Sometimes a Great Notion

  "Henry, Hank is nobody's fool . . . he knows better than."

  Because strength is a joke, a fake.

  "He's a smart boy, Henry, he sees how the land lays . . . it just is not a one-man world, never was . . . no mortal man can long endure . . ."

  Because sometimes the only way to keep from losing everything is to give everything up. Because sometimes strength must for the sake of winning give in to--

  "My, oh my," Boney said cheerfully, looking at a big pocket watch, "it's got late." He got up, stood up out of his chair again and finished up buttoning his coat. He coughed a little. He took the old man's hand up from the bed like picking up a rag and he shook it. "I got to be gettin' home, I guess, Henry," he says. "Long walk for a man our age, weather like it is"--and then dropped the hand back down. He shook his head. "I hated to be the bearer of the tidings about Joe Ben, Henry. I know how fond you all were of him. I'd as leave tore my tongue out as been the one to tell you. Oh . . . here. I'll leave this with you. Whyn't you have the nurse put you some out in a saucer so you can get to it easier? Well. Anthing you want me to bring when I come back? The Saturday Evening Post? I got a lot of back issues. Here. Let me sit this TV up on the chest-of-drawers where you can get you a straight bead on her. Might as well ruin the old eyes too, hadn't we?"

  He flicked on the machine and turned to go before it warmed up. He stopped at that door again and looked back at the old man fingering at his nose. Boney'd clean forgot I was in the room. Both of them had.

  "Chin up, old fellow," he said to Henry. "What do you bet we're still around chewin' the fat when the rest of these boys have cashed it in. Okay, don't let me hear about you giving that nurse a hard time, hey? So long. . . ."

  And he walked out, strutting like a man with a good ten years of coughing and complaining left in him. I stepped out from where I'd been hid at the foot of the bed and started to say something to the old man, but with the way he looked I didn't figure it would do a whole lot of good. "Papa," I started, "you see what happened was--"

  "Hm," he says. "Well anyway," he says, staring straight ahead at that TV, "anyway I still got . . . a good sense of smell for a nigger so old . . . an' a man can still lick it he keeps . . . but Hank he . . . but then I woulda thought . . . I suppose we . . . they got that cast on wrong . . ." And on like that, with his talk dipping into his thoughts now and again. He was looking kind of poleaxed. The dope getting to him. But not just that. His whole face is changing, getting calm and peaceful. The muscles under his cheekbones relaxing, letting the grin droop down; the lines between his eyes unraveling like old cotton string. The morphine's making him drowsy. . . . Then the eyes themselves went dull, like whoever was in there, like whatever was still left inside there, just went away through a door, leaving the empty body behind pumping air and blood and the empty face propped up there in the blue flicker of that television, like an old suit of threadbare skin somebody'd tossed onto a bed. . . .)

  The lights flutter. The room drones as though the air is filled with big, drowsy flies. Muffled . . . muted . . . inurned between deep cotton-soft sheathings of morphine, the old man rolls his head and parts the sheath enough to look up a long spiraling of redwood columns supporting a high deep-green dome. A woodpecker hammers the air unseen; a jay screeches brightly across, pulling the eye around splash blue! "Wheeoo, lookit that!" to a splintering sight of the May Day sun trying to shine through the needles. "What a day! Man alive." Pollen hangs in the windless still, solidifying the one yellow-bright beam from treetop to the ground . . . "Haw! Look yonder . . ." where a twirl of butterflies white and busy as stars flush from a patch of sheep sorrel at his tread, where no other white man's foot has ever trod before. "Maybe no man's foot of no color ever before!" He looks up one of the columns and spits on his hands. "Okay, stan' clear. What d'ya think? I'm a bear got to hibernate? Let me have some bullyjacks. We got things to do. Cats to kill, eggs to hatch, trees to chop, an' ground to scratch . . . stan' clear, dammit!"

  "Calm . . . calm does it, Mr. Stamper. We're calm and peaceful now."

  "Who says I couldn't? Just you stand outa my way. Never you mind. Hum, man alive . . . Let me clear my ears a second." And no other white man's ax has ever sounded. "Oh. The springboard. Oh, the misery whip." Then the sun is brushed momentarily aside by the gleaming green sweep of a thousand thousand rushing needles. "Wham! Right down the old slot." That was May, in the twenties, when redwoods still stood. Above, the dome is broken. The sun springs back, flooding light down over a stretch of ground unlighted for a thousand thousand years. "Jees H. Christ, what time must it gettin' to be? Whoa. Just a minute now, what you think you're doin'?" Scrappy, a little kitten, white and purply blue, just like a chicken gizzard, you know, useta scratch the bejesus outa--"Ouch? Now what are you--"

  "There we go now. It's all over. Calm and peaceful, now. It's done. Rest now. Calm and peaceful . . ."

  Ray and Rod are setting up on the bandstand when Evenwrite arrives at the Snag. The taut tuning of amplified steel stretches out into the darkening street. Andy, sitting in the jeep, hears it and takes his harmonica from his pocket, beats it against his thigh to remove the lint and sunflower-seed shells, and blows softly into it; he has decided he'd as leave wait and ride back up with Hank and Viv as hitchhike.

  Across the street he sees Hank hurrying toward the wet clatter of the Snag's neons and wonders forlornly how long he will have to wait. . . .

  (By the time I come out of the hospital my belly was boiling around till I didn't know whether I could make it to the Snag for a shot or not. The only thing I wanted was about three fingers of Johnny Walker, something to put the lid on the boiling down there. That damn little hospital room had been worse than the jeep box. My diamond-bright day had got duller and duller, and the way I was feeling I didn't know whether the world was going to last anyway.

  The Snag was mighty crowded for so early; most of the guys who hadn't gone to the cemetery had stopped off and they were pretty well oiled. They quieted a little when I first came in, but then they all came hustling over like they couldn't wait to shake the hand of the man who'd kept them out of a job for two months. Evenwrite bought me a whisky. The band got going and the old good-time honky-tonk sound started cranking up, like old times. And Indian Jenny dropped in and started buying drinks for the drunks. And Biggy Newton was there, looking tough. And Les Gibbons, slobbering and blubbering and staggering around. And, though it wasn't but Wednesday, the next day being Thanksgiving and a holiday made it just like good old Saturday night at the Snag the way it used to be, except that it's not, just like old times, except that it's different, with the guitars whanging and the beer flowing and the boys whooping and hollering and cussing one another and matching nickels and shuffling the shuffleboard . . . except that it just isn't the same. I don't know how, but I know that it isn't. I know it's different. And so does everyone else.)

  In the droning hospital room, remember? On the community boat trip? On that Fourth of July celebration--The River Is Your Highway--some of the folks, they got sick account of not being used to water, so sick they thought sure they was gonna die, then finally got sicker and wished they would. Motorboat races on the river; contestants joking back and forth--"Ben, we can win this boogin' event with some leetle doin', what d'ya say?"--and when it's over "Them dern Stamper boys, ya see what they done? They put a big smithy bellows at the intake o' their carburetor an' forced air in . . . we gonna allow that?"

  But that's July. This is May, May Day, let's see . . . Another section of the green dome is ripped swishing away from the bluejay sky, crashing, falling across ghost fern and salal and witch hazel, and sun crashing after it. "Git them hayburners up here an' hooked on goddammit before she mosses over an' rots o' age!"

  At the Snag, shaved and shined and sharp as a razor, Ray begins to lift the crowd to his heights, and Rod along with them. The beat had picked up; the people been pouring in; and the copper pot in front of the mike stand filled with green and silver. "Gray days, hurryin'
by . . ." Ray slapped the strings with a callused thumb, let his vision swim, and grinned out at the coast-to-coast TV hook-up; a year from now, his Trendex only a mildly impressive forty-one--next year he'd kick it over fifty. . . . ". . . when you're in love, my how they fly."

  The whole town was drunk with sunshine, optimism, and ringer whisky, delirious with good times. "Never saw the sun, shinin' so bright; never saw things lookin' so right--" Teddy looked through his long lashes--never saw as many people drinking as hard or laughing as much. You see one or two this way most of the time. Sometimes as high as thirty or forty, after a big salmon run or a big log-camp fight. But never before, only thing near it was at the peak of the recession scare. I don't understand. So much drinking. Even toasting Hank Stamper . . .

  (My couple of whiskies didn't do me a bit of good. I tell the boys they got to excuse me but I can feel my little flu bug coming up outa his hidey-hole, preparing for another attack. I thanked them for the drinks and pulled my jacket on. When I left I waved to them all and told them to keep up the good work, that it was heartening for a man to see his fellows laboring so hard to get shut of the alcohol surplus, and they all laughed and told me to hurry back as soon as I could to give them a hand--that it was gonna be just like old times again. But every one of us knows that it won't ever again be the same . . .)

  Unsheathed . . . wild . . . the first of May in the redwoods, out all day long till dark and the next day Sunday and no work but I hike back up just the same, alone, to see what it's like cut clean . . . the morning sun walks across new ground, ground unlighted for a thousand thousand years, and finds dew necklaces strung by spiders across the sleek green throats of Darlingtonias. Funny weed, them flycatchers. Lots of funny plants. Them Indians eat a outfit called a wapatoo, a tuber-like affair that grows under water in the sloughs, squaws wade around barefoot and grub them outen the mud with their toes. Touch-me-nots spring like traps when you touch them. Dwarf iris supposed to been planted by little people useta live in the woods. The pitch-ogres, remember them? awful boogers . . . kid won't go out at night on account the pitch-ogres might mingle with them and they'll stick to death. Death always right handy. On the beach, so close to the water that the waves sometimes touch it, a grave is marked by a cedar cross and daffodils stunted by salt air . . . little Illabelle Sitkins one day sits out on the back step and cracks open all the apricot seeds her ma'd throwed out whilst canning apricots. July thirteenth, nineteen ought--hell, I don't know: and she eats the pits because they taste like almonds you get for Christmas and dies of the bellyache. I've tried 'em myself. July 15: We had services at the Toms house for Illabelle, then all run foot-races on the beach after the burying. Aug. 19: John kills a she-bear. Sept. 4: Rained twenty-eight hours solid. Water under kitchen. Sept. 5: Rain and sleet and some snow. Big wind. Tree smashed up the smokehouse. Sept. 6: got timbers to brace up smokehouse. Nov. 11: Lord's Day the old lady very ill. Had doctor in he stayed all night. Ben trapped some minks and got chewed up and the doctor patched him up too.

  Nov. 13: Dog ate some salmon washed up, pretty sick and broke down in the hindquarters. Went into town and Stokes give me some medicine for him. Stokes, damn you, Hank did it because he seen that . . . Stayed to argue with him and help him hull wheat. . . . because he seen that maybe too many folks'd get hurt if. . . . Stokes said he wouldn't charge up the medicine but I ought to send my mama to Eugene to Hospital. Hell with that.

  Nov. 15: Went to Arnold Eggleston's place for road works meeting. John and me come on home but Ben stayed and danced and got beat up by Sam Montgomery. Dog better when we get home. Old lady too . . . But where's Hank?

  "There goes a good old boy," Evenwrite proclaims when he sees Hank's jeep pass.

  "Stubborn, but straight," agrees Sitkins.

  "A real squareshooter," the Real Estate Hotwire adds and drinks to it.

  From behind his bar Teddy pauses in his polishing to see what will happen now that the guest of honor has taken his leave. That the laughter and talk had been a bit strained while Hank was present was no surprise to Teddy; it didn't take an expert on barroom psychology to understand that the merrymaking should have been a little tense under the circumstances. But now that the circumstances had removed himself, what would happen? How would they act? Teddy watched. He could usually predict, almost to the joke, or the curse, how his patrons would react after one of them had departed, but all day today their actions had been so anomalous, so out-of-the-ordinary, that he didn't even dare to guess. He watched, through a deep-sea cast of smoke . . .

  As the band continued, finishing up a request, and Howie Evans twisted his chin sideways to pop a stiff vertebra. And Jenny buzzed heavily from table to table with her fistful of Indian compensation, buying drinks and dribbling change, from table to table like a rubber-booted bee. A usual Saturday night, Teddy thought; sporadic laughter, coughing, nose-blowing, cursing. Just like. Except. What?

  (Andy was still in the jeep when I got there, tootling on his harmonica. Playing "Wabash Cannonball." "Damn!" I said. "Heave over. Damn. That damn harmonica. I thought it was Joe's little radio, and that--" I didn't finish and he stuck the thing back in his pocket. Then he said, "Hank? You ain't, by any chance, got any intentions . . . tomorrow--"

  "Of runnin' them logs? Hell's fire, I ain't got any intentions of runnin' anything more than a fever tomorrow, Andy. What's wrong with you, anyhow? We ain't even got a quota to run!"

  "Yeah we do," he said. "I made a count. That last log filled it."

  "Hell," I said. "Didn't you hear what Bismarck said? That WP don't even want them no more, the way the river's comin' up. What the hell's wrong with you?"

  "I just wanted to know," he mumbled and hushed up. I got the jeep started and headed out to pick up Viv. I was ready to call it a day. . . .)

  "Gawd almighty damn." Les Gibbons lurched suddenly up from the booth when he noticed that Hank had left. Halfway up he became tangled about a chair leg and his lurch turned into an awkward struggle that reminded Big Newton of a man trying to wrench himself from a mudhole. ". . . a mighty damn," Les repeated when he was standing; he looked about the room with the blue bunting of his lips fluttering limply about his shouting. "I am one . . . fierce . . . motherjumper!"

  Big tilted a bloodshot eye to check and didn't quite see it that way. "You don't look too fierce to me, Motherjumper."

  Les was only piqued to more ferocity by the dissension; he squinted through the smoke at the laughing faces to try to see who'd dared doubt the first half of his title. "Fierce enough," he proclaimed, "to tear a new asshole in whatever nigger said that!"

  There was more laughter, more jeering, but since no nigger was hurrying forward through the smoke to have his anatomy rearranged, Les sighed and elaborated. "Fierce enough that I jes' think I'll go over an' kick the hound outa that Hank Stamper over there!"

  "Danged if I don't believe, Les, that you're about ten seconds late," Big said into his beer. "Hank just drove off."

  "Then I'll foller him right to his hole and kick the hound outa him there!"

  "Who'd tote you 'cross river to his house?" Big wanted to know. "Or would you expect him to come get you?"

  Les squinted again but was still unable to locate his gadfly. "I won't need a totin'!" he shouted, as though the gadfly was all the way down at the depot end of the barroom instead of sitting in the chair right across from him. "I'd swim 'er, is what; I'd swim that river!"

  "Bull, Gibbons," Howie Evans said; maybe Big could be patient, but some others were trying to hear the music and becoming more and more aggravated with this liver-lipped ape. "You'd drown ten foot from bank."

  "Yeah, Les," another chimed in, "an' pollute the river for a month. Kill all the fish, probably most of the ducks. . . ."

  "Yeah, Les, and we don't want you drownin' and killin' the game. You stay here in the warm and don't risk yourself."

  Les wasn't to be pacified by their concern. "You think I can't swim that river?"

  "Les." This time Big looked up, l
ike a big lion raising its head off its forepaws. "I know you can't swim that river."

  Les looked quickly about and saw who was speaking, thought for a moment about what Big had said, and decided not to appear immodest by arguing the point. "Yeah, well," he said, setting back into his place in the booth like a man deciding mud ain't so bad after all, "Hank Stamper ain't the only one able to swim a river, y'know."

  "Maybe not, but he's the only one that happens to come to my mind just this minute."

  "I don't know 'bout that," Les said petulantly.

  "You hear what Grissom said the doc said who went out there?" Sitkins asked Big. "He said Hank got home that night an' found the boat missin' and swum across. I swear to golly, that's what they said."

  "That night after those goons Floyd hired from Reedsport worked him over?"

  "That's what they say."

  "Jesus Christ," Howie Evans said. "You gotta give him credit for spunk even if he don't have a lot of sense. Hurt that bad, I woulda bet money when he left here he couldn't of walked, let 'lone swum a river."

  "Maybe," Les said, "he weren't hurt so bad as ever'body thought."

  "What are you talking about?" Big demanded.

  "I don't know. Maybe he weren't hurt so bad as he acted. Maybe he just sulled to fool you."