The Post-War Dream Page 2

  And this morning, after having steered clear of his autobiography for nearly a year, he fired up the Mac long enough to revise that opening description of himself, adding a single line at the end: Looks fifteen years younger when seen on the living room window at sunup with fresh snow on the ground.

  Hollis now dressed beside the bed he shared with Debra, quietly putting on thermal underwear, woolen socks, jeans, and a green flannel shirt. Wrapped in a comforter that she had gathered around herself, her head partly concealed beneath an orthopedic pillow, Debra was motionless—tufts of short, gray-blond hair sticking out from one end of the pillow, a lax arm jutting beyond the comforter to his barren side of the mattress—and wasn't disturbed when he sat at the bed's edge to slip his leather winter boots on, keeping still below her cave of sponge rubber. Of late he had been getting up several hours before she stirred, and with all their years of living together, she no longer had to be awake for him to hear her. She could speak to him even now, as he dressed himself, without saying a word, without being aware of herself; for they had had such conversations many times in the past.

  “Hollis?” she would ask, and he would answer her, half whispering for no reason, while vaguely aware of the pungent, somewhat sickly aroma permeating the bedroom—the smell of morning breath, of hours spent resting behind closed doors and windows.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her voice would be flat, raspy, sounding as if she inhabited that murky realm which barely separated consciousness and sleep.

  “Think I'll take a drive,” he said, pulling the right boot on.

  She would ask the time.

  “It's almost seven,” he said, pulling the left boot on.

  She would ask if it was still snowing.

  “No, it's finished. We've got sun.”

  “That's good,” she would say, apparently relieved; and then she would ask: “Aren't you cold?”

  He told her he was fine. “Go back to sleep,” he said. “You need the rest.”

  He reached for the hand of her exposed arm, wriggling the fingers tenderly but so as not to bother her, then he curled her fingers into a half fist and slid the arm back underneath the comforter.

  “Maybe for a little longer,” she would say, her voice growing fainter. “It feels so warm here—”

  He rose unsteadily, plodded across the room, and entered the large walk-in closet, seeking an article of outerwear he'd had no use for since retiring to southern Arizona: his old duvet jacket. Located on a top shelf, discovered inside a plastic storage box which also contained sweaters and a quilt, the jacket was in much better condition than he ‘d remembered it being (the innumerable camping trips having done little to depress its down lining or tarnish its waterproof urethane-laminate fabric). When he finally exited the closet—appearing as a heavily padded version of his already stocky self, the cobalt-colored jacket fitting tightly and reeking of mothballs—he could have sworn he heard Debra say something below the pillow, perhaps encouraging him to be careful, to be mindful of ice.

  “Don't worry,” he whispered, zipping up the jacket. “I'll be home in a bit.”

  At that moment, Hollis remembered when Debra had once injured herself while skiing at Big Bear, spraining an ankle and bruising the left cheek of her buttocks. As she had said herself, gravity was increasingly unkind to her. The hurt ankle had doubled, the skin expanding in hues of purple, red, blue, and black—and for more than a week she couldn't walk without severe pain. During her recuperation, she had lounged about in sweatpants, sometimes hopping from room to room of their old California home with the wounded leg dangling above the carpet (her arms swinging as she went, grinning all the while as if glimpsing herself objectively and enjoying the absurdity of her precarious, bouncing body); yet she never really complained or sought any sympathy. And now Hollis paused to stare at her shrouded form in their bed, feeling pleased that she had stayed by his side for so long. I'm lucky to have gotten this far with you, he thought. Such an even-tempered and reliable woman, accommodating but also her own person. Still, she had had her moments of ennui, although she had not been prone to prolonged depressions, or unrealistic in her expectations of him, or someone who harbored regrets. She was, he knew, exactly the sort of woman he had wanted to marry—a friend as much as a wife, a lover who could regard his mundanity not as a drawback but as a reassuring, steadfast influence.

  With both of them bundled in their respective duvets, Hollis turned himself, promptly leaving her, passing through the preset warmth of their home and toward the sobering chill which awaited him. That was how, on this crisp morning, he found himself brushing snow from the Suburban's hood, roof, and windows, using a flattened disposable coffee cup to scrape frost off the windshield while the vehicle idled in the driveway (its internal heat billowing from the exhaust pipe and thawing a portion of concrete, just as visible gusts of breath floated from his mouth); but not before he almost lost his footing twice on the front porch, or tugged with bare hands to free the stuck driver's-side door—the ice cracking loose, reminding him of wood splintering when the door swung open.

  Minutes later, the Suburban eased backward onto the street; proceeding with the speed of a geriatric jogger, he steered it down inactive thoroughfares which were, at places, ivory and sleek—Sagebrush Avenue, Yucca Street, Piñon Way—gliding between medians of evenly spaced saguaros (the stately cacti snowcapped and humbled by the storm, soon to be humiliated further by large Santa Claus hats and Christmas lights) and narrow side lanes reserved for golf carts instead of bicycles. Ultimately, he navigated the perimeter of the expansive golf courses which were designed to encompass many of the newer homes—golf courses which, on this day, summoned the frozen lakes of his Minnesota childhood (lean and agile at fourteen, hunting Big Portage Lake's banks, center-fire bolt-action Winchester ready for ruffed grouse or deer). Then how unoccupied Nine Springs felt, how forsaken this isolated desert community looked: not another resident, it seemed, had yet braved the pristine winterland—no early-morning golfers, or power walkers, or pickup trucks delivering the Arizona Daily Star. No one else was compelled to navigate the perilous streets, or to risk the dangers of traversing slick sidewalks—no one else, that is, except Hollis and, as he came to realize, one other foolhardy soul.

  3

  It wasn't difficult for Hollis to relish the lifelessness of Nine Springs, savoring the illusion of having the entire city to himself. Without snow and ice present, he would have gladly increased the Suburban's speed, disregarding stop signs, blaring the horn for the pleasure of it. He would, if the city had actually been his and his alone, have swerved from the street, violating the curb and sidewalk, aiming his wheels directly for the greens. As it was, though, the stop signs were heeded, the brake pedal getting tapped lightly while he rolled the vehicle to a standstill—where, absent of anyone else in front of or behind him, he paused long enough to survey the nearby golf course grounds. Still, if he hadn't noticed a red-clad figure writhing out there on the ninth hole green (a solitary form striving to gain footing in the snow, like an upturned turtle within a scarlet hooded parka, galoshes kicking, arms flailing beneath the blue sky), he could have easily believed himself to be the last person here.

  But Hollis wasn't sure if it was, in fact, another person he was seeing, or, as had been the case after coming home from Korea, he was once more being visited by an apparition of himself: that disquieting doppelgänger appearing when least expected, presenting itself in the strangest of places—seated at a dinner table, stretched out on the gravel shoulder of a desolate county road, crouched silently among the harvested rows of a cotton field—as if to show Hollis what his outcome might have been had he made different choices in his life. Those unusual, fleeting encounters with himself had occurred regularly for quite a while—from late ‘50 through the winter of ‘51—yet he had never dared mention them to anyone else, largely because he feared his sanity might get called into question.

  At some point following his military discharge
, Hollis had begun hearing about the troubles of ex-cavalrymen, various accounts regarding fellow soldiers whose behavior had turned erratic. decorated hero jumps in front of train, one newspaper article stated; other articles related stories of veterans who had thrown bedroom furniture from apartment windows, wandered naked around a busy town square while weeping aloud, attacked their own family members for reasons as minor as letting the teapot whistle for too long or forgetting to set out a butter knife when breakfast was served. His own mental state, however, hadn't really concerned him at first. His nerves, he had convinced himself, weren't shot, nor was he wracked by sleeplessness or plagued with flashbacks of the things he had experienced during battle. In truth, he had to drink just to fall asleep—and drink he did, the rounds commencing by the afternoon and continuing well past midnight, where he soon became a familiar face in all but two of the seven beer taverns which catered to his hometown of Critchfield, Minnesota.

  For more than a month Hollis had stayed drunk, doing so once he had been officially welcomed back, paraded down Ripley Avenue in a chariot-red convertible led by the town's sole fire engine, smiling at those lining the sidewalks to greet him with enthusiastic waves (people who had given him little attention just months earlier, faces he had seen throughout his childhood but who had never really spoken to him). “Local hero Hollis,” he was called for a while, and with such an honorific title attached to his name, the twenty-year-old had an endless quantity of free liquor placed before him. Even a local tavern owner had told him, “Any fella that's done the tough job for this country won't be paying for his drinks here, at least until the war is finished with. It's on us, son. Drink up, you've earned it.”

  And so Hollis had begun swallowing his fill—starting off the days with four or five Schell beers, concluding the nights with a combination of gin and a pinch of DDT commonly known as a Mickey Slim—until his legs could barely guide him a few blocks to the two-story Craftsman-style house he shared with his mother, Eden, and stepfather, Rich. Sometimes he passed out on the lawn or across the steps of the front porch, only to be helped inside by his increasingly wary mother. But usually he managed on his own, limping past the doorway, dragging himself up the stairs and into the musty-smelling bedroom which had always been his sanctuary; collapsing upon the twin mattress while still dressed (facedown, a shoe touching the floor in order to keep the room from spinning), he fell asleep beside a wall decorated with the triangular banners of his high-school football team, snoring as sunshine brightened the curtains and the smoky aroma of bacon frying wafted upstairs.

  This debilitating ritual might have continued much longer had there not been the singular visitation of his immovable counterpart; for one morning after a particularly reckless night of breakneck drinking, Hollis had raised his throbbing head from the pillow and, blinking awake amid the subdued natural light of his room, beheld his duplicate standing at the foot of the bed. With eyes bloodshot and difficult to focus, it took a moment for him to comprehend what he was seeing, and seconds passed in a befuddled silence. Then like someone surfacing from the coldest of waters, his lips parted with an inaudible gasp just as his pupils dilated. He inhaled, breathing a sharp, pervasive scent resembling sulfur. As if the odor acted as a kind of smelling salt, he shuddered and, rising up on his elbows, began to fully grasp the uncanniness of the situation.

  “What is this?” Hollis had uttered, except no reply was forthcoming. But hearing his mother talking downstairs—her high-pitched voice resonating while she spoke on the telephone—was enough to convince him that he wasn't dreaming. “This a joke?” he mumbled, addressing his double with trepidation. As his confusion transformed into fear, there was an increasingly quavering aura to the apparition: while seemingly stock-still, it began conveying a sort of elusive but persistent motion, not unlike the spinning blades of a fan. Nevertheless, it had a manufactured, artificial bearing, like a mannequin posed within a window display. The arms hung rigidly at its sides, and, mirroring Hollis in almost every way, it wore the same faded blue jeans, tan leisure shoes with rubber soles, bright blue Windbreaker, white T-shirt; the two exceptions being that, for whatever reasons, no silver-plated wristwatch was worn and its facial hair was thicker than the day's worth of stubble on Hollis's boyish face.

  Before the shock had completely sunk in, the doppelgänger went away, vanishing at the moment Hollis blinked his eyes. Still, the unpleasant smell lingered for a while, and sitting breathless on his bed, glancing from one end of the room to the other with his heart racing, he worried that his screws were coming loose. The nonstop carousing, he was sure, had finally taken its toll. Presuming such errant behavior was the main cause for the hallucination, he vowed to himself to cut back on his drinking (no more Mickey Slims, just the occasional beer), to spend more evenings at home (helping clear the dinner table and doing dishes, enjoying programs on the Zenith tube radio upon finishing the nightly chores), and, most important, to seek at least a modicum of guidance from the Lord (Wednesday and Sunday services would be heeded, the Holy Bible would be kept by his bedside but rarely, if ever, studied); and he promptly set about doing these things without any great struggle, easing the mind of his worried mother and pleasing her with how effortlessly he had righted himself.

  But what had once been considered an illusory by-product of too much alcohol soon became a recurring enigma, troubling Hollis during his comparatively sober periods. In the months after his return from Korea, not a week passed when he didn't briefly spot his double—facing him at the opposite end of a grocery-store aisle, on a street corner, at the foot of his bed again—always accompanied by that acidic, distinctive odor. Each evanescent meeting brought lessening degrees of surprise, even as Hollis had repeatedly asserted underneath his breath, “Leave me alone. You get the heck out of here.”

  “I'm sorry, what was that, dear?” Eden sometimes asked him. “What'd you say?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, glaring toward a doorway, or down the hallway, or across the living room. “Nothing,” he said, while also thinking: Go on, you don't scare me anymore.

  From December of one year to February of the next, the same apparition plagued him, the same face and stance—although his twin's hair had grown progressively bushy and wild, its bearded face ruddy and unwashed, the clothing wrinkled and soiled in places; with Hollis's fastidious attention to personal hygiene and general tidiness, the similarities were becoming less obvious. Max was what he finally christened the thing; Max, he called it, because the name sounded benign to him—because he had stopped recognizing the mirror image of himself whenever encountering it. As the physical condition of Max declined further, so, too, did the regularity of its unwelcome appearances. By the spring of ‘51, once he started working on a farm in West Texas, the visitations were few and far between (about every other month, observed from greater distances); and later on, during the decades he had spent living in Southern California, it was recognized only a handful of times—usually as Hollis drove San Gabriel Valley boulevards, perceived momentarily along sidewalks as a run-down, hunched form—leaving him with the distinct impression of having glimpsed a childhood acquaintance who no longer had any significant role in his life.

  Yet Max's proximity returned two years ago, startling Hollis twice within the week he and Debra had moved into their Nine Springs home (materializing in the garage, waiting in the kitchen). Thereafter, it limited itself to the golf course greens, emerging every so often among the group of men Hollis joined for organized tournaments or informal competitions. Regarding Max from a short distance, he remained calm, refusing to let it affect his game, never addressing it outright or feeling haunted anymore by its grim presence. Whereas before Max had remained unflinching, he had since noticed some faint movements—possibly a twitch of the hands, maybe a slight turn of the head. Moreover, his formerly perfect double had transformed into a mass of wrinkles, a haggard and pitiable creature, like a wax effigy of an elderly vagrant. Perhaps for that reason, he fostered a certain amount of empa
thy toward his old likeness; it looked as if it had traveled through hell just to stand near him again. Harboring a begrudging tenderness for his own body, he felt sad about what had ultimately become of Max.

  • • •

  Now parking the Suburban in a golf cart lane, the hazard lights blinking, Hollis went from the vehicle and started trudging forward. Between him and the ninth hole, a large black crow flitted about, shooting its beak into the snow with pistonlike speed, working its way slowly toward the fallen figure, but when Hollis approached—his boots breaching the frigid layer, his tracks fashioning a curving trail—it screamed once at him and promptly took flight; the bird circled high overhead, following as Hollis veered through a sodden sand trap and angled for the ninth hole. The dull ache in his left thigh sharpened, further hindering his progress. Up ahead, the struggling figure had become listless—legs, arms, and body inert—and by the time Hollis reached him, the individual seemed resigned to his plight.