Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [62]
I know, said Kitty. Let s put snow on his face.
Oh, drop dead, said Whit. The snow might be a good idea, said Caroline. Who sai pu snow my face? said Julian. Are you awake, Ju? said Whit. Sure I m wake, said Julian. Well, then, put your coat on, said Whit. Here. Hold the other arm, Carter.
I dowanna put my coat on. Why do I have pu my coa on? Hu? Who do I?
Because we re going home, said Whit. Go on, darling, put your coat on, said Kitty. Oh, hello, Kitty, said Julian. How about a dance, Kitty?
No, we re leaving, said Kitty. Oh, get out of the way, Kitty, for Christ sake, said Whit. I think I ll go to sleep, said Julian. Come on, Julian. Snap out of it, said Caroline. Everybody wants to go home and it s freezing out here. Put your coat on.
Without another word Julian put his coat on, scorning all assistance. Where s my hat? he said. We can t find it, said Whit. The hat check girl said she must have given it to someone else by mistake. Lebrix said he d buy you a new one.
Turn your collar up, said Caroline. Julian turned up the deep collar of the coat, which was a husky garment of raccoon skins. He slumped back in a comer of the car and pretended to go to sleep. Carter sat in the other corner and Kitty Hofman sat in the middle of the back seat. Caroline sat up front with Whit, who was driving Julian s car. The whooping of the wind and the biting crunch of the tire chains in the snow and the music of the motor were the only sounds that reached the five persons in the car. The married four understood that; that there was nothing to be said now. Julian, lost in the coonskins, felt the tremendous excitement, the great thrilling lump in the chest and abdomen that comes before the administering of an unknown, well-deserved punishment. He knew he was in for it.
CHAPTER 7
WHEN he was a boy, Julian English once ran away from home. In a town the size of Gibbsville 24,032, estimated 1930 census the children of the rich live within two or three squares of the children of parents who are not rich, not even by Gibbsville standards. This makes for a spurious democracy, especially among boys, which may or may not be better than no democracy at all. In any case, in order to get a ball game going the sons of the Gibbsville rich had to play with the sons of the non-rich. There were not even nine, let alone eighteen, boys of Julian s age among the rich, and so the rich boys could not even have their own team. Consequently, from the time he was out of kindergarten until he was ready to go away to prep school, Julian s friends were not all from Lantenengo Street. Carter Davis would stop for him, or he would stop for Carter, when they were going to play baseball or football. They would go down the hill to Christiana Street, the next street, and join the gang. The gang s members had for fathers a butcher, a motorman, a practical surveyor (that is, a surveyor who had not gone to college), a freight clerk, two bookkeepers for the coal company, a Baptist minister, a neighborhood saloonkeeper, a mechanic in a garage (which he called a garridge), and a perennial convict (who was up this time for stealing 100,000 cigarettes from the Gibbsville Tobacco Company). These boys had enough to eat. They did not have to sell papers, although the minister s son sold subscriptions to The Saturday Evening Post and was always talking about blue vouchers or green vouchers and the Ranger bike he was going to get when he had enough vouchers. He was not available on certain days of the week, when he had to go to meetings of the other Post salesman. He was an industrious boy, and his nasal Indiana twang and the fact that he was a stranger (he had come to Gibbsville when he was five) and was bright in school all helped to make him unpopular in the gang. You could always tell his voice from the others: it was high, and his enunciation was not sing-songy like the other boys , which showed strong Pennsylvania Dutch influence. Julian liked him least of all. Best of all he liked Walt Davis, the son of the cigarette thief. Walt was no relation to Carter. Walt was