Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

“I swear to you, this young man’s fate will be avenged. We will never allow barbarians like the Vietcong to slaughter and wound our troops. The anti-American crowd says that we should stop ‘carpet-bombing,’ that we’re killing too many innocent Vietnamese. What they’re too stupid to realize is that there is no such thing as an innocent Vietnamese. Young or old, they all have one thing in common: they hate Americans — we went there to help them, after all — and won’t be happy until we’re all dead.”

A funny thing happened to the ear-shattering applause that should’ve followed such a red meat line. Maybe it was because the workers were holding hot dogs or burgers or soft drinks and couldn’t manipulate their hands to make the resounding noise O’Shay was used to. But even the poor kid in the wheelchair didn’t show much outward enthusiasm for O’Shay’s psycho remarks. Even if the kid was pro-war, he’d been there and seen a good number of innocent Vietnamese.

I got up and walked over to the TV and clipped it off.

Mary came back with an ice-cold bottle of Hamm’s for me. She’d been upstairs with the kids. I’d tried it, but given my mood I wasn’t much company. I did get an especially wet kiss from Kate which I hadn’t earned and a compliment on my two-day-old haircut from sweet, sensible Nicole.

“Feeling any better?”

“Afraid not. Thanks for putting up with me.” She had brought a can of 7UP along for herself. She curled up beside me on the couch. “Is it Karen you’re feeling bad for?”

“It’s everything. Foster’s obsession with Will and Anders getting off on a murder charge and Karen, sure, of course. I don’t know how she’ll handle it.”

Mary kissed me on the cheek and took my hand. “How about we just sit here and try to relax?”

For the next hour we watched a rerun of The Untouchables . As much as I liked the show occasionally, I never understood the American public’s fondness for gangster lore. Predators who prey on weak and defenseless people didn’t exactly make me want to spend much time with them, especially when they were as stupid as most gangsters are. Cunning, yes, but most of them — with the exception of the grand eccentric Bugsy Siegel — don’t make for riveting drama. Unless you’re into bloodbaths. I’d graced Mary with this sour speech a few times before. She deserved to be spared tonight.

When the call came, I was just about to head for home.

“It’s Karen, Sam. Will must have decided to tell her about this April tonight. She just keeps sobbing and sobbing. You really need to go over there.”

I went.

Karen greeted me in a wrinkled — Karen in something wrinkled! — white blouse and red walking shorts. In her left hand was a Chesterfield and in her right a very dark drink. It was now ten minutes after nine.

“I didn’t expect you to come over.”

“Mary’s worried about you and so am I.”

Her eyes were reddened from crying but she was apparently more in control of herself than she’d been on the phone with Mary. “I haven’t seen Peggy Ann in two days. I just don’t want her to see me this way. Thank God for my sister. I’m so damned selfish.”

“Yeah, that’s you. Selfish.”

“Let me get you a beer.”

There were at least two ashtrays overflowing. There was a water ring from a glass on the mahogany coffee table. A blue-covered throw pillow had fallen on the floor. A section of the newspaper hung from the phone stand. In a fair number of homes this would be normal everyday life. But in Karen’s case this signaled breakdown.

After handing me my bottle of Hamm’s, she walked over to the couch and sat down. I admired her most excellent legs and waited for her to talk.

She began by patting a small stack of papers next to her. “I’m going to try very hard not to cry.”

“Cry all you want, Karen. Seriously. You’ve helped me through some real bad nights of my own.”

“I’m sick of crying, Sam. And now I’m sick of trying to save this marriage.”

So he had told her.

“I went to see him tonight and he acted like everything was fine. I know you were there earlier. Anyway, by the time I left there he was almost like his old self.”

So he hadn’t told her.

“Then I got home and I made the mistake of going in his den again. Since I found those letters I’ve become compulsive about it. It’s as if I’ve conditioned myself to distrust him. As far as I know, he was faithful to me all the time we were married up until he got back from Vietnam. Maybe he’s ‘acting out,’ as the man at the VA told us. I didn’t find anything in his den tonight but when I looked in the front closet I saw this valise I bought him for his birthday a few years ago. It was leaning against the wall so I picked it up.”

She paused to sit up very straight and to take a deep, deep breath. Then she picked up the sheaf of papers. “He has a new girlfriend. I shouldn’t say girlfriend — he tells her he wants to marry her.”

I wanted to hate him but I couldn’t. The war had destroyed him. The old Will, the good, compassionate, clear-thinking Will had been killed along with the little girl his bullets had ripped apart.

She held them out to me. “Please take these, will you, Sam? Read them. See how far gone he is.”

I knew what I’d find in the papers. April. But I had no idea how I’d respond.

I got them all right and I came back and sat down and put them in my lap all right but I didn’t read them. Not right away. Because when I did read them she was going to ask me if he’d said anything about the woman he was writing to. And if I lied to her and she later found out that I’d lied to her she would never trust me again.

She lighted anther cigarette but it took three angry little attempts to make her silver lighter light. But it wasn’t the lighter that wasn’t doing well, it was her.

“Read the one on top, Sam. Even when we were first going out he didn’t say things like that to me.”

Now I lighted a cigarette. It took me two matches.

I lifted the top white sheet of typing paper and read the first paragraph.

You’re my first thought in the morning and my last at night. At first you were only my heart, but now you are my soul as well.

I had the semi-serious idea that he’d found an article or even a little paperback that listed all the things a love song should contain.

And it went on that way for the entire page. If there was a romantic cliché he missed, I couldn’t find it. I tried not to think, cliché or no cliché, of the effect all the cornball language would have on poor Karen.

I raised my head and when our eyes met, I shook my head. She started crying then.

“Read a few more. See what I’m up against.”

“Oh, I think I’ve got the idea here good enough, Karen.”

Crying more now. “Please just read a few more. Look how much he loves her.”

“You’re punishing yourself, Karen. I don’t want to help you.”

“Just get to the one where he says he wants to have children. Children — I don’t know how he could even think of such a thing. Isn’t Peggy Ann enough for him?”

The children reference was not in the next letter nor the next one nor the next one. But there in the middle of the following one was that word — “children” — and it might as well have been in neon. Yup, he and April would have a whole passel of wee ones and they would live somewhere over the rainbow and speak only in the language of the worst romance novels. And their wee ones would speak the same language, too, and in time have their own passel of treacle-speaking wee ones. What he was outlining was the hammiest Broadway musical ever created.