Ash Wednesday

by Chet Williamson

  "I . . . uh . . . I remember the World War. In Italy," his father went on. "There were a lot of things then I wished I'd never seen. I was about your age too. War's a . . . a terrible thing."

  Brad, silent, kept smoking, smiling.

  "You see much action?" his father asked. Brad made a

  nearly imperceptible move that might have been a nod. "Well, I know . . . I know what you must have gone through. I—”

  “Uh-unh." The sound floated out on gray smoke. "What?"

  "You don't know." It was said without rancor, merely as a statement of fact, to set the record straight.

  "Well, uh"—his father laughed uncomfortably—"I think I do. I mean, I was in combat—"

  "No." Brad looked at his father and smiled strangely, so that just his two top front teeth showed, like a rabbit's. "You really don't know, Dad. And no horror stories could make me think you do." The smile faded. "There was a master sergeant. Fifty years old. And he fragged himself. Just took a grenade, and pulled the pin, and held it up to his head like he was talking on the telephone. He did it because of something he saw. Something I . . . saw too. And twenty-five years before he'd been one of the first inside when they liberated Dachau." He smiled again. "So don't tell me you know. You don't know."

  The storm door opened and Brad's mother came out onto the porch. She bent over Brad and kissed his hair. "It's so good to have you back, honey. What are you boys talking about?" She sat between them on the glider.

  "I was just noticing your tulips, Mom. They really came out early this year."

  "I'm just glad we had some flowers for your homecoming." She folded her hands in her lap. "Do they have many flowers in Vietnam?"

  Brad laughed. "Oh, yeah, Mom, big ones. Bright orange. And white." He put an arm around her and hugged her closely. "So big you'd swear they fill the whole sky. But they don't last long," he said, looking upward to where the stars were just beginning to appear, like far-off flares of some impossibly foreign war. "They die real fast." His voice was barely a whisper.

  No one said anything for a long time, and Brad seemed not to notice his mother's shoulders stiffen as she wondered in a dim, dull, unimaginative way if her son had really come home.

  ~*~

  The next day was a Saturday, and he picked up Bonnie in his father's car just before noon. She was out the door of her parents' home even before he'd pulled the emergency brake, and threw herself into his arms as he left the car. "Hey"—he laughed—“take it easy, okay?"

  "Oh, Brad, thank God you're home, you don't know how much I've missed you, I prayed every night that you'd . . .” And so it went until he stilled her mouth with a kiss. He felt relief at the sudden quiet rather than any passion she might have aroused in him. They went into the house then, and he said hello in a remote and disinterested way to her parents. Afterward they drove out to the park and shared the picnic lunch Bonnie had packed. It was warm for April, and Brad was in shirtsleeves, and Bonnie, in a loose open blouse with a halter underneath. Throughout the lunch she seemed in a state of perpetual excitement, and after they'd eaten, she nearly dragged him the half mile back to the small clearing in the woods, where she pulled him to her and asked him to make love to her.

  "I'm on the pill now," she said. "I knew you were coming home and I wanted it to be so good for you, so I went on the pill."

  "That was nice of you," he said, giving a small laugh that startled her.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "Why? Something seem wrong?"

  "You just seem . . . funny."

  "Funny," he repeated. He looked down at her for a moment before he asked, "Do you still love me?"

  "Oh, yes," she said, making her eyes as soulful as she knew how.

  "And you want me to, make love to you?"

  "Yes."

  "And you want us to get married?"

  "Yes. I do. I want that . . . so much."

  "Okay, then." He sat down next to her, but he didn't touch her. "I'm going to tell you some things. And if after I tell you you still want what you want now, then I'll want it too. All right?"

  Terror ran through her. She fully expected to hear of every sexual escapade Brad had had in Vietnam, of teenaged whores and older mama sans, or whatever they called them, trained in how to please men in a hundred different sick ways, ways that she could never hope to compete with. She made herself smile and nod just the same, and sat up and listened as he spoke.

  But his words were not of sex and whores and strange diseases. Rather, to her surprise, he spoke of jungles and narrow caves, of grim things done in the middle of the night, couched in words and concepts she did not understand. Yet he painted scenes for her that parts of her mind could dimly comprehend—scenes of blood and fire, agony and death, glimpses of Brad, khaki-clad, tinted with red, eyes gleaming in orgasmic fear, doing things that she could not dream of anyone doing, not in real life, not in life as it was and had always been lived in Merridale. These were other dreams, the dark dreams, the dreams that would sometimes come to her unbidden in night's black heart, the same kind of things of which Brad spoke now, trying to gnaw their way into her sleep; but she would not let them, for they were filthy, worse than the worst things the whores of Saigon could ever bring themselves to do. And those dreams would turn from her and fade back to where they came from, and she would awaken from her effort and lie there sweating, thanking God that she had escaped from that confrontation with shadow.

  And now Brad was saying, wasn't he, that those dreams had been real, that he had lived them.

  It couldn't be. That was all. It couldn't be. And the words struck her and moved, not through her, but around her, like a stream parting to either side of a great rock, to be deflected, divided, weakened. If she heard now, it did' not matter.

  Brad finished. His face was solemn but not shaken by his tale of horrors. His cheeks were still ruddy, his hands steady. He looked at her coldly, appraisingly, and she smiled.

  "But were you faithful?" she asked. "Were you true to me?"

  He laughed as though he could not believe what she said, laughed and embraced her. "Oh, yes." He chuckled. " 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion!' "

  She did not ask who Cynara was, though she wondered about it.

  ~*~

  They decided to get married in June. When, in a moment of doubt, she asked him why he wanted to marry her, he told her that he needed her. Not loved, not wanted, but needed, and he did. He longed for normality, stability, even mediocrity. He wanted to drown himself in dullness. Though his parents suggested returning to college under the GI Bill, he told them that he had had enough of college. "I already learned too much," he said. "It's not easy to learn things." His father didn't know what he meant, but did not press him for an explanation. Since his return from the service, it was difficult to talk to Brad. He would speak readily of inconsequential things—baseball, television, movies—but on more serious matters, such as politics, he seemed to have no opinions at all, and of his own past and future he would say nothing. When his father or mother broached such subjects to him, he simply would not respond, or would walk out of the room without speaking.

  The week after he'd returned home he told them at the dinner table that he'd gotten a job that day at the Universal Shoe plant. They had not even known he was applying. "What kind of job, Brad?" his father asked.

  Brad put down his knife and fork. "I stand in front of a machine. I push a button, and two metal plates come together in front of me. Hot liquid plastic pours into a mold, and in twenty seconds the plates come apart. There in front of me are two plastic soles and heels. I put them in a box, rip out what's left in the feed tube, and push the button again."

  "A . . . machine operator," his father ventured.

  "That's right. It's a job I think I'm going to like very much." He picked up his knife and fork and turned his attention back to his meat loaf, not saying a word for the rest of the meal.

  Brad started working at Universal three days later,
and with his first paycheck he made a security deposit on an apartment in the Shady Dell complex, a cluster of twelve newly built pseudocolonial buildings on the outskirts of town, each housing eight families. The rent for the one-bedroom unit was $175 a month, a third of what he took home from Universal.

  The wedding took place in the second week of June, a justice of the peace presiding, and only the parents of the bride and groom in attendance. Bonnie was disappointed but uncomplaining. That fall, when she delightedly discovered she was pregnant, she quit her job at Allied Pressing after Brad assured her they could manage on his salary alone. Frank Donald Meyers was born the following May, a healthy eight-pound boy who resembled Bonnie far more than he did Brad. Brad began to work double shifts whenever he could to pay for the extra expenses the baby incurred. The extra work paid off in another way, for in early 1974 he was made assistant foreman. Mr. Rider, Universal's owner, liked the no-nonsense way in which Bradley Meyers handled himself. While the other workers seemed to use any excuse to indulge in horseplay, Brad was serious-minded, refusing to join in the pranks, choosing instead to keep working.

  Bonnie became pregnant again in late 1974, and Linda Marie followed Frank the next summer. The apartment quickly became cramped, and Brad made a fifteen-percent down payment on a six-year-old house on Sundale Road, a middle-income development. He had had no trouble saving the $5,000, as he spent money on nothing but his family. He had quit smoking, did not drink, had no hobbies and no apparent vices. No longer did he go hunting with his father, as he often had before he was drafted. He came home, played with Frank until it was the boy's bedtime, then sat in front of the television until 11:00, when he would switch it off. He never watched the news, and he seldom laughed at any of the sitcoms. When he talked to Bonnie, it was about trivial things, and when he made love to her, he was curiously detached, almost clinical. She was not and had never been a bright girl, but slowly it began to dawn on her that something was wrong with the marriage. Yet she was incapable of dealing with abstractions, and so could not solve or even define the problems. Brad did not beat her, as some of her friends were beaten by their husbands. He seldom lost his temper, never came home drunk or spent money foolishly. It was just that sometimes, after a late night feeding, when she slipped back into bed beside Brad, she thought she was next to a stranger. And sometimes then, in the middle of the night, she would almost but not quite remember what he had told her that day in the clearing. But just as she was about to think of it, to really remember what he had said, she would fall asleep, or think about something she would have to do the next day, or worry if she was pregnant again, and the memory would slide into the dark.

  She continued to be unaware of the condition of her marriage, even for a long time after Brad began to change. The first few incidents she dismissed as random flares of temper, things that she could have prevented. One morning just after six o'clock, she was fixing breakfast when Brad walked into the kitchen in his underwear. "Where are my socks?"

  "Urn . . . in the dryer, honey. I'm sorry, I forgot to take them out," she babbled, moving to the basement steps. "I'll get them right away, I just hope they're not damp." She ran down the steps and opened the dryer. The socks and the other clothes were not merely damp, they were soaked. "Oh, God, Brad, I'm sorry," she called up the stairs. "Honey, they're still wet. But there's one pair left in your drawer, I think. . . ."

  "They have holes in them." She looked up the stairs. He was standing at the top, looking vaguely threatening even in his near-nudity.

  "Well, hon, couldn't you just wear them today, and I'll—”

  “Fuck!" He spat out the word so gutturally that it was almost unintelligible, and slammed the cellar door on her.

  Her first thought was gratitude that the children were still sleeping; her second was a flash of concern that Brad might have awakened them. Not until these primarily maternal reactions were gone did she think of Brad's response at having to wear socks with holes in them as irrational overkill, and then only for an instant. He had a right to get angry, she told herself. He did so much for all three of them and expected so little in return. It was the least she could do to make sure his clothes were clean and dry, the house was picked up, the kids were quiet when he wanted to sleep late on weekend mornings.

  Brief outbursts of rage followed, randomly at first, then in a continuous pattern, and it seemed as if the most insignificant affronts received the most intense reactions. The inability to find a bottle opener in the kitchen, when all he had to do was ask Bonnie, drove him into a barely suppressed fury. A missing section of newspaper resulted in the paper being torn into shreds and scattered around the room. When Bonnie reused the coffee grounds because they'd run out, Brad took one sip and hurled the pot into the sink, where the glass shattered, nearly spraying Frankie and the baby with the steaming liquid. He seemed to come to his senses then, and while Bonnie held the baby to stop its crying, Brad put an arm around Frankie, who started to shy away from him in fright. A look of great sadness came over Brad, and he straightened up, watching the boy go to his mother's arms.

  "Take the kids in the living room," he said softly. "I'll clean this up." He did, and didn't speak of it again, never saying that he was sorry.

  Before long the invisible gate that had kept his temper from touching the children had opened, and though he did not strike them, Bonnie giving the spankings when they'd been earned, his words cut and tore them more than a heavy ring-fingered hand could ever have done.

  The Christmas of 1976 Frankie received from Brad's parents a battery-operated police car. The top of the car was rounded, and underneath was a plastic flap that was forced out during the motor's cycle, making the car flip over completely as it rolled along. On the day after Christmas the flap got stuck halfway, unable to flip the car or to let the wheels keep moving it. "Daddy," Frankie whined, "my car don't work."

  "Doesn't," Bonnie corrected.

  "Doesn't work."

  "Let me see." Brad took the car and opened the battery case underneath. The batteries were alkaline, put in the day before, and the contact points were all right.

  "It's stuck there, Daddy. That thing's stuck."

  "I see that, just shut up a minute."

  Bonnie could see the anger rising. "Honey," she said to Brad, "maybe your dad could take it back where they—"

  "Just let me look at it for a minute, for Christ's sake!"

  Frankie turned and looked at his mother, uncertain of what to do. When he looked back, Brad had his fingers in the small hole between flap and underbody, his teeth gritted with the effort to grasp a small metal spring that had somehow become twisted. "Daddy, don't break it!"

  "Do you want me to fix it or don't you?" Brad snarled, and the boy quailed.

  "Y-yeah . . ."

  "Okay, then, here!" He grabbed the plastic flap in one hand and snapped it off like a dead twig. The boy's face melted, butterlike, trembling with weeping, staring unbelievingly at his broken toy. "It'll run now," said Brad defensively. "It won't flip, but it'll run! Goddamn Hong Kong crap anyway. Here"—he thrust the car into Frankie's hands—"and don't ask me to fix your shit again." He stalked into the kitchen, and Bonnie heard the refrigerator door open, the metallic rattle of the nearly depleted six-pack, the door slam, and the pop and hiss of a ring tab being pulled.

  She hadn't really been aware of when the drinking had started in earnest. One Friday he'd come home from work a little high—he'd stopped at the Anchor with a few of his friends, since one of them was getting married that weekend—and she'd thought nothing of it. She'd seen her own father far worse every weekend when she'd lived at home. That next week he brought home a six-pack, and on the weekend, a case. Then slowly he began to drink more and more beer. At first a case had lasted two weeks, then a week and a half, and now he would drink four or five bottles in a single night, more on weekends. Instead of relaxing him, it seemed to Bonnie to make him more irritable, more impossible to talk to.

  Now Frankie's crying brought h
er back to the present, and she hugged the boy, looking sadly at Linda's wide puzzled eyes staring up from the floor where she played with her pop-beads. Bonnie didn't mind it when he got mad at her—she was a big girl, she could take it—but the kids were something else. She had to try to talk to him. Now, before he got too many more beers inside him.

  "Honey," she said to Frankie, whose cries had shrunk to soft, high-pitched sniveling, "you take Linda Marie to your room, okay?"

  "You mad at me too?" the boy asked.

  "No, hon, I'm not mad at you. I just want to talk to Daddy, that's all." The boy took his sister's hand and led her down the short hall to the room they shared, while Bonnie walked into the kitchen.

  Brad looked at her from under glowering brows. "Well?" he said with a surly cockiness that set her teeth on edge.

  "I don't want to fight," she said.

  "Who does?" He took a deep swig from the can. "What do you want?"

  "I . . . I just want to know why you picked on Frankie like that."

  He belched. "Scuse me. And excuse me for picking on Frankie. God forbid I should ever harm the little darlings.”

  “Stop it."

  "Did I hit him?" he flared. "Do I ever hit him? Or you? Or Linda?"

  "No, but—"

  "I never lay a hand on you!"

  "But your temper!"

  "Fuck my temper. So I got a temper, so what?"

  "So what?" she asked astounded. "So you're getting impossible to live with is what."

  "Then get the hell out." He turned away from her, as if ashamed of what he'd just said, and sat down.

  "You mean that?" she said quietly.

  His head shook almost imperceptibly. "No. No, I don't mean it." The voice was calm, his anger gone. She stepped behind his chair and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know what happens sometimes. I just . . . I just blow up, you know?"

  "I know."

  "I don't mean to. And I'd never want you to leave. I need you, Bonnie."