Pulling up in his ’36 Ford pickup, Clint Stuart automatically registered the sound of the engine, noting that it was not running as smoothly as it should. It needs a new set of valves pretty soon, I guess. He got out and parked the truck in front of Shorty’s Gas Station and Grocery Store. On a bench outside, two older men were sitting, their faces reddened by the cool breeze of September. They wore what was a uniform in their world, faded Toughnut overalls, cumbersome ankle-top shoes, and bill caps that they shoved back on their heads. One of the caps had the Coca Cola logo on it, and another read in faded letters, New York World’s Fair 1939.
“Hello, Ed, Micah!” Clint greeted the pair. He stopped for a moment and grinned at them. “You still arguing about who shot the most possums this year?”
The taller of the two leaned back and said, “He ain’t never gonna catch up with me, Clint!” Then he shifted and said, “You wanna come by and take a look at that Chevy of mine when you get a chance? Billy, down at the garage, said he couldn’t do nothin’ for it.”
“Sure, I’ll take a look.” Clint moved on inside, and the taller of the two said, “That fella can fix anything that’s got parts! Now, about them possums. . . .”
For the next few minutes Clint collected groceries and supplies from the shelves, and while Mel Stottlemeyer totaled them up on a small tablet, he listened as the sound of Jimmy Rogers spilled out of the wooden radio that sat on a shelf nailed to the wall.
I’m a thousand miles away from home
Waiting for a train. . . .
The melancholy of the song seemed to touch Clint, although he did not know why. Lately he had noticed a restlessness in his spirit that was unusual for him. He had always been reaching out to things, studying this and that, had taken every course he could on radios and had even invented a few simple things that never came to much, but still, the sound of the song seemed to touch a strain in him that rose and swelled. Sometimes I wish I were a thousand miles away from home, he thought. Then when Stottlemeyer said, “That’ll be $4.38, Clint,” he snapped out of his reverie, reached into his pocket, and fingered through the bills until he found four ones and made the rest out in change.
“You going to the ball game tonight?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“Don’t guess so. I got some studying to do.”
Stottlemeyer, a thin, wispy, middle-aged man, scratched his head in puzzlement. “You’re always studying, Clint. Ain’t you ever gonna learn enough so you can quit?”
“I hope not, Mel. See you later!”
Moving back outside the store, he put the groceries in the pickup seat, climbed in, started the engine, and pulled away. He drove down Elm Street to where Carol Davidson lived with her father, stopped the truck, then went up on the porch. He turned the brass knob that rang the bell, and when Ralph Davidson came to the door, he said, “Hello, Mr. Davidson, is Carol here?”
“Yes, she’s helping me fix supper. Come on in, Clint.”
Clint followed Davidson to the kitchen and was soon sitting down on a chair, eating odds and ends that were going into the evening meal. Davidson, listening quietly, peeled potatoes as Clint talked of his day. Ralph was only forty-five, but a heart attack several months earlier had almost killed him, and now he moved carefully and spoke in a faint voice. He’d lost his wife when Carol was only six, and Clint understood that Carol was very dependent on her father. Be hard on Carol if Ralph dies, he thought. She still looks to him for everything.
Carol came in, and her eyes lit up at the sight of Clint. She was a small woman of nineteen with rich black hair and large, beautifully shaped eyes. She had a full figure for such a petite girl, and she moved with grace. “You’re early,” she said, coming to stand beside him. She reached up and smoothed his hair, saying, “You need a haircut.”
“Can’t afford it.”
“I’ll cut it after supper.”
“Al Brown charges $1.25. How much do you charge?”
“You can buy me a milkshake at Benton’s after the movie. Now, you go play checkers with Dad while I finish getting supper.”
“He’s beat me too many times,” Ralph said. “I’ll go read the paper.”
As soon as her father was out of the kitchen, Carol pulled Clint’s head down and kissed him, saying, “There, I wanted to do that when I first came in! Daddy sort of puts a damper on things.”
“Don’t talk about your dad like that. I’ve got to learn to please him. If he’s going to be my father-in-law, we’ve got to get along.”
Carol laughed. She was wearing a white apron over a blue, print dress, and her hair was covered by a cloth that she had tied over it. “I just washed my hair and set it before you came. I must look awful.”
“You look good to me!”
For a time, as she prepared the meal, he spoke idly of his day, and finally he said, “Carol, did you hear about Wendy? No, I don’t guess you would have.”
“Wendy, your cousin? What about her?”
Clinton picked up a slice of carrot, bit off an inch of it, and chewed it thoroughly. He shook his head. “Well, you know she was just about engaged to that fella we met last Christmas at the reunion. You remember him?”
“Yes, his name is Alex, isn’t it?”
“Right, Alex Grenville. It’s not very good news, and I got it sort of third hand. Pa got it from Uncle Owen, who got it from Wendy.”
“Did they break up?”
“That’s about it. It sounds like he dumped her. I think he wanted more of her before marriage than she was willing to give.”
Carol was mixing biscuit dough. She stopped suddenly and turned to stare at him. “I’m sorry to hear it. She was so happy. She talked about nothing else but getting married. We had quite a talk after dinner that day, and she was so proud of him.”
“Well, it’s all over, and she did the right thing.”
Carol looked down at her hands and forearms, which were covered with white flour. Picking up the dough, she began to knead it thoughtfully, not thinking of what she was doing. Almost automatically she rolled it and, picking up an empty can, began to cut out circles of dough. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision. “Clint, let’s get married!”
“Why, we’ve talked about that before. We’ve got to wait until I’m better able to take care of you, Carol!”
“I don’t care about that!” There was an urgency, a fervent note in Carol’s voice. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, then came over and took his hand and held it. She pressed it to her cheek and turning her head to one side, she made a most fetching picture. “I don’t want to have to beg you. I hate women who chase men—but I love you, Clint! I want to get married and have you all to myself and start a family.”
They talked for some time, but when they left the house after supper, Clint was disturbed. Nothing had been settled, and as he started up the Ford and they drove to the Elite, his thoughts were on Carol’s face. I love her, he thought. What am I waiting for? But I hate not to be able to take care of her better than I can now. Maybe if I got an extra job. . . .
The marquee of the Elite Theater proclaimed the name of the film in garish yellow lights. Knute Rockne, starring Pat O’Brien and Ronald Reagan. Clint stepped to the box office, put down his dollar, and got two tickets. “Come along,” he said to Carol, “we’re a little bit late.” He led her inside the theater, and the young man who took tickets grinned and said, “Picture just started, Clint; you better hurry!”
Clint took Carol’s arm, and they made their way out of the lobby and groped in the darkness until they found two seats. He allowed her to go in first, then sat beside her on the aisle.
For the next ninety minutes, they sat engrossed in the story of the great Notre Dame coach and his star football player, George Gipp. The movie revolved around an incident in the life of Gipp, who contracted a fatal disease. On his deathbed, he reached up and gasped, “Sometimes, Coach, when the team’s not doing good, tell them to win one for the Gipper.”
Then later in the film, at a critical moment when the t
eam was losing, the iron, square-faced Pat O’Brien, portraying Rockne, put out this challenge to the team. The Fighting Irish did go out and win one for the Gipper.
Clint and Carol left the theater and made their way down to Benton’s Ice Cream Parlor, where Clint had a chocolate sundae, which he consumed noisily, and Carol ate a strawberry sundae a little bit more delicately. They talked about the movie and finally left in the Ford pickup. When they got to her house, he shut the engine off, and she waited for him to get out, but he sat twisting the wheel nervously. “I’ve got something to tell you, Carol.”
Noting the seriousness in his voice, Carol asked, “What is it?”
“I got my notice today—my draft notice.”
For one moment, Carol could not understand what he meant. No men in their area had actually been drafted yet, although she understood that the numbers had been drawn back in October. “Oh, no!” she finally whispered wanly and took his arm. “You’re not going into the army!”
“No choice about it,” Clint shrugged. “I got to do it; it’s the law!”
“When do you have to go?”
“In a month or five weeks, I guess.”
The harvest moon was large and orange, and they watched it through the glass of the pickup. November had turned cold, and the cab cooled off quickly. Carol finally took a deep breath. “Clint, let’s get married!”
Clint had known she would say this. He had his arguments ready and began at once. “It would be no life for you. I’ll be going to basic training and I couldn’t be with you then. Even after I’m out of that, if you did get to come to me, it would just be to some fleabag of a hotel. . . .”
But the more he spoke, the more Carol pleaded. Finally, she put her arms around him and drew his head down and kissed him. She was crying as she said, “I can’t live without you, Clint! Please, let’s get married! We’ll have each other for whatever time there is. I don’t care where we have to live as long as I have you!”
Clint had purposed to deny what he knew she would ask, but as he held her soft form in his arms and heard her pleas and tasted the salt of her tears as he kissed her cheek, he changed his mind. “All right,” he whispered quietly. “I love you so much, Carol, and I shouldn’t let you do this—but I’m just selfish, I guess.”
“We’re not selfish!” Carol kissed him again and clung to him fiercely. “We’ll have each other, and nothing else matters. . . .”
From that moment on, things moved rapidly. No one seemed very surprised when Clint and Carol agreed to marry. They had a wedding in the small church with Reverend Crabtree performing the ceremony. They had a weeklong honeymoon at Petit Jean Mountain with nothing really there but a lodge. They went horseback riding and rode in a canoe. The nights were theirs, and both of them were almost able to forget what would happen soon.
When they returned from their honeymoon, they lived at her house. “I’d rather we had a place of our own,” Clint said, “but I’ll be gone soon, and you need to take care of your dad.”
Carol moved to hold him and whispered, “I’ll miss you so much, but I’ll be here when you get back.”
Clint held her close, stroked her hair, and said nothing. There was nothing to say, for the war in Europe had reached out with a mailed fist and struck his life, shattering it, breaking it, but not, he hoped, beyond repair. This will be over one day, he thought. I’ll serve my time, then I’ll come back and Carol and I will have a family. We can have a real marriage then. He turned to her and held her close, putting this idea firmly in his mind as she leaned against him.
MAN WITHOUT A STAR
As Adam Stuart paused in front of the UCLA administration building, a sense of something close to fear seized him. He was not afraid of many things, owing partly to the fact that he had been raised in affluence. As the son of the owners of Monarch Motion Pictures Studios, he had been accustomed to having not only what he required but, for the most part, anything he wanted. He had made his way through the public school system of Los Angeles without great difficulty, not that he studied hard, but this had not been necessary. He had a brilliance that carried him through with a minimum of studying. As a matter of fact, he had never taken a book home throughout all his years of high school.
As he looked at the rising edifice of concrete, steel, and reflective tiles, the blank windows that gave back the rays of the early morning sun seemed to have a malevolence about them. The moment he had opened his mailbox and read the note that stated unemotionally, “Report to the office of Dr. Zimmerman immediately,” he knew that trouble was brewing. He had the impulse to turn and leave, pack his things, and get away from the campus, but some faint hope stirred in him, and he mounted the steps and entered the building, his chin held high.
A young woman sat at the outer desk, which contained absolutely nothing on its surface except a telephone with an intercom and a single book. The woman herself was rather plain and wore a dress that looked as if it had not come from an expensive shop. She had mousy brown hair and a prim mouth, but admiration was in her brown eyes as she looked at the trim form of the young man who stood before her. He was wearing a pair of gray flannel slacks and a royal blue sweater over a white shirt. The royal blue set off the electric, light blue eyes that he put on her, and her heart missed a beat as she said, “Yes, may I help you?”
“I have a notice to meet with Dr. Zimmerman. My name is Adam Stuart.”
“Yes, I’ll see if Dr. Zimmerman will see you.” The young woman pressed a button and said, “Dr. Zimmerman, Adam Stuart is here to see you.”
“Send him in!”
Adam gave the girl a smile, which caused her heart to turn over, more or less, then he moved toward the door to his left. His mind was racing as he tried to summon his arguments. Adam had been able to talk himself out of most of his problems, including many traffic tickets and various problems with the administration of his high school. Those he could not talk himself out of were usually solved by his mother or his father.
As soon as he entered, his eyes swept the room quickly, taking in the austerity of it all. Each side of the room was lined with bookshelves, and the books matched in color and size. It was almost as if they were imitation books chosen to match the decor of the office. Exactly in the center of the room, set back toward a large window that allowed the pale yellow sunlight to filter through, a metal desk with a glass top caught those reflections, spread them out, and blinded him for a moment. On each side of the room were two chairs that matched, and one chair of the same design, of brown leather, sat in front of the desk. There were two pictures on the wall. One was a painting of a strong-faced woman dressed in a costume that was obviously foreign and out of date. The other was a reproduction of the self-portrait of Rembrandt. It was a strange combination of art, and Adam wondered fleetingly why those two pictures adorned the walls. He turned his attention then to Dr. Zimmerman, who sat silently watching him.
Dr. Karl Zimmerman was a second-generation American who had been educated in Austria. He was a slight man, not tall, but of such an erect posture that there was something faintly military in his appearance. He had light blonde hair, and his blue eyes were as light as Adam Stuart’s. He was close-shaven, and his fair hair was fixed firmly in place, not a hair out of position. He held his hands placed flat on the table, as if preparing to stand, but he did not.
“Mr. Stuart?”
“Yes, Dr. Zimmerman, I’m Adam Stuart.”
“Sit down, Mr. Stuart.”
Adam slipped into the seat in front of him. It was lower than the seat that Zimmerman sat in, which gave the dean the higher ground. Adam knew that Zimmerman had arranged it like this to give himself an advantage, and he vaguely resented this. Looking across at the dean, he remembered stories about how tough the man was, and what little hope he had brought with him seemed to evaporate as he stared into the icy blue eyes of the official.
He looks like a hanging judge, Adam thought. And if what I’ve heard about him is true, I don’t have any more chance t
han a snowball in a desert.
The rumors about Zimmerman all portrayed him as a man who was fair enough but absolutely without mercy. He would look at the grades on the paper and close his mind to every human consideration. Little was known about his background, but his German heritage was known, and with the rise of Hitler this had given him the nickname Professor Hitler. Zimmerman, if he heard these rumors, never spoke of them, nor did he ever allow them to intimidate him.
“I have your records, Mr. Stuart.” Zimmerman pulled a folder out of a file to his right, opened it, and stared at it for a moment. “It is a very poor record, I regret to say.”
What am I supposed to say to that? Adam thought. But with the dean staring right at his past, as it was reduced to ink on paper, he could only say, “Yes, Sir, that’s right.”
Zimmerman had expected more of a defense than this. He lifted his head slightly and studied the young man before him, taking in the fair hair, the light, icy blue eyes, and the determination. He was looking for a weakness, which was his custom. But in the features of Adam Stuart, he saw none.
“I have the results of your IQ tests. There’s nothing wrong with your mind,” Zimmerman said. “Therefore the fault has to lie with your character.”
Once again there was a pause and Adam felt obliged to say, “I’m afraid you may be right, Doctor.” He had decided to stay humble, at least while there was a chance that he might escape the wrath of the dean’s office. “I haven’t given my best efforts to my work, I’m afraid.”
“And why is that, Mr. Stuart?”
“I—” Suddenly Adam found himself unable to formulate an answer. The cold eyes of Zimmerman bored into him, and he could not meet them despite his intentions. He dropped his own eyes and shifted nervously in the chair. Why didn’t I study more? he demanded desperately of himself. He had come to college determined to do better than he had in high school, but he had found himself instantly diverted by several factors. His own good looks had drawn the beautiful young women of UCLA to him without effort on his part. His intelligence, he had assumed, would allow him to get by without studying—which had proved to be a fallacy. And in truth, emotionally he was so disturbed about the war in Europe that although he never spoke of it, he had not been able to put his mind on his studies. He had gone out for the track team, and the coach had been wildly excited, for he was an excellent runner, but poor grades had eliminated him from that outlet.
Winds of Change Page 7
