When Jean went back to the bedroom, Hal was still sitting on the side of the bed, staring out at the morning. “Dandy day for a trip,” he said.
“It can’t keep on raining this hard,” she said. “Rise and shine, mister. I’ve got to fold those sheets you’re sitting on.”
He stood up slowly. “Very efficient this morning, aren’t you?” The way he said it made it sound unpleasant.
“I’m a demon packer,” she said lightly.
He looked at her and looked away. He rarely looked into her eyes of late. “At least the old bucket won’t overheat on us. It feels sticky though.”
“I guess it’s the tail end of the hurricane.”
“We’ll be out of it soon enough.”
“And be back into autumn in the north. Leaves burning. Football weather. All that. I’m kind of looking forward to it.”
“How extremely obliging of you.”
“Please, darling. Don’t.”
“Then please stop being a Pollyanna and trying to make everything come out nice and cozy and perfect. It isn’t cozy and perfect, so why not admit it?”
She felt unexpected anger. “And go around wringing my hands and moaning?”
“Like I do? Is that what you mean?”
“I didn’t mean that, and you know it. We ought to try to be a little bit cheery. Even if it’s false.”
He clapped his hands and said sourly, “Oh, goody! We’re going on a trip, on a trip, on a trip.” He looked at her almost with contempt.
“Hal!”
His expression softened, changed. He took a half step toward her. “Damn it. I’m sorry. I know what it means to you, Jeanie. I know what it’s costing us.”
They put their arms around each other and stood quietly for a time. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“It’s all right. It isn’t your fault.”
He trudged to the bathroom, his shoulders listless, his pajamas baggy on his body.
She hoped it would be different in New York. He didn’t think Jason and Rawls would take him back. It wouldn’t be good policy. But Brainerd might take him on. Or Romason and Twill. Then maybe a measure of confidence would return.
She put on her dacron skirt and a light-weight blouse, folded the bedding and put it in the kitchen. She packed the last bag. They left the house at eight o’clock, dropped off the house keys at the real estate agent’s office and breakfasted at the diner. Jean kept remembering that, when they had driven away from the house, she had not looked back. Stevie had wept, but the hard sound of the rain had muffled it.
They turned north on Route 19. The heavy rain restricted visibility. All cars had their lights on. The wipers swept solid water from the windshield. She touched Hal’s arm lightly and was pleased when he gave her a quick absent-minded smile.
A few miles from Clearwater he turned on the car radio “...to give you the latest word on Hurricane Hilda. Hilda is now reported to be in the Gulf about a hundred miles west and a little north of the Tampa Bay area. The central west coast is experiencing heavy rains as far north as Cedar Keys. Though the experts predicted that Hilda would begin to lose force during the night, it is reported that wind velocities near the center have actually increased and are now as high as a hundred and fifteen miles an hour. After moving on a predictable course for many hours, the northward movement has slowed and it is less easy to predict the direction the storm will take. The Louisiana and Texas coasts have been alerted. We now return you to the program already in progress.” Hal clicked off the radio after two bars of hillbilly anguish.
“Could it come back in toward the land ahead of us?” Jean asked.
“Could what come?” Stevie demanded, leaning over the front seat. “Could what come, huh?”
“The hurricane, dear,” Jean said, knowing it might take his mind off the woes of leaving Clearwater.
“Wow!” Stevie said, awed.
“This rain, Stevie,” Hal said, “always comes ahead of a hurricane, but we’re sort of on the edge of it. It’s going up the Gulf and I don’t think it will cut back this way.”
“I hope it does,” Stevie said firmly.
“And I most fervently hope it doesn’t,” Jean said.
“It would be sort of improbable,” Hal said. Ahead of the car, in the gloom, he saw the running lights of a truck. He eased up behind it, moved out to check the road ahead, accelerated smoothly, dropped back into his lane ahead of the truck.
Here’s something I can do, he thought. I can drive just fine. I can boil right along in this old wagon without endangering my three... my four hostages to fortune. And I can shave neatly and tie my own shoes and make standard small talk. And I can, or at least I used to, make a living in a very narrow and highly specialized profession. A pleasant living in an area where my son could not exist.
We went down there with seven thousand dollars and now we have sixteen hundred and the car and what is in the car. So that is a fifty-four hundred dollar loss in twenty-six months which averages out to... just about fifty dollars a week.
It had taken him a long time to realize that he had failed. Harold Dorn had failed in something he wanted badly to accomplish. He had wanted it more than any other thing in his life. And it was the first failure.
He hadn’t failed the other times. Not the first time in that Pennsylvania coal-town which in all its history had known so few years of prosperity. His father, as a company clerk, had had none of the benefits the union had acquired for the miners. The old car had skidded on a wintry hill, a long skid into a post and it had rebounded from the post and tipped over onto the company clerk who had been thrown free at impact. And you saw how few of the kids went on to college and got away from the town. You saw there was only one way to do it, and two years left to do it in. So there were two years of straight A’s and the scholarship and that was the first victory.
The second victory happened on a hillside in a German forest in the snow. In a deep hole you shared with a dead man who had been your close friend for thirteen months. The barrage was over, and you could not control your trembling. You heard the lieutenant and the platoon sergeant, and you knew nothing could ever get you up out of that hole into the naked air where whining things sought your flesh. But you climbed out for the blundering run on half-frozen feet, running crouched, seeking cover and concealment, stiff hands clumsy on the trigger, running where you were told to run and doing what you had to do.
Then there was the victory of the girl. The blonde girl named Jean. Seeing her on campus, and knowing that she had no time for a student who had to work long hours.
But you won the scholarship and the degree, and you found your own courage, and you found the job you wanted with Jason and Rawls, and you won the tall, calm, blonde and lovely bride named Jean.
These were victories, and you were marked by victory. Marked with confidence and a sort of arrogance. You knew none of it had been luck. You went after things. And got what you wanted.
And so this defeat became, a shocking thing. He wondered how and why he had failed. If only they’d been more careful, at first. Then he wouldn’t have to be a jobless man heading north with an old car, a pregnant wife, two small kids. He wondered if he’d be able to get a job as easily as he hoped. It might be a long time. The money could run out. There wasn’t much of it. The trip would make a hole in it. The wagon needed a new set of tires. Maybe they would last.
He drove through the heavy rain and there was a grayness inside of him as bleak as the color of the day. And he felt ashamed.