Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Oh, they go to bed.”

“A black cow just looks like she goes to bed.”

We thought that was pretty funny, and laughed, and then were in the car, driving over the Cooper River and on past the flats. I’d stop now and then and show her Moultrie and Sumter and Folly Beach, where Gershwin is supposed to have written Porgy and Bess, no great chapter in history, I would say. They were nothing but bunches of lights, but I kept on talking. We went on, to the island at last, which is nothing but a stretch of sand, with a flock of cottages on the south end. But we drove along, and the ocean was out there, and pretty soon there weren’t any houses, and I pulled off the road, and stopped. We got out, walked around, and watched the surf, where it was coming in, but not rough. We came to kind of a dune we could sit on. My hand went down in the sand and it was warm. I had a bright idea and slid down, so the dune was at my back and the warm sand spilling over my pants. Then I grabbed her by the feet, and pulled her down. Then we were in each other’s arms, and she was whispering: “At last, at last, it’s been so long.”

I don’t know if it was an hour later, or how long, that I looked out to sea, and into the silver path to the moon, and knew if the moth would fly across it, I could watch it, and love it, and not have things happen inside. I knew it was the most beautiful moment of my life. She was lying close to me, her cheek under mine, her nose against my neck, when I raised up and spoke to her. “Lieutenant—”

“Yes?”

“Isn’t it time we told names?”

She raised up and stared at me, a look of horror in her eyes. Then she jumped up and went off. I lay there a minute, wondering what the trouble was. Then I got up, felt around for my barracks cap and started after her. By then she’d put on her shoes, and was on the road, running back, toward town. I tried to run, but kept slipping back in the sand. Then I remembered the car. I ran back to it, got in, and started the motor. But when I shot power to the wheels they spun in the sand. By then I could barely see her. I jumped out and cut beach grass, with my knife. When I had a little pile I jammed it under one wheel and tried again. The car gave a jerk and I rolled on to the road. I raced along, trying to spot her, and couldn’t. Two or three hundred yards away, I saw a bus stop, take somebody on, and go off. I overtook it. Every time it would stop, I’d be right behind, watching who got off. Pretty soon I could see inside of it, ahead of me, on the bridge. It was empty.

I went back to the island and drove all around. Next day I went down to Savannah and asked, and the day after that called Miami, anything to find her. So that’s what I was doing when I got this wire from Sheila. And that, once I’d answered, was what I kept right on doing.

1945 NOV 9 AM 11 51

MAJ JOHN DILLON

HOTEL TIMROD

CHARLESTON SC

SHEILA HAS JUST SHOWN ME YOUR TELEGRAM WHICH WAS FIRST I KNEW SHE HAD COMMUNICATED WITH YOU MY HEART IS ACTING BADLY SO WOULD BE GRATEFUL IF YOU WOULD ACCEPT MY INVITATION TO VISIT ME WHICH AM NOW IN POSITION TO EXTEND IF IT WOULD NOT BE TOO UTTERLY UTTERLY TIRESOME TO YOU

It was one of those yellow November days that they have in Maryland, when I got there, with red and brown and spotty green leaves still hanging to the trees, and the air clear but everything damp. I had spent the night in Richmond, then got going early, so I rolled up the terrace a little after noon. I had a look at the new statue to Martin Luther they’d put up in the park since I left, took a turn up the street, so as to park in front of the house, got out and went up there. I had my thumb on the bell, then figured a minute, my heart beating fast, and decided it would be friendlier to use my key, which I still had. Then Sheila opened the door. I caught her in my arms, and held her tight, while she cried. Then Nancy was there, and I hugged her too. I kissed and patted them both, and noticed how gray they’d got. Then they took me back to the den, and I was shaking hands with my father, who was in a wheel chair. His color was a little queer, pink in the cheeks but white around the eyes, but outside of that he looked all right. He asked about my trip and I told about the stopover in Richmond at the John Marshall Hotel, and my aunts said I was lucky to get in there at all, the way things were now. Then he and I were alone. We were alone, that is, except for the silence that came in, parked its hat, and sat down with us. After a long time he asked: “Well Jack, how have you been?”

“Oh, can’t complain. And you?”

“I could complain, but—”

“Then hell, complain!”

“At any rate it’s a disease that’s enjoyed sitting up, not lying down, which is something. And what have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh, this and that.”

That wound it up for a while. Then he said: “And them and those?” I didn’t connect, and he looked away quick. “Just injecting a little lubricant into a conversation otherwise a little creaky. Perhaps the quip limped, but the intention was amiable.”

Sometimes, when he went into his Derry brogue and used grammar in the grand style that only an Irishman seems capable of, it brought a lump to my throat, and one came there now. I began to talk about Charleston, the Timrod, the poet it was named after, the Civil War, anything, so it made words. It was chatter, but seemed to please him. “Are those major’s leaves on your shoulder, Jack?”

“Yeah, dime a dozen.”

“However, Anderson was a major.”

“... Who?”

“The commander you were talking about.”

“Oh, at Sumter.”

“He presided at one of the epic moments of history, and every detail of his conduct shows he knew it for such, and yet he was a major — a dime a dozen, as you say. In those days they had different ideas about rank. Where did you serve?”

“France.”

“Yes, but how?”

“Target.”

“You were in action?”

“These rifles on my collar mean infantry.”

“I don’t see well any more.”

But he was looking at my chest, where there wasn’t any fruit salad, as I didn’t wear it. I opened my brief case and got out the little leather box and handed over my ribbons. They were just routine, as I’d never been cited. The Purple Heart he looked at quite a while. “What was the wound, Jack?”

“Slug in the leg.”

“Where was this acquired?”

“Normandy.”

“You were with Patton?”

“No, Wyche was our guy. That made it easy for the guardhouse poets. Cross of Lorraine Division, we called ourselves.” I showed him our shoulder patch, the gray Lorraine Cross on a blue field. He asked if it wasn’t the same as de Gaulle’s emblem, and I said it was. Then I got out a brochure somebody had lent me in Charleston, that had been printed in 1919, to explain to the boys about the insignia, so they’d understand what it meant. “Though, the way I heard it, the cross wasn’t picked on account of the ideals it represented, but because General Kuhn happened to see it on a beer-bottle top in Bar-le-Duc one night, and decided it was what the outfit needed. Until then they had been the Joan of Arc Division, and Miss Geraldine Farrar had agreed to break a bottle over their heads. But all that was while the General was away in France, observing how things were done before the division was sent over, and it so happened that Miss Farrar was to do her stuff the night he got home. He raised hell, and stopped it. Nobody had told the division yet that to the French Miss Arc was a saint, and he figured they might not like it to see her picture on every doughboy’s shoulder. So they went across without having any insignia, until he had this inspiration, which to my mind hit the spot in a very noble way.”