Rock Springs (14 page)

“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.

“I'll come join you in a little while,” Sims said. “I'm not sleepy yet. I'll have another one of these, though.” He drank the last of his gin from his plastic cup and jiggled the ice cubes.

“Who's counting?” Marge smiled. She had a pill in her hand, but she took a leather-bound glass flask out of her purse and poured Sims some gin while he jiggled the ice.

“Perfect. It'll make me sleepy,” Sims said.

Marge put her pill in her mouth. “Snoozeroosky,” she said, and washed it down with the rest of her drink. “Don't be Mr. Night Owl.” She reached and kissed Sims on the cheek. “There's a pretty girl in the sleeping car who loves you. She's waiting for you.”

“I'll keep that in mind,” Sims said and smiled. He reached across and kissed Marge and patted her shoulder.

“Tomorrow'll be fine. Don't brood,” Marge said.

“I wasn't even thinking about it.”

“Nothing's normal, right? That's just a concept.”

“Nothing I've seen yet,” Sims said.

“Just a figure of the mind, right?” Marge smiled, then went off down the aisle toward the sleeper.

The Army people at the front of the car all laughed again, this time not so loud, and two of them—there were eight or so—turned and watched Marge go back down the aisle toward the sleeping car. One of these two was the big guy. The big guy looked at Marge, then at Sims, then turned back around. Sims thought they were talking about the woman in the rest room, telling something on her she wouldn't like to hear. “Oh, you guys. Jesus,” the remaining woman said. “You guys are just awful. I mean, really. You're
awful
.”

All the worry was about Marge's sister, Pauline, who was currendy in a mental health unit somewhere in Minot—probably, Sims thought, in a straitjacket, tied to a wall, tranquilized out of her brain. Pauline was younger than Marge, two years younger, and she was a hippie. Once, years ago, she had taught school in Seattle. That had been three husbands back. Now she lived with a Sioux Indian who made metal sculptures from car parts on a reservation outside of Minot. Dan was his name. Pauline had changed her own name to an Indian word that sounded like Monica. Pauline was also a Scientologist and talked all the time about “getting clear.” She talked all the time, anyway.

At four o'clock yesterday morning Pauline had called up in a wild state of mind. They had both been asleep. The police had come and gotten Dan, she said, and arrested him for embezzling money using stolen cars. The F.B.I., too, she said. Dan was in jail down in Bismarck now. She said she knew nothing about any of it. She was there in the house with Dan's dog, Eduardo, and the doors broken in from when the F.B.I, had showed up with axes.

“Do you want this dog, Victor?” Pauline had said to Sims on the phone.

“No. Not now,” Sims had said from his bed. “Try to calm down, Pauline.”

“Will you want it later, then?” Pauline said. He could tell she was spinning.

“I don't think so. I doubt it.”

“It'll sit with its paw up. Dan taught it that. Otherwise it's useless. It has nightmares.”

“Are you all right, honey?” Marge said from the kitchen phone.

“Sure, I'm fine. Yeah.” Sims could hear an ice cube tinkle. A breath of cigarette smoke blown into the receiver. “I'll miss him, but he's a loser. A self-made man. I'm just sorry I gave up my teaching job. I'm going back to Seattle in two hours.”

“What's there,” Marge asked.

“Plenty,” Pauline said. “I'm dropping Eduardo off at the pound first, though, if you don't want him.”

“No thanks,” Sims said. Pauline had not taught school in ten years.

“He's sitting here with his idiot paw raised. I won't miss that part.”

“Maybe now's not the best time to leave Dan,” Sims said. “He's had some bad luck.” Sims had had his eyes closed. He opened them. The clock said 4:12
A.M.
He could see the yellow light down the hall in the kitchen.

“He broke my dreams,” Pauline said. “The Indian chief.”

“Don't be a martyr, hon,” Marge said. “Tell her that, Vic.”

“You're not going to make it, acting this way,” Sims said. He wished he could go back to sleep.

“I remember you,” Pauline said.

“It's Victor,” Marge said.

“I know who it is,” Pauline said. “I want out of this. I'm getting the fuck out of this. Do you know how it feels to have F.B.I, agents wearing fucking flak jackets, chopping in your bedroom with fire axes?”

“How?” Sims said.

“Weird, that's how. Lights. Machine guns. Loudspeakers. It was like a movie set. I'm just sorry” Pauline dropped the receiver and picked it up again. “Oh shit,” Sims heard her say. “There it goes.” She was starting to cry. Pauline gave out a long, wailing moan that sounded like a dog howling.

“Monica?” Marge said. Marge was calling Pauline by her Indian name now. “Get hold of yourself, sweetheart. Talk to her again, Vic.”

“There's no reason to think Dan's a criminal,” Sims said. “No reason at all. The government harasses Indians all the time.” Pauline was wailing.

“I'm going to kill myself,” Pauline said. “Right now, too.”

“Talk to her, Victor,” Marge said from the kitchen, “I'm calling 911.”

“Try to calm down, Monica,” Sims had said from his bed. He heard Marge running out the back door, headed for the Krukows next door. Death was not an idle notion to Pauline, he knew that. Pauline had taken an overdose once, back in the old wild days, just to make good on a threat. “Monica,” Sims had said. “This'll be all right. Pet the dog. Try
to calm down.” Pauline was still wailing. Then suddenly the connection was broken, and Sims was left alone in bed with the phone on his chest, staring down the empty hall where the light was on but no one was there.

When the police got to Pauline and Dan's house it was an hour later. Pauline was sitting by the phone. She had cut her wrists with a knife and bled all over the dog. The policeman who called said she had not hit a vein and couldn't have bled to death in a week. But she needed to calm down. Pauline was under arrest, he said, but she'd be turned loose in two days. He suggested Marge come out and visit her.

Sims had always been attracted to Pauline. She and Marge had been wild girls together. Drugs. Overland drives at all hours. New men. They had had imagination for wildness. They were both divorced; both small, delicate women with dark, quick eyes. They were not twins, but they looked alike, though Marge was prettier.

The first time he had seen Pauline was at a party in Spokane. Everyone was drunk or drugged. He was sitting on a couch talking to some people. Through a door to the kitchen he could see a man pressed against a woman, feeling her breast. The man pulled down the front of the woman's sundress, exposed both breasts and kissed them; the woman was holding on to the man's crotch and massaging it. Sims understood they thought no one could see them. But when the woman suddenly opened her eyes, she looked straight at Sims and smiled. She was still holding the man's dick. Sims thought it was the most inflamed look he had ever seen. His heart had raced, and a feeling had come over him like being in a car going down a hill out of control in the dark. It was Pauline.

Later that winter he walked into a bedroom at another party to get his coat, and found Pauline naked on a bed fucking a man who was naked himself. It had not been the
same man he'd seen the first time. Later still, at another party, he had asked Pauline to go out to dinner with him. They had gone, first, out on a twilight rowboat ride on a lake in town, but Pauline had gotten cold and refused to talk to him anymore, and he had taken her home early. When he met Marge, sometime later, he had at first thought Marge was Pauline. And when Marge later introduced Pauline to Sims, Pauline didn't seem to remember him at all, something he was relieved about.

S
ims heard the rest-room door click behind him, and suddenly he smelled marijuana. The Army crew was still yakking up front, but somebody not far away was smoking reefer. It was a smell he didn't smell often, and hadn't for a long time. A hot, sweet, thick smell. Who was having a joint right on the train? Train travel had changed since the last time he'd done it, he guessed. He turned around to see if he could find the doper, and saw the woman sergeant coming back up the aisle. She was straightening her blouse as if she'd taken it off in the rest room, and was brushing down the front of her skirt.