David Wiltse - Into The Fire

Or than any other man she knew, for that matter. The steam filled the entire motel room. Pegeen threw her feet up on the bed and relaxed into the pillow. The spot on her cheek where he had touched her still burned, but she knew that was just her imagination.

In the speckled shade of a dying fir, Cooper squatted and studied the restaurant across the highway. The tree was a victim of acid rain, and half of its needles had turned brown and sere, mottling the canopy with scrofulous patches like a dog with mange. Cooper eyed the restaurant, his fingers idly toying with the dead needles that littered the ground around him, raking them into little piles while his mind raced, trying to figure out his situation. They had given him another application, even though Cooper said he'd already filled one out in the other town, even though he was wearing the striped uniform jacket of the restaurant chain to prove he'd worked there. Still, they wanted another application, as if they didn't believe him, or were trying to trick him, trying to make him look stupid. Cooper had glanced at the application and then at the manager who handed it to him. His name tag said he was Ted. Cooper thought of saying, here Ted, here's your head, then breaking the little clerk's neck for him and stuffing the application in the hole.

Instead, he had taken the application across the street, where he could be in the shade and think what to do. Last time, of course, he had made that girl fill out the form for him. Cooper had forgotten exactly how he had made her do it, but he remembered that it worked, he had gotten the job. He remembered other things about the girl, too.

He remembered how she had let him drive her car and how she had surprised him while he was driving and then how she had taken him into the woods and surprised him some more. She had liked him, he knew that.

She told him so and she certainly acted like it, or at least as if she liked part of him. She had told him she loved the way he howled.

"Most men don't say nothing, they don't make a sound, not a sound. You just throw your head back and hoot like an Indian on the warpath. That's a nice thing, Coop. Men aren't usually very good at enjoying themselves.

He remembered that he had howled a lot in the woods, maybe exaggerating it a little bit for her sake. She laughed every time he did, but not a mean laugh; she wasn't making fun of him.

He wished he could see her now. He would trick her into filling out the application again and this time, afterward, when they got in her car, maybe he'd surprise her.

There was something about her he had forgotten, he knew that, something important. He lifted a pile of dead needles in his hand and let them out like grains of sand.

They sparkled like shards of copper when the sunlight hit them, like a lively shining living stream of copper, but lying on the ground, in the shade once more, they were as dull and drab as dirt. A few of the needles were stuck in his hand, pasted there by perspiration. Cooper brushed them off, dried his hand on his pants, then rubbed the sweat from his forehead, wetting it again. It was very hot, even in the shade.

Mayvis, that was her name. Cooper stood up, pleased with himself for recalling it. Her name was Mayvis and she had written it down for him so he could remember it.

Cooper looked in his wallet; he remembered she had tucked the paper with her name on it in his wallet, which had disturbed him at first-he didn't like people handling his personal property-but she kept talking to him the whole time, explaining that he could call her anytime he wanted to have some more fun or if he needed anything at all.

"You can even call if you just want to talk," she said, then laughed-he wasn't sure if he liked that particular laugh-"but I don't guess you'd want to do that. Hell, I don't care, just call if you want to howl into the phone.

'Course, if you want me to make you howl, that's even better."

"Uh-huh," Cooper had said.

"Are you going to remember me at all, Cooper?"

"Sure," he said.

"I'll bet. If you do, you'll be one of the first. Anyway, here," and she had tucked the paper with her name on it into his wallet and slipped the wallet back into his pocket, pausing back there long enough to give him a squeeze.

"Ooohhh," she said, pretending that just touching him made her shiver.

Cooper found the paper in the little plastic pouch where some people carried pictures. Mayvis Tway, it said, then underneath it, a telephone number. Cooper left the shade and crossed to the restaurant to make a phone call.

"I'll be goddamned," she said. "Sure I remember you.

I never thought I'd hear from you again, though."

"You said to call you," Cooper said.

"I know I did, honey, but not everybody pays real close attention to what I say the way you do. They're mostly shitheads."

"Uh-huh," Cooper said. "Shitheads."

"This going to be kind of a one-sided conversation, ain't it?" she asked and Cooper did not answer because he wasn't sure what she meant.

"Well, where the hell are you?" she asked, her voice tinkling into his ear. She was pleased to hear from him, just as she had said she would be. Cooper decided he liked her.

"I'm at the restaurant," he said.

"Which one?… The one where I found you?"

"Yeah. But not there."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm at the one in…" He struggled to remember the name of the town that the preacher had told him. "Wycliffe," he said at last.

.,sugar, that's sixty miles from here. How'd you get over to Wycliffe?"

"I walked," he said.

"Walked? You couldn'ta walked all the way to Wycliffe."

Cooper didn't answer.

"Well, never mind," she said. "What did you want?"

"You said to call," Cooper said.

"Well, that was nice of you."

She sounded like she was going to hang up. Cooper hated the telephone.

"They give me another paper," Cooper said.

"What do you mean, honey?"

He struggled to say it right.

"Let's have some fun," he said.

She laughed again, sounding the way she did when she was with him in person. "Well, why didn't you say so?

Do you want me to come get you?":'Uh-huh," he said.

'In Wycliffe?"

"Uh-huh."

"It'll take me an hour, you know. You think you can wait that long for Mayvis?"

"Uh-huh."

"I don't want you to think this means I don't have an active social life now," she said. "Wouldn't want you to take me for granted or anything."

She laughed again, so merrily that Cooper laughed too.

"Now, tell me again, what's your name?"

"Cooper."

"That's right," she said. "And, Cooper… you're which one? The one that howls?"

Cooper howled into the phone. She was still laughing when she hung up.

It's not that I'm hard up, Mayvis said to herself, I'm just sentimental.

She told herself a lot of shit like that, and amused herself most times with it. It had taken her more than an hour to get to Wycliffe and she wasn't sure that Cooper would be there when she finally arrived. She wasn't sure he had been there in the first place-he might have been playing a trick on her. They did that often enough, taking advantage of her good nature and her willingness to go halfway to accommodate a man.

Cooper, if she remembered him clearly, didn't seem the type for cruel jokes, but you could never be sure with a man, cruelty was always just a scratch or two under the surface.

She didn't recall ever driving sixty miles for a man before, at least not for one with whom she had no relationship other than one rather active and sweaty afternoon, but she'd done dumber things for sex, there was no question about that; even if Cooper turned out not to be there, she'd engaged in wilder goose chases and had exposed herself to greater humiliation just to get laid. She did have that little problem of wanting it. Wanting it a lot. Often. And with new partners, if partnership was the right concept for the way most men went about it. It seemed a pretty solitary pursuit for most of them, something they did for themselves with Mayvis just happening to be conveniently in the way.