The Other Horseman Page 10

  Her chin sagged. "I believe--you would!" she whispered.

  "For the purpose of spreading ruin, you'll have to agree to die. Do you want to?"

  "I don't want to die."

  "Be very sure. It might be worth it. Is it?"

  "You're insane!"

  "Maybe. I'm telling you what will happen."

  "All right."

  "Quit?"

  "Yes, Jimmie." Her chest heaved. Her voice was hoarse.

  "You won't forget?"

  "No."

  "Or make a slip?"

  "No. My arm is--pulp."

  He let go of her. She sat still, rubbing the place where he had held her. Her breathing was repressed, stertorous. Her pompadour had come apart and tumbled. A wetness that did not run as tears blurred the blue-black make-up around her eyes. Jimmie began to collect the diaries that lay around her on the bed. He stacked them neatly and in order--unconsciously noting the years imprinted on the back of each book.

  Sarah began a hollow-voiced monologue. "It'll be very strange, knowing we have a murderer in the house-a potential one, anyway! Maybe I can't talk, but I will think! You won't stop that! I've always been beaten. I should have known you'd beat me again. I was entitled to one moment of the upper hand--one little season when I had my say and my way in this town. But I don't get that, now. I don't get that! I don't get even that." Her lip quivered. Jimmie was facing the closed door, stuffing the books under his arm. "If I had gone away with Harry, when he wanted me to, and told them all to go to hell, I wouldn't be in this prison now!"

  She said, "My arm hurts." She threw herself down sideways on the bed and commenced to sob.

  Jimmie whirled around. "Who's Harry?"

  "Never you mind," she answered brokenly.

  "Why didn't you go away with Harry--if you felt like it?"

  "People don't go away with clarinet players. Not people like us."

  "Where's Harry now?"

  "Chicago. "

  "Married?"

  She shook her head.

  "Did you love him?"

  She shook it the other way and cried harder.

  "He love you?"

  "Of course he did, you fool! He loved me until Mother talked to him, and Dad--on and on, day after day--and he went to Chicago."

  "When did all this happen?"

  "It all ended--last spring. Go away, Jimmie. I don't want to talk about it. Least of all--to you."

  "I think I'd like to look up Harry someday--if you ever want to see him again, and if you'll tell me more about him."

  Sarah sat up and sniffled. "You mean you'd help me--against the whole family?"

  "Is he a nice guy, sis?"

  "He's wonderful!"

  "If he is--if you're serious, if he's serious--I'll certainly help you. Against the family. Against the world." She was staring at him with widening eyes. He opened the door. "I don't like people being pushed around," he said. "Except as an extreme defense measure."

  When he walked into Mr. Corinth's office he was busy with the reflection that it took intense misery to bring the truth up out of the hearts of most people. He set down the books and smiled at the old man. "Sorry I was gone so long. Your truckman had quite a nap. You see--I caught Sarah reading these things." He kept smiling in spite of the startled look in the old man's eyes. "Sarah's first notion was that she could use her information as a sort of club. I had a hard time dissuading her."

  Mr. Corinth's alarm did not abate. "She'll betray you, Jimmie! That's a terrible thing! The girl is unhappy--and bitter! I've seen her about a good deal--!"

  "She won't betray me--or Audrey."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I told her I'd kill her." Jimmie stopped smiling. "I meant it."

  Mr. Corinth's gaze faltered and fell. He plucked at a shabby necktie that bore, in a faded, fabulous print, pictures of cowboys and Indians. At last he said, softly, "Yes. Yes.

  I can see what happened.

  And why you--!" He sighed and smiled gently. "It's a fine mess we've got our souls in! We wonderful Americans!"

  "She's in love with a guy named Harry," Jimmie said, moving away from the old man's desk. "And my folks do not love Harry at all."

  Mr. Corinth thought some more, and chuckled. "Worth it already, eh? You've got a lot of magic, boy. The slow, silent kind. Don't ever belittle the quality--or abuse it.

  Who's Harry?"

  "I dunno. I'll find out."

  "Don't bother. I will. My wife knows all these things. Her frontal lobes are filing cabinets, full of secrets and intrigue."

  Jimmie grinned. "I guess my lab's clear now."

  "Yeah. I was just over there. Not a whiff. I had a lunch sent in for you. Keeping it hot with a bunsen burner."

  CHAPTER IX

  BIFF LOOKED Up from his book, when the doorstop squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. "Hi, Jimmie! Haven't seen you in a dog's age. Sit."

  It was Wednesday--and eight o'clock in the evening. The hospital was on the way to Dan and Adele's house. Jimmie had decided to go there. He had an hour to kill between the end of dinner at home and the fateful stroke of nine. His visits to Biff had been perfunctory. He felt indifferent to his brother. His understanding of Biff's psychology--deeply hidden from Biff himself--brought to Jimmie a sense of repugnance whenever he thought of the big youngster with the broken legs. Now, he pulled up an easy chair with a white slip-cover, glanced at the vases of flowers, the fruit, the pictures of pretty girls, and peered at Biff with a formal cheerfulness. "How you doing?"

  "Okay. Swell. Healing like nobody they ever had here! Be staggering around on crutches in a while. I may even get to the football game a week from Saturday--in a wheelchair. Boy!"

  Jimmie nodded comprehension of the mood. "I went--last week."

  "Yeah. Dad said so. How do the doggone old Bearcats look?"

  "Pretty good." Jimmie laughed. "You know, for the first quarter, I hardly recognized the old game. Looked more like basketball. And the subs kept running out like waves of infantry. But I caught on. That Ward--and Ellis--and Becker--they're dynamite!"

  Biff assented. "I'll say. I ought to know. I was in there with all of 'em--this time last year."

  For fifteen minutes they held a lively discussion of football. When the topic lagged they reached one of the silences which so envelop a visitor and a hospital patient.

  The discrepancy between the life of the one busy in the world, and the other lying continuously on his back, abruptly becomes apparent; both persons rack their brains for a rejuvenating subject; the painfulness of the moment rises to a locked, near-violence. On this occasion Jimmie sat with a sense of increasing embarrassment and frustration; it was Biff, oddly enough, who found a way to reopen the impasse--a perfectly conventional way--the weather.

  "What sort of a night is it, old man?"

  "Oh, nice. Moon up and almost full. Crisp. On the Hallowe'en side. Shadows sharp, and the air feels good to breathe."

  Biff listened solemnly to that. "You kind of like the weather, don't you, Jimmie?"

  "Yeah. Guess so."

  "I remember--from before. Six years ago. It used to make you moody as hell."

  "Did it?" Jimmie smiled.

  "Yeah. I could never figure it out. Not moody like other people. Not because it interfered with your plans. Sometimes--on a bright, sunny, warm fall day--you'd be as sunk and as snappy as a dying turtle. And sometimes--on rainy days--you'd be full of hell and bejee. I used to try to figure it out, but I never could."

  Biff's tone--its intimacy, its amiability, and especially its quality of sentimental reflection--was surprising to Jimmie. It was almost poetical. Something new, or hitherto unseen in Biff. "I guess I was just being adolescent--and perverse."

  "Maybe. Dad sure enjoyed going up to State with you."

  "Did he? We rode all the way up and he never said a word, and we both watched the game every minute and he was silent again, driving back."

  "He told me you hollered your head off and nearly knocked a
man down--pushing on him--when they held the Bearcats in the second quarter. Said you were just like the old Jimmie."

  "Said that, eh? Funny! I had the idea, all the time, he'd rather have gone without me."

  "Hell, no! He was practically misty--talking about how you yelled."

  "Well, I'll be damned," Jimmie said.

  "People are funny," Biff suggested.

  "Mighty funny. Well, son, I gotta go. Date."

  "Come back again--in a month or so."

  Jimmie smiled apologetically at the sarcasm. "I will. Tomorrow, maybe."

  "What's happened to Sarah these days?"

  "You tell me. I dunno."

  "She came in here with a lot of bounce the other day. Brought me some new pajamas. Shocking pink. Helleroos. Acted like she used to before--"

  "Before what?"

  "Oh, you weren't here. And the family thought it'd be best not to tell you. She had a terrible case on a clarinet player. Guy in Sox Sykes' band. Me--I thought he was oke.

  College lad from the East. Good family. But bughouse on playing in a band and having a band of his own."

  "Anything wrong with that?"

  Biff shrugged. "Ask Mom. She knows two thousand things wrong." He opened his mouth to add more and closed it with decision.

  Jimmie rose, uncomfortably. "Well, son, gotta go--"

  "Yeah. Come back." Biff seemed to be searching his mind for something that would hold his elder brother. "You do a lot of thinking, when you have this kind of time to lie around in. You know what was the trouble with me?"

  Jimmie leaned on the rolling bed table. "No. What was?"

  "Well, I didn't like being forced. I'd have gone on my own hook, if I'd have thought there was a real need."

  "Hunh? Oh. The army. The draft."

  "Yeah. A guy hates to be hauled anywhere by the ears."

  "Sure."

  "Jimmie. Do you really think there really is a need?"

  "Yeah."

  Biff's eagerness diminished. "Well, I wish I did. I'd enlist, maybe, if I did. I mean-

  -I would."

  The younger man was staring at his bedclothes. The older was looking into blank space, painfully. Biff meant what he was saying. When he recovered he might try to enlist. And if he did, sooner or later, his secret record would overtake him--and he'd be sent home. Psychotic. Then what would Biff do? What would he do if the best impulse he'd ever had was--tossed in his face? People said, "The Baileys are all big--and quick-tempered--but they're good citizens."

  Maybe.

  Jimmie spoke nonchalantly. "Well, you can decide that later. I--"

  "Yeah. You gotta go. Say! How's your cheek? Heal okay?"

  "Cheek?"

  "Where I socked you?" Biff's solicitude was genuine this time, and not fatuous as it had been when he'd lain on the receiving-room table--many nights ago.

  Jimmie chuckled. "I'd forgotten. Sure, it healed. Why, you conceited damn' rat, I've had flies bite me worse!"

  "Yeah. Well--so long, fellow."

  Jimmie went to the door. It was he who had the wish, then, to linger on, to probe more deeply into this unfurling aspect of his kid brother's personality. "Well--want anything? Books? What you reading?"

  Biff picked up the volume and showed the dust jacket. It was Shirer's Berlin Diary. "Hell of a thing," he said. "Who do those Nazis think they are anyhow! You suppose this bird Shirer tells the truth?"

  "Happen to know he does."

  "How do you know?"

  Jimmie was more moved, more astonished and upset, than he wanted Biff to see.

  He edged toward the door. "Oh, I know, Biff, because--well, when I step out of the house on a night like this--now, and next year, and for years to come--I get a sinking sensation in my guts. For a minute I won't know why. It'll just be there--cold and hard. I'll look up and down the street to see what's wrong, Biff, and then I'll know. The moonlight."

  "Moonlight?"

  "Yeah. My guts will be saying, 'See it? See the moon! Bright! Good visibility!

  They'll be over soon, now.' The sirens'll start. The motors will begin to throb like your own pulse. And then--" He whistled. "Wham! Whoom! All around! Stuff like that. That's why I know Shirer's not lying. 'Night, keed."

  The music teacher lived near the river. Jimmie walked slowly, humming to himself. He still had time to kill. Once he turned and started back to the hospital. He decided his errand would keep till

  156 THE OTHER HORSEMAN

  morning. His feet clicked on the cold pavement. His shadow rippled lithely on lawns and hedges. The eight-thirty ship out of Muskogewan left the airport with far-off thunder and passed overhead at a few hundred feet, portlights bright, wings tipped in red and green, exhausts pale lavender. Jimmie stood stark still to look at it, with goose pimples washing up and down his back. He went on, humming songs that came over the radio which Sarah and his parents seemed to play incessantly. They were all sad songs--about refugees, and the last time somebody saw Paris, and what somebody's sister would disremember.

  Depressing songs. Popular songs. A nice, incisive index, Jimmie thought, of the defeatist ebb of spirit in a country that thought of itself as the Colossus of the West. Sick Colossus!

  The river flashed inkily through the naked trees. Cars streamed over the Maple Street bridge, starting and stopping-a dancing river of taillights, a pale avalanche of dimmers. Dan and Adele lived in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence and wrist-thick vines winding up over the roof of the porch. The curtains were drawn in the front rooms--yellow blinds down across lace. Jimmie poked the bell. Somebody was playing the piano with a rippling dissonance, and so many handfuls of notes they seemed to be showering from the keys at a humanly impossible rate. The music stopped and the door opened.

  "Hello, Jimmie."

  "Hello, Audrey."

  "Come in."

  He came in. There was no change in the huskiness of her voice--or its mood. He had expected that they would pick up the threads of their first, and only, afternoon together, through studied speeches, conventions, an exaggerated ritual of re-meeting. But that was not going to be so. It was as if he had interrupted a song by lifting the arm of a phonograph, and left it there for a long while, and then set it back at the same place in order to hear the rest of it. Audrey walked into the living room ahead of him and turned around. She stood quietly. Lamplight fell on her. She wore a gray silk dress that went round her in three climbing spirals and had turquoise trimming.

  "I had to wait quite a long while," she said.

  "Yes."

  He stood there, holding his hat. She walked up close to him: and put her arms around his neck, kissed him slowly, took his hat, and put it on the piano. "I love you very much," she said.

  Jimmie sat down. It was a pretty room. There was a fire going--a quiet fire. He leaned toward it.

  "Audrey, I don't love you."

  "I know. It's dreadful, isn't it?"

  He nodded absently, lighted a cigarette, sighed a little. "Golly. I'm tired tonight."

  She laughed.

  He looked up. She was sitting on the piano stool. "I told you, dope, that you'd be tired, and world-beaten--what is it? full of weltschmerz--and one of us Muskogewan girls would catch you!"

  "It's not that." He grinned. "Audrey, you're a devil."

  "Yes, I am. Willie says you wouldn't read my diaries."

  "But that he told you about them."

  "He's my boss. He can talk to me about what he pleases. He likes to talk."

  "And you like to listen to him. So do I. I love to! It's a good thing for a girl--to know one very wise man in this world."

  "Where are your pals? Dan and Adele?"

  "At the movies."

  "Oh."

  "Willie said you'd probably come over tonight. He said you had the look. He said you'd been jumpy--every Wednesday and Friday. It isn't very gallant flattery, Jimmie. But it did help."

  "Yeah. I came over. You know, if you were just some-well--"

  "--some
dazzling daughter of Muskogewan, with nice clothes and a kissable mouth? Yes. Jimmie, you have no idea how many times I've wished I were--and tried to be! But I'm not, and there it is."

  "There it is."

  "You're capable of a higher brand of conversation, Jimmie."

  "Not with you." "Shall I play the piano? It's not what I want to do."

  "What in the world do you want to do?"

  "Make love."

  He flushed. "I forgot. I shouldn't have asked."

  "Why not? Now you know. Just keep that in mind. Adele left things in the kitchen for making fudge. Chocolate. I love it, and I make the kind that melts in your mouth. We can do that. I can play--anything. I can play Bach and boogie-woogie. Schubert, swing, and Chaminade. A polished amateur--on the juicy side-with a little inattention to technique in the hard spots. Nothing that the average concertgoer would protest too much."

  "Why didn't you really learn? I mean, get good?"

  "I was waiting around for you."

  A log slipped. Jimmie picked up the poker and adjusted it. "That's going to be your answer to everything, hunh?"

  "Yes, Jimmie."

  "Then I can't drag over here twice a week, when our host and hostess are at the movies, and stand around like a cigar-store Indian while the"--he drew a breath against what seemed like resistance in his lungs--"while one of the most beautiful women I ever saw sits opposite me, using every sentence I pronounce as the spring board for a terrific pass."

  "No. That would be too difficult."

  "So--I better go home."

  Audrey spun on the piano stool so that her back was toward him. The turquoise trimming on her dress shivered infinitesimally. "Yes, Jimmie. If that's how you really feel."

  "Great God! It's not how I feel at all!"

  She came around again. "Well?"

  "But it's what I think."

  "People do what they feel. Not what they think. If they really feel a way, they make themselves think it's the right thought--in the end. That's why I--well, it might be a short world, Jimmie. A short life. I never minded wasting time before, in mine. Now--

  that's all that I mind."

  Jimmie stood up. "Audrey, you'd be awesomely easy to take advantage of."