Sometimes a Great Notion (93 page)

He’d been concerned with fear and fools ever since Draeger had told him with a wink the day before that Hank Stamper had just called to say that the shooting match was done. “The ‘shooting match,’ Mr. Draeger?” “ ‘The whole by god shooting match,’ as Hank put it. He said that because of ‘developments,’ Teddy, he couldn’t see how he could possibly make his deadline. Developments . . .” Draeger grinned proudly at him. “I told you we’d show these muscle-heads, didn’t I?”

Teddy had responded with a blush and some mumbled agreement, pleased that Draeger had chosen to be so intimate with him, but, all taken into consideration, rather saddened by the news that the whole by god shooting match was ended; the trouble with the Stampers may have hurt the rest of the town, but it had certainly kept his own till ringing. He would miss that sound. . . . “What’ll you do now, Mr. Draeger?” And miss even more this forceful and wise and handsome relief from all the fools that patronized his place. “Go back to California, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid so.” Draeger’s cultured voice had been a delightful interlude—intelligent, calm, kind but not pitying like the others. “Yes, Ted, I’m off to Eugene now to tie up some things, then I’m coming back to share Thanksgiving with the Even-writes, but after that . . . it’s back to sunny southland.”

“All your . . . all the trouble up here is cleared up?”

Draeger grinned across the bar, laying down a five for his I. W. Harpers. “Wouldn’t you say so, Teddy? Keep the change—but, all kidding aside, wouldn’t you say it was cleared up?”

Teddy nodded resignedly; he’d always known Draeger would show the muscleheads. . . . “I guess so. Yes. Yes, I’m sure it is, Mr. Draeger . . . the whole by god shootin’ match, all cleared up.”

Now, only a day later, Teddy wasn’t so sure. The let-up in business that he’d expected to accompany the town’s good fortune had yet to begin; it should have started, by his reckoning, as soon as the flush of victory had been drunk away last night. But, if anything, business had
picked
up instead of let up. When he consulted the neat set of records he kept in his head, and checked under “Quarts Consumed per Customer,” he found that individual consumption was up close to twenty per cent over last week, and, while he couldn’t be sure of “Customers per Cubic Foot per Hour” until the peak time tonight, all indications pointed to a top-notch crowd. At the rate men were dropping in already, it looked like the Snag would be filled tonight.

But, unlike Ray, Teddy knew his customers too well to ever believe that sweet joy could fill a bar. Or victory either. Teddy knew that it took something much stronger than those two watery reasons to fill a bar. Especially with the weather so nice. If it were still raining, he mused, looking at his neons dead and powerless under the bright sunshine, I might understand. If it were raining and dark and cold, then I might know what was forcing them here, but with weather like this—

“Teddy, Teddy, Teddy . . .” At one of the tables near the window, Boney Stokes squinted against the sun. “Shouldn’t we have us a shade or blinds or something to pull over that terrible glare?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stokes.”

“A curtain or
some-
thing?” His meatless old hand pawed at the light. “To protect tired old eyes?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stokes; I sent the blinds off to Eugene for cleaning when the rains started. I just never in a hundred years thought we’d get any more sun, I sure didn’t. But let me see . . .” He turned to the laundry box behind the bar; in the mirror Boney’s reflection blinked hollowly after him. Stupid old eyes, always looking for something to whine about . . . “Perhaps I might be able to pin up some cloth and help?”

“Okay, you do that.” Then Boney craned his neck, squinting at the street. “No. Wait. Best not, I reckon. No. I want to be sure and see him when he drives out to the cemetery. . . .”

“Who’s that, Mr. Stokes?”

“Never mind. I just . . . don’t feel like attendin’ the funeral—my lungs and so on—and I want to watch them drive by to the buryin’ ground. I’ll just sit here. I can endure the glare; I reckon I’ll just have to. . . .”

“Very well.”

Teddy returned the dishtowel to its box, glancing again at the reflection of the skinny man. Repulsive old specter. Stupid old eyes, cold as marble; and vicious, too, in a stupid way. Boney Stokes’s eyes never have seen anything but rain and dreariness, so it’s no mystery
him
being in here on such a pretty day; he’s seen nothing but fear all the days of his stupid life. But these others, all these others . . . “Teddy! Get your pink little rear in gear, by gory; there’s drinkin’ to be done!” He rippled soundlessly down the bar with his pink little rear switching in tight black trousers, toward the draft taps where a crowd of sweat-shirted shamblers had gathered again already with empty glasses. “Yes sir, what’ll it be, sir?” But what about all these others? No fear seemed to cloud their fool’s firmament, or no more than usual anyway. . . . What drove
these
men in, like cattle to the barn in a thunderstorm, on this crystal-clear day? Could it be that his cherished equations and formulas of man, based on years of correctly relating alcohol intake to fear output, were finally being proved imperfect? For what awful fear could possibly lurk beneath all this noisy joy and victory? How could a storm strong enough to drive such a large herd into his long, barnlike bar be thundering behind all this blue sky and sunshine?

Evenwrite, panting at the bathroom mirror, finds himself wondering along about the same lines as Teddy, only with less eloquence: Why ain’t I happy with how things worked out?—as he arranges the oversized knot on his tie to try to conceal the unbuttoned gap in his collar. “God! Damn! Dammit!” But
why
ain’t I pleased . . . ?—wrenching at the collar furiously.

He hated white shirts anyhow, never had liked ’em, wouldn’t even wear the things to big muckymuck meetings—frig ’em; they ain’t no better bird just because they can afford better feathers!—and he didn’t see why he couldn’t use the same argument on a dolled-up corpse. His wife saw differently. “Maybe poor Joe Stamper
won’t
kick about your blue Catalina Casual with the stripes, but
I
wouldn’t go to a funeral dressed like that
dead!
”

He’d argued, but he saw her point, and he’d been forced to dig down through the drawers after the shirt he’d been married in, only to find that the goddam
collar
had shrunk a good goddam two inches.

“Jesus, Mama,” he called out to his wife, leaning from the bathroom door, “what’d you wash this shirt in to shrink it so bad?”

“Your
white
shirt?” his wife called back. “Hasn’t been
near
water since our first wedding anniversary, buster. When you got drunk and decided that if a man was high enough he didn’t need
no such stuff
and tossed it in the punch.”

“Yeah, well, if that’s so . . .” he trailed off weakly, jerking the tie unknotted to start over. Then why ain’t I happy with how things worked out?

Simone, on the other hand, lighter by the fifteen pounds she had always promised herself that she would lose (the weeks of virtue had rendered her poor enough to keep that promise), looks back over her shoulder at the reflection of her nude ass in the cracked full-length mirror in her closet door, and wonders if she didn’t look better sinfully plump than morally trim. Well, it’s hard to say, nude; perhaps new clothes—her old wardrobe hung on her like dreadful old sacks!—perhaps if she could afford one of these smart new
short
things and a—

She stopped. She walked to the dresser and felt again in the empty Marlboro box, avoiding looking at the dresser mirror, trying to forget her wardrobe; this kind of thinking, it could do nothing but make her sad all over again for the appearance she made in those hateful rags. Why torture yourself drooling after thousand-franc cakes when six hundred francs was all you had? But she liked pretty things. And she detested her clothed look, so much so that she frequently spent her hours in her room naked to keep from seeing her baggy image in the mirror. And now, now, it seems—she turned to confront the reflection full front, head tipped and one hip thrown forward—that even
this body
—unless that crack distorted more than she thought—is becoming no longer a
pretty thing to see!
It’s all wrong. The . . . the
bones
push out. The
flesh
, it is become too
small. . . . I need money . . .

Simone was thankful that the Holy Mother was closed in the closet so that the evil desires did not cause Her sorrow; the poor Virgin, how such desires must pain Her! But one
cannot
help wishing sometimes, damn it, that one could afford
some
thing decent, just
one pretty thing
to fit right . . . it didn’t seem fair for one to have to endure the double humility of having both clothes too large and flesh too small.

The sun shines. The wood steams. The sapsuckers rap happily on the softened scrub-oak trunks. Men straighten up and women fill their washing machines in these little coast towns. But in Wakonda there is some dissent against this mood (and outside of Wakonda, up river, in the Stamper barn . . .) and some gloom in all the sunshine. Even Biggy Newton, who had leaped about the water in the drainage ditch like an overjoyed whale when his boss had strolled by the job to let him know that old Hank Stamper had finally throwed in the towel . . . even this swollen boy, pledged to the last ounce of his stunted intelligence as Hank Stamper’s arch enemy, found himself feeling less and less overjoyed. As he got drunker and drunker in the Snag.

Big had not always been big; at thirteen he had been Ben, Benjamin Newton, an average lad of normal size and sense. Then fourteen had pushed him up over six feet, and fifteen had carried him on up to six-six and left him with less sense than he’d had at twelve. By this time he had acquired a number of managers, and they could lay claim to at least part of the credit for Biggy’s first-rate progress. Older men, these managers—uncles, cousins, and job friends of his father’s—had devoted a lot of time to the big boy’s training. A lot of time to training and a
precious
lot to conditioning. And by the time he’d reached his full growth, he was so well conditioned that he was as sure as they were that he was the bully of the woods, the thickheaded heavy who’d bust up any block who got in his road. And after busting up enough of these blocks he’d become good enough at his role that his road began to be avoided. Now, barely voting age, he faced the bleakish future of the bully with no blocks left who’d get in his road and nothing to bust up. He hulked over his dark beer in the Snag, brooding about the years ahead, and wondering why all them managers who’d started slapping his back and buying him drafts when he was fifteen hadn’t prepared him for this inevitable blockless day.

“Hot diggity
dawg!
” Les Gibbons, one of the crowd at Biggy’s table, lurched up out of his chair, overcome with emotion and Seven Crown. “I do feel fine. I feel just
real
fine, to be siffically honest. . . .” He tossed down the last of his drink, then wagged his head about in search of some way to demonstrate just how fine he really felt. He decided throwing his glass at something was the only way to give them some idea. He aimed for the eagle in the big Anheuser-Busch clock above Teddy’s mounted Chinook salmon and hit the fish square in the eye, spraying glass and old fish scales over a booth full of tourists in deer-hunting garb. They started to protest, but Les stopped their objections with a steely-eyed stare. “Yessir!” he crowed. “I feel
fine!
And like a pur-ty tough bird, too.”

Big could hardly stir himself enough to raise his head for a look at this bird; and after he looked he didn’t even bother speaking. Boy, if this Gibbons was the toughest block a crowd this size could offer to bust, then his future was bleakish for
god
dam sure. Dammit anyhow. . . . What does a guy
do . . .
when his purpose in life peters out? when he ain’t fit for marryin’ or bein’ friends or for nothin’ but bustin’ up one certain somebody? And that certain somebody’s just finked out? Big ground his teeth: Stamper, dammit anyhow, how could you be such a bad ass, so downright
thoughtless
as to cop before them managers got me a replacement trained?

(. . . Up river, in the barn, Hank hears Viv’s call stretch out to him from the house. She is ready to leave. He stands up and releases the old redbone hound whose ear he has been doctoring. The dog shakes himself with a great dusty flapping of ears and lopes eagerly out of the dim barn into the sunshine. Hank returns the swab-stopper to the bottle of creosote and sets it up on the shelf with the rest of the various animal medicines. He brushes his hands on his slacks, picks up his jacket, and starts for the back door that leads out of the barn, down to the dock. Outside, the sun strikes his barn-accustomed eyes and momentarily blinds him. He pauses, blinking, while he puts on his sports jacket, thinking
Dang . . . wouldn’t old Joby be pleased to see what a fair day we got for his funeral?
)

“Yes, merciful.” Brother Walker picked up the conversation again. “Merciful, just, and
fair . . .
is what the Lord is. That is why I cannot be too stricken by Brother Joe Ben’s death. Grieved, if you know what I mean, Mr. Loop, but not
stricken.
For I feel that the Lord needed the use of Joe to make Hank Stamper see the Light, so to speak. That is why, like I was telling the little woman this morning, ‘I cannot be too stricken by poor Brother Joe Ben’s death, much as we all will miss him . . . for he was an
in
strument, an
in
strument.’ ”

“A real squareshooter,” the Real Estate Hotwire felt moved to add. “Right down the middle. Myself, I was never actually very closely acquainted with ol’ Joe, but what I seen always struck me that he was a
real squareshooter!
”

“Yes, yes, an instrument.”

“A real right-down-the-center guy.”