Defenders of Democracy Part 37

"Don't, Hal."

"Darling, don't you see? It's fate knocking at our door. There's not a chance rover can get exemption. He ain't eve got a fifth cousin or a flat-foot!"

"Maybe he could claim exemption on dandruff."

"I'm serious, honey. It's going to be one of those cases where an understudy wakes up to find himself famous. I can't fail if I get this chance, Bloss. It's the moment I have been drudging for, for five solid years. I never was in such voice as now, I never was so fit. Not an ounce of fat. Not a song in the part I don't know backwards. I tell you it's the hand of fate, Bloss, giving us a hand-out. I can afford now, darling, to make good with you.

On three fifty a week I can ask a little queen like you to double up with me. From thirty-five to three fifty! I tell you honey, we're made. I'm going to dress my little dolly in cloth of gold and silver fox. I'm going to perch her in the suite de luxe of the swellest hotel in town. I'm--"

She pushed back from the table, turning more broadly from him.

"Don't," she said pressing her kerchief against her lips.

"Why--why what's the matter, Bloss? Why--why, what's the matter?"

"Don't talk to me for a minute," she said, still in profile; "I'll be all right, only don't talk."

"Why, Bloss, you--sick?"

She shook her head. "No. No."

"You ain't getting cold feet now that we got the thing before us--in our hand?"

"I dunno. I dunno. I--don't want nothing. That's all, nothing but to be left alone."

He sucked his lips inward, biting at them.

"Don't--don't think I ain't noticed, Bloss, that you--you ain't been the same--that you been different--for weeks. Sometimes I think maybe you're going cold on--on this long engagement stuff.

That's why this thing is breaking just right for us, honey. I felt you slippin' a little. I'm ready now, Peaches, we can't go taxi-cabbing down for that license none too soon to suit me."

She shook her head, beating softly with one small fist into her other palm.

"No, Hal," she said, her mouth tightening and drawing down.

"Why--why, Bloss!"

Suddenly she faced him, her hands both fists now, and coming down with a force that s.h.i.+vered the china.

"You--you ain't a man, you ain't. You ain't a man, you--you're a slacker! You're a slacker, that's what you are, and Gawd, how I--how I hate a slacker!"

"Bloss--why, girl--you--you're cra---"

"Oh, I've known it. Deep down inside of me I've known it since the day we found ourselves in the mess of this war. I knew it, and all those months kept kidding myself that maybe--you--wasn't."

"You--"

"Thought maybe when you'd read the newspapers enough and heard the khaki-boys on the street corners enough, and listened to--to your country pleading enough that--that you'd rise up to show you was a man. I knew all these months down inside of me that you was a slacker, but I kept hopin'. Gawd how I kept hopin'."

"You--you can't talk to me that way! You're---"

"Can't I! Ha! Anybody can talk any old way to a slacker he wants to and then not say enough. You ain't got no guts you--you're yellow, that's what you are, you--"

"Blossum!"

"You, sneaking up to me with trumped up exemption stuff when your country's talking her great heart out for men to stand by 'er!

Gawd! If I was a man--If was a man she wouldn't have to ask me twice, but before I went marching off I'd take time off to help the street cleaning department wipe up a few streets with the slackers I found loafing around under a government they were afraid to fight for. I'd show 'em. I'd show 'em if a government is good enough to live under it's good enough to fight under. I'd show 'em."

"If you was a man, Blossum, you'd eat those words. By G.o.d, you'd eat 'em. I'm no coward--I--"

"I know you're not, Hal--that's why I--I--"

"I got the right to decide for myself if I want to fight when I don't know what I'm fighting for. This ain't my war, this ain't America's war. Before I fight in it I want a darn sight to know what I'm fighting for, and not all the street corner rah rah stuff has told me yet. I ain't a bull to go crazy with a lot of red waved in my face. I've got no blood to spill in the other fellow's battle. I'm---"

"No, but you--"

"I'm at a point in my life that I've worked like a dog to reach.

Let the fellows that love the hero stuff give up their arms and their legs and the breath that's in them for something they don't know the meaning of. Because some big-gun of a Emperor out in Austria was a.s.sa.s.sinated, I ain't going to bleed to death for it.

It's us poor devils that get the least out of the government that right away are called on to give the most, it's us---"

"Hal, ain't--ain't you ashamed!"

"No. I ain't ashamed and I ain't afraid. You know it ain't because I'm afraid. I've licked more fellows in my time than most fellows can boast. I--I got the Fifty-fifth Street fire rescue medal to my credit if anybody should ask you. I--I--ask anybody from my town if any kid in it ever licked me. But I ain't going to fight when I ain't got a grudge against no man. Call that being a coward if you like, but then you and me don't speak the same language."

Her silence seemed to give off an icy vapor.

"That's what they all say," she said. "It's like hiding behind a petticoat, hiding behind a defense like that. Sure you ain't got a grudge. Maybe you don't know what it's all about--G.o.d knows who does. n.o.body can deny that. There ain't nothing reasonable about war, if there was there wouldn't be none. That talk don't get you nowheres. The proposition is that we're at war, whatever you or anybody else may think of it."

"That's just it--we didn't have no say-so."

"Just the same, Hal Sanderson, this great big grand country of ours is at war, and needs you. It ain't what you think any more that counts. Before we was in war you could talk all you wanted, but now that we're IN, there's only one thing to do, only one, and not all your fine talk about peace can change it. One thing to do.

Fight!"

"No government can make me--"

"If you want peace now it's up to you to help make it, a new peace and a grander peace, not go baying at the moon after a peace that ain't no more."

"You better get a soap box. If this is the way you got of trying to get out of something you're sorry for, I'll let you off easier--you don't need to try to---"

She regarded him with her lips quivering, a quick layer of tears forming, trembling and venturing to the edge of her lashes.

"Hal--Hal--a--a fellow that I've banked on like I have you! It ain't that--you know it ain't. I could have waited for ten times this long. It's only I--I'm ashamed, Hal. Ashamed. there ain't been a single gap in the chorus from one of the men enlisting that my heart ain't just dropped in my shoes like dough. I never envied a girl on my life the way I did Elaine Vavasour when she stood on the curb at the Battery the other day crying and watching Charlie Kirkpatrick go marching off. Charlie was a pacifist, too, as long as the country was out of war, and there was something to argue about. The minute the question was settled, he shut up, buckled on his belt and went! That's the kind of a pacifist to be. The kind of fellow that when he sees peace slipping, buckles on and starts out for a new peace; a realer peace. That's the kind of a fellow I thought you--you---"

Her voice broke then abruptly, in a rain of tears, and she raised the crook of her arm to her face with the gesture of a child.

"That--that's the kind of a fellow I--I---"

His cigarette discarded and curling up in a little column of smoke between them, he sat regarding her, a heave surge of red rising above the impeccable white of his collar into the roots of his hair.

It was as if her denouncement had come down in a welt across his face.

"n.o.body ever--n.o.body ever dared to talk like this to me before.