by James Jones
It was ten o’clock by the old courthouse clock with its Roman numerals. The drugstore was already closed. Almost everything was closed. Everything except the three bars and the two poolrooms. There was only one other set of tracks in the snow, he noticed. Then the anger began to hit him.
Standing there, he was satisfied that she could be had. He was sure of that. It was, therefore, just a question of time. It might take six months, it might take a year. Long enough to convince her that you loved her exclusively. But it could be done.
That lover hunger that was in her eyes—hidden, she thought?—had showed up again in that last remark she made, was he angry? Why the hell should she care if he was angry? That in itself proved she was insecure, he thought coldly. Insecure meant ripe.
All right so what if it took him six months, or a whole year. A kind of wild, indignant enthusiasm swept through him. He could go into that taxi business with Frank. It would cost him the fifty-five hundred dollars, but who cared? A man ought to be willing to pay that much to make a woman he really wanted to make. The hell with the money. Come easy go easy. It would be worth it. It would be more than worth it, it would be something to be proud of.
The melting drizzle that had slacked off earlier in the day had fled on to the eastward, and it had begun to really snow, just about the time they sat down to dinner. It was a real snow, the first one of the winter.
Walking along in it, he put out feelers of sensation to taste the excitement of it. Large clusters of flakes caught in his lashes and licked wetly at his unprotected face under the overseas cap. He was reminded of Europe, how it had snowed like this in Belgium during the Bulge, how it had snowed this way all on through the forests. And the dead bodies lying half covered in it. Fresh blood was electrifying when spattered in snow, but afterwards it turned brown. Oh, it was a shame, a shame.
Did you know it was a shame, Gwen French? Or would you, Gwen French, be scientific about it? Gwen French. Gwen French Gwen French! You and your writers.
He had had an idea for a combat novel once, he remembered all at once. In France. He had not thought about it for a long time. His combat novel was to be a comedy. The writers after the last war had all written and written about the horrible horrors of war until it had become a literary tradition. But nobody had ever thought of writing a comic combat novel. And really, if you could divorce yourself from imagining it was you, there was nothing funnier in the world than the way a man who’s been shot tumbles loosely and falls down. Unless it’s watching someone slip on a banana peel and fall and break their arm. Besides, he knew why the old ones had written like they did. They pretended that horror stuff. It was not because they especially hated war. And it was not particularly because of fear, either, everybody was afraid when he was being shot at. The comical thing was how unafraid it made you to do the shooting. No, they had written like they did because their egos could not support this hated indignity of personal death, any kind of death, which they feared they might have to suffer. That, and also because they were starved for sympathy. He knew, because he had felt that way himself. But your typical Infantryman’s vanity took quite another form. He had got a glimpse of that, too, when he killed his first three Germans and felt so pleased and powerful and Godlike. Once you’d killed a couple, war wasn’t nearly so horrible. He wanted to write a delighted comical novel about killing and combat and bust up their old monopoly on war and at the same time force the human race for once to take an unsugarcoated look at itself for a change. He would enjoy that more than anything else in the world. They would recoil in such shock and horror at themselves that never again would the name of D Hirsh be mentioned in polite society.
Except that he wasn’t going to write it. Why should he?
He walked along looking in the store windows, the big snow playing upon him as if it were a musician, drawing from him not one or two successive emotions, but whole chords of them.
Wally, if you and I love the world too much, remember, it’s not the world’s fault; it’s our own. Why the hell should he write it? He was going to make this woman, if it took him every last dime he had, and then he was going out to the West Coast and live it up a little. The world didn’t ask us to love it that way, Wally, did it?
He passed one of the old-fashioned cast-iron water fountains, its basin filled with snow, and he loved it. The windshields of the late parked cars were plastered with it, too, and he loved them, too, and he loved the people who owned them.
He was not tight anymore, and the skin of his face felt drawn around the eyes from the liquor. Like your fingers when they’ve been left too long in water.
The courthouse and its square of yard were completely dark save for the four faces of the clock in the tower and the public toilet night-lights at the basement entrance under the stairs, and across the square he could make out the dark figure of the night cop making his rounds.
Gwen French. We will see, Gwen French, we’ll see.
The awareness of his physical unattractiveness, which he never thought about unless he had been drinking, flooded over him like the curling waters of an upriver cloudburst creeping over a delta swamp. He did not itemize them.
It was really all only sex. Everything. The game and the profession of the universe. Money was made, and music written, books were written, statues, poems, governments fell. All for sex. Love me, love my horse. Here, Trigger.
He stopped before the Athletic Club poolroom and looked inside. It was a huge place that he remembered had once been a bank, the Prairie Farmers & Growers Bank & Trust Company, but had gone under in the Depression. The light from the windows cast yellowish pools on the white mat at his feet where only two other sets of footprints showed. Inside, a bunch of men holding cues stood around one of the tables near the back. He could recognize the tall ’Bama in his hat. One of them said something, and they all laughed heartily. They had evidently been there a long time, playing. Since before the snow, by the footprints. He went inside. It had been a long walk.
Chapter 12
IN THE POOLROOM, two old men with tobacco-stained whiskers sat on the mahogany-stained benches against the wall, reading the papers. The owner—or manager, whichever he was—stood behind the glass cigar counter turning the pages of a motor sports magazine. All three looked up when Dave came in. Dave took off his greatcoat, suddenly self-conscious about his ribbons that he’d worn to impress Frank and Agnes, and hung it on one of the coatracks and went directly to the telephone on the counter to do it now. He might forget it later. Besides now that he had made up his mind, he wanted to be committed. He dialed Frank’s number and cupped his hand around the mouthpiece so the man behind the counter could not hear him. It was several long moments before there was an answer.
“Frank?”
“’Lo?” His brother’s voice sounded thick.
“This is Dave.”
“Dave?” Frank murmured.
“Yeah. I’m downtown. Listen, I’ve been thinking about that deal, you know? And I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided to take you up on it.”
“Tha’ good,” Frank mumbled. “Tha’ fine, Dave. But I knew all ’long you’d take it. A’ you needed was a chance to think it over’n see wha’ a good deal i’ was.”
“Fifty-five hundred, that right? That was what we said.”
“Tha’ right,” Frank mumbled.
“And course I suppose the job has to go with it,” Dave said. “Okay. I’ll stop by the store and see you tomorrow about the details.”
“Tha’ right,” Frank mumbled. “Job go wi’ i’.”
“Say, are you drunk?”
“No,” Frank mumbled. “Lor’, no. A’ this time o’ night? You jus’ woke me up, tha’s all.”
“Okay,” Dave said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
He hung up and turned toward the single pool game at the back, feeling satisfied. He walked on back to the table, threading his way amongst the empty darkened ones. He did not know any of them except ’Bama. And while he used to be a g
ood pool shooter in his youth, he knew he was not in their class. He suddenly felt embarrassed, and felt his face set itself in that stiff look of elaborate expressionlessness.
There were seven players in the game. They were playing pea pool. A dollar a game. Four of them were dressed in overalls or work clothes and a couple of these wore those pleated “railroader” workcaps. Two others wore the nondescript uniforms of store clerks. They were all six of them young—that is, below middle age—and they all appeared to be thoroughly enjoying a slightly expensive night off from the wife and kiddies.
By contrast, ’Bama Dillert stood out like a thief in church. He did not have that married look of the others, and he had changed his clothes to a sharply pressed suit, the coat of which he did not take off to play, and which had the exact same narrow smalltownish cut as the other while still managing to look expensive. He also wore, pushed carefully back just to his widow’s peak, another semi-western hat, with the same deeply snapped brim and creases as sharp and meticulous as the press in the suit. He had shaved, and bathed, and evidently even cleaned his fingernails, and had on a dazzling clean white shirt and a tie that was a futuristic printmaker’s dream, all dots and radial stripes and triangles, but which nevertheless blended well with the suit. He obviously felt it to be a sophisticated outfit.
As Dave came up and leaned against the next table, ’Bama chalked his cue, studied the table, wrapped long fingers around the stick in a small tight bridge, bent to shoot exposing cuffs unsoiled by what was apparently hours of playing, made a crisp but accurate kiss shot across the end of the table, and stood up throwing out across the felt the small ivory pea whose number corresponded to the one on the ball he had just pocketed—all of this in what seemed to be one swift, concerted movement.
“Read it and weep,” he sneered in his high, contemptuous nasal.
“You son of a bitch,” one of the men in overalls said good-naturedly.
“I said weep,” ’Bama said. ‘‘Go ahead and cry, you sad bastard. Get it off yore chest.”
As he spoke, he went around the table and collected the six dollar bills the others had laid out on the edge; tall, thin, sway-backed, with that hanging belly appended to the abnormally curving spine, setting his feet down in that same slow jerky horse walk, languid, arrogant, hateful of even the money. He shoved the bills in his front pants pocket. “Rack ’em up!” he bawled, and banged with the butt of his cue on the floor several times, and walked over to stand by Dave. “How’s it goin, Dave?” he smiled sneeringly.
The houseman, the same one who had been reading Motor Sports, was already there with the rack before he even yelled. ’Bama paid for the next game, as winner.
“You ought to know you can’t leave that ’Bama have a set up shot,” one of the men in overalls said to one of the clerks.
“You got to leave him safe,” another said.
“You want to shoot in front of him?” the clerk said.
“I’d rather shoot in front of him than behind,” one of the men in railroader caps said.
“If I played that bastard safe,” the clerk said coldly, “I’d never get to shoot for my ball all night but that wouldn’t keep you from winnin.”
“’Bama, are you payin him to shoot that way in front of you?” the second clerk said.
“Course I’m payin him,” ’Bama said, pocketing his change from the houseman. He said it so quickly and matter of factly, that even though you knew it wasn’t true you had a momentary impulse to believe him. As if he knew this, a hint of a self-satisfied sly grin crept over the sneer, then crept off.
“I’ve been a-anticipatin all along that was what you was doin,” another of the overalls said.
“I’d be glad to accept some of my pay now,” the first clerk said coldly.
’Bama ignored both of them. He leaned back against the table, waiting for the houseman to collect all the peas and pass out new ones, and turned his narrow hazel eyes on Dave.
“How’d the dinner turn out?” he asked. Once again, there was that strange incongruous intimacy that was too great for the time they’d known each other, and was out of place in ’Bama’s character, in his voice. Dave wondered again why it was. Could Frank be that important in this town?
“All right,” he said.
“You get enough to eat?” ’Bama grinned.
“Too much,” Dave said. He was watching the other men waiting to get their peas from the houseman. “I met our girl,” he said.
“Who?”
“Gwen French. She was there for dinner.”
“Ohhhh! Yeah?” ’Bama said. “You make her?”
“I didn’t try,” Dave said. “I think Wally’s right. I don’t think it would be worth it.”
“Look, don’t tell me,” ’Bama grinned. “I’ve looked at them eyes. It might be hard work. I grant you that. But it’d be worth it plenty.”
“I don’t think so,” Dave said stiffly. He discovered that he did not like ’Bama talking about Gwen like that. Even privately.
“Okay,” ’Bama grinned. “You shoe yore own horse. Ain’t you gettin in on this one?” he nodded at the table.
Dave’s embarrassment came back, “I’m just watchin,” he said. “But I might play one. Later on.”
“You’d better get in now if you aim to. Because they’ll be closing up before long. They close at eleven, so they quit at ten-thirty.”
“Perhaps I will play a game then,” Dave said. “If there’s room.”
“Plenty of room, Mr Hirsh,” one of the clerks said.
“Why, thank you,” Dave said. He went to the nearest wall rack for a cue, cursing himself savagely for sounding so pompous and feeling a fool. He relieved himself by hunting with great diligence for a cue that felt good. He was committed to it now.
When he came back to the table ’Bama came over and stood beside him. “You follow me,” he said, some kind of an eagerness in his voice. “I was the last man to get in, so you’ll follow me. And since I won the last game, that means I break, so you shoot second.” Dave wondered if the jerk thought he didn’t know anything about pool at all. But it wasn’t that; ’Bama sounded more like a pleased host who was proudly and some what pathetically showing one of his rare visitors around his estate.
The houseman, having racked the balls and collected all the peas, began to rattle the black leather bottle. Occasionally, he banged the bottom of it down flat on the table rail. Finally, he let the peas out the neck of the bottle into his hand one at a time and shot them across the green expanse of felt to the players, who caught them, peered at them secretively, and then hid them. When they all had their peas, he put the bottle up and disappeared again, as suddenly and silently as he had appeared, without having said a word the whole time.
’Bama broke the rack, a snapping hard very clean shot like a striking snake that sent colored balls squirting out from the triangle in all directions and sank two of them into pockets. One of these belonged to the first clerk, who cursed coldly, and ’Bama grinned at him. He went on shooting and sank three other balls before he missed.
Dave, whose turn it was to shoot next, did not sink three balls during the entire game. Nor did he sink a total of three balls in any one of the other four games they played before quitting time. Nervousness plus extreme self-consciousness plus a great embarrassment plus a wild hunger to win every game all combined to make him play even worse than he should have with no more practice than he’d had. He played increasingly in a grim, dead-faced silence intended to conceal the way he felt but which instead only served to call attention to it.
Nobody offered him any encouragement. Neither did anyone offer him any sympathy. ’Bama was the only one who spoke to him at all, and he only between games. The rest did not look at him and maintained a blank-faced silence, leaning on their cues. He was twice as lonely as he had been outside walking around the square.
’Bama won three of the five games before the houseman finally closed them down. One of the clerks won one, and one of the
country men won the other. Dave played along in all of them, actively hating every moment of it. When they stopped, all he felt was relief. By the time it took him to walk up front, his anger was replaced by an unutterable, almost unendurable melancholy. In this state, he thought about Gwen French.
She really wasn’t a very appetizing woman at all, when you thought about it objectively. And fifty-five hundred dollars! He wished to God he had not called Frank and committed himself now.
’Bama had gone back to the men’s room, and he sat down on one of the mahogany-stained benches to wait and lit a cigarette. The two whiskered old men had left, shuffling off to whatever miserable homes. He would have to look the Old Man up, he thought. He sat watching the falling snow through the big plate-glass windows. Beyond the windows, it filled the air between him and the courthouse, making it tangible. His own footprints outside were already dusted over.
Behind him, the others still were talking as the houseman continued turning the lights off. Then the four men in work clothes came past him and went out together.
“Christ,” one of them said, “it sure is snowin.”
A moment later the two clerks followed, each going his own way toward his own car, adding more footprints to the growing web.
’Bama came up behind him.
“Ready to go?” he said. He was folding a big sheaf of bills in half. He rolled it into a roll and snapped a rubber band around it. “All ones,” he laughed, and put it in his pocket.
“How much did you win?” Dave said.
’Bama studied him narrowly a moment, as if debating whether to tell him the truth. “’Bout thirty bucks.”
“That’s not a bad night’s work.”
’Bama studied him again. He had his topcoat on, a conventional ordinary light gray gabardine, and his hat was pulled forward now, about three quarters of the way down his forehead, a lot like a soldier wears a campaign hat, except for the long western crease and sharp snapped brim. “It ain’t bad,” he admitted; “for pool. But if I had to live on that, I’d starve to death damn quick.”
