Ice-Cream Headache (11 page)

Larry did not know if it was just then, as she walked off (she really did have a luscious figure), or if it had been with him longer than that, but it seemed he had been aware for some minutes now of a vague guilty sense of uneasiness. Maybe it had started when she leaned on the edge of the table, or maybe when one of the men in the barbershop had let out the long drawn out wolf whistle. Whatever it was he found that instead of feeling pleased as he had been he was now feeling very uncomfortable, and he realized he had not noticed if Mona had gone by the window.

Across the street the men in the barbershop were convulsed with laughter at their own wittiness while the grinning barber went on slowly cutting hair and one of them mock warningly shook his finger across at Larry.

God, Larry thought, it was almost like back in the Army, and with momentary warmth he thought suddenly of all the barbershops in the country, where men could go and laugh about sex away from women. The safety valves that leached off the pressure. Then he felt guilty.

A little hurriedly he got up and paid for his beer which he discovered he had finished some time ago. As an afterthought he bought a paper. Then he went outside. Mona was not in sight up and down the street, and he had not seen her go by the restaurant, but on the strength of a hunch and his increasingly strong feeling of uneasiness he went to look in the car.

There, he found Mona was sitting in it, staring straight ahead out through the windshield.

As he slid in under the wheel, Larry felt his chest begin to constrict on him. His vague uneasiness expanded and became a sharp knife of panic which sliced through him; and a mind-stunning feeling of guilt fell on him like a heavy weight dropped from a window. He had known it, he had known it all along. Even back there in the barbershop where, very faintly, the vague uneasiness had begun as soon as the men had started talking about the blonde waitress. It was less of a premonition than it was a memory. Mona’s face was stiff.

“Where were you?” she asked, not unpleasantly. “Ive been waiting almost half an hour.”

“I—I was—There were two or three ahead of me,” he said. “And that took a while. You werent in the car so I stopped at the restaurant to buy a paper,” he added. “And, while I was there, I drank a beer.”

“Oh,” Mona said, “if Id known you were going to do that Id of let you help me with the groceries.”

“I offered to help you,” Larry said desperately. “It was you that said no.”

“I didnt know wed have to park so far from the store,” Mona smiled pleasantly.

“I parked as near as I could get,” Larry protested. He had the feeling they were arguing, and yet they obviously were not arguing. His sense of panic deepened.

“Hell,” he said. “I was only there a few minutes. A single beer.”

Mona did not say anything.

“Did you get everything?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He started up the car.

“Is that blonde waitress still working there?”

“Which blonde waitress?”

“The only blonde waitress.”

“Oh, her. Sure, shes there. Shell probably always be there.”

“Shes a good looking girl,” Mona smiled. It was terrifying to him to hear such a pleasant easy voice coming out of such a stiffly frozen, wooden, smiling face.

“You think so?” he said. “I dont think so. Her face is ugly. Old already. Hard. Shes got a pretty good figure, but her face—”

“Thats true,” Mona said, “her face isnt very pretty.”

Larry was watching the road where it curved down steeply here in front of the courthouse, before it went on out and up the valley. “It sure isnt,” he said. He waited till he was down the hill and then pulled over in front of some houses and stopped. “Well? Come on. Give it to me. Whatre you trying to say. You think I made a date with her? You think because I had one beer Im going back and get drunk tonight? Is that it?”

Mona turned her face toward him slowly, her violet eyes wide with incomprehension in the frozen face. But the myriad tiny muscles of her eyelids were crinkled slightly giving her a haunted look. Deeply haunted. “Lets go on home, Larry,” she said, not at all pleasantly.

Larry’s hands had begun to shake on the steering wheel. He put the car in gear and started off again. There it was. He knew now that he had been afraid of it ever since he first stepped into the barbershop and heard them talking. He should never have gone in the restaurant. He should have gone back and sat in the car. What was he going to do? Panic, sheer panic, completely engulfed him. If there was only some way to bring it out in the open and explain. Desperately he wanted to bring it out in the open. He
hadnt
been interested in her. He
hadnt.
But how? He couldnt even prove it.

“Its unbelievable!” he said forcefully; but it sounded weak. “Its unbelievable! This was the first time that I was ever there. I never saw that woman before in my life. I drank one bottle of beer, Mona, one bottle. How you can possibly think that I—”

“I bought us a chicken,” Mona said pleasantly. “A nice broiler. I thought maybe we could cook it outdoors over an open fire in that iron pot.”

With an effort commensurate to driving a cork in the spout of a steaming teakettle, and which left him feeling totally exhausted, Larry swallowed and brought his voice down from the high pitch it had reached.

“I think thats a fine idea,” he said gravely. “Ill build us a place and fix it up for you. A regular outdoor fireplace. Ill dig a hole and floor it with stones.”

“Ive wanted to cook something in that little three legged iron pot in the cabin ever since we came,” Mona said. “Im sure its pre-Civil War. When we go home, I want to swipe it and take it with us.”

“I think where the chopping block is would be a good place to put the fireplace,” Larry said. “Its already got the grass and weeds worn off it from the wood cutting.” Fright and adrenalin sang in his ears, and his hands trembled uncontrollably on the wheel unless he gripped it tight.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

At the cabin Mona took the green quart mason jar and walked down to the farm for the milk. Larry got the coal scoop out of the cabin and commenced to gouge a shallow hole in the ground where he had had the chopping block. When he had it finished he lined it with flat stones from the creekbed and then, wearing only trunks and light moccasins, got the doublebit cabin ax and slipped out into the woods to get some green poles. He hunted a while, stepping lightly in the light moccasins that made no sound, carrying the ax near the head and against his thigh. He felt very Indian as he moved his nearnaked body through the trees and brush: with nothing but his moccasins and breechclout he would carve his life and home and place out of these strong friendly woods that were his brother; he would build and provide the things with which his squaw would make their home. Finally he found what he wanted, two slender young saplings, perfectly forked up near the top. He exulted as the sharp ax bit into the young green wood. The tall saplings fell slowly, turning slightly and pulling themselves away from their neighbors. In a way he hated to do it and his heart jumped as they fell, and he imagined he felt the exquisite sorrow of the hunter who has killed. Then he measured and cut them, two green forks and a long pole for hanging, and took them back to the cabin. He sharpened the forks with the ax on the chopping block and drove them in the ground on each side of the fire hole and put the green pole across them and stood back and looked at them, feeling like a fool. Then, still feeling like a fool, he went into the cabin and very deliberately started putting on his clothes. He came out and started walking down the road toward the farm. Halfway there he met Mona coming back.

“I thought Id take a little walk,” he said cheerfully. “Your fireplace is all fixed.”

Mona stood in the road holding the green jar of milk and looking at him with those almost mortally injured, haunted eyes out of that stiff frozen face.

“Well,” she said not at all unpleasantly, “Ill go on back and get the chicken started, Itll be about two hours before its ready.”

“Oh, Ill be back long before that,” he said cheerfully.

“Ill go on back then,” she said. Larry watched her go on off up the road, walking in the center of the narrow blacktop. He understood it was something she couldnt help, something she had absolutely no control over. Even so, the terrible tremendous guilt all larded over with panic that it made him feel, was almost unbearable. He knew it was nothing she had done, he knew it was something he had started. He wanted to stand and drive his fist into a tree until the bones broke.

“Ill be back in just a little bit,” he called after her cheerfully. “Dont worry about me.”

The farmer sold him two half pints of corn for a dollar and a half each. It looked like clear water and tasted sickeningly horrible. He walked back up the blacktop toward the cabin with one bottle in the hip pocket of his jeans and drinking from the other, but he did not turn off at the cabin and walked on past it. It was screened from the blacktop by a thick cover of young trees. He walked on up the blacktop uphill, carrying the bottle and drinking from it. Somebody had said this road went on up to the top of the mountain and deadended in the National Park, which was a game preserve. He must have walked a half to three quarters of a mile before he stopped and waded down through the weeds to the creekbank. There he squatted down on his haunches on a big rock and took another drink and listened to the never-ending whimper of the stream over the rocks.

Kee-rist, this stuff was terrible! He giggled. But it sure was potent though. The Indians used to squat like this, he reminded himself, poor goddam Indians. White man run ’em all off. Insurance company. Insurance company and meat packers. Second Hand Men, old doc had said. Larry began to whistle softly, a song. It had been one of his favorites when he was a kid.

Just a Japanese sandman

Dum de dum de dum dee

He couldnt even remember how the words went now. Yes, sir. Japanese sandman. Bogey man now. Or had been. When he was in the Army. Use it to scare kids with. Scare them into minding. Like his father used to tell him he would turn black. Then he remembered the words. That was it. Or part of them anyway.

Just a Japanese sandman

Dum de dum de dum dee

Just an old secondhand man

Trading new dreams for old

Yes sir, that was him all right. Secondhand man. Just an old secondhand man. Yes sure, thats what you are. And you might as well admit her.
God is Love!

God is love, hell. God is not love; not any more. Maybe two hundred years ago God was love. Poor old God, if He had anything to say about it, He must get awful tired of bein’ named. If He could get a word in edgeways, Hed probly change His name Himself. And it wouldnt be Love. Maybe God needed to be Love for old Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal or the Bastard of Orleans. But not for us today. No sir, God is not Love, he thought.
God is Will,
he thought, and took another drink.

“I cant stand it,” Larry said out loud. “I cant. Its too painful. And I dont have no
Will,”
He killed the bottle and threw it viciously down into the creekbed and listened to it smash on a rock. Then he got up and waded through the weeds back up to the road and started back down to the cabin. The sun was out of sight now and the air diffused with the bronze light of the long mountain twilight. He had no idea of how long he had been gone. When he got to the cabin he very carefully hid the second half pint bottle under the corner of the plank bridge over the creek. Then he went on in the yard and around to the other side.

Mona was sitting on the little lean-to porch in the light of the fire she had built under the pot, her knees pulled up against her chest, staring off through the trees. Larry sat down on the edge of the porch beside her.

“Well, I’m back,” he said cheerfully.

Mona turned to look at him, startled then. Her face looked strong, absolutely expressionless. “You’d better eat something,” she said quietly.

“Yeh, guess I had,” Larry said.

She got up and went inside to get him a plate.

“Well, you’ll always be able to get your job back at Antoine’s, anyway, wont you?” he said thickly, when she came back.

“Ive been sitting here thinking it might be a good idea to open my own exclusive shop,” Mona said. “There arent too many good ones in Baltimore.”

“Yuh,” Larry said. “Fine idea.” The secret thought of the second bottle hidden under the bridge where he could sneak back out and get it later on tonight was a source of great comfort and satisfaction to him.

Mona went down off the porch with the plates, toward the pot over the fire.

“Yup, good idea,” Larry said. Besides, who could tell, if that blonde waitress ever did decide to go up North to some city maybe she might go to Baltimore. Well, he would have to write to Beckett.

When translated into French for a French collection of my stories this story was given the title: “
Middle-West … Mon Middle-West!”
I guess that is as good a title as any for it, especially if you remark the supreme French irony in the punctuation. It was published in
New
World Writing
#2 November 1952. In introducing it I stated about it, and will still hold to, the following: “The very act of writing is at best a compromise—between what you want to say, and what you can say within the restrictions of the form. This is one time I didn’t restrict … . It’s probably as near to a real autobiographical story as I’ve ever come, though of course it’s all twisted and changed. And things in it that would seem to be unimportant to the story are important to me, and I think important to it.” Anyone interested may notice the Arky and Russ of this story are the direct ancestors of ’Bama and Dave Hirsh of
Some Came
Running.

S
YLVANUS
M
ERRICK TOOK
the cabin over at Fandalack that summer for two reasons. He had gone stale on his novel and he did not sell enough stories that year to go to the big woods up in Michigan. And, Fandalack was close enough to home that Norma Fry could come up from Vincennes nights and by getting up at four a.m. be back in time for work.