Some Came Running (64 page)

By God, no man ever had a better family!

It was on this same buying trip to Cincinnati, on which he got Agnes’s mink and Dawn’s luggage, and which occurred two weeks after his breakup with Geneve Lowe, that—immediately after he had bought the gifts, and consequently feeling relieved and released—he had got on the phone and got hold of a call girl—a really exquisite creature—and taken her out for the evening, and for a week after had worried and stewed and examined himself every time he went to the bathroom. Even if she did seem clean, you still couldn’t be sure what you might catch from a girl like that. Even if she was beautiful. And here he was with all these lovely, perfectly beautiful presents he had bought! For a week, he was in a perfect paroxysm of guilt and fear—a remorse so strong it actually seemed that by the sheer power of his thinking he could un-happen what had happened. Of course, nothing
did
happen; he didn’t catch anything. God, the funny things a man’s damned imagination could make him imagine!

On an earlier buying trip to St Louis, before the breakup with Geneve Lowe, he had bought Geneve a nice present, too—several pieces of that one-of-a-kind, “famous-name” costume jewelry—and now he had it and didn’t know what to do with it. He had thought about perhaps giving it to Edith Barclay—it was a shame to waste it—but if he did, Dawn would be sure to notice it when they took Edith’s and Jane’s presents out to them Christmas morning. And if she didn’t, Old Jane would! Of course, he could always give it to her when they were alone up at the store; but he had felt such a thing might not look too good. She might take it the wrong way. And of course, he didn’t want that.

And anyway, Edith had been acting funny the last week or so. She had quit joking with him, had quit calling him “Boss,” always “Mister Hirsh.” He wondered if she was about to marry that young punk Harold Alberson and quit him, and it was her guilt making her act that way? Or maybe it was what he had said to her about Old Jane that time? and she had been hurt by it? Hell, he hadn’t meant anything by that!

Whatever it was, Frank was considerably distressed by it. So the present remained locked up in his private lock section of the safe for which he had the only key.

Damn it all, life was all screwed up! he thought. Why couldn’t a man be friendly with a girl? You couldn’t do anything, or even say something friendly, without being afraid of somebody taking it the wrong way. Just because she was a girl and you were a man.

This year on the twentieth he took off from the store earlier in the day than usual to go to Terre Haute after the tree. The three of them, he and Agnes and Dawn, decorated it earlier than usual amid much gaiety that deeply touched Frank’s heart, and after he took them out to the Country Club for the evening, instead of just for dinner.

All the Chamber of Commerce Christmas decorations were up on the square, including the big tree on the courthouse lawn. The very air, as if getting its current from the strings of lights, seemed charged with happy excitement. And Christmastime seemed, as it always did, to actually brighten up the gray wet dismal December weather. The Holiday Truce was suddenly on, not only in his own home, but everywhere. And in the car, Frank looked at his family warmly, and his eyes got moist.

There had been some discussion, previous the twentieth about whether to invite Wally Dennis and his mother over Christmas Eve to open presents and share their tree; and also what to do about Brother Dave.

Dawn had suggested inviting Wally and his mom—because, she said, they wouldn’t be having much of a Christmas. But Frank, who more or less liked both Wally and Marg, pointed out that the magnitude of their own Christmas and presents might make the Dennises feel much worse instead of better. Dawn, who had not thought of these things, agreed that that might be true.

As for the matter of Dave, Frank had already talked to Agnes some time ago about whether they should invite Dave for Christmas or not. Agnes, personally, had been very much against inviting him; but she did not, on the other hand, see how they could very well get out of it. It was almost mandatory that they invite him, she thought. And that was how they had left it. But then later on, Agnes had seen Gwen at a tea one afternoon, and Gwen had told her that she and Bob were having Dave over there for Christmas weekend. Provided, of course, that that was all right with Agnes and Frank. Agnes had told her it was. And this afternoon, while they were fixing the tree, she had pointed out that since such was the case, all they needed to do now was to invite Dave since they already knew beforehand he would not be able to come. Frank had called Dave at the taxi stand to invite him for Christmas, and Dave had said he already had another invitation and couldn’t come, which settled that. Dave did not say where his invitation was
to,
Frank noted slyly; but then he already knew that.

As for the Dennises, they decided to invite them over on Christmas morning for an early breakfast, and to stay all day if they wanted. But since there would be lots of people around all day, and since Marg Dennis could not afford to hold open house herself, they could be reasonably certain there wouldn’t be much question about both Marg and Wally being willing to stay around all day. Especially if, as Agnes immediately planned to do, she invited Marg as her closest friend to come to her aid, and help her play hostess. Marg would love that.

So everything had worked itself all out, Frank thought as he drove them out to the Country Club. As it almost always seemed to do, at Christmastime. And he couldn’t have felt better.

At the Country Club, the big tree was already up, in the corner of the big high-ceilinged main room. A number of the little candlelit tables were occupied for dinner, a big fire blazed in the big fireplace at the other end, and everybody was hoping to each other that it would snow and make it a white Christmas this year. After saying hello all around to everyone, Frank and his two girls ate a filet mignon with french fries, succotash and green salad. Frank had several manhattans, and Agnes had a couple, and Dawn had some cocktail sherry from the bottle Frank kept in his bar locker especially for that.

The Cray County Country Club was quite an old one, as country clubs went in the Middle West, and it was an impressive one. Anyone who was anyone in Parkman belonged to it—even Judge Deacon, who wouldn’t even go there. Situated on an irregular sixty-acre tract two miles southeast of town, it possessed a ten-acre patch of woods for picnics, its own water system, a rough nine hole par 37 course, the tallest flagpole between Indianapolis and St Louis, its own small lake, free quarters for its groundskeeper, a caddy shelter, a beautiful view, and a large clubhouse perched on a rolling knoll which took full advantage of it.

All of this—clubhouse, site and course—was a memorial to the success of the Eastern oilmen who came in from Pennsylvania with the boom, and also to the resourcefulness, energy, and dogged determination of their wives. The men furnished the money and the wives used it. The men’s names were on the cornerstone. They were: Dorner. Toll. Whitehead. Greenfield. Synder. The list was long, and all dead now—together with other, familiar names: Wernz. Chandler. Madin. Crowder. Scott. Weger. Revell. The women’s names were not on the cornerstone, but they were remembered just as well; so they probably did not mind. In fact, they were evidently used to that sort of thing, Frank thought, those old-timers’ wives.

It was strange, Frank thought looking around the long main room as he finished his filet mignon, really very strange, how these people had come here as they had, and had made their money and spent it, and had left, or died, and the only thing that they really left behind them was the Club here. And what the Club stood for.

They knew how to live, those people, Frank thought sadly, with their White Steamers and linen dusters, their big hats and veils, driving out to their Club through muddy streets of roistering drunken roustabouts. They lived like sophisticated Europeans and Easterners. Like Al Dorner, with his wife and mistress who were such good friends; and everybody else just accepted it like reasonable people. Yes, sir, they knew how to live.

But then, he thought, today wasn’t like those good old days. Everybody had to pretend to be virtuous today—at least, they did if they wanted to stay in business. In a sort of melancholy mood of communion with the dead ghosts of an earlier, freer time, Frank ate his apple pie à la mode and drank his coffee, smiling at his two best girlfriends, his wife and his daughter.

The big main room was beautiful, and it was swiftly filling up with people. They wandered around carrying their drinks and sat down with someone or other they knew for a while. There was no formality. Big Doc Cost was there, a little tight as always, lingering over a long dinner with the latest of his series of out-of-town widows. Only at Doc’s table did no one intrude, because of not wanting to interfere with his date.

Yes sir, it was a fine Club, a really fine Club, Frank thought. They done us a real favor when they built it for us. This was the way human beings was meant to live, the way everybody in America ought to have a chance to live.

After their meal, Frank went out to the men’s bar in the locker room where the poker game was, Anges headed for the other locker-room widows at the fire, and Dawn wandered off by herself, bored.

D
AWN DID NOT SHARE
her father’s enthusiasm for the Cray County Country Club. Instead, she found it hopelessly middle-class and completely bourgeois. A group of other bored teenagers had formed their own little party in front of the Wurlitzer jukebox, where they were dancing; but from her maturity as an actress for whom even the Parkman College drama club was small potatoes and whose ambition—and intention—it was to be supporting herself in New York before fall, Dawn found the thought of joining them depressing although she would have died before admitting this snobbery to anyone.

Luckily, she didn’t have to join them. Before he left, she had wheedled some slot machine money out of her father. Filled with the portending good spirits of Christmas, he had slipped her a ten-dollar bill instead of the customary five and had winked at her. She took the bill in to the main bar—the “mixed bar,” she thought contemptuously—to be changed, and on a sudden impulse asked for a drink.

The harassed pro, a wiry, little Red-Irishman, who had all the money-making concessions for the clubhouse as well as running the pro shop, was helping his equally harassed bartender behind the overcrowded bar. Dawn had been taking lessons from him the last two summers. She was standing at the corner of the bar by herself, and the sweating pro turned to her and looked at her quizzically.

“A drink?” he said. “Sure. What kinda drink you want?”

“Oh— A manhattan,” Dawn said. “Make it out of dad’s bottle.”

The pro grinned. “Now, Dawnie, you know I can’t make you a manhattan unless it’s your dad who asks me for it. How about some of that cocktail sherry he keeps for you?”

“Why not?” she said. “I’m of age.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it, you know that. You want me to get your dad down on my neck?” he said, and grinned at her again. “Anyway, you’re not of age yet anyway, Dawnie. Now are you?”

Dawn grinned, and shook her head. “No, but I can get drinks in Terre Haute, though.” He sure knew how to handle people; especially women. But then that was his business, wasn’t it?

“Not if they knew how old you are,” the pro said. “And not if you were with your dad. And this ain’t Terre Haute. However, I’ll keep your secret.” He winked. “Now, how about some of that nice cocktail sherry?”

“Oh, that crap!” Dawn said. She stared at the pro, who wrinkled up his forehead at her. “Oh, you go to hell, Les!” She laughed.

The pro grinned back. “Well, now, if you want to go ask your dad—”

“He’s in the ‘men’s bar,’” Dawn said, twisting it.

“I’ll get him for you.”

“Give me the sherry,” Dawn said. “A big glass.” The pro winked. “And don’t forget my slot machine change!” she called after him. Everybody was so damned intent on protecting the morals of the young, and it outraged her.

She carried the glass of wine, and the change, over to the slot machine alcove across the bar, catching as she did so a glimpse of the smoke-filled men’s bar beyond the swinging door behind the bar as the other bartender passed through it. Men! she thought, the hell with men! The big pompous windbags. You’d almost think they really ran the world, like they pretended they did, the way they strutted around.

Dawn was aware of the system of bottle racks employed at the Country Club, and she thought it was ridiculous, typical of men. Since both Parkman and the county were partly dry, only unbroken package goods and beer were allowed to go over the bar; hard liquor could not be sold by the drink. But at the Country Club, this virtuous law was gotten deftly around by having the members—mostly made up of the same civic-minded people who had backed the silly law in the first place—bring their own bottles to the club. The bartenders then tagged and filed them, and sold the members only setups to go with their liquor. In that way, no hard liquor was sold over the bar. This could not be done, of course, in a public bar—which as she knew, was the reason for the law. But to Dawn, it was a sorry comment on the lying, virtuous bourgeoisness of the Middle West, and was almost as ridiculous as having a separate “men’s bar.”

Dawn would much rather have been out with Wally right now, eating hamburgers and drinking beer and talking, somewhere like up at West Lancaster, than in this damned bourgeois place. At least with Wally, you could talk honestly. But here—with these damned bourgeois men; in their damned silly locker-room men’s bar. Probably, all they talked about was sex. Wally, at least, was the kind of man who was sensitive to a woman, and understood her intellectual needs.

Oh well. Three of the ten slot machines were not in use, and she set the glass of wine down on the metal stand of a dime machine and commenced putting two dollars’ worth of dimes into it, coming out with eighteen left after she had run them through. As she put them through again, she thought about that extra five dollars and began to feel very excited as she decided to take the whole five and put it in the half-dollar machine. At least, she told herself, it would keep her from being totally bored. And after all, it was extra money, and if she did lose it, it wouldn’t matter because she’d still have the other five left to play on like always.