Willie and May were huddled together in the moonlight beside a tall pine on the floor of the Yosemite Valley, in front of the Ahwanee Hotel. Their cheeks touched; their breath mingled in a cloud of white vapor. They heard a deep masculine voice call, in long-drawn tones echoing between the sheer valley walls, “Let the fire fall!” From the peak of a cliff a red cascade of embers came tumbling straight down through the darkness, a glowing, floating fiery column a mile high. Somewhere in the gloom cowboy musicians began a melancholy little love song. Willie and May turned to each other and kissed.
After a while they walked arm in arm into the hotel. Through the bright lobby decorated with multicolored Indian hangings, and skins, and horns, they strolled to the red-lacquered elevator. They rode up three floors and got out together. It was all of a long winter night before Willie returned to his own room, and sank into an armchair in an excess of stupified pleasure, still thinking with joy of his last glimpse of May, enchanting in her simple white nightdress, with her red hair tumbled on her bare shoulders, smiling up at him as he closed her door. It was a perfectly satisfying picture, and he had no way of knowing that in her room below May was crouched in a chair, shivering and crying.
It was the familiar story: the young man back from the war, eager for his love, impatient of the cautious rules of peacetime; his girl no less eager for him, and ready to do anything to make him happy; and so, good-by rules! Willie had never tried to force May to yield to him. He had feared the entanglement more than he wanted this last intimacy, and their relationship had been full of sweetness without it. Nor did he force her this night. It happened; and it happened the more easily because they had both read lots of books which dismissed the rules as pretty primitive taboos and asserted that all morals were relative to time and place. Willie, floating in a daze of well-being, was certain at this moment that the books contained true wisdom. May, for some reason, wasn’t so sure. Anyway, the deed was done.
A couple of hours later, after May had telephoned him and both had confessed that they were wide awake, they sat at a table in the dining room, eating breakfast in a flood of white sunshine. Through the tall cathedral-like window they could see the nearby towering cliff, and pine forests dark green against the snow, and, far away, the everlasting white peaks of the Sierras; an especially agreeable contrast for a table set with a fine cloth, and fresh flowers, and fragrant bacon and eggs and hot coffee. They were both very gay. Willie leaned back and said with a luxurious sigh, “Well, it cost me a hundred and ten dollars, but it was worth it.”
“A hundred and ten dollars? For what? Two days in this place?”
“No, no. That was the ransom I paid to get off the Caine.”
He told May about the lost liquor crate, and described how, when he had requested a seventy-two-hour pass, Captain Queeg had hemmed and hawed, and finally said, “Well, now, Willie, it seems to me you’ve still got that fiasco with the crate on you record.” Whereupon the ensign had quickly answered, “Sir, I accept complete responsibility for my stupidity, and will try never to repeat such a bad performance. The least I can do, sir, is reimburse you for a loss which was my fault, and I hope you’ll permit me to do so.” At this Queeg had turned very pleasant; and, after a few gracious remarks to the effect that an ensign wouldn’t be an ensign if he didn’t make mistakes, he had agreed to let Willie go.
May was flabbergasted. She began to question Willie about his life on the Caine, and became more and more appalled as he talked, the Stilwell narrative shaking her most of all. “Ye gods, this Queeg, he’s a—he’s a monster, a maniac!”
“Well, more or less.”
“Is the whole Navy like that?”
“Oh, no. The skipper before Queeg was a grand guy, and damned capable, too.” The words were out of his mouth before it occurred to him to smile at his change of heart about De Vriess.
“Can’t you do anything about him?”
“But what, May?”
“I don’t know. Report him to an admiral. Write a letter to Walter Winchell. Something!”
Willie grinned, and put his hand over hers. They were silent for a while. Then May patted her lips with a napkin, opened her purse, and began repainting her mouth skillfully and quicky with a small brush which she dipped into a little black pot of rouge. Willie hadn’t seen such a cosmetic technique before, and he found it a bit glaring and over-professional, but he pushed the distaste from his mind with the thought that a night-club singer must carry with her a trace or two of her trade. The hope flitted across his mind that May wouldn’t bring out the brush if ever they dined with his mother. Lovers are supposed to come near the telepathic state; perhaps for this reason May gave him a keen look as she put away the brush and said, “Nice of your mother to let you run off like this.”
“Well, I pretty well do as I please, darling—”
“I know—but after she came across the country, and all—you just leave her flat-footed—”
“I didn’t ask her to come. She surprised me. Anyway, she’s going to stay on, and you have to go back. It’s only natural. She knows the score.”
“I wonder,” said May, with a little rueful smile. Willie pressed her hand, and they both colored a little.
“What does she think of me?” asked May, as forty billion poor girls have asked in their time.
“She thinks you’re swell.”
“I’ll bet she does—Really, what did she say? I mean the very first time she had a chance, when I walked off the pier and went back to the hotel? What were her exact words?”
Willie reviewed the awkward triangle scene on the wharf in his mind, the lame exchanges, the forced smiles, May’s deft withdrawal in a few minutes, and his mother’s remark, “Well, well. My Willie is keeping secrets from his old mother, eh? She’s remarkably pretty. Model, or showgirl?”
“Her exact words, as I recall them,” said Willie, “were, ‘There goes a very beautiful little girl.’ ”
May snorted delicately and said, “Your memory isn’t so hot, or you’re a liar. Little of both, I guess—Ow!”
A large blond young man in skiing clothes, walking past the table and chatting lovingly with a girl in a bright red ski suit, had cracked May’s head with his elbow. There were apologies, and the young couple went off, fingers interlaced, swinging their arms and laughing into each other’s eyes. “Goddamn honeymooners,” muttered May, rubbing her head.
“What do you say, would you like to try skiing?” Willie said.
“No, thanks. I like my spine the way it is.” But May’s eyes brightened.
“Look, they have slopes that your grandmother wouldn’t get hurt on—”
“I have no clothes, no skis—neither have you—”
“We’ll buy ’em or rent ’em. Come on!” He sprang up and tugged at her hand.
“Well, just to be able to say something if anybody asks me what I did in Yosemite—” She rose. “I’ll tell ’em I skiied.”
There were few people on the trails, and often they seemed to be playing by themselves in a white mountain world. Now and then Willie caught himself wondering whether the U.S.S. Caine really existed: the cramped little wheelhouse, the clip shack, the dreary gray-green wardroom with its tattered copies of Life and Esquire and its smell of old coffee boiling too long, the rust, the obscenity, the nagging little man who rolled steel balls in his fingers and talked with his eyes fixed on empty air. He felt he had wakened into health from a fever dream—except that he knew that the dream lay in a San Francisco drydock, real as a stone, and that in two days he would have to close his eyes and reenter the nightmare.
They stopped in the Badger Pass ski lodge, warmed themselves by a great log fire, and drank hot buttered rum. May took off her ski cap and shook out her hair over her green woolen jacket; and there was no man in the room who did not stare, and few ladies who could resist a brief annoyed appraisal. Willie felt most colossally pleased with himself. “What do you see in me, I wonder?” he said, halfway through his second hot buttered rum. “A glorious girl like you? What is there about me that’s worth crossing the country for?”
“First you answer a question for me. Why did you introduce me to your mother as Marie Minotti? You haven’t used that name since the day we met.”
Willie stared at the red smoky flames in the fireplace, and searched his mind for a pleasant answer. He had wondered himself at the impulse that had brought May’s real name to his tongue, and had discovered an unpalatable reason for it: the fact that, underneath all his powerful desire for May, he was ashamed of her. The thought of her origin, of the Bronx fruit store, of her grimy illiterate parents, had possessed him in the presence of his mother. At that moment, May had been Marie Minotti. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seemed right to tell Mom your real name, and start off on an honest footing. I didn’t think much about it.”
“I see. May I have another hot buttered rum? The last. I’m a little dizzy. Possibly from all this fresh air.
“If you want,” she said, when Willie returned and handed her the drink, “I can tell you what a glorious girl like me sees in you.”
“Fine. What?” Willie nestled complacently beside her.
“Nothing.”
“I see.” He buried his nose in his glass.
“I mean it. I’ve been trapped. In the beginning you seemed so fumbling and harmless to me, I just let myself enjoy your company, thinking nothing would come of it. And then they dragged you off to Furnald Hall, and with you carrying all those demerits I felt sorry for you, and it seemed patriotic to cheer you up, and furthermore I swear you must have appealed to my mother instinct—although I never thought I had one. Well, the whole thing just went on and on, and got to be a habit, and now here we are. I was a damn fool to come out here, and I’m going straight home day after tomorrow. I don’t like what’s happening. I feel as though I’d slipped and broken a leg.”
Willie said lazily, “You’re fascinated by my mind.”
“Just remember, pal,” said May, “I’ve had freshman English now. And I’ve done a hell of a lot of reading. I can talk about Dickens all you want, and probably top you. Go ahead, say something. What do you think of Bleak House?”
“Never read it, matter of fact,” said Willie with a yawn. “That’s one I missed. Nice and warm by this fire, you know?”
“Let’s get out of here,” said May, slamming down her unfinished drink.
“In a minute,” said Willie. “You know what I think? It’s chemistry. You and I just have a chemical affinity, like sodium and chlorine.”
“I’ve heard that line so often,” said May impatiently, “it makes me want to throw up. How do you explain the fact that almost every guy in the night-club business has felt this chemical affinity for me, while I look on them as so many hogs?”
Willie smiled with such naked male smugness that May jumped to her feet, resisting an impulse to throw her glass at him. “I’m roasting, I want to go.”
The firefall that night seemed less thrilling, somehow, though in every way the scene was unchanged except that the moon was fuller and brighter. The hidden musicians played the same nostalgic lament, and Willie kissed May again; but an odd feeling that he had better do so replaced last night’s fervor. May felt the difference in his lips, and her own remained coolly prim. Instead of going upstairs, they danced for a while. At last they went to May’s room, but Willie found everything different. May sat in an armchair in a position that made it hard for him to approach her, and she chattered in the most matter-of-fact way about Hunter College, Marty Rubin, and the clubs where she had sung. Willie became bored and exasperated, and at the same time found May looking more and more provokingly beautiful. At last he rose, went to the armchair, and, while she talked on, attempted an affectionate gesture. May, with a slight neat turn of her shoulder, deflected his hand. “What’s eating you, friend?” she said.
Willie muttered something affectionate.
“Well, don’t try to come at me when I’m not ready,” said the girl. “I’m fast as a snake at dodging.”
“Sorry,” he said, and shambled back to his chair.
They passed two hours of desultory talk, May alternately gossiping about her life at home and questioning Willie about the Caine, all in the same bright sociable manner. Willie took off his coat and tie and lay on the bed, smoking continually, and keeping up his end of the dialogue, with growing grumpiness. He began to yawn, whereupon May yawned twice as long and hard. “Gosh, Willie, I had no idea how dead I was. I’m going to turn in.”
“Fine,” said Willie, with great relief, not moving from the bed. May looked at him quizzically, then went into the bathroom. She emerged in a few minutes, tying a blue woolen bathrobe around her nightgown. “You still here?”
Willie jumped up and took her in his arms. She kissed him affectionately and said, “Good night, darling.”
“I’m not going,” said Willie.
“Oh, yes you are.” She put her hand on the knob and opened the door. Willie pushed it shut with the flat of his hand, and held her close. “May, what the devil—”
“Look, Willie,” said May, leaning away and regarding him calmly, “you have wrong ideas. I’ve done my share and a little more to welcome the boys home—and never mind how I feel about it, at this moment—but that doesn’t mean you’re moving in with me. I like you, Willie, I’ve made that all too plain, but I haven’t picked up new habits. Don’t, don’t get strong and virile now. You’ll just make an ape of yourself, and anyway I can handle you with one hand tied behind me.”
“I believe you,” said Willie furiously. “I daresay you’ve had plenty of practice. Good night!”
The door slam was loud enough to wake everybody on the floor, and Willie, embarrassed, scuttled up the red-lit emergency stairway instead of ringing for the elevator.
At eight o’clock May’s phone woke her out of a restless doze. She reached for the receiver and said dully, “Yes?”
“This is me,” spoke Willie’s voice, weary and subdued. “How about breakfast?”
“Okay. Be down in fifteen minutes.”
He was sitting at a table when she came walking through a broad beam of sunshine falling across the doorway. She wore a white sweater and gray skirt, with a little clasp of imitation pearls around her neck; her hair fell in soft rolls about her face; she was at her very prettiest. He stood and pulled a chair out for her, and two thoughts followed each other through his mind: “Do I want to live with this person for the rest of my life?” and “How can I live with anyone else? Where will I find her again?”
“Hello,” he said. “Hungry?”
“Not very.”
They ordered food, but left it uneaten. Their talk was desultory chatter about the scenery. They smoked and drank coffee. “What would you like to do today?” said Willie.
“Anything you want.”
“Did you sleep?”
“So-so.”
“I’m sorry about last night,” said Willie suddenly, though he had not had any intention of apologizing.
May smiled at him wanly and answered, “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Willie.”
Willie was seized with a feeling of vertigo, an actual dizziness, as though he were teetering at the edge of a deck, looking into a turbulent sea, and experiencing an impulse to jump overboard. His mouth became dry. He swallowed hard, and jumped. “What would you think of spending the rest of your life with a monster like me?” he said with difficulty.
May looked at him, a little amused, a little saddened. “What’s this, now, dear?”
“I don’t know, it seems to me maybe we ought to start talking about getting married,” Willie said doggedly.
May put her hand on his, and said with a quiet smile. “Do you want to make an honest woman of me, Willie?”
“I don’t know what else we’re going to do with our lives,” Willie said. “If you think I’m crazy, say so.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” said May. “Only I wish you didn’t look as though you were taking a dose of medicine like a man.”
Willie laughed. He looked into her face for a long moment. “Well, what do you say?”
May looked away, and glanced around the sunny dining room. Most of the tables were empty. In a corner near a window the honeymooners in the bright ski suits were leaning toward each other, the bride feeding a bit of coffee cake into her husband’s mouth. “What do I say about what, Willie?”
“About our getting married.”
“I haven’t heard you propose.”
“I propose to you that we get married,” said Willie with extreme distinctness.
“I’ll think about it,” said the girl. She took her lip brush and rouge from her purse, then glanced up at Willie demurely. He wore a look of such pained surprise that she burst out laughing. “Oh, look, darling,” she said, putting her cosmetics on the table, and touching his arm, “this is terribly sweet of you. I’m sure it’s the best you can manage. But everything’s all wrong this morning. I can’t jump at your words and hold you to them just because you’re feeling sheepish, and sorry for me. If we’re going to get married, why, I guess maybe we will sometime. I don’t know. Talk about other things.”
Willie, in a fog of bewilderment, watched her skillfully paint her mouth. Every word that they had both spoken seemed printed on his mind, and as he scanned the interview it seemed to him an unbelievable exchange. He had often pictured proposing to May, but nothing he had ever imagined resembled this devious, inconclusive reality. The possibility had never occurred to him that, several minutes after allowing himself to speak the fateful words, he might still be free.
May, for all her apparent calm, for all the steadiness with which she traced the carmine outline of her lips, was as confused and dizzied as Willie. All her reactions and words had come to her unbidden. She had not expected Willie to propose, and even less had anticipated that she could fail to accept. Yet now the scene was done, and nothing had been solved. “I think I’d like to ride a horse,” she said, still looking in the mirror. “A nice gentle one. Would you like that?”
“Sure,” said Willie. “Hurry with that paint job.”
They rode sad old horses through the snow on bulky Western saddles, May clutching the saddle horn and laughing breathlessly whenever her nag gamboled forward in a brief trot. Willie was an experienced rider, and the diversion was tame for him, but he enjoyed the crystal air, and the awesome scenery, and above all the beauty and good humor of his girl. They were hungry at lunch time, and ate huge steaks. In the afternoon they went for a sleigh ride, nestling under horsy-smelling blankets and exchanging mild caresses while the garrulous old driver droned geological facts about the valley. Back at the hotel, they started drinking long before dinner, and wafted through an evening of dancing and chatter in a pleasant haze of affection and good feeling. Willie left May at her door that night, after a short but wholehearted kiss, and went upstairs, glowing with manly virtue and alcoholic exaltation.
The bus ride back to San Francisco next day was long. It was pleasant enough to look out of the window at the snowy thick-forested peaks and gorges of the Sierras, holding hands and saying nothing. But when the bus rolled out into the San Joaquin Valley and sped quietly along U.S. 99 between endless plum groves and truck gardens, all wintry brown and bare, Willie became more and more aware that the time was at hand for serious talk. Not only San Francisco and the Caine lay at the end of this long straight macadam trail. There was also his mother. “Darling,” he said.
May turned and gave him an affectionate look.
“Have you thought about us?” Willie said.
“Sure, lots.” May sat up in her seat and disengaged her hand to light a cigarette.
“Well—what do you say?”
Between the moment that the match flared and the time she dropped it in the ashtray, May’s mind raced through a long series of thoughts. The gist of them was a sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction, and a suspicion that she was in a bad corner. “What do you want me to say, Willie?”
“That you’ll marry me.”
May shrugged. This tepid, matter-of-fact courtship was no part of love and marriage as she had vaguely imagined it. But common sense was her strong point, and she thought she had better take what was offered. She wanted Willie. “You know me, Willie—hard to get,” she said, with an abashed, confused smile and a blush. “When? Where? What do you want to do?”
Willie, with a heavy sigh, clasped her hand tightly and said, “Those are the things we have to think about next.”
May sat up straight and shot a glance at him full of her old wariness. “Look dear, let’s get one thing straight. If you’re starting a little home for fallen women, I’m not interested. I don’t want you to marry me because you’re sorry for me, or because you want to do the manly thing by me, or anything like that.”
“I love you, May.”
“You’d better think about the whole thing some more.”
“I don’t want to think about it any more,” said Willie, but his tone lacked conviction. He was confused about his motives, and suspected that misguided chivalry might be at the bottom of his proposal. Willie Keith was steeped in suburban morality, and he was inexperienced, and moreover, he was not the brightest young man on the planet. The night he had spent with May had sunk the girl in his esteem though it had heightened her as an object of desire. He did not really know what he ought to do, and on the whole was as miserable as a young man might be with a beautiful girl like May at his side and within his grasp.
“Are you going to talk to your mother about it?”
“Well, I guess she’d better know, the sooner the better.”
“That’s a conversation I’d like to hear.”
“I’ll repeat it for you tonight, after I talk to her,” said Willie. “Word for word.”
After a long silence Willie said, “There’s the matter of religion. How strongly do you feel about—about yours?” It was a great effort to bring the words out. He was embarrassed by a feeling that he was being stupidly and falsely solemn about something that was totally unreal.
May said, “I’m afraid I’m not a good Catholic by any means, Willie. That won’t be a problem.”
“Well, fine.” The bus turned in to a roadside restaurant and stopped. Willie jumped up with great relief. “Come on, let’s get some coffee or I’ll die.”
An old lady who was unpacking a lunch basket on her lap in one of the forward seats glanced up with sentimental pleasure at the pretty red-haired girl in the camel’s-hair coat, and the young pink-cheeked ensign in his long, gold-buttoned bridge coat, white silk scarf, and white officer’s cap. “Now there,” she said to the old gentleman by her side, whose eyes were on the lunch basket, “there goes a darling couple.”