Ice-Cream Headache

by James Jones

  “I—I was—There were two or three ahead of me,” he said. “And that took a while. You werent in the car so I stopped at the restaurant to buy a paper,” he added. “And, while I was there, I drank a beer.”

  “Oh,” Mona said, “if Id known you were going to do that Id of let you help me with the groceries.”

  “I offered to help you,” Larry said desperately. “It was you that said no.”

  “I didnt know wed have to park so far from the store,” Mona smiled pleasantly.

  “I parked as near as I could get,” Larry protested. He had the feeling they were arguing, and yet they obviously were not arguing. His sense of panic deepened.

  “Hell,” he said. “I was only there a few minutes. A single beer.”

  Mona did not say anything.

  “Did you get everything?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He started up the car.

  “Is that blonde waitress still working there?”

  “Which blonde waitress?”

  “The only blonde waitress.”

  “Oh, her. Sure, shes there. Shell probably always be there.”

  “Shes a good looking girl,” Mona smiled. It was terrifying to him to hear such a pleasant easy voice coming out of such a stiffly frozen, wooden, smiling face.

  “You think so?” he said. “I dont think so. Her face is ugly. Old already. Hard. Shes got a pretty good figure, but her face—”

  “Thats true,” Mona said, “her face isnt very pretty.”

  Larry was watching the road where it curved down steeply here in front of the courthouse, before it went on out and up the valley. “It sure isnt,” he said. He waited till he was down the hill and then pulled over in front of some houses and stopped. “Well? Come on. Give it to me. Whatre you trying to say. You think I made a date with her? You think because I had one beer Im going back and get drunk tonight? Is that it?”

  Mona turned her face toward him slowly, her violet eyes wide with incomprehension in the frozen face. But the myriad tiny muscles of her eyelids were crinkled slightly giving her a haunted look. Deeply haunted. “Lets go on home, Larry,” she said, not at all pleasantly.

  Larry’s hands had begun to shake on the steering wheel. He put the car in gear and started off again. There it was. He knew now that he had been afraid of it ever since he first stepped into the barbershop and heard them talking. He should never have gone in the restaurant. He should have gone back and sat in the car. What was he going to do? Panic, sheer panic, completely engulfed him. If there was only some way to bring it out in the open and explain. Desperately he wanted to bring it out in the open. He hadnt been interested in her. He hadnt. But how? He couldnt even prove it.

  “Its unbelievable!” he said forcefully; but it sounded weak. “Its unbelievable! This was the first time that I was ever there. I never saw that woman before in my life. I drank one bottle of beer, Mona, one bottle. How you can possibly think that I—”

  “I bought us a chicken,” Mona said pleasantly. “A nice broiler. I thought maybe we could cook it outdoors over an open fire in that iron pot.”

  With an effort commensurate to driving a cork in the spout of a steaming teakettle, and which left him feeling totally exhausted, Larry swallowed and brought his voice down from the high pitch it had reached.

  “I think thats a fine idea,” he said gravely. “Ill build us a place and fix it up for you. A regular outdoor fireplace. Ill dig a hole and floor it with stones.”

  “Ive wanted to cook something in that little three legged iron pot in the cabin ever since we came,” Mona said. “Im sure its pre-Civil War. When we go home, I want to swipe it and take it with us.”

  “I think where the chopping block is would be a good place to put the fireplace,” Larry said. “Its already got the grass and weeds worn off it from the wood cutting.” Fright and adrenalin sang in his ears, and his hands trembled uncontrollably on the wheel unless he gripped it tight.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  VI

  At the cabin Mona took the green quart mason jar and walked down to the farm for the milk. Larry got the coal scoop out of the cabin and commenced to gouge a shallow hole in the ground where he had had the chopping block. When he had it finished he lined it with flat stones from the creekbed and then, wearing only trunks and light moccasins, got the doublebit cabin ax and slipped out into the woods to get some green poles. He hunted a while, stepping lightly in the light moccasins that made no sound, carrying the ax near the head and against his thigh. He felt very Indian as he moved his nearnaked body through the trees and brush: with nothing but his moccasins and breechclout he would carve his life and home and place out of these strong friendly woods that were his brother; he would build and provide the things with which his squaw would make their home. Finally he found what he wanted, two slender young saplings, perfectly forked up near the top. He exulted as the sharp ax bit into the young green wood. The tall saplings fell slowly, turning slightly and pulling themselves away from their neighbors. In a way he hated to do it and his heart jumped as they fell, and he imagined he felt the exquisite sorrow of the hunter who has killed. Then he measured and cut them, two green forks and a long pole for hanging, and took them back to the cabin. He sharpened the forks with the ax on the chopping block and drove them in the ground on each side of the fire hole and put the green pole across them and stood back and looked at them, feeling like a fool. Then, still feeling like a fool, he went into the cabin and very deliberately started putting on his clothes. He came out and started walking down the road toward the farm. Halfway there he met Mona coming back.

  “I thought Id take a little walk,” he said cheerfully. “Your fireplace is all fixed.”

  Mona stood in the road holding the green jar of milk and looking at him with those almost mortally injured, haunted eyes out of that stiff frozen face.

  “Well,” she said not at all unpleasantly, “Ill go on back and get the chicken started, Itll be about two hours before its ready.”

  “Oh, Ill be back long before that,” he said cheerfully.

  “Ill go on back then,” she said. Larry watched her go on off up the road, walking in the center of the narrow blacktop. He understood it was something she couldnt help, something she had absolutely no control over. Even so, the terrible tremendous guilt all larded over with panic that it made him feel, was almost unbearable. He knew it was nothing she had done, he knew it was something he had started. He wanted to stand and drive his fist into a tree until the bones broke.

  “Ill be back in just a little bit,” he called after her cheerfully. “Dont worry about me.”

  The farmer sold him two half pints of corn for a dollar and a half each. It looked like clear water and tasted sickeningly horrible. He walked back up the blacktop toward the cabin with one bottle in the hip pocket of his jeans and drinking from the other, but he did not turn off at the cabin and walked on past it. It was screened from the blacktop by a thick cover of young trees. He walked on up the blacktop uphill, carrying the bottle and drinking from it. Somebody had said this road went on up to the top of the mountain and deadended in the National Park, which was a game preserve. He must have walked a half to three quarters of a mile before he stopped and waded down through the weeds to the creekbank. There he squatted down on his haunches on a big rock and took another drink and listened to the never-ending whimper of the stream over the rocks.

  Kee-rist, this stuff was terrible! He giggled. But it sure was potent though. The Indians used to squat like this, he reminded himself, poor goddam Indians. White man run ’em all off. Insurance company. Insurance company and meat packers. Second Hand Men, old doc had said. Larry began to whistle softly, a song. It had been one of his favorites when he was a kid.

  Just a Japanese sandman

  Dum de dum de dum dee

  He couldnt even remember how the words went now. Yes, sir. Japanese sandman. Bogey man now. Or had been. When he was in the Army. Use it to sc
are kids with. Scare them into minding. Like his father used to tell him he would turn black. Then he remembered the words. That was it. Or part of them anyway.

  Just a Japanese sandman

  Dum de dum de dum dee

  Just an old secondhand man

  Trading new dreams for old

  Yes sir, that was him all right. Secondhand man. Just an old secondhand man. Yes sure, thats what you are. And you might as well admit her. God is Love!

  God is love, hell. God is not love; not any more. Maybe two hundred years ago God was love. Poor old God, if He had anything to say about it, He must get awful tired of bein’ named. If He could get a word in edgeways, Hed probly change His name Himself. And it wouldnt be Love. Maybe God needed to be Love for old Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal or the Bastard of Orleans. But not for us today. No sir, God is not Love, he thought. God is Will, he thought, and took another drink.

  “I cant stand it,” Larry said out loud. “I cant. Its too painful. And I dont have no Will,” He killed the bottle and threw it viciously down into the creekbed and listened to it smash on a rock. Then he got up and waded through the weeds back up to the road and started back down to the cabin. The sun was out of sight now and the air diffused with the bronze light of the long mountain twilight. He had no idea of how long he had been gone. When he got to the cabin he very carefully hid the second half pint bottle under the corner of the plank bridge over the creek. Then he went on in the yard and around to the other side.

  Mona was sitting on the little lean-to porch in the light of the fire she had built under the pot, her knees pulled up against her chest, staring off through the trees. Larry sat down on the edge of the porch beside her.

  “Well, I’m back,” he said cheerfully.

  Mona turned to look at him, startled then. Her face looked strong, absolutely expressionless. “You’d better eat something,” she said quietly.

  “Yeh, guess I had,” Larry said.

  She got up and went inside to get him a plate.

  “Well, you’ll always be able to get your job back at Antoine’s, anyway, wont you?” he said thickly, when she came back.

  “Ive been sitting here thinking it might be a good idea to open my own exclusive shop,” Mona said. “There arent too many good ones in Baltimore.”

  “Yuh,” Larry said. “Fine idea.” The secret thought of the second bottle hidden under the bridge where he could sneak back out and get it later on tonight was a source of great comfort and satisfaction to him.

  Mona went down off the porch with the plates, toward the pot over the fire.

  “Yup, good idea,” Larry said. Besides, who could tell, if that blonde waitress ever did decide to go up North to some city maybe she might go to Baltimore. Well, he would have to write to Beckett.

  None Sing So Wildly

  When translated into French for a French collection of my stories this story was given the title: “Middle-West … Mon Middle-West!” I guess that is as good a title as any for it, especially if you remark the supreme French irony in the punctuation. It was published in New World Writing #2 November 1952. In introducing it I stated about it, and will still hold to, the following: “The very act of writing is at best a compromise—between what you want to say, and what you can say within the restrictions of the form. This is one time I didn’t restrict … . It’s probably as near to a real autobiographical story as I’ve ever come, though of course it’s all twisted and changed. And things in it that would seem to be unimportant to the story are important to me, and I think important to it.” Anyone interested may notice the Arky and Russ of this story are the direct ancestors of ’Bama and Dave Hirsh of Some Came Running.

  I

  SYLVANUS MERRICK TOOK the cabin over at Fandalack that summer for two reasons. He had gone stale on his novel and he did not sell enough stories that year to go to the big woods up in Michigan. And, Fandalack was close enough to home that Norma Fry could come up from Vincennes nights and by getting up at four a.m. be back in time for work.

  Sylvanus and Norma were getting married in the spring. She was getting her two-week vacation the first two in August and wanted to spend half of it with him. Michigan was too far to travel for just a week and she had to spend the other week of it at home with her folks. Norma was telling them that she was spending this week with a girl friend in Brazil she knew from college. Norma’s mother was very careful of Norma, especially now since the Frys were planning on their daughter’s marriage in the spring. Norma hated to lie to her parents, but it was the only way.

  “You dont know how strait-laced my family has always been, Van,” she told Sylvanus. “If you did, you’d understand. It would kill them if they knew, and they’ve done so much for me. I owe them that: they’ve taught me all I know.”

  “I understand them,” Sylvanus told her. “And I know they mean well. But they don’t realize you’re a big girl now, capable of running your own life. And they don’t like me.”

  “But they do like you, Van,” she protested. “Its just that they don’t understand you like I do. They cant see the possibilities in you that I can. They cant see the potential goodness in you.”

  “They sure cant,” Sylvanus Merrick grinned. They did not like it because he had tended bar at the Moose Lodge over home in Illinois, before his stories started selling.

  “They dont approve of you just up and taking off to all over the country for six months at a time,” Norma said. “They think its time you settled down.”

  “So do I,” Sylvanus said. “But I don’t have to sell cars to do it, do I?” Mr Fry had the biggest car agency in Vincennes and he wanted Merrick to come in with him when they got married, and do his writing on the side. Mr Fry had a personal friend in Detroit who spent two hours at his typewriter every morning and still carried on his business.

  “It isnt that,” Norma said. “Its just that they cant see much future in writing.”

  “They’re dubious of most of my ideas,” Sylvanus said. Mr and Mrs Fry had read some of the stories when they first came out, but they could not see anything much to yell about. They certainly could not see an adequate recompense for having taken his mustering-out pay and the two thousand dollars gambling money into the North Carolina mountains, when he could have invested it as capital. Sometimes Sylvanus Merrick thought it was unbelievable that they could have had a daughter like Norma Fry. And then, of course, there was always the Army.

  “It was the war,” Norma explained, “and George Field being so close to Vincennes. You cant really blame the folks, No one in our income bracket bought more bonds and gave more to the USO than Dad did, but they cant understand your refusing to go to officers’ school.”

  “I’m neurotic,” Sylvanus said. “Tell them that.”

  “Van,” Norma said. “I know you werent like most George Field soldiers, Van.”

  Sylvanus did not say anything.

  “I love you, Van,” Norma said. “Do you think if I didnt feel in my heart that I was your wife already, that I’d be doing what I’m doing? To them?”

  “I’m sorry honey,” he said. “Its just that …”

  “I live under quite a strain myself, Van,” she said.

  “I know you do, honey.”

  They were driving back from a dance at Zook’s Nook and he stopped the car and put his arm around her.

  “Lets not, Van,” she said. “Not now.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not mad?”

  “Nope.” He started the car.

  She watched him drive a while “You know, Van, sometimes I think I cant stand it, the duplicity, living like this.”

  “If we take this cabin, it’ll only be for a month.”

  “Its not just this vacation. I’ve been masquerading under false pretenses to my parents for over a year now.” She gave a sharp little laugh. “It isnt easy, Van.”

  “Cheer up,” Sylvanus grinned. “I’ll make an honest woman of you come spring.” He looked around at her so they could share this j
oke. Her face looked as if she had been slapped. Tears came in her eyes as he watched. He was shocked. “Good Lord, whats the matter?”

  “You think its funny,” Norma said.

  “But I was only kidding you,” he protested.

  “Kidding?” she said. “Or razzing. Or needling. There are lots of different ways to kid a person, Van.”

  “Now listen, honey,” he said, to right it. “I didn’t mean anything. If you’d rather, we can call this whole Fandalack deal off right now.”

  “Now why do you say that? Did I say anything about calling it off?”

  “No. No, you didn’t. But I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

  “I’d be a lot unhappier if you went to Michigan,” Norma said. “I cant bear the thought of you so far away.”

  “I dont have enough dough for that trip anyway,” Sylvanus said. “I could borrow it from Russ or Arky though, I suppose. They’ve been winning lately. Poker’s been going pretty good over home at the Moose lately.”

  “I dont want you to borrow money from gamblers,” Norma said.

  “They’re all right. They’re good guys. You just don’t understand them. They’re not gamblers; they’ve never murdered a soul, unless you want to count a few Germans.”

  “I still don’t want you to borrow money from them,” Norma said. “Please, Van.”

  “I don’t need to borrow money from them, if I’m not going to Michigan,” Sylvanus said.

  “Promise me you wont borrow money from them,” Norma said. “For anything. If you need money, I can get it from Dad.”

  “Okay,” Sylvanus said grudgingly. “I promise.”

  “I never said I wanted to call it off about Fandalack,” Norma said. “I dont want to call it off at all. It was the folks I was thinking of. You’re an orphan, you dont know how they are.”

  “Oh yes I do,” Sylvanus said, thinking how little wild cheering there had been when they announced to Mr and Mrs Fry that they were getting married. As it was, the only reason Norma would be able to get away nights was because she was not living at home. The school chum from Bloomington Norma shared the summer apartment with slipped her boy friend in at night all the time, so that Norma felt free to stay away at night.