Appointment in Samarra (21 page)

Captain Ogden! Julian laughed. We know all about him up the mountain, said the stout man. Are you by any chance a member of this club? said Julian. A member, and what s more you never see my name posted, said the man. Don t you worry about me being a member.

Well, that was all right. It was a slap at Julian, who had been posted two or three times, but it also was a slap at Froggy, Carter, Bobby Herrmann and just about everyone else. It was no distinction to be posted at the Gibbsville Club; it could mean that you had not paid your bill six days after the bill was presented. Is this man a member, Straight? said Julian. Oh, yes. Mr. Luck is a member.

Luck? Lukashinsky, if I know anything.

What s that got to do with it. This is between me and you, said Froggy. Not any more, it isn t. No, Captain, it s between me on the one side, standing here alone, and you and the Polack war veterans and whoremasters on the other side. I ll stay where I am.

Hey, you! said the lawyer. Aw, said Julian, finally too tired and disgusted with himself and everyone else. He took a step backwards and got into position, and then he let the lawyer have it, full in the mouth. The man fell back and gurgled and reached fingers in his mouth to keep from choking on his bridgework. Another lawyer came over, another Polack whose name Julian never could remember. He had a club soda bottle in his hand. Put that down! said Froggy. He has a bottle! He grabbed a bottle himself, and Julian got a water carafe. All through it Straight kept saying Gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, and kept out of the way. Come on, said Julian, to the man with the bottle. The man saw the carafe and hesitated. The other lawyers took the bottle away from him without a great struggle. The man could not keep his eyes off Froggy. He could not understand why Froggy had warned Julian. Go on out and get a warrant, Stiney, called the lawyer whom Julian had socked. Julian hit him again, hit him in the hands, which were covering the sore mouth. He hit him again in the ear. Froggy grabbed Julian s shoulder to pull him away, and Julian pulled up his shoulder so suddenly that it hit Froggy in the chin. The lawyer went down, not to get up for a while, and then Julian rushed Froggy and punched him in the ribs and in the belly and Froggy lost his balance and fell over a chair. Julian picked up the carafe again and hurled it at the man who had come at him with the bottle, and without waiting to see what it did, he ran out of the room, taking his coat and a hat off the hall rack. He hurried to the car. Hi, boy. Someone called to him. Julian had his foot on the starter and he identified the greeter as Whit Hofman. Well, Whit was a son of a bitch, too. Whit probably hated him and had hated him for years, just as Froggy had done. The car jumped out of the snow and Julian drove as fast as he could to the quickest way out of Gibbsville. The worst of that drive was that the sun glare on the snow made you smile before you were ready. Your home is the center of many zones. The first zone is your home, the second can be the homes around you, which you know only less well than you do your home. In the second zone you know where the rainpipes have stained the shingles on the houses, you know where the doorbell button is, how much of a bedpost can be seen in an upstairs window; the length of slack taken up in the porch-swing chains; the crack in the sidewalk; the oil spots from the drip-pans in the driveway; the lump of coal, which you remember from the time it was not swept away, and its metamorphosis from day to day as it is crushed and crushed into smaller lumps and into dust and then all that is left of it is a black blot, and you are glad one day that it has been crushed and it no longer is there to accuse you of worry about your neighbor s slovenliness. And so on. The next zone is the homes and buildings you pass every day on your way to work. The tin signs outside little stores, the trees with the bark gnawed away by horses, the rope on the gates and the ancient weights, the places where the street ought to be repaired, the half-second view of the town clock tower between two houses. And so on. And more zones, zones that the farther you get from the center, the longer spaces there are in the familiar things. In one zone a hundred yards of highway will be familiar, while in another zone the familiar spaces are a matter of inches. In the familiar zones remembering is effortless. An outside zone is where your brain begins to tell you where to make a turn in the road and where to keep going straight and where to blow your horn and where to slow down for a curve. Julian was in an outside zone, southwest of Gibbsville and in the Pennsylvania Dutch farming country, when he first brought himself up. He was first able to perceive that he had been driving, judging by the distance at least a half hour, when he became aware of not having a hat on. He reached over and picked up the hat beside him, but his fingers rejected the dents in the crown, and he examined the hat. The brim did not snap down in front. It was a Stetson, and Julian wore Herbert Johnson hats from Brooks Brothers. But he did not like to see men driving hatless in closed cars; it was too much like the Jews in New York who ride in their town cars with the dome lights lit. He put the hat on the back of his head, and lowered the window at his side. The first breath of air made him want a cigarette almost immediately, and he slowed down to light one from the torch on the dashboard. The road was his. He wanted to drive on the left side and zigzag like an army transport and idle along at four miles an hour. But one time when he thought the road was his he had done all these things, finally to be arrested for drunken driving by a highway patrolman who had been following him all the while. You d think you owned the road, the patrolman had said; and Julian could not answer that that was exactly what he had been thinking. So long as the engine did tricks for him he knew he was safe, but when he discovered this about the car, that it was occupying his mind and keeping it off the events of the last hour, two hours, twenty-four hours, forty-eight hours although it was not forty-eight hours since he had doused Harry Reilly with a highball the discovery forced his eyes to the clock. And the clock said three-eleven. It was three-eleven back at the garage, and he had to get back to see Lute Fliegler. He slowed down and stopped just beyond a country lane, he backed the car in the lane and then drove out, and the radiator now pointed in the direction of Gibbsville and not away from it. The faster he drove the less he liked the zones he was getting into. He wished he had gone on instead of turning around. To go on until he had spent his money, write a check in Harrisburg, write another in Pittsburgh, until his money was gone; then sell the car, sell it and buy a second-hand Ford, sell his coat, sell his watch, then sell the Ford, then get a job in a lumber camp or something where he wouldn t last a minute, not a day. There was something awfully good and lucky for him in being guided out of the club and into the car and away, but something else had pulled him back. You did not really get away from whatever it was he was going back to, and whatever it was, he had to face it. His practical sense told him that the idea of going away, writing checks, selling the car and so on, eventually would catch up to him. He probably would break a law. Oh, more than that. The way things were now at the garage, he had no right to sell this car, nor even to run away. He was too tall to run away. He would be spotted. And so he kept his foot on the accelerator, hurrying back to Gibbsville. The cigarette burned down to his glove he could not remember putting the gloves on and made a little stink. He threw the cigarette out and he yawned. Always when he felt sleepy while driving he would light a cigarette and it would revive him, but now he was sleepy and tired and did not want to be revived. Even the little fight in him annoyed him. He did not want to fight and he did not want to be awake. You would look at Mrs. Waldo Wallace Walker, dressed in a brown sweater with a narrow leather belt, and a tweed skirt from Mann and Dilks, and Scotch grain shoes with fringed tongues, and a three-cornered hat. You would know her for all the things she was: a woman who served on Republican committees because her late husband had been a Republican, although she always spelt it tarriff. She would be a good bridge player and a woman who knew the first two lines of many songs, who read her way in and out of every new book without being singed, pinched, bumped, or tickled by any line or chapter. Between doing the last thing and the next she would beat her hands together in little claps, rubbing her pure, once pretty fingers together for the warmth she generated in the fingertips, and making you expect her to say something good and wise about life. But what she would say would be: Oh, fish! I must have my rings cleaned.

A stranger, spending his first hour with her, would look at her clothes and think what trunkfuls of once stylish suits and hats and dresses she must have and she had them. She was the prettiest woman of her age in Gibbsville, and though she did not know it and would not have accepted it, her hairdresser would have been glad to do her for nothing, she was such a good ad. She also would have made a good ad for spectacles; but she also would have made a good ad for drinking a cup of hot water in the morning, Don t Worry, take a nap every afternoon, walk a mile every day, the Golden Rule, visit your dentist twice a year, and all the other codes that she had the time and the means to live by. Judge Walker had not left a great fortune, but there was money there. Mrs. Walker gave $250 to this, $15 to that, and never personally turned a hungry man away from her kitchen door. When Caroline was at Bryn Mawr, Mrs. Walker, according to Caroline, became president ex officio of the college, and in later years it was always with difficulty that Caroline restrained her mother from calling on Dr. Marion every time they motored through Bryn Mawr, the town. Someone once told Mrs. Walker that Caroline had great independence of spirit, and this delighted the mother and caused her to allow Caroline to develop as much as possible unassisted. Whatever independence of spirit Caroline possessed bad developed unassisted before Mrs. Walker made a philosophy of it, but at least Mrs. Walker did make it much easier for Caroline, and Caroline made it as easy as possible for her mother to develop unassisted too. There had been nothing but placid love in their relationship from the time Caroline began taking her own baths. It was a comfortable relationship, only slightly disturbed, if at all, by the fact that from the time of that necessary talk when Caroline was thirteen, Caroline always thought of her mother as a person who could say the mouth of the womb without leaving the tiniest inference of any excitement to be had there. In the beginning of her love with Julian Caroline sometimes felt sorry for her mother as she felt sorry for all the females she liked because of what they were missing, but after a year or two she wondered if it could not be possible that her mother simply had forgot the hours of her own passion. Julian said that a lovely lady had to be passionate to get that look and Mrs. Walker had been a lovely lady. Julian was fond of his wife s mother, a fondness that was incomplete only because he was not sure that she really liked him. But Mrs. Walker gave everyone who knew her well that feeling; and the truth was that at the moment of ordering the groceries, Mrs. Walker was as fond of Joe Machamer, the clerk at Scott s, as she was of anyone except her daughter, and the dignity in the memory of her husband, and Abraham Lincoln. (Mrs. Walker had an uncle whose home had been part of the underground railway for slaves.) Mrs. Walker was turning the pages of a Christmas book, Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives, when she heard the front door open and close. Who is it? she sang. Me. Caroline took off her gloves and coat and hat, and her mother put up her hand as though to ward off a too-affectionate kiss (it gave that impression), but when her daughter lowered her head to kiss her, Mrs. Walker cupped Caroline s chin in the palm of her hand. Dear, she said. Did you have a nice Christmas. Never even telephoned, did you?

Yes, I did, but you were out.

Yes, I was. I did go to Uncle Sam s. You look well, dear.

I don t feel well. I feel like the devil. Mother, what

Yes, a little tired. A little strained. Why don t you make Julian take you

What would you do if I got a divorce?

to Pinehurst. Divorce? Oh, now, Caroline. Four years, almost five. Divorce.

I thought so, said Caroline. She relaxed. I m sorry. I just came here because I had to speak to somebody and I didn t want to talk to somebody that d blab it all over.

Are you serious?

Yes, I m serious.

But are you? Are you serious, Caroline? That s a very serious thing, when people start talking about a divorce. We ve never had a divorce in our family, and I don t think there was ever one in Julian s family either. What is it?

I m just fed up. I m sick and tired and miserable. I m so miserable and unhappy. I m so unhappy, Mother, I don t care if I die.

Die, dear? Are you pregnant? Are you, dear? You could be wrong, you know. It might just be the strain, Christmas. She got up and sat beside Caroline. Come here, dear. Tell me about it. Mother wants to hear all about it.

Caroline wants to cry, said Caroline, and laughed. Oh, this is serious. Dear, don t. Have you missed the second period, dear?

Yes. Someone was in our seats. Oh, Mother, please. I m not pregnant. That s not it.

Are you sure, dear?

I m positive. Mother, please don t worry about that. That s not it at all. It isn t that. I guess I don t want to talk about it, said Caroline. I ll tell you what s the matter. I might as well. I m through with Julian. I want to go away and get a divorce and never hear his name again for a long time. We can go to France, can t we? Can t we?

Well, I suppose so. This year we ought to be a little more careful, Mr. Chadwick says and Carter. Carter isn t very optimistic. But we could if we had to, go to Europe I mean. Seven. Twenty-five. Hundred and. Oh, we could go. You wouldn t want to buy many things, would you, dear?

I don t want to buy anything. I want a divorce. I want to stop being with Julian English and this life. All I am is tired. It s nothing more than that. I m just tired and fed up. I m all washed up and I want to go away. I want to sleep here tonight and all other nights. I want to forget Julian and I want to talk to somebody and go away. I want to talk to somebody with an English accent or I don t know. I m sorry.