Sometimes a Great Notion

  "Who knows?" he replied sullenly, opening the door to the same hotrod that had kicked gravel in my face a few days before. "Who cares?" he said as he slipped in behind the wheel; and, as I circled the car to the other door I heard him wonder, "Or who gives a big rosy rat's ass?"

  Precisely, I thought, closing the door behind me; before I gave these other weighty questions the attention they deserve I should ask myself if I gave a big rosy rat's ass about the quaint and curious needs of the quaint and curious little town of Wakonda-by-the-sea. None whatsoever. Not any colored ass from any sized rat. Unless, of course, by some chance, some obscure chance, some of the town's quaint needs happened to correspond in some curious way with my own . . .

  "Frig." The grandkid deftly snapped the car into gear and went screeching across the puddled parking lot. "I oughta be home inna whirlpool," he informed me, to keep the subject of candy bars from coming up. " 'Stead of runnin' round gettin' stiff."

  "Absolutely," I agreed.

  "We had our last game of the season last night. With the Black Tornadoes of North Bend. I got a knee racked up the third quarter."

  "Is that why it was the last game?"

  "No, I ain't but third string. That's why I oughta be home inna whirlpool, though . . ."

  "Because you ain't but third string?"

  "Naw, because I got my knee racked up. Say, does your brother know we was puttin' his pitcher on the blockin' dummies for a while?"

  "I couldn't say," I told him, feigning interest in his sports activities while I tried to formulate some feelings about my own. "But I'll pass the information on to him when I get to the house . . . along with the free turkey and cranberries." It shouldn't be so complicated; I had my reasons for going out to the house: I was going out to try to get an insurance policy--I could tell Hank--and to try to acquire a traveling companion--I could tell Viv . . . Now; I should be able to come up with a story to tell myself . . .

  "Damn right," the grandkid mused, "on the blockin' dummies an' the tackling dummy too. Hank Stamper's pitcher. Damn right! That was before the Skagit game. We was really choice before that game. We creamed Skagit. We was ahead thirty points in the third quarter, an' I got to play all the fourth quarter."

  "Is that why you got in the game last night?"

  "No," he said reluctantly, "I got in because we was twenty-six points behind is why. They creamed us, forty-four to fourteen, our only loss of the season since Eugene." Then he added, almost questioningly, "But North Bend wasn't that good! They'd of never even touched us if we'd been as choice as with Skagit!"

  I didn't comment; I leaned back, planning ahead, thinking that there wasn't any reason why I couldn't give myself the same story that I gave Viv. Because I honestly did want her to come away East with me . . .

  "No. They wasn't that tough," my driver went on to himself. "We was just off, that's all; I know that's all there is to the story . . ."

  And, listening to him give himself his reasons while I gave myself mine, I began to suspect that there might be a whole lot more to it than either of us knew. . . .

  The rain drizzles down. The sand-buggy bumps over the railroad tracks at the end of Main, turning up river. Draeger drives out of the motel yard, looking around for a restaurant where he can have a cup of coffee. Evenwrite sits beside his telephone, smelling of menthol, soap, and, ever so slightly, gasoline. Viv runs water over the empty soup dishes in the kitchen sink. Out the window, only inches above the river, two mergansers fly past wing to wing, flying frantically but barely moving . . . as though the current beneath them extended in a force field beyond its own surface, striking them head-on. Their struggle is strange, agonizing, and Viv feels her arms ache for them as she watches. She has always been possessed of great empathy for other creatures. Or possessed by it. "But say . . . I know about the ducks." Her reflection is there again. "How do you feel?"

  Before the dim image in the kitchen window can be expected to respond, a car stops across the way at the landing. A figure steps out and walks toward the dock, cupping his hands to call . . .

  (When I seen Viv come hightailing out of the kitchen, drying her hands on the apron, I knew what she'd seen before I heard him holler. "Somebody at the landing," she said, going past to the front-door hall. "I'll go and get him. You aren't dressed."

  "Who is it?" I asked her. "Anybody we know?"

  "I couldn't tell," she said. "He was all bundled up and it's raining hard." She was out of sight a second, climbing into the big oilskin poncho. "But it looked like Joe Ben's old mackinaw. I'll be right back, honey . . ."

  She swung the big door booming shut behind her. I'm glad she said that about the mackinaw, I thought; I'm glad she gives me credit for having some eyes in my wooden head . . .)

  Viv answered my call for a boat. I watched her hurry from the house down through the milling dogs, tugging a voluminous parka about her head in an effort to keep dry. When she swung the boat in alongside the landing where I waited I saw that she hadn't had much success.

  "Your hair is sopping. I'm sorry to get you out in this."

  "That's okay. I was needing to get out of the house anyway."

  I stepped into the boat while she steadied it idling against a piling. "Our premature spring was short-lived," I said.

  "They always are. Where have you been? We've been worried."

  "At the hotel in town."

  She gunned the motor and swung the bow banking into the current. I was grateful to her for not asking why I had spent the last three days in solitary. "How is Hank? Still under the weather? Is that why you are ferryman today?"

  "Well, he isn't too bad. He's downstairs now, watching the game, but then he's never so sick but what he can't watch a football game. I just didn't think he was up to coming out in the wet. I don't mind."

  "I'm glad you did. I've never been much of a swimmer." I saw her wince and tried to cover it over. "Especially with the water so high. You think it'll flood?"

  She didn't answer. She angled the boat slightly when she reached midstream to allow for the current, and concentrated on the navigating. After a stretch of silence I told her that I had been in to see the old man.

  "How is he? I haven't been able to get away . . . to see him."

  "Not so good. Delirious. The doctor thinks it's just a matter of time."

  "That's what I heard from Elizabeth Pringle. It's too bad."

  "Yeah. It wasn't pretty seeing him that way."

  "I guess not."

  We concentrated again on the boatride. Viv fretted at her sopping hair, trying to tuck it into the poncho. "I was surprised to see you," she said. "I thought you had gone. Back East."

  "I plan to. A new semester will be starting soon . . . I'd like to make it."

  Without taking her eyes from the water ahead she nodded. "That sounds like a good idea. You should finish your schooling."

  "Yeah . . ."

  Then more riding; more silence . . . while our hearts screamed for us to stop and say something!

  "Yeah . . . I'm looking forward to showing off my callused hands in various coffee houses in the Village. I've some friends who will be astonished to discover the word applies to the physical as well as the spiritual."

  "What word is that?"

  "The word 'callous.' "

  "Oh, I see." She smiled.

  I went on matter-of-factly. "Then too, a cross-country bus trip should be something in the middle of winter. I anticipate snowstorms, hailstorms, perhaps even to be trapped overnight by a blizzard of terrible magnitude. I can see it clearly: the bus motor idling away, precious fuel used to keep the heater going; a little old lady rationing out her sack of cookies and tuna-fish sandwiches; a Boy Scout leader keeping the morale high by leading us in camp songs. It could be quite a trip, Viv--"

  "Lee . . ." she said without for an instant diverting her attention from the gray swirl of water in front of the boat, "I can't come with you."

  "Why?" I couldn't help asking. "Why can't you come?"

  "I
just can't, Lee. There's nothing else to say."

  And we rode on, with nothing else to say, it seemed, except that.

  We reached the dock and I helped her secure the boat and throw a covering over the motor. We walked in silence, side by side, down the dock, up the slick plank incline and across the yard to the door. Before she opened the door I touched her arm to speak again, but she turned to me, shaking her head no before the words could start.

  I sighed, surrendering speech, but held on to her arm. "Viv . . . ?" If this was the last of it, I wanted the last look of good-by. I wanted the reserve to be shed for that final glowing gaze of farewell that is traditionally awarded two souls that have touched, that is deserved by two people who have been so daring as to have truly shared, without reserve or fear, that rare, hope-filled moment we call love . . . I touched her dripping chin with my finger, lifting her face to mine, determined to have at least that last look. "Viv, I . . ."

  But the hope was not there, only the reserve and fear. And one thing else, a darker, heavier shadow that was hidden beneath the dropping of her eyelids before I could classify it.

  "Let's go in," she whispered, pushing open the big door.

  (I kept worrying about what I was going to say to Lee when they got back. Since he'd left I'd been satisfied that it was done and we wouldn't have to say anything; I hadn't thought he'd come back; I hadn't even wanted to think about him. But now here he was again all of a sudden, and something was going to have to be said, and I didn't even have an inkling.

  I kept watching the TV. The front door opened and he came in behind Viv. I was still sitting in the big chair. He came across toward me, but right then the teams came back out on the field and my problem was solved for a while anyhow: maybe something was going to have to be said all right, but there wasn't nothing so important it couldn't wait for the Thanksgiving Day Classic, Missouri and Oklahoma tied nothing to nothing at the start of the second half . . . !)

  In the living room we found Hank seated watching a football game on television; with a quilt tucked about him, a glass of evil-looking liquid by his chair, and a large livestock thermometer dangling cigar-fashion from the corner of his mouth; he looked so much the archetypical invalid that I was amused and a little ashamed for him.

  "How's it goin', bub?"--as he watched a rigmarole of pre-kickoff activities.

  "As well as could be expected, for a being not accustomed to existing under water."

  "How are things in town?"

  "Dreary. I stopped in to see the old man."

  "Yeah?"

  "He's in a coma of some kind. Doctor Layton claims he's dying."

  "Yeah. Viv talked to the doc on the phone last night and he told her the same thing. I don't know, though, I just don't know."

  "The good doctor seemed very positive of his diagnostic skill."

  "Yeah, well, you can't never tell about them things. He's a tough old coon."

  "What's happening with Jan? I couldn't make that funeral . . ."

  "Just as well. They'd put make-up all over him. It was kinda the last dirty trick Joby had pulled on him. Jan? She's took the kids to Florence to stay with her parents."

  "I suppose that's best."

  "I reckon. Now hang on; here comes the kick . . ."

  Except to glance down once for his can of beer, his eyes never left the television. Like Viv, he kept his attention fastened away from me, as painfully aware as we were of the feelings our inane chatter sought to conceal. Neither did I seek his gaze. I was truly afraid to; behind the cloud of our spoken words our thoughts rustled like impatient lightning, charging the air of the old house with such intensity that it seemed that the only way to avoid detonating the whole room was by keeping the contact points insulated--should our eyes connect there was no predicting whether or not our wiring could support the voltage.

  I crossed the room to the table, unbuttoning my coat. "I was just telling Viv that I plan to start back toward civilization right away." I picked a Golden Delicious apple from the bowl on the table and ate it as we talked. "To school."

  "Is that right? You're aiming to leave us?"

  "Winter term starts in a few weeks. And, since the word in town has it that the deal with Wakonda Pacific is off--"

  "Yep." He stretched, yawning, rubbing his chest through the front of his woolen robe. "It's all she wrote. Today's the deadline. Everybody laid up one way or another . . . and I damn sure couldn't run them booms down by myself, even if I was in good runnin' condition."

  "It seems a shame after we've worked so hard."

  "That's the way she bounces. It won't kill us. We're covering ourselves. Floyd Evenwrite says this Draeger said they're going to get a sales agreement with the mills as a sorta fringe demand in the new contract."

  "What about Wakonda Pacific? Couldn't they supply you with some help?"

  "They could but they won't. I checked on that some days back. They're just like us; with the river coming up like it is, they just as leave not have all them booms on their hands. Keeps up out there like this, we're in for higher water than last week."

  "Couldn't you lose the booms in a flood, all that work?"

  He drank from the can and set it back beside his chair; "Well, what the dickens . . . it just seems like nobody wanted them goddam logs delivered."

  "Except"--I started to say Joe Ben--"old Henry."

  I hadn't meant it as a cut, but I saw him flinch, just as Viv had at the mention of swimming. He was silent a moment and when he spoke again there was the vaguest edge to his voice. "Then, by god, old Henry can just get his ass out of bed and deliver 'em," he said. And looked neither left nor right from the Gillette commercial.

  "The reason I came out--"

  "I was wonderin'--"

  "--is about an insurance policy the doctor claimed exists."

  "By gosh, that's right. I remember something about a policy. . . . Viv, chicken?" He called, though she still stood only a few feet behind his chair, toweling her hair. "You know anything about them life-insurance papers? Are they up in the desk?"

  "No. I cleaned the desk of everything but papers to do with the business, remember? You said you couldn't find anything?"

  "What did you do with the other stuff."

  "I took it up to the attic."

  "Oh Christ." He moved as though to stand. "The motherin' attic!"

  "No, I'll get it." She tossed her hair back and turbaned the towel around it. "You'd never find it. And it's drafty up there."

  "Okeedoke," Hank said and settled back in his chair. I saw Viv start up the stairs, her tennis shoes pit-patting a dim print, and I had sense enough to realize that this pit-pat was probably the final, fading knock of my last opportunity to be alone with her.

  "Wait . . ." I dropped my apple core into Hank's abalone-shell ashtray ". . . I'll come with you."

  At the end of the hall past the bathroom and the room used as an office, a ladder, made of two-by-fours nailed like horizontal bars across the window there, took us up through a hinged trapdoor into the peaked top of the house . . . a gloomy, dusty, musty room that ran from the front of the house to the back, like an elongated pyramid braced upright with crisscrossing diagonal beams. Viv slid up through the trapdoor behind me, quiet as a burglar. I helped her stand. She wiped her hands on her Levis. The trapdoor fell shut with a muffled thump. We were alone.

  "I haven't been up here since I was five or six," I said, looking about me. "It's as delightful as ever. It would have been a nice little nook to repair to on some of these long rainy Sunday afternoons to sip tea and read Lovelace."

  "Or Poe," she said. We were both whispering, the way one does in certain rooms. Viv stretched out a leg and rolled a mangy Teddy bear over with the point of her tennis shoe. "Or Pooh."

  We laughed beneath our breaths and began to move carefully forward through the dim clutter. A small window at each end of the long room provided space and light enough to be a building site for spiders and a cemetery for flies; what light was left over strai
ned through the little warped panes and sifted like soot from a chimney across an ominous array of boxes and chests and trunks, rough-hewn packing crates and ornate bureaus. A dozen or so orange crates were lined up on end, appearing to stand at brooding attention, like geometric ghosts. About this array of larger objects, like lesser spirits of gayer and freer form, were gathered incidentals like the Teddy bear Viv had rolled over . . . fifty years of paraphernalia, tricycles to tambourines, dressmaker's dummies to diaper pails, dolls, boots, books, Christmas ornaments . . . you're wasting time, and, over everything, dust and mouse manure by the bale.

  "Of course," I whispered, "one would have to bring more than a book and a cup of tea: I think I might like a knife and a shotgun, and perhaps a radio so I could call in reinforcements in case I needed to put down a revolution."

  "A radio by all means."

  "By all means."

  When this is all over, I told myself, you will hate yourself for wasting so much time . . . "Because some of these natives look restless and very revolutionary." I prodded a stuffed owl and it responded with a high-pitched squeak and produced from its feathers a little brown mouse which scampered off behind some Japanese lanterns. "See? Very restless." When you get yourself alone later you are going to call yourself all kinds of names for not taking advantage of this situation.

  Viv had reached the window and was looking out through the webs. "It's too bad there isn't a room up here--I mean for living in . . . you can see so well. The garage across there, and the road and everything."

  "It is a nice view."

  I was standing right beside her, close enough to smell her damp hair--go ahead! try something! at least try something!-- but my hands stayed in my pockets, safe and well-mannered. A wall of protocol and passivity rose between us--she would not breach it; I could not.

  "That policy . . . where would you think we might find it?"

  "Boy, in this mess," she said brightly, "finding anything is going to be a chore. Here; you start on this side and I'll start on the other and we'll work our way down to the other end. It's in a shoebox, I remember, but old Henry was always up here moving things around . . ."