by James Jones
“Oh, Wally!” Gwen said. “That wouldn’t help you. It might even make it worse, comparing me to her.” Dave, Dave! She got hold of herself. “No,” she said. “No, I won’t. I’ve told you I was tired of sex and love. I don’t ever want to have to go through again that agony you’re going through right now.” God help me, she thought.
Wally let his gaze drop. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he said gloomily. “I guess it was just a wild gasp. You know, I used to think I was in love with you, once. Hah!” he said. “How green was my valley? I didn’t even know what love was! Even when I had it, with Dawnie, I didn’t even know what it was. That’s the worst thing!” he cried.
“Believe me, Wally,” Gwen said, “time will take care of it. It’s an awful struggle at first. A real battle . . .” It trailed off, and Gwen didn’t even feel like trying to finish it. God, oh, God.
“Time!” Wally bellowed. “You don’t understand!” he cried. “I think of her all the time! I keep remembering her how she looked up in the woods that first time—”
Gwen listened painfully as he went on talking about himself and Dawnie and all the places they had gone, more exquisitely painful than she could ever remember having felt before. Everything he said was not himself and Dawnie, but herself and Dave—except that the things he and Dawnie had done were things she and Dave had not even got to do. They didn’t even have those things to remember. Probably, she thought, the pain bright, probably those were the things he did with her, with Ginnie Moorehead. She brushed her hand across her forehead and shook back her hair and shut her eyes and let her hands lie lax in her lap, and listened.
“There isn’t anything!” Wally cried, “not a single damned thing! in this town, that don’t remind me of her. I ought to get out of this damned town entirely!” He stopped, and a kind of silence fell, and Gwen opened her eyes.
“Aww, Gwen!” Wally said. “Gee, Gwen, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I had to talk to somebody. I got to do something,” he said justifyingly.
“That’s all right,” she said, “I’m not crying. It’s just that I felt so sorry for you. I think it would be a good thing if you got entirely out of town for a while. Look; why don’t we do this. Why don’t you go away for six months, to New York say, and let us finance you, Bob and myself. We can give you enough money to keep you going that long, and in six months, you ought to have your book done. I’m quite sure I can get you the second year’s renewal on your fellowship, and if you need more money than that, let us give it to you. It would get you away from here and all the bad memories, and—and maybe you’d find yourself a new girl, there.”
Wally stared at her, his eyes wide with thought for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Thanks a lot, Gwen. That’s nice of you. But I couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I just can’t take money off of you and Bob like that.”
“Well then, let’s say we’re loaning it to you. You can pay it back later, out of the royalties of your book.”
Wally shook his head again. “What about the fellowship?”
“I’m pretty sure I can get it renewed for you, even if you do go away to New York for a while. Even so, if we don’t get it renewed, what does it matter? if Bob and I loan you the money?”
“Cities scare me. I don’t like them,” Wally said. “To go somewhere like that where nobody knows you. New York, most of all.”
“I know lots of people in New York. I can give you letters to all kinds of people. It might even help you to get your book published later.”
Wally stared at her, narrow-eyed. “No,” he said, and shook his head. “I can’t do that. But you’ve given me an idea. I know what I am going to do.” His eyes, so dull and darting up to now, flashed suddenly with a high frenetic enthusiasm. “I’m going to join the Army.”
“You’re what?!” Gwen was flabbergasted.
“Sure! Join the Army and see the world. Think of the material I’ll get.”
“But, Wally,” she protested. “Wally, that’s ridiculous. You don’t imagine you’ll be able to finish your book in the Army?”
“No!” Wally said eagerly. “Hell, no! I’ll just put it aside while I’m gone. Then when I get out I’ll be able to finish it, and I’ll also have a novel about the Army I can write, too.”
For the first time since he had arrived, he sat up suddenly in his chair, no longer depressed, his eyes bright. “A couple years in the Army like that’ll give me more maturity. I ain’t seen very much of life you know.”
“It’s three years,” Gwen said, “if you enlist. Isn’t it?”
Wally shrugged the extra year away. “Okay. So three years. I’ll just be that much more mature.”
Gwen did not know what to say. She tried desperately to think of every deterrent that she could. “Well— But you were turned down for the draft, weren’t you?”
“A bad ear,” Wally said, his eyes bright as the idea took deeper hold on him. “All I got to do is get it cleaned out before I go up for examination and they’ll never notice it. I let it run before,” he said, a little guiltily, “on purpose.” He smacked his fist into his palm, suddenly transformed from the unhappy boy who had entered earlier. “Gwen, you don’t know how you’ve helped me. Yes, sir; I think I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind for quite a while, only I just didn’t recognize it. I was talking to Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson not too long ago about the Army. They’re both thinking of going back in. Maybe I’ll go with them.”
“Wally, be sensible,” Gwen said, her heart beating with a kind of desperate foreknowledge. “You don’t belong in the Army. You’re a writer. Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson may belong in the Army. You’re just making an excuse to escape from your work.”
“But I can’t work anyway, anymore,” Wally said. “Anyway,” he said, “I’ve taken a lot of guff in this damned town, because I was turned down for service. Hell, most of the guys I was in school with are all in service. Why shouldn’t I do my stint? It’s not like there was a war on. Not that I’d care. No, sir, by God!” he said with finality. “That’s what I’m going to do. Then when I come back, I’ll have forgotten all about Dawnie Hirsh. Dawnie Shotridge.” He clenched his fist, then raised it, and then smacked it down into his palm again with enthusiasm. “Gwen, you don’t know how you’ve helped me!”
Gwen looked at him, at the frenetic enthusiasm on his face, her heart sinking in her desperately. The last one left, and the Army! She tried a ruse. “But what will all the people in Parkman say, when you go in the Army so soon after Dawnie’s marriage?”
“To hell with them! I won’t be here!” Wally said.
Once more, as she had done at least twice before since he had come, Gwen pulled herself together firmly and disregarded her own misery. “Well, you’re not going to do it,” she said. “I won’t let you. I’ve put God knows how much energy and time and thought and belief in on you, and I’m not going to let you just throw it all away for some damned wild excuse to get over a twiddling little love affair. I’ve got some rights, too. You didn’t marry Dawnie last summer when you had the chance because you wanted to write. Well, want to write now. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You sound like a ridiculous child.
“This is something I have learned from Bob. First you have to have a job. Make yourself do it. Because if you don’t, your mind will gallop from one idea to another all your life. Your job is writing, not saving your country. And when you deny it, you’re denying yourself.
“What if it had been you who quit Dawnie last Christmas, instead of her quitting you? Would you be so miserable now?”
“I did quit her,” Wally said, dismally.
“Ahh, yes! But then she turned the tables on you by not caring. She married someone else. She outsmarted you. That’s why you’re so miserable. She dominated you. When all the time you thought you were dominating her. Your ego, your vanity, can’t stand it.
“Stop pitying yourself, Wally. Of course, you can’t work. You’re
too damned busy feeling sorry for yourself.”
Her voice had suddenly become nearly hysterical, and her ears were listening to it carefully, trying to make her stop.
“Stop pitying yourself, Wally,” she said screechingly. “Of course, you can’t work. Your entire emotional strength, your whole existence is limited to this little state that you have built up in your mind. Love! A mountain out of a molehill! Stop it!” she cried, almost hysterically; because she herself could hear her own mind screeching her own words at herself.
Wally was staring at her, wide-eyed. And at the same time, all during her long-winded diatribe, that thick Slavic bullheaded stubbornness had been growing more and more pronounced in his face. She would never change him. Her words would not change his mind any more than they would change her own.
She got herself stopped, and then sat looking at him, her heart sinking. She wanted suddenly to slap his face, back and forth, until his ears rang and his eyes fell out.
“Go on and join the Army,” she said defeatedly. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care whether you go or not.”
“I’ve looked at everything,” Wally said sincerely. “I’ve thought of everything. It’s the only thing for me to do.”
“Just remember one thing,” Gwen said; “I won’t be here when you come back. You’re the last one,” she said. He obviously didn’t understand that; but she did not feel like elucidating. “You can get somebody else to help you with your damned writing.”
Wally smiled at her, warmly, then got up. “You’ve helped me a lot, Gwen. You’ve helped me a lot today, too, even.”
“Yes,” she said bitterly. “Yes, I’ve helped you a lot.”
“You’ll feel differently when I come back,” Wally said magnanimously. “You’ll realize it was all for the best.” For a moment, he put his arm around her, where she sat slumped in the chair. From the door on the cellar landing, just before he went out, he smiled and said: “Just remember one thing. No matter what happens. Just remember how much I’ll always owe you, and how grateful I am to you for all you’ve done for me.”
For a long time after he left, she did not move. It seemed somehow that whenever the crises came, Bob was never here. It was as if none of them even wanted Bob to be there. If Bob was there, they all just waited, until he was gone, before they brought their crises up to her. Bob, the only wise man of the lot. Gwen shook her head. Maybe Bob could have helped it; maybe Bob could have convinced him. Join the Army! The very last one left. And she had failed again, as she had failed with all of them. Guilt clawed at her, and her heart sunk down in her as far as it could go, defeatedly. She didn’t know where Bob was, and she simply sat, waiting for him. She knew what she was going to do. She was going to do, in defeat, what she had once hoped to do in triumph. She was going to take her own book and go far away and to hell with them, and she was not even going to wait till the school term ended. She was going now. Somewhere where she could work, where she would not be required to love a bunch of oafs who could not stand to live unless they were in hot water all the time; where she would not, either, be required to be “in love” with another oaf who did not even know it when someone was in love with him, and only wanted to rut in the gutter with some fat piggish whore. You could save the whole world and lose your own soul. Where was Bob? Where, oh, where was Bob?
He sat and heard her out while she told him. Sitting around the corner from the end of the table where she still sat, he leaned his chin on his hand and listened kindly.
He leaned over and patted her gently on the hand when she finished. “Dear Gwen,” he smiled gently, “if that is how you feel, I think that is exactly what you should do. Go. One can only take just so much in any one period of one’s life. The—ahh—ability to absorb punishment differs in different individuals, and one must realize one’s own limits.”
“You always agree with everything I say,” Gwen said, disheartenedly.
Bob shrugged, then smiled, sadly.
“The only thing I worry about is leaving you here alone,” Gwen said.
“Dear Gwen. Don’t give it a moment’s thought. Shardine and Jim can take excellent care of me. You’ve gone away before, you know.”
“Never like this,” Gwen said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever come back. Always before I just went away to school for a while, knowing I’d be back.”
Bob shook his head in gentle disagreement. “That doesn’t matter. You must do what you feel like doing. If you don’t come back, you just simply don’t come back. However,” he smiled, “I expect someday you will. If only for a visit. Where do you think you’ll go?”
“I’ve been thinking about Tucson. Cousin Wilson Ball is still out there, still running his Florsheim shoe store. I could stay with them until I got settled. I don’t feel up to trying to go to school anywhere this summer. And the country out there is beautiful: the long vistas, and the colors. And I expect Cousin Wilson Ball still has horses. I feel like maybe it might be—be healing. But most of all I want to take my book with me and get it finished up and sent in to a publisher. And I think I could work there.”
“It sounds like a splendid idea, dear Gwen,” Bob smiled. He paused. “And dear Gwen,” he added awkwardly, “don’t be shocked if your old father says this to you—but—find yourself another man. It’s often one of the best ways.” He smiled apologetically.
Gwen stared at him a moment, then suddenly began to laugh hysterically. Wildly, it rose up out of her in great roaring waves, and she threw back her head and let it come. Poor dear Old Bob. He was as about as inept at giving her advice as she had been with Wally. Apart from all the other—that he did not know—Gwen French the worldly-wise!
Bob got up and came over to her, and standing, held her head against his lean tweed-jacketed stomach. “Dear Gwen!” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t mean to remind you.”
“Oh, Daddy!” Gwen gasped, laying her head against the tobacco-smelling tweed. “No, no— It isn’t that. It’s just— Daddy, I said the same identical thing to Wally! Oh, Daddy! Aren’t we all so ridiculous!”
“And so sad,” Bob said.
Once it was all decided, it did not take long to put it into action. She did not even go back to the college. All her manuscript and most all of her research was already here at home. Bob called Dr Pirtle himself that same night, to arrange a substitute teacher. It was the work, he said; trying to do all the research and the writing and handle all her classes too. No, she wouldn’t even be able to come tomorrow. Very nearly a complete breakdown, yes. No, she wasn’t seeing anyone. As soon as she was able, she should go away for the summer. Probably to Tucson, yes; they had relatives there. Dr Pirtle, as always, was very understanding. He would arrange for the substitute. Three days later, she was packed and gone. Because Bob did not like to drive, she said goodby to him at the cellar landing door. Bob would explain to Dave, and anyone else. Shardine’s husband, Jim, drove her in her own car to Indianapolis to catch the plane.
As for Wally, he left that same day that he had talked to Gwen. He didn’t see any reason for hanging around. High and enthusiastic, glad at last to be doing something that kept him occupied without having to think, he stood and looked around his room and realized there wasn’t very much to put away. He would let his mom worry about it. His manuscript he packed carefully in typing paper boxes and locked it up in a bureau drawer. The key he hid carefully down amongst the mechanism of his typewriter, then slipped the leatherette cover over it. He didn’t want his mom looking at his manuscript. If the house burned down while he was gone, the hell with it; he’d write the whole damned thing over. He’d probably have to anyway, when he was maturer. Hell, maybe he’d throw that whole damned book out entirely and start a wholly new one. And for the first time in a long time he felt really free. His three Randall knives—the #3 Hunter, #5 Yachtsman, and the #8 Trout and Bird—he locked up in the bureau with his manuscript. The #1 All-Purpose Fighting Knife he packed carefully in his bag, of course. That was why he
’d bought it: for the Army. He only packed one small bag; and after he packed it, he hid it in the closet where his mom would not see it, and went to make his goodbys.
He had a couple of buddies in town, fellows from the old band, and he went to say goodby to them first. Then he went down to Dave’s and ’Bama’s, hoping to find Dewey and Hubie there, too, which he did. Of them all, only Dave tried to persuade him not to enlist. He did not, of course, tell them of his talk with Gwen. Dewey and Hubie, raising their heads up from their glasses, gave the considered opinion that a hitch in the Army was good for every young man; it grew them up. ’Bama didn’t seem to have an opinion, and shook hands with him stolidly after he had had one farewell drink with them.
At the last moment, when he was already on his way home, Wally got the idea of going by and saying goodby to Frank and Agnes. After all, they had been very nice to him in the past. And besides, they would probably mention it to Dawnie in their next letter. He didn’t hold a grudge against her anymore. Not really. But he could not help wondering with a little thrill what she would think when she heard the news. Would she, maybe, feel just a little sad?
He found, when he stopped by the house, that Frank was not there. Only Agnes was home. Frank, of course, was down at the store. Hell, he should have known. That meant he would have to go down there, too, like Agnes suggested he do. Anxious to get going, he nevertheless sat down and talked with her a few minutes. Enthusiastically, he told her about his plans. Being on the selection committee, Agnes naturally asked him about his book, and he explained how he was laying it aside until he got his service in. Then when he came home he would finish it up, and in addition have a novel on the Army, too. He might, he said happily, even find that he might be able to do some work on the first book while he was still in service. She seemed very understanding, he thought, and when he left she kissed him.