Sometimes a Great Notion

by Ken Kesey

  To prove his point he let his head drop back to the pillow on the seat and closed his eyes. He grinned broadly--"You'll see"--his lips slackened, parted, and in another minute he was snoring and muttering away. "Ya must not buy that place from Elkins. Mark this well . . ." Great God, I thought, looking at the yellow grillwork of this new dragon, what have you come back to?

  I turned away from the stubble-cheeked sight beside me to stare out the bus window at the receding geometry of the Willamette Valley farmland--rectangle walnut groves, parallelograms of bean-fields, green trapezoid pastures dotted with red cattle; the abstract splash of autumn--and tried to assure myself, You have just come back to quaint old Oregon is all. That's all, quaint, beautiful, blooming Oregon . . .

  But the dreamer beside me hiccupped and added, ". . . place is jus' overrun with Canada thistle an' nigger-heads." And my reassuring picture of assurance faded like the wind.

  (. . . only a few miles ahead of Lee's bus, on the same road, Evenwrite decides to stop at the Stamper house before going on into Wakonda. He wants to confront Hank with the evidence, to see the look on the bastard's face when he sees we got the goods on him!)

  We crested the summit and started down. I caught sight of a sign on a narrow white bridge that stood like a guidepost in my memory. WILDMAN CREEK, the sign instructed me. Meaning the little stream we had just crossed. Fancy that, man, ol' Wildman Creek; how my little imagination used to seize upon that name when I accompanied Mother on one of her frequent trips to Eugene and back. I leaned close to the window to see if any of the creatures I had fashioned still inhabited the prehistoric banks. Down a familiar stretch of highway Wildman Creek ran, snorting and squalling, foam whipping about the mossy teeth of rock, shaggy green hair of pine and cedar slashings, a beard matted with fern and berry vine . . . Through the fogging window I watched him as he crouched snarling in a little glade, catching his breath in a blue pool before he went leaping off again down a grade, tearing away bank and bottom in a frenzy of impatience, and I recalled that he was the first of the tributaries that would eventually merge down these slopes into big Wakonda Auga--the Shortest Big river (or Biggest Short, pick your own) in the world.

  ( Joe Ben answered Evenwrite's honking and took the boat across to get him. Inside the house they found Hank reading the Sunday funnies. Evenwrite shoved the report under his nose and demanded, "How does this smell, Stamper?" Hank took a long sniff, looking about. "Smells like somebody in here dirtied his britches, Floyd. . . .")

  And watching, seeing half-remembered farmhouses and landmarks stroking past, I couldn't quite shake the sensation that the road I traveled moved not so much through miles and mountains, as back, through time. Just as the postcard had come forward. This uneasy sensation provoked a glance at my wrist, and I thereupon discovered that my days of inactivity had allowed my self-winder to unwind.

  "Say, excuse me." I turned again to the sack across from me. "Could you tell me the time?"

  "The time?" His stubble split in a grin. "Golly, fella, we don't have such a thing as the time. You from outa state, ain't that so?"

  I admitted it and he thrust hands in his pockets and laughed as though they were tickling him in there. "Time, eh? Time? They got the time so fouled up that I guess there doesn't nobody really know it. You take me," he offered, leaning the whole prize toward me. "Now you take me. I'm a millworker an' I work switch shifts, sometimes weekends off, sometimes a day here, a night someplace else, so you'd think that'd be enough of a mess, wouldn't you? But then they got this time thing and I sometimes work one day standard, the next day daylight. Sometimes even come to work on daylight and go home on standard. Oh boy, time? I tell you, you name it. We got fast time, slow time, daylight time, night time, Pacific time, good time, bad time . . . Yeah, if we Oregonians was hawking time we'd be able to offer some variety! Awfullest mix-up they ever had."

  He laughed and shook his head, looking as though he could not have enjoyed the confusion more. The trouble started, he explained, when the Portland district was legislated daylight time, and the rest of the state standard. "All them dang farmers got together is why daylight got beat for the rest of the state. Danged if I see why a cow can't learn to get up at a different time just as easy as a man, do you?" During the ride I managed to find out that the chambers of commerce of other large cities--Salem, Eugene--had decided to follow Portland's lead because it was better for their business, but the danged mud-balls in the country would have no part of such high-handed dealing with their polled wishes and they continued to do business on standard. So some towns didn't officially change to daylight but adopted what they called fast time, to be used only during the week. Other towns used daylight only during store hours. "Anyway, what it comes down to is nobody in the whole danged all-fired state knowin' what time it is. Don't that take all?" I joined him in his laughter, then settled back to my window, pleased that the whole danged all-fired state was as ignorant of the time of day as I was; like brother Hank signing his name in capitals, it fit.

  (At the house Hank finished glancing through the report, then asked of Evenwrite, "How come such a big strike tryin' to get a little free time, anyhow? What are you boys gonna do with a few extra hours a day if you get it?" "Never mind, that. In this day and age a fellow needs more free time." "Might be, but I'm damned if I'm gonna foot the bill for that fellow's free time.")

  Down through the druid wood I saw Wildman join with Cleaver Creek, put on weight, exchange his lean and hungry look for one of more well-fed fanaticism. Then came Chichamoonga, the Indian Influence, whooping along with its banks war-painted with lupine and columbine. Then Dog Creek, then Olson Creek, then Weed Creek. Across a glacier-raked gorge I saw Lynx Falls spring hissing and spitting from her lair of fire-bright vine maple, claw the air with silver talons, then crash screeching into the tangle below. Darling Ida Creek slipped demurely from beneath a covered bridge to add her virginal presence, only to have the family name blackened immediately after by the bawdy rollicking of her brash sister, Jumping Nellie. There followed scores of relatives of various nationalities: White Man Creek, Dutchman Creek, Chinaman Creek, Deadman Creek, and even a Lost Creek, claiming with a vehement roar that, in spite of hundreds of other creeks in Oregon bearing the same name, she was the one and only original. . . .

  Then Leaper Creek . . . Hideout Creek . . . Bossman Creek . . . I watched them one after another pass beneath their bridges to join in the gorge running alongside the highway, like members of a great clan marshaling into an army, rallying, swelling, marching to battle as the war chant became deeper and richer.

  (At the peak of the argument Old Henry came crashing in, making so much noise neither Hank nor Evenwrite could hear. Joe Ben took the old man aside. "Henry, you bein' in here is gonna make things worse. How about you waiting over in the pantry--" "The boogerin' pantry!" "Sure; that way you can sneak a listen without them being onto you, you see?")

  Stamper Creek was the last of the small tributaries to join. Family history had it that this was the creek up which my Uncle Ben had disappeared in a frenzy of drink and despair to masturbate himself to death. This creek crossed under the highway, fell into the gorge with all the others, and these waters enlisted the South Fork, which had been rallying its own band from the mountains to my left, then, with a catching of breath and a racing of pulse, I saw what had a few miles back been wild streams and rivulets turn from charging green and white into the wide, composed, blueback surface of the Wakonda Auga, moving across the green valley like liquid steel.

  There should have been background music.

  (Through the crack in the pantry door old Henry could hear Hank and Evenwrite speaking. The voices were angry, he could tell that much. He concentrated, trying to make out what they were saying, but his own breath was too loud; it roared about the little closet like a gale. Cain't hear so red-hot no more. Breath pretty good, though, jest listen. He grinned at himself in the dark, smelling the apples in their boxes, the Clorox smell of rat droppings, the banan
a oil of the old shotgun he held . . . Yeah, and smell good, too. Keen nose still on the old dog. He grinned, fumbling with the shotgun in the dark, wishing he could hear clear enough to know what to do.)

  When the bus dropped on down out of the foothills and rounded a curve and I got my first look at the house across that cold blue surface, I received something of a pleasant shock; the old house was ten times more striking than I remembered. In fact, it did not seem possible that I could have forgotten its looking so magnificent. They must have rebuilt it completely, I thought. But as the bus drew closer I was forced to concede that I could discern no actual change, no repairs or renovations. If anything, it looked older. But, yes, that was it. Someone had removed the cracked coat of cheap white paint from all the sides. The window sills, the shutters, and all the other trimmings had been kept up in dark green, almost blue-green, but the rest of the house had been relieved of all paint; the crazy porch with its rough-hewn posts, the broad handsplit shaking that covered roof and sides, the huge front door--all had been stripped to allow the salt wind and bleaching rain to polish the wood to a rich pewter-gray shine.

  The bushes along the bank were trimmed, but instead of being attacked with that mathematical dedication one so often finds in suburban landscaping, they had been trimmed for a purpose, to let in light, or to afford a better view of the river and make the dock walk more accessible. The flowers that bloomed at random around the porch and along the sides of the embankment had obviously required great care and attention, but again there was nothing forced or unnatural: they were not flowers bred in Holland and raised in California and flown in to be pampered in local nurseries; they were the flowers common to the area, rhododendron and wild rose, trillium and ghost fern, and even some of the cursed Himalaya berry that the denizens of the coast battle the year round.

  I was thunderstruck because, difficult as it was for me to imagine either old Henry or brother Hank or even Joe Ben accidentally achieving the subtle, spare beauty that I saw across the river there, it was a hundred times more ridiculous imagining that any of them had done it on purpose.

  (It useta be so simple when I could hear better. Things was easy to figure. You come up to a rock you either jumped it or heaved it outten the path. Now I don't know. Twenty or thirty years ago I'd of made sure there were a shell in this barrel instead of make sure there ain't. Now I don't know. The old nigger don't hear so clear no more is one trouble.)

  With my last dollar I purchased from the bus driver the privilege of alighting in front of the garage instead of having to ride eight miles on into town and walk back. As I stood in the dust the driver advised me that my measly buck paid for nothing more than his stopping and letting me off; he couldn't foul up his schedule by opening the baggage compartment--"Sonny this ain't the Wells Fargo Stage Coach!" And left me protesting in his exhaust.

  So there stands our hero, with nothing but the wind in his hair, the clothes on his back, and the carbon monoxide in his nostrils. Quite a contrast, I mused, crossing the road, from that boatload of essentials I left with twelve years ago. I hope the calf is well fatted.

  On the gravel apron near the garage a new pea-green Bonneville gleamed in the sun. I walked past it and on into the three-sided affair that served as shelter, machine shop, dock-house, and garage. Grease and dust upholstered the floor and walls in a rich mauve velvet; mud hornets whizzed through dusty sunbeams near the roof; a yellow jeep heaped with equipment rested boxlike and resigned to its load near one wall, and beyond its cracked headlights I saw that Hank had purchased a bigger and brighter motorcycle; it was tethered on a chain against the back wall and bedecked with black leather and polished brass like a show horse in parade trappings. I looked about the garage for a phone; I had taken for granted that they must have installed some kind of device for signaling when a boat was desired, but I saw nothing, and when I glanced through the cobwebbed window toward the house across the river I caught sight of something that made me forsake all hope of such modern convenience; swung from a pole was a tattered cloth with numbers on it, the signal used for ordering wares from the Stokes grocery truck that came by every other day, the same primitive method of communication that had been going on years before my birth.

  (But by god the old hound don't need good ears for some things goddammit. He don't need good ears to know where to draw the boogin' line! And all this goddam telling me it's best old man you keep outta sight and outta trouble that don't set so good. I get tired! I get tired of!)

  I left the garage and was wondering how my modulated tenor, tuned for polite classroom intercourse back in a civilized world, could be expected to carry across the expanse of water, when I saw a disturbance at the massive front door across the way. (By god I maybe can't hear so good but I know what's right and what ain't by god if I don't!) I saw a stocky man in a brown suit come running across the lawn in thick-legged haste, holding his hat to his head with one hand and an attache case in the other, shouting back at the house. Stirred by the shouts, a battalion of hounds charged from beneath the house and the man cut short his tirade, paused a moment to flail at the pack with the case, which burst open in a bright yellow blizzard of paper, turned to run again, dogs and paper flapping at his heels. (By god one thing I just ain't about to tolerate is!) The front door banged again and another figure came charging out (goddammit is is is;) brandishing an ugly black shotgun and making a clamor that put to shame the barking and shouting that had gone before. The man in the suit dropped his case, turned to recover it, saw the terrifying approach of this new menace, and ran on without it down the incline to the dock, leaped into the fire-engine-red launch at the mooring, and began wildly jerking at the motor rope. He paused once to look back up the plank walkway at the awesome creature storming through the dogs and bearing vengefully down on him, then redoubled his frantic efforts to start the motor (Get back! Henry Stamper, you gone crazy with age there's laws in this country [is IS is] oh Jesus he's got a shotgun, Start! Start!) as the other man came closer and closer (What's wrong'th this boogin' gun [Start! Start!] I'll by the goddam see to who unloaded one thing I won't tolerate by god is is is) louder and louder. (Start! oh god here he comes [IS IS IS] oh god START!)

  Across the river Henry had dropped his gun. No; now he had it again! Now he was down. Now he was moving toward the dock again! His hair flew out behind him in a long white mane. His arm pumped him onward. He was impressive in a plaid shirt and a pair of knee-length wool undershorts and a plaster cast that ran in one piece from the tip of one foot seemingly all the way up his side and out over his shoulder, forcing him to carry that arm bent before him as though ossified there. Why, the old trouper has grown so venerably ancient, I thought, that he is preserving his matchless idiocy for posterity by gradually having himself done over in limestone (if anybody goddammit thinks for one minit that just because I'm I'm I'm).

  He swayed and teetered in his restricted advance and struck at the welter of hounds with the shotgun, which served alternately as firearm, crutch, and club. He reached the dock and I could hear the thundering boom of his plaster leg as it sounded on the boards, the report reaching me a second after the foot set down, so the sound appeared to issue from the lifting foot instead of the dock. He lumbered forward down the dock like a comic Frankenstein's monster, booming that foot, striking about with that gun, and cursing so fast and loud that the words were sacrificed to wholesale noise (because I never yet rose to see the GODDAM day I weren't up to RUNNING my own SONVABITCHING affairs and if any BASTARD thinks).

  The man in the boat jerked the motor to life and threw off the mooring just as the three other characters in this drama came running from the house and down onto the dock: two men and what I ventured to think a woman in jeans and an orange-colored apron, and a long braid flopping down the back of the ubiquitous sweat shirt. She passed the two men and scampered across the dock to try to calm Old Henry's raving; the two men held back, letting him rave his damnedest and laughing so they could barely walk. Henry ignored the calmi
ng and laughing alike and continued to rail at the man in the boat, who must have concluded that the gun was empty or broken because he had pulled a safe twenty yards away from the dock and was idling the boat at a standstill into the current so he could have his turn at shouting back at the others. All up and down the river I could see startled gulls flapping airward in a frightened flight from the uproar.

  (Oh lordy what am I doing with this here scattergun? Oh lordy I don't hear so good. I truly do not . . .)

  Henry appeared to be tiring. One of the men, the taller one, who I decided must be Hank--what other Caucasian ever moved with that slack-limbed indolence?--left the others and loped into the boatshed and reappeared, bent in an odd position as he shielded something with his cupped hands. He stood at the edge of the dock in this position for a moment, then straightened up to throw whatever he held in the direction of the boat. (Oh lordy, what's happening?) And then there was nothing but silence as the whole cast--the figures on the dock, the petrified brown lump in the boat, even the pack of dogs--stood perfectly still and quiet for perhaps two and three-quarters seconds before a thundering blast right next to the boat jammed a white column of water forty feet into the hot, smoky air, ka-whooomp! like an Old Faithful erupting in the middle of the river.

  As the water fell back into the boat the men on the dock roared with laughter. They stumbled with their laughter, they grew weak with it, they finally collapsed under it like drunks. Even Old Henry's cursing became so diluted with laughter that he was finally forced to lean weakly against a piling, no longer able to support both himself and the colossal amusement that shook him. The lump in the boat saw Hank heading back into the shed to reload and overcame his shellshock enough to gun the boat motor on full so that he was out of range of Hank's next throw by a good three feet. The explosion bucked the boat forward like a surfboard catching a fifteen-foot comber, and this set off new hysterics on the dock. (Anyhow by god I guess I showed him he can't tell me how to run my my . . . business, hear good or no!)