The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (64 page)

“Oh, he's really
blind,
isn't he?” Cianci said, smiling. He looked very small, very blond and pale in his white duck uniform.

“Thought I tol' you keep outa my
way
.”

Coyne told Lynch to take it easy, and Garvey said, “You better leave, Cianci,” but Cianci didn't move.

Lynch's eyes were slits. “Get that gah damn smile off your face and get
outa
here! Get
outa
here, you fairy bastard!”

“Oh, now, Lynch,” Cianci said, taking a step forward, “you don't mean that.”

Before they could grab his arms Lynch whipped out of the coat sleeves, sprang across the floor and drove his big right fist into Cianci's neck, just under the ear. Cianci crumpled quickly but Lynch's left caught him in the face before he sprawled to the floor. Coyne had one of Lynch's arms now and Garvey seized the other, pulling back on it with all his strength. In the unfamiliar shock of effort, Garvey's arms and shoulders burned; the muscles fluttered in his thin, invalid's legs. Lynch's voice was a high child's whimper: “Lemme go, lemme go—I'll kill 'im, I'll kill 'im—”

Cianci groped to his feet, holding his red-blotched face, just as the blood began to course from his nose and dribble on his uniform. “For Christ's sake, get
out
!” Garvey yelled, but he stood there, absurdly smiling through the blood, and said, “Let him go. It's all right.” It couldn't have been that he wanted to fight—it seemed almost that he wanted to be hurt. Lynch advanced on him with a terrible struggling slowness, locked against Garvey and Coyne but pulling them along, while Garvey's slippers slid and scrabbled on the tiles.

“Let him go,” Cianci said again.

Lynch broke from Garvey first, freeing his arm with a lunge that sent Garvey's glasses flying, and then he twisted away from Coyne. Whimpering and sobbing for breath, he seized Cianci's arm, wrenched it, swung him around like a flail and sent him crashing against the wall. Then he fell on him, sank one knee into his belly and both blunt thumbs into his throat. They had just hauled him off when Mrs. Fosdick burst in, wide-eyed, and said, “What's going on here?”

For an instant they all froze under her shocked eyes, Cianci half-risen against the tile wall, Lynch squatting spread-eagle in the arms of Garvey and Coyne. Then Coyne sat down, Garvey picked up his broken glasses, and Lynch stumbled over to one of the toilets and began to vomit. “I've got to have a doctor,” Cianci said in a tight, breathless voice. “I think my arm is broken.”

It was all over, then. The rest of the night, or morning, fell into the inevitable sequence of aftermath: the attendants taking Cianci away to the emergency ward; Mrs. Fosdick stumping around with her flashlight, ordering them to bed and then hurrying back to put it all into the Report; the hours of lying there in the dark—Lynch, lying quietly with a Kleenex wrapped around his raw knuckles and the red coal of a cigarette illuminating his eyes: “I'm sorry about the glasses, Frank”— and finally the turning on of the ward lights at seven o'clock, and Costello, scrubbing his eyes and looking around with a sleepy grin: “Jesus, what was all that commotion last night?” Breakfast, then, and the fresh starch, the early-morning efficiency of Miss Baldridge: “Lynch, that was the most disgusting exhibition I've ever heard of. You'd better start packing your things, because you can be sure the doctor will want you out of here and on the bus before noon.”

But Lynch was not kicked out, to everyone's surprise. The doctor gave him a severe dressing-down, that was all, and then went into a conference with the other doctors, after which Lynch was removed from the ward and placed in one of the quiet-rooms—single-bed cubicles reserved for the very sick—to spend the remaining weeks until he would be taken to surgery. Miss Baldridge was plainly dumbfounded, and assured everyone that Lynch had been inordinately lucky, that it was only because his case was of unusual interest to the surgeons, which was probably true. For days there were conflicting rumors on what had become of Cianci, the most authoritative being that his arm had been sprained, not broken, and that after treatment he had been returned to duty on a different ward. Coyne and Garvey were cleared from the Report by Lynch's testimony that both had come into the latrine only after the trouble began, though Coyne made sure that everyone in the ward knew the real story, which he told with relish long after the men had stopped asking to hear about it.

Soon, except for the fact that Lynch was gone, everything seemed just about the same in the ward. At least that was the way Garvey described it to Lynch whenever he went to the quiet-room to visit him.

“How's everything in the ward?” Lynch would ask, lying very flat and still. He seemed to lie like that for hours in his tiny room, reading nothing, looking at nothing, talking to no one except during these brief, awkward visits. All he apparently did was finger the cord of the venetian blind that dangled near his pillow; it was stained a sweaty gray from handling.

“Oh, just the same, Tom,” Garvey would say. “Same dull business. Got a new man in your bed, an elderly guy. Coyne's going out a lot lately; three nights so far this week.”

“How about Costello? Still got that shack job of his? Car still come around for him all the time?”

“Seems that way. Nothing's really changed since you left.”

And that, broadly, was the truth, since no one but Garvey could see any connection between Lynch's departure and the fact that Costello had begun hogging the portable telephone again. Only Garvey, lying across the aisle and listening, could find it significant that he began each call by reciting a New Jersey telephone number ending in
J,
and that his half of the ensuing conversation, more careless and confident than before, contained sentences like “Be around tonight, honey?” and “Sure I do, baby; you know I do.” Lover Boy, they called him.

AT FIRST THEY
were grotesque shapes, nothing more. Then they became drops of acid, cutting the scum of his thick, dreamless sleep. Finally he knew they were words, but they carried no meaning.

“Cramer,” Murphy was saying. “Let's go, Cramer, wake up. Let's go, Cramer.”

Through sleepy paste in his mouth he swore at Murphy. Then the wind hit him, blue-cold as Murphy pulled the raincoat away from his face and chest.

“You sure like to sleep, don't you, kid.” Murphy was looking at him in that faintly derisive way.

Cramer was awake, moistening the roof of his mouth. “All right,” he said. “All right, I'm all right now.” Squirming, he sat up against the dirt wall of the hole slowly, like an old man. His cold legs sprawled out, cramped in their mud-caked pants. He pressed his eyes, then lifted the helmet and scratched his scalp, and the roots of his matted hair were sore. Everything was blue and gray. Cramer dug for a cigarette, embarrassed at having been hard to wake up again. “Go ahead and get some sleep, Murphy,” he said. “I'm awake now.”

“No, I'll stay awake too,” Murphy said. “Six o'clock. Light.”

Cramer wanted to say, “All right, then, you stay awake and I'll go back to sleep.” Instead he let his shivering come out in a shuddering noise and said, “Christ, it's cold.”

It was in Germany, in the Ruhr. It was spring, and warm enough to make you sweat as you walked in the afternoon, but still cold at night and in the early morning. Still too cold for a raincoat in a hole.

They stared toward where the enemy was supposed to be. Nothing to see; only a dark area that was the plowed field and then a light one that was the mist.

“They threw in a couple about a half hour ago,” Murphy was saying. “Way the hell off, over to the left. Ours have been going over right along; don't know why they've quit now. You slept through the whole works.” Then he said, “Don't you ever clean that?” and he was looking, in the pale light, at Cramer's rifle. “Bet the son of a bitch won't fire.”

Cramer said he would clean it, and he almost said for Christ's sake lay off. It was better that he didn't, for Murphy would have answered something about only trying to help you, kid. And anyway, Murphy was right.

“Might as well make some coffee,” Murphy said, cramming dirty hands into his pockets. “Smoke won't show in this mist.”

Cramer found a can of coffee powder, and they both fumbled with clammy web-equipment for their cups and canteens. Murphy scraped out a hollow in the dirt between his boots and put a K-ration box there. He fit it, and they held their cups over the slow, crawling flame.

In a little while they were comfortable, swallowing coffee and smoking, shivering when fingers of the first yellow sunlight caressed their shoulders and necks. The grayness had gone now; things had color. Trees were pencil sketches on the lavender mist. Murphy said he hoped they wouldn't have to move out right away, and Cramer agreed. That was when they heard the bells; church bells, thin and feminine in tone, quavering as the wind changed. A mile, maybe two miles to the rear.

“Listen,” Murphy said quietly. “Don't that sound nice?” That was the word. Nice. Round and dirty, Murphy's face was relaxed now. His lips bore two black parallel lines, marking the place where the mouth closed when Murphy made it firm. Between the lines the skin was pink and moist; and these inner lips, Cramer had noticed, were the only part of a face that always stayed clean. Except the eyes.

“My brother and me used to pull the bells every Sunday at home,” Murphy said. “When we was kids, I mean. Used to get half a dollar apiece for it. Son of a bitch, if that don't sound just the same.”

Listening, they sat smiling shyly at each other. Church bells on misty mornings were things you forgot sometimes, like fragile china cups and women's hands. When you remembered them you smiled shyly, mostly because you didn't know what else to do.

“Must be back in that town we came through yesterday,” Cramer said. “Seems funny they'd be ringing church bells there.”

Murphy said it did seem funny, and then it happened. The eyes got big, and when the voice came it was small, intense, not Murphy's voice at all. “Reckon the war's over?” Something fluttered down Cramer's spine. “By God, Murphy. By God, it makes sense. It makes sense, all right.”

“Damned if it don't,” Murphy said, and they gaped at each other, starting to grin; wanting to laugh and shout, to get out and run.

“Son of a bitch,” Murphy said.

Cramer heard his own voice, high and babbling: “That could be why the artillery stopped.”

Could it be this easy? Could it happen this way? Would the message come down from headquarters? Would Battalion get it from Regiment? Would Francetti, the platoon runner, come stumbling out across this plowed field with the news? Francetti, waving his pudgy arms and screaming, “Hey, you guys! Come on back! It's all over! It's all over, you guys!” Crazy. Crazy. But why not?

“By God, Murphy, do you think so?”

“Watch for flares,” Murphy said. “They might shoot flares.”

“Yeah, that's an idea, they might shoot flares.”

They could see nothing, hear nothing except the faint, silver monotony of the bells. Remember this. Remember every second of it. Remember Murphy's face and the hole and the canteens and the mist. Keep it all.

Watch for flares.

Remember the date. March something. No, April. April something, 1945. What did Meyers say the other day? Day before yesterday? Meyers told you the date then. He said, “What do you know, this is Good—”

Cramer swallowed, then looked at Murphy quickly. “Wait a minute wait a minute. We're wrong.” He watched Murphy's smile grow limp as he told him. “Meyers. Remember what Meyers said about Good Friday? This is Easter Sunday, Murph.”

Murphy eased himself back against the side of the hole. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah, sure. That's right.”

Cramer swallowed again and said, “Kraut civilians probably going to church back there.”

Murphy's lips came together in a single black line, and he was quiet for a while. Then, stubbing his cigarette in the dirt, he said, “Son of a bitch. Easter Sunday.”

WHEN SHE
'
D PACKED
up the remains of the picnic lunch and got the twins settled in their carriage, Betty Meyers looked around for Bobby, her five-year-old. Squinting against the sun, she finally saw him way up the beach, playing with some French kids. “Bobby!” she yelled, but he pretended not to hear and she started off to get him, slow with weariness, feeling the alien stares of men and girls who lay all but naked on the sand.

When Bobby saw her coming he took off, and she had to run clumsily after him, knowing she must look a sight with the heavy flesh wobbling in her playsuit. Finally she caught him and gave him a couple of good hard smacks. He set up an awful howl but he came along nicely enough, once she had a grip on his wrist. The French kids he'd been playing with backed away shyly, holding their hands to their mouths. She hated to hit him—it always made her feel like hell afterwards—but he'd been asking for it all afternoon. He stopped crying by the time they got back on the promenade—still snuffling, but she could tell the worst was over. “All right, now listen,” she said. “Do you have to go? Because if you do, speak up now. I don't want you bothering me all the way home.
Do
you?”

“No, Ma.”

“All right then. Come on.” Pushing the twins' carriage, with Bobby walking beside her, she began the long trip back to the apartment, past the palm trees and sidewalk cafés, past the little bars around the yacht basin with their signs saying
WELCOME U.S. NAVY AND MARINES
.