The Longest Night (15 page)

“I know exactly what I'll do about the reactor!” Richards cried, his voice quavering with righteous offense. “I'm going to take your wife and I'm going to fuck her on top of it, that's what I'm going to do! That's what I call living my life—”

Without thinking, Paul pulled back his right elbow and let his fist fly at Richards's jaw.

He was in a red haze and knew, even as his arm swung out, that it was an unforgivable offense, but for a split second he felt elated, thrilled. Then his fingers crunched, and shock waves rang through his arm. It hurt more than he'd expected; he hollered with the pain.

Richards went over sideways, comically, his drink arcing through the air. For a minute he lay sprawled on the carpet. Then he sat up on one elbow and held the side of his face, cursing, cords of pinkish slobber dangling through his fingers.

There was a shriek from Mrs. Richards, who ran into the room. From the rear of the house their child began to cry.

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” said Paul, backing toward the door.

Richards staggered to his feet. A bright red daisy imprinted his cheek. “You're a coward,” he marveled, the words rounded and hung together, his mouth stiff, unclosing. “You're a miserable, sad, poor coward.” His slow, honking laughs stacked up like an engine that couldn't get going.

Jeannie dabbed at the spilled drink on the carpet with her apron. When her husband glanced at her, she stopped. There was nothing Paul could think of to say. He strode, shaking, out the door and down the driveway.

“Don't touch my car!” Richards's thick voice called after him.

The Coupe was bathed in sunset and looked as if it had been sculpted entirely from orange sherbet. Paul hocked back a wad and spat right on the driver's side door. Saliva splatted against the creamy paint and oozed down like bird shit. Richards went apoplectic in the doorway. Paul got into his own car and, balancing his right wrist atop the wheel and steering with his left, drove away.

W
HEN
P
AUL REACHED
his own house he sat for a minute, staring at his right hand. It was puffed up, speckled like a strawberry. He could raise his fingers, but stiffly; the fattened skin strained.

He could hear Sam and Liddie squealing in the backyard, playing with the hose most likely. Nat had let them turn half the lawn into a mud pit where they filled buckets with swampy concoctions of leaves, grass, and water. Even in chilly weather they played out there in undershirts and underpants, and Nat hosed them down outside before letting them in. Paul had tried to tell her that they were the only ones on the street, so far as he could tell, who let their children do this, but she claimed it was good for them: being outside, concentrating on their bizarre little projects.
Let them have fun; they're only girls for so long
. All Paul knew was that when he got home from work it appeared his people had taken to hog farming.

He was glad he could slip in the front door without the girls seeing him, but Nat was lying on the couch and opened her eyes.

“Hi,” he said. “Don't get up. I didn't mean to wake you.”

“I wasn't sleeping,” she said. “I was listening to the girls.”

“Okay,” he said, heading for the back bedroom.

He was struggling to unbutton his uniform when she came in. She watched him for a moment. He felt self-conscious and ashamed about the previous night, the tail end of which he wished he couldn't remember at all but, goddamnit, he did; he was definitely and unavoidably aware that he had clambered onto his wife's back and relieved himself like a bucking, drugged-out horse. But now even that fine display was overshadowed by the fact that his hand was the size and shape of a boxing glove and he might have cost himself a career in the army, and if that happened he would look like such an ass before his family and the world that he might as well just go somewhere and quietly kill himself.

“Did you get the note in your lunch?” Nat asked.

This was the last thing he'd expected her to say. “Oh,” Paul said. “I never even opened my lunch bag today. We were behind, so we just worked through the break. I guess it's still in the fridge.” He was babbling, feeling he'd been granted a reprieve but also that somehow, inexplicably, he was getting himself into more trouble.

“Well, that's just lousy,” Nat said, with a vehemence that made no sense. Her eyes narrowed. “What happened to your hand?”

For a brief second he considered saying he'd injured it at work. “I got in a fight,” he said.

“What?” she cried. “With who?”

“Master Sergeant Richards.”

Her face drained of color. Quietly she repeated, “You got in a fight at work with Master Sergeant Richards?”

“At his house.”

“Why were you at his house?”

“I drove there and got into a fight with him.”

“Paul. Why would you
do
that?” She sounded scared.

He fumbled uselessly with a button and gave up. He hadn't thought what his answer would be, but now his brain scrambled with the bind he was in. He couldn't tell her about the previous night at Slocum's apartment, and he didn't want her to know how bad things at the reactor had gotten; she'd never let it go.

“He's a jerk,” Paul blurted. “He's rude to the guys at work and he's just a real asshole.”

“If he's ‘rude' to the guys at work, why can't
they
fight him?” She pressed a hand to the side of her face, and then a look of recognition crossed her face. “Did Webb say something about yesterday?”

Paul paused. “What about yesterday?”

“Never mind.” She shook her head. “What's going to happen to you? What happens when someone does this?”

“I don't know,” Paul said. He started to chuckle, thinking of the absurdity of it. He had punched his sergeant in the face. “Hell,” he said. “Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. You know, they're starting to build power plants all over the country. I bet civilian operators make twice what we do. We could move somewhere better than this, make more money. Maybe they'll build one in San Diego.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Nat said. “This is a good thing because
maybe
someone will build a power plant in San Diego?”

“Fuck the army,” Paul said, quietly delirious. “What, do we love the army all of a sudden? Remember when I was at Fort Irwin and had to drive every weekend to see you? Remember reactor school? Yeah, those were the days.”

“Paul, come on,” she said, looking troubled. “You're more loyal than that.”

“It would be a relief to leave that reactor behind.”

“I'm having another baby,” Nat said.

All Paul's loony hilarity suctioned from the room in a second. He felt he'd been standing there bundled in farce, and now he was left ant-sized in his underpants.

“Oh, no,” he said.

“Thanks,” Nat said tearfully, “that's just the reaction I was hoping for.” She stood with one arm across her waist, the other gesturing bitterly. “I found out yesterday morning. I was waiting for a nice time to tell you. But since I didn't get to yesterday afternoon, or last night”—her eyes flashed—“I decided I'd leave a note in your lunch today. I didn't think there was any rush. I didn't think, ‘I'd better tell my husband I'm having a baby right away so he doesn't go punch out his boss and lose his job.' ”

“Maybe it's not so bad,” Paul said, feeling short of breath. “There have been fights at work before. No one's been discharged over them. They could dock me some pay, maybe.” He began to wander the room as if the answer were on top of the dresser or headboard.

Nat turned and left, and he assumed she was too disgusted to speak to him. He sank onto the bed, his hand throbbing as if something were trying to emerge from it. His knuckles were indistinct, a fat slab with a scalloped edge. Nat returned with a frozen TV dinner. Part of him thought she might sit beside him and hold it to his hand, but he wasn't surprised when she just passed it to him.

“Thanks,” he said, pressing the cold aluminum box to his skin. She stood in front of him, looking away. “I'm sorry, Nat,” he said, but she turned and headed out to the backyard where the girls were. He could hear them greeting her with happy yelps—“Mama, look at this!”—and he regretted his reaction to her news; of course he was happy to have another baby. He loved their children.

The full stupidity of his actions dawned on him. What a fool he had been to approach his boss in the spirit of rational discussion, only to blow the whole thing so fabulously that he'd come to this, sitting in a dark room shunned by his wife, his hand blown up like a balloon. Who would ever take him seriously now? Richards would have the last laugh, and the reactor was no safer than it had been the day before. He couldn't have done any worse if he'd tried.

I
N RETROSPECT, THE PHONE CALL
didn't surprise him. Franks hollered across the room “Collier, Department of the Army on line two.” Paul froze, his heart thudding, and forced himself to pick up the receiver. He heard a familiar southern accent—Sergeant MacKinnon, whom he'd talked to before coming to Idaho—a voice silkened and vaguely hostile from a lifetime of delivering unwelcome news. “This isn't necessarily typical, Specialist Collier,” MacKinnon said, “but a six-month billet has opened up at Camp Century, and it's been decided that you'll do a tour there.”

“Camp Century.” Paul couldn't believe what he was hearing. “That's the Arctic Circle.”

“They're building a new reactor out there, the PM-2A. It's based on the CR-1, so you'll be perfectly suited to take her on her maiden voyage.”

Paul's mind spun; should he be relieved, or more worried than before? He wasn't out of the army after all—an initial consolation—but instead he was being sent away. Nat and the girls were the ones who'd be stuck near the reactor, and he would be long gone. This might actually be the worst scenario he could have come up with; he'd exchanged their safety for his own, which he would never have willingly done. This deployment seemed almost custom designed to torment him: Richards knew he was worried about the reactor, so what a cruel twist it was that Paul's family would stay right in town while he was sent thousands of miles away, oblivious, a blindfolded idiot in exile.

“Did Richards ask to put my name in? Did he push to have me sent?”

“No, no. It's never anything personal, always a joint decision. Your name just came up.”

Paul wondered if this could be true. No, he wasn't that stupid. Of course Richards had had some say in this. Probably brought it up all on his own.

“So, Collier, here's the deal: We have you leaving June seventh.”

“You mean July seventh?”

“No, June seventh. The day after tomorrow.”

A moment of disbelief; wind whistled through his body.

“The good news is you'll get back a couple days before Christmas.”

“My wife's having a baby the first part of December.”

“Oh! Well, congratulations.”

A long pause.

“So I'll give you your flight numbers and the names of a couple of guys to get in touch with when you reach camp.”

Paul sweated, armpits cold, crunching his toes in his boots till they ached.

“All right. Go ahead.”

W
HEN HE TOLD
N
AT,
she barely said a word. She sat across from him at the kitchen table with an aghast expression. Then she got up and strode into the back bedroom, closing the door behind her. Even when Paul called her name she didn't come out, and he ended up taking the girls to a diner downtown. He ordered a milkshake and let them share the leftovers in the tin cup; Liddie squirmed and panted through a brain freeze, and Sam seized upon her sister's weakness to suck the rest of the cup dry. Nat was asleep when they got back, and Paul spent the night on the couch.

He felt he was going through his own useless, panicky brain freeze, never reaching any conclusions. The thought of leaving his family for six months horrified him.
You can't leave Nat and the girls
his brain would chant, until he wanted to reach inside his head and strangle it; a minute later he'd be verbally slapping himself to buck up and be a man and do his job, stop being such a goddamn softie. Then he'd imagine something going wrong with the reactor while he dabbled away in ignorance on his distant ice floe, and his mind would run through the cycle again.

He worked one last, good-for-nothing day at the reactor. There was a false fire alarm and a sticky third rod—disconcerting, but by now commonplace. At quitting time he rode the bus back into town and, at the curb, said good-bye to his two shift mates. Franks slapped him on the shoulder; Webb stood to the side looking oddly stricken. He was like a gawky kid brother and Paul realized, as dumb as it sounded, that Webb might miss him nearly as much as anyone else. Webb smiled lopsidedly as Paul stammered out some weak farewell—“Hang in there, Webbsy; hope to see you married when I get back”—got into his car, and drove away.

That night, Paul packed his duffel bag. It somehow took him a couple of hours even though all he really needed were uniforms, a toothbrush, socks, and aspirin. He'd be given all the formidable outer- and underwear he needed; a corporal who'd called earlier that day assured him of that. “Plus, you'll never get sick out there,” the man had said. “Viruses can't survive in the Arctic.”

“I don't
care
about getting sick,” Paul had snapped, and the man wished him good luck and hung up.

Nat climbed into bed right after the girls went down and left Paul in the living room for the second night in a row. She'd cracked the bedroom door but he couldn't bring himself to face the razor-sharp wall of her shoulders, so he poured himself some whiskey and plopped on the couch, staring at his duffel.