Some Came Running

by James Jones

  “Well, it’s lots of fun, to live like we live,” Dawn smiled.

  “Yes, it is,” Walter said, looking at her gravely.

  “Mother says you’re a wonderful housekeeper,” Dawn said.

  “Yes, mam,” Walter said. “They taught us at the orphanage to do things for ourselves.”

  Dawn was embarrassed. “Well, this is beautiful country, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Walter said.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen rolling country like this up north?”

  “We drove over to Indianapolis to get some new clothes when I first came to your house,” Walter said politely, “and I saw it then. But I can’t remember all of it.”

  “Well, I guess I can’t remember all of it myself,” Dawn said, a little startled. “And I’ve driven it lots of times. It’s beautiful country.”

  “Yes,” Walter said. He continued to gaze at her, gravely, politely.

  “Well, you go ahead and watch the country,” Dawn said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Thank you, mam,” Walter said and turned back to his window.

  “You come from around Chicago,” Dawn said, after a minute, “don’t you?”

  “Yes, mam,” Walter said turning to look at her. “When I was little, I lived in Lake Forest. With my old parents.”

  “Oh!” Dawn said. “That’s a fine, rich town.”

  “Yes, mam,” Walter said; “but my parents wasn’t rich.”

  “Oh,” Dawn said, embarrassed again.

  Walter gazed at her thoughtfully for a moment, then began to talk. “My old father worked in a garage,” he explained. “Him and my mother was divorced and he left. Then when my mother died, they could not find him, and I did not have any other relatives. So they sent me to the orphanage. I was there for a year before I was adopted.”

  “I see,” Dawn said, somehow nonplussed.

  “What’s going on back there?” Frank said jovially from the front. “Don’t you let that big sister of yours give you any guff, Walter. You doing all right, bub?” Dawn listened, thinking it was strange how none of them ever seemed to call him Walt, or—her mind froze, suddenly—or-Wally-or-something-like-that.

  “Yes, sir, Dad, thank you,” Walter said. “We were just talking about me before I was adopted.”

  “Well,” Frank said. “Well, that’s fine.”

  “Do you like it at college?” Walter asked her suddenly, almost as if he had figured it out that he should ask some questions himself to be polite.

  “Yes. I guess,” Dawn smiled. “I’ll be transferring though, to Illinois, once I’m married.”

  “I’d like to go to college,” Walter said. “I want to be an engineer.”

  “A train engineer?” Dawn smiled.

  “No, mam,” Walter said. “An electrical engineer. I’d like to build big dams.”

  “Oh,” Dawn said.

  As if he had done his duty, Walter turned back to his window. And after that, Dawn did not try to question him anymore and watched the country herself.

  They were a wonderful family, she thought suddenly. And they were doing so much for her. She missed her Shotridge. At the airport, after she had kissed them all, including Walter, the last thing she did before getting on the plane was to remind them not to forget to invite her old chum Wally Dennis to the wedding along with his mother whom Agnes would be inviting.

  Chapter 62

  WALLY DENNIS RECEIVED his formal engraved wedding invitation on Monday just exactly a week and six days before the wedding on Easter Sunday. His mom received hers on the same day. Wally had long ago formed a habit of taking a break from his work to look over the mail when the mailman came, and on this particular day as soon as he heard the mailman’s heavy feet hit the porch, he switched off the light beside his typewriter and went downstairs.

  His mom already had the mail as usual, and as she always did was sorting it out on the little hall table, one pile for his and one pile for hers. This time, there was only a couple of mailing list items for him about camping equipment and this one pure white square envelope postmarked Parkman with no return address. He took it all out with him to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and open it.

  All his Randall knives—except the #1, of course, which he kept upstairs—were still lying on the lazy susan (despite his mom’s repeated protest) and he picked up the #8 Trout and Bird knife and unsheathed it and opened the three envelopes.

  As soon as he saw the inner envelope of the Parkman letter, he knew it was some kind of damned invitation or something, and he looked at his own name “Mr Wally Dennis” written in ink and slit that envelope, too. When he slid out the contents and opened the single folded double sheet and shook the tissue paper and two cards off it, he forgot entirely about the other mail and sat down at the table. The script-engraved invitation read:

  Mr. and Mrs. Franklin L. Hirsh

  request the honor of your presence

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Dawn Anne

  to

  Mr. James Harry Shotridge

  on Sunday, the seventeenth of April

  One thousand nine hundred and forty-nine

  at four o’clock

  Parkman Methodist Church

  Parkman, Illinois

  Wally took it all in at one fell glance, his eyes focused on those two words there: Dawn Anne—his heart suddenly beating frighteningly and his eyes narrowing on the beautifully printed lines of script. The whole sheet seemed to swell and recede in time with the beating of his heart. He laid it down and picked up the tissue paper and fished the two cards out of it. One, the bigger one, said:

  Reception

  immediately following the ceremony

  The Cray County Country Club

  The favor of a reply is requested

  608 North Bancroft Street

  The other, a personal greeting card, read:

  Mrs. Agnes Towns Hirsh

  608 North Bancroft Street[/ext]

  And in the lower left-hand corner, written by hand:

  [ext] within the ribbon

  We want you both to be with us.

  Wally laid them down alongside the invitation and spread all three of them out and looked at them. But it was the invitation that seized his eye. The rectangular sheet with its beautifully centered, neatly spaced lines of script across it. And that was where the words Dawn Anne were. Dawn Anne— Wally picked it up, his hands trembling with some unnameable fear like nothing he had ever felt before, and his heart continued to pound remorselessly in his ears. Dawn Anne—request the honor of your presence—Mr. James Harry Shotridge—at the marriage of their daughter— It was all so official. That was the most disturbing, most frightening thing of all. So already done. This was official. This was legal. And only last Christmas, they had both of them sat right here, at this very same table, both nude, and then they had— Wally heard his mother coming down the hall, and quickly laid the invitation down.

  From the look on his mom’s face when she marched into the kitchen, he could tell she had had one, too. Her mouth with all those wrinkles was twisted around like she had just bitten into a green persimmon. Her eyes were screwed up almost shut. She had always wanted him to marry Dawnie—for Frank’s money, of course. He forced himself to grin at her.

  Her own invitation was in her hands and she had made as if to lay it down in front of him, but then she saw his own and so continued to hold hers.

  “Well, there you are,” she said vindictively.

  Wally grinned. “Yeah, looks like a big deal, don’t it? We’ll have to think of some kind of presents to send.”

  His mom’s mouth tightened up even more. “I told you—” she said, pushing the words out past the drawn lips.

  “You told me what, Mom?” Wally cried out. “That you wanted me to marry Dawnie for Frank’s money? And I told you I wouldn’t marry her and work in that damned son-of-a-bitching store for anything in the world! Didn’t I tell you that?”

  His mom’s
eyes widened.

  “Now for God’s sake, leave me alone!” Wally yelled. “And think up some kind of damned presents to send!”

  His mom took a step backwards and blinked. She held out the personal “admission” card, with the “within the ribbon,” and the “We want you both to be with us.” on it, identical to his own.

  “Yes!” she said viciously. “She’ll send me that! And send you one! And you know what it means, don’t you?”

  “Sure I know!” Wally cried. “It means we’ll be dear friends of the family, and sit with all of them, and that all that time me and Dawnie spent together last summer was all only good friendship, that’s what it means! Okay, so what? Nothing ever happened between me and Dawnie anyway,” he said.

  “It also means,” his mom said, “that it’s a polite way of getting rid of me. And you. We sit with the honored guests at the wedding, and after that—” She let it trail off, her mouth drawn up persimmonishly.

  “Well, what the hell did you expect!” Wally yelled. “For her to go on being ‘best friends’ with you? She’ll be best friends with Eleanor Shotridge now.

  “Jesus! but you make me sick at my stommick sometimes, Mom,” he said thickly. “Now shut up! and leave me alone.” He seized his own invitation and cards and envelopes and tissue paper, and jumped up from the table and ran upstairs to his room, leaving her still standing there.

  In his room, he shut the door, then looked at his typewriter sickly and laid the invitation and cards out on his desk and sat down and looked at them. All so official. Mr. James Harry Shotridge. Was that the Jimmy Shotridge that Dawnie never referred to by any other name but just plain “Shotridge”? Surely it couldn’t be. It must be somebody else, somebody she had met at Reserve. Yes, that must be it. Only, of course, it wasn’t, he thought sickly. He picked up the invitation again and brought it up close to his eyes. Dawn Anne— What a lovely name: Dawn Anne. Gee, he never would have thought she could do this to him, after as as intimate as they had been. He put the sheet back down. Then he picked up the outer envelope and stared at his own name and address on the front. It had been posted Saturday. He sat and looked at it sickly, and he wanted to beat his fists up and down on the desk. But he couldn’t, his mom would hear him. He wanted to bite and kick and tear, and throw his head back and and howl. Like a dog. But he couldn’t, his mom would hear it. He had never had anything in his life to hurt him so. She had given her virginity to him. She’d stood there in the woods, at dusk, bare to the waist in her skirt and bobby sox and saddle shoes; he could still see it; and then they had climbed into the backseat. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! He held it in, holding his belly muscles tight, the only sound a high faint keening in the back of his throat, until finally he had to gasp for breath. His head was charged with choked-off blood. That was dangerous: You could break a blood vessel in your head and die like that. All right then, he thought wildly, then go ahead and die! And he did it again: Ahhhhhhhhhhbhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! silently, held in. He looked down again at the invitation, the white paper appearing to be speckled with flecks of red, his eyes focusing themselves again upon those same two words as they always did:

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Dawn Anne!

  Dawn Anne!

  Dawn Anne— This time he could not hold it in. Sitting at his desk, he opened up his mouth and the long high drawn-out quavering howl poured out of him and filled the room, trickled out through the half open window and down the quiet street.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” and he didn’t care who heard, didn’t give a damn.

  Almost immediately, he snapped back to full awareness, horrified by what he had done.

  From downstairs, he heard his mother’s terrified voice: “Wallace! Wallace! What’s happened! What’s wrong!”

  His mind clicking swiftly, Wally jumped up and went to the dresser under the mirror and grabbed his Randall #1 All-Purpose Fighting Knife, which he kept there so he could practice with it before the mirror, unsheathed it, and slashed it down across his doubled-up index finger. The eight-inch blade was shaving sharp, and in his hurry, he slashed it much harder than he meant to. The knife cut his finger clean to the bone, and blood began to pour out of it. Staring at it, surprised, Wally put the knife down on the dresser and grabbed his handkerchief and wrapped it around the cut. Blood began to soak through it immediately.

  Behind him, his mother was already at the door crying “Wallace! Wallace!” Wally met her there and thrust the bloodstained handkerchief and finger at her.

  “It’s nothing,” he said calmly. “I just cut my finger.”

  “But the way you yelled!” his mother said, her face still terrified.

  “Aw, it just made me mad,” Wally said. “That’s all. Damn fool thing to do! It ain’t cut bad.”

  Her face was as white as a sheet. “I thought you were dying!” she said.

  Wally merely stared at her grimly. Yes, and I was, he thought.

  His mom shook her head. “I do wish you’d quit playing with those horrible knives,” she said, looking at him anxiously. “Is it cut bad?”

  “I wasn’t playing with it,” he said disgustedly, “I was sharpening it; and the damn thing slipped. No, I told you it wasn’t cut bad. Now, for God’s sake, Mom, leave me alone. I got to doctor this.”

  “Do you want me to do it?” she offered.

  “No, damn it! I’ll do it myself.”

  Reluctantly, his mom turned to go back downstairs. “Please don’t play with those sharp knives anymore, Wallace,” she said.

  “Damn it, I told you I was sharpening it!” Wally said. “And I don’t play with them. I practice with them. Please, Mom! Go away and just let me be.”

  When she had gone, he shut the door and went back to the dresser where the knife was. It was stained with blood up both sides, and he got out another handkerchief from the drawer and awkwardly wiped it clean. Nothing in the world would stain a knife worse than blood. Only after he had done that did he take another look at his finger. The cut was between the knuckle and second joint, running down the thumb side of the finger. Blood still ran from it in a thick stream, and he held the handkerchief under it so it would not drip on the floor. In a way, he was kind of proud of it. Anyway, at least it had fooled his mom. And it would make him a good scar. Yeah, he thought, a nice scar, to remember the day he got the invitation to Dawnie Hirsh’s wedding by.

  But now that he was safe with his misery again and alone, the sick feeling, the sense of disbelief, came back over him with a rush, making his stomach drop away from under him. Wrapping a clean handkerchief around the cut, he went back to the desk and sat down and looked at the invitation and the cards. Dawnie— Dawn Anne— He could still see her clearly as she had looked that first time up in the woods, and he thought he could not stand it.

  He dropped his forehead down on the desk, his work forgotten for the day, sick, beaten, empty. And so much in love with what he had lost that it was like a physical hunger for food when there is no food. Dawnie— Dawnie—

  Is this the Wallace French Dennis who drove her home so implacably that night? who sat in the car so emotionlessly and watched her go inside? Is this the Wally Dennis who quit her cold?

  Yes. Yes, but he had never thought she would do something like this to him.

  In the end, only anger came to his aid. Anger that she could do this to him, deliberately, just to spite him, after all that they had meant to each other, after all he knew about her. And hell, she loved it. Why hell, she was a regular damned wanton! And how in hell Jim Shotridge could ever keep her satisfied in bed he couldn’t figure. But in this direction lay danger, too; and as all the old memories flooded back in proof that she was just a damned wanton, the sick hungry bottomless feeling began to come back in him. So he put this thought down, too; and concentrated merely on sheer anger.

  Angrily, in the next few days, he prepared himself. He would show them all. He took his mom’s old car to
Terre Haute and spent a hundred dollars of his dwindling (almost nonexistent) fellowship money on a silver service for a present, and on the back of the platter he had engraved the legend: “To Dawnie and Jim, Many happy days! Wally.” For a moment, he contemplated having them engrave it to read: “To Dawnie and Shotridge;” like she always called him; but he was afraid it might be a little too much, and he did not want Shotridge getting wise. That would only ruin it. What he wanted was to fix it so that whenever she used that tea service, or even looked at it, she would remember. Remember Lake Audubon, and remember the woods at dusk out west of West Lancaster, and remember all the other times and places. And then let’s see how goddamned sanctimonious she could pretend to be!

  He had it sent out from Terre Haute, so his mom would not see it.

  During the two weeks before the wedding, he did not go anywhere. Except to classes at the college. Some instinct of some fright, some fear of some embarrassment, kept him away. And anyway, he just simply did not feel like going anywhere. Thank God he had never talked to anyone about his love affair! Nobody really knew there had ever been a love affair. Love affair— Oh, God! Dawnie—Dawn Anne—request the honor of your presence—

  Only when he was working, in the mornings, was he near free of it. He would get up early, after a night of bad dreams, and he would plunge furiously into his work on his book, writing all morning long, sometimes not even sure what it was he had written. He did not have the heart to try and go back over it and read it. He just filed it carefully away, more pages per day than he had ever written in his life before. And plunged on ahead. Because only then could he be even momentarily free of it.

  But the rest of the time, when he wasn’t working, he could only sit around and brood. Because he couldn’t concentrate to read anymore. When he would quit work exhausted at noon and come down for lunch, he would have to be pleasant and noncaring in front of his mom for forty-five minutes. That was even more exhausting. And when after lunch he would sit down with a book, he would read a few lines and the words would lose all sense, at the marriage of their daughter—Dawn Anne— If his mom was home, he would shut himself up in his room. To fool her, and to fool himself, he started working on model airplanes again and his old radio sets. If his mom was not home, he would simply sit, one leg up over a chair in the living room, staring at the horrible once-expensive furnishings; or go into the music room and play chords on the piano.