Going to Bend (40 page)

Q:
We leave Petie and Rose at a real crossroads, literally and figuratively. Do you plan to write a sequel?

A:
I’m often asked that. No, I don’t have any plans for a sequel. I feel that I safely guided Petie, Rose, and the rest of Bend’s characters through a difficult time, a life-changing time, and at the book’s end had safely delivered them not to an ending, but a beginning. I don’t believe they need
me to take them any further. And wherever they go from here, it will not be with the sort of high drama that makes for a compelling story to read. So, literarily speaking, I’ve wished them Godspeed and moved on.

I have hung on to the towns of Hubbard and Sawyer, though. My next book,
Homesick Creek
, takes place there, too, though with entirely different and unrelated characters—except for Roy, the bartender at the Wayside, who continues to drift in and out of scenes.

1. Much of the action in
Going to Bend
happens over food preparation. What does soup represent in the lives of Petie and Rose? How is that different than its significance for Nadine and Gordon?

2. Kitchens are also centers for discussion, revelations, and turning points. What key scenes take place in kitchens?

3. As a young man, Schiff meets a redheaded girl at a carnival and, early in the book, vividly remembers the few hours they spent together. Later, he will associate her with Petie. Why? What characteristics and quirks do these characters hold in common—and why does Schiff find them appealing?

4. When Petie is young, she and Paula seek refuge in a gift shop from Old Man’s drinking. When a fragile teacup is broken, the shopkeeper gives it and a matching saucer to Petie. What is the significance of these objects to Petie?

5. Old Man Tyler and Petie live in a camp trailer in the woods behind Hubbard. Later, Jim Christie discovers the trailer and uses it for his own purposes. What role does the trailer play in Petie’s past and in later causing a disastrous rift between her and Rose?

6.
Going to Bend
explores the different kinds of love that can exist between husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters,
and friends. How did those different kinds of love manifest themselves between the characters in
Going to Bend?

7. Rose and Gordon become good friends. Why—what do they have in common?

8. In some sense,
Going to Bend
is a story about the effects of isolation—geographical isolation, psychic isolation, and isolation based on shame and secrecy. What are some examples of isolation and its effect on the characters and on their unfolding stories?

9. In the course of the book there is an unfolding tension between Jim Christie and Carissa that will ultimately have tragic results. What’s really going on between these two characters?

10. Eula Coolbaugh is one of the most important people in Petie’s life. Does Eula’s love for Petie differ from Paula Tyler’s? If so, how?

11. In a childhood visit to Camp Twelve, Petie is badly burned in a fire, and Old Man applies a poultice of ashes. What do these ashes signify, both then and at the book’s end? What role do they play in helping Petie to resolve grief?

12. Eula Coolbaugh may be
Going to Bend
’s only truly wise character. What wisdom does she impart to Petie that has a lasting effect on her life and decisions? Why?

13. The title
Going to Bend
has both a metaphorical and literal meaning. What are they, and how do they relate to the book’s main characters?

14. At several key moments in Petie’s life, she buries objects beneath a tree. What are the objects, what do they represent, and why does she bury them?

15. Petie and Schiff, both of whom are married, carry on a clandestine relationship through much of the book. What’s missing in their respective marriages, and how does this play a role in their unfolding relationship?

16. Jim Christie is an inarticulate man with a severely limited ability to communicate his feelings. How does Rose deal with this throughout the book, and what role does it play in the book’s climactic outcome?

17. Work creates tensions throughout the book, and everyone except for Paula Tyler and Eula Coolbaugh has a job. How do the characters regard their respective jobs at the start of the book? At the end? How do they suit each character?

18. Were any of the characters in
Going to Bend
reminiscent of people you’ve known in your own lives? If so, what were the resemblances?

19. Were there universal truths about people and relationships that were revealed in
Going to Bend
? If so, what were they, and how might they relate to, say, white-collar people living and working in an urban environment?

20. What do you think will happen to Petie and Rose after the book’s end? What would you
like
to see happen?

Mornings come hard and mean on the Oregon coast in winter. Trees on Cape Mano between Hubbard and Sawyer have only lee-side branches, twisted old men with their backs to the sea. More than a few casually built bungalows and cabins are chained to the rocks so gale-force winds won’t take them.

Highway 101, Hubbard’s only through street, runs north to Canada and south to Mexico, edging along the black basalt shore and over a bridge that spans Hubbard’s small harbor. Both sport and commercial fishing vessels are moored there, piloted by the handful of skippers capable of navigating the boiling deep-water channel at the mouth of the harbor. Everyone has a story to tell about a boat that’s broken up on the rocks within hailing distance of home. In 1983, eight Realtors on a sport-fishing jaunt drowned in plain sight when their charter boat turned broadside and sank.

For all its tiny size and appearance of sleepiness, Hubbard in 1989 lit its fires early, and nowhere earlier than at the Anchor Grill, which opened every morning at four o’clock sharp. The restaurant was located at the exact center of town, across the street from Devil’s Horn, a rocky blowhole through which seawater shot thirty feet in the air when storm seas were running. The Anchor was that
rare hybrid, beloved by tourists and residents alike, an easy place with vinyl tuck-and-roll booths, stained carpet and paneled walls, stuffed trophy fish and the everlasting aroma of chowder, fried food, and beer. First light belonged to Hubbard’s fishermen and pulp mill workers putting in day shifts fifteen miles away over in Sawyer. From seven a.m. until the reek of fish guts signaled the return of the boats in midafternoon, the place was nothing but tourists with their hair, shoes, and umbrellas in various stages of ruination. By evening, a good-natured polyglot crowd filled the lounge to the accompaniment of Pinky Leonard on the keyboard and owner Nina Doyle playing the bottles.

Bunny Neary had waitressed at the Anchor for twenty-one years, ever since she was nineteen. A couple of months ago old Dr. Bryant had measured a two-and-a-half-inch difference in the height of her shoulders from lifting and carrying trays, but mostly she liked the work well enough. On a good day she could pick up a hundred, hundred and fifty bucks in tips. And from being there so long, she usually got her pick of shifts.

Not today, though. Beth Ann, who normally worked mornings, had called in with strep throat again. This was Bunny’s fourth day in a row covering for her, and she was beat. Being on the opening shift meant getting to the Anchor at three thirty—three, if she did the whole list of things she was supposed to do before she opened up at four. She hardly ever did, seeing as how no one came into the place at that hour of the morning but the boys, and the boys didn’t give a crap whether the salt and pepper shakers were topped off or the half-and-halfs were iced down or the sugars were filled, just as long as the coffee was fresh and hot. At four o’clock sharp they’d be out there in the back parking lot waiting for her, smelling like Dial soap and cigarettes and yesterday’s jeans. They’d slouch in and heave themselves into their booths, slap down the newspaper and call,
Hey, Bunny, where’s that coffee?

The fact was, though, Bunny would have been beat even if she hadn’t pulled the morning shift. She hadn’t slept worth a damn all night, not after she’d overheard some woman whisper to her husband over the phone,
Just pretend this is about work. Oh, Lord, Hack, do I feel stupid—I didn’t think she’d be home
.

She let an extra half-pull of coffee grounds fall into a fresh filter—the boys liked their coffee strong this time of day, weak as tea when they started coming in off the boats around two—and punched the brew button on the coffee maker, touching the waiting pot first. Once, another time she and Hack were on the outs, she’d made a whole pot of decaf without remembering to put a pot underneath and there’d been fresh-brewed coffee everywhere before she figured it out. The boys had razzed her about it for weeks.
Hey, Bunny, did you put a pot under it this time? Ha, ha, ha
. Shit.

Oh, Lord, Hack, do I feel stupid—I didn’t think she’d be home. You can’t talk with her there, can you. So I’ll hang up now. I guess I’ll just hang up. Here I go
. And she’d hung up. Then Hack had hung up. Then Bunny.

“Hey, Bunny, bring me that maple syrup there, would you?” Dooley Burden called from two tables down. Bunny had known Dooley all her life. He was maybe sixty-four now, and the stringiest thing Bunny had ever seen—he looked like if you were to bite into him, he’d be nothing but tendons and gristle and a little tough meat, like an old dry rooster. When Bunny was little, Dooley had worked a couple of seasons as deck crew for her father, but then it turned out he was epileptic. He managed to keep it a secret until he had a seizure forty miles out, fishing for black cod. He worked down at his brother’s fuel dock after that, until he fell a couple of winters ago and pretended he’d been going to retire anyway. Now he just hung around town, razzing all the young fishermen about their joint-venture seasons and their on-board microwaves. The boys let him talk: They’d heard about how he’d flopped around on the deck
with the cod and the trash fish so bad they’d finally had to lash him to a hatch cover to keep him from twitching himself clean over the rail with his eyes rolled back in his head. And they knew about how his turd of a brother Carlin never once paid him more than fifty cents above minimum wage in all those thirty-eight years of pumping diesel at three in the morning, while Carlin was busy taking vacations in Hawaii and sailing around the San Juans in his forty-five-foot sailboat, like some kind of goddamn son-of-a-bitch big shot.

Bunny set down a sticky little pitcher of maple syrup on Dooley’s paper place mat. The place mat came right back up and stuck when he went to pour syrup on his sausage links, next to his eggs, over his short stack. He’d ordered the exact same breakfast every day for the last twenty-four years.

“What’s the deal with Beth Ann?” he asked Bunny, who was so tired she was just standing there watching him. Beth Ann was one of the younger waitresses, twenty-three. The boys liked to send her for more coffee just to watch her walk away. “She got a new boyfriend? She’s sure looking nice these days.”

“New perm,” Bunny said. “Plus she’s on that liquid protein diet.”

“Aw, I like my women with some meat on them,” Dooley said, like he’d even had a date in the last fifteen years. He took a big bite of egg, slid his coffee cup toward Bunny so she’d top it off.

“Well, if you’d just told her that to start with, I’m sure she would have called the whole thing off. You’ve got a little piece of egg there on your chin,” Bunny said, pointing.

Dooley shrugged, flicked the egg off with his finger, drank some coffee. “Hack going to buy that dirt bike he was looking at?” he asked Bunny. “That 250? It’s got beans, that bike. It’s a good piece of machinery, and the boy was asking a good price. You tell Hack I said so.”

“What dirt bike?” Bunny said. “He hasn’t said anything about another dirt bike.”

“Aw, hell,” said Dooley. “Guess I’ve stepped in it now, huh? You think he’s coming by this morning?”

“Doesn’t he always come by?”

“He’s late, though.”

“Yeah,” Bunny said. She had tried the house a couple of minutes ago. The line had been busy. Busy, at five fifteen in the morning.

You can’t talk with her there, can you
.

And now there was some dirt-bike deal he’d never told her about.

She set her coffee pot on the table, slid into the booth across from Dooley, and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“You been keeping him up too late?” Dooley said and winked.

“Don’t he wish.” Bunny drank half the cup down, picked up a fork, and cut a bite out of Dooley’s soggy short stack.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he said, sucking a tooth.

But Bunny just finished her bite of pancake, sighed, and hoisted herself up from the table. “Nothing. Just tired of getting up at three in the morning to take care of you boys.”

Back at the waitress station Bunny threaded her name tag through the little round name-tag eyelets stitched into the blouse of her uniform.
Bunny
. Her real name was Bernadette. Bunny was something Hack had started and gotten almost the whole town to go along with. He used to say he called her Bunny because she had such a nice tail. That was Hack. He’d been a wild one when they first started going together fifteen years ago. She’d met him his second day in Hubbard. It had been a sunny June morning and she and her girlfriend Anita had been sitting on a blanket above the bay, gossiping and keeping an eye on their kids, Anita’s Doreen and Bunny’s Vanilla—Vinny—both of them almost four years old. Of course, she hadn’t been called Vinny then.