Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock Page A

and poured the drinks and together they downed the shots.
    “You got a coat?” he asked her.
    “I need a coat?”
    “You can have mine,” Jorgen said. “It ain’t that far to walk.”
    Jorgen helped her on with his jacket. He was a small man and it fit her well. His hands lingered on her shoulders. He could smell her perfume, and pulled her hair out from the collar. She smiled as he zipped the coat high to her neck.
    “You going to get cold?” she asked.
    “I don’t get cold.”
    The night hung a damp chill. Jorgen stuffed his hands in his pockets, nodded for Mary Ellen to follow. They passed the vacant savings and loan, then the First Baptist Church, set back off the road, its steeple glowing white in the darkness. They talked awhile about the freight yard, where Jorgen used to work and Mary Ellen still did, where since he’d been home on furlough, and had nowhere else to go, Jorgen spent his afternoons watching Tad and the boys unload the trains.
    Hickory trees rustled overhead. Wet leaves papered the road. Jorgen had once been at the center of things, with everyone else, but then he went to serve overseas, in that desert land, and though he’d been back awhile he felt as gone here as he had over there.
    They passed the Langstroms’ big Victorian, warm light gathered in its windows. Jorgen watched old lady Langstrom in a nightgown and curlers pull the shade on an upper window, and the light went dark inside.
    “What’s my surprise?” Mary Ellen asked. “I know you know something about it.”
    “I don’t,” he said.
    “You know where we’re going.”
    “Ain’t going to spoil it.”
    “Come on, Genie,” she begged.
    Jorgen kept walking.
    “Is it big?” she asked. “At least tell me that.”
    “Ain’t for me to say.”
    “You know what?” she asked.
    “What?”
    “I don’t like calling you Genie,” she said. “I know the boys do, but it don’t fit you right. I’m going to call you Jorgen.”
    Jorgen shrugged. “It’s my name.”
    “I like it,” she said, and took his arm. “Jorgen,” she said, trying it out. “Jorgen, can I ask you something?”
    “I guess.”
    “You think Tad’ll ever marry me?”
    The last house in the row sat dark. Three trucks parked bumper to bumper in its gravel drive. Jorgen glanced at Mary Ellen’s hand on his arm, her slender fingers, nails painted white at the tips. “That what you want?”
    “I think so,” she said. “Don’t tell him I asked.”
    Jorgen nodded. A figure stood beneath a willow tree at the corner of the house. Jorgen watched the figure slide out of the curtain of branches, scramble through the house’s shadows, then dash into the field they were approaching.
    Mary Ellen bubbled, tugged at his wrist. “Hey, Jorgen?”
    “Yeah?”
    “How long till you got to go back?”
    “Back?”
    “Over there?”
    “Oh,” he said. “Not long.”
    “You know,” she said. “I got a cousin I should set you up with.
    Crystal’s only seventeen, but she’s grown for her age, and so smart and pretty. I think you’d all do good together. Boy, she’s a wild one.” They walked beyond the row of houses and the road became a corridor between fields of corn. Mary Ellen told a story about her cousin sneaking off to the city, where at fifteen she lied about her age and got a job in a casino. “Served a senator once,” Mary Ellen said. “Had a Pabst Blue Ribbon.” She laughed. “We thought she was at choir practice, if you can believe that. Boy, my uncle tore into her. But when she told him how much she made, he said he knew where she’d work once she got old enough.”
    The wind blew in the corn and Mary Ellen clung to his arm. “She sounds all right,” Jorgen said.
    “My uncle was only kidding, though. He wouldn’t really want her working there. He’s a religious man.”
    “Oh.”
    “I used to be more religious than I am now,” Mary Ellen said. “I don’t know. All that talk on how to live.”
    Jorgen nodded.
    “You’re kind