Pride

by William Wharton

  Back at the hospital, Sally tells Cap all that she’s done. She tells him she has to work the next day but she’ll go out in the evening after work and feed Tuffy. She’ll come visit Sture, too.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Sally. Looks as if I’m going to be in this hospital when the team leaves for Langhorne. I’ll need to catch up later. You’ll never know how much I appreciate all you’re doing; not many people are brave enough to go into a room with Tuffy alone.”

  “But he’s so gentle. He loves to be loved. He’s like a big pussy cat.”

  “He probably thinks you’re part of our pride. I’m really glad he took to you like that.”

  “What do you mean ‘pride’?”

  “A lion’s family is called his pride. Since I got Tuffy I’ve been reading all the books on lions I can find. Mostly they talk about lions in zoos and the diseases they get; there isn’t much about how lions actually live in the wild. I wish I could take Tuffy back to Africa and set him free with other lions.”

  Sally smiles. “I like being part of Tuffy’s pride.”

  During the week Sture is in the hospital, he and Sally start confiding about their past lives. Sally feeds Tuffy, then comes to visit Sture until visiting hours are over. Sture tells about his boyhood on the farm, about his bicycle, about being in the war and getting wounded. He tells her about his lost hair and lost teeth, about his lungs, about his hurt leg.

  Sally tells about her poor family, about having a sister who died of galloping consumption at thirteen, about her father dying of the same deadly disease, contracted while trying to nurse her sister. She tells how she quit school in sixth grade and was lucky to get a job with the telephone company. She’d always wanted to be an actress but now knew she’d never be one, just work at the telephone company until she met somebody at one of the dances who would want to marry her.

  “I’d think anybody who’d ever met you would want to marry you, Sally.”

  Cap says it before he knows it’s coming; it’s what he feels. He still can’t believe that this lovely woman, in many ways only a girl, is still unmarried, still not taken. The women he’s met so far in his life, except his mother, have all been so hard and grasping, so easy to read and yet so hard to know.

  He feels Sally is almost like the sister he’d always wished he had. He likes the way they can talk together, laugh together, and enjoy long private silences, looking into each other’s eyes quickly, looking away.

  “Would you want to marry me, Sture? You act as if you’re afraid of me, afraid to be a friend. Would you go to a dance with me before you leave for Pennsylvania? I’d like that. That’s the way you could pay me back for helping with Tuffy.”

  She looks straight into Cap’s eyes, not looking away this time. Cap tries to look back into hers but is so confused he needs to look away. He raises his good arm and puts the back of his hand across his face. He tries to keep his voice in control as he speaks, his hand turned backward over his eyes. He thinks of how he was almost blind, how he fought for his sight.

  “Sally, I’m too old for you. I’m too old even for myself. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to drive a racing car again. I’ve lost something inside, a way of believing everything would always turn out all right, that nothing could really hurt me. I’m beginning to be afraid, Sally. If you’re going to race cars, you can’t be afraid or you’ll get hurt.

  “That’s how I had this crash. I was afraid and trying to make myself think I wasn’t. I took stupid chances at the wrong time because I wasn’t in tune with myself.

  “You’d best forget you ever knew me. I’m an outsider, a wanderer, and I guess I’ll always be one. You’ll make a good wife to some real man, and a fine mother to beautiful babies. That’s what you need, not a vagrant type like me. God, I’m old enough to be your father. How old are you, anyway?”

  “I’m twenty, Sture. And I’m old enough not to believe what you’re saying. You only say those things because you’re discouraged here in the hospital. You’ll be yourself when you get out, get driving again.”

  Cap looks at her. She’s saying what he’d like to believe, but he knows it isn’t true. Still, he’s glad to hear her say it.

  When Cap finally is out of the hospital, Sally comes regularly to see him. She goes on long walks with Tuffy and Cap in the pine barrens. They talk about all the things they’d never talked about to anyone else before. Cap tells how he loved the animals on his parents’ farm, how he talked to them, how much he enjoyed school.

  Sally tells how she hated school, couldn’t do the work; always wanted to run away to Hollywood. Sally tells how she’s bored with her job at the telephone company, how she hardly gets breaks even to go to the bathroom; how the other operators are coarse and mean.

  Cap discovers that Sally smokes cigarettes. He embarrassedly tells her how his lungs are burned out and he can’t be around cigarette smoke. Sally snuffs out the cigarette she’s smoking and says she’s been looking for an excuse to quit, that it’s a filthy and expensive habit and she only started because her friends at the telephone company smoke.

  Here, walking in the woods with a young lion we have two people. One looking like the classic flapper, giving the appearance of being fast, as loose as the women she’s imitating; yet actually, naive, inexperienced, scared. And the other, our Cap, brave beyond reason, gifted above all, man among men, however also scared, unprepared for the hard life he can see looming before him. They fall into each other, both feeling they’ve found the perfect blend of humanity and an ideal of the opposite sex they wanted but of which they were afraid.

  Sally starts coming directly from work to Sture. Cap sends a telegram to the racing team saying he’ll meet them in Detroit, that he isn’t well enough to race yet.

  When they first sleep together in Sture’s cabin, they’re both virgins. They come to the end of play-acting against the wall of physical reality. Their unsuccessful efforts only increase the mental, spiritual bonding between them as they laugh uncontrolledly at their mutual ineptitude.

  They’d locked Tuffy in the small bathroom, and, after laughing, they cry together, then sleep together, wrapped in each other’s arms, legs, knowing the end of aloneness. Sture’s whole life, his reasons for living are changed.

  When Cap goes to Detroit, Sally quits her job and goes with him. Cap insists they get married but Sally puts him off. She finally agrees to a civil marriage before a justice of the peace in Elkton, Maryland. Her only concern is that she not get pregnant. Sally is willing to be married but not ready to be a mother. Sture represents love, affection, passion; a chance to get away from the boredom of her life, but she still clings to her aspiration of being something on her own.

  They’re now comfortable with each other sexually and blossom in the joy of discovering their long-suppressed sensuality.

  Tuffy rides cramped in the back seat of the motorcar. He’s accepted Sally easily into the pride but is perhaps feeling somewhat displaced by her in Cap’s affection.

  The drive from Atlantic City to Detroit is a marvel to Sally. She’s never been farther than Philadelphia and rarely has ridden in a motorcar. The entire experience makes her glad she’s left her job. She feels guilty not being able to send the five dollars from her pay check home to her mother, but Cap says he’ll make that up. Since they’re married, that seems all right to Sally.

  At Detroit, Cap drives on a dirt half-mile track, difficult and dangerous driving. He finds he not only can’t pull away from the pack, take the lead, he can barely keep up with it. The team figures he is still suffering from his last accident and needs a few races under his belt to get his nerve again. But Cap knows otherwise. He knows he’ll never be willing to take the kinds of risks he’s always taken without thinking. Now he’s thinking too much. He’s thinking of Tuffy, of Sally, of himself. He’s no longer just a comfortable, natural animal.

  He races twice more, first at Omaha on a mile track and then at Altoona, Pennsylvania. He’s scheduled next to race in Laurel, Maryl
and. In both races he’s had the same problem. It’s as if he’s forgotten how to do something perfectly simple, like walking or milking a cow. He knows what he has to do but he can’t get himself to do it.

  The worst thing is he doesn’t even want to force himself to it any more. He not only can’t drive competitively, he doesn’t want to. In Altoona, Cap and Sally stay with Tuffy in a lodge outside town.

  Sally cuddles against Sture, puts her arms across his chest, whispers in his ear.

  “Don’t talk like that, Sture. You know you’re the best driver around, as good as De Palo or Shaw or Bill Cummings or any of them.”

  “Yeah, maybe I’m good as Frank Lockhardt and look what happened to him. I was there. And I don’t really think I was ever as good as those guys. I’m a lot better mechanic than any of them but I’m just not crazy-mad enough to be an outstanding driver. Sometimes they drive almost as if they want to be killed.”

  “Please, don’t say those things, Sture. It scares me.”

  “Well, it scares me, too, Sally. It’s what I’m trying to tell you, I’m scared.

  “Look, Sally, honest, I know you came off with me because you thought I was a big-shot automobile racer and now you find out I’m so scared I can hardly get myself to ride a kiddy car. If you want to go home I’ll give you the money and you can just forget you ever knew me. It’d be the best thing. We could get a quick divorce, and since you feel we’ve never really been married, since it wasn’t in the church, you can go to confession and start out fresh again.”

  There’s a long silence. Sally lifts herself with her elbows on Sture’s chest. “Is that what you really think of me, Cap? Do you think I ran away with you just because you’re an automobile driver? Do you really think that?”

  “What I really think, Sally, is I want you to feel married to me and stay with me. But I also want you to know what I can and can’t do. I don’t want you to be sorry afterward.”

  So they make love again, the most complete and somehow least complete of all communications. The next day, Sture tells Sally his plan.

  “Listen, Sally, I have just over ten thousand dollars in the bank right now. I know if I keep racing I’ll only get worse, and I’m sure to get hurt or killed. I’m a menace now to the other drivers as well as myself.

  “I thought of buying a garage and running that, but I’m still not ready to settle down and I don’t think you are either. So tell me what you think of this idea.”

  Cap looks at Sally. They’re having coffee in their cabin. Tuffy has been fed and is asleep under the table with his chin on Cap’s foot.

  “I know of a car for sale. It’s a 1930 Model T Ford Miller 91 with a Fronty overhead valve conversion. It’s narrow, light, and I know some things I can do to make it a perfect sprint car. Then, instead of racing in this crazy race scene with international and top-flight drivers I can race the dirt tracks, the county fairs. With this car I could win easily and beat out the local cowboys with their souped-up jobs. I can buy the car and a Ford truck in good condition with a trailer to haul it with and we could be off. What’d’ya think of the idea, Sal?”

  “Is that what you want, Sture? I want you to be happy and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “It sounds fine to me and we could take Tuffy along in the truck. I could probably fix him a place to live in there; it’s big enough. The team’s getting nervous about Tuffy anyway and I hate leaving him alone all the time when I race. He’s liable to break out from one of these cabins, then some idiot of a sheriff will most likely shoot him.”

  “It sounds wonderful, Sture. We could go from one county fairground to the other and it wouldn’t be so dangerous, would it?”

  “Safer than driving on the road. I think we could have a good time all the way. There’s all kinds of betting at those county fairs, and we can make more money that way, too, with you doing the betting and me doing the driving. We’d make out great. I think anybody’d be glad losing money to a pretty girl like you.”

  Sture bought his Ford Model T Miller converted Fronty and a truck to pull it. He paid $5,000 for the entire rig, half of his capital. At that time, a good job paid $25 a week; $5,000 was four years’ hard work.

  Sture tinkered with that car for a month, making the conversions and adaptations he thought would turn it into the ideal “sprint car,” a car that could get going fast and maneuver easily. Sture knew his car wouldn’t have much of a chance in big-time racing, because there’s nothing more obsolete than last year’s car, but it could be a winner on dirt-track sprinting.

  And he was right. Cap Modig became the terror of county fairs. With his jackrabbit car he’d get off fast and hold his lead for the short runs.

  The typical race would have four qualifying laps to shake out all the cars not fast enough for racing. Then there’d be a trophy dash to determine the fastest four cars. These four cars would then compete in the main event. The main event would usually be twenty-five or fifty laps on a half-mile track.

  Cap won more than his share. Sally did the betting, and even at short odds would usually more than equal the prize money Cap won.

  The most dangerous part for Sture was that the tracks were so short he’d have to lap some of the worst drivers before the end. Some of these cowboys wouldn’t pull over to let him by. He wasn’t afraid so much for himself as he was for the car: half of his capital was tied up in it.

  He kept working on the car after every race, tinkering, tuning up, making minor improvements. It was a good life for the two of them. They bought a tent and they’d usually camp near the fairground, but not too near because of Tuffy.

  Cap and Sally lived this roving life for three years, moving with the seasons. Tuffy was developing into a full-grown lion. He could already pull off a roar, and his mane was thickening and darkening. He was still playful and would wrestle with Cap evenings. When Cap wrestled with Tuffy, sometimes the local people would come out to where he was staying and watch. Cap could probably make as much money wrestling Tuffy as they were making on the track.

  The meat bills for Tuffy were a major factor in the budget. Sally, partly out of jealousy, partly fear, and partly resentment at the cost, kept encouraging Cap to sell Tuffy or give him to a zoo.

  Cap knew he’d have to do something, sooner or later, with Tuffy, before an accident happened; but he couldn’t think of Tuffy in a cage all the time with no company and he knew that something of his own sense of security, his deepest joy, was invested in Tuffy. It was a fine thing for a man like Cap owning an honest-to-goodness full-maned lion, especially since Sally still didn’t want to have children. She said it would be impossible being on the road all the time. She was young; they could wait till they settled down.

  Cap would buy his meat for Tuffy from local butchers and sometimes at horse-slaughtering houses. Tuffy needed about ten pounds of meat a day. He used his teeth to pull the last meat off a bone, and his jaws were so strong he could crunch down and splinter a horse or cow thigh bone to get at the marrow. But his favorites were the cheapest meats: the kidneys, lungs, and intestines.

  Cap loved to watch Tuffy eat. The lion’s claws would actually dig into the bone as he held it to gnaw off the meat. Cap could almost understand why people were afraid of lions. Meanwhile, Sally was getting less and less comfortable around Tuffy. She told Cap it scared her when he stared at her as if he could wish her away.

  One of Cap’s favorite positions was lying with his head on Tuffy’s chest, snuggled under his forelegs. Sometimes when Cap tried to get up, Tuffy loosened his top leg and flopped it across Cap’s face without unleashing his claws. The claws were now each more than an inch long, and sharp. A vet near Kalamazoo, Michigan, one Cap took Tuffy to when he had a cold, said Tuffy should be declawed, but Cap wouldn’t have it done.

  Cap even liked the smell of Tuffy, especially just after he’d been brushed. He had the smell of the first sweat on a man before the air gets to it and turns it sour, not nervous sweat, but honest, hard-work sweat. But Tuffy’s smell
couldn’t be from hard work; lions are among the laziest creatures in the world. If they’re fed they’ll sleep most of the time or just lie around.

  In New Jersey, at a small county-fair track not far from Asbury Park, Sally and Cap are walking down the midway of a traveling carnival that has set up beside the track. Sometimes a race meeting lasts four or five days and carnivals like this take advantage of the crowds. They pitch their tents and set up equipment: small Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, various rides, sideshows, and other acts.

  It is in the evening after the last day of racing. Cap has won two races. He and Sally are walking down the midway of the carnival, late, after most of the crowds have gone.

  There are booths for pitching baseballs against metal milk bottles, or popping balloons with darts, or banging a sledgehammer on a scale to ring a bell—all the sucker traps that make carnivals fun.

  At the end, closing off the runway, are two interesting setups. One is a boxing ring with a really beat-up-looking pug sitting on a small ring stool. The ropes of the ring are covered with red velvet. The manager of the act, a bald-headed, middle-aged, well-pouched man, is sitting on the edge of the ring at the feet of his fighter. The fighter has heavy eye ridges from many poundings, and both ears are cauliflowered. There are thickened scars on his brows and on his cheeks. He’s sitting with his back to the ring, his arms looped over the ropes, his gloves on his hands, but the laces loosened. He looks to Cap like somebody who’s really been through the mill, someone, like himself, who has too many scars. The promoter yells over to Cap.

  “Hey there, feller, you look tough. Why not give my boy a workout? There’s nobody around to bet so it’ll only cost you ten bucks; if you can stay in there with him for three rounds it’s worth a hundred to you. What d’ya think, make a big impression on your pretty girlfriend there?”