“It was all our fault,” Tucker says swiftly. “I didn’t see him on the road.”
Eddie watches his mother nervously. Over her dress, she wears a lumpy burlap satchel. She lifts it over her head and silently hands it to her son.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” he says. “I was looking but I didn’t find—”
She cuts him off.
“You hurt?”
“Not much.”
“You say sorry?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then don’t just stand there, you can hear the cow needs milking.”
Eddie ducks away and Tucker can tell he’s relieved to be given familiar chores. With Eddie gone, the discomfort in the room is even greater. The soup boils over the lid of the pot. Cora steps to the stove, covers her bare hands with the hem of her dress, and slides the pot to the back where the iron is cooler.
“Eddie hadn’t eaten all day,” Sonia explains. “We weren’t sure when you’d be back. I found a few potatoes in your pantry. Some ham—.”
“Thank you for tending him,” Cora says politely. “Will you stay to supper?”
Over just a few hours Tucker had come to think of this as Eddie’s house. He felt comfortable in Eddie’s house, as if it could have been his own. But Mrs. Alley’s formality knocks him back to intruder. He wishes he hadn’t brought the suitcase and applejack up with the projector. He was worried they wouldn’t be safe in the car, but now they feel presumptuous sitting outside in the breezeway.
“That would be too kind,” he says.
“What can I do to help?” Sonia asks.
“Maybe I could know your names?”
Hasty introductions are made and the story told of how they came to be here. As if she might doubt him, Tucker reaches into his satchel and pulls out their Esso map with his notes and distances. They are legitimate. They are with the government.
For her part, Cora Alley is unconcerned about their credentials. She washes her hands at the running sink and begins the supper preparations, measuring flour and lard enough for four biscuits, rolling and slicing the dough. After a while, Eddie returns, struggling with a metal bucket of milk, which Cora skims and sets on the table. Without being told, Sonia takes plates from the shelf and sets out the knives and forks. She is like a soldier in the field, fitting herself to the work as if born to it. Tucker feels extraneous and awkward, waiting to be fed.
“Will you take a drop of brandy, Mrs. Alley?” he asks, uncorking the jug. “We bought it up the way.”
“Don’t touch the stuff,” she says. “But feel free.”
He pours himself a coffee mug and starts to pour for Sonia, but she places her hand over her cup in solidarity with Cora. So he will be the only alcoholic at the table, is that it? He considers adding Sonia’s portion to his own mug but lets not doing so be his concession.
He says, “This is a fine place you have here.”
Cora looks around at the chipped china, the busted chair, the empty corners. In the uncomfortable silence, Sonia checks the biscuits.
“You’ll have to excuse my saying it’s beautiful,” Tucker smiles. “I’ve been a slave to the city for so long, I am starved for nature.”
“Have your fill,” says Cora. “Don’t cost you.”
“Oh, but it does,” he says. “It costs me peace of mind, wanting to be in two places at once. Don’t you ever feel that, Mrs. Alley?”
Cora Alley cocks her head as if to say, Mr. Hayes, who doesn’t feel that way? Some of us are adults. Eddie slides into the chair across from Tucker. He is holding his side but doesn’t want his mother to see. Cora clears her throat and he pops up again, passing out the bowls of soup that she has ladled.
“Mr. and Mrs. Hayes are from New York City,” he tells his mother.
“They’re pretty lost then,” Cora says.
“They’re writing a book about us,” Eddie says.
“It’s a book about places,” Tucker corrects. “A big, fat book of interesting places to visit. How else are we to make Henry Ford a little richer?”
Cora sets the biscuits on the table with a crock of butter and another of sorghum molasses. She takes her seat and holds out her hands for grace. Tucker takes Cora’s in one and Sonia’s in the other. Eddie completes the circle. Tucker hasn’t said grace in years and hopes Mrs. Alley doesn’t offer him the honor. She nods to Eddie and closes her eyes.
“God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food …”
The soup is thin but flavorful, with ham and potatoes and some dried thyme Sonia found in the pantry. The low lamplight brings them all a little closer over their bowls and the kitchen is filled with the sound of scraping spoons.
“I never would have thought to season a soup like that,” says Cora.
“I hope you like it,” Sonia offers.
“It’s different,” says Cora.
Tucker takes a biscuit and slathers it with butter and syrup. He’s eaten nothing since the hard-boiled egg and he’s drunk a little too much applejack. He’s never known a woman to bake less than a dozen biscuits. He longs for another.
“When do you return to New York?” Cora asks politely.
“Maybe next year, maybe never. I’ve been drafted, ma’am.”
“Your number got picked?” Eddie asks excitedly.
“It did.”
“My daddy’s didn’t get picked,” he says.
“A lot of men up this way was hoping to get drafted,” Cora says in her quiet voice. “The pay is good.”
“They are welcome to my spot,” says Tucker.
“You don’t believe in serving your country?” she asks. She is surprised not that a man would feel it, but that he would admit it.
“It’s hell what’s going on over there, but no one has attacked us,” Tucker says. “Our country has never had a peacetime draft. If the president feels entitled to pluck men out of their lives over a war we’re not even fighting yet, and pay them less than they were being paid in their old jobs, why not draft them for the munitions plants? And for the utility services? Why not draft men to be firemen and policemen, and just assign them jobs like Stalin does, or Hitler?”
“But they’ve seen U-boats off Virginia Beach,” Cora says.
“Have they? They scare us when it suits them. They spent the last miserable decade trying to calm us down and now everything is a great emergency. I don’t want to die because the rich bastards of the world weren’t happy with how things got divided up after the last war.”
Eddie’s eyes are wide. Cora doesn’t know where to look. Sonia is suddenly very somber, as if this conversation in this little kitchen has the power to affect the larger world.
“I’ve lived in Berlin,” she says. “Hitler won’t stop unless someone makes him stop.”
“Hitler is a bully. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last, he’s just the punch line of a bad joke that sooner or later we’ll be telling here.”
Cora pushes back her chair, rising from the table. Tucker and Eddie rise, too.
“Let me get your bed ready,” she says.
“Oh no, we can’t impose—” Tucker begins. She interrupts him.
“You won’t get far this time of night,” she says, cutting through the pretense. “Besides, you brought up your suitcase.”
Tucker blushes but says nothing. Cora nods to her son. “Eddie, you clear the table.”
Excusing herself, Cora steps across the breezeway. Eddie collects the bowls, pouring Cora’s remaining soup back into the pot. He covers it with a towel to save for tomorrow. Tucker’s shame creeps higher at how much he ate. He lowers his voice so that Eddie won’t hear.
“I wish I had some money to leave,” he says.
“She wouldn’t take it.”
“I’m not a coward, Sonia,” he says.
“I know you’re not a coward,” she replies. “You’d be happier if you were.”
“First death?” he says a little louder, challenging her.
“Tucker—” she wa
rns, glancing back at Eddie. He is not going to back down, and so she answers. “My great-aunt Miriam. She was ninety-two.”
“My father,” Tucker retorts. “Only his body didn’t have the good grace to follow for another twenty years. Women don’t know the first thing about war. You’re never called on to kill.”
Eddie rinses the bowls under the lead pipe, trying to make as little noise as possible. Tucker can see he doesn’t want to miss a word. He drains the rest of his mug and crosses to the sink.
“Let me do that,” he says, taking over. “You’ve had a long day.”
“Do you think the war’ll still be going on when I’m old enough to go?” Eddie asks. Tucker frowns as he takes the still greasy bowl and wipes it dry.
“I’m sure of it,” he says. “I tell you what, Eddie. I’ll make you a deal. Get yourself grown, find your way to the city, and if the world is still standing, I’ll introduce you to the New York Yankees.”
“You know players for the Yankees?” Eddie asks in awe.
“Only the ones I’ve hit with my car. But that’s a good ten or fifteen of them.”
The boy looks down, embarrassed, and Tucker regrets the joke.
“Really, kid,” he says, as serious as he can manage. “I don’t hit and run. I’m yours for life.”
* * *
In the front parlor, Cora has removed the seat cushion from the divan, wrapped it tightly in a patched sheet, and put it on the floor. She has taken the pillows from her own bed and laid over them a square of embroidered linen that looks to be a tablecloth. Together it is a makeshift mattress. On the wooden mantle above the fireplace, she has placed a hurricane lamp to light the room.
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to use the outhouse in back,” she says. “There’s a bucket here by the door for washing. And a little bit of soap.”
“We’ll be fine, Mrs. Alley,” Sonia says. “Please don’t trouble yourself.”
“We don’t get many guests,” Cora apologizes.
“You’ve been such a gracious host,” Tucker adds. “Far more than we’ve deserved.”
Cora nods and looks shyly away. She is almost pretty when she is softened up in blushes, he thinks.
“We’ll try not to disturb you in the morning,” she says.
“No special treatment, please,” Tucker says. “We do as you do.”
When the door is shut, Sonia takes one look at the sheet, pinpricked with blood, and begins adding layers. Her trousers and shirt, socks, Tucker’s oversized jacket, a red and tan Hermès scarf she sometimes wears over her hair but now tucks tight around her neck, protecting her bare skin as much as possible.
“We should get an early start in the morning,” she says, pulling a book from the side table and dropping it on the bare floor to use as a pillow. He is embarrassed at the precautions she takes and strips to his underwear before blowing out the lamp and lying down beside her. On the other side of the wall they share with the back bedroom, he hears Cora Alley preparing for bed, feels the give and creak of their common floorboards as the springs settle under her weight. The thin yellow light leaking between her wall and theirs is extinguished and he becomes even more aware of all their bodies, discrete and in space—his, Sonia’s, the mother and son together in a shared bed—and the flow of air and night between them. He pulls Sonia tight, craving the feel of her against him, a yielding woman’s body full of the unspoken, shared complaints of minor deprivations.
“Eddie’s a special kid,” Tucker says, feeling generous and fatherly in the dark. “I’ll send him something from Fort Dix.”
“What’s so special about him?”
Tucker is surprised at her. “I’ve met lots of country kids. He’s a cut above.”
“Of course,” she says. “You wouldn’t have hit an unspecial kid.”
“What’s eating you?” he asks, trying to sound light. He moves aside the scarf and kisses the back of her neck. “Besides me?”
“Why do you make promises you have no intention of keeping?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What will you do if Eddie shows up at your door one day?”
“He won’t,” says Tucker. “And if he did, I’d help him.”
“How?”
“You’re taking this all very seriously. I’m just trying to give the kid some encouragement.”
“You’re lying to him. Kids get mean when they’re disappointed.”
“Darling,” he sighs. He is as aroused by her added clothes as he was by her striptease. His fingers slide into her trousers, reaching between her legs for that soft warm enveloping space, but she clamps her legs together tightly.
“Jesus, Tucker,” she says. “Bedbugs.”
They are too new for no, and his hand burrows deeper. He pulls her even closer and lets her feel how much he needs her.
“We could stand up?” he whispers.
Sonia rolls over so that his fingers lose their way and he is left with only the stiff evidence of his own desire, as tight and determined as she. Goddamn it, he thinks. He had Sonia all to himself before the accident. Now he feels the boy between them, and her own loss of confidence in him. Fumbling in the dark, he finds his pants and pulls them on, wishing they made the sound of a door slamming or a glass breaking instead of the soft, womanish whoosh of a tugged zipper.
“I’m going out for a smoke,” he says.
He walks out to the edge of the breezeway and releases his halfstiff cock for a pee. The moon is nearly full, rising through the break in the trees. From his front pocket he fishes out his pouch of tobacco and rolling papers, strikes a match against the wooden railing. The hens are asleep in the barn, their beaks tucked beneath their wings. He steps out and walks toward the spring plashing from the rock into the stone basin of the family’s bathing hole. They wash there in warm weather, and he envies them their freedom to stand naked in the sun.
The yard is too small to contain his restlessness and Tucker starts into the woods, finding the path down to the road. He walked it with Eddie and again with the projector and suitcase, and it, too, is becoming familiar to him. Just a week before he took the assignment, Tucker had stood in a line of men stripped nude like himself. Trembling behind the screen in the recruitment center, some shielded their penises with their hands, some stood tall and proud. When it was his turn, the draftee in line ahead of Tucker froze. He was a farm boy with wide shoulders and a faded scar across his buttocks. I won’t go. I’m against all war, he said to the confused functionary who sat at his desk doling out white induction cards. His objection triggered no surprise or wrath, but was merely absorbed by the bespectacled man, stamping cards 1-A, 4-F. The farm boy moved on as if he hadn’t spoken and it was Tucker’s turn and he wanted to repeat everything just said, I cannot kill another human being. I don’t want to die. But looking at the same blank face, he had answered instead, No, I have never had gonorrhea. No, I have never had syphilis. Yes, I am heterosexual. I am unmarried. Yes, I am fit to serve.
He could never tell this to Sonia. No woman could possibly understand the need to act against everything one believed or be called a coward. She has no idea, even, the comfort her body might provide at a time like this. If she knew, she would never withhold it.
Yes, the car. He just needs to rest his head against something plush and soft. He half-slides down the unanchored stone of the dry creek bed and comes to a large boulder formation he remembers. It is shaped like a calf bending down to drink, runoff water left in the creek bed pools there. From the calf’s left fetlock, the path veers into the denser forest; he can see the shadowy, parted entrance to it and beyond, deeper, the alien green glow of jack-o’-lantern mushrooms thriving on rotted logs. Tucker hesitates. I should go back, he thinks. It’s wrong to leave Sonia there alone. He thinks of her cheek against the sharp corner of a book, sleeping in a house with strangers, and he is swiftly ashamed of forcing himself on her, for not taking into account the stress of the circumstances, and her exhaustion, and, of course, the g
oddamned bugs. He squats down by the boulder and splashes cool green water on his face. Let it go, Tucker, he says to himself. Let her go. It feels good to be outside alone. Soon enough he will be crammed into a stifling barracks and made to march, to drop, to clean, to parade, to aim, to pivot, to shoot, to dig a grave in concert with men, and he, Tucker, a man who might get up in the middle of the night and take a walk in the woods, and let a woman go, will be lost.
The moon floats blowsy and fat in the rippled green pool as if he could scoop it up, a worm in a bottle of tequila, and swallow it. He is so thirsty. Tucker drinks, the flinty water cold on his lips. He looks more like an animal, he decides, than a man. A milky beast with flaring nostrils and the rolling eyes of a horse, white like the moon, a creature of the full moon and the glowing mushrooms. Where do other men find the belief in their own righteousness, he wonders, when all he wants to do is run away? Reflected back, he looks to himself like Pegasus sprung from the blood of that which turns men to stone and he feels like he could actually be a beast, rising up and running, and then Tucker realizes that he is running, just by virtue of wanting to. He hears his feet on the forest path, the gallop of hooves. The wind is in his hair as he makes straight for the dark wood, which opens, just a slit for him. Tucker feels weightless almost, leaping tree roots and stammering gullies, a hobo jumping trains, an atom fissioning into starlight, letting go of thought, he thinks, and then thought is snuffed. And as his thoughts go, he is almost imperceptibly aware of a weight upon his back, a gentle pressure, then a hand in his hair. The pressure doesn’t slow him, it is not heavy, just present, and revives him like a second wind, lengthening his stride, stretching out. Against his flanks, he feels the press of thighs solid and muscular commanding him forward, he is not imagining it, he feels it skin to skin, smells it on the cold mist around him, fresh, empty shelled beans, fresh dug earth. He thought he was running before, but now, under the spell of this new weight, he sees his previous steps were slow and stumbling, still a man’s steps, the motion of a man’s thoughts. Under her hand—he knows it is a her, he feels the lean and the touch of her—he works himself into a rocking, rhythmic canter which is itself flesh breaking like a wave, and soon those tortured human associations are no more than the wind behind him and Tucker surrenders to the pleasure of being ridden, feeling the fluidity of horse and rider, savoring the weight as if it were all that kept him earthbound and connected to life itself.