When he went back to V again he wept for the first time since he had been a boy. He was not ashamed that V should hear him sobbing, heavy, unpracticed sounds that shook his body and left him gasping. V seemed to understand there was nothing else he could do. This feeling, that once would have found an outlet in furious anger, in a fight, in getting drunk, was now too huge, too complicated. There was nothing else he could do.
And when it was over he felt relieved. V was stroking his back and he took her hand between his and pressed it to his face, his face turned into the pillow. The end of the sobbing had brought a tired catharsis to his body and mind, and now he could think clearly, his mind washing clearly and quickly over the knots that had seemed unsolvable, like a mountain stream over the pebbles and boulders in the stream bed.
Shame was gone. Guilt was buried in the past. Everything was strange and new. This woman whom he could not see, but whose hand he clutched tightly to his face, was all that life had ever held for him, was life itself, and he was held to her by ties made up by both their lives. He realized he loved her completely and cleanly, had always, and the dirt of the guilt, the shame of the animal in himself, were washed away in the clear, cold stream of his mind. Everything he felt for her was purified and he saw the perfection he had only to close his hand upon.
Everything was simple now, turned into simple, understandable meanings and answers, and the torturing phantoms he had lived with so long were gone. The need for hurting V was gone. Guilt was gone; the death of Red, the murder of the unborn child, had been paid for now in his and V’s separate sufferings. They were separate no longer, but welded inextricably together.
The weight that had crushed him into a sobbing, grotesque caricature of himself was gone. He had felt it lift and dissolve into the air. He released V’s hand. He had wanted her fiercely, but suddenly he was no longer ashamed of the wanting. There was more than that for them; he knew it, yet now they did not need more, now they had not had time for more, they had had no chance for more. All that had held him from her in fear and hate was gone and what had thrust him to her only in wildness was gone, and it was as though his brain had burst free into a place where everything was calm and serene. He wished desperately he could tell V of this discovery, this change, the termination of the sentence, but he did not have the words. He could only run his hands over her body that was long and cool and clean, had always been so clean, that belonged to him and had always belonged to him, hearing the husky sound in her throat and feeling her arms come around his neck, arms that had known always that he belonged to her. He could not tell her, he could never hope to tell her. He could only show her, and feeling the aching pull again at his throat, he showed her; knowing that this was no animal, this was all of him, all of her was all of him, the wonder and the beauty of his life, that left him washed clean now and completely whole, that was his perfection, and exaltation, and apotheosis.
When it was over she lay with her face pressed against his chest. Her face felt wet but she made no sound. He looked down at her bare back and her brown arm flung out on the pillow, and stroked her hair, feeling the warm wetness of her tears on his chest.
Finally she said, “Will you go to her now?”
“Yes,” he said. “I can tell her now.”
V raised her head and pulled herself upright, her hands clutching his arms. “Will you?”
He nodded, trying to smile at her. He would go to Gene now and tell her. But V’s face was frightened. Her hair had slid around to cover one cheek and her mouth was trembling. She stared into his eyes and he could feel the sharp points of her fingernails digging into his arms.
“Yes,” he said. “I can do it now. I understand it now. I’ve been crazy too long, but I’m not anymore.”
She shook her head. The lock of blonde hair slid back and forth over her cheek. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve said that before. I’m afraid.” He thought she was going to say more, but she only repeated, “I’m afraid,” and shook her head again and bit her lip.
He freed his arms and put them around her and pulled her down. “Listen, V,” he said, speaking very slowly and carefully. “I’m going to Gene and tell her I want a divorce and she’s going to give it to me. Then we’re going to get married.” He shook her gently. “We’re going to get married,” he said.
She thrust her damp face into his throat, and he could feel her breath when she spoke. “I’ve thought about it so much,” she whispered. “I build it up and think we’ve got it now—that it’s finally going to be…and then it always falls apart again. I believe you now, when I hear you say it like that and see it in your face, but when you go away I’ll die and die and die, because I know it won’t be true.”
“Shut up with that,” Jack said. “Knock that off. I’ll cut off an arm and leave it here with you so you’ll be sure.” He shook her again. “Listen, V,” he said. “Where’ll we go? Back to the Valley?”
She laughed softly. “We can go anywhere. Haven’t you ever thought of that? I’ve got quite a lot of money. We can go anywhere and do anything we want to.”
“What would you want to do?”
She shook her head, her hair tickling his shoulder. “What do you want to do?”
“Buy a couple of cats. Rent them around. After a while buy some more equipment and get a little business going.”
“We could buy a lot of cats. Right away.”
“Just two,” Jack said. “Two big yellow D-8 dozers. I want there to be more because of my being smart enough, not because of your dough.”
“Maybe they’d have a little cat,” V said. She laughed breathlessly, and moved her face so that she was looking up at him. He had never seen her eyes look so big and dark. Her nostrils were stretched taut, as though she were holding her breath.
“There’ll be a lot of little cats,” Jack said. He laughed too. The laughing bubbled up inside him and made him shake all over. He thought of Gene; but that didn’t matter now. Nothing else mattered.
V laughed the breathless laugh. “How bourgeois,” she said shakily. “How completely beautifully perfect and bourgeois.” He didn’t know the word. His breath caught in his throat as he stared down at her; how much more did she know that he didn’t know? How much was she used to that he was not? How could she want what he wanted? Suddenly he was afraid.
“V, is that what you want, too? You don’t just want to go somewhere and be big time, do you? You…”
“No,” she said.
He shook his head at her. “You could; I guess you know that. But I never could. You know that. You know what I am. Just…”
“You shut up,” V cried. “Haven’t I ever told you all I wanted?”
He nodded seriously, and then he grinned. V smiled back at him.
“You’re my big time,” she said. “And how I’ve tried to make it!”
He moved his face until his cheek was against hers and she was pressed against his chest. Her body felt tight and hard, as though every muscle was being strained, and she pushed him away again. “Is this it?” she whispered, her eyes probing his. “Really? Really?”
“Really, damn it!” He pulled her roughly back. Her body relaxed and she clung to him.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes. I know it. But when you go away now, I’ll die. I’ll…”
He covered her mouth with his hand. “Goddamn it,” he whispered in her ear. “I mean this.” He brushed the blonde hair away from her ear and put his lips against it and whispered, “Something happened to me just then. Something broke. There’s nothing else now. There’s nobody else now.” He felt her hands tighten on his back and he removed his hand from her mouth and covered it with his mouth, feeling her strong arms on his back and pulling her to him and trying to make her know that it was now; it was now, and there would never be anything that could get between them again, because now there were only the two of them, there was nothing else; because now he knew what she was to him, and he could not live without her.
He left her sleeping to go back to the job. He wanted to go to work. He drove up beside the bulldozer, called to Danny Snyder to get down, and climbed up on the cat himself. He ran it all the rest of the afternoon, working as deftly and as surely as he had ever worked, enjoying hugely the dust in his nostrils and the trembling of the clutch levers and the dozer control under his hands, feeling his own sure power, his own narrow but complete skill, transmitted through the enormous power of the cat.
When the five-o’clock whistle blew he leaped down off the cat tracks. Danny waved and when Jack came over to him, said, “Hey, Jack, you should have been a cat skinner.”