Sometimes a Great Notion

  . . . She finds the table lamp in her room and switches it on and drops her blouse over her sewing chair. She sits down and pulls off her frayed tennis shoes, then removes her jeans. At the bureau she opens a drawer and removes a bra and half-slip. She pulls on the slip and reaches for the bra--thinking how ridiculous, with her build, to have to wear such nonsense . . .

  Then, at the moment, with exquisite timing, just as I was about to surrender to death by Status Quo, there came to me a sign, my pillar of fire leading to salvation, my torch . . .

  A click in the next room sent a thin finger of light through that hole. The finger wrapped itself about my head and tugged. I lay still for a long time before I gave in to the pull of the light and let it draw my throbbing bones standing.

  . . . And, fumbling at her back with the task of hooking the fastening, biting at her lip, she becomes aware that she has been staring for some time now at the empty bird cage suspended from the ceiling. She ceases her fumbling and lets her hands and the bra drop gradually to her sides. In the cage a long solitary filament of cobweb hangs from the little swing, laden with dust. That's about as birdless as a cage can get, she thinks. Should have bought another bird. Hank had even offered once to drive her to Eugene for just that purpose. She always liked canaries. She should have got herself another one. She still could. The next trip to Eugene she could . . . She turns from the cage . . .

  I remember perfectly my first impression: that the girl--not the lamp behind her--was emitting the light. She stood there, motionless, her back to me, seemingly entranced by some vision across the room; clothed from the waist down in a beige-colored slip and nothing else . . . quite pale, quite slender, with wonderfully long sorrel-blond hair following the slender line of her head down over her shoulders--and she made me think of a burning candle. She moves, tipping her head slightly forward. Then she turned, and as she walked directly toward my spying eyes, smooth almost hipless body, graceful wick of neck, pale unpainted face which seems to flicker and glow like a solitary flame . . . I saw that her cheeks were wet with crying.

  Time overlaps itself. A breath breathed from a passing breeze is not the whole wind, neither is it just the last of what has passed and the first of what will come, but is more--let me see--more like a single point plucked on a single strand of a vast spider web of winds, setting the whole scene atingle. That way; it overlaps. . . . As prehistoric ferns grow from bathtub planters. As a shiny new ax, taking a swing at somebody's next year's split-level pinewood pad, bites all the way to the Civil War. As proposed highways break down through the stacked strata of centuries.

  As a trilobite wades out of the paleolithic age and drags itself across the ruts of Breakbutt Road into the outskirts of town, and across a field of hop clover and beer cans, finally up the steps of the Mad Scandinavian's shack to stop and scratch at the front door like a dog wanting in out of the chill.

  As an antique Indian with a face like an aerial photograph of a bombed-out city--Indian Jenny's father, incidentally--sits in a pine-log shelter back up fifty years of practically impassable dirt road, on a pine-needle floor with a greasy bearskin robe pinned at his wattled neck with a porcupine quill, intensely watching "Have Gun, Will Travel."

  As Simone leans against her empty refrigerator, studying through the half-open door to her bedroom the little carved Virgin that studies her in turn, breathing the kitchen's odor of candlewax and wine. Who do they think they are, anyway? These Stampers? To make this bad strike?

  As the rest of the town breathes their own passing breezes:

  Willard Eggleston, in his theater's ticket office, counts the night's take. "If it don't get worse, if I can take in just this much a night I'll make it to the first of the year." Every night the take gets smaller. One night it will be too small.

  Floyd Evenwrite waits nervously while Jonathan B. Draeger leafs casually through a stack of yellow papers.

  Molly the hound watches the moon melt like wax, and feels the wax fall freezing on her hide, petrifying on her eyes and tongue . . .

  A point plucked any place sets all the currents and gales,

  zephyrs and gales, vibrating delicately. . . .

  Joe Ben, out clamdigging one summer morning with his three oldest kids, pauses in his giddy rushing from child to child to look across the flats at a pack of bony hogs that comes sniffing from the bam-tree thickets onto the mud. As he watches, a black swarm of crows appear almost simultaneously from the top branches of a fir grove; they sail screeching down to settle two or three apiece on the back of each rooting hog. A hog grubs a clam or mud shrimp into sight; a great squealing and squawking fight for the prize . . . a bird flaps off laughing hoarsely to break his clam against the rocks of the jetty. Joe Ben stands enthralled, palms pressing his skull--"Oh man! Oh boy!"--as though to reinforce the walls of his bursting soul, to take precaution against an explosion of joy . . .

  Oh man, them birds! And them goofy hogs. . . . can you believe it? Pap used to tell about that hog pack but I never myself laid eye on them before. He said them birds been here long as the hogs, or at least the bird kin long as the hog kin. All the way clear back to 1900. Oh man, Pap, what a kick you must've been, tearing around the country seeing all these funny things and bouncing from bed to bed with all those women. I wish, ah gosh I wish I might of knowed and enjoyed you when I had the chance, might of freed myself earlier from you somehow so's I could of give you the respect and attention you deserved. What a kick it could of been, me and Hank and Aaron's two boys bagged out on the floor while you'n old Henry sit cooking your shoes on the stove, drinking green beer and smoking cigars . . . fart and belch, fart and belch all night long while you talked about the way it was . . .

  Very swampy, son, back then. Arnold Eggleston and his brood tried to settle Siskilou flat nineteen ought six or seven. Very swampy, I recollect. Arnold put his hogs loose on the land to grub out wapatoos an' skunk cabbages--I seen two them devils last week whilst bringin' the boom down river--those type pigs with their ears slung over their eyes like car fenders, an' they went wild. And mean, let me tell you: Sam Montgomery, you recall, Henry? brother to Miss Montgomery?"

  "Betsy? Betsy Montgomery . . . ?"

  "She was the first of a long line of the mattressback Montgomery girls--"

  "Never mind her, you foul-mouthed bastard, what 'uz you saying about Sam an' them wild hogs?"

  "Yes. . . . One day me 'n' him was pirating drift logs off the flat and I 'uz doin' this or that an' all at once Sam commenced to holler, an' one of them devils had him down an' was workin' at him. I made a run to the skiff an' grab Sam's double-barrel he'd brung in case we get a chance at some mergansers. Sam's got the hog and the hog's got Sam. Over an' over they go, squalling an' cussin'! Mud and kelp and garbage an' god knows what all so's I can't make out what's about. 'Shoot, dammit, shoot!' Sam yells. 'I can't tell which is what!' I tell him. 'Never mind that, dammit, just shoot into the wad!' So I run back a piece an' fly at the two of them on the ground there. Whoo! Both barrels. Hog turned loose an' lit out back to the thickets, an' I swear if Sam didn't jump up and tear off after him, cussing and screamin' that he was gonna break his skinny fuckin' back, an' I tell ya! if he didn't of trip over some roots I bet he'd of come mighty damn close. . . ."

  "I remember Betsy Montgomery. I recall her now. I recall one time you traded Sam Montgomery a nearly full box of White Owls for the privilege of driving his sister Betsy to a dance up at Yachats and they were my White Owls too, by god!"

  "Well." Ben shrugs and smiles at his older brother. "A cigar is just a cigar, but a good woman is a fuck."

  The men guffaw and tip their foaming fruit jars; the boys lie full length on the wooden floor, chins on their crossed hands, grinning sleepily. Everyone has heard the story. Everyone has heard all the stories, even before they happen. At the stove Henry is recalling a tale told him by an oldtime hand logger who heard it from a one-eyed Indian, a folk legend . . . years of hard famine, game all gone, and the coyote god leads the men of the
tribe to the beach as the waves recede revealing an abundance of food, warning that as soon as anyone picks up even the tiniest morsel the waves will start back; a hungry brave tries to sneak a clam into his loincloth and the coyote god catches him. The water begins to move landward again, explaining the origin of the tides . . .

  On the riverbank the Indian storyteller materializes in full feathered dress; light from a driftwood fire illuminates eager ghosts dancing from a shiny, milkstoned eye; his stories, pure and comfortable and full of the fleshless fact of spirits, are still innocent of the demons to come from a faraway land called Hudson's Bay Company. His hand floats weightless in the night buoyed up on the heavy stream of his words; a circle of firelit faces listens. . . . A car's horn rings across the moonplated river and Hank rises from the supper table and crosses to the kitchen window. "Hush a minute; I thought I heard the old man toot. . . . Seems I been spending a lot of my time lately listening for that old fart to come home gassed and honkin'."

  At home, wearing a green eyeshade on his bald head, Willard Eggleston writes a final figure at the bottom of a page full of calculation. "If I take in just this much next month, then maybe the overhead won't kill me. Just this much is all I need to overcome the overhead." But every month the figure to overcome is bigger. One month it will be too big. It seems to Willard he is always spending his time with figures too big or too little.

  Indian Jenny's father rises with a grunt to stop the roll-over in his TV set. He spends a lot of his time adjusting his Westerns.

  Viv reads, curled against a large satin-covered pillow on her makeshift couch. She spends a large part of her time reading. She didn't read nearly so much back in Colorado; and even during her first years in the house in Wakonda, when Hank brought her books down from the attic for the long lonely afternoons, she had had a difficult time getting interested--the books were so worn with other readings from other years that it didn't seem she should peek--but in the weeks spent in bed after she lost the baby she had forced herself to try, sometimes reading the same page over and over, until one sleepy afternoon something clicked, like a lock unlocking, and she saw those printed doors swing open on a vast house of words. She entered carefully, feeling that she was trespassing, knowing that this had never been her house and hoping almost that someone--whoever had lived here first--would come back and chase her out. But no one came, and she reconciled herself to living in another's house, and gradually came to understand and appreciate the beauty of the house's various furnishings. Since then she has amassed a large and erratic library. Books on all subjects--books hardbound and books paperbacked, some ragged with reading, some never opened--range over the wall at various levels on a unique bookcase forming a floor-to-ceiling fortress of words.

  Once, as Viv tidied up her sewing before coming to bed, Hank stood before that fortress, rubbing his bare belly as he scanned the titles. He shook his head. He had long forgotten that the books were his idea in the first place. "All this," Hank said with a sweep of his arm, "all these books, all these buggy words." He turned and drew a finger down his wife's spine, producing a murmurous giggle. "Tell me, little girl: how's it possible all these words go in an' so piddling few come out?" He parted the bright glide of hair at the back of her head and examined her neck. "You must be so stuffed with words you due to explode!"

  Viv shook her head, smiling with the pressure of Hank's chest at her back. "Oh no." She laughed. "No words. I don't think I even remember words. Sometimes I remember a writer's words--like a line he wrote that I thought was real nice--but those are his words, you see?"

  He didn't see, but neither did he worry about it. Hank had adjusted to his wife's peculiarities as she had to his; if she was gone fifty per cent of the time, off someplace in another world while her body stayed behind humming over the housework, well, that was her world and her business. He didn't feel he had the ability to follow her into those reveries or the right to call her back out. What went on inside, that was nobody's business but whoever's it went on inside of, was the way Hank looked at it. Besides, the fifty per cent she gave him, wasn't that "a hell of a lot more'n most guys get outa their female even if they get the whole hunderd?"

  "I couldn't say." Lee hedged at Hank's question. "I think it would depend on the female, and on which half she gave."

  "Viv gives the best half all right," Hank assured him. "An' as far as the female goes, you tell me what you think along that line after you get a look at her."

  "I'll do that"--still savoring that half-nude image seen through the hole not a half an hour before. "But do you think I'll be able to judge the whole 'hunderd' per cent without seeing all of it?"

  Brother Hank's grin was swarming with secrets. "If you mean do you get a look at the whole hunderd of Viv, well I can't rightly say; that's up to her. But I got a hunch you might have to make do with the little bit showin'--like the legs an' face--and judge what's underneath like you'd judge how much iceberg's under water. Viv ain't one of these honky-tonk honeys I used to run with, Leland. She's shy. Joe says she's one of these 'still-water-runs-deeps.' You'll see. I think you'll like her."

  Hank had straddled a chair near the foot of my bed and was waiting, chin on the chairback, while I dressed to come down for supper. And was being remarkably cheerful compared to the snarling silence that had flowed from him since my outburst over his rigging story at lunch. He had even gone so far as to bring me up a cup of coffee to rouse me from my stupor, little realizing that this particular stupor--unlike the faint that followed my first contact with physical labor earlier that day--had been induced by his wife's performance in tears and a half-slip. And along with the coffee a pair of clean socks. "Till we get your suitcase from the depot."

  I smiled and thanked him, as puzzled by his change of mood as he must have been by mine. I knew my change was rooted firmly in reason: I had realized the imprudence of my afternoon of animosity--the clever assassin doesn't worm his way into the king's castle only to blow his chance of success by telling the king what he thinks of him. Certainly not. Quite the opposite.

  He is charming, witty, fawning, and he applauds the king's tales of triumph, however paltry they may be. It is the way the game is played. And for this reason I was suspicious of Hank's generosity--I saw no reason for the king to seek the favor of the assassin, and I therefore advised myself I'd best watch out. He's being nice for some sneaky reason; beware!

  But it is sometimes difficult to be very wary if people keep being nice to you, and I didn't know then that these underhanded tactics of niceness and warmth assailing my resolved revenge were to continue for so long.

  So I drank the coffee and welcomed the socks--watching out, of course, for tricks--laced my shoes and combed my hair and followed him down to the kitchen to meet his wife, never for one minute imagining that the sneaky wench would be even more underhanded and nice and warm than her sneak of a husband, and even harder to watch out for.

  The wench was turned to the stove, with that hair coiling down to her apron strings. And as lovely in the hard kitchen light as she had been in the mellow glow of her room. Hank pulled her toward me by the rear of the pleated skirt that I knew must be still warm from the iron; he turned her around by the sleeve of the blouse that had needed a button sewn on. "Viv, this is Leland." She brushed a lock from her forehead, offered her hand, and smiled a soft hello. I nodded. "Well, what's your judgment?" Hank asked, stepping back from her like a horse-trader from a prize two-year-old.

  "I would at least have to check her teeth."

  "I reckon we could see to that."

  The girl swatted his hand from her. "What on earth . . . What's he been talking about, Leland?"

  " 'Lee,' if you would."

  "Or 'bub,' " Hank added, and answered for me. "Why, I ain't been talking nothin' but good about you, honey. Ain't that so, bub?"

  "He said half of you was better than all of most women--"

  "An' Lee said he'd have to hold judgment on that till he could see all of you, hon." He reached
for the buttons of her blouse. "So if you'll just--"

  "Hank . . . !"

  She raised the spoon and Hank hopped agilely out of range. "But honey, we got to settle this thing . . ."

  "Not right here in the kitchen." She took my arm coquettishly, lifting her nose at him. "Leland, Lee and me'll settle it some other time--all by ourselves." Then gave a brazen little toss of her head to seal the bargain.

  "Done!" I said, as she spun laughing back toward the stove.

  But neither the laughing spin nor the brazen toss could hide the blush that rose like a red tide--out of a bra that I knew was fastened left-cup-to-strap by a silver safety pin.

  Hank yawned at his wife's flirtations. "All I ask is you feed me first. I could eat a snake. How about you, bub?"

  "All I ask is the sustenance to climb those stairs back up to my bed."

  "The fish'll be a few minutes yet," she said. "Jan has gone out to the barn for some more eggs. Ask Joe if all the kids are washed and ready, could you, Lee? And I think I hear Henry honking now; would you run across to get him, Hank?"

  "Damn, but he's gettin' to be a regular tomcat . . ."

  Hank left to start the boat and I went into the other room to help Joe Ben hose down his herd, with the treacherous smells and sounds and sights of that supper scene swirling about me like the background of a State Department propaganda film calculated to sell the American Way of Life to every hungry and lonely and homeless wretch in every hope-lost hamlet in every have-not nation in the world--"Don't listen to that Commy crap you dumb gooks, this is what we really live like in the good ol' Yew Ess Aye!"--and felt stir in my blood the first cancerous budding of an emotion that was not to go beneath the scalpel of sense until almost a month later, when it had almost got too firm a hold to remove . . .