Andre Dubus: Selected Stories (34 page)

‘
Where?
’

‘
Mexico
to
Tierra
del
Fuego
. We got the bat
tal
ion out.’

He twisted and reached behind his left hip for his canteen.

‘So the
colonel
was
right
.’

‘
Sure
he was.’ He gargled, then swallowed, and drank again and offered the canteen to Phil, who shook his head. ‘We
lost
people we might
not
have, if we’d
done
it the
right
way. But we had to
do
it
the fast
way. ’

The jeep climbed, and above him the fog was thinning; to his right he could see a ridge outlined clearly against the sky.

‘Have you
seen
your
mother
yet?’

‘Last
night
. She and the
girls
. We had
dinner. Catherine’s
screwed up.’

‘Not
dope?
’

‘
No
. She doesn’t
think
I should
go
. At the same
time
she—’ He shrugged, glanced at Harry, then watched the road.

‘Loves her
brother
,’Harry said.

‘Yes.’

‘Just the
women?
No
boy
friends?’

‘I
don’t
think they
like Marines
.’

‘
Fuck
’em.’

‘I’ll leave
that
to
Cathe
rine and
Joyce
.’

‘
Easy
now. My
daughters
are
virgins
.’

‘
Right
.’

‘ I wish your
ski
pper had left the
top
on
the jeep
.’

‘—
soon
.’

‘
Wbat?
’

‘
Today
will be
hot
.’

Harry nodded and put on his hat, pressing it down, and watched the suspended motion of fog above the road.

The deer camp duty officer’s table was near the fire. He wore hunting clothes and was rankless, as all the hunters were, but was in charge of the camp, logging hunters in and out, and recording their kills, because he had drawn the duty from a hat. A hissing gas lantern was on the table near his log book, and above him shadows cast by the fire danced in trees. Harry and Phil gave him their names and hunting area; he was in his mid-thirties, looked to Harry like a gunnery sergeant or major; they spoke to him about fog and the cold drive, and he wished them luck as they moved away, to the fire where two men squatted with skillets of eggs and others stood drinking coffee from canteen cups. The fire was in a hole; a large coffeepot rested on two stones at the edge of the flames. Harry poured for both of them, shook the pot, and a lance corporal emerged from the darkness; he wore faded green utilities and was eating a doughnut. He took the pot from Harry and shook it, then placed it beside the hole and returned to the darkness. The two men cooking eggs rose and brought the crackling skillets to the edge of the fire’s light, where three men sat drinking coffee. The lance corporal came back with a kettle and put it on the stones, then sat cross-legged and smoked. His boots shone in the fire’s light. From above, Harry watched him: he liked his build, lean and supple, and the cocky press of his lips, and his wearing his cap visor so low over his eyes that he had to jut out his chin to see in front of him. Phil crouched and held a skillet of bacon over the fire, and Harry stepped closer to the lance corporal; he wanted to ask him why he was in special services, in charge of a hobby shop or gym or swimming pool, drawing duty as a fire-builder and coffee-maker. Looking down at his starched cap and polished boots and large, strong-looking hands, he wished he could train him, teach him and care for him, and his wish became a yearning: looking at Phil wrapping a handkerchief around the skillet handle, he wished he could train him too. He circled the lance corporal and sat heavily on the earth beside Phil.

‘I
used
to be graceful.’

‘Civilians are entitled to a beer gut. We forgot a spatula.’

‘Civilian my ass. Here.’

He drew his hunting knife and handed it to Phil; behind him, and beyond the line of trees, a car left the road and stopped. Bacon curled over the knife blade; Phil lifted strips free of the skillet, lowered the pale sides into the grease, and said: ‘The eggs will break.’

‘I’ll cook them.’

‘Fried?’

‘Lieutenant, I’ve spent more time in chow lines than you’ve spent in the Marine Corps.’

Three hunters came out of the trees and stood at the table to his left. The lance corporal flipped his cigarette into the flames and crossed his arms on his knees and watched the kettle.

‘They use spatulas,’ Phil said.

‘True enough. But I will turn the eggs. How they come out is in the hands of the Lord.’

‘Bless us o Lord in this thy omelet.’

‘Over easy. Do you go to Mass?’

‘Sometimes. Do you?’

‘On Sundays.’

Across the fire the three men rubbed their hands in the heat. A car left the road, then another, and doors opened and slammed, and voices and rustling, cracking footsteps came through the trees. The lance corporal rose without using his hands and took the coffeepot into the darkness.

‘Where does he go?’ Harry said.

‘He’s like an Indian’

‘He’s like an Oriental.’

Then he heard the water boiling and, as he looked, steam came from the spout. From the pack he took bread, eggs, and paper plates. Phil spread bacon on a plate, then Harry dug a small hole with the knife and poured in some of the bacon grease and covered it. Kneeling, he fried four slices of bread, then broke six eggs, one-handed, into the skillet and was watching the bubbling whites and browning edges when he heard cars on the road; he glanced up at the dimmed stars and lemon moon; the fog was thinner, and smoke rose darkly through its eddying grey. In the skillet the eggs joined, and he was poised to separate them with his knife, then said: ‘Look what we have.’

‘Your basic sunnyside pie.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

He slanted the skillet till grease moved to one side, and with the blade he slapped it over the eggs. He held the skillet higher and watched the yellows, and the milky white circling them; he slid his knife under the right edge, gently moved it toward the center, and stopped under the first yolk. Phil held a paper plate, and Harry tilted the skillet over it, working the knife upward as connected eggs slid over the blade and rim, onto the plate.

‘I hate to break it,’ Phil said. ‘Should we freeze it?’

‘In our minds.’

Phil took their cups to the coffeepot; Harry watched him pouring, and waited for him to sit at the plate resting on loose dirt. They did not separate the eggs. On the road, cars approached like a convoy that had lost its intervals, and Harry and Phil ate quietly, slowly, watching the disc become oval, then oblong, then a yellow smear for the last of their bread. Men circled them and the fire. Phil reached for the skillet, and Harry said: ‘I’ll do it.’

He tossed dirt into it and rubbed the hot metal, then wiped it with a paper towel; he stabbed the knife into the earth and worked it back and forth and deeper, and wiped it clean on his trousers. He held his cigarettes toward Phil, but he was shaking one from his own pack. They sat facing the fire, smoking with their coffee. The lance corporal put on a fresh log, and Harry watched flames licking around its bottom and up its sides; above and around him the voices were incoherent, peaceful as the creaking of windblown trees.

Under a near-fogless sky, a half-hour before dawn, he reached the northern and highest peak of the narrow ridge, and walked with light steps, back and forth and in small circles, until his breathing slowed and his legs stopped quivering. Then he sat facing the bare spine of dirt and rock that dipped and rose and finally descended southward, through diaphanous fog, to the jeep. He heard nothing in the sky or on the earth save his own breathing. He rested his rifle on his thighs and watched both sides of the ridge: flat ground to the east until a mass of iron-grey hills; the valley, broken by a dark stand of trees, was to the west; beyond that was the ridge where Phil hunted.

The air and earth were the grey of twilight; then, as he looked down the western slope, at shapes of rocks and low thickets, the valley and Phil’s ridge became colors, muted under vanishing mist: pale green patches of grass and brown earth and a beige stream bed. The trees were pines, growing inside an eastward bend of the stream. Brown and green brush spread up the russet slope of Phil’s ridge, and beyond it was the light blue of the sea. Harry stood, was on his feet before he remembered to be quiet and still, and watched the blue spreading farther as fog rose from it like steam. He turned to the scarlet slice of sun crowning a hill. From the strip of rose and golden sky, the horizon rolled toward him: peaks and ridges, gorges and low country, and scattered green of trees among the arid yellow and brown. He faced the ocean, saw whitecaps now, and took off his hat and waved it. On the peak of Phil’s ridge he could see only rocks. The sea and sky were pale still; he stood watching as fog dissolved into their deepening blue, the sky brightened, and he could see the horizon. He sat facing it.

At eight o’clock he started walking down the ridge: one soft step, then waiting, looking down both slopes; another step; after three he saw Phil: a flash of light, a movement on the skyline. Then Phil became a tiny figure, and Harry stayed abreast of him. Soon the breeze shifted, came from the sea, and he could smell it. Near midmorning he flushed a doe: froze at the sudden crack of brush, as her bounding rump and darting body angled down the side of the ridge; in the valley she ran south, and was gone.

He sat and smoked and watched a ship gliding past Phil, its stacks at his shoulders. Then he stood and took off his jacket and sweat shirt and hung them from his belt. He caught up with Phil, and stalked again. When the sun was high and sparkling the sea, the ridge dropped more sharply, and he unloaded his rifle and slung it from his shoulder, and went down to the jeep. Phil sat on the hood. Behind him was open country and a distant range of tall hills. Harry sat on the hood and drank from his canteen.

‘Saved ammo,’ Phil said.

‘I almost stepped on a doe.’

‘How close?’

‘Three steps and a good spit.’

‘I’ve never been that close.’

‘Neither have I.’

‘Pretty quiet, Pop.’

‘She startled me. If she’d been a buck, I would have missed.’

They ate sandwiches, then lay on their backs in the shade of the jeep. Harry rested his hat on his forehead so the brim covered his eyes.

‘Are you staying for dinner?’ Phil said.

‘No. I don’t like driving tired.’

‘We can go back now, if you want.’

‘Let’s hunt. What will you do tomorrow?’

‘Make sure my toothbrush is packed.’

‘No girl?’

‘There isn’t one. I mean no
one
. So why choose now, right? I’ll go out with the guys and get drunk.’

‘Only way to go. What time Monday?’

‘I don’t even want to say.’

‘They love getting guys up in the dark.’

His boots were warm. He looked out from under the hat: sunlight was on his ankles now; he looked over his feet at the low end of Phil’s ridge.

‘Orientals can hide on a parade field. Chinese would crawl all night from their lines to ours. A few feet and wait. All night lying out there, no sound, nothing moving, and just before dawn they’d be on top of us. And
Jap
anese: they were like leaves. ’

‘Except that tank.’

‘What tank?’

‘Your Silver Star.’

‘That was a pillbox.’

‘It was?’

‘Sure. Did you think I’d go after a tank?’

‘Not much difference. Why didn’t I know that?’

‘Too many war stories, too many Marines; probably a neighbor told
his
kid about a tank.’

‘I told
them
. Was it on Tarawa?’

‘Yes.’

‘At least I got that right.’

‘It’s not important. It’s just something that happened. We were pinned down on the beach. The boxes had interlocking fire. I remember my mouth in the sand, then an explosion to my right front. It was a satchel charge, and a kid named Winslow Brimmer was the one who got it there.’

‘Winslow Brimmer?’

‘He was a mean little fart from Baltimore. Nobody harassed him about his name. He took whatever was left of his squad to that box, and all but two of them bought it. Then I was running with a flamethrower on my back. If you can call that running.’

‘Where did you get the flamethrower?’

‘The guy with it was next to me, and he was dead. So I put it on and moved out.’

‘Jesus.’

‘It was easier than Brimmer’s because he had knocked out the one on their left. I had more fresh air than he did.’

Not much.’

‘I can remember doing it, but it’s like somebody told me I did it, and that’s why I remember. The way it can be after a bad drunk. I don’t remember what I felt just before, or what I thought. I remember getting the flamethrower off him and onto me, and that should have taken a while, but it doesn’t seem like it. I remember running, but I don’t remember hearing anything, not with all those weapons firing, and I don’t remember getting there. I was there, and then I burned them. They must have made sounds, but I only remember the smell.’

‘Was that when you were wounded?’

‘No. That was the next day.’

‘I wish I had been there.’

‘No you don’t. The Navy dropped us in deep water—’

‘I know.’

‘Dead troops bobbing in it and lying on the reef and the beach. Fuck Tarawa.’

He opened his eyes to the sun, and squinted away from it at the sky. A hawk glided toward the earth, veered away, and climbed west over the ridge.

‘You reflected the sun this morning,’ he said. ‘That’s how I saw you.’