Habitual Warfare

by Phyllis Wright

The last rumble of the kids' bedtime skirmish faded. Silence eased in, broken by the neighbor's barking dog and the distant sound of the trucks pulling up the hill on the interstate. Neither sound touched her, that is, they did not draw her into some fantasy or welcome. To hold off nighttime loneliness, Alma turned on the radio and tuned it in to the country-western station.

Sad songs always carried her into an opposite mood, because she could daydream a rewrite of whatever story was sung. If not that, she could at least suffer, knowing her pain would last only as long as the song. Tonight was different. Tonight she longed to be touched. Not sexually, but humanly. She ached to hug and to be hugged in return, only because it pleased.

Lifting a pillow off the couch, she embraced it. Slowly, so slowly, her feet began to slide back and forth, back and forth. Closing her eyes, she clutched the pillow tighter and smiled, imagining the rise and fall of breath, the scent of spicy cologne. The music stopped.

Hoarse with cigarettes, the announcer's voice recalled her. As she turned to drop the pillow on the couch, she caught sight of her reflection in an uncurtained window. Her soft outline was distorted and the balding chenille bathrobe took on the dimensions of ruby velvet. She laughed, no longer surprised that it strained across the front.

"C'mon, Alma. Things to do," she said and turned abruptly away from her reflection. She quickly crossed the pocked linoleum to a closet and removed an ironing board. "Let's see. Billy needs jeans and Punky asked for her grey shirt." She concentrated on the small task and measured progress by spurts of steam and stretches of smooth, warm cloth. The radio droned on while Alma hummed carelessly, without concern for tune or melody. A small grey kitten batted at the iron cord and she shooed it away only half-serious.

When her own children's clothes were tended to, she pulled out a plastic bag marked "Owens" and began to nose the iron around tiny buttons and plastic zippers whose teeth reminded her that one slip could melt away a week's profit. The rack nailed to the wall slowly filled with white shirts whose arms seemed to be tentatively outheld and inviting. She finished with quick, economical shifts and glides of hands that were red with work and unplugged the iron, setting it carefully on the counter to cool, it's cord coiled primly around it like a cat's tail.

Over the awkward strains of "The Star Spangled Banner," the announcer was reading the call-letters of the station. Alma hurried to the radio and clicked it off before the blurry static began to roll out over the room. It was a sound Alma hated. One she was afraid would draw her in and hold her like quicksand or love.

She sat down in an old red chair whose velvet upholstery held the shape of her outline and whose cushions accepted her weight like an old friend. While she was smoking the last cigarette of the day, she began to think about her husband, Claudell, who silently followed the shafts of sunlight down at the Veteran's home.

He was not a soldier. He had fought harder to stay out of the army than he had ever fought to win the war. They shipped him home with no explanation for his muteness other than to say that he had been found quietly trying to reconnect the tiny fingers of a small charred hand: trying to make wholeness out of fragments.

He was assigned to the Vet's where Alma could take the kids to visit him. They had grown used to his quiet shuffling and lack of response. Alma told him each one of their accomplishments and reported any progress in growth. She prefixed many sentences with his name softly drawn out like a wish. "Claudell, Buddy learned to ride the bicycle this month. He didn't wreck once. Claudell..." It was a litany of love.

When the Army man came around to try to sign her up for Veteran's benefits, she refused all but what was needed to keep Claudell in the home. Her children must always know their father's tragedy and never feed on his destruction.

Their return journey home was always the same. Alma told the children "I thought daddy was happy today. He didn't seem so thin." She never convinced them but they learned to paste together the stories she told them and the wandering, isolated man they visited. It was enough.

Her cigarette finished, she stubbed it out carefully and made rounds of the quiet house. Upstairs the boys slept like puppies tangled in a heap. Their arms thrown wide, their hands open, as if waiting to receive. In the smaller room, the girls slept, already knowing to protect themselves. The blankets were drawn primly up to faces cradled by fists. Their knees were pulled to chests protectively.

Alma wondered if it were instinct, age, or example that made them so careful. Tucking in blankets and closing windows, she returned downstairs and tried not to notice that when she lay down, she lay like the girls.

Every night, she waited for sleep while dreaming of one goodness or another. A million dollars - Claudell waking up like sleeping beauty - a farm and room to live. They were fantasies, she knew, but slowly she would drift to sleep, happy for a while.

At six o'clock she unlocked the doors of the Quarter Moon Café and turned on the lights. While the coffee brewed, she began to make the pies the sign outside boasted. By eight the counter was lined with regular customers: tall, red-haired Daryl, who was slow and good natured; Ray, in his leisure suit, who sold insurance and raised poodles; and down at the very end of the counter, in front of the Patriotic Headwear display, sat Barry, bitter and solitary. His crutches corralled and protected him.

"Say, Alma," Ray said, "Have Billy boy come over and mow my lawn."

She murmured assent.

"Oh, and have him clip around the fence better. Two-fifty is a lot of money and he ought to do a better job. You tell 'im for me."

"If you're not satisfied with Bill's work, just say so. To him. He does a good job. He's only ten." It was impossible to keep the bitterness from her voice. The old bastard. Pay the boy half what it's worth and bitch about the job, she thought.

"Jesus, Ray." Daryl drawled. "Ya work the little bugger's ass off as it is. You ought to give him five dollars and be happy to get off that easy."

Alma moved away, afraid that Billy would lose his two-fifty and his Saturday movie. To have to be so careful that every word, every glance could set the whole show on the road to welfare. She had learned to be careful. She had learned to duck.

Ray looked to her for confirmation.

She just shrugged and said "Pay him what it's worth to you. If he don't like the money, he'll quit."

Ray smiled back and said "That's right. It's worth two-fifty."

That afternoon, beautiful and full of light, the high school girls who worked between Alma's shifts arrived. Alma untied her apron and left out the back door because she carried a small bag of steak bones and leftovers to feed her dogs and another full bag of unopened potato chips to feed her kids. She hurried home to spend some time with the kids and do various small chores before she walked back to do her second shift. Each child would come to her with small presents, silent kisses, or tales of adventure from the day. Buddy, the one child she could not love enough, would trail her silently half the distance back to work. At the corner of the only busy street in town, she would turn and hug him despite his tearful protests. Each night she would resolve not to look back at the small boy who watched her accusingly. Every night she looked back. The last few blocks she walked were miles long and lonely.

She returned to cooking as the barmaid, Loretta, and the bar-tender, Toots, arrived and carried coffee back to the bar to begin their work for the night. Loretta was a talkative blonde who wore clothes that were designed to provoke but only slipped down on her small breasts. Toots was a taciturn, middle-aged man easing into spare-tire softness and hating it. He was, however, an efficient and honest bartender who saw to it that his customers could drink undisturbed by boisterous drunks or wanderers selling whatever they had chanced upon.

The dining room sat between the bar and café, an uneasy blend of both. Loretta would serve drinks while the high school girls would wait on tables. Tonight was the night that the local Rotary Club met for dinner to compare and boast about business and romantic conquests. Alma waited on that table herself. She would not talk about what she heard and she did not engender any jealousy among those so-important wives who were playing bridge that night.

Alma moved in and out of the small, partitioned room quietly and answered summons cheerfully. Everyone took care to respect that fragile boundary between rudeness and familiarity that exists in all such relationships.

These dinners had become a ritual. As Alma served dinner and Loretta brought the second bottle of wine, the men began to swap heart attack stories. Alma always thought of exorcists who could conquer their adversary by naming it. These men were not fighting some demon of the spirit, but mortality itself.

Roy would begin by recounting his experience on the false tile floor of his girlfriend's kitchen. "It was just like getting crushed by a goddamned steam roller - I'd never thought about my heart - I couldn't breathe. I tried to yell, but the only sound that came out was a whimper." His voice grew softer until the mood of everyone at the table was sympathically quiet.

Ladd, whose curly hair and broad shoulders were the talk of the all the middle-aged women in Poplar, told of his heartburn that would not go away. He would joke now about the three packs of Rolaids that he chewed and downed with a quart of milk. "I cried like a baby. Really, Joe," he explained, "Just like a little titty baby."

The others would nod and murmur understanding. Aaron, who had the most recent and worst heart attack of the group, would, by this time, be pale and his face sheened with perspiration. He had not yet passed the "All's Well" mark and could not yet talk about his experience comfortably. His neighbor, Hal jabbed him with a sharp boney elbow and began "You talk about one scared rabbit! There I was stuck on my knees. I couldn't stand up, and I couldn't sit down. Whatever I did, It hurt. Mae, you know, was out of town. Her sister, Louise, was having her first kid and Mae wanted to be with her. It seemed like forever until I could crawl to the phone and call the ambulance. Jesus! Yeah, I was one scared rabbit."

The younger men were exchanging glances by now that clearly showed how they felt about his display of weakness and vulnerability. Everyone laughed and the talk accelerated into the usual braggadocio. The heart attack stories were pushed back until the next time they met for dinner. Only here and only when they talked about heart attacks were they able to be completely honest with each other and to admit fear and helplessness.

As the night wore on, Alma began to tire and think wistfully of her sagging bed and the bliss of sleep. She was, however, a practical woman. She finished her work in the kitchen, leaving it spotless. Then she sat down to wait at the small table in the back. Soon Toots would bring her a beer. They would sit in companionable silence while she finished the beer. Toots would pick up the empty bottle, wipe the table off and say "See ya tomorrow, Alma."

"Night, Toots." She would answer. Steady as clockwork.

She would put her tips in a velvet Crown Royal bag and carry it home in her purse. It made her feel like a returning hunter. Victorious at the stalk. Danger staved off one more day. Some nights she was not so successful but she never let that hamper her spirits. She had kept the show going another day. That's what counted.

As she rounded the corner, she knew that Buddy would be waiting in the alcove at the back of the florist's building with Ringgold, his large yellow dog. She would take the boy's hand and let him lead her home while the dog ran ahead and cleared the path of all possible dangers. At the door, Buddy would turn, pull her down, and kiss her on the cheek, soft as a whisper, then race to bed.

The last rumble of the kids' bedtime skirmish faded slowly. Silence eased in, broken by the neighbor's barking dog and the distant sound of the trucks pulling up the hill on the interstate.