Pilgrims

  chest. She kissed his smoky hair. In the dark of the back room,

  without a window or a fan, the air smelled like cigarette ashes

  and the dust of chalk. It smelled something like a school.

  Much later, more than an hour later, Al did roll carefully on

  top of Ellen, and she did lace her fingers snugly against his

  back, but before this they rested for a long time, still in the dark, holding hands like old people. They listened to Maddy the

  mean bartender throw the last drunks out of the Tall Folks

  Tavern, and they listened to her clean up and shut down the bar.

  On the best nights, Ellen used to dance on that same bar with

  her arms spread open wide, saying, “My people! My people!”

  while the men crowded at her feet like dogs or students. They

  used to beg her not to close. It would be daylight and they

  would still be coming in from across the street, begging her not

  to close. She told this to Al, and he nodded. In the dark of that

  big back room, she felt his little nod.

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  Ilived in San Francisco for three months and only slept

  with one person, a redneck from Tennessee. I could have

  done that back home and saved myself a lot of rent money.

  A city full of educated, successful men, and I went after the first

  guy I saw wearing a John Deere hat.

  I noticed him at the bar because he looked out of context

  among all the businessmen, sitting there in his plaid shirt and

  white socks. He was drinking a beer and I saw a can of chewing

  tobacco beside the bottle. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a man

  who chews tobacco. I sat down next to him.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “You sure made a beeline for me,” he said.

  “That’s a hell of a long name,” I said. I ordered a beer and

  settled onto the bar stool. He told me that he was Dean.

  “I’m Julie,” I said. “What are you doing in San Francisco,

  Dean?”

  “Uncle Sam stationed me here.”

  I thought, I didn’t come all the way to California to pick up

  some enlisted guy in a bar. I thought, I didn’t come all the way

  out to California to pick up some good old boy with a cheap

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  watch and a crewcut, some yokel from a town probably smaller

  than my own.

  “So, what is it exactly that you do in the army, Dean?”

  “I jump out of airplanes.” Something about his drawl made

  the comment sound drenched with innuendo. He looked at me

  appraisingly; there was a long pause.

  “Well,” I said, finally. “That must be fun.”

  Dean kept his eyes on mine for a moment. He unfolded the

  paper napkin in front of me, held it over my head, and let it go:

  a tiny parachute with “Pierce Street Bar” printed on a corner.

  The napkin fluttered down and settled on my pack of cigarettes.

  “You fall and fall,” he said. “And then you land.”

  I took a long drink and put the bottle down evenly on its own

  damp ring. I had started feeling that magnet pull at the back of

  my knees and the gentle tug just under my stomach.

  “Do you have cowboy boots?” I asked him.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not crazy about those shoes you’re wearing. You

  look stupid with white socks and dress shoes. I think you’d look

  a whole lot better with cowboy boots coming out from those

  jeans.”

  Dean laughed. “Sure, I got cowboy boots. Come back to the

  Presidio with me tonight, I’ll put them on for you.”

  “You don’t throw away much time buttering up a girl with

  conversation, do you?” I asked, and wrapped my hand around

  my beer bottle. Dean covered my hand with his.

  “You sure got nice hands,” he said.

  “I was just going to take a drink,” I said, and I thought my

  voice sounded a little bit too low and shaky. I cleared my throat.

  We looked at his hand on mine and at my hand on the bottle,

  and I said, “You’ve got nice hands, too. Big, but nice.” I could

  feel his calluses against my knuckles. “You know what they say

  about men with big hands,” I continued, and Dean grinned.

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  “What’s that?”

  “Big gloves.”

  It was easy to find Dean’s truck. It was the only pickup with

  Tennessee plates on Pierce Street, and it was right across from

  the bar.

  “You drove this thing all the way to California?”

  “Yup. Only took me two days.”

  There was an empty doughnut box on the front seat, and the

  passenger side window was stuck at half-mast. Plastic six-pack

  rings, fast food bags, and empty cassette boxes covered the

  floor, and I felt something crack under my foot as I got in.

  “What was that?” Dean asked, and I read the label on the

  box.

  “Hank Williams Junior’s Greatest Hits Volume Two. You’re

  kidding me.”

  “What’s the matter, never heard country music before?”

  “I wish.”

  Dean started up the truck and pulled off Pierce Street.

  “Where’d you say you were from, Julie?”

  “Main Street,” I said. “USA.”

  “You got some South in your voice.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Scoot over here,” Dean said, patting a spot next to him. I slid

  over, close as I could get. “I want to put my arm around you,” he

  said, “but I have to shift.”

  I took his hand off the chipped black ball on top of the gear

  shift and put his arm around me.

  “We driving all the way to the army base in second?” he

  asked.

  “I’ll shift,” I said, and that’s how we drove: me shifting, my

  other hand on his left thigh so I could tell when he was pushing

  the clutch, my face near his chest so I could feel him breathing

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  p i l g r i m s

  and see the snaps on his shirt. Dean drove with his hand on my

  shoulder and then under my arm against my ribs, and finally at

  my breast.

  We were quiet for some time, and then Dean said, “Talk to

  me. Tell me something.”

  I put my mouth against his ear and slid my hand up his thigh.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” I whispered, and he smiled and

  opened them. I could see the pulse in his neck.

  “Your bed narrow or wide?” I asked, and, quietly, Dean said,

  “Narrow.”

  “I think that I want to see you in these jeans, all faded, with

  cowboy boots coming out from the bottom of them,” I said. “I

  want to lie on your bed and see you standing there with no shirt,

  just those jeans down low on your hips and cowboy boots. Just

  looking at me. Okay?”

  Eyes forward, Dean swallowed and nodded. I kissed his ear.

  “I think you’d look great like that,” I said.

  I woke up the next morning to see a guy with white-blond hair

  and camouflage pants walking around, stepping over the tan-

  gled pile
of my shirt, bra, and skirt. He had a mole on his left

  cheek the size and color of a BB.

  Dean and I had fallen asleep back to front, my spine cush-

  ioned against his chest and stomach, my hair in his face and

  mouth.

  “Dean?” the stranger called, looking at me. “You up?”

  “Hey, Hunt,” Dean said into the back of my neck.

  “Who’s the girl?”

  “This is Julie. Julie, this is Hunt. My roommate.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  Hunt the roommate didn’t answer, so we looked at each other

  some more. He had a long cleft in the middle of his chin,

  another miniature cleft at the tip of his nose, and a deep furrow

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  between his eyes. It looked like someone had made markings in

  preparation to cleave his face in half, but had never got around

  to finishing up.

  Under the scratchy green army blanket, Dean slid his hand

  flat between my thighs. He let it rest there, cool and immobile

  but full of possibilities.

  “Where’d you sleep last night, Hunt?” he asked.

  “TV lounge.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, man.” Dean moved his hand up

  higher between my legs.

  Hunt grinned, but only on one side of his face, like a stroke

  victim. “I came by ’round three this morning,” he said, “and I

  heard you two rockin’, so I didn’t come knockin’.”

  Dean laughed. I turned over in the bed, careful to keep my-

  self covered, and faced him.

  “I’m not crazy about your roommate,” I whispered in his ear,

  and he laughed harder.

  “Julie don’t like you, Hunt,” he said.

  “I just seen that Madonna video,” Hunt said, unmoved by

  Dean’s remark. “You know that one where she’s in that man’s

  suit, grabbing her twat like Michael Jackson does?”

  “Yeah, I know it,” Dean said.

  “She’s hot, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I tried to get my head comfortable on Dean’s chest, some-

  where away from his collarbone, and traced the silky thin track

  of hair under his belly button with my finger.

  “I’m gone watch some more TV,” Hunt told us. “Maybe

  they’ll show it again. They been playing it a lot.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dean said.

  “If I come back, y’all want me to knock?”

  “Up to you, man.”

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  p i l g r i m s

  As soon as Hunt was out the door, Dean was on top of me,

  pulling my thighs up around his hips. I locked my fingers be-

  hind his head.

  “Oh, baby,” Dean said, “I’m so glad we’re awake again.”

  “So, you don’t like my roommate?” Dean asked. We were parked

  in his truck at the far end of Baker’s Beach, drinking beer,

  watching the only two people in the water toss a Frisbee back

  and forth.

  “When they drown, we can have the beach to ourselves,”

  I said.

  Dean’s truck smelled like the burgers we’d just finished.

  “They can have the beach,” Dean said. “Too damn cold to

  swim, anyhow. I’m happy we got the parking lot.” He stuck his

  little finger into the neck of his beer bottle and swung it slowly

  in front of his face, as if trying to hypnotize himself. “I got my

  finger stuck one time doing this.”

  “That’s a pretty smart thing to do, then, isn’t it?”

  He pulled his finger out with a pop and held it up. I leaned

  over and bit it.

  “Taste like beer?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  Dean pulled me close and ran his tongue across my lips,

  lightly. “I like the way you taste.”

  I kissed him, then sat back against the seat. “No, I don’t like

  your roommate,” I said. I put my feet up on the dashboard and

  looked between them at the swimmers. “Where’s he from, any-

  how? Alabama?”

  “West Virginia.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t like him. He reminds me of guys from

  my town. I know what he’s all about.”

  “That right?”

  “Uh-huh.” I combed the hairs on Dean’s leg back the wrong

  way with my fingertips and smoothed them down again. He

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  was wearing shorts, no shirt. Cowboy boots. “Hunt’s got a truck

  with six-foot wheels, I bet,” I said. “Got a belt buckle that says

  ‘The South Will Rise Again.’ Someday he’ll get a girl pregnant,

  maybe his cousin, and they’ll have more kids just like him.

  Bunch of kids running around with ringworm, eating mud

  pies.”

  Dean laughed. “So what kind of guy do you like?” He bal-

  anced his beer bottle on the palm of his hand.

  “College boys,” I said. “Lawyers. You know.”

  Dean nodded, interested. “Let me ask you something. You

  hooked up with a lot of guys like that since you left home?”

  I looked at him evenly. “All I said is that’s the kind of guy I’m

  attracted to.”

  He nodded again. “So you aren’t attracted to guys like me?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Dean set his bottle on the dashboard and gently pushed me

  down so that I was lying on my back, flat on the seat.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, and slid my underwear out from

  under my skirt, past my ankles, off. He pushed my skirt up

  around my waist, put his head between my legs, and started to

  kiss the insides of my thighs.

  “I really fucking love that,” I said after a few minutes, and

  Dean looked up.

  “You got some mouth for a girl supposed to be from the

  country.”

  “You’ve got some mouth yourself,” I said.

  It was midnight at the International House of Pancakes.

  “Happy anniversary,” Dean said, and toasted me with his

  milk shake. “We been together a whole day.”

  “These waitresses aren’t so great,” I said, and lifted my water

  glass, not for a toast, but for a refill. “I’ve been sucking on this

  ice for a half-hour now.”

  “Ten minutes,” Dean corrected me.

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  “Well, anyhow. A waitress should look after stuff like that. A

  good waitress.”

  “When you smile, the bottom part of your eyes look like

  this.” Dean dipped his finger into his milk shake and drew a

  half-moon shape on the tabletop. “I like that.”

  The skin around my mouth felt sore and raw from Dean’s

  stubble, and it hurt to sit down from all the sex. Dean leaned his

  head against the turquoise vinyl seat and shut his eyes.

  “You worn out yet?” I asked, and he smiled and shook his

  head without opening his eyes to the fluorescent lights.

  “No, sir. I’m all set for another round.”

  “Liar. I saw you walking like a cowboy before.”

  “It’s the cowboy boots make me walk like that.”

  The waitress filled my water glass and we didn’t speak for

  a while. Then I drank the water in one swallow, cleared my

  throat, and said, “Well . . . it
’s sure been nice knowing you,

  Dean.”

  He lifted his head from the back of the seat and looked at me

  with eyes the amber color of whiskey aging at the bottom of a

  barrel.

  “You going somewhere?” he asked.

  “Not really. Or, maybe yes. I may stay in San Francisco, but I

  could leave soon, too. I don’t like staying anywhere too long, you

  know?”

  Dean didn’t answer, waited.

  “Or maybe I’ll head down to L.A.,” I continued, shifting my

  eyes from Dean’s face to study first the dessert case, then the

  restroom doors. “I’ve also been thinking about going up to

  Seattle, or maybe Portland.”

  “You planning on leaving tomorrow or something?” Dean

  looked puzzled. I rolled my eyes.

  “Look, I don’t want to fight about this.”

  “Nobody’s fighting nobody. I just wondered what you meant

  about ‘nice knowing you.’”

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  “Dean, you’re a nice guy and everything, okay? But I’m not

  looking for any kind of relationship. I don’t want to see you

  getting attached to me or anything.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not what I came all the way out here for.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I reached for a bottle of maple syrup. I turned it upside down

  and watched the brown fluid move inside, slow as lava.

  “You and me don’t have anything in common, Dean. You’re

  going to finish with the army, then head back to Tennessee,

  probably. That’s fine; that’s great for you. But that’s not for me.

  I’m not going to end up married in Tennessee.”

  “I don’t remember asking.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I reached across the table for his hand, an