Colm Tóibín Reads Tobias Wolff

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This is The New Yorker Fiction Podcast from The New Yorker Magazine. I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month we're going to hear "A Waiting Orders" by Tobias Wolfe, which appeared in The New Yorker in July of 2005. Morse had spent 20 of his 39 years in the Army. He was not one of those who claimed to love it, but he belonged to it as to a tribe, bound to those around him by lines of unrefutable obligation, love being finally beside the point. The story was chosen by Comtor Bean, a winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, newsbooks of fiction include The Novels, The Master, and Long Island, and The Story Collection, the news from Dublin, which was published earlier this year. Hi, Com. Hi, Debra. So the last couple of times that you were on The Fiction Podcasts, you chose stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Mary Laven. What made you go for Tobias Wolfe this time? Maybe it's the same thing, the idea that suddenly very plain, something that doesn't have gorgeous writing in it, or have any sort of obvious efforts towards transcendence, sometimes that seems rooted in the daily, it becomes oddly luminous in one way and in another way where the character becomes much more complex than you thought it would be. In other words, that simple characters, ostensibly, begin to have more than one characteristic and then become really quite mysterious. It's difficult to write characters with more than one characteristic, isn't it? It seems to me the essential element really that you have to say to yourself, is this character merely gruff? Is he merely careful? Is he merely good man or is he merely beautiful? And if he's merely those things, then I think, as in this story, you have to then start working at making him more complex, at giving him ambiguities, things that are opposite to each other, so that you're never quite sure where he's coming from. And I think that's part of the joy of this story, is the way in which Morse presents himself as a very complex figure indeed. Yeah, what did you first read the story? I read the story when it came out in a book called Our Story Begins, which is the new and selected stories, and it was one of the stories towards the end of that. And I read that book when it came out. And were you a long time fan of Tobias Wolf? Yeah. You know, the two memoirs, I think, had an enormous impact on people of my age, first one of this boy's life, and then in Pharaoh's army. There's a sort of clarity in the writing that doesn't strive in any obvious way towards transcendence or towards anything, you know, especially wise or beautiful, but actually manages to do that almost without trying. And he could do that also in the stories. And there's a novel of his, which is called Old School, which I read more or less in a sitting. And there is also in that that he can create a scene in a paragraph. And when you look at the paragraph to see, how did this happen in this paragraph? It's not obvious, but it is that every, I suppose, image is hard one and work through. There's an image toward the end of this story where he's talking about rain and just watch how he describes how the rain on the asphalt and also the rain hitting hard on somebody's face. It seems to turn our face towards the rain. It's pretty good stuff. It's probably helpful for listeners to know that the story was written during the days of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, you know, when the Department of Defense Policy was that you couldn't discriminate against gay people in the army, but so long as they didn't identify themselves as gay. But if they were openly gay, they were barred from service. So that is a backdrop for the story. Do you think, do you think there's anything else that listeners should know about it before we start? Yeah, they should know that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was an absolute gift to writers. It's that funny moment from gay sex being unmentionable and unmentioned in the army and at the moment of full disclosure. So in that funny interregnum, in that strange time, someone could be both ready for a relationship or even having a relationship, but that relationship would be kept secret or as a decade earlier, the relationship would not have been possible and a decade later it would all be easier. So that decade if Don't Ask, Don't Tell was an extraordinary gift to writers. It just opens up a whole world of secrets. Yeah. We'll talk some more after the reading and now here's Comtobine reading Awaiting Orders by Tobias Wolf. Awaiting Orders. Sergeant Morris was pulling night duty in the orderly room when a woman called asking for Billy Hart. He told her that specialist Hart had shipped out for Iraq a week earlier. He said, "Billy Hart, you sure? He never said a word about shipping out. I'm sure." Well, sweet Jesus, that's some news. And you are, if you don't mind my asking, I'm a sister. I can give you his email, hang on, I'll find it for you. That's okay. There's people waiting for the phone, people who don't know any better than to breathe down other people's neck. It won't take a minute. That's okay. He's gone, right? Feel free to call back. Maybe I can help." Huh, she said, and hung up. Sergeant Morris returned to the paperwork he'd been doing with the talk of Billy Hart had unsettled him. He got up and went to the water cooler and drew him several glass. He drank it and filtered glass again and stood by the door. The night was sullenly hot and still. Just past 11, the barracks quiet, only few windows glowing in the haze, a meaty grey moth kept thumping against the screen. Morris didn't know Billy Hart well, but he'd had his eye on him. Hart was from the mountains near Asheville, and liked to play the hick for the cover it gave him. He was always running a hustle, Hart engaged elsewhere when there was work to be done, but on hand to fleece the new guys at poker or sell rides to town and his must and convertible. He was said to be dealing but hadn't gone. caught at it. So everyone else was dumb. You could see him thinking it, that little smile. He would trip himself up someday, but he'd do fine for now. Plenty of easy pickings over there for the likes of Billy Hart. A good-looking troop, though. Some India there, those high cheap bones, deep-set black eyes. Beautiful, really, with that slow cat-like way about him, cool, aloof, almost contemptuous in the langer and ease of his movements. Morse had felt the old pool despite himself, knowing Hart was trouble, but always a little taught in his presence, fighting the stubborn drift of his gaze toward Hart's face, towards that look of secret knowledge playing on his lips. Hart was approachable, Morse felt sure of it, opened to whatever and might offer both interest and advantage, but Morse kept his distance. He didn't give advantage and couldn't take the gamble of a foolish entanglement, not now anyway. He was a soldier, no longer able to imagine himself as a civilian, the formlessness of that life, the endless petty choices to be made. Morse knew that he belonged where he was, yet he had often put himself in danger of scandal and discharge through risky attachments. Just before his tour in Iraq, there had been the Cuban waiter he met in a restaurant downtown. The waiter turned out to be married in a gambling addict and finally, when Morse broke it off a blackmailer. Morse would not be blackmailed. He wrote down his commanding officer's name and telephone number. Here he said, "Go on, call him." And though he didn't think the man would actually do it, Morse spent the next few weeks inwardly hunched as if against a blow. Then he shipped out and soon came to life again, ready for the next excitement. This turned out to be a young lieutenant who joined Morse's unit the week Morse arrived. They went through orientation together and Morse saw that the lieutenant was drawn to him, though the lieutenant himself seemed unsure of his own disposition, even when he surrendered to it, with an urgency only heightened by the near impossibility of finding private time and space. In fact, he was just discovering himself, and in the process he suffered fits of self-loathing, so cruel and dark that Morse feared he would do himself harm, or turn his rage outward, perhaps onto Morse himself, or bring them both to grief by bawling out a drunken confession to a fatherly colonel in some officer's bar. He didn't come to that. The lieutenant had adopted a mangy, one-eared cat while they were on patrol. The cat scratched his ankle and the scratch got infected, and instead of going for treatment, he played the fool and tried to tough it out, and damn near lost his foot. He was sent home on crutches five months into his tour. By then, Morse was so wrong out that he felt not the slightest stirrings of pity, only relief. He had no calls for relief. Not long after returning stateside, he was called to battalion headquarters for an interview with two smooth, friendly men in civilian clothes who claimed to be congressional age from the lieutenant's home district. They said there was a sensitive matter before the congressman that required closer knowledge of the lieutenant's service in Iraq. His performance in the field is dealing with other officers and with the troops who served under him. Their questions looped around conversationally, almost lazily, but returned again and again to the lieutenant's relations with Morse. Morse gave nothing away, even as he labored to appear open unguarded. He figured these men for army narks, wherever else they said. They let several weeks go by before calling him to another meeting, which they cancelled at the last minute. Morse was still waiting for the next summons. He had often wished that his desire served him better, but in this he supposed he was not unusual, that it was a lucky man indeed whose desire served him well. Yet he had hopes. Over the last few months Morse had become involved with a master sergeant in division intelligence, a calm scholarly man five years older than he. The Morse could not yet think of himself as anyone's partner. He had gradually forsaken his room in the NCO quarters to spend nights and weekends at Dickson's townhouse offpost. The place was stuffed with ancient weapons and masks and chest sets that Dickson had collected during his tours overseas. And at first Morse had felt a sort of nervous awe as if he were in a museum, but that had passed. Now he liked having these things around him. He was at home there. But Dickson was due to rotate overseas before long, and Morse would soon receive new orders himself, and he knew it would get complicated then. They would have to make certain judgments about each other and about themselves. They would have to decide how much to promise. Where this would leave them, Morse didn't know, but all that was still to come. Billy Hart's sister called again at midnight, just as Morse was turning over the orderly room to another sergeant. When he picked up and heard her voice, he pointed at the door, and the other man smiled and stepped outside. "Would you like the address then?" Morse asked. "I guess, for all the good it'll do." Morse had already looked it up. He read it to her. "Thanks," she said. "I don't have a computer, but Sal does." "Sal?" "Salicrona, my cousin." "You could just go to an internet cafe." "Well, I suppose," she said skeptically. "Say, what did you mean maybe you could help?" "I don't know exactly," Morse said. "You said it, though?" "Yes, and you laughed." "That wasn't an actual laugh." "Ah, not a laugh." More like, "I don't know." Morse waited. "Sorry," she said. "Look, I'm not asking for help, okay? But how come you said it just out of curiosity?" "No reason. I didn't think it out. Are you a friend of Billy's?" "I like Billy." "Well, it was nice, you know, a real nice thing to say." After Morse signed out, he drove to the Pancake House she'd been calling from. As agreed, she was gracing by the cash register, and when he came through the door of his fatigue, he saw her take him in with a sharp measuring glance. She straightened up, a tall woman, nearly as tall as Morse himself, with close cut black hair and a long tide-looking face, darkly freckled under the eyes. Her eyes were black, but otherwise she looked nothing like hard, nothing at all, and Morse was thrown by the sudden disappointment he felt, and the impulse to escape. She stepped toward him, head-compt to one side, as if making a guess about him. Her eyebrows were dark and heavy. She wore sleeveless red blouse and hugged her freckled arms against the chill of the air conditioning. "So should I call you Sergeant?" she said. "Own." "Sgt. Owen." "Just Owen." "Just Owen," she repeated. She offered him her hands with dry and rough. "Julianne, we're over in the corner." She led him to a booth by the big window looking out on the parking lot. A fat face boy, maybe seven or eight, sat drawing a picture on the back of a placemat, among the congealed remains of eggs and waffles and sausages. Holding the crayon like a spike, he raised his head as Morse slid onto the bench across from him. He had the same fierce brows as the woman. He gave Morse a long, unblinking look, then he sucked in his lower lip and returned to his work. "Say hello, Charlie." He went on coloring for a while, then he said, "Howdy." "We'll say hello this one," says Howdy now. "Don't know where he got it." "That's all right. Howdy back at you, Charlie." "You looked like a frog," the boy said. He dropped the crayon and picked up another from the clutter on the table. "Charlie," she said. "Use your manners," she added mildly, beckoning to a waitress pouring coffee at the neighboring table. "It's okay," Morse said. He figured he had a coming, not because he looked like a frog, though he was all at once conscious of his wide mouth, but because he'd sucked up to the boy. "Howdy back at you." "What is wrong with that woman," Julianne said as the way which was gazed dolly around the room. Then Juliane caught her eyes. She came slowly over to their table and refilled Juliane's cup. That's some picture you're making the waitress said. What is it? The boy ignored her. You've got yourself quite the little artist there. She said to Morse, then moved dreamily away. Juliane poured a long stream of sugar into her coffee. Charlie your son? She turned and looked speculatively at the boy. No, you're not my mom, the boy moment. Didn't I just say that? She stroked his round cheek with the back of her hand. Draw your picture nosy. Kids, she said to Morse, not yet. Morse watched the boy smear blue lines across the placemat, wheeled in the crayon as if out of grim duty. You aren't missing anything. Oh, I think I probably am. Nothing but back-talking mess, she said. Charlie's billies, billion dinas. Morse would never have guessed it to look at the boy. I didn't know heart had a son, he said. And hope she hadn't heard the note of complaint that was all too clear and strange to him. Neither does he the way he acts, him and Dina both. Dina, she said, was off to another round of rehab in Raleigh, her second. Julian and Bella, Julian's mother, Morse gathered, have been looking after Charlie. But they didn't get along. And after the last blowup, Bella had taken off for Florida with a boyfriend, putting Julian in a bind. She drove a school bus during the year and worked summers cooking at a girl scout camp. But with Charlie on her hands and no money for childcare, she'd had to give up the camp job. So she'd driven down here to try and shake some help out of Billy, enough to get her through until school started. Or Bella decided to come home and do her share. Fat chance. Morse nodded toward the boy. He didn't like his hearing all this. If anything could penetrate that concentration. But Julian went on as if she hadn't noticed. Her voice was low, growly. But with a nasal catching it, like the whine of a sore blade binding. She didn't have the lazy music that heart could play so well. But she seemed more truly of the hollows and farms of their home. She spoke of the people there as if Morse must know them too, as if she had no work and conception of the reach of the world beyond. At first Morse was expecting her to put the bite on him. But she never did. He did not understand what she wanted from him. Or why, unprompted, he'd offered to come here tonight. So he's gone, she said finally. You're sure. Afraid so. Well, good to know my looks holding. Wouldn't want it to get worse. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Why didn't you call first? What? And let on I was coming? You don't know her, Billy. Julian seemed to fall into a trance, then, and Morse soon followed, lulled by the clink of crockery and the voices all around, the soft scratching of the crayon. He didn't know how long they sat like this. He was roused by the tapping of raindrops against the window, a few fat drops that left oily lines as they slid down the glass. The raindrops stopped. Then it came again in a rush, sizzling on the asphalt, blazing the cars and the parking lot, pleasant to watch after the long, heavy day. Rain, Morse said. Julian didn't bother to look. She might have been asleep, but with a slight nod, she gave him. Morse recognized two men from his company, her table across the room. He watched them until they'd lanced his way, then he nodded and they nodded back. Money in the bank, confirmed sighting of Sergeant Morse with woman and child, family. He hated thinking so bitter and cheaper thought and resented whatever led him to think it. Still, how else could they be seen the three of them in a pancake house at this hour? And it wasn't just their resemblance to a family. No, there was the atmosphere of family here in the very silence of the table. Julian, with her eyes closed, the boy working away on his picture, Morse himself looking on, like any husband and father. Your tired, he said. The tenderness of his own voice surprised him and her eyes blinked open as if she too were surprised. She looked at him with gratitude and it came to Morse that she had called him back that night just for the reason she gave, because he had spoken kindly to her. I am tired, she said. I am that. Look, Julian, what do you need to tide you over? Nothing, forget all that stuff. I was just blowing off steam. I'm not talking about charity, okay? Just alone, that's all. We'll be fine. It's not like there's anyone waiting in line for it, he said. And this was true. Morse's father and older brother, finally catching on, had gone cold on him years ago. He remained close to his mother, but she died just after his return from Iraq. In his new will, Morse named as sole beneficiary, the hospice, where she'd spent her last weeks. To name Dixon seemed too sudden and meaningful and might draw unwelcome attention. In any way, Dixon had made some sharp investments and was well fixed. I just can't, Julian said, but that is so sweet. My dad's a soldier, the boy said, head still bent over the placemat. I know, Morse said, he's a good soldier. You should be proud. Julian smiled at him, really smiled for the first time that night. She'd been squinting and holding her mouth in a tight line. Then she smiled and looked like someone else. Morse saw that she had beauty and that her pleasure in him had allowed this beauty to show itself. He was embarrassed. He felt a sense of duplicity that he immediately even indignantly suppressed. I can't force it on you, he said. Suit yourself. The smile vanished. I will, she said, in the same tone he had used, harder than he'd intended. But I thank you anyhow. Charlie, she said, time to go, get your stuff together. I'm not done. Finish it tomorrow. Morse waited while she rolled up the placemat and helped the boy collect his crayons. He noticed the check pinned under the sole shaker and picked it up. I'll take that, she said, and held out her hand in a way that did not permit refusal. Morse stood by awkwardly as Julian paid at the register. Then he walked outside with her and the boy. They stood together under the awning and watched the storm lash the parking lot. Glittering lines of rain fell a slant through the glare of the lights overhead. The surrounding trees tossed wildly and the wind sent gleaming ripples across the asphalt. Julian brushed a lock of hair back from the boys' forehead. I'm ready, how about you? No. Well, it ain't about the quit raining for Charles Drew Hart. She yawned widely and gave her head a shake. Nice talking to you, she said to Morse. Where will you stay? Pick up. A pick up. You're going to sleep in a truck. Can't drive like this. And in the look she gave him expected and mocking, he could see that she knew he would offer her a motel room and that she was already tasting the satisfaction of turning it down. But that didn't stop him from trying. Country proud, Dickson said, when Morse told him the story later that morning, you should have invited them to stay here. People like that, mountain people, will accept hospitality when they won't take money. They're like Arabs. Hospitality has a sacred claim. You don't refuse to give it and you don't refuse to take it. Never occurred to me, Morse said. But in truth, he had the same intuition, standing outside the restaurant with the two of them, wallet in hand. Even as he tried to talk Julianne into taking the money for a room, invoking the seriousness of the storm and the need to get the boy into a safe, dry place, he had the sense that if he simply invited her home with him, she might indeed say yes. And then what? Dickson waking up and playing host, bearing fresh towels to the guest room, making coffee, teasing the boy, and looking at Morse in that way of his. Its meaning would be clear enough to Julianne. What might she do with such knowledge out of shock and despair? disgust, perhaps even feeling herself betrayed, she could ruin them. Morse thought of that, but didn't really fear it. He liked her. He did not think she would act meanly. What he feared, what he could not allow, was for her to see how Dixon looked at him, and then to see that he could not give back what he received, that things between them were unequal and himself unloving. So that even while offering Julian the gift of shelter, he felt false, mealy math. As if he were trying to buy her off, and the unfairness of suffering guilt while pushing his money at her, and having his money refused, proved too much for Morse. Finally, he told her to sleep in a damn truck then, if that was what she wanted. "I don't want to sleep in a truck," the boy said. "You'd be a side happier if you did want to," Julian said. "Now come on, ready or not." Just don't try to drive home, Morse said. She put her hand on the boy's shoulder, and let him out into the parking lot. "You're too tired," Morse called after her. But if she answered, he couldn't hear it for the drumming of the rain on the metal awning. They walked on across the asphalt. The wind gusted, driving the rain so hard that Morse had to jump back a step. Julian took it full in the face, and never so much has turned her head. Nor did the boy, Charlie. He was getting something from her, ready or not, walking into the rain as if it weren't raining at all. That was Comtobine, reading "A Waiting Orders" by Tobias Wolf. The story appeared in the New Yorker in July of 2005, and was included in Wolf's collection "Our Story Begins," new and selected stories, which was published in 2008, as well as in the 2006 Best American Short Stories Anthology. What can a series about enterprising tween girls tell us about who we wanted to be when we grew up, and who we are now? I'm Danielle Doncelle, and I'm a lifelong babysitter's club fan. I'm also the host of Generation Babysitters Club, the latest season of generation, the media we love, and how it shapes us. A podcast from the award-winning NPR and PBS member station, Connecticut Public. The new season goes beyond nostalgia to explore the books as a cultural phenomenon. We learn how they shaped the worlds of entrepreneurship, publishing, and girlhood, and why they continue to shape generations of readers. So Generation Babysitters Club, wherever you get your podcast. Fall never arrives all at once. Verse the air, "Then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress, a hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf, because you don't simply step into the season. Find fall your way, at Ross." My life is booked and busy. I don't have time to try on a million outfits that still don't feel right. That's why I get styled with stitch tricks. My personal stylist sends outfits picked for my size, style, and budget so I can get dressed and get on with my day feeling confident. It's no risk, all-style. Rechipping free returns, no subscription required. Get started today at StitchFix.com. That's StitchFix.com. So, "Comb" Morse is someone who wants to have rules and orders in his life. He's a career soldier. He's, you know, quote, no longer able to imagine himself as a civilian, the formlessness of that life, the endless petty choices to be made. Do you think he deliberately chose a path that would require him to keep his private life secret? Yes, it's almost in the same way as somebody in other countries might go in and become a member of the clergy. In other words, that out of all this possible disorder that could come, he wants this order. But when he has the order, once he's actually in the army, of course, he's in a place of constant possibilities for a desire and for funny little relationships, all of which, of course, are illegal and will ruin him so that it isn't a simple business of him going into the army in order to deny himself. He goes in looking for form and then seeks formlessness in the sort of relationships he wants, so it's complicated. So perhaps the structure, having that structure gives him the freedom to have these little moments of unstructured life. Yeah, it happens in Tobias Wolf's work quite a lot where you're going along in very ordinary sentences and suddenly something gets said, some extraordinary illuminating moment occurs. And there's a sentence in this story which says, "It was a lucky man indeed whose desire served him well." In other words, he's saying that for most of us, our desires don't necessarily serve us well all the time, but if a man found that his desire did serve him well all the time, he would be a lucky man. And Morse is not such a man. And therefore what we're watching is the drama of this slightly unlucky man as he wants something strange late at night when somebody calls and it's the sister of a man who clearly attracts him enormously and he wants something from her, but he isn't sure and the reader isn't sure what it is. He has a pretense of wanting to give something to her, wanting to help her. Do you think that's genuine? I think what we're finding in him is a desperate loneliness and here he is at 11 o'clock at night and his phone call comes and he wants her to look like Billy who's the object of desire which when she doesn't, then that becomes dramatic where the two of them have to go and sit at a table and he realizes that Charlie is Billy's boy but he doesn't look like Billy either. So in somewhere rather than between him and Julian, something begins to happen. It's not like love, it's not even flirtation, but it's some sense of connection that he wasn't expecting. Right. And then what happens? Because something happens to that connection and it's not even entirely clear what triggers it. I suppose the great thing about the story is that he really doesn't know what to do. He almost doesn't want her to go. He doesn't think of inviting her home, although that becomes possible. That becomes a possibility later when he thinks about it but he wants to give her money. He doesn't need the money he has. She doesn't of course want to take it because she doesn't know him but she's also quite a proud and brittle person. She's not just going to take money from this man. He's just going to go. She just says her luck really is running out. She's just going to go and he sort of wants to help, wants to give her something. But the reader realizes this is all about connecting to Billy and the description of Billy, of his voice, the description of Billy's face, Billy is obviously someone who has been hugely attractive, who's really been interested in sexually. So it is almost sexual, it isn't. It is almost about for a second living in a family, that here's a son, here's a wife, here's him, that he sees himself in that position. Each thing is a sort of fleeting moment of possibility. Nothing is solid. He in certain moments is purely solid but then he isn't. He doesn't know how to behave or what to do. And as with so many of the entanglements in his life, he has sought this out, this ambiguous situation in which there's nothing clear for him to do. But he's volunteered to go to the pancake house. Yeah, he goes to the pancake house party out of loneliness. But party have some way of seeing if he could help Billy or find Billy or be with someone who knows Billy. And it's not going to be, it's not going to work out. And it isn't even done on an impulse, so he's being beautiful. So I suppose what's happening all the time is there are levels of, I suppose, impulse and levels of, I suppose, purpose and none of them fully connect so the reader is constantly being wrong-footed or being surprised by the next moment, the next thing he feels or does, but certainly isn't simple. Yeah. I mean, let's think about the previous attachments that are described. We have this Cuban waiter who turns out to be married and tries to blackmail him. We have this young lieutenant who goes into a tailspin of someone. self-loathing. And perhaps does give him away. And then in both cases, he's kind of saved by the bell at the last minute. The Cuban waiter, you know, he calls his bluff by giving him the commander's phone number. And with the young lieutenant, he gets a bad cat's scratch. And he takes off. But there's still, there's still risk happening. He's still being sort of randomly questioned and so on. So he really is in this strange position. And he was drawn to Billy. He thought about it. He considered the idea that Billy would be open to it because Billy's just sort of open. And then Billy got sent away. So that again that the risk was somewhat eliminated without him having to do much. It's a strange pattern that keeps repeating. Yeah, that he's ready to take risks even though he is in someone who would naturally be like that. That somehow or other, these long days and nights, this form he's found in the army has given him a sort of surface sense of respectability, normality, responsibility. But beneath that, there's something else as an absolute risk taker. I mean, the Cuban waiter just seems one where he's absolutely asking for trouble. But it's almost the same with Billy. That's a sense of with Billy. He's also asking for trouble. There's no suggestion that Billy is attracted to him or that Billy is gay. Just that Billy might be open to this because Billy was someone almost on the take. You know, that he would fleece you at poker. He would charge you money and people thought that he was selling drugs. So there's a whole sense of wanting Billy is a huge risk to take. In the meantime, he has a man called Dixon. He's that he's in that thing that everybody wants gay people to be in a sort of stable, loving relationship. The only thing he finds is that he doesn't love Dixon and that Dixon loves him. And the worry is that if he were to invite Julia and back, and it's think that I think gay men at the very beginning, you know, when they haven't been in a relationship before become acutely conscious of what they might look like with their partner. What will we look like? Because there are no images. You know, it's not as though you go to the movies and see a version of yourself or you don't appear in an ad for a car, that how would he look with Dixon? Would it be apparent in the way that Dixon looked at him, Dixon's longing for him much more than more loves Dixon? And that she would see this or witness it. And there's a beautiful image. He has a Dixon coming down the car door with fresh towels for Julia and her son. You know, how he would try and be hospitable. There's also a wonderful moment where Dixon says that people from the mountains are like Arabs, as though Dixon knows anything about this. And I just love that little tiny moment of people who have been in Iraq coming back with feelings that they sort of know these countries. My question about that scene is, what is he afraid of Julia and seeing? I mean, he's not afraid of her learning that he's gay, particularly. But he's afraid of being seen not to reciprocate love. Yeah, but I think it's a gay man's fear over what being gay looks like for someone who is an outsider. How am I going to perform in this and how bad will I be at it and how embarrassing it will be? So suddenly, you know, it's not about, I want the right to love. It is, I want the right not to be embarrassed while my boyfriend looks at me. It's a complicated idea. But what he's worried about is that he would bring her into his house and that she would see something that no one else has witnessed that has not been socialized. In other words, that his relationship with Dixon is fully private. They do not go out as a couple in public. So they have no sense of what they'd looked like as a couple. And this concerns more in the sense that he just, if someone started to watch them, he would worry about what he would feel or think. And in fact, that it might really irritate her enough that she would get angry and that she would denounce both of them as to how much sex she was living together in this strange, interregnant, a strange time of don't ask, don't tell. Yeah, he's not so worried about that because he says she's nice. There's a really interesting moment at the table, the pancake house, when he says a nice thing about Billy to Charlie, which really pleases her and she has this lovely warm smile. And then he has to quickly get rid of it by being unpleasant or unkind himself. What is that reaction? Yeah, she comes, Julie, I'm coming across as she's very well-made in the story in that she's brosk, that she's really in a very difficult position that she thinks he has said something nice to her, which he did do. Is there anything I can do to help, but she doesn't know what he wants and she's brosk and then for a moment she smiles and he sees something in her which reminds him in some way of what he saw in her brother, but it doesn't last. She's going to have to face into the night and she's going to do so in a very determined way, if there's trouble coming out face to trouble. I suppose we just don't get anything from Julie Anne's point of view other than what she says and the expression on her face that more witness is. So it's hard to say what she is actually thinking of him. Do you think in that moment when she smiles that he suddenly has a panic that perhaps she's attracted to him or she has the wrong idea? It's very important, I think, that the point of view is totally his and that we also, it's framed in the sense that there's a reference to what he's going to say to his boyfriend the following morning so that this is an event that's already in a way taken place. So that all Tobias Wolf can do is to give her various things to say in various ways that she can change how she looks. She's impatient. We see the first things we see about her is that someone is breathing down her neck and she's trying to make a phone call and she's irritated by this. And we see that again when she's impatient with the waitress. And also there's a lovely thing which is that she speaks about people she knows or people in her world, including her cousin, Sal, as though more should know who they are. You know, Sal will deal with that. That she has a whole way that her own world is as far as she's concerned the whole world. But it isn't encounter that fascinates him because everything she does is unpredictable. She's not looking for money. She's not looking for help. She's not necessarily attracted to him. She's not the mother of the child. She's the sister. She's the one who's stuck looking after this child. And she is just going to go. She's going to put us through whatever bad experiences are coming. I mean, she's pretty interesting. She doesn't make her two sort of folksy down homes or y'all. And he's careful with her. It gives her a sort of funny dignity. Yeah. As Dixon says, she's country proud, right? She's not there to be a charity case for this man who seems to feel a bit superior to her, I suppose, in their in their interaction. I think there's a moment in their conversation when he does start offering money. Oh, yeah. And he says it's going to be a loan. Yeah. And it seems as though he's talking about quite a lot of money because it's the money he was going to leave to the hospice where his mother died. Yeah. He was going to give her this. In other words, that we watch an impulse, which is, I think, in a story as a great thing. Suddenly, something occurs and is completely insane that this stranger, he would give her money. And of course, she's not going to take it. But I think she sees the offer as perhaps a manipulation on his part, a way of asserting power over her or control over her. He has something she needs. She sort of recoils from it. Yeah. She's just not going to take it. Yeah. And then when she refuses, then he's angry. You see, I think what's happening here is the sexual politics here, excuse, in other words, that he isn't coming on to her. Since he isn't doing that, what is he doing? And therefore, his neediness must emerge for her in somewhere, rather, that why has he come in to meet them this time? Why has a man, a 39-year-old man in uniform come to meet them in this place at midnight? What's in it for him? And so it is that idea of a gay man suddenly being put strangely in the role of a straight man and not knowing what his motives are since he himself is in a way has changed shape. It's trying to look like, and you can imagine what they call on the gay ads. They call straight acting. You know, like this is what straight acting is like where you make an offer to also complete a stranger of a loan of money, which he has to feel in somewhere, rather, is a strange offer, if it isn't about being attracted to her or wanting her in somewhere, rather. And of course, his whole life is straight acting, right? And it's life he's chosen, and perhaps he's chosen it for that reason, I feel that there's an enormous amount of shame in Morse, and whether it's shame at being gay, probably not, but shame at having that exposed, shame at the idea of being caught in the act, and maybe it's a hangover from his father and his brother cutting ties to him over this. Yeah, there's an awful lot. I mean, I'm gay and I hear a lot about gay shame. If I go, I hear about it. Sorry. That's okay. It's okay. But I do feel if you're writing a story, you've got to be very careful that gay shame isn't the center of it, because there's so many other things that are more interesting, such as gay fear. You know, there's a feeling that the time when he is being blackmailed, and he does just decide to confront the guy and say, "Look, if you want to blackmail me here, here's the number of my superior, you can call them." But he isn't just being braved. It says for the following few weeks, he was really in fear over this, and that it was the same with the other business of, suddenly, he's had an affair with a lieutenant, or he's had an affair with what you call a lieutenant, and that he feels the guy has told somebody, and he's being investigated, and that too brings with it a sort of fear. Yeah, which is still looming over him. Yeah, he's taking risks, but they're quite small risks, but nonetheless, they bring with them a huge amount of pain and fear, and what's really strange then is when he's in this relationship with Dixon, who clearly loves him, there's a moment where he just says he's just not able to give that love back. And so, we're back with the thing, it's what's a lucky man indeed, who's just served him well. Yeah. It's an absolutely brilliant sentence, and you can read the story without feeling that Tobias Wolf is preaching to you about this. The sentence comes in organically into a passage, and it's only as you're reading, you go, "Wow, that is one of the wisest things I've ever heard anyone say." There's a sense in which he can only, well, perhaps only feel love, but definitely only feel desire when he is at risk, right? So with Dixon, the risk is quite minimal, it seems at this point, though I'm not quite sure how his moving in with Dixon looks to anyone, or if that's public, but he seems to have minimal risk with Dixon, he's not afraid of exposure, he's not afraid of being discharged dishonorably. And so then there's no passion there. Yeah, I don't really know anything about straight life. My parents told me about it, but in the gay world, I think a lot of gay men who've settled down into domestic relationships, having the back of their mind, somebody wild and wonderful, that they went home with once, and they wonder where he is now, and they lie at night in their bed wondering where he is now, while they're lover, stable, wonderful, perfect in every way, sleeps beside them. That idea that was a danger, there was something wonderful, that was something wild, that you had once. I wonder if straight people feel that, but certainly I think gay people do. For every stable gay relationship, there's a funny, shadowy, risky thing that didn't work out, never could work out, but has its enormous attractions, especially in retrospect. Right, because you never actually had to deal with the day-to-day, you know, who's washing the towels. Yeah, and I think Billy here represents that, that he seems to know the guy who gambles, the guy who's in trouble, the guy who rumors about him selling drugs, and he's gone now, he's cheekbones, and he's dark eyes, and he's the fact that he's got his son, that he hasn't bothered to look after, that all of this interest morse enormously, while he himself contains all of this emotion by his professional life and indeed by his personal life, but that in the background is this business of not just taking risks, but finding wildness very attractive. And at the same time more to someone who's lost his family, right, he's been sort of cast out by father and brother, and his mother has died, the only one who tolerated his choices. Yeah, it gives the army a sort of idea of family or stability. Yeah, he's found that. There's a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt written, I suppose, in the in the 1550s, which ends with Nolan made Tandry for Caesars I am, and then the wonderful lines for wild to hold, though I seem tame. And so that idea of wildness and tameness is, I suppose, at the center of the story that Morse wants to seem tame, but actually there's something wild in him. Except he looks like a frog. It's a wonderful line. And what I also love is that Morse doesn't immediately think, well, yes, I do. People have been saying that to me all my life. He just says what he didn't look like a frog, but the reader has a right to feel that he must look somewhat like a frog. He has a very large mouth, looked up at him and just said, look like a frog. It's great. Speaking of Charlie, the last line of the story is sort of fascinating to me. I mean, you mentioned earlier the image with the rain, the last line being, he was getting something from her, ready or not, walking into the rain as if it weren't raining at all. And my question is, what is Charlie getting from Julian in that moment? Oh, I suppose a sense of facing into what's coming, but she does with the rain is terrific. Julian took it full in the face and never so much has turned her head. Now, if you just imagine walking out to a parking lot and you've got that rain coming, the people, people duck, people turn their face away. She turns towards it. She's taking it. In other words, they're not taking charity. They're not going to stay in a motel. They're going out into the hard world and Charlie watches and sees it. And that's what he gets for her in that second lesson. Yeah. Morse is jumping back to get on the cover. Morse knows exactly what to do and when it's raining like that coming, which is to turn away from. Yeah. Well, on the other hand, well, who do you think Charlie should learn from? Morse, Morse who goes undercover or Julian who? I think Charlie wants Billy. He wants Billy back. Yeah. He's never really had Billy. It sounds like it. In a way, this story, well, it made me think of Hemingway's Hills like White Elephants, simply because the word gay is never mentioned. And that's obviously a choice on both's part, not to mention. Yeah. And don't ask. Don't tell as you mentioned them. So, you know, those are things that are so, I mean, it's almost like Borghays insisting that there are no camels mentioned in the Koran because there's so many camels that why would you mention them? They're so generic. Yeah. So much there. So that, you know, he isn't going to give you a sort of sociopolitical context for this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, there's, I actually read an interview with him where he talked about the story and said, it's not about don't ask, don't tell. It's about a man. We all live under some kind of constraint in social situations, in work situations, concealing our nature. We perform our identities in public. A man who is harsh to his wife at home doesn't show that at work. A man who desires an employee at work doesn't let on unless he wants a lawsuit. We all live in social situations that put a constraint on or stifle our nature. Sometimes that's good. It would be hell if we did not. In the case of this man, it is not unique to the social situation. This story is about a cultural phenomenon that disallows people to be who they are. It's about the coercive effects of having to conceal our nature, which is true of soldiers and federal employees. Yeah. I mean, I think it's true that don't ask, don't tell. It's not the only context for this story. The other context are emotional ones and ones that I suppose really could apply to any situation. But one of the context is that, in other words, it's emphatically set in that decade. But he's right to say that, of course, that doesn't explain the story. Yeah. Yeah. You wonder if Morse were doing this ten years later and he was allowed to say he was gay. Would the army, would these situations have the same appeal for him if things were no longer secret? Well, you see, I think it doesn't really matter. I think Tobias Wolf was right about it, and it doesn't really matter. If we're a decade later in the army where you're suddenly free to be gay, you're not free to hit on somebody who's a younger soldier than you are and decide that you like them. Those dangers would still be there. What's interesting is that this story, this gay story, it's not going to go away. I've just been at the Teddy ride film festival and the number of films I saw, you know, films about AIDS or, but other films about gay life that this business of people being afraid to say, people living in the closet, that it's almost strikes me as becoming a sort of metaphor for general life, for people's keeping things to themselves, keeping secrets, not committing, that all of that is there in everybody, but it's, I realize it's, the gay thing has become a sort of way of opening up a space around those large emotional questions. Yeah. I mean, I think with Morris, you know, when he has a stable relationship where they're allowed to sort of acknowledge their relationship together, they live together, it's not very exciting, right? And he's still longing for the titillation of some kind of risk taking with Billy Hart. Yes, I mean, the Tob Haswell was absolutely marvelous, just one or two details being offered, that Dixon has collected chess sets and large guns and funny antiquities that he's brought in from, his travels abroad, but the idea of settling down with someone who collects antique chess sets would freeze the blood, you know, I mean, that's an image compared to Billy who you feel, you know, isn't interested in chess in the slow strategies around chess, but certainly the sheer dullness of that suggestion and that he would someone who would come down to corridor with fresh towels for visitors, again, again, an image of, I suppose mundane domesticity that that could reach over towards pure banality, dullness and lack of excitement. Right. So perhaps what Morris is really wanting is just excitement. And of course, he's spending his time covering that up, you know, in other words, he's a uniform, there was just even the way he's able, there's a wonderful little moment again where when he's taking the call the second time from Julian, he indicates to the soldier who's about to take over from him that it's a private call and he should go outside and soldier immediately does that. It's done in half a sentence, that idea, that all the soldiers know that their privacy is a really important thing because they're so little out. Yeah. And I think it's no coincidence that Morris is called Morris, you know, everything he does is encode. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think, last question, what do you think about the title? Because awaiting orders has never said in the story itself. What do you think it's referring to? Who's awaiting orders? Well, I suppose the sense that he's awaiting orders, you know, in the restaurant, they're at one moment. They're in pancake place. They're actually awaiting the waitress to come over to them. And the waiting orders is, of course, orders to, for himself and Dixon will have to split up at some point because they're going to have to go on. Yeah. And Twitter comes back to Iraq, so they're all awaiting orders. But in a way, he's awaiting orders in the restaurant from her. She's Julian, the strange woman who has no money. She's the woman who's strangely manages to control the moment. Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose also you have more wanting order, right? Wanting structure. Wanting structure and desperate needs wanting to break it all up. Exactly. Or you can't break it if you don't have it first. Well, thank you so much, Colin. Hey, thanks, Deborah, it's been a pleasure. Tobias Wolf is the author of two memoirs and eight books of fiction, including the novels, the barracks, thief, and old school, and the story collections, The Night in Question, and our story begins, new and selected stories, which won the story prize in 2008. Wolf is also a recipient of the Ray Award for the short story and the National Medal of Arts among other honors. Comtoy Bean, a winner of the International Dublin Literary Award, the Folio Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others, is a fiction writer, essayist, playwright, and poet. He published more than a dozen books of fiction, including the novel Spurklin and the Magician, and the story collections, The Empty Family and the News from Dublin. You can download more than 230 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including episodes in which Comtoy Bean discusses work by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Mary Lavin, or subscribe to the podcast for free and Apple Podcasts. On the writer's voice podcast, you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the writer's voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page, or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by John Lemay. I'm Debra Treesman, thanks for listening. Comprehensive, Speculative, critical, insightful, profound, wide-ranging. Hopefully it doesn't take itself too too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for The New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real. I'll never arrive all at once, burst the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. 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