Sometimes a Great Notion

  I reclined my seat another notch and closed my eyes, trying to resign myself that there was nothing I could do about this runaway anarchy I had hold of but wait for the pharmaceutical pilot to come on and take over the controls and let me sleep. But the pills seemed uncommonly slow in coming on. And in this ten-or fifteen-minute wait--the billowing; the ringing; the bus, empty but for its solitary passenger in the back, huffing and whooshing through the town--before the barbiturates took effect . . . I was forced at last to consider those questions I had been skirting so skillfully.

  Like: "What in the shit you hope to accomplish running back home?" I knew that all that obscure Oedipal pap I had fed Peters about measuring up or pulling down might be approaching some kind of truth . . . but even if I were able to bring off one of these coups, what did I hope to accomplish?

  And like: "Why should one want to wake up dead anyway?" If the glorious birth-to-death hassle is the only hassle we are ever to have . . . if our grand and exhilarating Fight of Life is such a tragically short little scrap anyway, compared to the eons of rounds before and after--then why should one want to relinquish even a few precious seconds of it?

  And--thirdly--like: "If it's such a goddamned hassle--why fight it?"

  The three questions lined up in front of me, just like that: three insistent bullies, hands on their hips and sneers on their faces, challenging me to meet them face to face, once and for all. The first one I made a little headway with, owing to its more pressing nature and the help I had during the trip. The second didn't receive satisfaction until weeks later when circumstances following that trip happened to occasion another challenge.

  And the third still waits right now. While I take another trip. Back into the memory of what happened.

  And the third one is the toughest bully of them all.

  But that first question I set to work on straightaway. What do I hope to accomplish going home? Well, myself, for one thing . . . my little old self!"

  "Man," Peters says over the phone, "you don't do that by running off someplace. That's like running from the beach to go swimming."

  "There are beaches East and beaches West," I let him know.

  "Crap," he says.

  Looking back on that trip (and forward on this one), I can calculate and know it took four days (the thing about being removed, thanks to modern technique, is, while it may afford objectivity and perspective--with all events tunneling back from this point like images in opposing mirrors, yet each image changed--it presents a tricky problem of tense) . . . but looking back I remember the depot, the gas, the bus trip, the blast, the disjointed narrative to Peters on the phone--all these scenes as one scene, composed of dozens of simultaneously occurring events . . .

  "Something's wrong," Peters says. "No, wait . . . something's happened, dammit Lee; what? You're in New York to identify what? But man, that's more than a year ago."

  I could now (possibly) go back and restretch those shrunken hours, flake the images separate, arrange them in accurate chronological order, (possibly; with will-power, patience, and the proper chemicals) but being accurate is not necessarily being honest.

  "Lee!" This time it's Mother. "Where are you going? Are you ever going anywhere?"

  Nor is chronological reporting by any means always the most truthful (each camera has its own veracity) especially when, in all good faith, one cannot truthfully claim to remember what happened accurately. . . .

  The fat boy turns to leer at me from the pinball machine. "You can win 'em all but that last one, hot shot." He grins. Stenciled on his T-shirt is TILT in large orange letters outlined in green.

  Or accurately claim to remember what happened truthfully . . .

  And Mother plummets past my bedroom window, forever and ever.

  Besides, there are some things that can't be the truth even if they did happen.

  The bus stops (I hang up the phone and hurry out to the car and drive to the Campus Diner) and starts again, jerkily. The diner is crowded but subdued. The people remote. A film of tobacco smoke drawn over the faces makes them look like displays behind glass. I peer through this film and see Peters sitting at his table back near the cigarette machine, sharing a beer with Mona and someone who leaves. Peters sees me coming and licks the foam from his mustache, the surprising pink of the Negro tongue darting out at me. "Enter Leland Stanford, stage left," he says. He picks the candle from the table and lifts it toward me in a theatrical gesture. "Rage, rage and remember Dylan Thomas," he says, and Mona says, "When you get home, Lee, look around and see if you dropped it back there somewhere." Sweetly.

  I tell them I have just failed my tests again. Peters says, "Crap. Is that all?" And Mona says, "I saw your mother fall past."

  "Oh," says Peters. "And guess who was with us? He left when you came in, still naked."

  The pinball machine goes rigid with light and I hear Peters breathing into the receiver, sympathetic and waiting for my fits to finally cease. "Nobody, man," he says sadly, "can go home again."

  I want to say something about my family. I tell them, "My father is a filthy capitalist and my brother is a motherfucker." Peters says, "Some people have all the luck," and we laugh. I want to say more but at that moment I hear Mother enter the cafe. I recognize the loud stab of her heels against the tile. Everyone turns and looks, then goes on drinking coffee. I can't find a dime and Mother stands at the door, looking back and forth through the people at the walls. She touches the black hair with her hand, and it is painful for me to look because then she turns into chromium and cosmetics. She walks briskly to the counter, puts her purse on one stool and her car coat on another, and seats herself between them.

  "Anyway, man . . . what to accomplish?"

  I watch Mother pick up a cup of coffee . . . her elbow resting on the countertop, fingers dropping to close over the cup . . . now she crosses her legs beneath the gray skirt and swings the fulcrum of her elbow to her knee and is revolving slowly around on the stool. I wait for the arm to lower and the hand to empty its load into the waiting truckbed. But she sees something that startles her so she drops the cup. I turn, but he's already gone again.

  I ask for a glass of water. The postman brings it and the loudspeaker calls for all aboard. The postman says, "Well, one thing you'll accomplish when you get back there: you'll find out if it's true or not." "What's that?" I ask, but he goes somersaulting away. I guess that's a postman's system.

  The phone rings and it's that horrible greened-over preacher friend of Mother's calling me from New York to tell me what happened. And how upset Mother has been by the news that I failed my exams. And how sorry she has been for failing me. And how sorry he is. And how desperately griefstricken he knows I must be and then offers the consolation that we are all of us, dear boy . . . trapped by our existence. I tell him that this is neither very profound nor very consoling but when I lie on the bed with the moon jigsawing my body I keep seeing this picture of a tiny birdcage inlaid with rhinestones chugging along a little track, mother trapped inside performing the feeble repertory of her movements as the cage moves along the track round and around up the concrete to the forty-first floor where the rails stop out in space.

  "Who trapped her?" I scream and the postman rushes in to hand me the card again. "Message out of the past, sir," he says, giggling. "A pastcard." "Crap," says Peters.

  It occurs to me . . . that . . . if I am as vulnerable to this world of the past as she has been . . . then perhaps I am being screwed out of everything I was ever to have--Peters, listen!--because I have always felt compelled to measure up to a memory."

  "The same crap," Peters says at the other end of the line.

  "No, listen. This card came just in time. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps I am a Big Enough guy now, don't you see? a Strong Enough guy to demand the return of the sun I've been cheated of . . . a Desperate Enough guy to see that my demands are met even if it means eradicating this specter casting this shadow!"

  Excited by this possibility--and by the incessan
t honking as the bus tried to goad a cautious milk truck away from the stop sign ahead of us out into the heavy traffic of the highway--I jerked momentarily awake. I was drowsy and dopey as hell, but the strange billowing sensation had ceased. And the feeling of terror had given way to a kind of capricious optimism. Because, by George, what if Little Leland were a Big Enough guy now? Wasn't it possible? Ah? Just on the basis of years? Hank was no young buck any more. A lot of water had flowed past since those days of stud prizes and swimming trophies. Here I am, just approaching my prime; Hank is past his--bound to be! Can I possibly go back and wrest from my past some remnant of a better beginning? Some start toward a better scene? That would be worth running back to accomplish, Lord knows . . .

  The milk truck finally dived into the stream of traffic and the bus moved into position. I let my eyes close and my head sink back again, euphoria tingling with a taste of confidence. "How about it, fellas?" I inquired of those standing in the nearby shadows. "Does Little Leland have any sort of chance against this illiterate spook who has charged out of the past to once more goad me with his grin? Do I actually have a chance to wrest from him the life that I have been cheated out of, the life that we both knew was mine? Rightfully mine? Justly mine?"

  Before any of my friends present can answer, the ghost himself slips out of the melting shadows and raps me over the head with a bladder, knocking loose a hailstorm of silver barbiturate burrs. Still drunk with confidence, I half rose from my seat to demand of the grinning giant looming above me in a sweat shirt, number 88, "Whither wilt thou lead me?" fixing him with the most withering Shakespearean gaze my goof-balled eyes could muster. "Speak, I'll go no further."

  "Oh?" A sneer played at his lip. "You'll go no further, is it?

  The hell if you won't! Now you get your tail on over here an' sit it down; didn't you hear me callin' you?"

  "You've no hold on me"--in a quavering voice--"no hold at all."

  "Why, willya listen at this: he says I ain't got no hold on him. Boys, you hear that: I got no hold on smart-ass here. Bub, you look: I aim t' ast you purty-please just one more time, then lose my patience. So move, blast you! An' quit that fidgetin' around! Stan' still! Move, I tell ye!"

  Our young hero, cowed and bullied and in a furor of frustration, plops to the ground quivering with protoplasmic confusion. The giant prods the glob with the toe of his spiked logging boot. "Gaa. Look what a mess he went an' made. Well, jeez . . . boys!" He raises his head and calls, "Dip him up an' get him on in the house fertheshitsakes so's we can get on with this business. Jeez, look at him . . ."

  A horde of kinsmen rush forth from the wings; their plaid shirts, spike boots, and manly physiques bespeak the logging trade; a uniformity of features indicates they are all members of the same family, for they all boast noble Roman noses, sandy-brown hair wafted free by the fragrant northern breezes, and iron-green eyes. They are ruggedly handsome. All save the Smallest Fellow, whose face has been horribly mutilated by constant use as the family dartboard; the darts are barbed and the flesh hangs in shreds where the barbs have torn it. This poor wretch trips in his haste and falls in a heap. The giant leans down and picks him up between a great thumb and forefinger and regards him with the kindly scorn one might reserve for a cricket.

  "Joe Ben," the giant says patiently, "ain't I tole you 'bout thisyere fumble-fart-an'-fallin' down all the time? Don't you know that it's call to get you drummed right out o' the clan if you keep on? What'd folks think, a Stamper ploppin' on his butt all the time? Now hop it up an' get on over yonder an' help your cousins sop my kid brother up before he drains away down the gopher holes. Now git!"

  He places the Smallest Fellow on the ground and fondly watches him scuttle to the sopping. "Good ol' Joby." Hank smiles after the lovable little gnome in a manner to betray the tender heart that beats beneath his rough exterior. "I'm might glad old Henry didn't have him drownt like he did the rest of the runts; Joe's good fer a lotta laughs."

  By this time the kinsmen have managed to contain our melted hero and are bearing him toward the house in a polyethylene bag; during the passage across the spacious and tastefully landscaped front bog the plucky lad overcomes his fright enough to gradually pull himself back to some semblance of human form.

  The house is disguised as a pile of discarded scrap lumber stacked precariously into the clouds; the door, which can be opened only by the insertion of a log in an enormous keyhole, swings inward, and for an instant young Leland can make out through his transparent confines the dim trappings of a spacious hall--mastiffs stalking among great fir-tree pillars wherein double-edged axes are stuck, sheepskin mackinaws hanging carelessly on their handles--then the door swings shut with a booming echo that reverberates off distant walls, and all is dark once again.

  This is mighty Stamper Hall. It was built sometime during the reign of Henry (Stamper) the Eighth and for centuries has been condemned by every public-safety agency in the land. Water can be heard dripping even in the severest drought, and the long maze of decaying corridors is filled with constant dark scurryings and a continual drumming of blind frogs. At intervals these sounds are broken by the thundering collapse of an obscure wing of the house, and entire branches of the family have disappeared into its passageways never to be heard from again.

  The domain is an absolute monarchy in which no one dares make a move, not even the crown prince himself, without first consulting the Great Ruler. Hank steps to the head of the band of kinsmen and cups his hands about his mouth to summon this exalted potentate.

  "Oh . . . PAW!"

  The roar rolls rumbling through the inky blackness, crashing into wooden walls. He yells again and this time a candle comes on in the distance, illuminating first the craggy profile, then the whole grisly visage of old Henry Stamper. He is sitting in a rocking chair waiting to be a hundred. His hawklike beak turns slowly in the direction of his son's voice. His hawklike eyes pierce the gloom. He coughs loudly and spits a blazing ember hissing through the damp air. He coughs again and speaks, looking at the plastic sack.

  "Wellsir now . . . aye doggies . . . heeheehee . . . lookee yonder . . . how's 'bout that. What in tarnation you youngsters found floatin' in the river this time? I swan, allus draggin' in some crap or other . . ."

  "Didn't rightly find it, Pa; sorter conjured it up."

  "You don't tell me!" He leans forward, displaying more interest. "Nasty-lookin' outfit . . . what you reckon it be? Somethin' come in on the tide?"

  "I'm afeared, Pa"--Hank hangs his head and scuffs his toe at the floor, shredding white pine in all directions with his spikes--"that it be"--scratches his belly, swallows--"be yer youngest son, Leland Stanford."

  "Damnation! I told you once I told you a friggin' hunnert times, I don't never! want the name o' that quitter! spoke in thisyere house again! Phoo. Cain't stand the sound of him, lit-lone the sight! Jesus, son, what got into you to pull such a boner?"

  Hank steps closer to the throne. "Paw, I knowed how ya felt. I cain't help but feel the same way myself--worst, mebbe, comes down to it; I'd as leave never heard his name again the rest o' my nachrul life--but I didn't see no way gettin' around it, considerin' the situation we is in."

  "What situation!"

  "The labor situation."

  "You mean--" The old man gasps; his hand lifts in a gesture of involuntary horror.

  "I'm afeared so. We come to the end of the bench, old fellow, to the last of the beans. You knowed when we saved out Joe Ben that we was scrapin' the bottom of the barrel. So it was like we didn't have a choice, Pa . . ." He crosses his arms, waiting. . . .

  (In the low mountains the crows sleep fitfully. Jenny works with need and loneliness and the magic of her ignorance. At the old house the discussion of Joe Ben's idea for writing other relatives in other states is halted suddenly by Orland's demand to see the books. "I'll bring them right down," Hank volunteers and heads for the steps . . . welcoming the opportunity to leave the noise and hubbub for a moment . . .)

  Henry st
ares forlornly at young Leland, who is feebly waving at his venerable father from inside the plastic bag. Henry wags his old head.

  "So. This is how it is, eh? It's finally come to this." Then, fired by a sudden fury, he lurches standing from the chair and shakes his cane at the cringing kinsmen. "Ain't I been tellin' you boys this was a-comin'? Ain't I been sayin' till I'm blue in the face, 'Leave off this diddlin' of your cousins and sisters an' the like an' get out an' knock us up some other women fer a change!' I'm sick 'n tired of all these freaks an' halfwits you been turnin' out. We cain't be inbreedin' all the time like a buncha damn hawgs! The family got to be healthy an' strong t' keep up the standards. I don't aim to tolerate weaklings! No, b' gawd, I don't. We need examples by gawd, like my own boy, Hank there, like the stock I turn out--"

  His face freezes for an instant as his eyes light once more on the plastic sack, then his stoic features shatter with humiliation. He collapses backward into his rocker, gasping and clutching at his tormented heart. When the fit has passed, Hank goes on in a subdued voice:

  "I know how it galls ya, Pa. I know how he took away your young an' faithful wife with his weakness an' his whining. But here's how it looked to me when I realized we had to bring up the un-pleasant subject." He rolls a log up close and seats himself, becoming confidential. "I figured . . . that we're a family first, and that's the most important. We got to keep ourselfs free of racial pollution. We ain't some bunch o' niggers or Jews or ordinary people; we're Stampers."