Chapter 93

 My sentinel ears no longer pricked outward to catch warning snap of the telltale twig, turning instead inward to the dull murmur of introspection. My sense of touch was disconnected by the cold. My taste buds atrophied. My keen nose, that had but a few days previous run silently ahead gleaning the shadows for the scent of danger, now only ran, not at all silently . . . For the hunt was done, the danger past, the demon defeated ...and what’s left for a nose to keep keen for? “We must learn to accept the change,” I tried to advise us. “We survived the slaughter of God and all his Heavenly Host quite handily; why, then, should we get so hung up over doing in the devil?” But this advice served not at all to tighten my low string. Seemed to make it lower, if anything. There was nothing left. I was finished. Hardly caring, I realized at last that here was the thing Old Reliable had warned me to watch out for—the post-duel depression; my revenge against Brother Hank completed, what was left but the trip back East? A dreary journey at best, especially when made alone. How much less dreary, I couldn’t help thinking, the trip would be, were one accompanied by a congenial travel companion—how much more pleasant . . . So, for three days, since our night together, I had put off leaving and hid out in a three-dollar no-bath room, waiting and hoping that this companion would come seeking me. For three days and three nights. But I would wait no longer; my last three dollars were slept up, I badly needed a bath, and I think I had known all along that my hoping was hopeless; deep inside, I sometimes a great notion had known Viv would not come seeking me—I had seen to that—and I couldn’t bring myself to go after her . . . While I might be fearless and all that, what with the devil done in, I still hadn’t reached the point of being able to go out to the devil’s house for no other reason than to ask his wife to come away with me. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets as I approached the hospital, low-strung and wishing that I had either more courage to go with my fearlessness, or a good cowardly excuse for returning to the old house just one more time... Viv washes off her toothbrush and returns it to the rack; and, holding her hair back with one hand, bends to the faucet to rinse her mouth out. She brushes with salt, to keep her teeth bright. She washes out the taste and straightens back up and faces her image in the medicine-cabinet mirror. She frowns: what is it? What she sees—or doesn’t see—in the face makes her uncomfortable; it isn’t age; the moist Oregon climate keeps the skin quite young, without cracking and lining. Skinny, but no, it isn’t the lack of flesh, either; she has always liked her rather underfed look. So ...something else . . . that she doesn’t yet understand. She tries to smile at the face. “Say, little girl . . .” she whispers out loud, “how have you been?” But the expression that answers is as abstruse to her as to others who constantly try to plumb its mystery. What is it ...? She can brush with salt to keep the smile gleaming, but she is unable to reach behind the gleam... “Foofawraw,” she says and switches out the bathroom light. “That’s the sort of thinking that leads a girl to drink.” She closes the door behind her and goes downstairs to sit on the arm of Hank’s chair and squeeze his hand tightly while the TV set booms “GO! GO! GO!” “Be half time here in a minute,” Hank says. “What about a egg sandwich or something?” (I was watching the Thanksgiving Day Classic when Viv came in ...Missouri and Oklahoma, still nothing to nothing at the end of the second quarter with less than five minutes to play . . .) “How about turkey-noodle soup instead, honey? I can open a can and heat it?” 666 ken kesey “Fine Anything, I don’t care... just so’s we can finish it during the half. And a beer if we got one.” “Not a sign,” she said. “Didn’t you hang out the beer flag for Stokes?” “Stokes doesn’t deliver any more, remember? Up this far...?” “Okay, okay . . .” (It was past noon and I’d laid in the sack till game time with a heat pad on my lower back, hadn’t had any breakfast and was hungry. Viv got up and slipped off to the kitchen, barely making a sound in her tennis shoes. The house was damn quiet with just the two of us. Even with the TV turned way up, the house was too quiet for my liking. That lonely, killing quiet of nobody talking with anybody, of no kids squealing and giggling, no Joby coming on with some wild notion, no old Henry helling around...and the little times when Viv and I said something to each other, it seemed like it was quieter than ever. Because we were just talking, not with anybody at all. I hadn’t really noticed the silence till then—I guess I’d been too busy with the funeral and what all to notice—and I hadn’t really started to appreciate what a thorough goddam job the kid had made of it till I got the chance to notice this silence, and to wonder if Viv and me’d ever be able to talk with each other again. Yeah, you had to give the kid credit . . .) Through the heavy glass door of the hospital I pushed, to a welcoming of warm air and the same old Amazon in white reading the same movie magazine. “You must live here,” I remarked, trying to be friendly. “Days, nights, and Thanksgivings.” “Mr. Stamper?” she asked with a good deal of suspicion. She then leaned nervously toward me. “You...are you feeling woozy, Mr. Stamper?” “It’s woozy weather,” I reminded her with some hesitation. “I mean feelin’ bad?” She rose from her magazine, eyeing me warily. “I mean I know you been under an enormous strain . . .” “Your sympathy is very much appreciated,” I told her, becoming more puzzled, “but I don’t think I’m going to faint again, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” sometimes a great notion “Faint? Yes ...maybe you can sit down while... I’ll just whisk off an’ fetch the doctor. You wait here, now, hear me ...?” Before I could reply she had whisked off in a cloud of starch dust that hung in her wake like exhaust. I stared after her, perplexed by her sprinting departure. Certainly a change from our last encounter. What scared her? I wondered for a few moments, then concluded it was my new look. “The new presence of black disdain in my features . . . that’s what.” I curled my lip coldly. “Threw a bit of fright into the poor drudge is what, to come face to chilling face with the Total Absence of Fear...” Then I bent to place a quarter in the cigarette machine and, in the mirror, caught sight of the visage that had sent her scurrying—a chiller all right: not quite so much a look of black disdain, I conceded, studying an unkempt, unshaven wastepaper basket of a face that peered back at me with red-rimmed and terror-filled eyes, as a look of bleak destruction. But a chiller, nevertheless. I was a sight. Along with no bath there had been no mirror in my hotel room and I had not been witness to the decay. It had come with the insidious stealth of mildew; just as the wallpaper had become tracked overnight with the little delicate footprints of gray blight, my face had been marked by the passage of neglect. No wonder the Mad Scandinavian had chosen to cower behind his bolted door! After three days of cigarettes, private eyes, and mildew, mine was not exactly the face at which anyone—regardless of humor or nationality—would rush forth armed only with a fish. The nurse returned with the bulky doctor in tow. Even this archfiend’s filthy- and fat-minded good fellowship was intimidated by my appearance: he was unable to think of a single insinuation, he was so overcome. “Good lord, boy, you look just awful!” “Thank you. I cultivated the look especially for the visit. I didn’t want my poor father to think I was ridiculing his present condition by showing up looking all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” “I don’t believe you have to worry about what old Henry’s thinking these days,” the doctor said. 668 ken kesey “Pretty bad?” He nodded. “Far too bad to give a hang if anybody’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed or not. You should have come earlier; as it is now, you might be disappointed in his reaction to your— what’d you call it?—‘cultivated look’?” “Perhaps,” I said, noticing that the good doctor was getting his old snide equilibrium back. “Shall we see?” “Take it easy; you don’t look capable of walking that far.” After a pulse check convinced him I was in no immediate danger, he allowed me to have a look at the shredded remnants of my illustrious sire. Not a very pleasant experience ...The room smelled of urine; the air was warm and hothouse moist; the bed had side-guards. The old man’s hardened grin had cracked in his baking nightmares, and a thin thread of red ran from his lips down his whiskered chin to his neck, like a lorgnette string attached to a wire-rimmed plaster smile. I stood looking down at him for as long as I was able—I’ve no idea if it was seconds or minutes—while the old fellow clacked and clattered against sleep with a bony tongue. One time he went so far as to open a matted eye to look at me and command, “Wag it an’ shake it. Suck yer gut in an’ git goddammit to affairs!” But ere I could comment, the eye closed, the tongue stopped, and the conversation was terminated. I followed the doctor’s broad backside down the corridor away from the old man’s room, wishing that, just once, just this one time, my father had been more explicit about these affairs that I had been so long trying to git goddammit to... On the pillowcase before her, Jenny sees a nebulous mouth forming; she has a quick sip from her glass, wipes her lips on the rough forearm of her sweater, scoops up the shells, and casts again, very hungry and very tired, but sensing the approach of something too big and too wonderful to risk missing in sleep ...Teddy unlocks the door of the Snag and steps into air set like gelatin with stale smoke and flat beer and wild-cherry toilet disinfectant; it is early, much earlier than he usually opens, and his eyes are puffier than usual from his interrupted sleep, but, like Jenny, he anticipates the approach of something too big to sleep through. sometimes a great notion Unlike Jenny, however, Teddy doesn’t feel that he has had any part in bringing it about; he is only an observer, a spectator—content to just open up the arena and let other forces and bigger men cast the shells . . . Jonathan Bailey Draeger wakes in his motel in Eugene, checks his watch, and reaches to the desk beside the bed for his notepad. He finds the appointment and reads it again to be sure: well ...he isn’t due at Evenwrite’s to eat for three hours; one hour to get dressed, one to drive over...and one to put off the ordeal at the Evenwrite household . . . Actually, he isn’t feeling that much distaste for the prospect. Be a nice concluding episode. He lies back against the pillow, holding the notepad in one hand, and, smiling to himself, at the picture Evenwrite’s name summons up, writes: “Status does not automatically generate aspirations to rise, just as food does not necessarily stimulate hunger ...but a man seeing another in a position superior to his, eating food higher off the hog, so to speak . . . will go through heaven and hell to sup at the same table with the superior even if he has to provide the hog.” And adds: “Or the turkey.” And Floyd Evenwrite, stepping from the tub, calls to his wife to ask how long it will be before their guest arrives. “Three hours,” she calls back from the kitchen. “Time enough for you to get you some rest before he gets here ...out all night, for goodness’ sakes, what kind of ‘business’ could be so important to keep you out all night?” He doesn’t answer. He pulls on his trousers and shirt and carries his shoes into the living room. “Three hours,” he says aloud, sitting down to wait. “Three by god hours. Time enough for Hank to stand up an’ shake hisself . . .” (Viv came back in with soup and sandwiches and we set up the TV trays to eat off of while we watched the bands and the twirlers parade around; we spoke about every five minutes, and then it was something like “She’s good, that one in spangles . . .” “Yeah, she is, isn’t she? Real good.” I was just beginning to appreciate what a thorough job the kid had done...) In the doctor’s office once again I took his offered cigarette, 670 ken kesey and this time sat down. I felt myself no longer vulnerable to the scurrilous comments and cattities. “I warned you”—he grinned—“that you might be a little disappointed.” “Disappointed? With his little phrases of advice and endearment? Doctor, I’m overjoyed. I can recall periods when that statement would have seemed like an hour’s chat.” “That’s funny. You two never talked much? Old Henry always made out he was a great one for talking. Maybe, would you say, you just didn’t care to hear what the old boy was talking about?” “Whatever do you mean, Doctor? My daddy and I might never have said much, but we kept no secrets from each other.” He gave me his most knowing of smiles. “Not even you from him? The tiniest secret?” “Nope.” He leaned back, creaking and wheezing in the swivel chair, and fixed his eyes on the past in rotund reverie. “Seems, though, that people were always keeping one thing or another from Henry Stamper,” he recalled. “I’m sure you don’t remember, Leland, but some years ago there was a story circulating around town”—he shot a quick look at me to make sure I did remember—“about Hank and his relationship with a—” “Doctor, we aren’t a nosy family,” I instructed him. “Our relationships are not always posted on the family bulletin board...” “Still—oh yes, I didn’t mean to imply ...But still, the point I was making is that the whole town was aware of this story— true or not—while old Henry seemed completely ignorant.” I felt myself becoming more and more irritated by the man, less, I think, by his insinuations than I was by his attack on my helpless father. “I’m sure you don’t remember, Doctor,” I said coldly, “that while old Henry quite often seemed completely ignorant, he nevertheless succeeded in besting all the rest of the sharpies in this town in some business deal, time after time after time.” “Oh, you misunderstand . . . I’m not disparaging your father’s judgment . . .” sometimes a great notion “I know you aren’t, Doctor.” “I was merely—” He halted, flustered, finding me a little harder to intimidate than last time. He filled his cheeks to start again, but there was a knock on the door. The nurse opened it to advise him that Boney Stokes was here again. “Tell him to stop in a moment, Miss Mahone. Fine old fellow, Leland; he’s been here, faithful as a clock, ever since— Say...! Boney, come on in a minute...you know young Leland Stamper?” I started to stand to give the old skeleton my chair, but he put a hand on my shoulder and shook his head soulfully. “Don’t get up, son. I’m going right on down to see your poor father. Terrible thing,” he said in a voice dripping grief. “Terrible terrible terrible thing.” The hand held me in the chair as though I were a wedding guest; I muttered a hello, while fighting back the urge to cry out, “Unhand me, graybeard loon!” Stokes and the doctor spoke a moment about old Henry’s deteriorating condition, and I tried once more to stand. “Wait, son.” The hand tightened. “Mightn’t you tell me how things are at the house, so I could pass it on, say just perchance Henry should come to for a bit? How is Viv? And Hank? My, you’ve no idea how heartsore I was hearing how the poor boy had lost his closest companion. ‘A good friend gone,’ my daddy used to say, ‘is a shadow across the sun.’ How’s he taking it all?” I told them I hadn’t seen my brother since the day of the accident; they were both openly shocked and disappointed. “But you’ll be seeing him today, won’t you? Thanksgiving Day?” I told them I saw no reason to trouble the poor boy, and that I was planning to leave on the bus to Eugene this afternoon. “Going back East? So soon? My, my . . .” I told the old man I was packed and ready. “My, my is right,” the doctor echoed, and went on to ask, “And what do you imagine you’ll do, Leland...now?” I thought at once of the letters I had sent to Peters, because the skillful emphasis placed on the “Now” at the end of his question made me momentarily think—as I’m sure he hoped it would—that this gossip glutton knew more than he was saying; 672 ken kesey perhaps he had somehow captured the letters and was onto the whole plot from beginning to end! “What I mean”—the good doctor probed onward, sensing that he was near a nerve—“do you plan to return to college? Or teach, maybe? Or is there a woman...?” “I haven’t exactly made plans,” I answered lamely. They leaned down on me; I stalled for time with an old psychiatrist’s trick. “Why do you ask, Doctor?” “Why? Well, I’m interested, as I told you before . . . in all of my people. Back East to teaching, huh? I suppose is what it will be? English? Drama?” “No, I’m not finished with—” “Ah, then back to school?” I shrugged, feeling more and more like a sophomore in the dean’s office with his counselor. “Perhaps back to school. As I say, I haven’t made any plans. The work here looks like it’s finished . . .” “Yes, looks like. So you say perhaps back to school?” They continued to pin me against the chair, one with his eyes, one with a hand like a pitchfork. “Why do you hesitate?” “I don’t know what I’ll do for the money . . . it’s too late to apply for a grant—” “Say!” the doctor interrupted, snapping his fingers. “You know, don’t you, that that old man in there is just as dead as if he was in the ground?” “Amen, Lord.” Boney nodded. “You realize that, don’t you?” Taken aback by his gratuitously frank statement, I waited for him to continue, feeling less like a sophomore than like a suspect. When were they going to bring in the spotlights? “Maybe your father won’t be declared legally dead for a week, or two weeks, who can say? Maybe a month, because he’s stubborn enough. But stubborn or not, Leland, Henry Stamper’s a dead man, you can bet money on it.” “Wait a minute. Are you accusing me of something?” “Accusing you?” He fairly beamed at the idea. “Of what?” “Of having something to do with that accident up—” “Good gosh, no.” He laughed. “You hear that, Boney?” sometimes a great notion They both laughed. “Accusing you, that’s something . . .” I tried a laugh myself, but it came out sounding like Boney’s cough. “All I was saying, son”—he gave Boney a broad wink— “is that, if you’re interested, you come in for about five thousand dollars when he is finally declared dead. Five grand.” “That’s true, very true,” Boney intoned. “I had not thought about that, but it’s true.” “Why is it true? Is there a will?” “No,” Boney said. “A life-insurance policy.” “I happen to know about it, Leland, because I help Boney here—and myself, o’ course; the doctor must have his ‘cut,’ as they say—by directing potential clients to his agency—” “Daddy started it,” Boney informed me proudly. “Nineteenand-ten. Coastal Life and Accident.” “And some ten years ago Henry Stamper came in here for a physical, not particularly thinking about insurance, and I directed him—” I held up my hand, feeling a little dizzy. “Wait just a moment. Are you asking me to believe that Henry Stamper has been making payments on a policy naming as beneficiary a person he hasn’t seen in twelve years?” “It’s all very true, son . . .” “And didn’t look at a half-dozen times in the twelve years prior to that? A person to whom his last words were ‘suck in yer gut’? Doctor, there is a limit to human credulity . . .” “Say now, there’s your reason,” Boney exclaimed, shaking my shoulder slightly, “for going back to the house. You must get that policy, you see. To return to school.” His enthusiasm brought on a slow, dawning suspicion; “Just why”—I looked up the length of that stick arm—“is it I need a reason to go back to that house?” “And when you see Hank”—the doctor overrode my question—“tell him we are all . . . thinking of him.” I turned from the stick figure to the lard man. “Why are you all thinking of him?” “Lord, aren’t we all old friends of the family, all of us? Say, I tell you what: My grandkid drove me here. He’s sitting this very minute out in the sitting room. While I’m visiting Henry, the 674 ken kesey grandkid can drive you out in his automobile.” They worked like a team. I was no longer a sophomore, or a wedding guest, but a suspect in the hands of two Kafkaesque interrogators skilled at keeping their victim from getting any idea what he was about. “How ’bout it?” Boney asked. The doctor rose, blowing and wheezing, from his chair to answer for me. “Can’t beat that kind of service, can you?” He circled the desk at me; I felt trapped by the pressure of his juggernaut advance. “Wait a minute, now; what is it with you people?” I demanded, fighting my way to my feet. “What skin is it off your nose whether I see my brother again or not? What is it you are pushing?” They were both genuinely innocent and astounded by my question. “As a doctor, I merely—” “Say, I tell you what.” Boney’s hand snagged me once more. “When you see Hank you reckon you could tell him—and the wife—that our grocery truck’s gonna be coming out that way again. Tell him we will be more than happy to start up delivery again now that the truck’s making that loop. Tell him to signal what he needs on the flagpole just like always. Would you do that for me?” I finally gave up seeking a reason for their grasping pressure; I just wanted out from under it. I would leave pressure to Hank; he was more accustomed to it. I told Stokes I would give Hank the message, then tried to move toward the door; his old white thorns of fingers hung on and the two of them followed me into the waiting room, reluctant to let me get away now that they had set me moving. “Maybe,” the doctor said, “say, Boney, maybe Hank’d like a turkey for the day. I’d bet money that with the excitement these last few days they didn’t think to buy a turkey.” He fished under his smock for his wallet. “Here, I’ll just pay for a bird for Hank, how’s that?” “That’s a very Christian gesture,” Boney agreed solemnly. “Don’t you thing it is, son? Thanksgiving dinner without a old roasted gobbler just ain’t Thanksgiving dinner, is it?” I told them I shared their feelings about Thanksgiving exactly sometimes a great notion and again tried to make a break for the glass door, but again that spiny hand detained me and, moreover, I saw that the pimply Adonis who had stolen the Hershey bar from the café blocked my way. “This is the grandkid,” Boney informed me. “Larkin. Larkin, this is Leland Stamper. You’re going to give him a ride out to the Stamper house while I have my visit out with old Henry.” The grandkid scowled, snuffed, shrugged, and began zipping up his Jimmy Dean jacket, giving no indication that he remembered our previous meeting. “Yes, now that I think about it”—the doctor still toyed with his wallet—“I bet money there’s a lot of people in town would chip in to buy old Hank a Thanksgiving dinner . . .” “We’ll get a basket!” Boney exclaimed. I started to say that I doubted that Hank was in such dire straits just yet, when I realized that they weren’t offering him the charity because he needed it—“Cranberry preserves, too, son, yams, mincemeat . . . whatever else he needs, you have him just phone me, won’t you? We’ll take care of it.”—but because they needed to offer it. “Larkin, you just drop Mr. Stamper off and hurry right back for me. We got things need attending to...” But needed it for what? was the hanger. What and why? This overblown offering wasn’t like Les Gibbons’ need to drag the champ down off the throne. Because the champ was already down. So now why all this need to bug him with their benevolence? And not just these two clowns, but seemingly much of the rest of the town felt the same need. “What is it,” I asked the grandkid as I followed him across the parking lot through the blowing rain, “that they want from my brother, do you know? bestowing all this bounty on him. What do they need?” “Who knows?” he replied sullenly, opening the door to the same hotrod that had kicked gravel in my face a few days before. “Who cares?” he said as he slipped in behind the wheel; and, as I circled the car to the other door I heard him wonder, “Or who gives a big rosy rat’s ass?” Precisely, I thought, closing the door behind me; before I gave these other weighty questions the attention they deserve I 676 ken kesey should ask myself if I gave a big rosy rat’s ass about the quaint and curious needs of the quaint and curious little town of Wakonda-by-the-sea. None whatsoever. Not any colored ass from any sized rat. Unless, of course, by some chance, some obscure chance, some of the town’s quaint needs happened to correspond in some curious way with my own . . . “Frig.” The grandkid deftly snapped the car into gear and went screeching across the puddled parking lot. “I oughta be home inna whirlpool,” he informed me, to keep the subject of candy bars from coming up. “ ‘Stead of runnin’ round gettin’ stiff.” “Absolutely,” I agreed. “We had our last game of the season last night. With the Black Tornadoes of North Bend. I got a knee racked up the third quarter.” “Is that why it was the last game?” “No, I ain’t but third string. That’s why I oughta be home inna whirlpool, though . . .” “Because you ain’t but third string?” “Naw, because I got my knee racked up. Say, does your brother know we was puttin’ his pitcher on the blockin’ dummies for a while?” “I couldn’t say,” I told him, feigning interest in his sports activities while I tried to formulate some feelings about my own. “But I’ll pass the information on to him when I get to the house ...along with the free turkey and cranberries.” It shouldn’t be so complicated; I had my reasons for going out to the house: I was going out to try to get an insurance policy—I could tell Hank—and to try to acquire a traveling companion— I could tell Viv ...Now; I should be able to come up with a story to tell myself . . . “Damn right,” the grandkid mused, “on the blockin’ dummies an’ the tackling dummy too. Hank Stamper’s pitcher. Damn right! That was before the Skagit game. We was really choice before that game. We creamed Skagit. We was ahead thirty points in the third quarter, an’ I got to play all the fourth quarter.” “Is that why you got in the game last night?” sometimes a great notion “No,” he said reluctantly, “I got in because we was twenty-six points behind is why. They creamed us, forty-four to fourteen, our only loss of the season since Eugene.” Then he added, almost questioningly, “But North Bend wasn’t that good! They’d of never even touched us if we’d been as choice as with Skagit!” I didn’t comment; I leaned back, planning ahead, thinking that there wasn’t any reason why I couldn’t give myself the same story that I gave Viv. Because I honestly did want her to come away East with me... “No. They wasn’t that tough,” my driver went on to himself. “We was just off, that’s all; I know that’s all there is to the story...” And, listening to him give himself his reasons while I gave myself mine, I began to suspect that there might be a whole lot more to it than either of us knew.... The rain drizzles down. The sand-buggy bumps over the railroad tracks at the end of Main, turning up river. Draeger drives out of the motel yard, looking around for a restaurant where he can have a cup of coffee. Evenwrite sits beside his telephone, smelling of menthol, soap, and, ever so slightly, gasoline. Viv runs water over the empty soup dishes in the kitchen sink. Out the window, only inches above the river, two mergansers fly past wing to wing, flying frantically but barely moving ...as though the current beneath them extended in a force field beyond its own surface, striking them head-on. Their struggle is strange, agonizing, and Viv feels her arms ache for them as she watches. She has always been possessed of great empathy for other creatures. Or possessed by it. “But say ...I know about the ducks.” Her reflection is there again. “How do you feel?” Before the dim image in the kitchen window can be expected to respond, a car stops across the way at the landing. A figure steps out and walks toward the dock, cupping his hands to call . . . (When I seen Viv come hightailing out of the kitchen, drying her hands on the apron, I knew what she’d seen before I heard him holler. “Somebody at the landing,” she said, going past to the front-door hall. “I’ll go and get him. You aren’t dressed.” 678 ken kesey “Who is it?” I asked her. “Anybody we know?” “I couldn’t tell,” she said. “He was all bundled up and it’s raining hard.” She was out of sight a second, climbing into the big oilskin poncho. “But it looked like Joe Ben’s old mackinaw. I’ll be right back, honey . . .” She swung the big door booming shut behind her. I’m glad she said that about the mackinaw, I thought; I’m glad she gives me credit for having some eyes in my wooden head...) Viv answered my call for a boat. I watched her hurry from the house down through the milling dogs, tugging a voluminous parka about her head in an effort to keep dry. When she swung the boat in alongside the landing where I waited I saw that she hadn’t had much success. “Your hair is sopping. I’m sorry to get you out in this.” “That’s okay. I was needing to get out of the house anyway.” I stepped into the boat while she steadied it idling against a piling. “Our premature spring was short-lived,” I said. “They always are. Where have you been? We’ve been worried.” “At the hotel in town.” She gunned the motor and swung the bow banking into the current. I was grateful to her for not asking why I had spent the last three days in solitary. “How is Hank? Still under the weather? Is that why you are ferryman today?” “Well, he isn’t too bad. He’s downstairs now, watching the game, but then he’s never so sick but what he can’t watch a football game. I just didn’t think he was up to coming out in the wet. I don’t mind.” “I’m glad you did. I’ve never been much of a swimmer.” I saw her wince and tried to cover it over. “Especially with the water so high. You think it’ll flood?” She didn’t answer. She angled the boat slightly when she reached midstream to allow for the current, and concentrated on the navigating. After a stretch of silence I told her that I had been in to see the old man. “How is he? I haven’t been able to get away ...to see him.” “Not so good. Delirious. The doctor thinks it’s just a matter of time.” sometimes a great notion “That’s what I heard from Elizabeth Pringle. It’s too bad.” “Yeah. It wasn’t pretty seeing him that way.” “I guess not.” We concentrated again on the boatride. Viv fretted at her sopping hair, trying to tuck it into the poncho. “I was surprised to see you,” she said. “I thought you had gone. Back East.” “I plan to. A new semester will be starting soon . . . I’d like to make it.” Without taking her eyes from the water ahead she nodded. “That sounds like a good idea. You should finish your schooling.” “Yeah . . .” Then more riding; more silence . . . while our hearts screamed for us to stop and say something! “Yeah ...I’m looking forward to showing off my callused hands in various coffee houses in the Village. I’ve some friends who will be astonished to discover the word applies to the physical as well as the spiritual.” “What word is that?” “The word ‘callous.’ ” “Oh, I see.” She smiled. I went on matter-of-factly. “Then too, a cross-country bus trip should be something in the middle of winter. I anticipate snowstorms, hailstorms, perhaps even to be trapped overnight by a blizzard of terrible magnitude. I can see it clearly: the bus motor idling away, precious fuel used to keep the heater going; a little old lady rationing out her sack of cookies and tuna-fish sandwiches; a Boy Scout leader keeping the morale high by leading us in camp songs. It could be quite a trip, Viv—” “Lee . . .” she said without for an instant diverting her attention from the gray swirl of water in front of the boat, “I can’t come with you.” “Why?” I couldn’t help asking. “Why can’t you come?” “I just can’t, Lee. There’s nothing else to say.” And we rode on, with nothing else to say, it seemed, except that. We reached the dock and I helped her secure the boat and throw a covering over the motor. We walked in silence, side by side, down the dock, up the slick plank incline and across the 680 ken kesey yard to the door. Before she opened the door I touched her arm to speak again, but she turned to me, shaking her head no before the words could start. I sighed, surrendering speech, but held on to her arm. “Viv . . . ?”