Free The Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates Page A

arright, just stick around. Yull find out. Wait’ll you kids got my time in the Army, then yez can talk.” But by that time we were all laughing with him; he had won our hearts.
    In the evenings, at the PX, we would cluster around him while he sat behind a battery of beer bottles, waving his expressive hands and talking the kind of relaxed, civilian language we all could understand. “Ah, I got this brother-in-law, a real smott bastid. Know how he got outa the Army? Know how he got out?” There would follow an involved, unlikely tale of treachery to which the only expected response was a laugh. “Sure!” Ruby would insist, laughing. “Don’tcha believe me? Don’tcha believe me? And this other guy I know, boy, talk about bein’ smott —I’m tellin’ ya, this bastid’s really smott. Know how he got out?”
    Sometimes our allegiance wavered, but not for long. One evening a group of us sat around the front steps, dawdling over cigarettes before we pushed off to the PX, and discussing at length—as if to convince ourselves—the many things that made life with Ruby so enjoyable. “Well yeah,” little Fogarty said, “but I dunno. With Ruby it don’t seem much like soldiering any more.”
    This was the second time Fogarty had thrown us into a momentary confusion, and for the second time D’Allessandro cleared the air. “So?” he said with a shrug. “Who the hell wants to soldier?”
    That said it perfectly. We could spit in the dust and amble off toward the PX now, round-shouldered, relieved, confident that Sergeant Reece would not haunt us again. Who the hell wanted to soldier? “Not me,” we could all say in our hearts, “not this chicken,” and our very defiance would dignify the attitude. An attitude was all we needed anyway, all we had ever needed, and this one would always sit more comfortably than Reece’s stern, demanding creed. It meant, I guess, that at the end of our training cycle the camp delivered up a bunch of shameless little wise guys to be scattered and absorbed into the vast disorder of the Army, but at least Reece never saw it happen, and he was the only one who might have cared.

No Pain Whatsoever
    MYRA STRAIGHTENED HERSELF in the backseat and smoothed her skirt, pushing Jack’s hand away.
    â€œAll right, baby,” he whispered, smiling, “take it easy.”
    â€œYou take it easy, Jack,” she told him. “I mean it, now.”
    His hand yielded, limp, but his arm stayed indolently around her shoulders. Myra ignored him and stared out the window. It was early Sunday evening, late in December, and the Long Island streets looked stale; dirty crusts of snow lay shriveled on the sidewalk, and cardboard images of Santa Claus leered out of closed liquor stores.
    â€œI still don’t feel right about you driving me all the way out here,” Myra called to Marty, who was driving, to be polite.
    â€œâ€™S all right,” Marty grumbled. Then he sounded his horn and added, to the back of a slow truck, “Get that son of a bitch outa the way.”
    Myra was annoyed—why did Marty always have to be such a grouch?—but Irene, Marty’s wife, squirmed around in the front seat with her friendly grin. “Marty don’t mind,” she said. “It’s good for ’m, getting out on a Sunday insteada laying around the house.”
    â€œWell,” Myra said, “I certainly do appreciate it.” The truth was that she would much rather have taken the bus, alone, as usual. In the four years she had been coming out here to visit her husband every Sunday she had grown used to the long ride, and she liked stopping at a little cafeteria in Hempstead, where you had to change buses, for coffee and cake on the way home. But today she and Jack had gone over to Irene and Marty’s for dinner, and the dinner was so late that Marty had to offer to