by Steve Amick
Wink wondered, a little, how she was affording all this coffee, and how she rated a travel voucher, but he didn't try to pry it out of her. She seemed either well off or accustomed to being well off, if she didn't happen to be at this particular time.
Instead of delving back into her book, she turned and gazed out the window. It was still very flat out there and dark and starry.
“Do you know your stars?” she asked.
“Sure,” he lied. “You've got your various Dippers, Big and Little, your Cassiopeia …”
“Which is where?”
He stared out at the night as she pulled the chain in their little table-side lamp. It helped with the illumination outside by cutting down on the reflection, but sacrificed the image of her profile he'd been checking out in the window.
“No idea,” he said. “These are Wyoming stars.”
When the coffee replacement came, along with an extra cup, presumably for him, he declined again and asked her how the hell she planned on sleeping tonight.
“That isn't my plan,” she said. “I never can on trains, anyway, so I might as well have some fun—just stay up and be wicked.”
He thought she winked. He might have imagined it—the lamp was still off and there was that oddity with her smaller eye— and then she eased a slender silver flask from her handbag and added to her half-full cup. This he didn't decline, accepting a belt minus the coffee, and it was a relief, a warm balm that allowed him to rest his eyes for just a moment, and imagine, for that moment, that the train's motion was a mothering rocking, a gentle lulling, not the friction of pistons, and for just that moment, he imagined he didn't have Chesty's widow a few cars down that he must watch over like an orphaned ward, and so he would follow this overly stimulated stranger's lead wherever it went, which quite probably would be down to her roomette or compartment or possibly high-class drawing room, and down to her undergarments, and he would follow her hints and insinuations to her wordless gestures and finally to her husky, grunted urgings … But it was only for a moment, and then there was a return to the knowledge that his friend needed him at this crucial time to watch over his wife and make it as bearable as it could be and his other friend needed him as well, or possibly might, and even if it were only an outside chance that she would need him in the next hour or so—even for something as small as a clean handkerchief or an aspirin powder or something as big as a hug, he should be there. And so, in a moment, he said good night to lovely, possible Carol in the lounge car and returned, alone, to his roomette.
The flat farmland streaming past made him occasionally think of his uncle in Michigan. He would always have a place there, he knew, if this ever became too much for him. A place, of course, wasn't necessarily a life. He wondered about that. If it ever came down to that, if he turned to Uncle Len, would there be room for growth there? Could he expand the acreage, down the line— find his own farmhouse, his own wife? The pickings around St. Johns, he imagined, quite probably paled compared with what he'd seen in Chicago. Hell, what he'd seen on board this train, even. Of course, a guy could hunt a little farther afield than a five or ten mile radius around his uncle's farm.
Theoretically, he could bring someone in, like a hothouse flower. Go down to Ann Arbor or Lansing, some highbrow hot spot like that, meet a gal with a little more of a sense of the great big world, maybe even a coed with some education … But what would stop that gal from pining for that great big world? For that matter, what would stop him from doing the same?
In Cheyenne, the porter barked past, announcing they had a half-hour stop to refuel and restock the dining car, so folks should get out and stretch if they wanted.
Wink wanted. The station was still hopping—it was not quite nine p.m. He got a milk shake at a soda fountain across the street, then returned to the station and drank it in the shoeshine chair, getting a shine. Since the newsstand was still open, he bought a copy of Stars and Stripes, the Denver Post—the old man said they didn't carry the Chicago Tribune—two paperback books of crossword puzzles, a handful of Hollywood gossip magazines for Sal, the latest Esquire for him, and a stack of girlies off the half-hidden side shelf for both of them to peruse. At Ease and Wink were among the bunch he grabbed, and he was pretty sure they had some work in both of these. Finally, he spotted that steamy novel, Forever Amber, and threw that on the pile, too. He wasn't sure which one of them that was for, but he figured it would, at the least, hand them a laugh. Maybe he'd read it to her out loud like a kiddie story.
“These two are the same,” the old man pointed out, holding up the two copies of the crossword puzzle book he'd selected.
Wink was aware of that. Not bothering to explain that one was for him and one was for his traveling companion, he said, “The same is fine.”
As the old guy groused over his pad, working a nubby pencil stub, adding it up, Wink was flipping through At Ease when he caught a glimpse of Reenie's unmistakable half-open pout and remembered what time of month it was. He was missing the once-monthly treat she gave him with her mouth, and since she'd recently confided that she and Sal had managed to magically synchronize their monthlies since spending so much time together in the past year, he told the old guy to toss some Midol on the pile as well.
“Hmm,” the guy grumbled, as if sympathizing with him, taking it down from the small pharmaceutical section. “The wife, huh?”
Wink just nodded, not bothering to correct him.
“Guess we all know how that is, brother.”
“Yes,” Wink said, “we do,” though he had no earthly idea how it was.
While the man retabulated, Wink slid the Wink from the stack and flipped through it. There was Weekend Sally, as they were calling her in this one, topless and squeezing them together like ripe fruit, the fingers of her black opera gloves just hiding the nipples, but beaming like everything was jake and A-okay not a care in the world, not a husband in a box, not a dream out the window, not at all like she was trapped in a cramped compartment in a lonely train in a strange countryside, with nowhere to go, with the stuffing knocked out of her and all the tears drained out of her, too.
42
Her jawbone and her cheekbones ached from the constant crying; her mouth set in a nearly fixed expression of anguish.
Her whole body ached, in fact. She never thought it would hurt like this, so physically. She'd almost forgotten the feel of deep, steady breathing, getting so used to her breath only coming in small, halting gasps.
She saw it, too—didn't just feel it—catching a glimpse of her ghastly face in the dark window of nighttime farmland rolling endlessly past, or in the horrible mirror on the back of her sliver of a closet. The word grief-stricken suddenly made sense in a way it never had before—she looked seized by something, in the grip of something that twisted and distorted her features to the point where even she almost failed to recognize herself.
She heard them sometimes, walking past, chatting in the corridor. Already there were soldiers returning, heading home upright and lucky. She knew she'd have to steel herself to it: on the return trip, heading back from the West Coast, there'd no doubt be waves of them, rushing back into the heart of the country in a massive, boyish, awkward gallop.
Even muffled through the door, they sounded giddy and nervous, hurtling with the speed of the train into the uncharted lands of peacetime and Stateside. Mostly it was girls and jobs and “getting back to goddamn normal.” And there was still talk of the bomb they'd dropped on the Japs: This here's where they're testing them, isn't it? Out here in the flat-and-nothin'? That's how I heard it, anyway …
It reached her, talk like this, drifting in like cigarette smoke, and she'd stare out her private window, as if expecting to see the unexpected—a flash brighter than the sun; a shudder deeper than any chill.
43
In the naval yard in San Francisco, Wink stood by as an MP went over Chesty's personal effects—the contents of his duffel and a footlocker crammed with exposed film, clippings of his work, files o
f prints, boxes of lenses, a light meter, and a portrait-sized bellows camera. Separate from this collection was the camera he'd been using at the moment of the explosion. Sal held it up to her eye, as if calmly assessing the damage, but he could see her gloved hand was shaking.
Maybe she'd thought, in a stunned moment that got away from her, she'd see Chesty in there, or at least some explanation as to what in the name of heaven …
Despite the smudges and scrapes, Wink could still make out the ARGUS next to her trembling fingers. It appeared to be more or less intact.
“Maybe got thrown clear of the blast,” the MP said, a little too softly.
“I'm afraid …,” she said, and Wink reached out and steadied her, his hand on her elbow before she could finish. “I'm afraid I don't understand what …”
“I'm sorry, ma'am—folks. Again, that's classified.” The MP made a twisted little face like he had heartburn.
So she signed for the whole caboodle and thanked him, and Wink steered her gently to the door. Outside, squinting in the California sun, he started looking around for the Quonset-hut number for their next stop, the remains. He was thinking of letting her in on the fact that when he was still serving, they called any soldier stuck in an office like that guy back there a Gertrude—try to hand her a laugh—when another door at the opposite end of the office they'd just visited opened, and it was the same MP, beckoning them closer.
Wink motioned for Sal to stay put and went to see what the guy had to say for himself.
“I don't know much,” the MP said, glancing around with a mixture of what appeared to be equal parts nervousness and annoyance, “strictly scuttlebutt, but you know there was a survivor, right?”
• • •
Once he made sure he had the right bed, checking the clipboard chart and the dog tags on the bandaged patient—the guy probably faking sleep anyway, trying to stretch out his hospital time— Wink yanked the privacy curtain around, and the metal rake of the curtain rings made a clatter that even someone faking sleep couldn't ignore.
Once the ensign's eyes came open in a groggy squint, Wink launched into it. “Love to hear what happened to you and Chesty—Sergeant Chesterton, that is. Something exploded?”
“You're a civilian,” he said. “Who wants to know?”
“His widow, actually. But you can tell me.”
The guy's face softened a little at this. He looked disappointed that he couldn't very well keep being a hard-on, and he sat up a little in the bed, a very loose approximation of standing at attention, as if a slightly higher altitude would convey more respect.
“Swans Down. Going as relief to Japan.”
After checking to be sure he was talking about the brand of cake flour, Wink pointed out that that hardly seemed like much of a necessity.
The ensign shrugged. “No kidding, right? Something like fourteen tons of unboxed Swans Down cake flour. Loose. Looked harmless, too. Like Christmas Eve. Only the shit went up like no snowflakes, believe me. More like it was gunpowder … Hey, on the widow? You can tell her it was my fault, really. I'm the one who took Chesty in there, thought he should get a picture …”
For a second, Wink wanted to hop on that guilt train, thinking how if he'd been there, he could have told him how combustible finely milled flours can be. It wasn't Chesty's fault he wasn't raised on a farm.
The ensign seemed to be warming up now. “You know what's worse than dying young, brother? Dying silly, in some lacy way. Seriously, I'm terrified of going some way frivolous like that now. It's all I can think about. Hey, but on the widow—don't tell her that, okay, friend? About it being silly and frivolous? Tell her it was real pretty. ‘Cause it really was. I mean—you know, the most he probably knew of it. Like fairy dust. A man should go out that way, looking at something beautiful. I guess no way it can be a silly death if that's the case.”
It wasn't enough, his description of it. She said she needed to hear it straight from the eyewitness.
But when he returned to the hospital with her, the ensign had dummied up. Someone had gotten to him. When he spoke today, his speech was louder than Wink remembered, and he rattled it off like something on a bad radio drama.
“Like I was telling the gentleman here yesterday, it must've been some type of unavoidable naturally occurring chemical breakdown that ignited that heating fuel, down in that hold. That's all I know.”
“Heating fuel?” Wink wasn't sure he was hearing right.
“Or maybe, possibly, some manner of sabotage orchestrated by outside agitators or subversives of a political nature.”
Wink asked him about the cake flour.
The guy's lip twitched a little, and then he said, “I guess I'm not clear what you're talking about, friend.”
It felt like they were being watched. Wink glanced up and spotted a gray-haired, gray-skinned lieutenant commander with a hefty row of tossed salad on his chest, down at the end of the room, talking to a nurse and a man in a plain brown suit who looked like one of Hoover's men. Wink caught the officer's eye and gave him a disgusted frown.
Turning back, he saw that the ensign was letting his eyes droop, and the nurse who'd been conferring with the two muckety-mucks swooped in and said he needed rest and his bandages changed and they would need to go. Right now.
It was pathetic. He glanced down at Sal, and she just seemed disappointed. Standing, hat in hand, he helped her up, and as they were filing out, he thought he heard the ensign say, very faintly, “Sorry …”
Outside, it was overcast and he heard seagulls crying. Sal's hair whipped around in the wind, uncontainable in her black hat and veil. “None of that matters,” she said. “Let's just get him home.”
44
Heading back east, the train couldn't go fast enough for Sal. She would never say it out loud, but already there was something else piggybacked onto the grief, and that was monotony.
It brought on waves of guilt like something actually jabbing her gut, but already, sometimes, she wanted desperately to be done crying, to bust out of her compartment, to come out and play and join Wink and even strangers in the lounge car. Maybe play a hand of bridge and just talk about normal things like normal people. And then the guilt she felt for feeling this way would bring on the gushing sobs even stronger, making such a public appearance beyond the little door of her compartment an impossibility.
During the day, she sometimes unsnapped Chesty's Argus and fiddled with it. There was no telling yet if the casing was intact, if light was seeping in through hairline cracks, but the film advanced without the whisper of any mechanical problems. She took pictures, not just boring straight-on shots that she knew would contain trace elements of reflections somewhere in the shot, the glass catching the light and ruining it with wispy ghosts and sunspots—what had her pop called them? “Circles of confusion” … ? Maybe that was something else. Everything seemed unfocused these days, out of kilter. Instead, she sat to one side and included the window frame in the composition, almost as an admission as to what this was, a nod to the realism of the setting, the sloppy intrusion of the train, not just the pure elegance of the scenery. She thought of the framing Wink had first shown her in the Hopper up the street at the Art Institute well over a year ago. She'd returned many times since and had grown to love it, though she knew she could never fully understand it or approach it the way Wink could. Already, with what little technical tricks she could pass along to him, he had moved far beyond anything she could do with a camera, and in a way, it was one of the things that made her saddest about losing Chesty right at this point in their lives—as trivial as it seemed, it made her heart ache to think what a kick her husband would have gotten out of seeing his friend's progress with the camera, the way he was steadily learning to transfer everything he'd trained his hands to do, finding other ways to utilize that eye of his that Chesty had so admired.
She wondered sometimes if she should have filled him in earlier. It hadn't seemed like the kind of thing to lay out in a letter, especia
lly one going through someone else's hands, with the military censors, but now he would never know about their little adventure together. Their success, their enterprise …
Sitting off to one side like that, she would set the focus on a spot in the middle distance, checking it against the next thing that lined up with her crosshairs—a barn, say, but shot at an angle, so it wasn't simply rolling past in a blur.
If the camera turned out to be undamaged, she hoped to discover she'd created startling, rushing panoramas with a single item locked in focus, crisp as a maple leaf.
It was here she first thought of teaching Wink about depth of field. Somehow, they hadn't gotten to that yet—the technique of manipulating the range and portion of a photograph that appears in focus. Looking out at the long vista stretched out through the range finder of the Argus, she knew, even in that bleakness, someone with Wink's eye could make a lot of interesting stuff happen. The technique would never be needed for their girlie shoots, which was most likely why it had yet to come up, but in his own artistic studies, the “assignments” she still occasionally gave him to prod him and encourage him, depth of field might just be a fruitful one for him to explore.
When she felt she could sit with a visitor without blubbering instantly, she invited Wink in to talk. The porter brought tea, and once they were settled, she asked Wink if he had any questions about the logistics of stopping in Breakey and he said, “Yeah, actually, I wasn't real clear what we're doing out here, really …”
It turned out he not only meant the funeral but was pretty much in the dark about Chesty's entire family history. It was surprising and made her wonder what exactly war buddies talked about all that time they spent together.
So she explained how Chesty came to move to Chicago at the age of ten; how his uncle Whitcomb was the more successful of two brothers in banking. Growing up, Whitcomb Chesterton had been the better student and gone to a better college—Dartmouth, out east, rather than staying in Nebraska at a state school, like Chesty's dad. In fact, Chesty's uncle managed to keep his bank from failing, even in the worst years that followed the Crash.
