The Kit Tolliver Stories

One Kind Favor I Ask of You

Hedgemont, North Carolina.

There was no bus station as such. The bus stopped at a convenience store with a pair of gas pumps out front. She got off, and the bus driver climbed down after her and retrieved her suitcase from the luggage compartment.

“Bet you’re glad to be gettin’ home,” he said.

He was a pleasant fellow, heartier than his passengers, and she saw no reason to disabuse him of the notion that Hedgemont was home to her, and that she was glad to be here. It wasn’t hard to guess how he’d jumped to that conclusion. If it wasn’t your home, what on earth would bring you here?

Alvin Kirkaby was here.

That was reason enough. Alvin Kirkaby, a corporal in the infantry, had shared a bed with her before his unit was transferred to Iraq. She remembered his name and rank, and not a great deal more about him. He’d been wearing his uniform when she spotted him in a bar just down the street from her apartment. She’d been living in Chelsea at the time, and the bar drew a mixed crowd, half straight and half gay, and she’d have assumed he was gay — like, a uniform in a Chelsea bar? — but when their eyes locked she knew otherwise. God knows what he’d seen in her eyes, but it had been enough to make him dump his companions and head straight over to her.

Cocksure, that was the word for him. He approached her with complete confidence, knowing she found him attractive, knowing she’d take him home with her. And he was right, of course, and his assurance was attractive in and of itself.

In more ways than one. It would make the sex better, and it would make the aftermath positively delicious. All that confidence, all that certainty, and the next thing he knew he’d be dead meat. It would mean leaving her apartment and moving on, but that was all right. She was getting tired of Chelsea.

In his uniform, he’d been generically attractive. Military haircut, face clean-shaven, broad shoulders, athletic physique. Out of it, his body turned out to be everything she could have wanted, and in bed he gave a good account of himself. He wasn’t the most imaginative lover she’d been with, or the most experienced, but ardor and stamina made up for anything that might have been lacking.

Earlier, she’d had a look at his wallet when he paid for a round of drinks. Nice thick wad of bills in there. Hardly enough for a retirement fund, but it was always nice to turn a profit. Pleasure was all the better when you made it pay.

Then, while he lay beside her smoking a cigarette, he told her how he’d be shipping out the next day. To Iraq, where he’d be in combat. He’d been there once already, this would be his second tour of duty over there, and he became a little less cocksure when he talked about it.

So much for that. Once he was over there he was on his own, but she could make sure he lived long enough to go serve his country. She let him go to sleep, and woke him in time for morning sex, and after a shave and a shower she sent him off to be a soldier.

She knew all about that. “You’re my little soldier,” her father had told her.

So when she drew up a list, he’d been on it. Alvin Kirkaby. Surprising, really, that she’d remembered the name, but somehow it had stayed lodged in her memory and she’d been able to dredge it up. Alvin Kirkaby. Corporal Alvin Kirkaby.

That was then.

Now he was Sgt. Alvin Kirkaby, United States Army (Ret.) He’d been promoted, and he’d been discharged, and he wasn’t a soldier anymore.

And he was on her list.

She could have asked directions at the convenience store. But this was a small town, just a dot on the map, and the less contact she had with people, the better off she’d be. Earlier, at an Internet café just two blocks from Washington’s Union Station, she’d asked Google Maps for directions to 24A Maple Street, and she had the printout in her purse. She didn’t even need it anymore, she’d studied it enough on the train and two buses she’d been on since then, but she took it out anyway and unfolded it and looked it over. Then she picked up her suitcase and started walking.

She’d expected a house, a modest older home, with a couple of broken-down cars on the lawn and, in the driveway, a rusted-out pickup with a gun rack. What she found was a house trailer, the first of four strung in a row, 24A and B and C and D. No pickup, with or without a gun rack. No cars on the lawn, and in fact no lawn; the trailers nestled within a near-forest of scrub pine, and the fallen needles carpeted the ground.

One car, a Hyundai hatchback with a dented front fender, stood alongside the trailer.

Home Sweet Home, she thought.

She’d have phoned, but she’d been unable to find a phone listed for him, or indeed for anyone at 24A Maple Street. And maybe that was just as well, because what would she have said? Hi, you won’t remember me, but I gave you a bon voyage blow job the morning before you shipped out. I can’t remember what year it was, so there may have been a few tours of duty since then for you, and a few blow jobs, too, but—

But what, pray tell?

Better to just show up and play it by ear. She had no idea what to say in person, but she figured she’d come up with something. And he didn’t have to remember her, or welcome her with open arms, or do anything, really, but let her in the front door. She could take it from there.

Wrong again.

The woman who came to the door looked as though she’d been bearing up bravely ever since the day she was born. That would have been some thirty-five years ago, and they hadn’t been easy years, and she wore her long-suffering look as if it affirmed her identity.

A wife? A girlfriend? No wedding ring, and this woman didn’t look like anybody’s girlfriend. Too young to be Alan’s mother. Jesus, was it even the right house?

She opened her mouth to say something, not sure what she should say, but the woman stopped her by holding her forefinger to her lips.

“My brother’s sleeping,” she said.

Thus answering an unasked question. This was Alan’s sister, worn down by life, and now sharing a trailer in the back of beyond with her brother.

Provided this was the right address. Just because this woebegone lady had a brother didn’t mean it was the man on her list.

So she whispered back, “Alvin Kirkaby?”

A nod.

“I used to know him. Years ago, I don’t even know if he’d remember me, but I happened to find this address for him, and I was—”

What? In the neighborhood? The only way anyone wound up in this particular neighborhood was by getting lost and being unable to find their way home. She let the sentence trail off unfinished, and the sister nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to her.

“We can talk outside,” came her whisper, and the finger she’d held to her lips was now pointing to a mismatched pair of lawn chairs huddled together beneath the pines. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Hope the coffee suits you,” the woman said. “It’s instant.”

It could have been anything, she thought. It had been souped up with powdered non-dairy creamer and a lethal quantity of sugar, and any coffee taste it might have started out with was long gone. She said it was fine.

“It’s a relief to step outside,” the woman said. “I don’t like to leave him, you know.”

“Why’s that?”

“You don’t know? What happened to him?”

She shook her head.

“Roadside bomb.”

“Oh.”

“They thought he was going to die. Shipped him home in pieces, figured he’d be gone in a week or two and they could bury what was left in Arlington. But our people are hard to kill. This place, an uncle left it to me. I was living in one room over in Charlotte, doing data entry for an HMO. Left that and moved down here where I could take care of my brother. My name’s Joanne.”

No idea what name she’d given Alan, and what difference did it make? “Mine’s Pam,” she said.

“Pam. Why’d you come?”

“To see your brother.”

“Thinking maybe y’all could have a life together? Only life he’s got’s gonna be in that trailer. Only life I got’s taking care of him. They was sure he was gonna die but I’m making sure he lives.”

“I see.”

“Few months ago I’d of said he’d be getting better. Well, that can’t happen. I know that now. All he can do is stay alive, and all I can do is keep him alive. So whatever you had in mind—”

“I don’t know what I had in mind.”

“Thing is, maybe you want to turn around and go right now. Oh, that sounded cold. I didn’t mean it that way. What I’m saying is you might want to spare yourself the pain of looking at him, and he’ll never know you were here. That’d be what I would do, I was you.”

“I came all this way,” she said.

“You want to see him.”

“I do.”

“Well,” Joanne said, and glanced at her wristwatch. “Time I woke him, anyway. If I let him sleep too much during the day I’m just dooming him to a restless night.”

Worse than she’d expected.

She thought she’d prepared herself, but the reality was worse than the images she’d conjured up on the way back to the trailer. She wouldn’t have recognized him as the young corporal she’d slept with in New York. She could barely recognize him as human.

So much of him was gone. One leg ended below the knee, the other at mid-thigh. One arm was off at the shoulder. The other stopped between the elbow and the wrist.

Vivid pink scar tissue covered half his face. His eyes were a clear blue, but only one of them looked at her. The other, she realized, was glass, which struck her as a curiously futile cosmetic touch, like spray-painting a car after a head-on collision.

“This is Pam,” Joanne said. “You and her knew each other in—”

“In New York,” she supplied.

She met his stare, unable to tell if he recognized her. Now that she’d seen him, she wanted to push back the clock five minutes; then, when Joanne gave her an out, she could agree that slipping away was the best course for all concerned. Then retrace her steps to the convenience store, and either catch the next bus or take a shot at hitching a ride, and get the hell away from Hedgemont as quickly as she possibly could.

Because there was no work for her here. It sometimes seemed to her as if she had an important piece of herself missing, in that the rightness or wrongness of killing her lovers didn’t seem to carry any weight with her. Killing was fun, there was no getting around it, and killing men she’d slept with felt appropriate, and that was as much as she had to know.

But to kill this man, this poor maimed creature, could not possibly be appropriate in any way. She’d put him on a list that existed solely in her own mind, and rather than cross him off she could hang a gold star next to his name, or a Congressional Medal of Honor.

She didn’t want to kill him. Quite on the contrary, she wanted to do something for him.

But what? Cook him a meal? Joanne prepared his meals, if you could call them that, and fed them to him through an IV line.

Give him a massage? Joanne performed that function, she’d confided, because it was necessary for his circulation, but he couldn’t feel it, because he couldn’t feel anything below the neck. The blast that took his limbs and his eye had severed his spinal cord. So he couldn’t move anything, not that he had much to move, and couldn’t feel anything, either.

She should leave, she thought. Say hello, say goodbye, and get the hell out.

But somehow she couldn’t.

“Paaaam.”

Her name, or at least the name she’d given him. His voice was low in pitch, raspy, as if dragged abrasively through his scarred throat.

“Yes, she’s right here, Bubba.”

“Paaaam.”

“I’m here, Alan.”

“You came.” He had breath enough for a single phrase, then had to gather himself for the next one. “’S really you.”

“Yes.”

And, haltingly, in three- and four-word bursts, he told her and his sister how much she had meant to him, how her letters had kept his morale up throughout the horror of desert warfare, how he’d longed to return to her, how he’d despaired at her ever being able to find him after his accident.

“You never said, Bubba.”

“Try forget.” A ragged breath, a gathering of verbal forces. “She here now.”

“I’m here now,” she agreed, wondering what else she was supposed to say, and hard put to guess who he thought she was, and what role she played in his personal mythology.

“Sis...”

And he rasped out what he wanted. Some time alone with his Pam. Joanne was hesitant, then agreed it would be a chance for her to get the grocery shopping done, and see to a few other errands she never had a chance to run. You’re here all the time, he told her. You never get a minute to yourself. Take an hour, take two hours. And give him some time alone with his Pam.

It was hard to get the woman out of the trailer. She had to provide instructions for every possible contingency that might crop up during her absence. But finally Joanne was out the door, and they heard the Hyundai pull out and head off down the road.

“She gone.”

“Yes.”

“So who the fuck—” a ragged breath “are you?”

Who the fuck was she?

Well, that was easy. She told him she’d met him just once, at a bar in the West Twenties. That they’d gone back to her apartment where he’d spent the night before returning to his unit in Iraq.

He seemed to remember. Remembered the bar, thought he was in the wrong place with all the gays there, and then he got lucky after all. He remembered that. Remembered her, sort of. But her name, Pam—

“Well, I probably gave you a different name.”

But her real name was Pam?

“Yes, Pamela, Pam for short. Pam Headley.”

She’d come this close to saying Hedgemont, then remembered that was the name of the town. Changed it to Headley at the last moment.

And what was she doing there? She fumbled her way to an answer. She’d remembered his name, Googled it one day on a whim, and decided it wouldn’t take her that far out of her way to stop by and see him. She hadn’t known he’d been wounded, hadn’t known anything, and the last thing she wanted to do was intrude. But here she was, and if there was anything she could do for him—

“One thing.”

“What?”

Hesitation. As if he was afraid to tell her what he wanted.

Well, sure. Looking as he did, reduced to what he’d become, the cocksure quality that had struck her years ago was nowhere to be found.

“If it’s sexual,” she said, “anything at all, just tell me. I won’t have a problem with it. Whatever you want, just tell me.”

“Sex.”

“Whatever you’d like me to do—”

“Can’t feel anything.”

“Oh.”

“Neck down. Nothing.”

“I just thought—”

“Sometimes it gets hard.”

“It does?”

He got it out, one ragged phrase at a time. He had no sensation there, but sometimes he got erections, and when it happened he knew it, sensed it somehow even without sensation. If his head was in the right position he could look down and see it.

And eventually it would go soft again, because he didn’t have a hand to jerk off with, and couldn’t have moved it if he did, or felt anything in either his hand or his penis. He’d tried to come by mental effort, tried to increase his excitement by thinking sexual thoughts, trotting out old memories, working up new fantasies. He let his thoughts run the gamut, tender, violent, aberrant. He’d entertain the memory or the fantasy for awhile, and then his erection would subside, and that would be that.

Once or twice, though, he’d come very close while he was sleeping. Almost had a wet dream a time or two. Woke up, though, before he could climax, and that was as far as it went.

Jesus, she thought.

“Is it hard now?”

“Can’t see. But no, can tell it’s not.”

“May I see?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. A sheet covered his lower body, and she drew it down to mid-thigh. His penis was soft, and her hand went to it automatically, held it gently.

“Can you feel anything?”

“No.”

“But you like that I’m holding it.”

“Yeah.”

“And you can tell that I’m holding it, can’t you? I mean, of course you can, you can see what I’m doing, but let’s try something. Close your eyes, and I’ll hold it and then not hold it, like off and on, and you’ll know when I’m holding it and when I’m not. At least I think you will. Can we try that? Can you close your eyes?”

Eye, she thought. He only had one eye to close. Was it wrong to say what she’d said?

Well, it didn’t seem to matter. And he’d closed both eyes, anyway, because that’s how the eyelids seemed to work, you closed or opened them both at once, the real one and the glass one.

She played with him, fondled him. Then let go of him. Then held him again.

“You can tell, can’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Even if you can’t feel anything, you can tell. So deep inside somewhere, you’re feeling it. Your mind just doesn’t know it.”

“Maybe.”

“You have a beautiful penis. I don’t want to stop touching it. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard or soft. It’s just beautiful.”

And it was, sort of. In a sense it was just a dick, and God knows she’d seen enough of them in her time, but she was connecting with it in a way that was, well, getting her hot. He couldn’t feel anything, and she was getting hot. Go figure that one.

“I want it in my mouth,” she told him. “I want to suck that beautiful cock, and play with your balls, and stick my finger up your ass. I want it for me, see, and I don’t give a shit whether you can feel anything or not. But you’re gonna feel it, Alan, even if the message doesn’t get all the way to your brain. Your cock’s gonna feel it. It’s gonna get hard as a fucking rock and I’m gonna suck it and suck it and suck it and you’re gonna come like crazy and I’m gonna swallow every drop. Every fucking drop, you hear me?”

“Alan?”

His eyes opened, and the good one met hers and held it. Was it clearer now? Was there a light in it that hadn’t been present earlier?

“Did you feel any of that?”

He took a moment. Then he said, “I knew when it happened.”

“Was there pleasure?”

“Kind of.”

“There was for me. I had an orgasm.”

“Don’t have to say that.”

“It’s true.”

“Yeah?”

“I was touching myself, but I think I would have come anyway. It was all intensely hot for me. I’m glad you got Joanne to give us some time alone. I guess this is what you had in mind.”

“No.”

“Or something like it, and if there’s anything else—”

“Different.”

“Oh?”

“You wouldn’t do it.”

“Wouldn’t do what? Alan, anything you want me to do, all you have to do is ask.”

His eye bored into hers. There was something there but it was hard to read.

“You’re afraid to tell me what you want.”

“Yeah.”

“Because of what I’ll think of you? Alan, I won’t—”

“Don’t care what you think of me.”

“Then why—”

“Because you won’t do it.”

“I can’t if you won’t tell me what it is.”

“Only thing I want.”

She waited. That would do it, she knew. If she just waited him out, sooner or later he’d tell her.

“Pam...”

Still waited.

“Kill me.”

Words and phrases, spilling out in fits and starts:

“Stop,” she said.

After a moment he murmured something, and she had to lean close and ask him to say it again.

“Sorry,” he said, in his ragged whisper.

“For what?”

“Laying it all on you. Held it all in so long, nobody to talk to. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Look, I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“What you asked. I’ll kill you.”

He stared at her.

“Not today,” she said. “Your sister’ll be back any minute. In fact I think I hear a car. I’ll come back tomorrow and we can send her shopping again, and once she’s out the door you can tell me if you really want to go through with it.”

“I already told you. You think I’ll change my mind?”

“You might. You told me because it was safe to tell me because you flat knew I wouldn’t do what you wanted. Well, you were wrong about that. I’ll do it. But you’ll have to tell me tomorrow that it’s still what you want. And that’s her car, she just cut the engine. I’ll get out of here in a minute, and I’ll be back tomorrow, and she’ll go shopping again and by the time she gets back I’ll be gone forever. And, if it’s still what you want, so will you.”

The only motel, a quarter-mile or so from the convenience store, was about what you’d expect. Hedgemont didn’t get much in the way of tourist traffic, so most of the units were rented by the week to the sort of people who could only dream of working their way up to a broken-down house trailer.

She paid cash in advance for a single night and tried to remember what name she’d told Kirkaby and his sister. Pam, of course, and not Hedgemont, because that was the name of this shithole town, but it started out that way before she caught herself, and what was it? Hedges? Hedgeworth?

Headley! Pam Headley, and it was nice she remembered, but it didn’t matter because the old drunk in the office didn’t give her anything to sign, just took her money and slapped a key on the counter.

Half an hour later she was sitting in front of the last black-and-white TV in America and eating food from the convenience store — Fritos, Hostess cupcakes, Slim Jims. She forced herself to use the shower, dried herself with the ratty little towel they provided. Stayed up late, woke up early.

Mid-morning, she was back at the trailer.

It was hard getting rid of Joanne. She didn’t have to do any more shopping, she told them. Had everything they needed. Why burn up gasoline driving around?

Alan insisted. He wanted some time alone with Pam. She’d be leaving soon, he might never see her again, and he wanted time together, just the two of them.

The woman got a mulish look on her face. But what could she do? “Maybe I’ll visit my friend Aggie,” she said. “That’s all the way over in Timber Creek. Say an hour there and an hour back, and she wouldn’t let me leave without she gives me lunch. So four hours? That enough time for the two of you to do whatever it is you have in mind?”

Joanne grabbed her purse, got her car keys in hand, let the screen door slam behind her. Alan was about to say something, but she made him wait until she heard the car start up and pull away. Then she asked him if he’d changed his mind.

“No. What got me through the night was knowing it was the last one I had to get through. And you?”

“Me?”

“Change your mind?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“Yeah, what I realized about you. Last night, thinking. You’re steel inside.”

She let that go.

“Tried to spare you. Last night. Tried to swallow my tongue. Supposed to be a way to kill yourself, shuts off the air flow. Heard of it somewhere. Don’t know if it’s even possible, but I couldn’t do it.”

“I said I’d do it.”

“I know. There’s a pillow on the sofa. No? What’s wrong with that?”

“Pin-point hemorrhages on the eyeballs. First thing anybody’d look for, and then they’d look at Joanne.”

“Sis? Anybody who knows her’d know she wouldn’t do it in a million years.”

“So then they’d come looking for me. They wouldn’t find me, but they’d come looking, and who needs it? I’m not gonna hold a pillow over your face, okay? It’s not that easy if the person’s conscious, anyway.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve done this before, okay? And not as a fucking act of mercy, either. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Like a roadside bomb, comes from out of nowhere and takes you by surprise.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“I put a pillow over a guy’s face once,” she said, “and then I sat on it, and I have to say it was H-O-T. But I don’t think he liked it much, and it took him a while to die. Which was fine with me, but I like you, and I want this to be easy, so why don’t you just let me do it my way?”

God, the look in his eye.

“I have some drugs with me. Should be quick and easy, and if you feel anything you won’t feel it for very long.”

“I can’t swallow pills.”

“This would be an injection. There’ll be a pinprick, but you won’t feel that, will you?”

“No.”

She’d prepared the syringe before she left the motel, filled it from one of the vials from the drugstore in Glens Falls. Now she retrieved it from her suitcase and showed it to him.

“All set,” she said. “Anything you’d like to do first?”

“Like what? Eat a sandwich? Take a quick jog around the block?”

“I thought you might want to have sex again.”

“No.”

“Or, I don’t know. Say a prayer?”

“Not much for praying.”

“Me neither. You figure there’s anything afterward?”

“After you die, you mean?”

“Maybe you’ll have your body back again. You know, in another dimension. Your arms and legs, and everything healthy.”

“Not counting on it.”

“Or maybe it’s a kind of existence where there aren’t bodies.”

“Just souls floating around?”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “Maybe it just, you know, stops.”

“Maybe. This vein looks good. Are you ready?”

“More than ready.”

“I don’t suppose I need an alcohol swab. I guess infection’s not a consideration. Sorry, I’m all thumbs all of a sudden. Just as well you can’t feel anything. Okay, I think I’ve got it in the vein. Alan?”

“What?”

“Look, if there is something afterward, and somebody up there wants a report, would you tell them I wasn’t bad all the time? That there was one time I did something good?”

Jesus, was that a tear in the corner of his eye?

She pressed the plunger, kept looking at his eye, watched the light fade from it.

One.