Some Came Running (6 page)

“Guinevere French. Is that any relation to Old Man French the English teacher?”

“Sure, man, the poet. Robert Ball French. She’s his daughter. They’re relations of mine.”

“He taught me English in high school,” Dave said. “He used to act out both sides of the duel scene in Hamlet with a yardstick.”

“That’s him. He moved up to the college, after you left. But he’s retired now.” Wally took a drink of the first of his two beers which Jake had brought him. “You ought to meet them. Hell, man! That’s where I got hold of all that stuff of yours. You know I’ve read everything you ever wrote, man. Even them two little articles in that little magazine. What was its name?”

Again Dave felt that flickering wave of dismay, that wanting to push it away with both hands. If they’d just shut up about it. If they were just goddam sensitive enough to realize he didn’t want to talk about that. ’Bama and the others were listening with silent interest.

“nous neurotiques,”
he said, looking down at his glass.

“That’s the one. Without the caps. I even read them,” Wally said. “They wasn’t very good.” He kept on looking at Dave, sort of hungrily, as if he expected him to do something miraculous.

Dave didn’t look up from his glass. “Where’d you ever get hold of all that old stuff?”

“From Gwen French,” Wally said. “She’s collected all your stuff. Partly because you was from here, I guess. But she collects lots of little-known writers like you. Uses them in her classes. Says you can learn more off them than the big ones. You know George Blanca?”

“Sure, he used to be my best buddy out on the Coast, years ago,” Dave said.

Wally nodded. “I know. She’s got all his stuff, too. Even his screenplays. Also that other guy you knew, the one who committed suicide.”

“Kenny McKeean,” Dave said. The dismay flooded back over him full force, stronger than before, rendering him totally inadequate and making the insides of his elbows and fingers twiddle. In Parkman, Illinois, of all goddam places! He had not thought about any of them for a long time now, especially Kenny. He and George were the ones who found him. They had gone up drunk to get him to go on a party. It was such an easy thing to forget things, if you wanted to, that had happened a long time ago.

But then something happened to make them come back full force, more real, fists in the face.

“That’s the guy,” Wally Dennis said from a long way off. “Wrote two novels that didn’t sell and blew his brains out.”

“He hung himself,” Dave corrected. “And there was more to it than that. There was a dame involved in it.”

The others sat listening silently, as if they seemed to sense he had gone back into a past, re-creating it here.

“You mean he killed himself for love?” Wally asked.

“Yeah,” David said, “sort of. Love, or the lack of it.”

“I didn’t know people did that anymore,” Wally said. “Especially writers. Well, anyway, she’s got all his stuff, too. I think what started her out was you, bein from here and all. And then she moved on to them two, because they was sidekicks of yours. And another guy: I don’t remember. She’s got lots more of them now.”

“Say!” ’Bama said in his sneering way. “You ought to look into this, Dave. This broad seems to think a lot of you. Might be something in it for you wholesale.”

“Naw, man,” Wally said. “It’s all strickly professional. This ain’t hero worship. Strickly aboveboard. This gal ain’t got no sex.”

“You think so?” ’Bama said. The spell of the past had been broken now, for everyone except Dave at least. The others began to talk.

“I got news for you, son,” Dewey said, grinning. “Women do like sex. I know. I use to think like you do, when I was your age and wasn’t gettin any.”

“Not very many of them don’t,” Wally said, undisconcerted. “She’s doin all this here for a book she’s doin, man. Book on writers and writing. She wrote her doctorate paper on it three years ago.”

“What the hell’s a doctorate paper?” Hubie drawled in his Midwest twang. “I’m igerant. You mean she’s learnin to be a doctor, too?’“

Dave got up out of the booth. Wally was grinning sheepishly at Hubie; he knew when he was being ridiculed. Dave reached back down and finished off the rest of his schooner. It was about half full. “Excuse me,” he said. “Got to go to the head.”

He went back past the empty booths to the door. Beyond the door was a narrow corridor with the two doors on the left side, the first marked Shes and the second Hes. He entered the Hes and lit a cigarette but it was unpleasant in there with the smell of the disinfectant blocks in the urinal and he went on down the narrow corridor to the back door and opened it and stood in it remembering to smoke. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t even think anything really. He just stood there while it welled up in him and looked out at the wet. After a minute, he turned around and started back up the narrow corridor.

Now it will be coming he thought desperately all that old literary crap and he was through with all that thanks to you Harriet Bowman but no. That wasn’t strictly true. That was only part of the truth, which covered everything every experience every association and it was all foredoomed to what it became. But to a goddamned lawyer!

We were all in love out there, he thought. Did anybody understand that really? and why? And every one of us, in a different way, got maybe Kenny McKeean got off lightest of us all, after all, the simple bastard.

They were still talking at the booth, and Wally was on his second beer.

“Was that who told you I wrote too much like Saroyan?” he said as he sat down.

“Gwen? Yes, man.” He took a drink of his beer. “You ought to meet them, man. Gwen and Old Bob.”

“No thanks,” David said. “I’m not volunteering as anybody’s literary guinea pig.”

“Oh no, man!” Wally protested. “Nothin like that! They’d just like to meet you, is all. We don’t get to talk to many writers around here.”

“How do you know they’d like to?” Dave said.

“Well, I just know. You see, my mom was a French. Her and Old Bob are cousins. Old Bob’s a great guy. Pretty good poet, too. Little old-fashioned.”

“I’ve never read him,” Dave lied.

“What! You’ve never read Old Bob? From your own hometown? Hell, man! He’s one of our nation’s major minor poets. You really ought to meet them, while you’re here.” He took another drink. “How long you going to be in town? Maybe I could arrange it.”

“Only a week,” Dave said. “And I don’t want to meet anybody.” But then he could not help adding, “I think I went to school with Gwen French.”

“Same one,” Wally said. “She’s about your age.”

“She’s a good-looking broad,” ’Bama said suddenly from his corner. “In a funny, frightened kind of a way. It’s attractive.”

“She ain’t interested in sex,” Wally said. “Her fiancé was killed at the start of the war. All she’s interested in is literature, man. Not men.”

“I’m not interested in men, either,” Dewey said.

“Well, I am!” Hubie Murson drawled in a high nasal falsetto, from where he sat squeezed back into the corner of the booth. He put his hand up delicately to the back of his blond head.

Grinning, Dewey elbowed him in the ribs. “All right, shut up and sit still. I’ll see if I can find you one someplace.”

“I ain’t got any choice but to sit still,” Hubie said, in his Midwest twang. “You
promise
?” he said in falsetto.

Wally emitted an appreciative snort as he turned back to Dave.

Dave looked from one to the other. “You mean she’s a lesbo?”

“A what?” Wally said.

“A lesbian.”

“Oh,” Wally said. “Oh no. I don’t think so. A dyke, you mean. I’ve heard it said, but I don’t believe it myself. We got some out there that are though,” he grinned.

“That gal’s no lesbo,” ’Bama sneered from his corner. “I know a dyke when I see one. That gal’s a gal that needs a man about as bad as I need a woman. Her and me ought to get together.” He sounded almost hungry, in spite of the joking manner, and Dave turned to look at him.

“She’s nice,” ’Bama said to him, as if they two understood each other.

“You wouldn’t stand a chance,” Wally said. “She says she’s had all the sex in her life she’ll ever be interested in.”

“She said that?” Dave said. He could feel the old pin, pricking him again. Sit up and take notice. Get up and give the lady a seat, young man. Goddam it why can’t you let it alone. The only thing that kept him there was the talk about the woman.

“Well I don’t reckon it’ll kill me,” ’Bama said. “But that gal’s no dyke, boys. That’s a gal that’s hungry. Only she don’t know it.”

“No, man,” Wally said earnestly. “Man, you got it all wrong. She knows it. She’s had it. Practically the same as told me so. It bores her. All she’s interested in is literature, man.”

“Okay,” ’Bama said. “This bores me. I’m wrong.” He sat up straight suddenly.

“You say her fiancé got killed?” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Wally said, “but he wasn’t much of a fiancé. They’d been engaged to each other for five years.”

“Lemme out of here,” ’Bama said, standing up. “I got to go piss.” Dave had to move quickly to get out of his way as he slid out. Standing by the booth the tall man looked down at them. “But I ain’t wrong,” he said. He started for the back, taking his time, languid, arrogant, insultingly confident. His sudden eruption out of the booth, and then his comment, had startled the whole conversation out of them and made it all look ridiculous.

“You say he wasn’t much of a fiancé?” Dave said, cursing himself, still standing.

“No, man,” Wally said. “He was a real sister. What she got she must of got someplace else. Out of town. College, maybe. She took her doctorate at Columbia in New York.” Both he and Dewey were smiling fondly after ’Bama.

Dave sat back down. “If she’s so goddamned good, what’s she doing here?”

Wally cocked his outside leg up over the other knee and ran his finger over the heavily ornate stitching on the cowboy boot, thoughtfully.

“She likes it,” he said. “I guess. Her and Old Bob’s always lived here. Old Bob’s no crud, you know. He’s no Allen Tate. But hes well known. Even the Kenyon Critics wrote about him.” He finished off the rest of his beer. “Well, I got to go, men. Got a class in forty minutes. Listen, man,” he said to Dave. “Why don’t you let me fix it for you to meet them?” He stood up and got the heavy fleece-lined jacket off the post. “We could make it a regular party, see? And I’ll bring your niece along, and there’ll just be us five. We can hoist a few brews and just talk.”

Dave listened, astounded. “Who do you mean?” he said. “You don’t mean Dawn?”

Wally nodded, shouldering into the jacket. “Sure. Your brother Frank’s girl. She’s a senior in high school this year and I been nanning around with her some. She’s a pretty artistic kid. She’d fit in.”

“What kind of art?” Dave said.

“Oh, she acts. Paints a little, too. On the side. Look,” he said, “what do you say?”

“No thanks,” Dave grinned. “I’ve quit writing. And I’ve quit meeting literary people. I don’t even talk that language anymore. So there’s no point in it.”

“You what?” Wally said. He was entirely in the jacket now. “You’ve quit writing!” He looked utterly shocked. If he had heard the former allusion made to Dewey, he had been too obsessed with something else for it to penetrate.

“That’s right,” Dave said. “The whole shebang.” Wally was still looking at him. Dave winked at him. “Gave it all up,” he grinned.

“I thought it was a long time since you’d published anything,” Wally said in a funny voice.

“I haven’t published anything for ten years,” Dave said. “I haven’t written anything for almost seven.”

“But, of course, you’ve been in the Army,” Wally said.

“I’ve only been in the Army four years,” Dave said, covering all the loopholes with a kind of lefthand enjoyment.

“‘And you’ve really quit?” Wally said.

“That’s right,” Dave said. “Really have.”

“Well, it’s your business,” Wally said.

“That’s the only one whose business it is.”

“You mind if I ask you one question? Was there a woman involved in that, too?” Wally said.

Once more, Dave was surprised at the depth of perception.

“No,” he grinned. “No woman.” Just a pig, he added to himself. Who turned into a cow. Now there’d be a hell of a good story title. “The Pig Who Turned into a Cow.” He was aware he was being bitter, but he enjoyed it. You could subtitle it, too. “The Pig Who Turned into a Cow; or The Short, Happy Life of Harriet Bowman.” Apologies, Ernest, old boy, he thought. “Now what do you say we drop it and have another beer?”

“Oh, I can’t,” Wally said. “I always limit myself to two.” Then he turned to Dewey and Hubie. “Well, men, I will see you,” he said in that same lugubrious voice he’d used when he came in, and the agitated excitement seemed suddenly to pop out through his pores, as if he were pushing himself up to it. “This here beer and talk really bugs me, but you know how it is. Got to go, men. See you.”

“Give my love to all the college professors,” Hubie drawled, “and professorettes.”

“Don’t take any wooden typewriters,” Dewey grinned.

“Great,” Wally said. “Great, men. You’re very witty today.” He zipped up the jacket. “Listen,” he said to Dave. “Listen, the party’s out. But I’d like to call you up while you’re in town?”

“Sure,” Dave said. “I’m staying at the Parkman.”

“Great,” Wally said, his face still stolid, his voice still flat. “Great, man. I’ll call you. I really did great today. I’m high as a kite. Every now and then I get so I think I’m not a writer, you know?” He turned away. “See you, all.” He took off for the door in the same fast running walk with which he’d entered, the high-heeled cowboy boots thudding on the floor.

He seemed to leave in a flurry of whirling air, and Dave thought how many times in his life he had done that same thing. It was all right to be a writer. But you can’t act like a writer. You must act like a regular guy. He thought that Wally must be terribly tired every time he got home, after he had been out where there were people.

“He’s some boy,” he said.

“He’s always like that,” Hubie said.

“No, he’s not either,” Dewey contradicted. “All depends on the mood he’s in. Sometimes hell sit for hours and not say nothin. He’s real high today.”