Home Free

by Dan Wakefield

  Waking, it looked like a battlefield. This side must have lost. Bodies pretzel-bent haphazardly overlapping here and there not in lust just left there. A groan or sigh or snore or some odd move of stretching arm, leg shifting, showed they all weren’t dead. Maybe just wounded. Or gassed. Some bodies gather and rise, squinting and blinking, sigh, disappear.

  Somehow Jerry and Monica got it together to make it up the beach and get the concession going, and likewise the natural food store chicks in their own enterprise. Coach Billy, the big, sandy-haired coach with the bull neck and the pale blue eyes who seemed to be the head coach of the coach bunch got to his feet and then to the kitchen, popped a can of Bud, let out a cavernous belch, rubbed his iron potbelly, stared down at the fallen troops, and said, in so many words, to follow me, and stirring, straggling, stumbling, stunned, they did.

  Stopped in town to pick up a couple of cases of Carlings, a couple of loaves of Wonder bread and two family-size jars of Skippy Peanut Butter in case anyone was up for lunch. Coach Billy insisted it was all on him, everything they ate or drank or smoked or snorted or chewed at The Broken Arms was on the house.

  The house they called The Broken Arms was where Coach Billy, Coach Burt, and Pal all lived.

  It was a bumpy ride back into scratchy scrubland mostly on an unpaved unmarked muddied and pitted and potholed poor excuse for a road. Visitors guaranteed to be shaken well on the journey. And again at first sight of the house.

  Out of thick brush a clearing comes suddenly, blank, dusty, nothing growing, an emptiness like a hole in a picture and then set into it onto it a stark, stiff, naked frame box of a two-story house once white but colorless now, washed out, corroded, bleached, blanched, roof in places scalped of shingles and sagged in the center like an overridden mule, two of six square windows blinded by boards, the others open blank, a front porch with top tilted to one side favoring a lame pillar bolstered by unpainted two-by-fours, old-fashioned glider on it with rusty coils sticking down through stuffing, and littered around the blunt building a dead car on wheel-less rims, a rusted jack, deflated beach ball, playground swing, big red Harley-Davidson in running order and plumed with appropriate squirrel’s tail, a bicycle not in running order stripped of all but a crippled frame, a metal beer keg, badminton net, two croquet clubs, old-fashioned round-topped refrigerator without a door. And out of some or all of this, skittering in and around it raising dust and yips comes a scraggy wirehaired terrier who also belongs here. They called him Coach.

  “Hey,” said Barnes, sensing he should say some salutary statement in behalf of his group, new visitors wanting to be appreciative, polite, “Hey,” he said again before coming up with: “This is really something.”

  “We looked and looked,” Pal said, pleased, “and finally found a place that had the two things Coach Billy really wanted.”

  “What?” asked Barnes, his mind boggling in the effort to imagine.

  “Privacy and a front porch.”

  The Broken Arms had one kind of privacy but not another. It was sealed off from the world outside, but inside its sagging walls you could hear any word or sound made in any given room in it from any other given room. There were five tiny rooms and a bathroom upstairs, and down, one big one and the kitchen. Layers of different wallpaper peeling and molting gave the interior a scrambled effect, dim stripes and soiled flowers, patterns of stars and sailing ships, repeated, running into one another. Pillows were living room furniture, all shapes and colors and sizes so you could stack them or strew them, sit or lie on them, or, if the mood hit, throw and fight with them. After an afternoon of playing touch they came in and flopped on the pillows and then Coach Burt teased Pal about missing a sure touchdown pass cause of trying to catch like a girl and she hit the target of his head from across the room with a small green beanbag of a pillow and knocked off his long-billed baseball cap and the whole room exploded with pillows, everyone hurling and ducking and pouncing and then they rained back down, subsided, sighs and huffings, and Pal said she’d make a run into town for some clams and there’d be spaghetti with clam sauce if anyone wanted and everyone did, Barnes going with her and bringing back wine, a case of Cribari rosé that by now he’d got used to, and after the feast they smoked and everyone stayed: sapped, zapped, crapped out on the pillows.

  Late morning, finishing muddy black coffee and bowls of Wheaties at the picnic table with benches that sat in the kitchen, Barnes asked Gene to go for a walk. They went along a narrow path in the scrubby woods and came to a slow brown stream where they sat on a log. Barnes tossed pebbles in the water, making little plinks. He said he and Nell had to get back to Boston. He said Gene could come and stay at his place awhile if he wanted.

  “No, man. Thanks.”

  “Yeh, I think you’re right. To keep away awhile.”

  “Got to.”

  “Wanna stay here?”

  “Where?”

  “The Arms.”

  “Christ. I can’t just ask.”

  “They said it’s OK. Already.”

  “Did you ask? For me?”

  “No. They seemed to know.”

  Gene gave a quick cut laugh.

  “I guess it shows,” he said. “That I don’t live anywhere.”

  Barnes shrugged.

  “Who knows?”

  Gene dug out a cigarette, lit it on the second trembling try, coughed. After a couple puffs he threw it in the stream and suddenly turned his face up to Barnes, the color of paste and panic.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “what am I gonna do?”

  “You mean—this summer?”

  “No, no. I mean, my life, man.”

  There were suddenly tears coming down. Barnes’s mouth opened, then closed, then he put his arm around Gene and Gene buried his head against him, sobbing, all of it coming out now, racking and coughing and heaving, wrenching, gut-deep, spasms, sobbing not just for the loss of his love, his Lou, or his life, that dizzy dream, but for all life, the puniness of it, people going bravely ahead through the tangle of it, tearing and being torn, caring anyway, cursing and caring, brave pretending there being no certain still ending for them all, but sometimes, struck by it, seeing the dark ahead some had, like this, to wail against it, down from and out of the falling yawn of his limitless depths, the ache at the center, the nightmare side of the dream, the scream.

  Barnes held onto him with both arms, like a child or a lover, murmuring as best he could sounds to comfort: “OK, man, yeh, it’s OK, let it out, let it all out, go, let it go, it’s all OK, yeh, go …”

  Later, empty of it, dry and nose-blown and clean inside, Gene sat up straight again, had a whole cigarette, and after clapped a hand on Barnes’s knee and said, “You’re good. Thanks.”

  Barnes said he and Nell’d be back up again to see Jerry and Monica, they could bring any of his stuff for him, just say what. And anything else he needed. That he and Nell could provide. They walked back along the trail through the often overgrowth, the sun hotter on them as they neared the house, sweat breaking, brambles scratching, swatting at occasional buzzing bugs, speaking no more, silence an understanding and a bond, stepping into the sudden circle of the house and the dust-grown yard, side by side, brothers. Before they left, Barnes gave him a biff on the arm and said, “Hang in, man.” Nell gave him a package of Bazooka bubble gum and said, “Practice!”

  As the car drew out of sight Gene stood, still looking at where it had been, arms hanging limp at his side, feet still, rooted, when Coach Billy’s voice shot out like a crack, “Go out for one!” and he wheeled, already running toward the cocked aim of Coach’s arm, running clear across the clearing, reaching, catching the shot spiral of the ball in his stomach, went backward with it, curled and clutching the catch, smiling as he fell. Welcomed.

  The house made its own noises, apart from the people noises. As the days fell around him, Gene learned which noises were whose. His were close and few, lying on an old army cot in one of the small rooms upstairs, staring up at the ceiling st
ained by rain from a leak in the roof. Cots are quiet, like stiff boards. House creaks came at night mostly, slow, tired, like the haunting effects in old movies. So did the people-made creaks of the bedsprings come then, at night, and he learned to tell the difference between the ones made by Coach Burt with Pal and Coach Billy with Pal. Coach Burt with Pal made quick high squeaky bouncy creaks like a singsong tune for kids skipping rope, and along with this came giggles and yelps, playful, nibbly, and then sudden cries of delighted shock. Coach Billy with Pal made steady, long rhythmic creaks, building, slightly faster, longer steady, like a march, methodical, and along with this were no other sounds except breathing, deep, matching the steady rhythm of the springs as the creak relentlessly rose in pace and ended with a deep cry like someone stabbed and then, the creaking dead, a long low fading moan. Later, steps, the chain of the toilet yanked, the swallowing whoosh of the flush. Morning, rattle and tinkle of cups and spoons, whistle alarm of water boiling, beginning of life again, repeating.

  One night Gene and Pal were playing checkers and the two Coaches said they were turning in early and Gene said maybe he should, too, but they said no, you finish your game there. Gene lost his concentration and Pal won. He started to get up to go to bed and she put a hand on his wrist, sitting him down again.

  “Would you like me,” she said, “to come with you?”

  “I guess I can’t. Do that now. Yet. Thank you.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  She gave him a little kiss on the forehead, and went on up. Gene sat where he was for a long time, looking at the jumble of red-and-black squares on the checkerboard.

  He figured out Pal was mostly Coach Billy’s woman, but it was all right with him if she sometimes went to Coach Burt, after all he, too, was a friend, a part of the family. And both the Coaches had said it was fine with them if she went to Gene, in fact it might be the best thing any of them could do for him. If not, at least he’d know they all cared.

  Pal was a nurse and worked in the pretty new hospital in Damariscotta. Coach Burt had a job at a summer camp teaching kids baseball and swimming and some basic track events like the high jump. He was good with kids, his laugh, his line of patter. Coach Billy had a job lined up for the fall coaching freshman football at a public high school. He and Coach Burt kind of took turns doing paying jobs, and Pal worked steady. Coach Billy was around the house all day so he and Gene tossed the football and played a lot of checkers, and sometimes sat on the porch and got quietly high. Coach Billy was friendly but didn’t talk much and Gene never pressed him. Coach Billy mainly just liked to sit on the porch, either playing checkers or getting high or maybe just sitting, moving a little back and forth in the rusty glider. He seemed like one of those people who has either done something awful or had it done to him.

  One afternoon he and Gene were sitting on the glider with a can of beer and Coach Billy just started talking. Gene hadn’t asked him anything, he just started telling it, slowly sipping his beer and talking in a quiet monotone, looking straight ahead of him across the flat dusty ground and into the bramble.

  “I went to Wisconsin, on a football scholarship and I was all gung ho about it. I did everything they told me. I started as a running back my sophomore year and made All Conference. My junior year I made second-string AP all-America. I got married. To the Homecoming Queen. I was still doing what they wanted me to. Then I saw what was happening. I saw I was in a machine. I wanted out, all the way out. I joined the Marines. I figured they’d send me to Nam and they did. They told me to kill and I did. Just point me to the ones you want dead and I’ll do it. I realized, shit, I had escaped one machine and put myself into another machine. I just went along with it. I did my time and I killed when they told me and then I got out. Burt was in my unit over there and he talked about going back to Maine where he grew up and just kind of fooling around. That sounded right and I came with him. I met Pal at the diner in town. We spent the day and that night and I told her straight before anything happened I wasn’t going to fall in love with her or anyone or get married to her or anyone and she is free to stay and free to go but that’s where it starts and ends. I will not get caught in any machine again, ever. You have to be careful, you have to be on guard, or sure as hell they’ll get you in one of their machines. I’ve been in their football machine and their marriage machine and their war machine and that’s it. They won’t get me again, not in their full-time job machine or their settling-down-and-have-kids machine or anything else. Not even their Welfare machine. We all three put what we earn in the pot. Pal sees we have enough and looks after things. I have made myself unfit for all their machines. Even if they got me they would have to spit me out.”

  He had told it all in a steady, sure monotone, as flat as reading a stock market prices report. When he finished, he took the last sip of his beer, then folded the can double with his fist and tossed it out onto the dusty ground. Gene listened to a fly that was buzzing around him. He didn’t say anything. What he thought was, You are way out there, man. You are farther along than I am.

  “Fuck a duck,” Coach Billy said. “Let’s play some checkers.”

  Gene liked the Coaches and Pal but he really wasn’t part of their family. They had their own thing going. And the house. The house had a spooky kind of vacancy about it, an essence of empty, wind whooshing through it, old boards groaning in the night. Sitting in the main room sharing a joint, no one talking, no sound but each person’s suck of inhalation, Gene was suddenly swept with the feeling that the house was haunted and the people in it were the ghosts. Him, too.

  He went into town and got a room and a job. The job was combination grill-man and waiter at Buster’s, an old-fashioned hole in the wall with a six-stool counter and two small tables. It smelled of grease and summer, and Gene found it comforting. The room was down the street from Buster’s. It had one twin bed with a large sag in the center, a rickety chest of drawers, and an old-fashioned washbasin. There was a bathroom down the hall with a tub on iron feet and a chain-flush toilet. The setup was fine. It was all he needed. Or wanted.

  He went down to Boston to get his gear, throwing stuff as quick as he could into a streamer trunk and two battered suitcases. He had hoped to get it over with and go without running into Lou, but when he finished he stopped and rolled a joint, sitting on the trunk, and heard her steps and the sound of the key in the lock that felt like metal twisting in his skull.

  At least she wasn’t with a guy. Still, it hurt. The sight of her, making him want to melt. She was wearing a light yellow summer dress and sandals. Her hair was tied with a piece of yellow yarn. She closed the door and leaned against it.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “You all packed?”

  “Yeh.”

  “Kitchen stuff, too?”

  “Keep it.”

  “But the stewpot, and—”

  “Keep it. Please.”

  “OK. Gimme a hit?”

  “Sorry. Sure.”

  He stood up and went to her and handed her the joint, trying not to touch her. He had the feeling if he touched her he’d burn. She closed her eyes and she took the drag. He forgot she always closed her eyes. All of a sudden he wanted her no matter what. He laid his hand on her cheek. She coughed, moved away, and handed him the joint back.

  “No,” she said.

  “Please. Lou.”

  “Don’t make it hard.”

  “Just this once. The last.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “For God sake don’t beg!”

  She turned away from him, folding her arms as if closing the matter.

  “OK,” he said.

  He picked up his suitcases.

  “Barnes’ll get the trunk,” he said. “He’ll get it to me.”

  She turned toward him.

  “Gene,” she said, “I wasn’t being bitchy. It would have hurt. It would have hurt too much.”

  “Nothing hurts,” he said, “if you ca
n’t feel anything.”

  “But you’re not like that,” she said.

  “Maybe I can get to be.”

  She opened the door and he walked out, past her, careful not to brush against, the suitcase bumping his knee as he went down the stairs. At the bottom he heard the door close.

  He hung out at Jerry and Monica’s a lot. He’d ask them to play the Linda record that he listened to when he first came.

  Time washes clean, she told him.

  He hoped so.

  He walked, swam, fished, and did a lot of dope.

  Still, he knew it would be a long, long time. To get Lou out of him. To be empty again.

  On sweltering summer nights he lay on his bed in his undershorts, smoking. That reminded him of Lou, too. Not the smoking, the undershorts. He had worn the boxer kind all his life till he met her and she told him jockey shorts were much sexier. He had never thought of men’s underwear being sexy, just necessary. He asked her what was sexy about jockey shorts and she explained they showed the bulge of the cock and that was a real turn-on. The boxer shorts didn’t show anything unless the guy had an erection. It made sense to Gene and the next day he went down to the Grand Union and bought four cellophaned three-packs of jockey shorts and had worn that kind ever since.

  He reached down and touched himself, thinking of Lou. Then drew his hand back. The most depressing thing of all was jerking off thinking of Lou. Realizing now the only way he could have her was in memory. He slipped on some jeans and a Maine state tourist office T-shirt that said “LOVE ME,” and his old moccasins, and walked down to the pier. There was a couple holding hands, and a bunch of high-school kids in a rowboat, diving off and scrambling back in. Gene sat down at the end and let the wave lap lull him. Occasionally, a foghorn hoot, low and long, like a hurt cow.