The Wolf That Fed Us

by Robert Lowry

  Because she didn’t care. She didn’t care what happened to her now. This was what she’d been looking for. She was free of her yearning to get away, free of everything, lost, and she didn’t care.

  “I don’t care!” she shouted, letting the sergeant with the little red eyes pull her along.

  LAYOVER IN EL PASO

  THE COACHES ARE crammed and jammed, and by the time that Los Angeles-Chicago train gets to Douglas, Arizona, there’s no more room anywhere, and a whole pack of eager disappointed soldiers are left behind, waiting with their little furlough-bags at the station. Inside the train everybody has gone mad with the fury of the war. Who cares! says the soldier going back to his tent from a furlough. Who cares! says the girl whose boy friend is far away. Who cares! says the lonely wife returning from visiting her husband for the last time before overseas duty. She holds hands with two soldiers she never saw before, and she has starry eyes and a short skirt, and helps kill a pint on the platform.

  The train moves slowly through the desert—everyone is bored looking out the window at the thirsty, burnt-out flat-land. The people go in upon themselves to pass the time. A fat lady with two kids dozes off to sleep, her head rocking back and her mouth opening with a soprano snore. A girl named Edna with mascaraed green eyes looks hard at a soldier passing; on his next trip through the cars he sits down and talks with her and wonders what he’ll get around to when the coach is dark tonight. A thin effeminate fellow about thirty-five in a snappy blue suit explains to two soldiers sitting across from him that he’s traveling for the government on very important business; otherwise he’d be in uniform too. He’d like nothing better, of course! The two soldiers just listen to him for a while, then get up and leave. Loud shouts and laughter come from the men’s washroom—thirty GIs who couldn’t find seats have gotten around to telling all the dirty jokes they can think of.

  Red couldn’t keep his eyes open. He was coming from Indio, California, and he’d already been on the train one rocky, cold night. In Indio he was on kitchen detail to an air force unit; he washed their trays for them. But nobody looking at him would have suspected this; he wore a uniform like anybody else and might have been a pilot for all some girls knew. It was the one good thing about being a soldier: everybody dressed pretty much alike.

  Across from him sat an old lady with faded blue eyes, wearing a dilapidated straw hat held on with a stickpin. She carried all her stuff in a shopping bag and a paper box tied up with soiled Christmas-package ribbon. She was very eager to talk and chose Red as the one to listen. It was all about her son who’d been killed in the last war. The kind of pie he’d liked, and some of his sayings as a child. She leaned forward eagerly as she spoke, looking like a bird that hears a worm in the ground, and every time Red started dozing off she talked still louder and higher, and put her hand on his arm. Finally he remembered someplace he had to go up the car a ways, and mumbled something in apology and beat it.

  Out on the platform a sailor offered him a drink. He took a long one and coughed. “Thanks, pal,” he said.

  The sailor was a short stocky fellow, with button eyes set wide apart under thick eyebrows. “Hey, there’s a couple quail I been talking to up in the next car,” the sailor said. “You wanta try out on one of them?”

  “Sure,” Red said.

  So they shoved into the next car—went right on through, with Red looking anxiously at every face to see what kind of babe it would be.

  The two of them were sitting in the last seats. “Jesus,” Red said, “they’re kinda old, ain’t they?”

  “This is Red,” the sailor was saying. “I don’t know either of yer names but I guess you know em yerself so it’s all right.”

  So the two babes laughed, and since the seats opposite were empty Red and the sailor sat down.

  Both the babes wore pants and both of them, judging by the little lines around their eyes, were thirty-five years old anyhow. The one had a tilted-up nose and large eyes, but when she smiled the whole coach was filled up with big teeth. The other kept looking at Red. She was smaller, had shrewd bright eyes and short black hair with just a few strands of gray in it. She wore a blue pants suit with an orange polka-dot kerchief around her neck. Her sandaled feet she kept tucked up under her. Red just looked at her. He’d spent nine months out on the California desert and he couldn’t help it.

  “Where you coming from, Red?” she asked in a voice that reminded him of somebody like Katharine Hepburn.

  “Oh, I’m comin from Indio,” he said.

  “Furlough?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Red said. He found he was holding on pretty hard to the arm of the seat. She was smiling at him all the time; there were little crinkles around her sharp eyes and her manicured hand played with the kerchief. She’s kind of tight, Red thought.

  “Your first furlough?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Red said. “I waited a heck of a time for it. Ten months. Seemed like a heck of a time, anyhow.”

  “Where you going?”

  “I’m goin home—back to Elder, Tennessee.”

  “Wife and kids?”

  Red blushed and looked down at his hands. “Ah, I haven’t got any wife and kids,” he said. “Just mom and pop and a couple brothers and sisters.”

  “Well, you might have a wife and kids,” she said, looking at him sidewise. “I mean, you’re capable of it, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess I’m capable of it,” Red said. The blush still hadn’t faded.

  “Come on, let’s go out on the platform and have a drink,” the sailor said.

  Before long they all had their arms around one another and were singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” It didn’t feel to Red like she had anything on under that costume. The whiskey and her made him feel faint. She kept laughing and saying clever things. Her name was Kay, and the bigtoothed woman she called Boots. They had a standing joke between them about somebody named Harry, but Red couldn’t figure out exactly who he was. Kay was always saying, “Oh, Harry doesn’t know the half of it!” And then a little later Boots would say, “If Harry could see you now!” And Kay would say, “But sweet, he’s such a bore. I can’t bear boring people. I’m out for a good time,” and pull Red’s head down to her and bite his ear. Once she put her tongue in his ear, which sobered him for a minute—it was such a surprise.

  About seven o’clock they got hungry and went and stood in the chow line.

  “This is one of the reasons I just hate the war,” Kay said. “You’ve got to wait and wait and wait.” She looked mad for a second, but then she began to laugh. She took Red’s cap off and put it on her own head; it sure made her look funny. Then they were all giggling and laughing and Boots said, “Did you ever hear about the lady moron who went to bed naked with a fellow and nine months later she woke up with a little more on?” and Kay pinched her fat rear and said, “That’s what you get for telling that.” Red saw other soldiers in line looking at him and he knew they were wondering. He felt pretty swell. He’d thought for ten months about something like this happening when he went home on the train.

  It was sort of funny in the diner, though. There were just two dinners advertised on the menu because of the food rationing, and she got in a big argument with the colored waiter about a shrimp cocktail. She must have a shrimp cocktail. “Just what’s on the menu, ma’am,” he said. “You could at least find out if they have a shrimp cocktail,” she said. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He went away and came back and said, “They got some shrimp back there, but it ain’t for servin in no cocktail.”

  “Why, I never heard of such a thing,” she said, looking from the waiter to Red and then back to the waiter. “Go get me the steward.”

  “Yes’m,” the tall negro said.

  In a minute the steward came, a frowning fellow in a navy-blue suit with menus in his hand. She explained the whole situation to him very slowly, as if to a child, and he didn’t say anything till she was all finished. Then he just said, “No,” and walked away
.

  It took about fifteen minutes more to get the waiter back and meanwhile Red was trying to pick out his choices on the two meals. He wanted to choose the same things she chose, hut everything he said he liked she disagreed with. “Are you really going to order milk?” she asked. “I simply can’t stand milk.” So he ordered coffee.

  The sailor and Boots had had to take a table at the other end of the car, but the four of them finished about the same time and went out on the platform for another drink. Kay kept her arms around Red’s neck most of the time; she was about a foot shorter than him and he had to stay bent over so she could reach him. He kissed her a lot, and she took to that all right. He got in some good feels too. Only once did she object and then she said, “Oh don’t, darling,” and kissed him again. Red didn’t know what to make of her.

  They all went back to their seats and there were only two available so the women sat on the men’s laps. They made so much noise everybody looked at them, and Red felt kind of embarrassed. He tried to pass it off by winking at one pimply faced PFC across the aisle, but the PFC just stared through his tortoise-shell glasses for a minute, then turned around and went on reading A Critique of Pure Reason.

  The women weren’t embarrassed at all, though; they kept shouting and laughing at each other, and Boots reached over and pulled Red’s ear and said, “Hey, Red, I bet you never heard about the little moron who thought a mushroom was someplace to pitch woo in,” then filled up the car with those teeth again. Kay’s arm was around Red’s head, and her hair was up under his chin. She kept buttoning and unbuttoning one of his shirt buttons. “Oh but I’m tired—simply dead. I think I’ll just go to sleep right here. Red doesn’t mind if I sleep on top of him tonight, do you, Red?”

  Red didn’t know what to say to that; he looked over at the kid reading the book and then back at the sailor. “Naw,” he said.

  He could feel himself blushing but it was okay too, only he’d never met any woman like Kay before, except maybe in the movies. These women really live fast, he thought.

  Red halfway dozed off, and woke up to see the big creased face of the conductor over him.

  “Better get your luggage together,” the conductor was saying to Kay. “Next stop is El Paso.”

  “Oh, my God,” Kay was saying, “my luggage is all over the train.” So Red had to help her go round it up; it was pretty swell stuff, all yellow leather and heavy as hell.

  The four of them were still half asleep when they got off the train. Red carried luggage under his arms and in both hands, and sweated as bad as he did back in Indio.

  When they arrived in the station, Kay suddenly stopped and turned around to him, the way some movie actress like Bette Davis would, and said, “Darling, are you taking another train out right away or spending the night in El Paso?”

  The question hit Red like a ton of bricks, and he glanced over at the sailor and Boots for an answer, but the sailor was whispering in Boots’s ear and they were laughing to beat the band. Then he looked back at Kay—her shrewd eyes with the little crinkles around them were regarding him in a kind of funny way. What the devil did she mean?

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Red said.

  “We-ell, you’ll have a horrible time if you try to find a place to stay in this ole town.” She studied a ring on her right hand for a minute, then looked up at him. “But I was thinking: Boots and I have an apartment and you can sleep over there if you want to.”

  Red still just stared at her. His blood-pressure was up about twenty points and a big lump had settled in his throat. She’d taken off her jacket and he noticed all of a sudden how her two little breasts pushed through the thin white blouse.

  “. . . if you’ll promise to be real good,” she was saying, and she laughed at him again.

  Jesus, Red thought, I’ll never get back to Elder now, and I told mom, and they’re all going to be there looking for that train.

  But there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, what with her looking at him that way, like a challenge or something, so he just mumbled, “I guess I’ll stay here tonight,” and Kay laughed at him, and went on gazing into his eyes for almost a minute. Then she ran over to Boots and said, “Red wants to get some sleep in El Paso tonight and I told him he could stay over at our place,” and Boots looked at Red and then back to Kay. “Why, that’s swell,” she said, “Georgie’s going to stay too.” Red and Georgie caught each other’s eye for a second—they were in complete understanding. They went back together for their bags, but neither said anything.

  With themselves and all the luggage bundled into a taxi, they drove out through town a long ways before they finally stopped on some dark street. The others waited for Red while he paid the driver, and then there was the business of opening the front door.

  The apartment was on the second floor and it was a pretty swell place with real low, plain furniture like nothing Red had ever seen before. He was almost afraid to move, it was all so nice, and he only sat down after Kay had told him to a couple times.

  “Wait, I’ll go out and fix us all a drink,” Kay said, and Red saw how small and nicely built she was from the rear.

  Red and Georgie sat on the couch and the two babes sat in separate chairs. They drank the whiskey-and-sodas and Kay talked about how horrible trains were, and how she always swore she’d never take another trip, but then when the time came she always did anyhow. She had a scratch on her suntanned leg and while leaning over to examine it, she explained how she’d got it when she’d slipped on the train step in Los Angeles. Red felt like getting down and examining it too.

  But as she was talking, Red suddenly had a funny feeling: he thought of those little five- or six-line notes his mom always wrote him and that last one was plain as day right there in front of him: Well son were sure glad all about youre furlo. . . . Twenty one-dollar bills had been enclosed—he’d already spent four of them on the dinner and a couple more on the cab. He thought of his old man too, a tall skinny fellow who never said much, just worked hard all day in the field. He remembered that funny look, as if he were going to cry, on his old man’s face the day he’d left, ten months ago. Now look at me, Red thought.

  Kay was standing up, pushing her arms above her head and yawning—a position that sure made her figure stand out. “I’m dead,” she was saying, “simply dead. I think I’ll get in the tub and just soak for a while—I’ve never felt so filthy before. . . . That couch opens up, darlings. You two can sleep there snug as bugs.”

  Red just sat and looked at her. She looked down at him and smiled. “And remember what I said to you, Mr. Red, about being good.” She came over and kissed him on the cheek and smoothed his hair. “Hmmmm?”

  Red couldn’t get up enough nerve to reach out and pull her down to him. He didn’t know what to make of her. What kind of a woman was she, anyhow, and where’d she get all the dough to keep this big apartment? . . . He watched which of the two bedrooms she went into, though.

  He and the sailor lay on the couch in the dark.

  “I never did get home on a leave yet,” the sailor said. “I tried about three other times, but I never make it; I always get into something like this. It ain’t bad though, they got a good set-up. Boots says she works in an office and yours lives off some rich guy she’s divorced from. Ain’t a bad set-up for us, is it?”

  “Looks pretty good,” Red said.

  They lay there a while longer, then the sailor said, “Well, I know what I’m gonna do,” and jumped out of bed.

  “Where you goin?” Red asked, straining his eyes, but not able to make out anything.

  “I ain’t goin to play tiddly-winks, soldier,” the sailor’s voice came back from halfway across the room.

  Red heard the door open and close, and Boots’s voice saying, “Oh don’t, Georgie——” There was a little scuffle and then he heard her giggling.

  Well, I’ll be damn, Red thought. He didn’t move for a minute, his heart was raising so much Cain.

  Then he got ou
t of bed and went in his bare feet across the room to Kay’s door.

  He listened for a while outside—couldn’t hear a sound above the pounding of his heart. He reached out, turned the knob and pushed. The door opened!

  He stood flatfooted. His heart was making twenty-foot leaps trying to get out of his throat.

  Then he heard her stir. He took three steps into the room.

  “Is that you, Red?” she asked.

  He went on over to the bed.

  “Yeah?”

  He got into the bed and knelt above her.

  “But Red, you promised you’d be good,” she said.

  He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he grabbed her and kissed her. For a minute she tried to push him away and talk with his mouth on hers, but then she gave up and put her arms around him. This is the part they always leave out of the movies, Red thought. It was such a damn thing to think, he felt like laughing right there.

  When he woke up, nobody was in the bed with him and he lay for a moment trying to remember everything that had happened, and not feeling very good about anything. I ought to be on the train, he thought. I ought to be on the train going back home to Elder right this minute.

  She came into the room without looking at him and began combing her hair in front of the mirror. It made his heart stop dead to see her like that, stark naked.

  Pretty soon she turned around and for a minute gave him a blank early-morning stare, like she didn’t even know him. Then her face came all together and got that quick crinkle-eyed smile. “Sleep well?” she asked, coming over to the bed.

  My God, she was beautiful and put together, Red thought. She was little, but she was sure put together. It made him want to cry almost, looking at a woman like her.

  She was smiling down at him and kind of mysteriously and he realized all of a sudden, he hadn’t answered her question. Did he sleep well? “I slept pretty good,” he said.