Glory Road (36 page)

“But
why
? That part seems silly.”

“Was it? When we snared you, your ego was in feeble shape, it had to be built up—and calling you ‘Boss’ and serving your meals while I stood and you sat, with
Her
, was part of it.” He gnawed a knuckle and looked annoyed. “I still think
She
witched your first two arrows. Someday I’d like a return match—with
Her
not around.”

“I may fool you. I’ve been practicing.”

“Well, forget it. We got the Egg, that’s the important thing. And here’s this bottle and that’s important, too.” He poured again. “Will that be all, ‘Boss’?”

“Damn you, Rufo! Yes, you sweet old scoundrel. You’ve straightened me out. Or conned me again, I don’t know which.”

“No con, Oscar, by the blood we’ve shed. I’ve told the truth as straight as I know it, though it hurt me. I didn’t want to, you’re my friend. Walking that rocky road with you I shall treasure all the days of my life.”

“Uh…yes. Me, too. All of it.”

“Then why are you frowning?”

“Rufo, I understand her now—as well as an ordinary person can—and respect her utterly…and love her more than ever. But I can’t be anybody’s fancy man. Not even hers.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to say that. Yes. She’s right She’s always right, damn
Her
! You must leave. For both of you. Oh,
She
wouldn’t be hurt too much but staying would ruin you, in time. Destroy you, if you’re stubborn.”

“I had better get back—and toss my shoes.” I felt better, as if I had told the surgeon:
Go ahead. Amputate
.

“Don’t do that!”

“What?”

“Why should you? No need for anything final. If a marriage is to last a long time—and yours might, even a very long time—then holidays should be long, too. And off the leash, son, with no date to report back and no promises. She knows that knights errant spend their nights erring, She expects it. It has always been so,
un droit de la vocation
—and necessary. They just don’t mention it in kiddies’ stories where you come from. So go see what’s stirring in your line of work elsewhere and don’t worry. Come back in four or forty years or something, you’ll be welcome. Heroes always sit at the first table, it’s their right. And they come and go as they please, and that’s their right, too. On a smaller scale, you’re something like
Her
.”

“High compliment!”

“On a ‘smaller scale,’ I said. Mmm, Oscar, part of your trouble is a need to go home. Your birthing land. To regain your perspective and find out who you are. All travelers feel this, I feel it myself from time to time. When the feeling comes, I pamper it.”

“I hadn’t realized I was homesick. Maybe I am.”

“Maybe
She
realized it. Maybe She nudged you. Myself, I make it a rule to give any wife of mine a vacation from me whenever her face looks too familiar—for mine must be even more so to her, looking as I do. Why not, lad? Going back to Earth isn’t the same as dying. I’m going there soon, that’s why I’m clearing up this paperwork. Happens we might be there the same time…and get together for a drink or ten and some laughs and stories. And pinch the waitress and see what she says. Why not?”

TWENTY-ONE

Okay, here I am.

I didn’t leave that week but soon. Star and I spent a tearful, glorious night before I left and she cried as she kissed me “
Au ’voir
” (not “Good-bye”). But I knew her tears would dry once I was out of sight; she knew that I knew and I knew she preferred it so, and so did I. Even though I cried, too.

Pan American isn’t as slick as the commercial Gates; I was bunged through in three fast changes and no hocus-pocus. A girl said, “Places, please”—then
whambo!

I came out on Earth, dressed in a London suit, passport and papers in pocket, the Lady Vivamus in a kit that did not look like a sword case, and in other pockets drafts exchangeable for much gold, for I found that I didn’t mind accepting a hero’s fee. I arrived near Zurich, I don’t know the address; the Gate service sees to that. Instead, I had ways to send messages.

Shortly those drafts became numbered accounts in three Swiss banks, handled by a lawyer I had been told to see. I bought traveler’s checks several places and some I mailed ahead and some I carried, for I had no intention of paying Uncle Sugar 91 percent.

You lose track of time on a different day and calendar; there was a week or two left on that free ride home my orders called for. It seemed smart to take it—less conspicuous. So I did—an old four-engine transport, Prestwick to Gander to New York.

Streets looked dirtier, buildings not as tall—and headlines worse than ever. I quit reading newspapers, didn’t stay long; California I thought of as “home.” I phoned Mother; she was reproachful about my not having written and I promised to visit Alaska as soon as I could. How were they all? (I had in mind that my half brothers and sisters might need college help someday.)

They weren’t hurting. My stepfather was on flight orders and had made permanent grade. I asked her to forward any mail to my aunt.

California looked better than New York. But it wasn’t Nevia. Not even Center. It was more crowded than I remembered. All you can say for California towns is that they aren’t as bad as other places. I visited my aunt and uncle because they had been good to me and I was thinking of using some of that gold in Switzerland to buy him free from his first wife. But she had died and they were talking about a swimming pool.

So I kept quiet. I had been almost ruined by too much money, it had grown me up a bit. I followed the rule of Their Wisdoms: Leave well enough alone.

The campus felt smaller and the students looked so
young
. Reciprocal, I guess. I was coming out of the malt shop across from Administration when two Letter sweaters came in, shoving me aside. The second said, “Watch it, Dad!”

I let him live.

Football had been re-emphasized, new coach, new dressing rooms, stands painted, talk about a stadium. The coach knew who I was; he knew the records and was out to make a name. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?” I told him I didn’t think so.

“Nonsense!” he said. “Gotta get that old sheepskin! Silliest thing on earth to let your hitch in the army stop you. Now look—” His voice dropped.

No nonsense about “sweeping the gym,” stuff the Conference didn’t like. But a boy could live with a family—and one could be found. If he paid his fees in cash, who cared? Quiet as an undertaker—“That leaves your GI benefits for pocket money.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Man, don’t you read the papers?” He had it on file: While I was gone, that unWar had been made eligible for GI benefits.

I promised to think it over.

But I had no such intention. I had indeed decided to finish my engineering degree, I like to finish things. But not there.

That evening I heard from Joan, the girl who had given me such a fine send-off, then “Dear-Johnned” me. I intended to look her up, call on her and her husband; I just hadn’t found out her married name yet. But she ran across my aunt, shopping, and phoned me. “Easy!” she said and sounded delighted.

“Who—Wait a minute,
Joan!
”

I must come to dinner that very night. I told her “Fine,” and that I was looking forward to meeting the lucky galoot she had married.

Joan looked sweet as ever and gave me a hearty arms-around-my-neck smack, a welcome-home kiss, sisterly but good. Then I met the kids, one crib size and the other toddling.

Her husband was in L.A.

I should have reached for my hat. But it was all right think nothing of it Jim had phoned after she talked to me to say that he had to stay over one more night and
of course
it was all right for me to take her out to dinner he had seen me play football and maybe I would like to bowl tomorrow night she hadn’t been able to get a baby sitter but her sister and brother-in-law were stopping in for drinks couldn’t stay for dinner they were tied up after all dear it isn’t like we hadn’t known each other a long time oh you do too remember my sister there they are stopping out in front and I don’t have the children in bed.

Her sister and brother-in-law stayed for one drink; Joan and her sister put the kids to bed while the brother-in-law sat with me and asked how things were in Europe he understood I was just back and then he told me how things were in Europe and what should be done about them. “You know, Mr. Jordan,” he told me, tapping my knee, “a man in the real estate business like I am gets to be a pretty shrewd judge of human nature has to be and while I haven’t actually been in Europe the way you have haven’t had time somebody has to stay home and pay taxes and keep an eye on things while you lucky young fellows are seeing the world but human nature is the same anywhere and if we dropped just one little bomb on Minsk or Pinsk or one of those places they would see the light right quick and we could stop all this diddling around that’s making it tough on the businessman. Don’t you agree?”

I said he had a point. They left and he said that he would ring me tomorrow and show me some choice lots that could be handled on almost nothing down and were certain to go way up what with a new missile plant coming in here soon. “Nice listening to your experiences, Mr. Jordan, real pleasant. Sometime I must tell you about something that happened to me in Tijuana but not with the wife around ha ha!”

Joan said to me, “I can’t see why she married him. Pour me another drink, hon, a double, I need it. I’m going to turn the oven down, dinner will keep.”

We both had a double and then another, and had dinner about eleven. Joan got tearful when I insisted on going home around three. She told me I was chicken and I agreed; she told me things could have been so different if I hadn’t insisted on going into the army and I agreed again; she told me to go out the back way and not turn on any lights and she never wanted to see me again and Jim was going to Sausalito the seventeenth.

I caught a plane for Los Angeles next day.

Now look—I am
not
blaming Joan. I like Joan. I respect her and will always be grateful to her. She is a fine person. With superior early advantages—say in Nevia—she’d be a
wow!
She’s quite a gal, even so. Her house was clean, her babies were clean and healthy and well cared for. She’s generous and thoughtful and good-tempered.

Nor do I feel guilty. If a man has any regard for a girl’s feelings, there is one thing he cannot refuse: a return bout if she wants one. Nor will I pretend that I didn’t want it, too.

But I felt upset all the way to Los Angeles. Not over her husband, he wasn’t hurt. Not over Joanie, she was neither swept off her feet nor likely to suffer remorse. Joanie is a good kid and had made a good adjustment between her nature and an impossible society.

Still, I was upset.

A man must not criticize a woman’s most womanly quality. I must make it clear that little Joanie was just as sweet and just as generous as the younger Joanie who had sent me off to the army feeling grand. The fault lay with me;
I
had changed.

My complaints are against the whole culture with no individual sharing more than a speck of blame. Let me quote that widely traveled culturologist and rake, Dr. Rufo:

“Oscar, when you get home, don’t expect too much of your feminine compatriots. You’re sure to be disappointed and the poor dears aren’t to blame. American women, having been conditioned out of their sex instincts, compensate by compulsive interest in rituals over the dead husk of sex…and each one is sure she knows ‘intuitively’ the right ritual for conjuring the corpse. She
knows
and nobody can tell her any different…especially a man unlucky enough to be in bed with her. So don’t try. You will either make her furious or crush her spirit. You’ll be attacking that most Sacred of Cows: the myth that women know all about sex, just from being women.”

Rufo had frowned. “The typical American female is sure that she has genius as a couturière, as an interior decorator, as a gourmet cook, and, always, as a courtesan. Usually she is wrong on four counts. But don’t try to tell her so.”

He had added, “Unless you can catch one not over twelve and segregate her, especially from her mother—and even that may be too late. But don’t misunderstand me; it evens out. The American male is convinced that he is a great warrior, a great statesman, and a great lover. Spot checks prove that he is as deluded as she is. Or worse. Historo-culturally speaking, there is strong evidence that the American male, rattier than the female, murdered sex in your country.”

“What can
I
do about it?”

“Slip over to France now and then. French women are almost as ignorant but not nearly as conceited and often are teachable.”

When my plane landed, I put the subject out of mind as I planned to be an anchorite a while. I learned in the army that no sex is easier than a starvation allowance—and I had serious plans.

I had decided to be the square I naturally am, with hard work and a purpose in life. I could have used those Swiss bank accounts to be a playboy. But I had been a playboy, it wasn’t my style.