What Makes Sammy Run? Read online

  Why all this moralizing about a book frequently described as racy, fast-moving and principally an entertainment? Well, there’s an old saying—or there ought to be one—“Scratch a novelist and you find a moralist.” Where is the tension in any novel to be found, after all, but in the discrepancy between the writer’s knowledge of what is and his vision of what ought to be?

  New Hope, Pa.

  January 1952

  CHAPTER 1

  The first time I saw him he couldn’t have been much more than sixteen years old, a little ferret of a kid, sharp and quick. Sammy Glick. Used to run copy for me. Always ran. Always looked thirsty.

  “Good morning, Mr. Manheim,” he said to me the first time we met, “I’m the new office boy, but I ain’t going to be an office boy long.”

  “Don’t say ain’t,” I said, “or you’ll be an office boy forever.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Manheim,” he said, “that’s why I took this job, so I can be around writers and learn all about grammar and how to act right.”

  Nine out of ten times I wouldn’t have even looked up, but there was something about the kid’s voice that got me. It must have been charged with a couple of thousand volts.

  “So you’re a pretty smart little feller,” I said.

  “Oh, I keep my ears and eyes open,” he said.

  “You don’t do a bad job with your mouth either,” I said.

  “I wondered if newspapermen always wisecrack the way they do in the movies,” he said.

  “Get the hell out of here,” I answered.

  He raced out, too quickly, a little ferret. Smart kid, I thought. Smart little yid. He made me uneasy. That sharp, neat, eager little face. I watched the thin, wiry body dart around the corner in high gear. It made me uncomfortable. I guess I’ve always been afraid of people who can be agile without grace.

  The boss told me Sammy was getting a three-week tryout. But Sammy did more running around that office in those three weeks than Paavo Nurmi did in his whole career. Every time I handed him a page of copy, he ran off with it as if his life depended on it. I can still see Sammy racing between the desks, his tie flying, wild-eyed, desperate.

  After the second trip he would come back to me panting, like a frantic puppy retrieving a ball. I never saw a guy work so hard for twelve bucks a week in my life. You had to hand it to him. He might not have been the most lovable little child in the world, but you knew he must have something. I used to stop right in the middle of a sentence and watch him go.

  “Hey, kid, take it easy.”

  That was like cautioning Niagara to fall more slowly.

  “You said rush, Mr. Manheim.”

  “I didn’t ask you to drop dead on us.”

  “I don’t drop dead very easy, Mr. Manheim.”

  “Like your job, Sammy?”

  “It’s a damn good job—this year.”

  “What do you mean—this year?”

  “If I still have it next year, it’ll stink.”

  He looked so tense and serious I almost laughed in his face. I liked him. Maybe he was a little too fresh, but he was quite a boy.

  “I’ll keep my ear to the ground for you, kid. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll have a chance to slip you in as a cub reporter.”

  That was the first time he ever scared me. Here I was going out of my way to be nice to him and he answered me with a look that was almost contemptuous.

  “Thanks, Mr. Manheim,” he said, “but don’t do me any favors. I know this newspaper racket. Couple of years at cub reporter? Twenty bucks. Then another stretch as district man. Thirty-five. And finally you’re a great big reporter and get forty-five for the rest of your life. No, thanks.”

  I just stood there looking at him, staggered. Then …

  “Hey, boy!” And he’s off again, breaking the indoor record for the hundred-yard dash.

  Well, I guess he knew what he was doing. The world was a race to Sammy. He was running against time. Sometimes I used to sit at the bar at Bleeck’s, stare at the reflection in my highball glass and say, “Al, I don’t give a goddam if you never move your ass off this seat again. If you never write another line. I default. If it’s a race, you can scratch my name right now. Al Manheim does not choose to run.” And then it would start running through my head: What makes Sammy run? What makes Sammy run? I would take another drink, and ask one of the bartenders:

  “Say, Henry, what makes Sammy run?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Al?”

  “I’m talking about Sammy Glick, that’s who I’m talking about. What makes Sammy run?”

  “You’re drunk, Al. Your teeth are swimming.”

  “Goddam it, don’t try to get out of it! That’s an important question. Now, Henry, as man to man, What makes Sammy run?”

  Henry wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Jesus, Al, how the hell should I know?”

  “But I’ve got to know. (I was yelling by this time.) Don’t you see, it’s the answer to everything.”

  But Henry didn’t seem to see.

  “Mr. Manheim, you’re nuts,” he said sympathetically.

  “It’s driving me nuts,” I said. “I guess it’s something for Karl Marx or Einstein or a Big Brain; it’s too deep for me.”

  “For Chri’sake, Al,” Henry pleaded, “you better have another drink.”

  I guess I took Henry’s advice, because this time I got back to the office with an awful load on. I had to bat out my column on what seemed like six typewriters at the same time. And strangely enough that’s how I had my first run-in with Sammy Glick.

  Next morning a tornado twisted through the office. It began in the office of O’Brien the managing editor and it headed straight for the desk of the drama editor, which was me.

  “Why in hell don’t you look what you’re doing, Manheim?” O’Brien yelled.

  The best I could do on the spur of the moment was:

  “What’s eating you?”

  “Nothing’s eating me,” he screamed. “But I know what’s eating you—maggots—in your brain. Maybe you didn’t read your column over before you filed it last night?”

  As a matter of fact I hadn’t even been able to see my column. And at best I was always on the Milquetoast side. So I simply asked meekly, “Why, was something wrong with it?”

  “Nothing much,” he sneered in that terrible voice managing editors always manage to cultivate. “Just one slight omission. You left all the verbs out of the last paragraph. If it hadn’t been for that kid Sammy Glick it would have run the way you wrote it.”

  “What’s Sammy Glick got to do with it?” I demanded, getting sore.

  “Everything,” said the managing editor. “He read it on his way down to the desk …”

  “Glick read it?” I shouted.

  “Shut up,” he said. “He read it on his way to the desk, and when he saw that last paragraph he sat right down and re-wrote it himself. And damn well, too.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “He’s a great kid. I’ll have to thank him.”

  “I thanked him in the only language he understands,” the editor said, “with a pair for the Sharkey-Carnera scrap. And in your name.”

  A few minutes later I came face to face with that good Samaritan Samuel Glick himself.

  “Nice work, Sammy,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s all right, old man,” he said.

  It was the first time he had ever called me anything but Mr. Manheim.

  “Listen, wise guy,” I said, “if you found something wrong with my stuff, why didn’t you come and tell me? You always know where I am.”

  “Sure I did,” he said, “but I didn’t think we had time.”

  “But you just had time to show it to the managing editor first,” I said. “Smart boy.”

  “Gee, Mr. Manheim,” he said, “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help you.”

  “You helped me,” I said. “The way Flit helps flies.”

  Ever since Sammy started working four or five months back he h
ad done a fairly conscientious job of sucking around me. He hardly ever let a day go by without telling me how much he liked my column, and of course I’d be flattered and give him pointers here and there on his grammar, or what to read, or sometimes I’d slip him a couple of tickets for a show and we’d talk it over and I’d find myself listening to him give out with Glick on the Theater. Anyway, he had played me for a good thing and always treated me with as much respect as a fresh kid like that could, but right here, as I watched that face, I actually felt I could see it change. The city editor hadn’t hung a medal on his chest but he had put a glint in Sammy’s eye. You could see he was so gaga about his success that he didn’t care how sore I was. That was the beginning.

  “Don’t you think it’s dangerous to drop so many verbs?” he asked. “You might hit somebody down below.”

  “Listen,” I said, “tell me one thing. How the hell can you read when you’re running so fast?”

  “That’s how I learned to read,” he cracked, “while I was running so fast. Errands.”

  It made me sore. He was probably right. Somebody called him and he spun around and started running. What makes Sammy run? I pondered, looking after him, what makes Sammy run?

  For the next couple of months Sammy and I didn’t have much to do with each other. I thought maybe by being tough I could teach him a lesson. I’d just hand him copy without looking up, and I quit trying to develop his mind. But after a while that began to seem a little silly. After all, here I was a grown-up drama editor having a peeve on a poor kid who was just trying to get along. It wasn’t dignified. So next time he stopped by I suggested that we bury the hatchet.

  “Two bits says I know where you’d like to bury it,” Sammy said—“in my head.”

  I had to admit that was quite a temptation, but I managed to overcome it. I guess I’ve always been a gentle soul at heart. I’ve never been able to walk past a street fight between two little newsboys out to murder each other over a three-cent controversy without trying to stop it. On off moments when I wasn’t drunk or working hard I suppose you would have to call me an idealist. I’m not boasting about this. In this world which is run with all the rules and restrictions of a rough-and-ready free-for-all, it is always a little embarrassing to find yourself still believing in such outmoded principles as the golden rule and brotherly love.

  So I began piously, “Now, Sammy, after all, I’m almost old enough to be your father …”

  “Don’t give me that,” Sammy said. “My old man was twice as old as you when he kicked the bucket five years ago.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I hope you won’t mind my bringing it up. But I’ll bet I know what he’d say if he saw you today. He’d say, ‘Sammy, in the long run you’ll get further by being nice to people because then when you need them, they’ll be nice to you.’ ”

  You should have seen Sammy’s face laughing at me. “Mr. Manheim,” he said, “that spiel really rings the bell on my old man. That’s what he’d be telling me, all right. Because you want to know what my old man croaked from? Dumbness.”

  “That’s a fine way to talk about your father,” I said.

  “Can I help it if that’s what he died of?” Sammy asked. “He didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain and he died of a disease that seems to run in my family—dumbness.”

  “That diagnosis doesn’t sound exactly scientific,” I said.

  “To hell with science,” he said. “All I know is that my old man kicked off because his brains were muscle-bound, and my old lady and my half-brained brother suffer from the same thing.”

  I could see that all this talk was definitely a blind alley. Most Jewish families are pretty strong on filial love, but Sammy wasn’t what you’d call a loving son. So I switched to my sociological approach.

  “Sammy,” I began wisely, “society isn’t just a bunch of individuals living alongside of each other. As a member of society, man is interdependent. Not independent, Sammy, interdependent. Life is too complex for there to be any truth in the old slogan of every man for himself. We share the benefits of social institutions, like take hospitals, the cops and garbage collection. Why, the art of conversation itself is a social invention. We can’t live in this world like a lot of cannibals trying to swallow each other. Learn to give the other fellow a break and we’ll all live longer.”

  I felt pretty pleased with myself after I said that because I was convinced that it was one of the most sensible things I had ever said. But I might as well have been talking to a stone wall. In fact that might have been better. At least it couldn’t talk back.

  Sammy’s answer was, “If you want to save souls, try China.”

  I suppose the reason Sammy was getting my goat was because he was the smartest and stupidest human being I had ever met. He had a quick intelligence, which he was able to use exclusively for the good-and-welfare of Sammy Glick. And that kind of intelligence implies stupidity, for where other people might have one blind spot, Sammy’s mind was a mass of blind spots, with only a single ray of light focused immediately ahead.

  But fat with tolerance, like a Quaker, I decided to break Sammy down with kindness. I had two for Of Thee I Sing, so I gave them to him and told him to take his mother or his girl.

  “Girl,” he sneered, “you don’t see me with any girl.”

  “That’s a terrible loss to the opposite sex,” I said.

  “What good would a girl do me?” he said. “All they do is take up time and dough, and then if they happen to get knocked up they go yelling for their mothers.”

  “In other words,” I said, “you’re above sex?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, “I’ve got a pal who gets me fixed up every Saturday night. Gratis.”

  “Isn’t it romantic?” I sang the words of a current song. “Now that we’ve got that settled, do you still want the ducats? Take ’em home and surprise your mother.”

  “My old lady at a musical show?” Sammy said. “The closest she ever got to a real show was hearing the cantor sing ‘Eli Eli.’ ”

  “Then take her out and give her a treat,” I said. “About the most fun you can have in the world is showing people who aren’t used to it a good time.”

  “Jesus, you’re a sentimental bastard,” Sammy said. “Most of the Hebes I know drive me nuts because they always go around trying to be so goddam kind. It ain’t natural.”

  “Remember what I told you,” I said. “Don’t say ‘ain’t’ or you’ll be an office boy forever.”

  “Fat chance,” Sammy said, and hurried off.

  When I saw Sammy the next day he didn’t even mention the show, so I finally had to ask him.

  “I didn’t expect you to thank me for those tickets,” I said, “but I thought you might tell me what you thought of it.”

  “Good show,” he said.

  “Good show,” I screamed. “One of the greatest American plays ever written and all you can say is, ‘good show!’ ”

  “I wouldn’t mind having half of what Kaufman and Ryskind have,” he added.

  That’s a little more like it, I thought. “I’d settle for half their talent myself,” I said.

  “I don’t mean talent,” Sammy said. “I mean profit. That show must be cleaning up.”

  “Go on, beat it,” I said. “Disappear.”

  A little later I happened to meet one of the rewrite men, Osborne, at the water cooler. He was a sweet old gray-haired duck who was gradually working his way down from the hundred-a-week ace reporter he had been before the War.

  “Hello, Osborne,” I said, “I thought you were going to drop around when you wanted a couple of tickets for some musical. The offer still goes.”

  “Thanks, Al,” he said, “but I didn’t want to bother you, so me and the little woman just took one in ourselves. Last night as a matter of fact.”

  “What did you do that for?” I said. “Two seats at the box office must have set you back plenty.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Osborne said, “it is
n’t as bad as it sounds. I happened to get a bargain on two seats right up in front. And since it happened to be our twenty-seventh anniversary, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to splurge.”

  “Someone bootlegging in the lobby?” I said.

  “No,” he said, “I bought them from one of the kids. Name’s Glick, I think. Sold me the two of ’em for four bucks.”

  That made me burn. Four dollars was a lot of money to Osborne.

  I didn’t wait to run into Sammy again. I sent for him as soon as I got back to my desk.

  “So you thought the show last night was pretty good,” I began.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Sammy said.

  “I didn’t know you were such a tough critic, Mr. Glick,” I said. “You make George Jean Nathan sound like a blurb writer.”

  “I just know what I like,” Sammy said.

  “That’s quite a trick,” I said, “knowing what you like without even having to see it.”

  “What do you mean haven’t seen?” Sammy said in a tone of injured belligerence.

  “Wipe that indignation off your face, Sammy,” I said. “I mean I’ve been talking with Osborne.”