Youngblood hawke, p.16
Youngblood Hawke, page 16
"Here's your other New York call, Art."
Jeanne's voice was just as he remembered it, very low in timbre and deeply stirring to him. She had waited a long time for him to return her call, she said, and finally had gone out to dinner. "With Karl Fry, as a matter of fact, Mr. Hawke. We talked a lot about your book. Karl said I was right not to give it to this man Luzzatto until you told me to."
"You were. I approve."
"Well, that's a relief! I had quite a little argument with Mr. Prince, you know. For all I know I'll be fired, but I don't much care."
"Jeanne, I appreciate your loyalty. I've talked to Luzzatto meantime. Now here's what you do." He gave her the instructions for bringing the manuscript to the actress at the Waldorf.
"What? Are you sure you want me to do that?" She sounded dismayed. "Suppose something happens to it?"
"Nothing will happen."
"Mr. Hawke, I realize selling the film rights can be important to you but—look, can't I get it duplicated first at least? I checked into microfilming, it wouldn't cost much."
"I promised to let her have it tomorrow, Jeanne."
She said obstinately, "Don't you have another copy? In any form, however crude?"
"Just scraps of drafts."
"Then I think it's too risky a thing to do. The book itself takes precedence over everything, even movie money."
He said a bit shortly, "Jeanne, that script survived four invasions, it'll survive two days in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel."
She said even more shortly, "All right, Mr. Hawke. It's your novel."
"How are you doing on the styling?"
"I'm halfway through Part Two. Of course I'll lose these two days now."
"Any more sublime chapters you want to throw out?"
"Well, yes, to tell the truth. If I'm still employed at Prince House next week."
He was enjoying her brisk tart answers, and he found himself faintly puzzled and jealous at her having dined with a derelict divorced man like Karl Fry. "Jeanne, I miss you. I enjoyed our Christmas Eve."
"Oh? Did you? Why, thank you, I enjoyed it too." The modulation of the firm business voice into the tentative tones of an unmarried girl was amusing and delightful. "Am I really forgiven for O. Henry, then?"
"I've decided to be pleased with you about that."
"Well, good." Then the girl said impulsively, "As a matter of fact I miss you, too, though it's quite absurd considering that I hardly know you. Having your work in front of me all the time, well, it's a little as though you were here." She paused and then said, "Not enough, though. I shall now shut up."
"How's Karl, Jeanie?"
"Rather sad, but he's always witty, you know. We had a big blowup over the ending of his new mystery."
"I imagine you won."
She laughed in a very pleasant way. "As a matter of fact, I did."
"You'll give Anne Karen my script tomorrow?"
"Yes, sir. What a thrill! I may ask for her autograph."
"You lack reverence, Jeanne."
"Not for your book. For movie stars, yes. She's to have forty-eight hours, right?"
"Yes."
"She won't have forty-nine. Goodbye, Mr. Hawke."
"My name's Arthur, Jeanne."
"Oh, is it? Goodbye, Arthur."
Hawke walked into the parlor, where Nancy was curled on the couch very intent on a magazine. He dropped into the poisonous green armchair. "There's the kind of girl I may marry one of these days."
Nancy dropped the magazine instantly and sat up. "Really? Let's hear about her."
Hawke told the sister of his evening with Jeanne, and tried to give a physical description of the young stylist, but felt he was failing to do her justice. "All I can say is, she's not only pretty, she's smart and sweet and decent. Marriage is written all over her in huge red letters, that's the trouble. Nothing but marriage. I mean this girl is very sharp but she's not an emancipated type, if you understand me."
"I do." Nancy sat with her arms folded, eyes alive with interest. "Sounds to me like you ought to grab her."
"I've spent two hours with her in all, Nancy."
"That's all it takes to decide, sometimes." The sister's broad face showed some secret irony or amusement.
"Well, I'll say this, Nancy, it's damned reassuring to know that such girls do exist after all—competent girls, girls who don't drawl, and giggle, and tease, and talk silly rot in honey tones, and only want to know who your family is and have you got a convertible, these necking mindless Southern rabbits with one consuming urge, to marry a fellow with money, especially old family money, but in a pinch any kind of money."
"Don't carry on so, Art. Girls are girls, south or north. A girl wants a provider and there's nothing wrong with that." Again there was that secret, amused look. "It appears that you're going to be quite a provider yourself, so all these rabbits just guessed wrong and you've got the laugh on them. And this Jeanne Green girl is in luck."
"I'm a million miles from getting married, Nancy."
His sister said with a complete change of tone, "Are you? Why? I think you need looking after. How do you feel these days, Art? Tell me the truth. Does your head ever bother you?"
"No—well, truthfully, when I overwork, or I go too long without sleep, I fall into a kind of black hole, and various queer symptoms do begin to crop up—"
"What kind of symptoms?"
"It doesn't matter. A night's rest is all I ever need, Nancy, to clear them away."
"Working at night can't be good for you, Art. I was scared when I first saw you today. You look like the devil."
"Well, maybe now that I've got some money I can start going by human time again."
In another abrupt change she said, grinning, "Would you go out with me New Year's Eve?"
"Why, I guess so. What would we do, Nancy?"
"Who knows? Drive down to Tombs to the Green Frog, or something." The sister's sallow face was turning very red. "You see, there's this peculiar man in the bank. He's been there for months. He's the new assistant manager and he's very capable but he's insanely shy. He's never said anything to anybody, except for business. Well, yesterday he came up to me and said he heard my brother was having a book published, and I said yes, and he said he wanted to congratulate me, and would I go out with him New Year's Eve? Just like that!"
Hawke laughed. "I'm glad I brought you together. The thing is, three's a crowd."
"Well, but this man! He's sort of a German, Art, he has a queer heavy way of talking, and he has this ridiculous, really unbelievable brown wig. There isn't a single real hair on his head. I—well, somehow I don't dislike him, but—"
"But you want a chaperon."
"Well, I want to know what you think of him. I'm sure he'll just give mama the horrors."
"It's a date, Nancy."
"Now I've warned you, Art, he's an absolute fright. But I don't know, I don't exactly dislike him." The sister made her way out of the room, scarlet-faced and laughing. Hawke went back to work.
"I can't sleep. Phew! It's smoky in here. You could cut this air with a knife."
Hawke's desk clock read a quarter past four. He emerged from the visions of his story with a shake of the head, and turned to his mother. Her hair was in a gray gauzy cap. The quilted Japanese bathrobe which he had brought her from Hawaii enveloped her shapelessly. She blinked and peered at him, her face seeming as always many years younger without glasses.
"Sit down, mama. Want some of this coffee?"
"Mercy no, that's the last thing I need. My eyes popped open two hours ago like they were on springs, and I've been tossing and thinking ever since." She perched on the edge of his bed. "I reckon this room's getting a little on the small side for a famous writer. And it's so chilly! I'm going to have to put in an oil burner, Art, that coal furnace just doesn't throw any heat up into this front room. It never did and it never will. My room's warm as toast."
Hawke tried not to smile. He had frozen in this room through a dozen winters, and each winter his mother had talked about putting in an oil burner. He wondered what subject she was circling around; he guessed it was Anne Karen. "I like writing in a cold room, mama, it keeps me waked up."
"Art, the more I think of it the more I don't want to take that thousand dollars."
Oh, lord, Hawke thought. "Why not, mom?"
The question might have been a mistake, but probably there was no escaping the flood that came. Mrs. Hawke reviewed her grievances against his dead Uncle Will, and the Hawke Brothers corporation, and against her husband for his lack of spine. She told him once again of her grandfather's fatal mistake in selling coal land outright instead of insisting on royalties. She reiterated her defiant faith that all the little parcels of wilderness she owned would some day prove to be treasures. They would make Art's children rich if not herself. The mine at Frenchman's Ridge was the best proof of this. Why, they had taken out hundreds of thousands of tons, they admitted it!
"Mama, anybody can mine coal up at Edgefield and lose money. That proves nothing."
"But that coal came out of our land, Art. It was worth a fortune and it's gone. What kind of payment is a thousand dollars for a thing like that?"
"Mom," said Hawke wearily, "you didn't own the mineral rights. Won't you ever see that? They made you a fair offer to settle a claim that can't hold up in a court."
"Art, that Hawke Brothers crowd wouldn't part with a thousand bottle caps, let alone a thousand dollars, unless they saw double their money out of it or better. Why do they want to give me a thousand dollars? That's what sticks in my craw."
"It was Scotty's idea. Glenn was against it."
"Ha! They were just putting on a show, all of them."
"Mama, I knew Scotty quite well at the university. He's a decent, responsible fellow."
"That was school. This is business. He's just like the rest of them, and that's why your cousin Eleanor married him, don't fool yourself. They're birds of a feather, that crowd. All money-mad."
"Let me understand you," Hawke said with exaggerated slow kindness. "You believe that the meeting yesterday was all rehearsed, correct? Glenn was only making believe he was grumpy. It was arranged for Scotty to offer the settlement and Glenn was supposed to object though really he was dying to have us fall in the trap and take a thousand dollars. The lawyers had their parts assigned too, that man from Lexington and Judge Crain. Or do you think old Harry Crain was in on the conspiracy? Let's get that clear."
"All right, Art, that was your father's way, making me out a fool. He was very good at that and in the end he ran a drugstore. Harry Crain's just an old lady. What we need is a lawyer."
"Scott Hoag offered to let you see the books of the mine, mom."
"Yes, I know, and that's something I want to take them up on, believe you me, before I accept their Santa Claus money. What's more you've got to do it, Art, not me. I can't read a company's books."
"I'm not an accountant."
"You're a man. It's a man's job to do these things. You can hire an accountant."
"An audit like that can take months."
"There's all the time in the world. The coal's gone."
"It could cost five hundred, a thousand dollars easily."
"You've got five thousand coming in. I don't have the money to spend myself, Art," whined the mother.
Hawke was not at all sure this was so. Devious secrecy about money came naturally to his mother. He knew that she was drawing some rental from the drugstore, and that she did receive a small coal royalty from her share in the estate of an aunt. His guess was that in this old house, especially with Nancy's earnings, his mother was living within her means, and probably buying more worthless coal land on remote cliffs. There was always plenty of excellent food in the house, and his mother and sister dressed well.
He said, more to dismiss his mother and get some sleep than anything else, "I'll phone Scott in the morning about the books, if that's what you want."
"That's just what I want. You're a good boy." She came to him and patted his head, a gesture which maddened him. He ground his teeth in silence. "Now I can sleep. I feel terrible, bothering a great writer with all this business talk, but some day you'll thank me." She gave him an irritating kiss on his forehead, and left. Hawke glanced mechanically at the last paragraph on the page before him. It seemed a jumble of words scrawled by an idiot. But this was a familiar effect, not necessarily accurate. Time to quit.
When he woke at noon the same paragraphs looked brilliant. The sun was blazing outside, and white snow mantled the yard. He had had seven straight hours of sleep. His first thought on waking was that at this very moment Anne Karen was reading his Alms for Oblivion; Anne Karen, whose luminous shadow he had adored as a boy of seventeen! The radio next door was blasting
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Open your gates and sing,
Hosannah in the highest!"
and for once the music from next door was a sound track made for his mood. He was picturing billboard signs all over the country and an electric display atop the Astor Theatre in New York:
ANNE KAREN
in
YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE'S
ALMS FOR OBLIVION
He looked at himself this way and that in the bathroom mirror singing. "Jerusalem, Je–roo–salem!" Yes, sir, that pasty young man with the broad square jaw, and the straight heavy nose, and that wide underlip curled over the upper one, was the author of that book! Yes indeed, he had seen his face in this same darkening spotty mirror the first time he had shaved, he had despaired over his pimples at this very mirror, and now he was looking at the face of YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE, by God! He came bawling into the kitchen, "Jeroosalem, Jer–oooo–salem!" flung himself into a chair with a crash, and ferociously attacked the ham and eggs his mother set smoking before him.
She said, "Well, you seem full of beans today."
"Mountain air, mama. Home cooking. The sight of my loved ones. Hey! Biscuits and honey, by God!"
What a marvellous breakfast! After all, there was something to being home. This was the only room in the house that Hawke liked. In fact he loved the kitchen. It was the biggest room, and it had the biggest windows. He didn't mind the familiar laundry smell from the foam-brimming washtub. This was the room where all the good things had happened, the eating, the family small talk, the giggling fits with Nancy. It was the real living room. The dining room and the parlor were both dingy gestures at polite life. The Hawkes had been a kitchen family, and he always felt good in a kitchen. If only it were spring, so that the lilacs at the window would be blooming, and warm perfumed air would be blowing in! There were worse places than home, and worse mothers than the woman who now put another slab of sizzling red ham before him, and poured his coffee. Mom was a problem, but she had a charming smile, and she was nobody's fool. A trifle paranoid; but then, he himself needed a streak of obstinate lunacy to be an artist, and no doubt he owed his ample endowment to his mother.
He blurted, in this wave of good feeling, "Mom, you know what? Now don't tell anybody, and don't ask me a lot of questions, nothing's definite, but I may sell my book to the movies."
"Really? My, that's nice, Art." She smiled uncertainly. "Very nice. How much would they pay you?"
"None of that's settled. It's all very complicated, a movie negotiation."
"But I mean, you can become a millionaire, can't you? Gracious! A movie!"
"Not with a first book."
"Don't sell it cheap, boy. I have a feeling it's good."
"Mom, you couldn't stand it when you read it."
"Well, I don't like these sordid stories, Art, everybody so greedy for money and all. Why, that book is all about money, and how mean people are. I'm not saying everybody's lily-white and altruistic but there's such a thing as loving your fellow man and serving him, and that's my creed. I think there should be more stories about wholesome people. You ought to write one. It would be a big money maker. But I'm only thinking with you selling this thing to a publisher right off like that, even if they only gave you five hundred down, and these phone calls from New York and all, why I think it must be worth money."
"Don't worry, I won't give it away."
"I hope not. Art, you won't forget to call Scott Hoag about examining those books, will you?"
Some of Hawke's elation departed, but he nodded, and wiped his mouth. "No time like the present." He went straight to the telephone.
Scotty said, "Boy, you really timed it. I had my hand on the doorknob, I'm all set to drive up to Lexington . . . Hey, boy, you see the Gazette yet this morning? You splashed all over the front page."
Hawke told him what his mother wanted. Scott's tone changed at once, still pleasant but serious. "That's a reasonable request, Art. She wants every last thing that's coming to her but by the Christ that's how you gotta be in this world."
"Is it all right?"
"I think so . . . Hell, sure it's all right, they couldn't stop her by law, I don't think, if she insisted. I'm not saying it won't be messy. You know, Art, your mother's antagonized that family over the years."
"I know."
"I had trouble last night over this thousand dollars. I don't want to bore you with all this, but ole Mister Will put the family's holdings in a trust fund, and every time we have to do something we end up discussing it with the ladies. Well, you know how women are in binness. I got them calmed down and it's all set. This might kick over the crock again. She definitely won't take the thousand?"
"After she's looked at the books, she says."
"Art, she shoulda been a binness man. Look, I gotta get down to Lexington like a bat out of hell. I'll do some phoning from there, and I'll call you on this tonight. Okay?"
