Some Came Running (137 page)

Wally came right to the point. When she smiled at him and said, “Well! Come right in, stranger. I’ll put another can of beans in the pot;” he did not bother to answer, but only went straight on across and flopped himself down in one of the ladder-backs.

“I can’t work anymore,” he said in a hoarse voice. “I haven’t written a word for two weeks. And for two weeks before that, I don’t think I wrote anything that was any good.”

“Oh?” Gwen said, and turned the burners on the stove off, then turned to him. It might be some time before she got back to cooking supper. She had never seen him looking so beaten down. His face stared at her blankly, while his two eyes darted here and there like two frightened animals. He looked ready to come all apart at the seams. “And why might that be?” she said.

“Don’t you know?!” Wally cried. “You were at the wedding! Dawnie got married!”

Gwen did not say anything for a moment, then came over to the big table and sat down at the end. Wally flung his ladder-back around to face her, and Gwen winced inwardly for the antique chair. There would be another one for Bob to fix, probably, like the one Dave had strained apart without ever knowing he had done it. With his heavy, muscled body and broad Slavic face Wally had in him much the same torrential energy and tremendous physical vitality that Dave had, and her heart contracted in her thinking of it. “Were you really that much in love with her?” she said quietly.

Wally stared at her, his eyes roving over her face desperately and at the same time hopefully. “I can’t sleep!” he cried. “I can’t eat! I can’t even concentrate to read!” Abruptly, he paused, and shook his head, as if to clear it. “Nothing seems
real,
anymore,” he said more calmly. “You don’t seem real. It’s like I’m dreaming and can’t wake up.”

“You seemed in such good shape at the wedding,” Gwen said.

“An act!” he cried. Again he made that abrupt pause. “You know, it’s funny, I didn’t really hurt much at the wedding. Or at the reception. It was only afterwards that it really began to hit me. The moment I left the reception, the moment I got outside the door, that was when it hit me. It fell down on me like a ton of—of—wheat,” he finished lamely. “Now I can’t think of anything but
her
!” he cried. “No control over my own mind at all. And—” he stopped, and momentarily his eyes cleared, and he looked at Gwen straightly. “Look,” he said, “what I’m telling you is strictly secret. We never told anybody about our love affair. But we were—were sleeping together; all last summer. And we were very much in love. Now do you see why?!” he cried.

“Well, of course, I never suspected anything like that,” Gwen lied calmly. “I only knew you were running around together. But if it was that strong, why didn’t you marry her yourself?”

“Well, I wanted to,” Wally said. “But I couldn’t. I mean, I knew if I did, Frank would have me working in that damned store for him, you know? And I couldn’t do that. Dawnie wanted us to run off to New York and live there. But I couldn’t do that, either. I had my fellowship, and I had to stay here. Anyway, we didn’t have any money. And then she just started to draw away from me. And then she left me,” he said brokenly. “For
Shotridge
!”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Gwen said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Help me!” Wally cried. “You’ve got to
help
me! Hell, I can’t write! All I can do is sit around and think about
her
— You’ve
got
to help me!”

“How can I help you?” Gwen said. “You’ve just got to get over it.” Guilt assailed her: God! How could she help him! She couldn’t even handle her own love problems.

“Well, what do
you
do?” Wally cried. “You must have been in love a hundred times. How do
you
get over feeling like I feel now?”

“Oh, Wally!” Gwen said.

“Well, what
do
you do?!”

Gwen gazed at him a moment, her heart sinking at the very ridiculousness of it—of him asking her, of anybody ever even considering asking her—Gwen French the worldly-wise. She tried desperately to think over all the “remedies” for love affairs that she had ever read about. There didn’t seem to be many. And of those there were, they were all suspiciously slim. “You just have to let time take care of it,” she said lamely. “Let it wear itself out. After a while, it will. Though you may not believe it now. Or,” she said, “one of the best ways to get over a love affair is to go right into another one.” They sounded stupid, even to her. And she thought of Dave again, painfully.

“But I
can’t
let time take care of it!” Wally cried. “It’ll kill me before that much time
passes
! And anyway, I ain’t
got
that much time; I got to get back to my work! And as for fallin in love with somebody else, that’s ridiculous; I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fall in love with anybody else again!” He paused again and made a herculean effort to get control of his facial muscles, and stared at her. “Will you have a love affair with me? To help me get over it?”

“Oh, Wally!” Gwen said. “That wouldn’t help you. It might even make it worse, comparing me to her.” Dave, Dave! She got hold of herself. “No,” she said. “No, I won’t. I’ve told you I was tired of sex and love. I don’t ever want to have to go through again that agony you’re going through right now.” God help me, she thought.

Wally let his gaze drop. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t have worked anyway,” he said gloomily. “I guess it was just a wild gasp. You know, I used to think I was in love with you, once. Hah!” he said. “How green was my valley? I didn’t even know what love was! Even when I
had
it, with Dawnie, I didn’t even know what it was. That’s the
worst
thing!” he cried.

“Believe me, Wally,” Gwen said, “time
will
take care of it. It’s an awful struggle at first. A real battle . . .” It trailed off, and Gwen didn’t even feel like trying to finish it. God, oh, God.

“Time!” Wally bellowed. “You don’t understand!” he cried. “I think of her all the time! I keep remembering her how she looked up in the woods that first time—”

Gwen listened painfully as he went on talking about himself and Dawnie and all the places they had gone, more exquisitely painful than she could ever remember having felt before. Everything he said was not himself and Dawnie, but herself and Dave—except that the things he and Dawnie had done were things she and Dave had not even got to do. They didn’t even have those things to remember. Probably, she thought, the pain bright, probably those were the things he did with
her,
with Ginnie Moorehead. She brushed her hand across her forehead and shook back her hair and shut her eyes and let her hands lie lax in her lap, and listened.

“There isn’t anything!” Wally cried, “not a single damned
thing!
in this town, that don’t remind me of her. I ought to get out of this damned town entirely!” He stopped, and a kind of silence fell, and Gwen opened her eyes.

“Aww, Gwen!” Wally said. “Gee, Gwen, I didn’t mean to make you
cry.
I
had
to talk to somebody. I
got
to do something,” he said justifyingly.

“That’s all right,” she said, “I’m not crying. It’s just that I felt so sorry for you. I think it
would
be a good thing if you got entirely out of town for a while. Look; why don’t we do this. Why don’t you go away for six months, to New York say, and let us finance you, Bob and myself. We can give you enough money to keep you going that long, and in six months, you ought to have your book done. I’m quite sure I can get you the second year’s renewal on your fellowship, and if you need more money than that, let us give it to you. It would get you away from here and all the bad memories, and—and maybe you’d find yourself a new girl, there.”

Wally stared at her, his eyes wide with thought for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Thanks a lot, Gwen. That’s nice of you. But I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I just can’t take money off of you and Bob like that.”

“Well then, let’s say we’re loaning it to you. You can pay it back later, out of the royalties of your book.”

Wally shook his head again. “What about the fellowship?”

“I’m pretty sure I can get it renewed for you, even if you do go away to New York for a while. Even so, if we don’t get it renewed, what does it matter? if Bob and I loan you the money?”

“Cities scare me. I don’t like them,” Wally said. “To go somewhere like that where nobody knows you. New York, most of all.”

“I know lots of people in New York. I can give you letters to all kinds of people. It might even help you to get your book published later.”

Wally stared at her, narrow-eyed. “No,” he said, and shook his head. “I can’t do that. But you’ve given me an idea. I know what I am going to do.” His eyes, so dull and darting up to now, flashed suddenly with a high frenetic enthusiasm. “I’m going to join the Army.”

“You’re what?!” Gwen was flabbergasted.

“Sure! Join the Army and see the world. Think of the material I’ll get.”

“But, Wally,” she protested. “Wally, that’s ridiculous. You don’t imagine you’ll be able to finish your book in the Army?”

“No!” Wally said eagerly. “Hell, no! I’ll just put it aside while I’m gone. Then when I get out I’ll be able to finish it, and I’ll also have a novel about the Army I can write, too.”

For the first time since he had arrived, he sat up suddenly in his chair, no longer depressed, his eyes bright. “A couple years in the Army like that’ll give me more maturity. I ain’t seen very much of life you know.”

“It’s three years,” Gwen said, “if you enlist. Isn’t it?”

Wally shrugged the extra year away. “Okay. So three years. I’ll just be that much more mature.”

Gwen did not know what to say. She tried desperately to think of every deterrent that she could. “Well— But you were turned down for the draft, weren’t you?”

“A bad ear,” Wally said, his eyes bright as the idea took deeper hold on him. “All I got to do is get it cleaned out before I go up for examination and they’ll never notice it. I let it run before,” he said, a little guiltily, “on purpose.” He smacked his fist into his palm, suddenly transformed from the unhappy boy who had entered earlier. “Gwen, you don’t know how you’ve helped me. Yes, sir; I think I’ve had the idea in the back of my mind for quite a while, only I just didn’t recognize it. I was talking to Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson not too long ago about the Army. They’re both thinking of going back in. Maybe I’ll go with them.”

“Wally, be sensible,” Gwen said, her heart beating with a kind of desperate foreknowledge. “You don’t belong in the Army. You’re a writer. Dewey Cole and Hubie Murson may belong in the Army. You’re just making an excuse to escape from your work.”

“But I can’t work anyway, anymore,” Wally said. “Anyway,” he said, “I’ve taken a lot of guff in this damned town, because I was turned down for service. Hell, most of the guys I was in school with are all in service. Why shouldn’t I do my stint? It’s not like there was a war on. Not that I’d care. No, sir, by God!” he said with finality. “That’s what I’m going to do. Then when I come back, I’ll have forgotten all about Dawnie Hirsh. Dawnie
Shotridge.
” He clenched his fist, then raised it, and then smacked it down into his palm again with enthusiasm. “Gwen, you don’t know how you’ve helped me!”

Gwen looked at him, at the frenetic enthusiasm on his face, her heart sinking in her desperately. The last one left, and the Army! She tried a ruse. “But what will all the people in Parkman say, when you go in the Army so soon after Dawnie’s marriage?”

“To hell with them! I won’t be here!” Wally said.

Once more, as she had done at least twice before since he had come, Gwen pulled herself together firmly and disregarded her own misery. “Well, you’re not going to do it,” she said. “I won’t let you. I’ve put God knows how much energy and time and thought and belief in on you, and I’m not going to let you just throw it all away for some damned wild excuse to get over a twiddling little love affair. I’ve got some rights, too. You didn’t marry Dawnie last summer when you had the chance because you wanted to write. Well,
want to write now.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You sound like a ridiculous child.

“This is something I have learned from Bob. First you have to have a job.
Make
yourself do it. Because if you don’t, your mind will gallop from one idea to another all your life. Your job is writing, not saving your country. And when you deny it, you’re denying yourself.

“What if it had been you who quit Dawnie last Christmas, instead of her quitting you? Would you be so miserable now?”

“I did quit her,” Wally said, dismally.

“Ahh, yes! But then she turned the tables on you by not caring. She married someone else. She outsmarted you. That’s why you’re so miserable. She
dominated
you. When all the time you thought
you
were dominating her. Your ego, your vanity, can’t stand it.

“Stop pitying yourself, Wally. Of course, you can’t work. You’re too damned busy feeling sorry for yourself.”

Her voice had suddenly become nearly hysterical, and her ears were listening to it carefully, trying to make her stop.

“Stop pitying yourself, Wally,” she said screechingly. “Of course, you can’t work. Your entire emotional strength, your whole existence is limited to this little state that you have built up in your mind. Love! A mountain out of a molehill! Stop it!” she cried, almost hysterically; because she herself could hear her own mind screeching her own words at herself.

Wally was staring at her, wide-eyed. And at the same time, all during her long-winded diatribe, that thick Slavic bullheaded stubbornness had been growing more and more pronounced in his face. She would never change him. Her words would not change his mind any more than they would change her own.

She got herself stopped, and then sat looking at him, her heart sinking. She wanted suddenly to slap his face, back and forth, until his ears rang and his eyes fell out.

“Go on and join the Army,” she said defeatedly. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care whether you go or not.”

“I’ve looked at everything,” Wally said sincerely. “I’ve
thought
of everything. It’s the only thing for me to do.”