Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  Miguel mixed a round of bourbon and sodas, remembering his father’s admonition about drinking and hell-raising while he was gone. The bourbon tasted particularly good tonight, he thought.

  Miguel sat down next to Tom and Marybeth. “How’s the old leg, Uncle?” he asked. Tom had broken his leg in the Oregon game and had been sidelined for the season. He was particularly worried about it because he was at USC on an athletic scholarship.

  “It still twinges me when the weather changes, pod’nuh,” Tom said. “And a south wind is sheerest hell.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously it’s serious. The sawbones isn’t sure I’ll be able to play again next year.”

  “Football,” Julie Trowbridge said. “The world is flying apart and we take time to talk about football.”

  “Julie is bucking for battery commander in the ROTC, Mrs. Rinehart,” Lawt Higby said to Becky. “He carries the world on his back.” He punched Miguel on the arm and said, “Your old roomie even keeps a war map in the house. How about that?”

  “Maybe he’s studying to be a profiteer,” Miguel suggested, sipping his bourbon.

  “You should have housebroken him better,” Higby said. “In fact, you should have pledged with us.”

  Miguel indicated their surroundings with his half-full glass. “My presence was required here.”

  “Oh, God,” Julie said beerily. “What difference does it all make, anyway?”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” Marybeth broke out. “You act like 1 we’re in the war or something.”

  Julie looked grim. “Aren’t we? Hasn’t that Anglophile in the

  White House slipped us in without anyone knowing about it? You’ve heard about the Neutrality Patrol, I guess? Don’t tell me they aren’t dropping depth charges on the German submarines?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised if they are,” Miguel said mildly. “And bully for them.”

  “Roger, roger,” Tom cried. “Bombs away! How about a refill, Spicko.”

  “Help yourself,” Miguel said. He looked over at Becky. “Ready for another?”

  Becky handed him her glass without a word and leaned back against the cushions of the couch.

  Nobody wanted to talk about the international situation except Julian Trowbridge, but he was determined. “I hate to sound like a Cassandra, but believe me, it’s later than any of you guys think. We’ve had too many millstones draped around our necks now to get out of what’s coming. My dad says the Lend-Lease Act is the biggest sellout in history. For crying out loud, how can we be so stupid as to just give that stuff away? Did they ever pay their debts before? Hell, no. And they won’t this time either,” he concluded darkly.

  “Julie,” Miguel said, “this is supposed to be a pleasant party. Not a wake for fifty tired old destroyers we didn’t even know we had.”

  “That’s right,” Tom said gaily. “I didn’t know we had ‘em. Nobody told me.” He turned the volume up on the radio-phonograph. “Hey, listen. ‘A String of Pearls’—oh, that Miller boy!” He walked over to Becky and asked her to dance. Miguel saw to his surprise that she stood up and accepted.

  “Watch that game leg,” Miguel said.

  “Spicko, I can’t feel a thing,” Tom said, prancing happily.

  Miguel watched for a few minutes. Becky seemed to be enjoying it. Lawt Higby and the Roble girl were dancing too now.

  Florian came over to Miguel and said, “Dance with me?”

  Miguel finished his drink and danced.

  “I haven’t seen you all year.”

  “I’ve been busy as hell,” he said, watching Tom and Becky.

  He was thinking about what Becky would say if she knew that the money she had given him last year had gone to Tom. After actually giving him the money, she had never mentioned the incident again. He had almost hoped, with a strange sort of perversity, that she would tell his father. The desire to outrage was still as strong as ever in Miguel. But Becky had done nothing of the sort. She had simply given him the money and kept quiet about it. So he had passed it on to Tom and that was the end of it.

  He realized that Flossie had been talking steadily while he had been watching Becky and Tom. He hadn’t any notion of what she was talking about.

  “I said,” Florian exclaimed testily, “I’d love another drink.”

  ‘Tm sorry, Floss,” Miguel said. “Right away.”

  She followed him to the buffet table where he had put the liquor. “Really, I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “Floss?”

  “My name is Florian.”

  “It’s a beautiful name,” Julie Trowbridge said heavily.

  “Your glass, Julie?” Miguel asked.

  Julian put his glass down and asked Florian to dance. She hesitated a moment and then glided away with him. Miguel poured himself a drink and took it down neat, shuddering a bit. He had decided to get high tonight. Raoul would be home tomorrow. For some reason the idea depressed him.

  Tom and Becky stopped by him as the record changed. Tom had evidently been telling Becky about his work in the blister rust control camps, explaining the life cycle of the parasites that caused the ugly swellings on the conifers. “We have to dig up all the rybee bushes—that breaks the chain or some damn thing,” he said. “I didn’t know there were so many rybee bushes in California. There must be billions and billions.”

  Miguel said, “The Department of Athletics did better by you this summer.”

  “He means I got paid for cleaning the goat pens at the bio labs during summer quarter,” Tom said to Becky. To Miguel he added, “Well, I didn’t kill myself working, Spicko, and that’s a fact.”

  Miguel watched Becky. Her eyes were half closed and she swayed slightly in time to the music. “Dance, Becky?” he asked.

  She felt very strange and exciting in his arms. The song was a Lunceford of “I Don’t Want to Cry Any More,” with a full unmuted trumpet carrying the melody against Lunceford’s solid rhythm section.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever danced with you,” Miguel said.

  Becky did not reply. She danced well. It seemed that she pressed every inch of herself against him. Occasionally, her knee would slip between his legs and he could feel the softness of the inside of her thigh. He was beginning to conjure a strange fantasy in his mind.

  Lawt Higby danced by holding a drink in his hand. “What became of Allie Wylie, Mike?” he asked. “We never see her around any more.”

  Miguel said nothing. He glanced down at Becky. She seemed not to have heard.

  It was a long while now since Miguel had made any effort to find out anything about Allie. He wasn’t welcome at the Wylie house and he had no other way of knowing. The bitter taste was in his mouth again.

  He stopped dancing and said to Becky, “Let’s have another drink.”

  “I don’t think I want any more.”

  “You aren’t feeling them, for chrissake,” he said roughly.

  She gazed at him with a confused expression in her eyes. What was she seeing, he wondered violently, a nineteen-year-old punk or just another Rinehart man?

  “Come on,” he said. “I need one.”

  He mixed himself a stiff, dark highball. Across the room he could hear Tom and Julie arguing extravagantly. Tom said, “Oh, Christ on a crutch, Julie—take off your Willkie button and relax, will you? He lost, that’s all, he talked himself hoarse...”

  Marybeth said, “I’m sorry he didn’t get to be President. He seemed to want to be so much.”

  “The Germans have made the same mistake Napoleon did “ Higby said loudly. “Nobody can lick those Russians.”

  “They seem to be doing a fine job of it right now,” Julie said, heatedly defending his position as a gloom-merchant.

  “Ho, for the Arsenal of Demo-crassy,” Tom shouted, laughing.

  It all came too late to help poor old Anson, Miguel thought, suddenly sentimental.

  “The country has been fed on a diet of sensationalism for so long we
re helpless without it,” Julian said.

  “Poly Sci 105,” Miguel said. “A direct quote from Dr. Harnett.”

  “That bastion of reaction,” Higby cried.

  “Don’t you call pore ol’ Julie’s friends bastions,” Tom grumbled. “His pa and ma were probably as married as yours or mine.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Julian said exasperatedly. “A person can’t say anything.”

  “Is it true that Stanford is the Hah-vahd of the west?” Tom asked Julie.

  “Harvard is the Stanford of the east,” Higby declared.

  The girl from Roble broke her silence with a shrill little laugh, like the cry of a baby hyena.

  Tom said soberly, “But Stanford girls are such pigs.”

  Marybeth said, “Honestly, Tommy.”

  Miguel watched Becky, wondering if she felt out of things. She was saying nothing at all. It occurred to him quite suddenly that she was drunk. It really didn’t take much. He felt his drinks himself. God, he thought, Raoul would blow a fuse if he could see Becky drinking with us like this.

  Tom and Lawt Higby were beginning to harmonize on the Roslyn School Hymn. Miguel listened with illogical irritation. How Tom could get along so easily with people was something he couldn’t understand. People like Lawt, who really disliked him. Nothing seemed to bother Tom much. The bastard had a skin two inches thick.

  He walked to the window and stood there looking at the wintry night. He felt sodden.

  Tom yelled to him, “Hey, Spicko, what do you hear from (Minder?”

  Miguel shook his head. He had sent Olinder three short stories and asked him if he thought he should try to sell them to Esquire or the Post and Olinder had sent them back to him with a note that said: “A student of mine can do better than this.” And he had torn the manuscripts up and hadn’t written anything since. The trouble was that he knew Olinder was right. He’d known about what to expect even before he sent the stories.

  “I want out,” he said to himself.

  “What did you say?” Becky was standing beside him, her voice was all soft and warm-sounding.

  “I said I want to get the hell away.”

  “From what?”

  “From Dad. From here.” He looked down at her angrily. “From you, I guess.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Don’t say things like that.”

  Almost of its own volition, his hand found hers and they stood together at the window, apart from the others, holding hands.

  “Becky,” he said, moved by an incomprehensible urge to confession. “I’ve been flying.” Why did I tell her that, he wondered. “I thought you might be,” she said.

  “I want to go up to Canada and join the RCAF.”

  Her hand tightened on his. “No, Mike.”

  “I told you I wanted to get out of here.”

  “Don’t do that, Mike. It would kill your father.”

  My father, he thought. My father and your husband and you stand here holding hands with me and tell me this—He had the notion he might simply be going a little crazy and this wasn’t really happening the way he thought it was at all. Maybe she was still Luis’s wife. Maybe she was really Allie in that dirndl. Maybe none of the things that had happened since the night Sandy died were real. I’m crazy, he thought. I’m drunk. Or both.

  The others had quieted down somewhat. Tom was dancing with Florian and Higby with Marybeth. Julie and the Roble girl were sitting on the floor watching the fire die down.

  Becky said softly, “Don’t be unhappy, Mike.” She put her arms up to him and he had an impulse to forget everything with her and let himself go completely and see what would happen. Instead, they started dancing, not moving much.

  “I shouldn’t feel this way,” Becky said thickly. “I’m awfully tight”

  “I won’t tell on you, Ma,” he said sarcastically.

  “Why do you have to be like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Nasty,” she said, and pressed herself against him.

  They danced for a long while. Presently Tom came up and said, “We have to get going, Spicko.”

  “Already?”

  “It’s damn near midnight. Have to drive all the way back to the city. Give me a blast tomorrow, will you?”

  “You staying with the folks?”

  “What else?”

  “When are we heading for Canada, Tom?”

  “You’re not kidding about that, are you?” Tom glanced at Becky. “Is the winged secret out?”

  “She knows I’ve been flying,” Miguel said.

  Tom said to Becky, “He’s crazy.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Tom looked from her to Miguel and then he said, “Okay, take it easy.” He called Marybeth and Higby. “On your feet, one and all. Uncle Sam needs you.”

  They trooped out the door singing and yelling and when they had gone there was an empty stillness left in the room. The music was still playing.

  Miguel said, “Want to dance some more?”

  Becky looked at him for a moment and then shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself as though she felt a sudden chill. “We’d better get things straightened up,” she said.

  Miguel helped her pick up the glasses and the empty bottles. They carried them into the kitchen. Becky washed and dried the glasses in a tense silence. She wouldn’t look at him. “Want some coffee?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She brushed against him as she reached for the percolator and pulled away as though she had touched something white-hot.

  Miguel reached out and caught her shoulder. He was angry, boiling over with unexplainable rage. He spun her around to face him, holding her by the upper arms. Her flesh felt moist under his hands.

  Her head rocked back, her eyes were rolled back so that the white showed under the iris. Her mouth looked warm and slack.

  “Oh, God, no—“ she said.

  He pulled her against him and kissed her, hard, so that his teeth crushed her lips. For a moment she was limp against him and then, as though an electric current had raced through her body, she responded.

  He kept his eyes open so that he could see her face. He hated her and loved her all at once and he wanted to inflict both pain and pleasure on her. He reached under her skirt, lifting it and slipping her underthings down in a swift, determined movement. His hands kneaded the flesh of her buttocks and searched the small of her back, holding her against him with all his strength. She fought for breath, but he kept his mouth hard on hers, stabbing with his tongue. He heard her dress rip and his hands found her breasts and belly. He handled every part of her while she writhed against him. Her responses were tidal, moon-driven heavings and moanings.

  She broke away from him and stood for a moment, her hand on her bruised mouth, her dress caught up around her waist so that he could see her belly heaving as she gasped for breath. Her eyes were wild, black, cavernous. Her dress was torn off one shoulder and her breast looked pounded, bruised.

  She turned and ran out of the kitchen and across the living room. He heard the door to her bedroom slam. He leaned back against the sink, half-stunned and undecided.

  Presently he turned off the kitchen light and walked into the living room, turning off the lights there, too. He sat down before the embers of the fire and smoked a cigarette. His mind was washed of thought. The satisfaction of his body seemed the only thing worth having. His hatred of her was a deep, visceral thing and he could think of nothing but her body.

  He stood up and walked slowly to her room. The door was closed. He tried the knob, expecting to find it locked. But the door opened into a black, humid cave smelling of women’s things, powder and perfume and the musk of sex.

  He walked in. In the darkness he could hear breathing. His foot touched something soft, the feel and slickness of silk.

  “Becky—”

  He heard her whimper something. She was beyond speech and the murky anger inside him grew again.

  He stood for what see
med a long time, poised over her. He could hear her burying her sobs in the pillow.

  Reaction hit him in a drenching wave. He felt as though he were going to be sick standing there in the dark. He lost orientation and the room whirled nauseously about him. He thought of Maria and La Roja and all the women that had been his father’s women. Desire drained out of him and left him weak and shuddering. He turned and stumbled from the room. He slammed the door behind him with such violence that he heard a picture fall and glass shatter inside.

  He went back to the living room and threw himself on the couch. He was racked by dry, painful spasms. He rolled over and pressed his face against the rough cloth of the armrest.

  Raoul found him there that way in the morning. The morning of December 7,1941.

  SIXTEEN

  Time was running out now, Miguel thought. He looked at his wristwatch. Four o’clock. He couldn’t remember whether or not he had set it ahead in Chicago. Well, it didn’t really matter too much. Right now time wasn’t measured in minutes and hours for him, but in miles.

  A late moon had risen behind the airliner, silvering the wings and the thin line of the stabilizer just back of Miguel’s window. The murky weather was far east of them now and below lay the vasty white expanses of the Great Salt Lake, pale as an icefield in the moonlight.

  He wondered if Karl had read any of the script yet and what he thought of it. He would probably say, “A student of mine can do better than this.” Miguel succumbed to a swelling tide of frustration. Perhaps Karl would be right, but it was so nearly impossible now for him to write decently that the very fear of complete failure might keep him from working.

  The stewardess walked quietly down the aisle between the sleeping passengers. She stopped and said, “What, still awake?”

  “Macbeth hath murdered sleep,” he said. “Dramamine doesn’t work on me.”

  She knelt in the aisle and handed him his book. “I brought it back. Be sure to keep it.”