Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“I’m divorced.”

“There’s a lot of that, I guess.”

“Fifty percent of the time, I believe.”

“Guess I read that somewhere.”

Presently she said, “They all begin in hope, though.”

“That’s true.”

“All that happiness and celebrating.”

“Right.”

“Nobody does it planning to get miserable.”

“No.” He liked her. He felt a surge of grief for her troubles, whatever they were. “Actually, I’m getting married for a second time. If she can get home from Jamaica.”

“Ja mai ca.”

“She was vacationing with an old friend. Now since all the planes are grounded — well, today I was stuck on one island, and she was stuck on another. She was supposed to fly home tomorrow.”

“Well, I hope you can get together and be happy.”

“Fifty percent chance.” He smiled at her.

“I wonder what gets into people,” she said. “My husband and me, we were happy as kids together right up to the end.”

“You were lucky.”

She nodded emphatically. “We were that. We felt that.”

The door of the car on the other side opened, and a man entered, carrying a small brown briefcase. He sat at the far end of the counter and placed the briefcase in front of him. He looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with a drooping, pale face and light blue eyes that had shadows under them. His hair was dark gray with white streaks, and it was disarranged, as if someone had ruffled it. He smoothed the hair down with one hand, leaning forward to look over the varieties of snack foods in the baskets on the wall behind the counter.

“Hello,” the woman said to him.

“You have fresh coffee?”

“Sure.”

The man turned his attention to Faulk. “You live in Washington?”

“No, but that’s where I’m headed.”

He seemed satisfied with this.

“You?” Faulk said.

“I live there.”

When the woman put the coffee in front of him, he took her hand. “I wonder what you think of all this.”

“Oh — well. I–I can’t — I don’t know what to think. I was just telling this gentleman I feel like I have to get to know everybody I meet.”

“Yeah.” He let go of her.

“You got a family?” she asked.

“Four grown kids. Three girls and a boy. A nice friendly wife. Like that.” He smiled. “They’re all waiting for me to get home and try to explain this day to them, you know? They’ve all gathered at the house.”

“I think the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“Yeah. His wonders to perform, right?”

“Mysterious.”

“Okay.”

“I think maybe it’s like this,” she said. She appeared to be trying to formulate the idea as she went on, hesitating. “It’s like we all — flowers, and — and the Lord is like the gardener. Right. We all flowers in his garden. And sometimes he needs one flower, or maybe two or three, and then sometimes, you know, he needs a whole bouquet of them.”

“You believe that.”

“I hope so.”

“And you’re happy.”

She stared at him. “Yes, sir.”

“And today was just a gardening day for God.”

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“You know the suicide bombers over in Jerusalem. They believe that when they blow themselves up and a lot of innocent men, women, and children die, they themselves are going straight to paradise for it.”

She took up a rag and began to wipe the counter. She lifted his cup and wiped under it and then set the cup down with a little force.

“They believe deep in their hearts that they’re going straight to paradise where they will be greeted by virgins. Virgins. Think of it.”

She said nothing.

“And for us it’s gardening.”

“Excuse me,” Faulk said. “There’s really nothing to be gained by haranguing someone at this time of night and in this situation, is there?”

The man did not answer but opened the briefcase. For the moment his head was obscured by the open lid of the case. Both Faulk and the woman watched him. Then she turned to Faulk and said, low, “You want anything to eat or drink?”

“Thought I was hungry,” Faulk said. “Feeling’s gone.”

She said, “Terrible day.”

The man closed the lid with a snap and lifted his coffee cup. He sipped from it. “I was in Boston at a funeral,” he said. “Business associate of mine. We were in ’Nam. He got wounded, and I pulled him onto a chopper in a firefight. Bullets ripping the air all around us and pinging on the metal. All hell breaking loose. I pulled him in. Nice guy. Another war altogether. Jungle rot and little people hiding in the leaves, some of them just kids. Kill you quick as look at you. I’ll tell you, lot of gardening going on in that war. And it’s one goddamned war after another, isn’t it.”

The woman did not respond, standing by the cash register looking at him.

“Wish I could see the world like you do, ma’am.”

“Excuse me, but you don’t know how I see the world, sir. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

He raised the cup as if to toast her. “To gardening.”

“Maybe I said that to make you feel better.”

“Well, it did that, all right.”

“What’s your point, anyway?” Faulk said.

“Pardon?”

“What’re you getting at? What’s the point of bothering to be so unpleasant tonight?”

“And what are you, a lawyer?”

“I happen to be a priest.”

Both of them stared.

“Now, you want to start in on me?”

“I didn’t know I was starting in on anybody. I was just talking. Seemed odd, that’s all — that business about God the gardener. I don’t know how anybody can think anything positive after today.” His voice broke. “I’m sorry.”

After a little pause, the woman, in a soft, ameliorative voice, said to him, “You want more coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.” He held out the cup.

Faulk said good night to them and went back through the vestibule and the door, the mostly empty car, to the next vestibule and his own car and along the aisle to his seat. The train rattled and tossed, and then it entered a tunnel, the dark at the windows becoming blackness with intermittent rushing lights. He sat down and saw his own reflection in the glass. So , he thought. I happen to be a priest .

3

She woke in bright moonlight, wrapped uncomfortably in the wet clothes. She sat up and had a shaken realization of the whole long day. It played across her memory in an instant. She saw the couple, looking so small, leaping from the hole in the massive burning side of the building. She saw the slight, brave, doomed, waving woman with the smoke coming from her hair and back. And she thought of Michael Faulk. “Oh, Jesus God.”

The sea made its steady rushing. She could not see the resort nor anything but empty beach with the blackness beyond it and the moving whitecapped waves. She sat up, shivering, the residue of the dream playing across her nerves.

Suddenly, with a strange forceful slow assuredness, someone was upon her from behind, hands on her breasts.

She yelled and tried to turn, swung her elbows back to strike. Reaching over her head, she got ahold of hair and pulled and was pushed forward until her face was in the sand. The other was heavy on top of her, knee in her upper back, one hand pressing her head down. The sand was in her nose and mouth, and this was going to be her death. But then he let go enough for her to turn over, and she saw Duego and kicked at him, attempting to rise, the sand choking her. “Stop it! Get off me! Are you — get off!”

“You — are — beautiful,” he groaned, moving back on top of her. “We both — want this. You — know we both want this.”