Killshot

the towboat, it wasn’t bad either.”

Carmen could smell the strong soap Wayne used. She stared at his face, for a moment wanting to touch it, the tough weathered skin shiny clean but drawn. He looked worn out.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“I tried to. I forgot the number and the operator wouldn’t tell me ’cause it’s unlisted. I said, it’s my house. Didn’t do any good.”

“I called the drydock when you didn’t come home,” Carmen said. “Whoever it was said you hadn’t been there all day.”

“The foreman knew where I was.” Wayne smiled. “That’s why we sound a little cool, huh? I’ll show you my coveralls, you’ll see I wasn’t out chasing women. You know where I was? On the Curtis Moore, the harbor tug. We brought some barges up from Westlake, putting together a tow. They’re gonna leave first thing in the morning, like in four hours. That boat I helped repair.”

“Your new life,” Carmen said.

“Well, I’m looking it over. You get out there, talk to guys who’ve been on the river a while, they wouldn’t think of doing anything else.”

“Maybe it’s all they know.”

“It’s more than that. I think the river gets to you.”

Carmen rolled her eyes at him.

“Well, it’s what you said, it’s a life, it’s not just the river. It’s places, it’s...like they’re talking about running the Lower Memphis bridge southbound, how you come along Interstate-Forty, stay close to Mud Island and point at the High-Rise Motel. Like you’re driving along the highway, only you have a quarter of a mile of barges out in front of you.”

Carmen said, “Not like walking on high steel.”

“It’s different, yeah, but you get the same kind of feeling that, you know, you’re doing something. It’s not just a job where you get paid, you go home and put hamburgers on the grill and sit there thinking, Shit, I gotta go to work tomorrow.”

“When did you put hamburgers on the grill?”

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s big stuff,” Carmen said.

“That’s right. It’s not a building you can look at after, but you know you’ve done something.”

“Like today?”

“Yeah, putting that tow together, getting ready . . .” He stopped and said, “What’d you do today?”

Remembering her. He did it sometimes when she least expected and it made her feel comfortable, nothing to worry about. She said, “You first.”

“Well, this morning I’m on the drydock, a company boat arrives with a tow. They come down from Burlington, Iowa, with hopper barges loaded with grain they have to get to New Orleans by a certain day, a ship’s waiting at the dock, so it’s what they call a hot tow. But they also have eight coal barges they’re supposed to drop off at Cairo, Illinois, a thousand ton of coal in each one, you talk about big stuff. But if they stop at Cairo they won’t get to New Orleans on time ...You listening?”

“A thousand tons of coal in each one.”

“You feel all right? You look tired.”

“I am. I just got to sleep before you came home.”

“What were you doing?”

“Lying here trying to sleep . . . thinking.”

“You want to leave, don’t you?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“You know what I hear is a good place? St. Louis. A hundred and ten miles north of here. Burlington, where they picked up the grain, is another couple hundred miles. Anyway, they have to get to New Orleans, so they leave the eight coal barges here for the Robert R. Nally, the boat I worked on. It’s repaired now, ready to go. We used the Curtis Moore to bring up eight barges of crushed rock from the quarry at Westlake and now we’ve got a sixteen-barge tow. What they’ll do is drop the coal off at Cairo and haul the rock down to Louisiana to use as building revetments. See, the federal government won’t let contractors use shell anymore, you know, seashells, to mix their concrete. So they use this crushed rock from up here.”

Wayne paused and Carmen waited, knowing he wasn’t finished. Finally she said, “Yeah ...?”

“They asked me if I want to go.”

“Are you?”

“It’s okay with the drydock foreman. I could get off just about anywhere I want and catch a northbound tow to come back.”

“Is that river talk?”

“What?”

“Catch a tow?”

“I don’t know—I’d only be gone a few days.”

“Then why don’t you go?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Well, if they’re leaving this morning . . .”

“In about four hours.”

“You’d better get some sleep.”

“I thought maybe I’d get in with you. It’s been a while, and if I’m gonna be gone . . .”

“We made love last night,” Carmen said. “You don’t remember?”

Wayne stared at her thinking about it. He said, “Was that last night? Uh-unh, it was the night before, after you threw the beer can at me.” He said, “Well, I can wait if you can.” He gave her a kiss good-night, got in his own bed and said to her in the dark, “We could check it off on the calendar each time and keep score. The way your mom used to do it.”

He thought that was funny. He’d say, well, it is. You take things too seriously.

Lying awake listening to him snore. Trying not to resent the way he could fall asleep almost at will.

She could say something that was really funny and he wouldn’t get it, but she was the one who took things too seriously or was too sensitive. He’d say, if that’s the word. Sensitive. He didn’t trust it. When she used to have problems at work, someone in the real estate office stealing her leads, she’d be afraid to tell him. He’d say, well, you settle it or forget it, don’t piss and moan. Now she had Ferris making the moves, touching her, telling her he’d be back, he’d look for her car in the drive and stop in when she was home, telling her he was a patient man and once she got to know him ... But if she told Wayne she was afraid he would go after Ferris and get in trouble, threatening or assaulting a federal officer. Or was she afraid he might not and say she was imagining it? Why would the guy make the moves on a woman ten years older than he was? Seven years. All right, seven years. Good- looking guy, he wouldn’t have any trouble getting girls. Wayne would say that being a moron had nothing to do with it. But being smarter didn’t solve the problem either. Getting straight A’s twenty years ago. If she mentioned Ferris tonight, Wayne might decide it was a problem to be settled now, not put off or forgotten, and he’d miss his boat ride. So maybe you’re playing the martyr, Carmen thought.

And then thought of her mother. She’d better call her tomorrow.

That business about keeping score, marking a calendar each time you made love, was something her dad had told Wayne. Her mother never said a word about it. The way Wayne had told it to Carmen:

“Your dad says, ‘You understand, all those years of marriage we’re using the rhythm method of birth control. It gives you about a week a month when it’s safe to do it. So it became known as Love Week with us and among some of our friends, all the micks. The problem was, the wife could hold it over your head. Say you’re at a party and she wants to go home and you don’t, you’re having a good time. She whispers in your ear, “We go home right now, buddy, or you don’t get any.” You have to decide quick. You want to get smashed, have a good time? You do, you’re gonna have to wait a month to get laid. This goes on for years of marriage. One night I’m not feeling so good, I’m constipated, sitting in the bathroom trying to get something going. Lenore says to me through the door, “If you want to have sexual intercourse”— that’s what she called it, sexual intercourse—“you have to come right this minute.” I sat there thinking about it and decided, that’s it for Love Week. No more. I left the house the next