Sometimes a Great Notion (82 page)

 

The old house is noisy even without television. The children talk in whispers, and the rain outside seems to whisper back, but the geese call full-throated and brazen as Hank lies listening. . . . (
I don’t even bring a paper to read. I just hop right in the sack. I’m about asleep when I hear the kid come up and go on down to his room. He’s coughing a little, sounds about as real as the cough Boney Stokes been putting on thirty years. I listen to see if anybody else comes up, but there’s a flock goes so loud I can’t hear. Thousands and thousands and thousands. Flying round and round and round the house. Thousands and thousands and thousands. Banging against the roof, crashing
through the walls till the house is full of them gray feathers beaks at my ear hard and hollering at me beating chest and neck and face hard whacking wings of thousands and thousands louder than—
)

I woke up, feeling like something was haywire. The house was dark and quiet and at the foot of the bed the glow-dial clock said it was about half past one. I laid there, trying to figure what had woke me. The wind was blowing outside, crashing rain against the window so hard it sounded every once in a while like that old river out there was rising up in the dark and striking at the house like a big swaying snake of water. But that wasn’t what woke me; if I was woke up by every little wind kicking against the window I would of died of exhaustion years ago.

Looking back, it’s easy to figure what it was: the geese had all shut up. There wasn’t a sound, not a hoot nor a honk. And the hole left in the night by their honking was like a big roaring vacuum; enough to wake anybody. But at the time I didn’t realize that. . . .

I slid out of bed, taking it real easy to keep from waking Viv, and I got hold of the six-cell light I keep in the room. The way the weather was carrying on out there I decided I maybe ought to have a look at the foundation, seeing as I hadn’t checked before going to bed. I walked over to the window and put my face up near the glass and shined the light off in the direction of the bank. I don’t know why. Laziness, I reckon. Because I knew that even on a clear day it was next to impossible to see the foundation from that window on account of the hedge. But I reckon I was just punchy enough to hope this time it would be different and I would see the bank and it would be fine. . . .

Out past the glass there seemed to be nothing but rain being whipped around in long filmy sheets, like the banners of the wind. I was just standing there, stroking the beam of that light back and forth, still about half sacked-out, when all of a sudden I see out yonder a face!
A human face!
floating out there on the rain, wide-eyed, wild-haired, with a mouth twisted in horror like a thing been trapped outside in the storm for
centuries!

I don’t know how long I stared at it—maybe five seconds or five minutes—before I gave a yell and jumped back from the window. And saw the face mimic my actions. Oh! Oh for chrissakes . . . It’s just a
reflection
, nothing but a reflection. . . .

But so help me god, it was about the wildest thing I ever had happen to me; the worst scare I ever had in my life. Worse than in Korea. Worse even than the time I seen the tree falling at me and I tripped right underneath it and fell next to a stump and the tree hit that stump like a two-ton maul driving a stake; the stump was pounded a good six inches into the ground but it protected me so I didn’t suffer no more than the loss of my breakfast. That particular incident shook me so bad I laid there without moving for a good ten minutes, but I tell you so help me
god
, that wasn’t nowhere
near
the scare I got from that reflection.

I heard Viv hustle around behind me. “What is it, honey?”

“Nothing,” I told her. “Nothing. I just thought for a minute there the
bogey
man was after me.” I laughed a little. “Thought the old boy had come for my ass at last. I looked out the window to check the foundation, and there the sonofabitch was, face looking like death warmed over.” I laughed again, and finally turned from the window and walked to sit on the edge of the bed beside her. “Yessiree, a regular fiend in the night. See him yonder?”

I shined the light up toward my face again so’s Viv could see the reflection for herself, and made a face at her in the window. We both laughed, and she reached out to take my arm and hold it against her cheek, the way she used to do when she was pregnant.

“You were tossing and turning so; did you finally get to sleep?”

“Yeah. I guess them geese finally give up tryin’ to get in.”

“What woke you, the storm?”

“Yeah. The rain woke me, I imagine. The wind. She’s walkin’ and talkin’ out there tonight. Dang. I bet that river’s comin’ up, too. Well, you know what that means . . .”

“You’re not going down to
check
, are you? It’s not that bad. It’s just blowing a lot. It couldn’t have come up so much since you checked after supper.”

“Yeah . . . except I
didn’t
check tonight after supper, remember? I had a bone in my throat.”

“But it was all right when you came home from work; that was just before supper. . . .”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “I
should
go check. It’d be safest.”

“Honey, don’t,” she said and squeezed my arm.

“Yep, one hell of a scare,” I said, shaking my head. “Most like it was the
dream
had a lot to do with it; getting me ripe for a scare, sort of. I’d been dreaming again that college dream again, you know? Only this time the reason I quit wasn’t because I was just too duncy to hack it, but because
Ma’d
died. I come home from school and found the old lady dead, like the time when I was a kid. It happened just like it really did: I found her bent nearly double, with her face in the launder tray. And when I touched her she tipped sideways and banged to the floor, still bent, like she was frozen bent, like a piece of a root. ‘Probably a stroke,’ was what Dr. Layton said. ‘Probably suffered a stroke while she was washing and fell in the water, drown before she could come to.’ Hmm. . . . Only in this dream I’m not a kid; I’m twenty or so. Hmm. . . .” I thought about it a minute, then asked Viv, “What you suppose, Doctor; am I completely schitzish?”

“You’re completely nuts. Get under the covers. . . .”

“Funny, ain’t it . . . the geese hushing up all at once. I almost think that’s what woke me.”

Looking back, I know damn well that’s what woke me.

“That or the rain knocking to remind me I ain’t checked the foundation tonight . . .”

Looking back, a guy can always pick him out some top-notch reasons to explain what happened. He can say the reason he woke up like he did was because the geese hushed; and the reason that reflection spooked him so was the dream he’d been having leaving him in a kind of spooky frame of mind . . .

(
I sit there on the bed, listening to the rain. I can feel her cheek pushed up against my bicep, all warm and smooth, and her hair falling down in my lap. “I’m sure it’s all right, honey,” she says. “What’s that?” I say. “The foundation,” she says. . . .
)

A guy can even look back and see that the thing that happened the next day at work was because of them dreams and reasons, along with thinking about that nut Willard Eggleston, and with all that week working so hard and not sleep enough when I got home . . . he can look back and say
there
was the why of it . . .

(
I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I say. “I know I ought to go down there and check, just run a light over the waterline to see how things are . . . but oh lord god,” I say, “how I hate the thought of pulling on a pair of ice-cold boots and go slopping out in that soup . . .”
)

Even that flu bug that was going the rounds, a fellow could add that on, looking back . . .

(
I reach over for my trousers off the back of the hard chair. “Especially,” I say, “the way my kidneys are giving me hell. . . .” “Your kidneys?” she says. “Yeah, you remember, they used to bother me some just after we was married; Layton said it was from riding all the way across the country on the cycle with no support on; floating kidney or something was what he called it. Hadn’t troubled me none for the last couple years. Till today. I skidded offn a peeled one and whanged hell outa my rear end and back—” “Oh,” she says, “bad? Let me look.” She flicks on the bed light. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Sure,” she says. “Sure, it’s always okay with you.” She sits up and gets hold of the scruff of my hair and pulls me back over on the bed. “Now roll over to your stomach and let me look.”
)

Yeah, a fellow can look back and add up all the reasons and say, “Well, it ain’t really so hard to figure how come I was so punchy and so logy, and so careless out working the state park the next day, what with all the hassles banging at me so long; no, not really so hard . . .”

(
She pulls up my undershirt. “Hon-ey! . . . it’s all raw.” “Yeah,” I say into the covers, “but nothin’ to fuss over. Nothing you can do with a bruised butt anyhow but pee blood for a few days while it heals. I tell you, though: you might see can you unravel some of the kinks in my shoulders while you got me here . . . okeedoke?”
)

But just the same, being able to look back and give reasons and all that still don’t do much toward making a man
proud
of what happened because of them reasons. Not if he can look back as well and see how he could have kept it from—no, not could; look back and see how he by god
should
have kept it from happening. There’s shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them
forty dozen deep.
And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away . . .

(
She gets up and goes to the dresser for something and switches on the electric heater on her way back. She’s wearing the nightgown with the one broken strap. I smell that she’s got the analgesic before it touches my back. “Boy,” I say, “that’s all right. I sure didn’t realize how knotted up I was.” She hums along with the electric heater for a while, then commences to sing in just this least little whisper possible. “Redbird in a sycamore tree-ee, singing out his song,” she sings. “Big black snake crawls up that tree and swallows that poor boy whole.” “That’s nice,” I tell her. “Dang, that’s nice. . . .” She rubs round and around and around; and it is nice, it’s very nice . . .
)

Hank breathes deeply, his lips damp against the back of his forearm as he lies on his stomach. The hands slither over him like a warm and fragrant oil. The heater beside the bed purrs pleasantly, glowing at him from across the room in a deep orange spiral. Viv sings:

 

He rolls to his back. In thick, warm oil. And reaches his maimed hand languorously up to take the dangling strap and pull her down toward him . . .

 

The rain strikes against the window and draws back and strikes again without effect. The wind strums the four insulated power lines that swoop over the river to the house, making the house hum in deep response. Hank falls asleep with the lamp still burning and the heater still purring, and the slim liquid hands once again flowing warmly across his back . . .

 

In the morning Lee refused absolutely to rise from bed; there would be no carrier to sleep the day away in at the new grounds, and he was damned if he’d get out of the house just to sit like a mudflat Indian under a rubber poncho, frustrated and frozen, while the rain slowly washed the remaining shreds of his life downhill into the river. He was determined to remain firmly in bed; no amount of persuasion on Joe Ben’s part was going to work this morning. “Lee, boy, think of
this.
” Joe raised a finger significantly. “You don’t even have to ride the boat up river this time. We’re taking the pick-up all the way to the job.” Then the finger began to jab, icy and insistent—“Come on. Hop up; get up now—”

“What?” I was shaken from warm dreams of victory by that cold little jab of reality. “What? Get up? Are you
serious
, Joe?”

“Certainly,” he told me seriously, then launched a new sales campaign.

Through a scrim of sleepy I saw Joe Ben’s fanatic eyes crackling green at me from their orange rims. A happy Caliban. He was offering me some kind of nice little excursion in the pick-up. I half listened, sitting up and reaching for another handful of aspirins from the dish beside my bed. All night long I had been chewing them like salted peanuts to foil any attempt a thermometer might make to reveal my actual sickness.

“Josephus,” I interrupted, “a ride in the pick-up somehow just does not compete with the ride I’m now taking. Have a handful of aspirin. Get a nice buzz on.” I leaned back and pulled the covers over my head, remembering that this was the day I had chosen for my assault, for the final step in my plans. To stay home. With the remembering, excitement began to run through me, but I managed to keep my voice appropriately weak and muffled. . . . “No, Joe. No no no, I’m sick sick sick”—and at the same time allow just enough of an edge of malicious amusement show to let Joe know better. I reasoned that Brother Hank had sent him on this mission to my bedroom, for I was positive that Hank too understood the importance of this day. Everything had led up to it. It could not be denied. At long last it was inevitable that I would have to spend the day home from work . . . alone . . . except for the old man, who slept most of the mornings and sometimes a good part of the afternoons if he didn’t go into town, and for Viv. The thought of my brother’s anxiety lent a new dimension to my undercover excitement, as well as a glow to my frozen extremities. “Forget it, Joe. No. I’m not going.” I burrowed deeper.