Sometimes a Great Notion

  Hank slid the tank off and helped Joe Ben off with his. They carried their tanks by the canvas straps, walking down the hill in the direction of the donkey. Hank's long legs reeled smoothly out in front of him like ropes that stiffened at just the last moment to hold his weight; Joe Ben, taking two steps to Hank's one, followed down the hillside in a jerky, bowlegged skitter, lifting each foot quickly as though the mud were hot. He kept quiet, hoping Hank might be drawn into the talk of watching the mighty fall; it was the sort of rich ground that gave Joe possibilities to raise and crossbreed his own peculiar strain of parables. He waited, but Hank seemed off in thought. Joe tried again.

  "Yes, by gosh . . . I think I have hit on something."

  "Hit on something what?" Hank asked, amused by the profundity of Joe's tone.

  "About people hot to see a tree felled. Oh yeah. I think there is something going there. There's a passage in the Book that says, 'The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.' That's Psalms, and I know I got that one right because I paid very special attention to it when Brother Walker talked on it. Because I thought what the everloving dickens is a cedar got to do with a palm? Besides, I don't remember any cedars around Lebanon, damn sure they's no palm trees. I thought a good while about it. That's why I'm sure of the line."

  Hank waited in silence for Joe to cut in closer to his point.

  "So anyhow, if we say that the righteous are like trees, an' say people do like to see trees felled, then it comes to people are hot to see the righteous felled!" He paused a moment to let the power of this logic sink in. "It follows right to a T. Think about it: somebody always tryin' to do a good man some dirt. Some Whore of Babylon is always hustling the Man of God, ain't that so?" As he warmed to his sermon his little blackened hands began jumping about in front of him and his eyes brightened. "Oh yeah. Oh man yeah! Wait till I pass this on to Brother Walker. It works right to the hair. Remember Rita Hayworth in that Sadie Thompson show? She was for falling that preacher's cedar tree even she had to gnaw down like a beaver. Same thing in Samson and Delilah. Sure. And even Brother Walker: remember three-four years back when that baloney was passing around about what does he do with those women who come to his house private to receive the Spirit? Shoot, he had to discontinue them prayer meetings, remember? The talk got so bad . . . not that Brother Walker wasn't maybe guilty of what was said--what the dickens, Spirit's Spirit, I always say, for whatever it takes to get it into you--but the point is them women weren't complainin', were they? No. Just the people, the people trying to fall the Tree of Righteousness. Oh yeah, oh yeah!" He hammered his thigh with a sooty fist, so pleased and enthusiastic about his remarkable analogy. "Don't you agree that's a lot to it? People likin' to watch the trees come down? That they is a natural hell-driven desire to see the righteous fallen?"

  "I suppose," Hank agreed, with one eye blinking against the smoke of his cigarette.

  Joe Ben thought he detected a slight lack of enthusiasm in that agreement. "Well, don't you?" he persisted. "I mean that people just naturally sinners at heart got to chop down the righteous to keep from feeling like sinners . . . now don't you?"

  They had reached the bottom; a stream of coffee-colored water floated chunks of ash along the canyon. Hank wiped his hand on the belly of his sweat shirt and took his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to Joe, but Joe declined, saying cigarettes were now lumped in with coffee as taboos at his church. Hank took a cigarette from the pack, lit it with the butt, and flipped the butt into that stream. "Joe," he said, "I don't know about a natural hell-driven desire, but I don't think people give a tinker's damn that a tree is righteous or not when they fall it. A man wouldn't walk across the street to watch you chop down a little pisspot cedar, I don't care if it was blessed by Brother Walker till it stunk of holiness."

  He meant to let it go at that, but Joe's hurt silence demanded more.

  "But them same people, they'd come for miles to see somebody chop down that tallest-tree-in-the-state up yonder in Astoria." He shifted the weight of the tank to his other hand and took a long, jumping step across the stream. "Nope"--he started up the slope toward the donkey--"it ain't the righteous, it ain't that," he said with finality. "Now; what do you say we get at that bastard of a donkey before it falls into a junk heap."

  Joe Ben followed in silence. At first, he was merely disconsolate that such a prime subject had been done in so prematurely, but as he continued to think about Hank's statement while they worked on the donkey, his disconsolateness began to change, to a sort of perplexed anxiety, to that feeling quite close to panic that he had experienced earlier that morning at the house when he saw Hank's face looking through the door at Lee in bed. The two of them battled the inevitable decay of the piece of machinery in silence for a time, speaking only when they needed to call instructions or requests for tools to Andy, who sat up in the operator's seat; finally Joe could no longer contain his anxiety.

  "Choice days ahead," he announced suddenly. "Oh yeah!" Then paused to wait for Hank's reaction. Hank was hunched over the capstain of the donkey as if he hadn't heard. "You bet!" Joe went on. "Little bit more of this an' we'll be on the shady side of easy street. We'll be--"

  "Joby," Hank said softly, stopping work but not moving as he spoke into the greasy clutter of machinery. "Let me tell you something. I'm tired of it. Tired. And that's the God's truth."

  "Of the rain? The breakdowns? Shoot yes, you're tired! You got every reason in the world--"

  "No. You know I ain't talking about the rain or the breakdowns. Hell, we've always had rain and breakdowns and I'm always tired of that. . . ."

  Joe Ben felt a little thing start running inside of him, slow at first then speeding up very fast--how? he wondered, how can you get tired?--like a lizard or a shrew or something, a little thing running around and around inside while he waited for Hank to go on.

  "A guy gets fed up," Hank said. He had raised his head now and was looking up at the black crisscross of belts and cables of the donkey. "Fed up to his ears. Forever going down the street and hearing the locks snap shut in front of him like he was some kind of bogey man. Real tired, you know what I mean?"

  "Sure," Joe said. He constricted his bowels to stop the scurrying, "but--"

  "I mean, gets tired having people phone him about what a hardnose he is."

  "Sure, but . . ." He felt woozy, dizzied by the sound of Hank's words, the way he'd felt coming out of the ether in the doctor's office after they'd stitched up his face. ". . . Well, sure a man gets tired of it . . ." He shrugged: How can he? "But, well, you know . . ." When it was obvious to both of them that Joe was not going on, they bent back to work on the capstain.

  After a while Hank stood up with a mashed finger. Grimacing, he looked at the red beginning to bead over the grease of his knuckle. (The whole day up there . . .) He looked about the wet ground for a rag and remembered the only rags were up in the crummy where Lee was (He's spent the whole day sitting up in that outfit. I can't keep making him do that. Not just to keep him away from home), then doubled his fist and pressed the cut into the blue-gray mud ridged up by the cat treads. (Because there is bound to come a day . . .)

  Darkness fell fast while they waited for Andy to rig the light. (I can't keep him away forever . . .) The machinery became ominous and threatening in silhouette. The steel-ribbed yarder reared against the stiffening sky, thrusting its neck into the moiling twilight like a prehistoric creature. The cat tractor hunkered motionless in the mud, a patient, brute form watching them work. "I don't know," Hank said suddenly, stopping work. "Maybe we been kiddin' ourselves about it. Maybe we made the whole town mad at us for nothing. This rain ain't easin'; the spurs are washing out; we still got those last booms to finish. . . . An' even if we get 'em finished, with the weather like it is, an' no help, an' nobody in town willin' to rent us a tug . . . maybe we don't have a snowball's chance in hell driving them down river to the mill."

  "Why, man?" Joe was aghast. "
Why, listen to you!" His scratchy voice stood out sharp against the soft rain sounds. "Why, how can we miss? We been fat an' happy as babies up to now, ain't we? We can't miss! Now, let's get at this devil. . . ."

  "I don't know." Hank stood, looking up toward the crummy. (Just can't keep track of him all the time. Sooner or later I'm bound to be off someplace else. . . .) and sucked at his finger. "A bit ago you was all for heading home . . ."

  "Me? Leaving a job undone? That was somebody else. . . ."

  Andy finally rigged the wires, and a light bloomed suddenly at the end of a black cord. He hung the light out over Hank and Joe Ben; it swung pendulously back and forth, provoking a terrific struggle of shadows on the granite outcropping behind the donkey. Joe blinked in its glare for a second--"and as far as the contract goes . . ." then flung himself to work on the machine, talking all the while. ". . . Oh, yeah, we just can't miss. Look, look at all the signals we got. Just look."

  Hank removed his cigarette from his mouth and looked toward the knotty figure jabbering away as it worked; he was amused and a little puzzled by Joe's sudden intensity. "Look at what?" he asked.

  "At the signals!" Joe declared without looking up from his work. "What about Evenwrite an' his bunch getting throwed in the drink when they tried to cut our booms? Or the big saw bustin' at the mill just when we needed the crew to help . . . yeah, I know they didn't last long, but the saw did bust! That you got to admit!--let me see that Allen wrench. If old Jesus wasn't on our side would he flung those birds in the water? Or broke that saw? Would he?" His voice rose as his theme developed. "Oh, I tell ya, the way I feel we just can not miss! We're in God's pocket and he's been breakin' his back to let us know it. We can't disappoint him. Man, look. Look here! See? I got that capstain to fit by gosh just like that. Try her out, Andy! Oh yeah, we'll get home an' get us some sleep and get up at that state park in the mornin' while it's still dark and log more board feet than anybody ever logged in one day before in history! Hank, I know! I know! I feel it like I never felt nothing else before in all my life! Because I--whups, hear that? Hear it? What did I tell you, purring like a kittycat--leave it run, Andy boy--because I mean on top of all those other signs and the like--wait; swing the light closer so's we can get our tools up,

  Andy--on top of those signs--an' I seen signs in my time, but nothing ever to hold a match to all we been getting--on top and more important . . . I been experiencin' a tremendous power building in me the last few days like I could just tear out those old firs up in that park and toss 'em to the river like throwin' the javelin . . . and I just now been able to figure out why!"

  Hank stood out of the way, grinning, as he watched the little man hustle the tools together, like a squirrel gathering nuts. "Okay, why?"

  "It's because"--Joe caught his breath--"like the book puts it: 'Whosoever shall say unto this mountain be thou removed into the sea an'--uh-uh, yeah--'an' shall not doubt that those things which he hath sayeth shall come to pass, why, man, that guy is gonna have just exactly what he sayeth!' Hey, boy; you didn't know I knew that one, I bet. Anyway, what I'm saying, is this power I been feeling is because I don't doubt it! See? See? An' that's why I know we can't miss. Dang! Quick; grab that hard hat of Andy's where it's blowin' away. . . ." He scrambled after the spinning aluminum hat and caught it before it hit the ground. He came panting back to where Hank stood grinning. "Hot dog and man alive," he exclaimed studying the swinging trees to cover the flush of embarrassment brought on by the open fondness of Hank's grin, "she is a windy one tonight, friend; oh yeah."

  "Not as windy as some," Hank judged, telling himself that as winds and friends went, all in all, a man could do a whole lot worse than old Joby and the storms he blew. A whole hell of a lot worse. Because even when he was as obvious as a forty-mile-an-hour gale you still couldn't help wanting to go along with him. Most people, when they tried to cheer you up, didn't make fools out of themselves; they could be a lot more subtle about it than Joe could with his prancing and hollering, but they couldn't be nearly as successful. I think this was because he didn't try to be subtle; he didn't care if he made a fool out of himself, just so long as he made you happy with the fool. And as we hurried around, buttoning up the show for the night, I was so tickled at him working to improve my mood that I clean forgot for a while what'd caused the mood in the first place. Right up to when we headed up to the crummy I couldn't remember (He's sitting there awake; I tell him to scoot over . . .); then I heard a flock of geese off down country and toward the town and I remembered just exactly what was bugging me (I ask him what he'd been doin' to pass the day. He says writing. I ask if it was more poetry and he looks at me like he doesn't have the vaguest inkling what I'm talking about), because hearing them geese is just like the phone ringing; even with the wire tore out it's still the same yammering, the same crazy pestering and wheedling, even if I can't make out the words. And hearing the geese, and thinking about the phone wire being tore out . . . that screwy phone call from the night before finally came back to me. It had been dangling just out of my memory's line of vision ever since last night, like one of those dreams when you can remember the feeling but not the dream.

  I started the crummy and headed off to the boat at the bottom of the hill, trying to get the memory straight. The whole conversation started coming back to me, clear as a bell; I still wasn't sure right then whether it had really happened or was just a dream, but, real or a dream, I could remember it damn near word for word.

  It was from Willard Eggleston, the little gink who used to run the laundry. He was all keyed up and excited and so screwy-sounding I thought at first he was actually drunk. I was still about nine-tenths asleep and he was trying to tell me some story about him and the colored girl that used to work for him, and about their child--this was what made me think he was drunk--about the child the two of them had had. I just listened for a while, polite, like I did with the other calls, but after he rambled on long enough I began to see this wasn't like the others; I began to see he wasn't just calling to give me a hard time, that there was something else on his mind behind all of his rambling and roaming talk. I let him go on; pretty soon he drew a long breath and said, "That's the story, Mr. Stamper; just like it happened. Every bit the truth, I don't care what you think." I said, "All right, Willard, I'll go along with you, but--" "Every word of it the Lord's pure truth. I know, I personally know, so I don't care if you go along with me or not--" "All right, all right; but you had more on your mind when you called than telling me how proud you are to be able to sire yourself a pickaninny--" "A boy, Mr. Stamper, a son! and not just sire him; I was able to pay for his way in the world like a man should for his son--" "Okay, have it your way: a son, but--" "--until you went and made it impossible for a fellow to make profit enough to pay for the overhead--" "I might hafta be showed just exactly how I did that, Willard, but for the sake of argument--" "You've all but bankrupted the whole town; do you need to be showed that?" "All I need is just for you to get on around to what you had on your mind when--" "I'm doing exactly that, Mr. Stamper--" "--because there's a lot of other anonymous callers these days waitin' their turn at me; I don't want to tie up the line too long with one when so many--" "I am not anonymous, Mr. Stamper; I want you to be sure of that; this is Eggleston, Willard--" "Eggleston; all right, Willard, now just what is it you had to tell me--other'n your secret loves--at, ah, twelve-twenty-two in the morning?" "Just this, Mr. Stamper: I'm on my way this very moment to kill myself. Ah? No wise comment? This wasn't what you expected, I'll bet? Not from Willard Eggleston, I'll bet? But it's as true as I'm standing here. You'll see. No, don't try to stop me. And don't try to phone the police, because they couldn't reach the place before I do anyway, and if you phoned they would know I phoned you, wouldn't they? And that I phoned to tell you it was your fault that I was forced into--" "Forced? Willard, now listen--" "Yes, forced, Mr. Stamper. You see, I have a very large policy with double indemnity in case of violent death, naming as beneficiary my son. Of course, until he's
twenty-one it will--" "Willard, those companies don't pay on suicide!" "That's why I can't have you telling anyone, Mr. Stamper. You see now? I am dying for my son. I've arranged everything to look like an accident. But if you were to--" "Willard, you know what I think?" "--to tell anyone about this phone call then I would have died in vain, wouldn't that be true? And your guilt would then be doubled--" "I think that you been seeing too many of your own movies." "No, Mr. Stamper! You wait! I know you people think that I'm totally without courage, that I'm just 'that spineless Willard Eggleston.' But you'll see. Oh yes. And don't bother trying to stop me, my mind is made up." "I ain't trying to stop you from anything, Willard." "You'll see tomorrow; oh yes, you'll see what kind of spine--" "I ain't trying to stop anybody from anything, but you know, that looks to me like a pretty poor excuse for spine as far as I'm concerned--" "It's no use trying to talk me out of it." "What I'd call a man with spine is a man able to pay for his kid by living for him, no matter how hard it comes--" "I'm sorry, sorry, but you're just wasting your breath." "--not by dying for him. That's a lot of crap, Willard, dying for somebody." "Just whistling at the wind, Mr. Stamper." "That's the one thing that everybody in the world can do, ain't it, Willard? is die . . . living is the hassle." "No use, Mr. Stamper, not the slightest. I've made my decision." "Well, good luck, then, Willard. . . ." "There's no way anyone can--what" "I said 'Good luck.' " "Good luck? Good luck? Then you don't believe I'm going to do it!" "Yeah . . . I think I do; I think I probably do. But I'm tired, and not thinking too sharp, and 'good luck' is about the best I can offer." "The best you can offer? Good luck? To someone who--" "Christ almighty, Willard; you want me to read you a page of scripture or something? 'Good luck' seems as good as anything in your case; it's better than 'Have fun.' Or 'Bon voyage.' Or 'Sweet dreams.' Or just plain old 'Good-by.' Let's leave it like that, Willard: Good luck, and I'll toss in the good-by for good measure . . . okeydoke?" "But I haven't--" "I got to try to get some sleep, Willard. So, with all my heart, good luck--" "--completely finished telling--" "--and good-by."