by James Jones
“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” Dave said.
“I didn’t say it did. All I said was, that’s how I feel. What I was trying to say was: If Whoever or Whatever it was that created everything, did create it—and I think we can assume Something or Someone did create it—then everything must be just in an abstract sense because it is all a part of Him and is all there is. So it must be just, according to His concept of just—whatever that is.”
“Oh,” Dave said; “oh. I think I see what you mean, now. But it’s a hard thing to try to say.
Just simply because of the fact it’s all there is, it is all there is. So it has to be accepted as just.”
“Yes.” Gwen turned to smile at him, that incredibly warm, lambent lovers’ look, and he smiled back at her—their eyes saying many silent things—and wanting desperately to take her in his arms here in her car and make love to her. A little chill went over him when he remembered that so short a time ago Bob had so devastatingly held up for him the whys and wherefores of “love.” Had, in effect, proved almost conclusively that there wasn’t any such a thing as “love,” except insofar as it was love of self. But, damn it, if you felt things they existed didn’t they? If he could only figure out what it was that was wrong, with her. Something, somewhere, was wrong; he could feel it. If he could only reach her, find out what this thing was . . .
Gwen’s Christmas vacation started three days later. Dave said no more to her about making the trip to Chicago. Once the college had let out he started spending more and more time over at their house in Israel. He still worked some in the mornings; but not nearly as much, and he began spending most of the nights over there, too, in that same bedroom he had occupied before. He had shaving things and toilet articles he kept there, and a number of his clothes hung perpetually in the closet whether he was there or not. It was, in fact, his room now; “Dave’s room” was what they all called it.
More than once, as he lay in the bed in “his” room, he was more than half a mind to just simply slip out of bed and go down there and accost her, where she lay only two doors away, so near he could almost imagine he could hear her breathing, and yet at the same time seemingly solar systems away; just accost her, and force her to sleep with him. He was sure, somehow, that if he did, everything would somehow be all right then. If he succeeded. But always in the end, the thought that he might not succeed stopped him. She had made it plain she didn’t want to sleep with him. And if he did not succeed, everything would come down about his ears, and there wouldn’t be anything left. And after all, he was a guest in her house. So he would simply lie, running his hands up and down over the fat of his belly, hating himself for being so unattractive, and for being so gutless, until he finally went to sleep.
Christmas in 1948 was not like Christmas in 1947. This year, it was a real white Christmas, and Dave was over there in Israel almost all of that time; he helped decorate the house and tree and plan the party they would have; he was consulted on what presents to buy for the various ones; and he went to Terre Haute by himself to buy his own gifts for all of them. He came home drunk and exhausted. It was all of it ridiculous; he detested it; but once the shopping part was done, it was nevertheless fun to have done. It was, in short, Christmas.
’Bama had decided since Dave was going to be in Israel, to go down to the farm for Christmas this year. So the house in Parkman was locked up, and a key given only to Dewey and Hubie. Doris Fredric was going to be home Christmas with her family.
Wally and Dawn—who was home for Christmas from Western Reserve—were very much in evidence in Israel during the preparations for Christmas. Dawn didn’t seem to have changed much—except that maybe she was a little less openly displayful of her sophistication now; and also she seemed a little more cold. Whatever warmth there had been between her and Wally last summer had apparently either gone underground or else gone away entirely—although they were together all the time, just the same.
Wally himself, on the other hand, appeared just as reserved and cold as Dawnie did—although he had apparently given up Rosalie Sansome while Dawn was home. And for the first time since early last summer, he was being distant again with Dave. The only reason Dave had been able to figure out for it was the acceptance of his story by Gwen’s lady editor friend with New Living Literature. But during the holidays, when they were all over at Israel so much, he discovered there was more to it than that. Wally was jealous of him with Gwen. He obviously thought they were lovers, Dave deduced wryly.
On Christmas Day, Frank and Agnes came over for their eggnog and to see the presents. It was the first time Dave had seen either of them face to face since Frank had come up to the hotel after he got back from Florida. He and Frank eyed each other, and said hello politely.
“How’re you making out, Frank?”
“Oh, I’m doing pretty good,” Frank said, cold-eyed. “I guess I’m making out all right. And you?”
“Fine, Frank, fine,” he said. “I couldn’t be doing better. My book’s over half done.”
“Well, that’s good,” Frank said. He did not sniff, actually, but he looked as if he wanted to. And when they left, moved by some vague feeling of warmth and all the things that he truly owed his brother, Dave went up and said goodby and held out his hand to him. For a moment, it looked as if Frank was not even going to take it, but then—half tight from the eggnogs he had been drinking all morning; and probably with some obscure feeling about Christmas Cheer and Good Will to Men—he took Dave’s hand and shook it, though of course they both knew—from the very moment he hesitated—that it really meant nothing.
Well, to hell with it, Dave thought, a little tight himself. He didn’t care any more than Frank cared.
The rest of the holidays he spent in Israel. On January 3, Gwen started back to her classes; and Dave moved back to Parkman.
But he knew, even before she started back to school, that it wasn’t going to work, although he never said anything to her, or anyone, about it. It just wouldn’t work. If she wanted a “platonic” love affair, if that was all she had stomach for anymore, she would have to find another man to have it with. It just wasn’t part of his makeup. In his makeup, you couldn’t divorce love from sex. It was too painful. He had thought for a while that he might be able to live like that. But he couldn’t. And after that week of the holidays, he could see clearly that she wasn’t going to make any change. He could have sex with a woman without loving her; but he could not love her, and go on loving her forever, without having sex with her. Without saying anything about it, and leaving all of his things still there in “his” room, he went home to the house in Parkman carrying a sick loneliness which, he was quite sure, was greater than any of the other lonelinesses he had ever felt in his life, all lumped together.
A week after that, Mildred Pierce married her Sternutol laborer. And just a few days after that, Raymond Cole died.
Chapter 53
DURING THE MONTH he had spent so much time with Gwen, Dave had nevertheless a number of different times gone out to Smitty’s Bar; so he had seen Raymond several times.
Some nights, Raymond would not be there at all; and on other nights, he would show up with one companion or another. All of them—like Raymond—intensely vital, intensely strong, intensely awkward (among well-dressed “civilized” people), and intensely outcast. The mere fact that Raymond and the others could continue to live the wild, virtually homeless, dimly drunken lives they lived without just keeling over and dying, attested superbly to their tremendous physical vitality, which nevertheless always had the effect of putting everybody else ill at ease.
At other times, Raymond would appear alone, and then would sit by himself at one of the tables in the back, drinking up a forest of empty beer bottles and slyly sneaking swallows of whiskey from the 826 pint bottle he hid inside his worn old leather jacket. He would sit so for an hour, talking to himself under his breath, and ogling hungrily all the women in the place with what he fondly believed to be his irresistib
le masculine appeal, unaware that none of them would even be caught dead with him, and then after an hour or so he would charge up—as often as not knocking over the chair he was sitting in—and stalk out in his rolling punch-drunk fighter’s gait and climb into his decrepit old Dodge and go chugging off into the night no one knew where.
Raymond still spent very little time at home with his wife and one kid, apparently only going there whenever he was out of money, and hanging around until his wife, who worked, would—probably more to get rid of him than for any other reason—give him a little money. Winter was the hardest time of the year for Raymond, since he could get almost none of those laboring jobs that he lived off of in the summer.
Dave could not help seeing him as a casualty of Empire like the plebes of Rome; and, whenever he saw him, could not help musing sorrowfully over our Victorian moralisms which would not allow us to have gladiators, as Rome had so wisely done, to take up the slack of surplus. Raymond might have been happy as a gladiator.
Raymond apparently had some dim feeling that Dave carried some sort of affection for him, because whenever Dave was there and he came in, he would insist on buying Dave a drink and then pull up a chair and shoulder his way in on the party, talking to Dave all the while in a loud voice about Life and the Sorrows of Living and offering happily to beat the living hell out of anybody that Dave did not like, to prove his friendship.
Whenever he did all this, he would invariably embarrass his brother Dewey, who was usually in the party, to the point of fury. And it was one of these times, just about the middle of December, that he irritated him beyond the point of where anybody could calm him down, and they had another of their locally famous fights. The last one, as it turned out.
Dewey had been spending a great deal of time at the Lincoln Street house with Dave and Wally, and that probably had a great deal to do with it. Ever since last summer, when Dawn had used to come down to the house with Wally, Dewey had been discussing art and music and literature with all of them. It was as if a whole new field to challenge had opened up for him. He had read all of Wally’s manuscript and later—at his own suggestion—had then read Dave’s. And from this it was only one short step to the idea of writing a book about his own life. He talked about it with both Dave and Wally. “I’m a rebel,” he would say; “just like you guys. Only I ain’t got anything to rebel against, even. What could I rebel against? your brother Frank and Clark Hibbard and the Country Club? That ‘Lost Generation’ of the twenties, they loved it; they never had it so good. But my generation, we can’t even be lost—because we never been found. What was I ever taught? Nothing! that’s what. I never even learned to brush my teeth and make up my bed till I got in the Army. My folks was always too busy fighting. What do they give my generation to believe in: a happy home, a union to increase my wage, a new car, and an automatic washing machine. We’re not even a lost generation. We’re an unfound generation. The ‘Unfound Generation’ of the forties.”
He talked a good deal about this, and Dave listened and unblushingly stole everything of it that he could use. He did not feel guilty about it, because while Dewey talked about writing a book about his own life he never actually did anything about it. He only talked about it. Dave told him (not entirely truthfully) that all he had to do was sit down and start. But Dewey never did. And Hubie only hooted derisively when he would start talking about his book. “I’m gonna write a book,” Hubie howled into the conversation one day, kicking up his legs in the big armchair. “It’ll be a soulful histry of the human race. I’m gonna call it No Forehead. That’s from a poem. I’m gonna print the poem right behind the title, see? like all them regular writers do,” he said in his twanging drawl. “You remember that limrick about The Young Man from Dundee?” and proceeded to quote it.
“There!” he yelled, as they all shouted with laughter. “What do you think of that? Ain’t that some title! No Forehead. Soulful histry of the human race.”
It broke the literary discussion up into a general paroxysm of laughter, in which Dewey—if a little ruefully—joined as much as anybody, and from that time on Hubie’s “book” had acquired its permanent title. But in spite of Hubie, and in spite of the fact that he only talked, Dewey nevertheless was becoming “educated”—tremendously so, compared to what he used to be.
Consequently, it would infuriate him almost beyond reason whenever his brother, Raymond, would come horning in and begin to talk to Dave in his loud-voiced, totally ignorant, ingenuous way. As ’Bama said of Dewey, grinning sardonically: “Like they say, there’s no Catholic as rabid as a converted Catholic.”
This particular time, while they all sat around a table in Smitty’s, Raymond had said something about what a sad thing it was that people who didn’t really hate each other had to go to war and kill each other; war was a great tragedy, he thought, didn’t Dave?
“Jesus Christ, Raymond,” Dewey said with cold contempt, his beautiful blue eyes searing, “must you always open that big fat yap of yours and expose what an ass you are?” Dewey’s grammar, as well as his vocabulary, had been steadily getting better since summer. “I didn’t think even anybody as dumb as you are could open their mouths and make themselves look that much dumber.”
“Now, what the hell did I say?” Raymond demanded. “All I said was I think war is sad, that’s all. And anyway, I was talkin to my friend Dave here, and not to you. So why don’t you keep your nose out?”
“Raymond, Jesus Christ,” Dewey said. “I think if you went back to school for ten years you might, if you were lucky, come out of it about as smart as a nine-year-old Mongolian idiot. Look: You never had it so good as you did during the war. You never were as happy and successful and neither was I and Hubie. For the first and only time in our life, the three of us, we belonged to something where we had a definite place and an important job. What we did was right, and what people wanted us to do. We filled a place. And you loved it, and I and Hubie loved it. Now what the hell is all this crap that war is sad, hunh?”
“Well, sure,” Raymond said belligerently; “I guess I liked the Army. In some ways. But I still say war is sad, for them that got kilt.”
“Well, I say it isn’t sad,” Dewey said icily. “I say it’s happy. I say the ones that got it are better off dead. Look at us: We’re all three bums. There’s not a living soul in this town gives a damn whether any of the three of us lives or dies. And that includes the Old Lady. And the Old Man, too. Right? I say peacetime is sad; not war. Now how about that?”
“Well,” Raymond said, caught short and wrinkling up his brow. “Well— Maybe peacetime is sad, too. I guess it is. But damn it, Dewey, you know war is sad. When your buddies get killed and all. Now what kind of crap are you tryin to hand me anyway?”
“I say they’re better off dead,” Dewey said, his eyes icy and hard. “They’re better off dead than they would be to live the kind of life you’re living. Now isn’t that right? Just like you would have been better off if you had got killed and not come back home and lived the kind of miserable crappy life you’re living now.”
“Well,” Raymond said, “no. I don’t live a bad life. Hell, I live a good life. I have lots of fun.”
“Fun! You wouldn’t know fun if it punched you in the mouth, you dumb bastard,” Dewey said.
“Hey,” Hubie said. “Take it easy, Dewey.”
“Ah, the dumb son of a bitch,” Dewey said disgustedly.
“All right, maybe I’m dumb,” Raymond said. “Maybe I ain’t no smart son of a bitch like you. But, by God, I still say war is sad; you hear? In spite of what everything you say.”
“Well, I say war is happy,” Dewey countered; “you miserable, ignorant, dumb animal son of a bitch.”
“Don’t call me none of your family names,” Raymond said, laughing loudly and looking around the table for applause at his quip.
“Lay off,” ’Bama said from across the table. “Let him alone for Christ’s sake.”
“Go to hell,” Dewey said. “You let m
e alone. No,” he said to Raymond, “I wouldn’t call you any of my family names. Because I wouldn’t want anybody to know you were my family.”
“Now damn you, Dewey!” Raymond said. “You can’t talk to me like that, now. Maybe I ain’t much, but after all I am your brother.”
“You’re no brother of mine,” Dewey said, “you dumb slobhead.”
“War is sad,” Raymond said stubbornly.
“War is happy,” Dewey said, mimicking him.
“All right, damn you!” Raymond bawled. “You come outside and I’ll show you who’s the dumb slobhead!” He jumped up, once more knocking over his chair as usual.
“Fine,” Dewey said. “I wondered how long it was going to take you to get around to it.” He got up himself, slim and wiry-muscled beside Raymond who towered thickly over him. Drunk—as was Raymond—he stood with his slender chin pulled in bullishly, his blue eyes flashing with a kind of happy excitement.
’Bama and Hubie had jumped up and taken hold of Raymond. “Come on, you guys,” ’Bama said. “Sit down and drink your drink.”
“No,” Raymond said, jerking his arms loose. “Leave us alone. We know what we’re doin. You ready, Dewey?” he said.
“Sure, you fat bastard,” Dewey said. “Let’s go.”
Around them, the low din of conversation had ceased now and all the parties were watching them intently. This was what they all came here for; and maybe now they were going to get to see it. It wasn’t, Dave thought suddenly, really so different from the Roman arena after all; less homicidal, was all. That, and of course, the fact that they did not have to pay their gladiators anything.
They moved in a body to the door up front, ’Bama (who had given up) and Hubie leading, then Raymond with Dewey behind him, and Dave bringing up the rear; and behind, the crowd began to form, mostly men with a few tittering girls in it.
When Dave, who was fifth in line, got to the door he saw that it was snowing again. Oh no, he thought, his stomach sinking. Ever since the war he had hated snow. But he didn’t have any more time to think about it then. ’Bama and Hubie, who were first, were already standing down on the sidewalk in the fresh snow; Raymond and Dewey up on the indented little stoop; himself in the doorway. Then Raymond turned to his brother and started to say something, shucking back his old leather jacket. That was when Dewey hit him. Quick as a streak of greased lightning, Dewey hauled off and belted Raymond with a tremendous punch, his ice-blue eyes dancing excitedly. Raymond flew off of the step; he lit on his butt in the snow and skidded across it straight between ’Bama and Hubie and came up crashing into the door of a parked car, his arms still in the sleeves of his jacket.