Sometimes a Great Notion (99 page)

The band had stopped. Big had pushed back from the table and was rising in front of Les like a mountain. Les appeared to sink deeper into his mud.

“I
said
, let’s get up, Gibbons! Get the fuck
up!
”

And the room, suddenly so quiet the deep drumming of the oil burning in the heater could be heard, felt that strange trembling fully. Waiting. Teddy swiveled softly from the laundry bag where he had just placed his dishtowel, moving carefully to keep from disturbing his specimens. Before him, the long room seemed stretched even longer by the silence, taut as a wire. But not the clenched anticipation that usually precedes a fight. Again, something different . . . what is it, this fear?

Across the turned heads Teddy saw Les Gibbons, the shabby form shrunk beneath the towering, outlandish bulk of Big Newton—a scene made even more ridiculous, even more comical, by Newton’s monumental rage;
look
how furious he is with that pathetic Les! Big’s face was blazing; his neck was corded with the bind of his shoulders; his chin quivered so that Teddy could easily see it, far away as he was. So much
fury
at such pathetic insignificance? It’s a wonder someone doesn’t break up laughing. Except—Teddy put down his polishing rag—
except it isn’t rage. No!
Down the beautifully grained bartop, polished to an expensive luster by his years of face-watching, Teddy saw for one instant a common face—
Not rage or caution either
—a face he had never seen before in all his polishing years. As a collector of expressions, he thought he had seen and studied them all; it was his hobby, his
business.
For years of endless, outcast nights he had watched an endless sea of idiots tossed wave on wave across the beach of his bar . . . watched, and skillfully gauged every wink and grin, and carefully analyzed every fat drop of anxious sweat, every scared tremble of hand and frightened swallowing. My, yes, if anything, he knew expressions . . .
but never this face, never before this expression of . . . of—

Then Rod slaps his guitar—
“An-ee-time . . .”
—shooting Ray a look to wake him up; “. . .
you’re thinkin’ of me . . .”
Ray joins in halfheartedly:
“An-ee-time . . . you’re feelin’ blue . . .”
And the taut wire of silence snaps, the tableau thaws. Big Newton thunders off to pee, his face once more bleak and surly. Les Gibbons laughs a blubbering laugh that sounds as though it had come up through purple clay. Mrs. Carleson’s daughter begins rattling glasses in the sink. Evenwrite wanders out, looking either dazed or drunk. Jenny tugs on a drunk arm lackadaisically, her usual tenacity missing. Howie Evans contorts his unlovely back to relieve old kinks, looking for a woman. The Sitkins boys begin wordlessly razzing Les about his near-annihilation. Evenwrite starts his car and drives slowly east up Main with nine beers heavy and joyless in his belly. Old Henry shades his eyes against the May Day sun that shines through the broken green dome across a flowered meadow of months. January, nineteen-twenty-one, as I recollect, after the storm they still call the High Blow, Ben is farting around for one reason or the other down south of Florence near the mouth of the Siltcoos and he sees four whales left by the tides with the bar too low for them to swim back out to sea. And he—wait till I get that photograph—he gets a rowboat and rows out there and kills all four of them with an ax, so help me god! June bugs, hot and humming,
hummmmming.
No. January? Oh yeah, Ben? Well, nobody’d believe he wasn’t telling a whopper till me and John borrowed a camera from Stokes and—what in thunder did I
do
with that picture, anyhow? Around here someplace . . . I saw last . . . let’s see . . . Nov. 17: Doctor out again to see the old lady. Says she looks mainly tired is all. Says dog is good as he’ll get after salmon sickness, gimpy in the hindquarters but will be fine, will be able to trail just as good as—

Nov. 19: Dog died. Old Red? Brownie? No, Old Gray . . . from eating salmon, spine bowed the wrong direction and died.

Nov. 24: Thanksgiving—a different year?—old lady died. John and me build coffin out of Idaho pine. Doctor says he don’t know why. Stokes says cannot endure. Hell with that. I say she just
Hank? Hank boy, oh Hank don’t you know
that the old lady just
Hank boy you can’t
laid down and died boy? Hank boy if you
the sun leaps springs back
can’t keep
sun crashing on ground shadowed a thousand thousand
“Hank, goddammit, straighten up there!”

“Mr. Stamper! Lie back down! Doctor . . . Doctor, a hand, please!”

“And never by god give a boogin’!” A pretty good world you keep the shadows off.
Salmonberries: pale, translucent orange with a taste more delicate than the color.
“Listen to me now, Hank, son, I’m talkin’ to ya!”
Butterflies busy as stars.
“Mr. Stamper . . . calm and easy now . . .”
The Walking Preacher, remember?
talkin’ over Mama when she died, tell that he one time baptized a fella in sour mash; a real loud, shoutin’ preacher sonofabitch you could hear carryin’ on a good two miles, always hungry, always digging at his big nose, always talking about Christian Charity . . . oh,
those winters!
“Stokes, blast you, bringing out them cast-offs!”
Missionary barrels, packed by churches back East
always a big hullabaloo when the barrel came in on the boat, always the buttons cut off all the donated clothes, always teeth outen the combs . . . “Stokes by god I’ll wear leaves an’ comb my hair with fishbones afore I’ll!”
The sun crashes into green shadows unlighted
. . . “Before I’ll give a goddam inch to your goddam!”
. . . springs back, cracking through the dome.
“Calm and peaceful, Mr. Stamper, there we go, now, there we go it’ll just be a moment . . .”
Crashing once more out of blue behind the gathering rush . . .
“. . . hush, hush, hush.”

“He’s asleep. Thanks for the help.” The milky light flutters. The nurse draws deep, cotton-soft gray curtains down over the first of May. Andy drops Hank and Viv off at the house and drives the jeep on up to the mill to row his skiff back across in the rain. Big Newton tries to compose himself on the can by scratching letters from the WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK sign decaled on the toilet door, changing the first line to WAS YOU HAD and adding a question mark after WORK. Ray finally wakes up enough from the shock the silence has given him to step up the beat and the volume. Jenny, growing suddenly weary of this game of maneuvering drunks, thumps out the door, having thought of
another
game. Just as Simone, resigned and irreligious in lascivious scarlet, whisks in the same door and surrenders the sweet-cake naïveté in her heart forever.

“Hey-
hey
, look who just flew in. How do, Simone; long time no see.”

“Boys . . .”

“An’ goodness me, all feathered out like she’s right off a
magazine
cover!”

“Thank you; I think it is nice. It is a gift. . . .”

“Howie. Say,
Howie
, Simone’s here; Simone’s back, Howie. . . .”

“Tut. Simone’s back,
everybody.
Who will buy me a beer, a
lot
of beer, please?”

“Teddy. A drink for zee little lady from Frawnce. . . . No, a drink for everybody!”

Teddy turns from the face for the glasses draining on the towel beside Mrs. Carleson’s daughter—
this expression. Now I know. Now I see—
his plump little body still tingling with the charge of that taut instant.
I thought this day, this sunshine, this
well-being was selling all this alcohol. I thought all my notions why people drink was all wrong when this lovely day . . . but now I see.
In the falling dark his neons begin to stir. His hands come alive. Glasses tink together, the till rings. . . .
It just took some time to see what was happening. I thought I had collected all the dark situations; I thought I knew them. I thought I knew all the expressions, I thought I had seen all the fears . . .
while the music and laughter glorious good times blaze under his smoky ceiling . . .
but never this face before; never absolute, unspeakable, supreme terror!

 

Thanksgiving morn finds the town suffering under a drizzling gray overcast and a driving black hangover, with a mouthful of yesterday’s cigarettes, and thankful for nothing but the knowledge that all such mornings pass. This morning Big Newton tries to purge himself of the day before with soda and vinegar. Howie Evans uses a spoonful of Sal Hepatica and a half-bottle of French toilet water, genuine from Paris, which he steals from Simone and takes to his wife as a peace offering. Jenny uses a page from Timothy. Les Gibbons tries cold water when, running down to the riverbank, he slips while shouting to Andy rowing past; Andy heaves on downstream, toward the mill, rowing obliviously past the man floundering and cursing in the reedy shallows, as though he is rowing in his sleep. Viv brushes at her teeth with salt. Ray sits muggle-headed on the edge of the bed and tries to wash away his darker feelings with the bright memory of his success last night and the glowing prospect of his future. Simone tries to wash away similar feelings, using the Blood of the Lamb. Evenwrite uses Vicks VapoRub and the words from an old song of his father’s.