Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 1, February 1961

Jim had been expecting it all week. But when his notice of dismissal came that morning it caught him off balance. He hadn’t realized that it showed that much.

The clock at the far end of the newsroom told him that he had another hour left in his shift. The last shift. He bent over his typewriter and dug into the last summary. He hoped that Alec, the senior editor and desk man, would let him go early. It was the least he could do.

Otherwise, Jim thought, he wouldn’t be able to get downtown to make the payment before the store closed. Then there would be the weekend, and by the time Monday came around, he knew he wouldn’t have enough money.

He slapped the first half dozen pages down in front of Alec; Alec took them automatically, without looking up. He had been checking news copy for almost thirty years. Methodically, his tired eyes swept up and down the yellow pages, his right hand correcting a comma here, a typo there. Jim went back to his own desk.

Alec finished up his little pile of copy, with a continuous motion placing page after page in front of the teletype operator.

CLACK CLACK DING CLAC CLAAC...

And all across the country, his stories came up on similar teletype machines in every private radio station. Every hour another fifteen hundred words, to be ripped from the machines by breathlessly running copy boys and spread in front of editors and announcers. So goes the news of a turbulent world, he thought.

Jim finished up and threw the remaining sheets in front of the older man.

“Leaving early tonight, do you mind?” he forced civility into his voice.

“Can’t see what difference it makes,” Alec replied, still glaring at the copy. “This the best you can do?” he asked, referring to the UN piece.

“Do you want me to go out and make the news too?” he said.

“See you sometime, Jim,” said Alec with the small smile of a man who has had his revenge.

“Yeah,” Jim said, getting his coat from the rack. He walked through the room to the door. No one looked at him directly. But as he passed each man he could feel his eyes on him. Word gets around fast in a news office.

He wasn’t embarrassed. He had been through the same thing four times since the beginning of the year. This was the shortest tenure yet, not quite five weeks. He had better learn to watch himself from now on, he thought. He took the stairs three at a time.

The notice had come that morning with his pay. Not much warning. Too bad the place wasn’t unionized, he thought. Maybe then he could have raised a little hell.

He stepped into the street. The setting sun made him squint. He pulled his Spring-and-Fall closer about him and strode to the streetcar stop.

He glanced at his watch and saw with relief that he would miss the rush hour. It was the last payment he would have to make and it was now or never. He knew what would happen to the money unless he made use of it now.

He waited with the handful of workers at the corner. He wondered what he would do. There was always a chance of getting a temporary job with UPI, that is, until word got around that he had been canned again. But it would be a couple of weeks’ pin money.

But what would Marie think? She had been very patient, but he winced at the thought of hurting her again. He didn’t imagine she could take it much longer.

The street-car was slow in coming, and he began to fidget. The tentacles of that familiar hunger crawled through his body and he tried to put it down. He had to control himself. He looked at the people around him. Strange people, he thought... jobs, lunch pails... loves...

Again, the hunger. More urgent this time. Again he clenched his fists in his pockets.

Alec hadn’t said a thing to him all week. He just sat and spied and informed on him. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t done his job, he told himself. It was just that Alec couldn’t stand people doing what they wanted. What bothered him most, apart from the effect it would have on Marie, was the total indifference of his so-called friends. You’d think it was the most natural thing in the world to be fired for being a drunk.

He began to sweat. He needed a drink. He stepped aboard the streetcar, went to the rear and slumped down.

He thought about the job and how he lost it, and the three before it. Hell, he thought, drinking was almost a prerequisite in the news business. Even Alec was known to take a drink now and then. What are a few drinks between friends?

It must have been the black-list, he concluded. Not overt, but spread slowly by word of mouth, over poker, over drinks. He was not liked and must be kept on the merry-go-round.

The streets sped by. He took out his wallet and counted his money. Forty-three dollars, after taxes. Well, he hadn’t lost much. He realized that he had come to his stop and lept for the bell rope. He got off and went into the small jewelry store near the corner.