sensitivity, the introspection, the mental and physical growing pains of adolescence, he was able to throw off his youth and take on the armor of young manhood with the quick-changing ease of a chorus girl. His alert little ferret face began to take more definite form, the thin neat lips permanently set, the nose growing larger but still straight and sharp, giving the lie to the hook-nosed anti-Semitic cartoons, a nose that teamed up with the quick dark eyes and the tense, lined forehead to give an impression of arrogance and a fierce aggressiveness, which, when you included the determination of the pointed, forward-thrust chin, produced a face that reminded you of an army, full of force, strategy, single will and the kind of courage that boasts of never taking a backward step.
The first sure sign I had of Sammy’s growing up was when he came to me with the announcement that he now felt himself ready to conduct the paper’s radio column. Of course, the fact that the paper had never had a radio column didn’t seem to discourage him in the least.
“And just what makes you think you’re prepared to be an expert on matters Marconi?” I said.
“What made you think you were an expert on the theater?” he said.
That made me pause.
“That’s got absolutely nothing to do with it,” I said. “I had plenty of reasons.”
“Name one,” said Sammy.
I don’t know why the hell I was letting a twelve-buck-a-week half-pint bulldoze me, but there I was. “Well, for one thing,” I said, “I always liked the theater. I’ve seen lots of plays.”
“Well, I’ve listened to the radio plenty too,” Sammy said.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “Everybody listens to the radio.”
“That’s why there oughta be a radio column,” Sammy said.
It struck me funny. Here was this office boy applying for the job of writing a radio column that didn’t exist, and he actually had me on the defensive.
“Listen,” I said, “do you realize you have one hell of a nerve interrupting me in the middle of my work to ask me a thing like that?”
“O.K.,” Sammy said, “go ahead and put your own selfish interest ahead of the paper’s good.”
It made just enough sense to exasperate me into going on. That was getting to be one of Sammy’s favorite tricks. He could go so far that your curiosity was pricked because you wouldn’t believe anybody could get that brazen.
So instead of simply giving him his walking papers the way I should have, I accepted the challenge. “What are you talking about, the good of the paper?” I said. “What’s the good of the paper got to do with it?”
“You know the paper needs a radio column,” Sammy said. “But you’re such a dog in the manger you’re afraid it might cut into your column and that’s why you’re against it.”
“What’s the good of fighting with me about a radio column?” I said. “Everybody knows the old man doesn’t want it because he says why should we plug a setup that’s cutting our advertising.”
“But millions of people are listening in all day long,” Sammy argued. “That’d mean new readers for the Record . And I’ll betthe column would land us plenty of radio ads. So if you’d put in a good word for me with the boss …”
“Listen, Sammy,” I said. “That is, if you ever do listen, which I doubt. In the first place, I don’t care about radio columns, and in the second place, there are half a dozen boys I could name in this office I’d give the job to before you, and in the third place, even if you were the radio master mind of the century I’d be damned if I’d help you get it, and in the fourth place—or have you had enough places?”
“I don’t know,” Sammy said. “I guess if you’ve heard one place you’ve heard them all.”
Three or four weeks later I was sitting around in Bleeck’s one night with the boys after turning in my column.
The telephone rang and Henry answered it and said it was for me.