Some Came Running (70 page)

“Answer me! Why
should
I do it?”

“But that’s elementary, isn’t it?” he smiled sadly. “You do it because it’s easier and less frightening than doing something else.”

“Something else!” she leered. “What else? Once in a thousand times, once in a thousand thousand, one comes along with that peculiar mental and emotional makeup that makes it possible to think, and leavened by that incorrigible, all-engulfing vanity which is so great it makes it more painful to be like everybody else than it does to go ahead and
think,
and then you have one with talent. Which you try to nurture. And so you watch while the vanity balloons and corrodes until it destroys that which at the start it was the reason for the existence of. And once in a billion billion times, it does not happen.”

“It must have been a bad evening,” Bob said.

Gwen put her face in her hands. “Oh—it doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Dawn Hirsh?” Bob said.

“Partly,” she said. “I’ve watched her for years you know.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, women have a hard time you know. With sex, and all. Much harder than men do. It isn’t important to men.”

“I wonder,” Gwen said.

“I mean not major,” Bob said. He pressed his fingertips together thoughtfully. “I only know three things, dear Gwen. One, we learn through pain—and
only
through pain. Therefore, two, to avoid pain is to embrace ignorance. Therefore, three, pain is not bad. Also, what is pain to one is not pain to another.
Don’t
try to take away people’s pain. What we learn sooner in one life, we won’t have to learn later in another. But we’ve talked about all this. . . . I think it’s time we went to bed now,” he said, “don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. She bent and picked up her coat.

Bob came over and put his arms around her. She leaned her head onto his shoulder.

“There there,” he said, patting her on the head. “Come over by the fire and warm. Your teeth are chattering.”

“Liars!” she cried out. “All liars and cheats! And smug!”

“Of course,” Bob said. “There there.” She allowed him to lead her over to the fireplace, where it was warm.

When Frank called her next day about Dave being gone, she did not think anything about it. She was still expecting him over for Christmas.

W
HEN
D
AVE LEFT
P
ARKMAN
heading south to Florida in ’Bama’s Packard, he left as a non-resident. He felt he had nothing in this town and was leaving nothing. When he returned, finally, it was to discover he was returning as a resident: as a man who thought of himself as a resident of Parkman. What had made this change, he did not know. Maybe it was just the simple fact of being gone so long without expecting to be. Altogether they were gone a little over four months.

He had, of course, had no idea of going to anywhere like Florida, when he looked ’Bama up. He had been thinking, actually, that they might go to Terre Haute. The night he had his wearing bout in bed with Ginnie Moorehead, he had made up his mind he was not going to spend Christmas with the Frenches, who had not even seen fit to ask him. The result was an acute depressive loneliness and a feeling of being totally unloved. And after closing the taxi stand at eleven he had started out to hunt the gambler down with the idea that they might do something together Christmas. He was hoping to get hold of him before he made other plans—this was the twentieth—but even then he wasn’t expecting much success because he had forgotten all about ’Bama’s family and they would want him to spend Christmas with them, wouldn’t they? He did not even know if ’Bama was in town. It had taken him over an hour to finally find him.

He started out with the two poolrooms, then moved on to the bars. Then he started in on the clubs, any of which ’Bama might be at, playing cards. Slowly, he drove his crusty little Plymouth up and down the streets from one place to the next. Finally, he found him, sitting in a stud game beneath his immaculate semi-western hat, at the American Legion Hall.

“Well, look who’s here,” the tall man drawled and grinned. “It’s old pard. Hello, old pard.”

“Come on, ’Bama, and play,” one of the players growled. “Or you gonna sit and talk all night?”

“Just saying hello to my old pard,” ’Bama said. “Besides, I’m studyin. I’ll see,” he said and threw two blue chips out on the table. “Come on and sit in,” he said to Dave.

Dave did not want to, but he did. All of the players at the table except himself and ’Bama were old vets, men of the First War of fast-fading memory. Not old yet, but old enough to see their war, and their heroisms, all displaced. Dave wondered suddenly if Caesar’s veterans might not have looked a lot like this in Augustus’s time. He remembered every single one of them at the table from his childhood. They had all been hanging out here twenty five years ago. When the Old Man’s younger brother, Roland, now dead, who was a vet used to bring him down here. But they all looked smaller now and more narrow-shouldered. Both death and success had made inroads on their numbers, but the rest remained. Stubbornly, the ones who were left clung onto their sanctuary.

Feeling as though he wanted to laugh or maybe cry, Dave concentrated on the poker. He had never been a really
good
poker player; he got too excited, and he overplayed. He knew what his trouble was, but he could not control it; the mere thought of playing always excited him.

He played in their game about an hour, and in that time the strange alchemic thing that had happened with ’Bama and him before, happened again. They began to win. They did not play together, or even try to. But gradually, the percentage of the hands that either one or the other of them won began to rise, and kept on rising. Finally, after winning a big pot on a king high hole card, Dave pushed back his chair.

“I guess I’ve got enough. I didn’t come down here to play poker anyway. I was just lookin for ’Bama.”

Across the table the tall Alabaman grinned. “Anything special?” he said. “Or just in general?”

“Oh, I thought we might go out and hit some joints, or something. Nothing special.”

“Okay,” ’Bama said, “I’m yore man. Hey, Elvie,” he called to the fat, crippled old vet known as the “Custodian.” “Fry us up six hamburgers to go. Come on play one more hand, our hamburgs be ready to go by then.”

After the hand, they collected their hamburgers in a paper sack. ’Bama stuck his nose down in the sack and inhaled deeply. “Ahhh! Give us six cans of Greasy, too, Elvie,” he decided. “Sanwiches like them needs beer.”

With the beer and hamburgers, they left. The other players had already gone on with the game. “I’ll see all you gentlemen,” ’Bama said from the swinging doors. He sneered it of course, by sheer force of habit, but it seemed to Dave there was a curious respectfulness in his voice that he had never noticed anywhere else.

“Well, where you want to go?” the gambler said when they were outside.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Dave said. “Any place, I guess. I don’t even care.”

’Bama chuckled. “I kind of had a hunch you just wanted more to talk. Well, let’s take our sanwiches and beer on up to yore place at the Douglas. You got your car? You go ahead and I’ll follow you.”

When they were in his room, ’Bama broke out the hamburgers and opened two of the beers. “There you are, dig in.” He himself drained off half his own beer in one long swig and then helped himself to the whiskey bottle on Dave’s dresser and poured some into his can of beer. Then he sprawled himself out in the armchair as he had done the other times. “Well, how much you win?” he said.

“About twenty bucks,” Dave said. He helped himself to a sandwich and a beer. He had suddenly become acutely self-conscious. It had started when ’Bama had asked him where he wanted to go. He hadn’t really wanted to go anywhere, he had wanted to ask him what he was going to be doing Christmas but he couldn’t because he did not want ’Bama to know he had nothing to do.

“I won about forty myself,” ’Bama drawled. “Most of it after you come in. It’s funny, you know it? Almost the minute you come into that game, I could feel somethin change. I knew I was goin to start winnin. Did you feel that?”

“No,” Dave said. “I didn’t.”

“Well, by God, I sure as hell did.” ’Bama sighed around a mouthful of hamburger and laid his head back, the immaculate hat tipped over his eyes. “You know,” he said, “gamblin’s really a profession, a craft. A fellow gets into it he has to learn his trade, his craft. But beyond that hes got to have luck.

“Matter of fact,” he said, “gamblin’s an awful lot like farming. I’ve done both. What does a farmer do? He gets everything ready, gets his seed out, all that stuff. And in the end, it’s all luck, whether he makes his crop or not. It’s a
gamble.
He never knows if he’s goin to make money or not, see?”

“Well, writing a book is just the same thing at that,” Dave said. “It’s a gamble.”

’Bama looked over at him. “Well sure it is, ain’t it?” he said. “You never know whether yore goin to have a best seller or not.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s a gamble, too,” ’Bama said, looking a little surprised. “It’s all a gamble, and in the end it all hangs on luck. Which is something nobody understands the workings of.” He seemed to be suddenly full of talking. “Nobody knows anything about luck, except that it exists, and comes and goes, and that nobody can control it. Well, now I actually believe that luck’s controlled by the mind. I don’t mean by havin faith and all that religion crap. What I mean is, I think there’s some actual
physical
part of the brain that controls luck. Some gland or nerve cell or something like that. The trouble is, we ourselves don’t know how to control that gland or whatever it is. At least, not consciously. But I believe that when a man is hot and winning, he’s actually
physically
controllin them cards, with some part of his brain some way that he don’t know he’s doin. I mean actually
physically,
you see?”

He looked straight at Dave and went on. “People think gamblers are superstitious because they’re always wearin the same hat or always keepin the same coin in their pocket and things like that.” He pulled out a rabbit’s foot and held it up and grinned. “But the truth is, gamblers know that they got this gland in their brain—although they may not have any idea what it is—and they know that certain circumstances make it work. All they’re doin when they wear the same hat is trying to duplicate whatever circumstances it was that made it work for them the last time,” he said, staring straight at Dave.

“I guess,” Dave said.

“You take you and me. Why is it when we both get together, we both begin to win more? I don’t mean that we win them all, but the overall percentage of winning hands we have definitely goes up. That’s a fact. And so there’s got to be some explanation for it. Some factor we don’t know about that would explain it reasonably if we just knew what it was.

“I shore wish you and me could form that gamblin pardnership we talked about,” he said, “while we’re still lucky for each other. We ought to take advantage of it while it lasts.”

’Bama reached for his beer can and discovered it was empty. He got up to open two more beers. “But that’s what fascinates a person about gamblin so much, you know? It’s like death: We don’t really understand it any more than we understand what luck is.” He laughed. “Well,” he said, “what was it you was wantin to see me about anyway?”

“Oh,” Dave said, suddenly self-conscious again, “nothing special. I just thought I’d look you up, you know? Say,” he said, “what are you going to be doin Christmas?”

“Christmas?” ’Bama said looking startled. “Well, I don’t know. Nothing. Why? What’s today?” he said, “Wednesday the twentieth?” He counted the days up on his fingers. “Christmas is Monday. I ain’t doin nothing Monday that I know of. Why?”

“I thought we might celebrate,” Dave said. “Go off somewhere and get on a good drunk together.”

“Okay,” ’Bama said. “But why Monday?” He was just handing Dave his beer. Then he stopped and began to grin. “But ain’t you going to be spending Christmas over to yore little schoolteacher’s in Israel?”

“Who? Me? Hell, no.”

The grin widened. “You mean she didn’t ask you.”

“Look,” Dave said. “What in hell are you talking about? Why the hell should she ask me for Christmas?”

“Aw now, come on, buddy,” ’Bama said. “Everybody in town knows you and that schoolteacher of Wally’s are hot for each other.”

“Now look!” Dave said. “All I did was come around and ask you to go someplace on Christmas. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. Just say so. But spare me your wit and homegrown psychology.”

For a moment, ’Bama stared at him cold-eyed, his face set like stone, as if debating whether he should take offense or not. Then he apparently decided not to. He moved, and rearranged his face.

“Okay,” he grinned, “let’s go to Florida.”

Dave, who had only had time to think that everything was going wrong, and had been for some time, could not believe he had heard right.

“To Florida!”

“Sure,” ’Bama grinned, “why not? I ain’t been down there since I was at that Tankers’ Vacation Home they sent me to in ’45 when I come back from overseas. We can run down there for a couple weeks or so and have us both a
real
celebration. The winter season’ll just be startin and Hialeah and the dog tracks’ll be runnin. We might even make expenses.”

“But what about your family? Don’t you have to spend Christmas with them?”

“Hell, no,” the tall slim Southerner said. “I’ve done bought them all the damned presents they want. So it don’t matter whether I’m there or not. My mom and my brother and all will be there. They always go down to the farm for Christmas. Hell, I never do.”

“Well—when will we go?” Dave said.

“Go right now,” ’Bama said. “I’ll go back to the boardinghouse and pick up an extra suit and hat and you can be packin up and I’ll come back and pick you up here. Whatever we don’t take we can buy when we get there.”

“What about money?” Dave said.

’Bama sneered. He didn’t say a word.

“Okay,” Dave said, “let’s go. Just one other thing first. Why don’t we take a couple of women with us?”