Джеймс Кейн - Root of His Evil [= Shameless]

“Is that why you have all these Indian things here?”

“Why do you think?”

“And you want to read books about them? I still don’t quite understand it.”

“What do I care whether you understand it or not, or anybody understands it? You don’t study Indians out of books. You study them on the hoof. You go where they are, and — oh, God, what’s the use?”

“You mean in... Oklahoma?”

“If you knew anything — or if you or any of them knew anything — you’d know that all the Indians aren’t in Oklahoma. More than half the population of this hemisphere is Indian — millions and millions of them — they’re the one surviving link with this country’s past — they’re anthropologically more important than all the tribes of Asia put together and — skip it. I’m sorry. It would be impossible to make you understand it, or any of them understand it, and I apologize for even trying.”

“You study them — and then what?”

“Write a book. That’s all — just a book.”

I sat down and then looked around the room at all the things he had in there and after awhile I got up and walked around looking at them one by one. There were little typewritten labels on most of them which I hadn’t noticed before, telling exactly where they came from, what their use was and what their names were in Indian languages and in English. Then I walked over to the big built-in bookcase that filled one side of the room and pulled out one or two books and looked through them. They were different from any books I had ever seen — most of them were bound in leather, some of them in parchment, and they were filled with all sorts of footnotes and scientific references. I knew then at least what he was talking about, the kind of books he wanted to write anyway, even if I had never read any books like that, or even knew there were such books. But there was still more I had to find out. “Why won’t they let you — study Indians?”

“Costs money.”

“In what way?”

“All you have to have is an expedition, a flock of assistants, an army of porters and a boatload of equipment. It runs into money, big money. And I’ve got money — all the money it takes — or will have some day, when George Harris is no longer trustee. That’s why I said I’d marry that Muriel idiot. I thought if I did that George might kick in, but when he got coy about it I knew that was just a dream.”

“You didn’t make the money.”

“Neither did George Harris. Neither did my grandfather. He stole it — and a lot I care. But isn’t it better to have it put to some decent use? Am I supposed to jump up and cheer when George Harris uses it to win a race with one of his yachts? All right, you want to know why I hate the system — any system’s wrong that lets useful wealth be wasted so George Harris can sail yachts — the Alamo, the Alamo II, the Alamo III, and the Alamo IV — aren’t they a lovely end-product for a civilization? For them men sweat and walk tracks in blizzards and tap flanges and get killed in wrecks, and for them I have to give up something that’s worth doing.”

“And to break that system you tried to organize a junior executives’ union?”

“Anyhow, I tried to do something! All right, George made me a junior executive. The day after I got out of Harvard he had a job waiting for me — a swell job where I can learn the business from the ground up, so one day I can acquire a knowledge of stealing, so I know how it’s done. I beat that rap by going in the Army. But Okinawa didn’t last forever and pretty soon here we were again, and this time I told him O.K. And so I don’t disgrace him when I board his yacht he gives me an allowance of $200 a week. And so I get thoroughly integrated, as he calls it, he tells me to marry Muriel. Well, you’re right. Going after George by organizing an office-workers’ union is like hunting an elephant with a cap pistol. But a kid with a cap pistol is fire-arm conscious, at least. I’ll get him. I’ll get him yet.”

“I see. Marrying a waitress was merely exchanging a cap pistol for a pea shooter. They’re not much good against elephants either.”

“Listen, I’ve got you, and you’re my first step in cutting loose from George, his yachts and everything he stands for.”

I felt sick and queer and frightened. We sat there for a time in the half-dark, for it was now well after six, and then it was my turn to begin walking around. I kept passing the bookcase, and little by little it crept in on me that this man was my husband and that, in spite of my pride, I had to help him fight through somehow, even if I didn’t quite understand what it was about or believe in it at all, for that matter. I went over, sat down in his lap and pulled his head against me. “Grant.”

He put his arm around me and drew me close to him. “You never called me that before.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“I think the Indians are swell.”

“I think you mean you like me.”

“I more than like you, or will, if you’ll let me. But that isn’t what I meant, and that isn’t what you want me to mean. I don’t know much about Indians, or this book—”

“It’ll be a hell of a book.”

“That’s it — tell me about it.”

“It’ll take me ten years to write it but it’ll really be a history of this country that everybody else has missed. Listen, Carrie, they’ve all written that story from the deck of Columbus’ ship. I’m going to write it from San Salvador Island, beginning with the Indian that peeped out through the trees and saw that anchor splash down. It was a bright moonlight night all over the American continent the night before Columbus slipped into that harbor — did you know that, Carrie? I’m going to tell what that moon shone on — are you listening?”

“Go on. I love it.”

I lay in his arms until it was quite dark and he told me more about his book and how it was not to be an ordinary history at all but a study of Indians and the imprint they have left on our civilization. Then for a few minutes he had nothing to say and then he stirred a little. “What’s the matter?”

“I’ve been thinking, Carrie, just as a sort of peace offering, hadn’t I better send some flowers around to my mother?”

“I think that will be fine — as soon as she sends flowers to me.”

“She sends flowers to—?”

“I’m the bride, after all.”

“Oh — that’s a different department. What she sends you, that couldn’t be just a bunch of flowers, you know, bought at the drop of a hat. But tonight — she’s not herself and it will make a difference.”

“Can’t you order them by phone?”

“I’ll have to put a card in. I’ll only be a few minutes, and then we’ll pick out a nice place to have dinner.”

He got his hat and went out, and I was left with this same feeling I had had before, of being sick and forlorn and up against something I didn’t understand, and mixed in with it was a sense of helplessness, for I was sure that it wasn’t the system, or his Uncle George, or the yachts that was the cause of his trouble, but this same woman he refused to talk about and yet seemed to have on his mind all the time, his mother. And what could I do about her?

The place seemed horribly gloomy then, and I wanted light. I groped all around but couldn’t find any of the switches. I began to cry. Then the house phone rang and I went to answer it and couldn’t find that. Then the phone stopped ringing and in a minute the buzzer sounded. I knew how I had come in, at any rate, so I opened the door. A policeman was standing there. “Carrie Selden Harris?”

“I’m Carrie Harris.”