I don’t know if it was an hour later, or how long, that I looked out to sea, and into the silver path to the moon, and knew if the moth would fly across it, I could watch it, and love it, and not have things happen inside. I knew it was the most beautiful moment of my life. She was lying close to me, her cheek under mine, her nose against my neck, when I raised up and spoke to her. “Lieutenant—”
“Yes?”
“Isn’t it time we told names?”
She raised up and stared at me, a look of horror in her eyes. Then she jumped up and went off. I lay there a minute, wondering what the trouble was. Then I got up, felt around for my barracks cap and started after her. By then she’d put on her shoes, and was on the road, running back, toward town. I tried to run, but kept slipping back in the sand. Then I remembered the car. I ran back to it, got in, and started the motor. But when I shot power to the wheels they spun in the sand. By then I could barely see her. I jumped out and cut beach grass, with my knife. When I had a little pile I jammed it under one wheel and tried again. The car gave a jerk and I rolled on to the road. I raced along, trying to spot her, and couldn’t. Two or three hundred yards away, I saw a bus stop, take somebody on, and go off. I overtook it. Every time it would stop, I’d be right behind, watching who got off. Pretty soon I could see inside of it, ahead of me, on the bridge. It was empty.
I went back to the island and drove all around. Next day I went down to Savannah and asked, and the day after that called Miami, anything to find her. So that’s what I was doing when I got this wire from Sheila. And that, once I’d answered, was what I kept right on doing.
1945 NOV 9 AM 11 51
MAJ JOHN DILLON
HOTEL TIMROD
CHARLESTON SC
SHEILA HAS JUST SHOWN ME YOUR TELEGRAM WHICH WAS FIRST I KNEW SHE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH YOU MY HEART IS ACTING BADLY SO WOULD BE GRATEFUL IF YOU WOULD ACCEPT MY INVITATION TO VISIT ME WHICH AM NOW IN POSITION TO EXTEND IF IT WOULD NOT BE TOO UTTERLY UTTERLY TIRESOME TO YOU
PATRICK DILLON
29
IT WAS ONE OF those yellow November days that they have in Maryland, when I got there, with red and brown and spotty green leaves still hanging to the trees, and the air clear but everything damp. I had spent the night in Richmond, then got going early, so I rolled up the terrace a little after noon. I had a look at the new statue to Martin Luther they’d put up in the park since I left, took a turn up the street, so as to park in front of the house, got out and went up there. I had my thumb on the bell, then figured a minute, my heart beating fast, and decided it would be friendlier to use my key, which I still had. Then Sheila opened the door. I caught her in my arms, and held her tight, while she cried. Then Nancy was there, and I hugged her too. I kissed and patted them both, and noticed how gray they’d got. Then they took me back to the den, and I was shaking hands with my father, who was in a wheel chair. His color was a little queer, pink in the cheeks but white around the eyes, but outside of that he looked all right. He asked about my trip and I told about the stopover in Richmond at the John Marshall Hotel, and my aunts said I was lucky to get in there at all, the way things were now. Then he and I were alone. We were alone, that is, except for the silence that came in, parked its hat, and sat down with us. After a long time he asked: “Well Jack, how have you been?”
“Oh, can’t complain. And you?”
“I could complain, but—”
“Then hell, complain!”
“At any rate it’s a disease that’s enjoyed sitting up, not lying down, which is something. And what have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, this and that.”
That wound it up for a while. Then he said: “And them and those?” I didn’t connect, and he looked away quick. “Just injecting a little lubricant into a conversation otherwise a little creaky. Perhaps the quip limped, but the intention was amiable.”
Sometimes, when he went into his Derry brogue and used grammar in the grand style that only an Irishman seems capable of, it brought a lump to my throat, and one came there now. I began to talk about Charleston, the Timrod, the poet it was named after, the Civil War, anything, so it made words. It was chatter, but seemed to please him. “Are those major’s leaves on your shoulder, Jack?”
“Yeah, dime a dozen.”
“However, Anderson was a major.”
“... Who?”
“The commander you were talking about.”
“Oh, at Sumter.”
“He presided at one of the epic moments of history, and every detail of his conduct shows he knew it for such, and yet he was a major—a dime a dozen, as you say. In those days they had different ideas about rank. Where did you serve?”
“France.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Target.”
“You were in action?”
“These rifles on my collar mean infantry.”
“I don’t see well any more.”
But he was looking at my chest, where there wasn’t any fruit salad, as I didn’t wear it. I opened my brief case and got out the little leather box and handed over my ribbons. They were just routine, as I’d never been cited. The Purple Heart he looked at quite a while. “What was the wound, Jack?”
“Slug in the leg.”
“Where was this acquired?”
“Normandy.”
“You were with Patton?”
“No, Wyche was our guy. That made it easy for the guardhouse poets. Cross of Lorraine Division, we called ourselves.” I showed him our shoulder patch, the gray Lorraine Cross on a blue field. He asked if it wasn’t the same as de Gaulle’s emblem, and I said it was. Then I got out a brochure somebody had lent me in Charleston, that had been printed in 1919, to explain to the boys about the insignia, so they’d understand what it meant. “Though, the way I heard it, the cross wasn’t picked on account of the ideals it represented, but because General Kuhn happened to see it on a beer-bottle top in Bar-le-Duc one night, and decided it was what the outfit needed. Until then they had been the Joan of Arc Division, and Miss Geraldine Farrar had agreed to break a bottle over their heads. But all that was while the General was away in France, observing how things were done before the division was sent over, and it so happened that Miss Farrar was to do her stuff the night he got home. He raised hell, and stopped it. Nobody had told the division yet that to the French Miss Arc was a saint, and he figured they might not like it to see her picture on every doughboy’s shoulder. So they went across without having any insignia, until he had this inspiration, which to my mind hit the spot in a very noble way.”
“I’d have given five dollars, cash of the realm, to have heard the remarks of Miss Geraldine Farrar on this highly interesting occasion. In fact, had I been the General, I’d have taken my chances with the French.”
“Little temperamental, hey?”
“Some girl.”
He glanced through the brochure, then wanted to know more about my wound. I told him it was above the knee, on the outside, and had required plenty of surgery, massage, and heat. “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I wanted to say more, but nothing would come out of my mouth. He closed his eyes for a while, then said: “Jack, I’m going to die.”
“Hey, quit talking like that!”
“I have angina pectoris, which in Latin means agony of the chest, the most painful way in nature that a man can go. That I can face, or hope I can. But—I ruined my life.”
“I wouldn’t say so.”
“There were those who could have said it.”
“Did they?”
“If they didn’t, they forebore.”
“Are you talking about my mother?”
“I’m talking about a good many things, some of them hard to talk about, some of them hidden and obscure and shameful, almost impossible to talk about. I’m trying to say, what I’ve done to my life I don’t want you to do to yours.”
“Oh well, I probably have.”
“Wh
at are you talking about? It’s hardly begun.”
“It’s half lived. I’m thirty-five.”
“It’s a matter of youth, and it’s in your eye. Your face is battered and seamed and hurt, but the look of a boy is still on it.”
“I interrupted you.”
“There are things I want to tell you.”
“O.K., shoot.”
“... Jack, I can’t talk to the man who says: ‘O.K., shoot,’ and he doesn’t want to talk to me. Why deceive ourselves? Your tongue is as paralyzed as mine. We live under the curse of the inarticulate, some horrible murky screen that’s always been between us. Think of it, it’s thirteen years this fall, since you left this house, and yet, when I ask what you’ve been doing, you tell me ‘this and that.’”
“I’ve been doing a lot of things.”
“I know, lots and lots.”
“Some things I’m not proud of.”
“I know of them.”
“... What do you mean, you know of them?”
“Rumors reached me.”
“Rumors?”
“Let us say, inquiries.”
I don’t know how long I sat there, blinking at him, but after a while I said: “All right, I had some trouble with the police. Just once, on mistaken identification. You bat around like I did, you can have. What did they ask you about me?”
“When you went into the Army, telegrams were sent me, and I answered them. I’m not interested in your police record. I’ve one of my own, it may surprise you to learn. I got into a brawl on O’Connell Street one night, and before I was done with it they had me in Dublin Castle and some filthy jail, and it was days before I was done with it, and was out. It’s not important, and it’s been years since I thought of it. But the frilled shirt on the statue of George III, but a few blocks up the street, in the old Grattan’s Parliament Room of the Bank of Ireland, that’s important, and it’s of such things I’d like to talk to you about. Think of it, every thread, every knot, every flower, is hewn from the virgin marble, with the light showing through every tiny opening, and one mislick with a tool could have ruined it. John Bacon spent years on it, and even then died before it was done, and his son, John Bacon, Jr., had to finish it. It’s a trivial conception, like engraving the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, and yet it represents one man’s consecration, and a second man’s acceptance of it, to an ideal, and has sustained me at times when I thought about it. I’m not talking of jails, or police, or incidental things. I’m talking of fundamentals, of what men believe in, and dedicate their lives to, of what your heart dreams of, and may yet have, and what mine wanted, and lost.”
“Threw away, I’ve heard said.”
“Aye.”
That had slipped out on me, but the quick way he agreed to it set me back on my heels, and for some time nothing was said. Then: “You did big things, Jack—or so I was told.”
“Anyhow, I was proud of them.”
“Are you still?”
“I don’t know. They’re a closed chapter.”
“But they were big?”
“The blues were a million dollars. I call that big.”
“And I. If for no other reason, I can understand that you were proud. The man doesn’t live, though he damn it and denounce it, who doesn’t think a million dollars is a matter for pride, and I agree with Julius Caesar, who once boasted he lacked fifteen million sesterces of having nothing at all, that even such a debt is something in the nature of an accomplishment. I now make you an overture. I should like to hear more about it.”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Why not, if the ice is broken?”
“I’ve no gift for words, Dad. I’d tell the brawl on O’Connell Street and leave out the statue of George III. I’d tell the what, and leave out the why.”
“I’ve had similar trouble, trying to piece together what happened to me. Because on the face of it I was a fool, as were Brutus, Columbus, Burr, Davis, Bryan, and all the misfits of history. And yet when somebody takes one of these, an Othello, a Macbeth, a Hamlet, a George III if you like, and carves a little deeper than the world’s eye sees, he achieves something not possible with heroes. I believe it to be no accident, Jack, that the world’s great literature is peopled by a swarm and rabble and motley of a hundred-per-cent heels.”
“I should fascinate.”
“And I.”
The flicker of a smile passed between us, one of the few we’d ever had. He said: “And Jack, these medals didn’t come by cultivating the colonel’s good regards. You’ve been places only a brave man would venture into.”
“Who’s brave? If you’re really brave you’re a fool. If you’re not you’re a fake. I’ve saluted brave men, but they were dead.”
“There was a battle once, Jack, in what this country calls the Revolutionary War, fought in the South, at a place called the Pens, or Cowpens, as the town is now named. It’s lovingly studied by the military men, as General Daniel Morgan, the American, defeated General Banastre Tarleton, the Englishman, in a battle of decisive consequence. The point of interest is that Morgan disposed his green men, with reference to the terrain, so they couldn’t run and had to fight. ’Twas the last word in cynicism, the disbelief in heroism and glory and the colors of a parade, but I’ve often wondered if it didn’t summarize most what’s known of courage and war.”
“I’ve run. Or as we say now, ducked.”
“And lived to fight another day, I see.”
“Anyway, I’m here.”
“Jack, it’s melted a bit. Our barrier.”
“Then fine.”
“But not completely. I don’t think it will. And yet, I’ve hit on a plan that may help. That will help us both, if you like it.”
“Which is?”
“Write it.”
“Who—me?”
“Well, in my condition, hardly I.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll never learn grammar.”
“The American distrusts it, for its exactitude, which he associates with theology and metaphysics and logic, and identifies with superficiality. I don’t say he’s not right, but I’m a Trinity College man myself, and had as lief drop egg on my waistcoat as split an infinitive. I don’t wholly accept the American canon. Yet it’s wholly distinctive and I hope you don’t hesitate on that account. Never forget, the foreign colony, during the Civil War, looked down on Mr. Lincoln because of his uncouthness of speech. The greatest literary genius who ever sat in the White House, which is indeed a title—and the precisionists voted him down. Can you quote one phrase ever uttered by the minister from the Court of St. James during this memorable administration? Do you even know who he was?”
“If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten.”
“He bitterly criticized the gorilla Lincoln for his syntax.”
“Getting back to me, I can’t write.”
“The art of writing consists of having something to say.”
“And wanting to say it.”
We dropped it for two or three days. I found a place for my car, took my stuff to my room, settled down. It was all pretty much as I’d left it, and it touched me, the way they had kept it for me. I’d get a little thick, when I’d remember how he was leaving out the one thing that had to be told, which was what had happened about Helen, and where she was now, and all the rest of it, things Denny hadn’t gone into, or Margaret. Then I’d ask myself if I wanted to know about Helen, after what had happened in Charleston. Something had gone wrong between me and that girl which I didn’t understand, but given a little time, I’d catch up with her, and maybe get going again. Then something happened that made me want to please my father, whether it pleased me or not. I don’t know if you’ve seen a man in one of those spells they have with angina, but if you have I don’t think you’ll forget it in a hurry. First of all the color left his face until it was gray. Then his eyes took on a set, terrible stare. Then he began to labor. He didn’t move, and yet you could see he was doing everything God would let him do, just
to get his breath. I jumped up, began calling for my aunts, and held him up straight in his chair. He began banging on the arm of it, with a handkerchief he had crumpled in his fist. Something went clink, and he held the handkerchief over his nose. A funny smell filled the room, he relaxed, and I could feel he was getting relief. What got me was that when he was himself again, maybe in five minutes, he never said a word, but picked up his paper and went on reading. If that wasn’t enough to start me off writing, the cable from Douvain was. I’d written him where I was, and why, and now came this wire saying he was tied up until the end of winter, but to count him in, definitely, and get things in shape for him when he was free. It didn’t worry me, I mean I wasn’t afraid he was backing out. But it would be three or four months. Between him and this girl I couldn’t find, I suddenly thought about writing—anything, to keep from going nuts. And so, one morning I cleared out a room over the garage, had a typewriter sent up, and got going.
So I’ve been at it all winter. As I’d finish it I’d show it to him, one hunk at a time. He cut it up into chapters, and put some curlicues in to break it up, and cut out a lot of stuff where I’d repeated myself. I let him. I caught it before very long that at last, in his death chair, he was doing something literary, something that hooked up with what he had studied when he was young, and that didn’t have to do with cam shafts or differentials or fan belts or grease. He wasn’t easy to please. About some things he told me stuff I hadn’t known. For instance, about my mother. That morning in church was the one time I saw her, but she saw me, he said, many times. About some of it he got bitter, not so much at me as at himself, and specially the way he had thrown away my money, after insisting on keeping it for me. I tried to get over to him I didn’t hold it against him. On my GI’s he convinced me it was not my fault. On Buck, he took the better part of two days, talking to me, explaining it to me, getting it through my head it was only partly my fault. He didn’t try to say it wasn’t at all my fault, but he kept pressing on “partly.” “You were caught in a web of circumstances unsurpassed for cruelty, for I hold the depression that began in 1929 was one of the most tragic eras ever seen. It broke up homes, it cut the heart out of the nation, it dismayed young people as nothing ever did. If, in consequence, you were planning a hold-up, God help you there were plenty more, and they had their reasons! If the boy got killed, you didn’t kill him, and if the other limither, the one you call Hosey, was unable to implicate you, so much the better for justice and the good sense of the police. They’re a peculiar breed. In some ways, the stupidest of men, but on a moral matter, strangely profound. They know, as ’tis said, the difference between a crook and a crook. As they released you, I think you may trust them, and no longer concern yourself.”