Girls

by Frederick Busch

  “Archie Halpern would think so.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “I mostly know what I think about things from you and from Archie. So, yeah. I guess so. Yeah. I feel shitty, too. How’s that?”

  “So now you feel better because you said so,” she said, smiling even though her eyes were filled and her cheeks were streaked. She said, “There. It’s what a nurse knows how to do.”

  “Is this what playing nurse means? I always thought it meant, you know—”

  “Sex,” she said.

  “Ah.”

  “Remember it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We used to have it. I think we had some several months ago. Well. I guess I wouldn’t quite call it that.”

  “That was not your fault,” she said.

  “That’s right. I knew that. You were the one with the erection and you’re to blame for losing it,” I said.

  “You don’t do blame about hard-ons.”

  The dog slugged the floor with his tail.

  “Fanny, I wouldn’t know one of those right now if it knocked me off of my chair.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  I didn’t know what was in my head, but I was afraid to raise it and let her see my eyes, in case Rosalie Piri was in there looking out.

  I shrugged, and she said, “I didn’t come home to make love, Jack.”

  Trying not to look sneaky, I did raise my head, and I waited. She was waiting, too. I said, “What, Fanny?”

  “Are we, do you think, are we ever going to be all right?”

  I nodded hard. I said, “Damned right. Of course we are.”

  “Do you have any idea when?”

  “We’re getting there,” I said. “Don’t you think? Really?”

  Nurses look directly at it, and they name it out loud. She shook her head.

  “But maybe,” I said. “Right?”

  “If you want it to be maybe, we can say that.”

  “Is it worth coming off the shift early to come home and say maybe?”

  She said, “Jack.”

  The dog thumped his tail.

  I said, “So, then, maybe. All right?”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Really, though. A definite maybe.”

  She almost laughed. She shook her head. She finished her soup. I thought, as I stayed where I was, that somebody ought to walk around the table and hug this woman hard and just hold on.

  testify

  WE HAD THE USUAL upstate January thaw so late in the season, it was two days away from March when temperatures went toward twenty, and people new to the region talked about early spring. Students forsook heavy coats, and some professors came to work in sport jackets with sweaters underneath and, of course, the long scarf wrapped around the neck and trailing down the back.

  The dog got down to another level of dead creatures in the forest, and he came back on the second morning of the thaw with a bunch of loose but connected half-defrosted blue-brown flesh that he rolled on in the side yard. He tossed it in the air and chased it, dancing rigidly over it, back and forth, like an old brown rocking chair. Then he aimed his back at it and rolled around, his paws in the air, his back writhing. Occasionally, he took licks at it, then bites. When he came back in, I smelled him and sent him out.

  So, before work, on a day when you could see, if not feel, the sun, I rubbed the old dog down with shampoo and then rinsed him off with snow. I didn’t want him soaked so the lanolin ran out of his coat. I also didn’t want to smell the secrets he’d uncovered. But he’d had a happy morning, and I was glad.

  When I got to campus, the sun was paler, and it fell with even less weight than it had a couple of hours before. I cranked the window down and stuck my head out to look up. Clouds were massing, dirty and serrated and thick. Our thaw was about to be rescinded.

  I had thought about making an appointment for Fanny and me with Archie Halpern. I had thought about it for several nights and days. I didn’t drive to the Blue Bird, though, and I didn’t phone his office on campus or call him at home. I read reports from the night men and I looked through the mail. The president promised us all, students, faculty, and staff (as they called us): He would move heaven and earth, he would use all powers at his disposal, he would bring to bear every resource possessed by the college, to set free Irene Horstmuller. I thought she was wrong and also a goddamned hero and I loved what she did. Archie would call this being in conflict. Apparently, no one was telling the Secret Service or the FBI or anyone in the courts that the records she was sent to jail for protecting didn’t exist. This much of it, I quite enjoyed. In being guilty as charged, she was also innocent, since what she protected by going to jail wasn’t on the surface of the earth or in it. Still, I worried about the Vice President.

  In a sealed campus-mail envelope was a letter for me on departmental letterhead. It said:

  And?

  It wasn’t signed with a name, only an initial: R. I thought it was pretty bold stuff, really. Consorting with staff couldn’t be easy on any campus, and surely not this one, with its heavy burden of reputation. This was a training center for the overprivileged, underdisciplined children of large money and thick ease. They were here to learn how to manage credit cards Fanny and I couldn’t qualify for. The faculty, I believe, enjoyed complaining about but also servicing the kids whose parents gave them the older Volvo to take back to school. You don’t fraternize with staff. You don’t lie down on a bed so when he approaches it your little arms extend above your head and stretch your small breasts tight.

  I folded the letter and buttoned it into my shirt pocket. I unbuttoned it and took the letter out and tore it into many small pieces.

  There was no mail about Janice Tanner or any of the other missing girls. My vice president for administration wanted my opinion on the performance of our Jeeps. I thought they were all right. They had gotten me where I needed to go, and had maybe saved a girl’s life. On the other hand, pieces of them could break away in your hands. So could anything else, I thought. I chucked his letter. I read that my staff evaluations were late. I chucked that letter, too. It was a good morning for disregarding mail. Of course, I wasn’t disregarding Rosalie Piri’s letter. I was only trying to.

  I left the rest of the mail, and I warmed up my Jeep. The sun was so pale, it barely lit the blanket of cloud cover. I thought the wind had picked up. I sniffed out the window, and I smelled moisture. We were going to end the thaw’s little illusion with a giant storm. And we were locked into winter for several more months. The corpses in storage would have to wait for burial. The dog was going to have to be happy with snorting at the surface of things. It was going to get snowy and then it was going to get cold.

  A sign outside the language laboratory said FREE HORSTMULLER. When I passed the library, I saw that someone had hung a bedsheet from a reference room window. FREE HORSTMULLER was painted on it in loopy red letters. Big Pete passed me and he nodded, telling me that all was well. So I didn’t understand when, a few hundred yards below, where he must have passed, I found a long Crown Victoria sedan with its right-side wheels stuck in frozen mud the driver had churned his way down to, trying to get free. They were up to visit the campus with their son, a very long boy who sat in the backseat, his legs folded so his knees were almost at the level of his chin. I used the cable and I pulled them out.

  I called for Pete to meet me, and we had our little rendezvous in the parking lot behind the Jewish Center. We angled so the driver’s side windows were next to each other.

  Pete said, “Jew-bee Jew-bee doo.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Nothin’. It’s just Jew town here, so I’m singing a theme song.”

  “We can’t do that, Pete. We can’t talk like that.”

  “Who says we can’t?” His little face behind thick glasses actually looked confused. He was dumber than water and too small for trouble and he got on my nerves. His job was the one I had in mind for a woman, and not only because he was too s
tupid to live and we needed a little courtesy on the staff. Like most colleges I’d heard about, rape here was one of the more favored indoor sports, and I thought the kids ought to be able to talk to a trained woman.

  “Well, Pete, actually it’s me.”

  “No shit, Jack.”

  “I mean it.”

  “All right.”

  “No. I mean I mean it. I’ll get you canned. Actually, I’ll do that myself. I’m halfway there.”

  “Over the Jews? Excuse me.”

  “How about the big Crown Victoria down below the library? They were halfway buried when you must have passed them.”

  “Jack, these fuckin’ kids with their big cars …”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not sayin’ these were Jews, mind you.”

  “No.”

  “They lord it over you. You know.”

  “Some of them do do that.”

  “Like they own you.”

  “Well, pretty much, they do, if they pay the tuition here, Pete. Pete?”

  “I shouldn’t of left them there.”

  “No. Pete?”

  “Mm?”

  “I think you’re fired. I want you to be. Take a sick day so you get paid, and I’m finding out if I can fire you. If so, you’re gone. If not, you really have to watch your ass around me.”

  “You mean like fired?”

  “Off the job.”

  “Fired.”

  “Take the car back and go home sick. Check with me tomorrow or the day after.”

  “You’re gonna be a man short, Jack.”

  “Not quite a whole one, Pete. I’ll see you.”

  I went around to the farthest dormitory, calling Anthony Berberich to tell him we’d try to tighten our rotations a little. I thought how I’d decided to suspect my English prof on account of his unlatched hood. And there was always poor William Franklin, whose chest must be black and blue from nipple to neck. I thought maybe I should add Big Pete to the list. I seemed to be trying to help the Tanners by considering the world not only a dangerous place—their daughter had proved that—but everyone in it capable of terrible acts. I was not a man you’d call at ease with the condition of things.

  We pushed ourselves, and I skipped my lunch break, and we covered our patrols. Snow had begun to fall in the late morning. It came down very quickly. With my window open, I could hear it in the naked tree limbs and against the windows of the school. It accumulated with a suddenness, and all at once the streets needed plowing, and soon enough the plows on campus and off couldn’t deal with the snow. By late in the day, I was using four-wheel drive on the upper campus roads. The plows left cars covered outside the classroom buildings, and we gave lifts to students and teachers leaving the campus. By four, word came that the school was closed. I walked past ice-stiffened posters that rattled on the walls. The faces of the girls were covered by heavy snow and fresh ice. The campus was deserted. I had the night shift called in early and I kept Anthony on.

  The buildings were dark except for hallway lights, and the walkway lights on campus shrank in the wind-driven snow to smears of brown-orange. I checked the half-buried cars to make certain no one was trapped inside. I used the radio to remind Anthony and the night men to do the same. I called the campus radio station, which seemed to specialize in the sound of people screaming, and asked them to request that the kids stay in. The president of the college called me to ask if everything was all right. I could have said no, and I could have said yes, and neither would have been true. So I said, “Not bad.” He seemed pleased.

  Coming back up, very slowly and in four-wheel drive, behind the humanities building, I saw a new shape. It had snow on it, especially on top of the roof, but it wasn’t buried. It looked to me like a Land Cruiser. I thought to myself, Trust a kid to drive a car worth more than a year’s salary. It was broad and high and there was an arrogance to how it was set on its wheels. I thought I heard a horn, and then I saw the Toyota’s lights go on and off, so I got as close as I could, pointed in at an angle you simply would have to call obtuse.

  I left the Jeep running, with its lights on the Toyota, and I walked over to the driver’s side. The back doors opened, and then the front passenger-side door. The driver’s door came out with surprising speed and it caught me on the knee and thigh, and I went down hard in the snow.

  A voice said, “Absolutely.” It was ab-so-lootlee, and I knew it was William Franklin. He’d brought some friends for me to meet, I thought.

  One of them was wearing a sweatshirt or sweater and speed gloves, what you wear when you work with the light bag. His hair was shiny in the headlights of the Jeep, and it was pulled back in a ponytail. He was either advertising he was a middle-aged vet who hadn’t gotten past 1973, or he was an Indian, maybe an Onondaga, or maybe he was both. He had a big belly and sloping shoulders and those long, ropy-muscled arms. He wouldn’t have stamina, I thought, but he would do a lot of damage before he tired out.

  The others wore waist-length jackets, working clothes that would leave them free to pivot, spin, run, or kick. One of the jackets looked leathery; one seemed made of cloth. They were shorter than the Indian, but almost as broad, and while one of them seemed to carry a gut, the other was lean and hard-looking.

  I saw this on the run or, really, on the clamber. I got to my feet as fast as I could and leaned my back against the Jeep. The light would be in their eyes, not mine, and they’d not be able to reach my back too easily. It wouldn’t matter in a while, but I thought I ought to do what I knew how to do.

  The roll of dimes was in the car, and so was anything else I could use, including gloves. William Franklin shouted, “Absolutely yes! It’s him!”

  The Indian came around his door, holding it for balance, slipping a little in what I thought were street shoes, maybe loafers. I held on to the grille of the Jeep and kicked him as hard in the knee as I could with the toe of my heavy boot. He skidded in toward me, but he was down. I let go of the car and hit him in the throat with a chopping fist. I missed the throat because he knew his business and tucked his chin into his chest. I made him uncomfortable, but I also numbed up my fist. He went facedown, then rolled back away from me. His leg wouldn’t work right away.

  The first squat one, the one with the bigger belly, threw a big roundhouse left to the body. Amateur, I thought. The amateur connected with the right side of my ribs and I felt him through my coat. I came over his left, like you’re supposed to, with a sweet, short, crossing right. He stopped where he was. My right hand had gone from numb to sore and now it plain hurt very badly. But he wobbled. I ignored his friend, the leaner one, and followed up the right cross with a right knee. I went after that, as he dropped, with the chopping right that hadn’t worked on the Indian. It worked on him, but to the side of his face. I did it again, and I thought he might be through. Something had broken with the last blow, and I was hoping it was inside him and not in my hand.

  But by now, the lean one had hit me twice in the ribs, big, pounding blows. He worked the heavy bag, I thought. Or maybe he just killed people with his fists. He missed my nose but caught my temple. Then he caught my nose. I didn’t want to bend over or go down, but I did both, in segments, and one of them, the Indian who was up again, I thought, caught me on the back of the neck. It wasn’t the correct way to deliver that blow, which was lucky for me, but it was done quickly and with malice, which was unfortunate for a man in my position, which was down and exposed.

  I was in the snow now, on my knees, and almost out of business. My head went back a few times and made contact with the car. Someone was landing feet in my belly and ribs. A shot took my elbow, and I went facedown. I tried to roll under the Jeep, and I got partway there. They pulled me out. I tried to cover up, but I couldn’t see and I couldn’t make my arms work. My mouth was filled with blood and I thought I was maybe breathing it in, because I started to cough.

  William Franklin said, “You let him spit his blood on you like that?” It was yoo. He said, “You gonn
a let him give yez AIDS?”

  One of them said, “Holy shit.”

  Someone else said, “AIDS motherfuckin’ fag.”

  They continued to deliver the message with their feet. They’d let go of me by now, and I worked my body into as much of a ball as my disconnected-feeling limbs could manage. I tried to cover my head with my arms. I couldn’t tell if I had. Nothing much was operational.

  I thought he was whispering down one of those cardboard tubes that paper towels come wrapped around. He said something in hollow-sounding whispers, but I couldn’t understand him.

  Another one—maybe it was Franklin—shouted over the wind, and I did hear him. He cried, “Don’t piss us off.”

  Another one said, “This is not about pissed off. The man understands.”

  My tongue was too big for my mouth. I kept swallowing liquids. I was blind. I was trying to decide about breathing, because it hurt. I knew if they did any more, it would kill me.

  They did a little more. They went twice more to the body and I decided not to breathe. I wondered if they’d killed me. Someone dragged me someplace. I was cold. Someone drove a car away, maybe my Jeep, I thought. I thought if I was thinking, maybe I wasn’t dead. I heard their Toyota turn over, a low, nasty rumble, and then they left.

  After they were gone, I listened to the snow rattling on something, maybe the backs of my ears. I heard a low chugging noise that I thought might be my Jeep. I waited a little while longer to see if I was dead. I opened my eyes. I actually opened one. The other didn’t work. I saw the Jeep about ten or fifteen feet away. You can walk that, I thought. I moved a little. I thought, So crawl it. I moved again, and then I thought, Roll.

  I inched there. My hands were alongside my body and my face was down. I moved my knees and, each time I did, I quickly learned it was important to hold my breath. That fooled my body between the throat and the waist into believing the pain was better. A few fingers didn’t work, and I couldn’t lift my arms. My legs were sore, but they could push. My forehead and the front of my face got very numb from the slush and snow and ice, but that was good. Numbness was wonderful. I wanted more. I dug my head into the snow and I pushed with my knees and angled my shoulders, and within no more than a month, I seemed to be near the car.