“Threw away, I’ve heard said.”
“Aye.”
That had slipped out on me, but the quick way he agreed to it set me back on my heels, and for some time nothing was said. Then: “You did big things, Jack—or so I was told.”
“Anyhow, I was proud of them.”
“Are you still?”
“I don’t know. They’re a closed chapter.”
“But they were big?”
“The blues were a million dollars. I call that big.”
“And I. If for no other reason, I can understand that you were proud. The man doesn’t live, though he damn it and denounce it, who doesn’t think a million dollars is a matter for pride, and I agree with Julius Caesar, who once boasted he lacked fifteen million sesterces of having nothing at all, that even such a debt is something in the nature of an accomplishment. I now make you an overture. I should like to hear more about it.”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Why not, if the ice is broken?”
“I’ve no gift for words, Dad. I’d tell the brawl on O’Connell Street and leave out the statue of George III. I’d tell the what, and leave out the why.”
“I’ve had similar trouble, trying to piece together what happened to me. Because on the face of it I was a fool, as were Brutus, Columbus, Burr, Davis, Bryan, and all the misfits of history. And yet when somebody takes one of these, an Othello, a Macbeth, a Hamlet, a George III if you like, and carves a little deeper than the world’s eye sees, he achieves something not possible with heroes. I believe it to be no accident, Jack, that the world’s great literature is peopled by a swarm and rabble and motley of a hundred-per-cent heels.”
“I should fascinate.”
“And I.”
The flicker of a smile passed between us, one of the few we’d ever had. He said: “And Jack, these medals didn’t come by cultivating the colonel’s good regards. You’ve been places only a brave man would venture into.”
“Who’s brave? If you’re really brave you’re a fool. If you’re not you’re a fake. I’ve saluted brave men, but they were dead.”
“There was a battle once, Jack, in what this country calls the Revolutionary War, fought in the South, at a place called the Pens, or Cowpens, as the town is now named. It’s lovingly studied by the military men, as General Daniel Morgan, the American, defeated General Banastre Tarleton, the Englishman, in a battle of decisive consequence. The point of interest is that Morgan disposed his green men, with reference to the terrain, so they couldn’t run and had to fight. ’Twas the last word in cynicism, the disbelief in heroism and glory and the colors of a parade, but I’ve often wondered if it didn’t summarize most what’s known of courage and war.”
“I’ve run. Or as we say now, ducked.”
“And lived to fight another day, I see.”
“Anyway, I’m here.”
“Jack, it’s melted a bit. Our barrier.”
“Then fine.”
“But not completely. I don’t think it will. And yet, I’ve hit on a plan that may help. That will help us both, if you like it.”
“Which is?”
“Write it.”
“Who—me?”
“Well, in my condition, hardly I.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll never learn grammar.”
“The American distrusts it, for its exactitude, which he associates with theology and metaphysics and logic, and identifies with superficiality. I don’t say he’s not right, but I’m a Trinity College man myself, and had as lief drop egg on my waistcoat as split an infinitive. I don’t wholly accept the American canon. Yet it’s wholly distinctive and I hope you don’t hesitate on that account. Never forget, the foreign colony, during the Civil War, looked down on Mr. Lincoln because of his uncouthness of speech. The greatest literary genius who ever sat in the White House, which is indeed a title—and the precisionists voted him down. Can you quote one phrase ever uttered by the minister from the Court of St. James during this memorable administration? Do you even know who he was?”
“If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten.”
“He bitterly criticized the gorilla Lincoln for his syntax.”
“Getting back to me, I can’t write.”
“The art of writing consists of having something to say.”
“And wanting to say it.”
We dropped it for two or three days. I found a place for my car, took my stuff to my room, settled down. It was all pretty much as I’d left it, and it touched me, the way they had kept it for me. I’d get a little thick, when I’d remember how he was leaving out the one thing that had to be told, which was what had happened about Helen, and where she was now, and all the rest of it, things Denny hadn’t gone into, or Margaret. Then I’d ask myself if I wanted to know about Helen, after what had happened in Charleston. Something had gone wrong between me and that girl which I didn’t understand, but given a little time, I’d catch up with her, and maybe get going again. Then something happened that made me want to please my father, whether it pleased me or not. I don’t know if you’ve seen a man in one of those spells they have with angina, but if you have I don’t think you’ll forget it in a hurry. First of all the color left his face until it was gray. Then his eyes took on a set, terrible stare. Then he began to labor. He didn’t move, and yet you could see he was doing everything God would let him do, just to get his breath. I jumped up, began calling for my aunts, and held him up straight in his chair. He began banging on the arm of it, with a handkerchief he had crumpled in his fist. Something went clink, and he held the handkerchief over his nose. A funny smell filled the room, he relaxed, and I could feel he was getting relief. What got me was that when he was himself again, maybe in five minutes, he never said a word, but picked up his paper and went on reading. If that wasn’t enough to start me off writing, the cable from Douvain was. I’d written him where I was, and why, and now came this wire saying he was tied up until the end of winter, but to count him in, definitely, and get things in shape for him when he was free. It didn’t worry me, I mean I wasn’t afraid he was backing out. But it would be three or four months. Between him and this girl I couldn’t find, I suddenly thought about writing—anything, to keep from going nuts. And so, one morning I cleared out a room over the garage, had a typewriter sent up, and got going.
So I’ve been at it all winter. As I’d finish it I’d show it to him, one hunk at a time. He cut it up into chapters, and put some curlicues in to break it up, and cut out a lot of stuff where I’d repeated myself. I let him. I caught it before very long that at last, in his death chair, he was doing something literary, something that hooked up with what he had studied when he was young, and that didn’t have to do with cam shafts or differentials or fan belts or grease. He wasn’t easy to please. About some things he told me stuff I hadn’t known. For instance, about my mother. That morning in church was the one time I saw her, but she saw me, he said, many times. About some of it he got bitter, not so much at me as at himself, and specially the way he had thrown away my money, after insisting on keeping it for me. I tried to get over to him I didn’t hold it against him. On my GI’s he convinced me it was not my fault. On Buck, he took the better part of two days, talking to me, explaining it to me, getting it through my head it was only partly my fault. He didn’t try to say it wasn’t at all my fault, but he kept pressing on “partly.” “You were caught in a web of circumstances unsurpassed for cruelty, for I hold the depression that began in 1929 was one of the most tragic eras ever seen. It broke up homes, it cut the heart out of the nation, it dismayed young people as nothing ever did. If, in consequence, you were planning a hold-up, God help you there were plenty more, and they had their reasons! If the boy got killed, you didn’t kill him, and if the other limither, the one you call Hosey, was unable to implicate you, so much the better for justice and the good sense of the police. They’re a peculiar breed. In some ways, the stupidest of men, but on a moral matter, strangely profound. They know, as ’tis said, the difference between a crook and a crook. As they released you, I think you may trust them, and no longer concern yourself.”
But when he got to my fine scheme, my frozen food, he almost had a spell with his breath, he hated it so. “If there’s one side of the Americans that arouses only my contempt, it’s their genius for standardization, their acceptance of it, their pride in it, as though there were merit in their damned assembly line. Glory be to God, is this what you’ve arrived at, with your conquest of oil, your bravery in France, all the other things you’ve done, that you’ll put Detroit on a trailer, and haul it to Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, and places that have been fit, until now, for a man to live in! Ford going to Dixie—there’s a project for you! I hate every part of it, from the way it sounds to the way it looks to the way it tastes to the way it smells!”
“Well, thanks.”
“You’re wholly welcome.”
“I wasn’t asking you, however.”
“You’re still welcome, and many of them.”
We must have come closer though, because it didn’t upset me much. Then, some days later, just like he’d never blown his top at all, he said: “I’ve thought of your scheme, the central kitchens, the distribution, the advertising, Miss Dumb and Miss Bright, and I feel they’re an inspiration, that you’re on the right track. As I say, the whole thing revolts me, but it’s your life we’re planning, not mine. As your friend, your very amusing friend, Mrs. Branch, so cogently observed, you’re a romantic.”
“This is business.”
“This is
penance.”
“This is—what did you say?”
“This is the act of contrition you feel you must make to all these women you seduced, or think you did. In my own opinion, it was a plain case of abduction, with you in their arms, the victim of their wiles. I don’t subscribe to your notions of women—they’re quite as prehensile as man, as physical, as grasping, and as ruthless. I feel you were taken, as they say. But in yourself, there’s some sense of guilt. Perhaps it’s my fault, for letting you sing as a child, and acquire a special picture of yourself, in a blue velvet suit, with flowing tie and rolled-down collar, and women figuring maternally, as though you were too holy to defile. Whatever the reason for this macula, you’ve been touched. Now, you want to make up for it. You want to strike the shackles from women, to free the sex from the labors it’s heir to, redeem man, by this sacrifice, for the wrongs he has done them, at least in your imagination, forever and ever,
in sœcula sœculorum, amen.
But at the same time you want to give them a piece of your mind, lecture them on the waywardness of their characters, tell them what you think, get them down on their knees. You seek to feed them and emancipate them and raise them to the heights with one hand, and give them a good spank on their delicious little bottoms, with the other. ’Tis a strange conceit, but yours, and it’ll work. I loathe it, and wish it well. It’s yours, and will bring you health, happiness, and success.”
And so far he’s been right. As I correct the last of this, there has been a price break, with things, stocks, and bonds tumbling all down the line, and plenty of people are nervous. I guess I am. But I’m not afraid, bitter, or helpless any more. Whatever you think of this idea I’ve got started on,
I
like it, which is what my father couldn’t say for the idea he got started on. I like it, I know how to pull it off, and I believe in it. If I can haul a bunch of American women out of kitchens and put them somewhere else, I don’t care if it’s only picture shows, I’ll settle for that, because I think picture shows are a better place for them to be. And whether it’s worth doing or not worth doing, the country I’m doing it in seems mine, which it didn’t before. I did some work for it and I helped fight for it —one night, no more, but also one bullet, no less. It’s not, from where I sit at least, a mess I didn’t make but have to take the rap for. There’ll be tough times, I don’t kid myself about that, if not this year then another year. But, unless I louse myself some way I don’t foresee now, I’ll have the heart to face them.
All that time, free as he talked about women, my father never once brought up Helen, the girl in Charleston, or anything in connection with them, which I thought was funny, as they were the key to everything else. But then one day he said: “I’ve located your little friend Helen.”
“... Did I ask you to?”
“I took it upon myself.”
“Taking things upon yourself, you might have found out by now, isn’t always indicated. I appreciate your interest, but something has intervened.”
“The little lady in Charleston?”
“Finding
her
would have been a help.”
“I still bet on Helen.”
“Why, may I ask?”
“The context of your narrative. Over all that you’ve written she presides like some little divinity. She’s in your blood, she’s part of you. It’s the fool who doesn’t know when a woman is part of him, that lets specious things, small, meaningless things, come between.”
“It’s over. Try minding your business.”
“I won’t.”
I wrote on, and patched, and rewrote, as he corrected. And then one day I heard his bell. I came down from my workroom, crossed the back yard, and found him on the sun porch. He had me sit down, looked shifty, and fidgeted for several minutes. Then: “She’s in there waiting for you. You’d better see her.”
“Who?”
“The little one. Helen. In my study.”
“There it goes!
Goddam
it, why did you do this to me?”
I blew my top, but good. I wanted to know if he’d ever let my life alone, so I could live it, and not have it loused. “And especially as I’ve told you repeatedly, that’s over. If it wasn’t over, the Charleston thing would have killed it. Why did you do this?”
“I did what I thought best. She was away all winter, but at last she came home, and I got her on the phone. She holds things against you, most grievously. But, when I told her she was the only woman in your life, it seemed to me I’d made an impression. Then when I made a personal matter of it, explaining I was too feeble to visit her, she consented to visit me. And discuss it with me. Sheila and Nancy are out on an errand I arranged, and you, so far as she knows, are still in the Army, somewhere in the South. But, before I left her just now and wheeled myself out here, I made progress with her on a number of matters, and cleared up some things. I think, when you learn how I pieced them together, you’ll have some admiration for me.”