Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  “Only for now.” Donald took the money and went into the service station. He came out carrying two orange sodas, one of which he handed to Pete as he got into the car. “My treat,” he said.

  “No bags?”

  “Wow, thanks for reminding me.” Donald balanced his drink on the dashboard, but the slight rocking of the car as he got out tipped it onto the passenger’s seat, where half its contents foamed over before Pete could snatch it up again. Donald looked on while Pete held the bottle out the window, soda running down his fingers.

  “Wipe it up,” Pete told him. “Quick!”

  “With what?”

  Pete stared at him. “That shirt. Use the shirt.”

  Donald pulled a long face but did as he was told, his pale skin puckering against the wind.

  “Great, just great,” Pete said. “We haven’t even left the gas station yet.”

  Afterward, on the highway, Donald said, “This is a new car, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. This is a new car.”

  “Is that why you’re so upset about the seat?”

  “Forget it, okay? Let’s just forget about it.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “I just wish you’d be more careful,” Pete said. “These seats are made of leather. That stain won’t come out, not to mention the smell. I don’t see why I can’t have leather seats that smell like leather instead of orange pop.”

  “What was wrong with the other car?”

  Pete glanced over and saw that Donald had raised the hood of the blue sweatshirt he’d put on. The peaked hood above his gaunt, watchful face gave him the look of an inquisitor.

  “There wasn’t anything wrong with it,” Pete said. “I just happened to like this one better.”

  Donald nodded.

  There was a long silence between them as Pete drove on and the day darkened. On either side of the road lay stubble-covered fields. Low hills ran along the horizon, topped here and there with trees black against the evening sky. In the approaching line of cars a driver turned on his headlights. Pete did the same.

  “So what happened?” he asked. “Farm life not your bag?”

  Donald took some time to answer, and at last he said, simply, “It was my fault.”

  “What was your fault?”

  “The whole thing. Don’t play dumb, Pete. I know they wrote to you.” He looked at Pete, then stared out the windshield again.

  “I’m not playing dumb.”

  Donald shrugged.

  “All I really know is they asked you to leave,” Pete went on. “I don’t know any of the particulars.”

  “I blew it,” Donald said. “Believe me, you don’t want to hear the gory details.”

  “Sure I do,” Pete said. He added, “Everybody likes the gory details.”

  “You mean everybody likes to hear how someone else messed up.”

  “Right,” Pete said. “That’s how it is here on Spaceship Earth.”

  Donald bent one knee onto the front seat and leaned against the door. Pete was aware of his scrutiny. He waited. Night was coming on in a rush, filling the hollows of the land. Donald’s long cheeks and deep-set eyes were dark with shadow. His brow was white. “Do you ever dream about me?” he asked.

  “Do I ever dream about you? What kind of a question is that? Of course I don’t dream about you,” Pete said, untruthfully.

  “What do you dream about?”

  “Sex and money. Mostly money. A nightmare is when I dream I don’t have any.”

  “You’re just making that up,” Donald said.

  Pete smiled.

  “Sometimes I wake up at night,” Donald went on, “and I can tell you’re dreaming about me.”

  “We were talking about the farm,” Pete said. “Let’s finish that conversation and then we can talk about our various out-of-body experiences and the interesting things we did during previous incarnations.”

  For a moment Donald looked like a grinning skull; then he turned serious again. “There’s not that much to tell,” he said. “I just didn’t do anything right.”

  “That’s a little vague,” Pete said.

  “Well, like the groceries. Whenever it was my turn to get the groceries I’d blow it somehow. I’d bring the groceries home and half of them would be missing, or I’d have all the wrong things, the wrong kind of flour or the wrong kind of chocolate or whatever. One time I gave them away. It’s not funny, Pete.”

  Pete said, “Who’d you give the groceries to?”

  “Just some people I picked up driving home. Some field-workers. They had about eight kids with them and didn’t even speak English—just nodded their heads. Still, I shouldn’t have given away the groceries. Not all of them, anyway. I really learned my lesson about that. You have to be practical. You have to be fair to yourself.” Donald leaned forward, and Pete could sense his excitement. “There’s nothing actually wrong with being in business,” he said. “As long as you’re fair to other people you can still be fair to yourself. I’m thinking of going into business, Pete.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Pete said. “So, that’s the story? There isn’t any more to it than that?”

  “What did they tell you?” Donald asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “They must’ve told you something.”

  Pete shook his head.

  “They didn’t tell you about the fire?” When Pete shook his head again Donald regarded him for a time, then folded his arms across his chest and slumped back into the corner. “Everybody had to take turns cooking dinner. I usually did tuna casserole or spaghetti with garlic bread. But this one night I thought I’d do something different, something really interesting.” He looked sharply at Pete. “It’s all a big laugh to you, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Pete said.

  “You don’t know when to quit. You just keep hitting away.”

  “Tell me about the fire, Donald.”

  Donald kept watching him. “You have this compulsion to make me look foolish.”

  “Come off it, Donald. Don’t make a big thing out of this.”

  “I know why you do it. It’s because you don’t have any purpose in life. You’re afraid to relate to people who do, so you make fun of them.”

  “Relate,” Pete said.

  “You’re basically a very frightened individual,” Donald said. “Very threatened. You’ve always been like that. Do you remember when you used to try to kill me?”

  “I don’t have any compulsion to make you look foolish, Donald—you do it yourself. You’re doing it right now.”

  “You can’t tell me you don’t remember,” Donald said. “It was after my operation. You remember that.”

  “Sort of.” Pete shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Oh yes,” Donald said. “Do you want to see the scar?”

  “I remember you had an operation. I don’t remember the specifics, that’s all. And I sure as hell don’t remember trying to kill you.”

  “Oh yes,” Donald repeated, maddeningly. “You bet your life you did. All the time. The thing was, I couldn’t have anything happen to me where they sewed me up because then my intestines would come apart again and poison me. That was a big issue, Pete. Mom was always in a state about me climbing trees and so on. And you used to hit me there every chance you got.”

  “Mom was in a state every time you burped,” Pete said. “I don’t know. Maybe I bumped into you accidentally once or twice. I never did it deliberately.”

  “Every chance you got,” Donald said. “Like when the folks went out at night and left you to babysit. I’d hear them say good night, and then I’d hear the car start up, and when they were gone I’d lie there and listen. After a while I could hear you coming down the hall, and I’d close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. There were nights when you’d stand outside the door, just stand there, and then go away again. But most nights you’d open the door and I’d hear you in the room with me, breathing. You’d come over and sit next to me on the bed—you reme
mber, Pete, you have to—you’d sit next to me on the bed and pull the sheets back. If I was on my stomach you’d roll me over. Then you would lift up my pajama top and start hitting me on my stitches. As hard as you could, over and over. I was afraid you’d get mad if you knew I was awake. Is that strange or what? I was afraid you’d get mad if you found out that I knew you were trying to kill me.” Donald laughed. “Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t remember that.”

  “It might have happened once or twice. Kids do those things. I can’t get all excited about something I maybe did twenty-five years ago.”

  “No maybe about it. You did it.”

  Pete said, “You’re wearing me out with this stuff. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, and if you don’t back off pretty soon we aren’t going to make it. You aren’t, anyway.”

  Donald turned away.

  “I’m doing my best,” Pete said. The self-pity in his voice made this sound like a lie. But it wasn’t a lie! He was doing his best.

  The car topped a rise. In the distance Pete saw a cluster of lights that blinked out when he started downhill. There was no moon. The sky was low and black.

  “Come to think of it,” Pete said, “I did have a dream about you the other night. Quite a few nights ago, actually. Are you hungry?”

  “What kind of dream?”

  “It was strange. You were taking care of me. Just the two of us. I don’t know where everyone else was supposed to be.”

  Pete left it at that. He didn’t tell Donald that in this dream he was blind.

  “I wonder if that was when I woke up,” Donald said. “Look, I’m sorry I got into that thing about my scar. I keep trying to forget it but I guess I never will. Not really. It was pretty strange, having someone around all the time who wanted to get rid of me.”

  “Kid stuff,” Pete said. “Ancient history.”

  They ate dinner at a Denny’s on the other side of King City. As Pete was paying the check he heard a man behind him say, “Excuse me, but I wonder if I might ask which direction you’re going in?”

  Donald answered, “Santa Cruz.”

  “Perfect,” the man said.

  Pete could see him in the fish-eye mirror above the cash register: a red blazer with some kind of crest on the pocket, little black mustache, glossy black hair combed down on his forehead like a Roman emperor’s. A rug, Pete thought. Definitely a rug.

  He got his change and turned. “Why is that perfect?” he asked.

  The man looked at Pete. He had a soft ruddy face that was doing its best to express pleasant surprise, as if this new wrinkle were all he could have wished for, but the eyes behind the aviator glasses showed signs of regret. His lips were moist and shiny. “I take it you’re together,” he said.

  “You got it,” Pete told him.

  “All the better, then,” the man went on. “It so happens I’m going to Santa Cruz myself. Had a spot of car trouble down the road. The old Caddy let me down.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Pete asked.

  “Engine trouble,” the man said. “I’m afraid it’s a bit urgent. My daughter is sick. Urgently sick. I’ve got a telegram here.” He patted the breast pocket of his blazer.

  Before Pete could say anything Donald got into the act again. “No problem,” he said. “We’ve got tons of room.”

  “Not that much room,” Pete said.

  Donald nodded. “I’ll put my things in the trunk.”

  “The trunk’s full,” Pete told him.

  “It so happens I’m traveling light,” the man said. “This leg of the trip, anyway. In fact I don’t have any luggage at this particular time.”

  Pete said, “Left it in the old Caddy, did you?”

  “Exactly,” the man said.

  “No problem,” Donald repeated. He walked outside, and the man went with him, Pete following at a distance. When they reached Pete’s car Donald raised his face to the sky, and the man did the same. They stood there looking up. “Dark night,” Donald said.

  “Stygian,” the man said.

  Pete still had it in mind to brush him off, but he didn’t. Instead he unlocked the car and opened the back door for him. He wanted to see what would happen. It was an adventure, though not a dangerous adventure. The man might steal Pete’s ashtrays but he wouldn’t kill him. If anyone killed Pete on the road it would be some spiritual person in a sweat suit, someone with his eyes on the far horizon and a wet TRY GOD T-shirt in his duffel bag.

  As soon as they left the parking lot the man lit a cigar. He blew a cloud of smoke over Pete’s shoulder and sighed with pleasure.

  “Put it out,” Pete told him.

  “Of course,” the man said. Pete looked into the rearview mirror and saw the man take another long puff before dropping the cigar out the window. “Forgive me,” he said. “I should have asked. Name’s Webster, by the way.”

  Donald turned and looked back at him. “First name or last?”

  The man hesitated. “Last,” he said finally.

  “I know a Webster,” Donald said. “Mick Webster.”

  “There are many of us,” Webster said.

  “Big fellow, wooden leg,” Pete said.

  Donald gave Pete a look.

  Webster shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Still, I wouldn’t deny the connection. Might be one of the cousinry.”

  “What’s your daughter got?” Pete asked.

  “That isn’t clear,” Webster answered. “It appears to be a female complaint of some nature. Then again it may be tropical.” He was quiet for a moment, and added: “If indeed it is tropical, I will have to assume some of the blame myself. It was my own vaulting ambition that first led us to the tropics and kept us there all those many years, exposed to every evil. Truly, I have much to answer for. I left my wife there.”

  “You mean she died?” Donald asked.

  “I buried her with these hands. The earth will be repaid, gold for gold.”

  “Which tropics?” Pete asked.

  “The tropics of Peru.”

  “What part of Peru are they in?”

  “The lowlands,” Webster said.

  “What’s it like down there? In the lowlands.”

  “Another world,” Webster said. His tone was sepulchral. “A world better imagined than described.”

  “Far out,” Pete said.

  The three men rode in silence for a time. A line of trucks went past in the other direction, trailers festooned with running lights, engines roaring.

  “Yes,” Webster said at last, “I have much to answer for.”

  Pete smiled at Donald, but he’d turned in his seat again and was gazing at Webster. “I’m sorry about your wife,” Donald said.

  “What did she die of?” Pete asked.

  “A wasting illness,” Webster said. “The doctors have no name for it, but I do.” He leaned forward and said, fiercely, “Greed. Mine, not hers. She wanted no part of it.”

  Pete bit his lip. Webster was a find, and Pete didn’t want to scare him off by hooting at him. In a voice low and innocent of knowingness, he asked, “What took you there?”

  “It’s difficult for me to talk about.”

  “Try,” Pete told him.

  “A cigar would make it easier.”

  Donald turned to Pete and said, “It’s okay with me.”

  “All right,” Pete said. “Go ahead. Just keep the window rolled down.”

  “Much obliged.” A match flared. There were eager sucking sounds.

  “Let’s hear it,” Pete said.

  “I am by training an engineer,” Webster began. “My work has exposed me to all but one of the continents, to desert and alp and forest, to every terrain and season of the earth. Some years ago I was hired by the Peruvian government to search for tungsten in the tropics. My wife and daughter accompanied me. We were the only white people for a thousand miles in any direction, and we had no choice but to live as the Indians lived—to share their food and drink and even their culture.”

  �
�You knew the lingo, did you?” Pete said.

  “We picked it up.” The ember of the cigar bobbed up and down. “We were used to learning as necessity decreed. At any rate, it became evident after a couple of years that there was no tungsten to be found. My wife had fallen ill and was pleading to be taken home. But I was deaf to her pleas, because by then I was on the trail of another metal—a metal far more valuable than tungsten.”

  “Let me guess,” Pete said. “Gold?”

  Donald looked at Pete, then back at Webster.

  “Gold,” Webster said. “A vein of gold greater than the Mother Lode itself. After I found the first traces of it nothing could tear me away from my search—not the sickness of my wife nor anything else. I was determined to uncover the vein, and so I did, but not before I laid my wife to rest. As I say, the earth will be repaid.”

  Webster was quiet. Then he said, “But life must go on. In the years since my wife’s death I’ve been making the necessary arrangements to open the mine. I could have done it immediately, of course, enriching myself beyond measure, but I knew what that would mean—the exploitation of our beloved Indians, the brutal destruction of their environment. I felt I had too much to atone for already.” Webster paused, and when he spoke again his voice was dull and rushed, as if he’d used up all the interest he had in his own words. “Instead I drew up a program for returning the bulk of the wealth to the Indians themselves. A kind of trust fund. The interest alone will allow them to secure their ancient lands and rights in perpetuity. At the same time, our investors will be rewarded a thousandfold. Two thousandfold. Everyone will prosper together.”

  “That’s great,” Donald said. “That’s the way it ought to be.”

  Pete said, “I’m willing to bet you have a few shares left. Am I right?”

  Webster made no reply.

  “Well?” Pete knew that Webster was on to him now, but he didn’t care. The story had bored him. He’d expected something different, something original, and Webster had let him down. He hadn’t even tried. Pete felt sour and stale. His eyes burned from cigar smoke and the high beams of road-hogging truckers. “Douse the stogie,” he said to Webster. “I told you to keep the window down.”

  “Got a little nippy back here.”