by David Rhodes
Della woke up at three and saw the empty bed. She threw on her bathrobe, stuffed her tiny feet into slippers and went down the hall, downstairs and into the kitchen. A blast of cold air met her. Holding her robe closely about her neck, she went to the door and closed it. She stood there looking out into the lit barnyard, shadows roundly filling the two tracks out into the darkness of the barn. The awful snow, thought Della, and the words came running back again and again like shaking someone falling between consciousness and unconsciousness, calling his name over and over—the awful snow, the awful snow—until she regained herself.
She went to the closet where Wilson’s winter coat still hung, and put on her own. Then the fur-lined boots and scarf. She took down Wilson’s coat and hurried to the door—then stopped again, looking outside. Dropping the coat, she ran into the dining room, and with a key from behind the teacups she opened their utility closet. From a little case between Wilson’s tackle boxes she took the pistol and put it in her pocket. She took up the coat again on her way out, and the flashlight for the porch. She called his name and followed the tracks, noticing how closely Cindy had kept to Wilson, never wandering as much as several feet away. Though she did not think it now, she did later. Those tracks . . . they were much like soldiers’.
She followed them below the barn, halfway down the hill toward the river, to a place where there were rocks jutting up from the snow, crowned with ice. Her flashlight caught Cindy’s green eyes. She went over. Leaning against the rock was Wilson, his eyes nearly closed. She took her hand out of her mitten and touched his face. It was cold and hard.
Della dropped the mitten. She stood back and closed her eyes, opened them wide, lifted her head up above the white, howling wilderness, watched the stars of Orion reel over her, his belt like a dagger in her heart. Then she felt the gentle pressure, Wilson’s gentle pressure—his comforting net settle over her soul and bring it back around her.
“Come on,” said Della to Cindy. “There’s nothing here.” The old dog whined and lay down at Wilson’s feet, watching for his eyes to open, for him to get up and go back to the warmth of the house. Della took out the pistol and shot her, then went back home, the sharp, tearing, inhuman blast running a needle through her sorrow, bleeding into the insatiable pores of her body.
John was out of the Army in 1947.
From the dawning of his conscious thought July had been told that Daddy was coming home, though he had no idea of who this was or what he would be like. He did know that this Daddy, however, was likely to be an object of his mother’s attentions, which all his life had belonged almost entirely to himself, and which he felt were vital to his very existence. She told him he would have to try hard not to be jealous, because Daddy loved him too, and Daddy’s attentions were going to be just as good as, or better than, her own. And not knowing anything else, July could do nothing but wait and see. Then later she came to talk about the exact date he would be coming, and every day after that she exclaimed how, praise be to God, it was one day less. The closer it got, the more she neglected July and abandoned herself to her own expectations, filling him with dread.
John rode on a bus jammed with servicemen from New York City to Toledo. Many got off along the way, and there was a layover of six hours. On the bus to Chicago there were only eight men in uniform besides himself, trained from their duties to live with boredom and motion. Another layover in Chicago, a dinner of fried chicken and coleslaw in a diner on the Loop, and he was the only GI on the bus for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, a seven or eight-hour ride.
He tried to sleep and couldn’t. For the rest of his life he would remember this ride. Outside the tinted windows everything smelled of the disgust and nightmare of war. January thaw, he thought. My father’s dead, he remembered again. My mother: they might not have wanted to tell me about my mother. He resolved then, passing over the Mississippi and into Iowa, that if he could salvage his broken and splintered religion, if he could become a part, in a small way—any way—of those things he had so many nights feared were never true, if he could lie against Sarah’s body and be only a little happy—he would never breathe a word of the last five years. He would deny them. The bus went on farther into his state and he began seeing familiar landmarks, familiar towns. His sleeplessness since getting into the States had honed his nerves to an edge, and by the time they pulled into Iowa City, fear was soaking him in cold sweat. Beyond the window Sarah stood against the brick wall. Tears wanted to be let out of his eyes. Men were staring at her. Her face looked anxious. His desire to touch her frightened him. Maybe, he thought, she won’t want to. Maybe she’ll say when we get home, “John, I’ve got to tell you something, while you’ve been gone away—” God help me, please help me, I am a wreck of a man.
It was in this condition July would have first seen his father, had John come out of the bus at that time. But a large woman getting baggage from the overhead rack forced him back into his seat. Angry and frantic, he looked out the window again. This time he saw his son standing behind her against the wall, and it was as though he had not known before and had just been told: Did you know, you have a boy, old enough to talk and understand, with a complete personality of his own. Here he is. He’s yours.
He’s a pretty good-looking boy, he thought, staring out of the besmudged window. He stands well, making no trouble . . . no idea what a man would think in a bunker—what he would do to save his own miserable life, the extent to which he would go . . . The woman with her bags bumped on down the aisle, and John slid out of his seat. At the door he stopped and gathered as well as he could all the loose ends and stepped down, reminding himself over and over: Be careful. Nothing can be taken for granted. Make no assumptions.
July felt his mother’s hand tighten and tremble as the uniformed man stepped down from the huge metal bus onto the ground. “John,” she called, and he came slowly over, carrying a cloth bag, holding his hat in his hand. Dark moons like blue wounds under his eyes, ugly hairs on his face, smelling clothes. The man held out his hand and at first July was afraid to touch it, even though pressed to by his mother. The knuckles and joints and veins were so awful. July touched it and wanted to cry: it was so hard. Then the hand squeezed and he felt the power, the child-crushing strength that lay dormant like a crouching panther, controlled only by the sallow face’s intention. Red lines in his eyes.
They went over to the car, and his mother wanted “Daddy” to drive. No, he said, he didn’t want to. He sat next to July’s window, July next to his mother behind the wheel. They left the station and headed home. The stranger looked suspiciously at the telephone poles and houses, at the dashboard and at July’s mother’s feet. His smell overpowered July’s mother’s. He spoke once on the ride home, asking about Grandma, only he called her Mom. The rest of the time he was silent.
Once home, he remained standing in the driveway, looking suspiciously at everything outside as though it might grow wings and flap away into outer space. The bird feeder (which his mother had carefully filled before they drove to the bus station) seemed to hold him mesmerized. His mother waited silently for him inside the opened door to the house. Finally, he came toward them with his cloth bag. July rushed to the door, slammed it and locked him outside so that he could never come in. He looked back to his mother, whose face was a betrayal of her erupting emotions: fear, hatred, sorrow and despair. She sank to the sofa.
The doorbell rang. “Go away,” July shouted.
“Please,” came from outside, and the word cut through the door and into July’s throat. There was sadness and loneliness unimaginable in an older person. “Please,” he repeated, and July opened the door. “Thanks, July,” he said and put out his hand again. July took it and squeezed as hard as he was able.
“Ouch,” said John.
Tears ran down Sarah’s cheeks as she tried to stand up from the sofa. “Go outside and play now,” she said.
July left, glad to be out of the oddly electric house. He knew “Daddy” had been joking, but s
till felt as though he could smash rocks with his fists. He closed the door and stood outside it.
“Would it be all right ...” John was saying inside.
“I hope you’re never satisfied,” said his mother.
July left to play in the empty garage across the street.
FIVE
In 1948, Della Montgomery was prevailed upon by John to quit her country home, where she had lived alone since the death of her husband, and move into John’s house in town, where (as she suspected) she could be watched more closely.
Coming up that first day, carrying her personal belongings in a shopping bag (a truckload would come later), she stopped on the porch with her son and his family, looked at them all, put her hand on the wooden railing and jumped over it, landing three feet away on the ground, walked up the step, picked up her bag again and went inside the house.
“How old is Grandma?” asked July.
“Seventy-three,” said Sarah. “I think she’s telling us she doesn’t need help.”
“She’s still seventy-three,” said John, and went in with a chair.
Della took for her place the little downstairs bedroom off the living room, flat against the back yard, with three rather large windows, done in a delicate broad-petaled flower print on a yellow-and-blue background. In it she had her two chairs, single iron bed, round rag rug, bureau and mirror, fish tank full of tiger barbs and silver neons, eight hung-up dresses, a pole lamp and a night table filled with odds and ends, from toothbrushes to things that meant a great deal to her. Settling into bed that first night, many thoughts came into her head. There were unfamiliar house noises, but there were other people in it. John and Sarah were upstairs. July too. She closed her eyes and pictured lying in the bedroom in her own house. This is better, she thought, and went soundly to sleep.
On the third night she was thinking quite happily to herself about the many things she had to do tomorrow when she heard a noise that frightened her and she got up, put on her robe and went out into the living room. It was almost like a cry. She went over to the stairway leading upstairs and carefully opened the door. Yes, it was clearer now, but less frightening, though strange and eerie. The crying rose and fell, then rose to an unearthly wail; then it fell away to moaning and stopped. The house became silent again and filled with her thoughts. She closed the door and went over to the couch and sat there in the darkness, listening. Perhaps a half-hour later she heard a door open, then feet descending the staircase. It was July, and she watched him open the door and cross over into the kitchen, walking with the blind determination of someone not completely awake. He put on the light, took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, poured out a glass and sat at the table, drinking it with both hands. Della got up and went into the kitchen. July gave a little start, then relaxed.
“Hi, Grandma,” he said.
“Do you think I could have a glass of that milk?” she asked.
“Sure. Here, I’ll get it,” and he got another glass from the dish drain and began filling it.
“Only half, now,” said Della. “Or there won’t be enough for cereal in the morning.”
July handed it to her and they both drank.
“July,” she said cautiously, “do you ever hear things at night?”
“Sure.”
“What kind of things?”
“I don’t know what they all are.”
“Do you ever hear crying?”
“I don’t know . . . I don’t think so, Grandma. One time I heard voices, though, but Dad said it was the wind. Once I heard thumping whirring, but that was the antenna wire.”
“Did you hear anything tonight?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You must have, think hard.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
They put their glasses away and separated. Three nights later they met again. This time the noise began while they were together in the kitchen. “That. There, that. Do you hear it?” asked Della.
“That? That’s Mom,” said July, and put the milk back. “She always sounds like that, sometimes.”
“Go on to bed now, July,” said Della, and went back to her room and sat in the chair next to the window. She stared and thought for a long time, about Sarah and about the sound—about how all the neighbors could not have helped but know, everyone but herself. How in their minds there had never been a mystery; it all had been too obvious. Sensualist. She thought and stared, and finally decided: I could have been like that—Wilson and I—if only I’d cared to open my mouth. The sound is the only difference. Then she went away from the window and fell into an ancient, uninvaded sleep which carried her past breakfast.
It must be remembered that July grew up in a house like this one. His father worked across the street, and if July needed him, was always there, even in the daytime. Sometimes the two of them would go into Iowa City together and walk through the wide-aisled stores, where July would be looking quickly at everyone, thinking that all of them were seeing his father the way he saw him—strong, wise and very funny. And when they went with Grandma, he thought everyone thought she was Grandma. He very simply thought that there was nothing his father couldn’t do, or know how to do, and nothing his mother couldn’t eventually forgive and forget. His father could protect him from anything that could walk or crawl, anything that was physical and might come to get him, and his mother could protect him from his own terrifying thoughts, and the darkness in the hall closet and disease.
They knew him in school then as a friendly yet quiet boy, someone whom all enjoyed being with, and who could play baseball very well, but who wasn’t particularly wanted on your team in a spelling contest. He was better in math. He’d inherited his father’s strength, but it seemed to work more through his determined ruthless will than through his shoulders and arms—an enduring runner, but lacking the speed in short sprints.
One thing everyone remembers about him was the difficulty in getting him to change his mind. If he decided, as he once did in second grade, that yes, it was possible to see air, there wasn’t any moving him. No, the teacher told him, air is clear. You can see everything clearly through it. You can see it on radiators, and coming up from a pavement. That’s heat, they told him. That’s heat waves. No, it’s hot air. And for all the reasoning, he wouldn’t budge, no matter how wrong he was. Most of the teachers would simply tell him that he was just being stubborn, and keep him quiet in that way. Sometimes it would turn out that his ideas were sound; but, good or bad, he would hang on to them with the same tenacity, and weeks later when you would try to bring up an incident in a light way, giving him a chance to take back what he’d said—like eating fish eyes can be a cure for blindness—he would jump into the argument as though he had spent the whole time thinking up more reasons to hurl at you.
Simply, he was one of us, and like us all, in his own way. Only a little more confident, perhaps, because of the great faith he had in his parents and their ability to manage all parts of his life that were out of his own control, allowing him to be very open and personable and radiate good humor and be obstinate.
He’d never known his grandfather except from what his parents told him, and Della (who, though she did not talk about him constantly, always said we; we did this or went over there, or we thought that was funny. This we, his mother explained to him later, was completed by the no-longer-present figure of his grandfather, a living, breathing person who was dead. The bodies of the dead went back to the ground. The living got old, and when they were finished, they were dead. His grandmother, he was told, was getting old).
July’s favorite story of Wilson was a fishing story. He had supposedly gone up north once, into Minnesota, after walleyes and northerns, and fished in a two-hundred-acre lake on the outskirts of a small town. The water was hot, and the fish had simply not been biting. Nearly everyone else was off the lake, or swimming, or waiting for the cooler air of evening to go for bullheads. The walleyes, it was thought, were in too deep water, down deep w
ith the bottom feeders, sleeping. It had been like that all week. Once in a while someone would get a small northern out of the arrowheads and water lilies, a couple of pan fish, but nothing of any size. Men were drinking beer in the shade along the lake though it was several hours before noon. Wilson was out by himself, sitting in the bow of a twelve-foot rented rowboat, fishing off a rock point. Maybe twenty-five yards out.
Two men sat at a picnic table on the other side of the lake, Jim and Moss Terry. They had been trying not to drink heavily, but had bought too much to begin with, had it cold in the cooler, and it was just a little too easy to drain off the bitter beer in the bottom of the can, chuck it into a nearby trash barrel, open another and kill the memory of the taste with an ice-cold stiff swig from the top. Moss Terry was ahead of his friend, but excused it due to having recently given up smoking, and every time his entrail desires would form visions of gray, curling, sweet smoke, he would reach again for a can.
“We should go easier on this stuff,” remarked Jim. “It’s a poor idea in the morning.”
“It’s a poor morning,” said Moss Terry. “Too blasted hot. Try to keep from blowing that smoke in my face.”
“Sorry. This is sure some vacation, I’d say. Been just as well to stay home.”
“Relax. When else do you get to drink beer in the morning, safely?”
“I’d give it all—all the beer in the world—to feel one four-pounder bump on the end of my line. Hell, a two-pounder—even one!”
“Fish don’t like it when it’s this hot. Slows ’em down too much. We’ll get some bullheads tonight.”
“Bullheads! Drive four hundred miles to catch nigger fish.”
“Don’t blow smoke in my face.”
“Sorry, Moss. Say, look at that poor motherfucker over there, snagged off those rocks.”
Across the lake, Wilson, still in the bow of his boat, was standing up, every once in a while heaving backward, bending his rod in a violent arch.
