Sometimes a Great Notion (85 page)

A dozen parting replies passed through my mind as I pulled on my jacket, but I was still too cowed by my recent experience with the woman and her needle to be able to voice them. Instead I paused at the door and meekly announced I was going to walk downtown. “If my father comes back, could you please tell him I’ll probably be at Grissom’s?”

I waited for an answer. She did not seem to have heard at first. Her face did not rise from the book, but as I stood there, like a schoolboy waiting to be excused, the curl of her slurring voice traced the curl of her lip perfectly. “You right
sure
you can make it without fainting again?” She licked her thumb to flip a page. “And don’t let the door slam.”

Between my clenched teeth I cursed her soundly, as well as the hypodermic, the doctor, and my thoughtless father, cursed them all and threatened dire revenge for each and every one in his turn . . . and closed the door behind me with a coward’s care.

In the puddled walk outside the clinic I stood wondering what to do, feeling completely foiled. My chances to get Viv alone seemed to grow slimmer and slimmer. How would I get back out there unless old Henry came back? And yet, without thinking of it, when I started for town I avoided the only street on which he might drive if he came to look for me, taking instead, “for old time’s sake,” the old broken walk that would take me past the schoolhouse . . . “in case that doctor comes looking.”

Sulking, furtive, alert—hands hanging cold and cocked at my sides instead of warm in my pockets—I advanced cautiously through billowing rain down a long row of memories, ready for anything. The rickety, slithery wooden walk took me past forlorn fishermen’s shacks ominous and smoky and quilted with assorted patches made from snuff-can lids and flattened Prince Albert tins: There the Mad Scandinavian lives; “a baby-eater,” my schoolmates used to claim as they tossed apples at his windows; “you
skeered
, Leland?” . . . past the cottage where the janitor had lived with all the rumors that janitors always live with, past the squat brick furnace building that heated the school, past the shaggy wall of stacked waste lumber that fired the furnace . . . and, strangely, I didn’t relax my caution most of the long walk. Then, when almost at once my groundless fears did leave me—why so scared? How stupid I had been, thinking that jowly fool knew anything; what a stupid worry!—I realized that I was standing in front of the schoolhouse, my age-old citadel of Learning, of Truth, and my sanctuary. But fear was not replaced by peace: as I strolled along the walk edging my sanctuary’s play yard, my alert pose turned to one of slouching dejection and remorse as I trailed my knuckles along the cyclone-fence enclosure past a school I’d never belonged to, past a playground loud with lunch-hour memories of teams I’d never played on. Through the fence, I saw I was passing the baseball diamond. Where the “big kids” had played when I was a first-grader; where the “little kids” played after I reached grade four . . . “Little kids?” Hank once asked. “Yeah, you know, the
dumb
kids, the stupes who couldn’t enjoy a book in all their lives.” Now this old rationalization seemed pitifully thin to me; big kid or little, first grade or fourth, Leland, old chap, you know you would have given your whole collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs to have joined that noisy, disorganized group. Isn’t that so? Isn’t it! As I looked through the dripping crisscross of wire to the runneling field I found myself wryly asking When do I get to play, fellers, when do I get chosen? Everybody’s had a turn but me. Come on. Choose
me
for a change.

The fellers hung back. No nine-year-old demagogue of the diamond rushed forward, freckled with good old American sandlot sunshine, to point with the greasy finger of a fielder’s mitt and say, “I choose
you
for my team.” Nobody shouted, “
You’re
needed, Leland,
you’ll
come through strong in a clutch.”

But fellers, I pleaded into the whorled ear of rain, fair’s fair, now, isn’t it? Fair’s fair?

Yet, even in the face of that time-revered truth, the phantoms hung back; fair might be fair and all, they couldn’t argue with
that
, but when it came to first basemen—or second or third—they wanted a cool head and a brave heart, not some dang punk who throws his fist up in front of his specs every time he sees a fast one skipping in his general direction.

But guys . . .

Not some dang sissy who falters, fidgets, and finally faints dead away and wakes up five minutes later with his trousers around his ankles and an ammonia capsule under his nose—just because a nurse pricked him from behind with a little penicillin.

Wait, fellers; it wasn’t just a prick. The needle was
this
long!

This long, the sissy says.
This
long. Willya listen at him.

It was so! Please, fellers . . . maybe home base?

Home base. Willya just
listen
at the pantywaist. . . . C’mon; let’s get at it . . .

They shifted back into time and I walked on again, past the ball-field while the wind booed and the rain hissed through the chicken-wire backstop and the regular team held down sodden home plate against all comers. I turned toward town, away from the school where I had received straight A’s in everything but recess. Some sanctuary. Oh, sure, my fear had been pacified by the sight of that institute of learning—at least I no longer expected the doctor to swoop down on me like a fat vampire; for, like a church, the school served as my defense against such demons—but in the demon’s place grew a terrible emptiness, a great malignant vacuum. No demons, but no teammates either. Seemed it was always like that.

A person might almost think they were one and the same. . . .

On the slope Hank smoked in patient silence beside his father while he heard the dissonant squeak of Joe Ben’s little radio draw closer through the dripping firs. (The old man still stood leaned up against the log, working his jaw in thought; his white hair was plastered to his bony skull now and hung streaming from the back of his head, sort of like wet cobwebs. “Steeper land like that over yonder,” he kept mumbling. “Hm. Yeah. Over there like that. We can get half again the cutting. Uhuh. I bet we can. . . .”

I was a little awed by the change that had come over the old coon; it seemed that the cast had broken to reveal a younger and at the same time more mature person. I watched old Henry appraise the land and announce which trees we was gonna cut, how, in what order, and so forth . . . and I got to feeling like I was seeing a once-familiar but almost-forgotten man. I mean . . . this wasn’t the old yarn-spinning, bullshitting character that had been thundering damn near unnoticed through the house and the local bars for the last six months. Not the noisy joke of a year before either. No, I realized gradually, this is the boomer I used to follow on cruising walks twenty years before, the calm, stubborn, confident rock of a man who had taught me how to tie a bowline with one hand and how to place a dutchman block in an undercut so’s the tree would fall so cunthair
perfect
that he could put a stake where he aimed for it to fall, then by god drive that stake into the ground with the trunk!

I kept still, looking at him. Like I was scared if I said something this phantom might disappear. And as Henry talked—haltingly, yet deliberate and certain all the same—I felt myself commence to relax. Like I’d had a couple quarts of beer. I let my lungs pull deep and easy and felt a kind of repose, almost like sleep, go running through me. It felt good. It was the first time, I realized, that I’d felt relaxed in—oh, Christ, except for last night with Viv rubbing my back—in what seemed years and years. Hot damn, I figured; the
old
old Henry is back; let him hold the handles a spell while I take a breather.

So I didn’t say anything until Joby was almost there. I let him carry on for a while with his instructions before I reminded him that that slope me and Joby’d been working was exactly the one he’d pointed out for us to work that morning. “Remember?” I grinned at him. “You said just down from that outcropping?”

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” he says, not the least concerned, and went on to say, “But I said that account of this place was
safest.
An’ that was this morning. We ain’t got time for that, not no more, not now. Down yonder she’ll be a little trickier, but we can fall half again the bastards we can fall up here. Anyhow I’ll tell you when Joe gets up here. Now hush and let me think a minute.”

So I hushed and let him think, wondering how long it had been since I’d been able to do
that . . .
)

I left the school and playground and spent most of the rest of that lonely morn over dreary cups of drugstore coffee brought me by a dour Grissom who seemed to hold me solely responsible for his lack of business. During this time I revised and revamped my demon-teammate theory—improving on symbolism, sharpening the effect, stretching it to cover all possible woes. . . . I could stretch it far beyond grammar school. All through prep school I avoided that playground, all through college I had stayed safely in the classroom, secure behind a bastion of books, and played no base at all on the field outside. Not first or second, not third. Certainly not
home.
Secure but homeless. Homeless even in the town of my home-town team, with no base to play. No arms in all the wet world to enfold me, no armchair by the cozy fire to hold me. And, now, on top of it all, I was
deserted
, deserted at the hospital, left to the merciless hoofs of galloping pneumonia, by my own pitiless father. Oh, Father, Father, where can you be . . . ?

(“Gettin’ drownt,” I tell Hank. “Out in the weather thisaway, I should of brung more better gear.” I lean my bum hip against the log again to take the weight offn the cast and I take me a little knit cap from my pocket and pull it on. It ain’t gonna keep my head dry none, but it’ll soak up enough rain to keep it from running into my eyes. Joe Ben, he comes scrambling up the hill practically on all fours, looking like some kinda animal scared outa the ground. “What’s up? What’s up?” He looks from Hank to me, then settles himself on the log and looks down the direction we’re looking. He’s itching to pieces to know what’s up but he knows he’ll get told when I’m ready to tell him, so he don’t ask again.

“Well sir.” I pat my old cap into place and spit. “We got to finish our cuttin’,” I tell them, “an’ finish it today.” Just like that. Hank and Joe Ben light up cigarettes and wait to see what it’s all about. I say, “It’s full moon, an’ a poor time for it. I bet this mornin’ was a good minus-one-five or minus-two tide.
Real
low. When we left the house this mornin’ the river shoulda been low enough to show barnacles on the pilings, ain’t that so? With a tide so low? Huh? But did we see any barnacles? Or did anybody look . . . ?” I look right at Hank. “Did you check the marker at the house this mornin’ against the tide chart?” He shakes his head. I spit and look disgusted at him. Joe says, “What’s it mean, anyway?” “What it means,” I tell them, “is the
game
is all, is jick, jack, joker, and the game for Evenwrite and Draeger an’ that bunch of goddam feather-beddin’
so-slists
is eg-zactly what it means! Unless we
really
get in high gear. What it means . . . is there must be damn heavy rain up country; there’s
more water
comin’ out’n the upper branches’n anybody figured. We’re in for maybe one sonofabitch of a flood!

Not tonight, probably, no, I doubt it tonight. Unless she
really
cuts loose a storm. And she could, but let’s say not. Let’s say it keeps on like it’s goin’. By tomorrow or the next day
nobody
’ll be able to hang onto a boom of logs, not us nor WP. So we got to deliver before it crests. Now. Let’s say, oh, say, it’s about ten-thirty now, so that means eleven, twelve, one, two . . . so let’s say we get
two
of the bastards an hour, pushin’ it, two of these. . . .” I take me a look up one of the firs standing there. She’s a good one. Like they used to be. “At seventeen board feet, times two, times—what did I figure? five hours’ cuttin’?—times five hours, say six hours; we can have Andy to stay up all night at the mill with a boat and spotlight watchin’ for the late-comers . . . yeah, we can do that. So. Anyhow. Figuring six real
highballin’
hours of cutting, nothin’ goes wrong, we—let’s see now . . . hum . . .”

The old man talked on, darting the brown tip of his tongue over his lips and occasionally pausing to spit, speaking more to himself than to the others. Hank finished his cigarette and lit another, nodding now and then as he listened (content to let the old guy call the shots and run the show. Damned content, to be honest with you.

Henry kept rambling on. After telling Joe and me all the details and outlining to us all the dangers and doubts, he finally got around to allowing, “But, yessir, we can hack it,” like I knew he would. “With even a little margin, if we hump our tails. ’N’ then tomorrow we got to rent a tug an’ ran the booms down to Wakonda Pacific, quicker the better. Not wait for Thanksgivin’. Get ’em off our hands before we lose ’em. Well . . . be tight, but we can whup it.”

“You bet!” Joe said. “Oh yeah!” Business like this was right up Joby’s alley.

“So . . . ?” the old man said, talking straight ahead. “What do you say?”

I knew it was me he was asking. “Be tough,” I tell him, “with Orland and Layton and the others buffaloed by Evenwrite and the rest of the town. I mean, it’ll be tough making a drive on that high a river, with that many booms and us so shorthanded. . . .”

“I know it’ll be tough, goddammit! That ain’t what I asked. . . .”

“Hey!” Joby snaps his fingers: “I know: we can get some of the Wakonda Pacific foremen!” He’s excited and chomping at the bit. “See, they
got
to help us, don’t you see? They don’t want to lose their winter millwork. With Mama Olson’s tug, and some of them WP bosses, we’ll be pretty as you please, right in the good Lord’s warm little fist.”

“We’ll take that jump,” the old man says, pushing himself up from the log, “when it comes up. Right now I’m sayin’ can we cut our quota today? All of it. Just us three?”