Nickel Mountain (31 page)

He read the headlines on the papers in the rack and the lead articles down as far as the fold in the paper, his face squeezed shut, pouting. There was no news. There was never any news, merely the palaver those in power released to the fat, happy masses: a new artificial lake for their motorboats, a new skirt length from the change-mongers. His eyes filled with tears. From somewhere behind him came Christmas music.

He went into the men's room and looked in the mirror, then, after thinking about it first, washed his face and parted his hair with his fingers. They could have known what train he'd be on if they'd thought, or if they knew their own son at all; they could have known even that he'd forget to wire ahead. It was all very well to say, “Never mind, no harm done.” None had been done: He could phone from here and wait for them to come in the morning (his father driving king-like through the darkness, holding the big gray Cadillac to the center of the road, and let anybody approaching from the other direction watch out). Or he could hitchhike. No harm. It sounded calm and grown-up. But there
was
harm.
Hypocrites,
he thought again, more angrily, more defensively (he knew) than before. All the same. … His father had bought every decent milker from Ben Wolters' barn, getting them dirt cheap because Ben was hard up, and when they were driving the loaded cattle truck home he'd laughed and said, “That poor devil don't even know I cleaned him out!” Willard had said, “
I
do, though, don't I,” squinting like Roy Rogers. He'd been fourteen then. His father had looked at him and grinned, then looked back at the road. A little farther on he'd said, “It was him or me, Willard.” Willard thought now, six years too late to say it:
Never. From the minute the two of you were born it was never you, only him.
Then he thought:
And me. Nicked in the balls from the beginning.

And now again (meeting his eyes in the mirror) he was thinking sadly of his own son, nicked too, from before he was born, as though the old man had thought it out before­hand and set it all up. But too late now to worry about the child. Too late to worry about the mother either, not that she needed it. He swallowed and blinked hard, angry that tears had ambushed him. She'd done fine for herself, Callie had. Had somehow talked fat old Henry Soames, bad heart and all, into marrying her—by crying, maybe, or by walking into his bedroom naked, or maybe by telling her father old Henry was the one. He'd never have believed she was capable of it, three years ago; which showed how incredibly innocent he'd been. He'd thought he himself was the calculating one: He'd been tortured, lying in his bed at night, each time he left her, thinking simultaneously how beautifully innocent and good she was and what a bastard he was himself, teasing her on little by little, unable to stop himself, vile but at least
knowing
he was vile, believing in the goodness that was out of his reach—except that that wasn't true; all lies; all he ever told himself, he thought, was lies. He'd never known, right to the last minute, whether what he wanted was just to make her or to marry her. She was the third, but the only virgin, the first one there'd been any question about. A question he'd never really answered, in fact, until after he'd heard she was marrying Henry Soames. He'd had to leave for school, which gave him a chance to put off deciding, and pretty soon the thing was decided for him and he saw how lucky he'd been—for once in his life. It shouldn't have surprised him that Callie Wells had turned calculating. That happened, the minute a girl got pregnant. It was instinct, maybe. But was it possible Callie had been calculating all along? (Norma Denitz had said, “You fool, Willard, she planned the whole thing! She took you because she was chasing a bigger fish. A sick old man with money.” “I don't believe it,” he'd said; but he did believe it, or anyway believed it for that brief moment Norma had laughed. “Hah! Male ego. If men believed the truth about women it would be the end of cohabitation.” She was wrong about that, though. He knew the truth about Norma Denitz. He meant nothing to her—“a good lay,” she said, “ships smashing in the night.” But he stayed with her. He might even marry her someday, if she got her neuroses straightened out.)

And yet Henry was no fool. Was his part, too, calculation? Was it possible that Henry himself had set it all up, hiring her at the diner when he didn't need help—maybe even knowing she was making it with Willard?—keeping her working there late sometimes, watching every minute with his little pig's eyes, pecker itching, as Norma claimed? He'd gone up to Henry's place almost every night, once. To work on the jitney or to sit in the lean-to room in back and talk. His mother had distrusted it, had felt, vaguely, disgusted by it, and when Willard understood what she had in mind he was furious. “He's a
good
man,” he'd said fiercely. “He wants someone to talk to, and argue with. Nothing but that.” She'd pretended to be convinced, but never again could Willard be thoroughly convinced himself. “No one over thirty is seriously concerned with ideas,” one of his instructors had said. “Ideas are either toys or tools—ways of passing the time, or ways of getting things.” Surely
that
was a lie.

It came to him what it was that made his stomach churn as he drew closer to home. He was going back to the land of his innocence, the sunlit garden where all those years he had believed, in spite of everything, in parental love, the goodness and innocent virtue of girls, or at any rate of certain girls, the possibility of unselfish friendship. He was going back knowing it was perhaps all bullshit, and, for all his fear that it might be bullshit, he was going back expecting to find it still there, and holy.

He decided to hitchhike. He would give the old man no advantage, no chance to speak of how he'd driven half the night through ice and snow et cetera, like a postman, no chance to whine about Willard's forgetting to wire. Cold as it was, nobody would bother to stop for him but the drunks and fairies. Because hitchhikers could be dangerous, like any stranger. The drunks would stop because they were stupid, the fairies because they had an angle. All right.

He took a bus to the city limits and waited.

2

When Willard woke up the car was warm, moving very slowly. The radio was playing softly, Christmas music by an orchestra. The odd scent was still there, like a funeral. The man was bent forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands tightly. There was light, curly hair on the backs of his fists. They were passing through a town. The streets were deserted and white, and the snow streaking toward the windshield made it impossible to see from one block to the next. Willard hugged himself, his legs clamped together, and watched streetlamps and dimly lighted store windows loom into sight one after another. From time to time the car floated for an instant, as it seemed, coming onto ice. Wreaths hanging over the middle of the street came into sight overhead and then vanished behind the car roof, unlighted and morose. Here and there there were parked cars along the curb, drifted-in, half-buried. Then they were out in the country again, passing unlighted farms and high, blowing drifts.

The man said, “Get any sleep?”

“A little,” he said. He got out his cigarettes and lit one. Reflected in the windshield, he looked like Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney or someone, and the recognition simultaneously pleased and disgusted him.
Fake,
he thought;
sucker.
And that too was from some movie. Even his self-hatred was secondhand, cheap show. He blew out smoke and took a deep breath of air but seemed to get none, like Fortunato in the basement.

“Storm's getting worse and worse,” the man said.

“So I see.” He studied the bright red reflection of his cigarette in the windshield, wondering how far they'd come. After a moment he glanced over at the man. He was medium-sized, chubby, well-off-looking. A brown, heavy coat that might be English. Brown hair under the jaunty hat brim; probably bald on top. A flabby, effeminate face. He looked pleased with himself, pleased to be driving an Olds 98, helping some poor damn hitchhiker home to its mother.

“Going home for college vacation?” the man said.

Willard nodded, thinking:
No. To visit my bastard son and my former whore.
(But he wasn't. Would dodge them, escape them.) He took another deep breath and closed his eyes, briefly.

“I thought so,” the man said, pleased. “I'm visiting my daughter. We always spend Christmas together.”

“That's nice,” he said, all trace of irony suppressed. He drew on the cigarette and kept the smoke inside for a moment. “A family should keep in touch.”

The man glanced at him. After a moment, he smiled. “I always visit her at Christmas.”

Bringing presents, yes. Why, Daddy, how thoughtful of you to remember!

Sir, your daughter is pregnant. By a bicycle with the seat off. She's afraid to mention it, for fear you might disapprove. I speak as your friend, sir. It's only natural that a father would want to be informed.
Panic rose in him, or claustrophobia. He remembered swimming in Lake George, driving up, up, up toward air unbelievably far from where it should be.

“Where are you in school?” the man asked.

“Albany.”

The man nodded as though that, too, pleased him, but he said, “I meant, what grade are you in?”

“I went to Cornell, the first year,” Willard said, “but I transferred.”

The man thought about it. “I see.”

“For the better living conditions.”

To live with a slut, sir. Luckily, your daughter is not a slut. Although she is going to deliver a bicycle. Part Roadmaster.

“The living conditions are better in Albany, you think?” He was torn between watching the virtually invisible road and squinting at Willard; he twisted his head from one to the other.

“Much better. Softer, if you know what I mean.” After a minute, he added, “There are two main conditions of living, hard and softer.”

The man laughed and nodded, then seemed to think about this, too, his head inclined to one side, face screwed up as if he'd bitten his tongue. Willard said, “What line are you in, exactly?”

“Actually,” the man said, “I'm in flowers.” After a second he explained, “
J
.
E. Jones' Flowers,
in Utica. You may have heard of it. Jones has been dead for years. I bought the business. My name's Taylor. Actually, most people call me Jones.” He laughed. “I have a bank account under the name of Jones and another one under my other name. For personal checks. Saves confusion.”

“How about that,” Willard said. He added without thinking, meaning nothing, “I have two names too.”

“Oh?” The man was squinting at him again, suspicious.

But he was remembering Norma Denitz's father. A psychoanalyst. He had curly brown hair parted down the middle, droopy eyes, a face as soft and pale as ass, fingers obscenely warm. He talked about patients, some man who'd put lye in his wife's douche bag, knowing (for certain reasons, Norma's father said) that she would never actually use it. He sat with a double martini in his pink, soft hand, wearing even in his own living room his obscene brown suit and vest, bow tie. Norma's stepmother was wearing a shiny white dress cut so low you could see her ample and only virtues whenever she bent over. She was forty-eight, but she'd had her face lifted. They believed in The New Morality, but when Norma had stood up and stretched, holding the martini out to the side, as if for a toast, signaling him to come up with her—screw right under their noses—he could feel their anger like electric shock reverberating through the room, smile as they might.
Hypocrites.
He said abruptly:

“I imagine it takes a sharp man to make it with flowers.”

“Well,” the man said tentatively, “you have to be cut out for it, that's true.”

The snowfall was as heavy as ever. The hills and trees blocked the wind and the snow dumped down as if from a giant shovel.

“That's not what I mean. You have to know exactly what to buy, otherwise the whole mess would rot. You have to have enough but not too much, and then you have to talk people into taking it.”

“Well, yes,” the man said. “But actually—”

“And then, too, you've got to act interested in people. They graduate from grammar school and you've got to act like it's really something, or Uncle Elmer dies and you've got to look sad, or some girl gets married—”

The man was looking hard at him, the car nosing toward the guard rail. He said, “I
am
interested in people. As I say, some people are cut out for it and some aren't. It takes all kinds.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Willard said. He lit a new cigarette from the old one. “It's a kick to talk to people sometimes—gives the ego a boost. But day after day, the same old. …” He stopped, looking at the guard rail in alarm. The man jerked the wheel and the car slid for a second, then straightened out again. It gave them both a scare, and for a while they were quiet. The radio played on, tinny, mechanically sentimental. The man sat back farther in his seat, driving still more slowly. They came to a town. There were no lights except, here and there, the snow-filtered light of a Christmas tree or an outline of colored lights around a porch. The big car moved through the town quickly, riding down the center of the deserted street. They jounced over a railroad crossing, then came into the open again, the highway a tunnel between snowplow drifts.

(It was right around Christmas the baby had come, three years ago. He'd been home, even had a vacation job at the Purina place; but he'd only stayed two days. After he'd gotten back to school, he'd gotten drunk and told them the whole thing, at the dorm. As soon as it was out he saw what he'd done. She was just some country slut to them, and what he'd done was of no importance. Only his misery was important. They turned it over and over, like a dead turtle, some of them laughing, some of them sympathizing, some sitting glum and embarrassed at his talking too much. After that he could hardly stand meeting them in the dorm halls. But it was all right. He'd transferred, and he'd never repeated his idiot mistake. He knew them now, all their talk about girls they'd laid, all their jabber about what buddies they'd always be.)