Chapter 90

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 610 ken kesey 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 wholebygod 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.” sometimes a great notion “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 612 ken kesey 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 god-dam 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— sometimes a great notion 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 something 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 614 ken kesey 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 goddam 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 sometimes a great notion 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 instrument, an instrument.’ ” “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.” The conversation faded again and they continued toward the funeral parlor in silence; Brother Walker was looking forward to the funeral. He knew that enough members of the Faith would be there to insist that he say a few words about Brother-in-the-Faith Joe Ben after the Reverend Toms finished, and the prospect of saying a few words to all those polished seats, those 616 ken kesey somber clothes, the organ, the drapes, to all the plush and pompery of conventional religion, always made him a little schoolgirlish. A tent, he knew, could certainly be the House of the Lord as well as any building, and as long as he held with the Faith—which did not hold with any gaudy show of mourning— he was compelled to frown on the orthodox Christian funeral; but frown as he might, he was always secretly pleased when one of the deceased’s kin insisted—as one of the deceased’s kin invariably did—that, with all due respect for the Faith’s teachings, still perhaps a funeral should, just for appearances, be held at a funeral parlor. And in spite of all its ostentatious, gaudy, and disgusting pageantry, you couldn’t deny that that pale gray drapery lining Lilienthal’s Funeral Parlor was acoustically superior to canvas as a backdrop for the Word of God. Yes, a tent could most certainly be a House of the Lord as well as any fancy building, but it was still just a tent. (Wouldn’t old Joby have a field day with these kind of sunshiny signals? I thought to myself, just standing there, looking at the sky ...wouldn’t he bust a gut? Then I heard Viv call again and headed on to the boat . . .) Simone works futilely with scissors and needle. Indian Jenny sighs and untangles her legs and arranges them full length on her cot heavily. Oh, she isn’t giving up on her projects—she reaches for the copy of The Search for Bridey Murphy lying on the shack floor—she is merely changing her approach once more . . . In their hotel room Rod gives up on the want ads and reluctantly unsnaps his guitar case to join this madman roommate of his in rehearsing. Behind his sunlit scrawl of neon tubes Teddy listens to the rising pitch of laughter and merrymaking and tries to plumb the dark well it rises from. What are they afraid of now? Even-write gives up on his tie: a white shirt, o-kay, but that was compromise enough . . . no by god chokerope, and that’s final! Simone hears the doorbell ring and hurries to answer it before it wakes her six-year-old from his nap; disgustedly she wraps a faded chenille housecoat about her body and checks the empty cigarette box one last time as she leaves the bedroom. Big Newton sometimes a great notion drinks his tasteless beer and orders another, feeling more bleakish than ever . . . (Across the river, at the garage landing, I held the boat steady while Viv stepped out of the boat with the hem of her skirt held in one hand, watching that she didn’t get any mud on her high-heeled shoes. She crossed the gravel, then headed on up to the garage and waited there for me to tie the boat up and drag a tarp over the motor. The sky looked clear, and maybe that tarp wouldn’t be necessary, but one thing you learn young in this neck of the woods is not to be sucked in by a little fair weather. “Never trust the sun no further than you can throw it,” the old man always said. I took my time lashing on the tarp in spite of the sunshine, and even though we was running a little late. I took my time and got it right and let her stand there . . .) The Real Estate Hotwire waves at someone down the street. “There’s Sis. Hey, Sissy, wait up.” And they step up their walk to reach her. The Real Estate Man took her arm. “You positive you feel up to this, Sissy? This close after Willard’s?” She blew her nose through the veil. “Willard always had the finest opinion of Joe Ben. I feel I should go.” “There’s a girl. You know Brother Walker, don’t you? Of the First Church and Christian Science?” “Metaphysics, Mr. Loop. Yes, we saw each other at—the other day. May I say again how sorry I am, Mrs. Eggleston.” Brother Walker extended his hand along with his condolences. “These last few days . . . have been a cross for many of us.” The Real Estate Man squeezed her arm. “But we’re through it, now, isn’t that so, Sissy-little? We’re around that corner.” They resumed walking. Sissy-little wished she were alone with her brother so she could tell him about this awful thing the insurance company was trying to do with her Willard’s money. The Real Estate Hotwire wished he’d sold Willard a better package than that theater, as long as it looked like it was coming back to him anyway. And Brother Walker wished he’d worn less sedate garb. As they walked he watched the healthy bounce of the Real Estate Man’s once-muscular breasts through the casual blue polo shirt and wished he’d dared a bit of casualness himself. It would make a nice picture against all the rest of the 618 ken kesey stiff and formal trappings. He wondered ...perhaps he could remove his dark serge coat and loosen his tie; on a day like this, who could blame a man for being a little informal? Even a man of God? It would be one way to show all those who were not Brothers or Sisters just how the Faith stood on appearances, show them he was a regular guy. He might even remove his tie completely. Wouldn’t Reverend Toms, with his french cuffs and his double-breasted black and his hanky-in-the-pocket, wouldn’t old Biddy Toms go into a flap when he was replaced by an open-collared white shirt that delivered a better eulogy in a more resonant voice? A regular flap? “Ohyas,” he said, “a time of great trial for many of us.” (I got the boat secured good and walked up to the garage. Viv was waiting to see what I planned to drive into town; the jeep had that damn top on it I never liked, but the pick-up was still a mess from driving old Henry to the hospital—I hadn’t done anything about cleaning it up but for taking out that arm. So I said let’s take the jeep. And you drive, okay? I don’t care to.... I never minded driving the jeep during the summer, it’s wide open and wild in good weather; but with that damned top on for winter, it makes the thing like a tin coffin on wheels, hardly any rear or front vision at all and just a couple slits in the side so you can see out that way. Not the sort of thing I like to ride in anyhow, especially to a funeral. Viv got in behind the wheel and went to grinding the starter. I leaned back and tried to rub me a spot to see out through that plastic-covered slit in the door....) When Floyd Evenwrite leaves the house, wearing a tie, on his way to warm up his car, he meets Orland Stamper walking to his own car, as groomed and grumpy as Floyd himself— “. . . yeah, it took some doin’, Orland...but, shit, he needed brought down a peg or two.” “If he’d been brought down sooner,” Orland said harshly, “Janice would have her a live man today instead of something swole up over at Edward Lilienthal’s. We’re just lucky his hardheadedness didn’t get more of us hurt....” “Yeah ...too bad about Joe Ben. He was a good old boy.” sometimes a great notion “If Hank’d been brought down that couple pegs just one day sooner . . . them five little tykes’d have a daddy instead of a piddling little four-thousand-dollar policy. The old man’d still have two arms. . . .” “What’s the word about old Henry?” Evenwrite asked. “Comin’ along, they say; comin’ along. Hard old coon to kill.” “What has he said about his pride and joy knuckling under to the union? Looks to me like that alone would be enough to kill the old coon....” “Why, to tell the truth, I don’t know how he took it. I didn’t think about it. Maybe they ain’t even told him.” “Bull. Somebody’d sure have told.” “Maybe not. Hank’s give orders nobody’s to get to see him. Maybe the doctor wants him to get his strength back before he hears the news.” “Uhuh ...an’ then you know what. He’ll go to frailin’ whoever’s knob happens to be closest. Personally, I was Hank, I’d tell him before he got able to swing that cane of his again.” “With one arm gone clean,” Orland said, “and the other just fresh out of a sling, I’d venture Henry Stamper’s knob-frailin’ days are a thing of the past.” “Never saw the sun,” Ray sings, “shining so bright . . .” “I ain’t givin’ up,” Jenny vows. “Teddy . . . ?” Boney Stokes calls. “What’s the time?” “Twenty till, Mr. Stokes,” Teddy answers. “They should be comin’ past in about twenty minutes, then. My, my; that awful sun...you should think about putting up an awning, Teddy.” “Yes, I guess I should.” Teddy returns to his spigots. It is still picking up. If it continues he will have to call in Mrs. Carleson from the Sea Breeze to help tonight. He should have already made the arrangements, but he still is unable to believe that such weather and well-being could stimulate so much business. It goes against all he has learned . . . (Viv let go the jeep’s starter and took off her white gloves— the wheel and gear shift are wrapped with friction tape—and handed them to me so she could wrestle the jeep without getting 620 ken kesey them dirty. Neither of us said anything. She was fixed up real nice for the occasion; she’d worked half the morning getting her hair stacked onto her head like a coil of gold ropes—I swear to god the only thing a woman’ll spend more effort getting ready for is a wedding—but by the time she got that coldblooded bastard choked, started, killed, started again, into low, killed again, and finally out on the road, the golden coil was on its way to coming unwound. I watched her but I didn’t put my two cents in. I didn’t even tell her to throttle it with the choke. I just sat there with them gloves in my lap figuring it’s by god time somebody besides me learned to tote and roll . . .) “I ain’t quitting,” Indian Jenny assures herself when she shuts her book and puts it down, “just resting.” She closes her eyes, but the image of a green-eyed, proud-eyed young logger with a bristling mustache will not let her sleep. Simone answers the door and...why, Howie Evans! “Yeah, Simone, I’m just wondering . . . if you might not join me at the Snag tonight?” “No, Howie. I am sorry. Look at me...can I go into public like this?” He shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, started to make a wisecrack, then grinned and said, “Well, who knows? Maybe a fairy godmother er somethin’ will come through, huh? Anyhow... we’ll be seeing you?” “Perhaps....” He was gone before she could say good-by.... The Real Estate Man and his bereaved sister leave Brother Walker when they reach Lilienthal’s, to go talk something over. Brother Walker searches the crowd for Janice—she will need him in this hour of need, certainly—and is astounded at the number of people who have turned out to pay their last respects to poor Joe. He’d no idea Brother Joe Ben had been so well loved by his neighbors . . . (Viv or me didn’t say a word all the way into town, about Joe or anything. I imagine she figures I’d just rather not talk. She don’t have any way of knowing what I know. And it’s just as well. Because I didn’t feel like telling her how I come to know it. The jeep was bumping and bouncing and banging so much sometimes a great notion we couldn’t of heard each other anyhow. There’s chuckholes galore. The road’s tore to hell after the storms, and the road crews are out working on it. Above the mountains there’s lots of small, tight clouds cluttering up the sky, and the sun keeps going off and on, dodging behind first one and then the other. “Man, I’m drained to a frazzle,” I say, but Viv doesn’t hear. I lay my head down against the plexiglass window and just take it easy. The sun comes out bright as hell, like it was lit with more than light. I see that snarl of berry vine beside the road and it’s like somehow it scrubs both my eyeballs clean of stuff that’d built up there without me knowing it, because I blink a couple times and look around and I’m seeing things clear as a bell. This kept happening, off and on. It’d be bright for a little bit, everything shining like chrome, waxy-looking, polished, then go dark as muddy water. Then bright again. It’s the first time I’ve really been out since Joe bought it, and I can’t help feeling that the world looks different. I tell myself that it looks so bright just because the light zooming on after that dark spell makes a diamond flash out of everything. But I ain’t convinced. It still feels like that first dazzling swipe of berry vine scrubbed my eyes clear. I just sit there in a kind of doze, looking out through the flicker of ditch willows zipping past along the road and enjoying the scenery. Maybe I was seeing things so clear because it was the first time in I don’t know how many years I’d rode this stretch without having to do the driving. Maybe that’s it. All I know is everything was shining like a new dime. There’s rusty screen-topped cones of sawdust-burners vomiting sparks and blue smoke; widow’s-lace fern waving around the mailboxes; busy glisten of little breezes blowing across the standing water . . . swoop of powerlines ...spearmint bush so bright and new I smell them as we pass ...squirrels hustling around... then more rusty burners. Leaves, bright, waxy green, scrubbed, sort of. Prismed light where the sun comes through the drops hanging off the leaves, shattered and pure and bright.... I put my face closer to the little window so I could see more. There was the sky, the little clouds, then the treetops running into the steep sloped-off canyon down to the railroad embankment, 622 ken kesey then there’s a wide drainage between the road and the track. This ditch is a mangle of scrubby little Himalaya vines; Himalaya blackberry got a pretty good flavor but loaded with seeds big enough to knock a tooth out. All the leaves had been whipped off the vines by that last big storm, and the vines look like a king-sized roll of steel wool. I bounce along, looking at them vines, thinking to myself if a fellow was big enough he’d just grab him a handful of that and scrub the world to a farethee-well, get shut of them clouds, really brighten things up....This notion slid into a kind of open-eyed dream. I take a giant fistful of steel wool and go at it, working like a nigger. I can’t stop somehow. I finish with the sky and go at the beach. Then the town, then the hills. I’m panting and sweating and scrubbing like a nigger! I step back and take a look: but instead of things getting brighter and clearer this time, it’s just made them duller. Like it kind of faded the color out. I grab up the roll and tear into it again, and when I’m finished this time it’s even more faded than before. So this time I really work it over. I scrub everything, the world and sky and my eyes and the sun and everything, and finally fall back, wore clean out. I take a look and it’s bright all right, like a movie-show screen when the film breaks and you got nothing to look at up there but the bright white light. Everything else is gone. I throw away the steel wool; it’s fine to brighten things up with once in a while, but too much of it, man, can rub everything away.) In the Snag, Boney Stokes complains about the glare as he moves his chair closer to the window. Teddy finally gives Mrs. Carleson a call and she says sorry but she’s too busy herself right then, but she’ll send over her daughter. Big Newton watches Les Gibbons get drunker and fiercer but seriously doubts that the big liver-lipped monkey will ever get drunk or fierce enough. And the crowd lingering outside the funeral parlor swings suddenly around at someone’s whisper to see a yellow jeep turn the corner of Nahamish and South Main, coming toward them, finally. (So many folks had come to the funeral that we couldn’t find a parking place closer than two blocks off. “Joe Ben would’ve popped his eyes out to see what a draw he was dead,” I said to sometimes a great notion Viv. I popeyed a little myself; I knew he was the type guy always liked by everybody that knew him, but I didn’t know this many even knew him. Walking back from the jeep, I saw that even the lawn on the family-entrance side of Lilienthal’s was packed to the sidewalk with dark blue suits and black frocks. As I got closer I saw that the whole working force from WP was there, Floyd Evenwrite too—all standing and talking in respectful voices, and slipping off two or three at a time behind Lilienthal’s big black ’53 Caddy hearse where they could crack out their pocket stashes and have a nip out of sight of the women. Most of the women were standing up on the steps or just inside the door, touching their faces to little white hankies. The men nipped; the women dabbed. Everybody to their own kick, I figured. They saw Viv and me come walking up toward them, and I heard the talk drone to a stop. The guys behind the Caddy quick stuck their bottle out of our sight. They all watched us walk past, working their faces, those faces you always see at a goddamned funeral. Little smiles, understanding smiles, and eyes like they borrowed them from cocker spaniels especially for the occasion. They watch and nod whenever I look their direction. Nobody says a thing. The crowd from around the other side of the building comes bustling to get a look, and a couple more women’s heads poke out the door. Orland’s car slides up to the side door, and Orland’s wife helps Jan out. Jan’s just as lumpy and owl-like as ever, for all the black net they’d hung over her. The crowd turns to watch her walk along so stooped for a second, but then turns right back to me and Viv. They aren’t interested in Jan. Big a deal as a griefstruck woman is, she still isn’t what they’d gone to the trouble of primping and preening and getting into their Easter Sunday costumes to come out and see. Jan’s just the side attraction, the prelim. And they didn’t come for that. A crowd comes to an event to see the main attraction, I thought to myself. And at a funeral the main attraction is somebody belly up. That ain’t lumpy little Jan. And, much as I hate to steal your thunder, Joby, I’m afraid that you ain’t the main attraction at this particular event, either. Viv and me followed Orland and Jan and them into the dim-lit 624 ken kesey family room. Everybody else was there, sitting quiet in little padded folding chairs in front of a sort of gauzy curtain separating us from the main section. We could see them out there but they couldn’t see in; they’d to be satisfied with what sniffs and sobs drifted out to them. The heads of the family craned around at me and Viv as we sidled into our seats. I braced myself for the scalding looks I’d been expecting to get, but the heat wasn’t there. I’d expected a verdict of guilty from every Stamper eye in the house, but got nothing except that same sad cocker-spaniel smile. I guess I was still a little rummy from the ride because this threw me pretty bad. I stared back at them, froze where I stood....Good Christ, didn’t they realize? Didn’t they know I’d as well as killed him? I opened my mouth to demand at least one of them recognize this, but the only sound that came out was the moo of an electric organ someplace, then old lady Lilienthal singing. Viv took my hand and pulled me into my seat. The organ mooed and bawled. Old lady Lilienthal tried to outdo it with “End of a Perfect Day,” the same song she’d sung at my mom’s funeral out at the house twenty years before, sung just as bad today, only slower. It took her hours. If she lasted another twenty years of funeral singing and kept getting slower, they would have to come up with some new embalming preservatives. The organ played again. Somebody recited something from a book of poems. Lilienthal, who couldn’t stay out of the show any more than his wife, read a list of names of folks who couldn’t make it for one reason or another, and had sent flowers in their place. “Lily Gilchrest,” he would singsong, “her spirit is with us today. Mr. and Mrs. Edward R. Sorenson . . . their spirit is with us today.” La-da-dee-la-dee-la-da. It was a running battle built up over the years between him and his wife and that mooing organ, to see which one could drag out his part the longest. Then old man Toms got up and went to droning on. I thought about how funny it was that Joby should be drummed out this way ...a guy who could cram more words into a minute than these three, going all at once, could get into a day. sometimes a great notion I begin to get sleepy. Brother Walker came out in his shirtsleeves, looking like a coach at half-time. He opened a Bible that bristled like a porcupine with place-markers and, using Joby’s death like a man on a springboard, took a running jump at the stars. He lost me someplace during the dive. Viv shook me awake. We were getting up out of the seats and filing through an opening in the curtain. The main room had already took its look and were waiting outside while we had our turn. I strolled past and looked in. By golly. You don’t look so bad. The drowned ones I seen before always looked waterlogged. I guess you weren’t in long enough to soak up much. Fact the matter is, you ugly little toad, you look a damn sight better than usual. They painted your face with some stuff that dulled the scars some, and you don’t have your ordinary raw-meatball look. And a black tie. You’d be amazed. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. To see how godawful handsome they could make. “Hank ...Hank, please . . .” Except. Damn, I wish they hadn’t made you such a frigging sobersides because it makes you look like. “Please, the others are waitin’....What are you doing?” You need the grin, man. The goofy one. You taking it so serious. Swing with what you got. Here. Hold on, I’ll just.