The Huge Season

by Wright Morris

  Nearing the middle of the block, he stepped into stale draft full of music. Fugue from Franck “Prélude, Choral and Fugue,” blowing from bookstore stacked with remainders. But softly. Soothing savage breast for possible sales. Walls hung with modern conversation pieces, air full of transcribed classical pollen. Culture by pollination. Painless. Dehydrated or sanforized. As he dawdled between counters to the back, caught sight of Hound and Horn. Single copy. Lou Baker, for a year or two, had worked on the staff. Published excerpt tautly titled “Disinherited.” Now dated. What did he mean, dated? Sense of having been—having been taken in. Price on magazine forty-nine cents, so he slipped it under several books on the counter, where he might find it if he changed his mind on way back. Turned to see clerk with saddle-leather tie pin eying him. Button-down, too tight collar dating from odds and ends sale at De Pinna’s.

  “Getting warm,” Foley said and took out a Schrafft’s napkin, wiped his face. Clerk knew that. Wearing Mexican ring hand-crafted in the Village, and in spite of the heat cable-stitched pullover sweater. Living in windowless room where he let tap drip over wilted head of lettuce in bowl in the bathtub. Argyle socks drying on the faucet handles. Two liqueur glasses from sale at Plummer’s. As Foley idled toward the front, clerk cruised around the counter to the back. Foley watched him tilt over, shift pile of books, find copy of magazine he had left there, and thumb through rapidly for erotic illustrations he had missed. Returned magazine to center of table, under Toulouse-Lautrec. Take it home with him later, go over it carefully while he sat on the john. Foley stepped outside, turned as if name was called, but voice came from cab waiting at the curbing. Yankee Stadium. Batteries for the afternoon game. In background Foley could hear sound of foul ball slapping on screen of pressbox. Cab driver, noting he was listening, flipped up the flag on his meter, slowly drifted away.

  When Foley talked about the good life in the city he didn’t mean the city, he meant Central Park, and all he wanted of the park was a narrow green gap he could view from the window of a gray stone mansion. Below the window small trees, like celery stalks, wearing collars of garden hose and leashes of wire, as if taken in at night but curbed in the morning, like a good dog. Shaded street would be wet, with moist scent of early morning watering. Parked at the curb would be a wagon-wheeled electric, with flowers in the vases screwed to the doorposts, or an old Pierce-Arrow with the popeyed look of the fender lights. A chauffeur brightening up the brass with a cloth that smelled like an O-Cedar mop.

  Foley’s Fossil Diorama. Property of Peter Foley, born 1909: died 1929: corpse planted on the campus of quiet Quaker college, where it did not sprout. Spirit known to hover over scene of diorama, whimpering at night. Gatsby’s dream, Proctor’s trauma, like peignoir thrown to Foley as he soaked in the tub at St. Cloud, the night after Lawrence’s death. Smelling strongly of girls, of the bags of sachet found in all the drawers of the guest rooms, smelling of caste, class, and coats of arms, Yardley soap, saddle-leather luggage, and the pollen-laden air over the olive court at Phipps. Lawrence laundry tag sewed onto the tail of it. Foley had slipped it on, easy enough, but couldn’t slip it off. Had left it on, worn it wet and smelling, tails gathered in a bulging wad around his middle, under the linen coat and the pongee shirt all the way across Paris to his room. Swiped it, that is, in the American manner, like a piece of the Cross, Lincoln’s ax or log cabin, or pocket said to be torn from Babe Ruth’s pants. An object of magic, a pollen seeder, a hollow gourd full of the stuff that when rattled made the corn flower, the ghosts dance, and the dragon’s teeth sprout like the rites of spring.

  As if a finger had tapped him on the shoulder, Foley turned. Thought he had heard, would have sworn he had heard, some word spoken. No one stood behind him, but a small child, wearing a reindeer harness, peered at him through the bars of a playground, as from a cage. Gazed into Foley’s eyes as if they were holes bored into his head. Poor damn kid, he thought, and smiled. But child did not smile. For a moment he stood fixed, powerless to act, like a specimen pinned to the wall, until the child’s nurse picked up reins of his harness and pulled him away. Calmly, casually, Foley glanced at his watch, still keeping his father’s time, then he ran for bus held up by corner light.

  THE CAPTIVITY: VI

  We had it nip and tuck with Proctor for four or five weeks. The shock was bad, and after the shock there was a run of blood poisoning, but that setback, as it turned out, may have saved his foot. They figured he was too weak at the time for them to amputate it. So he came through with his foot, but it would never run the quarter in fifty flat. The slug had smashed all the fine bones across the instep, and when they took the drain from the hole it looked as if he had been nailed to the cross.

  That was the end of the great quarter-miler, and the hew track shoes Lawrence had given him for Christmas hung by their laces at the foot of his bed like the small boxing gloves dangling on the windshields of taxicabs.

  I had never seen him run without his sweat pants, or noticed him particularly in the shower, so I was surprised to see what beautiful legs he had. It made me wonder if a woman appreciated them. He had no arms to speak of, nor shoulders, but his legs were very nicely turned in the calves and like a good trotting horse where they met at the crotch. That explained why he made the racket he did when he wore corduroys. In a run much longer than the quarter mile he would need to be greased up between the thighs, like the well-bred horses I had seen in Chicago on the bridle paths.

  When he was not so depressed he began to read and catch up on his work. He gave his papers to me or Lawrence to deliver, depending on the class. During the spell that he was sick, or depressed, I wrote the English and Civics papers for Lawrence—nothing was coming through from Princeton at that point that was fit to use. I wrote about Chicago more or less in the vein Proctor had written about Brooklyn, but much more acceptably, since it was known that Lawrence had a Chicago background. I had a note from the dean congratulating me on the good work. Proctor and I never discussed it, but when it was clear that I was doing so well, Proctor suggested that maybe I should keep it up. His own papers might get us into trouble; they were too bright. He was writing poems now as well as stories, most of them dealing with love, all of them with sad endings, but none of them reminding you of Lawrence. My papers reminded the dean of Lawrence quite a bit. They indicated, he said, that Lawrence was becoming more aware of himself.

  Proctor and I never discussed certain details, but we worked out a program that would keep Lawrence in school. It called for handling some of Lawrence’s mail. Every two or three weeks, as a rule, he would receive a big envelope from Princeton—he would, that is, unless Proctor or I headed it off. The envelope was full of papers Dickie Livingston had collected from his girls. They were usually from Vassar, Smith, or Barnard, but he also had a very smart number at Goucher, who would turn him out a fine paper to order, on anything. Lawrence would throw them into one of the bags under his bed. When he needed a paper he would take one out, retype the first page and put his name on it, then go through the paper making spelling corrections in his own green ink. It was a system of sorts but not very well worked out. It might have worked pretty well at USC, Illinois, or one of the big factories, but Colton was so small you couldn’t get away with something like that. Proctor had seen that early in the fall, when he collected the mail. The only thing he could do was start writing the papers himself. Lawrence didn’t seem to care where they came from, who wrote them, or even who saw through it. He left Vassar and Smith term papers in the seat of his car; they might turn up in the pocket of his coat, or anywhere. There had been nothing for Proctor to do but see that he didn’t get more of them, and to do that he had to censor Lawrence’s mail. That had not been hard, for Lawrence didn’t seem to care about that either.

  While Proctor was in bed I had to take care of that myself. As a matter of precaution I went through his car, cleaning out all the stuff I found in the rumble and taking out the front seat to get at the papers that had fallen behind. T
here were plenty. Some of them dated from 1924. I went so far as to clear out the top drawer of his desk. He sometimes left a paper there after he had finished retyping part of it. He didn’t seem to give a damn. He had just forgotten that they were there. Except for French Survey, which he took up at Phipps, we had him pretty well organized by mid-February; a week or two, that is, before the freshmen took their physical exams. Right after the exams would come the first semester finals, which Lawrence would flunk, but his papers would be so good, we were sure, that he wouldn’t fail the courses. So we had it all figured, we had it down as pat as you can have something like Lawrence, right up to the night that Lundgren tapped on the door of my room.

  When I opened it he said, “Baby, how about you and me taking a little walk?”

  I figured that some griped, pimply-chinned frosh had let the cat out of the bag. He had probably been smart and waited till he knew he had us all involved. That’s what I was thinking, and as we headed for the wash, a sort of necking preserve behind the football field, I was trying to decide if I should write and break the story to my mother first. We poked along through the dark till we came to the Greek Theater. We came out on the stage, facing the curve of seats, and there was just moonlight enough to see the pairs of upperclass neckers, high at the back, under the blue and white Colton laprobes. Where we stood on the stage, just left of center, there were two rustic tables and several benches, left over from the Glee Club’s holiday performance of Robin Hood. Lundgren dragged a bench up to one of the tables, and we sat down on it. He put his Bull Durham sack on the table, his papers, and about two-thirds of a Sportsman’s Bracer he had started on the way over but decided to save. I’ve often wondered what the upper-class spooners thought of us. The moon was rising, and in the cold white light I couldn’t see much of Lundgren’s face but the blond top of his head and the white sweater he was wearing were very bright. In a clear voice he said that he had brought me out there to tell me the truth. I could hear the planks creak under the lovers who sat up to catch an earful of it.

  He had been sitting in his room, playing with his magnet, when he turned and saw Lawrence standing in the door. Lawrence hadn’t knocked, or spoken up, but just stood there with his right hand poised on hip.

  “What’s on your mind, Lawrence?” Lundgren had said. For certain reasons he never called him “baby.” He admired Lawrence, but he reserved “baby” for people he liked.

  “I’m in a bit of a jam, old man,” Lawrence had said.

  Lundgren said that he knew that so well he had agreed with it. He had nodded his head, and Lawrence had stepped into his room.

  “I can’t take it, old man.”

  Lundgren had naturally thought he meant the pace. In particular, the final exams that were coming up. “Oh, I don’t know,” he had said. “Aren’t you in the upper bracket?”

  “I mean the physical. I can’t take it.”

  “The phys?” Lundgren had replied. “Why not?”

  “Old man,” Lawrence had said, putting his hand into his pocket, “I’ll have to take you into my confidence.”

  Lundgren had just sat there, and Lawrence had gazed at the wall where Lundgren had drawn a target on the plaster. There were small holes in the plaster where Lundgren had stuck his compass, then drawn it out.

  “What’s the trouble?” he had said.

  “Old man,” Lawrence had said, “I got a dose of the clap.”

  “Christ!” Lundgren had jumped out of his chair as if Lawrence was so sick he might need it. But Lawrence didn’t need it, so he had sat down again.

  “Nothing urgent,” Lawrence had said. “Responding to treatment. Got a little careless in the Latin Quarter. Well under control, but there’s still a little scar tissue.”

  “Christ almighty!”

  “But I’m afraid an examination, old man—” he had said, and Lundgren had said, “Good God no, baby!” He had felt friendly toward Lawrence the moment he admitted to something like that. Lawrence had gone on to say that he didn’t tell Proctor because he was young and it might sort of shock him, and he didn’t tell me because he wasn’t sure I was the type. But he thought Lundgren was more acquainted with the facts of life and was not the sort of man who would get excited when he heard the word clap. Lundgren had replied that he knew there were people with so little experience that they did get excited, but thank God he didn’t, and then he asked Lawrence what he intended to do.

  “I was thinking of shooting myself,” Lawrence had replied.

  The way he said it had made Lundgren’s blood run cold. He had probably looked it, for Lawrence had gone on, “Not seriously, old man, just a small wound that would put me on the sick list for a short time.” Then he had put his left hand into the air and said, “I hardly use this hand.”

  “Look!” Lundgren had said, but it had been sometime before he could speak. First of all, what the hell could he say? Finally he had cooled down and said that two accidental shootings in the same frosh suite might lead some people to wonder what the hell. They might think everybody in the suite was crazy, or something like that.

  “I can see your point, old man,” Lawrence had said, but he had just stood there looking down at his feet, in particular the foot that Proctor had drilled with the .45. Lundgren said it had given him the willies just to look at him.

  “Look, baby,” he had said, “suppose we think it over?” And Lawrence had said, much obliged, old man, just as if Lundgren had been the one with the clap and had to make up his mind. It had been too much of a problem for Lundgren to keep to himself. The more he had thought about it the less he knew what the hell to think.

  “Christ made little apples,” I said, to indicate what I thought about it, then I sat there and watched Lundgren roll a cigarette. It took him quite some time; his hands were so nervous the tobacco spilled.

  “The crazy goddam booby-drawers, baby!” he said, and I could see that he was nearly overcome with admiration. He never cursed out anything he didn’t admire a lot. He had something like a feeling of reverence for a man who could catch the clap. “The crazy sieve-brained romantic bastard!” he said in a voice you could have heard back on the campus. “He probably caught it from one of them goddam French whores!”

  From the edge of the stage he flipped his cigarette into the dark side of the pit, turned on his heel and walked back into the wash, with me following him. There was not a peep, not a sound, from the lovers we left in the stands. It didn’t seem at all strange, out there in the moonlight, that a man who played tennis without any ground strokes should naturally catch the clap, or something worse, from the Latin Quarter whores. It was just one of the chances that a man of that type would take. We walked back through the wash without any more talk, coming in from the back, across the football field, from where we could see the lights that were burning in the frosh dorms. But Lawrence, clap and all, had gone to bed. There was no light in his window, and it crossed my mind, as we went up the stairs, that now every one of us had something on Lawrence, good or bad. But it was drawing us together right when I thought we were falling apart. Now he had the clap, or at least scar tissue, and while he slept we would lie awake, wondering where the hell he got it and what it was like. He didn’t seem to give a damn somehow, but we did.

  “The hopeless goddam bastard,” Lundgren said, but no more than a whisper, under his breath, because we could see the door to the room he slept in was ajar. We undressed and went to bed without turning on the lights.

  On Washington’s birthday, two days later, Lawrence disappeared. He got up from his desk, early in the evening, and I heard him speak to Lundgren, and Lundgren asked him if he would mind bringing back some hamburgers from Ma Slade’s. He said he would, and we sat up waiting for them, but he didn’t come back. When we got up in the morning we saw his unslept-in bed. He didn’t show up all that day, so Lundgren called up the dean in the evening, pointing out the fact that Lawrence’s car was gone and he was not in his room. The dean asked to speak to me, and I said that Lawr
ence had been feeling a little pressure, like everybody else, with the final exams coming up. That was all until Sunday evening, when an orange grower, over in the next county, found Lawrence’s car parked under one of his orange trees. Everything that would come off or unscrew had been taken off it. The cops even found the holes that Proctor had shot in the turned-back top. The next morning the frosh physicals began, and in the evening papers there were pictures of Lawrence, with stories to the effect that he had probably been kidnaped. The police, however, said it looked like amnesia—they had stopped believing in kidnaping after Sister Aimee had not been kidnaped two years before. The Tuesday papers were full of more pictures, described the great wealth of the Lawrence family, and on Wednesday morning Mr. Raymond Gans, Lawrence’s uncle, arrived on the campus. He brought along four or five Pinkerton men from Chicago. They spent one day picking up campus gossip, one day driving around and looking at the country, then they sat in our rooms playing pinochle and filing their reports. Mr. Gans called every hour from his room at the Ambassador in Los Angeles.

  By Friday all the frosh physicals were over, and early Saturday morning, according to the papers, a half-starved, dazed college student, nearly crazy from lack of water and food, stumbled out of the sagebrush about a mile outside of Twenty-nine Palms. It was Lawrence, and he was in all the papers that evening. We had him back at school Sunday morning—we had him in the infirmary, that is, occupying the room right across the hall from Proctor. According to the papers, he was suffering from shock, but I couldn’t see much of a change in him myself. If you didn’t know Lawrence very well you might call it shock.

  The story was that a couple of sailors, after thumbing a ride from Lawrence, had hit him over the head with a tire iron they found on the floor. Then they had taken his watch, his money, and stripped down the car. The only part of the story that made much sense was that he had been hit by a tire iron, and around at the back, where he couldn’t have hit himself. He had been hit so hard he may have been out cold several hours or more. Lundgren and I came to the conclusion that he hired some thug to hit him over the head, and that the thug thought he was crazy, and may have stripped down the car. But there were also quite a few holes in a story like that. When you were dealing with a person like Lawrence you couldn’t draw a line around what might have happened, or say, as they did, that he couldn’t have kayoed himself. Monday morning his uncle came out from L.A., and he was there in the infirmary when Dr. Lynes checked Lawrence’s heart, his lungs, and the bump on the back of his head. Then he asked him to stand up and take the test for hernia. He took it all right, and the doctor gave him a clean bill of health.