Ben was working at the new naval base on the Peninsula the Monday the Pearl Harbor news started coming in. The next day he tried to enlist in the Navy. He was already 4-F, and the Navy wouldn’t take him, nor the Army, nor the Marines. He knew he was never going to be part of this, because of his leg.
In February they finished the grading at the naval base and moved down to Hamilton Field, where new air-strips were being installed. He knew Doris was working as a secretary in one of the offices at Hamilton Field, because his mother and Mrs. Rasmussen had mutual friends, but he made no effort to look her up. He saw her a few times, riding around with a fat captain in a new Chrysler convertible, seeing only her small white face above the car door, her black hair piled high in a bunch in front, and waving low on her shoulders in the back. He knew she was doing a good deal of partying and drinking and sleeping around with the officers at the field, because the mutual friend had told his mother that too. Her husband was a pfc down at Camp Callan.
But evidently Doris had heard he was working at Hamilton Field, because one Saturday afternoon she came out to see him, and when he was through work he took her home. She lived in an auto court which, because of the housing shortage, had been converted into a row of one-room apartments and in her apartment were large photographs of four men in Air Corps caps, all of whom looked very much alike, and a picture of her husband in his Army uniform, signed in a scrawling hand, “Your Johnny,” under the inscription, “To My Dear Baby Deer.” On the bed were three large, cloth-covered animals, a rabbit and a pink dog and a black-and-white dog, and on the bedside table were two glasses, one of them containing an inch of liquor in which a cigarette floated soggily, and a bottle one-third full of good bourbon.
They sat down on the bed and drank the rest of the bourbon without saying much, and then Doris cooked some chili on the hot plate and made some toast while Ben took a shower. After dinner Doris brought out another bottle of the good bourbon, which she said Hughey had given her. When they were drunk she sat on Ben’s lap and put her arms around his neck and cried drunkenly on his shoulder. That night he stayed with her.
He slept with her often after that. It didn’t matter to him that there were others as well, and although he felt badly about her husband, Doris said he knew about her and was going to get a divorce when he came back to San Jose. One night the fat captain came when Ben was there, and barged in past Doris and tried to hit Ben. The captain was drunk and when Ben pushed him away, trying to defend himself, the captain fell down, and Doris screamed at him and kicked him till he got up. The captain tried to hit Ben again, but Doris screamed, “You touch him and I’ll kill you! You touch him and I’ll kill you, you fat bastard pig drunk dog son of a bitch!” Ben held her as she tried to claw the captain, and the captain looked confused, and suddenly very young, and began to cry. When he had gone Doris had hysterics on the bed. Ben sat beside her until she quieted down, then he went out and got into his car. Down the road a way he stopped the car and sat for a long time with his face in his hands.
He had intended not to see Doris again, but a few days later she was waiting at the sentry box at the gate when he drove out of the field after work. When he stopped for the sentry she got in the front seat with him and he had to drive her home. In the apartment she began to cry and she made him come to bed with her, crying and saying she wanted to die when he had gone away.
In the morning when the alarm went off, Doris woke before he did, and reached across him to turn it off. She remained with her chest pressed against his and her cheek against his cheek and he could feel her breath on his ear. “Benny,” she whispered. “Johnny’s coming home on furlough next week.”
“Is he?”
“I got a letter from him day before yesterday. Do you want to read it, Benny?”
“No,” he said. “He wrote it to you.”
“He called me a whore nine times,” she said, and giggled. “Don’t you want to read it? He called me a bitch in heat twice.”
“I’ve got to get to work,” Ben said. “I’ll get some breakfast down at the corner. You go on back to sleep for an hour, honey.”
She reached down and rubbed her fingers over the scar on his leg, her chin still pressed into his neck. He thought she would stop it after a minute, but she kept tickling her fingers over the scar, breathing into his ear, and finally he pushed her hand roughly away. “I asked you not to do that.”
“Benny, we’re going to get a divorce. Do you want to marry me?”
He stared at her long sheaf of rumpled black hair, and then she raised her head and looked into his eyes. Her eyes were bright and strange behind the black eyelashes, and her pale mouth was twisted into a tight, thin smile. Suddenly he pulled the covers back, swung his legs out and got up. Doris sat up in bed, watching him as he got his clothes from the chair and put them on. He turned his back to her.
“Aren’t you going to say anything, Ben?”
“I have to think,” he said. “We’ll talk about it tonight.” When he went out the door she was still sitting up in bed watching him, her narrow shoulders hunched up, her chest flat and dead-white with her nipples looking like red twenty-five-cent pieces pasted on it.
He thought about it all day. He didn’t know whether he wanted to marry her or not. He didn’t know how he felt about her; he didn’t think he felt anything toward her one way or another. He felt only a kind of blank nothingness. And it was a poor life for a wife, he knew, moving around from construction job to construction job, never knowing where you were going to live, and where a wife might be a focal point in a life that had no focal point; too often she was only a piece of inconvenient baggage. What he wanted now was to go back to Bakersfield. Something—curiosity, he told himself—had been urging him to go for a long time. He thought he would go back. Merely in being near Jack and V he had felt something infinitely larger, infinitely more fulfilling than this affair, or even marriage to Doris could ever be.
That night, to avoid a scene, he did not go back to her again. He quit his job, went home, wrote Doris a letter and asked his mother to mail it when he was gone. The next day he packed his bags and put them in his car, and when he had kissed his mother goodbye and had shaken hands with his father, he drove south out of San Jose and over the Pacheco Pass, and then down the San Joaquin Valley, ignoring the thirty-five-mile-an-hour wartime speed limit. It was late in the evening when he got into Bakersfield, and he drove slowly along the main street, looking at the familiar buildings and the red and blue neon signs that glowed and hummed in the darkness. He did not know where he was going, but finally he parked his car in front of the Hitching Post and went in to see if anyone he knew were there.
The first thing he saw was the legs of a girl who was sitting on a stool at the end of the bar nearest the door. He paused, looking at the legs; they were long and tanned and the girl’s skirt had fallen away from her knees as she leaned back on her stool, her face turned from him so that he could see only her long, dark blonde hair. But he knew who it was, and then he saw Jack, sitting next to her.
Jack was leaning forward over the bar, talking, but his yellow eyes widened when he saw Ben. He grinned slowly. Then he yelled, “Ben!” and slid off the stool and was slapping Ben on the back. “Damn it, Ben,” he cried. “Where the hell you been?”
“Hi, Jack,” Ben said, and he could feel his face muscles pull painfully with his own grin. He had been away a long time, and now he felt as though he had come home. He squeezed Jack’s arm. Jack looked taller and leaner, older, and his face was thinner through the cheeks than Ben had remembered. His slanting yellow eyes were glinting happily; his mouth pulled down at the corners and he stuck out his lower lip.
“You jug-eared little bastard,” he whispered. “Goddamn it, it’s good to see you.”
“Hello, Ben,” V said, and Ben, still holding Jack’s arm, looked up at her. He didn’t like what he saw. She looked older too, sleek and blonder. Her smile was sleek and sure of itself; it was a smile he had never seen before, and only her eyes held the old, grave, innocent look he remembered. She had learned the ropes. He released Jack’s arm.
“How are you, V?” he said.
She looked at him levelly, smiling. Her chest was tan, swelling down into the top of her dress, and she wore no brassiere. He turned away and hit Jack gently on the arm with his closed fist. “It’s good to see you, man,” he said sincerely. “How’s everything going?”
“Going great,” Jack said. “Everything’s booming, everybody’s got draft deferments, everybody’s happy and drunk all the time, and where the hell you been, anyway? How about a drink?” Ben sat down on the other side of him from V, and Ernie brought them a round of straight shots.
“Say, where’s Peg?” Ben asked.
“Married, for Christ’s sake,” Jack said. “Married a lousy truck driver.” They both laughed, Jack heartily, his head tipped back. Ben could see V watching them in the mirror behind the bar.
“Listen, where the hell you been?” Jack demanded sternly. “Don’t you even know how to write? You’re a damn checkout friend, you are.”
“Been up around San Jose, mostly. You out at the air base?”
“Me and everybody else.”
“How’s chances of getting on?”
“Good. They’re dying for skinners. Can you run a blade?”
“I’ve been on one about a year,” Ben said. “But I’m not in your class yet.”
Jack grinned and slapped him on the back. “Listen, everybody’s out there. Push’s grade foreman, and Petey’s on a Turnapull, and Harry’s got a big old roller about a thousand years old, and old Red’s got the cat and tampers, and Toussaint’s stake-running for me. Everybody. Mac, and Hugo Crane…Did you know Hugo?”
“You think I can get on?” Ben asked.
“Hell, yes! Push’ll go wild when he hears you’re back. He’s been asking about you all along. Say, how about rooming with me?”
“I’d like to,” Ben said slowly, and then he looked past Jack at V. She leaned forward toward him.
“Why didn’t you let someone know where you were?” she asked. “We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Jack?”
“Hell, yes,” Jack said. “Bakersfield’s been all shot to hell with you gone, Ben. Everybody moping around, drinking by themselves. Terrible.”
Two men in leather jackets came in the door. One of them nudged the other and they both looked at V’s legs. The second one nodded to Jack. Jack nodded shortly in return, scowled, and finished his drink.
“Where’ve you been, Ben?” V said. He could see down the neck of her dress as she leaned toward him.
“San Jose. Up the Peninsula. All around.”
“Why didn’t you let anybody know you were going?”
“Aw, you know. I made up my mind in a hurry. You know the way you do.”
Jack’s eyes were veiled and he slid the shot glass back and forth between his hands on the smooth top of the bar. All the gaiety seemed to have left him, and now he was morose and silent.
“What’re you doing now, V?” Ben asked.
“I’m working at Deterle’s.”
“Car-hopping?”
“Yeah, it’s a good racket,” Jack broke in. “She wears a short skirt and a tight sweater and all the jerks and dogfaces break their necks tipping her.” He flipped the shot glass upside down and sat staring at it moodily. V put her hand on his knee and laughed and winked at Ben in the mirror.
“Jack gets awfully jealous,” she said.
Ben jerked his head around as the jukebox began playing, and then he slid off the stool to his feet. He had not touched his drink and, remembering it, he tossed the liquor down his throat, coughed, and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve.
“Everything’s all right then?” he asked. He didn’t look at V.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. Jack turned toward her curiously and she smiled at him, her hand still on his knee. Ben wondered how she had managed it. She had won, some way, he saw, and he wondered how she had done it. He thought suddenly of Doris, surprised that he had hardly thought of her all day; already, in the trip down from San Jose, she had faded as far into the past as she had ever been before.
“Well, I’ve got to hit the sack,” he said. “I’ve had a long trip. You still at the same place, Jack?”
“Yeah. You know where the key is. Can’t you stick around awhile?”
“Have another drink with us, Ben,” V said.
But he shook his head. “I’m pretty tired. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe. So long.”
“So long,” Jack said.
As he walked past V, Ben saw her lips form words. “Everything’s fine,” she said with her lips, and he nodded to her and kept on walking. He didn’t want to see her smile again.