Mary and Finlay walked down the linoleum-covered stairs. Somebody on the first floor was brewing coffee. It smelled good. Mary was trying hard to think. There were many things she ought to be thinking about, but her mind was in a state of blank suspension, and her emotions had been drained away.
She heard Finlay tell a policeman to watch the apartment house in case Ginny or the little man left. Across the street was a small park with occasional benches. Soldiers and sailors were stretched out on them. On one bench sat a soldier with a girl. The soldier was asleep, his head on the girl’s shoulder, his open mouth drooling on the ratty fur of her neckpiece.
“It’s going to be a warm day,” said Finlay.
Mary looked up at the sky. “Yes,” she said. “It’s going to be a warm day.”
They got into the police car and Finlay drove toward the station where Jeff was being held. She didn’t remember the ride. She didn’t know how long it took. She sat huddled against the door of the car and let the wind cool the fire in her eyelids. Then the car stopped and they were there.
Finlay got out first and held the door open for her. His face looked the same to her as it had last night. Strong. Oldish. Comfortable. Dependable.
She said to him: “You’ve been very kind, Captain Finlay. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Don’t,” said Finlay. “You do your job and I’ll do mine. He’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”
Finlay left her and started into the police station. I was wrong, he thought. Mitchell didn’t do it. Maybe Keeley was right. Maybe there were some men who couldn’t kill. In that case Finlay knew he had outlived his usefulness as a policeman. Maybe there was a new kind of people coming into the world. People like Jeff Mitchell, who couldn’t kill. They would call for a new kind of policeman. It’s going to be tough to handle that Crawford boy, though. He’s a good liar. But he’s the kind I’m used to. I’ll know how to tackle him. He decided that he would have to send somebody down to the Post to pick up Monty Crawford right away. Better, he would go himself. Jeff he could release on his own recognizance.
Mary walked slowly back and forth in front of the police station.
“You do your job and I’ll do mine.” That’s what he had said.
What was her job? What was any woman’s job during a war? What was war itself? Certainly it was everything she had thought it was. But it was so much more, too. More than merely a blue star in the window. More than a headline read hurriedly over morning coffee. More than a radio commentator haggling over boundaries on a map. More than casualty lists and V-mail and pictures of jeeps and war bond drives. It was all of those things and more. More than bombed cities and lines of straggling refugees and blood donations and giving to the Red Cross and buying a poppy on May 30.
It was all of those things and more still.
It was Jeff being lonely. Not only her loneliness, but her man’s.
It was whorehouses, and girls like Ginny. Girls who could take loneliness in their arms and dispel it.
It was a stranger with a D.D. How many more men would there be with dishonorable discharges? Who would think of them? What would be their place?
It was Captain Finlay looking for a soldier who had murdered.
It was Peter Keeley calling up at night and asking her to hurry up and fly three thousand miles to be with her husband.
It was crowds and confusion and frantic letters from a frustrated husband. It was understanding, understanding, and more understanding.
Mary didn’t understand all the things that spelled w-a-r. But she did understand at last that war did not come from outside of people. It came from inside them. And when people had cured themselves, there would be no war.
Jeff was standing on the steps of the police station.
Every other thought fled from her mind.
Jeff needed a shave. His uniform was wrinkled. His shoes needed shining. He came down the steps, and she took his arm. For awhile they walked slowly and said nothing.
Then she said, “Jeff.…” And she stopped because she didn’t know how to say it.
“Yes?”
“Will everything be the same as it was with us?”
“No,” he said. “It won’t. It can’t be. We shouldn’t expect it. Even if this hadn’t happened, things wouldn’t be the same. But I think things will be better. They’ll be better for everybody, and that means for us, too.”
But that wasn’t what Mary meant. She wasn’t even listening to Jeff any more. She was listening now to the wisdom of her own body, and it was aflame. There was something she had to prove to herself and to Jeff. That was the immediate thing. She would prove she was better than Ginny. She wanted to wipe Ginny from his mind forever.
She wanted to go to bed with him.
About the Author
Richard Brooks (1912–1992) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Temple University. A novelist, director, screenwriter, and producer, he was known for hard-hitting dramatic films that addressed social themes and for his skillful adaptation of literary material for the screen. His celebrated films include The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar. After serving in the Marine Corps during World War II, Brooks wrote The Brick Foxhole (1945), The Boiling Point (1948), and The Producer (1951) before turning full-time to movies.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1945 by Richard Brooks
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN 978-1-5040-4438-7
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