by Irwin Shaw
“Sure,” Archer said, relieved and ashamed of himself, thinking, I must stop reading all these realistic novels. “I’ll be there right after dinner.”
“And the truth,” Herres said, staring somberly at Archer. “Right out of the feed box. If you kid me, I’ll never forgive you as long as I live, Clement.”
“That’s an unfriendly kind of thing to say,” Archer said, troubled and annoyed.
“I mean it.” Herres got up. “Eight-thirty sharp,” he said as he went out.
Seating himself later in the rear of the empty auditorium, Archer realized he still felt resentful about Herres’ warning, and tried to clear it out of his mind so that he could judge fairly as the curtain went up. The play was Sidney Howard’s They Knew What They Wanted, and Herres had the role of the tough young wandering ranch hand who seduces the waitress-wife of the Italian farmer. Nancy played the wife and was astonishingly good, simple, pathetic, sensual, and finally pitiful. Archer refused to make up his mind about Herres until the play was over.
When the curtain was lowered, Herres and Nancy came out from backstage almost immediately. They had not been in costume and Herres came down the aisle pulling on his jacket.
“Let’s get out of here quick,” Herres said as Archer stood up. “Before that idiot Schmidt decides he has some new gems for us.”
Schmidt was the director. He had, so he said, once worked for Reinhardt in Germany, and was given to long, philosophical analyses. Herres also called Samson, the football coach, an idiot. Generosity toward his elders, especially the ones who attempted to teach him anything, was certainly not one of Herres’ strong points, Archer reflected, as they hurried out of the auditorium. For a half-second Archer wondered what Herres said about him after a dull Wednesday afternoon history class. The trouble was, Herres was accurate. Schmidt and Samson were idiots, or the academic equivalents of idiots.
“Nancy,” Archer said, when they were safely outside, and walking away from the building, “you were awfully good tonight.”
“The second act,” Nancy said. “I wasn’t bad in the second act.”
Archer smiled. That girl, he thought, is practically a member of Equity right now.
“Nancy,” Herres said when they came to Sorority Row, “this is where you say good night to the people and go home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” Nancy protested. “It’s early yet.”
“Home,” Herres said quietly. “Clement and I have some things to talk about. Men’s talk.”
“I hate men,” Nancy said, coming as near to a pout as she could manage. “I think men ought to be abolished.”
“Yes, darling,” Herres said, and kissed her, domestically, not paying any attention to the fact that Archer was watching. “Run along now.”
“Aren’t you even going to walk me home?” Nancy sounded aggrieved and Archer realized that she was still wound up and excited by the evening’s performance and wanted to continue sharing the excitement as long as she could.
“No, darling,” Herres said.
“I hope you’re miserable with each other,” Nancy said. But she went off down the street, her figure slim and docile under the shedding trees.
Handling women, Archer thought enviously, watching her, is a talent you’re born with. Either you have it or you never learn it. He could never get Kitty to do what he wanted except on the gravest and most crucial matters.
“I want a beer,” Herres said, starting toward the inn. “Acting is thirsty labor.”
“What if Samson hears of it?” Archer asked, swinging into step beside him. “In the middle of the season? Won’t he be hurt?”
“Screw Samson,” said Herres, and Archer reminded himself he meant to talk to Herres about his language. Ten years later he actually managed to do this.
They didn’t mention the performance until they had settled themselves in the corner of the barroom and had their beers in front of them. Herres drained off half a glass in one gulp, then put the beer down and said, “All right. Let’s have it. And remember—” again the warning “—no pulling punches. You’ve lived in New York and you’ve been seeing shows all your life and you know the difference between an actor and a performing seal. I worked hard all summer but I don’t know whether I’m a bum or John Barrymore. You can save me a lot of grief by telling me the truth tonight. Here’s what I want from you,” he said bluntly. “I want you to tell me whether you think I have a chance to make a career in New York on the stage.”
“Now, Vic,” Archer protested, “nobody can tell you that. There are a thousand accidents that might happen and …”
“Don’t sound like an article on what’s wrong with the American theatre,” Herres said harshly. “I know all about the accidents. They don’t interest me. For one thing, I’m lucky, and if there are going to be accidents, the percentage is in my favor.”
What conceit, Archer thought, what useful, happy conceit! To believe, in 1936, at the age of twenty-one, that you’re lucky and the percentage is all in your favor.
“What I want to know from the professor’s mouth,” Herres said, staring at him coldly, “is whether the professor thinks I have enough talent to go to New York and earn my living on the stage. A simple, clear, yes or no, from an enlightened member of the audience.”
“The usual way people decide this,” Archer said mildly, “is if they feel they can’t help themselves. If that’s the only thing they want to do or think they can do with themselves.”
“I don’t want to do anything,” Herres said flatly. “And I can do a lot of things. So let’s rule that out.”
“All right,” Archer said, feeling bludgeoned, “I think you can do it. I think you have a lot of talent and you’ve improved enormously over the summer and your looks are on your side and I think there’s a good chance you’ll be the darling of all the Wednesday matinees.”
“Good,” Herres said calmly. He finished his beer. “I’m going to New York in June. Watch for my name in electric lights.” He grinned and for the moment looked boyish.
“Now wait a minute,” Archer said. “Don’t just take my word. It’s your whole life and I …”
“Don’t worry, Professor,” Herres patted his arm and smiled. “I won’t blame you when I wind up in the old actors’ home.”
“Now,” said Archer, feeling unpleasantly that, he was being condescended to, “maybe you can tell me what’s behind all this.”
“Sure,” Herres said as he waved to the waitress for two more beers. “Nancy MacDonald. She’s going to live in New York after she graduates and there it is. My father has a job for me with General Motors, but that’s in Detroit and Nancy won’t live in Detroit. And I don’t want to be separated from her for a couple of years, while she’s going around with all the pretty boys in New York and finally climbing into bed with them and forgetting her gentleman friend at the Buick plant in the West. And I want to have her with me every day and take our vacations together and see each other for dinner every night.”
This man, Archer thought, is a fanatic on the subject of monogamy. A freak. A post-war, pre-war freak. “Wait a minute,” he said, “have you talked to her about this? About marrying her and living in Detroit?”
“Yes,” Herres said soberly. “Nothing doing. She won’t even say we’re engaged if we live so far away from each other. She won’t be tied down, she says, her first time in New York, just by an idea. That’s what she says a man a thousand miles away is. Just an idea.”
“And because of that,” Archer said wonderingly, “you decide that you’re going to be an actor for the rest of your life? Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Herres said. He drank off half his second beer. “Anyway, I like the notion of New York. And I don’t like the notion of Detroit. I know Detroit. So I figured out all the ways I might earn a living in New York, pronto. And acting came up on top. I don’t care what I do. I’d just as soon act as make Buicks. Don’t look shocked, Professor. Nine-tenths of the population of the United Stat
es don’t really care what they do. They just kid themselves. You teach history,” he said challengingly. “Is that what you really want to do?”
Archer sipped his beer. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.
“I know I want to do one thing,” Herres said. “I want to live with Nancy MacDonald the rest of my life. That’s my ambition. Complete. Maybe I’m a disgrace to my family and to the Constitution of the United States, but that’s the way it is. So here’s to marriage and grease paint.” Herres lifted his glass mockingly. “In that order.”
“David Garrick is screaming in pain,” Archer said. “Wherever he is.”
“Let him scream.” Herres smiled. “Let the old faker yell his lungs out. Wherever he is. Visit us in New York on your sabbatical.”
Then, the next day, the scandal broke. Herres walked up to Samson just before afternoon football practice was to begin and told him that he was quitting. As of that minute. To devote all his spare time to the Dramatic Society. Poor Samson, who had had his troubles in years of coaching, who had had boys flunk out on him and turn up drunk at practice and contract gonorrhea on road trips, had never heard of anything like this before. He didn’t believe it and almost wept as he pleaded with Herres to think it over for another week, play just one more game. … But Herres had been pleasant but firm, had given Samson just five minutes of his time, and walked off the field.
The school paper had come out the next day with the story on the front page under their biggest headline of the year, “HERRES QUITS” and there was an editorial on the inside page, in which Herres was called a betrayer of trust, as though he had been caught trying to burn down the Science Building or selling signals to Ohio State.
Samson had come to Archer’s home, feeling in his dim, athlete’s way that Archer was in some manner mixed up in this, and had talked ramblingly about a sense of mutual responsibility, and the old school, and the fact that there wasn’t another quarterback on the squad who could be depended upon to throw a block or call for a kick on fourth down, and had ended by demanding that Archer influence Herres to go back.
“Now, listen,” Archer told Samson, annoyed with him and with Herres, too, for putting him in this absurd position, “my job here is teaching history. I wasn’t hired to recruit athletes. And even if I wanted to help, which I don’t, there’s nothing I can do with Herres. You ought to know him well enough to understand that by now …”
“He’s ungrateful,” Samson said, mournfully. “He’s a boy without spirit. He has no team feeling. He’s a God-damn intellectual.”
“Then you ought to be glad he’s quit,” Archer said, “before he infects all the others.”
“Yeah,” Samson said, running a huge, sorrowful hand across his battered face. “Yeah. He’s doing this, right in the middle of our best season, because he doesn’t like me. Personally. He looks down on me. Don’t shake your head, Archer. The sonofabitch looks down on me. I’m twice his age, but sometimes he treats me like I was his backward nephew. I took it. I’m willing to take it some more for the sake of the school. But I need some help. I got nobody else. There’s O’Donnell,” Samson rambled on, continuing a bitter reverie that had obviously begun the moment Herres had broken the news, “but he hasn’t blocked out a tackle since he was in high school, and besides he’s got a trick knee. And there’s Shivarski, and he couldn’t outrun my mother in a hundred-yard dash. And when it comes to calling signals …” Samson looked up tragically to heaven. “It’s like giving a Swiss watch to an ape in the trees.”
“I’m sorry, Samson,” Archer said. “There’s nothing I could do.”
“You could try to talk to him,” Samson said, “Just try. The boys say he likes you. The boys say you’re the only one on this whole God-damn campus that cold-blooded sonofabitch gives two cents for,” he said bitterly. “You could try.”
“He’s made up his mind,” Archer said. “You better find another quarterback by Saturday.”
“Yeah.” Samson stood up. He laughed hollowly. “Just like that.” He picked up his hat. “I’m surrounded by enemies on this campus,” he said darkly, going out. “Waiting for me to fall.”
Even the Dean of Men had called Herres into his office and tactfully attempted to persuade him to go back. Herres had been polite, crisp and unyielding, and he left the Dean of Men shaken and wondering if he was losing touch with the younger generation.
“That demented editor came to me,” Herres said to Archer a day after Samson’s visit. “He said he wanted to be fair. He said he wanted to give me space in the paper to defend myself. He wanted me to explain what he called my disloyalty to the school, by giving my real reasons for quitting.”
“What did you say to him?” Archer asked.
Herres grinned. “I told him I was considering becoming a fairy and the boys on the team were not my style. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he prints it. Give a man a couple of columns of print to fill up and he loses touch with reality. Loyalty!” Herres snorted. “What the hell loyalty do you owe a school? I pay my tuition and keep my grades above passing and refrain from punching the instructors. Aside from everything else, I got bored with playing football. The games’re all right, but the practice is a nuisance. And if the team loses a game or two because of me, what the hell do I care? Or for that matter, finally, what the hell does anyone care? There’s one boy, Sam Ross, a tackle, who cries in the locker room every time we lose a game. Twenty-three years old, weight two hundred and seven, blubbering away for fifteen minutes at a time. He ought to be put away. In a home for expectant mothers. Once he wanted to fight me because he heard me whistling in the shower after we lost by two touchdowns. Character building! You know what aspects of my character I built up playing football?”
“What?” Archer asked curiously.
“Cruelty, sadism, duplicity, pleasure in destruction,” Herres said slowly. “I figured it out before I quit. The reason I enjoyed playing was because I like to knock people down. I broke a man’s leg in a game last year and I walked alongside the stretcher pretending I was upset, but I was pleased with myself all the time. Looking down at him, yelling on the stretcher. Clean-cut American boy, building a sane mind, in a sound body every Saturday afternoon.” Herres peered mockingly at Archer. “Do you think I ought to put all this in a letter to the editor?”
“Even so,” Archer said, although he was not surprised at what Herres had told him, remembering the savage way he drove into opponents, “even so, you might write a tactful letter to the paper to calm everybody’s feelings.”
“Let them boil,” Herres said carelessly. “It’s none of their business.”
“Vic,” Archer said slowly, displeased suddenly with the boy, “there’s a point up to which arrogance in the young is understandable, even engaging. It gives evidence of independence of spirit, courage, private confidence. But after a point—it shows vanity, cruelty, a disregard of the people around you. It’s the sin of pride, Vic, and maybe that’s the worst of the lot.”
Vic grinned. “I didn’t know they had compulsory chapel on this campus any more,” he said.
Archer restrained his anger. “I’m not talking as a preacher,” he said. “I’m speaking as a teacher and friend. There’s a certain minimum of decency you owe whatever society you find yourself in. When you do something that seems strange or harmful or unfriendly to the people you’ve been working with and who depend on you for one thing or another, it seems to me you owe them some kind of explanation. You have to live with them and they have to live with you, and they have a right to be able to locate you in a general sort of way.”
“The band will now play the college anthem,” Herres said. “I don’t owe anybody anything. If I find anybody locating me, I’ll move. If I’m suffering from the sin of pride—” He lifted his eyebrows mockingly. “I’m delighted. Thanks for your interest, Professor. Want to see the game with me tomorrow?”
When he left, Archer sat staring into the empty fireplace, troubled, obscurely oppressed. Ah, he thought,
I’m taking this too seriously. I mustn’t forget he’s only twenty-one years old.
The parade in front of the stands the next day with Herres and the slow climb up the aisle to their seats was one of the most embarrassing experiences Archer had ever lived through. People fell silent in groups as they approached and others, farther off, stood up and stared, all faces cold and full of suspicion. Archer, who wanted people to like him at all times, felt rejected and lonely at Herres’ side, but Herres seemed oblivious of what was going on. He talked easily, nodded to acquaintances who barely acknowledged the greeting, chuckled at a joke of his own making, and as soon as they were seated, not in the last row this time, took out his flask and offered it to Archer. Archer, conscious of a thousand eyes upon them, refused to drink, feeling cowardly and exposed. This is going to make me real popular all over the campus, he thought glumly this afternoon. Herres drank, not very much, and without ostentation, and put the flask away.
All through the game, especially when the team failed to move the ball, or was scored against, their neighbors would stare accusingly at Herres, but he still paid no attention. He explained plays to Archer, pointed out where men were missing assignments, predicted where plays were going, and drank from the silver flask, not too heavily. Either this boy is completely encased in armor plate, Archer thought, admiringly, or he is one of the great actors of our time. In a reckless gesture, during the fourth quarter, Archer took a drink himself, staring coldly, mimicking Herres, at the disapproving faces around him.
“The silver flask award,” Herres whispered, grinning, after Archer had drunk, “for Mr. Clement Archer, for extraordinary courage in face of heavily concentrated disapproval.”
It was a joke, but Archer knew Herres well enough to see that Herres was very pleased with him. I must watch that boy carefully, Archer thought, I can learn a lot from him.
After the game was over (the college lost by two touchdowns) Herres and Archer walked through the crowd, little hushed, resentful eddies marking their progress, and without hurrying, made their way toward Archer’s home. Suddenly, Herres began to chuckle. Archer, who was feeling spent by this time, looked at him curiously. “What’re you laughing at?” he demanded.