Some Came Running

by James Jones

  Toying with the stem of her glass as she drank her drink, the idea popped into her head that she could go over there and pick Dave up and get a hotel room with him, and in that way—by sleeping with him—she could sleep one last time with—comfort for one last time, poor old Frank. A kind of private farewell, all her own.

  But, of course, it was a silly idea. He wasn’t Frank. He was Dave. And she did not even contemplate it beyond that first wild moment when it popped into her head. It did not even bother her that she had thought it. Once, it would have.

  Quietly, she sat and sipped her drink. She knew one thing anyway: She would not want to be Frank and Agnes Hirsh for anything in this world. She felt sorry, deeply, sincerely sorry, for both of them.

  Then she finished her drink and walked out through the hotel lobby to catch a cab to the railroad station.

  She could get her sandwich out there.

  Chapter 70

  WHEN EDITH BARCLAY SAW Dave Hirsh in Terre Haute without his seeing her, what she did not know was that Dave was out celebrating. He was having himself a sort of private bachelor dinner: He intended to get good and drunk and have himself a good big dinner and then make the rounds of the whorehouses one last time; after that, he was going to be a happily married man like everybody else. Dave had finally, after due and careful consideration, decided to marry Ginnie Moorehead; and tonight’s solo party was a sort of symbol of the decision.

  He hadn’t told her yet, and he hadn’t even told ’Bama; and that was why he was out doing his celebrating by himself. What the hell, other people had bachelor dinners, didn’t they? Actually, of course, it wasn’t a true bachelor dinner. It wasn’t taking place the night before the marriage. But it was a bachelor dinner in the sense that it was taking place the night after the day of decision. Dave had turned it around and around for a couple of weeks, and the more he turned it around, the more it seemed the most rational out for him. After all, who the hell else would he—at his age, and with his prospects and looks—ever get to marry him? He wasn’t in love with Ginnie, at least not in the way he had once loved Gwen French; but in a way he did love her, too, he guessed: She was so extremely pitiable. But more important was the fact that she would make him a good wife; the very kind of wife that a writer ought to have. She would take care of him. He had looked it all over, had studied Ginnie closely the two weeks since she had been back from her Kansas fiasco, and finally he had decided. He couldn’t very well see how he could go wrong.

  Ginnie had—after he sent her the fifty dollars General Delivery in Kansas—taken nearly two weeks to get home to Parkman. Perhaps it had taken her that long to sneak away from her crazy ex-Marine, but Dave did not doubt but what she had picked up some guy on the bus and had herself a several-day brawling party. She probably wouldn’t be Ginnie if she didn’t. But if she had, that didn’t bother him. Because after sending her the money, during the nearly two weeks it took her to get home, he had checked around Parkman and had found out for sure that she had been telling him the truth when she stated that she had not been out with anybody but him for nearly three months, before she took off with her ex-Marine. Naturally, this impressed him. But what impressed him even more was the Ginnie who arrived home chastened from Kansas.

  Worn and wan after her three-month ordeal, she came right down to the house on Lincoln Street as soon as she got off the afternoon bus. She had lost a considerable amount of weight—but let’s face it, he thought: It hadn’t done much for her figure, and never would. If she only weighed eighty-two pounds, she would still look squat and fat and dumpy. But, after all, what the hell did that matter? That wasn’t what he was marrying her for.

  Nevertheless, she had lost quite a lot of weight, and it did make her a little more palatable. But mostly, it was the change in her personality that both impressed and touched Dave. And perhaps even flattered him a little. After she had arrived at the house, she sat down with him and ’Bama and a bottle of whiskey and, her eyes haunted-looking, told them the tale of her ordeal. Dull as she was by nature (a good trait for a writer’s wife), she was nevertheless considerably more sensitized by her recent unhappiness. Repeatedly, while she was living with her new husband in Kansas, she said, she had been threatened by him with what was apparently a .45 Service Automatic just on the mere suspicion that she might have been toying with the idea of leaving him. And his old father wasn’t much better: a mean old son of a bitch, Ginnie said, dirty and unshaven, who wore nothing but ripe overalls, which she was forced to scrub by hand in a big tub, and whose sole opinion of women, apparently, was that they were ordained by God and by law to work themselves to death for the men they married.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted to them; “I’m feared he’ll come back here after me. He ain’t all there. All he can do is talk about the Marine Corps and the war. Hes really got all them medals he said, too. That was the only thing he told me the truth about. He showed ’em all to me. I’m jist scared to death he’ll come back here after me.”

  “If he comes around here,” ’Bama said, his eyes glittering hotly, “I’ll kick his damned head in and take his Army automatic and shove it up his—”

  “Oh, but you don’t know what he’s like,” Ginnie said nervously. “He’d kill ya.”

  ’Bama made no answer, and only took another drink. But Dave remembered the attempted holdup in Indianapolis—and since then, since learning he had the diabetes, ’Bama had been more sour and mean than ever. If his own personal sympathies went out to anybody in this imagined fight, Dave felt it would be to the ex-Marine.

  But Ginnie was not to be persuaded. They didn’t know what he was like, she kept repeating. And—as she kept on babbling out all the things that had been done to her—she finally broke down and cried. She had to talk to somebody about it, she said, she just had to. Or she would bust. God she was glad to get back home.

  It was decided, that first afternoon, that Ginnie because of her fearful state, would move in there at the house with them. And ’Bama, strangely, because he had never liked her, was just about as gently solicitous over her predicament as Dave himself was. She was really a very pitiable object: nervous as a cat; completely physically and mentally worn out from her ordeal.

  “But, by God, you can get yore old job back,” ’Bama added, “and start puttin some of it in the kitty. We ain’t livin off the fat of the land like we use to here.”

  “No,” Dave said, “we’ve been losing more than we’ve been winning, gambling. Them old rich-livin days are gone.”

  Ginnie nodded. She was willing to do anything. And it was awful nice of them to take her in. She would, she said, be scared to death if she did not have nobody around to protect her. She would see about the job tomorrow, and thank you both awful much. Then she broke down again.

  “I don’t know whatever made me do it,” she wept. All the pride and spine stiffening she had gradually acquired after she had become Dave’s “girlfriend” amongst the brassiere factory set was entirely gone out of her now. “And now I’m married to him. He’s got me where he wants me. And I can’t do nothing.”

  “Hell, that’s easy fixed,” ’Bama snorted. “You never screwed him, did you?”

  “Wha— What?” Ginnie said, her eyes widening guiltily.

  “I say, you never slept with him, did you?” ’Bama grinned sourly.

  “Well, I—” Ginnie started, and then paused, guilt shining on her face like a coating of grease.

  “What he means is that you never slept with the guy,” Dave put in. He could see she wasn’t getting the idea. “If you never slept with him, then you can get the marriage annulled.”

  “Annulled?” Ginnie said.

  “Sure,” Dave said. “You know; like a divorce. Only easier to get. And then it’s the same as if you were never married at all.”

  “Oh no,” Ginnie said quickly, “I never laid him.” She held up her right hand. “Honest to God, I never did.” She looked at both of them as if she expected them to believe it, too.

&
nbsp; ’Bama stared at her, then sniffed. “It ain’t us you got to convince. It’s the court.”

  “Court?” Ginnie said in an almost panicky voice. “I don’t want to go into no court for nothin!”

  ’Bama pulled his mouth around in an impatient sneer.

  “Well, it’s the only way you’ll ever get rid of the guy. You want to stay married to him all yore life?”

  “No!” Ginnie said. “No, sir!”

  “Well then, this is what you gotta do.”

  “Well— What would I have to do?” Ginnie said.

  “Nothing,” ’Bama said. “Except appear in court. We’ll let Judge Deacon handle all of it.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Ginnie said.

  “Go call him,” Dave said. “Maybe he can explain it to her.”

  “Okay,” ’Bama said disgustedly, and went to the phone.

  The fat little roly-poly judge, when he came out explained it not only to Ginnie but to all of them. “Hell, yes,” he growled. “I’ve got ’em for lots of people. All you got to do is publish a notification in the paper for three consecutive weeks and send your husband a copy of it. Then thirty days after the purification, you can take it into court. A week after the thirty days is up, I’ll take you in, and the marriage will be declared null and void.”

  “Is that all?” Ginnie said.

  “Sure is,” the judge said.

  “Well, but what if he wants to fight it?”

  “Then he could combat it. But I wouldn’t worry about it.” He grinned. “Maybe he’ll never get the paper.”

  “She’s afraid he’ll come back here after her, Judge,” Dave said.

  “So what?” the judge said. “He can’t take you away by force. Well, you want me to go ahead with it?”

  “Whatever Dave says,” Ginnie said apprehensively. “What do you think, Dave?”

  “Well, it’s the only chance you got,” Dave said, not without feeling a little flattered. “Sure, I’d say go ahead with it. The judge can handle it.”

  “Send me the goddamned bill,” ’Bama said sneeringly.

  “Okay,” the judge grinned. “Won’t be much of a bill.”

  After he left, Ginnie broke down again. “Whatever made me do it?” she wailed. “I musta been plumb crazy.” She wept into her little flowered hankerchief that Doris Fredric had once bought her.

  Dave and ’Bama had exchanged glances. She was, quite plainly, a truly pitiable object to both of them. “There, there,” Dave said. “Don’t cry. It’s all going to be all right. What you need is to get good and half drunk and get some sleep.”

  “You won’t leave me if I do, will ya?” Ginnie said fearfully.

  “No,” Dave said. “We’ll stay right here.”

  “I won’t,” ’Bama said curtly. “I’m goin down to the farhm tonight.”

  “Well, I’ll stay,” Dave said.

  “Have you got a gun?” Ginnie said.

  “No,” Dave said. “I don’t need a gun.”

  “Oh yes, you will!” Ginnie cried. “If he comes back lookin for me, you’ll need one.”

  “I’ll leave you my thirty-two,” ’Bama said to Dave. “All you have to do is point it and pull the damned trigger.”

  “That’ll make me feel a lot better,” Ginnie said, and looked about to cry again.

  “Now, don’t cry,” Dave said. And, after he had helped her to several more drinks, he had helped her upstairs to one of the extra rooms to go to bed.

  Sitting in the Marine Room in Terre Haute, enjoying his solo bachelor dinner, Dave in thinking back over that first interview and the two weeks that followed still had the same strong sense of almost inarticulate pity for her that he had had then. However, that was not the only reason he had finally decided on marrying her. There were a number of others. He had been thinking on it for two weeks now.

  One of the main ones was what happened that first night (and later nights, too) after ’Bama had left for the farm, and after he had thought he had Ginnie in bed in her own room and asleep. He had had a few drinks himself and cooked himself a steak and made a few notes on the scene he wanted to work on tomorrow (he had gone back to working after the letter from Ginnie came), and then had gone to bed himself. He had not been asleep more than an hour or so when he was startled awake by something moving beside him, and found that it was Ginnie. She didn’t want to sleep in there by herself, she said; she was scared. Then she began playing up to him. Whatever frights and unhappiness she had incurred out in Kansas, it sure hadn’t diminished Ginnie’s love of sex any; if anything she seemed to have more. Three times in the night, she woke him up by cuddling up against him, and all three times the sex was of a caliber and intensity greater than he had ever known existed. And after they had got up, without any prompting from him, Ginnie made up the bed with fresh sheets, and fixed it all up clean and smooth. Then, she even offered to cook breakfast for him. Dave, who never ate breakfast when he was working, was tempted to refuse; but after all, this one time was a sort of an occasion, so he accepted. The bacon and eggs and coffee and toast were delicious, better than any he had ever cooked himself. Yes, sir, whatever had happened after she went off to Kansas, it had not in any way changed Ginnie’s love for sex.

  And after all, where was a man like him—a butterball of nearly forty—to get sex like that? Or sex of any kind, as far as that went? Whenever Dave would think of that, a kind of helpless panic would hit him. He had wasted his last two years of comparative youth on Gwen French, and without getting a damned thing for it. Now he was on the downhill grade side. And from now on it would get worse, instead of better. There wasn’t a woman anywhere who would have him. And certainly not a woman who liked sex like Ginnie did. And that sex hadn’t stopped with the first night, either; it had gone right on through the rest of these two weeks. That should be, he thought, a principle reason for any man getting married. Married to her, he could look ahead to a number of years of sex like that. It was, to say the least, quite a strong inducement in favor.

  But it was not the only one, by any means. There was Ginnie herself. It was a lot like the famous old soldier’s saying that “whores make the best wives, because they’re grateful.” But it went deeper than that. Here was Ginnie, who had never had anything in her life. Not anything, from the moment she was born to the moment she married her crazy ex-Marine. Was that Justice? Ginnie was, in a way, a sort of female Raymond Cole. No one, neither her society nor any individual, had ever tested her capacities—or even thought about doing so. How did anyone know what she was capable of, if only given a chance? And she wasn’t really dumb so much. She was pretty intelligent, really. It was just that she had never had a chance to develop what intelligence she had. Who knew what she might amount to if she only had a decent chance? And Dave, with a warm deep magnanimity of spirit, wanted to help her.

  She was always talking about the fact that she was a human being, that she had some rights, too. But who had ever treated her like one? Who had ever treated her with the basic dignity that was her right? Nobody, and that even included himself. The truth was, it was more than just a personal or social problem; it was a moral issue. If he had ever believed in anything, Dave Hirsh believed fervently in the rights of the free individual. Every human being had the right to be treated like a human being, and not like some kind of animal. Every human being had the right to some measure of dignity—no matter how unbeautiful that human being might be physically, or how low mentally. It was that very thing that had so irritated him that time when ’Bama had talked about Ginnie so contemptuously, as if she were some kind of an animal. No human being had the right to talk that way about another. Everybody ought to be given their chance. Dave had believed this basic tenet, fierily and devoutly, all his life.

  Hell, he had always been on the wrong side of the tracks himself, hadn’t he? What better could he do than marry somebody from that same side? Let the two fatties get together; let the two bums marry each other.

  All of these things were in his mind
during the two weeks he toyed with it and finally made his decision; and not the least of these was ’Bama’s wife, Ruth, whom he had got to know so well those times ’Bama had taken him down there to the farm after that first hunting trip, and before he found out he had diabetes. (He had not taken him afterwards.) Ginnie would make him the same kind of wife as Ruth made ’Bama; and that was the kind of wife Dave wanted. You couldn’t find a more perfect wife: She ran that farm, and she looked after her man and looked up to him and loved him. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of wild passionate love the Gwen Frenches of the world indulged in; but this kind of love was productive. And that was the kind of wife Dave needed: one that would help him with his work. To hell with these rich, literary, neurotic, nymphomaniac ladies like Gwen French. He’d take a wife like Ruth or Ginnie anytime.

  Only, after he married Ginnie, he wasn’t going to be like ’Bama; Dave was going to be true to his wife.

  And that was why he was having his lone bachelor’s dinner tonight: It was to be his last fling before putting on the harness of the faithful, happily married husband. And then he would tell them both, her and ’Bama, tomorrow. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind that Ginnie would marry him; and there wasn’t the slightest doubt that ’Bama would heartily approve.

  Of course, there still remained another two or three weeks before the judge could make the annulment final. Before they could actually get married. But Dave had never been one for following the letter of the contract: Once he had made up his mind, as far as he was concerned it was the same as being married by the Law! Because in his mind, he had given his own word of honor. And whatever else anybody might say about Dave Hirsh, by God, he could always say that his word was his Bond.