John's Wife: A Novel (50 page)

Turtle’s father, the nasty man with the short fuse, who Fish supposed must be at John’s barbecue like everybody else in town except himself, was in fact back in Settler’s Woods again, pawing frantically through the weeds and litter, in fruitless search for that which, now lost, he held—except for the leg it came from—most dear in the world, his dander up all right, but directed wholly against his own criminally negligent self: how could he possibly have let it, when for almost twenty years it had never been, out of his grasp? He’d awakened in the hospital, not knowing where he was at first, plugged up to various devices, remembering only a kind of dream he’d had about walking in the woods and seeing John’s wife bicycling by in her tennis clothes. Had she fallen? Or had he fallen? Had he used the frayed garter as a bandage of sorts? He couldn’t recall, but (he was off the cot and searching desperately through his pants pockets) he definitely no longer had his most precious possession. But where—?! How—?! In a panic (he’d felt like screaming!) he’d hauled on the pinstripe suit pants, tucked in his golf shirt, pulled his tennis shoes on over bare feet, and, head ducked, had bulled his way down the pale corridors and out of the building, responding to no one when they shouted at him: let the sonuvabitches try to stop him, it was
his
fucking heart, he had his rights! The hospital was on the edge of town, not far from the highway and the woods (it was not a dream, he’d been there, he was sure of it), it was a doable walk, or jog, rather, he was on the move, piecing together, as he galumphed along, what remained in his loss-stunned memory of his earlier trek out here: the ravine, right, he’d been taking a piss at the fucking ravine! So he started there, kicking through the thorny underbrush, poking around in the damp leaves and suffering all over again the terrible chagrin he’d felt when, all aglow, she cycled by. It had to be here! But it wasn’t. He retraced his steps, working his way inch by inch from the ravine back to the first place he could remember being and then again back to the ravine. Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh shit. It was gone. Gone—! But what the hell had he been doing out here in the first place? That’s right, he’d been hunting for his truant son, he’d nearly forgotten about him, the irresponsible little sonuvabitch, it was his fault this had happened. He was furious with him, but at the same time he loved him of course and he realized that, down deep, he’d been missing his boy sorely all the while. It was what had been keeping him up nights. That and, well, some other things. He wanted to blister the kid’s backside for running off, bringing this catastrophe upon him, but he wanted to hug him, too, and be hugged by him, and to teach him what the world was like (goddamn it, you don’t just go running off into it, son) and to protect him from the worst of it, his only child, next of the Maynards. Well, maybe he was right to go. Escape the fucking curse. Which he, Maynard II, could not, could never. With an aching heart (yes, it was damaged all right, irreparably), he sank to his knees near where he’d peed, or had started to before she passed by, and began turning the leaves over one by one, tugging away the thornier plants, tossing aside the sticks and twigs, the beer cans and cigarette butts, scratching at the ground around, feeling (pinstriped trousers notwithstanding) like some sort of prehistoric man squatting miserably in the dawn of time, trying to understand by touch alone who and what the unfathomable Other was. And what he touched was hard and stony but smooth in the way that bone was smooth and was indeed bone, and as he dug the earth away around it, he saw that it was a skull. His son’s? He shuddered and tears came to his eyes and he forgave the boy with all his heart and he dug deeper and discovered that there was a big hole in the middle where the nose should be, as though … He really didn’t want to know any more. He covered it up hastily and stood, looking around him, his hand scrabbling about in his empty pocket. He thought he saw something moving and the heavy silence was broken suddenly by some violent thrashing about deep in the woods like some huge wild animal was loose—and it sounded like it was coming closer!

Mitch, driving in from the airport in one of John’s cars, picked him up on the road out there as he came stumbling breathlessly out of the trees just past the humpback bridge, looking more like beast than man, teeth bared, eyes beady, and jowls dark, and dressed up like a circus animal. John’s punishment had been hard on the poor fellow. Mitch was glad it was over, for his nephew’s sake. In truth, Mitch had rather admired the daring of Barnaby’s and Maynard’s attempted raid, and he supposed that John, who always relished a bruising battle, especially when he won, probably did, too, though he couldn’t say so. When Mitch pulled over and shoved the door open, Maynard shrank back in terror and threw his hands up in front of his face. Whew, the sonuvabitch was really in bad shape. “It’s all right, son,” Mitch said, leaning across the passenger seat toward him and extending his hand. “It’s just me, your uncle Mitch. Come on, get in.” Maynard hesitated, then seemed to collect himself. “Sorry,” he said, the glittery panic in his eyes fading to a dull stare. “I’m—I’ve not been feeling well.” He shook Mitch’s hand briefly (no more than a second or two, but Mitch could feel the trembling) and, head ducked, dropped heavily into the seat, pulled the door to, and after a nervous glance over his shoulders into the woods, sat slumped there, stubbly fat chin on his chest, gloomily contemplating his muddy knees. When Mitch, relighting his cigar from the car lighter, asked him if he’d spoken to John lately, he got a barked “No!,” making it clear John had not yet sprung his surprise on him. Maybe his son had changed his mind. More likely he’d just been too busy. “It’s high time you did,” Mitch said, but got no response. Probably he had taken too many hits and was wary. Or maybe there was something else. As they rolled on into town, Mitch asked him if everything was all right at home. “I mean, you know, your wife’s been a bit funny lately.” Completely off her trolley, more like it, the crazy twat. “She been giving you trouble?” “No, it’s not that.” Maynard seemed to be struggling for some way to talk about it, whatever it was. His clothes were a mess and he smelled pretty funky but he could clean up at John’s. A full and immediate rehab was in order and, by the looks of it, it shouldn’t wait another day. “It’s just that I lost something. Something important. And—” “Oh yeah. Your son, you mean.” “What?” His nephew peered dimly up at him for a moment, then looked back down at his filthy hands, dangling limply between his knees, turning them palms up as though there might be messages scrawled there. Christ, he was an ugly bastard. “That’s right. We haven’t heard a thing.” “That’s tough,” Mitch said. “Only son and all, I know how you feel.” He knew better than to ask about his brother-in-law, Maynard’s old man, who was going gaga. Pretty depressing. All of us headed that way. Don’t think about it. So instead Mitch told him about the hippies who’d camped out in the old hangar out at the airport. “Left a helluva mess. Fucking garbage everywhere. The crews out there never saw them, just some kid in a truck the manager took a pop at as he tore out of there, but they must have been a whole damn gypsy caravan. Where in God’s name do these people come from?” When he’d asked the mechanic who’d shown him into the hangar where the manager was now and what he was doing about it, he’d replied: “You mean Snuffy? I don’t know, ain’t he the mayor now?” So now Mitch asked: “What do you think of the new mayor?” Maynard didn’t know there was one. His nephew was silent for a time, reading his hands, and then he raised his head and looked around him and said: “How long has this day been going on?” Jesus, no answer to that one. Mitch, chewing his cigar, shook his head and said: “Looks like the whole damned town’s here.” The street outside John’s house was parked bumper-to-bumper and the drive was full too, so Mitch pulled into the space in front of the drive, leaving the keys in the ignition. Maynard seemed alarmed that Mitch wanted him to join the party, but Mitch insisted that he and his wife had been invited, his son had told him so personally, and that in fact John, he knew, had a surprise in store for him, something great, let’s go see him now. “You know John. A rough customer in a brawl, but never one to hold a grudge, and in the end he always sticks with family.” When Maynard held back, Mitch bit down on his cigar and told him this was his chance to get his life back in order and he shouldn’t fuck it up. He should also pay more attention in the future to his dress and to his personal hygiene, goddamn it, but today it didn’t much matter, this was an informal party, so let’s hit the head for a quick wash and shave and get with the pioneer spirit. Or spirits. “God knows I could use a stiff one and so could you. So, come on, son! Move your butt!”

Needing a stiff one was but one of many such remarks that passed for wit or wisdom at John’s annual Pioneers Day barbecues, that particular mot (as Ellsworth, absent today, would say) repeated at this one, with a wink and a wistful grin, by Waldo, the paint-and-wallpaper man, in cordial conversation with the gum-snapper his wife called Sweet Abandon, and no doubt employed by others this day as well; there were only so many such lines in town and they had to be shared around. “I know what you mean,” most would say, returning the wink, though Sweet Abandon, perhaps, so young, still not adept at what Kate the late lamented librarian used to call the community codes, did not. What she said, popping a bubble, was: “No shit. Listen, you got any blow on you?” Waldo’s grin vanished for a moment, then spread easily across his flexible jowls again. “I can get some,” he said. This willingness to be of service to one another, for whatever reason, was characteristic of most of the guests in John’s congested backyard: this was a friendly town, and for all that it had grown in the last decade or two, still a town, just as in the days of the pioneers, where most people knew each other and even knew what their jobs and hobbies were and where they went to church, and where common courtesy, without frills, was the daily norm. “Can I help?” “Let me refresh that for you. What’s your poison?” “Drop by the shop tomorrow, I’ve got just what you need.” “Listen, what I need, nobody’s got.” “I know what you mean.” Humor, courteous neighborliness, now and then a gentle ribbing, these were forms of local discourse that were at the same time declarations of affection and togetherness. Thus, there was no malice intended, or at least very little, when Maynard stepped out on the deck in the smiling company of John’s cigar-chewing father, indicating that his long painful exile was over, and was applauded by everybody in the backyard for having the best costume at the party: a golf shirt tucked in tailor-made business pants with muddy knees, the pioneer’s dream. When the preacher’s wife passed by the barbecue grill, holding her tummy up in front of her with both hands, one of her husband’s parishioners, wielding tongs like forceps, called out: “I’ve heard of a bun in the oven, Beatrice, but that one takes the cake!” and others, playing joke-tag, one of the town’s favorite pastimes, especially at parties and during happy hour (what old Stu, also not yet here today, liked to call “Can You Tup This?”), added: “Maybe somebody forgot to set the timer,” and “If it’s the pastor’s wife, it must be a hot cross bun,” and “Looks more like a baker’s dozen!”—“Or else a dozen bakers!” someone laughed—and none of these remarks were meant in any disparaging or disrespectful way, or to call into question the Reverend’s paternity or to suggest inadequate precautions taken, not seriously anyway, but all were at heart expressions of sympathy and sodality, and were taken as such by those at whom they were directed, except for this or that individual with a fragile ego or an underdeveloped sense of humor. These persons, whose lives, though proud, were lonelier than most, set apart as they were even at amiable gatherings like John’s backyard barbecues, were often as not dubbed by the townsfolk with accordant nicknames—and though they did not always appreciate them as such, these were also a form of inclusion and friendship, a kind of community embrace of its unembraceables—like the Nerd or Old Hoot or Mad Marge. Who now, having abandoned her mayoral campaign (the general opinion seemed to be that John’s flunky was already the mayor, she must have missed something), and being overdressed for this vacuous lawn party which mocked the day it supposedly celebrated (pioneers didn’t
have
lawns!), decided it was time to butt out and cool off with a round of golf. But she lacked both car and partner. She knew where her car was, parked many blocks away where she’d been canvassing with her clubs in the back, but where the hell, now that she needed her, was Lollie? The banker’s wife explained, in what was probably an expurgated quote, that Lorraine had left in somewhat of a tizzy, saying that when she came back, look out, there’d be the dickens to pay. Marge’s husband Trevor, sporting his new black eyepatch like a codpiece (Lorraine had used the image earlier and, annoyingly enough, it was true) and tipsier than Marge had ever seen him, also refused to leave with her when she asked, wanting to know why she always tried to spoil it whenever he was having a little fun. “What—?! You call this fun—?!” Feeling betrayed and furious with them both, Marge stormed away, shouting out her disapproval of the ecological insanity of all this wasteful suburban sprawl and arrogant overconsumption as she went (“Happy Profiteers Day!” she yelled), no doubt eliciting, somewhere amongst the revelers, yet another repetition of “There’s someone who could use a stiff one.” “I know what you mean.”

Mad Marge may have needed a bad-humor cure on this day, the Nerd as well, but not the man they called Old Hoot, the former hardware store manager, now managing director-elect of John’s new nationwide trucking and air cargo operations, who was in such a euphoric state he looked like he might explode. The broad smile on his craggy face was almost scarier than his scowl, so unfamiliar was it (there were two teeth missing, one on each side, that no one in town had ever noticed before), but certainly none could match him for the heartfelt fervor and spirit of joyful thanksgiving with which he was celebrating this traditional day of the pioneers; he was everyone else’s therapy, a stiff one personified, and most, when they saw him, broke into broad smiles, too. A rough customer, old Floyd, folks generally thought, but hardworking and loyal, and John was now repaying that loyalty. As he always did. So no one, or almost no one, begrudged him his sudden good luck. Spiffily dressed in a new summer suit with two-toned shoes, checked shirt, and silver bootlace tie, a new moustache shadowing his lip, Floyd was himself feeling very much like a pioneer, having breached some impossible frontier and finding himself moving now into exciting new unexplored territory (genuine respectability, for starters), and he did not hesitate to let people know that he was, by the grace of God, a man reborn, his mind cleansed of all impure thoughts and his repentant heart forever devoted to this town which had raised him up from the depths of hell. When John passed by, bare-chested in his cowboy duds, Floyd raised a toast to his benefactor, thanking him for having faith in him, unworthy as he was, when most of the world did not, and asking God’s blessings upon him and all his enterprises, and John, with a faint smile, raised his can of beer in return and said simply that he considered Floyd the right man for the job. Floyd flushed and smiled and tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. “And God bless your good wife!” he added, somewhat stifling the general cheer, though no one could say exactly why. Perhaps it was because Floyd’s own wife Edna had not yet arrived, arousing some curiosity, and perplexing Floyd, too, as he said when asked. “She went buying for the new house, as I recollect. Probably just got carried away.” Not like Edna, of course, a cautious shopper to say the least, but the astonishing news had made her a bit giddy and it was true that she had gone buying, as Floyd said, and with the promised new house in mind: one, she imagined, with old trees in the yard and a big picture window and carpet on the stairs instead of rubber mats and a toilet that really worked proper, or maybe even more than one. “I cain’t believe it, Floyd,” she’d said, steadying herself against the kitchen sink when he told her, “but I do, I sincerely
do
believe it!” Because she could see it in his face. And so, she had gone out to the big mall on the highway where she rarely ventured so as to look for something sufficient to mark this mighty change in their lives (she could almost hear her stepmother telling her: “Edna, go fetch me a sign!”) and what she’d finally chosen, it being too early to pick out curtains or wallpapers, carpets or cabinets, since they hadn’t even gone house hunting yet, was a beautiful table lamp with a porcelain dog for a base, all curled up like it was asleep, and a red shade above it with a pretty silver border around the top and bottom, plus a red velvet cloth, the same color as the shade, for it to rest on. She’d deliberated for a long time because it was so expensive, and when she finally plunked down her credit card she felt a twinge of guilt, but she was sure in her heart that it was just the right thing and that she would love that dog for all her life. As she was wheeling it out to her car in a shopping basket, she ran into John’s wife, dressed in a lovely pioneer costume with bonnet, full skirts, and apron, who paused to admire Edna’s purchase. How nice, she said, the way the lampshade matched the little cloth, and she showed Edna the throw rug she had just bought which also had some of the same red in it, as well as colors which were similar to the silver stripe and the porcelain dog, especially the painted collar with golden studs around the dog’s neck. It was just amazing how they went together, she said, and she insisted Edna must have it. Edna protested of course, it was strictly something she never did, but John’s wife said Edna would be doing her a favor to take it, she’d picked it up by mistake but didn’t really want it, honest, and it would go so well with Edna’s new house when she had one, and certainly it
was
very beautiful and it really
did
go perfectly with the lamp and when John’s wife told her it was a prayer rug and that she wanted her to have it as a housewarming gift, how could she refuse? It seemed like God’s will. So Edna rolled it up and put it in her shopping basket with the lamp and the cloth, telling John’s wife she didn’t know how to thank her, John’s wife saying there was really no need to, it was truly a pleasure, have a good day, and then she was gone. Edna pushed her shopping basket out into the parking lot, still very happy but worrying already about how she was going to explain all this seeming extravagance to Floyd, and, as she opened up her car trunk, she was arrested for shoplifting.