Some Came Running (111 page)

Well, to hell with it, Dave thought, a little tight himself. He didn’t care any more than Frank cared.

The rest of the holidays he spent in Israel. On January 3, Gwen started back to her classes; and Dave moved back to Parkman.

But he knew, even before she started back to school, that it wasn’t going to work, although he never said anything to her, or anyone, about it. It just wouldn’t work. If she wanted a “platonic” love affair, if that was all she had stomach for anymore, she would have to find another man to have it with. It just wasn’t part of his makeup. In his makeup, you couldn’t divorce love from sex. It was too painful. He had thought for a while that he might be able to live like that. But he couldn’t. And after that week of the holidays, he could see clearly that she wasn’t going to make any change. He could have sex with a woman without loving her; but he could not love her, and go on loving her forever, without having sex with her. Without saying anything about it, and leaving all of his things still there in “his” room, he went home to the house in Parkman carrying a sick loneliness which, he was quite sure, was greater than any of the other lonelinesses he had ever felt in his life, all lumped together.

A week after that, Mildred Pierce married her Sternutol laborer. And just a few days after that, Raymond Cole died.

D
URING THE MONTH
he had spent so much time with Gwen, Dave had nevertheless a number of different times gone out to Smitty’s Bar; so he had seen Raymond several times.

Some nights, Raymond would not be there at all; and on other nights, he would show up with one companion or another. All of them—like Raymond—intensely vital, intensely strong, intensely awkward (among well-dressed “civilized” people), and intensely outcast. The mere fact that Raymond and the others could continue to live the wild, virtually homeless, dimly drunken lives they lived without just keeling over and dying, attested superbly to their tremendous physical vitality, which nevertheless always had the effect of putting everybody else ill at ease.

At other times, Raymond would appear alone, and then would sit by himself at one of the tables in the back, drinking up a forest of empty beer bottles and slyly sneaking swallows of whiskey from the 826 pint bottle he hid inside his worn old leather jacket. He would sit so for an hour, talking to himself under his breath, and ogling hungrily all the women in the place with what he fondly believed to be his irresistible masculine appeal, unaware that none of them would even be caught dead with him, and then after an hour or so he would charge up—as often as not knocking over the chair he was sitting in—and stalk out in his rolling punch-drunk fighter’s gait and climb into his decrepit old Dodge and go chugging off into the night no one knew where.

Raymond still spent very little time at home with his wife and one kid, apparently only going there whenever he was out of money, and hanging around until his wife, who worked, would—probably more to get rid of him than for any other reason—give him a little money. Winter was the hardest time of the year for Raymond, since he could get almost none of those laboring jobs that he lived off of in the summer.

Dave could not help seeing him as a casualty of Empire like the plebes of Rome; and, whenever he saw him, could not help musing sorrowfully over our Victorian moralisms which would not allow us to have gladiators, as Rome had so wisely done, to take up the slack of surplus. Raymond might have been happy as a gladiator.

Raymond apparently had some dim feeling that Dave carried some sort of affection for him, because whenever Dave was there and he came in, he would insist on buying Dave a drink and then pull up a chair and shoulder his way in on the party, talking to Dave all the while in a loud voice about Life and the Sorrows of Living and offering happily to beat the living hell out of anybody that Dave did not like, to prove his friendship.

Whenever he did all this, he would invariably embarrass his brother Dewey, who was usually in the party, to the point of fury. And it was one of these times, just about the middle of December, that he irritated him beyond the point of where anybody could calm him down, and they had another of their locally famous fights. The last one, as it turned out.

Dewey had been spending a great deal of time at the Lincoln Street house with Dave and Wally, and that probably had a great deal to do with it. Ever since last summer, when Dawn had used to come down to the house with Wally, Dewey had been discussing art and music and literature with all of them. It was as if a whole new field to challenge had opened up for him. He had read all of Wally’s manuscript and later—at his own suggestion—had then read Dave’s. And from this it was only one short step to the idea of writing a book about his own life. He talked about it with both Dave and Wally. “I’m a rebel,” he would say; “just like you guys. Only I ain’t got anything to rebel
against,
even. What could I rebel against? your brother Frank and Clark Hibbard and the Country Club? That ‘Lost Generation’ of the twenties, they loved it; they never had it so good. But my generation, we can’t even be lost—because we never been found. What was I ever taught? Nothing! that’s what. I never even learned to brush my teeth and make up my bed till I got in the Army. My folks was always too busy fighting. What do they give my generation to believe in: a happy home, a union to increase my wage, a new car, and an automatic washing machine. We’re not even a
lost
generation. We’re an
unfound
generation. The ‘Unfound Generation’ of the forties.”

He talked a good deal about this, and Dave listened and unblushingly stole everything of it that he could use. He did not feel guilty about it, because while Dewey talked about writing a book about his own life he never actually did anything about it. He only talked about it. Dave told him (not entirely truthfully) that all he had to do was sit down and start. But Dewey never did. And Hubie only hooted derisively when he would start talking about his book. “I’m gonna write a book,” Hubie howled into the conversation one day, kicking up his legs in the big armchair. “It’ll be a soulful histry of the human race. I’m gonna call it
No Forehead.
That’s from a poem. I’m gonna print the poem right behind the title, see? like all them regular writers do,” he said in his twanging drawl. “You remember that limrick about
The Young Man from Dundee?”
and proceeded to quote it.

“There!” he yelled, as they all shouted with laughter. “What do you think of that? Ain’t that some title!
No Forehead.
Soulful histry of the human race.”

It broke the literary discussion up into a general paroxysm of laughter, in which Dewey—if a little ruefully—joined as much as anybody, and from that time on Hubie’s “book” had acquired its permanent title. But in spite of Hubie, and in spite of the fact that he only talked, Dewey nevertheless was becoming “educated”—tremendously so, compared to what he used to be.

Consequently, it would infuriate him almost beyond reason whenever his brother, Raymond, would come horning in and begin to talk to Dave in his loud-voiced, totally ignorant, ingenuous way. As ’Bama said of Dewey, grinning sardonically: “Like they say, there’s no Catholic as rabid as a converted Catholic.”

This particular time, while they all sat around a table in Smitty’s, Raymond had said something about what a sad thing it was that people who didn’t really hate each other had to go to war and kill each other; war was a great tragedy, he thought, didn’t Dave?

“Jesus Christ, Raymond,” Dewey said with cold contempt, his beautiful blue eyes searing, “must you always open that big fat yap of yours and expose what an ass you are?” Dewey’s grammar, as well as his vocabulary, had been steadily getting better since summer. “I didn’t think even anybody as dumb as you are could open their mouths and make themselves look that much dumber.”

“Now, what the hell did I say?” Raymond demanded. “All I said was I think war is sad, that’s all. And anyway, I was talkin to my friend Dave here, and not to you. So why don’t you keep your nose out?”

“Raymond, Jesus Christ,” Dewey said. “I think if you went back to school for ten years you might, if you were lucky, come out of it about as smart as a nine-year-old Mongolian idiot. Look: You never had it so good as you did during the war. You never were as happy and successful and neither was I and Hubie. For the first and only time in our life, the three of us, we belonged to something where we had a definite place and an important job. What we did was right, and what people wanted us to do. We filled a place. And you loved it, and I and Hubie loved it. Now what the hell is all this crap that war is sad, hunh?”

“Well, sure,” Raymond said belligerently; “I guess I liked the Army. In some ways. But I still say war is sad, for them that got kilt.”

“Well, I say it isn’t sad,” Dewey said icily. “I say it’s happy. I say the ones that got it are better off dead. Look at us: We’re all three bums. There’s not a living soul in this town gives a damn whether any of the three of us lives or dies. And that includes the Old Lady. And the Old Man, too. Right? I say
peacetime
is sad;
not
war. Now how about that?”

“Well,” Raymond said, caught short and wrinkling up his brow. “Well— Maybe peacetime is sad, too. I guess it is. But damn it, Dewey, you
know
war is sad. When your buddies get killed and all. Now what kind of crap are you tryin to hand me anyway?”

“I say they’re better off dead,” Dewey said, his eyes icy and hard. “They’re better off dead than they would be to live the kind of life you’re living. Now isn’t that right? Just like you would have been better off if you had got killed and not come back home and lived the kind of miserable crappy life you’re living now.”

“Well,” Raymond said, “no. I don’t live a bad life. Hell, I live a good life. I have lots of fun.”

“Fun! You wouldn’t know fun if it punched you in the mouth, you dumb bastard,” Dewey said.

“Hey,” Hubie said. “Take it easy, Dewey.”

“Ah, the dumb son of a bitch,” Dewey said disgustedly.

“All right, maybe I’m dumb,” Raymond said. “Maybe I ain’t no smart son of a bitch like you. But, by God, I still say war is sad; you hear? In spite of what everything you say.”

“Well, I say war is happy,” Dewey countered; “you miserable, ignorant, dumb animal son of a bitch.”

“Don’t call me none of your family names,” Raymond said, laughing loudly and looking around the table for applause at his quip.

“Lay off,” ’Bama said from across the table. “Let him alone for Christ’s sake.”

“Go to hell,” Dewey said. “You let
me
alone. No,” he said to Raymond, “I wouldn’t call you any of my family names. Because I wouldn’t want anybody to know you were my family.”

“Now damn you, Dewey!” Raymond said. “You can’t talk to me like that, now. Maybe I ain’t much, but after all I am your brother.”

“You’re no brother of mine,” Dewey said, “you dumb slobhead.”

“War is sad,” Raymond said stubbornly.

“War is happy,” Dewey said, mimicking him.

“All right, damn you!” Raymond bawled. “You come outside and I’ll show you who’s the dumb slobhead!” He jumped up, once more knocking over his chair as usual.

“Fine,” Dewey said. “I wondered how long it was going to take you to get around to it.” He got up himself, slim and wiry-muscled beside Raymond who towered thickly over him. Drunk—as was Raymond—he stood with his slender chin pulled in bullishly, his blue eyes flashing with a kind of happy excitement.

’Bama and Hubie had jumped up and taken hold of Raymond. “Come on, you guys,” ’Bama said. “Sit down and drink your drink.”

“No,” Raymond said, jerking his arms loose. “Leave us alone. We know what we’re doin. You ready, Dewey?” he said.

“Sure, you fat bastard,” Dewey said. “Let’s go.”

Around them, the low din of conversation had ceased now and all the parties were watching them intently. This was what they all came here for; and maybe now they were going to get to see it. It wasn’t, Dave thought suddenly, really so different from the Roman arena after all; less homicidal, was all. That, and of course, the fact that they did not have to pay their gladiators anything.

They moved in a body to the door up front, ’Bama (who had given up) and Hubie leading, then Raymond with Dewey behind him, and Dave bringing up the rear; and behind, the crowd began to form, mostly men with a few tittering girls in it.

When Dave, who was fifth in line, got to the door he saw that it was snowing again. Oh no, he thought, his stomach sinking. Ever since the war he had hated snow. But he didn’t have any more time to think about it then. ’Bama and Hubie, who were first, were already standing down on the sidewalk in the fresh snow; Raymond and Dewey up on the indented little stoop; himself in the doorway. Then Raymond turned to his brother and started to say something, shucking back his old leather jacket. That was when Dewey hit him. Quick as a streak of greased lightning, Dewey hauled off and belted Raymond with a tremendous punch, his ice-blue eyes dancing excitedly. Raymond flew off of the step; he lit on his butt in the snow and skidded across it straight between ’Bama and Hubie and came up crashing into the door of a parked car, his arms still in the sleeves of his jacket.

“Goddam you, Dewey!” he bellowed, a knot rising swiftly on the side of his jaw. He struggled back up and shucked his jacket off and flung it from him. “You cheated!” he bellowed and charged across the sidewalk for Dewey still on the stoop. Dewey—grinning strangely, obviously no longer angry at all—came to meet him, diving headfirst off the stoop. They met with a shock in mid-air and went down in a welter of arms and legs in the snow, as the crowd behind Dave surged through the door anxiously.

“Get back! Get back!” ’Bama hollered, trying to widen the circle.

“Get back! Give ’em room!” Hubie yelled, waving at the closing crowd.

“Come on, get up,” ’Bama said, trying to grab each of them by the arm. “You want to get jailed? Come on around the side.”

Grasping and punching, and trying to hook each other’s legs with their own, the two brothers rolled around in the inch-deep snow, muttering muffled curses. Dave saw Raymond’s big right hand strike the concrete sidewalk where Dewey’s head had been a moment before. A moment later, they had rolled and Dewey, grinning happily and making a strange whining noise in the back of his throat, was on top and trying to bang Raymond’s head on the sidewalk.