by Philip Wylie
Chuck felt relieved—then alarmed. “Just what, then, has he asked for, all the time you’ve been spending with him?”
Lenore smiled a little. “That? He asked that immediately.”
He straightened. “The no-good, God-damned—”
“You stop, dope! Kit’s the kind of person who always asks that right off, of any girl. It’s just like manners with him. If she says ‘No,’ he accepts it.”
“I’ll bet!”
“I’m trying to tell you. You want to try to see how I feel? Or shall we go home?”
“I’ll listen,” he answered sullenly.
“All right. Then try to hear what I’m trying to say. Maybe my parents aren’t as sweet and loving and noble as yours. Maybe they’re climbers and kind of crumby at times. They are. But they are still my parents. Now, if Kit ever proposed and I said ‘Yes,’ a whole lot of very important and terrifying and real problems would come to an end forever. I wouldn’t love him—
no. We wouldn’t have as many things in common as—other men I know. One other anyhow. But at least I’d never be in a spot where I’d wilt at the Sight of my own house and hate myself for working so hard and despise never getting ahead fast enough to keep up with the bills. Don’t you see, Chuck, either way it wouldn’t be a perfect deal?”
“Not if you keep it on a dollars-and-cents basis. No.”
“It keeps itself on that basis. Where might I be, either way, in ten more years? On one hand, with a lot of kids—probably bad-tempered, embittered, envious, and ready to slip out and have fun on the side if I got the chance. On the other hand, I’d have everything in the world, and so would my folks, and I wouldn’t be a physical wreck—”
“This is all a lot of nonsense,” he said.
“Women,” she answered, “shouldn’t ever try to tell men what they really think! What they have to consider—when men won’t!”
“Some men consider other matters are more important than living-room drapes.”
“Don’t you think I do, too!” Her voice was urgent. “What in hell, Charles Conner, do you think I’ve gotten to be twenty-four years old without marrying for? I’ll tell you. You. I’ve had hundreds of offers and chances to enlarge a friendship into a gold hoop. Rich men, bright men, men in college, men from Kansas City, New York-even. Only first you had to take another year for architecture. Architecture, of all the hard-to-learn, hard-to-rise-in things! Then, two years for the army. And now, who knows? What if they start a new little war someplace? Maybe I’ll be fifty when you can afford a wife.” She stopped very suddenly, caught her breath and stared in the dimness. “Charley,” she whispered, “you’re crying.”
He blew his nose. “Maybe I was,” he said unevenly. “It’s a little hard to take it-like that.
Brick by lousy brick. Maybe, Lenore, you better give up the marathon. Maybe you are right. It’s so damned hard for a guy to separate how he feels and what he wants-from the facts.”
She came close to him, familiarly, because she’d been close to him often before, in cars, on hayrides, on warm pine needles at picnics, in movie theaters. “It’s a rotten time for young people.”
“For people,” he agreed, putting back his handkerchief.
“Charles?”
“Right here.” He kissed her forehead.
“Tomorrow, you’11 be gone.”
“Don’t remind we.”
“Charles. Why do we have to do like this all our lives?”
“For freedom,” he said ironically. “For God, for Country, and for Yale.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“You always do, Lenore.”
“Have you made love to other girls?”
“Some,” he admitted.
“I mean—really. Actually.”
“No.”
She hesitated. “Me—-either.”
“I know,” he nodded, his head moving against her dark hair. “That, I always knew.”
“With things like this, and you going away . . .”
He said, “Nix.”
“I always felt,” her voice faltered and went on, “I mean, if anybody else but you, Chuck—was—the first one—I’d hate that.”
“I’m agin it, myself.” She could feel his jaw set.
“Then . . . .”
He let go of her. He leaned forward and started the engine. This, he said to himself, is the hardest goddam thing I hope I’ll ever have to do in this world! ‘We could go,” he said in a strained voice, “to one of the many pretty motels and spend the next few hours. And then Lenore would belong—spiritually—to Chuck. They call it spiritual when they mean anything but. I love you, gal. I always may. But if I start showing you how much, dear, it won’t be in some motel, and it won’t be a sample. Okay?”
“That’s okay, Chuck.” She exhaled a tremulous, relieved sigh. “I just wanted to be sure, Chuck.” He swung around suddenly and kissed her harshly on the lips. “Shut up, now, baby. I know what you wanted to be sure of! That’s one of the reasons I care for you. You’re a game dame.”
“I—I—wouldn’t want you to think I—cheated on you—I mean—held out—because of any reason you disagreed with.”
“Must I shout?” He managed to grin. “I know what you mean. And now, I’m taking you back home—before I forget what I mean.”
2
More and more, Coley Borden had taken to standing by the window, especially at night, or on dark afternoons, when the big buildings were lighted. Sometimes when he looked for a long while, he’d sit on the sill—twenty-seven stories above the street, above the people-ants, the car-beetles—watching the last thunderstorm of summer, for instance. When his secretary came into his office, to announce a visitor or to bring copy for the Transcript, he’d be there, while black clouds tumbled behind the silhouette of the two cities, while the dull light Battened them so they resembled cardboard cutouts of skyscrapers, and until shafts of storm-stabbing sun restored dimension to the soaring cityscape.
He’d be sitting there, or standing, when fog rolled in or when the wind picked up dry earth from between the myriad acre-miles of corn stubble and plunged the cities into the darkness of a duster.
He’d watch rain there.
Sometimes the men at the city desk would say, “Coley’s getting a bit odd.” Then, thinking how his family had perished one by one in ways which, to the lucky, are merely statistical, they’d add a kindly, “No wonder.”
Mrs. Berwyn, his secretary, would always say, “You’re crazy—not the boss. He’s just taken to doing his thinking looking out the window. Maybe some of you dumb journalists would improve your work by staring at something more than city-room walls.”
Coley was, one night, looking at the moon and its effect upon the spires and minarets of his homeland. A powdery light sifted over the region and picked out not just the loftiest buildings but lesser structures, objects that did not usually draw his daytime attention. Thus the tarred roof of the block-square produce market stood revealed across River Avenue. Out toward Rocky Glen, near the Country Club, he could see the glister of a greenhouse and guessed it was the Thomas Nursery. Slossen’s Run, a muddy tributary of the river, indistinguishable by day from a dusty road, now glinted to the west wherever the buildings left a space for it to show-a proper water course by night, however much the day defiled it. He saw, too, the distant spires of River City’s Roman Catholic Cathedral newly finished, up on the corner of Market and, appropriately, St. Paul.
He was thinking that there had been a time in America, not long before even by the brief calendar of human lives, when church spires had been the loftiest landmarks. Now, the steeples of commerce towered above, dwarfing and belittling man’s homage to God. It was not, Coley reflected, an accidental phenomenon. When men turned from inner values to those outside, to
“getting and spending,” their tabernacles dwindled while trade places grew majestic.
He heard his door open and sighed, looking away from the moon-lacquered panorama.
&
nbsp; “Mr. Conner’s here to see you,” his secretary said. “And it’s almost ten o’clock.”
“Conner?”
“Henry Conner.”
Borden smiled. “Oh. Hank. Tell him to come right in.”
“You haven’t had supper yet, Mr. Borden. Would you like. . . ?”
“Later. Later.” He snapped on lights and sat down at his desk.
Coley Borden could tell, nine times out of ten, about how a man felt, just from a glance.
Seven times out of ten, with the same quick look he could guess what a man was thinking. With women, he wasn’t so sure. In the case of Hank Conner, Coley knew even without the seeing what his thoughts would be. He was astonished, however, when Hank came in. Hank was
“dragging his shoulders.” His hair wasn’t iron-gray, any more; it was just plain gray, curly still, but he was getting bald. His homely, solid face was still good-humored, but in a patient way, not with his old exuberance. He looked like a man who would have a quiet chuckle ready for an ironic joke, not like a man who would yell louder than a Sioux and do a war dance in a bowling alley after six strikes in a row.
“Hello, Hank.”
And there was also a new, unwelcome diffidence about Henry Conner. He sat down uncomfortably in the walnut-armed, leather-upholstered chair beside the desk. “Good evening, Coley.” He didn’t add, “You old type-chewer,” or anything.
“Like a cigar?”
Hank’s head shook. “Brought my pipe. Mind?”
“This place has been perfumed by some of the vilest furnaces in the Middle West. Fire it up!” Hank did. “Came to talk about Civil Defense, Coley.”
“I know.”
“Kind of hate to. Always liked the Transcript. Respected it.” His big mouth spread with something like his old-time smile and when he rubbed his cheek, Coley could hear the bristles that had grown since morning. “You know, first time my name was in the paper, or my picture, it was the Transcript. High school graduation.”
Coley said, “Sure.”
“Tried to get you at your home. Mrs. Slant said you were still down here. So I hopped in the car.”
Coley didn’t say anything. Hank’s diffidence was real; so was the determination underneath. The best thing was to let Hank go about it in his own way. The editor felt sad. His instincts—and every syllable of his logic—were on the other man’s side.
“Of course,” Hank went on, after a sip of smoke, “I know Minerva Sloan was responsible for your policy change.”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s doing us bad harm. Real bad.” Hank mused a while, got up and lumbered across the room to the big map on the west wall. It was a street map of the two cities, their suburbs and the surrounding villages; there was a duplicate at CD headquarters. Hank used his pipestem for a pointer. “My district, Coley, is here—from West Broad on the north to Windmere Parkway. And from Bigelow to Chase Drive. Takes in a lot of territory—about four square miles, give you a few acres.” He smiled again. “It isn’t so full of folks as you’d think, on account of Crystal Lake and Hobart Park—about eleven thousand people is all. A little over three thousand homes and buildings. Stores in three small shopping centers. Libraries and schools and churches and hospitals and so on. You know it, about as well as I do.”
“Sure, Hank.”
“Out of my area, we had darn near a thousand volunteers, all told.” His eyes, clear and blue like Nora’s eyes, sparkled a little. “Three quarters of ‘em roughly were just plain people, working people, running from masons and carpenters and delicatessen owners to the middle category, folks like us Conners. I wouldn’t say more than a quarter—if that, quite—came from the big places around Crystal Lake or up in the chichi district toward Cold Spring. Just a cross section of ordinary city people, you might say. And I’m tolerably sure that out of the thousand not every man-jack—or woman-jill—would show up set and ready, if my outfit ever got asked to do what it’s here for.
“The point is, Coley, these people are the backbone of not just Green Prairie or the Sister Cities, or a couple of states, but the whole doggoned country. Les Brown may just be a handyman. But if you were cast on a desert island for a few years, you’d be smart to take Les—
for company and comforts. Alton Bowers may own ten acres of lawn and landscaped gardens and a big mansion, and he may own a pile of grain elevators, but he’s as close to Christian as Baptists ever get!” Hank, a Presbyterian, let the joke linger for a moment. Then the brightness left his eyes, he came back and sat down. “Called a meeting of the whole gang at the South High yesterday, Coley.” Hank looked at his pipe. “Forty-three people showed up.”
“Good Lord!”
Henry sighed. “We usually turned out around five, six hundred.”
“What do you want me to do, Henry?”
The bulky man stirred in his chair, frowned, rubbed his thorny cheek and said, “Talk, first of all. Get out from behind Minerva Sloan’s skirts and talk!” He reached around his neck and wrestled, one-handedly, with his vertebrae, disarranging his neat blue suit. “I’ve always had a good deal of respect for you. You’ve been right about things in this man’s town—sometimes when I was wrong. You’ve got a good mind, Coley. You’ve read a lot of history. You know a lot about this science stuff. Your paper’s been wide awake. Now, all of a sudden, because we jam up traffic—and it’s not the first time we’ve done it but maybe the tenth—you change tack on us.”
Coley Borden’s face wrinkled with intensity, glowed with a burning expression, like helpless sympathy. It was a brownish face, as if perennially suntanned; and the eyes were too big for it. Time, not very much time at that, for Borden was contemporary with Henry Conner, had bent and gnarled the editor. “I can imagine how you feel, Henry.”
“The point is—why I came here, is—what do you really think? I’ve talked to lots of people, last few weeks. People in CD and even people from River City who think the whole show is some kind of boondoggle. Those folks haven’t even got enough organization on paper. I talked to Reverend Bayson, he’s a fire fighter in my outfit. I talked to a couple of professors. I kept asking, ‘Should we go on? Is it worth it? Are we doing anything valuable? Or are we what they call us—a bunch of Boy Scouts’? I decided to put you on my list of people to talk to.”
“Thinking of quitting, yourself?”
Henry Conner looked squarely at the editor. “That’s it.” He recrossed his legs as if his body dissatisfied him. “Not right off. I don’t mind looking ridiculous to other people, so long as I don’t feel that way myself. Well. What about it?”
“If I were you,” Coley said, “I wouldn’t quit if hell itself froze over.”
Henry stared for a moment. “Be damned,” he breathed. “Why?”
“Because men like you, Hank, are the only life insurance left to the people of U.S.A. The other policies have all run out. First, Soviet friendship; then, our lead on the bombs; next, our superiority and our H-bomb. All gone.”
“They’re talking peace, hard. They made those deals and kept their word, so far.” It was almost a question.
“How many times have they jockeyed our politicians into a peace mood? Fifty? Then snatched something. It’s got so the people of the United States are scared to say or do anything that sounds hostile, even disagree, for fear they’ll spoil some new ‘chance’ at ‘world peace.’
Makes a man sick! Can you imagine, twenty years ago, Senators pussyfooting around, trying to stop free men from freely saying what they think for fear Russia would be ‘antagonized’ or made
‘suspicious’? I say—the more suspicious they are the better, and the more antagonized the better.”
“Then why print in the Transcript that Civil Defense preparations in America discourage honest peace desires in the Kremlin?”
“Minerva Sloan.”
“Who does she think she is,” Hank asked enragedly, “Mrs. God?”
“You’ve hit it. Yes. Mrs. God.”
“If I could only be sur
e,” Hank murmured. He got up, went to the window, saw the moonlight and murmured, “Pretty view.”
“I like it,” the editor said and switched out the fluorescent lamps in the office. That allowed Henry Conner to absorb, as his eyes grew accustomed to the soft silver outdoors, the same panorama that so frequently held Coley fixed at his window.
“Be a shame,” Henry said at last, in a quiet tone, “to wreck it.”
“Lot of lives. Lot of work.”
“You think they’ll ever try?”
“That,” Coley answered, coming around his desk in the dark and standing beside Hank,
“is not the question. The question is, Could they if they tried. And the answer is, They could. So long as that’s the answer, Hank, we need you where you are.”