Some Came Running (77 page)

She had already, earlier, when handing out the presents, quietly set Dave’s in a little pile where he could get them later, laughing about it as she did so. She and Bob had both bought him little presents, just something to show him he was not outside, was liked and wanted, as had both Wally (and through him, Dawn), at her suggestion. Bob had gotten him a beautiful, and quite expensive, set of handmade cufflinks and tie tack; and she herself had bought him both a Roget’s Thesaurus and an uncommonly good combination coat-wallet and notebook because she wanted to give him something that would have to do with his writing. There was nothing to do but to put them all back for him. Then she threw herself into the gaiety of the party.

(It was a fascinating experience, to watch Dawn and Wally together here after having seen Dawn with Jimmy Shotridge so short a time ago. Where there it had been Jimmy Shotridge who had followed Dawn around adoringly, worshipping at her shrine—here the positions were reversed and it was Dawn who worshipped Wally. Dawn was not as obvious about it as Jimmy had been, but the result was the same. And the effect, upon Wally, was the same as it had been on her with Jimmy. It seemed to thicken his whole head, and even the muscular expressions of his face, expanding all of them outward several inches with smugness until he actually looked gross. He was pompous as hell. Gwen had been noticing this same quality in his work for some time, flashes of it, but this was the first time she had ever seen it in physical action, or actually learned the reason for it. Wally was in love with Dawn—or, more accurately, Wally was becoming sure that Dawn was in love with
him;
just as Dawn was sure that Jimmy Shotridge was in love with her. Of course, none of this had transpired while their parents were there, only before and after. They could let themselves go, around her, because they felt she was their friend. She was, from watching them, pretty sure they were not sleeping together yet, but eventually would be; just as she was sure that, unless something she did not anticipate occurred, Dawn would also sleep with Jimmy Shotridge, if not for revenge, then in self-defense. God, what a mess.)

They came back over, Wally and Dawn, for New Year’s Eve. Bob was off somewhere celebrating with a couple of his cronies and she was alone. The three of them sat up and saw the New Year in and talked and drank a little. They were both such nice kids. Completely blind, completely unprepared. What else could they be? Their parents had never taught them anything. How could they? They didn’t know, hadn’t been taught, anything themselves. So these two rebelled, instinctively, knowing only the negative, that whatever their parents had done had been wrong, obviously, so perhaps the opposite had a chance of being right.

After New Year’s, when she finally got around to taking down the tree, and Dave still had not shown up, she removed the presents and stacked them neatly in a little pile in the living room where they would not be obtrusive, and where he could get them when he finally did come. She was sure by now that this was more than just some drunken binge, but the days ran on down toward the middle of January and the end of term and all the work that that date implied, and she could not spend all her time thinking about one person. Nevertheless, at odd free moments she would discover herself thinking about him, briefly, with a kind of puzzled hurt that verged on anger, and wondering what had happened to him. Then she would plunge back into the papers and the work again. He was undoubtedly the most talented of all the potential writers she had had personal contact with—Wally was still too young to know yet—and that even included Mac Price who had run off to Chicago and not been heard from since. Was Dave, now, doing the same damned thing? If her theory of the self-destructiveness of talent, as propounded in the critical book on Dave’s Los Angeles group, was actually true, then that meant that Dave was not only the most talented but would be, conversely, also the most self-destructive. He might be lying dead somewhere right now, unrecognized and unidentified because of the absence of the papers he would almost certainly forget to carry with him. Oh, the silly goddamned son of a bitching fool! she would think irately, and plunge back into the work again.

After the ridiculous but necessary fiasco of final exams was over, she had more time, and more chances to speculate on Dave. She didn’t do it all the time, but she did it often—oftener than Dave in Florida would have guessed.

The thing that set her off was the fact that she had tried to remember whether she had actually invited him over for Christmas vocally. And the more she thought about it, the more sure she was she had not. She had not asked him. She had committed the unpardonable sin of assuming that he was an adult grown-up human being. And she knew suddenly then that this was the reason he had taken off like he had, without so much as a word to them and without even notifying Frank and Agnes. Because she hadn’t in so many words invited him over for Christmas! Oh the silly, foolish, colossally egocentric, something or other fool! she thought with a bright anger at him.

This was in February, and she took the little stack of presents and put them away in a paper sack on a shelf in the kitchen pantry.

Two weeks later, she called up Agnes, on some pretext or other, to see if they had heard anything of him. She was no longer angry now, and more resigned, but it was like some mystery that never let you rest until you’d solved it. The moment she mentioned Dave, she could hear Agnes’s voice become cat-smug at the other end, and her instinct was to slam the phone down in her ear. But in spite of the smugness, Agnes was willing to give her all the news they’d had. No, they hadn’t heard a word from Dave and had no idea where—or with whom—he was. But two weeks ago, Sherm Ruedy had called Frank up about Dave’s car. It was still sitting locked up on the street in front of the Douglas Hotel, and it had to be moved. He was giving Frank a chance to do something about it if he wanted to; otherwise he would haul it off himself. So Frank had called the garage and had them haul it around to the taxi stand and park it there. Then just a week ago, the man at the Douglas Hotel had called up. Dave had paid the night man a month’s rent in advance when he left, but now the rent was a month overdue and what did Frank want him to do about it? All of Dave’s clothes and things were still in the room. Frank had told him he did not intend to pay the rent, since he did not know where Dave was or even if he was coming back, and as for the clothes and things, for all Frank cared he could package them up and sell them. For the rent. But the conscientious little man at the Douglas had packed them up and said he would keep them for him, for a while at least. And that, Agnes said, was all they knew or had heard. Had they, Agnes said sweetly, heard anything over there?

“Oh no,” Gwen said. “He wouldn’t have written us. But he had such an excellent book started. I hate to see it go down the drain. I told you about it.”

“Yes, I know,” Agnes said, “I remember. Well, Dave never was very dependable,” she said, and might have been saying, in so many words, “I told you so.” “Well, don’t worry about him, Gwen dear. Bad pennies, you know. I’m sure nothing could have happened to him; if we do hear anything from him I’ll let you know right away, dear.”

“Thanks, Agnes honey.” Gwen hung up, furious.

Agnes was really very likeable, and her friend—probably her best friend—in Parkman; but there had been several times over the phone when Gwen could have screamed into her ear like a fishwife. When she started putting on that smugness of hers— And then when she kept talking about Dave’s car, left to sit out there on the lot— And his clothes, stuffed away somewhere—

And there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about any of it. Well, there
was
something she could do about part of it: She could send Bob over to the Douglas and have him pay the month’s rent and get Dave’s clothes so they could at least be taken care of—and
piss
on what they thought, she thought.

Well, she had learned a couple of things from Agnes, anyway. She had learned that he had paid a month’s rent ahead, which meant he must have
intended to
come back. And she had learned that he had left at night, because it was the night man to whom he paid the money. But all in all, it wasn’t much. She still knew next to nothing. And it was not until the last week of March, when Wally Dennis happened to mention—just happened to mention!—that Dave had gone off with ’Bama Dillert, that she learned any more. Wally, apparently, had known it all along, since January.

Gwen had only the vaguest idea who ’Bama Dillert was. She had had him pointed out to her in town once or twice. A tall man in a western-style hat. He gambled. For a living. She also knew that Dave had been running around with him some. She had to pump Wally almost forcibly. “Well, damn it! sit back down and tell me about it.”

Well, Wally said looking startled. It appeared that he had run into Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson several times, out at Smitty’s Bar. He had discussed with them Dave’s leaving. Anyway, they said that the evening of the twentieth, Dave had been in to Smitty’s looking for ’Bama. When he didn’t find him, he left right away. Next day he was gone. And so was ’Bama. Neither had been back since.

“Where do you think they might have gone?” Gwen said.

“Probably down to Birmingham. That’s where ’Bama comes from. But you never know. That ’Bama,” he said admiringly. “They might just as easily be in Mexico City or California.”

“How long have you known all this, Wally?”

“Oh, first or second week in January, I think it was. First time I ran into Dewey Cole, anyway.” He got up. “Anyway, it was just at the time when I was working on the last part of that chapter on the girdle factory,” he said. He gathered up his new chapter.

Gwen watched him as he left, feeling once again that desire to laugh disgustedly and shake her head. Writers! They lived in sealed cells made of the hardened juices of their own exuded egos. What she would have liked to do was run down the room, laughing merrily, and boot Wally down the stairs. God, would he be surprised!—and not have the vaguest idea what she did it for. Damn the little snob! she thought angrily. Lord, she was getting so she swore as badly as a longshoreman or a soldier, associating with all these damned writers.

Well, that was that anyway. She felt considerably relieved. If Dave had gone off with this ’Bama somewhere, at least, he was probably in fairly competent hands. A man who makes his living gambling like that had to be fairly competent if he makes a living at it. Also, this ’Bama apparently had a wife somewhere down in the country, and owned property down there; and that meant he would come back. Of course, that did not necessarily mean Dave would
come
back with him; but still it appeared to increase the chances that he would, and she was somewhat relieved. But over her relief was a sudden outraged anger at him that grew and grew until it sent shivers of fire along her nerves. He had so much talent. And then to be going off with some bum of a gambler like that! Even if he did come back, and go back to work. All that time wasted.

Sometimes she wished she had never had anything to do with any of them. And, by God, someday she wouldn’t! Wally, Dave Hirsh, Mac Price, or any of the other, lesser ones. None of them, by God! None of them appreciated what the hell you did to help them, anyway. How could they appreciate it when they were never even aware of it? They were all alike, all of them. Gluttons, that’s what they were!—and not just for food, for everything! They wanted to make every woman in the world, and eat every meal, and drink every drink—and not just one of each, but all they could hold, until they fell over dead, or burst their gut, or fornicated themselves simple-minded! It was really pathetic in a way. All they wanted was to be loved. By everybody. And as far as they were concerned, for Love you had to read Sex; nothing else counted. Well, goddam them! she thought. All of them!

And Wallace French Dennis and D Hirsh would be the first. And yet, in spite of her anger, she had to admit she was still relieved. At least that ’Bama character would take care of him somewhat anyway. The stupid fool.

It was getting well on toward spring now, the prettiest time of the year on the campus—at least, for her—April and May. Even the air seemed to change. Walking along campus and looking off through the ocean of air and amongst the spotting branches of the big trees at the buildings, Gwen wondered if fish ever became aware of the water they lived in when it changed its seasons.

This last year, she had applied for a study in the library, and had been assigned one with a girl who was in the history department. And now in the spring increasingly, as well as during the winter, she did most of her work here. It was a dingy little room, with the two big ugly desks in it and paneled with dark melancholy oak because the library was one of the oldest buildings of the college, and she loved it.

The truth was, Parkman College had had a pretty precarious history. Founded in 1852, two years after the town itself, by a local Episcopalian widower, whose name was Samuel Pliny Earle, with the help of Bishop Philander Chase who also founded Kenyon, it was founded as a denominational Episcopalian seminary, endowed for twenty-five students. Samuel Pliny Earle lived long enough to see the original two small redbrick buildings built, and then died and was buried at his own request on the grounds.

After him, the Parkman Seminary—for so Samuel Pliny Earle insisted that it be named—crippled along through twenty-eight years of a considerably lean period. By 1865, it managed to add its third building (a tiny chapel) and to raise its enrollment to nearly fifty, but more than that it could not do and it almost went under doing that, and would have if it had not been for its local church.

But then in 1880, when it seemed it must gradually dwindle away now and die, politics saved it. It was reorganized and renamed Parkman College. It remained denominationally Episcopalian, and it kept its little divinity school, but now it offered a full college curriculum and dispensed bachelor of arts diplomas. More land was added to the original twenty acres and three new, and larger, redbrick buildings began to go up around the two tiny ones and their tiny chapel, and the largest of these was the library. This reformation was all the work of a local man named Judge Lysander Blaines. For the first time in its history, one of Parkman’s local sons had been elected to the state Senate, and this son was Lysander Blaines. He had been a poor boy who had studied at Parkman Seminary for the ministry and graduated there before he changed his mind and decided to enter the law because it paid better, but he had never forgotten his alma mater.