As Good As Gone (9781616206000) (14 page)

SIXTEEN

Beverly stays in bed while Calvin sits on the chair. He's pulled on his Levi's, but that's as far as he's gotten. He's smoking a hand-­rolled cigarette, the sweet scent of its tobacco pushing aside the basement's smell of mildew. She considers picking up her whiskey but decides against it. She wouldn't have to drink much more to fall asleep in this bed. Besides, the liquor has already done what it was supposed to do.

“I don't want to disturb your brown study,” she says to Calvin, “but I have a question I'd like to put to you.”

“All right.”

“I probably shouldn't say anything because this just opens the door for you to make your own observations about someone's body and its features, but I couldn't help noticing”—she points to his bare torso—“that's an impressive scar on your right side.” In truth, he had plenty of smaller scars, including a nasty one across his cheek, but they were the nicks that a man in his line of work naturally accumulates. The one on his side was different, however, and she hadn't seen it so much as felt it, a rough raised surface that felt like a length of cord just under the skin.

“This?” He points to his ribs. “A souvenir from my time in the military.”

“I bet there's a story there.” She's heard enough tales told by ex-­GIs over the years to know they're seldom the stories that a woman would be interested in hearing, but she has to ask. Even another anecdote about a drunken soldier falling off a truck would be preferable to Calvin Sidey's silence.

“This came my way courtesy of a German soldier with a bayonet. But he only got the one chance and he didn't take sufficient advantage. My aim was better than his.”

“Yes? Tell me more.”

He begins to speak but seems uncertain about the decision, as if speech's victory over silence has been won by the narrowest of margins. “I've always felt sort of strange about this scar. Or what put it there. Can't say I'm fond of it exactly. But it brought me my wife and most of the good in my life.”

Beverly sits up, keeping herself covered with the sheet as she does. “Come now—you can't say something like that and then not explain yourself.”

He bends over and taps the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray at his feet. “We were in France, fighting one of those battles that was too small to have a name. We kept going back and forth, scrapping with the Krauts over a hill and a few acres of hardwoods. We were finally hand to hand among the trees. That's when I got this.” He points again to his side. “And as I said, he got paid back for his trouble . . . Anyway, of the seven of us doughboys who walked into the woods, four of us came out, and I wasn't the only one who was a might worse for wear. None of us was too sure about how to join back up with the regiment, so we decided to head off in different directions. Not the wisest course of action, but what can you expect from boys, green as grass every one of us. Maybe we all felt the way I did, that I'd do better on my own than roped in with the other three.

“I headed north, sticking to the hedgerows when I could. Caught sight of a German patrol, so I figured I was headed the wrong way. I backtracked and maybe I would've ended up in those goddamn woods where we had our skirmish, but I got so thirsty I ventured out to find some water. So though I said it was a bayonet wound that brought my wife and me together, could be it was simple thirst.

“I wasn't far from a French village—I'd been circling it for a while—but then I saw a farmhouse on the outskirts of town. And it had a well. I didn't give a damn—I set out across the field to draw myself a drink of water or get shot trying. Before either happened, a couple women came scurrying out, squawking away in French. They saw my uniform, and while the older one was trying to shoo me away, the other was motioning me to come closer.

“This was the Costallat farm, and while Monsieur Costallat and his son were off to war, his mother, wife, and daughters were working the place. They had geese, I remember, and they put up a bigger fuss than any barking dog would. Then the daughters came out to see what the commotion was about, and I reckon together they outvoted the grandmother because they were soon hustling me inside before I could make them understand all I wanted was a little water. But they kept better track of the Germans than I did—the roads were crawling with them.

“They put me down in the root cellar, and when they discovered I'd gotten myself sliced open, they insisted on trying to patch me up. The old woman seemed to have some knowledge of wounds. She might have had a husband who fought his war with a saber. Anyway she said I had to be stitched up. But she couldn't do the job, not because she didn't have the stomach for it but because her fingers were stiff and gnarly as twigs. The older daughter—that was Pauline—said she'd give it a try.

“She was the one who spoke the best English too, so there she was, trying to work the needle and thread in and out of my skin and apologizing to me every other second. I was trying to help. I was pinching the wound shut and telling her she was doing a good job, just get on with it. The mother and sister hung back, but that old grandma had her nose right in there, telling Pauline to pull the stitches tighter and get them closer together.

“But they got it done, and I thought I'd say good-­bye and thank you and hit the road. When I look back, I have to shake my head over how damn cocky I was. I was in France, but beyond that fact, I didn't have much idea of where I was. I didn't have a map. I didn't know where the Krauts were except nearby, and that I had to be told. I didn't know which direction to head in to rejoin my own army. In the end, it didn't matter. Those women wouldn't hear of me leaving, not in daylight and not without feeding me a hot meal.

“Well, the next morning there was no question of me leaving. I woke up sicker than a dog. To this day I don't know if I came down with the influenza that was cutting down as many soldiers as the bombs and bullets, or if I had an infection from that bayonet wound, or if it was both. By nightfall I was rattling with fever and chills and out of my head. The woman who went on to be my wife later told me they were so sure I was going to die they started discussing whether they would bury me there on the farm or wrap me up in a shroud and try to lug my body back to the army so I could be shipped home.

“But I was probably too young and dumb to die. I recovered, but I wasn't too quick about it. For days just climbing those cellar steps was all I could handle. I sort of lost track of time for a while there, and I'm still not sure how long I stayed at the farm. Maybe a couple weeks. I guess I don't have to tell you I had a reason for staying beyond getting my strength back.”

Here's a man for you, Beverly thinks. The sheets haven't even cooled, and he's yakking about his dead wife. Maybe his silence wasn't so bad. Yet she wants him to go on. She's seen more softness in him telling the tale of his scars than when he was braced above her in bed.

“That's when it happened?” Beverly asks. “You and Pauline?”

Calvin casts a baleful eye in her direction, and Beverly thinks, Oh God, now I've done it; I've broken the spell. I'm allowed to moan in his ear, but I'm not worthy of speaking her name.

In another moment, however, he continues with his story, though Beverly thinks she detects a slight alteration in his tone: His voice had dropped dangerously close to his heart, and now he lifts it back up again.

“When it came time for me to try to rejoin the troops, a good portion of the Allied army was waiting just over the hill, and the German forces were hightailing it back to their own territory. The war was petering out and soldiers on both sides were running around in every direction. My unit welcomed me back, and it wasn't long before I was back on the lines, back in the trenches. When officers on each side remembered we were still supposed to be fighting a war, bullets would commence flying and bombs would start falling again.

“When they stopped for good, and when we were told we were no longer soldiers but free men lucky to be alive, I didn't get on one of the boats headed back to America. Instead, I headed for the village of Nonsard and the Costallat farm.

“By the time I arrived, Pauline's father and brother had returned as well—the brother with only half the arm he left with—and the two of them welcomed me like they'd known me for years.
Le cowboy, le cowboy, oui, le cowboy
who lived in the cellar . . . They were a pair, I tell you. Two Frenchmen who liked their wine but wouldn't turn down a drink of whiskey if the bottle was going around.

“Anyway. The plan was Pauline and I would get married, and we'd stay and help out on the farm until we could find a place of our own. But it was Pauline's family who spoke against that idea. Stay in France where the best we could hope for was a few acres already plowed up by bombs when we could go to America where I had a brick house and the family business waiting for me? Hell, I had to come around to their reasoning myself. We were in a country that wouldn't get back on its feet for a while. So back we came. I guess you know the rest.”

Beverly gives out a low whistle. “I know some of it. I remember when the two of you came back to town. That was quite the occasion. Calvin Sidey and his French wife . . . Didn't the town put together a parade for the two of you?”

He crushes out his cigarette and glowers in her direction, but it has no effect. There must be something about lying naked in the man's bed that renders her immune to his dark looks.

“I'm not mocking you,” she says. “You must have known you were the closest thing this town had to a celebrity, and with Pauline on your arm—my goodness! What a pair the two of you made.”

“If I'd had my way,” Calvin says, “we would never have come back here.”

“You wanted to stay in France for good?”

“I did. Why—is that so hard to believe?”

“I don't know. Look at yourself. You belong here.”

Calvin's laugh reminds her of the sound of her spatula scraping at the frost buildup in her freezer. “Belong here?” he says. “I don't even live here.”

“But you did.”

He kicks at something invisible on the floor in front of him. “Well, I don't now.”

Beverly Lodge is not the sort to hold back or bite her tongue just because her inquiries might offend someone. And she doubts she'll ever have a better opportunity to ask of Calvin Sidey, Was it sorrow or murder that drove you from this town? Yet when she opens her mouth she says, “I've never been to France. What was its appeal?”

“Green fields. Trees. Hundreds of years of history everywhere you looked.”

“In other words, it wasn't Montana.”

He shrugs. “There's a hell of a lot of world out there that isn't Montana.”

“So go back to France now. What's stopping you?”

He doesn't hesitate before answering. “I don't belong there either.”

She leans toward him, still clutching the sheet to her body, although not as tightly as before. “Is it permitted for me to say I for one am glad you're here?”

At this he says nothing but grunts softly. He picks up his tobacco and papers as though he's about to roll himself another cigarette, but then he seems to think better of it. “Can I get your opinion on something that happened last night?”

Asking that question probably cost him more than taking off his pants in front of her. “Fire away,” she says.

“I don't sleep so good as I once did and last night was one of those nights. So I was sitting up late when Miss Ann came sneaking down the stairs. She sure as hell didn't expect to see me, and I suspect I fouled up some plans she might have had. There was a car parked in the alley and likely she was going out to meet someone. This seem possible to you?”

Beverly shrugs. “She's a teenager. So certainly it's possible. But I'll tell you something about that girl, if you haven't noticed already. As pretty as she is? She's got a character every bit as good.”

Calvin nods in agreement. “She didn't make much fuss.”

“Of course, if she's in love—”

“And then while I'm staring out the window I remember another summer night when something just like that happened. Back then I likely had a glass of whiskey in my hand and it was Bill I saw sneaking across the backyard. I had a pretty good idea where he was going. He'd been keeping company with those no-­good Ballard boys and he was probably going out to raise some kind of hell with them. I could have stopped him; I didn't. Instead, I told myself he was old enough to take care of himself. Now I look at Will. Not much younger than Bill was then. A boy that age—take care of himself? About the only thing they
can
manage on their own is getting into trouble. But I had my hands full with being a widower, or so I thought. Took that on as my full time occupation. And I let my boy go. Take care of himself? Jesus. I might as well have let the coyotes raise my kids.”

“It was a different world back then,” Beverly says. “We could let the rope out a little because the whole town looked out for our children. Any adult could tell any child to mind his p's and q's.”

Calvin shakes his head as if to reject any attempt to absolve him. “Well, there must have been a hell of a lot of them telling my son how to behave. He turned out fine, no thanks to me.”

He stands, takes his shirt off the chair, and something in the way he thrusts his arm into a sleeve says their conversation, and probably their time together, has come to a close.

“My, my, Mr. Sidey. Is that a cotton shirt you're wearing? Or a hair shirt?” Beverly sticks a bare leg out from under the covers and puts a foot on the cool floor. “You might as well hand me my clothes. And turn your back or cover your eyes.”

He lifts her clothes from the chair and hands them to her. “I've seen all there is to see,” he says.

“But you're looking at me with different eyes now.”