Philip Wylie - The Other Horseman

“She won’t betray me—or Audrey.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I told her I’d kill her.” Jimmie stopped smiling. “I meant it.”

Mr. Corinth’s gaze faltered and fell. He plucked at a shabby necktie that bore, in a faded, fabulous print, pictures of cowboys and Indians. At last he said, softly, “Yes. Yes.

I can see what happened.

And why you—!” He sighed and smiled gently. “It’s a fine mess we’ve got our souls in! We wonderful Americans!”

“She’s in love with a guy named Harry,” Jimmie said, moving away from the old man’s desk. “And my folks do not love Harry at all.”

Mr. Corinth thought some more, and chuckled. “Worth it already, eh? You’ve got a lot of magic, boy. The slow, silent kind. Don’t ever belittle the quality—or abuse it.

Who’s Harry?”

“I dunno. I’ll find out.”

“Don’t bother. I will. My wife knows all these things. Her frontal lobes are filing cabinets, full of secrets and intrigue.”

Jimmie grinned. “I guess my lab’s clear now.”

“Yeah. I was just over there. Not a whiff. I had a lunch sent in for you. Keeping it hot with a bunsen burner.”

BIFF LOOKED Up from his book, when the doorstop squeaked on the polished linoleum floor. “Hi, Jimmie! Haven’t seen you in a dog’s age. Sit.”

It was Wednesday—and eight o’clock in the evening. The hospital was on the way to Dan and Adele’s house. Jimmie had decided to go there. He had an hour to kill between the end of dinner at home and the fateful stroke of nine. His visits to Biff had been perfunctory. He felt indifferent to his brother. His understanding of Biff’s psychology—deeply hidden from Biff himself—brought to Jimmie a sense of repugnance whenever he thought of the big youngster with the broken legs. Now, he pulled up an easy chair with a white slip-cover, glanced at the vases of flowers, the fruit, the pictures of pretty girls, and peered at Biff with a formal cheerfulness. “How you doing?”

“Okay. Swell. Healing like nobody they ever had here! Be staggering around on crutches in a while. I may even get to the football game a week from Saturday—in a wheelchair. Boy!”

Jimmie nodded comprehension of the mood. “I went—last week.”

“Yeah. Dad said so. How do the doggone old Bearcats look?”

“Pretty good.” Jimmie laughed. “You know, for the first quarter, I hardly recognized the old game. Looked more like basketball. And the subs kept running out like waves of infantry. But I caught on. That Ward—and Ellis—and Becker—they’re dynamite!”

Biff assented. “I’ll say. I ought to know. I was in there with all of ’em—this time last year.”

For fifteen minutes they held a lively discussion of football. When the topic lagged they reached one of the silences which so envelop a visitor and a hospital patient.

The discrepancy between the life of the one busy in the world, and the other lying continuously on his back, abruptly becomes apparent; both persons rack their brains for a rejuvenating subject; the painfulness of the moment rises to a locked, near-violence. On this occasion Jimmie sat with a sense of increasing embarrassment and frustration; it was Biff, oddly enough, who found a way to reopen the impasse—a perfectly conventional way—the weather.

“What sort of a night is it, old man?”

“Oh, nice. Moon up and almost full. Crisp. On the Hallowe’en side. Shadows sharp, and the air feels good to breathe.”

Biff listened solemnly to that. “You kind of like the weather, don’t you, Jimmie?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“I remember—from before. Six years ago. It used to make you moody as hell.”

“Did it?” Jimmie smiled.

“Yeah. I could never figure it out. Not moody like other people. Not because it interfered with your plans. Sometimes—on a bright, sunny, warm fall day—you’d be as sunk and as snappy as a dying turtle. And sometimes—on rainy days—you’d be full of hell and bejee. I used to try to figure it out, but I never could.”

Biff’s tone—its intimacy, its amiability, and especially its quality of sentimental reflection—was surprising to Jimmie. It was almost poetical. Something new, or hitherto unseen in Biff. “I guess I was just being adolescent—and perverse.”

“Maybe. Dad sure enjoyed going up to State with you.”

“Did he? We rode all the way up and he never said a word, and we both watched the game every minute and he was silent again, driving back.”

“He told me you hollered your head off and nearly knocked a man down—pushing on him—when they held the Bearcats in the second quarter. Said you were just like the old Jimmie.”

“Said that, eh? Funny! I had the idea, all the time, he’d rather have gone without me.”

“Hell, no! He was practically misty—talking about how you yelled.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jimmie said.

“People are funny,” Biff suggested.

“Mighty funny. Well, son, I gotta go. Date.”

“Come back again—in a month or so.”

Jimmie smiled apologetically at the sarcasm. “I will. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“What’s happened to Sarah these days?”

“You tell me. I dunno.”

“She came in here with a lot of bounce the other day. Brought me some new pajamas. Shocking pink. Helleroos. Acted like she used to before—”

“Before what?”

“Oh, you weren’t here. And the family thought it’d be best not to tell you. She had a terrible case on a clarinet player. Guy in Sox Sykes’ band. Me—I thought he was oke.

College lad from the East. Good family. But bughouse on playing in a band and having a band of his own.”

“Anything wrong with that?”

Biff shrugged. “Ask Mom. She knows two thousand things wrong.” He opened his mouth to add more and closed it with decision.

Jimmie rose, uncomfortably. “Well, son, gotta go—”

“Yeah. Come back.” Biff seemed to be searching his mind for something that would hold his elder brother. “You do a lot of thinking, when you have this kind of time to lie around in. You know what was the trouble with me?”

Jimmie leaned on the rolling bed table. “No. What was?”

“Well, I didn’t like being forced. I’d have gone on my own hook, if I’d have thought there was a real need.”

“Hunh? Oh. The army. The draft.”

“Yeah. A guy hates to be hauled anywhere by the ears.”

“Sure.”

“Jimmie. Do you really think there really is a need?”

“Yeah.”

Biff’s eagerness diminished. “Well, I wish I did. I’d enlist, maybe, if I did. I mean—I would.”

The younger man was staring at his bedclothes. The older was looking into blank space, painfully. Biff meant what he was saying. When he recovered he might try to enlist. And if he did, sooner or later, his secret record would overtake him—and he’d be sent home. Psychotic. Then what would Biff do? What would he do if the best impulse he’d ever had was—tossed in his face? People said, “The Baileys are all big—and quick-tempered—but they’re good citizens.”

Maybe.

Jimmie spoke nonchalantly. “Well, you can decide that later. I—”

“Yeah. You gotta go. Say! How’s your cheek? Heal okay?”

“Cheek?”

“Where I socked you?” Biff’s solicitude was genuine this time, and not fatuous as it had been when he’d lain on the receiving-room table—many nights ago.

Jimmie chuckled. “I’d forgotten. Sure, it healed. Why, you conceited damn’ rat, I’ve had flies bite me worse!”

“Yeah. Well—so long, fellow.”

Jimmie went to the door. It was he who had the wish, then, to linger on, to probe more deeply into this unfurling aspect of his kid brother’s personality. “Well—want anything? Books? What you reading?”