The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (59 page)

 

 

Yale hadn't answered.

 

 

The next night Pat tried a different approach. He told Yale that his Army
pay wouldn't last forever. He reminded Yale of the check for ten thousand
dollars that he had given him. "I wasn't kidding you when I told you that
was the end of the road," he said. "You can earn your own money from now on."

 

 

Yale wondered how he would be able to tell Pat that he wasn't going to
work at the Marratt plant, that under no circumstances was he going to
be involved with day-to-day dealings with his father. He was convinced
that the personality clash would be violent and disruptive. He simply
wasn't going to live a life dominated by his father. If he gave in and
be couldn't find Anne, he would eventually get involved in a routine
marriage into one of Midhaven's better families, to some girl, approved
by Pat and Liz, who was adjusted to the suburban golf, yacht-club,
cocktail, merry-go-round. It was impossible for him to adjust to that
kind of middle-class world and conform to its ingrown mores.

 

 

For him it was a "crock of shit" -- "shit for the birds." Yale grinned
as he recalled the Army expressions. He imagined Pat's disgust had he
used them. They were immature. He knew that. But in their inanity they
summed up the confused ideas beleaguering him.

 

 

Liz had misinterpreted his vacant grin. "It's nice to see you smile, Yale.
Why don't we have Yale come to Florida with us for a few weeks?" she had
asked Pat. "After being in India and China this New England weather has
probably got him down. It begins to get me at this time of year. You'd
meet some nice girls, Yale," Liz said enthusiastically. "Pat could rent
you a car. You could be on your own." Liz continued with a discussion
of how nice it would be to have Yale in Miami with them.

 

 

Yale knew that she had visions of herself being escorted by her son to
some of the fancier night clubs. No doubt she would suggest that he wear
his uniform. Even if the war was over -- no one could possibly object
to his wearing his uniform for a little while longer.

 

 

Of course, Yale wasn't a Major, but a First Lieutenant would provide a
nice backdrop for Liz.

 

 

Pat quickly took up the idea and embellished it with the glamor of daily
jaunts after sailfish. Pat had chartered a boat. It was already waiting
for him.

 

 

Neither of them believed that Yale would refuse. When he did, it became
just one more instance of his intractability. Five years away from home
had obviously not changed his stubborn disposition. It was incomprehensible.
There wasn't another young man in Midhaven who wouldn't have jumped at
the idea.

 

 

To close off the discussion and avoid further arguments, Yale told them
that he wanted the next few weeks to iron out things in his own mind.
Perhaps, while they were gone he would go down to the plant and look
things over.

 

 

It was a vacillating answer and he was angry with himself for the
indecision. Before Pat got back from Florida he would have to make up
his mind.

 

 

What would Pat think if he knew that his son had a suitcase under his bed
neatly packed with a million rupees? More than three hundred thousand
dollars by present rates of exchange. Pat wouldn't worry about the moral
issues -- that was certain. He would consider it a financial coup of
the first order.

 

 

Yale hadn't given much thought to the rupees. Money didn't interest him.
He was directionless. But, very soon, he should attempt to convert them
into dollars. Actually, any plans for the future hinged on whether he
could make the conversion. He had only a few hundred dollars left from
his mustering-out pay. The second he ran out of money Pat would have won.

 

 

The lights from an approaching truck jarred Yale back to the present
reality of the storm. As he crawled nearer, hugging his car to the side
of the road, he realized that the truck wasn't moving. It was a snowplow.
Yale stopped and cranked his window down. "How is it up ahead?" he yelled
at the driver who was slouched down behind his wheel. A surly looking man
leaned out of the cab and looked at him.

 

 

"Couple of real drifts about a mile ahead . . . your way. I busted through
them on this side, but they'll be filled in half an hour. My engine's
conked out."

 

 

"Sorry," Yale said. He wondered whether the driver planned to sit out
the storm in the cab of his plow. "What is the name of this place?"
Yale asked. The driver of the snowplow told him that it was Berks County.

 

 

Yale waved good-bye. He had thirty more miles to go. At this rate it
would take him an hour or more. It had been crazy to drive all the way to
Boston. Doubly crazy to drive back in a blizzard; If he had been a little
more cold-blooded, and not worried about what Cynthia thought, he could
have been in bed with her right now. Why couldn't he just screw a woman
and move on . . . that's all that was possible with Cynthia now. Why had
he reopened pages of his life that should have been left closed?

 

 

Was it the dark shadow that Mat Chilling had cast over his life ever
since he had known him? Or was it because he was haunted by his love for
Cynthia? Yale had tried to tell himself that the reason that he wanted
to find Mat was that Mat might very well know where Anne was. Anne had
liked Mat. She might have written to him. If Yale had told Harrigan,
Harrigan would have investigated and found whatever Mat knew about
Anne. But Yale told himself that he really must talk personally with
Mat. If Mat were interested in re-activating his "Seek the True Love"
. . . maybe he could help. It would be something to do. Once he got the
rupees converted he could at least offer Mat financial help.

 

 

The reasons he mustered were plausible reasons but Yale was too honest
with himself not to admit the truth. He wanted to see Cynthia. He wanted
to have her tell him why she still wore the ring he had given her in
college. More than anything else he wanted to have the answer to the
riddle that had haunted him so long. If Cynthia loved him, why had
she left him? Once he found out, maybe he could banish the ghost of
her forever.

 

 

Knowing that it was a kind of immaturity to be at once so desperate to
find Anne, and at the same time to feel this compulsion toward Cynthia
. . . knowing it, but telling himself . . . to hell with such middle-class
concepts . . . the day after Pat and Liz left for Florida Yale drove
over to Midhaven College. The Alumni office would have Mat's address.

 

 

Walking toward the administration building, he met Doctor Amos Tangle
who greeted him warmly. "Pat told me you were home, Yale. I'm glad that
you made it safely. A great many Midhaven boys didn't." Doctor Tangle
looked properly sad. "Well, well . . . a lot of water has passed under
the bridge since your college days. You are a grown man now. Won't be
long before you are taking over for Pat. A good thing, too. As a minority
stockholder I've told him time and again to loosen his reins a little.
I think he will now. Fine thing . . . following in your father's footsteps.
What brings you over to the college? Feeling nostalgic?" It crossed
Doctor Tangle's mind that this might not be the wise thing to have said.

 

 

Yale explained that he had met Mat Chilling in India. They had been very
close. He had come over to the college to obtain Mat's address.

 

 

This time Doctor Tangle's look of sadness was genuine. "Mat is dead. Yale!
A terribly shocking accident. While Mat and I had parted ways over this
love nonsense of his, nevertheless I always respected him. A brilliant
mind. Such futility life has at times. Mat came home last November. . . ."

 

 

Stunned . . . with a feeling of loss so deep that it was like a body
blow, Yale wanted to shout, "For God's sake, how? What happened?" It
was incredible. Impossible. It was as if Doctor Tangle were telling
him that God was dead! But Yale said nothing. He listened, tears in his
eyes, while Doctor Tangle told him how Mat was killed in an automobile
accident. His car had skidded, plunged over an embankment, and Mat's
neck had been broken.

 

 

"Too bad. . . . too bad." Doctor Tangle's face reassumed its ministerial
cast. "But we all have to go. At least Mat didn't suffer."

 

 

Yale escaped Doctor Tangle and in the Alumni office he found the complete
story. Mat had been returning to his home in Swampscott from Evans
Academy, a boys' school up north on the Newburyport Turnpike. His car
had skidded somehow, crashed over an embankment and turned over. Death
was immediate. Fortunately, no one had been with him. He was survived
by his widow, Cynthia Chilling, née Carnell, Class of 1939. There
were no children.

 

 

He called Mat's Swampscott address and found that the house had been
sold. The woman who answered the phone told him that she believed
Mrs. Chilling was living in South Boston . . . she was working at Jordan
Marsh. Yes, she had a forwarding address. Yale wrote it down with a
trembling hand.

 

 

 

 

It was snowing lightly when Yale arrived in Boston. As he drove by the
buildings of Harvard Business School, he remembered Sam Higgins and
Agatha Latham. Either one of them might be able to give him some advice
on how to dispose of the rupees. Was Agatha still alive? Evidently,
or Pat or Liz would have mentioned it. As for Sam, he probably was well
ensconced in his father's investment business. He would have to contact
one or the other of them soon.

 

 

The address that the woman had given him took him to one of South Boston's
alphabet streets. A depressing area of houses built without style and
without grace just after the Civil War. They had been erected too late
to benefit from the clean lines of the Colonial period but not too early
to suffer from the gingerbread and gimcrack construction of the turn of
the century.

 

 

Plowing through drifts, he walked into the entrance of a house
indistinguishable from rows of its neighbors. He tried to ignore the
pervasive smell of boiled spare ribs and the penetrating odor of animal
fats that had seeped into the woodwork over the years.

 

 

Why had Cynthia moved into such a poor place? Hadn't Mat left any money?
He wondered why Mat hadn't gone back into the ministry instead of seeking
a teaching job. If Mat had lived would he have tried to start his tent
show again? It was too bad, because Yale had begun to feel that Mat
Chilling was really himself, Yale Marratt . . . only properly focused;
with the goals of his life clearly in front of him. There was no purpose
. . no teleological meaning in a universe that could permit the snuffing
out of a life like Mat's. Yale knew that Mat would have disagreed with him
-- that if there were purpose in the world . . . it might be meaningful
for men but it was of no interest or concern to the Ultimate.

 

 

Peering around in the dimly lighted hall, Yale found Cynthia's name on a
mailbox . . . third floor. Yale climbed the stairs apprehensively. Would
Cynthia be home? What would she say? At last, he would be able to find
out what had happened in 1939. That was six long years ago and the boy,
Yale Marratt, had long since vanished into memory; buried beneath an
accumulation of time that so far had added up to nothing. Was it worth
knowing, now? Was there any reason, really, why Cynthia had left him
beyond the simple fact that she didn't love him?

 

 

A few seconds after his knock, the door opened. Cynthia, a startled
expression on her face, greeted him.

 

 

"Yale Marratt! I can't believe it," she gasped.

 

 

Yale experienced the same surge of relief and happiness he had known when
Cynthia used to come tripping down the dormitory stairs at Midhaven College.

 

 

"Come in! Come in!" she said happily. "And excuse the mess!"

 

 

He followed her into the room, noting that she was neatly dressed in a
black skirt, and a pale green sweater that buttoned over her full breasts.
He glanced around. It was a one-room apartment with a brass bedstead in
one corner and a dresser. On the opposite wall there was a hot plate and
a stained white sink. There was one chair near a small window that looked
out over back yards full of trash and endless clotheslines. Cynthia sat
on the bed and stared at him. "Oh, Yale, I can't believe it is you. You
look so tanned . . . just like Mat when he first came back. You really
have become quite handsome. Do you know that?"

 

 

Yale blushed. He sat in the chair and fidgeted uneasily. His eye caught
the entrance to a small bathroom. A clothesline stretched across it was
hung with stockings and underwear.

 

 

"I heard about Mat just yesterday, Cindar. I'm awfully sorry.

 

 

She nodded. "It was a shock, Yale. Some days I can't believe the reality
of it. I expect I'll go to our house in Swampscott and he will be there
like he was, full of plans to help people, bursting with enthusiasm for
new projects like thai one in Miami." She paused and stared at Yale,
a hopeless expression on her face, her eyes moist with tears. She made
a strong effort and recovered herself. "It's nice to see you, Yale.
I guess you are about the only friend I have left in the world. Daddy died
three years ago. After that Aunt Adar seemed to just wither away.
The blow of having Michael killed in France and Lennie away in Germany with
the Occupation . . . the empty house . . . the farm not producing . . .
I stayed with her while Mat was in India. She died a few months before he
came home."