Sometimes a Great Notion (89 page)

But beneath the water, in the close, cold dark, the fix was as bad as it was above. And as humorless. More so, actually. Still . . . there was something funny happening. Not funny the way Joe liked, but funny like it was somebody else’s joke. And the laughter was no more his laughter than the grin was his grin. They came from someplace else. They had started coming over him right after the water completely covered his face. Black and cold. Shock and horror, then . . . this funny thing swimming up out of the dark. Like something’d been there all along and just waiting for it to get dark enough. Now, in tight silence beneath the water, Joe feels it trying to fit into the skin of him, trying to eat away the thing
he
is inside, and fit into
his
skin. A black, laughing cancer trying to take over the shell of him. He doesn’t like it. He fights to stop it by trying to think of brighter sides. Like Thanksgiving just a couple days off. One of the best of
all
times, any time, and
this
time due to be one of the
best
of the best of all times. Because this WP deal will be finished; we’ll be able to take a breather. With smells all morning. Sage and onion dressing in the turkey. Punkin pie with allspice.
Watch the doughnut.
Then sit around the stove in the living room, fart and belch, fart and belch like it used to be. Watching the ballgames on TV and drinking beer and smoking cigars. No, no beer or cigars. I forgot.
Not the hole.
No coffee neither. Don’t laugh. Because a man, Brother Walker says, builds his mansion in the sky out of the lumber of Good Living
as you walk the streets
that he saws here on earth. Lays up his treasures in Heaven by not partaking in—don’t laugh now
you will have no cares
—by not indulging in—don’t you laugh because you start laughing pretty quick I choke then I never catch up . . . Besides. There’s nothing funny. Not under here. Look: I’m a little worried—
and not the squares
—and I’m cold; and I hurt. That’s not funny. I want to go home. I want to go to my new home and put on the clean suntans Jan’s ironing for me and have the twins sit on my belly and Squeaky show us what she drew today in drawing. And all them things. I want . . . cranberries and mincemeat. Oh yeah! And sweet potatoes with marshmallows—don’t laugh—with marshmallows baked on top and turkey . . . Don’t laugh I want it
again!
Don’t you laugh it ain’t funny never to taste sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows on top again! But don’t you want
watch the doughnut
that cigar too?
Yes!
but dang it a man’s got to build his mansion out of! Sure but you tell me—
don’t get me laughing!
—wouldn’t you rather have that cup of hot coffee now that you didn’t—
don’t, dang you!
—didn’t have this morning?
No! Not the hole.
And don’t laugh I know
you
now
get outa here
—or that Judy girl who was always—
get outa here, Devil!
—putting the ray on you in math class?
Satan! Satan! I know you and don’t laugh
—you know me—
you black Devil
—you know better than that now
Devil! The Good Lord in His goodness He leadeth me through the valley of the shadow!
Come on now, sonny, don’t make me laugh; you know better than that bullshit.
It ain’t funny! Or bullshit. I’ll hack it out if I just don’t go to doubting.
Oh yeah, sure you will . . .
I will! Whosoever believe that he don’t laugh!
Sure you will just like you hacked me out with a brush knife
it ain’t funny
no but it still gives a fellow amusement
don’t laugh you you cheated me
no you cheated me
no no they
yeah yeah that’s what I mean it
was Him and them
yeah that’s what’s
so don’t do it!
baloney what’s the
Oh oh oh no difference? See? See?
If we all got cheated?
But the cigars!
Oh yeah, I missed the smokes but
And o my god I liked coffee
oh yeah me too
but that’s what’s so goddam funny
so blessed funny so oh oh . . . oh . . .

A bubbling of hysterical mirth erupted in Hank’s face just as he was bending to deliver another breath to Joe. It startled him so he lost his lungful of air. He stared, frowning, at the now placid spot where the strange laughter had exploded. Then gulped another lungful of air and plunged his face into the water, feeling with his lips until he found Joby’s mouth . . . open in the dark there, open and round with laughing. And huge; like an underwater cave, it’s so huge, like a drain hole at the world’s deepest bottom, rimmed with cold flesh . . . so huge it could empty seas.

And the current swirling down in a black spiral, filling it to laugh again.

He did not attempt to force his cargo of air into that lifeless hole. He withdrew his face slowly and stared again at the surface of water that lay featureless and unruffled over Joe. No different from any of the rest of the surface, all the way across the river, all the way out to sea. (
But Joe Ben is dead, don’t you realize?
) The clicking was going again—waiting—louder and harder. And a fuzziness, too, and nausea. (
The little sonofabitch is dead.
And yet,
the little goblin is dead don’t you see?
in spite of the sudden rolling pitch of nausea, above that ballooning sense of loss that you always feel right after somebody close dies
but he’s dead, Joe Ben is dead, don’t you understand,
I experienced a sort of feeling of
relief.
I was tired, and it was almost over, and I was relieved to know I would be able to rest before much longer. Waiting.
Tired for a long time. Just a little bit more, just get the old man up to the pick-up and in town to some help, and maybe then it will be over. Finally finished. After going on now for Christ how long? after going on now for at least . . . since I saw the old man coming down the hill from the pick-up this morning, looking all worried. No. Before that. Since earlier this morning, or last night waking up and seeing my reflection. No. Before that, too. Since Joby first got me out for football and made me his hero. Since he first jumped into the ocean that time to make me outswim him. Since the old man nailed that plaque on my wall. Since Boney Stokes bugged old Henry about his old man. Since, since, since . . .
) until—standing there, waiting, still looking at that spot of water—his burning lungs broke the backrushing stream of thoughts, “But you’re dead, Joby, you bastard oh damn you you’re
dead
”—and he blew out the stale air in a loud, gasping sob . . .

As it grew darker along the highway more and more kindred souls motoring in my direction up river pulled over to ask if they mightn’t give me a lift. I refused politely and continued stoically on with a delicious air of martyrdom about me. The walk had become more and more religious to me; a pilgrimage with built-in penance, taking me to my mosque, my shrine of salvation, and at the same time punishing me with rain and cold for the sin I planned to commit when I got there. And, believe it or not, the closer I got to the house the slower fell the rain and the warmer felt the air. Quite a change, I thought, from streets filled with sleet and demonic doctors . . .

(After climbing up onto the end of the log still sticking out of the water, I noticed for the first time since the accident that the weather was clearing off a little; the wind had died down almost complete, and the rain was beginning to ease off. I rested a minute or so on the log there; then I got out of my back pocket some big cable staples and a crescent wrench I was carrying. I found Joe Ben’s hand floating in the dark. I pulled the sleeve up over the limp hand and rolled it back into a thick cuff. Then I nailed it to the log. I found the other hand and did the same; it was clumsy work, hammering the big staples through the heavy fabric with a crescent wrench, about half under water to boot. I took out my hanky and tied it to that branch, the one that had whacked me. When I was finished I stood up, and already I could feel a little movement beneath my feet as the rising current lifted at the log. “If Joe could have hung on another twenty minutes or so . . .” Then I jumped from the log into the tangle of vines and made my way through the forest toward the place I had left the old man.

The climb up the hill to the pick-up shook the old man to consciousness. He rolled his poor old head back and forth in the dark while I was starting the motor, asking, “What? What, dammit all?” and, “You got the cast on the wrong ruttin’ side er somethin’?”

I felt I should say something to reassure him but somehow couldn’t make myself speak. I just kept saying, “Hang tough, hang tough.” I drove the pick-up back down the hill, listening to the whimpered questions like they were coming from a long ways off. When I reached the highway the questions stopped and I could tell by the breathing that he had passed out again. I said thank the Lord for small favors and tore out west. I reached into my breast pocket after my smokes and it wasn’t cigarettes at all: it scared me; it was that damned little transistor radio and it had dried out enough to peep a little when I touched it. I throwed it from me and it landed next to the door, going off and on with pieces of Western music.
“Keep movin’ on—”
it played. “When they get you goin’ they really keep at you,” I said out loud. The old man answered, “Grab a root an’ dig,”—and I really tromped down on her. I didn’t want any more of
that
than necessary.

The rain slowed to a mist and had quit altogether by the time I swung the pick-up into the mill yard. The clouds above were beginning to break up and in the pale moonlight I could see Andy leaning on his peavey like a sleeping heron. I got out and handed him the two candy bars I’d found in the jockey box.

“You got to stay out here all night,” I told him. My voice sounded like it was coming from someone standing in the shadow beside me. “Most of the logs rode the current up. You won’t see no more probably for three or four hours, till the tides change again. And get every log that comes past, all of them. Every one, you hear me? And watch for one flagged. Joe Ben’s nailed onto that one, drowned.”

Andy nodded, wide-eyed, but he didn’t say anything. I stood there a minute. The overcast had thinned and split above us and was beginning to curl up and pull apart into dark clots; the full white circle of the moon came out now and then between the clots. The dripping berry vines that grew along the plank walk from the mill to the moorage looked like banks of crumpled foil. I saw Andy look at the blood-drenched arms of my sweat shirt, wanting to be told what had happened, but there again—just like back at the slope—I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I turned, going back along the planks toward the idling pick-up without saying anything else. I just wanted to be away from people. I didn’t want to have to avoid answering questions about what happened. I didn’t want the questions.

I barely slowed down as I approached the house. Just enough to glance over and see that the light was still on in Viv’s room. I better call her when I get into town, I figured. Jan, too; call them from the hospital. But I knew I wouldn’t.

The little radio had finally stopped playing. It was warm in the cab now, and quiet; just the tires ripping along the pavement as I passed our garage, and a sound beside me from the old man like a wind going back and forth over old dead leaves. I was tired. Too tired to mourn or care about what had happened. I’ll mourn later, I figured, I’ll—“What!” I’ll mourn later when I get time—“
What?
”—after a rest I’ll—
“What! It’s him!”
Then I saw the kid, just as I went past the garage. Walking along the highway headed for the house,
not at the hospital, not in town, but here, now, there, back there at the garage, back there getting ready to go down to the launch and across to the house! Damn. They really keep at you. When they get you going they really keep right at you. . . .
)

By the time my damp pilgrimage ended and the garage came into sight it had stopped raining, my nose no longer ran, and a wind had sprung up and showed signs of blowing the skies clear. Yet my old anxiety was returning, barking WATCH OUT WATCH OUT over and over, and this time giving as a reason to hesitate the dangerous lateness of the hour: THEY WILL BE RETURNING; THEY WILL CATCH YOU. . . . But, where I might have procrastinated another hour away haggling with this thought, the reason eliminated itself for me: just as I stepped from the highway to the graveled drive I caught sight of brother Hank himself zooming past in the pick-up, face fixed with the obvious intention of going all the way into town—to look for the old man, I was certain.

That sight scuttled my new excuse; and, never once wondering how Hank had acquired the pick-up without old Henry’s driving it to him, I made for the launch, unable to come up with any reasons not to. “Here’s your chance to get into the game,” I told myself, “with security insured and no tricky grounders or pricky needles.”

And tried to convince myself that I was pleased that events had laid the way so open for me.

Indeed, the way seemed to be becoming more open, and more lovely, by the moment. The clouds, suddenly shriveled and empty, were returning on the wind over the treetops back to sea to reload, leaving the land to frost and the boat motor dry when I removed the tarp covering. The moon ran like quicksilver on the motor, guiding my hands to the right instruments; the rope pulled smoothly; the motor started the first try and held, even and full-throated; the mooring rope came loose with a single flip and the prow swung pointing at the house, as sure as a compass needle. And from the glisten of frozen forest across the river I could hear the bugle of an elk, possessed by lust or a cold bed, I didn’t know which, but I know those high skirling notes marshaled me forward like a tune from a satyr’s pipe. The light from Viv’s upstairs window rolled a glowing carpet out across the water to me . . . ushered me dimly up the stairs . . . seeped warmly from beneath her door. Everything was perfect; I will be a veritable stallion, I told myself, Casanova personified . . . and had already knocked when a new fear smote me:
but what if I can’t make it!
I TOLD YOU TO WATCH OUT
what if I start to come on like a stallion and can’t get it up!