The hell I will. You’re Henry to me.
I can see we’re going to get along swell, I chuckled. I got up to inspect the food. Do you suppose we could have lunch soon? I asked.
It’s only eleven o’clock, said Mona.
I know, but I’m getting hungry. Ham-and-eggs sounds enticing. Besides, we haven’t had too much to eat lately. Let’s make up for lost time.
O’Mara couldn’t restrain himself. As long as I’m around you’re going to eat well. If we only had a regular kitchen! I could dish up some swell meals.
Mona knows how to cook, I said. We have wonderful meals—when we eat.
You mean to say you don’t eat every day?
He exaggerates, said Mona. If he misses one meal he thinks he’s starving.
That’s true, I said, pouring out another glass of Sherry. I’m thinking of the future all the time. Something tells me it’s going to be a long, hard grind.
Haven’t you sold anything yet? asked O’Mara.
I shook my head.
That’s really tough, he said. Listen, (an afterthought) let me look at your stuff later, will you? Maybe I can peddle it for you—if it’s any good.
If it’s any good? Mona blazed. What do you mean?
O’Mara burst out laughing. Oh, I know he’s a genius. That’s what’s wrong, perhaps. You can’t give it to ‘em straight, you know. It’s got to be watered down. I know Henry.
With every crack he made O’Mara put his foot in deeper. I had a presentiment things were not going to work out at all. However, as long as the money held out we would enjoy a respite. After that he’d probably get a job and fend for himself.
Ever since I knew O’Mara he had been making these sorties and coming back with a little jack which he always divvied up with me. There never had been a period when he had found me in good straits. Our friendship dated from the time we were seventeen or eighteen. We met for the first time in the dark at a railway station in New Jersey. Bill Woodruff and I were spending a vacation on the shores of a beautiful lake. Alec Walker, their boss, who had come to visit us, had brought O’Mara along as a surprise. It was a long drive from the station to the farm house where we were boarding. (We were travelling by horse and carriage.) About midnight we got back to the farm house. No one felt like going to bed immediately. O’Mara wanted to see the lake we had talked so much about. We got into a row-boat and headed toward the center of the lake, which was about three miles across. It was black as pitch. On an impulse O’Mara peeled off his clothes. Said he wanted to have a swim. In a jiffy he had dived overboard. It seemed an endless time before he came up to the surface; we couldn’t see him, we could only hear his voice. He was panting and puffing like a walrus. What happened? we asked. I got stuck in the bulrushes, he said. He turned over on his back and floated a while to get his breath. Then he started swimming, with strong, vigorous strokes. We followed in his wake, calling to him from time to time, begging him to get back in the boat before he got cold and exhausted.
That was how we met. His performance made a deep impression on me. His manliness and fearlessness won my admiration. During the week we spent together at the farm house we got to know one another inside out. Woodruff seemed more than ever a sissy to me now. He was not only full of qualms and misgivings but he was mercenary too. O’Mara, on the other hand, always gave recklessly. He was a born adventurer. At ten he had run away from the orphan asylum. Somewhere in the South, while working in a carnival, he had run across Alec Walker who immediately took a fancy to him and brought him North to work for him. Later Woodruff was also taken into the office. We were to see and hear a lot of Alec Walker soon. He was to become the sponsor of our club, our patron saint virtually.
But I am getting ahead of myself … What I wanted to say was that it was impossible for me to ever refuse O’Mara anything. He gave all and he expected all. Among friends this was the natural, spontaneous way to behave, he believed. As for morals, be had no moral sense whatever. If he were hard up for a woman he would ask you if he couldn’t sleep with your wife—that is, until he found himself a piece of tail. If he lacked the money to help you out in a pinch he would do a little thieving on the side or he would forge a check. He had no scruples, no compunctions whatever. He liked to eat well and sleep long. He hated work but when he undertook something he went at it whole-heartedly. He always wanted to make money quickly. Make a haul and clear out, that was the way he put it. He was fond of all the sports and loved to hunt and fish. When it came to cards he was a shark: he played a mean game, entirely out of keeping with his character. His excuse was that he never played for the fun of it. He played to win, to make a killing. He was not above cheating either, if he felt he could get away with it. He had formed a romantic notion of himself as a clever gambler.
Best of all was his talk. To me, at least. Most of my friends found him tiresome. But I could listen to O’Mara without ever desiring to open my own trap. All I did was to ply him with questions. I suppose the reason his talk was so stimulating to me was because it dealt with worlds I had never entered. He had been over a good part of the globe, had lived a number of years in the Orient, particularly China, Japan and the Philippines. I liked the picture he drew of Oriental women. He always spoke of them with tenderness and reverence. I liked too the way he spoke about fish, big fish, the monsters of the deep. Or about snakes, which he handled like pets. Trees and flowers also figured heavily in his talks: he knew every variety, it seemed to me, and he could dwell on their particularities endlessly. Then too he had been a soldier, even before the war broke out. A top sergeant, no less. He could talk about the qualities of a top sergeant in a way that would make one believe this little tyrant to be far more important than a colonel or a general. Officers he always spoke of with contempt and derision, or else with bitter hatred. They tried to push me up the ladder, he said once, but I wouldn’t hear of it. As top sergeant I was king, and I knew it. Any horse’s ass can become a lieutenant. You have to be good to be top sergeant.
He gave himself plenty of elbow room when talking. Never in a hurry to finish. Not O’Mara. Talked just as well when sober as when drunk. Of course he had a wonderful listener in me. An ideal listener. All anyone had to do in those days was merely to mention China, Java or Borneo, and I was all ears. Mention anything foreign and remote and I was a willing victim.
The surprising thing about a guy like O’Mara was that he also read a great deal. Almost the first thing he would do, on looking me up, would be to survey the books on hand. One by one he would go through them, savouring them slowly and delectably. The books also entered into our talks. Somehow I preferred O’Mara’s impressions of a book to those of my other friends who were more widely read or more critical. Like myself, O’Mara was all appreciation, all enthusiasm. He had no critical sense. If the book held his interest it was a good book, or a great book, or a marvelous book. We would live as vividly in the books we devoured together as in Our imaginary peregrinations through China, India, Africa. It was at the dinner table these jags often began. Over the coffee O’Mara would suddenly recall some incident out of his checkered past. We would egg him on. At two or three in the morning we would still be sitting there at table. By that time we would be ready for a little snack—to revive ourselves. Then a bit of a walk to get some clean fresh air into our lungs, as he always phrased it. Of course the next day was always shot. None of us thought of stirring out of bed before noon. Breakfast and lunch combined was always a leisurely affair. None of us was geared to start going first thing out of bed. And, since the day was already shot, we would immediately begin thinking about the theatre or a movie.
As long as the money lasted it was wonderful…
I suppose it was O’Mara’s practical turn of mind which gave me the idea one day of getting my little prose poems printed and selling them myself. After looking through my stuff, O’Mara was of the opinion that I would never get an editor to take them. I knew he was right. I began to
