Philip Wylie - Tomorrow!

He was smiling a little. “Maybe it would at that!”

“I’ll get you another highball.”

“Yeah,” he said, absently. He returned from his day-dream. “Oh. Yes. Please do. My face hurts like hell.” He called after her, “And make it stronger than iced tea.”

It was going to go on all night.

But Beau began to think, began for the first time to let himself think, that life might not forever be a round of hard work, of figures and facts and statements, of miles of tape from adding machines, of coming and going in traffic that kept you on the verge of insanity, of the aching anxiety of home finance and stretched funds, of eternal self-sacrifice for a wife and daughter three hundred and sixty-five days a year, with only an hour snatched here and there for personal pleasures or recreation—a redhead kissed in the dim Cyclone Bar, a bet made on a pay telephone.

Things could be better. He deserved them better.

And a man, a self-respecting man, couldn’t take a slugging lying down.

It was a peculiar farewell. Chuck thought it was probably like thousands of farewells said by soldiers.

He had been raking leaves, the day before….

He raked and thought, Ted ought to be doing this. I’m going back to the base. Back to Texas. Tomorrow I’m going. I ought not to be raking up the yard. Officers don’t rake leaves.

It was a cold day—October. The wind came all the way from Canada, from Saskatchewan or Manitoba or Alberta, with polar cold and the raw smell of muskeg, of permafrost, of something arctic. He’d heard the Alaska-based people talk about that weather.

And it came down from the north to U.S.A., making the prairie states chilly in October.

He wondered why he pushed up the pungent leaf-heaps with the wooden rake and shoved them to the gutter, and he knew. To burn them. To make a sweet-smelling pile and add to the good ozone of Green Prairie his own private incense, his somber contribution. Maybe, also, as a symbol. Burning autumn leaves, like burning bridges.

He fished in a pocket of his slacks, thinking how unfamiliar some pockets became when you wore mufti, how unfamiliar the uniform would feel for a day or so. He lit a match and it blew out, so he found a piece of paper, cupped his hands, got the newsprint going, watched words about “strike threatened in River City plant” blacken and vanish. He thrust the paper into the middle of the breast-high pile, on the windward side, and there was streaming smoke, then a bright blaze and soon a soul-satisfying conflagration. It ate gray holes in the leaf pile and sent a soft-looking, slanted fountain of smoke down Walnut Street. Cars had to slow but the people in them came through the smoke laughing and they waved because they, too, would soon be burning their leaves, stopping cars—mulching roses, getting out storm windows, nailing weather stripping around doors, taking coal into their cellars.

She came.

Wearing an orange-red knitted suit. With her large beautiful eyes and with her black hair done up under a knitted hat. He could see her hips move and her breasts and the immobile “V” in front of her and feel his nerves jump.

“You’re going tomorrow, aren’t you, Chuck?”

“So Uncle says.”

She looked at the fire as if it were a work of art like a sand castle on a beach. “Nice and warm,” she said. “I’ve been over in Coverton, watching State play Wesleyan.”

“Who won?”

“We didn’t stay to see the end. State was ahead—thirty points—at the half. And Kit wanted a drink.”

“He didn’t bring you home,” Chuck said.

“We had a fight.” She kicked a spruce cone into the fire. “About you.”

“Me?” He leaned on the rake, slender, dark, smiling.

“I said—you and I had a date for tonight.”

“Do we?”

“Heck, Charles! You’re going back tomorrow. I sort of assumed we’d spend the evening together. Or with your family.”

“Swell.”

“And, anyhow, he doesn’t own me.”

The fight, then, had been a mere declaration of independence, not of special loyalty. “I’ll borrow Dad’s car.”

“ Don’t bother! I’ve got my Ford. And your old man needs his these days. Running around…”

Chuck nodded. “ He’s working hard. And to darn little purpose. People are deserting his organization like…”

“I know. Well, what time shall I call for you?” She laughed.

“Say, eight? Mother’s made a special dinner. Maybe…?”

She knew she was going to be invited. She didn’t want to be exposed to the calm, collective scrutiny of the Conners during a long meal. “Eight. I’ll be there.”

They drove down to Lee’s Chinese Inn and danced a while. But the place, in spite of the gloom in the booths, the oriental lighting, the orchestra and the waitresses in Chinese costumes, didn’t have the necromancy that had invested it when they had been high school kids, and then undergraduates. They were both restless.

“Let’s go,” she suggested, in the middle of a fox trot, “ on out the river, the way we used to, and park in that spot where the mill used to be.”

It was crisp and cool out there and bright with moonlight. The heater had warmed the car.

They pointed its nose so they could see the water shimmering in the ruined flume.

“Remember when we came here after the basketball game?” she asked. He said,

“Remember the night you and I—and Wally and Sylvia—went swimming?”

“If Dad had seen us down there, skinny, he’d have skinned me alive!”

The recollections bubbled up, glimmered, broke.

“How long will you be gone this time?” she asked.

His shoulders shrugged a little; she felt it, on the seat. “No telling. Six more months—but I’ll be out, all things equal, in eight more.”

“It seems a long time!” She picked up his hand. “A long, long time. Chuck. It is a long time, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish you weren’t going away.”

“See any beggars riding, these days?”

“If wishes were horses?” Lenore shook her head. “You know what I’m thinking about.”

“Guess I usually do, Lenore.”

“I guess you do. It’s Kit—of course. Partly.”

“And partly you?” Her head shook, and the small motion seemed to diffuse in the night an additional quantity of the perfume she wore. It came from her hair, he thought, her midnight, wavy hair. “Not me, exactly,” she said in a speculative tone, and added defensively, “Kit’s a lot of fun.”

“Why not? He’s never had experience in much else.”

“He has so! He was a star in lots of sports—”

“That isn’t fun?”

“I mean, he does plenty of difficult things. Climbs mountains. Flies. He was a war pilot.

He has a pound of medals.”

“Shall I try to get wounded?”

“No,” she smiled, uninjured by his sarcasm, familiar with it. “Not even—emotionally, Chuck. What I wanted to do, hoped to do, what I suggested we leave that Chink spot to do, was talk.”

“So okay. Talk.”

“Do you think you could put yourself in my place for a few minutes?”

Charles laughed. “I could come mighty close!”

“You sit still. I mean—look. You tell me what the score is. I’m twenty-four. Right?”

“Practically senile. Right.”

“You’re the same. You’ve got nearly another army year. Then, some architectural office, and maybe-maybe in ten years-you’d have enough to—”

“To what? I’ve got Dad and Mom. In a year, Lenore, I could have a house in Edgeplains, maybe, and enough money for a kid or two. And if I didn’t, the folks would see to things till I got started.”