Back in the World: Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  “Hey,” she said. “What if you didn’t stop smiling? What if you just kept smiling and never stopped?”

  Barney looked at her. Then he looked back at Mark. “To me,” he said, “there are places you go and places you don’t go. You don’t go to Rochester. You don’t go to Blythe.”

  “You definitely don’t go to Blythe,” Nance said.

  “Right,” Barney said. Then he listed some of the places where, in his opinion, you do go. They were going to one of them now, San Lucas, up in the mountains above Santa Fe. They were part of a film crew shooting a Western there. They had shot another movie in the same place a year ago and this was the sequel. Barney was a sound man. Nance did make-up. They didn’t say anything about the driver.

  “The place is unbelievable,” Barney said. He paused and shook his head. Mark was waiting for him to describe San Lucas, but Barney just shook his head again and said, “The place is completely unbelievable.”

  “Really,” Nance said.

  It turned out that the star of the picture was Nita Damon. This was a real coincidence, because Mark had seen Nita Damon about six months ago in a show in Germany, a Bob Hope Christmas Special.

  “That’s amazing,” Nance said. She and Barney looked at each other. “You should scratch Blythe,” Barney said.

  Mark grinned.

  Nance was staring at him. “Marco,” she said. “You’re not a Mark, you’re a Marco.”

  “You should sign on with us,” Barney said. “Ride the stiffmobile express.”

  “You should,” Nance said. “San Lucas is just incredible.”

  “Partyville,” Barney said.

  “Jesus,” Mark said. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Sure you could,” Barney said. “Lincoln freed the slaves, didn’t he? Get your car later.”

  Mark was laughing. “Come on,” he said. “What would I do up there?”

  Barney said, “You mean like work?”

  Mark nodded.

  “No problem,” Barney said. He told Mark that there was always something to do. People didn’t show up, people quit, people got sick—there was always a call out for warm bodies. Once you found a tasty spot, you just settled in.

  “You mean I’d be working on the movie? On the film crew?”

  “Absitively,” Barney said. “I guarantee.”

  “Jesus,” Mark said. He took a breath. He looked at Barney and Nance. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” Barney said. “I know.”

  “Barney knows,” Nance said.

  “What have you got to lose?” Barney said.

  Mark didn’t say anything. He took another breath.

  Barney watched him. “Marco,” he said. “Don’t tell me—you’ve got a little something else back there besides the car, right?” When Mark didn’t answer, Barney laughed. “That’s mellow,” he said. “You’re among friends.”

  “I have to think,” Mark said.

  “Okay,” Barney said. “Think. You’ve got till Blythe.” He turned around. “Don’t disappoint me,” he said.

  Nance smiled. Then she turned around too. The top of her head was just visible over the high seat-back.

  The desert went past the window, always the same. The road had an oily look. Mark felt rushed, a little wild.

  His first idea was to get the directions to San Lucas, then drive up with Krystal and Hans after the car was fixed. But that wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t have enough money left for the gas, let alone food and motels and a place to live once they got there. He’d miss his chance.

  Because that’s what this was—a chance.

  There was no point in fooling himself. He could go to Los Angeles and walk the streets for months, years maybe, without ever getting anywhere. He could stand outside closed doors and suck up to nobodies and sit in plastic chairs half his life without ever coming close to where he was right now, on his way to a guaranteed job in Partyville.

  Los Angeles wasn’t going to work. Mark could see that. He’d borrow money from his friend and start hustling and he wouldn’t get the time of day from anyone, because he was hungry, and nobody ever had time for hungry people. Hungry people got written off. It was like Dutch said—them as has, gets.

  He would run himself ragged and the money would disappear, the way all his other money had disappeared. Krystal would get worried and sad. After a couple of weeks Mark and his buddy wouldn’t have anything to say to each other, and his buddy would get tired of living with a guy he didn’t really know that well and a yelling kid and a sad, pregnant woman. He would tell Mark some lie to get rid of them—his girl was moving in, his parents had decided to stay together after all. By then Mark would be broke again. Krystal would have a fit and probably go into labor.

  What if that happened? What then?

  Mark knew what. Crawl home to Dutch and Dottie.

  No. No sir. The only way he was going back to Phoenix was in a coffin.

  The driver started talking to herself. Barney rapped her on top of the head with his knuckles. “Do you want me to drive?” he said. It sounded like a threat. She quieted down. “All right,” he said. Without looking back he said, “Five miles to Blythe.”

  Mark looked out the window. He couldn’t get it out of his mind that here he had exactly what he needed. A chance to show what he was made of. He’d have fun, sure, but he’d also be at work on time in the morning. He would do what he was told and do it right. He would keep his eyes open and his mouth shut and after a while people would start to notice him. He wouldn’t push too hard, but now and then he might do a song at one of the parties, or impersonate some of the actors. He could just hear Nita Damon laughing and saying, “Stop it, Mark! Stop it!”

  What he could do, Mark thought, was to call Krystal and arrange to meet up with her at his buddy’s house in a month or two, after they’d shot the film. Mark would have something going then. He’d be on his way. But that wouldn’t work, either. He didn’t know how to call her. She had no money. And she wouldn’t agree.

  Mark wasn’t going to fool himself. If he left Krystal and Hans back there, she would never forgive him. If he left them, he left them for good.

  I can’t do that, Mark thought. But he knew this wasn’t true. He could leave them. People left one another, and got left, every day. It was a terrible thing. But it happened and people survived, as they survived worse things. Krystal and Hans would survive, too. When she understood what had happened she would call Dutch. Dutch would hit the roof, but in the end he would come through for them. He didn’t have any choice. And in four or five years what happened today would be nothing but a bad memory.

  Krystal would do well for herself. Men liked her. Even Dutch liked her, though he’d been dead set against the marriage. She would meet a good man someday, a man who could take care of her. She and Hans and the new baby would be able to go to sleep at night without wondering what would happen to them when they woke up. They didn’t need Mark. Without him they would have a better life than if he and Krystal stayed together.

  This was a new thought for Mark, and when he had it he felt aggrieved. It hurt him to see how unimportant he really was to Krystal. Before now he had always assumed that their coming together had somehow been ordained, and that in marrying Krystal he had filled some need of the universe. But if they could live without each other, and do better without each other, then this could not be true and must never have been true.

  They did not need each other. There was no particular reason for them to be together. Then what was it all about? They were dragging each other down like two people who couldn’t swim. If they were lucky, they might keep at it long enough to grow old in the same house.

  It wasn’t right. She deserved better, and so did he.

  Mark felt that he had been deceived, played with. Not by Krystal, she would never do that, but by everyone who had ever been married and knew the truth about it and went on acting as if it were some great deal. The truth was different. The truth was that when
you got married you had to give up one thing after another. It never ended. You had to give up your life—the special one that you were meant to have—and lead some middle kind of life that went where neither of you had ever thought of going, or wanted to go. And you never knew what was happening. You gave up your life and didn’t even know it.

  “Blythe,” Barney said.

  Mark looked at the town, what he could see of it from the road. Lines of heat quivered above the rooftops.

  “Blythe,” Barney said again. “Going, going, gone.”

  When Krystal came up from sleep she expected to open her eyes on the sight of water. She blinked in the gloom. In a moment she knew where she was.

  “Hans,” she whispered.

  “He’s outside,” Hope said. Hope was standing over the lamp, feeding shells into a shotgun. Her shadow swayed back and forth against the wall. “I’m going to get us some dinner,” she said. “You just lie here and rest up. The boy will be fine.” She finished loading the gun and pushed a few more shells into the pockets of her jeans. “Be right back,” she said.

  Krystal lay on the bed, restless and thirsty, but feeling too heavy to rise. Outside the men had a radio on. One of those whiny songs was playing, like Hope had sung in the kitchen. Krystal had heard no good music for two months now, since the day she left home. A warm day in late spring—lieder playing on the radio, sunlight flickering through the trees along the road.

  “Ah, God,” Krystal said.

  She pushed herself up. She lifted the shade of the window and looked out. There was the desert, and the mountains. And there was Hope, walking into the desert with her shotgun. The light was softer than before, still white but not so sharp. The tops of the mountains were touched with pink.

  Krystal stared out the window. How could anyone live in such a place? There was nothing, nothing at all. Through all those days in Phoenix, Krystal had felt a great emptiness around her where she would count for no more than a rock or a spiny tree; now she was there.

  Krystal thought she might cry, but she gave the idea up. It didn’t interest her.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the glass.

  I will say a poem, Krystal thought, and when I am finished he will be here. At first silently, because she had promised to speak only English now, then in a whisper, and at last plainly, Krystal recited a poem the nuns had made her learn at school long ago, the only poem she remembered. She repeated it twice, then opened her eyes. Mark was not there. As if she had really believed he would be there, Krystal kicked the wall with her bare feet. The pain gave an edge of absolute clarity to what she’d been pretending not to know: that he had never really been there and was never going to be there in any way that mattered.

  The window was hot under Krystal’s forehead. She watched Hope move farther and farther away. Then Hope stopped. She raised her gun. A moment later Krystal heard the boom, and felt the glass shudder against her skin.

  A few miles past Blythe the driver began to talk to herself again. Her voice was flat. Mark looked out the window and tried to ignore it but after a time he found himself listening, trying to make sense of the things she said. There wasn’t any reason to her words. Every possibility of meaning ended in the beginning of another possibility. It was frustrating to Mark. He became uncomfortable.

  Then he noticed that the hearse was moving at great speed, really racing. The driver passed every car they came upon. She changed lanes without any purpose.

  Mark tried to find a break between her words to say something, just a note of caution, something about how tough the police were around here, but no break came. The car was going faster and faster. He hoped that Barney would tell her to shut up and slow down, maybe even take over himself for a while, but Barney wasn’t saying anything and neither was Nance. She had disappeared completely and all Mark could see of Barney were the bristles of his hair.

  “Hey,” Mark said. “What’s the hurry?”

  The driver seemed not to hear him. She passed three more cars and went on talking to herself. Then Mark saw that she had only one hand on the steering wheel, her left hand. She was gripping the wheel so tightly that her hand had turned white. He could see the bones of her fingers.

  “Better slow down,” Mark said.

  “Blue horse sells kisses,” she said, then repeated the words.

  “Jesus,” Mark said. He bent forward and leaned over the top of the seat to get a look at the speedometer. He had never seen anything like that before. It took the wind out of him. The driver was making what sounded like animal noises in the jungle. Nance giggled.

  “Stop the car,” Mark said.

  “Stop the war,” the driver said.

  “Stop the car,” Mark said again.

  “Hey,” Barney said. “What’s the problem?” His voice was soft, remote.

  “I want out,” Mark said.

  Nance giggled again. The tires began to whine.

  “Everything’s sweet,” Barney said. “Just settle into it, Marco. You decided, remember?”

  Mark didn’t know what to say. It was hard to talk to someone he couldn’t see.

  He heard Nance whispering. Then Barney said, “Hey—Marco. Come on up here.”

  “Midnight phone book,” the driver said.

  “Come on,” Barney said. “You’re with us now.”

  “Stop the car,” Mark said. He reached over the seat and began to rap on the driver’s head, softly at first, then hard. He could hear the knocking of his knuckles against her skull. She stopped the hearse in the middle of the road. Mark looked back. There was a car bearing down on them. It swerved into the other lane and went past with its horn wailing.

  “Okay, Marco,” Barney said. “Ciao. You blew it.”

  Mark scrambled over equipment and cords and let himself out the back. When he closed the gate the driver pulled away, fast. Mark crossed the road and watched the hearse until it disappeared. The road was empty. He turned and walked back toward Blythe.

  A few minutes later an old man stopped for him. He took a liking to Mark and drove him all the way to the parts store. They were closing up when he arrived, but after Mark explained his situation the boss let him inside and found the alternator for him. With tax, the price came to seventy-one dollars.

  “I thought it was fifty-eight,” Mark said.

  “Seventy-one,” the boss said.

  Mark showed him the figures that the woman had written down, but it did no good. Mark stared at the alternator. “I’ve only got sixty-five.”

  “I’m sorry,” the boss said. He put his hands on the counter and waited.

  “Look,” Mark said. “I just got back from Vietnam. Me and my wife are on our way to Los Angeles. Once we get there I can send you the other six. I’ll put it in the mail tomorrow morning. I swear.”

  The boss looked at him. Mark could see that he was hesitating.

  “I’ve got a job waiting,” Mark said.

  “What kind of job?”

  “I’m a sound man,” Mark said.

  “Sound man.” The boss nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You think you’ll send the money but you won’t.”

  Mark argued for a while but without heat, because he knew that the man was right—he would never send the money. He gave up and went outside again. The parts store adjoined a salvage yard filled with crumpled cars. Across the street there was a U-Haul depot and a gas station. Mark began to walk toward the gas station. A black dog appeared on the other side of the salvage yard fence and kept pace with Mark. When Mark looked at him, the dog silently bared his fangs and gave Mark such a fright that he crossed the street.

  He was hot and tired. He could smell himself. He remembered the coolness of the hearse and thought, I blew it.

  There was a pay phone outside the gas station. Mark got a handful of change and shut himself in. He wanted to call his buddy in Los Angeles and figure something out, but he had left the address book in the car and it turned out that the number was unlisted. He tried
to explain things to the operator but she refused to listen. She hung up on him.

  Mark looked out at the street. The dog was still at the fence, watching him. The only thing he could do, Mark decided, was to keep calling Los Angeles information until he got a human being on the other end. There had to be somebody sympathetic out there.

  But first he was going to call Phoenix and give Dutch and Dottie a little something to sleep on. He would put on his official voice and tell them that he was Sergeant Smith—no, Smythe—Sergeant Smythe of the highway patrol, calling to report an accident. A head-on collision just outside of Palm Springs. It was his duty, he was sorry to say—his voice would crack—there were no survivors. No, ma’am, not one. Yes, ma’am, he was sure. He’d been at the scene. The one good thing he could tell her was that nobody had suffered. It was over just like that, and here Mark would snap his fingers into the receiver.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the phone ring through the cool, quiet house. He saw Dottie where she sat in her avocado kitchen, drinking coffee and making a list, saw her rise and gather her cigarettes and lighter and ashtray. He heard her shoes tapping on the tile floor as she came toward the phone.

  But it was Dutch who answered. “Strick here,” he said.

  Mark took a breath.

  “Hello,” Dutch said.

  “It’s me,” Mark said. “Dad, it’s me—Mark.”

  Krystal was washing her face when she heard the gun go off again. She paused, water running through her fingers, then finished up and left the bedroom. She wanted to find Hans. He should have been changed long before now, and it was almost time for him to eat. She missed him.

  Picking her way through the parts on the floor, she went into the main room. It was almost completely dark. Krystal felt her way along the wall to the light switch. She turned the light on and stood there with her hand against the wall.

  Everything was red. The carpet was red. The lampshades were red, and had little red tassels hanging down from them. The chairs and the couch were red. The pillows on the couch were shaped like hearts and covered in a satiny material that looked wet under the light, so that for a moment they had the appearance of real organs.