Some Came Running

by James Jones

  Only now it was worse, because in addition to all that other, there was added that sharply poignant sense of warmth and gratitude he had had for her ever since he had fully consummated—that was the way he always thought of it—their love affair. That had only been two weeks ago, and the newness had not even worn off yet. But then, he had been deathly scared of that, too—afraid she might take it wrong and be horrified. But then that had worked out all right, hadn’t it? So then, why shouldn’t this? It was just that he would hate to lose her now.

  When he picked her up at the little bar out in Terre Haute where they always met, after the letter from the welfare man had come only two days before, he had definitely made up his mind to tell her. In truth, he had no other choice; she would find it out soon enough anyway, now. And if she found it out that way, it might be even worse. She might even quit him. They had a couple of drinks in the little bar, and then drove up toward Clinton. To a little out-of-the-way place they sometimes went for dinner. And Frank, seeing a group of children walking along the street, had a desperate inspiration. Children: that was the answer! He could say something about the children, and from that lead into it naturally. But by the time he had thought of it, the group of children was already past. Well, the next bunch of kids he saw; that would do it.

  So the rest of the way to Clinton—about ten miles—he kept his weather eye out anxiously for children. He saw exactly none. All the way to Clinton and at the dinner place where they had more drinks and ate, he saw not one child. It was as if in an accurately timed conspiracy against him the entire world had suddenly become bereft of children. Only when they finally reached the motel where they were going to spend their two or three hours of secret, illicit, dearly bought companionship, did he see a child: The motel manager’s two young sons were sitting in in their father’s office, raptly reading comic books.

  Son of a damned bitch! Frank thought despairingly. Hell, he couldn’t do it now. To tell her now while they were getting ready to get their motel room and go to it alone together and make love, he just simply could not do it. What if there was a scene? What if she quit him for good? right here and now, just when he was all ready and primed to go to bed? No! If this was going to be the last time he would ever get to make love to her, he was not going to sacrifice it right at the last minute; he would have to find some other way to tell her, afterwards. Then, at least if she quit him, he would still have that last time to remember. Did that make him a cheater? Well, if it did, to hell with it.

  But, luckily, when they got inside and Edith had begun to undress (she no longer had to betake herself shyly to the bathroom to get undressed), Frank saw on the wall just beside the bureau where he set the whiskey bottle a framed full-length painting of a child, a nine- or ten-year-old boy. There was his excuse, as if God after deliberately mocking him and proving to him his own lack of integrity, had suddenly given him an out. And afterwards, after they had talked, and drunk (Edith was much more used to drinking now than she had used to be), and had petted, and had made their love, he made himself get up when all he wanted to do was lie there peacefully, and went over to the bureau to pour himself a drink and looked at the picture and commented on it and then came back, with the drink, and sat down on the bed and told her. He laid special stress on how he had always wanted a son to carry on the business, and his name.

  Edith, lying back with her arms behind her head merely stared at him and said nothing. There were no tears in her eyes, but there was pain in them as he had instinctively known there would be and he wanted to smash his fists bloody into the pastel-painted concrete-block wall.

  Gradually, he faltered into silence. “I suppose it must be sort of a shock,” he mumbled. “I don’t suppose you had any idea about it.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said faintly without moving. “I’d heard about it.”

  “You did? Who told you?”

  “Jane.”

  “Jane! Well, Goddam her! How did she find out?”

  Edith smiled, weakly. “Who knows how she ever finds out all she knows about everybody? I’ve been wondering when you were going to tell me.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Frank said. Then he paused. “I hope it doesn’t make you feel unhappy,” he said.

  Edith merely smiled that same faint smile, looking at him out of her slapped-looking eyes that were not crying, and said nothing. Frank waited, hoping she would say something, but she still did not answer.

  “I think I need a drink,” he said, getting up and heading for the bureau.

  “Bring me one, too, will you?” Edith said.

  He turned around and looked at her, searchingly, and she smiled back at him.

  “A good, big one!” she said cheerfully.

  Frank stood, looking disconsolately at that small lithe big-boned body, so different from the thinness of Geneve Lowe that he had also known, thinking back to that Wednesday night two weeks ago, when he also had not known—then he went on to the bureau and the bottle, suffering, and wondering with a dim awe how here on God’s earth the human race, anybody could continue to suffer so—so silently, so hopefully, so—all those fears and hates and hurts and guilts, that had, for some Unknowable Unreasonable reason, been placed in them.

  It was only another of their regular ordinary Wednesday (or Thursday or Tuesday or Friday) nights, except that he was a little drunker than usual. At least, it started out to be one. But it did not wind up one.

  Another thing, of course, was that he had been doing an awful lot of reading in the past few months about this thing. Anything he could get hold of about the subject, which was surprisingly damned little. Kinsey’s book (which he still kept locked and hidden in his desk) was his greatest source of knowledge, largely because there was so damned little else even written about it. The information had all been suppressed, almost everywhere, as if some huge conspiracy were in action to keep everybody in ignorance; as if just by publicly denying its existence, it could be made in actual fact to not exist. A lie, of course. Because it did exist. And existed with surprising commonness, as Kinsey’s book showed with its chart of frequencies. But even without the reading, he probably would not have dared to chance it with Edith if he had not been so drunk. But drunk as he was, coupled to all the heavy reading on it he had been doing, he was at just that mental state where he didn’t give a damn. To hell with it! he thought savagely. They were lying together petting, and when the idea struck him, he got up and went and mixed them both another drink, a really stiff one. Might as well have everything on your side you can get: Every businessman knew that. Businessman! Bastard! And after they had drunk the drink, he said: “Lay back. I want to show you something.”

  Edith Barclay, feeling shock and alarm as he touched her, shut her eyes. Fear and self-horror rolled down over her diluting her tenderness, but which nevertheless did not go away. She thought of the soldier who had served in Paris, that she had almost married. Except for things like this. And then she thought of all those things that she had always dreamed of having: even dreamed of wanting: The home, the children, the security of a man who loved you, adored you even, and for yourself. Those were the things she had dreamed of having. And these were what she’d got: the mistress of a married man with a grown daughter (and now a son; oh, she knew) and more: mistress of a married man who loved his wife; and more yet: a little piddling job of working for him, just to be his lover. Was there no limit to how low Love must make you sink? Completely bottomless? Oh, it would be easy to know what to do, if the tenderness had gone away. But the tenderness had not gone. It was still there, and perhaps even stronger than before: the poor guy. The poor, haunted, painfilled, anguished guy. Oh, she knew hatred; she knew it when she thought of that big, fat, loud-voiced, dominating woman. Agnes. And he loved her: Agnes. From the Greek that was: meant chaste, pure. She had even looked it up in the Webster’s Intercollegiate. That was how low she had fallen. From the Edith Barclay she had someday meant to be. And now this, too. And yet he loved her also. In his way. And she
clung to that. Oh, it would be easy to know what to do, if she didn’t love him. Edith submitted.

  “That’s enough,” Frank heard her say. “No more.”

  “Oh, God, I love you, Edith,” he said. “Oh, God.” He kissed her on the neck and put his face against hers.

  Edith patted him on his head, and as she did so, made up her mind. If she was going to stay—if she was going to be involved—she ought to be involved entirely. It was only fair.

  “Now you lie back and relax,” she said.

  With the bottle in his hand, Frank stood looking over at her, in this different but somehow just the same motel room. Then, looking down at his hand that held it and coming back from a long way away, he poured the drinks and carried them back to her in silence. What words were there to say what he would have liked to say?

  “That damned Jane,” he said, sitting beside her on the bed. “She seems to know just about everything about everything.”

  Edith lowered her glass, from which she had been drinking greedily. “Yes,” she said. “She does.”

  A thought struck Frank suddenly: “Do you suppose she knows about—about us—too?”

  “If she did,” Edith said, “I don’t think she would ever tell that to anyone, do you?”

  “No, I suppose not,” he said without much belief. “You bein her granddaughter and all.” He took himself a drink.

  “Yes,” Edith said. “I think she does know, as a matter of fact. She has never said anything to me about it; but I think she knows.”

  Frank nodded, staring into his glass. Well? There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot you could do about it? Except just wait and hope she didn’t talk? “She’s always hated my guts,” he said.

  “If she’s hated you, she’s also loved you a lot, too, I think,” Edith said.

  Frank looked up at her. “You think she really has?” he said. “I’ve always liked her.” He stared down into his glass. “You know, I’ve been meanin to ask you about Janie for some time now. She don’t look well to me.”

  “I know,” Edith said faintly. “I’ve tried to get her to go to a doctor, but she won’t. She just laughs and says there’s nothing wrong with her a good drunk won’t cure.”

  “She’s lost an awful awful lot of weight.”

  “I know. She just says it’s good for her. But I’m worried. You know she’s given up all her other jobs except at your house. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Frank said. “She never mentioned it.”

  “She’s even given up working for your brother Dave and ’Bama.”

  (“Those bastards!” Frank interjected.)

  “And I know she liked working there. But she says she’s tired of all these other jobs, says it’s time she started to retire. She says she’s been at your place the longest so that’s where she should keep on working—and then laughs and says: Unless she should get fired. You know Janie.” She paused. “I don’t know what’s the matter,” she said.

  Frank was getting a little tired of Edith’s grandmother. “Well, she ain’t as young as she used to be. She probably just drinks too much, I guess,” he said, staring at his own glass and then raised it up and took a deep draught.

  “No, no, I know it isn’t that,” Edith said; “she doesn’t drink half as much as she used to.” And suddenly, she was off on one of those strange fast desperate strings of talking of hers, which were the only times she ever really talked much at all, this time about her grandmother. She had called her a whore once, she said anguishedly. Once when she was mad. Her, of all people. To call Jane a whore. She went on and on, talking about when she was a little girl and Janie had took care of her, the words tumbling out faster and faster until Frank could hardly follow their meaning.

  He waited, hardly listening, until there came a pause. “Well, you know, I’ve always thought it would be good for you to get away from there,” he said; “why don’t you let me buy you that house for yourself like we’ve talked about? Hell, I could buy it tomorrow, through a Springfield agent, and nobody would ever know I had anything to do with it. Wouldn’t have to be a big place, but—”

  “No, Frank,” she said. “It wouldn’t work. Nobody would ever believe I’d ever gotten enough money together to buy a house. And right away they’d start looking for the reason. Anyway,” she said, “I don’t want to leave Janie now.”

  Frank looked at her not knowing what else to say. They’d been over it many times before. It would make him feel so much better, if he could only just buy her something. Anything. But she never would take anything. He thought for a brief moment about saying something else about the adoption that might perhaps make her feel better, but decided against it. It was better not to even bring it up again. He had told her, at least, he himself. Nobody could ever say he hadn’t told her.

  “Well, I guess we better get on back home,” he said wanly, and then for a moment sat watching her as she got up to dress. Never in his life again, he realized suddenly with a kind of miserable, desperate anguish, would he ever enter a motel room—or see one——without thinking of Edith Barclay. What a chain that was to impose upon yourself.

  But of course, as soon as he let her out at the corner of Roosevelt and Wernz Avenue and drove on home, his happiness returned; and he could sit back and think of all of it with pleasure and comfort and release. Never in his life had he been so really truly happy.

  Chapter 57

  IF EITHER DAVE OR WALLY—or for that matter, his own sophisticated daughter Dawn—had in some way known about Frank’s moral anguishes and desperate fears concerning his sex life, they would have laughed—or else felt an adult’s consummate sympathy for him as a child. All of them had solved that problem for themselves long ago; Dave, a long long time ago; and Wally and Dawn, a younger generation still, had solved theirs last summer even before they had read any Kinsey.

  Although Dawn, of course, perhaps, might have a different attitude now—now that she was engaged in that great and infinitely popular American preoccupation of changing lovers. It wouldn’t have bothered Dave, though.

  But what did bother Dave was the matter of Old Janie Staley. When she came to them and quit, almost with tears in her eyes, it appeared to Dave as only one more manifestation of the downhill change which for some unknown reason had seemed to begin with the death of Raymond Cole.

  Not only were Dewey and Hubie more troublesome drunk almost all the time, but something had happened at Smitty’s, too. The old-time sparkle their bunch had used to have there wasn’t there anymore; the life had gone out of it. And not only that, he and ’Bama had begun to lose at gambling. And now, on top of that, Janie had to quit them!

  The change in the gambling wasn’t really very noticeable. They were not losing dangerously. But there was still enough of a change for both of them to note it. For over a year now, ever since they had started it out in Florida, they had been winning consistently a far higher percentage of poker hands than could ever be explained away mathematically or logically. And now that percentage had started to go down. ’Bama sat up around the kitchen filling sheet after sheet with calculations by which he figured out averages and percentages of both the hands they won and the amounts of money, working at it delightedly, trying to formulate for himself some theory about winning and losing which he could prove positively, apparently feeling none of the sense of possible impending doom which Dave felt. They were, he said, looking up from his calculations, definitely losing more. It was very slight, but there was a definite change, he said excitedly; he wanted to see if it kept on. And if so, why?

  Dave knew as well as he did that if the percentages did keep on dropping, they would not be able to go on living like they were. The house, that new garden, the immensity of their liquor bill, the trips here and there, the freedom; they would lose them all. And Dave did not want to lose them; and that sense of deep impending doom settled over him lower and lower. What could be the cause? Dave wondered. Could it be that in some strange way Raymond Cole was, after all, sort of their
lucky piece? a living talisman? But how could that be? when they had started they had hardly ever seen Raymond; and they really started in Miami, and Raymond hadn’t been there. Surely, it could not be the act of Mildred Pierce getting married; it hadn’t affected anything; one way or the other. The only other thing he could point to was his own having withdrawn from the race for Gwen French; but how could that have affected anything? His relationship with Gwen didn’t have any visible—or invisible—effect on their lives. How could it be that?

  But what else could it be? except one—or all—of those three?

  Could they have, he and ’Bama, committed some great—great—sin or other (it was the only word he could give it; the only word that fit), some great sin, then, that neither of them was aware of? so that whatever power or force it was that had protected them had suddenly been withdrawn? He had gloomily been thinking more and more about the strange talk he had had with Bob—and after that with Gwen—and what they had said about reincarnation and about the Group of Masters or Spirits or whatever you wanted to call them Who were supposed to be governing everything. Could They really exist like that? like Bob had said? And if so, what would they ever have wanted to give luck to him and ’Bama for in the first place? He and ’Bama went against just about every moral law that everybody taught was right. Hell, even the damned Communists wouldn’t want him and ’Bama, would think they were immoral. Why should these Masters or Spirits or whatever They were even be interested in two such “sinners” as him and ’Bama were? Why should They have given them this consistent luck? And then why take it away?

  And most of all, with a voiceless almost unbelieving awe, he wondered about what Bob had said about artists, about writers, possibly being below—the very greatest of them just one step below—the lowest, lowliest Seeker or Disciple or whatever they called them. Jesus Christ! if that was so, that was nowhere! He himself was nowhere! Hell, he might as well be dead! He wasn’t even a great writer! As the house settled immediately into deterioration and uncleanliness just one week after Jane was gone, he wondered darkly, and tried to work on his book.