Collection 1980 - Yondering (v5.0) Page 16

  The same plots that were used by the ancient Greek dramatists were also used by Chaucer, by Shakespeare, by Dickens, and by any contemporary writer of mysteries or of the West. It is what is done with material in the development of that plot that makes the difference. Nobody “invents” a plot. They are all here, happening every day, probably every hour. George Polti, many years ago, listed thirty-six basic plots, and nobody has ever improved on his list. To offer an illustration of constantly recurring plot patterns: at the moment of writing, the hostage situation in Iran is much in the news. Here we have a basic plot situation. A persecutor (the so-called students), the suppliant (the hostages), and the power in authority, Khomeini. Another of these basic plots is the fugitive and the pursuer, the theme of thousands of stories, lately in the television serial “The Fugitive” but also in Les Misérables. The most common of all, perhaps, the wife or husband and two adulterers.

  As to my own writing, I cannot remember when I was not trying to tell stories, certainly before I ever went to school. Everybody thinks he can tell a story well enough for publication, and I certainly thought so. Most professional writers have served an apprenticeship of about ten years in learning their trade. Many people can write one story, but to write many stories is altogether a different thing. I often think that the worst thing that can happen to a writer is to have a big success with his first book. Unless he or she has done much writing in other areas before, the writer will never have learned his trade.

  The stories contained in this volume are largely among the earliest stories I published, although they were followed by many others. I had no choice but to make a living as a writer, so I wrote all kinds and types of stories; by far the larger number were concerned with Asia, in one aspect or another.

  Many of my associates during the years when I was working around over the West at whatever job I could find were men and women who had lived through the period of which I now write. Gunfighters, gamblers, outlaws, and cowpunchers did not live in some never-never land; they were men who had to make a living, and they worked, as I did, at whatever came to hand. One whom I knew operated a small store, another a crossroads filling station.

  My stories have come from incidents in my own life, anecdotes I’ve heard, stories repeated by miners, cowhands, Indians, and others whom I’ve known.

  * * *

  I’VE BEEN READING your work, Mr. Dugan, and like it tremendously! You have such power, such feeling!”

  “Thank you,” he heard himself saying. “I’m glad you liked it.” He glanced toward the door where several women were arriving. They weren’t young women. He sighed and glanced hopelessly toward the table where one of those faded dowagers who nibble at the crusts of culture was pouring tea. Now if they only had a steak—

  “Mr. Dugan,” his hostess was saying, “I want you to meet Mrs. Nowlin. She is also a writer.”

  She was so fat she had almost reached the parting of the stays, and she had one of those faces that always reminded him of buttermilk. “How do you do, Mrs. Nowlin?” He smiled in a way he hoped was gracious. “It is always a pleasure to meet someone in the same profession. What do you write?”

  “Oh, I’m not a regular writer, Mr. Dugan, but I do so love to write! Don’t you find it simply fascinating? But I just never have been able to get anything published. Sometimes I doubt the publishers even read my manuscripts! Why, I believe they just couldn’t!”

  “I imagine they are pretty busy, Mrs. Nowlin. They get so many stories, you know.”

  “Why, I sent one of my poems away not long ago. It was a poem about James, you know, and they wouldn’t take it. They didn’t even say anything! Just one of those rejection slips. Why, I read the poem at the club, and they all said it was simply beautiful!”

  “Was—was James your husband?” he asked hopefully, glancing toward the tea table again. Still no steak.

  “James! Oh, goodness no! James is my dog! My little Pom. Don’t you just adore Poms, Mr. Dugan?”

  Then she was gone, fluttering across the room like a blimp escaped from its moorings.

  He sighed again. Every time chance caught him at one of these author’s teas, he would think of Frisco Brady. He could imagine the profane disgust of the big Irish longshoreman if he knew the guy who flattened him in the Harbor Pool Room was guest of honor at a pink tea.

  Dugan felt the red crawling around his ears at the thought, and his eyes sought the tea table again. Someday, he reflected, there is going to be a hostess who will serve real meals to authors and achieve immortality at a single stroke. Writers would burn candles to her memory, or better still, some of those shadowy wafers that were served with the tea and were scarcely more tangible than the tea itself.

  He started out of his dream and tried to look remotely intelligent as he saw his hostess piloting another body through the crowd. He knew at a glance that she had written a book of poetry that wouldn’t scan, privately published, of course. Even worse, it was obvious that in some dim, distant year she had seen some of Garbo’s less worthy pictures and had never recovered. She carried her chin high, and her neck stretched endlessly toward affected shoulders.

  “I have so wanted to meet you! There is something so deep, so spiritual about your work! And your last book! One feels you were on a great height when you wrote it! Ah!…”

  She was gone. But someone else was speaking to him, and he turned attentively.

  “Why do so many of you writers write about such hard things? There is so much that is beautiful in the world! All people aren’t like those people you write about, so why don’t you write about nice people? And that boy you wrote about in the story about hunger, why, you know perfectly well, Mr. Dugan, that a boy like that couldn’t go hungry in this country!”

  His muscles ached with weariness, and he stood on the corner staring down the street, his thoughts blurred by hunger, his face white and strained. Somehow all form had become formless, and things about him took on new attitudes and appearances. He found his mind fastening upon little things with an abnormal concentration born of hunger and exhaustion. Walking a crack in the sidewalk became an obsession, and when he looked up from that, a fat man was crossing the street, and his arms and legs seemed to jerk grotesquely. Everything about him seemed to move in slow motion, and he stopped walking and tried to steady himself, conscious it was a delirium born of hunger.

  He had been standing still for a moment trying to work his foot free from the sock where it was stuck with the dried blood from a broken blister, and when he moved forward suddenly, he almost fell. He pulled up sharply and turned his head to see if anyone noticed. He walked on then with careful attention.

  He was hungry.

  The words stood out in his consciousness, cold and clear, almost without thought or sensation. He looked at them as at a sign that had no meaning.

  He passed a policeman and tried to adopt a careless, confident air but felt the man looking after him. Passing a bakery, the smell of fresh pastry went through him like a wave, leaving a sensation of emptiness and nausea.

  “You’ve had such an interesting life, Mr. Dugan! There must have been so many adventures. If I had been a man, I would have lived just such a life as you have. It must have been so thrilling and romantic!”

  “Why don’t you tell us some of the real stories? Some of the things that actually happened? I’ll bet there were a lot you haven’t even written.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, Dugan. Lay off that dame, see? If you don’t, I’ll cut your heart out.”

  The music moved through the room, and he felt the lithe, quick movements of the girl as she danced, and through the smoky pall he heard a chair crash, and he looked down and smiled at the girl, and then he spun her to arm’s length and ducked to avoid the first punch. Then he struck with his left, short and hard. He felt his fist thud against a jaw and saw the man’s face as he fell forward, eyes bulging, jaw slack. He brought up his right into the man’s midsection as he fell toward him and then stepped away. Something
struck him from behind, and it wasn’t until he got up that the blood started running into his eyes. He knew he’d been hit hard, and heard the music playing “In a little Spanish town ’twas on a night like this, stars were shining down…”

  He was speaking then, and he heard himself saying, “There is only the personal continuity. The man we were yesterday may not be the man we are tomorrow. Names are only trademarks for the individual, and from day to day that individual changes, and his ways and thoughts change, although he is not always himself aware of the change. The man who was yesterday a soldier may be a seller of brushes tomorrow. He has the same name, but the man himself is not the same, although circumstances may cause him to revert to his former personality and character. Even the body changes; the flesh and blood change with the food we eat and the water we drink.

  “To him who drifts about, life consists of moving in and out of environments and changing conditions, and with each change of environment the wanderer changes, also. We move into lives that for the time are very near and dear to us, but suddenly all can be changed, and nothing remains but the memory.

  “Only the innocent speak of adventure, for adventure is only a romantic name for trouble, and when one is having ‘adventures’ one wishes it were all over and he was elsewhere and safe. ‘Adventure’ is not nice. It is more often than not rough and dirty, cruel and harsh…”

  Before they screwed on the copper helmet, Scotty stopped by, his features tight and hard. “Watch yourself, kid, this is bad water and too many sharks. Some say there are more octopi and squids here than anywhere else, but usually they’re no trouble. We’ll try to hold it down up here.” He slapped his waistband as he spoke. Scotty moved, and Singapore Charlie lifted the helmet.

  “Don’t worry, skipper, I’ll keep your lines clear, and I can handle any trouble.” Then Dugan was sinking through the warm green water, feeling it clasp him close so that only the copper helmet protected him. Down, down, still farther down, and then he was standing on the sandy floor of the ocean, and around him moved the world of the undersea. There was silence, deep, unfathomable silence, except for the soft hiss of air. He moved forward, walking as though in a deep sleep, pushing himself against the water, turning himself from side to side like some unbelievable monster that haunted the lower depths.

  Then he found the dark hull of the old ship and moved along the ghostly deck, half shrouded in the weed of a hundred years, moving toward the companionway where feet no longer trod. He hesitated at the door, looking down into darkness, and then he saw it moving toward him, huge, ominous, frightening. He tucked his warm-blooded hands into his armpits to leave only the slippery surface of the canvas and rubber suit. It came toward him, only vaguely curious, and inquiring tentacles slipped over and around him…feeling…feeling…feeling.

  He sipped his tea and avoided the eyes of the woman who had the manuscript she wanted him to comment on, nibbled impotently at those infinitesimal buttons of nourishment, and listened to the ebb and flow of conversation about his ears. Here and there a remark swirled about, attracting his momentary attention. He heard himself speaking, saying how pleasant it had been, and then he was out on the street again, turning up his collar against the first few drops of spattering rain.

  SO YOU WANT ADVENTURE, DO YOU?

  * * *

  NO MAN IN his right mind wants adventure. I won’t speak for women. To women the words adventure and romance are synonymous. Adventure to a woman implies a man, reasonably tall and dark, or unbelievably blond and golden tan, and of course, the imminent possibility of losing what some ancient humorist called her honor.

  Women, some of them anyway, have honor, but it isn’t what they are in danger of losing when they have an adventure.

  Adventure is the romantic name for trouble. What is a confounded nuisance in Pawhuska is an adventure in Hangchow. Adventure is the innocent-looking cigar that blows up in your face. Adventure is a term associated with the tough districts of famous towns, of native quarters, or dark alleyways, places like Grant Road in Bombay, Malay Street in Singapore, District Six in Cairo, Hongkew or Blood Alley in Shanghai, the Cut in Port au Prince, the Fish Market in Cairo, or some of the other similar places. Adventure is a curse and a blight.

  There are adventure stories. You sit deep in a soft chair and read about some poor devil lost in the desert, or living precariously on some lonely island on a diet of gull’s eggs, shellfish, and coconuts, and you call that adventure. Or you read about some lug getting himself shot at and missed.

  You imagine yourself rescuing some seductive damsel in distress (usually clad in as little as your imagination will allow) and being the dashing hero. You forget that the gal you rescued would probably sue you for spoiling her new hat, getting a run in her nylons, or for breach of promise…if you got far enough to make any promises you could breach.

  That beautiful damsel would probably move into your life, quaff your last bottle of Scotch, smoke your cigarettes, and look at you through the smoke…and then vanish into the night with your watch, shirt studs, and the thirty bucks you won in that crap game.

  Anybody can have adventure. Formerly, I believed one had to have the adventure-type mind, a slightly screwball attitude that keeps you doing the irresponsible, unexpected thing, the wrong thing at the wrong time. Now I know that’s a lot of malarkey.

  You want adventure? Walk down to the corner and kick a cop in the teeth. You’ll get it.

  When you are having adventure, it is always a pain in the neck. When you tell about it afterward, it becomes all glamour and romance. Not that you need to enlarge on the tale, but it always looks different to a man in an armchair with a drink in his hand, and that’s probably the way you’ll have your listener.

  Take tonight. I could have a dozen adventures. The time is nine o’clock in the evening. The town is Rouen, France. Roughly 125,000 population, a seaport on the Seine River about 40 miles, as the crow flies, from the sea, almost twice that by river.

  The town is still picking up the pieces from that bombing, so when you walk along the streets, every once in a while you come upon a bunch of ruins, looking like the stump of a decayed tooth.

  Except, that is, for the waterfront. The whole waterfront could stand a new denture. When they bombed the harbor installations and buildings close by they weren’t kidding.

  So this is Rouen. You walk out of an Allied Troop movie and cross a lighted street and start to walk. Ahead there is a café. Of course, if you go in there, you could have your adventure. You could decide that blonde in the corner wanted to be rescued from the sailor, that big sailor sitting with her.

  You could order a drink, lean an elbow on the bar, then turn slowly and give him a look through slitted eyes, sneering and looking him slowly up and down. If that doesn’t do it, and it will unless he is a Quaker, or gifted with Job’s own patience, you can dash your drink in his eyes or slap him across the mouth with your gloves. And if there is anything that will arouse concentrated mayhem in a man, it is a slap across the mouth with a pair of gloves.

  The only bad angle to that sort of adventure is that you’d probably be looking at everybody through slitted eyes for the next two weeks. Slitted eyes with large areas of blue and black around them.

  Or you could take that street. That dark one. It is narrow and black, and when you turn into that narrow crevice between the buildings, you seem to start down, plunging deeper and deeper into some nether world from which there will be no escape. The buildings seem to lean toward each other for support, almost shutting out the sky.

  Your footsteps will echo hollowly on the cobblestones. Then you hear footsteps approaching (what the hell would you expect, somebody walking on his hands?) and you flatten against the buildings. As the girl draws near, you lean out and say in a sepulchral tone: “Come with me to the Casbah!”

  Nine chances out of ten she’ll say, “That’ll be two thousand francs, bud!”

  Supposing it is the tenth chance. Supposing she suddenly screams for the c
ops. What then? Why then, my boy, you have an adventure, and brother, it will be a honey!

  If you know your adventure, however, you are not at a loss. You will wheel instantly and dart into the door behind you. (How did it get there? Friend, it had to be there!) and race up the stairs. You will escape over the roofs, you will…you dart into a room and a woman screams, then there is a roar from her husband. He isn’t bellowing because he thinks you’re assaulting his wife, but he wants to sleep. Can’t a man ever get any rest around here? The fact that you now have against you a charge of breaking and entering means nothing.

  You race to the room. You never make a mistake and get the blind hallways. That wouldn’t do at all. You race to the roof. And then you find there is no other roof closeby, but you are not disturbed. You merely knot together your necktie, both socks, your coat, and two old clotheslines, to say nothing of the shoestring on which you began all this, and then you lower yourself to the ground.

  Instantly, you wheel and dart into an alleyway. You run to a lighted street, brush the dust off your clothes, and head for the nearest café to pick up another coat. Once garbed in the new coat (and getting it may lead to still another adventure), you walk back on the street. If the owner of the new coat pursues you, glare at him in your most supercilious manner and say, “Why, my good man, you are in error! This coat was made for me by our old family tailors, the brothers Twigger, of Twirling on the Tweed!” And then walk on ignoring him. Better still, walk away in high dudgeon. If there’s anything that floors a man, it’s high dudgeon.

  So, for a few simple formulas for adventures:

  Don’t hesitate to butt into other people’s business.

  Never accept things at face value. Remember Don Quixote.