A few days later I asked how he was getting along at work. Fine, he said, he said he had gotten a raise. But I met Betty Wilks on the street and she said they were all sorry at Hartley’s that he had quit, he was so well liked, she said, Betty Wilks.
Two nights after that I was in bed but I couldn’t sleep, I stared at the ceiling. I heard his car pull up out front and I listened as he put the key in the lock and he came through the kitchen and down the hall to his room and he shut the door after him. I got up. I could see light under his door, I knocked and pushed on the door and said would you like a hot cup of tea, honey, I can’t sleep. He was bent over by the dresser and slammed a drawer and turned on me, get out he screamed, get out of here, I’m sick of you spying he screamed. I went to my room and cried myself to sleep. He broke my heart that night.
The next morning he was up and out before I could see him, but that was all right with me. From then on I was going to treat him like a lodger unless he wanted to mend his ways, I was at my limit. He would have to apologize if he wanted us to be more than just strangers living together under the same roof.
When I came in that evening he had supper ready. How are you? he said, he took my coat. How was your day?
I said I didn’t sleep last night, honey. I promised myself I wouldn’t bring it up and I’m not trying to make you feel guilty but I’m not used to being talked to like that by my son.
I want to show you something, he said, and he showed me this essay he was writing for his civics class. I believe it was on relations between the congress and the supreme court. (It was the paper that won a prize for him at graduation!) I tried to read it and then I decided, this was the time. Honey, I’d like to have a talk with you, it’s hard to raise a child with things the way they are these days, it’s especially hard for us having no father in the house, no man to turn to when we need him. You are nearly grown now but I am still responsible and I feel I am entitled to some respect and consideration and have tried to be fair and honest with you. I want the truth, honey, that’s all I’ve ever asked from you, the truth. Honey, I took a breath, suppose you had a child who when you asked him something, anything, where he’s been or where he’s going, what he’s doing with his time, anything, never, he never once told you the truth? Who if you asked him is it raining outside, would answer no, it is nice and sunny, and I guess laugh to himself and think you were too old or too stupid to see his clothes are wet. Why should he lie, you ask yourself, what does he gain I don’t understand. I keep asking myself why but I don’t have the answer. Why, honey?
He didn’t say anything, he kept staring, then he moved over alongside me and said I’ll show you. Kneel is what I say, kneel down is what I say, he said, that’s the first reason why.
I ran to my room and locked the door. He left that night, he took his things, what he wanted, and he left. Believe it or not I never saw him again. I saw him at his graduation but that was with a lot of people around. I sat in the audience and watched him get his diploma and a prize for his essay, then I heard him give the speech and then I clapped right along with the rest.
I went home after that.
I have never seen him again. Oh sure I have seen him on the TV and I have seen his pictures in the paper.
I found out he joined the marines and then I heard from someone he was out of the marines and going to college back east and then he married that girl and got himself in politics. I began to see his name in the paper. I found out his address and wrote to him, I wrote a letter every few months, there never was an answer. He ran for governor and was elected, and was famous now. That’s when I began to worry.
I built up all these fears, I became afraid, I stopped writing him of course and then I hoped he would think I was dead. I moved here. I had them give me an unlisted number. And then I had to change my name. If you are a powerful man and want to find somebody, you can find them, it wouldn’t be that hard.
I should be so proud but I am afraid. Last week I saw a car on the street with a man inside I know was watching me, I came straight back and locked the door. A few days ago the phone rang and rang, I was lying down, I picked up the receiver but there was nothing there.
I am old. I am his mother. I should be the proudest mother in all the land but I am only afraid.
Thank you for writing. I wanted someone to know. I am very ashamed.
I also wanted to ask how you got my name and knew where to write, I have been praying no one knew. But you did. Why did you? Please tell me why?
Yours truly.
THE DUCKS
A wind came up that afternoon, bringing gusts of rain and sending the ducks up off the lake in black explosions looking for the quiet potholes out in the timber. He was at the back of the house splitting firewood and saw the ducks cutting over the highway and dropping into the marsh behind the trees. He watched, groups of half a dozen, but mostly doubles, one bunch behind the other. Out over the lake it was already dark and misty and he could not see the other side, where the mill was. He worked faster, driving the iron wedge down harder into the big dry chunks, splitting them so far down that the rotten ones flew apart. On his wife’s clothesline, strung up between the two sugar pines, sheets and blankets popped shotlike in the wind. He made two trips and carried all the wood onto the porch before it started to rain.
“Supper’s ready!” she called from the kitchen.
He went inside and washed up. They talked a little while they ate, mostly about the trip to Reno. Three more days of work, then payday, then the weekend in Reno. After supper he went out onto the porch and began sacking up his decoys. He stopped when she came out. She stood there in the doorway watching him. “You going hunting again in the morning?”
He looked away from her and out toward the lake. “Look at the weather. I think it’s going to be good in the morning.” Her sheets were snapping in the wind and there was a blanket down on the ground. He nodded at it. “Your things are going to get wet.”
“They weren’t dry, anyway. They’ve been out there two days and they’re not dry yet.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you feel good?” he said.
“I feel all right.” She went back into the kitchen and shut the door and looked at him through the window. “I just hate to have you gone all the time. It seems like you’re gone all the time,” she said to the window. Her breath produced itself on the glass, then went away. When he came inside, he put the decoys in the corner and went to get his lunch pail. She was leaning against the cupboard, her hands on the edge of the draining board. He touched her hip, pinched her dress.
“You wait’ll we get to Reno. We’re going to have some fun,” he said.
She nodded. It was hot in the kitchen and there were little drops of sweat over her eyes. “I’ll get up when you come in and fix you some breakfast.”
“You sleep. I’d rather have you sleep.” He reached around behind her for his lunch pail.
“Kiss me bye,” she said.
He hugged her. She fastened her arms around his neck and held him. “I love you. Be careful driving.” She went to the kitchen window and watched him running, jumping over the puddles until he got to the pickup. She waved when he looked back from inside the cab. It was almost dark and it was raining hard.
She was sitting in a chair by the living-room window listening to the radio and the rain when she saw the pickup lights turn into the drive. She got up quickly and hurried to the back door. He stood there in the doorway, and she touched his wet, rubbery coat with her fingers.
“They told everybody to go home. The mill boss had a heart attack. He fell right down on the floor up in the mill and died.”
“You scared me.” She took his lunch pail and shut the door. “Who was it? Was it that foreman named Mel?”
“No, his name was Jack Granger. He was about fifty years old, I guess.” He walked over close to the oil stove and stood there warming his hands. “Jesus, it’s so funny! He’d come through where I work and asked me how I was doing and pr
obably wasn’t gone five minutes when Bill Bessie come through and told me Jack Granger had just died right up in the mill.” He shook his head. “Just like that.”
“Don’t think about it,” she said and took his hands between hers and rubbed his fingers.
“I’m not. Just one of them things, I guess. You never know.”
The rain rushed against the house and slashed across the windows.
“God, it’s hot in here! There any beer?” he said.
“I think there’s some left,” she said and followed him out to the kitchen. His hair was still wet and she ran her fingers through it when he sat down. She opened a beer for him and poured some into a cup for herself. He sat drinking it in little sips, looking out the window toward the dark woods.
He said, “One of the guys said he had a wife and two grown kids.”
She said, “That Granger man, that’s a shame. It’s nice to have you home, but I hate for something like that to happen.”
“That’s what I told some of the boys. I said it’s nice to get on to home, but Christ, I hate to have it like this.” He edged a little in the chair. “You know, I think most of the men would’ve gone ahead and worked, but some of the boys up in the mill said they wouldn’t work, him laying there like that.” He finished off the beer and got up. “I’ll tell you—I’m glad they didn’t work,” he said.
She said, “I’m glad you didn’t, either. I had a really funny feeling when you left tonight. I was thinking about it, the funny feeling I had, when I saw the lights.”
“He was just in the lunch room last night telling jokes. Granger was a good boy. Always laughing.”
She nodded. “I’ll fix us something to eat if you’ll eat something.”
“I’m not hungry, but I’ll eat something,” he said.
They sat in the living room and held hands and watched television.
“I’ve never seen any of these programs before,” he said.
She said, “I don’t much care about watching any more. You can hardly get anything worth watching. Saturday and Sunday it’s all right. But there’s nothing weeknights.”
He stretched his legs and leaned back. He said, “I’m kind of tired. I think I’ll go to bed.
She said, “I think I’ll take a bath and go to bed. too." She moved her fingers through his hair and dropped her hand and smoothed his neck. “Maybe we’ll have a little tonight. We never hardly get a chance to have a little.” She touched her other hand to his thigh, leaned over and kissed him. “What do you think about that?”
“That sounds all right,” he said. He got up and walked over to the window. Against the trees outside he could see her reflection standing behind him and a little to the side. “Hon, why don’t you go ahead and take your bath and we’ll turn in,” he said. He stood there for a while longer watching the rain beat against the window. He looked at his watch. If he were working, it would be the lunch hour now. He went into the bedroom and began getting undressed.
In his shorts, he walked back into the living room and picked up a book off the floor—Best-Loved Poems of the American People. He guessed it had come in the mail from the club she belonged to. He went through the house and turned off the lights. Then he went back into the bedroom. He got under the covers, put her pillow on top of his, and twisted the gooseneck lamp around so that the light fell on the pages. He opened the book to the middle and began to look at some of the poems. Then he laid the book on the bedstand and bent the lamp away toward the wall. He lit a cigaret. He put his arms behind his head and lay there smoking. He looked straight ahead at the wall. The lamplight picked up all of the tiny cracks and swells in the plaster. In a corner, up near the ceiling, there was a cobweb. He could hear the rain washing down off the roof.
She stood up in the tub and began drying herself. When she noticed him watching, she smiled and draped the towel over her shoulder and made a little step in the tub and posed.
“How does it look?”
“All right,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“I thought you were still . . . you know,” he said.
“I am.” She finished drying and dropped the towel on the floor beside the tub and stepped daintily onto it. The mirror beside her was steamy and the odor of her body carried to him. She turned around and reached up to a shelf for the box. Then she slipped into her belt and adjusted the white pad. She tried to look at him, she tried to smile. He crushed out the cigaret and picked up the book again.
“What are you reading?” she called.
“I don’t know. Crap,” he said. He turned to the back of the book and began looking through the biographies.
She turned off the light and came out of the bathroom brushing her hair. “You still going in the morning?” she said.
“Guess not,” he said.
She said, “I’m glad. We’ll sleep in late, then get up and have a big breakfast.”
He reached over and got another cigaret.
She put the brush in a drawer, opened another drawer and took out a nightgown.
“Do you remember when you got me this?” she said.
He looked at her in reply.
She came around to his side of the bed. They lay quietly for a time, smoking his cigaret until he nodded he was finished, and then she put it out. He reached over her, kissed her on the shoulder, and switched off the light. “You know,” he said, lying back down, “I think
I want to get out of here. Go someplace else.” She moved over to him and put her leg between his. They lay on their sides facing each other, lips almost touching. He wondered if his breath smelled as clean as hers. He said, “I just want to leave. We been here a long time. I’d like to go back home and see my folks. Or maybe go on up to Oregon. That’s good country.”
“If that’s what you want,” she said.
“I think so,” he said. “There’s a lot of places to go.” She moved a little and took his hand and put it on her breast. Then she opened her mouth and kissed him, pulling his head down with her other hand. Slowly she inched up in the bed, gently moving his head down to her breast. He took the nipple and began working it in his mouth. He tried to think how much he loved her or if he loved her. He could hear her breathing but he could also hear the rain. They lay like this.
She said, “If you don’t want to, it’s all right.”
“It’s not that,” he said, not knowing what he meant.
He let her go when he could tell she was asleep and turned over to his own side. He tried to think of Reno. He tried to think of the slots and the way the dice clicked and how they looked turning over under the lights. He tried to hear the sound the roulette ball made as it skimmed around the gleaming wheel. He tried to concentrate on the wheel. He looked and looked and listened and listened and heard the saws and the machinery slowing down, coming to a stop.
He got out of bed and went to the window. It was black outside and he could see nothing, not even the rain. But he could hear it, cascading off the roof and into a puddle under the window. He could hear it all over the house. He ran his finger across the drool on the glass.
When he got back into bed, he moved close to her and put his hand on her hip. “Hon, wake up,” he whispered. But she only shuddered and moved over farther to her own side. She kept on sleeping. “Wake up,” he whispered. “I hear something outside.”
HOW ABOUT THIS?
All the optimism that had colored his flight from the city was gone now, had vanished the evening of the first day, as they drove north through the dark stands of redwood. Now, the rolling pasture land, the cows, the isolated farmhouses of western Washington seemed to hold out nothing for him, nothing he really wanted. He had expected something different. He drove on and on with a rising sense of hopelessness and outrage.
He kept the car at fifty, all that the road allowed. Sweat stood on his forehead and over his upper lip, and there was a sharp heady odor of clover in the air all around them. The land began to change; the highway dipped suddenly,
crossed a culvert, rose again, and then the asphalt ran out and he was holding the car on a country dirt road, an astonishing trail of dust rising behind them. As they passed the ancient burned-out foundation of a house set back among some maple trees, Emily removed her dark glasses and leaned forward, staring.
“That’s the old Owens place,” she said. “He and Dad were friends. He kept a still in his attic and had a big team of dray horses he used to enter in all the fairs. He died with a ruptured appendix when I was about ten years old. The house burned down a year later at Christmas. They moved to Bremerton after that.”
“Is that so?” he said. “Christmas.” Then: “Do I turn right or left here? Emily? Right or left?”
“Left,” she said. “Left.”
She put on her glasses again, only to take them off a moment later. “Stay on this road, Harry, until you come to another crossroad. Then right. Only a little farther then.” She smoked steadily, one cigaret after the other, was silent now as she looked out at the cleared fields, at the isolated stands of fir trees, at the occasional weathered house.
He shifted down, turned right. The road began to drop gradually into a lightly wooded valley. Far ahead—Canada, he supposed—he could see a range of mountains and behind those mountains a darker, still higher range.
“There’s a little road,” she said, “at the bottom. That’s the road.”
He turned carefully and drove down the rutted track road slowly, waiting for the first sign of the house. Emily sat next to him, edgy, he could see, smoking again, also waiting for the first glimpse. He blinked his eyes as low shaggy branches slapped the windshield. She leaned forward slightly and touched her hand to his leg. “Now,” she said. He slowed almost to a stop, drove through a tiny clear puddle of a stream that came out of the high grass on his left, then into a mass of dogwood that fingered and scraped the length of the car as the little road climbed. “There it is,” she said, moving her hand from his leg.