Ice-Cream Headache

by James Jones

  Norma shrugged and laughed merrily at him. “Well, I got paid today, didnt I? I would have had it already fixed for you to sit right down to when you came in, but I didnt know what time you’d be back.”

  “I didnt know you were coming,” Sylvanus said.

  She offered no explanations. “Did you get any fish?”

  “I didnt go after fish,” he said, and held up the flyrod that he had forgotten to uncouple and put in the corner.

  Norma laughed, merrily. “I dont think you were cut out for a fisherman, Van.”

  He began to stop waiting a little. “I guess not,” he said. “How were your folks?”

  “Just fine. They sent their regards.”

  When he heard that, he stopped waiting entirely. It seemed almost too good to be true. He had had himself all wound up to refusing to apologize, and now he felt ungrateful and guilty, thinking how it had been Norma who swallowed her pride and not him. Arky had been right all along about women.

  She went into the little kitchen alcove, smiling back out at him, to put the steak on. He stood in the doorway and watched the lithe pert way she moved. You had to admire courage like that. She cut off a piece of the fat and rubbed it lightly over the skillet and laid the steak down tenderly into its cradle. After she had both sides properly seared to her satisfaction she came over to where he was standing and kissed him lightly. Then he kissed her back, but not lightly. She had to squirm loose.

  “Van,” she said breathlessly. “Now you stop it. You want me to burn up this steak?”

  “Not that steak,” he said.

  “Then you just better watch out.”

  “I’m not in much of a condition to exercise much control,” he grinned.

  Norma looked at him. Then she smiled. “My poor darling,” she said. She patted his shoulder on the muscle up near his neck. “I was hoping you’d get back in time so we could go swimming after we ate.” She smiled. “I wanted us to go swimming tonight.”

  “We can still go, if you want.”

  “Not now.” She went to the window and looked out through the trees and across the lake to the high arc lights on the beach. She looked at her watch. “Its too late. They’ll be closed by the time the steak gets itself cooked and eaten.”

  “Let the steak go then,” he said. “Cook it later.”

  “You cant, after its already on. It would ruin it. And I want you to enjoy it. We’ll go tomorrow. Oh, didn’t you see? I brought a bag, so I could stay till Monday morning. We’ll have plenty of time yet to swim.”

  “Sure we will,” he said. “After next week we’ll have nine whole days of it, all to ourselves. Just the two of us.”

  “We will have, wont we?” she said. “Oh, and Van. I brought my new swim suit you bought me, You havent even seen me in it yet, have you? I’ll wear it tomorrow.”

  “Why not give me a preview?” he said. “Try it on for me now?”

  Norma laughed sideways at him. “All right, I will. But not now. Later on. We’ve got to eat first. The steak ought to be done soon.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But dont forget, thats a promise.”

  The steak was the best steak Sylvanus Merrick ever had eaten. The swim suit was fine, too. It was one of those terrycloth Stunners, by Cole. She had seen it advertised in Life Magazine. He had ordered it from Marshall Field’s by mail. It was the first one around here, and when she wore it next day on the beach it made a little sensation over there too.

  “Look how everyone envies me my new swim suit,” Norma whispered happily as he spread out the blanket. “They’re all of them watching it.”

  He looked around. Guys all around them were giving her the camera eye, even some of the high school boys were putting their minds on it.

  “Well, dont look, silly,” Norma said, flushing.

  “The suit may be what the women are watching,” he grinned. “Thats not what the men are looking at.”

  Her face changed as he looked at it. “Oh now, Van,” she smiled icily. “Dont start that again.” She lay down on the blanket on her belly with her feet carefully toward the sun.

  He lay down beside her. For a minute he thought she was making him pay for last night. Women did that, sometimes. She had done it before. But she was changed now, wasnt she?

  “Dont start what?” he said.

  “You know what,” she said, her face still turned the other way, into the sun. “I dont need to tell you.”

  “No,” he said. “No, I dont know. Start what? Tell me.”

  She turned her head then and looked at him. “Every man isnt as oversexed as you are, Van,” she smiled gently. “I’m willing to accept you as you are, you dont have to excuse yourself to me by trying to prove all men are like you are. I wont stop loving you. I came back, didnt I? But you know all men dont look at women the way you do.”

  “They dont, hunh?” he said.

  “No, of course not, they dont.”

  “Name one,” he said.

  “Well, I could name plenty.”

  “All right,” he grinned, “name one.”

  “All right,” she smiled thinly. “My father. There.”

  She looked at him, her face condensed into this smile that was more like an exasperated frown. But already a light of triumph was beginning to shine through. It was in her eyes that she had taken an unfair advantage, and that she had him.

  He made his eyes look away. He did not want to say anything about her father. Her father had the best car agency in Vincennes. He was a good solid Rotarian. He belonged to the Chamber of Commerce. Well, that was all right, if he wanted that, Sylvanus would not hold that against him, he still liked him. He liked him because in all the times he had run into Mr Fry down along the riverfront in Terre Haute and in some of the joints in Evansville Mr Fry had never asked him not to say he saw him. Mr Fry did not complain to anybody because he had to go away from home to get his sheep dipped properly, he did it with dignity, even when he was drunk. And for that he liked Mr Fry, even though he was sure at least half of the reason the Frys had tried to break up the marriage was because Mr Fry had run into him down on the riverfront.

  But he could not explain all this to Mr Fry’s 21-year-old daughter. And Mr Fry’s 21-year-old daughter knew it.

  “And I could name others,” Norma said. Her smile was all triumph now. “Plenty of them, boys I used to go with in Vincennes, boys who respect women, only you wouldnt know them.”

  “No,” he said. “I wouldnt know them.” “I’m sorry, Van,” she said softly. “I didnt mean that.”

  “Its all right,” he said. “Lets forget it. Lets swim.”

  “Now sulk,” Norma said. “I didnt mean it like that, and you know I didnt. But it makes me so mad, the way you’re always trying to convert me, when every instinct in me cries out against what you say.”

  “Me convert you!” he said.

  “Hush,” she frowned. “Do you want someone to hear us? Yes, convert me. How do you think I feel, your future wife who has given you all of me, to see you eyeing up every girl that walks in front of your nose?”

  “Dont you like to have men admire you?” said Sylvanus.

  “Thats different. Why do you always twist things so? Its natural for girls to like to have men admire them.”

  “Well, its natural for men to admire girls. And I admire all of them,” he said. “And if I said anything else I’d be lying. Listen,” he said, “lets go swim, shall we?”

  “I dont feel much like swimming just now,” Norma said. “Admiring them and mentally undressing them are two different things,” she said.

  “Oh they are?” said Sylvanus. “Okay. And I suppose buying your clothes to show off what you’ve got to the best advantage, and wanting to be admired, are two different things too?”

  “Absolutely different,” Norma said. “I dont—Say,” she said, “are you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” said Sylvanus. There was another loving young couple spread out on their blanket next to him, except that this lov
ing young couple really looked loving. He was watching them. They did not know there was anything in the world but themselves. He wondered if they ever had theoretical arguments, too.

  “I dont believe you’ve been listening to me at all,” Norma said, looking at them.

  “I have though,” said Sylvanus.

  “Girls dont think about ‘showing off what they’ve got,’ as you so meticulously put it,” Norma said. “Its only girls like the two your friends brought to the cabin who are cheap enough to do that. With most girls it is only an interest in fashions. They want to look nice and they want to be fashionable. They arent even thinking what men think about them.”

  “You really believe that, dont you?” said Sylvanus.

  “Why, of course I believe it,” she said.

  “Then all I can say is somebody better explain that to the men, but quick,” he said, watching this couple. It made you feel hopeful, watching them, and then suddenly sad with a self-pity because you were too old for that any more apparently, because somewhere in the last two years you had outgrown it. Hell, he thought, even you cant get away from the great national fiction of romantic love you are decrying.

  The boy lay on his belly propped up on his elbows and the girl leaned down over him. They talked and laughed softly. The boy favored his right arm and it was whiter than the rest of him, as if it had just come out of a cast. There was a thumbstall on that thumb and the girl was playing with it tenderly. She leaned down once more, still whispering, and kissed him on the shoulder.

  “It isnt all men,” Norma said, “that ought to be told. Its only a few men. They need it explained to them. Like you looking at the girl over there, making over that boy.”

  “I was looking at both of them,” said Sylvanus.

  “Of course you were,” Norma smiled. “You probably didnt even see the girl, did you?”

  “Yes, I saw her,” he said. She was really making him pay for last night all right. It was as if they were either ashamed of it afterwards or else afraid you would leave them. He could never tell which. Maybe it was both. For a second he thought of asking her why she always did that, Instead, he sat up and lighted a cigarette.

  You paid for everything in this world. If you wanted the merchandise, you had to pay the full market price. Well, he was willing to pay, and he might as well pay it to Norma as any of the rest of them. It seemed a cold-blooded way to look at it when you looked at the loving young couple there. But then where would they be five years from now?

  He tossed the match away and looked around at the rest of the people, trying to see them as clearly, while the honesty of the insight lasted, because it never lasted long any more.

  That was when he saw Mr Ohls, the one-armed Lodge guard, coming down the hill fast in that lumbering gallop old men acquire when their coordination has started to go.

  Mr Ohls was in uniform and wearing his gun. He was very much on duty. And he looked very mad. Sylvanus’ heart swelled up and jumped once with that old fear of the Law, even after two years he had not gotten over that part of the army, but then it was gone. He remembered he was a civilian. He looked around, but he could not see anything that seemed to call for the Law.

  Mr Ohls saw it though. Mr Ohls came straight down through the crowded Saturday people to the loving young couple next to Sylvanus. Mr Ohls’ eyes were blazing with that kind of impersonal triumph a towerman has when he discovers a fire in the big woods.

  “This is no lovers’ lane, you two,” Mr Ohls said to them. They both looked up, startled.

  Shades of the Protestant forefathers, thought Sylvanus, Calvin and Wesley and Cromwell.

  “What?” the boy said.

  “You heard me, son. I said this aint no lovers’ lane,” Mr Ohls said outragedly. He looked around at the people who were all sitting up now watching him, the people Mr Ohls was protecting. “This is a public bathing beach,” Mr Ohls said, “and we dont like stuff like that to go on around here.”

  “Stuff like what?” the boy said.

  The girl did not say anything. The red was mounting into her face like the line in a thermometer, even under her tan.

  Mr Ohls leaned over and shook the finger of his good hand at the boy. “Listen, son,” Mr Ohls said. “Dont talk back to me. I know what I saw. If you and your girl friend havent got the decency to keep from making a display of yourselves on a public beach, why we will see to it for you that you dont, thats all. Thats why we’re here.”

  “Yeah?” the boy said. It was beginning to dawn on him. “I thought maybe you were here to prevent anybody robbing the till of all that money this concession takes in here for those lousy hamburgers.” He turned back to his girl. “Dont pay any attention to him, honey,” he said.

  “I’m still talking to you, boy,” Mr Ohls said.

  “I wasnt talking to you,” the boy said, without looking around. The backs of his ears were very red.

  “I think you and your friend just better pick up your stuff and come with me,” Mr Ohls decided. “This is a State Park, boy. Run by the laws of the State of Indiana. We’re paid to see it stays a respectable place. I dont think we want your kind of trash around here.”

  “Oh, go peddle your papers,” the boy said. “We werent doing anything,” He had his hand on his girl’s arm trying to soothe her.

  “This is the Law you’re talkin to, boy!” Mr Ohls said. He reached down with his good hand and grabbed the boy by the hair and stepped back, jerking the boy’s head back on his neck first, then bowing his back, then bringing him up. The boy came to his feet without a struggle.

  “Hey!” the boy said, surprised hurt in his voice. “Whats the idea anyway, mister?”

  Mr Ohls did not answer this purely rhetorical question. He got the boy by his right arm, the thin one, with his one hand that looked as strong as both might have been once, and started him up the hill toward the watchful figure of Mr Philips who was already coming down at a dogtrot. Mr Philips got him by his other arm.

  “Hey, take it easy,” the boy said. He hung back and tried to disengage his bad arm. “I’ll go with you. You dont have to hold me. You’re hurting my arm.”

  Mr Ohls did not bother to inquire after this request either. Instead, Mr Ohls swung his false arm, putting his body that was in mid-stride behind it, and without letting go of the arm hit the boy in the mouth with his gloved wooden fist.

  Maybe Mr Ohls had not heard him. Sylvanus had heard him. Sylvanus heard also the very hard unflexible sound the wooden fist made on the boy’s face, like a club with no give in it.

  The boy’s head bounced back against the pull of their arms like a man on the ropes in the ring and his knees went slack for a couple of steps so they dragged him. Then his head came back up some. Sylvanus was interested to see that he had not gone clear out. The boy tried to look back at his girl, but he did not offer any other suggestions. As an old soldier, Sylvanus was forced to admire their efficiency.

  The girl was still sitting looking stupidly after them, her hands still cupped and just beginning to come away from her face. The people all around on the beach were still staring. They were yackety-yacking now in flushed holiday phrases, excitedly, and a woman’s voice broke up out of the rest saying, “They ought to of known better than act like that here.” The girl dropped down and lay flat on the blanket as if she would have liked to crawl under it.

  Sylvanus got to his feet then, feeling his heart kicking down in his belly and his body trying to shrink back and sit back down out of it, away from conspicuousness. Maybe it was the happy holiday sound in the voices. Maybe it was the righteousness of the woman’s high voice. Maybe it was the girl dropping down on the blanket. He had to get up.

  “Van,” Norma said in an agonized voice. “What are you doing? Sit back down here. Its none of our business.”

  “I’m going up there,” he said, loud, and waited. He was hoping somebody else would get up, too. Nobody got up. Most of them looked at him and then looked away, their eyes curiously flat.

 
Okay, he thought, okay. Then to hell with all of you.

  “You’re not going to do any such thing,” Norma said. “You sit down.”

  Sylvanus did not say anything. Maybe it was because he had felt the old Law-fear and was ashamed of it. Or maybe it was because he had been beaten up once by two big Second Army MPs in Memphis and had his nose broken. After they wore their bars, or their pistols, so long a time they got to believing it. You had to say something once in a while, if you wanted to go on with the pretense of being a man.

  He pulled a couple deep breaths down into the fluttering and waited for the big rage, the red rebel rage, to come. He could always depend on the big rage, could Sylvanus. He had learned how to utilize it in combat, when you were more scared than this, when there was nothing nowhere to depend on but the big rage that was the only thing that could burn the fear and the cowardice out of you for a little while. Maybe the boy did not know about the big rage yet, well he would learn soon enough when his war came along. When you had the big rage, not even the screaming wild men of Japs could scare you. And certainly not the Strong Arm of The Law that had, ironically, taught it to you.

  He had walked down the main street of Memphis where he was in the hospital carrying a fifth of whisky at right shoulder arms and rifle-saluting every officer he met. For that theyd beaten him up and broken his nose. Yet it hadnt hurt him a bit. He hadnt felt it at all.

  It was not that he hated or blamed them, they were only doing what they had been taught and got paid for, it was the ones down here on the beach that made you sick to your stomach, that forced you to be different from them. He could feel it rising all through him in a red ecstasy of no-consequences.

  He started up the hill after them. “Van!” Norma said. “Van, come back here. Dont make a fool out of yourself.”

  V

  He headed for the path around the corner of the Lodge back to the maintenance parking lot, where they were taking him.

  Mr Lemmon was already there ahead of him. Mr Lemmon was standing wide-legged arms-akimbo in the middle of the narrow path. Mr Lemmon had his back to Sylvanus, and was watching them with the boy, like a hotel manager watching his houseman move some nasty-drunks out of his lobby before going back to soothe his ruffled guests. Sylvanus could not get past him, not without some hard elbowing, or else crashing through the thick eight-foot shrubbery.