Read 'em and Weep fiction by Rube Goldberg

When I was delivering copy I used to hear Fred Knowles tell the reporters, “Forget all that stuff about suspense, style, light and shade, and the rest of it. Just make sure you’ve got a story that’s worth telling, and, if you know anything about the English language, it will be interesting. The only way to write is to write…Now, get out of here.”
That’s what gave me a secret desire to put a lot of words down on paper some day and see how they came out. Maybe it will be all cockeyed, with the middle in the front and the back in the middle. But I at least know something about the subject I have selected. So here goes:
I worked on the Mail-Telegraph and sat in a chair outside the door where it said Editorial Rooms. To get past me you had to have plenty of reasons or be Rudyard Kipling. The few bucks I earned seemed like a lot in those days and the fact that I could throw guys out made me feel important. The only fellows who knew my last name were Ernie Kerr and Gus Salinger. Everybody else just called me “Buzz.” Ernie wrote small stories about cops chasing burglars over tenement house roof-tops, and Gus drew those diagrams with dotted lines showing where half a dozen cops fell after shooting each other in the excitement. Ernie said some day he would knock out a column that would make all the big guys in the game look sick. Gus sat around mumbling about going over to Paris to study art.
They did most of their bragging to Jennie Kraus, who wrote sob stuff under the name of Viola Merivale. Everybody was willing to forget the name “Jennie Kraus” because “Viola Merivale” seemed to belong to her. She was a beaut. Long eyelashes, a pale complexion with just enough rouge on her lips to make you look twice. And she was very neat about everything, which was a novelty around a newspaper office. It was hard to tell which one she liked the best, Gus or Ernie. I had a secret admiration for Viola myself, but she didn’t seem to know I was alive. When she walked past my desk I could hear birds sing, like a fighter who was just clipped on the chin.
It’s a funny thing about a newspaper. There’s a continual flow of human lives going through those clattering old typewriters all the time, but nobody gives a rap for all the joys and troubles of the people in the office. That’s what made me so strong for Ernie and Gus. One payday they saw my chin dropping down to my knees, and asked me what was the matter. I told them my kid brother had to be sent to Arizona for his health and I didn’t know what to use for money. Without too much talk they gave me enough dough to make up the amount I needed, and left me standing there like a fool before I could swallow the lump in my throat and say something. I was their friend for life. I paid them back little by little. Every little while they’d ask me how my sister or my mother was, and I had to remind them it was my brother’s life they’d saved. I didn’t care. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for them after that.
Everything around the Mail-Telegraph seemed so permanent. You just took it for granted that everybody and every desk was there forever. So you can imagine what a terrible jolt we all got when a notice was posted near the city desk saying the Mail-Telegraph had been sold to P.C. Singleton and would be consolidated with the Blade. This meant that we would all be thrown out on our ear, because Old Man Singleton only wanted the name and, incidentally, Viola Merivale. We were glad for Viola’s sake, because she could handle King Kong if she had to. She was used to owners who liked to have nice-looking dames around.
Gus and Ernie were pretty sad when they were cleaning out their desks, which were mostly full of old papers, stray neckties, and orange peels. They kept whispering and looking over at me. So I went over to console them, although I felt pretty sad, myself.
“Buzz Snagle,” said Ernie,” with a quiver in his voice, “you’re a great little guy. This is a tough blow to all of us.”
Gus put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Ernie and I have been thinking. We don’t want to give up the place we got, and we thought it would be nice if you came to live with us and sort of helped out while we were all looking around. It would be good for you, too.”
“Gee, that would be wonderful,” I answered, feeling pretty good to think two guys like that would want me. I still had a little dough in the bank and could pay my way until I found something.
The first night we were in the apartment we swore to split our combined bank roll three ways, no matter what happened. Ernie said drop around to the magazines in a day or two and get a job, and Gus thought he’d knock out a few murals until something better turned up. They introduced me to Viola. She said, “Haven’t I seen you some place before?” which was enough for me. If she had just recited her ABCs it would have been okay. Her voice was like that.
I found out Ernie and Gus had no money at all, and I had to kick in pretty strong to keep things going. I knew people would think I was somewhat of a sap for doing it. But it didn’t matter to me what people would think, because the memory of what Ernie and Gus did for my brother was still pretty fresh in my mind.
Time went on, and my roll was getting thinner.
“I know what my trouble is,” said Ernie, after going through my pants, which were hanging on the back of a chair. “My head is too big for my body. My brain generates ideas so fast my poor little physique hasn’t enough strength to execute them.”
I was lucky that way. I didn’t have to worry about my brain at all. All I had to worry about was getting those two guys out of bed in the morning so they would look for work…
The three of us were standing in front of one of those employment agencies on Sixth Avenue where they paste up little slips asking for valets, chauffeurs, and other high-class help. Ernie and Gus didn’t seem to be reading the notices very carefully, and I had the courage to say, “Listen, boys. If you’re trying to pick out a job for me, it’s no dice. We all get jobs, or else I lay down right alongside of you two and we all starve together.” They both grabbed me and gave me a reproachful look.
“Listen, Buzz,” said Gus. “We’re all going to get jobs, and whatever we make goes in the pot for the three musketeers, just like we said before.”
I asked, with some degree of doubt, “Suppose one of us is out of work and can’t kick in?”
“Nothing to it,” smiled Gus, sort of tickled with himself for no reason. “The other two of us will take care of him until he gets a job. It’s all in one pot, even if only one is working.”
That last crack had a peculiar sound to it, but I agreed. To confirm my suspicions, I was the first one to land a job. I was to get fifteen bucks a week in a cannery over near the East River working on a silly machine that blew skins off of tomatoes. I thought it was a rib at first, but after the first couple of weeks the laughs were gone. It was just another job, and very monotonous.
I nearly fainted when Gus and Ernie came home and said they had jobs, too. It was around the holidays, and Gus was helping out in a stationery store selling Christmas cards. He said the art work was lousy but, after all, all great artists had to suffer before they got anywhere.
Ernie was also imbibing the Christmas spirit. He was getting fourteen smackers a week in the toy department of a big store, demonstrating a little tin duck that walked around in a circle and quacked. He always kept a false beard handy in case Viola or any of the old gang from the paper happened to be roaming through the store. It was all right with me. As long as they were both doing honest work I didn’t care how much they suffered.
Outside of being ashamed of all our jobs we weren’t doing so bad. We were eating regular, and Ernie and Gus were still able to alternate with Viola, what with the free tickets she got for the theater and poultry shows.
One day I ran into a man named Tanner, who was the manager of a syndicate that sold newspaper features. He greeted me like an old friend: “Hello, Buzz. What have you been doing since the boss ran out on the old staff?”
“Who, me?” I stalled. “Why, I’m doing fine. I’m in the canned goods business.”
“Canned goods business,” he laughed. “Don’t kid me.”
“Well,” I said, “I got to eat, don’t I? I’m working in a cannery blowing skins off tomatoes at fifteen dollars a week.”
He exploded with a laugh, and I hastened to add, “No, Mr. Tanner. This is on the level. Ask anybody in the business about the machine. It saves the time and expense of peeling the tomatoes.”
“You know, Buzz,” he said, when he got control of himself, “I don’t forget, like some people do. I owe something to you. You always gave me a break when I tried to get in to see the big boss to sell him some of my stuff. How’d you like to try selling features?”
I couldn’t get the answer out of my mouth fast enough: “Listen, Mr. Tanner. I’ll go out selling lighthouses just to get away from those tomatoes.”
“All right. We’ll give you your expenses to visit papers in small towns at first, and you’ll get a commission on every feature you sell. Come around to the office and we’ll fix up a deal.”…
The next day Tanner showed me a large map of the eastern part of the United States, with a lot of little red pins sticking in it, and said, “Buzz, this is your territory.”
He gave me a bunch of samples of the stuff I was to sell. There was a daily cartoon about a kid detective who was mixed up with gangsters. I was to tell editors that this feature would especially appeal to mothers, on account of the lesson it taught that crime don’t pay. I didn’t quite get the drift, because I looked at one week’s installment, and it was all about riveting the kid up inside a boiler and throwing the boiler into a big vat of burning oil. Cute entertainment for the kiddies. Then there was another feature about how to keep yourself beautiful. The dame who was writing the stuff happened to be in the office when I was there, and she looked pretty terrible. There was a lot of other stuff, too.
Gus and Ernie were very happy to hear about my good luck and said they’d keep in touch with me when I was out on the road. When I said good-by I told them, “Just hang on to your jobs and I know everything will come out all right in the end.” That three-way agreement bothered me a little, because I knew the boys weren’t any too industrious…
The first editor I met gave me a setback. He was on the telephone most of the time I was showing him my samples, and from snatches of his conversation I judged he had his mind more on himself than on his paper. He was making arrangements for some kind of banquet to be given in his own honor. I must have talked extra loud about one of my cartoon features called Andy and Sandy, because he turned around and asked, “How much do you want for Andy and Sandy?”
I looked up the price for his town and told him. He said he’d try it for three months and see how it went. Then he told me to step into the business manager’s office downstairs and make out a contract. I went down and saw the business manager, and he told me that Andy and Sandy had been running in their paper for two years.
The next editor I tackled was a darb. He boasted, “I got the best paper in town and I don’t know one feature from another. Outside of Annie The Waif, they’re all the same.”
I laid out my junk and said, “Here’s a cartoon with a little thought in it. It has humor and—”
He cut in with, “Boy, you’re wasting your time. I told you I never look at that tripe. All I know is that the president of the Lions Club has a little daughter who reads Annie The Waif in the opposition paper. I’d buy a cartoon like that if I could get it.
I tried to sell him Steno Sadie and some other stuff, but he got sore. So I ducked and caught a bus to the next town. Here I broke the ice by selling my beauty series to an editor who had no sales resistance because he had just come back from a big lunch. I picked up a sale here and there, and felt kind of good when I arrived in Pittsburgh. When I registered at the hotel that clerk handed me this letter:
Dear Buzz:
We were glad to get your letter from Bridgeport saying you thought editors were pretty low, but hope by this time you have found out different. Gus and I are both fine, only Gus quite his job because he felt the work was not helping his art much. He is now looking for something that will give him real inspiration. I had a little trouble at the store. A woman tripped on one of my ducks and she is now suing the store for $10,000. They made such a fuss about it I thought I’d better quit. I hate working for cheap people.
I hate reminding you of this but Gus and I are pretty flat, and you know about out agreement. Please send us two thirds of what you make outside your expenses for a little while, until we get set. We’ll do the same for you when you get fired. Viola is fine, too. Her new boss tried to kiss her the other day and she bit his thumb. They had a nice quiet talk afterwards and he gave here a five- dollar raise.
Don’t forget, old pal, the three of us have agreed to stick together. We’ll never run out on you. Please send money order by return mail.
As ever your pal,
Ernie
I admit I burned up when I went to the post office and sent the money order for hard dough I earned with so much work. But an agreement is an agreement. I enclosed the money order in the following letter:
Dear Gus: Sorry to hear you and Ernie got such bad breaks. I am enclosing money order for two thirds of what I made after all expenses were paid. It ain’t so much, because this is a hard game. Hurry up and get jobs, because if I flop I expect you and Ernie to come through for me the way I’m doing now.
The only comic strip they want is Annie The Waif, and I ain’t selling that. I am looking for an editor who reads his own paper. Tell Viola to bite the other thumb for me. Regards to you and Ernie.
Your pal,
Buzz
The boys wrote swell letters back but didn’t say anything about landing jobs. And I kept thinking of Viola all the time and the injustice of it, with the fellows I’m supporting so close to her.
It didn’t make me feel any better when I met a guy named Froos on a bus going to Richmond, Virginia. We got a gassing about things in general, when he said he just came from New York, where he had a cousin by the name of Viola Merivale. At the mention of her name I gave a lurch.
Froos said, “That’s funny. I didn’t feel any bump.”
I gulped, “That was my own private bump. I used to work on a newspaper with Viola.”
“Great girl, Jennie I mean, Viola. I knew she’d make a name for herself, even if it wasn’t her own.”
“Did you see much of here when you were in New York?” I asked.
“Did I! I still got a headache from the last party we had at the Ubangi Club up in Harlem. What a week, what a week!”
“That don’t sound much like Viola.”
“Don’t get me wrong. Viola was only acting as a kind of a chaperon to a couple of friends of hers who didn’t seem to have much else to do but breeze around town entertaining visiting firemen.”
“A couple of friends, did you say?”
“Sure. Two guys, Ernie and Gus.”
I lurched again.
“Say, what’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Is something biting you?”
“Don’t pay any attention to me. It’s just a habit.” Then I added, “I know Ernie and Gus, too. It was certainly nice of you and Viola to drag them around to such expensive places.”
“Oh, I didn’t drag them around. They paid all the bills.”
“And did Viola have a good time?”
“Swell. When she got tired we’d trot her off home, and then Gus and Ernie would insist on carting me around some more. I don’t know how they stand the life.”
“Neither do I.”
“Maybe they can stand it because they sleep all day.”
When we parted at Richmond, Froos’s last pleasant remark was, “After this, they can say all they want about Southern hospitality. Those New York fellows are as big-hearted as anybody in the world. They wouldn’t let me spend a nickel.”
At the hotel they handed me this letter:
Dear Buzz:
Thanks a lot for coming through so regular. We are expecting another money order today. Ernie has a short story almost finished, and will let one of the big magazines have it next week. I’ve decided to go in for portrait painting. It is the only legitimate form of art. We are both up bright and early every morning making every minute count, so we can lay our hands on some dough and pay you back as soon as possible.
Haven’t seen much of Viola lately, as she has been busy showing a cousin of hers the night life of this town. We are tucked in bed before those things start. Don’t hurry home, as everything here is just the same. Send money orders to the same address, and good luck, old pal.
Your pal,
Gus.
I was falling away to nothing, what with being rattled around in galloping buses and tossing off cheap beef stews. I kept sending the boys their money, although I was not so particular about the two thirds. And I had to keep myself pepped up with fake enthusiasm, telling editors funny stories, talking about their golf, and taking their secretaries out to lunch. I had a contract-bridge item called Count Your Tricks, and a Jacksonville editor bought it for his children’s page because he thought it was something about a magician. He’s still using it. . . .
When I finally got back to New York I was pretty discouraged, and told Mr. Tanner I was sick of shoving our stuff down editors’ throats, when the only thing they really wanted was Annie The Waif.
“Well,” he said, “we can’t all have hits. We just have to go along until something on our list clicks in a big way.”
I was too tired to give any answer to that, and thought I’d go home and get a good sleep. It was three in the afternoon.
Our apartment consisted of a sitting-room, two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchenette. When I opened the front door with my key I heard a noise that sounded like a gang of CCC workers sawing up the Oregon woods. The telephone was ringing like mad. I looked in the bedroom and saw Ernie and Gus sleeping like two dead men, if you want to overlook the snoring. I then answered the telephone. It was Viola.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“It’s me, Buzz Snagle. I just got in from a trip.”
“Yes?” she replied in a tone that indicated she didn’t care when I came back.
Than I said, “I met a cousin of yours by the name of Froos on a bus going to Richmond.”
“Oh, you did. The boys and I had a lot of fun with him when he was in New York.”
“On my dough,” I muttered so she couldn’t hear me. Then into the phone, “The boys are both asleep now. I don’t want to wake them, they look so cute.”
She laughed in that musical voice of hers and said, “Tell them to call me up later. I’ll be at the paper.”
I lost my head for a minute. “Say, which one of those two sleeping beauties are you going to marry, anyway?” I asked her.
I could hear her gasp into the mouthpiece: “What business is it of yours?”
“Plenty,” I said. “I’m through supporting them.”
“How dare you!” she yelled.
“You’re the swellest girl in the world,” I answered then we both hung up.
By the time I shook the boys out of their dreams I forgot I was tired, myself. I called them every name I could think of and told them the agreement was off. They sat there and took it like a couple of naughty children. They looked so sad I began to feel sorry for them. Then I noticed they were both wearing swell silk dressing gowns. This was too much. I ran out of the house and took a walk in the park.
I saw down on a bench and started to brood. Of course, my first thought was to quit cold and force Ernie and Gus to give me money when they got jobs. And if they didn’t get jobs it didn’t make much difference if I died. Who cared, anyway? Then it suddenly struck me that if I died and nobody cared I’d have a pretty small funeral. I’m not exactly vain, but I’ve got a little pride.
My thoughts were all balled up. I could hear Viola’s voice saying, “Tell them to call me up later.” I went over to the office of the Blade-Mail-Telegraph.
To my great surprise, Viola greeted me with, “Hello, Buzz.” My groggy mental state left me just careless enough to speak my mind.
“Listen, Viola, I guess you’re sick of hearing everybody say they love you.”
“Calm yourself, young man,” she replied, without batting an eye. “No girl is ever sick of hearing men say they love her.”
“Well, I’d like to join the mob. I love you, too.”
“Thanks.”
“Now I’ll tell you what I came for. I’ve got a terrible problem on my mind. It’s about.”
“Ernie and Gus,” she interrupted. “You’re tired of waiting till they find employment suitable to their talents.”
“So they’ve been talking it over with you, have they?” I said. “You and the boys and your cousin must have had plenty of laughs over me at the Ubangi Club.”
“You’re really a sweet boy,” she laughed, “only, only.”
“Only, I’m dumb. I know, Viola, only a sap would let those two mugs put it over on him.”
“Well, you’re at least honest enough to stick to your agreement.”
“It’ll land me in the poorhouse if I can’t put those goofs to work.”
“Well, one can draw and the other can write, can’t they?”
“But how?”
“I’ve got to get to work now, Buzz. You’re a dear.”
On the way down in the elevator I thought it over . . . Gus, Ernie; draw, write . . . Why didn’t I think of it before? Of course. I’d get the boys to collaborate on a tear-jerking strip like Annie The Waif.
I walked around the reservoir in the park four times trying to think of a name for the new character. It had to suggest hard luck. Let’s see Hardluck Hattie, Little Miss Rags, Notwanted Nona. Somehow these didn’t sound right.
I roamed over towards Madison Avenue, and bumped into a sandwich man with a sign on his back which read, “Stay away from the poorhouse by taking out an annuity on the Dorflinger Life Plan.”
The word “poorhouse” came back to me again. The rest was easy. Poorhouse, Poorhouse Patsy, Poorhouse Penelope, Poorhouse Peggy. There it was, just like that. Poorhouse Peggy.
When I burst into the apartment I found the boys dressed and ready to argue. I came right to the point. “Boys,” I said, “The country wants to cry.”
“Okay with us,” moaned Ernie. “We feel the same as the country.”
“You two are going to collaborate on a comic strip called Poorhouse Peggy.”
“Comic strip!” they shouted in unison.
“Yes, comic strip. They love to cry over sad comic strips.”
“Work is bad enough,” groaned Ernie. But to draw a sad comic strip! Oh! If Viola ever finds out.”
“She knows already,” I answered, smiling for the first time in days.
I was afraid to look at the first week’s strips the boys knocked out. I might weaken. I had Gus draw a few poses of Poorhouse Peggy so I could run over to Washington and have the character registered in my name: Poorhouse Peggy, by Buzz Snagle. I had no prestige to lose and I wanted to be sure of my third of the take, no matter how small. To kill two birds with one stone, I sold the strip to the Washington Inquirer without showing any samples. The managing editor cried when he heard the name.
My fears were realized when I got my first look at the stuff. “If you can sell that,” said Ernie, “You can peddle safety razors to babies.”
“I’ll sell it,” I answered grimly.
In the first few weeks’ installments, Poorhouse Peggy got the measles, was run over by a truck, was bitten by a mad dog, and beaten to a pulp by a crooked lawyer named Cyrus Baxter, who knew that Peggy was the rightful heir to the Vanderblatt millions and wanted to grab the fortune for himself. I was surprised that Mr. Tanner, the head of the syndicate, did not stab me when I brought it in.
I was so anxious to keep those two boys working I didn’t even say good-by to Viola. I flew around the country like a frightened gazelle, and used up thousands of throat lozenges keeping my voice tuned up to the praises of Peggy. Editors bought the stuff just to quiet me down.
After four weeks of intensive roadwork I dragged myself back to Mr. Tanner’s office, more dead than alive. I flopped into a chair and said, “Mr. Tanner, I’ve ruined my health and ruined your syndicate. I’ve sacrificed you and myself just to put a couple of mooching bums to work and show a certain girl.”
I heard a chirping sound like somebody practicing a flute accompaniment to one of those gargling sopranos. It was a burst of soft, tinkling laughter from Viola.
“Oh, hello, Viola,” I said, with a choke of surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Buzz,” she said, coming towards me. “I’m just here on business. But I’m leaving now. Won’t you take me home?”
“I’ll take you to Patagonia if you want,” I replied, glad to get away from Mr. Tanner.
On the way uptown I said, “Well, I’m not quite as dumb as you thought, am I?”
“Buzz,” she agreed, “that was a swell idea of yours about the new comic strip.”
“You betcha,” I replied. “Funny I didn’t think of it before.”
Then, trying to be casual, I said, “By the way, what business took you to Tanner’s office?”
“I wanted to see how a certain salesman was getting along.”
When I left her she said, “Ernie and Gus are so busy now they haven’t much time to devote to poor little me. Give me a ring.”
Well, it took me just two weeks to get Viola in my arms and tell her how guilty I felt in putting Ernie and Gus out of the way. After the first kiss she said, “You’re not taking me away from anybody. I’m in full charge of my own destiny.”
“So am I now,” I whispered against her cheek. . . .
I am a firm believer in miracles. The good people of the United States took Peggy to their hearts. Gus and Ernie became reconciled to their fate when we sold the movie rights for thirty grand. I was warming a bottle for the baby, when I yelled in from the kitchen, “Viola, I still think that opening continuity for Peggy was about the rottenest story that was ever written.”
“I wrote it,” she called back, as she toyed with the wave in the three hairs on Buzz Junior’s head. “Who do you think got Gus and Ernie started?”
“Thank heaven I took you out of literature and planted you in the home.”