"I'm not your subordinate. I'm a civilian. I don't have to take this from you."
"By Jesus, I'll take a swing at you in about a minute!"
"Try itt" I said, stepping back and tightening my fists.
"Howard, please. Howard," said Mrs.
Briggs. "Joseph," said Ira, appearing in the doorway. "Come here. Come into the room." I edged by them, guardedly. "Get in," commanded Ira.
"If he touched me, I'd murder him, soldier suit or no soldier suit," I growled as I went in.
"Oh, keep quiet," said Iva. "Mrs.
Briggs, please, just a moment." She hurried toward them.
I put on my shoes, snatched my street clothes from the closet, and flung out of the house. I walked rapidly through the drizzle. It was not late, certainly not more than ten o'clock. The air was dense and black and pressed close on the hourglass figures the street lamps made. I could not have slowed my walk; I was not sure of my legs. So I went on for some time, until I came to an open place, a lot with a wire backstop for baseball games. The ground was flooded, a wind-blown sheet of water, utterly dark. Behind the backstop was a white drinking fountain and water from it flurring into the warm air. I drank and then I went on, not so fast as before but just as aimlessly, toward the static shower of lights in the street ahead, a spray of them hanging in the middle distance over the shine of the pavement. Then I turned back.
I could not even imagine what Ira's misery must be, nor the state of the house. Ira must be trying to explain; Mrs. Briggs, if she was listening at all, was listening frostily; while Vanaker was making his way to his room, meek but vindicated, and probably wondering what had happened. Once more he seemed to me, as in the early days, simple-minded, perhaps subnormal.
I walked over the cinders of a schoolyard and came into an alley approaching our windows. I looked for Ira's shadow on the blind. She was not there. I had. halted near a fence against which a tree leaned, freshly budding and seething under the rain. I made an effort to dry my face. Then it occurred to me that the reason I could not see her was that she was lying on the bed again. My skin was suddenly as wet with perspiration as it had been a too- with rain. I turned and started back along thementago schoolyard fence. A steel ring on a rope whipped loudly against the flagpole. Then, for a moment, a car caught me in its lights. I'stood aside for it and followed its red blur. It was gone.
Something ran among the cans and papers. A rat, I thought and, sickened, I went even more quickly, skirting a pool at the foot of the street where a torn umbrella lay stogged in water and ashes. I took a deep breath of warm air.
I believe I had known for some time that the moment I had been waiting for had come, and that it was impossible to resist any longer. I must, give myself up. And I recognized that the breath of warm air was simultaneously a breath of relief at my decision to surrender. I was done. But it was not painful to acknowledge that, it was not painful in the least.
Not even when I tested myself, whispering "the leash," reproachfully, did I feel pained or humiliated. I could have chosen a harsher symbol than that for my surrender. It would not have hurt me, for I could feel nothing but gratification and a desire to make my decision effective at once.
It couldn't be later than half. past ten now. The draft board often held late sessions. I set out for its office in the Sevier Hotel. As I was walking across the old. fashioned lobby, trying to remember on which side the office 183 was, the clerk cagg'led me over. He guessed what I wanted.
"If it's the board you're after," he said, "everybody's gone home."
"Can I leave a note? Oh, never mind, I'll mail it."
I sat down at a desk in a corner, near one of the portieres, and wrote on a sheet of stationery: "I hereby request to be taken at the earliest possible moment into the armed services."
To this I added my full name and call number, and across the bottom: "I am available at any time."
After I had posted this, I stopped at a tavern and spent my last forty cents on a drink.
"I'm off to the wars," I said to the bartender. His hand hovered over the money. He picked it up and turned to the cash register. The place, after all, was full of soldiers and sailors.
March 27
Tins morning I told Iva what I had done.
She made only one comment, namely, that I should have consulted her. But I said, "I'm doing myself no good here." There was no answer to that. She took the check downtown to cash. I waited for her on the library steps, sitting among the pigeons, reading the paper. She came down at noon, and we had lunch together. She did not look well. There was a blemish on her face that always shows up when she is disturbed. I felt weak myself, standing in the sunlight.
Mrs. Briggs had asked both parties to yesterday's disgrace to move.
"You can stay on alone," I said to Ira. "She won't object."
"I'll see about it. When do you think you'll be called?"
"I'm not sure. I think in about a week."
"I don't think you ought to spend your last week moving," she said. "We'll stay on for a while. I'm sure Mrs.
Briggs will let us."
About her own plans she said nothing.
March 29
MRS. KIEFER died during the night. When I went out to breakfast I saw her door thrown open, her bed empty, the curtains in the room pinned back, the window open. Later, Mrs. Briggs appeared in black. In the afternoon other mourners came, gathering in the parlor. At five o'clock they began to pour out of the house. They went up the still street to the undertaker. The odor of coffee drifted up from the kitchen.
That evening, as we came out of the restaurant, we saw Mrs. Bartlett across the way. She had changed he; white uniform for a silk dress and a short fur coat. Her hat was a strange affair with a flat top and a curtain or wimple that fell about her neck-a fashion that disappearedmany years ago. We guessed that she was on her way to the movies after her long confinement with Mrs. Kiefer.
Her shiny, long, black pocketbook was clasped under her doubled arm; she walked in a heavy-hipped, @'@: energetic stride toward the brightly lit avenue.
March 31
TODAY, the funeral. The Captain drove up with a wreath in his car; to him came a woman in a blue cape and feathers and short legs in ribbed hose.
Her foot was set on the running board as though she were standing at a bar. Then she sprang in, and they drove off together. Telegraph messengers kept coming all morning. I don't know how many children the old woman had. There was a son in California, Marie had once said. The family gathered on the porch.
The women's faces were mottled with crying; the men looked morose. They returned from the funeral at noon and had lunch at a long table in the parlor.
I saw them when I went down for the midday mail.
The Captain caught me looking in, and frowned.
I withdrew quickly.
The postman was putting a letter in the box next door and he pointed vigorously at me and drew his finger across his throat. I had received my notice.
"A committee of your neighbors '@.
Later in the day, as I sat reading, Marie came to the door with fresh towels. She, too, was dressed in black. She went about the house somber and unapproachable, as though she shared with Mrs.
Kiefer and the mourners some unusual secret about death. I took this opportunity to tell her that I was going away.
"Your wife going to stay?" she said.
"I don't know."
"U-h. huh. Well, good luck." She gloomily wiped her cheeks with a blackedged handkerchief.
"Thanks," I said.
She took the soiled towels and shut the door.
April 2
UN'RW. RS. R relief. As old