Sometimes a Great Notion (87 page)

 

Until the three of them meshed, dovetailed . . . into one of the rare and beautiful units of effort sometimes seen when a jazz group is making it completely, swinging together completely, or when a home-town basketball squad, already playing over its head, begins to rally to overtake a superior opponent in a game’s last minute . . . and the home boys can’t miss; because everything—the passing, the dribbling, the plays—every tiny
piece
is clicking perfectly. When this happens everyone watching
knows . . .
that, be it five guys playing basketball, or four blowing jazz, or three cutting timber, that
this bunch
—
right
now, right
this moment
—is the best of its kind in the world! But to become this kind of perfect group a team must use
all
its components, and use them in the slots best suited, and use them all with the pitiless dedication to victory that drives them up to their absolute peak, and past it.

Joe felt this meshing. And old Henry. And Hank, watching his team function, was aware only of the beauty of the team and of the free-wheeling thrill of being part of it. Not of the pitiless drive. Not of the three of them building toward a peak the way a machine running too fast too long accelerates without actually speeding up as it reaches a breaking point that it can’t be aware of, and goes on past that breaking point, accelerating
past
it and
toward
it at the same time and at the same immutable rate. As the trees fell and the radio filled in between their falling:

 

The fogged glass door of the Sea Breeze Cafe and Grill swung open and a pimpled Adonis came in out of the rain and seated himself down the counter from me, openly contemplating the heist of one of the three-week-old Hersheys beside the cash register—could get him two months for petty theft, and more acne.

“Mrs. Carleson . . . I’m thinkin’ on drivin’ up river to Swedes-gap to see Lily and I’ll be goin’ past Montgomery’s house if you’d care to visit your mama”—one eye on the stale chocolate, the other on the staler waitress.

“No, I guess not right now, Larkin; but I thank you for the offer.”

“ ’S okay.”
Snatch!
“Well, I’ll see you later.”

Our eyes met as he turned from the counter, and we each grinned sheepishly, sharing our mutual secret guilts. He hurried on to his car, where he hesitated outside the café for a few minutes, worrying about my discretion, wondering if he should come back in and pay for the snatched Hershey before I snitched.
And the trees fall, in the forest, and the rain slices the sky . . .
while I hesitated
inside
the café, worrying about my own discretion, wondering why I kidded myself about waiting for my long-lost father . . .
In the forest, bent over a log, old Henry skillfully wedges a screwjack between stump and log that’s just exactly by god how I useta do it even if I maybe
ain’t
so spry as back in them days . . .
and wondering
also
why I didn’t get up and go outside and ask the pimpled thief for a ride. Why not? He’s going to the Montgomery place, right past our house; he would have to oblige me, with all I have on him!
Joe Ben runs downhill, leaping the ferns, right on the heels of a sliding log, setting his jack almost before it stops, because there ain’t no
sense
lettin’ up if you don’t doubt, because if you
don’t doubt
you are
already
in God’s fur-lined pocket . . .
So I slid from the leatherette stool, dug a handful of change from my pocket to pay my bill, and hurried toward the door—determined to make the move before the heat of my decision cooled . . .
And Hank rips his saw free from a huge moss-covered trunk just as it starts to tip, steps back to watch the top far above him lean, wave, faster, gasping and whistle, sucking gray rain after it just the way I like to see it, simple and straight and
whomp!
Who knows a better life? . . .
thinking as I hurried out, Viv, here I come, ready or not! “What?” Viv says, but it’s just the dogs at the porch door wanting dinner. She puts down her broom, wiping back her hair. Lee flips up his collar as he steps into the rain. The pimpled boy panics at his approach and spins away with the car. Hank kills his saw to refuel it. Lights a new cigarette, starts the little quarterhorse motor again. Old Henry juggles at his snuff can, his hands cold and stiff. Joe jumps, trips, falls and takes a strip of hide off his chin with the grooved dial of his little radio, switching off the music. A moment’s hush runs like a fuse through the wet sky. They each pause and notice the pressing silence, then make ready to move again, forgetting it. Lee starts walking along the gravel, east. Viv feeding the hounds. Hank thumbing the chain oil button on the saw. Henry packing his charge of snuff, wheezing and spitting. Joe Ben turning his radio back on, convinced that the fall has by golly
improved
the reception . . . to Burl Ives:

 

Then, as though the fuse had burned away, the forest ended its brief hush.

And a wind, heavy with rain, came up from the river through the fern and huckleberry like a deep-drawn breath; and “
as you go through life make this your goal . . .
” and Hank feels the air about him swell with that wind, gathering with it, just as he rocks the saw free from a limb he is bucking off the fallen fir, looking up, frowning to himself before he even hears it listen! the maddened snapping of bark someplace else moving, he turns back to the log in time to see a bright yellow-white row of teeth appear splintering over the mossy lips to gnash the saw from his hands fling it furiously to the ground it claws screaming machine frenzy and terror trying to dig escape from the vengeful wood just above where old Henry drops his screwjack Gaw when mud and pine needles spray over him like black
damn!
rain an’ even if I don’t see so clear as I used to there’s still time to get
down
the hill Joe Ben hears the metal scream behind a curtain of fern but if you
never doubt
in your mind where’s
Hank
spins away leaving his log and turn me on and aim me is all I want still peaceful, relaxed like sleep from eight to five without thinking or I’d said
Nothing doing
to see the log springing suddenly massive upright pivots on Henry’s ARM GOD my good one goddammit GOD GOD just leave the old nigger enough to whup it enough arm that he’d been using to fix his screwjack it waves limp then disappears a second beneath the row of teeth before the log springs on downhill massive upright like the bastard is trying to stand up again and find its
stump!
a swinging green fist slams Hank’s shoulder goes somersaulting past upright like the bastard is so mad getting chopped down it jumps up chews off the old man’s arm clubs me one now tearing off downhill after “Joe! Joby!” the last of us and Joe Ben’s hand parts the fern there’s this
blunted
white circle fanged jagged spreading toward him larger and larger down the mud-trough
oop
springs backward from the fern over the bank not really scared or startled or anything but
light
like the mud on my boots turned to
wings . . .
and hangs in the air over the bank for an instant . . . a jack-in-the-box, bobbling . . . sprung up from his box and dangling backward above the tangle of vines . . . face sudden clown red the color of the old man’s arm now crushed flowing all the way to the boogerin’
bone . . .
hangs, sprung up, for an instant, with that ugly little goblin face red and still merry grinning to me that it’s okay Hankus okay that you couldn’t of been thinkin’ that limb you cut off would of done this then falls cut loose slapping back to the muddy bank outa the way if it wasn’t “Look out!” for that screwjack “Look out!” don’t worry Hankus face still red like the old man’s GOD you booger, leave me
somethin’
to fight with the ARM GOD my one good ARM
Look out!
just don’t worry Hankus just never doubt slaps against the muddy bank right in the path LOOK OUT JOBY slaps and rolls as the runaway log thunks the log he’d been working with his screwjack jolts sideways rearing above ROLL rolls still light-feeling confident almost safe half into the river almost but slamming down, the log, across both legs, and stopping.

 

There was again the near, the more than silence: the radio; the hiss of the rain on the conifer leaves, the river sucking at its banks. . . . Hank stood, reeling, the only movement in the fern, dizzy from the blow—waiting—that he’d received in his back. Everything was still now—waiting—crystallized and set in dead soundless calm, like a dream stone set in a dream ring. “When you go through life make this your goal.” (Except it wasn’t a dream, just crystallized calm.
For I’m wide awake, so wide awake my brain has run off and left time behind. Time will start in a minute; time, will start, in a minute. . . .
) The thought continued to echo softly. “Watch the doughnut, not the hole.” (
In a minute, in a minute. I been asleep. I just woke but time ain’t started yet. In a minute that branch there’ll spring back and those mallards froze in the air’ll go on flying and the old man’s arm will bleed and I’ll holler my ass off. In a minute. If
I can just break loose, then in a minute I’ll
) “Joe!” (
in a minute I’ll
) “Joby! Hang on, I’m comin’!”

He ran down the gouged rut of mud and leaped the bank of berry vine and saw Joe Ben sitting in water to his shoulders, looking as though he were holding the log on his lap. His narrow back was toward the rutted bank, and he smiled out across the river toward the mountains. He was resting his chin on the bark, in no apparent pain. “Man oh man, she really came barrelin’ after me, didn’t she?” He laughed softly, strangely calm. Like me, Hank thought; time hasn’t started for him yet. He don’t know yet he’s in trouble. . . .

“You bad off, Joby?”

“I don’t think too bad. She lit on my legs, but the mud under me there’s soft. I don’t feel like I broke anything. Didn’t even bust my radio.” He twisted the dial; Burl Ives still strummed out across the water:

 

There was—waiting together—an odd and honest moment before either of them spoke again.

 

Then . . . Hank moved suddenly. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me get up there after the saw.”

“What about the old man? I heard him yell.”

“It mashed hell outa one arm. He’s passed out. Let me get the saw.”

“Go on and see to him, Hank. I’m not hurtin’. Don’t get in a stew about me; you know what I told you? I been promised to live till eighty and have twenty-five kids. See to the old man while you’re gettin’ that saw. And be careful.”

“Be
care
ful?” Listen to the crazy outfit. “Five kids he’s got and he tells
me
to be careful. You bet,” I told him and headed back up the slope. I was gasping so I almost conked out by the time I made it back up to Henry. “
Whew
; too frantic . . .” I told myself to ease off, that we was in a little tight but we’d make it. Ease off and be calm about it like Joe. I forced my lungs to breathe deep and slow and tried to make my hands stop trembling. “Whew lordy . . .” Cool, cool and slow. Just don’t sweat it. Go slow. . . .

While his head rang and his heart rattled out a code he was still—waiting—trying to pass off as nonsense, as panicked nonsense.

On a mound of pine needles and mud the old man lay like a broken gull. I knelt and looked at the crushed arm. Well . . . it was in bad shape but not bleeding too hard. I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and put a tourniquet at the armpit and the blood stopped gushing so big. That would hold till I could get him up the hill to the pick-up. Be a job, toting him up. But then maybe Joby’s legs are all right and we can rig up a stretcher and we can both carry him as soon as I saw that log off. “That log.” In a minute I’ll go back down and saw through that—“but that
log!
” In a minute I’ll—“That log on Joe . . . in the water!”

Hank’s head jerked up. That rattling was like a frantic telegraph. The message crystallized everything—the waiting over—before his eyes once more:
That’s
why I couldn’t ease off! I knew, back down there. I knew. Just like I knew before that log sprung in the air that there was trouble. Just like I knew clear back last night that I’ll—Oh, Christ, that log, the way it’s laid!

With a cry he grabbed the chain saw and once again ran stumbling down the gouged trough, charging through the vines and springing fern down toward the bank, where Joe Ben lay trapped . . .

Walking the roadside gravel from the restaurant east toward the old house, resolved to make my own way now that I was in motion, even if it meant walking the whole eight miles, I found myself enjoying a satisfying symbiosis with the rain: I was walking from the rain, along with it. This meager assistance of water blowing against my neck piqued my determination: I can make it, I grimly told myself, I shall make it. And this way I didn’t have to think about the ordeal ahead, only the struggle getting there. I trudged onward and up-river-ward, resolute and relentless, never even once sticking up my thumb to hitch a ride: I can make it, by gosh, and—if you don’t count the rain—by
myself
by gosh. . . .

Hank bounded through the bank brush, right out onto the log; he could see the water had already risen a few inches up Joe’s back.