Memorial Day

by Paul Scott Malone

  "Just a beer," Dalrymple cajoled.

  "My little brother died in that war," she said.

  Suddenly her face changed, went mean and hard and bitter, and she looked at him as if he were the cause of the bitterness. For a moment she seemed transported in her thoughts to someplace far away and dangerous. Then she changed again, and she blinked and looked at him and her eyes spoke of pity and disgust and outrage as if she hated him for reminding her of something she had tried to forget. "A beer huh?" she said. "That's what you want?"

  He nodded. She turned and marched away through the tables to the bar. She handed a bill to the bartender who took it and quickly produced a bottle. He opened it and set it on the wood and after saying something to him she took up the bottle and hurried back through the tables. When she arrived she hesitated for a moment, standing above Dalrymple with the beer in her hand, looking down at him, showing that hard bitterness in her eyes again. With no preliminaries she sat down in the chair across from him. She leaned up close to the table as if to whisper so that her breasts flattened against the wood.

  "This is my beer," she said. "But you can have some, you see. Drink it real fast and then get out of here."

  This was nothing like what he had expected. It was more like a punishment than a reward.

  "Look," he said. "Let's just forget it."

  "No go on, drink it."

  He took a sip. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. Her face was completely cold when it returned to him. "Gimme some of that," she said. She took the bottle and turned it up, drank half of it and set it down in front of him. "So you're gonna be a soldier are you?"

  "Looks like."

  She nodded thoughtfully and said, "My old man was over there too. Someplace called Khe Sanh. 1968." She shook her head and raked back her hair. "Lost an eye," she said, lightly touching her right cheek by way of emphasis. "Made him mean, real mean."

  "Yeah, I can see that."

  A world-weary kind of cruelty entered her face when she looked at him now, and he thought for a moment she was going to say you don't know shit or stand up and tell him to get out. It was a long bad moment, and he wished he hadn't said it, wished he hadn't noticed the badge of suffering under her eye nor acknowledged that he knew what it meant.

  She said, "Drink up."

  He took a sip and then handed her the bottle. She finished it off and put a hand against her chest when she belched.

  "So you want beer tonight, is that what it is?"

  "Yes."

  "You want to get drunk, is that what it is?"

  He shrugged and almost smiled.

  "You think that's what soldiers do?"

  "I don't know what soldiers do, yet."

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes away in a look of such complete derision that Dalrymple felt like a fool. Without warning she said, "Come with me," and then stood up. She raked back her hair and challenged him with her eyes. "Well come on."

  "Where to?" he asked.

  "Just come on."

  He followed her out the door and into the evening where the summertime heat flooded over them, almost pushed them back inside with its oppressive force. The sun had just set and the western sky was a rage of hot color though the sidewalk under its awning sulked in a deep shadow. He towered above her pudgy body and saw for the first time a thin spot in her dark hair at the crown of her head. She said, "Come on." She walked quickly up the sidewalk, and he followed like a child in trouble. They passed several empty storefronts, saying nothing, until they had almost reached the 7-11. She stopped and turned to him and said, "Gimme five bucks." She held out her hand and urged him to hurry.

  He dug into his pocket and fished out a bill and gave it to her. "Wait here," she commanded and then marched off again, pushing through the door. A few minutes later she emerged from the store with a brown bag under her arm and approached him.

  "Where's your car?"

  He nodded toward the Camaro.

  "Come on," she said.

  Together they walked to the car. It was in the far, darkening corner of the lot. Cars and trucks pounded by in a pack on the street after the light at the corner changed and all around them, up and down the ragged dirty street, neon signs had begun to flicker on. Exhaust fumes fouled the air and everything was dirty, littered with debris and broken glass.

  "Get in," she said, speaking up over the traffic noise.

  Again he obeyed her without comment or question. He unlocked and opened the door but then stood there before sitting down.

  "Go on, get in," she said.

  He did. She closed the door and then tapped on the window for him to roll it down. She leaned on her elbows against the door and looked in at him, her face so close that he could smell the powerful odors of her unwashed hair and her barmaid's hard working body and even the beer on her breath.

  "Start it up," she said.

  He turned the key, and the Camaro growled to life.

  "Well done. You're a good little soldier. You'll do fine."

  She hefted the bag up and handed it in through the window. He took it from her and set it down on the seat beside him.

  "Nice car," she said flatly. "Still smells new inside."

  He smiled and nodded.

  "There're two six packs in there," she said. "That ought to be enough to get you drunk, soldier boy."

  "Listen," said Dalrymple, finding his voice. "My name's "

  "No don't tell me. I don't want to know."

  She stood up straight and looked down at him. She smiled in her old friendly way. A dismissive and indulgent and half-sad warmth came into her ugly battered face again, and for an instant he thought she might reach out to touch his arm. So that what she said surprised him. "You're nothing special, you know."

  He just looked at her. Her black eye flashed.

  "Nobody owes you nothing," she said.

  "I know that."

  "Nothing! You hear me?"

  A van passing by on the street let out a honk, and she flinched as if she'd been struck by a bullet. She changed again; she was through with him. Her face was hard and brutal. She bent low and leaned in the window so he would hear what she said clearly. Her ugliness by then was so complete and profound and threatening that he recoiled and tried to pull away from her.

  "Now get out of here, you little fuck head, and don't come back again."

  He wiped her spittle from his cheek and with a strange sinking feeling deep in his stomach he watched her walk away across the scabby parking lot. The door to Dick's Dive Inn opened and then closed behind her. She never glanced back.

  12

  He had no place to go so he just drove around for hours that night, drinking beers, warm beers after the first two, remembering that barmaid's face and voice and her bewildering attitude. She seemed all at once tender and hateful toward him.

  He drove the freeways mostly, all over the city, slipping down into familiar neighborhoods from time to time to get out of the light and the noise and the rush of traffic. Once, about midnight, he drove back by Angie's place, saw the red Pontiac parked out front that must have been Roy's and in a stupid rage he tossed his five empties onto her lawn; then he laid rubber.

  At home he hid the second six pack in the trunk of the Camaro, crept into the house, banged into a floor lamp that his mother had recently moved in a rearrangement of furniture and then into his bedroom. He slept soundly.

  Early the next morning, just before waking in a sweat, hung over slightly from the beer she had purchased for him, Dalrymple dreamed of that barmaid. It was a fearful dream that would plague him all through the months of July and August that year and into the autumn; through the winter too and into spring, though with less regularity, it would not let his mind alone and even in the month of May 1972 as he lay for the first time on a military cot in a warm open and metallic-smelling army barracks at Fort Polk, Louisiana, amid the night-bug sounds and the harsh erratic snoring of some two dozen comrades one of whom screamed "Mama!"
rousing half the new-boy-men-soldiers on the second floor with his nightmare it always drove him, Private Dalrymple, when he realized it was The Dream, to flee the awful spectacle, to force himself from sleep.

  It began with the sensation of heavy breathing. As if he had been running for a long time and had to keep on running. As if something were chasing him. She was there, just ahead. They were in a gentle lovely place, a seemingly endless forest with tall trees above them and soft green ferns on the ground and dappled sunlight all about. He had been following her for some time, trying to catch up to her, always about to call out "Wait, wait!" when quite suddenly she stopped and turned. She was dressed in crimson lace with a crimson bow in her hair, and she was holding out her pudgy hands to him. He wanted to rush into her arms and be held but the sight of her stopped him. It was a moment of horror and uncertainty for on her face appeared long fresh scars like razor cuts and huge puffy bruises like putrid plums and her lips were bleeding over a smile of enticing beauty.