Before We Sleep

by Jeffrey Lent

  She lay out on her towel, spread on the hot ledge, on her back, her eyes closed against the sun. Voices came and fled over her, high shrieks from the younger children as they thrilled to the sudden chill of the water. The splash from someone plunging from the rope swing. And above and around all of that the heavy slow rush of the water, a constant sound rising and falling in braided rhythms, as if carrying the day away.

  When she grew too hot she rose and walked down on tender feet to one of the pebble beaches within the shelter of the curve and made her way out into the river. The ripples of cold up her thighs and slapping at her belly. Then she let herself down in and hung there in the wash of the current before pushing out into the deeper water. It was very cold down around her toes, feet, ankles, then cold all around her. She turned so her feet faced the current and lay back in the river, her toes rising above the surface as she floated down around the bend, then along a smooth stretch of the river until the current nudged her toward the gravel shore above the next bend.

  She climbed out and squatted on the stones, holding the delicious cool as the sun warmed her back. Then she walked back up along the twined and braided paths until she was back beside her spread towel. She was calm and satiated and nowhere except exactly where she was. She stretched out again upon her towel, wanting nothing, needing nothing, beyond the bake of the sun and then the return to the river. Already, all tension drained from her muscles. What a summer day could do.

  Over the best part of the afternoon she repeated this process two more times. The last time returning to her towel languid, almost stumbling, water- and sun-drunk. Then upon the towel she spent even longer, turning time to time to let her suit fully dry against her. At one point toward the end sitting up cross-legged to run her fingers through her knotted hair. Down below her she watched a young woman she did not know help a little boy of four or five in and out of a pool small for anyone else but large for him. His wild cries as he sank down to sit in the cold water, then bursting up, his skin pimpled with cold, his face a gorgeous scream of pure delight. And all throughout this the woman kept one hand free toward the boy while with the other she held back a toddler girl with ropy blonde curls, wearing only a diaper, red-faced angry because she was denied the water. Finally the woman, with great effort, guided the boy out of the water and up onto the ledge above her, after which she walked into the pool to her knees, the girl cradled against one hip, where then the woman let free the boy and lifted the girl high in the air with both hands, brought her down to kiss her and then lowered her into the water. The girl was silent as her face turned from sunstruck delight to slow comprehension, delight for a moment, then shock and outrage as she felt the cold. And her mother swept her back up from the water. Holding her tight.

  Ruth pulled on her clothes over her mostly dry suit and left, her day, her afternoon, not done. She made her way out to her car and turned about and drove back down the River Road, through Royalton and on to the Ellis farm. At the stand she got a wooden flat and nested in the empty quart baskets after turning her own empties in and walked out down the long rows to the section the woman at the stand had indicated for her, crouched on the hay mulch with the flat before her and began to pick strawberries. It was the same place her mother had come, although she’d bought berries already picked. It was the same place many years ago where Ruth and Jo had picked berries and Jo had to keep telling Ruth to put them in the baskets, not in her mouth. The field was long and broad, ran along the river but was belted by trees and here and there thin needles of shade ran out over her. Still hot. Summer. She ate the biggest berry she’d yet found. And smiled. But come winter she’d have jars of preserves for toast or perhaps a pie. She had rhubarb canned as well.

  And then there in the field came back the memory just gained and left behind of the mother and her children. A clamp or clench in her stomach. She sat back on her heels and looked at the sky. Not a cloud in sight, the vault of blue near to black as afternoon turned so slow to evening. She wanted. She wasn’t jealous, was grateful for all she had. Truly she was. She wanted and hoped. The woman was younger than she was but not so much. And she was young. And Oliver was young. Time lay ahead. And if she’d learned nothing these past three years she’d learned what you get comes different than how you’d thought. Almost always.

  Or perhaps always. And that was how it should be. For how else does life reveal itself to be what it is? How could it?

  Meanwhile, she had berries to pick. Which she did. The job at hand.

  The house was empty when she returned. She wasn’t surprised, although it could’ve gone either way, all she knew. It was still only the truck that was gone—they were off somewhere. She made no effort over dinner but instead cooked down the strawberries and canned them, listening to the radio. When she had the two dozen jars cooling from their bath, lined up on the counter so she could check the lids in the morning, it was after ten o’clock. She ate cold mac and cheese and then a big bowl of broken biscuits covered with crushed strawberries and a mighty heap of whipped cream. It was all wonderful; she was ravenous and exhausted.

  She went up to bed. Sliding her heat-burned skin under the covers she thought she’d wait up for a bit but there wasn’t a book beside the bed. She turned off the switch, bringing darkness down. Next thing she knew there were birds singing in a fog-paled dawn beyond the windows and it was a new day.

  And nothing had woke her during the night. She was in a house alone.

  Midafternoon she heard the truck drive in. She was cleaning the pantry shelves, wearing old slacks and a worn-out workshirt of Oliver’s, her hair tied up under a bandanna knotted in the front. The pantry had shelving on all three sides that rose from her knees to the ceiling. There were bins for flour or potatoes, dry goods, built in under the shelves. The pantry had missed spring cleaning, intentionally. With summer and the garden and other fresh foods, the pantry stock diminished and so there were fewer cans and jars and tins to move about, to reorganize. There was also a thick coat of dust on all the shelves, the higher she went, the more there was. So her hands and face were grimed and moist with the effort on a hot afternoon, trousers and shirt as well. A basin of dirty soapy water stood atop the step stool, a rag twisted brown draped on the side of the basin. She had a flash of irritation, then calmed—she’d known when she’d started the job they might arrive back. Perhaps she even wanted them to arrive then, to see her in hard earnest labor while they were, well … up to whatever they’d been up to. Then felt a little small because of this thinking and went into the kitchen and washed her hands, splashed water on her face.

  She heard one of the truck doors slam. Only one. And thought What has come now? She stood at the sink, drying her hands well past need on an old hand towel, facing the wall, waiting.

  He rapped gently on the screen door and she turned and faced him. “I was cleaning the pantry,” she told him. “Come in. Where’s Oliver?”

  She stepped away from the sink but only just as Brian Potter opened the screen door. Once through he stopped and let it shut behind him. His clothes were wrinkled but somehow still neat, his face ashen, his eyes darkly pouched. She held her alarm and waited.

  “He’s wicked sick.”

  “What? How? Should we take him to the doctor? Where have you two been?”

  He shook his head. “If there was a time to take him to a doctor that time’s passed. I think all he needs is to go to bed and finish the sleep he started a couple three hours ago. Which allowed me to get him back here. I’m sorry, that’s not very clear. I thought I’d help you get him in and up to bed and then I’d be obliged to explain, the best I can.”

  His odd formality struck her as a deeply fatigued honesty. She replied, simply, “All right.”

  Still, he held a moment. She sensed he was gathering courage. Then he asked, “Is he a drinker?”

  Ever more alarmed she started forward, then stopped. Brian Potter held a bruised and tested authority about him. She said, “He’ll have the odd beer, time to time.
But not the way I think you mean.”

  Brian smiled. Said, “Good. I don’t think you have anything to worry about there. If he had a taste for it I suspect that’s pretty much gone now. Let’s bring him in.”

  She followed him out to the truck. Oliver was slumped in the passenger side, the window rolled down only enough to let air flow over him, the side of his face mashed against the glass, his mouth open and a smear of drool pooled down. Brian opened the door and at the same moment caught Oliver and held him. Together they worked him out of the truck and Brian took Oliver up in his arms as if lifting a sack of flour, a heavy weight dragged by its own inertia but a weight the man was equal to. She quickly stepped and held Oliver’s head up, taking some of the weight from his torso into her arms.

  She could smell him; a swirl of sweat, bile and the harsh reek of alcohol emitted from his pores, his sweat, his mouth and nostrils. His clothes askew, as if they’d been removed and replaced not exactly right, splotched with stains that could’ve been anything from dried blood to food to that same food or other food vomited up from him. She looked up at Brian as he said, “You got him, now? Let’s go in. Let me hold the most of him.”

  Which he already was. She said, “Let’s go. It’s up the stairs and down the hall—”

  “I know.”

  He stepped off gently and she held her husband’s shoulders, his head against her breast, and they made it up the steps and through the kitchen to the hall and up the stairs and down to the bedroom, a couple of times missing the pace and having to pause, to regain and move on. But they made it and ever so gently they placed him upon the bed. And stood side by side looking down, catching breath.

  Brian said, “I can help get him undressed and whatever else you need. It’s not anything I haven’t done before.”

  “No,” she said. “You go downstairs. I’ll settle him and be down when I’m done.”

  It took her less time than she thought; less time than she wanted. Worked his clothes off of him and partway through he began to snore, deeply and slowly. Once he was naked she got a wet washcloth and wiped clean his face and then stopped, looking down at him. Whatever else she did now wouldn’t matter—when he woke from this fever, this whatever-it-was, that was when he’d want and need to bathe. She rolled him to one side and got him under the sheet and left the blanket off, for now. The room was afternoon-warm and the least breeze played through the window screens. What he needed, she thought.

  Downstairs Brian Potter sat at the table with a quart Mason jar filled with ice cubes and water. Only now did she realize how shaky she was and so got a glass herself, and cubes from the tray and filled it. A simple thing that calmed her. She turned around her desk chair and sat and said, “What happened to my husband?”

  He waited, then pushed a wry smile briefly upon his face. As if he knew what she was truly asking and had guessed it would be his job to tell her—a realization come to only in the past hours. She saw this.

  He said, “The first night we ate cheeseburgers and then went to the VFW and drank beer and he listened to me talk. What I was here for. After a bit I realized that was what he wanted—for me to talk. He was reluctant to have me there but, seeing how I was, he left it to me to speak. As if he’d been ahead of me figuring out how best to deal with me, how best to let me relive what I needed and to keep himself at a remove from it. Which was what he wanted. I don’t think I figured that out until sometime last night. Because, see, I was overcome with facing him again, with doing what I’d promised myself I’d do. To thank him, you see.”

  “You said he saved your life.”

  “He did.”

  “Will you tell me about that?”

  He pulled cigarettes and a lighter from his shirt pocket and offered them and when she declined he lighted one. He smoked and crossed one leg over the other knee and when the ash grew long he leaned and tipped the ash into the cuff of his pants. She almost rose for an ashtray but knew he was working things out and so let it be.

  “I might.” He concluded after thinking. “He’s not talked to you about the war?”

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  A pause again. Then he said, “So I have that, also.”

  She thought again of what her mother had told her and said, “No. Not if you don’t want to.”

  “I can just leave? And you’ll be content to have him back and let him recover and leave him be? Not bother him about this weekend, how he returned, the shape he was in? And go on as the two of you have been?”

  “It’s not been so bad!”

  “I can see that.” Then was quiet a long pause, looked down at the floor and studied as if he’d cipher some answer there. He looked up again and stood and said her name.

  “What?”

  “If I give you what you want, it will never be the same. Do you understand that?”

  “I have to know. How can I not?”

  He stood looking at her and then turned and said, “God damn it.” He walked to the screen door and out onto the porch and she leaned and watched him as he smoked again. She waited. And knew then, there, all was about to change and she wanted whatever was made of that change, however her life turned she knew she’d turn with it and knew the man upon her porch had come or been sent to enact that change. And he clearly hadn’t known that coming in but he certainly did now—likely had known for hours, longer.

  Then watched him turn and come back into the house. His tired face set, his lips asnarl, an arch of anger, distemper. Upon himself, upon her, she did not know. But would soon.

  “He saw her last night. Or thought he did, it amounts to the same thing. The blonde girl; did he ever tell you about her?”

  “No.” Her voice small and uncertain.

  If he heard her fear he paid it no mind but filled his jar again at the sink and sat across from her. His face was no longer angry but his eyes distant, red, darkly pouched. She thought This was how he’d looked during the war, the part they were speaking of. Finally, he settled those tired eyes upon her and said, “I don’t think a person can understand how it was unless they were there, and if you don’t know that, how can you understand the rest? So I’ll do my best to first tell that. How it was.

  “In May of ’45 when we crossed the Rhine it was terribly exciting and simply terrible. Made worse because we’d been sitting, waiting, most of April. We knew the war was almost over, none of us though knew how soon or what we faced. What lay ahead. But the first thing to understand was how enormously different it felt to be inside Germany—all those months since the invasion of France, fighting across France, there was much to be frightened about, and the land itself, the villages and towns, what was left of them, was terrible to see, to be there—none of us knew day to day what would come next. But it was France. And then, after some weeks waiting, we went across the bridges made by the engineers and were in Germany. Do you understand?”

  She remained quiet. He went on.

  “Every man among us knew we were winning the war. We were a conquering army. But we didn’t know how soon or how long it would take for the Germans to surrender. I guess the generals and high command had a pretty good idea but we didn’t. And so we didn’t know what we’d face. Or how quickly it all would happen. What we knew was we were there. What that does, in a man’s head, is a strange thing. We fully expected to encounter some huge force, the army the Germans had held back for just this event—why would we not expect that? If nothing else during those years we’d learned not to underestimate the Germans. There was talk among the men about new weapons, new bombs the Nazis had developed, for just such an event. More immediately, there was talk not only of hidden divisions but an understanding that every man in the country, the young women and older kids, also had been instructed and trained to fight. So we had no idea. And we crossed that river, that border, and then were within the place itself. All around us. How that works on a man’s mind. You’re all jacked up and it never quits. But not like it was across France. It was almost as if
your mind and the land had come to some agreement: Nothing will make sense and the further you go and whatever happens, nothing makes sense even more.

  “How it was. Listen: Those first days, there were no divisions waiting for us. But that didn’t mean they weren’t there, waiting five miles away, ten miles away. You got more nerved up the further you went. It was slow going. Every bridge, regardless of how small the road, had been blown by the Germans. So the engineers had to work with what they had and rebuild. There were tanks with us, which was good, but made the going slow also. My company, the second day was working across a ruined land but it was country and so here and there were farms, the remains of farms. And on the second day—I saw this—a bunch of us had just passed an old stone barn with the roof burned off some time ago when it blew up. A huge explosion that sent rocks the size of, well, slabs, that had built the barn a couple hundred years ago, flying through the air. I don’t know how many men were killed, how many wounded, from that. And only moments before it had just been a barn. That’s how it was. It seemed like there were no people, no German people, anywhere. Then you’d see someone dart off into the woods or down a ravine. Doughs chased and often as not came back empty-handed but a couple times I saw them return with someone. An old man with half a leg using a crutch and that leg had been gone a long time. Or an old woman looking at us like we were spawn out of hell. Once it was a kid, a boy not more than seven or eight and he was twisting and fighting to get away, spitting at the men who held him. Someone knocked him over the head with a rifle butt and they carried him away. And there were dead horses on the road we had to make our way around and carts full of household goods and clothing lying there as the people abandoned that stuff and took to the woods or fields or maybe went down into a roadside ditch and whoever had a weapon killed them all and then themselves. And those few people we did see, women, mostly old, men, all old, and kids, there was no joy in our arrival. Contempt and hatred. The weeks before we invaded Stars and Stripes had a couple articles about how all Germans were not Nazis, how many had to go along to get along, and I’m sure that was true. But we sure didn’t see any welcome then. Some later, after the war was over, but not then. You see? We walked through all that.