Life Between Wars

by Robert Patton

  “I get a little loaded, a little mean.”

  “Must be a reason.”

  “Sometimes I think the things I’m thinkin’ you won’t approve of. Makes me mad that I give a shit.”

  “I don’t ask you to be noble. I ask you to be honest.”

  “Same difference.”

  “A profound coincidence.”

  Matthew was out of quarters and Jerome handed him several. Jerome hated video games — practicing war, he said. “You winnin’?”

  “You can’t win. The object is to outlast other players.”

  “I gave Charlie Wertz all my money.”

  “You don’t need it. It was tainted anyway.”

  “I need it for Robby’s bail.”

  “Ah.” Matthew’s late mother had left Matthew comfortable, but Jerome never would have asked him for a loan and Matthew never would have offered it — not for Robby anyway.

  “I owe him that,” Jerome said.

  “You owe him nothing. Not everything is your fault.”

  “I want him outta jail.”

  “When justice has been served.”

  “Now. If he wants to skip, fine. Take Lois with him.”

  “She’d never go. I’d miss her.”

  “Me too.” At Matthew’s look Jerome said, “I don’t trust myself, I admit it. So the right thing to do is get Robby back home. Right?” Matthew’s concentration had faltered. His starship blew up. Jerome said, “We’ve always sorta circled each other, Lois and me.”

  “And always steered clear. I found it admirable that two so selfish people for once could do something unselfish.”

  “What if it changed?”

  “That’s your business.”

  “It’s just with Robby not around, the possibility’s there like it wasn’t before. It’s the first thing I thought when I heard what he’d done. Get him free was the second.” Jerome was earnest with drink. “I like Lois. I always liked her. I never had a chance with someone I liked, ’cept Eve, and even she was wearin’ thin at the end. I used to think about her gone, you know? I didn’t care how, just gone — get free was all I wanted. Then when she died, it felt like I’d killed her.”

  Matthew exploded. “I’ve heard your sad stories! I was there, remember? They’re pathetic to me now. Pathetic and vile!”

  “I’m gonna do the right thing.”

  “Then why did you give your money away?”

  “I have conflict. I thought you could help.”

  “I can’t help anyone.”

  Jerome nodded. “I shouldna laid this on you. It’s my own situation.” He left. Matthew bent weakly over the video console, his face in his hands. It was a common pose at the Starkiller game, a game nobody wins.

  The sudden press of a hand on Matthew’s back was the answer to a wish he’d been wishing all day. He thought it was Jerome, so let slip a needful sigh. “Relax, old buddy,” said the voice beside him. “Hard times all around.” It was the dark-haired guy from the pier this morning.

  Matthew straightened, humiliated, before composing himself in crossness. “I am not old.” He traced the man’s gaze to Jerome over by the bar. “Don’t expect me to introduce you.”

  “He stands out, is all. Seems to have a lot of friends.”

  “In fact he has very few — to his credit, I’ve always thought. I am one,” Matthew added. “Off and on.”

  “I saw you had a spat.”

  “I didn’t know we were being observed, Mister — ?”

  “Willoughby Claire.” He extended a hand. “Tourist.”

  “Willyboy.”

  The hand fell. “Now where’d you hear that?”

  Matthew’s self-pity at once dispersed in electric apprehension of who this guy was and what he wanted here, for he well knew the name Willoughby Claire. It had been told to him one year ago by Jerome on the night of Jerome’s last drunk, as part of Jerome’s saddest story. It had been Matthew who’d subsequently urged, who’d transcribed with elegant penmanship, Jerome’s brief notes of confession to Lieutenant Claire and Sergeant Dale Parker, the former whose fragging Jerome had okayed, the latter whose maiming the grenade accidentally caused. “I know who you are,” Matthew said.

  “Yeah? Who am I?”

  “Please, no games. You came for Jerome. You found him.”

  “I came for clarity.”

  “It isn’t here.”

  “I came to see old friends. See who made out and who didn’t.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because I didn’t.”

  “Somehow I guessed that.”

  “You think it’s funny?”

  “I do not.” Matthew felt hurt by the suggestion. He also felt wonderful, hardly dying at all. It was his fondest dream to grapple and grow, to engage, with a soul akin to his own in lonesome candor and admirable yearning — it was his weakness to project those traits on any new acquaintance who wasn’t outright dense or outright happy.

  Willoughby mumbled, “Well, here goes,” and headed for Jerome across the barroom. Matthew, protective now and wary, followed at his heel.

  Jerome regarded them without expression. Memories of past times with Willoughby stirred in him as yet benignly, like a furnace in a frozen house whose overheating feels pleasant at first. He poured a drink for his guest. “You like the whiskey?” Willoughby asked him. “I figured you for bourbon.”

  “That’s me.”

  Matthew watched Willoughby drink — his swallow was fake. “Lieutenant Claire is stalking you,” he told Jerome.

  “What, you guys are friends now?” Without waiting for an answer Jerome said, “Somethin’ you oughta know, Willyboy. Matthew here don’t have but one friend at a time, and a reward it ain’t.”

  “You’re free of me now,” Matthew said. “I’m going home.”

  “I’m not.” Jerome explained to Willoughby, “He don’t drive, see? Scared to. Gets driven everywhere. Same gaff a baby uses on its mama, to keep mama close.”

  Matthew was furious. He told Willoughby, “This is more or less where you came in.”

  Jerome was still rambling, evidently determined to dig a deep hole tonight. “Ever see dogs fight and the dog that’s losin’ turns up its belly and, like, squeals? That’s Matthew. You can kick him around.”

  “If he cares for you, you can.”

  “Aw.”

  Willoughby spoke up. “You guys,” again with a fake sip, “are not what I expected.” He asked Matthew, “Did you fight?”

  “In Vietnam? What a quaint old question.”

  “Call me square.”

  “I fought on the homefront as a conscientious objector.”

  “Yeah? Sergeant Cochran and myself — pardon me: Jerome — we knew a few CO’s got killed. Medics, drivers. Sammy Orr was one. Remember Sammy?”

  Jerome belched. “RPG.”

  “I have no answer to that,” Matthew said.

  “Damn straight.”

  “Except to say no choice comes free and clear.”

  “A philosopher.”

  “Just a chooser.”

  “People died, man.”

  “People lived.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Willoughby said.

  Matthew faced him. His eyes shone. “I believe we have a self-dramatist here, a touch of the soapbox, a touch of the martyr.”

  “Speak for yourself. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know that you don’t know anything about me, and that if you did, your life would be improved.”

  “Gee whiz.”

  “Quite. And I’d venture to say that if I knew you, I’ve no doubt that my life too would be improved, if not exactly saved.”

  Confused by this tangle of subtext he’d wandered into, Willoughby, somewhat by rote, sneered. “D
on’t count on it.”

  “Kids, kids,” Jerome slurred, misunderstanding that war was not being made here.

  Matthew reached for Willoughby’s whiskey glass and took a single sip. “Since you’re abstaining.”

  Willoughby quickly copied him, that is, he took a long slug from the same glass and shrugged, “When in Rome.” He’d read famous books. He’d had a leg blown off, had seen killing and done it, had studied depths in his character that some people might envy and some might be sickened by. But in the realm of provocative human interplay, naive late-bloomer didn’t begin to describe him. He was, simply, not swift.

  “Now,” Matthew said. “Why did you rub my back before?”

  “Because Sergeant Cochran didn’t.”

  Matthew considered a moment. “Good answer.”

  The five whales schooled together and headed for shore. Their dorsal fins cut the surface of the water then disappeared under it. Their pectorals grazed the shallowing bottom and their broad downsweeping flukes churned sandy clouds behind. Their sonars rang about them and linked them in these seconds like the arms of partisans facing a firing squad. After the whales had beached themselves, waves broke over them in a succession of sighs becoming fainter as the tide receded.

  Mr. Wertz observed all this with a sandwich in his hand. He took a last bite, stood and brushed crumbs off his pants before going in his car to get help, leaving his tackle box and fishing rods behind him on the sand.

  The old man on the widow’s walk had dropped his spyglass and missed the beaching entirely. Bending to pick it up, he knocked off the wood railing a blue vase he’d set there for safekeeping. The vase banged to the rooftop and rattled down it. Expectantly wincing, the old man didn’t hear glass shattering nor the smash of porcelain on flagstone, only the stir of arborvitae branches cushioning the vase’s fall. He blinked in wonder. It was a miracle! Another goddamn miracle, just as when the arborvitae had saved the very same vase when he’d rolled it off the roof at sunrise today. But instead of rejoicing, the old man quaked as implications came clear. There was mystery here, in his shrubbery, and he its chosen witness.

  To explain: Even before his cerebral shocks Mr. Winston had been prone to volatile notions generally stemming from pride, paranoia, and lust. Once cause for public alarm, since the onset of extreme old age these notions had flared harmlessly like sparks in a vacuum; and they’d continued to spark, veritable fireworks of psychotic delusion never translating to action. Lately, however, strange changes had come, improvements of a kind. He scorned his walker and cane, held his bladder, tasted his food, scared himself with morning erections. And he’d resumed writing his memoirs, abandoned as tripe in the 1950s, rediscovered in manuscript in a desk drawer during his frantic search for paper and pen with which to record that first miracle several days ago, when (as Araby Munro had witnessed) the arborvitae had saved the vase he’d hurled through his solarium skylight.

  His revived faculties were not a total boon. With them had come a sense of malaise that in his former foggy state had vexed him not a bit. It was high time, his heart seemed to be saying, that he believe in something transcendent. In his sudden childlike vigor, odds favored belief in the first thing that amazed him. By chance that thing had been arborvitae, so arborvitae he now worshipped.

  The night shimmered about him. The Finger’s searchbeam circled the sky like the hand of a heavenly watch. Mr. Winston spread wide his arms like a minister embracing his flock from the pulpit. That flock in this case lay sleek and unseen, stranded and dying, out there in the sand of Oceanside Beach — already converts, as it were, to the message he was preaching.

  Thirteen

  Mr. Wertz carried news of the beached whales to The Cave. From there, someone called Mantra’s Cafe in town (reaching Ollie Newberry on the pay phone), and now vehicles from both places were racing to Oceanside Point. Radios blared synchronous tunes and gave the parade a giddy spirit. Willoughby, Jerome, and Matthew were sardined into Jerome’s pickup, Willoughby at the wheel.

  Like ex-lovers thrown together, Jerome and Willoughby kept conversation to anything but the past. Jerome was relying heavily on his gift for affecting brain trauma. Willoughby as he drove took hits from Jerome’s whiskey bottle in an effort to care less.

  Matthew leaned his head on the seatback and fell into one of those reveries that are like a dream with real effects, the noises around you the dream’s soundtrack, the dream a fitful movie. He was trapped in a dark space, the hold of a ship maybe. He heard engines laboring, sensed voices in the distance and somewhere a presence of people, a presence of light. With sickness in his stomach he felt the ship tip steeply and slide under the surface like a blade.

  He roused with a start. The truck was parked on the beach beside other off-road vehicles. Jerome was gone. Willoughby was trying to ease out from under him. Matthew seized his arm, his face resembling a skull in a trick of the truck’s interior light. “I’m dying,” Matthew said. “I’ve got cancer and I’m going to die.”

  Willoughby started to smile.

  “Please believe it.”

  Willoughby did smile. “You can’t die now. We just met.” He climbed from the truck and made for the crowd by the water, walking slow so Matthew could catch up.

  People milled around the stricken whales as if awaiting orders. Jerome, swaying, threw off his coat and led an attempt to haul one of the creatures to water. It couldn’t be done. He lost hold of a fluke and fell into the waves, wallowing in a moonbeam. Willoughby, watching, recalled his grandmother’s funeral on Virginia Beach — magic and dread had attended that scene, and those feelings returned to him now. These whales beaching themselves tonight seemed an event inescapably fateful. They’d done their part. He must do his. It was a matter of balance, of payback.

  In cupped hands a woman carried seawater to a whale and moistened its back. Others followed her example, sportcoated men from Mantra’s Cafe, the Baby Blues’ bearded drummer. Paper cups and a bucket were produced. The woman continued to stroke the whale. A young guy beside her said gently, “I really think it’s dead.” She raised her head and asked when would the tide turn.

  “Be high in six hours,” someone said.

  “I’m staying,” she declared. People nodded solemnly. The woman was Lois Cochran. The guy beside her was Ollie Newberry.

  Matthew stood with Willoughby outside the crowd. Across the water The Finger flashed at steady intervals. Waves made froth at its base and on a sand bar exposed by low water. “Forgive my outburst before,” Matthew said formally. “It was selfish of me.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I’ve seen a doctor. I’ll be seeing more.”

  “So it’s not definite.”

  “An act of God, a stroke of luck. I’ve told no one but you.”

  “Why not?”

  The truth surprised Matthew. “I want just you to know.”

  They stood together awkwardly. Matthew wanted some similar confession from Willoughby, some major wish to fulfill. It didn’t come.

  Two carpenters unloaded scrap wood off their flatbed and started a bonfire. The flames threw fever on people watering the whales, whose dark forms lay like fallen sculpture in the sand. There was a celebratory undertone, a secret party within this occasion of fellowship in a lost cause. Several cases of beer were opened. The guitarist from the Baby Blues strummed his acoustic, his chord progressions too soulful and sad to be taken entirely seriously. He took a harmonica from his pocket and handed it to Jerome, who, drying himself by the fire, blew into the instrument softly. “Wish Robby was here. Robby woulda dug this.” Wood was thrown on the fire and sparks carried to the sky.

  Willoughby had retreated to Jerome’s pickup. The quiet was a relief. He felt the soul fatigue of a loner in society, the cares of making an impression, even a bad one, burdening every moment. It made Willoughby grimace to think that such a man as Jerome once had had power to ruin
him — he seemed merely pathetic now. So where was resolve, the will to punish him? Willoughby had come to Penscot to take revenge. But like the tide his passion had ebbed, revealing bones and a lack of heart.

  He put a cigarette in his mouth and patted his pockets for matches. He searched the floor of the truck and over the dash. He opened the glove box, where he found an automatic pistol wrapped in oilcloth. With it were two empty clips and a box of bullets, also a pack of matches. He gazed at the gun. He lit his cigarette.

  High on the bluff the wind whistled spookily through the frame of the Winstons’ gazebo. It rustled the boughs in the apple orchard and the corn blades in Mrs. Winston’s vegetable patch. The clearing clouds overhead were backlit, creating a topography of silver rivers and canyons cutting through mountains whose billowy drift revealed the gleaming moon — a harvest, hunter’s, bomber’s moon — targeting in shadows what would be reaped.

  A tall gangly figure moved across the wide lawn toward the terrace outside the house solarium; a long shed roof sloped down above the solarium from a silhouetted widow’s walk. At either side of the solarium was a tall fat bush. The figure, pausing there to pluck a berry, could be seen to wear a big hat.

  Crouching now, it approached a lighted window behind some low shrubbery. Just then a second figure, bathrobed and rickety, rounded the corner of the house and marched headlong into the first figure, which tore through the shrubbery and lit out across the lawn. The lighted window flew open, a woman’s contralto piercing forth. “We have dogs and we have weapons! You have been warned!” Behind her, corgis and wolfhounds howled in alarm. “Hush goofs.” She peered out the window. “John?”

  “Don’t shoot.”

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “Dropped my flower pot.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “My flower pot!” He sighed impatiently. “The powder blue Danish porcelain vase, a thousand bucks retail in 1950, all right?”

  She sighed too. “Haven’t you noticed the moon is full? God knows what beasts are lurking tonight, possums and skunks I’m sure.”

  A pause. “Open the door, I’m coming.”