THE CARPETBAGGERS
HAROLD ROBBINS
( INSTALMENT 14 )
TWO
I GOT OFF THE TRAIN AT RENO, WHILE MORRISSEY WENT ON TO LOS ANGELES. There was no time to call Robair at the ranch, so I took a taxi to the factory. We barreled through the steel-wire gate, under the big sign that read CORD EXPLOSIVES, now more than a mile from the main plant.
The factory had expanded tremendously since the war. For that matter, so had all our companies. It seemed that no matter what we did, there never was enough space.
I got out and paid the cabby and as he pulled away, I looked up at the familiar old building. It was worn now, and looked dingy and obsolete compared with the new additions, but its roof was gleaming white and shining in the sun. Somehow, I could never bring myself to move out of it when the other executives had moved their offices into the new administration building. I dropped my cigarette on the walk and ground it into dust beneath my heel, then went into the building.
The smell was the same as it always was and the whispers that rose from the lips of the men and women working there were the same as I always heard when I passed by "El hijo." The son. It had been twenty years and most of them hadn't even been there when my father died and still they called me that. Even the young ones, some of them less than half my age.
The office was the same, too. The heavy, oversized desk and leather-covered furniture now showed the cracks and wear of time. There was no secretary in the outer office and I was not surprised. There was no reason for one to be there. They hadn't expected me.
I walked around behind the desk and pressed the switch down on the squawk box that put me right through to McAllister's office in the new building, a quarter of a mile away. The surprise echoed in his voice as it came through the box. "Jonas! Where did you come from?"
"The Air Corps," I said. "We just delivered the CA-JET X.P."
"Good. Did they like it?"
"I guess they did," I answered. "They wouldn't trust me to take it up." I leaned over and opened the door of the cabinet below the telephone table, taking out the bottle of bourbon that was there. I put the bottle on the desk in front of me. "How do we stand on war-contract cancellations in case the war ends tomorrow?"
"For the explosive company?" Mac asked.
"For all the companies," I said. I knew he kept copies of every contract we ever made down here because he considered this his home office.
"It'll take a little time. I'll put someone on it right away."
"Like about an hour?"
He hesitated. When he spoke, a curious note came into his voice. "All right, if it's that important."
"It's that important."
"Do you know something?"
"No," I said truthfully. I really didn't know. I was only guessing. "I just want it."
There was silence for a moment, then he spoke again. "I just got the blueprints from Engineering on converting the radar and small-parts division of Aircraft to the proposed electronics company. Shall I bring them over?"
"Do that," I said, flipping up the switch. Taking a glass from the tray next to the Thermos jug, I filled it half full with bourbon. I looked across the room to the wall where the portrait of my father looked down on me. I held the glass up to him.
"It's been a long time, Pop," I said and poured the whisky down my throat
I took my hands from the blueprints on the desk and snapped and rolled them up tight, like a coil spring. I looked at McAllister. "They look all right to me, Mac."
He nodded. "I'll mark them approved and shoot them on to Purchasing to have them requisition the materials on standby orders, to be delivered when the war ends." He looked at the bottle of bourbon on the desk. "You're not very hospitable. How about a drink?"
I looked at him in surprise. Mac wasn't much for drinking. Especially during working hours. I pushed the bottle and a glass toward him. "Help yourself."
He poured a small shot and swallowed it neat. He cleared his throat. I looked at him. "There's one other postwar plan I wanted to talk to you about," he said awkwardly.
"Go ahead."
"Myself," he said hesitantly. "I’m not a young man any more. I want to retire."
"Retire?" I couldn't believe my ears. "What for? What in hell would you do?"
Mac flushed embarrassedly. "I've worked pretty hard all my life," he said. "I’ve got two sons and a daughter and five grandchildren, three of whom I've never seen. The wife and I would like to spend a little time with them, get to know them before it's too late."
I laughed. "You sound like you expect to kick off any minute. You're a young man yet."
"I'm sixty-three. I've been with you twenty years."
I stared at him. Twenty years. Where had they gone? The Army doctors had been right. I wasn't a kid any more, either. "We'll miss you around here," I said sincerely. "I don't know how we'll manage without you." I meant it, too. Mac was the one man I felt I could always depend on, whenever I had need for him.
"You'll manage all right. We've got over forty attorneys working for us now and each is a specialist in his own field. You're not just one man any more, you're a big company. You have to have a big legal machine to take care of you."
"So what?" I said. "You can't call up a machine in the middle of the night when you're in trouble."
"This machine you can. It's equipped for all emergencies."
"But what will you do? You can't tell me you'll be happy just lying around playing grandpa. You'll have to have something to occupy your mind."
"I've thought about that," he said, a serious look coming over his face. "I've been playing around so long with corporate and tax laws that I've almost forgotten about the most important part of all. The laws that have to do with human beings." He reached for the bottle again and poured himself another small drink. It wasn't easy for him to sit there and tell me what he was thinking.
"I thought I'd hang my shingle outside my house in some small town. Just putter around with whatever happened to come in the door. I'm tired of always talking in terms of millions of dollars. For once, I'd like to help some poor bastard who really needs it."
I stared at him. Work with a man for twenty years and still you don't know him. This was a side to McAllister that I'd never even suspected existed.
"Of course, we'll abrogate all of the contracts and agreements between us," he said.
I looked at him. I knew he didn't need the money. But then, neither did I. "Why in hell should we? Just show up at the board of directors' meeting every few months so at least I can see you once in a while."
"Then you—you agree?"
I nodded. "Sure, let's give it a spin when the war is over."
The sheets of white paper grew into a stack as he skimmed through the summary of each of the contracts. At last, Mac was finished and he looked up at me. "We have ample protective-cancellation clauses in all the contracts except one," he said. "That one is based on delivery before the end of the war."
"Which one is that?"
"That flying boat we're building for the Navy in San Diego."
I knew what he was talking about. The Centurion. It was to be the biggest airplane ever built, designed to carry a full company of one hundred and fifty men, in addition to the twelve-man crew, two light amphibious tanks and enough mortar, light artillery, weapons, ammunition and supplies for an entire company. It had been my idea that a plane like that would prove useful in landing raiding parties behind the lines out in the small Pacific islands.
"How come we made a contract like that?"
"You wanted it," he said. "Remember?"
I remembered. The Navy had been skeptical that the big plane could even get into the air, so I'd pressured them into making a deal predicated on a fully tested plane before the war ended. That was over seven months ago.
Almost immediately, we'd run into trouble. Stress tests proved that conventional metals would make the plane too heavy for the engines to lift into the air. We lost two months there, until the engineers came up with a Fiberglas compound that was less than one tenth the weight of metal and four times as strong. Then we had to construct special machinery to work the new material. I even brought Amos Winthrop down from Canada to sit in on the project. The old bastard had done a fantastic job up there and had a way of bulling a job through when no one else was able to.
The old leopard hadn't changed any of his spots, either. He had me by the shorts and he knew it. He held me up for a vice-presidency in Cord Aircraft before he'd come down.
"How much are we in for up to now?" I asked.
Mac looked down at the sheet. "Sixteen million, eight hundred seventy-six thousand, five hundred ninety-four dollars and thirty-one cents, as of June thirtieth."
"We're in trouble," I said, reaching for the telephone. The operator came on. "Get me Amos Winthrop in San Diego. And while I'm waiting to talk to him, call Mr. Dalton at the Inter-Continental Airlines office in Los Angeles and ask him to send down a special charter for me."
''What's the trouble?" Mac asked, watching me.
"Seventeen million dollars. We're going to blow it if we don't get that plane into the air right away."
Then Amos came on the phone. "How soon do you expect to get The Centurion into the sky?" I asked.
"We're coming along pretty good now. Just the finishing touches. I figure we ought to be able to lift her sometime in September or early October."
"What's missing?"
"The usual stuff. Mountings, fittings, polishing, tightening. You know."
I knew. The small but important part that took longer than anything else. But nothing really essential, nothing that would keep the plane from flying. "Get her ready," I said. "I'm taking her up tomorrow."
"Are you crazy? We've never even had gasoline in her tanks."
"Then fill her up."
"But the hull hasn't been water-tested yet," he shouted. "How do you know she won't go right to the bottom of San Diego Bay when you send her down the runway?"
"Then test it. You've got twenty-four hours to make sure she floats. I’ll be up there tonight, if you need a hand."
This was no cost-plus, money-guaranteed project, where the government picked up the tab, win, lose or draw. This was my money and I didn't like the idea of losing it.
For seventeen million dollars, The Centurion would fly if I had to lift her out of the water with my bare hands.
THREE
I HAD ROBAIR TAKE ME OUT TO THE RANCH, WHERE I TOOK A HOT SHOWER AND CHANGED MY CLOTHES BEFORE I GOT ON THE PLANE TO SAN DIEGO. I was just leaving the house when the telephone rang.
"It's for you, Mr. Jonas," Robair said. "Mr. McAllister."
I took the phone from his hand. "Yes, Mac?"
"Sorry to bother you, Jonas, but this is important."
"Shoot."
"Bonner just called from the studio," he said. "He's leaving at the end of the month to go over to Paramount. He's got a deal with them to make nothing but blockbusters."
"Offer him more money."
"I did. He doesn't want it. He wants out."
"What does his contract say?"
"It's over the end of this month," he said. "We cant hold him if he wants to go."
"To hell with him, then. If he wants to go, let him."
"We're in a hole," Mac said seriously. "We'll have to find someone to run the studio. You can't operate a motion-picture company without someone to make pictures."
That was nothing I didn't know. It was too bad that David Woolf wasn't coming back. I could depend on him. He felt the same way about movies that I did about airplanes. But he'd caught it at Anzio.
"I want to make San Diego tonight," I said. "Let me think about it and we'll kick it around in your office in L.A. the day after tomorrow." I had bigger worries on my mind just now. One Centurion cost almost as much as a whole year's production at the studio.
We landed at the San Diego Airport about one o'clock in the morning. I took a taxi right from there to the little shipyard we had rented near the Naval base. I could see the lights blazing from it ten blocks away. I smiled to myself. Leave it to Amos to get things done. He had a night crew working like mad, even if he had to break the blackout regulations to get it done.
I walked around the big old boat shed that we were using for a hangar just in time to hear someone yell, "Clear the runway!"
And then The Centurion came out of the hangar, tail first, looking for all the world like an ugly giant condor flying backward. Like a greased pig, it shot down the runway toward the water. A great roar came from the hangar and I was almost knocked over by a gang of men, who came running out after the plane. Before I knew it, they'd passed me and were down at the water's edge. I saw Amos in the crowd and he was yelling as much as any of them.
There was a great splash as The Centurion hit the water, a moment's groaning silence as the tail dipped backward, almost covering the three big rudders, and then a triumphant yell as she straightened herself out and floated easily on the bay. She began to turn, drifting away from the dock, and I heard the whir of the big winches as they spun the tie lines, drawing her back in.
The men were still yelling when I got to Amos. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I shouted, trying to make myself heard over the noise.
"What you told me to do—water-test her."
"You damn fool! You might've sunk her. Why didn't you get a pressure tank?"
"There wasn't time. The earliest I could've got one was three days. You said you were taking her up tomorrow."
The winches had hauled the plane partly back on the runway, with her prow out of the water. "Wait here a minute," Amos said, "I gotta get the men to work. They're all on triple time."
He went down the dock to where a workman had already placed a ladder against the side of the giant plane. Scrambling up like a man half his age, Amos opened the door just behind the cabin and disappeared into the plane. A moment later, I heard the whir of a motor from somewhere inside her and the giant boarding flap came down, opening a gaping maw in her prow that was big enough to drive a truck through. Amos appeared at the top of the ramp inside the plane. "O.K., men. You know what we gotta do. Shake the lead out. We ain't paying triple time for conversation."
He came back up the dock toward me and we walked back into his office. There was a
bottle of whisky on his desk. He took two paper cups from the wall container and began to
pour whisky into them. "You mean it about taking her up tomorrow?"
I nodded.
He shook his head. "I wouldn't," he said. "Just because she floats don't mean she'll fly. There's still too many things we're not sure of. Even if she does get up, there's no guarantee she'll stay up. She might even fall apart in the sky."
"That'll be rough," I said. "But, I'm taking her up, anyway."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You're the boss," he said, handing me one of the paper cups. He raised his to his lips. "Here's luck."
******
By two o'clock the next afternoon, we still weren't ready. The number-two starboard engine spit oil like a gusher every time we started it up and we couldn't find the leak. I stood on the dock, staring up at her. "We'll have to pull her off," Amos said, "and get her up to the shop."
I looked at him. "How long will that take?"
"Two, three hours. If we're lucky and find what's wrong right away. Maybe we better put off taking her up until tomorrow."
I looked at my watch. "What for? We'll still have three and a half hours of daylight at five o'clock." I started back toward his office. "I'm going back to your office and grab a snooze on the couch. Call me as soon as she's ready."
But I might as well have tried to sleep in a boiler factory, for all the shouting and cursing and hammering and riveting. Then the telephone rang and I got up to answer it. "Hello, Dad?" It was Monica's voice.
"No, this is Jonas. I’ll get him for you."
"Thanks."
Laying the telephone down on the desk, I went to the door and called Amos. I went back to the couch and stretched out as he picked up the phone. He shot a peculiar look at me when he heard her voice. "Yes, I'm a little busy." He was silent for a little while, listening to her. When he spoke again, he was smiling. "That's wonderful. When are you leaving? Then I’ll fly to New York when this job is finished. We'll have a celebration. Give my love to Jo-Ann."
He put down the telephone and came over to me. "That was Monica," he said, looking down at me.
"I know."
"She's leaving for New York this afternoon. S. J. Hardin just made her managing editor of Style and wants her back there right away."
"That's nice," I said.
"She's taking Jo-Ann back with her. You haven't seen the kid for a long time now, have you?"
"Not since the time you walked the two of them out of my apartment at the Drake in Chicago, five years ago."
"You oughta see her. The kid's turning into a real beauty."
I stared up at him. Now I'd seen everything—Amos Winthrop playing proud grandpa. "Man, you've really changed, haven't you?"
"Sooner or later, a man has to wise up," Amos said, flushing embarrassedly. "You find out you did a lot of fool things to hurt the people you love and if you're not a prick altogether, you try to make up for them."
"I heard about that, too," I said sarcastically. I wasn't in the mood for any lectures from the old bastard, no matter how much he'd reformed. "They tell me that generally happens when you can't get it up any more."
A trace of the old Amos came into his face. He was angry, I could see it. "I got a mind to tell you a couple of things."
"Like what, Amos?"
"Ready to remount the engine, Mr. Winthrop," a man called from the doorway.
"I'll be there in a minute." Amos turned back to me. "You remind me of this after we get back from the test flight."
I grinned, watching him walk out the door. At least, he hadn't gone so holy-holy that I couldn't get his goat. I sat up and started looking under the couch for my shoes.
When I got outside, the engine was turning over, sweet and smooth. "She seems O.K. to me now," Amos said, turning to me.
I looked at my watch. It was four thirty. "Then, let's go. What're we waiting for?"
He put a hand on my arm. "Sure I can't make you change your mind?"
I shook my head. Seventeen million dollars was a lot of argument. He raised his hands to his mouth, making a megaphone of them. "Everybody off the ship except the flight crew."
Almost immediately, there was a silence in the yard as the engine shut off. A few minutes later, the last of them came down the boarding flap. A man stuck his head out of the small window in the pilot's cabin. "Everybody off except the crew, Mr. Winthrop."
Amos and I walked up the flap into the plane, then up the small ladder from the cargo deck to the passenger cabin and on forward into the flight cabin. Three young men were there. They looked at me curiously. They were still wearing the hard hats from the shipyard.
"This is your crew, Mr. Cord," Amos said formally. "On the right, Joe Gates, radioman. In the middle, Steve Jablonski, flight engineer starboard engines, one, three and five. On the left, Barry Gold, flight engineer port engines, two, four and six. You don't have to worry about them. They're all Navy veterans and know their work."
We shook hands all around and I turned back to Amos. "Where's the copilot and navigator?"
"Right here," Amos said.
"Where?"
"Me."
"What the hell—"
He grinned at me. "You got anybody knows this baby better? Besides, I been sleeping every night with her for more than half a year. Who's got a better right to get a piece of her first ride?"
I stared at him for a moment. Then I gave in. I knew exactly how he felt. I felt the same way myself yesterday, when they wouldn't let me fly the jet.
I climbed up into the pilot's seat. "Take your stations, men."
"Aye, aye, sir."
I grinned to myself. They were Navy men, all right. I picked up the check list on the clip board. "Boarding ramp up," I said, reading.
A motor began to whine beneath me. A moment later, a red light flashed on the panel in front of me and the motor cut off. "Boarding ramp up, sir."
"Start engines one and two," I said, reaching forward and flicking down the switches that would let the flight engineers turn them over. The big engines coughed and belched black smoke. The propellers began to turn sluggishly, then the engines caught and the propellers settled into a smooth whine.
"Starboard engine one turning over, sir."
"Port engine two turning over, sir."
The next one on the check list was a new one for me. I smiled to myself. This wasn't an airplane, it was really a Navy ship with wings. "Cast off," I said.
From the seat to my right, Amos reached up and tripped the lever that released the tow lines. Another red light flashed on the panel before me and I could feel The Centurion slide back into the water. There was a slight backward dip as she settled in with a slight rocking motion. The faint sound of water slapping against her hull came up from beneath us. I leaned forward and turned the wheel. Slowly the big plane came about and started to move out toward the open bay. I looked over at Amos. He grinned at me.
I grinned back. So far, so good. At least we were seaborne.
FOUR
A WAVE BROKE ACROSS THE PROW OF THE PLANE, THROWING SALT SPRAY UP ON THE WINDOW IN FRONT OF ME, AS I CAME TO THE LAST ITEM ON THE CHECK LIST. There had been almost a hundred of them and it seemed like hours since we'd started. I looked down at my watch. It was only sixteen minutes since we'd left the dock. I looked out the windows. The six big engines were turning over smoothly, the propellers flashing with sun and spray. I felt a touch on my shoulder and looked back.
The radioman stood behind me, an inflatable Mae West in one hand and a parachute pack hanging from the other. "Emergency dress, sir."
I looked at him. He was already wearing his; so were the other two men. "Put it behind my seat."
I looked across at Amos. He already had the vest on and was tightening the cross belt of the parachute. He sank back into his seat with an uncomfortable grunt. He looked at me.
"You ought to put it on."
"I’ve got a superstition about 'em," I said. "If you don't wear 'em, you'll never need 'em." He didn't answer, shrugging his shoulders as the radioman went back to his seat and fastened his seat belt. I looked around the cabin. "Secure in flight stations?"
They all answered at once. "Aye, aye, sir!"
I reached forward and flipped the switch on the panel and all the lights turned from red to green. From now on, they'd only go back to red if we were in trouble. I turned the plane toward the open sea. "O.K., men. Here we go!"
I opened the throttle slowly. The big plane lurched, its prow digging into the waves then slowly lifting as the six propellers started to chew up the air. Now we started to ride high, like a speedboat in the summer races. I looked at the panel. The air-speed indicator stood at ninety.
Amos' voice came over to me. "Calculated lift velocity, this flight, one ten."
I nodded without looking at him and kept opening the throttle. The needle went to one hundred, then one ten. The waves were beating against the bottom of the hull like a riveting hammer. I brought the needle up to one fifteen, then I started to ease back on the stick.
For a moment, nothing happened and I increased our speed to one twenty. Suddenly, The Centurion seemed to tremble, then jump from the water. Free of the restraining drag, she seemed to leap into the air. The needle jumped to one sixty and the controls moved easily in my hands. I looked out the window. The water was two hundred feet beneath us. We were airborne.
"Hot damn!" one of the men behind me muttered.
Amos squirmed around in his seat. "O.K., fellers," he said, sticking out his hand. "Pay me!" He looked over at me and grinned. "Each of these guys bet me a buck we'd never get off the water."
I flashed a grin at him and kept the ship in a slow climb until we reached six thousand feet. Then I turned her west and aimed her right at the setting sun.
"She handles like a baby carriage." Amos chortled gleefully from his seat.
I looked up at him from behind the radioman, where I had been standing as he explained the new automatic signaling recorder. All you had to do was give your message once, then turn on the automatic and the wire recorder would repeat it over and over again until the power gave out.
The sun had turned Amos' white hair back to the flaming red of his youth. I looked down at my watch. It was six fifteen and we were about two hundred miles out over the Pacific.
"Better turn her around and take her back, Amos," I said. "I don't want it to be dark the first time we put her down."
"The term in the Navy, captain, is 'Put her about'." The radioman grinned at me.
"O.K., sailor," I said. I turned to Amos. "Put her about."
"Aye, aye, sir."
We went into a gentle banking turn as I bent over the radioman's shoulder again. Suddenly, the plane lurched and I almost fell over him. I grabbed at his shoulder as the starboard engineer yelled, "Number five's gone bad again."
I pushed myself toward my seat as I looked out the window. The engine was shooting oil like a geyser. "Kill it!" I shouted, strapping myself into my seat.
The cords on Amos' neck stood out like steel wire as he fought the wheel on the suddenly bucking plane. I grabbed at my wheel and together we held her steady. Slowly she eased off in our grip.
"Number five dead, sir," the engineer called.
I glanced out at it. The propeller turned slowly with the wind force but the oil had stopped pouring from the engine. I looked at Amos. His face was white and perspiration was dripping from it, but he managed a smile. "We can make it back on five engines without any trouble."
"Yeah." We could make it back on three engines, according to the figures. But I wouldn't like to try it. I looked at the panel. The red light was on for the number-five engine. While I was watching, a red light began to flicker on and off at number four. "What the hell?"
It began to sputter and cough even as I turned to look at it. "Check number four!" I yelled. I turned back to the panel. The red light was on for the number-four fuel line.
"Number-four fuel line clogged!"
"Blow it out with the vacuum!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" I heard the click as he turned on the vacuum pump. Another red light jumped on in front of me. "Vacuum pump out of commission, sir!"
"Kill number four!" I said. There was no percentage in leaving the line open in the hopes that it would clear itself. Clogged fuel lines have a tendency to turn into fires. And we still had four engines left.
"Number four dead, sir!"
I heaved a sigh of relief after ten minutes had gone by and there was nothing new to worry about. "I think we'll be O.K. now," I said.
I should have kept my big fat mouth shut. No sooner had I spoken than the number-one engine started to choke and sputter and the instrument panel in front of me began to light up like a Christmas tree. The number-six engine began to choke.
"Main fuel pump out!"
I threw a glance at the altimeter. We were at five thousand and dropping. "Radio emergency and prepare to abandon ship!" I shouted.
I heard the radioman's voice. "Mayday! Mayday! Cord Aircraft Experimental. Going down Pacific. Position approx one two five miles due west San Diego. I repeat, position approx one two five miles due west San Diego. Mayday! Mayday!"
I heard a loud click and the message began over again. I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked around quickly. It was the radioman. There was a faint surprise in the back of my mind until I remembered the recorder was now broadcasting the call for help. "We'll stay if you want us, sir," he said tensely.
"This isn't for God and country, sailor! This is for money. Get goin'!"
I looked over at Amos, who was still in his seat. "You, too, Amos!"
He didn't answer. Just pulled off his safety belt and got out of his seat. I heard the cabin door behind me open as they went through to the emergency door in the passenger compartment.
The altimeter read thirty-eight hundred and I killed the one and six engines. Maybe I could set her down on the water if the two remaining engines could hold out on the fuel that would be diverted from the others. We were at thirty-four hundred when the red light for the emergency door flashed on as it opened. I cast a quick look back out the window. Three parachutes opened, one after the other, in rapid succession. I looked at the board. Twenty-eight hundred.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. It was Amos, getting back into his seat. "I told you to get out!" I yelled.
He reached for the wheel. "The kids are off and safe. I figure between the two of us, we got a chance to put her down on top of the water."
"Suppose we don't?" I yelled angrily.
"We won't be missing much. We ain't got as much time to lose as they have. Besides, this baby cost a lot of dough!"
"So what?" I yelled. "It's not your money!"
There was a curiously disapproving look on his face. "Money isn't the only thing put into this plane. I built her!"
We were at nine hundred feet when number three began to conk out. We threw our weight against the wheel to compensate for the starboard drag. At two hundred feet, the number-three engine went out and we heeled over to the starboard. "Cut the engines!" Amos yelled. "We're going to crash!"
I flipped the switch just as the starboard wing bit into the water. It snapped off clean as a matchstick and the plane slammed into the water like a pile driver. I felt the seat belt tear into my guts until I almost screamed with the pressure, then suddenly it eased off. My eyes cleared and I looked out. We were drifting on top of the water uneasily, one wing pointing to the sky. Water was already trickling into the cabin under our feet.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Amos yelled, moving toward the cabin door, which had snapped shut. He turned the knob and pushed. Then he threw himself against it. The door didn't move. "It's jammed!" he yelled, turning to me.
I stared at him and then jumped for the pilot's emergency hatch over our heads. I pulled the hatch lock with one hand and pushed at the hatch with the other. Nothing happened. I looked up and saw why. The frame had buckled, locking it in. Nothing short of dynamite would open it.
Amos didn't wait for me to tell him. He pulled a wrench from the emergency tool kit and smashed at the glass until there was only a jagged frame left in the big port. He dropped the wrench, picked up the Mae West and threw it at me. I slipped into it quickly, making sure the automatic valve was set so it would work the minute I hit the water.
"O.K.," he said. "Out you go!"
I grinned at him. "Traditions of the sea, Amos. Captain's last off the ship. After you, Alphonse."
"You crazy, man?" he shouted. "I couldn't get out that port if they cut me in half."
"You ain't that big," I said. "We're going to give it a try."
Suddenly, he smiled. I should have known better than to trust Amos when he smiled like that. That peculiarly wolfish smile came over him only when he was going to do you dirty. "All right, Gaston. You're the captain."
"That's better," I said, bracing myself and making a sling step with my hands to boost him up to the port. "I knew you'd learn someday who's boss."
But he never did. And I never even saw what he hit me with. I sailed into Dream Street with a full load on. I was out but I wasn't all the way out. I knew what was going on but there was nothing I could do about it. My arms and legs and head, even my body—they all belonged to someone else.
I felt Amos push me toward the port, then there was a burning sensation, like a cat raking her claws across your face. But I was through the narrow port and falling. Falling about a thousand miles and a thousand hours and I was still looking for the rip cord on my parachute when I crashed in a heap on the wing.
I pulled myself to my feet and tried to climb back the cabin wall to the port. "Come on out of there, you no-good, dirty son of a bitch!" I yelled. I was crying. "Come on outa there and I’ll kill you!"
Then the plane lurched and a broken piece of something came flying up from the wing and hit me in the side, knocking me clear out into the water. I heard the soft hiss of compressed air as the Mae West began to wrap her legs around me. I put my head down on those big soft pillows she had and went to sleep.
FIVE
IN NEVADA, WHERE I WAS BORN AND RAISED, THERE IS MOSTLY SAND AND ROCKS AND A FEW SMALL MOUNTAINS. But there are no oceans. There are streams and lakes, and swimming pools at every country club and hotel, but they're all filled with fresh, sweet water that bubbles in your mouth like wine, if you should happen to drink it instead of bathe in it.
I've been in a couple of oceans in my time. In the Atlantic, off Miami Beach and Atlantic City, in the Pacific, off Malibu, and in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, off the Riviera. I've even been in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, off the white, sandy beach of Bermuda, chasing a naked girl whose only ambition was to do it like a fish. I never did get to find out the secret of how the porpoises made it, because somehow, in the salt water, everything eluded me. I never did like salt water. It clings too heavily to your skin, burns your nose, irritates your eyes. And if you happen to get a mouthful, it tastes like yesterday's leftover mouthwash.
So what was I doing here?
Hot damn, little man, all the stars are out and laughing at you. This'll teach you some respect for the oceans. You don't like salt water, eh? Well, how do you like a million, billion, trillion gallons of it? A gazillion gallons?
"Aah, the hell with you," I said and went back to sleep.
******
I came trotting around the corner of the bunkhouse as fast as my eight-year-old legs could carry me, dragging the heavy cartridge belt and holstered gun in the sand behind me.
I heard my father's voice. "Hey, boy! What have you got there?"
I turned to face him, trying to hide the belt and gun behind me. "Nothin'," I said, not looking up at him.
"Nothing?" my father repeated after me. "Then, let me see."
He reached around behind me and tugged the belt out of my grip. As he raised it, the gun and a folded piece of paper fell from the holster. He bent down and picked them up. "Where'd you get this?"
"From the wall in the bunkhouse near Nevada's bed," I said. "I had to climb up."
My father put the gun back in the holster. It was a black gun, a smooth, black gun with the initials M. S. on its black butt. Even I was old enough to know that somebody had made a mistake on Nevada's initials.
My father started to put the folded piece of paper back into the holster but he dropped it and it fluttered open. I could see it was a picture of Nevada, with some numbers above it and printing below. My father stared at it for a moment, then refolded the paper and shoved it into the holster.
"You put this back where you got it," he said angrily. I could tell he was mad. "Don't you ever let me catch you taking what doesn't belong to you again or I’ll whomp you good."
"Ain't no need to whomp 'im, Mr. Cord." Nevada's voice came from behind us. "It's my fault for leavin' it out where the boy could get to it." We turned around. He was standing there, his Indian face dark and expressionless, holding out his hand. "If you'll jus' give it to me, I'll put it back."
Silently my father handed him the gun and they stood there looking at each other. Neither of them spoke a word. I stared up at them, bewildered. Both seemed to be searching each other's eyes. At last, Nevada spoke. "I’ll draw my time if you want, Mr. Cord."
I knew what that meant. Nevada was going away. Immediately, I set up a howl. "No," I screamed. "I won't do it again. I promise."
My father looked down at me for a moment, then back at Nevada. A faint smile came into his eyes. "Children and animals, they really know what they want, what's best for them."
"They do say that."
"You better put that away where nobody'll ever find it."
The faint smile was in Nevada's eyes now. "Yes, Mr. Cord. I sure will."
My father looked down at me and his smile vanished. "You hear me, boy? Touch what isn't yours and you'll get whomped good."
"Yes, Father," I answered, loud and strong. "I hear you."
******
I got a mouthful of salt water and I coughed and choked and sputtered and spit it out. I opened my eyes. The stars were still blinking at me but over in the east, the sky was starting to turn pale. I thought I heard the sound of a motor in the distance but it was probably only an echo ringing in my ears.
There was a pain in my side and down my leg, like I'd gone to sleep on it. When I moved, it shot up to my head and made me dizzy. The stars began to spin around and I got tired just watching them, so I went back to sleep.
The sun on the desert is big and strong and rides the sky so close to your head that sometimes you feel like if you reached up to touch it, you'd burn your fingers. And when it's hot like that, you pick your way carefully around the rocks, because under them, in the shade, sleeping away the heat of the day, are the rattlers, coiled and sluggish, with the unhappy heat in their chilled blood. They're quick to anger, quick to attack, with their vicious spittle, if by accident you threaten their peace. People are like that, too.
Each of us has his own particular secret rock, under which we hide, and woe to you if you should happen to stumble across it. Because then we're like the rattlers on the desert, lashing out blindly at whoever happens to come by.
"But I love you," I said and even as I said them, I knew the hollowness of my words.
And she must have known, too, for in her scathing self-denunciation, she was accusing me with the sins of all the men she'd known. And not unjustly, for they were also my sins.
"But I love you," I repeated and as I said it, I knew she recognized the weakness in my words. They turned empty and hollow in my mouth. If I had been honest, even unto my secret self, this is what I would have said; "I want you. I want you to be what I want you to be. A reflection of the image of my dreams, the mirror of my secret desires, the face that I desire to show the world, the brocade with which I embroider my glory. If you are all these things, I will grace you with my presence and my house. But these are not for what you are, but for me and what I want you to be."
And I did little but stand there, mumbling empty platitudes, while the words that spilled from her mouth were merely my own poison, which she turned into herself. For unknowing, she had stumbled across my secret rock.
I stood there in the unaccustomed heat and blazing brightness of the sun, secretly ashamed of the cool chill of the blood that ran through my veins and set me apart from the others of this earth. And unprotesting, I let her use my venom to destroy herself.
And when the poison had done its work, leaving her with nothing but the small, frightened, unshrivened soul of her beginnings, I turned away.
With the lack of mercy peculiar to my kind, I turned my back. I ran from her fears, from her need of comfort and reassurance, from her unspoken pleading for mercy and love and understanding. I fled the hot sun, back to the safety of my secret rock.
But now there was no longer comfort in its secret shade, for the light continued to seep through, and there was no longer comfort in the cool detached flowing of my blood. And the rock seemed to be growing smaller and smaller while the sun was growing larger and larger. I tried to make myself tinier, to find shelter beneath the rock's shrinking surface, but there was no escape. Soon there would be no secret rock for me. The sun was growing brighter and brighter. Brighter and brighter.
I opened my eyes.
There was a tiny pinpoint of light shining straight into them. I blinked and the penetrating pinpoint moved to one side. I could see beyond it now. I was lying on a table in a white room and beside me was a man in a white gown and a white skullcap. The light came from the reflection in a small, round mirror that he wore over his eye as he looked down at me. I could see on his face the tiny black hairs that the razor had missed. His lips were grim and tight.
"My God!" The voice came from behind him. "His face is a mess. There must be a hundred pieces of glass in it."
My eyes flickered up and saw the second man as the first turned toward him. "Shut up, you fool! Can't you see he's awake?"
I began to raise my head but a light, quick hand was on my shoulder, pressing me back, and then her face was there. Her face, looking down at me with a mercy and compassion that mine had never shown.
"Jennie!"
Her hand pressed against my shoulder. She looked up at someone over my head. "Call Dr. Rosa Strassmer at Los Angeles General or the Colton Sanitarium in Santa Monica. Tell her Jonas Cord has been in a bad accident and to come right away."
"Yes, Sister Thomas." It was a young girl's voice and it came from behind me. I heard footsteps moving away.
The pain was coming back into my side and leg again and I gritted my teeth. I could feel it forcing the tears into my eyes. I closed them for a moment, then opened them and looked up at her. "Jennie!" I whispered. "Jennie, I'm sorry!"
"It's all right, Jonas," she whispered back. Her hands went under the sheet that covered me. I felt a sharp sting in my arm. "Don't talk. Everything's all right now."
I smiled gratefully and went back to sleep, wondering vaguely why Jennie was wearing that funny white veil over her beautiful hair.
SIX
FROM OUTSIDE MY WINDOWS, FROM THE STREETS, BRIGHT NOW WITH THE MORNING SUN, STILL CAME THE SOUNDS OF CELEBRATION. Even this usually staid and quiet part of Hillcrest Drive skirting Mercy Hospital was filled with happy noises and throngs of people. From the Naval Station across the city of San Diego came the occasional triumphant blast of a ship's horn. It had been like this all through the night, starting early the evening before, when the news came. Japan had surrendered. The war was over.
I knew now what Otto Strassmer had been trying to tell me. I knew now of the miracle in the desert. From the newspapers and from the radio beside my bed. They had all told the story of the tiny container of atoms that had brought mankind to the gates of heaven. Or hell. I shifted in my bed to find another position of comfort, as the pulleys that suspended my leg in traction squeaked, adding their mouselike sound to the others.
I had been lucky, one of the nurses told me. Lucky. My right leg had been broken in three places, my right hip in another, and several ribs had been crushed. Yet I still looked out at the world, from behind the layer of thick bandages which covered all of my face, except the slits for my eyes, nose and mouth. But I'd been lucky. At least I was still alive.
Not like Amos, who still sat in the cabin of The Centurion as it rested on the edge of a shelf of sand, some four hundred odd feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Poor Amos. The three crewmen had been found unscathed and I was still alive, by the grace of God and the poor fishermen who found me floating in the water and brought me to shore, while Amos sat silent in his watery tomb, still at the controls of the plane he had built and would not let me fly alone.
I remembered the accountant's voice over the telephone from Los Angeles as he spoke consolingly. "Don't worry, Mr. Cord. We can write it all off against taxes on profits. When you apply the gross amount to the normal tax of forty per cent and the excess-profits tax of ninety per cent, the net loss to us comes to under two million—"
I had slammed down the phone, cutting him off. It was all well and good. But how do you charge off on a balance sheet the life of a man who was killed by your greed? Is there an allowable deduction for death on the income-tax returns? It was I who had killed Amos and no matter how many expenses I deducted from my own soul, I could not bring him back.
The door opened and I looked up. Rosa came into the room, followed by an intern and a nurse wheeling a small cart. She came over to the left side of my bed and stood there, smiling down at me. "Hello, Jonas."
"Hello, Rosa," I mumbled through the bandages. "Is it time to change them again? I didn't expect you until the day after tomorrow."
"The war is over."
"Yes," I said. "I know."
"And when I got up this morning, it was such a beautiful morning, I decided to fly down here and take off your bandages."
I peered up at her. "I see," I said. "I always wondered where doctors got their logic."
"That isn't doctor's logic, that's woman's logic. I have the advantage of having been a woman long before I became a doctor."
I laughed. "I’m grateful for the logic, whichever one of you it belongs to. It will be nice to have the bandages off, even for a little while."
She was still smiling, though her eyes were serious. "This time, they're coming off for good, Jonas."
I stared at her as she picked up a scissors from the cart. I reached up and stayed her hand. Suddenly, I was afraid to have her remove the bandages. I felt safe having them wrapped about my face like a cocoon, shielding me from the prying eyes of the world. "Is it soon enough? Will it be all right?"
She sensed my feeling. "Your face will be sore for a while yet," she said, snipping away at the cocoon. "It will be even sorer as the flesh and muscles take up their work again. But that will pass. We can't spend forever hiding behind a mask, can we?"
That was the doctor talking, not the woman. I looked up at her face as she snipped and unwound, snipped and uncovered, until all the bandage was gone and I felt as naked as a newborn baby, with a strange coolness on my cheeks. I tried to see myself reflected in her eyes but they were calm and expressionless, impersonal and professionally detached. I felt her fingers press against my cheek, the flesh under my chin, smooth the hair back from my temples. "Close your eyes."
I closed them. I felt her fingers touch the lids lightly. "Open."
I opened them. Her face was still quiet and unrevealing. "Smile," she said. "Like this." She made with a wide, humorless grin that was a slapstick parody of her usual warm smile.
I grinned. I grinned until the tiny pains that came to my cheeks began to burn like hell. And still I grinned.
"O.K.," she said, suddenly smiling now. Really smiling. "You can stop now."
I stopped and stared up at her. "How is it, Doc?" I tried to keep it light. "Pretty horrible?"
"It's not bad," she said noncommittally. "You were never a raving beauty, you know." She picked up a mirror from the cart. "Here. See for yourself."
I didn't look at the mirror. I didn't want to see myself just yet. "Can I have a cigarette first, Doc?"
Silently she put the mirror back on the cart and took a package of cigarettes from her coat pocket. She sat down on the edge of my bed, put one in her mouth, lit it, then passed it to me. I could taste the faint sweetness of her lipstick as I drew the smoke into me.
"You were cut pretty badly when Winthrop pushed you through that port. But fortunately—"
"You knew about that?" I asked, interrupting. "About Amos, I mean. How did you find out?"
"From you. While you were under the anesthetic. We kept getting the story in fragments, along with the fragments of glass we were picking out of your face. Fortunately, none of your important facial muscles were severely damaged. It was largely a matter of surface lesions. We were able to make the necessary skin grafts quickly. And successfully, I might add."
I held out my hand. "I’ll take the mirror now, Doc."
She took my cigarette and handed me the mirror. I raised it and when I looked into it, I felt a chill go through me.
"Doc," I said hoarsely. "I look exactly like my father!"
She took the mirror from my hand and I looked up at her. She was smiling. "Do you, Jonas? But that's the way you've always looked."
******
Later that morning, Robair brought me the papers. They were filled with the story of Japan's capitulation. I glanced at them carelessly and tossed them aside. "Can I get you something else to read, Mr. Jonas?"
"No," I said. "No, thanks. I just don't feel much like reading."
"All right, Mr. Jonas. Maybe you'd like to sleep some." He moved toward the door.
"Robair."
"Yes, Mr. Jonas?"
"Did I—" I hesitated, my fingers automatically touching my cheek. "Did I always look like this?"
His white teeth flashed in a smile. "Yes, Mr. Jonas."
"Like my father?"
"Like his spittin' image."
I was silent. Strange how all your life you tried not to be like someone, only to learn that you'd been stamped indelibly by the blood that ran in your veins.
"Is there anything else, Mr. Jonas?"
I looked up at Robair and shook my head. "I'll try to sleep now."
I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes. I heard the door close and gradually the noise from the street faded to the periphery of my consciousness. I slept. It seemed to me I'd been sleeping a great deal lately. As if I was trying to catch up on all the sleep I'd denied myself for the past few hundred years. But I could not have slept long before I became aware that someone was in the room.
I opened my eyes. Jennie was standing next to my bed, looking down at me. When she saw my eyes open, she smiled. "Hello, Jonas."
"I was sleeping," I said, like a child just waking from a nap. "I was dreaming something foolish. I was dreaming I was hundreds of years old."
"It was a happy dream, then. I’m glad. Happy dreams will help you get well faster."
I raised myself up on one elbow and the pulleys squeaked as I reached for the cigarettes on the table next to the bed. Quickly she fluffed the pillows and moved them in behind me to support my back. I dragged on the cigarette. The smoke drove the sleep from my brain.
"In another few weeks, they'll have the cast off your leg and you can go home."
"I hope so, Jennie," I said.
Suddenly, I realized she wasn't wearing her hospital white. "This is the first time I've seen you in a black veil, Jennie. Is it something special?"
"No, Jonas. This is what I always wear, except when I'm on duty in the hospital."
"Then this is your day off?"
"There are no days off in the service of Our Saviour," she said simply. "No, Jonas, I've come to say good-by."
"Good-by? But I don't understand. You said it would be a few weeks before I—"
"I'm going away, Jonas."
I stared up at her stupidly. "Going away?"
"Yes, Jonas," she said quietly. "I’ve only been here at Mercy Hospital until I could get transportation to the Philippines. We're rebuilding a hospital there that was destroyed in the war. Now I am free to leave, by plane."
"But you can't, Jennie," I said. "You can't leave the people you know, the language you speak. You'll be a stranger there, you'll be alone."
Her fingers touched the crucifix hanging from the black leather cincture beneath her garment. A quiet look of calm deepened in her gray eyes. "I am never alone," she said simply. "He is always with me."
"You don't have to, Jennie," I said. I took the pamphlet that I'd found on the table by my bed and opened it. "You've only made a temporary profession. You can resign any time you want. There's still a three-year probationary period before you take your final vows. You don't belong here, Jennie. It's only because you were hurt and angry. You're much too young and beautiful to hide your life away behind a black veil."
She still did not answer.
"Don't you understand what I’m saying, Jennie? I want you to come back where you belong."
She closed her eyes slowly and when she opened them, they were misted with tears. But when she spoke, her voice was steady with the sureness of her knowledge and faith. "It's you who don't understand, Jonas," she said. "I have no place to which I desire to return, for it is here, in His house, that I belong."
I started to speak but she raised her hand gently. "You think I came to Him out of hurt and anger? You're wrong," she said quietly. "One does not run from life to God, one runs to God for life. All my years I sought Him, without knowing what I was seeking. The love I found out there was a mere mockery of what I knew love could be; the charity I gave was but the smallest fraction of the charity in me to give; the mercy I showed was nothing compared with His mercy within me. Here, in His house and in His work, I have found a greater love than any I have ever known. Through His love, I have found security and contentment and happiness, in accordance with His divine will."
She paused for a moment, looking down at the crucifix in her fingers. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear and untroubled. "Is there anything in this world, Jonas, that can offer more than God?"
I didn't answer.
Slowly she held out her left hand toward me. I looked down and saw the heavy silver ring on her third finger. "He has invited me into His house," she said softly, "and I have taken His ring to wear so that I may dwell in His glory forever."
I took her hand and pressed my lips to the ring. I felt her fingers brush my hair lightly, then she moved to the foot of my bed, where she turned to look at me. "I shall think of you often, my friend," she said gently. "And I shall pray for you."
I was silent as I ground my cigarette out. There was a beauty in Jennie's eyes that had never been there before. "Thank you, Sister," I said quietly.
Without another word, she turned and went out the door. I stared down at the foot of the bed where she had stood, but now even the ghost of her was gone.
I turned my face into the pillow and cried.
SEVEN
I LEFT THE HOSPITAL EARLY IN SEPTEMBER. I was sitting in the wheel chair, watching Robair pack the last of my things into the valise, when the door opened. "Hi, Junior."
"Nevada! What are you doing way down here?"
"Came to carry you home."
I laughed. Funny how you can go along for years hardly thinking about someone, then all of a sudden be so glad to see him. "You didn't have to do that," I said. "Robair could have managed all right."
"I asked him to come up, Mr. Jonas. I figured it would be like old times. It gets mighty lonely out there at the ranch with nothing to do."
"An' I figured I could use a vacation," Nevada said. "The war's over an' the show's closed down for the winter. And there's nothin' Martha likes better than to do a little invalidin'. She's down there now, gittin' things ready for us."
I looked at the two of them and grinned. "It's a put-up job, huh?"
"That's right," Nevada said. He came over behind the wheel chair. "Ready?"
Robair closed the valise and snapped it shut. "All set, Mr. Nevada."
"Let's go, then," Nevada said, and started the wheel chair through the door.
"We have to stop off at Burbank," I said, looking back at him. "Mac has a flock of papers for me to sign." I might be laid up, but business went on.
Buzz Dalton had an ICA charter waiting for us at the San Diego airport. We were at Burbank by two o'clock that afternoon. McAllister got up and came around his desk when they wheeled me into his office. "You know, this is the first time I can remember seeing you sit down."
I laughed. "Make the most of it. The doctors say I’ll be moving around as good as new in a couple of weeks."
"Well, meanwhile, I'm going to take advantage of it. Push him around behind the desk, fellows. I've got the pen ready."
It was almost four o'clock when I'd signed the last of a stack of documents. I looked up wearily. "So what else is new?"
Mac looked at me. He walked over to a table against the wall. "This is," he said, and took the cover off something that looked like a radio with a window in it.
"What is it?"
"It's the first product of the Cord Electronics Company," he said proudly. "We knocked it out in the converted radar division. It's a television set."
"Television?" I asked.
"Pictures broadcast through the air like radio," he said. "It's picked up on that screen, like home movies."
"Oh, that's the thing that Dumont was kicking around before the war. It doesn't work."
"Does now," Mac said. "It's the next big thing. All the radio and electronics companies are going into it. RCA, Columbia, Emerson, IT&T, GE, Philco. All of them. Want to see how it works?"
"Sure."
He walked over and picked up the phone. "Get me the lab." He covered the mouthpiece. "I'll have them put something on," he said.
A moment later, he went over to the set and turned a knob. A light flashed behind the window, then settled into a series of circles and lines. Gradually, letters came into view.
CORD ELECTRONICS PRESENTS-
Suddenly, the card was replaced by a picture, a Western scene with a man riding a horse toward the camera. The camera dollied in real close on the face and I saw it was Nevada. I recognized the scene, too. It was the chase scene from The Renegade. For five minutes, we watched the scene in silence.
"Well, I’ll be damned," Nevada said, when it was over.
I looked across at Robair. There was an expression of rapt wonder on his face. He looked at me. "There's what I call a miracle, Mr. Jonas," he said softly. "Now I can watch a movie in my own home without goin' to sit in no nigger heaven."
"So that's why they all want to buy my old pictures," Nevada said.
I looked up at him. "What do you mean?"
"You know those ninety-odd pictures we made and I own now?"
I nodded.
"People been after me to sell 'em. Offered me good money for 'em, too. Five thousand dollars each."
I stared at him. "One thing I learned in the picture business," I said. "Never sell outright what you can get a percentage on."
"You mean rent it to 'em like I do to a theater?"
"That's right," I said. "I know those broadcasting companies. If they'll buy it for five, they plan to make fifty out of it."
"I'm no good at big deals like that," Nevada said. "Would you be willin' to handle it for me, Mac?"
"I don't know, Nevada. I'm no agent."
"Go ahead and do it, Mac," I said. "Remember what you told me about making a point where it counts?"
He smiled suddenly. "O.K., Nevada."
Suddenly, I was tired. I slumped back in my chair. Robair was at my side instantly. "You all right, Mr. Jonas?"
"I’m just tired," I said.
"Maybe you better stay at the apartment tonight. We can go on out to the ranch in the morning."
I looked at Robair. The idea of getting into a bed was very appealing. My ass was sore from the wheel chair.
"I'll order a car," Mac said, picking up the phone. "You can drop me at the studio on your way into town. I've got some work to finish up there."
My mind kept working all the time we rode toward the studio. When the car stopped at the gates, suddenly everything was clear to me.
"We'll have to do something about a replacement for Bonner," Mac said, getting out. "It isn't good business having a lawyer run a studio. I don't know anything about motion pictures."
I stared at him thoughtfully. He was right, of course. But then, who did? Only David, and he was gone. I didn't care any more. There were no pictures left in me, no one I wanted to place up there on the screen for all the world to see. And back in the office I'd just left, there was a little box with a picture window and soon it would be in every home. Rich or poor. That little box was really going to chew up film, like the theaters had never been able to. But I still didn't care.
Even when I was a kid, when I was through with a toy, I was through with it. And I'd never go back to it. "Sell the theaters," I whispered to Mac.
"What?" he shouted, as if he couldn't believe his ears. "They're the only end of this business that's making any money."
"Sell the theaters," I repeated. "In ten years, no one will want to come to them, anyway. At least, not the way they have up to now. Not when they can see movies right in their own home."
Mac stared at me. "And what do you want me to do about the studio?" he asked, a tinge of sarcasm coming into his voice. "Sell that, too?"
"Yes," I said quietly. "But not now. Ten years from now, maybe. When the people who are making pictures for that little box are squeezed and hungry for space. Sell it then."
"What will we do with it in the meantime? Let it rot while we pay taxes on it?"
"No," I said. "Turn it into a rental studio like the old Goldwyn lot. If we break even or lose a little, I won't complain."
He stared at me. "You really mean it?"
"I mean it," I said, looking away from him up at the roof over the stages. For the first time, I really saw it. It was black and ugly with tar. "Mac, see that roof?"
He turned and looked, squinting against the setting sun.
"Before you do anything else," I said softly, "have them paint it white."
I pulled my head back into the car. Nevada looked at me strangely. His voice was almost sad. "Nothing's changed, has it, Junior?"
"No," I said wearily. "Nothing's changed."
EIGHT
I SAT ON THE PORCH, SQUINTING OUT INTO THE AFTERNOON SUN. Nevada came out of the house behind me and dropped into a chair. He pulled a plug out of his pocket and biting off a hunk, put the plug back. Then from his other pocket, he took a piece of wood and a penknife and began to whittle.
I looked at him. He was wearing a pair of faded blue levis. A sweat-stained old buckskin shirt, that had seen better days, clung to his deep chest and broad shoulders and he had a red-and-white kerchief tied around his neck to catch the perspiration. Except for his white hair, he looked as I always remembered him when I was a boy, his hands quick and brown and strong.
He looked up at me out of his light eyes. "Two lost arts," he said.
"What?"
"Chewin' an' whittlin'," he said.
I didn't answer.
He looked down at the piece of wood in his hands. "Many's the evenin' I spent on the porch with your pa, chewin' an' whittlin'."
"Yeah?"
He turned and let fly a stream of tobacco juice over the porch rail into the dust below. He turned back to me. "I recall one night," he said. "Your pa an' me, we were settin' here, just like now. It'd been a real bitcheroo of a day. One of them scorchers that make your balls feel like they're drownin' in their own sweat. Suddenly he looks up at me an' says, 'Nevada, anything should happen to me, you look after my boy, hear? Jonas is a good boy. Sometimes his ass gets too much for his britches but he's a good boy an' he's got the makin's in him to be a better man than his daddy, someday. I love that boy, Nevada. He's all I got.' "
"He never told me that," I said, looking at Nevada. "Not ever. Not once!"
Nevada's eyes flashed up at me. "Men like your daddy ain't given much to talkin' about things like that."
I laughed. "He not only didn't talk it," I said. "He never showed it. He was always chewing on my ass for one thing or another."
Nevada's eyes bore straight into mine. "He was always there whenever you were in trouble. He might have hollered but he never turned you down."
"He married my girl away from me," I said bitterly.
"Maybe it was for your own good. Maybe it was because he knew she never really was for you."
I let that one go. "Why are you telling me this now?" I asked.
I couldn't read those Indian eyes of his. "Because your father asked me once to look after you. I made one mistake already. I seen how smart you was in business, I figured you to be growed up. But you wasn't. An' I wouldn' like to fail a man like your father twice."
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, then Martha came out with my tea. She told Nevada to spit out the chaw and stop dirtying up the porch. He looked at me almost shyly, got up and went down to get rid of the chaw behind the bushes.
We heard a car turn up our road as he came back to the porch. "I wonder who that is?" Martha asked.
"Maybe it's the doctor," I said. Old Doc Hanley was supposed to come out and check me over once a week.
By that time, the car was in the driveway and I knew who it was. I got to my feet, leaning on my cane, as Monica and Jo-Ann approached us. "Hello," I called.
They'd come back to California to close up their apartment, Monica explained, and since she wanted to talk to me about Amos, they'd stopped off in Reno on their way back to New York. Their train wasn't due to leave until seven o'clock.
I saw Martha glance meaningfully at Nevada when she heard that. Nevada got to his feet and looked at Jo-Ann. "I've got a gentle bay horse out in the corral that's just dyin' for some young lady like you to ride her."
Jo-Ann looked up at him worshipfully. You could tell she'd been to the movies from the way she looked at him. He was a real live hero. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I’ve never really ridden a horse before."
"I can teach you. It's easy, easier than fallin' off a log."
"But she's not dressed for riding," Monica said.
She wasn't. Not in that pretty flowered dress that made her look so much like her mother. Martha spoke up quickly. "I got a pair of dungarees that shrunk down to half my size. They'll fit her."
I don't know whose dungarees they were but one thing was for sure. They'd never been Martha's. Not the way they clung to Jo-Ann's fourteen-year-old hips, tight and flat with just the suggestion of the curves to come. Jo-Ann's dark hair was pulled back straight from her head in a pony tail and there was something curiously familiar about the way she looked. I couldn't quite figure out what it was.
I watched her run out the door after Nevada and turned to Monica. She was smiling at me. I returned her smile. "She's growing up," I said. "She's going to be a pretty girl."
"One day they're children, the next they're young ladies. They grow up too fast."
I nodded. We were alone now and an awkward silence came down between us. I reached for a cigarette and looked at her. "I want to tell you about Amos."
It was near six o'clock when I finished telling her about what happened. There were no tears in her eyes, though her face was sad and thoughtful. "I can't cry for him, Jonas," she said, looking at me. "Because I've already cried too many times because of him. Do you understand?"
I nodded.
"He did so many things that were wrong all his life. I’m glad that at last he did one thing right."
"He did a very brave thing. I always thought he hated me."
"He did," she said quickly. "He saw in you everything that he wasn't. Quick, successful, rich. He hated your guts. I guess at the end he realized how foolish that was and how much harm he'd already done you, so he tried to make it right."
I looked at her. "What wrong did he do me? There was nothing but business between us."
She gave me a peculiar look. "You can't see it yet?"
"No."
"Then I guess you never will," she said and walked out onto the porch.
We could hear Jo-Ann's shout of laughter as she rode the big bay around the corral. She was doing pretty good for a beginner. I looked down at Monica. "She takes to it like she was born to the saddle."
"Why shouldn't she?" Monica replied. "They say such things are inherited."
"I didn't know you rode."
She looked up at me, her eyes hurt and angry. "I’m not her only parent," she snapped coldly.
I stared at her. This was the only time she'd ever mentioned anything about Jo-Ann's father to me. It was sort of late to be angry about it now.
I heard the chug of Doc Hanley's old car turning into the driveway. He stopped near the corral and getting out of the car, walked over to the fence. He never could drive past a horse.
"That's Doc Hanley. He's supposed to check me out."
"Then I won't keep you," Monica said coolly. "I’ll say good-by here."
She went down the steps and started walking toward the corral. I stared after her bewilderedly. I never could figure her out when she got into those crazy moods. "I'll have Robair drive you to the station," I called after her.
"Thanks!" She flung it back over her shoulder without turning around. I saw her stop and talk to the doctor, then I turned and walked back into the house. I went into the room that my father used as his study and sank down on the couch. Monica always did have a quick temper. You'd think by now she'd have learned to control it. I started to smile, thinking of how straight her back was and how sassy she'd looked walking away from me, her nose in the air. She still looked pretty good for a woman her age. I was forty-one, which meant she was thirty-four. And nothing on her jiggled that shouldn't.
******
The trouble with Doc Hanley is that he's a talker. He talks you deaf, dumb and blind but you don't have much choice. Since the war started, it's been him or nothing. All the young docs were in the service.
It was six thirty by the time he'd finished his examination and begun to close up his instrument case. "You're doin' all right," he said. "But I don't hold with them newfangled notions of getting you out as soon as you kin move. If it'd been up to me, now, I'd have kept you in the hospital another month."
Nevada leaned against the study wall, smiling as I climbed into my britches. I looked at him and shrugged. I turned to the doctor. "How long now before I can really begin to do some walking?"
Doc Hanley peered at me over the edges of his bifocals. "You kin start walkin' right now."
"But I thought you didn't agree with those city doctors," I said. "I thought you wanted me to rest some more."
"I don't agree with them," he said. "But since you're out, an' there ain't nothin' that can be done about that, you might as well git to movin' about. There ain't no sense in you jist stayin' aroun'."
He snapped his case shut, straightened up and walked to the door. He turned and looked back at me. "That's a right pert gal you got there, your daughter."
I stared at him. "My daughter?"
"That's right," he said. "With her hair tied back like that, I never seen a gal who took so after her father. Why she's the spittin' image of you when you was a boy."
I couldn't speak, only stare. Had the idiot gone off his rocker? Everybody knew Jo-Ann wasn't my daughter.
Doc laughed suddenly and slapped his hand on his thigh. "I’ll never forget the time her mother came down to my office," he said. "She was your wife then, of course. I never seen such a big belly. I figured, no wonder you got married so sudden like. You'd been doin' your plantin' early."
He looked up at me, still smiling. "That was before I examined her, you understand," he said quickly. "You could have knocked me over with a feather when the examination showed her only six weeks gone. It was just one of those peculiar things where she carried real high. She was so nervous an' upset just about then that she blew up with gas like a balloon. I even went back to the papers an' checked your weddin' date just to make sure. An' dang my britches if it weren't a fact you'd knocked her up at most two weeks after you were married. But there's one thing I got to say for yuh, boy." He turned back at the door. "When you ram 'em, you ram 'em good. Right up the ol' gazizzis, where it sticks!" And still laughing lewdly, he walked out.
I felt the tight, sick knot ball up inside me. I sat down on the couch. All these years. All these years and I had been wrong. Suddenly, I knew what Amos had been going to tell me after we returned from the flight. He'd seen how crazy I'd been that night and turned my own hate against me. And there was little Monica could have done about it.
What a combination, Amos and me. But at least, he'd seen the light by himself. No one had to hit him over the head with it. And he'd tried to make up for it. But I—I never even turned my head to seek the truth. I'd been content to go along blaming the world for my own stupidity. And I was the one who'd been at war with my father because I thought he didn't love me. That was the biggest joke of all.
Now I could even face the truth in that. It never had been his love that I'd doubted. It had been my own. For deep inside of me, I’d always known that I could never love him as much as he loved me. I looked up at Nevada. He was still leaning against the wall, but he wasn't smiling now. "You saw it, too?"
"Sure." He nodded. "Everybody saw it—but you."
I closed my eyes. Now I could see it. It was like that morning in the hospital when I looked into the mirror and saw my father's face. That was what I'd seen in Jo-Ann when I thought she looked so familiar this afternoon. Her father's face. My own.
"What shall I do, Nevada?" I groaned.
"What do yuh want to do, son?"
"I want them back."
"Sure that's what you want?"
I nodded.
"Then get 'em back," he said. He looked at his watch. "There's still fifteen minutes before
the train pulls out."
"But how? We'd never get there in time!"
He gestured to the desk. "There's the phone."
I looked at him wildly, then hobbled to the phone. I called the stationmaster's office at Reno and had them page her. While I was waiting for her to come on, I looked at Nevada. Suddenly, I was frightened, and when I'd been little, I'd always turned to Nevada when I was frightened. "What if she won't come back?"
"She'll come back," he said confidently. He smiled. "She's still in love with you. That's something else everybody knew but you."
Then she was on the phone, her voice worried and anxious. "Jonas, are you all right? Is there anything wrong?"
For a moment, I couldn't speak, then I found my voice. "Monica," I said. "Don't go!"
"But I have to, Jonas. I have to be on the job by the end of the week."
"Screw the job, I need you!"
The line was silent, and for a moment, I thought she'd hung up. "Monica, are you there?"
I heard her breathe in the receiver. "I’m still here, Jonas."
"I've been wrong all the time. I didn't know about Jo-Ann. Believe me." Again the silence.
"Please, Monica!"
Now she was crying. I could hear her whispered voice in my ear. "Oh, Jonas, I've never stopped loving you."
I looked up at Nevada. He smiled and went out, closing the door behind him.
I heard her sniffle, then her voice suddenly cleared and filled with the warm sound of love. "When Jo-Ann was a little girl she always wanted a baby brother."
"Hurry home," I said, "I’ll do my best."
She laughed and there was a click as the line went dead in my hands. I didn't put the phone down because I felt that as long as I held it, she was close to me. I looked down at the photograph of my father on the desk.
"Well, old man," I said, asking his approval for the first time in my life, "did I do right?"
END
