by James Jones
“In a lot of ways, it was like yore story,” ’Bama said grinning. “‘The Confederate.’ It might even be a sort of history of all Southerners. They were great fighters. They just spent too much time fightin with each other.”
The only other time he spoke was some time later, when he suddenly began to talk about the diabetes and told Dave he had halfway suspected it for some time. He just hadn’t done anything about it because he didn’t want to know for sure. Well, now he knew. After that, he spoke no more until they had got home.
It was something like seventy-five miles from Indianapolis to Parkman, and long before they got there, the trip had turned into a nightmare for Dave. Everything seemed as if it wasn’t happening and yet seemed to promise to go on endlessly. After a while, he did not believe they would ever get there. The man beside him, his friend, obviously in constant pain and yet not saying a word about it; himself, pushing hard, trying to get them there, and yet at the same time trying to drive as smoothly as he could. The wound had opened up again from all the moving around and was bleeding steadily. It was an experience Dave did not soon forget, and seemed somehow to set the mood for everything that followed.
“Don’t say anything about this diabetes stuff to anyone,” ’Bama said when they finally pulled into the drive, and Dave only nodded.
As soon as he had got him inside and helped him upstairs to bed, he called Doc Mitchell, the doctor ’Bama said he went to. Dr Earl Mitchell was a roly-poly little man with a big, fleshy nose and kindly eyes. He was one of the few successful doctors in Parkman who had made money and not used it to open up a “clinic” or a “sanitarium.” He came right out when Dave called, and Dave sat upstairs with them while he dressed the wound and they discussed the diabetes.
“Well, if they’re right and it is diabetes,” Doc Mitchell said in his mild sad way, “the best thing to do is to get you into a hospital and have them check you out.”
“I won’t go into any hospital,” ’Bama said. “I’ve had enough hospitals today to last me forever.” His lips were still drawn tight across his face from the changing of the drainage wicks in the wound. “Can’t you fix it up without me havin to go in?”
“Well, I guess I can, ’Bama,” the little doctor said. “It’ll be a little harder. But yes, I can do it all right. I’ll just take the blood for the test myself and have one of the labs here in town do it. I’ll get the syringe and all the stuff and show you how to use it. It’s simple enough.” He smiled. “When I have the blood sugar test from the lab, I’ll know how many units to start you out on.”
“What about this drinkin business?” ’Bama said.
Doc Mitchell spread his hands, almost helplessly. He was as kind and self-effacing a man as the doctor at the hospital had been commanding. “He’s quite right about that, of course, ’Bama,” he said. “You should quit drinking entirely. The diet itself isn’t so tough. They make a lot more out of it than they need to. All you really need to do is cut out the carbohydrates and eat lots of leafy vegetables. But you should quit drinking.”
“I’ve been drinkin whiskey all my life,” ’Bama said, his voice flat. Then he grinned. “In fact, I could use a drink right now, after the way you tore me up, Doc.”
Doc Mitchell laughed, the humor in his eyes curiously tinged with sadness.
“No, I been drinkin all of my damned life,” ’Bama said, “and I don’t reckon to stop now.”
Again, the little doctor spread his hands. There was a look of sad understanding on his face. “Well, try to cut it down all you can,” he said.
“What about this dying business?” ’Bama said.
“It’s hard to say,” Doe Mitchell said. “But he was probably right about that, too. And then again you might live on damned near forever. It’s just hard to say.”
“Well, to hell with it,” ’Bama said. “Five or ten years is quite a while anyway. Dave, go down and get me a bottle of Jack Daniels, will you?”
And that was the way they left it. ’Bama kept on drinking whiskey. Doc Mitchell fixed him up with everything he needed, brought him out the syringe and equipment, showed him how to use it, even brought him a couple of books on diabetes. ’Bama studied them carefully with that meticulous mathematical attitude of his and learned all about the insulin injections and the mechanics of the disease itself. But he did not stop the drinking.
“The thing I hate about most doctors,” he said to Dave, “is that they always want to dominate you into living. Now Doc Mitchell’s not like that, and that’s why I like him: He understands. And then after they’ve dominated you into living, and you do go on living, all the damn fun’s gone out of living anyway. So what have you got?”
In three weeks, nearly the end of March, he was up and around again, still limping but able to navigate and to sit up and play poker all night at the Moose or Eagles. The wound had healed well, and every day he faithfully gave himself his shot of insulin. Dave would see him sometimes, late in the morning when he had got up, sitting by the light of the bedroom window, his pants down around his ankles, the little glass and metal insulin syringe in his hands against the light. ’Bama would look up and laugh, and make a gesture as if to goose him with the syringe. All of his diabetic equipment and the books he kept locked up in a little cabinet in his room. Neither of them ever mentioned anything about it ever, to anyone.
’Bama had digested the books on diabetes immediately, while he was still laid up with the hip. He also went through all of Dave’s books on reincarnation and metaphysics that Bob had given him, although neither of them ever talked about them. As soon as he was back up on his feet again and the limp had nearly subsided, he packed his little diabetes cabinet in the Packard and went down to the farm and stayed for several days, almost a whole week, the longest Dave had ever seen him stay down there.
Apparently, to all intents and purposes, he was the same old ’Bama.
But he had changed.
Chapter 60
IT WAS STRANGE to watch the change take place, grow more pronounced—especially for Dave: Dave who, he realized now, had always had this almost worshipful hero worship for him. It was not so much that he changed physically. If anything, he looked to be even healthier, after he started taking the insulin. That sallow, hollow-eyed look that he had had ever since Dave had first known him faded away somewhat, and more color came into his face. The strange protruding paunch melted away a little, too, probably from the diet and from keeping his bowels open with plain-water enemas as Doc Mitchell had advised him. It was eerie to Dave, to think that even back then, almost a year and a half ago now, when he had first met him there in Ciro’s, even then the tall gambler was probably already suffering from this disease. The change wasn’t physical, it was something inside ’Bama. The old cool, collected, objective, always-in-command-of-the-situation ’Bama was being sucked out of him, eaten away, before your very eyes. In its place was a flighty, irascible, often petulant man whose judgment was no longer dependable and whose grin was bitter as gall. It even showed up in his gambling: From the cold methodical poker player, patient as a steel trap, he became an irritable greedy player; he was even on occasion given to fits of wild unreasonable betting on hands which even he knew weren’t worth it, but unlike Bob French in his sporadic poker jaunts he could not push his bluffing through. And then, he would actually complain almost querulously about losing! It was as if—or so Dave analyzed it—it was as if, knowing that he was sick, knowing that he was dependent—upon insulin, upon diet, upon help—took away all his old self-confidence and left him no longer powerful, no longer positive—exposed. Only when he was thinking or when he was reading some of his metaphysical books on luck, or working at his calculations of their still dwindling wins, did he seem at all to be the old, calm mathematical systematic ’Bama. Only then, and when he was driving the big black car.
The change took place in an astonishingly short space of time, actually—from the time he got out of bed which was the last week in March, to Easter which fell
on April 17 in that year of 1949: about three weeks. In that time, he had become an entirely different man. Most of the time, he didn’t talk at all. Like all diabetics, he had taken to carrying cubes of sugar in his pocket all the time, upon Doc Mitchell’s advice, as insurance against insulin reaction. And also, there was always the possibility of diabetic coma should his insulin allowance fall too low, or should he eat and drink too much and forget to take his insulin. None of the others knew anything about any of this; all they knew about was the shooting; but the change in him was apparent to everyone, and the last vestige of the old unity in the house disappeared. ’Bama took to spending more and more time down at the farm with Ruth and his kids and Clint and his family, and Dave as well as all the others were thrown more and more upon their own devices. For Dave, this gradually came to consist of Ginnie Moorehead. But mostly, it seemed, for all of them, it consisted of the liquor: There was always plenty of liquor at the house; ’Bama saw to that. He himself was drinking even more now; it was almost as if he were deathly afraid of being caught sometime without a bottle at hand.
“What’s the matter with him?” Wally Dennis asked Dave once, after ’Bama had come in and gone up to his room without a word to anyone. “What’s happened to him since he got mixed up in that shooting scrape? Has he lost his nerve?”
Dave could only glare at him. “I’ll tell you one thing, kid,” he said tensely. “And don’t forget it: Whatever it is that’s happened to him—and it’s none of your business; and it’s none of mine—but whatever it is, he hasn’t lost his nerve.” He said it for the benefit of all of them, scattered around the kitchen, and no one of them would meet his eye and offer to take exception, even the sanguinary Dewey. But it appeared that nevertheless, the opinion voiced by Wally was the general consensus. “You, all of you, practically live off of him, drink his damned liquor, and then sit around and talk—over the whiskey he bought for you—about him losing his nerve. Well, I wouldn’t wipe my feet on the whole damned bunch of you!” He glared at all of them, ready to go to the mat with any one or even all of them. But, for the moment at least, his fury was too strong for any of them.
“And I’ll tell you something, kid!” he said to Wally. “You better learn something about nerve, kid; before you go shootin your mouth off about it.”
Wally did not say anything. He did not like being called “kid,” it showed plainly on his face, but he only looked down at his glass—filled with ’Bama’s whiskey—and then took a big drink of it. Wally had been having his own troubles lately, Dave had sensed it, although he did not know what it was.
“I’m sorry, Wally,” he said.
“It’s all right,” Wally said without looking up from the glass. “I guess I had it coming.”
Dave looked around at all of them. He had said his little piece. But it plainly hadn’t changed anybody’s opinion. He got his own martini and took it upstairs to sit with ’Bama in his room a while. It was a futile gesture. They really talked very little anymore, except for just superficial things. But he sat down anyway, holding his glass. There was a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels on the bedside table. And so he just sat, in silence. It was all he could do.
’Bama was reading the Alice A Bailey occult book, Discipleship in the New Age, and he glanced up in acknowledgment of Dave’s arrival and went back to the book. After a moment Dave cleared his throat. “You like that stuff?”
“What?” ’Bama said and looked over at him. Then he at the cover. “Yeah,” he said. “Very interesting.” Then he grinned that bitter grin. “I guess I’d like to believe it’s true.”
“That’s the way I feel,” Dave said. “I guess that’s why I distrust it. It’s always so easy to just believe something you want to believe. I distrust myself.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s how I feel,” ’Bama nodded, his head already back in the book.
“Why don’t you come over to Israel with me sometime soon,” Dave said, “and meet Bob and Gwen.” Then his stomach sank away from under him again at the thought of her. He hadn’t seen them since ’Bama had been shot.
’Bama dropped the book again, and grinned. “What for?”
“Oh, you could meet them,” Dave said awkwardly, “and talk to Bob maybe. He knows a lot. He’d be glad to talk to you.” But inside, the sick empty feeling in his stomach, he was hoping desperately now that ’Bama would not accept.
“No thanks,” ’Bama said, raising the book again.
“Well, it was just an idea,” Dave said, feeling relieved, but wishing now, a little guiltily, that he had accepted, for his own good. “Well, I guess I’ll go on back downstairs,” he said lamely.
“See you,” ’Bama said, head still in the book.
Dave nodded from the door and then went on slowly down the stairs, and in the darkened hallway Ginnie Moorehead met him, and he put his arms around her.
And that was the way it went. One time ’Bama would be icily, totally unapproachable; and the next time as flighty as a virgin on stilts, petulant, even querulous.
Dave, who still remembered that weird night he had heard Lois Wallup weeping, could only watch and helplessly do nothing. It was only one more of that steadily increasing series of mishaps. Only this time it was something more than just a minor mishap. It was a major calamity. Not only to ’Bama himself, but to all of them. But why had it come just now? It had been in progress back almost a year and a half ago when he met them; perhaps ’Bama had actually already had the diabetes then. But why had it happened just now? Why right after Raymond Cole had died? after Mildred Pierce had got married? after he himself had quit with Gwen? Was all this only superstition in his own mind? Only a reaction to his own guilt? He could not escape a feeling that in some way it all tied in together: the three incidents, and now this.
The old life—the life that he had so unconsciously moved into when he first met ’Bama that first day he was in Parkman—that life he loved, that old life, that pattern, was breaking up, and he was watching it. All that remained was for the people to move on into new spheres, away from each other, and for the house to rot and fall down, and the garden in the vacant lot to grow back up in weeds, then it would all be gone. Change. Inexorable change. What had caused it? What was the answer? He had stood and watched it disintegrate all about him, and inside him, too. All that remained was the disposal of the ashes: the interment. He had never in his life, despite all the whiskey the tall gambler drank, seen ’Bama actually drunk. Now he began to see him drunk increasingly. Eyes glazed, his movements and speech slow and thick, but always able to walk without staggering. He even played poker that way, something he would never have done before.
Was he himself, Dave, somehow personally responsible for all of this? Had he, by entering into the life of this group, caused it in some way to fall all apart? What if he had never come back to Parkman at all? Perhaps ’Bama would never have contracted the diabetes at all? Or was all this only the haunted imaginings of some unnamed guilt in him? All his life, it seemed, he had been just an onlooker, a sort of outsider. He had never participated; he had never acted. Only when he was violently in love with some woman or other, did he ever really act—and even then his actions never extended far enough beyond his immediate vicinity to affect any other person. Bob French had said a writer should be an onlooker, a nonparticipant: a sort of physical and emotional recording machine, without personality, without opinions. But was Bob right? Would not such a man be just a sort of emotional and spiritual octopus, sucking the vital energy out of everyone he came in contact with? Or again, was this just his own obscure guilt? that guilt that every human in the world today seemed to suffer from?
Where did it come from, this new guilt in everyone? And what was its purpose? If there was really a definite evolution, as Bob claimed, where did this great vague guilt fit into it? Or was it just that it came from your mother beating you when you were a kid? just mechanically came from that, augmented by all the toilet-training of civilization which instilled such a feeling of fi
lth that you wound up constipated, mentally and emotionally constipated? Well certainly wasn’t emotionally constipated. If anything, he had diarrhea of the emotions. And all he could do was sit, feeling somehow vaguely that it was his fault, and watch Old ’Bama fall apart.
Dave himself—in spite of his protracted furies of work the past six or seven weeks—had only come up with about twenty-five pages of finished manuscript in all that time. Most of what he had written in his extended furies, he had gone back over later and in a fit of despair decided to throw out. And what was left he wasn’t even sure was any good. He had not been over to see Gwen with any of it, and when he tried to pull himself back into the old, slow, methodical routine he failed miserably. Only when he worked himself up into an emotional frenzied fury could he work at all, burning out of him his worries and fears; otherwise his mind was too full of both Gwen and ’Bama to concentrate at all. And the work done this way was not nearly as good. It plainly lacked discrimination. And even his furies of energetic anger were now weakened by what had happened to ’Bama.
Only once during that six or seven weeks from when he had last seen Gwen did he take anything over to Israel to show her; and that one time was just the same as the time before: She was just as embarrassed and distant as she had been before. She read the manuscript—as did Bob—she thought it was good, and said it seemed like a very little for so long a time. Bob had had an answer from the new story “The Peons” that he had sent in; the lady-editor at NLL had bought it for the same price as “The Confederate,” five hundred dollars, and was going to use it in the fall collection. She thought it was even better than “The Confederate,” though she did wish he would try sometime to write about more normal people. Bob gave him the check and he put it in his pocket. It meant so little to him that he carried it around in his pants a week before he discovered it again and deposited it in the bank with the other. And he did not go back to Israel after that; it was just too painful. All he did was just hang around the Parkman house and watch what was happening to ’Bama. The increasing change in ’Bama was utterly unbelievable.