taxicab.


10


Although Homer had nothing to do but prepare his scanty meals, he was not
bored. Except for the Romola Martin incident and perhaps one or two other
widely spaced events, the forty years of his life had been entirely
without variety or excitement. As a bookkeeper, he had worked
mechanically, totaling figures and making entries with the same
impersonal detachment that he now opened cans of soup and made his bed.

Someone watching him go about his little cottage might have thought him
sleep-walking or partially blind. His hands seemed to have a life and a
will of their own. It was they who pulled the sheets tight and shaped the
pillows.

One day, while opening a can of salmon for lunch, his thumb received a
nasty cut. Although the wound must have hurt, the calm, slightly
querulous expression he usually wore did not change. The wounded hand
writhed about on the kitchen table until it was carried to the sink by
its mate and bathed tenderly in hot water.

When not keeping house, he sat in the back yard, called the patio by the
real estate agent, in an old broken deck chair. He went out to it
immediately after breakfast to bake himself in the sun. In one of the
closets he had found a tattered book and he held it in his lap without
looking at it.

There was a much better view to be had in any direction other than the
one he faced. By moving his chair in a quarter circle he could have seen
a large part of the canyon twisting down to the city below. He never
thought of making this shift. From where he sat, he saw the closed door
of the garage and a patch of its shabby, tarpaper roof. In the foreground
was a sooty, brick incinerator and a pile of rusty cans. A little to the
right of them were the remains of a cactus garden in which a few ragged,
tortured plants still survived.

One of these, a clump of thick, paddlelike blades, covered with ugly
needles, was in bloom. From the tip of several of its topmost blades
protruded a bright yellow flower, somewhat like a thistle blossom but
coarser. No matter how hard the wind blew, its petals never trembled. A
lizard lived in a hole near the base of this plant. It was about five
inches long and had a wedge-shaped head from which darted a fine, forked
tongue. It earned a hard living catching the flies that strayed over to
the cactus from the pile of cans.

The lizard was self-conscious and irritable, and Homer found it very
amusing to watch. Whenever one of its elaborate stalks were foiled, it
would shift about uneasily on its short legs and puff out its throat. Its
coloring matched the cactus perfectly, but when it moved over to the cans
where the flies were thick, it stood out very plainly. It would sit on
the cactus by the hour without moving, then become impatient and start
for the cans. The flies would spot it immediately and after several
misses, it would sneak back sheepishly to its original post.

Homer was on the side of the flies. Whenever one of them, swinging too
widely, would pass the cactus, he prayed silently for it to keep on going
or turn back. If it lighted, he watched the lizard begin its stalk and
held his breath until it had killed, hoping all the while that something
would warn the fly. But no matter how much he wanted the fly to escape,
he never thought of interfering, and was careful not to budge or make the
slightest noise. Occasionally the lizard would miscalculate. When that
happened Homer would laugh happily.

Between the sun, the lizard and the house, he was fairly well occupied.
But whether he was happy or not it is hard to say. Probably he was
neither, just as a plant is neither. He had memories to disturb him and a
plant hasn't, but after the first bad night his memories were quiet.


11


He had been living this way for almost a month, when, one day, just as he
was about to prepare his lunch, the door bell rang. He opened it and
found a man standing on the step with a sample case in one hand and a
derby hat in the other. Homer hurriedly shut the door again.

The bell continued to ring. He put his head out of the window nearest the
door to order the fellow away, but the man bowed very politely and begged
for a drink of water. Homer saw that he was old and tired and thought
that he looked harmless. He got a bottle of water from the icebox, then
opened the door and asked him in.

"The name, sir, is Harry Greener," the man announced in sing-song,
stressing every other syllable.

Homer handed him a glass of water. He swallowed it quickly, then poured
himself another.

"Much obliged," he said with an elaborate bow. "That was indeed
refreshing."

Homer was astonished when he bowed again, did several quick jig steps,
then let his derby hat roll down his arm. It fell to the floor. He
stooped to retrieve it, straightening up with a jerk as though he had
been kicked, then rubbed the seat of his trousers ruefully.

Homer understood that this was to amuse, so he laughed.

Harry thanked him by bowing again, but something went wrong. The exertion
had been too much for him. His face blanched and he fumbled with his
collar.

"A momentary indisposition," he murmured, wondering himself whether he
was acting or sick.

"Sit down," Homer said.

But Harry wasn't through with his performance. He assumed a gallant smile
and took a few unsteady steps toward the couch, then tripped himself. He
examined the carpet indignantly, made believe he had found the object
that had tripped him and kicked it away. He then limped to the couch and
sat down with a whistling sigh like air escaping from a toy balloon.

Homer poured more water. Harry tried to stand up, but Homer pressed him
back and made him drink sitting. He drank this glass as he had the other
two, in quick gulps, then wiped his mouth with his handkerchief,
imitating a man with a big mustache who had just drunk a glass of foamy
beer.

"You are indeed kind, sir," he said. "Never fear, some day I'll repay you
a thousandfold."

Homer clucked.

From his pocket Harry brought out a small can and held it out for him to
take.

"Compliments of the house," he announced. "'Tis a box of Miracle
Solvent, the modern polish par excellence, the polish without peer or
parallel, used by all the movie stars..."

He broke off his spiel with a trilling laugh.

Homer took the can.

"Thank you," he said, trying to appear grateful. "H much is it?"

"The ordinary price, the retail price, is fifty cents, but you can have
it for the extraordinary price of a quarter, the wholesale price, the
price I pay at the factory."

"A quarter?" asked Homer, habit for the moment having got the better of
his timidity. "I can buy one twice that size for a quarter in the store."

Harry knew his man.

"Take it, take it for nothing," he said contemptuously. Homer was tricked
into protesting.

"I guess maybe this is a much better polish."

"No," said Harry, as though he were spurning a bribe. "Keep your money. I
don't want it."

He laughed, this time bitterly.

Homer pulled out some change and offered it.

"Take it, please. You need it, I'm sure. I'll have two cans."

Harry had his man where he wanted him. He began to practice a variety of
laughs, all of them theatrical, like a musician tuning up before a
concert. He finally found the right one and let himself go. It was a
victim's laugh.

"Please stop," Homer said.

But Harry couldn't stop. He was really sick. The last block that held him
poised over the runway of self-pity had been knocked away and he was
sliding down the chute, gaining momentum all the time. He jumped to his
feet and began doing Harry Greener, poor Harry, honest Harry,
well-meaning, humble, deserving, a good husband, a model father, a
faithful Christian, a loyal friend.

Homer didn't appreciate the performance in the least. He was terrified
and wondered whether to phone the police. But he did nothing. He just
held up his hand for Harry to stop.

At the end of his pantomime, Harry stood with his head thrown back,
clutching his throat, as though waiting for the curtain to fall. Homer
poured him still another glass of water. But Harry wasn't finished. He
bowed, sweeping his hat to his heart, then began again. He didn't get
very far this time and had to gasp painfully for breath. Suddenly, like a
mechanical toy that had been overwound, something snapped inside of him
and he began to spin through his entire repertoire. The effort was purely
muscular, like the dance of a paralytic. He jigged, juggled his hat, made
believe he had been kicked, tripped, and shook hands with himself. He
went through it all in one dizzy spasm, then reeled to the couch and
collapsed.

He lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his chest heaving. He was
even more surprised than Homer. He had put on his performance four or
five times already that day and nothing like this had happened. He was
really sick.

"You've had a fit," Homer said when Harry opened his eyes.

As the minutes passed, Harry began to feel better and his confidence
returned. He pushed all thought of sickness out of his mind and even went
so far as' to congratulate himself on having given the finest performance
of his career. He should be able to get five dollars out of the big dope
who was leaning over him.

"Have you any spirits in the house?" he asked weakly.

The grocer had sent Homer a bottle of port wine on approval and he went
to get it. He filled a tumbler half full and handed it to Harry, who
drank it in small sips, making the faces that usually go with medicine.

Speaking slowly, as though in great pain, he then asked Homer to bring in
his sample case.

"It's on the doorstep. Somebody might steal it. The greater part of my
small capital is invested in those cans of polish?"

When Homer stepped outside to obey, he saw a girl near the curb. It was
Faye Greener. She was looking at the house.

"Is my father in there?" she called out

"Mr. Greener?"

She stamped her foot.

"Tell him to get a move on, damn it. I don't want to stay here all day."

"He's sick."

The girl turned away without giving any sign that she either heard or
cared.

Homer took the sample case back into the house with him. He found Harry
pouring himself another drink.

"Pretty fair stuff," he said, smacking his lips over it. "Pretty fair,
all right, all right. Might I be so bold as to ask what you pay for a..."

Homer cut him short. He didn't approve of people who drank and wanted to
get rid of him.

"Your daughter's outside," he said with as much firmness as he could
muster. "She wants you."

Harry collapsed on the couch and began to breathe heavily. He was acting
again.

"Don't tell her," he gasped. "Don't tell her how sick her old daddy is.
She must never know."

Homer was shocked by his hypocrisy.

"You're better," he said as coldly as he could. "Why don't you go home?"

Harry smiled to show how offended and hurt he was by the heartless
attitude of his host. When Homer said nothing, his smile became one
expressing boundless courage. He got carefully to his feet, stood erect
for a minute, then began to sway weakly and tumbled back on the couch.
"I'm faint," he groaned.

Once again he was surprised and frightened. He was faint.

"Get my daughter," he gasped.

Homer found her standing at the curb with her back to the house. When he
called her, she whirled and came running toward him. He watched her for a
second, then went in, leaving the door unlatched.

Faye burst into the room. She ignored Homer and went straight to the
couch.

"Now what in hell's the matter?" she exploded.

"Darling daughter," he said. "I have been badly taken, and this gentleman
has been kind enough to let me rest for a moment."

"He had a fit or something," Homer said.

She whirled around on him so suddenly that he was startled.

"How do you do?" she said, holding her hand forward and high up.

He shook it gingerly.

"Charmed," she said, when he mumbled something. She spun around once
more.

"It's my heart," Harry said. "I can't stand up."

The little performance he put on to sell polish was familiar to her and
she knew that this wasn't part of it. When she turned to face Homer
again, she looked quite tragic. Her head, instead of being held far back,
now drooped forward.

"Please let him rest there," she said.

"Yes, of course."

Homer motioned her toward a chair, then got her a match for her
cigarette. He tried not to stare at her, but his good manners were
wasted. Faye enjoyed being stared at.

He thought her extremely beautiful, but what affected him still more was
her vitality. She was taut and vibrant. She was as shiny as a new spoon.

Although she was seventeen, she was dressed like a child of twelve in a
white cotton dress with a blue sailor collar. Her long legs were bare and
she had blue sandals on her feet.

"I'm so sorry," she said when Homer looked at her father again.

He made a motion with his hand to show that it was nothing.

"He has a vile heart, poor dear," she went on. "I've begged and begged
him to go to a specialist, but you men are all alike."

"Yes, he ought to go to a doctor," Homer said.

Her odd mannerisms and artificial voice puzzled him. "What time is it?"
she asked.

"About one o'clock."

She stood up suddenly and buried both her hands in her hair at the sides
of her head, making it bunch at the top in a shiny ball.

"Oh," she gasped prettily, "and I had a luncheon date."

Still holding her hair, she turned at the waist without moving her legs,
so that her snug dress twisted even tighter and Homer could see her
dainty, arched ribs and little, dimpled belly. This elaborate gesture,
like all her others, was so completely meaningless, almost formal, that
she seemed a dancer rather than an affected actress.

"Do you like salmon salad?" Homer ventured to ask.

"Salmon sal-ahde?"

She seemed to be repeating the question to her stomach. The answer was
yes.

"With plenty of mayonnaise, huh? I adore it."

"I was going to have some for lunch. I'll finish making it."

"Let me help."

They looked at Harry, who appeared to be asleep, then went into the
kitchen. While he opened a can of salmon, she climbed on a chair and
straddled it with her arms folded across the top of its back and rested
her chin on her arms. Whenever he looked at her, she smiled intimately
and tossed her pale, glittering hair first forward, then back.

Homer was excited and his hands worked quickly. He soon had a large bowl
of salad ready. He set the table with his best cloth and his best silver
and china.

"It makes me hungry just to look," she said.

The way she said this seemed to mean that it was Homer who made her
hungry and he beamed at her. But before he had a chance to sit down, she
was already eating. She buttered a slice of bread, covered the butter
with sugar and took a big bite. Then she quickly smeared a gob of
mayonnaise on the salmon and went to work. Just as he was about to sit
down, she asked for something to drink. He poured her a glass of milk and
stood watching her like a waiter. He was unaware of her rudeness.

As soon as she had gobbled up her salad, he brought her a large red
apple. She ate the fruit more slowly, nibbling daintily, her smallest
finger curled away from the rest of her hand. When she had finished it,
she went back to the living room and Homer followed her.

Harry still lay as they had left him, stretched out on the sofa. The
heavy noon-day sun hit directly on his face, beating down on him like a
club. He hardly felt its blows, however. He was busy with the stabbing
pain in his chest. He was so busy with himself that he had even stopped
trying to plan how to get money out of the big dope.

Homer drew the window curtain to shade his face.

Harry didn't even notice. He was thinking about death. Faye bent over
him. He saw, from under his partially closed eyelids, that she expected
him to make a reassuring gesture. He refused. He examined the tragic
expression that she had assumed and didn't like it. In a serious moment
like this, her ham sorrow was insulting.

"Speak to me, Daddy," she begged.

She was baiting him without being aware of it.

"What the hell is this," he snarled, "a Tom show?"

His sudden fury scared her and she straightened up with a jerk. He didn't
want to laugh, but a short bark escaped before he could stop it. He
waited anxiously to see what would happen. When it didn't hurt he laughed
again. He kept on, timidly at first, then with growing assurance. He
laughed with his eyes closed and the sweat pouring down his brow. Faye
knew only one way to stop him and that was to do something he hated as
much as she hated his laughter. She began to sing.

"Jeepers Creepers!
Where'd ya get those peepers?..."

She trucked, jerking her buttocks and shaking her head from side to side.

Homer was amazed. He felt that the scene he was witnessing had been
rehearsed. He was right. Their bitterest quarrels often took this form;
he laughing, she singing.

"Jeepers Creepers!
Where'd ya get those eyes?
Gosh, all git up!
How'd they get so lit up?
Gosh all git..."

When Harry stopped, she stopped and flung herself into a chair. But Harry
was only gathering strength for a final effort. He began again. This new
laugh was not critical; it was horrible. When she was a child, he used to
punish her with it. It was his masterpiece. There was a director who
always called on him to give it when he was shooting a scene in an insane
asylum or a haunted castle.

It began with a sharp, metallic crackle, like burning sticks, then
gradually increased in volume until it became a rapid bark, then fell
away again to an obscene chuckle. After a slight pause, it climbed until
it was the nicker of a horse, then still higher to become a machinelike
screech.

Faye listened helplessly with her head cocked on one side. Suddenly, she
too laughed, not willingly, but fighting the sound.

"You bastard!" she yelled.

She leaped to the couch, grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake
him quiet.

He kept laughing.

Homer moved as though he meant to pull her away, but he lost courage and
was afraid to touch her. She was so naked under her skimpy dress.

"Miss Greener," he pleaded, making his big hands dance at the end of his
arms. "Please, please..."

Harry couldn't stop laughing now. He pressed his belly with his hands,
but the noise poured out of him. It had begun to hurt again.

Swinging her hand as though it held a hammer, she brought her fist down
hard on his mouth. She hit him only once. He relaxed and was quiet.

"I had to do it," she said to Homer when he took her arm and led her
away.

He guided her to a chair in the kitchen and shut the door. She continued
to sob for a long time. He stood behind her chair, helplessly, watching
the rhythmical heave of her shoulders. Several times his hands moved
forward to comfort her, but he succeeded in curbing them.

When she was through crying, he handed her a napkin and she dried her
face. The cloth was badly stained by her rouge and mascara.

"I've spoilt it," she said, keeping her face averted. "I'm very sorry."

"It was dirty," Homer said.

She took a compact from her pocket and looked at herself in its tiny
mirror.

"I'm a fright."

She asked if she could use the bathroom and he showed her where it was.
He then tiptoed into the living room to see Harry. The old man's
breathing was noisy but regular and he seemed to be sleeping quietly.
Homer put a cushion under his head without disturbing him and went back
into the kitchen. He lit the stove and put the coffeepot on the flame,
then sat down to wait for the girl to return: He heard her go into the
living room. A few seconds later she came into the kitchen.

She hesitated apologetically in the doorway.

"Won't you have some coffee?"

Without waiting for her to reply, he poured a cup and moved the sugar and
cream so that she could reach them. "I had to do it," she said. "I just
had to."

"That's all right."

To show her that it wasn't necessary to apologize, he busied himself at
the sink.

"No, I had to," she insisted. "He laughs that way just to drive me wild.
I can't stand it. I simply can't."

"Yes."

"He's crazy. We Greeners are all crazy."

She made this last statement as though there were merit in being crazy.

"He's pretty sick," Homer said, apologizing for her. "Maybe he had a
sunstroke."

"No, he's crazy."

He put a plate of gingersnaps on the table and she ate them with her
second cup of coffee. The dainty crunching sound she made chewing
fascinated him.

When she remained quiet for several minutes, he turned from the sink to
see if anything was wrong. She was smoking a cigarette and seemed lost in
thought.

He tried to be gay.

"What are you thinking?" he said awkwardly, then felt foolish.

She sighed to show how dark and foreboding her thoughts were, but didn't
reply.

"I'll bet you would like some candy," Homer said. "There isn't any in the
house, but I could call the drugstore and they'd send it right over. Or
some ice cream?"

"No, thanks, please."

"It's no trouble."

"My father isn't really a peddler," she said, abruptly. "He's an actor.
I'm an actress. My mother was also an actress, a dancer. The theatre is
in our blood."

"I haven't seen many shows. I..."

He broke off because he saw that she wasn't interested. "I'm going to be
a star some day," she announced as though daring him to contradict her.

I'm sure you...

"It's my life. It's the only thing in the whole world that I want."

"It's good to know what you want. I used to be a bookkeeper in a hotel,
but..."

"If I'm not, I'll commit suicide."

She stood up and put her hands to her hair, opened her eyes wide and
frowned.

"I don't go to shows very often," he apologized, pushing the gingersnaps
toward her. "The lights hurt my eyes." She laughed and took a cracker.

"I'll get fat."

"Oh, no."

"They say fat women are going to be popular next year. Do you think so? I
don't. It's just publicity for Mae West." He agreed with her.

She talked on and on, endlessly, about herself and about the picture
business. He watched her, but didn't listen, and whenever she repeated a
question in order to get a reply, he nodded his head without saying
anything.

His hands began to bother him. He rubbed them against the edge of the
table to relieve their itch, but it only stimulated them. When he clasped
them behind his back, the strain became intolerable. They were hot and
swollen. Using the dishes as an excuse, he held them under the cold water
tap of the sink.

Faye was still talking when Harry appeared in the doorway. He leaned
weakly against the door jamb. His nose was very red, but the rest of his
face was drained white and he seemed to have grown too small for his
clothing. He was smiling, however.

To Homer's amazement, they greeted each other as though nothing had
happened.

"You okay now, Pop?"

"Fine and dandy, baby. Right as rain, fit as a fiddle and lively as a
flea, as the feller says."

The nasal twang he used in imitation of a country yokel made Homer smile.

"Do you want something to eat?" he asked. "A glass of milk, maybe?"

"I could do with a snack."

Faye helped him over to the table. He tried to disguise how weak he was
by doing an exaggerated Negro shuffle. Homer opened a can of sardines and
sliced some bread. Harry smacked his lips over the food, but ate slowly
and with an effort.

"That hit the spot, all righty right," he said when he had finished.

He leaned back and fished a crumpled cigar butt out of his vest pocket.
Faye lit it for him and he playfully blew a puff of smoke in her face.

"We'd better go, Daddy," she said.

"In a jiffy, child."

He turned to Homer.

"Nice place you've got here. Married?"

Faye tried to interfere.

"Dad!"

He ignored her.

"Bachelor, eh?"

"Yes."

"Well, well, a young fellow like you."

"I'm here for my health," Homer found it necessary to say.

"Don't answer his questions," Faye broke in.

"Now, now, daughter, I'm just being friendly like. I don't mean no harm."

He was still using an exaggerated backwoods accent. He spat dry into an
imaginary spittoon and made believe he was shifting a cud of tobacco from
cheek to cheek.

Homer thought his mimicry funny.

"I'd be lonesome and scared living alone in a big house like this," Harry
went on. "Don't you ever get lonesome?"

Homer looked at Faye for his answer. She was frowning with annoyance.

"No," he said, to prevent Harry from repeating the uncomfortable
question.

"No? Well, that's fine."

He blew several smoke rings at the ceiling and watched their behavior
judiciously.

"Did you ever think of taking boarders?" he asked.

"Some nice, sociable folks, I mean. It'll bring in a little extra money
and make things more homey."

Homer was indignant, but underneath his indignation lurked another idea,
a very exciting one. He didn't know what to say.

Faye misunderstood his agitation.

"Cut it out, Dad," she exclaimed before Homer could reply. "You've been a
big enough nuisance already."

"Just chinning," he protested innocently. "Just chewin' the fat."

"Well, then, let's get going," she snapped.

"There's plenty of time," Homer said.

He wanted to add something stronger, but didn't have the courage. His
hands were braver. When Faye shook good-bye, they clutched and refused to
let go.

Faye laughed at their warm insistence.

"Thanks a million, Mr. Simpson," she said. "You've been very kind. Thanks
for the lunch and for helping Daddy."

"We're very grateful," Harry chimed in. "You've done a Christian deed
this day. God will reward you."

He had suddenly become very pious.

"Please look us up," Faye said. "We live close-by in the San Berdoo
Apartments, about five blocks down the canyon. It's the big yellow
house."

When Harry stood, he had to lean against the table for support. Faye and
Homer each took him by the arm and helped him into the street. Homer held
him erect, while Faye went to get their Ford which was parked across the
street.

"We're forgetting your order of Miracle Salve," Harry said, "the polish
without peer or parallel."

Homer found a dollar and slipped it into his hand. He hid the money
quickly and tried to become businesslike.

"I'll leave the goods tomorrow."

"Yes, that'll be fine," Homer said. "I really need some silver polish."

Harry was angry because it hurt him to be patronized by a sucker. He made
an attempt to re-establish what he considered to be their proper
relationship by bowing ironically, but didn't get very far with the
gesture and began to fumble with his Adam's apple. Homer helped him into
the car and he slumped down in the seat beside Faye. They drove off. She
turned to wave, but Harry didn't even look back.


12


Homer spent the rest of the afternoon in the broken deck chair. The
lizard was on the cactus, but he took little interest in its hunting. His
hands kept his thoughts busy. They trembled and jerked, as though
troubled by dreams. To hold them still, he clasped them together. Their
fingers twined like a tangle of thighs in miniature. He snatched them
apart and sat on them.

When the days passed and he couldn't forget Faye, he began to grow
frightened. He somehow knew that his only defense was chastity, that it
served him, like the shell of a tortoise, as both spine and armor. He
couldn't shed it even in thought. If he did, he would be destroyed.

He was right. There are men who can lust with parts of themselves. Only
their brain or their hearts burn and then not completely. There are
others, still more fortunate, who are like the filaments of an
incandescent lamp. They bum fiercely, yet nothing is destroyed. But in
Homer's case it would be like dropping a spark into a barn full of hay.
He had escaped in the Romola Martin incident, but he wouldn't escape
again. Then, for one thing, he had had his job in the hotel, a daily
all-day task that protected him by tiring him, but now he had nothing.

His thoughts frightened him and he bolted into the house, hoping to leave
them behind like a hat. He ran into his bedroom and threw himself down on
the bed. He was simple enough to believe that people don't think while
asleep.

In his troubled state, even this delusion was denied him and he was
unable to fall asleep. He closed his eyes and tried to make himself
drowsy. The approach to sleep which had once been automatic had somehow
become a long, shining tunnel. Sleep was at the far end of it, a soft bit
of shadow in the hard glare. He couldn't run, only crawl toward the black
patch. Just as he was about to give up, habit came to his rescue. It
collapsed the shining tunnel and hurled him into the shadow.

When he awoke it was without a struggle. He tried to fall asleep once
more, but this time couldn't even find the tunnel. He was thoroughly
awake. He tried to think of how very tired he was, but he wasn't tired.
He felt more alive than he had at any time since Romola Martin.

Outside a few birds still sang intermittently, starting and breaking off,
as though sorry to acknowledge the end of another day. He thought that he
heard the lisp of silk against silk, but it was only the wind playing in
the trees. How empty the house was! He tried to fill it by singing.

"Oh, say can you see,
By the dawn's early light..."

It was the only song he knew. He thought of buying a victrola or a radio.
He knew, however, that he would buy neither. This fact made him very sad.
It was a pleasant sadness, very sweet and calm.

But he couldn't let well enough alone. He was impatient and began to prod
at his sadness, hoping to make it acute and so still more pleasant. He
had been getting pamphlets in the mail from a travel bureau and he
thought of the trips he would never take. Mexico was only a few hundred
miles away. Boats left daily for Hawaii.

His sadness turned to anguish before he knew it and became sour. He was
miserable again. He began to cry.

Only those who still have hope can benefit from tears. When they finish,
they feel better. But to those without hope, like Homer, whose anguish is
basic and permanent, no good comes from crying. Nothing changes for them.
They usually know this, but still can't help crying.

Homer was lucky. He cried himself to sleep.

But he awoke again in the morning with Faye uppermost in his mind. He
bathed, ate breakfast and sat in his deck chair. In the afternoon, he
decided to go for a walk. There was only one way for him to go and that
led past the San Bernardino Apartments.

Some time during his long sleep he had given up the battle. When he came
to the apartment house, he peered into the amber-lit hallway and read the
Greener card on the letter box, then turned and went home. On the next
night, he repeated the trip, carrying a gift of flowers and wine.


13


Harry Greener's condition didn't improve. He remained' in bed, staring at
the ceiling with his hands folded on his chest.

Tod went to see him almost every night. There were usually other guests.
Sometimes Abe Kusich, sometimes Anna and Annabelle Lee, a sister act of
the nineteen-tens, more often the four Gingos, a family of performing
Eskimos from Point Barrow, Alaska.

If Harry were asleep or there were visitors, Faye usually invited Tod
into her room for a talk. His interest in her grew despite the things she
said and he continued to find her very exciting. Had any other girl been
so affected, he would have thought her intolerable. Faye's affectations,
however, were so completely artificial that he found them charming.

Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous
play. From in front, the stupid lines and grotesque situations would have
made him squirm with annoyance, but because he saw the perspiring
stagehands and the wires that held up the tawdry summerhouse with its
tangle of paper flowers, he accepted everything and was anxious for it to
succeed.

He found still another way to excuse her. He believed that while she
often recognized the falseness of an attitude, she persisted in it
because she didn't know how to be simpler or more honest. She was an
actress who had learned from bad models in a bad school.

Yet Faye did have some critical ability, almost enough to recognize the
ridiculous. He had often seen her laugh at herself. What was more, he had
even seen her laugh at her dreams.

One evening they talked about what she did with herself when she wasn't
working as an extra. She told him that she often spent the whole day
making up stories. She laughed as she said it. When he questioned her,
she described her method quite willingly.

She would get some music on the radio, then lie down on her bed and shut
her eyes. She had a large assortment of stories to choose from. After
getting herself in the right mood, she would go over them in her mind, as
though they were a pack of cards, discarding one after another until she
found the one that suited. On some days, she would run through the whole
pack without making a choice. When that happened, she would either go to
Vine Street for an ice cream soda or, if she was broke, thumb over the
pack again and force herself to choose.

While she admitted that her method was too mechanical for the best
results and that it was better to slip into a dream naturally, she said
that any dream was better than no dream and beggars couldn't be choosers.
She hadn't exactly said this, but he was able to understand it from what
she did say. He thought it important that she smiled while telling him,
not with embarrassment, but critically. However, her critical powers
ended there. She only smiled at the mechanics.

The first time he had ever heard one of her dreams was late at night in
her bedroom. About half an hour earlier, she had knocked on his door and
had asked him to come and help her with Harry because she thought he was
dying. His noisy breathing, which she had taken for the death rattle, had
awakened her and she was badly frightened. Tod put on his bathrobe and
followed her downstairs. When he got to the apartment, Harry had managed
to clear his throat and his breathing had become quiet again.

She invited him into her room for a smoke. She sat on the bed and he sat
beside her. She was wearing an old beach robe of white toweling over her
pajamas and it was very becoming.

He wanted to beg her for a kiss but was afraid, not because she would
refuse, but because she would insist on making it meaningless. To flatter
her, he commented on her appearance. He did a bad job of it. He was
incapable of direct flattery and got bogged down in a much too roundabout
observation. She didn't listen and he broke off feeling like an idiot.

"I've got a swell idea," she said suddenly. "An idea how we can make some
real money."

He made another attempt to flatter her. This time by assuming an attitude
of serious interest.

"You're educated," she said. "Well, I've got some swell ideas for
pictures. All you got to do is write them up and then we'll sell them to
the studios."

He agreed and she described her plan. It was very vague until she came to
what she considered would be its results, then she went into concrete
details. As soon as they had sold one story, she would give him another.
They would make loads and loads of money. Of course she wouldn't give up
acting, even if she was a big success as a writer, because acting was her
life.

He realized as she went on that she was manufacturing another dream to
add to her already very thick pack. When she finally got through spending
the money, he asked her to tell him the idea he was to "write up,"
keeping all trace of irony out of his voice.

On the wall of the room beyond the foot of her bed was a large photograph
that must have once been used in the lobby of a theatre to advertise a
Tarzan picture. It showed a beautiful young man with magnificent muscles,
wearing only a narrow loin cloth, who was ardently squeezing a slim girl
in a torn riding habit. They stood in a jungle clearing and all around
the pair writhed great vines loaded with fat orchids. When she told her
story, he knew that this photograph had a lot to do with inspiring it.

A young girl is cruising on her father's yacht in the South Seas. She is
engaged to marry a Russian count, who is tall, thin and old, but with
beautiful manners. He is on the yacht, too, and keeps begging her to name
the day. But she is spoiled and won't do it. Maybe she became engaged to
him in order to spite another man. She becomes interested in a young
sailor who is far below her in station, but very handsome. She flirts
with him because she is bored. The sailor refuses to be toyed with no
matter how much money she's got and tells her that he only takes orders
from the captain and to go back to her foreigner. She gets sore as hell
and threatens to have him fired, but he only laughs at her. How can he be
fired in the middle of the ocean? She falls in love with him, although
maybe she doesn't realize it herself, because he is the first man who has
ever said no to one of her whims and because he is so handsome. Then
there is a big storm and the yacht is wrecked near an island. Everybody
is drowned, but she manages to swim to shore. She makes herself a hut of
boughs and lives on fish and fruit. It's the tropics. One morning, while
she is bathing naked in a brook, a big snake grabs her. She struggles but
the snake is too strong for her and it looks like curtains. But the
sailor, who has been watching her from behind some bushes, leaps to her
rescue. He fights the snake for her and wins.

Tod was to go on from there. He asked her how she thought the picture
should end, but she seemed to have lost interest. He insisted on hearing,
however.

"Well, he marries her, of course, and they're rescued. First they're
rescued and then they're married, I mean. Maybe he turns out to be a rich
boy who is being a sailor just for the adventure of it, or something like
that. You can work it out easy enough."

"It's sure-fire," Tod said earnestly, staring at her wet lips and the
tiny point of her tongue which she kept moving between them.

"I've got just hundreds and hundreds more."

He didn't say anything and her manner changed. While telling the story,
she had been full of surface animation and her hands and face were alive
with little illustrative grimaces and gestures. But now her excitement
narrowed and became deeper and its play internal. He guessed that she
must be thumbing over her pack and that she would soon select another
card to show him.

He had often seen her like this, but had never before understood it. All
these little stories, these little daydreams of hers, were what gave such
extraordinary color and mystery to her movements. She seemed always to be
struggling in their soft grasp as though she were trying to run in a
swamp. As he watched her, he felt sure that her lips must taste of blood
and salt and that there must be a delicious weakness in her legs. His
impulse wasn't to aid her to get free, but to throw her down in the soft,
warm mud and to keep her there.

He expressed some of his desire by a grunt. If he only had the courage to
throw himself on her. Nothing less violent than rape would do. The
sensation he felt was like that he got when holding an egg in his hand.
Not that she was fragile or even seemed fragile. It wasn't that. It was
her completeness, her egglike self-sufficiency, that made him want to
crush her.

But he did nothing and she began to talk again.

"I've got another swell idea that I want to tell you. Maybe you had
better write this one up first. It's a backstage story and they're
making a lot of them this year."

She told him about a young chorus girl who gets her big chance when the
star of the show falls sick. It was a familiar version of the Cinderella
theme, but her technique was much different from the one she had used for
the South Sea tale. Although the events she described were miraculous,
her description of them was realistic. The effect was similar to that
obtained by the artists of the Middle Ages, who, when doing a subject
like the raising of Lazarus from the dead or Christ walking on water,
were careful to keep all the details intensely realistic. She, like them,
seemed to think that fantasy could be made plausible by a humdrum
technique.

"I like that one, too," he said when she had finished.

"Think them over and do the one that has the best chance."

She was dismissing him and if he didn't act at once the opportunity would
be gone. He started to lean toward her, but she caught his meaning and
stood up. She took his arm with affectionate brusqueness--they were now
business partners--and guided him to the door.

In the hall, when she thanked him for coming down and apologized for
having disturbed him, he tried again. She seemed to melt a little and he
reached for her. She kissed him willingly enough, but when he tried to
extend the caress, she tore free.

"Whoa there, palsy-walsy," she laughed. "Mamma spank." He started for the
stairs.

"Good-bye now," she called after him, then laughed again.

He barely heard her. He was thinking of the drawings he had made of her
and of the new one he would do as soon as he got to his room.

In "The Burning of Los Angeles" Faye is the naked girl in the left
foreground being chased by the group of men and women who have separated
from the main body of the mob. One of the women is about to hurl a rock
at her to bring her down. She is running with her eyes closed and a
strange half-smile on her lips. Despite the dreamy repose of her face,
her body is straining to hurl her along at top speed. The only
explanation for this contrast is that she is enjoying the release that
wild flight gives in much the same way that a game bird must when, after
hiding for several tense minutes, it bursts from cover in complete,
unthinking panic.


14


Tod had other and more successful rivals than Homer Simpson. One of the
most important was a young man called Earle Shoop.

Earle was a cowboy from a small town in Arizona. He worked occasionally
in horse-operas and spent the rest of his time in front of a saddlery
store on Sunset Boulevard. In the window of this store was an enormous
Mexican saddle covered with carved silver, and around it was arranged a
large collection of torture instruments. Among other things there were
fancy, braided quirts, spurs with great spiked wheels, and double bits
that looked as though they could break a horse's jaw without trouble.
Across the back of the window ran a low shelf on which was a row of
boots, some black, some red and some a pale yellow. All of the boots had
scalloped tops and very high heels.

Earle always stood with his back to the window, his eyes fixed on a sign
on the roof of a one-story building across the street that read: "Malted
Milks Too Thick For A Straw." Regularly, twice every hour, he pulled a
sack of tobacco and a sheaf of papers from his shirt pocket and rolled a
cigarette. Then he tightened the cloth of his trousers by lifting his
knee and struck a match along the underside of his thigh.

He was over six feet tall. The big Stetson hat he wore added five inches
more to his height and the heels of his boots still another three. His
polelike appearance was further exaggerated by the narrowness of his
shoulders and by his lack of either hips or buttocks. The years he had
spent in the saddle had not made him bowlegged. In fact his legs were so
straight that his dungarees, bleached very light blue by the sun and much
washing, hung down without a wrinkle, as though they were empty.

Tod could see why Faye thought him handsome. He had a two-dimensional
face that a talented child might have drawn with a ruler and a compass.
His chin was perfectly round and his eyes, which were wide apart, were
also round. His thin mouth ran at right angles to his straight,
perpendicular nose. His reddish tan complexion was the same color from
hairline to throat, as though washed in by an expert, and it completed
his resemblance to a mechanical drawing.

Tod had told Faye that Earle was a dull fool. She agreed laughing, but
then said that he was "criminally handsome," an expression she had picked
up in the chatter column of a trade paper.

Meeting her on the stairs one night, Tod asked if she would go to dinner
with him.

"I can't. I've got a date. But you can come along."

"With Earle?"

"Yes, with Earle," she repeated, mimicking his annoyance.

"No, thanks."

She misunderstood, perhaps on purpose, and said, "He'll treat this time."

Earle was always broke and whenever Tod went with them he was the one who
paid.

"That isn't it, and you damn well know it."

"Oh, isn't it?" she asked archly, then, absolutely sure of herself,
added, "Meet us at Hodge's around five."

Hodge's was the saddlery store. When Tod got there, he found Earle Shoop
at his usual post, just standing and just looking at the sign across the
street. He had on his ten-gallon hat and his high-heeled boots. Neatly
folded over his left arm was a dark gray jacket. His shirt was navy-blue
cotton with large polka dots, each the size of a dime. The sleeves of his
shirt were not rolled, but pulled to the middle of his forearm and held
there by a pair of fancy, rose armbands. His hands were the same clean
reddish tan as his face.

"Lo, thar," was the way he returned Tod's salute.

Tod found his Western accent amusing. The first time he had heard it, he
had replied, "Lo, thar, stranger," and had been surprised to discover
that Earle didn't know he was being kidded. Even when Tod talked about
"cayuses," "mean hombres" and "rustlers," Earle took him seriously.

"Howdy, partner," Tod said.

Next to Earle was another Westerner in a big hat and boots, sitting on
his heels and chewing vigorously on a little twig. Close behind him was a
battered paper valise held together by heavy rope tied with
professional-looking knots.

Soon after Tod arrived a third man came along. He made a thorough
examination of the merchandise in the window, then turned and began to
stare across the street like the other two.

He was middle-aged and looked like an exercise boy from a racing stable.
His face was completely covered with a fine mesh of wrinkles, as though
he had been sleeping with it pressed against a roll of rabbit wire. He
was very shabby and had probably sold his big hat, but he still had his
boots.

"Lo, boys," he said.

"Lo, Hink," said the man with the paper valise.

Tod didn't know whether he was included in the greeting, but took a
chance and replied.

"Howdy."

Hink prodded the valise with his toe.

"Coin' some place, Calvin?" he asked.

"Azusa, there's a rodeo."

"Who's running it?"

"A fellow calls himself 'Badlands jack.'"

"That grifter!...You goin', Earle?"

"Nope."

"I gotta eat," said Calvin.

Hink carefully considered all the information he had received before
speaking again.

"Mono's makin' a new Buck Stevens," he said. "Will Ferris told me they'd
use more than forty riders."

Calvin turned and looked up at Earle.

"Still got the piebald vest?" he asked slyly.

"Why?"

"It'll cinch you a job as a road agent."

Tod understood that this was a joke of some sort because Calvin and Hink
chuckled and slapped their thighs loudly while Earle frowned.

There was another long silence, then Calvin spoke again. "Ain't your old
man still got some cows?" he asked Earle. But Earle was wary this time
and refused to answer. Calvin winked at Tod, slowly and elaborately,
contorting one whole side of his face.

"That's right, Earle," Hink said. "Your old man's still got some stock.
Why don't you go home?"

They couldn't get a rise out of Earle, so Calvin answered the question.

"He dassint. He got caught in a sheep car with a pair of rubber boots on."

It was another joke. Calvin and Hink slapped their thighs and laughed,
but Tod could see that they were waiting for something else. Earle,
suddenly, without even shifting his weight, shot his foot out and kicked
Calvin solidly in the rump. This was the real point of the joke. They
were delighted by Earle's fury. Tod also laughed. The way Earle had gone
from apathy to action without the usual transition was funny. The
seriousness of his violence was even funnier.

A little while later, Faye drove by in her battered Ford touring car and
pulled into the curb some twenty feet away. Calvin and Hink waved, but
Earle didn't budge. He took his time, as befitted his dignity. Not until
she tooted her horn did he move. Tod followed a short distance behind
him.

"Hi, cowboy," said Faye gaily.

"Lo, honey," he drawled, removing his hat carefully and replacing it with
even greater care. Faye smiled at Tod and motioned for them both to climb
in. Tod got in the back. Earle unfolded the jacket he was carrying,
slapped it a few times to remove the wrinkles, then put it on and
adjusted its collar and shaped the roll of its lapels. He then climbed in
beside Faye. She started the car with a jerk. When she reached LaBrea,
she turned right to Hollywood Boulevard and then left along it. Tod could
see that she was watching Earle out of the corner of her eye and that he
was preparing to speak.

"Get going," she said, trying to hurry him.

"What is it?"

"Looka here, honey, I ain't got any dough for supper." She was very much put out.

"But I told Tod we'd treat him. He's treated us enough times."

"That's all right," Tod interposed. "Next time'll do. I've got plenty of
money."

"No, damn it," she said without looking around. "I'm sick of it."

She pulled into the curb and slammed on the brakes.

"It's always the same story," she said to Earle.

He adjusted his hat, his collar and his sleeves, then spoke. "We've got
some grub at camp."

"Beans, I suppose."

"Nope."

She prodded him.

"Well, what've you got?"

"Mig and me's set some traps."

Faye laughed.

"Rat traps, eh? We're going to eat rats."

Earle didn't say anything.

"Listen, you big, strong, silent dope," she said, "either make sense, or
God damn it, get out of this car."

"They're quail traps," he said without the slightest change in his
wooden, formal manner.

She ignored his explanation.

"Talking to you is like pulling teeth. You wear me out." Tod knew that
there was no hope for him in this quarrel. He had heard it all before.

"I didn't mean nothing," Earle said. "I was only funning. I wouldn't feed
you rats."

She slammed off the emergency brake and started the car again. At
Zacarias Street, she turned into the hills. After climbing steadily for a
quarter of a mile, she reached a dirt road and followed it to its end.
They all climbed out, Earle helping Faye.

"Give me a kiss," she said, smiling her forgiveness.

He took his hat off ceremoniously and placed it on the hood of the car,
then wrapped his long arms around her. They paid no attention to Tod, who
was standing off to one side watching them. He saw Earle close his eyes
and pucker up his lips like a little boy. But there was nothing boyish
about what he did to her. When she had had as much as she wanted, she
pushed him away.

"You, too?" she called gaily to Tod, who had turned his back.

"Oh, some other time," he replied, imitating her casualness.

She laughed, then took out a compact and began to fix her mouth. When she
was ready, they started along a little path that was a continuation of
the dirt road. Earle led, Faye came next and Tod brought up the rear.

It was full spring. The path ran along the bottom of a narrow canyon and
wherever weeds could get a purchase in its steep banks they flowered in
purple, blue and yellow. Orange poppies bordered the path. Their petals
were wrinkled like crepe and their leaves were heavy with talcumlike
dust.

They climbed until they reached another canyon. This one was sterile, but
its bare ground and jagged rocks were even more brilliantly colored than
the flowers of the first. The path was silver, grained with streaks of
rose-gray, and the walls of the canyon were turquoise, mauve, chocolate
and lavender. The air itself was vibrant pink.

They stopped to watch a humming bird chase a blue jay. The jay flashed by
squawking with its tiny enemy on its tail like a ruby bullet. The gaudy
birds burst the colored air into a thousand glittering particles like
metal confetti.

When they came out of this canyon, they saw below them a little green
valley thick with trees, mostly eucalyptus, with here and there a poplar
and one enormous black live-oak. Sliding and stumbling down a dry wash,
they made for the valley.

Tod saw a man watching their approach from the edge of the wood. Faye
also saw him and waved.

"Hi, Mig!" she shouted.

"Chinita!" he called back.

She ran the last ten yards of the slope and the man caught her in his
arms.

He was toffee-colored with large Armenian eyes and pouting black lips.
His head was a mass of tight, ordered curls. He wore a long-haired
sweater, called a "gorilla" in and around Los Angeles, with nothing under
it. His soiled duck trousers were held up by a red bandanna handkerchief.
On his feet were a pair of tattered tennis sneakers.

They moved on to the camp which was located in a clearing in the center
of the wood. It consisted of little more than a ramshackle hut patched
with tin signs that had been stolen from the highway and a stove without
legs or bottom set on some rocks. Near the hut was a row of chicken
coops.

Earle started a fire under the stove while Faye sat down on a box and
watched him. Tod went over to look at the chickens. There was one old hen
and a half a dozen game cocks. A great deal of pains had been taken in
making the coops, which were of grooved boards, carefully matched and
joined. Their floors were freshly spread with peat moss.

The Mexican came over and began to talk about the cocks. He was very
proud of them.

"That's Hermano, five times winner. He's one of Street's Butcher Boys.
Pepe and El Negro are still stags. I fight them next week in San Pedro.
That's Villa, he's a blinker, but still good. And that one's Zapata,
twice winner, a Tassel Dom he is. And that's Jujutla. My champ."

He opened the coop and lifted the bird out for Tod. "A murderer is what
the guy is. Speedy and how!"

The cock's plumage was green, bronze and copper. Its beak was lemon
and its legs orange.

"He's beautiful," Tod said.

"I'll say."

Mig tossed the bird back into the coop and they went back to join the
others at the fire.

"When do we eat?" Faye asked.

Miguel tested the stove by spitting on it. He next found a large iron
skillet and began to scour it with sand. Earle gave Faye a knife and some
potatoes to peel, then picked up a burlap sack.

"I'll get the birds," he said.

Tod went along with him. They followed a narrow path that looked as
though it had been used by sheep until they came to a tiny field, covered
with high, tufted grass. Earle stopped behind a gum bush and held up his
hand to warn Tod.

A mocking bird was singing near by. Its song was like pebbles being
dropped one by one from a height into a pool of water. Then a quail began
to call, using two soft guttural notes. Another quail answered and the
birds talked back and forth. Their call was not like the cheerful whistle
of the Eastern bobwhite. It was full of melancholy and weariness, yet
marvelously sweet. Still another quail joined the duet. This one called
from near the center of the field. It was a trapped bird, but the sound
it made had no anxiety in it, only sadness, impersonal and without hope.

When Earle was satisfied that no one was there to spy on his poaching, he
went to the trap. It was a wire basket about the size of a washtub with a
small door in the top. He stooped over and began to fumble with the door.
Five birds ran wildly along the inner edge and threw themselves at the
wire. One of them, a cock, had a dainty plume on his head that curled
forward almost to his beak.

Earle caught the birds one at a time and pulled their heads off before
dropping them into his sack. Then he started back. As he walked along, he
held the sack under his left arm. He lifted the birds out with his right
hand and plucked them one at a time. Their feathers fell to the ground,
point first, weighed down by the tiny drop of blood that trembled on the
tips of their quills.

The sun went down before they reached the camp again. It grew chilly and
Tod was glad of the fire. Faye shared her seat on the box with him and
they both leaned forward into the heat.

Mig brought a jug of tequila from the hut. He filled a peanut butter jar
for Faye and passed the jug to Tod. The liquor smelled like rotten fruit,
but he liked the taste. When he had had enough, Earle took it and then
Miguel. They continued to pass it from hand to hand.

Earle tried to show Faye how plump the game was, but she wouldn't look.
He gutted the birds, then began cutting them into quarters with a pair of
heavy tin shears. Faye held her hands over her ears in order not to hear
the soft click made by the blades as they cut through flesh and bone.
Earle wiped the pieces with a rag and dropped them into the skillet where
a large piece of lard was already sputtering.

For all her squeamishness, Faye ate as heartily as the men did. There was
no coffee and they finished with tequila. They smoked and kept the jug
moving. Faye tossed away the peanut butter jar and drank like the others,
throwing her head back and tilting the jug.

Tod could sense her growing excitement. The box on which they were
sitting was so small that their backs touched and he could feel how hot
she was and how restless. Her neck and face had turned from ivory to
rose. She kept reaching for his cigarettes.

Earle's features were hidden in the shadow of his big hat, but the
Mexican sat full in the light of the fire. His skin glowed and the oil in
his black curls sparkled. He kept smiling at Faye in a manner that Tod
didn't like. The more he drank, the less he liked it.

Faye kept crowding Tod, so he left the box to sit on the ground where he
could watch her better. She was smiling back at the Mexican. She seemed
to know what he was thinking and to be thinking the same thing. Earle,
too, became aware of what was passing between them. Tod heard him curse
softly and saw him lean forward into the light and pick up a thick piece
of firewood.

Mig laughed guiltily and began to sing.

"Las palmeras lloran por to ausencia,
Las laguna se seco--ay!
La cerca de alambre que estaba en
El patio tambien se cayo!"

His voice was a plaintive tenor and it turned revolutionary song into a
sentimental lament, sweet cloying. Faye joined in when he began another
stanza. She didn't know the words, but she was able to carry melody and to
harmonize.

"Pues mi madre las cuidaba, ay!
Toditito se acabo--ay!"

Their voices touched in the thin, still air to form a minor chord and it
was as though their bodies had touched. The song was transformed again.
The melody remained the same, but the rhythm broke and its beat became
ragged. It was a rumba now.

Earle shifted uneasily and played with his stick. Tod saw her look at him
and saw that she was afraid, but instead of becoming wary, she grew still
more reckless. She took a long pull at the jug and stood up. She put one
hand on each of her buttocks and began to dance.

Mig seemed to have completely forgotten Earle. He clapped his hands,
cupping them to make a hollow, drum-like sound, and put all he felt into
his voice. He had changed to a more fitting song.

"Tony's wife,
The boys in Havana love Tony's wife..."

Faye had her hands clasped behind her head now and she rolled her hips to
the broken beat. She was doing the "bump."

"Tony's wife,
They're fightin' their duels about Tony's wife..."

Perhaps Tod had been mistaken about Earle. He was using his club on the
back of the skillet, using it to bang out the rhythm.

The Mexican stood up, still singing, and joined her in the dance. They
approached each other with short mincing steps. She held her skirt up and
out with her thumbs and forefingers and he did the same with his
trousers. They met head on, blue-black against pale gold, and used their
heads to pivot, then danced back to back with their buttocks touching,
their knees bent and wide apart. While Faye shook her breasts and her
head, holding the rest of her body rigid, he struck the soft ground
heavily with his feet and circled her. They faced each other again and
made believe they were cradling their behinds in a shawl.

Earle pounded the skillet harder and harder until it rang like an anvil.
Suddenly he, too, jumped up and began to dance. He did a crude hoe-down.
He leaped into the air and knocked his heels together. He whooped. But he
couldn't become part of their dance. Its rhythm was like a smooth glass
wall between him and the dancers. No matter how loudly he whooped or
threw himself around, he was unable to disturb the precision with which
they retreated and advanced, separated and came together again.

Tod saw the blow before it fell.. He saw Earle raise his stick and bring
it down on the Mexican's head. He heard the crack and saw the Mexican go
to his knees still dancing, his body unwilling or unable to acknowledge
the interruption.

Faye had her back to Mig when he fell, but she didn't turn to look. She
ran. She flashed by Tod. He reached for her ankle to pull her down, but
missed. He scrambled to his feet and ran after her.

If he caught her now, she wouldn't escape. He could hear her on the hill
a little way ahead of him. He shouted to her, a deep, agonized bellow,
like that a hound makes when it strikes a fresh line after hours of cold
trailing. Already he could feel how it would be when he pulled her to the
ground.

But the going was heavy and the stones and sand moved under his feet. He
fell prone with his face in a clump of wild mustard that smelled of the
rain and sun, clean, fresh and sharp. He rolled over on his back and
stared up at the sky. The violent exercise had driven most of the heat
out of his blood, but enough remained to make him tingle pleasantly. He
felt comfortably relaxed, even happy.

Somewhere farther up the hill a bird began to sing. He listened. At first
the low rich music sounded like water dripping on something hollow, the
bottom of a silver pot perhaps, then like a stick dragged slowly over the
strings of a harp. He lay quietly, listening.

When the bird grew silent, he made an effort to put Faye out of his mind
and began to think about the series of cartoons he was making for his
canvas of Los Angeles on fire. He was going to show the city burning at
high noon, so that the flames would have to compete with the desert sun
and thereby appear less fearful, more like bright flags flying from roofs
and windows than a terrible holocaust. He wanted the city to have quite a
gala air as it burned, to appear almost gay. And the people who set it on
fire would be a holiday crowd.

The bird began to sing again. When it stopped, Faye was forgotten and he
only wondered if he weren't exaggerating the importance of the people who
come to California to die. Maybe they weren't really desperate enough to
set 'a single city on fire, let alone the whole country. Maybe they were
only the pick of America's madmen and not at all typical of the rest of
the land.

He told himself that it didn't make any difference because he was an
artist, not a prophet. His work would not be judged by the accuracy with
which it foretold a future event but by its merit as painting.
Nevertheless, he refused to give up the role of Jeremiah. He changed
"pick of America's madmen" to "cream" and felt almost certain that the
milk from which it had been skimmed was just as rich in violence. The
Angelenos would be first, but their comrades all over the country would
follow. There would be civil war.

He was amused by the strong feeling of satisfaction this dire conclusion
gave him. Were all prophets of doom and destruction such happy men?

He stood up without trying to answer. When he reached the dirt road at
the top of the canyon Faye and the car were gone.


15


"She went to the pictures with that Simpson guy," Harry told him when he
called to see her the next night.

He sat down to wait for her. The old man was very ill and lay on the bed
with extreme care as though it were a narrow shelf from which he might
fall if he moved.

"What are they making on your lot?" he asked slowly, rolling his eyes
toward Tod without budging his head.

"'Manifest Destiny,' 'Sweet and Low Down,' 'Waterloo,' The Great Divide,'
Begging Your..."

"'The Great Divide'--" Harry said, interrupting eagerly. "I remember that
vehicle."

Tod realized he shouldn't have got him started, but there was nothing he
could do about it now. He had to let him run down like a clock.

"When it opened I was playing the Irving in a little number called 'Enter
Two Gents,' a trifle, but entertainment, real entertainment. I played a
Jew comic, a Ben Welch effect, derby and big pants--'Pat, dey hollered me
a chob in de Heagle Laundreh'...'Faith now, Ikey, and did y