Some Came Running (158 page)

“I’m scared,” she admitted to them; “I’m feared he’ll come back here after me. He ain’t all there. All he can do is talk about the Marine Corps and the war. Hes really got all them medals he said, too. That was the only thing he told me the truth about. He showed ’em all to me. I’m jist scared to death he’ll come back here after me.”

“If he comes around here,” ’Bama said, his eyes glittering hotly, “I’ll kick his damned head in and take his Army automatic and shove it up his—”

“Oh, but you don’t know what he’s like,” Ginnie said nervously. “He’d kill ya.”

’Bama made no answer, and only took another drink. But Dave remembered the attempted holdup in Indianapolis—and since then, since learning he had the diabetes, ’Bama had been more sour and mean than ever. If his own personal sympathies went out to anybody in this imagined fight, Dave felt it would be to the ex-Marine.

But Ginnie was not to be persuaded. They didn’t know what he was like, she kept repeating. And—as she kept on babbling out all the things that had been done to her—she finally broke down and cried. She had to talk to somebody about it, she said, she just had to. Or she would bust. God she was glad to get back home.

It was decided, that first afternoon, that Ginnie because of her fearful state, would move in there at the house with them. And ’Bama, strangely, because he had never liked her, was just about as gently solicitous over her predicament as Dave himself was. She was really a very pitiable object: nervous as a cat; completely physically and mentally worn out from her ordeal.

“But, by God, you can get yore old job back,” ’Bama added, “and start puttin some of it in the kitty. We ain’t livin off the fat of the land like we use to here.”

“No,” Dave said, “we’ve been losing more than we’ve been winning, gambling. Them old rich-livin days are gone.”

Ginnie nodded. She was willing to do anything. And it was awful nice of them to take her in. She would, she said, be scared to death if she did not have nobody around to protect her. She would see about the job tomorrow, and thank you both awful much. Then she broke down again.

“I don’t know whatever made me do it,” she wept. All the pride and spine stiffening she had gradually acquired after she had become Dave’s “girlfriend” amongst the brassiere factory set was entirely gone out of her now. “And now I’m
married
to him. He’s got me where he wants me. And I can’t do
nothing.
”

“Hell, that’s easy fixed,” ’Bama snorted. “You never screwed him, did you?”

“Wha— What?” Ginnie said, her eyes widening guiltily.

“I say, you never slept with him, did you?” ’Bama grinned sourly.

“Well, I—” Ginnie started, and then paused, guilt shining on her face like a coating of grease.

“What he means is that you never slept with the guy,” Dave put in. He could see she wasn’t getting the idea. “If you never slept with him, then you can get the marriage annulled.”

“Annulled?” Ginnie said.

“Sure,” Dave said. “You know; like a divorce. Only easier to get. And then it’s the same as if you were never married at all.”

“Oh no,” Ginnie said quickly, “I never laid him.” She held up her right hand. “Honest to God, I never did.” She looked at both of them as if she expected them to believe it, too.

’Bama stared at her, then sniffed. “It ain’t us you got to convince. It’s the court.”

“Court?” Ginnie said in an almost panicky voice. “I don’t want to go into no court for nothin!”

’Bama pulled his mouth around in an impatient sneer.

“Well, it’s the only way you’ll ever get rid of the guy. You want to stay married to him all yore life?”

“No!” Ginnie said. “No, sir!”

“Well then, this is what you gotta do.”

“Well— What would I have to do?” Ginnie said.

“Nothing,” ’Bama said. “Except appear in court. We’ll let Judge Deacon handle all of it.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Ginnie said.

“Go call him,” Dave said. “Maybe he can explain it to her.”

“Okay,” ’Bama said disgustedly, and went to the phone.

The fat little roly-poly judge, when he came out explained it not only to Ginnie but to all of them. “Hell, yes,” he growled. “I’ve got ’em for lots of people. All you got to do is publish a notification in the paper for three consecutive weeks and send your husband a copy of it. Then thirty days after the purification, you can take it into court. A week after the thirty days is up, I’ll take you in, and the marriage will be declared null and void.”

“Is that all?” Ginnie said.

“Sure is,” the judge said.

“Well, but what if he wants to fight it?”

“Then he could combat it. But I wouldn’t worry about it.” He grinned. “Maybe he’ll never get the paper.”

“She’s afraid he’ll come back here after her, Judge,” Dave said.

“So what?” the judge said. “He can’t take you away by force. Well, you want me to go ahead with it?”

“Whatever Dave says,” Ginnie said apprehensively. “What do you think, Dave?”

“Well, it’s the only chance you got,” Dave said, not without feeling a little flattered. “Sure, I’d say go ahead with it. The judge can handle it.”

“Send me the goddamned bill,” ’Bama said sneeringly.

“Okay,” the judge grinned. “Won’t be much of a bill.”

After he left, Ginnie broke down again. “Whatever made me do it?” she wailed. “I musta been plumb crazy.” She wept into her little flowered hankerchief that Doris Fredric had once bought her.

Dave and ’Bama had exchanged glances. She was, quite plainly, a truly pitiable object to both of them. “There, there,” Dave said. “Don’t cry. It’s all going to be all right. What you need is to get good and half drunk and get some sleep.”

“You won’t leave me if I do, will ya?” Ginnie said fearfully.

“No,” Dave said. “We’ll stay right here.”

“I won’t,” ’Bama said curtly. “I’m goin down to the farhm tonight.”

“Well, I’ll stay,” Dave said.

“Have you got a gun?” Ginnie said.

“No,” Dave said. “I don’t need a gun.”

“Oh yes, you will!” Ginnie cried. “If he comes back lookin for me, you’ll need one.”

“I’ll leave you my thirty-two,” ’Bama said to Dave. “All you have to do is point it and pull the damned trigger.”

“That’ll make me feel a lot better,” Ginnie said, and looked about to cry again.

“Now, don’t cry,” Dave said. And, after he had helped her to several more drinks, he had helped her upstairs to one of the extra rooms to go to bed.

Sitting in the Marine Room in Terre Haute, enjoying his solo bachelor dinner, Dave in thinking back over that first interview and the two weeks that followed still had the same strong sense of almost inarticulate pity for her that he had had then. However, that was not the only reason he had finally decided on marrying her. There were a number of others. He had been thinking on it for two weeks now.

One of the main ones was what happened that first night (and later nights, too) after ’Bama had left for the farm, and after he had thought he had Ginnie in bed in her own room and asleep. He had had a few drinks himself and cooked himself a steak and made a few notes on the scene he wanted to work on tomorrow (he had gone back to working after the letter from Ginnie came), and then had gone to bed himself. He had not been asleep more than an hour or so when he was startled awake by something moving beside him, and found that it was Ginnie. She didn’t want to sleep in there by herself, she said; she was scared. Then she began playing up to him. Whatever frights and unhappiness she had incurred out in Kansas, it sure hadn’t diminished Ginnie’s love of sex any; if anything she seemed to have more. Three times in the night, she woke him up by cuddling up against him, and all three times the sex was of a caliber and intensity greater than he had ever known existed. And after they had got up, without any prompting from him, Ginnie made up the bed with fresh sheets, and fixed it all up clean and smooth. Then, she even offered to cook breakfast for him. Dave, who never ate breakfast when he was working, was tempted to refuse; but after all, this one time was a sort of an occasion, so he accepted. The bacon and eggs and coffee and toast were delicious, better than any he had ever cooked himself. Yes, sir, whatever had happened after she went off to Kansas, it had not in any way changed Ginnie’s love for sex.

And after all, where was a man like him—a butterball of nearly forty—to get sex like that? Or sex of any kind, as far as that went? Whenever Dave would think of that, a kind of helpless panic would hit him. He had wasted his last two years of comparative youth on Gwen French, and without getting a damned thing for it. Now he was on the downhill grade side. And from now on it would get worse, instead of better. There wasn’t a woman anywhere who would have him. And certainly not a woman who liked sex like Ginnie did. And that sex hadn’t stopped with the first night, either; it had gone right on through the rest of these two weeks. That should be, he thought, a principle reason for any man getting married. Married to her, he could look ahead to a number of years of sex like that. It was, to say the least, quite a strong inducement in favor.

But it was not the only one, by any means. There was Ginnie herself. It was a lot like the famous old soldier’s saying that “whores make the best wives, because they’re grateful.” But it went deeper than that. Here was Ginnie, who had never had anything in her life. Not anything, from the moment she was born to the moment she married her crazy ex-Marine. Was that Justice? Ginnie was, in a way, a sort of female Raymond Cole. No one, neither her society nor any individual, had ever tested her capacities—or even thought about doing so. How did anyone know what she was capable of, if only given a chance? And she wasn’t really dumb so much. She was pretty intelligent, really. It was just that she had never had a chance to develop what intelligence she had. Who knew what she might amount to if she only had a decent chance? And Dave, with a warm deep magnanimity of spirit, wanted to help her.

She was always talking about the fact that she was a human being, that she had some rights, too. But who had ever treated her like one? Who had ever treated her with the basic dignity that was her right? Nobody, and that even included himself. The truth was, it was more than just a personal or social problem; it was a moral issue. If he had ever believed in anything, Dave Hirsh believed fervently in the rights of the free individual. Every human being had the right to be treated
like
a human being, and not like some kind of animal. Every human being had the right to some measure of dignity—no matter how unbeautiful that human being might be physically, or how low mentally. It was that very thing that had so irritated him that time when ’Bama had talked about Ginnie so contemptuously, as if she were some kind of an animal. No human being had the right to talk that way about another. Everybody ought to be given their chance. Dave had believed this basic tenet, fierily and devoutly, all his life.

Hell, he had always been on the wrong side of the tracks himself, hadn’t he? What better could he do than marry somebody from that same side? Let the two fatties get together; let the two bums marry each other.

All of these things were in his mind during the two weeks he toyed with it and finally made his decision; and not the least of these was ’Bama’s wife, Ruth, whom he had got to know so well those times ’Bama had taken him down there to the farm after that first hunting trip, and before he found out he had diabetes. (He had not taken him afterwards.) Ginnie would make him the same kind of wife as Ruth made ’Bama; and that was the kind of wife Dave wanted. You couldn’t find a more perfect wife: She ran that farm, and she looked after her man and looked up to him and loved him. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of wild passionate love the Gwen Frenches of the world indulged in; but this kind of love was productive. And that was the kind of wife Dave needed: one that would help him with his work. To hell with these rich, literary, neurotic, nymphomaniac ladies like Gwen French. He’d take a wife like Ruth or Ginnie anytime.

Only, after he married Ginnie, he wasn’t going to be like ’Bama; Dave was going to be true to his wife.

And that was why he was having his lone bachelor’s dinner tonight: It was to be his last fling before putting on the harness of the faithful, happily married husband. And then he would tell them both, her and ’Bama, tomorrow. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in his mind that Ginnie would marry him; and there wasn’t the slightest doubt that ’Bama would heartily approve.

Of course, there still remained another two or three weeks before the judge could make the annulment final. Before they could actually get married. But Dave had never been one for following the letter of the contract: Once he had made up his mind, as far as he was concerned it was the same as being married by the Law! Because in his mind, he had given his own word of honor. And whatever else anybody might say about Dave Hirsh, by God, he could always say that his word was his Bond.

Sitting there in the Marine Room and eating his big steak and getting mellowly drunk and kidding with the pretty waitress, Dave felt that a truly momentous change was taking place in his life. The old life with ’Bama, and Dewey and Hubie, and Wally Dennis and Gwen French and Bob,
had
broken up, and it would not be true to say that he did not in some ways regret it; but in its place he was getting a solid stable way of life where happily, contentedly, he could live and accomplish the kind of writing he wanted to do before he died. He wanted to write the truth about life. Not all that crap that sentimental jerks crammed together into novels and tried to pretend was literature. The
real
truth, about life as it was
really
lived. And Ginnie was just the wife to help him do it.

And, the truth was, he loved Ginnie. Not in the same wild, passionate, painful way he had loved Harriet Bowman and Gwen French—and, perhaps, still loved Gwen maybe, somewhat. Loved the memory at least. He loved Ginnie, not like that, but in a paternal way, and with a strong desire to be helpful to her, and to teach her. And, when you looked at it honestly—without the rose colored glasses of romance—this was the kind of love that successful marriages were founded on. Not that wild passionate unhappy other kind of love. And it was this kind of love, the kind he felt for Ginnie, that he wanted to write about. There were plenty of novels about the other kind.