Sometimes a Great Notion

  "Teddy!"

  "Yes sir. I forgot; you said light? I'll change it just as soon as we get the rest of these glasses . . ."

  But the man was already drinking his beer. Teddy moved back behind his bar, crepe-soled and spectral and ignored.

  The electrified screen door at the front of the bar opened, and through the sunny arch of glass came another figure--larger, older, clumping loudly past in calked boots--yet a figure somehow as spectral as Teddy. This was the hermit of the area, a heavy-bearded gray man known only as "that old wino boltcutter from someplace out the South Fork." Once a topnotch rigger, he was now so old and crippled he was reduced to making a living driving a broken-springed pick-up into the logged-over slopes around the area, where he cut down cedar snags one or two days a week and split them into shingle-bolts. These he sold to the shingle mill on the other side of town at ten cents a bolt. A great comedown, rigger to boltcutter. And the ignominy of this comedown had apparently rotted away most of that apparatus which projects a man's presence; he moved past the eye like something shrouded in fog, and after he had passed, no one could agree for certain on his description or even, for certain, on his existence. Yet, because he was so seldom seen at the Snag (even though he drove right past it at least once a week) his presence could not be ignored as could Teddy's. He was too much a rarity, and Teddy was only a fixture. He paused for a moment to listen to the men's talk before going to the bar. Under his scrutiny the conversation faltered, faded, and died out completely. Then he snuffed loudly in his beard and moved away without speaking.

  He had his own ideas about what the trouble was.

  The discussion didn't resume until the old man had purchased a large glass of red wine from Teddy and gimped his way on back to the gloomy rear of the bar.

  "Poor old duffer," the Real Estate Man managed, the first to overcome the momentary feeling of nervousness that had descended on the table.

  "Yeah," said the logger in the beaten gray hat.

  "That stuff you hear about him is the real McCoy, you know."

  "Wine?"

  "Cheap port. I hear tell he gets it from Stokes by the case, a case a week."

  "Too bad," said the movie-laundry owner.

  "Tsk, tsk," said Brother Walker. And, as he had learned the comment from Joe Palooka, it came out "tisk tisk," the way he assumed it was pronounced.

  "Yeah. Too damn bad."

  "Too damn many years in the woods for an old fellow; it's a shame."

  "Shame?" said the logger. "It's a fuckin' crime, is what it is, pardon me, Brother Walker, but I feel strongly about it." Then, moved to even greater passion and recalling his interrupted argument, he slammed his black-fuzzed fist down on the table. "But it is a fuckin' crime! And a sin! That a poor old jack like him should hafta--Listen now: pensions and guaranteed annual wage, ain't that what Floyd Evenwrite been preachin' about for nearly two years?"

  "That's right, that is the truth."

  They were getting back in gear again.

  "The trouble with this town is we can't get behind the very organization that is built to help us: the union!"

  "My God; ain't Floyd been sayin' so? He says Jonathan Bailey Draeger says that Wakonda is years behind the other woods towns. And that has become my thinking exactly."

  "And that sort of thinkin' brings us right back to you-know-who and his whole hardnosed brood!"

  "Right! Exactly!"

  The man in the hat slammed the table again. "A shame!"

  "And as much as I personally like an' admire Hank and his folks--Christ, didn't we grow up together?--I for one am of the opinion that right there is where our issue is, ifn you got to aim a gun someplace--right out there at that house, in my opinion."

  "Amen, brother."

  "Goddam right amen! Now you all look." Startled again by the violence of this order, Teddy raises his eyes. "Ifn you got to point a finger, then right that way is the way you point it!"

  Looking through the glass he is polishing, Teddy sees the finger spring thrusting from the greasy, black-fuzzed fist.

  "Right out at that goddamned house!"

  ... the jukebox whirs, bubbles, pulsing color. The electric screen buzzes. The men breathe softly together. The finger, a knuckled iron rod there in the slanting late-afternoon sun, swings slowly to fix like a compass needle. The house. Brute, monolithic structure, thick now with the light of coming dawn and noisy already with the preparations for breakfast . . .

  "Yeah, you may be right, Henderson."

  "Damn right I'm right! If you want my considered opinion, there's where your trouble is!"

  Lights and shouts pouring from the kitchen window; laughter, curses. "Wake it an' shake it, boys. The ol' man's already out ahead of ya, old an' crippled as he is." And the ringing smell of frying sausages. This is Hank's bell. This is the way he likes it. This is Hank's bell ringing.

  And from behind his bar, standing out of the sun, Teddy watches the men and listens to their logic and is secretly certain that the trouble is not financial--just now, during that idiotic discussion on the lack of working capital, he'd brought in close to twelve dollars, and in broad daylight--and also seriously doubts that it could all be laid at the doorstep of that Stamper house. No, it is another trouble. In his considered opinion . . .

  "Say, by the way, Henderson, your mentioning Floyd brings to mind: I haven't seen him in a good day or so."

  West of the house, in her shack on the mudflats, Indian Jenny rises from her cot and dons a rose-red dress turned mudflat brown, and begins to wonder whom to blame for the sorry state of her life and why can't she ever find her goddam Saint Christopher medal? South, Jonathan Bailey Draeger watches the road ahead for a place to spend the night before continuing on to Oregon. East, a postman tries to interpret the penciled scrawl of a threepenny postcard's address and almost gives up . . .

  "Yeah, where is Evenwrite?"

  "Up north, in Portland. Tryin' to get the goods once an' for all on this very subject we been discussing, by God . . ."

  The fist closes, but the finger still points. The old house hunches over breakfast, still noisy and bustly, and ignorant of the fingers beginning to swing from all around the country in a polarization of blame, beginning to converge like points on a constricting circle. . . .

  Up North, in Portland, Floyd Evenwrite sat like a rubber toy in a forty-dollar suit, stiff and inscrutable and gas-filled. He had just finished plowing laboriously through a pile of yellow paper. The papers, once neat and crisp, lay on the table in front of him like a pile of limp fallen leaves. You could see the sweat on the papers. His hands always sweated a lot when he used them for anything besides manual labor. Matter of fact, he couldn't remember for sure that they used to sweat at all. And now, as he rubbed his forehead and smallish red nose, they barely felt like his own. They felt naked, and nervous, and like somebody else's hands. No calluses was how come. Funny. You wouldn't think a man could get so attached to something like calluses, would you? Maybe they're like cork boots; with corks it don't make no matter how long since you quit wearing 'em because once you been used to going around with 'em, then the ground underfoot is always gonna seem slippery and strange without--though you maybe been wearing oxfords for years and years.

  Finished with his facial rub, he sat for a moment without moving and let his eyes remain closed. His eyes were tired. And his back was tired. In fact all the hell over he was tired. But it had been worth it. He knew he'd made a good impression on the flunky. And he was pleased by the report; it proved conclusively that the Stamper mills were in absolute fact, by Jesus, contracted to supply Wakonda Pacific with lumber. No damn wonder old man Jerome or the rest of the WP bunch hadn't been sweating the month-long walkout. The boys could strike till hell froze shut and it wouldn't be hurting profits. Not as long as Stamper and his scabby kind were cutting for them! It was even worse than he'd figured. He'd figured Jerome had contacted Stamper and maybe made a deal to buy some logs later on to make up for the setback suffered during the s
trike. He'd suspicioned this when he saw how hot and heavy the Stampers were hitting it. And it had griped his ass anyhow, them working while the rest of the town laid off. So he'd written Jonathan Draeger, and Draeger had put this union detective to researching the suspicion. And Christ, what that research had turned up: since back as far as August, Stamper'd been contracted to WP, cutting and storing the booms at his place so nobody'd know. So them sonsabitches across the river there were not only working, business as usual while the rest of the town sweated a strike, they'd been doing twice, maybe three goddam times as much business as usual!

  His eyes opened with a snap. He scooped up the untidy bundle of papers and clapped them in a manila folder. "This oughta do it," he said, nodding at the thin flunky who had sat across the table from him, drumming his fingers nervously, all the while Floyd had studied the report. The man seemed reluctant for Floyd to leave. "Ah--you used to go to school with Hank Stamper, I heard," he said, in a voice too friendly for Floyd's taste.

  "You heard wrong," Floyd replied coldly, refusing to look at the man. He picked up a can of beer in his other hand and took a drink from it. He knew the man had been watching him. He knew his every twitch and belch were being recorded by this little, thin-shouldered information flunky and would eventually get back to Mr. Draeger himself; this report, different as it was, showed that. It was thorough to a gnat's eyelash. His report to Draeger would likely be just as thorough. Floyd didn't like the man's little bootlicking grin and he ached to bring his fist hammering down on that nervous handful of fingers. He hated it that this sort of man had to be associated with the union at all. And when he'd made an impression on the boys at the top, Floyd promised himself he'd see to getting shut of this sniveling little snake. But if you aim to impress the ones on top, you damn sure have to impress the ones on the bottom. So he kept his face impassive and his spine stiff and forced himself to take another sip of the flat beer.

  "Least that's what I been told about you," the man went on.

  Evenwrite lifted the veined bumps of his eyes to the wheedling voice and tried to gauge the success of his visit. He had personally driven all the way from Wakonda to get this report. He'd wanted to test himself on this man before dealing directly with Draeger. It had taken him nearly an hour to find the flunky's home in Portland's confusing street system. He'd been in the city only once before, and he'd been so furious and outraged then that he could remember it only as a red blur. That was the time his teammates at Florence had taken a collection to pay his bus fare to the Shrine All-State Game, giving him the ticket and consoling him, "You shoulda been picked, Floyd. You was a better fullback. You was screwed."

  That screwing--and the resulting charity--had been brought back by the sight of the river and the lights of Portland, and the red blur as well. He'd become lost time and again, trying to follow the written directions through this blur. And he'd had no time to stop for supper. And the stale beer burned his guts. And his eyes stung; it had been a struggle camouflaging his shamefully slow reading speed by making it seem instead to be shrewd caution. And his back hurt from sitting so straight to keep his belly in. But looking now at the man's face, he decided he'd handled it. He could tell the man was impressed by this first encounter with the District Coordinator from Wakonda. Impressed and cowed just enough. Deliberately Floyd put his beer can back on the table and wiped his hand on his thigh.

  "No," he said. "That ain't--isn't exactly correct." He spoke with distinguished resonance; someday he would speak to a press conference this way. "No, I went to high school at Florence, a town about ten miles south of Wakonda. I didn't move to Wakonda till after high school. What you probably heard"--he paused, furrowing his brow to remember--"is we both played offensive fullback and defensive ends on our . . . respective teams, and all four years played right across from each other. Even at the Shrine All-State game."

  That was a little risky, but he doubted if the flunky was acquainted enough with sports to realize that he could not possibly have made All-State if Hank had, both being from the same district. He took a quick look at his watch, then stood up. "Well, I got a long drive." The union fink came off his stool by the sink and extended his hand. Evenwrite, who had once been compelled to run fifty yards down a hill to wash his paw in a creek before a visiting union dignitary would deign to touch it, now looked at the flunky's hand as though he saw bugs between the fingers. "You done real good," he said, then left the house. Outside he buttoned the top button of his trousers and complimented himself: pretty slick, that maneuver, pretty bygod smooth--leaving the little runt standing there with his paw stuck out and his eyes batting. Yep, he'd handled the whole business pretty smooth. Impression is the ticket. Teach 'em respect; impress 'em; show 'em you're just as good, just as big as they are. Bigger!

  But when he paused to rub his eyes again before getting into his car, his hand felt very small and limp. And stranger than ever. The fingers not his own. Somebody else's. They fumble after the car keys, nervously. The chain snaps, spraying keys into the streetlight. Jenny searches the shelves for her Saint Christopher. Gives up and instead mixes herself a drink, then goes to sit and look out through the spiderweb that laces her little shack's lone window. Squinting, she studies the sky. A full moon leans desperately against the landward rush of small clouds. She watches, sighing. The screen buzzes in the afternoon. Someone offers a dime to the bubbling jukebox. Hank Snow comes highballing out:

  Mr. Engineer, take that throttle in hand

  'Cause this rattler's the fastest in the southern land.

  Keep movin' on. . . .

  The old boltcutter props the rim of his glass of port against his lower lip and tips in the wine, watching grayly from the dusty gloom. The postman crosses a bright green lawn in New Haven, holding the card. The old house, shimmering and tiny under the dawn sky, like a pebble beneath an abalone shell, opens to emit two figures in logging garb.

  "He can raise one hell of a fuss for an invalid," Hank said, shaking his head.

  "Invalid? Why, you'd have to cut off both legs to invalid him!" Joe Ben laughed, delighted by the stamina the old man had shown in his breakfast antics. "Oh yeah, Henry ain't one to let a bad hand make him turn in his chips. A bad hand! Hey, how 'bout that? Two levels. I mean, a hand of cards an' then, too, him with his arm in a cast?"

  "You got a great future in TV comedy," Hank said halfheartedly. "But, you know, Joby? I truly am surprised at the hole it's left in the show, his being laid up. Damned if it doesn't look like we're gonna have to find somebody to come in to help us make that quota. I sure don't know who, though."

  "Don't you?" Joe asked.

  "No . . ." Hank said.

  "Don't you, now?"

  Hank knew Joe was grinning at him, but he continued on down toward the dock, not looking at his little banty-legged cousin. "I'm havin' Viv call everybody together for a meeting--to bring 'em up to date, I told her. I guess I'll have to, too. Some, anyhow. But even if they knew the whole score I still don't know of one who'd come to work that ain't already workin'."

  "You don't?" Joe asked. Joe had known from the beginning where the conversation was leading, and enjoyed teasing Hank about the roundabout route he was taking getting there. "You can't think of a solitary soul, huh? Sonofagun."

  Hank still pretended to miss the taunt. "Oh, I suppose I'll come up with some shirttail kin," he said finally, as though the subject were closed for the time. "It'll just take some time and thought."

  "Yeah," Joe said, "I suppose it will." Then added, with as much innocence as he could muster, "Considerin' how much time an' thought it took comin' up with a legitimate reason to need this particular shirttail."

  He danced nimbly away from Hank down the dock, waving his metal hat in the early-morning light and hooting his amusement.

  In the Snag the jukebox continues barrel-assing across the countryside:

  I'm movin' on,

  Just hear my song. . . .

  Floyd gets his car started and begins trying to retrace
his path back out of Portland. The postman mounts the steps. Draeger finds a motel and in the office, under a softly fluttering fluorescent lamp, shakes his head and politely refuses the motel manager's offer to buy him a drink.

  "I used to do some log work myself, y'know," the manager had mentioned as soon as he found out who Draeger was.

  "I'm sorry, but no go on the drink," Draeger said again. "I've a meeting tomorrow to prepare for. But thanks all the same. It's been pleasant talking with you. Good night."

  Outside in the buzzing glare of the neon--FREE TV POOL HEATED ELECTRIC BLANKET--he searched through his pockets sluggishly. Like Floyd, he was tired. He'd met with the owners of Wakonda Pacific Lumber at Sacramento that morning, then got right on the road; he planned to spend a few days in Red Bluff sitting in on negotiations with a grievance committee over from Susanville, then, unless matters improved, continue on up north to look into this Wakonda tie-up. And some logger-turned-farmer-turned-motelman wanted to buy him a drink. Jesus Christ!

  He finally found what he was searching for, a small notebook with an automatic pencil clipped to his inside coat pocket. He took it out, flipped through the pages, and in the heartbeat red of the neon wrote, "Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them."

  The note-taking habit was a carry-over from his college days, when he had A'd all tests by being the most ready. He read the phrase over and smiled approvingly. He had been collecting such aphorisms for years now, and dreamed of some day compiling them into a book of essays. But even if the dream failed to come off, the little phrases came in quite handy in his work, little notes taken daily in the lesson of life.

  Should a test ever present itself, he would be ready. . . .

  The old house falls quiet now, with breakfast over. The kids still aren't up. Old Henry has labored, exhausted but satisfied, back up the stairs to bed. The dogs have eaten and are asleep. Viv throws the coffee grounds out the back door into the rhododendron bed, as the sun is just chalking the tops of the firs back up in the hills. . . .