Some Came Running

by James Jones

“Sometimes I think I have it,” she said. “Have really grasped it. And then it will go away again, and it’s just like some stranger that you don’t really know. Then when I think I’m going to go completely mad, it begins to come back a little. It’s always that way.”

  “It’s the same way with writing,” Wally said. “You have to get inside of a character. You have to become them. And at the same time you have to be outside them, too.” He paused. “It’s very hard to explain.”

  “Yes,” Dawn agreed, and went on about herself. She talked hungrily, as if it had all been dammed up in her. By the time they had reached the turnoff, though, she had about run down.

  “How’s the book coming?” she said.

  “Oh, so-so,” Wally said. “It’s slow.” He didn’t like to talk about it, as though that might cause him bad luck.

  “I think you have the most wonderful title,” Dawn said, and giggled.

  “Yeah,” Wally grinned proudly. “It’s pretty good.” He had taken the title—The Scrawniest Monkey—from an idiotic, funny story ’Bama Dillert had told him once with ironic relish and then howled over. It was the story of the man in the jungle who came upon a band of monkeys. The monkeys all ran away, and the man was able to catch only one, which was a puny, weak, little monkey who just couldn’t run fast enough. The man picked him up and looked at him with disappointment and then said: “Well! You are without doubt the ugliest, scrawniest, puniest little monkey I ever saw.” And the monkey had answered him in a weak, puny, little voice, “Yes, I know. But I’ve been sick.” That was all the story. Wally saw it as a vivid comment on the whole human race. He wondered if ’Bama had seen it as that, too; he must have seen it as something, from the ironic way he roared. Anyway, he intended to print the story opposite the title page. Gwen French thought it was a good title, too.

  “You know,” he said suddenly, making the turn between the still lighted filling stations, “if the band picks up a few more dance dates, I’ll have a little money. I’ve been thinking you and me might run up to Chicago for a weekend. How would you like that?” He didn’t know why he said it. He would never have that kind of money, not off of any dance dates.

  “Like it!” Dawn said. “I’d love it!”

  “We could see all the shows,” Wally said, going ahead with it anyway, “and hit some nightclubs. Have ourselves a real good time.” It sounded good, even to him.

  “So-and-so’s playing there, I think, in . . .” Dawn went on, naming the plays that were playing in Chicago, and who was appearing in each one. She knew them all. “Oh, it would be wonderful!”

  “Well, we just might be able to swing it,” Wally said. “We’d probably have to sleep together in the same hotel room,” he added, “to save money.”

  “God!” Dawn said. “I wouldn’t care. lt’d be worth it!” She looked at Wally. “By the way,” she said, “what have you been doing with yourself lately, anyway? I haven’t seen you in a week.”

  “Oh, nothing much,” Wally said without taking his eyes off the road. Then suddenly, he thought of something. “Well,” he said, feeling his heart begin to bulge up into his throat and pump behind his eyes, at his own audacity, “when are you going to sleep with me?”

  “I don’t know,” Dawn said. “I didn’t know you wanted me to.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Well,” Dawn said; “no.” Her voice sounded both self-pleased and a little breathless: “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “I have been,” Wally said. “For four months now.”

  “But not very plainly,” Dawn said.

  “Well, I am now.”

  “All right,” she said. It was like a long-held sigh.

  “When?”

  “Oh, sometime. Not tonight.”

  “Name a date.”

  “All right, in May then.”

  “May! May!!” Wally exploded. “Why May? This is November! May’s six months away!”

  “May is such a beautiful month,” Dawn said.

  “What the hell’s that got to do with it?”

  “I just happen to prefer May,” she said, and paused. Her actress’s timing made it a momentous pause. “You know I’m a virgin, don’t you?” she said.

  “Well, no,” Wally said, confused. “I didn’t. I mean I never thought about it.”

  “Well, I am,” Dawn said, watching him. “Do men really all want virgins?” she asked.

  “Well, now, I don’t know,” Wally said, relieved to get back to the theoretical. Only later, thinking back over, would he feel he had been bested, in some way or other. “A lot of guys say they do. And none of them will admit the girl they married wasn’t one. But all that’s mostly vanity. I don’t think it really matters, honestly. Now, personally, I prefer my women to not be virgins.

  “On the other hand,” he cautioned, “I couldn’t guarantee you all guys feel like me. So don’t just take my word for it.”

  “I won’t,” Dawn said blithely.

  Wally made himself nod. “Good.” He was a little irritated, and still perplexed.

  Ahead of him he could see the neon lights of the buildings now. West Lancaster. The gravel road ran straight down over the sloping ten-foot bank to the water’s edge where they kept the ferry. There were five big two-story frame buildings right down by the river. Four of them were bars and the other was a sort of general store. Around behind these off the road, running along the river’s edge among the trees, were several scattered houses; and that was West Lancaster.

  “Now look,” he said. “Glen and Gertrude’s Place has got a new combo in from Terre Haute. I thought we’d go there first and get something to eat. But I’m kind of short on money, so go easy on what you order.”

  “Hamburgers and beer is fine with me,” Dawn said happily.

  “Okay; don’t forget. This here little combo’s pretty good,” he said. “Piano, vibes, guitar, and bass. Four colored boys who live in Terre Haute. I know all of them so I thought I might introduce you later on, if you want.”

  “Oh, that would be wonderful!” Dawn said. She looked at him, a sideways glance. “You know quite a bit about Terre Haute, don’t you?” she said.

  “Yeah,” Wally grunted. “The less ritzier places.” He swung the car in under the huge neon sign that read GLEN AND GERTRUDE’S in red and green. Several other cars were there already.

  “Maybe you can sit in with them later,” Dawn suggested.

  “I might. On piano,” Wally said. “I ain’t got my horn with me.” Curiously, he watched himself slipping back into the formalized musician-talk. “I ain’t much meat on piano, though,” he added.

  Inside, Glen and Gertrude’s was very dark and barnlike. A new-looking bar with stools upholstered in red plastic on the right of the door ran a third of the way down the room. Behind it ran a row of half-round booths upholstered in red plastic with red Formica-topped tables in them. Out on the floor stood round red tables, each with four red plastic upholstered chrome chairs around it. Down the whole left side of the wide, long single room ran the dance floor, and near the back on a little raised stand was the four-man Negro combo, all of whom wore Mister B shirts with double Windsor ties, and three of whom—excepting only the bass player—wore dark glasses. They were playing dissident modern jazz in the style of Stan Kenton. The song was “Willow, Weep for Me,” which June Christie had made famous. One of the ones with dark glasses called, “Hey, man!” to Wally and grinned.

  “Hello, man!” Wally called back, and he and Dawn sat down at one of the open tables in the center and ordered hamburgers and beer.

  Several other parties were scattered around at tables or booths and one of whom, a petite dark-auburn-haired young woman of about twenty-seven sitting with two men, both Dawn and Wally knew. She was Doris Fredric, the daughter of Paul Fredric, the president of the Second National Bank in Parkman, backyard neighbor and ex-school-chum of Dawn’s father’s office girl, Edith Barclay. Dawn knew her as her former freshman English teacher; Wally had missed having her for
English by three years, but had still been at the high school as a senior when she came there. From across the room, she waved at both of them gaily.

  They both waved back.

  “There’s Doris,” Dawn said. “But who’s that with her?”

  “Couple of out-of-towners?” Wally said.

  “No, I recognize one of them. But I don’t know his name. He works in the Sternutol offices.”

  Doris was talking to both men animatedly, and smiling happily. Her loose hair, cut in bangs and combed close to her small head except where it fluffed loose at her shoulders, added to the effect of naïveté and virginity about her. An expensive off-the-shoulder day dress did not detract from the effect, but only made her look more sweet and demure.

  “Which one of them guys you reckon she’s goin out with tonight? Or both?” Wally asked.

  “Wally!” Dawn said, scandalized. She looked back at Doris. “I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, turning back, “if I ever have to be a schoolteacher like Daddy wants me to be, I just hope I’m the kind of schoolteacher Doris Fredric is. She goes her own way, and she doesn’t give a damn what the moralists and the gossips say about her.”

  “You better wait till your daddy’s president of a bank first then,” Wally said. He was looking up at the pleased faces and inscrutable dark glasses of the band. They had finished “Willow” and were playing “Safranski,” the bass specialty which Eddie Safranski was so famous for in Kenton’s band.

  “Besides, I think she’s stunning,” Dawn said. “A beautiful girl.”

  “She’s all right,” Wally said, turning back. “She ain’t got any breasts.”

  “Some women just don’t have,” Dawn said.

  “True,” Wally said, “true. You want another burger?” The band had wound up the “Safranski” and started out on a sweet tune, for dancing. Wally knew how badly it must hurt them. “Or you want to dance?”

  “I’ll have another hamburger, and another beer,” Dawn said excitedly. “Can we afford it?”

  “Sure,” Wally said. “I just didn’t want to pay for no steak dinner, that was all, chick.”

  They ordered and ate their other hamburger, and after they danced some. Doris Fredric danced also, with first one of her men and then with the other. She looked very sweetly happy, Wally noticed. So did the two men. It was not, however, until after ’Bama Dillert came in that she came over to their table and spoke to them.

  They had been dancing and drinking beer perhaps three quarters of an hour when ’Bama entered with Dewey Cole and two worn-looking Terre Haute women. At least to Wally, they looked like some of ’Bama’s Terre Haute women. ’Bama and Dewey both looked like they had got their heads caught in a whiskey barrel and had to drink their way out; but they both carried it well. They always did. When ’Bama saw him, he made a beeline for their table, grinning. Wally had introduced him to Dawn long before. He stood, and talked a couple of minutes, kidding with Wally in that strange, very interested, very warm way he always affected around Wally; he could really be very charming, when he wanted.

  “Yore out kind of late for a novelist, ain’t you?” he chided. “How you goin to get up and work in the mornin with a clear head?”

  “Yeh,” Wally said, his face flashing guilt. “Matter fact, I was planning on leavin right away.”

  “Well, I won’t disturb yore happy party,” ’Bama said, and winked: “We got to get these here pigs back home to Terre Haute tonight without they fall over and break a leg or something.” He left, and walked in that strange horselike gait of his over to the booth where the sullen-eyed, drunken Dewey sat with the two women. Both of the women looked a little the worse for wear, too.

  Wally watched Dawn follow the departing ’Bama with her eyes. There was something about ’Bama which always seemed to fascinate women, especially respectable women, and Wally suspected always that it had something to do with an instinctive desire to reform him, as if the respectable women found it not only painful but also challenging, to see this sneer-faced man who just didn’t give a damn about worshipping women, walking around loose. That was what he read on Dawn’s face right now, sort of a look of interested speculation. It made him about half peeved. It always did, the way they looked at ’Bama. No matter what kind of an act he put on, he could never make them look at him that way.

  It was only a few minutes after ’Bama left that Doris Fredric came over to them at their table.

  “Hello, my children!” she said, smiling her sweet, virginal smile, and sat down with them. Wally knew he was being petty but he wished she’d waited till she was asked.

  “Haven’t seen my chicks in a long time,” Doris said, and reached over and playfully rumpled the shoulder of Dawn’s sweater. “It looks like you’re out having yourselves a time.”

  “Hello, Doris,” Dawn said almost worshipfully.

  Wally resented the tone in Dawn’s voice. Also, he did not like being called one of Doris’s chicks since he had never gone to school to her.

  As if she sensed this, Doris turned her demure child’s face to him. “How’s our star author today?” she smiled. “How’s that novel coming? I’ve been hearing a lot about it lately.”

  She looked at him shyly. She had startlingly baby blue eyes—even bluer than Dewey Cole’s, he thought.

  Wally shrugged. “Not very good. It’s slow work, Doris.”

  Doris shook her head, smiling. “Oh, now you’re spoofing me. Gwen was only just telling me about it the other day. She thinks it’s wonderful.”

  Wally knew this was a lie. He had asked Gwen not to say anything about it to anyone, and she had agreed with him that it was best not to talk about it. Also, he was wondering why, if Doris was going to come over and sit with them, she hadn’t done it before ’Bama Dillert came in.

  “Oh, it’s coming along, I guess,” he said. “I think it’ll be good when it’s done. But it’s just hard work.”

  Doris smiled and shook her cherrywood-colored hair again. “All novels are,” she said, as though she knew everything about novels. But Gwen had told him she didn’t.

  As if feeling she’d put enough time on this, she turned back to Dawn.

  “How is the drama club coming, sweetie?” she said.

  Dawn wrinkled her nose. “Oh, Doris, I’m having a terrible time.”

  Doris listened with an intent eagerness, as the younger girl laid out her troubles. She looks so absolutely demure, Wally thought. And so innocently childlike. And so completely virginal. Everything about her. It made you doubt all the stories. How any woman could look so completely virginal, and still sleep with all the men she was supposed to have slept with, was totally outside his knowledge. Unless it was that she herself really believed she had not slept with them. It might be that. Otherwise, the stories just had to be lies.

  “Everything will work out all right,” she said to Dawn. “You’ll see. Remember how it was last year. That’s a terrific new combo, isn’t it? Have you ever played with them, Wally?”

  “No, but I know them all,” he said. “They’re all Terre Haute boys.”

  “They play my kind of music,” Doris said. “For my money, I would just as soon they didn’t play dance music, and not dance, just listen.”

  “That’s about the way I feel, too,” he said.

  “Who was that tall man that stopped at your table?” Doris said.

  “That’s ’Bama Dillert,” Wally said, congratulating himself.

  “Oh!” she said. “Is that the gambler?”

  Wally nodded.

  Smiling, Doris looked over at him in the booth with Dewey, her face demure. “I never knew who he was,” she said, turning back. Then she laughed. “Maybe I ought to get him to teach me to play poker? Daddy says I’ll always be the world’s worst poker player.”

  “I doubt if he gives lessons,” Wally said, unable to resist. He got a warning glance from Dawn. Doris was unable to see her.

  “That’s the most beautiful dress, Doris,” Dawn said, reaching over to to
uch it. “Is it new? It’s the most beautiful outfit I’ve seen in a coon’s age.”

  “Oh, this old thing?” Doris said, looking down at herself. “No, it’s not new. What do you think, Dawn?” she said, looking up. “Should I meet the big bad gambler?” Before Dawn could answer, she said, “Well, maybe you’d better introduce me to him anyway, Wally. It’s worth a chance. I would dearly love to just sit down some night—and take all of Daddy’s money.”

  “Sure, I’ll introduce you,” Wally said, and grinned at her knowingly.

  Doris looked back at him blandly and then smiled. “If you were to get him back over here to your table, I could walk by a little later.” She shook her hair and grinned. It was an affective grin, completely innocent, and Wally found he still did not know.

  “I’ll see you later, kiddies,” Doris said, and got up and went back to her own booth.

  “Well, what do you think?” Wally said.

  “You mean you think she wants to sleep with him!” Dawn said.

  “Well, you gotta admit that might be a faint possibility,” Wally grinned.

  Dawn shook her head.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not with him. Anybody else maybe. I think she wants to learn to play poker. Just like she said. She’s an awful child, really.”

  “Yeah,” Wally said. And yet he still was not sure. “Well, I better go get hold of ’Bama.” He started to get up.

  “Don’t do it yet!” Dawn said. “Those two men would be sure to notice if you did it now. Wait awhile.”

  He waited fifteen minutes—until Dawn said it was all right. They danced twice more and had another beer. After he called ’Bama off and told him, the big man waited another five minutes. It was all beginning to smack of a conspiracy.

  “I think you like this playing matchmaker stuff,” Wally grinned at Dawn after he came back.

  “Well?” Dawn said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  ’Bama came back and sat with them and in a minute Doris wandered by, ostensibly on her way to the ladies’ room. She stopped for a moment to speak, whereupon Wally jumped up and made the introduction.

  Standing, ’Bama looked the banker’s daughter over. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Well, I better get back to my friends, Wally. Only trouble is,” he added grinning, “they won’t let me drink any. So every so often, I have to go up to the bar to get myself a drink.” He did not look at Doris, and Doris herself was looking at Dawn. She had not sat, and in a moment she went on her way, to the ladies’ room.