Sometimes a Great Notion (10 page)

That’s the trouble as he sees it.

There is a movie-show house, open Thurs., Fri. & Sat. Nites, located next door to a laundry, both establishments owned by the same sallow and somber businessman. The theater marquee reads: THE GUNS OF NAVARONE G PECK & THREE SHIRTS 99¢ THIS WEAK ONLY.”

According to this bleached citizen the trouble is not enough E’s.

Across the street, behind windows filled with curl-cornered photographs of retouched homes and farmhouses, the Real Estate Man sits with a lapful of white pine shavings . . . The bald brother-in-law of the sad-eyed movie-laundry magnate, this Real Estate Man is known as a shrewd cooky with a mortgage and a hotwire speaker at the Tuesday Jaycee luncheons: “She’s a comin’ area, boys, she’s a sleepin’ giant. We had some trouble, sure. Still have, because of eight hard years under the administration of that tight-fisted Army bastard in the White House, but now we’re out of the woods, we’re roundin’ the turn!”

And on his desk his collection of free-to-the-customer statues, little white pine replicas of Johnny Redfeather whittled by the Real Estate Man’s own skilled fingers, stand like a stalwart Community Chest army and turn their wooden eyes out the window down a long row of empty storefronts. Where FOR RENT signs on the doors make forlorn appeals for someone to come back and take the whitewash from the windows and put it back on the walls, come back and fill the shelves with bright tin rows of deviled meat and spiced beans, fill the glass-topped candy counter with cartons of Day’s Work, Copenhagen, Skol, Climax; fill the benches around the woodstove with the booming throng of bearded, steaming, calk-booted men who used to—a while back, three or four decades back—pay three or four times the city price for a dozen eggs; men who dealt only in paper money because pants pockets weren’t mended to hold anything as measly as a two-bit piece. FOR RENT, FOR SALE, FOR LEASE say the signs on the doors, “Prosperity and
New
Frontiers,” says the Real Estate Hotwire over a glass of beer. The shrewd cooky whose only deal since Founder’s Day involved his sister’s flour-faced husband and a little rundown bankrupt movie-show house next to the laundry. “You damn betcha. Smooth slidin’ from here on. Our only trouble is we have just suffered a minor recession under the regime of that general!”

But the citizens in Wakonda begin to disagree—toward agreement. The union members at first contend: “The trouble ain’t administration, it’s automation. Homelite saws, one-man yarders, mobile donkeys—why
half
the men can cut
twice
the trees. The solution is simple: the wood-worker’s got to have the six-hour day, just like the shingle-weavers’ve got. Boys, give us the Six-Hour Day with Eight-Hour Pay, and I tell you we’ll put
all
our members to cuttin’ twice the trees!”

And all the members holler and whistle and stamp their agreement, even though they know that later, in the bar after the meeting, some wet blanket will always recall that “the trouble is we ain’t
got
twice the trees any more; some snake in the grass chopped
down
a big bunch over the last fifty or so years.”

“No! No!” says the Real Estate Man. “What’s wrong isn’t the lack of timber—it is a lack of
Goals!
”

“Perhaps,” says the Reverend Brother Walker of the Church of God and Metaphysical Science, “it is a lack of God.” He takes a calculated sip of his beer before he goes on. “Our present spiritual trouble is certainly greater than our economic trouble.”

“Certainly! Far be it from me to de-emphasize
that
, but—”

“But what Mr. Loop means, Brother Walker, is a man needs a little meat and taters to keep his morale up.”

“Man’s got to live, Brother.”

“Yes, but ‘not by bread alone,’ remember?”

“Certainly! But not, by God, just by
God
alone neither.”

“And I say if we ain’t got the timber to cut—”

“There’s wood and aplenty! Ain’t Hank Stamper cuttin’ full time with
his
show? Ain’t he? Huh?”

They all take a thoughtful drink.

“So the trouble ain’t lack of timber . . .”

“Nope. No siree . . .”

They had been drinking and discussing since early afternoon at the huge oval table traditionally reserved for such caucuses, and, while they formed no official organization, this casual group of eight or ten citizens, they were nevertheless recognized as the ruling body of the town’s opinion and their decisions were as sanctified as the hall where they met.

“Innerestin’ point, you know—about Hank Stamper?”

This hall, the Snag Saloon, is a few doors down from the movie-show house and across the street from the grange hall. Its interior is no more out of the ordinary than its patrons—the booths and stools are replicas of similar settings in similar logging-town bars—but its streetfront is spectacular in the extreme. The wide front window contains an assortment of neon signs that have been collected from the fronts of numerous competing bars that Teddy has forced out of business over the years, and when the dusk falls and Teddy throws the switch under his bar, the sudden effect on the unsuspecting drinker is sometimes so terrifying that the crash of a dropped glass accompanies the crash of light. The neons fill the front of the bar with a shifting dance of color. The colors flicker and twist, crowding for window space, overlapping and intertwining and hissing like electronic snakes. Twisting and untwisting. So bright and so clashing are the many signs that on a dark night their effect is almost audible. On a dark,
wet
night they create an ear-splitting din. Listen: Next to the door a fire-crimson sign shrills out,
Red Dragon
; a green and yellow blinker just below this one insists on
The Nite Cap
and flashes a martini glass with a cherry in it; beside this is a huge orange creation bellowing COME AN’ GIT IT!; and beside this
The Bullskinner
shoots a darting red arrow to the barbershop next door.
The Gull
and the
Black Kat
scream back and forth at each other in discordant reds greens.
The Alibi
and the
Crab Pot
and the
Wakonda House
clash together. All the beer companies shout competing slogans:
It’s the water
. . . and
Where there’s life
. . . and
Mabel, Black Label
. . .

Yet, the Snag, which boasts a score of banners, has no sign of its own. Years ago the words
Snag Saloon & Grill
had been painted onto the greened glass of the windows, but as Teddy began buying other bars and closing them, he scraped off more and more of the green to make room for the captured neons which he flaunted like enemy scalps. On a clear day, when the neons are off, a man standing close might make out the dim edges of a few letters on the glass, but nothing you could really call a name. And on a dark night, when the neons are on, they overlap too much for any one to stand out.

There is one sign, however, that is afforded individual distinction; this is not an electric display but an elaborately scrolled shingle hanging alone by two eyescrews above the door. Acquired not by his usual financial onslaught on competition but by a past marriage that lasted only four months, this practically unnoticed sign is Teddy’s favorite above all the blarers and blinkers; in a calm and tasteful blue this obscure little sign reminds all the others to
“Remember . . . One Drink Is Too Many. WCTU
.
”

A short, plump polyp of man in a land of rangy loggers, Teddy is appeased by his collection of signs. Napoleon needed no elevator shoes to make him as big as the next man: he had a chestful of medals. It was these symbols of success that proved his size. Yes, wearing his medals he could remain silent while the brutes whined about their troubles . . .

“Teddybear—another round.”

... and slobbered in their glasses . . .

“Teddy?”

... and died of slow, brute fear . . .

“Teddy! Damn it, boy, let’s come to life.”

“Yes, sir.” He was jarred from his thoughts. “Oh, yes, sir, beer?” “Christ yes, beer.” “Coming right up, sir. . . .” Standing at the end of the bar, hearing the barroom chatter through the haze of light, he could become completely removed from their crude, bellowing world. Now, in a great fluster, he rushed back and forth behind the bar, his aplomb shattered. His fat fingers shook as he gathered a supply of glasses. “Be right with you.” He hustled their order to the table with a great show of haste to make up for the delay. But they had already returned to their discussion of the local trouble, ignoring him. Sure. Already the big idiots
had
to ignore him. They were afraid to look too close. It is threatening to perceive superiority in someone so much—

“Teddy!”

“Yes sir. I forgot; you said light? I’ll change it just as soon as we get the rest of these glasses . . .”

But the man was already drinking his beer. Teddy moved back behind his bar, crepe-soled and spectral and ignored.

The electrified screen door at the front of the bar opened, and through the sunny arch of glass came another figure—larger, older, clumping loudly past in calked boots—yet a figure somehow as spectral as Teddy. This was the hermit of the area, a heavy-bearded gray man known only as “that old wino boltcutter from someplace out the South Fork.” Once a topnotch rigger, he was now so old and crippled he was reduced to making a living driving a broken-springed pick-up into the logged-over slopes around the area, where he cut down cedar snags one or two days a week and split them into shingle-bolts. These he sold to the shingle mill on the other side of town at ten cents a bolt. A great comedown, rigger to boltcutter. And the ignominy of this comedown had apparently rotted away most of that apparatus which projects a man’s presence; he moved past the eye like something shrouded in fog, and after he had passed, no one could agree for certain on his description or even, for certain, on his existence. Yet, because he was so seldom seen at the Snag (even though he drove right past it at least once a week) his presence could not be ignored as could Teddy’s. He was too much a rarity, and Teddy was only a fixture. He paused for a moment to listen to the men’s talk before going to the bar. Under his scrutiny the conversation faltered, faded, and died out completely. Then he snuffed loudly in his beard and moved away without speaking.

He had his own ideas about what the trouble was.

The discussion didn’t resume until the old man had purchased a large glass of red wine from Teddy and gimped his way on back to the gloomy rear of the bar.

“Poor old duffer,” the Real Estate Man managed, the first to overcome the momentary feeling of nervousness that had descended on the table.

“Yeah,” said the logger in the beaten gray hat.

“That stuff you hear about him is the real McCoy, you know.”

“Wine?”

“Cheap port. I hear tell he gets it from Stokes by the case, a case a week.”

“Too bad,” said the movie-laundry owner.

“Tsk, tsk,” said Brother Walker. And, as he had learned the comment from
Joe Palooka
, it came out “tisk tisk,” the way he assumed it was pronounced.

“Yeah. Too damn bad.”

“Too damn many years in the woods for an old fellow; it’s a shame.”

“Shame?” said the logger. “It’s a fuckin’
crime
, is what it is, pardon me, Brother Walker, but I feel strongly about it.” Then, moved to even greater passion and recalling his interrupted argument, he slammed his black-fuzzed fist down on the table. “But it
is
a fuckin’ crime! And a
sin!
That a poor old jack like him should hafta—Listen now: pensions and guaranteed annual wage, ain’t that what Floyd Evenwrite been preachin’ about for nearly two years?”

“That’s right, that is the truth.”

They were getting back in gear again.

“The
trouble
with this town is we can’t get behind the very organization that is built to help us: the
union!
”

“My God; ain’t Floyd been
sayin’
so? He says Jonathan Bailey Draeger says that Wakonda is
years
behind the other woods towns. And that has become my thinking exactly.”

“And that sort of thinkin’ brings us right back to you-know-who and his whole hardnosed brood!”

“Right! Exactly!”

The man in the hat slammed the table again. “A shame!”

“And as much as I personally like an’ admire Hank and his folks—Christ, didn’t we
grow up
together?—I for one am of the opinion that right there is where our issue is, ifn you got to aim a gun someplace—right out there at that house, in my opinion.”

“Amen, brother.”

“Goddam right amen! Now you all
look
.” Startled again by the violence of this order, Teddy raises his eyes. “Ifn you got to point a finger, then right
that way
is the way you point it!”

Looking through the glass he is polishing, Teddy sees the finger spring thrusting from the greasy, black-fuzzed fist.

“Right out at that goddamned house!”

... the jukebox whirs, bubbles, pulsing color. The electric screen buzzes. The men breathe softly together. The finger, a knuckled iron rod there in the slanting late-afternoon sun, swings slowly to fix like a compass needle. The house. Brute, monolithic structure, thick now with the light of coming dawn and noisy already with the preparations for breakfast . . .

“Yeah, you may be right, Henderson.”

“Damn right I’m right! If you want my considered opinion, there’s where your trouble is!”

Lights and shouts pouring from the kitchen window; laughter, curses. “Wake it an’ shake it, boys. The ol’ man’s already out ahead of ya, old an’ crippled as he is.” And the ringing smell of frying sausages. This is Hank’s bell. This is the way he likes it. This is Hank’s bell ringing.

And from behind his bar, standing out of the sun, Teddy watches the men and listens to their logic and is secretly certain that the trouble is not financial—just now, during that idiotic discussion on the lack of working capital, he’d brought in close to twelve dollars, and in
broad daylight
—and also seriously doubts that it could all be laid at the doorstep of that Stamper house. No, it is another trouble. In his considered opinion . . .