It was fine, peaceful, beautiful thought and I took my eyes off the green below and lay back in my swivel chair, with my heels on the desk, and shut my eyes and thought of swooping down and bursting through the green to the sudden green quietness inside. I lay back with my eyes closed and listen to the electric fan, which was humming like a dream, and could almost feel the wonderful swoop and then the poise inside. It was a fine idea. If you had wings.
Then I heard the racket outside in the reception room, and opened my eyes. Somebody had slammed a door. Then I caught the whir of a passage and Sadie Burke swung into my ken, making a great curve through my open door, and, all in one motion, slamming it behind her and charging on my direction. She stood in front of my desk and fought for air enough to say what she had to say.
It was just like old times. I hadn’t seen her worked up that much since the morning when she had found out about the Nordic Nymph who had skated her way into the Boss’s bed up in Chicago a long time back. That morning she had exploded out of the Boss’s door, and had described a parabola into my office, with her black chopped-off hair wild and her face like a riddled plaster-of-Paris mask of Medusa except for the hot bituminous eyes, which were in full blaze with a bellows pumping the flame.
Well, since that morning there had, no doubt, been plenty of occasions when Sadie and the Boss had not exactly eye to eye. The Boss had had everything from the Nordic Nymph to the household-hints columnist on the Chronicle_ in his life, and Sadie hadn’t been exactly condoning–for Sadie did not have a condoning nature–but a peculiar accommodation had finally been reached. “Damn him,” Sadie had said to me, “let him have his sluts, let him have them. But he’ll always come back to me. He knows he can’t get along without me. He knows he can’t.” And she had added grimly, “And he better not try.” So, with her fury and her God-damns _and her satire and her tongue-lashing–and she had a tongue like a cat-o’-nine-tails–and even with her rare bursts of dry-eyed grief, she seemed to take a kind of pleasure, wry and twisted enough God knows, in watching the development of the pattern in each new-old case, in watching the slut get bounced and the Boss come back to stand before her, grinning and heavy and sure and patient, to take his tongue-lashing. A long time back she herself had probably ceased to believe in the tongue-lashing or even to think what she was saying. The juicy epithets had long since lost their fine savor and a strident mechanical quality had crept into the rendering of the scene. Like a stuck phonograph record or a chicken-hungry preacher getting over the doxology. The word came but her mind wasn’t on them.
But it was different that fine May morning. It was like old times, all right, with her bosom heaving and the needle of the steam gauge pricking deep into the red on the dial. Then she blew the plug.
“He’s done it,” she blew, “he’s done it again–and I swear–”
“Done what?” I demanded, though I knew perfectly well what he had done. He had another slut.
“He’s two-timing me,” she said.
I lay back in my swivel chair and looked at her. The bright morning light was hitting her face square and without pity, but her eyes were magnificent.
“The bastard,” she said, “he’s two-timing me!”
“Now, Sadie,” I said, lying back in my chair and sighting at her over the toes of my shoes crossed on the desk, “we went into that arithmetic a long time back. He’s not two-timing you. He’s two-timing Lucy. He may be one-timing you, or four-timing you. But it can’t be two-timing.” I was watching her eyes, and just saying that to see if it was possible to put a little more snap into them. It was.
For she said, “You–you–” Then words failed her.
“Me what?” I defended myself.
“You–you and your high-toned friends–what do they know–what do they know about anything–and you’ve got to mix them in.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I may not be high-toned and maybe I live in a shack but it hadn’t been for me he wouldn’t be Governor this minute and he knows it and she better not get gay, for high-toned or not, I’ll show her. By God, I’ll show her!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” she affirmed, and leaned over the desk top toward me, shaking her finger at me, “and you sit there and smile that way and think you are so high-toned. If you were a man you’d get up and go in there and knock hell out of him. I thought she was yours. Or maybe he’s fixed you up, too. Maybe he’s fixed you up like he fixed up that doctor.” She leaned farther toward me. “Maybe he’s making you director of a hospital. Yeah, what’s he making you director of?”
Under the flood of words and the savage finger and the snapping eyes, I jerked myself forward, dropped my feet to the floor with a crash, and lunged up to stand before her, while the blood pounded in my head to make me dizzy, as it does when you rise suddenly, and little red flecks danced before me and the words kept on. Then the words stopped on her question.
“Are you saying,” I began firmly, “that–that–” I had been about to pronounce the name of Anne Stanton, for the name itself had been quite clearly in my mind, as though spelled out on a billboard, but all at once the name stuck in my throat and with surprise I discovered that I could not say it. So I continued, “–that she–she–”
But Sadie Burke was looking straight into my mind–at least, I had that feeling–and quick as a boxer she jabbed that name at me, “Yeah, she, she, that Stanton girl, Anne Stanton!”
I looked at Sadie in the face for a moment and felt so sorry for her I could cry. That was what surprised me. I felt so sorry for Sadie. Then I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t even feel sorry for myself. I felt as wooden as a wooden Indian, and I remember being surprised to discovered that my legs worked perfectly even if they were wooden, and were walking directly toward the hatrack, where my right arm, even if it was wooden, reached out to pick up the old Panama which hung there and put it on my head, and my legs then walked straight out the door and across the long reception room over the carpet which was deep and soft as the turf of a shaven lawn in spring and walked on out the door across the ringing marble slabs.
And out into a world which seemed bigger than it had ever seemed before. It seemed forever down the length of white, sun-glittering concrete which curled and swooped among the bronze statues and brilliant flower beds shaped like stars and crescents, and forever across the green lawn to the great swollen bulbs of green which were the trees, and forever up into the sky, where the sun poured down billows and surges of heat like crystalline lava to engulf you, for the last breath of spring was gone now and gone for good, the fine, big-breasted girl popping the calico, with the face like peaches and cream and the tiny, dewy drop of perspiration at the edge of the tow head of hair, she was gone for good, too, and everything from now on out was bone and gristle and the hag face like a rusty brush hook, and green scum on the shrunk pool around which the exposed earth cracks and scales like a gray scab.
It was a source of perpetual surprise to find how well the legs worked carrying me down the white concrete of the drive, and how even if it was forever down the drive and past the trees I was finally past them and moving down the street as though sustained in a runnel of crystalline lava. I looked with the greatest curiosity at the faces which I saw but found nothing beautiful or remarkable in then and was not assured of their reality. For it takes the greatest effort to believe in their reality and to believe in their reality you must believe in your own, but to believe in your own you must believe in theirs, but to believe in theirs you must believe in your own–one-two, one-two, one-two, like feet marching. But if you have no feet to march with. Or if they are wooden. But I looked down at them and they were marching, one-two, one-two.
They march a long time. But at the end of forever they brought me to a door. Then the door opened, and there, with the cool, white-shadowy room behind her, wearing a pale-blue, cool-crisp linen dress, her bare white long small arms hanging straight
down against the pale blue, was Anne Stanton. I knew that it was Anne Stanton, though I had not looked into her face. I had looked into the other faces–all the faces I had met–I had looked into them with the greatest frankness and curiosity. But now I did not look into hers.
Then I looked into her face. She met my gaze quite steadily. I did not say anything. And I did not need to. For, looking and me, she slowly nodded._
Chapter Seven
After my visit to Anne Stanton’s apartment that morning in late May, I was out of town for a while, about eight days. I left her apartment that morning and went down to the bank and drew out some money and got my car out of the garage and packed a bag and was headed out. I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool which seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered_. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.
It was just where I went.
The second day I was in Texas. I was traveling through the part where the flat-footed, bilious, frog-sticker-toting Baptist biscuit-eaters live. Then I was traveling through the part where the crook-legged, high-heeled, gun-wearing, spick-killing, callous-rumped sons of the range live and crowd the drugstore on Saturday night and then all go round the corner to see episode three of “Vengeance on Vinegar Creek,” starring Gene Autry as Borax Pete. But over both parts, the sky was tall hot brass by day and black velvet by night, and Coca Cola is all a man needs to live on. Then I was traveling through New Mexico, which is a land of total and magnificent emptiness with a little white filling station flung down on the sand like a sun-bleached cow skull by the trail, with far to the north a valiant remnant of the heroes of the Battle of Montmartre in a last bivouac wearing huaraches and hammered silver and trying to strike up conversations with Hopis on street corners. Then Arizona, which is grandeur and the slow incredulous stare of sheep, until you hit the Mojave. You cross the Mojave at night and even at night your breath rasps your gullet as though you were a sword swallower who had got hold of a hack-saw blade by mistake, and in the darkness the hunched rock and towering cactus loom at you with the shapes of a visceral, Freudian nightmare.
Then California.
Then Long Beach, which is the essence of California. I know because I have never seen any of California except Long Beach and so am not distracted by competing claims. I was in Long Beach thirty-six hours, and spent all of that time in a hotel room, except for forty minutes in a barbershop off the lobby of the hotel.
I had had a puncture in the morning and so didn’t hit Long Beach till about evening. I drank a mild shake, bought a bottle of bourbon, and went up to my room. I hadn’t had a drop the whole trip. I hadn’t wanted a drop. I hadn’t wanted anything, except the hum of the motor and the lull of the car and I had had that. But now I knew that if I didn’t drink that bourbon, as soon as I shut my eyes to go to sleep the whole hot and heaving continent would begin charging at me out of the dark. So I took some, took a bath, and then lay on the bed, with my light off, watching the neon sign across the street flare on and off to the time of my heartbeat, and drinking out of the bottle, which, between times, I set on the floor by the bed.
I got a good sleep out of it. I didn’t wake up till noon the next day. Then I had breakfast sent up and a pile of newspapers, for it was Sunday. I read the papers, which proved that California was just like any place else, or wanted to think the same things about itself, and then I listened to the radio till the neon sign began to flare on and off again to the time of my heartbeat, and then I ordered up some food, ate it, and put myself to sleep again.
The next morning I headed back.
I was headed back and was no longer remembering the things which I had remembered coming out.
For example. But I cannot give you an example. It was not so much any one example, any one event, which I recollected which was important, but the flow, the texture of the events, for meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event. Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself. The meaning. But we cannot do that. For it is the motion which is important. And I was moving. I was moving West at seventy-five miles an hour, through a blur of million-dollar landscape and heroic history, and I was moving back through time into my memory. They say the drowning man relives his life as he drowns. Well, I was not drowning in water, but I was drowning in West. I drowned westward through the hot brass days and black velvet nights. It took me seventy-eight hours to drown. For my body to sink down to the very bottom of West and lie in the motionless ooze of History, naked on a hotel bed in Long Beach, California.
To the hum and lull of the car the past unrolled in my head like a film. It was like a showing of a family movie, the kind the advertisements tell you to keep so that you will have a record of the day Susie took her first little toddle and the day Johnny went off to kindergarten and the day you went up Pike’ Peak and the day of the picnic on the old home farm and the day you were made chief sales manager and bought your first Buick. The picture on the advertisement always shows a dignified, gray-haired, kindly old gent, the kind you find on the whisky ad (or a gray-haired, kindly, sweet-faced old biddy), looking at the home movie and dreaming gently back over the years. Well, I was not gray-haired or dignified or kindly or sweet-faced, but I did have a showing of my home movie and dreamed gently back over the years. Therefore, if you have any home movies, I earnestly advise you to burn them and to be baptized to get born again.
I dreamed gently back over the years. And the stocky man with the black coat and spectacles leaned over me as I sat with my colored crayons on the rug before the fire and he held me the candy and said, “Just one bite, now, for supper’s almost ready.” And the woman with the pale hair and the blue eyes and the famished cheeks leaned over me and kissed me good night and left the sweet smell in the dark after the light was out. And Judge Irwin leaned at me in the gray dawn light, saying, “You ought to have led that duck more, Jack. You got to lead a duck, son,” And Count Covelli sat straight in an expensive chair in the long white room and smiled from under clipped black mustache and in one hand–the smallish, strong hand which could make a man wince at its clasp–held the glass and with the other stroked the big cat on his knee. And there was the Young Executive with his hair laid on his round skull like taffy. And Adam Stanton and I drifted in the yawl, far out, while the white sails hung limp in the breathless air and the sea was like a hot glass and the sun burned like a barn on the western horizon. And always there was Anne Stanton.
Little girls wear white dresses with skirts that flare out to show their funny little knees, and they wear round-toed black patent-leather slippers held by a one-button strap, and their white socks are held up by a dab of soap, and their hair hangs down the back in braid with a blue ribbon on it. That was Anne Stanton and it was Sunday and she was going to church to sit still as a mouse and rub her tonguetip pensively at the place where she had just lost the tooth. And little girls sit on hassocks and lean their cheeks pensively against the dear father’s knee while his hand toys with the silken locks and his voice reads beautiful words. That was Anne Stanton. And little girls are fraidy-cats and try the surf with one toe that first day in spring, and when the surf makes a surprising leap and splashes th
eir thigh with the tingle and cold they squeal and jump up and down on thin little legs like stilts. That was Anne Stanton. Little girls get a smudge of soot on the end of the nose when they roast wieners over the campfire and you–for you are a big boy and do not get soot on your nose–point your finger and sing, “Dirty-Face, Dirty-Face, you are so dirty you are a disgrace!” And then one day when you sing it, the little girl doesn’t say a thing back the way she always had, but turns her big eyes on you, out of the thin little smooth face, and her lips quiver an instant so that you think she might cry even tough she is too big for that now, and as the eyes keep fixed o you, the grin dries up on your face and you turn quickly away and pretend to be getting some more wood. That was Anne Stanton.