Tracy, without prologue or hesitation, undressed. Naked, she looked just as he’d imagined she would. Round pink-tipped teacup breasts, too lightweight to be affected by gravity. Ribs visible. Bony hips, lovely slender legs, long narrow feet. The dark delta. The sight made his head swim. Brandy crawled up his throat and he choked. Then she was stepping toward him, shy and bold, modest but determined, shivering in the chilly room. A slight tremble in her lower lip. Gus was awestruck, drunk as he was.
“You made a decision,” Gus said, his voice hoarse.
“I have,” she said.
“You’re going to fuck your antiestablishment hero.”
“I am,” she said.
She straddled him. Unbuckled his belt. Unzipped his pants. Reached in. Found nothing useful.
Gus moaned shamefully.
“Looks like you’re too damn drunk, Mr. Nihilist,” she said.
“The shithouse rule strikes again,” Gus said.
44
Gus reported to building T572 at 0730, January 18, to process out of the air force. He was given a medical exam and two hundred dollars in separation pay. He shook hands with the old gray sergeant who gave him the two hundred dollars out of a cash box. “Better luck next time, kid,” the sergeant said.
“What do you mean, ‘next time’?” Gus said.
“You fucked up this time.” He pointed to his clipboard. “Says so right here on your separation papers. Maybe next time around you won’t.”
“What’s it say?”
“Says ‘medical’ but ‘medical’ doesn’t have to mean physical, like you got a bad liver or something. You look pretty healthy to me. The exam you just had proves it. So I figure it’s got to be mental. You went mental on them—like you choked your chicken in a public place, a pervert thing like that. So they showed you the door. Happens more often than you think. Lucky you didn’t get a Section 8.”
Gus went back to the TDY barracks, packed his B-4 bag, put on his parka, and walked to the front gate.
There was a woman in the AP shack arguing with the AP. Gus recognized her. He recognized the car blocking the gate. His heart thumped, then accelerated. She saw him. She came out of the AP shack taking long determined strides in his direction. The AP tried to hold her back.
“This is restricted air force property, lady,” the AP said. “Get in your car and back out.”
The woman broke free of the AP.
“Orson!” she said. “We’re going to have us a child!” She seemed both elated and frightened. “It’s a miracle, Orson! God blessed us with it! You have to honor it!”
“You know this woman, buddy?” the AP said.
“Never saw her before,” Gus mumbled.
“Why is she calling you by name?”
“I don’t know what she’s talking about, sarge. My name is Gus Reppo.”
“The child and I come for you, Orson!”
Gus flinched at her voice. It was as if lying about knowing Marva had legitimized her claim on him.
Gus took out his DD-217, his certificate of service. The card identified him as Gus Reppo and that his discharge was medical, and thus honorable. He showed it to the AP.
The AP gave the card back to Gus.
“She’s been coming here every day for nearly a week,” the AP said. “She parks her old wreck down the street, then runs up to cars coming in and going out and asking people if they’d seen some guy named Orson. She described him to me—little guy with a hungry look—and you kinda fit the description, so you can understand her mistake. I’d figured her for a nutcase but today she went too far. She drove her wreck through the gate behind General Balderra’s car. Just plowed right in after the general’s Lincoln. I’d a been in my rights to shoot her.” He turned to Marva. “All right, lady. You leave or I’ll have your car towed.”
“I’ll go but he’s got to come with me!” she said, pointing at Gus.
“No he doesn’t,” the AP said.
“You deny me, Orson?” she said.
“I’m not Orson,” Gus said.
“Who’s this Orson?” the AP said.
“Who knows, Sarge?” Gus said. “She’s nuts.”
“Come along, Orson. We’re going home now,” she said.
Marva was wearing a thin coat, threadbare at the cuffs and collar, and a chintz housedress printed with forget-me-nots under the coat. She wore high-top tennis shoes with no socks. Her legs were blue with cold. Wind gusts billowed open her buttonless coat. She was dressed for Chula Vista, not Great Falls.
“You’re going to freeze to death, lady,” the AP said. “Why don’t you get in your car and warm up?”
“Listen to me, Orson,” she said. “You need to come home with me and the child or I am liable to do something God will not forgive you for.”
Gus wanted to ask her how she found out he was mustering out of the air force at Malmstrom. Maybe she went to La Jolla and made FDR and Flora tell her where he was under the threat of violence. Maybe by making claims against him to the air force bureaucracy she’d culled out the place and date of his discharge. He remembered telling her his ID number. Maybe that was all she needed to find him.
The OSI investigators knew about her. She’d contacted the Judge Advocate General’s office. But that meant she’d used his real name in her complaint. Maybe she told them “Gus Reppo” was an alias and that, because of the rape, she was carrying his baby and that he was on the run to avoid his responsibility in the matter. If she was shrewd enough to do that, she was shrewd enough to track him down. In any case, she was here, calling him Orson, not Gus, for which he was thankful. She’d driven her rattletrap Ford all the way from Chula Vista at tweny miles an hour in second gear, stopping only to fill the gas tank, which in itself was a kind of miracle of determination and endurance.
The AP looked to Gus for help.
Gus shrugged.
The AP said, “For the last time, lady, get you and your car out of here or I call the local cops.”
Marva screamed.
Gus and the AP jumped. Gus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen.
It was a throat-tearing scream rising from the black hollows of her madness. She drew her eight-inch kitchen knife from her coat pocket.
“Jesus Christ!” the AP said, unsnapping his holster.
“No!” Gus yelled, his voice strong now. “Don’t do it, Marva!”
Marva’s eyes were wide. Gus had seen that look of single-minded determination in Chula Vista.
“Don’t!” he begged.
Marva threw her coat open. With both hands on the wooden haft she drove the knife into her torso under the rib cage. She grunted, withdrew the knife, then plunged it in again. The eight-inch blade made a ripping sound as if cutting into wet fabric as she forced it into gristle and flesh. She growled—teeth clenched so that the growl would not deteriorate into a scream of pain and regret. She worked hard to widen and deepen the wound. Gus would not forget either sound: the unwavering clenched-jaw growl; the fabric of her body accepting the knife.
A wash of blood spread down her dress. The first wound sent out a fine red mist from a nicked artery. Marva tried to remove the knife from the second wound but her strength was gone. She sat down on the ice-encrusted macadam, then slumped over.
“Get an ambulance!” Gus yelled at the AP, who was leaning on Marva’s car, immobile, pale, his gun drawn.
Gus knelt down next to Marva and held her head off the cold surface. He put his hand against her belly through running blood. Please God no baby.
“Orson,” she said.
“Marva,” Gus said.
“Topple with me, husband,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes and let out a long shuddering breath that she would not be able to replace.
Gus, his moans failing to become clear speech, toppled.
He sank into familiar green light, the underwater scene dark now at the edges like an old photo in a dusty album. The Fisk was still sending up bubbles of trapped air. It was 19
44 again. It always would be. Just like today would always be 1958. Every day, though it made no sense to Gus, had its own permanence. Things committed were always committed, without erasures. It spooled out one way and one way only. The days of 2008, fifty years from now, were already installed, like carvings in granite. Gus would always believe this though he would never be able to explain it to himself, much less to others. Nor would he want to. It wasn’t a comforting notion. It was not a sane way to think. Maybe the air force was right to get rid of him, even though their reasons were wrong.
Orson Gunlocke was tilted backward in repose as if restful sleep was a possibility. Small lantern fish emitting delicate light worried their way through the confusion of bones like miners lost in a collapsed drift.
“What have you learned from all this, son?” Orson said.
“Nothing,” Gus said.
The ghost yawned. “Maybe there’s nothing to learn.”
“That would be a lot to learn right there.”
“Yes it would, son. That would be a hell of a lot to learn.”
The medics checked him out, gave him a whiff of smelling salts. They gave the AP something for his stomach, which he’d emptied next to Marva’s car.
A crowd had gathered. An AP captain and a second lieutenant arrived in a jeep. They questioned witnesses:
Yes sir she came unglued, saw it in her spooky eyes.
The boy she yelled at looked about to fill his drawers. You see her try to gut herself? She didn’t fucking TRY, she flat GUTTED herself. I saw that gray intestine worm out of her like a toy balloon! He is cursed with ignorance, she said through red teeth. I didn’t see it like that, Captain, no sir. He saw more than what was there. The whole thing’s getting blown up into something more than it actually was. Things happen, you don’t need to make them seem special as if nothing like it never happened before. She was crazy I grant you that, the way she was yelling at this airman, stuff you couldn’t figure, stuff about her baby, gonna name it Warson or Herson and the airman stroking her bloody belly like he believed a thing was in there that shouldn’t be, like the baby was his and he would not admit it, him moaning like he’d been gutshot himself, who knows? He’s a stranger to himself, she said, her teeth red.
Shit happens to a lot of these airmen. They don’t tarp their load—you know what I’m saying? Is that what you think, Sarge? What’s your take on it? Weird shit in the boonies, sir, end of story. You think maybe he knocked her up even though she’s twice his age and maybe then some? How would I know, Lieutenant? Five stripes don’t make me Alfred fucking Einstein. Go easy Lieutenant, the sergeant’s had a hard day. It’s said she’d filed a grievance with JAG and the boy was trying to assay the width and depth of his moral responsibility, vis-à-vis her condition, physical and mental. Throttle back, college boy. Sorry, Captain, maybe that’s taking it too far, making a tragedy out of a backcountry soap opera. Back in Comp Lit 301 …
Stifle yourself, lieutenant! Right, sir. Consider me stifled, sir. So, how do you airmen see the incident? Don’t have the first clue. Some rank shit transpired. He don’t know what he is, she said, red teeth gritted against a scream. He aint able to wake hisself up. Who SAID that? Step up if you know more than we do! Sergeant Cochran? What do you think? Lieutenant, sir, they don’t pay me half-enough to fucking think.
The AP captain pulled Gus aside. “My gate sergeant believes you called the woman by name.”
“How could that be, sir? I’ve never seen her before.” “You deny you called her by name?”
“Yes sir, Captain, I do.”
“My sergeant here thinks what you said sounded something like mother, or mumbled, as in muvver, right before you passed out. Is that right? Is the deceased woman your muvver, I mean mother?”
“My mother drives a new Buick,” Gus said.
“Well la-dee-da,” said the captain.
The captain looked at the decaying lopsided Ford. The sight of the old car seemed to draw him into a morose reverie. His lingering regard of the car made Gus think the captain came from people who lived in squalor, drove lopsided wrecks, and who said la-dee-da when Buicks passed by.
“She’s not your mother then,” the captain said, “though you might have called her something that sounded like that?”
“I might’ve said mother as in motherfucker, sir,” Gus said, remembering that he’d called out her name, Marva, several times, the source of confusion. “I was kind of rattled after what she did, Captain, and careless with my language.”
“Is that what you heard, Sergeant?”
“Couldn’t swear to it, sir. He might have said mother as in motherfucker. That’s possible. I just heard the mother part for sure, or maybe it was muvver, like you said, Captain. I’m not positive about the fucker part. Though he could have said muvvermucker all mumbly like that so it wouldn’t sound so bad like sometimes you say ‘fricken’ instead of ‘fucken’ for the same reason and then there’s ‘mammyjammer’ which also takes the edge off but I couldn’t swear to it in his case since I don’t know him personally. Sometimes you will hear the word shortened to ‘mu’fuckah,’ especially among Negro airmen when talking jive, or even ‘mu’fuh,’ but I’m pretty sure he didn’t say anything like that, him not being a Negro …”
“Drop it, Sergeant,” the captain said.
Gus said, “If she was my mother, don’t you think I would say so?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the captain said. “I’m not sure what to think. I’ve seen some nutty goddamn things on my watch.”
“There’s nothing to think about, sir. She’s not my mother. Period. End of story.”
The captain didn’t care for Gus’s tone—thought he heard disrespect, perhaps insubordination. “Report to your barracks, airman,” he said. “I might want you to clear some things up later, since you were a witness.”
“No can do, Captain,” Gus said.
The captain, a small man, drew himself up. “What the hell do you mean, ‘No can do,’ airman?”
“I’m a civilian as of an hour ago.”
Gus showed the captain his DD-217 and walked off the base.
“Stop!” the captain said.
Gus kept walking.
“Stop, goddamnit!” the captain yelled.
Gus broke into a trot, the captain’s shouts dying behind him.
45
He trotted, then ran, all the way to downtown Great Falls. He stopped at a used car lot on Tenth Avenue South and ducked down among the sedans, coups, and pickups. He squatted between vehicles, listening, sucking air into his aching lungs. Strings of colorful pennants strung on ropes between light poles flapped in the rising wind. After another minute he stood up and looked around. He realized then that he needed a car.
He found a 1947 Pontiac Torpedo, a two-door sedan with massive straight-eight power. It had dented doors and rusted bumpers but the doors opened and closed and the bumpers didn’t matter. He got the key from a pudgy, gnomish salesman. The salesman was sitting next to a kerosene heater in his shed-like office reading the Great Falls Tribune. The room smelled of hot wet wool.
“Haven’t cranked her up for over a week,” the salesman said. “Been so darn cold the battery might be low.”
The car started without complaint. The eight-cylinder motor had an urgent throb to it. The radio buzzed with spark plug noise but it brought in all the local stations. Gus tried the gears and the car moved forward and backward without clutch slippage or grab. He put the transmission into neutral, reset the parking brake, and got out. He walked around to the back of the car and put his hand over the exhaust pipe then checked to see if his palm had blackened with burnt oil. It had not. He looked at the tires. They were recaps but had reasonable tread. He got back into the car and turned the wipers on. They worked. He turned off the engine and sat in the driver’s seat for another minute listening to the cooling engine tick. He tried the horn. Even that worked.
It had begun to snow. Heavy wet flakes in the driving wind soon turned the car lot
and the avenue it fronted white. The salesman came out of his office. He wore unlaced mukluks, a heavy wool coat, mittens, and a fur-lined cap with the earflaps down. A drop of clear mucous glistened on the tip of his bulbous nose. He looked up at the bleak sky. “Whiteout coming,” he said.
Gus felt under the dashboard for loose wires. Looked under the rubber floor mats for burn holes in the carpeting. He found a frozen mouse in the glove compartment, found the gap that let the mouse in.
“Great touring car in her day,” the salesman said. He caressed the Pontiac’s rear fender in a familiar way. “This honey’ll flat take you down the road, you betcha. Good traction, specially in this type of snow. She’s got a good cold-weather thermostat to boot. You’ll get heat before you drive off the lot.”
Gus examined the tires again, looking for cuts and bulges and signs of loosening tread. The salesman wiped snow off the hood ornament and polished it with his mitten. The hood ornament was a pitted chrome image of Chief Pontiac.
“She’s yours for a mere hundred,” he said.
“I can give you seventy-five,” Gus said.
“That straight eight’s got enough low-end torque, you could make a living pulling up stumps.”
“I’m not going to pull up stumps,” Gus said.
“Hold on a minute,” the salesman said. “Is that blood?”
Gus looked at his hands. They were rusty with Marva’s blood. The front of his parka had large dark stains.
“You’re an airman, right?” the salesman said.
“Was,” Gus said.
“You weren’t involved in that brawl last night at the Ozark Club by any chance? They say the razors came out.”
“No.”
“You a hunter? You the one poached that cow elk in the Highwoods yesterday?”
“No sir, I did not.”
“Ninety dollars and my lips are sealed.”
“Eighty,” Gus said.
“Cops or the APs come around asking questions, I never saw you. It’s none of my business what you did, right? Why should I involve myself in something that’s none of my business? How about eighty-five?”
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