Some Came Running

James Jones

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781453215760
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

James Jones's saga of life in the American Midwest, newly revised five decades after it was first published and including a new foreword by his daughter, Kaylie Jones After the blockbuster international success of From Here to Eternity, James Jones retreated from public life, making his home at the Handy Writers' Colony in Illinois. His goal was to write something larger than a war novel, and the result, six years in the making, was Some Came Running, a stirring portrait of small-town life in the American Midwest at a time when our country and its people were striving to find their place in the new postwar world.Five decades later, it has been revised and reedited under the direction of the Jones estate to allow for a leaner, tighter read. The result is the masterpiece Jones intended: a tale whose brutal honesty is as shocking now as on the day it was first published.This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author's estate.

BOOK FOUR

THE LOVE AFFAIR

CHAPTER 45

MRS ELVIRA HIRSH, on the day that her youngest son finally visited her, was not expecting him. Mrs Hirsh was aware that David had been back in Parkman because Franklin had told her. That was back in May and here it was, the first of July. And David still had not come to see her. So she felt safe in assuming he would never come.

Mrs Hirsh did not hold this against David. She knew how young people were. And anyways, he was her youngest and she had always spoiled him a little, she guessed. And of course Franklin’s wife had spoiled him a great lot more, Mrs Hirsh thought with a sudden vindictiveness. But he was still a good boy. Just thoughtless, was all. There wasnt nothing bad about him. Mrs Hirsh believed that and prayed to God for him and for his immortal soul. Maybe he was gambling and living an unChristian life right now, but she knew that someday he would settle down.

He had not had a very happy life, as a child. Thanks (Mrs Hirsh’s mind froze stiffly:) to Victor. But none of her children could ever be really bad, because she had raised them all to be decent Christians, and she did not hold it against David because he had not come and see her. But when he did come, she was very pleased.

He did not come until late in the afternoon. She was about to cook her supper. And she had the radio on.

Mrs Hirsh had not risen early that day. As usual, she had been awakened around seven in her little apartment on the second floor of the Wernz Arms, by the wife of the high-school football coach rummaging around to get her husband’s breakfast in the apartment across the hall and get him off to school. He was teaching Social Studies this year in the summer school, his wife said. Mrs Hirsh lay, half-asleep, listening to them across the hall, until she heard the coach leave and lumber down the stairs and his wife go back in and shut the door. After that Mrs Hirsh drifted back off to sleep.

At nine o’clock she woke again and got up, and went into the little kitchen where she turned on the little table model radio Franklin had given her and put coffee on. Then she went to the front door into the hall and reached out and got the morning paper, the Chicago Tribune which Franklin subscribed to for her, and took it to the kitchen and commenced to get her breakfast while she listened to the nine o’clock dramatic life story on WGN. When it was all ready, she ladled it all out onto a plate—eggs, bacon, grease soaked bread, fried hashbrowns—and sat down at the little table to eat it while she turned the radio to WLS for the nine thirty dramatic life story.

After the meal, she took her three pills and then went in the bathroom and sat on the toilet placidly, but a little uneasily, while her bowels moved. She had started taking a new laxative a few days ago, but it did not really seem to add much help to what the other three were already doing for her. The other pills that were not laxatives that the doctor had given her did not seem to be doing her much good either; and for a moment she had a vague feeling of general uneasiness, but this passed. There was nothing really wrong with her, he said.

After the unsatisfactory bowel movement, she went back out in the kitchen and had another cup of coffee and read the paper. The headlines this second day of July 1948 were all about the blockade of Berlin and the Air Lift and the campaign for President. Everything looked so bad that it gave her a sort of feeling of unpleasant happiness which she did not really enjoy, and yet did enjoy too.

It was so easy to say to the world, I told you so! The trouble was, the world would not listen. The world no longer believed in God. It had turned its face away from Him. Little wonder it had fallen upon evil days! Only in Christ, Savior, was there hope of Eternal Salvation. But in their vanity and pride men had turned their backs on Him.

The only bright spot of light in the paper was the campaign for President. It was becoming increasingly clear that President Truman could never be reelected and that Governor Dewey was going to beat him, and Mrs Hirsh was glad. What we needed was a really humble, God-fearing man in the White House, who would lead us back upon the path of God’s righteousness. And President Truman was obviously not that man. Maybe Governor Dewey would be.

But she did not really think this would happen, she thought with a gloomy happiness. The country was too far sunk in sin to ever elect a truly righteous and God-fearing man, and it would get what it deserved, she thought vindictively. Only a few, only a very few, were saved.

Before she had completely finished the paper, the telephone rang in the front room and she went to answer it. It was Mrs Millar, another lady who was also a member of The Church of Christ, Saved. But Mrs Hirsh did not think that Mrs Millar was really saved, not truly saved. But then, not many was, and she enjoyed her telephone conversations with her. Mrs Millar had been visiting down in Lawrenceville at her youngest son’s where her eldest granddaughter was getting married, and she was full of news about the wedding.

After she had hung up, sitting there by the phone, which faced the front door, Mrs Hirsh’s eyes had come to rest on the framed painting that hung beside it, and finally it impinged itself upon her consciousness. It was an autumn scene along a country road. Franklin and Agnes had given it to her once for Christmas. It made her think of her daughter in law. It seemed that in this world, Mrs Hirsh thought vindictively, it was always the good men who got the poorest wives, while the really bad men like Victor always got the good wives. It seemed to be almost God’s Will in a way; to cause us suffering. Mrs Hirsh was well aware that her daughter in law Agnes did not like her. She never invited her to her house. She almost never came to visit her, except once in a great while when she came with Franklin because he obviously made her. She never bought her anything. But Mrs Hirsh prayed for Agnes just the same. It was Agnes’s influence, she knew, which had got Franklin to leave The Church of Christ, Saved, and to join the Methodist. And it was Agnes who kept getting him to try and get her his mother to leave The Church of Christ, Saved, and go with them to the Methodist.

Mrs Hirsh did not have anything especially against the Methodists. It was a good enough church. At least it helped some in the fight against Papism and the Pope. But it did not take God very seriously, and was mostly a social church. But The Church of Christ, Saved, was a real church. It cared only for God and Christ, Savior, as it should do. Even Victor had used to admit that. When he used to blaspheme God and His religion.

Mrs Hirsh sighed several times and cleared her throat. It was sad that of all her sons Franklin should be the one to get that kind of a wife. Edward in Cleveland and Darrell in New York City and George in St Louis all had fine wives apparently. She had never met them because they had never been able to get back out home with their wives. But she was sure they were all fine girls. They looked fine in their pictures. But poor Franklin.

Again, Mrs Hirsh sighed several times, enjoying the muscular expansion of her chest. She had always had good lungs.

Of them all only David wasnt married. She wished he would find himself a nice woman and settle down with her. She would like to see him happily married before she passed on. And he was old enough now to stop being bitter about life and acting like an unresponsible child. Franklin was right about that, even if he was a little too hard on David.

Mrs Hirsh turned to look at the electric clock Franklin had given her on the little desk which he had also given her, and saw that it was going on eleven, while remembering that she had a beauty appointment day after tomorrow. My, how the time did fly. If it was eleven, that meant that the mail would probably be in.

Breathing heavily two or three times through her nose, Mrs Hirsh walked down to the first floor entry where the pretty brass mailboxes were and got her mail and her copy of Lifemagazine which Franklin had subscribed to for her. Then she went back up, and turned the big radio in the living-room which Franklin had got her to WGN for the eleven o’clock dramatic life story, and for the next hour and a half she listened to the radio and slowly turned the pages of Lifemagazine.

When she finished the magazine it was almost twelve thirty and, her mouth watering with hunger, she went out to the kitchen to get her lunch. The kitchen radio was on as she ate but, entranced by the taste of the food, she did not even hear it.

After lunch, she took a nap.

When the doorbell rang downstairs that evening, Mrs Hirsh had just finished talking to Mrs Ethel Weller on the telephone. She had received two phone calls from lady friends in The Church of Christ, Saved, and had made one call herself and listened to one radio program, and by then it was close to suppertime. My, how the time did seem to fly!

She could not imagine who would be calling on her. Franklin always came around this hour, but usually on Mondays. It must be Franklin though, she decided. It couldnt be any of the ladies from the church. Not at this hour. They most generally came in the morning, or else right after lunch. Like she herself when she visited. So it must be Franklin. If it was, she would have some real news for him. The phone call from Mrs...