Five Smooth Stones

  "Have to face facts, my boy, have to face facts. I tried to call last night, but no one answered."

  "Hunter was out and I was restless so I went wandering around. I even thought of going up to Harlem."

  "See the promised land, eh?"

  "You've been up there?"

  "We've got some missions there. I go up in my spare time to help with the kids. The twentieth century's answer to the fundamental belief in an actual hell. A hell here, not hereafter. Speed everything up, why wait for death to show you? Trains leave every five minutes on the West Side subway—"

  "Chuck, you turning into a blasted do-gooder? Like handing out goodies to the poor damned souls on the grids?"

  "Not entirely. We've got a lot of things going. But it's like the sparrow in the Arabian legend. A horseman found him lying on his back in the middle of the road, feet up. When the horseman asked him why he was doing it, he said he'd been told the heavens were going to fall that day. The horseman laughed and asked him if he thought his puny little legs could hold the heavens up, and the sparrow said, 'One does what one can.'"

  "Sure, sure. Big deal."

  "You're a plumb contentious man. Besides, while I'm not low-rating faith, your hope for survival is better if you have a carton of milk in your hand."

  "He who gives the milk away lives to fight another day?"

  "That's pretty lousy, son, pretty lousy, but there's a germ of truth in it."

  Chuck walked over to the gas plate, poured more coffee and came back cradling the cup in both big hands. "If you want to punch my head in, David, you can—notice I don't say 'haid' anymore?—but how come you haven't mentioned Sara? Hunter's told me what the score is. Or should I say 'was'?"

  "Theology makes personal questions O.K., eh? Four months and you're already a confessor."

  "All right, Stoopid. I just happen to like you both. I reckon your answer takes care of the question."

  David, sitting on the couch, leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands twisting the belt of the robe he had borrowed from Hunter. "It's all right, Chuck. I shouldn't have blown. I guess I'm glad you asked. For some reason I can talk to you. Although I couldn't have yesterday."

  "Couldn't have talked to anyone yesterday. Right?"

  "Right." He was silent for a long time, then said, "Listen, Chuck, there's nothing wrong with the mixed marriages I've seen or heard about that divorce won't cure."

  "That's the first completely puerile, adolescently cynical remark I've ever heard you make. Besides being stupid. What about Hunter's folks?"

  "That's no answer. They're not even an exception. That's a mixed marriage in another world. Look. I keep saying 'look' when I should say 'listen,' but maybe that's what I mean: look. How can two people, no matter how much they love each other, stick it out when there's a great gulf between 'em they can't walk across and they can't talk across, so they wind up shouting across it, and that doesn't mean communication because they're shouting in different languages? And it's there for a lifetime. And where do the kids grow up? In the bottom of the gulf?"

  "I'm supposed to answer that little dilly?"

  "If there was an answer there wouldn't have been a question. Maybe I just wanted you to listen."

  'To you talk a lot of plain and fancy hogwash?"

  "It's not, Chuck. It's not."

  "That's what you think." Chuck stood, walked slowly across the room, and came back to stand in front of David, looking down at him. "Did you want sympathy? Because you're not getting it. Not from Chuck Martin. 'If I can't be captain you can't use my ball and bat.' And then when there isn't a ball game you feel sorry for yourself. I don't get it. I just don't get being in love with a champion like Sara all this time, and not having any faith in her. Nobody's going to hold a gun at her head and make her marry you. She'd be doing it with her eyes open."

  "Well, well, listen to ol' sweetness and light! No problems. Everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

  "Problems? I didn't say there weren't any problems. There'll be a problem every time you turn around. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be easier in time if you called the whole thing off now, that she wouldn't forget.... That got to you, didn't it? But one thing's for dead sure, David: you can't go on like this. It's certain trouble, and I'm not talking about the moral aspects of it, although I suppose I should be."

  "That's what I know."

  "And I don't think cutting your hearts out is the answer, either. Give her a chance! Don't make her live as a half-woman. Give her a chance to do what she must do if she's to stay alive spiritually—commit herself. Who are you, you self-righteous idiot, to look God's gift in the teeth? To say, 'Thank you very much, God, but I don't believe I care for any.' Sometimes, young Champlin, you make me sick!"

  ***

  Now the little house was very quiet, its windows closed against the rain. A radio was playing next door where Edna Mae's mother still lived, its sound muffled. David let out a sudden gasping "Whoosh!" as fourteen pounds of black-and-white cat landed unexpectedly on his stomach. He pushed gently so that Chop-bone lay between him and the back of the couch, a loud insistent purr the only sound inside the room.

  It had been three years—a little more—since Chuck had spoken what were, for him, explosive words. And David had taken them, not protesting too much because it had been Chuck Martin and he knew, without analyzing how he knew, that whatever David Champlin and Sara Kent chose to do with their lives either individually or jointly, Chuck would always be able to tap on an inexhaustible well of understanding, his occasional explosions but a symptom of that understanding.

  That first Christmas home David had watched Gramp covertly, wondering if the little man, who still looked like a wist brown mouse when he was asleep, was picking up anything of his grandson's inner turmoil. And came to no satisfactory conclusions.

  When he had returned to Boston there was no way of knowing if Sara was back; her studio was too far from his apartment for him to be able to pick up sounds, and he would not ask the other tenants he saw in the halls.

  The first morning there he cleaned his apartment quickly, laid out books and note pad on the table for study, then decided to pick up the work that must be waiting for him at the office so that both study and work would be under his hands. He was slipping a woolen pullover sweater on when the knock sounded, the door opened, and a small red beret sailed into the room. He stood staring foolishly, one arm through one sleeve, the other arm halfway through the other sleeve, his face and head emerging from the neck of the sweater.

  "I—I can't throw it back," he said. "I'm hung up."

  Sara's small and anxious face appeared around the edge of the door. "Champlin's plumbing establishment?"

  He pulled the sweater down around his hips and stood, arms akimbo, looking at her, his world reassembling itself in a series of jarring jolts. "Yes, lady. You have plumbing troubles?"

  "David, it's the same thing. That damned round thing on a spike that's supposed to drop into a hole and stop the water running—"

  He fought the grin he felt spreading over his face. "The ten-year-old across the street from us at home fixes theirs."

  "I know, David. Only I'm—well, I suppose I'm not even ten yet—"

  He rolled the sweater up over his rib cage, raised his arms, ducking to pull it off over his head, then began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. "Lead on, Smallest."

  Halfway up the first flight of stairs she stopped so abruptly, just in front of him, that he almost lost balance, grabbed the bannister to steady himself.

  "I've got English muffins, David. I was going to toast one—"

  "Sure I'll have one." He smiled up at her, drinking in the glow of her eyes at his words, the flushed cheek. "Sure, baby. And on the way back from the office this morning I'll pick up the makings for a gumbo."

  "Dutch, now—"

  "Dutch if you insist, if it's the only way you'll eat it—" And that had been that until late spring when Sara left on her preplanned study
trip to Europe.

  CHAPTER 46

  Three and a half years had passed since the red beret had sailed through the door of David's apartment in Boston. During that time he and Sara and the other tenants had been forced to move because the house was marked for destruction to make way for a new building. David found a single apartment not far from the first one he had occupied, and Sara took over a studio near the Art Museum vacated by an artist friend. It had been David's last move. The apartment was waiting for him now, and he would return to it when he left Beauregard and reached Boston a full-fledged lawyer with his name on the door of his own office, the most junior member of the Abernathy, Willis and Shea staff. And, as far as his personal life was concerned, a loner.

  The hell of it was, he was as much a loner in Beauregard as in Boston, he thought. The feeling of loss brought by the last and apparently final break with Sara two weeks ago was a living entity that traveled with him in airplanes and on buses, on city streets and in subways, not to be banished this time, as it had been banished several times in the past three years, by the sight and sound of Sara herself, coming to him, coming back—"Coming home. David, my darling, coming home. Don't send me away."

  And in the end he had not sent her away; she had gone away saying: "You see, David, you're unhappy inside. Always now. I can feel it, and it's wrong, but you're all torn apart and I can't stand knowing I am the reason. But—but David, my darling, if you ever, ever see how wrong you are—"

  "Sara, Smallest. I've got to know I'm wrong. And I'm not How can I—"

  "David, I love you. That won't change. It can't ever. David, if you ever need me—"

  "I'll always need you."

  "This is silly. And it's hell. Goodbye, my love." Two hours later she had been on a plane to London. There had been no further word.

  ***

  Chop-bone had returned sneakily to sleep on David's stomach again, and now David eased him off. "Fourteen pounds, cat! I'm not in condition." He sat up, wondering if the pain of that final break with Sara would lessen if he went out, looked up Rudy Lopez, and got reacquainted with Rudy's family—a wife and two-year-old son. He looked at his watch. It was too late; Rudy had become even more domesticated than Chop-bone.

  He would have been in the same situation in Boston, with

  Suds and Rhoda starting their second year of marriage and Rhoda into her fifth month of pregnancy. They had been married at Rhoda's home in Walla Walla, Washington, and Suds had moaned: " 'The voice that breathed o'er Eden'—I can hear it now. Jeez, David, I wish you were going to be there. Man, I need you! Like when I sprung myself out of the Infirmary."

  "I just help my friends out of trouble pal, not in."

  "You understand, after all the red tape of the wedding is over, everything's going to be fine."

  "Sure, sure."

  "Oh, go to hell!"

  After the young Sutherlands' return, Suds returned to his classes, and Rhoda accepted a teaching position. Sara and David admitted that although Rhoda might seem a little on the dull side, Sudsy seemed content.

  "Medical studies are demanding," said Sara somewhat pedantically. "It's just as I said it would be. Rhoda's the perfect answer."

  David answered grudgingly, "Yeah. I suppose so."

  All through the three and a half years that followed the first break with Sara at graduation, David lived with the nagging feeling that the end of his detour from the main highway would face him at the end of his law studies at Harvard, that the day of reckoning and decision would come simultaneously with his degree. Just what that decision would be was not always crystal clear. That life without Sara would be a major hell for a long time and a minor hell for a lifetime he knew. And that for Sara marriage to him could mean— would mean—an equal hell he felt equally certain. And that there was within her the toughness, the resiliency to take it, once the bravado and defiance had worn off, he doubted. "It ain't good to say you'll never do something," Gramp had said once. "You always has to prove it."

  Chuck Martin had said, "But one thing's for dead sure, David; you can't go on like this." That had been more than three years ago, three years of months of happiness broken suddenly by quick, explosive quarrels, then a week, two weeks, of separation, and then always there had been Sara— coming back, "Coming home, David, coming home."

  And so, when the reckoning came in one brief, clean-cut session brought about by Sara, it left him stunned and unbelieving, remembering wide, dark eyes in a small white face, words coming slowly that usually tumbled out in quick freshets of phrase.

  "I'm going to London, David. And after that to Paris."

  They were at Sunday breakfast, and he looked across the table at her. "For the summer?"

  "For good, David. Unless you ask me not to. I'll come back for visits, of course. But not here."

  "Sara! What a hell of a spot to put a guy, any guy, on!"

  "How many times have we broken up, David? Three— four—five? And I've always come back, David, you were so close, so near. But I can't come back from over there, because I won't be able to afford it. And I—I couldn't go after a quarrel, David. I had to do it this way. With no—no horrid memories—"

  "They've been my fault—"

  "I know. I know they have. Because you've been afraid, David."

  "I'm not afraid, Sara! I just know what lies ahead."

  "And it terrifies you, because you think I can't stand up under rough weather—and I can't prove you're wrong unless you give me a chance. And you won't. And so I'm going over there and study and paint and try to stop hurting. Perhaps I'll —I'll be a good artist. Now. I haven't been so far."

  "Your stuff is great!"

  "Pretty little flower baskets. Unless I'm drawing you." She stood. "The coffee's all gone. I'll put some more on, but I won't be able to stay and drink it with you."

  He was on his feet now. "What in hell do you mean?"

  "My plane leaves in two hours. I'm all packed. All I have to do is go back to the studio for my luggage and call a cab."

  "Sara!" He felt as though he had run a mile on a hot day and had fallen without warning into a pool of icy water.

  "Yes. Suds and Rhoda may be hurt because I didn't let them know. You tell them it was unexpected. Please?"

  "I—of course. But—but what about me?"

  "I don't know, David. What about you? You see, David, my darling—"

  And then at last she had said, "This is silly. And it's hell. Goodbye, my love—"

  ***

  Now, back in Boston after ten days in New Orleans with Gramp, David stood in front of a door that bore on the opaque glass of its upper panel the name DAVID CHAMPLIN.

  Someone behind him said, "Is that why you're here so early? Couldn't wait to see it—" and he turned and smiled at Dora, who was taking off a rain bonnet, grinning up at him. "Not really, Dora. Couldn't sleep."

  "Ha!" said Dora. "And a couple of 'ha's.' You don't know what insomnia is yet. You've got Mr. Wu."

  "Mr. Wu?... Mr. Wu?... Wait, now... I have a dim memory.... Oh, my God, no!"

  "Yup. All the papers are on your desk."

  "Don't ever call me teacher's pet again, mouse. I'll throttle you."

  "Yes, sir. Give me a shout if there's anything you need." She made a face at him and trotted around the corner and down the hall to the dressing room.

  David had suspected that Brad was well aware of his state of mind after Sara left, and had meant more than was indicated by his kindly, "You're fagged. Take a two-week rest. My graduation present." If Brad wanted to guard against the continuation of that state of mind, he had picked a good means of doing it by handing him Mr. Wu's suit for damages against a truck driver. Everyone in the firm, in particular the three juniors, had been ducking it.

  Mr. Wu was a cherubic, myopic Chinese importer of transcendent charm and considerable vanity who refused to wear the eyeglasses prescribed for him except in cases of dire necessity. On one occasion he had been visiting a widow in whom he was interested and had remove
d his glasses, putting them in the glove compartment. Other things had been on his mind when he left, and his eyeglasses had remained in the glove compartment. Within a very few minutes he had driven in front of a large truck at an intersection, with resultant serious injuries, including a compound fracture of a leg.

  In addition to an appealing charm, Mr. Wu also possessed a sense of scrupulous and hair-splitting honesty. He and Brad Willis had been friends for years.

  David thought upon these things with dark misgivings as he flipped back the cover of a virgin yellow legal pad and wrote at the top of the first page, Wu vs. N. E. Indemnity, and beneath that, Action for damages—personal injuries. He was staring glumly at the blank remainder of the page when Brad came in and said, "Welcome back, David."

  "You and Mr. Wu!"

  "It's salutary to lose your first case, my boy. And maybe you won't. And honest to God, there's no one else free."

  "Maybe by the time it gets on the calendar?" said David hopefully.

  "It's on the calendar."

  "Jesus have moicy! O.K., Chief."

  "Believe me, I tried to talk him out of it. Mr. Wu's attitude is that when a man gets hurt in an accident he receives large sums of money. He reads about these things in the paper. He likes large sums of money. He is hurt in an accident. Ergo, he will receive a large sum of money."

  "Because he was hurt in an accident. As his due."

  "Precisely. Lots of luck—"

  For the next two weeks David dedicated himself to the lost cause of Mr. Wu, emerging baffled and exhausted from each interview with the cheery little man, interviews that Mr. Wu had to be urged to attend with all the persuasiveness David could muster. Mr. Wu quite evidently saw little point in them. David managed to extract the opinion from him that the truck might—just might—have failed to come to a full stop at the boulevard stop sign, but when David learned that Mr. Wu had been unaware until the accident that a stop sign even existed at that intersection he went on to other things. Mr. Wu was equally vague about what he had said to the insurance adjuster who had visited him in the hospital, except that he had refused a small settlement, offered more to abate a nuisance than because it was just. David had a mental picture of Mr. Wu, a benign and bandaged little Buddha, smiling bravely and myopically at the adjuster from his bed of pain, and turned from the picture, shuddering.