The Lost Get-Back Boogie

Buddy put his arm through the other sleeve, as though he had been in suspension, and then began jiggling all over in rhythm to the music while he buttoned his shirt in his bare feet.

“Tell me, truthfully,” he said. “Were you ever tempted when you were inside? I mean, to just quit fighting it and let the girl have her way?”

Without rising from the chair, I reached over and turned up the radio to full volume and finished the whiskey in my glass. A few minutes later I heard Buddy grind the starter on the Plymouth outside.

After I had showered and put on a soft wool shirt and clean pair of khakis, I saw the pickup truck stop in front of the porch. I opened the door and looked through the screen at Pearl in the blowing snow. She wore a man’s mackinaw with a scarf tied around her head, and her face was red with cold.

“Tell Buddy that—”

“Come in before you turn into a snowman,” I said.

“Just tell him that Frank—”

I opened the screen for her.

“Come in if you want to talk with me. You might not mind freezing, but I do,” I said.

She stepped inside, and I closed the wood door behind her.

“Frank’ll pick him up at six-thirty in the morning to go into Hamilton for some lumber,” she said.

“Oh, he’ll like that.”

“You can do it for him.”

“All right. No problem in that.” I could see she had on only a light shirt under the mackinaw, and she was shaking with the sudden warmth of the room. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“I have to get a loaf of bread up at the store before it closes.”

I took an unopened loaf from the bread box in the cupboard and set it on the table.

“Sit down. A cup of coffee won’t ruin your general feelings towards me.” I washed a cup under the iron pump and filled it from the pot on the stove.

She untied her scarf and shook her hair loose. It was wet with snow on the ends. She picked up the cup with both hands and sipped at the edge.

“Put a little iron it it,” I said, and tipped a capful of whiskey into her coffee. “Where’s Mel tonight?”

“He’s at a faculty meeting.”

“Is he serious about that revolution business?”

“In his way, yes, I guess he is.”

“What do you mean ‘in his way’?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

“I’ve had some experience with people who are always trying to right the world by wiping out large portions of it. They all have the same idea about sacrifices, but it’s always somebody else’s ass that gets burned.”

“Mel’s a good man,” she said, and looked at me flatly.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t. I didn’t say anything about him. I just asked a question.”

“He believes in idealistic things. He wasn’t in a war like you, and he doesn’t have your cynicism about things.”

I took a good hit out of the bottle on that one.

“You know, I think you’re a crazy woman and you belong in a crazy house,” I said. “The next time I get drafted into one of Uncle Sam’s shooting capers, I’ll write the draft board and tell them I’d rather opt out because I don’t want to come home with any cynical feelings.”