by Ken Kesey
"You just guess?" he asked, coming up behind. "How do you know you're right?"
She straightened up and shaded her eyes to look at him. A lock of the sorrel hair was sweated to her brow. "I'm generally pretty close," she said.
She asked that he wait on the other side of the muslin curtain that separated her tiny room from the rest of the fruit stand. Hank thought that she would be ashamed for him to see the squalor of her dwelling, and complied in silence while she ducked through the curtain to pack. But what he mistook for shame was closer to reverence; in the little cluttered room that had been her home since her parents' death, Viv was shriving herself like a nun before communion. She let her eyes roam over the room's shabby walls--the travel pictures, the clippings, the arrangements of dried straw flowers, all the childhood adornments that she knew she must leave as sure as the walls themselves, until she finally let her eyes meet with those looking out at her from a wood-framed oval mirror. The face that looked out at her was cramped into the lower part of the mirror to avoid a crack in the glass, but it didn't seem to mind the inconvenience; it smiled brightly back, wishing her luck. She glanced about once more and made a silent excited vow of allegiance to all the holy old dreams and hopes and ideals that these walls had held, then, chiding herself for being such a silly, kissed the face in the glass good-by.
And when she came out, with a small wicker bag in one hand, and in a sunflower-yellow cotton dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat that all but had a price tag hanging from it, she had two requests to make before they left. "When we get to where we're going, to Oregon . . . you know what I'd like? You remember me talking about wanting a canary--"
"Sweetpants," Hank interrupted, "I'll get you a whole damn flock of birds if you want. I'll get you doves and sparrows and cockatoos and canaries till the world looks level. Oh me, but you look pretty, you know that? About as pretty a thing as I think I ever saw. But . . . how come you tucked your hair all up in your hat like that? I like you better with it all hanging and swinging--"
"But it gets in the way so, all long, and gets so dirty--"
"Well then, maybe we'll just have to dye it black." He laughed, taking the bag and sweeping her along to the pick-up. "But we'll leave it long."
So she never made the second request.
She loved the lush greenery of her new home, and the old man, and Joe Ben and his family. She learned quickly how to fit in with the Stamper life. When old Henry accused Hank of picking a limp little Miss Mousie, Viv was compelled to change the old man's mind the first time they went raccoon-hunting together by outwalking, outyelling, and outdrinking every man on the hunt and having to be dragged giggling and singing back out of the woods on a makeshift travois like an Indian wounded in battle. After that the old man stopped teasing her, and she went on a number of hunts. She didn't care for the killing part, where the dogs tore up a screaming coon or fox, but she liked the walking part, and she liked to be with all of them, and she could let them think she didn't mind the other if that's what they wanted to think. She could be like that if they wanted.
As much as she took part in the Stamper activities, she still was obviously without a world truly her own. It bothered Hank at first and he thought he could help this by giving her her own room--"Not to sleep in, of course, just a place where you can go and sew and stuff, and it's yours, do you see?" She didn't, quite, but she went along with the idea; for one thing, it would be a good place to keep that bird he'd bought her from annoying the rest of the family, and for another she knew her private room made him feel better about having a world that she could never enter, a violent and brawling life that was to him what Viv's "sewing room" was supposed to be to her. Sometimes, after tying one on in Wakonda, Hank would arrive home in time to meet Joe Ben on his way to church, and he would go to where Viv lay reading on the low couch in her room and sit in the hard chair facing her while he told her about his night in town. Viv would listen, hugging her knees, then switch out her lamp and take him to bed.
These blow-offs in town never bothered her. In fact, the only quirk in her husband's personality that ever seemed to cause her remorse was Hank's teeth-gritting stoicism in the face of pain; sometimes as they undressed for bed she would break into furious tears on the discovery of deep line-cut festering red on Hank's thigh. "Why didn't you tell me?" she would demand. Hank would grin shyly. "Ah, 'tain't nothin' but a scratch." She threw her hands in the air. "Damn you! Damn you and your scratches to hell!" The scene always amused Hank and gave him such a glow of boyish pride that he went to great lengths to conceal his logging wounds from his wife; when a springback broke one of his ribs, she didn't know it until he took off his shirt to wash; when he lost his two fingers in the donkey drum he wrapped the stubs and didn't mention the accident until Viv asked him why he was wearing his work gloves at the supper table. Dipping his head with embarrassment he said, "Why, I guess I just forgot to take 'em off at the door . . ." and drew a glove from a claw so mangled and clotted with blood and cable rust that it took Viv a hysterical half-hour to get the wound clean enough to realize that the whole hand wasn't lost as well as three or four inches of the arm.
Sometimes Joe Ben's wife, Janice, would corner Hank and hold him grinning against a wall with her solemn owl-eyed gaze and chide him for not respecting Viv's secret spiritual needs and giving the poor girl a little more chance to be a wife.
"Don't you mean chance to be a nursemaid, Jan? I appreciate your good intentions but take my word: Viv is wife aplenty. If she needs to doctor something I'll get her a kittycat." Besides, he added to himself, for anybody to figure what the devil Viv's secret spiritual needs are or what to do about them you'd have to know her a hundred years. Have to be tuned in exactly to Viv's wave length. And Jan might be good at figuring people's needs but she wasn't that good. . . .
(But I got a big boot out of Jan that way. She was always corralling me in a corner with some of her big-eyed advice. Which I usually let slide off me like water off a duck. But when she come up to me that first morning Lee was at the house and told me to be real easy with the boy and I said, "Easy? what do you mean easy? I intend to get some work outa the cuss is what," and she said that wasn't what she meant, that what she meant was not to get into some kind of argument with him right off, I knew what she was driving at; better than she did, in fact. Because what with Viv and me getting into it the night before about her always wanting to fraternize with those harpies in town, and getting into it again that same morning as she headed for the barn in a huff, I was in a pee-poor mood. And that's the point: knowing this feeling like I did, I knew that if me and the kid started disagreeing about something I'd get an urge to pop somebody and it'd be just like me and that gleef in that bar in Colorado, only more so by a damned sight: I'd talk myself onto a limb again and end up getting pissed and kicking the living shit out of Lee . . . only this time it'd be worse than a little stretch in boot--we'd lose a badly needed woods hand. "What I mean, Hank," Jan said, "is you find something safe to talk about when you talk to that boy." I grinned at her and lifted her chin up with my finger and told her, "Janny lamb, you just ease yourself; I won't talk about nothing with him but the weather and the woods. That's a promise." "Good," she said and drew those waxy lids down over her eyes [I used to kid Joby about her being able to see through those lids like a frog], and headed off back to the kitchen to work on breakfast.
Soon as she left, Joby was on me about practically the same thing, only he wanted me to be sure I said something to Lee. "Tell him how he's growed or something, Hank. Last night you was about as friendly to him as a leper."
"By god, now," I said, "you an' Jan get together and rehearse this?"
"Just let the boy know he's home, is all. You gotta keep in mind he's one of the sensitives."
Joe went on off, leaving me kind of peeved--they act like the place was a grade school welcoming first-graders. I thought I knew what they were both angling at though. And I was already wondering how I was going to make it with another sensi
tive in the house, especially the way Viv'd been since finding out about the WP contract. I knew I was going to have to walk on eggs just to keep peace.
I walked on over to his room anyhow and stood there a minute, listening to see if he was up and around or not. Henry had give him a holler a few minutes before, but he could of passed that off as a bad dream, the way the old devil sounded with his calling; since the old man'd been laid up he'd been big on being the first one out of bed, storming through the house rise-and-shining till I could of choked the old bastard. Nothing galls a man more than being yelled out of bed by somebody all full of piss, vinegar, and the knowledge that as soon as everybody else is off to the job then he can cripple back to the sack and sleep till noon.
The room is hard and dark, patrolled by the icy air circulating through the jammed window . . .
I was about to tap on the boy's door when I heard him rustling around, so I tiptoed back down to get shaved up for breakfast, thinking back on the first time cousin John came out from Idaho to work for us and Henry went in to root him out in the morning. John'd looked pretty bad when he arrived the night before--claimed he'd swum his way across country on a great river of alcohol--so we'd put him to bed before the rest of us, hoping he'd grow back together a little bit with a good snooze. When Henry opened the door that morning and went in, John reared up in bed like somebody'd shot off a cannon, blinking his eyes and pawing at the air in front of him. "What is it?" he said. "What is it?" The old man told him it was three-thirty was what it was. "Jesus Christ," John said. "Jesus Christ, you better get some sleep, Henry. Didn't you tell me we got a hard day's work comin' up tomorrow?" And flopped right back down. It was a good three days before we got John cooked dry enough to look human, and he still didn't do us much good. He just moaned and groaned around. That was before any of us realized we were trying to run him without his fuel; just like his truck ran better with Diesel than without, John functioned better with a tankful of Seven Crown. One of the reasons for his drinking, Henry said, was John's mama used to make the whole family get down on their knees and pray like fury every time John's daddy--Henry's first cousin, I believe--would come home boozed, and John never quite got it straight that they weren't thanking the good Lord for his blessing same as they did at the supper table. So according to Henry booze come to be sort of holy to him and with faith like that John grew up religious as a deacon.
The bed is a frozen shell, surrounding one kernel of warmth from which you dare not move . . .
John was a good worker. A lot more drunks are good workers than people think. Maybe they need it like a medicine just like Jan every day needs to take her thyroid pills to keep even-keeled. I remember one day when we had to get John to drive the pick-up to town--the day old Henry busted himself up slipping off that mossy rock and Joe and me had to be in back with him to keep him from bouncing and rearing around and jumping out. John, I remember, was the only choice handy for driver. I thought he was going okay, but all the ride in Henry keeps hollering, "I'll walk to town rather'n ride with that damn ginhead. I'll walk, goddammit, I'll walk--" like it'd be easier'n riding . . .)
You try to shrink further inside that warm center, but the booming of old Henry's cast coming down the hall rips through your dark armor of sleep like a cannonball. "Wake it an' shake it!" comes the war cry following the initial knuckled assault on the door: Boom boom boom! then:
"Wake it an' shake it! Wag it an' shag it! If you can't carry it roll it out an' drag it hee hee hee."
Followed by more loud booming on the door and a high, malicious giggle.
"Give me some whistlepunks! Give me some bully jacks! Give me some fallers an' chasers an' chokersetters! Gawdamn; I can't run a show without me some loggers!"
Gawdamn; I can't sleep without me some quiet!
The door thundered again. Wham wham wham. "Boy?" The house shuddered. "Boy! Le's get out there an' take the shade offn the ground. Le's get some daylight in that swamp."
Daylight is right, I mumbled into the pillow. Still black as the holes of hell, and at any moment the senile old imbecile was going to proceed to fire the whole house as a precaution against slugabeds who might still harbor the ridiculous notion that the dead of night was meant for sleeping. In that first reawakening chaos a quick glance about at the morning proved as insufficient as it had the night before. For once again I was able to establish the where but not the when. Certain facts were apparent: dark; cold; thundering boots; quilts; pillow; light under the door--the materials of reality--but I could not pin these materials down in time. And the raw materials of reality without that glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind. . . . I am in my old room, yes, in the dark, certainly, and it is cold, obviously, but what time is it?
"Nearly four, son." Whomp whomp whomp!
But I mean what time? What year is it? I tried to recount the facts of my arrival but they had come unglued during the night and were too far blown in the dark to be readily recovered. In fact, it took at least the first two weeks of my stay to gather all the balsawood pieces--longer than that to glue them into any order again.
"Say, son, what are you doin' in there?"
Push-ups. My Latin assignment. The Blue Tango.
"You woke at all?"
I nodded loudly.
"Then what are you a-doin'?"
I managed to mumble something that must have satisfied as well as amused him because he rumbled on off down the hallway, snickering with a diabolic glee, but after he was gone I couldn't get back to my warm sleep because it dawned on me that I seriously was expected to rise and go outside in that frozen night, and work! And with this realization I repeated his question to myself: What am I doing here? I had managed up until then to avoid this problem by treating it facetiously, as demonstrated above, or by passing it off with vague fantasies about heroically measuring up or righteously pulling down. But now that I was being confronted by the demon work--and at four in the morning--and could no longer procrastinate answering, which was it to be? I was too sleepy to make a choice and I had about decided to table the question for the time and sleep on it when the old poltergeist came thundering back into my skull to make the choice for me.
"Get up, boy! Wake it an' shake it. It's time to get to makin' your mark in the world."
Lee rises abruptly from bed . . . And, rather than risk his return, I struggled to my feet he stares grimly at the door, his cheeks burning from the comment, thinking, Yeah, Leland. If you're going to measure up it's time to get to measurin'.
I dressed and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, where my fellow inmates were all elbows and ears over a checkered tablecloth covered with eggs and pancakes. They greeted me and bade me sit and join them in at least the last quarter of the meal. "Been waitin' for you, Lee," Joe Ben announced with a tangled grin, "just like one dog waits on another."
The kitchen was calmer than it had been the previous night: three of Joe's children were sitting on the woodbox beside the stove, engrossed in a comic book; Joe's wife was scraping the griddle with a wire brush; old Henry was one-handing his food skillfully into a set of false teeth; Hank was licking syrup from his fingers . . . a nice American breakfast. Lee swallows hard and pulls out a chair, hoping it is meant for him. But I noticed Hank's elusive woods nymph was still not present. "What about this wife of yours, Hank; hasn't Henry trained her to wake it and shake it?" He sits, stiff-backed and apprehensive, hoping he makes a better impression than he did at supper . . .
Hank seemed preoccupied; he hesitated answering and old Henry jumped into the breach. His face lifted from his plate like a cast-iron lid being raised. "Ya mean Viv? Why lordymercy, Leland, we kick her outa bed hours before the rest of us males stir a finger. Just like we do little Jan, here. Why, Viv, she's up, cooked this breakfast, mopped the floor, shelled a bushel of peas an' made us all a nosebag already. You bet; I taught this boy how to deal with women, goddammit." He snickered, lifting his cup, and
a mouthful of pancake disappeared before a torrent of coffee; he exhaled loudly and craned backward to peer around the kitchen for the missing girl. The yolk of egg wobbled in the center of his forehead like a third eye. "I reckon she's someplace here if you want to meet her . . ."
"Outside," Hank answered moodily, "seein' to the cow."
"Why ain't she in here eatin' with us?"
"Damned if I know." He shrugged, then turned vigorous attention once more to his food.
The food platter was empty. Jan offered to prepare me a new batch of cakes, but old Henry insisted time was far too much at a premium and said I could get by this morning on corn flakes. "Learn ya to hop right up, by god."
"Some stuff in the oven," Hank said. "I stuck a pie tin of cakes in to keep warm for him, figuring he might not make the first round."
He took the pan from the black mouth of the oven and scraped the contents onto a plate for me as one might scrape leftovers to a pet. I thanked him for saving me from a fate of cold corn flakes, and cursed him silently for condescendingly assuming I would be late. And again feels that flame redden his cheeks. The meal continued, if not in silence, at least without benefit of words. I glanced at brother Hank a time or two, but he seemed to have forgotten my presence in the pursuit of some more lofty contemplation. . . .
(. . . of course, John made the drive okay, and the old man didn't walk to the hospital like he threatened, but it turns out that that ain't the end of it. By no means. When Joby and me go back to the clinic a day or so later, there John is, sitting on the front steps with his hands dangling between his knees, blinking up at us red-eyed as a white hat. "I heard Henry's goin' home today," he says. "That's so," I tell him. "He didn't break so much as he just knocked it outa line. They got him in a lot of plaster but the doc says it's mostly to keep him from rearin' around." John stands up and whops his palms on his britches. "Well, I'm ready whenever you are," he says, and I see that he's someway got the notion that Joe and me'd have to ride in back again to hold the old man down. Now, I got no desire whatsoever to ride in back again while Henry raves about John's driving, so before I think I say to him, "John, one of us'll probably be in better shape to drive; maybe you oughta sit this one out." Never for one instant imagining he'd be put out about it. But he is and bad. He bats his eyes at me three or four times while they run full of water and says, "Just thought I'd lend a hand," and goes shuffling off around the corner of the hospital, cut clean to the bone. . . .)