Yale knew they had drifted at least as far down the river as the picnic grounds owned by Midhaven College and he thought of Cindar and that day nearly four years ago when they had met and got tipsy and had gone swimming. Four years ago and he had known the wonder of love and being loved.
Not once had there been any denunciation of that love. A few months ago Cindar had been reading Stendhal "On Love." She read parts of it to him. He remembered her saying, "I used to like Stendhal until I read this book . . . now I don't. Love isn't the cool calculating thing that he describes, is it, Yale?"
But it had become a calculating thing, hadn't it, Cindar? Were all the affairs of men destined to arc eventually like a skyrocket and plunge back to earth? He couldn't believe it. If you were really in love there was no peak, just a constant ascension, quieter and not so heady as you grew older, but still never culminating.
"It's hot and I'm sticky from the champagne," Marge announced. She stood up on the seat, unhooked her evening gown and let it fall in a heap. To Yale's surprise the only thing else she was wearing was a pair of shoes, and what looked like small pieces of adhesive tape across her nipples. Yale roared with laughter. "What are those? Your underwear?" he asked, pointing at the tapes.
Carefully she lifted them off her breasts, and flung them in the water. "They're to keep my nipples from chafing, stupid. Are you coming in?" She dove off the side. He could see her splashing in the darkness. Quickly, he undressed, thinking that it was ironic that once again he should be swimming nude in the Mamaputock River with a girl. Only this time it was Stendhalian and there was none of the feeling of wonder. Somewhere in the darkness there was a naked girl, and she was available. In fact she was asking for it. But he wouldn't touch her, because there would be no beauty in it. Just a coupling, with no overtones. Nothing beyond the necessity of the moment.
When he struck the water, he knew just how drunk he was. The water was surprisingly cold, still running with the cool rains from far off hills.
"Hey, Marge, where are you?" he yelled. There was no answer. Treading water, he listened. The silence was ominous. Supposing she had got a cramp? Supposing she drowned? He felt a sick chill of fear spread over him. Suddenly he realized that the boat was adrift. He swam after it, yelling, "Marge! Marge!" No answer. Swimming after the boat, he caught a glimpse of her boarding it. Her behind was white in the moonlight.
"Goodbye, Yale old dear," she screamed. He heard the zing of the self-starter, and the roar of the engine. In a second the boat was gone, leaving behind a greenish white wake of waves.
He yelled at her to come back. You utter damned fool, he thought, you'll run that boat into a rock and kill yourself, too. "To hell with you, go ahead. Kill yourself, you dumb bunny." He swore at the disappearing boat. Boy, what a mess, he thought grimly, as he tread water. He was going to have to walk home naked. He started to swim toward the shore when he heard the roar of the engine returning. She had turned the spotlight on. She was obviously looking for him. Leaning out the side, still naked, steering with one hand, she waved at him. "Hi! Want a lift?" she asked, grinning at him. She cut the engine.
"What happened, did you get cold feet?" Yale demanded as he climbed awkwardly in the boat.
She shook her head. "I took pity on you. The thought of you having to walk home in those dark woods without any clothes touched my maidenly heart. Even if you are a stuck-up bastard I couldn't do that to you."
Yale climbed aboard. He started to look for his clothes, thinking he could dry himself with his underwear. He had left them on the deck just above the windshield. They weren't there.
"What did you do with my tux?" he asked, peering in the darkness and fumbling along the floor.
"I think they blew overboard," Marge said, giggling. "At least something went flying above my head. I thought it was a bat or something."
"You absolute jerk," Yale yelled angrily. "How do we go back to the party now?" He grabbed the wheel from her hand. "Turn this damned boat around. I've got to find them."
She swung the boat around in low speed. Yale, hanging over the side, swinging the searchlight from side to side, searched for his tuxedo, praying by some miracle that it was still floating. He could hear her giggling. She made some remark about how funny he looked. He was in a murderous frame of mind; ready to take hold of Marge and shake the living daylights out of her. How in hell had he got tangled up with such a crazy dame?
"I see my pants," he yelled suddenly. "They're still floating. Over to the right."
Marge stood up and asked where.
"Over there, stupid. Hurry up before they sink!"
Before Yale could ask her what she was doing, Marge gunned the Chris-Craft engine. In horror Yale saw his pants disappear from sight as the prow of the boat hit them. He yelled. Marge swerved the boat and Yale fell against her.
"Thought they might get caught in the propeller," she said, straightening the boat out and grinning at him.
"You stupid little bitch!" Yale snarled. He grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shake her. Then he had what seemed, at the moment, a better idea. He reached in the back of the boat; took her evening gown that she had dropped there in a heap; rolled it in a ball and flung it in the water.
"Now," he gloated, "laugh that off. I believe in the code of Hammurabi, an eye for an eye."
Marge had stopped laughing. "Well, you just forget your code, and get this boat over there before that dress sinks, or we'll both be dead." In the reflection of the searchlight they could see the dress drifting rapidly downstream, and slowly submerging. Marge tried to start the engine which had stalled.
Yale grabbed her arms. "Not on your life, chum. You can kiss that dress goodbye."
"Let go of me!" Marge hissed in his ear. She bit his shoulder and clawed at his back. Feeling the sharp sting of pain, Yale clutched her in a wrestler's hug. She went limp in his arms. He started to kiss her face. Half-lying, half-standing, her legs a vise around his middle, he was deep within her. She moaned from hunger, and taunted him, calling him Mr. Brain, and egged him on, saying that intellectuals didn't know how to make love. Within minutes she reached a violent climax and clawed at him while he met and equalled her ecstasy.
They stayed clasped together for a long time, listening to the night sounds. Yale pulled away from her suddenly. "God, we'll run this boat aground yet. The luck of the devil has been with us."
"I'm the devil," Marge said, huddling on the seat, her arms across her breasts. "I'm sorry, Yale." He could hear her sobbing.
"Look, Marge, don't cry." He patted her face. "It was very nice. I guess you're right, I'm a bastard." He started the engine and was relieved to find that once again it caught and the cylinders fired. Pat certainly kept the boat in excellent shape. "What I'm wondering is how we are going to get back without any clothes. Boy, this is going to be a scandal that will rock Midhaven. If I could get us back to the boathouse, without anyone seeing us, you could hide down there. I could sneak in the back way and get you a coat or one of Bobby's dresses."
Marge didn't seem interested or even concerned about getting back. All that she wanted to do was justify her actions. "You see, Yale, you just got my goat. All anyone in Midhaven knows about you is that you are an intellectual giant. You look in disdain at the amusements of the common herd. You never come out to the Club. You've been asked by Jim, and the Ames boys, and the Hastings. Your family are regular people. How did you get to be so stuffy? Then to graduate Phi Beta Kappa, that's the last straw. We won't hear the end of that among the High-C average Lathams for a long time."
Yale drove the Chris-Craft in low speed back up the river. He listened with a smile to her chatter. The fact that she had flung herself into intercourse with him didn't seem to bother her at all. How many men-boys had she already made love with? Plenty, no doubt. At eighteen she was an expert. He felt sorry for her. In the area of sexual relations she had nowhere to go but downhill.
He turned the last bend in the river before the boathouse, and realized
it was too late. The river was lighted up in all directions by floodlights. Pat must have taken someone down to see the Chris-Craft and found it gone.
"There's the boat, Pat," someone yelled. The sound of many voices drifted to them across the narrowing distance to the boathouse. Yale kept the boat in the lowest speed, hoping desperately to think of some solution to their predicament.
"We're sunk, Marge," he said, imagining the expression on Pat's face. He wondered if this would be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. "I'll pull up close enough to yell. I'll tell them all to go away while you get out."
"Don't be dumb, Yale Marratt! You may know everything there is to know in books, but in a situation like this there is only one thing to do. Face it with aplomb! Act as if it is simply nothing. We went for a swim and lost our clothes. Happens in the best of circles." Marge giggled. "Most natural thing in the world to be in your birthday suit. Come on, stop poking . . . just drive right into the dock, and act as cool as a cuke."
Yale patted her shoulder. "It was kind of fun, Marge."
"Any time, Yale . . . Just keep cool." She smiled at him and leaned back in the seat. He increased the speed and headed for the boathouse. He wondered if the Life photographers would be waiting. Brother. . . .
PART TWO
Our age is retrospective. It builds sepulchres of the fathers . . . Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs . . . ? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. Let us demand our own works, and laws, and worship. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1
Yale felt that he might be missing something if he remained in the hotel. The room, with the wallpaper removed and painted gray; the crowded army cots and the piles of duffel bags had a feeling of transience, underscored by the certain knowledge that the bed you slept in tonight would probably be slept in tomorrow by some other soldier on his way to parts unknown.
He walked through the lobby noticing the newspapers at the cigar counter. The headlines screamed "German Breakthrough." "The Battle of the Bulge." How much longer could it go on, he wondered? He had a quick picture of mud and snow, and soldiers miserably waiting . . . waiting, while somewhere Generals pondered the situation and tried to determine what to do. Of one thing he was certain, the battle in Europe was not his immediate problem. He was shipping out to India. Karachi . . . a place so remote from his thinking that when he discovered it on a map he had looked at it as idly as he would have looked at a photograph of the moon. This strange world did not concern him. But he was going there. Today or tomorrow or the next day. Just as soon as the gears of Air Transport Command meshed and there was a plane available. It didn't really matter when. For nearly four years he had been drifting toward God knew what goal. Would he ever be able to establish a clear objective? First it was Pat with definite plans for him, and now it was the Army.
He checked at the Headquarters desk. No, he wasn't on orders tonight. Nothing could come through until three tomorrow afternoon. He was free. This was Miami. He couldn't get excited about it. The first few days it had been fun; exploring the other night clubs along the beach, or getting drunk with a group of other officers who were your buddies on a moment's notice; pitching a line at every girl you met or trying to play the game of going to bed with an utter stranger. Then the loneliness would seize him and there was nothing -- nothing on earth that he wanted except the warm brown eyes and oval face of a girl who had vanished, leaving a love that somehow wouldn't die.
Yale didn't know what he wanted to do this evening. Some of the fellows had asked him to go along to a strip joint they had discovered. The evening would end up with his getting soggily drunk, wanting not women in general, but a particular woman. He refused, and wandered out of the hotel by himself in the direction of Miami Beach.
A soldier waiting. shipment feels himself detached from the people around him. The busy traffic moving toward the beach or into Miami is a phenomenon apart. He was no longer Yale Marratt. He had seen others like himself in the past two years, thousands of them. Wandering, looking in darkened windows, staring unbelievingly at their own reflection.
He had seen them lighting unwanted cigarettes, or drinking unwanted beers at crowded bars, or just pacing the streets looking for pick-ups. You might think they were lonely, and for a moment feel a tinge of regret. The same feeling you might have for a blind violinist tottering along as he sawed out lonely discords and begged for pennies. But soldiers didn't need your regrets. They were carefully trained beyond loneliness. They had lost the conceit called I . They still thought of themselves in the first person, but the I had no meaning. They were Angelo Grazziani, or Dick Bryan, or a host of other names, and when they moved or talked or loved they were still I to themselves, but the connecting link had been carefully eradicated by Army training. Each I existed peripherally and would disappear as one action supplanted another. Without a war to unify them, many of them would become dangerous men. They belonged to the empty nowhere. In cities all over the world in this year 1943 they were going nowhere, coming from nowhere . . . and caring less.
Yale climbed on a bus headed for Miami Beach. The driver was a girl. The traction company had evidently run out of male applicants. Yale squeezed into one of the small leather seats that backed up to hers. In this position he could watch the back of her stringy yellow hair, a fraction of her profile, and an occasional full face view in the mirror over her head. He was full of admiration for the way she slurred the bus up Second Avenue.
"You're pretty good, sister," he said. "How long have you been driving?"
"Couple of months," was the brief reply as she slammed her foot on the brake and pulled the lever opening the doors.
A man, an unlighted cigar in his mouth, his belly tight against a green slack suit, boarded. Behind him was a white-haired blonde with black eyebrows. She climbed languidly up the step, delaying a wispy, grey-haired woman who followed her. The grey-haired woman, impatiently glaring from behind her pince-nez glasses, fumbled in a laundry type handbag and finally produced a bill. The bus driver looked at her in disgust. "Five dollars! For God's sake, madam, haven't you got a dime?"
"No, I haven't, and I'll thank you not to be fresh, young lady."
The bus driver snapped quarters, dimes and nickels from her change dispenser and handed them in a fistful to the lady. The lady clutched them, edging back in the bus.
"Madam, your ten cents! You put your ten cents in this little gadget and then we all go where we are going."
The lady looked suspiciously at the pile of change in her hands wondering whether she had four dollars and ninety cents or five dollars.
The bus driver started the bus with a jerking of gears. The old lady nearly catapulted through the windshield. Swishing the cigar to the other side of his mouth the man grabbed her to keep her from going over. Uncertainly, she deposited ten cents in the coin box.
"I don't ride on buses very much," she said plaintively to no one in particular.
"Jeez," snapped the bus driver. "you meet all kinds."
There were several seats in the rear but the blonde with the black eyebrows stood directly in front of Yale holding onto a strap. The bus swayed violently. The blonde lurched toward him. Yale noticed, with sudden amazement, that all she seemed to be wearing was a pink dress which clung tightly to her stomach. Even the dull lights of the bus did not obscure the black hairs below her navel. I could almost pluck one or two for a souvenir, Yale thought.
The bus driver was playing cops and robbers with a blue Chevrolet sedan. The driver of the Chevrolet was trying to pass on the left. The bus driver was determined that he wouldn't make it.
"The lousy bastard. No need to be in such a damned hurry. I'll fix him." She swerved the bus directly across his path, stopping on the corner of Tenth Street. Yale heard the squeal of the Chevrolet's brakes. He grinned as he v
isualized the driver cursing.
A few passengers walked out the rear door and waited for the light to change. Yale watched the crowd moving along the widewalk. He was feeling better now. He was in the movement of things. He was a speck on the current of people going somewhere. The faster the current moved the less the plaguing I bothered him. It was like the water therapy that they give to the insane. The motion, ceaseless, vacillating, bending back on itself but always going, was a sedative. It smoothed out the tangle of nervous energy and like a transformer set the current flowing in steady pulsations instead of an overcharged torrent.
The bus was moving again. The man with the cigar sat down beside Yale. The black eyebrowed blonde still stood, her navel enticingly near, her perfume overpowering in the Woolworth tradition. The man was friendly.
"I'm President of Pearlstein's Clothiers, New York City," he said, examining Yale's uniform as he spoke. "Little business and a little pleasure combined in this trip. How's the war going?"
"Lousy," Yale answered. What did Pearlstein expect that he would shout for joy?
"You oughta be a civilian. You can't get anything. Cigarettes, liquor, butter . . . that's not all. Try and run a business. The government's at your neck every minute. You can't get this, you can't hire that. Hell, I'd rather be in the Army."
Yale sympathized. It was tough to be a civilian.
"What are you doing now?" Pearlstein demanded.
"Nothing much."
"Come on over to my room. I've got some good Scotch. We'll have a shot."
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 22