The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories

Songs of War

8 8 8 8 8 For some weeks now a fire had burned day and night on a hillside just beyond the town limits; standing at her kitchen sink, Sally Hall could see the smoke rising over the trees. It curled upward in promise but she could not be sure what it promised, and despite the fact that she was contented with her work and her family, Sally found herself stirred by the bright autumn air, the smoke emblem. Nobody seemed to want to talk much about the fire, or what it meant. Her husband, Zack, passed it off with a shrug, saying it was probably just another commune. June Goodall, her neighbor, said it was coming from Ellen Ferguson ’s place; she owned the land and it was her business what she did with it. Sally said what if she had been taken prisoner. Vic Goodall said not to be ridiculous, if Ellen Ferguson wanted those people off her place, all she had to do was call the police and get them off, and in the meantime it was nobody’s business. Still there was something commanding about the presence of the fire; the smoke rose steadily and could be seen for miles, and Sally, working at her drawing board, and a number of other women, going about their daily business, found themselves yearning after the smoke column with complex feelings. Some may have been recalling a primal past in which men conked large animals and dragged them into camp, and the only housework involved was a little gutting before they roasted the bloody chunks over the fire. The grease used to sink into the dirt and afterward the diners, smeared with blood and fat, would roll around in a happy tangle. Other women were stirred by all the adventure tales they had stored up from childhood; people would run away without even bothering to pack or leave a note, they always found food one way or another and they met new friends in the woods. Together they would tell stories over a campfire, and when they had eaten they would walk away from the bones to some high excitement that had nothing to do with the business of living from day to day. A few women, thinking of Castro and his happy guerrilla band, in the carefree, glamorous days before he came to power, were closer to the truth. Thinking wistfully of campfire camaraderie, of everybody marching together in a common cause, they were already dreaming of revolution. Despite the haircut and the cheap suit supplied by the Acme Vacuum Songs of War 256 k i t r e e d Cleaner company, Andy Ellis was an underachiever college dropout who could care less about vacuum cleaners. Until this week he had been a beautiful, carefree kid and now, with a dying mother to support, with the wraiths of unpaid bills and unsold MarvelVacs trailing behind him like Marley’s chains, he was still beautiful, which is why the women opened their doors to him. He was supposed to say, “Good morning, I’m from the Acme Vacuum Cleaner company and I’m here to clean your living room, no obligation, absolutely free of charge.” Then, with the room clean and the Marvelsweep attachment with twenty others and ten optional features spread all over the rug, he was supposed to make his pitch. The first woman he called on said he did good work but her husband would have to decide, so Andy sighed and began collecting the Flutesnoot, the Miracle Whoosher and all the other attachments and putting them back into the patented Bomb Bay Door. “Well thanks anyway . . .” “Oh, thank you,” she said. He was astounded to discover that she was unbuttoning him here and there. “Does this mean you want the vacuum after all?” She covered him with hungry kisses. “Shut up and deal.” At the next house, he began again. “Good morning, I’m from the Acme Vacuum Cleaner company . . .” “Never mind that. Come in.” At the third house, he and the lady of the house grappled in the midst of her unfinished novel, rolling here and there between the unfinished tapestry and the unfinished wire sculpture. “If he would let me alone for a minute I would get some of these things done,” she said. “All he ever thinks about is sex.” “If you don’t like it, why are we doing this?” “To get even,” she said. On his second day as...