Sometimes a Great Notion (4 page)

The man on the bank turns slowly. “Answer . . . ?”

“Answer! Answer! What he told us when we ast him to reconsider, so to speak. Bring here them glasses and let Mr. Draeger have a look.”

The binoculars are drawn from the belly pouch of a rain-gray sweat shirt. They are cold in Draeger’s hands, even through the heavy elkhide. The men crowd forth. “There.” Evenwrite points triumphantly. “There’s Hank Stamper’s answer!”

He follows the point and notices something through the fog there, the swing of some object hanging like fish bait from a big stick in front of that ancient and ridiculous house across the river there. . . . “But what does this—” He lifts the glasses and leans into the eyepieces, forefinger twiddling the focus knob. Hears the men waiting. “I still don’t—” The object blurs, fuzzes over, blurs, twisting, then clicks solid into focus so close he momentarily experiences the reeking stench of it high in his burning throat—“It looks like a man’s arm, but I still don’t—” then feels that growing foreboding blossom full. “I’ll—what?” Hears the rising of wet laughter from around his car. Curses and thrusts the glasses back at a face unrecognizable in mirth. Rolls up his window but he can still hear it. Leans over the wheel toward the beating wipers—“I’ll talk to that girl, his wife—Viv?—in town and find—” and spins out the ruts onto the highway, away from the laughing.

He clamps his jaw and follows the lip of that grinning river. Confused and furious; he has never been laughed at before, not by such a pack of fools—not by
anyone!
Confused, and bleakly, crazily furious, and haunted by the suspicion that he is not only being laughed at by that pack of fools back there on the riverbank—as if their fools’ response concerned him one dime’s worth!—but that there is
also
some other fool laughing at him unseen from the upstairs window of that damned house. . . .

“What could have
happened?
”

Where whoever had hanged the arm from its pole had made certain that it was as much a gesture of grim and humorous defiance as the old house; where whoever had taken the trouble to swing the arm out into sight of the road had also taken trouble to tie down all the fingers but the middle finger, leaving that rigid and universal sentiment lifted with unmistakable scorn to all that came past.

And somehow lifted especially, Draeger could not help feeling, to him. “To
me!
Disparaging me personally for . . . being so mistaken. For . . .” Lifted as a deliberate refutation of all he believed to be true,
knew
to be true about Man; as a blasphemous affrontery to a faith forged over an anvil of thirty years, a precise and predictable faith hammered out of a quarter-century of experience dealing with labor and management—a religion almost, a neatly noted-down, red-ribboned package of truths about men, and Man.
Proven!
that the fool Man will oppose everything except a Hand Extended; that he will stand up in the face of every hazard except Lonely Time; that for the sake of his poorest and shakiest and screwiest principles he will lay down his life, endure pain, ridicule, and even, sometimes, that most demeaning of American hardships, discomfort, but will relinquish his
firmest stand
for Love. Draeger had seen this proven. He had watched oak-hard mill bosses come to ridiculous terms rather than have their pimply daughters pilloried at the local junior high, seen die-hard right-wing labor-hating owners grant another two bits an hour and hospital benefits rather than risk losing the dubious affection of a senile aunt who happened to play canasta with the wife of the brother of a striking employee that the owner didn’t even know by sight or name. Love—and all its complicated ramifications, Draeger believed—actually does conquer all; Love—or the Fear of Not Having It, or the Worry about Not Having Enough of It, or the Terror of Losing It—certainly does conquer all. To Draeger this knowledge was a weapon; he had learned it young and for a quarter-century of mild-mannered wheeling and easy-going dealing he had used that weapon with enormous success, conquering a world rendered simple, precise, and predictable by his iron-hammered faith in that weapon’s power. And now some illiterate logger with a little gyppo show and not an ally in the world was trying to claim that
he
was invulnerable to that weapon! Christ, this blasted fever . . .

Draeger hunches over the wheel, a man who enjoys thinking of himself as mild-mannered and under control, and watches the speed mount on the speedometer in spite of all he can do to restrain it. The big car has taken command. It has speeded up beneath him of its own accord. It rushes toward the town with an anxious, sucking hiss of wet tires. The white lines flicker by. The willows fluttering beyond the windows vibrate toward motionlessness, like spokes standing still on a careening Holly-wood wagon wheel. He runs his gloved fingers nervously over his stiff gray crew-cut, sighing, giving in to his foreboding: if what Evenwrite says is true—and why would he lie?—it means weeks more of the same enforced patience that has left him exhausted and sleepless two nights out of three for the last month. More forced smiling, more forced talking. More feigned listening. And more Desenex for a case of athlete’s foot capable of making medical history. He sighs again, resigning himself, oh what the devil, anybody is liable to call it wrong once in a while. But the car does not slow, and far down in his precise and predictable heart, where the foreboding first sprouted and where the resignation lies now like a brooding moss, another bloom is budding.

“But if I
didn’t
call a wrong shot . . . if I
didn’t
make a miscalculation . . .”

A different bloom. Petaled with wonder.

“Then there may be more to this particular fool than I imagined.”

And perhaps, therefore, more to all fools.

He stops the car, skidding the whitewalls against the curb in front of the Sea Breeze Cafe. Through the rushing windshield he can see the whole length of Main Street. Deserted? Just rain and tomcats. He flips up his collar and steps out without taking time to put on his overcoat, hurries across to the neon-filled front of the Snag. Inside, the bar also looks deserted; the juke-box is lighted, playing softly,
but there is no one in sight. Odd . . . Has the whole town driven out to stand about in the mud to be laughed at? That seems terribly
—Then sees the fat and pallid stereotype of a bartender standing near the window, watching him from beneath long curling lashes.

“Really coming down out there, isn’t it, Teddy?” There’s more to
this than
—

“I suppose so, Mr. Draeger.”

“Teddy?”
Look: even this little effeminate frog of a bartender—even he knows more than I do
. “Floyd Evenwrite told me I could find Hank Stamper’s wife here.”

“Yes sir,” Draeger hears the little man tell him. “Way at the back, Mr. Draeger. In the depot section.”

“Thank you. Oh say, Teddy; why do you think that—”
That . . . what?
He stands a moment, unaware that he is staring until the bartender blushes beneath the blank gaze and drops his long lashes down over his eyes. “Never mind.” Draeger turns and walks away:
I can’t ask him. I mean he couldn’t tell me—even if he knew, wouldn’t tell me
. . . past the juke as it clicks, whirs, introduces another tune:

 

Down the long bar past the gently throbbing glow of the jukebox, the shuffleboard, through the partitioned gloom of empty booths, finally finding the girl at the very back. By herself. With a beer glass. The upturned collar of a heavy pea jacket frames her slim, moist face. The moisture—he can’t tell—is it rain or tears or just
too damned hot in here
sweat? Her pale hands resting on a large maroon album . . . she watches him approach, the slightest smile turning her lips.
And so does she
, Draeger realizes, greeting her;
more than I do. Odd . . . that I could have thought I understood so much
.

“Mr. Draeger . . .” The girl indicates a chair. “You look like a man after information.”

“I want to know what happened,” he says, sitting. “And why.”

She looks down at her hands, shaking her head. “More information than I can give, too, I’m afraid.” She raises her head and smiles at him again. “Honest; I’m afraid I really can’t explain ‘and why’ ”—her smile wry but not all derisive as the grins of those other fools had been, wry, but sincerely sorry and somehow quite sweet. Draeger is surprised by the anger generated in him by her reply—
this damned flu!
—surprised by the rapid beating of his heart and the uncontrolled rising of his voice.

“Doesn’t that imbecile husband of yours
realize?
I mean the
danger
of making such a run down the river without help?”

The girl continues smiling at him. “You mean doesn’t Hank realize what the town will
think
of him if he goes through with it . . . isn’t that what you started to say, Mr. Draeger?”

“All right. Yes. Yes, that’s right. Isn’t he
aware
that he is risking complete—
total
—alienation?”

“He’s risking more than that. He may lose his little wife if he goes through with it. For one thing. And he may lose his life, for another.”

“Then
what?
”

The girl studies Draeger a moment, then takes a sip of her beer. “You could never understand it all. You just want a reason, two or three reasons. When there are reasons going back two or three hundred years . . .”

“Rubbish. All I want to know is what changed his mind.”

“You would have to know what made it up in the first place, wouldn’t you?”

“Made what?”

“His mind, Mr. Draeger.”

“All
right
. I mean all right. I have plenty of time.”

The girl takes another sip of beer. She closes her eyes and wipes a lock of wet hair back from her forehead. Draeger suddenly realizes that she is completely exhausted—dazed, almost. He waits for her to open her eyes again. The smell of disinfectant floats from a nearby toilet. The jukebox beats against the smoke-varnished knotty pine walls:

 

The girl opens her eyes and pulls up a sleeve to look at her watch. Then folds her hands on the maroon album again. “I guess, Mr. Draeger, things used to be different around this area.”
Rubbish; the world is always the same.
“No. Don’t scowl, Mr. Draeger. Really. I didn’t quite believe it myself . . .”
She knows what I’m thinking!
“. . . but I gradually came around. Here. Let me show you something.” She opens the book; the smell reminds her of the attic. (Oh, the attic. He kissed me good-by and my sore lip . . .) “This is the family history, sort of. I’ve finally got around to reading up on it.” (I’ve got around to admitting . . . my lips blister, every winter.)

She pushes the book across the table toward Draeger; it is a large photograph album, awkward with old prints. Draeger opens it slowly, hesitant since his experience with those binoculars. “There isn’t anything written here. Just dates and pictures . . .”

“Use your imagination, Mr. Draeger; that’s what I’ve been doing. Come on, it’s fun. Look.”

The girl turns the book facing him, lightly touching the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue. (Every winter, since I been in this country . . .) Draeger leans close to the dimly lit album.
Rubbish; she doesn’t know any more than
. . . The juke bubbles as he turns a couple of pages of faces:

 

The rain hums against the roof overhead. Draeger pushes the book away, then pulls it back.
Rubbish; she doesn’t
—He tries to situate himself more comfortably in the wooden chair, hoping to overcome the unruly feeling of disorientation that has been building ever since he twisted that focus knob. “Nonsense.”
But that’s the trouble, that is the trouble
. . . “This is senseless.” He pushes the book away again.
It is nonsense
.

“Not at all, Mr. Draeger. Look.” (Every danged winter . . .) “Let me leaf through a bit of the Stamper family past . . .”
Giddy bitch, the past has nothing to do
—“For instance, here, 1909, let me read you”—
with the ways of men today
. “ ‘During the summer the red tide came in and turned the clams bad; killed a dozen injuns and three of us Christians.’ Fancy that, Mr. Draeger.”
The days are the same, though, damn it
(days that you feel like pages of soft wet sandpaper in your fingers, the silent pliant teeth of time eating away);
the summers are the same
. “Or . . . let’s see . . . here: the winter of 1914 when the river froze solid.”
The winters are the same too
. (Every winter there is mildew, see it licking its sleepy gray tongue along the baseboards?)
Or not essentially any different
(every winter mildew, and skin rash, and fever blisters on your lip). “And you must go through one of these winters to have some notion. Are you listening, Mr. Draeger?”

Draeger starts. “Certainly.” The girl smiles. “Certainly, go on. It’s just . . . that jukebox.” Burbling:
“Ah cast a lonesome shadow/An’ Ah play a lonesome game
. . .
”
Not really loud but—“But, yes; I am listening.”

“And using your imagination?”

“Yes, yes! Now what”
difference should these bygone years make?
(every winter a new tube of Blistex) “were you saying?”
“Though you’re gone, Ah still dance on . . .”
The girl assumes the air of one in a trance, closing her eyes. “As I see it, Mr. Draeger, the ‘whys’ go a long way back . . .”
Nonsense! Rubbish!
(Yet every winter, feel the hole already forming? Lower lip?) “As I recall, Hank’s granddad—Henry’s father—now let me think . . .”
But. Perhaps
. (Relentlessly.)
“Shadows lonesome.”
“Of course there are—”
Nevertheless
. (Still.) “On the other—” Stop . . . stop.