Twenty-five dollars per month. That was all. It wasn’t an inconsequential sum; that provided a measure of reassurance. But now it was 1895, which made him 33 years old, and he was sure his friends would say to him “Bill! Bill Porter! You’re a family man now, and you’ve just moved to Houston. Will $25 per month really suffice?”
He worried that in the eyes of his wife Athol, it certainly wouldn’t suffice. She’d never said anything to suggest otherwise, but she’d come from a wealthy family back in Austin, and had wanted for nothing. Ever since they’d eloped (avoiding his mother’s objections), being married in the Reverend Smoot’s own parlor, Bill had been trying to climb the ladder of success — the one with his new father-in-law comfortably occupying the top rung.
There had been his time as a pharmacist, of course — that had been at the Harrell Cigar Store — then his friend became the Texas Land Commissioner and given Bill a job as a draftsman at the General Land Office. He smiled, recalling the building he worked in. It looked so much like a real castle that it sparked the imagination. He’d been writing stories in his spare time, and he worked the castle into a few of of them.
His friend at the GLO ran for governor in 1890, but when he lost to Jim Hogg — the scoundrel who named his daughters “Ima” and “Ura” (something nobody would have believed if Bill had tried to work it into one of his stories), the land office job was over.
He tried banking next, at the First National Bank in Austin. It was $100 per month, the same as he’d brought home from the GLO, and the job was easy. It was an informal bank, given to “just about this much” and “close enough for that”, which was a good match for the careless way he kept his books as a teller. Not everybody at the bank went along with the informality, though, and Bill lost his job when he was accused of embezzling funds. He hadn’t said much at all; just moved on to try to make a living out of his writing alone.
His $100 per month was in the past, though, at least according to the magazine in Austin. But the Houston Post had seen his work and offered him a job. He brought his wife and daughter Margaret to Houston to take them up on it, only to discover he was going to have to eke it out somehow on just $25 per.
His work turned out to be pretty popular around Houston, and the Post kept increasing his wage as people mentioned his columns and stories to their friends and circulation rose. His situation was looking rosier by 1896.
Back in Austin, though, the federal auditors had heard about the informality at the First National Bank and took a closer look. The next thing Bill knew, he was arrested for embezzlement. His father-in-law kept him out of jail by posting bail and on July 7, there he was on his way to the courthouse for his trial. He had to change trains to get there, and his imagination, always tearing along ahead of him, took over. “You’re in trouble, Bill,” it said, “you’ll never get out of this,” it advised. “Better get out of town,” it whispered.
He cracked. The train to the courthouse was just ahead on Track 6, but right there there on Track 5, which he had to walk past in any case, was one leaving even sooner — for New Orleans. He never made it to Track 6.
From New Orleans, he went to Honduras. He’d heard there wasn’t any extradition treaty between the US and Honduras, and he settled there for a while. He wasn’t the only one on the run in Trujillo; in a month or two he met Al Jennings the train robber, and they got along famously. Bill kept writing, and thanks to his new surroundings he set one of his stories in a similar place. He called the place a “banana republic” — people seemed to remember the phrase.
Meanwhile, back home, he’d sent his wife and daughter to live with her parents in Austin. But his wife’s consumption got worse, and she was too sick to meet him in Honduras as they’d planned. When he went to the meeting place they’d agreed on, instead of seeing her he got word to get home as fast as he could if he wanted to see her again.
He set his jaw, rushed home, and turned himself in. He did get to see Athol again, and they spent her final months together, but she passed the next July, 1897. Then Bill’s new trial came up the next February, and this time he attended. He didn’t have much to say in his own defense when they accused him of embezzling $854.08. It was a fair sum — eight months’ salary — but on the other hand not really such an impressive total that it would obviously seem worth the risk. Maybe it really was just sloppy bookkeeping. But he wouldn’t say either way, so they sentenced him to five years.
In prison in Ohio, he showed them the Pharmacist’s license he still carried from yet another past career, and they put him to work in the prison hospital as the nighttime druggist. They even gave him a room in the hospital wing, which was better than the regular cell block. It gave him the time and space to keep writing, and he kept sending his stories to magazines, which kept publishing them.
He got out in just three years, thanks to good behavior, and joined his in-laws and daughter in Pittsburgh. They’d moved there, needing a place where nobody knew or cared that Bill was in prison. Margaret didn’t know or care either; she was just 11 and as far as she’d been told, he was away on business.
He decided that for the new millennium — it was 1901 by then — he’d do what he was best at and just write for a living. And write he did. Three hundred eighty-one stories (more than one per day) during 1902. Readers loved them. He had a contract with the New York World for a story a week, and contracts with several other New York publishers, so he did the sensible thing and moved to New York, where he could talk to them in person.
He was soon the most popular writer in the country, and new publishers were eager to sign him up to write for their magazines, newspapers, almanacs, and the like. He got used to the first part of those meetings. They’d ask about him and his life, and he’d be honest. He even told them about his time in prison. Sometimes they’d be astonished, and some of them were worried. More than once he’d been asked “once our readers find out about your past, won’t they turn up their noses at reading your stories?”
“Nope,” Bill Porter would reply. “They can look all they want. Bill Porter’s been convicted, and you can find him by his birthday, July 24. But they’ll never find the name ‘O.Henry’ on any prison roster.”
