Rock Springs (15 page)

The woman looked at Sims looking at her and smiled a big smile. She was the one smoking dope, Sims thought. She'd slipped off from her friends and gotten loaded. He had smoked plenty of it in the Army. In Oklahoma. Everybody had stayed loaded all the time then. It was no different now, and no reason it should be.

“Where's your pretty wife?” the sergeant said casually when she got to Sims. She arched her brows and put her knee up on the armrest of Marge's seat. She was loaded, Sims thought. Her smile spoke volumes. She didn't know Sims from Adam.

“She's gone off to bed.”

“Why aren't you with her,” the woman asked, still smiling down over him.

“I'm not sleepy. She wanted to go to sleep,” Sims said. The woman smelled like marijuana. It was a smell he liked, but it made him nervous. He wondered what the Army people would think. Being in the Army was a business now. Businessmen didn't smoke dope.

“You two have kids?”

“No,” Sims said. “I don't like kids.” She looked down at her friends who were playing cards in two groups. “Do you?” Sims said.

“None that I know about,” the woman said. She wasn't looking at him.

“Are you a farmer?”

“No,” Sims said. “Why?”

“What else is there to do out here?” The woman's look unexpectedly turned sour. “Do you say nice things to your wife?”

“Every day,” Sims said.

“You must really be in love,” she said. “That's the coward's way out.” The woman quickly smiled. “Just kidding.” She ran her fingers back through her hair and gave her head a shake as if she was clearing her thoughts. She looked down the aisle again and seemed, Sims thought, not to want to go back down there. He looked at the name BENTON on her brass tag. It also had tiny sergeant's stripes stamped on it. Sims looked at the woman's breast underneath the tag. It was in a big brassiere and couldn't be defined well. Sims thought about his own age. Forty-two.

“Your friends are having a good time, it sounds like.”

“They're not my friends,” she said.

This time the other Army woman in the group got up and looked back where Sergeant Benton was standing beside Sims's seat. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head
in a mock disapproving way, then waved an arm in a wide wagon-train wave at Sergeant Benton. “Get back down here, Benton,” the woman shouted. “There's money to be made off these drunks.”

The other sergeants said, “Whoa!” then laughed. Another beer can popped. Cards were shuffled. The other woman was fat and short with black hair.

“They think they're your friends,” Sims said.

“Let 'em think it. I just met them tonight,” the woman said. “It's the easygoing camaraderie of the armed forces. They're all nice people, I guess. Who knows? Where're you going if you're not a farmer?”

“Minot,” Sims said.

“Which rhymes with why-not. I remember that from school. Pierre rhymes with queer.” She shook her head again and touched her palm to her forehead. She had big hands, red and tough looking. Hands that had worked. Bigger than his own hands, Sims suspected. “I feel a little light-headed,” the woman said.

“Must be the dope you smoked,” Sims said.

She grinned at Sims. “Well, do tell.” She look scandalized but wasn't scandalized at all. “You're just full of ideas, aren't you?”

“I'm a veteran myself,” Sims said.

“What of? Modern life?”

“I was in Vietnam,” Sims said. The words just popped out of his mouth. They shocked him. He didn't want them back, but they shocked him. How many people had been there, after all? He tried to guess how old Sergeant Benton was, if she might've been there herself. Thirty. Thirty-five. It was a long time ago.

“When was that?” the woman said.

“When was what?” Sims said.

“Vietnam? Was that a war or what?” She looked
disgustedly at Sims. “I don't believe you were in Vietnam. Do you know how many of you guys I've met?”

“How many?”

“Two million,” the woman said, “possibly three.”

“I was in the Navy,” Sims said.

“And you were probably on a boat that patrolled the rivers shooting blindly in the jungle day and night, and you don't want to discuss it now because of your nightmares, right?”

“I worked on an air base,” Sims said. This seemed safe to say.

“That's a new one,” Sergeant Benton said. “The nonviolent tactic.”

“What's your job in the Army?” Sims felt a big smile involuntarily crossing his face. He wished he'd never mentioned Vietnam. He wished he had that part of his life story to tell over again. He was relieved Marge wasn't here.

“I'm in intelligence,” Sergeant Benton said brazenly. “Don't I look smart?”

The fat woman stood up and faced Sergeant Benton again. “Stop harassing the civilians, Benton,” she shouted. A laugh went up.

“You look plenty smart,” Sims said. “You look great, if you ask me.” Sims realized he was still grinning and wished he weren't. He wished he'd told her to go to hell in a rickshaw.

“Well, aren't you nice?” the woman said in a voice Sims thought was vulgar. The sergeant kissed her fingertips and blew him a kiss. “Sweet dreams,” she said and walked off down the aisle to where the other soldiers were laughing and drinking.

S
ims took a walk back to the sleeping car to check on Marge. Two of the sergeants turned
and watched him leave. He heard someone chuckle and somebody say, “Gimme a break.”

When he stepped out onto the vestibule he noticed it was colder, a lot colder than Spokane. It was September the eighteenth. It could freeze tonight, he thought. Canada wasn't far north of where they were. That was not an appealing world, Sims thought. Cold and boring.

The train was coming into a station when he looked in on Marge. There was one main street that came straight up to the main tracks. The sky was cloudy in front of a big harvest moon. Down the street were red bar signs and Christmas lights strung across one intersection. Here was a place, Sims thought, you'd want to stay drunk in if you could.

Marge was asleep on top of the covers, still in her clothes. The reading light was on. She had a mystery novel open on her chest. She was dead to the world.

Sims took down the extra blanket and covered Marge up to her neck. He put the book on the window ledge and turned off the light. It was cold in the roomette. There was hardly room for him in the bed.

Out the window on the station platform he saw the big sergeant walk past, then the other Army people. He could see a green Army van waiting in a parking lot, its motor running in the chilled air. A few Indian men were standing along the wall of the station in their shirt sleeves. Two dogs sat in front of them. One of the Indians saw Sims looking out and pointed to him. Sims, leaning over Marge, waved and gave him the thumbs-up. All the Indians laughed.

The Army sergeants, seven in all, carrying their bags, walked down to the parking lot and climbed in the van. The one fat woman was with them, and the big man was giving the orders. They looked cold. Where could they be going, Sims wondered. What was out here?

A bell sounded. The train moved away before the
Army van left. Sims kept watching. The Indians all gave him the thumbs-up and laughed again. They had bottles in Sneaky-Pete sacks.

“What's happening?” Marge said. She was still asleep, but she was talking. “Where are we now?”

“Nowhere. I don't know,” Sims said softly, still leaning over her, watching the town slide by. “Everything's fine.”

“Okay,” Marge said. “That's good news.”

She went back to sleep. Sims slipped out and headed back to his seat.

It was quieter in the car now. A couple of new people had gotten on, but it seemed less smoky, the lights not as bright. Sims bought a ham sandwich and a soft drink at the snack bar and sat back in his seat and ate, watching die night go by. He thought he should've taken Marge's mystery novel. That would put him to sleep fast. He wasn't going to be able to sleep in the roomette anyway.

Out the window, a highway went along the train tracks. Trucks were running in the night. A big white Winnebago seemed to be trying to keep up with the train. Lights were on in the living quarters and children's faces at the windows. The kids were pointing toy guns at the train and bouncing up and down. Their parents were up front, invisible in the dark. Sims made a pistol with bis fingers and pointed it at the Winnebago. All the children—three of them—abruptly ducked out of sight. Suddenly the train was onto a long trestle, over a bottomless ravine, and the Winnebago was lost from view in the dark.

Sergeant Benton rose out of a seat at the far end of the car and looked back toward the rest room. She looked like she'd been asleep. She grabbed her shoulder purse and walked back toward Sims, pushing the sides of her hair up.

“What happened to your friends?” Sims said, though he knew perfectly well what had happened to them.

Sergeant Benton looked down at Sims as if she'd never seen him before. Her blouse was wrinkled. She looked dazed. It was the dope, Sims thought. He'd felt the same himself. Like a criminal.

“Nothing but bars in these towns,” the woman said vaguely. “All social life's in the bars. Where do you eat?” She shook her head and put her fingers over one eye, leaving the other looking at Sims. “What's your name?”

“Vic,” Sims said and smiled.

“Vic.” The woman stared at him. “How's your wife?”

“She's fine,” Sims said. “She's locked away in dreamland.”

“That's good. My friends left in a hurry. They were loudmouths. Especially that Ethel. She was too loud.”

“What's your name” Sims asked. He was staring at the woman's breasts again.

Sergeant Benton looked at her name tag and back at Sims. “Can I trust you?” she said. She covered her other eye and looked at Sims with the one that had been covered.

“Depends,” Sims said.

“Doris,” she said. “Wait a minute. Stay right here.”

“I'm up all night,” Sims said.

The woman went on down to the toilet and locked herself in again. Sims wondered if she'd smoke another joint. Maybe he ‘d smoke one himself this time. He hadn't been loaded in ten years. He could stand it. If Marge were here, she'd want to get loaded herself. He wondered what Pauline had on her mind tonight. He wondered if she ‘d stopped howling yet. Maybe things would get better for Pauline, Maybe she'd go back and teach school someplace, some small town in Maine, possibly, where no one knew her. Maybe Pauline was a manic depressive and needed to be on drugs.

He thought about Sergeant Benton, in the head now, washing up. His attitude toward “lifers,” which is what he
assumed she was, had always been that something was wrong with them. The women, especially. Something made them unsuited for the rest of life, made them need to be in a special category. The women were always almost pretty, yet not quite pretty. They had a loud laugh, or a moustache or enlarged pores, or some mannishness that went back to a farm experience with roughneck brothers and a cruel, strict father—something to run away from. Bad luck, really. Something somebody with a clearer oudook might just get over and turn into a strong point. Maybe he could find out what it was in Doris and treat her like a normal person, and that would make a difference.

Out the window, running along with the train, was the big white Winnebago again. The kids were in the windows, but they weren't shooting guns at him this time. They were just staring. Sims thought maybe they weren't staring at him, but at something else entirely.

Sergeant Benton came out of the toilet and this time no dope smell came out with her. She had puffed up her hair, straightened her green blouse and her tie, and put on some lipstick. She looked better, Sims thought, and he was happy for her to come back. But Sergeant Benton looked straight down the aisle past him, patted her hair again, raised her chin slightly and made no gesture to suggest she had ever known Sims was alive or on the earth at that moment. She turned and walked straight out through the door and into the next car.

Sims watched through the window glass as her blond head crossed the vestibule and disappeared through the second door into the lounge car. He felt surprised and vaguely disappointed, but it was actually better, he thought, if she didn't come back. He'd wanted her to sit down and talk—all a matter of being friendly and passing the time—but it wasn't going anyplace. Killing time led to trouble, he'd found. It even was possible Sergeant Benton was traveling with someone else, somebody asleep somewhere. Another sergeant.

A year ago, Marge had gotten sick and had had to go in the hospital for an operation. Marge had seemed fine, then suddenly she'd lost twenty pounds and gotten pale and weak, so weak she couldn't go to work—all in the space of what seemed like ten days. The doctor who examined Marge told her and Sims together that Marge had a tumor the size of an Easter egg deep under her arm, and in all likelihood it was cancerous. After a dangerous operation, she would have to undergo prolonged treatments at the end of which she would probably die anyway, though nothing was certain. Sims took a leave from his insurance job and spent every day and every night until nine in the hospital with Marge, who needed to be there two weeks just to get strong enough for the surgery.

Every night Sims kissed Marge good-bye in her bed, then drove off into the night streets alone. Sometimes he'd stop in a waffle house, eat a sandwich, read the paper and talk to the waitresses. But most of the time he would go home, fix his own sandwich, eat it standing at the sink and watch TV until he went off to sleep, usually by eleven. Sometimes he'd wake up in his chair at three a.m.

When he'd been alone at home for three weeks, he began to notice as he stood at the sink eating his sandwich and staring into the dark, that the woman in the house next door was always at her kitchen table at that time. A radio and an ashtray were on the tabletop, and as he stood and watched, she would start crying, put her head down on her bare arms and wag it back and forth as if there was something in her life, an important fact of some kind, she couldn't understand.