“Yeah. Sure. History.”
“I read somewhere that it’s a frightening realization that we live in history,” Utilizer said. “But that’s nothing. The scariest realization is that we live in nature.”
“Now you sound like a college type.”
“Nah. Actually I heard it somewhere.”
“Yeah? Where’d you hear it?”
“Sitting in Santa’s lap at the department store.”
“Just talk, right?”
“Uh-huh. Conversation is important to you. You been talking to anybody?”
“Nobody but you, man. I’ve been a sphinx to everybody else.”
“Really.”
“A stone. A statue. An oil painting.”
“You know what I heard?” Utilizer said. “I heard you asked to be excused from this particular task.”
“Where’d you hear that? Who’ve you been talking to.”
“Man, I’m in the inner circle. I’m up on everything.”
“Like to know who told you that.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Somebody in close is a liar, man.”
“You say.” Utilizer looked into him.
“Okay. You know what?” Sanitation said. “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”
“You see what trouble you can get into with your mouth. Thought I should remind you.”
“You’re the one talking now. Right?”
Utilizer smiled. “Guess everything depends on the subject matter, huh.”
The younger man had removed the clips from his bag and put one in his belt. Then he stood and gave the other one to Utilizer, who put the clip in, then sighted along the barrel again. His movements were very quick and efficient. “Good,” he said. Then: “How about you. You get along with your old man?”
“This okay for subject matter?”
“Sure. Why not?”
They were quiet for a space.
“So, you get along with your old man?”
“Not anymore.”
“Guess that’s the way these days.”
“My old man’s dead.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”
“He was a nice guy, my father.”
“Yeah, what’d he do?”
“Ran a grocery store.”
Utilizer left a pause.
“It’s the truth. Not a chain store, either. Appleton, Wisconsin. Decent man. Good to his family. Worked his ass off and never asked for a thing from anybody. Voted Democratic all his life, too. Man, he believed in the Democratic way. Read everything Lincoln ever said or wrote.”
“Lincoln was a Republican, old son.”
“My father always said Lincoln’d be a Democrat if he lived now.”
“Did he vote for the Designated Item?”
“Died five years ago.”
“That’s what—’fifty-eight. So, he lived to vote for Stevenson one more time.”
“Cut the comedy,” Sanitation said.
“I didn’t mean it that way. A man’s vote is sacred. My old man voted for Roosevelt four separate times and was elected to the city council twice himself.”
“What’d he do?”
“He did a lot of heavy drinking in the evenings. Also he sold houses. Dealt mostly with foreclosures through the banks. But what he did mostly was the drinking in the evenings.”
“My old man’s store got closed down by a bank. Couple of years before he died. Nobody appreciates the small stores anymore. It’s all changing.”
“Well,” said Utilizer, “and think of it: if time and circumstances were just right, my good-for-nothing son might’ve worked for your father. We might’ve got to know each other.”
The younger man said nothing.
“Right?”
“I don’t have any qualms about what I’m doing, man.”
“I’m talking about time and circumstances,” Utilizer told him.
“We’re all in the crosshairs,” said Sanitation. “Right?”
Utilizer looked at him with his yellow eyes. “Whatever you say.” He sighted through the scope again. The crowds along either side of the street were growing. It was past noon. “So your old man died and then what.”
“Nothing.”
“No college.”
“I told you, man. No college.”
“But you flunked out of a couple, right?”
Sanitation said nothing.
The other pointed to the side of his own head. “Becoming a good observer—you know?”
“Well, don’t believe everything you—observe.”
“Oh, I’m a skeptic all the way. And I observe you being a little nervous.”
“Just keeping an edge.”
“And you had no army or navy? That sort of thing?”
“Strictly stateside, man. Had a camera and took wedding pictures and kids’ portraits. I got good with certain kinds of lenses and photographic stuff. But everything seemed like a lie after a while. That’s what got me here.”
“You decided to be a foot soldier in the fight to preserve Democracy.”
“Maybe.”
Utilizer smiled. And then the smile went away. “Maybe. But maybe what’s really happening is you’re looking for famous action.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Sanitation.
“We’re providing context. Right?”
“I don’t get you.”
Utilizer smiled still again. “Years from now there’ll be theories about it, and everything anybody says about it’ll be true.”
“You a philosopher?”
“Sure.”
“What’ll be your version?”
“I’ll be elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Not here or there.” The smile was still present.
“Okay,” Sanitation said.
“A little cryptic, huh.” The older man smiled again. There was something not right about the left side of his mouth when his lips pulled back. And the younger man knew suddenly what it was: he had no back teeth on that side.
“Well, keep it cool, college boy.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“I don’t get paid to think. Hey. This is getting to you a little, huh.”
“Right,” said the other. “Look at me shake.”
“Nerves are usually a healthy thing to have, don’t you think? They make you more thorough.”
“Yeah, well. I’m fine.”
“No need to get worked up, son.”
They were quiet. A few yards away, another man stood with a walkie-talkie. He put it to his ear and then spoke into it. Then he looked at the older man and held up five fingers, closed his hand, opened it again, closed it, and opened it.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“You think it’ll be Go?” Sanitation asked.
“Hard to say.” Utilizer sighted through the scope again.
“Actually, I don’t think it’ll be Go.”
“You’re a thinker.”
“Well, really. Do you?”
“Boy, you think too much, maybe.”
“I just want to know if you think it’ll really be Go.”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we.”
“I don’t think it actually will.”
Behind them the railroad cars clanked and creaked, metal on metal. The cars were being moved a few feet on the tracks, and now they stopped. It was one of those inexplicable shiftings in a railroad yard. The sound startled Sanitation.
“Hey, kid, you getting jumpy, huh. You want something to calm you down?”
Sanitation didn’t answer.
“I got a little something’ll calm you down.”
“I’m calm.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to call attention to yourself.”
“Like I said: stone cold, man.”
“Nothing but frozen tundra inside,” said Utilizer, with a narrow-eyed look. But he was still smiling. Sanitation saw the place where the teeth were missing on the left side of the mo
uth. “Nothing but the target and whether or not we’re Go.”
“Right.”
A moment later, Sanitation said, “Do you hope we’re Go?”
“I don’t have any opinion on the subject.”
“What do you think of him, yourself?”
“Who?”
“Come on, man. The Designated Item. Word is he’s gonna take us right to communism. Make peace with Cuba.”
“No opinion,” the older man said. “Except maybe that he’s a pretty boy who fucks everything in sight. I heard he doesn’t even want to know their names. I’ve got six daughters, man. But that’s nothing to do with it.”
“Six daughters.”
“Three sets of twins.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
Utilizer sighted through the scope again. “Of course.”
“You don’t care one way or the other.”
“The chances are better than even that in about thirteen minutes pretty boy will be a dead pretty boy.”
“It doesn’t bother you who he is? What he’s doing?”
Utilizer shook his head. “I figure there’s always going to be somebody. Bothers you, though.”
“No. But they played that speech about getting along with the Communists.”
“I wasn’t there that day.”
“Virtues of the Russians.”
“Bothers you, huh.”
“Just curious. Just making conversation.”
“I’ll tell you what, kid. I think maybe you’re in the wrong business.”
“What business is that,” Sanitation said, with an edge of menace. “Spreading lies?”
“That’s all true about the girls, old son.”
“I’m talking about me, man. And whoever told you shit about me—that’s breaking the rules and I’m going to look for a way to fuck him up, whoever he is.” Sanitation heard the small tremor in his own voice and looked away.
“Just making conversation, like you said,” Utilizer told him. “Just keeping it light. No need to get shitty.”
Sanitation put one hand to the side of his face and wiped the sweat away.
“And what’re we doing—we’re stopping the Communists and saving Democracy as we know it,” Utilizer said. “Right? We’re making history.”
“Sure.”
“But you know what, old son? I don’t need bullshit like that to help me focus. This is my job. This is what I do. I don’t give a shit about Cuba or the Communists or any of that. Like they always used to say, you know, whatever you choose to do in life, be the best at it. Because it’s all a damn competition. I believe that. Strange as that might sound, I believe it. I couldn’t get my son to believe it, but I believe it.”
Sanitation stared at him and was silent.
“If the kid wanted to be a goddamn ditchdigger, I’d want him to try and be the best one there is, and that’s the truth.”
“More bullshit,” Sanitation said.
“That is correct.”
“You don’t even have a son.”
The other was silent, staring off.
“What do you do when you’re not doing—this?” the younger man asked.
“I’m a Studebaker dealer. And I never had any children. That’s a rumor, man.”
“So it’s all lies.”
“Could be,” Utilizer said. “What do you think.”
“I think this is entirely bullshit that you’re giving me. And I don’t even believe it about the Designated Item skirt chasing. Not with that wife.”
“Ah. I heard she’s a cold fish.”
“Somebody’s blowing smoke up your ass, man.”
“College boys. Jesus,” said Utilizer, stepping up to the fence. “They all want everything handed down to them on a platter.”
“I wasn’t asking for anything. And I’m no college boy. I told you that already.”
“Well, remember this about me. I sell Studebakers, anybody asks you.”
“You think I’d tell anybody anything?”
“Hey, talk, right? I’m not a gambler. You talk about this, or me, and you die. But I’ll tell you what, you could pass me on any street corner in this country and you wouldn’t even remember my face, what I was wearing. I look just like everybody else, kid. And what I do, well, it’s very, very ordinary and everyday.”
They waited quietly. In the distance, they could hear the sound of a band. Then the wind picked up, shook through the top of the tree, and blotted everything else out. Police were stopping traffic on the overpass, nearby. It would be soon now. On the sidewalk next to the street, a man was holding his little girl on his shoulders and bouncing her.
“That just might get in the way of a clear shot,” said Sanitation.
“Well,” Utilizer said in a flat, dead voice. “Guess I might have to shoot through it.”
“God.”
“And country, right? God and country. See, I’m just as sharp as any college boy.”
“Just fucking cut the college-boy stuff.”
“Okay.”
A moment later, Utilizer said, “Listen, are you a doubtful boy now? A minute ago you were telling me you had doubts.”
“Don’t know what you think you heard,” said the other.
“I was thinking maybe if you had doubts, I had some, too.”
“Doubts about what.”
“What if I was thinking that?”
“I said, ‘Doubts about what.’ ”
Utilizer paused a moment. “Don’t know,” he said. “Whatever you have in mind.”
“I don’t have any doubts at all. I told you, I don’t have any qualms at all.”
“Well, that’s good. Whatever you say, kid. Remember what I said. I got no opinion about anything.”
“Okay, well—that’s me, too.”
“No, but you’ve got opinions. You’re a kid who thinks about history, I can tell. You’re an idealist.”
“Just make sure you’re ready when the time comes,” Sanitation said.
“Hey,” said Utilizer. “And isn’t this really too bad? We might’ve been friends.”
“You can say that sort of thing,” Sanitation said. “But listen—I’m just as focused as you are.”
“I was serious, boy. You think I’d joke about a thing like that?”
“If it’s Go, I’m ready.”
“Nobody said you weren’t.”
“Nobody better say it.”
“That’s it. That’s the spirit. Stand in there and be tough. But you know, even if it is Go all sorts of other things could happen. I could miss. It’s happened. I could miss, see, and muddy up the history so nobody’d ever get it straight. I’ve heard that he plans to end elections and just stay in office. Suspend the Constitution because of the missile crisis. But there’s nothing anybody can do about all that except just being in place and doing the job. That’s all there is.”
Music had come to them again, flying on the air. It was from a car nearby, on another street. There was activity in the crowd now, cheers beginning at the far end of the street. The two men waited. “And I’ll tell you, they better decide quick,” the older one said.
At this moment, standing a few yards away, the man who held the walkie-talkie lifted it to his ear, then raised his other hand and held up two fingers. When the younger man saw this, he said, “Go.” And a second later, more evenly, he repeated it. “Go.”
“You sound like somebody who just saw a ghost.”
“Two minutes, man.”
Utilizer took one look around and moved closer to the fence, in among the branches of the shrubs growing along the base of it. “Get ready,” he said. “This is gonna be over a lot quicker than it got started.”
The younger man remembered the training. It was just going to be rote action now. Dismantle and pack the article of utility, collect all discharged shells, and move off.
Behind them, the railroad cars had begun rolling again, sending up a hollow metallic clatter. From the other side of the fence you could hear
the crowd, the cheering. Everything was louder, and the sun was very bright. The whole, hot light of it. Sounds, colors, odors, were intensified.
“Here we go, sports fans,” said Utilizer. “Sic semper fidelis or whatever the hell they say when this happens.”
The younger man covered his ears.
And there was a shot, far off. Not here. From somewhere at the other end of the street.
“Jesus Christ,” the older man said. “What was that?”
There was another shot.
“What the—who’s doing that?” He pressed tighter against the fence. “I’m a son of a—” He was looking at the man with the walkie-talkie, who, Sanitation saw, had ducked down as if fearing that he was being fired upon. Sanitation turned his head and looked at the car coming past, and there was the bright brown hair of the Designated Item, and with the third shot, the head went apart, opened a flap, in blood and spattering, and the man slumped over in the seat, his wife climbing onto the trunk of the car. It was a man and woman and Sanitation saw the pink dress.
Utilizer said, “Jesus Christ. Get out. Don’t look back.”
Sanitation picked everything up and put it away and started in the opposite direction, toward the train cars. There was commotion all around. He made his way to the parallel street, and down an alley to his car, and got in, with the rifle in its case on the seat at his side. Just as he had been ordered to do. There were sirens. He drove south. Precisely according to plan. He went for miles, keeping consistently to the speed limit. Now and then he looked over at the case with the rifle in it, not even his rifle. Finally, not according to plan, he stopped along the highway and walked up a bank into the brush with it and laid it down. He opened the case and lifted it out, put it back together, and sat on the little rise in the ground with the rifle across his legs. He brought it up to his shoulder and looked through the scope at a bird, high and far. Then he set it on the field itself, nothing but knife grass and weeds and cactus. He fired once, hit a cactus, which blew apart. He fired again on another. And still again. The sound of the shots went off from him, repeating on the distances. When the clip was empty he set the rifle down and stood and went back to the car. He left everything of the disturbances of the last days there in the weeds. Driving north again, he had the radio on, and there were the voices talking about the tragedy, extolling the virtues of the fallen hero, relating stories about the resolute boy destined to be president, as if the narrative required that the boy, even when only a boy, was already complete, carrying the long but insubstantial wish, some fatal determination. The highway stretched on toward the lowering winter sky. Sanitation—whose name was Brian, and who had himself been a lonely and anxious boy, and had left his father’s house to get away from lingering judgments and frights, and wanted to be famous and untouchable and to be among the ones who saved Democracy—realized that there wasn’t anything to do now, nothing to report, no one to speak to about any of it. It was all meaningless. Random. They had arrested somebody, a madman, someone said, with his own unfathomable reasons that were connected to nothing. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be so awful. The radio droned on in static with its voices lamenting the death of the hero. But now he was only half listening, driving through the increasing darkness, gripping the steering wheel so tight his palms hurt, looking straight ahead, speeding, crying.
Living in the Weather of the World Page 6