by James Jones
“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.”
“He sounds like a writer,” Dave said. “He has all the symptoms.”
“Him?” Dewey said. “He’s not a writer. I’ve known him all my life.”
“You mean he couldn’t be a writer because you knew him all his life?” Dave asked.
Dewey grinned sheepishly, and ducked his head. “I guess that did sound—insular.” It was an unexpected, strange word for him to use. “No, I meant he just didn’t seem like a writer.”
“How should a writer seem?” Dave said.
“Oh, you know. Different.”
“Strange?” Dave said.
“Yeah. Strange. Sort of,” Dewey grinned, and then picked up his beer bottle and drank, and Dave realized suddenly that he was not going to say any more; and he knew simultaneously that ’Bama would not say anything more, either, about him or his writing. Because men who lived their kind of lives learned early that incuriosity is, at certain times, just as important or more so than curiosity is at others.
“How come they’ll sell him beer?” Dave said, nodding at the door, and Dewey grinned with that look of malicious relish that he was beginning at last to recognize. It came whenever anything was said or done against the current moral code.
“Because officially he’s twenty-two,” Dewey grinned. “He fixed his driver’s license up himself last year when he was nineteen. Changed it to twenty-one. He says now he’ll be two years older than himself the rest of his whole life.”
Dave laughed. He could hear ’Bama horse-walking lazily up behind him. “They really know how old he is, don’t they?”
“Sure but hell, they don’t care. Long as the law can’t get them. See, he plays a trombone in a dance band around here, that’s how he gets spending money. His old lady’s got a fair chunk of dough, I guess. But I guess she holds on to it. Her husband’s dead. Owned his own company during the oil boom.”
“The trombone accounts for the long hair,” Dave said, getting up to let the tall man in. Dewey nodded.
’Bama did not sit down. Instead he leaned on his hands on the edge of the table, one leg stiff throwing the buttocks out so far that they seemed disjointed, and looked down into the booth. “Well, are you guys all through di-sectin love and women?” he sneered.
“All through,” Dewey said. “Sit down.”
’Bama shook his head. “Where’s the kid? He didn’t get mad, did he?” There was almost a tone of anxiety in his voice.
“Naw, he just left.”
“Without payin for them beers,” Hubie said.
“He never does,” ’Bama said.
“Come on, sit down,” Dewey said.
’Bama shook his head, grinning. “I got to make my rounds.” Then he seemed to think better of it and slid into the booth. “Wait just a minute,” he said to Dave. “What’s on the agenda for tonight?” he asked the others. “There’s a good hockey game on over at Indianapolis.”
“Yeah and I wanted to see that game,” Dewey said.
Hubie poked him in the arm. “We’ve got that paperin job we’ve got to get at, Dewey,” he cautioned. “That job’s past overdue now.”
Dewey looked at him disgustedly.
“Well, you told me to remind you.”
“He’s right,” Dewey said reluctantly. “We got this papering job I’ve been putting off for a month. The people are beginning to get on me.”
“Then I guess you stay home,” ’Bama said. “Anyway, we don’t have to decide it now. You’ll be down at Smitty’s later, won’t you? I thought we might go over there to the game and take Dave here with us.”
Once again, Dave had that curious feeling of something conspicuous that he couldn’t put his finger on, in the way ’Bama used his first name so familiarly.
“Can you get me a woman, too?” he asked suddenly.
“Hell yes, two if you want ’em,” ’Bama sneered. “What flavor do you prefer?”
“One’s plenty,” Dave grinned. “But I really can’t go. I’m supposed to go out to Frank’s for dinner, and I won’t get away from there in time to make the game.”
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’Bama shrugged. “It don’t matter if we go to the game or not. The thing is to go. They got some nice after-hours places over there.”
“I’ll try to get away by ten,” Dave said. His palms felt sweaty at the thought of a woman. He hadn’t thought to stock up a little, back in Chicago. And he had had a bad afternoon. A woman helped. For a while, at least.
“All right, let’s figure I’ll meet you at the Athletic Club,” ’Bama said. “That’s a poolroom up the street.”
“Okay,” Dave said, but suddenly depressed at the prospect, “and if I’m not there, you go ahead.”
“Right,” ’Bama said, and made as if to get out of the booth. He seemed jitterish to get going. “And we’ll go from there to Smitty’s.” He got out so Dave could sit back down. He did not have a topcoat.
“Where’s Smitty’s?” Dave said.
“Another bar. Out north.” ’Bama was now standing motionless, his hands jammed under his coat skirts in his pants pockets, looking out through the window up front at the wet streets and damp cars, the shining Stetson still just exactly where it had been ever since he’d pushed it back with his thumb when Dave first met him.
Dave had again that strange feeling of having been dumped unceremoniously into the middle of this town, right square into the middle of its personalities and conflicts and allegiances. Dumped like a chunk of beef, down into a yowling pack of cats. He sat down.
“It’s funny,” he said aloud, “me showing up back here, and meeting people, and finding out so much about so many others. I never had any idea there was as much going on in this town as there seems to be.”
“Oh, this is quite a town,” Dewey said almost protectively. “There’s a lot more goes on in this town than an out-of-stater drivin through might think. And sooner or later, this place right here is where it all winds up and where the business all gets done.
“Unless of course you belong to the Elks or Country Club,” he said.
“Here or Smitty’s,” the standing ’Bama said indifferently.
“There don’t seem to be much winding up here right now,” Dave said.
“This is working hours now. Wait’ll this afternoon. And after supper,” Dewey said. “This is where your old man hangs out most the time,” he added.