A Second Father

a new novelette

Mrs. Samuels was interviewing a new chauffeur when Chris came in from school.

"Hello, Mommy." He kissed her, dutifully, on the cheek and she cuddled him a moment, asking him the automatic question, How was school today? Then she told him to run along and play, she was very busy now.

"Is Daddy going to take me to the ball game tonight?"

His mother smiled politely at the applicant chauffeur to forgive the interruption.

To Chris she said: "I'm sure Daddy will do his best, dear."

"Well he promised ..."

"Yes, I know, but ----" Chris' father was the head of a film studio, a job that seemed to consist of an endless series of "conferences" running on into the night. He was always promising Chris things that had to be called off at the last minute because he was "tied up." Mrs. Samuels did her best to explain this to Chris but it was difficult for Chris to understand. Why couldn't his Dad simply say, "Look, people, I have to end this conference in 10 minutes. I have a date to take my son to Gilmore Stadium." Why couldn't it be as simple as that?

"But he did promise," Chris said again.

"Chris, I'm busy now."

"You like ball games, sonny?" asked the man talking to his mother.

Chris turned and looked at him. He was a square-jawed, ruddy complexioned, well-built fellow with black curly hair. He was smiling at Chris an unusually warm and winning smile that immediately communicated something important to Chris. The man likes me, he thought. Grown-ups from the picture studio were always telling Chris what a wonderful man his father was and how they hoped Chris would grow up to be just like him. Usually they said this with a little, fond pat on Chris' shoulder, but the 10-year-old boy was never completely sure they liked him.

"Chris loves to go with his father to fights and ball games," his mother answered for him. "Of course his father is terribly busy, so ----"

"When I was a kid I used to watch 'em play almost every day," said this stranger who liked Chris. "Of course I never had money for a ticket. I got awfully good at climbing those telephone Poles."

He laughed easily, the skin crinkling around his eyes in straight lines like the sunrays in Chris' drawings. Chris always felt like laughing when other people laughed. Chris' mother smiled indulgently, something in her manner saying, And now let us get back to business.

"You say you have no references here in Los Angeles?"

"No, ma'm. I've been with a family in Westchester, New York, for the past three years, ma'm. I did all their driving and filled in as a butler for their parties. I even used to give Mr. Hawthorne a rubdown on Saturdays. I've been a physical education instructor." Then he turned toward Chris and said for his benefit, "I even did a little professional boxing when I was a kid."

Chris noticed that the man's nose was slightly dented about two-thirds down the bridge. Chris liked the way it looked. It made the man look tough and formidable and yet he was handsome and had a gay smile.

"What's your name?" Chris asked the man suddenly.

"James," the man said, "James H. Campbell. H for Hercules. I weighed 14-and-a-half pounds when I was born."

"Are you going to be our new chauffeur?"

James smiled. "That's up to your mother, young man."

"I hope so," Chris said.

The chauffeur grinned. "Thank you." He turned to Mrs. Samuels. "I like kids. We always get along fine."

Chris went over to his mother. "You are going to make him our new chauffeur, aren't you, Mommy?"

Mrs. Samuels' expression was one of gracious embarrassment.

"Now, Chris, will you please go out and play and let me finish this interview."

That evening, as Chris had feared, his father called from the studio just before dinner to say how sorry he was that the Catherine the Great script had hit a snag and it looked as if he was going to be tied up with the writers for hours. They were blocking out an entirely new final sequence. He hated to disappoint Chris about the ball game but he would take him to the next L.A.-Hollywood game a week from Saturday. That was a promise.

Chris went up to his room and slammed the door. It wasn't fair. He went back to the door, opened it and slammed it again. When he heard his mother coming he threw himself on his bed and started to cry loudly. His mother was not sure whether to scold him for slamming the door or sympathize with him in his disappointment.

"Chrissy, you mustn't give in to your temper like that. Daddy works very hard for you. He can't help it if he has to work so hard."

Chris gulped back his sobs.

"Is James coming back, Mommy?"

"James?"

"The new chauffeur you were talking to."

"Oh, the chauffeur. Well, I don't know. I also talked to a Japanese boy."

"Please, Mommy. I want James."

Mrs. Samuels looked at her only son, a tow-haired, rather frail child who, in the opinion of his father, needed to be toughened up. One trouble was that Sol Samuels was much too busy to do anything about it and Alma Samuels liked his being "poetic" and soulful. She was always saying how sensitive he was.

"Chris, if James doesn't work out, well, I don't like to see you disappointed."

"Oh, Mom, I know he will, he's so nice."

Sol really should make a little more of an effort when he promises him these baseball games, Mrs. Samuels was thinking. "All right," she said. "We'll try him. Just try him, you understand." She fondled the back of Chris' head. "Wait 'til I tell your father that you're hiring the chauffeurs now."

James moved into the chauffeur's room above the garage that Sunday evening. Next morning Chris was up especially early so he'd have a chance to talk to James before school. One trouble with his father was that he never got up until after Chris had gone to school. That way days, even whole weeks, would go by without their seeing each other. Mr. Samuels was always explaining how sorry he felt about this and Chris was always saying that he understood. "He does understand," his mother would say proudly. "He's more understanding than a lot of grown-ups I know." Such praise made Chris uncomfortable and he didn't know why.

On Monday morning Chris bolted his breakfast so recklessly that Winnie, the mulatto maid, warned him against indigestion. Chris gulped down his milk ("so you'll have nice strong bones") and hurried out to the garage. James was already at work, stripped to his undershirt, washing the town car.

"Hi, Chris," James said, as he hosed down the glossy maroon hood of the long special-body Lincoln.

Chris liked the way the new chauffeur called him Chris right away. Not sonny or lad or buster or any of those drippy names the others had used. Chris stood as close as he could to James without getting wet, and watched in fascination the way the colored pictures on the chauffeur's arms rippled into life as he worked his muscles. On his left arm was a picture of a woman without any clothes on, identified in purple letters as Jo-Ann. On his right arm was an American flag and curving around it was a M-O-T-H-E-R. Chris had never seen anything like that before. Everything about this new chauffeur was big and strong and different and fascinating.

"You've got pictures on your arm," Chris said.

James raised his hand modestly to shield the figure of Jo-Ann.

"That's right. I've had 'em on so long I forgot all about 'em."

"Don't they come off when you take a bath?"

James explained the principle of tattooing to Chris.

"Little needles? Don't they hurt a lot?"

"Sure they do. But we just grit our teeth and take it like a man. I'll bet you don't cry when you get hurt, do you, Chris?"

Chris had a tendency to cry more than he should at going-on-11. ("I don't know why he should be such a nervous child," his mother would say.) But now he said, "I hardly ever cry."

"That's a boy," said James. "Here, hold this hose a minute. I'll go put my shirt on."

No one had ever asked Chris to help wash the cars before. It is hard to explain how important you can feel when you aren't quite 11 and are trusted to hold a hose in your hand. If you stand too close to the car the water bounces back and splatters you. If you hold the hose too high the stream of water misses the car entirely and soaks the roadster and the tools in the garage. You have to do it just right.

In a few moments James was back with his uniform jacket on. It buttoned tight at the neck line like a dress marine uniform and James wore it very well. "Thanks, Chris," he said, taking the hose, "you did a nice job. Now you can turn the water off."

Chris hastened to obey. James winked at him. "I can see you're going to be a big help to me."

"I'll help you wash the cars every day," Chris said proudly.

One of the big problems in Chris' life was having to be driven to school in the town car. Sol Samuels, in a burst of democratic expression, had insisted that Chris go to the large public school bridging the exclusive Windsor Square section and the plebeian neighborhoods toward Western Avenue. The school reflected southern California's cultural overlapping, for there were Mexicans, Japanese and Negroes as well as white children whose fathers were not heads or even assistant heads of movie studios. "I don't want Chris to get any false ideas about people," Mr. Samuels would lecture. "After all we came from New York's lower East Side. Our parents were driven out of Europe. And I try to make pictures for average people, that everybody can enjoy. I never want Chris to grow up a snob, and the best way to check that is to keep him in touch with the people."

A noble speech, but, as in many of us, there were inconsistencies in Sol Samuels. On the wave of a magnificent bonus from the company, following a particularly profitable series of pictures, he had brought home the most remarkable automobile Chris had ever seen. Instead of having a long, sleek body like any ordinary expensive limousine, this one had a body like an old-fashioned royal coach crisscrossed in gold petit point. It was an authentic 18th Century coach down to the smallest detail, with elaborate coach lights in gold, and gold-plated door handles. The chauffeur sat out in front under a canopy like a coachman. There was no worse torture, in Chris' mind, than being driven to school in that outlandish car. The only way he could manage it at all was to flatten himself on the floor so no one could see him through the small oval side-windows. Then he would insist on stopping down the block and across the street from the school entrance. There he would crawl out onto the sidewalk on his hands and knees, like a soldier in enemy country, then jump up suddenly and quickly walk away from the motorized monstrosity, as if he and it were total strangers.

James didn't understand what Chris was doing that first morning when he saw him pressing himself against the floor of the coach. He laughed when Chris tried to explain it to him. "If I had a buggy like this I'd be proud of it," he said. "Your old man made all this money because he had brains. Why should you be ashamed of that?"

It had something to do with not wanting to be special, Chris knew, but he couldn't explain it very well. On the way home James got him to come up and join him on the driver's seat, once they were far enough away from school for Chris to feel relatively safe. Chris told James how he had been teased about the car. A Mexican boy who was the best fighter in the class had called him "Meester Reech Beech." Had Chris told him to shut up and mind his own beeswax? James wanted to know. The (continued on page 26) Second Father (continued from page 18) possibility of such defiance was scary to Chris. Iggy Gonzalez was the human embodiment of danger and fierceness. He was a dark, wiry boy a year or so older than the other fifth graders. And his brother Chu-Chu was the amateur featherweight champion of greater Los Angeles. Chris could think of no eventuality more destructive than being forced into physical combat with Iggy Gonzalez.

James looked Chris over carefully. Chris had thin, long arms and legs. "Growing out of himself," he had heard his mother describe it.

"Ever have any boxing lessons?" James asked.

No, Chris had gone to the Legion fights with his father, but he had never tried it himself.

"I fought a couple of semi-windups in the Legion seven, eight years ago," James said. "I was runner-up to the champ of the Pacific Fleet when I was in the Navy, where I picked up the tattoos. How about you and me putting on the gloves? I'll show you a few things that'll knock Gonzalez' head off. Then you can sit up here in front with me right up to the school door. And if anyone kids you, you tell 'em to shut up or else. Isn't that better than hiding on the floor?"

The way James said it suddenly made it sound possible. Driving home under the canopy with this formidable James at his side, Chris let his mind explore heroic possibilities. His new, powerful self was flailing away at Iggy Gonzalez until the bigger boy slumped down at Chris' feet. "You ween--I have meet my master," his former tormenter sobbed. With faultless magnanimity, Chris knelt beside his fallen foe to administer first aid. "Come on, I'll drive you home in the car. You'll be OK, after you rest up. You're a good man, Iggy, as brave as I ever fought."

The town car was pulling to the curb on Larchmont. "I'm going to stop in here right now and get you some boxing gloves," James was saying. "We'll start the first lesson this afternoon."

They squared off on the back lawn near the garage, James with a pair of huge, greasy, worn gloves and Chris with a little pair in shiny red leather. Chris was stiff with fear at the strangeness of it and James did his best to show him how to relax and how to place his feet so he'd be in balance and able to move back and forth like a dancer. He told Chris to hit him in the belly as hard as he could and Chris enjoyed hitting with all his might. James told him to turn his left toe in a little and to pivot on the right foot--"now with your body behind it"--smack!--"that's better!" Chris was enjoying the sensation of sweat oiling his body. If he kept this up he was going to have a big chest and a hard, tight stomach like James. Wham-bang, wham-bang. "Hey, that's pretty good! I could really feel that one."

In his almost 11 years, Chris could not remember hearing anything that made him feel so effectively alive. He listened devoutly, desperately anxious to please, as James drew him into a new world where belligerence was fascinatingly linked to skill. Chris found, under James' tutelage, that he could pull his head back a few inches to avoid a punch, or deflect it with his glove. "The first thing to learn is how not to get hit." James dramatized his lesson with stirring accounts of his Navy bouts: like the time he forgot to duck and the Navy middleweight champ Jocko Kennedy knocked him cold with a haymaking right. "I was out for 10 minutes. They thought I was dead. They say you hear birdies but it's a funny thing--I heard telephone wires. You know how you hear them buzzing sometimes in the country?"

James had just told him he had had enough for a while and Chris was stretched out on the grass, listening. He had never heard anyone tell such wonderful stories. He was looking up into James' face as the chauffeur told him of his determination to fight Kennedy again. James' shipmates had lost their month's pay on him and he felt he owed it to them to turn the tables on Kennedy. On shipboard, all the way from San Diego to the Philippines, James practiced how to duck under that haymaker right, and then to bob up quickly with a left hook of his own. Day after day in the hot sun of the oriental seas James fought his imaginary battle with the fearsome Jocko Kennedy. It was like fighting Iggy Gonzalez, Chris was thinking. Was there anything more exciting in the whole world than to choose the one person you are most afraid of and then to devote yourself to a long-range careful plan for licking him? Chris lived through the days when James was preparing himself for his ordeal. The plan was to challenge Jocko formally to a rematch when the Pacific Fleet assembled in Manila Bay.

Chris was sitting up now with his arms clasped around his bony knees. His gentle face was set in an unusually serious and manly expression, as if his vicarious sharing of the chauffeur's experiences already had cut him off from his sheltered child's world.

"We better not get too cooled off," James interrupted himself. "Let's go one more round and I'll finish the story."

"Oh please, please finish it," Chris begged. He was sailing into Manila Bay, ready for Jocko Kennedy. On Sundays his father had read him Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper and it had been rather pleasant. But this wasn't listening to a story, it was being inside a story. He and James on one side and Jocko and Iggy on the other. Chris was in training to duck Gonzalez' fiercest blows. Oh he had to beat him, he had to, in this grudge match in Manila Bay!

"James, please, finish about you and Jocko." Wham-bang--inexplicably Chris pistoned his small fists into the air. His new-found feeling of power made him laugh wildly.

"Well, the night we hit Manila we all got shore leave. And you know how the sailors are, a lot of young punks who don't know any better, they hit the bars pretty hard. Around one o'clock in the morning I was in some dive called the Yellow Dragon feeling pretty good. There was an argument in the other corner, some loud-mouth getting fresh with one of the Filipino barmaids and I look over and see my old friend Jocko Kennedy. I say 'Pipe down, Jocko, ye're rockin' the boat,' something like that. This Jocko, he bellows like a bull. Twenty shore police can't hold him when he's boozed up. I see him coming at me with a bottle. My shipmates, they say to me let's powder out of here, Jimmy, that Jocko's the toughest rough-and-tumble fighter in the Navy. All those months I been practicing to meet him in the ring where I c'n use my footwork and science, not in a dim-lit bar with a bottle. But I tell my pals, 'You clear out if you want to, I ain't afraid of no man, bottle or no bottle.' The boys back away to give me fighting room. Jocko comes at me swinging the bottle at my head. I do just what I been practicing on shipboard. I duck and then bob up quick and put everything I have into a left hook to the jaw. I follow it up with a right cross as he's going down. Jocko Kennedy is through for the night. His jaw is broken and he's still in sick bay when his ship pulls out."

There was a long, delicious silence as Chris saw himself in the smoky haze of the Yellow Dragon looking on in nonchalant curiosity as Iggy Gonzalez was being carried out with a slack and bloody jaw.

"OK, now let's work one more round," James said and Chris jumped up and assumed the stance his mentor had taught him. "That's it, now tuck your chin in a little more, now move around and jab, snap it out, snap, snap!" Chris was feeling light on his feet and formidable. Someday he would have colored pictures on his arms and know how to do as many things as James.

Mrs. Samuels came out to find the new chauffeur and was surprised to find him sparring with her little boy. "Why, Chris, where did you get the gloves?"

Chris stopped, panting and sweating proudly. "Jimmy got them for me, Mom."

"Who?"

"Jimmy." He nodded toward his (continued on page 30) Second Father (continued from page 26) friend.

"Oh. James?" Mrs. Samuels looked at the chauffeur. "I'll have Mr. Samuels reimburse you for that."

"It's my pleasure," James said, "Mrs. Samuels. It's my present to him."

"But--you hardly know him," Mrs. Samuels said.

"I wouldn't say that. We're pretty good pals already, aren't we, Chris?"

"He used to be a real fighter, Mom. He's been teaching me a lot of keen stuff. Look--watch me, watch me, Mom!"

Chris began swarming all over James, fearlessly, as James let the small punches through his guard.

"You've got a wonderful little boy here, Mrs. Samuels."

"Yes. Thank you," Mrs. Samuels said. She didn't know why the sight of them sporting like this should disturb her even mildly. Was it because it pointed up some failure on Sol's part? Or because there was a certain roughneck quality in James, under the careful chauffeur manners, that could coarsen Chris if their relationship grew too close?

"James, I'd like you to have the car out in front in 15 minutes," Mrs. Samuels said.

"Very good, madam," James said.

"Chris, you look terribly overheated. Don't you think you should go in and take a nice cool shower?"

His mother was forever telling him things in the form of questions.

"I want to stay out here with James," Chris said.

His mother stared at him. She had never heard her son speak so positively, almost rudely before.

As Mrs. Samuels returned to the house, James looked over at Chris and winked. Chris grinned. Their wink, he felt, was the beginning of an entirely new experience, of an intimacy outside of and even opposed to his mother and father.

All through his school days Chris looked forward to his boxing lesson with James. In two weeks it had become a ritual, the sparring punctuated by talks on the grass between rounds, the valorous accounts of James' fistic jousts that had begun to crowd out of Chris' mind the gallant battles of Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad. And then there were the glorious stories of the sea, when James had hung on to the wheel of a sinking destroyer, or had to dive into the shark infested waters of the South Pacific to save an exhausted shipmate.

When Chris' father did break away from the studio ("I'll try to break way in time," was the phrase he always used) his description of the more harrowing events of the day was frequently interrupted now by Chris' boastful reference to some singular deed of James'. "James was the best fighter in the whole Pacific Fleet, Dad," Chris would say suddenly, interrupting his parents familiar conversation to speak his mind on a subject that seemed to him of far greater importance than all this talk-talk about making pictures.

One evening after dinner Chris' father apologized for his delinquencies as a parent and offered to make atonement by taking up Melville's Typee where they had left off nearly four weeks before. To his surprise, Chris said he had promised to meet "Jimmy" after dinner --Jimmy had something in his room he had promised to show Chris. Chris hurried off from the dinner table as soon as he was excused.

"What is this Jimmy business?" Sol Samuels wanted to know.

"Chris is simply wild about James," Mrs. Samuels explained. "I don't remember ever seeing him like this before."

Mr. Samuels frowned. "I wonder if it's a good idea, letting him get this chummy with that fellow. After all, we don't know very much about him."

"I wouldn't worry too much," Mrs. Samuels said. "He seems to adore Chris. And he's all the things a boy would idolize--a sailor and a fighter and ----" She saw a suggestion of regret or jealousy come into her husband's eyes for a moment and she quickly added, "I'm afraid he's at an age when being an ex-fighter or even having a spectacular tattoo seems a little more important than merely being the head of a movie studio."

Sol Samuels nodded, absently, and then he sighed with an exaggerated intake of breath. "God I had a helluva day. That Gloria may bring in millions at the box office but she takes every dollar of it out of my hide."

"Those stupid, temperamental girls," Mrs. Samuels sympathized, shaking her head at a whole generation of glamorous ladies who fought each other tooth and nail for larger dressing rooms, more close-ups and better billing.

The chauffeur's room above the garage was rather small and unprepossessing but Chris entered it with a sense of wonder. It supposed a new sense of intimacy with his big friend, of entering into an almost forbidden world of adults and their strange, secret ways. Over the chauffeur's bed were three pictures of young women, two of them in bathing suits and one of them almost naked.

"That middle one is my sweetie," James said. "She works in the movies once in a while. She's an extra-girl. Maybe one of these days your old man will give her a screen test."

"I hate girls," Chris said.

"Just wait about five more years," James said.

"Oh boy, a gun," Chris said, seeing a rifle set on pegs above the door.

"That's my deer hunting rifle," James said. "One of these days I'll take you up in the Sierras and we'll get ourselves a 12-point buck."

"Can I hold it, Jimmy, please?" Chris begged.

"I don't know if your mother 'n father 'd like it."

"I won't tell them if you won't."

James grinned and roughed up Chris' curly yellow-brown hair.

"You're a rascal. OK. It'll be our secret."

He took the rifle down from the wall, checking it to make sure it was safe, and handed it to Chris. Chris held it up and made the expert ricochet sound that has replaced in young vocabularies the old fashioned bang-bang. Then James set it back on its pages again. Chris' mother and father hated guns and wouldn't have one in the house.

"When I'm big will you teach me how to shoot it, Jimmy?"

"Sure. Chris, you just stick with me and I'll teach you everything I know. And one of these days when you're a big famous movie producer like your father I'll be your assistant, how about that?"

Chris frowned slightly because everybody from the studio was always telling him he'd be a famous producer like his father one of these days. The people who told him that were his father's friends and not his friends and it worried him that Jimmy, his own private grown-up friend, should mention the studio like the others.

"I don't want to be a producer. I want to be an explorer and an archeologist."

"An archeologist? Hey, what's that?"

"You dig up old cities that are all covered over with grass and trees. Pyramids and stuff like that."

"Like digging for buried treasure, huh? Well, you're going to make a bundle, whatever you do. You're a smart kid."

"Have you got any more guns?"

James laughed at him and jabbed him lightly, playfully, on the jaw.

"What are you, the house dick around here? Come on, now, don't be so nosy."

"Chri-is, oh Chris-sy-boy," his mother's voice, plaintive but persistent, spanned the fascinating gulf between the main house and the chauffeur's quarters.

"Now remember, fella," James said, "don't tell your old lady I let you handle a gun." He winked toward the bathing suit pictures over his bed. "And I wouldn't mention the cheesecake to her either. I don't want her to think I'm leading you astray."

Chris did not entirely understand the chauffeur's meaning but he did appreciate the fact that they now shared certain (continued on page 36) Second Father (continued from page 30) rather delicious secrets together.

"I won't tell, Jimmy," he said solemnly, "I swear I won't tell."

"Attaboy. Hit the sack now. You got to get lots of sleep if you want to grow big and strong like your Uncle Jimmy."

"I'm going to be in the Navy and have pictures all over my arm," Chris said happily, as he ran to obey his mother's now slightly more impatient call.

The next afternoon when James picked Chris up in front of the school in the hateful gold petit point town car, the nemesis Iggy Gonzalez was watching disdainfully. James was resplendent in his dark maroon uniform.

"Jeez, get a load of the little prince," Iggy said. He was a tough, young American with only the faintest echo of a Mexican accent.

Chris was hating the car and Iggy Gonzalez and all the motion picture money that was putting him to this shame.

"Hey, stuck-up, what you got that guy in uniform for? So you don't get your block knocked off?"

A few of Iggy's admirers laughed. Iggy had wiry brown arms and a cocky way of walking, as if he was already a winning prize fighter like his big brother Chu-Chu. Iggy came closer, charging the atmosphere with his schoolboy snarls. Chris was ready to duck into the safety of the coach when James said, "Go ahead. Stand up to him. Left hand in his face like I showed you."

Chris was terribly afraid of Iggy Gonzalez but he was even more afraid to be a coward in the eyes of his benefactor Jimmy. Visibly trembling and embarrassingly close to tears, he did as the chauffeur told him. The two boys circled each other with intense concentration, Chris moving jerkily in his fear, Iggy feeling his man out coolly as befitted a veteran of these school-yard bouts. Then he rushed at Chris, but Chris, to his own surprise, put into practice the cleverness James had been teaching him. He drew back quickly and stepped neatly to one side and Iggy went rushing foolishly by him like a little bull. Iggy cursed and came charging in again. Chris put out his left hand and Iggy ran into it. His nose began to bleed. Iggy's rooters called out, "Come on, Ig, he can't fight, knockum down 'n make him bawl." They were vicious cries and made Chris panicky. But he kept pushing his left in the dark sweaty face coming at him, as James had tutored him. Iggy was breathing hard like a little bull through his soggy nose. He knocked Chris' surprising left hand away and swung on him with his hard wild right. Chris cringed and ducked, both automatically and in fear and they fell into each other, the clinch deteriorating into a stand-up wrestle. They teetered and fell to the ground, grabbing frantically at each other, Chris on the verge of hysterical sobbing and fighting with the hysterical strength of some small cornered animal. Iggy was working his hard, bony knees into Chris' neck when James decided this was the strategic moment to extricate his charge with honor.

"Ok, kids, good fight, let's call it a draw," he said and he pulled them apart. Iggy had not expected any resistance from Chris. He stared at him with sullen respect. Chris was still trembling inside and giddy with relief at having the ordeal behind him, this thing he had dreaded from the time he was eight.

"Come on," James said to Iggy. "Hop in. I'll blow both you champs to a soda."

It was a master stroke. Secretly, for a long time, Iggy Gonzalez had been wishing for a ride in the gold petit point coach, and once he accepted he could hardly heckle Chris about it again.

Chris felt even closer to James after that. He'd be in James' room almost every evening after dinner, and occasionally James would even be invited to Chris' room, to examine the rock collection or to talk over some secret plans that Chris enjoyed being mysterious about in front of his parents.

Sol Samuels still had doubts about the wisdom of allowing so close a relationship but Mrs. Samuels said she had to admit that Chris was a good deal more manly than he had been before James came into his life. "Really, James has done wonders for him, Sol. I wouldn't say he's the best chauffeur we ever had, but he's almost like a second father to Chris."

A few weeks after school let out for the summer there was a company convention in St. Louis and the Samuels planned to be away for five or six days. They were going to take Chris along, and Winnie to care for him. But when Chris heard about it he said Gee Whiz what fun would that be, he'd rather stay home with James. "We thought this would be a good time to give James his week's vacation," Mrs. Samuels said. This conversation was held in the yard and James happened to overhear it. After lunch he came in and asked Mrs. Samuels if he could talk to her.

"Mrs. Samuels, I've been thinking what to do with my week. I thought I'd pack into the Sierras with a gun and some fishing tackle and sleep out of doors."

"That sounds very nice," Mrs. Samuels said stiffly.

"What I was thinkin' was maybe you'd let me take Chris along with me."

"Well, I really don't know what to say. I'd have to talk to his father. Are you sure you'd like a little boy along on your vacation?"

"He's real good company, you'd be surprised," James said, unaware of all that he was saying.

Late that night, after Sol Samuels had had a particularly prolonged wrangle with a doll-faced star who was tough as snake-hide, he and Mrs. Samuels discussed James' invitation.

"But, Alma, darling, I tell you we don't know the fella. After all we simply brought him in off the streets."

"He had beautiful references from Westchester."

"Those people never answered, Alma. Maybe they don't even exist."

"Any man who loves children so much," Mrs. Samuels said vaguely.

Sol Samuels still had his doubts. Alma answered him with the old argument that he spoke out of jealousy and guilt for not spending more time with his only son. It was a slightly unfair if rather unanswerable kind of reasoning and finally Sol threw up his hands. "All right, dear, all right Now I've got to work on my speech for the convention."

The trip into the mountains with James was Chris' version of going to heaven. There was a bigness, an importance about the way he felt that was more than his word keen could ever suggest. It was dry and hot under the summer sun. They climbed and suffered manfully. Then they would come upon a stream, with a natural pool three or four feet deep and they would stretch out alongside it and lower their mouths to the surface of the cool water. Chris saw beguiling shadows under a trickling waterfall and cried out, "Look, Jimmy, look!" James laughed as the sub-limit trout darted out of sight, "Next time whisper," he said. "We'll drop a fly on their noses and see if they're hungry."

Later in the day they found a real trout pool and they rolled up their pants and stood in the melted-snow water up to their knees. Chris got his line badly tangled in the underbrush and had no luck but James finally brought one to the net, about 10 inches long and so lively that it kept flopping in the basket that Chris was allowed to hold. It made his heart pound with joy and excitement and some sort of fatalistic sorrow as he heard the flip-flopping get stronger and stronger, and then begin to slow down and weaken. There was a long silence, perhaps two minutes, and Chris raised the lid and peeked in to see if the fish was dead. It jumped toward the light and Chris slammed the lid down just in time. James managed to net another one about the same size, just as the sun (continued overleaf) Second Father (continued from page 36) was ducking down behind the folding range. Then came the best fun of all, starting the fire and frying the fish.

Chris would never eat fish for his mother or Winnie, but James' fish were different. He ate his whole portion, with fried potatoes that he had sliced himself and that James had taught him how to cook. Then he threw the remains into the fire and watched the paper plate flame up and twist into ashes. They sat around the fire talking, James with a pipe in his mouth exhaling little clouds of smoke into the still night air. Chris liked the smell of it. So much sweeter than his father's stinkly old cigars. Chris asked James to tell him all over again about his fight with Jocko Kennedy in the Yellow Dragon in Manila. Later they talked about the woods and Chris thought it would be fun to live up here the rest of his life, being a mountain ranger and putting out forest fires and catching bandits and things like that. James laughed and said that was only because Chris was still very young. The day would come when he would be happy to take over his father's studio and have some oomphy red-headed star for his girlfriend. And James would come to the studio gate and Mr. Bigshot Chris Samuels wouldn't even let him in.

Oh, no, no, that would never happen, Chris cried, and he wished inside of him that James would forget about the studio and how rich or important his father was, or that he was going to be. He didn't want his father and the studio along on this trip. This was to be just Jimmy and Chris camping out in the mountains. Maybe they could find gold together and set up a mine and be partners for life. How much more fun that would be than any old studio.

After a while Chris got very sleepy from looking into the fire and James told him it was time to crawl into their pup tent. While Chris was lying in there thinking about the day, suddenly it began to thunder. The Sound of it seemed to roll along the mountain slope and fall away into the valley below. Then lightning struck as if it were hop-skippling from scrub-pine to pine around the tent. Chris would have been very scared if James hadn't been there. But James was there. He had moved into the tent and was squatting by the entrance-flap looking out at the summer storm. Chris was sure James would know what to do in any emergency. Muscle-weary, but pleasantly so, he drifted off into visions of heroic comradeship: prospecting in Arizona where a bad man jumps them to steal their claim but he and Jimmy fight back like wildcats You thought we didn't know how to box, huh? this'll teach you flying together in a Navy PBY forced down in enemy waters and sailing their little rubber life boat into a desert island cove where fish were jumping all around them Good boy Chris pull 'im in this'll keep us going 'til the search plane spots us ... How long Chris had been sleeping he had no idea but suddenly he was awake again and for a funny moment he thought he was home in his own familiar bed. Winnie must be running a bath for him. He stretched out his hand and felt the dark canvas of the tent. Oh, the sound of running water was the brook outside. But what was this dark form kneeling over him? Half awake he cried out his fear of it. "James?"

"Yeah."

He felt better. But what was Jimmy doing so close to him, and looking down into his face while he slept? And what did he have in his hand? Chris could feel it as he lifted his own hands in stinctively. A rope. "James?" Chris said again, in a quavering voice and after a moment or two he was reassured as the chauffeur's voice sounded more like him again. "It's OK, kid. It's me, kid."

"What are you doing with that rope?"

James cleared his throat and said, "It was getting kinda windy. I thought I'd go out and see if I can batten down the flaps."

Before Chris could answer, James was gone. It was spooky quiet and dark inside the tent. It shouldn't take Jimmy very long, Chris was thinking. Minutes passed. Chris huddled uneasily in the darkness. Why was it taking so long? Chris felt his way to the entrance flap and called "Jimmy, Jimmy!" There was no answer. "James. Jaaaaaa-ms ..." No answer. Chris crawled back under his covers and tried to think what to do. But the thinking got all jangled up in his head: too frightened to think. There was a cold clammy panic filling him up inside. He yelled JAMES so loud it strained his throat. Then he started to cry. He couldn't stop crying. It became a harsh hysterical rasping. Lost in the mountains, deserted and left to strave, like a scene from an old movie of his father's. Oh James, James, Jimmy, come back, come back, his mind begged the rainy out of doors. He lay still for a while, burrowing into his fear and then he heard the footsteps coming toward the tent and James was back.

"Hi, fella," he said, "afraid I wasn't coming back?"

Chris threw himself into the chauffeur's arms and tried, as James had taught him, not to cry.

"I walked back to the car to get a tarpaulin to throw over the tent," James explained. They had driven up the mountain as far as the dirt road would take them and then had walked in to find the camp site.

"Oh," Chris said. "That's OK, Jimmy."

He did wonder why James hadn't told him he was going but he didn't want to mention it for fear that James would say something that would make him ashamed.

The next morning was fine again because the sun was shining and Chris found some salamanders in the stream. At first he called them little alligators but James, who seemed to know everything, explained to Chris that this was their full size, a kind of water lizard, and that you could pick them up without their biting you. Chris thought they were beautiful, with their shiny dark green bodies decorated with bright yellow spots. He was anxious to take some home with him. He got a milk bottle to carry them in. It was such fun to look at them through the glass. Watching their silent dark green struggle in the bottle, he had almost forgotten the scare of the night before. He spent the whole morning chasing salamanders--"water dogs," James called them--and would have been happy to catch and play with them all day but when the sun was overhead James thought they ought to be getting on back to town. Chris had expected them to stay another night but James said he didn't want to keep Chris up here too long. And anyway he had someone he had to stop in and see on their way home.

Chris was sorry to be driving down the winding mountain road. Except for the scary part in the night, it was the keenest time he had ever had. He was ashamed of himself for letting James frighten him even for a minute. He held his two salamanders in the bottle on his lap and he asked James if they could come up again that summer and stay even longer. James said, Sure, sure they'd have lots of good times together, but he didn't seem quite as easy to talk to as he had been driving up, or fishing the pools, or around the fire. There seemed to be something on James' mind. They drove a long time in silence, with Chris trying to touch the water dogs through the mouth of the bottle.

When they got down into the valley and on into the neat little white bungalow section of north Hollywood, James said that the person he wanted to stop off and see was his sister. James honked the horn and she came out, a flashy, good-looking girl with orangey hair.

"Hello you," she said to James and she made a little kissing sound with her mouth.

"We've been up in the mountains camping out," James said.

"How gay for you," the girl said.

Chris saw that the hand of the girl played with James' hand and that she seemed to arch and stretch against him (continued on page 46) Second Father (continued from page 38) like a cat he had once. And where had Chris seen her face before! Oh, now he remembered, on the wall over James' bed, the one looking over her shoulder with practically no clothes on. James hadn't said anything about her being his sister then.

"Here's a kid your father ought to put in pictures," James said. "She was Miss Spokane two years ago. Isn't she a dead ringer for Ann Sheridan?"

Chris wished they hadn't hurried to come down from the mountain.

"He's cute," the girl said, tossing her orange hair toward Chris. Then she looked at James in a funny way. "You must have had fun up there."

"I caught a lot of salamanders," Chris said. "Look, I've got two of them here!"

"You should have been along," James said. "Did you ever sleep in a pup tent?"

"Christ, I've slept everywhere else," the girl said. She and James looked at each other and laughed. Chris wished they would get this over with. It had been so nice up there, just the two of them, standing in the cold clear water looking for trout.

"You get back in the car now, I'll be right with you," James said to Chris, noticing how he was staring. "I've got something private I want to tell my sister."

"Come back again, honey," the girl said, and then she looked at James in that same way again. "When you're a little bigger."

Chris didn't like them laughing together. This wasn't like James at all, his pal Jimmy who invited him to his room over the garage and taught him boxing and fishing and how to slice spuds. Chris watched critically as James walked the girl back to her door. He put his arm on her shoulder and she brushed up against him again. Chris saw James whisper something in her ear and she flung her head back in mock anger and slapped him hard but fondly on the bottom of his pants. Chris wished James would cut all this stuff out and come back to him.

On the drive through Hollywood to the Samuel's home James said, "Say, Chris, when your parents get home, we don't have to mention this little visit to see my sister, OK?"

Chris did not exactly understand.

"It'll just be our little secret, like letting you hold the gun. OK?"

That was OK with Chris. He was sure his mother and father had secrets they never told him. He looked at his salamanders through the milk bottle glass.

"I'll fix you up a tank for them," James said.

"And when we go back to the mountains we can catch some more," Chris said, feeling better again.

"Sure, we'll go again. We're gonna have lots of fun. Just remember now, you forget all about that little visit to see my girl--my sister."

Chris had half forgotten it in his reverie of salamanders. He wished James wouldn't keep bringing it up. He didn't want it to be so much on James' mind. "Tell me a story about how you were in the Navy and a big storm came up and the captain got washed overboard and you had to save the ship," Chris said.

James laughed. "You already know it by heart. You just about told it right now."

"Please, Jimmy."

The rest of the way home James kept Chris entertained with this wild tale of the sea. Chris listened with his eyes staring wide, living it through again. By the time they turned up the Samuels' driveway he seemed to have forgotten everything but the fun parts of the trip and he was anxious to ask his mother and father how soon they could go camping together again.

James sat with Chris as the boy slowly talked himself on into sleep that night, talking of all the new things they had seen on the trip and all the things there were to look forward to on their next adventure. Chris was very tired and sleepy from their energetic two days and couldn't keep his eyes open to talk to James as long as he wanted to.

James turned out the light and tiptoed out.

"He's dead tired, he wore himself out up there," James said to Winnie, the mulatto maid, as he passed through the kitchen.

"I'm glad he's back safe. Goodnight," Winnie said. She had been with the Samuels a long time and did not like to see the new chauffeur going so familiarly through the house.

In the morning when Chris woke up the first thing he did was to see how his salamanders were, in the bottle. One of them was floating on the surface. He was dead. His color had sort of paled out and he wasn't nearly so dark and shiny as he had been. Chris thought of them scampering alive in the mountain stream. It made him sad to see his little water dog floating lifeless in the bottle. He wondered if it had suffered very much. And whether the one still alive felt very lonely without his friend.

When Chris came down for breakfast that morning he was surprised to hear from Winnie that his parents had come home during the night. They had not been expected until that afternoon. He hurried up to see his mother, who was having breakfast in bed. His father was in the bathroom shaving. His mother kissed him and hugged him and said he looked tired and then before Chris could tell her about the camping and the storm that came up and the salamanders and everything, she asked him in a cross, serious way if he knew where James had gone last night. With a child's innocent intuition Chris thought of the lively orange-haired girl who had slapped James in such an intimate way. But he kept silent while his mother told him why they were so angry with James. They had wired James to meet them at the station. Apparently he did not get the wire because he had left the house at nine o'clock, without permission, and had stayed out all the night. They had called him from the station around one A.M. and there had been no answer. To make matters worse, when they got home by taxi they found that James had taken the town car with him. Daddy was furious. He had a special phobia about chauffeurs who used the cars at night for their own private pleasures. Sol wanted to discharge James immediately.

"Oh please, please, please don't let him go," Chris begged. Who else was there to sleep with him in a tent and help him catch salamanders and build a tank for them to live in?

Chris' father came out of the bathroom half dressed, half shaved and very angry. James would simply have to go, that was all there was to it. He was taking advantage of his friendship with Chris. Sol was sorry Chris had formed this attachment but the could no longer allow a child's temporary sentiments to protect an employee who was obviously irresponsible.

Chris knew his father when he got stubborn mad instead of the easygoing way he usually was. It made the boy panicky. His life before James now seemed terribly pale and dull. The things James had taught him. The things James had showed him he could do. These past few months for the first time he had things to talk about with other boys.

James was called in to the breakfast room while Mr. Samuels was having his coffee. James was extremely polite and subdued. Yes, sir. No, sir. If you'll let me try to explain, sir. He explained that while the Samuels were away he had spent so much time with Chris that he had needed an evening off for his personal wants, a haircut, some shopping and the rest. It was wrong of him to keep the car out all night, he admitted, but he had been visiting some relatives and when he suddenly realized how late it was he had thought it would be more practical to sleep over and return early in the morning. He would never, never take the car without permission again. He was devoted to the family, adored young Chris and would never risk losing the job again. James (continued on page 54) Second Father (continued from page 46) said all this very well, with a certain glibness, although with a pained expression on his face that seemed to reflect a rather intense suffering for the sins he had committed. In fact, his tone was not unlike that of a repentant sinner at confessional.

Sol Samuels was a stern grand inquisitor, Mrs. Samuels was as usual softening and Chris remained silent and begged his father with his eyes.

In the end, because Mr. Samuels' defenses always crumbled before the combined efforts of his wife and son, James was allowed to remain on probation. "The slightest little act of disobedience and that is the finish, final," Mr. Samuels intoned, gathering up the crumbs of his authority. "I am only tolerating you now because you seem to have made such a hit with Christopher."

"He is a wonderful boy, sir," James said soothingly.

Later that morning Chris helped James wash the car and then James said he was ready to fix up the tank for the surviving salamander. He seemed a good deal more quiet than usual. Evidently Mr. Samuels' lecture had brought him down considerably. He didn't play and tell stories as he had before. But Chris imagined it would take him a day or two to get over the scolding. Chris was the same way.

That afternoon Mrs. Samuels took Chris to a Disney picture. James dropped them off and was told to pick them up outside the theatre at five O'clock. He wasn't there when they got out and they waited patiently for 15 minutes or so as the streets were often jammed up at that hour. At 5:30 Mrs. Samuels called home. Why, James had left shortly after four, Winnie said. He had been working on Chris' salamander tank most of the afternoon. At a quarter to six Mrs. Samuels and Chris went home by cab. A number of police cars were in front of the house. In the maid's room Winnie was thrashing on her bed having hysterics. After Mrs. Samuels' call she had gone up to Chris' room to be sure James wasn't there. It was then she noticed that Chris' little cash register bank was gone. It was always on the night table by his bed. Then something had made Winnie go to the drawer where Mrs. Samuels kept her jewels. They were gone. Then Winnie looked through Mr. Samuels' bureau. His diamond watch was missing, and his gold cufflinks and a sapphire ring and a lot of other expensive accessories. Winnie called Mr. Samuels and he said, "The skunk. Even takes the kid's nickels and dimes and that's the fellow who's so nuts about Chris I can't even fire him." He told Winnie to look for his wallet in the back of the little drawer where he kept his links and handkerchiefs. The wallet was supposedly hidden. There was $750 in cash. Winnie ran up and looked. No, Mr. Samuels, that's gone too! And your silk monogrammed shirts and your silk robe and oh he just took everything, everything ... Mr. Samuels told her he was calling the police immediately and how in the hell could he take all that stuff with you in the house watching him, Winnie? Winnie sobbed and stammered as if it was she who had been caught doing this terrible deed. He--he was in and out of Chris' room all afternoon fixing up that tank. He kept going in and out to the garage to get tools and things. I ever dreamed, I didn't think--Oh, Mr. Samuels I feel as if I am going to faint ...

"Don't faint. Wait for the police. Tell them exactly what happened. And be sure and tell them what James looked like. That son of a bitch. I'll be home as soon as possible."

Chris went up to his room without saying anything. James had not finished fixing up the tank for the salamander as he had promised. Now the poor salamander would probably die. He knew it would die. He wished he could go back to the mountains and put this shiny green water lizard back in its home stream. It made him feel nervous having to take care of the salamander without James. It didn't seem possible that he was never going to see him again. The change hadn't quite happened for him yet. James was still his friend and chum going to take him camping.

He knew what an ordeal it would be when his father came home. "Goddamn it, now will you believe me? He was nothing but a bum, a cheap crook. I hope this will teach you not to be so goddamn trusting of everybody."

Chris didn't come down for dinner that night. He couldn't bear to hear all that from his father. He wished James had finished the salamander tank for him. It would have helped him get over it to watch the salamander swimming around the salamander tank. The salamander wasn't moving around as fast as he was before. In the morning, he bet anything, the salamander would be a paler green and floating belly up in the bottle. He hadn't even had a chance to name him and now he didn't want to name him if he was going to die. He wondered where James was this minute. He wondered how James could stand to be away from him. James had liked him so much. It was that darned girl, that crummy orange-headed sister of his. Or whatever she was.

Impulsively Chris went over to James' room and looked around. Yep, her picture was still there, over his bed. Winnie always told him he'd catch cold if he stood around after a bath without putting his pajamas on. He wondered how it happened that someone had taken her picture before she had a chance to put all her clothes on. Chris thought about the first time he had come up to James' room. It was something to have a big friend of his own. It was something. Oh James James Jimmy how could you, how could you take my eight dollars and 75 cents. I was saving up. I wanted to take it down to the bank that keeps people's money and get a regular bank book like my father. Chris felt like crying. His nose felt all itchy as if he was going to cry. Who would help him get grownup now? Who would teach him how to handle the Iggy Gonzalezes? He felt like crying but he didn't cry because his friend James had taught him things. Taught him to keep his left hand out and not to cry. It didn't matter how many dollars James had taken. James had taught him things he would always remember.

Next afternoon there were big black headlines in the evening papers about the capture of James. He and his gunmoll, it said, a prostitute and part-time extra girl by the name of Tommie King, had been apprehended in Calexico, near the Mexican border. They had ditched the gold petit point town car and had stolen a Ford sedan. In the paper James talked a lot about the robbery, almost as if it was one of his sea stories. "It was the easiest job I ever pulled. I decided the first day to use the kid. Rich kids are dumb. They're lonely, most of them, and that makes 'em dumb. Suckers for the big-brother pitch. This Samuels kid was as square as they come."

And then Chris read something that scared him so he felt his heart might choke up and stop beating. "I took the kid up in the mountains and started to tie him up and was going down and call his old man in St. Louis and tell him I wanted 50 Gs to bring the kid back in one piece. But a storm was blowing up and I figured I'd have a hell of a time getting to a phone and back again. So I gave it up. When I heard I might get fired any minute, for taking off with the car for a night, I figured I better get mine quick while I still had a foot in the door. I pulled a gag about building a fish tank for the kid to ..."

It was a neat plan, James had boasted, and only a lousy turn of luck kept them from getting deep into Mexico and living off the fat. A hick cop, running him down for speeding, spotted his puss from an old post office picture wanting him for some job way back. James had posed as a butler-chauffeur and driven off like this in quite a few different states.

That night Chris had a terrible dream. He was tied to a tree in the (concluded on page 68) Second Father (continued from page 54) mountains and it was raining, pouring salamanders and James and that orange-haired sister or gun-moll or whatever she was were on the front seat of the gold petit point town car coach driving straight at him. They were looking at each other and laughing and Chris let out a scream, a long, shrill, terrible scream.

Mr. Samuels came running in. He sat on the edge of Chris' bed. "Oh Daddy, Daddy," the child cried out. Mr. Samuels hugged him. He had not held his boy to him like this in a long time. Perhaps years. He had been too busy at the studio. Chris was surprised to find himself in the arms of his father. He had avoided his father because he was so afraid of being scolded about the way he had loved and trusted James. It was too much for him, too much, and he sobbed and bawled like a baby.

Sol Samuels felt guilty. Alma had just given him a good talking to about his neglect of Chris and how this blow to the boy never would have happened if Chris hadn't been so terribly in need of a father-image.

"Chris," Mr. Samuels said, "tomorrow I'm going to take the whole day off from the studio. In the afternoon we'll go to Gilmore's and see the ball game."

Chris coughed and said all right. But he still couldn't get out of his head how nice James had been to him. The nicest anyone had ever been. If only they hadn't so many things that James wanted, Chris tried to figure it out, maybe everything would have worked out all right. He just couldn't believe everything James said in the papers. Any more than he believed every single bit of the rescue in shark-infested waters or the triumph over Jocko Kennedy in the Yellow Dragon.

He peered in at the milk bottle standing on the deep window sill where the tank was supposed to be. The salamander was beginning to float toward the top and wasn't working its arms and legs very much. Jimmy must have liked him a little bit. To do all these things with him. Chris squeezed hard to keep his eyes dry. Jimmy just must have liked him a little bit.

"Jeez, get a load of the little prince," sneered Iggy.