Chuck Throws in the Towel

Chuck tugs away on his cigarette, black garters keeping his sleeves in place, looking at the mouse, looking at every flicker of his white, pleated gloves and his pointy button nose. Twenty-four drawings, twenty-four plastic cels, for one second of technicolour psychosis. Half a day for one sucker punch, for one haymaker, the flourishing of a wilting rose for the simpering Minnie. The mouse, the dog, the duck … he hated them all: their whiskers, their beaks, their ratty tails, their goofy teeth, every hammer, every drill and every waterspout. Eat shit and die, Walter.

The sky is implausible, just like it always is. He aches for the seasons. The Floridian airspace, as unchanging as the cartoons, is a crude neon blue. His back, his eyeballs, his fingers, they all ache, so he takes an early lunch.

There’s a wise guy in the bar, tooting and honking, trying to catch Chuck’s eye. Chuck keeps his own eyes averted, watching his wallet. He’s a funny guy, though. No doubting. Got the bar in side-splitting stitches with snapping braces and a New York accent. Then he calls over to Chuck, 'Hey! You work at the studio? What a gig!” Chuck looks over, tells him it’s a balls ache. The wise guy moves on to someone else, pitching something.

Later, a little drunk, when Chuck is stealing himself to draw a blaring trumpet, he feels a hand on his shoulder. The hand is proprietary, a gesture that makes you stop what you’re doing. A hand that must be obeyed.

‘Chuck, come into the office?’

Chuck puts his pens down and follows the chief to his den, which is oaken, the kind of dull only money can buy. He has a blueprint of the new studio weighted down on the table with crystal glasses. Chuck imagines it rolling up and bashing the chief on the head until he drills into the ground.

‘Drink?’

‘Sure, whatever you got.’

‘Then a Scotch Mist it is,’ he chuckled. ‘Bit early for me, Chuck. Maybe not so much for you.’

The chief settles, cracks his neck. ‘I’m worried about you, Chuck. Your work’s slowing down.’

Chuck looks at him, but the boss is blurred, the tree outside like cotton candy. The close-up is finely drawn, but the rest is ill-made scenery.

‘I can’t do it anymore,’ he eventually says.

The chief waits.

‘I look like a guy sitting at a board, calmly drawing for a living. But inside, I’m living every mallet, every blast in the ear, every Peg-leg punch, every squawking chicken. It’s all becoming a tremendous effort. The action scenes. Please put me on Snow White …’

‘That peach is already in the bag,’ the chief says. ‘You know that, Chuck. You do the shorts. That’s what you do. You’re not a soldier with’— (he clicks his fingers), ‘shell shock. Honestly, Chuck? It’s demeaning to the men who went to Europe. You’re an animator, and if you don’t want to do it, there’s plenty who will. How many little boys grew up wanting to draw for a living?’

Chuck steadies his breathing, because he’s beginning to see his big red heart coming out of his chest with a pounding, expanding rhythm. The chief reminds him there’s a depression on and that times are real hard. He should be lucky. Plenty to take his place.

‘And that’s my Mickey,’ the chief says. “What you suddenly got against my little guy?’

‘I just want to smash his face in,' said Chuck, hopelessly. ‘Just move me off the shorts, boss. Please?’

‘You might as well have said you wanted to smash my wife’s face in,’ the boss says. Chuck’s met her several times, and maybe he does.

'Put me in Story Telling,’ he beseeches. ‘I got some great ideas —’

‘Chuck, Chuck, the world is teeming with talent. It’s everywhere and in every place. That’s the disheartening thing about it. It’s just everywhere you look. You’re an illustrator, Chuck, and a decent one, but I’ve got kids just queuing up —’

‘Put me in Ink and Print’, Chuck persists.

The chief laughs. ‘Colouring in with the ladies, is it, Chuck? That what you want?’

‘Yes!’

‘Ain’t gonna happen.’ The chief checks his watch. ‘Listen, Chuck. Take a week off, but no more. Spend time with that wife of yours.’

‘She left me,’ Chuck admits. ‘For a story teller.’

The chief leans forward, across the plans for the new site, still lying flat but liable to roll up at any minute and drill him down to the basement.

‘So, what are you saying to me?’

‘I quit. Sorry.’

In the drawing studio, nothing has changed. The tree outside the window is still cotton candy, and, although Chuck’s very personal sky has fallen in, outside it is still neon blue. He collects his personal effects, including the hip flask in the second drawer down on the right, and wonders just how it is that a grown man can wake up in the morning and never know how it’s going to turn out.

He returns to the bar along the strip, where the wise guy is still holding court, and his liquor. He recognises Chuck, nods at him warily, but this time Chuck is more amenable, and they talk long after the barkeep empties the ashtrays.

*****

A month in his condo follows, with the curtains drawn, drinking and making idle sketches of a bipedal, smarty-pants bunny boy. At the turn of the next month, he shaves, rolls up his work and takes himself to another studio, where he pitches his idea about a wry rabbit with a Brooklyn accent, but the recruiter smirks when he’s finished.

‘Seems like you and ten other guys all got that same idea,’ he says. ‘Must have all been drinking in the same bar, huh?’

‘Ten other guys?’

‘That’s the business, Mr Belfield. You really should’ve stuck with the rodent.’

*****

When Chuck’s money runs out, he takes himself to the Labour Bureau, trying out all sorts of creative ways to explain he left a plum job because he couldn’t stand the hooting and the tooting any more; taking a day to draw out a fight.

‘Well, we got a janitor, several janitors, the navy, of course, the army - slightly more particular: we got a shoe factory, we got pest control —’

‘I’ll take that,' says Chuck, tapping the card. ‘That’s what I’ll do.’