by James Jones
“He always acts like that,” Dawn said, smiling at Dave with desperate levity. “You’d think he never read a book in his life.”
“Well, I haven’t, except for one or two,” Frank grinned.
“Oh, Daddy! Please stop acting like a country farmer! It doesn’t become you!” Under the light smile on her face, there was an edge in her voice. She got up suddenly from the chair, collected her book, and walked with her woman’s body above which floated the desperate child’s face into the hall where the stairway was.
“Wait a minute. Where you think you’re going?” Frank said.
“Why, upstairs. To read,” Dawn said. “I can’t concentrate here with you men talking.”
“But supper’ll be ready in a little bit,” Frank said. “I mean dinner.”
“Well? Can’t you call me, silly?” Dawn said. “You’ll want your big chair. And I can’t read on the davenport.” She turned her smile upon Dave as she turned away and was gone before Frank had a chance to answer.
Frank looked for a moment as if he wasn’t sure whether he should order her back and reprimand her. Then he sank into the big leather armchair with an affected “Ahhh!” of satisfaction.
“She’s an awful tempermental kid,” he said proudly, and then realized he still had Dave’s glass in his hand. “Wait, I’ll get you another drink.”
“Thanks,” Dave said. He was debating whether he should ask Frank about the possibility of getting a woman in Parkman, and whether Frank would guess it was his daughter’s figure that had brought it on. He decided against. Frank would probably let on he didn’t know anyway.
On his way to the buffet, Frank furtively drank off the rest of his own drink. As he mixed them both new ones, he kept on talking about Dawn back over his shoulder.
“She’s really a very talented girl. But she’s awful headstrong. And now she’s got this idea about bein an actress. She’s always more or less wanted to be an actress. Myself, I think she ought to do somethin in the artistic line like that. she’s too smart and too egotistical to ever be happy as just a housewife. But now I think she’s got the idea that four years at college would just be wastin her time. Every time we try to talk to her about college, she just clams up on us. And she’ll graduate next June. It’s time she ought to be thinkin about her college.”
Frank left off working on the drinks to peek at the kitchen door, and then took a stiff shot of the straight rye. Then he went on talking about college. If acting was what his daughter wanted, by God, that was what she was going to have. But she was going to have to go to school, and that was all there was to it, and he was afraid he was going to have to set his foot down.
Upstairs in the two little sloping-roofed rooms and bath, which she had decorated herself and liked to call her apartment, Dawn lay face down on her bed in a misery so overwhelming it made suicide seem enjoyable. She should never have let out her secret to Dave, he would almost certainly tell Frank. And she should never have taken The Remembrance of Things Past down there in order for Dave to see her reading it. But how was she to know the only artist in the family would think Proust was passé. Almost any other book would have been better. And Frank. Frank had made it ten times worse. And Agnes acting like a giggly schoolgirl. The book lay on the floor where she had dropped it, and she had no inclination to pick it up, now or ever again, who the hell wanted to read Proust, and she looked around her place, which she had done herself, and it all seemed horrible, horrible, and crappy, and middle class. Just like she herself, who had made it. Just like the crappy high-school dramatics training, and all the crappy middle-class Middle Western colleges with their horrible crappy middle-class dramatics, well she was not going to any crappy Midwest college and study horrible dramatics, they could say what they wanted, and they could just wait, by God, son of a bitch, and see. Swearing didn’t help. She wanted to die.
Downstairs, Frank brought the fresh drinks back into the living room. “As a matter of fact, I’m just as glad the girl did go upstairs,” he said, “because I’ve got somethin I want to talk to you about. Before the Frenches get here.”
“Yes? What’s that?” Dave said. He already knew though.
“Well,” Frank said, sitting down again with that same affected “Ahhh!” of satisfaction, “it’s about your plans. For the future.”
“That’s simple,” Dave said. “I haven’t got any.”
It had suddenly gotten like a poker game between them, in the room, as if it were the back room at the Elks or the American Legion. There should have been a few steel gray cones of tobacco smoked light coming down from the ceiling, Dave thought, remembering what a good poker player Frank always had been.
“It’s also about this money you’ve got deposited in the Second National Bank,” Frank said, sipping his drink.
“What about it?” Dave said.
“There’s no sense in us beatin around the bush,” Frank said. “A good friend of mine called me up and told me you deposited fifty-five hundred dollars in the Second National not ten minutes after you did it. And if you didn’t know that would happen, you’re a lot dumber than I think you are.” He grinned at Dave without rancor.
“I didn’t think anything about it one way or the other,” Dave said. “It just happened to be the bank nearest the hotel.”
“Well, it’s none of my business where you put your money. It’s not goin to break me, or seriously injure the bank I’m with. But I think you ought to plan to do somethin with that money.”
“I’m planning to live on it,” Dave said.
“You mind if I ask how you got it?”
“I won it. On the boat comin home from Europe,” Dave said.
Frank sipped his drink. “Well, I’ve given that money of yours a lot of thought in the last six hours,” he said. “And I’ve got an idea. As a matter of fact, you gave me the idea.”
“I did?” The poker tension was getting deeper. As Frank had intended it should, Dave thought. You’ve got to watch him, he’s got something up his sleeve, and he’s going to use it on you, just to get that money out of that bank. If for nothing else.
“And that’s one reason I figured I’d give you a chance to get in on it first.”
“Well,” Dave said, “I don’t—”
“It’s one of the best deals for a good investment I’ve seen in some time,” Frank interrupted. It reminded Dave of a heavy tank he had seen in France once, outside St Lo, rolling steadily and peacefully over a forest of young saplings. “You said something in the car tonight, Dave, about how this town ought to be able to support a taxi service. I never thought of it before, and neither has anybody else I know of, but it’s true.”
“Well, the only reason I said that—” Dave said.
Frank waved his hand. “It’s not important why you said it. It’s a helluva good idea. So why can’t the two of us go into it? I’ve got a little loose money to invest and if you want to put your fifty-five hundred dollars in, I’ll put up seven thousand dollars and make you a junior partner. I think that’s a fair deal.”
“I think it’s a lot more than fair,” Dave said. He meant it. Once more, he had been caught completely off balance. “But I’m just not interested in anything like that. A business.”
“And why not? We buy three or four good used cars,” Frank said, “I think I know where I can get us a deal on those. I’m a silent partner in the Dodge-Plymouth agency. And hire some drivers cheap and rent one of those little buildings just off the square for a taxi stand, put in a phone, and we’re in business. Not too much capital outlay. And it’d be a good little moneymaker from now on.”
“I’m sure it would be,” Dave said, “but I don’t know anything about business, Frank. Why don’t you put up the same as me and make me a full partner?”
“I don’t think eleven thousand dollars will be enough to swing it,” Frank said, sipping his drink. “Cars are awful high right now. Probably need runnin capital for the first two three months, too.”
“So for fift
een hundred dollars extra, you get control of the business,” Dave said.
“Well, you said yourself you don’t know anything about business,” Frank said. “I do.”
“That’s true,” Dave said. “You’re right there. I guess.”
“On the other hand, you’d be gettin a little over two-fifths of the profits,” Frank said. He paused a second, “Eleven-twenty-fifths, to be exact. That’s more than a third. And you get none of the headaches.”
Dave nodded. “You mean you’d actually do all that for me? Just because I’m your brother? and I gave you the idea?”
“Well, no,” Frank said. “But I do need a partner. I don’t see why you shouldn’t profit by it.” Frank was beginning to feel high. And it wasn’t due to the liquor, either. Even if he was beginning to feel it a little.
“I don’t know,” Dave said. He shook his head. “You’re not just doin all that to get my money out of that bank?”
“Jesus Christ,” Frank said. “You think I’d throw away seven thousand dollars just to get your money out of the Second National Bank?”
“Well, no, but I could see where you might invest into a profitable thing like that, in order to do it. lt’d get you back whatever prestige you lost, and still make you a profit, too.”
“I ain’t lost any prestige,” Frank said. “Is that why you did it?”
“No,” Dave said. “I told you. It just happened to be the closest bank to the hotel.”
“Well,” Frank said, sipping his drink, “you’ll never find a better deal to invest that money in.”
“Well. I don’t know,” Dave said. “I don’t see how I can do it. I’ll need that money to get me back out to the Coast and to live on.”
“Then don’t go,” Frank said, crossing his legs. “Stay here.”
“Stay here! In this goddam town?”
“Well, sure,” Frank said. “Why not? Now just wait a minute, just hold your horses till I tell you what I been thinkin about.”
It was at moments such as these that he felt most alive he thought because he was seeing in his mind a deal like this and elaborating it, but not because during them he had developed his best money-making schemes, no. The thing itself was the thrill—
And if at other times like the unnerving scenes with Agnes and battles with Dawn and the times he thought Agnes had found out about Geneve Lowe or some other woman if then depression gripped him and fear ate at him these times like now made up for it and filled him back up again with the vitality and the enthusiasm—
Frank could see his life laid out straight ahead of him, happily married, a fine home and family, a prospering business, and unlimited prospects of success. Of ownership. Someday he’d own the whole damned town.
“Look here,” he said. “You stay here and run it. We pay you a livin wage out of the profits. You run the taxi stand and check the drivers in and out and handle the money. You live off your salary, and save all of your share of the profits.
“Hell, no young man startin out in business could ask for a better deal than that!” he said.
“What the hell,” Dave said. “I ain’t about to be startin out in business. And I ain’t about to be stayin in this damned hick town, either. Is that what you been workin it toward?”
“But why not?” Frank said.
“Because I never had to yet and I don’t want to now and I ain’t about to start. That’s why. I’m here for a week and then I’m takin my money out of that bank and I’m off for California. And you can get your lost prestige back some other way.”
“You think if I felt you’d lost me any prestige, I’d be tryin to make money for you?” Frank said.
“I don’t know,” Dave said. “You might. I never know what the hell you might do. What it amounts to is that I’d be your employee, isn’t it? That’d look good in the town. No thank you.”
“Not mine,” Frank said. “The firm’s. Of which you’ll be over two-fifths owner. And as such draw down over two-fifths of the firm’s profits. In addition to your salary. Eventually, you could quit the job part altogether.”
“In how many years?” Dave said with a grin that was almost a snarl. “Fifty? And in addition, you’d have me right here where you could keep me under your thumb, workin for you, and let everybody see how you handled Brother Dave. Huh!”
“Well, it would take you a while,” Frank said. “Naturally. I’ve been at it over twenty years myself and I’m not quite ready myself. But with you, I’d say in about five, if you really worked at it and put everything back into it. This town’s boomin, boy, and anybody who gets in on the ground floor of it now— There’s no limit to what the two of us together could do.”
“Yeah, with you as the boss, and me as the yesman.”
“No, as partners,” Frank said.
“And so what would I have then?” Dave said, grinning. “No thank you. I have no desire to be a bourgeois Middle Western businessman. And if I did, I’m sure not goin to run any monotonous crappy little taxi stand for five years to do it. No, sir. Not me.”
“You don’t expect to get anywhere in the world with that kind of an attitude, do you?” Frank said, sipping his drink. “You don’t expect to make a fortune without workin at least a little bit for it, do you?”
“I don’t know,” Dave said. “I don’t care. Maybe not. The point is, I just misunderstood you. Hell, I could have done all that years ago if I’d wanted to do that.” Suddenly, just thinking about it, about being caught like that, he wanted to get up and run out somewhere, anywhere. Only there wasn’t any place to run to. Or anyone.
“What’ll you do when you get back to Hollywood?” Frank said. “You haven’t written anything at all for six years, have you?”
“I don’t know!” Dave half yelled. “That doesn’t matter! That’s not what we’re talkin about!”
Behind them, the four-chimed doorbell rang, seeming to take an eternity to get through its rigmarole of notes.
“That’s the Frenches,” Frank said. “You think it over.”
“I don’t have to think it over,” Dave said. “I know my answer right now.”
Agnes came through from the kitchen, going to answer the door. She did not look at either of them, as if she sensed her discretion was important right now.
“Listen to me,” Frank said, and his voice was clear but when he stood up he swayed a little. “I’m not bullin you. There’s goin to be a lot of big things come up in this town in the next few years. You and me could get in on it, and with some hard work and careful investin we could the two of us take this town away from some of those snotty bastards like the Wernzes. And I for one aim to do it. And if you’re smart, you will, too.”
“And what’ll you have?” Dave said, “when you do it?”
“I’ll have respect, and friendship, and the love,” Frank said. “All the respect and friendship and the worship they always give the big boy, and that you and me never got in our whole lives because our old man ran off with the doctor’s wife. That’s what.”
“No, you won’t,” Dave said. “They’ll just hate you more and laugh at you more.” He got up, too.
“Oh yes, I will,” Frank said. “Because when you’re the man with the money and the success everybody bows down to you, see? Now I’ll go mix us all a little drink.”
“Just don’t count on me,” Dave said as Frank swayed off to mix the drinks. Behind him, he could hear the voices of them as they came through the living room, and he turned around to look them over feeling bullish and glowering and half-drunk and unhappy. How were you supposed to feel when you met somebody who wanted to dissect your private life for a book to explain why writers are writers?
He was sure Frank had been trying to put it over on him, he reflected. He was sure because Frank hadn’t gotten mad at a single thing he said.
They came through the door toward him, the three of them, Agnes leading and talking back over her shoulder in that party voice, then the woman smiling, and finally the man, and it was the man wh
o caught and held his attention.
He was a tall man, spare and very straight and he had close-cropped snow white hair, and with it an unusually full, iron-gray mustache, which was incongruous with such a short haircut and yet on this man belonged there. He was probably sixty-eight. But most of all, it was the eager mobility of the features, the almost childishly bright expectancy of the eyes, that caught and held you, as if in a crowded room you suddenly saw him and for no reason were just glad that he existed. Dave remembered him from high school with a different picture, doing both sides of the Hamlet duel scene with the yardstick, and wondered suddenly at the self-centered ignorance of youth that does not see.
But then, that’s probably all that keeps the young alive.
The woman, when he finally thought of her and looked, was different and yet the same. Sort of as if she had been consciously compounded of a given number of salient ingredients both of him and of her mother, whom Dave remembered as a large rawboned woman. She was tall, too, but there was more weight of bone in her, less fragility, yet a long-thighed delicacy of muscle, too, high, wide square shoulders under the slender neck, with long hair—so long as to be unstylish—but looking good in it, and Dave saw the thing in her that the gambler ’Bama Dillert had commented so positively upon, a tension, a quietly held in restraint, and in the very deepest bottom of the eyes where she no doubt thought that it was hidden this look of sexual (or would you say spiritual) expectancy. Not beautiful. Not beautiful at all. Yet giving a strangely unlogical illusion of beauty in a boyishly female way that you knew was an illusion but couldn’t help feeling anyway.
Dave was immediately positive he was going to like both of them, and felt even more bullish and glowering because he hadn’t wanted to.
Agnes introduced them all to each other.
“Of course, of course,” Bob French said delightedly, clasping his hand, running those eyes eagerly back and forth over his face, an emotional blotter, getting impressions. Impressions that would be accurate, Dave thought. “I taught you your Shakespeare in high school. Not a very successful job of it though, I’m afraid.”
