After the War (18 page)

But Russ is dead, why should anyone do what he said anymore?

By the time, though, that Melanctha had got into her robe and slippers, and knocked very lightly on Graham’s door, there was no sound, only a long interval before his sleep-weighted voice said, “Who’s that?”

“It’s me. You okay?”

“Of course. I was just asleep.”

Rejected, but feeling that she had to accept what he said, Melanctha went back to her own bed—and found herself still
plagued with thoughts of Ed Faulkner, the Negro soldier. The sergeant. Negroes were as badly treated in the Army as anywhere else, she had read; in fact just the same. And she had done nothing to help him.

Nothing, nothing.

But somehow she would help him, Melanctha determined—and soon. When the money came through from what Deirdre referred to as “the estate” (not “Russ’s estate,”
the
estate), she would give a lot of it to Edward Faulkner—somehow. (She would not spend it on any Hollywood kind of self-indulgence, like plastic surgery.)

First, though, she would have to go out to Roxbury to find him.

15

“I
DON’T fall in love. Not ever. It’s not my style,” Derek said, intending sincerity, as he raised his head from Deirdre’s delectable plump breast to meet the headlong gaze of her depthless, matchless, thoughtless blue eyes. But his words had a sort of mechanical echo as he spoke them, as though he were in a recording studio. And then he recalled, I said exactly those same words to Cynthia Baird a few weeks ago, and I hurt her, probably I’ve said them a lot; do I like to hurt women? Am I really queer? What a shit I am, basically.

But Deirdre, improbably, was laughing. A tremor that for one instant he had thought might be incipient sobs turned out to be the first of waves of laughter, deep rich belly laughs, that put tears into those lovely eyes. “You just say that to hear yourself saying it,” she told him. “You think if you tell me that, you’ll be safe, you won’t fall. I’ve known just a bunch of guys like you.”

“What do you mean, a bunch?” This was the first thing that Derek was able to ask. He was more or less in shock. “I thought Russ was the first man—the only man—” He found that he could not quite put this thought into words.

“Russ was the first man, you’ve got that right.” She
stretched—like a lioness, Derek thought, with her great smooth muscles, her tawny skin. Her power. She said, “But then there was all that time in California with my folks, ’fore Russ let me and Graham come back here.”

“Oh.” Absorbing all that information, including the fact of her laughing, Derek was rattled with unfamiliar emotions, even as he said to himself, I am not an emotional man. And his member, which all afternoon had performed with such noble energy, such skill and zest and cunning, began limply to wilt.

They were in Derek’s room in the Carolina Inn, exactly where he had been with Cynthia, and had made that same speech, but to what vastly different effect! Cynthia had worn that hurt-angry look with which Derek was familiar, on so many women. But not Deirdre: she thought he was funny.

He asked her, “You mean you weren’t just a dutiful young mother out in California?” He had meant to say something hurtful, but nothing had come.

“Not hardly. My momma, she was the dutiful mother to the both of us, really. Me and Graham. So the idea of coming back here and pretending like Graham was my little brother seemed like the natural thing to do.” She laughed again. “Seems like they were actually encouraging me to go out a lot, my folks were. I reckon they hoped some guy’d come along and take me off their hands. And they never did care a whole lot for Russ.”

“I should think, with your looks, easy enough to find someone,” Derek mumbled.

Another laugh. “Like I said, there was a bunch of them. And sooner or later I’d get this little speech about not falling in love. ‘Not getting serious,’ was usually how they said it.
Not knowing they were safe as safe, me being so young and stupid and so hung up on Russ it was all I could do to kiss them good night.”

This time Derek managed a laugh. “But you forced yourself, just out of being polite?”

“Oh sure, and sometimes a plenty more.”

Oh, thought Derek.

“Anyways,” Deirdre continued, “just after the ‘don’t fall in love’ speech came the ‘why don’t we get married’ one. Are you going to ask me to marry you now, darling Derek?” And she gave her terrible laugh.

Wanting to say,
Certainly not
, Derek forbore, and forced a smile. And changed the subject. “Do you know this Jimmy Hightower very well?” he asked her.

Deirdre shifted her weight a little, rocking the somewhat rickety bed. “Round here we all know each other pretty well,” she told him. “That Jimmy, though, he’s a deep one. Only thing I know about him for sure is that he’s plum crazy about that wife of his, that Esther. Dark sort of foreign-looking lady, must’ve been some looker in her younger days. Folks say that Jimmy had this sort of a crush on that Cynthia Baird for a while, but I don’t believe it, such a cold, flat-chested talky lady. Russ liked her too for a while, they say, but I think that’s not really likely. Russ didn’t much like anyone, I sometimes think.”

“But Jimmy Hightower?” Derek reminded her. “Russ liked him pretty well?”

“Oh, Jimmy. Well, you know he moved to Pinehill mostly to be around Russ. Same way that Cynthia, Miz Baird did, is what I heard. But what Jimmy wanted most of all in this world was to be a writer, and now he is one. Although Russ always said he was not a real writer and never would be.
Whatever a ‘real writer’ is.” Finding this idea ridiculous, she laughed.

“Are you saying that Russ was a little hard on people who liked him?”

Not given to general ideas, Deirdre considered. “I guess you could put it that way,” she concluded. “Most people made Russ kind of nervous, he was a real restless man. Like a horse. He got real tired of people. He was terrible tired of Jimmy, time his book was done.”

“Russ was a big help, though?”

“I don’t rightly know about that. For a big part of it I wasn’t even here in town, and then when I was I mostly saw Russ just by himself.” She shivered, rocking the bed again. “Long about then I got to feeling like some person Russ had got tired of, and by that time I was living in this big old house he’d bought me, with this little old boy that was his son. Our son, anyway not my brother.”

Derek was thinking that, actually, he could perfectly well marry Deirdre. If he got her to take off some weight, she’d be beautiful again! Well, she still was, as far as her face was concerned. And for all her cheeky talk she was a patient woman, basically. A man’s woman. All those kids would be off in school somewhere soon, except that sweet little SallyJane who was really no problem. And when he went all over the peacetime world, in his work, there would be lovely Deirdre, waiting like Penelope, in that nice big house all spread out in the nice old grove of trees.

Except for Melanctha; she was trouble and going to get worse, he’d bet on that. He thought of her difficult, troubled presence. Smart as hell, maybe as smart as Russ. And she was going to turn into just the kind of woman that gave him, Derek, the most trouble: sexy and hypersensitive, probably
talky at all the wrong times, never knowing when to just shut up. Making a big deal of things that were not important, and not paying a lot of attention to the really major stuff, the headlines, the real news that was the core of Derek’s world.

Deirdre giggled, and then she asked, “I ever tell you that SallyJane had’ve been a boy, we’d’ve named her Derek?”

Only about a dozen times, was the truth of it, but Derek contented himself with saying, “I think you mentioned it once or twice. Good thing she wasn’t, probably.”

His appointment with Jimmy Hightower was for early the next afternoon. It meant driving out that narrow white road into the woods that led eventually to Russ Byrd’s place, now Deirdre’s. Deirdre had told him that there was a back road between her house and the town. “Comes out real near that house what used to be mine, now belongs to those Bairds, that Cynthia and Harry.” Deirdre had also said, “Russ and I used to meet on that little old road, when we were first getting to know each other, sort of accidentally-on-purpose.” She said this with her laugh and her big-eyes significant look. The things women tell you that you really don’t want to know.

Jimmy Hightower himself was out in front of his big white “modern” house (one wall was all bluish glass brick) as Derek drove up; he was mowing his lawn with a very large new-looking mower, its shiny sharp blade quite clean of grass. It actually looked too large and heavy for Jimmy to maneuver—as Jimmy himself almost immediately remarked.

“Goddam thing’s really more than I can handle,” he stated
(unnecessarily) as he wiped his hands on his pants (very new blue jeans) and shook the hand that Derek extended. “That’ll teach me to try this gentleman-farmer routine. But you can’t get good yard help around here these days.” He grinned at this last, as though quoting others whom he found ridiculous. “Leastways, that’s what they all say,” he added. “Had this real good man—a colored, of course—named Horace, married to the famous Odessa, but he’s off in the Navy somewhere. Hope he comes back all right.”

By now they had reached the front door, bright white with its glass brick surround. With a small flourish, Jimmy opened the door for Derek, who was at least a head taller.

“The truth is,” said Jimmy as they settled into adjoining cool leather club chairs in the living room, “anything’s easier than writing. Which is how I come to do a bunch of house and garden chores that I’m not real good at. Ask Esther,” and he smiled very fondly. “Russ used to say that a lot,” he appended, now frowning. “Anything’s easier than writing. So I honest-to-God can’t imagine Russ and this Manhattan Project thing, this so-called musical. A musical about atomic physicists? Come on. None of us know what they’re up to, up there, but you can bet your worn-out boots it’s not songs and dances.”

Derek leaned forward; after all, this was what he’d come to talk about. “You don’t think he would have done it?”

Jimmy looked taken aback. “Well, since you put it like that, no, I don’t. Funny, I hadn’t thought in a yes-or-no way about it. But no, I think at some point Russ would just have said, I won’t do this, I won’t have any part of this crap. Although that’s not a word he used.”

“Why? Why would he have said no?”

“God, man, you really put it to a fellow. You know, I
hadn’t really asked myself that question before you did. Well.” His hands on his knees, Jimmy leaned back, considering. He half closed his eyes for an instant, and then came forward, quite suddenly and decisively. “Just because of that,” he said. “Because it’s crap. And not good honest horse manure, which I gather this new show about my native state is.
Oklahoma
. I could tell them a few things about that state. But I can’t tell a soul a goddam thing about Manhattan or any project there. And neither could Russ’ve done it. And as of right this minute I’m not going to try.”

“Why is the Manhattan Project so much crappier than Oklahoma?” Derek asked.

“Well, for Christ’s sake, you probably know that even better than I do. You’ve heard the rumors. Last thing I heard, they were scouting New Mexico for a test site, for whatever it is they’re making. A test site! Jesus, all I can think of is thousands of rabbits, dead. And I just don’t see all that as a background for some love story. And with songs, for Christ’s sake.”

Derek laughed. He was finding this Jimmy Hightower very likeable, much more likeable, probably, than Russ Byrd had been.

“Shouldn’t we have a drink on that?” asked Jimmy, getting to his feet. “We’ll drink to what I’m not writing, and then I’ll tell you all I can about Russ, I promise.”

“I won’t say no, since you put it like that.” Derek realized that he’d been wanting a drink for hours, ever since that dumb scene with dumb Deirdre. As Jimmy hurried out of the room, in his mind Derek heard again Deirdre’s laugh; he hated her laugh; could he really marry someone whose laugh he hated?

Returned with drinks, Jimmy settled his small neat body into the big chair, and began to talk, at last, about Russ.

“Well, as I knew the man,” he began, “I find it hard to say any single thing about his character.”

“It’s not necessarily his character that concerns me,” Derek told him—gently, not wanting to interrupt a possible train of thought.

“Hard to say anything at all,” continued Jimmy—then going on to say quite a lot. “A very contradictory fellow, Russ was. Very moral, moralistic you might say, in that old Southern Baptist way, and by the way not much liking anybody knowing about that, the Baptist part, since the first time he got married he married up, so to speak. SallyJane, the one he renamed Brett, was an Episcopalian, of course she was, with her father the university president and all. On the other hand, Russ never saw the inside of any church that I know of.” Jimmy straightened his body in his chair, as though to become more serious, more in focus. “The thing about Russ is—I mean was—he got tired of people. Don’t think he could help it, poor fellow, just plumb tired and bored. Restless. I was boring him silly, time we got through with that book I was writing, but it was my first time out and I was a lot more worried about the book than I was about maybe boring Russ Byrd. Well, his lack of interest was a thing I could live with, pretty easy. After all, I’ve always got my beautiful Esther and two nice girls for my old ego. But the women in Russ’s life, I think they took it considerable harder, his attention wandering off the way it did. Not necessarily to any specific person, just
off
. It was the worst for SallyJane—so crazy, his renaming that woman. Brett, she had no more resemblance to a Brett than I do.” He laughed, and sipped at his drink.

“And speaking of names, what Southern man in his right mind would name his little girl Melanctha? A colored girl in a book by a Jewish lesbian woman, I mean I’ve got nothing against anybody in any of those groups, I truly don’t. My Esther is Jewish, you know, and I think Melanctha is a lovely name, just the sound of it. But downright inconsiderate, for a child. The teasing she’s had to take. And then to name the baby that he had with Deirdre, to name her SallyJane, that just strikes me wrong, entirely wrong.”