Girl by the Road at Night

by David Rabe

  Above the bright lights of the market, the sky is a strange color. The moon shudders and the sky wavers. The voice of the marketplace fades. Clouds ripple like fingers. The vendor hands her three oranges. Did she ask for them? Did she pay? He counts out her change and walks away. The bowl she ate from sits empty on the counter. She peels one orange, slowly, waiting. The vendor looks back at her and seems to be waiting, too. She sees that he is missing an arm, his left arm. The knotted sleeve dangles, and his eyes are still on her.

  The man understands that the girl with the orange has no idea that she reminds him of his dead daughter now gone more than a year. It’s that long since ARVN troops battled Vietcong to control his village, Binh Gia. Qui and two of her brothers, Than and Bao, were killed as fiery bombs devoured people. The rockets and mortars fell everywhere. But he has customers waiting, a young couple with a crying baby.

  Lan senses that the man is about to look away. She feels a puzzling sadness, a kind of tender rebuke. Who is he? Should she know him? She smiles and gestures, as if to ask these question, but she isn’t certain he sees, and then he’s back at work.

  7

  Sharon’s apartment, as he stands before it, is darkened windows over which the shades are silently drawn. He waits, though the rapping of his knuckles on the door has ceased. The stillness makes him hear a wind in the park across the street. They spent a Sunday morning seated on a bench there, he and Sharon; they rested through the quiet hours, reading a Sunday paper, trading the various sections, sharing occasional comments; each had been pleasantly at ease and accepting of the other and the silence. Now there comes a ticking from within the wood of the walls of the building before him. He waits, knocks again; no one comes; no one is home; she is not at home.

  He crosses to the park where there is a phone booth from which he calls into the midwest to speak to his father. Initially, he has difficulty making the apparatus accept his dime, but eventually, he raises an operator who asks for more money, and then there comes the buzzing of the distant ringing in the big old house in which both his father and brother live. He has a moment’s vision of the flat expanse of frosted, brittle land surrounding the few buildings of the farm, the barn and sheds, the house itself, three stories tall. Each blade of grass and weed is singly frosted. He hears the ringing within that house, glowing in his imagination as if he is nearby instead of wandering the various pathways, cinder and concrete, of this park in Washington, D.C. Suddenly, he hangs up the phone to stand as still as a listening hunter who has heard the noise of the animal he must kill.

  Through a webbing of black tree limbs and changing wind, Sharon is the object of a consuming concentration. Dressed in an aqua suit, boots, and light-colored net stockings, she is on the steps that rise from the sidewalk to the door. He ducks behind a tree. She has her keys. The door slams shut.

  Walking briskly, he returns to the bar where he has been drinking. He sits on the bar stool, his feet tucked onto the lower rungs, for he is free at last of her power to make him grieve because she, who was requisite to his life, is gone. But she is not requisite. She is not air, not oxygen. She is not breath. Empty of her now, the expanse of his imagined future grows enormous. He can go to any girl. He downs a shot of Seagram’s whiskey followed by a beer. To celebrate, he orders another pair of drinks, and feeling himself already present in his new and limitless life, he goes to the jukebox that is all glass and glitter like a jewelry case. Sealed away below him are miniatures of the covers of top-selling albums, rotating like small carousels. He leans nearer to see more clearly the delight of their colorful design, and his dog tags, clinking one against the other, make a sound that falls like a cannon down his mind. He freezes, his fingers pressed upon the glass. Only yesterday he read a letter sent from 3rd Platoon, ALPHA Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Infantry Division. It was monsoon season, said the letter. The mud was deep. There was no end to it, no place where it was not. He read of huge rats that crept into camp each night in search of garbage. The heat was constant. He learned of spooky black nights. There was no moonlight in a jungle, said the letter, and so the dark was total in which tiny yellow people probed the concertina wire for flaws through which to pass to go among the sleeping men, setting charges of plastic explosives, or with the speed of a snake’s head striking, cutting one white sleeping throat.

  Whitaker frowns and fingers his dog tags. They tell him who he is and he squints, remembering the letter’s final page, which told of one day at dawn when a boy, clumsy with sleep, triggered the trap of a bomb set at the ends of the straddle trench where he was squatting to shit. The explosion threw his ragged chest and head and arms into the pit, where he shuddered, eyes wide and monstrous in his huge distress. Some nights tracers swept in from the jungle, coming low and dangerous, until they reached the limit of their thrust, where they tumbled unnoted into the foliage or dirt.

  Goddamn, says Whitaker, goddamn, and beneath the glass under his fingers a cardboard face of pert Petula Clark goes floating by.

  8

  “Fisher here,” says the voice over the phone.

  “Hello,” Whitaker says.

  “Yes, please.”

  “May I speak to Sharon?”

  “May I ask who is calling please?”

  “I’m Joe Whitaker.”

  “Sharon’s married now, you know.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.”

  “I’m her husband, Bob Fisher, Joe. Could I take a message? Sharon’s in the shower.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is there a message?”

  “I’m just an old friend is all and I’m in the army and I’ve got to ship out next week, a week from today, as a matter of fact … overseas … Vietnam … , actually. So I just thought it might be nice if I could say hello. I’d like to meet you, too. I’ve been in town all day.”

  “It’s awfully late.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s late.”

  “Somewhere around eleven.”

  “It’s nearer twelve, Joe. Look at your watch.”

  “I didn’t think it would matter since it’s Saturday. I didn’t get you up, did I?”

  “No.”

  “Well, would it be all right maybe if I called back in maybe ten minutes? Would she be out of the shower by then, do you think?”

  “Wait a minute; she’s out now.”

  Of course, he thinks.

  “Hang on.”

  And so he settles deeper into the confinement of that sweaty booth, wondering if she’s naked and twinkling with beads of light and water at the top of the stairs. Or is she wrapped in a towel, held in a robe? Was she in any shower? Muted through the panels encasing him in wood and Plexiglas come the murmuring voices, the music of the taproom crammed with people, where smoke hangs and shifts like currents. The glass of beer in his limp hand is warm; he gulps what’s left.

  “Hello,” she says. “Joe?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Joe, are you really being sent to Vietnam?”

  There is pressure in the veins of his eyes, and he doesn’t speak.

  “Joe?” she says.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Oh, Joe, how awful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “I just came down on orders, is all.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Where are you, Joe? Are you in a bar?”

  “Sure am; sure as hell am.”

  “Are you having a good time? How do you feel?”

  “Not bad.”

  “How’s everything else been going, all right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. How are you otherwise?”

  “Okay, I guess. Sure.”

  “Would you like to come over, have a drink with Bob and me?”

  “Would that be all right?”

  “Of course it would, if you’d like to do it.”

  “I would,
yes, honest. I mean, if it’s all right with you. I’m fine. It doesn’t even matter to me, I’ve got so much other stuff to worry about, you know what I mean, Sharon?”

  “Well, come on over then. It’s the least we can do.”

  “I mean, I don’t care that you’re married, that’s what I mean.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll come by cab, all right?”

  “Could we come and get you?”

  “No, no, cab’s all right.”

  “All right. See you in a little.”

  Eagerness is in her voice, one quick flare of it. She savors her words, loving to say them, glad, it occurs to him suddenly, that she is married and he has called out of need because he has no friend but her in the city.

  “Are you hungry?” she says. “I’ll throw on a steak if you are.”

  “All right.”

  “And hurry, Joe. I want to hear all about what you’re doing. I’m so glad you called.”

  There was an afternoon one Sunday, when rain and nearing storms made the air gray, and they sat in the living room, drinking with Sharon’s sister, Caroline, and Caroline’s fiancé, Fred, and Sharon dared Fred, who was a shade older, making him feel that there was a bet in the air between them and he could win and have her if he wanted. Though she was to be a sister-in-law in his future, she could not find the will or the means or the reason to restrain herself. That was her message: caprice was her queen.

  Sitting at the bar to have one last beer before leaving, Whitaker watches the bartender, a vigorous, healthy-looking man upon whose left hand the absence of three fingers causes in Whitaker a small but exacting shock. He can think no more. He wants to call the man “club fingers,” and wave farewell with his fist.

  Bob and Sharon greet him at the door. Sharon kisses him twice. Bob shakes his hand. Bob is thin; his hair is black.

  “It’s so good to see you, Joe.”

  Bob wears a white shirt and a silky blue tie set in the wide flourish of a perfect Windsor knot. His trousers are neatly creased, his shirt trimly tucked in. He wears a wedding ring and another ring is on the little finger of his left hand. The neatness of his thick hair, blacker than Sharon’s, speaks of twice-a-week trimmings.

  Standing at the liquor cabinet, he says, “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Sharon wears the pink skirt of a suit that Whitaker remembers because it shows netted stockings and hints of skin well into the slope of her thigh. The white blouse is speckled with pink and the frills at the throat are pink also. She wears no shoes and sits curled up on her legs, like a cat, in a cuplike leather chair.

  “Whiskey all right?”

  “Fine,” Whitaker says.

  “Little water?”

  “No. Just ice.”

  “So, tell us everything you’ve been doing, Joe.”

  “I’ve been drinking. Since early this afternoon, mostly I’ve been drinking.”

  “Drowning your sorrows,” Sharon says, expectancy the light and smile of her eye.

  “Looking for a good time?” Bob says.

  “I don’t know. I was over by the Washington Monument.”

  “Right, right,” Sharon nods.

  “I just wandered around.”

  “Observed,” Bob says.

  “I didn’t really participate.”

  “I see.”

  “How’s everything between you two?”

  “Fine, Joe. Just fine,” she says, just the smallest huskiness entering her voice, a depth and echo in which her love of sex, along with her skill at it, are the real wonders of which she is speaking—would he care to try?

  “How exactly did you meet Sharon, Joe?” Bob says.

  “I picked her up on a train.”

  “Now that’s not really true,” she says.

  “It’s nearly true.”

  “We met on a train and talked.”

  “How did you meet Sharon, Bob?”

  “Same high school.”

  He ached to lie within her, to move into and out of her body and make her feel him fiercely, and know of him so that she, in her thighs, her cunt, would remember.

  “We grew up about six blocks from each other,” Bob says.

  “How is it that you have to go to Vietnam, Joe?” she says.

  “Came down on orders.”

  “I thought they were mostly marines over there,” Bob says.

  “What does that mean? ‘Came down on orders.’”

  “Somebody at the Pentagon and this IBM computer got together and came up with my name, so they sent the word on down to Fort Meade to get me and they got me.”

  “Who does that work?”

  “Other soldiers.”

  “There are civilians who do it, too, aren’t there?” Bob says.

  “I guess so,” says Whitaker and stands up.

  “Sure,” Bob says.

  Crossing between them to the liquor cabinet where he detects a scent of mint, Whitaker feels the disapproval of their eyes upon him, but he is a ghost in their house, a ghost in the world now, so what can they, with their praise or their condemnation, matter? With golden tongs he reaches into a golden bucket and picks two cubes of ice, which he drops into a clean glass. The bourbon he pours over them changes their color. He begins to talk about Parnelli Jones and A. J. Foyt, auto racing, the power of machines, the majesty of cars and how they were like dogs, pets, good beasts, but you had to be stronger, better, in control. And the day Parnelli won his first big race, Al Keller, a veteran of twenty-three years, got killed, flipping into a chain-link barrier and landing atop the retaining wall.

  To speak her good night to him, Sharon strolls over to where he is stretched out on the couch, all tucked in with sheets and a blue blanket—they invited him to stay the night when it appeared he would never leave—and her hand settles lightly on his stomach as she speaks, while Bob awaits her, the shape and shadow of him blocking the doorway that leads to the stairs and their bedroom, while Whitaker, just below her lazy, warm fingers, is swollen and hard. Her head is lovely above him, centered in the black luster of her hair, he is so drunk, so very drunk, her eyes so large, sadly appealing, distress in them, and longing beneath the distress, and love of him even further. He is sure she regrets her marriage.

  Then she is gone.

  Yet for a time he struggles to resist the downward pull of his body drugged with dulling alcohol and exhaustion, for her eyes have put into him the thought that it is not impossible that she might, even here and now, slip down to him to hold him in the later darkness. Though immediately before him the streetlight above the glowing park is visible in the window, like a picture in a frame. He remembers the newspaper they shared not so long ago, the remnants moving with wind among the trees that hid him from her earlier this afternoon. He wants her to want him. Night and day. Wrong or right. His feelings swoop around, murky and sad. I’m going out of my head, he thinks, and then he recognizes that his thoughts are song lyrics. What do cars say to one another? he thinks. They putt and sputter. What in the person is the spark?

  9

  Buried beneath blankets, he is startled by consciousness, as if at the entrance of a calling voice into his slow brain, and then he scarcely moves, listening for over an hour to the silence of their house. Pain thumps in his skull. The clock on the wall shows it is nearly six A.M. He stands slowly, tentatively, alert to the possibility of nausea coming strong enough to send him flopping back onto the couch. He waits for a while. The sickness in him, however, is not severe. Uncomfortable, but not incapacitating. He does not know how long they stayed together, drinking. No certain knowledge informs him of the evening’s end.

  Pulling on his trousers, he puts on his shirt and shoes. A feeble glow cast by streetlights suffuses the ceiling. The plaster appears to be warped. After prying his shoes back off, he goes carefully to the stairway, which he climbs, leaning heavily upon the banister to make his footsteps lighter. His need to pee is so potent it hurts and he dreams of aspirins,
bromo seltzer. The banister, smooth beneath his fingers, lifts him higher. The carpeting cushions his feet. The door to their bedroom is partially open. He opens it farther and is staring in upon the tangle of their bodies. Her breasts are visible, catching light, thick swells of flesh, seeming nearly separate from her, for she is mostly shadow, her hair undone and strewn about her throat, face, and shoulder. Her mouth is open, breathing. The first time he got her was on the floor, afraid to move to the bed because the lapse of time might have cost his rhythm, her desire and willingness. He kept her hot with one hand, getting the rubber on with the other. What a lie he’s telling; he’s never had her. She had him, though. He wasn’t fast enough with the rubber and she squirmed away. She told him to stop and he did. Then she told him to start, and he did. She was way out front, looking back, watching him hope that he was somebody. But she knew better. And then she kept inviting him back. But just to sit there. Just to hear, “Stop.”

  After peeing he returns to the bedroom doorway. Now her breathing changes. He looks. Pink lips encircle the dark socket of her mouth. They screwed last night, Bob and her. Whitaker is sure, hurting as he thinks of it. That was the meaning of their evening, though Whitaker tried to take it from them. They joined together with Whitaker between them, and their joining killed him. If she had desired Whitaker even for a minute, Bob rode in on that desire. He senses now their tactic, the struggle between them. They fed this day of their life with the food of ole Whitaker. He feels he can smell the sweat of their meeting, coupling, for if she were ever to make this man, her husband, believe in her dream of herself as a creature of the wilds tempted by flight, then her disappearance must seem, at times, a danger. On this day, Whitaker helped her prove it was truly possible that she might, on a whim, or no basis at all, run away from her home and husband, so Bob nailed her, seized her flesh where she would most feel his presence and nailed her, held her upon the power of his will and prick until she wished for nothing more than sleep, happy that he panicked so exquisitely and completely at her smallest intimation of their danger, her threat of a threat.