Part 3

"Were you in love with him?"

She gave me a slightly startled glance. "I thought I was, of course. Otherwise we wouldn't have been as close. But--I don't know as I can explain it. You see, Timmy was very popular in high school. He was a good athlete, and everybody liked him. He was president of the senior class. I was popular, too. I was queen of the senior pageant and all that sort of thing. We both liked to dance and we were good at it. It was as if people _expected_ us to go together. It seemed right to other people. And that sort of infected us, I guess. Maybe we fell in love with the way we looked together, and felt the responsibility of what other people wanted us to be. We made a good team. Do you understand that?"

"Of course."

"When it finally ended it didn't hurt as badly as I would have thought it would. If it hadn't ended, we would have gone on and gotten married and--I guess it would have been all right." She looked puzzled.

"What kind of a guy was he, Ruth?"

"I told you. Popular and nice and--"

"Underneath."

"I don't want to feel--disloyal or anything."

"Another drink?"

"No. We better order, thanks." After we had given the order, she frowned beyond me and said, "There was something weak about Timmy. Things had come too easily. His mind was good and his body was good and he made friends without trying. He'd never been--tested. I had the feeling that he thought that things would always be that easy all his life. That he could always get whatever he wanted. It worried me because I'd learned the world isn't like that. It was as though nothing had ever happened to him to make him grow up. And I used to wonder what would happen when things started to go wrong. I knew he'd either turn into a man, or he'd start to whine and complain."

"He turned into a man, Ruth."

There was a sudden look of tears in her eyes. "I'm glad to hear that. I'm very glad to hear that. I wish he'd come back."

"I think you would have seen that I'm right. After he stopped going with you, who did he go with before he went into the army?"

Her eyes were evasive. "No one."

I lowered my voice. "He told me about Eloise."

Her face became more pale. "So it was true, then. I couldn't be completely certain. But I suspected it. It made me sick to think that could be going on. And it was part of the pattern. Everything came so easily. I don't think he even realized what he was doing to himself and to George. She was trash. Everybody was sorry and shocked when George married her."

"Timmy told me about Eloise and he told me he was sorry about it. He wanted to come back so he could make things right. I guess he knew he couldn't turn the clock back and make things like they were before, but he wanted to be able to make amends of some sort."

"I don't think George has ever suspected. But even if he knew now it couldn't hurt too much. He knows what she is now."

"What was she like?"

"Quite pretty in a sort of full-blown way. A tawny blonde, with a kind of gypsy-looking face. I don't know where she got those features. They're not like the other people in her family. She was a year ahead of me in school at first, and then in the same year, and then a year behind me. She never did graduate from high school. She was dumb as a post as far as schoolwork is concerned. But smart in other ways. Very smart. She was sloppy. You know, soiled collars, bare dirty ankles. She always soaked herself in perfume. She had a very sexy walk, full hips and a tiny waist and nice legs. She had a lot of little provocative mannerisms. Boys used to follow her around like stupid dogs, their eyes glazed and their tongues out. We used to make fun of her, but we hated her, and in some funny way we were jealous of her. She did as she pleased. She always seemed to be mocking everybody. It was a very good marriage for her, to marry George. Then the three of them were living in that house. I guess she got bored. Being right there in the house, once she got bored Timmy had as much chance as--hamburger in a panther cage. I guess they were careful, but in a place this size people get to know things. Quite a few people were talking by the time Timmy went away. I hadn't had a date with Timmy for over two years when he went away."

"Then Eloise went off with a salesman."

"That was so stupid of her. She had everything she wanted. George believed in her. The man's name was Fulton. He was a big red-faced man who drove a gray Studebaker and came to Hillston about once every six months. Eloise ran off almost--no, it's over two years ago. George had to be out of town on business. People saw Eloise and Mr. Fulton right here in this place having dinner one night, bold as can be. They must have left that night. When George came back they were gone."

"Did he try to trace her?"

"He didn't want to. He was too badly hurt. She'd packed her prettiest things, and taken the house money and gone without even leaving a note. I'll bet that some day she's going to come crawling back here."

"Would George take her back?"

"I don't know. I don't know what he'd do. I've been trying to help George." She blushed. "Dad always teases me about the way I keep bringing kittens and homeless dogs back to the place. He says my wards eat up all the profits. It's sort of the same with George. He hasn't got anyone now. Not a soul. Not anyone in the world. He's drinking all the time and he's lost most of his business. I do what little I can. Cook for him sometimes. Get his room cleaned up. Get his clothes in shape. But I can't seem to make him wake up. He just keeps going down and down. It makes me sick."

"I saw him at the store. He wasn't in very good shape. He acted strange."

"The store is doing almost no business at all."

"The lumberyard looks all right. I was out there to talk to Fitzmartin. He was in the same camp."

"I know. He told me that. I--is he a good friend of yours?"

"No."

"I don't like him, Tal. He's a strange man. I don't know why George hired him. It's almost as if he had some hold over George. And I have the feeling he keeps pushing George downhill. I don't know how, or why he should. He kept bothering me. He kept coming to see me to talk about Timmy. It seemed very strange."

"What did he want to talk about?"

"It didn't make much sense. He wanted to know where Timmy and I used to go on picnics when we were in high school. He wanted to know if we ever went on hikes together. And he acted so sly about it, so sort of insinuating that the last time he came it made me mad and I told him I wouldn't talk to him any more. It seemed like such a queer thing for him to keep doing. He's creepy, you know. His eyes are so strange and colorless."

"Has he stayed away?"

"Oh yes. I got very positive about it.... He had such an unhealthy kind of interest in Timmy I wondered if it was the same sort of thing with you. But if you're going to write about him I can understand your wanting to know things."

The honesty in her level eyes made me feel ashamed. There was an awkward pause in our conversation. She fiddled with her coffee spoon and then, not looking up, said, "Timmy told you about Eloise. Did he tell you about me?" She was blushing again.

"He mentioned you. He didn't say much. I could make something up to make you feel better, but I don't want to do that."

She raised her head to look directly at me, still blushing. "This isn't anything to go in your book. But it's nothing I'm ashamed of. And maybe you can understand him better, or me better, if I tell you. We went steady during our senior year here. A lot of the kids, a lot of our friends, who went steady, taking it for granted that they were going to get married as soon as they could, they slept together. It was almost--taken for granted. But Timmy and I didn't. Then we both went up to Redding. We were both away from home. We were lonely and in a new environment. It--just happened. It got pretty intense for a few months, but we began to realize that it wasn't helping anything. We stopped. Oh, we had a few lapses, accidents. Times it wasn't meant to happen. But we stopped, and felt very proud of our character and so on. You know, I sometimes wonder if that is what spoiled things for us. It's a pretty Victorian attitude to think that way, but you can't help wondering sometimes."

I felt ill at ease with her. I had never come across this particular brand of honesty. She had freely given me an uncomfortable truth about herself, and I felt bound to reciprocate.

I said, too quickly, "I know what you mean. I know what it is to feel guilty from the man's point of view. When they tapped my shoulder I had thirty days grace before I had to report. I had a girl. Charlotte. And a pretty good job. We wondered if we ought to get married before I left. We didn't. But I took advantage of all the corny melodrama. Man going to the wars and so on. I twisted it so she believed it was actually her duty to take full care of the departing warrior. It was a pretty frantic thirty days. So off I went. Smug about the whole thing. What soft words hadn't been able to accomplish, the North Koreans had done. She's a good kid."

"But you're back and you're not married?"

"No. I came back in pretty bad shape. My digestive system isn't back to par yet. I spent quite a while in an army hospital. I got out and went back to my job. I couldn't enjoy it. I used to enjoy it. I couldn't do well at it. And Charlotte seemed like a stranger. At least I had enough integrity not to go back to bed with her. She was willing, in the hopes it would cure the mopes. I was listless and restless. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Finally they got tired of the way I was goofing off and fired me. So I left. I started this--project. I feel guilty as hell about Charlotte. She was loyal all the time I was gone. She thought marriage would be automatic when I got back. She doesn't understand all this. And neither do I. I only know that I feel guilty and I still feel restless."

"What is she like, Tal?"

"Charlotte? She's dark-haired. Quite pretty. Very nice eyes. She's a tiny girl, just over five feet and maybe a hundred pounds sopping wet. She'd make a good wife. She's quick and clean and capable. She has pretty good taste, and her daddy has yea bucks stashed."

"Maybe you shouldn't feel guilty."

I frowned at her. "What do you mean, Ruth?"

"You said she seems like a stranger. Maybe she is a stranger, Tal. Maybe the _you_ who went away would be a stranger to you, too. You said Timmy changed. You could have changed, too. You could have grown up in ways you don't realize. Maybe the Charlotte who was ample for that other Tal Howard just isn't enough of a challenge to this one."

"So I break her heart."

"Maybe better to break her heart this way than marry her and break it slowly and more thoroughly. I can explain better by talking about Timmy and me."

"I don't understand."

"When Timmy lost interest the blow was less than I thought it would be. I didn't know why. Now after all this time I know why. Timmy was a less complicated person than I am. His interests were narrower. He lived more on a physical level than I do. Things stir me. I'm more imaginative than he was. Just as you are more imaginative than he was. Suppose I'd married him. It would have been fine for a time. But inevitably I would have begun to feel stifled. Now don't get the idea that I'm sort of a female long-hair. But I do like books and I do like good talk and I do like all manner of things. And Timmy, with his beer and bowling and sports page attitude, wouldn't have been able to share. So I would have begun to feel like sticking pins in him. Do you understand?"

"Maybe not. I'm the beer, bowling, and sports page type myself."

She watched me gravely. "Are you, Tal?"

It was an uncomfortable question. I remembered the first few weeks back with Charlotte when I tried to fit back into the pattern of the life I had known before. Our friends had seemed vapid, and their conversation had bored me. Charlotte, with her endless yak about building lots, and what color draperies, and television epics, and aren't these darling shoes for only four ninety-five, and what color do you like me best in, and yellow kitchens always look so cheerful--Charlotte had bored me, too.

My Charlotte, curled like a kitten against me in the drive-in movie, wide-eyed and entranced at the monster images on the screen who traded platitudes, had bored me.

I began to sense where it had started. It had started in the camp. Boredom was the enemy. And all my traditional defenses against boredom had withered too rapidly. The improvised game of checkers was but another form of boredom. I was used to being with a certain type of man. He had amused and entertained me and I him. But in the camp he became empty. He with his talk of sexual exploits, boyhood victories, and Gargantuan drunks, he had made me weary just to listen.

The flight from boredom had stretched my mind. I spent more and more time in the company of the off-beat characters, the ones who before capture would have made me feel queer and uncomfortable, the ones I would have made fun of behind their backs. There was a frail headquarters type with a mind stuffed full of things I had never heard of. They seemed like nonsense at first and soon became magical. There was a corporal, muscled like a Tarzan, who argued with a mighty ferocity with a young, intense, mustachioed Marine private about the philosophy and ethics of art, while I sat and listened and felt unknown doors open in my mind.

Ruth's quiet question gave me the first valid clue to my own discontent. Could I shrink myself back to my previous dimensions, I could once again fit into the world of job and Charlotte and blue draperies and a yellow kitchen and the Saturday night mixed poker game with our crowd.

If I could not shrink myself, I would never fit there again. And I did not wish to shrink. I wished to stay what I had become, because many odd things had become meaningful to me.

"Are you, Tal?" she asked again.

"Maybe not as much as I thought I was."

"You're hunting for something," she said. The strange truth of that statement jolted me. "You're trying to do a book. That's just an indication of restlessness. You're hunting for what you should be, or for what you really are." She grinned suddenly, a wide grin and I saw that one white tooth was entrancingly crooked. "Dad says I try to be a world mother. Pay no attention to me. I'm always diagnosing and prescribing and meddling." She looked at her watch. "Wow! He'll be stomping and thundering. I've got to go right now."

I paid the check and we went out to the car. On the way back I steered the conversation to the point where I could say, "And I remember him talking about a girl named Cindy. Who was she?"

Ruth frowned. "Cindy? I can remember some--No there wasn't any girl named Cindy in this town, not that Timmy would go out with. I'm sure he never knew a pretty one. And for Timmy a girl had to be pretty. Are you certain that's the right name?"

"I'm positive of it."

"But what did he say about her?"

"He just mentioned her casually a few times, but in a way that sounded as though he knew her pretty well. I can't remember exactly what he said, but I got the impression he knew her quite well."

"It defeats me," Ruth said. I turned into the driveway and stopped in front of the animal hospital and got out as she did. We had been at ease and now we were awkward again. I wanted to find some way of seeing her again, and I didn't know exactly how to go about it. I hoped her air of restraint was because she was hoping I would find a way. There had been too many little signs and hints of a surprising and unexpected closeness between us. She could not help but be aware of it.

"I want to thank you, Ruth," I said and put my hand out. She put her hand in mine, warm and firm, and her eyes met mine and slid away and I thought she flushed a bit. I could not be certain.

"I'm glad to help you, Tal. You could--let me know if you think of more questions."

The opening was there, but it was too easy. I felt a compulsion to let her know how I felt. "I'd like to be with you again even if it's not about the book."

She pulled her hand away gently and faced me squarely, chin up. "I think I'd like that, too." She grinned again. "See? A complete lack of traditional female technique."

"I like that. I like it that way."

"We better not start sounding too intense, Tal."

"Intense? I don't know. I carried your picture a long time. It meant something. Now there's a transition. You mean something."

"Do you say things like that just so you can listen to yourself saying them?"

"Not this time."

"Call me," she said. She whirled and was gone. Just before she went in the door I remembered what I meant to ask her. I called to her and she stopped and I went up to her.

"Who should I talk to next about Timmy?"

She looked slightly disappointed. "Oh, try Mr. Leach. Head of the math department at the high school. He took quite an interest in Timmy. And he's a nice guy. Very sweet."

I drove back into town, full of the look of her, full of the impact of her. It was an impact that made the day, the trees, the city, all look more vivid. Her face was special and clear in my mind--the wide mouth, the one crooked tooth, the gray slant of her eyes. Her figure was good, shoulders just a bit too wide, hips just a shade too narrow to be classic. Her legs were long, with clean lines. Her flat back and the inswept lines of her waist were lovely. Her breasts were high and wide spaced, with a flavor of impertinence, almost arrogance. It was the coloring of her though that pleased me most. Dark red of the hair, gray of the eyes, golden skin tones.

It was nearly three when I left her place. I tried to put her out of my mind and think of the interview with Leach. Leach might be the link with Cindy.

I must have been a half mile from the Stamm place when I began to wonder if the Ford coupé behind me was the one I had seen beside Fitz's shed. I made two turns at random and it stayed behind me. There was no attempt at the traditional nuances of shadowing someone. He tagged along, a hundred feet behind me. I pulled over onto the shoulder and got out. I saw that it was Fitz in the car. He pulled beyond me and got out, too.

I marched up to him and said, "What the hell was the idea of going through my room."

He leaned on his car. "You have a nice gentle snore, Howard. Soothing."

"I could tell the police."

"Sure. Tell them all." He squinted in the afternoon sunlight. He looked lazy and amused.

"What good does it do you to follow me?"

"I don't know yet. Have a nice lunch with Ruthie? She's a nice little item. All the proper equipment. She didn't go for me at all. Maybe she likes the more helpless type. Maybe if you work it right you'll get a chance to take her to--"

He stopped abruptly, and his face changed. He looked beyond me. I turned just in time to see a dark blue sedan approaching at a high rate of speed. It sped by us and I caught a glimpse of a heavy balding man with a hard face behind the wheel, alone in the car. The car had out-of-state plates but it was gone before I could read the state.

I turned back to Fitz. "There's no point in following me around. I told you I don't know any more--" I stopped because there was no point in going on. He looked as though I had become invisible and inaudible. He brushed by me and got into his car and drove on. I watched it recede down the road. I got into my own car. The episode made no sense to me.

I shrugged it off my mind and began to think about Leach again.

FOUR

Though the high-school kids had gone, the doors were unlocked and a janitor, sweeping green compound down the dark-red tiles of the corridor, told me I could probably find Mr. Leach in his office on the ground floor of the old building. The two buildings, new and old, were connected. Fire doors separated the frame building from the steel and concrete one. My steps echoed in the empty corridor with a metallic ring. A demure little girl came out of a classroom and closed the door behind her. She had a heavy armload of books. She looked as shy and gentle and timid as a puppy in a strange yard. She looked at me quickly and hurried on down the corridor ahead of me, moccasin soles slapping, meager horsetail bobbing, shoulders hunched.

I found the right door and tapped on it. A tired voice told me to come in. Leach was a smallish man with a harsh face, jet eyebrows, a gray brushcut. He sat at a table marking papers. His desk, behind him, was stacked with books and more papers.

"Something I can do for you?"

"My name is Tal Howard. I want to talk to you about a student you used to have."

He shook hands without enthusiasm. "An ex-student who is in trouble?"

"No. It's--"

"I'm refreshed. Not in trouble? Fancy that. The faculty has many callers. Federal narcotics people. Parole people. Prison officials. County police. Lawyers. Sometimes it seems that we turn out nothing but criminals of all dimensions. I interrupted you."

"I don't want to impose on you. I can see how busy you are. I'm gathering material about Timmy Warden. Ruth Stamm suggested I talk to you."

He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "Timmy Warden. Gathering material. That has the sound of a book. Was he allowed to live long enough to give you enough material?"

"Timmy and some others. They all died there in the camp. I was there, too. I almost died, but not quite."

"Sit down. I'm perfectly willing to talk about him. I take it you're not a professional."

"No, sir."

"Then this, as a labor of love, should be treated with all respect. Ruth knows as much about Timmy as any person alive, I should say."

"She told me a lot. And I got a lot from Timmy. But I need more. She said you were interested in him."

"I was. Mr. Howard, you have probably heard of cretins who can multiply two five digit numbers mentally and give the answer almost instantaneously."

"Yes, but--"

"I know. I know. Timmy was no cretin. He was a very normal young man. Almost abnormally normal if you sense what I mean. Yet he had a spark. Creative mathematics. He could sense the--the rhythm behind numbers. He devised unique short cuts in the solution of traditional class problems. He had that rare talent, the ability to grasp intricate relationships and see them in pure simple form. But there was no drive, no dedication. Without dedication, Mr. Howard, such ability is merely facility, an empty cleverness. I hoped to be a mathematician. I teach mathematics in a high school. Merely because I did not have enough of what Timmy Warden was born with. I hoped that one day he would acquire the dedication. But he never had time."

"I guess he didn't."

"Even if he had the time I doubt if he would have gone any further. He was a very good, decent young man. Everything was too easy for him."

"It wasn't easy at the end."

"I don't imagine it was. Nor easy for hundreds of millions of his contemporaries anywhere in the world. This is a bad century, Mr. Howard. Bad for the young. Bad for most of us."

"What do you think would have become of him if he'd lived, Mr. Leach?"