Some Came Running (87 page)

He had called her up at home the evening of the day he had got the check in the mail and after he had already ordered his knives. Of course, she already knew about it by then because her mom was on the committee. It was a school night, but they had let her go out anyway, since it was sort of an occasion.

They had driven up toward West Lancaster, talking about the award. It was a beautiful warm May night. When Wally got to the two filling stations at the West Lancaster road, instead of turning over toward the river, he had turned west the other way onto the gravel that ran on back into the countrified interior of the county.

“What are you turning this way for?” Dawn had said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he had answered. “I thought we’d just go for a ride. I don’t much feel like going to some pub where there are a lot of people.”

“I guess I don’t blame you,” Dawn said. “It’s a pretty momentous occasion. The first tangible proof of your talent; the first pay for your writing. Well, you’ve finally made the grade, Wally.”

“It isn’t pay,” he said. “It’s a damned donation, charity. And I haven’t made the grade. The book isn’t finished.”

“It’s still money,” Dawn said. “And that makes it a proof of your talent.”

“Gwen and Dr Pirtle got it for me. It’s not the same as selling your book and getting a check from a publisher.”

“It’s a proof that they believe in you. And it’s
tangible
proof. You can even spend it,” Dawn said. “And it’s a lot more than I ever got.”

There was a curious kind of melancholy feeling about her tonight, and he felt very warm toward her. “I’ve already spent a part of it,” he said. “I ordered my Randall knives this afternoon. In fact, I ordered four.”

“Oh! Did you? Can I see them when they come?” Dawn said.

“Sure,” Wally said. “I’ll even teach you how to use them, if you want. A girl who’s as pretty as you might need to know how to use one someday.”

“I doubt it,” Dawn said. “But I’d like to learn it anyhow. If
you’ll
teach me.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said. They had come to a patch of tall deserted woods into which an ungated little dirt road ran. The last lingering red light of the evening banked up against the trees and sifted down through them. In the woods, it was much darker than it was out on the road. Wally stopped the car to look at it. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said.

“It is,” Dawn said. “It looks so peaceful in there. You’d never think the world was in danger of blowing itself to pieces to look at that, would you?”

Without saying anything, Wally put his mom’s old car in gear and pulled it in under the trees. It got immediately much darker. Old leaves and rotted hickory nuts crunched under the tires as he stopped it. Dawn did not say anything, either. He had not considered the idea of making her here, tonight, and it had not even been in his head when he turned west off the highway. Now it came in his head.

“God! Isn’t it beautiful? So still!” Dawn said. “Look how much lighter it is out in the road! We could sit right here forever and no one in the world would ever know we were here,” she said. Wally tried to think of something to say, but he could not think of anything, so instead he reached over and pulled her to him. It felt very good. And they had necked a lot before.

“Oh, Wally!” she said after he had kissed her. “Someday you’ll be famous! Just think about it!” She rubbed her forehead against the side of his chin. “You’ll be famous, and rich. And people everywhere will read your books and talk about you. And I’ll probably be playing cheap bit roles in some summer stock somewhere. Will you remember Dawn then, Wally?”

“What do you think?” he said.

“I’m sure I’ll remember you then,” Dawn said.

“Listen,” Wally said, putting his finger under her chin. “Look here. Do you remember you told me last November you’d sleep with me in May?”

“That’s right, I did say that, didn’t I?” she said.

“But I suppose you didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t know,” Dawn said. “May was such a long time off, then.”

Wally did not know what to say to this. “Well, will you?” he said finally.

“Do you really want me?”

“You know I do,” he said.

“And you really truly do want me?” Dawn said.

“Yes,” he said.

“All right,” she said, “you can have me,” and pulled away from him suddenly and just simply started to undress. Wally thought his head would burst.

“Let’s get in the backseat,” he said, but it was little more than a croak. When she got out on her side, he simply followed her, as if hypnotized, and he thought he had never seen anything as beautiful as Dawn was, still in her skirt, bare to the waist in the May air in that woods, the last dying light touching her torso and those magnificent breasts of hers with a rich red rose color.

“Kiss me,” she said.

He did.

“Make violent love to me first,” she said.

He did that, too, or tried. And then she looked up at him without seeing him, curiosity and surprised interest in her eyes, as she concentrated on feeling these things she had never felt before, but had heard and thought a lot about.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Go on.”

“Ah, Dawnie,” Wally said.

Lying beside him afterwards, Dawn was still trying to sort out her impressions. She had more or less anticipated certain things, physical feelings, and all that sort of stuff, but there were other things she had not anticipated. And so this is what it’s like, she thought with a sort of satisfaction. Yes, she definitely liked it. But then it was all so natural. But over and above all that, over and above all the physical sensations, there was something else. Such a feeling of power! She had never felt such a sense of such great, tremendous power. Acting on the stage was as nothing to it; the audience loved you—if you were good enough; but even at the moment of acting to them, the power, the love, was nothing as great as here. Here, she held almost complete power over this man—this boy. And even the particular man didn’t matter, not really—except of course this was Wally; her Wally. He needed her. Needed, and had to have, what only she could give him. And she had the power to give it or take it away, as she chose. It was
such
a power, that she would have to be very careful not to abuse it, she thought. “Old Wally,” she said affectionately. “Nice Wally,” and reached over to stroke the back of his head.

His lips moving against her cheek, Wally mumbled, “Thank you, Dawnie. I—I’m sorry,” he said in a choked, guilty voice in her ear, and Dawn wanted to laugh.

Wally felt he could have lain there forever. But he knew they would have to get up sometime.

“Here,” he croaked. “Come on. I’ll help you up.”

“Thank you, sire,” she grinned, and he blushed. When they were both back inside the car, Wally did not start the engine but sat looking out at the woods where it was nearly completely dark now. He wanted to remember it, just as it was.

“What do you say we have a cigarette?” Dawn said cheerfully.

“Oh. Excuse me,” he mumbled, and fished out a pack and put two of them in his mouth and lit them, the ancient, trite old gesture, that you saw in every movie to represent the moment of peace and closeness after sex, but that still made him feel good and very much the lover. He handed her hers.

“It’s a beautiful woods, ain’t it?” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Dawn said. “And it will always be our woods now, won’t it?”

“You’re not going to hate me, are you, Dawnie?” he said.

“Well, what a ridiculous thing to say!” Dawn said. “Of course, I don’t hate you! I love you!”

“You really do love me, don’t you?” Wally said.

“Of course, I do, darling! Do you think I’d do what we’ve just done if I didn’t love you?”

“No, of course not,” Wally said, “that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Or if I didn’t know you loved me?”

“Of course, I love you. What I meant was that I didn’t want you ever to have cause to hate me. You’ll never have cause to hate me, Dawnie, I promise you that.”

“I know that, silly,” Dawn said. She puffed on her cigarette. “God, Wally! Quit acting so damned guilty. You’re acting more worried about it than I am!”

“I just want you to know you’ll never have cause to regret your action,” Wally said.

“Thank you, my darling,” Dawn said, “I always knew that.” She put her cigarette out in the tray. “We’d better be getting home, you know it? It’s getting pretty late.”

“Give us a kiss first.”

They leaned together for a quick kiss that became a longer kiss and turned into an even longer caress.

“Open your door a minute,” Dawn said when they finally separated. “I’ve got to put my lipstick back on.”

Wally opened his door so the dome light would come on, and watched her lovingly as she replaced her lipstick, another ancient, trite, but wholely memorable love gesture. That was pretty good, he thought, he’d have to remember and use that, together with that about the cigarettes.

When she was finished, he shut the door and started the old car and switched on the lights, bringing to life the bottom of a number of shaggy-barked, gray hickories.

He backed the car out slowly until they were back on the gravel, and headed back toward the highway, driving leisurely, everything about him relaxed and liquid.

“I just hope Mother doesn’t find out,” Dawn said.

“There’s no way she can very well, is there?” he said.

“I don’t think so. I just don’t want her to find out. Until we’re ready to tell her ourselves, you know?”

“Yes,” Wally said. He felt a touch of irritated unease.

“My God!” Dawn said, turning to him and pecking him on the cheek. “We’ve entirely forgotten all about your fellowship! That was what we rode out here to be happy about!”

“We’ve got other reasons for being happy, now,” Wally said.

“Yes, we have,” Dawn said. “Haven’t we?”

They drove on down the gravel, not talking much, and looking out, both of them, in silent thought, at the spring night.

“Wally, I just want to tell you one thing,” Dawn said in a clear voice. “You and I can have a very powerful love affair. Or we can have a nice friendly little relationship, and have sex together, and let it go at that. It’s up to you to decide.”

“Well—you think we got any choice?” Wally said.

“But it’s only fair to warn you,” Dawn said, “that I love very strongly. Do you want me to let myself go and really love you as much as I am capable of?”

Wally found he could not help but fidget a little. He felt a panicky sense of portending loss. “Well, I want you to love me. Of course,” he said carefully.

“All the way?” Dawn demanded. “Because if you do, it has to work both ways. Otherwise, we’ll just be good friends, and have sex. And I’ll go out with other guys.”

“Well, hell!” Wally said. “I don’t want you to go out with other guys.”

“Then it has to be all the way. Is that what you want?”

“Well, I guess it is,” Wally said. “I love you, Dawnie!”

“All right, then!” Dawn said happily. “That’s the way it’ll be,” and as he turned onto the highway she cuddled herself up against him.

“Somebody’s liable to see us,” he cautioned.

“Let them!” she said. “That won’t prove anything.”

They had driven the rest of the way back into town with his arm around her, her face pressed against his armpit.

“I can smell you,” Dawn said. “You smell stronger than you did before, I think. Why?”

“They say some people secrete a musk, like,” Wally said, flustered but pleased. “When they have sex. Maybe I do that.”

“I like it,” Dawn said.

“I’ll never hurt you, Dawnie,” he said, “I promise you that.”

And looking at her sitting beside him on the divan, he still wished they were up to their woods, right now. Godalmighty! it was amazing how much sex there was in him apparently. He had never been aware of it before. He actually believed he could just keep right on going, all night long.

Watching her proudly as she talked to Dewey and Hubie and Lorelei Shaw from Terre Haute, he was not sorry about the way he had decided that first night in the car. She had gotten possessive—
very
possessive—of him since then; but it was funny about that. While half of you resented it, he had noted, the other half of you ate it up.

Now, why had nobody ever written it just like that? That ambivalence?

He had rigidly kept his promise to her, and had not even looked at another woman. Dawnie had never, so far, said anything at all about marriage. And so he had not, either. Time enough to worry about that if and when she did mention it. Hell, maybe he’d even marry her. A writer could get a helluva lot worse wife, that was for sure. She would be going away to school at Western Reserve in the fall, he thought suddenly, and it made a feeling of befuddled hollow emptyness rise up in him.

Because he didn’t believe all this New York stuff she had been spouting about going as soon as school was out. Wally wasn’t worried about the summer. He
knew
she wouldn’t go. And he himself was not going to New York, either. When
he
went to New York,
he
would go as an already big man in his
own
right—as Wallace French Dennis, whose book was already out— No, he wasn’t worried about the summer.

But the thought of her going away to school at Western Reserve in the fall not only deboweled him but addled his whole head, like spinning on a gyro.

“. . . work of a novelist,” Dawnie said beside him. “You know, I’ve about decided that acting is a second-class art. After all, an actor’s job is not to create so much as it is to interpret what someone else—the playwright—created. But, of course, one could be a great actress
and
a playwright, too. Don’t you think so, Wally?” she said, turning to him.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think you can really confine creativity that much. It comes in its own way, you know, and on its own terms. Just like luck in gambling.”

“Well, if I was writing a novel,” Dewey said, “I’d write it about the kind of life I wish I’d had. I’d make me the hero and the kind of person I wish I’d been. Then I’d put in all the kind of people I wish I’d known—instead of the chickenhearted slobs I really know.”