3. deo

The Inverted Forest


On monday evening, May 10, 1937, Mr. and Mrs. Ford--who had been  married three weeks to the day--met Miss Croft outside the Alvin Theater and the three went inside together to attend the performance of "Hiya, Broadway Hiya." After the theater the three went to the bar of the Weylin Hotel, where, just after the midnight performance of some singers known as The Rancheros, Mr. Ford leaned across the table and in a very cordial manner invited Miss Croft to attend his lecture at the institute the following morning. Mrs. Ford impulsively reached forward and pressed her husband's hand. The three people remained at the Weylin bar until approximately one A.M., speaking together in a most friendly manner and watching the entertainment. Mr. and Mrs. Ford dropped Miss Croft off at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at approximately one ten A.M. Emotionally, almost at the point of tears, Miss Croft thanked Mr. and Mrs. Ford for "the loveliest evening of my life."
   Mrs. Ford held her husband's hand as the taxi continued on its way to their apartment house. Mr. Ford remarked, as they ascended in the elevator to their apartment, that he had a splitting headache. Once they were inside their apartment Mrs. Ford insisted that Mr. Ford take two aspirins one for being the "best boy in the world" and one to make him eligible to kiss his wife.
   On Tuesday morning, May eleventh, Miss Croft attended Mr. Ford's eleveno'clock lecture, sitting in the rearmost seat in the lecture hall. She then accompanied Mr. Ford to lunch at a Chinesetype restaurant located three blocks south of the university. Mr. Ford quietly mentioned this fact to Mrs. Ford at dinner. Mrs. Ford asked Mr. Ford which table he and Miss Croft had sat at. Mr. Ford said he didn't remember: near the door, he believed. Mrs. Ford asked Mr. Ford what he and Miss Croft had talked about at lunch. Mr. Ford replied quietly that he was sorry, but that he really hadn't brought along a dictagraph for lunch.
   After dinner Mrs. Ford informed her husband that she was going to take the dog for a walk. She asked Mr. Ford if he would like to join her, but he declined, saying he had a great deal of work to look over.
   When Mrs. Ford returned to the apartment two hours later--from a walk up Park Avenue almost as far as the Spanish Quarter--the lights were out both in Mr. Ford's study and in his bedroom.
   Mrs. Ford sat alone in the living room until shortly after two A.M., at which time she heard Mr. Ford screaming in his bedroom. She then burst into Mr. Ford's bedroom, where she found Mr. Ford apparently asleep in his bed. He continued to scream although Mrs. Ford shook him as violently as she was
able. His pajamas and sheets were wringing wet with perspiration.
   When Mr. Ford came to, he reached at once for his glasses on the night table. Even with his glasses on he seemed unable for several seconds to recognize his wife, although Mrs. Ford frantically continued to identify herself. At last, staring at her evenly, he spoke her name; but with great difficulty, like a man physically and emotionally exhausted.
   Mrs. Ford, stammering badly, told Mr. Ford that she was going to get him acup of hot milk. She then moved unsteadily out to the kitchen, poured some milk into a pot, searched rather wildly for the Magic Ignition Light, finally found it. She heated the milk and returned with a cup of it to her husband's room. Mr. Ford was now asleep again, with his hands clenched at his sides. Mrs. Ford set the cup of milk on the night table and climbed into bed beside Mr. Ford. She lay awake the rest of the night. Mr. Ford did not scream again in his sleep, but between the hours of four and five A.M., for nearly three quarters of an hour, he wept. Mrs. Ford maneuvered her whole body as close as possible to Mr. Ford's, but there seemed to be no way of relieving him of his sorrow or even of reaching it.
   Wednesday morning, May twelfth, at breakfast, Mrs. Ford casually (so she thought) asked Mr. Ford what he had dreamed during the night. Mr. Ford
looked up from his dry corn flakes and replied unelaborately that last night he had dreamed his first "unpleasant dream" in a long time. Mrs Ford asked him again what he had dreamed. Mr. Ford replied quietly that nightmares are nightmares and that he could get along without a Freudian analysis. Mrs. Ford said equally quietly (so she thought) that she didn't want to give Mr. Ford a Freudian analysis even were she qualified to do so. She said she was merely Mr. Ford's wife and that she wanted to make Mr. Ford happy. She began to cry Mr. Ford placed his face between his hands, but after a moment he stood up and left the room. Mrs. Ford rushed after him and found him standing in the outer hall, holding his brief case, but without his hat. He was waiting for the elevator. Mrs. Ford asked Mr. Ford whether he loved her. But at that instant the elevator doors opened, and Mr. Ford, entering the car without his hat, said he would see Mrs. Ford at dinner.

MRS. FORD dressed and went to her office. Her behavior at the magazine offices, that Wednesday afternoon, might be called "erratic." She was observed to slap the face of Mr. Robert Waner when the latter lightly addressed her at an editors' meeting, as "Mary Sunshine." After said act Mrs. Ford apologized to Mr. Waner, but did not accept his invitation to accompany him to Maxie's Bar for a drink.
   At seven P.M. Mr. Ford telephoned his apartment and told Mrs. Ford that he would not be home to dine as he was obliged to attend a faculty meeting at  the university.
   Mr. Ford did not come home until eleven fifteen P.M., at which time Mrs. Ford, who was out walking her wirehaired terrier, encountered him on the street. Mr. Ford objected when the dog attempted to greet him by jumping on his person. Mrs. Ford pointed out that Mr. Ford ought to be flattered that Malcolm (the dog) had learned to love him so much in such a short time. Mr. Ford said he could get along without having Malcolm jump all over him with his filthy paws. They then went up in the elevator together. Mr. Ford remarked that he had a great deal of work to look over and went into his study. Mrs. Ford went into her own room and closed the door.
   At breakfast Thursday morning, May thirteenth, Mrs. Ford remarked to her husband that she wished she hadn't made a theater date with the little Croft girl for that night. Mrs. Ford said she was tired and didn't care to see the play a second time, but that Miss Croft ought to see Bankhead if she had never seen her, Mr. Ford nodded. Then Mrs. Ford asked him if by chance he had seen Bunny Croft again. Mr. Ford asked, in reply, how in the world could he possibly have seen Miss Croft. Mrs. Ford said she didn't know, she said she just thought Miss Croft might have attended his lecture again. Mr. Ford finished his breakfast, kissed Mrs. Ford good-by and left.
   Thursday evening Mrs. Ford waited outside the Morosco Theater until eighty fifty P.M., at which time she went to the box office, left a ticket in Miss
Croft's name and entered the theater alone.
   At the end of the first act of the play she went directly home, arriving there at approximately nine forty P.M. She learned at the door from Rita, the maid, that Mr. Ford had not yet come home from his Thursday-evening class and that his dinner was getting "ice-cold." She instructed Rita to clear the table.
   Mrs. Ford stayed in a hot bath until she felt a little faint. Then she dressed herself for the street, leashed Malcolm and took him out for a walk.
   Mrs. Ford and Malcolm walked five blocks north and one block west, and enbred a popular restaurant. Mrs. Ford left Malcolm in the checkroom, then she sat down at the bar and, in the course of an hour, drank three Scotch old-fashioneds. Then she and the dog returned to the apartment, arriving there at approximately eleven forty-five P.M. Mr. Ford still had not arrived home.
   Mrs. Ford immediately left her apartment again--leaving Malcolm behind.
   She went down in the elevator and the apartment house doorman got her a taxi. She ordered the driver to stop at Fortysecond Street and Broadway. There she got out of the taxi and proceeded west on foot. She entered the De Luxe Theater, an all-night movie house, and stayed there throughout one complete performance, seeing two full-length films, four short subjects and a newsreel.
   She then left the De Luxe Theater and went by taxi directly home, arriving there at three forty A.M. Mr. Ford still had not arrived home.
   Mrs. Ford immediately went down in the elevator again with Malcolm.
   At approximately four A.M., having twice walked completely around the block, Mrs. Ford encountered Mr. Ford under the canopy of their apartment house as he was getting out of a taxi. He was wearing a new hat. Mrs. Ford said hello to Mr. Ford and asked him where did he get the hat. Mr. Ford did not seem to hear the question.
   As Mr. and Mrs. Ford ascended in the elevator together, Mrs. Ford's knees suddenly buckled. Mr. Ford tried to draw Mrs. Ford up to a normal standing position, but his attempt was strangely incompetent, and it was the
elevator operator who lent Mrs. Ford real assistance.
   Mr. Ford seemed to have great difficulty inserting his key into the lock
of his apartment door. He suddenly turned and asked Mrs. Ford if she thought he was drunk. Somewhat inarticulately, Mrs. Ford replied that she did think Mr. Ford had been drinking. Mr. Ford asked her to speak more distinctly. Mrs. Ford said again that she thought Mr. Ford had been drinking. Mr. Ford, successfully unlocking his front door, stated in a loud voice that he had eaten an olive from "her" Martini. Mrs. Ford, trembling, asked from whose Martini. "From her Martini," Mr. Ford repeated.
   As the two entered their apartment together, Mrs. Ford, still trembling,
asked her husband whether he knew that Miss Croft had left her standing at
the Morosco Theater. Mr. Ford's reply was unintelligible. He walked, swaying perceptibly, toward his bedroom.
   At approximately five A.M. Mrs. Ford heard Mr. Ford get out of his bed and, apparently ill, go into his bathroom.
   With the use of sedatives Mrs. Ford fell asleep, at approximately seven A.M.
   She awoke at approximately eleven ten A.M., at which time she rang for her maid, who informed her that Mr. Ford had left the apartment more than an hour ago.
   Mrs. Ford immediately dressed and without eating breakfast went by taxi to her office.
   At approximately one ten P.M. Mr. Ford telephoned Mrs. Ford at her office to say that he was at Pennsylvania Station and that he was leaving New York with Miss Croft. He said that he was very sorry and then hung up.   Mrs. Ford carefully replaced her phone and then fainted, loosening one of her front teeth against a filing cabinet.
   As she was alone in her office and no one had heard her fall she remained unconscious for several minutes.
   She regained consciousness by herself. She then drank a quarter of a glass of brandy and went home.
   At home she found Mr. Ford's bedroom and closets completely empty of his few personal effects. She then rushed into Mr. Ford's study--followed by Rita, the maid, who explained rather laconically that Mr. Ford himself had pushed the desk back against the wall. Mrs. Ford looked slowly around the freshly reconverted playroom, then again fainted.

ON May twenty-third--another Sunday --Rita, the maid, rapped imperiously on the door of Corinne's bedroom. Corinne told her to come in.
   It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. Corinne was lying on her  bed, fully dressed. Her window blinds were drawn down. She knew, vaguely, that she was a fool not to let the sunshine into the room. but in nine days she  had grown to hate the sight of it.
   "I can't hear you," she said, without turning over to face Rita's unattractive voice.
   "I said, Chick the doorman's on the house-phone," Rita said. "He says there's a gentleman in the lobby wansta see you."
   "I don't want to see anybody, Rita. Find out who it is."
   "Yes, ma'am." Rita went out and came in again. "You know a Miss Craft or somebody?" she demanded.
   Corinne's body jumped under the bedspread she had drawn over her. "Tell whoever it is to come up."
   "Now?"
   "Yes, Rita. Now." Corinne stood up unsteadily. "And will you please   how him into the living room?"
   "I was just gonna clean in there. I haven't cleaned in there yet."
   "Show him into the living room, Rita, please."
   Rita walked sullenly out of the room.
   As people do who have chosen to live in a supine position, once she  as on her feet Corinne went into action a little crazily. It seemed of prime importance to her to take out from under her night table Ford's two books of poems and walk up and down the room with them for a little while.
   She suddenly replaced the books under her night table. Then she combed her hair and Put on lipstick. Her dress was badly wrinkled, but she didn't change it.
   As she walked carefully into the living room, a man with wavy blond hair stood up. The man was in his early thirties, with a physique that was turning fat, but which had a look of tremendous animal power. He was wearing a pale green sports coat and a yellow polo shirt open at the collar. Several inches of white handkerchief drooped out of his breast pocket.
   "Mrs. Ford?"
   "Yes . . ."
   "My card." He pushed something into Corinne's hand.
   Corinne slanted the card toward the daylight:
   I'M HOWIE CROFT
   Who the Hell    are you, Bud?
   She started to return the card, but Mr. Howie Croft sank away from  her into the upholstery of the couch, waving a hand. "Keep it," he said generously.
   Framing the card in her hand, Corinne herself sat down in the red damask chair opposite her visitor.
   She asked a little stiffly, "Are you closely related to Miss Croft?"
   "Are you kidding?"
   Corinne's reply was delivered down her handsome nose: "Mr. Croft, I'm not especially in the habit of---"
   "Look, hey. I'm Howie Croft. I'm Bunny's husband."
   Impressed, Corinne immediately fainted.
   When she came to. she had the choice of looking into either or both of the alarmed, faintly inconvenienced faces of Howie Croft and Rita. She closed
her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Howie Croft and Rita had placed her feet up on the couch. She swung them now, a trifle arrogantly, to the floor. "I'm all right, Rita," she said. "I'll take some of that though." She drank half a pony of brandy.
   "You can go, Rita. I'm all right. I'm damned sick and tired of fainting .
   As Rita left the room, Howie Croft moved uneasily over to the red damask chair  Corinne had vacated. He sat down and crossed his legs-which were huge; each thigh a whole  athlete in itself.
   "I'm sure sorry to of scared you that way, Mrs. Field.'
   "Ford."
   "I meant Ford--I know a coupla people named Field." Howie Croft uncrossed his legs. "Uh--so you didn't know I and Bunny were married?"
   "No. No. I did not."
   Howie Croft laughed. "Sure. We been married eleven years," he said.
"Cigarette?" He snapped the bottom of a fresh pack of cigarettes with his finger, then sociably, without getting up, extended the pack to Corinne.
   "What do you mean you've been married eleven years?" Corinne demanded coldly.
   For a split second Howie Croft looked like a schoolboy unjustly accused of chewing gum in class, but whose involuntary reaction is to swallow when challenged.
   "Well, ten years and eight months, if you wanna be so eggzact," he said. "Cigarette?"
   Something in Corinne's face told him to stop offering her a cigarette. He shrugged his forehead, lighted his own cigarette, put the pack back in his
breast pocket and carefully rearranged his handkerchief.
   Corinne spoke to him.
   "I beg your pardon?" Howie Croft said politely.
   Corinne repeated her question, in a harsh voice.
   "What girl's twenty years old?" Howie Croft inquired.
   "Your wife."
   "Bunny?" Howie Croft snorted. "You're nuts. She's thirty-one. She's a month older'n me and I'm thirty-one."
   Swiftly Corinne wondered whether doormen and people had sense enough to cover up immediately the bodies of people who jumped out of apartment-house windows. She didn't want to jump without a guarantee that somebody would cover her up immediately . . . She forced herself to pick up Howie Croft's voice.
   "She looks a lot younger," Howie Croft was analyzing, "because she's got small bones. People with small bones don't get old the way people like you and I. Know what I mean?"
   Corinne didn't reply to this question, but asked a question of her own.    Howie Croft didn't hear her. "I don't getcha," he said, and cupped his ear. "Say that again."
   She repeated her question--louder.
   Before replying, Howie Croft got rid of a troublesome bit of tobacco on
his tongue. Then he said, not impatiently "Look, hey. She can't be twenty. We got a kid eleven years old."
   "Mr. Croft---"
   "Call me Howie," he suggested. "Unless you wanna stand on this ceremonies stuff."
   With a shiver Corinne asked him if he were telling her the complete truth.
   "Look, hey. What would I lie for? I mean what would I lie for? How old did she tell you she was?" But he waved away his interest in a reply. "She's nuts," he pronounced rather cheerfully. "She was always nuts."

HE SETTLED back comfortably on the lower part of his spine and assumed the kind of philosophical countenance available to him.
   "Look, hey. I come home on Thursday. From this special trip I hadda make for the firm. I look around the house. No Bunny anywheres. Even though she  was supposta be back at least a week awreddy. So I call up my mom. My mom tells me Bunny hasn't got back yet. She starts yellin' her head off on the phone. She tells me the kid's broke-broken-his leg climbin' on some roof. She keeps yellin' over the phone about how she hasn't strength enough to take care of the kid and where's his mother anyways, and so finly I hang up. I can't stand somebody yellin' in my ear over the phone.
   "So I spend around an hour tryin' to put two-in-two together, like. So I
knew where I'm at, at least. And so finly I look in the mailbox. and I see a letter from Bunny. She tells me her and this Ford guy are goin' away somewheres together. What a screwball!" He shook his head.
   Corinne took a cigarette from the box on the table beside her and lighted it. She then cleared her throat, as though to make sure her voice still functioned.
   "Thursday. This is Sunday. It took you a long time to get here."
   Howie Croft finished what he was doing -he was blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling-then he answered, Look, I don't live on Park Avenue or somewheres. I work for a living. I go where the firm sends me."
   Corinne took her time. "You mean you're here on business?"
   "Certainly I'm here on business!" Howie Croft said indignantly.
   "You let her come to New York? You knew she was coming here? Corinne asked dizzily.
   "Certainly I knew she was comin' here! You don't think I'd let her come all the ways to New York without knowin' what's what, do ya?"
   It took him a moment to smooth out his feathers.
   "She told me she wanted to meet this Ford guy--this Ford chap—your husband. So I figure: Let her get it out of her system. She's drivin' me nuts; he's drivin' me nuts---" He interrupted himself. "Your husband makes a lot of dough writin' books, don't he?"
   "He's written only two books of poems Mr. Croft."
   "I don't know about that, but he makes a lot of dough on what he writes, don't he?"
   "No."
   "No?"--incredulously
   "There is no money in poetry, Mr. Croft."
   Howie Croft looked suspiciously around him.
   "Who pays the rent here?" he demanded.
   "I do,"--shortly. "Mr. Croft, must we ---"
   "I don't get it." He turned to Corinne a real appeal in his rather sizeless eyes "He's a big shot, isn't he?"
   "He's probably the finest poet in America."
   But he shook his head. "If I'd known this I wouldn'ta let her come," he said bitterly. He looked at Corinne accusingly, as though she were personally responsible for his private dilemma. "I thought your husband could kinda show her the ropes."
   "What ropes?"
   "The ropes, the ropes!" Howie Croft said impatiently. "She keeps writin' these books . . . You know how many books she's wrote since we been
married? Twelve I read 'em all. The last one she wrote for Gary Cooper. For a picture with Gary Cooper in it. She sent it out to the movies, and they didn't even send it back. She's had some tough breaks."
   "What?" Corinne asked sharply.
   "I said she's had some tough breaks."
   Corinne felt her cigarette burning hotly close to her finger. She unloosened the cigarette over an ash tray.
   "Mr. Croft. How did your wife hear of my husband?"
   "From Miss Durant," was the brief answer. Howie Croft was deep in thought
   "Who," Corinne said. "is Miss Durant?"
   "Her drinkin' buddy. Teaches at the high school. Durant and Bunny talk about all that kinda stuff."
   "Would you like a drink?" Corinne asked abruptly.
   Howie Croft looked up. "You're not kiddin'," he said. "Say. What's your
first name anyways."
   Corinne stood up and rang for Rita. By the time she sat down his question had sufficiently cleared the room.
   With a drink in his hand Howie Croft suddenly asked a question "What'd she do here in New York anyways?"
   Corinne drank part of her drink. Then she told him what she knew--or what she was able to bring herself to relate. He listened to her in a way that, at first, she thought was disconcertingly alert. Then, abruptly, it occurred to her that he was examining her legs. She crossed her legs and tried to bring her account to a rapid close, but he interrupted her, "Who's this 'Aunt Cornelia' you're talking about?"
   Corinne stared at him. Her hands began to tremble, and she wondered if it might not be best to sit on them.
   She managed to ask the obvious question.
   Howie Croft concentrated briefly, but shook his head.
   "She's got an Aunt Agnes," he suggested constructively. "Got a lotta dough, too. Runs the movie house over at Cross Point."
   As though there were some manual way to stop the horrible ceremony beginning to take place inside her head, Corinne put her hand to her forehead. But it was too late. Already a gallant single file of people was approaching the precipice of her brain. One by one--she couldn't stop them--they dived off. First came lovable but eccentric, faintly mustached Aunt Cornelia. Then came Harry, the sweet old kite-building butler Then came dear old kleptomaniacal Ernestine. Then came the funny medical student and the funny dramatics student. Then came the Poughkeepsie friend of Aunt Cornelia's, who was being fed through tubes. Then at last the Waldorf-Astoria itself was moved into position, given a competent push and sent hurtling after the others . . . "I think I'm going to faint again," she informed Howie Croft. "Would you hand me that glass of brandy?"
   Howie Croft rushed forward, semialarmed again, and Corinne drank me what was left in the pony of brandy.
   When things looked all right, Howie Croft backed off toward the couch and re-ensconced himself. He gulped down the last of his highball. Then, with
an ice cube clicking in the side of his mouth inquired, "Wuss your firs' 'ame, anyways?"
   Corinne lighted another cigarette without answering. Her guest watched her, unaffronted.
   "Mr. Croft, has your wife ever gone off like this before?"
   "Hoddaya mean?" he asked, beginning to chew the ice cube in his mouth.
   "I mean," Corinne said with control, "has she ever gone on trips with men?"
   "Lis-sen. Wuddaya think I am-a fool?"
   "Of course not," Corinne said quickly, politely.
   "I let her go on trips once in a while. Just to break up the monotony, like. But if you're inferring-like that I let her chase around---"
   "I didn't really mean that," Corinne hastily lied, in spite of herself.
   Howie Croft started to work on the other ice cube in his glass.
   "Mr. Croft, what do you intend to do about all this?"
   "About all what?"--sociably.
   Corinne took a deep breath "About your wife and my husband going away together."
   Howie Croft held up his reply until he had finished crunching his second ice cube into liquid. When he was finished he looked at Corinne, oozing with confidential confidence. "Well, I tellyawhat's your first name anyways?"
   "Corinne," Corinne said dully.
   "Corinne. Well, I tellya, Corinne. Strickly between you and I and the lamppost I and Bunny haven't been gettin' along so good. We haven't been getting along so good the last coupla years. Know what I mean? . . . I don't know. Maybe she's had a little too much dough to spend. I'm makin' one-ten a week now--plus expenses, plus a darn good bonus every Christmas. It's maybe gone to her head kinda. Know what I mean?"
   Corinne nodded intelligently.
   "And that year she went to college didn't do her no good--any good," Howie Croft pointed out. "Her Aunt Agnes never shoulda let her go. It warped her mind, like."
   Then something strange happened. Howie Croft suddenly took off the fullback's shoulder pads he was wearing under his sports jacket. Without them he looked like a different man and required fresh observation.   "Somethin' else, too," the new man said, uneasily. "She kinda drove me nuts."
   "What?" said Corinne with respect.
   "She kinda drove me nuts," he repeated. "Know what I mean?"
   Corinne shook her head and said, "No."
   "Say 'Howie."'
   "Howie," Corinne said.
   "Atta girl. Yeah. She kinda drove me nuts sometimes." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It wasn't too bad when we first got married. But-I don't know. She got funny pretty quick. Mean. Mean with me. Mean with the kid, even. I don't know." He suddenly blushed. "Once she ---" But he broke off. He shook his head.
   "Once she what?" Corinne demanded.
   "I don't know. It don't matter anymore, anyways. I've forgot about it already. She just changed a lot. I mean she just changed a lot. Boy! I can remember how she used to come to all the games when I was playin'. Football Basketball. Baseball. She never missed a one." His mouth tightened; he was almost finished. "I don't know. She just changed a lot."
   He was finished. He could look over at Corinne easily now. Some trusty interior whistle had blown just in time. The mollycoddle, reason, had been taken off the scrimmage line and Good old Hammerhead Jukes was back in his old position. "This is darn good bourbon ya got, Corinne," he said,
brandishing his empty glass.

BUT Corinne stood up. She said something about a previous appointment. She thanked him for dropping by.
   Howie Croft looked disappointed by the abrupt termination of his visit.
But he obediently stood up and allowed Corinne to lead him to the front door. On the way he turned to address her.
   "I'm gonna be in town a couple days. Okay if I give ya a ring? How 'bout us doin' the town?"
   "I'm sorry. I'm afraid not."
   He shrugged, undeflated. He put on a light gray hat in front of the hall
mirror and creased it tenderly.
   "Maybe you could tell me a coupla shows I oughta see while I'm in town. Stage shows. This 'Hiya, Broadway, Hiya!' any good?"
   "Yes."
   Howie Croft, his hat finally set satisfactorily on his head, turned in the doorway. He grinned at Corinne. "Don't look so worried-like," he recommended. "You're better off. You're better off, in the long run. If your husband's as nuts as my wife is."
   At that point Corinne let go of the doorknob--and everything else. She informed Howie Croft at the top of her voice that she wanted her husband back.
   Howie Croft fled into the elevator when it arrived, and Corinne went inside her apartment and closed the door. Her legs then dissolved and she slipped to the floor sobbing. Later. she went to her bedroom and at once took some sedative capsules.
   When she awoke--at one of the timeless hours people awake from strong sedatives--she felt something crushed damply in her hand. She pressed the object into shape, then turned on her bed lamp. Howie Croft's personal card was in her hand. She stared at it. Then she lay still for several minutes, looking at her dim reflection in her dressing-table mirror across the room. Suddenly she asked herself aloud: "Who the hell are you, Bud?" The question struck her very funny and she laughed for a quarter of an hour.

CORINNE never stopped trying to find out where Ford had run off to. Neither
did Ford's publishers stop trying. Neither did Columbia.
   Often they all thought they had a lead, but invariably it faded away over a long-distance telephone call, or died between the simple declarative
sentences of some hotel manager's letter. At one time Corinne even considered hiring a private detective. She even had one report to her apartment for instructions. But she sent him back to his office unused. She was afraid he would give her a lot of dirt and no husband . . . Corinne's search for Ford was an intense one, but a curiously legitimate one.
   We know now that the itinerary o Ford and Bunny Croft, once they had  left New York together, was rather like that of two quarter-blooded gypsies. We know that they turned back North when they reached Charleston, West Virginia, and back East when they reached Chicago and that after only ten weeks of wandering they settled down in a Middle Western city. A city that obscured their liaison under a natural screen of smoke and grit.
   It was Robert Waner who found out where they were living. It took him about eighteen months to find out. When he did he phoned Corinne's apartment, and by the way he began, "Corinne? . . . Now listen. Don't get excited---" Corinne knew what was coming.
   Waner knew that Corinne would want to go to see Ford. It was his intention to go along with her. But it didn't work out that way. She lifted the facts from him over the phone, then packed a bag and an hour later boarded a train alone.
   Her train got into the city Waner had named at six in the morning. It  was November, and as she walked down the gray empty platform toward the taxi stand she felt sleet on her face and down her neck. Monday sleet, at that.
   She checked into a hotel, took a hot bath, dressed herself again, and proceeded to sit in her room for the next seventeen hours. She looked at five magazines. She had a chicken sandwich sent up to her room at noon, but she didn't eat it. She counted bricks in the office building across the street; vertical patterns, horizontal and diagonal patterns. When it got dark outside she put three coats of polish on her nails.
   While she was waiting for her third coat of polish to dry she suddenly stood up from her chair, walked over to the telephone and placed a hand on it. But there was an electric clock on the same table with the phone. She saw almost with delight that it was eleven o'clock at night. She felt saved. It was much too late to do any phoning. It was much too late to tell her husband all she had learned about Bunny from Howie Croft. It was much too late to find out if her husband needed money. It was much too late to hear his voice. It was exactly the right time to take another hot bath.
   She did so. But with the bath towel still wrapped around her she suddenly walked straight to the telephone and asked the operator for the number she knew by heart.
   This is the extraordinary conversation that followed: "Hello." Bunny's voice.
   "Hello. I know it's late. This is Corinne Ford."
   "Who?"
   "Corinne For---"
   "Corinne! Well, golly! I can't believe it!" A voice full of rich, creamy delight "Are you in town?"
   "Yes. I'm in town," Corinne said. Her own voice didn't sound like her own voice, it sounded like a man's-as though all her glands were through with her.
   "Well, golly, Corinne! I don't know what to say! This is wonderful. We've been meaning to get in touch with you for -ages and ages. This is wonderful." Then, a little shyly, a little ashamedly: "Corinne I feel just awful about what's happened and stuff."
   It was an apology. A rather wonderful one, in a way. It wasn't delivered like any apology at all that a woman of thirtythree might essay while standing up to her ears in richly assorted, connubial garbage. It was the apology of a very young salesgirl who has buttonheadedly sent the blue curtains instead of the red.
   "Yes," Corinne said.
   "Golly, where are you anyway, Corinne?"
   "I'm at the Hotel King Cole."
   "Well, look, now. ' Warm, chocolate plans on the way. "It's not at all late. You've got to come over here this minute You're not in bed or anything?"
   "No."
   "Good. Ray's in the other room, working. But listen. You hop in a cab- you know our address, Corinne?"
   "Yes."
   "Swell . . . Well, we're dying to see you. You hurry on up, now."
   For a few seconds Corinne couldn't talk at all.
   "Corinne? You there?"
   "Yes."
   "Well, you hurry up, now. We'll be waiting. G'by!"
   Corinne replaced the phone.
   She then went into the bathroom and got back into the tub for a few minutes, to get warm. But all the hot water in all the hotels in the world couldn't have warmed her. She got out of the tub and dried and dressed herself.
   She put on her hat and coat and looked around the room to see whether she had left several cigarettes burning. Then she left her room and rang the elevator bell. She could feel her pulse beating close to her ear, the way it does when the face is pressed against the pillow a certain way.
   The sleet had turned to snow during the seventeen hours she had spent in her room, probably since darkness, and part of an inch of slush covered the walk outside the hotel. A neon sign across the un-New York-looking street cast its ugly blue reflection on the black wet street. The hotel doorman who got her a cab needed to use his handkerchief.
   Corinne rode for nearly fifteen minutes; then the cab stopped and she
asked animatedly, "Is this the place?" and got out and paid her fare.
   She found herself standing on an empty, dark, slushy street of rebuilt tenements. But she walked up the stone steps and went through the first double door. She searched in her handbag, found her cigarette lighter and flicked it on. A panel of names and buttons were before her. She found the name FORD, written in green ink, and she pushed the corresponding button casually, like a salesman or a friend.
   A buzzing sound followed, and the inner door opened. Almost at once Corinne heard her own name, with a gay question mark trailing from it, ring down a dark spiral staircase. And Bunny Croft scampered down to meet her.
   Bunny slipped her arm through Corinne's and said things to her and continued to say things to her as they climbed the stairs together. Corinne heard nothing. Suddenly Corinne's coat was being taken from her and she was being seated in a room and she was being asked by Bunny Croft which she'd rather have-rye or bourbon. But Corinne just looked down at her own legs. She saw that her stockings didn't match. This seemed a very strange and highly provocative fact to her, and she resisted a strong temptation to lift her legs hip-high, knees together, and remark to anyone within hearing distance, Look. My stockings don't match. But she only said, "What?"
   "I said, you look cold, Corinne. Brrr! I'm going to make you a drink whether you want it or not. No arguments. Go in and see Ray while I'm doing stuff. He's working, but he won't care. Right through that door." Bunny disappeared on the run, through a kitchen push door.
   Corinne stood up and walked over to and through the door Bunny had pointed to.

FORD was sitting at a small bridge table, with his back to the door. He was in his shirt sleeves. An undressed watty little bulb burned over his head. Corinne neither touched him nor even walked directly toward him, but she said his name. Without perceptibly starting, Ford turned around in the wooden restaurant chair he was sitting on and looked at his visitor. He looked confused.
   Corinne went over and sat down on the chair close to his table, within touching distance of him. She already knew that everything was wrong with him. The wrongness was so heavy in the room she could hardly breathe.
   "How are you, Ray?" she asked, without crying.
   "I'm fine. How are you, Corinne?"
   Corinne touched his hand with hers. Then she withdrew her hand and placed it on her lap. "I see you're working," she said.
   "Oh, yes. How've you been, Corinne?"
   "I've been fine," Corinne said. "Where are your glasses?"
   "My glasses?" Ford said. "I'm not allowed to use them. I'm taking eye exercises. I'm not allowed to use them." He turned around in his seat and looked at the door Corinne had entered through. "From her cousin," he said.
   "Her cousin? Is he a doctor?"
   "I don't know what he is. He lives on the other side of town. He gave her some eye exercises to give me."
   Ford cupped his eyes with his right hand, then put down his hand and looked at Corinne. For the first time since she had entered the room, he looked at her with some kind of real interest.
   "You in town. Corinne?"
   "Yes. I'm at the Hotel King Cole. Didn't she tell you I phoned?"
   Ford shook his head. He pushed some papers around on his bridge table.
"You in town, eh?"
   Corinne saw now that he was drunk Under this awareness, her knees began to knock together uncontrollably.
   "I'm just going to stay overnight."
   Ford seemed to give this remark a great deal of concentration. "Just overnight?"
   "Yes."
   Narrowing his eyes painfully, Ford looked down at the papers strewn messily all over the bridge table. "I have a lot of work here, Corinne," he said confidentially.
   "I see. I see you have," Corinne said, without crying.
   Ford again turned around to glance at the door to the room--this time almost falling off his chair. Then he leaned forward toward Corinne. Warily. Like a man in a crowded decorous room who is about to risk telling someone at his table a bit of choice gossip or an off-color joke.
   "She doesn't like my work," he said, in a surreptitious voice. "Can you
imagine that? "
   Corinne shook her head. She was now half-blinded with tears.
   "She didn't like it when she first came to New York. She thinks I'm not
meaty enough."
   Corinne was now crying without making any attempt to control herself.
   "She's writing a novel."
   He drew himself back from his confidential position and began again to push papers around on his bridge table. His hands stopped suddenly. He spoke to Corinne in a stage whisper. "She saw my picture in the Times book section before she came to New York. She thinks I look like somebody in the movies. When I don't wear my glasses."
   Then, fairly quietly, Corinne lost her head. She asked Ford why he hadn't written. She accused him of being sick and unhappy. She begged him to come home with her. She wildly touched his face with her hand.
   But he suddenly interrupted her, blinking painfully, but sounding like the soberest, most rational man in the world,
   "Corinne. You know I can't get away."
   "What?"
   "I'm with the Brain again," Ford explained briefly.
   Corinne shook her head, choked with despair and incomprehension.
   "The Brain, the Brain," he said rather impatiently. "You saw the original. Think back. Think of somebody pounding on the window of a restaurant on a dark street. You know the one I mean."
   Corinne's mind traveled unfractuously back, reached the place, then partially blacked out. When she looked at her husband again he had picked up a movie magazine and was squinting at its cover. She turned her eyes away from him.
   "Staying in town, Corinne?" he asked politely, putting down the magazine.
   Corinne didn't have to answer, because her hostess's voice suddenly called--hollered--from the other side of the door,
   "Hey, open up, you two! My hands are full."
   Ford rushed awkwardly to open the door. A highball was suddenly deposited in Corinne s boneless hand.
   The other two people, with glasses of their own, sat down--Ford at his messy little bridge table, Bunny Croft on the bare floor on the other side of the table.
   She was wearing blue jeans, a man's T-shirt, and a red handkerchief knotted cowboy-style around her throat.
   She stretched out her legs pleasurably, as though a good bull-session were about to begin.
   "You're terrific to come and see us. Corinne It's marvelous. We were going to go to New York last spring, but somehow we never did." She pointed a moccasined foot at Corinne's husband. "If this big lug would stoop to writing for money once in a while we might be able to do a couple of ambitious things." She broke off. "I love your suit. You didn't have that when I saw you in New York, did you?"
   "Yes."
   Corinne wet her lips with her highball. The glass was filthy.
   "Well, you didn't wear it. At least I didn't see it." Bunny crossed her legs lithely "How do you like our dive? I call it the Rat's Nest. I may have to sublet one room. Then Ray'll have to sleep in the medicine cabinet--won't you, darling?"
   "What?" Ford said, looking up from his drink.
   "If we sublet this room, you'll have to sleep in the medicine cabinet."   Ford nodded.
   Bunny turned to Corinne, asking "Where are you staying in town, anyway, Corinne?"
   "At the Hotel King Cole."
   "Oh, you told me. I love that little bar downstairs. With all the swords and stuff on the wall? Have you been in it?"
   "No."
   "The barkeep looks exactly like some guy in the movies. Some new guy. But exactly. I never can think of his name."
   Ford stirred in his chair, and looked over at Bunny Croft. "Let's have another drink, ' he suggested. His glass was empty.
   Bunny looked back at him. "What am I supposed to do? Jump?" she inquired.
"You have the combination to the bottle."
   Ford stood up, holding onto the back of his chair, and left the room.   He was gone about five minutes--or five days, so far as Corinne knew. Bunny spoke to her steadily in his absence, but she missed nearly all of it except about the novel. Bunny said she hoped Corinne would have time while she was in town to at least take a look at her novel.
   Ford came back into the room with about four fingers of undiluted whisky in his glass. Then Corinne stood up and said she had to go.
   "Right now?" Bunny wailed. "Well, look. What about having lunch with us tomorrow or something?"
   "I'm leaving on an early train," Corinne said, starting to walk out of the room unescorted. She heard her hostess spring to her moccasined feet, heard her say, "Well, golly . . ."
   All of them--Ford, too--filed toward the front door of the apartment, Corinne first, Bunny at her heels, Ford in the rear.
   At the door, Corinne abruptly turned around--in such a way that her shoulder was adjacent to Bunny's face, partially blocking off Bunny's view.
   "Ray. Will you come home with me?"
   Ford did not hear her. "I beg your pardon?" he said politely, unforgivably.
   "Will you come home with me?"
   Ford shook his head.
   The action over, Bunny came briskly out from behind Corinne's shoulder, and, as though no entreaty of real significance had just been made and rejected, took Corinne's hand. "Corinne. It's really been terrific seeing you. I wish we could all write to each other or something. I mean you know. Are you still at the same place in New York?"
   "Yes."
   "Swell."
   Corinne took back her hand and extended it to her husband. He half pressed it; then she took it away from him.
   "Golly, I hope you get a cab all right Corinne. In this weather. Oh, you'll get one . . . Turn on the hall light for Corinne, stupid."
   Without looking back Corinne went as quickly as she could down the stairs, and broke into an awkward, knock-kneed kind of run when she reached the street.

16. The Long Debut of Lois Taggett         
(Story, September-October, 1942)


Lois Taggett was graduated from Miss Hascomb's School, standing twenty-sixth in a class of fifty-eight, and the following autumn her parents thought it was time for her to come out, charge out, into what they called Society.  So they gave her a five-figure, la-de-la Hotel Pierre affair, and save for a few horrible colds and Fred-hasn't-been-well-latelys, most of the preferred trade attended.  Lois wore a white dress, and orchid corsage, and a rather lovely, awkward smile.  The elderly gentlemen guests said, "She's a Taggett, all right"; the elderly ladies said, "She's a very sweet child"; the young ladies said, "Hey.  Look at Lois.  Not bad.  What'd she do to her hair?"; and the young men said, "Where's the liquor?"
   That winter Lois did her best to swish around Manhattan with the most photogenic of the young men who drank scotch-and-sodas in the God-and-Walter Winchell section of the Stork Club.  She didn't do badly.  She had a good figure, dressed expensively and in good taste, and was considered Intelligent.  That was the first season when Intelligent was the thing to be.
   In the spring, Lois' Uncle Roger agreed to give her a job as receptionist in one of his offices.  it was the first big year for debutantes to Do Something.  Sally Walker was singing nightly at Alberti's Club; Phyll Mercer was designing clothes or something; Allie Tumbleston was getting that screen test.  So Lois took the job as receptionist in Uncle Roger's downtown office.  She worked for exactly eleven days, with three afternoons off, when she learned suddenly that Ellie Podds, Vera Gallishaw, and Cookie Benson were going to take a cruise to Rio.  The news reached Lois on a Thursday evening.  Everybody said it was a perfect riot down in Rio.  Lois didn't go to work the following morning.  She decided instead, while she sat on the floor painting her toenails red, that most of the men who came into Uncle Roger's downtown office were a bunch of dopes.
   Lois sailed with the girls, returning to Manhattan early in the fall-still single, six pounds heavier, and off speaking terms with Ellie Podds.  the remainder of the year Lois took courses at Columbia, three of them entitled Dutch and Flemish Painters, Technique of the Modern Novel, and Everyday Spanish.
   Come springtime again and air-conditioning at the Stork Club, Lois fell in love.  He was a tall press agent named Bill Tedderton, with a deep, dirty voice.  He certainly wasn't anything to bring home to Mr. and Mrs. Taggett, but Lois figured he certainly was something to bring home.  She fell hard, and Bill, who had been around plenty since he'd left Kansas City, trained himself to look deep into Lois' eyes to see the door to the family vault.
   Lois became Mrs. Tedderton, and the Taggetts didn't do very much about it.  It wasn't fashionable any longer to make a row if your daughter preferred the iceman to that nice Astorbilt boy.  Everybody knew, of course, that press agents were icemen.  Same thing.
   Lois and Bill took an apartment in Sutton Place.  It was a three-room, kitchenette job, and the closets were big enough to hold Lois' dresses and Bill's wide-shouldered suits.
   When her friends asked her if she were happy, Lois replied, "Madly."  But she wasn't quite sure if she were madly happy.  Bill had the most gorgeous rack of ties; wore such luxurious broadcloth shirts; was so marvelous, so masterful, when he spoke to people over the telephone; had such a fascinating way of hanging up his trousers.  And he was so sweet about-well, you know-everything .  But. . . .
   Then suddenly Lois knew for sure that she was Madly Happy, because one day soon after they were married, Bill fell in love with Lois.  Getting up to go to work one morning, he looked over at the other bed and saw Lois as he'd never seen her before.  Her face was jammed up against the pillow, puffy, sleep-distorted, lip-dry.  She never looked worse in her life-and at that instant Bill fell in love with her.  He was used to women who didn't let him get a good look at their morning faces.  He stared at Lois for a long moment, thought about the way she looked as he rode down in the elevator; then in the subway he remembered one of the crazy questions Lois had asked the other night.  Bill had to laugh right out loud in the subway.
   When he got home that night, Lois was sitting in the morris chair.  Her feet, in red mules, were tucked underneath her.  She was just sitting there filing her nails and listening to Sancho's rhumba music over the radio.  Seeing her, Bill was never so happy in his life.  He wanted to jump in the air.  He wanted to grit his teeth, then let out a mad, treble note of ecstasy.  But he didn't dare.  He would have had trouble accounting for it.  He couldn't say to Lois, "Lois. I love you for the first time.  I used to think you were just a nice little drip.  I married you for your money, but now I don't care about it.  You're my girl.  My sweetheart.  My wife.  My baby.  Oh, Jesus, I'm happy."  Of course he couldn't say that to her; so he just walked over where she sat, very casually.  He bent down , kissed her, gently pulled her to her feet.  Lois said, "Hey!  What's goin' on?"  And Bill made her rhumba with him around the room.
   For fifteen days Following Bill's discovery, Lois couldn't even stand at the glove counter at Saks' without whistling Begin the Beguine between her teeth.  She began to like all of her friends.  She had a smile for conductors on Fifth Avenue busses; was sorry she didn't have any small change with her when she handed them dollar bills.  She took walks in the zoo.  She spoke to her mother over the telephone every day.  Mother became a Grand Person.  Father, Lois noticed, worked too hard.  They should both take a vacation.  Or at least come to dinner Friday night, and no arguments, now.
   Sixteen days after Bill fell in love with Lois, something terrible happened.  Late on that sixteenth night Bill was sitting in the morris chair, and Lois was sitting on his lap, her head back on his shoulder.  From the radio pealed  the sweet blare of Chick West's orchestra.  Chick himself, with a mute in his horn, was taking the refrain of that swell oldie, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
   "Oh, darling," Lois breathed.
   "Baby," answered Bill softly.
   They came out of a clinch. Lois replaced her head on Bill's big shoulder.  Bill picked up his Cigarette from the ash tray.  But instead of dragging on it, he took it in his fingers, as though it were a pencil, and with it made tiny circles in the air just over the back of Lois' hand.
   "Better not," said Lois, with mock warning.  "Burny, burny."
   But Bill, as though he hadn't heard, deliberately, yet almost idly, did what he had to do. Lois screamed horribly, wrenched herself to her feet, and ran crazily out of the room.
   Bill pounded on the bathroom door.  Lois had locked it.
   "Lois.  Lois, baby.  Darling.  Honest to God.  I didn't know what I was doing.  Lois.  Darling.  Open the door."
   Inside the bathroom, Lois sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the laundry hamper.  With her right hand she squeezed the other, the injured one, as though pressure might stop the pain       or undo what had been done.
   On the other side of the door, Bill kept talking to her with his dry mouth.
   "Lois.  Lois, Jesus.  I tellya I didn't know what I was doing.  Lois, for God's sake open the door.  Please, for God's sake."
   Finally Lois came out and into Bill's arms.
   But the same thing happened a week later.  Only not with a cigarette.  Bill, on a Sunday morning, was teaching Lois how to swing a golf club.  Lois wanted to learn to play the game, because everybody said Bill was a crackerjack.  They were both in their pajamas and bare feet.  It was a helluva lot of fun.  Giggles, kisses, guffaws, and twice they both had to sit down, they were laughing so hard.
   Then suddenly Bill brought down the head-end of his brassie on Lois' bare foot.  Fortunately, his leverage was faulty, because he struck with all his might.
   That did it, all right.  Lois moved back into her old bedroom in her family's apartment.  Her mother bought her new furniture and curtains, and when Lois was able to walk again, her father immediately gave her a check for a thousand dollars.  "Buy yourself some dresses," he told her.  "Go ahead."  So Lois went down to Saks' and Bonwit Teller's and spent the thousand dollars.  Then she had a lot of clothes to wear.
   New York didn't get much snow that winter, and Central Park never looked right.  But the weather was very cold.  One morning, looking out her window facing Fifth, Lois saw somebody walking a wire-haired terrier.  She thought to herself, "I want a dog."  So that afternoon she went to a pet shop and bought a three-months-old scotty.  She put a bright red collar and leash on it, and brought the whimpering animal home in a cab.  "Isn't it darling?" she asked Fred, the doorman.  Fred patted the dog and said it sure was a cute little fella.  "Gus," Lois said happily, "meet Fred.  Fred meet Gus."  She dragged the dog into the elevator.  In ya go, Gussie," Lois said.  "In ya go, ya little cutie.  Yes.  You're a little cutie.  That's what you are.  A little cutie."  Gus stood shivering in the middle of the elevator and wet the floor.
   Lois gave him away a few days later.  After Gus consistently refused to be housebroken, Lois began to agree with her parents that it was cruel to keep a dog in the city.
   The night she gave away Gus, she told her parents it was dumb to wait till spring to go to Reno.  It was better to get it over with.  So early in January Lois flew West.  She lived at a dude ranch just outside Reno and made the acquaintance of Betty Walker, from Chicago, and Sylvia Haggerty from Rochester.  Betty Walker, whose insight was penetrating as any rubber knife, told Lois a thing or two about men.  Sylvia Haggerty was a quiet dumpy little brunette, and never said much, but she could drink more scotch-and-sodas than any girl Lois had ever known.  When their divorces all came through, Betty Walker gave a party at the Barclay in Reno.  The boys from the ranch were invited, and Red, the good-looking one, made a big play for Lois, but in a nice way.  "Keep away from me!"  Lois suddenly screamed at Red.  Everybody said Lois was a rotten sport.  They didn't know she was afraid of tall, good-looking men.
   She saw Bill again, of course.  About two months after she'd returned from Reno, Bill sat down at her table in the Stork Club.
   "Hello, Lois."
   "Hello, Bill.  I'd rather you didn't sit down."
   "I've been up at this psychoanalyst's place.  He says I'll be all right."
   "I'm glad to hear that.  Bill, I'm waiting for somebody.  Please leave."
   "Will you have lunch with me sometime?" Bill asked.
   "Bill, they just came in.  Please leave."
   Bill got up.  "Can I phone you?" he asked.
   "No."
   Bill left, and Middie Weaver and Liz Watson sat down.  Lois ordered a scotch-and-soda, drank it, and four more like it.  When she left the Stork Club she was feeling pretty drunk.  She walked and she walked and she walked.  Finally she sat down on a bench in front of the zebras' cage at the zoo.  She sat there till she was sober and her knees had stopped shaking.  Then she went home.
   Home was a place with parents, news commentators on the radio, and starched maids who were always coming around to your left to deposit a small chilled glass of tomato juice in front of you.
   After dinner, when Lois returned from the telephone, Mrs. Taggett looked up from her book, and asked, "Who was it?  Carl Curfman, dear?"
   "Yes," said Lois, sitting down.  "What a dope."
   "He's not a dope," contradicted Mrs. Taggett.

         Carl Curfman was a thick-ankled, short young man who always wore white socks because colored socks irritated his feet.  He was full of information.  If you were going to drive to the game on Saturday, Carl would ask what route you were taking.  If you said, "I don't know.  I guess Route 26," Carl would suggest eagerly that you take Route 7 instead, and he'd take out a notebook and pencil and chart the whole thing out for you.  You'd thank him profusely for his trouble, and he'd sort of nod quickly and remind you not for anything to turn off at Cleveland Turnpike despite the road signs.  You always felt a little sorry for Carl when he put away his notebook and pencil.
   Several months after Lois was back from Reno, Carl asked her to marry him.  He put it to her in the negative.  They had just come from a charity ball at the Waldorf.  The battery in Carl's sedan was dead, and he had started to get all worked up about it, but Lois said, "Take it easy, Carl.  Let's smoke a cigarette first."  They sat in the car smoking cigarettes, and it was then that Carl put it to Lois in the negative.
   "You wouldn't wanna marry me, would you, Lois?"
   Lois had been watching him smoke.  He didn't inhale.
   "Gee, Carl.  You are sweet to ask me."
   Lois had felt the question coming on for a long time; but she had never quite planned an answer.
   "I'd do my damnedest to make you happy, Lois.  I mean I'd do my damnedest."
   He shifted his position in the seat, and Lois could see his white socks.
   "You're very sweet to ask me, Carl," Lois said.  "But I just don't wanna think about marriage for a while yet."
   "Sure," said Carl quickly.
   "Hey," said Lois, "there's a garage on Fiftieth and Third.  I'll walk down with you."
   One day the following week Lois had lunch at the Stork with Middie Weaver.  Middie Weaver served the conversation as nodder and cigarette-ash-tipper.  Lois told Middie that at first she had thought Carl was a dope.  Well, not exactly a dope, but, well, Middie knew what Lois meant.  Middie nodded and tipped the ashes of her cigarette.  But he wasn't a dope.  He was just sensitive and shy, and terribly sweet.  And terribly intelligent.  Did Middie know that Carl really ran Curfman and Sons?  Yes.  He really did.  And he was a marvelous dancer, too.  And he really had nice hair.  It was actually curly when he didn't slick it down.  It really was gorgeous hair.  And he wasn't really fat.  He was solid.  And he was terribly sweet.
   Middie Weaver said, "Well, I always liked Carl.  I think he's a grand person."
   Lois thought about Middie Weaver on the way home in the cab.  Middie was swell.  Middie really was a swell person.  So intelligent.  So few people were intelligent, really intelligent.  Middie was perfect.  Lois hoped Bob Walker would marry Middie.  She was too good for him.  The rat.

         Lois and Carl got married in the spring, and less than a month after they were married, Carl stopped wearing white socks.  He also stopped wearing a winged collar with his dinner jacket.  And he stopped giving people directions to get to Manasquan by avoiding the shore route.  If people want to take the shore route, let them take it, Lois told Carl.  She also told him not to lend any more money to Bud Masterson.  And when Carl danced, would he please take longer steps.  If Carl noticed, only short fat men minced around the floor.  And if Carl put any more of that greasy stuff on his hair, Lois would go mad.
   They weren't married three months when Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning.  She'd sit up in the loges and chain-smoke cigarettes.  It was better than sitting in the damned apartment.  It was better than going to see her mother.  These days her mother had a four-word vocabulary consisting of, "You're too thin, dear."  Going to the movies was also better than seeing the girls.  As it was, Lois couldn't go anywhere without bumping into one of them.  They were all such ninnies.
   So Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning.  She'd sit through the show and then she'd go to the ladies room and comb her hair and put on fresh make-up.  Then she'd look at herself in the mirror, and wonder, "Well.  What the hells should I do now?"
   Sometimes Lois went to another movie.  Sometimes she went shopping, but rarely these days did she see anything she wanted to buy.  Sometimes she met Cookie Benson.  When Lois came to think of it, Cookie was the only one of her friends who was intelligent, really intelligent.  Cookie was swell.  Swell sense of humor.  Lois and Cookie could sit in the Stork Club for hours, telling dirty jokes and criticizing their friends.
   Cookie was perfect.  Lois wondered why she had never liked Cookie before.  A grand, intelligent person like Cookie.
   Carl complained frequently to Lois about his feet.  One evening when they were sitting at home, Carl took off his shoes and black socks, and examined his bare feet carefully.  He discovered Lois staring at him.
   "They itch," he said to Lois, laughing.  "I just can't wear colored socks.”
   "It's your imagination," Lois told him.
   "My father had the same thing," Carl said.  "It's a form of eczema, the doctors say."
   Lois tried to make her voice sound casual.  "The way you go into such a stew about it, you'd think you had leprosy."
   Carl laughed.  "No," he said, still laughing, "I hardly think it's leprosy."  He picked up his cigarette from the ash tray.
   "Good Lord," said Lois, forcing a laugh.  "Why don't you inhale when you smoke?  What possible pleasure can you get out of smoking if you don't inhale?"
   Carl laughed again, and examined the end of his cigarette, as though the end of his cigarette might have something to do with his not inhaling.
   "I don't know," he said, laughing.  "I just never did inhale."

         When Lois discovered she was going to have a baby, she stopped going to the movies so much.  She began to meet her mother a great deal for lunch at Schrafft's, where the ate vegetable salads and talked about maternity clothes.  Men in busses got up to give Lois their seats.  Elevator operators spoke to her with quiet new respect in their nondescript voices.  With curiosity, Lois began to peek under the hoods of baby carriages.
   Carl always slept heavily, and never heard Lois cry in her sleep.
   When the baby was born it was generally spoken of as darling.  It was a fat little boy with tiny ears and blond hair, and it slobbered sweetly for all those who liked babies to slobber sweetly.  Lois loved it.  Carl loved it.  The in-laws loved it.  It was, in short, a most successful production.  And as the weeks went by, Lois found she couldn't kiss Thomas Taggett Curfman half enough.  She couldn't pat his little bottom enough.  She couldn't talk to him enough.
   "Yes.  Somebody gonna get a bath.  Yes.  Somebody I know is gonna get a nice clean bath.  Bertha, is the water right?"
   "Yes.  Somebody's going to get a bath.  Bertha, the water's too hot.  I don't care, Bertha.  It's too hot."
   Once Carl finally got home in time to see Tommy get his bath.  Lois took her hand out of the scientific bathtub, and pointed wetly at Carl.
   "Tommy.  Who's that?  Who's that big man?  Tommy, who's that?"
   "He doesn't know me," said Carl, but hopefully.
   "That's your Daddy.  That's your Daddy, Tommy."
   "He doesn't know me from Adam," said Carl.
   "Tommy.  Tommy, look where Mommy's pointing.  Look at Daddy.  Look at the big man.  Look at Daddy."
   That fall Lois' father gave her a mink coat, and if you had lived near Seventy-Fourth and Fifth, many a Thursday you might have seen Lois in her mink coat, wheeling a big black carriage across the avenue into the park.
   Then finally she made it.  And when she did, everybody seemed to know about it.  Butchers began to give Lois the best cuts of meat.  Cab drivers began to tell her about their kids' whooping cough.  Bertha, the maid, began to clean with a wet cloth instead of a duster.  Poor Cookie Benson during her crying jags began to telephone Lois from the Stork Club.  Women in general began to look more closely at Lois' face than at her clothes.  Men in theater-boxes, looking down at the women in the audience, began to single out Lois, if for no other reason than they liked the way she put on her glasses.
   It happened about six months after young Thomas Taggett Curfman tossed peculiarly in his sleep and a fuzzy woolen blanket snuffed out his little life.
   The man Lois didn't love was sitting in his chair one evening, staring at a pattern on the rug.  Lois had just came in from the bedroom where she had stood for nearly a half-hour, looking out the window.  She sat down in the chair opposite Carl.  Never in his life had he looked more stupid and gross.  But there was something had to say to him.  And suddenly it was said.
   "Put on your white socks.  Go ahead," Lois said quietly.  "Put them on, dear."
[pre][/pre]

17. The Stranger                  
(Colliers, December, 1945)

The maid at the apartment door was young and snippy and she had a part-time look about her.  "Who'd ya wanna see?" she asked the young man hostilely.
      The young man said, "Mrs. Polk."  He had told her four times over the squawky  house phone whom he wanted to see.
      He should have come on a day when there wouldn't be any idiots to answer the house phones and doors.  He should have come on a day when he didn't feel like gouging his eyes out, to rid himself of hay fever.  He should have come--he shouldn't have come at all.  He should have taken his sister Mattie straight to her beloved, greasy chop suey joint, then straight to a matinee, then straight to the train--without stopping once to take out his messy emotions, without forcing them on strangers.  Hey!  Maybe it wasn't too laugh like a moron, lie and leave.
      The maid stepped out of the way, mumbling something about maybe she was out of the tub and maybe not, and the young man with the red eyes and the leggy little girl with him entered the apartment.
      It was an ugly, expensive little New York apartment of the kind which seems to rent mostly to newly married couples--possibly because the bride's feet began to kill her at the last renting agency, or because she loves to distraction the way her new husband wears his wrist watch.
      The living room, in which the young man and the little girl were ordered to wait, had one Morris chair too many, and it looked as though the reading lamps had been breeding at night.  Ah, but over the crazy artificial fireplace there were some fine books.
      The young man wondered who owned and cared about Rainer Maria Rilke and the Beautiful and the Damned and A High Wind in Jamaica, for instance.  Did  they belong to Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband?
      He sneezed, and walked over to an interesting, messy stack of phonograph records, and picked up the top record.  It was an old Bakewell Howard--before Howard had gone commercial--playing Fat Boy.  Who owned it?  Vincent's girl or Vincent's girl's husband?  He turned the record over, and through his leaky eyes he looked at a patch of dirty white adhesive tape fastened to the title sticker.  Printed on the tape in green ink were the identification and warning:  Helen Beebers--Room 202, Rudenweg--Stop Thief!
      The young man grabbed his hip pocket handkerchief and sneezed again; then he turned the record back to the Fat Boy side.  His mind began to hear the old Bakewell Howard's rough, fine horn playing.  Then he began to hear the music of the unrecoverable years:  the little, unhistorical, pretty good years when all the dead boys in the 12th Regiment had been living and cutting in on other dead boys on lost dance floors:  the years when no one who could dance worth a damn had ever heard of Cherbourg or Saint Lô or Hürtgen Forest or Luxembourg.
      He listed to this music until behind him his little sister started practicing belching; then he turned around and said, "Cut it out, Mattie."
      At that instant a grown girl's harsh, childish, acutely lovely voice came into the room, followed by the girl herself.
      "Hey," she said.  "I'm sorry to keep you waiting.  I'm Mrs. Polk.  I don't know how you're gong to get them into this room.  The windows are all funny.  But I can't stand looking at that dirty old building across the wuddaya-call-it."  She caught sight of the little girl, who was sitting in one of the extra Morris chairs with her legs crossed.  "Oh!" she cried ecstatically.  "Who's this?  Your little girl?  Pussy cat!"
      The young man had to make an emergency snatch at his pocket handkerchief, and he sneezed four times before he could reply.  "That's my sister Mattie," he told Vincent's girl.  "I'm not the window man, if that's--"
      "You aren't the curtain man?  . . .  What's the matter with your eyes?"
      "I have hay fever.  My name is Babe Gladwaller.  I was in the Army with Vincent Caulfield."  He sneezed.  "We were very good friends . . . Don't stare at me when I sneeze, please.  Mattie and I came in town to have lunch and see a show, and I thought I'd drop by to see you; take a chance on your being in.  I should have telephoned or something."  He sneezed again, and when he looked up, Vincent's girl was staring at him.  She looked fine.  She probably could have lighted up a cigar and looked fine.
      "Hey," she said, quietly for her; she was a shouter.  "This room is dark as glop.  Let's go in my room."  She turned around and started to lead the way.  With her back turned she said, "You're in the letter he wrote me.  You live in a place starting with a 'V.'"
      "Valdosta, New York."
      They entered a lighter, better room; obviously Vincent's girl's and her husband's room.
      "Listen.  I hate that living room.  Sit in the chair.  Just throw that glop on the floor.  Pussy cat, baby, you sit here on the bed with me--oh, sweetie, what a beautiful dress!  Oh, why did you come to see me?  No, I'm glad.  Go ahead.  I won't look at you when you sneeze."
      There was never a way, even back in the beginning, that a man could condition himself against the lethal size and shape and melody of beauty by chance.  Vincent could have warned him.  Vincent had warned him.  Sure he had.
      Babe said, "Well, I thought--"
      "Listen, why aren't you in the Army?"  Vincent's girl said.  "Aren't you in the Army?  Hey?  Are you out on that new points thing?"
      "He had a hundred and seven points," Mattie said.  "He has five battle stars, but you only wear a little silver one if you have five.  You can't get five of the little gold ones on the ribbon thing.  Five would look better.  They'd look more.  But he doesn't wear his uniform anymore, anyway.  I got it.  I got it in a box."
      Babe crossed his legs as most tall men do, laying the ankle on the knee.  "I'm out.  I got out," he said.  He looked at the clock in his sock, one of the most unfamiliar things in the new, combat-bootless world, then up at Vincent's girl.  Was she real?  "I got out last week," he said.
      "Gee, that's swell."
      She didn't care much one way or the other.  Why should she?  So Babe just nodded, and said, "You, uh . . . You know Vincent's--you know he was killed, don't you?"
      "Yes."
Babe nodded again, and reversed the position of his legs, laying the other ankle on the other knee.
      "His father phoned and told me," Vincent's girl said; "when it happened.  He called me Miss Uhhh.  He's known me all my life and he couldn't think of my first name.  Just that I loved Vincent and that I was Howie Beeber's daughter.  He thought we were still engaged, I guess.  Vincent and I."
      She put her hand on the back of Mattie's neck, and stared at Mattie's right arm, which was nearest her.  Not that there was anything the matter with Mattie's right arm.  It was just bare and brown and young."
      "I thought you might want to know a little about it all," Babe said, and sneezed about six times.  When he put away his hand kerchief, Vincent's girl was looking at him, but she didn't say anything.  Very confusing and annoying.  Maybe she wanted him to quit his introductions.  He thought, and said, "I can't tell you he was happy or anything when he died.  I'm sorry.  I can't think of anything good.  yet I want to tell you the whole business."
      Don't lie to me at all.  I want to know," Vincent's girl said.  She let go of Mattie's neck.  Then she just sat and didn't especially look at, or do, anything.
      "Uh, he died in the morning.  he and four other G.I.s and I were standing around a fire we made.  In Hürtgen Forest.  Some mortar dropped in suddenly--it didn't whistle or anything--and it hit Vincent and three of the other men.  He died in the medics' CP tent about thirty yards away, not more than about three minutes after he was hit."  Babe had to sneeze several times at that point.  He went on, "I think he had too much pain in too large an area of his body to have realized anything but blackness.  I don't think it hurt.  I swear I don't.  His eyes were open.  I think he recognized me and heard me when I spoke to him, but he didn't say anything to me at all.  The last thing he said was about one of us was going to have to get some wood for the lousy fire--preferably one of the younger men, he said--you know how he talked."  Babe stopped there because Vincent's girl was crying and he didn't know what to do about it.
      Mattie spoke up, telling Vincent's girl:  "He was a witty guy.  He was at our house.  Gee!"
      Vincent's girl went on crying with her face in one hand, but she heard Mattie.  Babe looked at the low-cut shoe on his foot, and waited for something quiet and sensible and easier to happen--such as Vincent's girl, Vincent's swell girl, not crying any more.
      When that happened--and it happened quickly, too--he talked again.  "You're married and I didn't come here to torture you.  I just thought, from stuff that Vincent told me, that you used to love him a lot and that you'd ant to hear this stuff.  I'm sorry I have to be a stranger with hay fever and on my way to lunch and a matinee.  I didn't think it would be any good, but I came anyway.  I don't know what's wrong with me since I'm back."
      Vincent's girl said, "What's a mortar?  Like a cannon?"
      How could you ever tell what girls were going to say or do?  . . . "Well, sort of.  The shell drops in without whistling.  I'm sorry."  He was apologizing too much, but he wanted to apologize to every girl in the world whose lover had been hit by mortar fragments because the mortars hadn't whistled.  He was very afraid now, that he had told Vincent's girl too much too coldly.  The hay fever, the dirty hay fever, certainly was no help.  But the thing that was really terrible was the way your mind wanted to tell civilians these things--that was much more terrible than what your voice said.
      Your mind, your soldier's mind, wanted accuracy above all else.  So far as details went, you wanted to the bull's-eye kid:  Don't let any civilian leave you, when the story's over, with any comfortable lies.  Shoot down all the lies.  Don't let Vincent's girl think that Vincent asked for a cigarette before he died.  Don't let her think that he grinned gamely, or said a few choice last words.
      These thing didn't happen.  These things weren't done outside movies and books except by a very, very few guys who were unable to fasten their last thoughts to the depleting joy of being alive.  Don't let Vincent's girl fool herself about Vincent, no matter how much she loved him.  Get your sight picture on the nearest, biggest lie.  That's why you're back, that's why you were lucky.  Don't let anybody good down.  Fire!  Fire, buddy!  Now!
      Babe uncrossed his legs, briefly squeezed his forehead with the heels of his hands, then he sneezed about a dozen times.  He used a fourth, fresh handkerchief on his burning, watery eyes, put it away, and said, "Vincent loved you something terrific.  I don't know exactly why you broke up, but I do know it wasn't anybody's fault.  I got that feeling about it when he talked about you--that your breaking up wasn't anybody's fault.  Was it anybody's fault?  I oughtn't to ask you that.  Your being married.  Was it anybody's fault?"
      "It was his fault."
      "How come you married Mr. Polk, then?" Mattie demanded.
      "It was his fault.  Listen.  I loved Vincent.  I loved his house and I loved his brothers and I loved his mother and father.  I loved everything.  Listen, Babe.  Vincent didn't believe anything.  If it was summer he didn't believe it; if it was winter he didn't believe it.  He didn't believe anything from the time little Kenneth Caulfield died.  His brother."
      "That the little one, the younger one he was so crazy about?"
      "Yes.  I loved everything.  I swear to you," Vincent's girl said, touching Mattie's arm almost vaguely.
      Babe nodded.  Without sneezing first, he reached into his inside coat pocket and took out something.  "Uh," he said to Vincent's girl.  "This is a poem he wrote.  No kidding.  I borrowed some air-mail envelopes from him and it was written on one of the backs.  You can have it if you want it."  He reached his long arm forward, unable to avoid being fascinated by the shiny links in his shirt cuffs, and handed her a mud-dirty G.I. air-mail envelope.  It was folded once the short way, and slightly torn.
      Vincent's girl looked at the face of it, and read the title with her lips moving.  She looked at Babe.  "Oh, Lord!  Miss Beebers!  He called me Miss Beebers!"
      She looked down at the poem again, and read it through to herself, moving her lips.  She shook her head when she reached the end, but not as though she were denying anything.  Then she read the poem through again.  Then she folded the poem into a very small size, as though concealment was necessary.  She put her hand with the poem in it into her jacket pocket and left it there.
      "Miss Beebers," she said, looking up as if someone had come in the room.
      Babe, who had his legs crossed again, uncrossed them, as an overture to getting up.  "Well," he said.  "The poem, is all."  He stood up and so did Mattie.  Then Vincent's girl stood up.
      Babe extended his hand, which Vincent's girl duly clasped.  "I probably shouldn't have come," he said.  "I had the best and the worst motives . . . and I'm acting very peculiarly.  I don't know what's the matter.  Goodbye."
      "I'm very glad you came, Babe."
      That made him cry and he turned around and walked quickly out of the room towards the front door.  Mattie wen tout behind him, and Vincent's girl slowly followed.  When he turned around in the hall outside the apartment, he was all right again.
      "Can we get a cab or something?" he asked Vincent's girl.  "Are there cabs running?  I didn't even notice."
      "Maybe you can get one.  It's a good time."
      "Would you like to go to lunch and theater with us? he asked her.
      "I can't.  I have to--I can't.  Ring the 'Up' bell, Mattie.  The 'Down' one doesn't work."
      Babe took her hand again.  "Goodbye, Helen," he said, and released it.  He walked over and stood beside Mattie in front of the closed elevator doors.
      "What are you gong to do now?" Vincent's girl almost shouted at him.
      "I told you, we're going--"
      "I mean now that you're back."
      "Oh!" He sneezed.  "I don't know.  Is there something to do?  No, I'm kidding.  I'll do something.  I'll probably get an M.A. and teach.  My father's a teacher."
      "Hey.  Go see some girl dance with a big bubble or something tonight, huh?"
      "I don't know any girls who dance with big bubbles.  Ring the bell again, Mattie."
      "Listen, Babe," Vincent's girl said intensely.  "Call me sometime, willya?  Please.  I'm in the book."
      "I know some girls," Babe said.
      "I know, but we could have lunch or something and see a show.  Wuddaya-call-it can get tickets to anything.  Bob.  My husband.  Or come to dinner."
      He shook his head and rang the elevator bell himself.
      "Please."
      "I'm all right.  Don't be that way..  I'm just not used to things yet."
      The elevator doors slammed open.  Mattie hollered "Goodbye," and followed her brother into the elevator.  the door slammed shut.

      There weren't any taxis down in the street.  They both walked west, toward the Park.  The three long blocks between Lexington and Fifth were dull and noonish, as only that stretch can be in late August.  A fat, apartment-house doorman, cupping a cigarette in his hand, was walking a wire-haired along the curb between Park and Madison.
      Babe figured that during the whole time of the Bulge, the guy had walked that dog on this street every day.  He couldn't believe it.  He could believe it, but it was still impossible.  He felt Mattie put her hand in his.  She was talking a blue streak.
      "Mamma said we ought to see that play, Harvey.  She said you like Frank Fay.  It's about this man who talks to a rabbit.  When he's drunk and everything, he talks to this rabbit.  Or Oklahoma!  Mamma said you'd like Oklahoma!, too.  Roberta Cochran saw it and she said it was swell.  She said--"
      "Who saw it?"
      "Roberta Cochran.  She's in my class.  She's a dancer.  Her father thinks he's a funny guy.  I was over at her house and he tries to make a lot of wisecracks.  He's a dope.'" Mattie was quiet for a second.  "Babe," she said.
      "What?"
      "Are you glad to be home?"
      "Yes, baby."
      "Ow!  You're hurting my hand."
      He relaxed his grip.  "Why do you ask me that?"
      "I don't know.  Let's sit on top of the bus.  An open one."
      "All right."

      The sun was brilliant and hot as they crossed over to the Park side of Fifth Avenue.  At the bus stop, Babe lighted a cigarette and took off his hat.  A tall blond girl carrying a hatbox walked zippily along the other side of the street.  In the middle of the broad avenue a small boy in a blue suit was trying to get his small, relaxed dog, probably named Theodore or Waggy, to get up and finish walking across the street like someone named Rex or Prince or Jim.
      "I can eat with chopsticks, " Mattie said.  "This guy showed me.  Vera Weber's father.  I'll show you."
      The sun was full warm on Babe's pale face.  "Kiddo," he said to Mattie, tapping her on the shoulder, "that's something I have to see."
      "Okay.  You'll see," said Mattie.  With her feet together she made the little jump from the curb to the street surface, then back again.  Why was it such a beautiful thing to see?


[pre][/pre]

18. The Varioni Brothers               
(Saturday Evening Post 216, July, 1943)


The Varioni Brothers



Around Old Chi
with Gardenia Penny

     While Mr. Penny is on his vacation, his column will be written by a number of distinguished personalities from all walks of life.  Today's guest columnist is Mr. Vincent Westmoreland, the well-known producer, raconteur, and wit.  Mr. Westmoreland's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Mr. Penny or this newspaper.

"If, like Aladdin, I had means to be waited on by a sociable genie, I would first demand that he pop Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito into a fair-sized cage, and promptly deposit the menagerie on the front steps of the White House.  I should then seriously consider dismissing my accommodating servant, after I had asked him one question--namely:  'Where is Sonny Varioni?'
   "To me, and probably to thousands, the story of the brilliant Varioni Brothers is one of the most tragic and unfinished of this century.
   "Although the music these golden boys left us is still warm and alive in our hearts, perhaps their story is cold enough to be told to some of the younger readers and retold to the older ones.
   "I was there on the fatal night their music publisher and friend, Teddy Barto, gave them the handsomest, most ostentatious party of the crazy Twenties.  It was in celebration of their fifth year of collaboration and success.  The Varioni Brothers' mansion was stuffed with the best shirts of the day.  And the most beautiful, most talked about or against, women.  The most supercolossal, blackest colored boy I have ever seen stood at the front door with a silver plate the size of a manhole cover into which dropped the invitation cards of our then favorite actors, actresses, writers, producers, dancers, men and ladies about town.
   "It seemed that with success Sonny Varioni had developed quite a taste for gambling.  Not with just anybody, but with big shots like the late, little-lamented Buster Hankey.  About two weeks before the party, Sonny had lost about forty thousand dollars to Buster in a poker game.  Sonny had refused to pay, accusing Buster of dirty-dealing him.
   At about four A.M. on that festive, frightful morning there were about two hundred of us jammed fashionably in the crazy, boyish basement where the Varionis wrote all their hits.  It was there that the thing happened.  I must have a reason for retelling a tragic story, I shall say with conviction that it is my right.  Because honestly I believe that I was the only sober individual in that basement.
   "Enter Rocco, Buster Hankey's newest, most-likely-to-succeed trigger man.  Rocco inquires sweetly of the dizziest blonde in the room, whose name escapes me, where he can find Sonny Varioni.  The tipsy blonde--poor thing--points wildly in the direction of the piano.  'Over there, Handsome.  But what's your hurry?  Have a li'l' drink'
   "Rocco doesn't have time for a 'li'l' drink.'  He elbows his way through the crowd, fires five shots, very fast, into the wrong man's back.  Joe Varioni, whom no one in the room had ever heard play the piano before, because that was Sonny's affair, dropped dead to the floor.  Joe, the lyricist, only played the piano when he was tight, and he only got tight once a year, at the great parties Teddy Barto threw for him and Sonny.
   "Sonny stayed in Chicago for a few weeks, walking around town without a hat, without a necktie, without a decent Christian night of sleep.  Then suddenly he disappeared from the Windy City.  There is no record of anyone having seen or heard of him since.  Yes, I think I should ask my hypothetical genie:  'Where is Sonny Varioni?'
   "Some remote little person somewhere must have the inside dope.  As, unfortunately, I am a little short on genii, will he or she enlighten a sympathetic admirer, one of thousands?"

   My name is Sarah Daley Smith.  I am one of the remotest little numbers I know.  And I have the inside dope on Sonny Varioni.  He is in Waycross, Illinois.  He's not very well, and he's up day and night typing up the manuscript of a lovely, wild and possibly great novel.  It was written and thrown into a trunk by Joe Varioni.  It was written longhand on yellow paper, on lined paper, on crumpled paper, on torn paper.  The sheets were not numbered.  Whole sentences and even paragraphs were marked out and rewritten on the backs of envelopes, on the unused sides of college exams, in the margins of railroad timetables.  The job of making head and tail, chapter and book, of the wild colossus is an immeasurably enervating one, requiring, one would think, youth and health and ego.  Sonny Varioni has none of these.  He has a hope for a kind of salvation.
   I don't know Mr. Westmoreland, of the guest columnist Westmorelands, but I guess I approve of his curiosity.  I think he must remember all his old girls by the Varioni Brothers' words and music.
   So, if the gentlemen with the drums and bugles are ready, I shall pass among the Westmorelands with the inside dope.
   Because the inside dope begins there, I must go back to the high, wild and rotten Twenties.  I can offer no important lament or even a convincing shrug for the general bad taste of that era.
   I happened to be a sophomore at Waycross College, and I actually wore a yellow slicker with riotously witty sayings pen-and-inked on the back, suggesting liberally that sex was the cat's pajamas, and that we all get behind the ole football team.  There were no flies on me.
   Joe Varioni taught English III-A, from Beowulf through Fielding, as the catalogue put it.  He taught it beautifully.  All little girls who take long walks in the rain and major in English have had Grendel's bloody arm dragged across their education at least three times, in this school or that.  But somehow when Joe talked about Beowulf's silly doings they seemed to have undergone a rewrite job by one of the Brownings.
   He was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life.  He was brilliant.  He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits.  He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.
   If he had ever called for volunteers to come to the blackboard and drop dead for him, I would have won a scholarship.  He took me out several times, walking just ahead of my gun.  He wasn't much interested in me, but he was terribly short on the right audiences.  He sometimes talked about his writing, and he read me some of it.  It was part of the novel.  He'd been reading from some crazy sheets of yellow paper; then all of a sudden he'd cut himself short.  "Wait a minute," he'd say.  "I changed that."  Then he'd fish a couple of envelopes out of his pocket and read from the backs of them.  He could cram more writing in less space than anybody I ever knew.
   Suddenly one month he stopped reading to me.  He avoided me after classes.  I saw him from the library window one afternoon, and I leaned out and hollered to him to wait for me.  Miss MacGregor campused me for a week for hollering out the library window.  But I didn't care.  Joe waited for me.
   I asked him how the book was coming.
   "I haven't been writing," he said.
   "That's terrible.  When are you gonna finish it?"
   "As soon as I get the chance."
   "Chance?  What have you been doing nights?"
   "I've been working with my brother, nights.  He's a song writer.  I do the lyrics for him."
   I looked at him with my mouth open.  He had just told me that Robert Browning had been hired to play third bass for the Cards.
   "You're being ridiculous," I said.
   "My brother writes wonderful music."
   "That's great.  That's just peachy."
   "I'm not going to write lyrics for him my whole life," Joe explained.  "Just till he clicks."
   "Do you spend all your times nights doing that?  Haven't you worked on your novel at all?"
   Joe said coldly, "I told you I'm waiting till he clicks.  When he clicks I'm through."
   "What does he do for a living?"
   "Well, right now he spends most of his time at the piano."
   "I get it.  Joe Artist doesn't work."
   "Do you want to hear one of Sonny's numbers?" Joe asked.
   I said no, but he took me into the rec room anyway.  Joe sat down at the piano and played the number that was later to be called I Want to Hear the Music.  It was tremendous, of course.  It knocked you out.  It dated the time and place, and filed both away for future sweetness.  Joe played it through twice.  He played rather nicely.  When he was finished, he ran a skinny hand through his black hair.  "I'll wait till he clicks," he said.  "When he clicks I'm through."
   For the Inside Dope Department, Sonny Varioni was handsome, charming, insincere and bored.  He was also a brilliant creative technician at the piano.  His fingers were marvelous.  I think they were the best of the old 1926 fingers.  I think his fingers played with a keyboard so expertly that something new had to come out of the piano.  He played a hard, full-chord right hand and the fastest, most-satisfying bass I have ever heard, even from the colored boys.  When he as in the mood to show off for himself, he was the only man I have ever seen throw either arm over the back of his chair and play the bass and the treble with his remaining hand alone, and you could hardly tell the difference.  He was frightfully aware of his talents, of course.  He was so congenitally conceited that he appeared modest.  Sonny never asked you if you liked his music.  He assumed too confidently that you did.
   I'm always willing to acknowledge one virtue in Sonny.  While he knew there were Berlins, Carmichaels, Kerns, Isham Joneses plugging out tunes comparable in quality with his own, he knew that Joe was in a class strictly by himself among the lyric writers.  If Sonny ever took the trouble to brag at all in public, he bragged about Joe.
   Sonny would never let me watch him and Joe work together.  I don't know what their methods were, except what Joe once told me.  He told me Sonny would play whatever he had composed, through about fifteen times, while he, Joe, would follow his playing, with a pad and pencil handy.  I think it must have been a pretty cold business.
   I went with them to Chicago the day they sold I Want to Hear the Music, Mary, Mary, and Dirty Peggy.  My uncle was Teddy Barto's lawyer, and I got them in to see Teddy.
        When Teddy announced dramatically that he wanted to buy all three of the numbers, Neither of the Varionis went into a soft-shoe routine.
        "I want all three," Teddy said again, but more impressively.  "I want all three of them songs.  You guys got an agent?"
        "No," Sonny said, still at the piano.
        "You don't need one," Teddy informed.  "I'll publish your stuff and be your agent.  Look happy.  I'm a very smart man.  What have you guys been doing for a living?"
        "I teach," Joe said, looking out the window.
        "I weave baskets," Sonny said, at the piano.
        "You should move into town right away.  You should be near the pulse of things.  You're two very talented geniuses," Teddy said.  "I'm going to give you check on account.  You should both move into town right away."
       "I don't want to move into Chicago," Joe told him.  "It's hard enough to make my first class on time as it is."
        Teddy turned to me.  "Miss Daley, impress on the boy he should move in town by the pulse of the whole country."
        "He's a novelist," I said.  "He shouldn't be writing songs."
        "So he can write a few novels in town," Teddy said, solving everything.  "I like books.  Everybody likes books.  It improves the mind."
        "I'm not moving into Chicago," Joe said, at the window.
        Teddy started to say something, but Sonny put a finger to his lips, ordering silence.  I hated Sonny for that.
        "I'll leave it to you to work out for yourselves in the most advantage to yourselves personally," Teddy said beautifully.  "I'm not worried.  I'm confident, you might say.  We're all adults."

On the train back to Waycross we had the porter put up a table and we played poker.  We played for hours.  Then all of a sudden I felt something terrible and certain.  I put down my cards and walked back to the platform and lighted a cigarette.  Sonny came back and bummed a cigarette.  He stood over me easily, positively, frighteningly.  He was so masterful.  He couldn't even stand over you on a platform between cars without being the master of the platform.
        "Let him go, Sonny," I begged him.  "You don't even let him play cards his own way."
        He wasn't the sort to say "What do you mean?"  He knew exactly what I meant, and didn't care if I knew he knew.  He just waited easily for me to finish.
        "Let him go, Sonny.  What do you care?  You've got your break.  You can get somebody else to write lyrics for you.  It's your music that's terrific."
        "Joe does the best lyrics in the whole country.  Nobody touches him or comes close to it."
        "Sonny, he can write," I said.  "He can really write.  I spoke to Professor Voorhees at college--you've heard of him--and when I told him Joe wasn't writing any more, he just shook his head.  He just shook his head, Sonny.  That was all."
        Sonny snapped his butt to the platform floor, ground it out with his shoe.  "Joe's as bored as I am," he said.  "We were born bored.  Success is what both of us need.  It'll at least demand our interest.  It'll bring in money.  Even if Joe does write this novel, it may take the public years to pat him on the ego."
        "You're wrong.  You're so wrong," I said.  "Joe's not bored.  Joe's just lonely for his own ideals.  He has lots of them.  You don't have any.  You're the only one who's bored, Sonny."
        "You certainly have it bad," Sonny said.  "And you're wasting your time.  Could I interest you in something on my type?"
        "I hate you," I said.  "All my life I'm going to try to hate your music."
        He took my handbag away from me, opened it and took out my cigarettes.  "That," he said, "is impossible."
        I went back into the car.

        The Varioni Brothers followed up Dirty Peggy with Emmy-Jo, and before Emmy-Jo was cold that wonderful job, The Sheik of State Street was dropped on Teddy Barto's new, more expensive desk.  After the Sheik they did Is It All Right if I Cry, Annie? and after Annie came Stay a While.  Then came Frances Was There Too, then Weary Street Blues, then--Oh, I could name them all.  I could sing them all.  But what's the use?
        Right after Mary, Mary they moved into Chicago, bought a big house and filled it with poor relations.  They kept the basement to themselves.  It had a piano, a pool table and a bar.  Half the time they slept down there.  Almost overnight they were financially able to do almost anything--chucking emeralds at blondes, or what have you.  There just suddenly wasn't a grocery clerk in America who could climb a ladder for a can of asparagus without whistling or singing a Varioni Brothers' song, on or off key.
        Just after Is It All Right if I Cry, Annie? my father became ill, and I had to go to California with him.
       "I'm leaving tomorrow with daddy.  We're going to California, after all," I told Joe.  "Why don't you ride as far as California with me?  I'll propose to you in Latvian."
        He had taken me to lunch.
        "I'll miss you, Sarah."
        "Corinne Griffith is going to be on the train.  She's pretty."
        Joe smiled.  He was always a good smiler.  "I'll wait for you to come back, Sarah," he said.  "I'll be a big boy then."
        I reached for his hand across the table, his skinny, wonderful hand.  "Joe, Joe, sweetheart.  Did you write Sunday?  Did you, Joe?  Did you go near the script?"
        "I nodded at it very politely."  He took his hand away from mine.
        "You didn't write at all?"
        "We worked.  Leave me alone.  Leave me alone, Sarah.  Let's just eat our shrimp salads and leave each other alone."
        "Joe, I love you.  I want you to be happy.  You're burning yourself out in that terrible basement.  I want you to go away and do your novel."
        "Sarah, please.  Will you keep quiet, absolutely quiet, if I tell you something?"
        "Yes."
        "We're doing a new number.  I've given Sonny my two weeks' notice.  Lou Gangin is going to write lyrics for him from now on."
        "Did you tell Sonny that?" I said.
        "Of course I told him."
        "He doesn't want Lou Gangin.  He wants you."
        "He wants Gangin," Joe said.  "I'm sorry I told you."
        "He'll trick you, Joe.  He'll trick you into staying," I told him.  "Come to California with me.  Or just get on the train with me.  You can get off where and when you like.  You can--"
        "Sarah, shut up, please."

        While Joe came to the train with me and daddy, I made Professor Voorhees go to see Sonny.  I couldn't have seen him myself.  I couldn't have stood those cold, bored eyes of his, anticipating all my poor little strategies.
        Sonny received Professor Voorhees in the basement.  He played the piano the whole time the old man was there.
        "Have a seat, professor."
        "Thank you.  You play well, sir."
        "I can't give you too much time, professor.  I've got an engagement at eight."
        "Very well."  The professor got right to the point.  "I understand that Joseph is through writing lyrics for you, that a young man named Gangley is going to take his place."
        "Gangin," corrected his host.  "No.  Somebody's been kidding you.  Joe writes the best lyrics in the country.  Gangin's just one of the boys."
        Professor Voorhees said sharply, "Your brother is a poet, Mr. Varioni."
        "I thought he was a novelist."
        "Let us say he is a writer.  A very fine writer.  I believe he has genius."
        "Like Rudyard Kipling and that crowd, eh?"
        "No.  Like Joseph Varioni."
        Sonny was playing with some minor chords in the bass, running them, striking them solid.  The professor listened in spite if himself.
        "What makes you so sure," Sonny said.  "What makes you so sure he wouldn't plug out words for years and then have a bunch  of guys tell him he was also-ran?"
        "I think that Joseph is worthy of taking that chance, Mr. Varioni," Professor Voorhees said.  "Have you ever read anything your brother has written?"
        "He showed me a story once.  About some kids coming out of school.  I thought it was lousy.  Nothing happened."
        "Mr. Varioni," said the professor, "you've got to let him go.  You have a tremendous influence on him.  You must release him."
        Sonny stood up suddenly and buttoned the coat of his hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit.  "I have to go.  I'm sorry, professor."
        The professor followed Sonny upstairs.  They put on their overcoats.  A footman opened the door and they went out.  Sonny hailed a cab and offered the professor a lift, which he declined politely.
        One last attempt was made.  "You're quite determined to burn out your brother's life?" Professor Voorhees asked.
        For answer, Sonny dismissed the cab he had hailed.  He turned and made his reply, scrupulously for him.  "Professor, I want to hear the music.  I'm a man who goes to night clubs.  I can't stand going into a night club and hearing some little girl sing Lou Gangin's words to my music.  I'm not Mozart.  I don't write symphonies.  I write songs.  Joe's lyrics are the best--jazz, torch, or rhythm, his are the best.  I've known that from the beginning."
        Sonny lighted a cigarette, got rid of smoke through thinned lips.
        "I'll tell you a secret," he said.  "I'm a man who has an awful lot of trouble hearing the music.  I need every little help I can get."  He nodded good-by to the professor, stepped off the curb and got into another cab.

        Perhaps my sensitivity because has become blunted somewhere along the disposition of a reasonably normal, happy life.  For a long time after Joe Varioni's death I tried to stay away from places where jazz was played.  Then I suddenly met Douglas Smith at teachers' college, fell in love with him, and we went dancing.  And when the orchestra played a Varioni Brothers' number, I treacherously found that I could use Varioni words and music to date and identify my new happiness for future nostalgic purposes.  I was that young and that much in love with Douglas.  And there was a wonderful, ungeniuslike thing about Douglas--his arms were so ready to be filled with me.  I think if ever a lady, in memory of a gentleman, were determined to write an ode to the immortality of love, to make it convincing she would have to remember how the gentleman used to take her face between his hands and how he examined it with at least polite interest.  Joe was always too wretched, too thwarted, too claimed by his own unsatisfied genius, to have had either inclination or time to examine, if not my face, my love.  As a consequence, my mediocre heart rang out the old, in with the new.
        Intermittently through the seventeen years since Joe Varioni's death, I certainly have been aware and close to the tragedy of it.  Often painfully so.  I sometimes remember whole sentences at a time of the unfinished novel he read to me when I was a sophomore at Waycross.  Oddly, I remember them best while I was bathing the children.  I don't know why.
        As I have already mentioned, Sonny Varioni is now in Waycross.  He is living with Douglas and me in our home about a mile from the college.  He isn't at all well, and he looks much older than he is.
        About three months ago, Professor Voorhees, very old and dear, opened the door of my classroom during one of my lectures, and asked me if I would kindly step outside for a moment.  I did so, prepared for some major announcement or admonition.  I was horribly late with my mid-term grades again.
        "Sarah, dear," he said, "Sonny Varioni is here."
        It registered immediately, but I denied it.  "No, I don't believe you."
        "He's here, my dear.  He came into my office about twenty minutes ago."
        "What does he want," I asked, just a little shrilly.
        "I don't know," the professor said slowly.  "I don't really know."
        "I don't want to see him.  I just don't want to see him, that's all.  I'm married.  I have two fine children.  I don't want anything to do with him."
        "Please, Sarah," Professor Voorhees said quietly.  "This man is ill.  He wants something.  We must find out what it is."
        I didn't think my voice would work, so I didn't say anything.
        "Sarah"--the professor was gentle but firm--"the man in my office is harmless."
   "All right," I said.
   I followed Professor Voorhees down the corridor.  My legs suddenly weren't too sure of themselves.  They seemed in the process of dissolving.
   He was sitting in one of the worn leather chairs in the professor's office.  He stood up when he saw me.
   "Hello, Sarah."
   "Hello, Sonny."
   He asked me if he could sit down.  I said, very quickly, "Yes, please do."
   Sonny sat down and Professor Voorhees moved into his place behind the big desk.  I sat down, too, and I tried to look unhostile.  I wanted to help this man.  I think I said something about seventeen years being quite a long time.  Sonny made no perfunctory reply.  He was staring at the floor.
   "What is it you want, Mr. Varioni?" Professor Voorhees asked him deliberately, yet helpfully.  "What can we do for you?"
   Sonny was a long time making an answer.  Finally he said, "I have Joe's trunk with his script in it.  I've read it.  Most of it's written on the inside of a match folder."
        I didn't know what he was getting at, but I knew he needed help.
        "I know what you mean," I said.  "He didn't care what he wrote on."
        "I'd like to put his book together.  Kind of type it up.  I'd like to have a place to stay while I do it."  He didn't look up at either of us.
        "It isn't even finished," I said.  "Joe didn't even finish it."
        "He finished it.  He finished it that time you went to California with your father.  I never let him put it together."
        Professor Voorhees accepted the responsibility of making further comment.  He leaned forward over his desk.  "It will be a tremendous job," he told Sonny.
        "Yes."
        "Why do you want to undertake it?"
        "Because I hear the music for the first time in my life when I read his book."  He looked up helplessly at both Professor Voorhees and me, as though hoping that neither of us would take advantage of the irony at his expense.  Neither of us did.
[pre][/pre]

19. The Young Folks               
(Story 16, March-April, 1940)

About eleven o'clock, Lucille Henderson, observing that her party was soaring at the proper height, and just having been smiled at by Jack Delroy, forced herself to glance over in the direction of Edna Phillips, who since eight o'clock had been sitting in the big red chair, smoking cigarettes and yodeling hellos and wearing a very bright eye which young men were not bothering to catch. Edna's direction still the same, Lucille Henderson sighed as heavily as her dress would allow, and then, knitting what there was of her brows, gazed about the room at the noisy young people she had invited to drink up her father's Scotch. Then abruptly she swished to where William Jameson Junior sat, biting his fingernails and staring at a small blonde girl sitting on the floor with three young men from Rutgers.

   “Hello, there,” Lucille Henderson said, clutching William Jameson Junior's arm. “Come on,”she said. “There's someone I'd like you to meet.”
   “Who?”
   “This girl. She's swell.”  And Jameson followed her across the room, at the same time trying to make short work of a hangnail on his thumb.
   “Edna baby,” Lucille Henderson said, “I'd love you to really know Bill Jameson. Bill - Edna Phillips. Or have you two birds met already?”
   “No,” said Edna, taking in Jameson's large nose, flabby mouth, narrow shoulders. “I'm awfully glad to meet you” she told him.
   “Gladda know ya,”  Jameson replied, mentally contrasting Edna's all with the all of the small blonde across the room.
   “Bill's a very good friend of Jack Delroy's,”Lucyreported.
   “I don't know him so good,” said Jameson.
   “Well. I gotta beat it. See ya later, you two!”
   “Take it easy!” Edna called after her. Then, “Won't you sit down?”
   “Well, I don't know,” Jameson said, sitting down. “I been sitting down all night, kinda.”
   “I didn't know you were a good friend of Jack Delroy's,” Edna said. “He's a grand person, don't you think?”
   “Yeah, he's all right, I guess. I don't know him so good. I never went around with his crowd much.”
   “Oh, really? I thought I heard Lu say you were a good friend of his”
   “Yeah, she did. Only I don't know him so good. I really oughtta be gettin' home. I got this theme for Monday I'm supposed to do. I wasn't really gonna come home this week end.”
   “Oh, but the party's young!” Edna said. “The shank of the evening!”
   “The what?”
   “The shank of the evening. I mean it's so early yet.”
   “Yeah,” said Jameson. “But I wasn't even gonna come t'night. Accounta this theme. Honest. I wasn't gonna come home this week end at all.”
   “But it's so early I mean!” Edna said.
   “Yeah, I know, but-“
   “What's your theme on, anyway?”
   Suddenly, from the other side of the room, the small blonde shrieked with laughter, the three young men from Rutgers anxiously joining her.
   “I say what's your theme on, anyway?” Edna repeated.
   “Oh, I don't know,” Jameson said. “About this description of some cathedral. This cathedral in Europe. I don't know.”
   “Well, I mean what do you have to do?”
   “I don't know. I'm supposed to criticize it, sort of. I got it written down.”
   Again the small blonde and her friends went off into high laughter.
   “Criticize it? Oh, then you've seen it?”
   “Seen what?” said Jameson.
   “This cathedral.”
   “Me. Hell, no.”
   “,I mean how can you criticize it if you've never seen it?”
   “Oh. Yeah. It's not me. It's this guy that wrote it. I'm supposed to criticize it from what he wrote, kinda.”
   “Mmm. I see. That sounds hard.”
   “Wudga say?”
   “I say that sound hard. I know. I've wrestled with all that stuff puhlenty myself.”
   “Yeah.”
   “Who's the rat that wrote it?” Edna said.
   Exuberance again from the locale of the small blonde.
   “What?” Jameson said.
   “I say who wrote it?”
   “I don't know. John Ruskin.”
   “Oh, boy,” Edna said. “You're in for it, fella.”
   “Wudga say?”
   “I say you're in for it. I mean that stuff's hard.”
   “Oh. Yeah. I guess so.”
   Edna said, “Who're ya looking at? I know most of the gang here tonight.”
   “Me?” Jameson said. “Nobody. I think maybe I'll get a drink.”
   “Hey! You took the words right out of my mouth.”
   They arose simultaneously. Edna was taller than Jameson, and Jameson was shorter than Edna.
   “I think, “ Edna said, “there's some stuff out on the terrace. Some kind of junk, anyway. Not
sure. We can try. Might as well get a breath of fresh air.”
   “All right,” said Jameson.

   They moved on toward the terrace, Edna crouching slightly and brushing off imaginary ashes from what had been her lap since eight o'clock. Jameson followed her, looking behind him and gnawing on the index finger of his left hand.
   For reading, sewing, mastering crossword puzzles, the Henderson terrace was inadequately lighted. Lightly charging through the screen door, Edna was almost immediately aware of hushed vocal tones coming from a much darker vicinity to her left. But she walked directly to the front of the terrace, leaned heavily on the white railing, took a very deep breath, and then turned and looked behind her for Jameson.
   “I hear somebody talkin',” Jameson said, joining her.
   “Shhh. . . . Isn't it a gorgeous night? Just take a deep breath.”
   “Yeah. Where's the stuff? The Scotch?”
   “Just a second,” Edna said. “Take a deep breath. Just once.”
   “Yeah, I did. Maybe that's it over there.”  He left her and went over to a table. Edna turned and watched him. By silhouette mostly, she saw him lift and set things on the table.
   “Nothing left!” Jameson called back.
   “Shhh.  Not so loud. C'mere a minute.”
   He went over to her.
   “What's the matter?” he asked.
   “Just look at the sky,” Edna said.
   “Yeah. I can hear somebody talkin' over there, can't you?”
   “Yes, you  ninny.”
   “Wuddaya mean, ninny?”
   “Some  people,” Edna said, “want to be alone.”
   “Oh. Yeah. I get it.”
   “Not so loud.  How would you like it if someone spoiled it for you?”
   “Yeah. Sure,”Jameson said.
   “I think I'd kill somebody, wouldn't you?”
   “I don't know. Yeah. I guess so.”
   “What do you do most of the time when you're home week ends, anyway?” Edna asked.
   “Me? I don't know.”
   “Sow the wild oats, I guess, huh?”
   “I don't getcha,” Jameson said.
   “You know. Chase around. Joe College stuff.”
   “Naa. I don't know. Not much.”
   “You know something,” Edna said abruptly,”you remind me a lot of this boy I used to go around with last summer. I mean the way you look and all. And Barry was your build almost exactly. You know. Wiry.”
   “Yeah?”
   “Mmm. He was an artist. Oh, Lord!”
   “What's the matter?”
   “Nothing. Only I'll never forget this time he wanted to do a portrait of me. He always used to say to me - serious as the devil, too - `Eddie, you're not beautiful according to conventional standards, but there's something in your face I wanna catch.' Serious as the devil he'd say it, I mean. Well. I only posed for him this once.”
   “Yeah,” said Jameson. “Hey, I could go in and bring out some stuff -“
   “No,” Edna said, “;let's just have a cigarette. It's so grand out here. Amorous voices and all, what?”
   “I don't think I got any more with me. I got some in the other room, I think.”
   “No, don't bother,” Edna told him. “I have some right here.” She opened her evening bag and brought out a small black, rhinestoned case, opened it, and offered one of three cigarettes to Jameson. Taking one, Jameson remarked that he really oughtta get going; that he had told her about this theme he had for Monday. He finally found his matches, and struck a light.
   “Oh,” Edna said, puffing on her cigarette, “it'll be breaking up pretty soon. Did you notice Doris Leggett, by the way?”
   “Which one is she?”
   “Terribly short? Rather blonde? Used to go with Pete Ilesner? Oh, you must have seen her. She was sitting on the floor per usual, laughing at the top of her voice.”
   “That her? You know her?” Jameson said.
   “Well, sort of,” Edna told him. “We never went much around together. I really know her mostly by what Pete Ilesner used to tell me.”
   “Who's he?”
   “Petie Ilesner? Don't you know Petie? Oh, a  grand guy. He went around with Doris Leggett for a while. And in my opinion she gave him a pretty raw deal. Simply rotten, I think.”
   “How?” Jameson said. “Wuddaya mean?”
   “Oh, let's drop it. You know me. I hate to put my two cents in when I'm not sure and all. Not any more. Only I don't think Petie would lie to me though. After all, I mean.”
   “She's not bad,”  Jameson said. “Doris Liggett?”
   “Leggett,” Edna said. “I guess Doris is attractive to men. I don't know. I think I really liked her better though-- her looks, I mean-- when her hair was natural. I mean bleached hair--to me anyway--always looks sort of artificial when you see it in the light or something. I don't know. I may be wrong. Everybody does it, I guess. Lord! I'll bet Dad would kill me if I ever came home with my hair touched up even a little! You don't know Dad. He's terribly old-fashioned. I honestly don't think I ever would have it touched up, when you come right down to it. But you know. Sometimes you do the craziest things. Lord! Dad's not the only one! I think Barry even would kill me if I ever did!”
   “Who?” said Jameson.
   “Barry. This boy I told you about.”
   “He here t'night?”
   “Barry?  Lord, no! I can just picture Barry at one of these things. You don't know  Barry.”
   “Go t'college?”
   “Barry? Mmm, he did. Princeton. I think Barry got out in thirty-four. Not sure. I really haven't seen Barry since last summer. Well, not to talk to. Parties and stuff. I always managed to look the other way when he looked at me.  Or ran out into the john or something.”
   “I thought you liked him, this guy,” Jameson said.
   “Mmm. I did. Up to a point.”
   “I don't getcha.”
   “Let it go. I'd rather not talk about it. He just asked to much of me; that's all.”
   “Oh,”Jameson said.
   “I'm not a prude or anything. I don't know. Maybe I am. I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them. The best I can, anyway.”
   “Look,” Jameson said. “This rail is kinda shaky-“
   Edna said, “It isn't that I can't appreciate how a boy feels after he dates you all summer and spends money he hasn't any right to spend on theater tickets and night spots and all. I mean, I can understand. He feels you owe him something. Well, I'm not that way. I guess I'm not built that way. It's gotta be the real thing with me. Before, you know. I mean love and all.”
   “Yeah. Look, uh. I really oughtta get goin'. I got this theme for Monday. Hell, I shoulda been home hours ago. So I think I'll go in and get a drink and get goin'.”
   “Yes,” Edna said. “Go on in.”
   “Aren'tcha coming?”
   “In a minute. Go ahead.”
   “Well. See ya,” Jameson said.
   Edna shifted her position at the railing. She lighted the remaining cigarette in her case. Inside, somebody had turned on the radio, or the volume had suddenly increased. A girl vocalist was huskying through the refrain from that new show, which even the delivery boys were beginning to whistle.
   No door slams like a screen door.
   “Edna!” Lucille Henderson greeted.
   “Hey, hey,” said Edna. “Hello, Harry.”
   “Wuttaya say.”
   “Bill's inside,” Lucille said. “Get me a drink, willya Harry?”
   “Sure.”
   “What happened?” Lucille wanted to know. “Didn't you and Bill hit it off? Is that Frances and Eddie over there?”
   “I don't know. He hadda leave. Had a lot of work to do for Monday”
   “Well, right now he's in there on the floor with Doris Leggett. Delroy's putting peanuts down her back. That is Frances and Eddie over there.”
   “Your little Bill is quite a guy.”
   “Yeah? How? Wuttaya mean?” said Lucille.
   Edna fish-lipped her mouth and tapped her cigarette ashes.
   “A trifle warm-blooded, shall I say?”
   “Bill Jameson?”
   “Well,” said Edna, “I'm still in one piece. Only keep that guy away from me, willya?”
   “Hmm. Live and learn,” said Lucille Henderson. “Where is  that dope Harry? I'll see ya later, Ed.”
   When she finished her cigarette, Edna went in too. She walked quickly, directly up the stairs into the section of Lucille Henderson's mother's home barred to young hands holding lighted cigarettes and wet highball glasses. She remained upstairs nearly twenty minutes. When she came down, she went back into the living room. William Jameson, Junior, a glass in his right hand and the fingers of his left hand in or close to his mouth, was sitting a few men away from the small blonde. Edna sat down in the big red chair. No one had taken it. She opened her evening bag and took out her small, black rhinestoned case, and extracted one of ten or twelve cigarettes.”
   “Hey!” she called, tapping her cigarette on the arm of the big red chair. “Hey, Lu! Bobby! See if you can't get something better on the radio! I mean who can dance to that stuff?”

[pre][/pre]

20. This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise      
(Esquire 24, October 1945)

I am inside the truck, too, sitting on the protection strap, trying to keep out of the crazy Georgia rain, waiting for the lieutenant from Special Services, waiting to get tough.  I'm scheduled to get tough any minute now.  There are thirty-four men in this here vee-hickle, and only thirty are supposed to go to the dance.  Four must go.  I plan to knife the first four men on my right, simultaneously singing Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder at the top of my voice, to drown out their silly cries.  Then I'll assign a detail of two men (preferably college graduates) to push them off this here vee-hickle into the good wet Georgia red clay.  It might be worth forgetting that I'm one of the Ten Toughest Men who ever sat on this protection strap.  I could lick my weight in Bobbsey Twins.  Four must go.  From the truck of the same name . . . Choose yo' pahtnuhs for the Virginia Reel! . . .
   And the rain on the canvas top comes down harder than ever.  This rain is no friend of mine.  It's no friend of mine and these other gents (four of whom must go).  Maybe it's a friend of Katharine Hepburn's, or Sarah Palfrey Fabyan's, or Tom Heeney's, or of all the good solid Greer Garson fans waiting in line at Radio City Music Hall.  But it's no buddy of mine, this rain.  It's no buddy of the other thirty-three men (four of whom must go).
   The character in the front of the truck yells at me again.
   "What?" I say.  I can't hear him.  The rain on the top is killing me.  I don't even want to hear him.
   He says, for the third time, "Let's get this show on the road!  Bring on the women!"
   "Gotta wait for the lieutenant," I tell him.  I feel my elbow getting wet and bring it in out of the downpour.  Who swiped my raincoat?  With all my letters in the left-hand pocket.  My letters from Red, from Phoebe, from Holden.  From Holden.  Aw, listen, I don't care about the raincoat being swiped, but how about leaving my letters alone?  He's only nineteen years old, my brother is, and the dope can't reduce a thing to a humor, kill it off with a sarcasm, can't do anything but listen hectically to the maladjusted little apparatus he wears for a heart.  My missing-in-action brother.  Why don't they leave people's raincoats alone?
   I've got to stop thinking about it.  Think of something pleasant.  Vincent old troll.  Think about this truck.  Make believe this is not the darkest, wettest, most miserable Army truck you have ever ridden in.  This truck, you've got to tell yourself, is full of roses and blondes and vitamins.  This here is a real pretty truck.  This is a swell truck.  You were lucky to get this job tonight.  When you get back from the dance. . .Choose yo' pahtnuhs, folks! . .you can write an immortal poem about this truck.  This truck is a potential poem.  You can call it, "Trucks I Have Rode In," or "War and Peace," or "This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise."  Keep it simple.
   Aw, listen. .Listen, rain.  This is the ninth day you've been raining.  How can you do this to me and these thirty-three men (four of whom must go).  Let us alone.  Stop making us sticky and lonely.
   Somebody is talking to me.  The man is within knifing distance. .(four must go).  "What?" I say to him.
   "Where ya from, Sarge?" the boy asks me.
   "Your arms gettin' wet."
   I take it in again.  "New York," I tell him.
   "So'm I!  Whereabouts?"
   "Manhattan.  Just a couple of blocks from the Museum of Art."
   "I live on Valentine Avenue," the boy says.  "Know where that is?"
   "In The Bronx, isn't it?"
   "Naa!  Near The Bronx.  Near The Bronx, but it ain't in it.  It's still Manhattan."
   Near The Bronx, but it isn't in it.  Let's remember that.  Let's not go around telling people they live in The Bronx when in the first place they don't live there, they live in Manhattan.  Let's use our heads, buddy.  Let's get on the ball, buddy.
   "How long have you been in the Army?" I ask the boy.  He is a private.  He is the soakingest wettest private in the Army.
   "Four months!  I come in through Dix and then they ship me down to Mee-ami.  Ever been in Mee-ami?"
   "No," I lie.  "Pretty good?"
   "Pretty good?"  He nudges the guy on his right.  "Tell 'im, Fergie."
   "What?" says Fergie, looking wet, frozen and fouled.
   "Tell the Sarge about Mee-ami.  He wantsa know if it's any good or not.  Tell 'im."
   Fergie looks at me.  "Ain'tya never been there, Sarge?"--You poor miserable sap of a sergeant.
   "No.  Pretty good down there?" I manage to ask.
   "What a town," says Fergie softly.  "You could get anything you want down there.  You could really amuse yourself.  I mean you could really amuse yourself.  Not like this here hole.  You couldn't amuse yourself in the here hole if you tried."
   "We lived in a hotel," the boy from Valentine Avenue says.  "Before the War you probly paid five, six dollars a day for a room in the hotel we was at.  One room."
   "Showers," says Fergie, in a bittersweet tone which Abelard, during his last years,  might have used to mention Heloise's handle.  "You were all the time as clean as a kid.  Down there you had four guys to a room and you had these showers in between.  The soap was free in the hotel.  Any kinda soap you wanted.  Not G.I."
   "You're alive, ain'tcha?" the character in the front of the truck yells at Fergie.  I can't see his face.
   Fergie is above it all.  "Showers," he repeats.  "Two, three times a day I took 'em."
   "I used to sell down there," a guy in the middle of the truck announces.  I can barely see his face in the darkness.  "Memphis and Dallas are the best towns in Dixie, for my dough.  In the wintertime Miami gets too crowded.  It used to drive you crazy.  In the places it was worth goin', you could hardly get a seat or anything."
   "It wasn't crowded when we were there--was it, Fergie?" asks the kid from Valentine Avenue.
   Fergie won't answer.  He's not altogether with us on this discussion.  He's not giving us his all.
   The man who likes Memphis and Dallas sees that, too.  He says to Fergie, "Down here at this Field I'm lucky if I get a shower once a day.  I'm in the new area on the west side of the Field.  All the showers aren't built yet."
   Fergie is not interested.  The comparison is not apt.  The comparison, I might and will say, stinks, Mae.
   From the front of the truck comes a dynamic and irrefutable observation:  "Not flying again tonight!  Them cadets won't be flyin' again tonight, all right.  The eighth day no night flyin'."
   Fergie looks up, with a minimum of energy.  "I ain't hardly seen a plane since I'm down here.  My wife thinks I'm flyin' myself nuts.  She writes and tells me I should get outta the Air Corps.  She's got me on a B-17 or something.  She reads about Clark Gable and she's got me a gunner or something on a bomber.  I ain't got the heart to tell her all I do is empty out stuff."
   "What stuff?" says Memphis and Dallas, interested.
   "Any stuff.  Any stuff that gets filled up."  Fergie forgets Mee-ami for a minute and shoots Memphis and Dallas a withering look. 
   "Oh," says Memphis and Dallas, but before he could continue Fergie turns to me.  "You shoulda seen them showers in Mee-ami, Sarge.  No kiddin'.  You'd never wanna take a bath in your own tub again."  And Fergie turns away, losing interest in my fact, which is altogether understandable.
   Memphis and Dallas leans forward, anxiously, addressing Fergie.  "I could get you a ride," he tells Fergie.  "I work at Dispatchers.  These here lieutenants, they take cross-countries about once a month and sometimes they don't already have a passenger in the back.  I been lotsa times.  Maxwell Field.  Everywhere."  He points a finger at Fergie, as though accusing him of something.  "Listen.  If you wanna go sometime, gimme a ring.  Call Dispatchers and ask for me.  Porter's the name."
   Fergie looks phlegmatically interested.  "Yeah?  Ask for Porter, huh?  Corporal or something?"
   "Private," says porter, just short of stiffly.
   "Boy," says the kid from Valentine Avenue, looking past my head into the teeming blackness.  "Look at it come down!"
   Where's my brother?  Where's my brother Holden?  What is this missing-in-action stuff?  I don't believe it.  I don't understand it.  I don't believe it.  The United States Government is a liar.  The Governments is lying to me and my family.
   I never heard such crazy, liar's news.
   Why, he came through the war in Europe without a scratch, we all saw him before he shipped out to the Pacific last summer, and he looked fine.  Missing.
   Missing, missing, missing.  Lies!   I'm being lied to.  He's never been missing before.  He's one of the least missing boys in the world.  He's here in this truck; he's home in New York; he's at Pentey Preparatory School ("You send us the Boy.  We'll mold the man--  All modern fireproof buildings..."); yes, he's at Pentey, he never left school; and he's at Cape Cod, sitting on the porch, biting his fingernails; and he's playing doubles with me, yelling at me to stay back at the baseline when he's at the net.  Missing!  Is that missing?  Why lie about something as important as that?  How can the Government do a thing like that?  What can they get out of it, telling lies like that?
   "Hey, Sarge!" yells the character in the front of the truck.  "Let's get this show on the road!  Bring on the dames!"
   "How are the dames, Sarge?  They good-lookin'?"
   "I don't really know what this thing is tonight," I say.  "Usually they're pretty nice girls."  That is to say, in other words, by the same token, usually they're usually.  Everybody tries very, very hard.  Everybody is in there pitching.  The girls ask you where you come from, and you tell them, and they repeat the name of the city, putting an exclamation point at the end of it.  Then they tell you about Douglas Smith, Corporal, AUS.  Doug lives in New York, and do you know him?  You don't believe so, and you tell her about New York being a very big place.  And because you didn't want Helen to marry a soldier and wait around for a year or six, you go on dancing with this strange girl who knows Doug Smith, this strange nice girl who's read every line Lloyd C. Douglas has written.  While you dance and the band plays on, you think about everything in the world except music and dancing.  You wonder if your little sister Phoebe is remembering to take your dog out regularly, if she's remembering not to jerk Joey's collar--the kid'll kill the dog someday.
   "I never saw rain like this," the boy from Valentine Avenue says.  "You ever see it like this, Fergie?"
   "See what?"
   "Rain like this."
   "Naa."
   "Let's get this show on the road!  Bring on the dames!"  The noisy guy leans forward and I can see his face.  He looks like everybody else in the truck.  We all look alike.
   "What's the looey like, Sarge?"  It was the boy from near the Bronx.
   "I don't really know," I say.  "He just hit the Field a couple of days ago.  I heard that he lived right around here somewhere when he was a civilian."
   "What a break.  To live right near where you're at," says the boy from Valentine Avenue.  "If I was only at Mitchel Field, like.  Boy.  Half hour and I'm home."
   Mitchel Field.  Long Island.  What about that Saturday in the summer at Port Washington?  Red said to me, It won't hurt you to see the Fair either.  It's very pretty.  So I grabbed Phoebe, and she had some kid with her named Minerva (which killed me), and I put them both in the car and then I looked around for Holden.  I couldn’t find him; so Phoebe and Minerva and I left without him. . . At the Fair we went to the Bell Telephone Exhibit, and I told Phoebe that This Phone was connected with the author of the Elsie Fairfield books.  So Phoebe, shaking like Phoebe, picked up the phone and trembles into it, Hello, this is Phoebe Caulfield, and child at the World's Fair.  I read your books and think they are very excellent in spots.  My mother and father are playing in Death Takes a Holiday in Great Neck.  We go swimming a lot, but the ocean is better in Cap Cod.  Good bye! . . .And then we came out of the building and there was Holden, with Hart and Kirky Morris.  He had my terry-cloth shirt on.  No coat.  He came over and asked Phoebe for her autograph and she socked him in the stomach, happy to see him, happy he was her brother.  Then he said to me, Let's get out of this educational junk.  Let's go on one of the rides or something.  I can't stand this stuff. . . And now they're trying to tell me he's missing.  Missing.  Who's missing?  Not him.  He's at the World's Fair.  I know just where to find him.  I know exactly where he is.  Phoebe knows, too.  She would know in a minute.  What is this missing, missing, missing stuff?
   "How long's it take you to get from your house to Forty-Second Street?"  Fergie wants to know from the Valentine Avenue kid.
   Valentine Avenue thinks it over, a little excitedly.  "From my house," he informs intensely, "to the Paramount Theayter takes exactly forty-four minutes by subway.  I nearly won two bucks betting with my girl on that.  Only I wouldn't take her dough."
   The man who likes Memphis and Dallas better than Miami speaks up:  "I hope all these girls tonight ain't chicken.  I mean kids.  They look at me like I was an old guy when they're chicken."
   "I watch out that I don't perspire too much," says Fergie.  "these her G.I. dances are really hot.  The women don't like it if you perspire too much.  My wife don't eve like it when I perspire too much.  It's all right when she perspires--that's different!. . . Women.  They drive ya nuts."
   A colossal burst of thunder.  All of us jump--me nearly falling off the truck.  I get off the protection strap, and the boy from Valentine Avenue squeezes against Fergie to make room for me. . .A very drawly voice speaks up from the front of the truck:
   "Y'all ever been to Atlanta?"
   Everybody is waiting for more thunder.  I answer.  "No," I say.
   "Atlanta's a good town."
   --Suddenly the lieutenant from Special Services appears from nowhere, soaking wet, sticking his head inside the truck--four of these men must go.  He wears oilskin covers on his visored cap: it looks like a unicorn’s bladderie. His face is even wet. It is a small-featured, young face, not yet altogether sure of the new command in it issued to him by the Government. He sees my stripes where the sleeves of my swiped raincoat (with all my letters) should be.
   “You in charge heah, Sahgeant?”
   Wow. Choose yo’ pahtnuhs…
   “Yes, sir.”
   “How many men in heah?”
   “I’d better take a re-count, sir.” I turn around, and say, “All right, all you men with matches handy, light ‘em up-I wanna count heads.” And four or five of the men manage to burn matches simultaneously. I pretend to count heads. “Thirty-Four including me, sir,” I tell him finally.
   The young lieutenant in the rain shakes his head. “Too many,” he informs me-and I try to look very stupid. “I called up every orderly room myself,” he reveals for my benefit, ”and distinctly gave orduhs that only fahve men from each squadron were supposed to go.” (I pretend to see the gravity of the situation for the first time. I might suggest that we shoot four of the men. We might ask for a detail of men experienced in shooting people who want to go to dances.) …The lieutenant asks me, “Do you know Miz Jackson, Sahgeant?”
   “I know who she is,” I say as the men listen-without taking drags on their cigarettes.
   “Well, Miz Jackson called me this mawnin’ and asked for just thi’ty men even. I’m afraid Sahgeant, we’ll have to ask four of the men to go back to their areas.” He looks away from me, looks deeper into the truck, establishing a neutrality for himself  in the soaking dark. “I don’t care how it’s done.”
   I look cross-eyed at the men. “How many of you did not sign up for this dance?”
   “Don’t look at me,” says Valentine Avenue. “I signed up.”
   “Who didn’t sign up?” I say. “Who just came along because somebody told him about it?” -That’s cute sergeant . Keep it up.
   “Make it snappy, Sahgeant ,” says the lieutenant, letting his head drip inside the truck.
   “Cmon now. Who didn’t sign up?” -C’mon now, who didn’t sign up.I never heard such a gross question in my life.
   “Heck, we all signed up, Sarge,” says Valentine Avenue. “The thing is, around seven guys signed up in my squadron.”
   All right, I’ll be brilliant. I’ll offer a handsome alternative.
   “Who’s willing to take in a movie on the Field instead?”
   No response.
   Response
   Silently, Porter (the Memphis-Dallas man) gets up and moves toward the way out. The men adjust their legs to let him go by. I move aside, too…None of us tells Porter, as he passes, what relatively big, important stuff  he is.
   More response… “One side,” says Fergie, getting up. “So the married guys’ll write letters t’night.” He jumps out of the truck quickly.
   I wait. We all wait. No one else comes forward. “Two more,” I croak. I’ll hound them. I’ll hound these men because I hate their guts. They’re all being insufferably stupid. What’s the matter with them? Do they think they’ll have a terrific time at this sticky little dance? Do they think they’re going to hear a fine trumpet take a chorus of “Marie”? What’s the matter with these idiots? What’s the matter with me? Why do I want them all to go? Why do I sort of want to go myself? Sort of! What a joke. You’re aching to go, Caulfield…
   “All right,” I say coldly. “The lst two men on the left. C’mon out. I don’t know who you are.” -I don’t know who you are. -Phew!
   The noisy guy, who has been yelling at me to get the show on the road, starts coming out. I had forgotten he was sitting just there. But he disappears awkwardly into the India ink storm. He is followed, as though tentatively, by a smaller man-a boy, it proves in the light.
   His overseas cap on crooked and limp with wet, his eyes on the lieutenant, the boy waits in the rain-as though obeying an order. He is very young, probably eighteen, and he doesn’t look like the tiresome sort of kid who argues and argues after the whistle’s blown. I stare at him, and the lieutenant turns around and stares at him, too.
   “I was on the list. I signed up when the fella tacked it up. Right when he tacked it up.”
   “Sorry, soldier,” says the lieutenant, “-Ready, Sahgeant?”
   “You can ask Ostrander,” the boy tells the lieutenant, and sticks his head in the truck. “Hey, Ostrander! Wasn’t I the first fella on the list?”
   The rain comes down harder than ever, it seems. The boy who wants to go to the dance is getting soaked. I reach out a hand and flip up his raincoat collar.
   “Wasn’t I first on the list?” the boy yells at Ostrander.
   “What list?” says Ostrander.
   “The list for fellas that wanna go to the dance!” yells the boy.
   “Oh,” Says Ostrander. “What about it? I was on it.”
   Oh, Ostrander, you insidious bore!
   “Wasn’t I the first fella on it?” says the boy, his voice breaking.
   “I don’t know,” says Ostrander. “How should I know?”
   The boy turns wildly to the lieutenant.
“I was the first one on it sir. Honest. This fella in our squadron-This foreign guy, like, that works in the orderly room-he tacked it up and I signed it right off. The first fella.”
The lieutenant says, dripping: “Get in. Get in the truck boy.”
The boy climbs back into the truck and the men quickly make room for him.
The lieutenant turns to me and asks, “Sahgeant, wheah can I use a telephone around heah?”
“Well, Post Engineers’ sir. I’ll show you.”
We wade through the rivers of red bog over to Post Engineers.
“Mama?” the lieutenant says into the mouthpiece. “Buddy…I’m fine…Yes, mama. Yes, mama. I’m fixin’ to be. Maybe Sunday if I get off like they said. Mama, is Sarah Jane home?… Well, how ‘bout lettin’ me talk to her?…Yes, mama. I will if I can, mama; maybe Sunday.”
The lieutenant talks again.
“Sarah Jane?…Fine. Fine…I’m fixin’ to. I told mama maybe Sunday if I get off. -Listen Sarah Jane. You got a date t’night?…It sure is pretty bad. It sure is. -Listen, Sarah Jane. How’s the car? You get that thing fixed? That’s fine, that’s fine; That’s mighty cheap with the plugs and all.” The lieutenant’s voice changes. It becomes casual. “Sarah Jane, listen. I want you to drive oveh to Miz Jackson’s t’night…Well it’s like this: I got these boys heah for one of those pahties Miz Jackson gives. You know?…Only this is what I want to tell you: they’s one boy too many…Yes…Yes…Yes…I know that, Sarah Jane; I know that; I know it’s rainin’ …Yes … Yes…” The lieutenant’s voice gets very sure and hard suddenly. He says into the mouthpiece, “I ain’t askin’ you, girl. I’m tellin’ you. Now I want you to drive ovuh to Miz Jackson’s right quick-heah? …I don’t care…All right. All right…I’ll see y’all later.” He hangs up. Drenched to the bone, the bone of loneliness, the bone of silence, we plod back to the truck.
Where are you Holden? Never mind the Missing stuff. Stop playing around. Show up. Show up somewhere. Hear me? It’s simply because I remember everything. I can’t forget anything that’s good, that’s why. So listen. Just go up to somebody, some officer or some G.I., and tell them you’re Here-not Missing, not dead, not anything but Here.
Stop kidding around. Stop letting people think you’re Missing. Stop wearing my robe to the beach. Stop taking the shots on my side of the court. Stop whistling. Sit up to the table…
[pre][/pre]

21. Blue Melody                  
(Cosmopolitan, September 1948)

(The saga of Lida Louise who sang the blues as they have never been sung before or since)

In mid-winter of 1944 I was given a lift in the back of an overcrowded GI truck going from Luxembourg City to the front at Halzhoffen, Germany--a distance of four flat tires, three (reported) cases of frozen feet, and at least one case of incipient pneumonia.
The forty-odd men jammed in the truck were nearly all infantry replacements. Many of them had just got out of hospitals in England where they had been treated for wounds received in action somewhat earlier in the war. Ostensibly rehabilitated, they were on their way to join rifle companies of a certain infantry division which, I happened to know, was commanded by a brigadier general who seldom stepped into his command car without wearing a Luger and a photographer, one on each side; a fighting man with a special gift for writing crisp, quotable little go-to-hell notes to the enemy, invariably when outnumbered or surrounded by the latter. I rode for hours and hours without looking anybody in the truck very straight in the eye.
During day-light hours the men made an all-out effort to suppress or divert their eagerness to get another crack at the enemy. Charade groups were formed at either end of the truck. Favourite statesmen were elaborately discussed. Songs were started up--spirited war songs, chiefly, composed by patriotic Broadway songwriters who, through some melancholy, perhaps permanently embittering turn of the wheel of fortune, had been disqualified from taking their places at the front. In short, the truck fairly rocked with persiflage and melody, until night abruptly fell and the black-out curtains were attached. Then all the men seemed to go to sleep or freeze to death, except the original narrator of the following story and myself. He had the cigarettes and I had the ears.
This is all I know about the man who told me the story:
His first name was Rudford. He had a very slight Southern accent and a chronic, foxhole cough. The bars and red cross of a captain in the medics were painted, as fashion had it, on his helmet.
And that's all I know about him except for what comes naturally out of his story. So please don't anybody write in for additional information--I don't even know if the man is alive today. This request applies particularly to readers who may sooner or later think that this story is a slam against one section of this country.
It isn't a slam against anybody or anything. It's just a simple little story of mom's apple pie, ice cold beer, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Lux Theater of the Air--the things we fought for, in short. You can't miss it, really.
Rudford came from a place called Agersburg, Tennessee. He said it was about an hour's drive from Memphis. It sounded to me like a pretty little town. For one thing, it had a street called Miss Packer's Street. Miss Packers had been an Agersberg school teacher who, during the Civil War, had taken a few pot shots at some passing Union troops, from the window of the principal's office. None of the flag-waving, Barbara Fritchie stuff for Miss Packer. She had just taken aim and let go, knocking off five of the boys in blue before anybody could get to her with an ax. She was then nineteen.
Rudford's father originally had been a Bostonian, a salesman for a Boston typewriter company. On a business trip to Agserberg, just before the first World War, he had met--and within two weeks married--a well heeled local girl. He never returned either to the home office or to Boston, apparently X-ing both out of his life without a jot of regret. He was quite a number altogether. Less than an hour after his wife died giving birth to Rudford, he got on a trolley going to the outskirts of Agsberg and bought out a rocky, but reputable, publishing house. Six months later he published a book he had written himself, entitled, "Civics for Americans." It was followed, over a period of few years, by a highly successful series of highly unreadable textbooks known-- only too widely, even today--as the Intelligence Series for Progressive High School Students of America. I certainly know for a fact that his "Science for Americans" paid the public high schools of Philadelphia a visit around 1932. The book was rich with baffling little diagrams of simple little fulcrums.
The boy Rudford's early home life was unique. His father evidently detested people who just read his books. He grilled and quizzed the boy even at the height of marble season. He held him up on the staircase for a definition of a chromosome. He passed him the lima beans on condition that the planets were named--in order of size. He gave the boy his ten-cent weekly allowance in return for the date of some historical personage's birth or death or defeat. To be brief, at the age of eleven Rudford knew just about as much, academically, as the average high-school freshman. And in an extracurricular sense, more. The average high-school freshman doesn't know how to sleep on a cellar floor without using a pillow or blanket.
There were, however, two footnotes in Rudford's boyhood. They weren't in his father's books, but they were close enough to make a little quick sense in an emergency. One of them was a man named Black Charles, and the other was a little girl named Peggy Moore.
Peggy was in Rudford's class at school. For more than a year, though, he had taken little note of her beyond the fact that she was usually the first one eliminated in a spelling bee. He didn't begin to assess Peggy's true value until one day he saw her, across the aisle from him, insert her chewing gum into the hollow of her neck. It struck Rudford as a very attractive thing for anybody to do--even a girl. Doubling up under his desk, pretending to pick up something from the floor, he whispered to Peggy, "Hey! That where you put your gum?"
Turning her lips ajar, the young lady with the gum in her neck nodded. She was flattered. It was the first time Rudford had spoken to her out of the line of duty.
Rudford felt around the floor for a nonexistent ink eraser. "Listen. You wanna meet a friend of mine after school?"
Peggy put a hand over her mouth and pretended to cough. "Who?" she asked.
"Black Charles."
"Who's he?"
"He's a fella. Plays the piano on Willard Street. He's a friend of mine."
"I'm not allowed on Willard Street."
"Oh!"
"When are you going?"
"Right after she lets us out. She's not gonna keep us in today. She's too bored...Okay?"
"Okay."
That afternoon the two children went down to Willard Street, and Peggy met Black Charles and Black Charles met Peggy.
Black Charles's cafe was a hole-in-the-wall hamburger joint, a major eyesore on a street that was regularly torn down, on paper, whenever Civic Council convened. It was, perhaps, the paragon of all restaurants classified by parents--usually through he side window of the family car--as unsanitary-looking. It was a swell place to go, in short. Moreover, it is very doubtful if any of Black Charles's young patrons had ever got sick from any of the delicious, greasy hamburgers he served. Anyway, almost nobody went to Black Charles's to eat. You ate after you got there, naturally, but that wasn't why you went.
You went there because Black Charles played the piano, like somebody from Memphis--maybe even better. He played hot or straight, and he was always at the piano when you came in, and he was always there when you had to go home. But not only that. (After all, it stood to reason that Black Charles, being a wonderful piano player, would be wonderfully indefatigable.) He was something else--something few white players are. He was kind and interested when young people came up to the piano to ask him to play something or just to talk to him. He looked at you. He listened.
Until Rudford started bringing Peggy with him he was probably the youngest habitué of Black Charles's cafe. For over two years he had been going there alone two or three afternoons a week; never at night, for the very good reason that he wasn't allowed out at night. He missed out on the noise and smoke and jump indigenous to Black Charles's place after dark, but he got something, afternoons, equally or more desirable. He had the privilege of hearing Charles play all the best numbers without interruption. All he had to do to get in on this deal was to wake the artist up. That was the catch. Black Charles slept in the afternoon, and he slept like a dead man.

Going down to Willard Street to hear Black Charles play was even better with Peggy along, Rudford found out. She was not only somebody good to sit on the floor with; she was some body good to listen with. Rudford liked the way she drew up her racy, usually bruised legs and locked her fingers around her ankles. He liked the way she set her mouth hard against her knees, leaving teeth marks, while Charles was playing. And the way walked home afterwards: not talking, just now and then kicking at a stone or a tin can, or reflectively cutting a cigar butt in two with her heel. She was just right, though of course, Rudford didn't tell her so. She had an alarming tendency to get lovey-dovey with or without provocation.
You had to hand it to her, though. She even learned how to wake Black Charles up.
One three-thirtyish afternoon, just after the two children had let themselves in, Peggy said, "Can I wake him up this time? Huh, Rudford?"
"Sure. Go ahead. If you can." Black Charles slept, fully dressed except for his shoes, on a bumpy, ratty-looking settee, a few stacked tables away from his beloved piano.
Peggy circled the problem academically.
"Well, go ahead and do it," Ruthford said.
"I'm fixin' to; I am fixin' to. Go away."
Rudford watched her a trifle smugly. "Naa. You can't just shove him around and get anywhere. You've seen me," he said. "You gotta really haul off. Get him right under the kidneys. You've seen me."
"Here?" said Peggy. She had her finger on the little island of nerves set off by the dorsal fork of Charles's lavender suspenders.
"Go ahead."
Peggy wound up and delivered.
Black Charles stirred slightly, but slept on without even seriously changing his position.
"You missed. You gotta hit him harder than that anyway."
The aspirant tried to make a more formidable weapon of her right hand. She sandwiched her thumb between her first and second fingers, held it away from her and looked at it admiringly.
"You'll break your thumb that way. Get your thumb out of--"
"Oh, be quiet," said Peggy, and let go with a haymaker.
It worked. Black Charles let out an awful yell and went all of two feet in the stale cafe air. As he came down, Peggy put in a request: "Charles, will you play 'Lady, Lady' for me, please?"
Charles scratched his head, swung his immense, stockinged feet to the cigarette-butt specked floor, and squinted. "That you, Marga-reet?"
"Yes. We just got here. The whole class was kept in," she explained. Would you please play, 'Lady, Lady,' Charles?"
"Summer vacation starts Monday," Rudford enthusiastically put in. "We can come around every afternoon."
"My, my! Ain't that fine!" Charles said--and meant it. He got to his feet, a gentle giant of a man, towing a hook-and-ladder gin hang-over. He began to move in the general direction of his piano.
"We'll come earlier too," Peggy promised.
"Ain't that fine!" Charles responded.
"This way, Charles," Rudford said. You're going right into the ladies' room."
"He's still sort of asleep. Hit him just once, Rudford..."
I guess it was a good summer--the days full of Charles's piano--but I can't say for sure. Rudford told me a story; he didn't give me his autobiography.
He told me next about a day in November. It was still a Coolidge year, but which one I don't know exactly. I don't think those Coolidge years come apart anyways.
It was afternoon. A half hour after the pupils of the Agersburg Elementary School had pushed and shoved and punched their way out of the exit doors, Rudford and Peggy were sitting high in the rafters of the new house that was being built on Miss Packer's Street. There wasn't a carpenter in sight. The highest, narrowest, weakest beam in the house was theirs to straddle without annoying interference.
Sitting on a beauty, a story above the ground, they talked about the things that counted: the smell of gasoline, Robert Hermanson's ears, Alice Caldwell's teeth, rocks that were all right to throw at somebody, Milton Sills, how to make cigarette smoke come out your nose, men and ladies who had bad breath, the best size knife to kill somebody with.
They exchanged ambitions. Peggy decided that when she grew up she would be a war nurse. Also a movie actress. Also a piano player. Also a crook--one that swiped a lot of diamonds and stuff but gave some of it to poor people; very poor people. Rudford said he only wanted to be a piano player. In his spare time, maybe, he'd be an auto racer--he already had a pretty good pair of goggles. 
A spitting contest followed, at a heated moment of which the losing side dropped a valuable, mirrorless powder compact out of her cardigan pocket. She started to climb down to retrieve it, but lost her balance and fell about a quarter story. She landed with a horrible thud on the new, white pine floor.
"You okay?" her companion inquired, not budging from the rafters.
"My head, Rudford, I am dyin'!"
"Naa, you're not."
"I am, too. Feel."
"I am not comin' all the way down just to feel."
"Please," the lady entreated.
Muttering cynical little observations about people who don't watch where they're even going, Ruthford climbed down.
He pushed back a hank or two of the patient's lovely black-Irish hair.
"Where's it hurt?" he demanded.
"All over..."
"Well, I don't see anything. There isn't any abrasion at all."
"Isn't any what?"
"Abrasion. Blood or anything. There isn't even any swelling." The examiner  drew back suspiciously. "I don't even think you fell on your head."
"Well, I did. Keep looking...There. Right where your hand---"
"I don't see a thing. I am going back up."
"Wait!" said Peggy. "Kiss it first. Here. Right here."
"I'm not gonna kiss your old head. Wuddaya think I am?"
"Please! Just right here." Peggy pointed to her cheek.
Bored and enormously philanthropic, Rudford got it over with.
A rather sneaky announcement followed: "Now we're engaged."
"Like fun we are!...I'm leaving. I'm going down to old Charles's."
"You can't. He said not to come today. He said he was gonna have a guest today."
"He won't care. Anyway, I'm not gonna stay here with you. You can't spit. You can't even sit still. And when I feel sorry for you or something, you try to get lovey-dovey."
"I don't get lovey-dovey much."
"So long," Rudford said.
"I'll go with you!"

They left the sweet-smelling empty house and moped along the four-o'clock autumn streets toward Black Charles's. On Spruce Street they stopped for fifteen minutes to watch two irate firemen trying to get a young cat out of a tree. A woman wearing a Japanese kimono directed the operations, in an unpleasant, importunate voice. The two children listened to her, watched the firemen, and silently pulled for the cat. She didn't let them down...Suddenly she leaped from a high branch, landing on the hat of one of the firemen, and springboarded instantly into an adjacent tree. Rudford and Peggy moved on, reflective and permanently changed. The afternoon now contained forever, however suspensory, one red and gold tree, one fireman's hat and one cat that really knew how to jump.
"We'll ring the bell when we get there. We won't just walk right in," Rudford said.
"Okay."
When Rudford had rung the bell, Black Charles himself, not only awake but shaven, answered the door. Peggy immediately reported to him, "You said for us not to come today, but Rudford wanted to."
"Y'all come on in," Black Charles invited cordially. He wasn't sore at them.
Rudford and Peggy followed him self-consciously, looking for the guest.
"I got my sister's chile here," Black Charles said. "Her and her mammy just come up here from 'gator country."
"She play the piano?" Rudford asked.
"She a singer, boy. She a singer."
"Why are the shades down?" Peggy asked. Why don't you have the shades up, Charles?"
"I was cookin' in the kitchen. You chillen can he'p me pull 'em up," Black Charles said, and went out to the kitchen.
The two children each took a side of the room and began to let daylight in. They both felt more relaxed. The Guest discomfort was over. If there were somebody strange, some non-member, hovering about Black Charles's place, it was only his sister's child--practically nobody.
But Rudford, over on the piano side of the cafe, suddenly took in his breath. Somebody was sitting at the piano, watching him. He let go the blind string in his hand, and the blind snapped to the top; it slattered noisily for a moment, then came to a stop.
"'And the Lord said, Let there be light,'" said a grown-up girl as black as Charles, sitting in Charles's place at the piano. "Yeah, man," she added moderately. She was wearing a yellow dress and a yellow ribbon in her hair. The sunshine that Rudford had let in fell across her left hand; with it she was tapping out something slow and personal on the wood of Charles's piano. In her other hand, between long, elegant fingers, she had a burning stub of a cigarette. She wasn't a pretty girl.
"I was just pulling up the shades," Rudford said finally.
"I see that," said the girl. "You do it good." She smiled as she said it.
Peggy had come over. "Hello," she said, and put her hands behind her back.
"Hello y'self," said the girl. Her foot was tapping, too, Rudford noticed.
"We come here a lot," Peggy said. "We're Charles's best friends."
"Well, ain't that glad news!" said the girl, winking at Rudford.
Black Charles came in from the kitchen, drying his huge, slender hands on a towel.
"Lida Louise," he said, "these here's my friends, Mr. Rudford and Miss Mar-gar-reet." he turned to the children. "This here's my sister's chile, Miss Lida Louise Jones."
"We met," said his niece. "We all met at Lord Plushbottom's last fortnight." She pointed at Rudford. "Him and me was playin' mahjong out on the piazza."
"How 'bout you singin' somethin' for these here chillern?" Black Charles suggested.
Lida Louise passed over it. She was looking at Peggy. "You and him sweeties?" she asked her.
Rudford said quickly, "No."
"Yes," said Peggy.
"Why you like this little ole boy like you do?" Lida Louise asked Peggy.
"I don't know," Peggy said. "I like the way he stands at the blackboard."
Rudford considered the remark disgusting, but Lida Louise's threnodic eyes picked it up and looked away with it. She said to Black Charles, "Uncle, you hear what this here ole Margar-reet say?"
"No. What she say?" said Black Charles. He had the cover of his piano raised and was looking for something in the strings--a cigarette butt perhaps, or the top of a catsup bottle.
"She say she like this ole boy on accounta the way he stands at the blackboard."
"That right?" said Black Charles, taking his head out of the piano. "You sing somethin' for these here chillern Lida Louise," he said.
"Okay, what song they like?... Who stole my cigarettes? I had 'em right here by my side."
"You smoke too much. You a too-much gal. Sing," said her uncle. He sat down at his piano. "Sing 'Nobody Good Around.'"
"That ain't no song for kiddies."
"These here kiddies like that kinda song real good."
"Okay," said Lida Louise. She stood up, in close to the piano. She was a very tall girl. Rudford and Peggy already sitting at the floor, had to look way up at her.
"What key you want it?"
Linda Louise shrugged. "A, B, C, D, E, F, F," she said and winked at the children. "Who cares? Gimme a green one. Gotta match my shoes."
Black Charles struck a chord, and his niece's voice slipped into it. She sang "Nobody Good Around." When she was finished, Rudford had gooseflesh from his neck to his waist. Peggy's fist was in his coat pocket. He hadn't felt it go in and he didn't make her take it out.

Now years later Rudford was making a great point of explaining to me that Lida Louise's voice cannot be described, until I told him I happened to have most of her records and knew what he meant. Actually, though, a fair attempt to describe Lida Louise's voice can be made. She had a powerful soft voice. Every note she sang was detonated individually. She blasted you tenderly to pieces. In saying her voice can't be described, Rudford probably meant that it can't be classified. And that's true.
Finished with "Nobody Good Around." Lida Louise stooped over and picked up her cigarettes from under her uncle’s bench. "Where you been?" she asked them and lit one. The two children didn't take their eyes off her.
Black Charles stood up. "I got spareribs," he announced. "Who want some?"

During Christmas week Lida Louise began singing nights at her Uncle Charles's. Rudford and Peggy both got permission, on her opening night, to attend a hygiene lecture at school. So they were there. Black Charles gave them the table nearest the piano and put two bottles of sarsaparilla on it, but they were both too excited to drink. Peggy nervously tapped the mouth of her bottle against her front teeth; Rudford didn't even pick his bottle up. Some of the high-school and college crowd thought the children were cute. They were dealt with. Around nine o'clock, when the place was packed, Black Charles suddenly stood up from his piano and raised a hand. The gesture, however, had no effect on the noisy, home-for-Christmas crowd, so Peggy turned around in her seat and, never a lady, yelled at them, "Y'all be quiet!" and finally the room quieted down. Charles's announcement was to the point. "I got my sister's chile, Lida Louise, her t'night and she gonna sing for you." Then he sat down and Lida Louise came out, in her yellow dress, and walked up to her uncle's piano. Thje crowd applauded politely, but clearly expected nothing special. Lida Louise bent over Rudford and Peggy's table, snapped her finger against Rudford's ear, and asked, "Nobody Good Around?" They both answered, "Yes!"
Lida Loise sang that, and it turned the place upside down. Peggy started to cry so hard that when Rudford had asked her, "What's the matter?" and she had sobbed back, "I don't know," he suddenly assured her, himself transported, "I love you good, Peggy!" which made the child cry so uncontrollably he had to take her home.

Lida Louise sang nights at Black Charles's for about six months straight. Then, inevitably, Lewis harold Meadows heard her and took her back to Memphis with him. She went without being perceptibly thrilled over the Great Opportunity. She went without being visibly impressed by the sacred words "Beale Street.". But she went. In Rudford's opinion, she went because she was looking for somebody, or because she wanted somebody to find her. It sounds very reasonable to me.
But as long as Agersburg could hold her, she was adored, deified, by the young people there. They knew, most of them, just how good she was, and those who didn't know pretended to. They brought their friends home for the week-end to have a look at her. The ones who wrote for their college papers sanctified her in glorious prose. Others grew smug or blasé when foreigners turned dormitory conversation to Viloet Henry or Priscilla Jordan, blues singers who were killing other foreigners in Harlem or New Orleans or Chicago. If you didn't have Lida Louise, where you lived, you didn't have anybody. What's more, you were a bore.
In return for all this love and deification, Lida Louise was very, very good with the Agesburg kids. No matter what they asked her to sing, or how many times they asked her to sing it, she gave them what there was of her smile, said, "Nice tune," and gave.
One very interesting Saturday night a college boy in a Tuxedo--somebody said he was a visiting Yale man--came rather big-time-ily up to the piano and asked Lida Louise, "Do you know 'Slow Train to Jacksonville,' by any chance?"
Lida Louise looked at the boy quickly, then carefully, and answered, "Where you hear that song, boy?"
The boy who was supposed to be a visiting Yale man said, "A fella in New York played it for me."
Lida Louise asked him, "Colored man?"
The boy nodded impatiently.
Lida Louise asked him, "His name Endicott Wilson? You know?"
The boy answered, "I don't know. Little guy. Had a mustache."
Lida Louise nodded. "He in New York now?" she asked.
The boy answered, "Well, I don't know if he's there now. I guess so...How 'bout singin' it if you know it?"
Lida Louise nodded and sat down at the piano herself. She played and sang "Slow Train to Jacksonville."
According to those who heard it, it was a very good number, original atleast in melody, about an unfortunate man with the wrong shade of lipstick on his collar. She sang it through once and, so far as Rudford or I know, never again. Nor has the number ever been recorded by anybody, to my knowledge.

Here we go into jazz history just a little bit. Lida Louise sang at Lewis Harold Meadows's famous Jazz Emporium, on Beale Street in Memphis, for not quite four months. (She started there in late May of 1927 and quit early in September of the same year.) But time, or the lack of it, like everything else, depends entirely upon who's using it. Lida Louise hadn't been singing on Beale Street for more than two weeks before the customers started lining up outside Meadows's an hour before Lida Loiuse went on. Record companies got after her almost immediately. A month after she had hit Beale Street she had made eighteen sides, including "Smile Town," "Brown Gal Blues," "Rainy Day Boy," "Nobody Good Around" and "Seems Like Home."
Everybody who had anything to do with jazz--anything straight, that is--somehow got to hear her while she was there. Russell hopton, John Raymond Jewel, Izzie Field, Louis Armstrong, Much Mcneill, Freddie Jenks, Jack Teagarden, Bernie and Mortie gold, Willie Fuchs, Goodman, Beiderbecke, Johnson, Earl Slagle--all the boys.
One Saturday night a big Sedan from Chicago, pulled up in front og Meadows's. Among those who piled out of it were Joe and Sonny Varioni. They didn't go back with the others, the next morning. They stayed at the Peabody for two nights, writing a song. Before they went back to Chicago they gave Lida Louise "Soupy Peggy." It was about a sentimental little girl who falls in love with a little boy standing at the blackboard in school. (You can't buy a copy of "Soupy Peggy" today, for any price. The other side of it had a fault, and the company only turned out a very few copies.

Nobody knew for certain why Lida Louise quit Meadows's and left Memphis. Rudford and a few others reasonably suspected that her quitting had something--or everything--to do with the corner-of-Beale-Street incident.
Around noon on the day she quit Meadows's, Lida Louise was seen talking in the street with a rather short well-dressed colored man. Whoever he was, she suddenly hit him full in the face with her handbag. Then she ran into Meadows's, whizzed past a crew of waiters and orchestra boys, and slammed her dressing room door behind her. An hour later she was packed and ready to go.
She went back to Agersberg. She didn't go back with a new flossy wardrobe, and she and her mother didn't move into a bigger and better apartment. She just went back.
On the afternoon of her return she wrote a note to Rudford and Peggy. Probably on Black Charles's say-so--like every body else in Agersberg, he was terrified of Rudford's father--she sent the note around to Peggy's house. It read:

Dear kittys
I am back and got some real nice
new songs for you so you come
around quick and see me.
                Yours Sincerely,
                (Miss) Lida Louise Jones

The same September that Lida Louise returned to Agersberg, Rudford was sent away to boarding school. Before he left, Black Charles, Lida Louise, Louise's mother and Peggy gave him a farewell picnic.
Rudford called for Peggy around eleven on a Saturday morning. They were picked up in Black Charles's bashed-in old car and driven out to a place called Tuckett's Creek.
Black Charles, with a fascinating knife, cut the strings on all the wonderful looking boxes. Peggy was a specialist on cold spareribs. Rudford was more of a fried-chicken man. Lida Louise was one of those people who take two bites out of a drumstick, then light a cigarette.
The children ate until the ants got all over everything, then Black Charles, keeping out a last sparerib for Peggy and a last wing for Redford, neatly tied all the boxes.
Mrs. Jones stretched out on the grass and went to sleep. Black Charles and Lida Loise began to play casino. Peggy had with her some sun-pictures of people like Richard Barthelmess and Richard Dix and Reginald Denny. She propped them up against a tree in the bright light and watched possessively over them.
Rudford lay on his back in the grass and watched great cotton clouds slip through the sky. Peculiarly, he shut his eyes when the sun was momentarily clouded out; opened them when the sun returned scarlet against his eyelids. The trouble was the world might end while his eyes were shut.
It did. His world, in any case.
He suddenly heard a brief, terrible, woman's scream behind him. Jerking his head around, he saw Lida Louise writhing in the grass. She was holding her flat, small stomach. Black Charles was trying awkwardly to turn her toward him, to get her somehow out of the frightening, queer position her body had assumed in its apparent agony. His face was gray.
Rudford and Peggy both reached the terrible spot at the same time.
"What she et? What she done et?" Mrs. Jones demanded hysterically of her brother.
"Nothin'! She done et hardly nothin'," Black Charles answered, miserable. He was still trying to do something constructive with Lida Louise's twisting body.
Something came to Rudford's head, something out of his father's "First Aid for Americans." Nervously he dropped to his knees and pressed Lida Louise's abdomen with two fingers. Lida Louise responded with a curdling scream.
"It's her appendix. She's busted her appendix. Or it's gonna bust," Rudford wildly informed Black Charles. "We gotta get her to a hospital."
Understanding, at least in part, Black Charles nodded. "You take her foots," he directed his sister.
Mrs. Jones, however, dropped her end of the burden on the way to the car. Rudford and Peggy each grabbed a leg, and with their help Black Charles hoisted the moaning girl into the front seat. Rudford and Peggy also climbed in the front. Peggy held Lida Louise's head. Mrs. Jones was obliged to sit alone in the back. She was making far more anguished sounds than those coming from her daughter.
"Take her to Samaritan. ON Benton Street," Rudford told Black Charles.
Black Charles's hands were shaking so violently he couldn't get the car going. Rudford pushed his hand through the spokes of the driver's wheel and turned on the ignition. The car started up.
"That there Samaritan's a private hospital," Black Charles said grinding his gears.
"What's the difference? Hurry up. Hurry up, Charles," Rudford said, and told the older man when to shift into second and when into third. Charles knew enough, though, to make good, unlawful time.
Peggy stroked Lida Louise's forehead. Rudford watched the road. Mrs. Jones, in the back, whimpered unceasingly. Lida Louise lay across the children's laps with her eyes shut, moaning intermittently. The car finally reached Samaritan Hospital, about a mile and a half away.
"Go in the front way," Rudford prompted.
Black Charles looked at him. "The front way, boy?" he said.
"The front way, the front way," Rudford said, and excitedly punched the older man on the knee.
Black Charles obediently semicircled the gravel driveway and pulled up in front of the great white entrance.
Rudford jumped out of the car without opening the door, and rushed into the hospital.
At the reception desk a nurse sat with earphones on her head.
"Lida Louise is outside, and she's dying," Rudford said to her. "She's gotta have her appendix out right away."
"Shhh," said the nurse, listening to her earphones.
"Please. She's dying, I tellya."
"Shhh," said the nurse, listening to her earphones.
Rudford pulled them off her head. "Please," he said. "You've gotta get a guy to help us get her in and everything. She's dying."
"The singer?" said the nurse.
"Yes! Lida Louise!" said the boy, almost happy and making it strong.
"I'm sorry but the rules of the hospital do not permit Negro patients. I'm very sorry."
Rudford stood for a moment with his mouth open.
"Will you please let go of my phones?" the nurse said quietly. A woman who controlled herself under all circumstances.
Rudford let go of the phones, turned, and ran out of the building.
He climbed back into the car, ordering, "Go to Jefferson. Spruce and Fenton."
Black Charles said nothing. He started up the motor--he had turned it off--and jerked the car to a fast start.
"What's the matter with Samaritan? That's a good hospital," Peggy said stroking Lida Louise's forehead.
"No, it isn't," Rudford said, looking straight ahead, warding off any possible side glance from Black Charles.
The car turned into Fenton Street and pulled up in front of Jefferson Memorial Hospital. Rudford jumped out again, followed this time by Peggy.
There was the same kind of reception desk inside, but there was a man instead of a nurse sitting at it--an attendant in a white duck suit. He was reading a newspaper.
"Please. Hurry. We got a lady outside in the car that's dying. Her appendix is busted or something. Hurry, willya?"
The attendant jumped to his feet, his newspaper falling to the floor. He followed right on Rudford'd heels.
Rudford opened the front door of the car, and stood away. The attendant looked in at Lida Louise, pale and in agony, lying across the front seat with her head on Black Charles's head.
"Oh. Well, I'm not a doctor myself. Wait just a second."
"Help us carry her in," Rudford yelled.
"Just be a minute," the attendant said. "I'll call the resident surgeon." He walked off, entering the hospital with one hand in his jacket pocket--for poise.
Rudford and Peggy let go of the awkward carry-hold they already had on Lida Louise. Redford leading, they both ran after the attendant. They reached him just as he got to his switchboard. Two nurses were standing around, and a woman with a boy who was wearing a mastoid dressing.
"Listen. I know you. You don't wanna take her. Isn't that right?"
"Wait just a min-ute, now. I'm callin' up the resident surgeon...Let go my coat, please. This is a hospital, sonny."
"Don't call him up," Rudford said through his teeth. "Don't call up anybody. We're gonna take her to a good hospital. In Memphis." Half-blinded, Rudford swung crazily around. "C'mon, Peggy."
But Peggy stood some ground, for a moment. Shaking violently, she addressed everybody in the reception lobby: "Damn you! Damn you all!"
Then she ran after Rudford.
The car started up again. But it never reached Memphis. Not even halfway to Memphis.
It was like this: Lida Louise's head was on Rudford's lap. So long as the car kept moving, her eyes were shut.
Then abruptly, for the first time, Black Charles stopped for a red light. While the car was motionless, Lida Louise opened her eyes and looked up at Rudford. "Endicott?" she said.
The boy looked down at her and answered, almost at the top of his voice, "I'm right here, Honey!"
Lida Louise smiled, closed her eyes, and died.

A story never ends. The narrator is usually provided with a nice, artistic spot for his voice to stop, but that's about all.
Rudford and Peggy attended Lida Loiuse's funeral. The following morning Rudford went away to boarding school. He didn't see Peggy again for fifteen years. During his first year at boarding school, his father moved to San Fransisco, re-married and stayed there. Rudford never returned to Agersburg.
He saw Peggy again in early summer of 1942. He had just finished a year of internship in New York. He was waiting to be called into the Army.
One afternoon he was sitting in the Palm Room of the Biltmore Hotel, waiting for his date to show up. Somewhere behind him a girl was very audibly giving away the plot to a Taylor Caldwell novel. The girl's voice was Southern, but not swampy and not blue-grass and not even particularly drawly. It sounded to Rudford very much like a Tennessee voice. He turned to look. The girl was Peggy. He didn't even have to take a second look.
He sat for a minute wondering what he would say to her; that is if he were to get up and go over to her table--a distance of fifteen years. While he was thinking, Peggy spotted him. No planner, she jumped up and went over to his table. "Rudford?"
"Yes..." He stood up.
Without embarrassment, Peggy gave him a warm, if glancing kiss.
They sat down for a minute at Rudford's table and told each other how incredible it was that they had recognized each other, and how fine they both looked. Then Rudford followed her back to her table. Her husband was sitting there.
The husband's name was Richard something, and he was a Navy flier. He was eight feet tall, and he had some theater tickets or flying goggles or a lance in one of his hands. Had Rudford brought a gun along, he would have shot Richard dead on the spot.
They all sat down at an undersized table and Peggy asked ecstatically, "Rudford, do you remember that house on Miss Packer's Street?"
"I certainly do."
"Well, who do you think's living in it now? Iva Hubbel and her husband!"
"Who?" said Rudford.
"Iva Hubbel! You remember her. She was in our class. No chin? Always snitched on everybody?"
"I think I do," Rudford said. "Fifteen years though," he added pointedly.
Peggy turned to her husband and lengthily brought him up to date on the house on Miss Packer's Street. He listened with an iron smile.
"Rudford," Peggy said suddenly. "What about Lida Louise?"
"How do you mean, Peggy?"
"I don't know. I think about her all the time." She didn't turn to her husband with an explanation. "Do you too?" she asked Rudford.
He nodded. "Sometimes, anyway."
"I played her records all the time when I was in college. Then some crazy drunk stepped on my 'Soupy Peggy.' I cried all night. I met a boy, later, that was in Jack Teagarden's band, and he had one, but he wouldn't sell it to me or anything. I didn't even get to hear it again."
"I have one."
"Honey," Peggy's husband interrupted softly, "I don't wanna interrupt, but you know how Eddie gets. I told him we'd be there and all."
Peggy nodded. "Do you have it with you?" she asked. "In New York?"
"Well, yes, it's at my aunt's apartment. Would you like to hear it?"
"When?" Peggy demanded.
"Well, whenever you---"
"Sweetie. Excuse me. Look. It's three thirty now. I mean---"
"Rudford," Peggy said, "we have to run. Look. Could you call me tomorrow? We're staying here at the hotel. Could you? Please," Peggy implored, slipping into the jacket her husband was crowding around her shoulders.
Rudford left Peggy with a promise to phone her in the morning.
He never phoned her, though, or saw her again.
In the first place, he almost never played the record for anybody in 1942. It was terribly scratchy now. It didn't even sound like Lida Louise any more.
[pre][/pre]

To my mother



1

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds. They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.
Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game
of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them.
There were never many girls at all at the football games. Only seniors were allowed to bring girls with them. It was a terrible school, no matter how you looked at it. I like to be somewhere at least where you can see a few girls around once in a while, even if they're only scratching their arms or blowing their noses or even just giggling or something. Old Selma Thurmer--she was the headmaster's daughter--showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.
The reason I was standing way up on Thomsen Hill, instead of down at the game, was because I'd just got back from New York with the fencing team. I was the goddam manager of the fencing team. Very big deal. We'd gone in to New York that morning for this fencing meet with McBurney School. Only, we didn't have the meet. I left all the foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway. It wasn't all my fault. I had to keep getting up to look at this map, so we'd know where to get off. So we got back to Pencey around two-thirty instead of around dinnertime. The whole team ostracized me the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way.
The other reason I wasn't down at the game was because I was on my way to say good-by to old Spencer, my history teacher. He had the grippe, and I figured I probably wouldn't see him again till Christmas vacation started. He wrote me this note saying he wanted to see me before I went home. He knew I wasn't coming back to Pencey.
I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out. I wasn't supposed to come back after Christmas vacation on account of I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself and all. They gave me frequent warning to start applying myself--especially around midterms, when my parents came up for a conference with old Thurmer--but I didn't do it. So I got the ax. They give guys the ax quite frequently at Pencey. It has a very good academic rating, Pencey. It really does.
Anyway, it was December and all, and it was cold as a witch's teat, especially on top of that stupid hill. I only had on my reversible and no gloves or anything. The week before that, somebody'd stolen my camel's-hair coat right out of my room, with my fur-lined gloves right in the pocket and all. Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has--I'm not kidding. Anyway, I kept standing next to that crazy cannon, looking down at the game and freezing my ass off. Only, I wasn't watching the game too much. What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind
of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad goodby, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.
I was lucky. All of a sudden I thought of something that helped make me know I was getting the hell out. I suddenly remembered this time, in around October, that I and Robert Tichener and Paul Campbell were chucking a football around, in front of the academic building. They were nice guys, especially Tichener. It was just before dinner and it was getting pretty dark out, but we kept chucking the ball around anyway. It kept getting darker and darker, and we could hardly see the ball any more, but we didn't want to stop doing what we were doing. Finally we had to. This teacher that taught biology, Mr. Zambesi, stuck his head out of this window in the academic building and told us to go back to the dorm and get ready for dinner. If I get a chance to remember that kind of stuff, I can get a good-by when I need one--at least, most of the time I can. As soon as I got it, I turned around and started running down the other side of the hill, toward old Spencer's house. He didn't live on the campus. He lived on Anthony Wayne Avenue.
I ran all the way to the main gate, and then I waited a second till I got my breath. I have no wind, if you want to know the truth. I'm quite a heavy smoker, for one thing--that is, I used to be. They made me cut it out. Another thing, I grew six and a half inches last year. That's also how I practically got t.b. and came out here for all these goddam checkups and stuff. I'm pretty healthy, though.
Anyway, as soon as I got my breath back I ran across Route 204. It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down. I don't even know what I was running for--I guess I just felt like it. After I got across the road, I felt like I was sort of disappearing. It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.
Boy, I rang that doorbell fast when I got to old Spencer's house. I was really frozen. My ears were hurting and I could hardly move my fingers at all. "C'mon, c'mon," I said right out loud, almost, "somebody open the door." Finally old Mrs. Spencer opened. it. They didn't have a maid or anything, and they always opened the door themselves. They didn't have too much dough.
"Holden!" Mrs. Spencer said. "How lovely to see you! Come in, dear! Are you frozen to death?" I think she was glad to see me. She liked me. At least, I think she did.
Boy, did I get in that house fast. "How are you, Mrs. Spencer?" I said. "How's Mr. Spencer?"
"Let me take your coat, dear," she said. She didn't hear me ask her how Mr. Spencer was. She was sort of deaf.
She hung up my coat in the hall closet, and I sort of brushed my hair back with my hand. I wear a crew cut quite frequently and I never have to comb it much. "How've you been, Mrs. Spencer?" I said again, only louder, so she'd hear me.
"I've been just fine, Holden." She closed the closet door. "How have you been?" The way she asked me, I knew right away old Spencer'd told her I'd been kicked out.
"Fine," I said. "How's Mr. Spencer? He over his grippe yet?"
"Over it! Holden, he's behaving like a perfect--I don't know what. . . He's in his room, dear. Go right in."

2

They each had their own room and all. They were both around seventy years old, or even more than that. They got a bang out of things, though--in a haif-assed way, of course. I know that sounds mean to say, but I don't mean it mean. I just mean that I used to think about old Spencer quite a lot, and if you thought about him too much, you wondered what the heck he was still living for. I mean he was all stooped over, and he had very terrible posture, and in class, whenever he dropped a piece of chalk at the blackboard, some guy in the first row always had to get up and pick it up and hand it to him. That's awful, in my opinion. But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn't doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer'd bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer'd got a big bang out of buying it. That's what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket.
His door was open, but I sort of knocked on it anyway, just to be polite and all. I could see where he was sitting. He was sitting in a big leather chair, all wrapped up in that blanket I just told you about. He looked over at me when I knocked. "Who's that?" he yelled. "Caulfield? Come in, boy." He was always yelling, outside class. It got on your nerves sometimes.
The minute I went in, I was sort of sorry I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly, and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vicks Nose Drops. It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don't much like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing. And their legs. Old guys' legs, at beaches and places, always look so white and unhairy. "Hello, sir," I said. "I got your note. Thanks a lot." He'd written me this note asking me to stop by and say good-by before vacation started, on account of I wasn't coming back. "You didn't have to do all that. I'd have come over to say good-by anyway."
"Have a seat there, boy," old Spencer said. He meant the bed.
I sat down on it. "How's your grippe, sir?"
"M'boy, if I felt any better I'd have to send for the doctor," old Spencer said. That knocked him out. He started chuckling like a madman. Then he finally straightened himself out and said, "Why aren't you down at the game? I thought this was the day of the big game."
"It is. I was. Only, I just got back from New York with the fencing team," I said. Boy, his bed was like a rock.
He started getting serious as hell. I knew he would. "So you're leaving us, eh?" he said.
"Yes, sir. I guess I am."
He started going into this nodding routine. You never saw anybody nod as much in your life as old Spencer did. You never knew if he was nodding a lot because he was thinking and all, or just because he was a nice old guy that didn't know his ass from his elbow.
"What did Dr. Thurmer say to you, boy? I understand you had quite a little chat."
"Yes, we did. We really did. I was in his office for around two hours, I guess."
"What'd he say to you?"
"Oh. . . well, about Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules. He was pretty nice about it. I mean he didn't hit the ceiling or anything. He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know."
"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. "Has Dr. Thurmer written to your parents yet?" old Spencer asked me.
"He said he was going to write them Monday."
"Have you yourself communicated with them?"
"No, sir, I haven't communicated with them, because I'll probably see them Wednesday night when I get home."
"And how do you think they'll take the news?"
"Well. . . they'll be pretty irritated about it," I said. "They really will. This is about the fourth school I've gone to." I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. "Boy!" I said. I also say "Boy!" quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head--the right side--is full of millions of gray hairs. I've had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am--I really do--but people never notice it. People never notice anything.
Old Spencer started nodding again. He also started picking his nose. He made out like he was only pinching it, but he was really getting the old thumb right in there. I guess he thought it was all right to do because it was only me that was in the room. I didn't care, except that it's pretty disgusting to watch somebody pick their nose.
Then he said, "I had the privilege of meeting your mother and dad when they had their little chat with Dr. Thurmer some weeks ago. They're grand people."
"Yes, they are. They're very nice."
Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.
Then all of a sudden old Spencer looked like he had something very good, something sharp as a tack, to say to me. He sat up more in his chair and sort of moved around. It was a false alarm, though. All he did was lift the Atlantic Monthly off his lap and try to chuck it on the bed, next to me. He missed. It was only about two inches away, but he missed anyway. I got up and picked it up and put it down on the bed. All of a sudden then, I wanted to get the hell out of the room. I could feel a terrific lecture coming on. I didn't mind the idea so much, but I didn't feel like being lectured to and smell Vicks Nose Drops and look at old Spencer in his pajamas and bathrobe all at the same time. I really didn't.
It started, all right. "What's the matter with you, boy?" old Spencer said. He said it pretty tough, too, for him. "How many subjects did you carry this term?"
"Five, sir."
"Five. And how many are you failing in?"
"Four." I moved my ass a little bit on the bed. It was the hardest bed I ever sat on. "I passed English all right," I said, "because I had all that Beowulf and Lord Randal My Son stuff when I was at the Whooton School. I mean I didn't have to do any work in English at all hardly, except write compositions once in a while."
He wasn't even listening. He hardly ever listened to you when you said something.
"I flunked you in history because you knew absolutely nothing."
"I know that, sir. Boy, I know it. You couldn't help it."
"Absolutely nothing," he said over again. That's something that drives me crazy. When people say something twice that way, after you admit it the first time. Then he said it three times. "But absolutely nothing. I doubt very much if you opened your textbook even once the whole term. Did you? Tell the truth, boy."
"Well, I sort of glanced through it a couple of times," I told him. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was mad about history.
"You glanced through it, eh?" he said--very sarcastic. "Your, ah, exam paper is over there on top of my chiffonier. On top of the pile. Bring it here, please."
It was a very dirty trick, but I went over and brought it over to him--I didn't have any alternative or anything. Then I sat down on his cement bed again. Boy, you can't imagine how sorry I was getting that I'd stopped by to say good-by to him.
He started handling my exam paper like it was a turd or something. "We studied the Egyptians from November 4th to December 2nd," he said. "You chose to write about them for the optional essay question. Would you care to hear what you had to say?"
"No, sir, not very much," I said.
He read it anyway, though. You can't stop a teacher when they want to do something. They just do it.
The Egyptians were an ancient race of Caucasians residing in
one of the northern sections of Africa. The latter as we all
know is the largest continent in the Eastern Hemisphere.
I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.
The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for
various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what
the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they
wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for
innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite
a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.
He stopped reading and put my paper down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. "Your essay, shall we say, ends there," he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn't
think such an old guy would be so sarcastic and all. "However, you dropped me a little note, at the bottom of the page," he said.
"I know I did," I said. I said it very fast because I wanted to stop him before he started reading that out loud. But you couldn't stop him. He was hot as a firecracker.
DEAR MR. SPENCER [he read out loud]. That is all I know about
the Egyptians. I can't seem to get very interested in them
although your lectures are very interesting. It is all right
with me if you flunk me though as I am flunking everything
else except English anyway.
Respectfully yours, HOLDEN CAULFIELD.
He put my goddam paper down then and looked at me like he'd just beaten hell out of me in ping-pong or something. I don't think I'll ever forgive him for reading me that crap out loud. I wouldn't've read it out loud to him if he'd written it--I really wouldn't. In the first place, I'd only written that damn note so that he wouldn't feel too bad about flunking me.
"Do you blame me for flunking you, boy?" he said.
"No, sir! I certainly don't," I said. I wished to hell he'd stop calling me "boy" all the time.
He tried chucking my exam paper on the bed when he was through with it. Only, he missed again, naturally. I had to get up again and pick it up and put it on top of the Atlantic Monthly. It's boring to do that every two minutes.
"What would you have done in my place?" he said. "Tell the truth, boy."
Well, you could see he really felt pretty lousy about flunking me. So I shot the bull for a while. I told him I was a real moron, and all that stuff. I told him how I would've done exactly the same thing if I'd been in his place, and how most people didn't appreciate how tough it is being a teacher. That kind of stuff. The old bull.
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
I'm lucky, though. I mean I could shoot the old bull to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. It's funny. You don't have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher. All of a sudden, though, he interrupted me while I was shooting the bull. He was always interrupting you.
"How do you feel about all this, boy? I'd be very interested to know. Very interested."
"You mean about my flunking out of Pencey and all?" I said. I sort of wished he'd cover up his bumpy chest. It wasn't such a beautiful view.
"If I'm not mistaken, I believe you also had some difficulty at the Whooton School and at Elkton Hills." He didn't say it just sarcastic, but sort of nasty, too.
"I didn't have too much difficulty at Elkton Hills," I told him. "I didn't exactly flunk out or anything. I just quit, sort of."
"Why, may I ask?"
"Why? Oh, well it's a long story, sir. I mean it's pretty complicated." I didn't feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn't have understood it anyway. It wasn't up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies. That's all. They were coming in the goddam window. For instance, they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life. Ten times worse than old Thurmer. On Sundays, for instance, old Haas went around shaking hands with everybody's parents when they drove up to school. He'd be charming as hell and all. Except if some boy had little old funny-looking parents. You should've seen the way he did with my roommate's parents. I mean if a boy's mother was sort of fat or corny-looking or something, and if somebody's father was one of those guys that wear those suits with very big shoulders and corny black-and-white shoes, then old Hans would just shake hands with them and give them a phony smile and then he'd go talk, for maybe a half an hour, with somebody else's parents. I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy. It makes me so depressed I go crazy. I hated that goddam Elkton Hills.
Old Spencer asked me something then, but I didn't hear him. I was thinking about old Haas. "What, sir?" I said.
"Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?"
"Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure. . . but not too many. Not yet, anyway. I guess it hasn't really hit me yet. It takes things a while to hit me. All I'm doing right now is thinking about going home Wednesday. I'm a moron."
"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"
"Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right. Sure. Sure, I do." I thought about it for a minute. "But not too much, I guess. Not too much, I guess."
"You will," old Spencer said. "You will, boy. You will when it's too late."
I didn't like hearing him say that. It made me sound dead or something. It was very depressing. "I guess I will," I said.
"I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can."
He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides ot the pole, that's all. "I know you are, sir," I said. "Thanks a lot. No kidding. I appreciate it. I really do." I got up from the bed then. Boy, I couldn't've sat there another ten minutes to save my life. "The thing is, though, I have to get going now. I have quite a bit of equipment at the gym I have to get to take home with me. I really do." He looked up at me and started nodding again, with this very serious look on his face. I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. But I just couldn't hang around there any longer, the way we were on opposite sides of the pole, and the way he kept missing the bed whenever he chucked something at it, and his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place. "Look, sir. Don't worry about me," I said. "I mean it. I'll be all right. I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
"I don't know, boy. I don't know."
I hate it when somebody answers that way. "Sure. Sure, they do," I said. "I mean it, sir. Please don't worry about me." I sort of put my hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" I said.
"Wouldn't you like a cup of hot chocolate before you go? Mrs. Spencer would be--"
"I would, I really would, but the thing is, I have to get going. I have to go right to the gym. Thanks, though. Thanks a lot, sir."
Then we shook hands. And all that crap. It made me feel sad as hell, though.
"I'll drop you a line, sir. Take care of your grippe, now."
"Good-by, boy."
After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me,
I hope to hell not. I'd never yell "Good luck!" at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it.

3

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. So when I told old Spencer I had to go to the gym and get my equipment and stuff, that was a sheer lie. I don't even keep my goddam equipment in the gym.
Where I lived at Pencey, I lived in the Ossenburger Memorial Wing of the new dorms. It was only for juniors and seniors. I was a junior. My roommate was a senior. It was named after this guy Ossenburger that went to Pencey. He made a pot of dough in the undertaking business after he got out of Pencey. What he did, he started these undertaking parlors all over the country that you could get members of your family buried for about five bucks apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river. Anyway, he gave Pencey a pile of dough, and they named our wing alter him. The first football game of the year, he came up to school in this big goddam Cadillac, and we all had to stand up in the grandstand and give him a locomotive--that's a cheer. Then, the next morning, in chapel, be made a speech that lasted about ten hours. He started off with about fifty corny jokes, just to show us what a regular guy he was. Very big deal. Then he started telling us how he was never ashamed, when he was in some kind of trouble or something, to get right down his knees and pray to God. He told us we should always pray to God--talk to Him and all--wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs. The only good part of his speech was right in the middle of it. He was telling us all about what a swell guy he was, what a hot-shot and all, then all of a sudden this guy sitting in the row in front of me, Edgar Marsalla, laid this terrific fart. It was a very crude thing to do, in chapel and all, but it was also quite amusing. Old Marsalla. He damn near blew the roof off. Hardly anybody laughed out loud, and old Ossenburger made out like he didn't even hear it, but old Thurmer, the headmaster, was sitting right next to him on the rostrum and all, and you could tell he heard it. Boy, was he sore. He didn't say anything then, but the next night he made us have compulsory study hall in the academic building and he came up and made a speech. He said that the boy that had created the
disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the new dorms.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck. The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back--very corny, I'll admit, but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, He just isn't the kind of guy I'd want to call up, that's all. I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I'd only read about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains. Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy that roomed right next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was probably the only guy in the whole dorm, besides me, that wasn't down at the game. He hardly ever went anywhere. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley." Not even Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack." If he ever gets married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley." He was one of these very, very tall, round-shouldered guys--he was about six four--with lousy teeth. The whole time he
roomed next to me, I never even once saw him brush his teeth. They always looked mossy and awful, and he damn near made you sick if you saw him in the dining room with his mouth full of mashed potatoes and peas or something. Besides that, he had a lot of pimples. Not just on his forehead or his chin, like most guys, but all over his whole face. And not only that, he had a terrible personality. He was also sort of a nasty guy. I wasn't too crazy about him, to tell you the truth.
I could feel him standing on the shower ledge, right behind my chair, taking a look to see if Stradlater was around. He hated Stradlater's guts and he never came in the room if Stradlater was around. He hated everybody's guts, damn near.
He came down off the shower ledge and came in the room. "Hi," he said. He always said it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired. He didn't want you to think he was visiting you or anything. He wanted you to think he'd come in by mistake, for God's sake.
"Hi," I said, but I didn't look up from my book. With a guy like Ackley, if you looked up from your book you were a goner. You were a goner anyway, but not as quick if you didn't look up right away.
He started walking around the room, very slow and all, the way he always did, picking up your personal stuff off your desk and chiffonier. He always picked up your personal stuff and looked at it. Boy, could he get on your nerves sometimes. "How was the fencing?" he said. He just wanted me to quit reading and enjoying myself. He didn't give a damn about the fencing. "We win, or what?" he said.
"Nobody won," I said. Without looking up, though.
"What?" he said. He always made you say everything twice.
"Nobody won," I said. I sneaked a look to see what he was fiddling around with on my chiffonier. He was looking at this picture of this girl I used to go around with in New York, Sally Hayes. He must've picked up that goddam picture and looked at it at least five thousand times since I got it. He always put it back in the wrong place, too, when he was finished. He did it on purpose. You could tell.
"Nobody won," he said. "How come?"
"I left the goddam foils and stuff on the subway." I still didn't look up at him.
"On the subway, for Chrissake! Ya lost them, ya mean?"
"We got on the wrong subway. I had to keep getting up to look at a goddam map on the wall."
He came over and stood right in my light. "Hey," I said. "I've read this same sentence about twenty times since you came in."
Anybody else except Ackley would've taken the goddam hint. Not him, though. "Think they'll make ya pay for em?" he said.
"I don't know, and I don't give a damn. How 'bout sitting down or something, Ackley kid? You're right in my goddam light." He didn't like it when you called him "Ackley kid." He was always telling me I was a goddam kid, because I was sixteen and he was eighteen. It drove him mad when I called him "Ackley kid."
He kept standing there. He was exactly the kind of a guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him to. He'd do it, finally, but it took him a lot longer if you asked him to. "What the hellya reading?" he said.
"Goddam book."
He shoved my book back with his hand so that he could see the name of it. "Any good?" he said.
"This sentence I'm reading is terrific." I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood. He didn't get It, though. He started walking around the room again, picking up all my personal stuff, and Stradlater's. Finally, I put my book down on the floor. You couldn't read anything with a guy like Ackley around. It was impossible.
I slid way the hell down in my chair and watched old Ackley making himself at home. I was feeling sort of tired from the trip to New York and all, and I started yawning. Then I started horsing around a little bit. Sometimes I horse around quite a lot, just to keep from getting bored. What I did was, I pulled the old peak of my hunting hat around to the front, then pulled it way down over my eyes. That way, I couldn't see a goddam thing. "I think I'm going blind," I said in this very hoarse voice. "Mother darling, everything's getting so dark in here."
"You're nuts. I swear to God," Ackley said.
"Mother darling, give me your hand, Why won't you give me your hand?"
"For Chrissake, grow up."
I started groping around in front of me, like a blind guy, but without getting up or anything. I kept saying, "Mother darling, why won't you give me your hand?" I was only horsing around, naturally. That stuff gives me a bang sometimes. Besides, I know it annoyed hell out of old Ackley. He always brought out the old sadist in me. I was pretty sadistic with him quite often. Finally, I quit, though. I pulled the peak around to the back again, and relaxed.
"Who belongsa this?" Ackley said. He was holding my roommate's knee supporter up to show me. That guy Ackley'd pick up anything. He'd even pick up your jock strap or something. I told him it was Stradlater's. So he chucked it on Stradlater's bed. He got it off Stradlater's chiffonier, so he chucked it on the bed.
He came over and sat down on the arm of Stradlater's chair. He never sat down in a chair. Just always on the arm. "Where the hellja get that hat?" he said.
"New York."
"How much?"
"A buck."
"You got robbed." He started cleaning his goddam fingernails with the end of a match. He was always cleaning his fingernails. It was funny, in a way. His teeth were always mossy-looking, and his ears were always dirty as hell, but he was always cleaning his fingernails. I guess he thought that made him a very neat guy. He took another look at my hat while he was cleaning them. "Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake," he said. "That's a deer shooting hat."
"Like hell it is." I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. "This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat."
"Your folks know you got kicked out yet?"
"Nope."
"Where the hell's Stradlater at, anyway?"
"Down at the game. He's got a date." I yawned. I was yawning all over the place. For one thing, the room was too damn hot. It made you sleepy. At Pencey, you either froze to death or died of the heat.
"The great Stradlater," Ackley said. "--Hey. Lend me your scissors a second, willya? Ya got 'em handy?"
"No. I packed them already. They're way in the top of the closet."
"Get 'em a second, willya?" Ackley said, "I got this hangnail I want to cut off."
He didn't care if you'd packed something or not and had it way in the top of the closet. I got them for him though. I nearly got killed doing it, too. The second I opened the closet door, Stradlater's tennis racket--in its wooden press and all--fell right on my head. It made a big clunk, and it hurt like hell. It damn near killed old Ackley, though. He started laughing in this very high falsetto voice. He kept laughing the whole time I was taking down my suitcase and getting the scissors out for him. Something like that--a guy getting hit on the head with a rock or something--tickled the pants off Ackley. "You have a damn good sense of humor, Ackley kid," I told him. "You know that?" I handed him the scissors. "Lemme be your manager. I'll get you on the goddam radio." I sat down in my chair again, and he started cutting his big horny-looking nails. "How 'bout using the table or something?" I said. "Cut 'em over the table, willya? I don't feel like walking on your crumby nails in my bare feet tonight." He kept right on cutting them over the floor, though. What lousy manners. I mean it.
"Who's Stradlater's date?" he said. He was always keeping tabs on who Stradlater was dating, even though he hated Stradlater's guts.
"I don't know. Why?"
"No reason. Boy, I can't stand that sonuvabitch. He's one sonuvabitch I really can't stand."
"He's crazy about you. He told me he thinks you're a goddam prince," I said. I call people a "prince" quite often when I'm horsing around. It keeps me from getting bored or something.
"He's got this superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I just can't stand the sonuvabitch. You'd think he--"
"Do you mind cutting your nails over the table, hey?" I said. "I've asked you about fifty--"
"He's got this goddam superior attitude all the time," Ackley said. "I don't even think the sonuvabitch is intelligent. He thinks he is. He thinks he's about the most--"
"Ackley! For Chrissake. Willya please cut your crumby nails over the table? I've asked you fifty times."
He started cutting his nails over the table, for a change. The only way he ever did anything was if you yelled at him.
I watched him for a while. Then I said, "The reason you're sore at Stradlater is because he said that stuff about brushing your teeth once in a while. He didn't mean to insult you, for cryin' out loud. He didn't say it right or anything, but he didn't mean anything insulting. All he meant was you'd look better and feel better if you sort of brushed your teeth once in a while."
"I brush my teeth. Don't gimme that."
"No, you don't. I've seen you, and you don't," I said. I didn't say it nasty, though. I felt sort of sorry for him, in a way. I mean it isn't too nice, naturally, if somebody tells you you don't brush your teeth. "Stradlater's all right He's not too bad," I said. "You don't know him, thats the trouble."
"I still say he's a sonuvabitch. He's a conceited sonuvabitch."
"He's conceited, but he's very generous in some things. He really is," I said. "Look. Suppose, for instance, Stradlater was wearing a tie or something that you liked. Say he had a tie on that you liked a helluva lot--I'm just giving you an example, now. You know what he'd do? He'd probably take it off and give it ta you. He really would. Or--you know what he'd do? He'd leave it on your bed or something. But he'd give you the goddam tie. Most guys would probably just--"
"Hell," Ackley said. "If I had his dough, I would, too."
"No, you wouldn't." I shook my head. "No, you wouldn't, Ackley kid. If you had his dough, you'd be one of the biggest--"
"Stop calling me 'Ackley kid,' God damn it. I'm old enough to be your lousy father."
"No, you're not." Boy, he could really be aggravating sometimes. He never missed a chance to let you know you were sixteen and he was eighteen. "In the first place, I wouldn't let you in my goddam family," I said.
"Well, just cut out calling me--"
All of a sudden the door opened, and old Stradlater barged in, in a big hurry. He was always in a big hurry. Everything was a very big deal. He came over to me and gave me these two playful as hell slaps on both cheeks--which is something that can be very annoying. 'Listen," he said. "You going out anywheres special tonight?"
"I don't know. I might. What the hell's it doing out--snowing?" He had snow all over his coat.
"Yeah. Listen. If you're not going out anyplace special, how 'bout lending me your hound's-tooth jacket?"
"Who won the game?" I said.
"It's only the half. We're leaving," Stradlater said. "No kidding, you gonna use your hound's-tooth tonight or not? I spilled some crap all over my gray flannel."
"No, but I don't want you stretching it with your goddam shoulders and all," I said. We were practically the same heighth, but he weighed about twice as much as I did. He had these very broad shoulders.
"I won't stretch it." He went over to the closet in a big hurry. "How'sa boy, Ackley?" he said to Ackley. He was at least a pretty friendly guy, Stradlater. It was partly a phony kind of friendly, but at least he always said hello to Ackley and all.
Ackley just sort of grunted when he said "How'sa boy?" He wouldn't answer him, but he didn't have guts enough not to at least grunt. Then he said to me, "I think I'll get going. See ya later."
"Okay," I said. He never exactly broke your heart when he went back to his own room.
Old Stradlater started taking off his coat and tie and all. "I think maybe I'll take a fast shave," he said. He had a pretty heavy beard. He really did.
"Where's your date?" I asked him.
"She's waiting in the Annex." He went out of the room with his toilet kit and towel under his arm. No shirt on or anything. He always walked around in his bare torso because he thought he had a damn good build. He did, too. I have to admit it.