Of Men and Fog by Frank McQuown FICTION It is that time of night when sounds come seldom and muffled, when the cold sea fog is broken only by the half gleam of street lamps. Two such lamps can be seen now by the young man as he approaches the bridge. He knows it is the bridge because he has seen the two lamps, one at either end, in the early evening when the fog is thin and unsettled. He knows it is the bridge because he has stood at the concrete rail many times and gazed down through the thick vapor to the water. He can feel the hardness of the concrete beneath his feet, the echo of his feet pounding against the pavement. He is terrified and shaking ... who has known the fury of the senses battling with the intellect? who has felt the deep well of bitterness come up in the bosom in wild crescendo and spill in upon the brain? who has felt the mind flooded and blotted out by a surge of feeling? who has been chased across the moor of the earth by phantoms of suppression? who has felt the slow stain of living corrode and eat away the flesh? . . . Quickly, desperately, he runs to the parapet and throws one leg over. A greysuited man leaps out of the greyness, seizes the youth by the shoulders and pulls him back. They look at each other in silence; then the youth shudders, half sobs and covers his face with his hands. "Let me go! Let go . . . I'll-" "No, you fool!" "Why?" "I really would have done it! . . ." "Why?" "Oh, you don't know . . . you couldn't know . . . Leave me alone. It's none of your business!" "Oh, I don't know, I'm a stranger ... It won't do any harm to tell someone." "Yeah, sure, tell someone. I've done that, too, at least partly. Sure, I'll tell you. Why not? It's funny . . . sure . . . Oh, what the hell! Mind your own business!" "Come on now . . . Everybody has the right to call a coward a coward." "Whadaya mean?" "It'd be cowardly to jump . . . Come on now; most troubles will iron themselves out in time." "In time! Don't think I haven't waited. Why, it's been months and years, and things have just got worse. Everything's gone; there's nothing left, nothing." "But over the bridge isn't the way out. Come on now, tell me about it. Do you good to tell someone." "All right, Mister, I'll tell you. This was going to be a different kind of suicide, I thought. No notes saying 'Goodbye, O cruel world!', or anything like that. Sure, I'll tell you the whole thing just to show you what fools men can make of themselves." "Yes, I think if you tell it all aloud, bring it out before you, you'll see that maybe things aren't so bad after all. You know, killing oneself is a pretty serious thing." "All right . . . but try to understand. You've probably never had to suffer." The Man smiles ironically and slowly shakes his head in mock disgust, but the Youth doesn't notice this. "Take your time. Get it all off your chest." "Well, I guess I can't take it ... I guess there are good jobs for all the college boys somewhere, but I can't find them, and I guess there are honest women in the world somewhere, but I haven't found any . . ." "Uh-huh. Women. Is there a girl in this story somewhere?" "Oh, yes, there's always a woman. I've just come from seeing her now." "Ah, yes, a woman . . ." "Can you imagine a guy giving up a swell girl he was crazy about, willing to turn his back on all his yearning for her, purposely making himself out a dope in her eyes, just to remove any obstacle in the way of his PAGE 6 Scribulus future? You can't, huh? Well I did. Do you hear me? I did . . . killed it . . . just ..." "Now, wait a minute, fellow. I don't exactly follow you . . ." "No, I guess you can't. Nobody can follow me. Nobody, even myself, knows what makes me do things ..." "You say this girl really loved you, huh?" "Well, no, not exactly ... It started out as a great infatuation . . . But it came close to being the real thing. And if I'd only forgotten that being different stuff. Even just long enough to make her sure that I really meant all those things I told her about her being my inspiration, and how I'd get to be a big shot on her account . . . And then three months later I was treating her like a dog, insisting that we were good friends . . . nothing else . . . telling the other guys to take her out 'cause she wasn't wearing my pin anymore . . . telling them to take her out and burning up with jealousy when they did . . . And all because I was scared that liking her would interfere with my plans to be a big shot . . . Hell, how funny!" "Well, of course every man of any experience has been disillusioned in love. Why, if you laid all the men who've lost sleep over some woman end to end, you could trace history from time immemorial to the far reaches of the future. Besides, remember Kipling's A woman's only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke' . . . that is if you care for tobacco. Mine's White Owl, what's yours?" "Yeah, it's funny, I guess. Go ahead and laugh ... I don't know why I'm telling you all this . . . unless it's a very, very funny story. Oh, yes, very extremely funny, and most people are interested in funny stories." "No, seriously, it's not so funny. I think.it's sort of tragic all right. But don't you think you might be exaggerating this woman thing a bit?" "Exaggerating! How could you exaggerate murdered love!" "Well, you speak of this girl as sort of a revelation to you, which makes me think she's probably your first feminine venture, your first love, you might say. And then you mention the fact that the other boys were quite willing to take her out, which would indicate that she was quite popular. Am I right?" "Oh, yes, I considered myself quite lucky to win her in the face of all the competition I had . . ." "Well, then . . . It's safe for me to venture a guess backed by countless experiences with women that you might have been just another infatuation to her; just another notch in her romance gun ... a gun kept warm and smoking by constant firing ... a gun primed by Cupid and lubricated by the fickleness of feminine nature . . ." "Oh, of course there were other guys . . . before me . . . But I was different. I-I know I was . . . She said so. And besides we shared so many victories and defeats, good experiences, bad experiences . . . We grew, saw each other transformed from girl and boy to woman and man . . . and all this and our common interests sort of cemented us together. And then after I'd started my experiment in mock heroism, pounding into both our minds the thought similarity of our temperaments, we never got along. Seems to me it must'uve been some sort of love to make us so discontented with each other as friends, one of us so afraid the other would suspect that romance still existed ..." "Life's like that, fello. When you turn your back on something, especially something you've liked, it's always popping out at odd moments in your life, always popping up somewhere to plague you and bite into your conscience. One can't really break something off in the 'happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage,' as Ingersoll put it, and yet one shouldn't let anything progress to a point of satiation. I guess it all comes back to the old saying that you can't have your cake and eat it too . . . that is, all of it. And if you don't want to get disillusioned you'd best not even nibble at the cake ... I tell you, a man's a silly ass to trust a woman . . . That is, unless she's his wife . . . Say, tell me, did you have physical relationships with her?" "Whadaya mean!!!" "Well, of course, you kissed her, and . . . well, to just what extent did physical love enter into your romance?" "Not at all . . . er, that is . . . well, it did too ... I . . . I . . . You know sometimes I hate my own guts . . . You see, she was sort of like Shelley's 'Epipschidion' to me . . . That was love to me . . . that and fiery kisses on balconies of ivy-covered castles . . . Knights-of-the Round-Table love ... At the start I bet one of the boys I'd never even kiss her, but she made that sort of thing inevitable . . . One thing led to another . . . Then after trying hours of sight-seeing in a strange city with no food except hot dogs and junk, little sleep and miles of walking and exclaiming ... I really made love to her . . . God, it was awful ..." "And then you really became afraid of your affection for her . . . her . . . ?" "Yes, damnit. After, I walked the streets for two hours until I was nearly exhausted and the buildings were swirling and bending above me ... It was just like fever and delirium when you get sick . . . That's when I was positive I'd have to turn my back on her ... I was afraid I'd killed something in her, but she was swell about it. Oh, hell, you know I think that has a lot to do with my feeling the way I do about her. It's made me want to make it all up to her, become a big gun because of her, become greater than even she could imagine me . . . But now, that's all impossible . . ." "Wait a minute. That should help it become possible . . . Make it a probability, more than just a possibility. You "Yes. just because I wanted to be selfish and mock heroic at the same time . . . just because I didn't have sand enough to really produce the goods and start myself on the way to becoming that great guy for her . . . now, everything's gone ... I hate everybody, mostly myself. I haven't got anything, anybody ... no security, nothing I can believe in or rely on. Haven't got these things because I killed them all in my attempt at cynicism and 'Dog-eat-dog' determination to live wholly for myself. All the things I've believed in; trusted . . . looked up to . . . they've all gone . . . and now all I believe is that no matter what you do in this damned mile-a-minute life you get it in the teeth every time. I can only believe that there's no place in the world for idealists, no place for honesty ... to self and to others. I believe there's nothing for a damned dope with no guts like me ... I believe . . . Oh, God, I don't know what I believe . . ." The Man grins maliciously. "Hold on a minute! Heavens, man! Why just the fact that you're letting this thing get you down is ample proof that you still believe in these things, still know that they're everywhere in life ... if the man can just fit them in to make a regulated code for living. All that's the matter is that you've just thought about going out and finding them, proving them, as you say, making yourself a big gun . . . You've just thought about digging in and becoming a superman for her and because of her . . . What you've got to do is to quit thinking about doing it and go out and really (Continued on Page 19) for Autumn Page 7