The Porkchoppers Read Online Free

than nothing.”
    â€œThey’ll probably be run out of town and you along with them.”
    â€œI’ll have to take that chance.”
    â€œThey’re dirty talking. They said so themselves.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œPays twelve-fifty a week.”
    â€œGood.”
    Pettigrew handed Cubbin a slip of paper. “You call this man here. Tell him I recommended you.”
    â€œThanks, Mr. Pettigrew.”
    Pettigrew shrugged. “I told ’em they could get a girl for ten bucks who’d put up with their dirty talking, but they said they wanted a man, but that they didn’t want any nance. You know what a nance is, don’t you?”
    Cubbin nodded. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

    He got the job, of course. The Good Old Man himself hired Cubbin in the shabby, one-room office that was located in the heart of what they later called Pittsburgh’s golden triangle. “Let’s see what you can do, son,” he said.
    Cubbin nodded, sat down in a chair, and took out his pencil and a stenographer’s notebook.
    â€œDear Sir and Brother,” the Good Old Man began. He was not so old then, not quite forty-five in 1932, but already he dictated his letter as if delivering a short speech to an audience of a thousand or more, reaching his roaring peroration in the next to last paragraph and ending each letter with a heartfelt and whispered “Fraternally yours.”
    Cubbin took it all down in Pitman at around eighty words per minute and typed it up on the office L. C. Smith at a steady sixty-five words per minute. After the Good Old Man read it, he looked up at Cubbin and smiled, “I don’t have much education, son, but I’m not stupid. I put a couple of little grammatical errors in on purpose. You took ’em out. Why?”
    â€œThey weren’t bad enough to leave in,” Cubbin said.
    The Good Old Man nodded. “That’s a pretty fair answer,” he said after a while. “You say you can also keep a simple set of books?”
    â€œYes, I can do that.”
    â€œAll right, you’re hired. Be here tomorrow at eight. You know anything about unions?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œGood. You can learn about ’em my way.”
    When Cubbin got back to his boardinghouse to tell his mother that he had landed a job, he found a tall, thin young man waiting for him on the front porch. The tall, thin young man introduced himself as “Bernie Ling of Warner Brothers.”
    Cubbin heard the Warner Brothers but discounted it as part of some kind of a sales pitch. “I’m sorry,” he said, starting to brush by Ling, “but I can’t afford one right now.”
    â€œI’m not selling,” Ling said. “I’m making you an offer.”
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œA screen test. In L.A.”
    â€œBullshit,” Cubbin said and started past Ling again.
    â€œHere,” Ling said, taking a telegram from his pocket. “Read this.”
    The telegram was from Ling’s producer uncle, a man who enjoyed some partly manufactured notoriety for his unwillingness to squander words. The telegram read, “ BUS FARE ONLY LOVE FISHER .”
    â€œI don’t get it,” Cubbin said.
    â€œFisher. That’s Arnold Fisher, a producer. My uncle. At Warner Brothers. I’m with their publicity department. I saw you the other night in the play. I wired my uncle and they’re willing to pay your bus fare to L.A, for a test. No shit.”
    â€œYou saw me?” Cubbin said, thinking a message to his father: Why did you have to go and die and be out of a job?
    â€œI think you might make it out there,” Ling said. “I mean really make it.”
    Cubbin slowly handed back the telegram. “Sorry, but it’s just not possible right now.”
    â€œChrist, all you have to do is get on a bus.”
    There was a moment for Cubbin when it was all possible, better than possible, it had all