Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Once again, and always, my deepest thanks...

  A Note from the Author

  SELECTED STORIES

  In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

  Next Door

  Hunters in the Snow

  The Liar

  Soldier’s Joy

  The Rich Brother

  Leviathan

  Desert Breakdown, 1968

  Say Yes

  Mortals

  Flyboys

  Sanity

  The Other Miller

  Two Boys and a Girl

  The Chain

  Smorgasbord

  Lady’s Dream

  Powder

  The Night in Question

  Firelight

  Bullet in the Brain

  NEW STORIES

  That Room

  Awaiting Orders

  A White Bible

  Her Dog

  A Mature Student

  The Deposition

  Down to Bone

  Nightingale

  The Benefit of the Doubt

  Deep Kiss

  These stories originally appeared the following publications: “In the Garden…

  Also by Tobias Wolff

  Copyright

  FOR MY DEAR FRIENDS

  George Crile (1945–2006)

  AND

  Bill Spohn (1944–2005)

  Once again, and always, my deepest thanks to Catherine Wolff and Gary Fisketjon for the gift of their attention to these stories over many readings, and many years. And, as ever, my thanks to Amanda Urban for her friendship and support.

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  The first of these stories was written some three decades ago, the most recent just last year. In preparing such a selection, I had to confront this question: Should I present my stories, of whatever vintage, in their original form? Or should I allow myself the liberty of revisiting them here and there?

  You could make a good argument for the first approach. It might be said that I am no longer the man who wrote a story published twenty-five, or ten, or even two years ago, and that I should be a respectful executor and do the actual, now-vanished writer the honor of keeping my mitts off his work. But there’s a problem here. What would the “original form” of a story be? The very first draft of what may have been as many as twenty drafts? Surely not—nobody would want to read that. Do we mean the story as it made its debut in a periodical? Or as published in the first edition of the collection it belonged to? Bear in mind that before the magazine brought it out, an editor had read it with pencil in hand, and that at least some of her suggestions survived our negotiations, not because I was bullied but because I thought they improved the story. Then another editor looked it over before signing off on the collection, and no doubt he had something helpful to say. And if the story was chosen for an anthology, as many if not most of these were, I would have given it yet another going-over on my own, and done so again before the collection went into paperback.

  The truth is that I have never regarded my stories as sacred texts. To the extent that they are still alive to me I take a continuing interest in giving that life its best expression. This satisfies a certain aesthetic restlessness, but I also consider it a form of courtesy. If I see a clumsy or superfluous passage, so will you, and why should I throw you out of the story with an irritation I could have prevented? Where I have felt the need for something better I have answered the need as best I can, for now.

  Tobias Wolff

  August 2007

  Selected Stories

  In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

  When she was young, Mary saw a brilliant and original man lose his job because he had expressed ideas that were offensive to the trustees of the college where they both taught. She shared his views but did not sign the protest petition. She was, after all, on trial herself—as a teacher, as a woman, as an interpreter of history.

  Mary watched herself. Before giving a lecture she wrote it out in full, using the arguments and often the words of other, approved writers so she would not by chance say something scandalous. Her own thoughts she kept to herself, and the words for them grew faint as time went on; without quite disappearing they shrank to remote, nervous points, like birds flying away.

  When the department turned into a hive of cliques, Mary went about her business and pretended not to know that people hated one another. To avoid seeming bland she let herself become eccentric in harmless ways. She took up bowling, which she learned to love, and founded the Brandon College chapter of a society dedicated to restoring the good name of Richard III. She memorized comedy routines from records and jokes from books; people groaned when she rattled them off, but she didn’t let that stop her, and after a time the groans became the point of the jokes. They were a kind of tribute to Mary’s willingness to expose herself.

  In fact no one at the college was safer than Mary, for she was making herself into something institutional, like a custom or a mascot—part of the college’s idea of itself.

  Now and then she wondered whether she had been too careful. The things she said and wrote seemed flat to her, pulpy, as though someone else had squeezed the juice out of them. And once, while talking with a senior professor, Mary saw herself reflected in a window: she was leaning toward him and had her head turned so that her ear was right in front of his moving mouth. The sight disgusted her. Years later, when she had to get a hearing aid, Mary suspected that her deafness was a result of always trying to catch everything anyone said.

  In the second half of Mary’s fifteenth year at Brandon the president called a meeting of all faculty and students to announce that the college was bankrupt and would not open its gates again. He was every bit as much surprised as they were; the report from the trustees had reached his desk only that morning. It seemed that Brandon’s financial manager had speculated in some kind of futures and lost everything. The president wanted to deliver the news in person before it reached the papers. He wept openly and so did the students and teachers, with only a few exceptions—some cynical upperclassmen who claimed to despise the education they’d received.

  Mary could not rid her mind of the word “speculate.” It meant “to guess,” in terms of money “to gamble.” How could a man gamble a college? Why would he want to do that, and how could it be that no one stopped him? It seemed to belong to another time; Mary thought of a drunken plantation owner gaming away his slaves.

  She applied for jobs and got an offer from a new experimental college in Oregon. It was her only offer, so she took it. The college was in one building. Bells rang all the time, lockers lined the hallways, and at every corner stood a buzzing water fountain. The student newspaper came out twice a month on mimeograph paper that felt wet. The library, which was next to the band room, had no librarian and few books. “We are a work in progress,” the provost was fond of saying, cheerfully.

  The countryside was beautiful, though, and Mary might have enjoyed it if the rain hadn’t caused her so much trouble. There was something wrong with her lungs that the doctors could neither agree upon nor cure; whatever it was, the dampness made it worse. On rainy days, condensation formed in Mary’s hearing aid and shorted it out. She began to dread talking with people, never knowing when she’d have to take out her control box and slap it against her leg.

  It rained nearly every day. When it wasn’t raining it was getting ready to rain, or clearing. The ground glinted under the grass, and the light had a yellow undertone that flared up during storms.

  There was water in Mary’s basement. Her walls sweated, and she found toadstool
s growing behind the refrigerator. She felt as though she were rusting out, like one of those old cars people thereabouts kept in their front yards, propped up on pieces of wood. Mary knew that everyone was dying, but it did seem to her that she was dying faster than most.

  She continued to look for another job, without success. Then, in the fall of her third year in Oregon, she got a letter from a woman named Louise who’d once taught at Brandon. Louise had scored a great success with a book on Benedict Arnold and was now on the faculty of a famous college in upstate New York. She said that one of her colleagues would be retiring at the end of the year and asked if Mary might be interested in the position.

  The letter surprised Mary. Louise thought of herself as a great historian and of almost everyone else as useless; Mary had not known that she felt differently about her. Moreover, enthusiasm for other people’s causes did not come easily to Louise, who had a way of sucking in her breath when familiar names were mentioned, as though she knew things that friendship kept her from disclosing.

  Mary expected nothing but sent a résumé and a copy of her book. Shortly afterward Louise called to say that the search committee, of which she was chair, had decided to grant Mary an interview in early November. “Now don’t get your hopes too high,” Louise said.

  “Oh, no,” Mary said, but thought: Why shouldn’t I hope? They wouldn’t go to the bother and expense of bringing her to the college if they weren’t serious. And she was certain the interview would go well. She would make them like her, or at least give them no cause to dislike her.

  She read about the area with a strange sense of familiarity, as if the land and its history were already known to her. And when her plane left Portland and climbed easterly into the clouds, Mary felt like she was going home. The feeling stayed with her, growing stronger when they landed. She tried to describe it to Louise as they left the airport at Syracuse and drove toward the college, an hour or so away. “It’s like déjà vu,” she said.

  “Déjà vu is a hoax,” Louise said. “It’s just a chemical imbalance of some kind.”

  “Maybe so,” Mary said, “but I still have this sensation.”

  “Don’t get serious on me,” Louise said. “That’s not your long suit. Just be your funny, wisecracking old self. Now tell me—honestly—how do I look?”

  It was night, too dark to see Louise’s face well, but in the airport she had seemed gaunt and pale and intense. She reminded Mary of a description in the book she’d been reading, of how Iroquois warriors gave themselves visions by fasting. She had that kind of look about her. But she wouldn’t want to hear that. “You look wonderful,” Mary said.

  “There’s a reason,” Louise said. “I’ve taken a lover. My concentration has improved, my energy level is up, and I’ve lost ten pounds. I’m also getting some color in my cheeks, though that could be the weather. I recommend the experience highly. But you probably disapprove.”

  Mary didn’t know what to say. She said that she was sure Louise knew best, but that didn’t seem to be enough. “Marriage is a great institution,” she added, “but who wants to live in an institution?”

  Louise groaned. “I know you,” she said, “and I know that right now you’re thinking But what about Ted? What about the children? The fact is, Mary, they aren’t taking it well at all. Ted has become a nag.” She handed Mary her purse. “Be a good girl and light me a cigarette, will you? I know I told you I quit, but this whole thing has been very hard on me, very hard, and I’m afraid I’ve started again.”

  They were in the hills now, heading north on a narrow road. Tall trees arched above them. As they topped a rise Mary saw the forest all around, deep black under the plum-colored sky. There were a few lights and these only made the darkness seem greater.

  “Ted has succeeded in completely alienating the children from me,” Louise was saying. “There is no reasoning with any of them. In fact, they refuse to discuss the matter at all, which is very ironic because over the years I have tried to instill in them a willingness to see things from the other person’s point of view. If they could just meet Jonathan I know they’d feel differently. But they won’t hear of it. Jonathan,” she said, “is my lover.”

  “I see,” Mary said.

  Coming around a curve they caught two deer in the headlights. Mary could see them tense as the car went by. “Deer,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Louise said, “I just don’t know. I do my best, and it never seems to be enough. But that’s enough about me—let’s talk about you. What did you think of my latest book?” She squawked and beat her palms on the steering wheel. “Seriously, though, what about you? It must have been a real shockeroo when good old Brandon folded.”

  “It was hard. Things haven’t been good, but they’ll be a lot better if I get this job.”

  “At least you have work,” Louise said. “You should look at it from the bright side.”

  “I try.”

  “You seem so gloomy. I hope you’re not worrying about the interview, or the class. Worrying won’t do you a bit of good. Look on this as a vacation.”

  “Class? What class?”

  “The class you’re supposed to give tomorrow, after the interview. Didn’t I tell you? Mea culpa, hon, mea maxima culpa. I’ve been uncharacteristically forgetful lately.”

  “But what will I do?”

  “Relax,” Louise said. “Just pick a subject and wing it.”

  “Wing it?”

  “You know, open your mouth and see what comes out. Extemporize.”

  “But I always work from a prepared lecture.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you what. Last year I wrote an article on the Marshall Plan that I got bored with and never published. You can read that.”

  Parroting what Louise had written seemed wrong to Mary, at first; then it occurred to her that she’d been doing the same kind of thing for many years, and that this was no time to get scruples.

  “Here we are,” Louise said, and pulled into a circular drive with several cabins grouped around it. In two of the cabins lights were on; smoke drifted straight up from the chimneys. “The college is another two miles that away.” Louise pointed down the road. “I’d invite you to stay at my house, but I’m spending the night with Jonathan and Ted is not good company these days. You would hardly recognize him.”

  She took Mary’s bags from the trunk and carried them up the steps of a darkened cabin. “Look,” she said, “they’ve laid a fire for you. All you have to do is light it.” She stood in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and watched as Mary held a match under the kindling. “There,” she said. “You’ll be snugaroo in no time. I’d love to stay and chew the fat but I really must run. You just get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Mary stood in the doorway and waved as Louise, spraying gravel, pulled out of the drive. She filled her lungs, to taste the air: it was tart and clear. She could see the stars in their figurations, and the vague streams of light that ran among the stars.

  She still felt uneasy about reading Louise’s work as her own. It would be her first complete act of plagiarism. It would surely change her. It would make her less—how much less, she didn’t know. But what else could she do? She certainly couldn’t “wing it.” Words might fail her, and then what? Mary had a dread of silence. When she thought of silence she thought of drowning, as if it were a kind of water she could not swim in.

  “I want this job,” she said, and settled deep into her coat. It was cashmere and Mary hadn’t worn it since moving to Oregon, because people there thought you were pretentious if you had on anything but a Pendleton shirt or, of course, rain gear. She rubbed her cheek against the upturned collar and thought of a silver moon shining through bare black branches, a white house with green shutters, red leaves falling in a hard blue sky.

  Louise woke her a few hours later. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, pushing at Mary’s shoulder and snuffling loudly. When Mary asked her what was wrong she said, �
��I want your opinion on something. It’s very important. Do you think I’m womanly?”

  Mary sat up. “Louise, can this wait?”

  “No.”

  “Womanly?”

  Louise nodded.

  “You are very beautiful,” Mary said, “and you know how to present yourself.”

  Louise stood and paced the room. “That son of a bitch,” she said. She came back and stood over Mary. “Let’s suppose someone said I have no sense of humor. Would you agree or disagree?”

  “In some things you do. I mean, yes, you have a good sense of humor.”

  “What do you mean, ‘in some things’? What kind of things?”

  “Well, if you heard that someone had been killed in an unusual way, like by an exploding cigar, you’d think that was funny.”

  Louise laughed.

  “That’s what I mean,” Mary said.

  Louise went on laughing. “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “Now it’s my turn to say something about you.” She sat down beside Mary.

  “Please,” Mary said.

  “Just one thing,” Louise said.

  Mary waited.

  “You’re trembling,” Louise said. “I was just going to say—oh, forget it. Listen, do you mind if I sleep on the couch? I’m all in.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sure it’s okay? You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” She fell back on the sofa and kicked off her shoes. “I was just going to say, you should use some liner on those eyebrows of yours. They sort of disappear and the effect is disconcerting.”

  Neither of them slept. Louise chain-smoked cigarettes and Mary watched the coals burn down. When it was light enough that they could see each other, Louise got up. “I’ll send a student for you,” she said. “Good luck.”

  The college looked just like colleges are supposed to look. Roger, the student assigned to show Mary around, explained that it was an exact copy of a college in England, right down to the gargoyles and stained-glass windows. It looked so much like a college that moviemakers sometimes used it as a set. Andy Hardy Goes to College had been filmed there, and every fall they had an Andy Hardy Goes to College Day, with raccoon coats and goldfish-swallowing contests.