by Tim O'Brien
"Or else what?" says Elaine.
Darrell thinks about it.
He stares straight up the road and says, "Or else I shoot you in the face."
The crossing is a thrill. Darrell has taken Karen by the hand. He holds it comfortably, whistling under his breath while a border guard studies their passports. The guard peers into the van, waves them through. It's like pausing at a stoplight.
A quarter mile up the road Darrell takes his hand away.
"Easy as can be," he says to her. "Exactly like I promised. Adventure of a lifetime—I bet you'll be talking about it for years. You and your pals, over cups of Geritol."
"I imagine so," Karen says.
She is thinking about his hand, how his fingers had interlocked with hers, how he'd volunteered an encouraging squeeze when the guard leaned down to ask for the passports. She craves more. She wants him to take her hand on a beach somewhere, and at breakfast, and wherever and anywhere else.
For a few moments she floats in fantasy. Then something happens in her head: a tiny explosion.
She reaches out toward Darrell.
Without volition, without even counting to herself, she pries his right hand from the wheel and takes it to her lap and holds it tight. Darrell mutters something. He tries to pull away, but Karen hangs on. She has appropriated a luckier woman's life. She's a fashion model. She's on her honeymoon. She's aware of the hum of the tires against the road, the heat of a man's flesh.
Darrell releases the wheel. He strikes her on the forehead with his free fist.
"Holy shit," he says.
Forty minutes out of Tucson, Darrell pulls off onto a side road. He drives west into the desert for several miles, through barren alkali flats, then halts at the edge of a dry creek bed. He steps out. He invites the others to join him.
"Last stop," he says.
He helps Bess from the van, escorts her down into the gully. Single file, Karen and Norma and Elaine and Ed follow along. It's late afternoon. A wind has come up. To the east a stain of dusk darkens the sky.
Darrell's friend gives Elaine a nudge and motions toward a large, flat boulder. "Sit," he says, "and don't flap them bitch lips of yours."
Elaine sniffs and sits.
Bess, Norma, and Ed settle down beside her.
A few feet away, Karen waits for dispensation. The wind nips at her navy-blue skirt. She looks at Darrell, whose eyes have no focus. "Come on, now," he says quietly. "Take a load off."
His friend chuckles. "Big load. Shoulda holed her, man. Reamed off some lard."
Darrell shakes his head and says, "Cut it out. Karen's my princess. My sweetie pie."
The two men climb out of the gully.
They talk in low tones, put on identical nylon jackets, get into the van, drive away.
Already the day is cooling. In twenty minutes it will be dark. As she watches the van disappear into its own rising dust, it occurs to Karen that she has been here before, or in a place much like it. She sits down. At the roof of her mouth she feels a bud of thirst. Soon it will be all she knows. But for the present Karen slides into the fantasy that Darrell Jettie will return to take her away. She has waited a long while. She can wait a bit longer.
"I'll tell you this much," says Bess Hollander. "I'm totally pooped. Boy oh boy."
"At least they didn't murder us," Norma says.
"Oh, they did," says Elaine.
18. CLASS OF '69
AT 4:45 P.M., Saturday, July 8, 2000, immediately after the memorial service, there was a gathering in the ballroom of the Darton Hall student union. The college's president delivered cheery remarks, plugging for donations, then a number of important-looking plaques were presented in recognition of alumni achievements. A Lutheran missionary, a chemist, a physician, and Minnesota's lieutenant governor were among the recipients.
Afterward, with two hours to kill before the evening banquet, Amy Robinson and Jan Huebner rounded up their friends for a late-afternoon assault on the Red Carpet, a hangout during their college days. Jan and Amy led the march up Grand Avenue. It was a tiring expedition for all of them: humidity like bubble gum, middle age, little sleep. A swirl of low, ugly clouds was moving in over the Twin Cities, and rain seemed a certainty, but for now the thermometers still burned in the high nineties.
Behind Jan and Amy, strung out in a ragged column along Grand Avenue, Paulette Haslo trudged side by side with Ellie Abbott, followed by Marla Dempsey, then Billy McMann, then David Todd, then Spook Spinelli in crocheted hot pants and spike heels, then Marv Bertel sweating his heart out a block or so behind. Dorothy Stier had also been enlisted, mostly for Billy's sake, but at the last minute she'd gone AWOL, begging off for domestic reasons. Dorothy had a husband, after all, and two terrific kids; she might or might not make it to the banquet.
It was a few minutes past 6 P.M. when nine weary friends straggled into the Red Carpet. The place had changed with the times. Once psychedelic-seedy, the bar had taken a sharp right turn toward collegiate-chic, lots of chrome and exposed brick and stained glass and fake ferns. Only a jukebox and two pool tables remained from the old days.
"Well," Jan said. "Want to plan a merger?"
They took seats around a large, circular table, ordered pitchers of designer beer, and launched their offensive. Time was short. The concluding banquet, they knew, would be a sentimental nightmare, false promises rolled up inside platitudes, and now, with various shadings of motive and intensity, each of them was aware of a growing pressure to fill these last hours with significance. Spook Spinelli had made up her mind to be jolly. She would leave her friends some exemplary pictures to remember: foxy, flamboyant Spook. She would say nothing about drinking from fire extinguishers. If anyone suggested it, or even if not, she would climb up on the table and reprise a striptease from three decades ago. Flick her tongue at David Todd. Put a slither to her hips and giggle like a schoolgirl and let Marv slip a few bucks into the waistband of her crocheted hot pants and pretend she was young and ready to be ravaged, by whomever or by whatever, Queen of Sluts, happiest hussy in the house.
At the moment, under the table, she was unbuckling Marv's belt. "Sandra, Sandra," she was saying to him. "Now, correct me, but that's the wife, right? Or is it Sandy?"
"Sandra," said Marv.
"Exactly. Sandra it is. Sandra we'll definitely call her." Spook looked down at his lap. "Comfortable?"
"Very, thanks," Marv said.
"We don't want to be cramped, do we?"
"No, that we don't want," he said. He smiled at her. Moron love, he thought. "One question. I was under the impression—here's the dumb impression I was under—I was pretty much impressed by the idea that you and I were just swell friends."
"Oh, we are. Except you're so wonderful and true blue. Hot pants come to those who wait."
"Really?"
"Of course, really. Old saying. Chairman Mao."
"Bless my fat soul," said Marv. "Last of the Mohicans, am I? Batting cleanup?"
"Pretty much. So sorry." She pulled off the belt, wound it around her neck, buckled it up, handed him the flap. "Is chronology an issue?"
"Guess not," Marv said.
Across the table, Amy Robinson said, "Careful, Marvy. Don't you dare break her heart."
"He knows better," said Jan Huebner.
Marv rose to his feet. He secured the flap of his belt with one hand, his trousers with the other. "To the price of mops," he said, "may they never tumble. And to what mops can buy: fame, power, pretty women. Spook and I—she doesn't know this yet—we're soon off on a booze cruise to the Tropics. Never underestimate a fat guy."
"Or patience," said Spook, and Jan Huebner yelled, "Mops!"
Paulette Haslo went to the jukebox and helped Marla Dempsey feed in quarters. Paulette wasn't sure why, but she was feeling a little lighter about the world. The memorial service, possibly. The knowledge that she was still a minister, job or no job. She loved helping people; she loved the idea of faith, if not its elusiveness. After a time she r
eturned to the table and sat in Billy McMann's lap and said, "Forget Dorothy, make me pregnant."
Billy chuckled. "You had us worried," he said.
"I'm good now."
"You look good. Shipshape."
"Sweet of you, sir. Needed to go to church."
"That'll do it," said Billy.
"Yes, it will," said Paulette.
She tilted her head back, looked at him closely for several seconds.
"Confession," she said. "Truth time. It's June '69, graduation day, I'm a God Squadder, you're with Dorothy, and the whole time I sit there staring at that ponytail of yours. Can't stop. Poor unponytailed Paulette. I've got this crush on you, just like Amy and Jan and Spook and everybody else. Ruined it for me, my own graduation. Surprised? Shocked?"
"I am," Billy said.
"A little or a lot?"
"A very little little."
Paulette pretended to smack him. She liked being on Billy's lap. It was the liquor at work, and sentiment. But there was also that new buoyancy inside her. Fifty-three years old, and her sell-by date had long since expired, but now, when she did a bounce on Billy's lap, when she laughed, it was as if she weighed less than nothing.
"What does surprise me," Billy said, "is that you're sitting where you're sitting. Feels terrific, don't budge, but I never thought this particular lap was up there in your league."
"Oh, it is," said Paulette. "First-rate lap."
"You think so?"
"Yes, I do."
"In that case," Billy said, "may I look at your chest?" He looked at her chest. "Now, this might be too bold, but that chest is also enormously first rate. Always thought so. May I be bold?"
"I insist."
"Minister, et cetera. Don't want to offend."
"None taken," said Paulette. "But I hope you don't mean too hugely first rate."
"No. I mean massively adequate." Again Billy looked at her, this time in the eyes, straight on, and then he slipped his arms around her and locked his hands at her spine, lifting slightly, taking her weight. He kissed her nose. "Back in school, you were always ... Don't hold me to these exact words, but you were always so damned unapproachable."
"The first-rate boobs," Paulette said. "Hard for people to get close."
"Maybe."
"I'm kidding, Billy."
He nodded. He kept looking at her. "So how come you never hooked up with anybody? Man, woman, animal?"
"Marriage, you mean?"
"Yes."
Paulette shook her head.
She had no idea, really. A female minister, sure. Except that was only part of it.
After a second she said, "That ponytail of yours, Billy, maybe I never found one up to snuff," which sounded true, and so she said, "And you were brave, too. Saying no, doing no. Just walking away. People don't use the word 'hero' for it, they don't even think that word—hero, I mean—but I do." She moved on his lap. She felt a rush of self-consciousness. Thirty-one years, she thought. Two boyfriends, six months each. "Anyway, there you are. My hero. Plus the ponytail."
"I'll grow it back," he said.
"Deal," said Paulette. "Glad you're home."
"Thank you."
"One more time. On the lips this time."
"Okay," Billy said.
He kissed her, and Paulette returned it, and then she said, "Well, now. Where's Dorothy?"
"I forget," he said.
"Pity. So about my pregnancy."
"Pretty old, aren't we?"
"Yes, but don't forget my eulogy. Miracles and all that."
"Oh, yeah. Like Viagra."
"Right. Except no quintuplets. Once more—on the lips again."
It was closing in on 6:30 P.M., July 8, 2000, and the bar had begun to swell with a good many thirsty patrons, mostly young people, mostly unborn in 1969, mostly tattooed or pierced or bejeweled, but the jukebox was well stocked with coins that had been slavishly acquired over thirty-one years, by toil, by risk and heartache, and the music was therefore "Lay, Lady, Lay," to which nine dear friends provided choral accompaniment, tipsy, off-key, singing loud, surprising themselves. In the old days they would've sneered, and did sneer, at such flagrant sentiment. Now it felt like love.
"The revolution," Amy said later, "wasn't about that, it was about us."
"'That'?" Jan Huebner said.
"Everything else."
"Don't follow, dear. One more time."
"Oh, you know. Stopping wars, things outside us. We tried to change the world, but guess what? World changed us. Dumbass cliché, I know, and that's what makes it so sad, so depressing. All those platitudes Mom and Pop used to feed us like baby food. They're true."
"Is this good or bad?"
"No idea," Amy said, "but it looks like I won't be intercoursing Billy McMann."
Not without delight, they watched Paulette dance on Billy's lap.
"Behold, a happy gal," Amy said. "Maybe that's my point. Older you get, more it comes down to not being Harmon Osterberg."
"Or Karen Burns," said Jan.
"Yeah," Amy said. "Lay, lady, lay."
Ellie Abbott, too, was feeling lighter, though not by much. In less than an hour she would be meeting Mark at the farewell banquet, where she would dine on chicken tarragon and listen to speeches and make deft conversation, and then on the drive back to the hotel, in the dark, when Mark's eyes could not be seen, she would say, "Remember Harmon?"
David Todd knew pretty much what the future would hold. For three decades now, amid dense morphine dreams along a river called the Song Tra Ky, Master Sergeant Johnny Ever had kept him well informed. The man didn't shut up. Even now he rattled on. "Born to jabber, love the mike," he was saying. "Can't stop myself. But, Davy boy, I warned you at least ten zillion times. Dotted the t's, crossed the i's. No offense, but I got zero tolerance for that poor-me attitude of yours. Let's be honest, you knew the score before the friggin' game got played. Every inning, every pitch. You asked for it, man. You took the ride."
David Todd acknowledged this.
He understood that Marla's hand in his meant only that she craved forgiveness, and that when the question was finally put to him, the forgiveness question, he would nod and say, "Sure," because long ago he already had. He realized, too, that a little later in the evening, if he were to get up to shoot some pool, Marla would find a way to join him, and that after a couple of games she would suggest that they skip the banquet and seek out a place to talk, and he realized that he would then hear considerably more than he wished to hear about Harleys and stockbrokers and how much she regretted hurting him, how it was a horrid, horrid memory that she'd be revisiting forever. But she had no serious interest in trying again. She cared for him, yes, but passion was a problem, and in the morning he would have only the ghost of a hand in his, those Marla fingers, that perfect fit, a phantom ache, the pain of what was lost, just as he sometimes felt the ghost of his missing leg.
He looked over at Marv Bertel.
"Pool?" he said.
"Sure," Marv said. "If my pants stay up."
***
"Excellent muscle tone," Billy said to Paulette. "You're in shape."
"Bicycling," Paulette said. "Swimming."
"We have bikes in Winnipeg."
"Do you? And water?"
"Water, too. We're famous for water."
"Wet water?"
"Oh, yeah. Every drop."
"Wet," Paulette said. She wiggled on his lap. "I like it that way."
"Jesus Christ," Jan said.
"Cute couple," said Amy Robinson.
Jan wagged her head. "No lie, I'm doing something wrong. This lipstick, you think?"
"Not the lipstick."
"Personality, then? The face?"
"Probably the face," Amy said.
As David and Marv racked up for eight ball, the others drank and lap-danced and reminisced and listened to the jukebox and flirted or pretended to flirt and made secret resolutions and tried not to think about the press of time. Outside, the s
ky was bruised and tumbling. No rain yet, but it was on the way. There were floods in Colorado, thunderstorms all across the Dakotas. Amy Robinson explained the impoverishing rules of blackjack. Jan Huebner talked about a dwarf she once knew. Spook Spinelli talked about her number coming up, how she could feel it, even hear it. Like this voice inside her, Spook said. Some old woman's voice, mumbly-sounding, always yakking away about Indians and grass and metal fatigue.
"Imagine the funeral," Jan said. "Noah's ark. Two of everything."
Later on, they played a game called Truth that had originated in their college days. Amy Robinson reviewed the rules, which even thirty-one years ago had been fluid and mutable, subject to inspiration. "What I remember for sure," Amy said, "is we have to confess the most terrible thing ever about ourselves, something we did or didn't do. Whatever keeps us awake at night. Something monstrous. Evil."
Jan Huebner raised a hand. "I think you've forgotten the basic point, Amy. I'm pretty sure it was a fun game."
"Back then it was," said Billy. "Terrible things weren't so terrible."
"Goes without saying," Jan said, "but I believe there's a drinking part, I'm almost positive. At some point you get to drink, or you have to, or I don't know. You do in fact drink."
"Probably if you lie," Marla said.
"Or if nobody believes you," said Jan, "then you definitely drink. There's drink involved, I promise you."
"I'm not playing," Ellie said.
"You are so," said Spook, "and I just wish Dorothy were here. Honest to God, I'd give one of my husbands to hear that girl's most terrible thing."
"Forgot recycling day," Amy said.
"Burned Ron's supper," said Jan. "Served TV dinners to those two groovy kids."
Paulette Haslo suddenly felt heavier in Billy's lap. She could feel his thoughts congeal. "Let's be fair," she said. "Every morning, every night, maybe the cancer's back. Chemo. Radiation. Tough girl."
"And she lets you know about it," Amy said.