“And then Muriel went west?”
“Yes, that was in July.”
“To buy her trousseau?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think we can take it for granted, that to be worthy of a Harris, Muriel would buy her wedding clothes at Adrian’s.”
“What she did in California I don’t-know and I’d rather we took nothing for granted, if you don’t mind.”
“And then?”
“And then you came along.”
“And then true love was so irresistible that you left Muriel stood-up at the airport and married me, is that it?”
“I guess that about covers it.”
“Well I don’t. You didn’t say anything about love when you asked me to marry you — not at first, and it hurt me, and I ought to have known that any other reason was an insult, and—”
“Is a marriage proposal an insult?”
“Oh, it can be, even from a Harris, if that one thing isn’t there—”
“Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
“Sometimes I know — or think I do. But that wasn’t why you asked me. It was all about the system and getting back at them, whoever ‘they’ are. Is that the only reason you wanted me, so you could get back at your uncle for trying to make you marry Muriel?”
“No!”
“Then what was it?”
“It would take me a week to explain it to you.”
“I’ve got a week.”
“They won’t let me do what I want to. They—”
“And who is ‘they’?”
“My uncle!”
“And your mother.”
“We’ll leave my mother out of this.”
“Oh no, we won’t.”
“I tell you my mother has nothing to do with it. If everybody in the world were as fine as she is — the hell with it! I... I’ve got to go see how she is. She’s my mother, can’t you understand that? And she’s sick. I’ve... I’ve brought this on her. I—”
He started for the door but I was there first. “And I’m your wife, if you can understand that. And you’ve brought this on me. You’re not going to your mother. I don’t care how sick she is — if she’s sick, which I seriously doubt. You’re staying here, and we’re going into it. I told you — I’ve got a week, I’ve got a lifetime. They won’t let you do what you want to do, I think that’s what you said. What is it you want to do?”
I still stood there by the door, and he began tramping up and down the room, his eyes set and his lips twitching. He kept that up a long time and then he dropped into a chair, let his head fall on his hands and ran his tongue around the inside of his lips before he spoke to stop their twitching. “Study Indians.”
“You — what did you say?”
He leaped at me like a tiger, took me by the arms and shook me until I could feel my teeth rattling. “Laugh-let me hear you laugh! I’ll treat you like a wife! Just let me see a piece of a grin and I’ll knock it down your throat so fast you won’t have time to swallow it! Go on — why don’t you laugh?”
“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.”