by James Jones
It was somewhere along in here that he learned, from Dewey and Hubie, about what had happened to Ginnie that night he ran her off, and since then.
He was very drunk when they told it to him, but later on, when he happened to be not quite so drunk, he questioned them about it again, a little more clearly. It was a very funny story, and they all three sat and howled over it. The night he had run her off, Dewey and Hubie told him, they had been sitting up at Ciro’s with Martha and Lois. So they had been present when Ginnie came in. The one-armed ex-Marine was still there, and Ginnie had sat down with him and right away they became engaged in a deep conversation.
Dewey and Hubie had been drifting in and out all day, they said, so they knew about the one-armed ex-Marine and had seen him earlier. Just why this one-armed ex-Marine had decided to get off the bus in Parkman no one seemed to know. He was headed east. Probably he had gotten hard up for a drink. (Maybe it was Fate, Hubie giggled with drunken sarcasm.) Anyway, he had gotten off the bus—a great deal like Dave had two years ago—and had headed straight for the nearest bar which was, of course, Ciro’s. He had bought himself a half-pint, which he concealed very skillfully, and had started drinking beer at Ciro’s, lacing it occasionally, and eyeing whatever women happened to be around, which was very few at that time of day. Dewey and Hubie had seen him then and had a drink or two with him, and he seemed like a fairly reasonable soul. But later, after the brassiere factory girls got out from work, that was when he met Ginnie. They had seen Ginnie talking to him a lot, earlier—before Dave came and picked her up. And then she had come back, alone; and started talking to him again.
So, just for kicks, after a while Dewey and Hubie (with Martha and Lois) had slipped over into the booth right next to them, taking their beers with them.
Well, what they heard, Dewey and Hubie grinned at him, had them all four laughing so hard they had difficulty in keeping silent and not giving the show away. Ginnie and this one-armed ex-Marine were having such a deep absorbing conversation they did not even notice Dewey and Hubie and the girls slip into the next booth. Ginnie was snowing this ex-Marine. Man, but really snowing him. The story of her life. And he was eating it up: All about how she, Ginnie, was the local banker’s daughter; and had been born to the purple. But then the Depression came along and her old man had lost everything, and then to top it off, had died before he could make it back; and this, of course, left her and her mom holding the sack. Well, her and her mom had never got along so good, so as soon as she graduated from high school (there was no possibility of college now, of course), she had went out on her own. Yes, her mom still lived here; but they didn’t hardly never see each other. That was because Ginnie had chosen to throw in her lot with the common people, and decided to work in the local brassiere factory. Oh, her mom was an awful snob. She herself, of course, Ginnie, had—having had such a rich father and all—never been trained to no kind of work. No, sir, she was supposed to be a lady. Consequently, when she did go out on her own, the only kind of work she was able to do was take a common factory worker’s job in the brassiere factory. But, she said, she was earning her own way, and paying her own way, and she was proud of that.
She had, Dewey and Hubie grinned, gone on at some length in this fashion. And the one-armed ex-Marine believed every word of it. And in between times when Ginnie was talking, he told her his own life history: He come from a rich family of wheat farmers in Kansas. And his trouble was a lot similar to hers: Him and his old man never did see eye-to-eye. And of course, he admitted, he had been a little bit wild when he was younger. Then the war had come along and he had joined the Marines. And it was in the Marines that he had found himself: that he had become a man. He loved the Corps: They were men, by God. And if it hadn’t been for him losing this arm at Iwo, he would have stayed in the Corps and made it his career. Oh sure, he had got a flock of medals. But what was a flock of medals to him? when it meant he could no longer stay in the Corps?
(If he lost his arm at Iwo, Hubie said parenthetically to Dave, it was probly when he stuck it out to make a left-turn signal and some truck took it off: heh-heh.)
And so, with the Corps no longer possible as a career for him, the ex-Marine finished telling Ginnie, he was back with the old man wheat farming. Only, he couldn’t take it for very long at a time. He was, in a way, like herself: He was on his own. Right now, he was just off on a trip, hoping maybe something would turn up for him, but he would probably wind up going back. A one-armed man didn’t have much chance of breaking into a new racket. And, after all, his old man did have the acres, and the bucks.
Anyway, there had been a great deal of this kind of talk between them, and Dewey and Hubie had sat and listened to it, with their girls, all four of them stifling their laughter—especially when Ginnie got to her part about throwing her lot in with the common man. Also: When the ex-Marine told all about his rugged combat experience with “The Corps,” and then went on to say that what he really needed, he guessed, was a woman’s gentle hand to guide him, a woman like her, like Ginnie.
Finally, Dewey and Hubie said, the two of them—the ex-Marine and Ginnie—got up and left Ciro’s. Where they went for their romp, Dewey and Hubie didn’t know. Anyway, they called a taxi. Dewey and Hubie had heard Ginnie mention to him something about another, nicer bar named Smitty’s; so after the two of them left, Dewey and Hubie had collected their gals and gone on out there. And sure enough, about half an hour later, here came Ginnie and the ex-Marine, looking a little rumpled. Ginnie introduced him to all of them (they had all already met him anyway), but she was very careful to keep him pretty much away from them. Probably, Dewey grinned, she didn’t want them to say anything that might show up any discrepancies in her story.
Later on, they all slipped into the next booth to them again, and listened to more of this talk. It was really terrific. And it went on like that all evening: Ginnie appropriated just about every illustrious ancestor the town of Parkman possessed, even Old Anton Wernz II. And by the end of the evening, both pretty drunk, Ginnie and the ex-Marine were holding hands in Smitty’s and discussing how strange it was that Fate had had them meet.
To make a long story short, this drunken courtship went on for four days in all, that the ex-Marine stayed in town. And at the end of the four days, when he left, Ginnie had left with him—and get this, now!—to be married. She was returning with him to his father’s rich wheat farm in Kansas to become his bride. She came around and had made sure that everybody knew about it. Several times, in fact. That night they left on the westbound bus for Kansas.
“Hell, maybe he really has got a rich old man who’s a wheat farmer,’’ Dewey said. “I don’t know.”
“Nope,” Hubie said, “I’ll stake my reputation on it that that guy was snowin her as much as she was snowin him.” And he began to laugh again. “Banker’s daughter! Banker’s daughter, yet! God!”
Dave laughed with them, drunkenly, thinking about slobby old Ginnie the banker’s daughter. It was, in fact, funnier than hell. Howlingly funny.
But then, later on, he got to thinking about it, and it did not seem nearly so funny. Hell, now he didn’t even have Old Ginnie anymore. First Gwen gone; then Ginnie, too. No: First Harriet Bowman, who married a lawyer. Then Gwen; then Ginnie. He couldn’t even hold onto a poor slob like Old Ginnie.
But it did not really bother him. Not really. He had his drinking to think about. Nothing really bothered him, in fact. And to hell with everything. To hell with you, Gwen French! And he would go and get another drink. All he had to do was go and get another drink. If panic struck him over Gwen, he would get another drink. If double-panic struck him over Ginnie Moorehead, he would get another drink. If triple-panic struck him over being fat and forty and broke and prospectless, he could always go and get two more drinks. If he could never get another woman again, well what the hell? As long as you stayed drunk.
And yet, underneath it all, underneath the gin-bravado, the panic still lurked, ready to rise up the first moment
he let the alcohol level in his system get a bit too low. And not the least of its causes was that manuscript lying in there in that little writing room, gathering dust in there from week to week—that manuscript—whenever he saw it, no matter how drunk he was, he had to go quick and have another drink.
And that was why he could not stop. That damned Gwen: She had made a writer out of him again, when he hadn’t wanted to be a writer anymore again, and he was letting the manuscript lie there and rot because he was too drunk to work on it. That was why he couldn’t stop: If he stopped, he would have to face the fact that he had wasted over two precious months on being drunk and sorry for himself—two months, and more, that could never be regained. And he could not face that; not without help.
He had meant to go back over to Israel to see Old Bob. But lethargy and apathy made him even incapable of that. Anyway what good could Bob do him? Hadn’t he said himself no man could really help another? And anyway, he could not stand the thought of going there inside that house with so many myriad memories of Gwen.
Dewey and Hubie, at least, were a great help to him, anyway. They had been coming around more and more now, and without their girls. Whenever they were there, he could laugh with them over anything: caustic, bitter, like the mean-looking broken-nosed Dewey had been laughing ever since his brother Raymond’s death. At least, there was that much release from pain.
But then Dewey and Hubie left. And there was nobody left but ’Bama.
They came around one day, both three-fourths drunk, to announce that finally they had decided to go back in the Army. After struggling with this momentous decision for six full months, they had at last made up their minds: After all, what was there here for them, they said? A couple women that wanted to tie them down? A cheap job in some plant somewhere, where they could work away the rest of their lives? The unfound generation, Dewey had said; and now said again: What do we know but the Army? We’re both good soldiers; well-trained soldiers; why not go back to our trade, ’ey? They were, in fact, acting out in their lives the very principle Dave had evolved for his novel: the modern-day professional Roman legionary—though, of course, they were not aware of this.
(But Dave was, and wanted to weep, thinking about that manuscript gathering its dust.)
And besides, they added, the govmint’s offerin to take back the World War II vets at the old ratings they had—offerin all kind of added inducements—and, by using a little pull here and there they ought to be able to fix it so they could stay together, in the same outfit.
They were the block the modern-day prosperity was founded on, weren’t they: the old Army pros? Why shouldn’t they get in on as much gravy as they could? And so, after one more heavily drunken party with Dave and ’Bama, they left, going to Chicago to reenlist.
And right away, without the comfort of that illusory companionship, everything started going from bad to worse. With them gone, Dave could no longer see himself and ’Bama and their situation as adventurous. Which only drove him back for more drinks.
Finally, he got so bad off that even ’Bama got on him about it.
“Hell, at least I sober up a little bit sometimes, when Ahm down at the farhm,” he said drunkenly. “But you don’t never sober up at all.”
“So what?” Dave said equally drunkenly.
“Well, Ah just hate to see it, thas all,” ’Bama said. They were both sitting at the kitchen table, drinking. ’Bama’s Southern accent got much stronger when he was drunker. “You got a talent, Dave. That’s why. And you ain’t done no writin on that book of yores for what—almost three months now. Hell, what do you think Ah tied up with you in the first place for?”
“Because I was big-shot Frank Hirsh’s brother.”
“Mebbe so; at the very first. But that ain’t why Ah went to Florida with you, and then taken this heah house with you. Ah admired you, and Ah admired yore talent. Hell, I used to respect you.”
“I used to respect you, too,” Dave said slackly.
“And now—” ’Bama said, grinning bitterly, “we don’t neither one of us respect the other.”
It was, in fact, a rather momentous statement, and Dave recognized it as such, drunk as he was. But it could not impinge upon his drunken apathy.
“That’s about the size of it, I guess,” he said.
“Well, it’s yore life,” ’Bama grinned. “I cain’t git you out of it.”
“You want me to leave?” Dave said thickly. “After all, it’s you that’s spendin all the money, and payin all the bills.” Which was true. Dave had some time back run through all the money in his savings account: the money from the two stories, the accumulated money from his share of the taxi service, which was still paid to him and now he was throwing into the kitty every month. “Just you say the word,” he said.
“Did Ah say that?” ’Bama said. “No. Yore welcome to stay here as long as you want. It don’t matter about me. Hell with me. But, man, you got a talent. You oughtn’t to jus’ throw it away.”
“Why not?” Dave said. “It’s my talent.”
After that, ’Bama said no more about it. But the acid accusation—at himself as well as at Dave—was often in his eyes. As a matter of fact, they had not in fact renewed the one-year lease on the house, which had fallen due in May—any more than they had, this year, worked any on their vacant-lot garden, which was now growing back up in weeds. But Judge Deacon had arranged to sort of carry them along on a month-to-month basis with the house, handling it both for them and for the Albersons in Florida, until they could definitely make up their mind about it. Which, by the end of July, they had not done. Neither of them was in any condition to do so, and what with the old life that had existed here for a year being totally gone now, neither one of them was sure of just which way the log would fall. And now they were both engaged in this protracted jag, which not only took all their time, but also sapped their energy.
What had made it change? Dave wondered. He had seen it coming, had felt it, almost, in his bones. Was it really true that Raymond Cole’s death back in January had something to do with it? Or was it that, at about that same time, he had fatuously convinced himself he was no longer in love with Gwen French and that he had given up on her? Or was it the simple fact of Lois Wallup weeping bitter tears in the kitchen while he listened that somehow had caused it? He didn’t know. Probably he never would know. He went back to get another drink.
It was not until some time in August that an event happened to cause him to start coming out of it. By that time, between them, he and ’Bama—not counting Dewey and Hubie and the others, when they were still there—had consumed untold gallons of whiskey and gin, and probably never would entirely get over it, either one of them, physically. Especially ’Bama. But then, as Wally Dennis had once told him rather profoundly: The human body can stand an amazing amount of punishment and still get over it, still recover. Old Wally, Dave thought affectionately (now that the kid was gone), wonder how he’s likin the Army now?
The event that happened which started bringing him, at least somewhat out of it, was that he got a letter from Ginnie Moorehead, in Kansas. Delivered at the house where they got all the regular mail, it lay for several days stuck in the mailbox on the porch, before Dave happened to see something white there one day as he was driving his little Plymouth drunkenly in from having been out at Smitty’s. When he got it, and saw who it was from, he wanted to laugh. When he took it inside and opened it, it read:
Dear Dave,
I guiss you will be suprized to hear from me after this such longe time. Will you remember Old Ginnie Moorehead that you use to date. Well I am living out hear in Kanzas and I ain’t happy. He lied to me, Dave. His fathor don’t have no big wheet farm atall. His fathor has a littel tiny shack of a plase where he grow a few littel akers. It is a horibel shack and I am the only woman. It is teribel. There’s not no trees no place for miles around. And the hot sun beat downe. When I cry, he beats me up. I am very unhappy. He held a gun on me oncet which he brung hom
e from the Marynes and threaten to shoot me. If I ever trid to run away. Pleaze help me, Dave. 1 don’t know nobody else to rite a letter to. I am afrad I will git killd. I am riting this leter secret. Pleaze help me. Pleaze send fifty dolors to Gen’l Delivry. It is the only way 1 can git away. 1 relize now it was you 1 lovd all the time. Pleaze help me. You the only one I can tern to. You are so kind and good. But 1 want you to know even if you do not send the mony I will always lov you anyways for ever and ever. But pleaze help me. Pleaze send the mony. Yore loving frend, Ginnie Moorehead
He did not know whether to laugh or cry over it. Mostly he just felt amazement at the spelling. Poor old Ginnie. And so “Fate” had finally caught up to her, too, just like the rest of us. That she did indeed love him, Dave suddenly realized for perhaps the first time. He was not naive enough to think that all the protestations of love were not without ulterior motive: i.e., getting away from that hellhole; but you couldn’t blame her for that. And in spite of that, some quality of real agony seemed to reach him through the scrambled handwriting. Suddenly, half drunk as he still was, and had been for so long, he felt genuine pity for her. Everybody treated her like a bum. And apparently, he was the only one anywhere to whom she could turn.
He showed the letter to ’Bama, when the big gambler came home, and they both laughed—a little shamefacedly—over it; and yet there was that same quality of—of pity—on ’Bama’s face, too.
“Well, yore goin to send her the money, ain’t you?” he asked. “There ain’t no need for everybody to suffer as much as you and me do. Not, anyway, when it can be prevented for just fifty bucks.” Suddenly, he swore. “Christ, now we’ll have that slobby bitch hangin around the place again like before.”
