Some Came Running

by James Jones

  He had (’Bama said, while the speedometer needle hovered between eighty and ninety) driven this road—at least that part from Terre Haute to Nashville—three or four different times both ways since the war, in going back down to Birmingham. But that made no especial difference in how fast he drove, which was governed by several things, he explained: first, the natural terrain of the country—how flat or hilly it was; second, the age of the road itself—the older the road, the sharper the curves; and third, the amount of traffic—heavy traffic naturally slowed you down. He would have driven this road, today, just as fast if he had never been on it. He was, Dave saw, obviously flattered by Dave’s interest.

  “Y’see, in the first place,” he elaborated, “road-driving and race-driving are completely different because of two main things. One is that in road-driving there are cars coming the other way. The other thing is the relative speeds of the vehicles that are goin the same way: In road-driving, you may be goin ninety and the car ahead of you thirty-five; in race-drivin all the cars’re going pretty much the same speed. Well, those two things changes all the problems a driver has to face. And consequently, the problem of passing—in road-drivin—becomes of much more importance. In road-drivin, you have three objects moving, you and the car yore goin to pass, and the car moving toward you. Y’see? While now in race-drivin, you completely remove one of those three objects; namely, the car comin toward you. Why, you must lower yore percentage of mishaps from just passin alone by—my God, I don’t know how much—seventy-five percent at least.”

  The more he elaborated, the more he began to sound like some kind of a mathematician. It was obvious that he had made an almost scientific study of the subject in his own mind.

  “Well, yore main problem in road-drivin is passing. You ain’t going to find many curves yore goin too fast to make—not if you know anything at all about drivin. But anytime yore across that black line in the other lane, yore in danger, see? But what do most of yore drivers do when they pass some car? The damned fools edge out real slow, then actually slow down when they’re goin around the bastard! and edge back in like they were scared to death. What they ought to do is get out there fast, get around him, and get back in. As long as yore on yore own side of the road yore not in too much danger, except from damfool drivers—which is nearly all of them. Now, course in race-drivin, you don’t have none of that.”

  “Did you ever do any race-driving?” Dave asked.

  “Oh no,” ’Bama said. “Hunh-unh.” He grinned. “I’ve shore seen an awful lot of them though.”

  Dave had once again that feeling of what an almost scientific study of driving ’Bama had apparently made for himself. He had gone at it, apparently, in the same systematic way he had gone at his gambling, separating it all into categories then approaching all of these with the cold-blooded practical rationality of a trained logician. Apparently, he did that with just about everything. Including people, Dave thought, not quite so admiringly, and thinking of poor dumb Ginnie. Then he remembered how he himself had jumped all over ’Bama about Gwen French.

  “Listen,” he said, “I want to tell you something.”

  “What’s that?” ’Bama said without taking his eyes from the road.

  “Well,” Dave said, “it’s this. I think I owe you an apology. For insultin you up there in the room before we left. I was pretty nasty, I guess.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” ’Bama grinned. “I figured I had it comin. I didn’t have no business stickin my nose in yore business.”

  “Well, it wasn’t so much that,” Dave said.

  “I know. You was mad. But it still wasn’t my business,” ’Bama said. After a moment, then, he suddenly let up on the gas and the Packard began to slow. “Now look there. Show you something. See that car up ahead?”

  Dave looked, and saw a misshapen vehicle at least a quarter of a mile ahead of them, just cresting a hill. “Yeah? Why?”

  “You notice anything funny about it?” ’Bama said.

  “Well, no. It didn’t look like a car. A truck, maybe?”

  “It was a tractor. Tractors travel anywhere from ten to twenty five miles an hour. That’s why I’m startin to slow up now, soon as I see it. I don’t want to run up on it, see?”

  “Oh,” Dave said, feeling witless, and then he watched as the slowing car began to run up more and more slowly on the tractor; by the time they reached it, they were doing slightly less than forty, and still moving up. The road ahead was clear for a mile at least. Two car lengths in back of it ’Bama swung out, gunned the Packard, passed, and swung back in, and had the big Packard back up to ninety before the tractor was out of sight behind them.

  “Y’see what I mean?” ’Bama said, sliding his gloved hands back and forth on the wheel. “That’s a principle you can always follow: Anytime you see something up ahead that don’t look completely like another passenger car, start slowin as soon as you see it. Until you know what it is and how fast it’s goin—you slow. See?”

  Dave nodded. “Yeah. I see.”

  “You notice I never used my brake,” ’Bama said. “Not atall. A perfect driver never uses his brake. Not for nothing. Except maybe like at stoplights after he’s already slowed. But we ain’t none of us perfect drivers. The brakes there only so that when you’ve made a mistake—or the other guy has—it can be used to get you out of some jam. That’s all it’s for. See?”

  “I’ll remember,” Dave said. He realized he was being taught.

  ’Bama gave him a quick grin and turned back to the road without saying anything. But after that, whenever some other similar situation occurred that caused him to use some little trick of driving, he would carefully explain it, laying out just what he was doing and why.

  At one place, for instance, he passed a slow-moving car up near the crest of a hill. There was no no-passing zone, so he was not breaking any law, but still to pass so was against all orthodox theory, and he explained very carefully why he did it. Ordinarily, to pass in such a way was dangerous, he said. But in this instance—and he pointed it out to Dave—he could see over the crest the top of the second car ahead. As long as he could see it, and also could see no oncoming car in the other lane, he knew it was safe to pass.

  He was full of such little pointers, simple enough when called to your attention but things Dave would never have thought of himself. The more of these little things he brought out, the more Dave was amazed at all the things about driving he had never seen. ’Bama also made other comments, from time to time, but these comments were on the things and society of people that they saw. ’Bama had no more respect for people in general than Dave did (and, Dave thought, a lot less for people in particular). These comments were not made with the eager enjoyment he had when he talked about driving; these comments were made with sardonic disgust and caustic scorn.

  One time, they were passing through a little town that sported the perennial signs you saw everywhere: Drive Slow. We Love Our Children. ’Bama merely snorted. “Why don’t they think up something new? Yas, they love the little bastards. That’s why they route the highway right past every school in town; to prove it. What they’re really hopin is that some son of a bitch will run over their damn kids so they won’t have to feed ’em.” Then he said: “Someday when I’m rich I’m gonna buy myself a whole town and put up my own damned signs: Drive As Fast As You Want To. We Hate Our Kids As Much As You Do.” Dave could not help but laugh, especially as, when they drove on through, they sure enough passed two schools.

  Still another time, when the gambler saw a state patrol car bearing down on them going the other way, he quickly hit his brake several times lightly with his foot, slowing the heavy Packard down to around sixty-five, and snorted. “Bastards. It ain’t the expert drivers who causes their wrecks. It’s them damn twenty-mile-an-hour bastards. But it’s always the expert drivers who pay their damned fines.” He grinned through the window at the state troopers and waved as they passed.

  He apparently hated trucks, and once
after finally getting by a solid string of four of them that were driving almost nose to tail, he delivered himself of a diatribe on them, too.

  “That’s against the law,” he said. “They’re supposed to stay one car length apart. Goddamned trucks. It’s got to be a damned custom in this country that everybody has to say what expert polite drivers truck drivers are. It’s got so damned bad that if you or me went out and said truck drivers were bums we’d get accused of being un-American or damn Communists. While the damned truth is, only about one in a hundred truck drivers is a decent driver—and since the war that percentage has been goin down and down. Too damned many punk hot-rod kids getting trucker jobs. And that ain’t the worst. Not only are they bad drivers,” he drawled, “but their damn stinking trucks are what’s ruinin our highways. The government can’t hardly get a highway completed, before the truckers have already wore out the other end of it so that they have to start all over resurfacing. And you know who pays for it, don’t you? We do. You and me. Every time you or me buy a gallon of gas, we’re settin them up in business and payin their maintainance bills.”

  “I wouldn’t care so much,” he said after a moment, “myself. If they’d just hire some damned decent drivers.”

  As if to prove him right, it was not ten minutes later, in a patch of rough hilly country where they were driving less than sixty, that ’Bama suddenly exclaimed “Shit!” and bore down on his brake harder than Dave had ever seen him do it. Even so, he did not press down hard enough to throw them into a skid. All this had happened before Dave had time to even see what was happening. Then he saw the truck ahead of them, apparently coming straight at them. ’Bama kept on braking coolly and edging over to the right as close as he could get without going off on the muddy shoulder, until finally he had come to a complete stop on the pavement.

  What had happened was that at the top of a short hill in front of them, where there was a sharp left-hand turn onto a narrow bridge, and where there was a warning sign of twenty mph, a big tractor trailer had swung out coming off the bridge around the turn to pass another, slow-moving car on the downgrade. ’Bama had seen him almost before he started and thrown on his brakes. By the time they were completely stopped, the truck had almost made it, gunning desperately, and then whipping back into his own lane in the scant space ’Bama had provided by stopping. The truck appeared to miss the front of the Packard by inches. By the time Dave had grasped and understood all this, it was already over.

  “Well, he made it,” ’Bama said coolly. “Well!” he said, turning to grin at Dave. “It’s a good thing there wasn’t anybody behind me, ain’t it?” Dave, whose own heart was thudding in his ears, could see the large artery in ’Bama’s throat pulsing. “That was a fairly close one,” the tall man grinned. “He didn’t miss us by much more than six feet.” He put the Packard in low gear and started off up the hill without so much as a backward glance. “That trucker probly had been tryin to get around him for the last thirty miles. Well, at least he didn’t speed up any, did he? even if he didn’t put on his brakes.”

  They rode up over the narrow, rickety bridge and down and on along the other side of the valley. “This must be one of those bad stretches they told me about back up the way,” ’Bama said. Then he chuckled. “It’s funny, ain’t it? Just an inch or two, one way or the other. It makes all the difference.”

  They were in Tennessee by now. It was still early morning. Now and then, cars came at them out of the winter grayness, swelled, grew, then passed and receded. Sometimes dwellings or a village appeared, rushed at them, then disappeared. Sometimes, too, human people were visible, moving. But none of these things really had anything to do with them. They had reached that stage of a long trip where, moving along a prescribed restricted ribbon of area, touching the earth itself only on four points of rubber, they had become insulated from everything. The world no longer existed, and they themselves hung suspended between two points on a map. It was not hard to believe, looking out, that it was they who were stationary and the rest of the world which moved.

  And in a way, Dave thought, it might even be partly true—since they were moving westward just now and if you took into account the earth’s eastward spinning, and its movement around the sun, then it might very possibly be that they were moving slower than the earth. Wouldn’t that be funny? Actually making themselves move slower, in relation to the movement of the earth. Sometimes he wished he were a mathematician.

  All he had to do, to do it, was to shuck off whatever it was that was Dave Hirsh. That was all.

  For a moment, a pointless, confused anguish filled him. And almost like a revelation, which he seemed to see so clearly and still could not reach, he thought he could see that for a man to be himself, become himself, was really a very simple thing: All he had to do was to cease to be himself. All he, Dave Hirsh, had to do to become Dave Hirsh, was to not be Dave Hirsh at all.

  Oh just once, to shuck off this slow ugly body that hampered and hemmed you in. But more than that, to be rid of this personality. This personality restrained and hampered and locked you out from everything more than your body ever did, and which you detested.

  Yes, he hungered to be a mathematician. In the same way and with the same intensity Old Tom Wolfe hungered to be a poet. Only, Old Tom was a poet; and didn’t know it? What was that line we used to say as kids? He’s a poet and don’t know it? Well, D Hirsh is a mathematician and can’t do addition.

  Oh, Jesus! he thought. Jesus, Jesus Christ!

  Well, there was one thing he could do anyway. Never again would the name D Hirsh appear on a story or novel or poem. He made himself a solemn oath. If he ever did publish anything again—and he knew he would, this book—he would use his name like it should be, without affectation: David Hirsh. It would be a symbol; a symbol of the change in him, and in his viewpoint, personality, style, everything, by God! Like Old Cabell did. Better yet, he thought with a burgeoning excitement, he would use it like it always should have been all along, all his life: It would be David Herschmidt! That was what it would be. A solemn oath . . . But then, after having come to, and made, the decision, he found that nothing had really changed at all. He, the him, remained. A sort of terrified desperation gripped him.

  Gradually, out of the welter, the faint knowledge of what had upset him and put him onto this tirade swam up through his consciousness: He never should have left Parkman. He never should have quit his book and come off on some crazy junket like this to Florida. He had no right to do it. He owed it to the world, to the damned world that he was going to shoot off at the ankles, not to do it.

  Beside him, ’Bama still drove easily, if tiredly. Dave stole a look at him, possessed by a hatred for him so strong he could have done him bodily injury. He hated ’Bama for talking him into making this lazy, worthless pleasure trip to Florida, and Gwen French for not inviting him over Christmas when she knew how badly he wanted to come, and also Bob French for allowing her to do a thing like that and not stopping her. And he hated Frank for getting him to stay in Parkman in the first place.

  If it wasn’t for all of them, he could be out in Hollywood right now with Francine, living peacefully, and working on this book without all this terror and anguish.

  Inwardly, he drew himself up to his full five feet six inches. Well, he would do it without them. He would become a mathematician. A mathematician of the human soul. God knew the world needed one.

  It was a large ambition for a man who was thirty-seven years old and had never yet done anything toward achieving it. But he could do it. And none of them could stop him. And he thought of that magnificent line from Stevens’s poem about “What Thomas an Buile Said in a Pub,” where God was about to destroy the Earth, and the one little man said: “Stay, you must not strike it, God; I’m in the way; and I will never move from where I stand.” And then finally, exhausted the turbulence his own emotions, he went to sleep.

  Chapter 38

  IN NASHVILLE, ’Bama stopped long enough to gas up and to find
out about the roads. Apparently, the information he had been given was accurate, and Route 41 was not in too good a shape on south. Looking curiously stable for a man of his precarious habits, he leaned over a map out on the driveway with the station attendant while they discussed the routes. After he got back in, still clutching the marked map, and got them started through the congested downtown area, he explained what the attendant had said about the routes.

  Dave, whom the stopping of the car had waked up in the station, had waked to find his previous mood all gone. Only a vaguely reasoned determination to change his writing name, and a stubborn intention to hold ’Bama and Bob and Gwen and Frank responsible for what happened to him and not to trust them, remained out of all that torrent of emotion. These; and an indefinite feeling that he had had a sort of revelation about life that he could no longer put his finger on. More than once during that acute emotional upheaval, he had been at the point of telling ’Bama to turn around and go back except that it would have made him look so ridiculous. And anyway he had been afraid to speak, for fear the grinding hatred he felt for ’Bama would have communicated itself to him. But now he was glad he hadn’t told him. And because he still felt that secret dislike that he was afraid for ’Bama to find out about, he was much nicer than he usually would have been.

  The routes, ’Bama said—according to the attendant—were none of them in any too good a shape. But 41 was the worst, in bad shape almost all the way. There were two other ways, and ’Bama said he was in favor of the second route.