Richard Ford - Rock Springs

She went back to sleep. Sims slipped out and headed back to his seat.

It was quieter in the car now. A couple of new people had gotten on, but it seemed less smoky, the lights not as bright. Sims bought a ham sandwich and a soft drink at the snack bar and sat back in his seat and ate, watching die night go by. He thought he should’ve taken Marge’s mystery novel. That would put him to sleep fast. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep in the roomette anyway.

Out the window, a highway went along the train tracks. Trucks were running in the night. A big white Winnebago seemed to be trying to keep up with the train. Lights were on in the living quarters and children’s faces at the windows. The kids were pointing toy guns at the train and bouncing up and down. Their parents were up front, invisible in the dark. Sims made a pistol with bis fingers and pointed it at the Winnebago. All the children — three of them — abruptly ducked out of sight. Suddenly the train was onto a long trestle, over a bottomless ravine, and the Winnebago was lost from view in the dark.

Sergeant Benton rose out of a seat at the far end of the car and looked back toward the rest room. She looked like she’d been asleep. She grabbed her shoulder purse and walked back toward Sims, pushing the sides of her hair up.

“What happened to your friends?” Sims said, though he knew perfectly well what had happened to them.

Sergeant Benton looked down at Sims as if she’d never seen him before. Her blouse was wrinkled. She looked dazed. It was the dope, Sims thought. He’d felt the same himself. Like a criminal.

“Nothing but bars in these towns,” the woman said vaguely. “All social life’s in the bars. Where do you eat?” She shook her head and put her fingers over one eye, leaving the other looking at Sims. “What’s your name?”

“Vic,” Sims said and smiled.

“Vic.” The woman stared at him. “How’s your wife?”

“She’s fine,” Sims said. “She’s locked away in dreamland.”

“That’s good. My friends left in a hurry. They were loudmouths. Especially that Ethel. She was too loud.”

“What’s your name” Sims asked. He was staring at the woman’s breasts again.

Sergeant Benton looked at her name tag and back at Sims. “Can I trust you?” she said. She covered her other eye and looked at Sims with the one that had been covered.

“Depends,” Sims said.

“Doris,” she said. “Wait a minute. Stay right here.”

“I’m up all night,” Sims said.

The woman went on down to the toilet and locked herself in again. Sims wondered if she’d smoke another joint. Maybe he ‘d smoke one himself this time. He hadn’t been loaded in ten years. He could stand it. If Marge were here, she’d want to get loaded herself. He wondered what Pauline had on her mind tonight. He wondered if she ‘d stopped howling yet. Maybe things would get better for Pauline, Maybe she’d go back and teach school someplace, some small town in Maine, possibly, where no one knew her. Maybe Pauline was a manic depressive and needed to be on drugs.

He thought about Sergeant Benton, in the head now, washing up. His attitude toward “lifers,” which is what he assumed she was, had always been that something was wrong with them. The women, especially. Something made them unsuited for the rest of life, made them need to be in a special category. The women were always almost pretty, yet not quite pretty. They had a loud laugh, or a moustache or enlarged pores, or some mannishness that went back to a farm experience with roughneck brothers and a cruel, strict father — something to run away from. Bad luck, really. Something somebody with a clearer oudook might just get over and turn into a strong point. Maybe he could find out what it was in Doris and treat her like a normal person, and that would make a difference.

Out the window, running along with the train, was the big white Winnebago again. The kids were in the windows, but they weren’t shooting guns at him this time. They were just staring. Sims thought maybe they weren’t staring at him, but at something else entirely.

Sergeant Benton came out of the toilet and this time no dope smell came out with her. She had puffed up her hair, straightened her green blouse and her tie, and put on some lipstick. She looked better, Sims thought, and he was happy for her to come back. But Sergeant Benton looked straight down the aisle past him, patted her hair again, raised her chin slightly and made no gesture to suggest she had ever known Sims was alive or on the earth at that moment. She turned and walked straight out through the door and into the next car.

Sims watched through the window glass as her blond head crossed the vestibule and disappeared through the second door into the lounge car. He felt surprised and vaguely disappointed, but it was actually better, he thought, if she didn’t come back. He’d wanted her to sit down and talk — all a matter of being friendly and passing the time — but it wasn’t going anyplace. Killing time led to trouble, he’d found. It even was possible Sergeant Benton was traveling with someone else, somebody asleep somewhere. Another sergeant.

A year ago, Marge had gotten sick and had had to go in the hospital for an operation. Marge had seemed fine, then suddenly she’d lost twenty pounds and gotten pale and weak, so weak she couldn’t go to work — all in the space of what seemed like ten days. The doctor who examined Marge told her and Sims together that Marge had a tumor the size of an Easter egg deep under her arm, and in all likelihood it was cancerous. After a dangerous operation, she would have to undergo prolonged treatments at the end of which she would probably die anyway, though nothing was certain. Sims took a leave from his insurance job and spent every day and every night until nine in the hospital with Marge, who needed to be there two weeks just to get strong enough for the surgery.

Every night Sims kissed Marge good-bye in her bed, then drove off into the night streets alone. Sometimes he’d stop in a waffle house, eat a sandwich, read the paper and talk to the waitresses. But most of the time he would go home, fix his own sandwich, eat it standing at the sink and watch TV until he went off to sleep, usually by eleven. Sometimes he’d wake up in his chair at three a.m.

When he’d been alone at home for three weeks, he began to notice as he stood at the sink eating his sandwich and staring into the dark, that the woman in the house next door was always at her kitchen table at that time. A radio and an ashtray were on the tabletop, and as he stood and watched, she would start crying, put her head down on her bare arms and wag it back and forth as if there was something in her life, an important fact of some kind, she couldn’t understand.

Sims knew the woman was the younger sister of Mrs. Krukow, who owned the house with her husband, Stan. The Krukows were away on a driving trip to Florida, and the sister was watching the house for them. The sister’s name was Cleo. She had dyed red hair and green eyes, and Mrs. Krukow had told Sims that she was “betwixt and between” and had no place to go at the moment. Sims had seen her in the backyard hanging out clothes and, often late in the day, walking the Krukows’ dachshund on the sidewalk. He had waved several times, and once or twice they’d exchanged a pleasant word.

When Sims had stood in the kitchen drinking milk and eating a sandwich three days running, and watching Cleo alone and crying, he decided he should call over to the Krukows’ and ask if there was something he could do. Maybe she was worried about the house. Or maybe something had happened to the Krukows and she was in shock about it and hadn’t come out of the house for days. He didn’t know what she did all day. It would be an act of kindness. Marge would go herself if she weren’t in the hospital.