THE OUT-OF-PRINT PUBLICATIONS OF J.D. SALINGER Pt. I

THE OUT-OF-PRINT PUBLICATIONS OF J.D. SALINGER Pt. I

1. The Young Folks
2. Go See Eddie
3. The Hang of It
4. The Heart of a Broken Story
5. The Long Debut of Lois Taggett
6. Personal Notes on an Infantryman
7. The Varioni Brothers
8. Both Parties Concerned
9. Soft-Boiled Sergeant
10. Last Day of the Last Furlough
11. Once a Week Won't Kill You

1. THE YOUNG FOLKS

About eleven o'clock, Lucille Henderson, observing that her party was soaring at the proper height, and just having been smiled at by Jack Delroy, forced herself to glance over in the direction of Edna Phillips, who since eight o'clock had been sitting in the big red chair, smoking cigarettes and yodeling hellos and wearing a very bright eye which young men were not bothering to catch. Edna's direction still the same, Lucille Henderson sighed as heavily as her dress would allow, and then, knitting what there was of her brows, gazed about the room at the noisy young people she had invited to drink up her father's scotch. Then abruptly, she swished to where William Jameson Junior sat, biting his fingernails and staring at the small blonde girl sitting on the floor with three young men from Rutgers.

"Hello there," Lucille Henderson said, clutching William Jameson Junior's arm. "Come on," she said. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

"Who?"

"This girl. She's swell." And Jameson followed her across the room, at the same time trying to make short work of a hangnail on his thumb.

"Edna baby," Lucille Henderson said, "I'd love you to really know Bill Jameson. Bill-- Edna Phillips. Or have you two birds met already?"

"No," said Edna, taking in Jameson's large nose, flabby mouth, narrow shoulders. "I'm awefully glad to meet you," she told him.

"Gladda know ya," Jameson replied, mentally contrasting Edna's all with the all of the small blonde across the room.

"Bill's a very good friend of Jack Delroy's," Lucille reported.

"I don't know him so good," said Jameson.

"Well. I gotta beat it. See ya later you two!"

"Take it easy!" Edna called after her. Then, "Why don't you sit down?"

"Well, I don't know," Jameson said. "I been sitting down all night, kinda."

"I didn't know you were a good friend of Jack Delroy's," Edna said. "He's a grand person, don't you think?"

"Yeah, he's alright, I guess. I don't know him so good. I never went around with his
crowd much."

"Oh, really? I thought I heard Lu say you were a good friend of his."

"Yeah, she did. Only I don't know him so good. I really oughtta be getting' home. I got
this theme for Monday I'm supposed to do. I wasn't really gonna come home this week-end."

"Oh, but the party's young!" Edna said. "The shank of the evening!"

"The what?"

"The shank of the evening. I mean it's so early yet."

"Yeah," said Jameson. "But I wasn't even gonna come t'night. Accounta this theme. Honest. I wasn’t gonna come home this weekend at all."

"But it's so early I mean!" Edna said.

"Yeah, I know, but-"

"What's your theme on, anyway?"

Suddenly, from the other side of the room, the small blonde shrieked with laughter, the three young men from Rutgers anxiously joined her.

"I say what's your theme on anyway?" Edna repeated.

"Oh, I don't know," Jameson said. "About this description of some cathedral. This cathedral in Europe. I don't know."

"Well, I mean what do you have to do?"

"I don't know. I'm supposed to criticize it, sort of. I got it written down."

Again the small blonde and her friends went off into a high laughter.

"Criticize it? Oh, then you've seen it?"

"Seen what?" said Jameson.

"This cathedral."

"Me? Hell, no."

"Well, I mean how can you criticize it if you've never seen it?"

"Oh. Yeah. It's not me. It's this guy that wrote it. I'm supposed to criticize it from what he wrote, kinda."

"Mmm. I see. That sounds hard."

"Wudga say?"

"I say that sounds hard. I know. I've wrestled with that stuff puhlenty myself."

"Yeah."

"Who's the rat that wrote it?" Edna said.

Exuberance again came from the locale of the small blonde.

"What?" Jameson said.

"I say who wrote it?"

"I don't know. John Ruskin."

"Oh, boy," Edna said. "You're in for it fella."

"Wudga say?"

"I say you're in for it. I mean that stuff's hard."

"Oh. Yeah. I guess so."

Edna said, "Who're ya looking at? I know know most of the gang here tonight."

"Me?" Jameson said. "Nobody. I think maybe I'll get a drink."

"Hey! You took the words right out of my mouth."

They arose simultaneously. Edna was taller than Jameson and Jameson was shorter that Edna.

"I think," Edna said, "there's some stuff out there on the terrace. Some kind of junk, anyway. Not sure. We can try. Might as well get a breath of fresh air."

"All right," said Jameson.

They moved on toward the terrace, Edna crouching slightly and brushing off imaginary ashes from what had been her lap since eight o'clock. Jameson followed her, looking behind him and gnawing on the index finger of his left hand.

For reading, sewing, mastering crossword puzzles, the Henderson terrace was inadequately lighted. Lightly charging through the screen door, Edna was almost immediately aware of hushed vocal tones coming from a much darker vicinity to her left. But she walked directly to the front of the terrace, leaned heavily on the white railing, took a very deep breath, and then turned and looked behind he for Jameson.

"I hear somebody talkin'," Jameson said, joining her.

"Shhh....Isn't it a gorgeous night? Just take a deep breath."

"Yeah. Where's the stuff? The scotch?"

"Just a second," Edna said. "Take a deep breath. Just once."

"Yeah, I did. Maybe that's it over there." He left her and went over to a table. Edna turned and watched him. By silhouette mostly, she saw him lift and set things on the table.

"Nothing left!" Jameson called back.

"Shhh. Not so loud. C'mere a minute."

He went over to her.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Just look at that sky," Edna said.

"Yeah. I can hear somebody talkin' over there, can't you?"

"Yes, you ninny."

"Wuddaya mean ninny?"

"Some people," Edna said, "wanna be alone."

"Oh. Yeah. I get it."

"Not so loud. How would you like it if someone spoiled it for you?"

"Yeah. Sure," Jameson said.

"I think I'd kill somebody, wouldn't you?"

"I don't know. Yeah. I guess so."

"What do you do most of the time when you're home weekends, anyway? Edna asked.

"Me? I don't know."

"Sow the old wild oats, I guess, huh?"

"I don't getcha," Jameson said.

"You know. Chase around. Joe College stuff."

"Naa. I don't know. Not much."

"You know something," Edna said abruptly, "you remind me a lot of this boy I used to go around with last summer. I mean the way you look and all. And Barry was your build almost exactly. You know. Wiry."

"Yeah?"

"Mmm. He was an artist. Oh, Lord!"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Only I'll never forget this time he wanted to do a portrait of me. He used to always say to me--serious as the devil, too-- 'Eddie, you're not beautiful according to conventional standards, but there's something in your face I wanna catch.' Serious as the devil he'd say it, I mean. Well. I only posed for him this once."

"Yeah," said Jameson. "Hey, I could go in and bring out some stuff?"

"No," Edna said, "let's just have a cigarette. It's so grand out here. Amorous voices and all, what?"

"I don't think I got any more with me. I got some in the other room, I think."

"No, don't bother," Edna told him. "I have some right here." She opened her evening bag and brought out a small black, rhinestoned case, opened it, and offered one of three cigarettes to Jameson. Taking one, Jameson remarked that he really oughtta get going, that he had told her about this theme he had for Monday. He finally found his matches, and struck a light.

"Oh," Edna said, puffing on her cigarette, "it'll be breaking up pretty soon. Did you notice Doris Leggett, by the way?"

"Which one is she?"

"Terribly short? Rather blonde? Used to go with Pete Ilesner? Oh, you must have seen her. She was sitting on the floor per usual, laughing at the top of her voice."

"That her? You know her?" Jameson said.

"Well, sort of," Edna told him. "We never went around much together. I really know her mostly by what Pete Ilesner used to tell me."

"Who's he?"

"Petie Ilesner? Don't you know Petie? Oh, he's a grand guy. He went around with Doris Leggett for a while. And in my opinion, she gave him a pretty raw deal. Simply rotten, I think."

"How?" Jameson said. "Wuddaya mean?"

"Oh, let's drop it. You know me. I hate to put my two cents in when I'm not sure and all. Not any more. Only I don't think Petie would lie to me though. After all, I mean."

"She's not bad," said Jameson. "Doris Liggett?"

"Leggett," Edna said. "I guess Doris is attractive to men. I don't know. I think I really liked her better though--her looks I mean--when her hair was natural. I mean bleached hair--to me anyway--always looks sort of artificial when you see it in the light or something. I don't know. I may be wrong. Every-body does it, I guess. Lord! I'll bet Dad would kill me if I ever came home with my hair touched up even a little! You don't know Dad. He's terribly old fashioned. I honestly don't think I ever would have it touched up, when you come right down to it. But you know. Sometimes you do the craziest things. Lord! Dad's not the only one! I think Barry even would kill me if I ever did!"

"Who?" said Jameson.

"Barry. This boy I told you about."

"He here t'night?"

"Barry? Lord, no! I can just picture Barry at one of these things. You don't know Barry."

"Go t'college?"

"Barry? Mmm, he did. Princeton. I think Barry got out in thirty-four. Not sure. I really haven't seen Barry since last summer. Well, not to talk to. Parties and stuff. I always managed to look the other way when he looked at me. Or ran out to the john or something."

"I thought you liked him, this guy," Jameson said.

"Mmm. I did. Up to a point."

"I don't getcha."

"Let it go. I'd rather not talk about it. He just asked too much of me, that's all."

"Oh," said Jameson.

"I'm not a prude or anything. I don't know. Maybe I am. I just have my own standards and in my funny little way I try to live up to them. The best I can, anyway."

"Look," Jameson said. "This railing is kinda shaky -"

Edna said, "It isn't that I can't appreciate how a boy feels after he dates you all summer and spends money he hasn't any right to spend on theater tickets and night spots and all. I mean, I can understand. He feels you owe him something. Well, I'm not that way. I guess I'm just not built that way. It's gotta be the real thing with me. Before, you know. I mean love and all."

"Yeah. Look, uh. I really oughtta get goin'. I got this theme for Monday. Hell, I shoulda been home hours ago. So I think I'll go in and get a drink and get goin'."

"Yes," Edna said. "Go on in."

"Aren'tcha coming?"

"In a minute. Go ahead."

"Well. See ya," Jameson said.

Edna shifted her position at the railing. She lighted the remaining cigarette in her case. Inside, somebody had turned on the radio, or the volume suddenly had increased. A girl vocalist was huskying through the refrain from that new show, which even the delivery boys were beginning to whistle.

No door slams like a screen door.

"Edna!" Lucille Henderson greeted.

"Hey, hey," said Edna. "Hello Harry."

"Wuttaya say."

"Bill's inside," Lucille said. "Get me a drink, willya, Harry?"

"Sure."

"What happened?" Lucille wanted to know. "Didn't you and Bill hit it off? Is that Frances and Eddie over there?"

"I don't know. He hadda leave. He had a lot of work to do for Monday."

"Well, right now he's in there on the floor with Dottie Leggett. Delroy's putting peanuts down her back. That is Frances and Eddie over there."

"Your little Bill is quite a guy."

"Yeah? How? Wuttaya mean?" said Lucille.

Edna fish-lipped her mouth and tapped her cigarette ashes.

"A trifle warm-blooded, shall I say?"

"Bill Jameson?"

"Well," said Edna, "I'm still in one piece. Only keep that guy away from me, willya?"

"Hmm. Live and learn," said Lucille Henderson. "Where is that dope Harry? I'll see ya later, Ed."

When she finished her cigarette Edna went in too. She walked quickly, directly up the stairs into the section of Lucille Henderson's mother's home barred to young hands holding lighted cigarettes and wet highball glasses. She remained upstairs nearly twenty minutes. When she came down, she went back into the living room. William Jameson, Junior, a glass in his right hand and the fingers of his left hand in or close to his mouth, was sitting a few men away from the small blonde. Edna sat down in the big red chair. No one had taken it. She opened her evening bag and took out her small black, rhinestone case, and extracted one of ten or twelve cigarettes.

"Hey!" she called, tapping he cigarette on the arm of the big red chair. "Hey, Lu! Bobby! See if you can't get something better on the radio! I mean who can dance to that stuff?"

2. GO SEE EDDIE

Helen's bedroom was always straightened while she bathed so that when she came out of the bathroom her dressing table was free of last night's cream jars and soiled tissues, and there were glimpses in her mirror of flat bedspreads and spotted chair cushions. When it was sunny, as it was now, there were bright warm blotches to bring out the pastels chosen from the decorator's little book.

She was brushing her thick red hair when Elsie, the maid, came in.

"Mr. Bobby's here, ma'am," said Elsie.

"Bobby?" asked Helen. "I thought he was in Chicago. Hand me my robe, Elsie. Then show him in."

Arranging her royal-blue robe to cover her long bare legs, Helen went on brushing her hair. Then abruptly a tall sandy-haired man in a polo coat brushed behind and past her, snapping his index finger against the back of her neck. He walked directly to the chaise-lounge on the other side of the room and stretched himself out, coat and all. Helen could see him in her mirror.

"Hello you," she said. "Hey. That thing was just straightened. I thought you were in Chicago."

"Got back last night," Bobby said, yawning. "God, I'm tired."

"Successful?" asked Helen. "Didn't you go to hear some girl sing or something?"

"Uh," Bobby affirmed.

"Was she any good, the girl?"

"Lot of breast-work. No voice."

Helen set down her brush, got up, and seated herself in the peach-colored straight chair at Bobby's feet. From her robe pocket she took an emory board and proceeded to apply it to her long, flesh-pink nails. "What else do you know?" she inquired.

"Not much," said Bobby. He sat up with a grunt, took a package of cigarettes from his overcoat pocked, stuck them back, then stood up to remove the overcoat. He tossed the heavy thing on Helen's bed, scattering a colony of sunbeams. Helen continued filing her nails. Bobby sat on the edge of the chaise-lounge, lighted a cigarette, and leaned forward. The sun was on them both, lushing her milky skin, and doing nothing for Bobby but showing up his dandruff and the pockets under his eyes.

"How would you like a job?" Bobby asked.

"A job?" Helen said, filing. "What kind of job?"

"Eddie Jackson's going into rehearsals with a new show. I saw him last night. Y'oughtta see how gray that guy's getting. I said to him, have you got a spot for my sister? He said maybe, and I told him you might be around."

"It's a good thing you said might," Helen said, looking up at him. "What kind of a spot? Third from the left or something?"

"I didn't ask him what kind of spot. But it's better than nothing, isn't it?" Helen didn't answer him and went on attending to her nails.

"Why don't you want a job?"

"I didn't say I didn't want one."

"Well, then what's the matter with seeing Jackson?"

"I don't want anymore chorus work. Besides, I hate Eddie Jackson's guts."

"Yeah," said Bobby. He got up and went to the door. "Elsie!" he called. "Bring me a cup of coffee!" Then he sat down again.

"I want you to see Eddie," he told her.

"I don't want to see Eddie."

"I want you to see him. Put down that goddam file a minute."

She went on filing.

"I want you to go up there this afternoon, hear?"

"I'm not going up there this afternoon or any other afternoon," Helen told him, crossing her legs. "Who do you think you're ordering around?"

Bobby's hand was half fist when he knocked the emery board from her fingers. She neither looked at him nor picked up the emery board from the carpet. She just got up and went back to her dressing table to resume brushing her hair, her thick red hair. Bobby followed to stand behind her, to look for her eyes in the mirror.

"I want you to see Eddie this afternoon. Hear me, Helen?"

Helen brushed her hair. "And what'll you do if I don't go up there, tough guy?"

He picked that up. "Would you like me to tell you? Would you like me to tell you what I'll do if you don't go up there?"

"Yes, I'd like you to tell me what you'll do if I don't go up there," Helen mimicked.

"Don't do that. I'll push in that glamour kisser or yours. So help me," Bobby warned.

"I want you to go up there. I want you see Eddie and I want you to take that goddam job."

"No, I want you to tell me what you'll do if I don't go there," Helen said, but in her natural voice.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," Bobby said, watching her eyes in the mirror. "I'll ring up your greasy boyfriend's wife and tell her what's what."

Helen horse-laughed. "Go ahead!" she told him. "Go right ahead, wise guy! She knows all about it!"

Bobby said, "She knows, eh?"

"Yes, she knows! And don't you call Phil greasy! You wish you were half as good looking as he is!"

"He's a greaser. A greasy lousy cheat," Bobby pronounced. "Two for a lousy dime. That's your boyfriend."

"Coming from you that's good."

"Have you ever seen his wife?" Bobby asked.

"Yes-I've-seen-his-wife. What about her?"

"Have you seen her face?"

"What's so marvelous about her face?"

"Nothing's so marvelous about it! She hasn't got a glamour kisser like yours. It's just a nice face. Why the hell don't you leave her dumb husband alone?"

"None of your business why!" snapped Helen.

The fingers of his right hand suddenly dug into the hollow of her shoulder. She yelled out in pain, turned, and from an awkward position but with all her might, slammed his hand with the flat of her hairbrush. He sucked in his breath, pivoted swiftly so that his back was both to Helen and Elsie, the maid, who had come in with his coffee. Elsie set the tray on the window seat next to the chair where Helen had filed her nails, then slipped out of the room.

Bobby sat down, and with the use of his other hand, sipped his coffee black. Helen, at the dressing table, had begun to place her hair. She wore it in a heavy old-fashioned bun.

He had long finished his coffee when the last hairpin was in its place. Then she went over to where he sat smoking and looking out the window. Drawing the lapels of her robe closer to her breast, she sat down with a little oop sound of unbalance on the floor at his feet. She placed a hand on his ankle, stroked it, and addressed him in a different voice.

"Bobby, I'm sorry. But you made me lose my temper, darling. Did I hurt your hand?"

"Never mind my hand," he said, keeping it in his pocket.

"Bobby, I love Phil. On my word of honor. I don't want you to think I'm just playing around. You don't, do you? I mean you don't just think I'm playing around, trying to hurt people?"

Bobby made no reply.

"My word of honor, Bob. You don't know Phil. He's really a grand person."

Bobby looked at her. "You and your goddam grand persons. You know more goddam grand persons. The guy from Cleveland. What the hell was his name? Bothwell. Harry Bothwell. And how 'bout that blond kid used to sing at Bill Cassidy's? Two of the goddamndest grandest persons you ever met." He looked out the window again. "Oh, for Chrissake, Helen," he said finally.

"Bob," said Helen, "you know how old I was. I was terribly young. You know that. But Bob, this is the real thing. Honestly. I know it is. I've never felt this way before. Bob, you don't really in your heart think I'm taking all this from Phil just for the hell of it?"

Bobby looked at her again, lifting his eyebrows, thinned his lips. "You know what I hear in Chicago?" he asked her.

"What, Bob?" Helen asked gently, the tips of her fingers rubbing his ankle.

"I heard two guys talking. You don't know 'em. They were talking about you. You and this horsey-set guy, Hanson Carpenter. They crummied the thing inside out." He paused. "You with him, too, Helen?"

"That's a goddam lie, Bob," Helen told him softly. "Bob, I hardly know Hanson Carpenter well enough to say hello to him."

"Maybe so! But it's a wonderful thing for a brother to have to listen to, isn't it? Everybody in town gives me the horse-laugh when they see me comin' around the corner!"

"Bobby. If you believe that slop it's your own damn fault. What do you care what they say? You're bigger than they are. You don't have to pay any attention to their dirty minds."

"I didn't say I believed it. I said it was what I heard. That's bad enough, isn't it?"

"Well, it's not so," Helen told him. "Toss me a cigarette there, hmm?"

He flipped the package of the cigarettes into her lap; then matches. She lighted up, inhaled, and removed a piece of tobacco from her tongue with the tips of her fingers.

"You used to be such a swell kid," Bobby stated briefly.

"Oh! And I ain't no more?" Helen little-girl'd.

He was silent.

"Listen, Helen. I'll tell ya. I had lunch the other day, before I went to Chicago with Phil's wife."

"Yeah?"

"She's a swell kid. Class," Bobby told her.

"Class, huh?" said Helen.

"Yeah. Listen. Go see Eddie this afternoon. It can't do any harm. Go see him."

Helen smoked. "I hate Eddie Jackson. He always make a play for me."

"Listen," said Bobby, standing up. "You know how to turn on the ice when you want to." He stood over her. "I have to go. I haven't gone to the office yet."

Helen stood up and watched him put on his polo coat.

"Go see Eddie," Bobby said, putting on his pigskin gloves. "Hear me?" He buttoned his overcoat. "I'll give you a ring soon."

Helen chided, "Oh, you'll give me a ring soon! When? The fourth of July?"

"No. Soon. I've been busy as hell lately. Where's my hat? Oh, I didn't have one."

She walked with him to the front door, stood in the doorway until the elevator came. Then she shut the door and walked quickly back to her room. She went to the telephone and dialed swiftly but precisely.

"Hello?" she said into the mouthpiece. "Let me speak to Mr. Stone, please. This is Miss Mason." In a moment his voice came through. "Phil?" she said. "Listen. My brother Bobby was just here. And do you know why? Because that adorable little Vassar-faced wife of yours told him about you and I. Yes! Listen, Phil. Listen to me. I don't like it. I don't care if you had anything to do with it or not. I don't like it. I don't care. No, I can't. I have a previous engagement. I can't tonight either. You can call me tomorrow. I'm very upset about all this. I said you can call me tomorrow, Phil. No. I said no. Phil. Goodbye."

She set down the receiver, crossed her legs, and bit thoughtfully at the cuticle of her thumb. Then she turned and yelled loudly: "Elsie!"

Elsie moused into the room.

"Take away Mr. Bobby's tray."

When Elsie was out of the room, Helen dialed again.

"Hanson?" she said. "This is me. Us. We. You dog."

3. THE HANG OF IT

This country lost one of the most promising young men ever to tilt a pinball table when my son, Harry, was conscripted into the Army. As his father, I realize Harry wasn't born yesterday, but every time I look at the boy I'd swear it all happened sometime early last week. So offhand I'd say the Army was getting another Bobby Pettit.

Back in 1917 Bobby Pettit wore the same look that Harry wears so well. Pettit was a skinny kid from Crosby, Vermont, which is in the United States too. Some of the boys in the company figured Pettit had spent his tender years letting that Vermont maple syrup drip slowly on his forehead.

Also one of the dancing girls in that 1917 company was Sergeant Grogan. The boys in camp had all kinds of ideas about the sarge's origin; good, sound, censorable ideas that I won't bother to repeat.

Well, on Pettit's first day in the ranks the sarge was drilling the platoon in the manual of arms. Pettit had a clever, original way of handling his rifle. When the sarge hollered "Right shoulder arms!" Bobby Pettit did left shoulder arms. When the sarge requested "Port arms!" Pettit complied with present arms. It was a sure way of attracting the sarge's attention, and he came over to Pettit smiling.

"Well, dumb guy," greeted the sarge, "what's the matter with you?"

Pettit laughed. "I get a little mixed up at times," he explained briefly.

"What's your name, Bud?" asked the sarge.

"Bobby. Bobby Pettit."

"Well, Bobby Pettit," said the sarge, "I'll just call ya Bobby. I always call them by their first names. And they all call me Mother. Just like they was at home."

"Oh," said Pettit.

Then it went off. Every fuse has two ends: the one that's lighted and the one that's clubby with T.N.T.

"Listen, Pettit!" boomed the sarge. "I ain't running no fifth grade. You're in the Army, dumb guy. You're supposed t'know ya ain't got two left shoulders and that port arms ain't present arms. Wutsa matter with ya? Ain'tcha got no brains?"

"I'll get the hang of it," Pettit predicted.

The next day we had practice in tent pitching and pack making. When the sarge came around to inspect, it developed that Pettit hadn't bothered to hammer the tent pegs slightly below the surface of the ground. Observing the subtle flaw, the sarge, with one yank of his hand, collapsed entirely Bobby Pettit's little canvas home.

"Pettit," cooed the sarge. "You are...without a doubt...the dumbest...the stoopidest...the clumsiest gink I ever seen. Are ya nuts, Pettit? Wutsa matter with ya? Ain'tcha got no brains?"

Pettit predicted, "I'll get the hang of it."

Then everybody made up full packs. Pettit made up his like a veteran - just like one of the Boys in the Blue. Then the sarge came around to inspect. It was his cheery custom to pass in the rear of the men, and with a short, blugeon-like stroke or his forearm slam down on the regulation burden on the back of every mother's son.

He came to Pettit's pack. I'll spare the details. I'll just say that everything came apart save the last five segments in Bobby Pettit's vertebrae. It was a sickening sound. The sarge came around to face Pettit, what was left of him.

"Pettit. I met lotsa dumb guys in my time," related the sarge. "Lots of 'em. But you, Pettit, you're in a class by yourself. Because you're the dumbest!"

Pettit stood there on his three feet.

"I'll get the hang of it," he manage to predict.

First day of target practice, six men at a time fired at six targets, prone position exclusively. The sarge passed up and down, examining firing positions.

"Hey, Pettit. Which eye are you lookin' through?"

"I don't know," said Pettit. "The left, I guess."

"Look through the right!" bellowed the sarge. "Pettit, you're takin' twenty years offa my life. Wutsa matter with ya? Ain'tcha got no brains?"

That was nothing. When, after the men had fired, the targets were rolled in, there was a gay surprise for all. Pettit had fired all his shots at the target of the man on his right.

The sarge almost had an attack of apoplexy. "Pettit," he said, "you got no place in this man's army. You got six feet. You got six hands. Everybody else only got two!"

"I'll get the hang of it," said Pettit.

"Don't say that to me again. Or I'll kill ya. I'll akchally kill ya, Pettit. Because I hatecha, Pettit. You hear me? I hatecha!"

"Gee," said Pettit. "No kidding?"

"No kidding, brother," said the sarge.

"Wait'll I get the hang of it," said Pettit. "You'll see. No kidding. Boy, I like the Army. Someday I'll be a colonel or something. No kidding."

Naturally I didn't tell my wife that our son, Harry, reminds me of Bob Pettit back in '17. But he does nevertheless. In fact, the boy is even having sergeant trouble at Fort Iroquois. It seems, according to my wife, that Fort Iroquois nurses to its bosom one of the toughest, meanest first sergeants in the country. There is no necessity, declares my wife, in being mean to the boys. Not that Harry's complained. He likes the Army, only he just can't seem to please this terrible first sergeant. Just because he hasn't got the hang of it yet.

And the colonel of this regiment. He's no help at all, my wife feels. All he does is walk around and look important. A colonel should help the boys, see to it that mean first sergeants don't take advantage of the boys, destroy their spirit. A colonel, my wife feels, should do more than just walk around the place.

Well, a few Sundays ago the boys at Fort Iroquois put on their first spring parade. My wife and I were there in the reviewing stand, and with a yelp that nearly took my hat off she picked out our Harry as he marched along.

"He's out of step," I told my wife.

"Oh, don't be that way," said she.

"But he is out of step," I said.

"I suppose that's a crime. I suppose he'll be shot for that. See! He's in step again. He was only out for a minute."

Then, when the parade was over and the men had been dismissed, First Sergeant Grogan came over to say hello. "How do, Mrs. Pettit."

"How do you do," said my wife, very chilly.

"Think there's hope for our boy, sergeant?" I asked.

"Not a chance," he said. "Not a chance, colonel."

4. THE HEART OF A BROKEN STORY

EVERY DAY Justin Horgenschlag, thirty-dollar-a-week printer's assistant, saw at close quarters approximately sixty women whom he had never seen before. Of these 75,120 women, roughly 25,000 were under thirty years of age and over fifteen years of age. Of the 25,000 only 5,000 weighed between one hundred five and one hundred twenty-five pounds. Of these 5,000 only 1,000 were not ugly. Only 500 were reasonably attractive; only 100 of these were quite attractive; only 25 could have inspired a long, slow whistle. And with only 1 did Horgenschlag fall in love at first sight.

Now, there are two kinds of femme fatale. There is the femme fatale in every sense of the word, and there is the femme fatale who is not a femme fatale in every sense of the word.

Her name was Shirley Lester. She was twenty-four years old (eleven years younger than Horgenschlag), was five-foot-four (bringing her head to the level of Horgenschlag's eyes), weighed 117 pounds (light as a feather to carry). Shirley was a stenographer, lived with and supported her mother, Agnes Lester, an old Nelson Eddy fan. In reference to Shirley's looks people often put it this way: "Shirley's as pretty as a picture."

And in the Third Avenue bus early one morning, Horgenschlag stood over Shirley Lester, and was a dead duck. All because Shirley's mouth was open in a peculiar way. Shirley was reading a cosmetic advertisement in the wall panel of the bus: and when Shirley read, Shirley relaxed slightly at the jaw. And in that short moment while Shirley's mouth was open, lips were parted, Shirley was probably the most fatal one in all Manhattan. Horgenschlag was her is a positive cure-all for a gigantic monster of loneliness which had been stalking around his heart since he had come to New York. Oh, the agony of it! The agony of standing over Shirley Lester and not being able to bend down and kiss Shirley's parted lips. The inexpressable agony of it!

That was the beginning of the story I started to write for Collier's. I was going to write a lovely tender boy-meets-girl story. What could be finer, I thought. The world needs boy-meets- girl stories. But to write one, unfortunately, the writer must go about the business of having the boy meet the girl. I couldn't do it with this one. Not and have it make sense. I couldn't get Horgenschlag and Shirley together properly. And here are the reasons:

Certainly it was impossible for Horgenschlag to bend over and say in all sincerity:

"I beg your pardon. I love you very much. I'm nuts about you. I know it. I could love you all my life. I'm a printer's assistant and I make thirty dollars a week. Gosh, how I love you. Are you busy tonight?"

This Horgenschlag may be a goof, but not that big a goof. He may have been born yesterday, but not today. You can't expect Collier's readers to swallow that kind of bilge. A nickel's a nickel, after all.

I couldn't, of course, all of a sudden give Horgenschlag a suave serum, mixed from William Powell's old cigarette case and Fred Ast-aire's old top hat.

"Please don't misunderstand me, Miss. I'm a magazine illustrator. My card. I'd like to sketch you more than I've ever wanted to sketch anyone in my life. Perhaps such an undertaking would be to a mutual advantage. May I telephone you this evening, or in the very near fut-ure? (Short, debonair laugh.) I hope I don't sound too desperate. (Another one.) I suppose I am, really."

Oh, boy. Those lines delivered with a weary, yet gay, yet reckless smile. If only Horgenschlag had delivered them. Shirley, of course, was an old Nelson Eddy fan herself, and an active member of the Keystone Circulating Library.

Maybe you're beginning to see what I was up against.

True, Horgenschlag might have said the following:

"Excuse me, but aren’t you Wilma Pritchard?"

To which Shirley would have replied coldly, and seeking a neutral point on the other side of the bus:

"No."

"That's funny." Horgenschlag could have gone on, "I was willing to swear you were Wilma Pritchard. Uh. You don't by any chance come from Seattle?"

"No."--More ice where that came from.

"Seattle's my home town."

Neutral point.

"Great little town, Seattle. I mean it's really a great little town. I've only been here--I mean New York--four years. I'm a printer's assistant. Justin Horgenschlag is my name."

"I'm really not inter-ested."

Oh, Horgenschlag wouldn't have got anywhere with that kind of line. He had neither the looks, personality, or good clothes to gain Shirley's interest under the circumstances. He didn't have a chance. And, as I said before, to write a really good boy-meets-girls story it's wise to have the boy meet the girl.

Maybe Horgenschlag might have fainted, and in doing so grabbed for support: the support being Shirley's ankle. He could have torn the stocking that way, or succeeded in ornamenting it with a fine long run. People would have made room for the stricken Horgenschlag, and he would have got to his feet, mumbling: "I'm all right, thanks," then, "Oh, say! I'm terribly sorry, Miss. I've torn your stocking. You must let me pay for it. I'm short of case right now, but just give me your address."

Shirley wouldn't have given him her address. She just would have become embarrassed and inarticulate. "It's all right," she would have said, wishing Horgenschlag hadn't been born. And besides, the whole idea is illogical. Horgenschlag, a Seattle boy, wouldn't have dreamed of clutching at Shirley's ankle. Not in the Third Avenue Bus.

But what is more logical is the possibility that Horgenschlag might have got desperate. There are still a few men who love desperately. Maybe Horgenschlag was one. He might have snatched Shirley's handbag and run with it toward the rear exit door. Shirley would have screamed. Men would have heard her, and remembered the Alamo or something. Horgenschlag's flight, let's say, is now arrested. The bus is stopped. Patrolman Wilson, who hasn't made a good arrest in a long time, reports on the scene. What's going on here? Officer, this man tried to steal my purse.

Horgenschlag is hauled into court. Shirley, or course, must attend session. They both give their addresses; thereby Horgenschlag is informed of the location of Shirley's divine abode.

Judge Perkins, who can't even get a good, really good cup of coffee in his own house sentences Horgenschlag to a year in jail. Shirley bites her lip, but Horgenschlag is marched away.

In prison, Horgenschlag writes the following letter to Shirley Lester:

Dear Miss Lester,

I did not really mean to steal your purse. I just took it because I love you. You see, I only wanted to get to know you. Will you please write me a letter sometime when you get the time? It gets pretty lonely here and I love you very much and maybe even you could come to see me some time, if you get the time.

Your friend,
Justin Horgenschlag

Shirley shows the letter to all her friends. They say, "Ah, it's cute, Shirley." Shirley agrees that it's kind of cute in a way. Maybe she'll answer it. "Yes! Answer it. Give'm a break. What've ya got to loose?" So Shirley answers Horgenschlag's letter.

Dear Mr. Horgenschlag,

I received your letter and really feel very sorry about what has happened. Unfortunately there is very little we can do about it at this time, but I do feel abominable concerning the turn of events. However, your sentence is a short one and soon you will be out. The best of luck to you.

Sincerely yours,
Shirley Lester

Dear Miss Lester,

You will never know how cheered up you made me feel when I received your letter. You should not feel abominable at all. It was all my fault for being so crazy so don't feel that way at all. We get movies here once a week and it really is not so bad. I am 31 years of age and come from Seattle. I have been in New York 4 years and think it is a great town, only once in a while you get pretty lonesome. You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen even in Seattle. I wish you would come to see me some Saturday afternoon during visiting hours 2 to 4 and I will pay your train fare.

Your friend,
Justin Horgenschlag

Shirley would have shown this letter, too, to all her friends. But she would not answer this one. Anyone could see that this Horgenschlag was a goof. And after all. She had answered the first letter. If she an-swered this silly letter the thing might drag on for months and every- thing. She did all she could do for the man. And what a name. Horgenschlag.

Meanwhile, in prison Horgenschlag is having a terrible time, even though they have movies once a week. His cell-mates are Snipe Morgan and Slicer Burke, two boys from the back room, who see in Horgenschlag's face a resemblance to a chap in Chicago who once ratted on them. They are convinced that Ratface Ferrero and Justin Horgenschlag are one and the same person.

"But I'm not Ratface Ferrero," Horgenschlag tells them.

"Don't gimme that," says Slicer, knocking Horgenschlag's meager food rations to the floor.

"Bash his head in," says Snipe.

"I tell ya I'm just here because I stole a girl's purse on the Third Avenue Bus," pleads Horgenschlag. "Only I didn't really steal it. I fell in love with her, and it was the only way I could get to know her."

"Don't gimme that," says Slicer.

"Bash his head in," says Snipe.

Then there is the day when seventeen prisoners try to make an es-cape. During play period in the recreation yard, Slicer Burke lures the warden's niece, eight-year-old Lisbeth Sue, into his clutches. He puts his eight-by-twelve hands around the child's waist and holds her up for the warden to see.

"Hey, warden!" yells Slicer. "Open up them gates or it's curtains for the kid!"

"I'm not afraid, Uncle Bert!" calls out Lisbeth Sue.

"Put down that child, Slicer!" commands the warden, with all the impotence at his
command.

But Slicer knows he has the warden just where he wants him. Seventeen men and a small blonde child walk out the gates. Sixteen men and a small blonde child walk out safely. A guard in the high tower thinks he sees a wonderful opportunity to shoot Slicer in the head, and thereby destroy the unity of the escaping group. But he misses, and succeeds only in shooting the small man walking ner-vously behind Slicer, killing him instantly.

Guess who?

And, thus, my plan to write a boy-meets-girl story for Collier's, a tender, memorable love story, is thwarted by the death of my hero.

Now, Horgenschlag never would have been among those seventeen desperate men if only he had not been made desperate and panicky by Shirley's failure to answer his second letter. But the fact remains that she did not answer his second letter. She never in a hundred years would have answered it. I can't alter facts.

And what a shame. What a pity that Horgenschlag, in prison, was unable to write the following letter to Shirley Lester:

Dear Miss Lester,

I hope a few lines will not annoy or embarrass you. I'm writing, Miss Lester, because I'd like you to know that I am not a common thief. I stole your bag, I want you to know, because I fell in love with you the moment I saw you on the bus. I could think of no way to become acquainted with you except by acting rashly--foolishly, to be accurate. But then, one is a fool when one is in love.

I loved the way your lips were so slightly parted. You represented the answer to everything to me. I haven't been unhappy since I came to New York four years ago, but neither have I been happy. Rather, I can best describe myself as having been one of the thousands of young men in New York who simply exist.

I came to New York from Seattle. I was going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. But in four years I've learned that I am not going to become rich and famous and well-dressed and suave. I'm a good printer's assistant, but that's all I am. One day the printer got sick, and I had to take his place. What a mess I made of things, Miss Lester. No one would take my orders. And I don't blame them. I'm a fool when I give orders. I suppose I'm just one of the millions who was never meant to give orders. But I don't mind anymore. There's a twenty-three-year-old kid my boss just hired. He's only twenty-three, and I am thirty-one and have worked at the same place for four years. But I know that one day he will become head printer, and I will be his assistant. But I don't mind knowing this anymore.

Loving you is the important thing, Miss Lester. There are some people who think love is sex and marriage and six o'clock kisses and children, and perhaps it is, Miss Lester. But do you know what I think? I think love is a touch and yet not a touch.

I suppose it's important to a woman that other people think of her as the wife of a man who is either rich, handsome, witty or popular. I'm not even popular. I'm not even hated. I'm just--I'm just--Justin Horgenschlag. I never make people gay, sad, angry or even disgusted. I think people regard me as a nice guy, but that's all.

When I was a child no one pointed me out as being cute or bright or good-looking. If they had to say something they said I had sturdy little legs.

I don't expect an answer to this letter, Miss Lester. I would like an answer more than anything else in the world, but truthfully I don't expect one. I merely wanted you to know the truth. If my love for you has only led me to a new and great sorrow, only I am to blame.

Perhaps one day you will understand and forgive your blundering admirer.

Justin  Horgenschlag

Such a letter would be no more likely than the following:

Dear Mr. Horgenschlag,

I got your letter and loved it. I feel guilty and miserable that events have taken the turn they have. If only you had spoken to me instead of taking my purse! But then, I suppose I should have turned the conversational chill on you.

It's lunch hour at the office, and I'm alone here writing you. I felt that I wanted to be alone today at lunch hour. I felt that if I had to go have lunch with the girls at the Automat and they jabbered through the meal as usual, I'd suddenly scream.

I don't care if you're not a success, or that you're not handsome, or rich, or famous or suave. Once upon a time I would have cared. When I was in high school I was always in love with the Joe Glamour boys. Donald Nicolson, the boy who walked in the rain and knew all Shakespere's sonnets backwards. Bob Lacey, the handsome gink who could shoot a basket from the middle of the floor, with the score tied and the chukker almost over. Harry Miller, who was so shy and had such nice, durable brown eyes.

But that crazy part of my life is over.

The people in your office who giggled when you gave them orders are on my black list. I hate them as I've never hated anybody.

You saw me when I had all my make-up on. Without it, believe me, I'm no raving beauty. Please write me when your allowed to have visitors. I'd like you to take a second look at me. I'd like to be sure that you didn't catch me at my phony best.

Please let me know when I may come to see you.

Yours sincerely,
Shirley Lester

But Justin Horgenschlag never got to know Shirley Lester. She got off at Fifth-Sixth Street, and he got off at Thirty-Second Street. That night Shirley Lester went to the movies with Howard Lawerence with whom she was in love. Howard thought Shirley was a darn good sport, but that was as far as it went. And Justin Horgenschlag that night stayed home and listened to the Lux Toilet Soap radio play. He thought about Shirley all night, all the next day, and very often during that month. Then all of a sudden he was introduced to Doris Hillman who was beginning to be afraid she wasn't going to get a husband. And then before Justin Horgenschlag knew it, Doris Hillman and things were filing away Shirley Lester in the back of his mind. And Shirley Lester, the thought of her, was no longer available.

And that's why I never wrote a boy-meets-girl story for Collier's. In a boy-meets-girl story the boy should always meet the girl.

5. THE LONG DEBUT OF LOIS TAGGETT

LOIS TAGGETT was graduated from Miss Hascomb's School, standing twenty-sixth in a class of fifty-eight, and the following autumn her parents thought it was time for her to come out, charge out, in what they called Society. So they gave her a five-figure la-de-da Hotel Pierre affair, and save for a few horrible colds and Fred-hasn't-been-well-lately's, most of the preferred trade attended. Lois wore a white dress, an orchid corsage, and a rather lovely, awkward smile. The elderly gentlemen guests said, "She's a Taggett, all right;" the elderly ladies said, "She's a very sweet child;" and the young gentlemen said, "Where's the liquor?"

That winter Lois did her best to swish around Manhattan with the most photogenic of the young men who drank scotch-and-sodas in the God-and-Walter Winchell section of the Stork Club. She didn't do badly. She had a good figure, dressed expensively and in good taste, and was considered Intelligent. That was the first season when Intelligent was the thing to be.

In the spring, Lois' Uncle Roger agreed to give her a job as a receptionist in one of his offices. It was the first big year for debutantes to Do Something. Sally Walker was singing nightly at Alberti's Club; Phyll Mercer was designing clothes or something; Allie Tumbleston was getting that screen test. So Lois took the job as receptionist in Uncle Roger's downtown office. She worked for exactly eleven days, with three afternoons off, when she learned suddenly that Ellie Podds, Vera Gallishaw, and Cookie Benson were going to take a cruise to Rio. The news reached Lois on a Thursday evening. Everybody said it was a perfect riot down in Rio. Lois didn't go to work the following morning. She decided instead, while she sat down on the floor painting her toenails red, that most of the men who came into Uncle Roger's downtown office were a bunch of dopes.

Lois sailed with the girls, returning to Manhattan early in the fall--still single, six pounds heavier, and off speaking terms with Ellie Podds. The remainder of the year Lois took courses at Columbia, three of them entitled Dutch and Flemish Painters, Technique of the Modern Novel, and Everyday Spanish.

Come springtime again and air-conditioning at the Stork Club, Lois fell in love. He was a tall press agent named Bill Tedderton, with a deep, dirty voice. He certainly wasn't anything to bring home to Mr. and Mrs. Taggett, but Lois figured he certainly was something to bring home. She fell hard, and Bill, who had been around plenty since he'd left Kansas City, trained himself to look deep enough into Lois' eyes to see the door to the family vault. Lois became Mrs. Tedderton, and the Taggetts didn't do very much about it. It wasn't fashionable any longer to make a row if your daughter preferred the iceman to that nice Astorbilt boy. Everybody knew, of course, that press agents were icemen. Same thing.

Lois and Bill took an apartment in the Sutton Place. It was a three-room, kitchenette job, and the closets were big enough to hold Lois' dresses and Bill's wide-shouldered suits.

When her friends asked her if she were happy, Lois replied, "Madly." But she wasn't quite sure if she were madly happy. Bill had the most gorgeous rack of ties; wore such luxurious broadcloth shirts; was so marvelous, so masterful, when he spoke to people over the telephone; had such a fascinating way of hanging up his trousers. And he was so sweet about--well, you know--everything. But...

Then suddenly Lois knew for sure that she was Madly Happy, because one day soon after they were married, Bill fell in love with Lois. Getting up to go to work one morning, he looked over at the other bed and saw Lois as he'd never seen her before. Her face was jammed against the pillow, puffy, sleep-distorted, lip-dry. She never looked worse in her life--and at that instant Bill fell in love with her. He was used to women who wouldn't let him get a good look at their morning faces. He stared at Lois for a long moment, thought about the way she looked as he rode down the elevator; then in the subway he remembered one of the crazy questions Lois had asked him the other night. Bill had to laugh right out loud on the subway.

When he got home that night, Lois was sitting in the Morris chair. Her feet, in red mules, were tucked underneath her. She was just sitting there filing her nails and listening to Sancho's rhumba music over the radio. Seeing her, Bill was never so happy in his life. He wanted to jump in the air. He wanted to grit his teeth, then let out a mad, treble note of ecstasy. But he didn't dare. He would have had trouble accounting for it. He couldn't just say to Lois, "Lois. I love you for the first time. I used to think you were just a nice little drip. I married you for your money but now I don't about it. You're my girl. My sweetheart. My wife. My baby. Oh, Jesus, I'm happy." Of course, he couldn't say that to her; so he just walked over where she sat, very casually. He bent down, kissed her, gently pulling her to her feet. Lois said, "Hey! What's goin' on?" And Bill made her rumba with him around the room.

For fifteen days following Bill's discovery, Lois couldn't even stand at the glove counter at Saks' without whistling Begin the Beguine between her teeth. She began to like all her friends. She had a smile for conduct-ors on Fifth Avenue busses; was sorry she didn't have any small change with her when she handed them dollar bills. She took walks to the zoo. She spoke to her mother over the telephone every day. Mother became a Grand Person. Father, Lois noticed, worked too hard. They should both take a vacation. Or at least come to dinner Friday night, and no arguments, now.

Sixteen days after Bill fell in love with Lois, something terrible happened. Late on that sixteenth night Bill was sitting in the Morris chair, and Lois was sitting on his lap, her head back on his shoulder. From the radio pealed the sweet blare of Chick West's orchestra. Chick himself, with a mute in his horn, was taking the refrain of that swell oldie, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

"Oh, darling," Lois breathed.

"Baby," answered Bill softly.

They came out of a clinch. Lois replaced her head on Bill's big shoulder. Bill picked up his cigarette from the ashtray. But instead of dragging on it, he took I between his fingers, as though it were a pencil, and with it made tiny circles in the air just over the back of Lois' hand.

"Better not," said Lois, with a mock warning. "Burny Burny."

But Bill, as though he hadn't heard, deliberately, yet almost idly, did what he had to do. Lois screamed horribly, wrenched herself to her feet, and ran crazily out of the room.

Bill pounded on the bathroom door. Lois had locked it.

"Lois. Lois, baby. Darling. Honest to God. I didn't know what I was doing. Lois. Darling. Open the door."

Inside the bathroom Lois sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the laundry hamper. With her right hand she squeezed the other, the injured one, as though pressure might stop the pain or undo what had been done.

On the other side of the door, Bill kept talking to her with his dry mouth.

"Lois. Lois, Jesus. I tellya I didn't know what I was doing. Lois, for God's sake open the door. Please, for God's sake."

Finally Lois came out and into Bill's arms.

But the same thing happened a week later. Only not with a cigarette. Bill, on a Sunday morning, was teaching Lois how to swing a golf club. Lois wanted to learn to play the game, because everybody said Bill was a crackerjack. They were both in their pajamas and bare feet. It was a helluva lot of fun. Giggles, kisses, guffaws, and twice they both had to sit down, they were laughing so hard.

Then suddenly Bill brought down the head-end of his brassie on Lois' bare foot. Fortunately, his leverage was faulty, because he struck with all his might.

That did it, all right. Lois moved back into her old bedroom in her family's apartment. Her mother bought her new furniture and curtains, and when Lois was able to walk again, her father immediately gave her a check for a thousand dollars. "Buy yourself some dresses," he told her. "Go ahead." So Lois went down to Saks' and Bonwit Teller's and spent the thousand dollars. Then she had a lot of clothes to wear.

New York didn't get much snow that winter, and Central Park never looked right. But the weather was very cold. One morning, looking out her window facing Fifth, Lois saw somebody walking a wire-haired terrier. She thought to herself, "I want a dog." So that afternoon she went to the pet shop and bought herself a three-months-old scotty. She put a bright red collar and leash on it, and brought the whimpering animal home in a cab. "Isn't is darling?" she asked Fred, the doorman. Fred patted the dog and said it sure was a cute little fella. "Gus," Lois said happily, "meet Fred. Fred meet Gus." She dragged the dog into the elevator. "In ya go, ya little cutie. Yes. You're a little cutie. That's what you are. A little cutie." Gus stood shivering in the middle of the elevator and wet the floor.

Lois gave him away a few days later. After Gus consistently refused to be housebroken, Lois began to agree with her parents that is was cruel to keep a dog in the city.

The night she gave away Gus, Lois told her parents it was dumb to wait till spring to go to Reno. It was better to get it over with. So early in January Lois flew West. She lived at a dude ranch just outside of Reno and made the acquaintance of Betty Walker, from Chicago, and Sylvia Haggerty, from Rochester. Betty Walker, whose insight was as penetrating as any rubber knife, told Lois a thing or two about men. Sylvia Haggerty was a quiet dumpy little brunette, and never said much, but she could drink more scotch-and-sodas than any other girl Lois had ever known. When their divorces all came through, Betty Walker gave a party at the Barclay in Reno. The boys from the ranch were invited, and Red, the good-looking one, made a big play for Lois, but in a nice way. "Keep away from me!" Lois suddenly screamed at Red. Everybody said Lois a rotten sport. They didn't know she was afraid of tall, good-looking men.

She saw Bill again, of course. About two months after she'd returned from Reno, Bill sat down at her table in the Stork Club.

"Hello, Lois."

"Hello, Bill. I'd rather you didn't sit down."

"I've been up at this psychoanalyst's place. He says I'll be alright."

"I'm glad to hear that. Bill, I'm waiting for somebody. Please leave."

"Will you have lunch with me sometime?" Bill asked.

Bill got up. "Can I call you?" he asked.

"No."

Bill left, and Middie Weaver and Liz Watson sat down. Lois ordered a scotch-and-soda, drank it, and four more like it. When she left the Stork Club she was feeling pretty drunk. She walked and she walked and she walked. Finally she sat down on a bench in front of the zebra's cage at the zoo. She sat there till she was sober and her knees had stopped shaking. Then she went home.

Home was a place with parents, news commentators on the radio, and starched maids who were always coming around to your left to deposit a small chilled glass of tomato juice in front of you.

After dinner, when Lois returned from the telephone, Mrs. Taggett looked up from her book, and asked, "Who was it? Carl Curfman, dear?"

"Yes," said Lois, sitting down. "What a dope."

"He's not a dope," contradicted Mrs. Taggett.

Carl Curfman was a thick-ankled, short young man who always wore white socks because colored socks irritated his feet. He was full of information. If you were going to drive to the game on Saturday, Carl would ask what route you were taking. If you said, "I don't know. I guess Route 26," Carl would suggest eagerly that you take Route 7 instead, and he'd take out a notebook and pencil and chart out the whole thing for you. You'd thank him profusely for his trouble, and he'd sort of nod quickly and remind you not for anything to turn off at Cleveland Turnpike despite the road signs. You always felt a little sorry for Carl when he put away his notebook and pencil.

Several months after Lois was back from Reno, Carl asked her to marry him. He put it to her in the negative. They had just come from a charity ball at the Waldorf. The battery in Carl's sedan was dead, and he started to get all worked up about it, but Lois said, "Take it easy, Carl. Let's smoke a cigarette first." They sat in the car smoking cigarettes, and it was then that Carl put it to Lois in the negative.

"You wouldn't wanna marry me, would you, Lois?"

Lois had been watching him smoke. He didn't inhale.

"Gee, Carl. You are sweet to ask me."

"I'd do my damnedest to make you happy, Lois. I mean I'd do my damnedest."

"You're very sweet to ask me, Carl," Lois said. "But I just don't wanna think about marriage for a while yet."

"Sure," said Carl quickly.

"Hey," said Lois, "there's a garage on Fiftieth and Third. I'll walk down with you."

One day the following week Lois had lunch at the Stork with Middie Weaver. Middie Weaver served the conversation as nodder and cigarette-ash-tipper. Lois told Middie that at first she had thought Carl was a dope. Well, not exactly a dope, but, well, Middie knew what Lois meant. Middie nodded and tipped the ashes of her cigarette. But he wasn't a dope. He was just sensitive and shy. And terribly sweet. And terribly intelligent. Did Middie know that Carl really ran Curfman and Sons? Yes. He really did. And he was a marvelous dancer, too. And he really had nice hair. And he wasn't really fat. He was solid. And he was terribly sweet.

Middie Weaver said, "Well, I always liked Carl. I think he's a grand person."

Lois thought about Middie Weaver on the way home in the cab. Mid-die was swell. Middie really was a swell person. So intelligent. So few people were intelligent, really intelligent. Middie was perfect. Lois hoped Bob Walker would marry Middie. She was too good for him. The rat.

Lois and Carl got married in the spring, and less than a month after they were married, Carl stopped wearing white socks. He also stopped wearing a winged collar with his dinner jacket. And he stopped giving people directions to get to Manasquan by avoiding the shore route. If people want to take the shore route, let them take it, Lois told Carl. She also told him not to lend any more money to Bud Masterson. And when Carl danced, would he please take longer steps. If Carl noticed, only short fat men minced around the floor. And if Carl put any more of that greasy stuff on his hair, Lois would go mad.

They weren't married less than three months when Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning. She'd sit up in the loges and chain-smoke cigarettes. It was better than sitting in the damned apartment. It was better than going to see her mother. These days her mother had a four-word vocabulary consisting of, "You're too thin, dear." Going to the movies was also better than seeing the girls. As it was, Lois couldn't go anywhere without bumping into one of them. They were all such ninnies.

So Lois started going to the movies at eleven o'clock in the morning. She'd sit through the show and then she'd go to the ladies room and comb her hair and put on fresh make-up. Then she'd look at herself in the mirror, and wonder, "Well. What the hell should I do now?"

Sometimes Lois went to another movie. Sometimes she went shopping, but rarely these days did she see anything she wanted to buy. Sometimes she met Cookie Benson. When Lois came to think of it, Cookie was the only one of her friends who was intelligent, really intelligent. Cookie was swell. Swell sense of humor. Lois and Cookie could sit in the Stork Club for hours, telling dirty jokes and criticizing their friends.

Cookie was perfect. Lois wondered why she had never liked Cookie before. A grand, intelligent person like Cookie.

Carl complained frequently to Lois about his feet. One evening when they were sitting at home, Carl took off his shoes and black socks, and examined his bare feet carefully. He discovered Lois staring at him.

"They itch," he said to Lois, laughing. "I just can't wear colored socks."

"It's your imagination," Lois told him.

"My father had the same thing," Carl said. "It's a form of eczema, the doctors say."

Lois tried to make her voice sound casual. "The way you go into such a stew about it, you'd think you had leprosy."

Carl laughed. "No," he said, still laughing, "I can hardly think it's leprosy." He picked up his cigarette from the ashtray.

"Good Lord," said Lois, forcing a little laugh. "Why don't you inhale when you smoke? What possible pleasure can you get out of smoking if you don't inhale?"

Carl laughed again, and examined the end of his cigarette, as though the end of his cigarette might have something to do with his not inhaling.

"I don't know," he said, laughing. "I just never did inhale."

When Lois discovered she was going to have a baby, she stopped going to the movies so much. She begun to meet her mother a great deal for lunch at Schrafft's, where they ate vegetable salads and talked about maternity clothes. Men in busses got up to give Lois their seats. Elevator operators spoke to her with quiet new respect in their nondescript voices. With curiosity, Lois began to peek under the hoods of baby carriages.

Carl always slept heavily, and never heard Lois cry in her sleep.

When the baby was born it was generally spoken of as darling. It was a fat little boy with tiny ears and blond hair, and it slobbered sweetly for all those who liked babies to slobber sweetly. Lois loved it. Carl loved it. The in-laws loved it. It was, in short, a most successful production. And as the weeks went by, Lois found she couldn't kiss Thomas Taggett Curfman half enough. She couldn't pat his little bottom enough. She couldn't talk to him enough.

"Yes. Somebody's gonna get a bath. Yes. Somebody I know is gonna get a nice clean bath. Bertha, is the water right?"

"Yes. Somebody's gonna get a bath. Bertha, the water's too hot. I don't care, Bertha. It's too hot."

Once Carl finally got home in time to see Tommy get his bath. Lois took her hand out of the scientific bathtub, and pointed wetly at Carl.

"Tommy. Who's that? Who's that big man? Tommy, who's that?"

"He doesn't know me," said Carl, but hopefully.

"That's your Daddy. That's your Daddy, Tommy."

"He doesn't know me from Adam," said Carl.

"Tommy. Tommy, look where Mommy's pointing. Look at Daddy. Look at the big man. Look at Daddy."

That fall Lois' father gave her a mink coat, and if you had lived near Seventy-Fourth and Fifth, many a Thursday you might have seen Lois in her mint coat, wheeling a big black carriage across the Avenue into the park.

Then finally she made it. And when she did, everybody seemed to know about it. Butchers began to give Lois the best cuts of meat. Cab drivers began to tell her about their kids' whopping cough. Bertha, the maid, began to clean with a wet cloth instead of a duster. Poor Cookie Benson during her crying jags began to telephone Lois from the Stork Club. Women in general began to look more closely at Lois' face than at the clothes. Men in theater-boxes, looking down at the women in the audience, began to single out Lois, if for no other reason than that they liked the way she put on her glasses.

It happened about six months after young Thomas Taggett Curfman tossed peculiarly in his sleep and a fuzzy woolen blanket snuffed out his little life.

The man Lois didn't love was sitting in his chair one evening, staring at a pattern on the rug. Lois had just come in from the bedroom where she had stood for nearly a half-hour, looking out the window. She sat down in the chair opposite Carl. Never in his life had he looked more stupid and gross. But there was something Lois had to say to him. And suddenly it was said.

"Put on your white socks. Go ahead," Lois said quietly. "Put them on, dear."

6. PERSONAL NOTES ON AN INFANTRYMAN

HE CAME into my Orderly Room wearing a gabardine suit. He was several years past the age-- is it about forty?--when American men make living-room announcements to their wives that they're going to gym twice a week--to which their wives reply: "That's nice, dear--will you please use the ashtray? That's what it's there for." His coat was open and you could see a fine set of carefully trained beer muscles. His shirt collar was wringing wet. He was out of breath.

He came up to me with all his papers in his hand, and laid them down on my desk.

"Will you look these over?" he said.

I told him I wasn't the recruiting officer. He said, "Oh," and started to pick up his papers,but I took them from him and looked them over.

"This isn't an Induction Station, you know," I said.

"I know. I understand enlistments are taken here now, though."

I nodded. "You realize that if you enlist at this post you'll probably take your basic training here. This is Infantry. We're a little out of fashion. We walk. How are your feet?"

"They're all right."

"You're out of breath," I said.

"But my feet are all right. I can get my wind back. I've quit smoking."

I turned the pages of his application papers. My first sergeant swung his chair around, the better to watch.

"You're a technical foreman in a key war industry," I pointed out to this man, Lawlor. "Have you stopped to consider that a man your age might be of greatest service to his country if he just stuck to his job?"

"I've found a bright young man with a A-1 mind and a F-4 to take over my job," Lawlor said.

"I should think," I said, lighting a cigarette, "that the man taking your place would require years of training and experience."

"I used to think so myself," Lawlor said.

My first sergeant looked at me, raising one hoary eyebrow.

"You're married and have two sons," I said to Lawlor. "How does your wife feel about your going to war?"

"She's delighted. Didn't you know? All wives are anxious to see their husbands go to war," Lawlor said, smiling peculiarly. "Yes, I have two sons. One is in the Army, one is in the Navy--till he lost an arm at Pearl Harbor. Do you mind if I don't take up any more of your time? Sergeant, do you mind telling me where the recruiting officer is?"

Sergeant Olmstead didn’t answer him. I flipped Lawlor's papers across the desk. He picked them up, and waited.

"Down the company street," I said. "Turn left. First building on the right."

"Thanks. Sorry to have bothered you," Lawlor said sarcastically. He left the Orderly Room, mopping the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

I don't think he was out of the Orderly Room five minutes before the phone rang. It was his wife. I explained to her that I was not the recruiting officer and that there was nothing I could do. If he wanted to join the Army and was mentally, physically, and morally fit--then there wasn't anything the recruiting officer could do either, except swear him in. I said there was always the possibility that he wouldn't pass the physical exam.

I talked to Mrs. Lawlor for quite a while, even though is wasn't a strictly G.I. phone call. She has the sweetest voice I know. She sounds as though she'd spent most of her life telling little boys where to find the cookies.

I wanted to tell her not to phone me anymore. But I couldn't be unkind to that voice. I never could.

I had to hang up finally. My first sergeant was ready with a short lecture on the importance of getting tough with dames.

I kept an eye on Lawlor all through his basic training. There wasn't any one call-it-by-a- name phase of Army life that knocked him out or even down. He pulled K.P. for a solid week, too, and he was as good a sink admiral as the next one. Nor did he have trouble learning to march, or learning to make up his bunk properly, or learning to sweep out his barrack.

He was a darned good soldier, and I wanted to see him get on the ball.

After his basic, Lawlor was transferred to "F" Company of the First Battalion, commanded by George Eddy, a darn' good man. That was late last spring. Early in summer Eddy's outfit got orders to go across. At the last minute, Eddy dropped Lawlor's name from the shipping list.

Lawlor came to see me about it. He was hurt and just a little bit insubordinate. Twice I had to cut him short.

"Why tell me about it?" I said. "I'm not your C.O."

"You probably had something to do with it. You didn't want me to join up in the first place."

"I had nothing to do with it," I said. And I hadn't. I had never said a word to George Eddy, either pro or con.

Then Lawlor said something to me that sent a terrific thrill up my back. He bent over slightly and leaned across my desk. "I want action," he said. "Can't you understand that? I want action."

I had to avoid his eyes. I don't know quite why. He stood straight up again.

He asked me if his wife had telephoned me again.

I said she hadn't.

"She probably phoned Captain Eddy," Lawlor said bitterly.

"I don't think so," I said.

Lawlor nodded vaguely. Then he saluted me, faced about, and left the Orderly Room. I watched him. He was beginning to wear his uniform. He had dropped about fifteen pounds and his shoulders were back and his stomach, what was left of it, was sucked in. He didn't look bad at all.

Lawlor was transferred again, to Company "L" of the Second Battalion. He made corporal in August, got his buck sergeant stripes early in October. Bud Ginnes was his C.O. and Bud said Lawlor was the best man in his company.

Late in the winter, just about the time I was ordered to take over the basic training school, the Second Battalion was shipped across. I wasn't able to phone Mrs. Lawlor for several days after Lawlor was shipped. Not until his outfit had officially landed abroad. Then I long distanced her.

She didn't cry. Her voice got very low, though, and I could hardly hear her. I wanted to say just the right thing to her I wanted to bring her wonderful voice up to normal. I thought of alluding to Lawlor as being one of our gallant boys now. But she knew he was labored and phony. I thought of a few other phrases, but they were all on the long-haired side, too.

Then I knew that I couldn't bring her voice up to normal--at least not on such short order. But I could make her happy. I knew that I could make her happy.

"I sent for Pete," I said. "And he was able to go to the boat. Dad started to salute us, but we kissed him good-by. He looked good. He really looked good, Ma."

Pete's my brother. He was an ensign in the Navy.

7. THE VARIONI BROTHERS

Around Old Chi
WITH GARDENIA PENNY

While Mr. Penny is on his vacation, his column will be written by a number of distinguishing personalities from all walks of life. Today's guest columnist is Mr. Vincent Westmoreland, the well-known pro-ducer, raconteur, and wit. Mr. Westmoreland's opinions do not necess-arily reflect those of Mr. Penny or this newspaper.

	If, like Aladdin, I had means to be waited on by a sociable genie, I would first demand that he pop Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito into a fair-sized cage, and promptly deposit the menagerie on the front steps of the White House. I should then seriously consider dismissing my accommodating servant, after I had asked his one question - namely: "Where is Sonny Varioni?"

	To me, and probably to thousands, the story of the brilliant Varioni Bro-thers is one of the most tragic and unfinished of this century. Although the music these golden boys left us is still warm and alive in our hearts, perhaps their story is cold enough to be told to some of the younger readers and retold to the old ones.

	I was there on the fatal night their music publisher and friend, Teddy Barto, gave them the handsomest, most ostentatious party of the crazy Twenties. It was in celebration of their fifth year of collaboration and success. The Varioni Brothers' mansion was stuffed with the best shirts of the day. And the most beautiful, most talked about or against, women. The most supercolossal blackest colored boy I have ever seen stood at the front door with a silver plate the size of a manhole cover into which dropped the invitation cards of our then favorite actors, actresses, writers, producers, dancers, men and ladies about town.

	It seemed that with success Sonny Varioni had developed quite a taste for gambling. Not with just anybody, but with big shots like the late, little-lamented Buster Hankey. About two weeks before the party, Sonny had lost about forty thousand dollars to Buster in a poker game. Sonny had re-fused to pay, accusing the Buster of dirty- dealing him.

	At about four A.M. on that festive, frightful morning there were about two hundred of us jammed fashionably in the crazy, boyish basement where the Varionis wrote all their hits. It was there that the thing happen-ed. If I must have a reason for retelling a tragic story, I shall say with con-viction that it is my right, because I honestly believe that I was the only sober individual in that basement.

	Enter Rocco, Buster Hankey's newest, most-likely-to-succeed trigger- man. Rocco inquires sweetly of the dizziest blonde - poor thing - points wildly in the direction of the piano. 'Over there, handsome. But what's your hurry? Have a li'l' drink.'

	Rocco doesn't have time for a li'l' drink. He elbows his way through the crowd, fires five shots, very fast, into the wrong man's back. Joe Varioni, whom no one had ever heard play piano before, because that was Sonny's affair, dropped dead to the floor. Joe, the lyricist, only played the piano when he was tight, and he only got tight once a year, at the great parties Teddy Barto threw for him and Sonny.

	Sonny stayed in Chicago for a few weeks, walking around town without a hat, without a necktie, without a decent Christian night of sleep. Then suddenly he disappeared from the Windy City. There is no record of anyone having seen or heard of him since. Yes, I think I should ask my hypothetical genie: "Where is Sonny Varioni?"

	Some remote little person somewhere must have the inside dope. As, un- fortunately, I am a little on genii, will he or she enlighten a sympathetic admirer, one of thousands?

My name is Sarah Daley Smith. I am one of the remotest little numbers I know. And I have the inside dope on Sonny Varioni. He is in Way-cross, Illinois. He's not very well and he's working day and night typing up the manuscript of a very lovely, wild and possibly great novel. It was written and thrown into a trunk by Joe Varioni. It was written longhand on yellow paper, on lined paper, on crumbled paper, on torn paper. The sheets were not numbered. Whole sentences and even paragraphs were marked out and rewritten on the back of enveloped, on the unused sides of college exam papers, in the margins of railroad timetables. The job of making head and tail, chapter and book, of this wild colossus is an im-measurably enervating one, requiring, one would think, youth and health and ego. Sonny Varioni has none of these. He has a hope for a kind of salvation.

I don't know Mr. Westmoreland, of the guest-columnist Westmore-lands, but I guess I approve of his curiosity. I think he must remember all his old girls by the Varioni Brothers' words and music.

So, if the gentlemen with the drums and bugles are ready, I shall pass among the Westmorelands with the inside dope.

Because the inside dope begins there, I must go back to the high, wide and rotten Twenties. I can offer no important lament or even a convincing shrug for the general bad taste of that era.

I happened to be a sophomore at Waycross College, and I actually wore a yellow slicker with riotously witty sayings pen-and-inked on the back, suggesting liberally that sex was the cat's pajamas, and that we all get behind the ole football team. There were no flies on me.

Joe Varioni taught English III-A, from Beowulf through Fielding, as the catalogue put it. He taught it beautifully. All little girls who take long walks in the rain and major in English have had Grendel's bloody arm dragged across their education at least three times, in this school or that. But somehow when Joe talked about Beowulf's silly doings they seemed to have undergone a rewrite job by one of the Brownings.

He was the tallest, thinnest, weariest boy I had ever seen in my life. He was brilliant. He had gorgeous brown eyes, and he had only two suits. He was completely unhappy, and I didn't know why.

If he called for volunteers to come to the blackboard and drop dead for him, I would have won a scholarship. He took me out several times, walking just ahead of my gun. He wasn't much interested in me, but he was terribly short on the right audiences. He sometimes talked about his writing, and he read me some of it. It was part of the novel. He'd been reading some crazy sheets of yellow paper; then all of a sudden he'd cut himself short. "Wait a minute," he'd say. "I changed that." Then he'd fish a couple of envelopes out of his pocket and read from the backs of them. He could cram more writing in less space than anybody I ever knew.

Suddenly one month he stopped reading to me. He avoided me after classes. I saw him from the library window one afternoon, and I leaned out and hollered to him to wait for me. Miss MacGregor campused me for a week for hollering out the library window. But I didn't care. Joe waited for me.

I asked him how the book was coming.

"I haven't been writing," he said.

"That's terrible. When are you gonna finish it?"

"As soon as I get the chance."

"Chance? What've you been doing nights?"

"I've been working with my brother, nights. He's a songwriter. I do the lyrics for him."

I looked at him with my mouth open. He had just told me that Robert Browning had been hired to play third base for the Cards.

"You're being ridiculous," I said.

"My brother writes wonderful music."

"That's great. That's peachy."

"I'm not going to write lyrics for him all my life," Joe explained. "Just till he clicks. When he clicks I'm through."

"Do you spend all your time nights doing that? Haven't you worked on the novel at all?"

Joe said coldly, "I told you I'm waiting till he clicks. When he clicks I'm through."

"What does he do for a living?" I asked.

"Well, right now he spends most of his time at the piano."

"I get it. Joe Artist doesn't work."

"Do you want to hear one of Sonny's numbers?" Joe asked.

I said no, but he took me in the rec room anyway. Joe sat down at the piano and played the number that was later to be called I Want to Hear the Music. It was tremendous, of course. It knocked you out. I dated the time and place, and filed both away for a future sweetness. Joe played it through twice. He played rather nicely. When he was finished, he ran a skinny hand through his black hair. "I'll wait till he clicks," he said. "When he clicks I'm through."

For the Inside Dope Department, Sonny Varioni was handsome, charming, insincere, and bored. He was also a brilliant creative techni-cian at the piano. His fingers were marvelous. I think they were the best of the old 1926 fingers. I think his fingers played with a keyboard so expertly that something new had to come out of the piano. He played hard, full-chord right hand and the fastest, most-satisfying bass I have ever heard, even from colored boys. When he was in the mood to show off for himself, he was the only man I have ever seen throw either arm over the back of his chair and play the bass and the treble with his re-maining hand alone, and you could hardly tell the difference. He was so congenitally conceited that he appeared to be modest. Sonny never asked you if you liked his music. He assumed too confidently that you did.

I'm always willing to acknowledge one virtue in Sonny. While he knew there were Berlins, Carmichails, Kerns, Isham Joneses plugging out tunes comparable in quality with his own, he knew that Joe was in a class strictly by himself among the lyric writers. If Sonny ever took the trouble to brag at all in public, he bragged about Joe.

Sonny would never let me watch him and Joe work together. I don't know what their methods were, except what Joe once told me. Joe told me Sonny would play whatever he had composed through about fifteen times, while he, Joe, would follow his playing with a pad and pencil handy. I think it must have been a pretty cold business.

I went with them to Chicago the day they sold I Want to Hear the Music, Mary,Mary, and Dirty Peggy. My uncle was Teddy Barto's lawyer, and I got them in to see Teddy.

When Teddy announced dramatically that he wanted to buy all three of the numbers, Neither of the Varionis went into a soft-shoe routine.

"I want all three," Teddy said again, but more impressively. "I want all three of them songs. You guys got an agent?"

"No," Sonny said, still at the piano.

"You don't need one," Teddy informed.

"I'll publish your stuff and be your agent. Look happy. I'm a very smart man. What have you guys been doing for a living?"

"I teach," Joe said, looking out the window.

"I weave baskets," Sonny said, at the piano.

"You should move into town right away. You should be near the pulse of things. You're two very talented geniuses," Teddy said. "I'm going to give you check on account. You should both move into town right away."

"I don't want to move into Chicago," Joe told him. "It's hard enough to make my first class on time as it is."

Teddy turned to me. "Miss Daley, impress on the boy he should move in town by the pulse of the whole country."

"He's a novelist," I said. "He shouldn't be writing songs."

"So he can write a few novels in town," Teddy said, solving everything. "I like books. Everybody likes books. It improves the mind."

"I'm not moving into Chicago," Joe said, at the window.

Teddy started to say something, but Sonny put a finger to his lips, ordering silence. I hated Sonny for that.

"I'll leave it to you to work out for yourselves in the most advantage to yourselves personally," Teddy said beautifully. "I'm not worried. I'm confident, you might say. We're all adults."

On the train back to Waycross we had the porter put up a table and we played poker. We played for hours. Then all of a sudden I felt something terrible and certain. I put down my cards and walked back to the platform and lighted a cigarette. Sonny came back and bummed a cigarette. He stood over me easily, positively, frighteningly. He was so masterful. He couldn't even stand over you on a platform between cars without being the master of the platform.

"Let him go, Sonny," I begged him.

"You don't even let him play cards his own way."

He wasn't the sort to say "What do you mean?" He knew exactly what I meant, and didn't care if I knew he knew. He just waited easily for me to finish.

"Let him go, Sonny. What do you care? You've got your break. You can get somebody else to write lyrics for you. It's your music that's terrific."

"Joe does the best lyrics in the whole country. Nobody touches him or comes close to it."

"Sonny, he can write," I said. "He can really write. I spoke to Professor Voorhees at college - you've heard of him - and when I told him Joe wasn't writing any more, he just shook his head. He just shook his head, Sonny. That was all."

Sonny snapped his butt to the platform floor, ground it out with his shoe. "Joe's as bored as I am," he said. "We were born bored. Success is what both of us need. It'll at least demand our interest. It'll bring in money. Even if Joe does write this novel, it may take the public years to pat him on the ego."

"You're wrong. You're so wrong," I said. "Joe's not bored. Joe's just lonely for his own ideals. He has lots of them. You don't have any. You're the only one who's bored, Sonny."

"You certainly have it bad," Sonny said. "And you're wasting your time. Could I interest you in something on my type?"

"I hate you," I said. "All my life I'm going to try to hate your music."

He took my handbag away from me, opened it and took out my cigarettes.

"That," he said, "is impossible."

I went back into the car.

The Varioni Brothers followed up Dirty Peggy with Emmy-Jo, and before Emmy-Jo was cold that wonderful job, The Sheik of State Street was dropped on Teddy Barto's new, more expensive desk. After the Sheik they did Is It All Right if I Cry, Annie? and after Annie came Stay a While. Then came Frances Was There Too, then Weary Street Blues, then - Oh, I could name them all. I could sing them all. But what's the use?

Right after Mary, Mary they moved into Chicago, bought a big house and filled it with poor relations. They kept the basement to themselves. It had a piano, a pool table and a bar. Half the time they slept down there. Almost overnight they were financially able to do almost anything- chucking emeralds at blondes, or what have you. There just suddenly wasn't a grocery clerk in America who could climb a ladder for a can of asparagus without whistling or singing a Varioni Brothers' song, on or off key.

Just after Is It All Right if I Cry, Annie? my father became ill, and I had to go to California with him.

"I'm leaving tomorrow with daddy. We're going to California, after all," I told Joe. "Why don't you ride as far as California with me? I'll propose to you in Latvian."

He had taken me to lunch.

"I'll miss you, Sarah."

"Corinne Griffith is going to be on the train. She's pretty."

Joe smiled. He was always a good smiler. "I'll wait for you to come back, Sarah," he said. "I'll be a big boy then."

I reached for his hand across the table, his skinny, wonderful hand.

"Joe, Joe, sweetheart. Did you write Sunday? Did you, Joe? Did you go near the script?"

"I nodded at it very politely." He took his hand away from mine.

"You didn't write at all?"

"We worked. Leave me alone. Leave me alone, Sarah. Let's just eat our shrimp salads and leave each other alone."

"Joe, I love you. I want you to be happy. You're burning yourself out in that terrible basement. I want you to go away and do your novel."

"Sarah, please. Will you keep quiet, absolutely quiet, if I tell you something?"

"Yes."

"We're doing a new number. I've given Sonny my two weeks' notice. Lou Gangin is going to write lyrics for him from now on."

"Did you tell Sonny that?" I said.

"Of course I told him."

"He doesn't want Lou Gangin. He wants you."

"He wants Gangin," Joe said. "I'm sorry I told you."

"He'll trick you, Joe. He'll trick you into staying," I told him. "Come to California with me. Or just get on the train with me. You can get off where and when you like. You can - "

"Sarah, shut up, please."

While Joe came to the train with me and daddy, I made Professor Voorhees go to see Sonny. I couldn't have seen him myself. I couldn't have stood those cold, bored eyes of his, anticipating all my poor little strategies.

Sonny received Professor Voorhees in the basement. He played the piano the whole time the old man was there.

"Have a seat, professor."

"Thank you. You play well, sir."

"I can't give you too much time, professor. I've got an engagement at eight."

"Very well." The professor got right to the point. "I understand that Joseph is through writing lyrics for you, that a young man named Gangley is going to take his place."

"Gangin," corrected his host. "No. Somebody's been kidding you. Joe writes the best lyrics in the country. Gangin's just one of the boys."

Professor Voorhees said sharply, "Your brother is a poet, Mr. Varioni."

"I thought he was a novelist."

"Let us say he is a writer. A very fine writer. I believe he has genius."

"Like Rudyard Kipling and that crowd, eh?"

"No. Like Joseph Varioni."

Sonny was playing with some minor chords in the bass, running them, striking them solid. The professor listened in spite if himself.

"What makes you so sure," Sonny said. "What makes you so sure he wouldn't plug out words for years and then have a bunch of guys tell him he was also-ran?"

"I think that Joseph is worthy of taking that chance, Mr. Varioni," Professor Voorhees said. "Have you ever read anything your brother has written?"

"He showed me a story once. About some kids coming out of school. I thought it was lousy. Nothing happened."

"Mr. Varioni," said the professor, "you've got to let him go. You have a tremendous influence on him. You must release him."

Sonny stood up suddenly and buttoned the coat of his hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit. "I have to go. I'm sorry, professor."

The professor followed Sonny upstairs. They put on their overcoats. A footman opened the door and they went out. Sonny hailed a cab and offered the professor a lift, which he declined politely.

One last attempt was made. "You're quite determined to burn out your brother's life?" Professor Voorhees asked.

For answer, Sonny dismissed the cab he had hailed. He turned and made his reply, scrupulously for him. "Professor, I want to hear the music. I'm a man who goes to night clubs. I can't stand going into a night club and hearing some little girl sing Lou Gangin's words to my music. I'm not Mozart. I don't write symphonies. I write songs. Joe's lyrics are the best- jazz, torch, or rhythm, his are the best. I've known that from the beginning."

Sonny lighted a cigarette, got rid of smoke through thinned lips.

"I'll tell you a secret," he said. "I'm a man who has an awful lot of trouble hearing the music. I need every little help I can get." He nodded good-by to the professor, stepped off the curb and got into another cab.

Perhaps my sensitivity because has become blunted somewhere along the disposition of a reasonably normal, happy life. For a long time after Joe Varioni's death I tried to stay away from places where jazz was played. Then I suddenly met Douglas Smith at teachers' college, fell in love with him, and we went dancing. And when the orchestra played a Varioni Brothers' number, I treacherously found that I could use Varioni words and music to date and identify my new happiness for future nostalgic purposes. I was that young and that much in love with Douglas. And there was a wonderful, ungeniuslike thing about Douglas - his arms were so ready to be filled with me. I think if ever a lady, in memory of a gentleman, were determined to write an ode to the immortality of love, to make it convincing she would have to remember how the gentleman used to take her face between his hands and how he examined it with at least polite interest. Joe was always too wretched, too thwarted, too claimed by his own unsatisfied genius, to have had either inclination or time to examine, if not my face, my love. As a consequence, my mediocre heart rang out the old, in with the new.

Intermittently through the seventeen years since Joe Varioni's death, I certainly have been aware and close to the tragedy of it. Often painfully so. I sometimes remember whole sentences at a time of the unfinished novel he read to me when I was a sophomore at Waycross. Oddly, I remember them best while I was bathing the children. I don't know why.

As I have already mentioned, Sonny Varioni is now in Waycross. He is living with Douglas and me in our home about a mile from the college. He isn't at all well, and he looks much older than he is.

About three months ago, Professor Voorhees, very old and dear, opened the door of my classroom during one of my lectures, and asked me if I would kindly step outside for a moment. I did so, prepared for some major announcement or admonition. I was horribly late with my mid- term grades again.

"Sarah, dear," he said, "Sonny Varioni is here."

It registered immediately, but I denied it. "No, I don't believe you."

"He's here, my dear. He came into my office about twenty minutes ago."

"What does he want," I asked, just a little shrilly.

"I don't know," the professor said slowly. "I don't really know."

"I don't want to see him. I just don't want to see him, that's all. I'm married. I have two fine children. I don't want anything to do with him."

"Please, Sarah," Professor Voorhees said quietly. "This man is ill. He wants something. We must find out what it is."

I didn't think my voice would work, so I didn't say anything.

"Sarah" - the professor was gentle but firm - "the man in my office is harmless."

"All right," I said.

I followed Professor Voorhees down the corridor. My legs suddenly weren't too sure of themselves. They seemed in the process of dissolving.

He was sitting in one of the worn leather chairs in the professor's office. He stood up when he saw me.

"Hello, Sarah."

"Hello, Sonny."

He asked me if he could sit down. I said, very quickly, "Yes, please do."

Sonny sat down and Professor Voorhees moved into his place behind the big desk. I sat down, too, and I tried to look unhostile. I wanted to help this man. I think I said something about seventeen years being quite a long time. Sonny made no perfunctory reply. He was staring at the floor.

"What is it you want, Mr. Varioni?" Professor Voorhees asked him deliberately, yet helpfully. "What can we do for you?"

Sonny was a long time making an answer. Finally he said, "I have Joe's trunk with his script in it. I've read it. Most of it's written on the inside of a match folder."

I didn't know what he was getting at, but I knew he needed help.

"I know what you mean," I said. "He didn't care what he wrote on."

"I'd like to put his book together. Kind of type it up. I'd like to have a place to stay while I do it." He didn't look up at either of us.

"It isn't even finished," I said. "Joe didn't even finish it."

"He finished it. He finished it that time you went to California with your father. I never let him put it together."

Professor Voorhees accepted the responsibility of making further comment. He leaned forward over his desk. "It will be a tremendous job," he told Sonny.

"Yes."

"Why do you want to undertake it?"

"Because I hear the music for the first time in my life when I read his book."

He looked up helplessly at both Professor Voorhees and me, as though hoping that neither of us would take advantage of the irony at his expense.

Neither of us did.

8. BOTH PARTIES CONCERNED

THERE really isn't much to tell - I mean it wasn't serious or anything, but it was kind of funny at that. I mean because it looked there for a while as though everybody at the plant and Ruthie's mother and all was going to have the laugh on us. They had all kept saying I and Ruthie were too young to get married. Ruthie, she was seventeen, and I was twenty, nearly. That's pretty young, all right, but not if you know what you're doing. I mean not if everything's Jake between she and you. I mean both parties concerned.

Well, like I was saying, Ruthie and I, we never really split up. Not really split up. Not that Ruthie's mother wasn't wishing we did. Mrs. Cropper, she wanted Ruthie to go to college instead of getting married. Ruthie got out of high school when she was fifteen only, and they wouldn't take her at where she wanted to go to till she was eighteen. She wanted to be a doctor. I used to kid her, "Calling Doctor Kildare!" I'd say to her. I got a good sense of humor. Ruthie, she don't. She's more inclined to be serious like.

Well, I really don't know how it all started, but it really got hot one night last month at Jake's Place. Ruthie, she and I were out there. That joint is really class this year. Not so much neon. More bulbs. More parking space. Class. Know what I mean? Ruthie don't like Jake's much.

Well, this night I was telling you about, Jake's was jam-packed when we got there, and we had to wait around for about an hour till we got a table. Ruthie was all for not waiting. No patience. Then finally when we did get a table, she says she don't want a beer. So she just sits there, lighting matches, blowing the out. Driving me nuts.

"What's the matter?" I asked her finally. It got on my nerves after a while.

"Nothing's the matter," Ruthie says. She stops lighting matches, starts looking around the joint, as though she was keeping an eye peeled for somebody special.

"Something's the matter," I said. I know her like a book. I mean I know her like a book.

"Nothing's the matter," she says. "Stop worrying about me. Everything's swell. I'm the happiest girl in the world."

"Cut it out," I said. She was being cynical like. "I just asked you a question, that's all."

"Oh, pardon me," Ruthie said. "And you want an answer. Certainly. Pardon me." She was being very cynical like. I don't like that. It don't bother me, but I don't like it.

I knew what was eating her. I know her inside out, her every mood like. "Okay," I said. "You're sore because we went out tonight. Ruthie, for cryin' out loud, a guy has a right to go out once in a while, doesn't he?"

"Once in a while!" Ruthie says. "I love that. Once in a while. Like seven nights a week, huh, Billy?"

"It hasn't been seven nights a week," I said. And it hadn't! We hadn't come out the night before. I mean we had a beer at Gordon's, but we came right home and all.

"No?" Ruthie said. "Okay. Let's drop it. Let's not discuss it."

I asked her, very quiet like, what was I supposed to do. Sit around home like a dope every night? Stare at the walls? Listen to the baby bawl its head off? I asked her, very quiet like, what she wanted me to do.

"Please don't shout," she says. "I don't want you to do anything."

"Listen," I said. "I'm paying that crazy Widger dame eighteen bucks just to take care of the kid for a couple hours a night. I did it just so you could take it easy. I thought you'd be tickled to death. You used to like to go out once in while," I said to her.

Then Ruthie says she didn't want me to hire Mrs. Widger in the first place. She said she didn't like her. She said she hated her, in fact. She said she didn't like to see Mrs. Widger even hold the baby. I told her that Mrs. Widger has had plenty of babies on her own, and I guessed she knew pretty good how to hold a kid. Ruthie said when we go out at night Widger just sits in the living room, reading magazines; that she never goes near the baby. I said what did she want her to do-get in the crib with the kid? Ruthie said she didn't want to talk about it any more.

"Ruthie," I said, "what are you trying to do? Make me look like a rat?"

Ruthie, she says, "I'm not trying to make you look like a rat. You're not a rat."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot," I said. I can be cynic-like too.

She says, "You're my husband, Billy." She was leaning over the table, crying like-but,
holy mackerel, it wasn't my fault!

"You married me," she says, "because you said you loved me. You're supposed to love our baby, too, and take care of it. We're supposed to think about things sometimes, not just go chasing around."

I asked her, very calm like, who said I didn't love the baby.

"Please don't shout," she says. "I'll scream if you shout," she says.

"Nobody said you didn't love it, Billy. But you love it when it's convenient for you or something. When it's having its bath or when it plays with your necktie."

I told her I loved it all the time. And I do! It's a nice kid, a real nice kid.

She says, "Then why aren't we home?"

I told her then. I mean I wasn't afraid to tell her. I told her. "Because," I said, "I wanna have a couple of beers. I want some life. You don't work on a fuselage all day. You don't know what it's like." I mean I told her.

Then she tried to make funny like. "You mean," she says, "I don't slave over a hot fuselage all day?"

I told her it was pretty hot. Then she started lighting matches again, like a kid. I asked her if she didn't get what I meant at all. She said she got what I meant all right, and she said she got what her mother meant, too, when her mother said we were too young to get married. She said she got what a lot of things meant now.

That really got me. I admit it. I'm willing to admit it. Nothing really gets me except when she brings up her mother. I asked Ruthie, very quiet like, what she was talking about. I said, "Just because a guy wants to go out once in a while." Ruthie said if I ever said "once in a while" again, I'd never see her again. She's always taking things the way I don't mean them. I told her that. She said, "C'mon. We're here. Let's dance."

I followed her out to the floor, but just as we got there the orchestra got sneaky on us. They started playing Moonlight Becomes You. It's old now, but it's a swell song. I mean it isn't a bad song. We used to hear it once in a while on the radio in the car or the one at home. Once in a while Ruthie used to sing the words. But it wasn't so hot, hearing it at Jake's that night. It was embarrassing. And they must have played eighty-five choruses of it. I mean they kept playing it. Ruthie danced about ten miles away from me, and we didn't look at each other much. Finally they stopped. Then Ruthie broke away from me like. She walks back to the table, but she don't sit down. She just picks up her coat and beats it. She was crying.

I paid the check and went out after her as quickly as I could. Boy, it was cold out all of a sudden. I had on my blue suit, but Ruthie, she only had on her yellow dress. That thing wouldn't keep a flea warm. So all I wanted to do was get to the car fast and take off my coat, and maybe put it around her. I mean it was pretty cold.

She was on her side of the car, all doubled up like, and she was crying - noisy, like a kid cries. I put my coat around her and tried to turn her around to look at me, but she wouldn't turn. Boy, that's a lousy feeling when Ruthie does that. I mean that's a lousy feeling. I'd rather be dead.

I asked her around a million times just to look at me once. But she wouldn't do it. She was half on the floor of the car. She told me to go back and drink a couple beers, that she'd wait for me in the car. I told her I didn't want any beer. All I wanted was she should look at me. I told her not to believe her mother, her always saying we were too young and all. I told her her mother was nuts.

Well, like I said, I kept asking her to turn around, sit up like, and look at me, but she wouldn't do it. So finally I started up the car and drove home. She cried all the way, half on the seat, half on the floor, like a kid. But by the time I'd backed the car in the garage, she'd cut it out a little, was sitting up in her seat more. I'll admit it, usually when we drive in the garage at night we neck a little. You know what I mean. It's dark and all, and you get the feeling you're in your own garage and all, and hers too. I mean it's swell sometimes. But we just right out of the car this time. Ruthie, she almost ran upstairs. By the time I was ready to go upstairs I heard the front door slam. That was Mrs. Widger, going. When we come in at night, she breaks about thirty speed records getting out of the house.

When I got upstairs to our room, and had took off my necktie, Ruthie says to me - it made me sore, "I don't suppose you want to take a look at the baby. How do you know? Maybe it grew a mustache or something since the last time you saw it. Or don't you want to see him at all this month?"

I don't like that cynic-like stuff. I said to Ruthie, "Wuddaya mean I don't wanna see him? Naturally, I want to see him," and I went out of the room.

Ruthie, she leaves the light burning in the hall right outside the kid's room, so it's never pitch dark in there. I bent over the crib and looked at the kid. It had its thumb in its mouth. I took it out but the kid put it right back in again, even though it was asleep. I mean being asleep don't stop the kid from thinking. It's smart. I mean it's not dumb or anything. I took its foot in my hand and held it for a while. I like the kid's feet. I mean I just like them. Then I felt Ruthie come in the room and stand behind me. I covered up the kid and walked out. When we got back to our room, I don't know why I said what I did, because the baby really looked good. Healthy. Like Ruthie.

"It doesn't look so hot to me," I told her.

Ruthie said, "What do you mean it doesn't look so hot to you? What's the matter with it?"

"It looks kind of underweight," I said.

"You're underweight in the head," Ruthie said.

I said, very cynic-like, "Thank you. Thank you very much."

Ruthie, she and I didn't talk to each other again till morning.

Ruthie always gets up to make breakfast and drive me to the bus stop. I always wait till I have my shirt and necktie on before I shake her because she's already awake. But that morning I had to shake the stuffin's out of her. It made me kind of sore that she was sleeping so good - well, I mean - because I hadn't slept good - well, at all. I never sleep good when I'm sort of worried. But finally she opened her eyes.

I says to her, "You wanna get up? You wanna get up? You don't have to, you know."

"I know I don't," she says, cynic-like. But she got up anyway, fixed breakfast and drove me to the bus stop.

We didn't talk at all in the car. I mean we didn't say a word. I just said "So long" to her at the bus stop, then walked quick over to where Bob Moriarty was standing. Then I did something nuts. I slammed Moriarty on the back like he was my long-lost brother - and I can't even stand the guy! He's on fuselages with me, and he always slows down my output. How do you like that?

Boy, I put in a lousy day on the line. I slowed down Moriarty instead of the other way around. He started giving me the razz about it, and I nearly took a poke at him, except that Sidney Hoover was watching. Sidney Hoover's the foreman on fuselages.

Twice during lunch I went in the phone booth, but both times I hung up before I finished dialing our number. I don't know why. I mean, what'd I go in here for in the first place?

That night after work I was supposed to play basketball at the Y, but I only played the first half, then caught the bus. Ruthie wasn't there to meet me, I figured, because she thought I was going to play the whole game. I mean I didn't get sore or anything because she wasn't there. And, anyway, Joe and Rita Santine gave me a lift in their car, so I was all right.

When I got home, what do you think? Figure it out. Well, I'll tell you. Ruthie, she wasn't there. There was just this note on the table in the hall. I brought it in the living room with me. I didn't even take my hat off. And it was a funny thing. My hands were shaking like. I mean they were shaking.

The note, it said:

	Billy,

	I just don't see any use of our staying together. You don't seem to realize that we are supposed to grow out of certain things. We are supposed to get a new kind of fun. I don't know how to tell you what I mean. Anyway, there is no use hashing over it again, because you know how I feel, and it only makes you angry anyway. Please don't come around to Mother's. If you want to see the baby, please wait a while.

	Ruth

Well, I lit a cigarette and sat there for a long time in the chair we bought together at Louis B. Silverman's. That's the best store in town. Class. Then I started reading Ruthie's letter over and over again. Then I memorized it, really memorized it. Then I started to memorize it backwards, like this: while a wait please baby the see to want you If. Like that. Crazy. I was crazy. I still hadn't even took off my hat. Then all of a sudden Mrs. Widger, she came in.

She says, "Ruthie told me to fix your dinner. It's ready"

Boy, she was a cold number. How I hated her. I figured she put Ruthie up to leaving me.

"I don't want any dinner," I told her. "Go on home."

"It's a pleasure," she says. An A-No.-1 dame.

In a few minutes Widger slams the door and I'm alone. Boy, am I alone! I keep memorizing Ruthie's letter backwards, then I go out to the kitchen. I made myself a little sandwich, then I opened up our bottle of bourbon and brought it in the living room with me. With a glass. I kept thinking about how drunk Humphrey Bogart got in Casablanca when he was waiting for Ingrid Bergman to show up. Humphrey Bogart had that colored piano player, Sam, with him, and after I had a few drinks I began to make believe Sam was in the room with me. Boy, was I nuts!

"Sam," I said, making believe Sam was around, "play Moonlight Becomes You for me."

Then I was Sam too.

"Ah, ain't gonna play dat numbuh, boss," I said, making believe I was Sam. "That's yours and Ruthie's number." Boy, was I nuts!

"Play it Sam!" I yelled, making believe I was Humphrey Bogart. "Play it, Sam. While a wait please baby the see to want you If. Understand me, Sam? Got it?"

I got tired of that crazy stuff and went over to the phone and talked my ear off. "Well, Billy Vullmer! You sure are a stranger! And how's that darling little wife of yours, and that adorable little baby?" Boy, she can really bend an ear, that woman. She said Bud wasn't home. She said, "You know these bachelors." Then she laughed like a dope. I hung up. She was driving me crazy.

Boy, I spent the next four hours sitting in the Louis B. Silverman chair, getting drunk, making believe I was talking to Sam. I kept waiting for Ruthie to come in. Once I got up and went to the front door and yanked it open. Ruthie wasn't there, but I pretended she was. I mean I made believe she was out there.

I yelled, "It's all right! You can come in, Ruthie!"

Finally, I went back inside the house. I felt like crying, only I didn't of course. Then I went over to the phone and called Ruthie's house. The phone rang and rang, till I nearly went crazy, then Mrs. Cropper answered it. Boy, I hate to talk to her on the phone. She said Ruthie was asleep. But she wasn't, because Ruthie got on the phone. Ruthie, she and I chatted for a while like, I sort of asked her to come home. I told her I was home. She said she'd come home. She hung up and I hung up.

In a half-hour I heard her old man's car turn in our driveway, and I went to the window, Ruthie got out of the car, but she stood talking to her old man for an awful long time. Then all of a sudden she turned around and started coming towards the house. Her old man drove off.

Pretty soon she was inside, and she put her arms around me. She was crying to beat the band. I couldn't think of anything to say except "Ruthie, Ruthie." I kept saying that over and over again, like a dope. Then I sat down on the Louis B. Silverman chair - that's really a good chair - and she sat on my lap.

I told her I was sort of afraid she wasn't coming home. She didn't say anything. Her face was on my neck. When her face is on my neck, she never talks.

I says to her, "Where's the baby?" She didn't have it with her and it wasn't upstairs.

Ruthie, she says, "It was asleep. I didn't wanna wake it. Mother'll bring him over tomorrow."

"I was afraid you weren't coming home," I said.

Ruthie said her mother nearly killed her for coming home to see me. I didn't say anything. Then Ruthie said something funny:

"Mother answered the phone wearing her hair net," Ruthie said. "It got me down. I mean when I saw her looking so funny in her hair net again. I knew I wouldn't be any good at home anymore. I mean not any good at their home."

I asked her what she meant, but she said she didn't know what she meant. Funny kid.

It thundered and lighteninged that night real late. I woke up around three o'clock, and Ruthie, she wasn't there next to me. I kind of jumped out of bed sort of fast and walked downstairs. All the lights were on downstairs - all of 'em. Ruthie, she wasn't in the hall closet, she was in the kitchen. She had on her blue pajamas and those wooly slippers - strictly Ruthie - and she was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine; only she wasn't reading it, because she gets to scared to read. You haven't never seen my wife when she's got blue pajamas on or a blue dress of a blue bathing suit. I never knew what color stuff a girl had on before I knew Ruthie. But with Ruthie you know she's got something blue on.

Ruthie, she said she only came downstairs because she wanted a glass of milk.

Boy, what a lousy guy I am. You don't understand.

I said to her all of a sudden, just for the heck of it, how I kind of memorized her note backwards. The one she wrote me. I recited the whole thing backwards for her. I said to her, "while a wait please baby the see to want you If." I says to her, "That's it. That's it backwards."

Then - get this. I mean get this. Ruthie she started to cry! Then she said, "I don't care about anything now."

It was a funny thing to say. Ruthie, she says plenty of funny things. Funny kid. It's a good thing I know her inside and out. Sort of.

Then I said sort of, "Wake me when it thunders, Ruthie. Please. It's okay. I mean, wake me when it thunders."

That made her cry harder. Funny kid. But she wakes me now, that's what I mean. It's okay with me. I mean it's okay with me. I mean I don't care if it thunders every night.

9. SOFT-BOILED SERGEANT

JUANITA, she's always dragging me to a million movies, and we see these here shows all about war and stuff. You see a lot of real handsome guys always getting shot pretty neat, right where it don't spoil their looks none, and they always got plenty of time, before they croak, to give their love to some doll back home, with who, in the beginning of the pitcher, they had a real serious misunderstanding about what dress she should ought to wear to the college dance. Or the guy that's croaking nice and slow has got plenty of time to hand over the papers he captured off the enemy general or to explain what the whole pitcher's about in the first place. And meantime, all the other real handsome guys, His buddies, got plenty of time to watch the handsomest guy croak. Then you don't see no more, except you hear some guy with a bugle handy take time off to blow taps. Then you see the dead guy's home town, and around a million people, including the mayor and the dead guy's folks and his doll, and maybe the President, all around the guy's box, making speeches and wearing medals and looking spiffier in mourning duds than most folks so all dolled up for a party.

Juanita, she eats that stuff up. I tell her it sure is a nice way to croak; then she gets real sore and says she's never going to no show with me again; then next week we see the same show all over again, only the war's in Dutch Harbor this time instead of Guadalcanal. Juanita, she went home to San Antonio yesterday to show our kid's hives to her old lady - better than having the old lady jump in on us with eighty-five suitcases. But I told her about Burke just before she left. I wisht I hadn't of. Juanita, she ain't no ordinary dame. If she sees a dead rat laying in the road, she starts smacking you with her fists, like as if it was you that ran over it. So I'm sorry I told her about Burke, sort of. I just figured it'd stop her from making me to all them war movies all the time. But I'm sorry I told her. Juanita, she ain't no ordinary dame. Don't ever marry no ordinary dame. You can buy the ordinary dame a few beers, maybe trip the light fantastict with them, like that, but don't never marry them. Wait for the kind that starts smacking you with their fists when they see a dead rat laying in the road.

If I'm gonna tell you about Burke, I gotta go back a long ways, explain a couple of things, like. You ain't been married to me for twelve years and you don't know about Burke from the beginning.

I'm in the Army, see-

That ain't right. I'll start over, like.

You hear guys that come in on the draft kick about the Army, say how they wish they was out of it and back home, eating good chow again, sleeping in good bunks again - stuff like that. They don't mean no harm, but it ain't nice to hear. The chow ain't bad and there ain't nothing wrong with the bunks. When I first come in the Army, I hadn't eat in three days, and where I been sleeping - well, that don't matter.

I met more good guys in the Army than I ever knowed when I was a civilian. And I seen big things in the Army. I been married twelve years now, and I wisht I had a buck for every time I told my wife, Juanita, about something big I seen that's made her say, "That gives me goose pimples, Philly." Juanita, she gets goose pimples when you tell her about something big you seen- Don't marry no dame that don't get goose pimples when you tell her about something big you seen.

I come in the Army about four years after the last war ended. They got me down in my service record as being eighteen, but I was only sixteen.

I met Burke the first day I was in. He was a young guy then, maybe twenty-five, twenty- six, but he wasn't the kind of a guy that would of ever looked like a young guy. He was a real ugly guy, and real ugly guys don't never look very young or very old. Burke, he had bushy black hair that stood up like steel wool, like on his head. He had them funny, slopy-like, peewee shoulders, and his head was way too big for them- And he had real Barney Google goo-goo- googly eyes. But it was his voice that was craziest, like. There ain't no other voice like Burke's was. Get this: it was two-toned. Like a fancy whistle. I guess that's part why he never talked much.

But Burke, he could do things You take a real ugly guy, with a two-toned voice, with a head that's too big for their shoulders, with them goo-goo-googly eyes well, that's the kind of a guy that can do things- I've knowed lots of Handsome Harry's that wasn't so bad when the chips was down, but there never was one of them that could do the big things I'm talking about. If a Handsome Harry's hair ain't combed just right, or if he ain't heard from his girl lately, or if somebody ain't watching him at least part of the time, Harry ain't gonna put on such a good show. But a real ugly guy's just got himself from the beginning to the end, and when a guy's just got himself, and nobody's ever watching, some really big things can happen. In my whole life I only knowed one other guy beside Burke that could do the big things I'm talking about, and he was a ugly guy too. He was a little lop-eared tramp with TB on a freight car. He stopped two big gorillas from beating me up when I was thirteen years old - just by insulting them, like. He was like Burke, only not as good. It was part because he had TB and was almost dead that made him good. Burke, he was good when he was healthy like.

First off, maybe you wouldn't think what Burke done for me was the real big stuff. But maybe, too, you was never sixteen years old, like I was, sitting on a G.I. bunk in your long underwear, not knowing nobody, scared of all the big guys that walked up the barracks floor on their way to shave, looking like they was tough, without telling the way real tough guys look. That was a tough outfit, and you could take my word for it. Them boys was nearly all quite tough. I'd like to have a nickel for every shrapnel or mustard-scar that I seen on them boys. It was Capt. Dickie Pennington's old company during the war, and they was all regulars, and they wasn't busted up after the war, and they'd been in every dirty business in France.

So I sat there on my bunk, sixteen years old, in my long underwear, crying my eyes out because I didn't understand nothing, and those big, tough guys kept walking up and down the barracks floor swearing and talking to theirselves easy like. And so I sat there telling, in my long underwear, from five in the afternoon till seven that night. It wasn't that the guys didn't try to snap me out of it. They did. But, like I said, it's only a couple of guys in the world that really know how to do things.

Burke, he was a staff sergeant then, and in them days staffs only talked to other staffs. I mean staff-s except Burke. Because Burke come over to where I was sitting on my bunk, bawling my head off - but quiet like - and he stood over me for around twenty minutes, just watching me like, not saying nothing. Then he went away and come back again. I looked up at him a couple times and figured I seen about the ugliest looking guy I ever seen in my life. Even in uniform Burke was no beaut, but that first time I seen him he had on a fancy store bathrobe, and in the old Army only Burke could get away with that.

For a long time, Burke just stood there over me. Then, sudden like, he took something out of the pocket of his fancy store bathrobe and chucked it on my bunk. It chinked like it had dough in it, whatever it was. It was wrapped up in a handkerchief and it was about the size of a kid's fist.

I looked at it, and then up at Burke.

"Untie them ends and open it up," Burke says.

So I opened up the handkerchief. Inside it was a hunk of medals, all pinned together by the ribbons. There was a bunch of them, and they was the best ones. I mean the best ones.

"Put'em on," Burke says, in that cockeyed voice of his.

"What for?" I says.

"Just put'em on," Burke says. "You know what any of them are?"

One of them was loose and I had it in my hand. I knowed what it was all right. It was one of the best ones, all right.

"Sure," I says " I know this one. I knowed a guy that had this one. A cop in Seattle. He give me a handout."

Then I give Burke's whole bunch of medals the once-over. I seen most of them on guys somewheres.

"They all yours?" I says.

"Yeah," says Burke. "What's your name, Mac?"

"Philly," I says, "Philly Burns."

"My name's Burke," he says "Put them medals on, Philly." "On my underwear?" I says.

"Sure," says Burke.

So I done it. I untangled Burke's bunch of medals and pinned every one of them on my G.I. underwear. It was just like I got a order to so it. The googly-eyed guy with the cockeyed voice told me to. So I pinned them on - straight acrost my chest, and some of them right underneath. I didn't even know enough to put them on the left side. Right smack in the middle of my chest I put them. Then I looked down at them, and I remember a big, fat, kid's tear run out of my eye and splashed right on Burke's Crah de Gairry. I looked up at Burke, scared that maybe he'd get sore about it, but he just watched me. Burke, he really knowed how to do big things.

Then, when all Burke's medals was on my chest, I sat up a little off my bunk, and come down hard so that I bounced, and all Burke's medals chimed, like - like church bells, like. I never felt so good. Then I sort of looked up at Burke.

"You never seen Charlie Chaplin?" Burke says.

"I heard of him," I says. "He's in movie pitchers."

"Yeah," Burke says. Then he says, "Get dressed. Put your coat on over your medals."

"Just right over them, like?" I says.

And Burke says, "Sure. Just right over them."

I got up from my bunk with all them medals chiming, and I looked around for my pants. But I says to Burke, "I ain't got one of them passes to get out the gate. The fella in that little house said it wouldn't be wrote out for a couple days yet."

Burke says, "Get dressed, Mac."

So I got dressed and Burke got dressed. Then he went in the orderly room and come out in about two minutes with my name wrote out on a pass. Then we walked into town, me with Burke's medals chiming and clanking around under my blouse, me feeling like a hotshot, happy like. Know what I mean?

I wanted Burke to feel sort of happy like too. He didn't talk much. You couldn't never tell what he was thinking about. I called him "Mister" Burke most of the time. I didn't even know you was supposed to call him sergeant. But thinking it over, most of the time I didn't call him nothing; the way it is when you think a guy's really hot - you don't call him nothing, like as if you don't feel you should ought to get too clubby with him.

Burke, he took me to a restaurant. I eat everything like a horse, and Burke paid for the whole thing. He didn't eat nothing much.

I says to him, "You ain't eating nothing."

"I ain't hungry," Burke says. Then he says, "I keep thinking about this girl."

"What girl?" I says.

"This here girl I know," Burke says. "Got red hair. Don't wiggle much when she walks. Just kind of walks straight like."

He didn't make no sense to a sixteen-year old kid.

"She just got married," Burke says. Then he says, "I knowed her first though."

That didn't interest me none, so I goes on feeding my face.

After we eat - or after I eat - we went to the show. It was Charlie Chaplin like Burke said.

We went inside and the lights wasn't out yet, and when we was walking down the aisle Burke said "Hello" to somebody. It was a girl with red hair, and she said "Hello" back to Burke, and she was sitting with a fella in civvies. Then me and Burke sat down somewheres. I asked him if that was the redhead he was talking about when we was eating. Burke nodded like, and then the pitcher started.

I jiggled around in my seat the whole show, so's people would hear them medals clanking. Burke, he didn't stay for the whole show. About halfways through the Chaplin pitcher he says to me, "Stay and see it, Mac. I'll be outside."

When I come outside after the show I says to Burke, "What's the matter, Mr. Burke? Don't you like Charlie Chaplin none?" My sides was hurting from laughing at Charlie.

Burke says, "He's all right. Only I don't like no funny looking little guys always get chased by big guys. Never getting no girl, like. For keeps like."

Then me and Burke walked back to camp. You never knowed what kink of sadlike thoughts Burke was thinking while he walked, but all I was thinking was, Will he want these here medals back right away? I always have kind of wished that I would of knowed enough that night to say something nice like to Burke. I wisht I'd of told him that he was way better than that there redhead that he knowed first. Maybe not that, but I could of said something. Funny, ain't it? A guy like Burke could live a whole life being a great man, a really great man, and only about twenty or thirty guys, at most, probably knowed about it, and I bet there wasn't one of us that ever kinda tipped him off about it. And never no women. Maybe a coupla ordinary dames, but never the kind that don't wiggle when they walk, the kind that sort of walks straight like. Them kind of girls, the kind Burke really liked, was stopped by his face and that rotten joke of a voice of his. Ain't that nice?

When we got back to the barracks, Burke says, "You want to keep them medals a while, don't you, Mac?"

"Yeah," I says. "Could I?"

"Sure," says Burke. "You can keep'em if you want'em."

"Don't you want'em?" I says.

Burke says, "They don't look so good on me. Good night, Mac." Then he goes inside.

I sure was a kid. I wore them medals of Burke's on my G.I. underwear for three weeks straight. I even wore them when I washed up in the mornings. And none of them tough birds razzed me none. They was Burke's medals I had on. They didn't know what made Burke tick, but about sixty per cent of the guys in that outfit had been in France with Burke. If Burke had give me them medals to wear on my G.I.'s it was all right with them. So nobody laughed or give me the razz.

I only took them medals off to give them back to Burke. It was the day he was made first sergeant. He was sitting alone in the orderly room - the guy was always alone - at about half past eight at night. I went over to him and laid his medals down on the desk; they was all pinned together and wrapped in a handkerchief, like when he chucked them on my bunk.

But Burke, he didn't look up. He had a set of kid's crayons on his desk, and he was drawing a pitcher of a girl with red hair. Burke, he could draw real good.

"I don't need them no more," I says to him "Thanks."

"Okay, Mac," Burke says, and he picks up his crayon again. He was drawing the girl's hair. He just let his medals lay there.

I started to take off, but Burke calls me back, "Hey, Mac." He don't stop drawing though.

I comes back over to his desk.

"Tell me," Burke says. "Tell me if I'm wrong, like. When you was settin' on your bunk cryin' - "

"I wasn't crying," I says. (What a kid.)

"Okay. When you was settin' on your bunk laughin' your head off, was you thinking that you wanted to be laying on your back in a boxcar on a train that was stopped in a town, with the doors rolled open halfways and the sun in your face?"

"Kind of," I says. "How'd you know?"

"Mac, I ain't in this Army straight out of West Point," Burke says.

I didn't know what West Point was, so I just watched him draw the pitcher of the girl.

"That sure looks like her," I says.

"Yeah, don't it?" says Burke. Then he says, "Good night, Mac."

I started to leave again. Burke calls after me, like, "You're transferrin' out of here tomorrow, Mac. I'm getting you sent to the Air Corps. It's gonna be big stuff."

"Thanks," I says.

Burke, he gives me some last advice just as I goes out the door. "Grow up and don't cut nobody's throat," he says.

I shipped out of that outfit at ten o'clock the next morning, and I never saw Burke again in my whole life. All these years I just never met up with him. I didn't know how to write in them days. I mean I didn't write much in them days. And even if I would of knowed how, Burke wasn't the kind of guy you'd write to. He was too big, like. Too big for me, anyways.

I never even knowed Burke transferred to the Air Corps himself, if I hadn't of got this letter from Frankie Miklos. Frankie, he was at Pearl Harbor. He wrote me this letter. He wanted to tell me about this fella with this crazy voice - a master, Frankie said, with nine hash marks. Named Burke.

Burke, he's dead now. His number come up there at Pearl Harbor. Only it didn't exactly come up like other guy's numbers do. Burke put his own up. Frankie seen Burke put his own number up, and this here is what Frankie wrote me:

The Jap heavy stuff was coming over low, right over the barracks area, and dropping their load. And the light stuff was strafing the whole area. The barracks was no place to be safe like, and Frankie said the guys without no big guns was running and zigzagging for any kind of a halfways decent shelter. Frankie said you couldn't get away from the Zero's. They seemed to be hunting special - like for guys that was zigzagging down the streets for shelter- And the bombs kept dropping, too, Frankie said, and you thought you was going nuts.

Frankie and Burke and one other guy made it to the shelter okay. Frankie said that him and Burke was in the shelter for about ten minutes, then three other guys run in.

One of the guys that come in the shelter started telling about what he just seen. He seen three buck privates that just reported to the mess hall for K.P. lock theirselves in the big mess- hall refrigerator, thinking they was safe there.

Frankie said when the guy told that, Burke sudden - like got up and started slapping the guy's face around thirty times, asking him if he was nuts or something, leaving them guys in that there refrigerator. Burke said that was no safe place at all, that if the bombs didn't make no direct hit, the vibration like would kill them buck privates anyhow, on account of the refrigerator being all shut up like.

Then Burke beat it out of the shelter to get them guys out of the refrigerator.

Frankie said he tried to make Burke not go, but Burke started slapping his face real hard too.

Burke, he got them guys out of the refrigerator, but he got gunned by a Zero on the way, and when he finally got them refrigerator doors open and told them kids to get the hell out of there, he give up for good. Frankie said Burke had four holes between his shoulders, close together, like group shots, and Frankie said half of Burke's jaw was shot off.

He died all by himself, and he didn't have no messages to give to no girl or nobody, and there wasn't nobody throwing a big classy funeral for him here in the States, and no hot-shot bugler blowed taps for him.

The only funeral Burke got was when Juanita cried for him when I read her Frankie's letter and when I told her again what I knowed. Juanita she ain't no ordinary dame. Don't never marry no ordinary dame, bud. Get one that'll cry for a Burke.

10. LAST DAY OF THE LAST FURLOUGH

TECHNICAL SERGEANT John F. Gladwaller, Jr., ASN 32325200, had on a pair of gray- flannel slacks, a white shirt with the collar open, Argyle socks, brown brogues and a dark brown hat with a black band. He had his feet up on his desk, a pack of cigarettes within reach, and any minute his mother was coming in with a piece of chocolate cake and a glass of milk.

Books were all over the floor - opened books, closed books, best sellers, worst sellers, classic books, dated books, Christmas-present books, library books, borrowed books.

At the moment, the sergeant was at the studio of Mihailov, the painter, with Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky. A few minutes ago he had stood with Father Zossima and Alyosha Karamazov on the portico below the monastery. An hour ago he had crossed the great sad lawns belonging to Jay Gatsby, born James Gatz. Now the sergeant tried to go through Mihailov's studio quickly, to make time to stop at the corner of Fifth and 46th Street. He and a big cop named Ben Collins were expecting a girl named Edith Dole to drive by...There were so many people the sergeant wanted to see again, so many places worth -

"Here we are!" said his mother, coming in with the cake and milk.

Too late, he thought. Time's up. Maybe I can take them with me. Sir, I've brought my books. I won't shoot anybody just yet. You fellas go ahead. I'll wait here with the books.

"Oh, thanks, Mother," he said, coming out of Mihailov's studio. "That looks swell."

His mother set down the tray on his desk. "The milk is ice cold," she said, giving it a build-up, which always amused him. Then she sat down on the foot-stool by his chair, watching her son's face, watching his thin, familiar hand pick up the fork - watching, watching, loving.

He took a bite of the cake and washed it down with milk. It was ice cold. Not bad.

"Not bad," he commented.

"It's been on the ice since this morning," his mother said, happy with the negative compliment. "Dear, what time is the Corfield boy coming?"

"Caulfield. He's not a boy, Mother. He's twenty-nine. I'm going to meet the six-o'clock train. Do we have any gas?"

"No, don't believe so, but your father said to tell you that the coupons are in the compartment. There's enough for six gallons of gas, he said." Mrs. Gladwaller suddenly discovered the condition of the floor. "Babe, you will pick up those books before you go out, won't you?"

"M'm'm," said Babe unenthusiastically, with a mouthful of cake. He swallowed it and took another drink of milk - boy, it was cold. "What time's Mattie get out of school?" he asked.

"About three o'clock, I think. Oh, Babe, please call for her! She'll get such a kick out of it. In your uniform and all."

"Can't wear the uniform," Babe said, munching. "Gonna take the sled."

"The sled?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, goodness gracious! A twenty-four-year-old boy."

Babe stood up, picked up his glass and drank the last of the milk - the stuff was really cold. Then he side-stepped through his books on the floor, like a halfback in pseudo-slow motion, and went to his window. He raised it high.

"Babe, you'll catch your death of cold."

"Naa."

He scooped up a handful of snow from the sill and packed it into a ball; it was the right kind for packing, not too dry.

"You've been so sweet to Mattie," his mother remarked thoughtfully.

"Good kid," Babe said.

"What did the Corfield boy do before he was in the Army?"

"Caulfield. He directed three radio programs: I Am Lydia Moore, Quest for Life, and Marcia Steele, M.D."

"I listen to I Am Lydia Moore all the time," said Mrs. Gladwaller excitedly. "She's a girl veterinarian."

"He's a writer too."

"Oh, a writer! That's nice for you. Is he awfully sophisticated?"

The snowball in his hands was beginning to drip. Babe tossed it out the window. "He's a fine guy," he said. He has a kid brother in the Army who flunked out of a lot of schools. He talks about him a lot. Always pretending to pass him off as a nutty kid."

"Babe, close the window. Please," Mrs. Gladwaller said.

Babe closed the window and walked over to his closet. He opened it casually. All his suits were hung up, but he couldn't see them because they were enveloped in tar paper. He wondered if he would ever wear them again. Vanity, he thought, thy name is Gladwaller. All the girls on a million busses, on a million streets, at a million noisy parties, who had never seen him in that white coat Doc Weber and Mrs. Weber brought him from Bermuda. Even Frances had never seen it. He ought to have a chance to come in some room where she was, wearing that white coat. He always felt he looked so homely, that his nose was bigger and longer than ever, when he was around her. But that white coat. He'd have killed her in that white coat.

"I had your white coat cleaned and pressed before I put it away," his mother said, as though reading his thoughts - which irritated him slightly. He put on his navy-blue sleeveless sweater over his shirt, then his suede windbreaker. "Where's the sled, mom?" he asked.

"In the garage, I suppose," his mother said.

Babe walked past where she still sat on the footstool, where she still sat watching, loving. He slapped her gently on the upper arm.

"See ya later. Stay sober," he said. "Stay sober!"

Late in October you could window-write, and now, before November was through, Valdosta, New York, was white - tun-too-the-window white, take-a-deep-breath white, throw- your-books-in-the-hall-and-get-out-in-it white. But even so, when the school bell rang at three o'clock these afternoons the passionate few - all girls - stayed behind to hear adorable Miss Galtzer read another chapter of Wuthering Heights. So Babe sat on the sled, waiting. It was nearly three-thirty. C'mon out, Mattie, he thought. I don't have much time.

Abruptly, the big exit door swung open and about twelve or fourteen little girls pushed and shoved their way into the open air, chattering, yelling. Babe thought they hardly looked like an intellectual bunch. Maybe they didn't like Wuthering Heights. Maybe they were just bucking for rank, polishing apples. Not Mattie though. I'll bet she's nuts about it, Babe thought. I'll bet she wants Cathy to marry Heathcliff instead of Linton.

Then he saw Mattie, and she saw him at the same instant. When she saw him, her face lit up like nothing he ever saw before, and it was worth fifty wars. She ran over to him crazily in the knee-deep, virgin snow.

"Babe!" she said. "Gee!"

"Hiya, Mat. Hiya, kid," Babe said low and easy. "I thought maybe you'd like to go for a ride."

"Gee!"

"How was the book?" Babe asked.

"Good! Did you read it?"

"Yep."

"I want Cathy to marry Heathcliff. Not that other droop, Linton. He gives me a royal pain," Mattie said. "Gee! I didn't know you were coming! Did mamma tell you what time I got out?"

"Yes. Get on the sled and I'll give ya a ride."

"No. I'll walk with you."

Babe bent down and picked up the drag rope of the sled; then he walked through the snow toward the street, with Mattie beside him. The other kids, the rest of the Wuthering Heights crowd, stared. Babe thought, This is for me. I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. This is better than my books, this is better than Frances, this is better and bigger than myself. All right. Shoot me, all you sneaking Jap snipers that I've seen in the newsreels. Who cares?

They were in the street now. Babe took up the slack of the drag rope, attached it out of the way and straddled his sled.

"I'll get on first," he said. He got into position. "Okay. Get on my back, Mat."

"Not down Spring Street," Mattie said nervously. "Not down Spring Street, Babe." If you went down Spring Street you coasted right into Locust, and Locust was all full of cars and trucks.

Only the big, tough, dirty-words boys coasted down Spring. Bobby Earhardt was killed doing it last year, and his father picked him up and Mrs. Earhardt was crying and everything.

Babe aimed the nose of the sled down Spring and got ready. "Get on my back," he instructed Mattie again.

"Not down Spring. I can't go down Spring, Babe. How 'bout Randolph Avenue? Randolph is swell!"

"It's all right. I wouldn't kid you, Mattie. It's all right with me."

Mattie suddenly got on his back, pushing her books under her stomach.

"Ready?" said Babe.

She couldn't answer him.

"You're shaking," Babe said, finally aware.

"No."

"Yes! You're shaking. You don't have to go, Mattie."

"No, I'm not. Honest."

"Yes," said Babe. "You are. You can get up. It's all right. Get up, Mat."

"I'm okay!" Mattie said. "Honest I am, Babe. Honest! Look!"

"No. Get up, honey."

Mattie got up. Babe stood up, too, and banged the snow free from the runners of the sled.

"I'll go down Spring with you, Babe. Honest. I'll go down Spring with you," Mattie said anxiously.

"I know that," said her brother. "I know that." I'm happier than I ever was, he thought. "C'mon," he said. "Randolph is just as good. Better." He took her hand.

When Babe and Mattie got home, the door was opened for them by Corp. Vincent Caulfield in uniform. He was a pale young man with large ears and a blanched scar on his neck from a boyhood operation. He had a wonderful smile, which he used infrequently. "How do you do," he said, dead-pan, opening the door. "If you've come to read the gas meter, you two, you've come to the wrong house. We don't use gas. We burn the children for heat. Always have. Good day."

He started to close the door. Babe put his foot in the doorway, which his guest proceeded to kick violently.

"Ow! I thought you were coming on the six o'clock!"

Vincent opened the door. "Come in," he said. "There's a woman here who'll give you both a piece of leaden cake."

"Old Vincent!" Babe said, shaking his hand.

"Who's this?" asked Vincent, looking at Mattie, who looked slightly frightened.

"It's Matilda," he answered himself. "Matilda, there's no use in our waiting to get married. I've loved you ever since that night in Monte Carlo when you put your last diaper on Double-O. This war can't last - "

"Mattie," Babe said, grinning, "this is Vincent Caulfield."

"Hiya," said Mattie, with her mouth open.

Mrs. Gladwaller stood bewildered by the fireplace.

"I have a sister just your age," Vincent told Mattie. "She's not the beauty that you are, but she's probably far brighter."

"What's her grades?" Mattie demanded.

"Thirty in arithmetic, twenty in spelling, fifteen in history and zero in geography. She can't seem to bring her geography grades up with the others," Vincent said. Babe was very happy, listening to Vincent with Mattie. He'd known that Vincent would be nice with her.

"Those are terrible grades," Mattie said, giggling.

"All right, you're so smart," said Vincent. "If A has three apples, and B leaves at three o'clock, how long will it take C to row five thousand miles upstream, bounded on the north by Chile?...Don't tell her, sergeant. The child must learn to do things by herself."

"C'mon upstairs," Babe said, slapping him on the back. "Hiya, mom! He said your cake was leaden."

"He ate two pieces."

"Where're your bags?" Babe asked his guest.

"Upstairs, the pretties," said Vincent, following Babe up the stairs.

"I understand you're a writer, Vincent!" Mrs. Gladwaller called before they had reached the top.

Vincent leaned over the banister. "No, no. I'm an opera singer, Mrs. Gladwaller. I've brought all my music with me, you'll be glad to hear."

"Are you the guy that's in I Am Lydia Moore?" Mattie asked him.

"I am Lydia Moore. I've shaved off my mustache."

"How was New York, Vince?" Babe wanted to know, when they were relaxed in his room and smoking.

"Why are you in civilian clothes, sergeant?"

"Been indulging in athletics. I went sledding with Mattie. No kidding. How was New York?"

"No more horsecars. They've taken the horsecars off the streets since I enlisted." Vincent picked up a book from the floor and examined the cover. "Books," he said contemptuously. "I used to read 'em all. Standish, Alger, Nick Carter. Book learning never did me no good. Remember that, young feller."

"I will. For the last time, how was New York?"

"No good, sergeant. My brother Holden is missing. The letter came while I was home."

"No, Vincent!" Babe said, taking his feet off the desk.

"Yes," said Vincent. He pretended to look through the pages of the book in his hand. "I used to bump into him at the old Joe College Club on Eighteenth and Third in New York. A beer joint for college kids and prep school kids. I'd go there just looking for him, Christmas and Easter vacations when he was home. I'd drag my date through the joint, looking for him, and I'd find him way in the back. The noisiest, tightest kid in the place. He'd be drinking Scotch and every other kid in the place would be sticking to beer. I'd say to him, 'Are you okay, you moron? Do you wanna go home? Do you need any dough?' And he'd say, 'Naaa. Not me. Not me, Vince. Hiya boy. Hiya. Who's the babe' And I'd leave him there, but I'd worry about him because I remembered all the crazy, lost summertimes when the nut used to leave his trunks in a wet lump at the foot of the staircase instead of putting them on the line. I used to pick them up because he was me all over again." Vincent closed the book he was pretending to look through. With a circuslike flourish he took a nail file from his blouse pocket and started filing his nails. "Does your father send his guests away from the table if their nails aren't tidy?"

"Yes."

"What does he teach? You told me, but I forgot."

"Biology...How old was he, Vincent?"

"Twenty," Vincent said.

"Nine years younger than you," Babe calculated inanely. "Do your folks - I mean do your folks know you're going overseas next week?"

"No," said Vincent. "Yours?"

"No. I guess I'll have to tell them before the train leaves in the morning. I don't know how to tell mother. Her eyes fill up if somebody even mentions the word 'gun.'"

"Have you had fun, Babe?" Vincent asked seriously.

"Yes, a lot," Babe answered. "...The cigarettes are behind you."

Vincent reached for them. "Seen a lot of Frances?" he asked.

"Yes. She's wonderful, Vince. The folks don't like her, but she's wonderful for me."

"Maybe you should have married her," Vincent said. Then, sharply, "He wasn't even twenty, Babe. Not till next month. I want to kill so badly I can't sit still. Isn't that funny? I'm notoriously yellow. All my life I've even avoided fist fights, always getting out of them by talking fast. Now I want to shoot it out with people. What do you think of that?"

Babe said nothing for a minute. Then, "Did you have a good time - I mean till that letter came?"

"No. I haven't had a good time since I was twenty-five. I should have got married when I was twenty-five. I'm too old to make conversation at bars or neck in taxicabs with new girls."

"Did you see Helen at all?" Babe asked.

"No. I understand she and the gentleman she married are going to have a little stranger."

"Nice," said Babe dryly.

Vincent smiled. "It's good to see you, Babe. Thanks for asking me. G.I.'s - especially G.I.'s who are friends - belong together these days. It's no good being with civilians anymore. They don't know what we know and we're no longer used to what they know. It doesn't work out so hot."

Babe nodded and thoughtfully took a drag from his cigarette.

"I never really knew anything about friendship before I was in the Army. Did you, Vince?"

"Not a thing. It's the best thing there is. Just about."

Mrs. Gladwaller's voice shrilled up the stairs and into the room, "Babe! Your father's home! Dinner!"

The two soldiers stood up.

When the meal was over, Professor Gladwaller held forth at the dinner table. He had been in the "last one" and he was acquainting Vincent with some of the trials the men in the "last one" had undergone. Vincent, the son of an actor, listened with the competent expression of a good player on stage with the star. Babe sat back in his seat, staring at the glow of his cigarette, occasionally lifting his cup of coffee. Mrs. Gladwaller watched Babe, not listening to her husband, searching out her son's face, remembering it when it was round and pink, remembering the summer when it had started to get long and dark and intense. It was the best face, she thought. It wasn't handsome like his father's, but it was the best face in the family. Mattie was under the table, untying Vincent's shoes. He was holding his feet still, letting her, pretending not to notice.

"Cockroaches," said Professor Gladwaller impressively. "Everywhere you looked, cockroaches."

"Please, Jack," said Mrs. Gladwaller absently. "At the table."

"Everywhere you looked," her husband repeated. "Couldn't get rid of 'em."

"They must have been a nuisance," Vincent said.

Annoyed that Vincent had to make a series of perfunctory remarks to humor his father, Babe suddenly said, "Daddy, I don't mean to sound pontifical, but sometimes you talk about the last war - all you fellas do - as though it had been some kind of rugged, sordid game by which society of your day weeded out the men from the boys. I don't mean to be tiresome, but you men from the last war, you all agree that war is hell, but - I don't know - you all seem to think yourselves a little superior for having been participants in it. It seems to me that men in Germany who were in the last one probably talked the same way, or thought the same way, and when Hitler provoked this one, the younger generation in Germany were ready to prove themselves as good or better than their fathers." Babe paused, self-consciously. "I believe in this war. If I didn't, I would have gone to a conscientious objectors' camp and swung an ax for the duration. I believe in killing Nazis and Fascists and Japs, because there's no other way that I know of. But I believe, as I've never believed in anything else before, that it's the moral duty of all the men who have fought and will fight in this war to keep our mouths shut, once it's over, never again to mention it in any way. It's time we let the dead die in vain. It's never worked the other way, God knows." Babe clenched his left hand under the table. "But if we come back, if German men come back, if British men come back, and Japs, and French, and all the other men, all of us talking, writing, painting, making movies of heroism and cockroaches and foxholes and blood, then future generations will always be doomed to future Hitlers. It's never occurred to boys to have contempt for wars, to point to soldiers' pictures in history books, laughing at them. If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm."

Babe stopped talking, afraid that he had made a terrible fool of himself in front of his father and Vincent. His father and Vincent made no comment. Mattie suddenly came up from under the table, wriggled onto her chair, in cahoots with herself. Vincent moved his feet, looking at her accusingly. The laces of one shoe were tied to the laces of the other.

"You think I'm talking through my hat, Vincent?" Babe asked, rather shyly.

"Nope. But I think you ask too much of human nature."

Professor Gladwaller grinned. "I didn't mean to romanticize my cockroaches," he said.

He laughed and the others laughed with him, except Babe, who resented slightly that what he felt so deeply could be reduced to a humor.

Vincent looked at him, understanding that, liking his friend immensely.

"What I really want to know," Vincent said, "is who do I have a date with tonight. Whom."

"Jackie Benson," Babe answered.

"Oh, she's a lovely girl, Vincent," Mrs. Gladwaller said.

"The way you say it, Mrs. Gladwaller, I'm sure she's as homely as sin," Vincent said.

"No, she's lovely.... Isn't she, Babe?"

Babe nodded, still thinking of what he had said. He felt immature and a complete fool. He had been windy and trite.

"Oh, I remember the name now," Vincent recalled. "Isn't she one of your old flames?"

"Babe went with her for two years," Mrs. Gladwaller said fondly, possessively. "She's a
grand girl. You'll love her, Vincent."

"That'll be nice. I haven't been in love this week.... Who are you taking, Vincent, as if I didn't know."

Mrs. Gladwaller laughed and stood up.

The others stood up too.

"Somebody has tied my shoelaces together," Vincent announced. "Mrs. Gladwaller. At your age."

Mattie nearly had a fit. She slammed Vincent on the back, laughing till she was almost hysterical. Vincent watched her, dead-pan, and Babe came around the table, smiling again, picked up his sister and sat her high on his shoulder. He took off Mattie's shoes with his right hand and gave them to Vincent, who solemnly opened the side flaps of his blouse and put the shoes in his pockets. Mattie howled with laughter, and her brother set her down and walked into the living room.

He went to the window where his father was standing, and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's snowing again," he said to him.

Late at night, Babe couldn't sleep. He tossed and twisted in the dark, then suddenly relaxed, lying on his back. He had known how Vincent would react to Frances, but he had hoped that Vincent wouldn't say how he felt. What was the good of telling a guy what he knew anyway? But Vincent had said it. He had said it not thirty minutes ago, in this very room. "Boy, use your head," he had said. "Jackie is twice the girl Frances is. She runs rings around her. She's better-looking than Frances, she's warmer, she's smarter; she'll give you ten times the understanding that Frances would ever give you. Frances will give you nothing. And if ever a guy needed understanding, it's you, brother."

Brother. The "brother" had irritated Babe as much as anything. Even from Vincent.

He doesn't know, thought Babe, lying in the dark. He doesn't know what Frances does to me, what she's always done to me. I tell strangers about her. Coming home on the train, I told a strange G.I. about her. I've always done that. The more unrequited my love for her becomes, the longer I love her, the oftener I whip out my dumb heart like crazy X-ray pictures, the greater urge I have to trace the bruises: "Look, stranger, here is where I was seventeen and borrowed Joe Mackay's Ford and drove her up to Lake Womo for the day....Here, right here, is where she said what she said about big elephants and little elephants....Here, over here, is where I let her cheat Bunny Haggerty at gin rummy at Rye Beach; there was a heart in her diamond run, and she knew it....Here, ah, here, is where she yelled 'Babe!' when she saw me serve an ace to Bobby Teemers. I had to serve an ace to hear it, but when I heard it my heart - you can see it right here - flopped over, and it's never been the same since....And here - I hate it here - here is where I was twenty-one and I saw her in one of the booths at the drugstore with Waddell, and she was sliding her fingers back and forth through the knuckle grooves of his hand." He doesn't know what Frances does to me, Babe thought. She makes me miserable, she makes me feel rotten, she doesn't understand me - nearly all of the time. But some of the time, some of the time, she's the most wonderful girl in the world, and that's something nobody else is. Jackie never makes me miserable, but Jackie never really makes me anything. Jackie answers my letters the day she gets them. Frances takes anywhere from two weeks to two months, and sometimes never, and when she does, she never writes what I want to read. But I read her letters a hundred times and I only read Jackie's once. When I just see the handwriting on the envelope of Frances' letters - the silly, affected handwriting - I'm the happiest guy in the world.

I've been this way for seven years, Vincent. There are things you don't know. There are things you don't know, brother.

Babe rolled over on his left side and tried to sleep. He lay on his left side for ten minutes, then he rolled over on his right side. That was no good either. He got up. He walked around his room in the dark, tripped over a book, but finally found a cigarette and a match. He lighted up, inhaled till it almost hurt, and as he exhaled he knew there was something he wanted to tell Mattie. But what? He sat down on the edge of his bed and thought it out before he put on his robe.

"Mattie," he said silently to no one in the room, "You're a little girl. But nobody stays a little girl or a little boy long - take me, for instance. All of a sudden little girls wear lipstick, all of a sudden little boys shave and smoke. So it's a quick business, being a kid. Today you're ten years old, running to meet me in the snow, ready, so ready, to coast down Spring Street with me; tomorrow you'll be twenty, with guys sitting in the living room waiting to take you out. All of a sudden you'll have to tip porters, you'll worry about expensive clothes, meet girls for lunch, wonder why you can't find a guy who's right for you. And that's all as it should be. But my point, Mattie - if I have a point, Mattie - is this: kind of try to live up to the best that's in you. If you give your word to people, let them know that they're getting the word of the best. If you room with some dopey girl at college, try to make her less dopey. If you're standing outside a theater and some old gal comes up selling gum, give her a buck if you're got a buck - but only if you can do it without patronizing her. That's the trick, baby. I could tell you a lot, Mat, but I wouldn't be sure that I'm right. You're a little girl, but you understand me. You're going to be smart when you grow up. But if you can't be smart and a swell girl, too, then I don't want to see you grow up. Be a swell girl, Mat."

Babe stopped talking to no one in the room. He suddenly wanted to tell Mattie herself. He got up from the edge of his bed, put on his robe, sniped his cigarette in his ashtray and closed the door of the room behind him.

There was a hall light burning outside Mattie's room, and when Babe opened the door, the room was adequately lighted. He went over to her bed and sat on the edge of it. Her arm was outside the cover, and he rocked it back and forth gently, but strongly enough to wake her. She opened her eyes, startled, but the light in the room wasn't strong enough to hurt.

"Babe," she said.

"Hello, Mat," Babe said awkwardly. "What are ya doing?"

"Sleeping," said Mattie logically.

"I just wanted to talk to you," Babe said.

"What, Babe?"

"I just wanted to talk to you. I wanted to tell you to be a good girl."

"I will, Babe." She was awake now, listening to him.

"Good," said Babe heavily. "Okay. Go back to sleep."

He stood up, started to leave the room.

"Babe!"

"Sh-h-h!"

"You're going to war. I saw you. I saw you kick Vincent under the table once. When I
was tying his shoelaces. I saw you."

He went over to her and sat down on the edge of the bed again, his face serious. "Mattie, don't say anything to Mother," he told her.

"Babe, don't you get hurt! Don't you get hurt!"

"No. I won't, Mattie. I won't," Babe promised. "Mattie, listen. You mustn't tell Mother. Maybe I'll have a chance to tell her at the train. But don't you tell her, Mat."

"I won't. Babe! Don't you get hurt!"

"I won't, Mattie. I swear I won't. I'm lucky," Babe said. He bent over and kissed her good night. "Go back to sleep," he told her. And he left the room.

He went back to his own room, turned on his lights. Then he went to his window and stood there, smoking another cigarette. It was snowing hard again, big flakes that you couldn't really see till they popped big and wet against the windowpane. But the flakes would get drier before the night was over, and by morning the snow would be deep and good and fresh all over Valdosta.

This is my home, Babe thought. This is where I was a boy. This is where Mattie is growing up. This is where Mother used to play the piano. This is where Dad dubbed his tee shots. This is where Frances lives and brings me happiness in her way. But this is where Mattie is sleeping. No enemy is banging on our door, waking her up, frightening her. But it could happen if I don't go out and meet him with my gun. And I will, and I'll kill him. I'd like to come back too. It would be swell to come back. It would be -

Babe turned, wondering who it was.

"Come in," he said.

His mother came in, in her dressing gown. She came over to him, and he put his arm around her.

"Well, Mrs. Gladwaller," he said, pleased, "The etching department is right over - "

"Babe," his mother said, "You're going over, aren't you?

Babe said, "What makes you say that?"

"I can tell."

"Old Hawkshaw," Babe said, trying to be casual.

"I'm not worried," his mother said - calmly - which amazed Babe. "You'll do your job and you'll come back. I have a feeling."

"Do you, Mother?"

"Yes, I do, Babe."

"Good."

His mother kissed him and started to leave, turning at the door. "There's some cold chicken in the icebox. Why don't you wake Vincent, and you two go down to the kitchen?"

"Maybe I will," Babe said happily.

11. ONCE A WEEK WON'T KILL YOU

HE HAD a cigarette in his mouth while he packed, and his face squinted to avoid smoke in the eyes; so there was no way of telling by his expression if he was bored or apprehensive, annoyed or resigned. The young woman sitting in the big man's chair, looking like a guest, had her pretty face caught in a blotch of early morning sunshine; it did her no harm. But her arms were probably the best of her. They were brown and round and good.

"Sweetie," she said, "I don't see why Billy couldn't be doing all that. I mean."

"What?" said the young man. He had a thick, chain-smoker's voice.

"I mean I don't see why Billy couldn't be doing all that."

"He's too old," he answered. "How 'bout turning on the radio. There might be some canned music on at this time. Try 1010."

The young woman reached behind her, using the hand with the gold band wedding ring and on the little finger beside it the incredible emerald; she opened some white compartment doors, snapped something, turned something. She sat back and waited, and suddenly, without any pretext, she yawned. The young man glanced at her.

"What a horrible time to start, I mean," she said.

"I'll tell them," said the young man, examining a stack of folded handkerchiefs. "My wife says it's a horrible time to start out."

"Sweetie, I am going to miss you horribly."

"I'll miss you, too. I have more white handkerchiefs than this."

"I mean, I will," she said. It's all so stinking. I mean. And all"

"Well, that's that," said the young man, closing the valise. He lighted a cigarette, looked at the bed, and dropped himself on it....

Just as he stretched himself out the tubes of the radio were warmed, and a Sousa march, featuring what seemed to be an unlimited fife section, triumphed voluminously into the room. His wife swung back one of her marvelous arms and put a stop to it.

"There might have been something else on."

"Not at this crazy time."

The young man blew a faulty smoke ring at the ceiling.

"You didn't have to get up," he told her.

"I wanted to."

It had been three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics.

"Not get up!" she said.

"Try 570," he said. "There might be something there."

His wife tried the radio again, and they both waited, he closing his eyes. In a moment some reliable jazz came through.

"Do you have enough time to lay down like that? I mean."

"To lie down like that--yes. It's early."

His wife suddenly seemed to be struck with a rather serious conjecture. "I hope they put you in the Calvary. The Calvary's lovely," she said. "I'm mad about those little sword do-hickies they wear on their collars. And you love to ride and all."

"The Calvary," said the young man, with his eyes shut. "There's not much chance of that stuff. Everybody's going to the Infantry, these days."

"Horrible, Sweetie, I wish you'd phone that man with the thing on his face. The Colonel. The one at Phyll and Kenny's last week. In Intelligence and all. I mean you speak French and German and all. He'd certainly get you at least a commission. I mean you know how miserable you'll be just being a private or something. I mean you even hate to talk to people and everything."

"Please," he said. "Keep quiet about that. I told you about that. That commission business."

"Well, I hope at least they send you to London. I mean where there's some civilized people. Do you have Billy's APO number?"

"Yes," he lied.

His wife was making another apparently grave conjecture. "I'd love some material. Some tweed. Anything." Then, almost instantly, she yawned, and said the wrong thing: "Did you say good-by to your aunt?"

Her husband opened his eyes, sat up rather sharply, and swung his feet over to the floor. "Virginia. Listen. I didn't get a chance to finish last night," he said. "I want you to take her to the movies once a week."

"The movies?"

"It won't kill you," he said. "Once a week won't kill you."

"No, of course not, Sweetie, but--"

"No buts," he said. "Once a week won't kill you."

"Of course I'll take her, you crazy. I only meant--"

"It isn't too much to ask. She isn't young or anything any more."

"But Sweetie, I mean she's getting worse again. I mean she's so batty, she isn't even funny. I mean you're not in the house with her all day."

"Neither are you," he said. "And besides, she doesn't ever leave her rooms unless I take out somewhere or something." He leaned closer to her, almost sitting off the edge of the bed. "Virginia, once a week won't kill you. I'm not kidding."

"Of course, Sweetie. If that's what you want. I mean."

The young man stood up suddenly.

"Will you tell cook I'm ready for breakfast?" he asked, starting to leave for somewhere.

"Give us a teeny kiss first," she said. "You ole soldier boy."

He bent over and kissed her wonderful mouth and left the room.

He climbed a flight of wide, thickly carpeted steps, and at the top landing turned to his left. He rapper twice at the second door, on the outside of which was tacked a white, formal card from the old Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York: Please Do Not Disturb. There was a faded notation in ink, written in the margin of the card:

	Going to Liberty Bond Rally. Be back. Meet Tom for me in lobby at six. His left shoulder is higher than his right and he smokes a darling little pipe. Love, Me

The note was written to the young man's mother, and he had read it when he was a small boy, and a hundred times since, and he read it now: in March, 1944.

"Come in, come in!" called a busy voice. And the young man entered.

By the window, a very nice-looking woman in her early fifties sat at a fold-leg card table. She wore a charming beige morning gown, and on her feet a pair of extremely dirty white gym shoes. "Well, Dickie Camson," she said. "How did you ever get up so early, you lazy boy?"

"One of those things," said the young man, smiling easily. He kissed her on the cheek, and with one hand on the back of her chair casually examined the huge leather-bound book opened before her. "How's the collection coming?" he asked.

"Lovely. Simply lovely. "This book--you haven't seen it, you terrible boy--is brand new. Billy and Cook are going to save me all theirs, and you can save me all yours."

"Just cancelled American two-cent stamps, eh?" said the young man.

"Quite an idea." He looked around the room. "How's the radio going?" It was tuned to the same station he had had on downstairs.

"Lovely. I took the exercises this morning."

"Now, Aunt Rena, I asked you to stop taking those crazy exercises. I mean you'll strain yourself. I mean there's no sense to it."

"I like them," said his aunt firmly, turning the page in her album. "I like the music they play with them. All the old tunes. And it certainly doesn't seem fair to listen to the music and not take the exercises."

"It is fair. Now please cut it out. A little less integrity," her nephew said. He walked around the room a bit, then sat down heavily on the window seat. He looked out across the park, searching between the trees for the way to tell her he was leaving. He had wanted her to be the one woman in 1944 who did not have someone's hourglass to watch. Now he knew he had to give her his. A gift to the woman in the dirty white gym shoes. The woman with the cancelled American two-cent stamp collection. The woman who was his mother's sister, who had written notes to her in the margins of old Waldorf Please Do Not Disturb cards....Must she be told? Must she have his absurd, shiny little hourglass to watch?

"You look like your mother when you do that with your forehead. Yes. Just like her. Do you remember her at all, Richard?"

"Yes." He took his time. "She never used to walk. She always ran, and then she'd stop short in a room. And she always used to whistle through her teeth when she was drawing the blinds in my room. The same tune most of the time. It was always with me when I was a boy, but I forgot it as I grew older. Then in college--I had a roommate from Memphis, and he was playing some old phonographs some afternoon, some Bessie Smiths, some Tea Gardens, and one of the numbers nearly knocked me out. It was the tune Mother used to whistle through her teeth, all right. It was called I Can't Behave On Sundays 'Cause I'm Bad Seven Days a Week. A guy named Altrevi stepped on it when he was tight later on in the term, and I've never heard it since." He stopped. "That's about all I remember. Just dumb stuff."

"Do you remember how she looked?"

"No."

"She was quite a package." His aunt placed her chin in the cup of one of her thin, elegant hands. "Your father couldn't sit still, like a human being, in a room if your mother had left it. He'd just nod idiotically when someone talked to him, keeping those peculiar little eyes of his on the door she'd left by. He was a strange, rather rude little man. He did nothing with interest except make money and stare at your mother. And take your mother sailing in that weird boat he bought. He used to wear a funny little English sailor hat. He said it was his father's. Your mother used to hide it on the days she had to go sailing."

"It was all they found, wasn't it?" asked the young man. "That hat."

But his aunt's glance had fallen on her album page.

"Oh, here's a beauty," she said, and she held one of her stamps up to the daylight. "He has such a strong, bashed-nose face. Washington."

The young man got up from the window seat. "Virginia told Cook to fix breakfast. I'd better go downstairs," he said. But instead of leaving he walked over to his aunt's card table. "Aunt Rena," he said, "give me your attention a minute." His aunt's intelligent face turned up to him.

"Aunt--Uh--There's a war on. Uh--I mean you've seen it on the newsreels. I mean you've heard it on the radio and all, haven't you?"

"Certainly," she snorted.

"Well, I'm going. I have to go. I'm leaving this morning."

"I knew you'd have to," said his aunt, without panic, without bitter-sentimental reference to "the last one." She was wonderful, he thought. She was the sanest woman in the world.

The young man stood up, setting his hourglass flippantly on the table--the only way to do it. "Virginia'll come to see you a lot, Kiddo," he told her. "And she'll take you to the movies pretty often. There's an old W. C. Fields picture coming to the Sutton next week. You like Fields."

His aunt stood up, too, but moved briskly past him. "I have a letter of introduction for you," she announced. "To a friend of mine."

She was over at her writing desk now. She opened the topmost left-hand drawer, positively, and took out a white envelope. Then she went back to her stamp-album table again and casually handed the envelope to her nephew. "I didn't seal it," she said, "and you can read it if you like."

The young man looked at the envelope in his hand. It was addressed in his aunt's rather strong handwriting to a Lieutenant Thomas E. Cleve, Jr.

"He's a wonderful young man," said his aunt. "He's with the Sixty Ninth. He'll look after you, I'm not at all worried." She added impressively, "I knew this would happen two years ago, and immediately I thought of Tommy. He'll be marvelously considerate of you." She turned around, rather vaguely this time, and walked less briskly back to her writing desk. Again she opened a drawer. She took out a large, framed photograph of a young man in the high-collared, 1917 uniform of a second lieutenant.

She moved unsteadily back to her nephew, holding the picture out for him to see. "This is his picture," she informed him, "This is Tom Cleve's picture."

"I have to go now, Aunt," the young man said. "Good-by. You won't need anything. I mean you won't need anything. I'll write you."

"Good-by, my dear, dear boy," his aunt said, kissing him. "You find Tom Cleve now. He'll look after you, till you get settled and all."

"Yes. Good-by."

His aunt said absently, "Good-by, my darling boy."

"Good-by." He left the room and nearly stumbled down the stairs.

At the lower landing he took the envelope, tore it in halves, quarters, then eighths. He didn't seem to know what to do with the wad, so he jammed it into his trouser pocket.

"Sweetie. Everything's cold. Your eggs and all."

"You can take her to the movies once a week," he said. "It won't kill you."

"Who said it would? Did I ever once say it would?"

"No." He walked into the dining room.

PART II: http://pastebin.com/GD8Nf94q