Some Came Running (25 page)

“Why should I marry her to get somethin I’m already gettin,” Dewey said.

She did indeed have a body. Big-boned, beautiful legs, voluptuous breasts and hips separated by a small waist, above which was a rather unsightly pug-dog face framed in long black hair. With this face, she scowled toward the table, although she had just joined in the titter of laughter.

“What’d you do this time?” ’Bama said.

Dewey merely grunted.

“First, he tried to cop a feel off her while we were all sittin there in the booth,” Hubie said in his high complaining nasal. “And she wouldn’t let him and got mad.”

“Then when Raymond and Gus come in, he told her he wanted her to give Raymond a piece,” Hubie said. “Because Raymond was his brother and he looked hard up.”

Dewey grinned. “I don’t see why that should make her so mad.”

“You mean that made her mad?” Bama said with mock surprise.

Dewey grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”

“I don’t need anybody to get none for me,” Raymond Cole said with a black scowl. “I can get all I need for myself. And if I can’t, I’ll go home and use my wife.” Dave looked at him, vaguely remembering him from a tough kid. He was six or eight years older than Dewey, a man of middle height but very big, with arms that bulged out the sleeves of his badly worn blue work shirt, but beginning to go badly to fat. He had none of the innocent boyishness of Dewey.

“All the outside stuff you’ve had in the past six months, Raymond,” Dewey said, “you could count up on the fingers of an armless man.”

Raymond’s face congested and his eyes went wild and crazy. “Lissen, you punk!” he said loudly, shoving back in his chair.

As one man, ’Bama on one side and Gus Nernst a tall, lean, horse-faced man the age of Dewey on the other each grabbed an arm of Raymond and with their other hands pressing on his shoulders held him down in his seat. His arms at his sides, he was off balance and could not get up.

“So what else?” ’Bama asked Hubie a little breathlessly, as he bobbed up and down with the silently struggling Raymond. “Is Martha mad at you, too?”

“Nah,” Hubie said. “But I come back to sit with Dewey. So now we been sittin here three quarters of an hour.”

“To hell with her,” Dewey said. “Let her make up. She started it.”

All during the episode with Raymond, he had regarded his brother with a kind of innocent indifference, and he continued to look at him the same way now while Raymond struggled against the two men holding him.

“Martha Garvey is Hubie’s girl,” ’Bama, bobbing with Raymond, explained to Dave. “She’s the one next to Lois.”

Dave took his eyes off Raymond long enough to see a petite, raven black-haired girl with very big eyes and a great deal of self-possession. He couldn’t see her legs as they were inside the booth. Again, the booth of girls tittered.

“Come on, Raymond,” Gus Nernst complained. “Quit it, now.”

Raymond, whistling air, made one more titanic struggle to get up. Then he relaxed so suddenly that both men lurched toward the table and almost fell on it. “Leave go of me,” he said in a choked voice. “I’m all right. I ain’t mad no more.”

They relaxed their grips and turned back to the table without so much as a word or look, apparently seeming to have completely forgotten him.

“Let’s have another round,” ’Bama said.

“That’s a good idea,” Gus said. “But we’re about broke.”

“I’m buyin,” ’Bama said. “Raymond? Want one?”

For answer, Raymond launched a tremendous powerhouse punch with his right arm. It swept along the edge of the table at ’Bama on his left with the force of a hurricane. ’Bama, who hadn’t forgotten him at all, as neither had Gus, moved with the speed of greased light, putting his left hand on the table for balance and leaning away to his left. Consequently, Raymond’s fist exploded into the spring-wire back of the chair, tearing fingers and knuckles in a wild flurry of flesh, while Raymond grunted in surprised pain and then retrieved his damaged hand to inspect it in the dim light.

“Goddam it,” he said. “Now I’ve hurt my hand.”

“Serves you right, Raymond,” ’Bama said. “Bring us another round!” he called to the bar.

Up at the bar Smitty’s extra bartender, a one-armed youth of twenty-one or -two wearing one of those double claw hooks the Army gives you on his right arm, nodded at ’Bama and began opening beers, six of them, which he put on a round tray and carried over to them in his powerful left hand, disdaining the dangling hook.

“Help yerselves, gents,” he said, hanging the hook in his apron string. “How you, ’Bama?”

“Okay, Eddie,” ’Bama said, “Well enough to pay.” He gave him the money.

The young bartender took it and grinned and went away, clicking his hooks absentmindedly, the way a man snaps his fingers.

“You oughtn’t to treat Raymond like that, Dewey,” Hubie said.

“Treat him how?” Dewey said. “Why not?”

“Well, he is your brother,” Hubie said.

“How long since you been home, Raymond?” ’Bama said.

“A week,” Raymond said, nursing his hand.

“Yore wife’ll be gettin hungry pretty soon, won’t she?” ’Bama said.

“Let her work,” Raymond said. “I work when I get hungry.”

“You’d think he was a punch-drunk fighter,” Dewey said. “The way he acts.” They were all talking in normally loud voices, and Dave realized suddenly why there was nobody sitting at the tables near them. It was undoubtedly because they did not want to get hit with a flying chair.

“Well, he’s had a lot of fights,” Hubie said.

“Not with me,” Dewey said.

“More with you than anybody else,” Gus Nernst said. “Drink your beer, Dewey. Leave him alone.”

“He’s had fights. Look at his face,” Dewey said, still looking at Raymond coolly. “So many they’ve scrambled his brains.”

“Goddam you, Dewey, leave my face out of this,” Raymond said. “Come on outside and I’ll beat your goddamned head in.”

“Come on,” Dewey said without moving, “let’s go. I’ll put a couple more scars on that head of yours for you.”

“Hand or no hand!” Raymond bellowed. This time, he jumped up so quickly they couldn’t grab him. Dewey straightened up lazily in his chair a little and watched his brother coolly.

“Do you think Dewey could really take him?” Dave asked ’Bama quietly.

“I don’t know,” ’Bama said. “It usually winds up as a kind of a draw.”

“Sit down, sit down,” Gus Nernst said, rising between them. “Sit down and drink. I want to propose a toast first.” He evidently knew how to handle Raymond.

“A toast?” Raymond said. “A toast to what?”

“To what? To the next war. Sit down.”

“To hell with that,” Raymond said.

“Sit down,” Gus said.

Raymond stood, looking around indecisively.

“Come on, Raymond,” Gus said. “Let’s you and me go someplace else.”

“That’s a good idea,” Raymond said, sitting down and reaching for his beer. “By God, it is. Let’s go over to Terre Haute or someplace.” He wiped his mouth with his hand and got up, this time putting on his leather coat jacket his eyes glittering with some hidden fever.

He started off, then came back and drained off the rest of the beer. “I’ll see
you
later, punk,” he sneered at Dewey, and went off again, down past the near end of the bar where Smitty was standing alertly. “See you later, Smitty,” he said.

“Good night, Raymond,” Smitty said; and Raymond went on, a haunting figure.

Dave watched him go, feeling as if a huge black hand had reached inside of him and squeezed his heart. The black hand of God. Warning him. There goes all of us, he thought. In Raymond Cole, imbued with an almost classical Greek inevitability of self-destruction and carrying that same sense of tragic fitness. It was all so mathematical. That was what was so frightening. Raymond could blame no one but himself and neither can we. He fought and drank his way through his life looking for something. Love. Admiration? Respect. And he got scars and liquor fat. And an addled head. And those people in those booths watching so avidly, they hedged and qualified their lives and then came here to watch, and got nothing. Dave reached for his bottle of beer frantically. Raymond had stopped by the door and was looking round for Gus.

“I’ll take him off someplace and get rid of him,” Gus Nernst said to the rest of them, “and then come on back.”

“Why don’t you take him home?” ’Bama said.

“Him? He’s been sleepin in the backseat of his car for the past week.”

“It’s a wonder he don’t freeze to death,” Hubie said.

“Him and that old beatup ’34 Dodge of his,” Dewey said as they left. “It looks as bad as his face. But he thinks he’s really got somethin because he’s got a car.”

“Slip me a drink from that bottle,” Dave said to ’Bama.

“He used to be a damned good man,” Hubie said.

“He still is,” Dewey said. “And don’t you forget it. But I can take him. And he knows it.”

“Was he in the Army?” Dave said, holding onto ’Bama’s whiskey tightly, as if that would help him. “Was that it?”

“Yeah, he got shot up two or three times. You ought to see his legs,” Dewey said. “He was in the 132nd Infantry. Illinois National Guard. Americal Division. Guadalcanal and points west.”

“But he was like that before he ever got in the Army,” Hubie said. “Too many drunk fights. Too many times of havin his head bounced on the sidewalk.”

Dewey nodded. “Yeh.”

“But I bet he was a good combat soldier wasn’t he?” Dave said hopefully, and then took another long drink of whiskey straight out of the bottle. Go away, go away.

“As a matter of fact, he was,” Dewey said. “Damned good. You know when Raymond was with the ’Merical on Guadalcanal, he was—”

“Look! I don’t feel like refightin no war,” ’Bama sneered “What about these women up there? Are you goin back up or not?”

“Hell with them,” Dewey said. “Let them come back here.”

“Yeah. Hell with them,” Hubie said.

And with that Raymond Cole was dropped completely out of the conversation and forgotten. By everyone, except Dave.

“I promised Dave here I’d get him fixed up tonight,” ’Bama said to Dewey. “We can’t get him fixed up with any of those women if they’re on the outs with you guys.”

“You don’t need us to get him fixed up,” Dewey said.

“Damn it, you know how these women stick together,” ’Bama said.

“We can’t go out anyway,” Hubie said. “We got to work tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Dewey said. “I wish you’d quit remindin me.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I get laid,” Dave said to all of them. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t even feel like getting fixed up. Why don’t you just drop the whole thing? I’m going up and get us another bottle,” he said suddenly, handing the almost empty one back to ’Bama. “Or two.”

He got up and went to the near end of the bar where the one-armed youth Eddie was pulling the caps of beer bottles with his double hook.

“This damned thing makes the best damn bottle opener,” the boy grinned. He was half tight. “What’ll you have?” he said, “Pabst Blue Ribbon?”

“No,” Dave said. “Two pints of Seven Crown.”

“Sure thing,” the boy grinned. “But you can’t drink ’em in here.” He winked.

“Course not.”

The boy chuckled and went away up the bar. Dave watched him go, absently clicking his hooks. Everywhere you saw them. Fingers. Hands. Arms. Legs. Feet. Eyes. What a nation we were turning into. It was like living in the last wild days of the Roman Empire. Everybody drinking and discussing and destruction sweeping down in hordes from the north. We will maintain our policy of Business As Usual.

He turned around and looked back into the dimness at the table. They were arguing.

F
OR HIM, THE WILDLY
grotesque episode of Raymond Cole changed the complexion of the entire evening. He noticed it did not seem to have bothered any of the others. But he could not get free of it. Coupled with everything else that had happened to him today, it was too much. What had started out as an ordinary evening in search of entertainment and of getting fixed up, seemed suddenly to have become one of those Walpurgis Nights that he had had before when nothing seemed real, a Witches’ Sabbath of an evening, wild and frightening, in which liquor and fatigue combined with a vague but piercing hunger and overwrought emotions drove both the mind and the personality into turning faster and faster, until they seemed unable to partake of anything happening around them, seemed only to register half of what they saw.

The four of them sat on at the little table drinking beers, which now and then they laced liberally with Dave’s new whiskey and discussing the private lives of various persons whom Dave did not know but who were all evidently members of their gang, both boys and girls. All of them seemed to have problems, largely sexual. Dewey was apparently the unofficial (and unacknowledged) leader of the group. ’Bama enjoyed a unique position of being sort of senior advisor to them while not actually one of them. Every now and then, they arrived back at the current problem of the girls up front in the booth. Dave noticed the people around the walls were still watching them hopefully, and trying to listen.

“What the hell do you think they’re sittin there for?” ’Bama sneered. “They’re just sittin up there waitin for you to come back.”

“Let em sit,” Dewey said. “I’m happy.”

“Didn’t Lois get paid, out at the brassiere factory today?” ’Bama asked.

“Yeah, she got paid,” Dewey said. “Hell with her. I don’t need her money. At least, not tonight.”

“Well, you need somebody’s,” ’Bama said. “And I’d a lot rather you had hers, than mine.”

“I can go up and get some off of Martha,” Hubie offered. “If you’re runnin short.”

’Bama transfixed him with a withering look and Hubie looked away. “Well, I could get some off of her,” he said defensively. “I wasn’t bein snotty.”

’Bama ignored him. “Look, Dewey,” he said slowly, as if explaining something incomprehensible to a child, “here’s the thing. I promised Dave here I’d get him fixed up tonight. He’s hard up and don’t know anybody around here. But we can’t go up there by ourselves while you guys are sittin back here.”

“I don’t care if you go up there,” Dewey protested. “Go ahead. Hell, I won’t be mad. What kind of a guy do you think I am?”