Lawrence Sanders - Tenth Commandment

I was an only child and so I became an only man.

My name is Joshua Bigg: a joke life played on me, as I am quite small. Five feet, three and three-eighths inches, to be precise. In a world of giants, those eighths are precious to the midget.

That was the first of fortune's tricks. There were others.

For instance, I was orphaned at the age of three months when my parents were killed in the sudden collapse of a bridge over the Skunk River near Oskaloosa, Iowa. As their pickup truck toppled, I was thrown clear and was found later lying in a clump of laurel, gurgling happily and sucking my toe.

People said it was a miracle. But of course they weren't the orphan. Years later, when Roscoe Dollworth was teaching me to be an investigator, he had something to say on the subject. He had just learned that he had a small gastric ulcer, after months of worrying about stomach cancer. Just an ulcer. Everyone told him how lucky he was.

'Luck,' Roscoe said, 'is something that happens to other people.'

I was raised by my mother's brother and his wife: Philo and Velma Washabaugh. He had an Adam's apple and she smelled of muffins. But they were dear, sweet people and gave me compassion and love. I wish I could say the same for their three sons and two daughters, all older (and taller) than I. I suppose it was natural that I should be treated as an interloper; I was never allowed to forget my diminutive size and parentless status.

My uncle owned a hardware store in Ottuma, Iowa. Not a prosperous store, but there was always sufficient food, 9

and if I was required to wear the outgrown clothing of my older and larger cousins, it seemed ungrateful to complain.

On the basis of my high school grades and financial need, I was able to obtain a scholarship to Grenfall. It was a very small scholarship to a very small liberal arts college.

During term I held a variety of jobs: waiter, movie usher, gas station attendant, tutor of football players, etc. In the summers I worked in the hardware store.

It was my ambition to become a lawyer but by the time I was graduated, Bachelor of Arts, with honours, I had realized that a law degree was beyond my means.

A short man in tall America has a choice: he may become dark, embittered, malevolent, or clever, sunny, and manic. I chose the latter, determined that neither lack of bulk nor lack of funds would prevent me from making my way in a world in which I was forced to buy my clothes in Boys' Departments.

So, packing my one good blue suit, I stood on tiptoe to kiss uncle, aunt, and cousins farewell, and took the bus to New York City to seek my fortune. I was resolutely cheerful.

My first few years in the metropolis I lived in the YMCA on 23rd Street and worked at a succession of depressing jobs: dishwasher, drugstore clerk, demonstrator of potato peelers, etc. I lived a solitary, almost desolate life. I had no friends. I spent my free hours at museums (they didn't charge admittance then) or in the public library. I have always been an omnivorous reader. Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, and Theodore Dreiser are my favourite authors. I also enjoy reading history, biography, and novels in which the law plays an important part, as in Dickens.

Now I must tell you about my sex life. It won't take long.

It is true that in our society small men are at a decided disadvantage in wooing and winning desirable women. I have read the results of research studies proving that, in America, success is equated with physical size. Most 10

corporation executives are large, imposing men. Most successful politicians are six-footers. Even the best-known attorneys and jurists, doctors and surgeons, seem to be men of heft. And then, of course, there are salesmen, policemen, professional football players, and bartenders.

Size and poundage do count.

So I think it only natural that most women should link a man of impressive height and weight with determination, aggressiveness, energy, and eventual success. A small man, particularly a small, penniless man, is too frequently an object of amusement, pity, scorn, and automatic rejection.

However, during my four years at Grenfall College (coeducational), I had learned a valuable truth. And this was that if I wished to make myself attractive to women, I could not attempt to imitate the speech, manner, or forceful behaviour of large or even normal-sized men.

Rather, I could only succeed by exaggerating my minuteness, physical weakness, and meekness.

Despite what some advocates of the women's liberation movement may claim, I say there is a very strong 'mother instinct' in most women, and they respond viscerally and warmly to helplessness, particularly in the male. So, during my college days, this was the string I plucked. And when they took me onto their laps, murmuring comforting words, I knew I was home free and might expect to see my fondest fantasy come true.

Six years before the story I am about to tell commences, I had been working as a temporary clerk in Macy's during the holiday season. After Christmas I was again unemployed, but I had money in my pocket and was able to take a week off without worries. I had a few good meals, wandered Manhattan, went to museums, read in libraries, saw the ballet, and called a young lady I had met while serving at the men's underwear counter. We went to a Chinese restaurant, saw a movie, and later I climbed onto her lap.

But then, since my funds were rapidly approaching the panic level once again, I bought the Sunday Times and spent the afternoon circling Help Wanted ads with a red crayon. I started out Monday morning, working my way up the eastern half of Manhattan. The fourth Help Wanted ad on my list was for a mailroom boy at a law firm. I was 26 and wasn't certain I qualified as a 'boy'. If necessary, I thought, I could lie about my age. But I didn't think it would be necessary. In addition to my shortness, I am small-boned and slender. My hair is almost flaxen, my eyes are softly brown, my features are regular. I shave only every other day. I felt my appearance was sufficiently juvenile to pass the initial inspection, and I headed right over.

TORT the law firm of Tabatchnick, Orsini, Reilly, and Teitelbaum w a s located on East 38th Street, in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan. It occupied a five-storey converted townhouse, and when I arrived late in the morning, there was already a long line of men leading from the doorway, down the steps, along the sidewalk, halfway down the block. All ages, wearing overcoats, pea jackets, windbreakers, sweaters, whatever. Thin men, fat men, tall men, heavy men. I was, of course, the smallest.

'The mailroom job?' I asked the last man on the line.

He nodded dolefully, and I took my place behind him. In a few moments, there were a half-dozen applicants behind me.

Then I noted a puzzling phenomenon: the line was moving forward swiftly, and men were exiting the building as fast as they entered. The flow was constant: the hopefuls in, the rejected out.

The man ahead of me grabbed the arm of one of the rejects.

'What's going on in there?' he asked.

The rebuffed one shook his head bewilderedly.

'Beats me,' he said. 'No interviews. No applications. 12

questions even. This high-muck-a-muck takes a look at me and says, "Sorry. You won't d o. " Just like that. A nut!'

I was moving with the line up the block, along the sidewalk, up the stairs, through the door and finally into a large, imposing entrance hall with vaulted ceiling and walnut-panelled walls. The line stumbled up a wide carpeted staircase, so quickly that I scarcely had time to inspect the framed Currier and Ives lithographs on the walls.

I made it rapidly to the second-floor landing. The line now wavered down a long hallway and ended at a heavy closed door of carved oak. Placed alongside the door was a small desk, and seated behind the desk was a young woman, poised, expressionless. As each rejected applicant exited from the oak door, she called 'Next!'