Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  After Morse signed out he drove to the pancake house she’d been calling from. As agreed, she was waiting by the cash register, and when he came through the door in his fatigues he saw her take him in with a sharp, measuring glance. She straightened up—a tall woman, nearly as tall as Morse himself, with lank brown hair and a long, tired-looking face, darkly freckled under the eyes. Her eyes were dark, but otherwise she looked nothing like Hart, and Morse was thrown by the sudden disappointment he felt and his impulse to flee.

  She stepped toward him, head cocked to one side, as if making a guess about him. She wore a sleeveless red blouse and hugged her freckled arms against the chill of the air-conditioning. “So should I call you Sergeant?” she said.

  “Randall.”

  “Sergeant Randall.”

  “Just Randall.”

  “Just Randall,” she repeated, and offered him her hand. It was dry and rough. “Julianne. We’re over in the corner.”

  She led him to a booth by the big window looking out on the parking lot. A fat-faced boy, maybe seven or eight, sat drawing a picture on the back of a place mat among the congealed remains of eggs and waffles and sausages. Holding the crayon like a spike, he raised his head as Morse slid onto the bench across from him. He had the same fierce brows as the woman and gave Morse a long unblinking look; then he sucked in his lower lip and returned to his work.

  “Say hello, Charlie.”

  He went on coloring. Finally he said, “Howdy.”

  “Won’t say ‘hello,’ this one. Says ‘howdy’ now. Don’t know where he got it.”

  “That’s all right. Howdy back at you, Charlie.”

  “You look like a frog,” the boy said. He dropped the crayon and picked up another from the clutter on the table.

  “Charlie!” she said. “Use your manners,” she added mildly, beckoning to the waitress pouring coffee at a neighboring table.

  “It’s okay,” Morse said. He figured he had it coming. Not because he looked like a frog—though he was all at once conscious of his wide mouth—but because he’d sucked up to the boy. Howdy back at you!

  “What is wrong with that woman?” Julianne said, as the waitress gazed dully around the room. Then Julianne caught her eye, and she came slowly over to their table and refilled her cup. “That’s some picture you’re making,” the waitress said. “What is it?” The boy ignored her. “You’ve got yourself quite the little artist there,” she said to Morse, and moved dreamily away.

  Julianne poured a long stream of sugar into her coffee.

  “Charlie your son?”

  She turned and looked speculatively at the boy. “No.”

  “You’re not my mom,” he murmured.

  “Didn’t I just say that?” She stroked his round cheek with the back of her hand. “Draw your picture, nosy. Kids?” she said to Morse.

  “Not yet.” He watched the boy smear blue lines across the place mat, wielding the crayon as if out of grim duty.

  “You aren’t missing anything.”

  “Oh, I think I probably am.”

  “Nothing but back talk and mess,” she said. “Charlie’s Billy’s. Billy’s and Dina’s.”

  Morse would never have guessed it, to look at the boy. “I didn’t know Hart had a son,” he said, and hoped she hadn’t heard the note of complaint that was all too clear and strange to him.

  “Neither does he, the way he acts. Him and Dina both.” Dina, she explained, was off doing her second round of rehab in Raleigh. Julianne and Belle—Julianne’s mother, Morse gathered—had been looking after Charlie but didn’t really get along, and after the last blowup Belle had taken off for Florida with a boyfriend, putting Julianne in a bind. She drove a school bus during the year and worked summers cooking at a Girl Scout camp, but with Charlie on her hands and no money for child care she’d had to give up the camp job. So she’d driven down here to try and shake some help out of Billy, enough to get her through until school started or Belle decided to come home and do her share, fat chance.

  Morse nodded toward the boy. He didn’t like his hearing all this, if anything could penetrate that concentration, but Julianne went on as if she hadn’t noticed. Her voice was low, almost masculine, with a nasal catch in it like the whine of a saw blade binding. She didn’t have the lazy music that Hart could play so well, and she seemed more truly of the hollows and farms of their home. She spoke of the people there as if Morse must know them too, as if she had no working conception of the reach of the world beyond.

  At first Morse was expecting her to put the bite on him, but she never did. He didn’t understand what she wanted from him, or why, unprompted, he’d offered to come here tonight.

  “So he’s gone,” she said. “You’re sure.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Well. Good to know my luck’s holding. Wouldn’t want it to get worse.” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you call first?”

  “What, let on I was coming? You don’t know our Billy.”

  Julianne seemed to fall into a trance then, and Morse soon followed, lulled by the clink of crockery and the voices all around, the soft scratching of the crayon. He didn’t know how long they sat like this. He was roused by the tapping of raindrops against the window, a few fat drops that left oily lines as they slid down the glass. The rain stopped. Then it came again in a rush, sizzling on the asphalt and glazing the cars in the parking lot, pleasant to watch after the long humid day.

  “Rain,” Morse said.

  Julianne didn’t bother to look. She might have been asleep but for the slight nod she gave him.

  Morse recognized two men from his company at a table across the room. He watched them until they glanced over, then he nodded and they nodded back. Money in the bank—confirmed sighting of Sergeant Morse with woman and child. Family. He hated thinking so bitter and cheap a thought, and resented whatever led him to think it. Still, how else could they be seen, the three of them, in a pancake house at this hour? And it wasn’t just their resemblance to a family. No, there was the atmosphere of family here, in the very silence of the table: Julianne with her eyes closed, the boy working away on his picture, Morse himself looking on like any husband and father.

  “You’re tired,” he said.

  The tenderness of his own voice surprised him, and her eyes blinked open as if she, too, was surprised. She looked at him with gratitude; and it came to Morse that she had called him back that night just for the reason she gave, because he’d spoken kindly to her.

  “I am tired,” she said. “I am that.”

  “Look, Julianne. What do you need to tide you over?”

  “Nothing. Forget all that stuff—I was just blowing off steam.”

  “I’m not talking about charity, okay? Just a loan, that’s all.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not like there’s anyone waiting in line for it,” he said, and this was true. Morse’s father and older brother, finally catching on, had gone cold on him years ago. He’d remained close to his mother, but she died just after his return from Iraq. In his new will Morse named as sole beneficiary the hospice where she’d spent her last weeks. To name Dixon seemed too sudden and meaningful and might draw unwelcome attention, and anyway Dixon had made some sharp investments and was well fixed.

  “I just can’t,” Julianne said. “But that is so sweet.”

  “My dad’s a soldier,” the boy said, head still bent over the place mat.

  “I know,” Morse said. “He’s a good soldier. You should be proud.”

  Julianne smiled at him, really smiled, for the first time that night. She had been squinting and holding her mouth in a tight line; then she smiled and looked like someone else. Morse saw that she had beauty, and that her pleasure in him had allowed this beauty to show itself. He was embarrassed. He felt a sense of duplicity that he immediately, even indignantly, suppressed. “I can’t force it on you,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

  The smile vanished. “I w
ill,” she said, in the same tone he had used, harder than he’d intended. “But I thank you anyhow. Charlie,” she said, “time to go. Get your stuff together.”

  “I’m not done.”

  “Finish it tomorrow.”

  Morse waited while she rolled up the place mat and helped the boy collect his crayons. He noticed the check pinned under the saltshaker and picked it up.

  “I’ll take that,” she said, holding out her hand in a way that did not permit refusal.

  Morse stood by awkwardly as Julianne paid at the register, then walked outside with her and the boy. They stood together under the awning and watched the storm lash the parking lot. Glittering lines of rain fell aslant through the glare of the lights overhead. The surrounding trees tossed wildly, and the wind sent gleaming ripples across the asphalt. Julianne brushed a lock of hair back from the boy’s forehead. “I’m ready. How about you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it ain’t about to quit raining for Charles Drew Hart.” She yawned widely and gave her head a shake. “Nice talking to you,” she said to Morse.

  “Where will you stay?”

  “Pickup.”

  “A pickup? You’re going to sleep in a truck?”

  “Can’t drive like this.” And in the look she gave him, expectant and mocking, he could see that she knew he would offer her a motel room, and that she was already tasting the satisfaction of turning it down. But that didn’t stop him from trying.

  “Country proud,” Dixon said later that morning, when Morse told him the story. “You should have invited them to stay here. People like that, mountain people, will accept hospitality when they won’t take money. They’re like Arabs. Hospitality has a sacred claim. You don’t refuse to give it, and you don’t refuse to take it.”

  “Never occurred to me,” Morse said, though in truth he’d had the same intuition, standing outside the restaurant with the two of them, wallet in hand. Even as he tried to talk Julianne into taking the money for a room, invoking the seriousness of the storm and the need to get the boy into a safe, dry place, he had the sense that if he simply invited her home with him she might indeed say yes. And then what? Dixon waking up and playing host, bearing fresh towels to the guest room, making coffee, teasing the boy—and looking at Morse in that way of his. Its meaning would be clear enough to Julianne. And what might she do with such knowledge? Out of shock and disgust, perhaps even feeling betrayed, she could ruin them.

  Morse had thought of that but didn’t really fear it. He liked her, and didn’t think she would act meanly. What he feared, what he could not allow, was for her to see how Dixon looked at him, and then to see that he could not give back what he received. That things between them were unequal, and himself unloving.

  So even while offering Julianne the gift of shelter he’d felt false, mealymouthed, as if he were trying to buy her off. And the unfairness of suffering guilt while pushing his money at her and having it refused proved too much for him. Finally he told her to sleep in the damned truck then if that’s what she wanted.

  “I don’t want to sleep in the truck,” the boy said.

  “You’d be a sight happier if you did,” Julianne said. “Now come on—ready or not.”

  “Just don’t try to drive home,” Morse said.

  She put her hand on the boy’s shoulder and led him out into the parking lot.

  “You’re too tired!” Morse called after her, but if she answered he couldn’t hear it for the drumming of the rain on the metal awning. They walked on across the asphalt. The wind gusted, driving the rain so hard that Morse had to jump back a step. Julianne took it full in the face and never so much as turned her head. Nor did the boy. Charlie. He was getting something from her, ready or not, walking into the rain as if it weren’t raining at all.

  A White Bible

  It was dark when Maureen left the Hundred Club. She stopped just outside the door, a little thrown by the sudden cold and the change from daylight to night. A gusting breeze chilled her face. Lights burned over the storefronts, gleaming on icy patches along the sidewalk. She reached in her pockets for her gloves, then hopelessly searched her purse. She’d left them in the club. If she went back for them she knew she’d end up staying—and sayonara to all her good intentions. Jane or one of the others would pick up the gloves and bring them to school on Monday. Still, she stood there. Someone came out the door behind her, and Maureen heard music and voices raised over the music. When the door swung shut she tightened her scarf and turned down the sidewalk toward the lot where she’d left her car.

  Maureen had gone almost a block when she realized she was walking in the wrong direction. Easy mistake—the lot where they all usually parked had been full. She headed back, crossing the street to avoid the club. Her fingers had gone stiff. She put her hands in her coat pockets, then yanked them out when her right foot took a skid on the ice. After that she kept them poised at her sides.

  Head bent, she shuffled in tender steps from one safe spot to the next—for all the world like her own worn-out, balding, arthritic mother. Maureen allowed herself this thought in self-mockery, to make herself feel young, but it didn’t have that effect. The lot was farther than she’d been aware of as she strolled to the club with Molly and Jill and Evan, laughing at Evan’s story about his domineering Swedish girlfriend. She’d had an awful day at school and was happy to let the week go, to lose herself in jokes and gossip and to feel the pale, late sunshine almost warm on her face. Now her face was numb and she was tense with the care of simply walking.

  She passed a hunched, foot-stamping crowd waiting to get into Harrigan’s, where she herself had once gone to hear the local bands. It had been called Far Horizon then. Or Lost Horizon. Lost Horizon, it was.

  She scanned the faces as she walked by, helplessly on the watch for her daughter. She hadn’t seen her in almost two years now, since Katie walked away from a full scholarship at Ithaca College to come back and live with one of Maureen’s fellow English teachers from St. Ignatius. It turned out they’d been going at it since Katie’s senior year at SI—and him a married man with a young daughter. Maureen had always tried to see Katie’s willfulness as backbone, but this she could not accept. She had said some unforgivable things, according to Katie. Since when, Maureen wanted to know, had a few home truths become unforgivable?

  She was still trying to bring Katie around when Father Crespi got wind of the whole business and fired the teacher. Maureen had not been Father Crespi’s source, but Katie wouldn’t believe it. She declared things at an end between them, and so far she had kept that vow, though she dumped the luckless fool within a few weeks of his leaving his wife.

  Katie was still close to Maureen’s mother. From her, Maureen had learned that Katie was doing temp work and keeping house with another man. Maureen couldn’t get her to say more—she’d given her word! But the old bird clearly enjoyed not saying more, being in the know, being part of Maureen’s punishment for driving Katie away, as she judged the matter.

  Maureen crossed the street again and turned into the parking lot—an unpaved corner tract surrounded by a chain-link fence. The attendant’s shack was dark. She picked her way over ridges of frozen mud toward her car. Last summer’s special-offer paint job was already dull, bleached out by road salt. Through a scrim of dried slush on the window Maureen could see the stack of student blue books on the passenger seat—a weekend’s worth of grading. She fished the keys from her purse, but her hand was dead with cold and she fumbled them when she tried to unlock the door. They hit the ground with a merry tinkle. She flexed her fingers and bent down. As she pushed herself back up a pain shot through her bad knee. “Goddammit!” she said.

  “Don’t curse!” The voice came from behind Maureen, a man’s voice, but high, almost shrill.

  She closed her eyes.

  He said something she couldn’t make out; he had some sort of accent. He said it again, then added, “Now!”

  “What?”

  “The keys. Give them
to me.”

  Maureen held the keys out behind her, eyes pressed shut. She had just one thought: Do not see him. The keys were taken from her hand, and she heard the door being unlocked.

  “Open it,” the man said. “Open the door. Yes, now get in.”

  “Just take it,” Maureen said. “Please.”

  “Please, you will get in. Please.” He took her arm and half pushed, half lifted her into the car and slammed the door shut. She sat behind the steering wheel with her head bent, eyes closed, hands folded over her purse. The passenger door opened. “Compositions,” the man muttered.

  “Exams,” she said, and cringed at her stupidity in correcting him.

  Maureen heard the blue books thud onto the floorboards in back. Then he was on the seat beside her. He sat there a moment, his breath quick and shallow. “Open your eyes. Open! Yes, now drive.” He jingled the keys.

  Looking straight ahead over the wheel, she said, “I don’t think I can.” She sensed a movement toward her and flinched away.

  He jingled the keys again beside her ear and dropped them in her lap. “Drive.”

  Maureen had once taken a class in self-defense. That was five years ago, after her marriage ended and left her alone with a teenage daughter—as if the dangers were outside somewhere and not already in the house, between them. She’d forgotten all the fancy moves but not her determination to fight, for Katie or for herself; to go on the attack, kick the bastard in the balls, scream and kick and hit and bite, fight to the very death. She hadn’t forgotten any of this, even now, watching herself do nothing. She was aware of what she was failing to do—was unable to do—and the shock of understanding that she could not depend on herself produced a sense of resignation, an empty, echoing calm. With steady hands she started the car and pulled out of the lot and turned left as the man directed, away from the lights of the commercial zone, toward the river.

  “Not so slow,” he said.

  She sped up.

  “Slower!”

  She slowed down.