Authors: James Jones
“They sure do,” Shotridge said, and put his arms around her again.
They decided not to say anything about the
Weight
magazine article just yet, at home. Not until they found out whether or not any of their pictures would be in it. Because after all, there was no use in building the folks’ hopes up and then having them fall flat. But wouldn’t it be nice to be home for the big hundredth year Centennial Festival? They could spend part of the time with Frank and Agnes and part with Harry and Eleanor.
T
HE
P
ARKMAN
C
ENTENNIAL
F
ESTIVAL
was indeed a big thing in Parkman. It had been planned ahead for the second week of September for over a year. All the businessmen’s organizations and the college had worked on it together as co-sponsors; and Frank Hirsh, as one of the officers of the Chamber of Commerce—as well as being the newly respected manager of the bypass shopping center and the new motel-restaurant—was right in the thick of it from the very start.
There was really a tremendous lot to be done by everybody. There were the rides and games concessions to be handled—although this was actually more easily done than the rest: Because an apparently entirely new profession had grown up in Southern Illinois in the last couple of years: that of “festival impresario.” Almost every town and city in Southern Illinois had had some kind of a festival or other in the past three years. And, for every festival, there must be a festival impresario. Mostly these were ex-carnival managers, who simply switched over because there was more money to be made in festivals than there was in old-fashioned carnivals.
Parkman, however, was an exception. They had had no festivals—in the three years the businessmen of Parkman had wisely decided to wait—despite a number of dissenting votes—before their bona fide Centennial Festival. There was something satisfying at looking at those round zeros after that one, and knowing that your city had actually existed for a full hundred years. So they were all glad they had waited, and now that it
was
here, they were going to let the sky be the limit.
The entire square and courthouse was to be fully lighted up with strings of blazing lights, at city expense. And three whole sides of the square were to be blocked off to traffic for the entire week. That in itself lent an excitement and holiday air to the whole thing.
The rides and games concessions wisely had been farmed out to the “festival impresario” the business organizations had finally chosen, who, of course, would receive his flat-price profit. That in turn saved the Parkman businessmen untold work, because the three blocked-off sides of the square would be lined with booths and concessions and games of all kinds, just about every variation of all the carny games booths. And, in fact, that was what it really resembled more than anything else: a mammoth carnival. The rides themselves were being set up on the courthouse lawn—a Ferris wheel, a bullet, an octopus, a bump-car ride, and, of course, a merry-go-round. In addition, every businessman’s organization—the Kiwanis, the Lions, the Rotary, the Elks, the Moose, the Eagles—were all setting up their own particular cider booth or lemonade booth or hot dog stand, to be run by the businessmen members themselves. Also, the college was sponsoring a large historical display of artifacts from a hundred years ago, to be run by the students and professors. In fact, there was almost nothing that wasn’t thought of and attempted.
The joint festival committee, composed of small committees from all the various organizations, had decided to elect a festival queen. There would also be a parade of floats across the still-open fourth side of the square, sponsored by the various businesses and whose motif would be “Pioneer Days,” and a prize would be given for the best one. Also, the joint committee decided, “Pioneer Days” ought to apply to everybody—to the citizens, as well. Consequently, proclamations were prominently displayed in town to the effect that beginning the Monday of Festival Week until the following Sunday, any male or female found on the square in unsuitable attire would be arrested and jailed on the old-fashioned pole stockade which would be set up on the northeast corner of the square, for a period of two hours. Also, any male found without a beard or mustachios or some suitable hirsute adornment would be locked up in the stocks set up alongside the stockade for a period of one hour. Consequently, as far back as eight weeks before official Festival Week, men began starting their beards. The joint committee issued a further proclamation that a prize would also be given for the best or most unusual beard or combination of hirsute adornments. As a result, there were Mormon-type beards, Quaker-type beards, Amish beards, Wyatt Earp (an ex-Illinois boy, himself) mustachios, all kinds of chin beards and goatees and bulging sideburns. And as Festival Week approached, the laughing feverish excitement grew apace with it: For one week, everybody was going to be able to forget themselves, and the world they hadn’t made but had to live in—forget it all, and be happy, for just one week.
A large platform was to be erected in the southwest corner of the square for round dancing. All the stores around the square planned to stay open during Festival Week, and Frank Hirsh decided that the Parkman Village Shopping Center would also stay open, if any of the individual store proprietors wished to. Naturally, they all did: Frank Hirsh’s new restaurant adjoining the motel, as soon as it opened in late August, became the most popular dinner place in town—people were even forsaking the Country Club to have dinner there—so naturally there would be a string of people out there during Festival Week.
The setting up was, of course, the hardest job. Saturday night at midnight, trucks began to move in the equipment: the rides, and the concession booths and their contents. All night and all the next day, countless hordes of tough leathery carnies labored to get everything set up for the official opening Sunday evening, while the citizenry stood around and watched excitedly. The Chamber of Commerce had already appointed their private police force for the inspection of beards and costumes, and while their authority did not go into force until midnight Sunday they were able, amid much laughing, to go about warning offenders of what they would do to them after midnight. The warm crazy laughing near-hysteria spread all over town. It was going to be a gala week. Just about everybody in the county was expected to turn out, and spend money, and be happy.
There was, however, at least one man who had no intention of turning out. Dave Hirsh was still working ten to fourteen hours a day at the shell plant; and he was still trying to work at night on his goddamned novel—which, by now, he had come to hate more than he had ever hated anything in his whole life. It wasn’t right, and he knew it. The trouble still lay with the damned love affair. It just didn’t play right. If he cut it out entirely, it would leave a book of only some five hundred manuscript pages—not a very big book at all. And anyway, he still felt it could be an integral part of the whole novel. But he could not write it right. And he had no intention of going out nights to some damn carnival—he had lived as a carny too damned much in his life, to be able to be excited by a carnival—and trying to be happy.
But it was not only the book and the rest of it that made him unable to participate in the sense of forthcoming gaiety: He was working ten and sometimes fourteen hours a day in the shell factory painting forty-millimeter shells—and now rifle grenades, too—and he could not forget that as soon as all of these were finished up, they were being swiftly shipped off to Korea—where men were using them, and perhaps being killed in using them. And he could sense the quality of rising hysteria in the whole town as Festival Week approached: to forget! just for a little while! But he could not forget: He worked with it every day, always in his mind. He just did not belong down there downtown, not the way he felt. The heavy ominous feeling of being in at the end of the Roman Empire which he had felt so strongly over Dewey and Hubie down at the house on Lincoln Street came back over him, as he watched the growing hysteria-to-forget as Festival Week approached. The trouble was, he knew the reason for it. He felt it too: that fear. But he knew what it was. And consequently, he could not participate.
But if Dave wanted nothing to do with what he could only call the “Tragedy of Festival Week,” Ginnie did not feel that way at all. She was looking forward to it eagerly. Dave had slept with her once, just once, in the past whole month. He had tried halfheartedly several times, but when she put him off, he just gave up. But in spite of that, Ginnie was making eager plans for all that they were going to do together Festival Week. And, in the end, it was this that brought on the crisis, and the final blowup, between them.
For the first two days of Festival Week, he refused to go out with her. He hated to do it, he knew how much she wanted him to go, but he couldn’t help it. In the first place, he hadn’t grown a beard or mustachios, and he did not feel equal to spending an hour in those damned stocks. He wasn’t in the proper mood. Ginnie, of course, could not understand this. And he made no very strong effort at trying to explain it to her. So he had stayed home those first two nights, working on the book alone in the little house, and it had been one of the most peaceful experiences he had had in some time—even though he couldn’t get the writing on the love affair going very much better. He was beginning to think perhaps he was being too calumnious with this love affair because of his irritation with Ginnie—perhaps even losing his objectivity. Anyway, it was worthwhile staying home and working on it. And so Ginnie had gone on by herself with some of her friends. Reluctantly, and angrily hurt at him—but she had gone.
But on the third night, when he came home from work, he found Ginnie already waiting for him with a wad of false hair.
“Look!” she said eagerly. “Look what I bought you! Now we can fix you up some sideburns and a beard. Then you can go and be all right. We’ll have a lot of fun. There’s a big dance on tonight the southwest corner.”
“Ah, look, honey,” Dave said sadly; he was incredibly touched by the false hair. “You go ahead and go with your friends, and have a good time. I don’t want to go. If I go, I’ll only be a wet blanket and spoil the fun.”
Ginnie looked at the false hair in her hand disappointedly and let her arm drop to her side. Her own costume was an old-fashioned calico dress and long-billed sunbonnet she had picked up God knew where, and her round moon face stared out from under the sunbonnet at him—at first, pensively, then irritably.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “You don’t never want to do anything with me. All you do is stay here at home with that damned book. You don’t love me at all anymore.”
“Ah, honey, it’s not that,” Dave said. “I just don’t feel like going, that’s all. It’s— Well, all those people— You know?— They’re—” He didn’t want to say hysterical, but it was the only word that fit. “They’re not having fun, they’re— Well, they’re just hysterical.”
“Hysterical!” Ginnie cried. “Hell! You and your damn big writer’s words! Those people are having
fun.
Why can’t you ever have fun? How do you think I feel? havin to go down to the festival without my husband?” Suddenly, she threw the wad of false hair on the floor. “All my friends, their husbands go with them. And
they
have fun. And what do you think they say about me? Hunh? You never want to do anything with me, damn you. You just don’t want to
do
anything with me, because it’s
me.
”
“Ah, no, honey,” Dave said. “It ain’t that. It’s just that— Well, it’s just gloomy. The whole damn thing makes me sad.”
“I know what it is!” Ginnie cried suddenly, her disappointment at the failure of the false hair shining on her moonlike face. “It’s that damned book! You sit and work and beat your damned brains out on it—and what do you get? Nothing! That damned book! It won’t
never
sell! And you keep wastin time on it when you could be livin! With
me!
”
They were standing just inside the kitchen door, around the corner from the little room Dave had fixed up as a writing room and to which Dave had gradually retreated, hoping to get in and shut the door, until he was fully inside of it now with his hand resting on the corner of the table he used for a desk.
“That damned book!” Ginnie screamed and, herself still in the kitchen, seized up a heavy thick-walled aluminum saucepan, and taking a step toward him, threw it with all her strength through the door. She didn’t throw it at anything particularly—but the saucepan hit Dave’s typewriter sitting on the table beside which he stood, and both typewriter and saucepan slid off the table and crashed to the floor.
For a moment, there was complete silence in the little house, as both of them stood staring at each other and looking startled. Then Dave bent and picked up the typewriter and set it back on the table to see what damage had been done. The platen had been knocked completely off of it, and the carriage itself was bent. The thin back of the little portable had been deeply dented. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed, but Dave felt his face growing white with anger. And as his own face grew white, Ginnie’s face under the old sunbonnet grew correspondingly redder with sullen guilt.
“Well, I’m
glad
I done it,” she said sullenly. “Maybe now you’ll throw that old thing away and start livin like a reglar human being.” She stared at him, wide-eyed with fright.
“Get out!” Dave hissed at her through his teeth. Suddenly, he took a stride toward her beyond the doorway. “I said
get out
!”
And Ginnie, her eyes wide with both guilt and fear, backed away and then put her hands up over her face and began to cry and ran out through the back door.
Dave, his face still deathly pale, merely stood looking after her, feeling sorry for her, and for himself.
Ginnie Moorehead, Ginnie Moorehead
Hirsh,
was crying so hard she could hardly see the path as she ran around to the front of the house. He wasn’t comin after her. But that wasn’t why she was runnin. She was runnin because she had just done the very thing she had promised herself she wouldn’t never do: She had acted unbecomin to a lady. And that was what she was runnin from. Only, there wasn’t no place to run to. When she got out to the sidewalk, breathing heavily, she stopped and stood looking back at the little house sadly. Then, finally, she started to walk to town.