Sundown, Yellow Moon

by Larry Watson

  Two weeks later, at their island camp, Monty and Raymond Stoddard were sitting outside on planks placed on top of stumps, watching The Affairs of Susan with a hundred other men. For the hour before the movie began, Monty and Raymond Stoddard had been drinking, passing back and forth a pint of Four Roses with two other members of the tank crew. So maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was something Joan Fontaine said to George Brent up on the screen. Whatever the cause, the impulse to confess returned, and Monty Burnham nudged Raymond Stoddard. As casually as he might comment on something happening in the movie, he said softly, “Hey. I fucked your wife, you know. Back in Texas.”

  The rain that had been falling steadily for days had subsided now to little more than a mist, just enough to keep the moviegoers wet but doing nothing to cool them. Monty and Raymond were sitting apart from everyone else, in a back row near the projector, and in its flickering beam the drizzle separated into individual droplets that looked like tiny bits of silver floating in the light.

  Raymond Stoddard didn’t acknowledge Monty’s remark in any way, but when Monty leaned in to repeat his disclosure, Raymond said, “I ain’t deaf. I heard you.”

  Someone else obviously heard as well, and not just Raymond’s response. From one of the rows ahead a soldier said, “Christ. There’s a buddy for you.”

  Immediately Monty wanted to seek that man out, to explain that he and Raymond’s wife had a history, that they had dated throughout high school, and that she had all but acknowledged that marrying Raymond had been a mistake. First, however, he had to make Raymond understand.

  “It’s not like I planned it,” Monty whispered.

  “If you say so.” Raymond kept his eyes focused on the screen. On a tropical night like this one, how you could tell whether the moisture on a man’s face was rain, sweat, or tears, Monty had no idea.

  “It’s not like it was even my idea. Not entirely.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It was just something we had to get out of our systems. Both of us.” Monty had now returned comfortably to the mental script he had prepared well in advance of this occasion.

  Raymond Stoddard, however, didn’t offer any of the lines that Monty had rehearsed on Raymond’s behalf. Without saying another word, Raymond slid off the plank, as if it were one of Dennis O’Keefe’s remarks that upset him rather than Monty’s confession. Monty almost shouted out an order—Soldier, get back here!—before he realized that would not be the appropriate tone for the transaction he was trying to conduct with Raymond Stoddard.

  From boyhood Monty Burnham had known that in his nature ran two parallel streams. One was the pleasure he took in inflicting pain. Oh, not serious pain—just teasing that sometimes went on a little too long, roughhousing that might cross a border but still didn’t venture far into the territory of hurt, or joking that had a jagged edge. The other current running through him was the need to be liked and the need to overcome any prejudice, animosity, or grudge someone might hold against him. Occasionally these two streams could converge, and Monty Burnham would find that the person whose goodwill had to be restored was exactly the person he had insulted, injured, or grieved. When this occurred, when he had to persuade a girl he had stood up to let go of her anger or a soldier he had ridden too hard to give up his resentment, Monty would attempt to set things right with talk, with charming, candid talk. He would usually be able to accomplish this without explicitly asking for forgiveness or apologizing, but he knew he always had those in reserve. And Monty Burnham could not be contented until approval was once again flowing his way.

  This was why Monty Burnham left the movie to find Raymond Stoddard. The theater, however, had been set up near a small forest whose trees had provided the stumps for movie viewing. If Raymond wandered into that dense, dark grove, Monty might never track him down.

  He was standing at the entrance to the trees, trying to look down their lightless corridors, when he heard the clank of a Zippo lighter off to his left. There was Raymond Stoddard, lighting a cigarette and shielding it expertly to keep it burning in the rain.

  “I had a few more things I wanted to say,” Monty said.

  “And you think I want to hear them.” Raymond stood next to a knee-high pile of brass—anything above .50 caliber in size—that only days before the infantry had been forced to pick up from the battle lines. The rain brought a dull glint to the shell casings.

  “I guess I figure you have a right to know.”

  “About you and Alma. I know all about it. She told me.”

  “What happened back in Killeen? She told you that?” Monty considered the possibility that Raymond now only pretended to know about what had gone on in that hotel bathroom, in order to save face. Monty decided to test him. “Everything? She told you everything?”

  “Enough.” The smoke Raymond Stoddard exhaled seemed to hang in the air as if it couldn’t make its way through the drizzle. From the nearby forest came the hisses, chirps, scrapings, whines, and pipings of strange insects and even stranger birds. If Monty stepped even a few feet into the jungle, some of those calls would cease immediately while others would become louder and more rapid.

  “Then I suppose you know I had her like you never did.” The streams in Monty had diverged once again, and there was no doubt which current was running strongest now. He did find it odd that war hadn’t satisfied that need to hurt. Then again, maybe it had only stirred the desire.

  Raymond Stoddard, however, was not outwardly perturbed. “You mean I never had her like that before. I sure as hell did after.”

  “Glad I could show the way.”

  To that Raymond Stoddard said nothing. He simply raised his hand to his forehead in a parody of a salute. God damn, would nothing rile this man?

  “I don’t know,” Monty said, “how a man can talk about his wife like that.”

  Again, Raymond said nothing, but this time he snorted softly, and the sound coincided almost exactly with a burst of laughter that came from the rows of soldiers staring up at the screen. Was Raymond even listening to him, Monty wondered, or was most of his attention focused on the movie?

  Monty took a step back and straightened his shoulders. “Well. I just needed to get that off my chest. I can’t imagine it was too easy to hear. You probably feel like taking a poke at me. Can’t say I blame you. Officer or not, I’d probably slug a man who told me a tale like this one.”

  “Take a poke at you? Take a poke at you?” This time Raymond’s laugh came out as sharp as a dog’s bark. He flicked away his cigarette and stepped so close to Monty that Monty could smell the rank, curdled odor of tobacco and whiskey on Raymond’s breath. “I never climbed into a tank with you but that I thought this would be the time I pulled the pin on a grenade and blew the both of us to kingdom come.”

  “And every other soldier in there with us?”

  In the summer of 1935 Monty Burnham was eleven years old and returning from a morning spent fishing in Ripley’s Creek, just outside Wembley. He was less than a mile from his home when he came across an excavation site near an abandoned farm. Curious as to why a sizable hole had been dug out there in the country, Monty climbed to the top of the pile of dirt and sod in order to survey the entire scene.

  He guessed someone was digging the foundation for a house, but the hole was crudely, unevenly dug, and Monty saw no sign that any work had been done recently. While he was wondering how he might have missed this alteration to the landscape on the other occasions when he’d walked out to Ripley’s Creek, three boys approached. Monty didn’t notice them until they were right behind him, and then they caught his attention by throwing a dirt clod that barely missed his head.

  Monty turned quickly. The three had spread themselves out at the base of the mound as if they planned to attack him from different directions. From their similar high foreheads, close-set eyes, and dirty, ragged overalls Monty guessed they were brothers. The oldest was probably a year or two older than Monty, but he was so skinny Monty figured he could handle hi
m. The other two might have been twins, and though they were smaller and younger than Monty, they had a determinedly nasty look that said they would have been trouble even in a fair fight. And three against one wouldn’t be fair. . . .

  “Hey,” Monty said in a voice as friendly as any he owned, “you live around here?”

  “Yeah,” the oldest one said, “and you’re trespassing.”

  Monty pretended to look over the surrounding countryside. “Nothing says this land is posted.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  One of the twins kicked at the fishing pole Monty had set down before he’d scrambled up the dirt pile. “And you ain’t fishing the creek no more without our say-so.”

  “All this is our property now,” the other twin added.

  “Not the creek. Nobody can buy the creek.” Monty gestured toward the water, and as he did, as if on cue, a red-winged blackbird whistled its three notes from that direction.

  “Like hell,” the oldest said, and when he reached down to pick up a dirt lump, it was plain he’d had enough of oral argument.

  Monty tried once more to extricate himself from the moment with words. “So if I ask first from now on, you’ll let me fish in your creek?”

  The twins were silently sorting through the dirt at their feet. Their feet were bare. They were searching for rocks.

  Because of the hole on the other side, Monty couldn’t take flight down the hill away from the brothers, yet if he tried to run in any other direction, he’d only charge right at them. And maybe, he decided, that was exactly what he should do. Charge them, swinging wildly all the way, and hope that he could get past them onto the road and then outrun them. Even if he took a few punches in the process, that would be better than standing here and allowing himself to be a target for their rocks and dirt lumps.

  Before he could put his plan into action, however, someone else appeared on the scene.

  From out of a field of tall grass came a boy Monty’s age. He too was carrying a fishing pole, and as he walked, grasshoppers leaped in arcs all around him. It was Monty’s friend Raymond Stoddard, and he must have been fishing upstream from Monty, near the bend in the creek where the cottonwood trees shaded the water.

  Raymond said, “Hey, Morris. What the hell are you and your snotnose brothers up to?”

  Morris dropped his dirt clod, but the twins continued to gather stones.

  “This fella’s trespassing. . . .”

  Raymond also positioned himself at the bottom of the dirt pile, but he stood apart from the other three. “You’re the ones trespassing. Just because you moved into that old barn don’t mean you own the place.”

  “We’re gonna build here. My dad says—”

  “Your folks are nothing more than squatters. That’s what my old man said.” He set his fishing pole down carefully. To Monty he said, “What do you say. You want to come down here and help me beat the shit out of these assholes? Maybe that’ll send ’em back where they came from.”

  Monty, however, could not call up a desire for brutality on such short notice. Furthermore, he could not abandon so quickly his earlier strategy, which was to escape through charm.

  “Where are you boys from?” he asked his enemies.

  Raymond answered for them. “Iowa. Lost their farm down there and now they’re gonna mooch off their North Dakota relations.” To Monty he explained, “Their mom and my mom are sort of cousins.”

  Monty believed that conversation would now ensue among the five of them, that goodwill would be the rule all around, and that if he ever needed the aid or service of the dull-witted Morris or the malicious twins, they would be available.

  But Raymond had other ideas. He lurched threateningly toward Morris and the other two, stamping his shoe in the dirt as if they could be frightened off like animals. “Go on,” he said. “Get the hell out of here. Crawl back in your holes and stop making trouble for folks.”

  And that was all it took. The three of them backed away slowly, gradually moving together like birds in flight resuming their formation. Side by side they walked back down through the field. Monty noticed, however, that the twins had never dropped the stones they’d collected. Sure enough, once they gained some distance, the twins turned and heaved them at Monty and Raymond. They were out of range, however, and the two older boys just laughed as the missiles did nothing but kick up dust at their feet.

  The boy who saved Monty on that day had grown into the man who now made his own confession. Once Raymond Stoddard’s laughter subsided, he said, “That’s right. I didn’t give a shit who I took with us.”

  “So what stopped you?”

  Raymond shrugged. “Figured the Japs would do the job for me.”

  “You know, I could have you court-martialed for what you just said.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Soldier. Don’t. Be. So. Sure.”

  The two men were still standing so close together that Raymond Stoddard had to raise his hand right in front of his own face in order to give Monty the finger.

  Now Monty understood. Raymond wanted Monty to swing at him. A man who was willing to take the consequences that might come from leaving his wife alone with an old boyfriend would certainly be willing to take a punch just to get his superior officer in trouble.

  “You know what, Ray? I feel sorry for you. I surely do.”

  Raymond Stoddard’s only response was to dig into his pocket for another cigarette. As Monty walked away, he heard again the clink of Raymond’s lighter. And was there a similarly distinctive sound, Monty wondered, when the pin was pulled from a grenade? And would he ever be able to stop listening for either sound, whether in war-or peacetime?

  Of my many fictions, and fictional efforts, that had their origins in the Stoddard-Burnham saga, the preceding narrative (“Got a Light?” as it was titled when it appeared in Blue Parchment, a Seattle magazine) was the only one that featured Monty Burnham (Tony Kroll in the published story) as a protagonist and point-of-view character. While there was never a point of personal contact—an observed gesture, an overheard remark—that allowed me to conjure that character’s inner life (or to imagine an entire series of fictional episodes in which he played a prominent part), and while there’s little reason to believe “my” Monty Burnham bore any resemblance to the actual one, I’ve always felt that my early attempts to imagine my way into the real Raymond Stoddard’s mind (and only after the man’s death) inevitably led me to try to enter others. And disposed me to create fictions more concerned with the motives behind actions than with the actions themselves.

  During my senior year I signed up for Introduction to Psychology, a course that had never been offered before at Bismarck High School. Edith Ehrlich taught the class, and I suspect she was given the assignment as a reward for having taught for almost fifty years in the city’s school system. Miss Ehrlich looked forward to the prospect of spending months with us exploring “the mysteries of our mental processes,” but the semester had barely begun when her health forced her out of the classroom and out of the profession altogether. Miss Ehrlich had a stroke that deprived her of the power of speech, probably the only infirmity that could have kept her from taking her place in front of rows of students.

  The school was in a quandary. No one else was willing to step forward and take over Miss Ehrlich’s class, yet something had to be done with the students who were enrolled. We couldn’t simply be given credit and sent on our way, and the semester was too far along to place us in other courses. The administration took the unusual step—for this they must have needed a special dispensation from the board of education—and hired an outsider, a non-teacher, to take over Introduction to Psychology.

  That was how I came to know Frances Fenzer, Ph.D. Dr. Fenzer was a Bismarck psychologist, and someone on the school board apparently thought he would be a perfect substitute for Miss Ehrlich. And it worked out exactly as hoped. On a Wednesday, Miss Ehrlich was taken to the hospital. On the following Thursday
and Friday, our Introduction to Psychology class was turned into a study hall, but when we showed up on Monday, we were met by a pink, plump, smiling man in a rumpled brown suit.

  We were immediately pleased with the new development. Rather than stand behind a lectern, Dr. Fenzer sat on top of the desk. He straightened and twisted paper clips while he talked, and he freely admitted that this nervous behavior was caused by having to go an entire hour without a cigarette. Best of all, Dr. Fenzer didn’t so much lecture as gossip. He refused to use the textbook that Miss Ehrlich had ordered, and instead structured the class around case histories—culled from his own experience. Furthermore, we knew that the patients—the neurotics, the compulsives, the depressives—were almost surely Bismarck residents. He never used real names, but hadn’t his entire professional career been spent in North Dakota? From what other sources could he be lifting those examples? He even teased us occasionally with a remark like, “Now, this is behavior you’ve all had a chance to observe, especially if you’ve spent any time at all in a certain local establishment.” Talk like that probably violated the standards of his profession, but we felt fortunate to be in his class and privileged to be taken into his confidence.

  He favored us—a few of us—further by inviting us to his home, a small stucco house not far from the high school and surrounded by gardens unlike any other in Bismarck. “Flowers and imported cigarettes,” Dr. Fenzer said, “my indulgences.” Some of the students were invited to visit him after school; others in the evening.

  I went, along with Mike LaPorte and Joe McDonald, on a rainy night in April. I remember the weather conditions so well because Dr. Fenzer unapologetically required us to remove our wet shoes before we stepped on any of his rugs.

  The house was as elaborately furnished as any I had ever been in. I realize now how much time and money Dr. Fenzer put into his home—the walls were covered with paintings and prints, objets d’art were everywhere, a grand piano filled a sunporch, and every piece of furniture was covered with rich fabrics or made of heavy, polished woods—but to my adolescent sensibility it all seemed fussy, ostentatious, and uncomfortable.