The Walkaway (11 page)

Two years after Grethe’s death the family moved to Cottonwood, a slightly larger town thirty miles to the east, where his father, a stone-mason, had found a regular position with a chance for advancement. By then he had remarried, and despite himself Gunther still thought of his stepmother Nellie as his mother most of the time; when he did think of Grethe it was with sorrow and shame at having allowed another to eclipse her in his affections. He was trying to remember the German word his mother had used to refer to his baby sisters when the egg timer went off, and looking in through the oven window he saw that the pizza rolls were leaking their sizzling insides onto the cookie sheet.

Dot didn’t think she would feel much like eating, but when the time came she found that she was ravenous. She heated up the electric skillet and fried four strips of bacon, carefully removing them at just the point when the fat and lean parts were equally chewy, before the lard disappeared into the skillet and the meat got crumbly. She toasted and buttered two pieces of white bread and discovered that she had neither lettuce nor tomato in the fridge. She slapped a little mayonnaise onto the top slice and put the sandwich together, leaving it whole, and standing at the sink she ate it from the corner inward, washing down every other bite with a mouthful of iced tea.

She lit a cigarette and wondered if there was any way she could find the rock quarry herself. How many of them could there be, after all, in this part of the state? She didn’t know how to go about looking for it, though. She’d awakened from an uneasy nap just as Gunther was getting back from hiding the money and the man they’d run over. Ten years gone by and she could still hardly stand to think about that, even knowing what she knew about the young man who’d stopped to help them that morning.

There was a knock on the front door and it opened before she could ask who it was. Her granddaughter Tricia tossed her purse on the couch.

“Hi, Moomaw. I thought you might like some company,” she said. Truthfully, Dorothy would have preferred to be alone, but she knew Tricia wouldn’t understand that. “Thanks,” she said. “You want a bacon sandwich?”

Tricia smiled politely, or tried to; her expression was more akin to a grimace. “Actually, no thanks. Got anything lower fat?”

“Christ on a crutch, look at you! You’re skinny as a rail. Why are you worried about calories?”

“It’s the saturated fat, Moomaw, and the cholesterol and the nitrosamines and the sodium, not the calories.” Tricia sat down on the arm of the couch, a maddening habit her grandchildren all shared that she forced herself not to comment upon.

“I know what it’s got in it. I’m not asking you to eat two of them for lunch every day ’til you’re my age, I just wanted to know if you wanted one right now.”

“No, thanks.” Tricia was still making that face, though less severely.

“Anyway, what about protein? It’s lousy with protein. Don’t forget I was a nurse for goddamn near forty years, and I still know a thing or two about nutrition.” She took a long, ostentatious drag on the cigarette, daring Tricia to make a comment.

“You’re right. Sorry. You want to play gin rummy or something?”

She thought for a minute. “What I’d really like is to get out of the house for a few minutes.”

Tricia shrugged. “Sure. What if Gunther gets here while we’re gone, though?”

“He won’t. If he does he’ll wait around. Come on. How’d you like to drive me out to the mall?”

Steve Blasik sat across from Loretta in the dining room at Lupe’s doing his best to make her want to go to bed with him, a possibility she’d never entertained before and wasn’t entertaining now. He leaned across the table, maintaining constant eye contact, talked about her and not himself, wondered how things were going at home—Eric’s visit had provided him with an excellent opener there—and discreetly complimented her changed appearance, though he was quick to add that he’d always found her attractive.

By the time drinks were served he was holding her hand across the tabletop. She felt herself redden, debated yanking the hand away and decided not to. She enjoyed being the object of public affection, something she hadn’t experienced in a long time. When their appetizers came his hand had moved under the table, where it came to rest gently on her knee, stroking it lightly until she removed it a millisecond later, giving no other indication that she’d even noticed its presence there.

Now she felt the conversation turning more explicitly in the absurd direction of their sleeping together, maybe even that afternoon. She was discouraging that turn every way she knew how when she turned to see Skeeter Garcinich, his thin nostrils pinched in anger, arms folded across his chest, his face as red as hers felt.

“Hey, Skeeter.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Two years before Skeeter had shown up at the house early one evening and angrily informed her that their spouses had been having an affair. By that time Eric’s infidelities no longer qualified as news, and she saw that her attitude of resignation disappointed him. That Lacey would ever do such a thing was clearly a shock to him, and though Loretta failed to dissolve into the emotional, weepy mess he’d apparently been expecting, he went ahead and suggested that they exact revenge by sleeping with each other.

The multitude of reasons she’d had for turning him down started with the fact that his entire motivation seemed to be paying Eric and Lacey back rather than any actual interest in her; also working against him was her suspicion that, despite his self-righteous anger at his unfaithful wife, he was at least as promiscuous as Eric. Finally, there’d been the problem of that name; it was impossible to imagine herself moaning “Skeeter” in a passionate moment without laughing.

Steve pulled his chair back, prepared to stand but clearly hoping he wouldn’t have to. “What seems to be your problem?”

“My problem is this paragon of virtue here. You know Eric saw you a minute ago? Holding hands with your boyfriend here? You have any idea how hurt that man was?”

“Not very, I bet,” she said, though the idea delighted her. She looked at the surrounding tables, relieved, and, to her surprise, slightly disappointed to see no faces she recognized among those pretending not to eavesdrop.

Steve was on his feet now. “Time to go, pal.”

Skeeter ignored him. “What’s so fuckin’ special about him? What the hell’s he got?”

“We’re just eating lunch, Skeeter,” she said.

“Lunch,” Skeeter said, his upper lip curled as though reviling the very concept of a midday meal.

“You leaving or what?” Steve said, and mentally Loretta tried to handicap a fight between them. Steve was younger than Skeeter, thirty-five at the outside, and in good shape besides, but her money would have been on Skeeter, who was mean and, according to Eric, without scruples.

Skeeter dismissed Steve with a millisecond’s glance, then turned his attention back to Loretta. “I never wanted you anyway. I was just trying to make you feel better about Eric trying to fuck every other woman he meets.” He turned and stomped away in the direction of the front door.

Before sitting back down Steve stood next to her and touched her shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Sit down.”

He kept standing there, rubbing her back from side to side as though reading an inscription in braille on her brassiere. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Sit down, Steve,” she said, and it was a command this time. He took his seat, looking like he’d just guessed correctly what the outcome of today’s lunch would be. Most likely he wrongly blamed his failure to seduce on Skeeter’s interruption and the accompanying shift in mood.

“Who was that, anyway? Some friend of your husband’s?”

“Yeah. He made a pass at me once.”

“Some friend,” he said, and his contempt for such behavior seemed genuine.

10

WAYNE OGDEN
June 19–20, 1952

I was driving the Plymouth through miles of empty space, or what seemed empty to me. Actually, every plot of land I passed was planted with something or other, wheat most likely, although they might as well have been fields of banana trees or Venus flytraps for all I cared. To be honest I didn’t remember what they grew around here, exactly. I was a full-fledged city kid, and I never gave a damn about agriculture. All I’d cared about while growing up here as a boy were airplanes, both the flying and building of them, which now occupied a rung of my consciousness just above sorghum and barley; all I cared about now was making a living. At the moment I also cared about getting laid, but that would evaporate soon enough.

I’d gone way north on Washington up to Forty-ninth Street, then headed west toward the Hitching Post. I’d just spent a couple of hours at the Comanche, mostly talking to a certain Amos Culligan, who claimed to be Sally’s shop steward and who split a third of the monthly take between the union and himself. I was taken aback to find such a talker at the center of such an enterprise; in my operation he would have been long gone before he had a chance to blabber anything to anybody. I was glad to have met him, though. He gave me a lot of information I expected to have to work hard for over the course of several nights. He was about forty, and not stupid, really, just one of those guys who got that way every time sex entered the picture. The occupation army was full of guys just like him, or rather it had been.

In the Plymouth’s passenger seat sat a young woman named Lena. She was talking about Senator Taft, who she thought ought to be president.

“Damn Democrats got us into two wars in a row, and Eisenhower’s not likely to do any different,” she said, failing to consider that from my perspective a desire to keep the U.S.A. out of another war might be a drawback in a presidential candidate.

Her slur was considerably more pronounced than when she and her friends had introduced themselves to me and the shop steward earlier. The girl she’d come in with had latched on to a fellow who worked for the
Beacon
, and I noticed that Culligan clammed up about Sally’s deal when he came around. He probably thought of that as being extra cautious. When last call came the girls conferred and Lena announced to me that I’d be driving her home. She was young, younger than twenty-five anyway, and married to somebody who pissed her off by working for a living. I thought I’d take her to the Hitching Post and see how things stood there, have a drink or two, and then head for her place. She was so drunk we could probably have done it in the backseat in the parking lot of the Comanche, but I felt like the luxury of a bed, and I didn’t want her to know I could be found at the Bellingham.

She was still on the subject of Taft when we parked at the Hitching Post. She laughed at the neon hillbilly and held on to my arm going in. She was a nice-looking, slightly heavy girl, prettier than any of the whores inside, and nicely dressed, too. I had on my new clothes and intended them and her to be as provocative as my uniform had been a few nights earlier. If I wasn’t on solid ground here, I’d find out fast.

The Comanche had been jumping, but the Hitching Post was having a slow evening. Elishah’s car wasn’t there, and he wasn’t inside. Beulah was sitting at the bar, though, and the same bartender was on duty.

“Well, look who’s back, and dressed to beat the band, too,” she said. “I was afraid those boys’d scared you away.”

I pulled out a thick roll of bills and made sure Beulah saw it; I knew she’d made a note of my cash supply the other night. “Bourbon,” I said, and the bartender waved the wad of green away.

“You still got most of a ten in credit from the other night.”

What do you know, I thought, a bartender who’s on the square. “Bourbon for me, then, and whatever the lady wants, and another round for the house.”

Lena asked for a Bloody Mary and settled for a beer, and as the bartender poured the round and rang the bell I spotted a couple of the guys from the other night, both of whom nodded at me as they came up to get their drinks. Neither seemed unfriendly; a little sheepish, maybe, the way you might get if somebody you’d beaten up bought you a drink.

“I like a good sport, Sarge,” Beulah said. She had on a green dress cut pretty much like the one she had on the other night. “Who’s your friend?”

“Beulah, this is Lena.” My new friend was having trouble just looking at Beulah without staring at her face, something Beulah was clearly used to.

“Pleased to meet you, Lena. You sure have snagged yourself a fine handsome man here.”

“I’m married,” Lena said, the way a child might suddenly announce “I’m five.”

“That’s nice.”

Somebody put a nickel in the jukebox and a hillbilly record started playing.

“Mind if I snag your fella for a dance?” Beulah asked, and Lena seemed not to have heard. A minute later I was dancing with Beulah, a close, slow dance completely unsuited to the idiotically jumpy tune.

She murmured into my ear, and I could smell the perfume behind hers. “I’m glad you came back, Army Man. Even if it is with a pretty kid like her. Where’d you meet her, a high school hop?”

“She says she’s in college.”

“Uh-huh. Well, once you drop her off at home you feel free to come back in the wee hours of the morning, maybe we can have a party of our own.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Suit yourself. I may be spoken for tomorrow, who knows.”

She was completely sure of herself, ugly as she was. Maybe that self-confidence was part of the attraction; in any case, by the time the song ended I was pressing a full-blown erection against her belly. Another song started and the tall, balding man I’d seen in the parking lot the night before cut in. I found Lena at the bar nursing a grudge against Beulah.

“Two of those yokels asked me to dance,” she said.

“So how come you didn’t?”

“Because I came with you. Come on, let’s go over to my house and have some fun.”

I was all for that. I waved at the bartender and a couple of the regulars and we headed out. I was glad to see that I was still welcome at the Hitching Post as promised, and once I was done screwing Lena I might head back.

She lived in a little house near the river. She had me drop her off, then park around the corner and walk in the back way as quick as I could to reduce the risk of the neighbors seeing me go in.

It was a little brick house with a low fence enclosing a tiny terrace in front. Around back was a yard with some big old trees in it, and that reminded me of the white cottage Sally and I had rented before the war. As soon as I got into the house Lena held up her face for a kiss, and before she got the lights on we were in the bedroom.

“You’re only the second guy I’ve cheated on Doug with.” She said it matter-of-factly but slowly, concentrating too hard on the suddenly difficult task of unbuttoning her blouse. I told her I had to go to the bathroom and as I pissed I wondered who the first guy was, feeling a little sorry for poor Doug.

When I opened the bedroom door, she was passed out on the bed and snoring; it looked like we weren’t going to be having any fun after all. I covered her with a blanket and went into the living room. It was filled with books, most of which appeared to predate the marriage, having either his or her name written on the flyleaf. His interest was history, whereas her specialty was English literature, and I thumbed through his copy of the Byrd translation of Procopius’s
The Secret History
, wishing I could still read it in the original Latin. Of course if I really wanted to there was nothing to stop me brushing up on it.

I could still hear her snoring as I stepped out the front door. I’d noted her phone number on the dial, and if things got slow maybe I’d call her some evening.

I drove back to the Hitching Post, where the first thing I noticed was Elishah’s Oldsmobile, parked in that same spot next to the sign. It was close to four in the morning when I walked in, and once again Elishah sat at a table all by himself, staring at Beulah as she danced with some other guy. I switched to beer for the duration of the evening, and as the bartender served me he nodded at Elishah. “He’s in about the same mood he was in the other night.”

Elishah didn’t seem to have spotted me, and when the song ended and Beulah came over and sat next to me he looked at me with no sign of recognition.

“So you slipped it to your college girl and you’re calling on old Beulah for seconds?”

“Didn’t get a chance. She passed out on me and I put her to bed.”

“A gentleman on top of it all. What more could a girl ask for?”

I tensed up as Elishah rose and moved toward us, but he was fixed on her and not me. “Beulah, I was wondering if I could have the next dance.”

“Elishah, I’m talking to someone right now. We’ll dance later, maybe.”

He looked closely at me now. “Okay,” he said without much hostility, and he went back to his table to stare off into the distance.

“He doesn’t seem to mind me as much tonight,” I said.

“It was your uniform set him off before. Most likely he doesn’t realize you’re the same guy.”

“What’s he got against soldiers?”

“He didn’t get to be one. He volunteered right after Pearl Harbor and got turned down, and you know how that was for some guys. He’s had a chip on his shoulder since I’ve known him.”

The door opened and a woman stumbled as she crossed the threshold with a blond-haired, freckle-faced guy with front teeth so big they looked fake. If you dressed him in overalls and a straw hat he could have been the inspiration for the hillbilly on the sign outside. Beulah nodded at the woman, whom I hadn’t seen before; her hair was hennaed red and her lips painted orange to match, and she sat the buck-toothed guy down at a table by himself before coming up and sitting on the other side of Beulah.

“Bernice, this is Sergeant McCowan. I’m gonna knock off at fivethirty since I didn’t take a break, and Sergeant McCowan and me are going back to my crib for a party.”

Bernice looked at me carefully, or maybe it was at my new clothes. “Sometime maybe the three of us could have a little party, if you want.”

I danced with Beulah a few more times and so did Elishah, and the whole time they spun around on the floor he was talking to her quietly, maybe pleading, I thought, and she closed her eyes, listening to the song on the jukebox and acting as if she couldn’t hear a word he said. When five-thirty finally came, I was ready for trouble, but he just silently watched us go, looking more sad than angry. Something about him right then reminded me of a greasy-haired, slightly more emaciated duke of Windsor.

“Where exactly are we heading?” I asked, leading her to the Plymouth.

“I live at the Crosley, downtown. You know where that is?”

I did. When I was a kid it was a nice hotel, about half residential, but during the Depression it had been sold, and its new owners had allowed it to deteriorate physically; by the time I’d left town it had developed a reputation as a den of iniquity, populated by whores and dope fiends. It hadn’t started renting by the hour yet, but it was heading in that general direction.

As I pulled onto the road she pulled the last cigarette out of a pack. “I hope you got smokes on you ’cause this is my last.” She lit it, crumpled the pack and tossed it out her window.

“Offhand I’d say old Elishah’s a little smitten with you.”

“Smitten.” She giggled, a sound that didn’t sound right somehow, coming from her. “Listen to you. Yeah, Elishah’s carrying a torch. He doesn’t like to see me go off with anybody else, but shit, what’s he think I do for a living?”

“Doesn’t he want any of the other girls?”

She shook her head. “See, every once in a while I take a liking to a fellow, and I start giving him special treatment. You know, freebies. Hanging around together off hours. It was that way with Elishah for a while, and then. . . .” She shrugged. “I’m taking kind of a liking to you.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m still on the clock, though,” Beulah said. “You left with me from the club, so I’m gonna have to collect.”

“I was planning to pay anyway.” The idea that fucking Beulah would be free of charge hadn’t even entered my mind; I knew exactly what she was really taking kind of a liking to.

The sky to the east was getting to be a lighter blue now, the clouds in the distance orange and faint pink, and for an unsettling moment I had to think whether it was a sunrise or a sunset. My sense of day and night, of today and tomorrow and yesterday, was completely out of joint now, a disorienting but not altogether unpleasant sensation. It had been that way when I’d first arrived in Japan; the difference this time was that I was making no attempt to get synchronized with the locals. My conversation with the shop steward, Culligan—had that been last night, or was that tonight? Was it the next day already, since the sun was coming up, or had the new day started when I woke up at the hotel? What time was it in Japan, anyway?

I parked in the Crosley’s small, weedy lot and we went inside. In the morning light the lobby looked like the nice hotel it had been once; it was only when you looked closely at the wallpaper or the carpet, or took a deep sniff, that it was clearly at the tail end of a steep decline. There was nobody at the front desk, but she had her key in her purse, and we climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. The hallway wasn’t as bad as the lobby. It was clean, and though the carpet was worn down the center, it was intact. A tall old woman came out of one of the other rooms wearing a bathrobe and slippers and glared at Beulah. When she was safely down the stairs Beulah looked over her shoulder and grinned. “Mrs. Grenwald. She lived here back when it was nice, and she doesn’t like anybody else who’s moved in since. Sometimes I like to introduce her to whatever fellow’s with me, just to get a rise out of her.”

She opened the door and I was surprised to see a clean, comfortable-looking room with a nice view of downtown to the south. The light coming through the window cast long shadows, and she reached up and started unpinning her hair. When it came down, past her shoulders, the effect was startling. Framed that way, her face wasn’t half as bad as it looked in the bar. You wouldn’t call her pretty, but it did a lot to balance out that jaw.