Chapter 88

Peaceful. And simple. (And I ain’t thinking about the kid, not in hours I ain’t wondered where he is.)...And Joe Ben handled most of the screwjack work, rushing back and forth from jack to jack, a little twist here, a little shove there, and whup! she’s turnin’, tip-pin’, heading out downhill! Okay—get down there an’ set the jacks again, crank and uncrank right back an’ over again. Oh yeah, that’s the one’ll do it. Shooooom, all the way, an’ here comes another one, Andy old buddy, big as the ark... feeling a mounting of joyous power collecting in his back muscles, an exhilaration of faith rising with the crash of each log into the river. Whosoever believes in his heart shall cast mountains into the sea an’ Lord knows what other stuff ...then heading back up to the next log—running, leaping, a wingless bird feathered in leather and aluminum and mud, with a transistor radio bouncing and shrill beneath his throat: Leaning on Jee-zus, leaning on Jee-zus Safe an’ secure from all alarms . . . Until the three of them meshed, dovetailed . . . into one of the rare and beautiful units of effort sometimes seen when a jazz group is making it completely, swinging together completely, or when a home-town basketball squad, already playing over its head, begins to rally to overtake a superior opponent in a game’s last minute...and the home boys can’t miss; because everything—the passing, the dribbling, the plays—every tiny piece is clicking perfectly. When this happens everyone watching sometimes a great notion knows . . . that, be it five guys playing basketball, or four blowing jazz, or three cutting timber, that this bunch—right now, right this moment—is the best of its kind in the world! But to become this kind of perfect group a team must use all its components, and use them in the slots best suited, and use them all with the pitiless dedication to victory that drives them up to their absolute peak, and past it. Joe felt this meshing. And old Henry. And Hank, watching his team function, was aware only of the beauty of the team and of the free-wheeling thrill of being part of it. Not of the pitiless drive. Not of the three of them building toward a peak the way a machine running too fast too long accelerates without actually speeding up as it reaches a breaking point that it can’t be aware of, and goes on past that breaking point, accelerating past it and toward it at the same time and at the same immutable rate. As the trees fell and the radio filled in between their falling: Leaning on Jee-zus, leaning on Jee-zus, Leaning on the everlasting arms. The fogged glass door of the Sea Breeze Cafe and Grill swung open and a pimpled Adonis came in out of the rain and seated himself down the counter from me, openly contemplating the heist of one of the three-week-old Hersheys beside the cash register—could get him two months for petty theft, and more acne. “Mrs. Carleson ...I’m thinkin’ on drivin’ up river to Swedes-gap to see Lily and I’ll be goin’ past Montgomery’s house if you’d care to visit your mama”—one eye on the stale chocolate, the other on the staler waitress. “No, I guess not right now, Larkin; but I thank you for the offer.” “ ’S okay.” Snatch! “Well, I’ll see you later.” Our eyes met as he turned from the counter, and we each grinned sheepishly, sharing our mutual secret guilts. He hurried on to his car, where he hesitated outside the café for a few minutes, worrying about my discretion, wondering if he should come back in and pay for the snatched Hershey before I 570 ken kesey snitched. And the trees fall, in the forest, and the rain slices the sky . . . while I hesitated inside the café, worrying about my own discretion, wondering why I kidded myself about waiting for my long-lost father . . . In the forest, bent over a log, old Henry skillfully wedges a screwjack between stump and log that’s just exactly by god how I useta do it even if I maybe ain’t so spry as back in them days . . . and wondering also why I didn’t get up and go outside and ask the pimpled thief for a ride. Why not? He’s going to the Montgomery place, right past our house; he would have to oblige me, with all I have on him! Joe Ben runs downhill, leaping the ferns, right on the heels of a sliding log, setting his jack almost before it stops, because there ain’t no sense lettin’ up if you don’t doubt, because if you don’t doubt you are already in God’s fur-lined pocket . . . So I slid from the leatherette stool, dug a handful of change from my pocket to pay my bill, and hurried toward the door— determined to make the move before the heat of my decision cooled . . . And Hank rips his saw free from a huge moss-covered trunk just as it starts to tip, steps back to watch the top far above him lean, wave, faster, gasping and whistle, sucking gray rain after it just the way I like to see it, simple and straight and whomp! Who knows a better life? . . . thinking as I hurried out, Viv, here I come, ready or not! “What?” Viv says, but it’s just the dogs at the porch door wanting dinner. She puts down her broom, wiping back her hair. Lee flips up his collar as he steps into the rain. The pimpled boy panics at his approach and spins away with the car. Hank kills his saw to refuel it. Lights a new cigarette, starts the little quarterhorse motor again. Old Henry juggles at his snuff can, his hands cold and stiff. Joe jumps, trips, falls and takes a strip of hide off his chin with the grooved dial of his little radio, switching off the music. A moment’s hush runs like a fuse through the wet sky. They each pause and notice the pressing silence, then make ready to move again, forgetting it. Lee starts walking along the gravel, east. Viv feeding the hounds. Hank thumbing the chain oil button on the saw. Henry packing his charge of snuff, wheezing and spitting. Joe Ben turning his radio back on, convinced that the fall has by golly improved the reception ...to Burl Ives: sometimes a great notion When you walk the streets you will have no cares If you walk the lines and not the squares. Then, as though the fuse had burned away, the forest ended its brief hush. And a wind, heavy with rain, came up from the river through the fern and huckleberry like a deep-drawn breath; and “as you go through life make this your goal . . .” and Hank feels the air about him swell with that wind, gathering with it, just as he rocks the saw free from a limb he is bucking off the fallen fir, looking up, frowning to himself before he even hears it listen! the maddened snapping of bark someplace else moving, he turns back to the log in time to see a bright yellow-white row of teeth appear splintering over the mossy lips to gnash the saw from his hands fling it furiously to the ground it claws screaming machine frenzy and terror trying to dig escape from the vengeful wood just above where old Henry drops his screwjack Gaw when mud and pine needles spray over him like black damn! rain an’ even if I don’t see so clear as I used to there’s still time to get down the hill Joe Ben hears the metal scream behind a curtain of fern but if you never doubt in your mind where’s Hank spins away leaving his log and turn me on and aim me is all I want still peaceful, relaxed like sleep from eight to five without thinking or I’d said Nothing doing to see the log springing suddenly massive upright pivots on Henry’s ARM GOD my good one goddammit GOD GOD just leave the old nigger enough to whup it enough arm that he’d been using to fix his screwjack it waves limp then disappears a second beneath the row of teeth before the log springs on downhill massive upright like the bastard is trying to stand up again and find its stump! a swinging green fist slams Hank’s shoulder goes somersaulting past upright like the bastard is so mad getting chopped down it jumps up chews off the old man’s arm clubs me one now tearing off downhill after “Joe! Joby!” the last of us and Joe Ben’s hand parts the fern there’s this blunted white circle fanged jagged spreading toward him larger and larger down the mud-trough oop springs backward from the fern over the bank not really scared or startled or anything but light like 572 ken kesey the mud on my boots turned to wings . . . and hangs in the air over the bank for an instant...a jack-in-the-box, bobbling . . . sprung up from his box and dangling backward above the tangle of vines ...face sudden clown red the color of the old man’s arm now crushed flowing all the way to the boogerin’ bone . . . hangs, sprung up, for an instant, with that ugly little goblin face red and still merry grinning to me that it’s okay Hankus okay that you couldn’t of been thinkin’ that limb you cut off would of done this then falls cut loose slapping back to the muddy bank outa the way if it wasn’t “Look out!” for that screwjack “Look out!” don’t worry Hankus face still red like the old man’s GOD you booger, leave me somethin’ to fight with the ARM GOD my one good ARM Look out! just don’t worry Hankus just never doubt slaps against the muddy bank right in the path LOOK OUT JOBY slaps and rolls as the runaway log thunks the log he’d been working with his screwjack jolts sideways rearing above ROLL rolls still light-feeling confident almost safe half into the river almost but slamming down, the log, across both legs, and stopping. As you walk through life you will have no cares If you walk the lines and not the squares. . . . There was again the near, the more than silence: the radio; the hiss of the rain on the conifer leaves, the river sucking at its banks. ...Hank stood, reeling, the only movement in the fern, dizzy from the blow—waiting—that he’d received in his back. Everything was still now—waiting—crystallized and set in dead soundless calm, like a dream stone set in a dream ring. “When you go through life make this your goal.” (Except it wasn’t a dream, just crystallized calm. For I’m wide awake, so wide awake my brain has run off and left time behind. Time will start in a minute; time, will start, in a minute. . . .) The thought continued to echo softly. “Watch the doughnut, not the hole.” (In a minute, in a minute. I been asleep. I just woke but time ain’t started yet. In a minute that branch there’ll spring back and those mallards froze in the air’ll go on flying and the old man’s arm will bleed and I’ll holler my ass off. In a minute. If sometimes a great notion I can just break loose, then in a minute I’ll) “Joe!” (in a minute I’ll) “Joby! Hang on, I’m comin’!” He ran down the gouged rut of mud and leaped the bank of berry vine and saw Joe Ben sitting in water to his shoulders, looking as though he were holding the log on his lap. His narrow back was toward the rutted bank, and he smiled out across the river toward the mountains. He was resting his chin on the bark, in no apparent pain. “Man oh man, she really came barrelin’ after me, didn’t she?” He laughed softly, strangely calm. Like me, Hank thought; time hasn’t started for him yet. He don’t know yet he’s in trouble. . . . “You bad off, Joby?” “I don’t think too bad. She lit on my legs, but the mud under me there’s soft. I don’t feel like I broke anything. Didn’t even bust my radio.” He twisted the dial; Burl Ives still strummed out across the water: . . . in golden letters three foot high Is this phil-os-o-fee. There was—waiting together—an odd and honest moment before either of them spoke again. When you walk the streets you will have no cares If you walk the lines and not the squares. . . . Then...Hank moved suddenly. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me get up there after the saw.” “What about the old man? I heard him yell.” “It mashed hell outa one arm. He’s passed out. Let me get the saw.” “Go on and see to him, Hank. I’m not hurtin’. Don’t get in a stew about me; you know what I told you? I been promised to live till eighty and have twenty-five kids. See to the old man while you’re gettin’ that saw. And be careful.” “Be careful?” Listen to the crazy outfit. “Five kids he’s got and he tells me to be careful. You bet,” I told him and headed back up the slope. I was gasping so I almost conked out by the 574 ken kesey time I made it back up to Henry. “Whew; too frantic . . .” I told myself to ease off, that we was in a little tight but we’d make it. Ease off and be calm about it like Joe. I forced my lungs to breathe deep and slow and tried to make my hands stop trembling. “Whew lordy . . .” Cool, cool and slow. Just don’t sweat it. Go slow.... While his head rang and his heart rattled out a code he was still—waiting—trying to pass off as nonsense, as panicked nonsense. On a mound of pine needles and mud the old man lay like a broken gull. I knelt and looked at the crushed arm. Well ...it was in bad shape but not bleeding too hard. I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and put a tourniquet at the armpit and the blood stopped gushing so big. That would hold till I could get him up the hill to the pick-up. Be a job, toting him up. But then maybe Joby’s legs are all right and we can rig up a stretcher and we can both carry him as soon as I saw that log off. “That log.” In a minute I’ll go back down and saw through that—“but that log!” In a minute I’ll—“That log on Joe . . . in the water!” Hank’s head jerked up. That rattling was like a frantic telegraph. The message crystallized everything—the waiting over—before his eyes once more: That’s why I couldn’t ease off! I knew, back down there. I knew. Just like I knew before that log sprung in the air that there was trouble. Just like I knew clear back last night that I’ll—Oh, Christ, that log, the way it’s laid! With a cry he grabbed the chain saw and once again ran stumbling down the gouged trough, charging through the vines and springing fern down toward the bank, where Joe Ben lay trapped... Walking the roadside gravel from the restaurant east toward the old house, resolved to make my own way now that I was in motion, even if it meant walking the whole eight miles, I found myself enjoying a satisfying symbiosis with the rain: I was walking from the rain, along with it. This meager assistance of water blowing against my neck piqued my determination: I can make it, I grimly told myself, I shall make it. And this way I didn’t have to think about the ordeal ahead, only the struggle sometimes a great notion getting there. I trudged onward and up-river-ward, resolute and relentless, never even once sticking up my thumb to hitch a ride: I can make it, by gosh, and—if you don’t count the rain—by myself by gosh. . . . Hank bounded through the bank brush, right out onto the log; he could see the water had already risen a few inches up Joe’s back. “Glad to see you,” Joby said. “Gettin’ a little deep all of—” “Joe! I can’t! The log here!” I fumbled with the starting rope of my saw, damn near raving. My hands are shaking again. “I mean I won’t be able to cut—I mean look at the goddam waterline where I have to—” The saw whirred. Joe’s face darkened when he saw what I meant. The log was deep enough in the water that I wouldn’t be able to cut through it without submerging the saw’s motor. That’s why I couldn’t make myself cool down. I knew, before, up the hill, that I couldn’t cut it. Maybe before then. “Look out,” I said anyway. “I’ll see what we—” Again Hank jabbed the guard prongs of the saw into the bark and tipped the whirring teeth. Joe clinched his eyes as the chips and sawdust flew past him into the berry vines over his shoulder. He felt the chips of bark sting his cheek briefly, then heard the saw sput and gurgle, then stop. It was quiet again; the rain and radio—As you go through life make this your goal . . . Joe opened his eyes; out across the river he could see Mary’s Peak blurred by rain and the fast-falling dusk. But anyway. Whosoever don’t doubt...don’t hafta worry. Hank tried to jerk the saw free to start it again, but it was stuck. “No good anyway. Never do it, Joe.” “Look, Hankus, it’s okay.” Whosoever knows in his heart. “I know it’s okay ...because look: all we got to do is wait. An’ have a little faith. Because look, man: things is already seen to. Ain’t this tide coming up gonna float this thing offn me in a minute? Oh yeah, now ain’t it?” Hank looked at the log. “I don’t know...the way it’s sitting. It’s got to do some rising before it’ll lift.” “Then we’ll do some waiting,” Joe Ben said confidently. “I just wish I’d waited one day to swear off smoking. But I can stand it.” 576 ken kesey “Sure,” Hank said. “Sure. We’ll just wait.” And waited. While the sky before them, over the river, thickened with rain, and the forest behind shushed the wind to listen to the tinny music reeling out below. While freshets gushed icy mud into gullies, gullies into creeks, along banks wattled by erosion. While the waves, back up the coast at the Devil’s Jailhouse, thudded higher and higher toward escape up the cancered rock wall, and the clouds combed overhead, in from the sea over the surf, and broke against the high slopes to rake back the way they had come. While Viv rose from a hot tub of water and hummed herself dry before an electric heater in a room that smelled of rose oil. And while the distance between the old house and my rain-soaked and relentless shoes clicked steadily away, my resolution mounted: Eight miles through this rain, eight miserable miles . . . why, if I can make that, I can make anything . . . Hank tried to set the screwjacks to move the log, but they only twisted into the mud. “What we need is a horse,” Hank said, cursing the jacks. “An’ then how?” Joe asked, amused by Hank’s frustration at the log. “Hook on and drag it over me up the hill? No, what you need is a whale in the river yonder to pull it off that way. You bet. Know where we can rent a good stout whale broke to harness?” “How you doin’? You feel it lightenin’ any yet?” “Maybe some. I can’t tell. Because I’m cold as a witch’s tit, if you got to know. How much has it come up?” “Only another couple inches,” Hank lied and lit another cigarette. He offered Joe a drag, but Joe, after eying the smoke, allowed as how he’d best keep his promises to the Lord, things being the way they were. Hank smoked in silence. The kingfishers waited ceremoniously on the branches over the river. . . . watch the doughnut, not the hole. When the water reached Joe Ben’s neck Hank dived under the surface and braced his shoulder against the bark and tried to sometimes a great notion budge the log. But it would have taken a two-hundred-horse Diesel to move that weight and he knew it. He also knew that the way the log lay, slanting up the bank, it was going to take considerable water to float it off. And when it did move it was likely to roll up bank, more onto Joe. Occasionally a kingfisher would dive, then return to the branch without chancing the water. Joe had turned down the radio and they talked some now. About the old man lying up the hill under Hank’s parka, about the job and how they’d call J. J. Bismarck, the head man at Wakonda Pacific, first thing they got to a phone and score some non-union help for the run tomorrow. “Maybe get old Jerome Bismarck hisself out there in corks doin’ the river-run twist—wouldn’t that be a sight to behold? J. J. Bismarck floppin’ around in the water, all four hundred pounds of him? Lord, Lord...” Hank laughed at the thought. “Okay, buster, but let me call to your attention the first time you tried to pond-monkey. Remember? Right in the middle of January, and there was ice all around the logs?” “No. No, I don’t recall nothing about that. Not a thing.” “No? Why, I guess I should refresh your memory. You’d put on about a dozen sweat shirts and a set of rain pants and a big mackinaw—” “Nope. That wasn’t me. I never owned no mackinaw. Some other boy . . .” “And first jack outa the box you fell in and went down like a rock. Just one little whoop. And it took half the mill crew to haul you out, you weighed so much. I like to died laughing.” “Somebody else. I’m always light and agile. And, anyhow, what about you the time you was wearin’ that scarf that Barbara knitted for you and it got caught in the chain saw—for a while there we didn’t know whether you was goin’ out by hanging or decapitation! How ’bout that?” “You remember that time the wrestling team drove to Bend for a dual match—talkin’ about clothes—and big old Bruce Shaw brought along a tuxedo because the coach told him to dress?” 578 ken kesey “Lord, Lord—Bruce Shaw...” “Bruce the moose—he just kept growing.” “Ain’t that the truth! Oh yeah. He was in our congregation for a while, did I tell you that? Falling down and talking in tongues. Dangerous to get too close; he was bigger’n he was in high school.” “Lordy that was pretty big. He was two-eighty or -ninety then....” “After he quit comin’ to services I lost track of him. What come of him, hear tell?” “He got in a bad car wreck seven or so years ago ...Hey, I ever tell you? I run into him, not long after that very wreck, I guess, over in Eugene at Melody Ranch. I saw him at the dance and said hiya Bruce, friendly enough, but he was salty as hell about something, just scowled at me like he’d break me in half. And—listen to this, I never told you this—I got a real skinful that night, one of the fullest ever. That summer, home from the service. Really bombed. I shoulda passed out, but I made the mistake of thinking I was up to maneuvering around, you see. So I left the dance and went out and started walking, see, and this tree accosted me, man, kept me pinned down for hours. Because I’m really loaded and...it’s dark and late...and I’m walking along and I come up to this tree—with sap running down on it, just standing there. It’s old Shaw, big as life and twice as ugly. Shaw, I’m certain of it; old Bruce the moose . . . and man, he looks bad! He’s got his shirt off and his arms all spread out and he’s got scabs all down the front of him. I stand there and say, ‘Hey there, Shaw, how’s it hangin’?’ Nothing. ‘What’s happening lately, Shaw boy?’ He still don’t say nothing, but man he looks bad. I ask him how things are up at the dam where he was working and how is his girl, and his mom, and I don’t know what all, and he just stands there—big and bad-looking. So finally—after I’ve been shivering in front o’ him, thinking he’s after me for some business I can’t even recall—I go to sliding around him. I sorta put myself in my pocket and slide away around him and on down the street, and I don’t know old Shaw’s a tree till I see he’s still standing there in the morning.” sometimes a great notion “Oh yeah? You never told me that.” “Swear to God.” “Jesus. Pinned down by a tree.” While they were laughing the squeak of the radio suddenly stopped. “Oh dadgum; I forgot to take my radio from around my neck. Dadgum . . . it’s ruint. Now don’t you laugh, dang you. I thought a lot of that little outfit.” Then broke into giggles himself. But without his radio Joe’s laughter gave to chattering. Hank’s laughter only increased. “Whoee. After you braggin’ about not breaking it when a log rolled over you; now you dunk it . . . oh lord, oh me. . . .” Joe tried to join him. Their laughter stretched out across the water. The kingfishers watched from between solemnly hunched shoulders. As they were laughing a sudden gust of wind blew a small wave into Joe Ben’s mouth. Joe choked and spat and laughed some more ...then turned to ask Hank, in a voice too full of kidding, “Now you ain’t about to let this here old river just up and drown me, are you?” “This river? Why, by gosh; is Joe Ben Stamper worryin’ this old river? Sounds screwy. Because man, I thought all you had to do was call your Big Buddy and He’d just aim His finger an’ the water’d just hallelujah snap back away from you.” “Yeah, but I’ve explained this: I hate to bother Him if some of us can handle it. Hate to call anybody out in this stuff, especially Him.” “Okay; I can see that; He’s probably got a lot on His mind.” “You bet. It’s a busy season, Christmas coming. Then all them trouble spots. Laos, Vietnam . . .” “And lots of goiters to tend to in Oklahoma. Oh, I can see how you’d hesitate...” “That’s right. That’s right. Oklahoma needs Him special this year. I believe Oral Roberts has got Him signed on down there right now, shooting a TV series. But the thing is”—Joe raised his chin to avoid another small wave—“this dang water keeps getting’ up my nose. I’ll tell you what, Hankus: maybe you better hustle up to the pick-up after a length of hose . . . it might just be a while before this log begins to float.” 580 ken kesey You’d never thought it possible, but Joby was commencing to sound worried. “What is this noise?” I ask him. “Is this the boy who says, ‘Accept your lot and hold your mouth right!’ . . . scared of a little wet? Besides, Joby, it’s a good three-fourths mile up hill to that pick-up; you want to be alone all that time?” “No,” he says very fast, and quotes: “ ‘It ain’t so good that man should be alone.’ Genesis. Just before He whopped up Eve. But, still and all, maybe you oughta run get that hose. . . .” I splashed into the water beside Joe and stood with my hand resting on his shoulder. “No,” I told him. “It’s a fifteen-minute run up to that pickup and a fifteen-minute run back and at the rate the—well, one thing; I’m just too wore out to go runnin’ around here and there, this way and that, at your every little whim-wham. An’ you can’t run your neck out like you are much longer neither. You remember that leatherback terrapin we caught in the slough bottom once? An’ put in a tub with too much water— two, three inches—and nothing for him to climb up on? He didn’t drown, you remember? He stood on the bottom of the tub and stretched his neck for so long and out so far to breathe that he stretched himself to death. ...And, where I ain’t worried that you’ll drown, there is some chance you might stretch yourself to death.” Joe tried to laugh, then shut his mouth before another wave got him. “Anyhow, that log should come up from there right away. An’, if worst comes to worst, I can always give you mouth-to-mouth till it rises.” “Well, sure; sure, that’s the truth,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He brought his lips together for a bit as the water lapped up to his face. “Oh yeah; you can always give me mouth-to-mouth.” “Just so long as you don’t get worried under there . . .” “Worried? I ain’t worried. Just cold. I know you’ll do somethin’.” “Sure.” “Just like we used to trade off with one aqualung under water.” “Sure. It’s no different.” “Just like it.” sometimes a great notion I stood there in the water beside the log, shivering. “All a man is ever got to do is hold his mouth right an’ keep his faith. An’ wait . . .” He clamped his mouth. “Sure,” I finished for him while the wave passed. “Just wait. And think about good times ahead.” “Right! And—boy oh boy—Thanksgiving in a few days,” Joe remembered, smacking his lips. “That’s something, that’s good times. ’N’ this business will be all over. We’ll have to really do something full-size for Thanksgiving.” “Damn right.” Just stood there and shivered, feeling like maybe the time for doing something full-size had long gone. . . . The kingfishers waited. ...The rain buzzed pensively against the river, adding drop after drop... while Hank spent the last darkening hours of that day clinging to the bark of the log, the sharp brown fingers of the current dragging at his legs—shivering at first, then cold beyond cold and no longer shivering—carrying lungs full of air to a face invisible beneath the water....All Joe has to do, he told himself, is keep from panicking, keep up his spirits. Joe seemed in the best of spirits. Even after his little scarred face had been submerged Hank could still hear sputtering giggles, and when he ducked his face under still feel that goofy, half-wit grin against Joe’s lips. The situation seemed so bizarre to them both that for a time they felt silly and foolish and made the job of transferring the air more difficult and dangerous with their laughing, both realizing it, but unable to stop. For a time they were unable to think of anything except sonofagun I bet we look like fools; I bet if old Henry up there came to an’ saw this we’d never be shut of him kidding us, not in the next hundred years. And, for a time, even after all the situation’s ludicrous humor was exhausted for Hank, he still could feel the amusement beneath the water. This kept his hopes alive; as long’s the little fart is laughing under there we’ll make out. I can carry him air all night if it comes to it. As long as he’s got faith enough to see it’s funny. As long as I still feel him grinning. That’s what’ll save his ass, him still getting a boot out of being in a bad fix; him still holding his mouth right. . . . 582 ken kesey 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 sometimes a great notion 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 584 ken kesey 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... sometimes a great notion (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’ 586 ken kesey 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!” sometimes a great notion 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 588 ken kesey 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! I was petrified by the prospect; with no luck along that line since way back before Mother’s suicide, and months even since my last painful attempt, what reason had I to expect success this time? perhaps that’s why I have been holding back so long; perhaps it is this pain I have been warned to WATCH OUT for; perhaps I should— But when a voice called, “Come in, Lee,” from the other side of the door, I knew it was too late to use this reason to run, even if the reason had been real. I opened the door and poked in my head—“Just for a quick hello,” I said, and added matter-of-factly, “I walked out from town, now I—” “I’m glad you did,” she said, then added in a lighter tone, “It was getting a little scary out here all by myself so long. Boy! Are you drenched! Come sit by the heater.” “I became separated from Henry at the hospital,” I offered lamely. “Oh? Where do you suppose he went?” “Where can one ever suppose old Henry goes? Maybe after more of the balm of Gilead. . . .” She smiled. She was seated on the floor before the humming orange heat of her coiled heater with a book, wearing a pair of tight green capris and one of Hank’s plaid woolen shirts that itched itched itched against her skin, I was positive. And the glow of the electric coils made her face and hair shimmer with a deep fluid opulence. “Yes,” I said, “I suppose he must have stopped by Gilead for more balm. . . .” After our initial howdy-do’s and what-do-you-supposes, and sometimes a great notion that stretched instant of silence, I indicated her book. “I see you’re still bent on improving your mind.” She smiled at the volume. “It’s the Wallace Stevens.” She looked back up, asking forgiveness. “I don’t know that I’m getting all of it—” “I don’t know that anybody is.” “—but I like it. It—well, even when I don’t get it, I still feel certain ways when I read it. Some places I feel happy, some places I feel all funny. And then”—she dropped her eyes again to the book resting in her hands—“sometimes I feel pretty awful.” “Then you are most certainly getting it!” My enthusiasm hung there for another silence with egg on its face; she looked back up. “Oh say, what did they say to you at the doctor’s?” “They said”—I tried to change from enthusiasm to comedy again—“in so many words: ‘drop your pants and bend over.’ And the next thing I knew they were pumping my lungs full of smelling salts.” “You passed out?” “Cold.” She laughed softly at me, then became confidential, lowering her voice. “Hey now; I’ll tell you a little something, if you promise not to plague him about it.” “Cross my heart. Plague who about what?” “Old Henry. After his fall off those rocks. See, when they brought him in from the show he cussed and carried on just terrible while he was around here, then, when we got him to the doctor, he went tough as nails. You know the way he can be. He didn’t make a peep while they were lookin’ him over—except for joking with the nurses and kidding them about being so antsy with him. ‘Ain’t nothin’ but a busted wing,’ he kept saying.