Rock Springs (18 page)

“And where're you going? You told me but I forgot. It seems like a long time ago.”

“Would you like to hear a little story?” Sergeant Benton said. “A recent and true-to-life story?”

“Sure.” Sims raised his vodka glass to toast a story. Doris extended the bottle and poured in some more, then more for herself.

“Well,” she said. She smelled the vodka in her glass, then pulled her skirt up slightly to be comfortable. “I go to visit my father, you see, out on San Juan Island. I haven't seen him in maybe eight years, since before I went in the Army—since I was married, in fact. And he's married now himself to a very nice lady. Miss Vera. They run a boarding kennels out on the island. He's sixty something and takes care of all these noisy dogs. She's fifty something. I don't know how they do it.” Doris took a drink. “Or why. She's a Mormon, believes in all the angels, so he's more or less become one, too, though he drinks and smokes. He's not at all spiritual. He was in the Air Force. Also a sergeant. Anyway, the first night I get there we all eat dinner together. A big steak. And right away my father
says he has to drive down to the store to get something, and he'll be back. So off he goes. And Miss Vera and I are washing dishes and watching television and chattering. And before I know it, two hours have gone by. And I say to Miss Vera, ‘Where's Eddie? Hasn't he been gone a long time?' And she just says, ‘Oh, he'll be back pretty soon.' So we pottered around a little more. Each of us smoked a cigarette. Then she got ready to go to bed. By herself. It was ten o'clock, and I said, ‘Where's Dad?' And she said, ‘Sometimes he stops and has a drink down in town.' So when she's in bed I get in the other car and drive down the hill to the bar. And there's his station wagon in front. Only when I go in and ask, he isn't there, and nobody says they know where he is. I go back outside, but then this guy steps to the door behind me and says, Try the trailer, hon. That's it. Try the trailer.' Nothing else. And across the road is a little house trailer with its lights on and a car sitting out front. And I just walked across the road—I still had on my uniform—walked up the steps and knocked on the door. There're some voices inside and a TV. I hear people moving around and a door close. The front door opens then and here's a woman who apparently lives there. She's completely dressed. I'd guess her age to be fifty. She's younger than Vera anyway, with a younger face. She says, ‘Yes. What is it?' and I said I was sorry, but I was looking for my father, and I guessed I'd gotten the wrong place. But she says, ‘Just a second,' and turns around and says, ‘Eddie, your daughter's here.'

“And my father came out of a door to the next room. Maybe it was a closet, I didn't know. I didn't care. He had his pants on and an undershirt. And he said, ‘Oh hi, Doris. How're you? Come on in. This is Sherry.' And the only thing I could think of was how thin his shoulders looked. He looked like he was going to die. I didn't even speak to Sherry. I just said, No, I couldn't stay. And I drove on back to the house.”

“Did you leave then?” Sims said.

“No, I stayed around a couple more days.
Then
left. It didn't matter to me. It made me think, though.”

“What did you think,” Sims asked.

Doris put her head back against the metal wall and stared up. “Oh, I just thought about being the other woman, which I've been that enough. Everybody's done everything twice, right? At my age. You cross a line. But you can do a thing and have it mean nothing but what you feel that minute. You don't have to give yourself away. Isn't that true?”

“That's exactly true,” Sims said and thought it was right. He'd done it himself plenty of times.

“Where's the real life, right? I don't think I've had mine, yet, have you?” Doris held her glass up to her lips with both hands and smiled at him.

“Not yet, I haven't,” Sims said. “Not entirely.”

“When I was a little girl in California and my father was teaching me to drive, I used to think, ‘I'm driving now. I have to pay strict attention to everything; I have to notice everything; I have to think about my hands being on the wheel; it's possible I'll only think about this very second forever, and it'll drive me crazy.' But I'd already thought of something else.” Doris wrinkled her nose at Sims. “That's my movie, right?”

“It sounds familiar,” Sims said. He took a long drink of his vodka and emptied the glass. The vodka tasted metallic, as if it had been kept stored in a can. It had a good effect, though. He felt like he could stay up all night. He was seeing things from the outside, and nothing bad could happen to anyone. Everyone was protected. “Most people want to be good, though,” Sims said for no reason. Just words under their own command, headed who-knows-where. Everydiing seemed arbitrary.

“Would you like me to take my clothes off?” Sergeant Benton said and smiled at him.

“I'd like that,” Sims said. “Sure.” He thought that he
would also like a small amount more of the vodka. He reached over, took the bottle off the blanket and poured himself some more.

Sergeant Benton began unbuttoning her uniform blouse. She knelt forward on her knees, pulled her shirttail out, and began with the bottom button first. She watched Sims, still half-smiling. “Do you remember the first woman you ever saw naked?” she said, opening her blouse so Sims could see her white brassiere and a line of smooth belly over her skirt.

“Yes,” Sims said.

“And where was that?” Sergeant Benton said. “What state was that in?” She took her blouse off, then pulled her strap down off her shoulder and uncovered one breast, then the other one. They were breasts that went to the side and pushed outward. They were nice breasts.

“That was California, too,” Sims said. “Near Sacramento, I think.”

“What happened?” Sergeant Benton began unzipping her skirt.

“We were on a golf course. My friend and I and this girl. Patsy was her name. We were all twelve. We both asked her to take off her clothes, in an old caddy house by the Air Force base. And she did it. We did too. She said we'd have to.” Sims wondered if Patsy's name was still Patsy.

Sergeant Benton slid her skirt down, then sat back and handed it around her ankles. She had on only panty hose now and nothing beyond that. You could see through them even in the dim light. She leaned against the metal wall and looked at Sims. He could touch her now, he thought. That was what she would like to happen. “Did you like it,” Sergeant Benton asked.

“Yes. I liked it,” Sims said.

“It wasn't disappointing to you?”

“It was,” Sims said. “But I liked it. I knew I was going
to.” Sims moved close to her, lightly touched her ankle, then her knee, then the soft skin of her belly and came down with the waist of her hosiery. Her hands touched his neck but didn't feel rough. He heard her breathe and smelled the perfume she was wearing. Nothing seemed arbitrary now.

“Sweet, that's sweet,” she said, and breathed deeply once. “Sometimes I think about making love. Like now. And everything tightens up inside me, and I just squeeze and say
ahhhh
without even meaning to. It just escapes me. It's just that pleasure. Someday it'll stop, won't it?”

“No,” Sims said. “That won't. That goes on forever.” He was near her now, his ear to her chest. He heard a noise, a noise of releasing. Outside, in the corridor, someone began talking in a hushed voice. Someone said, “No, no. Don't say that.” And then a door clicked.

“Life's on so thin a string anymore,” she whispered, and turned off the tiny light. “Not that much makes it good.”

“That's right, isn't it?” Sims said, close to her. “I know that.”

“This isn't passion,” she said. “This is something different now. I can't lose sleep over this.”

“That's fine,” Sims said.

“You knew this would happen, didn't you?” she said. “It wasn't a secret.” He didn't know it. He didn't try to answer it. “Oh you,” she whispered, “Oh you.”

S
ometime in the night Sims felt the train slow and then stop, then sit still in the dark. He had no idea where he was. He still had his clothes on. Outside there was sound like wind, and for a moment he thought possibly he was dead, that this is how it would feel.

Sergeant Benton lay beside him, asleep. Her clothes were around her. She was covered with a blanket. The vodka
bottle was empty on the bed. What had he done here? Sims thought. How had things exactly happened? What time was it? Out the window he could see no one and nothing. The moon was gone, though the sky was red and wavering with a reflected light, as though the wind was moving it.

Sims picked up his shoes and opened the door into the corridor. The porter didn't appear this time, and Sims closed the door softly and carried his shoes down to the washroom by the vestibule. Inside, he locked the door, ran water on his hands, then rubbed soap on his face and his ears and his neck and into his hairline, then rinsed them with water out of the silver bowl until his face was clean and dripping, and he could stand to see it in the dull little mirror: a haggard face, his eyes red, his skin pale, his teeth gray and lifeless. A deceiver's face, he thought. An adulterer's face, a face to turn away from. He smiled at himself and then couldn't look. He was glad to be alone. He wouldn't see this woman again. He and Marge would get off in a few hours, and Doris would sleep around the clock.

Sims let himself back into the corridor. He thought he heard noise outside the train, and through the window to the vestibule he saw the Asian woman, standing and staring out, holding her little boy in her arms. She was talking to the conductor. He hoped there was no trouble. He wanted to get to Minot on time and get off the train.

When he let himself into Marge's roomette, Marge was awake. And out the window he saw the center of everyone's attention. A wide fire was burning on the open prairie. Out in the dark, men were moving at the edges of the fire. Trucks were in the fields and high tractors with their lights on, and dogs chasing and tumbling in the dark. Far away he could see the white stanchions of high-voltage lines traveling off into the distance.

“It's thrilling,” Marge said and turned and smiled at him. “The tracks are on fire ahead of us. I heard someone
outside say that. People are running all over. I watched a house disappear. It'll drive you to your remotest thoughts.”

“What about
us
?” Sims said, looking out the window into the fire.

“I didn't think of that. Isn't that strange?” Marge said. “It didn't even seem to matter. It should, I guess.”

The fire had turned the sky red and the wind blew flames upwards, and Sims imagined he felt heat, and his heart beat faster with the sight—a fire that could turn and sweep over them in a moment, and they would all be caught, asleep and awake. He thought of Sergeant Benton alone in her bed, dreaming dreams of safety and confidence. Nothing was wrong with her, he thought. She should be saved. A sense of powerlessness and despair rose in him, as if there was help but he couldn't offer it.

“The world's on fire, Vic,” Marge said. “But it doesn't hurt anything. It just burns until it stops.” She raised the covers. “Get in bed with me, sweetheart,” she said, “you poor thing. You've been up all night, haven't you?” She was naked under the sheet. He could see her breasts and her stomach and the beginnings of her white legs.

He sat on the bed and put his shoes down. His heart beat faster. He could feel heat now from outside. But, he thought, there was no threat to them, to anyone on the train. “I slept a little,” he said.

Marge took his hand and kissed it and held it between her hands. “When I was in my remote thoughts, you know, just watching it burn, I thought about how I get in bed sometimes and I think how happy I am, and then it makes me sad. It's crazy, isn't it? I'd like life to stop, and it won't. It just keeps running by me. It makes me jealous of Pauline. She makes life stop when she wants it to. She doesn't care what happens. That's just a way of looking at things. I guess I wouldn't want to be like her.”

“You're not like her,” Sims said. “You're sympathetic.”

“She probably thinks no one takes her seriously.”

“It's all right,” Sims said.

“What's going to happen to Pauline now?” Marge moved closer to him. “Will she be all right? Do you think she will?”

“I think she will,” Sims said.

“We're out on a frontier here, aren't we, sweetheart? It feels like that.” Sims didn't answer. “Are you sleepy, hon,” Marge asked. “You can sleep. I'm awake now. I'll watch over you.” She reached and pulled down the shade, and everything, all the movement and heat outside, was gone.

He touched Marge with his fingers—the bones in her face and her shoulders, her breasts, her ribs. He touched the scar, smooth and rigid and neat under her arm, like a welt from a mean blow. This can do it, he thought, this can finish you, this small thing. He held her to him, her face against his as his heart beat. And he felt dizzy, and at that moment insufficient, but without a memory of life's having changed in that particular way.

Outside on the cold air, flames moved and divided and swarmed the sky. And Sims felt alone in a wide empire, removed and afloat, calmed, as if life was far away now, as if blackness was all around, as if stars held the only light.

I had not been back in town long. Maybe a month was all. The work had finally given out for me down at Silver Bow, and I had quit staying down there when the weather turned cold, and come back to my mother's, on the Bitterroot, to lay up and set my benefits aside for when things got worse.

My mother had her boyfriend then, an old wildcatter named Harley Reeves. And Harley and I did not get along, though I don't blame him for that. He had been laid off himself down near Gillette, Wyoming, where the boom was finished. And he was just doing what I was doing and had arrived there first. Everyone was laid off then. It was not a good time in that part of Montana, nor was it going to be. The two of them were just giving it a final try, both of them in
their sixties, strangers together in the little house my father had left her.