Some Came Running (138 page)

“Just remember one thing,” Gwen said; “I won’t be here when you come back. You’re the last one,” she said. He obviously didn’t understand that; but she did not feel like elucidating. “You can get somebody else to help you with your damned writing.”

Wally smiled at her, warmly, then got up. “You’ve helped me a lot, Gwen. You’ve helped me a lot today, too, even.”

“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Yes, I’ve helped you a
lot.
”

“You’ll feel differently when I come back,” Wally said magnanimously. “You’ll realize it was all for the best.” For a moment, he put his arm around her, where she sat slumped in the chair. From the door on the cellar landing, just before he went out, he smiled and said: “Just remember one thing. No matter what happens. Just remember how much I’ll always owe you, and how grateful I am to you for all you’ve done for me.”

For a long time after he left, she did not move. It seemed somehow that whenever the crises came, Bob was never here. It was as if none of them even wanted Bob to be there. If Bob was there, they all just waited, until he was gone, before they brought their crises up to her. Bob, the only wise man of the lot. Gwen shook her head. Maybe Bob could have helped it; maybe Bob could have convinced him. Join the Army! The very last one left. And she had failed again, as she had failed with all of them. Guilt clawed at her, and her heart sunk down in her as far as it could go, defeatedly. She didn’t know where Bob was, and she simply sat, waiting for him. She knew what she was going to do. She was going to do, in defeat, what she had once hoped to do in triumph. She was going to take her own book and go far away and to hell with them, and she was not even going to wait till the school term ended. She was going now. Somewhere where she could work, where she would not be required to love a bunch of oafs who could not stand to live unless they were in hot water all the time; where she would not, either, be required to be “in love” with another oaf who did not even know it when someone was in love with him, and only wanted to rut in the gutter with some fat piggish whore. You could save the whole world and lose your own soul. Where was Bob? Where, oh, where was Bob?

He sat and heard her out while she told him. Sitting around the corner from the end of the table where she still sat, he leaned his chin on his hand and listened kindly.

He leaned over and patted her gently on the hand when she finished. “Dear Gwen,” he smiled gently, “if that is how you feel, I think that is exactly what you should do. Go. One can only take just so much in any one period of one’s life. The—ahh—ability to absorb punishment differs in different individuals, and one must realize one’s own limits.”

“You always agree with everything I say,” Gwen said, disheartenedly.

Bob shrugged, then smiled, sadly.

“The only thing I worry about is leaving you here alone,” Gwen said.

“Dear Gwen. Don’t give it a moment’s thought. Shardine and Jim can take excellent care of me. You’ve gone away before, you know.”

“Never like this,” Gwen said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever come back. Always before I just went away to school for a while, knowing I’d be back.”

Bob shook his head in gentle disagreement. “That doesn’t matter. You must do what you feel like doing. If you don’t come back, you just simply don’t come back. However,” he smiled, “I expect someday you will. If only for a visit. Where do you think you’ll go?”

“I’ve been thinking about Tucson. Cousin Wilson Ball is still out there, still running his Florsheim shoe store. I could stay with them until I got settled. I don’t feel up to trying to go to school anywhere this summer. And the country out there is beautiful: the long vistas, and the colors. And I expect Cousin Wilson Ball still has horses. I feel like maybe it might be—be healing. But most of all I want to take my book with me and get it finished up and sent in to a publisher. And I think I could work there.”

“It sounds like a splendid idea, dear Gwen,” Bob smiled. He paused. “And dear Gwen,” he added awkwardly, “don’t be shocked if your old father says this to you—but—find yourself another man. It’s often one of the best ways.” He smiled apologetically.

Gwen stared at him a moment, then suddenly began to laugh hysterically. Wildly, it rose up out of her in great roaring waves, and she threw back her head and let it come. Poor dear Old Bob. He was as about as inept at giving her advice as she had been with Wally. Apart from all the other—that he did not know—Gwen French the worldly-wise!

Bob got up and came over to her, and standing, held her head against his lean tweed-jacketed stomach. “Dear Gwen!” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t mean to remind you.”

“Oh, Daddy!” Gwen gasped, laying her head against the tobacco-smelling tweed. “No, no— It isn’t that. It’s just— Daddy, I said the same identical thing to Wally! Oh, Daddy! Aren’t we all so ridiculous!”

“And so sad,” Bob said.

Once it was all decided, it did not take long to put it into action. She did not even go back to the college. All her manuscript and most all of her research was already here at home. Bob called Dr Pirtle himself that same night, to arrange a substitute teacher. It was the work, he said; trying to do all the research and the writing and handle all her classes too. No, she wouldn’t even be able to come tomorrow. Very nearly a complete breakdown, yes. No, she wasn’t seeing anyone. As soon as she was able, she should go away for the summer. Probably to Tucson, yes; they had relatives there. Dr Pirtle, as always, was very understanding. He would arrange for the substitute. Three days later, she was packed and gone. Because Bob did not like to drive, she said goodby to him at the cellar landing door. Bob would explain to Dave, and anyone else. Shardine’s husband, Jim, drove her in her own car to Indianapolis to catch the plane.

As for Wally, he left that same day that he had talked to Gwen. He didn’t see any reason for hanging around. High and enthusiastic, glad at last to be doing something that kept him occupied without having to think, he stood and looked around his room and realized there wasn’t very much to put away. He would let his mom worry about it. His manuscript he packed carefully in typing paper boxes and locked it up in a bureau drawer. The key he hid carefully down amongst the mechanism of his typewriter, then slipped the leatherette cover over it. He didn’t want his mom looking at his manuscript. If the house burned down while he was gone, the hell with it; he’d write the whole damned thing over. He’d probably have to anyway, when he was maturer. Hell, maybe he’d throw that whole damned book out entirely and start a wholly new one. And for the first time in a long time he felt really free. His three Randall knives—the #3 Hunter, #5 Yachtsman, and the #8 Trout and Bird—he locked up in the bureau with his manuscript. The #1 All-Purpose Fighting Knife he packed carefully in his bag, of course. That was why he’d bought it: for the Army. He only packed one small bag; and after he packed it, he hid it in the closet where his mom would not see it, and went to make his goodbys.

He had a couple of buddies in town, fellows from the old band, and he went to say goodby to them first. Then he went down to Dave’s and ’Bama’s, hoping to find Dewey and Hubie there, too, which he did. Of them all, only Dave tried to persuade him not to enlist. He did not, of course, tell them of his talk with Gwen. Dewey and Hubie, raising their heads up from their glasses, gave the considered opinion that a hitch in the Army was good for every young man; it grew them up. ’Bama didn’t seem to have an opinion, and shook hands with him stolidly after he had had one farewell drink with them.

At the last moment, when he was already on his way home, Wally got the idea of going by and saying goodby to Frank and Agnes. After all, they had been very nice to him in the past. And besides, they would probably mention it to Dawnie in their next letter. He didn’t hold a grudge against her anymore. Not really. But he could not help wondering with a little thrill what she would think when she heard the news. Would she, maybe, feel just a little sad?

He found, when he stopped by the house, that Frank was not there. Only Agnes was home. Frank, of course, was down at the store. Hell, he should have known. That meant he would have to go down there, too, like Agnes suggested he do. Anxious to get going, he nevertheless sat down and talked with her a few minutes. Enthusiastically, he told her about his plans. Being on the selection committee, Agnes naturally asked him about his book, and he explained how he was laying it aside until he got his service in. Then when he came home he would finish it up, and in addition have a novel on the Army, too. He might, he said happily, even find that he might be able to do some work on the first book while he was still in service. She seemed very understanding, he thought, and when he left she kissed him.

At the store, he shook hands with Frank, and with Al Lowe, who as a combat veteran of World War II gave it as his sober opinion that it was a fine thing he was doing by enlisting, but Frank’s office girl Edith Barclay was also in the office quietly going about her work, and Wally suddenly felt constrained by her presence. There didn’t seem to be much to talk about, unless he talked about himself, and he didn’t want to do that in front of the girl. When he left, he accepted another of Frank’s big Churchills and stuck it in his pocket.

Back home, he got his bag from the closet and came downstairs with it to say goodby to her. Five and one-half minutes later, he was walking out of town to hitchhike to Indianapolis where he intended to enlist, feeling freer and more happy than he thought he had ever felt.

That Edith Barclay, he thought, as he thumbed the first two trucks that passed. She really had a body. Now there was a woman who, he bet, would really let go and love a man once she knew she loved him. Hell, she might even still be around town when he got home.

I
F
F
RANK
H
IRSH HAD
been able to guess that Wally Dennis was thinking covetously of his mistress, Edith Barclay, he would have been pleased. And if he had known Wally was imagining having designs on her three years from now, he would have laughed. Or, at least, he would have laughed a month ago. He had never been so sure of Edith’s real love for him as he had been a month ago. Now, however, he was not quite so sure.

But, of course, Frank did not guess what Wally Dennis was thinking, because it would have been hard for Frank to realize that a boy like that would ever even think of sex. Hell, he was no more than just barely out of high school. True, kids were growing up a little quicker nowadays—witness little Dawnie’s getting married—but they still weren’t growing up all that quick. Anyway, getting married grew a person up almost overnight. The added, new responsibilities; the necessity for engaging in a meeting of minds; the give-and-take; all of these turned a youngster into an adult all at once, and consequently, they were
ready
to learn something about sex. The odd thing was you didn’t even need to talk to them about it, about sex and all that stuff. They just picked it up themselves, once they married. Frank had never seen anything as amazing as the sudden change into adulthood that had come over Dawnie, when she at last made up her mind that she was getting married. She had become a mature, thoughtful, forceful person overnight.

But all that did not apply to young Wally, who had never married. Instead of going into the Army, he should have found a nice girl and married her and settled down. Frank was all for marriage. And he himself had never been so married, so very much married, as he had been with Agnes the past year. And he had never been so happy in his life.

Of course, he knew why the boy was going into the Army. He felt kind of sorry for him ever since Agnes had told him she suspected maybe he had had a boyish crush on Dawnie. Probably going into the Army was the best thing for him.

That damned wedding! Frank thought a little smugly. It had cost him a fortune; but it had been more than worth it. When you only had one daughter, you ought to give her a real send-off. It had been his idea to get all the relatives in from out of town. And he had offered to help pay whatever expenses they incurred by coming. No one accepted, of course, except Francine in Hollywood. With her husband and herself both schoolteachers, they wouldn’t have been able to come if he hadn’t helped them out. There had been a devil’s own time, getting all of them put up, and in the end they had had to resort to the hotel, for which he footed the bill. It was, he reflected happily, a damn good thing that he had almost unlimited credit with Clark’s father-in-law and the Greek. He wished his own damned motel out on the bypass had already been built! He could have just put them all in it and turned it over to them. But then with a wife like Agnes, it had not been a problem anyway. He had just turned it over to her. And, as always, Agnes had handled it all superbly. She had done a magnificent job, flying to New York and all. Frank had never been as proudly, and as happily, married as he had been those three weeks before the wedding, and the big week of parties after it.

In only two things concerning the wedding did he have anything to do with it. One was that it was him who suggested putting Edith Barclay and her grandmother “within the ribbons”; and the other was that it was him who handled the Old Man.

Both he and Agnes had agreed right away against inviting either the Old Man or Dave. The Old Man, of course, was out from the start. He probably didn’t even have a suit of clothes he could wear to a wedding; and if you went out and bought him one, he would be just as liable to show up in it without having shaved for six days and dead drunk. And as for Dave, since he had taken to living in that damned house with ’Bama Dillert and sleeping with that horrible low-life bum of a whore (everybody in town was laughing at it), they had decided that it was best not to invite him, either. He had only seen Dawnie a couple of times since he had been back in Parkman anyway, both times when he had eaten dinner at their house. And in the last year, he had turned into being almost as big a thorn in their sides as the Old Man.

With Dave, there was no problem. They just would not send him an invitation and, moving in the circles that he did, he would probably not even hear about the wedding until it was over. Unless, of course, some of the relatives wanted to visit him; but that could be easily taken care of by simply explaining the situation and asking them, if they wanted to see Dave, to wait until
after
the wedding. And as a matter of fact, Francine was the only one who put up much of a beef. Francine had seen that story of his in the New Living Literature pocket edition out in Hollywood (Agnes had a copy of it, too; kept it out on the coffee table, so that people would not think they were bitter about Dave), and while Francine thought it was a fine story (as did Agnes!), Francine was not in the least upset about Dave’s using the old family name Herschmidt that they had all been trying to live down for so long. And so, with her wild scatterbrain “artistic” ideas about Art and Freedom, Francine had insisted that Dave be invited to the wedding. However, with her three children to take care of, her protest was pretty halfhearted; and anyway Frank had always been able to handle Francine. And when the rest of the family, including her own husband, sided against her Francine gave up; although she insisted that after the wedding she was going down to see Dave. And, in fact, did go to see him.