He was sitting with his shoulders fallen, staring at his hands, when she turned with — I think it's getting late Paul, if you…
— Look did Chick call? He looked up, — he ever call back?
— Well he, no, no not since he called to say he'd just got out, that's all he said. I mean I didn't know who he was or…
— He was my RTO. Chick was my RTO… He'd gone back to staring at his hands, one over the other there on the table as though to hold it still — whole God damn, call you up like that out of nowhere we want a real showing from the Lightning Division, come down to that God damn wailing wall see all your old buddies even get you a wheelchair, ride down Constitution Avenue in a God damn wheelchair… and his hand broke away to seize one of the sodden pamphlets opened to display a figure suspended by the wooden limitations of the artist's intentions headlong against black over a firescape of torment — get Gates up there, comes back both legs smashed no parade he'll have his own God damn parade. You get Bobbie Joe, you get Ude up there Reverend Ude under his powerful anointing by the Holy Spirit already insulted the Jews now he's ready to take on the Catholics, he's got Gates fired up with how Satan's mad as hell over all these souls they're harvesting for the Lord do any God damn thing he can to get their crusade going against the forces of the Antichrist Ude says God's promised to give him an army, valiant soldiers of the cross marching on to war, they get this hall full of white schoolteachers? wheel in this big spade in combat gear? You'll see them climbing right up the God damn walls where's the, got to get going I thought you'd set the clock… His chair banged the wall and he came up sweeping the booklets together, — take these with me thought I'd turned on the radio, find out what the hell time it is where you going.
— I was just going up to get your red necktie.
— I've got it Liz! Right there in my God damn bag now don't, try to show a little God damn patience… He stood shaking his shoulders into his jacket, tearing away the dark knot at his throat and jamming it into a pocket, wadding up the papers piecemeal in a turn for the living room where he opened his bag and jammed them in — and look… He got a foot up on the edge of the coffee table pulling the lace tight with a sharp tug for emphasis, and it snapped — God damn it! and he was down on the edge of the chair with the shoe off, hands trembling in his effort to rethread it and when he got it back on and knotted he sat there, and then he suddenly reached out to seize the magazine of Natural History. — I have to look at this God damn face every time I sit down? crushing it up in his hand — God damn smartass grin I still see it at night listen, if that, listen Liz if that same, if that Sergeant Urich if he calls again hang up just, hang up. Bands, flags, Drucker and his bag of ears just hang up they, fall in behind because they shut us out, eighty percent disability says they can provide a wheelchair? sit there in the rain see these weeping mothers running their fingers over a name nobody can pronounce? He twisted the magazine hard in both hands thrusting it at her, — just get this God damn thing out of the house?
— Don't you want to take a coat? she came after him.
He had the front door open but he stood there, looking out, looking up, — little bastards look at that, not even Halloween till tonight but they couldn't wait… Toilet paper hung in disconsolate streamers from the telephone lines, arched and drooped in the bared maple branches reaching over the windows of the frame garage beyond the fence palings where shaving cream spelled fuck. — Look keep the doors locked, did this last night Christ knows what you're in for tonight… and the weight of his hand fell away from her shoulder, — Liz? just try and be patient? and he pulled the door hard enough for the snap of the lock to startle her less with threats locked out than herself locked in, to leave her steadying a hand on the newel before she turned back for the kitchen where the radio, muttering to itself all this time, took this opportune silence to tell her that three men whose boat had capsized in Long Island Sound had been saved in a thrilling rescue operation by the Coast Guard and she snapped it off, her eyes drawn in a kind of perplexity there emptying the cup of tea he'd left cold on the table and putting it aside unrinsed in the first of what became, as the morning fell away, a progress through the house of chores abandoned, dry wisps of lingerie in the bathroom basin and damp towels and socks as far as the floor in the hall, the vacuum cleaner dragged out and left and even paper towels and the spray bottle to the head of the stairs where she caught the bannister, turned back for the bathroom and quietly threw up.
She woke abruptly to a black rage of crows in the heights of those limbs rising over the road below and lay still, the rise and fall of her breath a bare echo of the light and shadow stirred through the bedroom by winds flurrying the limbs out there till she turned sharply for the phone and dialed slowly for the time, up handling herself with the same fragile care to search the mirror, search the world outside from the commotion in the trees on down the road to the straggle of boys faces streaked with blacking and this one, that one in an oversize hat, sharing kicks and punches up the hill where in one anxious glimpse the mailman turned the corner and was gone.
Through the festoons drifting gently from the wires and branches a crow dropped like shot, and another, stabbing at a squirrel crushed on the road there, vaunting black wings and taking to them as a car bore down, as a boy rushed the road right down to the mailbox in the whirl of yellowed rust spotted leaves, shouts and laughter behind the fence palings, pieces of pumpkin flung through the air and the crows came back all fierce alarm, stabbing and tearing, bridling at movement anywhere till finally, when she came out to the mailbox, stillness enveloped her reaching it at arm's length and pulling it open. It looked empty; but then there came sounds of hoarded laughter behind the fence palings and she was standing there holding the page, staring at the picture of a blonde bared to the margin, a full tumid penis squeezed stiff in her hand and pink as the tip of her tongue drawing the beading at its engorged head off in a fine thread. For that moment the blonde's eyes, turned to her in forthright complicity, held her in their steady stare; then her tremble was lost in a turn to be plainly seen crumpling it, going back in and dropping it crumpled on the kitchen table.
It was still there when she came back down the stairs, differently dressed now, eyeliner streaked on her lids and the colour unevenly matched on her paled cheeks, there was still a quaver in her hand when she reached for the phone, in her voice when she said — Who, hello…? She swallowed and cleared her throat, her free hand moving to smooth the picture out flat on the table before her — I'm sorry, who… oh… The voice burst at her from the phone and she held it away, staring down close at the picture as though something, some detail, might have changed in her absence, as though what was promised there in minutes, or moments, might have come in a sudden burst on the wet lips as the voice broke from the phone in a pitch of invective, in a harried staccato, broke off in a wail and she held it close enough to say — I'm sorry Mister Mullins, I don't know what to… and she held it away again bursting with spleen, her own fingertip smoothing the still fingers hoarding the roothairs of the inflexible surge before her with polished nails, tracing the delicate vein engorged up the curve of its glistening rise to the crown cleft fierce with colour where that glint of beading led off in its fine thread to the still tongue, mouth opened without appetite and the mascaraed eyes unwavering on hers without a gleam of hope or even expectation, — I don't know I can't tell you! I haven't seen Billy I don't know where he is! I'm sorry… she crushed the picture up in her hand, — I can't now no, no there's someone at the door… Someone hunched down, peering in — Wait! She had it crushed in a step for the trash taking Natural History's crumpled Masai with it, — wait… she caught breath coming through, seizing the knob tight, and then — oh… getting it open, — Mister McCandless I'm sorry, I, come in…