"Sure, why not," I told him. "You ain't disturbed one single honker feather in twenty years of hunting, so I don't suppose I'll have to be doing any retrieving today." And he said, "You wait an' see . . . I got a feeling . . ."
Well, as it turned out, like it usually did with Joby's predictions, it wasn't his day after all: we didn't see goose one all that day. It wasn't my day either: that was the day Evenwrite spiked our logs and tore a six-hundred-dollar two-way carriage saw to pieces for me. Matter of fact it wasn't even Evenwrite's day: that breakdown gave the excuse I'd been waiting for, a good reason to move the mill crew to the woods. I didn't tell them then, though. I let them go on home the rest of that day, figuring to start them Monday. They weren't going to be red-hot for it.
So everybody came out sucking hind tit that day, except that honker Joby'd sworn to kill for supper; wherever he was, he got off easy. At the supper table that night Joe explained what had went haywire with his prediction. "The mist was too thick for good visibility. I hadn't allowed for the mist."
"Always my trouble ex-actly." The old man put in his two bits' worth. "I'd allow for the wind an' the drop, but sonofagun if I was ever able to allow for that mist!"
We razzed Joby about that a while. He said okay, just wait till tomorrow . . . "Tomorrow mornin', if I read the signals correct, it's gonna be colder! Yeah . . . wind enough tonight to scatter the flock, cold enough in the morning to keep down the mist. . . . Tomorrow is the day I bag my honker!"
It was cold enough that next day, all right, cold enough to freeze your balls off, but it still wasn't Joby's day. That cold kept off the mist but it kept the geese huddled someplace to keep warm, too. There had been honking all night, but we didn't even hear a goose that day. It got colder. By night it was cold enough it even showed signs of clearing. When I told Viv to give the relatives a call and have them all drop out for Sunday dinner the next day, I told her she better mention to them all to put in some anti-freeze, the way the mercury was going down. I damn sure didn't want any of them not making it out to the meeting; they all had a pretty good idea what was coming, anyway, that I was planning to tell them we were moving everybody to woods work, "An' knowing how much a lot of them hate outdoor work," I told her, "I know better'n to give any of them the chance to miss the meeting by saying their radiator froze up. . . . I'd at least like to get enough cars parked at the landing over there to let that damned Evenwrite know what he's up against."
After lunch that Sunday me and Joby took the guns and hiked to the slough to see if any of the geese had lit in down there. I got a load of widgeons, but that was all we saw. We got back to the house about four, and when I rounded the barn and looked across at the landing I could barely believe my eyes: there was cars packed over there thicker than I'd seen in years and more coming. Most of the Stampers within fifty miles showed up, whether they were connected with the lumber end of the business or not. I was surprised to see so many turn out on such short notice, and a lot more surprised than that at what a friendly, easy-going mood they were all in. That's what really floored me! I knew they must have a notion of some kind what I was up to, but they all acted like maybe they was tired of mill work anyhow and looking forward to a little stretch out in the good old fresh air.
Even the weather took a turn toward an easy-going mood: the rain eased down a lot, even though the mercury had come up a good deal since morning. And the sun was showing through now and then the way it will sometimes at the start of the wet season, shooting all of a sudden between two clouds so the hills sparkle like they was sprinkled with sugar. By dark the rain had quit and I could occasionally make out a piece of the soggy moon. The wind laid down and bugs started showing up with the people. Nobody asked what the meeting was all about, so I didn't say anything. We all just hung around on the porch while people showed up, talking hounds and recalling great hunting nights of the past and whittling white strips from the kindling near the woodpile; the ones that didn't whittle stood at the screened wall watching the children spin each other around on the tire swing Joe'd made in the toolshed out of the rain. I went out and plugged in the big three-hundred-watt porch light, and the men standing on the bank near the incline cast shadows all the way across the river against that cut stone embankment above the railroad. Every time another car full of new arrivals swung onto the gravel across the way those shadows would kind of fold over it to see who it was just showed up.
"It's Jimmy! Ye gods if it ain't," the shadows would holler across. "Jimmy, oh Jimmy . . . that you?"
A voice would come floating back. "Somebody gonna come over here an' tote me across, or do I wade?"
Then one of us would get up and ramble down the planks to the boat and pick up the newcomer, bring him back to stand around the porch to talk hounds and whittle and guess at the next car that stopped.
"Who you think this time? Martin? Hey, Martin, that you?"
I just stood around enjoying it. The voices stretched like the shadows, becoming huge across the water as it got darker. It made me think of the way it used to be on Christmas and other get-togethers when us kids would sit in the porch windows and listen to the men laugh and lie and holler across the water. Back when the shadows were always big and the mood always seemed easy-going.
They kept coming. Everybody was all grins and greeting. Nobody asked what was up, and I didn't volunteer the information. I even held off starting the meeting, waiting to see if any stragglers were showing up, I told people, but really because I hated to get around to business and foul up the whole evening. But after a while it got me so curious I went upstairs to ask Viv what she might of said over the phone to get so many people out in such a good mood.
The kid was there, laying belly down on her couch, stripped to the waist; Viv was working at the big cloudy blue welt below his right shoulderblade where he'd got tagged a day or so before. (The room is hot, full of the stink of wintergreen. It reminds me of a locker room. . . . "How's the back, bub?" I say.
"I don't know," he says. His cheek is on his arm with his face turned toward the wall. "Better, I guess. Until Viv began her ministerings and massagings I had given it up as a complete loss; now I think I might salvage the spine."
"Well," I tell him, "you keep on the bounce out there you won't be gettin' bopped by springbacks." He don't answer. I can't think of anything else to say for a minute. The room is tight and strange. "Tomorrow . . . anyway, bub, tomorrow we'll have a good number of extra men up there, so you can take it pretty easy. You can maybe do some driving till it quits paining," I say. I unbutton my jacket, wondering why is it always so hot in a room when he's in it? Maybe he's got thin blood . . .)
I walked over and asked Viv, "Chicken, can you remember what you said when you called the kinfolks last night?" She looked up at me, lifting her eyebrows the way she would when something puzzled her, made her eyes look big enough to fall into. (She's got on Levis and the green and yellow striped jersey pullover that someway puts me in mind of bam trees on a sunny fall morning. Her hands are red from the analgesic. Lee's back is red . . .)
"Golly, hon," she said, thinking. "I can't remember exactly. Just what you asked me to say, I think: that they all should come out about suppertime because you had a few things to go over since this breakdown. And to check about the anti-freeze . . ."
"How many calls did you make?"
"Oh, four or five, I guess. Orland's wife . . . Netty . . . Lou . . . and asked them to make some calls. Why?"
"If you'd been downstairs in the last hour you'd know why; we got every shirttail cousin in the country down there. And all of them acting like it was their personal birthday party they were attending."
"Every one?" That got her. She raised up off her knees, wiping hair off her forehead with the back of her arm. "I didn't get groceries enough for more than fifteen or so . . . how many do you mean by every one?"
"A good forty or fifty, counting kids."
This really brought her to her tiptoes. "Fifty?" she said. "We've never had fi
fty people, even on Christmas!"
"I know, but we do now. And all of them happy as clams--that's what I can't explain . . ."
Then Lee said, "I can explain it."
"Explain which?" I asked him. "How come they're all here? Or how come they're all so happy?"
"Both." He was laid face to the wall on that day-bed affair of Viv's. (He scratches the wall with his fingernail.) "It's because," he said, without turning over, "they are all under the impression that you have sold the business--"
"Sold it?"
"That's right," he went on, "and as stockholders--"
"Stockholders?"
"Yeah, Hank. Didn't you tell me that you made each man that ever worked for you a stockholder? In order to--"
"But sold it? What a minute. What are you talking about sold it? Where did you hear about this?"
"Grissoms'. Last night."
(He never moves, laying there turned to the wall. I can't see his face. His voice sounds like it could come from any place in the room.) "What the hell are you talking about!" (I want to grab him and roll him toward me so bad my hands are shaking. )
"If I remember correctly," he said, "Floyd Evenwrite and this other cat--"
"Draeger?"
"Draeger, yes, came up in a boat to visit you last night with--"
"Nobody was out here last night! Wait--"
"--with an offer to purchase the whole business with union funds, and the help of some of the local businessmen--"
"Wait. Hell's bells, I see now . . . them bastards!"
"--and that you drove a hard bargain and got a good price."
"Them snake-bellied bastards! Yeah, I see now. This Draeger musta thought of this--Evenwrite ain't got the brains. . . ." I stormed around a while, pretty hacked off, then turned back to where Lee was still laid facing the wall. For some reason this hacked me off more than ever. (He hasn't so much as twitched a muscle. Damn. Viv's got it so hot in here with the electric heater humming. And that smell of wintergreen. Damn. I want to throw ice water on him. I want him to yell, get excited, wake up, come to life. . . .) "Why in the shit," I said to him, "didn't you let me know about this before now?"
"I guess," he said, "I presumed that if you had sold the business you would probably already know about it."
"But what if I hadn't?"
"You would be just as apt, it seems to me, to know that, too."
"Hell's bells!"
Viv reached out and touched my arm. "What's the trouble, honey?" she asked. The only thing I could say was "Hell's tinkling bells!" and stormed around the room some more. What could I tell her? (Lee is turned to the wall, tracing the edge of his shadow with a matchstick. I don't know.) What could I tell any of them? "What is it, honey?" Viv asked again. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing. . . . But just what does a man think of somebody who's supposed to be giving him a big red apple and puts him to work pruning the apple tree instead? Huh?" I walked to the door and opened it a little and listened, then I came back. (I can hear them down there waiting. It's so hot in here, and that smell . . .) "Huh? How would you feel toward somebody who'd pull such a dirty switch on you?" (I just don't know. He just lies there. That electric heater purring.) "No, Evenwrite don't have the sense for something like this. . . ." (I just want to wake him up. It's so mothering hot . . .) It's this Draeger. . . ." (Or I want to lie down myself. I don't know.)
Finally, after I'd fumed and fretted enough, I did what I'd known from the first I was going to do: I went out in the hall to the stairwell and hollered for Joe Ben to come up a minute.
"Whatsay?" I heard him holler from the back porch where the kids were.
"Never mind whatsay, just get up here!"
I met him out in the hall and we went into the office. He was eating the pumpkin seeds hollowed from the jack-o'-lantern, all big-eyed and curious about me calling him. He was wearing a necktie for the occasion, a big blue silk affair he'd had since high school with a hand-painted picture of a duck on it that he was real proud of; the tie was all twisted around and two buttons were off his white shirt from roughhousing outside with the kids. Just to look at him, standing there in that godawful tie and a pumpkin-seed hull stuck to his lip and his hand in his shirt front fingering his navel, it tickled me so that it took the edge off my mood. And anyhow, now that I had him up here, what was it I wanted from him? I don't exactly know what good I thought he could do with that bunch down there, but now that he was there I could see what good he could do me.
"You know," I said to him, "when we seen them cars, an' I told you that I was damned if I was able to understand such a turn-out?"
He nodded. "Yeah; an' I told you that it was the ee-on charge the atmosphere gets when it's cold, puts people in a better mood."
"Ion," I corrected him, and went on. "But I don't think that fully accounts for it." I walked over to the desk and got out the pint I keep in there for bookkeeping work. "No, not completely," I said.
"Yeah? What else?"
I took a little sip and offered him the bottle. "They're all out here because they think I sold the business," I told him. I told him what Lee'd said and how I figured Floyd Evenwrite and this other dude started the rumor. "So all those friendly folks of ours down there think they are in on the pie-slicing; that's why the whole afternoon's been smiles and shoulder-slapping, not from ions."
"But what for?" he asked, blinking his eyes. "I mean what for would Evenwrite--?"
"Evenwrite wouldn't," I said. "Evenwrite wouldn't have the sense. Evenwrite is more inclined toward planting spikes than planting rumors. No; it was this Draeger."
"Uh-huh," he said, punching his fist in his palm and nodding; then he went to blinking again. "But I still don't see what they was hoping to get outa that . . . ?"
I took back the bottle, in as he wasn't using it. I had me another sip and screwed the lid back on. "Just more pressure," I said. "Like a squeeze play . . . a way to make me look more the villain than before, even to my own folks."
He scratched at his bellybutton some more, thinking about that. "All right. I can see that, yeah; I can see how it ain't gonna make some of the boys none too happy to be told they're gonna be moved to work the woods when they was thinking the work was all over . . . and how some of them might hardtime you a little. . . . But I just don't see for the life of me what good Evenwrite and Draeger thought it would do them."
I grinned at him while I put the bottle back in the drawer and slapped it shut. "Why, by gosh, I don't see neither, Joby," I said and wiped off my mouth. "Now that you mention it. No good at all. So let's get on downstairs and see how we stand up under a little hardtiming. Let's get on down there and show those dirteaters who's one of the Ten Toughest Hombres This Side of the Rockies."
He followed me out of the room, still shaking his head. Good old Joby. Why anybody, dirteaters or no, would have to be showed something so obvious was way beyond him. (That heater is still humming when I go past the door. Viv is gone, down in the kitchen helping Jan. But Lee is still there. He sits there on that day-bed couch with that thermometer hanging out of his mouth, cleaning his glasses on one of her silk hankies, looking at me with that innocent look nearsighted people have with their glasses off. . . .)
None of the folks did handsprings over the news, but Orland and his wife was the only ones that really hardtimed me. The rest just moped around smoking cigarettes while Orland claimed he was damned if he could see where I got off trying to dictate to the whole county, and his wife kept yapping That's right! That's right! like a hysterical lap dog.
"Of course you--out here in the sticks like a hermit--you don't have to worry about neighbors!" he kept telling me. "You don't have a teen-aged daughter who comes home crying because the kids in school won't vote her into the Y-teens."
"That's right!" his wife barked. "That's right! That's right!" She was one of these little-bitty women with bulgy, bright eyes and too big teeth pushing out of her lips, like she was about to jump right out of her hide at you.
"We also have a sh
are in this business," Orland said and waved around at everybody. "We also own stock! Shares! But do we get a chance to vote like other shareholders? Hank, I don't know about the rest here, but I certainly don't recall casting any vote of any kind for this deal with Wakonda Pacific. Or for going up to the woods and working for such a deal!"
"That's right! That is right!"
"A share gets a vote; that's how it's supposed to be done. And my share votes we take this offer Evenwrite and these people are making!"
"I've yet to hear this offer Evenwrite and those people are making, Orland," I told him.
"Yeah? Maybe that's so and maybe not. But a considerable lot of the rest of us have heard it, and it sounds considerably better than anything you've offered."
"That's right!" his wife barked. "That's right!"
"Orland, it seems to me that you--and that considerable lot of the rest of you--that you would all be a little slow in wanting your jobs sold out from under you."
"We wouldn't lose our jobs. The union doesn't want to put men to work in our jobs, just back to their own. We'll keep our jobs, it's just they would own the operation."
"The union not wanting to put men in our jobs sure comes as a surprise to me--considering how they been on my ass for years to get me to hire somebody other than family--but I do have to hand it to them for working it out so complete, jobs guaranteed and all. Did Floyd tell you this? My, my; I wouldn't thought he concerned himself so over us. Was that who you heard it from? Floyd Evenwrite?"
"Never mind who I heard it from, I have faith in the particular party's word."
"You can afford to. It ain't likely they'd fire you and have to train another sawyer. . . . But some of us others might be a little easier to do without. Besides, you wouldn't want to sell the old Stamper operation down the river after so many years of faithful service to us, now would you?"
"So many years us serving the business, is what you mean. Ancient machinery, buildings . . . why, we're still working a high-lead show, for the love of Pete! We'd be wise to get out from under it while the getting's good--"
"That's right!"
"--and I cast my vote to sell!"
"Me too! Me too!"
Some of the others started to stir around, talking about voting, and I was just about to say something when the old man suddenly appeared. "How many sheers you got to vote with, Orland?"