The Complete Collection. William Wharton

exams. Maybe some of it’s supposed to stick to the sides of your mind when you pour it back, like making pots with slip in a dry plaster mold.

      Anyway, I don’t want any more. I don’t know what all that forced feeding has to do with survival. What good is it having a piece of paper saying you went to college, licked ass and crammed for four, six or eight years?

      I can say I went. Who checks? I’ll say I graduated, say I have a Ph.D. Who knows the difference? Nobody will call up and ask. Most times you take a job and fill out an employment form. I’ll say I have a Ph.D., two Ph.D.s, what the hell, do it right. I have a Ph.D. in physics and another in chemistry.

      There aren’t enough people in the world who can ask an intelligent question in those areas. Hardly any physicists could even trip me up. They all get specialized so soon, none of them know what the other guy’s doing. One peon’s off tracking down a wee bit of charm from a quark falling off the side of a neutron and doesn’t know from hell what an optical physicist might be into. None of them remember anything about general physics. I’ll just say, ‘That’s not my area.’ I’ll spend three days memorizing twenty or so of those constants and I’m home free.

      I’ll get myself a good printer to mock up a beautiful diploma and dingle some names to sign on it. Rupert Crutchins or Part Faley. Or I’ll make friends with somebody working in a registrar’s office at a university; have them mail off a set of photostat bogus credentials and records for me, give myself a 4.0 average; make it impressive, scare everybody.

      Most likely, I’m only going out to work in industry anyway; help Exxon make another billion or two, what’s the difference.

      The whole thing’s so phony. If you can do something, you can; if you can’t, you can’t. School and papers don’t change much.

      Up in Oregon I passed myself off as a choker. I faked the name of an outfit and said I’d worked there. They didn’t dash out and check.

      Sure, I made some booboos the first few days; they must’ve thought I was a raving idiot. But by the end of a week I was making it, same as everybody else.

      The trouble is, choking’s one bitch of a dangerous job. You earn that seven bucks an hour. The third week I was knocked cold. When that cat pulls back and those logs roll, you’d better be quick getting out from under; you can wind up smashed into a pancake. Two days later I was floored again. I went in to cash out. But already I was a good enough choker so they offered me more money to stay.

      You can get by with anything. I worked as a boatbuilder in Portland. I told them I’d built boats in L.A. I looked up a boatbuilding outfit in the L.A. phone book at the library.

      I’ve never even built a model boat. I get seasick watching a boat. But I landed the job. They set me to sanding mahogany pieces of wood and filing rough edges off fiberglass. Then I was promoted to cutting forms out of plywood using a jigsaw. An hour at any of those jobs and you’ve learned all there is to know.

      The thing I don’t understand is how guys stick all their lives with these jobs. No wonder they wind up stoned, or glued to the boob tube.

      We pull into Glenwood Springs before dark. The Rockies stand up in front of us like a wall. The sun, coming from behind, looks as if it’s trapped, totally blocked, on this side of the mountain. From here, you’d think it’s dark on the other side, all the way to the East Coast.

      We find a hotel built into some foothills. It’s an old-time place, not a motel. There’s a foyer with worn-out rugs, an oaken check-in desk and a punch bell. There’s even a regulation-size pool table. The price is about the same as a motel, so we splurge. I can’t remember ever staying in an American hotel before.

      The room is old-fashioned, with twin beds and paint-thick, castmetal steam radiators under the windows. This place must be freezing cold winters. In the bathroom there’s a genuine bathtub sitting up on lion’s paws. We take turns in the tub and there’s all the hot water you could ever want. I usually take showers, but there’s no shower. I fill the tub till it’s at the edge, then let myself float. I make the water hot as I can stand, then gradually cool it off to cold.

      I dry myself at the window while Dad takes his bath. It sounds as if he only puts in about three inches and doesn’t stay in more than five minutes. He’s always in such a hurry about everything.

      Downstairs we rent cues for the pool table. I played some in the rec room at Cowell in UCK SUCK; I’m no shark but I’m reasonable. We play rotation. Dad’s awkward as hell, looks as if he’s going to drive the damned cue straight through the table, but he puts them in. I hardly get to play at all. When and where the hell’d he learn pool? Maybe in the army.

      Neither of us can face another pizza. There is a Pizza Hut across from the hotel but we find a steak house on the far side of the river. With the steak, we have hash browns and corn on the cob. You hardly ever get corn on the cob in a restaurant. But the mother’n bill comes to almost twelve dollars. How in hell can a person live with food costing like that?

      Dad’s barely holding up his head as we go back to the hotel. He puts on his crazy sleeping-running suit and climbs into bed. He goes right out, snoring like a train till I push him over on his side.

      I’ve snitched a Mad magazine from a table in the foyer, so I stretch on the other bed. I turn on the TV in the corner, low. There’s only one channel and it’s a cowboy film to go with all the cowboy music. I’d go nuts if I lived around here. In ten minutes I’m bored; I’ve read the Mad before, it’s two years old. I think of going out and wandering around town, maybe investigate the river, but I’m too tired.

      I wish I could figure out just what the hell I’m going to do.

       8

      The next morning I’m in the kitchen making breakfast when Dad comes in still wearing his pajamas.

      ‘Johnny, something’s wrong in here; would you step into the bathroom and have a look?’

      I go back to see what it is and the toilet bowl’s full of blood! I turn to him.

      ‘What happened?’

      I’m looking to see if he’s cut himself somewhere. He stares into the bowl.

      ‘I don’t know. When I peed, it came out like that.’

      I’m scared. Big quantities of blood always set off my adrenaline.

      ‘Geez, Dad, we’d better get you in and have this checked. All this worry and everything maybe has you mixed up inside.’

      He looks at me.

      ‘You don’t think it might be cancer or something like that, do you?’

      Dad has an absolutely deadly fear of cancer. His father died painfully from liver cancer; two of his sisters from breast cancer; it seems to run in the family.

      ‘I’m sure not, Dad. But just to be safe we’ll make an appointment to see a urologist when we go visit Mother this afternoon.’

      At the hospital, Mother’s more reconciled to things. She promises she’ll do as the doctors say and she’s really going to take care of herself. She’s glad I talked to her and she hadn’t thought of it that way.

      ‘Besides, Jacky, I have to live for his sake.’

      Afterward, I take Dad down to the urology clinic. We don’t tell Mother. Down there they give us a bottle and point out a bathroom. I show Dad how he’s to pee in the bottle, then attach the paper on the outside with a rubber band. He’s nervous, but says he can do it.

      In a few minutes he comes out smiling, the bottle filled with urine to the brim. It’s still reddish but not so bad as the urine in the toilet this morning. The nurse looks and schedules him for an emergency appointment.

      The