The Victorious Opposition (48 page)

Flora blinked at the slang, then figured out what it had to mean. “I don’t flabble about cigarettes—for grownups,” she said. Instead of seeming pleased that she’d understood him, Joshua merely looked scornful that she was trying to speak his language. She might have guessed he would. Suppressing a sigh, she forged ahead: “No matter what you think, you’re not a grownup yet.”

“Father was smoking cigarettes when he was fifteen,” Joshua said.

He was right about that, however much Flora wished he weren’t. “Your father grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere,” she answered. “When he was fifteen, he was going to the bathroom in a privy, bathing once a month, and eating food his folks had cooked over buffalo chips. Do you want to imitate him there, too?”

For a moment, she thought he would say bathing once a month didn’t sound so bad. But he visibly changed his mind and changed the subject: “If cigarettes are so terrible, how come everybody smokes them?”

“Not everybody does.”

“Just about!” Joshua said, by which he doubtless meant three or four people he liked did.

This time, Flora didn’t suppress her sigh. She knew a losing fight when she saw one, and she saw one here. Whether she liked it or not, Joshua was going to smoke. She said, “From now on, you don’t need to sneak any more.” That made him happy. She wished it would have made her happy, too.

S
ylvia Enos came out of the moving-picture theater with Ernie. She looked happy—she’d liked the film. He didn’t, and hadn’t. “What was wrong with it?” she asked. “It was exciting, and it had a good love story.”

“What was wrong with it?” he echoed. “I will tell you what was wrong. The men who made it never saw war. They were boys in 1914. They had to be. Either that or they were cowards. Half the things in the film could not have happened. Soldiers would have gone to the guardhouse for the other half.”

“It’s only a story,” Sylvia said. “It’s not supposed to be true.”

“But it pretends to be true,” Ernie said. “That offends me.”

She didn’t want him angry. When he got angry, he got angry at the whole world, not just at what had bothered him in the first place. She said, “Let’s go somewhere, and we’ll have a couple of drinks, and we’ll forget about it.”

“All right,” he said. “That film deserves forgetting.”

They ended up having more than a couple of drinks—considerably more, in Ernie’s case. Then they went back to Sylvia’s apartment. Mary Jane was out with friends, and wouldn’t be back till late. They had the place to themselves. Sober or drunk, Ernie made a conscientious lover. He did what he needed to do to make Sylvia happy. Then she tried to do the same for him. She’d had pretty good luck with that lately. Not tonight, though. Try as she would, nothing happened.

She did her best to make light of it, saying, “See what those last couple of cocktails will do to you?”

“My cock has more wrong with it than cocktails,” Ernie answered, which was unfortunately true. “Half-cocked,” he muttered. That was what Sylvia thought she heard, anyhow. He shook his head. “It is no good. It is no goddamn good at all.”

“That’s not true,” Sylvia exclaimed. “It was fine just last week.”

He didn’t want to listen. “No good at all,” he said again. “Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bother. What is the use? There is no use. I know that. I know that much too well.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sylvia told him. “It can happen to anybody at all, not just to you.”

“It does not happen to a real man,” Ernie said. “That is what it means to be a real man. And what am I?” His laugh told what he thought he was. “A leftover. Something from the scrap heap. I ought to go to Spain. I could fight there.” A Nationalist uprising backed by France and Britain had half the country up in arms against King Alfonso XIII. Kaiser Wilhelm had belatedly sent the Monarchists weapons to resist their would-be overthrowers, but things didn’t look good for them even so.

Sylvia shook her head. “What does shooting people have to do with—this?” She set her hand on the part, or part of a part, that hadn’t quite worked.

Ernie twisted away, kicking the quilt she’d got from Chris Clogston down onto the floor. “You do not understand. I knew you would not understand. Damn you anyway.” He all but jumped out of the bed they’d shared and started putting on his clothes.

“Maybe I would understand, if you’d talk sense once in a while,” Sylvia said.

“You are only a woman. What do you know?” Ernie stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. Sylvia sighed as she picked up the quilt and put on a nightgown. This sort of thing had happened before. It would probably happen again. She sighed once more, went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and then came back and fell asleep. Whatever time Mary Jane came in, Sylvia never heard it.

George Jr., his wife, Connie, and their children came over for supper the next evening. Sylvia enjoyed spoiling her grandchildren. Bill, the baby boy for whom Mary Jane had bought another quilt, was toddling now. Sylvia also enjoyed listening to her son’s stories about life on a fishing boat. They took her back to the days when her husband had told the same kind of stories. Hard to believe George was more than twenty years dead. Hard to believe, but true.

“And how are you, Ma?” George Jr. asked. “How’s Ernie? Sis said you went to the cinema with him last night.”

He sounded earnest himself. The pun made Sylvia laugh a little.
He wants me to be happy,
she thought.
He really does. That’s sweet.
But she had to answer. “He’s been better,” she said slowly. “But he’s been worse, too.”

Her son’s sigh had an indulgent quality, one that made her wonder who’d raised whom. “You really ought to—” he began.

Sylvia held up a hand and cut him off. “I really ought to do whatever
I
think is the best thing for me to do. And
you
really ought to”—she enjoyed turning George Jr.’s phrase back on him—“mind your own beeswax.”

“Give up, George,” Connie said. “You don’t let her tell you what to do. How can you blame her if she doesn’t want to let you tell her?”

“That’s right.” Sylvia beamed at her daughter-in-law.

“Fine. I give up. Here—I’m throwing in the towel.” George Jr. took his napkin off his lap and tossed it into the middle of the table. “But I’m going to tell you one more thing before I shut up.”

“I know what you’re going to say.” Sylvia held up her hand again, like a cop stopping traffic. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to say it anyway.” George Jr. stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. “That guy is bad news, Ma. There. I’m done.”

“About time, too.” Sylvia knew her son was right. Ernie was, or could be, bad news. She would have known even if Mary Jane hadn’t told her the same thing. The feel of danger—within limits—was part of what made him attractive. Whether he would ever break those limits . . . But he hadn’t—quite—in all the time Sylvia had known him. And he had reasons for being the way he was. Sylvia didn’t think George Jr. knew about those. She couldn’t very well talk about such things with a man, and especially not with her son.

She wondered whether George Jr. could keep from bringing up Ernie again for the rest of the evening. She would have bet against it, but he managed. That made time pass a lot more pleasantly. Only when he and his family were leaving did he say, “Take care of yourself, Ma.”

“And haven’t I been doing that since before you were born?” Sylvia said. “A fisherman’s wife who can’t take care of herself is in a pretty sorry state, that’s all I’ve got to tell you.” She looked to Connie. “Am I right or am I wrong?”

“Oh, you’re right, all right,” her daughter-in-law said.

“You bet I am.” Sylvia spoke with great certainty. Fishermen were away at sea so much, their wives had to do things on their own behalf. If the wives didn’t, nobody would or could. And Sylvia had gone from fisherman’s wife to fisherman’s widow. Nobody gave a widow a helping hand. She’d discovered that the hard way.

For that matter, no elves emerged from the walls to help her with the dishes. She did them herself, the way she always had. She couldn’t go to bed without being angry at herself till they were done. Her hard-earned, hard-learned self-reliance ran deep.

And when Ernie showed up at her door with flowers two days later to ask her out the next Saturday, she didn’t say no. She didn’t even ask him if he would behave himself. A question like that would just have made him angry and all the more determined to act up. She couldn’t blame him for that, not when she felt the same way herself.

When Saturday came, he took her to the Union Oyster House. She smiled, remembering her last visit there with Mary Jane. Unlike Mary Jane, though, Ernie washed down his fried oysters with several stiff drinks. “Are you sure you want to do that?” Sylvia picked her words with care. He did have more trouble in the bedroom when he was drunk—and he had plenty when he was sober. And when he was drunk, he had a harder time coping with the trouble he had.

But he didn’t want to listen to her tonight, any more than she’d wanted to listen to George Jr. earlier in the week. “I am fine. Just fine,” he said loudly. The way he said it proved he was nothing of the sort, but also proved he would pay no attention if she tried to tell him so.

If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em,
she thought, and waved to the waiter for another drink of her own. After another one, and then another one yet, she stopped worrying—at any rate, she stopped caring—about how many Ernie had had, though he kept pouring them down, too. She took him by the arm. “Where shall we go?” she asked, laughing at how bold and brassy she sounded.

“We will go back to my place,” he answered. “And when we get there, we will see what comes up.” That made Sylvia laugh, too, though Ernie wasn’t joking the way another man might have. In fact, he seemed to be trying to persuade himself something
would
come up. Under his leer, or perhaps stirred into it, was enough desperation to give Sylvia pause, though she was a long way from sober herself.

“Maybe we ought to have some coffee or something first,” she said.

Ernie took her arm. “Come on,” he said, and effortlessly hauled her up out of the booth. He was very strong, even if he didn’t show it all the time. She went along with him, thinking,
The walk will sober him up. It may even sober me up, too.

Her head still buzzed when they got to Ernie’s apartment. She didn’t want to think about what it would feel like in the morning. But the morning seemed a million miles away. Ernie closed the door behind them, then took her in his arms and kissed her, hard. He tasted of whiskey and pipe tobacco. He picked her up and carried her into the cramped little bedroom and half set, half dropped her on the bed.

“Come on,” he said again, and started taking off his clothes.

Sylvia did the same, quickly. His strength and the whiskey in her and the taste and smell of him all combined to excite her. If he’d been any other man, he would have thrown himself on her and done what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. He hadn’t been able to do anything like that for more than twenty years. If he was going anywhere, she would have to get him there. She sat up and leaned forward and took what there was of him in her mouth as he stood by the side of the bed.

And nothing happened. He groaned again and again, but always in frustration, not release. Try as she would, it was no use. She did everything she knew how to do. Nothing helped. Sweat ran down his face, down his chest. “Damn you,” he muttered, and then, “Damn me.”

She looked up at him. “What do you want?” she asked. “I’ll do anything you think will do you good. You know I will.”

She’d turned on the lamp by the bed a little while before. Sometimes watching helped him. Not tonight. He looked at her, looked through her. His eyes might have belonged to a dead man. His voice sounded as if it came from the other side of the grave, too: “It makes no difference, not any more.”

“What do you mean?” she said. “Of course it does. Next time, we’ll—” She broke off. “What are you doing?”

The blued metal of the pistol he took out of the nightstand gleamed dully in the lamplight. “Nothing matters any more,” he said, and pointed it at the side of his own head.

“No!”
He’d played such games before. This time, Sylvia didn’t think he was playing. She grabbed for the pistol. Ernie cursed and hit her. She tried to knee him in the crotch. He twisted away. They wrestled, both of them shouting, both of them swearing, there on the bedroom floor.

Loud as the end of the world, the pistol went off. She never knew whether he’d intended to shoot her. It made no difference. It didn’t matter. The bullet tore into her chest, and the world was nothing but pain and darkness.

As if from very far away, Ernie shouted, “Sylvia! Don’t die! Damn you, I love you!” She tried to say something, but blood filled her mouth. From even further away, she heard another shot, and the thump of a falling body, and then nothing, nothing at all.

J
efferson Pinkard was not a happy man. He’d come to Louisiana to help run a camp for political prisoners, and what had they gone and done? They’d taken out most of the politicals and filled the camp full of colored guerrillas. The politicals had been sober, civilized, middle-aged men who did as they were told. The Negroes, on the other hand . . .

Though Pinkard didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, the captured Negroes scared him to death. They had taken up arms against the Confederate States not in hope of victory—as the colored Reds had a generation earlier—but because they simply couldn’t stand the way things were. Now that they’d been taken prisoner, they expected nothing from the men into whose hands they’d fallen. They expected nothing—and they were seldom disappointed.

Camp Dependable was a rougher place now than it had been when inoffensive politicals filled it. These days, guards always carried submachine guns. They carried the weapons with safeties off, and they always traveled in pairs in areas where prisoners went. So far, the blacks hadn’t managed to steal a submachine gun from a guard. Jeff hoped that record would last. He wondered if it could.