There were girls I didn’t get to first base with, and there were girls I did get to first base with. And some I got to second base with, and one or two who let me get all the way to third. More than one or two, maybe. But one way or another they all turned in superb clutch pitching, and no matter how many hits I got, the inning would end in a scoreless tie, with my men stranded all over the bases.
I wanted to take my bat and balls and go home.
The last apples I picked were in a small Early Macintosh orchard in Dutchess County, New York. That’s about sixty or seventy miles from New York City. When we finished picking those trees, I all of a sudden knew that I didn’t want to pick another apple for a very long time, or anything else. The high season was just coming on, and it was the one time of the year when a fruit picker can actually make decent money, but I was sick of it and ready for something else. I was just done and that was all.
I had around thirty dollars and two changes of clothes including one pair of heavy boots and a pair of regular shoes. I also had a whole load of money coming to me from the termite sales. I was dumb enough to send them a couple of wires asking them to send me the dough. Of course I never heard from them.
One of two things happened: (a) Flickinger managed to bribe his way out of the mess, in which case he certainly wouldn’t tell the office what had happened, so they would treat me like any deserter, or (b) they were all rotting in jail, and nobody ever so much as turned those signed orders in, and there was no money coming to me.
Either way, I had thirty dollars. Which means I had made a clear profit of a dollar a month since I left Upper Valley. I had a lot of vocational experience, none of which would get me a job with Opportunity For Advancement. And my cherry, like the winter apples, was still on the tree.
That’s how I spent the summer. The more I think of it, the more I figure the movies have the right idea. Start with a long shot of a kid in muddy shoes and a hunter’s jacket on a dusty Indiana road, and cut to a shot of the same kid finishing a hard day’s work as a wiper in a car wash in Upstate New York. In a town which I won’t name, because I’m still here now, writing this, and may be here forever.
It was in this very town that I met Francine.
Remember Francine?
To tell you the absolute truth, I’m having a little trouble remembering her myself. Good old Burger told me it was always a good idea to start off with something dramatic to hook the reader, and then go back and fill in the background and work up to it, but I have a feeling that would have been a better idea if I were someone who knew something about writing a book. If I were starting over again, I would just start at the beginning and go straight through to the end and the hell with hooking your attention and riveting your eye to the page. Either you’re with me or you’re not. But in case you forgot about Francine, and how things were going when I broke off to start backing and filling, it went like this:
And paused, because it seemed that a herd of elephants was stampeding up the staircase and down the hall, and voices were shouting, and Francine was roaring at me, begging me to do it, to stick it in, and I lay there, paralyzed, and the door to my room exploded inward, and a man the size of a mountain charged inside. He had a hand the size of a leg of lamb, and in that hand he had a gun the size of a cannon.
“You son of a bitch!” he bellowed.
And pointed the gun at me, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter nine
The gun jammed
Chapter ten
Well, what did you expect?
Blood?
Look, a guy stuck a gun in my face and pulled the trigger. Now if the gun didn’t jam then he would have blown my head off and you would be reading something else because I wouldn’t be around to write this.
I mean, I can just hear you clucking like a chicken and saying, “Now how in the hell is he going to get out of this one?” And then on the last page it said The gun jammed and you said, “Oh, shit, the gun jammed, what a cornball way to save him.”
I didn’t plan it that way, for Pete’s sake. If you want to know something, it took me a full day to write the last chapter. One stupid page with three stupid words on it and it took me all day to write it because I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that the gun jammed. And finally it came to me that there was only one way. The gun jammed. Period, end of chapter.
I’ll tell you something. I was going to make something up instead of having the gun jam. You know, to lie to you and figure out something more convincing and satisfying than a jammed gun. (I already put two things in this book that aren’t true. They’re out-and-out lies, actually. They’re both in the second chapter. If you think you know what they are, write to me. I’d be interested to see if you get it right.)
But I couldn’t think of a lie. Either I’m dictating this from the grave or the gun jammed. Well, the gun jammed and that’s all there is to it, and come to think of it, I don’t know why in the hell I’m apologizing, because what it amounts to is I’m apologizing for being alive, and that doesn’t make any sense.
Chapter eleven
When he saw that the gun was jammed, he tried wiggling the trigger with his finger. It wouldn’t come back into position. I suppose that was the logical time to pick up a chair and brain him with it, while he was standing there playing with the gun and swearing at it, but I don’t have those kind of reflexes. I just sat there on the bed with one hand on my knee and the other on the best part of Francine and waited for him to get the gun fixed and shoot me all over again.
Then he looked at me and said, “You’re not Pivnick.” His voice was very stern, as if he was accusing me of not being Pivnick. As though Pivnick was something everybody should be, like clean or loyal or trustworthy.
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
“I was sure it was Pivnick. I would have sworn up and down it was Pivnick.” He frowned. Then he looked up again and turned his eyes on Francine.
“You,” he said. “You’re not Marcia.”
She didn’t say anything. “No,” I said, for her. “She’s not Marcia. She’s Francine.”
“No wonder you’re not Pivnick.” He frowned again, deep in conversation, and then nodded his head emphatically. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. I see it all now. That’s why you’re not Pivnick.”
“It’s the main reason.”
“Then where is my wife?”
“Huh?”
“My wife,” he snapped. “Marcia. My wife.”
“Oh, Marcia,” I said. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Tell me.”
“She must be with Pivnick.”
“Ha,” he said, triumphantly. “I thought so! I always thought so. But where?” He lowered his head and paced, then raised it and snapped.
“There is another apartment in this building?”
“No. Just the barbershop downstairs.”
“This is One-eighteen South Main Street?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it to hell,” he said. “I was told I would find them at One-eighteen South Main Street. I was told that it was Pivnick. But I was certain. And I was definitely told that it was my wife. They told me I would find her at One-eighteen South Main Street in Rhinebeck.”
“This isn’t Rhinebeck.”
“What?”
“This isn’t Rhinebeck,” I told him. And I told him the name of the town.