Sometimes a Great Notion (80 page)

“Yes, by gosh . . . I think I have hit on something.”

“Hit on something what?” Hank asked, amused by the profundity of Joe’s tone.

“About people hot to see a tree felled. Oh yeah. I think there is something going there. There’s a passage in the Book that says, ‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.’ That’s Psalms, and I
know
I got that one right because I paid
very special
attention to it when Brother Walker talked on it. Because I thought what the everloving dickens is a
cedar
got to do with a
palm?
Besides, I don’t remember any cedars around Lebanon,
damn
sure they’s no palm trees. I thought a good while about it. That’s why I’m sure of the line.”

Hank waited in silence for Joe to cut in closer to his point.

“So anyhow, if we say that the righteous
are
like trees, an’ say people
do
like to see trees felled, then it comes to
people are hot to see the righteous felled!
” He paused a moment to let the power of this logic sink in. “It follows right to a T. Think about it: somebody always tryin’ to do a good man some dirt. Some Whore of Babylon is
always
hustling the Man of God, ain’t that so?” As he warmed to his sermon his little blackened hands began jumping about in front of him and his eyes brightened. “Oh yeah. Oh man
yeah!
Wait till I pass this on to Brother Walker. It works right to the hair. Remember Rita Hayworth in that Sadie Thompson show? She was for falling that preacher’s cedar tree even she had to gnaw down like a beaver. Same thing in
Samson and Delilah.
Sure. And even Brother Walker: remember three-four years back when that baloney was passing around about what does he do with those women who come to his house private to receive the Spirit? Shoot, he had to
discontinue
them prayer meetings, remember? The talk got so bad . . . not that Brother Walker wasn’t maybe guilty of what was said—what the dickens, Spirit’s Spirit, I always say, for what
ever
it takes to get it into you—but the point is them
women
weren’t complainin’, were they? No. Just the
people
, the people trying to fall the Tree of Righteousness. Oh yeah, oh
yeah!
” He hammered his thigh with a sooty fist, so pleased and enthusiastic about his remarkable analogy. “Don’t you agree that’s a lot to it? People likin’ to watch the trees come down? That they is a natural hell-driven desire to see the righteous fallen?”

“I suppose,” Hank agreed, with one eye blinking against the smoke of his cigarette.

Joe Ben thought he detected a slight lack of enthusiasm in that agreement. “Well, don’t you?” he persisted. “I mean that people just
naturally
sinners at heart got to chop down the righteous to keep from
feeling
like sinners . . . now don’t you?”

They had reached the bottom; a stream of coffee-colored water floated chunks of ash along the canyon. Hank wiped his hand on the belly of his sweat shirt and took his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered one to Joe, but Joe declined, saying cigarettes were now lumped in with coffee as taboos at his church. Hank took a cigarette from the pack, lit it with the butt, and flipped the butt into that stream. “Joe,” he said, “I don’t know about a natural hell-driven desire, but I don’t think people give a tinker’s damn that a tree is righteous or not when they fall it. A man wouldn’t walk across the street to watch you chop down a little pisspot cedar, I don’t care if it was blessed by Brother Walker till it stunk of holiness.”

He meant to let it go at that, but Joe’s hurt silence demanded more.

“But them same people, they’d come for miles to see somebody chop down that tallest-tree-in-the-state up yonder in Astoria.” He shifted the weight of the tank to his other hand and took a long, jumping step across the stream. “Nope”—he started up the slope toward the donkey—“it ain’t the righteous, it ain’t that,” he said with finality. “Now; what do you say we get at that bastard of a donkey before it falls into a junk heap.”

Joe Ben followed in silence. At first, he was merely disconsolate that such a prime subject had been done in so prematurely, but as he continued to think about Hank’s statement while they worked on the donkey, his disconsolateness began to change, to a sort of perplexed anxiety, to that feeling quite close to panic that he had experienced earlier that morning at the house when he saw Hank’s face looking through the door at Lee in bed. The two of them battled the inevitable decay of the piece of machinery in silence for a time, speaking only when they needed to call instructions or requests for tools to Andy, who sat up in the operator’s seat; finally Joe could no longer contain his anxiety.

“
Choice
days ahead,” he announced suddenly. “Oh yeah!” Then paused to wait for Hank’s reaction. Hank was hunched over the capstain of the donkey as if he hadn’t heard. “You bet!” Joe went on. “Little bit more of this an’ we’ll be on the shady side of easy street. We’ll be—”

“Joby,” Hank said softly, stopping work but not moving as he spoke into the greasy clutter of machinery. “Let me tell you something. I’m tired of it. Tired. And that’s the God’s truth.”

“Of the rain? The breakdowns? Shoot yes, you’re tired! You got every reason in the world—”

“No. You know I ain’t talking about the rain or the breakdowns. Hell, we’ve
always
had rain and breakdowns and I’m
always
tired of that. . . .”

Joe Ben felt a little thing start running inside of him, slow at first then speeding up very fast—how? he wondered, how can you get tired?—like a lizard or a shrew or something, a little thing running around and around inside while he waited for Hank to go on.

“A guy gets fed up,” Hank said. He had raised his head now and was looking up at the black crisscross of belts and cables of the donkey. “Fed up to his ears. Forever going down the street and hearing the locks snap shut in front of him like he was some kind of bogey man. Real
tired
, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” Joe said. He constricted his bowels to stop the scurrying, “but—”

“I mean, gets
tired
having people phone him about what a hardnose he is.”

“
Sure
, but . . .” He felt woozy, dizzied by the sound of Hank’s words, the way he’d felt coming out of the ether in the doctor’s office after they’d stitched up his face. “. . . Well,
sure
a man gets tired of it . . .” He shrugged: How
can
he? “But, well, you know . . .” When it was obvious to both of them that Joe was not going on, they bent back to work on the capstain.

After a while Hank stood up with a mashed finger. Grimacing, he looked at the red beginning to bead over the grease of his knuckle. (
The whole day up there . . .
) He looked about the wet ground for a rag and remembered the only rags were up in the crummy where Lee was (
He’s spent the whole day sitting up in that outfit. I can’t keep making him do that. Not just to keep him away from home
), then doubled his fist and pressed the cut into the blue-gray mud ridged up by the cat treads. (
Because there is bound to come a day . . .
)

Darkness fell fast while they waited for Andy to rig the light. (
I can’t keep him away forever . . .
) The machinery became ominous and threatening in silhouette. The steel-ribbed yarder reared against the stiffening sky, thrusting its neck into the moiling twilight like a prehistoric creature. The cat tractor hunkered motionless in the mud, a patient, brute form watching them work. “I don’t know,” Hank said suddenly, stopping work. “Maybe we been kiddin’ ourselves about it. Maybe we made the whole town mad at us for nothing. This rain ain’t easin’; the spurs are washing out; we still got those last booms to finish. . . . An’ even if we get ’em finished, with the weather like it is, an’ no help, an’ nobody in town willin’ to rent us a tug . . . maybe we don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell driving them down river to the mill.”

“Why,
man?
” Joe was aghast. “Why, listen to you!” His scratchy voice stood out sharp against the soft rain sounds. “Why, how can we
miss?
We been fat an’ happy as babies up to now, ain’t we? We
can’t
miss! Now, let’s get at this devil. . . .”

“I don’t know.” Hank stood, looking up toward the crummy. (
Just can’t keep track of him all the time. Sooner or later I’m
bound to be off someplace else. . . .
) and sucked at his finger. “A bit ago you was all for heading home . . .”

“
Me? Leaving a job undone?
That was somebody else. . . .”

Andy finally rigged the wires, and a light bloomed suddenly at the end of a black cord. He hung the light out over Hank and Joe Ben; it swung pendulously back and forth, provoking a terrific struggle of shadows on the granite outcropping behind the donkey. Joe blinked in its glare for a second—“and as far as the contract goes . . .” then flung himself to work on the machine, talking all the while. “. . . Oh, yeah, we just
can’t
miss. Look, look at all the signals we got. Just look.”

Hank removed his cigarette from his mouth and looked toward the knotty figure jabbering away as it worked; he was amused and a little puzzled by Joe’s sudden intensity. “Look at what?” he asked.

“At the
signals!
” Joe declared without looking up from his work. “What about Evenwrite an’ his bunch getting throwed in the drink when they tried to cut our booms? Or the big saw bustin’ at the mill just when we needed the crew to help . . . yeah, I
know
they didn’t last long, but the saw
did bust!
That you
got
to admit!—let me see that Allen wrench. If old Jesus wasn’t on our side would he flung those birds in the water? Or broke that saw? Would he?” His voice rose as his theme developed. “
Oh,
I
tell ya,
the way I feel we just can
not
miss! We’re in God’s pocket and he’s been breakin’ his back to let us know it. We can’t disappoint him. Man, look.
Look here!
See? I got that capstain to fit by gosh just like
that.
Try her out, Andy! Oh yeah, we’ll get home an’ get us some sleep and get up at that state park in the mornin’ while it’s still dark and log more board feet than anybody ever logged in one day before in
history!
Hank, I know! I know! I
feel
it like I never felt nothing else before in all my life! Because I—
whups
, hear that? Hear it? What did I tell you, purring like a kittycat—
leave it run, Andy boy
—because I mean on top of all those other signs and the like—
wait; swing the light closer so’s we can get our tools up,

Andy
—on top of those signs—an’ I seen signs in my time, but nothing ever to hold a match to all we been getting—
on top and more important
. . . I been experiencin’ a tremendous
power
building in me the last few days like I could just tear out those old firs up in that park and
toss
’em to the river like
throwin’ the javelin
. . . and I just
now
been able to figure out
why!
”

Hank stood out of the way, grinning, as he watched the little man hustle the tools together, like a squirrel gathering nuts. “Okay, why?”

“It’s
because
”—Joe caught his breath—“like the book puts it: ‘
Who
soever shall say
unto
this mountain be thou removed into the sea an’—uh-uh, yeah—
‘an’ shall not doubt
that those things which he hath sayeth shall
come to pass,
why, man, that guy is gonna have just exactly what he sayeth!’ Hey,
boy;
you didn’t know I knew that one, I bet. Anyway, what I’m saying, is this
power
I been feeling is because
I don’t doubt it!
See? See? An’
that’s
why I know we can’t miss. Dang! Quick; grab that hard hat of Andy’s where it’s blowin’ away. . . .” He scrambled after the spinning aluminum hat and caught it before it hit the ground. He came panting back to where Hank stood grinning. “Hot dog and man alive,” he exclaimed studying the swinging trees to cover the flush of embarrassment brought on by the open fondness of Hank’s grin, “she is a windy one tonight, friend; oh yeah.”

“Not as windy as some,” Hank judged, telling himself that as winds and friends went, all in all, a man could do a whole lot worse than old Joby and the storms he blew. A whole hell of a lot worse. Because even when he was as obvious as a forty-mile-an-hour gale you still couldn’t help wanting to go along with him. Most people, when they tried to cheer you up, didn’t make fools out of themselves; they could be a lot more subtle about it than Joe could with his prancing and hollering, but they couldn’t be nearly as successful. I think this was because he
didn’t
try to be subtle; he didn’t care if he made a fool out of himself, just so long as he made you happy with the fool. And as we hurried around, buttoning up the show for the night, I was so tickled at him working to improve my mood that I clean forgot for a while what’d caused the mood in the first place. Right up to when we headed up to the crummy I couldn’t remember (
He’s sitting there awake; I tell him to scoot over . . .
); then I heard a flock of geese off down country and toward the town and I remembered just exactly what was bugging me (
I ask him what he’d been doin’ to pass the day. He says writing. I ask if it was more poetry and he looks at me like he doesn’t have the vaguest inkling what I’m talking about
), because hearing them geese is just like the phone ringing; even with the wire tore out it’s still the same yammering, the same crazy pestering and wheedling, even if I can’t make out the words. And hearing the geese, and thinking about the phone wire being tore out . . . that screwy phone call from the night before finally came back to me. It had been dangling just out of my memory’s line of vision ever since last night, like one of those dreams when you can remember the
feeling
but not the dream.