Going to Bend (41 page)

Hack had stumbled up, scaring them half to death before he got close enough to show them that easy smile of his. He’d spent the night under the bridge, and he was shivering, still part drunk, and his fatigue jacket was soaked with old fog. He came right up to them and asked Bunny if he could borrow her blanket for a minute—he was about to die of cold, he said, and if there was one thing he hadn’t been able to stand, ever since he could remember, it was being cold. That was one of the things he’d liked best about Vietnam—the heat.

He squatted down next to Bunny, and there was something hopeful about him that Bunny liked, as if he was expecting good things to happen any minute. He had the scrappy, take-me-home look of kids who get away from their parents too young. So she gave him the blanket. He’d meant to find a better place to stay than under that bridge, he said while he wrapped up, but he’d closed the last tavern—did she know that one, the Wayside?—and by then it was too late to find anything; plus he hadn’t seen the town in daylight to know where to find a room. Wrapped up in her blanket he talked for an hour straight, until the kids started getting hungry and they had to go. Bunny was going to let him keep the blanket, which was just an old flannel one with a hole in the middle, but he gave it back with that slow smile of his and said,
Maybe sometime you could show me some other ways people keep warm around here. If I stick around
.

Oh
, Bunny had said over her shoulder.
I bet you’ll stick around
.

Hack. He’d been something special to look at with his big rangy body, pretty green eyes, neat brown beard, and a tongue that showed pink as a cat’s when he yawned; in fact there’d been something catlike and clean about him all over, even that first time. He’d only been back from Vietnam maybe three months by then, so mixed in with the other things was that half-crazy, what-the-fuck gleam in his eyes you saw in vets a lot in those days. But Bunny had seen that same look all her life in fishermen who’d seen a boat or two go down. Her father had had that look as long as Bunny could
remember. In a fishing town, everyone knows men who’ve walked right up and hung their toes over the edge.

Meantime, Bunny’s boyfriend JoJo had already been gone a couple of months and it looked like he wasn’t coming back this time. He hadn’t left her any money, either, so she and Vinny had to move in with Bunny’s folks, which wasn’t working out. Her father was always ragging on her that she should have made JoJo marry her after she’d had Vinny. Plus, no Hubbard man would date her because they knew how crazy-mean JoJo would be if he ever came back and found out. And it was true that he’d beat the holy crap out of you if he was in the mood. Bandy little guys like JoJo took up the slack by being twitchy.

Not Hack. Hack was big and slow and agreeable, and Bunny decided right then, on that first day, that he’d be good to have. She knew she had the kind of looks Hack could live with: okay face, better-than-okay figure, and a walk that said Uh-huh. She also knew that even though he still hadn’t found the back-home good time he’d promised himself while he was over there in Vietnam, he was ready to rest awhile. And a man like Hack didn’t rest alone. So when he started showing up every afternoon at the tavern Bunny went to, with that mouth of his going steady and smooth and her brand of cigarettes stuck in his pocket, she was ready. She let him buy her a beer sometimes but not always, showed up some days but not others, and never explained one way or another. And she ignored him. Nothing drove Hack crazier than being ignored. He’d come sit down next to her and she’d pretend she was busy reading in the newspaper about something going on over there in Poland or Africa or someplace. Pretty soon Hack would start talking, some little pay-attention-to-me foolishness, and when that didn’t work he’d bump her barstool or throw little balled-up napkin bits at her, and she’d ignore that, too, until he’d finally grab the paper completely out of her hands and lay half his body across the bar in front of her. He
moved her and Vinny into a nice rental with him before the end of the first month.

For a couple of years after that he’d done odd jobs around town, and on weekends he raced stock cars over in the Willamette Valley with some buddies he’d met. He liked to race, but it was mostly so he could be around the cars. He talked to Bunny about them all the time, even though she didn’t understand one thing he was saying. He referred to the cars as “she,” and if he was anywhere near one he’d stroke and pet its sides and hood and inspect it all over for little hurt places. Bunny had seen him stare at some piece of junk in his hand for an hour trying to figure out a new thing to try, and there would be love in his eyes. She went with him when she could get Anita or someone to watch Vinny, and on the way home they’d usually pull into the Patio Courts or the Hi-Time Motel and screw on the thin scratchy sheets for hours. More than anything, more even than cars, Hack loved to screw. His touch was so good Bunny sometimes thought that if God Himself did it, He would do it like Hack.
Oh, pretty lady
, he used to say to her.
The way you make me feel
.

After a couple of years Hack was still in Hubbard and he let Bunny marry him. He got a steady job managing the service department at Vernon Ford over in Sawyer, until old Marv noticed Hack was a born salesman and tried him out on the used car lot, instead. He did so well they let him sell new cars after only a year. He bought them a house and then a better one. He bought them a sectional sofa and an electric organ. When Vinny’s permanent teeth started coming in gray he found a special dentist for her, and when Bunny crashed her car into the back of a motor home that time and they got sued, Hack found an attorney who got them out of it.

But the whole time that was all going on, there was this other thing Bunny knew. Hack had come to Hubbard on his way to someplace else, and he had never meant to stay, just to stop and rest awhile. Right from the start there were times when he got sad, got
lost-looking and homesick for someplace he’d never been. The spells hadn’t lasted long, and when they were over he’d been glad to be back. But in the last few years the sad times had started coming more often and playing out meaner, and even though Hack still wouldn’t talk about them, she knew it was because he was trying to figure out what to do. And whatever he chose, he meant to do alone. One day, Bunny knew, he’d just take her and Vinny and Vernon Ford and everything else about their lives and pitch them over the side and rise up like a big hot-air balloon and be gone. You couldn’t keep a man like Hack. The best you could hope for, if you were lucky and you played your cards right, was to get the use of him for a while.

diane hammond
has worked as a writer and an editor. She was awarded a literary fellowship by the Oregon Arts Commission, and her writing has appeared in such magazines as
Yankee, Mademoiselle
, and
Washington Review
. She served as a spokesperson for the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and currently lives with her husband, Nolan, and daughter, Kerry.