Sometimes a Great Notion (31 page)

Henry returned with my “corks”—spiked boots miserably cold and stiff, obviously the recent home of migrant scorpions and rats—and before I could flee all three set upon me and laced the leather horrors to my feet. Then they draped one of Joe Ben’s extra coats over me; Hank handed me a battered metal hat with a dozen coats of varicolored paint peeling red and yellow and orange, like a chapeau designed by Jackson Pollock; Jan thrust a lunch sack in my hand; Joe Ben gave me a pocketknife with eight blades; and they all stepped back to view the result. Henry rolled a doubting eye, allowed as how he guessed I’d hafta do till somethin’ with more meat on its bones showed up, and offered me a dip from his snuff can as a sign that I had passed review. Joe Ben said I’d do just
fine
, and Hank withheld judgment.

I was ushered out into a morning still totally dark save for a pale blue cast over the hills. I followed the silhouettes of Hank and Joe Ben down the invisible planks to the dock while the old man lurched along behind, slicing the dark in a distracted fashion with the misty beam of an enormous flashlight. While he walked he kept up a line of talk as aimless as the light: “That Evenwrite, now I don’t trust him; watch for booby traps. When we get this contract done I think by god—say, what about the drums on that donkey? You boys watchin’ out? Lord, I don’t want to be buyin’ new equipment. I was sayin’ the other day to Stokes that that old donkey wasn’t as old as
this
one and look at me still agoin’. . . . Say now, Leland, did I tell you about my teeth?” He swung the light to his face and I watched while he removed a moldy-looking mouthful of molars. “What you think about
that
for lucky?” He spread back his lips. “Only three my own teeth left—lookee here—an’ two the sonofaguns meet. How ’bout that?” He laughed triumphantly and replaced the dentures. “Somethin’ more’n just luck about it, too, Joe Ben tells me; it’s a indication or something. . . . You, Joe, don’t forget to lay the old oil on that boogin’ donkey drum, hear me? It’s good for another two or three seasons, treated proper. Whup. Don’t care for the way the sky looks. Hmm”—grumbling, mumbling, “Ouch oh!” pausing occasionally to curse some paleolithic pain in his shoulder. “An’ oh yeah, have Bob watch them scalers when he drives down; they’re smooth as grease an’ they’ll cheat you ever’ time you sneeze. Those boys of Orland’s will be there from the mill to give us extra help, ain’t that right? An’ no coffee and bullshooting every twenty minutes. We ain’t Wakonda Pacific
yet
. Keep everybody on the jump. We got only a month left to Thanksgiving, you realize, only a month . . .”

Keeping up a frantic free-association which he hoped would, by some miracle, save the day in spite of his monumental absence.

“Hey, did you hear me about that donkey, dammitall? That drum?”

Hank had been yanking at the starting rope of the outboard during the latter part of the harangue; only after the motor caught with a burbling roar and the rope had been carefully secured beneath the rear seat and the gas tank checked, only then did Hank indicate any awareness of the old man. “You know . . .” He flipped the mooring rope free and settled himself beside the motor, held out his hand for the flashlight, which Henry relinquished with about as much enthusiasm as Napoleon must have shown giving up his sword on the isle of Saint Helena. . . . “You
know . . .
” turning the light on Henry and stopping whatever the old man was opening his mouth to say as though the beam had knocked the wind out of his bony frame “. . . you are sure a noisy old fart this morning.”

Henry blinked in the glare. He started to shield his eyes against the light with his hand but decided this would be a gesture of weakness unbefitting so noble a donkey, and lowered the hand, choosing instead to turn disdainfully away from the light and the sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth words of his disrespectful son. “Pshh.” And thus did he treat us to the magnificence of his profile framed there against the dramatic backdrop of dawn. He stood there—majestic, striking, confident that Valentino could not come close to matching those steely eyes, certain that when it came to classic facial proportion Barry-more was not even in the running—and slowly, deliberately withdrew the snuff can from the pocket of his robe, thumbed it open with one hand, and placed a rolled ball of it in his lower lip . . .

“Just look at ’im,” Hank whispered.

The long cowl of white hair like blown clouds; the firm jaw; the intelligent brow; the nose hooking down over the horseshoe mouth . . .

“Yeahhh,” Joe breathed.

He remained profiled before us in the light’s beam, aristocratically austere, grandly aloof, as ludicrous as a buzzard, until Hank nudged Joe Ben in the ribs and whispered again.

“My, ain’t he handsome.”

“Gosh, yes,” Joe Ben agreed, “no getting around it.”

“You think I dast leave a sheik like that home with my pore little unprotected wife?”

“Can’t tell,” Joe answered.

“Mighty good-lookin’ head of hair for a man that age.”

“Oh yeah. Like a prophet, kind of.”

The whole thing had the ring of long practice; I imagined a scene not unlike this one went on nearly every morning. The old man tried to remain aloof. But in spite of all he could do I could see the grin creeping into the fierce features.

“And will you just
look.
” Hank’s voice was full of mocking awe and admiration. “Just look how
fine
those eyebrows are groomed and slicked up. Almost like he plucks them an’ puts stuff—”

“Boogers!” the old man bellowed. “Sonsabitches! You ain’t got no respect!” He made a lunge for an oar leaning against the boathouse, but Hank gunned the boat just in time and left the outlandish figure charging around the dock, so furious, so outraged, and so obviously pleased by the teasing that I couldn’t help laughing along with Hank and Joe Ben as we pulled away up the river.
They swing out into the water, laughing. The tenseness that overcame Lee during his breakfast lecture begins finally to subside after the comedy on the dock, and Hank feels his concern for his wife’s mood lessen as the boat leaves the house lights behind.
(We futzed around on the dock with the old man like we usually do, and I noticed Lee laughed, showing he’s loosening up some. I think, Now’s the time to make a move and try to
talk
with him. Now’s the time forchrissakes to try to make some kind of contact.)
And as the dawning sky grows brighter the two brothers find themselves glancing quickly at each other and away, waiting . . .

I had at first feared I might be embroiled in some small talk with Hank and my gnomish cousin, but neither of them seemed any more inclined toward conversation than they had at the breakfast table. The air was cold. All of us were content to let the motor hold forth in its rhythmical way while we drew our own thoughts about us against the ice-blue dawn just beginning to give the mountains shape. I tucked my chin into the sheepskin top of the jacket Joe Ben had provided and averted my face so the stinging mist struck my cheek instead of my eyes. The bow thump-thump-thumped against the river’s surface; the motor warbled, a tight, high, full-throated whine underscored by the guttural churn of water; Hank weaved the boat up the river, responding to the grunted instructions of Joe Ben, who sat in the bow watching for floating snags. “Stump there, cut left. Okay.” I felt warm and drowsy, entranced by the movement, the rocking . . . and the vicious, singing hiss of water speeding beneath the aluminum hull of the motionless boat.

(All that ride up the river I sit like a knot on a log, no notion in the world how to talk to him or what to talk about. I think the only thing I said during the whole trip was something about how pretty the morning was . . .)

Before me the dawn took on ghastly substance, becoming solid except for the trees and mountains ripped like jagged black holes to space. A dirty glaze spread over the water. An oilslick; it will explode at the touch of a match, a river of hell-fire stretching to the horizon.

(You know? It’s hard to talk to somebody you ain’t seen in a long time and it’s hard not to. And it’s especially hard when you got a lot to say and no notion how to say it.)

We rocked forward in the boat, past phantom pilings suspended in mist, kerosene lanterns behind windows of stage-set house-fronts where wind-up dogs toll the watch beside muslin trees; past muskrats pulling a V of silver down into their underwater hideouts, and waterfowl, startled, splashing into the air dripping shiny intestines.

(And I’m right glad when we pull in to bank and take on Andy because I feel like the pressure’s eased a little bit just having somebody else around and I can quit fretting about talking.)

At a perilous and tottering plank pier that continued out over the river like an extension of the path that came from the vine-tangled bank, we acquired another passenger. A droop-eyed, droop-mouthed, droop-shouldered hulk twice my size and not much more than half my age. He stumbled and stomped about the bottom of the boat with his spiked boots, almost upsetting the boat, while Hank introduced us. “This here is—sit down, Andy—this here is your cousin Leland Stanford. Down now, dammit”—like a bear that had been stricken with all the traditional clumsy woes of the archetype adolescent, he had acne, an Adam’s apple and a timidity so stultifying that he was thrown into a fidgeting agony each time I glanced his direction. He sat hunched between the peaks of his knees, rustling a brown paper sack that held a full-grown turkey at very least, possibly two turkeys. I was touched by his discomfort. “I take it, Andy,” I ventured, “that you are part of the Stamper Industries?”

He was put suddenly at ease by my question. “You bet,” he exclaimed happily. “You bet I am.” So at ease that he then fell immediately to sleep on a tarp at the bottom of the boat.

A few minutes farther on we stopped again for another passenger, a man in his late thirties, garbed in the traditional metal headgear of loggers and wearing a muddy pair of coveralls. “One of our neighbors,” Hank explained as we glided toward him. “Named Les Gibbons. A sawyer for WP, outa work from the strike . . . How’s she goin’, Les?”

An older, hairier, dirtier, and slightly smaller animal than our first passenger, Les was as garrulous as Andy was taciturn. His tongue worked continually to alternate a load of snuff and a charge of dialogue so overdone in the colloquial vein that it was difficult to remember this was a real person speaking real lines, not a character from an Erskine Caldwell novel.

“Not s’ good, Hank,” Les answered. “Not s’ good. By dog, me ’n’ the woman ’n’ the kids, we done et the last measly bean ’n’ chewed the last salty bone ’n’ it shore beats me what this here world is acomin’ to. Them u-nyn boys they don’t do sompin’ awful quick we jes’ gonna be flat up agin it.”

Hank shook his head, positively radiating sympathy. “I guess she’s tight all over, Les.”

“Ain’t that a fack,” Les said, and paused to lean over the side of the boat and work a gob of tobacco from between purple lips. “Don’t look for no letup, neither, if ya ast me. Nope. Reason I’m agoin’ inta town today is, well, that I hear tell there’s road job hirin’ on part time. Diggin’. Well . . .” He shrugged philosophically. “A beggar cain’t be a chooser, I don’t s’pose. You boys, now you, you’re probably makin’ hay, I bet. Eh? Eh? Pleased for you. Real happy an’ that’s a fack. You Stampers are good old boys. Yes, I’m really happy. But oh gawdahmighty but I surely do hate road work. An’ that’s the truth! They ever get you on the business end of a shovel, Hank? Oh, let me tell you, it’ no work for a white man . . .”

The boat touched the other shore, and after spitting again—short, onto the seat—our passenger stood and disembarked decorously. “I thank you boys.” He nodded to me. “Real happy to make your acquaintance, young fella. Well, I surely thank you. I do hate to put you boys out, but till I can get my skiff back from Teddy—”

Hank waved the gratitude aside magnanimously. “Not a word, Les.”

“Just the same, Hank . . .” His hand inched toward a billfold that we all knew he had no intention whatsoever of opening. “Just the same I ain’t one to be beholden. Let me—”

“Not another word, Les. Glad to help. I’d do the same for a white man.”

They gave each other the pleasure of their smiles—Hank’s grin wide and innocent, Les’s like a broken clay dish—then Les clambered up the road, muttering thanks, ragged and humble as poverty itself, and climbed into a new Ford Fairlane convertible. “Can you hold ’er a sec, Hank?” he called back. “Mornin’s are gettin’ chillier an’ sometimes the ol’ ragtop don’t start so good.”

Hank nodded, amused, while little Joe Ben fumed at Les under his breath: “What you figure we could do for you, you cluck? give you a startin’ shove with the boat?” Hank laughed softly. He idled the boat against the bank until Les got a reaction from his car; then we started up river again. It was light enough so I could see Joe Ben’s face twisted into its own rendition of a frown.

“I’ll slip up here one of these nights an’ roll that machine of his into the river.”

“Les is a good old boy, Joe, an’ we wouldn’t want to be party to any ill that come to—”

“Lester Gibbons is a cluck an’ always has been! What about the time he took off a whole season an’ left his woman to grub potatoes in Walterville? He oughta been tarred and feathered . . .”

Hank winked at me. “Does that sound like a Christian attitude to you, bub? Joby, it ain’t like you to be hacked at poor old Les. What harm’s he ever done us?”

“
Harm!
He’d cut your throat, an’ you know it. Hank, sometimes I think you ain’t got the eyes the good Lord gave a goose.

Why, any man can see the way he’s gunnin’ for you. Yet you just fiddle along, swallowin’ his bull.”

“Joe’s always been my big matchmaker, Lee. He got me into more scrapes than I can recall.”

“That ain’t so! That ain’t so! It’s just I sometimes try an’ get you to face up to what you got to do. Oh yeah. Lee, he’s the worst I ever seen for puttin’ off till tomorrow what he already put off till today. Just like this business with Floyd Evenwrite; if you’d told Viv about it way back when you knew you was gonna have to, you wouldna had her angered at you now.”