William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (34 page)

The mention of money was like speaking of ice cream to a child. Pookie looked up, cheerful once more. “Yeah, Milt. I’m going to Knoxville next week. Then Harriet’s coming down in January and we’ll get married.” Harriet squeezed his arm again, blushing tenderly. “What a deal I’ve got,” he went on. “The whole thing’s a prefabricated job on Army specifications, so my overhead’ll be cut down I figure by twenty per cent …”

“All this is secret, Milton,” Harriet broke in. She intended faintly to reprove Pookie, but there was pride in her voice. “Top secret. Including the wedding.”

“Aw, honey,” Pookie said, “it’s not a secret. The job, I mean. It’s just restricted. The general told me it’s just not the kind of stuff that’s supposed to get into the newspapers. Anyway, the wedding …”

“Anyway,” Loftis interrupted quickly, “anyway I’m proud to hear that you are doing …
so
… well. And my congratulations to
both of you.”
He extended both hands gravely across the table as he spoke, listening to the whimsical inflection in his voice, uncontrollable now, crassly insincere, he knew, and he watched—in amusement, chuckling to himself—the compliant, milky look of bewilderment come into their eyes. They were smiling, saying nothing. Harriet, he noticed, was not perfect after all—a sliver of gold sparkled behind one tooth. And he was saying, in a voice in which even a four-year-old could detect the tone of bogus good will,
this—
Great God!—this: “Old Pookie always makes out for himself O.K., doesn’t he? Getting married to a sharp gal like this who loves you for love alone, not for your money. Just like Dolly. You know how she still loves you; my God, Pookie, that’s why I’m having such a hard time getting with that woman. Why, God, man, don’t you see, can’t you tell, she loves you even now!” They were still smiling, with meekness and what seemed a little fear; each of them took one of his hands reluctantly, and beneath his skin theirs was damp and cool, ten fingers crawling nervously beneath, like round white worms.

“Why, man,” he went on helplessly, “don’t you see? You’ve got everything that the rest of us poor bastards don’t have. You’ve got position, standing, real position, success. Everything, Pookie! You got what makes a woman want to love you. You’ve got a real touch. Everything you touch turns to gold. Just like old Prince Mildass. And listen, Pookie—” he bent forward confidentially, winking at Harriet and bearing down firmly on Pookie’s hand—“listen, Pookie, don’t let anyone fool you. Don’t let anyone tell you that they marry you for your money, because they don’t. They marry you because you’re one hell of a …
grand
…
guy!
” He paused to drink, hating himself but exhilarated.

Their hands fell to the table. Pookie still smiled his doglike smile but Harriet, blinking her eyes, looked indignant. “Well, I never,” she said. Pookie too should wake up soon, even Pookie, and Loftis waited, drinking: poor bastards, if they only knew how, by merely sitting there blowing platitudes like bubbles through the air (now, “Sclater, he’s so drunk,” she was saying), they had crucified him, had cut him, like two kids playing with a knife, right to his heart, poor bastards, they’d say: Let’s leave him alone with his guilt, let’s leave him now, Sclater, Harriet honey. “Milt, dammit, boy,” Pookie was saying, his eyes small and dark with sudden puzzled resentment, a look Loftis had never seen there before, “Milt, dammit, I don’t know what you’re driving at, but I think you’d better lay off that bottle——”

His poise came crashing ungallantly down; the bottle slid from his lap, fell to the floor and broke. Whisky crept across the linoleum and he watched it for a second, then turned to look at Pookie, who stared at the spilled whisky, too. It didn’t matter—the whisky—it occurred to him, for in his overcoat there was another pint. But this: they had baited him, tortured him, no matter with what childish, stupid innocence. Tortured him they had indeed, and they were paying for it. Harriet pulled at Pookie’s sleeve, saying, “Darling, let’s go,” and as he looked up Loftis caught his eye and rose from his seat unsteadily. Poor Pookie, simple bastard, he thought, gazing down into the puzzled, resentful face: oh, Pookie, blessed are the meek and the unaware, blessed are the ill-informed, blessed are you, Pookie, though a woman drain you dry, because your heart is incorruptible and you shall inherit the earth. He thought of the sun porch and of Helen waiting, and he shivered in misery.

“Pookie,” he said, looking down, “you’re one hell of a
grand
…
guy.
The only trouble with you is—the only trouble is …”

Harriet rose in her seat. “Tell him off, Sclater!” she yelled, but Pookie was hypnotized.

Loftis stretched out his arm in a wide sweep, gesturing for peace, amity and forbearance, and remembered just at that instant, through miles of drunkenness, his mission, still unfulfilled. Dear God in heaven, what was he doing here? O Peyton.

“The only trouble with you is,” he said in a choked voice, “is that … oh, the hell with it.” He turned and went out of the restaurant blindly, past Harriet and the dumfounded Pookie, bearing in his arms the Confederate flag, a trophy without honor.

With three sandwiches bought from a boy near the stadium gate, with a container of coffee, with a program he had bought and had not wanted, with his pint bottle of whisky, with a pillow he had rented and an umbrella, and an orange badge pinned to his lapel, with the huge banner that drooped from his elbow and trailed along the gravel—with these he was utterly overwhelmed. From the stands a yell went up, but he was still behind the barrier and he couldn’t see. And at any rate someone was nudging him, shouting into his ear: “Ticket, please!” He asked the boy who was winning; the boy had very red cheeks and earmuffs, though the day was not that cold, and he roared, “We got ’em down on the ten-yard line!” Pillow and program fell from his arms: they had to, for his ticket was inside somewhere, buried deep in his pocket, among receipts, old letters, a railroad timetable. Another yell came from the parapet and a band, dismally off-key, played the victory song, while confetti swirled around him like fallen snow. “Already?” he murmured. “A touchdown already?” But the boy had disappeared.

Awkwardly descending the concrete steps, he found his seat, in a place conveniently athwart the student section where, he hoped, he might catch sight of her. The seat was in the center of a row and he sidled in, banging people with his pillow. There was another kickoff. He sat down. A wall of people, gray overcoats and pennants arose in front of him, behind, and on both sides of him. As he uncapped his bottle and placed all of his equipment on Hubert MacPhail’s empty seat, it became clear that he, too, somehow must rise, for convention’s sake. He peered down the row for Peyton, and got up, craning his neck toward the student section. “Sit down, Pop!” a boy’s voice cried behind him, and he turned, his hair bristling at his neck, and found that he alone was left standing. On the field there was a time out: someone had been hurt on the last play. Everyone was sitting but himself. Who had called him Pop? But he eased himself down, halfway into the lap of a young woman with prominent teeth, like himself very tight, who wrapped an arm around his neck and called him “Dugout Doug.”

“This is my husband, Arvin Lee Brockenborough,” she yelled over the noise, for behind them someone had begun to blow a gigantic horn. “Isn’t that a bearcat of a name?” She poked in the ribs a Navy chief petty officer, staring at the field, who was tanned and muscular and who, with huge hands propping up a gum-chewing jaw, pointedly ignored them both. “Arvin Lee, meet Dugout Doug!”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because you look just like him! Or—do you? It depends.”

“Like Mac——”

“Just like him, baby! Gimme a drink. Mmm. No, I don’t really think you do.”

Loftis took back his bottle from her, dipping the flagstaff, which he gripped in the other hand, in a jaunty salute. “Cheers, Mrs. Brockenborough!”

“Just call me Frances!”

“O.K., Frances!”

She smiled; there was a smear of lipstick on one of her large front teeth.

They drank. It was all very convivial, and shortly he became a friend in need to her. He told her of his troubles between the halves, when the tumult subsided except for brief sheeplike cries from the student section. A bottle bounced down behind them from tier to tier and finally shattered beneath their feet. “Ooo-h,” she said, clutching his arm. She put the edge of her blanket over his knees. “My daughter,” he said, “she’s in the hospital over there.” “Ooo-h,” she said, “poor Dugout. Is it bad?” “No, no, it’s very harmless, really, else I’d be over there, you see, instead of here.” Her mouth hung open; there was a long silence, a toothy, wordless commiseration.

Gray light rolled over the stadium. Above, an airplane hung in the sky, hovering nearly motionless. A high-school band, gay with plumes, paraded out onto the field and nobody watched or listened. On the other side of the field the stands were gaudy with blankets and pennants, a patchwork quilt upended. Somewhere a siren howled and died, and on the sidelines there was a brief clot of people, a fistfight, but two fat cops ran up brandishing sticks, and the spectators scattered in all directions, like boys from a firecracker. It was a moment of suspension, of gloom even, although the score was tied: it had nothing to do with the game. It seemed merely as if all these thousands had been seized at once by the same numbness: gathered here between the halves, sitting idly, mainly silent now, it was as if, imprisoned by their boredom, they had been here since the beginning of time and would go on being here forever. Loftis munched on a soggy cheese sandwich, dividing it with Frances. Arvin Lee had gone to get a hot dog.

“You see maybe how severe my quest is,” he said, wiping a crumb away, “what a trial it is to be so goddam drunk when—when, that is, when sobriety should be the password or watchword, rather.”

“That’s right, Dugout,” said Frances, “the whole goddam thing’s a trial, if you ask me. Arvin Lee’s crazy about football; he played for Thomas Jefferson High School, and he drags me out so I freeze my fanny——”

“Oh, not that,” Loftis broke in. “I love football. It’s just that—that——”

“That it’s a trial, it is. Poor Dugout. Is your wife pretty?”

“My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. My family has—— My daughter——”

“Yes, poor thing. She’s so sick.”

“No she ain’t. She’s right over there. Somewhere.”

“Who, Dugout honey? You said——”

“Peyton. My daughter.”

It seemed as if he had been gently awakened from a long sleep. The corners of his mouth hung down, drugged and paralyzed, and through the gray light of this soft, new-born consciousness it occurred to him first, prime and foremost
(order, order,
he found himself pleading) that he was not properly articulating. Yes, without a doubt, that was of the utmost importance. This lack of ar-tic-u-la-shun. And he turned to Frances—watching the players gallop to the field again, the people rising in front of him—to say, carefully, distinctly: “It’s her I’ve gots to find. My baby. I love her.” He couldn’t hear her reply, for there were renewed cheers, and the horn behind them again, loud, defiant, enormous; she blinked and smiled, shrieked something at him, and laid cold thin fingers beneath the blanket upon his leg. The awakening progressed slowly: someone, he noticed, had grabbed his Confederate flag, was waving it in great triumphant circles through the air, while his conscience, reviving from the brown depths of the day, told him that it was true: sitting here evading all, hiding his very identity among people for whom that fact, at least, was of no importance, he had committed the unpardonable crime. It was neither one of commission nor of omission, but the worst combination of both—of apathy, of a sottish criminal inertia—and it seemed that if he didn’t rise at this very moment, become sober, strike boldly, act like a man—it seemed that if he didn’t do all these things, his enormous sin would be advertised to the sky like a banner, and all these thousands would turn in their seats, the band silent, the players pausing to stand and face him grimly from the turf, even the drink vendors stiff and immobile in the aisles, all quiet, motionless, unblinking—to regard him with massive scorn and loathing. Even Frances. She squeezed down with her fingers on his leg, laughing furiously, and groped for his bottle. He looked at her without a smile, savoring this last minute of dereliction, and thought giddily of Peyton. Not to shelter her from Helen, from whatever catastrophe was in store for all of them today, had he wasted this last hour and a half, but only to anticipate seeing again that dear sweet face, only to make the meeting, once it came, more joyful by the long delay. Now no more of that. Ah, for a man to arise in me, that the man I am should cease to be. My father’s line.

Peyton baby, you and I must grow older in a day, we must face this thing together.

He gave the bottle to Frances and got up unsteadily and bowed. “For you,” he said loudly, “the sun, the moon, the stars, and this precious rationed pint of Old Crow.”

“Thanks, Dugout,” she said.

“Farewell,” he said.

“Aw, come back, Dugout!”

He slid past her. “I shall return,” he said, saluting, and then to Arvin Lee: “ ’Scuse me, Chief.”

“On your way, Dugout,” said Arvin Lee rudely.

He hunted for her until the end of the game, stumbling up and down the terrace of the student section, saying, “Do you know Peyton Loftis?” Some pointed in one direction and some in another, and he followed every lead, trying to keep out of people’s way. Once, to an alarmed girl and her boy friend with horn-rimmed glasses, he muttered, “I got to find her before Maudie dies,” and brought himself up short and turned away. There were tears in his eyes and the girl’s voice, fading, said “Crazy,” swallowed up in a roar as a long forward pass, which seemed to spin endlessly against the clouds, was caught for a touchdown. He bought a hot dog and an Eskimo Pie and refused drinks, in silver flasks which floated up to him out of the confusion, three times. Twice he stood erect and reverent when the Alma Mater was played, but he no longer knew the score, or cared, because of his desperate wild sorrow. At last, when the game had ended, he saw her far below on the field, surrounded by boys and girls, and he shouted, “Peyton! Peyton!” but he was being pushed upward and upward by the crowd, and he had lost his scarf. In the stands Frances still sat, now with her arm around someone else’s neck. Loftis turned to yell at Peyton again: it seemed miles away and, besides, she was gone. Pinned! He had lost her. His banner was lost, too, his pillow, his program, his scarf, but on the way out someone handed him a red balloon.