The Outside Lands

by Hannah Kohler

  “What do you want?”

  Lee’s pupils were wide as pennies. Her smile hardened. “Walter’s in jail.”

  “What?”

  “They arrested him yesterday.”

  “What for?”

  “Selling falsified documents. For the purpose of draft evasion.” Jeannie’s nerve endings lit bright with fear. “It was a sting. He went to see a couple about fixing a 4-F deferment and the guy pulled out a badge and handcuffs. Like I said, that ad was a dumb fucking idea.”

  “Oh, my God.” Panic gripped Jeannie, and she paced to loosen it from her body, but her heart only flickered faster.

  “They set bail at five thousand dollars. The Reverend said he’d pay, but this morning Mrs. Moon found his room was empty. He’s gone, taken everything with him, all the money.”

  Jeannie sat, put her palms to her forehead, the sweat oily at her fingers. She felt the couch jiggle under the bounce of Lee’s leg.

  “The guy was a fucking crook.”

  “Jesus,” whispered Jeannie.

  Lee leaned toward her, her breath warm on Jeannie’s face. “I don’t think he’s really a priest.” She drew back, and Jeannie caught the slant of her smile, the wheedle in her eyes, and felt a cold blanch of horror. Lee thought this was a game.

  “Mrs. Moon is freaking out. In that big, nasty house, all by herself, saying how Walter’s all she’s got left.”

  “Lee.”

  “It’s a felony charge. She’s talking about selling the place, just to pay for a lawyer.”

  “Lee.”

  “When I went by, Silver was there, crying. I think the Reverend was fucking her. He was fucking June too.” Lee shook her head back and forth, fingers fidgeting at the folds of her braid. “I’m just glad the son of a bitch is gone. Now he can’t hurt me.” She slid a sly glance at Jeannie. “Not that you give a damn.”

  Jeannie gripped Lee’s face, forcing her chin up so their eyes met. Lee gave a strange roll of her jaw; her teeth ground together. Beads of sweat showed on her upper lip. “You think you’re safe now the Reverend’s disappeared?” said Jeannie. “What about the police? What about me?”

  Lee’s eyes twitched over Jeannie’s. Jeannie squeezed Lee’s chin, brought it higher. “For Christ’s sake, Lee.”

  “Walter won’t give anybody up,” said Lee. She pulled away and touched her hand to her jaw. “He might be an asshole, but he’s an asshole with a sense of duty. He won’t hurt the cause.”

  “Jesus, Lee. You’re so naïve.”

  “I’m not naïve.”

  “And you’re high.” Jeannie shook her head in disgust; stood, and walked to the cloaked window. Lee’s arms were folded, her face earnest.

  “You don’t know Walter,” she said.

  “People surprise you when they want to save themselves.” Jeannie paced.

  “Not Walter. He lost two cousins in Vietnam. He served most of last year in jail for breaking into an induction center. He’s pissed off he’s too old to get drafted. He’d gladly serve time as a CO. He’s the genuine article.”

  “You thought that about the Reverend.”

  Lee shrugged. “I’m telling you what I know,” she said. “The guy’s dying for a cause to die for.” The same grating of her teeth; she unfolded her arms and put her hands to her waist. Her body rocked, her eyebrows lifting in screwball arches. “I guess we’ll know soon enough.”

  Jeannie slapped the wall. “For Christ’s sake, Lee, this isn’t a joke.” Her palm stung; she closed it and pressed her fist against her thigh. “What about Billy? I have a child, Jesus, what about Charlie?” Jeannie felt sick; she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

  “Everything will work out.”

  The front door slammed. Jeannie startled—she hadn’t heard the ratchet of the key. They listened to his footsteps: Billy, large and pallid in his fatigue-grimed shirt, his spectacles smudged with grease.

  “Lee Walker,” he said, his face rounding with pleasure. “What are you doing here?”

  “Billy.” Jeannie stepped toward her husband.

  Lee stood and moved between them. “I was in the neighborhood,” she said. “I thought I’d stop by and say hello to Jeannie.”

  “It’s good to see you.” Billy held Lee by her upper arms and looked her over. “It’s been awhile,” he said. “You look like quite the hippie.”

  Lee grinned. “And you the square.”

  Billy laughed, bashfulness reddening his cheeks—Jeannie had forgotten that Lee and Billy had their own intimacy. “Still a brat, I see,” he said good-naturedly; and Jeannie felt a tenderness for him that mixed unhappily with her fear. She stood, her hands dangling at her sides, aware of every joint and hang of her body, like a convict, waiting for the floor to drop. Billy looked from Lee to Jeannie, a delighted smile stretching over his cheeks.

  “I didn’t know you two had gotten to be friends,” he said.

  Lee’s foot was dancing on the rug. “Sisters-in-arms against Dorothy and Virginia.”

  “Now, now.” Billy wagged his finger.

  Jeannie swallowed. “You’ll have a drink, Billy?”

  “Canadian Club, please.” He planted a kiss on the side of Jeannie’s face. “You okay, honey? You feel a little warm.”

  “Just a headache,” said Jeannie. “I’m going to turn in. Lee was just leaving.”

  Disappointment flashed across Lee’s face. “Yes, I’ll go.” She pushed her hands into her pockets. “Oh.”

  “Everything all right?” Billy’s mouth winced over his drink.

  “I don’t have my key,” she said, patting her shorts. “My parents are out of town, and I’ve gone and locked myself out.”

  “Shoot,” said Billy.

  “They’re back tomorrow.” Lee shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll go see if I can stay with my friend.”

  “Baloney,” said Billy. “You’ll stay with us.”

  Jeannie lay awake until dawn thinned the shadows, listening to Billy’s comfortable breaths and Charlie’s coughs as he turned in his blankets. Lee was in the living room, a prowler in the dark. Jeannie thought of Walter Moon, crawling with hair and anger, lying on his prison rack, full of poison; Kip, someplace she couldn’t imagine, waiting for the spill of light at his door; Tom, damaged, yet somehow alive in his sleep-worn bed: all the men in buried places. The sparrows sang, and sleep pressed down on her. She woke to the push of a body at her back, frantic buzzing at the front door.

  Lee was in bed beside her, her hand resting on Jeannie’s stomach. Jeannie sat upright.

  “What the hell—”

  Lee sat too. She was naked. Whoever was at the front door had given up buzzing and was thumping on the wood. Jeannie checked the clock—9 A.M.: Billy would be long gone. Fear rinsed her. She roughed the bedspread aside and swung her feet to the floor.

  “Hey,” said Lee.

  Jeannie hurried on a robe. “Get dressed, for Christ’s sake,” she said, and yanked the bedroom door shut behind her, slapping straight into Charlie, who craned his neck to look at her, his face breaking into a scream.

  “Shush,” said Jeannie, scooping him into her arms and barefooting down the hallway. She paused at the door, her heart hammering. The door shook with another knock. Jeannie gathered her courage, and opened it.

  “Billy told me you were unwell.” Dorothy leaned to set down her purse in the hallway. Jeannie felt loose with relief; she should have known it was her mother-in-law, who never met a door that wouldn’t open, should have expected the news of her headache to have already reached Dorothy via the long, invisible umbilical cord that ran between her and Billy.

  Dorothy must have seen the thought in Jeannie’s face: she made a tut sound as she untied the belt of her raincoat. “He telephoned because he was worried about you,” she said. “I said I’d come and help with Charlie.” She stepped into the hallway and stretched her arms for her grandson; he launched himself forward, taking Dorothy’s locket in his fist.

  Jeannie’s
heart was slowing fatly in her chest. “That’s kind of you, Dorothy, but I’m doing a lot better.” She spoke loudly so that Lee might hear, tilting her body so she blocked Dorothy’s way.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” said Dorothy. She kissed Charlie’s nose, leaving a pink smudge. “I want to see my best boy.”

  The release of a door handle sounded from down the hallway. Jeannie’s shoulders locked.

  “Who’s that?” Dorothy peered past Jeannie.

  Jeannie turned and saw Lee, muss-haired and barefoot, her shorts seemingly even shorter than the night before, her shirt misbuttoned. A guilty sweat fingered Jeannie’s skin.

  “Hullo, Mrs. Harper,” said Lee.

  Jeannie watched Dorothy’s face, saw all its parts in fine definition—the waxy gathering of lipstick at the corners of her mouth, the Carole Lombard eyebrows, the powder silted in the creases of her nose—but her mother-in-law’s expression remained smooth.

  “Leonora,” said Dorothy.

  “My mother locked me out,” said Lee. She found her sandals in the hallway, pushed her feet into them, and smiled. Her face was still tender with sleep.

  “Lee was nearby,” said Jeannie, “we—”

  Dorothy held up her hand. “If you’re in trouble again, I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “Go home, and clean up before your mother gets back.”

  Dorothy and Jeannie stood aside as Lee brushed by in a sweep of bed-warm scent. She turned on the doorstep to face them. “So long,” she said, and blew a kiss.

  Jeannie closed the door, pausing to gather her composure before turning back to Dorothy.

  “What on earth was she doing in your bedroom?” Dorothy’s eyes were acid bright.

  “Oh,” said Jeannie, forcing herself to hold Dorothy’s gaze. “She wanted to fix her hair, use my makeup.”

  Dorothy stared into Jeannie’s face; Jeannie felt heat rising in her skin. “So.” She clapped her hands together. “Coffee?”

  “Cream and two sugars,” said Dorothy, her lips pulling into a distracted smile as Charlie palmed her face. Jeannie stepped past her down the hallway, and was surprised by the older woman catching her hand. “You’re not to see that girl, do you hear me?” she said. She brought her mouth close to Jeannie’s ear, whispered, her breath on Jeannie’s neck. “She’s rotten, all the way through.”

  Tom / August 1968

  He lay in the dark, listened to the sounds of footsteps and talking outside. Sometimes the sounds hesitated at his door, then started up again and moved away. At first the solitude of the private room was welcome—between the LZs, the firebases, and the hospitals, he hadn’t slept alone in a long time. Even between tours, there were the girls, the tan, gutsy Virginia babes who rode the back of his motorcycle and sneaked past the sentries onto the base (Bonnie, Ruth, Lucy, Gloria—oh, Gloria). But after three days on his own, he felt as though he was disappearing. Some moments he imagined that all that was left was the patch of skin that itched and burned on his face, floating in the dark.

  He wanted to touch that part of his face, feel its newness, check that it was him. But the chief had warned against it, and Tom imagined the new skin coming away in his fingers. He had to be patient.

  A tap at the door, and light washed the room.

  Jeannie / August 1968

  There was an unexpected comfort in his familiar bulking of the sheets.

  “You were hard to find,” she said.

  “They moved me after my surgery.”

  “How was it?”

  “Pull the blinds. Take a look.”

  He sounded different, his voice harder, brighter. She raised the blind in three long pulls. The window was muzzled with fog.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  Jeannie turned toward the bed, and focused on removing all expression from her face. The dressings on his face were gone, but what was beneath looked raw as a fresh wound. Part of his cheek was hollowed away, a plum-colored, wet patch of skin covering the pit that sunk at his cheekbone. Pink, shiny skin pulled in ridges from his cheek, down to his neck and up to his hairline; and Jeannie thought of Dubble Bubble gum, the way it used to look when Nancy stretched it from her teeth in long strings. Part of his lower eyelid was pulled away, and his milky eyeball bulged from its socket. A white scum gathered at the place where his nose met his cheek. And against all this, the good part of his face—the strong bones, the smooth skin, the dusty freckles—seemed to disappear. Jeannie tried to recalibrate her view of him, but he was as half stuffed and lopsided as something half made; and when he spoke, she didn’t know where to look.

  “How does it look? Nobody will give me a straight answer.”

  Jeannie kept her gaze fixed on his good eye. “I . . .”

  “They won’t give me a mirror. Do you have one?”

  Jeannie remembered the powder compact in her purse. “No,” she said. She saw his disappointment, his dependency, and pity made her correct herself. “Hold on.” She opened her purse and pushed through it; saw the compact sitting next to her coin purse, and kept digging through her things—handkerchief, lipstick, compact, coin purse, compact—while she decided what to do.

  “Two tours in Vietnam, and all this”—he waved his hand over his body—“and they think I’m afraid of my own reflection? How bad is it?”

  “I don’t think it’s . . .”

  “C’mon. I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t carry a mirror.”

  “All right,” said Jeannie. She drew the compact from her purse and handed it to him. She wanted to prepare him without hurting him. She forced her eyes over his grafted cheek while she searched for the words. “It looks painful,” she said.

  Tom / August 1968

  It was everything he’d feared, and more.

  The mirror was small, and it showed the graft in small, hideous pieces—the hollow cheek, the thick scars, the rot on his nose, the horror-show eyeball. Distress rose in a hard knot up his throat. He swallowed, but the knot wouldn’t subside.

  “Jesus,” he said. The word came out strangled. After they took his leg, he made a quiet deal with God: that if they could repair his face, that would be enough; he would take the rest—the amputated leg, the scars covering his body, the chronic pain, even the goddamn gimpy arm. When his arm found its movement again, it felt like a divine show of willingness, a sign that there were greater gifts to come, that he just needed to be patient, and his face would heal. But this was it: the last surgery—there were no other magic tricks up the chief’s sleeve, God’s sleeve—and it was a fucking swindle. “Jesus Christ.”

  She brought her face close to his. He closed his eyes; he didn’t want her to see their wetness. “It looks bad because it’s healing,” she said. “You can see there’s blood coming into the graft—that’s what’s making this piece of skin purple. That’s good. And the patches by the nose—they look strange because they’re scabbing over. The side of your face is getting pulled by the new skin—I think that’s why your eyeball’s prominent. That should calm down as the graft takes.” He made a humming sound. Her palm was on his chest.

  “Look at me,” she said.

  He opened his eyes and willed them dry. Her face was gentle.

  “I can see the shape of your face underneath,” she said. “I can see you.” She took the mirror from his hand and opened it. It caught the light and blazed. “Look,” she said, holding it up to his face. “Look again. You’ll see it too.”

  She sat by his side—his bad side—as he forced himself to make a study of his face. However long he gazed at it, its ugliness didn’t diminish. But when she looked at him, her face showed no horror or judgment. She sat with him until his eyes grew tired and his cheek grew hot. “Drop the blinds,” he said; and they sat in the dark together, and for all his disappointment, he was grateful for this: a beautiful girl, sitting beside him. Sleep heavied his eyes, and when he woke, parched, confused, the sun making a red line under the blinds, she was still there.

  Two days later, she retur
ned. The blinds were drawn; she crossed the room to open them.

  “No light.”

  “I can’t see you.”

  “It’s for the graft,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  She sat at his side. Even in the dark, he could sense her unhappiness—she carried it like a knife strapped to her thigh.

  “Apparently, it’s healing up okay,” he said. “I’m still planning to leave this place in a week or two.” He tried to animate his voice, but it came out flat.

  “That’s good,” she said. There was a forced brightness there, too.

  “I got word from my cousin,” he said. “The apartment comes free in twelve days.” His whole life he’d been counting time: days to graduation, to deployment, to returning home.

  “Twelve days.” She seemed close, her mouth at his ear.

  “I’ll get myself settled, then I’ll find something.” He didn’t ask how she could help him; he knew she wouldn’t have an answer, and whatever it was that was bringing her to him, with her secrets and her strange beauty, he didn’t want to stop her. “A family friend offered to have me work for him in Connecticut. Help run his farm, keep the books.”

  “You’ll go?”

  “I’m a California boy. The world is here—ocean, mountains, desert. Couldn’t settle anywhere else.”

  He paused; she didn’t fill the silence.

  “Got to keep working on this arm, so I can go back fishing on Lake Shasta.”

  “My dad took my brother to climb Mount Shasta. Wanted to cure him of his overconfidence.”

  “And did it?”

  “My brother bitched the whole time.” He heard the smile in her voice. “But he came home saying he was going to climb Mount Whitney next.”

  “And did he?”

  “He went to Vietnam.”

  “Another cure for overconfidence.”

  “Except my dad thought it might just kill him over there. He was a Marine too, and his father before him. He didn’t want my brother to enlist. Wanted me to dissuade him.”