Sometimes a Great Notion

  After I drop the kid at the doctor's I decide to drive on to the Snag for a little slash. See what's the news. Mainly me, it looks like. My coming in kind of stirs things up a mite, but I say piss on 'em and head for the bar. I have me two whiskies while I read the scribbled notes pinned up there near the door, advertising all kinds of paraphernalia, and I'm about to get me a third when Indian Jenny comes driving through the door like a big old cow. She blinks around and sees me and she comes bearing down on me with fire in her eye.

  "You!" she says to me, "you all, your whole family, you, you're bad as hell on us, being so stubborn."

  "Jenny! By god now, you like a drink? Teddy, see what Jenny here'd like." I act like everything's normal as pie, just like I done at Stokes's. I'm darned if I show them I know better. Maybe I don't hear so good no more, but I can still keep up appearances. Jenny, she takes the glass Teddy brought but she don't let it soothe her down none. She sucks it down without taking her eyes offn me. Seems to me she's awful caught up in something don't have any bearing on her. But then, she's never gone overboard for me. When she's done with her whisky she sets down the glass and says, "Anyhow, you can't make delivery anyhow. Not by Thanksgiving. Nobody can."

  I just grin at her and shrug like I ain't got no more idee than a duck what she means about Thanksgiving. Wondering what's eating at her, by god. Maybe without a little cash floating around and niggers here not able to get drunk, she's been having a tough time getting victims. Could be. This business is affecting everybody, I reckon. Maybe the way it's affecting Jenny is giving her the hot britches. She keeps glaring at me; then she says nobody can make it by Thanksgiving and I tell her I am awful sorry but I just cannot make out what she is driving at. She tips her glass again and puts it back on the counter. And then says again, "No, you won't make it." This time in a spooky goddam fashion that someway bothers me, by god. Enough I have to ask, "What you mean I won't make it? I don't know what you're talking about. Besides, what's to stop me?"

  And she says, "I get my revenge on you, Henry Stamper . . . I been working with bat bones all week. . . ."

  "So bat bones is gonna stop me? Boy howdy, and you Indians--"

  "No. Not just bat bones, not only. . . ."

  "What else, then?" I ask, getting peeved a little. "What is this thing you got workin' for you so fierce?"

  "The moon," is all she says, "the moon," and walks back in the direction of the women's toilet, leaving me standing there studying that one over . . .

  The other citizens in the bar went disappointedly back to their drinks and their conversations; they had thought for a minute that Jenny might really light into the old turtle. But no, they decided, when she'd left, just more of her bull about the moon and the stars. . . . So they dismissed her and drew finger patterns on the formica tabletops with the condensate from their drinks and wished something would happen.

  Only Henry, with his lean, slanting back to the room, gave serious thought to Jenny's words. The moon? He finished his drink slowly. . . . "The moon, huh?" he said again to himself, frowning. Then, slowly, reached for the wallet from his pocket. "What if . . . ?" He took a tiny book from one of the wallet's compartments and riffled through the pages, stopping, running a cracked black nail down a list of tiny numbers. "Let's see.

  November; what if--" Then abruptly shoved wallet and book into his pocket, lurched out through the door to the pick-up. "Christ . . . what if she hadn't said something?" He drove east, out of town, without pausing for stop signs or even considering going back to the doctor's office for Lee. When he passed the mill he swung off to the side of the highway and called out to Andy, "How they doin' up there?"

  Andy was dragging a huge log into place with a peavey pole; the small motorboat he was using to retrieve the logs as they showed up in the river chugged through the opening in a boom. "Pretty good," the boy called back. "About ten. An' bigger'n any I ever see before."

  "How's the river mark? Up, ain't it?"

  "Up a scosh, yeah; why? It ain't up much, not near enough to trouble us. . . ."

  "But it's still ebbing fast, ain't it? While it's rising? Ain't that right, it's ebbing."

  Before Andy answered he stood up in the boat bottom to look across the surface of the water; chunks of bark and debris were indeed still moving rapidly down river toward the sea. Slightly confounded now, he turned the boat and putted to check the marker on one of the check-pilings to be sure he hadn't misread the depth. No; he'd been right. It was rising, and at a fair clip, though the river was still ebbing fast. "Yeah," he called slowly over his shoulder, "it's running out an' rising at the same time. Uncle Henry, what you make of that? The water coming up while the river's running down?"

  But the old man had already thrown the pick-up back into gear and was picking up speed on the highway up river. The moon. The moon, huh? Well, maybe so the moon. Well, okay, the moon. But I can whup it too. I by god can whup the moon too. . . .

  When the Amazon in the nurse's uniform finally led me to the doctor's office for examination, the doctor wasn't even concerned enough over my pitiful fever-racked frame to be present; in fact, it was the Amazon that ministered to me, and I didn't see the good doctor himself until she had completed my treatment and showed me to another office where a mountain of flesh trapped within a white smock whistled and sighed from an ancient swivel chair.

  "Leland Stamper? I'm Doctor Layton. You got a minute? Sit down."

  "I have a minute, probably more, in fact; I'm waiting for my father to return for me, but if it's all the same to you, I think I shall continue to stand. I'm paying homage to the penicillin shot."

  The doctor grinned at me through his purple jowls and held out a gold cigarette case. "Smoke?" I took one and thanked him. While I lit the cigarette he leaned torturously back in his chair and regarded me with that look generally reserved by deans for wayward sophomores. I waited for him to get into whatever it was he was planning to lecture about, wondering if he didn't have better things to do with his valuable time than to waste it on a young stranger bent on adultery. He ponderously lit his own cigarette, then leaned back like a white blimp exhaling smoke. I tried putting on my best look of annoyed impatience, but something in his manner, in the way he relished the pause, turned my impatience to discomfort.

  I naturally assumed he had called me in to make a citizen's appeal to brother Hank through me, as most of the rest of the strikebound town had been doing to every available Stamper, but he took his cigarette from his fat red butt of mouth and said instead, "I just wanted to have a look at your face was all. Because your posterior has a certain nostalgic significance; your posterior happened to be one of the very first in a long line of posteriors that I had the opportunity to whack. You were born my first year practicing, you see."

  I told him he could have seen the article itself a moment ago if he'd been on his toes.

  "Oh, posteriors don't change much. Not like faces. How's your mom, by the way? I certainly hated to see you two leave here when--"

  "She's dead," I said flatly. "You hadn't heard? Not quite a year. Now, if there's nothing else?"

  The chair squeaked and complained as he leaned back forward. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said, tapping the ash into the wastepaper basket. "No, that's all." He looked at the chart the nurse had given him. "Just come back in three days for a follow-up. And watch out. Oh, and say hello to Hank for me when you--"

  "Watch out?" I stared at him. The fat face underwent an abrupt transition before my eyes, from clod of a doctor to arch-criminal in white. "Watch out?"

  "Yes, you know," he said; then, after a knowing wink, added, "for exhaustion, cold, et cetera." He coughed, frowned at the cigarette, tossed it in the basket with the ashes, as I tried to fathom just how deep the knowing went beneath that wink. "Yes, you can lick this thing," he said with heavy overtones, "if you don't let it catch you with your pants down."

  "What thing?"

  "This Asian flu bug, what did you think I meant?" He regarded me innocently from
beneath eyelids bloated and positively drooping with wickedness. I was suddenly certain that he knew everything, the whole plan, the entire intended vengeance, everything! In some diabolic Sydney Greenstreet fashion, he had amassed a complete brochure of all my activities. . . . "Maybe we could have a chat the next time you come in, huh?" he purred, lips dripping innuendoes. "Until then, like I said, watch out."

  Terrified, I hurried out to the waiting room, with his echo pursuing me like a hound baying watch OUT . . . OUT . . . OUT . . . What was happening? I wrung my hands. What had gone wrong? How had he known? And where was my father . . . ?

  On the slope Hank stopped the shriek of his saw and tilted the metal brim of his hat back to watch the lean, stiff-moving figure of old Henry work its way down a switchback deer trail, curious and amused (but, as a matter of fact, none too surprised that the old man had come back out. I had been halfway suspecting as much since I'd saw him look over the set-up and watch Joe unload the old-time equipment. I'd halfway figured he'd get into town and get a little juiced and decide to come back out and show us how it used to be done. But, as he got closer, I noticed he looked pretty sober, like there was more on his mind than just futzing around shooting the bull and getting in everybody's way. There was something about the way he moved that I recognized as special, about the way he hustled--a mixture of worry and joy and excitement as he jerked his neck and tossed the white shock of hair around where it kept getting washed down in his eyes. It called to my mind the kind of grim giddiness that I hadn't seen in him in god knows how long, years and years, but that I recognized right off, even fifty yards off and him in a leg cast.

  I stopped my cutting. I laid my saw down, lit a fresh cigarette off my stub, and watched him come . . . scrabbling, grabbing vines and roots as he heaved that stiff leg before him--heave, then lurching forward, pole-vaulting forward almost over that muddied cast, finding a foothold with the one good, cork-booted leg, then throwing that cast ahead of him again--relentless and grim and comical all at once.

  "Whoa back a little," I hollered up the hill at him. "You'll pop a gasket, you old fool. Slow down. Nobody's after you."

  He didn't answer back. I hadn't expected that he would, puffing and panting like he was. Where's the kid? But he didn't slow down, either. What's he done with the kid?

  "Lee up in the pick-up?" I called again and started angling toward him. "Or was he so goddam sick he couldn't even make the ride back with half a dozen cotter pins?"

  "Left 'im," he said, short of breath. "Town." He didn't say anything again until he reached the log I had been bucking and leaned his hip up against it for a rest. "Ah, lor'," he gasped. "Ah, lor'." For a minute I was worried: his eyes were rolling; his face was as white as his hair; his throat seemed clogged . . . he tipped his pink old toothless mouth up to the rain, sucking in great breaths of the wet air. "Ah, lor' almighty," he said, finally getting a good breath. He ran a tongue around his lips that looked like a tongue out of a boot. "Shoo! Took 'er faster'n I planned. Shooee!"

  "Well, Jesus H. Christ I hope to shout," I said, relieved as well as a little hacked off at being so worried. "What the shit do you mean, come ball-assin' down that hill like a wild stallion? I'm damned if I want you poppin' some gasket where I

  have to tote you back up to that pick-up. You'd be heavy with that load you got on." I could see he'd had him a couple by the way he was colored up, but he was a long way from drunk.

  "Lef ' the boy in town," he said, standing up and looking around him. "Where's Joe Benjamin? Get him over here."

  "He's the other side of those outcroppin's--what the hell's wrong with you, anyhow?" I saw he was steamed up with more than Teddy's whisky. "What happened back there in town?"

  "Give Joe Ben a whistle," he told me. He walked a few steps from the log, surveying the lay of the land. After looking it over he says, "You workin' land too level. No good now. Too much effort to get the bastards moving. We'll move on, down yonder past that little swale, where it's steeper. It's dangerous, but we're in kind of a bind. Where the hell's Joe Ben!"

  I gave Joe another whistle. "Now cool off and tell me what you're so steamed up about."

  "Let's wait," he says. He was still puffing pretty bad. "Till Joe Ben gets here. Here's the pins. I left in a hurry. I didn't have time to pick up the boy. Whooee. My lungs ain't so good any more. . . ." And I saw there wasn't any sense doing anything but wait. . . .)

  After another hour spent in that pungent waiting room, an hour of pure terror and paranoia spent pretending to read back issues of McCall's and True Romance under the nurse's supervision and wondering just how much that devil of a doctor knew, I resigned myself to admitting that the old man wasn't coming back for me and that perhaps the doctor didn't know anything. I faked a yawn. I stood up and blew my nose loudly on a handkerchief so overused that the Amazon winced with disgust at the nasty old thing. "Could get yourself some paper from the john," she advised me over the top of her magazine, " 'n' throw that unsanitary thing away."

  A dozen parting replies passed through my mind as I pulled on my jacket, but I was still too cowed by my recent experience with the woman and her needle to be able to voice them. Instead I paused at the door and meekly announced I was going to walk downtown. "If my father comes back, could you please tell him I'll probably be at Grissom's?"

  I waited for an answer. She did not seem to have heard at first. Her face did not rise from the book, but as I stood there, like a schoolboy waiting to be excused, the curl of her slurring voice traced the curl of her lip perfectly. "You right sure you can make it without fainting again?" She licked her thumb to flip a page. "And don't let the door slam."

  Between my clenched teeth I cursed her soundly, as well as the hypodermic, the doctor, and my thoughtless father, cursed them all and threatened dire revenge for each and every one in his turn . . . and closed the door behind me with a coward's care.

  In the puddled walk outside the clinic I stood wondering what to do, feeling completely foiled. My chances to get Viv alone seemed to grow slimmer and slimmer. How would I get back out there unless old Henry came back? And yet, without thinking of it, when I started for town I avoided the only street on which he might drive if he came to look for me, taking instead, "for old time's sake," the old broken walk that would take me past the schoolhouse . . . "in case that doctor comes looking."

  Sulking, furtive, alert--hands hanging cold and cocked at my sides instead of warm in my pockets--I advanced cautiously through billowing rain down a long row of memories, ready for anything. The rickety, slithery wooden walk took me past forlorn fishermen's shacks ominous and smoky and quilted with assorted patches made from snuff-can lids and flattened Prince Albert tins: There the Mad Scandinavian lives; "a baby-eater," my schoolmates used to claim as they tossed apples at his windows; "you skeered, Leland?" . . . past the cottage where the janitor had lived with all the rumors that janitors always live with, past the squat brick furnace building that heated the school, past the shaggy wall of stacked waste lumber that fired the furnace . . . and, strangely, I didn't relax my caution most of the long walk. Then, when almost at once my groundless fears did leave me--why so scared? How stupid I had been, thinking that jowly fool knew anything; what a stupid worry!--I realized that I was standing in front of the schoolhouse, my age-old citadel of Learning, of Truth, and my sanctuary. But fear was not replaced by peace: as I strolled along the walk edging my sanctuary's play yard, my alert pose turned to one of slouching dejection and remorse as I trailed my knuckles along the cyclone-fence enclosure past a school I'd never belonged to, past a playground loud with lunch-hour memories of teams I'd never played on. Through the fence, I saw I was passing the baseball diamond. Where the "big kids" had played when I was a first-grader; where the "little kids" played after I reached grade four . . . "Little kids?" Hank once asked. "Yeah, you know, the dumb kids, the stupes who couldn't enjoy a book in all their lives." Now this old rationalization seemed pitifully thin to me; big kid or little, first grade or fourth,
Leland, old chap, you know you would have given your whole collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs to have joined that noisy, disorganized group. Isn't that so? Isn't it! As I looked through the dripping crisscross of wire to the runneling field I found myself wryly asking When do I get to play, fellers, when do I get chosen? Everybody's had a turn but me. Come on. Choose me for a change.

  The fellers hung back. No nine-year-old demagogue of the diamond rushed forward, freckled with good old American sandlot sunshine, to point with the greasy finger of a fielder's mitt and say, "I choose you for my team." Nobody shouted, "You're needed, Leland, you'll come through strong in a clutch."

  But fellers, I pleaded into the whorled ear of rain, fair's fair, now, isn't it? Fair's fair?

  Yet, even in the face of that time-revered truth, the phantoms hung back; fair might be fair and all, they couldn't argue with that, but when it came to first basemen--or second or third--they wanted a cool head and a brave heart, not some dang punk who throws his fist up in front of his specs every time he sees a fast one skipping in his general direction.

  But guys . . .

  Not some dang sissy who falters, fidgets, and finally faints dead away and wakes up five minutes later with his trousers around his ankles and an ammonia capsule under his nose--just because a nurse pricked him from behind with a little penicillin.

  Wait, fellers; it wasn't just a prick. The needle was this long!

  This long, the sissy says. This long. Willya listen at him.

  It was so! Please, fellers . . . maybe home base?

  Home base. Willya just listen at the pantywaist. . . . C'mon; let's get at it . . .

  They shifted back into time and I walked on again, past the ball-field while the wind booed and the rain hissed through the chicken-wire backstop and the regular team held down sodden home plate against all comers. I turned toward town, away from the school where I had received straight A's in everything but recess. Some sanctuary. Oh, sure, my fear had been pacified by the sight of that institute of learning--at least I no longer expected the doctor to swoop down on me like a fat vampire; for, like a church, the school served as my defense against such demons--but in the demon's place grew a terrible emptiness, a great malignant vacuum. No demons, but no teammates either. Seemed it was always like that.