“I was thinking of making an appointment with your daughter while I’m in town,” Duane said. He had not really meant to tell Jody that, or anyone that, but then he did. Jody would undoubtedly mention it to some roughneck, who would mention it to Bobby Lee, who would mention it to Karla. Before he could even reach Wichita and make an appointment everyone in the county would know he was seeing a psychiatrist.
“Want me to call her for you?” Jody asked. “If you call her you’ll be lucky to get an appointment before April or May or sometime—that’s how busy she is,” Jody said. “She might not even take you, if you just call in cold.”
“If she’s a psychiatrist, why wouldn’t she?” Duane asked.
“Because she’s full up with crazies and nuts as it is,” Jody said. “There ain’t many shrinks in Wichita Falls and all the nuts know that my girl’s the best.”
“I haven’t noticed that many crazies and nuts in this part of the world,” Duane said. “There’s not really that much population.”
“No, but about ninety percent of what population there is is crazy to some degree,” Jody said. “Of course, most of them are poor and crazy. They can’t afford one hundred and ninety dollars an hour to let Honor help them with their problems.”
Duane knew psychiatrists were expensive, but he had no idea they were that expensive. The news took him aback.
“If that’s what she costs I don’t know that I can afford it, either,” Duane said. “It’d be cheaper just to shoot myself.”
“No, you’re not the suicide type, Duane,” Jody informed him. “Besides, you got all those kids and grandkids. You’d be leaving too much grief behind. Better let me call Honor and see if she can slip you into the rotation sometime soon.”
“Well, if it’s no bother,” Duane said. “I’d prefer the afternoon. I’d like to walk over to town.”
Jody chuckled. “That’ll interest Honor,” he said. “I’ll tell her she’s got a bad case of pedestrianism to deal with. Honor walks herself—that’ll be one thing you two have in common.”
“Mind if I go look at the hardware while you make the call?” Duane asked. “I need a good wire cutter.”
Jody handed him the padlock key and picked up the telephone.
Duane lingered for nearly an hour in the small shed where the hardware was. He had always appreciated hardware, but now he liked it more than ever. Jody—or his daughter, Honor—had managed to cram an amazing array of tools into a small space. Duane knew what most of the tools were used for, but there were a few that puzzled him until he examined them closely. One of the nice things about being allowed to brood amid the hardware was that he could look at the tools and reason from them to a future. He had always admired fine woodwork, but had never himself done any woodworking. He considered himself handy with tools, and had always made simple repairs, both at home and in the oil fields. But he had never sat down with a few good tools and made something fine, like a cabinet, or a wood carving of an animal or something. He considered that he had a good many years of his life left, during which he would need to occupy himself. It occurred to him that woodworking might be something he could learn.
Poking around in Jody’s hardware room, Duane indulged in a pleasant daydream. If he wanted to attempt to master woodworking he would need a workroom in which to do it. The cabin itself wasn’t large enough. He would need to build a good strong table to work on; building a little workroom would be his first task and constructing a solid table his second. The thought of having such a room and such a table was very comforting to him. Of course he would have to have the lumber trucked in. He couldn’t carry it home. He would need to buy a fair number of tools as well; he would need some sawhorses and a variety of saws and drills. For a moment he considered avoiding power tools, but rejected that notion as silly. He didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Power tools had been available most of his life; if he rejected them he might as well reject electricity and live by candlelight.
Thinking of his room and his table and his woodwork was such a satisfying reverie that it was with reluctance that Duane finally emerged from Jody’s hardware room and put the padlock back on the door. Good tools offered one a great deal to look forward to, after all. The prospect of making something appealing was very comforting—it made the whole enterprise that he had embarked on seem less negative. It wasn’t merely a walking away that he was involved in. He might also be walking toward a new life—or, at least, acquiring a new attitude. The only sad element in the picture was that he hadn’t done it years sooner.
When he walked back into the store Jody was typing on his computer at great speed.
“Hold on, got to get a few bets in, the horses are at the gate,” Jody said. Duane bought a package of peanut butter crackers while Jody clicked away at the computer. As soon as he finished he stood up.
“I like to make about fifty bets a day—it’s my organizing principle,” Jody said. “I guess walking all over the county is your organizing principle.”
“For now it is,” Duane said. “I might develop another one if you give me a while.”
He did not want to reveal his desire to do some woodwork—that was a thing to keep private, a prospect to nurse and enjoy. He was curious as to whether Jody had reached his daughter and secured him an appointment but he felt shy about asking. Jody was absently staring at the TV screen, where, as usual, several soccer players were in hot pursuit of a soccer ball.
Duane paid for the wire cutters. He meant to take them with him to check the fences around his property—and when he handed over the cash Jody handed him another of his daughter’s business cards, with a date and a time written on the back. The time was three in the afternoon, this coming Friday.
“That’s quick. Thanks, Jody,” Duane said, tucking the card in his shirt pocket.
“Yep—took my daughter by surprise,” Jody said. “I’ve never asked her to take anybody on before. I told her you enjoyed walking, like she does.”
“What’d she say to that?” Duane asked.
“Nothing. Honor’s closemouthed,” Jody said. “She just looked at her schedule and gave me the appointment.”
“I didn’t expect it to be this quick, busy as she is,” Duane said.
“I know—that surprised me too,” Jody said. “I guess the person she usually has in this slot was killed in a car wreck yesterday, up by Nocona. Lost control of his vehicle and smashed up against a bridge.”
“Oh my,” Duane said. “That’s one good thing about walking. You don’t smash into the bridges.”
“No, but you still have to watch out for the country drivers,” Jody said. “While you’re not smashing into the bridges one of them could always smash into you, if you’re not watchful.”
Duane left and walked slowly home with his dog. He felt a little strange. Not only had he decided on a new skill he wanted to master—woodworking—but he also had an appointment with a psychiatrist—the first such appointment of his life.
“There’s one good thing about it, Shorty,” he said to the dog. “It’s four days off. I guess I could still cancel it if I change my mind.”
BOOK TWO
The Walker and His Doctor
1
KARLA LEARNED ABOUT DUANE’S APPOINTMENT the next day, when Duane came home to look for his passport. While he was rummaging in desks and bureaus he casually informed his wife that he had made an appointment with a psychiatrist, namely Honor Carmichael.
“Duane, you don’t need a passport to go to a shrink,” Karla informed him. As usual her husband had shown up at an early hour, before anyone else was awake. The sight of him rooting around in drawers at that hour—which meant that he had walked into town while it was still pitch-dark—made her so nervous that she went in the kitchen and poured herself a stiff shot of tequila. Then she poured herself another and went back to the bedroom to help him look.
“I know that, but I might want to go somewhere else besides the doctor,” Duane said. “I just want to make sure my passp
ort hasn’t expired. I haven’t used it since those fishing trips I took to South America—that was years ago.”
“It’s not my fault; I wanted to go to Norway and see a glacier and sail on up a fjord,” Karla reminded him.
It was true that Karla had once wanted to take a cruise to Scandinavia, a desire inspired by some particularly alluring pictures in a travel magazine, but the family was in a state of crisis at the time and they had had to keep changing the dates until they finally just gave up and canceled the trip entirely, a fact that gave Karla one more thing to resent—or so it seemed to Duane.
“I’m sorry that trip never came off,” Duane said. “But you can still go, you know? You’re not crippled.”
He was a little annoyed—it had been ten years since the trip to Norway had been canceled, but Karla still seized any opportunity to bring it up.
“Take a girlfriend—go to Norway. I’m sure the glaciers are still there,” he said.
His passport was not turning up, which made him feel a little frantic. He had no firm plans for going to Egypt, but, should the mood strike him, he wanted to be able to leave immediately, and he couldn’t leave immediately unless he had a valid passport.
“It’s strange to me that you’d walk half the night to hunt a passport and not stay to have breakfast with your family.”
“I didn’t walk half the night, I only walked two hours,” Duane pointed out. “Besides, I haven’t left yet and all my family’s asleep except you.”
“Whatever,” Karla said, before bursting into tears. Everything seemed wrong to her, insupportably wrong. It was an insult to suggest that she go to Norway with a girlfriend when initially the whole trip had been planned as a way of getting some romance back in their marriage. It seemed to her it would be impossible to be sailing on a luxurious boat up a beautiful fjord in Norway without some romance coming about. But the opportunity had been missed; now her husband had gone crazy, and now there was no likelihood that any romantic feelings would ever be aroused again—not between the two of them, at least.
It took Duane another twenty minutes to find his passport, which was in the inside pocket of an old sports coat he hadn’t worn for several years. The passport had been expired for the past three years. Karla lay on the bed sobbing the whole time he was looking for the passport, but he hardened his heart, which wasn’t difficult to do—maybe she had just ragged him about the lost trip to Norway once too often.
“My passport’s expired,” he informed her, sitting for a moment on the bed, where Karla lay amid a pile of Kleenex. “Put on your tennis shoes and take a walk with me—it’s a pretty day.”
Karla was so startled by the invitation that she stopped crying.
“Take a walk how far?” she asked. “I’m not walking out in the country with you—you’re too crazy.”
“Just to the Dairy Queen,” he said. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
It was a better offer than she had been expecting—not that breakfast at the Dairy Queen, under the watchful eye of the local gossips, was any substitute for a romantic trip to Norway. There had even been a three-day trip to Lapland to ride reindeer included in the tour. Though the suggestion that she make the trip with a girlfriend, rather than him, was a deadly insult, Karla decided to try and make the best of things. She got up, repaired herself as best she could, and went out on the back steps to slip on her tennis shoes—it was only just light.
“I can’t get over it that you walk around in the dark,” she said, as they set out. “It upsets me no end. If all you wanted was your passport why couldn’t you have waited till daylight to walk in?”
“Because I can’t stand to be around people, and people are milling around when it’s daylight,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. The earlier I get in and out and the fewer people I have to deal with, the better.
“It may just be a phase,” he added, by way of comfort.
“Well, if it’s forever I’m moving to Santa Fe or somewhere,” Karla informed him. “Only psychos walk around in the dark—if you’re going to be a psycho for the rest of your life I’d just as soon not be nowhere around.”
Duane didn’t answer—Karla’s position was too absurd. J.T., Dan Connor, and a few other oilmen were already at the Dairy Queen when they walked in. The oilmen were smoking and drinking coffee at their usual table, way in the back.
“Watch them be nice as pie now that you’re here,” Karla said bitterly. “If Dan Connor says anything about my hair not being combed I hope you’ll punch him out.”
“Why would he? Your hair is combed,” Duane said. He waved at the men, but Karla only gave them a stony stare. She had just remembered a salient fact, which was that the psychiatrist her husband had made an appointment with was a woman. Though she had advised him to seek counseling, it had never occurred to her that he might seek it from a woman.
Now that the fact was staring her in the face, she wasn’t sure she liked it.
They got coffee and sat down in a corner booth, as far from the oilmen as possible.
Duane was wishing he had been more efficient about keeping his passport up to date. He knew he could get it renewed through the mail, but that meant having his picture made and getting a certified copy of his birth certificate and perhaps other documents which it would be tedious to have to locate. He thought there might be a copy of his birth certificate in his office, but the thought of having to go there to look for it was a downer.
Karla, blowing on her coffee, was feeling a good deal better. Having breakfast with her husband at the Dairy Queen was pretty much a normal thing—it would shore up her reputation in local eyes.
“I might have known you’d do it with a beautiful woman,” she said—then, from the shocked look on Duane’s face, she realized she had been a little sloppy in her choice of words.
“Going to the shrink, that is,” she clarified. “I might have known you’d choose a beautiful woman to be your shrink.”
“How do you know she’s beautiful? We haven’t seen her since she was a girl,” Duane said, not completely surprised by the accusation. The minute Karla began to feel better, after a cry, she resumed the line of attack she had been pursuing, or else developed a new one.
“Well, her mother was beautiful,” Karla reminded him. “Besides, it wouldn’t be like you to choose an ugly old boy doctor if there was a pretty woman you could get an appointment with.”
“I just chose her because Jody gave me her card,” Duane said. “I don’t know anything about her at all. But she’s a psychiatrist and Jody said he could get me in quick, so I let him try.”
“How quick? Are you feeling more psycho all of a sudden?” she asked.
“I’m not feeling psycho at all,” Duane said. “I thought you wanted me to get counseling.”
“I did, but not from a beautiful woman who might be smarter than me,” Karla said.
“It’s counseling,” Duane reminded her. “It’s important that the doctor be smart—otherwise the patient is just wasting time.”
He felt a little dejected. Though he had known that the fact that he was seeing a woman psychiatrist would be a wrinkle Karla wouldn’t welcome, he had hoped that the fact that he had agreed to counseling would override that aspect of the matter.
“Your gynecologist is a man,” he pointed out.
“That’s because the woman gynecologist I was going to died,” Karla said. “What’s that got to do with the price of peas?”
“Woman, man, it shouldn’t matter—the point is she’s a doctor,” Duane said. He felt a tightening in his chest. Karla seemed to be in a go-for-the-jugular mood and already he was feeling that it would be nice to be walking down a lonely country road.
“The appointment’s not until Friday,” he said. “This is Tuesday. If you don’t want me to go then I guess I could still cancel it and not have to pay.”
Karla shook her head.
“I can’t win,” she said. “If I tell you not to go you’ll just get more and more psycho, and
if I let you go on and see her you’ll be sitting there telling some smart-ass woman doctor that we haven’t had sex since my last birthday.”
“Oh, go to hell,” Duane said. “Why would I be wanting to tell her something like that? That’s nobody’s business but ours.”
“If she’s your shrink it is her business,” Karla said. “Your sex life is the first thing a shrink will want to know about.
“From what I hear it’s the only thing most of them want to know about,” she added.
Duane stood up and put a ten-dollar bill on the table.
“Be sure and leave a tip,” he said. “I always leave a tip.”
“Duane, you haven’t eaten a bite and you walked all that way—sit down,” Karla said. “You can go to a woman doctor if you want to—it just took me by surprise at first.”
Duane sat back down but he felt tense and was determined to leave if Karla continued in her go-for-the-jugular mode. Just then their food came and Dan Connor got up from the oilmen’s table and walked over. He was chewing two toothpicks simultaneously, one in each corner of his mouth—a small peculiarity of his.
“If you was to swallow one of those toothpicks it would pierce the lining of your stomach and you’d die,” Karla informed him, when it looked as if he meant to join them.
“And no one would care,” she added, to make sure he got the point.
“Oops, I guess Karla ain’t feeling sociable this morning,” Dan said, stopping in his tracks.
“Hi, Dan,” Duane said. He didn’t particularly like Dan Connor—Karla was correct to suggest that few would lament his passing—but he wanted to preserve at least a semblance of civility for the brief time he had to be in town.
“Howdy,” Dan said. “Has Bobby Lee still got that one testicle?”
“Why yes, so far as I know,” Duane said.
“Of course he’s still got it,” Karla said. “Why don’t you shut up about Bobby Lee’s balls? He won’t even come in here and have coffee with us because he’s so afraid someone will ask him about it.”