Authors: Evan Hunter
Sons (18 page)
The next day, the 33rd Division on our right was relieved by the French 15th Colonial, who brought in mail for us, and with it Clara’s three letters. I had not cried when Timothy Bear was killed. There is something in war, you do not cry, it is almost as if the person never existed. But now, reading Clara’s letters, I began to weep because I was certain I would lose Nancy, too, and then nothing in the world would matter. They thought I was shell-shocked at first. I cried all during the attacks on La Mi-Noel and the Bois de Forêt and the small woods southwest of Clery-le-Grand, cried throughout the mopping-up operations on October 24. I did not stop crying until we were relieved by the 5th Division on October 27, and sent back to Montfaucon, leaving our artillery behind in support.
A letter from Eau Fraiche was waiting for me upon my arrival there.
Sunday, October 20
NovemberHello, darling,Clara says she’s been afraid to write to you for almost a week, so let me assure you here and now that I am alive and well and back home again and in receipt of two letters from you, so I know that you’re safe, too, and that’s all that matters to me.They thought I was dying.I’ll tell you something, Bert,
I
thought so, too!Oh boy, Bert, what a time it was! I guess Clara told you it started with an awful headache which I didn’t pay any mind to because I figured it was caused by all the worry over Daddy and everything. But the next morning I tried to get out of bed and almost fell on the floor, I was so dizzy. And there was a terrible knife pain behind my eyes, as if someone was inside trying to cut his way out! Mother took my temperature, and I seemed to be all right, but that night it shot up from normal to a hundred and three and Dr. Henning packed me off to McIver. (They are now calling people like Daddy and me, who go to the emergency hospital and manage to get out of it alive, “McIver Survivors.”) I didn’t think I would make it, Bert. I kept having terrible nightmares, all about Hell and being burned alive at the stake, and this went on for more than a week, which is quite unusual since if you’re going to get well at all it usually takes three or four days for the fever to pass. Dr. Henning tells me, though, that I also had a touch of encephalitis, and that I’m “a very lucky little girl.”I have to tell you something, Bert.I can’t hear too well in my right ear. Dr. Henning says this was caused by the infection in the auditory center, and may be temporary or permanent, but that in any event it is a small price to pay. I feel terrible about it because I don’t think it’s exactly feminine to be saying “How’s that?” all the time, do you? Will you still love me if I have to carry around a horn?Clara is here with some aspirin and some hot milk, so I’d better take it and close the light. She has been an absolute dear all through this. I may even let her read your next letter (if you promise not to say any of those
awful
things in it!) Seriously, Bert, I think it might be a good idea if you wrote to her personally, if you have the time, that is. She was so worried that she’d done the wrong thing in telling you I was sick, and I know a reassuring word from you would set her mind at ease.Keep safe and well, Bert, and let’s hope the war will soon be over as they say it will be. Then you can come home and marry me, and we will live happily ever after, okay?I love you,Miss Nancy Ear-Trumpet
The train had come down from Boston, and it was jam-packed when it stopped at New Haven. She had her crap spread out all over the seat, two valises, a guitar, and a duffle bag, as if she were going on a grand tour of the Bahamas instead of probably just home for the Thanksgiving weekend. I had conic through three cars looking for a seat, and when I spotted her living in the luxury of this little nest she’d built, I stopped and said, “Excuse me, is this taken?”
She had dark brown eyes and long black hair parted in the middle of her head, falling away straight on both sides of her face, framing an oval that gave a first impression of being too intensely white, lips without lipstick, checks high and a bit too Vogue-ish, a finely sculpted nose and a firm chin with a barely perceptible cleft. The look she gave me was one of extreme patience directed at a moron, her glance clearly saying Can’t you see it’s taken?
“Well,
is
it?” I asked.
is
it?” I asked.
“I’ve got my stuff on it,” she answered. Her voice sounded New Canaan or mid-Eighties Park Avenue. It rankled immediately.
“I see that,” I said, “but is anyone
sitting
here?”
sitting
here?”
“I’m
sitting here.”
sitting here.”
“Besides
you.”
you.”
“No.”
“Then would you mind putting your stuff up on the rack?”
Her look of patience turned instantly to one of annoyance. I was forcing her to move her furniture out of the apartment just after she’d painted and settled in. She turned the look off, got up without so much as glancing at me again, lifted the guitar onto the rack and then reached for the heavy duffle.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
“Don’t bother,” she said.
She was wearing sandals and tight chinos, and I discovered her backside as she lifted the duffle up onto the rack with a great show of delicate college girl maidenhood being strained to its physical limits. The gray sweatshirt she had on over the chinos rode up as she lifted one of the valises, revealing a well-defined spine, the halves of her back curving into it like a pale ripe apple into its stem. She turned to pick up the other valise, and I saw MIT’s seal on the front of the sweatshirt, flanked by a rounded pair of breasts too freely moving to have been confined by a bra. She saw my goofy leer, made a face, hoisted the valise up onto the rack, slid back into the seat, cupped her chin in her hand, and stared through the window.
“Thank you,” I said.
She did not answer.
“Look,” I said, “your
bags
didn’t pay for a seat, you know.”
bags
didn’t pay for a seat, you know.”
“I moved them, didn’t I?” she said, without turning from the window.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, but she still did not turn from the window.
“You coming down from Radcliffe?” I said.
“What gives you
that
impression?” she said, and turned from the window at last, and assumed again that patient expression of someone talking to a cretin.
that
impression?” she said, and turned from the window at last, and assumed again that patient expression of someone talking to a cretin.
“You sound like a Radcliffe girl.”
“And just how do Radcliffe girls
sound?”
she asked,
so
annoyed by my presence on her turf, and
so
confident of her own allure in sweatshirt and chinos, brown eyes burning with a low, angry, smoky intensity, white face pale against the cascading black hair, completely stepping down several levels in the social strata by deigning to utter in her New Canaan nasal twang anything at all to someone like
me,
who should have been up a tree someplace eating unpeeled bananas instead of trying to start a conversation with the WASP princess of the western world. I was already half in love with her.
sound?”
she asked,
so
annoyed by my presence on her turf, and
so
confident of her own allure in sweatshirt and chinos, brown eyes burning with a low, angry, smoky intensity, white face pale against the cascading black hair, completely stepping down several levels in the social strata by deigning to utter in her New Canaan nasal twang anything at all to someone like
me,
who should have been up a tree someplace eating unpeeled bananas instead of trying to start a conversation with the WASP princess of the western world. I was already half in love with her.
“Radcliffe girls sound rude and surly and sarcastic,” I said. “So do Yalies,” she said.
"Are
you from Radcliffe?”
you from Radcliffe?”
“No, I’m from B. U.”
“Is that a school?”
“Ha-ha,” she said. “You’re from Yale, all right.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can tell,” she said in dismissal, and turned to look through the window again, pulling her long legs up under her.
“Must be fascinating, watching all those telephone poles go by,” I said.
“Yes, it is.”
“My name’s Wat Tyler,” I said.
She turned to me with a reproachful look. Certain she had tipped to a put-on, she said, “Mine’s Anne of Bohemia.”
“Hey, how’d you know that?” I said, surprised.
“How’d I know what?”
“About Wat Tyler. Not many people do.”
“Luck,” she said.
“Come on, how’d you know?”
“I had to do a paper on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
“What’s that got to do with Wat Tyler?”
“Nothing. But that’s how I got to him.”
“How?”
“Well... can
you
name the Four Horsemen?”
you
name the Four Horsemen?”
“Sure. Plague, Pestilence...”
“Wrong.”
“You’re not talking about the Notre Dame foot...”
“No, the Bible.”
“Plague...”
“Wrong.”
“I give up.”
“I’ll give you a clue.”
“Give me a clue.”
“They’re on different colored horses — white, red, black, and pale.”
“Pale what?”
“Just pale.”
“I still give up.”
“Death’s on the pale horse,” she said. “War’s on...”
“... the black one.”
“Wrong, the red one.
Famine’s
on the black one.”
Famine’s
on the black one.”
“Then Plague’s on the white one.”
“There
isn’t
any Plague.”
isn’t
any Plague.”
“Has
to be a Plague.”
to be a Plague.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But there isn’t.”
“Then who’s on the white horse?”
“Christ. At least, a lot of people
suppose
it was Christ. Nobody really knows for sure who John the Divine meant.”
suppose
it was Christ. Nobody really knows for sure who John the Divine meant.”
“But
you
thought it was Plague.”
you
thought it was Plague.”
“Yes. That’s why I went to the library to see what they had.”
“What’d they have?”
“Plagues, epidemics, blights,
everything.
But there was a very
popular
plague back in 1348...”
everything.
But there was a very
popular
plague back in 1348...”
“Popular?”
“In that it was widespread. The Black Death, you know?”
“From the Tony Curtis movie of the same name,” I said.
“It was bubonic.”
“It certainly was.”
“Killed a third of England’s population.”
“Sound of Music
was even worse.”
was even worse.”
“Anyway,” she said, and raised her eyebrows and quirked her mouth as though in exasperation, but it was clear she was enjoying herself now, feeling comfortable enough with me to be able to make a fleeting facial comment on my corny humor, and then move right on unperturbed to the very serious business at hand, which was how she happened to know anything at all about Wat Tyler who had been killed by the mayor of London in 1381, lo, those many years ago, when both of us were still only little kids. “Anyway,” she said again, and turned her brown eyes full onto my face, demanding my complete attention, as though knowing intuitively it was wandering to other less important topics, never once suspecting, heh-heh, that I was lost in thought of her alone, of how absolutely adorable she looked when she struck her professorial pose, relating talcs of poxes and such, and stared back into her lady-hypnotist eyes and wanted to bark like a dog or flap like a chicken, “
Anyway
, when I was looking
up
all this crap, I learned that a couple of the labor statutes put into effect around the time of the plague were thought to have caused the great peasant rebellion of 1381, do you see?” she said.
Anyway
, when I was looking
up
all this crap, I learned that a couple of the labor statutes put into effect around the time of the plague were thought to have caused the great peasant rebellion of 1381, do you see?” she said.
“You have a tiny little beauty spot right at the corner of your mouth,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Listen, are you sure
you
know who Wat Tyler was?”
you
know who Wat Tyler was?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “He led the great peasant rebellion of 1381. Against Richard II.”
“So what did I just say?”
“I don’t know, what
did
you just say?”
did
you just say?”
“I said that certain labor statutes...”
“That’s right...”
“... caused the rebellion of 1381.”
“So?”
“So Richard II was married to Anne of Bohemia.”
“I know.”
“So that’s why when you said you were Wat Tyler, I said I was Anne of Bohemia. Because when I was looking up
plagues
in the library... the hell with it,” she said. “What’s your real name?”
plagues
in the library... the hell with it,” she said. “What’s your real name?”
“That’s my real name.”
“Wat Tyler, huh?”
“Walter
Tyler. Everybody calls me Wat, though. Except my grandfather sometimes. What’s yours?”
Tyler. Everybody calls me Wat, though. Except my grandfather sometimes. What’s yours?”
“Dana. Don’t laugh.”
“Dana what?”
“Castelli. Guess who
I’m
named after?”
I’m
named after?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“You
can
imagine.”
can
imagine.”
“Oh no! Really?”
“Really. I was born in 1946, right after my mother saw him in
The Best Years of Our Lives.”
The Best Years of Our Lives.”
“When in 1946?”
“Was I born, or did she see the picture?”
“Born.”
“December. Two days before Christmas.”
“So what did you find out about him?”
“Dana Andrews?”
“No, Plague. On the white horse.”
“I told you, there was no Plague. Only War, Famine, Death, and Jesus.”
“Then all your research was for nothing.”
“I didn’t mind. I like libraries.” She smiled again. “Besides, it gives me something to talk about on trains.”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m really sorry I asked you to move your bags.”
“Don’t be silly. I was being a hog.”
“Would you like a beer or something?”
“I don’t think there’s a bar car.”
“Has
to be a bar car.”
to be a bar car.”
“Had to be a Plague, too, but there wasn’t.”
“You watch the seats,” I said. “I’ll check it out.”
In the next to the last car on the train, I ran into Scott Dundee who was now a freshman at Tufts and who was sitting with a girl he introduced as “Gail Rogers, Simmons ’67,” the same asshole he’d always been. He asked if he could give me a lift home from Stamford, but I lied and said I was being picked up, preferring a taxi to his Great Swordsman company, and then hurrying into the last car, knowing by then of course that Dana Castelli had been right, there
was
no bar car. I lurched and staggered my way forward again, the New Haven Railroad performing in its usual glassy-smooth style, and when I got back to where she was sitting I nearly dropped dead on the spot. The guitar, the duffle bag, and both suitcases were piled onto the seat again, and Dana was turned away from the aisle, legs up under her, one elbow on the window sill, staring out at the goddamn telephone poles. I felt, I don’t
know
what, anger, rejection, embarrassment, stupidity, clumsiness, everything. And then, suddenly, she turned from the window, whipping her head around so quickly that her black hair spun out and away from her face like a Revlon television commercial, and her grin cracked sharp and clean and wide, confirming her joke, and we both burst out laughing.
was
no bar car. I lurched and staggered my way forward again, the New Haven Railroad performing in its usual glassy-smooth style, and when I got back to where she was sitting I nearly dropped dead on the spot. The guitar, the duffle bag, and both suitcases were piled onto the seat again, and Dana was turned away from the aisle, legs up under her, one elbow on the window sill, staring out at the goddamn telephone poles. I felt, I don’t
know
what, anger, rejection, embarrassment, stupidity, clumsiness, everything. And then, suddenly, she turned from the window, whipping her head around so quickly that her black hair spun out and away from her face like a Revlon television commercial, and her grin cracked sharp and clean and wide, confirming her joke, and we both burst out laughing.
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