In between these high-level discussions, we ran out of our planes when the siren shrieked and went up and came down again, then sent our drawers to the little black Fuzzies who did our laundry so that we would be ready for the next flight. There is something very unaesthetic about dying in stained underwear. Almost un-American you might say.
I made it to Lieutenant Colonel the hard way. My flight commander was shot out of the sky in front of me and I was moved up into his place. I remember what I thought when they swapped my gold oak leaves for silver. Like everybody dies, now it’s my turn.
But I’d been lucky. I still remember the surprise I’d felt at the sudden needle-like pain lacing up my back. The instrument panel disintegrated before my eyes as the Jap Zero spun out over my head and into the water, while I tried to get away from the one beneath me. I don’t know how I made it back to the airstrip. I seemed to be floating in a sea of jelly, and then the plane hit the ground and rolled over. Somewhere in the distance I heard someone yelling and felt hands pulling at me. They were warm hands, comforting hands, even though they were trying to take me away from the beautiful heat that surrounded me.
I closed my eyes and gave myself up to them. It was about time I got to that jungle I’d read so much about. I smiled to myself.
This was more like it. I was lying on the beach at Bali Bali and a thousand bare-breasted beauties all looking like Dorothy Lamour were parading up and down and the only problem I had was to decide which one of them I would choose for that evening.
This was one dream I would never give up. MacArthur would just have to learn to get along without me.
I was shipped back stateside as soon as I was well enough to travel.
5
__________________________________________
I didn’t learn that Nora had won the Eliofheim Award until the second week in July, and then only when I happened to see her picture on the cover of Life.
Since February, when I’d been hit, I’d put in five weeks in a hospital in New Guinea, then seven more in the Veterans’ at San Diego, after which I’d been discharged as good as new. I had a thirty-day leave coming before returning for reassignment, so I went back to La Jolla, renting a small boat on which I could eat and sleep and begin to soak up a little sun.
I’d been dozing on a deck chair when the thud of a bundle hitting the deck woke me. I opened my eyes to see a boy standing at the edge of the dock grinning at me. I made it a point not to read the daily papers. I’d had enough of the war. But I had asked the newsstand to drop off a few magazines every week.
I stuck my hand in my pocket and spun a half-dollar in the air. He caught it with all the grace of Joe DiMaggio pulling down a high fly ball.
I leaned over and picked up the bundle and pulled the string that held it together. The magazines slid to the floor and I picked up the first one that my hands touched.
I stared at the picture of the oddly familiar-looking dark-haired girl on the cover, and I remember thinking how nice it was that they’d finally gotten off the war kick. Then I realized why the girl seemed so familiar.
It was there in small white block letters: NORA HAYDEN—WINNER OF THE ELIOFHEIM FOUNDATION AWARD FOR SCULPTURE.
I looked at the picture again and the old itch came back. The luminous dark eyes, the oddly sensual mouth over the proud, almost haughty, chin. It was like yesterday, though it had been almost a year since I’d seen her.
I opened the magazine. There were more pictures inside. Nora working in the small studio out in back of her mother’s house. Nora smoking, while sketching out an idea. Nora sitting at a window, her face silhouetted by the light behind her. Or stretched out on the floor, listening to a record player. I began to read.
The slim Miss Hayden, who looks more like a model than an artist, leaves no doubt in your mind where she stands in regard to her work.
“Sculpture is the one true life form in art,” she maintains. “It is three-dimensional. You can walk around it, see it from any angle, touch it, feel it as you would any living thing. It has shape, form and reality and it exists in life all around you. You can see it in any stone, in the flowing grain of every piece of wood, in the tensile, yielding strength of every strip of metal.
“It remains only for the artist to bring forth this buried vision from the raw material, to fuse it into shape, to breathe it into life …”
I could hear her voice echoing in my ear.
I turned back to the cover of the magazine and studied her picture. That did it. I dropped the magazine to the deck and got to my feet. So I changed my mind. What difference did it make if it was a year later?
I stood in the cramped, narrow telephone booth at the foot of the dock, hearing the phone ring at the other end of the line in San Francisco. Her mother answered.
“This is Luke Carey,” I said. “Remember me?”
The old lady’s voice was clear and firm. “Of course I do, Colonel. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Mrs. Hayden. And you?”
“I have never been ill a day in my life,” she answered. “I read about you in the papers. That was a very brave thing you did.”
“The newspapers made too much of it. I really had no choice. There was nothing else I could do.”
“I’m sure there was more to it than that. But we can discuss that at another time.” I could hear her voice soften. “I’m sorry that Nora isn’t here. I know that she will be disappointed.”
“Oh,” I said. “And I did so want to congratulate her on winning the Eliofheim Award.”
“That’s why she went away. The poor child hasn’t had a moment’s rest since the announcement was made. I insisted that she go down to La Jolla to get away from it.”
“Did you say La Jolla?”
“Yes.” A sudden awareness came into her voice. “Where are you calling from?”
“La Jolla. I’m spending my leave down here.”
“Isn’t that a fortunate coincidence, Colonel? Of course, now I do remember seeing something in the papers about your being there. Nora’s at the Sand and Surf Club.”
“I’ll call her,” I said.
“If you can’t reach her, Colonel, get in touch with Sam Corwin. He’ll know where to find her.”
“Sam Corwin?”
“Yes,” she said. “You remember him. The newspaperman friend of Professor Bell’s. He’s taken over the management of my daughter’s affairs. The poor child has no head for business.”
The old lady’s voice changed again. “I do hope we won’t have to wait another year to see you, Colonel. I still feel we have something to discuss. It seems to me that Hayden and Carruthers would be an excellent place for you to resume your career.”
“Thank you for thinking of me, Mrs. Hayden. We’ll talk about it real soon.”
“You’re welcome, young man. Goodbye.”
The phone clicked and I hesitated a moment before putting in another nickel. This time Corwin answered.
“Is Miss Hayden there?” I asked.
“Who’s calling?”
“Luke Carey.”
It seemed to me that his voice grew friendlier. “Colonel Carey?”
“Yes.”
“Just a moment, please. I’ll see if I can find her.”
I held onto the telephone a moment, then I heard her voice.
“Colonel Carey. This is a surprise. How did you know where to reach me?”
I laughed. “Your mother told me. I thought we might meet for a drink.”
“Are you in La Jolla?”
“About three miles from where you are,” I said. “How about it?”
“I’d love to. But Aaron Scaasi, my agent, is due in from New York any minute now. We have a cocktail thing set up for the press at five o’clock.”
I waited for her to suggest another time but she didn’t. Fair enough. I thought, she had no reason to. I hadn’t exactly been the politest the last time we’d seen each other.
“I’ll try again,” I said.
&nbs
p; “Please do,” she said politely and hung up.
I squinted up at the sky as I moved off down the dock. It was a good sky. Blue, like in the postcards, with a few high-running clouds. The sun was nice and warm; later it would get hot and heavy, but by then I wouldn’t care—I’d be out on the water.
That was the end of it, I thought. But, then, I didn’t know what Sam told her after I hung up the phone.
“You weren’t very cordial,” Sam said as she put down the telephone.
“Damn. A whole year. Who does he think he is?”
Sam walked back to her sketchpad and looked down at it. The sketch was of a young man about to dive. He was nude. Sam knew the face. It was the high school boy who worked as a lifeguard at the club.
“He’s not one of these kids,” he said drily.
“That has all the earmarks of a crack. Do you have any objections?”
“Not personally,” he answered. “I don’t give a damn whom you go to bed with. But when it becomes public knowledge it affects our business.”
Her voice grew cold. “Where did you hear about it?”
“It’s the big noise down on Muscle Beach. You’re too much for the kid to keep to himself. He’s been filling in his buddies, blow by blow. The kid left nothing out.”
Angrily she tore the sketch from the pad and crumbled it. “The little bastard!”
“I told you to be discreet,” he said patiently.
“What am I supposed to do?” she demanded, throwing the crumpled paper on the floor. “Become a nun?”
Automatically he picked the wad of paper off the floor and threw it into the wastebasket. He dug his pipe out of his pocket.
“I wish you’d get rid of that damned pipe! I can’t stand its stink.”
Silently he put it back in his pocket and started for the door. She stopped him. “Sam.” Her anger had left her and suddenly she seemed young and helpless. “Sam, what do you think I ought to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “But I’d start by leaving these kids alone.”
“I will, Sam,” she said quickly.
“And another thing,” he added. “It wouldn’t hurt if you were seen with someone like your soldier boy who just called. It might help drown out the gossip.”
When I got back, the ancient watchman seated on the bench in front of the dock office waved a tired hand at me. “Hi, kunnel.”
“Hi.”
“Hear tell they seen some marlin off’n Coronado. Might pay yuh to give it a look-see.”
“Might do that,” I said, giving him his daily bread.
He slipped the half-dollar into his pocket. “Thanks, kunnel.” He squinted up at me with his watery eyes. “By the way, they’s some gal out to your boat. I told her you was about due back from lunch.”
I went down towards my boat. Nora must have heard my footsteps because she was standing on the deck when I came up. She was wearing a pair of blue polka-dot shorts and a halter, and she looked like a kid with her black hair tied behind in a ponytail.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.”
Her eyes crinkled against the sun. “It’s my turn to apologize, Colonel.”
I studied her for a moment, then I jumped down to the deck beside her. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here for that, Nora.”
She put her hand on my arm. It was warm on my flesh. “But I wanted to, Colonel. I wanted you to know I was sorry.”
She was so close I could smell the fragrance in her hair. It was good and clean and fresh—like the pines up in the hills, and all the makeup she wore was a faint shade of lipstick. I looked down into her eyes. It seemed like forever. Then I kissed her.
Her mouth was warm and sweet and her teeth were hard and sharp behind her soft lips. I felt her arm around my neck and the press of her body against mine. I dropped my hand to her waist and I could almost count every rib on the way down. It was the way I knew it would be between us.
I let her go as suddenly after I’d kissed her again, and reached for a cigarette. I spun the wheel of my Zippo but I couldn’t get the damn thing to work. “Look, I’m shaking.”
“I’m shaking, too,” she said softly.
I took a drag on the cigarette I’d finally managed to get lit and then gave it to her.
She took one puff from it, then turned. “I wanted you to kiss me that very first time.”
“I wanted to,” I said.
“Then why didn’t you?” Her eyes were like the shadows in the water between the boat and the dock. “You knew I was ready.”
I turned away. “I thought you were—for somebody else.”
“Did it matter that much even then?”
“It did to me,” I said. “You took a long time making the scene. I wanted everything to be right between us.”
“You weren’t exactly the early bird yourself.”
“No.”
“Does it matter now?”
I took her into my arms again. “Nothing matters now.”
Then the tears were in her eyes and wet against my cheeks. “Oh, Luke, Luke!”
I know what has been said about a woman’s tears but I don’t buy any of it. It’s the greatest sop to a man’s ego ever invented. I felt ten feet tall as I kissed her tears away. I never did get out to see if the marlin were really off Coronado that afternoon. Instead I climbed into my uniform for the first time since I’d come down here and trotted along after her to her press conference.
I was glad when it was almost over. I was deadly. The reporters were all over us the minute they saw us together.
They made us pose for pictures. They asked questions. Were we engaged? When were we getting married? How had we met? Was she going to Washington with me for the citation? Did I come down here to be near her or was it the other way around?
After a while they got tired of asking questions for which we had no answers, and the party got down to the business for which it had been organized. That was to listen to Aaron Scaasi expound on why he thought Nora was the greatest thing to happen to American sculpture since the totem pole.
I must say he was convincing. He even sold me. He was a bald, thickset man who looked more like an ex-pug than one of the most prominent art dealers in the country. He kept mopping at his head with a baby-blue handkerchief. Nora looked like a little child sitting there on the couch beside him.
Sam Corwin wandered over and sat down. “He knows what he’s talking about,” he said, nodding toward Scaasi. “She’s really very good.”
I looked at Sam. He was a thin, almost delicate-looking man, whose appearance might fool you if you didn’t notice the firm mouth and decisive chin. Inside, this lad was as hard as nails. “I believe him,” I said, wondering just how deep Corwin’s interest in Nora went.
It was as if he knew what I was thinking. “I’ve known Nora ever since she was in school. I always had faith in her, and I was very happy when she and her mother suggested I take charge of her affairs.”
He studied me with his dark eyes. “I owe you a vote of thanks.”
“Oh?” I said.
He nodded. “For coming to the party. Nora was very upset after she spoke to you and was all set to call it off if she couldn’t find you to apologize. She’s very emotional, almost like a child about things like that.”
The party was beginning to break up and Corwin went off to exchange some final words with the newspapermen. Maybe the bourbon was dulling my senses, but I had the feeling that there had been more that he wanted to tell me.
Scaasi and Nora came over then and I found myself resenting the way he let his hand rest familiarly on her shoulder. “Perhaps you’d join us for dinner?”
I hesitated a moment, looking at Nora, then made up my mind. “No, thanks. You people have business to talk over and I don’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be intruding,” Nora said quickly. I saw the disappointment in her eyes.
For a moment I almost changed my mind. Then I thought
better of it. I smiled, making my excuse. “I promised myself a crack at some marlin. I think I’ll take the boat out tonight and lay up off Coronado. That way I’ll be ready for them when the sun comes up.”
“What time will you be back tomorrow?” she asked.
“Late.”
“Then I won’t see you. I’m due back in San Francisco the next morning.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Sam called to Scaasi and they left us alone. “Are you going to call me?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“No, you’re not,” she said after a moment. “I know you won’t. It will be just like the last time. You’ll go back and I won’t ever hear from you. I’ll know nothing about you except what I read in the newspapers.”
“Don’t be silly. I said I’d call you.”
“When?”
“First time I’m in San Francisco.”
“That might be never,” she said gloomily.
I took her hand. It seemed warm, soft and helpless. “I’ll call you. I promise.”
She looked at me strangely. “What if something happens to you? How will I know?”
“Nothing will happen to me. I’m convinced now. You know the old saying about being born to be hanged?”
The last of the reporters filed out. It was time to go. I shook hands all around.
“I’ll walk to the door with you,” Nora said.
We walked out into the patio. It was already dark and a thousand tiny stars were lighting up the night. I closed the door behind us. “I thought you didn’t like goodbyes,” I said. I knew I could have kissed her but I chose not to. If I had I never would have gone.
I think she knew it too. “This isn’t goodbye,” she whispered, her hand touching mine briefly. The door closed behind her and I went down to the cab.
Where Love Has Gone (1962) Page 7
