Sometimes a Great Notion (42 page)

He paused to take the bottle from Hank. He tipped it to his indrawn lips and swallowed with an impressive gurgling; when he brought it down he held it to the lamp, making it slyly obvious that he had drunk a good two inches without wincing. “You boys like a little nip too?”—offering the bottle and making his challenge implicit by the bright green glitter in his old satyr’s eye. “No? Reckon not? Well, don’t say I didn’t make the gesture.” And started to tip the bottle again.

“But—but go on, Uncle Henry!” Squeaky could endure the old man’s theatrics no longer.

“Go on? I’m
goin
’ somewheres?”

“What
happened?
” Squeaky cried, and the twins echoed her plea. “What happened—happened?”

And little Leland Stanford, agog as any, soundlessly urged, Go on, Father, what happened . . . ?

“Happened?” He craned his neck about to check. “Happened where? I don’t see a thing.” Face as innocent as a billygoat’s.

“About the log! the log!”

“Oh yeah, that log. Lemee see, by
gosh.
You mean, don’t you, that log I was ridin’ lickety-brintle down the slide trough to certain disaster? Hmm, let me see.” He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his hooked nose in deep thought; even the apathetic shadows perked up and moved in closer to hear. “Well then, right at the last I come up with me a idea; I thought I’d try throwin’ the bucket underneath the bastard. I pitched it up ahead in the trough, but the log shoved it rattlin’ an’ clatterin’ along in front for a piece like that ol’ bucket was a horse-fly it was tryin’ to brush aside—hey! sonofagun, that makes me think: have you boys checked that outfit Teddy’s got goin’ at the Snag for killin’ bugs? Slickest-workin’ piece of machinery I ever—”

“The
log!
The
log!
” cried the children.

The
log
, echoed the child in me.

“Hm? Ah. Yessir. Right at the
last
I saw there weren’t nothin’ for me to do but dive. So I give a jump. But lo an’ behol’, my
gallusses
is catched onto a
stob!
an’ me an’ that fir went shootin’ off into the wild blue yonder, aimin’ to tear hell out of the side of that mailboat—did, too, if you got to know; so me up there tryin’ to be the big hero with the bucket was all just so much yellin’ at the wind, ’cause it
did!
hit that boat and split it to kingdom come, letters flyin’ in all directions like somebody’d set off a blizzard: letters, nuts, bolts, steamfittin’s, kin’lin’ wood, an’ that boy steerin’ it flung straight in the air—an’ it was the Pierce boy, too, come to think of it, because I recall he ’n’ his brother allus useta trade off makin’ the runs and the one off duty got mighty sore about havin’ to pilot full-time after his brother was drownt—”

“But what about
you?
”

“Me? Lord love us, Squeaky, honey, I thought you
knew
. Why, your ol’ Uncle Henry was killed! You didn’t think a man could survive a fall like that, now did you? I was killed!”

His head fell back. His mouth gaped in death agony. The children looked on, stunned to horrified silence, until his belly began to shake with amusement. “Henry,
you!
” shouted the twins, and each breathed a disappointed “Ahhh.” Squeaky reacted with a hiss of outrage and fell to kicking at his cast with blue-flanneled feet. Henry laughed until tears poured down his gullied cheeks.

“Killed, didn’t y’know? Killed yeee hee haw, dead YEE hee hee haw!”

“Henry, someday when I’m bigger you’ll be sorry!”

“YEEE haw haw haw!”

Hank turned aside—“Lord; just look at him carry on”—to laugh into his band. “The balm of Gilead is cooked his brains out.” And Joe Ben lapsed into a coughing fit that took five minutes and a spoonful of molasses to subdue.

When Joe could breathe again Viv came from the kitchen, carrying a pot and cups on a tray. “Coffee?” Steam fell in an ermine mantle about her shoulders and when she turned her back to me I saw it was braided into her hair and tied at the bottom with a ribbon of silk. Her jeans were rolled to the swell of her calf; she bent to put the tray on the table, and a brass brad gave me a lewd wink; she straightened and a slight bind of denim made an interesting star of wrinkles. “Who likes sugar, anybody?”

I spoke not a word aloud, but could feel my mouth begin to water as she offered the cups around. “You, Lee?”—turning, with those feather-light tennis shoes sighing at her feet.

“Sugar?”

“It’s fine, Viv, thanks—”

“I’ll get it for you?”

“Well . . . all right then.”

Just to watch that brass brad wink its way back to the kitchen.

Hank poured bourbon into his coffee. Henry had a drink straight from the bottle to regain his strength after his untimely demise. Jan took Joe Ben’s hand and looked at his wristwatch and announced it was time, past time for the kids to be in bed.

Viv returned with a cup of sugar, licking the back of her hand. “Got my thumb in it. One or two spoons?”

Joe Ben roused himself. “Okay, kids, move.
Up
them stairs.”

“Three.” I never took sugar in my coffee, never before or since.

“Three? Such a sweet tooth?” She stirred in one. “Try it like this first. I have very powerful sugar.”

Hank sipped his drink, eyes closed, peaceful, tame. The kids trooped upstairs in a surly pack. Henry yawned. “Yessir . . . killed me dead.” At the top of the steps Squeaky stopped and turned slowly and deliberately with her hands on her hips. “Okay for
you
, Uncle Henry. You know what,”—and walked on, leaving the air behind her pervaded with some awful fate meaningful only to her and the old man, whose eyes bulged wide in shammed terror.

Viv carried Johnny, tickling him with fuzzy breath down the back of his neck.

Joe held the twins by fat hands, patient with their one-step, step, one-step, step to the top of the stairs.

Jan snuggled the baby over her shoulder.

And I swelled, threatening to burst in an explosion of hearts, flowers, and frustration; love, beauty, and jealousy.

“Nigh’-nigh’.” The baby waved.

“Night-night.”

“Night-night.”

Night-night, said a small voice inside, waiting to be cuddled upstairs. Frustration and jealousy. I blush to admit it. But as I watched that last pampered bundle disappear up the stairwell I could not help feeling a twinge of envy. “Twinge?” the moon mocked me through a dirty windowpane. “Looks to me more like a hammerblow.”

“Yeah, but they are living the life I should have lived.”

“Just little kids. Shame on you.”

“Thieves! Stealing my home and my parental affection. Enjoying my unused paths and climbing my apple trees.”

“A while ago,” the moon reminded me, “you were blaming all your elders, now it’s the children . . .”

“Thieves”—I tried to ignore that moon—“little fuzzy thieves, growing up in my lost childhood.”

“How,” the moon whispered, “can you be sure it is lost? Until you try to find it?”

I sat stunned by the insinuation.

“Go on,” it nudged, “give it a whirl. Show them you still want it. Let them know.”

So, with the kids gone and the old man nodding, I searched the room for a sign. My attention was caught by the sound of the dogs beneath the floor. Well, I’d made it with the cream, I’d made it with the boat . . . why not go the whole route? I swallowed hard, shut my eyes, and asked if they still used the hounds for hunting, still, you know, went on hunts—like they used to?

“Now and then,” Hank answered. “Why d’ya ask?”

“I’d like to go sometime. With you . . . all . . . if you don’t mind?”

It was said. Hank nodded slowly, rolling a hot spoonful of apple on his tongue. “All right.”

A silence followed, identical to the one that had followed my offer to pick up Henry in the boat—only longer and stronger, because as a boy my aversion to hunting had been the most vociferous of all my aversions—and I once again reacted to my embarrassment at this silence with a flustered attempt at sophistication. “It’s only that one should”—I shrugged, studying the cover of a
National Geographic
with bored authority—“
know
something of the area . . . besides, I’ve read all the decent paperbacks offered by Grissom’s drugstore, and I saw
Summer and Smoke
on stage, so—”

“Where! Where!” Henry lurched to his feet like an old fire-horse jumping to the bell, brandishing his cane and sniffing about for the flames. Viv uncoiled swiftly from the foot of Hank’s chair and crossed to take his arm and ease him down again.

“The movie-picture show, Henry,” she said in a voice that would have calmed Vesuvius. “Just the movie-picture show.”

“What was I sayin’? Ah.” He picked up the thread as though it had never broken. “About the old times. Say, them oldtime tales where we greased the skids and rode the oxen and all that noise? Hm? Them oldtime jacks in mustaches and ten-gallon hats carryin’ a misery whip over their shoulders, you seen them pictures, ain’t you? Lookin’ all dashin’ an’ romantic? Well, them boys are good pictures in
The Pioneer
magazine, but I tell you now an’ you can mark ’er down:
they weren’t the ones!
that really rolled the logs. No. No sir. It was boys like me and Ben and Aaron, boys what not only had the grit but what had the sense to get hold of a
machine.
You’re godblessed right! Let me say . . . hm, well now, roads? We didn’t have roads worth sour apples, sure, but what did I tell ’em? Roads or no boogin’ roads, I say, I’ll take this here donkey machine any place you can take one them worthless tow-oxen of yours! Shoot; all I got to do is run a little piece of line up to a stump somewheres and pour it to ’er. Reel myself right up to where I want, then run a line to the next stump. Jumpin’ the donk, we called it; cookin’ with steam. Yessir, steam, steam, that’s the business. You feed them animals of yourn bale of hay every other day at eighty, ninety cents a bale, and you know what I’m feedin’ mine? Wood
chips
, and slashin’, and
scrub oak
, and any other damn thing layin’ around handy for the burnin’. Steam! gasoline! now
Diesel!
Yessir, that’s the ticket. You can’t whup the swamps with a animal. A animal is on the other side! You can’t take much shade offn the ground with nutted ox an’ a whittlin’ knife! You got to have a
machine.
”

His eyes brightened as he warmed again to his subject. He jerked upright in his chair and hooked a long bony hand in the invisible strap hanging before him. He dragged his body standing, a rickety stack of limbs and joints, teetering precariously on the edge of eighty and looking like the slightest breeze would turn it into a pile of rubble.

“The trucks! The cats! The yarders! I say more power to ’em. Booger these peckerwoods always talkin’ about the good old days. Let me tell you there weren’t nothin’ good about the good old days but for free Indian nooky. An’ that was all. Far as workin’,
loggin’
, it was bust your bleedin’ ass from dark to dark an’ maybe you fall three trees. Three trees! An’ any snotnosed kid nowdays could lop all three of ’em over in half an hour with a Homelite. No sir. Good old days the
booger!
The good old days didn’t hardly make a dent in the shade. If you want to cut you a piece you can see out in these goddam hills you better get out there with the best thing man can make. Listen: Evenwrite an’ all his crap about automation . . . he talk like you gotta go easy on this stuff. I know better. I
seen
it. I cut it down an’ it’s comin’ back up. It’ll
always
be comin’ back up. It’ll outlast anything skin an’ bone. You need to get in there with some machines an’ tear hell out of it!”

He lurched violently across the room, clearing his throat, wiping at the long cornstarch hair worrying his eyes, working his mouth in a grimacing mixture of anger and exuberance, of fury practically, of drunken, dedicated fury; he turned and came thundering back.

“Tear it out! Only thing! Chop out the big stuff and burn the brush, grub up the brambles and poison the vines. Goddam right. What if it
is
growin’ back on you soon’s you bat your eye? Screw it. You don’t get it this round, get it the next. Yee HEE I useta tell Ben. Whoo Whooee. Goddam tootin’. Tear the livin’ jesus outa it! You watch an’ see if I—”

Hank kept him from falling. Joe caught the outflung cane. Viv hurried to his side, her face white. “Papa, Henry, are you all right?”

“I think he’s just gassed, chicken,” Hank said without conviction.

“Henry! Are you feeling all right?”

Slowly the old face lifted and turned toward hers; gradually the sunken mouth stretched itself into a grin. “Okay, now—”

He fixed her with one searing green eye. “What’s this about tryna sneak off on a coon hunt ’thout me?”

“Oh, lord.” Hank sighed, releasing the old man and returning to his seat.

“Papa,” Viv said with a mixture of relief and vexation, “you’ve just got to go to bed—”

“Booger the bed! What about a coon hunt? I asked!”

Joe Ben maneuvered him toward the stairs. “Nobody said anything about a coon hunt, Henry.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, you think I can’t
hear?
You think the old nigger is too deef, too stove up to go on a little hunt? We’ll see about
that
.”

“Come on, Papa.” Viv tugged gently at the sleeve of his shirt. “Let’s me and you go upstairs to bed.”

“Why, all right,” he agreed with a sudden change of mood and gave Hank a wink so lascivious and led Viv so spryly up the steps that I told her I was giving her three minutes, at the most five, then I was organizing a posse to come up and rescue her from the old dragon.

We listened to him thundering and hooting overhead. “I sometimes think,” Hank said, still shaking his head, “that my dear old daddy is slippin’ his gears.”

“Oh no.” Joe Ben leaped to Henry’s defense. “That ain’t it. He’s gettin’ to be the town character, like I said. They’re callin’ him Old Wild and Woolly in Wakonda—kids pointin’ at him, women sayin’ hello to him on the street—and don’t think for a minute he ain’t lovin’ every minute of it. Ah, no, Hankus, it ain’t that he’s really comin’ apart—well, maybe a little, like his memory an’ his eyes—it’s more a kind of act, you see?”