She asked me to forgive her. She had visited me with her winter pounds shed and with a dark suntan so as to hurt me, in her vanity. To make my mouth water. But yet I was her friend and this could no longer go unconfessed. She had wanted to change and ruin me for a while, with her beauty. It was an unfortunate trait. Her father had accused her of it all her life, but only now she was truly adult could she admit she enjoyed inflicting pain this way, always had. Her mother, a beauty, was fast losing her looks and was always in a state, afraid to go out with anybody new. She and her mother spent the days simply keeping a watch on each other. They had begun going to church together. Even there, they knew the great Satan was in one of the cars in the parking lot, watching them.
You must never write about me, she wrote. You think I am special but I am not. I am to be forgotten, do you understand. We have had a bad house, wherever I am is a bad room.
A week later I won an award from the governor. My old parents were there glowing in the mansion. I was in a suit, now a goodly time healthy, but in my short acceptance speech I was conscious of sneering ironic people somewhere in the crowd. When I looked at the rear rank of those standing I did see three hats way above the rest and flashes of beige skin. I may have broken all forms for modesty, unwilled actually, but from a diminished heart, and held my work in an esteem equal to that of a scratching worm drowned in ink and flung against a tombstone. Through all this too I confess I was coming on to the governor’s wife — helplessly, God — and finished in a burst of meekness coupled with hideous inappropriate lust. I could hear the laughter and was led away.
I was looking at the plaque and stroking myself a couple days later as the phone rang. A voice I could not remember began. At once I could feel the black wind of North Dakota between us on the lines. She was a friend of the Florida girl. I had not seen her since I chatted with them at that bar near the Minnesota line. She was clear for a while but then started sobbing and stalling. Her friend. Our friend. You were kind to her, she said. Always she mentioned your kindness. What?
In Tallahassee the father had run her over in her own living room and killed her. The car came in through the bay window and crushed her as she sat on the couch in her bikini swimsuit. Her mother, also in a swimsuit, was broken up badly but would survive. Abruptly after the collision, the father, still in the driver’s seat, put a pistol to his ear and destroyed himself. The women were having lunch after sunning. He must have known all their moves. You are a good person, the woman said — a scrap of memory through the black air of days and days ago — and I had to tell a good person. Somebody who knew her.
I am not a good person, I told her. This is too awful.
Do you believe in God?
Foxhole Christian. When all else is lost.
Nothing else was said and she hung up.
I was suddenly something fresh to her, a way I did not know. Then she was destroyed by a monster I had never believed in, who was true. My pity was so confused I could not accept I was even worthy of having it, for weeks. Or worthy of her, or my former girlfriend.
It is true now that, years later and desperately married (to the daughter of a World War II pilot named Angel), whenever a flute plays I have the woman sweet in my ears and think of our laughter. Wherever I see a headline beauty I brag quietly: come on, I had better, with a sad smile, I’d imagine, that fine appreciation of ourselves when we have bittersweetness right on time.
I have not had that many women, is the truth, and this, pal, I know seems crammed with serial romance and grief, but I’m not quite through, and you will understand me at last as more that poor man on the east Texas hill with the wind in his last hairs, too thick in modern life, too thick in dream, too sad for years now. Maybe the girl in North Dakota mistook my sadness for kindness; defeat for gentleness. I look at an old photograph of myself at eight when I was just a boy and his dog under a cowboy hat. I was looking at the world across the cornfield, all ready to touch it all under the shade of my tall Hoot Gibson. Now I understand I have been witness to the worst fifty years in the history of the world. A tragedy that might make Caligula weep in commiseration. And I have had, you know, a relatively pampered life, although you see me puffing away on my smoke like a leathered vet, a tough cookie.
I used to be a considerable tennis player. So in my health I took it up again and got the game back quickly. I just had a tough time giving a damn about the score. Once I was playing with a friend and noticed a very tall pale woman through the fence on another court. She had her back to me. I saw she struck the ball with authority and grace. I wanted her within seconds of seeing her. I needed her. I had never had a tall woman, blonde, and I was already in my mind rocking with her in great abandon like a dying cannibal. The nourishment would be endless, so generous.
My friend and I played well. We sat down exhausted in that fine chill of Southern twilight that heaven might be. I looked to my right and somehow, in the flesh, the tall pale woman was sitting between us. You never see that kind of European paleness in women on a Southern tennis court. I was amazed at her musculature, like strands of soft wire. Then I saw the hat. She had been wearing a big unusual hat that must have given her seven feet in height. She was looking toward my friend. I had never seen her face. When she turned I looked away and in great fear I stared through the woods. I wanted her more than ever but I would not see her face. I heard her voice, though, just the once up close.
I believe I’ve got something you want.
I grabbed my bag and got in my car and was almost home before I remembered my friend had no ride home, a long way. But I couldn’t go back and I almost threw up.
He called me, however.
Man, the woman was fast on you. What the devil, did you see all of her, fool? I’m much the better-looking, but all she gave me was a pouting ride home.
Who is she?
Somebody’s relative. Can’t remember. Too busy stealing looks. That’s quite a drink of water, long and cool, old son. You never knew her?
Never set eyes on her.
You’re an uncommon fool. And sober.
She has been around town now for a couple of years. I see parts of her here and there, but I walk or drive right away. I don’t intend to see her face because I know I’ve already seen it. When we touch one of us will die and be in the other’s dreams.
I am not insane. My affairs are composed in vicious sobriety. I did not see my tennis partner either for several months. Then he called at the end of the summer.
You don’t play anymore?
A few times, other places.
The tall one was back on the courts the other day. I swear, fool, she’s like something from the heart of winter in a foreign land. Same old story full of wolves where you’d stumble into a woman lying in the woods. I’m going to use a word. Alabaster.
I swallowed. You mean living or dead?
I’m not sure, mister.
Wolves.
I wonder, when she dies, likely by violence, will she be named like the lesser creatures in that story? Certain people believe all are given names when we die, not at birth.
The creature goes to heaven very baffled.
My God, what was all that about? it asks.
God says: Well, you were a wolf.
I see, says the wolf.
I wonder will it be that simple for her, or for me.
Drummer Down
HE HAD NEVER LIKED THE YOUNG DANCING ASTAIRE, ALL GREEDY AND certain. But now he was watching an old ghost thriller, and he liked Astaire old, pasted against the wall of mortality — dry, scared, maybe faintly alcoholic. This was a man. He pitied him. Everything good had pity in it, it seemed to Smith, now fifty and a man of some modest fashion himself. Even as a drunkard he had been a bit of a dandy. It was midnight when he turned off the set. He had begun thinking sadly about his friend Drum again, the man whose clothes were a crying shame. Drum two summers ago had exchanged his.22 for a pistol of a large bore, one that was efficient. In his bathtub in a trailer home on the outskirts of that large town in Alabama, he had put the barrel in his mouth. He had counted off the days on his calendar a full month ahead of the event of his suicide, and on the date of it he had written “Bye Bye Drum.” The note he left was not original. It was a vile poem off the bathroom wall, vintage World War II. He had destroyed his unpublished manuscripts and given away all his other art and had otherwise put his affairs in order, with directions he was to be cremated and there was to be no ceremony.