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band, a youngster named Frank Tinney, met frequently to discuss their ambitions. Each assured the other that he would become famous, and, as it turned out, they were both right. The fare in the beer garden was tolerably good ; also, the artists, including the drowner, were permitted to gorge at will. Do what he would, however, Fields was unable to pry any cash out of the manager. Like the head of Plymouth Park, the man beefed steadily about business, which seemed, at least superficially, to be bustling. "I need a dollar to pay for my room," Fields told him at the end of a week. "If I had a dollar clear, I'd hire another drowner," the manager replied. Then he promised to settle up by the next week end. When that time rolled around, Fields was in reduced mental and physical circumstances. For one thing, he was annoyed about the absence of pay; for another, his co-ordination had gone sour. The trouble was easily diagnosed : briefly, the boy was too waterlogged to juggle. His situation looked desperate, and when the manager welshed again, he quit. For two days Fields dried out in his room ; then he went down the boardwalk a short way and got a different job. The pay was nominally the same, and his duties were entirely landlocked.
His experience at Fortescue's made Fields permanently hostile toward swimming. He also liked to say that it turned him against water in general. He once told a reporter, inaccurately, that he had never taken a drink of water after his last encounter with the life guards at Atlantic City. "I didn't need any more," he said. "I had it stored up, like a camel." During the last quarter of his life, Fields occasionally rented houses that had swimming pools. He kept the pools filled for company, but he never went near them himself. When people inquired about this curious behavior, he'd say, "I once drowned twelve times a day for two weeks. Would you like to swim if you'd drowned one hundred and sixty-eight times?"
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