Some Came Running (61 page)

Then however, suddenly, a new and deeper realism dropped down over Dave’s sense of triumph, smothering it.

It was like a sudden spiritual revelation to him, a warning almost; one of those sudden deeper penetrations into things that go deeper than you want to go. And that consequently you have to be alert for because they only knock once, and lightly: This was what all men wanted from all women. To make them like sex and make them admit they liked it. To make them feel so good in sex they would come back and ask for more. That was what men wanted. But the very idea presupposed a woman who in the beginning
didn’t
like it, a “respectable” woman; otherwise it would be impossible. That was what intrigued him so about Edith Barclay, and about Gwen.
Why her? a nympho? and yet he did include her.
But with a “respectable” woman, it was impossible anyway: Even if you managed to make her like it, and admit she liked it, the guilt and the hate for you for making her go against her “principles”—which you would not have her without, and were the very thing which attracted you!—would always be there. And so he saw, didn’t he, the Revelation said to him, that it was all impossible, a vague nonexistent dream of an illusion, and a snare and a delusion: and that was where the warning part came in.

But my God, the next thought came, what was left? What hope was there? for love? complete love? The answer was obvious, wasn’t it, the Revelation said. None. Hastily, Dave picked up the full glass of beer from the bottle Dewey had ordered for him and drained it, staring straight ahead at the wall. Then he poured another and drank it, and shut the door on the cold draft of the Revelation which said it was impossible and that everything else was lies. It had changed his entire mood. Obviously, the only thing to do was not to think about it. I
need
love.

“. . . and so there you are!” Hubie finished up. “I ask you. Is that fair or not?” He looked down at Martha unctuously. Dave had not heard a single word he’d said.

“It sure is,” he answered nevertheless, grinning. “It’s not fair at all. But then, who ever expected anything to be fair?”

Martha continued to look down glumly into her half-empty beer glass. Then, almost absentmindedly, she picked it up and drank what was in it and set it back down and continued to stare at it, empty now. Yes, sir, Dave thought happily, yes, sir, for once the Males sure had the Females going tonight. And it was seldom enough, he thought.

“Yes, sir! I think that’s what we ord to do, Dewey,” Hubie drawled. “Enlist for Germany. I’ve always wanted to see Europe anyways.

“Don’t you hit me, Rosalie!” he squealed suddenly, as the big Amazon turned to glare down at him. “You leave me alone, now! Or I’ll sick Dewey on you!”

“I want a home for my kids!” Lois burst out. She had begun to cry.

“You don’t want a home,” Dave said, with unexpected fury. “You got one. You ain’t out in the street, are you?”

“I live with my folks.”

“Well, you see? All you want is some damned man to marry you. And take care of you and be a damned father to them kids.”

Lois looked up at him reproachfully, tears still still dribbling from her eyes. “He would want to,” she said, “if he loved me.” Her face seemed to be asking what he was doing trying to break up her love life?

Dave suddenly felt ashamed of himself.

But the debonair Dewey had just set down his glass with savoir faire. “Yes, sir, it sure is rough,” he said. “People just shouldn’t get married and
have
kids in this day and age, that’s all. A person just can’t
tell
what’s liable to happen, anymore.”

“Yes, by God, that’s right!” Mildred Pierce suddenly said, her eyes swinging around the table as fiercely as some hawk’s. “And that’s about the only damn
true
thing that’s been said here tonight!” It was the first word she had spoken since Dave had come in. Beside her, the sacklike dumpy Ginnie had so far not said anything. She had been occupying herself, he had noticed, by exchanging hopefully flirtatious glances with one of the various men at the bar, after which every so often, beneath those vague washed-out eyes she would smile coyly.

“Mildred, Mildred,” Dewey murmured. “I didn’t mean to go getting you all upset or nothing.”

“Mildred,” Dave said, suddenly, aware of Rosalie beside him— “Mildred, how would you like to go out with me tonight?” Beside him, Rosalie seemed to stiffen.

Mildred turned to look at him, her eyes relaxing back into their normal calmness. “Be all right. I wouldn’t mind,” she said, shaking her head slowly; “but I’m just too tired. I’ve been out the last two nights straight. And I’ve just got to get a good night’s sleep.”

Dave felt his prospects plummet, and carry his optimism with them. He had staked it all on Mildred’s usual willingness to go on a party. He had not considered a possible need for sleep. And beside him, little ripples of triumph seemed to emanate from Rosalie’s heroic physique, as she settled herself to wait for him to ask her next.

“As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go right now,” Mildred said. “Before I wind up sitting here another hour. Let me out, you two,” she said to Lois and Dewey. “Maybe some other time, Dave,” she said after they had let her out, and patted him on the neck, and then went to looking for her coat among the loaded hooks on the upright post at the end of the booth.

Well, Dave thought, that was that. And he watched her pert little bottom under that tight skirt with a feeling very like a man who watches a bass which has thrown his hook swim slowly down out of sight in the water. And beside him, the sanguinary Rosalie still waited. When Mildred finally found her coat, she put it on and turned back to the table.

“Well,” she said, “how much do I owe on my share?” She seemed to be talking to Lois more than anyone else.

“I’ll get it,” Dave said before anyone else could answer. “Just forget it. I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay,” Mildred said. “Thanks.” She patted him once more on his shoulder and left.

Dave sighed. “Well,” he said, “what do you say we have another beer?”

“Well now, I think that’s the best idea yet,” Ginnie said in her toneless voice, smiling at him dully. It was the first she had spoken.

Dave studied her, seeing her for the first time, really—as an individual—since he had come in. Nobody else paid the slightest attention to her.

She was, Dave reflected sadly, just about the poorest excuse for a human being that he had ever had occasion to witness. And yet: ’Bama had told him she was not only the best but also the least troublesome one of the bunch for a one-night stand, hadn’t he? He toyed with an idea. Well, why not? He looked at her again. Ginnie was just about as shapeless as a human body could get, and still be recognizable as such. Where there was any definite shape to her at all, it was always the wrong shape, and in the wrong place. Like that hump of fat on the back of her neck that aging and poorly postured women acquired. And yet she wasn’t an awful lot older than Wally Dennis: She had been in the sixth grade with him, he’d said. Twenty-three or -four? My God, it was unbelievable! And yet, after all, like they said in the Army, if you turned the lights out.

Still, there was Rosalie beside him, still waiting for him to ask her to go, so she could turn him down. Dewey had already ordered the new round. “Ginnie,” Dave said, “how would
you
like to go out with me tonight?”

For a moment, he thought Rosalie was going to break him in two.

“Who?” Ginnie said. “Me?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yeah. You.”

“Why, that would be most nice,” she said. “I’d love to.” Surprise was spreading slowly over her round face. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t have nothing doing tonight.”

“Well that’s fine,” Dave said. “I didn’t have nothing doing, either.”

“Well, I guess I better be getting home,” Rosalie said stiffly. “That makes me the extra at the party. And you know what that’s like. How much do I owe for my share?”

“Let it go,” Dave said magnanimously. “I’ll get it.”

“Why, thank you, Dave,” Rosalie said sweetly, and shouldered her muscular shoulders into her expensive coat. “I’ll see you-all.”

“You made a wise choice,” Dewey said, after she had left; “especially after asking Mildred first.”

If Ginnie Moorehead heard this, she gave no sign. She still appeared to be getting over her surprise.

“Here, Dave,” Hubie said. “You want to sit over here in front of Ginnie? Me and Martha’ll move and let you in.”

“No,” Dave said. “This is all right. I’ll just sit here on the end.” He moved into the seat Rosalie had vacated.

“Yes,” Ginnie said. “That’s all right. He can sit right there.”

“Well,” Dave said, “here’s to a pleasant evening.”

“I’ll sure drink to that,” Ginnie said.

They all drank to it. But after that things sort of settled into an unexciting routine. They drank that round of beers and another one, and ordered others. There wasn’t much general conversation. Both of the other girls were glum, and Ginnie was just naturally not scintillating. Every now and then, Dewey and Hubie would bring up anew the question of going back into the Army. They were both having the times of their lives. It wasn’t often they could get—and keep—such a strong upper hand over their girls. Perhaps it was because his mood had changed, but Dave no longer got much kick out of it. He tried desperately to think of something to talk to Ginnie about and felt upset because he couldn’t, although he had to admit it apparently made no difference to her whether she was talked to or not. Once, when Hubie and Dewey were discussing enlisting again, he mentioned ’Bama just to sort of be in on things.

“Why don’t you ask ’Bama what he thinks about it?”

“That son of a bitch,” Dewey snorted. “There’s no point askin him. He thinks anybody’s crazy who would have anything to do with the Army voluntarily. I know what he’d say.”

It was not long after this that, in the back of the room, Raymond Cole exploded again, like a bad bottle of beer going off and scattering foam and bits of glass. One moment all was quiet, the next Raymond had stood up bellowing, upsetting both his own chair and the little round table of beer bottles. The only understandable words were: “I’ll beat the living hell out of all of them before I’ll . . .” The rest was lost in the confusion as his two friends grasped him each by an arm and hustled him, struggling, up front and out the door. “Be back pay you later,” one of them said breathlessly to Smitty who was standing behind the bar as they passed.

“I don’t know why I keep on serving Raymond,” Smitty said to nobody, as he looked after them. “I guess I’m just softhearted. Someday Sherm Ruedy’s going to catch him.” Sherm Ruedy was chief of police in Parkman; Dave had already heard about him from ’Bama, almost none of it good.

“Glad it was them instead of me,” Gus Nernst laughed to Dewey from across the back of the booth. “Tonight’s my night off.”

“Who were those two guys?” Dave asked Dewey.

Dewey had been looking after his brother disgustedly. “Couple friends of Raymond’s. Old Army buddies. Served in the 132nd with him.”

The one-armed Eddie had already gone back to clean up the debris. In a little while, he came over to their booth grinning with another round Dewey had ordered.

“Raymond’s not in very good form tonight, is he?” he grinned. “Didn’t even hit one guy before they collared him.”

“Aaanh,” Dewey said contemptuously. He took some money out of Lois’s purse and paid him.

“Look,” Eddie grinned; “put a quarter down on the table.”

Dewey looked up at him uncomprehendingly.

“A quarter,” Eddie said. “I’ll show you something.”

Dewey did as he was asked.

“Now watch this,” Eddie grinned. He lowered his hooks, spread open, over the quarter until their curved centers touched the table, then carefully brought them together on it. Slowly, he lifted the quarter, holding it by its milled edges, and then flipped it and caught it in his other hand.

“How about that,” he grinned. “Pretty good, hunh? Been practicing up on my tip collecting.” He put the quarter back on the table.

“By God, that is!” Dewey said. “That’s pretty damned good!”

Eddie laughed then tilted his tray rakishly on the plam of his good hand. He winked at Dave, then dropped his hand out from under his tray, catching it by its edge as it fell, and went back to the bar.

Dave was hit again suddenly—to the accompaniment of Stravinski’s
The Rite of Spring
—by that powerful, depressive feeling of living in the last days of the Roman Empire, that he had felt here before and that Raymond Cole and the one-armed Eddie seemed to have a peculiar power to evoke in him. These were the Plebs, he thought looking around the booth. The maimed veterans of the Legions, the shopkeepers without shops, the wives without husbands, the whores without cribs. The teeming life-loving life-devouring ant heap of the Forum, living their lives out in the taverns and the occasional circus given them for their vote, hooting at the false virtue of their leaders—but their willing prey nonetheless—and trying hard to forget the barbarian hordes gathering like a thunderhead in the horizons of the north.

And out at the Country Club tonight, the leaders. The vain energetic Caesars, the vain weakling Pompeys, the vain shrewd-politico Augustuses, their heads in a bottle, and talking to each other about how virtuously to handle the people, for the people’s own best virtuous good. We love the people virtuously. We serve the people virtuously. We virtuously ask nothing for ourselves—except the virtuous power to virtuously save the people from themselves.

All of them, all, both here and there, all little bricks in the crumbling edifice of the unbearable twilight of the age; while the barbarian wind sweeps down chilling from the north.

Probably, Frank was out there right now. Frank was a leader, he thought wanting to roar with unbearable twilight laughter, his brother Frank was a leader.

“What’s the matter, Davie boy?” a strange voice came in on him suddenly, cooing with dull coyness. He looked up startled. “You feel bad? You got the blues, Davie boy?” Ginnie Moorehead said.

“Damn it, don’t call me Davie!” he exploded. “Don’t ever call me Davie! I hate that name!”