The Stories of Richard Bausch Read Online Free Page B

difficult marriage—fourteen childless years with Aldenburg. As if the fact that there were no children was anyone’s fault.
    God only knew what she found to say when he wasn’t around to hear it.
    Toward the end of the long night, Smitty said, “Of course, a man doesn’t spend this much time in a saloon if there’s a happy home to return to.”
    Aldenburg caught just enough of the sentence to know he was the subject. He said, “Smitty, sometimes I look around myself and I swear I don’t know how I got here.”
    “I thought you walked over,” Smitty said.
    They laughed.
    Sometime after three in the morning he had made coffee, and they had switched to that. Black and strong, to counter the effects of the night’s indulgence, as Smitty called it. He had broken an old rule and consumed a lot of the whiskey himself. It was getting harder and harder to be alone, he said.
    Aldenburg understood it.
    “Damn monstrosity didn’t last long enough to make any heroes below the level of general,” Smitty said. “My son was a hero.”
    “That’s true,” said Aldenburg. “But take somebody like my brother-in-law. Here’s a guy standing on a corner looking at the sights, and this oil burner goes off. You know? Guy standing in the street with a couple of other boys from the motor pool, talking football, and whoosh. Just a dumb accident.”
    “I don’t guess it matters much how you get it,” Smitty said, shaking his head. His son had been shot through the heart.
    “I’m sorry, man,” Aldenburg told him.
    “Hell,” said Smitty, rubbing the back of his neck, and then looking away.
    Light had come to the windows. On the polished table between them was a metal ashtray stuffed to overflowing with the cigarettes they had smoked.
    “What day is this, anyway?” Smitty asked.
    “Friday. I’ve got to be at work at eleven. Sales meeting. I won’t sleep at all.”
    “Ought to go on in back and try for a little, anyway.”
    Aldenburg looked at him. “When do you ever sleep?”
    “Noddings-off in the evenings,” Smitty said. “Never much more than that.”
    “I feel like all hell,” Aldenburg told him. “My liver hurts. I think it’s my liver.”
    “Go on back and take a little nap.”
    “I’ll feel worse if I do.”
    They heard voices, car doors slamming. Smitty said, “Uh, listen, I invited some of the boys from the factory to stop by for eggs and coffee.” He went to open the door, moving slow, as if his bones ached. The curve of his spine was visible through the back of his shirt. He was only fifty-three.
    Aldenburg stayed in the booth, with the playing cards lying there before him, and the full ashtray. He lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke at the ceiling, wishing that he’d gone on home now. Brad and Billy Pardee came in, with Ed Crewly. They all wore their hunting jackets, and were carrying gear, looking ruddy and healthy from the cold. Brad was four years older than Billy, but they might have been twins, with their blue-black hair and identical flat noses, their white, white teeth. Ed Crewly was once the end who received Cal’s long passes in the high school games, a tall skinny type with long lean arms and legs—gangly looking but graceful when he got moving. He was among the ones who kept coming to the house now that Cal was back from the war. Aldenburg, returning in the late evenings from the store, would find them all in his living room watching a basketball game or one of the sitcoms—every chair occupied, beer and potato chips and a plate of cheeses laid out for them, as though this were all still the party celebrating the hero’s homecoming.
    He never had the nerve to say anything about it. An occasional hint to his wife, who wasn’t hearing any hints.
    Brad was bragging now about how he and Billy and Ed had called in sick for the day. They were planning a drive up into the mountains to shoot at birds. Billy turned and saw Aldenburg sitting in the booth.
    “Hey, Gabriel,” he said.