Duane's Depressed (21 page)

“Hi,” Duane said. “I was by this morning but decided to let you sleep.”

“Boy, I needed it,” Dickie said. “Rehab’s draining. I guess it’s all that talking.”

“I just hope it drained all the bad stuff out of you, this time,” Duane said.

Though Duane had twice flown to Arizona to check his son into the famous and expensive rehabilitation facility there, and had then gone back for the obligatory family day, in which Dickie and his siblings had spent several hours blaming one another for their problems—blaming him and Karla too, although not quite so venomously—he had not gained much insight into the actual day-to-day procedures of the place, or into the process of rehabilitation either. Once or twice during the high-stress days of the boom he himself had drunk too much whiskey. Karla had even urged him to go into rehab, but he had taken up bass fishing instead and found that it worked just as well—maybe better. The more he fished, the less he drank. Being alone on the water then had had the same soothing effect as being alone by the pond had now. He had needed to be calm, rather than to be drunk, and floating alone in a bass boat had seemed to calm him down.

“I’m glad you came out—let’s go inside,” Duane said. “There’s not much to eat, but I can offer you a good hot bowl of soup.”

“Can’t. Annette’s cooking dinner,” Dickie said. “She thinks I’m too skinny—she wants to put some meat on my bones.”

“You’ve come back with a good tan,” Duane said, once he looked at his son in good light.

“That Arizona sun,” Dickie said, looking around the cabin. “So, Momma says you’re kind of a hermit now. How long has that been happening?”

Duane was heating himself a can of clam chowder.

“About ten days,” he said.

Dickie was silent, waiting for his father to explain himself, but Duane didn’t. He just went on heating the chowder, stirring the chowder.

“So, what’s going on?” Dickie asked, a little nervously. “Was it a big fight with Mom, or what?”

“No, your mother and I have been getting along fine,” Duane said. He stirred some more, not sure that he could find the language in which to explain himself accurately to his nervous son.

He poured the soup, turned off the stove, sat down at the table, and looked at Dickie.

“I want a different life,” he said. “I already have a different life. I know it’s going to take a while for people to adjust to that fact—your mother particularly—but you’ll all just have to do your best to adjust. I want to live alone now. I don’t want to be a family man anymore, and I don’t want to be an oilman, either.”

Duane paused. Dickie was listening—waiting to hear what his father had to say.

“The oil business is what I need to talk to you about,” Duane said. “Starting tomorrow it’s yours to run.”

“What do you mean?” Dickie asked, startled.

“I said exactly what I meant,” Duane said. “You’re home, you’re healthy, and the oil business is now yours to run. You’re the boss man—starting immediately.”

“Gosh,” Dickie said. “I just got out of rehab and I’m supposed to run our oil business?”

“That’s right,” Duane said. “It’s not Exxon or Texaco, you know. It’s just a little family oil business. You grew up with it. You’ve worked every job connected with it—except mine. Now you need to take over and do what I’ve been doing, because I’ve done it all my life and I don’t want to do it anymore. From now on you make the deals, you hire the crews, you tell who to go where, you check on the rigs, you see that the leases get pumped properly. You see that the trucks are kept in good repair, you go over the contracts, you see that the bookkeeper and the accountant get the information they need. You see that the crews don’t go to work drunk and don’t go to work stoned.”

Dickie chuckled. “Dad, I’ve been in rehab three times. The crews are going to laugh in my face if I tell them not to take drugs.”

“Maybe at first, but that’s just something you have to deal with,” Duane said. “You’re clean and you need to stay clean. If you do, the crews will behave—or at least most of them will. You’re not going to find a crew that’s so perfect everybody behaves.”

“Gosh,” Dickie said, again. “I’m not saying I can’t do it, but it’s a big responsibility and it’s sort of sudden.”

“It is, but I can’t help it,” Duane said. “Sometimes things just happen sudden.”

“But what if I screw up?” Dickie asked. “I mean, I don’t think I will, but what if I do?”

Duane shrugged. “It’s yours to run, like I say,” he said. “If you fuck up, you just do. I can’t be involved with it anymore. Maybe you’ll fuck up and lose every cent we have. I don’t think you will, and I hope you don’t, but if you do, that’s just tough shit. I’ll give you advice now and then, but otherwise I’m not lifting a finger.”

“Gosh,” Dickie said again. Then he took a deep breath.

“Maybe I can do it,” he said. “Maybe I can do it fine.”

“Maybe you can even do it better than I can,” Duane said. “I hope so. It’s been twenty years or more since I really had much interest in it. Everything you do for a long time gets old—I guess that’s one reason I feel like being a hermit for a while.”

“You think it’s just for a while, Dad?” Dickie asked. “I mean, it’s fine about the oil business, I think I can do it. But what about you?”

“What about me?” Duane asked.

“Momma doesn’t know what to think,” Dickie says. “She says you just kind of walked off.”

“That’s a fair description,” Duane said. “In fact, it’s a perfect description. I just kind of walked off.”

“But you’ve never done anything like that,” Dickie said. “It’s got everyone confused.”

“Well, but I did do something like this,” Duane said. “I used to fish, remember? I used to fish a lot.”

“I know, but at least you drove out to the lake,” Dickie said. “At least you had a vehicle. You didn’t just hoof it.”

“Is there something wrong with walking?” Duane asked. “It’s a pleasant thing to do. I’ve just reached a point where I enjoy a slow pace.”

“Nellie says you’re thinking of going to Egypt or somewhere,” Dickie said. “What’s that all about?”

“Curiosity,” Duane said. “I want to see the pyramids. That’s
not so strange, either. Thousands of people go to see the pyramids every year.”

“Are you depressed?” Dickie asked. He had his mother’s impatience. He liked to cut to the chase.

Duane smiled. “I don’t know,” he said. “Your mother thinks so, but I’m not sure.”

Dickie looked confused.

“Seems like you’d know, one way or the other,” he said. “I sure know when I’m depressed. That’s when I go looking for the stuff.”

“Which you can’t do anymore,” Duane said firmly. “You’ve done enough stuff. Now you’ve got an oil business to run, and the family fortune’s in your hands.”

“It upsets everybody to think of you sitting out here depressed,” Dickie said.

Duane smiled again. “You’ll all just have to deal with it,” he said. “Go on about your lives and let me worry about whether I’m depressed enough or not. If I am it’s my problem.”

Dickie sighed—he looked uncertain.

“In rehab they teach you that all problems are family problems,” he said. “So if you’re depressed it’s our problem too.”

Duane shook his head. “This ain’t rehab,” he said. “This is just life. My problems don’t pertain to anybody but me. I’m not unhealthy. I’m not suicidal. I’m not drinking or doping. There’s nothing wrong with walking as a pursuit. I’m not harming myself or anybody else. I don’t want anybody coming out here preaching to me. I’m going to live the way I want to live, for a while, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I’m not in dire straits and neither are any of you.”

“You’ve kind of got a peace-be-with-you attitude, don’t you?” Dickie said. “I had a counselor like that. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“No, not that I can see,” Duane said. “I’ll give you one piece of advice about the oil business, the one you’re going to be running starting tomorrow, and that’s return your phone calls. Don’t put it off and don’t skip any, even if you think the person you’re supposed to call is an asshole or a flake. Make sure Earlene keeps
a good list, and the minute you get to the office return those phone calls. All of them.”

He ate the last swallow of the clam chowder and put the spoon neatly in the bowl.

“That’s the secret of success,” he said. “Just return all your phone calls, and the sooner the better.”

Dickie, across the table, noticed Honor Carmichael’s business card propped against the salt and pepper shakers. He picked it up and looked at it—a psychiatrist’s card was a surprising thing to find on his father’s little table.

“Gosh!” he said, for the fourth time that evening. “Are you actually seeing a shrink?”

“Not at the moment,” Duane said. “Jody Carmichael gave me that card—that’s his daughter. She made a head doctor and he’s real proud of her. He wants everybody to know his daughter made something of herself.”

A little later, Dickie left. When he drove off Duane went back inside, picked up Honor Carmichael’s business card, and slipped it into his billfold. He didn’t want anyone else to casually pick it up, as his son had, and be shocked.

27

T
HE NEXT DAY
Duane gave some thought to hitchhiking to Wichita Falls, largely in order to buy the book by Thoreau. A secondary purpose, which he also weighed, would be to use a pay phone to make an appointment with Honor Carmichael—counselor, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. He considered making the appointment for the same reason that he considered traveling to Egypt: curiosity. He was curious about the pyramids and also curious about Honor Carmichael. On the complex question of his depression, he remained undecided: whether he was in a depression, whether he wasn’t, whether it really mattered, either way. He was not as convinced as Karla and everyone else that he was seriously depressed—but he
had
experienced two or three fits of irrational rage and had felt sad and weird when the rage subsided.

He considered himself to be a mature adult, with at least some capacity for making realistic judgments. Life was not all pie in the sky; some days were bound to be better than other days, and still other days were likely to be downright hard to get through. Some depression seemed normal to him—life was the sort of affair that, sooner or later, for one reason or another, would pull anybody’s spirits down. He didn’t know any adults who weren’t sometimes depressed. Bobby Lee was depressed because he had only one testicle. Lester Marlow was depressed because his wife wouldn’t buy him any new video games. Earlene
was depressed because she had a scar from splitting her head open on the water fountain. Julie was depressed because her boyfriend would likely be in jail for three years. Karla was depressed because her husband had left her for no good reason—or none, at least, that she had been given. And in Africa and the Balkans people were depressed because they were being massacred in horrible ways, or being driven from their homes, or both:
their
depression was visible on CNN practically every night.

Seen in such a context, Duane didn’t believe that his depression was anything the world needed to worry about, or even notice. As long as he kept to himself he felt sure he could handle it fine. Also, it seemed little enough to ask. Nobody in his family was either starving or sick. There were several young women and a couple of highly experienced older women available to take care of the grandkids. Dickie’s situation vis-à-vis drugs would remain touchy for a while, but at least there was reason to hope.

Duane considered that he had pretty well fulfilled his duties as a father, a provider, and a citizen. He had done a reasonable percentage of the things he was supposed to do—now he just wanted to be left alone, and he didn’t feel that the question of whether he was depressed or happy was anybody’s business but his own. He had a warm house and warm clothes; anything he needed he could buy. Fortunately he had won about twenty-five hundred dollars in a poker game the night before he set out to be a walker—he had the cash in his pocket and could buy what he needed from day to day. Though he had splurged a bit on tools over at Jody Carmichael’s he still was a long way from having exhausted the twenty-five hundred dollars.

Still and all, Duane was aware that such reasonable thoughts didn’t necessarily represent the whole story. Several times lately he had felt a piercing sadness, a sadness that always took him by surprise. The sadness might pierce him while he was walking along, or while he sat in his lawn chair, or even while he was in bed. He didn’t understand where these sadnesses came from, or why they were so deep and so sharp.

Also, his dreams had become intense and often painful. Three times lately he had had a calf-roping dream which puzzled
him a good deal. In all the dreams he was a calf roper who had an easy throw and the prospect of winning time—only he always missed the calf. In all three dreams his horse put him in perfect position, and yet he missed. The loop he threw at the calf seemed to dissolve, somehow, just as it was about to settle around the calf’s neck. Then he would be sitting on his horse watching the calf trot on across the arena, unroped, a sight that made Duane feel sad, intensely sad. Why had he missed the calf?

Another puzzling aspect of the dream, an aspect as curious as the dissolving rope, was the fact that there were no people in the stands to see his humiliation. Only he saw it—and his horse. The bleachers around the arena were empty. The spectators, if there were any, had all flocked to the snow cone stand at the same time.

Duane found the roping dream both puzzling and troubling. The first time he dreamed it he shrugged it off. Anybody could dream anything once. He himself had never owned a roping horse and had never competed in a rodeo; but he had seen a lot of rodeos and knew that it was not particularly uncommon for even a skilled roper to miss a calf now and then. It was something that happened to the best of them, though of course it happened less often to the best of them.

Then Duane dreamed the dream twice more—and each time, at the moment when the calf went trotting off, he felt an intense disappointment. He remembered all three dreams quite vividly when he woke up, too. The dreams were so painful, in their way, that waking brought him the kind of intense relief that comes when you wake from a nightmare and realize that whatever bad thing had happened had only happened in a dream. Yet in all three of the roping dreams his sense of humiliation was so intense that he kept recalling it throughout the day.