Pride (20 page)

Finally, with his large, rough tongue he's licking the last bits of meat from the package. His yellow, round eyes look up at Sally. Then he quickly forces his face through the opening in the door and leans so hard she can't hold back. As the door swings farther open, Tuffy can apply his full strength and wrenches the doorknob from her hand.

Sally stands with her fists against her mouth as Tuffy comes out, stalks around her, and begins rubbing his face, his body, against her so hard he almost knocks her over. He's behaving exactly the way any domestic cat would, except he weighs almost a hundred pounds.

Sally pulls herself together and goes into the room. Tuffy follows her. She closes the door behind him. He isn't trying to escape, he's only wanting company; as Cap has foretold, he's almost more lonely than hungry.

The room smells. Sally sees where Tuffy has made his messes. She takes a newspaper from the table beside the bed and scoops them up, flushes them down the toilet. She opens a window slightly from the top to air the room.

Tuffy stays close to her rubbing hard against her whenever she stoops or stops. When she's finished, she sits on the side of the bed. Here she is in the cabin of a man she hardly knows, feeding and cleaning up after his lion. She's between crying and laughing. What would the nuns say? This is even more of an adventure than a Gloria Swanson movie.

Tuffy comes up and rests his large head across her lap on the bed. It's such a natural thing for a dog but seems wrong for a large cat. Sally pushes his head away and Tuffy starts prowling around the room.

Sally finds some milk in the wooden icebox in the kitchenette. The ice has long ago melted, so it's warm but not sour. She pulls the melted ice-water pan out into the middle of the floor, pours milk into another pan, and puts it beside the water. While Tuffy drinks, she carefully edges her way to the door, opens it quickly, and goes out. She locks it behind her and walks surreptitiously past the office of the lodge keeper. It's the kind of lodge where casual visitors to guests' rooms are tolerated, even expected.

Back at the hospital, Sally tells Cap all that she's done. She tells him she has to work the next day but she'll go out in the evening after work and feed Tuffy. She'll come visit Sture, too.

“I can't thank you enough, Sally. Looks as if I'm going to be in this hospital when the team leaves for Langhorne. I'll need to catch up later. You'll never know how much I appreciate all you're doing; not many people are brave enough to go into a room with Tuffy alone.”

“But he's so gentle. He loves to be loved. He's like a big pussy cat.”

“He probably thinks you're part of our pride. I'm really glad he took to you like that.”

“What do you mean ‘pride'?”

“A lion's family is called his pride. Since I got Tuffy I've been reading all the books on lions I can find. Mostly they talk about lions in zoos and the diseases they get; there isn't much about how lions actually live in the wild. I wish I could take Tuffy back to Africa and set him free with other lions.”

Sally smiles. “I like being part of Tuffy's pride.”

During the week Sture is in the hospital, he and Sally start confiding about their past lives. Sally feeds Tuffy, then comes to visit Sture until visiting hours are over. Sture tells about his boyhood on the farm, about his bicycle, about being in the war and getting wounded. He tells her about his lost hair and lost teeth, about his lungs, about his hurt leg.

Sally tells about her poor family, about having a sister who died of galloping consumption at thirteen, about her father dying of the same deadly disease, contracted while trying to nurse her sister. She tells how she quit school in sixth grade and was lucky to get a job with the telephone company. She'd always wanted to be an actress but now knew she'd never be one, just work at the telephone company until she met somebody at one of the dances who would want to marry her.

“I'd think anybody who'd ever met you would want to marry you, Sally.”

Cap says it before he knows it's coming; it's what he feels. He still can't believe that this lovely woman, in many ways only a girl, is still unmarried, still not taken. The women he's met so far in his life, except his mother, have all been so hard and grasping, so easy to read and yet so hard to know.

He feels Sally is almost like the sister he'd always wished he had. He likes the way they can talk together, laugh together, and enjoy long private silences, looking into each other's eyes quickly, looking away.

“Would you want to marry me, Sture? You act as if you're afraid of me, afraid to be a friend. Would you go to a dance with me before you leave for Pennsylvania? I'd like that. That's the way you could pay me back for helping with Tuffy.”

She looks straight into Cap's eyes, not looking away this time. Cap tries to look back into hers but is so confused he needs to look away. He raises his good arm and puts the back of his hand across his face. He tries to keep his voice in control as he speaks, his hand turned backward over his eyes. He thinks of how he was almost blind, how he fought for his sight.

“Sally, I'm too old for you. I'm too old even for myself. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to drive a racing car again. I've lost something inside, a way of believing everything would always turn out all right, that nothing could really hurt me. I'm beginning to be afraid, Sally. If you're going to race cars, you can't be afraid or you'll get hurt.

“That's how I had this crash. I was afraid and trying to make myself think I wasn't. I took stupid chances at the wrong time because I wasn't in tune with myself.

“You'd best forget you ever knew me. I'm an outsider, a wanderer, and I guess I'll always be one. You'll make a good wife to some real man, and a fine mother to beautiful babies. That's what you need, not a vagrant type like me. God, I'm old enough to be your father. How old are you, anyway?”

“I'm twenty, Sture. And I'm old enough not to believe what you're saying. You only say those things because you're discouraged here in the hospital. You'll be yourself when you get out, get driving again.”

Cap looks at her. She's saying what he'd like to believe, but he knows it isn't true. Still, he's glad to hear her say it.

When Cap finally is out of the hospital, Sally comes regularly to see him. She goes on long walks with Tuffy and Cap in the pine barrens. They talk about all the things they'd never talked about to anyone else before. Cap tells how he loved the animals on his parents' farm, how he talked to them, how much he enjoyed school.

Sally tells how she hated school, couldn't do the work; always wanted to run away to Hollywood. Sally tells how she's bored with her job at the telephone company, how she hardly gets breaks even to go to the bathroom; how the other operators are coarse and mean.

Cap discovers that Sally smokes cigarettes. He embarrassedly tells her how his lungs are burned out and he can't be around cigarette smoke. Sally snuffs out the cigarette she's smoking and says she's been looking for an excuse to quit, that it's a filthy and expensive habit and she only started because her friends at the telephone company smoke.

Here, walking in the woods with a young lion we have two people. One looking like the classic flapper, giving the appearance of being fast, as loose as the women she's imitating; yet actually, naive, inexperienced, scared. And the other, our Cap, brave beyond reason, gifted above all, man among men, however also scared, unprepared for the hard life he can see looming before him. They fall into each other, both feeling they've found the perfect blend of humanity and an ideal of the opposite sex they wanted but of which they were afraid.

Sally starts coming directly from work to Sture. Cap sends a telegram to the racing team saying he'll meet them in Detroit, that he isn't well enough to race yet.

When they first sleep together in Sture's cabin, they're both virgins. They come to the end of play-acting against the wall of physical reality. Their unsuccessful efforts only increase the mental, spiritual bonding between them as they laugh uncontrolledly at their mutual ineptitude.

They'd locked Tuffy in the small bathroom, and, after laughing, they cry together, then sleep together, wrapped in each other's arms, legs, knowing the end of aloneness. Sture's whole life, his reasons for living are changed.

When Cap goes to Detroit, Sally quits her job and goes with him. Cap insists they get married but Sally puts him off. She finally agrees to a civil marriage before a justice of the peace in Elkton, Maryland. Her only concern is that she not get pregnant. Sally is willing to be married but not ready to be a mother. Sture represents love, affection, passion; a chance to get away from the boredom of her life, but she still clings to her aspiration of being something on her own.

They're now comfortable with each other sexually and blossom in the joy of discovering their long-suppressed sensuality.

Tuffy rides cramped in the back seat of the motorcar. He's accepted Sally easily into the pride but is perhaps feeling somewhat displaced by her in Cap's affection.

The drive from Atlantic City to Detroit is a marvel to Sally. She's never been farther than Philadelphia and rarely has ridden in a motorcar. The entire experience makes her glad she's left her job. She feels guilty not being able to send the five dollars from her pay check home to her mother, but Cap says he'll make that up. Since they're married, that seems all right to Sally.

At Detroit, Cap drives on a dirt half-mile track, difficult and dangerous driving. He finds he not only can't pull away from the pack, take the lead, he can barely keep up with it. The team figures he is still suffering from his last accident and needs a few races under his belt to get his nerve again. But Cap knows otherwise. He knows he'll never be willing to take the kinds of risks he's always taken without thinking. Now he's thinking
too
much. He's thinking of Tuffy, of Sally, of himself. He's no longer just a comfortable, natural animal.

He races twice more, first at Omaha on a mile track and then at Altoona, Pennsylvania. He's scheduled next to race in Laurel, Maryland. In both races he's had the same problem. It's as if he's forgotten how to do something perfectly simple, like walking or milking a cow. He knows what he has to do but he can't get himself to do it.

The worst thing is he doesn't even
want
to force himself to it any more. He not only
can't
drive competitively, he doesn't
want
to. In Altoona, Cap and Sally stay with Tuffy in a lodge outside town.

Sally cuddles against Sture, puts her arms across his chest, whispers in his ear.

“Don't talk like that, Sture. You know you're the best driver around, as good as De Palo or Shaw or Bill Cummings or any of them.”

“Yeah, maybe I'm good as Frank Lockhardt and look what happened to him. I was there. And I don't really think I was ever as good as those guys. I'm a lot better mechanic than any of them but I'm just not crazy-mad enough to be an outstanding driver. Sometimes they drive almost as if they
want
to be killed.”

“Please, don't say those things, Sture. It scares me.”

“Well, it scares me, too, Sally. It's what I'm trying to tell you, I'm scared.

“Look, Sally, honest, I know you came off with me because you thought I was a big-shot automobile racer and now you find out I'm so scared I can hardly get myself to ride a kiddy car. If you want to go home I'll give you the money and you can just forget you ever knew me. It'd be the best thing. We could get a quick divorce, and since you feel we've never really been married, since it wasn't in the church, you can go to confession and start out fresh again.”

There's a long silence. Sally lifts herself with her elbows on Sture's chest. “Is that what you really think of me, Cap? Do you think I ran away with you just because you're an automobile driver? Do you really think that?”

“What I really think, Sally, is I want you to feel married to me and stay with me. But I also want you to know what I can and can't do. I don't want you to be sorry afterward.”

So they make love again, the
most
complete and somehow
least
complete of all communications. The next day, Sture tells Sally his plan.

“Listen, Sally, I have just over ten thousand dollars in the bank right now. I know if I keep racing I'll only get worse, and I'm sure to get hurt or killed. I'm a menace now to the other drivers as well as myself.

“I thought of buying a garage and running that, but I'm still not ready to settle down and I don't think you are either. So tell me what you think of this idea.”

Cap looks at Sally. They're having coffee in their cabin. Tuffy has been fed and is asleep under the table with his chin on Cap's foot.

“I know of a car for sale. It's a 1930 Model T Ford Miller 91 with a Fronty overhead valve conversion. It's narrow, light, and I know some things I can do to make it a perfect sprint car. Then, instead of racing in this crazy race scene with international and top-flight drivers I can race the dirt tracks, the county fairs. With this car I could win easily and beat out the local cowboys with their souped-up jobs. I can buy the car and a Ford truck in good condition with a trailer to haul it with and we could be off. What'd'ya think of the idea, Sal?”