Cullin Mitch - The Post-War Dream

And this morning, after having steered clear of his autobiography for nearly a year, he fired up the Mac long enough to revise that opening description of himself, adding a single line at the end: Looks fifteen years younger when seen on the living room window at sunup with fresh snow on the ground.

Hollis now dressed beside the bed he shared with Debra, quietly putting on thermal underwear, woolen socks, jeans, and a green flannel shirt. Wrapped in a comforter that she had gathered around herself, her head partly concealed beneath an orthopedic pillow, Debra was motionless — tufts of short, gray-blond hair sticking out from one end of the pillow, a lax arm jutting beyond the comforter to his barren side of the mattress — and wasn't disturbed when he sat at the bed's edge to slip his leather winter boots on, keeping still below her cave of sponge rubber. Of late he had been getting up several hours before she stirred, and with all their years of living together, she no longer had to be awake for him to hear her. She could speak to him even now, as he dressed himself, without saying a word, without being aware of herself; for they had had such conversations many times in the past.

“Hollis?” she would ask, and he would answer her, half whispering for no reason, while vaguely aware of the pungent, somewhat sickly aroma permeating the bedroom — the smell of morning breath, of hours spent resting behind closed doors and windows.

“What are you doing?”

Her voice would be flat, raspy, sounding as if she inhabited that murky realm which barely separated consciousness and sleep.

“Think I'll take a drive,” he said, pulling the right boot on.

She would ask the time.

“It's almost seven,” he said, pulling the left boot on.

She would ask if it was still snowing.

“No, it's finished. We've got sun.”

“That's good,” she would say, apparently relieved; and then she would ask: “Aren't you cold?”

He told her he was fine. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “You need the rest.”

He reached for the hand of her exposed arm, wriggling the fingers tenderly but so as not to bother her, then he curled her fingers into a half fist and slid the arm back underneath the comforter.

“Maybe for a little longer,” she would say, her voice growing fainter. “It feels so warm here — ”

He rose unsteadily, plodded across the room, and entered the large walk-in closet, seeking an article of outerwear he'd had no use for since retiring to southern Arizona: his old duvet jacket. Located on a top shelf, discovered inside a plastic storage box which also contained sweaters and a quilt, the jacket was in much better condition than he ‘d remembered it being (the innumerable camping trips having done little to depress its down lining or tarnish its waterproof urethane-laminate fabric). When he finally exited the closet — appearing as a heavily padded version of his already stocky self, the cobalt-colored jacket fitting tightly and reeking of mothballs — he could have sworn he heard Debra say something below the pillow, perhaps encouraging him to be careful, to be mindful of ice.

“Don't worry,” he whispered, zipping up the jacket. “I'll be home in a bit.”

At that moment, Hollis remembered when Debra had once injured herself while skiing at Big Bear, spraining an ankle and bruising the left cheek of her buttocks. As she had said herself, gravity was increasingly unkind to her. The hurt ankle had doubled, the skin expanding in hues of purple, red, blue, and black — and for more than a week she couldn't walk without severe pain. During her recuperation, she had lounged about in sweatpants, sometimes hopping from room to room of their old California home with the wounded leg dangling above the carpet (her arms swinging as she went, grinning all the while as if glimpsing herself objectively and enjoying the absurdity of her precarious, bouncing body); yet she never really complained or sought any sympathy. And now Hollis paused to stare at her shrouded form in their bed, feeling pleased that she had stayed by his side for so long. I'm lucky to have gotten this far with you, he thought. Such an even-tempered and reliable woman, accommodating but also her own person. Still, she had had her moments of ennui, although she had not been prone to prolonged depressions, or unrealistic in her expectations of him, or someone who harbored regrets. She was, he knew, exactly the sort of woman he had wanted to marry — a friend as much as a wife, a lover who could regard his mundanity not as a drawback but as a reassuring, steadfast influence.

With both of them bundled in their respective duvets, Hollis turned himself, promptly leaving her, passing through the preset warmth of their home and toward the sobering chill which awaited him. That was how, on this crisp morning, he found himself brushing snow from the Suburban's hood, roof, and windows, using a flattened disposable coffee cup to scrape frost off the windshield while the vehicle idled in the driveway (its internal heat billowing from the exhaust pipe and thawing a portion of concrete, just as visible gusts of breath floated from his mouth); but not before he almost lost his footing twice on the front porch, or tugged with bare hands to free the stuck driver's-side door — the ice cracking loose, reminding him of wood splintering when the door swung open.

Minutes later, the Suburban eased backward onto the street; proceeding with the speed of a geriatric jogger, he steered it down inactive thoroughfares which were, at places, ivory and sleek — Sagebrush Avenue, Yucca Street, Pinon Way — gliding between medians of evenly spaced saguaros (the stately cacti snowcapped and humbled by the storm, soon to be humiliated further by large Santa Claus hats and Christmas lights) and narrow side lanes reserved for golf carts instead of bicycles. Ultimately, he navigated the perimeter of the expansive golf courses which were designed to encompass many of the newer homes — golf courses which, on this day, summoned the frozen lakes of his Minnesota childhood (lean and agile at fourteen, hunting Big Portage Lake's banks, center-fire bolt-action Winchester ready for ruffed grouse or deer). Then how unoccupied Nine Springs felt, how forsaken this isolated desert community looked: not another resident, it seemed, had yet braved the pristine winterland — no early-morning golfers, or power walkers, or pickup trucks delivering the Arizona Daily Star . No one else was compelled to navigate the perilous streets, or to risk the dangers of traversing slick sidewalks — no one else, that is, except Hollis and, as he came to realize, one other foolhardy soul.

It wasn't difficult for Hollis to relish the lifelessness of Nine Springs, savoring the illusion of having the entire city to himself. Without snow and ice present, he would have gladly increased the Suburban's speed, disregarding stop signs, blaring the horn for the pleasure of it. He would, if the city had actually been his and his alone, have swerved from the street, violating the curb and sidewalk, aiming his wheels directly for the greens. As it was, though, the stop signs were heeded, the brake pedal getting tapped lightly while he rolled the vehicle to a standstill — where, absent of anyone else in front of or behind him, he paused long enough to survey the nearby golf course grounds. Still, if he hadn't noticed a red-clad figure writhing out there on the ninth hole green (a solitary form striving to gain footing in the snow, like an upturned turtle within a scarlet hooded parka, galoshes kicking, arms flailing beneath the blue sky), he could have easily believed himself to be the last person here.

But Hollis wasn't sure if it was, in fact, another person he was seeing, or, as had been the case after coming home from Korea, he was once more being visited by an apparition of himself: that disquieting doppelganger appearing when least expected, presenting itself in the strangest of places — seated at a dinner table, stretched out on the gravel shoulder of a desolate county road, crouched silently among the harvested rows of a cotton field — as if to show Hollis what his outcome might have been had he made different choices in his life. Those unusual, fleeting encounters with himself had occurred regularly for quite a while — from late ‘50 through the winter of ‘51 — yet he had never dared mention them to anyone else, largely because he feared his sanity might get called into question.