Back in the World

by Tobias Wolff

  “Relax,” Hooper told him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He held out his hand again.

  Porchoff licked his lips. “No,” he said. “Not you.”

  Behind Hooper a voice called out, “Hey! Porkchop! Drop it!”

  Porchoff sat bolt upright. “Jesus,” he said.

  “It’s Trac,” Hooper said. “Put the rifle down, Porchoff—now!”

  “Drop it!” Trac shouted.

  “Oh Jesus,” Porchoff said and stumbled to his feet with the rifle still in his hands. Then his head flapped and his helmet flew off and he toppled backwards over the bench. Hooper’s heart leaped as the shock of the blast hit him. Then the sound went through him and beyond him and into the trees and the sky, echoing on in the distance like thunder. Afterwards there was silence. Hooper took a step forward, then sank to his knees and lowered his forehead to the wet grass. He spread his fingers through the grass beside his head. The rain fell around him with a soft whispering sound. A bluejay squawked.

  Hooper heard the swish of boots through the grass behind him. He pushed himself up and sat back on his heels and drew a deep breath.

  “You okay?” Trac said.

  Hooper nodded.

  Trac walked on to where Porchoff lay. He said something in Vietnamese, then looked back at Hooper and shook his head.

  Hooper tried to stand but went to his knees again.

  “You need a hand?” Trac asked.

  “I guess so,” Hooper said.

  Trac came over to Hooper. He slung his rifle and bent down and the two men gripped each other’s wrists. Trac’s skin was dry and smooth, his bones as small as a child’s. This close, he looked more familiar than ever. “Go for it,” Trac said. He tensed as Hooper pulled himself to his feet and for a moment afterwards they stood facing each other, swaying slightly, hands still locked on one another’s wrists. “All right,” Hooper said. Each of them slowly loosened his grip.

  In a soft voice, almost a whisper, Trac said, “They gonna put me away?”

  “No,” Hooper said. He walked over to Porchoff and looked down at him. He immediately turned away and saw that Trac was still swaying, and that his eyes were glassy. “Better get off those legs,” Hooper said. Trac looked at him dreamily, then un-slung his rifle and leaned it against the picnic table farthest from Porchoff. He sat down and took his helmet off and rested his head on his crossed forearms.

  The wind had picked up again, carrying with it the whine of distant engines. Hooper fumbled a cigarette out of his case and smoked it down, staring toward the woods, feeling the rain stream down his face and neck. When the cigarette went out Hooper dropped it, then picked it up again and field-stripped it, crumbling the tobacco around his feet so that no trace of it remained. He put his cap back on and raised the hood of his poncho. “How’s it going?” he said to Trac.

  Trac looked up. He began to rub his forehead, pushing his fingers in little circles above his eyes.

  Hooper sat down across from him. “We don’t have a whole lot of time,” he said.

  Trac nodded. He put his helmet on and looked over at Hooper.

  “All right, son,” Hooper said. “Let’s get our story together.”

  Desert Breakdown, 1968

  Krystal was asleep when they crossed the Colorado. Mark had promised to stop for some pictures, but when the moment came he looked over at her and drove on. Krystal’s face was puffy from the heat blowing into the car. Her hair, cut short for summer, hung damp against her forehead. Only a few strands lifted in the breeze. She had her hands folded over her belly and that made her look even more pregnant than she was.

  The tires sang on the metal grillwork of the bridge. The river stretched away on both sides, blue as the empty sky. Mark saw the shadow of the bridge on the water with the car running through the girders, and the glint of water under the grillwork. Then the tires went silent. California, Mark thought, and for a time he felt almost as good as he had expected to feel.

  But it soon passed. He had broken his word, and he was going to hear about it when Krystal woke up. He almost turned the car around. But he didn’t want to have to stop, and hoist Hans up on his shoulders, and watch Krystal point that camera at him again. By now Krystal had hundreds of pictures of Mark, Mark with Hans on his shoulders standing in front of canyons and waterfalls and monumental trees and the three automobiles they’d owned since coming Stateside.

  Mark did not photograph well. For some reason he always looked discouraged. But those pictures gave the wrong idea. An old platoon sergeant of Mark’s had an expression he liked to use—“free, white, and twenty-one.” Well, that was an exact description of Mark. Everything was in front of him. All he needed was an opening.

  Two hawks wheeled overhead, their shadows immense on the baking grey sand. A spinning funnel of dust moved across the road and disappeared behind a billboard. The billboard had a picture of Eugene McCarthy on it. McCarthy’s hair was blowing around his head. He was grinning. The caption below said, “A Breath of Fresh Air.” You could tell this was California because in Arizona a McCarthy billboard would last about five minutes. This one had bullet holes in it, but in Arizona someone would have burned it down or blown it up. The people there were just incredibly backward.

  In the distance the mountains were bare and blue. Mark passed exit signs for a town called Blythe. He considered stopping for some gas, but there was still half a tank and he did not want to risk waking Krystal or Hans. He drove on into the desert.

  They would make Los Angeles by dinnertime. Mark had an army buddy there who’d offered to put them up for as long as they wanted to stay. There was plenty of room, his buddy had said. He was house-sitting for his parents while they made up their minds whether to get divorced or not.

  Mark was sure he’d find something interesting in Los Angeles. Something in the entertainment field. He had been in plays all through high school and could sing pretty well. But his big talent was impersonation. He could mimic anybody. In Germany he had mimicked a Southern fellow in his company so accurately that after a couple of weeks of it the boy asked to be transferred to another unit. Mark knew he’d gone overboard. He laid off and in the end the boy withdrew his request for transfer.

  His best impersonation was his father, Dutch. Sometimes, just for fun, Mark called his mother and talked to her in Dutch’s slow, heavy voice, rolling every word along on treads, like a tank. She always fell for it. Mark would go on until he got bored, then say something like, “By the way, Dottie, we’re bankrupt.” Then she would catch on and laugh. Unlike Dutch, she had a sense of humor.

  A truck hurtled past. The sound of the engine woke Hans, but Mark reached into the back and rubbed the satin edge of the baby blanket against Hans’s cheek. Hans put his thumb in his mouth. Then he stuck his rear end in the air and went back to sleep.

  The road shimmered. It seemed to float above the desert floor. Mark sang along with the radio, which he had been turning up as the signal grew weaker. Suddenly it blared. He turned it down, but he was too late. Hans woke up again and started fussing. Mark rubbed his cheek with the blanket. Hans pushed Mark’s arm away and said, “No!” It was the only word he knew. Mark glanced back at him. He’d been sleeping on a toy car and the wheels had left four red dents on the side of his face. Mark stroked his cheek. “Pretty soon,” he said, “pretty soon, Hansy,” not meaning anything in particular but wanting to sound upbeat.

  Krystal was awake now too. For a moment she didn’t move or say anything. Then she shook her head rapidly from side to side. “So hot,” she said. She held up the locket-watch around her neck and looked at Mark. He kept his eyes on the road. “Back from the dead,” he said. “Boy, you were really out.”

  “The pictures,” she said. “Mark, the pictures.”

  “There wasn’t any place to stop,” he said.

  “But you promised.”

  Mark looked at her, then back at the road. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’ll be other rivers.”

  “I wanted that
one,” Krystal said, and turned away. Mark could tell that she was close to tears. It made him feel tired. “All right,” he said. “Do you want me to go back?” He slowed the car to prove he meant it. “If that’s what you want just say the word.”

  She shook her head.

  Mark sped up.

  Hans began to kick the back of the seat. Mark didn’t say anything. At least it was keeping Hans busy and quiet. “Hey, gang,” Mark said. “Listen up. I’ve got ten big ones that say we’ll be diving into Rick’s pool by six o’clock.”

  Hans gave the seat a kick that Mark felt clear through to his ribs. “Ten big ones,” Mark said. “Any takers?” He looked over at Krystal and saw that her lips were trembling. He patted the seat beside him. She hesitated, then slid over and leaned against him, as he knew she would. Krystal was not one to hold a grudge. He put his arm around her shoulder.

  “So much desert,” she said.

  “It’s something, all right.”

  “No trees,” she said. “At home I could never imagine.”

  Hans stopped kicking. Then, without warning, he grabbed Mark’s ears. Krystal laughed and pulled him over the seat onto her lap. He immediately arched his back and slid down to the floor, where he began to tug at the gear shift.

  “I have to stop,” Krystal said. She patted her belly. “This one likes to sit just so, here, on my bladder.”

  Mark nodded. Krystal knew the English words for what Dottie had always been content to call her plumbing, and when she was pregnant she liked to describe in pretty close detail what went on in there. It made Mark queasy.

  “Next chance we get,” he said. “We’re low anyway.”

  Mark turned off at an exit with one sign that said GAS. There was no mention of a town.

  The road went north over bleached hardpan crazed with fissures. It seemed to be leading them toward a solitary mountain far away that looked to Mark like a colossal sinking ship. Phantom water glistened in the desert. Rabbits darted back and forth across the road. Finally they came to the gas station, an unpainted cement-block building with some pickup trucks parked in front. Mark pulled in.

  There were four men sitting on a bench in the shade of the building. They watched the car come toward them.

  “Cowboys,” Krystal said. “Look, Hans, cowboys!”

  Hans stood on Krystal’s legs and looked out the window.

  Krystal still thought that everyone who wore a cowboy hat was a cowboy. Mark had tried to explain that it was a style, but she refused to understand. He drove up to a pump and turned off the engine.

  The four men stared at them. Their faces were dark under the wide brims of their hats. They looked as if they had been there forever. One of the men got up from the bench and walked over. He was tall and carried a paunch that seemed out of place on his bony frame. He bent down and looked inside the car. He had little black eyes with no eyebrows. His face was red, as if he were angry about something.

  “Regular, please,” Mark said. “All she’ll take.”

  The man stared openly at Krystal’s belly. He straightened up and walked away, past the men on the bench, up to the open door of the building. He stuck his head inside and yelled. Then he sat on the bench again. The man next to him looked down and mumbled something. The others laughed.

  Somebody else in a cowboy hat came out of the building and went around to the back of the car. “Mark,” Krystal said.

  “I know,” Mark said. “The bathroom.” He got out of the car. The heat took him by surprise; he could feel it coming down like rain. The person pumping gas said, “You need oil or anything?” and that was when Mark realized it was a woman. She was looking down at the nozzle, so he couldn’t see her face, only the top of her hat. Her hands were black with grease. “My wife would like to use your bathroom,” he said.

  She nodded. When the tank was full she thumped on the roof of the car. “Okay,” she said, and walked toward the building.

  Krystal opened the door. She swung her legs out, then rocked forward and pushed herself up into the light. She stood for a moment, blinking. The four men looked at her. So did Mark. He made allowances for the fact that Krystal was pregnant, but she was still too heavy. Her bare arms were flushed from the heat. So was her face. She looked like one of those stein-slinging waitresses in the Biergarten where she and Mark used to drink. He wished that these fellows could have seen the way Krystal looked wearing that black dress of hers, with her hair long, when they’d first started going out together.

  Krystal shaded her eyes with one hand. With the other hand she pulled her blouse away from where it stuck to her skin. “More desert,” she said. She lifted Hans out of the car and began to carry him toward the building, but he kicked free and ran over to the bench. He stood there in front of the men, naked except for his diaper.

  “Come here,” Krystal said. When he didn’t obey she started toward him, then looked at the men and stopped. Mark went over. “Let’s go, Hansy,” he said. He picked Hans up, and felt a sudden tenderness that vanished when Hans began to struggle.

  The woman took Krystal and Hans inside the building, then came out and sat on the pile of scrap lumber beside the door. “Hans,” she said. “That’s a funny name for a little boy.”

  “It was her father’s name,” Mark said, and so it was. The original Hans had died shortly before the baby was born. Otherwise Mark never would have agreed. Even Germans didn’t name their kids Hans anymore.

  One of the men flicked a cigarette butt toward Mark’s car. It fell just short and lay there, smoldering. Mark took it as a judgment on the car. It was a good car, a 1958 Bonneville he’d bought two weeks ago when the Ford started to smoke, but a previous owner had put a lot of extra chrome on it and right now it was gleaming every which way. It looked foolish next to these dented pickups with their gun racks and dull, blistering paint. Mark wished he’d tanked up in Blythe.

  Krystal came outside again, carrying Hans. She had brushed her hair and looked better.

  Mark smiled at her. “All set?”

  She nodded. “Thank you,” she said to the woman.

  Mark would have liked to use the bathroom too, but he wanted to get out of there. He started toward the car, Krystal behind him. She laughed deep in her throat. “You should have seen,” she said. “They have a motorcycle in their bedroom.” Krystal probably thought she was whispering but to Mark every word was like a shout.

  He didn’t say anything. He adjusted the visor while Krystal settled Hans on the back seat. “Wait,” she told Mark, and got out of the car again. She had the camera.

  “Krystal,” Mark said.

  She aimed the camera at the four men. When she snapped the shutter their heads jerked up. Krystal advanced the film, then aimed the camera again.

  Mark said, “Krystal, get in!”

  “Yes,” Krystal said, but she was still aiming, braced on the open door of the car, her knees bent slightly. She snapped another picture and slid onto the seat. “Good,” she said. “Cowboys for Reiner.”

  Reiner was Krystal’s brother. He had seen Shane more than a hundred times.

  Mark didn’t dare look toward the bench. He put the key in the ignition and glanced up and down the road. He turned the key. Nothing happened.

  Mark took a deep breath and waited for a moment. Then he tried again. Still nothing happened. The ignition went tick tick tick tick, and that was all. Mark turned it off and the three of them sat there. Even Hans was quiet. Mark felt the men watching him. That was why he did not lower his head to the wheel and give way to tears. But they were in his eyes, blurring the line of the horizon, the shape of the building, the dark forms of the trucks and the figure coming toward them over the white earth.

  It was the woman. She bent down. “Okay,” she said. “What’s the trouble?” The smell of whiskey filled the car.

  For almost half an hour the woman messed with the engine. She had Mark turn the key while she watched, then turn it some more while she did various things under the hood. At las
t she decided that the trouble was in the alternator. She couldn’t fix it, and she had no parts on hand. Mark would have to get one in Indio or Blythe or maybe as far away as Palm Springs. It wasn’t going to be easy, finding an alternator for a ten-year-old car. But she said she’d call around for him.

  Mark waited in the car. He tried to act as if everything were all right, but when Krystal looked at him she made a sympathetic noise and squeezed his arm. Hans was asleep in her lap. “Everything will be fine,” Krystal said.

  Mark nodded.

  The woman came back toward the car, and Mark got out to meet her.

  “Aren’t you the lucky one,” she said. She gave Mark a piece of paper with an address written on it. “There wasn’t anything in Indio,” she said, “but this fellow in Blythe can fix you up. I’ll need two dollars for the calls.”

  Mark opened his wallet and gave her the two dollars. He had sixty-five dollars left, all that remained of his army severance pay. “How much will the alternator cost?” he asked.

  She closed the hood of the car. “Fifty-eight dollars, I think it was.”

  “Jesus,” Mark said.

  The woman shrugged. “You’re lucky they had one.”

  “I suppose so,” Mark said. “It just seems like a lot of money. Can you jump-start me?”

  “If you’ve got cables. Mine are lent out.”

  “I don’t have any,” Mark said. He squinted against the sun. Though he had not looked directly at the men on the bench, he knew that they had been watching him. He was sure that they had heard everything. He was also sure that they had jumper cables. People who drove trucks always carried stuff like that.

  But if they didn’t want to help, he wasn’t going to ask.

  “I guess I could walk up to the highway and hitch a ride,” Mark said, more loudly than he meant to.

  “I guess you could,” the woman said.

  Mark looked back at Krystal. “Is it okay if my wife stays here?”

  “I guess she’ll have to,” the woman said. She took off her hat and wiped her brow with the back of her sleeve. Her hair was pure yellow, gathered in a loose bun that glowed in the light. Her eyes were black. She put her hat back on and told Mark how to get to the parts store. She made him repeat the directions. Then he went back to the car.