Nebraska (13 page)

Avis put the clippings back inside the dirty envelope and shoved it deep in her apron pocket and pulled herself up heavily on the handrail. Eyes were on her as she walked inside and indignantly locked the door.

She tried to nap on the sofa in the parlor but couldn't sleep for the upsetting visions of Gary twelve years ago, a slaughter-house ax in his reddened hands, his clothes sagging heavily with blood and the blood plipping like nickels onto the carpet.

Avis got up and paid her bills, cleaned up the parlor, then emptied the wastepaper baskets into a green plastic bag and dragged it out to the garbage cans in the cinder alley. The day had lost twenty degrees since noon and indigo rain clouds were turtling in. She had a premonition and looked up at the upstairs rooms of her house and at the high windows that Claude had covered with plastic weatherproofing and tape. She pulled her overcoat closed and looked up the alley at a gray old woman clipping her hedges in a see-through raincoat, her black poodle standing between her legs and idly sniffing the air.

She thought, Everything's changed. And she thought, Don't go back, but she did. She walked to the stoop and peered through the windowpanes of her kitchen door and saw the big house as it was when white people lived in it. Aprons and sweaters were hanging from nails, and green rubber boots made tan by yard mud had been slung into a corner. A twelve-year-old Knights of Columbus calendar was tacked up in the pantry, and hooked over the top of the inner door was a rubber-tipped cane.

Avis yelled unreasonably, “Hello?” and paused a second
before stepping inside. She walked into the kitchen and called again, “Hello?” She could see the pecan pie she'd made on the stove top, and Lorna's storybooks by the telephone, but she could also make out a rickety table with a checkered plastic tablecloth and on it salt and pepper cellars and a soup bowl of truck-stop matchbooks. She opened cabinets and found her own soups and stews and cereal boxes, but also their ill-matched assortment of cups and plates, potato chips, beef jerky, whiskeys, antacids, cough syrups, and a huge variety of pills. Avis bumped against her own purple sofa in the parlor but only saw a heap of magazines and a frayed green chair no more than two feet away from a round-tube Zenith television. Unwashed clothing was on their sofa, overalls were on the floor, a motor was in pieces on an open newspaper.

She was getting overlapping stations at one spot on the radio. She was apparently picking up impressions from another person close by.

And then she went upstairs to the evil past, with apprehension, even chill panic, but also with pity and reverence and the concern of a physician. She could see photographs stair-stepped up the wall: of a young sailor in Navy whites standing with a testy older woman in a tulle wedding dress; a baby boy in cowboy boots in the yard with a 1956 Plymouth; the boy in a blue Cub Scout uniform; and Gary now fourteen years old, at Christmastime, getting a shotgun from his father. And at the top of the stairs was Willa—not a snapshot but an apparition, a girl acting out scenes from the past. Willa just stepping out of the bathtub and prettily reaching up for a towel in the hallway closet as green eyes spied on her nakedness. And Willa in a terry-cloth robe, carrying a food tray, slightly smiling at someone Avis couldn't see. And yet again Willa, in nurse's whites, standing up against the clothes hamper and shutting her eyes with pleasure
as she yielded her right breast to Gary's father. Engine grease from his night shift was under his fingernails. Avis could smell gasoline on his green coveralls. And then the hallway was empty.

Avis saw a strip of light beneath the closed door to her bedroom. She put her palms to the door and perceived the room as she'd imagined it days ago, the great mahogany bed underneath the high window, the oxygen tank in the corner, the gray-haired woman sinking into a heap of yellowed pillows under stained patchwork quilts as an orange rubber tube drained into a saucepan. When Avis opened the door, the woman's head lolled fragilely to the right and she gazed at Avis for many seconds before saying weakly, “Gary?”

His mother was the first.

Avis shut the door and walked down the hallway to the second bedroom. Her girls’ room; now a boy's. His orange window shades were down, rumpled airplane sheets were on the bed, jeans were hanging over a chair. Atop a small study desk were a black telephone, high-school geometry and physics textbooks, a German beer stein of pencils and pens, and a green rubber triceratops. Everything preserved as it was twelve years ago—the overhead light was always on, and the program on the big console radio was always at high volume.

She withdrew to the only other upstairs room. Her sewing room. Willa's room. Her own mattress had been rolled up and kept in place in the corner with a clothesline rope, but Willa's mattress was on the iron springs of a pinewood cot just like her own, and the pressed bed linens were sprinkled with cheap perfume. Except for some hangers covered in tissue paper, Avis's closet was empty, but Willa's was deep in nurse's whites and party clothes and seven pairs of shoes. A striped rug was oddly placed on the floorboards in order to cover up the pink stain of spilled fingernail polish.

Avis was surprised at how little else she could pick up in the room; there was only a teaspoon of history in it. She fractionally parted her drapes, as if that were just another orderly step in a mechanical process, and she peered out without passion or emotion as she slipped her heavy overcoat off and let it pour onto her sewing bench. She sat on her own spare bed and then slumped over on the iron springs with her right palm tightly clamped to her purple eyes so she could put all the scenes and pictures together.

Rain pattered against the window glass and gradually increased in power and then it was as hard and gray and vertical as upright piano wire. Avis heard the porch door open and seconds passed and then the porch door closed again. She yelled down, “Priscilla?” and then she heard a heavy tramping up the steps, and she got another horrible glimpse of that night twelve years ago: In the big walk-in closet where her girls’ pretty things were now, Gary sagged among his jeans and paisley shirts and calf-high motorcycle boots, a pop-eyed boy with a pink tongue squeezed out of his mouth, his purpled head jutted to the right by an angled towrope and noose.

And now she could hear him opening his mother's bedroom door, and seconds passed and Gary repeated her killing, his right hand raising up high overhead and slashing down, his left palm up to shield his eyes from the hot spray of blood. Gary was probably hearing over and over again the hard, squelching slugs of the ax and his mother's dying groans of pain, but Avis only heard stillness, and then she heard the boy open the second bedroom door and yank the towrope down from his tie rack, and then, with an angry second thought, Gary shut that door too.

Hairs stood up on her arms and neck, goose bumps pebbled her skin like a rain on a nighted pond, but Avis stayed as she
was. His footsteps approached the yellow sewing room, Willa's room, and as the door creaked open, the penny odor of blood and the sink upsurge of corruption were so overpowering that Avis pinched her nose, but she couldn't move in spite of her understanding of what his sleeplessness was and what Gary had meant by being in prison. The iron springs dipped with Gary's added weight, and the springs rang a little as the boy rolled into her and nudged his hard sex between her thighs. His clothes were soaked with the hot blood of more than one body and he stank like a cat rotting in the street. His hand painted her skin red with blood as Gary gingerly touched her cheek and petted back her hair and said “Willa!” raspily, just as his father did. And Avis at last found the voice to say, “It's time to go to sleep, Gary.”

The boy paused and then avidly pressed his lips to her ear in a kiss that was cold as an apple slice. He placed his heavy ax on top of her hip, and Avis could feel its sharp pressure through her skirt as the boy's hand sought her breast. And she could feel his crazy hate and jealousy as Gary again pushed into her, saying, “You want it and you know it.”

Avis took his hand in a motherly way and said, “Gary, please. Don't hate anymore. Give up. Go to sleep. You're a ghost.”

And then she could feel a slight change in him, and Gary was lying on his back, acknowledging her words. She turned, and Gary was just a sickly boy in a paisley shirt, his green eyes windowpaned with tears. Avis said, “Everybody's forgotten,” and she heard the iron springs ease up as his nightmare slowly ended and, at last, Gary slept.

Red-Letter Days

J
AN 25. Etta still poorly but up and around. Hard winds all day. Hawk was talking. Helped with kitchen cleanup then shop work on Squeegee's fairway woods. Still playing the Haigs I talked him into in 1963. Worth plenty now. Walked up to post office for Etta's stamps. $11.00! Went to library for William Rhenquist's book on Court and Ben Hogan's
Five Lessons.
Finest golf instructions ever written. Will go over with Wild Bill, one lesson per week. Weary upon return. Skin raw. Etta said to put some cream on. Didn't. We sat in the parlor until nine, Etta with her crossword puzzles, me with snapshots of Wild Bill at junior invitational. Will point out his shoe plant and slot at the top.

FEB 2. Will be an early spring, according to the groundhog. Went ice fishing on Niobrara with Henry. Weren't close as boys but everybody else dying off. Extreme cold. Snaggle hooks and stink bait. Felix W on heart and lung machines and going downhill in a handcart. Dwight's boy DWI in Lincoln. Sam Cornish handling trial. Would've been my choice too. Aches and pains discussed. Agriculture and commodities market and Senior Pro/ Am in August. Toughed it out till noon—no luck with catfish —then hot coffee at Why Not? Upbraided for my snide comments about
The People's Court.
Everyone talking about Judge Wapner the way they used to gush about FDR. Wild Bill's poppa
slipped into the booth and hemmed and hawed before asking had
William
said anything to me about colleges. You know how boys are. Won't talk to the old man. Writing to Ohio State coach soon re: sixth place in Midwestern Junior following runner-up in Nebraska championship. And still a sophomore! Etta tried for the umpteenth time to feed me haddock this evening. Went where it usually does.

FEB 9. Hardly twenty degrees last night. Felix W's funeral today. Walked to Holy Sepulchre for the Mass, then to cemetery; taking a second to look at our plots. Hate to think about it, but I'll have my three score and ten soon. Felix two years younger. Estate papers now with Donlan & Upshaw. (?!) Widow will have to count her fingers after the settlement. Etta stacked her pennies in wrappers while watching soaps on television. Annoying to hear that pap, but happy for her company. And just when I was wishing that kids and grandkids would have been part of the bargain, Wild Bill showed up! And with his poppa's company car, so he took us out to the golf club and we practiced his one and two irons from the Sandhills patio, hitting water balls I raked up from the hazards in September. Wild Bill in golf shoes and quarterback sweats and Colorado ski sweaters, me in my gray parka and rubber overboots. You talking
cold?
Wow! Wild Bill getting more and more like Jack Nicklaus at sixteen. Lankier but just as long. His one irons reaching the green at #2! And with a good tight pattern in the snow, like shotgun pellets puncturing white paper. Homer and Crisp stopped by to hoot and golly, say how amazing the kid is, but I wouldn't let em open their traps. The goofs. W. B.’s hands got to stinging—like hitting rocks, he said—so we quit. Have spent the night perusing
Reader's Digest
. Our president making the right decisions. Feet still aching. Hope it's not frostbite.

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FEB 20. Helped Etta with laundry. Hung up sheets by myself. Brrr! Heard Etta yelling “Cecil!” over and over again, nagging me with instructions. Would not look back to house. We're on the outs today. Walked the six blocks to Main for the groceries ($34.17!) and got caught out in the snow right next to liquor store. Woman I knew from a Chapter Eleven took me home. Embarrassing because I couldn't get her name right. Verna? Vivian? Another widow. Says she still misses husband, night and day. Has the screaming meemies now and again. Was going to invite her inside but thought better of it. In mailbox the
Creighton Law Review
and
Golf Digest,
plus a jolly letter from Vance and Dorothy in Yuma, saying the Winnebago was increasing their “togetherness.” A chilling prospect for most couples I know. Worked in shop putting new handgrips on Henry's irons. Eighteen-year-old MacGregors. Wrong club for a guy his age, but Henry's too proud to play Lites. Work will pay for groceries, just about. Half pint of whiskey behind paint cans. Looked and looked and looked at it; took it up to Etta. Ate tunafish casserole—we appear to be shying away from red meat —and sat in parlor with magazines. Tom Watson's instructions good as always but plays too recklessly. Heard he's a Democrat. Shows. Etta's been watching her programs since seven. Will turn set off soon and put out our water glasses as the night is on the wane and we are getting tired.

MAR 4. Four inches last night and another batch during the day. Old Man Winter back with a vengeance. Woke up to harsh scrape of county snowplows. Worried the mail would not get through, but right on the button, including Social Security checks! Helped Etta put her Notary Sojack on, then trudged up to the Farmer's National. Whew! Kept a sawbuck for the week's
pocket money. Hamburger and coffee at the Why Not? Happy to see Tish so chipper after all her ordeals. Checked out Phil Rodger's instruction book from library—great short game for Wild Bill to look at, although Lew Worsham and Paul Runyan still tops in that category. Helped Etta tidy up. Wearing my Turnberry sweater inside with it so cold, but Etta likes the windows open a crack. Shoes need polishing. Will do tomorrow or next day. Early to bed.

MAR 12. Etta has been scheming with Henry's wife about retirement communities in Arizona. And where would our friends be? Nebraska. We put a halt to that litigation in September, I thought. Expect it will be an annual thing now. Dishes. Vacuumed. Emptied trash. Hint of spring in the air but no robins yet. Wild Bill lying low, sad to say. Girlfriend? Took a straw broom into rooms and swatted down cobwebs. Etta looking at me the whole time without saying a word. Haircut, just to pass the time. Dwight snipping the air these days, just to keep me in his chair. We avoided talk of his boy and jail. Seniors potluck meeting in Sandhills clubhouse at six. Shots of me with Dow Finsterwald, Mike Souchak, Jerry Barber still up in the pro shop. Worried new management would change things. (Pete Torrance still my idea of a great club professional.) And speaking of, a good deal of talk about our own Harlan “Butch” Polivka skunking out at Doral Ryder Open and the Honda Classic. Enjoyed saying I told you so. We'll plant spruce trees on right side of #11 teebox, hoping to make it a true par five. Alas, greens fees to go to six dollars (up from 5¢ in 1940) and Senior Pro/Am will have to go by the way this year. Hours of donnybrook and hurt feelings on that score, but Eugene late in getting commitments. Everybody regretting August vote now. Would likes of Bob Toski or Orville Moody say no soap to a $1,000 appearance fee? We'll
never know. Betsy said it best at Xmas party. Eugene looks very bad, by the by. Chemotherapy took his hair, and a yellow cast to his eyes now. Wearing sunglasses even indoors. Zack much improved after operation. Wilma just not all there anymore. Etta tried to make coherent conversation but got nowhere. Sigh. Upon getting home, wrote out checks to water and sewer and Nebraska power and so on, but couldn't get checkbook to zero out with latest Fanner's National statement. Frustrating. Sign of old age, I guess. Will try again tomorrow.

MAR 17. Looked up Wild Bill's high-school transcript. Would appear he's been getting plenty of sleep. We'll have to forget about Stanford and the Eastern schools and plug away at the Big Eight and Big Ten. Etta wearing green all day in honor of old Eire. Was surprised when I pointed out that Saint Patrick was English. Told her that
Erin go bragh
joke. She immediately telephoned Betsy. Late in the day I got on the horn to Wild Bill, but Cal said he was at some party. Kept me on the line in order to explore my opinions on whether Wild Bill ought to get some coaching from the Butcher, acquire some college-player techniques. Well, I counted to ten and took a deep breath and then patiently, patiently told old Cal that golf techniques have changed not one iota in sixty years and that Harlan “Butch” Polivka is a “handsy” player. Lanny Wadkins type. Hits at the golf ball like he was playing squash. Whereas I've taught Wild Bill like Jack Grout taught Nicklaus. Hands hardly there. And did Cal really want his boy around a guy known to have worn knickers? Well, old Cal soothed my pin feathers some by saying it was only a stray notion off the top of his head, and it was Cecil says this and Cecil says that since his son was ten years old. Told
him
that Erin
go bragh
joke. Heard it, he said. From Marie.

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MAR 20. Took a morning telephone call for Etta, one of those magazine-subscription people. Enjoyed the conversation. Signed up for
Good Housekeeping.
Weather warming up at last, so went out for constitutional. Wrangled some at the Why Not? Squeegee getting heart pains but don't you dare talk to him about his cigarettes! Lucky thing Tish got between us. She says Squeegee still doesn't know what to do with his time; just hand-washes his Rambler every day and looks out at the yard. Encouraged her talk about a birthday party for Etta with the girls from the Altar Sodality and the old “Roman Hruska for Senator” campaign. Ate grilled cheese sandwich in Etta's room. Did not blow it and broach party subject. Etta's hair in disarray. We sang “The Bells of St. Mary's” and “Sweet Adeline” while I gave it a hundred strokes. Etta still beautiful in spite of illness. Expressed my sentiments.

MAR 25. Worked out compromise with insurance company. Have been feeling rotten the past few days. Weak, achy, sort of tipsy when I stand up. Hope no one stops by. Especially Wild Bill. Sandhills’ one and only PGA golf professional is again favoring us with his presence in the clubhouse. Will play dumb and ask
Harlan
about his sickly day at the Hertz Bay Hill Classic. Etta's temperature gauge says it's fifty-two degrees outside; March again going out like a lamb. Ike biography petered out toward the end. Haven't been able to sleep, so I took a putter from the closet and have been hitting balls across the parlor carpet and into my upended water glass.
Tock,
rum, rum, plonk.

APR 1. Hard rains but mail came like clockwork. Nice chat with carrier. (Woman!) Quick on the uptake. April Fool's jokes, etc. Letters to occupant, assorted bills, and then, lo and behold, government checks. Wadded up junk mail and dropped it in
circular file, then Etta walked with me to Farmer's. Enjoys rain as much as ever, but arthritis acting up some. Hefty balance in savings account thanx to Uncle Sam, but no pup anymore. One hospital stay could wipe us out. Have that to think about every day now as 70 looms on the horizon. Will be playing nine tomorrow with Zack, Mel, and Dr. Gerald S. Bergstrom, P.C. Hoping for another Nassau with old P.C. Lousy when “pressed,” and the simoleons will come in handy. Evening supper with
Reader's Digest
open under milk glass and salad bowl. National Defense called to task. Entire Navy sitting ducks. Worrisome.

APR 4. Have put new spikes in six pairs of shoes now; at $15 a crack. Wrist is sore but easy money. Dull day otherwise. Walked over to Eugene's and played cribbage until five. Eugene is painting his house again. Etta and I have been counting and think this is the sixth time since Eugene put the kibosh on his housepainting business. You know he's retired because he will
not
do anyone else's house. Have given up trying to figure Eugene. Walked past Ben's Bar & Grill on the way home. Just waved.

APR 10. Wonderful golf day. Timothy grass getting high in the roughs, but songbirds out, womanly shapes to the sandhills up north, cattails swaying under the zephyrs, great white clouds arranging themselves in the sky like sofas in the Montgomery Ward. Homer and Crisp played nine with me and zigzagged along in their putt-putt. Hijinks, of course. Exploding golf ball, Mulligans, naughty tees. (Hate to see cowboy hats on the links. We ought to have a rule.) Even par after six, then the 153-yard par three. Hit it fat! Chopped up a divot the size of Sinatra's toupee and squirted the pill all of twenty yards. Sheesh! Exam-
177
ined position. Easy lie and uphill approach. Eight iron would have got me there ten years ago, but I have given in to my age. Went over my five swing keys and thought “Oily,” just like Sam Snead. Hard seven iron with just enough cut to tail right and quit. Kicked backwards on the green and then trickled down the swale to wind up two feet from the cup. Homer and Crisp three-putted as per usual—paid no attention to my teaching—and I took my sweet time tapping in.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Crisp says Butch has been claiming he shot a 62 here last July but, conveniently, with some Wake Forest pals who were visiting. Funny he never gets up a game with me. Tax returns in. Have overpaid $212, according to my pencil. Early supper, then helped Etta strip paint from doorjambs. Hard job but getting to be duck soup with practice. Will be sore tomorrow.

APR 15. Squeegee passed away just about sunup. Heart attack. Etta with Mildred as I write this. The guy had been complaining of soreness in his back but no other signs of ill health other than his hacking and coughing. Looking at yesterday's diary entry, I spot my comment on his “hitching,” and it peeves me that I could not have written down some remarks about how much his friendship meant to me over these past sixty-five years. Honest, hardworking, proud, letter-of-the-law sort of guy. Teetotaler. Excellent putter under pressure. Would not give up the cigarettes. Will keep pleasant memories of him from yesterday, say a few words at the service. Weather nippy. Wanted booze all day.

APR 17. S. Quentin German consigned to his grave. Especially liked the reading from Isaiah: “Justice shall be the band around his waist, and faithfulness a belt upon his hips. Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.” And then something about a lion
eating hay like the ox. Excellent applications to old age/erosion of powers/nature's winnowing process. Following, there was a nice reception at the Why Not? Haven't seen Greta since she had her little girl. Mildred wisely giving Squeegee's Haigs to the golf team at William Jennings Bryan. Etta and I took short constitutional at nightfall. Warm. Heather and sagebrush in the air. Have begun Herbert Hoover biography. Iowa boy. Engineer. History will judge him more kindly than contemporaries did. Low today; no pep.