Rock Island Line. David Rhodes
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hey,” he began a little louder, though hardly above a whisper. “Get up here, you dogs.” Without his hearing a sound, as though they had materialized out of the darkness, all at once they were at the foot of the steps, ascending and clamoring. “Good,” he whispered, “but don’t be so noisy.” The kitchen filled with them. They’re being pretty quiet, he thought, considering how they could be. He let them outside.
If there’s something out there, some burglars, he thought, they’ll wish they weren’t. At the kitchen door he watched them leave the porch and hit the snow without a sound and flash off into the dark of the barn and yard trees, as quickly and quietly as a cloud’s shadow. No barking. Strange, thought Wilson, but then no one ever knows exactly why dogs do anything. Then he heard his name again: “Wilson.”
“Who said that?” he said and switched on the outside light, holding the door ajar. He saw his dogs running silently at the edge of the light, moving slowly toward him, running in a large circle, dipping to and fro out of the darkness. Then two gray figures stepped into the light. Both of them wore hats and their faces were dark and without definition. They carried what looked like long, thin reeds bending at the tops, with winking spots of silver. They came up to the door and stopped. There was no light in the house. “Wilson,” one said.
“Step up closer,” he answered. “I can’t see you clearly. I know that voice. Step closer, I can’t see you.” He went through the door onto the porch. They came up the steps and just inside.
“Step closer,” said Wilson. “There, now I can see you. Dave . . . Sam . . . What are you doing here?”
“We thought you might want to go fishing,” said Sam.
“We came to see,” said Dave.
“The river’s frozen over,” said Wilson.
“We’ve got a hole chopped in the ice. Sam made it, clear down to the water.”
“Why are you whispering?” said Wilson. “It’s too cold out there.”
“It’s not so cold,” said Sam.
“ You’re right, it’s not too cold,” said Wilson almost to himself, looking down at his pajama tops and bare ankles, not feeling the slightest discomfort.
“They’ll be biting tonight,” said Sam. “The big ones.” The dogs were sitting silently outside. Frequently one would jump up and dance around in anticipation of going for a walk, but noiseless in the snow.
“I can’t go, really,” said Wilson. “I don’t have my poles any more. Della locked them up.”
“We brought one for you,” said Dave, and held it out to him, the light from outside glistening off the silver eyes.
He looked at it. “It’s sure a nice one,” he said. “Feels like you could really bring them in with this one . . . I don’t know, though. I better not. Della would worry.”
“No she won’t,” said Sam. “She’ll be asleep.”
“No . . . I better tell her. I’ll be right back.”
“No, Wilson. Come on, let’s go. She’d never let you.” They stepped off the porch.
“Wait,” said Wilson.
“No, come on,” said Dave, his voice almost inaudible.
“OK, I’m coming,” called Wilson, and followed them outside. The three walked down below the barn into the trees, Wilson’s dogs running around them. “You know, I think you’re right, Sam,” he said, shaking his rod and looking at it. “I think they’ll be biting—I’ve just got that feeling.”
Della woke up at three and saw the empty bed. She threw on her bathrobe, stuffed her tiny feet into slippers and went down the hall, downstairs and into the kitchen. A blast of cold air met her. Holding her robe closely about her neck, she went to the door and closed it. She stood there looking out into the lit barnyard, shadows roundly filling the two tracks out into the darkness of the barn. The awful snow, thought Della, and the words came running back again and again like shaking someone falling between consciousness and unconsciousness, calling his name over and over—the awful snow, the awful snow—until she regained herself.
She went to the closet where Wilson’s winter coat still hung, and put on her own. Then the fur-lined boots and scarf. She took down Wilson’s coat and hurried to the door—then stopped again, looking outside. Dropping the coat, she ran into the dining room, and with a key from behind the teacups she opened their utility closet. From a little case between Wilson’s tackle boxes she took the pistol and put it in her pocket. She took up the coat again on her way out, and the flashlight for the porch. She called his name and followed the tracks, noticing how closely Cindy had kept to Wilson, never wandering as much as several feet away. Though she did not think it now, she did later. Those tracks . . . they were much like soldiers’.
She followed them below the barn, halfway down the hill toward the river, to a place where there were rocks jutting up from the snow, crowned with ice. Her flashlight caught Cindy’s green eyes. She went over. Leaning against the rock was Wilson, his eyes nearly closed. She took her hand out of her mitten and touched his face. It was cold and hard.
Della dropped the mitten. She stood back and closed her eyes, opened them wide, lifted her head up above the white, howling wilderness, watched the stars of Orion reel over her, his belt like a dagger in her heart. Then she felt the gentle pressure, Wilson’s gentle pressure—his comforting net settle over her soul and bring it back around her.
“Come on,” said Della to Cindy. “There’s nothing here.” The old dog whined and lay down at Wilson’s feet, watching for his eyes to open, for him to get up and go back to the warmth of the house. Della took out the pistol and shot her, then went back home, the sharp, tearing, inhuman blast running a needle through her sorrow, bleeding into the insatiable pores of her body.
John was out of the Army in 1947.
From the dawning of his conscious thought July had been told that Daddy was coming home, though he had no idea of who this was or what he would be like. He did know that this Daddy, however, was likely to be an object of his mother’s attentions, which all his life had belonged almost entirely to himself, and which he felt were vital to his very existence. She told him he would have to try hard not to be jealous, because Daddy loved him too, and Daddy’s attentions were going to be just as good as, or better than, her own. And not knowing anything else, July could do nothing but wait and see. Then later she came to talk about the exact date he would be coming, and every day after that she exclaimed how, praise be to God, it was one day less. The closer it got, the more she neglected July and abandoned herself to her own expectations, filling him with dread.
John rode on a bus jammed with servicemen from New York City to Toledo. Many got off along the way, and there was a layover of six hours. On the bus to Chicago there were only eight men in uniform besides himself, trained from their duties to live with boredom and motion. Another layover in Chicago, a dinner of fried chicken and coleslaw in a diner on the Loop, and he was the only GI on the bus for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, a seven or eight-hour ride.
He tried to sleep and couldn’t. For the rest of his life he would remember this ride. Outside the tinted windows everything smelled of the disgust and nightmare of war. January thaw, he thought. My father’s dead, he remembered again. My mother: they might not have wanted to tell me about my mother. He resolved then, passing over the Mississippi and into Iowa, that if he could salvage his broken and splintered religion, if he could become a part, in a small way—any way—of those things he had so many nights feared were never true, if he could lie against Sarah’s body and be only a little happy—he would never breathe a word of the last five years. He would deny them. The bus went on farther into his state and he began seeing familiar landmarks, familiar towns. His sleeplessness since getting into the States had honed his nerves to an edge, and by the time they pulled into Iowa City, fear was soaking him in cold sweat. Beyond the window Sarah stood against the brick wall. Tears wanted to be let out of his eyes. Men were staring at her. Her