Sometimes a Great Notion

  The nurse noticed his interest and paused, smiling into one of the larger rooms. "Each room's got one now. Used, of course, but still in excellent shape. The DAR ladies donated them." She adjusted a strap through the fabric of her uniform. "Gives the old folks something to look at, y'know, while they wait."

  The picture in the room they were looking into had begun to flip; yet no one called for an adjustment. "While they wait for what?" Hank couldn't help wondering out loud. The nurse gave him a sharp look and started on down the corridor again toward the old man's room.

  "We had to situate him where we had room," she felt compelled to explain, speaking sharply. "Even though he might not be classified geriatric. The new wing is always so crowded . . . babies and young mamas and the like. Besides, he's not exactly a spring chicken any more, now is he?"

  The place stank of age, of all the accouterments of age, strong soap and wintergreen salve, alcohol and baby food, and, over everything, the keen reek of urine. Hank's nose wrinkled with distaste. But, he reasoned, when you come down to it, why shouldn't the old live in an old world and the bright new wing be reserved for babies and young mamas and the like?

  "No . . . I guess he ain't exactly a spring chicken any more."

  The nurse stopped at the very last door. "We did give him a private room, you see. Mr. Stokes is in there with him now." Her voice had dropped to a reedy whisper. "I know what you told us about nobody gettin' in to see him for a while, but I figured . . . well, my lands, they're such old friends I couldn't see the harm." She smiled quickly and opened the door, stepping in to announce, "Another visitor, Mr. Stamper."

  The gaunt and white-maned head reared up out of the pillow with a bray of laughter. "By god now, I was beginning to think all my kin had give me up for dead. Find a chair, son. Sit. Wait. Here's old Boney. He's been here cheering me up, like a good soul."

  "Afternoon, Hank. My condolences." The cold hand touched Hank's with a husking, parchment sound, then withdrew quickly to cover a practiced cough. Hank looked down at his father.

  "How you makin' it, Papa?"

  " 'Middlin', Hank, middlin'." His brows lowered despondently over defeated eyes--"The doc says it'll be a piece before I can get back to loggin', maybe a long piece . . ."--then lifted quickly to reveal a flash of ornery green. "But he says I'll be playin' the violin again before the week's out. Oh yee haw, hee hee haw! Look out for me, Boney, they been shootin' me fulla dope an' I'm a caution."

  "Henry." Boney spoke through his fingers, hiding the thin slot of mouth. "You had best take it easy now. . . ."

  "Listen to him, son; don't you know he brings me a lot of pleasure comin' here? Here, sit down on the edge of the bed if you can't run down a chair. Nursie, don't I get but one chair? And what d'ya say you bring another scuttle of mud for my boy?"

  "Coffee is provided for the patients, Mr. Stamper, not for the visitors."

  "I'll pay for it, goddangit!" He winked at Hank. "I tell ya . . . when they fust brought me in here the other night you just would not believe all the crap and paraphernalia they wanted me to fill out. Seems as you neglected to, so I had to do it."

  "That's not true!" the nurse hoped in horror; but there was no telling about that night staff. "I don't think it's true."

  "Yessir, fill all kinds of the stuff out. Even was after my fingerprints by god till they seen I weren't equipped for it." The woman turned and huffed away down the corridor. Henry studied her departure with an expert's eye. "Hogs fightin' under a sheet . . . how'd I like to sink my long yellows in that an' let it drag me to my death?"

  "If you was of an age," Boney added on, "to have long yellows." He wasn't giving a thing.

  "Maybe you'd have to sink your gums into her, Boney. But I still got three my own teeth, if you'll notice"--he opened his mouth to display the proof--"an' two of 'em meet." This seemed to tire him momentarily and his high spirits waned while he lay for a few seconds with his eyes closed. When his head rolled on the pillow to look again at his somber visitor his good humor seemed strained. "You know, that damned woman, she's been waiting all the livelong day for this ol' nigger to give up the ghost an' get it over with so's she can make the bed. Now I believe she's peeved that I haven't."

  "Maybe she's just worried," Boney observed solemnly. "She's had a lot of reason to be worried about you, old fellow."

  Henry rallied to meet the challenge. "Reason the bull. I weren't even close, not even close, you goddam vulture. Listen at him, Hank, the old buzzard. Why I weren't even in shoutin' distance!"

  Hank smiled weakly. Boney looked down at the floor with a slight shaking of his head. "My, my, my." It was his day, he felt, and he wasn't about to let his toll of doom be drowned out by a few tinkles of humor.

  Henry didn't like that shake of the head. "You think no? I always said, didn't I, that I could outlog any man this side of the Cascades, with one arm tied behind my back? All right, now I get a chance to prove it. An' you by god wait an' see if I--" A sudden thought occured to him; he turned back to Hank. "Say, what come of that arm, anyhow? Because, y'know . . ." He timed a little pause before he announced, "I was kinda attached to it!"

  His head fell back to the brass bars, mouth going wide in voiceless laughter. Hank knew the old man had probably been waiting for hours for the opportunity to make that announcement. He told Henry that he'd kept good track of the limb. "I had a notion you might want to keep it. I got it in the freezer with all the other meat."

  "Well, you watch that Viv don't fry it up for supper," Henry warned. "For I was always mighty attached to that arm."

  When Henry tired of his joke he fumbled for the buzzer button that dangled on a wire beside his head. "Where in hell that woman go to now? I ain't been able to get anything out of her all day, and I don't just mean coffee. Hank, I want you to bring me up on--here! damn it, ring this gizmo for me; she keep puttin' it on the wrong side where I can't get at it. On my wingless side. Hm. You be careful of that ol' wing, now. Damn. Where is that old cow? A man could die in this place and people wouldn't know it till the stink got bad. Listen, I want to know what's happenin' with the show an' if--Come on! don't just fiddle with it, buzz hell out of it. That's what it's here for. Boney, what's the matter'th you? Sittin' there like you lost your best friend . . . ?"

  "It's only that I'm worried for you, Henry. Just exactly that."

  "Balls. You're worryin' I'll outlive you is just exactly what. You been worryin' that ever since I can remember. Son, Jesus Christ ohmighty, give me that outfit!" Swinging it by the wire, he clanged the button loudly against the nightstand and called in a pained and angry voice, "Nurse! Nurse!" His eyes clenched with the effort. "Get me another shot o' that dope, and where the hell's that caw-fee!"

  "Easy, Papa . . ."

  "Yes, Henry . . ." Boney spread his web of fingers over the sheet covering Henry's knee. "You better take it a little easier."

  "Stokes"--Henry's eyes, usually so wide that white could be seen all the way around pupils hot as Fourth of July flares, went narrow and cold--"git your fishy old mitt off'n my leg. Just git it off." He glared at Boney until the other's eyes dropped; he felt a surge of delight at finally voicing a feeling long unvoiced. He continued to look straight at Boney and went on, speaking with unusual softness, "You're just as bad as she is, Stokes; you know that. Except you been forty-five years at it. Hopin' I'll give up the ghost." He drew back the button-on-wire threateningly. "Now git it off, I tell you. Off!"

  Boney withdrew his hand and held it at his chest, looking wronged. Henry dropped the button and began jerking about beneath the covers in a state of tense agitation.

  "That's not true, old friend," Boney said in a hurt voice.

  " 'S true. 'S true as the day is long, an' we both know it. Forty-five years, fifty years, sixty years. Nurse!"

  Boney sighed and half turned in his chair, presenting a face pained by the injustice of the accusation. But there was something so false in his attitude of wronged friendship, something so vicious in the denying shake
of his head, that Hank was certain that the whole act was a deliberate admission to all of Henry's charges. Fascinated, he moved back to the foot of the bed and stood there, half hidden by the yellowed bed curtain. The two old men had forgotten him in their confrontation of each other. Boney continued to shake his head sadly; Henry jerked about beneath the covers and glared sideways at the figure in the chair from time to time. After a minute of silence, he worked his mouth to express a feeling that had burned so long unworded that now it threatened to rage out of control.

  "A good sixty years. Ever since . . . ever since . . . goddam you, Stokes, I can't even remember when it first started, it's been there so long!"

  "Ah, Henry, Henry . . ." Boney chose to acknowledge the fire through his overdrawn denial of it. "Can you truthfully now recall me ever giving you anything but what I considered the soundest advice, the very soundest, in all our years? Can you?"

  "Like which? Like the time you advised me and Ben and Aaron to bring Ma to go to Eugene for the Welfare, because we couldn't endure a season alone in those woods? Somebody that ain't used to it, you says, can't endure a season in these woods. You recall that advice? Well, we endured it fine, as I look back. . . ."

  "You lost your mother that winter from your stubbornness," Boney reminded him.

  "Lost her? She died! The woods didn't have beans to do with it. She just got sick and laid down and died!"

  "It mightn't of happened in town."

  "It'd of happened anywhere. She died that year cause she made up her mind that she was bound and determined to die."

  "We all offered to help."

  "I'll say you did. You helped us right out of that feed store."

  "We all unselfishly offered the necessities of life--"

  "And wanted what in payment? Our house an' property? A mortgage on the next ten years?"

  "Henry, that's unfair; the organization made no such demands."

  "Not wrote down any place, maybe, but they was demands made just the same. I never seen your old man--or that goddam organization neither one--get hurt from any of these unselfish offerings. You did all right with your offerings."

  "Be that as it may, there's no one who can accuse us of havin' anything but the interests of the community at heart."

  Before Henry could answer, the door opened and the nurse entered with a small paper cup of coffee. She set it on the bed-stand, looked around at the silent men, and hurried back out without saying anything. Henry took up the cup and drank. He watched Boney through the rising steam. When he brought the cup from his lips, Hank saw that the rim bore mark of those two teeth out of three that met. Henry placed the cup back on the nightstand, never taking his eyes from Boney's bent head. With the sleeve of his white flannel robe he wiped his mouth. Boney continued to shake his head, clucking pityingly over his old companion's unbalanced state.

  "Boney," Henry finally said in a flat voice, "you got any snoose on you?"

  Boney's face brightened. "Surely, surely." He drew a can from the pocket of his coat. "Here, let me--"

  "You give it here."

  He blinked at Henry, then placed the can carefully on the sheet, unopened. Henry picked it up. He began turning it around and around in his pink hand as the thumb laboriously pushed at the lid; a fraction of an inch, turn, another fraction, another turn . . . Hank ached to take the can from his father, quickly screw the lid off, and end this thing, free both himself and his father from an obsession that seemed more and more senseless. But he somehow did not dare move from his hiding place beside the curtain. Not yet. Not until it was finished of its own accord.

  The lid popped off. The coarse brown fuzz of tobacco boiled out over the sheet. Henry cursed, then, patiently, with Boney watching motionless, scooped the bulk of the spill back into the tin, replaced the lid, popped it tight between thumb and finger, tossed it into Boney's lap. . . .

  "Much obliged."

  Then swept the remainder into a small heap on the sheet, rolled this into a ball, and placed the wad between his lower lip and his gums. He concentrated a second as he maneuvered the charge into comfortable position, then flapped the grains from the sheet with a victorious flourish. The stained lips broke into a broad grin.

  "Much obliged, old fellow, old friend . . . very much obliged."

  Now it seemed it was Boney's turn to fidget. Henry's success with the snuff had shaken his complacency and placed the burden of the contest on his humped shoulders. "What do you plan on now, Henry," he wanted to know, trying to sound matter-of-fact, "now that things have changed?"

  "Why, what do you mean, Boney? Just what I been doin', I imagine." The old daring confidence returned to Henry's eyes. "Plan to get back out there with the boys, I imagine, back out in the woods. Lettin' daylight in the swamp. Bullwhippin' the brush." He yawned and drew a long fingernail down the stubble of his neck. "Ah, I ain't foolin' myself. I ain't a pup any more. When you get into your seventies you got to think about slowin' up, lettin' the boys do the muley work while you rely on your knowhow and experience. Maybe even get me a chair out there. But, I don't know, when it comes right down to it--"

  "Henry." Boney could stand it no longer. "You are a fool. Bullwhipping the brush . . . don't you see you're the one gettin' bullwhipped? You! Ever since . . . But I told you, all along I told you--"

  "Ever since what, Boney?" Henry asked pleasantly.

  "Since I told you that there is no mortal bein' capable of--of enduring all alone this country! We are in this together! Man . . . man has got to--"

  "Ever since what, Boney?" Henry still wanted to know.

  "What? Ever since I . . . What?"

  Henry leaned forward intently. "Since Pa run off and I stuck? Since I survived that winter? Since I built up a business that you said nobody could?"

  "I never had anything against men developing the land."

  "But one man doin' it? One family? Heh? Heh? When you told us time an' again we couldn't. A 'community effort' is what you always said. God. I heard that pioneer-community-against-the-wilds shit so much the first years my belly was run over with it."

  "It was necessary. It was mortal man's only hope against the untamed elements--"

  "Sounds just like your old daddy talkin'."

  "--that we strive together to survive together."

  "I don't recollect as how I did much strivin' together, but I believe I did survive. Even gained a little bit on the side."

  "Look what it's got you! Loneliness an' despair."

  "Well, I don't know about that."

  "Bedridden!" Boney stood from his chair, twisting his hands in his shirtfront. "An arm lost! Dying!"

  "I don't know about that. It maybe winged, nicked me a little bit, but you got to expect that."

  Boney started to say more but was stopped by a fit of rage and coughing. When the coughing stopped he took his coat from the back of the chair and stabbed his skeleton arms into the sleeves. "Out of his head with pain." He tried to dismiss Henry as he walked toward the door. The coughing had injured his throat so his voice squeaked comically. "That's all. Crazy with pain. And dope. He can't think reasonable." He wiped his mouth and stood fingering the smooth buttons of the coat.

  "Leavin', Boney?" Henry inquired amiably.

  "Burnin' up with fever, too, I'd bet." But he couldn't walk out the door. Not while out of the corner of his eye he could see that cursed imbecile grin, shellacked with tobacco, that face like the face of a heathen idol shining out against everything he knew to be holy and right, those eyes that had so long needled and irritated and made uncomfortable an existence that would have otherwise been a peaceful stretch of pleasant pessimism. He feared that if he walked out through that door that face might solidify itself in death; that way he would never escape it. . . .

  "Well, I'll see you in the funny-papers, Boney Stokes, Bobby Stokes, sobby little Bobby Stokes . . . you remember that?"

  That way not only would he be haunted by it for the rest of his days, but his whole past would be scooped out hollow, h
is whole life gutted. . . .

  "An' listen, if you run across Hank or Joe Ben, tell 'em I said to get in here an' bring me up to date on where we stand."

  That way, if he let Henry get the last laugh, his entire world would--"What? Stand? Joe Ben?"

  Horrified, Hank watched the opening door stop, pull slowly closed. He saw the stiff, thoughtful pivot of Boney's turning, and his own realization mirrored there in Boney's yellowed eyes. "Henry . . . old man, don't you know?" No wonder Henry had seemed in such phenomenal good spirits; he hadn't been told. Of course, neither he nor Boney had mentioned it; it simply wasn't the sort of thing you talked about when visiting a man recovering from a serious--"Old boy?" But that no one had told him! "What I mean, Henry . . . hasn't the doctor or the nurse or someone?"

  "What's got hold of you now, Boney?"

  "Or about afterwards? What went on yesterday?"

  "I told you nobody has been up to tell me anything."

  And now saw a second realization settle like a soft light over Boney's whole face. Unconsciously, as Boney moved forward, Hank drifted farther back behind the curtain. Boney seated himself again, lighted up a large pipe, and began to speak in a pity-filled voice. He spoke quickly and confidently, without a hint of his usual cough. Through the tiers of blue smoke Hank watched the final scene of the drama; he had dropped out; he had become a spectator that just happened by for the last act, to sit in the very last row of a darkened balcony unseen and catch lines blown intermittent and disconnected through a drafty theater. He stared down on the two figures with unfocused eyes. He made no effort to concentrate. Without listening, he knew the lines by heart; without looking, he saw the action. A bit player with his part finished, waiting around to see the end, almost bored, almost dozing over familiar lines, until a repeated phrase told him it was drawing to that end.

  "Hank did it because he didn't want . . . to risk anybody else hurt."

  "I don't think so. . . ."

  Bleakly running down as the lights dimmed.

  "He did it because . . . he didn't want to risk anybody."

  "I don't hardly think so, Henry."

  As the curtain closed, as the echoes stood up to leave: He wouldn't of done it for any other reason--he didn't want to have anybody to have to take the risk just for--I guess not, old fellow, because there wasn't anybody but him left--He did it because--I guess not--because everybody left and he knows he can't run them logs down by himself--He did it because . . . he finally saw how it was . . . because . . . he finally saw that there wasn't any sense. Because of rust, of rot. Of push, of squeeze. Because there is really no strength beyond the strength of those around you. Because of weakness. Because of no grit, no grit anywhere at all and labor availeth not. Because all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. Because of that drum on the donkey forever breaking down. Of bruises from springbacks. Of sinus headaches and ingrown toenails. Of rain and the seas are still not full. Because of everything coming so thick and so fast for so long for so very long for finally too long. . . .