He came around there where I was and sat down beside me.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t be like me. Get old and you won’t have nobody to take care of you.”
“Did you not ever want to get married?” I said.
“Nah, hell, wasn’t that. They’s all married off when I got back.”
I knew better. War had hurt him. He never got the bullets and the bombs out of his head. I know he shot men. He once saw a dogfight over the African desert, with all the action at five thousand feet. He said the American plane that went down left a solid black trail of smoke all the way to the ground, and the whole company sat down in the sand and cried. Then they went out that night and killed a bunch of people. He told me that.
He was drunk by the time he’d told it, and that time I left him asleep on the floor. I locked the door before I left. He wouldn’t have let me help him across the road to his house.
The other thing I’m fixing to tell you has a lot to do with what I just told you.
This was years later. Uptown in a bar one night. It was raining so hard I had to make a mad dash from my car to the door, raining so hard you could hardly see how to drive with the wipers going full speed. But I got in there and took my coat off and was glad to be in out of the rain. I was between women, living alone for a while again, and I didn’t know how or when I’d find another one. The beer I ordered came and I paid.
There was nothing much going on. A few guys shooting pool and a few older women sitting at tables talking. Then I saw Squirrel at about the same time he saw me. I could tell he was drunk. He got up and started making his way over to me. I sat there and waited for him.
He’s a good man. He’s worked hard all his life laying brick, but he’s had his troubles with the bottle. He’s somewhere in his fifties, maybe sixties, I don’t know now.
He sat down beside me and we talked for a while. Or he did. With drunks you know you just mostly agree and nod your head a lot. You don’t have to worry about carrying the conversation, they’ll do it. Squirrel was pissed off. He was ready to go home and he didn’t have any wheels, because he’d left his wheels at home and come to town with two of the old guys shooting pool. He was ready to go and they weren’t. I didn’t want to think about what he was working his way up to. I was in out of that rain, I wanted to stay in out of it for a while.
This boy I knew walked in and asked me what in the hell I was doing in there when they had nickel beer up at Abbey’s Irish Rose from 7:30 to 9:30 after you paid a two-dollar cover charge upstairs. I told him I didn’t know anything about it. Squirrel leaned over right fast and in close to me and said, “Can you take me home?”
There it is a lot of times. You go out somewhere, just planning on drinking a few beers, and you run into some drunk you’ve known all your life who doesn’t have a way home. You either have to take him home, refuse to, or tell him a lie. Usually I tell a lie. I told Squirrel I wasn’t planning on going on home for a while, which was the truth. He said he understood and wouldn’t think of imposing on me. I felt guilty, and I hated for him to make me feel guilty, but I hadn’t brought him up there and poured any whiskey down him. And he lived way back up in the woods on a mud road the mailman has to use a Jeep on when it rains. In four-wheel drive. With Buckshot Mudders.
I finished my first beer and got another one, and Squirrel bummed a cigarette off me. I lit it for him, and he started telling me how he’d lost all his money. I wasn’t listening that close, but it was something about them driving down to Batesville and unloading some two-by-fours and him asking the man he was working for to loan him a hundred dollars. The guy gave him five twenties, and when they got back to town, Squirrel paid for two fifths of whiskey. I know they were drinking when they went down there, he didn’t have to tell me that. He said that left him about eighty dollars, but he said he didn’t have it now and it was making him sick. And he wanted to go home.
“Sumbitches drug me off up here and got me drunk and now they don’t want to go home,” was what he said.
I hated to hear of his troubles, but I didn’t want to drive him all the way back to Old Dallas on those muddy roads in my Chevelle and more than likely slide off into a ditch. He said he wouldn’t think of imposing on me. His head was starting to droop. And I was wishing I’d never gone in there. There was no way I could leave without him. He only lived six miles from me.
I always think I’m going to find something when I go out at night, I don’t know why. I always think that, and I never do. I always think I’ll find a woman. But if you go out in sadness, that’s all you’re going to find. It was too quiet in there with him sitting next to me drooping his head, so I got up and put some change into the jukebox. I just had sat down and picked up my beer again when he leaned over and said, “Take me home, Leo. Please, please.”
There wasn’t anything else I could do. I couldn’t sit there and drink beer with gas in my tank and him saying please to me. All he wanted was to get home and get up the next morning in time to go to work. I knew the other guys would stay until last call, and I knew they had his money. I stared at them but they wouldn’t even look at us. I picked up my coat and put it on and I led him to the door. I had to help him down the stairs so he wouldn’t fall, and then I had to help him into the car. I had some beer on the back seat, and I gave him one after we got up on the bypass.
Squirrel always talked through his nose. I guess he had a birth defect, a partial palate or something like that, but it wasn’t hard to understand him. I think it was easier to understand him when he was drunk. I guess he talked slower then. I know I do.
“How many times you ever seen me drunk, Leo?” he said.
“I don’t know, Squirrel. Not many.”
“You ain’t never seen me drunk, have you?”
“Not too many times,” I said. “I think I saw you drunk about six months ago, out there one night.”
“How bout opening this beer for me? I can’t get this doddamn thing open.”
I opened the beer for him and then gave him another cigarette. It was still raining and I was dreading that drive up that muddy road like an asswhipping. I knew with my luck, I’d get about five miles up in the woods before I slid off into a ditch, then I’d have to walk all the way out and wake up somebody who had a tractor while Squirrel slept it off in the car. I wasn’t just real damn happy thinking about it.
“I been ready to go home for the last three hours, and them sorry sumbitches wouldn’t even take me home,” he said.
I told him it was hell to get off with some sorry sonofabitches who wouldn’t even take you home.
“I don’t mean to impo on you, Leo. You know that. Please, please.”
I didn’t feel like talking. Even if I got him home without getting stuck, it would be too late to turn around and go back to town. And there wasn’t even anything in town. There was no sense in going up there looking for it. The people who were in the bars were just as lost as I was.
“If you just get me to Aaron’s. You know Aaron, don’t you?”
Well, I knew Aaron. I didn’t know what Mr. Aaron would think about me dumping Squirrel on him.
“Yeah, I know Aaron. I imagine he’s in the bed asleep by now.”
“You just get me to Aaron’s and I’ll be all right. I wouldn’t think of impoin on you, please, please.”
I told him not to sweat it, that I’d been off with drunks who didn’t want to go home, that he was in good hands now. He talked some more about losing his eighty dollars. He said it made him sick. A dollar was so hard to come by, he said. I clamped my lip shut and drove.
“I was on the front lines at Korea,” he said. I looked sideways at him.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Hell yes.”
I listened then, because moments like that are rare, when you get to hear about these things that have shattered men’s lives. I knew my daddy never got the war out of his head. When he got to drinking that’s what he’d talk about. Mama said when they fi
rst got married he’d wake himself up screaming from a nightmare of hand-to-hand combat, knives and bayonets and gun stocks. With sweat all over him like he’d just stepped from water. I listened to Squirrel.
“First night out, they was fifty of our boys got killed. Just cut em all to pieces with machine guns. Half of em my friends. I mean friends like you and me. They wadn’t nothing nobody could do. I can’t forget about it. I thought about it all my life. Please, please.”
There wasn’t much I could do but listen.
“They was this one boy with me in a foxhole one night. He was my old buddy. Been knowing him ever since basic training, Fort Campbell, Kentucky. But then he got away from me and a machine gun cut loose up on top of a hill. He was screaming for me, Help me, Help me, all night long. Them goddamn bullets like to cut him half in two. Wasn’t nothing I could do. You know that. I thought about it all my life. Please, please. Next morning he was dead.”
There wasn’t anything I could say.
“I come back off the front lines for the first time in three months. I walked in a tent there and saw this captain standing there. I had a fifth of whiskey in my hand, and he asked me what I wanted. I told him I wasn’t looking for nothing but a smile and a kind word. Sumbitch just cussed me and told me to get the hell out. I laid down and cried all night long. I’ve cried many a night all night long, Leo. Just get me to Aaron’s and I’ll be all right.”
And Daddy had seen the same things, had marched all the way across Europe, freezing, getting shot at every day, seeing all those people he knew die. Fighting the Germans hand to hand. And waking up yelling, thinking he was back in it with them again. Bayonets and knives.
“Just get me to Aaron’s and I’ll be all right. Please. I don’t want to impo on you. I ain’t got no money to pay you, but I’ll have some later. I can go home and in five minutes I can have a hunnerd dollars. A hunnerd dollars to me don’t mean what it used to. You boys just don’t know.”
“You don’t want me to take you home?”
“Naw. Just take me to Aaron’s. I’ll get one of his cars and go home.”
“You don’t think he’ll get pissed off?”
“Naw. He won’t get pissed off. Aaron don’t care.”
We pulled into Mr. Aaron’s place and I parked in his yard. Squirrel looked at me before he opened the door.
“I got to see if Aaron will let me in. You won’t leave me, will you?”
“Naw, Squirrel,” I said. “I ain’t gonna leave you. Ill take you home if Aaron won’t let you have a car. I’m gonna get out and take a piss, though. I’ll be right here.”
I got out and stood in the rain while Squirrel staggered up to Mr. Aaron’s window and knocked on the glass. I could hear him talking.
“Aaron? Aaron. Squirrel. Can I come in? Squirrel. Can I come in?”
Standing there watching him in the rain, I felt bad. He was old and withered and drunk and all he wanted was to get home so he could go to work the next day. Forget all this. Try to forget all this. But he wouldn’t. He’d be back up there within a few nights. And I probably would be, too.
The light came on finally, and I saw Mr. Aaron coming to the front, his hair puffed up like wings on each side of his head. The rain fell on me. He didn’t have his glasses on and he looked confused. I hollered and told Squirrel that he was coming to the front. He walked through a mud puddle and Aaron opened the door. I stepped up there and said, “I’ll take him home if you don’t want to mess with him, Mr. Aaron.”
Squirrel stepped up beside me. “Can I come in, Aaron?” he said. “I’m trying to get home.”
“Hell yeah, you can come on in,” Mr. Aaron told him. He looked different without his glasses and with sleep in his eyes. He was still confused. He didn’t know what was going on yet. When I was a child he treated me with kindness always. He wouldn’t talk to you if he didn’t know you, but he told me a lot of war stories. Squirrel walked across the boards laid on the ground that were all the porch Mr. Aaron had and stuck his hand out. We shook.
“Thanks, Leo,” he said. “I’ll be all right now.”
They went on inside, already talking, already forgetting about me, and I watched them for a moment before I ducked out of the rain and back into my car. I thought about things while I drove home alone. I thought about being old, and alone, and drunk and needing help. I knew I might be like that one day. I thought about having to turn to somebody for help. I hoped it would be there.
We buried Aaron today. We stood up in the church and smelled the flowers, and sang those beautiful songs over him, and the preacher said his words. I helped carry the coffin; I was one of the chosen six. It turned out that he had picked out his resting place thirty years ago. It’s on high ground, in the shade, and from there you can stand and see the green hills folding away, all the way to the horizon.
I’m drinking beer now and a little into my cups, thinking about Aaron, and Squirrel, and Daddy, and about all the conversations they probably had about war. I know now that they suffered like all soldiers do, and I know they saw things that affected them for the rest of their lives.
And I just realized something. Squirrel didn’t want to go home that night. He had no intention of going home. He wanted to be with somebody who knew him. And if there was anybody that night who knew what he was feeling, and what it meant, Aaron did. Aaron did for sure.
So long, old buddy. Cod bless you and keep you. Me, I need some sleep myself.
Sleep
My wife hears the noises and she wakes me in the night. The dream I’ve been having is not a good one. There is a huge black cow with long white horns chasing me, its breath right on my neck. I don’t know what it means, but I’m frightened when I awake. Her hand is gripping my arm. She is holding her breath, almost.
Sometimes I sleep well and sometimes I don’t. My wife hardly ever sleeps at all. Oh, she takes little naps in the daytime, but you can stand back and watch her, and you’ll see what she goes through. She moans, and twists, and shakes her head no no no.
Long ago we’d go on picnics, take Sunday drives in the car. Long before that, we parked in cars and moved our hands over each other. Now all we do is try to sleep, seems like.
It’s dark in the room, but I can see a little. I move my arm and my elbow makes a tiny pop. I’m thinking coffee, orange juice, two over easy. But I’m a long way away from that. And then I know she’s hearing the noises once more.
“They’re down there again,” she says.
I don’t even nod my head. I don’t want to get up. It’s useless anyway, and I just do it for her, and I never get through doing it. I’m warm under the covers, and the world apart from the two of us under here is cold. I think maybe if I pretend to be asleep, she’ll give it up. So I lie quietly for a few moments, breathing in and out. I gave us a new electric blanket for our anniversary. The thermostat clicks on and off, with a small reassuring sound, keeping us warm. I think about hash browns, and toast, and shit on a shingle. I think about cold places I’ve been in. It’s wonderful to do that, and then feel the warm spaces between my toes.
“Get up,” she says.
Once I was trapped in a blizzard in Kansas. I was traveling, and a snowstorm came through, and the snow was so furious I drove my car right off the road into a deep ditch. I couldn’t even see the highway from where I was, and I foolishly decided to stay in the car, run the heater, and wait for help. I had almost a full tank of gas. The snow started covering my vehicle. I had no overshoes, no gloves. All I had was a car coat. The windshield was like the inside of an igloo, except for a small hole where I ran the defroster. I ran out of gas after nine hours of idling. Then the cold closed in. I think about that time, and feel my nice warm pajamas.
“You getting up?” she says.
I’m playing that I’m still asleep, that I haven’t heard her wake me. I’m drifting back off, scrambling eggs, warming up the leftover T-bone in the microwave, looking for the sugar bowl and the milk. The dog has the paper in his mouth.
br /> “Did you hear me?” she says.
I hear her. She knows I hear her. I hear her every night, and it never fails to discourage me. Sometimes this getting up and down seems to go on forever. I’ve even considered separate beds. But so far we’ve just gone on like we nearly always have.
I suppose there’s nothing to do but get up. But if only she knew how bad I don’t want to.
“Louis. For God’s sake. Will you get up?”
Another time I was stationed at a small base on the North Carolina coast. We had to pull guard duty at night. After a four-hour shift my feet would be blocks of ice. It would take two hours of rubbing them with my socks off, and drinking coffee, to get them back to normal. The wind came off the ocean in the winter, and it cut right through your clothes. I had that once, and now I have this. The thermostat clicks. It’s doing its small, steady job, regulating the temperature of two human bodies. What a wonderful invention. I’m mixing batter and pouring it on the griddle. Bacon is sizzling in its own grease, shrinking, turning brown, bubbling all along the edges. What lovely bacon, what pretty pancakes. I’ll eat and eat.
“Are you going to get up or not?”
I sigh. I think that if I was her and she was me, I wouldn’t make her do this. But I don’t know that for a fact. How did we know years ago we’d turn out like this? We sleep about a third of our lives and look what all we miss. But sometimes the things we see in our sleep are more horrible and magical than anything we can imagine. People come after you and try to kill you, cars go backward down the highway at seventy miles an hour with you inside and you’re standing up on the brake. Sometimes you even get a little.
I lie still in the darkness and, without looking around, can see the mound of covers next to me with a gray lump of hair sticking out. She is still, too. I think maybe she’s forgotten about the things downstairs. I think maybe if I just keep quiet she’ll drift back off to sleep. I try that for a while. The gas heater is throwing the shadow of its grille onto the ceiling and it’s leaping around. Through the black window I can see the cold stars in the sky. People are probably getting up somewhere, putting on their housecoats, yawning in their fists, plugging in their Mr. Coffees.