The Troubled Air Part 4

"You're a dirty man," Kitty said. "I'm married to a real dirty man. Isn't this nice?" she said. "Isn't this the best part of the day, just sitting here gossiping like this at night?"

"Yes, dearest," Archer said gently.

"I think I'm going to stay in bed most of the time now," Kitty said. "I get tired when I walk around and I don't want anything bad to happen. And I'm not interested in anything else. I just want to lie here and doze and wait for you to come home."

"You ought to take up something," Archer said. "Knitting, needlepoint, something. A hobby."

"I only have one hobby," Kitty said.

"What's that?"

"You."

They chuckled together.

Archer reached over and put out the light.

"You coming in here for awhile?" Kitty's voice was elaborately arch in the darkness.

"I can't sleep that way."

"But I can." Kitty giggled, as Archer got into bed beside her.

She lay on his outthrown arm and kissed his neck. "Clement, Clement," she whispered, then stretched out on her back. "I feel so good today," she said. "This is the first day I felt really good. I could even bear the taste of the lipstick today and I tried smelling my perfume and there were actually two bottles I could stand." Her voice rambled off and in a moment or two, close beside him, she was asleep.

Archer listened to her breathing and the domestic rustle of the curtains at the window. No wonder women live longer than men, he thought. They know how to sleep.

Conscientiously, he closed his eyes and pretended to himself that he was drowsy. I mustn't think about it now, he thought. I'll be up all night and then, tomorrow, when I really have to make decisions, I'll be uncertain and exhausted. Not now, he thought, not now. O'Neill. Pokorny, Weller, Atlas, Motherwell, Herres. Archer. Herres. Keep your eyes closed. You have two weeks. Take ten deep breaths and put your hands flat on the blanket. Archer. Herres. What do you really know about your friend? Is accuracy possible after the blunting years of habit and affection? Who knows his friend? Who dares to add up the facts of fifteen years, the jokes, the conversations at night, the journeys, the parties, the crises and disasters, and say at the end-"Here he is. This is what he is like ..."?

Archer had first seen Vic Herres in History 22, Europe from the Renaissance to the Congress of Vienna, Required for Degree. An Indian summer afternoon, with the windows of the cla.s.sroom all open and the trees still deep green and everybody a little sleepy after lunch. Fifteen years ago, with the old creased map of Europe in 1600 hanging from a hook behind Archer and the smell of the lawn and all the girls with bare brown arms. The academic year lurking ahead like a beartrap. Everybody dreamy and still attached to the memories of summer and wis.h.i.+ng they were swimming or taking a nap in the sun or walking through the woods. Everybody resentful of Europe from the Renaissance to the Congress of Vienna. Archer, thirty years old, fiddling with his notes on his desk, waited for the bell to ring and the year begin, glancing surrept.i.tiously out over the cla.s.s, wondering what they were thinking of him. Especially the girls. ("Why, he's bald! A true, historic, ancient, old crock.") He must remember, Archer thought, waiting for the bell, and regarding the cla.s.s with hostility, not to keep rubbing the naked top of his head. Keep that ammunition, at least, out of the hands of the remorseless imitators in the cla.s.s.

Then a tall boy wearing a bow tie had sauntered in, holding hands with a pretty girl. That was Herres. The boy and girl had seated themselves in the last row of chairs, on the end. They were expecting to talk about a lot of other things besides history for the next five months, that far away from his desk, Archer thought grimly, and looked at Herres closely. Flunking material, he decided. Then he saw that the boy had a big raw b.u.mp on the bridge of his nose and a black eye. Unreasonably, he was annoyed with the boy, as though it was deliberately rude to approach Louis the Fourteenth and Robespierre with a black eye. Also, he was wearing a better suit than Archer. And rather than disfiguring him, the swelling on his nose and the purple lines around the eye socket gave him a das.h.i.+ng and mocking appearance. A wealthy rowdy, Archer judged, probably with an open roadster of his own, and a big hand with the campus girls and the waitresses downtown. And thick straight blond hair, cut very close, to crown it all. And the girl next to him looking up at him as though she was ready to melt into her seat at a kind word from him. The secret stresses that instructors were exposed to, that no course on education ever took into account.

Then the bell rang and the year began and Archer called the roll. Herres answered with a clipped, "Here" and Archer remembered the name. Quarterback on the football team, another mark against him. Probably there'd be a hearty, embarra.s.sed visit from Samson, the coach, in a month or two, with a plea to keep the boy eligible until Thanksgiving, even though he cut half his cla.s.ses. Not this time, Samson, old boy, Archer resolved in advance, not for this particular young hero in a bow tie. He can come in with both eyes closed and swinging on crutches after scoring twenty touchdowns on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, but I won't give an inch.

That was how he saw Vic and Nancy Herres, who was then Nancy MacDonald, for the first time.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Archer had said, after reaching Zimmerman on his alphabetical list and ascertaining that Mr. Zimmerman was present and ready for knowledge, "ladies and gentlemen, we are all the captives of history. In a double sense. First, we are all here in this room on this pleasant afternoon, when we would prefer being some place else, because this is a required course and autumn has officially begun." There had been the usual tentative polite chuckles, although not from Herres or his girl, and Archer went on. "And second, because, here in the middle of America, in 1935, all our actions are in some measure the result of certain decisions made in Paris in 1780 and certain books written by dead foreigners in the early part of the nineteenth century ..." Well, it was all ba.n.a.l enough, but you had to begin somewhere, and every teacher of anything had his own standard openings to lead the way into the routine of a term.

Herres had surprised him. He cut no cla.s.ses, listened carefully, whispered very seldom to the pretty girl at his side while others were talking, seemed to take no notes, but answered swiftly and easily in his cool, confident voice, was witty on occasion without being a clown, and obviously had read a great deal more on the subject than anyone else in the cla.s.s. Archer was first surprised, then suspicious, and finally grateful to have someone like that in his cla.s.s. He began to look forward to History 22 and prepare it more thoroughly than any other of his courses and allow many more digressions and tangential debates because the whole cla.s.s seemed to learn more quickly and interestedly because of Herres' lead. When, in the middle of the season, Herres came up to his desk and in his casual and offhand manner offered Archer two tickets for the next football game, he was pleased and said he'd be delighted to go, although he had been religiously devoting Sat.u.r.days and Sundays to writing a play on Napoleon III that he had high hopes for.

The stadium was really nothing more than two sets of field stands with a wooden fence around them, but there was a gala air about it, with the stands filled and the bands playing during the pre-game practice and the flags snapping in the raw October breeze. Herres had given Archer tickets high up in the stands, saying, "It's the only place you can make any sense out of a football game. Down low, it'll just look like a mob of ruffians beating each other over the head for two hours." Seated in the last row, between Kitty, who had bought herself a yellow chrysanthemum for the occasion and who looked younger than most of the students this afternoon, and Nancy MacDonald, who was playing hostess in a grave, adult manner, Archer could see over the fence through the bare trees, down the hill to the buildings of the college. They looked peaceful and solid in the gray afternoon and for a moment he felt deeply attached to them and glad that he was spending his life here.

"That's Vic," Nancy was saying, her voice betraying nothing. "Number 22. He's throwing pa.s.ses now, but he doesn't do much of that in the game."

"He looks so large," Kitty said. "It doesn't seem fair, letting such a large boy play with some of those poor little undernourished ones."

They had all laughed and Kitty's eyes had been dancing and lively. Kitty loved parties, dances, events of all kinds. Watching her out of the corner of his eye, Archer felt a little guilty, because he kept her so close to home all the time. He himself disliked noise and group hilarity, and stayed at home whenever he could and Kitty, although she sighed from time to time when he made her refuse an invitation, loyally smothered all complaints.

He looked for number 22. He had brought a pair of binoculars and he put them to his eyes. Vic Herres emerged from the circular blur of the gla.s.ses. He did look enormous, with the shoulder pads and helmet, as he took the pa.s.s from center and ran back easily and threw with a jumping, flipping motion. He seemed bored but relaxed, in contrast to the tense excitement of the other boys around him. His hips seemed very narrow, sloping in from the spread of the shoulder pads and his legs, tight in the silk pants, were thick and long. When he moved, Archer realized what sports writers meant when they talked about the way an athlete handled himself.

"Mr. Archer," Nancy said in a low voice and Archer put down the gla.s.ses, "I have something here for the cold."

Archer looked down and saw that Nancy was holding a silver flask, keeping it low on her lap, and partially covered under a plaid blanket. He must have looked a little surprised, because Nancy said hastily, "It's Vic's. It's his whiskey, too. He said not to press it on you, but to be quick with it if you showed unmistakable signs of exposure." She smiled and Archer decided that he liked her very much.

"Kitty," he said, turning to his wife, "we're being tempted with spirits by the younger generation. Look."

Kitty bent over and saw the flask. She looked at him doubtfully. "Here?" she whispered, with a quick flick of her eyes for the students and faculty members and alumni and parents crowded below them.

"Vic said that's why he got you tickets in the last row," Nancy said. "There's n.o.body around you and everybody's looking the other way."

"Victor Herres is probably the most thoughtful man playing collegiate football this year," Archer said. "He has my vote for All-American right now." He took the flask and offered it to Kitty.

Kitty giggled as she took the flask. "Gilded youth," she said. "I feel illegal and dissolute. As though Prohibition were still on." She unscrewed the top, which had a little silver chain, and drank. She looked mischievous and boyish, with her head tilted back from the collar of her old fur coat and Archer thought vaguely and pleasantly of the time when he first met her. She took a long drink, and made a little satisfied pursing sound with her lips as she pa.s.sed the flask back to Archer. "Some day," she said, "I'm going to investigate whiskey more completely. Scandal on the campus. Faculty member's wife found looping in chapel-tower every Sat.u.r.day evening."

Archer smiled at her, pleased that she was having such a good time. Then he turned and offered the flask to Nancy.

Nancy shook her head soberly. "Vic gave me explicit instructions not to," she said.

"I won't tell the man," Archer said. "Mum as the grave."

"No," Nancy said. "He says I get silly on one drink and he's right."

"Does Vic drink much?" Archer asked curiously.

"Yes," Nancy said, without criticism. "I've had to carry him into his fraternity house twice so far. He weighs a ton, too, and he's dangerous when he's drunk. He'll do anything. The last time, he walked across the water pipe over the gully near the lake. In the middle of the night. Somebody dared him. It's a twenty-foot drop and he wouldn't listen to any of us when we tried to stop him. He knocked out Sully, that's number 17, the center, because Sully stood in his way. And Sully's his best friend."

The history student, Archer thought dryly, does other things with his time, too, I see. And there's more to little Nancy MacDonald than you can see with the naked eye across six rows of chairs in a cla.s.sroom, too.

He lifted the flask and drank. It was Bourbon, very smooth and strong. Another thing about the quarterback, Archer thought appreciatively, he does not serve inferior spirits to his elders.

The game was about to begin and Samson, the coach, was hanging onto Herres' arm and talking earnestly into his ear. Herres kept nodding again and again impatiently and trying to walk away from Samson, as though he had heard everything that the coach had to say and was bored by it. Archer watched through the binoculars as the players gathered into a pre-game huddle, exhorting each other, shaking hands and clapping one another on the back, their faces strained and tense. Archer noticed that Herres stood quietly on the edge of the group, his hands on his hips, taking no part in the fervent little ceremony, looking on almost tolerantly, like a grownup watching children playing. When a man whacked him encouragingly across the shoulders, Herres shrugged, as if he were annoyed. And when, just as the knot of players broke up, number 17, Sully, kneeled swiftly and crossed himself, Herres' face, calm and soldierly looking under the golden helmet, showed amused disdain.

"He shouldn't do that to Sully," Nancy said. "Vic always makes fun of him when he crosses himself and he knows it hurts him. He keeps telling Sully that's taking G.o.d too cheaply, pulling Him in on athletic events. He says if G.o.d spends His Sat.u.r.days watching football games, He must be neglecting more important work somewhere else."

"Oh, that's unfriendly," Kitty said. Kitty came from a religious family and treated anyone's observance of ritual with worried respect. "I should think it would make Mr. Sully hate him."

"Oh, no," Nancy said, seriously. "Sully loves Vic. He goes to Ma.s.s and prays for Vic's safety every Sat.u.r.day morning. It makes Vic furious."

Watching Herres trot out onto the field to line up for the kickoff, Archer had the feeling that there was no necessity for praying for the boy's safety at any time. He moved with calm a.s.surance and didn't jitter around the way the other boys did and his long powerful body seemed to be under easy control at every moment. Yet, when the game got under way, Archer was surprised. Herres played with cold recklessness, backing up the line on defense and throwing himself at charging blockers with insane disregard for what Archer, who was a sedentary man, would have felt were the most rudimentary rules of self-preservation. Archer used his gla.s.ses almost all the time and found himself following Herres rather than the game. Herres hurt people when he hit them, brus.h.i.+ng through blockers with his hands swinging cruelly and tackling savagely, even when a ball carrier was stopped by other men or herded against the sidelines so that a mere push would have sufficed to throw him out of bounds. And when his team had the ball he blocked the same way, with that ferocious, cold tenacity, knifing into tacklers' legs with long, lunging dives or driving them with his shoulders, his helmet bobbing up into their chins, hitting, it seemed, harder and harder as the game wore on. And when he carried the ball, he barely deigned to twist or dodge, but plunged disdainfully and with furious power into tacklers, knocking them over, trampling on them, carrying them on his back as he plowed on. Without knowing much about the game, Archer understood that Herres was an unpleasant and discouraging man to play against.

There was something curious about the way he played, different from the rest of the boys on the field. He seemed to do everything impersonally. When the others would congratulate a man after a play or cheer each other on, he remained out of it. Between plays he stood by himself, his hands on his hips, not seeming to listen to the other players or notice them. And in the time outs he walked off by himself and got down on one knee to stare placidly at the crowd.

"He shouldn't do that," Archer heard Nancy say during one time out, when Herres as usual, went off toward the sideline, and with his back half-turned from the men on his team grouped around the waterboy, knelt and played with a blade of gra.s.s at his feet.

"Shouldn't do what?" Archer asked.

"Go off by himself like that all the time," Nancy said. "The other boys don't like it. They think he's stuck-up."

Archer smiled at the childish phrase.

"It's not so funny," Nancy said. "Sully's come to me to ask him to change. They don't like him, really. They think he's making fun of them all the time. They won't elect him captain for next year, Sully says, even though he's the best player on the team."

"Did you tell him?"

"No," said Nancy.

"Why not?"

"Because n.o.body can tell him anything," Nancy said soberly. "Especially not his girl. That's the wonderful thing about him. Do you want another drink?"

Archer looked at her gravely. There was a lot more here than just two children holding hands on the way to a history cla.s.s. Archer had the feeling that if he asked if she were Herres' mistress she would answer, surprised at the question, "Of course. Didn't you know?"

"Yes," Archer said, "I'd love a drink."

"Don't leave me out," Kitty said, from the other side, her cheeks bright from the cold and the chrysanthemum shedding its petals in a yellow shower over her coat. "I'm numb." She drank from the flask. "Oh, glory," she said, "I'm going to become a sportswoman. You're so lucky, Nancy, to have a man who gets you out into the open air every week."

I'm not so sure, Archer thought as he took the flask, I'm not sure at all how lucky she is.

Just before the end of the game a fight broke out on the field. The visiting' team was behind by three touchdowns and felt punished and humiliated. Their tempers were touchy and when one of the defending backs was knocked down after the play was over he got up swinging. In ten seconds there was a melee around the two players, with fists flailing among the helmets. Almost all the players, including the subst.i.tutes on both benches, rushed to the scene and joined in. Only Herres, who had not been in on the play, remained aloof. He stood twenty yards away, smiling amusedly and shaking his head. When a subst.i.tute from the opposing bench ran past him, Herres mockingly put his hands in the position of prizefighters in oldtime prints. The subst.i.tute stopped running and looked at Herres puzzledly, and the crowd laughed. Oh, no, thought Archer, you will not be elected captain this year, young man.

The officials broke up the fight quickly and the game continued. It was over two minutes later and the crowd wound onto the field, darkening spots of color on the dark green gra.s.s in the autumn dusk.

"I have to go now," Nancy said. "I have to wait for Vic outside the field house and he's always the first one out. He never hangs around after the game." She put the flask to her ear and shook it to see if there was any left. She smiled as she saw Archer and Kitty watching her. "Vic likes a good long slug after a game."

"Does the coach know about this?" Archer asked.

"I'm sure he does," Nancy said. She shook hands with Kitty. "Good-bye," she said. "This has been so nice."

"Tell Mr. Herres," Kitty said, "that he had an ardent admirer in the top row. Under the influence of liquor all through the second half."

"I certainly shall. I know he'll be glad to hear it."

"Do you think he'll get drunk tonight?" Archer asked, although he knew he shouldn't.

"I suppose so," Nancy said lightly. She folded the blanket she had brought with an intense and suddenly childish look of concentration on her face.

"Well," said Archer, "have a good time tonight."

"I'm sure we will, Mr. Archer," the girl said, and went carefully down the creaking wooden aisle, with her blanket and her flask and the long slug of Bourbon for the boy who was now taking off his sweaty jersey in the field house. She walked away, happy, her hair s.h.i.+ning in the dull evening light, young and not innocent. As he watched her, Archer had the feeling that the generations were filling in behind him.

He walked home slowly through the dusty-smelling trees, holding Kitty by the arm. He kissed her when they got to the shadow of the porch, without knowing exactly why he did it. Kitty's face was cool from the wind and her skin smelled of the chrysanthemum, autumnlike and healthy when he kissed her. "I feel nineteen," she said as he held her. "I really feel only nineteen years old."

Archer thought that he knew why Kitty felt that way. But he knew he didn't feel nineteen that afternoon.

When they went into the house and Kitty started calling for Jane, to give her supper, he went into his study and put on the light. He sat down at his desk and picked up the act and a half of the play about Napoleon III. He read it through. It seemed empty and dead, deprived of all the life he had thought it had as recently as eleven o'clock that morning.

He sat in the limited light of the desk lamp, thinking how pleasant it would be to get drunk that night.

After that, Archer went to see all the games, allowing Napoleon III time off on Sat.u.r.day afternoons. Herres always played the same way, remotely, savagely, and with amus.e.m.e.nt. He was involved in a small scandal when he refused to attend the rally on the eve of the last game with the season's traditional rival, and Nancy told Archer that there was a great deal of resentment on the part of the other boys on the team, especially when Herres told them he had just gone to a movie that evening. And as Sully had predicted, he was not elected captain for the next year.

But the real scandal came the following season, when Herres was a senior. By that time, he and Archer were friends and both Herres and Nancy were dropping into the house casually, playing with Jane, who had given herself to Herres on sight, and helping Kitty with the dishes when they had dinner together. At Kitty's request, Herres dragged Archer off to ice skate during the winter and play tennis when the weather got warm. Kitty was afraid Archer was getting too fat and was always after him to exercise, but until Herres came along to root him out with imperious good nature, Archer had placidly sat in the easy chair in his study, allowing his wife's scolding to flow unremarked over his head. Herres was a good tennis player, too, hitting the ball hard and volleying deftly, and Archer, who was physically a clumsy and untrained man, was no match for him. But Herres didn't seem to mind, good-naturedly playing with him three or four hours a week, coaching him mockingly, putting the ball from one corner of the court to the other, for Kitty's sake, as he said, to make Archer run the fat off.

Then Herres joined the Dramatic Society and got the leading part in the spring play.

"Now what did you do that for?" Archer asked him one night. It was a surprising thing for Herres to do. Aside from the football team, he paid no attention to the extra-curricular life of the campus. And he had no friends besides Sully and the Archers and steered away from all group activity. Even in his fraternity he lived alone, more like a guest at a hotel than anything else. "I didn't know you thought you had any talent."

"I probably haven't." Herres grinned at him. "But I want to keep an eye on Nancy." Nancy was the star of the Dramatic Society and was talking about going to New York and trying to get on the stage. "I don't like her walking home at one o'clock in the morning with the leading man, after rehearsing love scenes all night. So now I'm the leading man and she's trapped."

It had started as frivolously as that. But just before the play was to go on, Herres had come to him with tickets and had said, very seriously, "Now, listen, Clement, I want you to watch me carefully. Don't drink too much before you go and watch me as though you weren't my friend. As though you were a critic on a tough newspaper and you didn't give a d.a.m.n for anything."

Archer had watched conscientiously. The play was The Hairy Ape, and while Herres, with his close blond hair and aristocratic face had seemed somewhat too polite for the part of the tortured, gorilla-like stoker, there still was evident enough of the competence and self-a.s.surance with which Herres always conducted himself to keep it from being hopeless. Later that night, Archer had told him this, Herres listening intently, nodding and agreeing when Archer had pointed out crudities and amateurishness, and shaking his hand with unaccustomed emotion when he left and saying, "Thank you. It's just what I needed to hear. Thanks for being so honest."

In bed, with the lights out, Archer said to Kitty, "That Vic is a queer one. Acting now. The last thing in the world you'd expect from a boy like that. And really concerned about it."

"Don't you worry about Vic Herres," Kitty said. "All he has to do is lie down under the tree and the fruit falls into his mouth."

That summer, Herres and Nancy got a job in a summer theatre in the East, working fourteen hours a day, playing small parts, attending cla.s.ses and painting flats just for their keep. That was the summer Archer finished the play about Napoleon III and threw it away.

The scandal came after the second game of the football season and Archer never got over the feeling that he was partly responsible for it. Herres showed up one evening after practice, played for awhile with Jane, then asked if he could have a minute alone with Archer. In the study he had seemed uncharacteristically ill at ease and Archer had fiddled elaborately at cleaning and filling his pipe to allow Herres time to gather his forces.

"I want to ask you a favor," Herres had begun.

Oh, thought Archer, he's in trouble with Nancy and he's come to an older man for the name of an abortionist.

"I'm in the new play," Herres went on, gravely. "They gave me the lead. And we've been rehearsing two weeks. And I want you to come to the run-through tonight and watch me. And then I want you to be as honest as you were last spring. I've worked hard all summer, but I'm still not sure. I want you to tell me whether you think there's any hope for me as an actor. You're the only one I know I can trust. And it's very serious. After you tell me, I'll explain why."

"Sure," Archer said, relieved and ashamed of himself, thinking, I must stop reading all these realistic novels. "I'll be there right after dinner."

"And the truth," Herres said, staring somberly at Archer. "Right out of the feed box. If you kid me, I'll never forgive you as long as I live, Clement."

"That's an unfriendly kind of thing to say," Archer said, troubled and annoyed.

"I mean it." Herres got up. "Eight-thirty sharp," he said as he went out.

Seating himself later in the rear of the empty auditorium, Archer realized he still felt resentful about Herres' warning, and tried to clear it out of his mind so that he could judge fairly as the curtain went up. The play was Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted, and Herres had the role of the tough young wandering ranch hand who seduces the waitress-wife of the Italian farmer. Nancy played the wife and was astonis.h.i.+ngly good, simple, pathetic, sensual, and finally pitiful. Archer refused to make up his mind about Herres until the play was over.

When the curtain was lowered, Herres and Nancy came out from backstage almost immediately. They had not been in costume and Herres came down the aisle pulling on his jacket.

"Let's get out of here quick," Herres said as Archer stood up. "Before that idiot Schmidt decides he has some new gems for us."

Schmidt was the director. He had, so he said, once worked for Reinhardt in Germany, and was given to long, philosophical a.n.a.lyses. Herres also called Samson, the football coach, an idiot. Generosity toward his elders, especially the ones who attempted to teach him anything, was certainly not one of Herres' strong points, Archer reflected, as they hurried out of the auditorium. For a half-second Archer wondered what Herres said about him after a dull Wednesday afternoon history cla.s.s. The trouble was, Herres was accurate. Schmidt and Samson were idiots, or the academic equivalents of idiots.

"Nancy," Archer said, when they were safely outside, and walking away from the building, "you were awfully good tonight."

"The second act," Nancy said. "I wasn't bad in the second act."

Archer smiled. That girl, he thought, is practically a member of Equity right now.