Sometimes a Great Notion (90 page)

I was petrified by the prospect; with no luck along that line since way back before Mother’s suicide, and months even since my last painful attempt, what reason had I to expect success this time? perhaps that’s why I have been holding back so long; perhaps it is this pain I have been warned to WATCH OUT for; perhaps I should—

But when a voice called, “Come in, Lee,” from the other side of the door, I knew it was too late to use this reason to run, even if the reason had been real.

I opened the door and poked in my head—“Just for a quick hello,” I said, and added matter-of-factly, “I walked out from town, now I—”

“I’m glad you did,” she said, then added in a lighter tone, “It was getting a little scary out here all by myself so long. Boy! Are you drenched! Come sit by the heater.”

“I became separated from Henry at the hospital,” I offered lamely.

“Oh? Where do you suppose he went?”

“Where can one ever suppose old Henry goes? Maybe after more of the balm of Gilead. . . .”

She smiled. She was seated on the floor before the humming orange heat of her coiled heater with a book, wearing a pair of tight green capris and one of Hank’s plaid woolen shirts that itched itched itched against her skin, I was positive. And the glow of the electric coils made her face and hair shimmer with a deep fluid opulence. “Yes,” I said, “I suppose he must have stopped by Gilead for more balm. . . .”

After our initial howdy-do’s and what-do-you-supposes, and that stretched instant of silence, I indicated her book. “I see you’re still bent on improving your mind.”

She smiled at the volume. “It’s the Wallace Stevens.” She looked back up, asking forgiveness. “I don’t know that I’m getting all of it—”

“I don’t know that anybody is.”

“—but I
like
it. It—well, even when I don’t get it, I still feel certain ways when I read it. Some places I feel happy, some places I feel all funny. And then”—she dropped her eyes again to the book resting in her hands—“sometimes I feel pretty awful.”

“Then you are most certainly getting it!”

My enthusiasm hung there for another silence with egg on its face; she looked back up. “Oh say, what did they say to you at the doctor’s?”

“They
said
”—I tried to change from enthusiasm to comedy again—“in so many words: ‘Drop your pants and bend over.’ And the next thing I knew they were pumping my lungs full of smelling salts.”

“You passed
out?
”

“Cold.”

She laughed softly at me, then became confidential, lowering her voice. “Hey now; I’ll tell you a little something, if you promise not to plague him about it.”

“Cross my heart. Plague who about what?”

“Old Henry. After his fall off those rocks. See, when they brought him in from the show he cussed and carried on just terrible while he was around here, then, when we got him to the doctor, he went tough as nails. You know the way he can be. He didn’t make a peep while they were lookin’ him over—except for joking with the nurses and kidding them about being so antsy with him. ‘Ain’t nothin’ but a busted wing,’ he kept saying. ‘I had twicet as bad—twicet as bad! C’mawn, git the booger put back in place! I got to git back to work! Yarrrr!’ ”

We both laughed at her gravel-voiced impersonation. “But
then,
” she went on, becoming secretive again, “they brought out a needle. Not even very big, but big enough. I knew how he felt about needles and I saw the old fella just go white as a sheet when he saw it coming. But he wasn’t going to let on, you see? He was just going to keep up his front. ‘C’mawn, c’mawn, c’-mawn; stick me with that outfit so I can get back to business!’ he kept growling. Then, when they
did
shoot him—after him bein’ so tough and so brave in front of them over his broken bones—he just flinched and made a face. But we heard something; and when I looked over I saw he’d wet all over himself and it was running down his
leg
all over the
floor
!”

“No! Henry? Oh
no,
Henry Stamper? Whoo! Oh god . . .” I laughed more than I could remember laughing in years. The thought of his funny surprised face reduced me to a soundless quivering. “Oh god . . . that’s beautiful, oh my god . . .”

“And . . . and—oh listen,” she went on in a whisper, “when we went to get him into pajamas—oh listen—after the shot had knocked him out . . . we saw that wetting himself wasn’t
all
he’d done.”

“Oh lord . . . oh that’s marvelous, I can just see it. . . .”

We laughed until we reached that awkward emptiness that follows long laughing, like the emptiness that follows a long roll of thunder; then we were silent again, and uncomfortable, and terribly, deafeningly aware of the thought in both our minds. But what’s the sense in trying? I demanded of myself, staring at the lock of hair which ran like a glowing arrow down the side of her averted face into the neck of her shirt. . . . What’s the sense in dreaming? You can’t make it, that’s all. It’s all part of the way you have worked it out. You should have known all along that the selfsame weapon of weakness that was to win you victory over Brother Hank would be incapable of partaking of the fruits of that victory. You should have known that the spoils which you won from him with limp impotence could
never
be taken with the same tact. . . .

I stood there, then, looking down at this girl’s shy and unvoiced and obvious offering of herself, trying to be philosophic about my organic inability to accept the offer . . . while the very organ in question rose to refute this newest of excuses and demand with pounding insistence the chance to
prove
his ability. I stood there, with all obstacles at last removed and nothing separating me any more from my most desirable goal but the space of a few feet—all reasons removed, all excuses exhausted—and
still
that voice in my head refused to let me go: WATCH OUT WATCH OUT, it chanted. But for
what?
I demanded, almost sick with frustration. Please, tell me; watch out for
what!

JUST DON’T DO IT, was the reply; IT WILL BE A BAD SCENE. . . .

For
who?
I’m safe, I
know
so. A bad scene for Hank? Viv? For who?

FOR YOU, FOR YOU . . .

So, when I had suffered this period of silent standing sufficiently, I sighed and mumbled something about well, it would probably be best—oh, for my cold and all—if I went on in to bed. And she nodded—face still averted—yes, that’s probably true . . . well, good night, Viv . . . Good night, Lee; I’ll see you, I guess, in the morning. . . .

With her eyes downcast for my cowardice as I slunk from the room. With my stomach sick for failure and my heart dying with shame for an impotence that could no longer even be blamed on impotence . . .

(I stopped the pick-up out in front of the hospital, and when I picked up the old man to cart him into the emergency room, I saw his arm had come all the rest of the way off. It dropped out of the ragged sleeve to the street like a snake coming out of its skin. I left it lay. I couldn’t fuss with it now.
There is something else, if I could just remember . . .

The night attendant stopped me and started to say something, then looked at the old man. His pencil fell out of his hand. I told him, “I’m Hank Stamper. This here is my old man. A log rolled on him.” And I put the old man on a bed and went over and sat down in a cushioned chair. The attendant was asking questions that I didn’t care about answering. I told him I had to get gone. He said I was nuts, I had to stay till the doc come. I said, “Okay. When Doc Layton gets here wake me up Soon as he gets here. And we’ll see. Now. Take this old man somewhere and give him some blood and leave me alone.”

When I woke I thought for a second that no time had passed, that I’d just blinked and that attendant had merely aged and put on about two hundred pounds and was still asking the same questions that I wasn’t hearing yet. When I seen it was the doctor I stood up. “Now,” I told him, “all I want to know is do I need to give him some blood?”

“Blood? Lord, Hank, what’s wrong with you? You’re in about as much condition to give a pint of blood as he is. What happened out there?”

“He’s all right, then? The old man?”

“Sit down. No, he isn’t all right, for chrissakes. He’s an old man and he’s lost him an arm. What in the name of god are you trying to rush off to that’s so—”

“But he ain’t dead? He ain’t goin’ to die tonight?”

“He isn’t dead—Lord knows why—but as far as—What’s the
matter
with you, Hank? Sit back down there and let me get a look at you.”

“No. I got to go. In a minute I will—” I’m late for something, sleeping like that. “I got to in a minute—”
In a minute I’ll remember what it is. I pull on my hard hat and feel for cigarettes. “Now,” I say.

“Well, for chrissakes,” the doctor said to me, “he’s going to drive home. Look here, let me look at that hand, anyway.”

It was the cut I’d got working on the jetty some days before; it had opened and was bleeding. “No,” I said slowly, trying to remember what it was I was late for. “No thanks, I can get my wife to tend to that for me. I’ll call you about old Henry in the morning.”

I headed out the door. The arm was still laying there on the sidewalk beside the pick-up in a puddle. I picked it up and tossed it in just like it was cord wood.
What was it? In a minute I’ll—

On the way back through town I stopped at the Sea Breeze to ask where the kid was. “Don’t know,” Mrs. Carleson answered, more sullen than usual, “jest he ain’t here no more.” I didn’t feel like pressing it so I walked on up the street to check the bar. No one there had seen him. Before I could leave, Evenwrite eased up to me and said something at me. I just nodded and told him I didn’t have time to fool with him right then and headed for the door. This Draeger guy was sitting there and he smiled at me and he said hello. He said, “Hank, I feel I should warn you that your casual presence in town is more dangerous to you than you—”

“I’m busy,” I told him.

“Certainly, but stop a moment and consider—”

I walked out along Main. I wasn’t sure where I was headed.
In just a minute I’ll remember . . . somewhere I have to go.
I went to the Sea Breeze and started to go in and then I remembered that whatever it was I had asked about in there, they didn’t have it. I started back for the pick-up when three guys I never saw before in my life come out of the alley by the grange hall. They pull me back in the alley and go to working me over. I think for a minute, they’re gonna kill me, but then I knew that they weren’t. Some way I knew. They just weren’t working at it hard enough. They took turns holding me against the wall and belting me pretty good, but not like they really aimed to kill me. And I wasn’t really giving them my undivided attention;
just a minute I’ll
—I was about to sit down and just let them have their way when up the alley came Evenwrite and Les Gibbons and even old Big Newton, hollering, “Hang on, Hank! Hang on, boy!” And I’m damned if they didn’t run off these three other guys and help me up from the ground. Dang, Les said; those must be that bunch of yahoos from Reedsport again,
we heard they was spoiling for you . . .
and I thanked them
and Evenwrite says people got to stick together and I thank him. They help me out to my pick-up. Les Gibbons even says he’ll drive me home if need be. I tell him no, I don’t know that I’m going that way, but thanks just the same, I’m in somethin’ of a hurry to—what? well, in a minute I’ll
—I told the boys so long and started the pick-up and headed off,
feeling lightheaded and pleasant, floating, sort of. Some of that fever going around, I suspect. But what the devil? it ain’t so bad, a little temperature . . . like Joby always says, accept your lot and swing with
what you got. And a runny nose is maybe a damn nuisance, but a fever is a cheap drunk . . .
driving up Main. It was funny; I felt that there was an errand or something that had slipped my mind
in just a little bit I’ll
but I was damned if I could remember what, exactly.
So in a minute I’ll—
I headed out up river, figuring I might as well go home as long as I couldn’t recall what it was I was supposed to see to. I just drove, slow and easy, watching the white lines blink past and the clouds blowing in the moon, not trying to think.

And I didn’t recall what was on my mind till I pulled the pick-up up to the garage, and that reminded me of seeing him
and I don’t recall all of it till I look out across the moonlit river and see the launch is tied over there now, across the way, and that now there’s two rooms lit over in the house instead of only one . . .
)

After leaving Viv with her poetry and her disappointment, I went to the bathroom, where I drew out my teeth-brushing as long as possible and spent a good five minutes examining the skin of my face to see how the burn had healed. In my own cold quarters I undressed slowly, putting off getting into bed until the cool of the room forced me between the covers. Finally I turned out the light. The darkness exploded into the room; then, slowly, the moon cast a blue-white beam across my quilt, chilling my cheek and intersecting that thin finger of light that came from the hole in the wall. Have to fill that hole, I thought to myself. I’ll have to fill that hole. Someday soon I will have to do that for good. . . .

Then, like that exploding darkness, the shame rose again and surged over me with the same sickening force that had years ago left me with drumming headaches and vomiting . . . the same force, years before, in the same bed . . . always after (oh God, I had never made the connection before!) always the
day
after I had watched through that spyhole the passion that I was then, was
still
incapable of competing with. Now that point of light had found me again. I cringed back into the bedclothes; it seemed to be chopping away at me, at the worthless flesh of me. A scalpel of terrible light, causing actual physical
pain!
I lay writhing beneath it, feeling no longer shame but only pain. Perhaps when shame grows too much for the soul to hold, it expands to sicken the flesh itself with a disease as palpable as cancer, and as deadly. I couldn’t say. Not then. Only that it was a very real hurt and rapidly growing in proportion . . . I realized I was crying, not at all silently this time. I clutched my head in time to catch a thunderclap of pain that shook water from my forehead and eyes. I clenched my teeth and rolled groaning into a ball, readying myself for the blow to my stomach. I shuddered with deep, clutching sobs. . . .