Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

“As soon as you want.”

These few spoken words seemed to clear the air of all the inhibitions of seriousness that had thrived in the silence. All Julycould think was of Mal’s body. Mal filled with the frantic realization that her skin was about to be ravaged, and felt him coming toward her before he ever moved.

Mal wrote to her parents explaining that they had decided to be married, implored them to forgive her for all she might have done which they believed compromised them (and her) and, if they couldn’t come out to the wedding, at least to participate in her happiness. A week passed, during which time her job expired, and each day she was sure a letter from them would be delivered. Another week went by. Then came a short, cryptic note from her father, typed on his office typewriter on college stationery, explaining his moral outrage and belief that everything she’d done in the last ten months was misguided, strongly urging her to abandon her infatuation and return to the East, ending with a firm though grandiose pledge to pay for any emergencies which might come up involving her health. Two days later a letter came from her mother in which she wished her happiness, as though a kind of degenerate, pale happiness was all that would be possible for her now—well-being, comfort, respectability, self-esteem and spiritual harmony being forever out of her reach.

When July saw the letters he became very upset. He knew how much Mal had hoped for a reconciliation.

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, so am I,” she said with a brave smile and stuffed the letter into the crowded living-room wastebasket. “But I guess it’s just tradition—the girl leaves her family for the family of her husband. It can’t be helped.”

Their marriage ceremony was short and uncomplicated. Two people were asked in off the streets of Iowa City to be witnesses. In the brief private talk before the words were read, the pastor’s only concern was that Mal and July hadn’t been married before and that they shouldn’t ever be married again, because in his mind that was the most damnable of all sins. Then the little ritual was acted out, their vows were spoken aloud and ringsexchanged, and at this moment you are man and wife tied them together legally, morally and with the full blessing of society. Mr. and Mrs. July Montgomery shook hands with their witnesses and departed in their green Chrysler, now half belonging to Mal, through the snow back to the country.

Through one of the girls she met at “Things and Things,” Mal found another job, this one as a waitress in a restaurant. It was mostly evening work and, though basically very unpleasant, left the morning and early afternoon free for painting, which is the only time in the middle of winter.

The thrill of knowing throughout the whole day that he was married made the rest of February fly by with unbelievable ease. Even when the water pipes froze, and the wind ripped all the storm windows from the north side of the house and dashed them to the ground, and the cars wouldn’t start, he still kept on the right side of things. But by the middle of March he knew he’d have to give up on the house for a while, let the upstairs go without paint and the front porch last as it somehow had for many years, and find a job.

Cabin fever, he told himself. Not good to stay in the house so much.

The usual terrors of job hunting were considerably lessened by being able to identify himself as a married man and circle that place in the questionnaires. It seemed he was now entitled to all the respect due a real citizen. He felt he’d joined the status quo. The American tradition was for once behind him and he was encouraged not to go begging for a job, but merely search one out as had all the great majority before him. And with this added sense of personal courage he ventured forth and a week later began working as a taxi-cab driver in Iowa City.

He bought another old car.

By dint of their different work schedules there remained no more than two or three days a week when they had any real time to be together, and these would drift by so quickly in comparisonto the other days that it seemed more as if they never had any time together. The winter continued to wear away at them and one night when July’d fallen asleep waiting for Mal to come home on a Friday night he woke up and had a terrifying moment in which he completely lost touch with what he was doing. Now, what was I trying to accomplish? he asked himself. Exactly why did I come out here? What precisely is the reason for living here as opposed to any other place? He reached for answers which had been so close to him before and which his every movement and thought had seemed to embody—but found only the gloomy, cold, hostile walls of their bedroom. Outside, the snow lay at cat’s-eye level twenty degrees below zero.

The kitchen clock said it was after one, and the house itself knew it was late. Turning on a light in an empty room seemed to be an intrusion. The radio had a faraway, demonic sound as though coming from the deep recesses of a cave, heavy and thick, with dark, meaningless voices. The silences were alive: the dog, Holmes, was sleeping somewhere in the barn, and July decided to walk out and find her. It was a pretense to listen for Mal turning off the highway onto the gravel two miles away, but on a still winter night with the roads cleared it was as unmistakable as something could be. He dressed warmly.

Leaving the light on in the living room and carrying a weak flashlight, he went out. Around his eyes he could feel the searing