Some Came Running

by James Jones

  Of course, the #1 was one of the most expensive models Randall made—twenty-two dollars; twenty-five, with the stag handle and the wrist thong—but Wally felt this was offset by the versatility of use he would have for it. And, of course, he would then have it if the Army ever got him, and should there be another war. Just about everybody, including himself, now accepted the fact that there would be another war before he would ever be near old enough to be safe from it. So really the #1 was the most practical choice.

  Swallowing the last of the beer, he studied the picture. It was a sort of a game he played with himself. Like getting out the Sears-Roebuck catalog when you were a kid. He had changed his mind and decided on different Randall models several times, pretending he was going to buy one of them instead of the #1 so that he might compare their various merits and faults, but in the end he always came back to the #1 as being the most practical. For him.

  He carried his dishes to the sink and and then came back and closed the Randall catalog and put it back on the lazy susan. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee and carried it into the living room to make his call to Gwen.

  The big, old, ornate china clock on the massive oak mantel said it was ten minutes past one. On Thursdays, Gwen had no one o’clock class, and could always be found in her little cubbyhole of an office in the English Department, working on that critical book of hers. She could usually be found there after school, too.

  Sipping at the coffee Wally laid himself down in the big overstuffed main chair, draping a leg over one arm, and picked up the phone and dialed the number of the English Department.

  He still had this date with Dawn tonight—provided, of course, Dawn did not, in her unpredictable way, decide to break this one, too—but there wasn’t much to do, except take her to the show or go pub crawling, so she might as well ride over to Gwen’s with him.

  Actually, and as usual, in the interim since quitting work he had got to feel more and more that the two rewritten chapters might not be as good as he had earlier thought, and because of this he wanted Gwen to read them and brag on them more than ever now, in order to reassure him.

  As he talked, Wally listened to his own voice putting forth into the phone an enthusiasm which he himself did not feel at all, and was not even intending to convey. After he hung up, he sat and stared at the mantelpiece.

  This horrible old house, he thought looking at the oak mantel. Sometimes he actually, actively hated it. But more than the house he hated all the other newer houses—none of them over ten years old—which had been built up all around them. In the heyday of his father, when he built this house in the twenties, this place had very nearly covered a whole damned city block. Gradually, after he died, after first selling his oil company, his mom had during the Depression sold off pieces of the grounds to keep them going. In rigid tempo to the state of their finances, the new houses had risen around them, encroaching further and further, until now there were six of them, and the old house had left just barely enough ground for itself and its garage. Wally had no idea what had happened to all the money his father was supposed to have left; but with a shrewdness considerably beyond his years, he suspected Old Judge Deacon, who handled the estate for his mom, was probably now in possesion of a good part of it; and with a cynicism at times approaching the shrewdness, if not equalling it, he was quite sure an investigation would show there was nothing illegal or untoward about how judge had got hold of it.

  But on the other hand, he found it both difficult and unpleasant to think people really did things like that—except in movies, or a novel—so most of the time he just put it aside and did not believe it. There wasn’t anything he could do about it anyway. He was supposed to have an inheritance of his own of over fifteen thousand dollars, which he would come into when he was twenty-seven. He could only hope the judge hadn’t got his fingers into that, too.

  He had talked to his mom a number of times about selling this house and buying or building a smaller, more modern one. Her answer was always that she could not get out of it what it was worth and she did not intend to give it away. But the truth was, she just couldn’t stand the thought of giving it up. Her latest idea was to take in roomers—schoolteachers, she said, young, single teachers, and Gwen could help her find some; reliable ones. He had managed to talk her out of that one. The truth was, he did not want to move, either. One of his fondest daydreams was to someday—when he was a rich, famous writer—buy up all the six houses and tear them down and restore the old man’s estate to its original lines. But at least he didn’t make a goddam symbol out of it, like his mom.

  Wally did not remember his father. He had what he called “secondhand memories”—stories about about him and his father, which had been told him so often by the family that they seemed to be things he remembered. But he had no real ones, and he was always careful to differentiate between the two.

  The old guy had died—suddenly, painlessly—of a heart attack, when he himself was less than three. A combination of too much work, too much good living, not enough exercise, and Bingo! the doctor had said later. He had died, Wally preferred to think, as cold-bloodedly, and with the same unemotional dispatch, that he displayed in everything he did.

  Resolutely, he pulled his mind back from its ramblings and put it upon the subject he had really been thinking about all the time:

  He did not know what to do with Dawn.

  In the beginning, he had thought Dawn would make him an excellent mistress. She liked the same things he did, and to talk about the same things. They were both creative types, and both were intensely interested in the arts. She was pretty sophisticated for a high school girl, almost as sophisticated as he was; and they saw eye-to-eye on the dismal sorriness of Parkman, Illinois. And in addition, she was intelligently uninhibited when it came to discussing sex, like he was himself. Also, she would be going away to school next year so he did not have to worry about marrying her. Then when she came home summers, they could take up again. Of course, if she ran away to New York to act, he would lose her. But outside of that, and in fact, just about the only thing he could find wrong with the setup was that she lived at home and no place where they could go. But everything else had seemed fine.

  But then, gradually, other things began to become apparent. For one thing, Dawn was turning out to be very unstable. Not reasonable at all. She broke dates, she threw tantrums, she would deliberately try to make him jealous, at times she tried publicly to snob him, and he had learned for a fact that whenever she was not with him she talked about him as though she thought him a child. And in spite of the fact that she was quite open—and even voluntarily frank—in discussing sex drives and desires and relationships, he had never been able yet to get her to go to bed with him. Obviously, she had an unhappy home life; but then what the hell? so did he. There was apparently some other, some unknown quantity in this tentative equation he had not been able to isolate. He had no idea what it could be, but it was making the equation insoluble, and he was getting damn bored with it.

  And the result was, he was not getting the sexual satisfaction he had expected and that a man of his age required, and which was one of the main reasons he had started this whole thing. He still had to make the same old run over to Terre Haute to one of the whorehouses. And it took more money than he could afford. Especially when he was spending a good part of his funds on Dawn herself.

  If he didn’t know the driving power of her ambitions to act, he could almost have believed she was actually trying to marry him. But he knew she wasn’t. You might almost think she was a virgin? But he knew pretty positively, from several of the guys in school, that she wasn’t.

  Oh, the hell with it. Wally picked up the book he was currently reading. It was called Decisive Battles Their Influence upon History and Civilization, by J F C Fuller, a British major general. He had been reading quite a few books on military history lately, to prepare himself for when the Army got him. But now he couldn’t hold it. Irritating mind twitches kept him from conce
ntrating. He put the book down and went across the hall into the “Music Room,” his mom called it. He looked at his trombone, sitting in one corner, then looked away. He looked at the not-expensive guitar, in another corner, which he had taken in on a trade for his old bicycle. They were playing a dance next weekend in Terre Haute—at the goddamned Eagles Lodge, of all goddamned places—and he would be able to pick up a few bucks. This great big old house was so goddamned deathly quiet.

  If she didn’t want to go with him over to Gwen’s, she damned well didn’t have to, he thought angrily. After all, he told himself, more calmly, he wasn’t getting anything out of it anyway.

  Finally, he sat down at the baby grand his mom had never been quite able to bring herself to part with and began picking out multiple melodies in thirds and fifths. He was still at it, concentrating so raptly, that when the phone rang in the hall he was shocked, and for a moment didn’t know what had happened.

  He went out in the hall and picked up the phone.

  “Hello; Wally?” it said.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Ed DeLancie, Wally.”

  “Oh, hi, Ed!” he said; “I didn’t know who it was. How’s the shop doing, Ed?”

  “Okay, Wally,” Ed DeLancie said. “That’s what I called you for. A woman brought her radio in to be fixed, and I’m too busy to do it. It needs a good little bit of repair and adjustment. You want to do it for me?”

  “Well; how much is in it?” Wally said.

  “Oh, four or five bucks.” In the background, Wally could hear the little door-hung bell tinkle. “Just a minute, Wally,” Ed DeLancie said.

  Wally smiled, seeing him in his mind’s eye. Tall, slender, aristocratic already at thirty-five, with those professor-ish rimless gold glasses, getting up from the battered workbench where the phone was and stepping to the counter he had made himself, in that little shop Wally knew so very well. Wally had worked for Ed from the sixth grade all through high school until he took off for Florida, in his little concrete block Tinker Shop where he fixed radios and lawnmowers and just about any other mechanical equipment and held the local Harley-Davidson and Indian—and now Triumph—dealerships. It was Ed who had first got him started riding motorcycles.

  “Excuse me, Wally,” Ed’s voice came back on. “Some lady with an electric fan she wants fixed. Well, how about it?”

  “Okay. Sure, I’ll do it,” Wally said. Ed put him onto little jobs like this from time to time. “I can sure use the money.”

  “How soon are you going to come over and eat dinner with us again?”

  “Soon,” Wally grinned into the phone. “Maybe I’ll stay tomorrow night.” After he hung up, he stood looking down at the phone.

  It was funny, Wally thought; Old Ed. Wally was still sort of “Ed’s boy”—just because he had worked for him all those years. He grinned affectionately. Old Ed had taught him a lot. Ed had known he was hard up, so he had gone out of his way to talk his ’cycle up to that Towns boy just on the strength that he might want to sell it. Just like he put him onto these jobs, which he always took, even though he didn’t enjoy doing them anymore. Old Ed, he was probably the only man in town who had understood an inkling of his sudden ambition to be a writer. But even he doesn’t really understand it, Wally thought; he just likes me.

  Wally stopped in the doorway of the Music Room. The big house sounded echoingly silent again. Something about Ed DeLancie’s call distressed him. Loneliness, probably, he thought. For a moment, he thought of going down to his workbench in the basement and doing something. He had not been down there in over a year, except to do some job for Ed. And yet he used to spend almost all his time down there, doing one experiment or another, building something. He had built that workbench himself, years ago when he was still a kid, and had strung the wiring for the lights himself. That was back when his ambition was to be a radio technician. He still had all his old Popular Mechanics and Popular Science magazines, together with his correspondence course papers from the course he took in radio. Whenever he thought about them and his old workbench, he had such a painfully powerful affection for it, sitting down there by itself, that it was as if it were a real live person and somehow or other he had let it down. He had worked at it like a real son of a bitch for almost six years.

  And then suddenly, it had been gone, it no longer interested him. And with a dim half-realized feeling of guilt and loss of confidence that was two-thirds fright at his inability to be perfect, he had gradually dropped it. It had been the same thing with music later on in high school. The same thing with motorcycles, too. He always found himself unequal to it, whatever it was, inadequate. Somebody could always do it better than he could.

  The thought of music suddenly sickened him, and he turned and went across the hall to the living room and back to the chair, but he did not try to read. Instead, he sat down and shut his eyes and tried to think himself away from his nervous bodily reactions which were upsetting him again.

  At five-thirty, feeling weary, he went up to his room and kicked off his moccasins and pulled on his best western boots. They went on his feet like gloves going onto hands, and he experienced a momentary lift of spirits.

  “Cowboy boots,” he said aloud, “are the only really efficient footwear ever invented. With the raised heel and fitted instep, your foot slides down till it molds the soft instep to it and keeps your toes from cramping up. For comfort, there is nothing like it.”

  Then, shouldering into his Air Force surplus fleece-lined jacket, he took his two chapters off the desk and went to pick up Dawn.

  At the Hirshes’, he found Dawn already waiting for him with her coat and gloves on. “I just got home from school,” she said, giving him her #3 or English duchess smile. “Haven’t even had time to get my coat off.” Knowing this was not the truth, Wally said nothing and led the way out to the car. As she slid into the front seat beside him, Dawn looked down at the sheaf of papers lying in the seat.

  “What’s this?” she said. “Some of your manuscript?”

  “Yeah,” Wally said. “Couple chapters. I was going to run them out to Gwen at the college this afternoon, but I never got the time,” he lied. Quite suddenly, he had discovered he no longer wanted to go over to Gwen’s. His mood had changed. He was no longer unsure, of himself or of the chapters, and he was no longer lonely. Instead, he wanted to do something exciting. It didn’t have anything much to do with Dawn, really; it was just that some pressure had let down in him. It was evening, and the day’s work was over everywhere, and he had a girl beside him just like normal people, and he wanted to be where there were lights and laughter and normal people who did not live in fear all the time.

  “I’ll just run out home and leave this,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to lose them.” He put the little old Dodge in gear, and squealed its tires a little, taking off.

  “Great God, no,” Dawn said. “Not after the way you’ve sweated blood on it.” She settled herself in the seat. “Well, what are we going to do tonight?”

  “I thought we’d run up to West Lancaster and do a little pub crawling,” Wally said. “I’d take you over to a nice Terre Haute joint, but I’m a little short on money.”

  “West Lancaster’s fine,” Dawn said. “As a matter of fact, I prefer it. It’s so quaint.”

  “It’s quaint, all right,” Wally said. “Maybe we’ll see a knife fight.”

  “Oh, do you suppose?” Dawn said eagerly. “No, this isn’t Saturday.” She laughed, and then suddenly she opened her coat and stretched and yawned, arching her back and her flat stomach in the sweater. Wally was aware of the large twin cones, pushing back the edges of the coat. “God! It’s sure good to get away from home for a while where you can be yourself,” she said.

  “Sure is,” Wally said.

  “Doesn’t it take a load off you, though?” Dawn said.

  “Sure does,” Wally said.

  He drove up out in front of the house and parked under the big, young oaks and ran in with the chapters.
His mom still was not home yet. He ran upstairs to his room and put them on the desk and laid a paperweight on them. Then he took some more money out of the lock drawer of the little desk and relocked it. And then he paused, and looked down out the front window at the parked car. She seemed to be feeling especially good tonight. The pause became an intensely enjoyable moment of solo secrecy, and he kept prolonging it. Just looking. Then he turned and ran back down the stairs pocketing the money.

  “I’ve had the most miserable time today,” Dawn said when he got back in.

  “The Drama Club?” Again he put the little Dodge in gear but this time he didn’t bother to squeal the tires.

  “Yes! What else? Were doing Mourning Becomes Electra this time and I have the lead again. It’s terrible, Wally! You’d think even a high school Drama Club would have some people in it who were a little intelligent and sensitive.”

  “Not in this sorry town,” Wally said.

  “No, I guess that’s right,” Dawn said. “That’s too much to expect. Even the college club doesn’t have it when I work with them. But…”

  He let her ramble on. Anyway, the trip to West Lancaster wasn’t far. You took State Highway 1 north about eight miles and then turned off east on a gravel road between two dinky filling stations. It was three miles from there to the river. Besides, he sort of enjoyed listening to her. He was using her—partially—for one of his characters, and anything he could get from her about the theater was very helpful.

  Dawn talked on, getting it off her chest (and what a chest! he thought), about the miserableness of the entire production and the people in it, and about her own part.