Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
At this moment, his mind swept clean by pain, Miller can hear the tapping of raindrops on his own poncho. Then he hears the pitchy whine of an engine. A jeep is splashing along the road, slipping from side to side and throwing up thick gouts of mud behind it. The jeep itself is caked with mud. It skids to a stop in front of Bravo Company’s position, and the horn beeps twice.
Miller glances around to see what the others are doing. Nobody has moved. They’re all just standing in their holes.
The horn beeps again.
A short figure in a poncho emerges from a clump of trees farther up the road. Miller can tell it’s the first sergeant by how little he is, so little the poncho hangs almost to his ankles. The first sergeant walks slowly toward the jeep, big blobs of mud all around his boots. When he gets to the jeep he leans his head inside; a moment later he pulls it out. He looks down at the road. He kicks pensively at one of the tires, then looks up and shouts Miller’s name.
Miller keeps watching him. Not until the first sergeant hollers his name again does Miller begin the hard work of hoisting himself out of the foxhole. The other men turn their blanched, weary faces up at him as he trudges past their holes.
“Come here, boy,” the first sergeant says. He walks a little distance from the jeep and waves Miller over.
Miller follows him. Something is wrong. Miller can tell because the first sergeant called him boy instead of shit-bird. Already he feels a burning in his left side, where his ulcer is.
The first sergeant stares down the road. “Here’s the thing,” he begins. He stops and turns to Miller. “Goddamn it, anyway. Did you know your mother was sick?”
Miller doesn’t say anything, just pushes his lips tight together.
“She must have been sick, right?” When Miller remains silent, the first sergeant says, “She passed away last night. I’m real sorry.” He looks sadly up at Miller, and Miller watches his right arm beginning to rise under the poncho; then it falls to his side again. Miller can see that the first sergeant wants to give his shoulder a man-to-man kind of squeeze, but it just wouldn’t work. You can only do that if you’re taller than the other fellow or at least the same size.
“These boys here will drive you back to base,” the first sergeant says, nodding toward the jeep. “You give the Red Cross a call and they’ll take it from there. Get yourself some rest,” he adds, then walks off toward the trees.
Miller retrieves his gear. One of the men he passes going back to the jeep says, “Hey, Miller, what’s the story?”
Miller doesn’t answer. He’s afraid if he opens his mouth he’ll start laughing and ruin everything. He keeps his head down and his lips tight as he climbs into the backseat of the jeep and doesn’t look up until they’ve left the company a mile or so behind. The fat PFC sitting beside the driver is watching him. He says, “I’m sorry about your mother. That’s a bummer.”
“For sure,” says the driver, another PFC. He shoots a look over his shoulder.
Miller sees his own face reflected for an instant in the driver’s sunglasses. “Had to happen someday,” he mumbles, and looks down again.
Miller’s hands are shaking. He puts them between his knees and stares through the snapping plastic window at the trees. Raindrops rattle on the canvas overhead. He’s inside, and everyone else is still outside. Miller can’t stop thinking about the others standing around getting rained on, and the thought makes him want to laugh and slap his leg. This is the luckiest he has ever been.
“My grandmother died last year,” the driver says. “But that’s not the same thing as losing your mother. I feel for you, Miller.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Miller tells him. “I’ll get along.”
The fat PFC beside the driver says, “Look, don’t feel like you have to repress just because we’re here. If you want to cry or anything, just go ahead. Right, Leb?”
The driver nods. “Just let it out.”
“No problem,” Miller says. He wishes he could set these fellows straight so they won’t feel like they have to act mournful all the way to Fort Ord. But if he tells them what happened, they’ll turn right around and drive him back to his foxhole.
Miller knows what happened. There’s another Miller in the battalion with the same initials he’s got, “W.P.,” and this Miller is the one whose mother died. The army screws up their mail all the time, and now they’ve screwed this up. Miller got the whole picture as soon as the first sergeant started asking about his mother.
For once, everybody else is on the outside and Miller’s on the inside. Inside, heading straight to a hot shower, dry clothes, a pizza, and a warm bunk. He didn’t even have to do anything wrong to get here; he just did as he was told. It was their own mistake. Tomorrow he’ll rest up like the first sergeant ordered him to, go on sick call about his bridge, maybe downtown to a movie after that. Then he’ll call the Red Cross. By the time they get everything straightened out it will be too late to send him back to the field. And the best thing is, the other Miller won’t know. The other Miller will have a whole other day of thinking his mother is still alive. You could even say that Miller is keeping her alive for him.
The man beside the driver turns around again and studies Miller. He has small dark eyes in a big white face covered with beads of sweat. His name tag reads KAISER. Showing little teeth square as a baby’s, he says, “You’re really coping, Miller. Most guys pretty much lose it when they get the word.”
“I would too,” the driver says. “Anybody would. It’s human, Kaiser.”
“For sure,” Kaiser says. “I’m not saying I’m any different. That’s going to be my worst day, the day my mom dies.” He blinks rapidly, but not before Miller sees his little eyes mist up.
“Everybody has to go sometime,” Miller says, “sooner or later. That’s my philosophy.”
“Heavy,” the driver says. “Really deep.”
Kaiser gives him a sharp look. “At ease, Lebowitz.”
Miller leans forward. Lebowitz is a Jewish name. Miller wants to ask him why he’s in the army, but he’s afraid Lebowitz might take it wrong. Instead, conversationally, he says, “You don’t see too many Jewish people in the army nowadays.”
Lebowitz looks into the rearview, his thick eyebrows arching over his sunglasses. Then he shakes his head and says something Miller can’t make out.
“At ease, Leb,” Kaiser says again. He turns to Miller and asks him where the funeral will be held.
“What funeral?” Miller says.
Lebowitz laughs.
“Fuckhead,” Kaiser says to him. “Haven’t you ever heard of shock?”
Lebowitz is quiet for a moment, then he looks into the rearview again and says, “Sorry, Miller. I was out of line.”
Miller shrugs. His probing tongue pushes the bridge too hard and he stiffens suddenly.
“Where did your mom live?” Kaiser asks.
“Redding,” Miller says.
Kaiser nods. “Redding,” he repeats. He keeps watching Miller. So does Lebowitz, glancing back and forth between the mirror and the road. Miller understands that they expected a different kind of performance than the one he’s giving them, more emotional and all. They’ve seen other personnel whose mothers died and have certain standards he has failed to live up to. He looks out the window. They’re driving along a ridgeline. Slices of blue flicker between the trees to the left of the road; then they hit a clear space and Miller can see the ocean below them, clear to the horizon under a bright, cloudless sky. Except for a few hazy wisps in the treetops they’ve left the clouds behind, back in the mountains, hanging over the soldiers there.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Miller says. “I’m sorry she’s dead.”
Kaiser says, “That’s the way. Talk it out.”
“It’s just that I didn’t know her all that well,” Miller says, and after this monstrous lie a feeling of weightlessness comes over him. At first it makes him uncomfortable, but almost immediately he begins to enjoy it. From now on he can say any
He makes a sad face. “I guess I’d be more broken up and so on if she hadn’t taken off on us the way she did. Right in the middle of harvest season. Just leaving us flat like that.”
“I’m hearing a lot of anger,” Kaiser tells him. “Face it down. Own it.”
Miller got that stuff from a song, but he can’t remember any more. He lowers his head and looks at his boots. “Killed my dad,” he says after a time. “Died of a broken heart. Left me with five kids to raise, not to mention the farm.” Miller closes his eyes. He sees a field all plowed up and the sun setting behind it, a bunch of kids coming in from the field with rakes and hoes on their shoulders. While the jeep winds down through the switchbacks he describes his hardships as the oldest child in this family. He’s at the end of his story when they reach the coast highway and turn north. All at once the jeep stops rattling and swaying. They pick up speed. The tires hum on the smooth road, the rushing air whistles a single note around the radio antenna. “Anyway,” Miller says, “it’s been two years since I even had a letter from her.”
“You should make a movie,” Lebowitz says.
Miller isn’t sure how to take this. He waits to hear what else Lebowitz has to say, but he’s silent. So is Kaiser, who’s had his back turned to Miller for several minutes now. Both men stare at the road ahead of them. Miller can see they’ve lost interest. He feels disappointed, because he was having a fine time pulling their leg.
One thing Miller told them was true: he hasn’t had a letter from his mother in two years. She wrote him a lot when he first joined the army, at least once a week, sometimes twice, but Miller sent all her letters back unopened and after a year of this she finally gave up. She tried calling a few times but he wouldn’t go to the telephone, so she gave that up too. Miller wants her to understand that her son is not a man to turn the other cheek. He is a serious man. Once you’ve crossed him, you’ve lost him.
Miller’s mother crossed him by marrying a man she shouldn’t have married. Phil Dove. Dove was a biology teacher at the high school. Miller was having trouble in the course, so his mother went to talk to Dove about it and ended up getting engaged to him. When Miller tried to reason with her, she wouldn’t hear a word. She acted like she’d landed herself a real catch instead of someone who talked with a stammer and spent his life taking crayfish apart.
Miller did everything he could to stop the marriage, but his mother had blinded herself. She couldn’t see what she already had, how good it was with just the two of them. How he was always there when she got home from work, with a pot of coffee all brewed up. The two of them drinking coffee together and talking about different things, or maybe not talking at all—just sitting in the kitchen while the room got dark around them, until the telephone rang or the dog started whining to get out. Walking the dog around the reservoir. Coming back and eating whatever they wanted for supper, sometimes nothing, sometimes the same dish three or four nights in a row, watching the programs they wanted to watch and going to bed when they wanted to and not because some other person wanted them to. Just being together in their own place.
Phil Dove got Miller’s mother so mixed up that she forgot how good their life was. She refused to see what she was ruining. “You’ll be leaving anyway,” she told him. “You’ll be moving on, next year or the year after,” which showed how wrong she was about Miller, because he would never have left her, not ever, not for anything. But when he said this she laughed as if she knew better, as if he weren’t serious. He was serious, though. He was serious when he promised he’d stay, and he was serious when he promised he’d never speak to her again if she married Phil Dove.
She married him. Miller stayed at a motel that night and two nights more, until he ran out of money. Then he joined the army. He knew that would get to her, because he was still a month shy of finishing high school, and because his father had been killed while serving in the army. Not in Vietnam but in Georgia, in an accident. He and another man were dipping mess kits in a garbage can full of boiling water and somehow the can fell over on him. Miller was six at the time. Miller’s mother hated the army after that, not because her husband was dead—she knew about the war he was going to, she knew about ambushes and mines—but because of how it happened. She said the army couldn’t even get a man killed in a decent fashion.
She was right too. The army was just as bad as she thought, and worse. You spent all your time waiting around. You lived a completely stupid existence. Miller hated every minute of it, but there was pleasure in his hatred because he believed that his mother must know how unhappy he was. That knowledge would be a grief to her. It wouldn’t be as bad as the grief she’d given him, which was spreading from his heart into his stomach and teeth and everywhere else, but it was the worst grief he had power to cause, and it would serve to keep her in mind of him.
Kaiser and Lebowitz are describing hamburgers to each other. Their idea of the perfect burger. Miller tries not to listen but their voices go on, and after a while he can’t think of anything but beefsteak tomatoes and Gulden’s mustard and steaming, onion-stuffed meat crisscrossed with black marks from the grill. He’s at the point of asking them to change the subject when Kaiser turns and says, “Think you can handle some chow?”
“I don’t know,” Miller says. “I guess I could get something down.”
“We were talking about a pit stop. But if you want to keep going, just say the word. It’s your ball game. I mean, technically we’re supposed to take you straight back to base.”
“I could eat,” Miller says.
“That’s the spirit. At a time like this you’ve got to keep your strength up.”
“I could eat,” Miller says again.
Lebowitz looks up into the rearview mirror, shakes his head, and looks away again.
They take the next turnoff and drive inland to a crossroads where two gas stations face two restaurants. One of the restaurants is boarded up, so Lebowitz pulls into the parking lot of the Dairy Queen across the road. He turns the engine off, and the three men sit motionless in the sudden silence. Then Miller hears the distant clang of metal on metal, the caw of a crow, the creak of Kaiser shifting in his seat. A dog barks in front of a rust-streaked trailer next door, a skinny white dog with yellow eyes. As it barks the dog rubs itself, one leg raised and twitching, against a sign that shows an outspread hand below the words KNOW YOUR FUTURE.
They get out of the jeep, and Miller follows Kaiser and Lebowitz across the parking lot. The air is warm and smells of oil. In the gas station across the road a pink-skinned man in a swimming suit is trying to put air in the tires of his bicycle, jerking at the hose and swearing loudly. Miller pushes his tongue against the broken bridge, lifting it gently. He wonders if he should try eating a hamburger and decides it can’t hurt as long as he’s careful to chew on the other side of his mouth.
But it does hurt. After a few bites Miller shoves his plate away. He rests his chin on one hand and listens to Lebowitz and Kaiser argue about whether people can actually tell the future. Lebowitz is talking about a girl he used to know who had ESP. “We’d be driving along,” he says, “and out of the blue she’d tell me exactly what I was thinking about. It was unbelievable.”
Kaiser finishes his hamburger and takes a drink of milk. “No big deal,” he says. “I could do that.” He pulls Miller’s hamburger over to his side of the table and takes a bite out of it.
“Go ahead,” Lebowitz says. “Try it. I’m not thinking about what you think I’m thinking about.”
“Yes, you are.”
“All right, now I am,” Lebowitz says, “but I wasn’t before.”
“I wouldn’t let a fortune-teller get near me,” Miller says. “The way I see it, the less you know the better off you are.”
“More vintage philosophy from the private stock of W. P. Miller,” Lebowitz says. He looks at Kaiser, who’s finishing Miller’s hamburger. “Well, how about it? I’m up for it if you are.”
Kaiser chews ruminatively. He
“Mind what?” Miller asks.
Lebowitz stands and puts his sunglasses back on. “Don’t worry about Miller. Miller’s cool. Miller keeps his head when men all around him are losing theirs.”
Kaiser and Miller get up from the table and follow Lebowitz outside. Lebowitz is bending down in the shade of a dumpster, wiping off his boots with a handkerchief. Shiny blue flies buzz around him.
“Mind what?” Miller repeats.
“We thought we’d check out the prophet,” Kaiser tells him.
Lebowitz straightens up and the three of them start across the parking lot.
“I’d actually kind of like to get going,” Miller says. When they reach the jeep he stops, but Lebowitz and Kaiser walk on. “Now listen,” Miller says, and skips a little to catch up. “I have a lot to do,” he says to their backs. “I have to get home.”
“We know how broken up you are,” Lebowitz tells him. He keeps walking.
“This won’t take too long,” Kaiser says.
The dog barks once and then, when it sees that they really intend to come within range of his teeth, runs around the trailer. Lebowitz knocks on the door. It swings open, and there stands a round-faced woman with dark, sunken eyes and heavy lips. One of her eyes has a cast; it seems to be watching something beside her while the other looks down at the three soldiers at her door. Her hands are covered with flour. She is a Gypsy, an actual Gypsy. Miller has never seen a Gypsy before, but he recognizes her as surely as he’d recognize a wolf if he saw one. Her presence makes his blood pound in his veins. If he lived in this place he would come back at night with other men, all of them yelling and waving torches, and drive her out.
“You on duty?” Lebowitz asks.
She nods, wiping her hands on her skirt. They leave chalky streaks on the bright patchwork. “All of you?” she asks.