Some Came Running (160 page)

“I know he’s here,” he said wildly. “I got information. So don’t try to hide him from me, see?” he said. It was quite easy to see that he had lost all rationality. And a person in that kind of state could not be handled with reason.

“Well, what did you do?” Dave said urgently. “Why, I talked to
him,
” Bob said simply. “What would you have done?”

“I don’t know,” Dave said.

“As a matter of fact, we talked for very nearly three hours,” Bob said. “After he got quieted down, and allowed me to mix him some drinks.” He sighed tiredly. “It was really very interesting.”

The first thing, of course, was to find out who he was and whom he was looking for; and to convince him that there was no one in the house but Bob himself. It looked as if that might be a hard task to accomplish. But, when after standing wild-eyed in the middle of the floor a few moments the young man charged the dining room door, Bob had an opportunity to get started with it.

“What’s in there?” the boy demanded when he stopped in front of it.

“My library,” Bob had said. “Where I keep my books. Also, it’s sort of a dining room. But we never use it. We eat out here.”

“You eat in the kitchen? here?” the young man had asked interestedly, and jabbed with his knife toward the table.

“That’s correct,” Bob had said. He would have gone on. But then the interest faded out of the young man’s face, and the wild-eyed irrationality replaced it.

“I know he’s here,” he had said again. “And I’m going to find him if I have to take your whole damned house apart. And when I find him, by God, I’ll kill him. And I’ll kill you, too, if I have to. How do I know he’s not hidin right in there?” he demanded, jabbing with his knife at the dining room door.

“You’re welcome to look,” Bob had said. The young man had gone in there and looked, while keeping one eye as it were on Bob all the time. “Well, there ain’t nobody in there,” he had said, coming back.

“You’ll find it’s that way through the whole house,” Bob had said. “There is no one here but myself.”

“How do I know you ain’t lyin?”

“I’ll take you on a tour of the entire house, if you wish,” Bob had said. “But after all, don’t you think it’s only fair to tell me whom you’re looking for?”

That was when he found out it was Dave he was looking for. Cursing savagely, the young man explained that Dave Hirsh had stolen his girl—and not just his girl, his
wife,
his
Ginnie.
And when he found him, by God, he was going to kill him. He had killed a lot of other men in his life. He might as well kill one more.

“He was, I noted,” Bob said to Dave, “strangely proud of his killing abilities. He talked a lot about that later on.” He hesitated a moment. “You see, I’m not used to young men like that. Oh, I know they exist; I mean, I know
intellectually
that they exist. But I have almost no personal contact with them. Meeting and talking with one is an entirely different thing. It was very interesting. Well,” he said, “to proceed.”

To make a long story short, the upshot of it was that once the young man got to talking about himself, he wanted to go on talking about himself.

“Naturally, I encouraged him,” Bob smiled wanly. “I offered once again to take him all through the house; but after a moment’s laborious thought he said no, he would take my word for it that I was alone. So then I offered him a drink. This he accepted. And we sat down to talk about him.”

This the young man had enjoyed highly. And naturally, Bob smiled, he had plied him with drink, as the saying was; all he could get down him in fact. He himself had rather nursed his own drink, feeling that perhaps it was better if he kept his wits as keen as possible; but the young man noticed this after a while and insisted that Bob finish his drink and get another, and drink with him drink for drink; and he got his knife out again and laid it on the table. Bob was able to circumvent the drink-for-drink compact to some extent, but not entirely. Probably, he judged, the young man had two or possibly three to his one. “Amazing capacity!” Bob said in a somewhat awed voice. And the more the young man drank, the more eager he became to talk about himself, and—and this was noteworthy—to ask advice about his problems and what did Bob think he ought to do? Consequently, during the next three hours, Bob heard the entire story of his life, plus a very worshipful history of the United States Marine Corps, not to mention a great many astonishing combat episodes and killings that took place during the war.

“He was really quite proud of his killing abilities,” Bob said, “and of all the Japanese men he had killed. He was at Tarawa. Have you ever read about Tarawa, dear Dave? You have? Amazing thing! Well, by the end, he was on a regular crying jag. Especially about not being able to stay in his beloved Marine Corps. It was really rather amazing. Several times he offered to fight me, there and then—with fists, with knives, with rocks, with guns. One of which he had tucked in his belt. But he seemed to prefer his—ahh—switchblade. Anyway, he offered to fight me, and was, he said, willing to spot me his missing arm. And in between times of offering to fight me, all of which I modestly declined, he would tell me that I was in reality the best—if not the only—friend he had in the world.” He smiled, tiredly. “So when he left I helped him back on with his coat and tucked his sleeve in his pocket for him and called a cab over from Parkman and when it came we put our arms around each other and swore our undying friendship and he promised to write me a letter as soon as he got home to Kansas.” Bob shook his head. “Amazing!” he said, and smiled again. “It was really a most interesting experience. Not one, however,” he added, “that I would look forward to having every day.

“And, well, that’s the story,” he finished. “But how the hell did you get him to go back to Kansas?” Dave asked.

“Well—I must admit—that was on a rather flimsy moral pretext,” Bob said. “I told him that if he really loved his wife, he would want her to be happy. Therefore, if she were happier with another man, then, if he really loved her, he would want her to do whatever would make her most happy. And he agreed to this.

“Of course, as you know, dear Dave, all that was quite untrue. When a person is really in love with another, that person is not concerned with the beloved’s happiness at all; he is concerned, solely, with his own happiness. Of course, very few like to admit this, and I sized this young man up as being one of those who would not admit it. So you can see how I tricked him. It was a rather unfair advantage to take of the young man, in a way. But still I felt it was justified if it would get him to return to Kansas without—ahh—blooding his knife.

“Of course, once he admitted the initial premise that one who loves wants most of all the happiness of the beloved, he had to admit he should return home. His own sentimentality and his desire to be a fine, admirable person forced him to it.”

Dave was forced to laugh, though he felt a little ashamed of doing so. Bob however did not laugh, and did not even look amused.

“Do you suppose he actually will write me a letter?” he said.

“God, I don’t know, Bob,” Dave said. “I’m inclined to think once he gets home he’ll forget the whole episode with you.”

“If he does write, I suppose I shall have to answer,” Bob said unhappily.

“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Dave asked. “That I wouldn’t know,” Bob said. “I rather think not, not for some time anyway, because it will take him quite a while to free himself of the mental picture of himself which I forced upon him. He had a very highly developed moralism in him, I think; and he wants to be right, not wrong; good, not evil. And as long as he believes it immoral to interfere with his ‘wife’s’ happiness, he won’t. No, I should say it would be some time before he comes back. If he ever does come back at all. In general, I believe, persons of his type quickly fall in love with someone else while telling them of their unhappiness in their current love. Perhaps that is what our young man will do.

“It’s amazing!” he said once again. “I almost never meet young people of this type. Oh, of course, I did, when I was younger. But one tends to forget how very mentally backward the majority of people really are. He’s really a very brave young man, that one,” Bob said; “and he’s had a most interesting and painful life, too.” Then he shrugged, slowly. “But then, after all, what is bravery?”

Bob took a sad thoughtful swallow of his drink.

“Their lives,” he said, “are governed by such fantastic illusions about what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ and what is ‘manly.’ Or ‘womanly.’ Utterly fantastic. Has nothing to do with what life really is.” He took another thoughtful swallow.

“You know, dear Dave,” he said, almost apologetically. “I have a sort of a theory about killing. Outside of wartime, of course. I believe there is not ever a murder committed that is not—ahh—requested, shall we say. In other words, for every murderer there must also be a murderee. Now that young man might very easily—considering the state he was in—have killed me, had I made one false move in handling him. Because, you see, he was scared, too. But even more than that it was that his pride was involved. He really didn’t want to kill anyone; but he felt he
should
want to kill someone, and that way he would prove he was a man. In other words, had I done anything that would have in his own eyes made him look bad or futile or ridiculous, I should have been forcing him to kill me. You see? Even when he didn’t want to, really.

“Of course, I admit,” he added, “that there are circumstances when the theory doesn’t apply. For instance, should he have struck me with the knife at the door before I got a chance to talk to him. Or, perhaps, say, if he were a hired killer, hired to kill me for some reason. I’ve never had any experience with—ahh—?” He looked at Dave questioningly.

“Hoods?” Dave said.

“Yes, that’s it. Hoods. I’ve never had any experience with that type. But this young man didn’t want to kill anybody, and was, in fact, really afraid that someone would call his braggadocio bluff. That was the key to the whole situation when I noted how he kept opening and closing his knife against his leg. I think if he were really bent on killing, he would not have done that. However, if
you
had been here, he might have felt impelled to go ahead with it, just to prove he wasn’t backing down.”

He stopped, and took another swallow of his drink. “Amazing!” he said again.

“I’m going to marry that girl he came over here after me for,” Dave said suddenly.

“Oh?” Bob said slowly. Still sitting relaxedly in the ladder-back, his long legs sprawled out before him, he turned his thoughtful gaze onto Dave slowly with a look both of deep interest and surprise. “You are?”

“Yes,” Dave said. “She’s getting an annulment from the boy who was over here to see you. She just up and married him on the spur of the moment, and got herself into a trap.”

“I see,” Bob said.

“I—uh— I’ve done a great deal of thinking about it the past few weeks,” Dave said. “Everything between me and Gwen is over. And I need a wife. I— Her name is Ginnie Moorehead.”

Bob did not say anything for a moment. Then he nodded. “Ah, yes. I know of the young woman.”

“You probly do. She used to be the biggest whore—the biggest free romp in Parkman. She’s not very bright. And that in itself is one of the main reasons I think she’ll make me a perfect wife: dumb, preoccupied with her housework, et cetera; but good-natured; I think it’s the perfect kind of a wife for a writer to have.”

“Yes, there is a lot to be said for that school of thought on writers’ wives,” Bob said. For a long moment, he stared at Dave, a little sadly. “Of course,” Bob said finally, after taking another pull at his glass, “one must be quite sure that they
are
dumb; and that they
are
good-natured.”

“Those are two things I
am
sure of,” Dave said.

“Well then,” Bob said, and suddenly he raised himself back up in his chair somewhat. “Then you have no worries, do you? I want to wish you the best of luck with it, dear Dave.”

“Thanks,” Dave said. “You know, it’s probably better that it all turned out as it did. With Gwen and me. I was completely thrown for a while; but maybe, in the end, this was how it was supposed to be.”

“Yes,” Bob said, his voice curiously veiled. “I expect, in the end, that just about everything happens as it was supposed to happen.”

“More of your Karma?” Dave said. “More Yog-ah?” He pronounced it very precisely.

Bob laughed, and Dave laughed with him. Then Bob’s face sobered again. “No,” he said, “not exactly. Karma doesn’t exactly work like that. There’s always the matter of free choice, you know? But then, if everyone free-chooses as they perforce must—” He shrugged. “Perhaps it is the same in the end, in a way. One must wear out one thing before he is capable of going on to some other. So perhaps it is somewhat the same in the end: It’s all for learning lessons.”

“Damn it! I wish I could be
sure:
the way you always sound,” Dave said. “I wish I
knew
something—the way you do. I wish I could
believe
like you seem to.”

“Dear Dave,” Bob said, and smiled sadly, “dear Dave. I don’t
know
anything. I just guess—and hope. I read, and I wonder. I’m really far less ahead of
you
than you seem to think.”

“Well, you always seem to know,” Dave said almost irritably. “You always sound so damned positive.”

“Theorizing,” Bob said. “Pure theorizing. I
know
nothing. And,” he added, “I expect I never shall
know
anything. I have a theory about that, too,” he smiled, pleasantly. “I believe that the way of the artist, such as you and I, is
never
to know. The Way, the Path,” he said, capitalizing the words with his voice, “of the artist is actually based upon that very point, I think: to
not
know. If he
knew
what God was, he would be too sure. And the
very
nature of an artist, a great artist, is that he must never
know;
must never be
sure.
That is why he works so hard, and so painfully. If he
knew
—” He smiled. “Well, I don’t suppose he would ever produce anything, would he? He wouldn’t
need
to.” He finished off the last of the drink. “So you’re going to marry Ginnie Moorehead?” he said.