Call if You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose Page 16

  His wife was at the draining board doing dishes. “I thought you were asleep. Honey? You feel better now?”

  He nodded, picked up the phone and got Information. He had a kind of bad taste in his mouth as he dialed.

  “Hello. Yes, sir, I think I feel better. Just wanted you to know I’ll be at work tomorrow. Right. Eight thirty, sharp.”

  After he got back in bed he smoothed his tongue over his teeth again. Maybe it was just something he could get used to. He didn’t know. Just before he went to sleep, he’d almost stopped thinking about it. He remembered what a warm day it had been and those kids out wading—how the birds were singing that morning. But once during the night he yelled out and woke up sweating, almost choking. No, no, he kept saying, kicking his feet against the covers. It scared his wife and she didn’t know what was the matter.

  The Aficionados

  They are sitting in the shade at a small iron patio table drinking wine out of heavy metal cups.

  “Why should you feel this way now?” he asks her.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It always makes me sad when it comes. It’s been such a short year, and I don’t even know any of the others.” She leans forward and reaches for his hand, but he is too quick for her. “They seem so, so unprofessional.” From her lap she takes her napkin and wipes her lips in a way that has become detestable to him this last month. “We won’t talk about it anymore,” she says. “We still have three hours yet. We won’t even think about it.”

  He shrugs and looks past her towards the open windows with their blanket-like squares of white sky, out into the street, taking it all in. Dust covers the low, powdery buildings and fills the street.

  “What will you wear?” he asks, not turning around.

  “How can you talk about it so?” She slumps back in her chair, interlacing her fingers, twisting the lead ring around her index finger.

  There are no other patrons on the patio and in the street nothing moves.

  “I’ll probably wear white, as usual. But, I might not. I won’t!”

  He smiles, then drains his cup, tasting, at the bottom, the almost bitter pieces of soft leaves that touch against his lips. “Should we go?”

  He pays for the wine and counts out an additional five thousand pesos to the shopkeeper. “This is for you.”

  The old woman hesitates, looks at the younger woman and then with a birdlike frightened movement scrabbles up the bills and pushes them, crinkling, into a front pocket. “Gracias.” She bows stiffly, and respectfully touches her forehead.

  The patio is dark and has a smell like rotting wood. There are squat black arches encircling it and one of these opens onto the street. It is noon. The pallid dead brilliance makes him dizzy for a minute. Heat ripples rise from the adobe walls that close in the narrow street. His eyes water and the air is dry and hot on his face.

  “Are you all right?” She takes his arm.

  “Yes. Just a minute.” From a street very close to them, a band is playing. The music streams up and over the roofless buildings, melting against the heat over his head. “We should see this.”

  She frowns. It is the same frown she makes when someone tells her there are few young men interested in the Arena nowadays. “If you wish, darling.”

  “I do. Come on, aren’t you going to indulge me on my last afternoon?”

  She clutches his arm tighter and they go slowly down the street in the shade of a low wall, the music moving closer as they near the end of the street. When he was a child the band used to play several times a year, then twice a year for a long time, and now they play and march only one time in the year. Suddenly the soft, fluffed dust in front of his feet spouts, and he kicks up a brown spider that clings to the toe of his huarache before he kicks it away.

  “Should we pretend?” he asks.

  Her eyes have followed the spider and now they turn to him, flat and gray-filmed, motionless under her damp forehead. Her lips purse: “Pretend?”

  On an impulse, he kisses her. Her lips are dry and cracked and he kisses her hard and presses her against the hot brick wall. The band shrieks and clangs and passes across at the end of the street, pauses, and moves on. Fainter now as it tramps along then turns off onto another street.

  “Like it was when we first met and I was a struggling young disciple. You remember?” He remembers, anyway. Long, hot afternoons at the Arena; practicing, practicing, perfecting—every action, every thought, every grace. The blood thrill and rush of excitement as his compadres finished, one by one. He was one of the lucky ones and the dedicated. Then he’d moved up at last among the few eligibles, then above them even.

  “I remember,” she says.

  This last year as his wife she might remember and perhaps she might remember this afternoon. For a moment he lets himself think about the afternoon.

  “It was good—it was,” she says. Her eyes are cold and clouded, flat into her face like the eyes of a snake he’d killed once in the mountains in the blind season.

  They come to the end of the street and stop. It is quiet and the only sound that reaches them is a dry rattling, gagging cough coming from somewhere down the street in the direction of the band. He looks at her and she shrugs before they turn down the street. They walk by some old men sitting in doorways, the doors boarded up behind them, their big dusty sombreros pulled down over their faces, legs drawn up tight and folded against their chests or sticking out into the street. The coughing starts again, dry and thick as if it comes from under the ground, the throat tubed full of dirt. He listens and looks closely at the men.

  She points into a narrow passageway at a bareheaded small gray man squeezed in between the two buildings. The man opens his mouth … and makes a cough.

  He turns her around to him. “How many of us have you lived with?”

  “Why … five or six. I’d have to think. Why do you ask?”

  He shakes his head. “Do you remember Luis?”

  She pulls her arm out of his, her heavy bracelet making a dull chinking sound. “He was my first. I loved him.”

  “He taught me almost everything … I needed to know.” He chews on his lip and the sun presses like a hot flat stone on his neck. “Do you remember Jorge?”

  “Yes.” They are walking again and she takes his arm once more. “A good man. Like you a little, but I didn’t love him. Please, let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  “All right. I think I’d like to walk down to the plaza.”

  Vacant-eyed men and women stare at them as they pass. They sag against the doors or crouch in the dark alcoves and some gaze dully at them from low windows. They walk farther, away from the town and out onto the plain. All around them are mortar blocks and chunks of old limed white cement and broken, grainy bits and pieces that crush under their feet. Over everything a thick coat of dust. The plated sun shimmers white and blinding above their heads, burning the garments into their sticky backs.

  “We should go back,” she says, squeezing his arm a little.

  “Pretty soon.” He points at the thin, wash-yellow flowers stretching up in the dark crack of a broken block of cement roadway. They are standing in the Zocalo, the Great Square, facing the ruins of the Metropolitan Cathedral. Bordering the square is a line of powdery brown mounds with a single hole in the side of each, facing them. Beyond the mounds, brown rows of adobe houses that run and spread toward the hills until only the tops of the tallest houses are visible. Then a long up-and-down line of gray humped hills that stretch as far as he can see down the valley. The hills have always reminded him of great-breasted reclining women but it all seems strange now, and dirty.

  “Please, love,” she says, “let’s go back now and drink a little wine while there’s time.”

  From the Arena the band has struck up, a few strains jagging over and across the plain to them. He listens. “Yes. We mustn’t be late.” He looks at the ground and stirs the dust with his heel. “All right, yes, let’s go and have a little wine.” He bends and picks the
small cluster of yellow flowers for her.

  They go to Manuel’s and when Manuel sees them sit down at one of his tables he first salutes and then goes to the cellar and brings out their last bottle of dark wine.

  “You will be at the Arena this afternoon, Manuel?”

  Manuel studies a crack that runs down the length of the wall behind the table. “Si.”

  “Don’t feel that way, my friend. It’s not so bad. Look.” He tilts his cup and lets the warm wine run down his throat. “I’m happy? What would be the sense of it if I were not happy? That the moment should be perfect, there should be joy and consent on the part of all persons concerned.” He smiles at him; no hard feelings. “This is the way it has always been, so you see—I must be happy. And so should you, my friend. We’re all in this together.” He finishes another cup and wipes his sweaty palms on his pants. Then he gets up and shakes hands with Manuel. “We must go. Good-bye, Manuel.”

  At the entrance to their quarters she clings to him, whispering and stroking his neck. “I do love you! I love only you.” She pulls him to her, her fingers digging into his shoulders, pulling his face to hers. And then she turns and runs for the entrance.

  He shouts: “You’ll have to hurry if you’re going to dress!”

  Now he is walking in the late afternoon green shadows and now crossing a deserted square, his sandaled feet settling into the hot crumbly dirt. For a moment the sun has gone behind a skein of white clouds and when he comes onto the street leading to the Arena, it is very pale and light and there are no shadows. Silent, small groups of people shuffle down the street but they keep their eyes away and show no recognition when he passes them. In front of the Arena a group of dusty men and women is already waiting. They stare at the ground or at the white-laced sky, and a few of them have their mouths open with the backs of their heads almost touching the shoulders, swaying back and forth like ragged stalks of corn as they follow the clouds. He uses a side entrance and goes directly to the dressing room.

  He lies on the table, his face turned toward the dripping white candle, watching the women. Their distorted slow movements flicker on the wall as they undress him, rubbing his body with oils and scent before dressing him again in the white rough-textured garment. Dirt walls close in the narrow room and there is barely space for the table and the six women who hover over him. A wrinkled, oily brown face peers into his, blowing a wet breath of old food, the breath scraping in her throat. The lips crack farther until they part, open and close over hoarse ancient syllables. The others pick it up as they help him off the table and lead him into the Arena.

  He lies down quickly on the small platform, closes his eyes and listens to the chanting of the women. The sun is bright against his face and he turns his head away. The band flares up, much closer, somewhere inside the Arena, and for a moment he listens to that. The chanting drops suddenly to a murmur, then stops. He opens his eyes and turns his head first to one side and then to the other. For an instant all the faces are focused on him, heads craning forward. He closes his eyes to the sight. Then the dull chink of a heavy bracelet close to his ear, and he opens his eyes. She is standing over him dressed in a white robe and holding the long shiny obsidian knife. She bends closer, the cluster of flowers woven into her hair—bending lower over his face as she blesses his love and devotion and asks his forgiveness.

  “Forgive me.”

  “What is the use?” he whispers. Then, as the knife point touches his chest he screams, “I forgive you!”

  And the people hear and settle back in their seats, exhausted, as she cuts out his heart and holds it up to the lustrous sun.

  Poseidon and Company

  He saw nothing only suddenly the wind stiffened and blew mist up off the sea and over his face, taking him by surprise. He’d been dreaming again. Using his elbows, he worked a little closer to the edge that overlooked the beach and raised his face out toward the sea. The wind struck his eyes, bringing tears. Down below, the other boys were playing war but their voices sounded watery and far away, and he tried not to listen. Over the voices came the squeak of the gulls, out where the sea thundered on the rocks below the temple. Poseidon’s temple. He lay again on his stomach and turned his face a little to one side, waiting.

  On his back the sun slipped away and a chill broke over his legs and shoulders. Tonight he would lie wrapped in his cover and remember these few minutes of felt time, day fading. It was different than standing in Naiad’s cave up in the hills, someone holding his hand under the water that trickled steadily out of the crack in the rock. It had been dripping for no one knows how long, they said. Different too than wading in the surf up to his knees, feeling the strange pull. That was time too, but not the same. They’d told him about that, about when to wade and when to stay off the beach. But this was something of his own and every afternoon he lay on his stomach up over the sea and waited for the change, the prickly passage of time across his back.

  Out loud, tasting the sea salt on his lips as he did so, he said a few verses into the wind, new ones that he’d heard last night. Some of the words he liked he rolled over again in his mouth. Below, he heard Aias curse another boy and invoke one of the gods. Was it true, what men told of the gods? He remembered every song he’d heard, every story handed down and recited at night around the fire, as well as all the eyewitness accounts. Still, he had heard some men speak of the gods with disrespect, even disbelief, so that it was hard to know what to believe anymore. Someday he’d leave here and find out for himself. He’d walk over the hills to Eritrea where the trading ships came in. Maybe he’d even be able to board one of them and go wherever it was they go, the places men talked about.

  Below, the voices were louder and one of the boys was crying jerkily against the clatter of their sticks on the shields. He raised up onto his knees to listen and swayed blindly, dizzy with memory and idea as the evening wind carried up the angry voices. He could hear Achilles yelling loudest of all as the two groups ran back and forth over the beach. Then his own name was called, and he lay down quickly to keep out of sight. Nearer, his sister called again. Now the steps behind him and he sat up all at once, discovered.

  “There you are!” she said. “I had to walk all this way for you! Why didn’t you come home? You never do anything you’re supposed to.” She came closer. “Give me your hand!”

  He felt her hands take his and begin to pull him. “No!” he said, shaking. He jerked free and with the stick he sometimes called Spear began to feel his way down the trail.

  “Well, you’ll see, little man who thinks he’s so big,” she said. “Your time’s coming, Mama said.”

  Bright Red Apples

  “I can’t make water, Mommy,” Old Hutchins said, coming out of the bathroom with tears in his eyes.

  “Close your barn door, Pa!” Rudy shouted. The old man disgusted him and his hand twitched in anger. He leaped out of his chair and looked around for his boomerang. “Have you seen my boomerang, Ma?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Mother Hutchins said patiently. “Now you just behave yourself, Rudy, while I see to your pa. You just heard him say he can’t make water. But close your barn door, Daddy, like Rudy says.”

  Old Hutchins sniffled but did as he was told. Mother Hutchins came over to him with a worried look, holding her hands in her apron.

  “It’s just what Dr. Porter said would happen, Mommy,” Old Hutchins said, sagging against the wall and looking as if he were going to die right then. “I’ll get up one morning, he said, and not be able to make water.”

  “Shut up!” Rudy shouted. “Shut up! Talk, talk, talk, dirty talk all day long. I’ve had enough of it!”

  “You keep quiet now, Rudy,” Mother Hutchins said feebly, moving back a step or two with Old Hutchins in her arms.

  Rudy began stalking up and down the linoleum-covered floor of the sparsely furnished but tidy living room. His hands jumped in and out of his hip pockets as he threw menacing looks at Old Hutchins, who hung limply in Mother Hutchins’s ar
ms.

  At the same time, a warm smell of fresh apple pie drifted in from the kitchen and made Rudy lick his lips hungrily, reminded him, even in the midst of his great anger, that it was nearly snack time. Now and then he glanced nervously out of the corner of his eye at his older brother Ben, who sat in a heavy oak chair in the corner near the treadle-operated sewing machine. But Ben never raised his eyes from his worn copy of Restless Guns.

  Rudy couldn’t figure Ben. He kept tramping up and down the living room, from time to time knocking over a chair or breaking a lamp. Mother Hutchins and Old Hutchins inched back toward the bathroom. Rudy stopped suddenly and glared at them, then looked at Ben again. He just couldn’t figure Ben. He couldn’t figure any of them, but he could figure Ben even less than the others. He wanted Ben to notice him sometimes, but Ben always had his nose in a book. Ben read Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, Ernest Haycox, Luke Short. Ben thought Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour, and Ernest Haycox were all right, but not as good as Luke Short. He thought Luke Short was the best of the lot. He’d read Luke Short’s books forty or fifty times. He had to have something to pass the time. Ever since his rigging had come loose seven or eight years ago when he was topping trees for Pacific Lumber, he’d had to have something to pass the time. Since then he could only move the upper part of his body; also, he seemed to have lost the power of speech. Anyway, he had never uttered a word since the day of the fall. But then he’d always been a quiet boy when he was living at home before; no bother at all. Still no bother, his mother maintained, if she was asked. Quiet as a mouse and needed very little seeing to.

  Besides, on the first of each month Ben got a little disability check in the mail. Not much, but enough for them all to live on. Old Hutchins had quit work when the disability checks started coming. He didn’t like his boss was the reason he gave at the time. Rudy had never left home. He’d never finished high school, either. Ben had finished high school but Rudy was a high school dropout. Now he was afraid of being drafted. The idea of being drafted made him very nervous. He didn’t at all like the idea of being drafted. Mother Hutchins had always been a housewife and a homemaker. She was not very shrewd but she knew how to make ends meet. Once in a while, though, if they ran short before the end of the month, she had to walk into town with a nice box of apples on her back and sell them for a dime each on the corner in front of Johnson’s Pharmacy. Mr. Johnson and the clerks knew her and she always gave Mr. Johnson and the clerks a shiny red apple that she polished against the front of her dress.