John Domini: Bedlam and Other Stories

“Why don’t you go back to, to camp or wherever it is they keep you apes?” Garbeau was standing up. “We sure don’t need you here. You can come back with your wife .”

She shook her hair angrily. Hartley was still lying in bed, playing the cool dude. From this angle he was stung by the unexpected revelation, her fine legs against the numb synthetics of the hotel curtain. He felt the old tug. Amazing, he still wanted her. Could that — could that have been the reason he’d gotten so jerked around? For now at least it was obvious that he’d never been in love with Garbeau. No never; love had been only a game for switchboard operators.

“You’ll still get your checks ,” Garbeau said.

They sat and made the necessary phone calls. She in her chair and he on the edge of the bed, they sat with knees touching, with even a few inches of their naked thighs touching. They faced each other. He called Fort Devens and then Fort Pope, Louisiana, where he’d done his basic training. He had no idea how far Fort Pope was or how he’d get there. Meantime she called Los Angeles and New York.

“Put a stop on F.L.A.,” Garbeau said into the phone. She spoke pointedly, loudly, her eyes fixed on Hartley. “No, this is just paper. We’ll promote the same S.A. Just reroute the signatures through Ayer, Mass.”

“Let’s get this exercise locked in as of thirteen-hundred,” Hartley said to the man at Fort Pope, glaring back at Garbeau word for word. He felt the sea-salt inside her knee. “The C.O. and the gate should understand it’s strictly S.O.P.”

Hartley was back behind the plexiglass divider, back with the driver whose face he found so reliable, so soggy. He’d finished sneezing at the limo’s air-conditioning. He lit a joint. He’d bought about a half-dozen before leaving Garbeau’s room. She’d asked a high price and he’d insisted on paying what he called “recreation tax.” Now, outside the big car’s tinted windows, he saw the foliage closing together to make jungle, the Everglades.

“You know,” the driver said, “Louisiana’s a long way.”

Hartley hadn’t noticed the divider coming down.

“You’re getting paid,” he said.

“Gettin’ paid is just bidnis as usual.” The driver gestured for the joint and Hartley saw no reason not to pass it. “But I think you and me can work out a better ‘rangement.”

Toke. Hartley wondered if he’d missed something said earlier. Also, for no reason, he realized he wouldn’t have any lunch and for breakfast there’d only been that coffee.

“Army got installations in Florida, you know,” the driver said later. By this time they’d pulled over to the side of the road. They sat under some powerful flowers, like morning glories on spiralling vines, and were sharing a bottle of Catawba Pink. Hot pebbles dug into Hartley’s behind.

“Now I can cover for you with any kind of story you like,” the driver said. “Army won’t mind. A war hero like y’self, you can bend the rules a little.”

“That’s not true .” Hartley felt he had to stand up. “The Army”—he groaned and made it—“expects a man to be where he says he’s going to be.”

“Ahowoo, Soldier-boy.”

“Hey, I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding. The Army, I know just where I’d be if it wasn’t for them. I’d be up in those woods living out of some two-bit mobile home, working on the heat, working on the car, working every goddamn minute of the weekend. Breaking my back not to get laid off. Half the time I’d be scared of my own children. I’ve seen it. I know .”

“I got granchillen, myself,” the driver said.

But Hartley went on pacing, back and forth along the unshaded road. Every step in his heavy boots seemed to send the point of a spear poking through the top of his head.

“What you’re talking about,” he said, “is just the kind of thing they show on TV. They think they can tell any lie they want to. Right out there on TV !”

“That’s right, Soldier-boy,” the driver said. “Be fifty, sixty million see it anyway. So why not—”

“Never mind Louisiana.”

“Now you talking.”

“We’re going to find that shooting site.”

The driver’s grin dropped fast. His whole sloppy middleaged face seemed to shrink while he argued that, man you gotta know, the site moved on different days. And he’d never been any too clear on Everglades roads, especially halfway in the bag like he was now. And then also , Soldier-boy couldn’t do much except maybe mess up their timetable a little. Hartley wouldn’t hear it. Finally he promised to let the driver go home as soon as they found the place. Deal. Hartley performed isometrics in the back seat as they moved into the jungle. He did up another joint, smoking almost all of it himself, when he felt his thoughts get foggy. He ordered the driver to keep the air conditioning off and the windows open; he wanted to hear what was going on outside. From bigger roads they pulled onto smaller, muddy even this late in the year. The smaller roads ended soon in blank swamp walls. Insects would fill the halted car. The fourth time they came to one of these dead ends, just as the driver had started to shout that Soldier-boy didn’t scare him, he’d been in the service himself, the Coast Guard just like Alex Haley, and a deal was a deal but he sure didn’t need no ofay Yankee asshole racist Soldier-boy comin’ down here tellin’ him to drive with the damn windows open — just then they found something. Hartley was outside before the car had stopped rolling. On the wet ground lay a clipboard with a yellow legal pad attached.

“ Ahowoo .” The driver scowled.

Hartley turned the thing over in his hands. The paper was blank and the lines had run. The clip hinges were dark with rust.

“Man,” the driver called from behind the wheel.

“Shut up.”

“Don’t you be giving me no more orders, Soldier-boy. You don’t know what I’m cap’ble of.”

“They’re here. I can smell em.”

“All right Tarzan, you just go find ’em then.”

Without a word, Hartley dropped the clipboard and headed into the bush. Another half-dozen ducking steps, holding his hands before his chest as if cradling a rifle, and he knew the driver would never find him.

What was Hartley doing in here? Maybe an hour had passed since he’d left the road; the sun was beyond its high mid-point. Siesta time, Hartley thought, and where he came from they didn’t have siestas. That should give him some advantage. He’d smeared mud on his face, partly to prevent his white skin from being seen and partly to keep off the incredible bugs. His neck was already misshapen with bites. His hands kept moving, slapping, moving. Despite the bugs however, this apparently was some drier patch of the ‘Glades, perhaps one of the Seminoles’ old hideaways. He’d gone this entire time without hitting any impassable stretches of river or lake. He seemed instead on an endless waterlogged plain, broken up by occasional cypress or crucified oaks and palms, but for the most part a monotonous trudge through nasty long grass with saw edges that cut the skin. He stumbled often. He recalled a statistic from yesterday’s tour: the Everglades occupy over 4000 square miles. Then what, he sometimes had to wonder, was he doing? Yet the answer always came to him at once, a grappling hook slung easily across the gap of hesitation, slung that much more easily because Hartley would never take a moment to gauge the depths. He would think only: I’ll get them . And he’d crash ahead.

Not that Hartley didn’t experience other inklings, other thoughts. He felt pervadingly alone, an ant crossing a gymnasium floor. He recalled the rare look his son had given him the first time Bobby understood why his father was called a war hero. Also the soldier could picture his victory, cue cards floating on the surface of a pool, powerlines shorting out and everything going up like the slow lightning of tracer fire. Yet these other inklings were no more than inklings. Wing shots at something glimpsed once and then out of sight. By and large Hartley was going on nothing but the grapple-hook-swing of action itself. He didn’t think. For miles of forced march it seemed as if Hartley wasn’t there at all. Whenever he felt his mind beginning to slow, grow foggy again, he did up another joint.