by Andre Dubus
They left Strout’s car in Boston, in front of an apartment building on Commonwealth Avenue. When they got back to town Willis drove slowly over the bridge and Matt threw the keys into the Merrimack. The sky was turning light. Willis let him out a block from his house, and walking home he listened for sounds from the houses he passed. They were quiet. A light was on in his living room. He turned it off and undressed in there, and went softly toward the bedroom; in the hall he smelled the smoke, and he stood in the bedroom doorway and looked at the orange of her cigarette in the dark. The curtains were closed. He went to the closet and put his shoes on the floor and felt for a hanger.
‘Did you do it?’ she said.
He went down the hall to the bathroom and in the dark he washed his hands and face. Then he went to her, lay on his back, and pulled the sheet up to his throat.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘I think so.’
Now she touched him, lying on her side, her hand on his belly, his thigh.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
He started from the beginning, in the parking lot at the bar; but soon with his eyes closed and Ruth petting him, he spoke of Strout’s house: the order, the woman presence, the picture on the wall.
‘The way she was smiling,’ he said.
‘What about it?’
‘I don’t know. Did you ever see Strout’s girl? When you saw him in town?’
‘No.’
‘I wonder who she was.’
Then he thought: not was: is. Sleeping now she is his girl. He opened his eyes, then closed them again. There was more light beyond the curtains. With Ruth now he left Strout’s house and told again his lie to Strout, gave him again that hope that Strout must have for a while believed, else he would have to believe only the gun pointed at him for the last two hours of his life. And with Ruth he saw again the dropping suitcase, the darting move to the right: and he told of the first shot, feeling her hand on him but his heart isolated still, beating on the road still in that explosion like thunder. He told her the rest, but the words had no images for him, he did not see himself doing what the words said he had done; he only saw himself on that road.
‘We can’t tell the other kids,’ she said. ‘It’ll hurt them, thinking he got away. But we mustn’t.’
‘No.’
She was holding him, wanting him, and he wished he could make love with her but he could not. He saw Frank and Mary Ann making love in her bed, their eyes closed, their bodies brown and smelling of the sea; the other girl was faceless, bodiless, but he felt her sleeping now; and he saw Frank and Strout, their faces alive; he saw red and yellow leaves falling to the earth, then snow: falling and freezing and falling; and holding Ruth, his cheek touching her breast, he shuddered with a sob that he kept silent in his heart.
The Dark Men
THEIR DARK CIVILIAN clothes defied him. They were from the Office of Naval Intelligence, they sat in his leather chairs in his cabin, they poured coffee from his silver pot, and although they called him Captain and Sir, they denied or outmaneuvered his shoulder boards by refusing to wear their own. He did not know whether they were officers or not, they could even be civilians, and they came aboard his ship and into his cabin, they told him names which he had already forgotten and, in quiet inflectionless voices, as if they were bringing no news at all, they told him that three months ago, during a confession in San Francisco, someone gave them Joe Saldi’s name; and they told him what they had been doing for those three months, and what they had discovered. Then for a few moments they were talking but he wasn’t listening and there were no images in his mind, not yet; he didn’t see their faces either, though he was looking at them. If he was seeing anything at all, he was seeing the cold, sinking quickening of his heart. Then he entered their voices again, met their eyes, these men who looked for the dark sides of other men, and then he looked at his watch and said: ‘I’ve forgotten your names.’
They told him. He offered them more coffee and they took it, and as they poured he watched their hands and faces: they appeared to be in their late thirties. Their faces were drained of color, they were men who worked away from the sun. Todd pinched his earlobe; Foster breathed through his mouth. At times it was audible. Foster now had a dispatch case on his lap; the raised top of it concealed his hands, then he lifted a large manila envelope and handed it to Captain Devereaux. The Captain laid it in front of him; then slowly, with a forefinger, pushed it aside, toward the photograph of his wife.
‘I wonder how much you’ve missed,’ he said.
‘We have enough,’ Foster said.
‘That’s not what I meant. I suppose he doesn’t have much of a chance.’
‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Foster said. ‘But we don’t make recommendations. We only investigate.’
‘They always resign,’ Todd said.
Captain Devereaux looked at him. Then he picked up the envelope and dropped it across his desk, near Foster.
‘I don’t want to read it.’
Foster and Todd looked at each other; Todd pinched his ear.
‘Very well,’ Foster said. ‘Then I suppose we could see him now.’
‘I suppose you could.’ He dialed Joe’s stateroom, waited seven rings, then hung up and told them Commander Saldi’s plane was ashore and he might have gone flying. He went to the door and opened it and the Marine orderly saluted. The Captain told him to get Commander Saldi on the phone; he told him to try the pilots’ wardroom and the commanders’ wardroom and the officers’ barber shop.
‘I’ll try the OOD too, sir.’
‘Do that last.’
Then he sat at his desk and looked at them. Out of habit he was thinking of a way to make conversation but then he decided he would not. He looked away and tried not to hear Foster breathing.
‘He should be flown home tomorrow,’ Foster said. ‘It’s better for everyone that way.’
‘Before the word gets out,’ Todd said. ‘It always gets out.’
‘You shouldn’t complain.’
‘What’s that, Captain?’
‘It’s how you make your living, isn’t it? On word that gets out?’ Now he looked at them. ‘And where do you think he’ll be flown to? I mean where do you think he will choose?’
‘I don’t know where he’ll go, Captain,’ Foster said. ‘Our job is only to make sure he does.’
‘You contradict yourself. You said your job was only to investigate.’
‘Captain—’
‘Yes, Mr. Foster?’
‘Never mind, Captain.’
‘Have some coffee, Mr. Foster. Don’t be disappointed because I’m not making your work easy. Why should it be?’
‘We understand you’re a friend of his,’ Todd said. He was trying to sound gentle. ‘We understand that.’
‘Do you, Mr. Todd?’ The orderly knocked. ‘It’s strange to talk to you gentlemen; you don’t wear ribbons. I have no way of knowing where you’ve been.’
‘It doesn’t matter where we’ve been,’ Foster said.
‘Maybe that’s my point.’
He rose and went to the door. The orderly saluted.
‘Sir, the OOD says Commander Saldi went ashore. He’ll be back at eighteen hundred.’
‘When did the boat leave?’ Foster said.
Captain Devereaux looked at him. He was twisted around in his chair.
‘What boat is that, Mr. Foster?’
‘The one Commander Saldi took.’
Captain Devereaux looked at the orderly.
‘Fifteen minutes ago, sir.’
Foster took the envelope from the Captain’s desk, put it in his dispatch case, and he and Todd stood up. Captain Devereaux held the door. When they were abreast of him they stopped.
‘I don’t know what you think you’ve gained,’ Foster said.
‘Have a good day in Iwakuni,’ the Captain said.
‘We’ll be back tonight.’
From his door he watched them cross the passageway and s
tart down the ladder. Then he turned to the orderly.
‘Have my boat alongside in thirty minutes. Wait: do you know Commander Saldi? What he looks like?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Then make it an hour for the boat. Then go eat your lunch. I want you to come with me.’
The carrier was huge, it was anchored far out, and the ride in the launch took twenty minutes. It was a warm blue summer day and, to go ashore, he had changed from khakis to whites. He sat in the rear of the launch, his back against the gunwale, holding his cap so it wouldn’t blow off; Corporal Swanson sat opposite him, wearing a white pistol belt and a 45 in a spit-shined holster, his cap chin-strapped to his head, dozing in the warm sun, his chin sinking slowly till it touched his necktie, then he snapped his head up and glanced at the Captain who pretended he hadn’t seen, and in a few moments the sun did its work again and Swanson—who looked hung over—fought it for a while and then lost until his chin again touched the knot of his tie, and it stayed there; soon his mouth was open. The Captain looked back at the carrier, diminished now but still huge against the sky and the sea beyond; then he turned away and looked up at the blue sky and at the green and rocky shore, his vision broken once by the hull of a British freighter, then shore line again, while in his mind he saw Joe in the orange flight suit, helmet under his arm, crossing the flight deck and turning his face into the wind; sometimes Joe looked up at the bridge and smiled and waved: thinning black hair, a suntanned face that never seemed weary, and the Captain, looking down through glass and lifting his arm in a wave, felt his own weariness, and he yearned for the wind out there, away from the bridge that could make him an admiral, and away from the cabin where he slept little and badly and smoked too much and drank too much coffee and took Maalox after his meals; and Joe would move on to his plane near the catapult and beyond him the Pacific glittered under the sun, and the endless blue sky waited to lift him up; but now images collided in the Captain’s mind, images of night and shame, and he actually shook his head to cast them out and to cast out memory too, thinking he must move from one moment to the next and that no matter what he did the day held no hope, and that memory and imagination would only make it worse; he gazed ahead at the white buildings of the Marine air base and he looked at the boat’s wake, and kept himself from thinking about what had happened in his heart this morning when, as soon as Foster spoke Joe’s name, he had known what was coming next and though he had been Joe’s friend for thirteen years this was the first time he knew that he knew it.
As the boat neared the wharf Corporal Swanson was rubbing his neck and blinking his eyes. When the engine slowed, the Captain leaned forward and told him what to do.
‘After that,’ he said, ‘you can sack out till I get back.’
It was early Thursday afternoon, so there weren’t many people in the Officers’ Club. A commander and his handsome wife were finishing lunch. The commander was a flight surgeon. Three Marine pilots were drinking at the bar. They were loud and happy and the Captain liked being near them. He chose a small polished table with two leather chairs, and he sat facing the door. A Japanese girl took his order. She was pretty and she wore a purple kimono of silk brocade, and as she walked back to the bar he felt an instant’s yearning and then it was gone and he was both amused and wistful because either age or responsibility or both had this year kept him clean. He was finishing his second drink when Joe stepped in, wearing whites with short sleeves, four rows of ribbons under the gold wings on his breast, his white cap under his arm like a football; he stood looking about the room while his eyes adjusted and Captain Devereaux raised his hand and Joe saw him and waved and came forward. The Captain stood and took his hand and nodded toward the laughing pilots at the bar.
‘It is peacetime and the pilots are happy pretending to make war. I’m about to start my third gimlet. Are you behind?’
‘I am.’
They sat, and the Captain signalled to the Japanese girl at the end of the bar, pointed at his glass and at Joe and then himself. Under the table Joe clicked his heels, and briskly raised his hand and held it salute-like at his brow: ‘Commander Saldi, sir. Captain Devereaux wishes the Commander to join him at the O Club sir. In the bar sir. He says if the Commander wishes to go back to the ship instead, sir, he is to send me to get the Captain and the Captain will take the Commander back to the ship in the Captain’s boat. Sir.’ He snapped off the salute. ‘Jesus Christ, Ray, I’ll drink with you. You don’t have to send them out with .45’s.’
The girl lowered the drinks and Joe reached for his wallet but the Captain was quicker and paid.
‘What about lunch,’ Joe said. ‘Have you had lunch?’
The girl was waiting.
‘I’ll buy you a lunch,’ the Captain said.
He watched the girl going back to the bar, then he looked at Joe, and Joe raised his glass and the Captain raised his and they touched them over the table.
‘Old Captain Devereaux.’
‘Old is right. I don’t sleep much, out there. My gut’s going too.’
‘Gimlets’ll back up on you.’
‘It’s the lime, not the gin.’
‘Right.’
‘How do you know? Is yours on the blink too?’
‘Not now. It has been.’
‘Not an ulcer.’
‘Oh hell no. You don’t have one, do you?’
‘Just acid. I ought to retain the booze and get rid of cigarettes and coffee.’
The girl gave them the menus and then went away.
‘You ought to have the lasagna, Joe.’
‘Where is it?’
‘It’s spelled sukiyaki.’
‘I don’t like lasagna anyway.’
‘Really?’
‘Too heavy.’
‘I’ll have the sukiyaki.’
‘So will I.’
‘Should we have sake too?’
‘How’s your gut?’
‘Fine. I’m going to lay off this lime juice.’
‘Then let’s have hot sake.’
When they laid down the menus the girl came and took their order and the Captain told her to bring his friend another drink but to leave him out.
‘It’s my stomach,’ he told her. ‘It needs gentleness.’
‘Oh? I could bring you some nice milk.’
‘No, not milk, thanks.’
‘What about Asahi?’
‘Yes: fine. Bring me a big Asahi.’
She brought Joe’s gimlet and his beer, and after a glass of it he quietly belched and felt better but not good enough, so he told Joe he’d be right back and he went to the men’s room and took from his pocket the aspirin tin containing six Maalox tablets and chewed two of them. He went back into the bar, approaching the table from Joe’s rear and, looking at his shoulders and the back of his head, he felt a power he didn’t want but had anyway, and he felt like a traitor for having it.
‘You ought to get up more,’ Joe said.
‘I know.’
‘Let’s do it then.’
‘When?’
‘After lunch. We can walk over to the field and go up for an hour.’
‘With gin and beer and sake.’
‘Oxygen’ll fix you up.’
‘I can’t though. I have things at the ship.’
‘Let them wait.’
‘They won’t.’
‘Tomorrow then.’
‘Tomorrow?’ He frowned, pretending he was trying to remember what tomorrow held for him, then he said: ‘All right. Tomorrow,’ and saying the word gave him a sense of plaintive hope that somehow and impossibly this moment with drinks and waiting for lunch would flow into a bright afternoon of tomorrow with Joe off his wing as they climbed from Iwakuni and out over the blue sea. And with that hope came longing: he wanted Foster and Todd to vanish, he wanted to go to sea next week and launch Joe into the wind, he wanted to not know what he knew and, with this longing, fear came shivering into his breast, and he did what he could not recall doing si
nce he was a boy trying to talk to his father, a young boy, before he finally gave up and became silent: he promised himself that when a certain thing happened he would tell Joe: when his cigarette burned down; when he finished his beer; when the girl brought the sukiyaki; when Joe finished telling his story; and as each of these occurred, a third and powerful hand of his clutched his throat and squeezed.
The girl stood smiling and serving them until all the sukiyaki was on their plates and then she left, and he was chilled by her leaving because he had been flirting with her, praising the meal and her kimono and her face and small delicate hands, he had been cocking his head to her and glancing up at her, not up very high because he was a tall man and sat tall and she was barely over five feet and maybe not even that; now she was gone. He started to look at Joe, then poured sake into the china tumbler and carefully pinched rice with his chopsticks and dipped it into raw egg and, leaning forward, quickly raised it to his mouth, and heard over Joe’s voice the drinking talk of the Marines at the bar, and he chewed his rice and hated his fear and silence and when he took another swallow of sake the acid rose to his throat and he held his breath for a moment till it went down, and then took another swallow and that one was all right. Joe was laughing: ‘—and he said I couldn’t bail out, Commander. I’m afraid of sharks. You see, he really meant it but the bombardier and the crewman didn’t believe him. They thought he believed he had a chance to make it, and he was just being cheerful to help them along. Truth was, he thought he’d go down, but he wasn’t going into the water without that plane around him. So he kept telling them: look, you guys better jump, and they’d say what about you, and he’d say not me, I ain’t getting down there with no sharks. So they stuck with him and he hit the ship first try, he said if he’d got waved off that time he’d have gone in and too low for anybody to bail out and he was cussing the other two for making him responsible for them going down too. But then he made it and I gave him a shot of rye in my room and he told me, You see, I don’t even wade. Not in salt water. I haven’t been in salt water for fourteen years. He was shot down, you see, in the Pacific, and he swam to his raft and he was climbing aboard when a shark got his co-pilot. He said the water turned red. He said I heard that scream every night for ten years. He said I ain’t been in the water ever since and if any shark’s going to get Chuck Thomson he’s going to be the most disguised shark you ever saw because he’s going to cross two hundred feet of sand walking on his tail and wearing a double-breasted pinstripe suit and some of them reflecting sunglasses—’ Then Joe was laughing again, and the Captain was too, his body jerked and made sounds and then he was telling a story too, listening to it as it took shape, just as he had watched and listened to his own laughter: another story of men who had nearly gone into the sea and then had laughed, and after that Joe told one and then he told another, and they kept going. They did not tell stories of valor without humor, as though valor were expected but humor was not, and the man who had both was better. And they did not talk about the dead. Sometimes they spoke a name but that was all. Three o’clock came and the girl brought more tea and Captain Devereaux went to the men’s room and chewed two more tablets, standing alone at the mirror, but Joe’s ghost was with him, and he went back to the table and looked at Joe and he could not feel the wine now, his heart was quick, his fingers tight on the tumbler of tea, and he said: ‘There are two men, Joe. On my ship. Or they were. They’re coming back tonight.’ And already Joe’s eyes brightened, even before the Captain said: ‘They’re from ONI, Joe, and it’s about you.’
