Never Love a Stranger (57 page)

“You were the only reason I threw in the towel—because I fell for the line you gave me. Maybe I always knew deep inside me you were right, but it was for you that I did it.

“I didn’t make any bargain with you. I’ve turned my life inside out for you, I’ve traded a fortune for you. I’ve traded a loaf of bread for a pie in the sky, steak and potatoes for an ideal. And if you still think I don’t love you, baby, you can go to hell!”

I let her go. She sank back on the couch, and I started out of the room. “Frank,” she called after me in a still, small voice.

I turned around. She was standing there. “Frankie,” she said in the same small voice, filled with wonder, “you’re crying!”

Ruth and I were married at Justice of the Peace Smith’s in Meriden, Connecticut, on Monday, the last day of June 1941.

The justice’s voice was deep and strong.

“Do you, Francis, take this woman, Ruth, to be your lawful wedded wife and promise

to love, honour, and cherish her, in sickness and health as long as you both shall live?” “I do.”

“Do you, Ruth, take this man, Francis, to be your lawful wedded husband, and promise to love, honour, and cherish him, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, as long as you both shall live?”

Ruth looked up at him, then at me. Her eyes were the deepest blue I had ever seen.

Her voice was warm and soft and rich. “I do.”

The judge made a gesture. I placed the ring on her finger.

He held up his hands. “By the powers invested in me by the state of Connecticut, I pronounce you man and wife.” He drew a deep breath. “You may now kiss the bride.”

I turned to kiss her. Her lips pressed against mine lightly, then drew away. I looked at the judge.

He smiled at me. “Congratulations, young man! Two dollars, please.” I gave him five for luck.

We got back to my apartment about eleven o’clock. I carried her over the threshold and kissed her.

“Hello, Mr. Kane!” “Hello, Mrs. Kane!”

I put her down and went over to the phone and got room service. I ordered four bottles of champagne and they came up in a jiffy.

I waited outside the door while she made ready for bed. Nervously I drank from the glass in my hand. I walked over to the window and looked out. New York was bright across the river.

I smiled at my reflection in the window pane. Suddenly I lifted a glass to New York. “Here’s to you!” I said.

My reflection in the window lifted its glass and drank to me. “Frank.”

Her voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear it. I turned from the window and went to the door. “Yes, Ruth.”

There wasn’t any answer. I put the glass down, flicked off the wall lights, and opened the bedroom door. There was a soft lamp glowing near the bed. I crossed the room.

Ruth was standing near the window. She held her hand towards me. “Frank, come here a moment and look.”

I stood beside her, but all I could see in the glow of the light was Ruth.

“Frank,” she said, her voice strange and full of mystery, “look out of the window. Did you ever look out and see the whole world before you? A world, large and beautiful, waiting for you?”

I didn’t answer. The moonlight fell across her face. She was beautiful. She turned towards me. “Frank, what do you think our son will be like?” I kissed her lightly on the cheek. She moved closer into my arms.

“I don’t know,” I said softly. “I never thought about children; I never wanted any.”

She moved still closer to me. “Do you think he’ll be like you—wild and strange and wicked and handsome?”

I tightened my arms around her. “If he’s anything like me, we’d better not have him.”

My lips were against her throat. Her voice was whispering in my ear: “Frank, our son will be beautiful.” I moved my lips along her neck to her shoulder. “Frank, do you know you’re beautiful?” I laughed and moved my lips along the swell of her breast.

Her hands suddenly caught my head and held it close to her. She bent and kissed the top of my head.

I lifted my lips to hers. They were aflame. “Do you know you’re beautiful?” I whispered.

She reached out one hand and turned out the light.

It was later—much later. I had lain there quietly a long time watching her sleep. There were little tears in the corner of her eyes. I reached over and brushed them away. Suddenly I wanted a cigarette.

I fished with one hand on the side of the bed. No cigarettes! I moved slowly, carefully: I didn’t want to wake her.

I could still hear her voice: “Frank, are you happy? Am I all you wanted me to be?”

I went into the other room. I closed the door quietly and flicked on one of the table lamps.

She was all I ever wanted.

There were cigarettes on the end table. I went over and picked up the pack and took one and lit it. I drew a deep breath of smoke and let it come out my nose. It smarted a little and felt good.

I looked down at the table. There were some letters there that had been delivered while I was away in New York. Idly I picked my way through them: some bills, some advertisements.

I was at the bottom of the pile when I came across the post card. It was a penny government card. On the back of it was something that looked like a printed form. I read it.

Local Board No. 217 Selective Service.

Notice of Classification

Registrant ….. Francis Kane Order No. 549 has been classified in Class ….. 1A Until ……. by x Local Board. June 25, 1941

My cigarette was almost finished I put it out in a tray and walked towards the bedroom. It wasn’t until I reached over to put out the light that I realized I still held the card in my hand.

I flicked off the light and scaled the card across the room. The hell with it! I’d call Carson in the morning and get him to fix it up.

What Came After

M
ARTIN
suddenly felt weak. He sank into a chair and stared at Janet. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice trembling.

Jerry, too, looked at his wife This was what he wanted to know. He already knew part of the story, but now he was to hear the rest of it. Some of the tension left his face and he leaned back in his chair.

“We all knew Ruth was going to have a baby,” she began, seating herself so that she faced the two of them, “and when we received the terse telegram from Frank that Ruth had died in childbirth, containing no allusion to the child, we assumed that the child had perished with her. We were wrong.

“You, Martin, were already overseas, and all we could do was to write and tell you what had happened. A month later Jerry went over, and for a while life seemed to stop.

“A few weeks before Jerry came back, a visitor came in to see me. He was a chaplain

—a captain in the outfit that Frank was in—and had seen him die. We already knew that Frank was dead. I received word from the War Department about him on April 16th. But Captain Richards brought a message: a letter from Frank that he had entrusted to the chaplain to deliver personally.”

The chaplain was tired. It seemed like years since he had last slept. A man lived a thousand years from morning to night every day. And a thousand years a day was too long a time to live.

The sound of the guns had fallen away to a dull boom he scarcely heard. Yesterday this had been a field hospital; today it was a base hospital—the front had moved thirty miles away in one day. And still the wounded kept coming in. The doctors worked frantically, ceaselessly, tirelessly, but still the wounded piled up in front of the door of the operating-room.

He stepped out of the small building that served as the hospital. On the ground as far as a block away the wounded were lying on stretchers, awaiting their turn in the operating-room or transportation to the rear. It was almost night. The first star flickered incongruously in the sky. Slowly he picked his way past them to his tent. He had to get some sleep. He couldn’t stay awake any longer, even if in his sleep he would see them, their faces white with pain, and hear their voices heavy with their suffering.

Slowly he walked towards his tent, his head bowed, his feet dragged, his heart heavy in his anguish.

“Captain Richards.”

The chaplain heard the voice. He felt it rather than heard it. Its impact was more mental than physical. As a sound it was almost nothing in the intensity of pain that surrounded it. He stopped.

“Captain Richards, over here.” The voice was weak but steady.

The chaplain walked around a stretcher to the sound and looked down at the man who had called him. The man was one with the others. He was anonymous: another man wrapped in a blanket up to his neck, only his white face staring up at him. He didn’t know the man and got to one knee the better to see him.

“Captain,” the man said, “don’t you remember me?”

The chaplain shook his head. There were so many men. “I’m Kane, remember?” the man asked.

With a feeling of shock the chaplain remembered. He remembered the first time he had seen the man. He had just come into the army then, and Kane was a sergeant. He had asked Kane to attend some services. Kane had laughed. What was it he had said? It was hard to remember, it was so long ago. Oh yes, Kane had laughed. “Going to services now won’t help me much, Padre,” he had said. And the chaplain had answered: “Going to services will always help. It’s never too late to turn to God.” And the man had laughed again and answered: “If it ever comes to that, Padre, I hope to do my turning in person,” and had walked off. The chaplain had watched Kane for a while after that. He thought Kane was rather old for so strenuous a fighting job, and was surprised to learn that, despite his almost white hair, Kane was still in his early thirties.

“Yes, Kane, I remember now,” the chaplain said. He pulled his coat tight beneath him and sat down on the cold ground. He sat on a small rock and shifted his position a little until he was comfortable. He could see the red first-aid markings on Kane’s forehead now. The moon was coming up.

“I’m going to die,” the man said simply. There was no fear in his voice—he was only stating a fact.

“Come now,” the chaplain said, trying to get some cheer into his voice—but it didn’t sound right even to his own ears—“don’t talk like that!”

“Don’t kid me, Father!” the man said. He tried to laugh, but his laugh was only a windless, choking sound. “They don’t live with what I’ve got. I’ve seen too many of them.”

The chaplain tried to speak but the man cut off.

“Oh, it doesn’t hurt, Padre. That’s not it. I’m so full of morphia I don’t even know if I have a body—that is, if I have one.” The man’s eyes turned towards the chaplain. “Besides, they put me on the wrong side of the hospital door.”

Startled, the chaplain looked around him. The man was right. Those that could not hope to live were placed on this side; those who could, were on the other side of the door.

“I’ve been watching them walk past me for the last two hours,” the man said. “Every now and then one of the first-aid men would give me another shot of dope and chalk up the score on my forehead.” He chuckled again, the same windless, soundless laughter. “I don’t blame them. It’s better to help those that have a chance.”

The chaplain found his voice. “Look, you’re going to be all right, I tell you.”

“O.K., Father,” said the man in an oddly comforting voice. It was as if he were whole in body and the chaplain were in his place. “If you say so. But there’s something I want you

to do for me just in case I do go.”

“What is it, Kane?” the chaplain asked. The granting of Absolution came into his mind.

They all came to God sooner or later.

He was a little disappointed in the answer. “I have a letter I want you to deliver for me, Father,” the man said quietly. “Deliver—not mail. It’s in my pocket. Get it.”

The chaplain bent forward, put his hand under the blanket, felt for the letter, found it, and took it out.

“That’s it, Father,” said the man. “It’s to a woman.” He saw the look on the chaplain’s face. “It’s not to my mother, wife or sweetheart, Father. They have gone before me. It’s to a friend and her husband and their friend, and I don’t want them to get it until the war is over and they’re all together.” He fell silent. Thoughts were flickering through his mind.

The chaplain watched him for a few moments silently. Tiny drops of blood were falling from the man’s ears, forming a large dark blob on the stretcher that kept steadily growing larger. “Don’t worry about the letter, son. I’ll deliver it. Is there anything else I can do?”

Only the man’s eyes seemed to move. The chaplain had the impression they were laughing at him, that they read his mind and intention. “Yes, Father,” said the man. “Give me a cigarette.”

The chaplain stuck a cigarette in the man’s mouth. The man’s lips were cold and thin.

He could feel them move under his fingers, say a thank you that was almost like a kiss.

He turned around to get a match from his back pocket. When he turned back the man was dead.

He had slipped from this world into the next without sound or motion. Only his eyes were open. They seemed alive with expression. The chaplain looked at them a moment. They were softer now than he had ever seen them. They were warmer now than he had ever remembered them in the living man. A veil dropped from them.

They looked grateful.

“This chaplain had promised Frank he would deliver the letter himself. He kept his promise. He told me of Frank’s wish to have you all see it when we could get together.” Janet looked at her husband.

“Then that’s why you didn’t tell me before,” Jerry said, “why you didn’t tell me where you got the idea, why you only told me that the chaplain had told you of the child.”

“Yes,” Janet answered simply. “I wanted you both to hear it together.” She went to a small cabinet in the corner of the room and took the letter from it. She came back to the centre of the room and began to read from it. She spoke quietly, plainly, with a tangible expression of feeling and warmth.

“The letter is dated December 5th, 1944.”

Dear Janet,

I am writing a letter I hope you will never get. It is strange to write something you know may never be delivered, but it is stranger still to imagine it will be. If you get this letter I will be dead. It isn’t because I have any premonition of death that I take my pen in hand but it is just because, after all, there is the possibility that I may die rather