Ash Wednesday

by Chet Williamson

  But this time more happened. Bonnie knew that Brad had been dating at State, though she had chosen to "stay faithful," as she put it rather accusingly. So when she opened her legs a little wider than usual, and actually unzipped his fly to touch him, he knew why. It was to keep him, as if sex would lock them to each other not only temporarily but permanently. Although he thought he might love Bonnie, there was no way he could reciprocate the unthinking devotion with which she tried to claim him.

  But he wanted her, and so he made love to her in the clearing, trying to be slow and careful with her, while she moaned in a combination of feigned pleasure and actual discomfort. When it was done, he told her that he loved her, not from any sense of true emotion, but from duty, and he held her as she cried.

  Her period came the next week, so the length of their mutual worry was brief, although Brad suspected that Bonnie would have preferred being pregnant. She disliked her line job at Allied Pressing, but told him that she was saving the money for them. Brad had never asked Bonnie to marry him. It was simply assumed that it would happen. They had dated steadily since tenth grade, and when Brad had told her that he wanted to go out at State, she cried but agreed that it would be best, "to prove our love. If we get through this, that means we can get through anything." Brad didn't see it that way. The girls he'd dated at State had shown little interest in him, and he in them. The dates had been mostly pairings of convenience, and a few French kisses after some beers was the closest he'd come to any physical involvement.

  But to Bonnie the threat was all too real, and he could easily tell that her sexual surrender was only a calculated ploy to hang onto him for as long as she could.

  It was two weeks after her period started that he had his conversation with Eddie Karl. Brad and Bonnie hadn't made love since that afternoon, or even talked about it except for her telling him not to worry, because she wasn't pregnant. He did take the precaution, however, of buying a twin pack of Prince prophylactics from the machine in the rest room of Ruhl's Sunoco and slipping one of them into his wallet, where he was achingly aware of its presence, wondering what his mother would think if he were killed in an accident and she found it while going through his things.

  He was thinking about that and about Bonnie Allen, and wondering if he could make love to her that night, when Eddie Karl sat down beside him on the bench in front of the bank. "You just get off work?" Eddie asked in his raspy voice.

  Brad nodded, annoyed at having his thoughts interrupted, but unable to show that annoyance. Eddie was too benign, too friendly to spurn. Even if Brad had said something smartass, he doubted if Eddie would have paid it any mind. "How's it going, Eddie?"

  "Good, good." He nodded his grizzled head. "I like Saturdays. Nothin' like a nice warm Saturday. Everybody's out, everybody's around." He rapped his cane on the sidewalk as if for emphasis. "Saw Coot Brierly over at the drugstore."

  "Yeah? How's Coot?"

  Coot Brierly had died several years before Brad Meyers was born. It was a fancy of Eddie Karl's, accepted by the town, that he often saw the friends of his youth, though youth and friends had long since passed away. When people were exposed to Eddie's delusion for the first time, they found it strange and a little frightening. But Eddie's manner was so sincere and his words so ingenuous that after a while it was difficult to disbelieve him, so his delusion, at least in Eddie's presence, became shared by the community, and when a person would see an acquaintance parting from Eddie's company on the street, he would be likely to ask who he and Eddie saw today. A knowing smile would be shared, and heads shaken in wry understanding laced with a kindly pity.

  "Coot's good," Eddie said, and tried to spit into the street, barely making the curb. "Shit. Used to be I could spit in a skeeter's asshole at fifty yards. Gettin' old, Jim."

  "Brad," he corrected.

  "Yup. Brad. Jane and Oscar's boy."

  Brad chuckled and nodded.

  "There, y'see. Ain't that old. Slip on a name now 'n' then, so what? People's important, not names." He pulled a mangled pack of Pall Malls out of a pants pocket and shoved one of the twisted white tubes between his thin lips. "Got a match?"

  "Sorry."

  " 'S'okay." Eddie dug into the other pocket and finally extricated a barnburner. "Yer pal Rorrie's always got matches."

  "Rorrie smokes. I don't smoke."

  "Y'oughta." The match flared into life like a small grenade. "Then I wouldn't have to dig for matches." He lit the Pall Mall and tossed the match toward the gutter. It landed on the sidewalk. "I seen him today."

  "Who?"

  "Rorrie." Eddie hissed out a bit of tobacco from his mouth. This time he didn't even attempt distance.

  "Rorrie?" Brad straightened. "Where, Eddie?"

  "His dad's garage."

  "Jesus," Brad said. "Is he back, then?"

  "Back from where?"

  "From Vietnam, Eddie. You know, he went to Vietnam?"

  Eddie frowned and shook his head. "He didn't go to no Vietnam. That boy's too smart for that. Christ, a person could get hisself killed over there. Get blowed up by a mine—all sorts of things."

  Under the late afternoon sun, Brad felt suddenly cold, and his hand on the back of the bench started to tremble.

  "Good boy, Rorrie. Never be an old fart like me, I'll say that for 'im."

  Brad stood up, his legs rubbery. He cleared his throat. "I'll see you later, Eddie. Gotta go . . . do something." Eddie waved a spidery hand in a gesture of dismissal, and Brad walked away, thinking, Not Rorrie, oh, Jesus, please no, not Rorrie, but not knowing, not sure. He knew who would know.

  Merridale had one newsstand. When you went in the front door, the magazines, comics, and paperbacks were on the left, roughly arranged by size. TIME, comic books, and Sports Illustrated shared the same wooden rack, while Reader's Digest, Analog, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine rubbed spines in the digest bin. To the right was a long glass counter, behind and on top of which were gum, candy bars, shoelaces, pocketknives, combs, and piles of the Merridale Messenger and the Lansford Courier, a small stack of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and three or four copies of the New York Times. Behind the counter on a small stool sat Marie Snyder, a True Confessions ensconced permanently in her lap, although no one had ever seen her eyes on it longer than a few seconds. The minute any customer—man, woman, or child—entered the store, the head would go up on the stalk of a neck, the glasses would drop as if of their own volition off the beaky nose onto the flat bosom, and the pale birdlike eyes would transfix the visitor while the mouth would split in a harshly lipsticked smile. The ears, contrary to legend, did not perk and flare at the mention of rumors, but if they could have, they would.

  Rumors were Marie Snyder's stock in trade, and actual news interested her only on the local level. She knew who had been born, who had died, who had conceived, and who had attempted conception. Hit. newsstand was the hub of every story true or false to come into or out of Merridale. If anyone would know about Rorrie Weidman, Marie Snyder would.

  She smiled at Brad as he entered the tiny store, her thin fingers brushing invisible lint from the front of her shapeless, patterned dress. "Afternoon, Bradley," she said in surprisingly soft, flutelike tones. "Help you with anything?"

  "Uh, not really, Miss Snyder. I was just wondering . . ." He was afraid to ask, but the fear of not knowing was worse. "I was talking to Eddie Karl, and he said something kind of funny about Rorrie Weidman, and I thought maybe . . ."

  He stopped. At the mention of Rorrie's name, her lips had closed and stretched taut like two thick rubber bands. They were deep dark red, the color of fresh liver, and the illusory look of stern regret upon them was hard for Brad to bear. "You haven't heard?" she said, shaking her head. Brad thought her eyes shone with excitement, with the urge to bear bad news, and he remembered a scene from some Greek play he'd read in Lit II of killing the messenger of bad tidings, and imagined Marie Snyder at the point of a sword, wondering if that would erase her carelessly concealed delight.
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  "Heard what?" he asked calmly, suddenly angry with himself for coming to her, for now his reaction would be grist for her mill. He decided to show no emotion, to speak only noncommittal words.

  "Poor Roland." Her head still shook, and she gave three tsk-tsks in rapid succession, like a hen pecking corn. "I just heard around two o'clock. From his aunt, Molly Weidman. You know her, I'm sure. Very tall woman."

  She was doing it on purpose, he knew, baiting him, playing him like a fish, or a nightclub comic telling a long story whose only point is to ultimately make fools out of his audience, But Brad would not be treated that way. He would not. "Was he killed?" he asked coldly.

  Marie Snyder's head stopped shaking in the middle of a right hand sweep so that it seemed locked in a cocked position. She eyed him appraisingly, as though this were a new and different audience she was not used to. "Why, yes," she said with the hint of a smile. "Yes, he was."

  Brad nodded shortly.

  "I understand he stepped on one of those whatchamacallits—a mine, I think. At least he didn't suffer. They're shipping the body back quick as they can." Brad moved toward the door, and Marie speeded up, anxious to get in as much as she could before she lost him. "Of course, they won't have a viewing or anything; he was too messed up for that, and that hot weather too, well . . ." The screen door squeaked, then banged shut on its spring, leaving Marie Snyder talking to an empty store.

  ". . . that wouldn't help much either." She frowned again, and turned back to True Confessions.

  Brad walked numbly up the street, knowing that he should start home, that his mother would soon have supper on the table. But he couldn't. And yet he didn't want to be alone. So he went back to the bench next to Western Auto. Eddie Karl was still there, talking softly to friends unseen, and Brad sat next to him. Eddie nodded a greeting, stopped talking, and went back to watching cars.

  Brad watched too for a while, then turned to face the old man. "Eddie?"

  "Mmm?"

  "Next time you see Rorrie . . . say hi for me, will you?"

  Eddie Karl smiled, nodded, and spat. This time he made the street, and his smile broadened. "Not that old yet," he said.

  ~*~

  Rorrie Weidman's body came back in October, when Brad was away at State. The burial was held on a Wednesday, so there would have been no way for Brad to have attended, even if he'd known. As it was, he didn't find out until two weeks later, from an out-of-date Messenger his mother sent him, and he gave it little thought. A dull, nearly forgotten regret had replaced the sorrow and disbelief he'd first felt, and his mind was primarily concerned with (a) keeping Bonnie while at the same time building up his relationship with Louisa Brewer, who'd let him fuck her on their first date inside a walk-in closet in a friend's apartment, (b) battling to keep his grades from slipping even further, and (c) whether or not to cut down on some of his campus activities. The leaders of the antiwar group he'd joined as a freshman were still strident and even more demanding than before, requiring his presence at a rally, a sit-in, a demonstration, on evenings before tests for which he should have been rabidly studying.

  Finally, the draft lottery solved his problems once and for all.

  There must have been a hundred of them packed into the small lounge, each jockeying for a view of the screen on which their fates would be decided. Brad sat toward the back of the room with his roommate, not caring that the screen was blocked by assorted long-haired and short-cropped heads. When it was time, he could hear the numbers, hear the dates. He didn't really want to see as well.

  "Okay! Shut up! They're doin' it!" came a voice from up front, and a flat silence fell over the room like a sheet. The first date was read in a clear treble from the tinny speaker that had been turned to maximum volume. Everyone looked around, at friends, at strangers, but no one spoke, laughed, moaned. The Angel had flown past without swinging the sickle.

  The second date rattled out, and, amazingly, no one reacted. Free again.

  At the reading of the third date, a neatly bearded boy near the front twisted his head as though he'd received a blow and gave a deep throaty grunt. He stood up, his face red, shrugging off the hands, unused to touching, that sought to comfort him, and stalked out of the lounge. First blood had been drawn.

  Strangely enough, everyone suddenly seemed more at ease. Their birth dates might be called, but at least they would not be the first, and Brad thought it was like death in a way, and whispered to his roommate, "It's like we're all gonna die sooner or later, but who wants to go first, y'know?"

  His roommate chuckled, then held a finger to his lips. The next date was already being read. Brad heard only the tail end: ". . . ary 14."

  "What?" he said in alarm.

  "February 14, now shut up," came a voice, and murmurs of agreement followed.

  After the fifth date was called, his roommate looked at him with a question in his eyes. Brad nodded. "Number four," he whispered. "Got me." He sat there silently as the rest of the 366 dates were drawn. Then the room emptied of students, all of them talking, some in a fast-paced tone of relief, others in a quiet monotone. Still others instructed friends how to fail the physical: "Drink some ink"; "Put sugar in the piss jar"; "Say you're a fag." One boy was crying silently. No one made fun of him. The last words Brad heard before he walked out alone into the night were, "Shit, they even got Jesus."

  Sitting on a bench in the grove just like the bench he and Rorrie Weidman used to sit on, he thought about Rorrie long and hard. Desert, he'd told Rorrie, get the hell out if you can't take it. He wondered if he could give himself the same advice. He knew in his heart he couldn't make it, even if a miracle struck and he didn't have to go to Vietnam. But the only alternative was Canada, and that frightened him. To be an outcast from his country, maybe forever, was a concept that he had never before confronted head-on. It would mean separation from everything and everyone he knew and loved. And he could never come back.

  If he did go to 'Nam, though, if he did, it would be two years of the Army, no more than a year in 'Nam, probably. He could stay alive for a year—he wouldn't be in combat all the time—he'd just be careful. That was Rorrie's problem.

  He was fast, casual, quick to do crazy things, take stupid dares. He'd probably walked into that mine on purpose, for God's sake.

  Brad shook his head and stood up. He wished he could buy booze at nineteen, and then he considered crashing someone's pad and drinking their booze. But instead, he went back to his dorm. His roommate, whose number was 287, was studying when he came in. "You okay?" he asked Brad.

  "Yeah."

  "What you gonna do?"

  "Shit . . . man, it's all such shit."

  In a few weeks Brad got the notice to report for his physical, which he passed. He went home, said goodbye to his parents and to Bonnie, who told him she'd be faithful and cautioned him to be careful. When he replied that he'd stay out of the way of bullets, she clarified her admonition by having it include a sexual warning as well. He decided bitterly that he would fuck the first gook whore who made him an offer.

  He didn't get the chance for quite a while. Basic training was a two-month nightmare of close bodies, filthy talk, and a series of near-fights that gave him constant bouts of diarrhea, which the Army doctors treated with large doses of Kaopectate. He went to Vietnam in March 1970 and came back thirteen months later not only alive, but untouched. He had not suffered so much as a scratch from the time of his arrival in the country to the time of his departure. He came back to the United States and to Merridale with an athlete's body—lean, rock-hard, cable-muscled, over which was stretched a tanned surface of smooth, unblemished skin. But if his mind could have shown a human form, it would have been shriveled, diseased, filled with the decay of a month-old corpse.

  It was April when he returned. Buds were slightly greening the trees, and his mother's daffodils were just starting to open, laying a slash of yellow across the base of their house. He entered his room as if it were a stranger's. He had forgotten the boy
who had lived there, could not remember his reasons for putting up the posters of rock stars, the wrinkled map of Middle-earth. Only the poster of Doc Savage touched a note of response: the torn shirt, bunched muscles, face wrinkled with something more than age. This he did not touch, but the others he took down, rolled up, and put into the closet, tossing into the waste can the nearly dry balls of Plasti-Tak that had held them to the walls.

  His mother was finishing the supper dishes, so he went onto the back porch, where his father was sitting reading the paper. He put it down when Brad came out the door, and they smiled at each other, sitting side by side on the glider and listening to the clatter of Melmac, the soft liquid sound of rinsing, the metallic rattle of silverware hitting the drying rack. Brad laughed low in his throat. "Jesus, what a pretty sound."

  His father nodded. "Don't let Mom hear you say that," he said with a grin.

  "Yeah, sure." He dug out a pack of Winstons from his pocket and lit one.

  "When did you start that?" his father asked.

  "Smoking? In 'Nam." He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke turn a small space of evening air gray, souring for a moment the scent of honeysuckle drifting up from the back fence.

  "Not too good for you, is it?" His father had never smoked.

  Brad shrugged. "I never thought about that. It didn't matter much. Maybe I'll quit."

  The father looked at his son's profile in the dying light. The face had changed, he thought. There was a depth in the eyes that had not been there before, the sense of having looked over the edge of a great abyss and having teetered on its edge, and the knowledge that one could balance there for a very long time without falling. The mouth was different too. It seemed larger, the lips thick and full, almost sensuous if the line of the mouth had not been so straight and firm, as though a knife edged in coal dust had scored across the petals of a rose.

  "Was it . . ." His father paused. "Was it very bad? Over there?"

  The full mouth twisted up on the side away from the older man so that all he saw was a crooked frown. Then Brad chuckled, and there was true humor in the sound, but he said nothing.