Sundown, Yellow Moon

by Larry Watson

  Even though Monty Burnham was standing right there, Alma asked her husband, “Do you want to see the room?” In one of their late-night telephone conversations Raymond had been unashamedly, even shockingly, specific about what they would do when they were together once again.

  Now, however, Raymond said, “Later’s fine.” Then he asked, “Did you have to show your marriage license?”

  Raymond had repeatedly told her to bring it with her, that she might need it to check into the hotel, but she had still forgotten it at home. Fortunately, she had not been asked for it. She shook her head.

  “Because you look so respectable,” Monty said. She couldn’t tell if there was any irony in his remark. “No one would ever expect anything untoward of a woman who looks like you.”

  Raymond said, “Monty’s going to join us tonight. He knows his way around town, and he can keep us moving in the right direction.” He said this without enthusiasm, and for the first time Alma considered the possibility that Monty Burnham had somehow forced his company upon Raymond. She knew little about Army rank, its designations and privileges, but the differences between Monty’s uniform and Raymond’s were obvious. Perhaps Monty was there as the result of a military command that Raymond had to obey. Her husband’s sullen remoteness could certainly be explained as the behavior of a man who had been forced into his circumstances. Alma wondered if she should say she wasn’t feeling well enough to go out; perhaps that would send Monty on his way and allow her and Raymond to be alone. She kept quiet, however, because she felt there was a chance that Raymond might then choose to spend the evening out on the town with his comrade.

  “Monty’s got a girl who’s going to meet us later.”

  To Alma, Monty explained, “She’s working now.”

  Alma brightened at this news. “Oh, where does she work?”

  “At a laundry. She’s off at five, but she has to clean up and change clothes. She works up such a sweat she has to sit under a cold shower for damn near an hour to cool off.”

  She wanted to encourage Monty to talk about his girl. “Does this young woman have a name?”

  “Dinah. And she’s older than us.”

  “That’s a pretty name. Do I see signs you might be serious about Dinah?”

  Monty laughed. “Not likely! She’s what soldiers call a diversion.”

  Whatever term soldiers had for a woman like Dinah, she knew it wasn’t “diversion.” For that matter, she was surprised that the word was part of Monty Burnham’s vocabulary. Perhaps Raymond would tell her later what Dinah was more likely to be called.

  “Anyway, you’ll meet her later,” Monty said. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Monty Burnham! What kind of thing is that to say?”

  He merely shrugged.

  Alma turned to Raymond for support, but he was busy looking his wife up and down, an examination Alma thought more appropriate for a stranger—and a rude one at that—to be conducting than a husband. She knew he hadn’t seen the dress before; it was a royal-blue cotton print, and she’d bought it at Whitestone’s right after Thanksgiving, when it had been on sale because it belonged to a different season. Perfect for Texas in December, Alma had thought, and had justified the purchase on that basis. It clung to her in a way that she thought was just this side of immodest.

  To cover her discomfort under his stare she stepped back and tried to make a joke. “Well, soldier, do I pass inspection?”

  “I just wondered if you were ready to go, or if you wanted to change.”

  “Isn’t this appropriate for . . . where we’re going?”

  Apparently Monty took it upon himself to answer because he would be their guide for the evening. “You look great. But bring your coat.”

  And then they were off, leaning into the cold Texas wind, threading their way carefully down sidewalks clotted with soldiers and shopgirls. Alma was glad to be in the company of Raymond and Monty. She had never seen so many men publicly intoxicated and behaving so badly. Even a woman walking arm-in-arm with a man was likely to be subjected to crude remarks and propositions.

  Their first stop was a restaurant large enough to be a dining hall, and it too was crowded with soldiers. Casa Robles was unlike any eatery Alma had ever been in. Its walls were painted the color of mustard, brown-skinned waiters scurried about carrying enormous serving trays, and the general din made conversation next to impossible. Alma wanted to suggest they find a quieter place to eat, but before they were even seated at a table, Raymond and Monty ordered beers. Alma rarely drank beer, and they were served a brand she had never heard of. She said she’d prefer Coke.

  Monty shook his head. “Not with Mexican food. Coke won’t put the fire out.”

  Raymond agreed. “Pretty spicy.”

  Alma couldn’t eat more than a few bites of her meal, but the heat wasn’t the problem. She had told the men that she didn’t like spicy food, so they had studied the menu carefully, trying to find something mild for her. But the food’s textures were all wrong—mealy and soft—and the restaurant made no effort to separate one item from another on her plate. Neither of the men noticed how little she ate.

  Raymond didn’t finish his food either. He pushed aside his half-eaten tamales and lit another cigarette. Alma still could not get used to the sight of him smoking. He had taken up the practice when he’d joined the service because, he said in a letter, smokers were given extra breaks. He wrote about his “new habit” in a joking way, but there was nothing lighthearted in the grim, resolute way he pulled smoke deep into his lungs.

  They had entered Casa Robles in the full sunlight of afternoon, but when they exited, the streetlamps had all come on. This too shocked Alma. So many miles separated Texas from North Dakota—yet December dark came as early to one place as another.

  Monty announced their next destination, and its name sounded more exotic and interesting than it turned out to be. The Alhambra was nothing but a bar, small, smoky, and dimly lit to hide its dirt and disrepair. After a couple of drinks they walked to another bar, Vic’s Place, but since it was so similar to the one they’d just left, Alma wondered why they had bothered to move. She supposed it might have been to meet Monty’s girlfriend, yet he had made no effort to survey either establishment for her presence. He didn’t even bother turning to look when the door rattled open with new customers and a breath of cold wind.

  After their second round of drinks was served—the men had switched from beer to rum and Coke—Alma asked, “What does this girlfriend of yours look like, Monty?”

  “A Mexican. But she’s not. And I told you, she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Your date, then. Dinah.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “That girl over there is up on her tiptoes looking around, and I wondered if she could be Dinah.”

  Monty shook his head.

  With his index finger Raymond nudged Alma’s drink, a Schenley’s and Seven, closer to her. “You’re not drinking,” he said. “You want something else?”

  “It’s fine.” She was disappointed that he didn’t seem to remember how little taste she had for either liquor or its effects.

  “You got to drink up, Alma,” Monty said. His ruddy cheeks, part of his soft, youthful good looks, became even more flushed as he drank. Even in the bar’s gloom she could see his ears glowing bright red. “This is a celebration!”

  “What are we celebrating?”

  “Why, that you made the trip! Welcome to Texas!”

  Alma glanced at Raymond to see if Monty spoke for both of them.

  But Monty wasn’t finished. “And I never had a chance to drink to your marriage.” He raised his glass again.

  “We didn’t have any alcohol at the reception,” Alma said.

  Raymond raised his own glass but only inches off the table, and he addressed Alma’s earlier question. “Because we haven’t shipped out yet,” he said. “Because we can still breathe the open air, and we’re not trapped in a tank somewhere waiting to get blow
n all to hell. Not yet.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ray,” Monty said.

  Alma put a comforting hand on her husband’s wrist, but he misunderstood her gesture. He obviously thought she was trying to keep him from bringing his drink to his lips, and he twisted away from her touch.

  “I’m just saying what we’re all thinking.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to say it. It’s going to happen or it isn’t. No point in dwelling on it.”

  Monty’s view on this matter was Alma’s, too. She dreaded the possibility of spending these days with Raymond and having him fill the hours with talk of all the horrible things that could happen to men in war. She’d prefer they spend every moment together in complete silence rather than have to listen to her husband’s hideous, hopeless thoughts. Did that make her a bad wife? She didn’t care if it did.

  “Can we go back to the hotel?” Alma asked apologetically. “I couldn’t sleep much on the bus.”

  She directed her request to Raymond, but Monty rose as well. He, in fact, reached into the pocket of his khakis and brought out a money clip with a tight packet of folded bills. He tugged loose a dollar and dropped it carelessly onto the table. Alma had never seen a man keep his currency in anything but a billfold, exactly where Monty had kept his during their time together. What strange practices men adopted when they left their homes.

  They did not walk directly to the hotel. Monty Burnham insisted on stopping at a liquor store, and Alma and Raymond remained outside on the sidewalk. Alma hoped the frigid air would help sober her husband, who had slipped into a slow-blinking, slack-jawed silence. He looked as though he could fall asleep leaning against the liquor store’s brick wall.

  She tugged on the sleeve of his uniform. Without her gloves she could feel how rough was the wool of his jacket. “Ray. Have you ever met this Dinah?”

  “I dunno. Maybe.”

  “Well, have you or haven’t you? She was supposed to meet us, but there’s no sign of her. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s just one of Monty’s stories.”

  Either her question or his effort to answer her seemed to sober him momentarily. “You know him better’n I do. He seem like the sort who needs to make up a woman?”

  There was no right way for Alma to respond. She stepped away from her husband and looked up the street as if she were the one expecting to meet someone. On a wire above the street hung two slices of tin cut in the shape of Christmas bells. In the wind the tin bells had slid out of place on the wire and were rattling against each other. Why, Alma wondered, had the town not had to donate those tin decorations to the war effort? Back in Wembley the townspeople had already collected enough tin cans to build a tower as tall as a house. She turned back to Raymond, thinking she might put him in an improved humor with this observation about their hometown, but he had already drifted back into his drunken trance.

  Then Monty burst out of the liquor store, his smile wide, his cheeks as red as his ears had been earlier. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s show these folks how North Dakotans celebrate!”

  But his remark made no sense, since they proceeded directly back to the hotel and to Raymond and Alma Stoddard’s room, where, once the door was closed behind them, no one would know whether the people inside were raising their glasses in celebration or hanging their heads in despair.

  Monty pulled the cork on the newly purchased bottle of rum, and using a bottle opener screwed into the wall next to the bathroom sink, he levered open a bottle of Coke. The room had only two glasses, so after mixing drinks for Ray and Alma, he poured rum into the Coke bottle for his own drink. “I didn’t make yours quite so strong,” he said to Alma. “As I recall, you’d just as soon not taste the liquor.”

  She didn’t want another drink at all, but she accepted it without comment or complaint. The day had been so filled with the unexpected that she hadn’t even been surprised when Monty followed them to the room and walked right in behind them.

  “To the newlyweds!” Monty said.

  “Hardly,” Raymond said, and sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, which gave out a stiff-springed rusty groan.

  Alma didn’t raise her glass either, but Monty was undeterred. “I can’t imagine a couple better than the two of you!”

  In order not to hear the demurral that she feared Raymond might make, Alma excused herself, went into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her.

  Alma took out her cosmetics from her overnight case and lined them up on the back of the sink. Some of the makeup was newly purchased, never opened, and she had brought them from North Dakota with a specific plan in mind. In Wembley she would never dare venture out in public wearing much more makeup than a little rouge and lipstick. “You’re pretty enough all on your own,” her mother used to tell her. “You don’t need that gunk.” Alma had never doubted that she was pretty, but what she had in mind wasn’t simply to make herself more attractive. She wanted to transform herself into a woman who would be regarded as—she didn’t even know what term men used. Not “pretty.” Not “a diversion.” Some word or phrase that had more than appreciation in it, that expressed not just a woman’s looks but a man’s desire. All she could think of were the words from movie magazines. “Glamorous.” “Stunning.” “Alluring.” Not the language that a man would use when a woman with a certain look passed, and he’d nudge his friend and say—Well. Even if Alma couldn’t put a word to it, she knew what the look was. And she set about giving it to herself.

  With her rouge she made her cheeks look as if they were flushed with passion. With lipstick she not only darkened her lips, she swelled their outline as well. With her eyelash curler and eyebrow pencil she gave her eyes what she considered a cruel, dramatic look. She believed that no one but Raymond would see her this way. Soon Monty would leave, and then she would walk out of the bathroom, startling her husband with her new glamorous look. She and Raymond would spend most of the remainder of her visit in their hotel room—alone in their hotel room—and if he wanted her to use her makeup to recreate this movie star mien, she would happily do so. Or if he preferred her scrubbed as clean as the morning of their wedding day, that would be fine, too.

  Alma put her ear to the bathroom door. She couldn’t hear any drunken voices or clinking glasses or matches being struck. She supposed it was possible that Monty had left when she was running water in the sink and therefore she hadn’t heard the door open and close, but then why wouldn’t Ray call out to her and tell her they were alone? Deciding that she’d simply wait a little longer, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub.

  During this visit Alma had hoped to discuss with Ray a matter that had been weighing heavily on her. She was living in her mother’s house, and since Alma was married to a serviceman, she thought it was perfectly legitimate to affix a gold star to her mother’s window. Then, just last week, when Raymond’s parents learned that Alma would be traveling to Texas, they invited her over for supper and to give her a small package to carry to Ray. As Alma stepped onto the Stoddards’ front porch, she saw a gold star shining in the corner of their living room window.

  Was this all right, Alma wanted to ask Ray, two homes and two stars yet only one serviceman? But somehow, in the miles between North Dakota and Texas, the dilemma had lost its importance. In fact, if she were to tell Ray about it now, she was certain he would laugh at the foolishness of her concerns.

  At the bathroom door came two soft knocks and Alma jumped up to answer. When she opened the door, however, it was Monty Burnham’s face that peered into the room.

  “Well, I got him tucked in,” Monty said. “And he’s on his stomach just in case—don’t want him gagging on his supper. I put that wastebasket beside the bed, too.”

  Monty announced all this as if it had been done according to some plan worked out with Alma in advance of the evening. She didn’t know what to say but thank you.

  Because Monty was wearing his officer’s cap, Alma assumed he was about to leave, but he tilted the cap back on his head, stepped
into the bathroom, and reached for a cigarette. Heleaned back against the door until it shut softly. The room was tiny, and Alma backed up until her legs touched the cool porcelain of the bathtub.

  Monty blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and in a voice barely more than a whisper said, “Old Ray. He’s holding on but barely.”

  If this was to be a conversation about her husband’s state of being, Alma would welcome it. “I believe he’s lost weight.”

  “That ain’t the half of it.” He cocked his head as if the bathroom’s bright light allowed him to see Alma in a new way. “But you—you’re looking prettier than ever, Alma. And that’s saying something.”

  “Pretty,” he had said, but she realized that her face was made up in that other way, and she stepped quickly to the sink with the intention of washing immediately.

  Monty must have misunderstood her movement. He came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Alma? You okay?”

  She nodded but turned on the faucet and began to splash water on her face.

  “Thought you were gonna be sick or something.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Monty didn’t move away but started to rub Alma’s back, his hand caressing a small circle high between her shoulder blades and on her neck up under her hairline.

  “When I saw you today . . . ,” he said, “well, it just started up all over again. I mean, not that they ever went away, my feelings for you. But Jesus Christ, I was a fool to let you go.”

  Let me go? Alma believed she had been the one to walk away from their relationship, fed up with the number of times he’d stood her up because he preferred hunting or fishing with his friends or drinking beer and shaking dice at Sugar’s Bar to being with her. But there was no point arguing with him. He obviously had his own version of their breakup.