Ervin Krause - You Will Never See Any God - Stories

Two years to the day, McDonald thought, two years since he had last come through Lincoln, Nebraska, in the dead of winter, going west to see his relatives during the Christmas let-out. Through the begrimed train window he saw the wood frame houses emerge frigidly from the somnolent snow-blown land, and the trees, like exposed fretful nerves, black against the gray December sky. He vaguely remembered the curve of the railroad track and the landscape from that time two years before, but now everything was very clear to him, chiseled there, as if he saw it all for the first time really, as if perhaps his eyes had altered in those two years. And still he felt an eagerness akin to that rush of the time before. There had been the quivering warmth in his body, the specific need, the hurry to get off the train, the push through the clusters of people to see her there, for they had written regularly and impassionedly that first fall. His face colored a little, the prickles of heat he felt were like a mirror to him, as he remembered those letters, the heart yearnings of a newly lonely man who had imagined that he had drunk deeply of unloneliness. And she, Wanda, replying, matched his passion almost word for word (a part of him thought coolly of her at the time and wondered at that, and he had ascribed her parrotings of feeling to her lack of training in communication). McDonald smiled again, thinking of that misjudgment, he who had once thought he knew all of mankind, he, James R. McDonald, assistant professor of English at the University of Missouri, teacher of literature (Truth, Life, Humanity), and of composition.

Six years before, he had come from the Air Force — two pleasant years as an officer at a base in England — armed with his GI bill and, as he now reflected, an empty-headedness, and made his way to the M.A. in one year in the company of ascetics. He, as those others apparently did not, had that perpetual yearning, that perpetual need of a woman, the impelling desire and want, for he was in his early twenties, in the prime of his life, and those two easy years in England had only confirmed his hunger. He had seen associates wed through the same desperation to have a woman (so confessed to him by the grooms in stolid puzzlement over beer glasses a few months following weddings), while he went sardonically and dilatorily on dates with birdy female graduate students — unsexed bodies like storewindow dummies and faces like parakeet beaks — evenings stiff with conversation and milked-out culture and the heady pronouncements of likes, dislikes, and logic, dredged from a convenient book or lecture, and nothing else, while his producing gonads cried to heaven for aid. In the coffeerooms the younger, married professors, affecting crew-cuts and virility, clucked approvingly over the vibrance of Dylan Thomas’s insanities, and sniggered with admiration at the dynamic sex allusions of the visiting literati; they huddled together in closet-like rooms like frigid children before a fireplace to simper at fleshy jokes told by transient linguists. They giggled over Chaucer, and vibrated over Fielding, and snickered over D. H. Lawrence, and perspired over John Updike (that Rabbit man); and the fairies in the department looked him over and approached in sly, nuzzling, knee-touching familiarity and retreated before his somber stare.

He met Wanda Overson the summer he began work on his Ph.D. On a hot, bad night in July he had driven down to the roadhouses along the highway where there were unnerving attempts at jazz offered up by college students, and he saw her, a woman a little older than most of the others there, slender, fairly tall, hard smooth legs, and with black hair and dark eyes. They danced; she said she liked the way he danced, and they arranged to see each other again.

She was twenty-nine, a divorcee, with a boy nine years old — that first night he went to her house the child came up to him and shook hands, man-like, a frail boy, skinny, pale, with dark, deep-socketed eyes as if blackened by blows; he said his name was Trevor — and McDonald smiled carefully and affectedly at the boy, knowing this would please the mother. She did like that, talked about it in the car on the way to dinner that night, how kind he was, saying too that Trevor meant more to her than anything else in the world — her whole life was just lived for her son — and she would like anybody who treated her son well. She liked kindness, she said, she liked to be treated nice, that made more difference to her than anything else, money or anything. Of course she liked nice things too; she really had the tastes of a lady, she said, even if she was only a secretary. She had gone with a few very wealthy men, she said, lifting her eyes to look carefully at him, but of course none had meant a thing to her. She had gone with the owner of a ladies shoe store who had wanted to marry her, but his father who had the money didn’t like it, wanted him to marry a rich girl who wasn’t a divorcee, but she could have had him any time she wanted him, she said with a faint curl of upper lip. And there had been her boss, ex-boss rather, old Mr. Curtis who owned and managed one of the biggest department stores in town and who had wanted her, he had been really very sweet to her and bought her very expensive things, and he was a lot of fun for an old guy, but she didn’t want any part of that, although he was the sweetest, kindest man and the best dancer in the world.

All small talk, McDonald had thought idly then, as he noted with hunger her healthy body, her hard legs, her crisp, clean movements, her bright, happy eyes as if she were on her first date.

They kissed that night and two nights later they went to bed.

“You want to make love to me, don’t you?” she said, turning to look down at him as he nuzzled her flaccid drooping breasts.

He, startled, forced a smile and then a look of sensitive want from his sweaty concentration and said, “Yes.”

“Why do you?” And she looked into his eyes, holding his head away — he finding out later that she believed a look directly in the eyes meant honesty.

“Because I like you very much, and you’re a beautiful woman.”

“You’re a handsome man, too, Jim,” she said, “and I’d like to go to bed with you but I really can’t. You’ll talk.”

“No I won’t… darling.”

“I’ve got my reputation to keep in this town. You don’t know how this town is. You’ve got to keep lily-white or every old biddy will keep after you till you can’t take this town anymore. Nobody has ever said anything against me yet, and I won’t give them the chance.”

“I could never tell anyone.”

“I know how men are after they’ve been to bed with a woman.”

“Not me, Wanda. I promise.”

“No. I can’t. I just can’t go to bed with you.”

“Wanda, I need you. I want to make love to you.”

“I know you do,” she murmured, letting tenderness come into her eyes. “And I want to make love to you.”

She went to see if her son was asleep and then they went to her bedroom where over her feebling hesitation he undressed her and then himself.

“You’ve got something to put on?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “I can tell you’ve been around,” she said, glad.

She reclined upon the sheets, waiting.

“God, but you’re wonderful. It’s been so long, so terribly long,” she cried, fastening upon him.

And afterwards, in a little-girl nasality, “What must you think of me? Knowing you only three days and then doing this?”

He held her tight and let the words out, darling, darling, you’re wonderful, I think you’re wonderful. Then they made love again.

They danced to the ancient tune; for three years they made love at their convenience.