Carrying

by Theodore Weesner

  Her dairy bar counter is no more occupied than it was the last time I was here, and as I settle onto a stool and she comes along to take my order, I say to her, “Hi. Remember me?”

  She looks, and says, “I think I do.”

  “Six or eight weeks ago…I mentioned that I was thinking of renting a place here, within walking distance of downtown? If I l may say so, I found you to be most friendly and attractive…have been wondering if there was any chance you would join me for coffee… lunch…whatever…tomorrow or the next day? I’d like to make your acquaintance and learn more about daily life in Bristol.”

  To my surprise, she hears me out before saying, “Coffee? Let me think about that. Would you like to order something?”

  “I would. A grilled cheese and a Diet Coke. Wanted to get out what I really wanted to say before I lost my nerve.”

  She smiles, looking surprised and pleased by my invitation.

  “A grilled cheese and a Diet Coke,” she says. “I’ll think about coffee,” she adds, smiling. “You’re who?” she wants to know on turning away.

  “A visitor, from Somerville. Herman Roth,” I say as she moves along to fill my order. “I’ve been teaching…at Massachusetts State. A widower. Have a grown son and daughter. New York and DC. I’ll be sort of retiring next summer…to read and write in peace. What happened…Bristol caught my fancy on some earlier trips through here to visit friends, and I’m trying to decide if moving here to live is what I want to do. Talking to you would help a lot.”

  “Conversation…or a date?” she says.

  “I guess both,” I tell her.

  As she places my Coke on the counter, she glances at my face. “I’m a single mom,” she says. “My daughter is nineteen and lives at home. Her father–my husband–died in a car crash four years ago. I have yet to go out, if you know what I mean. Which isn’t to say I’m not ready to make friends.”

  “Bert,” I reply. “You know, I like the clarity of your name. Every time I think of it, and of you, I smile. I’m asking, you know, as a stranger from out of town. Coffee, or lunch? Tomorrow? No need to think of it as going out or anything like that. Two grown-ups having lunch and talking about life in a small town in New Hampshire. The reason I like this place. The reason it’s caught my eye–besides you–is that it looks like it hasn’t changed in forty years. Seems peaceful. Which I like. I have money enough, in my pension and so on, that I can relocate to a quiet town where I’ll be able to read and write in semi-retirement. Think about it. I’ll have my grilled cheese, and if it’s something you can do, give a nod. Otherwise I won’t bother you. Who knows? We might get along. Or not. We can find out, if you’re up for a modest adventure into the unknown over coffee and a bite to eat.”

  “I’ll think about it,” she says.

  “Stranger enters old-fashioned dairy bar…invites pretty woman on a date for coffee. And conversation. No risk in that, do you think?”

  “Eat your sandwich…on which I put some extra cheese,” she says, making me smile with pleasure and letting me know that in every likelihood she will be agreeing to the date I’ve proposed, that she is fun, that the timing in our lives is okay, that we’re going to check each other out to see what kind of friendship might lie in the cards we’re holding here in our middle years.

  “Okay,” she says, standing before me and writing the check.

  “Okay?”

  “You better not turn out to be some kind of weirdo,” she says. “You don’t seem like that…which is why I’m saying okay. You seem like a nice man, a teacher who has no reason to lie about moving to a town by a lake to read and write. Makes sense to me. There’s a restaurant on the second corner here to the right. The Hot Skillet. I could meet you there for lunch, tomorrow, if you can arrive on the early side. I start my evening shift here at 3 p.m.”

  “Excellent,” I say. “We can grab some lunch. I can show you that I am not a weirdo. You can tell me about life in Bristol. I’m pleased…that you’re as genuine as I thought you might possibly be.”

  After half an hour, as I leave the Bristol Dairy Bar, I leave a triple tip on the counter with the old-fashioned greenish-white check. Given that Bert is attending to a new pair of customers, I say only, on leaving, “See you,” to which she replies with a faint 1950s smile that pleases me more than I would have thought.

  The next day, as I enter on the early side of noon, I see that the Hot Skillet offers high wooden tables and chairs with views of the street and sidewalk. As I take a seat and gaze through glass, I see Bert approaching almost at once, dressed up a bit, looking attractive in a pastel blouse on a warm October day. Standing to greet her and present a high chair, I say, “Nice to see you. I checked in the mirror, before I left the B&B, to be sure I wasn’t displaying too much weirdness. You look nice.”

  “Well…a small amount of weirdness may be acceptable.”

  “Truth is, I have little use for weirdness. Thing that attracted me, the first time I drove through this town, was an impression that it hadn’t changed. Nor did I expect to meet anyone. But there you were…and I began thinking of you quite a bit. All at once it was a world where I thought I might fit in, in an unassuming way…where I might start off actually knowing someone! May sound like nothing much to you, but to me it’s been intriguing. I’ve been thinking about it all the time.”

  “I thought for some time that I’d be better off–as would my daughter–if we moved to a bigger town. Manchester. Or Nashua. I haven’t wanted to leave the state. Not even Bristol…where I grew up. Still, it’s a small town. Was…until you came along.”

  We laugh over this, and I’m so pleased to have her say something nice that I say, “That’s the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in a quite a while.”

  “I’m teasing.”

  “I know. Still, it’s a treat to me to talk with someone and laugh.”

  “You’re going to think I’m weird!” she says.

  “Weird enough,” I say.

  “You’re thinking of moving here…thinking, if you do, that we can go out together?” Bert says on finishing her fizzy soft drink.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “I’m okay with that…though I’m not making any promises. What I notice,” she adds. “Not that I mind. What I notice is that you sort of speak through what might be said, and how we might say it. Do you do that because you’re a teacher?”

  This time I’m the one to grin. “I guess I do that because I’m a teacher, and a writer,” I say. “It’s how my mind works. I hope it’s not disconcerting. It’s because I’ve been kind of a loner who spends a lot of time reading and writing. Truth is, I talk to myself when I’m doing either one. The way a person walks through scenes, you know, to see how they feel…what people would say. I do it all the time. You can call it my crazy dimension, if you like. I don’t mind.”

  She’s watching me, and in doing so smiles with fondness enough to let me know she is accepting of this dimension in me. “If you visit next week,” she says. “I’d like you to call, not to ask if I want you to visit, because I know that I do.”

  “Another nice thing to say,” I say.

  “I’d like you to meet my daughter. Sometime. We come as a package. If we’re going to go out, I don’t want there to be any surprises. You’re either a dream that has strolled into my life…or you’re not. I like you. I like the things you say and how you say them. Can we go with that for now?”

  “As you wish,” I tell her. “I will be visiting next weekend…and I’ll call to see if we can set up a time to get together.”

  “I like your style,” she says. “Friendly stranger comes to town…invites single mom out to lunch,” she adds, over which we both laugh with pleasure.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Late august 1990

  If the president tries to throw Iraq out of Kuwait by military force, it will not be a quick or bloodless operation, and it might not be successful; and the alternative, as it now appears, would be stalemate in the
desert–Iraq in Kuwait, the U.S. in Saudi Arabia. As became evident in Korea and Vietnam, however, the American public has little tolerance for long, limited, stalemated wars and the high casualty rate they bring.

  –Tom Wicker, The New York Times, August 13, 1990

  An effort to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait will, according to estimates, cost the lives of 20,000 American soldiers.

  –Senator Clairborne Pell, Boston Globe, August 20, 1990

  Twenty thousand U.S. soldiers dying in battle? Are the observations accurate? If we ship out to Kuwait with our armor (there appears to be a fifty-fifty chance that we will) most people on base are saying the Russian T-72s we’ve faced in maneuvers will be like toys against our M1A1s let alone our Air Force, Marine Corps, Army Rangers, and Airborne Divisions. Older NCOs all around keep saying, ‘It ain’t gonna be your daddy’s Vietnam and anybody who thinks it is will be in for one hell of a surprise.’

  It’s unreal to me to be involved in an event that may count in world history. I’m excited to be here and all the more drawn to making a trip into town before someone comes shouting that it’s time to load up and move out. My army experience may be only beginning.

  The gangbanger is staring at me.

  It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m in uniform (more than a little self-conscious with the new stripes on my arms) in a Bayreuth joint called Club Miami Beach The Gasthaus is one of several sexy bars on an Allee near the Red River and riverfront Kanalstrasse. Moving to a pick-up station at the bar, I glance left only to find myself looking right into the face of the dismount scout himself, sending fire my way with eyes out to cut and kill.

  Due to whatever impulse of fear I may be feeling, I laugh. I approached the twin chrome pipes to pick up drinks to carry to a table where a woman I met in the city’s fancy indoor Bahnhof promenade sits waiting. Gazing at DeMarcus Owens, I go on grinning, no matter the alarm that is erupting within me. Had to happen, is my thought, though I always thought it would be on base, at the post movie theater or snack bar, rather than in town at a bar. I feel threatened by the muscular dismount scout no matter that he, too, like his two companions, is wearing class A’s. I might as well have glanced between my legs into a toilet and seen a coiled water moccasin eyeballing my private plumbing. Despite my hammering heart, I keep smiling and nearly laughing.

  Against my better judgment, I do the blinking. Returning eyes front, I feel a squirm of cowardice down my spine. There’s always an impulse to not back down, as I just did, and when I do I always feel the shame of a worm disliking itself.

  A woman behind the bar says sieben Mark something (numbers make up most of the German I’ve learned so far), and I deposit more than enough cash and take up one glass each of beer and white wine. Pivoting in the face of Mike Tyson’s continuing glare, belying his lingering desire to cut my throat for having dissed him in public, I walk off, studying the wine’s popping streamers and seeking to appear above it all.

  Recovering my seat opposite the woman at our table, I eye-sweep the bar and see the dismount scout staring over his shoulder. I return his gaze for a mini-instant before blinking again on giving it up. When I glance again, he’s talking to the two African American soldiers with whom he’s sharing a table. His shaved head and shoulders remain in place, looking chiseled in stone. I knew I would run into the son-of-a-bitch but had avoided actually believing I would.

  I smile over the table at Magdalena von Benschotten (Magda) no matter that the stunning woman is old enough to be my mother. I lift my glass in a bit of a toast. Maybe she just picked me up in the Bahnhof, I’m not sure. Wanted a young soldier to buy her some drinks. I know only that she had me pause to talk in the Bahnhof promenade and here we are at a table in a Gasthaus on Kanalstrasse, based on her instructions to walk in one direction and another. Maybe she’s a prostitute, I don’t know and don’t care…I am into the adventure of experience. Her eyes are crystal blue and her ashen blonde hair makes her look like a vintage movie star who stepped moments earlier from a vintage Mercedes on the lot at MGM.

  “You are studying me again,” she says. “Before you are studying me, as you are doing again. Am I so interesting?”

  She’s teasing, and I smile. “You’re interesting to look at,” I tell her. “You look like a movie star.”

  I knew this glamorous woman wanted me to pick her up. Inexperienced with women but feeling fearless, I continued but a few steps along a Bahnhof offering of shops and flower stalls before I glanced back and saw that she was doing the same. Willing (eager?) to talk with anyone, casting caution to the beer-and-cigar-smelling German air, I waited for her to say whatever she might wish to say. She was exotic, interested, maybe eager, too, and the animal within had me deciding to cross a forbidden line no matter what we had heard about captivating Europeans taking young soldiers to the cleaners, sending them to the dispensary, breaking their foolish hearts. “These folks have been around and know more tricks than you’ve ever dreamed of,” an NCO warned in an orientation soon after we arrived at Christensen Barracks.

  Raising my beer, noting once more how pretty are her eyes, her nose and mouth–as pretty as something painted on a child’s face–I say, “To experience,” and take a sip. I smile, hoping she will find me charming and clever. She’s old, but maybe not that old. Forties or fifties. Maybe older, but so what? Hadn’t I joined the army to see the world? “And to you, Magdalena von Benschotten,” I add, enjoying speaking her grand name and, if the junior member in our party, feeling bold with her. “Let’s drink up and find us another place.”

  “Anozzer place? Pleeze, I do not understand. Anozzer place?”

  “I don’t like it here, that’s all.”

  “You do not like it here? Dear young man, I am not understanding.”

  “Trouble could be a-brewing,” I say. “What it is…if I stay, I might end up in a fight with one of the black guys sitting over there.”

  “Please, black guys? You are afraid of black guys? Why is this?”

  “Not like that,” I say. “Not fear of black guys. It’s that I could end up in a fight with one of them who’s out for me.”

  “A young soldier fearing black guys? Dear me, what is one to think? What is U.S. Army saying to your fear of black guys?”

  I grin and catch up. “You know, you’re funny,” I say.

  I lean close and half-whisper, “This is like an African American hangout in case you haven’t noticed. I’m outnumbered. Could end up hurting somebody. Mess up my time in the army. That’s all I’m saying. This, right now, is not the place for me.”

  She spurts wine and laughter. “An African American hangout! You have said this is an African American hangout?”

  “Not so loud, okay? You know what I’m saying. It’s a hangout for soldiers who are black. Soldiers who may not like me being here.”

  “You will hurt people? Which people, may I ask, will you be hurting? A frightened boy soldier hurting people in an African American hangout? Goodness, is it now 1860, or 1945 in Alabama?”

  I study her a bit, in surprise at being mocked by her righteousness, on being charged–as she has done in her aloof and aristocratic way–with having made insensitive (racist?) remarks.

  “You’re a handful, aren’t you?” I say. “You’re getting me wrong here… while I can see that getting me wrong is something you like doing. I shouldn’t have said ‘African American hangout,’ I can see that, okay? What it is–pardon my fear–is there’s an African American soldier over there who vowed, twice, back when we first arrived, to cut my throat. Okay?”

  She smiles all the more, as if amused with me…even interested.

  “I’m not joking,” I say.

  “Is not a joke for an American soldier to fear the dark beastly ones?”

  “Look, I can take off if you like. Your wine’s paid for. I thought you wanted to sit down and talk. But if we can’t, we can’t. You’re not being fair, twisting my words like that.”

  “You are saying you do not fear the beastly
dark ones? Please, young man, do not insult my intelligence.”

  Her arched eyebrows above her high-bone-structure good looks add mischief to a mocking expression that is not entirely a smile. Wary by now of her bite–while having little wish, really, to return to being a lonely soldier on the Saturday afternoon streets of lofty Bayreuth–I say, “Okay. I don’t mind you making fun of me. Though you aren’t playing fair, Miss Magda. I did not mean to be racist. Okay? I was only trying to impress you. To have you know that I have an issue with one of the African American soldiers sitting over there.”

  “You say you do not fear black soldiers?” she mocks, continuing to smile.

  “Come on. And don’t be so loud. I have no interest in having the MPs called.” I lean close and whisper clearly: “That guy. Over there. We had a dust-up over a knife. He was carrying it in his shoe and I made him look bad by throwing it on the Autobahn. That’s it. It didn’t have anything to do, per se, with anything racial. It’s macho…because I made him look bad.”

  “Of course, how could something be racial in an African American hangout?”

  I sigh, sip my beer, can see that I should take off. “Look, if I’ve offended…I’m sorry,” I say. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said what I said. I did not mean to be racist, because I’m not…I don’t think. I grew up with black guys, am in the army with black guys. My roommate’s a black guy. Black guys can be like everyone, as far as I’m concerned. Like I say, I don’t mind your bite. I love your name. It’s like music. Though you don’t play real fair, you know.”

  Her expression is dismissive…while she appears to remain interested.

  “In America the white man is not in fear of the black man doing this to his throat?” She does a finger-line over her neck, making me laugh. “Not in fear of the size of his ting?”