“No can do, Curly,” Phyllis said. They were at the door. Through the three glass portals I could see the buck lying outside in the grass with snow melting in its insides. Bonnie and Phyllis had their guns back over their shoulders. Bonnie seemed genuinely sorry to be leaving.
“You should see his arms,” she was saying and winked at me a last time. She had on her lumberjack’s jacket and her orange cushion fastened to her belt loops. “He doesn’t look strong. But he is strong. Oh my God! You should see his arms,” she said.
I stood in the door and watched them. They had the deer by the horns and were pulling him off down the road toward their car.
“You be careful, Lloyd,” Phyllis said. Bonnie smiled over her shoulder.
“I certainly will,” I said. “You can count on me.”
I closed the door, then went and stood in the little picture window watching them walk down the road to the fence, sledding the deer through the snow, making a swath behind them. I watched them drag the deer under Gainsborough’s fence, and laugh when they stood by the car, then haul it up into the trunk and tie down the lid with string. Hie deer’s head stuck out the crack to pass inspection. They stood up then and looked at me in the window and waved, each of them, big wide waves. Phyllis in her camouflage and Bonnie in her lumberjack’s jacket. And I waved back from inside. Then they got in their car, a new red Pontiac, and drove away.
I stayed around in the living room most of the afternoon, wishing I had a television, watching it snow, and being glad that Phyllis had cleaned up everything so that when I cleared out I wouldn’t have to do that myself. I thought about how much I would’ve liked one of those deer steaks.
It began to seem after a while like a wonderful idea to leave, just call a town cab, take it all the way in to the train station, get on for Florida and forget about everything, about Tina on her way to Phoenix with a guy who only knew about greyhounds and nothing else.
But when I went to the dinette to have a look at my ticket in my wallet, there was nothing but some change and some matchbooks, and I realized it was only the beginning of bad luck.
Empire
Sims and his wife Marge were on the train to Minot from their home in Spokane. They had left Spokane at five, when Marge got off her shift, and it was after nine now and black outside. Sims had paid for a roomette which Marge said she intended to be asleep in by nine, but she wasn’t in it yet. She had talked Sims into having a drink.
“How would you hate to die most?” Marge said, waggling a ballpoint in her fingers. She was working a crossword puzzle book that had been left on the seat. She had finished the hardest puzzle and gone on to the quiz in the back. The quiz predicted how long people would live by how they answered certain questions, and Marge was comparing her chances to Sims’s. “This will be revealing,” Marge said. “I’m sure you’ve thought about it, knowing you.” She smiled at Sims.
“I’d hate to be bored to death,” Sims said. He stared out at the glassy darkness of Montana where you could see nothing. No lights. No motion. He’d never been here before.
“Okay. That’s E,” Marge said. “That’s good. It’s ten. I’m ten because I said none of the above.” She wrote a number down. “You can see the psychology in this thing. If E is your answer for all of these, you live forever.”
“I wouldn’t like that,” Sims answered.
At the front of the parlor car a group of uniformed Army people were making a lot of noise, shuffling cards, opening beer cans and leaning over seats to talk loud and laugh. Every now and then a big laugh would go up and one of the Army people would look back down the car with a grin on his face. Two of the soldiers were women, Sims noticed, and most of the goings-on seemed intended to make them laugh and to present the men a chance to give one of them a squeeze.
“Okay, hon” Marge took a drink of her drink and repositioned the booklet under the shiny light. “Would you rather live in a country of high suicide or a high crime rate? This thing’s nutty, isn’t it?” Marge smiled. “Sweden’s high suicide, I know that. Everywhere else is high crime, I suppose. I’ll answer E for you on this one. E for me, too.” She marked the boxes and scored the points.
“Neither one sounds all that great,” Sims said. The train flashed through a small Montana town without stopping — two crossing gates with bells and red lanterns, a row of darkened stores, an empty rodeo corral with two cows standing alone under a bright floodlight. A single car was waiting to cross, its parking lights shining. It all disappeared. Sims could hear a train whisde far off.
“Here’s the last one,” Marge said. She took another sip and cleared her throat as if she was taking this seriously. “The rest are … I don’t know what. Weird. But just answer this one. Do you feel protective often, or do you often feel in need of protection?”
At the front of the car the Army people all roared with laughter at something one of them had said in a loud whisper. A couple more beer cans popped and somebody shuffled cards, cracking them together hard. “Put your money where your mouth is, sucker. Not where mine is,” one of the women said, and everybody roared again. Marge smiled at one of the Army men who turned to see who else was enjoying all the fun they were having. He winked at Marge and made circles around his ear with his finger. He was a big sergeant with an enormous head. He had his tie loosened. “Answer,” Marge said to Sims.
“Both,” Sims said.
“Both” Marge said and shook her head. “Boy, you’ve got this test figured out. That’s an extra five points. Neither would’ve taken points off, incidentally. Ten for me. Fifteen for you.” She entered the numbers. “If there weren’t twenty taken off yours right from the start, you’d live longer by a long shot.” She folded the book and stuck it down between the seat cushions, and squeezed Sims’s arm to her. “Unfortunately, I still live five years longer. Sorry.”
“That’s all right with me,” Sims said and sniffed.
One of the Army women got up and walked back down the aisle. She was a sergeant, too. They were all sergeants. She was wearing a green shirt and a regulation skirt and a little black tie. She was a big, shapely woman in her thirties, an ash blond with reddish cheeks and dark eyes that sparkled. She was not wearing a wedding ring, Sims also noticed. When she passed their seat she gave Marge a nice smile and gave Sims a smaller one. Sims wondered if she was the jokester. BENTON was the name on her brass name tag. SGT. BENTON. Her epaulettes had little black-and-white sergeant’s stripes snapped on them. The woman went back and entered the rest room.
“I wonder if they’re on duty,” Marge said.
“I can’t even remember the Army, now,” Sims said. “Isn’t that funny? I can’t remember anybody I was even in it with.” The toilet door clicked locked.
“You weren’t overseas. You’d remember things, then,” Marge said. “Carl had a horror movie in his head. I’ll never forget it.” Carl, Marge’s first husband, lived in Florida. Sims had met him, and they’d been friendly. Carl was a stumpy, hairy man with a huge chest, whereas Sims was taller. “Carl was in the Navy,” Marge said.
“That’s right,” Sims said. Sims himself had been stationed in Oklahoma, a hot, snaky, hellish place in the middle of a bigger hellish place he’d been glad to stay in instead of shipping out to where everybody else was going. How long ago was that, Sims thought? 1969. Long before he’d met Marge. A different life altogether.
“I’m taking a snooze pill now,” Marge said. “I worked today, unlike some people. I need a snooze.” She began fishing around inside her purse for some pills. Marge waitressed in a bar out by the airport, from nine in the morning until five. Airline people and manufacturers’ reps were her customers, and she liked that crowd. When Sims had worked, they had had the same hours, and Sims had sometimes come in the bar for lunch. But he had quit his job selling insurance, and hadn’t thought about working since then. Sims thought he’d work again, but he wasn’t a glutton for it.