Separate Flights (14 page)

‘Yes, sir.'

‘One other thing. You've worked in this brig. You know my policies and you know the duties of the turnkeys and prisoner chasers. While you're down there, I expect you to be a number one prisoner. Don't give your fellow Marines a hard time.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘All right. If you need any help with your problem, let me know.'

‘Yes, sir.'

He waited, blinking at the bulkhead.

‘That's all,' the captain said.

He clicked his heels together, pivoted around, and strode out. A chaser with a nightstick was waiting for him outside the door. Gale stopped.

‘Son of a bitch,' he whispered. ‘They're sending me to Yokosuka.'

‘Go to your wall locker and get your toilet articles and cigarettes and stationery,' the chaser said.

Gale marched to his bunk, the chaser behind him, and squatted, opening the small bulkhead locker near the head of his bunk, which was the lower one, so that his hands were concealed by the two bunks above his and he was able to slide one razor blade from the case and hide it in his palm. He packed his shaving kit with one hand and brought the other to his waist and tucked the razor blade under his belt.

He rose and the chaser marched him to the brig on the third deck, where Fisher, the turnkey, took his shaving kit and stationery and cigarettes from him and put them in a locker.

‘It's letter-writing time now,' Fisher said. ‘You can sit on the deck and write a letter.'

‘Sir, Prisoner Castete would like to smoke.'

‘Only after meals. You missed the smoke break.'

‘Sir, Prisoner Castete will write a letter.'

Fisher gave him his stationery and pen and he sat on the deck beside two sailors who glanced at him, then continued their writing.

He did not write. He sat for half an hour thinking of her scornful, angry, blue eyes looking at him or staring at the living room wall in Louisiana as she spoke loudly into the telephone:

What do you expect me to do when you're off on that damn boat? I bet you're not just sitting around over there in Japan
.

No! I haven't done a damn thing. Goddamnit, Dana, I love you. Do you love me?

I don't know
.

Do you love him?

I don't know
.

What are you going to do?

What do you mean, what am I going to do?

Well, you have to do something!

It looks like I'm going to sit right here in this house
.

That's not what—oh you Goddamn bitch, you dirty Goddamn bitch, how could you do it to me when I love you and I never even looked at these gooks, you're killing me, Dana, sonofabitch you're killing me—

Son. Son!

Mama?

She was going to hang up on you and you calling all the way from Japan and spending all that money—

Were you standing right there?

Yes, and I couldn't stand it, the way she was talking to you—

Why were you standing there?

Well, why shouldn't I be there when the phone rings in my own house and my boy's—

Never mind. Where's Dana?

In the bedroom, I guess. I don't know
.

Let me talk to her
.

She won't come
.

You didn't ask her
.

Gale, you're wasting time and money
.

Mama, would you please call her to the damn phone?

All right, wait a minute
.

What do you want?

Dana, we got to talk
.

How can we talk when your mother's standing right here and you're across the ocean spending a fortune?

If I write you a letter, will you answer it?

Yes
.

What?

Yes!

I got to know everything, all about it. Did you think you loved him?

I don't know
.

Is he still hanging around?

No
.

Dana, I love you. Have you ever run around on me before this?

No
.

Why did you do it?

I told you I don't know! Why don't you leave me alone!

I'll write to you
.

All right
.

Bye. Answer my letter. I love you
.

Bye
.

The letter-writing period ended and he handed the blank paper and pen to Fisher, who started to say something but did not.

Gale did not start crying until after he was put into a cell and the door was locked behind him and he had unfolded his rubber mattress and was holding one end of it under his chin and with both hands was working it into a mattress cover and he thought of Dana, then of himself, preparing his bed in a cell thousands of miles away, then he started, the tears flowing soundlessly down his cheeks until he was blinded and could not see his hands or even the mattress and it seemed that he would never get the cover on it and he desperately wanted someone to do it for him and lay the mattress on the deck and turn back the blanket and speak his name. He dropped the mattress, threw the cover against the bulkhead, unfolded the blanket, and lay down and covered himself, then gingerly took the razor blade from under his belt, touching it to his left wrist, for a moment just touching, then pressing, then he slashed, knowing in that instant of cutting that he did not want to; that if he had, he would have cut an artery instead of the veins where now the blood was warm and fast, going down his forearm, and when it reached the inside of his elbow he said:

‘Fisher.'

But there was no answer, so he threw off the blanket and stood up, this time yelling it:

‘Fisher!'

Fisher came to the door and looked through the bars and Gale showed him the wrist; he said sonofabitch and was gone, coming back with the keys and opening the door, pulling Gale out into the passageway and grabbing the wrist and tying a handkerchief around it, muttering.

‘You crazy bastard. What are you? Crazy?'

Then he ran to the phone and dialed the dispensary, watching Gale, and when he hung up he said:

‘Lie on your back. I oughta treat you for shock.'

Gale lay on the deck and Fisher turned a waste basket on its side and rolled it under his legs, then threw a blanket over him.

‘Son of a bitch!' he said. ‘They'll hang me. How'd you get that Goddamn razor?'

6

T
HE DOCTOR
was tall, with short gray hair and a thin gray moustache. He was a commander, so at least there was that much, at least they didn't send a lieutenant. The doctor filled his cup at the percolator, then faced Gale and looked at him, then came closer until Gale could smell the coffee.

‘You didn't do a very good job, did you, son?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Do you ever do a good job at anything?'

‘No, sir.'

The doctor's eyes softened and he raised his cup to his lips, watching Gale over its rim, then he lowered the cup and swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You go on and sleep now,' he said, ‘without any more silly ideas. I'll see you tomorrow and we'll talk about it.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Gale stepped into the passageway where the chaser was waiting and they marched down the long portside passageway, empty and darkened save for small red lights, Gale staring ahead, conscious of the bandage on his wrist as though it were an emblem of his uncertainty and his inability to change his life. He knew only that he faced a year of waiting for letters that would rarely come, three months of that in the brig where he would lie awake and wonder who shared her bed and, once released from the brig, he would have to return to Betty or find another girl so he would not have to think of Dana every night (although, resolving to do this, he already knew it would be in vain); and that, when he finally returned to the States, his life would be little more than a series of efforts to avoid being deceived and finally, perhaps years later, she would—with one last pitiless glare—leave him forever. All this stretched before him, as immutable as the long passageway where he marched now, the chaser in step behind him, yet he not only accepted it, but chose it. He figured that it was at least better than nothing.

The Doctor

1

I
N LATE
M
ARCH
, the snow began to melt. First it ran off the slopes and roads, and the brooks started flowing. Finally there were only low, shaded patches in the woods. In April, there were four days of warm sun, and on the first day Art Castagnetto told Maxine she could put away his pajamas until next year. That night he slept in a T-shirt, and next morning, when he noticed the pots on the radiators were dry, he left them empty.

Maxine didn't believe in the first day, or the second, either. But on the third afternoon, wearing shorts and a sweat shirt, she got the charcoal grill from the garage, put it in the backyard, and broiled steaks. She even told Art to get some tonic and limes for the gin. It was a Saturday afternoon; they sat outside in canvas lawn chairs and told Tina, their four-year-old girl, that it was all right to watch the charcoal but she mustn't touch it, because it was burning even if it didn't look like it. When the steaks were ready, the sun was behind the woods in back of the house; Maxine brought sweaters to Art and the four children so they could eat outside.

Monday it snowed. The snow was damp at first, melting on the dead grass, but the flakes got heavier and fell as slowly as tiny leaves and covered the ground. In another two days the snow melted, and each gray, cool day was warmer than the one before. Saturday afternoon the sky started clearing; there was a sunset, and before going to bed Art went outside and looked up at the stars. In the morning, he woke to a bedroom of sunlight. He left Maxine sleeping, put on a T-shirt, trunks, and running shoes, and carrying his sweat suit he went downstairs, tiptoeing because the children slept so lightly on weekends. He dropped his sweat suit into the basket for dirty clothes; he was finished with it until next fall.

He did side-straddle hops on the front lawn and then ran on the shoulder of the road, which for the first half mile was bordered by woods, so that he breathed the scent of pines and, he believed, the sunlight in the air. Then he passed the Whitfords' house. He had never seen the man and woman but had read their name on the mailbox and connected it with the children who usually played in the road in front of the small graying house set back in the trees. Its dirt yard was just large enough to contain it and a rusting Ford and an elm tree with a tire-and-rope swing hanging from one of its branches. The house now was still and dark, as though asleep. He went around the bend and, looking ahead, saw three of the Whitford boys standing by the brook.

It was a shallow brook, which had its prettiest days in winter when it was frozen; in the first weeks of spring, it ran clearly, but after that it became stagnant and around July it dried. This brook was a landmark he used when he directed friends to his house. ‘You get to a brook with a stone bridge,' he'd say. The bridge wasn't really stone; its guard walls were made of rectangular concrete slabs, stacked about three feet high, but he liked stone fences and stone bridges and he called it one. On a slope above the brook, there was a red house. A young childless couple lived there, and now the man, who sold life insurance in Boston, was driving off with a boat and trailer hitched to his car. His wife waved goodbye from the driveway, and the Whitford boys stopped throwing rocks into the brook long enough to wave too. They heard Art's feet on the blacktop and turned to watch him. When he reached the bridge, one of them said, ‘Hi, Doctor,' and Art smiled and said ‘Hello' to them as he passed. Crossing the bridge, he looked down at the brook. It was moving, slow and shallow, into the dark shade of the woods.

About a mile past the brook, there were several houses, with short stretches of woods between them. At the first house, a family was sitting at a picnic table in the side yard, reading the Sunday paper. They did not hear him, and he felt like a spy as he passed. The next family, about a hundred yards up the road, was working. Two little girls were picking up trash, and the man and woman were digging a flower bed. The parents turned and waved, and the man called, ‘It's a good day for it!' At the next house, a young couple were washing their Volkswagen, the girl using the hose, the man scrubbing away the dirt of winter. They looked up and waved. By now Art's T-shirt was damp and cool, and he had his second wind.

All up the road it was like that: people cleaning their lawns, washing cars, some just sitting under the bright sky; one large bald man lifted a beer can and grinned. In front of one house, two teenage boys were throwing a Frisbee; farther up the road, a man was gently pitching a softball to his small son, who wore a baseball cap and choked up high on the bat. A boy and girl passed Art in a polished green M. G., the top down, the girl's unscarfed hair blowing across her cheek as she leaned over and quickly kissed the boy's ear. All the lawn people waved at Art, though none of them knew him; they only knew he was the obstetrician who lived in the big house in the woods. When he turned and jogged back down the road, they waved or spoke again; this time they were not as spontaneous but more casual, more familiar. He rounded a curve a quarter of a mile from the brook; the woman was back in her house and the Whitford boys were gone too. On this length of road he was alone, and ahead of him squirrels and chipmunks fled into the woods.

Then something was wrong—he felt it before he knew it. When the two boys ran up from the brook into his vision, he started sprinting and had a grateful instant when he felt the strength left in his legs, though still he didn't know if there was any reason for strength and speed. He pounded over the blacktop as the boys scrambled up the lawn, toward the red house, and as he reached the bridge he shouted.