Sometimes a Great Notion

by Ken Kesey

  The conductor calls. The two youngest boys move past the father into the train, muttering thanks, thank ya kindly for the wrapped lunches offered by the queue of relatives who have come to see them off. Their nervous, wet-eyed mother follows, kissing cheeks, pressing hands. The oldest boy next, with his fists knotted in his trousers pockets. The train bucks suddenly and the father grasps the bar and swings on board, lifting his hand to the waving relatives.

  "So long."

  "You write, Jonas, hear?"

  "We'll write. We look to see you folks following before long."

  "So long . . . so long."

  He turns to mount the hot iron steps and sees again that look as Henry passes from the landing into the car. Lord have mercy, he whispers, without knowing why. No, admit it; you did know. You knew it was the family sin come back from the pit, and you knew your part in it; you knew your part just as surely as you knew the sin. "A born sinner," he mutters, "born cursed."

  For, to Jonas and his generation, the family history was black with the stain of that selfsame sin: You know the sin. Curse of the Wanderer; curse of the Tramp; bitter curse of the Faithless; always turning their backs on the lot God had granted. . . .

  "Always troubled with itchy feet," contended the more easygoing.

  "Idiocy!" thundered those advocating stability. "Blasphemers!"

  "Just roamers."

  "Fools! Fools!"

  Migrants, is what the family's history shows. A stringy-muscled brood of restless and stubborn west-walkers, their scattered history shows. With too much bone and not enough meat, and on the move ever since that first day the first skinny immigrant Stamper took his first step off the boat onto the eastern shore of the continent. On the move with a kind of trancelike dedication. Generation after generation leapfrogging west across wild young America; not as pioneers doing the Lord's work in a heathen land, not as visionaries blazing trail for a growing nation (though they quite often bought the farms of discouraged pioneers or teams of horses from disillusioned visionaries making tracks back to well-blazed Missouri), but simply as a clan of skinny men inclined always toward itchy feet and idiocy, toward foolish roaming, toward believing in greener grass over the hill and straighter hemlocks down the trail.

  "You bet. We get to that place down the trail, then we sit back and take 'er easy."

  "Right. We got plenty time then. . . ."

  But, always, just as soon as the old man finally got all the trees cut and the stumps cleared and the old lady finally got the linseed coating she'd been so long griping about for her hemlock floor, some gangly, frog-voiced seventeen-year-old would stand looking out the window, scratching a stringy-muscled belly, and allow, "You know . . . we can do better than this yere sticker patch we got now."

  "Do better? Just when we finally got a toehold on 'er?"

  "I believe we can, yes."

  "You can do better, may-be--though I truly do have my mis-givin's about it--but your father an' me, we ain't leaving!"

  "Suit yourself."

  "No sir, Mister Antsy Pants! Your father an' me, we come to the end of it."

  "Then Father an' you suit yourselfs, 'cause I'm movin' on. You an' the old man do what you please."

  "Wait a minute now, bud--"

  "Ed!"

  "Just hold your horses now, makin' up my mind for me what I do, woman. Okay, bud, what egzackly was it you had in mind, just outta curiosity?"

  "Ed!"

  "Woman, the boy an' me is talkin'."

  "Oh, Ed . . ."

  And the only ones that ever stayed behind were either too old or too sick to continue west. Too old or too sick, or, as far as the family was concerned, too dead. For when one moved, they all moved. Tobacco-scented letters found in heart-shaped candy boxes in attics are filled with excited news of this moving.

  ". . . the air out here is real good."

  "... the kids do fine tho the school as you can well imagine this far from civilization is nothing to holler about."

  ". . . we look to see you folks out thisaway very soon now hear?"

  Or with the dejected news of restlessness:

  ". . . Lu tells me I should not pay any attention to you that you and Ollen and the rest always put a burr in my blanket but I don't know I tell her I don't know. I tell her for one thing I am not as of yet ready to settle that what we got here is the whole shebang and give up that we cannot improve our situation some. So I'll think on it . . ."

  So they moved. And if, as the years passed, some parts of the family went slower than others, moving only ten or fifteen miles during their lifetime, still the movement was always west. Some had to be dragged from tumbledown homes by insistent grandchildren. Gradually some even managed to be born and to die in the same town. Then, eventually, there came Stampers of a more sensibly practical nature; Stampers clearheaded enough to stop and stand still and look around; deep-thinking, broodful Stampers able to recognize that trait they began calling "the flaw in the family character" and to set about correcting it.

  These clearheaded men made a real effort to overcome this flaw, made a truly practical effort to put once and for all an end to this senseless fiddlefooting west, to stop, to settle down, to take root and be content with whatever portion the good Lord had allotted them. These sensible men.

  "All right now . . ." Stopping on a flat Midwestern land where they could see in all directions: "All right, I do feel we have come about far enough." Stopping and saying, "It's high time we put an end to this foolishness that has been prodding at our ancestors; when a man can stand here--and see in every direction and left's no better'n right and forward's got just as much sage and buffalo weed as backward, and over that rise yonder is just more flat, more of the same we been walkin' over for two hundred years, then why, praise Jesus, why go further?"

  And when no one could come up with a good reason the practical men gave a stiff nod and thumped a worn boot against the flatiron land: "All right. Then this is the whole shebang, boys, right here underfoot. Give up and admit it."

  To begin devoting their restless energies to pursuits more tangible than wandering, more practical than walking, pursuits like business and community and church. They acquired bank accounts, positions in local government, and even, sometimes, these stringy-muscled men, potbellies. Pictures of these men found in boxes in attics: black suits poised with rigid determination before a photographer's mural, mouths grim and resolute. Letters: ". . . we have come far enough."

  And they folded up in leather chairs like jackknives closing and climbing into scabbards. They bought family plots in cemeteries in Lincoln and Des Moines and Kansas City, these pragmatic men, and mail-ordered huge cushiony maroon chesterfields for their living rooms.

  "Ah boy. Yes sir. This is the life. It's about time."

  Only to be set in motion again by the first young wildeye able to sucker the old man into listening to his dreams. Admit; you knew that look even then; by the first frog-voiced young foot-itcher able to get Pop to believing that they could outdo this sticker patch by moving farther west. Be all set in plodding, restless motion again, you knew that look and could have saved us the heartache . . . like animals driven by a drought, by an unquenchable thirst--but you didn't--driven by a dream of a place where the water tastes like wine:

  This Springfield water tastes like turpentine,

  I'm goin' down . . . that long dusty road.

  Going until at last the whole family, the whole clan, reached the salty wall of the Pacific.

  "Where from here?"

  "Beats the piss outa me; all I know's this don't taste much like wine."

  "Where from here?"

  "I don't know." Then desperately: "But someplace, someplace else!" With a desperate and cornered grin. "Someplace else, I can tell ya." Not accepting God's intended lot, Jonas says under his breath, driven by a curse. You could have saved them the trouble of looking for that someplace. You know now that all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. Could you only of mustered the courage when yo
u first saw that devil's leer shining through Henry's grin there at the train station, you could of stopped it and saved us all the trouble. He turns his back on his son and lifts his hand to the flock of cousins and brothers who walk alongside the slowly moving train.

  "Mind, Jonas, you be thoughtful; don't be too stiff on Mary Ann or th' boys. It's a hard new country."

  "I won't, Nathan."

  "And mind, Jonas, them bad old Oregon bears and Indians, hee hee hee."

  "Pshaw, now, Louise."

  "Write, now, soon's you get settled. Old Kansas is looking gosh-awful flat."

  "We'll do that." You could of stopped it then, could you of only mustered the courage. "We'll write and advise you all."

  "Yessir; those bears and Indians, Jonas, don't let such as them get you all."

  The Oregon bears, Jonas Stamper found, were well fed on clams and berries, and fat and lazy as old house cats. The Indians, nourished on the same two limitless sources of food, were even fatter and a damn sight lazier than the bears. Yes. They were peaceful enough. So were the bears. In fact the whole country was more peaceful than he had expected. But there was this odd . . . volatile feeling about the new country that struck him the very day he arrived, struck him and stuck, and never left him all the three years he lived in Oregon. "What's so hard about this country?" Jonas wondered when they arrived. "All it needs is somebody to whip it into shape."

  No, it wasn't such as bears or Indians that got stern and stoic Jonas Stamper.

  "But I wonder how come it's still as unsettled as it is?" Jonas wondered when he arrived; others wondered when he left. "Tell me, weren't they a Jonas Stamper hereabouts?"

  "He was here, but he's gone."

  "Gone? Just up and gone?"

  "Just up and scoot."

  "What come of his family?"

  "They're still around, her'n' the three boys. Folks here are kinda helpin' keep their heads above water. Old Foodland Stokes sends 'em a bit of grocery every day or so, back up river. They got a sort of house--"

  Jonas started the big frame house a week after they settled in Wakonda. He divided three years, three short summers and three long winters, between his feed-and-seed store in town and his building site across the river--eight acres of rich riverbank land, the best on the river. He had homesteaded his lot under the 1880 Land Act before he left Kansas--"Live on the Highway of Water!"--homesteaded it sight unseen, trusting to the pamphlets that a riverbank site would be a good site for a patriarch to do the Lord's work. It had sounded good on paper.

  "Just scooted out, huh? That sure don't sound like Jonas Stamper. Didn't he leave anything?"

  "Family, feed store, odds and ends, and a whole pisspot of shame."

  He had sold a feed store in Kansas, a good feed store with a rolltop desk full of leatherbound ledgers to finance the move, then had sent the money ahead so it was already waiting for him when he arrived, waiting bright green and growing, like everything else in the rich new land, the rich new promising frontier he'd read about in all the pamphlets his boys had brought him from the post office back in Kansas. Pamphlets sparkling red and blue, ringing with wild Indian names like bird-call signals in the forest: Nakoomish, Nahailem, Chalsea, Silcoos, Necanicum, Yachats, Siuslaw, and Wakonda, at Wakonda Bay, on the Peaceful and Promising Wakonda Auga River, Where (the pamphlets had informed him) A Man Can Make His Mark. Where A Man Can Start Anew. Where (the pamphlets said) The Grass Is Green And The Sea Is Blue And The Trees And Men Grow Tall And True! Out In The Great Northwest, Where (the pamphlets made it clear) There Is Elbow Room For A Man To Be As Big And Important As He Feels It Is In Him To Be!1

  Ah, it had sounded right good on paper, but, as soon as he saw it, there was something . . . about the river and the forest, about the clouds grinding against the mountains and the trees sticking out of the ground . . . something. Not that it was a hard country, but something you must go through a winter of to understand.

  But that's what you did not know. You knew the cursed look of wanderlust but you did not know the hell that lust was leading you into. You must go through a winter first. . . .

  "I'll be switched. Just gone. It sure don't sound like old Jonas."

  "I wouldn't be too tough on him; for one thing, you got to go through a rainy season or so to get some idee."

  You must go through a winter to understand.

  For one thing, Jonas couldn't see all that elbow room that the pamphlets had talked about. Oh, it was there, he knew. But not the way he'd imagined it would be. And for another thing, there was nothing, not a thing! about the country that made a man feel Big And Important. If anything it made a man feel dwarfed, and about as important as one of the fish-Indians living down on the clamflats. Important? Why, there was something about the whole blessed country that made a soul feel whipped before he got started. Back home in Kansas a man had a hand in things, the way the Lord aimed for His servants to have: if you didn't water, the crops died. If you didn't feed the stock, the stock died. As it was ordained to be. But there, in that land, it looked like our labors were for naught. The flora and fauna grew or died, flourished or failed, in complete disregard for man and his aims. A Man Can Make His Mark, did they tell me? Lies, lies. Before God I tell you: a man might struggle and labor his livelong life and make no mark! None! No permanent mark at all! I say it is true.

  You must go through at least a year of it to have some notion.

  I say there was no permanence. Even that town was temporary. I say it. All vanity and vexation of the spirit. One generation passeth away, and another cometh: but the earth abideth forever, or as forever as the rain lets it.

  You must rise from your quilts early that morning, without waking the wife or boys, and walk from the tent into a low, green fog. You have not stepped out onto the bank of the Wakonda Auga but into some misty other-world dream . . .

  And even as I pass away, that blamed town, that piteous little patch of mud wrested briefly away from the trees and brush, it shall pass also. I knew so the moment I saw it. I knew all the time I lived there and I knew when death took me back. And I know now.

  Fog is draped over the low branches of vine maple like torn remnants of a gossamer bunting. Fog ravels down from the pine needles. Above, up through the branches, the sky is blue and still and very clear, but fog is on the land. It creeps down the river and winds around the base of the house, eating at the new yellow-grained planks with a soft white mouth. There is a quiet hiss, not unpleasant, as of something pensively sucking . . .

  For what profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun if the trees and the brush and the moss strive everlastingly to take it back? Strive everlastingly until a soul felt that the town was only a sort of prison cell with green prison walls of brush and vine and he had to labor everlastingly, day in day out, just to hang on to whatever pitiful little profit he might have made, labor everlastingly day in day out just to hang on to a floor of mud and a ceiling of clouds so low sometimes he felt he must stoop. . . . Floor and ceiling and a green prison wall of trees. I say it. The town? It may grow, but abide? It may grow and spread and proliferate, but abide? No. The old forest and land and river will prevail, for these things are of the earth. But the town is of man. I say it. Things cannot abide which are new and wrought by man. Is there anything whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath already of old time, which was before us. I say it.

  ... Yawning, walking thigh-deep through the ground-mist toward the house, you wonder vaguely if you are still asleep and at the same time not asleep, still dreaming and at the same time not dreaming. Couldn't it be? This swathed and muffled ground is like a sleep; this furry silence is like dream silence. The air is so still. The foxes aren't barking in the woods. The crows aren't calling. You can see no ducks flying the river. You cannot hear the usual morning breeze fingering the buckthorn leaves. It is very still. Except for that soft, delicious, wet hissing . . .

  And space? Didn't the pamphlets claim there was elbow room? Perhaps, but w
ith all that hellish greenery on every side could a soul tell it? Could he see more'n a couple hundred yards in any direction? Back on the plains, there is space. I will admit that a man back on the plains might feel a freezing emptiness in his bowels when he looked in all directions and saw nothing but what has gone before and what will come, nothing but far-stretching flat land and sage. But I say a man can get accustomed , get comfortable and accustomed to emptiness, just the way he can get accustomed to the cold or accustomed to the dark. That place, however, that . . . place, when I cast my eyes about, at fallen trees decaying under the vines, at the rain chewing away the countryside, at the river which runs into the sea yet the sea is not full . . . at all . . . at things such as . . . a soul cannot find the words . . . such as plants and flowers, the beasts and the birds, the fishes and the insects! I do not mean that. At all the things going on and on and on. Don't you see? It just all came at me so downright thick and fast that I knew I could never get accustomed to it! But I do not mean that. I mean. I had no choice but do as I did; God as my witness . . . I had no choice!

  . . . In a reverie of movement you dip your hand into the nail keg and remove a few nails. You place the nails between your teeth and take up your hammer and go along the wall you were working on, half wondering if the blow of the hammer will be able to penetrate this cushioning silence or be stolen away by the fog and drowned in the river. You notice you are walking on tiptoe . . .

  After the second year Jonas was sick with longing to leave Oregon and return to Kansas. After the third year his longing had turned to a constant burn. But he dared not mention it to his family, especially not to his eldest. For the three years of rain and wilderness that had weakened the stiff, practical plainsman's starch in Jonas had nurtured a berry-vine toughness in his sons. Like the beasts and plants, the three boys grew on and on. Not larger by size; they were, like most of the family, small and wiry, but larger by look, harder. They watched the look in their father's trapped eyes get more frantic after each flood, while their own eyes turned to green glass and their faces to leather.