To Sail Beyond the Sunset

  Once back on the road he said, “Maureen, that baby was dead long before Jackson Igo sent for me. Since last night, I estimate.”

  I tried to feel sorry about that baby. But growing up in that household was no fate to wish on anyone. “Then why did he send for you?”

  “To bless the death. To get me to write a death certificate, to keep him from trouble with the law when he buries it…which he is probably doing this very minute. Primarily to cause me—and you—to make a six-mile round trip to save himself the trouble of harnessing his mule and coming into town.” Father laughed without mirth. “He kept pointing out that I couldn’t charge him for a call since I didn’t get there before the baby died. I finally said, ‘Shut up, Jackson. You haven’t paid me a cent since Cleveland beat Harrison.’ He said something about hard times and how this administration never does anything for the farmer.”

  Father sighed. “I didn’t argue with him; he had a point. Maureen, you’ve been keeping my books this past year; would you say these were hard times?”

  That brought me up sharp. I had been thinking about the Howard Foundation and Chuck’s pretty penis. “I don’t know, Father. But I know that you have far more on the books than you ever get paid. I’ve noticed something else, too: the worst of the deadbeats would rather owe you a dollar for a house call than fifty cents for an office visit. Like Jackson Igo.”

  “Yes. He could have fetched that little cadaver in—never saw a child so dehydrated!—but I’m relieved that he did not; I don’t want him in my clean clinic…or Adele’s clean house. You’ve seen the books; do you estimate that collections are enough to support our family? Food, clothing, shelter, oats and hay, and a nickel for Sunday School?”

  I thought about it. I knew my multiplication tables through twenty times twenty, same as everybody, and in high school I had been learning the delights of more advanced ciphering. But I had never applied any of it to our household affairs. Now I drew a blackboard in my mind and did some hard calculating.

  “Father…if they all paid you what they owe you, we would be quite comfortable. But they don’t pay you, not enough of them.” I thought. “Nevertheless we are comfortable.”

  “Maureen, if you don’t want the Howard option, better marry a rich man. Not a country doctor.”

  Presently he shrugged and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll keep food on the table even if I have to slide over into Kansas and rustle cattle. Shall we sing? ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ would be appropriate today. How is your weasel by now, dear? Sore?”

  “Father, you are a dirty old man and you will come to a bad end.”

  “I’ve always hoped so, but I’ve been too busy raising Kinder to raise Cain. Meant to tell you: Someone else is interested in your welfare. Old lady Altschuler.”

  “So I know.” I told him about her remark. “She thinks I’m Audrey.”

  “That unspeakable old cow. But she may not really think you are Audrey. She asked me what you were doing in the grandstand at the fairgrounds.”

  “Well! What did you tell her?”

  “I told her nit. Silence is all a snoopy question deserves…just fail to hear it. But the insult direct is still better. Which I handed that snapping turtle by ignoring her question and telling her next time to bathe before she comes to see me, as I found her personal hygiene to be less than adequate. She was not pleased.” He smiled. “She may be so angry that she will switch to Dr. Chadwick. One may hope.”

  “One may. So somebody saw us go up. Well, sir, they did not actually see us doing it.” I told Father about the box heavy with weights. “Spectators would have to have been in a balloon.”

  “I would say so. Safe enough if not very comfortable. I wish I could extend to you the courtesy of the sofa…but I can’t until you take up the Howard option. If you do. In the meantime let’s think about it. Safe places.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you. What I can’t figure out is this: We trimmed the trip to Butler short, in order to conceal the time used up in unscheduled activity. I’ve been figuring times and distances in my head. Cher papa, unless my arithmetic is wrong—”

  “It never is.”

  “Whoever spotted us climbing up into my hideaway must then have proceeded at a fast trot to the Altschuler place, reported my sins, then the Ugly Duchess must have been already dressed, with her buggy hitched and ready, to hurry over to see you. When did she show up?”

  “Let me see. When she arrived, three patients were waiting. I made her wait her turn…so she came in already angry. I sent her out boiling mad. Mmm…she must have arrived at least an hour before you showed up and bumped into her coming out.”

  “Father, it won’t work. Physically impossible. Unless she herself was at the fairgrounds, then drove straight to our house on the pretense of needing to see you.”

  “That’s possible. Quite unlikely. But, Maureen, you have just encountered a phenomenon that you will see again and again all your life after this red-letter day: the only thing known to science faster than the speed of light is Mrs. Grundy’s gossip.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I know so. When you next encounter it, how will you handle it? Do you have that in your commandments?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Think about it. How will you defend yourself?”

  I thought about it for the next half mile. “I won’t.”

  “Won’t what?”

  “I won’t defend myself against gossip; I will ignore it. At most I will look her—or him—in the eye and state loudly, ‘You are a filthy-minded liar.’ But it’s usually best to ignore it entirely. I think.”

  “I think so, too. People of that sort want to be noticed. The cruelest thing you can do to them is to behave as if they did not exist.”

  During the remaining half of 1897 I ignored Mrs. Grundy while trying to avoid being noticed by her. My public persona was straight out of Louisa M. Alcott while in private I tried to learn more about this amazing new art. I don’t mean to imply that I spent much time on my back, sweating away for the mutual pleasure of Maureen and His Name Is Legion. Not in Lyle County, not in 1897. Too hard to find a place to do it!

  “Conscience is that little voice that tells you that someone may be watching.” (Anon. and Opcit.)

  And there was the problem of a satisfactory partner. Charles was a nice boy and I did offer him that encore, and even a third try at it for good measure. The second and third attempts were more comfortable but even less exciting—cold mush without sorghum and cream.

  So after the third one I told Charles that someone had seen us on top of Marston Hill and had told one of my sisters…and a good thing that it hadn’t been one of my brothers, because I had been able to cool things down with my sister. But he and I had better act as if we had quarreled…or next time the word might get all the way to my mother, who would tell my father, and then there was just no telling. So you had better leave me alone until school starts, huh? You see, don’t you, dear?

  I learned that the hardest problem of all in dealing with a man is how to stop dealing with him when he does not want to stop. A century and a half of quite varied experience has not given me any answer that is totally satisfactory.

  One partly satisfactory answer that I did not learn until much later than 1897 requires considerable skill, great self-control, and some sophistication: the intentional “dead arse.” Lie there like a dead woman and, above all, let your inner muscles be utterly relaxed. If you combine that with garlic on your breath, it is likely—although not certain—that he will save you the trouble of thinking of a reason to break off. Then, when he initiates a break, you can be brave about it. A “good sport.”

  I am not suggesting that lively hips and tight muscles constitute “sex appeal.” Such qualities, while useful, are merely equivalent to sharp tools for a carpenter. My sister wife Tamara, mother of our sister wife Ishtar and at one time the most celebrated whore in all Secundus, is the epitome of sex appeal…yet she is not especially pretty and no one who has
slept with her talks about her technique. But their faces light up when they see her and their voices throb when they speak of her.

  I asked Jubal Harshaw about Tammy because Jubal is the most analytical of my husbands. He said, “Mama Maureen, quit pulling my leg. You of all people know the answer.”

  I denied it.

  “All right,” he said, “but I still think you are fishing. Sex appeal is the outer evidence of deep interest in your partner’s pleasure. Tammy’s got it. So have you and just as strongly. It is not your red hair, wench, or even the way you smell, which is yummy. It is the way you give…when you give.”

  Jubal got me so stirred up that I tripped him, then and there.

  But in Lyle County in 1897 one cannot simply trip a darling man and have at it; Mrs. Grundy is sitting up in every tree, eager to catch you and publish it. So the preliminaries must be more complex. There are plenty of eager males (about twelve in every dozen) but it is necessary to pick the one you want—age, health, cleanliness, personal charm, discretion (if he gossips to you, he will gossip about you), and other factors that vary with each candidate. Having selected him for the slaughter you must cause him to decide that he wants you while letting him know silently that it is possible. That is easy to phrase but to put it into practice—You’ll be honing your skills for a lifetime.

  So you reach an agreement…but you still haven’t found a place.

  After picking a place to shed my virginity I resigned that aspect of the problem. If a boy/man wanted my immoral carcass, he would get his gray matter churning and solve it. Or he could go chase flies.

  But I did risk chiggers and (once) poison ivy. He caught it; I seem to be immune.

  From June to January three boys ranging sixteen to twenty had me, and one married man of thirty-one. I added him in on the assumption (false) that a married man would be so skilled that he could set off those fireworks without fail.

  Total copulations: nine. Orgasms: three—and one was wonderful. Time actually spent copulated: an average of five minutes per go, which is not nearly enough. I learned that life can be beautiful indeed…but that the males of my circle ranged from clumsy to awkward.

  Mrs. Grundy apparently did not notice me.

  By New Year’s Eve I had decided to ask Father to submit my name to the Howard Foundation…not for the money (I still did not know that the payments could amount to enough to matter) but because I would welcome a chance to meet more eligible males; the hunting in Lyle County was too poor to suit Maureen. I had firmly made up my mind that, while sex might not be the be all and end all, I did want to marry and it had to be a man who would make me eager to go to bed early.

  In the meantime I kept on trying to make Maureen as desirable a female animal as I could manage and I listened most carefully to my father’s advice. (I knew that what I really wanted was a man just like my father, but twenty-five years younger. Or twenty. Make that fifteen. But I was prepared to settle for the best imitation I could find.)

  There were two hundred days left in 1897 from that day Chuck and I climbed up into the judges’ stand; that makes 200 X 24 X 60 = 288,000 minutes. Circa 45 of those minutes I spent copulated; that leaves 199 days, 23 hours, 15 minutes. It is obvious that I had time for other things.

  That summer was one of the best of my life. While I did not get laid very often or very effectively, the idea was on my mind awake and asleep. It brightened my eyes and my days; I shed female pheromones like a female moth and I never stopped smiling—picnics, swimming parties in the Osage (you wouldn’t believe what we wore), country dances (frowned on by the Methodist and Baptist churches but sponsored by Jack Mormons who welcomed gentiles who might be converted—Father overruled Mother: I went and learned to swing on the corners and dosey-doh), watermelon contests, any excuse to get together.

  I stopped thinking about the University of Missouri at Columbia. From Father’s books I could see that there just wasn’t money to put me through four years of college. I was not anxious to be a nurse or a school teacher, so there seemed to be little point in my aspiring to formal (and expensive) higher education. I would always be a bookworm but that does not require a college degree.

  So I decided to be the best housewife I could manage—starting with cooking.

  I had always taken my turn in the kitchen along with my sisters. I had been assistant cook for the day in rotation since my twelfth birthday. By fifteen I was a good plain cook.

  I decided to become a good fancy cook.

  Mother remarked on my increased interest. I told her the truth, or some of it. “Chère mama, I expect to be married someday. I think the best wedding present I can bring my future husband is good cooking. I may not have the talent to become a gourmet chef. But I can try.”

  “Maureen, you can be anything you want to be. Never forget that.”

  She helped me, and she taught me, and she sent away to New Orleans for French cookbooks, and we pored over them together. Then she sent me for three weeks to stay with Aunt Carole, who taught me Cajun skills. Aunt Carole was a Johnny Reb, married after the War to—Heavens!—a damn Yankee, Father’s eldest brother, Uncle Ewing, now deceased. Uncle Ewing had been in the Union occupation of New Orleans, and had poked a sergeant in the nose over a distressed Southern girl. It got him a reduction from corporal to private, and a wife.

  In Aunt Carole’s house we never discussed the War.

  The War was not often discussed in our own house as the Johnsons were not native to Missouri, but to Minnesota. Being newcomers, by Father’s policy we avoided subjects that might upset our neighbors. In Missouri sympathies were mixed—a border state and a slave state, it had veterans from both sides. But that part of Missouri had been “local option”—some towns never had had any slaves and now permitted no colored people; Thebes was one such. But Thebes itself was so small and unimportant that the Union troops had ignored it when they came through there in ’65, burning and looting. They burned Butler to the ground and it never fully recovered. But Thebes was untouched.

  Even though the Johnsons had come down from the North, we were not carpetbaggers as Missouri never seceded; Reconstruction did not touch it. Uncle Jules, Father’s cousin in Kansas City, explained our migration this way:

  “After fighting four years in Dixie, we went back home to Minnesota…and stayed just long enough to pack up again and git. Missourah ain’t as hot as Dixie but it ain’t so cold that the shadows freeze to the sidewalks and the cows give ice cream.”

  Aunt Carole put a polish on my cooking and I was in and out of her kitchen quite a lot until I married. It was during that three weeks that the matter of the lemon pie took place—I think I mentioned it earlier.

  I baked that pie. It was not my best work; I had burned the crust. But it was one of four, and the other three were all right. Getting the temperature just right on a wood range is tricky.

  But how did my cousin Nelson get that pie into church without anyone seeing it? How did he slide it under me without my noticing it?

  He made me so furious that I went straight home (to Aunt Carole’s house), then, when Nelson showed up to apologize, I burst into tears and took him straight to bed…and had one of those three fireworks occasions.

  Sudden impulse and quite reckless and we got away with it cold.

  Thereafter I let Nelson have me from time to time when we could figure out a safe way right up to my wedding. Which did not quite finish it, as years later he moved to Kansas City.

  I should have behaved myself with Nelson; he was only fourteen.

  But a smart fourteen. He knew that we didn’t dare get caught; he knew that I couldn’t marry him no matter what and he realized that he could get me pregnant and that a baby would be disaster for each of us.

  That Sunday morning he held still while I put a French purse on him, grinned and said, “Maureen, you’re smart.” Then he tackled me with unworried enthusiasm and brought me to orgasm in record time.

  For the next two years I kept Nelson supplied with Mer
ry Widows. Not for me; I carried my own. For his harem. I started him off; he took up the sport with zeal and native genius, and never got into trouble. Smart.

  Besides cooking, I endeavored to straighten out Father’s accounts receivable, with less success. After consulting with Father I sent out some polite and friendly dunning letters. Have you ever written over one hundred letters, one after another, by hand? I found out why Mr. Clemens had grabbed the first opportunity to shift from pen to typewriter—first author to do so.

  “Dear Mr. Deadbeat:

  “In going over Dr. Johnson’s books I find that your account stands at umpteen dollars and that you have made no payment on it since March 1896. Perhaps this is an oversight. May we expect payment by the first of the month?

  “If it is not possible for you to pay the full amount at once, will you please call at the clinic this Friday the tenth so that we can work out arrangements mutually satisfactory?

  “The Doctor sends his good wishes to you and to Mrs. Deadbeat, and also to Junior and the twins and little Knothead.

  “I remain,

  “Faithfully yours,

  “Maureen Johnson

  “(On behalf of Ira Johnson, M.D.)”

  I showed Father sample letters ranging from gentle to firm to tough; the sample above shows what we used on most of them. With some he said, “Don’t dun them. They would if they could, but they can’t.” Nevertheless I sent out more than a hundred letters.

  For each letter postage was two cents, stationery about three. Can we reckon my time as worth five cents per letter? If so, each letter comes to a dime, and the whole mailing cost slightly over ten dollars.

  Those hundred letters did not bring in as much as ten dollars in cash.

  About thirty patients came in to talk to us about it. Perhaps half of those fetched some payment in kind—fresh eggs, a ham, side meat, garden truck, fresh bread, and so forth. Six or seven arranged schedules of payment; some of those actually met their promises.