Some Came Running

by James Jones

  “Afraid not,” Sherm said.

  ’Bama shrugged. “Like I said, Sherm, yore the boss. Raymond can’t see very good, and his jacket’s here. Is it all right if Hubie goes in and gets Dewey’s coat for him?”

  “I guess so,” the police chief said.

  Hubie turned and took off without a word. “Haven’t seen you around lately, Sherm,” ’Bama said while they waited. “I understand you just got back from that new FBI school for police, in Washington?”

  “That’s right,” Sherm said levelly.

  “Pretty good school?” ’Bama said. “Teach you quite a bit?”

  “A good bit,” Sherm said.

  “Any judo?”’

  “Some.”

  “Must be a pretty good school,” ’Bama said pleasantly. “Criminals ain’t got much of a chance anymore, to get away with anything, have they?”

  “Not much,” Sherm said.

  “And a good thing, too,” ’Bama said. “Us respectable citizens need all the protection we can get from law inforcement officers. They should be trained.”

  Behind him, Hubie came up with Dewey’s old Army mackinaw. “Here’s your coat, Dewey,” he said.

  “You boys both ready?” Sherm said.

  “I guess so,” Dewey said with a happy laugh. “Raymond, it looks like we’re goin back to jail for another good night’s sleep again.” He flung his arm around his brother.

  “I just hope they give me my same old cell back,” Raymond said with his loud guffaw.

  They went ahead of Sherm to the car and climbed in the backseat.

  “I’m taking you up to the doctor’s first,” Sherm said in through the window. “Though I hate to wake him up for the likes of you.” They all knew who he meant. The doctor was a new man who had come to town from the East with a lot of money and bought out one of the five local “sanitariums”—privately owned hospitals—and was now making a lot more off the better class of people with his really exquisite bedside manner. Sherm Ruedy took all his own and his family’s, as well as all his city police business, there.

  “’Bama,” he said, turning back after he had closed the door on them, “how are you boys making out with that house of yours?” He leaned his gloved hand against the top of the car a moment.

  “Just fine, Sherm,” ’Bama said. “Just fine. Why?”

  “I just wanted to tell you,” Sherm said slowly “that you better be careful about what goes on down there. I’ve got my eye out on it.”

  “Has somebody made a complaint?” ’Bama said.

  “No. If anybody had, I’d have been down there.”

  “Well, you come down when you get a complaint, will you, Sherm?” ’Bama said pleasantly.

  “You bet I will,” the police chief said. He stared at the tall Southerner for a moment, as if waiting for his warning to sink in, then he took his gloved hand down off the car and went around to the other side and got in.

  “See you guys tomorrow after court,” Dewey called.

  After they had gone, ’Bama began to curse, savagely. “Well, we better get on home,” he said after a minute. “You want to come on down to the house with us, Hubie?”

  “I might as well,” Hubie drawled. “I ain’t very sleepy now anyway.”

  They all got in ’Bama’s Packard and started home. Dave, who had kept himself back out of all of it, found he had in him somewhat the same feeling Hubie must have been referring to. There had been—all during the time that Sherm Ruedy had been present—an uncomfortable, deadly, tension in each of them. As soon as he was gone, so was that tension; but its flavor lingered on. It was the same thing with Dave whenever he met Sherm on the street, as he frequently did. He would be walking one way and Sherm the other, and they would look at each other and that tension would pass between them. Sherm would nod at him, gravely, and say “Hello, Dave;” and he would nod at Sherm, and say “Hello, Sherm;” and that would be all there was to it. There wasn’t anything you could put your finger on. He could understand why poor old Ginnie so hated and feared him. He hated and feared him himself. And the stark raw hatred that had passed between Sherm and ’Bama so pleasantly on the one side, and so gravely on the other, was actually a livid living flame of a thing. Once again Dave thought that he would not ever want to have ’Bama mad at him.

  “You know, he doesn’t do anything,” he said out loud in the car; “anything wrong, I mean. You know?”

  “He never does,” ’Bama said. “He never crosses the line. He makes it his code.”

  “I mean, he could have took them down and thrown them in without actually having to take them to the doctor,” Dave said.

  “Oh, he would never do that,” ’Bama said. “He’s always scrupulously fair. He leans over backwards to be scrupulously fair.”

  “We use to have a good police chief in this town,” Hubie said. “Old Max Thompson. Remember him, ’Bama? He kept me from gettin sent to reform school once for stealing cartons of cigarettes. Got the guy to drop the complaint, if I’d promise to pay it all back out of my paper route.” He laughed. “Took me a year.” He sighed: “But Old Max got a better job as a trouble shooter with some big company in Chicago. And then we got Sherm.”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Dave said. “You get the feeling that he’s set himself up as a sort of overseer of everybody’s morals—private, as well as public. Not just their acts, you see; but their thoughts. Their morals.”

  ’Bama turned to look at him with a sort of wondering thoughtfulness. “By God, I think you’ve hit it. He’s not only gonna make them do good; he’s gonna make them be good. Make them think good. I never been able to quite say it before. But that’s it.”

  He did not say anything for a moment. “I never been quite able to say it before,” he said half to himself.

  And then he suddenly broke out into furious tirade. “And all the time drivin that fat, funny, little oddball daughter of his to school every morning in the police car; and every afternoon drives back out and picks her up again. That funny, ugly, fat daughter of his.”

  “It’s her glands,” Hubie said, “made her like that.”

  ’Bama raged on, as if he had not even heard. “Him and that new doctor are always gettin together. And he’s got this old buddy of his from the Dark Bend, that he’s always goin everywhere with. Always together, when he’s off duty. Guy never does anything; doesn’t work; never earns any money; just runs around with Sherm.” He was raging. “And that oddball of a wife of Sherm’s, and that oddball fat daughter. And that odd duck of a mother of his who goes around preachin at meetings down in the Dark Bend.”

  “Look, what the hell’s eatin you all of a sudden?” Hubie said.

  “Nothing!” ’Bama said savagely. “Not a damn thing. Here’s this whole bunch of crazy people from down there in the Bend. Here’s this guy who is going to stick up for law and order to the point of insanity, just so he can make himself like himself a little better.

  “Why should anything be eatin me? You slob! Sure, Sherm believes in ‘Law and Order.’ He’s afraid not to. Because that way he can keep one half of his mind totally divorced from the other half. You think Sherm would have kept you out of reform school when you were a kid like Max Thompson did? Hah! he’d have made damn sure you went. And you would probably be some petty safe artist somewheres in Chicago or Hammond, today, from what you learned there. Is it any wonder we got juvenile delinquents? Sure we got ’em. They’re not fools enough to believe the mishmash of crap we try to feed them about justice and ‘Law and Order.’” He raged on.

  “But you don’t know Sherm’s that bad,” Dave said.

  “I don’t, hunh?” ’Bama said furiously. “And let me tell you something. Yore an ass. You like to believe the best in people. You got a streak of sentimentality a yard wide in you, Dave, and someday it’s goin to get you into a situation you won’t be able to bull yore way out of, and yore liable to get yore head tore clean off of you, because of yore sentimentality.”

  Dave, feeling
both flustered and embarrassed, and a little chill of the possibility of truth in this sudden attack, said nothing.

  “Oh, lots of people know about Sherm, Dave,” Hubie said easily. “What the hell you gettin so worked up for?” he said to the tall man.

  ’Bama took a deep breath and snorted it out explosively. “I’ll tell you why,” he said more calmly. “Because it’s all a lie, that’s why. Here, we got a guy who (like Dave said) is attempting to set himself up as a policeman of everybody’s morals. And yet this guy himself is a sadist—and yet nobody does a damn thing about it. Now, I say that’s a damning comment on our whole American civilization. Dave here’s always talkin and talkin about Rome, and the decadence of Rome. Well, how much more decadent can you get than this? That we set up this character to administer our laws to us, and all the time the guy himself is a real sadist, and gets his kicks that way.

  “And you think the people in this town don’t know about that? Hell, you talk about the decadence of Rome! Anytime you got laws—a moral code—that people give lip service to in public and ignore and break in private, you got decadence. Rome!”

  “Hell, I agree with you,” Dave said.

  “Rome, Schmome!” Hubie said. “The whole world’s like that.”

  “Well, if you want to know one reason why I’m a gambler and why I sneer at our so-called ‘American society’ and ain’t got any use for it,” ’Bama said, “right there’s a good one for you to remember: Sherm Ruedy. One, I may add, of many.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “While we’re on the subject. You want to know why there’s so many neurotics and ‘juvenile delinquents’ and sadists in this country today? It’s the simple fact we don’t give our children physical affection like we use to: Holdin them, and pattin them, and rubbin them. And do you know why we don’t? It’s because in the kind of society we live in where sex is the most important thing in the back of everybody’s mind we’re ashamed to. There’s a certain sexual pleasure in it, for both parties, and we’re embarrassed and afraid of that. Afraid of what the neighbors might think. Afraid maybe our kids will turn into some kind of sexual oddball. Well, by God, none of my kids will ever turn into neurotics! If they want to come up and put their arms around me, I let them; and if they want to sit on my lap and run their hands up and down my chest, I let them! and I run my hands up and down their chest, too. Just like my daddy done to me; and my grandaddy done to him. Ruth carts them kids around on her hip all the time till they’re old enough to walk; and if after that they come and rub against her, she don’t push them off and look ashamed. When kids are little they need that kind of touch. They get something out of it. A confidence. They get a certain physical reassurance. And they don’t turn into Sherm Ruedys.

  “You can give a kid all the damned ‘love’ and ‘mental affection’ you want to; but unless you give them that physical affection, it don’t do them a damn bit of good. You can baby them, and spoil them, and let them have their damned way all the time, and all the rest of that crap; and it won’t do them a damned bit of good if you don’t give them physical affection. In fact, it’ll do more harm. I make them mind me, but I give them physical affection. If more people would forget their own goddam sexual fears and worries, we’d have a whole lot less trouble with the kids. I hold that Sherm Ruedy’s crazy preachin mother is responsible for Sherm.

  “Hell,” he said seriously, “the guy’s actually crazy. Look at what he does with all the parkin meters. Hell, last fall when Clark Hibbard was campaigning here (and he had one of the state highway’s men drivin him; a guy I know; that’s how I come to hear about it) Clark and this state man were parked uptown on the street, both of them sittin in their car, waitin for Clark to get ready to make a speech; and Sherm comes over to them and gives them a parking ticket; right there, by God! Their meter had run out. And they were both in the car with the motor runnin. So the highway’s man takes the ticket down to the city hall and he says to the clerk: ‘Look, do I really have to pay this ticket Sherm Ruedy gave me?’ and the clerk says to him: ‘Well, sir, I’ll tell you. The other day I just happened to be lookin out the window, and I saw Sherm go right up to his own car, the police car, and give himself a ticket; the meter had run out, and he came in here and he paid me the fifty cents.’ So the state man said: ‘Well, I guess I better pay it then, hadn’t I?’

  “Talk about immoral,” ’Bama said savagely; “that’s the most completely immoral thing I ever heard of. Whenever you got a guy who is so scrupulously honest he’ll do a thing like that—then he’s either acting, or else he’s crazy. You can be pretty damned sure he’s really cheating some other way, and only tryin to cover it up.”

  “That’s a pretty shrewd remark,” Dave said.

  “Well, I’m a shrewd guy,” ’Bama said. “Too shrewd for the likes of that oaf, anyway,” he grinned. “Can’t you imagine how horrible it makes him feel to imagine us livin down here and gettin by with something? He’d love to stick us. Only he never will.”

  As he climbed out of the Packard, he slammed the car door loudly, behind him, something Dave had never seen him do to the Packard since he had known ’Bama.

  He turned toward the house as the others climbed out. “You watch,” he grinned; “in another three quarters of an hour or so, he’ll be cruisin down by here.”

  They did watch, after they had all got themselves another drink, and sure enough in less than an hour, the city police car came creeping down Lincoln Street—slowly and quietly—and passed by the house; and then went on around several blocks and came back and passed by again before it went away.

  “What did I tell you!” ’Bama hooted. “The bastard.”

  Chapter 54

  THE NEXT MORNING, Raymond and Dewey were hauled into court and each fined fifty dollars and costs. ’Bama was there with the cash to make up any deficits, and between them he and Dewey paid both his fine and Raymond’s; and shortly thereafter Dewey appeared down at the house, grinning from behind his grotesquely swollen nose, his blue eyes looking relieved of some obscure tension. Both he and Raymond had submitted voluntarily to blood tests and had been judged drunk. The charges against them were drunkenness and disorderly conduct; and the only witness to appear against them was Sherm Ruedy. That night the Parkman Oregonian & Evening News carried mention of the event, in amongst other news of the day in court. As for the nose, the doctor had said there was nothing much to do about it, just keep it packed with cotton until the swelling went down. When it did go down two weeks later, what had been a straight boyishly handsome nose had changed into a grotesque, off-center monstrosity with a big knot on it. It changed the whole look of his face and gave him a curiously mean, satanic look. He wasn’t handsome anymore.

  Raymond did not come down to the house with him after the fines were paid but, able to at least see somewhat out of his swollen eyes now, picked up his old battered Dodge at Smitty’s and chugged off out of town somewhere, alone—after first promising to repay ’Bama soon for the fine. He never did repay it, of course, but then nobody had ever expected that he would. And, of course, less than a month after that, he was dead.

  But the thing that struck Dave so much about the whole affair was the reaction that Doris Fredric had to the whole story. She was at the house later that same afternoon when Dewey came back from the court; and she flew into a veritable fit of fury. Dave had never seen her—not even the night she tried to seduce him—when she was not under that icily sweet, virginal control of hers. But this time, when her distant cousin Chief of Police Sherm Ruedy was mentioned, she threw propriety to the wind. The things she said were not so very different from what ’Bama had said, but the tone and implication were entirely different; and it was obvious this was something she had thought quite a bit about before.

  “He’s nothing but a dirty little sadist,” she said with icy fury. “A useless, worthless, nasty little sadist. Ugh! I’ve never seen a human being who was so completely despicable. That son of a bitch! That the likes of that
filth should ever be allowed on the police force!”

  “Well, it was you Wernzes who put him in there,” ’Bama drawled, no longer upset.

  “The Wernzes don’t act as a body,” Doris said furiously. “And what any of them do doesn’t mean that I agree with them. Is it any wonder every kid in town breaks his neck to leave this dump as soon as he can? Who wants to live in their crappy little town? I certainly don’t.”

  “Then why don’t you just move out?” ’Bama grinned.

  “I may just do that,” Doris said, her blue eyes flashing. She was sitting at the kitchen table with them, holding her drink: a big glass of Jack Daniels Black Label and 7-Up. And as she spoke she threw it, straight down, between her feet, the crash of the broken glass punctuating what she had just said, the liquid wetting her expensive shoes.

  They did not any of them see Raymond again very much after that. Only once did he come back into Smitty’s when they were there. It was shortly before Christmas, and he was alone; and on that one time he did not stay, or try to barge into the party. He was drunk, of course—but he did not have a drink while he was there. He came in, walked around, grinned and waved a hello at them with his too-loud, too-hearty voice, refused the drink they offered to buy him, and left. That was the last time any of them saw him until his funeral. Two weeks later, he was found dead in his old Dodge in an out-of-the-way backwoods cornfield down in the river bottoms, frozen to death.

  Apparently, he had got down in there, drunk, and had got lost and gone to sleep. The decrepit old Dodge was out of gas when they found him and in neutral gear and with the hand brake set, as if he had left the motor running when he went to sleep. What he had been doing down in that God- and man-forsaken place, nobody could figure out. Almost nobody ever went down in there except the farmers who worked the fields, and they went as seldom as possible, and what Raymond could have been doing down in there, especially in the dead of winter, nobody had the vaguest idea.

  All of them, there at the house felt a sort of shocked dismay when they heard the news, a sort of unalleviable sorrow, potent, stomach-wrenching, mingled with a kind of shocked horror that anything like that should happen to Raymond, and a curious guilty feeling, too. Raymond had never really run around with their little clique; but after the fight, there had seemed to be a deeper closeness to him than before. But if all of these feelings were strong in them when they heard the news, and afterwards at his funeral—it would have been a great deal stronger, and a great deal more perplexing, if any of them had been able to be with him in some occult way, right there inside of his own head, that night when he took his last ride.