Sometimes a Great Notion

  "To seek out my lost roots," I answered gaily, trying to ease his suspicion. "To stir up old fires, to eat fatted calves."

  "Lee, what's happened?" Peters asked, now more patient than suspicious. "You out of your gourd? I mean, what's wrong?"

  "Well, I shaved my beard, for one thing--"

  "Lee! Don't give me this other shit . . ." In spite of my attempt at gaiety I could hear both suspicion and patience giving away to concerned anger, the very thing I wanted to avoid. "Just tell me goddammit why!"

  It wasn't the reaction I had been hoping for from Peters. Far from it.

  I was disappointed and put out with him for getting so wrought up while I was being so cool. At the time I thought it unlike him to be so demanding (not realizing until later how fucked-up I must have sounded) and damned unfair of him to disregard so flagrantly the rules of our relationship. We had ideas about relationship. We both agreed that each pair of people must have a mutually compatible system all their own within which they can communicate, or communication falls like the Tower of Babel. A man should be able to expect his wife to play the role of Wife--be she bitchy or dutiful--when she relates to him. For her lover she may have a completely different role, but at home, on the Husband-Wife set, she must stay within the confines of that part. Or we would all wander around never knowing our friends from our strangers. And in our eight months of rooming together and years-long friendship, this homely, lantern-jawed Negro and I had established a clear set of limits within which we knew we could comfortably communicate, a sort of dramatic tradition wherein he always played the sagacious and slow-talking Uncle Remus to my intellectual dandy. Within this framework, behind our shammed masks, we had been able to approach the most extreme personal truths in our conversations without suffering the embarrassment of such intimacies. I preferred it that way, even under the new conditions, and I tried again.

  "The apple orchards will be in fruit; the air thick with the smell of warm mint and blackberry--ah, I hear my native land a-beckoning to me. Besides, I have a score there to settle."

  "Oh man--" he started to protest from the other end of the line, but I went on unheeding, unable to stop.

  "No, listen: I received a postcard. Let me recreate the scene for you--condensed somewhat, because my bus will soon be loading. But listen, it was a superbly styled vignette of some kind or other: I had just returned from walking on the beach--down toward Mona's place; I didn't go in; her damned sister was there--anyway I had just come in after what I always like to think of as one of my 'TB or not TB' walks, and, after a few decisive coughs, I finally decided to take arms against a sea of troubles . . . and flick it all in for good."

  "Lee, come on please; what is it you're--"

  "Just listen. Hear me out." I drew nervously from my cigarette. "Interruptions only mar the meter." I heard the rattle of machinery nearby. A plump Tom Sawyer had just activated the pinball machine next to my glass booth; the lights spun in a hysterical tallying of astronomical scoring, numbers mounting with a rapid-fire banging. I hurried on.

  "I walk in through our careful clutter. It's about noon, a bit before. The apartment is cold; you've left that damned garage door open again--"

  "Shit; if somebody didn't let a little cold air in on you you'd never get out of bed. Decided what? What do you mean you finally decided--"

  "Hush. Watch closely. I close the door and lock it. Dishtowel, wet, across the bottom. Check all windows, moving cryptically about my task. Then open all the jets on all the wall heaters--no, hush, just listen--turn on all the burners on that godawful grimy stove you left . . . I remember the pilot light on the water heater . . . go back, kneel piously at the little door to blow it out (the flame spewed symbolically from three jets, describing a fiery cross. You would have applauded my cool: I draw a breath . . . 'There's a divinity that shapes our'--pfft--'ends.') Then, satisfied with the arrangement, having removed my shoes, you will notice--a gentleman to the last--I climb onto the bed to await sleep. Who knows what dreams? Then. I decide--even the Mad Dane of Denmark would have allotted himself a last cigarette, I mean, if that wishy-washy coward had ever had my courage, or my cigarettes--and just then, beautifully timed, just as this ghostly hand appeared, fixed, in that little window you know above the mail slot, to drop its message calling me home . . . just as the card fluttered to the floor . . . I flicked my cigarette lighter and blew out all the windows in the place."

  I waited. Peters was silent while I had another drag on my cigarette.

  "So. It was my usual way--a rotten failure. But with a rather nice turn this time, don't you think? I wasn't hurt. Singed a little, my beard and eyebrows gone, no loss, and my watch stopped--let's see: it's going again now. But it knocked the poor postman all the way down the steps into the hydrangeas. I suspect you'll find his carcass there when you get home from class, plucked by the gulls, nothing remaining but his mailbag and cap. No, listen: there's a pinball machine going insane right next to the booth and I can't hear you anyway. So just listen. After a rather sticky moment or two spent trying to understand why I wasn't dead, I got up and walked to the door--oh hey! I remember thinking, the first thing after the blast: 'Well, Leland, you blew it.' Isn't that nice?--and find that card. With growing incredulity I decipher the tight little penciled scrawl. What? A card from home? Asking me to come back and help out? How very timely, considering that I've been living the last three months off the earnings of my spade roommate. . . . Then, listen: standing there, I heard this voice. 'WATCH OUT!' the voice booms, with the brutal authority of panic. 'WATCH OUT! LOOK OUT FROM BEHIND!' I've told you about this voice. An old and familiar friend, perhaps the oldest of all my mental Board of Directors; the true arbiter of all my interior negotiations and easily distinguished from all other members of the board--you remember me telling you?--by his loud upper-case mandates. 'WATCH OUT!' he booms. 'LOOK OUT FROM BEHIND!' So I spin quickly to face my attacker. 'BE-HIND! ' he screams again. 'LOOK OUT FROM BEHIND!' I spin again, to no avail. And again, faster, and again, getting dizzy as hell--all to no avail. And you know why, Peters? Because one can never, no matter how fast he is on the spin, face an attack from behind."

  I paused a moment and closed my eyes. The booth racketed about me in a sort of anarchy. I placed my hand over the mouthpiece and drew a deep breath, hoping to calm myself. I could hear the loudspeaker outside, pealing unintelligible instructions, and the pinball's machine-gunning. But as soon as I heard Peters start, "Lee, why don't you just wait for me to--" I was off again.

  "So, after this little ritual . . . I stand there in our demolished doorway with that terrible card dancing in my hand. Completely forgetting that I wanted to be gone before the postman could fetch the fuzz in to ask about my health--by the way: the cops didn't come but while I was shaving the gas company arrived to shut off the gas. No reason given; I don't know whether they just happened to pick that moment to take action because we haven't paid our bill or whether the public utilities are taking it upon themselves to punish anyone using their product for nefarious ends by subjecting them to cold canned soup and chilly nights. Anyway, standing there with that little slip of penciled paper in my poor fricasseed fingers and a ringing in my ears ten decibels louder than the ringing the explosion had caused, I had a great insight into myself: while it was certainly humiliating to discover myself so affected by that postcard, it was even more surprising. Because . . . well, hell, I thought I was beyond being bugged by my past, you know, I thought I had cemented myself forever from the years of my youth; I was certain that Doctor Maynard and I had succeeded in dismantling the past, second by ticking second, like a time-bomb team; I thought we'd left the treacherous device deactivated and dead, powerless to affect me. And see: since I had considered myself cut loose from my past I had seen no reason to guard that direction. Right? Thus it was all for naught, the 'Watch outs,' the spinning. Because all my beautiful fortifications, built so cunningly and carefully on Maynard's couch, had been designed in accord with information indicating that t
he only dangers lay in front, ahead of me--and were fortifications, alas, quite powerless against even the meagerest offensive from the rear. Dig? So that postcard, sneaking up as it had from behind, had caught me more unawares than my aborted suicide; the explosion, though certainly a bit of a shocker, was nevertheless immediately comprehensible, you see? A here-and-now holocaust. But this postcard was a kidney kick out of the past, coming by the most devious route. It had jumped all customary postal tracks, of course, to travel through dark time zones and bleak wastelands of yore, accompanied by the eerie wailing note of an oscilloscope and other science-fiction movie background music . . . speeding through nimbus shadows and along the undulating mist of bubbling dry ice . . . then we cut to close-up: ah. A solitary crystal hand appearing at my mail slot . . . floating there for an instant, like chemical statuary designed to immediately dissolve as soon as it deposits the invitation that requests my humble presence at a gathering being held twelve (twelve? that long ago? Jesus . . .) twelve years previous to the day of its delivery! Whew! Any wonder it left me a little ringy?"

  I didn't wait for an answer, or pause when the voice at the other end attempted to interrupt my manic monologue. As the loudspeaker announced departures and the pinball scoreboard outside the booth clattered and clashed and ran its meaningless numbers upwards in maddened acceleration, I kept talking, compulsively filling the phone with words in order not to leave an opening of silence for Peters to speak into. Or, more accurately, to question into. I think I must have phoned Peters, not so much out of thoughtfulness for an old friend as out of a need to verbalize my reasons, and a desperate wish to logically explain my actions--but I wanted to explain without anyone questioning my explanations. I must have suspected that any extensive probing would surely reveal--to Peters, to myself--that I really had no logical explanation, either for my abortive attempt at suicide or for my impulsive decision to return home.

  ". . . so the card convinced me, among other things, that I am still much more at the mercy of my past than I ever imagined. You wait; the same thing will happen to you: you'll get a call from Georgia one of these days and realize that you've many a score to settle back home before you can get on with your business."

  "I doubt that I could settle that many scores," Peters said.

  "True; your scene is different. But with me it's just one score. And one man. It was amazing the number of pictures of him that card conjured up: booted feet, with spikes no less. Muddy sweatshirt. Gloved hands forever scratching scratching scratching at a navel or an ear. Raspberry-red lips draped in a drunken grin. A lot of other equally ridiculous pictures to choose from, but the picture that came on the clearest was of his long, sinewy body diving into the river, naked and white and hard as a peeled tree . . . this was the predominant image. You see, Brother Hank used to spend hours swimming steadily into the river's current as he trained for a swimming meet. Hours and hours, swimming steadily, doggedly, and remaining in exactly the same place a few feet from the dock. Like a man swimming a liquid treadmill. The training must have paid off because by the time I was ten he had a shelf simply gleaming with trophies and cups; I think even held for a time a national swimming record in one of the events. Lord God! All this brought back by that one tiny postcard; and with such astonishing clarity. Lord. Just a card. I dread to imagine what a complete letter might have produced."

  "Okay. But just what in the shit do you hope to accomplish going home? Even, say, you do settle some funny score--"

  "Don't you see? It's even in the card: 'You think you're big enough now?' It was that way all my time at home--Brother Hank always held up to me as the man to measure up to--and it's been that way ever since. In a psychologically symbolic way, of course."

  "Oh, of course."

  "So I'm going home."

  "To measure up to this psychological symbol?"

  "Or pull him down. No, don't laugh; it's become ridiculously clear: until I have settled my score with this shadow from my past--" "Crap."

  "Crap."

  "--I'll go on feeling inferior and inadequate."

  "Crap, Lee. Everybody has a shadow like that, their old man or somebody--"

  "Not even able to get on with the business of gassing myself."

  "--but they don't go running home to even things, for shitsakes--"

  "No, I'm serious, Peters. I've thought it all out. Now listen, I hate to leave you with the hassle of the place and all, but I've--thought it all out and I've no choice. And could you tell them at the department?"

  "What? That you blew yourself up? That you've gone home to settle a score with the naked ghost of your brother?"

  "Half-brother. No. Just tell them . . . I was forced because of financial and emotional difficulties to--"

  "Oh man, come on, you can't be serious."

  "And try to explain to Mona, will you?"

  "Lee, wait; you're out of your head. Let me come over--"

  "They're calling my bus number. I've got to rush. I'll send what I owe you as soon as I can. Good-by, Peters; I'm off to prove Thomas Wolfe was wrong."

  I placed Peters, still protesting, back on the hook, and once more drew that long breath. I complimented myself on my control. I had pulled it off nicely. I had managed to remain religiously within the boundaries in spite of Peters' attempts to subvert our system and in spite of a mixture of Dexedrine and phenobarb which was bound to make a fellow a little giddy. Yes, Leland old man, no one can say that you didn't present a concise and completely rational explanation regardless of all the rude distractions . . .

  And the distractions were getting more rude by the second; I noticed this as I pushed out of the booth into the rush of the depot. The fat boy was humping the pinball machine toward a frenzied orgasm of noise, neon, and numbers. The crowd was pushing. The suitcase was pulling. The loudspeaker was advising me in a roar that if I didn't get on my bus I would be left!

  "Too much up," I decided and at the water fountain washed down another two phenobarbitals. Just in time to be swept up in a maelstrom of motion that landed me, marvelously and just in time, on the loading platform in front of my bus.

  "Leave the suitcase and find yourself a seat," the driver told me impatiently, as though he'd been waiting for me alone. Which proved to be exactly right: the bus was completely empty. "Not many going West these days?" I asked, but he didn't answer.

  I walked unsteadily down the aisle to a seat at the back (where I am to remain almost unmoving for almost four days, getting off at stops to go to the can and buy Coke). As I stood, removing my jacket, the door thumped closed at the other end of the bus with a loud hiss of compressed air. I jumped and looked toward the noise, but it was so dark in the unlit bus in the garage I couldn't see the driver. I thought he had gone out and the door closed behind him. Left me locked in here alone! Then the motor beneath me thundered and began straining in pitch. The bus started out of the murky cement grotto toward the bright New England afternoon, lurching over the sidewalk and throwing me finally into my seat. Just in time.

  I still hadn't seen the driver return.

  The weird, billowing anarchy of motion and sound that had started in the phone booth was now surging around me in earnest. As though the debris had finally begun to settle back after hanging suspended overhead all the hours since the blast. Scenes, memories, faces . . . like pictures embroidered on curtains billowing in the wind. The pinball machine clattered and clung to my eyes. The postcard rang in my ears. My stomach rolled, voices tolled in my head--that interior monitor of mine bellowing for me to WATCH OUT! HANG ON! THIS IS IT! YOU'RE FINALLY COMPLETELY FLIPPING! I clutched the armrests of the bus seat desperately, terrified.

  Looking back (I mean now, here, from this particular juncture in time, able to be objective and courageous thanks to the miracle of modern narrative technique), I see the terror clearly, but I find it a little difficult to believe that I was sincerely able to blame much of this burgeoning terror on the rather hackneyed fear of going mad. While it was quite fashionable at t
he time for one to claim to be constantly threatened by the fear of finally flipping out, I don't think I had been able to honestly convince myself of my right to the claim for a good while. In fact, I remember that one of the scenes swirling past me as I clutched my seat was a scene with Dr. Maynard, a session at his office where I had told him in dramatic desperation, "Doctor . . . I'm going mad; the final complete flip, it's swooping down out of the hills at me!"

  He had only smiled, condescendingly and therapeutically. "No, Leland, not you. You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for you to 'go mad' in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently 'went mad' and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now"--And I think he even went so far as to yawn--"you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. Another thing: all of you have a talent for releasing frustration through clever fantasy. And you, you are the worst of the lot on that score. So . . . you may be neurotic as hell for the rest of your life, and miserable, maybe even do a short hitch at Bellevue and certainly good for another five years as a paying patient--but I'm afraid never completely out." He leaned back in his elegant Lounge-o-Chair. "Sorry to disappoint you but the best I can offer is plain old schizophrenia with delusional tendencies."

  Recalling this, and the wise doctor's words, I relaxed my grip on the armrests and pulled the lever to recline the seat. Hell, I sighed, exiled even from the sanctuary of insanity. What a drag. Madness might have been a good way to explain terror and excuse anarchy, I mooned, a good whipping boy to blame in the event of mental discomfort, an interesting avocation to while away the long afternoon of life. What a crashing drag . . .

  But then . . . on the other hand, I decided, as the bus thundered slowly through town, you never can tell: it might have constituted as bad a drag as sanity. You would probably have to work too hard at it. And at times, almost certainly, a little sneak of memory would slip past your whipping boy and you would be whacked just as hard as ever by that joker's bladder of reality, of pain and heartache and hassle and death. You might hide in some Freudian jungle most of your miserable life, baying at the moon and shouting curses at God, but at the end, right down there at the damned end when it counts . . . you would sure as anything clear up just enough to realize the moon you have spent so many years baying at is nothing but the light globe up there on the ceiling, and God is just something placed in your bureau drawer by the Gideon Society. Yes, I sighed again, in the long run insanity would be the same old cold-hearted drag of too solid flesh, too many slings and arrows, and too much outrageous fortune.