Ice-Cream Headache (8 page)

“I’ll say,” Tom said. “I’ll never forget the first time me and George went on pass in Salt Lake City. He sure could of used them then.”

“Aint you drinkin, Sandy?” George said.

“You know I don’t drink.”

“You used to. Some.”

“That was only on special occasions,” Sandy said, looking at him. “That was a long time ago. I’ve quit that now,” she said.

George looked away, at Tom, who had his hand up under the blonde one’s armpit, snuggled in. “Now this here’s a very fine thing,” Tom said, nodding at her. ‘She’s not persnickity like the broads in Salt Lake.”

“I didn’t really like it then,” Sandy said.

“I know,” George said.

“George picked him up a gal in a bar in Salt Lake that first night,” Tom said. “She looked a lot like you, honey,” he said to the blonde one. The blonde one tittered and put her hand beneath his ear.

“This gal,” Tom continued, “she thought George was wonderful; he was wearing his ribbons. She asked him all about the limp and how he got wounded. She thought he was the nuts till she found out what it was made him limp.” Tom paused to laugh.

“Then she got dressed and took off; we seen her later with a marine.” He looked at George and they both laughed. George went around the table and sat down beside the short one.

“You ought to have a drink with us, Sandy,” George said. “You’re the host.”

“I don’t feel much like being formal,” Sandy said.

Tom laughed. “Me neither.”

“Do you want something to eat?” Sandy asked him. “I might eat something.”

“Sure,” Tom said. “I’ll eat anything. I’m an old eater from way back. I really eat it. You got any cheese and crackers?”

Sandy went to one of the cupboards. “You fix another drink, George.”

“Thats it,” Tom said. “Eat and drink. There’s only one thing can turn my stommick,” he said to the blonde one. “You know what’s the only thing can turn my stommick?”

“Yes,” said the blonde one apprehensively, glancing at Sandy. “I know.”

“I’ll tell you the only thing can turn my stommick.”

“Now, honey,” the blonde one said.

George turned around from the bottles on the countertop, pausing dramatically like an orator.

“Same thing that can turn my stommick.”

He and Tom laughed uproariously, and he passed the drinks and sat down. The blonde one and the short one tittered and glanced nervously at Sandy.

Tom thumped George’s right leg with his fist and the sound it made was solid, heavy, the sound his own had made out in the car.

“You goddam old cripple, you.”

“Thats all right,” George said. “You can’t run so goddam fast yourself.”

“The hell I can’t.” Tom reached for his drink and misjudged it, spilling some on the tablecloth and on the blonde girl’s skirt.

“Now see what you did?” she said. “Damn it.”

Tom laughed. “Take it easy, baby. If you never get nothing worse than whisky spilled on your skirt, you’ll be all right. Whisky’ll wash out.”

George watched dully as the spot spread on the red and white checked tablecloth, then he lurched to his feet toward the sink where the dishrag always was.

Sandy pushed him back into his chair. “Its all right, George. I’ll change it tomorrow.”

George breathed heavily. “Watch yourself, you,” he said to Tom. “Goddam you, be careful.”

“What the hell. I dint do it on purpose.”

“That’s all right, just watch yourself.”

“Okay, Sergeant,” Tom said. “Okay, halfchick.”

George laughed suddenly, munching a slab of cheese between two crackers, spraying crumbs. “Don’t call me none of your family names.”

“We really use to have some times,” he said to Sandy. “You know what this crazy bastard use to do? After we got our leather, we use to stand out in the corridor and watch the guys with a leg off going down the hall on crutches. Tom would look at them and say to me, Pore feller. He’s lost a leg. And I’d say, Why thats turrible, aint it?”

Sandy was looking at him, watching him, her sandwich untouched in her hand. Under her gaze George’s eyebrows suddenly went up, bent in the middle.

“We use to go to town,” he said, grinning at her. “We really had some times. You ought to seen their faces when we’d go up to the room from the bar. You ought to see them when we’d take our pants off.” He laughed viciously. “One broad even fainted on me. They didn’t like it.” His gaze wavered, then fell to his drink. “I guess you can’t blame them though.”

“Why?” Sandy said. “Why did you do it, George?”

“Hell,” he said, looking up. “
Why?
Don’t you know
why
?”

Sandy shook her head slowly, her eyes unmoving on his face. “No,” she said. “I don’t know why. I guess I never will know why,” she said.

Tom was pinching the blonde one’s bottom. “That tickles mine,” he said. “You know what tickles mine?”

“No,” she said, “what?”

Tom whispered in her ear and she giggled and slapped him lightly.

“No,” George said. “I guess you won’t. You aint never been in the Army, have you?”

“No,” Sandy said, “I haven’t.”

“You ought to try it,” George said. “Fix us one more drink and we’ll be goin.”

“All right, George. But I wish you’d stay.”

George spread his hands and looked down at himself. “Why?” he said. “Me?”

“Yes,” Sandy said. “You really do need to sober up.”

“Oh,” George said. “Sober up. Liquor never bothers me. Listen, Sandy. I wanted to talk to you, Sandy.”

Under the red and white checked tablecloth George put his hand on Sandy’s bare knee below her skirt. His hand cupped it awkwardly, but softly, very softly.

“I’ll get your drink,” Sandy said, pushing back her chair. George watched her get up and go to the countertop where the bottles were.

“Come here, you,” George said to the short dark one. He jerked her toward him so roughly her head snapped back. He kissed her heavily, his left hand behind her head holding her neck rigid, his right hand on her upper arm, stroking heavily, pinching slightly.

Sandy set the drink in front of him. “Here’s your drink you wanted, George,” she said, still holding the tabled glass. “George, here’s your drink.”

“Okay,” George said. “Drink up, you all, and lets get out of this.”

The short one was rubbing her neck with her hand, her face twisted breathlessly. She smiled apologetically at Sandy. “You got a wonderful home here, Miss Thomas,” she said.

George lurched to his feet. “All right. All right. Outside.” He shooed them out the door, Tom grinning, his hand hidden under the blonde one’s arm. Then he stood in the doorway looking back.

“Well, so long. And thanks for the liquor.”

“All right, George. Why don’t you stop drinking, George?”

“Why?” George said. “You ask me why.”

“I hate to see you ruin yourself.”

George laughed. “Well now thanks. That sure is nice of you, Sandy girl. But liquor never bothers me.” He looked around the gayness of the kitchen. “Listen. I’m sorry about the tablecloth. Sorry. I shouldn’t of done it, I guess. I shouldn’t of come here with them.”

“No, George. You shouldn’t.”

“You know what I love about you, Sandy girl? You’re always so goddam stinking right.”

“I just do what I have to,” Sandy said.

“Sandy,” George said. “You don’t know what it was like, Sandy.”

“No,” she said. “I guess I don’t.”

“You goddam right you don’t. And you never will. You’ll never be …”

“I can’t help the way I’m made.”

“Yes? Well I can’t neither. The only thing for us to do is turn it over to the United Nations. Its their job, let them figure it out.”

Tom Hornney came back to the door. “Come on, for Christ sake. Are you comin or aint you?”

“Yes goddam it I’m comin. I’m comin and I’m goin.” George limped swingingly over to the countertop and grabbed a bottle.

Tom stepped inside the door. “Listen, lady,” he said. “What the hells a leg? The thing a man wants you dames will never give him. We’re just on a little vacation now. I got a trucking business in Terre Haute. Had it before the war. There’s good money in long-distance hauling, and me and George is goin to get our share. We got six trucks and three more spotted, and I know this racket, see? I know how to get the contracks, all the ways. An I got the pull. And me and George is full-time partners. What the hells a leg?”

George set down the bottle and came back, his right leg hitting the floor heavy and without resilience. “Tom and me is buddies, and right or wrong what we do we do together.”

“I think thats fine, George,” she said.

“Yeah? Well then, its all all right then, aint it?”

“Listen, lady,” Tom said. “Someday he’ll build another house’ll make this place look sick, see? To hell with the respectability if you got the money. So what the hells a leg?”

“Shut up,” George said. “Lets go. Shut up. Shut up, or I’ll mash you down.”

“Yeah?” Tom grinned. “I’ll take your leg off and beat you to death with it, mack.”

George threw back his head, laughing. “Fall in, you bum. Lets go.”

“George,” Sandy said. She went to the countertop and came back with a nearly full bottle. “Take it with you.”

“Not me. I got mine in the car. And I got the money to buy more. Whisky never bothers me. Fall in, Tom, goddam you.”

Tom slapped him on the back. “Right,” he said. And he started to sing.

They went out of the house into the steaming chill February night. They went arm in arm and limping. And they were singing.

“Si-n-n-g glorious, glorious,

One keg of beer for the four of us,

Glory be to God there’s no more of us,

’Cause…”

Their voices faded and died as the motor started. Tom honked the horn once, derisively.

Sandy Thomas stood in the door, watching the headlights move away, feeling the need inside, holding the bottle in her hand, moisture overflowing her eyes unnoticed, looking backward into a past the world had not seen fit to let alone.

Tomorrow she would change the tablecloth, the red and white checkered tablecloth. And it was not her fault.

I spent the summer of 1945 in the Smokies, and it was there that I heard first of Hiroshima and the Japanese surrender. Originally it was about a cracked-up veteran trying to pull himself together by living by himself in the mountains (where he learns of the surrender), but somehow was always too sentimental and never worked. In 1948 I rewrote it as it is now, changing the character, adding the wife, and drawing on a couple I knew in Illinois. Reading it over I find I still like it but nobody ever wanted to publish it.

W
HEN THE DOCTOR TOLD
Larry and Mona Patterson he thought Larry should spend the summer in the mountains and suggested the Great Smokies, neither Larry nor Mona had even the vaguest idea of what it might be like there, and neither of them wanted to go. Also, they were both naturally pretty frightened too, by the pronouncement.

“Now for God’s sake dont look so scared,” the doctor said irritably. He was a big heavy floridfaced man they had had for years. “Its nothing permanent. And its nothing serious especially. I know youre both city dwellers. So’m I. But Larry’s lungs are not in good shape.”

“In other words, you mean Ive got spots on my lungs,” Larry said. “TB.”

“No, I dont mean any such a damn thing,” the doctor said irascibly. “If you did, Id tell you.” He hitched his chair up to his desk on the expensive carpet and looked off out the window over the rooftops of downtown Baltimore for a moment. Then he turned back to them. Patiently, explainingly, with the same awkward and irascible gentleness he had displayed all through Larry’s illness and ever since they had known him, he spoke of the bad siege of double pneumonia Larry had been through, and of the run down condition in which it had left him. He did not say anything about the protracted bouts of hard drinking and exposure scattered over a period of some years which they all knew had occasioned the pneumonia. Slowly, and logically, he pointed out that the best thing Larry could do was to change his environment and normal practice for a while.

“You newspapermen,” he said. “You dont lead any healthier lives than us doctors.”

What Larry needed now was a complete change. He was past the convalescence, but he still wasnt built up enough to go right on back into working. “Just look how shaky you still are,” he said. He shook his head. “Those lungs of yours have had a bad beating.” A summer in the mountains should restore him. Larry—who had an invalid’s gratitude to his doctor now that amounted almost to worship—had the feeling that while he talked patiently on, by far the larger part of his mind had gone on somewhere else. To contemplate some other patient’s problem, probably.

“Then you mean I dont have any spots on my lungs?” he couldnt help saying anyway.

“Larry, spots on the lungs can come from just about any damned thing in the world; and they can mean just about any damned thing in the world,” the doctor said with irascible patience. “No, you dont have any. But I will say this, Larry. You are not going to be able to go on living at the pace and in the manner you have been for the past ten years so lets face it. Your body wont stand it any more. Now, I dont know what your trouble is, with all this extended drinking and all, and everything,” he said embarrassedly, with a look at Mona. “Im no psychiatrist. But I do know your body wont take it much longer.”

Larry did not say anything to this. But Mona put out her hand on his and patted him and he turned to smile at her gratefully. “He wont, doctor,” she said embarrassedly.

“And right now your lungs are your weakest part,” the doctor said. “It might be a good idea to start looking into the idea of whether your paper would transfer you somewhere out West. In the high country,” he said. “They own papers out there, dont they? And after all youve been with them a long time.”

“Well, I suppose they would,” Larry said. “But if I dont have—”

“You havent,” the doctor said. “Well, it doesnt matter. Thats just something for you to think about. Im not recommending it. But you ought to think about gettin’ out of here. And cities arent good for your type anyway. But right now, theres nothing wrong with you that a summer in the mountains wont fix. You need fresh air, and exercise, and sun, and rest. Chop wood. Breathe. Eat. Sleep.” The doctor suddenly leaned back in his chair and looked out the expensive twentieth floor window of his office. “I use to hunt up there, myself,” he said looking out. Then he turned back to them. “Still do. Whenever I get the time,” he grinned, wistfully and almost unbelievingly, and then shook his head at his own lie. “Great country, anyway. Be the best thing in the world for you, Larry. I wouldnt suggest it if I didnt know you could afford it,” he added.