Some Came Running

by James Jones

  At the store, he shook hands with Frank, and with Al Lowe, who as a combat veteran of World War II gave it as his sober opinion that it was a fine thing he was doing by enlisting, but Frank’s office girl Edith Barclay was also in the office quietly going about her work, and Wally suddenly felt constrained by her presence. There didn’t seem to be much to talk about, unless he talked about himself, and he didn’t want to do that in front of the girl. When he left, he accepted another of Frank’s big Churchills and stuck it in his pocket.

  Back home, he got his bag from the closet and came downstairs with it to say goodby to her. Five and one-half minutes later, he was walking out of town to hitchhike to Indianapolis where he intended to enlist, feeling freer and more happy than he thought he had ever felt.

  That Edith Barclay, he thought, as he thumbed the first two trucks that passed. She really had a body. Now there was a woman who, he bet, would really let go and love a man once she knew she loved him. Hell, she might even still be around town when he got home.

  Chapter 64

  IF FRANK HIRSH HAD been able to guess that Wally Dennis was thinking covetously of his mistress, Edith Barclay, he would have been pleased. And if he had known Wally was imagining having designs on her three years from now, he would have laughed. Or, at least, he would have laughed a month ago. He had never been so sure of Edith’s real love for him as he had been a month ago. Now, however, he was not quite so sure.

  But, of course, Frank did not guess what Wally Dennis was thinking, because it would have been hard for Frank to realize that a boy like that would ever even think of sex. Hell, he was no more than just barely out of high school. True, kids were growing up a little quicker nowadays—witness little Dawnie’s getting married—but they still weren’t growing up all that quick. Anyway, getting married grew a person up almost overnight. The added, new responsibilities; the necessity for engaging in a meeting of minds; the give-and-take; all of these turned a youngster into an adult all at once, and consequently, they were ready to learn something about sex. The odd thing was you didn’t even need to talk to them about it, about sex and all that stuff. They just picked it up themselves, once they married. Frank had never seen anything as amazing as the sudden change into adulthood that had come over Dawnie, when she at last made up her mind that she was getting married. She had become a mature, thoughtful, forceful person overnight.

  But all that did not apply to young Wally, who had never married. Instead of going into the Army, he should have found a nice girl and married her and settled down. Frank was all for marriage. And he himself had never been so married, so very much married, as he had been with Agnes the past year. And he had never been so happy in his life.

  Of course, he knew why the boy was going into the Army. He felt kind of sorry for him ever since Agnes had told him she suspected maybe he had had a boyish crush on Dawnie. Probably going into the Army was the best thing for him.

  That damned wedding! Frank thought a little smugly. It had cost him a fortune; but it had been more than worth it. When you only had one daughter, you ought to give her a real send-off. It had been his idea to get all the relatives in from out of town. And he had offered to help pay whatever expenses they incurred by coming. No one accepted, of course, except Francine in Hollywood. With her husband and herself both schoolteachers, they wouldn’t have been able to come if he hadn’t helped them out. There had been a devil’s own time, getting all of them put up, and in the end they had had to resort to the hotel, for which he footed the bill. It was, he reflected happily, a damn good thing that he had almost unlimited credit with Clark’s father-in-law and the Greek. He wished his own damned motel out on the bypass had already been built! He could have just put them all in it and turned it over to them. But then with a wife like Agnes, it had not been a problem anyway. He had just turned it over to her. And, as always, Agnes had handled it all superbly. She had done a magnificent job, flying to New York and all. Frank had never been as proudly, and as happily, married as he had been those three weeks before the wedding, and the big week of parties after it.

  In only two things concerning the wedding did he have anything to do with it. One was that it was him who suggested putting Edith Barclay and her grandmother “within the ribbons”; and the other was that it was him who handled the Old Man.

  Both he and Agnes had agreed right away against inviting either the Old Man or Dave. The Old Man, of course, was out from the start. He probably didn’t even have a suit of clothes he could wear to a wedding; and if you went out and bought him one, he would be just as liable to show up in it without having shaved for six days and dead drunk. And as for Dave, since he had taken to living in that damned house with ’Bama Dillert and sleeping with that horrible low-life bum of a whore (everybody in town was laughing at it), they had decided that it was best not to invite him, either. He had only seen Dawnie a couple of times since he had been back in Parkman anyway, both times when he had eaten dinner at their house. And in the last year, he had turned into being almost as big a thorn in their sides as the Old Man.

  With Dave, there was no problem. They just would not send him an invitation and, moving in the circles that he did, he would probably not even hear about the wedding until it was over. Unless, of course, some of the relatives wanted to visit him; but that could be easily taken care of by simply explaining the situation and asking them, if they wanted to see Dave, to wait until after the wedding. And as a matter of fact, Francine was the only one who put up much of a beef. Francine had seen that story of his in the New Living Literature pocket edition out in Hollywood (Agnes had a copy of it, too; kept it out on the coffee table, so that people would not think they were bitter about Dave), and while Francine thought it was a fine story (as did Agnes!), Francine was not in the least upset about Dave’s using the old family name Herschmidt that they had all been trying to live down for so long. And so, with her wild scatterbrain “artistic” ideas about Art and Freedom, Francine had insisted that Dave be invited to the wedding. However, with her three children to take care of, her protest was pretty halfhearted; and anyway Frank had always been able to handle Francine. And when the rest of the family, including her own husband, sided against her Francine gave up; although she insisted that after the wedding she was going down to see Dave. And, in fact, did go to see him.

  But the Old Man was a different thing, entirely. He was liable to take it into his head when he was half drunk that it was his granddaughter that was getting married and, by God, he was going to go, and then show up at the church in his overalls and old mackinaw and that wornout railroader’s cap. The older he got, the more crotchety, and just plain mean, he became. So it was delegated to Frank to talk to him and fix it some way so he would not come. He had tried to talk to him as kindly as he could without actually coming right out and asking him not to come. But that was not, of course, the way to try to talk to him; and he should have known it. The pension home where he lived was just across the street north on North Main Street the cross street from the end of the business district, so that Frank did not actually have to drive up and park in front of it conspicuously. Frank did not like Mrs Rugel who ran the pension home, and with whom the Old Man had been having a “love affair” for the past three or four years; and he did not want to go to her place. So what he did was park in front of the business houses at the end of the business district and wait; until the Old Man came out of Mrs Rugel’s along in the middle of the morning. When he did come out, and started toward town, Frank opened the right-side door of the Cadillac and leaned over and called to him.

  “Hey! Get in. I want to talk to you.”

  Whereupon the Old Man, instead of doing as he was told, naturally, merely put his scrawny fists on his hips and stood and grinned at him evilly. “Well, hello, boy!” he said.

  Frank waited patiently, still holding the door open, and finally the old devil came hopping over to the car. He stood in front of the door for a while without saying anything, still grinning maliciously, an
d then finally he got in.

  “Well, how have you been?” Frank said. “Been a long time since I’ve seen you.”

  The Old Man grinned. “Scared I’ll come to yore girl’s weddin and fox it up for you, ’ey?” he said.

  Frank was rather taken aback. “Well, that is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” he said awkwardly. “Along with finding out how you’ve been, and all.”

  “Cut the crap,” the Old Man said, and then cackled maliciously. “How much is it worth to you if I don’t?”

  “How much?” Frank said, taken still further aback. “What do you mean how much?”

  “What do you think I mean? How much money. You think I mean eggs?”

  “Well, how much do you want?” Frank said.

  “I ain’t made up my mind exacly yet,” the Old Man grinned. “Make me an offer.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you have in mind,” Frank said. He still had not recovered from the suddenness with which they had got to the subject of money. “You want me to buy you a couple bottles of whiskey?”

  The Old Man cackled. “I want a lot more than that!”

  “Well, just what do you want?” Frank said, a little irritably.

  Obviously enjoying himself, the Old Man leaned back and opened up his frayed mackinaw. “Sure is a nice car you got here, boy,” he grinned. “How much she cost you?”

  “Great God!” Frank exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you want my car now!”

  “No,” the Old Man grinned. “No, I don’t want yore damned car. But I’ll tell you what I do want.”

  “Okay. Damn it, tell me,” Frank said. “And we’ll discuss it.”

  The Old Man leaned back in the seat, grinning, and thought awhile. “Well, I want two things,” Frank’s father said finally. “First, I want fifty dollars. In cash. Right now. No, seventy-five dollars.” He peered at Frank beadily.

  Frank stared back at him, saying nothing.

  “And the other thing I want,” Old Man Herschmidt said, “is somethin I been thinkin about fer some time now. I want a trip to Wisconsin.”

  “To Wisconsin!” Frank said. “What the hell for?”

  “Fer fishin,” the Old Man grinned. “I want to go up to Wisconsin fishin. Once more before I die. To a place I used to go to up there. Yes, sir; that’s what I want.” He slipped his mackinaw lapels back and hooked his thumbs through his overalls bib. “I figure,” he said happily, “it’ll cost you three, four hundred dollars. To do it up real right. Well, what do you say?”

  “Fishing! Well, for Christ’s sake!” Frank said. Then quite suddenly, he was angry. “Hell, you don’t have to trade me out like I’m a tightwad. If you’d have just come to me and asked me, I’d have been glad to finance you for a fishing trip to Wisconsin.”

  “Like hell, you would,” the Old Man said.

  “The hell, I wouldn’t!” Frank said angrily. “What do you think I am?”

  “I know what you are,” the Old Man said.

  “You do, hunh? It’s your damned layin around drunk all the time and embarrassin the family that I don’t like. I’d be glad to finance you to go on a fishing trip.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” the Old Man said. “You’d have told me to go screw. Anyways, I wouldn’t never have asked you, you son of a bitch. But this way I got somethin you want, and yore willin to pay for her. Even-steven.”

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” Frank said, struggling to keep from blowing up. He reached in his coat and pulled out his wallet and slid out a fifty and three twenties from a thick sheaf of cash.

  “Small bills, please,” the Old Man said. “I ain’t got yore credit nor reputation.”

  “All right,” Frank said irritably, and exchanged the large bills for tens and fives. “Now how soon can you leave for Wisconsin?”

  “Not now,” the Old Man said, and shook his birdlike head. “Late June, or July or August’s, the time to go. But I want you to deposit four hundred dollars in a savins account for me. I’ll pick the book up myself. Soon’s I got that book in my possession, I’ll see to it that I don’t show up at yore girl’s weddin.”

  “Four hundred dollars is a lot of money for a fishing trip,” Frank said.

  “Four hundred’s my price. Take it or leave it,” the Old Man said, and grinned at him evilly. “If I’m a-goin on this fishin trip, I ain’t goin cheap.”

  “All right, like I said, it’s a deal,” Frank said. “But how do I know you won’t go back on me? What guarantee have I got?”

  “Heh-heh,” the Old Man said. “I reckon you’ll just have to take my word for it, you son of a bitch.”

  “All right,” Frank said irritably; “but, by God, you better not try and show up at the wedding and ruin it. We’re plannin on havin a big wedding for Dawnie.”

  “Yair. I’ve heared about it,” his father grinned.

  “Okay. You just remember that,” Frank said, to which the Old Man merely grinned. “Do you want a personal check for the four hundred? I can write you out a check right now.”

  The Old Man looked at him slyly for a moment, then nodded. “All right; I’ll take a check. But you just better not try and stop payment on it.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Frank said. He got his checkbook out, and wrote off the check, his hand trembling a little with anger.

  “All right,” Old Man Herschmidt said. “Just you don’t try and stop payment on it. Because I’ll take it right up there today and that weddin is still two weeks off.” He accepted the check and folded it and stuck it down in his overalls bib pocket. Then suddenly, he cackled. “Now, I’ll tell you somethin, boy! I wouldn’t have give a damn whether I went to yore damned weddin or not. Hell, I ain’t seen that girl of your’n more’n three times, I don’t reckon. What would I give a damn whether I went to her weddin or not?”

  He slapped Frank on the knee and cackled as if he had just put over a big fox of a deal, and opened the door of the Cadillac and got out. He opened his mouth and peered down wisely at Frank inside the car. Slowly, the open mouth grinned, and he shut the door and walked away. “Goodby, boy!” he called back, and cackled smugly.

  Frank sat in the seat, irritated and edgy, and cursed under his breath as his father walked away. As it turned out, it was to be the last time that Frank was ever to see him, because in July of that year—on the Fourth of July it was—he was to die without ever having got to make his fishing trip to Wisconsin. He would die in the night in his room at Mrs Rugel’s of a stroke brought on by drinking all day (and probably several days before that; and God knew how many years before that) in celebration of the Glorious Fourth. Frank would, of course, give him a nice funeral. A funeral to which, however, very few people would come, except for Mrs Rugel and Frank and Agnes. His wife, of course, would not come. The four hundred dollars would still be in the bank, and would be very helpful in paying the funeral expenses. But, of course, Frank did not know any of all this then, as he sat in the car. And if he had known, he wouldn’t have cared. He had been hoping the old son of a bitch would die for fifteen years now. Anyway, he did not come to the wedding.

  The one other thing Frank had anything to do with, concerning the wedding, which was getting Edith Barclay and her grandmother seated “within the ribbons,” had been his own idea. His sole suggestion, actually—except to add the Greek’s name in along with Clark Hibbard’s father-in-law and mother-in-law. When he told Agnes, he put it all on Old Janie, just to be careful. It would, he thought, be a nice gesture to have Old Janie sit inside the ribbons, since she had been working for them so long. And especially since she so obviously had not been in good health lately. And, of course, if they asked Edith, which they would have to do, he said, since he was asking everybody else who worked at the store, they ought to have her sit with Janie.

  He did not really know what made him do it, but it elated him to think of his mistress sitting among the honored guests at his daughter’s wedding. It was the kind of thing the Anton Wernzes, grandfather, father, and son, or those
old oil magnates who had founded the Country Club, might have done. Or Clark’s father-in-law; or the Greek, if he had ever married. They were all pretty sophisticated people. Being wealthy like those people made you sophisticated. Anyway, he felt he owed it to Edith, after all she had been to him. But, of course, he could not tell any of this to Agnes. And indeed, had to be damned cautious in even approaching her with it. Agnes could smell a “clandestine affair” about four times as far away as she could see one. And in fact—up until the last year, at least; when they had got back together—had accused him of having affairs with lots more women than he had had.

  It was really amazing, when you thought of it, that she had never yet tumbled to Edith. Frank himself could only attribute it to Edith herself, and the extreme caution she always insisted upon.

  When he approached Agnes with the idea, she had looked up from the lists she was working on that evening, chewed on her eraser a moment, and then said that she thought it would be a fine idea. Poor old Janie had been going downhill rapidly the last couple of months.

  For a moment, Frank thought she might have guessed—even from this tiny bit of evidence. An old habit pattern, probably. Then she smiled at him, and he knew everything was all right.

  When he told Edith about it later, she was angry and did not think he should have done it, but underneath he could see she was pleased just the same. Pleased that he thought enough of her to take that kind of a chance for her. However, she still thought it was a silly thing to have done. But finally, he convinced her that he had really put it across, and that Agnes suspected nothing.

  The truth was, Frank did not need Agnes to tell him how badly Old Janie had been going downhill the last couple of months. He knew a lot more about it than Agnes did; because he got it from Edith. It was, in fact, about all Edith could talk about anymore when they were together. Agnes had told him that Janie was practically worthless around the house anymore. She still came every Friday, and Agnes would never have said anything about it to her, but it was little more than a token gesture anymore; Agnes herself, together with little Walter’s help, was doing almost all the real housework now on the days Jane wasn’t there. He and Agnes both knew by now that Janie had quit all her other jobs in order to keep on working for them; and he agreed with Agnes that they could not say anything to her. Hell, she had been with them ever since the first year they were married. And yet, Agnes said, whenever she tried to talk to her about her health, Janie only changed the subject, or else grinned and said she was dieting.