Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  They did not need each other. There was no particular reason for them to be together. So what was this all about? If he couldn’t make her happy, what was the point? They were dragging each other down like two people who couldn’t swim. If they were lucky, they might keep at it long enough to grow old in the same house.

  It wasn’t right. She deserved better, and so did he.

  Mark felt that he had been deceived. Not by Krystal, she would never do that, but by everyone who had ever been married and knew the truth about it and never let on. The truth was, when you got married you had to give up one thing after another. It never ended. You had to give up your life—the special one you’d been meant to have—and stumble along where neither of you had ever thought of going or wanted to go. And you never knew what was really happening. You gave up your life and didn’t even know it.

  “Blythe,” Barney said.

  Mark looked at the town, what he could see of it from the road. Lines of heat quivered above the rooftops.

  “Blythe,” Barney said again. “Going, going, gone.”

  Krystal woke and bolted upright, blinking in the gloom. “Hans,” she whispered.

  “He’s outside,” Hope said. She was standing over the lamp, feeding shells into a shotgun. Her shadow swayed back and forth against the wall. “I’m going to get us some dinner,” she said. “You just lie here and rest up. The boy will be fine.” She finished loading the gun and pushed a few more shells into the pockets of her jeans.

  Krystal lay on the bed, restless and thirsty but feeling too heavy to rise. The men had a radio on. A whiny song was playing, like the one Hope had sung in the kitchen. Krystal had not heard any good music for months now, since the day she left home. A warm day in early spring—sunlight flickering through the trees along the road. Trees. Streams swollen with snowmelt.

  “Ah, God,” Krystal said.

  She pushed herself up and lifted the window shade and looked out at the desert, the mountains. And there was Hope, walking into the desert with her shotgun. The light was softer than before, still white but not so sharp. The tops of the mountains were touched with pink.

  Krystal stared out the window. How could anyone live in such a place? There was nothing, nothing at all. Through all those days in Phoenix, Krystal had felt a great emptiness around her where she would count for no more than a rock or a spiny tree; now she was in the middle of it. She thought she might cry, but gave the idea up. It didn’t interest her.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the glass.

  I will say a poem, Krystal thought, and when I am finished he will be here. At first silently, because she had been trying to speak only English, then in a whisper, she recited a poem of Heine’s the nuns had made her learn so long ago at school, the only poem she remembered. She repeated it, then opened her eyes. Mark was not there. As if she had really believed he would be there, Krystal kicked the wall with her bare foot. The pain made clear what she had been pretending not to know: that he had never really been there and never would be there in any way that mattered.

  The window was warm against Krystal’s forehead. She watched Hope move farther and farther away, then stop and raise her gun. A moment later Krystal heard the boom, and felt the glass shudder against her skin.

  Mark was sore from sitting cross-legged on the bare floorboards. He stretched out his legs and listened to the driver talk to herself, straining to get the point of the things she said. There was sometimes rhyme but never any reason to her words. Every possibility of meaning trailed off into nonsense.

  The hearse was moving at great speed, really racing. The driver passed every car they came upon. She changed lanes without purpose. Mark tried to find a break between her words to say something, just a note of caution, something about how tough the police were around here. The car was going faster and faster. He hoped that Barney would tell her to shut up and slow down, maybe even take over himself for a while, but he wasn’t saying anything and neither was Nance. She had disappeared completely and all Mark could see of Barney were the bristles of his hair.

  “Hey,” Mark said. “What’s the hurry?”

  The driver seemed not to hear him. She passed another car and went on yakking to herself. She was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

  “Better slow down,” Mark said.

  “Butter sold owl,” she said.

  Mark leaned over the top of the seat to check out the speedometer, and Nance looked up from what she was doing to Barney down there. Her eyes met Mark’s, and she held his gaze as she kept at it, languorously, luxuriously. Mark rocked back on his heels as if he’d been struck. “Stop the car,” he said.

  “Star the cop,” the driver said. “Stop the war.”

  “Stop the car,” Mark said again.

  “Hey,” Barney said. “What’s the problem?” His voice was sleepy, remote.

  “I want out,” Mark said.

  “No, you don’t,” Barney said. “You already decided, remember? Just be Marco.” Mark heard Nance whispering. Then Barney said, “Hey—Marco. Come on up here. You’re with us now.”

  “Stop the car,” Mark said. He reached over the seat and began to rap on the driver’s head, softly at first, then hard. He could hear the knocking of his knuckles against her skull. She came to a squealing stop right in the road. Mark looked back. There was a car bearing down on them. It swerved into the other lane and went past with its horn wailing.

  “Okay, Mark,” Barney said. “Ciao. You blew it.”

  Mark scrambled over equipment and cords and let himself out the back. When he closed the tailgate the driver pulled away, fast. Mark crossed the road and watched the hearse until it disappeared. The road was empty. He turned and walked back toward Blythe.

  A few minutes later an old man stopped for him. He took a liking to Mark and drove him directly to the parts store. They were just closing up, but after Mark explained his situation the boss let him inside and found the alternator for him. With tax, the price came to seventy-one dollars.

  “I thought it was fifty-six,” Mark said.

  “Seventy-one,” the man said.

  Mark stared at the alternator. “I’ve only got sixty-five.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. He put his hands on the counter and waited.

  “Look,” Mark said, “I just got back from Vietnam. Me and my wife are on our way to Los Angeles. Once we get there I can send you the rest. I’ll put it in the mail tomorrow morning, I swear.”

  The man looked at him.

  Mark could see that he was hesitating. “I’ve got a job waiting.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “I’m a soundman,” Mark said.

  “Soundman. I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you think you’ll send the money.”

  Mark argued for a while but without heat, because he knew that the man was right; he wouldn’t send the money. He gave up and went back outside. The parts store adjoined a salvage yard filled with crumpled cars. Down the street was a gas station and a U-Haul depot. As Mark walked toward the gas station a black dog appeared on the other side of the salvage-yard fence and kept pace with him, silently baring his fangs whenever Mark glanced in his direction.

  He was hot and tired. He could smell himself. He remembered the coolness of the hearse and thought, I blew it.

  There was a pay phone outside the gas station. Mark got a handful of change and shut himself in. He wanted to call his buddy in Los Angeles and figure something out, but he’d left the address book in the car and it turned out that the number was unlisted. He tried explaining things to the operator but she refused to listen. Finally she hung up on him.

  He looked across the shimmering asphalt toward the salvage yard. The dog was still at the fence, watching him. The only thing he could do, Mark decided, was to keep calling Los Angeles information until he got a human being on the other end. There had to be somebody sympathetic out there.

  But first he was going to
call Phoenix and give Dutch and Dottie a little something to sleep on. He would put on his official voice and tell them that he was Sergeant Smith—no, Smythe, Sergeant Smythe of the highway patrol, calling to report an accident. A head-on collision just outside of Palm Springs. It was his duty, he was sorry to say—here his voice would crack—that there were no survivors. No, ma’am, not one. Yes, ma’am, he was sure. He’d been at the scene. The one good thing he could tell her was that nobody had suffered. It was over just like that, and here Mark would snap his fingers into the receiver.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the phone ring through the cool, quiet house. He saw Dottie where she sat in her avocado kitchen, drinking coffee and making a list, saw her rise and gather her cigarettes and lighter and ashtray. He heard her shoes tapping on the tile floor as she came toward the phone.

  But it was Dutch who answered. “Strick here,” he said.

  Mark took a breath.

  “Hello,” Dutch said.

  “It’s me,” Mark said. “Dad, it’s me—Mark.”

  Krystal was washing her face when she heard the gun go off again. She paused, water running through her fingers, then finished up and left the bedroom. She wanted to find Hans. He should have been changed long before now, and it was almost time for him to eat. She missed him.

  Stepping carefully through the parts on the floor, she went into the main room. It was almost completely dark. Krystal turned the overhead light on and stood there with her hand against the wall.

  Everything was red. The carpet was red. The chairs and the couch were red. The lamp shades were red and had little red tassels hanging down from them. The pillows on the couch were shaped like hearts and covered in a satiny material that looked wet under the light, so that for a moment they had the appearance of real organs.

  Krystal stared at the room. In a novel she had once come upon the expression “love nest,” and had thought of light-washed walls, tall pines reaching to the balcony outside. But this, she thought, looking at the room, this was a love nest. It was horrible, horrible.

  Krystal moved over to the door and opened it a crack. Someone was lying on the front seat of the car, his bare feet sticking out the window, his boots on the ground below with yellow socks hanging from the tops. She could not see the men on the bench but one of them was saying something, the same word again and again. Krystal couldn’t make it out. Then she heard Hans repeat the word, and the men laughed.

  She opened the door wider. Still standing inside, she said, “Hans, come here.” She waited. She heard someone whisper. “Hans,” she said.

  He came to the door. There was dirt all over his face but he looked happy.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Hans looked over his shoulder, then back at Krystal.

  “Come, Hans,” she said.

  He stood there. “Bitch,” he said.

  Krystal took a step backward. “No,” she said. “No, no, no. Don’t say that. Come, sweet boy.” She held out her arms.

  “Bitch,” he said again.

  “Oh!” Krystal said. She pushed the door open and walked up to Hans and slapped him across the face. She slapped him hard. He sat down and looked up at her. She had never done that before. Krystal took a flat board from the pile of scrap near the door. The three men on the bench were watching her from under their hats. “Who did that?” she said. “Who taught him that word?” When they didn’t answer she started toward the bench, reviling them in German. They stood and backed away from her. Hans began to cry. Krystal turned on him. “Be quiet!” she said. He whimpered once and was still.

  Krystal turned back to the men. “Who taught him that word?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Webb said.

  The other men just stood there.

  “Shame,” Krystal said. She looked at them, then walked over to the car. She kicked the boots aside. Holding the board with both hands, she swung it as hard as she could across the bare feet sticking out of the window. The man inside screamed.

  “Get out,” Krystal said. “Out, out, out!”

  He scrambled out the other door and squinted at her over the top of the car. Without his big hat he looked like a grumpy baby, face all red and puffy. She hefted the board and he started dancing over the hot sand toward the building, his hair flapping up and down like a wing. He stopped in the shade and looked back, still shifting from foot to foot. He kept his eyes on Krystal. So did Hans, sitting by the door. So did the men near the bench. They were all watching to see what she would do next.

  So, Krystal thought. She flung the board away, and one of the men flinched. Krystal almost laughed. How angry I must look, she thought, how angry I am, and then her anger left her. She tried to keep it, but it was gone the moment she knew it was there.

  She shaded her eyes and looked around her. The distant mountains cast long shadows into the desert. The desert was empty and still. Nothing moved but Hope, walking toward them with the gun slung at her back, barrel poking over her shoulder. As she drew near, Krystal waved, and Hope raised her arms. A rabbit hung from each hand, swinging by its ears.

  Say Yes

  They were doing the dishes, his wife washing while he dried. He’d washed the night before. Unlike most men he knew, he really pitched in on the housework. A few months earlier he’d overheard a friend of his wife’s congratulate her on having such a considerate husband, and he thought, I try. Helping out with the dishes was one way of showing how considerate he was.

  They talked about different things and somehow got on the subject of whether white people should marry black people. He said that all things considered, he thought it was a bad idea.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Sometimes his wife got this look where she pinched her brows together and bit her lower lip and stared down at something. When he saw her like this he knew he should keep his mouth shut, but he never did. Actually it made him talk more. She had that look now.

  “Why?” she asked again, and stood there with her hand inside a bowl, not washing it but just holding it above the water.

  “Listen,” he said, “I went to school with blacks and I’ve worked with blacks and lived on the same street with blacks and we’ve always gotten along just fine. I don’t need you coming along now and implying that I’m a racist.”

  “I didn’t imply anything,” she said, and began washing the bowl again, turning it around in her hand as though she were shaping it. “I just don’t see what’s wrong with a white person marrying a black person, that’s all.”

  “They don’t come from the same culture as we do. Listen to them sometime—they even have their own language. That’s okay with me, I like hearing them talk”—he did; for some reason it always lifted his mood—“but it’s different. A person from their culture and a person from our culture could never really know each other.”

  “Like you know me?” his wife asked.

  “Yes. Like I know you.”

  “But if they love each other,” she said. She was washing faster now, not looking at him.

  Oh boy, he thought. He said, “Don’t take my word for it. Look at the statistics. Most of those marriages break up.”

  “Statistics.” She was piling dishes on the drainboard at a terrific rate, just swiping at them with the cloth. Many of them were greasy, and he could see flecks of food between the tines of the forks. “All right,” she said, “what about foreigners? I suppose you think the same thing about two foreigners getting married.”

  “Yes,” he said, “as a matter of fact I do. How can you understand someone who comes from a completely different background?”

  “Different,” said his wife. “Not the same, like us.”

  “Yes, different,” he snapped, angry with her for resorting to this trick of repeating his words so they sounded crass, or hypocritical. “These are dirty,” he said, and dumped all the silverware back into the sink.

  The water had gone flat and gray. She stared down at it, her lips pressed tight together, then plunged her hands un
der the surface. “Oh!” she cried, and jumped back. She took her right hand by the wrist and held it up. Her thumb was bleeding.

  “Ann, don’t move,” he said. “Stay right there.” He ran upstairs to the bathroom and rummaged in the medicine chest for alcohol, cotton, and a Band-Aid. When he came back down she was leaning against the refrigerator with her eyes closed, still holding her hand by the wrist. He took the hand and dabbed at her thumb with the cotton. The bleeding had stopped. He squeezed it to see how deep the wound was and a single drop of blood welled up, trembling and bright, and fell to the floor. Over the thumb she stared at him accusingly. “It’s shallow,” he said. “Tomorrow you won’t even know it’s there.” He hoped that she appreciated how quickly he’d come to her aid. He had acted out of concern for her, with no thought of getting anything in return, but now the thought occurred to him that it would be a nice gesture on her part not to start up that conversation again, as he was tired of it. “I’ll finish up here,” he said. “You go and relax.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll dry.”

  He began to wash the silverware again, giving a lot of attention to the forks.

  “So,” she said, “you wouldn’t have married me if I’d been black.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Ann!”

  “Well, that’s what you said, didn’t you?”

  “No, I did not. The whole question is ridiculous. If you had been black we probably wouldn’t even have met. You would’ve had your friends and I would’ve had mine. The only black girl I ever really knew was my partner in the debating club, and I was already going out with you by then.”

  “But if we had met, and I’d been black?”

  “Then you probably would have been going out with a black guy.” He picked up the rinsing nozzle and sprayed the silverware. The water was so hot that the metal darkened to pale blue, then turned silver again.

  “Let’s say I wasn’t,” she said. “Let’s say I’m black and unattached and we meet and fall in love.”