by John O'Hara
Julian reached in the second drawer of the desk and took out a Colt’s .25 automatic and got up and went to the washroom. He was breathless with excitement and he felt his eyes get the way they got when he was being thrilled, big but sharp. He sat down on the toilet, and he knew he was not going to do it that way. But he wanted to sit down and look at the pistol. He looked at it for he knew not how long, and then snapped himself to without changing his position in the slightest degree. He put the barrel in his mouth and some oil touched the inside of his lower lip. He made a “Guck” sound, and took a long breath, and then he put the pistol in his pocket and got up and washed his mouth with cold water and then he took off his upper garments, except his undershirt, and washed himself all over the head and face and arms to the elbow. He used four towels, drying himself. Then he put on his clothes again, wiped stray drops of water off his shoes, and went back to the office and lit a cigarette. He remembered a bottle of whiskey he had in the desk, and he had a long-lasting drink of one whiskey glass of it. “Oh, I couldn’t,” he said, and he put his arms on the desk and his head on his arms, and he wept. “You poor guy,” he said. “I feel so sorry for you.”
He heard the first of the mechanics’ post-luncheon sounds: the thump of a baseball in a catcher’s mitt. That meant the mechanics were through lunch, because one of the men pitched on a semi-pro team, and he kept himself in shape all winter. Julian held his head up and the phone rang. “Hello,” he said.
“I just tried to get you at the club. Where’d you have lunch?” It was Caroline.
“I didn’t,” he said.
“Well, I don’t suppose you felt much like it. Now listen, Julian, the reason I called is, if you talk the way you did to Mrs. Grady again, we’re through. Do you hear?”
“Yes.”
“I mean it this time. I’m not going to have you take your hangovers out on any servants. Mrs. Grady should have slapped your face.”
“Say!”
“It’s about time someone slapped your face. Now I want you to understand this, old boy. If you come home drunk this afternoon and start raising hell, I’ll simply call up every person we’ve invited and call off the party.”
“You’ll simply, huh?”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, and ended the call.
“She’ll simply,” he said, to the telephone, and gently replaced the handpiece in the cradle. “She’ll simply.” He got up and put on his hat. He stopped and debated, a very short debate, whether to leave a note for Mary Klein. “Naa, who’s Mary Klein?” He struggled into his coat and drove to the Gibbsville Club.
The usual crowd was not in the club this day. “Hello, Straight,” said Julian to the steward.
“Good afternoon, Mr. English. I hope you had a merry Christmas. Uh, we all want to thank you for your, uh, generous, uh, subscription to the club employes’ Christmas fund. Uh.” Old Straight always spoke as though he had just been sniffing ammonia.
“Well, you’re very welcome, I’m sure,” said Julian. “Have a nice Christmas?”
“Quite nice. Of course, uh, well, of course I have no family that you’d, uh, really call a family, uh. My nevview in South Africa, he—”
“Mr. Davis in the club? Who’s here? Never mind. I’ll go look.”
“Not many members here today. The day, uh, day after—”
“I know,” said Julian. He went into the dining-room, and at first glance it appeared that it was occupied solely by Jess, the Negro waiter. But there was a small table in one corner, by common consent or eminent domain, the lawyers’ table, at which sat a few lawyers, all older men and not all of them Gibbsville men, but residents of the smaller towns who came to the county seat when they had to. You did not have to speak to the men at the lawyers’ table. In fact, some of the men who sat there did not speak to each other. Julian had hoped Carter Davis might still be in the club, but there was no sign of him. He sat down at a table for two, and he no sooner had given his order than he was joined by Froggy Ogden.
“Sit down and eat. I just ordered. Jess’ll take your order and serve it with mine if you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” said Froggy.
“Well, then, sit down and take the load off.”
“You’re feeling pretty snotty today,” said Froggy, sitting down.
“Snotty isn’t the word for it. Cigarette?”
“No, thanks. Listen, Julian, I didn’t come here for a friendly chat.”
“Oh, no?”
“No,” said Froggy. You could see he was getting angry.
“Well, then, come on. I’ve been hearing the anvil chorus all day, so you might as well join it. What kind of a fig have you got—”
“Now listen, I’m older than you—”
“Oh, it’s going to be one of those. And you have my best interests at heart? That one? Jesus Christ, you’re not going to give me that.”
“No. I’m not. I’m older than you in more ways than one.”
“What you’re trying to say is you lost your arm in the war. Do you mind if I help you? You lost your arm in the war, and you’ve suffered, and that makes you older than me, and if you had both arms I guess you’d thrash me within an inch of my life.”
Froggy stared at him until they heard the wall clock ticking. “Yes. I have a notion to bust you one right now. You God damn son of a bitch, Caroline is my cousin, and even if she wasn’t my cousin she’s one of the finest girls there is, Caroline is. You want to know something? When she told me she was going to marry you, I tried to stop it. I always hated you. I always hated your guts when you were a kid, and I hate you now. You never were any damn good. You were a slacker in the war—oh, I know how old you were. You could of got in if you’d tried. You were yellow when you were a kid and you grew up yellow. You chased around after that Polish girl till she had to go away or her father would have killed her. Then you put on some kind of an act with Caroline, and God help her, she fell for it. I tried to stop it, but no. She said you had changed. I—”
“You’re a dirty God damn one-arm bastard, and I wish you had that other arm.”
“You—don’t—have to wish it,” said Froggy, and he picked up the glass of water and threw the water in Julian’s face. “Come on outside. I’ll fight you with one arm.” Trembling with rage, Julian stood up, and then he felt weak. He knew he was not afraid; he knew he could not fight Froggy. He still liked him, for one thing; and for another, he could not see himself fighting a man who had only one arm.
“Come on. Anywhere you say,” said Froggy.
Julian wiped the water off his face with a napkin. “I don’t want to fight you.” He wondered, but did not turn his head to ascertain it, whether the men at the lawyers’ table had seen the incident. He heard some children playing in the street and he thought of horrible Saturday mornings at the dentist’s, when he was a kid and horses were being whipped and children were playing in the street and the car to Collieryville would be ringing its bell.
“Come on. Don’t stand there because I only have one arm. I’ll worry about that. Don’t you.”
“Go away. Beat it,” said Julian. “You’re showing off. You know I can’t fight you.”
“Come outside or by Jesus I’ll sock you in here.”
“No, you won’t. I won’t let you sock me in here, hero, and I won’t fight you outside. You think I’d give people the chance to say that about me? You’re crazy. Go on, beat it, General. The war’s over.”
“Yeah? That’s what you think. You’re right. I knew you wouldn’t fight. There isn’t a spark of manhood in you. I knew you wouldn’t fight. There isn’t a spark of manhood left in you, if there ever was one.”
“Run along, cousin. Go on home and count your medals.”
Froggy swung on him and Julian put up his open hand and the punch made a slight smack sound on his wrist, and hurt his wrist.
“Gentlemen!”
“Don’t be a God damn fool,” said Julian.
“Well, then, come on outside.”
“Gentlemen! You know the club rules.” It was Straight. He stood in front of Froggy, with his back toward Froggy, facing Julian. He certainly made it look as though he were protecting Froggy from an attack by Julian. By this time there was no doubt about the lawyers’ being in on the quarrel. They were all watching, and two of them were standing up. Julian heard one of them say something about “see what he did…one arm.” He knew they were doing just what everyone else would do who heard about this: they were taking for granted that he had socked Froggy. One stout man, whom Julian knew only as a lawyer face around the court house and Gibbsville restaurants during court terms, walked over and put his hand on Froggy’s shoulder. “Did he hit you, Captain Ogden?”
“Captain Ogden!” Julian laughed.
“We know all about him up the mountain,” said the stout man.
“Are you by any chance a member of this club?” said Julian.
“A member, and what’s more you never see my name posted,” said the man. “Don’t you worry about me being a member.”
Well, that was all right. It was a slap at Julian, who had been posted two or three times, but it also was a slap at Froggy, Carter, Bobby Herrmann and just about everyone else. It was no distinction to be posted at the Gibbsville Club; it could mean that you had not paid your bill six days after the bill was presented.
“Is this man a member, Straight?” said Julian.
“Oh, yes. Mr. Luck is a member.”
“Luck? Lukashinsky, if I know anything.”
“What’s that got to do with it? This is between me and you,” said Froggy.
“Not any more, it isn’t. No, Captain, it’s between me on the one side, standing here alone, and you and the Polack war veterans and whoremasters on the other side. I’ll stay where I am.”
“Hey, you!” said the lawyer.
“Aw,” said Julian, finally too tired and disgusted with himself and everyone else. He took a step backwards and got into position, and then he let the lawyer have it, full in the mouth. The man fell back and gurgled and reached fingers in his mouth to keep from choking on his bridgework. Another lawyer came over, another Polack whose name Julian never could remember. He had a club soda bottle in his hand.
“Put that down!” said Froggy. “He has a bottle!” He grabbed a bottle himself, and Julian got a water carafe. All through it Straight kept saying Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, and kept out of the way.
“Come on,” said Julian, to the man with the bottle. The man saw the carafe and hesitated. The other lawyers took the bottle away from him without a great struggle. The man could not keep his eyes off Froggy. He could not understand why Froggy had warned Julian.
“Go on out and get a warrant, Stiney,” called the lawyer whom Julian had socked. Julian hit him again, hit him in the hands, which were covering the sore mouth. He hit him again in the ear. Froggy grabbed Julian’s shoulder to pull him away, and Julian pulled up his shoulder so suddenly that it hit Froggy in the chin. The lawyer went down, not to get up for a while, and then Julian rushed Froggy and punched him in the ribs and in the belly and Froggy lost his balance and fell over a chair. Julian picked up the carafe again and hurled it at the man who had come at him with the bottle, and without waiting to see what it did, he ran out of the room, taking his coat and a hat off the hall rack. He hurried to the car.
“Hi, boy.” Someone called to him. Julian had his foot on the starter and he identified the greeter as Whit Hofman. Well, Whit was a son of a bitch, too. Whit probably hated him and had hated him for years, just as Froggy had done. The car jumped out of the snow and Julian drove as fast as he could to the quickest way out of Gibbsville. The worst of that drive was that the sun glare on the snow made you smile before you were ready.
* * *
Your home is the center of many zones. The first zone is your home, the second can be the homes around you, which you know only less well than you do your home. In the second zone you know where the rain-pipes have stained the shingles on the houses, you know where the doorbell button is, how much of a bedpost can be seen in an upstairs window; the length of slack taken up in the porch-swing chains; the crack in the sidewalk; the oil spots from the drip-pans in the driveway; the lump of coal, which you remember from the time it was not swept away, and its metamorphosis from day to day as it is crushed and crushed into smaller lumps and into dust and then all that is left of it is a black blot, and you are glad one day that it has been crushed and it no longer is there to accuse you of worry about your neighbor’s slovenliness. And so on.
The next zone is the homes and buildings you pass every day on your way to work. The tin signs outside little stores, the trees with the bark gnawed away by horses, the rope on the gates and the ancient weights, the places where the street ought to be repaired, the half-second view of the town clock tower between two houses. And so on.
And more zones, zones that the farther you get from the center, the longer spaces there are in the familiar things. In one zone a hundred yards of highway will be familiar, while in another zone the familiar spaces are a matter of inches. In the familiar zones remembering is effortless. An outside zone is where your brain begins to tell you where to make a turn in the road and where to keep going straight and where to blow your horn and where to slow down for a curve. Julian was in an outside zone, southwest of Gibbsville and in the Pennsylvania Dutch farming country, when he first brought himself up. He was first able to perceive that he had been driving, judging by the distance at least a half hour, when he became aware of not having a hat on. He reached over and picked up the hat beside him, but his fingers rejected the dents in the crown, and he examined the hat. The brim did not snap down in front. It was a Stetson, and Julian wore Herbert Johnson hats from Brooks Brothers. But he did not like to see men driving hatless in closed cars; it was too much like the Jews in New York who ride in their town cars with the dome lights lit. He put the hat on the back of his head, and lowered the window at his side. The first breath of air made him want a cigarette almost immediately, and he slowed down to light one from the torch on the dashboard.
The road was his. He wanted to drive on the left side and zigzag like an army transport and idle along at four miles an hour. But one time when he thought the road was his he had done all these things, finally to be arrested for drunken driving by a highway patrolman who had been following him all the while. “You’d think you owned the road,” the patrolman had said; and Julian could not answer that that was exactly what he had been thinking.
So long as the engine did tricks for him he knew he was safe, but when he discovered this about the car, that it was occupying his mind and keeping it off the events of the last hour, two hours, twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours—although it was not forty-eight hours since he had doused Harry Reilly with a highball—the discovery forced his eyes to the clock. And the clock said three-eleven. It was three-eleven back at the garage, and he had to get back to see Lute Fliegler. He slowed down and stopped just beyond a country lane, he backed the car in the lane and then drove out, and the radiator now pointed in the direction of Gibbsville and not away from it. The faster he drove the less he liked the zones he was getting into. He wished he had gone on instead of turning around. To go on until he had spent his money, write a check in Harrisburg, write another in Pittsburgh, until his money was gone; then sell the car, sell it and buy a second-hand Ford, sell his coat, sell his watch, then sell the Ford, then get a job in a lumber camp or something—where he wouldn’t last a minute, not a day. There was something awfully good and lucky for him in being guided out of the club and into the car and away, but something else had pulled him back. You did not really get away from whatever it was he was going back to, and whatever it was, he had to face it. His practical sense told him that the idea of going away, writing checks, selling the car and so on, eventually would catch up to him. He probably would break a law. Oh, more than that. The way things were now at the garage, he had no right to sell this car, nor even to run away. He was to
o tall to run away. He would be spotted.
And so he kept his foot on the accelerator, hurrying back to Gibbsville. The cigarette burned down to his glove—he could not remember putting the gloves on—and made a little stink. He threw the cigarette out and he yawned. Always when he felt sleepy while driving he would light a cigarette and it would revive him, but now he was sleepy and tired and did not want to be revived. Even the little fight in him annoyed him. He did not want to fight and he did not want to be awake.
* * *
You would look at Mrs. Waldo Wallace Walker, dressed in a brown sweater with a narrow leather belt, and a tweed skirt from Mann and Dilks, and Scotch grain shoes with fringed tongues, and a three-cornered hat. You would know her for all the things she was: a woman who served on Republican committees because her late husband had been a Republican, although she always spelt it tarriff. She would be a good bridge player and a woman who knew the first two lines of many songs, who read her way in and out of every new book without being singed, pinched, bumped, or tickled by any line or chapter. Between doing the last thing and the next she would beat her hands together in little claps, rubbing her pure, once pretty fingers together for the warmth she generated in the fingertips, and making you expect her to say something good and wise about life. But what she would say would be: “Oh, fish! I must have my rings cleaned.”
