Tomorrow Is Forever (20 page)

Dick whistled again. This time his response was uncomfortable. “Gee—I'm not sure I can follow you that far, Mr. Kessler. That takes a lot of getting used to.”

“You're a very patriotic fellow, aren't you, Dick?”

“You bet I am. What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing, right now. But that's why the ideal of individual dignity is so dangerous. It ultimately denies patriotism.”

“I don't get it.”

“Don't you? Don't you see that love for your country implies that your countrymen are somehow more worth loving than foreigners?”

“Well, from the foreigners I've seen, I think they are—oh gosh, excuse me, Mr. Kessler. But you don't seem like a foreigner.”

Kessler smiled. “That's all right, I'd rather have you say what you think than be artificially polite. But this ideal of nationalism grew up when it was so hard to move around in the world that each little political group could keep to itself. They can't do that any more. Did you read in the paper the other day that a Liberator bomber had crossed the Atlantic in six hours and twenty minutes? You've certainly read these airline ads everybody's been quoting, about no place on earth being more than sixty hours from the airport. The world's tightening up. We aren't used to it. Our hearts still cling to our own spadeful of earth, and we don't realize that the other spadefuls are so close they can fall over our fences any minute.”

“Holy smoke,” said Dick. “I guess I never thought about that before, not like you say it. I don't believe most other people have either.”

“Haven't you noticed,” said Kessler with a certain grim amusement, “that this country is still somewhat bewildered about the purposes of this war?”

“You bet I have. I was bewildered too. That's why I wanted to talk to you.”

“This country is still uncertain,” said Kessler, “because it has gone into the war on the side of history. The people know it's the right side, they're fighting valiantly for victory, but they're frightened at what victory will mean.”

“It will mean—?” Dick stopped.

“That Americans will have to go on, marching through more blood and pain toward a goal they are not sure they can bear to reach. You
are
fighting for the coolies, Dick, not because you give a damn what becomes of the coolies but because you care a great deal about what becomes of yourself. You don't dare not to fight for them. They've come so close to you that what happens to them touches you already, and will touch your children even more. Don't stop to think of this now if it's too much. I know it's terrifying. Go on and fight for your country. That's what is being asked of you now.”

“I want to think about it,” said Dick. “But you don't think I'm a dope because I'm—well, kind of shocked, do you?”

Kessler laughed a little. “Of course not. It's the most shocking conception that has shaken the minds of men and women since they were asked to believe that on the other side of the earth people were walking upside down. If you said you weren't shocked by it, I shouldn't believe you.”

Dick rambled among his own thoughts for a moment. At length he inquired, “How did you come to think of all this?”

“I was pretty badly hurt in the last war,” Kessler answered frankly. “When a man's life is so violently changed, he has to do a lot of thinking. At first I thought in terms of individuals, each learning to manage his own problems. But when hell broke loose again I had to start thinking all over, not in terms of individuals only but in terms of the human race. That's all.”

Again Dick was silent. He thought, contemplating himself, the world, and himself again. Finally he said,

“Well, I'm going to stick to my own country awhile. I like Americans and you can say what you please but by and large I do think they're more decent than other people. Of course, we'll be liberating the Greeks and Poles and Russians and Norwegians and the rest, but especially we'll be keeping the United States okay. I guess we'll make it better than it is when we clean up those fascist b—excuse me, when we clean up those palookas. We'll be that much ahead. We'll get the Four Freedoms anyway, and that's something.”

“Be careful, Dick,” said Kessler. “Don't expect too much.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you go out with any expectation that when you get this war over anything will be cleaned up for good and all, you'll run into the same disillusion that licked the generation just ahead of you. It's not that easy.”

“I don't expect it to be easy! I know it's going to be tough.”

“It will be tough, you're right about that. You'll go through the hardest training ever devised for military men; you'll be sent into a desert or a jungle or some frozen island; you'll fight disease and bombs and submarines, because you believe in freedom. Then at last you'll get it over and come home, to your own free, gallant country. And you'll walk right up to a summer resort that advertises ‘restricted clientele.' You'll meet another man who went through what you did, because he, like you, believed in freedom, and you'll see him unable to buy a sandwich in a drug store because they don't serve niggers. You'll hear comfortable ladies and gentlemen arguing comfortably that there'd be no unemployment if men would only work. You'll be told that free lunches in poverty-stricken school districts are merely another way of pampering the thriftless. You'll find that nine men and women out of ten don't care what happens to anybody anywhere, don't even notice it unless it interferes with their own personal convenience. And you'll stand in the midst of all the stupidity and cruelty and senselessness of your own country, saying to yourself, ‘If this is taken for granted in the freest nation in the world, what can the others be like?'—and you'll remember the bloody horrors behind you and wonder if they were all for nothing.”

He stopped, almost sorry he had said so much. Dick was looking down at the rug. Kessler had decided to tell him the truth as he saw it, but now he wondered if he had been right to blurt out all the truth. Dick looked up.

“No I won't,” he said abruptly.

He stood up and pushed his chair away, and then, awkwardly, finding that he had nothing to do with his hands he stuck them into his pockets.

“I swear I won't, Mr. Kessler! I
won't
get to believing it was all for nothing. I'll feel pretty bad sometimes—I guess nobody can help that, especially not right out of a war—but if we win this one I'll know it wasn't all for nothing. I'll remember what you've been telling me.”

Kessler leaned forward again, supporting himself on his cane. “Will you, Dick?” he asked, his voice tense with eagerness. “Will you promise me to remember?”

“I do promise you. I will remember. About the long hard march you were telling me about, and how we go ahead through history even when we can't see it ourselves. I'll remember about the Babylonian prince, and the pyramids, and the times when it never even occurred to anybody that people were people. I'll know it's better, there is more decency than there used to be, and if I can't see it, it's just because I can't see a thousand years at once.”

“Remember it, Dick. It's your only salvation.”

“No it's not.” Dick started to get red. He looked down at his shoes, and started talking fast to get it over. “I'll tell you something else, Mr. Kessler, about what I'm going to remember, after the war and during it. I hope you won't think I'm being sappy or sentimental or anything—but gosh—I mean—I'll remember you.” He turned redder.

“Thank you, Dick,” Kessler said quietly. “I'm glad you think I'm worth remembering.”

“You are,” said Dick. Still looking down, he kicked at a corner of the rug. “I mean—oh I know it's not polite to make personal remarks but I can't say it any other way—I mean for a guy that got shot to pieces in one war and then saw what happened in Germany and should have thought it was all for nothing if anybody ever did but can still talk the way you do—anywhere they send me, Alaska or the Pacific islands or anywhere—I'll remember you.”

He looked up then, but his embarrassment would permit his eyes to go no farther than the clock. “Gee, it's late,” he exclaimed before Kessler could answer his last speech and tempt him into any more sentimental outbursts. “They'll be wondering what's become of me. I've got to go.”

Kessler did not try to detain him. Dick got out a few words about its having been fine to be here, and hurried to the door. They made a few commonplace remarks to each other, and Dick, still abashed by his confession, ran to his bicycle. Standing in the doorway, Kessler watched him swing across the bicycle and scurry off. He wondered if Dick would come back to remember anything, or if he would come back with his strong young body shattered into such wreckage as his own.

“He might have been my son,” Kessler was thinking. “Good God, what I've sent him into. If he had been my son, I wonder if I should have said all that to him. I'd have had to send him into it just the same. But he believes me. That's something. He believes me.”

His eyes were stinging. He pushed his shoulder against the door and shut it quickly, lest somebody come by and see that he was crying.

11

D
ick announced to his parents that he was not going to finish this year at UCLA, and not going to wait at home until he was eighteen. He was going to join the Marines right now, if they'd have him.

Spratt told him to go ahead. “This is one place where you've got to make up your own mind,” he said. “I'm not going to boss you.”

To her own surprise, Elizabeth was able to answer him steadily. If it had to happen, it had to happen. She said, “Go ahead, Dick. It's all right with me.”

“Thanks,” Dick said shortly. But he stood there, evidently wanting to say more. After a moment he pulled up a chair with his foot and sat straddling it. “I was talking to Kessler the other day,” he began. “He told me a lot about the war, and all that. He said he thought I ought to tell you—” He hesitated.

“Tell us what, Dick?” Spratt prompted him.

“Well—about making you understand that I didn't want to join the Marines just because I was excited or anything like that. About why this war is something we've got to do. You know it's got to be done, don't you?”

“Yes, we know it's got to be done,” Spratt answered decisively. “I don't mind saying I'm sorry you've got to do it, Dick. But since you've got to, I'm glad you want to.”

“And this war's got to be different from the last one,” Dick persisted. “This time we've got to finish it, not leave everything up in the air the way it was before. You understand that too, don't you?” He looked at Elizabeth.

“Oh yes!” she exclaimed fervently. “I'm not very good at praying, but I feel like going down on my knees a dozen times a day to ask, ‘Oh God, make this one different!'”

“That's a coward's prayer,” Dick blurted rudely.

“Why—what do you mean?”

“I mean it is. Honestly, I've got a lot of things straight I never had before. Kessler didn't say just this, but I mean—well,” he said defiantly, “just asking God to make this one different is being like some squash-bottomed middle-aged dame eating chocolates and praying, ‘Please, God, don't let me get fat.' God answered her prayer when he gave her brains enough to know candy would make her fat. The rest is up to her. If this war is going to be different we've got to
make
it be different—don't you see? It's up to us. Unconditional surrender, and then go on from there. Don't you see what I mean?”

He spoke with a pleading earnestness. His parents were hearing him in astonishment. They had never heard Dick talk like this before.

All of sudden, as Dick went on to tell them something of what Kessler had told him, Elizabeth realized that Dick had grown up. It dawned upon her that this must inevitably have happened whether or not there had been a war. Spratt had understood this better than she had, and it was this understanding, and not merely a smaller realization of the price of war, that had made Spratt less reluctant than herself to let him go. War or no war, they could not have kept him, and if this means of separation was a particularly cruel one, it was still only another way of bringing about what would have had to happen anyway. How much worse it would have been, she thought with a painful wrench, if he had clung to them. Hard as this was, it would have been harder to have Dick try to evade what Spratt had called the challenge of his generation.

But instead of trying to evade it he had tried to understand it, and now, in halting sentences full of clichés and schoolboy colloquialisms, he was trying to make them understand it too.

The future against the past—he was right.

“It makes sense!” Dick was saying. “You do get it, don't you?”

“Yes, I do get it,” Spratt answered decisively. “I'm proud of you.”

“Well, I didn't figure it out all by myself. I'm not that smart. But in times like this, you do like to know what you're doing.” Dick stood up and kicked his chair aside. “I guess you do understand,” he said, and gave them a grin that was half embarrassed and half relieved.

Elizabeth came over to him. “Yes, we do. Go ahead, Dick. I mean it.” She took his face between her hands and kissed him. It was the first kiss she had given him in a long time, and he kissed her back without minding it.

“I've got to go call up Pudge,” he announced. “He and I have been talking a lot about the Marines.”

He went out, banging the door so lustily that Elizabeth started. She went over and sat on the arm of Spratt's chair. He put his arm around her and she leaned against him.

“You're a good sport, Elizabeth,” he said to her.

“No I'm not. I'm shaking inside. But he doesn't know it.”

“So am I,” said Spratt, “but he doesn't know it. I think he's a pretty good sport too, if you ask me.”

They stayed like that for a long time, but they did not say anything else. How good it was, Elizabeth was thinking, to be married to a man you could communicate with even when you were not talking.

Early in March Dick and his friend Pudge went down to enlist in the Marines.

Elizabeth was in her room, writing checks for the month's bills, when he telephoned her.

“Mother!”

“Yes, Dick? What happened? Tell me!”

“Mother, they took me!”

(“This is your chance, Elizabeth,” she was telling herself. “Do it right”)

“Oh Dick, they did really? I knew they would!”

“They took us both, me and Pudge both! He's phoning his folks now. They took us both, mother!”

“After all, how could they help it? As if they wouldn't be proud to get you.”

“Well, I sort of thought they'd take me, but you know how it is. They said there was nothing wrong with me, and gosh, by this time they'd sure know if there was. You never heard of such an overhauling as they gave us. There's nothing wrong with your son, Mrs. Herlong.”

“I knew there wasn't. I'm so proud of you, Dick.”

“We'll be going to boot-camp any day now. San Diego. Look, I've got to get out of this booth, there's other fellows wanting the phone, but I just wanted to tell you they took me. You'll phone the boss?”

“Right away. When are you coming home?”

“Pretty soon. We kind of want to talk about it.”

“Of course you do. I'll call the boss now. He'll want to know it.”

“Okay.”

Dick banged up the phone. Elizabeth heard the click and replaced her phone for a moment, then picked it up and dialed the studio. “Extension 269, please,” she said. “Lydia? This is Elizabeth Herlong. May I speak to my husband? Spratt, this is Elizabeth. Dick just called from downtown. He's passed his physical. They took him.”

“They did? Sure, I knew they would. Nothing wrong with Dick.” He hesitated an instant. “And you?”

“Fine.”

“You mean it, don't you? You sound like it.”

“Of course I mean it. I'm all right, Spratt.”

He laughed softly. “Good. Keep it up.”

“Can I keep it up?” she wondered when she had put the phone back again. “Of course I can. Nothing we can give up to win this war can be compared to what we'll give up if we lose it. We lost the last one. Nothing would be worse than making Dick's generation do it again after this. Oh God, please give us strength to get it over this time! Don't let them go through it twice!” Remembering what Dick had said about a coward's prayer, she repeated, “Give us strength to get it over.”

She went back to her desk and began counting the meat coupons. There should be chops at least for dinner tonight, something in the way of a celebration.

She had to try at three markets, but at last she got the chops, and made it a celebration. Spratt was proud, Brian full of envy and excitement, Cherry a little tremulous but thrilled. “It will be the first time any of us have been separated, really,” she said, but she spent half the evening calling up her friends to tell them she had a brother in the Marines. Dick was delighted. “If they had turned me down—gosh, it
must be
tough on those 4F fellows. Imagine wanting to go and having them turn you down.”

After dinner he went off to see Pudge. Elizabeth smiled proudly to herself. Strange, but you really could take it when the time came. That night Spratt came into her room.

“Thought I'd sleep in here with you. Mind?”

“Mind? I was just going in to sleep with you. Spratt—I was all right, wasn't I?”

“You bet you were.” They got into bed and he put both his arms around her. “Now you can say anything you please about it. If you feel like crying, that's all right with me.”

“You should know by this time I'm not much given to crying. I just wanted to be with you.” She put her head against his shoulder. “You were pretty splendid, Spratt. Anybody would have thought going off to war was just what you'd hoped he'd do since the day he was born.”

She felt him draw a long breath. “Well, it wasn't. Lord, I wonder if it's this tough on everybody.”

Elizabeth felt a pain coming up into her throat. Though she was not, as she said, much given to crying, the pain turned into a sob against Spratt's shoulder. She whispered, “I'm sorry, Spratt.”

“Sorry?” said Spratt. “What do you suppose I'm here for?”

Though the days that came afterward were not easy, they were easier than the first one. She seemed to have a great deal to do. There were parties, with Dick rushing about importantly and Cherry engrossed with clothes, for nearly all Dick's friends were going into some branch of the service. Brian strutted. “My brother, you know, the one that's in the Marines. Getting off to boot-camp next week.”

Dick left for boot-camp early one morning. Elizabeth was not sure what either she or Spratt had said to him. There was a great deal of, “Lucky it's only to San Diego. You'll be getting in for Sundays sometimes.” And Dick, “Wait till you see me in a GI haircut. Won't know me.” Spratt shook hands with him, grinning in spite of a faint mist about his eyes. Elizabeth kissed him goodby. As she did so, Dick whispered to her, “You two are swell. Tell the boss I said so. Some of these mothers—the scenes they do put on! You wouldn't believe it.”

It was an accolade. Elizabeth got into the car to go home, knowing she had done it well.

Brian and Cherry went to school. Spratt had to go to the studio, but before he left he said, “Let's go out to dinner tonight. There's no sense moping through the first evening. I'll reserve a table at Chasen's.”

“Oh yes,” she exclaimed, “let's do go out. With some other people.”

“The Stems? Kessler?”

“All right.”

“I'll call them,” said Spratt. He got into his car again, and waved at her.

Fortunately, she was very busy around the house. It was the day for the laundryman, the cleaner and the gardener, there was a call from the Red Cross blood bank asking if she wasn't ready to make another donation, and another call from a man who asked if she would consider taking a shift at an aircraft observation post. She had no time to stop and think. When Brian and Cherry came in, they were very busy too. Brian had to see Peter Stern about an important Scout meeting for the salvage drive. Cherry said, “It seems queer without Dick around, doesn't it? I've got to go down to the canteen. I may be latish getting in, but Julia's mother will be there, she'll drive us home.”

Spratt came in early. “The Sterns and Kessler will meet us at Chasen's. How do you feel?”

“Fine. I'm glad you thought of going out. It is better than just staying around. I'm going to wear that tight black dress and the crystal necklace.”

When she was dressed and standing before her mirror, Spratt came in. “You look beautiful. Thank the Lord for a woman who keeps her figure.”

“I don't get time to sit down long enough for it to spread. I do look rather well in this dress, don't I?”

“You look rather well, period,” said Spratt. He picked up her mink coat from the bed. The fur brushed his cheek as he held it out to her, and he grinned. Elizabeth said,

“Remember when you got raised to a hundred a week?”

“Do I! Never had heard of so much money.” He chuckled.

“Neither had I,” said Elizabeth. “You came dashing into the apartment like the boy who had just made the only touchdown of the game. You said—” She stopped. What he had said was “And just at the right time, too! Now we can afford a special nurse when you have the baby!”

Spratt remembered too. His mouth tightened. He said, “I guess we can't help it, can we? But it's no use trying not to remember those things.”

“No. We've had such a lot together, and we have such a lot. I'm not cracking up, Spratt. Believe me.”

“I believe you. You're all right, Elizabeth.”

He put the coat around her. She smiled at him as their eyes met in the glass. “And he's only gone to San Diego,” said Elizabeth.

Chasen's was gay and full of noise. Mr. and Mrs. Stern met them there, and Kessler arrived a few minutes later. While he was giving her a compliment on how well she looked, Elizabeth was thinking, “Mr. Kessler knows how tough this is, even better than Spratt knows. Mr. Kessler knows what war is. Spratt, these others, they can imagine it, but they don't
know
.”

“Drinks?” said Spratt.

“Yes,” said Irene Stern. “I'd like a Manhattan and I feel like having it double.”

“So do I,” said Elizabeth.

Spratt nodded. Irene put her hand over Elizabeth's. While her husband was saying something to Spratt, Irene half whispered, “I'm just beginning to understand what you've been up against, Elizabeth. Jimmy was seventeen yesterday. He doesn't want to wait to be drafted. Do you think it will be over by next year?”

“I don't know. I know I need that Manhattan, though.”

When the drinks were brought, she saw Kessler's eyes on her. He was watching her with a look that was gentle, almost tender. All of a sudden the idea that had not troubled her for months came back with astonishing force. She knew that man, she was sure of it. She was sitting at his right side. Her eyes dropped to his hand, just closing around the stem of his glass. That enormous, strong right hand—sometimes a hand was more revealing than a face. But the hand told her nothing. She looked up at his face again. It must be his eyes, or the way his hair grew. But his hair, though it was still thick, had withdrawn at his temples; if she had ever known him it must have been a long time ago, and no young man's hair grew like that unless he was prematurely bald—not his hair, then, but something. He saw her scrutiny, and smiled.