MARGO DOWLING 4 страница

IN FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOP PRODUCTS

IN BRASS AND BRASS PRODUCTS
IN TOBACCO AND CIGARS
IN ALUMINUM CASTINGS
IN IRON AND STEEL
IN LUBRICATOR TOOLS
MALLEABLE IRON
METAL BEDS

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Back to the land that gave me birth
The grandest place on God's green earth
California! That's where I belong.

"DETROIT THE CITY WHERE LIFE IS
WORTH LIVING"

CHARLEY ANDERSON

First thing Charley heard when he climbed down from
the controls was Farrell's voice shouting, " Charley Ander-
son, the boy with the knowhow. Welcome to little old
Detroit," and then he saw Farrell's round face coming
across the green grass of the field and his big mouth wide
open. "Kind of bumpy, wasn't it?"

"It was cold as hell," said Charley. "Call this a field?"

"We're getting the Chamber of Commerce het up about
it. You can give 'em an earful about it maybe."

"I sure did slew around in that mud. Gosh, I pulled out
in such a hurry I didn't even bring a toothbrush."

Charley pulled off his gloves that were dripping with
oil from a leak he'd had trouble with in the bumpy going
over the hills. His back ached. It was a relief that Bill
Cermak was there to get the boat into the hangar. "All
right, let's go," he said. "Thataboy," roared Farrell and
put his hand on Charley's shoulder. "We'll stop by the
house and see if I can fit you into a change of clothes."

At that moment a taxi rolled out onto the field and out
of it stepped Taki. He came running over with Charley's
suitcase. He reached the car breathless. "I hope you have
a nice journey, sir.""Check," said Charley. "Did you get
me a walkup?""Very nice inexpensive elevator apartment
opposed to the Museum of Municipal Art," panted Taki in
his squeaky voice.

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"Well, that's service," Farrell said and put his foot on
the starter of his puttycolored Lincoln towncar. The motor
purred silkily.

Taki put the suitcase in back and Charley hopped in
beside Farrell. " Taki thinks we lack culture," said Charley,
laughing. Farrell winked.

It was pleasant sitting slumped in the seat beside Far-
rell's welldressed figure behind the big softpurring motor,
letting a little drowsiness come over him as they drove
down broad straight boulevards with here and there a con-
struction job that gave them a whiff of new bricks and raw
firboards and fresh cement as they passed. A smell of early
spring came off the fields and backlots on a raw wind that
had little streaks of swampy warmth in it.

"Here's our little shanty," said Farrell and swerved into
a curving graded driveway and jammed on the brakes at
the end of a long greystone house with narrow pointed
windows and gothic pinnacles like a cathedral. They got
out and Charley followed him across a terrace down an
avenue of boxtrees in pots and through a frenchwindow
into a billiardroom with a heavilycarved ceiling. "This is
my playroom," said Farrell. "After all a man's got to have
someplace to play. . . . Here's a bathroom you can
change in. I'll be back for you in ten minutes."

It was a big bathroom all in jadegreen with a couch,
an easychair, a floorlamp, and a set of chestweights and
indianclubs in the corner. Charley stripped and took a hot
shower and changed his clothes. He was just putting on
his bestlooking striped tie when Farrell called through the
door. "Everything O.K.?""Check," said Charley as he
came out. "I feel like a million dollars." Farrell looked
him in the eye in a funny way and laughed. "Why not?"
he said.

The office was in an unfinished officebuilding in a ring of
unfinished officebuildings round Grand Circus Park. "You
won't mind if I run you through the publicity department

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first, Charley," said Farrell. " Eddy Sawyer's a great boy.
Then we'll all get together in my office and have some
food."

"Check," said Charley.

"Say, Eddy, here's your birdman," shouted Farrell,
pushing Charley into a big bright office with orange hang-
ings. "Mr. Sawyer, meet Mr. Anderson . . . the Charley
Anderson, our new consulting engineer. . . . Give us a
buzz when you've put him through a course of sprouts."

Farrell hurried off leaving Charley alone with a small
yellowfaced man with a large towhead who had the talk
and manners of a highschool boy with the cigarette habit.
Eddy Sawyer gave Charley's hand a tremendous squeeze,
asked him how he liked the new offices, explained that
orange stood for optimism, asked him if he ever got air-
sick, explained that he did terribly, wasn't it the damnedest
luck seeing the business he was in, brought out from under
his desk a bottle of whiskey. "I bet J. Y. didn't give you a
drink. . . . That man lives on air, a regular salamander."

Charley said he would take a small shot and Eddy
Sawyer produced two glasses that already had the ice in
them and a siphon. "Say when." Charley took a gulp, then
Eddy leaned back in his swivelchair having drained off his
drink and said, "Now, Mr. Anderson, if you don't mind
let's have the old lifehistory, or whatever part of it is fit
to print. . . . Mind you, we won't use anything right
away but we like to have the dope so that we can sort of
feed it out as occasion demands."

Charley blushed. "Well," he said, "there's not very
much to tell."

"Thataboy," said Eddy Sawyer, pouring out two more
and putting away the whiskeybottle. "That's how
all the best stories begin." He pressed a buzzer and a
curlyhaired stenographer with a pretty pink dollface came
in and sat down with her notebook at the other side of the
desk. While he was fumbling through his story, Charley

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kept repeating to himself in the back of his head, "Now,
bo, don't make an ass of yourself the first day." Before
they were through Farrell stuck his head in the door and
said to come along, the crowd was waiting.

"Well, did you get all fixed up? . . . Charley, I want
you to meet our salesmanager . . . Joe Stone, Charley
Anderson. And Mr. Frank and Mr. O'Brien, our battery
of legal talent, and Mr. Bledsoe, he's in charge of output
. . . that's your department."

Charley shook a number of hands; there was a slick
black head with hair parted in the middle, a pair of bald
heads and a steelgrey head with hair bristling up like a
shoebrush, noseglasses, tortoiseshell glasses, one small mus-
tache. "Sure mike," Eddy Sawyer was stuttering away
nervously. "I've got enough on him to retire on the black-
mail any time now."

"That's a very good starter, young man," said Cyrus
Bledsoe, the greyhaired man, gruffly. "I hope you've got
some more notions left in the back of your head."

"Check," said Charley.

They all, except Bledsoe who growled that he never ate
lunch, went out with him to the Athletic Club where they
had a private diningroom and cocktails set out. Going up
in the elevator a voice behind him said, "How's the boy,
Charley?" and Charley turned round to find himself face
to face with Andy Merritt. Andy Merritt's darkgrey suit
seemed to fit him even better than usual. His sour smile
was unusually thin.

"Why, what are you doing here?" Charley blurted out.

" Detroit," said Andy Merritt, "is a town that has al-
ways interested me extremely."

"Say, how's Joe making out?" Andy Merritt looked
pained and Charley felt he ought to have kept his mouth
shut. "Joe was in excellent health when I last saw him,"
said Andy. It turned out that Andy was lunching with
them too.

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When they were working on the filetmignon, Farrell
got up and made a speech about how this luncheon was
a beginning of a new spirit in the business of manufac-
turing airplane parts and motors and that the time had
come for the airplane to quit hanging on the apronstrings
of the automotive business because airplanes were going to
turn the automobile men into a lot of bicycle manufac-
turers before you could say Jack Robinson. A million-
dollar business had to be handled in a milliondollar way.
Then everybody yelled and clapped and Farrell held up
his hand and described Charley Anderson's career as a war
ace and an inventor and said it was a very happy day, a
day he'd been waiting for a long time, when he could wel-
come him into the Tern flock. Then Eddy Sawyer led a
cheer for Anderson and Charley had to get up and say
how he was glad to get out there and be back in the great
open spaces and the real manufacturing center of this
country, and when you said manufacturing center of this
country what you meant was manufacturing center of the
whole bloody world. Eddy Sawyer led another cheer and
then they all settled down to eat their peachmelba.

When they were getting their hats from the checkroom
downstairs Andy Merritt tapped Charley on the shoulder
and said, "A very good speech. . . . You know I'd felt
for some time we ought to make a break. . . . You can't
run a bigtime business with smalltown ideas. That's the
trouble with poor old Joe who's a prince, by the way
smalltown ideas. . . ."

Charley went around to see the apartment. Taki had
everything fixed up in great shape, flowers in the vases and
all that sort of thing. "Well, this is slick," said Charley.
"How do you like it in Detroit?""Very interesting," said
Taki. "Mr. Ford permits to visit Highland Park.""Gosh,
you don't lose any time. . . . Nothing like that assembly-
line in your country, is there?" Taki grinned and nodded.
"Very interesting," he said with more emphasis.

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Charley took off his coat and shoes and lay down on the
couch in the sittingroom to take a nap but it seemed he'd
just closed his eyes when Taki was grinning and bowing
from the door.

"Very sorry, sir, Mr. Benton, longdistance.""Check,"
said Charley.

Taki had his slippers there for him to stick his feet into
and had discreetly laid his bathrobe on a chair beside the
couch. At the phone Charley noticed that it was already
dusk and that the streetlights were just coming on.

"Hello, Nat.""Hay, Charley, how are you making
out?""Great," said Charley. "Say, I just called up to let
you know you and Andy Merritt were going to be elected
vicepresidents at the next meeting of Tern stockholders."
"How do you know?" Nat laughed into the phone. "Some
intelligence service," said Charley. "Well, service is what
we're here for," said Nat. "And, Charley, there's a little
pool down here. . . . I'm taking a dip myself and I
thought you might like to come in. . . . I can't tell you
the details over the phone but I wrote you this afternoon."
"I haven't got any cash.""You could put up about ten
grand of stock to cover. The stock won't be tied up long."
"Check," said Charley. "Shoot the moon . . . this is my
lucky year."

The plant was great. Charley drove out there in a new
Buick sedan he bought himself right off the dealer's floor
the next morning. The dealer seemed to know all about
him and wouldn't even take a downpayment. "It'll be a
pleasure to have your account, Mr. Anderson," he said.

Old Bledsoe seemed to be on the lookout for him and
showed him around. Everything was lit with skylights.
There wasn't a belt in the place. Every machine had its
own motor. " Farrell thinks I'm an old stickinthemud be-
cause I don't talk high finance all the time, but God damn
it, if there's a more uptodate plant than this anywhere,
I'll eat a goddamned dynamo.""Gee, I thought we were

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in pretty good shape out at Long Island City. . . . But
this beats the Dutch.""That's exactly what it's intended
to do," growled Bledsoe.

Last Bledsoe introduced Charley to the engineering
force and then showed him into the office off the drafting-
room that was to be his. They closed the groundglass door
and sat down facing each other in the silvery light from
the skylight. Bledsoe pulled out a stogie and offered one
to Charley. "Ever smoke these? . . . They clear the
head."

Charley said he'd try anything once. They lit the stogies
and Bledsoe began to talk between savage puffs of stinging
blue smoke. "Now look here, Anderson, I hope you've
come out here to work with us and not to juggle your
damned stock. . . . I know you're a war hero and all that
and are slated for windowdressing, but it looks to me like
you might have somepun in your head too. . . . I'm say-
ing this once and I'll never say it again. . . . If you're
workin' with us, you're workin' with us and if you're not
you'd better stick around your broker's office where you
belong."

"But, Mr. Bledsoe, this is the chance I've been lookin'
for," stammered Charley. "Hell, I'm a mechanic, that's
all. I know that."

"Well, I hope so. . . . If you are, and not a god-
damned bondsalesman, you know that our motor's lousy
and the ships they put it in are lousy. We're ten years be-
hind the rest of the world in flyin' and we've got to catch
up. Once we get the designs we've got the production ap-
paratus to flatten 'em all out. Now I want you to go home
and get drunk or go wenchin' or whatever you do when
you're worried and think about this damn business.""I'm
through with that stuff," said Charley. "I had enough of
that in New York."

Bledsoe got to his feet with a jerk, letting the ash from
his stogie fall on his alpaca vest. "Well, you better get

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married then.""I been thinkin' of that. . . . But I can't
find the other name to put on the license," said Charley,
laughing. Bledsoe smiled. "You design me a decent light
dependable sixteencylinder aircooled motor and I'll get
my little girl to introduce you to all the bestlookin' gals in
Detroit. She knows 'em all. . . . And if it's money you're
lookin' for, they sweat money." The phone buzzed. Bled-
soe answered it, muttered under his breath, and stamped
out of the office.

At noon Farrell came by to take Charley out to lunch.
"Did old Bledsoe give you an earful?" he asked. Charley
nodded. "Well, don't let him get under your skin. His
bark is worse than his bite. He wouldn't be in the outfit if
he wasn't the best plantmanager in the country."

It was at the Country Club dance that Farrell and his
wife, who was a thin oldish blonde haggard and peevish
under a festoon of diamonds, took him out to, that Char-
ley met old Bledsoe's daughter Anne. She was a square-
shouldered girl in pink with a large pleasantlysmiling
mouth and a firm handshake. Charley cottoned to her first
thing. They danced to Just a Girl That Men Forget and
she talked about how crazy she was about flying and had
five hours toward her pilot's license. Charley said he'd take
her up any time if she wasn't too proud to fly a Curtiss-
Robin. She said he'd better not make a promise if he didn't
intend to keep it because she always did what she said she'd
do. Then she talked about golf and he didn't let on that
he'd never had a golfclub in his hand in his life.

At supper when he came back from getting a couple of
plates of chickensalad he found her sitting at a round table
under a Japanese lantern with a pale young guy, who
turned out to be her brother Harry, and a girl with beau-
tiful ashenblond hair and a touch of Alabama' in her talk
whose name was Gladys Wheatley. She seemed to be en-
gaged or something to Harry Bledsoe who had a silver
flask and kept pouring gin into the fruitpunch and held

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her hand and called her Glad. They were all younger
than Charley, but they made quite a fuss over him and
kept saying what a godawful town Detroit was. When
Charley got a little gin inside of him he started telling
war yarns for the first time in his life.

He drove Anne home and old Bledsoe came out with
a copy of the Engineering Journal in his hand and said,
"So you've got acquainted, have you?""Oh, yes, we're
old friends, Dad," she said. "Charley's going to teach me
to fly.""Humph," said Bledsoe and closed the door in
Charley's face with a growling: "You go home and worry
about that motor."

All that summer everybody thought that Charley and
Anne were engaged. He'd get away from the plant for an
hour or two on quiet afternoons and take a ship up at the
flyingfield to give her a chance to pile up flying hours and
on Sundays they'd play golf. Charley would get up early
Sunday mornings to take a lesson with the golf pro out at
the Sunnyside Club where he didn't know anybody. Sat-
urday nights they'd often have dinner at the Bledsoes'
house and go out to the Country Club to dance. Gladys
Wheatley and Harry were usually along and they were
known as a foursome by all the younger crowd. Old Bled-
soe seemed pleased that Charley had taken up with his
youngsters and began to treat him as a member of the
family. Charley was happy, he enjoyed his work; after
the years in New York being in Detroit was like being
home. He and Nat made some killings in the market. As
vicepresident and consulting engineer of the Tern Com-
pany he was making $25,000 a year.

Old Bledsoe grumbled that it was too damn much
money for a young engineer, but it pleased him that
Charley spent most of it on a small experimental shop
where he and Bill Cermak were building a new motor on
their own. Bill Cermak had moved his family out from
Long Island and was full of hunches for mechanical im-

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provements. Charley was so busy he didn't have time to
think of women or take anything but an occasional drink in
a social way. He thought Anne was a peach and enjoyed
her company but he never thought of her as a girl he might
someday go to bed with.

Over the Labor Day weekend the Farrells invited the
young Bledsoes and Gladys Wheatley out for a cruise.
When he was asked Charley felt that this was highlife at
last and suggested he bring Taki along to mix drinks and
act as steward. He drove the Bledsoes down to the yacht-
club in his Buick. Anne couldn't make out why he was feel-
ing so good. "Nothing to do for three days but sit around
on a stuffy old boat and let the mosquitoes bite you," she
was grumbling in a gruff tone like her father's. "Dad's
right when he says he doesn't mind working over his work
but he's darned if he'll work over his play."

"But look at the company we'll have to suffer in, An-
nie." Charley put his arm round her shoulders for a mo-
ment as she sat beside him on the front seat. Harry who
was alone in the back let out a giggle. "Well, you needn't
act so smart, mister," said Anne, without turning back. "You
and Gladys certainly do enough public petting to make a
cat sick.""The stern birdman's weakening," said Harry.
Charley blushed. "Check," he said. They were already at
the yachtclub, and two young fellows in sailorsuits were
taking the bags out of the back of the car.

Farrell's boat was a fast fiftyfoot cruiser with a dining-
room on deck and wicker chairs and a lot of freshvarnished
mahogany and polished brass. Farrell wore a yachtingcap
and walked up and down the narrow deck with a worried
look as the boat nosed out into the little muggy breeze.
The river in the late afternoon had a smell of docks and
weedy swamps. "It makes me feel good to get out on the
water, don't it you, Charley? . . . The one place they
can't get at you."

Meanwhile Mrs. Farrell was apologizing to the ladies

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for the cramped accommodations. "I keep trying to get
Yardly to get a boat with some room in it but it seems to
me every one he gets is more cramped up than the last
one."

Charley had been listening to a light clinking sound
from the pantry. When Taki appeared with a tray of man-
hattan cocktails everybody cheered up. As he watched Taki
bobbing with the tray in front of Gladys, Charley thought
how wonderful she looked all in white with her pale abun-
dant hair tied up in a white silk handkerchief.

Smiling beside him was Anne with her brown hair blow-
ing in her eyes from the wind of the boat's speed. The
engine made so much noise and the twinscrews churned up
so much water that he could talk to her without the others'
hearing. " Annie," he said suddenly, "I been thinking it's
about time I got married."

"Why, Charley, a mere boy like you."

Charley felt warm all over. All at once he wanted a
woman terribly bad. It was hard to control his voice.

"Well, I suppose we're both old enough to know better,
but what would you think of the proposition? I've been
pretty lucky this year as far as dough goes."

Anne sipped her cocktail looking at him and laughing
with her hair blowing across her face. "What do you want
me to do, ask for a statement of your bankdeposit?"

"But I mean you."

"Check," she said.

Farrell was yelling at them, "How about a little game
of penny ante before supper? . . . It's gettin' windy out
here. We'd be better off in the saloon."

"Aye, aye, cap," said Anne.

Before supper they played penny ante and drank man-
hattans and after supper the Farrells and the Bledsoes set-
tled down to a game of auction. Gladys said she had a
headache and Charley, after watching the game for a

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while, went out on deck to get the reek of the cigar he'd
been smoking out of his lungs.

The boat was anchored in a little bay, near a lighted
wharf that jutted out from shore. A halfmoon was setting
behind a rocky point where one tall pine reached out of a
dark snarl of branches above a crowd of shivering white-
birches. At the end of the wharf there was some sort of
clubhouse that spilt ripples of light from its big windows;
dancemusic throbbed and faded from it over the water.
Charley sat in the bow. The boys who ran the boat for
Farrell had turned in. He could hear their low voices and
catch a smell of cigarettesmoke from the tiny hatch for-
ward of the pilothouse. He leaned over to watch the small
grey waves slapping against the bow. "Bo, this is the big-
time stuff," he was telling himself.

When he turned around there was Gladys beside him.
"I thought you'd gone to bed, young lady," he said.

"Thought you'd gotten rid of me for one night?" She
wasn't smiling.

"Don't you think it's a pretty night, Glad?"

He took her hand; it was trembling and icecold. "You
don't want to catch cold, Glad," he said. She dug her long
nails into his hand. "Are you going to marry Anne?"

"Maybe. . . . Why? You're goin' to marry Harry,
aren't you?"

"Nothing in this world would make me marry him."

Charley put his arms round her. "You poor little girl,
you're cold. You ought to be in bed." She put her head on
his chest and began to sob. He could feel the tears warm
through his shirt. He didn't know what to say. He stood
there hugging her with the smell of her hair giddy, like
the smell of Doris's hair used to be, in his nostrils.

"I wish we were off this damn boat," he whispered. Her
face was turned up to his, very round and white. When he
kissed her lips she kissed him too. He pressed her to him
hard. Now it was her little breasts he could feel against

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his chest. For just a second she let him put his tongue be-
tween her lips, then she pushed him away.

"Charley, we oughtn't to be acting like this, but I sud-
denly felt so lonely."

Charley's voice was gruff in his throat. "I'll never let
you feel like that again. . . . Never, honestly . . .
never. . . .""Oh, you darling Charley." She kissed him
again very quickly and deliberately and ran away from him
down the deck.

He walked up and down alone. He didn't know what
to do. He was crazy for Gladys now. He couldn't go back
and talk to the others. He couldn't go to bed. He slipped
down the forward hatch and through the galley, where
Taki sat cool as a cucumber in his white coat reading some
thick book, into the cabin where his berth was and changed
into his bathingsuit and ran up and dove over the side.
The water wasn't as cold as he'd expected. He swam
around for a while in the moonlight. Pulling himself up
the ladder aft he felt cold and goosefleshy. Farrell with
a cigar in his teeth leaned over, grabbed his hand and
hauled him on deck.

"Ha, ha, the iron man," he shouted. "The girls beat us
two rubbers and went to bed with their winnings. Suppose
you get into your bathrobe and have a drink and a half
an hour of red dog or something silly before we turn in."
"Check," said Charley, who was jumping up and down on
the deck to shake off the water.

While Charley was rubbing himself down with a towel
below, he could hear the girls chattering and giggling in
their stateroom. He was so embarrassed when he sat down
next to Harry who was a little drunk and silly so that he
drank off a half a tumbler of rye and lost eighty dollars.
He was glad to see that it was Harry who won. "Lucky
at cards, unlucky in love," he kept saying to himself after
he'd turned in.

A week later Gladys took Charley to see her parents

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after they'd had tea together at his flat chaperoned by
Taki's grin and his bobbing black head. Horton B. Wheat-
ley was a power, so Farrell said, in the Security Trust
Company, a redfaced man with grizzled hair and a small
silvery mustache. Mrs. Wheatley was a droopy woman
with a pretty Alabama voice and a face faded and pouchy
and withered as a spent toyballoon. Mr. Wheatley started
talking before Gladys had finished the introductions:
"Well, sir, we'd been expectin' somethin' like that to hap-
pen. Of course it's too soon for us all to make up our
minds, but I don't see how I kin help tellin' you, ma boy,
that I'd rather see ma daughter wedded to a boy like you
that's worked his way up in the world, even though we
don't know much about you yet, than to a boy like Harry
who's a nice enough kid in his way, but who's never done a
thing in his life but take the schoolin' his father provided
for him. Ma boy, we are mighty proud, my wife and me,
to know you and to have you and our little girl . . . she's
all we've got in this world so she's mighty precious to
us . . ."