Cruisers

by Craig Nova

  She looked right into his eyes and said, “It makes it more interesting, doesn’t it, when we do this after having been a little worried all night.” Her alarm clock, which she hadn’t turned off, began to buzz, and he put his hands over her ears to shield her from it, but then she turned and hit the button and said, “Well, we’ll settle this later.”

  He watched as she got dressed, which she did with an efficiency that amazed him: At first she stood there naked, her skin damp from the shower, and almost instantly she was wearing her stockings, her skirt, her blue shirt, her beige jacket. When she was about to go, she said, “And when I get back, I’d like you to give me the answer to a question. You won’t mind, will you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe you can tell me why you do this. Why do you go out there at night?”

  He shrugged. Whenever he was asked this question, he thought about two things, a night at a hunting camp, and a black snake. But how could he begin to explain them? She waited. The digital clock flipped over with a little flash, the numbers the same color as the readout on the radar at night. It made him think about the shadows seeping through the cruiser.

  “O.K.,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”

  “You don’t sound too sure,” she said.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said.

  “What isn’t?” she said. “I’m not easily shocked.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I am.”

  “Well ...” He shrugged again. “All right.”

  She stopped at the door on her way out.

  “Don’t say you weren’t warned,” he said.

  THE DOOR clicked behind Zofia and then the house was quiet again, just as it was when Russell first came in from a night on the highway. Usually this was when he went to sleep, but now, instead, he lay awake in the shadows of the bedroom.

  In addition to their year-round home, Russell’s family had owned a hunting camp in central Vermont. Whenever he approached the camp, at sixteen and seventeen, he always felt the quiet brooding that the place seemed to inspire, as though its presence was intimately related to mortality and the passage of time, of seasons that came and went. Russell always liked that moment when he first saw the house, since he felt the effect of time in a way that could be appreciated without any of the pain.

  The camp had five hundred acres of maple and birch, a few stands of pine and spruce. In the pine groves the red needles had been collecting for years, and walking through them was like wading through shallow water, the needles making a pattern around the ankles just like the last rush of a wave at the beach.

  The camp itself was a house made of stones. It was deserted aside from the week in the fall when his family came to hunt, although every now and then desperate young men and women broke in to use one of the beds. When seen from the outside, the house was nothing more than cemented cobbles with a pitched roof. In the front were two windows and a heavy wooden door, its grain rough to the touch. Inside, a loft had been built upstairs behind the chimney, which was also made of cobbles, although some of them were as large as footballs.

  Russell had started going there to hunt when he was fourteen, and the first few times he had just tried to be careful, to handle his rifle properly, and to stay out of the way. The hunt that he remembered, as he sat in the shadows of Zofia’s bedroom, was one he had gone to when he was sixteen. The hunts were organized by his grandfather, a small-town lawyer who took pride in telling the truth as nearly as he could, and was never surprised by the difficulties the people in town brought to his law office. Russell’s grandfather had blue eyes and gray hair. Often, when Russell thought of him, he remembered his grandfather sitting in his law office, where the old man leaned back in his oak chair with slats in the back, like a piece of furniture in a courtroom, and considered the problems clients brought his way. Russell’s father was a logger, who died when Russell was in his twenties, leaving two skidders and a logging truck and a bulldozer, all of which were owned by the bank.

  Still, on the night Russell thought about from time to time, both his grandfather and his father had still been alive. Russell had come into the house and put his rifle, a flat-shooting 7mm Mauser, into the rack at the side of the room. The older men sat around the table in the corner, talking about deer and telling stories and jokes. At about ten o’clock they began to think about sleeping so they could get up before first light and cook the slabs of ham they had brought along, browning them and letting them sizzle while they fried some eggs. Russell began to look around, trying to decide where he would sleep, but his grandfather said, “Russell. Come here. Sit down.”

  He poured Russell a drink of bourbon in a water glass and put it down in front of him.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said his grandfather. He went on looking at Russell. “You’re growing up.”

  “Not yet,” said Russell.

  “Oh, don’t be too sure,” said his grandfather. “Anyway, I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “You mean you’re going to give me advice?” said Russell.

  “He knows about girls,” said his father.

  “Does he?” said his grandfather. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. I wish I did.”

  One of the other men heard this and laughed. “Isn’t that the truth?” he said.

  “You could call it advice,” said Russell’s grandfather. “Or maybe it’s just a warning.” Russell’s grandfather’s chin was pitted as he sat there, thinking it over. “There are things hidden by ordinary life. I don’t know what to call them. Things you can suggest, but you can’t really describe. You know, those possibilities down there in the muck that make you squirm. At 3 A.M. You might get a glimpse every now and then but mostly you have the good sense to look away. And with good reason. Who wants the terror of it?”

  “I guess,” said Russell.

  “Oh, no,” said the grandfather. “There’s no guessing. Not in the midst of it! Don’t you see?”

  Russell shook his head. “No,” he said.

  “Hmpf,” said his grandfather. “I want to tell you something you won’t forget.”

  “You mean like in books?” said Russell.

  “Well, they’re all right, as far as they go. They hint at it, but they never tell you,” said Russell’s grandfather.

  “Why don’t you ask him if he wants to know?” said Russell’s father.

  “Oh, he wants to know. It’s knowledge that youth wants, isn’t it?” said Russell’s grandfather.

  “I don’t know,” said Russell. “I guess.”

  “Why, sure you do,” said Russell’s grandfather. “Sure you do. That’s the way things are. No one’s going to change that.”

  Russell’s grandfather looked at his own son. Russell’s father shrugged.

  Russell’s grandfather had a sip of his drink. The men on the other side of the room milled around in the pointless manner of men, alone, when they are getting ready to go to bed. The movement was more like a dog that turns around three times, chasing its tail, before flopping into a corner to sleep. A log collapsed in the fire with an ashy sigh, the sound itself suggesting a delicate invocation of defeat and finality, or maybe Russell perceived it that way because of the emotional pressure in the room, which he imagined came from the moment just before a secret was revealed. Later, Russell wondered if the stars would have changed in the way the room did if he had heard this secret outside. But then he thought, of course, they did change. They had something new in them, as far as Russell was concerned, after his grandfather bumbled through what he had to say.

  “I bet you think I’m going to tell you a war story,” said Russell’s grandfather.

  Russell nodded. Yes, he thought, that’s right. Thank God. It is just another one of those stories that get told in places like this, and that the old man has had too much to drink.

  “I guess,” said Russell.

  “Hmpf,” said his grandfather.

  The coals in the firepl
ace looked like red and silver foil that had been balled up and thrown into the fire.

  “Maybe we should just go to sleep,” said Russell’s father.

  “I’m getting old,” said Russell’s grandfather. “Who knows how many chances I’ll have?”

  “I know a lot of it already,” said Russell.

  “Do you?”

  Yes, thought Russell. He knew his grandfather had been a prisoner of war in Germany in World War II. He had heard the stories of the Red Cross boxes in which there had been raisins, and how the men had used the raisins to make beer. Russell had heard stories of how the men had tried to tunnel out of the camp, the fact that Russell’s grandfather had been a spy, and that when he heard useful information, he had a code to include it in letters he wrote home. He knew all that.

  Russell’s grandfather looked around the room and then back at Russell and said that it wasn’t the years of starving that needed to be mentioned, or forced marches and the rest of the stuff that you read about or saw in movies. That was the least of it. No. The unfathomable element, the essence that you wanted to be careful about, was something else altogether. And what was this thing that no one should ever forget, that was dangerous not to know, the very heart of what everyone should be afraid of? No. Not afraid of. Horrified by. What could that be? said Russell’s grandfather.

  “You’ve had too much to drink,” said Russell’s father.

  “Of course,” said Russell’s grandfather. “But what difference does that make?” He turned to Russell and said, “Take a sip of your bourbon.”

  Then his grandfather sat there, rolling one shoulder, as though whatever he was trying to convey could be felt on his back, and it itched and tormented him. But, he seemed to be saying, wasn’t that quiet torment the nature of really knowing something? And if you knew it, didn’t it change you, and make you want to be precise in what you said and did, and wasn’t that what determined how you spent your time? Wasn’t that knowledge what was behind being a small-town lawyer and never saying a word that wasn’t true and never being surprised by the problems that came his way?

  “It was at the end,” said Russell’s grandfather.

  “What was the end?” said Russell.

  “Why, that was when the Russians came.”

  His grandfather wanted to be precise about this. But how can you be precise about that moment when everything is changing, and when no one knows what the next moment will bring? And yet, in the midst of it, nothing seemed to be happening at all, as though everything was still: the entire landscape seemed to have stopped. It appeared in shades of gray on gray, the fenceposts to which the gray wire was affixed, the mud, the stumps around the perimeter of the camp, the huts, made of rough-cut lumber that had weathered to a gray like a dirty towel, all of it, even the slender shape of smoke that rose from a fire behind the huts, seemed to be hardly moving. And so, in the midst of it, in Russell’s grandfather’s apprehension of something coming his way, he was also profoundly bored. Nothing moved. Just that silver and gray light, that lazy smoke, the men who walked around, some of them with blankets over their shoulders. So, that was part of it, the fear so perfectly combined with boredom.

  And there were practical considerations, too, said Russell’s grandfather. This is where you can see the problem. Since the problem is always in what you do in the face of a moment like this. For instance, the guards were running away, and the prisoners could walk off, too, but then there was the chance of being shot on the road as an escapee. This was one of the things that the men considered as they stood there in that light, under their blankets, thinking about walking through the gates.

  One of the guards stayed. He was a fat man who had eaten well during the war, or at least he had eaten a lot of potatoes and blood sausage. The other guards had slipped away, their shapes disappearing with what they could carry into the woods beyond the stumps that had been left where the trees had been cut down on the other side of the wire. Still, one of them thought better of it, and decided that the camp was probably a better place to be. Who knew what was out there on the roads?

  So all of them, the prisoners and the one guard, were milling around in that slow-motion, aimless way, at once alert to malice and almost falling asleep, when they saw two Russians. The Russians were so thin they looked like a joke, like sticks on which someone had hung torn uniforms that were so dirty and ill-fitting as to leave one wondering just who the hell these people were. Deserters? Phantoms of an army that had been defeated by the years it had been fighting?

  The two Russians picked their way through the stumps that were left after the trees around the camp had been cut down. They were weak and so dizzy that they took a convoluted path around the stumps, and even stopped from time to time to stare in the direction they were going. When they stood up, they did so with an exhausted effort that could be distinguished a hundred yards away. Then they started their slow, circuitous, inexorable locomotion toward the wire where the blinking Americans and British stood, holding their blankets. Somehow or other, in a way none of the men behind the wire could articulate, they were more strangely troubled by these stick figures, these exhausted phantoms, than when they had just been waiting. This was the thing, said Russell’s grandfather, the unnamable sense of something you knew you should be afraid of. Still, it was hard to be certain whether there was anything here or not. The men in the camp were tired and hungry, sleepy and bored, and yet prone to exaggeration. Maybe that was all it was. Although, even then, Russell’s grandfather said, we knew this was more of a desperate hope than anything else.

  The guard who had stayed, though, wasn’t having anything to do with hope, desperate or otherwise. He could feel it, too, and he was a lot less fuzzy-headed than the prisoners were. It was obvious to him, said Russell’s grandfather as he took Russell’s arm and pulled him close, into the hot, bourbon-scented breath. Russell leaned forward, close to the man’s whitish stubble, grown for the hunt, and close enough, too, to look into the man’s oil-colored pupils, which, while in some ways disgusting, were mesmerizing in their serpentine depth. He looked back at his grandfather, as though daring the old man. Go on, Russell seemed to be saying. What do you think I’m made out of? We’ve gone this far. There’s no going back.

  The guard watched those scarecrows approach. He turned and looked around and then back at the Russians as they tottered among the stumps. But there! said Russell’s grandfather. That was the moment. The guard could tell by something, I don’t know what, the colors, the stillness of the air, the exhaustion, but something tipped him off. He began to move, slow, cagey, as though going no place, just walking around, as he always did, but he was steadily working toward the gate, which was open about a foot. Then, when he got there, he slipped into the open.

  And the prisoners went back to that dull waiting. The stillness of the smoke, the sluggishness of movement, as though nothing was happening and yet everything was changing. Russell’s grandfather stepped closer to the wire in time to see the guard take a look over his shoulder at the Russians and begin to run. For an instant the entire landscape seemed changed, as though in this one action all the sluggishness and boredom were brushed aside and violated. One of the Russians swung his rifle around with a practiced, supremely confident if fatigued movement, done so many times as to be second nature, like a man chopping wood. He mounted it on his shoulder, flicked off the safety, and seemed to lead the running guard, who fell with a suddenness that seemed to put an end to the sense of freedom, of movement that could escape the thick, sluggish air, which more and more seemed filled with the smoke from a fire behind the bungalows. What could be burning? Camp records? Was another guard hiding back there and getting rid of the paper?

  “So, that’s it?” said Russell.

  “No,” said his grandfather. “Oh no.”

  He had leaned forward and whispered. This is between just the two of us, his grandfather seemed to be saying, and frankly, who else is important? No. There was more. The Russians began to move t
hrough the stumps, coming forward with that same fatigued if not exhausted gait. They stood next to the dead man. One spoke to the other and then they reached down and began taking off his clothes. Surely they could make use of the jacket and the rest, but then maybe it wasn’t a good idea to wear the uniform of a German.

  Russell’s grandfather had taken hold of the wire. He watched while the other men turned away. The Russians built a fire. “Like that one!” said Russell’s grandfather, pointing to the fireplace. They went about their business with a quiet, methodical air, which was probably more starvation and fatigue than anything else, the knife moving along the German’s leg, to cut him up. Russell’s grandfather said, “See?” Russell took a drink. We could see them, said Russell’s grandfather, from a distance, around the fire, and then eating, too. They didn’t look in our direction. It was the blankness and the businesslike air that was as bad as anything else. We watched the smoke of their fire rise, gray like everything else, as the Russians ate until they were filled. Then they pulled themselves up, discarding a bone, and went on walking, passing the stumps and moving into the edge of the woods, leaving us staring through the wire.

  But that is what happens, said Russell’s grandfather, when things come unglued. So, do you see the essential horror? It is ungraspable and yet so obvious, nameless as it makes its appearance, as though there is nothing you can do. And once it starts ... He shrugged. There is nothing to do. How are you going to stop something like this? In the moment? Why, you aren’t going to do a thing but stare and turn away.

  Russell’s grandfather finished his drink and said, “Don’t you see? Tawdry, brutal, and yet indifferent. And dangerous? Oh, not by half. Now I’m going to sleep for a couple of hours before I go out and shoot a deer.”

  He stood up and looked around at the other men and said, “Has anyone seen that black snake this year? There’s one that lives in here. Heh?”

  In the morning it rained, and they all sat outside in the driving coldness of it, waiting, looking at the woods. Russell leaned against a tree, hearing the ticking as drops fell onto the leaves on the ground. The landscape appeared in shades of black and gray, in front of which there were slashes of silver rain.