Black Maps

by Jauss, David

  “Gale’s a good man,” I said. “I like him.” I wasn’t lying; I did like Gale, though I wished I didn’t.

  “I’d rather not talk right now,” she said then, and pushed her fingers through her gray-blonde hair. “If there’s something you’d like for breakfast, just go ahead and help yourself.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Then we drank our coffee for a while without saying anything. Finally I put my cup down and said, “It’s going to be a long day. It’s going to be tough. Can’t we be friends for just this one day?”

  She didn’t answer. She just sat there with her hands cradled around her cup for warmth.

  “Damn it,” I said. “I want to make this easier for you. Can’t you see that?”

  She kept looking at the coffee in her mug. “You could have made it easier for me by not coming,” she said. “You’ve brought back a lot of bad memories.”

  I looked out the window, watched the snow drift down. “I haven’t had a drink since yesterday afternoon.”

  “A half a day,” she said.

  “I know,” I answered. “But it was rough. Especially last night. You don’t know how bad I wanted a drink.”

  “Why?” she said then, tilting her head toward me. “So you wouldn’t remember your son’s name? So if someone said ‘Chuck is dead’ you’d just scratch your head and say ‘Chuck who?’” She picked up her mug. Her hand was trembling.

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “What you did to Chuck and me wasn’t fair either,” she said back.

  I dipped my spoon in my coffee and stirred it, though it was already cool.

  “I wasn’t myself,” I said. “I was drinking too much.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  Then I said, “I heard you last night. I was walking down the hall and I heard you. It made me wonder if you ever laid awake crying like that when we were married.”

  She looked up from her coffee. “Don’t make this day any harder than it has to be.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She picked up the coffee cup again. “Just remember that Gale invited you here, not me. If you had to come, you could have at least stayed at a motel.”

  “If I had to come?” I said. “Chuck is my son. I have just as much right to go to his funeral as you do.”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But what makes you think Chuck would want you at his funeral? Did you ever think that maybe he wouldn’t have wanted you here any more than I do?”

  I wanted to say that Chuck had never blamed me for any of it, that he always knew it was the booze, not me, that was responsible. I wanted to tell her that he had always loved me, despite everything she’d done to turn him against me. But I didn’t say anything. I looked out the window and watched the evergreens grow slowly more white.

  After a while, Barbara said, “I’m sorry. I was just trying to hurt you. I didn’t mean it.” She still had her hands cradled around her cup, though it must have been cold by now. “Can we please stop talking now?”

  I nodded. “If you want.”

  Neither of us said anything after that until Gale came into the kitchen a few minutes later. He was wearing a navy blue robe and slippers. “Morning,” he said. His face was splotchy and his eyes were red behind his thick glasses. I wondered if his head was hurting as much as mine.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, trying to smile. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, too,” I said.

  “Good. Good.” Then he put his hands on Barbara’s shoulders and leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Did you sleep all right, dear?” he asked.

  “Just fine,” she said, looking at me.

  At the funeral, Gale asked me to sit in the front pew with him and Barbara, but I said no and took a seat alone in the back of the church. I didn’t listen to the minister’s eulogy or sing any of the hymns. I just sat there and tried not to look at the flag-covered coffin, or at Barbara. I could hear her crying, that same quiet sobbing I’d heard the night before, but I wouldn’t let myself look at her.

  I didn’t look at Chuck either. Even though I came all that way to see him, when we filed into the church past his open casket, I couldn’t look at him. I bent over to look at him, but before I could see his face, my eyes closed. All I saw were the gold buttons of his dress blues and the white gloves on his crossed hands.

  I didn’t see him, but in a way I saw him wherever I looked. The small brick church was filled with his classmates from Officers’ Training School, all wearing their dress blues too. They sat stiff, at attention, hands unmoving on their laps. It occurred to me then that it was just some strange accident that one of them was not my son. I could have sat beside any of their highchairs, feeding them applesauce. I could have helped any of them with their homework. I could have romped around the kitchen with any of them riding on my shoulders. But Chuck had been my son. Somehow, it seemed such a random thing.

  It wasn’t until after the funeral that I started to get the shakes. The snow had turned to sleet during the service and everyone was standing in the vestibule, bundling up before going outside. Barbara and Gale stood by the Crying Room, waiting for the funeral director to bring the limousine around. The members of Chuck’s graduating class filed past then, shaking hands and saying how sorry they were to lose such a good friend and fellow officer. Barbara and Gale’s friends comforted them too. The women cried and wiped their eyes with Kleenexes or handkerchiefs. Their husbands stood beside them, said a few words, then put on their hats like it was the only thing they could do to keep from crying themselves.

  I turned away and looked outside. The cars were lining up in the parking lot, their lights already on. Their windshield wipers were barely keeping up with the sleet.

  Just then, a tall, skinny girl with sand-colored hair came up to me and looked at my face, her forehead pursed. “You’re Chuck’s father, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?” Barbara had introduced me to the minister and the funeral director as her former husband, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about Chuck being my son, and I hadn’t said anything. Gale had looked away, embarrassed, but he hadn’t said anything either.

  “I’ve seen pictures of you,” she answered. I must have looked surprised because she added, “I’m Tammy. I was Chuck’s girlfriend.” Then she looked down at her folded hands. Her fingernails were bitten down and the skin around them was red and cracked. “He was on his way to see me when he had the accident,” she said. “Sometimes I blame myself for it happening.” Then her eyes started to swell with tears.

  I started to say “I’m sorry,” but she took my arm suddenly.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “that Chuck forgave you before he died. He didn’t hate you anymore. He even talked about the two of us driving up to Montana to see you, to set things right between you.”

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. “You’re wrong,” I said, pulling my arm away. “You’re terribly wrong.” I meant that Chuck had never hated me, that he’d always loved me in spite of everything, but Tammy didn’t understand.

  “No,” she insisted. “It’s true. He did forgive you.” She took my arm again. “You have to believe that.”

  I stood there looking at her earnest face. For a second, it crossed my mind that I’d like to slap her. But I just said, “Thank you. I appreciate you telling me that.”

  “He really did love you,” Tammy went on. “You have to remember that.”

  I was beginning to feel dizzy, almost sick. “I’m sure he did,” I said, and tried to smile. “He always said he did.”

  Tammy looked down a second. When she looked back up, her face was working. “Oh, Mr. Falk,” she said, gulping back a sob, “I’m so sorry!” And then she gave me a quick hug and turned and hurried outside. I watched her run carefully down the slick sidewalk to a blue Oldsmobile waiting i
n the parking lot.

  That was when the shaking started. It was almost as bad as that time at Intercept, when I couldn’t lift my own fork or spoon and a nurse had to feed me like a baby. But it was a different kind of shaking, a scarier kind. I was shaking so much I thought I’d have to sit down right there on the floor. I put my hands in my pockets so no one could see them shake.

  A minute later, Gale called across the vestibule to me. “It’s time,” he said, and nodded toward the limousine idling behind the hearse. But I couldn’t move. I was trembling so bad I just stood there. Gale came over and said again that it was time to go.

  “That’s all right,” I managed to say. “I’ll catch a ride with someone else a little later.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gale said. “You don’t even know anybody else here.”

  Barbara came over then. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Mr. Gilmer is waiting.”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “You two go on ahead. I’ll catch up in a little while.”

  Barbara looked at me. “Are you all right?”

  I couldn’t look at her. “I’ll be okay in a few minutes,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you then.”

  Gale put his hand on my arm. “I know how you feel,” he said. “I’ll ask Pastor Davis if he can take you with him.”

  “Fine,” I nodded. My teeth were chattering and I could hardly talk.

  “Maybe you should sit down for a while,” Barbara said.

  “I’ll do that,” I answered. But I couldn’t move.

  “We’ve got to go,” Gale said. “Are you sure you aren’t coming with us?”

  I nodded.

  Gale took Barbara’s arm then. “Come on, dear, everyone’s waiting.”

  Barbara looked at me. “You won’t try to go back to Bozeman before we get home, will you? I don’t think you ought to drive right now. Not the way you’re—” She didn’t finish.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  Then she gave me her house key. “You can get a taxi to take you to the house,” she said. “Maybe you can get some sleep. Or at least rest.”

  “You mean, maybe I can get a drink.”

  She looked like I had struck her. “No,” she said, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Gale asked. I nodded yes. “Then we’d better go, dear,” he said to Barbara.

  The funeral director was standing beside the limousine under an umbrella, waiting to open the door for them. Barbara took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, still looking at me, then turned and went out into the sleet with Gale.

  After the procession wound its way out of the church parking lot, I went out into the storm and began walking back to Barbara and Gale’s house. I didn’t know, then, why I wanted to walk instead of taking a taxi; after I reached the house I understood, but then, I just felt I had to do it, that somehow it would be wrong not to.

  The house was on the other end of town, near the oil camp and the black pumping units rising out of the snow like giant grasshoppers, but Rose Creek was just a hospital, a post office, a community hall, a school, and a couple dozen blocks of stores and houses, so I didn’t have far to walk. But it was awfully cold, and I didn’t have any overshoes or gloves. After a few minutes, my hands and feet were numb, and the wind was blowing the sleet into my face so hard it stung. I felt exhausted, like I’d been walking for hours, even days. My breaths came out short and fast, little clouds the wind blew into nothing.

  My shaking was getting worse. I had to have a drink, I couldn’t wait any longer, so I walked as fast as I could. I walked past the silent houses with smoke rising from their chimneys, past the schoolyard where some children in snowmobile suits were playing King of the Hill on a mound of snow, past the turnoff that led to the highway where Chuck had died. I walked faster and faster until I was almost running. My face and hands burned from the cold, and I could tell without looking that they were white with frostbite.

  When I finally reached the house, I stood on the front steps, the sleet pelting my back, and tried to open the door, but my hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t get the key into the lock. I stood there a moment, trying to get ahold of myself. But it was no use. I couldn’t even breathe right—I had to strain for every breath, as if the air was too thin—and I felt so empty and dizzy I had to hold onto the doorframe to keep from falling.

  And then I saw myself climbing Rainier, inching my way up the sheer cliff, a terrible weight on my back, and it wasn’t a lie anymore, I had really done it. And I hung onto Barbara’s door, bracing myself against the rising wind.

  I remember sitting in Gale’s easy chair, drinking his bourbon and staring out his window at the ice-laden trees, but I don’t remember going to Chuck’s room. I don’t even remember thinking about going there. I just remember finding myself swaying drunk in front of his door. And I remember deciding, as soon as I realized where I was and what I was about to do, that it’d been a mistake to come, that I should never have left Bozeman. Standing there, I saw myself driving across that empty state under the huge black sky, driving away from Barbara and Gale and what was left of my son, heading home, toward Betty and lovemaking and sleep. And I turned to leave.

  But I turned back. I couldn’t leave, not yet. I stood there a second, then took a deep breath and opened the door.

  I’m not sure what exactly I expected—maybe I thought his room would give him back to me, if only for a moment, let me be with him for that last minute before he drove off to the accident that waited for him—but whatever it was, I didn’t get what I wanted. The room was just a room. The bed was just a bed, the desk just a desk. Even the shirts that hung in his closet were just shirts. I stood there awhile, looking at everything, then opened the top drawer of the desk: blank paper, some pens, a ruler, and a calculator. In one corner there were some pencil shavings. I picked them up and they fell apart in my hands.

  I sat down at the desk then and put my hot face against the cool wood. It felt good against my cheek, and it made me think of when I was in grade school and the teacher wanted to find out who had done something wrong. She’d tell everyone to put their heads down on their desks and close their eyes, then raise their hands if they were the one. Closing my eyes, I remembered how I felt those times when I hadn’t done anything, how I liked sitting there, innocent, imagining someone else’s guilty hand rising into the air.

  At first I thought the storm had woken me. Sleet was striking the window, sounding like flung pellets of rice. But then I heard Barbara, her voice wavering. “What are you doing in here?” I lifted my head from the desk and tried to see through the darkness. But I saw only a shadow, haloed by the hall light, and I heard it say, “Why did you have to come in here?” Then she flicked on the overhead light. I shielded my eyes. Through the bright blur, I saw Gale standing behind her in the hall, his coat still in his hand.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have stayed so long at Muriel’s,” he was saying. “I knew something would happen.”

  Barbara came toward me. “I asked you not to come in here,” she said. She looked around and bit her quivering lip. “Why did you have to—” she started, but couldn’t finish.

  I realized then that I’d taken away her last comfort, that from now on when she came into this room I’d be here with him. “I’m sorry,” I said, and stood up. My forehead swelled and throbbed, and I almost lost my balance.

  “You’re drunk,” Barbara said then, and she stepped toward me, her hands clenched at her sides.

  I wasn’t drunk, not anymore, but it didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that Barbara and Gale were angry at me. Nothing mattered now. It was all over. And suddenly I felt numb, almost peaceful, even though I knew it couldn’t last, that any minute now all the pain and sorrow would come back, maybe even worse than before.

  Barbara said something to me then, but I didn’t hear. I just looked at her. Then I reached out and put my arms around her. She stayed stiff in my arms and kept her hands at her sides, but she d
idn’t back away from me. I held her tight. “Chuck is dead,” I told her. I said it like I’d only just found out about it and thought she ought to know.

  GLOSSOLALIA

  That winter, like every winter before it, my father woke early each day and turned up the thermostat so the house would be warm by the time my mother and I got out of bed. Sometimes I’d hear the furnace kick in and the shower come on down the hall and I’d wake just long enough to be angry that he’d woken me. But usually I slept until my mother had finished making our breakfast. By then, my father was already at Goodyear, opening the service bay for the customers who had to drop their cars off before going to work themselves. Sitting in the sunny kitchen, warmed by the heat from the register and the smell of my mother’s coffee, I never thought about him dressing in the cold dark or shoveling out the driveway by porch light. If I thought of him at all, it was only to feel glad he was not there. In those days my father and I fought a lot, though probably not much more than most fathers and sons. I was sixteen then, a tough age. And he was forty, an age I’ve since learned is even tougher.

  But that winter I was too concerned with my own problems to think about my father’s. I was a skinny, unathletic, sorrowful boy who had few friends, and I was in love with Molly Rasmussen, one of the prettiest girls in Glencoe and the daughter of a man who had stopped my father on Main Street that fall, cursed him, and threatened to break his face. My father had bought a used Ford Galaxie from Mr. Rasmussen’s lot, but he hadn’t been able to make the payments and eventually Mr. Rasmussen repossessed it. Without a second car my mother couldn’t get to her job at the school lunchroom, so we drove our aging Chevy to Minneapolis, where no one knew my father, and bought a rust-pitted yellow Studebaker. A few days later Molly Rasmussen passed me in the hall at school and said, “I see you’ve got a new car,” then laughed. I was so mortified I hurried into a restroom, locked myself in a stall, and stood there for several minutes, breathing hard. Even after the bell rang for the next class, I didn’t move. I was furious at my father. I blamed him for the fact that Molly despised me, just as I had for some time blamed him for everything else that was wrong with my life—my gawky looks, my discount store clothes, my lack of friends.