Goshen Road

by Bonnie Proudfoot

  SEVEN

  MR. CLUTCH (1977)

  IT STARTED OFF LIKE A PICTURE POSTCARD, THE SNOW drifting down in big feathery flakes, weighing down the boughs of the spruce trees along the drive. A circle of brown earth ringed the base of each tree, and bright red birds clustered around the feed corn I’d set out, hopping around from the pines to the ground and back up again into little pillows of snow, twirling and swooping like a redbird ballet. Before long the snow came down so fast and thick I couldn’t even see the pines, much less the road or the woods across the way. I stood at the window, stew simmering on the stove, watching the sky go from gray to grayer, wondering where those poor little birds were going to hide to keep themselves warm, and wondering when my husband’s red Ford pickup would be coming up the drive. This was the second day in a row that Alan Ray was late getting home, the darkness creeping in and the roads a blanket of snow; the plow might not hit this road for days. I had no way to know where he got himself off to unless he picked up a phone and rang up to the house, and Alan Ray Munn just did not do that kind of thing.

  Last night I fed the boys, bathed them, and had them in bed before Alan Ray showed up, almost 9 p.m., his hair flying every which way, and his flannel shirt buttoned in the wrong places. He walked in, tossed his coat in the direction of the closet, rumbled around in the fridge, popped an Iron City, set himself down on his La-Z-Boy, and fell asleep with a Marlboro burning down to the filter while he held onto the can. But tonight, Wednesday, there was weather, wind tearing through the pines, clattering the window panes, knocking the TV cables against the outside of the trailer, the rattling and howling about to make a girl lose her grip.

  Long after dark, a good five inches of snow had fallen already, and it seemed like more on the way. With him up in the hills with a crew of loggers who don’t have the good sense to quit when snow starts to fall, with his almost bald tires, and the way these steep roads glaze over with ice, all I can say is that I was about at wits’ end by 7:30. I called up to Pap’s to see if he had any ideas about where that husband of mine had got himself to.

  The headlights came on in Pap’s Lincoln across the long field that separated our houses, and it hit me that the snow was probably too deep in our driveway for him to drive up to our trailer or to turn around if he did get the car up the drive. I set out supper for the boys and told them to stay put. Out I went, with a garden spade and mud boots, and I started shoveling even though it was almost too dark to see. I could not get so much as a path dug before Pap pulled off to the side of the road. That garden shovel could barely hold a teacup of snow; times like this, I wished we had a decent snow shovel so I could dig a proper turnaround spot. I hurried down to meet him, needles of snow darting in his headlights.

  Keeping the car running, Pap asked if we needed anything, and promised that he’d run through town to see whether Alan Ray’s truck was parked anywhere. I hated to make him head out like that on a night like this, but if he could be found, Pap would find him. Pap said that he’d be back before long with news, and that anyway he needed a pack of Luckies, some Coleman fuel for the lanterns, and Mom needed some Pepto-Bismol. I knew Pap well enough to know that he got restless now that he was retired, and that he liked having a job to do. Pap said not to worry, Aunt Nelda had a police scanner, and no one had wrecked in Fairchance so far tonight.

  Two hours passed. The cable went out, and all we could see was crazy static on the tube. Snow outside and snow inside, I told the boys for giggles. The lights flickered off, we hunted for a flashlight and candles, they came back on. The boys sat at the table, melting candle wax into little blobs, saying “poop” and laughing, making faces at each other and poking their fingers into the flame. I swear, if they asked me once more when their daddy was coming home, I would’ve lost it. Around 9, the boys finally in bed, after I’d once again swept the snow off the stairs and cleared a little path from the drive to the door, the Ford came sliding up, one windshield wiper going like mad and one stuck on the upper edge of the windshield. Alan Ray kind of waved, he sort of slid out of the pickup, a can of IC in his hand; all he had on his feet were socks. On the main road a short distance behind his truck was a second set of headlights with snow drifting in the beams, Pap’s, but he turned off before our place, at his own driveway.

  Right then I realized I was between a rock and a hard place. Oh, I could ask Alan Ray where he’d been these last two nights, and get him riled up, or I could not know and just be glad Pap had got him back home. I knew I’d never get anywhere asking Pap, so I bit my tongue while Alan hung his wet socks on the back of a chair next to the space heater, while he shook the snow off his cap and set it down on the counter, and while he filled the kitchen sink with warm water and about drowned his face into it. His bare feet left tracks across the floor. Without a word I set out his supper and handed him a dish towel.

  He slapped me on the butt and disappeared into the bedroom without giving the stew a second glance. Fine, I thought. Just fine. Starve yourself, I thought. But still not a word. I wished I had a hobby, something I could be doing to ignore him, like cutting coupons or quilting, but instead I wiped up the table, put away the dishes, and sat and smoked, kept my questions to myself, then headed to the bedroom. Alan Ray was sprawled across the bed, face down in his union suit, all of him on top of the bed quilt, long arms and hairy legs taking up both sides of the bed, smelling like a brewery and snoring like a chainsaw.

  Next day the sun was out, and Dessie rang up at 6 to tell me the sawmill and the schools were closed due to the heavy snow. The drifts were over the tires of the truck. The boys were still asleep, so I took some time to make a path so the boys could get out to play in the snow. As I walked back in, Alan Ray rose up, moaning about how every bone in his body hurt. He looked halfway to pitiful in the way he shuffled his feet so slow. He sat at the table in his union suit and his army vest, smoking his morning Marlboro and drinking his morning Coke. I trod softly. A wife can pick a fight when her man is in a weakened state, but sometimes it comes back to kick her in the ass. Finally I could stand it no longer.

  “You going up in the woods today?” I asked Alan Ray, starting with an easy question, one I was pretty sure I knew the answer to.

  He looked back at me with a cockeyed smile on his face, a bristle of red stubble on his chin. He squinted at the one cracked fingernail that had half come off. “Nah, they ain’t going to cut timber today. Too slick and wet up there. Hell, the skidder’s in the shop for busted hydraulics. This weather’s tore the hell out of the heavy equipment.” He stubbed out his cigarette into the lid of a baby food jar. “Maybe Lux will be called in to the mill, but none of the crews are going into the woods for the rest of the week.”

  Another week’s paycheck coming up short, I thought, but did not want to point out. Good thing I had set a bit aside for gas, cigs, and a few groceries. “Are you sick or just hungover? You look like you got run over by a tractor-trailer,” I asked him, but stopped when he shook his head. He went to the sink, squinted into the mirror, soaked a dish towel in cool water, and covered half his head with it, just a crooked grin, a bristly chin, and an Adam’s apple sticking out below. “Don’t start, woman,” he said.

  Hmmm, I thought. Don’t “woman” me. What’s a wife to do? Moments like this, I think I hear two voices in my head. One voice, the one that sounds like my father says, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace,” and the other one sounds like my sister Dessie, saying, “Bite your tongue and wait and see; ain’t nothing you can say or do will make a bit of difference anyways.”

  Yeah, right, I answered myself, we been down this road last spring, and I saw where it led. Alan Ray, walking in at all times of the night, chasing that lowlife barmaid KaraMay McAddams from Reader, finally one night showing up with a black eye and a bloody nose from her truck-driver boyfriend, meanwhile Alan Ray telling everyone he fell off a four-wheeler. And I believed him at first, both me and Dessie did, but we’re not going to fall for that again. I’ll never forget a Dear
Abby column a few years back, where the husband wrote to ask whether it was a good idea to come clean and tell his wife he was stepping out on her. Dear Abby told that husband to keep it to himself if he wanted to keep his marriage. Dear Abby probably did not have her man showing up late for supper night after night, and her finding out the truth a month later from her sister’s husband. First time, shame on him, second time, shame on me.

  Just then the boys came tearing out of their room, barely able to hold still long enough to get their pants on over their pj’s and find their boots to play in the snow. Alan Ray held them, first Bertie, then AJ, while I stuffed their feet into plastic bags over their socks and then stuffed their pants into their shoes. They kept hugging on their dad, which made me almost want to bawl, the worry and the joy like a windshield wiper, beating back and forth in my brain.

  I gave the boys some feed corn to set out for the birds and told them to stay in the yard where I could see them and come in if they got cold. Alan Ray headed outside to shovel out the truck, wearing an old pair of work boots that flapped around at the sole. I offered him some bread sacks to line his socks too, but he shook his head no. I kept it to myself but I was sure those old boots of his would soak up water like a sponge. Good, I thought, serves you right. Where the hell has that man been these nights? And where the hell had his work boots gone? What if one day he just did not come home? How would I ever raise these two hellions without their dad around? What’s that old joke? Why is a wife like a mushroom? ’Cause they keep her in the dark and feed her shit all day long. A man can live with anger, but a woman lives with mad.

  IF THERE is one thing I cannot abide, it is someone telling me what to do. You want me, I’ll be there, but don’t be telling me I have to be there, or you won’t see me at all. I heard it nonstop when I was growing up, every teacher saying read this, Alan Ray, write this, Alan Ray, all of it just a bunch of nonsense. If you write something five times, you ain’t gonna care about it any more than if you write it one time. I heard the same thing from my pa, especially when I got into high school and closed in on the end of eleventh grade. What are you doing with your life? Join the Army, join the Navy, join the Marines, get a job in the steel mills, be a man. My pa ran with some guys from the mills, and ain’t a one of them what I would call happy. All they did was bitch about their bosses and bitch twice as much about the union stewards. Shit. Two sets of bosses. I knew a couple of guys went into the marines, and them guys did nothing all day but follow orders, and once they got out, they drove down the road with their noses in the air, not a look back at their own people. That’s why I picked the Guard. First thing I asked the recruiter when he came to Middletown is if I had to finish school to join up, and he said not at all, if you’re eighteen, you don’t even need your folks to sign. I signed then and there, as I’d turned eighteen that month, and in two weeks I was out of that school building and into the fresh air, drilling and driving a Jeep around, with a new set of clothes, a new pair of boots, and a cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.

  I liked the Guard and the Guard liked me! So what if Pa ragged on me about keeping the family tradition with the infantry. Maybe some men can join the service and save the world, I wanted to stay put and help out my neighbors. We got plenty of action, sandbagging Decker’s Creek when it flooded, helping out with first aid and evacuation when Camille hit Mississippi. The best thing about the Guard was artillery training drills out behind the barracks, packing clips with shiny new rounds, the stink of the burnt gunpowder, and the sergeant calling our shots, then cleaning our weapons, then hanging around waiting for supper playing basketball. I liked basketball, too. I wasn’t the fastest, but I was one of the tallest, and those guys could count on me. When I got in the zone, I could shoot from anywhere, and when I wasn’t shooting, I could always block a shot or pick up a rebound. No one had to tell me what to do on the basketball court. The second best thing to sex, seeing a ball drop right into a basket from near half-court, everyone stopping dead in their tracks and staring as the hoop opened wide and swallowed up the ball.

  I don’t know whose idea it was, but the other day we couldn’t get nothing done in the woods so I stopped into the AmVets for a cold one. A few older guys from the Korean War stood around, but I just could not sit at the bar and listen to the same crazy stories about half freezing to death halfway across the world. I headed into the rec room, mostly to blow off steam. I guess Coach Campbell could see right away I had talent, just a little rusty, that’s all. It’s about time the AmVets decided to round up a team, play other teams across North Central and up the Ohio River, the Moose, the Lions, the Eagles, maybe for charity or just for beer money. I say they’re just waiting to be schooled. So I said, “Hey, I’m in!” It ain’t hard; get me the ball. The Gunners can show them other teams how it’s done. When it’s too cold or wet to cut or when the equipment is in the shop, I can stop in to the AmVets and get in some practice. As we say in the Guard, “Always ready, always there!”

  FOR THE first time all week, temperature climbed a bit, and the frost on the windows started to melt in little circles, just enough for me to see Lux’s pickup as it splashed through the slush on the road on the way to the mill. Three days of snow and ice, three days of my man disappearing a little before noon and not coming back until way past dark. On the good side, even though he was late, he still was coming home of an evening. On the bad side, he did not seem to care whether I had a clue where he’d been keeping himself. I knew he wasn’t working because he did not ask me to pack a lunch pail. I knew the bills would be piling up and the groceries would be running out, and I had to stretch out everything from the Cheerios to the washing powder. I knew Alan Ray’s work boots showed up, because he wore them home. I knew he had blisters on his feet, nosebleeds in his sleep, and he woke up a couple of times a night with coughing fits, rolling over to spit into a coffee can on his side of the bed.

  Around dawn, Alan Ray rolled over in bed, but he didn’t hurry to get dressed, saying he might stop by the mill around noon to check on things. He woke up in the best mood he’d been in all week. “Come on over here,” he said to me, in the way of his, a smile on his face that says he had something he wanted me to see. “Hey, you,” he said. “Come on back to bed.”

  Here’s my chance, I thought. “Alan Ray,” I said, holding my ground. “If I ask you something, will you tell me the God’s honest truth?”

  When Alan Ray smiled, I couldn’t help but smile with him. “Depends,” he said, but I could see that he wanted something from me, and he wanted it bad enough. “I get to ask you something first,” he said.

  “Fair enough,” I answered.

  “What’s the best kind of wood there is?” he asked.

  “Alan Ray, that’s a trick question!” I shot back.

  “Morning wood,” he said. “Check it out.” He started to pull the quilt down, but I grabbed it and pulled it back up, taking a quick look to see if the boys were stirring.

  I geared up. “Where you been, then, these past three nights?” I blurted out, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  Alan Ray looked at me, his blue eyes full of sleep and sex, his side of the bed looking tempting and warm. “If I tell you, will you promise to quit talking for five minutes?”

  I nodded, feeling like my heart was about to bang out of my chest, but somehow hoping that this was one of those times a man might not be able to lie to a woman.

  “OK, then.” he said. “I been reporting to basketball duty with some o’ them boys at the AmVets. We got a game coming up tomorrow and we’ve been practicing up. Now will you shut the bedroom door and get back into bed?”

  “You been reporting . . . ?” I asked, but he put his left hand under the covers and his right hand over his mouth and made a zipping motion with his index finger. I almost asked him if KaraMay McAddams had got herself a job as a barmaid there at the AmVets, but I had a feeling I had got all the information out of him that I could get for one morning.

  THE FIRST thing I a
sked when they told me I was on the team was if I could be number 44, just like Jerry West, Mr. Clutch. It’s my lucky number. Coach Campbell said they didn’t have any jerseys with that high of a number on it. They did have a number 4. That would do just fine, I told him, close enough. We found a dozen guys in no time, the only requirement being that a player was in some branch of the service. We all took a few free throws for practice, took the ball down the court, that kind of thing, next thing I know, Coach asked me to play power forward. And I said, “If you got the time, I got the game!”

  That first night I swear I was on fire at practice, blocking, shooting, stealing the ball. I felt like a kid again. The guys on the team were from age eighteen to about fifty, with me somewhere in the middle, but I played my ass off, to show them kids how it’s done. Next day I was a little stiff, had a few blisters, but a couple beers and I was right back on the court. Every time Coach looked for someone to take the ball, I was there.

  Best thing about the AmVets is you never knew who was going to show up, buying rounds for the team. There was always some kind of food at the clubhouse, chili, beans and cornbread, sloppy joes. Hell, a man has to wake up and go somewhere; he can’t just hang around the house like an old woman. I look back at my life after the Guard, and I feel like I have been the guy who wakes up, goes to a job, comes back home, and does it again the next day. But what kind of life is that? It might be OK for some, for Lux, maybe. A guy like Lux, he don’t take no time to smell the roses. Where does that get anyone? You work yourself to death, and you still can’t afford to pay the undertaker. The joke’s on you. As I always said, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

  THE SNOW started in again on Saturday, the day so cold, bleak, and gloomy that it seemed like the birds were afraid to fly out for their corn. I waited in the doorway of the trailer just long enough to see the redbirds hopping around, feathers all fluffed out, and the little black-and-white ones, too, coming down in flocks to get the corn and stay warm. I’d been holding my breath that they did not freeze to death in the cold air overnight.