The Post-War Dream Read online

  “The pleasure is mine, son. Now, what should you try next?” Skipper Ken pivoted, facing the shelves of backlit bottles, hands placed on hips while contemplating the next selection. “Let's see—”

  One day, Hollis thought, I'll have me a joint like this—make my own little private cantina somewhere, won't leave it for a minute. One day I'll be Captain Hollis, old and dignified and happy, sailing my very own landlocked ship.

  “I'm figuring a Hunchback's Nipple might do the trick. Or maybe a Rusty Hook is what you're needing.”

  And soon the final round was poured, and, shortly thereafter, Hollis managed to find his way back to the depot, pouring himself onto a Greyhound bus bound for Minnesota. But he wouldn't remember exiting the Zombie Cantina that morning—forgetting the cane at the bar, staggering along sidewalks which had gained foot traffic since dawn—nor would he recall buying a ticket or taking up two seats as he slumbered for hours on a Silversides coach. Well before noon he was snoring gently with the vibrations of the bus, consumed by a liberating sleep which carried him from the West Coast and far across the desert. Outside the flat midday light dimmed to darker hues, and in the distance storm clouds canvassed mesas, producing sheets of black rain which appeared like vertical streaks of lead rubbed upon paper.

  Debra sat in silence, keeping perfectly still while Hollis talked. It was the first she had heard of the Zombie Cantina, although the story didn't surprise her. In the past, he had mentioned his intense need to get drunk after being discharged, yet he mostly avoided the specifics, hardly addressing the consequences of his brief drinking spree even when she had asked him to elaborate. He had, in fact, always shrugged off the alcohol abuse as simply a transitional bump on the return road to civilian life, a fleeting misstep of his youth which wasn't worth dissection. But sitting there beside her at the kitchen table, his voice trembled as he spoke of those days, recounting what she already knew while, without actually elaborating, also shedding some light on the confusion and lack of understanding he maintained for the actions of his younger incarnation; then that which he had always told her was trivial or no longer relevant began, instead, hinting at a man who couldn't help but look back on his life with apprehension, often discovering a stranger occupying the pockets of his memory where fragments of his previous self should have resided.

  “That Halloween,” Hollis said, staring at the table, “pretty much set me on a course for a five-week bender, as you well know. The odd thing is, I'd barely touched a drop prior to then, but when I got started I didn't want to stop. Can't say why for sure, I just can't. I guess I was having a difficult readjustment, or likely it was an ill-conceived attempt to stabilize my frazzled nervous system. Don't know why, I don't. I mean, it's sort of like I fell asleep on that bus home and didn't wake up for a month or more. So you can imagine very little is clear in my head about those weeks—very little really, almost nothing at all—until the moment I met you. That's when I woke up, that's how I think of it.”

  Hollis paused for a moment, thoughtfully biting at his bottom lip, tugging the skin with his front teeth. The moon shined through the kitchen windows, illuminating the countertops and the no-wax vinyl flooring. Debra shut her eyes, breathing deeply. Then he, too, inhaled deeply, exhaling like a prolonged sigh before continuing. Everything was like a dream, he went on to explain. The minute he carefully maneuvered down the steps of the Greyhound bus—having arrived in Critchfield three days later, bringing himself to the asphalt of his hometown on a cold, overcast November morning—everything felt unreal to him. “I suppose I didn't realize I was big news in ol’ Critchfield, probably only because nothing much of note happened there anyway.” But the trombone-heavy C.S.D. high-school marching band and a crowd of about fifty locals had come to greet him with applause and cheers, at first encircling him with a cacophony of music and hard slaps to his shoulders, then fanning out to give him enough space in which to limp self-consciously toward the weeping, hand-wringing figure of his mother—while a discordant, halting version of “When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied his lurching, Frankenstein-like gait.

  “She had on a pale print dress,” Hollis said, when thinking of his mother, “and her hair had been done up nice, and she was crying. I'd never seen that woman cry for anyone—Eden wasn't a crier—but there she was, crying at the sight of me. She wore face powder and dry rouge, except the tears were making a mess of it. Next thing I know she ‘s hugging me in those big arms of hers, and she's holding me so close I could feel her corset pressing against my uniform. And after that—well, you know—they paraded me straight home, I guess. I got properly paraded after that. That's what they decided to do, for some idiotic reason.”

  Led by the town's single fire engine, the mayor of Critchfield drove a chariot-red Olds 98 convertible along the downtown stretch of Ripley Avenue, chauffeuring Hollis and Eden at a top speed of ten miles per hour. “Local hero Hollis,” the mayor shouted, repeatedly honking the horn. From the convertible's backseat, a bewildered Hollis smiled uncomfortably next to his beaming mother, responding in kind to the enthusiastic waves of the people who had braved the chilly weather to stand outside to welcome him—an array of pale, flushed faces he had seen throughout his life but who hadn't much acknowledged him until that morning. Even so, his contentious, tactless stepfather, Rich, was nowhere to be seen—nowhere among the townsfolk who had greeted his bus, nor glimpsed with those who were waving at the passing convertible. But soon enough the well-wishers thinned into empty sidewalks, and then, as if transporting him back in time, the convertible accelerated, parting ways with the fire engine when turning onto a residential street—speeding past Hollis's elementary school, and the First Methodist Church he had attended since childhood, and the familiar yards and brick homes which had always been there—rolling to a complete stop in front of the two-story Craftsman-style house he had previously vowed never to revisit, the property looking no different than the day he had left it, or, indeed, than the day he was born: front window boxes filled with withered flowers, mature trees providing a canopy over the shed-roof dormer.

  There was no question, he now told Debra, that his memory had become unreliable over the years, and as a result certain events likely didn't occur in the same manner in which he was relating them to her. Although he recalled with some clarity the oppressive atmosphere which consumed him when he entered the house right behind his mother, seeping into him from all sides within the foyer; and like the swift drumming of a hammer against a nail, whatever fleeting happiness and relief he had felt was immediately leveled, supplanted by an interminable weight in his gut which made him want to twist around and quickly hobble to somewhere else, anywhere else.

  “Who knows for sure what I was expecting. I mean, as long as I wasn't fighting North Koreans, I should've been fine and dandy. As long as I was alive and standing on my own two feet and wasn't in the hospital anymore, nothing on earth should've gotten under my skin, especially anything inside that old house, and especially a petty, mean-spirited little guy like Rich. I suppose in my head I'd thought I was going to be someone else when I got back there, a full-grown man and not just a kid anymore, and so I'd react to things maybe differently—except it wasn't quite like that, unfortunately.”

  His stepfather—jowly and overweight, a short man with a smattering of gray hair combed neatly on his balding scalp—emerged from the living room folding a newspaper, dressed in his normal attire of black suspenders, black slacks, and a pale blue button-up shirt. Staring at Hollis while avoiding eye contact, Rich spoke in his customary curt way, saying, “Isn't that something, you actually made it in one whole piece. Wouldn't have bet my money on it. But let's not worry your mother sick like that anymore, all right?” There was to be no welcome back, no glad you survived, nor the simple courtesy of a handshake—just the subtle resumption of what had always been a one-sided pissing match.

  His mother stiffened. “Now, now,” Eden said, forcing a smile. “Now, now—”

  Then Hollis knew,
without a doubt, that he was home again—although an opportunity to say anything wasn't given, for already Rich had shifted his attention to Eden, asking her before she had had a chance to set her purse aside, “What are you cooking me for lunch?”

  “Oh, I hadn't thought about it yet,” she answered, glancing nervously at Hollis, then at her husband, fidgeting all the while with her purse strap.

  “Well, start thinking about it,” replied Rich, chuckling and grinning smugly.

  At that moment Hollis had the urge to slap his stepfather, to strike him hard on the cheek, shutting his mouth. He considered grabbing Rich by the suspenders, peering at him coolly, making it clear that better men than him have had their bodies blown apart and scattered like hay across hillsides. While you were waiting for her to serve you sandwiches—he wanted to tell him—good men were dying near me, and I'm sure I killed much kinder men than you, and I was almost killed, too, and why don't you cook your own damn lunch today. But, instead, he expressed only fatigue, politely excusing himself in order that he might catch a nap, requesting to be awakened later so he could join them for the midday meal Eden was bound to prepare.

  As he moved unsteadily along the creaking floorboards of the shadowy main hallway—going past the open doorways of the downstairs bathroom and the unlit domain of Eden and Rich's bedroom—the interior of the house seemed imposing to Hollis. Various framed photographs were displayed on the walls—his deceased father in healthier days, his mother and her four sisters as farm children, a younger but still chubby Rich on a fishing trip, a number of departed or distant relatives whose names had been mostly forgotten by him. The odor of mothballs was as potent as ever. While heading up the worn-down staircase, he became aware of a sudden chill in spots, air pushing from hairline cracks on the wooden stairs, a momentary coldness sensed like the unseen presence of a spirit as he crossed through it; yet that, like everything else there, was nothing new.

  How disconcerting it was, then, for Hollis to feel as if he had never been anywhere but at home; the weeks and months serving overseas in Japan and Korea, the violence and murder which was at once epic and tragically intimate—all of that unfolding around him on a broad scale, altering him forever, while day in and day out the rooms, smells, and aura of the Critchfield house had endured. Aside from the shoebox-shaped package which had arrived ahead of him and now waited on his bedroom floor (shipped by the naval hospital, packed with a set of six ceramic Japanese teacups, a parcel of letters, a few articles of clothing), he found himself entering the room where his belongings felt frozen in time: the plaid comforter folded at the foot of the bed, a stack of National Geographic magazines on a writing desk beside a bay window, the white-and-silver-striped wallpaper interrupted here and there by tacked-up pencil drawings of imaginatively rendered spaceships or airplanes of his own design, the Coca-Cola bottle on the night table which contained a small amount of the beverage he had neglected to finish. Then as if the passing of months hadn't transpired, not even a single day or hour or minute, those familiar belongings seemed to be telling him, “Everything has remained as it was—nothing here has changed for you.”

  There was, however, the slight discomfort in his leg as Hollis stretched across the mattress, the uniform covering his body, and the memory of distant terrain and people he wished to dismiss from his mind (not wanting to dwell on anything—where he'd been, where he was now). The white ceiling above his bed remained stained with brownish spots, the result of water damage from two springs earlier in which rain had dripped through the attic and wetted his forehead while he slept. “You're home,” he said tiredly, moving his gaze away from the ceiling, focusing on the gray clouds filling the bay window, as though avoiding something, some internal quandary he hadn't expected would arise. And later he thought, his stare returning to the stains on the ceiling: What on earth am I going to do?

  Shutting his eyes, Hollis attempted to push aside the emptiness he was feeling within, to banish the dread he associated with the war and, also, with his own hometown; yet now every single thought suddenly involved one or the other, and as those competing ruminations came and went, the urge to fall asleep and never stir again increased. But shortly before sleep took him, another memory rescued his thoughts, presenting itself like a shimmering oasis in the middle of a hopeless landscape—a pleasant ideality of bamboo walls, miniature Japanese fishing boats, wooden tribal masks, tiki idols, and a multitude of colorful drinks served with tiny parasols; such an assuring, comforting vision it proved to be, lingering there when he stirred from his nap, staying with him during lunch, and, as evening loomed, encouraging him to venture outside so that he might find somewhere which could roughly approximate its hospitable imprint.

  Debra smiled at the kitchen table—grinning from side to side, momentarily amused at the idea of him searching for a tropical hideout in Minnesota—while Hollis rubbed at his temple with an index finger, saying, “And so it seemed the obvious answer was to drink, and to keep drinking, from the hour I woke up till I couldn't climb off a barstool or walk myself home at night. Obviously, there wasn't a Zombie Cantina, but we had us the Shelter, and the Rattlesnake Inn, and the Tap Room, and lord knows what else. There wasn't any Rusty Hook or Hunchback's Nipple either, I can tell you that, but there was plenty of other stuff I hadn't tried before. My main beverage of choice became the Mickey Slim, probably because it took me somewhere beyond the ether, sent me higher than a kite and as far from myself and Critchfield as any drink could. Getting drunk like that I didn't think or feel anything, at least anything I'd be able to recall the next morning. There ‘s nothing, I guess, like gin and a splash of DDT to zap you into the stratosphere. Also, my injury didn't flare up or bother me when I was hammered, and the only reminder of the war was my uniform—which I wore for as long as possible, because that way no bartender asked if I was of legal drinking age or not. The uniform alone meant I'd earned the right to throw a few back, and it also was my passport to free drinks. There were always those people who wanted to buy me a round or two whenever I had it on. So I suppose it became my drinking uniform, as it were, and it stayed on my body for weeks, except it didn't ever get washed, and it started to get ratty, smelled pretty ripe, stained by everything I'd spilled on it, not just beer or cocktails but also my own vomit and piss, you name it. Except at some point the uniform got to be too much for even me to tolerate, and so I stripped it off and rolled it up into a ball and set it on fire in the backyard trash barrel one bone-cold afternoon—almost buck naked except for a skivvy, poking at the flaming pile with a stick, and wondering if I'd still be getting free drinks without it. And sure enough, a lot of folks were still kind enough to do me the honor. I mean, for a while there I got a lot of mileage out of being the local war hero, I'm sure a lot more than most other guys got back in their hometowns.”

  Hollis fell silent, staring at the untouched platter of veggie kabobs at the center of the table. Suddenly at a loss for words, he reached forward, grabbing his glass of beer, and then he leaned back in the chair while taking several thoughtful sips. Debra remained with her eyes closed—although the grin had now shifted into a thin line of cracked, dry lips. Above them, the ceiling fan droned on, its blades vibrating.

  “Naturally, the alcohol melted my reserve, made me glare a bit harder at people, made my mouth move faster than my brain,” Hollis said, resuming in a somber tone as if this realization hadn't previously crossed his mind. “You can imagine the problems it caused between me and Rich, and Rich and my mother. I just wasn't a nice drunk, probably because I was too young and wasn't equipped to handle what the stuff did to me, and I didn't know how to stop once I got going, so the idea of moderation wasn't something I'd understood yet. One or two drinks, I was fine. More than two—and there was always more than two—all bets were off. It's probably a good thing I can't remember everything I said and did, because I'm sure I did and said some awful things. I do know Rich got scared of me, and I know he'd told my mother he didn't want me in the house anymore. But he ne
ver wanted me there to begin with. Anyway, he told her it was either him or me. To her credit, though, she stuck by me, ignoring his fake ultimatums. I mean, it was her house and her son after all, and I suppose one of the good things was him staying out of my way most of the time, for whatever the reasons. I guess I had him pretty spooked. To be honest, I think I had me spooked, too. But on those nights when I was passed out somewhere—on the floor of some tavern, or on a bench, places like that—my mother managed to get me home and into my bed, and she never, and I mean never, said a word to me about what I was doing to myself. It's sort of like she understood it, or in the very least she didn't fault me for it. Or maybe she just knew I'd eventually come around, and her patience would help bring me to my senses. Who knows for sure.”

  Hollis hesitated—nodding to himself while finishing the last of his beer—knowing that what must be imparted now should be carefully weighed before being articulated; there are the facts of the matter, he thought, and then there is the gist of the truth. “The turning point came early that December,” he said, placing the cup in front of him and clasping it, absently rotating it between his palms. “Maybe it's what they call a moment of clarity, I don't know. Or a breakthrough, right? Because after a hard night of drinking, I woke up in my bedroom feeling like death froze over, and as crappy as I felt it dawned on me I didn't want to feel that way anymore. Plus, I really desired a future for myself, some kind of life outside of Critchfield, and I wanted to fall in love, find that woman of my dreams. I didn't want to be the drunk soldier anymore, or the local hero basking like a wild man in the attention—I just wanted to be Hollis again, except I wasn't at all sure who Hollis really was yet. But there was no way I was going to find myself or escape that town if I got loaded all the time. If I'd kept on like I'd been doing, I knew I wasn't going anywhere but to the nuthouse. It's as simple as that. And the really odd thing was, on that day I decided to turn myself around and clean my act up, I realized my leg didn't hurt anymore, my limp had all but gone away. My mother thought it was a miracle, and I suppose I did, too. It was like I'd walked on water, or something amazing like that. I mean, overnight I was a new man. Even ol’ Rich didn't know what to think, especially since he ‘d been telling Mother it was just a matter of time before I got arrested. He seemed sort of disappointed things didn't end up worse for me. So for a while there it was church every Wednesday evening and Sunday morning, and I avoided the bars, and started reading more and contemplating a steady job, considered aiming for the university—and when I prayed, I always prayed for something to come along and guide me forward, some kind of sign to give me an answer and direct me to where I needed to be heading with my life.”