Sometimes a Great Notion (9 page)

It is a later spring, years now since chasing tricky grounders. The air is chilled and tasting of wild mint. The river runs dappled from the mountains, catching the fragrant blizzard blown from the blossoming blackberry vines that line its banks. The sun throbs off and on. Unruly mobs of young clouds gather in the bright blue sky, riotous and surging, full of threat that convinces no one. On the dock in front of the old house Henry helps Hank and Joe Ben load clothes, bundles, birdcages, hat-boxes . . . “Crap enough to have a purty fair auction, wouldn’t you say, Hank?”—cantankerous and jovial, becoming boyish with age as he had been once prematurely aged and grim.

“Sure, Henry.”

“Son of a gun,
look
at the boogerin’ stuff!”

The big, cumbersome, low-slung hauling boat rocks and heaves as it is loaded. The woman stands watching, thin bird hand resting on the shoulder of her twelve-year-old son, who leans against her hip, polishing his eyeglasses with the hem of her canary-yellow skirt. The three men work, carrying boxes from the house. The boat heaves, sinking deeper. The colors strike with stinging clarity, cutting the scene deep: blue sky, white clouds, blue water, white petals floating, and that sparkling patch of yellow . . .

“Crap an’ corruption enough to stay a lifetime, let ’lone a few months.” He turns to the woman. “What you takin’ so much of your own stuff for, as well as the boy’s? Travel fast and travel light, I allus say.”

“It may take longer than I anticipated, getting him settled.” Then adds quickly, “But I’ll be back as soon as possible. I’ll be back just as soon as possible.”

“Oho.”
The old man winks at Joe Ben and Hank as they carry a trunk along the dock. “See there, boys? See there. Can’t go too long on san’wiches an’ salad when she’s used to steak an’ potatoes.”

Blue and white and yellow, and from that pole jutting out of the second-story window hangs the flag that signals the grocery truck what supplies to leave; a sewn black number on a tailgate banner, red. Blue and white and yellow and red.

The old man stalks back and forth alongside the boat, studying the packing job. “I guess it’ll ride. Okay. Now then. Hank, whilst I’m driving them to the station you an’ Joe Ben see to gettin’ those parts we need for the donkey engine. You might have to take your cycle up to Newport and look around there, try Nyro Machine, they generally stock all the Skagit gear. I’ll be back from the depot by dark; leave me a boat other side. Where’s my hat at?”

Hank doesn’t answer. He bends instead to check the river’s level on the marker nailed to one of the pilings. The sun splashes silver on his pale metal hat. He straightens and pokes his fists in the pockets of his Levis and looks down river. “Just a minute . . .” The woman doesn’t move; she is a yellow patch sewn against the blue river; old Henry is absorbed whittling a sliver to stick in a leak he has discovered in the sideboards of the boat; the gnomish Joe Ben has gone into the boathouse for a tarp to cover the boat’s cargo in case those jostling clouds decide to take action.

“Just a minute . . .”

Only the boy’s head comes around with a jerk, swinging the pale brown cowlick. Only the boy seems to hear Hank speak. He leans toward his big brother, glasses flashing the spring sun.

“Just a minute . . .”

“What?” the boy whispers.

“. . . I guess I’ll ride along, if it’s no skin offn nobody.”

“You?” the boy says. “You guess you’ll—”

“Yeah, bub, I just guess I’ll ride on along to town with you instead of comin’ in later. My bike ain’t runnin’ to form anyhow—that sound all right, Henry?”

The hounds, suddenly aware of the activity on the dock, come pouring from beneath the house and charge barking down the plank walk. “Fine with me,” the old man says and steps into the boat. The woman follows, her face lowered. Hank pushes the hounds away and steps in, almost overloading the boat. The boy still stands, with a look of disbelief, surrounded by dogs.

“Well, sonny?” Henry looks up, squinting against the sun behind the boy. “You comin’ along or not? Dang that glare. Where the hell’s that hat?”

The boy gets in and sits on a trunk near his mother.

“Yonder I see it, under that box. D’ya mind, Myra?”

The woman proffers the hat. Joe Ben brings out the folded gray square of canvas, and Hank takes it from him.

“What you say, Henry?” Hank asks, reaching for the oars. “You want me to take it across?”

The old man shakes his head and takes up the oars himself. Joe Ben unties the rope and, bracing himself against a piling, shoves the boat away from him into the current. “See you people later. G’by, Myra. G’by, Lee, hang tough.” Henry cranes his head around for a sight on the landing at the garage across and commences to pull with a steady, measured strength, green eyes shaded beneath the brim of the tin hat.

The blossom-covered surface of the river is smooth, stretched taut from bank to bank like a polka-dotted fabric. The prow of the boat rips a passage through with a sizzling hiss. The woman keeps her eyes closed, withdrawn into some vague half-sleep, as though fighting the pain of a headache. Henry rows steadily. Hank looks off down river where fishducks are slapping the water with beaded wings. Little Lee squirms nervously atop his perch on the trunk at the back of the boat.

“Well now,”—old Henry spaces his words between oar strokes. “Well now, Leland”—in a detached, remote, inviolable voice—“I’m sorry you think you need”—cords snapping in his neck as he leans backward with the pull—“need a back East schooling . . . but that’s the long and short of it, I reckon . . . this ain’t no easy row to hoe out here . . . specially if you ain’t allus feeling up to snuff . . . and some just ain’t equal to it. . . . But it’s okeedoke . . . I want you to do proud back there . . .”
A litany spoken over me, Lee thinks later, listened to only for the
rhythm, a chant in a primitive dialect, an incantation perpetrating a spell; anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once. He thinks one time, years later.
“. . . yes, do yourself and
all
of us proud . . .” (Now it’s done, Hank thought. Then. Taking them across to the train. Now it’s finished, and I won’t ever see no more of her again.) “. . . an’, well, when you get stronger . . .” (I was right about not seeing her no more . . .)
A litany, chanted over me
. . . (
I
was right about
that
much—) They row through the glittering water. And reflections swirling gently among the flower petals. Jonas rows alongside, muffled from the neck down in green fog:
You have to know
. Lee meets himself coming back across twelve years after with twelve years of decay penciled on his pale face, and translucent hands cupping a vial of poison for Brother Hank. . . .
or, more aptly, like a spell
. . . . (But I was wrong about it being finished. Dead wrong.)
You have to know there is no profit and all our labor avoideth naught
. Jonas pulls, straining at the fog. Joe Ben goes into a state park with a brush knife and an angel’s face, seeking freedom. Hank crawls through a tunnel of blackberry vines, seeking thorny imprisonment. The arm twists and slowly untwists. The logger sitting in the mud calls curses across the water. “I’m hollowed out with loneliness,” the woman cries. The water moves. The boat moves with measured heaves. Rain begins to fall suddenly; the wink of a million white eyes on the water. Hank looks up, intending to offer the woman his hat to protect her, but she has drawn a quilt over her dark hair against the rain. The red and yellow and blue patchwork shape heaves softly up and down, tossed by waves the boat does not feel. Hank shrugs and closes his mouth. He spreads out the tarp and turns to look down river again, but his eyes connect with the boy’s, locking there finally.

For long seconds the two stare at each other.

Hank is the first to break the painful current of the stare. Dropping his eyes, he grins warmly and attempts to pass off the tension by reaching out to playfully squeeze the boy’s knee-bone. “What ya say, bub? You going to like New York for a home? All them . . .
museums
and galleries and that sort of thing? All them cute little college mice after you, you being such a big stud logger from the north woods?”

“Mmm, wait, I—”

Henry laughs. “That’s right, Leland”—pulling steadily—“that’s how I got your mama . . . them Eastern girls just go all to pieces . . . at the sight of one of us big good-lookin’ lumberjacks . . . just you ask her if that ain’t so.”

“Mm. Oh, I—” (
Just you ask her. Just you ask her . . .
)

The boy’s head goes back, mouth opening.

“What’s the trouble, son?”

“Oh . . . I . . . Mmm—” (
The taunt was wordlessly repeated to every ear but the old man’s: “Just you ask her”—an echoing litany that became a spell.
)

“I ask ya, what’s the trouble?” Henry stops rowing. “You feeling sick again? The sinus trouble?”

The boy’s hand clutches his lips, to try to control his voice, mangling the words with his fingers. He shakes his head, making a humming sound through his fingers.

“No? Maybe—maybe, then, it’s the boat rockin’. You get hold of something to make you sick this morning?”

He doesn’t see the tears until the boy’s face comes forward again. The boy appears not to have heard the old man. Henry shakes his head. “Must of been somethin’ godawful rich to make you so sick.”

The boy isn’t looking at Henry. He is glaring at his brother. He thinks the words have come from Hank. “You . . . just . . . wait,” he says, squeezing out the threat. “Mmm. Mm boy, Hank, someday you’ll get it for what you—”

“Me?
Me?
” Hank erupts, twisting in his seat. “You’re lucky I don’t bust your scrawny little
neck!
Because let me tell you, bub—”

“You just wait till—”

“—if you wasn’t a kid and I found out what you’d been—”

“—till I’m a big guy!”

“—found about what a
low
down, crummy—in fact, I might even of gone back like she—”

“—just wait till I’m big enough to—”

“—but you’d just pull the same crummy—”

“
What!
” Old Henry silences the outburst. “In God’s
creation!
Are you two
talking
about!”

The brothers look at the bottom of the boat. The hump of colored quilt is very still. Finally Hank laughs. “Ah, some little business me an’ the kid had. No big deal, right, bub?”

Silence forces the boy to nod weakly. Old Henry takes up the oars again, apparently satisfied, and rows on; Hank mumbles that them prone to gettin’ seasick ought to know better’n eat rich foods before getting into a boat. The boy controls his tears. He clamps his jaw and turns pompously to look off into the water, after whispering, “You, . . .” one more time, indicating with crossed arms that he has said all he intends to say on the subject. “Yeah . . . just . . . you . . .
wait
.”

And remains so silent all the rest of the boat ride and car trip on in to the Wakonda station—even while Hank is offering comical good-bys and good wishes to him and his mother at the train—remains so silent, so dramatically grim and brooding and vengeful, that it would seem he, not his older brother, were the one waiting.

And whether Lee consciously thought about it or not, he waited twelve years—before a postcard arrived from Joe Ben Stamper in Wakonda, Oregon, saying that old Henry was out of commission with a bad arm and leg and plenty old anyhow and the logging operation was in a kind of tight and they needed another man up in the woods to help them meet a contract deadline—another Stamper, natch, to keep them clear of the union—so since you’re the only footloose relative left not already working for us, what you say, Lee? If you think you’re equal to it, we could sure use another jack . . .

And penciled at the bottom, in a thicker, stronger hand:
You should be a big enough guy now, bub.

 

Yet, all up and down the West Coast, there are little towns much like Wakonda. Up as far as Victoria and down as far as Eureka. Towns dependent on what they are able to wrest from the sea in front of them and from the mountains behind, trapped between both. Towns all hamstrung by geographic economies, by rubber-stamp mayors and chambers of commerce, by quagmire time . . . canneries all peeling dollar-a-quart Army surplus paint, mills all sprouting moss between curling shingles . . . all so nearly alike that they might be nested one inside the other like hollow toys. Wiring all corroding, machinery all decaying. People all forever complaining about tough times and trouble, about bad work and worse pay, about cold winds blowing and colder winters coming . . .

There will be a small scatter of boxlike dwellings somewhere near a mill, usually on a river, and a cannery on the docks, needing a new floor. The main street is a stripe of wet asphalt smeared with barroom neon. If there is a stoplight, it is more a status symbol than a safety precaution . . .
Traffic Commissioner at the City Council
: “Those boys up there’t Nahalem got
two
stoplights! I can’t see no reason we don’t even have one. The trouble with this town, by Gawd, is not enough Civic Pride.”