How Precious Was That While, page 7
My mother came down for the wedding. These, apart from Cam’s mother, Elizabeth Marble, and little sister Jane Marble, then ten years old, were just about all the people there I knew. Cam’s father, the Reverend Ernest Marble, married us in his little church on Mirror Lake in St. Petersburg. Cam was just nineteen, and naturally she was a lovely bride. The ideal age for a woman, ever since, to my mind, has been nineteen. With long dark hair.
We took a slightly more leisurely trip back north, seeing Rainbow Springs and the Luray Caverns, in lieu of a honeymoon, dropping Charlie off in Philadelphia. We rented an apartment in Plainfield, Vermont, near the college, so Cam could continue her studies, and I set out to find work. College had been more or less idyllic; now we were up against mundane reality. It was rough going, and we lived exceedingly close to the wire, sustained mainly by the checks I received from the Jacob Trust Fund: $125.00 every three months, and several $25 checks my mother sent, when she could manage it. We never argued about money; not then, when we didn’t have it, or later, when we had a great deal; we discussed things and spent wisely. Our one luxury expense in that time was a caged parakeet we bought for ten dollars; we named it Lucky, short for Luxury. We wished we could go to Florida, but we lacked the money. Then I had a rollover that could have killed me but gave me only a bruised shoulder and a bashed car; Cam got pregnant and had a miscarriage; and in March 1953 I was drafted into the U.S. Army, having volunteered for an early draft call. I hated the separation from Cam, during basic training, but at least it gave us two years of relative (if lean) financial security, with my private’s pay and an allotment for my wife. Two years later, released from the Army, we settled in Florida; I like to say that we traveled to Florida the hard way, via the U.S. Army.
With all the major things happening in our lives, one of the most poignant memories I have is of something trivial. I was in the bedroom, putting on my jacket, I think, and turned on the little radio there. A song came on, and it fascinated me. It was “Remember Me,” or “The Girl in the Wood,” about a boy who saw a lovely woman with eyes like green grassy pools and hair like an autumn tree, who told him that he would never see a girl as lovely as she was. And when he grew up, he never did, so remained a bachelor. The vision of that lovely girl in the wood had spoiled him for marriage. I heard that song only once, but it had a phenomenal impact on my imagination. It became the basis for the plot of my first published novel, Chthon, and I searched for it for decades. Until at last two readers wrote to identify it for me, and I got both versions, and listened until I had memorized it. The song just took me right back to that bleak first year of marriage, when love was new, but the winter was cold, and money was scarce. More on that in Chapter 13, “Incidentals.”
The Army took me first to Fort Dix in New Jersey for basic training. They tried to make it hell on earth, and succeeded to a reasonable extent. It was rougher for me than some, because the meals weren’t geared to a vegetarian diet, but I gulped a lot of milk and stuffed rolls in my pockets, and got through. I caught a bug that was going around, but managed to finesse a weekend pass. I went to my mother in Philadelphia, and she put me to bed and brought the doctor in. He said I seemed to have a cross between pneumonia and strep throat. He urged me to report on sick call when I returned to the base. So I did, and was put on KP for the rest of the day. But the rest and treatment I had gotten over the weekend sufficed, and I recovered, and made it through training with my cycle. The single event that scared me most was when we did a mock encroachment on an enemy position, crawling under barbed wire, while other trainees fired live ammunition just above us—about waist height. I was afraid someone would aim just a bit too low, and I’d get a bullet up my ass, literally. Cam came to see me—and managed to slam the taxi door on her left thumb; I was notified that my wife had had an accident. I rushed there, and soon we were at the base hospital, where an officer bandaged her thumb—all medical personnel seemed to be officers—and I took her around in a wheelchair. I suppose it was a lot of fuss over not much, but she had cracked the bone, and pretty young women weren’t common on Army bases. Another time, Teresa visited; one of the other trainees saw this striking blonde, and ever after his endorsement of me was “You got a nice sister!”
The second part of basic training was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I got leave between the sessions and went home to Cam. What a wonderful reprieve! But all too soon it was over, and I had to prepare for the three-day bus trip. We checked schedules and found that the train would get me there in only two days. It was more expensive, but we decided that we’d rather have the extra day together, and paid for the train. I don’t regret it. We had our pictures taken then, and still have those portraits. We look so young! I’m handsome at twenty-two, with my military crew cut growing out, and she’s lovely at nineteen, with her lustrous long brown hair. I had much more than her appearance in mind when I asked her to marry me, but oh, my, she’s beautiful.
I did better in the intellectual portion of training than I had in the physical portion, and was one of two top cycle graduates to be chosen to become survey instructors. I was eager to do it, because it meant I would remain in the States, instead of being shipped on to Germany. Cam shut down things in Vermont, drove to Philadelphia to help my father move belongings, and to North Carolina to meet her folks. She drove to Florida with them, and then to Oklahoma to join me. It was a wonderful reunion. I believe she became pregnant again, the day we met. I remember two of the songs on the radio during that time of separation, their poignancy enhanced by my longing for Cam. One was “Tammy,” and the other was “Dark Moon.” The first was on the radio for decades thereafter, a standby, while the second faded from the scene. I was bemused by the way their histories differed, when they had seemed similarly beautiful to me. Today I have both in my collection of popular songs.
But more troubles came. My career in the Army effectively ended when I made the mistake of standing up for my rights and declining to sign for a coercive savings bond deal. Few soldiers wanted to sign up, but only two of us actually held out long. The saying was “They can’t make you do it, but they can make you wish you had.” Exactly—even when their demands are illicit. The others in my unit were hassled too, in the hope that they would pressure me to capitulate, but they were glad to see someone holding out, and tacitly supported me. Meanwhile, Cam had difficulties with her pregnancy, and spent a cumulative month in the hospital with threatening miscarriage, and finally did lose the baby. Once when I wanted to visit her in the hospital, I had guard duty, and had to wait for my time off before leaving the post. I arrived just after visiting hours closed, and they wouldn’t let me see her. Cam, in her room, could hear my voice, but there was no visit. I went back to the post and resumed guard duty. It seems to me that the hospital staff, knowing the circumstances, could have relented a trifle, but of course they didn’t care. It’s too bad that hospitals tend to be known for their supreme indifference to human sensitivities and suffering, but it’s an earned reputation. Even today they may not give effective pain medication to terminal patients, for fear they become addicted to it, as if addiction matters to a dead man. So not only must folk die, they must die in avoidable agony. That’s de facto sadism. A sergeant I knew had a worse experience: his wife had a heart attack, but their house was just beyond the military ambulance’s territorial limit, so it didn’t fetch her, and she died. But, he said, they did give her a nice funeral, later. At least the financial burden was not bad; I paid $25, and the military insurance paid all the rest. That saved us from a financial wipeout. But we had lost our second baby.
I had seriously considered making the Army a career, oddly, because it really wasn’t as bad as anticipated and did offer financial security, albeit of a low level. But the trouble I had satisfied me that it was not the place for me; I do need an environment where there is some individual freedom and justice. So when my term was up we departed Oklahoma and drove to Florida. A trip from there fetched our things from Vermont and Pennsylvania. We were in Sunny Florida to stay, at last.
But even in that relative paradise, things were not easy. I looked for a job—and found none. Our savings diminished, and finally I put in for unemployment compensation—only to learn that there was a thirty-day waiting period after qualifying. I should have applied before I needed to, to get that waiting out of the way. What to do? Well, Cam’s folks, the Marbles, helped; they had us in for supper every day, greatly easing our food budget. My grandmother Caroline helped, letting us use her house, rent-free. Family is great in emergencies, and I really appreciated it. In my later novel With a Tangled Skein I showed that: a beautiful young woman was required to marry a younger man, really a stripling, in part because he was of good family. That was a poor consolation for her—but later, when she was widowed with a baby, and had the opportunity to step into a phenomenal position, the man’s family took her son and raised him well and lovingly. That made it possible, and then she understood about good families. That sequence was a reflection of what I had found, when our families were there for us.
There was an electronics company in St. Petersburg, so I gave it a try, expecting the usual demurral. I walked in and inquired whether they could use a writer. “We do have an opening,” I was told, and I was sent to be interviewed by Harold Snider. I had my B.A. in writing, but no knowledge of technical writing—but as it turned out, they were willing to train someone. So suddenly I had not only a job, but a good job, paying twice what I had made in the Army including all allotments. I worked with Sam Day, a man in his fifties. He knew his job and I was an apt learner, so it was fine. Subsequently it soured, in part because Sam and others there were strong conservatives, supporting Richard Nixon, while I was liberal and openly supported John Kennedy. Kennedy won in 1960, and later Nixon showed his nature more openly in Watergate, but the signs were there throughout his career. I had trouble seeing how anyone could support such a dishonest, unscrupulous man—and that made me a petunia in an onion patch. Other factors come in, and eventually I lost my job, for reasons other than competence; it was one of the significant disillusions of my life, and it damaged my health.
Cam got a job too; she took a training course in accounting and typing, and that led to a position with Pittsburgh Plate Glass. As a temporary employee she was not eligible for compensation during illness, but when she was sick for a week they paid her anyway. My sympathy for big companies is minimal, but that act of generosity on the part of that company impressed me, and if I ever have a chance to do a favor for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, I’ll give it serious consideration.
Then she went to work for St. Petersburg Junior College (SPJC), in an office. Her boss was Dr. Jack Mauny, Registrar, second only to the college president, and a nice guy. He happened to be our neighbor, living directly across the street from us. He supervised the office of Admissions and Records. She worked there for two years, compatibly, before another difficult pregnancy required her to depart. Her sister Jane, then fifteen, was interested in gaining experience and earning some money, so Cam brought her into the office and paid her a small amount herself. Later Jane studied dental hygiene at SPJC, which impressed me; she wasn’t just a typical teen. Part of the training required students to bring in people to practice on. Thus Cam went in, and I did, among others. But what floored the hygiene director was when Jane brought in some of the ranking officials of the college, including Dr. Mauny himself, whom she had gotten to know during her office assistant days. Needless to say, Jane passed the course, and indeed spent many years as a hygienist. Her specialty enabled her to find work wherever her husband, Cary McConnell, a geologist she had met as another SPJC student, was transferred.
I believe it was May 3, 1962, when the bad currents struck together. That day I lost my job, and Cam lost our third baby, and the internist I went to about my mysterious chronic fatigue informed me that it was all in my head. He even suggested that when my wife had her baby normally, my fatigue would disappear. “She’s in the hospital losing it right now,” I said sourly. The truth was that it wasn’t my illness that was all in my head, but his diagnosis that was all in his head. Thereafter my insurance ridered me for all mental disease. Oh, the doctor had tried, but found nothing physically wrong with me, so set out to confirm the suspected psychological aspect. He had had me strip to the waist and sit on a table alone in a room, without explanation, for half an hour, I presume to work up my nervousness. Then I was called to the door, which opened suddenly with a noise to reveal a man-sized spook. It was the doctor in fancy laboratory costume, somewhat like a diving outfit complete with mask. I just looked at him, hardly in the mood for Halloween pranks. But despite my failure to faint or leap for the ceiling, and the nonimaginary nature of my job and baby concerns, he concluded that I was neurasthenic—a word the insurance company translated as crazy. Is it any wonder I am cynical about the medical profession? Its ignorance was my grief.
But when you are at the nadir, there isn’t much place to go but up. I had checked prospects, and had taken a placement test, and had a likely new job as a state social worker. Its reduced pay and benefits made it about half as remunerative as my prior position, but at least it had a positive thrust. Instead of working indirectly for the defense industry I would be working to help needy people. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out. The people were nice enough, and the clients were needy enough, but the rules were such that I seemed to spend most of my time explaining to folk in genuine need why the state of Florida would not help them. Later the Supreme Court would throw out some of the abusive requirements, but I couldn’t tolerate them in the interim. So I left within a few months.
Cam came to my rescue: suppose she went back to work, and I stayed home and tried to make it as a writer? That had been my dream, but seven years of part-time efforts had garnered only rejections. Yet I had come close in 1958, when editor Damon Knight had accepted a story for IF magazine—only to have the magazine fold before publication. So it just might be that a full-time effort would finally enable me to crack through to professional sales. I agonized over the decision, torn between the need to secure a family income and the desire to be a writer. Cam’s willingness to go to work again made the difference. I know many young wives support their husbands through training, and that many husbands subsequently turn around and dump those wives after success is achieved. I regard such men as turds. My wife enabled me to try seriously for my dream, and my gratitude for that will never abate.
So we tried it—and in three months I made my first story sale, and in another seven months, my second. But my total earnings from writing of $160 were not sufficient to support a family, so I reluctantly returned to gainful employment. Cam had meanwhile had difficulty finding a job, getting turned down for being overqualified, so she had to pay an employment agency to get a worse job, ironically. But later she got a job with the St. Petersburg Times, working at their dummy desk. No, this didn’t mean she was a dummy, but that she dummied the pages, fitting in the articles and ads so that no space was blank. So she had a regular job, and I was able to prepare for mine by going back to school to get a teaching certificate. Thus my wife supported us a second year.
I went to the University of South Florida (USF), through the barrage of “education” courses that in retrospect strike me as featherbedding for professors. It was not that there was no value in the classes, but that they were, taken as a whole, largely irrelevant to teaching, and I think that if they were all boiled down to just one class, the actual ability of new teachers to teach would not suffer. I saw favoritism, and a negative agenda, and incompetence, mixed in with some dedicated and even brilliant teaching. A mixed bag, and I suspect the university administration did not know or really care which was which. It was during this period that President Kennedy was assassinated; I learned of his death in an education class. So I can’t claim that I learned nothing significant. I did have the pleasure of a class with Wesley Ford Davis, a published novelist, whom I came to like as novelist, teacher, and person. My appreciation of modern fiction and poetry was enhanced by his guidance.
I got my teaching certificate, but was ill prepared to teach, so had to take further classes at SPJC on my own to gain competence in subject matter. There I found a similar mix of competence. But early judgments are treacherous. One teacher, Mrs. Major, seemed at first to be the epitome of the pointlessly fussy bureaucrat. For example, she insisted that essays be written with a black pen only. But as I observed her behavior in class, I saw how smart and alert she was; she could cut through ignorant bluster in a hurry. When I asked about the pen color, she explained: her vision was good, but she could see black penmanship most clearly, and so could grade the papers faster and more accurately. It made sense. When I got a regular job teaching, I asked her for guidance, and in about three hours she gave me more relevant and good advice about the practicalities of teaching than I had received in the entire battery of education courses. I didn’t follow all of It—and looking back, I wish I had, because she was right on. I wish I could thank her now, but she was then of middle age and is surely dead now. But I try to be as considerate and accurate myself, now, when asked for advice on writing, passing on the kind of favor I appreciated.
Substitute teaching was hellish, but then I got a position at Admiral Farragut Academy, filling out the last two months of the school year in 1965 left vacant by the departure of another teacher. Some of the students seemed to be there because they had been disciplinary problems elsewhere, and I had a problem keeping the discipline. But some were good cadets. So this experience was rather like that of the U.S. Army: it paid my way long enough for other prospects to fall into place. It had come at a very fortunate time: I had been about to return to USF, reluctantly, to go for a higher degree, so as to have a better chance to get a regular teaching job. We would have had to buy another car, as my wife needed one for her job. But Farragut was adjacent to our property, and so I could walk to work. So it saved us the price of a car, and saved me from what I suspect would have been a vain quest for a decent teaching position. As it was, the experience at Farragut satisfied me that teaching was not for me: I could handle the subject material, but trying to keep discipline with students who had no interest in learning, with a school administration that seemed to have little notion of reality, was nightmarish. I never want to teach again, but I have thought that if I did, the first thing I would do would be to speak to the principal in this manner: “If I send a troublemaker to the office for discipline, and he comes back smiling, you will have to hire a new teacher the next day.” I suspect that most teachers will understand.
