Some Came Running (147 page)

I have heen faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.
Yeah: What other fashion did they give you a choice of? At least slobby old Ginnie didn’t just up and take off from town without even leaving you a word.

But when he did get hold of slobby old Ginnie, he did the very same damned thing that he had warned Wally Dennis against doing when Wally insulted Rosalie back Easter night: He antagonized her; the hurt and outrage in him made him take it out on her; and then they had a fight, their second real fight, and Ginnie left in a huff and he did not even get to sleep with her.

It started in the car on the way home after he had picked her up at Smitty’s, when he jumped on her for picking her nose.

Ginnie looked hurt, and furtively wiped her finger on the tissue she had in her other hand. “Well, I seen you pick your nose an awful lot of times,” she said defensively.

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve seen,” Dave said. “Anyway, I don’t do it out in public.”

“We ain’t out in public.”

“All right then: Let’s say I don’t do it when I’m drivin home with somebody to go to bed with them,” Dave said. “It certainly don’t make you any more attractive.”

“Now you just lay off of me,” Ginnie said fiercely. “I ain’t done nothing to you. What’re you gettin on me for?”

“Because I don’t like to see you picking your goddamned nose when I’m getting ready to go to bed with you,” Dave said savagely. “I thought you wanted to learn to be a lady.”

“Now, damn it!” Ginnie said. “You can just lay off of me!

“Maybe I ain’t no lady,” she said. “But I notice whenever you want a party, you always come around to me.”

“Only because you’re so goddamned easy,” Dave said, not even knowing why he was doing it now.

“You ain’t got no right to talk to me like that,” Ginnie said. “Maybe I ain’t none of your high-toned ladies, but I ain’t been out with a single soul in the last three months but you. You can ask anybody. And you ain’t got no right to talk to me like that. I know you think I’m a dog. Well, I don’t care what you think.”

“Jesus, but you’re gettin awful high-minded lately,” Dave said.

“Well, if you want to sleep with me, you can at least treat me decent like a human bein,” Ginnie said. “I ain’t slept with another soul but you for three months; I was tryin to show you how much I cared for you. It ain’t like I didn’t have chances.”

“What kind of chances?” Dave said. “Some of them whiskery old bastards that use to go out with Old Janie Staley?”

“You just go to hell!” Ginnie rejoined. “There was a guy today, who tried to pick me up. A one-armed Marine he was, from out of town. And a nice boy. I was in Ciro’s after work, and he was there. And all I did was have a beer or two with him and talk with him awhile. And when he propositioned me, I turned him down. You got no right to talk to me like I’m one of your Terre Haute dogs. I’m a human bein. And I got some rights.”

And so they were back off on her “I got some rights” kick again. And in his soul, Dave knew she was right, and he felt guilty about it. But he could not stop it. He kept on deriding her the rest of the way home.

“Say now? Just what’s eatin you?” Ginnie demanded finally, after he had pulled up in the drive. “I don’t like this a little bit.”

“You really want to know?” Dave said viciously. “I’ll tell you. She’s left me, that’s what. Gwen French left town and I don’t even know where she is. Didn’t even wait to finish out the school year. And I’m in love with her.”

“Oh?” Ginnie said. “Well, that’s too bad, ain’t it? But that don’t give you no right to take it out on me. Evidently, she ain’t so much in love with you, though, is she?” she said.

“Oh? and what would you know about love?” he said. “You fat whore, you.”

“Dave, you can’t talk to me like that,” Ginnie said warningly. “Just because some broad you’ve been sleepin with takes off and leaves you in the lurch, don’t mean you can take it out on me.”

Rage, misery, hate—everything that had been seething in him all evening, suddenly came boiling up out of him. That she would have the gall to call Gwen French a “broad”! Suddenly, he began beating his fists softly on the steering wheel. “Whore,” he said. “Whore, whore, whore. Fat pig of a whore.”

“All right sir,” Ginnie said stiffly. “I’ll show ya, damn ya. I’ll go back downtown and get the feller. I’ll just show ya, boy. I been in love with you, and what do you care? And I been true to you. And then you treat me like some kind of old dog. Well, I got some rights. I’ll just show ya.” She got out of the car and started walking stiff-backed right back toward town the way they’d come.

“Go ahead!” Dave called after her; “see if I give a damn!”

“And I ain’t comin back till you apologize to me,” Ginnie said from the walk. “Not never.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Dave said. “Oh, go to hell.” And he turned and went on in the house, and proceeded to get stinking, slobbering drunk and remained so for three days. And true to her word, he saw no more of Ginnie. He did not even see her at Ciro’s or at Smitty’s, when he ambled dully into those places for a drink. Later on, he found out the entire story about why he didn’t see her. But that was not for some little time. And when he did find out, he didn’t care. The listless, leaden stupor and apathy of constant three-quarters-drunkenness kept him from caring about anything.

’Bama was not home that night, probably down at the farm, when he came in after running Ginnie off, and he sat down with a bottle of gin and drank himself to sleep. And when he did get up the next day, finally, he got another bottle and started right in again. He did manage to rouse himself sufficiently to clean up enough to go to Old Jane’s funeral, but that was all he did. When ’Bama did come back, they sat and got drunk together. Night after night. Sometimes, nearly dead-drunk, they would go out and play poker somewhere and lose. But the rest of the time, they merely sat in the house and got drunk, and talked. And then ’Bama would go away to the farm and then he would get drunk by himself. Sometimes Dewey and Hubie appeared, drank awhile, and then disappeared. And that was the way it went that six weeks between Old Jane’s funeral and his Old Man’s funeral, later, which he did not even know about until after it was over. And it went on longer than that, on into July.

It was somewhere along in here that he learned, from Dewey and Hubie, about what had happened to Ginnie that night he ran her off, and since then.

He was very drunk when they told it to him, but later on, when he happened to be not quite so drunk, he questioned them about it again, a little more clearly. It was a very funny story, and they all three sat and howled over it. The night he had run her off, Dewey and Hubie told him, they had been sitting up at Ciro’s with Martha and Lois. So they had been present when Ginnie came in. The one-armed ex-Marine was still there, and Ginnie had sat down with him and right away they became engaged in a deep conversation.

Dewey and Hubie had been drifting in and out all day, they said, so they knew about the one-armed ex-Marine and had seen him earlier. Just why this one-armed ex-Marine had decided to get off the bus in Parkman no one seemed to know. He was headed east. Probably he had gotten hard up for a drink. (Maybe it was
Fate,
Hubie giggled with drunken sarcasm.) Anyway, he had gotten off the bus—a great deal like Dave had two years ago—and had headed straight for the nearest bar which was, of course, Ciro’s. He had bought himself a half-pint, which he concealed very skillfully, and had started drinking beer at Ciro’s, lacing it occasionally, and eyeing whatever women happened to be around, which was very few at that time of day. Dewey and Hubie had seen him then and had a drink or two with him, and he seemed like a fairly reasonable soul. But later, after the brassiere factory girls got out from work, that was when he met Ginnie. They had seen Ginnie talking to him a lot, earlier—before Dave came and picked her up. And then she had come back, alone; and started talking to him again.

So, just for kicks, after a while Dewey and Hubie (with Martha and Lois) had slipped over into the booth right next to them, taking their beers with them.

Well, what they heard, Dewey and Hubie grinned at him, had them all four laughing so hard they had difficulty in keeping silent and not giving the show away. Ginnie and this one-armed ex-Marine were having such a deep absorbing conversation they did not even notice Dewey and Hubie and the girls slip into the next booth. Ginnie was snowing this ex-Marine. Man, but really
snowing
him. The story of her life. And he was eating it up: All about how she, Ginnie, was the local banker’s daughter; and had been born to the purple. But then the Depression came along and her old man had lost everything, and then to top it off, had died before he could make it back; and this, of course, left her and her mom holding the sack. Well, her and her mom had never got along so good, so as soon as she graduated from high school (there was no possibility of college now, of course), she had went out on her own. Yes, her mom still lived here; but they didn’t hardly never see each other. That was because Ginnie had chosen to throw in her lot with the common people, and decided to work in the local brassiere factory. Oh, her mom was an awful snob. She herself, of course, Ginnie, had—having had such a rich father and all—never been trained to no kind of work. No, sir, she was supposed to be a lady. Consequently, when she did go out on her own, the only kind of work she was able to do was take a common factory worker’s job in the brassiere factory. But, she said, she was earning her own way, and paying her own way, and she was proud of that.

She had, Dewey and Hubie grinned, gone on at some length in this fashion. And the one-armed ex-Marine believed every word of it. And in between times when Ginnie was talking, he told her his own life history: He come from a rich family of wheat farmers in Kansas. And his trouble was a lot similar to hers: Him and his old man never did see eye-to-eye. And of course, he admitted, he
had
been a little bit wild when he was younger. Then the war had come along and he had joined the Marines. And it was in the Marines that he had found himself: that he had become a
man.
He loved the Corps: They were
men,
by God. And if it hadn’t been for him losing this arm at Iwo, he would have stayed in the Corps and made it his career. Oh sure, he had got a flock of medals. But what was a flock of medals to him? when it meant he could no longer stay in the Corps?

(If he lost his arm at Iwo, Hubie said parenthetically to Dave, it was probly when he stuck it out to make a left-turn signal and some truck took it off: heh-heh.)

And so, with the Corps no longer possible as a career for him, the ex-Marine finished telling Ginnie, he was back with the old man wheat farming. Only, he couldn’t take it for very long at a time. He was, in a way, like herself: He was on his own. Right now, he was just off on a trip, hoping maybe something would turn up for him, but he would probably wind up going back. A one-armed man didn’t have much chance of breaking into a new racket. And, after all, his old man did have the acres, and the bucks.

Anyway, there had been a great deal of this kind of talk between them, and Dewey and Hubie had sat and listened to it, with their girls, all four of them stifling their laughter—especially when Ginnie got to her part about throwing her lot in with the common man. Also: When the ex-Marine told all about his rugged combat experience with “The Corps,” and then went on to say that what he really needed, he guessed, was a woman’s gentle hand to guide him, a woman like her, like Ginnie.

Finally, Dewey and Hubie said, the two of them—the ex-Marine and Ginnie—got up and left Ciro’s. Where they went for their romp, Dewey and Hubie didn’t know. Anyway, they called a taxi. Dewey and Hubie had heard Ginnie mention to him something about another, nicer bar named Smitty’s; so after the two of them left, Dewey and Hubie had collected their gals and gone on out there. And sure enough, about half an hour later, here came Ginnie and the ex-Marine, looking a little rumpled. Ginnie introduced him to all of them (they had all already met him anyway), but she was very careful to keep him pretty much away from them. Probably, Dewey grinned, she didn’t want them to say anything that might show up any discrepancies in her story.

Later on, they all slipped into the next booth to them again, and listened to more of this talk. It was really terrific. And it went on like that all evening: Ginnie appropriated just about every illustrious ancestor the town of Parkman possessed, even Old Anton Wernz II. And by the end of the evening, both pretty drunk, Ginnie and the ex-Marine were holding hands in Smitty’s and discussing how strange it was that Fate had had them meet.

To make a long story short, this drunken courtship went on for four days in all, that the ex-Marine stayed in town. And at the end of the four days, when he left, Ginnie had left with him—and get this, now!—to be married. She was returning with him to his father’s rich wheat farm in Kansas to become his bride. She came around and had made sure that everybody knew about it. Several times, in fact. That night they left on the westbound bus for Kansas.

“Hell, maybe he really has got a rich old man who’s a wheat farmer,’’ Dewey said. “I don’t know.”

“Nope,” Hubie said, “I’ll stake my reputation on it that that guy was snowin her as much as she was snowin him.” And he began to laugh again. “Banker’s daughter!
Banker’s
daughter, yet! God!”

Dave laughed with them, drunkenly, thinking about slobby old Ginnie the banker’s daughter. It was, in fact, funnier than hell. Howlingly funny.

But then, later on, he got to thinking about it, and it did not seem nearly so funny. Hell, now he didn’t even have Old Ginnie anymore. First Gwen gone; then Ginnie, too. No: First Harriet Bowman, who married a lawyer.
Then
Gwen;
then
Ginnie. He couldn’t even hold onto a poor slob like Old Ginnie.

But it did not really bother him. Not really. He had his drinking to think about. Nothing really bothered him, in fact. And to hell with everything. To hell with you, Gwen French! And he would go and get another drink. All he had to do was go and get another drink. If panic struck him over Gwen, he would get another drink. If double-panic struck him over Ginnie Moorehead, he would get another drink. If triple-panic struck him over being fat and forty and broke and prospectless, he could always go and get two more drinks. If he could never get another woman again, well what the hell? As long as you stayed drunk.