The Last Adam

by James Gould Cozzens

  She closed the door, stepped down the two wooden steps and fled, her heels catching on the foot-marked path, yesterday's slush frozen hard as iron. She kept her mouth open, gulping in the clean air. Entering her own back door, she saw—it had been impossible for her to remember—that she had left nothing in danger on the stove. From this frigid shed of a kitchen, she passed into the warm room. "Joe," she said, "I've got to bring Mrs. Talbot over here. She's pretty near crazy—"

  "Hello, May," Harry Weems said. He was sitting on the other side of the stove and she hadn't seen him at all. "What's the trouble?"

  "Mamie Talbot died."

  "Say, that's too bad!" Harry got to his feet, agitated. Joe had gone pale, his mouth tightening in a sort of sullenness. Joe wanted his supper, not Mrs. Talbot. Joe couldn't stand Mrs. Talbot anyway—who could? —and May didn't blame him. "I couldn't help it," she said, "She can't get herself anything to eat. Harry" she added in sudden appeal, "could we get a bottle of gin or something? We've got to give her something —"

  "Sure thing," said Harry Weems. "Get you one right away."

  "Wait. I'll pay you."

  "Don't be dumb," he said. "Anything I have you can have. Gosh, May, what do you think I am?" He was a little redder; hurt; pulling his cap on as he went out.

  "He'd never miss it," Joe said. Joe really tried, but he couldn't hide the bitter edge on his words. Look at Harry and look at him. "He made a hundred and seventy-two dollars last week," Joe said. "He brought five cases over from New York State last night, and he says practically all of them are spoken for. Listen, for God's sake, what's the good of bringing Mrs. Talbot here?"

  "Joe, I tell you she's pretty near crazy. I don't know what she'd do. One thing: she wanted to go up and tell Mrs. Banning she hoped she was satisfied, because she's killed Mamie, all right."

  "Well, I hear it's the truth."

  "No, it isn't! It's just craziness. I think in some ways Mrs. Banning was pretty mean to Mamie. But I happen to know this, because Mamie told me. All this fall, Mrs. Banning came out herself and saw that Mamie drank a glass of milk with every meal."

  "Larry keeps three Jerseys for her. She has to get rid of the milk some way, I guess."

  "Another thing Mamie told me was when it got so cold last September, that week, Mrs. Banning came up to their rooms at ten o'clock at night herself to see if they had enough blankets."

  "Banana oil!"

  "I can't help whether you believe it or not. Mamie told me."

  "Well, what's so wonderful about it? You keep saying 'Mrs. Banning herself,' like she was God or something."

  "Well, lots of people wouldn't have bothered."

  "Yeah, and she's one of them."

  "Well, Joe, I'm sorry. I've simply got to bring Mrs. Talbot over for a little while."

  "Go and get her and let's get it over with!" He shifted a little on his back. One arm slid inertly sideways; but before she could help him, he pulled up his shoulder, turned, making it fall back. "Go on," he said. "Get the hell after her!"

  In that wing of Bates' store which was rented to the United States Government, the post office window was not yet open. Behind the high screen formed by the mail boxes, Helen Upjohn and Mr. Bates' daughter Geraldine could be glimpsed in hasty movement under the tin-shaded lights hung above them. There was a constant sound of paper striking glass softly as envelopes went into their proper boxes. Suddenly whole small oblongs would be blocked up with rolled afternoon papers from Danbury, Bridgeport, or New York. People who cared to pay for boxes from time to time stepped forward, twisted the small combination dials, drew out whatever there was and retired to lean against the varnished wainscoting, looking at it. A row of windows let those otherwise unoccupied gaze out.

  All along the front, ample, mellow light flooded the section of cement side-walk. Between this paving and the triple concrete lanes of US6W stood half a dozen motor-cars, several of them with their headlights on, their front wheels against the side-walk edge. Out of the dark, new figures kept appearing on this well-lighted little stage. Some went to the doors of the store and came over inside; some walked past outside and came in at the post office door. This opened and closed constantly, admitting people who were brought to a halt by the press, distributing themselves as they could along the bits of unoccupied wall, against the board covered with notices about fourth-class mail, the Postmaster General's obsolete request to mail Christmas packages early, and the poster, in colours, of what was being shown at a Sansbury moving-picture theatre.

  Above, under dusty glass, hung a framed picture displaying the leaves and flowers of the mountain laurel with an ornately lettered plea to spare it—The Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia, is made, constituted, and declared to be the state flower of the State of Connecticut—Public Acts of 1907. Up to it floated a general haze of tobacco smoke, a general murmur of voices and confusion of conversations.

  Here, or stepped out a minute, or just coming in, were most of the men who had a stake in New Winton; power in its government, or position in the sense of running a business or owning a farm. Since everyone knew everyone else, clothes had no symbolic value here. Their good suits were at home. They wore old overcoats, old boots and overshoes; hats and caps meant only to cover the head. Mr. Bates, moving behind the grocery counter, his threadbare jacket hanging open on a sweater of sagging grey, was First Selectman. In a very old black overcoat, Matthew Herring, the Treasurer, retained by his tall, thin frame and composed face a distinct air of gentility. He came, of course, of superior people, living, well enough to-do, in a large house in the unfortunate taste of the seventies above Banning's Bridge. Charles Ordway was more citified. As Representative in the Legislature, he felt the need to be presentable in Hartford. He made up for bringing his new clothes home by great affability; he and Henry Harris, on several occasions his defeated Democratic opponent for his position, stood together in the friendliest possible intimacy. The clock now said ten minutes past six and Lester Dunn called loudly: "Let's go, Helen! Read what he wrote afterwards!"

  There was a glimpse, for those against the notice-board, of Helen Upjohn's fleeting pale smile beyond the glass-fronted pigeon holes; a little laughter rewarded Lester Dunn. The door opened and George Weems came in from his adjoining garage. Several voices saluted him. Henry Harris lifted his brown, pointed face and said, "What do you know?"

  "Not so much, Henry," George Weems nodded. "Hello, Charley." He paused a moment and added, "Harry just came by and tells me Mamie Talbot's dead."

  Silence fell instantly. There was a following murmur; surprise; disinterested consternation; then, in a gradual, grave lament, separate voices: "That's too bad —"

  "What, that's a shame —"

  "Why, yes, Mr. Weems says Mamie Talbot's dead—"

  "Don't seem right. How old's she? Not more than seventeen, I should say —"

  "I doubt she's more than sixteen —"

  "I surely feel sorry for Mrs. Talbot. You'd think she had her share of —"

  "You can't hardly believe it. She was just as lively and —"

  Henry Harris looked around, and seeing no one except Matthew Herring who could be called really intimate with the Bannings, allowed himself, for he had a longstanding political feud with Mr. Herring, to say: "I hear she took sick through overwork and underfeeding."

  Matthew Herring, though he could not help hearing, paid no attention, so Henry Harris went on: "I notice they didn't keep her. Sent her home when she felt too bad to earn her pay."

  Matthew Herring removed the mail from his lock box, snapped it shut, and turned about; his high, thin shoulders stooped a little; his long, reserved face expressionless. "You oughtn't to say things like that, Henry," he observed. "We know what you say never means anything; but strangers might take you seriously." He nodded to Charles Ordway and went out of the door.

  There was a stir and snicker of applauding laughter, Through this relieved sound, a voice, harsh in an old bitterness re-aroused, came clear, heard by everyone: "What you e
xpect when you got a horse doctor treating her? Just give him time, I say, and old Doc Bull can kill us all."

  "That's all right, Virginia," Larry Ward said. "It's only about six or a little after. I told Mrs. Banning not to hurry you; you'd be along soon enough."

  In the light-flooded garage, Larry's face had a beautiful warm bronze colour. The carefully shaved skin was firm and very finely textured. What should have been handsomeness was subtly spoiled by a too great regularity of feature. It gave him the blank, Insensitive look of a wax model. Like a model, too, his eyes were astonishingly bright, China blue, shaded in his bronzed face by an expression of perpetual mild perplexity. Virginia Banning got out of the Ford. "You'd better not keep Charlotte waiting," she said sharply.

  "We're going to the dance at the Odd Fellows Hall in Sansbury," Larry said. "I guess she'll wait, all right." Showing at once his idea of the splendour of the proposed entertainment, and his pleasure in Charlotte Slade's probable docility, he came innocently close to smirking.

  "Well, you needn't be so damned conceited," Virginia told him. "If I were Charlotte, I'd drop you cold!"

  Larry looked at her, stunned to the customary confusion which afflicted him in matters not connected with farm animals or gasolene motors. He laughed a little uncertainly, straightened the bright orange necktie which he had knotted into a starched linen collar, and got into the Ford. The engine was still running, so he backed out promptly, halted. "Go on," Virginia said. "I'll shut the doors."

  "Thanks!" he shouted, waving his hand, backed about and started down the drive.

  Virginia made a slight, contemptuous sound between her teeth. She pushed her gloved hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, moving speculatively to look at Guy's car.

  Standing on the clean cement of the garage floor next to her father's dark, sedately shaped, carefully kept sedan, this car of Guy's had a wonderfully violent air. Guy got something when he got that. She hoped, each time she saw it, that it would please her less, look more ordinary and less desirable; but it didn't. Its great power and tremendous potential speed could not have been more quietly, entrancingly evident. It had none of the shiny ostentation of lesser cars, turned out thousand after cheap thousand. Slate grey, its not too new enamel was flat and dull under a hardened film of dust and oil; its metal, of a luxurious tough thickness, showed the same lustreless practicality. A lean, three-pointed star was hung in a metal ring poised on the radiator cap; simple and severe badge of makers who didn't make cars for everybody, not a tricky little statue or ornament.

  Virginia's gloved hand caressed one of the great headlights crouched inside the long strong swoop of mudguards slightly dented here and there on the edges. Out of the sides of the formidable hood came fat tubes, like ribbed worms of soiled metal. They passed diagonally astern, ducked out of sight again. Virginia was not sure what they did, but they seemed to imply a power too titanic for any ordinary hood to cover and hold. She moved along the side, glanced into the open driving compartment. The keys were there.

  Carefully, unhurried and absorbed still, she passed on, examined the tyres, glanced at the dial on the underslung gas tank behind. Very quietly returning, she opened the door, slid across the much-used leather of the open seat. There she sat a moment, buttoning her jacket, pushing the fur collar close under her chin, tucking her skirt tight under her narrow thighs. She laid a hand on the wheel, reached and turned on the ignition. The headlights snapped up to a mighty glare on the radiators affixed along the back wall.

  The motor turned over vainly a moment. It caught then with a shocking thunder and she throttled it down, wincing; opened it up again, jerking the choke. With a wheel-spoke in one hand, the choke held out against possible stalling, she let the clutch engage gingerly, gazed over her shoulder, watching the long stern push out on to the drive. It bent majestically to the right until, looking front, she was pointed for the gate. Letting go the choke, she stamped on the clutch, snapped over the gear lever. Gathering momentum with a great roar, she swept down to pass the house.

  Upstairs, a window slammed open, and though she did not bother to look, she heard the sound of Guy's outraged shouts. Glancing hastily right and left, she slid through the gate, turned south in a pool of radiance from a street light at the corner. Down the ghostly sweep of US6W her long-shafted lights poured ahead. She saw a movement among the cars before the post office and jabbed her thumb on the button, sending the shattering blare of her horn down to them. "The red tail-light of one or two, starting to back, stopped, frightened; a single dark figure scurried across the down-flung brilliance. She was into high; and, given the accelerator, the, motor picked up marvellously. She was doing forty-five when she roared, horn rasping out, past the hesitant parked cars; the lighted windows of the store; the glowing glass globes on Weems' gasolene pumps. It was fifty-five when the half-shadowed, half arc-lit shape of St. Matthias's church at the corner hid the bridge road from her. She punched the horn button and took a chance. She was past it then; the star-scattered sky opened like an immense southern dome as she dipped down beneath the last street light and off on the fine straightaway to the river bend.

  Lighted like the other dashboard dials from some secret inner source, the shaking hand of the speedometer showed now, now hid, the numeral 6 of 65; and that was certainly fast enough. The air lashed stinging around the low wind-shield, so fiercely cold it scalded like fire blown along her face. She could scarcely breathe; the blast of it drove, chill, right through the leather of the buttoned jacket.

  Seeing that sixty-five was fast enough, already a little afraid with only this unfamiliar wheel to direct the great machine moving her, Virginia found that she was going faster. A perverse desire, born half of the awful beauty of speed, half of her fear's delectable pain, tried its edge on her shaky stomach. Not really wishing to, not able not to, she saw a black 7 shaking into sight; a thin line; then, the companion 5. To her right, the gigantic frail grey shape of a tower in the new transmission line went up against snow, dark hill, and at the top, stars. It was gone, and she saw, instead, the long low mound of a tobacco barn. It appeared, telescoped magically, disappeared. Two big elms were levered past the side of her eye.

  Now she saw the starlight distantly on the flat snow covering the river bend. With a pain of fear, an anguished faintness, fleetingly on the speedometer she beheld an 8 coming up. At once, its zero joined it. Her far-flung headlights had found the precise low line of the white fence, curving at the bend with the great arc of the curving road. She started to say: "Oh, Jesus . . ." but the solid wind crammed in her parting lips, choked her. With an insane and paralysing fatality she knew that she was going to be killed. She could never get around there at such a speed. She would have to drive through the fence, over the bank, break out a great hole in the snow-covered ice; and everything would be quiet-freezing, starlit on the empty road with no one stirring.

  A fear so great as to be more an agony of rage at the folly of killing herself when she did not want to die, for no reason at all, convulsed her. She locked her left hand on a spoke of the wheel, put her right hand on that, ready to bear down. The foot, so senselessly on the accelerator, recoiled; she cried out in surprised minor anguish as the sharp heel of that shoe dug the instep of her other foot, bracing, both of them, on the foot brake. She didn't even think of the emergency brake; she closed her eyes, her lungs bloated in despair; her belly caved in.

  Instantly a horrid jolt took out her breath; she drew on the wheel with all her might and her eyes, forced open, saw the white fence leaping towards the headlights. There was a rasp and slurring screech. Pain sank in her armpits as the steering-gear attempted to escape her. The car wobbled right, then left; it hovered in a delicate indecision, poised to overturn. Two wheels fell jouncing back on the concrete; the engine stalled. Her headlights brought up across snow-covered field and boulders and small, rotting apple trees. She was three-quarters of the way round the bend, pointed diagonally across the road.

  Virginia lay back in t
he seat, her hands limp in her lap. The bright stars seemed to quake towards the blackness of the sky as though they were going out. A taste like blood was in her mouth; the wind, gentle, overlaid her face with a killing pain of ice. Brushing her glove distracted against her cheek, the leather came to the dashboard radiance stained dark with sweat. She had one thigh locked over the other, the toe twisted tight around her ankle. Wincing, she realized with a sharp horror of disgust that she had lost control of herself; and at once she began to cry, for, safe and alive or not, that was really too sickening to bear.

  Mrs. Cole, boarding the train at Sansbury, had inadvertently picked the steps of the smoking car; but she was out of breath and sat down there anyway.

  "You be more comfortable in another car, Mrs. Cole?" the conductor asked.

  "Oh, no," she said. "I don't object to smoking. My boy Kenneth smokes the whole time. Tell them not to stop on my account."

  He went away then and she was able to settle herself and get her copy of that morning's New York Mirror open to the daily true story. She was wearing her old bifocals instead of her new reading-glasses, so the small print occupied her for most of the twenty-five minutes taken by the train to get up to New Winton. Finished, she turned to the serial then and, holding the sheet close, read the synopsis of preceding instalments: Coral Wright, beautiful and seventeen, is left alone in a little seaside hamlet upon the death of her mother. Hobart Nixon, an unscrupulous and distant relative, has long annoyed' her. Roger Clark, young mining engineer and beau of Coral in her schooldays, is back to sell some property before going West again. He falls in love with Coral and says that some day, when he makes good, he will come back and marry her. Coral thinks it's just a line with him. Maurice Maxwell, millionaire playboy, has built a great summer estate in the village. He has met Coral and asked her to his opening house party and she has half promised to come. Nixon, whose wife is deaf, sneaks into Coral's room that night and begins to overpower her. Now continue —