Absence of the Hero Read Free Page A

of seriousness, and I felt warm and glad. His faced looked so much more honest when he smiled; the small mouth widened and the scar pulled just a little on the chin.
    â€œLetters,” he said.
    I looked down into the shoebox. He withdrew one, then another. “ Accent , Circle , all of them. You know, ones that just missed. They write you about them.”
    I made some comment and he put the lid back on the shoebox and returned it to the closet. He came out of the closet looking grave again. I was back at the desk, at the high, white bowl. He stood there a moment, silent, looking very huge, the zebu.
    â€œI’ve decided,” he said, “that I can’t use you as an associate editor. You may not believe in such things—I doubt if you do—but sometimes God speaks to me, and last night I had a vision, and I was told you wouldn’t do.”
    I left soon after that, and he insisted on driving me the two miles to the streetcar line, saying that the buses probably didn’t run out there at that time of night, and if they did, it was probably at hour intervals.
    I stood out on the porch with the red-haired lady who was probably his wife, as he went back to the garage to get the car.
    â€œHe’s really a nice fellow,” I said.
    She stood there, her arms folded, with that beautiful, clearly amused smile. It was then that I remembered it was Sunday night and she had been alone for hours.
    â€œWe’ve been married almost twenty-five years.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œAnd it was all right until this writing thing started.”
    The car came down the drive backwards . . . about a 1928 model; thick steel body and enormous headlights, like the eyes of a monster, a great steel monster refusing to die.
    He opened the car door and looked out at me. The red-haired woman opened the door of the little house.
    â€œGoodbye,” I said.
    â€œGoodbye,” she answered.
    He drove toward the streetcar terminal and we discussed Sherwood Anderson. Arriving, we shook hands, said the parting words, and he helped me with the door handle. I got out. The monster chugged once, almost stopped, and then charged off into the night. . . .
    I am in another town now, but he has written me. It was a short note, typewritten on a piece of small yellow paper. I understand he has given up abstraction. He says his job there is done. He has agents in New York and London. Also, he writes, he has given up the magazine to devote himself fully to his art.

The Rapist’s Story
    I never knew I’d be one.
    And I still don’t feel like one. Or maybe I do. I don’t know how they feel. I only know how I feel.
    You know, I’d read about them in the newspapers now and then, and that was it.
    I’d get to thinking, for just a minute, now why in the hell would a guy do anything like that? There’s so much of it walking around.
    But I never tied myself in with it at all.
    I guess that’s the way it is: one minute you are walking around just being a person and then all of a sudden you, yourself, are accused of being a rapist, an attacker, a ravisher, and people everywhere are opening up newspapers and reading about you.
    And somebody’s thinking, now why in the hell would a guy (meaning me , this time) do anything like that?
    There’s so much of it walking around.
    I guess they just figure that a rapist is some guy who has been running around peeking into windows with a bunch of dirty pictures in his pants pocket. Then he gets some kind of chance he has always been waiting for, and he goes ahead with the rape.
    That’s what I thought.
    Now, I only know myself.
    Well, all this talk is not telling the story of how I got into this jam.
    I don’t know exactly how to begin. If you just list down what happened and what you did, it doesn’t come out right. By that, I mean the question and answer sort of thing that goes on in courts. It isn’t right. They make you