Good Day to Die

by Jim Harrison

  Sylvia tried to help Rosie with the dishes but Rosie said we should get on our way. I looked at Sylvia's cheap suitcase and thought of all the Southern girls that I had seen standing rather forlornly in bus stations in Cincinnati or Atlanta, a kind of tawdry prettiness about them compared to girls in New York City or California. And they tended to smile a lot as if they were born to please. I walked out to the car and got in the back seat while they were saying their farewells that I had no part in. My own wife had driven me to the airport in addition to loaning me the fare, an emotionless process that followed months of talk where no one was really wrong because no one had ever been right.

  Barely light. And a dark green against the window, a wall of green with my eye a few inches from it. Tim and Sylvia were breathing heavily with sleep in front of me, with a few strands of her hair over the head rest. Mosquitoes and sour air with all the windows up. The car was parked tight to the foliage on a very narrow country lane. How did we get here? Through the windshield I could see down a long isle of green split by the sandy trail that disappeared into ground fog. But something was moving and my skin prickled. The shape came closer and seemed to be floating in the fog moving toward the car. It was a black man carrying his lunch pail. Then our horn beeped and the man jumped then shrugged and passed the car with his eyes averted. The birds were silent.

  “Timmy?” Sylvia said.

  Tim yawned and stretched. “I didn't see him until he was right in front of us so I beeped.”

  We were somewhere off Route 90 near Cuevas on the other side of Gulfport. The night before I had told Tim that I thought we could buy dynamite around Bisbee or Douglas in Arizona. There's a lot of mining in that area. I had gotten a bit out of hand in the first few hundred miles what with finishing the whiskey and starting on another bottle. But all I really had done was go through the old false life story routine and then Tim and I had exchanged sexual anecdotes after which Sylvia had interjected that we were “sick” and that had started a long argument.

  Now I felt rather sorry about my unremitting foulness of the night before. It certainly had gotten the Sylvia question out of the way, or seemed to at least. When we had stopped for coffee her eyes were red from crying. Tim laughed and I pretended disinterest. The mood is a strange one. I mean this wanting to slaughter some lovely feeling in your brain—of course the psychology of it is open and only of nominal interest. Thank Christ people have almost stopped talking about such things.

  At the diner when Sylvia went into the washroom Tim started laughing again. “She's faking. She can fuck my ears off.”

  I thought about it when she walked back to the table with every trucker in the place staring at her then at us with some hostility. Who's getting the goodies, they probably wondered. Not me. Probably never. I was surprised when she didn't seem angry.

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  “No you're not.” She was smiling, if vaguely.

  Tim laughed. “You can't fool this sweet little bitch.” She punched him lightly in the shoulder, her smile broadening. “Why some of the things she likes just about make me blush.” Now she blushed and stared at her food.

  Tim revved the engine and drove up the trail looking for a place to turn around. We came to a small shack with a bare yard and backed in. I could see faces in the window, probably the home of the man Tim frightened.

  “You shouldn't have beeped,” I said.

  “I know. I get jumpy when I wake up.”

  I leaned over the seat and we began talking about routes. Sylvia had fallen back to sleep in the bucket seat and it was difficult not to stare at her legs which seemed so glaringly bare and beautiful.

  “They're the best I've ever seen,” Tim said.

  “Yes.” She moved sideways a little in the seat and her panties were clearly visible and the trace of a soft mound which was darker underneath the whiteness of the panties. I slumped back on the seat feeling like a shabby voyeur. There was a lump in my throat and my temples pounded with my hangover. I wanted to be in love momentarily. Maybe the inaccessibility of her made me desire her so much.

  We pulled into a small restaurant near the entrance to Route 90. “Sylvia, wake up.” He shook her with roughness. “He's been staring at your cunt for hours.” She was wide awake and glanced at me angrily when she pulled her skirt down.

  “That's a goddamn lie.”

  Tim shrieked and skipped into the restaurant. Sylvia brushed her hair back and got out. She shivered and tucked her blouse neatly into her skirt.

  “Sylvia, that's a lie. I mean what Tim said.” She only took my arm and we walked into the restaurant where Tim was already bullshitting the waitress.

  “See those two,” he said to the waitress. “They're on their honeymoon. They sure look tired. I bet they're sex maniacs.”

  The waitress giggled and stared at Sylvia. I quickly went to the men's room and looked at my swollen face. Perhaps it wasn't me. That was the displacement problem. How could I be sure. For once it didn't seem to matter much. I was along for the ride. Maybe we would do something interesting. If we blew up some dam it would have a sort of final interest to it like a fishing record that couldn't be taken away from you.

  PART

  II

  CHAPTER

  6

  FROM the balcony you could see the tops of buildings covered with tar and stones and then the dry riverbed of the White-water and beyond the riverbed Agua Prieta. On a hill to the right outside of Agua Prieta are a dozen white adobe buildings forming a square, the cantinas and whorehouses. At dawn and for a few hours afterwards the sky is very blue but before mid-morning the heat changes this and the sky becomes a sort of dull silver and the heat rises to a hundred degrees. When the breeze is just right you get a continuous stream of the fouled air from the huge copper smelter outside of Douglas. Douglas is a town of more than average ugliness but it makes up for its ugliness by its contiguity to Mexico, and even more by its air of the faded but still active cowtown, and the fact that it sits on land once fought over by the United States Cavalry and the fabled Mescalero Apache and also the Chiricahua. The White-water River is a joke as no river in southern Arizona is merely allowed to flow; the water is diverted to feed something whether it is cotton or cattle.

  In the room behind the balcony the large wood-paddled fan drifts concentrically with insufficient power to make any difference. Below the fan the room is bright and hot and not very well appointed. There are two large double beds and a few chairs and lamps and a dull green carpet. The bathroom is as big, though, as any bathroom in the Plaza Hotel in New York. You are tempted to close the door and sit there with the shower running cold which provides an amateurish but efficient imitation of air-conditioning.

  It was nearly noon when I awoke and after watching the fan for a few moments and going through a short countdown to make sure of my location I got up to go to the bathroom. Tim wasn't in the other bed but Sylvia was, quite nude, with the sheet straggling off onto the floor. She was on her side facing me so that when I walked to the bathroom I glanced at her rear. I stood there for a moment looking at it then out the window at the hotel parking lot. The car was still there. She moved a little on the bed and I took three steps further toward the bathroom. I frankly didn't want to be caught in so awkward a position. I merely stood there tasting the irony of the picture: nude man who loves nude woman sprawled on the bed but they have never touched nor does it seem very likely. In the shower I doubted that I had fully memorized her body and wanted to take another look. I took a grand assortment of vitamins but doubted they would outweigh the chili rellenos and tequila of the night before.

  Where was Tim? We had gotten in town the evening before then crossed the bridge into Agua Prieta. Events became less well defined after that. I remembered walking back with Sylvia. I remembered chewing on a single peyote cactus and thinking better of it. That was why my mouth tasted as if I had been eating oak leaves. Then there was the bar at the whorehouse and a scene of sorts.

  When I
got out of the bathroom Sylvia's eyes were open and she had drawn the sheet up.

  “Where's Timmy?”

  “I don't know.”

  “I guess I want to go home.”

  I said nothing. I found my Levi's and drew them on facing away from her. Then I slid them off deciding to go back to bed. I felt a bit nauseated and wanted to wait for the world to steady itself.

  “There's no point in going home. This has to be at least more interesting than Valdosta.”

  “I don't think so. You and Timmy are getting so crazy and I'm not sitting another night in that whorehouse. I thought we were going to the Grand Canyon. I go along with things because Timmy's screwed up but this is no good. Maybe he's still over there. Shut your eyes. I'm getting up.”

  “It's too late,” I said. “You had nothing on when I got up.”

  “Shut your eyes anyway.”

  Sylvia got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. I watched and she turned and looked at me from the door. “You're an asshole,” she said. That was the first time she used such a word.

  I woke up again an hour later and the room was empty. I had a painful hard-on. We had gone a bit too far I thought. After an insane amount of travel fatigue we got into Douglas and without eating had gone over to Agua Prieta and had a half dozen margaritas apiece except Sylvia who had maybe three and then ate dinner. By then it was close to midnight and we were all hyped up. Tim dropped a few pills and then we let a Mexican guide us to a whorehouse without telling Sylvia where we were going. There was a mariachi band in the cantina that fronted rather feebly for the whorehouse and I danced several times with Sylvia who seemed very happy. Then Tim flipped a coin and I went into the back first but settled on a blow job as the girl didn't seem too attractive. When I got back Tim had told Sylvia what was going on. I thought she was going to cry. Then Tim disappeared with a bar girl who kept shrieking “arriba, arriba” to the music. Sylvia was very pale and I tried to cheer her up.

  “How could you go with her? She's not even pretty.”

  “Tim's got you and I don't have anybody here,” I answered rather lamely.

  “Then why did he go with that girl?”

  I shrugged, wondering myself. I had a brief vision of repeating the act with Sylvia which made me shudder. We waited for an hour for Tim then Sylvia asked me to walk her home because she didn't feel safe by herself and she was leaving. I told the bartender who spoke English to give the message to Tim. When we got back to the hotel there was an edge of dawn and I went immediately to bed. When Sylvia got out of the bathroom I could see her get into bed in the lessening darkness.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “That's liquor talking.”

  “No it's not.” Then I went to sleep.

  Now I wondered if I should go look for Tim but dismissed the notion because it was very hot and I was sweating just lying there. My nausea though had passed and I felt hungry. There was a half-empty tequila bottle on the nightstand and I took a slug, feeling the warm liquid sear its way to my stomach. I heard a key in the lock and decided to feign sleep. There were a few flies buzzing around my face and through a squinted eye I could see that it was Sylvia and that she had brought me some coffee. Good girl. Now marry me. I heard the springs of her bed. She must be sitting wondering where Tim is. I must breathe more deeply and I'm sure she must think me absurd and embarrassing with my hard-on pointed up under the sheet. Maybe not. I've never known women very well and deeply and she might not be thinking any such thing or she might be thinking that it might be nice to sit on it for a moment as I know she and Tim haven't been together for three days. All that speed and alcohol too. Of course I would want to stay awake if someone were shooting at me I think. And Demerol's a sweet world in a way. I opened one eye slightly but she was looking at me.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “About two. You should eat something or you'll get a headache.”

  I turned on my side and drank the coffee. She was looking rather blankly over my body and out the window over the small balcony.

  “You can see that whorehouse from here,” she said.

  “Yeah. I wish I was over there. It cures a hangover.”

  “Are they fun?”

  She acted interested in knowing and I mulled over a number of answers. None seemed quite right.

  “Not really fun. Except the most expensive ones in places like New York or Boston or London. Then it's just about like any girl only more skillful. Last night it was like buying something from a store. Not too much fun.”

  “A man in Atlanta once when Rosie and I went up there overnight shopping offered me fifty dollars.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I started laughing and he got angry and walked away. We were in a bar. Rosie is always glad to do it for free.”

  “And you aren't?”

  “No. I've only made love to Timmy and to another guy last year when I got drunk. Timmy screws everyone he wants. He doesn't want to get married.”

  “Don't tell him what I told you last night.”

  She paused, obviously not remembering. I was disappointed. It was apparent that I was not being taken seriously.

  “You were only drunk. You don't love me. You only want to screw me and I should probably let you. It doesn't make any difference.”

  “It makes a lot a of difference to me. Nobody wants a sympathy fuck. I would never fuck a girl again if it was a sympathy fuck.”

  I had gotten instantly angry. Anything that borders on mothering or sympathy has always made me angry. She shrugged and walked over to the bathroom. I could hear the shower running and instantly regretted my big mouth when I thought of her in the shower.

  The open window served as a hot air vent and I began to fantasize about glaciers and snow and the trips I had made into the mountains when the temperature never rose much above forty-five and was well below freezing in the middle of the night. When you got up at dawn say in the shadow of a mountain wall there was always a rime of frost on your sleeping bag. I always looked out from this dark clear light at the sun shining on some meadow or mammoth rock formation or small lake whose surface was invariably dimpled with trout rising. In the fifteen hundred or so miles we had driven I didn't see one likely trout stream or river. All the water looked sluggish and brown and warm. And I only drove perhaps two hundred of the miles. Tim was too flighty and nervous when anyone else was driving, especially Sylvia who had made a miscalculation while passing another car near Houston and had nearly finished us all. When I did drive I admittedly was too taken with Sylvia's chatter and her long legs, something that Tim picked up on right away even while trying to doze. But he did not seem to take such threats seriously, in fact, didn't seem to take my immediate affection for Sylvia as a threat at all. I found out why near New Iberia in Louisiana where after a big meal of crawfish and beer I crawled into the back seat and began snoring but then became half awake with general discomfort. I heard them talking rather low and steadily, first about why Tim hadn't returned to her after he got out of the hospital. He had gone to Los Angeles with a hospital friend and stayed wrecked for a month, then got in trouble in a fight and the judge let him go to Key West rather than jail. After all he had served two hitches or tried to serve two hitches. But he had no notion of settling down anywhere much less in Valdosta. And he said if he ever married anyone it would be Sylvia but he knew he wouldn't get married. He didn't want to be a mechanic in a Ford garage like his older brother or a gas jockey like his younger and he knew it was too late for him to go back to Georgia Tech. Sylvia had evidently been pregnant but miscarried and I could tell that she had counted on this at one time for drawing him back. But then his speech became more excitable, dreamier, like so many speed rips one hears. He either wanted to go to Alaska and work on the pipeline they were going to build or maybe go to Africa to be a professional soldier. He had known two sergeants who went to Angola to fight in a private army. The money was supposed to be great. No, he hadn't heard from them. Such
people don't write letters. She was silent for a long time, terribly depressed I figured. So many good women fall in love with maniacs I thought. Then Tim held up the slight hope for her that he might go to Australia and if he liked it and got a job he cared for he might send for her.

  It was all very pitiful in a way. These two didn't seem to belong to the twentieth century though they bore so many of its characteristic scars. I've always wondered how people who don't know anything about history get by but I've realized if you are ignorant of history you're not lost in it. Sylvia was only intent, it seemed, on some age-old mating procedure and felt a certain desperation in having given over six or seven years to a man whose conception of a proper life must have come from an old Errol Flynn movie. So simple and almost charming if you didn't know and care for them, a particularly foolish country song set into action. And she would out of an almost biological drive probably return home and marry finally someone she didn't love at all but have children she did love. She did not entertain alternatives.

  As we crossed Texas which seemed the width of earth itself even at a steady ninety miles an hour the misery started to spread. Australia passed with the scenery, was discarded for Alaska again or maybe becoming a hunting guide in British Columbia. When I was awake and not too drunk or comatose with depression we talked about hunting and fishing and in a very childish manner about women. Absurd things like the total justification of the double standard. You would naturally kill someone if they screwed your wife. That was assumed. But they were only attitudes for me that were believed because one repeated them, like the lies one repeated until they owned their own inalterable reality. I had decided to visit my wife four months before but stopped three blocks away and settled on glassing the house for intruders. I saw her put my daughter in the car and drive to the grocery store after wiping the snow from the windshield. An hour later I saw her come back from the grocery store with two bags of groceries and my daughter. I saw my dog trot down the far side of the street sniffing and pissing on an occasional lamppost. That evening I got quite drunk and called her saying I was in Philadelphia of all places and I might find a job that would draw the whole thing out of the fire. But then there was little fire left except the anti-mechanics of inertia; those married tend to stay married until . . . And as I became less sure of myself she gathered strength, became more shrewd and protective, and I began to find the clarity of her intelligence offensive. It seemed that over ten thousand dollars’ worth of Wellesley had prepared her for someone other than me.