Never Love a Stranger (21 page)

My last night there was an ordinary one—the usual routine. When we had finished and closed up I went in the back as usual to settle up with Mrs. Mander. When we had finished I sat back and looked at her.

As usual she had helped herself to a drink. When she saw me sitting there instead of my usual going up to bed, she looked at me strangely.

“What’s on your mind, Frank?” she asked. “I’m movin’ on,” I told her, “tomorrow.” “What are you going to do?” she asked.

I didn’t answer.

“All right, so it’s none of my business!” she said sharply, taking another drink. “What about the clothes I bought you?”

“Keep ’em,” I said succinctly. “I got enough.”

“I don’t give a damn what you got! I paid good money for them.” “So what!” I said.

For a second she was quiet. Then she spoke again. “I’ll give you a ten-buck raise.” “No dice!” I said. “I don’t like the work.”

“But look,” she said, “stick around and you’ll make some real dough. Maybe after a while I’ll cut you in on the take. I like you. You’ll get along. We’ll make out O.K.”

“I’m leavin’,” I said standing up.

She looked up at me. “I haven’t any relatives and I got a nice bit of money socked away. I’m getting old for this kind of work and I got to have someone I can trust. You’re honest with me. Stick around—you’ll be rich.”

I felt sorry for the old dame; I guess she had a pretty tough life. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I can’t stay.”

She flared up. She stood near the edge of the table. “Go to hell!” Her voice was shaking.

I turned and started out the door without answering. She called me back. “Frank.”

“Yes,” I said, stepping back into the room. “Need any money?” Her voice was softer now. I shook my head.

She peeled some bills from her roll and held them out to me. “Here,” she said, “take it.

I’ve got more than I need.”

I took the money from her and put it in my pocket. “Thanks,” I said. “Come here a minute,” she said.

I walked over to her. She took my hand. “You’re a fine kid, Frank. There’s something wild and hard inside you that needs gentling, but there’s also something fine and bright inside you. Whatever you do, don’t change. Don’t lose that something that keeps you from being hard and rotten.” She laughed. “I must be getting old,” she said, “to be talking like that.” She took another drink from the table.

I was silent. The old dame kind of liked me. “Well?” she asked.

“Good-bye,” I said. On an impulse I bent and kissed her cheek. It was old and dry to the touch, like a piece of old paper.

She put her hand to her cheek half wonderingly. She thought aloud: “It has been a long time since—” Her words trailed off.

I closed the door behind me and went up to bed.

The next morning I was sworn into the United States Navy. When I finished my medical examination the doctor goosed me and laughed. “Get used to it, kid. You’re in the Navy now.”

There were three other men in the office with me being sworn in.

“You will raise your right hands and repeat after me,” Lieutenant Ford said.

I raised my right hand. It was so quiet that for a second I could hear my heart pounding.

“I pledge allegiance …” Lieutenant Ford said quietly. I repeated after him: “I pledge allegiance …”

Interlude

JERRY

J
ERRY
settled himself deeply in his favourite chair, took a cigarette from a small cabinet on the side table, and surveyed Marty and Janet, who were sitting opposite him. He looked around the room. He liked the simple, rich elegance of its décor, the odd paintings on the walls, the enlarged gay life-like kodachrome of Janet on the radio.

It had been taken on their honeymoon. They had gone to the Grand Canyon. Janet had been laughing and pointing at some wonder of nature, and he had taken the picture. It was a semi-profile shot and the immense, beautiful canyon served as a backdrop. It was by far the best picture he had ever taken. He was proud of it.

He dragged deeply at his cigarette and listened to what they were saying. The others were still talking about Francis. He felt a little annoyed at the turn the conversation had taken. Then he smiled inwardly. He felt he was acting the fool. One wasn’t annoyed by ghosts. Ghosts belong to the past. And Frankie was part of the past.

Marty leaned forward in his chair. His face was earnest and serious. “It’s funny, Jerry, but you never told me how you happened to meet Frankie. You’ve been rather quiet all evening.”

Jerry saw they were expecting an answer. He turned the question over in his mind carefully. Then he began to speak with that charmingly simple candour that he had learned to use so well.

“I met him simply enough—about the same as you did: in a fight. We couldn’t lick one another, so we shook and called it quits.

“It happened a long time ago. I was attending the Lawrence Academy in Connecticut when one week-end Dad came up there to talk to me. I sat on the edge of my bed in my room and watched him pace up and down before me as he spoke. My dad was a wonderful guy. Even when I was very young he treated me as an equal, asked my opinion on varying things.

“This was one of those things. ‘You see, son,’ he said, ‘in another two years they’re going to put me up for Mayor. And the boys seemed to think——’

“‘I should go to school in New York,’ I finished for him. I could understand that. I had been brought up in politics. I had watched my father ever since I was a child, and I had learned a great deal from him.

“‘That’s it, son,’ he said. ‘It would mean a lot to me if you’d like to have a try at it. If the people saw you mixing with the other kids, you know how they would feel about it.’ He sat down at the edge of the bed and put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I know how you feel about this place, son, and I know what it would mean to you if you left it just when you were in so good here and had all your friends around you. But you’re growing

up. You’re almost a man now and you have a right to make up your mind as to what you want.’

“I wanted to be like my father. He was the greatest man in the world to me. He was a leader of men and that’s what I wanted to be—a leader of men, a man people would look up to and respect and admire.

“I knew what I wanted and I knew what had to be done. I didn’t want to leave Lawrence, but there were other important things in life. So I went to St. Thérèse.

“I went to St. Thérèse, but I never liked the place. It was filthy and dirty, and most of the kids were stupid and poor and lacked manners and understanding. I never held it against them, but I never got to feel that I was part of the place, the way I had at Lawrence.”

He laughed a little. “I suppose I was a bit of a snob. But I tried to get over it. I honestly tried, and I think I did because most of the other kids seemed to accept me. They accepted me and liked me, but I never became the head of the gang, because there was another guy. He was Francis Kane.

“They knew him. He was rough and hard and he made the rules and they did what he told them. At first we steered clear of one another, sizing each other up. Then we had a fight. Though neither of us could win physically, I knew inside that he had won. I knew inside that he would have won even if I had bested him.

“You see, at that school I was from the wrong side of the tracks —funny in a way but perfectly true. He was of them, from them, with them, and part of them. That was something I never could be, coming from where I came. He was the first kid I ever envied.

“Well, as the old saying goes, ‘If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em. That’s what I did. And as I grew to know him I began to like him. In spite of the way he spoke, the clothes he wore, or the dirt on his hands and face. He and I were a lot alike. But one thing made the difference, he was the leader. It was that in him that I tried to find and see—that tiny spark that made the difference. I never did find it but I knew it was there all the time. Even if I couldn’t put my fingers on it.

“Even my father saw it. One day I had him to dinner at the house, and that night Dad asked me who he was. I told him. ‘The boy is dangerous,’ Dad told me. ‘He’s smart and tough and he’s a scrapper. Don’t let the way he talks fool you.’

“I smiled at Dad and told him I knew it. But Frankie was never dangerous for me. He was my friend. He liked me.”

A maid came into the room then and placed the electric coffee maker on the table. Next to it she placed three tiny demitasse cups and saucers and little spoons. Jerry fell silent as he watched her.

“I’ll serve the coffee, Mary,” Janet said, taking the napkins from her. “Yes, ma’am,” the maid said, and retired from the room.

Balancing the small cup and saucer on his knee, Jerry continued. “Remember that time he was running for class president in high school? He was going to make that speech we wrote for him. Remember how bad he was when we practised it, how afraid you were that he’d muff it? Well, I thought he’d muff it too, maybe even hoped a little that he

would so there could be something I could say I was better at.

“Remember what he did when he came to the centre of the platform—how he stood there a moment and then started to speak in a voice that was little bit high? I remember sitting there thinking: ‘Here it comes. He’s going to blow.’ But he didn’t. He spoke as naturally as he spoke to anyone—simply, quietly, friendly. It was then I realized fully what Dad had meant when he said Frankie was a scrapper. We all knew he was scared to death at going up there to speak, and there he was wrapping the meeting up in his hands. He was a showman too, the way he turned and brought Janet out with him. It was right—instinctively right. He did the things by instinct that I had to plan. He was the politician I had studied to be since I was a little kid. He was my father and myself rolled up into one, with my father’s magnetism and instinct for people, and my plans.

“At that moment I think I grew up—watching the two of them on the platform taking bows hand in hand. ‘You won’t meet many like him,’ I told myself. ‘Watch him and learn from him.’ I watched and I learned. And I learned to like him.

“There was nothing complicated about Frankie to me. To me he was the essence of direct simplicity and tact combined with a trigger-quick intelligence. He knew what he wanted and went for it. He told you what he thought, did what he wanted to, no matter what happened.”

He raised the demitasse to his lips. The coffee was cold. With an almost imperceptible pursing of his lips, he placed it back on the table.

“So you see,” he said, “Frankie wasn’t the mystery to me that he was to you. I grew to know him too well. I knew what he would do almost before he did it.”

“But,” Marty interjected, “you didn’t know he was going to run away.”

Jerry conceded the point by nodding his head. “That’s true. But you must remember I wasn’t with him the day he went to the station with his people. If I had seen him but once that day, I would have known.” But through his mind was running another theme.

“Could I have known? Did I really know him as I say? Or was he as much of a challenge or threat to me as I imagined him to be? The things that happened after could have been predicted by no man. No man could read the future. But he always had had the things I wanted most. He was top man at school, first with Janet. And even though I got the things I wanted after he left them, how do I know I would ever have had them if he hadn’t gone away?”

The thing that Janet wanted to do now—was it right or would it be Frank to come back to haunt him? He had no basic objections to Janet’s idea and he wondered where it came from. But after all, there had been Frank and, though he now belonged to the past, there still was a way open for him to return.

PART FOUR

Chapter One

I
STOOD
on the steps of the administration building and looked across the naval station. It was December 30th, 1931, and the breeze was chilly as it blew across the San Diego Bay. I turned up the collar of my pea jacket and lit a cigarette. My discharge papers were stuffed into my pocket; the duffel bag with my few belongings lay at my feet.

I was glad to be out. It wasn’t that I thought the Navy was bad, but as far as I was concerned it was a better place to bide my time before I rejoined my folks than the orphanage. Maybe I was just swapping one sort of a jail for another, but it was over now and I was glad of it.

Life in the Navy was generally a dull one. The restrictions, the routine, the very detailed planning of every minute of your day led to a certain deterioration of your ability to do and plan things for yourself. It probably did me some good. I read a great deal and was taught many things. I took mathematics for the gunnery classes, book-keeping for storekeeper’s duties, in addition to English, history, and a certain amount of geography.

Now, as far as I was concerned, it was over. I took a last puff at my cigarette, threw it away, and slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and proceeded to the main gate.

At the gate I handed my discharge papers to the chief petty officer on duty there. He took them, flipped them open, glanced at them and gave them back to me.

“O.K., sailor,” he said, grinning, “so long.”

“So long, hell!” I said. “This is good-bye. I’m out.”

“That’s what they all say,” he said, still grinning. “You’ll be back. They all come back.” “Not this baby!” I retorted, “I’m going home.” I walked out the gate to the bus stop. A

bus came up and I got in and sat down.

I turned for a last look at the station as the bus pulled out, and then settled back in my seat.

The folks would be glad to hear from me. I remembered the last time I had written them. It was from New York. I had twenty-four hours’ liberty from my ship and had wandered around town all morning not knowing what to do with myself. Suddenly I found myself in front of Jerry’s house. Without thinking, I ran up the steps and rang the bell.

A butler opened the door. “Is Jerry in?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, “Master Jerry is away at college. Any message?”

I hesitated a moment. “No,” I said. “No message,” and turned back down the steps as the door closed behind me.