Some Came Running (103 page)

The woman, Dave recognized at once, was one of those amateur-whore Terre Haute pigs which he and ’Bama were wont to pick up from time to time and bring home for a pure and simple sex bout. Why they both didn’t get the full list of venereals off of some of them was a constant source of amazement to Dave, and could only be due to the new widespread use of that slash-hunter’s miracle, penicillin. Here at home, after Doris had taken over, they had still continued to bring the bags home with them but they had had to be increasingly careful to bring them in when she wasn’t around. And Dave had sensed a growing dissatisfaction and irritation in ’Bama at having to do it that way. Now, apparently, he had just finally gotten a bellyful. Dave stole a quick glance at Doris, but her face showed nothing but her normal posed sweet serenity—at least, not as yet.

“Hello, you all!” ’Bama said—without any belligerence at all—in his flat gambler’s voice, and looked at them cheerfully out of those clear eyes, not a bit drunker than he ever was. “Hey there!” he called to the wreck; “Come on there, kid!” and the wreck who looked old enough to be his mother followed him out of the kitchen and down the hall and upstairs.

’Bama was clearly just doing what he wanted to do, in his own sweet way and time, and making himself at home in his own house.

Dave stole another look at Doris without saying anything. Doris she sat looking after them, her whole face still covered with that aloof but angelic sweetness she habitually wore and which apparently nothing could shock off, her wide deep blue eyes still widely innocent, the same look in short that she always wore—except for a certain narrowing canary-swallowing-catlikeness about the eyes when she smiled.

After a moment, she turned back to her book, her cheek still childishly propped on one hand, and bent her head to the print in silence. Only the unusual whiteness of her face showed there was any rage pumping through her or any faster beating of her heart or that she felt anything at all. Slowly, a faint flush spread over her face and then faded away again.

A couple of minutes later, she got up and in her demure stately marching kind of walk, went over to the countertop and mixed herself another drink and came back and sat down with it.

Dave did not know what to do. He was terribly upset. He was embarrassed for her, and hated having been present as a witness. Unable to do anything, he decided the best thing was just to ignore the whole thing completely. He bent his own head back to his own book, and pretended to read. Anyway, all he could see was the top of her small cherrywood-colored head anyway.

So they sat.

He did not know exactly how long. All he knew was that he read through one more page without grasping it, either. Apparently, Doris drank her new drink rather quickly. And then she got up again to go and make herself another. But this time, instead of going straight on around the table to her own seat on her way back, she suddenly turned off, toward his, put her glass down on the table, and then sat herself down on his thigh.

Dave was too startled to do anything for a moment. She was quite a lot heavier than he ever would have thought, his mind noted. And the feel of her, all firm-soft female flesh, was deliciously sexual. Though he hardly had time to really savor it. If she had kept her mouth shut, it might have worked.

But before he could do anything except straighten up, she leaned back against him, her eyes coming level just a little bit higher than his own—wide open, deep blue, childishly innocent—and said in a husky half-whimpering whisper,

“Nobody in the world has ever loved me. Not ever really loved me. I’ve always felt you could.”

Probably, it was pitifully true. He was not sure whether she was playing Rita Hayworth or Lana Turner, but the explicit movie tone of it was unmistakable. And pitifully true or not, she herself certainly did not believe it true. And that was why it didn’t work. Such totally un-self-aware vanity was infuriating. If she had only kept her mouth shut . . . Dave continued to stare back at her, because to have looked away would in some obscure way have been admitting guilt.

“I’ve always thought you were so pudgy and cute,” she said in the same Rita Hayworth-Lana Turner whisper, and rolled a lock of Dave’s swiftly thinning hair around her finger, and Dave had an impulse to laugh. “You’re sensitive,” she smiled, “you have understanding.”

“Get up,” he said. “Get up before ’Bama comes back downstairs.”

And that was the other part of why it didn’t work. She was ’Bama’s girl, ’Bama’s problem. Whatever troubles they had was their business, and he was damned if he was going to be turned into a pawn in a fight between them. If she wanted to get ahead of ’Bama, she was not going to use him to do it.

Doris did not say anything for a moment. Then she got up off his leg and picked up her glass and stepped back around the table. And there, before she sat down, she bent upon him such a potent look that he could actually hear in his ears the words those no-longer-childish but murderous snapping eyes shouted at him in silence.

“You Fat, Slobby, Sniveling, Gutless Son of a Bitch.”

Dave’s jaw tightened, and for the first time since he had first met her, he opened up his own eyes and withdrew the curtain of politeness from them and through them shouted back his own opinion of her personality.

“You Dumb, Degenerated, Whoring Pig of a Rich Girl Gash.”

For several moments, they stayed just that way, and finally it was Doris who dropped her eyes and Dave immediately felt embarrassed again for her. But he could not help but marvel at her aplomb.

As virginal and innocently dewy-eyed as she had ever been before, she sat down in her chair and looked down at her book, took several healthy sips of her drink, and then looked back up at him with childlike china eyes and it was actually as if none of it had ever happened, and Dave felt his brain yaw around wildly and wondered if he were going off his rocker. He knew it had happened.

“How long do you think they’ll stay up there?” she said in a hurt little girl voice.

Dave coughed. “Well, when we bring gals home with us, they usually stay almost all night,” he said embarrassedly, and found that now it was he who wanted to look away.

Doris swung her face away from him and looked around the room. “Well, I suppose there’s no point in my hanging around here waiting for him then, is there?” she said.

Once again, fury shuddered all through Dave. A thought had suddenly come in his mind, as he sat watching her as she looked around the room, and he knew he had not thought it himself. It could only have come from her.

“No, I guess not,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from quivering. “Unless, of course, you want to go on up there and crawl in with them. That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it?”

He didn’t give a damn what she did, or thought. That wasn’t it. It was that damned uncrackable aura of respectability, and the way she so blandly denied everything.

Doris did not answer him, but stared back at him steadily, the hurt expression still on her face from before, as if he had not even spoken.

“Well, I guess I might as well go, then,” she said. She got up from the table and collected her purse and coat and went gravely to the door. From the door she smiled back at him and in a hollow voice said “Good night, Dave” and went on out, leaving him with his book and his inability to read it.

The next day she was back, right after school again.

’Bama was there this time (after having driven his horror back to Terre Haute) and she came right on in and mixed herself a drink and sat down with them quietly. She did not say a word about the night before. But there was a hot catlike smoky-eyed hate-filled passion about her for ’Bama that, to Dave’s knowledge at least, she had never exhibited before. Dave tried not to see it, feeling somehow deeply embarrassed for her, but it was impossible not to see it. Doris couldn’t keep her hands off ’Bama. And she practically ignored Dave. ’Bama himself sat back and watched her amusedly, like a biologist performing an experiment with some form of lower animal. But she herself could not see this, apparently; or if she did, did not care, or else thought she could still defeat him. And that, too—if you knew ’Bama—made you embarrassed for her. Dave could not take it and finally got up and got out and went down to Smitty’s. Watching two other people’s love life was pretty nearly as full of ridiculousness as watching two other people in bed together and left you hoping you would not look as ridiculous to them. ’Bama only winked at him as he left, and said he would meet him later on at the Eagles Lodge game.

He had already talked to ’Bama about what had happened the night before, and in so doing had clarified for himself several things about ’Bama. It had been that morning, after ’Bama got back from Terre Haute, before Dave went to work.

“Well, you went ahead and romped her, didn’t you, I hope,” the tall man said.

“Hell, no!” Dave cried. “I wasn’t going to romp your girl behind your back!”

“Well, goddam,” ’Bama said. “If you didn’t, that makes you about the only guy around this camp who ain’t.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No,” ’Bama said; “no, you can’t. I guess. But if I was goin to bet on it I shore wouldn’t bet the
other
way.”

Dave had to laugh. “No,” he said. “Neither would I.”

“The next time you get yoreself a chance like that,” ’Bama admonished, “you go ahead and take it. Cause it shore won’t make me any difference.”

“I’ll probably never get another chance,” Dave had said, ”but if I did, I still don’t think I’d take it. I just don’t want to get involved with her. I don’t like her, somehow. I guess—I guess it’s just because she’s just—well, dumb.”

“Dumb?” ’Bama said. “Dumb like a fox. A fox don’t read books, nor talk well, nor think rationally. But don’t never tie into him on his own ground where his instincts come into it. You’ll take a whippin. And love and sex is women’s home ground, see? Us men think we know a lot about sex and love, but there ain’t a man in the world who knows as much as the dumbest fourteen-year-old virgin has known ever since she was born.”

“I guess that’s right,” Dave said, though he didn’t really believe it. “What did you do it for, anyway?”

“Do what?”

“Bring that pig home when you knew she was here.”

“What the hell, it’s my house ain’t it? I got a right to bring anybody into it I want to. I don’t owe Doris anything.”

“Then you done it on purpose.”

“No. I just done it. I didn’t know if she would be here. But I shore didn’t give a damn if she was. I’ve just got tard of her tryin to run my damn life. I just figured it was about time I taught her a lesson. Just because I’m rompin her don’t mean I’m goin to quit rompin other women.”

“Do you think she’ll ever come back?” Dave had said.

“Well, the truth is, I don’t give a damn,” ’Bama said. “But I expect she will come back, she’s that type.” And she had come back, that same afternoon.
“Look,”
he said. “Let me tell you something.

“When I was a kid in high school,” ’Bama said, “I played ball. First base. I played all through high school and after that on one of the plant teams there in town. Well, there was a guy played with me—a catcher—name of Jim Thurston. We called him Jimmer. He played all through high school with me, and afterwards on the same plant team. Now, I was never very good—never big-league material. But Jimmer was. I mean he was
good.
He was a marvel of a catcher. Had an arm like a pistol shot to second base. And glue fingers. And he was fast as hell. And he could hit. And run. I mean he was
really
good. He
belonged
in the big leagues.

“Well, even in high school, the scouts had their eye on him, and after he got out of school, he got several offers. But Old Jimmer turned them all down, and you know why? Because he had a girl in town there, in Birmingham. And Jimmer didn’t want to leave his girl. He was rompin this gal regular, see, the first real regular romp he’d ever had, and he didn’t want to give it up; and she didn’t want him to give it up, either. So Jimmer decided he would stay in Birmingham with his girl. They got married, he went to work in the plant, and played ball on the plant team. He’s still there.”

’Bama stretched himself. “All for a little regular slash.” His usually cool eyes were snapping with suppressed outrage.

“Well, that taught me a lesson,” he said, repressing his emotion and grinning, “a lesson I promised myself I would never ever forget. I made up my mind that no goddamned woman was ever goin to tell me what to do and ruin my damn life just because she was rompin me. If you just could of seen that guy play ball!” he cried.

It was the kind of a story that always angered Dave, too.

“Well, maybe he’s happier as he is,” he said after a moment.

“Happy!” ’Bama cried. “What the hell has ‘happy’ got to do with it? He had a
talent.
Would you be willin to give up yore writin, just so you could be
happy!”

Dave could not help but grin. “Well, sometimes I sure as hell think I would.”

“But you wouldn’t!” ’Bama cried. “And you know it. And anyway what the hell is
happy,
anyway? Can you describe it to me? No, and neither can nobody else. But everybody’s always bitchin and moanin about bein
happy.
It makes me sick to my stomach!” He took a fresh breath:

“But a person who has a talent has a responsibility to it, by God. I don’t care what kinda talent it is. Talent is the only single damned thing that separates human beings from dogs or cats. And when a person has a talent, it don’t just belong to him. It belongs to everybody. And that gives him responsibilities to it.”

“You really believe that?” Dave said.

“Yore damned right I do.”

“Well, I guess I believe it, too,” Dave grinned. “But of all the people in the world, you’re the least one I ever expected to hear talking about the responsibilities of talent!”

“How so?” ’Bama said, bringing his voice back down out of its excitement.

“Well, you don’t live like you believed in responsibilities.”

“That’s because I don’t have a talent,” ’Bama said. “Maybe that’s why I’m able to appreciate talent. Because I don’t have any myself.”