now quite gray; so was the mustache. He crossed and recrossed his legs, so that Willard saw the undersides of his shoes, pale and smooth. A little suitcase, also new, sat beside him on the floor.
“So,” said Willard to himself, “he did it. Actually got on a bus and came. After all that has happened, after all the misery he has caused, he has had the nerve to get on a bus and then get off it and to wait here half an hour, expecting to be picked up … Oh, you idiot!” he thought, and unseen yet, glared at his middle-aged son-in-law, his new shoes, his new suitcase—oh, sure, new man too! “You dumb cluck! You scheming, lying, thieving ignoramus! You weak, washed-outlushhead, sucking the life’s blood from every human heart there is! You no-good low-life weakling! So what if you can’t help it! So what if you don’t mean it—”
“—Duane,” said Willard, stepping forward, “How you doing, Duane?”
Two
1
W hen young Roy Bassart came out of the service in the summer of 1948, he didn’t know what to do with his future, so he sat around for six months listening to people talk about it. He would drop his long skinny frame into a big club chair in his uncle’s living room and instantly slide half out of it, so that his Army shoes and Army socks and khaki trousers were all obstacles to cross over if you wanted to go by, as his cousin Eleanor and her friend Lucy often did when he was visiting. He would sit there absolutely motionless, his thumbs hooked around the beltless loops of his trousers and his chin tipped down onto his long tubular chest, and when asked if he was listening to what was being said to him, he would nod his head without even raising his glance from his shirt buttons. Or sometimes, with his bright, fair face, with those blue eyes as clear as day, he would look up at whoever was advising him or questioning him, and see them through a frame that he made with his fingers.
In the Army, Roy had developed an interest in drawing, and profiles were his specialty. He was excellent on noses (the bigger the better), good on ears, good on hair, good on certain kinds of chins, and had bought a manual to teach himself the secret of drawing a mouth, which was his weak point. He had even begun to think that he ought to go ahead and try tobecome a professional artist. He realized it was no easy row to hoe, but maybe the time had come in life for him to tackle something hard instead of settling for the easiest thing at hand.
It was his plan to become a professional artist that he had announced upon his return to Liberty Center late in August; he had barely set down his duffel bag in the living room when the first argument began.
You would have thought he was a kid returning home from Camp Gitche Gumee instead of the Aleutian Islands. If he had forgotten in the time away what life had been like for him during his last year of high school, it did not take Lloyd and Alice Bassart more than half an hour to refresh his recollection. The argument, which went on for days, consisted for the most part of his parents saying they had had experiences he hadn’t, and Roy saying that now he had had experiences they hadn’t. After all, it just might be, he said, that his opinion counted for something—particularly since what they were discussing was his career.
To make a point, in fact, he spent the whole of his third day home copying a girl’s profile off a matchbook cover. He worked it over and over and over, taking just a quick break for lunch, and only after an entire afternoon behind the locked door of his bedroom did he believe he had gotten it right. He addressed three different envelopes after dinner, until he was satisfied with the lettering, and then sent the picture off to the art school, which was in Kansas City, Missouri—walking all the way downtown to the post office to be sure that it made the evening mail. When a return letter announced that Mr. Roy Basket had won a five-hundred-dollar
“So,” said Willard to himself, “he did it. Actually got on a bus and came. After all that has happened, after all the misery he has caused, he has had the nerve to get on a bus and then get off it and to wait here half an hour, expecting to be picked up … Oh, you idiot!” he thought, and unseen yet, glared at his middle-aged son-in-law, his new shoes, his new suitcase—oh, sure, new man too! “You dumb cluck! You scheming, lying, thieving ignoramus! You weak, washed-outlushhead, sucking the life’s blood from every human heart there is! You no-good low-life weakling! So what if you can’t help it! So what if you don’t mean it—”
“—Duane,” said Willard, stepping forward, “How you doing, Duane?”
Two
1
W hen young Roy Bassart came out of the service in the summer of 1948, he didn’t know what to do with his future, so he sat around for six months listening to people talk about it. He would drop his long skinny frame into a big club chair in his uncle’s living room and instantly slide half out of it, so that his Army shoes and Army socks and khaki trousers were all obstacles to cross over if you wanted to go by, as his cousin Eleanor and her friend Lucy often did when he was visiting. He would sit there absolutely motionless, his thumbs hooked around the beltless loops of his trousers and his chin tipped down onto his long tubular chest, and when asked if he was listening to what was being said to him, he would nod his head without even raising his glance from his shirt buttons. Or sometimes, with his bright, fair face, with those blue eyes as clear as day, he would look up at whoever was advising him or questioning him, and see them through a frame that he made with his fingers.
In the Army, Roy had developed an interest in drawing, and profiles were his specialty. He was excellent on noses (the bigger the better), good on ears, good on hair, good on certain kinds of chins, and had bought a manual to teach himself the secret of drawing a mouth, which was his weak point. He had even begun to think that he ought to go ahead and try tobecome a professional artist. He realized it was no easy row to hoe, but maybe the time had come in life for him to tackle something hard instead of settling for the easiest thing at hand.
It was his plan to become a professional artist that he had announced upon his return to Liberty Center late in August; he had barely set down his duffel bag in the living room when the first argument began.
You would have thought he was a kid returning home from Camp Gitche Gumee instead of the Aleutian Islands. If he had forgotten in the time away what life had been like for him during his last year of high school, it did not take Lloyd and Alice Bassart more than half an hour to refresh his recollection. The argument, which went on for days, consisted for the most part of his parents saying they had had experiences he hadn’t, and Roy saying that now he had had experiences they hadn’t. After all, it just might be, he said, that his opinion counted for something—particularly since what they were discussing was his career.
To make a point, in fact, he spent the whole of his third day home copying a girl’s profile off a matchbook cover. He worked it over and over and over, taking just a quick break for lunch, and only after an entire afternoon behind the locked door of his bedroom did he believe he had gotten it right. He addressed three different envelopes after dinner, until he was satisfied with the lettering, and then sent the picture off to the art school, which was in Kansas City, Missouri—walking all the way downtown to the post office to be sure that it made the evening mail. When a return letter announced that Mr. Roy Basket had won a five-hundred-dollar
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