Some Came Running

by James Jones

  In front of her, Harold cleared his throat again. “I think I better go over there and say something to him,” he said. “Don’t you think I should?”

  “Say something to who?” Edith said.

  “To Dave Hirsh. I think I’d better go over and speak to him,” Harold said hollowly. “Ask him to go outside with me or something.”

  “You’ll do no such a silly idiotic damned thing!” Edith said. “You’ll sit still and drink your damned beer! Do you want to make us even more conspicuous?” Jesus Christ! she said to herself, feeling ashamed for saying it about Harold. And he wants to marry me! None of those men over at that table would have asked your permission. They would have jumped up, perhaps too eagerly, and hit somebody if they were going to do anything at all. Poor Harold. Jesus!

  “After all, he can’t be that tough,” Harold said. “I think I should ask him to apologize or go outside with me,” Harold said. He looked at her. “Maybe you would like me better if I did.”

  “I’d like you a lot less,” Edith said. “And you’ll do no such a thing. The thing I like about you the best is that you’re a gentleman.”

  “I think I ought to do something,” Harold said.

  “Harold, you wouldn’t stand a chance with any of those men,” Edith said crisply. “Quit being a romantic damned fool.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Harold said. “I used to box a little.”

  “Those men are not boxers. They’re knock-down-drag-outers. And they’re crazy. Now stop it and shut up,” she said. “I can defend my own virtue. When it needs it. It doesn’t need it now.”

  Harold looked away, perhaps relieved, but mostly miserable. Edith felt sorry for him. Maybe she ought to let him go over there. And get his block knocked off. But it was stupid. Stupid and foolish, and she could not endure the thought of being the cause of a fight.

  She turned back to watch the table, where ’Bama was talking and the others listening. Except for Dave, who was staring off into space. It was amazing how much he looked like the boss, with a little less hair and the littlest bit more paunch it could be him.

  It wouldn’t be so bad, watching them, if the whole wild bunch weren’t all so obviously aware they were being watched. They loved it. And yet, to be honest, she had to admit there was something menacing that made it exciting to come here and watch their antics—those evenings they were here. When they weren’t here, the place was dead as hell, that was the truth. No wonder Smitty catered to them. Edith felt sorry for them. It was as if they didn’t care at all about their bodies, or about their reputations. And why should they? she thought, never having had any? She knew about that herself—or else were haunted beyond caring by something.

  In front of her, Harold cleared his throat again. “Sometimes I think you would like me a lot better if I were more like guys like that,” he said.

  “Harold, you can without doubt make some of the stupidest remarks I have ever heard!” Edith said. “I like you better than all of them.”

  She snapped her head away, and looked back at the table. God! And Dave Hirsh could go and nut himself—as Jane would undoubtedly have said; Jane had probably seen the whole thing and was sitting up there chortling to herself. She had never seen a man who could make himself so thoroughly unattractive and disliked in so short a time. Poor Harold was worth five of him.

  “Order us another beer!” she commanded. Oh, hell! she thought. Oh, damn hell!

  Chapter 15

  ’BAMA HAD SLID INTO his seat at the table grinning triumphantly when he came back from the girls’ booth.

  “Well, it’s all fixed up. They’re goin to move over into the empty booth. But they want to wait ten minutes so it won’t look like me talkin to them had anything to do with it. Let’s have another beer.

  “God,” he said leaning back in his chair, “the things I have to go through to get my friends fixed up— Eddie!” he called.

  The one-armed young bartender looked up and grinned and held up four of his five fingers.

  ’Bama nodded at him. “Now, look,” he said to Dewey, leaning forward again. “All I want is for you to give us fifteen minutes to get us established with the other three. Then you can do anything you want: Get up and leave, kick them in the jaw, pour beer on them. But give us that fifteen minutes so our three won’t feel honor bound to side in with them like they’re doing now. In fifteen minutes, they can legitimately feel like a separate party. So please sit and talk to them that long.” He paused. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” Dewey said, unperturbed. “I said we would. But if you’d have just waited they’d have come back here finally.”

  “Yes,” ’Bama said, “but by that time it would have been five minutes of closing and we wouldn’t have had any time left to make our pitch.”

  Dewey shrugged. “We’re goin to do it for you.”

  “Okay,” ’Bama said. “Now as for you,” he said, turning to Dave.

  Dave, who would have felt highly flattered if he could have heard Harold Alberson’s opinion of his fighting prowess, nodded. But he could not make himself really listen. All he could think of was what a tremendous amount of thought and energy was being expended, wasted—all because he had inadvertently said something earlier about wanting to get fixed up. And now he didn’t care. But he couldn’t say anything, not now after ’Bama had gone to all this trouble. He felt trapped. He tried to make himself listen.

  “First I made sure they understood you weren’t a soldier, you were a civilian guy who just got his discharge,” ’Bama said. “Then I told them some stuff all about you: how you live in Hollywood, are a writer for the movies, and are just visiting your brother here a week or so. And you don’t know anybody and want to meet someone.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Dave said. “You didn’t tell them I was a writer.”

  ’Bama paused. “Sure. Why the hell not?”

  “But I’m not one anymore.”

  “What difference does that make? As long as you can make it work for you,” ’Bama said. “I told them you were a movie writer, and that when you got back out there and got to workin on some new ones, if you saw some part that might fit one of them, should any of them happened to have caught your fancy, you might very easily get her out there and get her started in a couple jobs.

  “I figured we might as well use everything.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Dave said.

  “What the hell, why not use it. They’ll never know the difference anyway. What’s wrong with that?” ’Bama demanded.

  Eddie brought their beers. ’Bama paid him. “Now look,” he said. “There’s three of them. You can have yore choice. I’ve had them all one time or another, so it don’t make me no difference.”

  “Why don’t we take all three,” Dave said. He laughed uproariously.

  ’Bama looked at him curiously. “That’d be all right with me,” he said, “but I don’t think these gals would play along. You got to remember these gals are country gals. We’ll have to go to the city for that. Chicago or someplace.”

  “Then I guess we better not,” Dave said, grinning.

  “I don’t think we better chance it,” ’Bama said. “Now look. I’ll brief you on them. Two of them work out at the br—” He paused. “Wait a minute. How’d you make out over there?” he asked, nodding his head toward Edith Barclay.

  Dave grinned. “No good.”

  “Because I can always break this off quick, if you find somethin better.”

  “No,” Dave said. How to explain it? “I didn’t—”

  “He wasn’t tryin,” Hubie volunteered.

  “Well, I didn’t figure you’d make out anyway,” ’Bama said. “With her. Especially when she’s got a date. Now look: Two of these work out at the brassiere factory with Lois. That’s Ginnie and Mildred. The other one—”

  “Look, they’re movin’,” Hubie said suddenly. “They’re goin over to the other booth. Come on, Dewey,” he said, “let’s go.”

  “Let them sit a spell,” Dewey said sour
ly. “What’s your hurry? We don’t want to go runnin up there like a couple of dogs.”

  “The third one, is Rosalie Sansome. She’s the big, well-built one. She’s the niece of the woman who runs one of the bars up at West Lancaster. You know about West Lancaster?”

  Dave nodded absently.

  “West Lancaster’s the only place in the county can sell hard liquor over the bar,” ’Bama said anyway. “Her aunt’s a tough old gal, used to run a whorehouse in Terre Haute, and Rosalie’s pretty rugged herself. She can get pretty huffy, but she can be made, on the first time out, if you handle her right and baby her along. For instance, you don’t want to ever call her Rosie, she hates it. But she’s the best-lookin one by far of the bunch.”

  “Except for Lois,” Dewey said.

  “Except for Lois and Martha,” Hubie said.

  “Naturally,” ’Bama said. “You didn’t think I was counting them.”

  “Which one do you think I ought to take?” Dave said, trying to sound interested. The Walpurgis Night feeling was on him again, with its agonizing sense of being unable to partake, of being painfully aware of being so different all the time. Arrogance boiled up in him again: Why the hell should he have to cater to some goddamned woman, just to make her.

  ’Bama scratched his head alongside his hat. “Well, I don’t know. It all depends on what you’re lookin for. Ginnie is the easiest made; and she really likes her sex; but she’s hard to get along with sometimes; and she looks horrible, like a regular pig—”

  “Looks like just what she is,” Dave said with drunken profoundness.

  “Yeah, and Mildred’s the easiest to get along with; and she’s not bad lookin; and she can be a lot of fun, good sense of humor; but when you get her in bed, she’s no good at all, gets all tightened up, doesn’t really like it.

  “And Rosalie,” he wound up. “She’s the best looking; and she’s pretty damn good in the hay; but she’s awful damned hard to get along with. But she’s really almost beautiful,” ’Bama added, “if you’re a breast man. But I’d say she’s the hardest one of the bunch to make.

  “So there you are.”

  “I’ll take Rosie,” Dave said after a pause, in the voice of a man accepting a challenge.

  ’Bama shook his head. “Don’t never call her Rosie. I mean it. She hates it like poison. And she ain’t got that red hair for nothin. Look, why don’t you wait until you get up there and look them over and talk to them a little bit.”

  Dave was about to say no, by God! I’m not scared of any two-bit madam’s niece! but he decided not to. Something about ’Bama’s face. The earnestness.

  “All right, I’ll wait,” he said.

  “Come on, Hubie,” Dewey said. “We might as well get on up, there.” He got up disgustedly.

  “Stay with them,” ’Bama said like a man cheering on the home team. “Do you-all figure on goin long with us later?”

  “Nah,” Dewey said.

  “We got to work tomorrow,” said Hubie, who had gotten up also.

  “Goddam it!” Dewey said, glaring at him. “Where you goin to take them?” he asked ’Bama.

  “Indianapolis.”

  “In this snow?”

  “Hell yes,” ’Bama said. “Snow doesn’t bother me. We could go up to West Lancaster, only we wouldn’t have any place to bed down unless the ferry was runnin to take us across the river where them fishin resorts are.”

  “I doubt if it will be,” Dewey said, looking up at the front window.

  They walked away, up toward the booth that now had the two girls in it. Everyone in all the booths watched to see what they would do. When they merely sat down with the girls, and ordered beer, a sort of unheard sigh of disappointment went around the room.

  “We give them a couple minutes,” ’Bama said, apparently completely unaware of the audience. “To get settled in.” He looked at his watch suddenly, as if he were expecting to time them for two minutes to the second.

  Dave thought he looked worn and tired out, with those perpetual purple circles under his eyes and the drawn look around the corners of his no longer youthful jaw. And yet there was an old-time kind of life-eagerness in him, on his face, a sort of ardent interest in everything he looked at, that should have been incompatible with that perpetual sneer of his but evidently wasn’t. Looking at Dave, he suddenly grinned that twisted sarcastic grin, and there flooded up from behind it a shy look so filled with pure animal magnetism and unself-conscious charm that it seemed to drive his personality into the other man like a stake. It was almost as if he had deliberately turned on a switch.

  He must really be a woman breaker, Dave thought, when he wants to.

  “Why are you doing all this for me?” he asked him.

  “Why! You wanted to get fixed up, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah but, you don’t go all out like this for every stranger you meet who wants to get fixed up, do you? Is it,” Dave said, thinking of how the other had used his first name Dave so strangely, “is it,” he fumbled, unable to express the subtlety he felt into the simple gross crudities of words: c-a-t cat, d-o-g dog, m-a-n man, intelligent human beings, he thought, millions and millions of them, they went to school, most of them even graduated from high school, s-c-h-double-o-l school. Now, children, say after me: Cats do not have schools. Dogs do not have schools. Only m-a-n has schools. Arent you proud that only m-a-n has schools!

  s-m-u-g smug

  We can’t even talk. We think we can think though. Oh, nuts.

  ’Bama was still watching him expectantly. “Is it what?” he said.

  “Well, is it because Frank Hirsh is a big shot in this town? Does that impress you?”

  ’Bama seemed to draw back haughtily. “Impress me? Why the hell should that impress me?”

  “I mean, because it was Frank Hirsh. Frank Hirsh’s brother?”

  ’Bama stared at him with a greater contempt in his eyes than there had ever been in his sneer. “Hell, buddy, Frank Hirsh don’t impress me. Why the hell should he impress me? I knew him when he didn’t have but one pot to pee in—back before the war.”

  Dave moved his shoulders awkwardly, wishing he hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t meant to offend him, only understand. “Well, you seemed awful nice to me, that was all. It surprised me, I guess.”

  ’Bama drew up his lip in a contemptuous sneer of real magnitude this time, his eyes showing both disbelief and outrage. “I guess you don’t know me very well. Nothin in this town impresses me. I wasn’t nice to you. I just thought you wanted to get laid and didn’t know nobody. It don’t make one good goddam to me if yore Frank Hirsh’s brother or not,” he said coldly.

  Dave held his palm out in a sign to slow down. “It don’t make one to me, either,” he grinned.

  ’Bama stared at him. Then he laughed suddenly. “I guess you don’t know me very well yet.” The semi-western hat, evidently worn Dave thought suddenly to show he was not a native of this country but had come here from Alabama, looked somehow ludicrous, but also dangerous, as he leaned on his elbow on the table. “I was about to ask you if you wanted to go on up there now. But I don’t want you to think I’m suckin Frank Hirsh’s nose.”

  He leaned back in his chair and said nothing further.

  “Well, are you askin me or not?” Dave said.

  ’Bama sneered. There was a hurt sullenness in his voice as he ignored the question. “This is the goddamnest town,” he said, looking around the booths. “There’s never nothin to do in this damned town. And nobody to do it with. I don’t know why the hell I ever moved back here in the first place, after I got out of service.”

  “If you’re askin me, let’s go,” Dave said. “If you’re not, let’s just sit here.” It was the exactly right thing to have said.

  “Well, come on,” the tall man said. “We might as well, I guess. There’s nothin else to do around here.”

  To Dave, it was as if a great knell of relief had tolled somewhere, informing him that he had been saved from a great catastrophe.
He felt correspondingly gay.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said. When are you going to ever learn that you can’t talk the truth with people about themselves? About other people, yes. Gladly. But not themselves. It’s not that they’re lying. It’s that they don’t know. They make damn sure they don’t know. Did you ever see a whore who believed she was a whore? or a Scrooge who thought he was one? or a mother who didn’t believe she was Mary?

  “Wait a minute,” ’Bama said, in an almost eager tone. “There’s Wally.”

  Wally Dennis was just coming in the front door, complete with cowboy boots, rolled-up pants, Air Force fleece-lined jacket and glints of snow glistening on his bare head. Smitty’s seemed suddenly warm and cozy, as he shut the door on the blast of cold air. Wally spoke happily to Dewey and Hubie sitting with Lois and Martha, but he did not even slow his stride. He came on back, smiling, to ’Bama and Dave at the table, and it was as if ’Bama had known he would.

  “Howdy, men, howdy,” he said, nodding. “What’s the matter? You and the men got a mad on?”

  “Yore out late,” ’Bama said, grinning. “Are you ridin that damned motorcycle in this weather?”

  “God, no,” Wally said. “I’d have her down every fifteen feet, in snow like this. She’s locked up in the garage. I walked. Mr Hirsh,” he said.

  “Wallace Dennis,” Dave said maliciously. “Wallace French Dennis.”

  “That’s right,” Wally said. “You got it right, man. And I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

  “Yes? What’s that?”

  “Aw, nothin. Just kiddin,” Wally said. He swept off the jacket, hung it on the chair back, and sat down holding up one finger to the grinning Eddie. “Everybody grins at me. That is because they know I am a writer. In this town, everybody grins at writers. Not only do they expect them to be eccentric, but they do not think I can be one. I resent it. No,” he said to Dave, “all I meant was I had a date with that chick niece of yours tonight and she stood me up. What did you do to her? She wouldn’t even come downstairs but sent her mother to tell me to go to hell. Or words to that effect.”