What Comes Next

by Jonathan Baumbach

  I was surrounded, the trees revealing themselves as soldiers in camouflage. “Throw down your arms and put up your hands, or we’ll come in shooting,” a voice yelled. “We’ll hit you with everything we’ve got.”

  “I’m not armed,” I said.

  The order came again. “Throw down your arms.”

  I looked around to see who it was they might be after, but I saw no one—no one else—soldiers pointing rifles on all sides of me.

  “I’m a civilian. There’s been some kind of mistake.”

  For a moment I had the sense I had gotten through to them, then the voice came again. “Throw down your arms. Throw down your arms. You must show us, by diminishing your capability, that you want peace.” A bullet blistered by, taking a button off my shirt.

  “I want peace. I come in peace.”

  “We want deeds, not words,” said the voice, which seemed to be coming from a loudspeaker some distance away. “Yield your arms.” A shot grazed my finger.

  I looked in my pockets for something to yield to them—it seemed my only chance. I found an old boy scout knife, one that I had used when I was a kid, grateful that I had it with me. I threw it underhand on the ground in front of me, hoping somebody would notice. “That’s all there is,” I said. “It s not really a weapon.”

  “The enemy is trained to fight with all the means at his disposal,” someone said. “It’s in the Manual of Enemy Arms.”

  A soldier stepped forward, prodded my knife with his bayonet as though it might be alive, then fired a round of shots into it. At the fourth or fifth shot, the knife exploded.

  “This will go hard on you,” I was told. “Your ass has had it.”

  I thought the best thing for me to do was not to say a word until I learned what the charges were. Two guards in black were taking me to the orderly room. I thought of making a break for it, of making a sudden dive into the brush, which might be thick enough to conceal me.

  “It would be good shit if he tried to run,” one of the guards said in a Southern drawl, “’cause then I could make a few holes in his back and get transferred off this mother-forsaken post. You don’t kill a prisoner, you spend the rest of your time on this post.”

  “You’ll be doing him a favor,” the other said. “You go ahead and shoot him if you like, Schuyler. If anyone asks, I’ll say he looked to me like he was about to run.”

  “I couldn’t do it unless he actually made a motion to run,” the first one said. “I go by the book, man. I don’t do nothing without consulting the book.”

  “Hey, buddy,” the second guard whispered to me, “listen ass carefully what I tell you. I’m your friend, buddy. When I say to Schuyler, ‘Look what shit’s coming from the supply room,’ you take off and run for your life. It’s your only chance, old buddy. Trust the old man.”

  (How could he expect me to trust him?) We were walking along what must have been a parade grounds, goal posts on both ends, a rocket launcher in the center, the two guards joking about something that made no sense to me. A major came by and stopped us. “Why are you men out of uniform?” he bellowed at the guards. “What do you think this is, a tea party we’re running here? Let’s see your authorization, soldier.”

  “We ain’t got any authorization, sir,” Schuyler said. “We’re intelligence men, we go by the book.”

  “When I ask for authorization,” the major said, his face a deep red, swelling, “you better shit some if you don’t have any. I don’t care if the general himself gave you your orders; nobody goes by here without I say so. Am I making myself clear, gentlemen?”

  Schuyler held out his gun for the major to inspect. The second guard saluted. Their attention diverted, I took off for the woods, head down, running as fast as I knew how, the distance deceptive. The woods a fake, another open field on the other side. I kept on, any progress better than the risk of standing still. If the world is round, I reasoned, in the long run it doesn’t matter which way you go. Night now. The cries of birds. My chest hurts from running. An officer calls to me to stop. I can’t now even if I want to—the mechanism self-perpetuating, outside the authority of will. I trip on something, fall. There are men, bodies, around me—asleep or dead. Someone hands me a rifle. I am told to fire a round every five seconds. “I’m a pacifist,” I tell them. “A pacifist and a civilian.” “We’re all just men here,” the chaplain says. “The ways of war are mysterious.” The piece kicks back as I fire, punishing my shoulder. “Squeeze softly,” the chaplain whispers, “like a lover.” There is no light. How beautiful it is to fire at what can’t be seen. Somewhere I have been wounded. I have the sense that if I fall asleep, I will not wake up. I am too tired to care—past caring. Fight to stay awake. Will kill anyone who gets in my way.

  The inspection has started. The team of inspectors (1 major, 1 captain, 1 lieutenant, and the first sergeant) are studying the display of the man whose bed is closest to the door; my bed, the third in the row, is separated from his by one other bed.

  “Captain,” the major said, “do you have a copy of the latest inspection manual in this barracks? It is my impression that this year the item Α-five tent pegs are to be displayed to the right and not to the left.”

  “Lieutenant,” the captain said in a voice a shade louder than the major’s, “it is my distinct impression that the item Α-five, to wit, tent supporter pegs, are to be displayed to the right and not, as in the display of Private Komanski, to the left.”

  “Sergeant,” the lieutenant bellowed, “in the latest Manual of Field Display, Article Twenty-four, paragraph sub one, it is stipulated that when there are more than two inspecting officers, the item Α-five, to wit, tent supporter and maintainer pegs, are to be displayed to the right and not, as in the display of Private Komanski, to the left.”

  “Private Komanski,” the sergeant whispered in a mock-gentle voice, “your fucking Α-five tent pegs are pointing in the wrong asshole direction. Disciplinary action will be taken.” He turned and, stiffening to attention, saluted the lieutenant. “It has been verified that Private Komanski’s tent supporter pegs are in violation of Article Twenty-four, paragraph sub one, sir,” he chanted. “Disciplinary action, as deemed proper and necessary, will be taken.”

  (I suspected, unable to see without turning around, that my tent pegs were facing in the same direction as Komanski’s.)

  The captain saluted the major. “The violation has been duly noted, sir. Correctionary action will be taken.”

  “Then let’s go on, gentlemen,” the major said. “By all means, let’s go on.”

  They lined up, in order of descending rank, in front of Private Gatchel’s bed, the second bed in the row. “This is what I like to see,” the major said. “This man is to be commended, captain.”

  The word was passed back through the chain of command to the first sergeant. “You’re shaping up, soldier,” the sergeant barked at Gatchel.

  And then they were in front of me. I prayed, superstitious about my fate, holding my breath, that nothing was wrong.

  “Hmm,” I heard the major say. “Hmmm.”

  “Uh huh,” the captain said. “Uh huh, uh huh.”

  The lieutenant cleared his throat. The sergeant belched. “Is this the best you can do, Steiner?” the sergeant said.

  “Excellent,” the major said, “but not excellent enough. Is that in line with your observation, captain?”

  “My feeling is that it’s good,” the captain said. “But that there is room for improvement.”

  I stifled a belch.

  “I want to go on the record and say that it’s not up to snuff,” the lieutenant said. “A little more effort and desire was needed here.”

  The sergeant said nothing, looked at me with disappointment, with contempt.

  “I’ll do better next time,” I said. A belch escaped.

  The inspecting team went through the rest of the barracks quickly and disappeared into the john, where they remained for what seemed like days. Komanski made a joke about the ma
jor having to take a shit. In an agony of sickness, I threw up on the polished barracks floor.

  “If I were you,” Gatchel whispered to me, “I’d make a run for it before they get back.”

  “Where can I go?”

  “If you can get over the border,” he said, “they can’t touch you. I’d go myself if I didn’t have a reputation to maintain.”

  “Tennnnnn-shunnn,” someone yelled.

  I rushed for the door, tripped, got up, crawled under one of the beds and through a loose floorboard into an underground tunnel, which was, Gatchel had told me once, the only way out of the fort. Though I was tired—it had been days since I had been to sleep—I crawled, using my elbows to propel me, with what seemed, under the circumstances, exceptional speed. Crawling through the tunnel, elbows, knees, arms, wounds, I wanted a woman—I began in the dark of the tunnel to lust for a woman. It was what one lacked in the Army: tenderness, sex, affection, the touch of a woman, softness, ease, the taste and smell of love, breasts, cunt, love—a good fuck. I tasted the possibilities of freedom, the exhaustive opportunities. I would go from woman to woman with the impartial grace of a dedicated soldier, making up for all the ascetic wasted years. As I crawled I imagined a woman crawling with me, underneath me. I pressed up against her. “Not here,” she whispered, coming to life. “Not here.”

  “I’m tired of crawling,” I said, “Let’s screw.”

  “You must learn to wait, baby,” she said, fondling me, my hard on so big it had become painful to crawl.

  “I made you out of my head, and I want to make love now,” I said. “Here and now.”

  “OK,” she said. “Though, sweetie, it will be better if we wait. I know how these things are. There’s hardly any room in here for anything.”

  I couldn’t wait. I held her down and plunged, bleeding, into her dark cut, occupied her, an escaped soldier, desperate to the final extent. She sang in my ear: of what it is to dance on the head of a pin.

  I went off without feeling it, a short wistful spasm, more smoke than flame, the dust of regret on my tongue.

  And then I was too tired to move.

  “Come on,” she said. “My lover, my love, I want you again.”

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I want to rest for a while.”

  “Don’t you love me?” she asked. “Tell me you love me.”

  “I love you,” I said, unwilling to argue with an imaginary woman in the black of night (in an escape tunnel miles away from light and freedom). “I need to sleep for a few hours to regain my strength.”

  “Sleep, my love,” she said. “Forget everything that worries you. Put your head on my breasts and sleep.”

  So I did.

  I had the idea someone was following me. After six blocks, ducking in and out of places, he was gone. Later, there were two others, incompetents, easy to get rid of.

  QUEENS WOMAN KILLED IN BATHTUB—headline in the early News. No mention of the Cripple Killer. (Forgotten already?) On page three: MARRIAGE CRUMBLING, KILLS WIFE, MOTHER-IN-LAW, BYSTANDER.

  A woman stabbed to death in Central Park in broad daylight. The assailant, according to observers, was dark, foreign-looking, and had long hair.

  I have to stay out of the park.

  Called home. When he answered I said, disguising my voice, that it was my painful duty to inform him that his son was missing in action.

  “Don’t think I don’t know who it is,” he said.

  It was after nine, turning dark, when I arrived at Parks’ place. The pacifist in the middle of a fight with his wife. They turned off when I came in, pretending it was all right, the smell of their heat in the air.

  I come in peace, Parks.

  FIVE

  After Christmas Rosemary Byrd

  Gave Curtis Parks No Peace

  AFTER CHRISTMAS Rosemary Byrd gave him no peace. For weeks, for his sins, she haunted his office. For his virtue. It was his explanation of what had happened, his way of seeing it. He did what any love-starved American man would have done in his place. To deceive his wife was hard on his sense of himself, though necessary.

  For the first months of it, his affair with Rosemary made him happier with himself than a man of thirty-two, without accomplishments or expectation of some, had a right to be. Even Carolyn seemed to like him better, though perhaps it was that he was home less. And Steiner, still following him from time to time, he suspected, had returned to the once-a-week meetings in his office, his student again. When there was more ease between them, more trust, he would let him know that he knew he was following him, that it had to stop. Meanwhile, it was enough that they talked together, that he was influencing the most talented student of his short career, making a mark on his life. The confrontation would have to wait. In pursuit of too much at once, he might lose all. He kept his life in fragile balance.

  In March, with less pain than he anticipated, Curt wrote the first chapter of his book. Wrote it off as if it had been in him all the time. About the time of its completion, the late-night anonymous phone calls began again.

  The calls had no discernible pattern. They came and went. Sometimes there was breathing on the other end—harsh breathing—and he had the illusion, listening like an eavesdropper, that he knew who it was. Sometimes whoever was there hung up immediately. His wife suggested that maybe silent calls, like silent music, were a new fashion, but he saw that despite her joke they were making her tense. And her tension, her barely controlled hysteria, made him tense. Without saying so, she blamed him for them.

  When he mentioned the calls to Rosemary, not accusing her but implying that she might know something about them, she cried. He stroked her hair, said it didn’t matter. She said she had thought several times of calling—had talked to his wife in her imagination—but hadn’t. After they made love, a matter of life and death, she confessed that once, a long time ago, before they were close, she had out of desperation called. He didn’t know what to believe—if once, conceivably it was twice or ten times. How many anonymous callers did he have? He pleaded with her, no matter what, not to do it again. Her dark eyes turned darker. She accused him with a bitterness he hadn’t noticed before of not believing her, of lack of trust. He admitted it, disliking himself for not trusting.

  “First you told me you never called, Rosemary, then you said that you had once. If I trusted you the first time, I would have been deceived.”

  “Is that so bad?” She covered her body with a bathrobe. “Do you never deceive me?”

  “Do you trust me absolutely?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, mocking him.

  They made up before separating, but the fight—their first as lovers—lingered in aftertaste. Curt called to apologize, to tell her, anguished at something lost, that he trusted, wanted to. In repayment, she told him of another call, a more recent one. One that had caused him no trouble, she said, since the line had been busy. He groaned, said not to do it again. She said, her voice small, that she would try not to, though could make no promise.

  He received two silent calls the next week. When he mentioned them in passing, Rosemary swore they weren’t her, asked him, rejecting his touch, to leave. Though he apologized, she was adamant. She couldn’t love a man, she said, who didn’t trust her. When he left she ran after him and they made up, holding each other, on the steps of the subway. “I don’t lie to you,” she said. “I know,” he said. “I know,” believing himself. Looking up, he thought he saw him in the distance, hovering above the landscape, his wild hair among the branches of the trees like an apparition.

  In a dream Curt called his student on the phone to confront him. He answered silently. “Have you been calling me?” he asked the silence. There was no answer. “If you don’t stop, I give you my word, I have no choice but to fail you. You leave me no choice.” There was crying on the other end, sobs. “It’s doing neither of us any good,” he said, touched by his pain. “It has to stop.” There was a moan, a strangling sound, then the connection was dead. Curt woke with a re
velation: the boy wanted to talk to him, needed to (the reason for silent calls), but each time he tried, couldn’t. He remembered himself at twenty—more like seventeen or eighteen—calling a girl for a date and then losing his nerve in the middle of dialing. A few times, hanging up when the girl answered, unable to remember what it was he had planned to say, afraid of seeming a fool, of being what he seemed. Though twenty years old, Christopher was in his dealings with people very much a child—forward in some ways, backward in others. For example, Curt could not recall having seen him alone with a girl, though a handsome kid, attractive (he imagined) to women. Sometimes he had noticed him, looking superior, standing at the edge of a group. Always at the edge, looking on. His idea of his student’s life, a lonely child himself, pained him.

  At their next meeting, as a gesture he felt had to be made, Curt invited him to his house for dinner. He was noncommittal, looked burdened rather than pleased.

  “You know, you can bring a date if you want,” Parks said later, interrupting himself in the middle of a lecture on military tactics of the Civil War. “Though of course you’re welcome to come alone if that’s what you prefer.”

  “What would you prefer?”

  “I don’t have any preference, Christopher. If you want to come alone …” It struck him that he was repeating himself, that he had already said what he was saying, though it made him nervous leaving the sentence unfinished. “You’re welcome to come alone.”

  “I mean, if you were in my place, what would you do?”

  The question made him aware that his chair, the same one he had been sitting on for three years, was uncomfortably hard. “I’ve never been in your place,” he said. “No faculty member ever invited me to his house for dinner. I’ll answer your question this way: if I had a girl I was seeing regularly and was fond of, I think I would want to bring her along if someone invited me to dinner.”

  “When you were my age did you have a girl you were seeing regularly you were fond of?”

  “I really don’t remember. A more relevant question, Christopher, is do you?” Parks, despite himself, looked at his watch, suffered the minutes they were losing.