by David Treuer
Emma must have heard them, too. She stood at the foot of the dock, her silly skirt blowing in the hot wind and her hands clasped to her mouth in shocked, happy surprise.
Her surprise, even that, seemed hokey and staged. She must have heard them coming from the back by the garden and she had to catch and hold her “Oh! Frankie!” and carry it across the lawn and let it ripen while she stood and waited for the boys to quit their Ivy League guffawing and carousing and get out of the canoe so she could clasp him to her breast. It was that precious surprise and tenderness (as though one had opened the cupboard to fetch the salt and found a baby girl in there instead) that, more than anything else, made Jonathan wither. More than her constant worrying; more than her manner of dress (it would never occur to her to wear a suit, like the smart ones all the secretaries were wearing now); even more than her dripping, drooping monologue about their wonderful son; more than the occasional (and it had happened less and less over the years) day or two when she couldn’t get out of bed and would cry and cry and, asked what was the matter, would only say, “Josephine, poor baby Josephine.”
Jonathan sighed and shook his head. He couldn’t see very well at this distance, but for the few seconds it took for Frankie to emerge from the canoe and come down the dock, Jonathan thought Emma might actually be right: he had grown into a man. Jonathan could see, even from all the way across the lawn, the white flash of his teeth, a broad, tan smile (acquired, it seemed, from a trip to Key West after graduation), and strong, level shoulders almost even with Billy’s. And then Frankie was lost in his mother’s hug.
Jonathan let the curtain back down. He knew he had to greet his son, though the thought of it made him irritable. He stopped by the fireplace to collect his pipe kit from next to the easy chair and filled his pipe as he walked out the front door, down the steps, and toward the dock. By the time he strolled across the lawn (Felix was good at keeping the grass down, even Jonathan had to admit that) and filled his pipe, Frankie had managed to free himself from his mother’s hug, and he ducked his head as she tried to tuck his hair behind his ear.
“They’ll be cutting that off soon, won’t they? In the Air Force. They’ll give you a haircut.”
“For Christ’s sake, Mother,” he said, grinning sheepishly, looking back at Billy and Ernest and David (that was his name, Dave Gardner!), and then up at Jonathan, who had stopped nearby.
“I’m just saying,” said Emma shyly. “I’m just saying you’ve got beautiful hair.”
“I don’t care about that,” said Frankie, but his hand betrayed him and rose to re-part his hair and smooth it down, finishing his mother’s gesture by tucking it behind his ear.
Ernie said something to Billy and David that made them laugh.
“Father,” said Frankie, straightening. He stuck out his hand stiffly, and Jonathan, feeling a little foolish, reached out. They shook hands.
“The Air Force. That’ll be exciting, won’t it?”
“I hear we have a fight on the home front.”
“Where are the others? Weren’t there supposed to be more of you?” Jonathan felt uncomfortable, and it was all he could think to say.
“Couldn’t make it. Naval cadets. They had to go right after graduation.”
“Oh.”
“Sounds like we’ve got a German submariner to find,” said Frankie, smiling.
“An escaped German. Just one lonely submariner out in the woods. Not much of a fight.” Jonathan turned away from the imaginary wind and lit his pipe.
“Felix, I’ve been looking for you all morning,” said Emma, turning to where Felix stood in front of the boathouse.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Yes. Well, I expect you’ll go with the boys after the German. Jonathan would go but he’s got his journals, studying up on cases, you know. Anyway, you’ll go after the German with the boys. We can’t have him running around here doing all sorts of mischief. That’s for sure. But after, before it gets dark, the beach needs to be cleaned, there must be some dead fish under the dock—the smell is getting awful, just awful. And if we’re to swim here tomorrow—and you boys will want to, right, just like the old days?—well . . . it does need to be cleaned.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jonathan, pipe going, turned back to face the group. Frankie was different, as Emma had said. Broader, tanned.
Frankie nodded at his father and turned to look at Felix.
“Old Felix. Old Felix, it’s good to see you. Really good.”
“Mr. Frankie,” said Felix. This was as close as he got to affection.
“You don’t look any older.”
Felix smiled.
“We’d best get after that German,” said Frankie. “The longer we wait, the more time he has to cause trouble. Felix, is the Winchester still on top of the cupboard?”
Felix nodded.
“Hey, Pops, we’ll need to use the Winchester. Nothing like a Winchester 101 to convince a German to come in quietly.”
“All we have are rabbit and grouse loads,” said Jonathan.
“There’s double aught,” said Felix.
Jonathan narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like to be contradicted, especially by an Indian.
“Yes.”
“We’ll be loaded for bear, then, right, Felix?”
“Loaded for man,” said Ernie, smiling. “You’ll be loaded for man.”
Jonathan couldn’t bear any more of this banter, the bright chitchat, and he wished them good hunting and said he’d see them at dinner. They continued in the same vein as he turned and walked back up to the house. He went to the kitchen for a glass, and the girls, who had been watching and listening at the window, scampered mice-like back to their chairs and resumed shelling peas and peeling potatoes.
FIVE
They took the path behind the Pines and cut up the trail till they hit the logging road and took it west, parallel to the lake. It was the same trail and the same woods in which Billy and Frankie had played and later used as a kind of refuge from the Pines itself, when they were teenagers. But it felt different to Billy now. The heat hung heavy among the basswood and maple. Funny, but there weren’t really any pines behind the Pines except for the few planted as a windbreak between the property and the woods. The woods themselves were hardwoods and poplar. The horseflies droned in the air, and Billy’s shirt stuck to his arms underneath his brown wool jacket. He hadn’t thought to take it off. Frankie had been too excited, too eager to search for the German, and Billy had been too eager to be with Frankie, and so he was sweating heavily. The air had the feel of rain—a heavy, waiting feel—but the sky was clear and the stationmaster at the depot said that it was supposed to remain that way. Even so, the air . . . it was as though a man could swim in it.
Felix was in the lead, followed by Frankie—who had insisted on carrying the Winchester—and Billy, Ernie, and David were behind. Frankie peppered Felix with questions and Felix mumbled in reply. Billy suggested Ernie head north while Felix and David cut down by the slough to the south. Frankie finally caught on.
“Yeah, Felix. Good idea. We’ll take the tote road here and meet you on the other side of the slough. I’ll have a better field of fire with the Winchester on the road.”
“Field of fire?” asked Ernie.
“Well,” said Frankie, and he shrugged.
“Okay,” said Felix. “Okay.”
Ernie walked up to Billy and peered at him with bloodshot eyes, as though Billy had said something or offered some kind of challenge.
“One for the road,” said Ernie, and he reached inside Billy’s coat, removed one of the pints, and, without saying anything else, turned and stalked off into the brush, the branches flapping closed behind him.
Felix motioned to David and the two them turned and walked away through the trees to the south.
Frankie raised his eyebrows as if to say
, “Well?” Billy smiled.
They slowed down. The deerflies hummed heavily around them. Billy wasn’t sure if the humming sound came from the bugs or the blood in his ears. He could hear his own heart. They followed the tote road for a distance without saying anything. Frankie scanned the woods, the Winchester pointing up and to the left.
Frankie looked across at Billy. “Port arms,” he said. Billy smiled again.
They continued down the road and then Billy steered them off into a small clearing.
“I don’t think he’s out here, Frankie.”
“He could be anywhere.”
“He’s not here. Just slow down. Okay? Just slow down, Jesus. You’re really worked up.”
“I’ve been doing exercises,” said Frankie, blushing.
“Yeah?”
“You know, to get ready for the Air Force.”
“Oh?”
“Push-ups. Toe touches. Cherry pickers. Like that.”
“I suppose you’re stronger now,” ventured Billy. His heart beat fast.
“Yeah. I think so. Running, too. When we went to Key West after graduation I ran on the beach every day.”
“Let me feel.”
Frankie turned to face him and Billy reached out and squeezed his arm.
“Geez.”
“Stop it.”
“No. Really. Pretty good.”
Frankie looked straight into Billy’s eyes.
“I missed you, Billy. I missed you an awful lot.”
As he said it, he reached up and picked a twig from Billy’s hair and leaned in, his eyes closed in expectation. Billy closed his eyes and let himself be kissed. How long had it been? A year? A full cycle of seasons and chores and school and all that work peeling pulp, and the letters, and the books, and his own pitiful letters back, smudged and probably misspelled. Billy kissed him back and savored the slight, ever so slight feel of Frankie’s stubble on his lips. His blood rushed in his ears.
But then a sound crept through the blood. He heard something behind him and he turned to see Felix and David step out of the brush. And then Ernie came from the other direction.
Ernie said something, but Billy’s head was buzzing and he couldn’t hear what it was. Maybe they hadn’t seen. It was possible. Maybe they saw but didn’t know what they were seeing. Frankie was stammering and talking, and he had turned from Billy and was walking away.
“Come on, Billy. I said, come on.”
Billy followed, stumbling.
“Goddamn Indians,” said Frankie. “Come on.”
Frankie forced his way through the brush, the branches slapping his face. Billy followed. They walked this way for a few minutes, maybe a minute.
“Hold on, Frankie. Just wait up. They didn’t see anything. I don’t think they saw anything.”
“Saw what?”
“Would you stop? Just stop for a minute.”
Frankie stopped but he wouldn’t look at Billy.
“No one’s going to say anything.”
“Just drop it.”
Billy had wanted to touch Frankie’s arm again. He wanted to step close and hold him by both arms till he calmed down. But he didn’t dare. He wanted to tell him he didn’t care about push-ups or cherry pickers. He wanted to say that he liked Frankie’s arms—yes, his thin arms, his thin arms unencumbered, free of dull muscle. He wanted to say he liked his wrists, his dusty eyelashes. But he didn’t dare. He wanted to say, remember. Remember? Remember when they would steal time in the cabins. And how much he liked that Frankie let himself be held, let Billy curl his body around Frankie’s smaller one. Remember? To let yourself be held takes a lot more courage than to do the holding. But he didn’t dare. More than that. He wanted more: he wanted to retake the search for the German, back up the canoe, drive back to the station, and wait again—but he wanted to wait for Frankie, and only Frankie, to step off the train. And he wanted the train to be different. And the depot. It would be some other depot in some town neither of them knew or were known in. Some bland place no one would think of visiting. And Frankie would say, “Nice jacket, Billy!” and, “I like your style, kid.”
But Billy said only, “Everyone’s going to forget about it.”
“I’ll be gone in two weeks. In two weeks I’ll be in Montgomery.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do when you turn eighteen? What are you going to do, for your part?”
“I’ll do something. I’ll figure it out. Let’s go back. We can take the long way around the slough and meet the rest at the big house. There will be a lot of people around.”
“Shh.”
“Frankie. Please, let’s—”
“Quiet.”
Frankie turned toward the thicker brush. There was movement deep in the middle of it, under a blowdown.
“Hear that?”
Billy couldn’t see anything, but he heard the rustle of leaves.
SIX
Jonathan lay on his bed. The Pines was finally quiet. A man could actually hear the goddamn pines now. And though it was late afternoon (could it be five already?) the heat had not broken. The grass and each and every leaf seemed to ooze moisture, to drip with heat. And for that and the quiet that let him breathe, he was glad he hadn’t gone with the others after the German. He’d almost caved when Emma asked him, and again after Frankie had arrived with Ernest, Billy, and that other boy whose name he could never remember. He almost gave in just so he wouldn’t have to endure any more of Emma’s nervous wing-beating. And Frankie’s excitement was a little contagious. But, by God, he’d met enough Germans during the last war. They were decent enough, and he’d been sorry so many died. He’d even saved a few who had been pulled back to the trenches with their own and he had been glad to save them. It made him feel noble. The Japanese were a different matter. And as he lay on the bed and searched for a breeze by turning his head one direction and then the other, he wondered if he’d save one of those if he were still in the Army. Probably not. After what they’d done it was hard to imagine helping them, or lifting a finger if one lay bleeding below him. Let him bleed. He’d seen men stretched out on the ground many times, and it was surprising how seldom they themselves knew they were going to die. They’d turn their heads as though searching for something, something they could not find. And they’d say please, oh, please, please but he wasn’t sure what it was they were looking for or asking for, and neither were they, and then they died.
Jonathan wished that the Pines were wired for electricity, because then he could bring one of the electric fans they had in Chicago, and have a breeze whenever he wanted. You’d think this was the tropics, not the north. That’s how heavy the heat was. He turned his head again but did not lift his arms or move his body. He had not been wounded in the war. Not much more than scratches and a little trench foot, which came late and he was able to cure it by putting bandages in his boots and drying them over the Bunsen burner at the aid station. It must be a strange feeling to be shot. He turned his head quickly from side to side. “Please, oh, please, please,” he said, remembering the pleas of the soldiers under his care. He even went so far as to make the small gurgling sound in his throat that the wounded often made, as though they were thirsty, or as though swallowing air might somehow ease the pain.
“Please, oh, please, please.”
He felt himself stir. After a moment he reached down into his trousers. Well, why not? He shucked his pants and lay on the bed in his boxers and undershirt. He worked his penis out of his boxers. It lay long and limp on the sterile fabric, poking out of the fly as though draped and ready to be operated on. He liked it better this way. He liked not to see the angry cloud of his pubic hair and his penis rising out of it like some trunk out of the jungle canopy. It was better this way, with his underwear on. That way his penis was less like an extension of himself, with its taproot (as he knew
from medical school) running deep down near his anus. With his underwear on, it was as though his penis had no origin, no ancestral soil; it emerged clean, without history, from the white cotton of his shorts.
This would have to suffice until he got back to Chicago.
“Please, oh, please, please.”
He would have to wait weeks—weeks!—until he would hear those words spoken from any lips other than his own. There, after a long day with patients, he could close and lock his office door and spend some time with one of the nurses. Some of them, at least, were willing. They knew the score. Until then . . . well, he was a competent surgeon. He could operate on himself.
Emma would be of no help. She was a good woman. A good mother and a good wife. But passion was something he was sure she never felt. There was no changing that. Worry was as close as she came to passion, and the worry was nonstop. Worry about which wildflowers to stand in which vases at which tables, or whether or not to put parsley on the finger potatoes. She had the annoying habit of standing and murmuring to herself, arranging the flowers, stepping back, taking them out, putting them back in, and giving the vase another quarter turn. And then she would stand in front of the bookcase to the side of the fireplace and tap her chin and ask herself which books the various guests might appreciate finding, as though on accident, in their cabins. Usually Emma solved these crises on her own, but if he was within earshot she could not stop herself from asking him, even though she knew he found it annoying.
“Do you think Mrs. Norton would like The Ambassadors? It’s funny when you read it from the right angle,” she would say.
“Give her D. H. Lawrence, dear.”
“Oh, be serious, Jonathan.”
“Then ask Felix. I’m sure he has a recommendation.”
“Jonathan, please.”
Please, indeed.
Please, oh, please, please.
Jonathan worked more diligently with his right hand, and he snuck his left under the elastic of his boxers and skirted the forest of pubic hair on the way to worry his balls.