All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [206]
You could tell by the first exchange that they knew what they were about. And you could tell that their muscles didn’t need much loosening up. He was of medium height, perhaps a shade under, with a deep chest and big arms and nothing extra around the waist. His red hair had a crew cut, crinkly red hair showed on his chest above the underwear vest he was wearing instead of a shirt, and his skink was an even baby-pink except for the big blotches of brown freckles on his face and shoulders. In the middle of the freckles his face was all white-toothed grin and the glint of blue eyes. She was a brown lively girl, short brown hair that snapped when she pirouetted, and brown arms and shoulders above the white halter tied over her breasts, and brown legs flashing above white shoes and socks, and a little brown flat tummy between the white shorts and the white halter. They were both pretty young.
They began the game right quick, and I watched them over my newspaper. Maybe the red-headed felloe wasn’t trying his hardest, but she was handing them back to him well enough and could make him move around the court. She was even taking a game from him now and then. She was a pretty thing to watch, so light and springy and serious-faced and flashy-legged. But not as pretty as Anne Stanton had been, I decided. I even meditated on the superior beauty of a white skirt which could flow and whip with the player’s motion as compared to shorts. But shorts were good. They were good on the lively brown girl. I had to admit that.
And I had to admit, as I watched, that I had a knot in my stomach. Because I wasn’t out there on the court. With Anne Stanton. It was a terrific and fundamental injustice that I wasn’t out there. What was that red-faced, crop-headed fellow doing there? What was the girl doing there? I suddenly didn’t like them. I felt like going there and stopping the game and saying, “You think you’ll be here playing tennis forever, don’t you. Well, you wont.”
“Why, no,” the girl would say, “not forever.”
“Hell, no,” the fellow would say, “we’re going swimming this afternoon, then tonight we’re–”
“You don’t get it,” I would say. “Sure, I know you’re going swimming, and you’re going out somewhere tonight and you’ll stop the car on the way home. But you think you’ll be here this way forever.”
“Hell, no,” he would say, “I’m going back to college next week.”
“I’m going off to school,” she would shay, “but Thanksgiving I’ll see Al, won’t I, Al–and you’ll take me to the big game–won’t you, Al?”
They wouldn’t get it worth a damn. There was no use in giving them the benefit of my wisdom. Not even of the great big piece of wisdom which I had learned on my trip to California. They didn’t know the wisdom of the Great twitch, but they would have to find it out for themselves, for there was no use to tell them. They might listen politely, but they wouldn’t believe a word of it. And watching the brown girl dance and flash over there against the myrtles and the brilliant sea, I wasn’t so sure for the moment that I believed it myself.
But I did believe it, of course, for I had had my trip to California.
I didn’t see out the first set. The score was five to two when I left, but it seemed that she might make it five-three, for the crop-headed fellow was feeding them to her, not too obviously, and grinning out of the freckles when she’d whang them back.
I went to the house, changed, and took a swim. I idled out a long way, and floated around in the bay, which is a corner of the Gulf of Mexico, which is a corner of the great, salt, unplumbed waters of the world, and got back in time for lunch.
My mother had lunch with me. She kept giving me a chance to tell her why I had come down, but I just skirted round the subject till we got to the desert. Then I asked her if Judge Irwin was at the Landing. I hadn’t asked that yet. I could have found out the night before. But I hadn’t asked. I had postponed finding out.
He was at the Landing, all right.
My mother and I went out on the side gallery and had coffee and cigarettes. After a while I went upstairs to lie down for a spell and digest. I lay up there in my old room for an hour or so. Then I figured I had better get on with my work. I eased downstairs and started out the front door.