Some Came Running

by James Jones

  “But you’ll do it?” ’Bama said.

  “If you’ll get them to move first,” Hubie amended.

  “We’ll do it,” Dewey grinned.

  “Okay,” ’Bama said. “I’m off.”

  They all watched the tall gambler push back his chair and rise and go languidly up to the booth of girls, his hat pushed back just to his widow’s peak. He slid into the empty space next the two girls on this side, his back to their own table and facing Lois and the other two, and began to talk. Dave turned back to look across at his unpretty but very nubile young woman, who had looked up to watch the outcome of this new movement. She looked away quickly. He would have sworn she was watching mostly him.

  “I didn’t know he was married,” he said, turning his head back to the table, “until he told me just a while ago.”

  “He doesn’t look married,” Hubie agreed.

  “Yeah, he’s married,” Dewey grinned. “He bought himself a farm down in the south end of the county out of his first big killing after he came here—down in the Dark Bend River region—and installed his wife and two kids there and left them. He goes back down there once every couple of weeks or so. Most of the time, he stays in town here. Rents a room.”

  “But he’s seldom there,” Hubie said. “I heard she’s pregnant again,” he said to Dewey.

  Dewey laughed. “She probly is.”

  “You mean she stays there and farms the place all by herself?” Dave asked, looking again at his nubile young woman.

  “Naw,” Dewey said. “He’s got a man and his wife living there, too, in another house. They farm it on shares. She just stays down there, and manages it, sort of. His old mother lives down there too part of the time, I guess; when she’s not at his brother’s.”

  “Have you ever been down there?” Dave asked. He took another drink, quietly, in spite of the churning energy of misery and frustration and malice—of fright, abstract and objectless—boiling inside of him, and turned to look at the young woman again. She had just crossed her legs. They were too thin, too. It didn’t matter.

  “Yeah we been down there a couple of times,” Dewey said. “’Bama wanted me and Hubie to paint it for him once, but we’ve never got around to it.”

  “What kind of place is it?” Dave said. “Nice place?”

  “Naw, just one of them old old-time houses. The land’s good. He knows farmin, ’Bama.”

  “Must be a fine life for her,” Dave said.

  “She doesn’t seem to mind it. Kids go to a country school. She’s not a bad-lookin woman. If she’d just fix herself up a little.”

  “She probly doesn’t have much reason to,” Dave said.

  “I guess not,” Dewey said. “Say, you knew my brother Raymond in high school, didn’t you.” It was not so much a question as an assumption.

  “Yeah. That is, I knew of him. He was three years behind me. I remember him as a tough kid who was always getting into fights, even then,” he said, looking across at his girl again.

  “Did you know that Scott girl who was in love with him?”

  “No. Just by sight, is all.”

  “She was really hung on him,” Dewey said.

  “I never knew any of those rich kids,” Dave said.

  Dewey’s assumption had touched something deep inside of him. It made him aware that, historically, at least, he was as much a part of Parkman as were Dewey and Hubie, or ’Bama, or Brother Frank. Or as that girl over there. It meant he existed here—if only as a birth certificate, and a record of grades (usually poor), and a rarely remembered bit of scandal—in a way he could never exist in Greater Los Angeles. And he needed that. But such existence was hardly compensation for a man who had an almost physical need to be loved by the whole world, either.

  “As a matter of fact, I was always a sort of a black sheep,” he said. “Like you. A ne’er-do-well. The guys I ran around with were mostly all wild boys from down in the country who stole their old man’s homemade whiskey, or else stole his corn to make it themselves.”

  With everything colored by his emotion, he thought he could sense that same sense of existence-in-Parkman in everyone else as he looked at them around the wall booths. They all knew they existed here, but were unsure they would exist elsewhere. That was why they stayed. That was why they enjoyed Dewey’s gang’s escapades like they did. It was a part of the town. And besides Dewey had the same thing in him. That was why he stayed. They were all obviously disappointed by Raymond’s exit, he thought, and were still hoping for some event or other to happen that they could carry home with them to talk about, but there was an affection in their scrutiny, too. Of a sort. They felt a sort of sense of civic possession for Dewey. They had known him all their lives. His father had been one of the town bums when they were kids. When Dave’s sweeping eyes came to the nubile girl across from him, she dropped hers again and began talking animatedly to her ignored boyfriend.

  “Yeah, I remember,” Dewey answered him, his eyes glinting with a private malicious pleasure. “That was the same bunch that you got kicked off the football team with.”

  Dave nodded, feeling both choked up and a wild driving energy to kick over tables, to smash. If Raymond were still here, right now, he’d be happy to fight him himself, love it. And for no reason. Just because he was miserable. Miserable with a self-lashing, tooth-gnashing misery that would have made being beaten up actually enjoyable.

  “What I still don’t see,” Hubie said, “is why the hell you ever come back here.”

  “For the same reason that you did, probly,” Dave said, looking at him belligerently; then he looked away, “I’m only here for a week,” he said. “Say, who is that girl over there against the wall across from us?”

  Dewey swung around in his chair to look. The girl seemed to flush in the dim light, but she did not look at them or stop talking. “That’s your brother Frank’s office girl,” Dewey said. “Name’s Edith Barclay. Use to be a phone operator.”

  “No kidding,” Dave said, he looked at her again,

  “Yeah; I thought you already knew her,” Dewey said. “You been lookin at her like you did.”

  “Nah,” Dave said. “I don’t know her. Brother Frank’s office girl, hunh?” That was why she’d been watching him.

  “Nice-lookin girl, isn’t she?” Dewey said. “Guy she’s with is Harold Alberson. Works for Sternutol in the sales department. White-collar kid.”

  “They engaged?” Dave said.

  “Naw,” Dewey drawled. “Edith goes out with a lot of different guys. The way we hear it is Harold wants to marry her but she won’t give him a tumble. Or anybody else, we hear. But, of course, we don’t run in their circle.”

  “What circle?” Hubie demanded. “Her old man works for the Sternutol just like mine.”

  “I wonder if Brother Frank could be getting a little of it?” Dave said. His pulse was beginning to move from his chest up into his ears. He was contemplating doing something extravagant.

  “I don’t know,” Dewey said. “I kind of doubt it. I never heard that. And I probly would have. But then again, I wouldn’t be surprised. Would you? Because she’s really a looker, ain’t she? Beautiful, really.”

  Dave studied her again, male ego engulfing him in wild vanity without any legitimate reason. Except that he wanted to do something, something wild. Dewey thought she was beautiful, too. It wasn’t just him. She had almost no breasts at all and overwide hips, even sitting down. But that glow of nubility from her changed them all into beauty.

  “I think I’ll just step over and say hello to her,” he leered at Dewey. “After all, she’s practically family.”

  “Go ahead,” Dewey grinned, and his eyes lit up again with that curious pleased glint of malice they got, every time something was said or done that might conceivably flaunt the proprieties of Parkman.

  Dave took a last-minute gulp of beer and got up and sauntered across the room toward her booth, the old liquor-driven arrogance consuming his timidity completely. It was one of
the few confident emotions, he ever got the pleasure of feeling in his life. Besides, he was committed now.

  She saw him coming and her eyes widened and she quickly began talking to Harold. That pleased him. He felt very powerful. She must have been twenty-four or -five but looked at least twenty-seven. Harold was twenty-three or -four and looked it. Dave leaned one arm across the back of their booth behind Edith and grinned down at them.

  “Hello,” he said. “You’re Edith Barclay, aren’t you? That works for my brother Frank.”

  “Why, yes,” she said, “I am. Hello, Mr Hirsh, how are you?” and introduced him to Harold Alberson. Her voice was low, sexily nubile just like he’d guessed, and now it was troubled.

  Dave felt even better. “Hi, bud,” he said magnanimously to Harold, still grinning. “I thought it was you,” he said to Edith, ignoring Harold’s hand. “Sooo, I just thought I’d come over and say hello.”

  Behind him he could feel just about every eye in the other booths upon his back, watching intently. They knew who he was all right.

  “How did you know who I was?” she said in the same low voice. Apparently, she was well aware of the watchers, too.

  Dave grinned and said the first thing that came into his head. “I was in the store a few minutes this afternoon.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that!” she said. “But I work back in the office. . . .”

  “I know that. You happened to come out front a minute with some papers and I saw you. You didn’t notice me.”

  Her eyes, watching him with the hollow fortitude of the deeply embarrassed, flinched a little and betrayed she knew he was lying.

  “It’s still the same old store, ain’t it?” he said.

  She nodded. “I didn’t know you’d ever seen it.”

  “I never had. Till today. But then Frank’s sent us pictures of it,” Dave grinned. “When’s he going to redecorate it?”

  This was an unintended lucky shot, because her eyes showed surprise. She evidently wasn’t sure just how much of Frank’s confidence he had.

  Edith smiled at him tentatively, hoping she had at last found some common ground. “Well, he’s been talking about it for a long time. He wants Agnes to do it for him. Agnes is awfully good with colors. Someday they’ll get around to it.”

  Dave raised one eyebrow and grinned. “I seriously doubt it, Edith. They’ll just go on talking about it the rest of their lives. But then it won’t make much difference, will it, Edith?”

  She did not say anything to that, and merely sat looking at him with those troubled, marriageable eyes. (He swore he could smell her, the marriageableness of her, a delicious ruttish smell compounded of damp female flesh and hair seasoned liberally with perfume. Oh, Christ, Hirsh. Cut it out. Get away from here.)

  “Well, I’ve got to be getting back to my friends,” he grinned at them arrogantly. “But I’m glad I came over. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m coming up to the store again tomorrow. See Frank. I was out to the house tonight, for dinner.”

  “It’s nice to have met you,” Edith said, her eyes not only embarrassed now but vaguely guilty, too, as if all this were somehow her fault. She did not mention she already knew he was going to be at the house tonight.

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” Dave grinned, “I assure you. I thought I ought to come over when I saw you watching me.”

  “I wasn’t watching you!”

  It was an instinctive exclamation, and a guilty one.

  “You weren’t?” Dave grinned. “Well, I wouldn’t contradict a lady. But when you sit and stare at someone, you shouldn’t act surprised when they come over and speak to you. Bye, Harold.”

  He made a little bow with his head and turned on his heel and walked off, but not before he had seen the outraged start on her face and the look of mingled puzzlement at why he should want to deliberately embarrass her when she had not done anything to deserve it.

  The truth was, he didn’t really know why himself. Except that she was so damned nubile, so marriageable, and because he was so filled up with such a goddamned churning driving energy of misery and lack of love that it had to come out someplace and anyway he resented her.

  He took his time going back to the table, although he didn’t want to, very much aware of all the eyes in the booths upon him, but in every booth he looked at the eyes all dropped away.

  The eyes have it.

  “What’d she have to say?” Dewey grinned as he sat down. He had ordered another beer for Dave.

  “Said she was glad to meet me,” Dave said, and proceeded to drink off most of his fresh beer. He was breathing a little fast and his wrists were trembling, but the feeling of hilarious superiority had not left him. Neither had the piercing hunger and the misery. These were stronger. Than ever. It was a relief to get back to the table with Dewey and Hubie who he knew would not censure him, even if he didn’t like them very well because he felt they were wastrels.

  Hubie snorted. “Yeah, she looked like she was glad to meet you. She looked like she could have killed you.”

  Dave grinned, the tight-fitting puckery mouthed—too much drinking—arrogance washing about him—too much living!—in heady waves. He knew he had made a colossal ass of himself, a real violent fool, but he didn’t feel badly about having done it.

  Rather he felt glad, very glad. He liked doing it. It was his business if he liked making a fool of himself wasn’t it?

  “She sure smelled good,” he said, grinning grimly.

  “And that’s all the good it’ll do you,” Hubie snorted. Hubie was getting more argumentative as he drank more.

  “Don’t you worry, Dave,” Dewey grinned. “She ain’t so lily white all over. See that old dame up front in the corner booth smoochin with the old guy? Well, that’s Edith’s grandmother. Jane Staley. Jane’s a good old gal; she’s always good for a buck loan for a beer. But nobody knows what the old guys in this town would do for lovin if it wasn’t for Jane. So don’t let Edith crap you, she’s no saint descended from no Virgin Mary.”

  “They don’t even speak to each other hardly in here or uptown,” Hubie said.

  Dave looked up at the front booth, although he didn’t care, where an old gal of sixty-some was somewhat prevented from cuddling any closer to her stringy-aged companion by the unbelievable enormity of her breasts. Then he remembered her, startled. It was the same old Janie who used to take care of him as a kid. But she’d put on an awful lot of weight. He wanted suddenly to laugh wildly. They didn’t any of them, anywhere, understand a bit of it. What a way to introduce yourself to a woman you wanted to fall in love with! To make fall in love with you! He had sure picked himself a couple of great ones today, hadn’t he! And played them well! He felt, suddenly, exuberantly destructive. He just barely restrained himself from throwing back his head and roaring with laughter.

  “Old Jane works for Frank, too,” Dewey said, looking at him curiously. “Or for Agnes rather. Does their housework.”

  “I know. Maybe I ought to go over and say hello to her, too.” He laughed. While he was still looking at the ancients, ’Bama got up from the booth of girls and walked back toward them, cool, self-possessed, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his pulled-down mouth, his hat still riding just at his hairline. Dave’s sudden exuberance included him, too. What a book these characters would make someday! For some writer. Somebody. Somebody, like Wally Dennis, ought to do it.

  “Hi, ’Bama!” he cried.

  From the booth Edith, too, watched the tall ’Bama come back to the little table. He had evidently succeeded in patching up the squabble between Dewey Cole and his girlfriend, Lois Wallup. Now they would all get back together. Until some other argument started.

  It had been an interesting diversion to watch, and she had more or less enjoyed it. Rather like going to a movie you don’t especially like or dislike but you stayed to the end anyway just to see what would happen. But she was still embarrassed about Dave, and therefore angry, and now it seemed to her suddenly a disgustingly unedif
ying way of spending an evening: To go to Smitty’s after the show and drink beer and watch an argument between Dewey Cole and his girlfriend.

  And with Harold Alberson!

  Poor Harold. They had only spoken once since Dave Hirsh had come over to the booth, which was when Harold asked her if she would like another beer, and she had said no.

  She had been terribly embarrassed, and she had been hurt. Mostly, of course, it was just the being made conspicuous. Why, on earth, would he want to do something like that to her. She had never even met the man.

  She had wanted to run away, leave, and even now her body was still sending her frantic signals to move, but she was confident none of it showed on the outside of her.

  She watched the gambler ’Bama slide into his chair. She had never heard his last name, just ’Bama. And she listened coldly to Dave’s euphoric yelp of greeting. It was amazing how much he really did look like the boss. Like Frank. It was unbelievable two people could look so much alike and be so completely different.

  “What is ’Bama’s last name?” she asked Harold pleasantly.

  “Dillert, I think it is,” Harold said. He cleared his throat.

  “Dillert,” she said aloud to herself.

  “Yes,” Harold said. “He came up here from Alabama.” He cleared his throat again. “That’s why the nickname.”

  “Yes, I had heard that,” Edith smiled. He was supposed to be a very successful seducer of women. She could see where there might be a certain quality about him that might seem dangerous and attractive—if not very sensible. But he was so unattractive physically with that hanging belly and that strange way of walking, and that sneering cockiness as if he expected every woman to lie down for him, that she would have thought any woman would refuse to go to bed with him if only to show him all women weren’t easy. Who wanted to be just another jewel in some man’s crown?

  Besides, he looked sallow and not very healthy, as if he never got enough rest, and only ate whenever he happened to think about it, and drank far too much, and as if his bowels had not moved regularly for years. That belly. You just couldn’t have good elimination without regular meals.