Sometimes a Great Notion

by Ken Kesey

  And Molly the hound tries again to rise, whimpering as her paws push at the cold earth; she stands a twisted second on all fours, but the moon is too cold and heavy and she collapses again beneath its frozen weight.

  And Teddy the bartender peers through his tangled neons at the darkening twist of river past the firehouse, and wistfully wishes it were January: these Indian Summers, they are good for nothing but crickets and mosquitoes and old windbags dribbling out their money a dime at a time. Give me some rain, some bad weather, and watch me roll the dollars. Give me a dark smeary shiny night full of rain. That's when the fear starts. That's when you sell the juice!

  And Viv, through a lock of hair, watches Lee as he pats uncertainly at the dripping face of Joe Ben's girl with a towel. He's never washed a little kid before in his life, she realizes; can you beat that? What an odd boy, so gaunt and ghosty sort of. With eyes like he's been to the edge and looked over . . .

  His shirt gets splashed as he washes the child, and he puts aside the towel to roll up his sleeves. Viv sees his inflamed skin.

  "Oh . . . your arms!"

  He shrugs and blows on a smarting wrist. "They were a little too long for my shirtsleeves, I'm afraid."

  "Let me put on some witch hazel. Squeaky, honey," she calls to the porch, "would you toss in that bottle of witch hazel? Here, Lee, sit a minute. Old Henry hasn't come in anyhow. Sit here . . ."

  She dabs on the liquid with a folded dishtowel. Pungent smells of spice and alcohol burn in the warm air of the kitchen. His arms lie on the checkered tablecloth, as inert as two cuts of meat on the butcher's counter. Neither of them speaks. They hear the approach of the motorboat, and old Henry's drunken singing. Viv shakes her head at the sound, smiling. Lee asks how she feels about having another animal to care for.

  "Another animal?"

  "Sure. Look at this menagerie." The singing outside is louder. "First, you have old Henry, who is bound to need a lot of attention--"

  "Not really so much," she says. "He doesn't drink that much. Just when his leg hurts him."

  "--I meant attention because of his accident, his age. And then there are the kids, you probably help take care of Joe Ben's kids, don't you? and all the dogs and the cow? And I imagine if the truth were known that even brother Hank has needed the gentle touch of witch hazel--"

  "No," she muses, "he doesn't seem to."

  "Anyway, aren't you somewhat discouraged when faced with another liability to do for?"

  "Do you always consider yourself that? A liability?"

  Lee grins at her, rolling his sleeves back down. "I think my question has priority."

  "Oh"--taking a strand of hair in the corner of her mouth--"I suppose it does keep me on the jump, old Henry says that's the only way to keep from getting moss on your back--but when I think about it--"

  "That's right! That's right!" The back door swings open and Henry enters, carrying his dentures in his hand. "I say in Oregon you got to keep on the jump . . . to put the hair on your chest an' keep the moss off your rump. Good evening, all, an' good health. Here y'go, girlie." He pitches the teeth to Viv; they hiss, grinning in the bright kitchen light. "Hose these off for me, willya? I dropped 'em in the yard there an' a goddam dog tried to put 'em on. Whup! See the way she nabbed them teeth on the fly there, boy? Keep 'em on the jump. Mm-mmm! I was right, I smelt that salmon bakin' clean back to the Evans place."

  Viv turns from the sink, drying the teeth on a dishtowel. "Lee, now that I think about it," she says, as though speaking to the teeth; she lifts her head from her task and smiles at him. "I don't think I'll be discouraged . . . compared to some I could mention, you will be a pure joy to do for."

  Molly the hound pants at the moon with shallow, bright breaths. Teddy listens for rain. Lee--it is a month later--sits on his bed with his shoes off and his pants legs lifted gingerly from ankles inflamed by the half-drunk hunting trip he has just come in from, and he tells the anxious shadows that he can tend to his own cuts, thank you . . . "And with something far more soothing than witch hazel too!" On the table beside his bed three thin reddish-brown cigarettes are lying atop a cold-cream jar. A spiral notebook is waiting on a record jacket propped against his knees. A ballpoint pen and a book of matches lie in his lap. He gives the pillows behind his back a few settling punches, then, finally satisfied with the arrangement, he takes up one of the cigarettes and lights it, filling his lungs and holding the smoke a long time before he breathes it out with a long, hissing "Yessssss." He takes another drag. As he smokes he scoots deeper in the bed. When the cigarette is half gone he begins to write. He smiles occasionally as he rereads a line that particularly pleases him. His writing is at first neat and even, and the sentences congeal without correction on the page:

  Box 1, Route 1

  Wakonda, Oregon

  Halloween

  Norwick House

  New Haven, Conn.

  Dear Peters:

  "Good God, betimes the means that makes us strangers!"

  At which point, if you are up on Willy the Shake as you should be with the o'erlooming approach of prelims, you should have replied: "Sir, amen."

  Did you? No matter. For in all good faith I must confess I'm not myself certain which play the speech comes from. Macbeth, I think, though it could as easily be from a dozen other histories or tragedies. I have been home one month now and, as you can see, the dank and drippy climate of Oregon has mildewed my memory and I substitute surmise for certainty . . .

  And Viv shooed them all from the kitchen ". . . or I'll never get supper finished." And it happened, in the course of trying to bring Joe Ben's kids to what Joe called "up next to godliness," Viv saw the scratches on my arms. She dropped what she was doing at the stove and insisted on treating me with some kind of folk medicine that made me wish I had the scratches back, but I bit my tongue and kept my cool, watching how much the girl enjoyed playing nurse. Here, I thought to myself, is most certainly my weapon. Now how to wield it?

  So, my wounds attended to, I repaired to the living room to await supper and to try to formulate a plan of use for this weapon. No, it shouldn't be so difficult.

  That first night my efforts were distracted by the old man. His rattletrap energy made thought next to impossible. He clumped and thumped up and down, to and fro across the over-large room, like an obsolete wind-up toy, useless and worthless, yet still not run down. He switched on the TV on one of his passes; it began blaring patched platitudes and keeping us up on the latest in the Great Deodorant War--"Not those drippy sprays, not those sssticky roll-ons . . . just a simple dab and be sure of all-day safety!" No one watched or listened; the machine's blaring was as senseless and as ignored as the old man's raving nostalgia, but no one presented a motion for silence. It was somehow obvious that any attempt to turn off either would have precipitated a squall of protest more devastating than both.

  I tried to maneuver my brother into telling me more about his wife, but just as we were getting around to her the old man observed that there was some folks who preferred talkin' to eatin' but damned if he was one of 'em! And led an exodus into the kitchen.

  The following day was more toil and exhaustion, much the same as the first except that I controlled my hostility toward Brother Hank. And he continued his goodwill campaign toward me. And the ensuing days found me thinking less and less about my forsworn vengeance and feeling more and more positive about my avowed enemy. I tried to rationalize this to my mental mediator when he warned me to WATCH OUT for the primrose path. I insisted that I had to devote my full attention during the days to the task of keeping out from under rolling logs, and in the evenings I was too wasted to think constructively of revenge--"And that's why I haven't come up with something yet." But Old Reliable wasn't put off that easily.

  "Yeah, I know, but--"

  BUT YOU'VE BARELY SPOKEN WITH HER.

  "Well, that's true, but--"

  ALMOST LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE AVOIDING HER.

  "I guess it looks that way, but--"


  I'M WORRIED . . . SHE'S TOO NICE . . . BETTER WATCH OUT--

  "Watch out? What in God's name do you think has kept me away from her? I am watching out! Because she is too nice! She's warm and sweet and treacherous; I have to be careful about this . . ."

  To tell the truth, in our common heart we were both worried. And afraid. Because it wasn't just Viv: the whole diabolical houseful was being warm and sweet and treacherous, from my serpent brother down to the littlest snake-in-the-weeds infant. I was beginning to care for them. And as that cancerous emotion swelled within my heart so did my poor heart's fear. Swollen heart. This is an insidious malady chiefly common in that mythical organ that pumps life through the veins of the ego: care, coronary care, complicated by galloping fear. The go-away-closer disease. Starving for contact and calling it poison when it is offered. We learn young to be leery of contact: Never open up, we learn . . . you want somebody running their dirty old fingers over your soul's privates? Never accept candy from strangers. Or from friends. Sneak off a sack of gumdrops when nobody's looking if you can, but don't accept, never accept . . . You want somebody taking advantage? And above all, never care, never never never care. Because it is caring that lulls you into letting down your guard and leaving up your shades . . . you want some fink knowing what you are really like down inside?

  And we might even add to this list the simple rule "Never Drink Past Your Limit."

  For 'twas drink, I think, the dirty devil drink, that finally rusted through the last lock on the last door guarding my convalescing ego . . . rusted the lock and melted the bolt and sprung the hinges until, before I knew what I was doing, I was talking with my brother about my mother. I found myself telling him the whole story--the disappointments, the drinking, the despair, the death.

  "I was real sorry to hear about it," he said when I finished. I had just completed my second week in the woods and we were celebrating the miracle of no-bones-broken with a quart of beer apiece. Hank had plucked a stick of kindling from the beaten cardboard box behind the stove and was curling long white strips from it with his pocketknife. "When I heard I wired back that there should be some flowers--a wreath, I think--did you see it?"

  "No, I didn't see it," I told him somewhat coldly, angry at myself for telling as much as I had, angry at him for listening--"But then, there were such a number of wreaths one might easily have missed it"--but essentially angry with the memory of that one wreath. One wreath! Only one! Mother's family had chosen to ignore the death of this family disgrace--an educated Jezebel, they sniffed, a drinker, a dreamer, a dabbler in palmistry, phrenology, and promiscuity, a forty-five-year-old beatnik chick in black tights who not only had the indecency to blacken the family name by running off to the northern wilds with some old motheaten geezer and having a kid by him, but who compounded the shame by coming back and messing up her middle age as well, along with a sizable portion of the New York sidewalk--and as much as I had despised them at the time for refusing to send so much as a bunch of violets, I had despised Hank even more for his presumptuous wreath of white carnations.

  It was late. We had switched from beer to wine. The place seemed hellishly calm. Joe Ben and his brood were spending the night at their new house, planning to meet the dawn with a paintbrush. Henry had climbed stairs to a rumbling wooden sleep. Viv curled on the couch next to Hank, a lovely puzzle, speaking only with wide amber eyes and her sweet little denim rump, until the eyes closed and she pulled a sheepskin robe over the rump and went diplomatically to sleep. The old house ticked like a great wooden, erratic clock and outside occasional drifting logs thunked against the dock. Underneath us between the floor and the ground hounds whimpered, heroes or cowards in personal dreams. Above, the old man threw some perfumed memory a bony screw. My brother sat across the room from me under a tassel-shaded floor lamp, whittling, he himself carved in shadow, varnished by light . . .

  "Yes, there were a lot of wreaths . . ." I lied.

  He tickled the wood with a glistening blade. "Was a pretty nice funeral, I bet?"

  "Very nice, very nice," I allowed, watching the knife. "Considering."

  "Good." Thhht thhht. "I'm glad." Curlicues of barbered pine fell like trimmed tresses at his feet. Viv wriggled herself deeper into the cushions, and I drank again from the gallon of the old man's blackberry wine. The liquid had been aprickle with thorns at the top of the bottle, lumpy with seeds at the shoulder, now, halfway down, it had smoothed out soft as cotton.

  We waited for each other, wondering what on earth had prompted us to risk our cool by straying so far into long-forbidden territory, wondering if we dared throw caution to the winds and go even farther. Finally Hank turned the stick over. "Yeah, well, like I said, I was really sorry to hear about her."

  I still felt a little of that first anger. "Yeah," I said. Meaning: You should have been, you cad, after the way you--

  "Huh?"

  The knife ceased its whispering, half a curl of pine lifting unfinished from the stick. I held my breath; had he heard the thought behind the words? WATCH OUT, Old Reliable warned, HE'S GOT A SHIV! But the knife moved again on the wood; the curl looped complete and fell with the others; my breath drifted out of my nostrils in a swirl of relief and disappointment. Blank expectations (what had I imagined he would do?) remained blank. The earth turned again (what had I imagined I would do?), continuing its falling circle. The curlicues curled. I sipped again of Henry's homemade wine. I was sorry for my anger; I was glad he'd chosen to ignore it.

  "Sack time." He folded the knife and with a woolen sweep of his stockinged foot swept the curls into a neat pile. He bent and cupped the pile and dropped it into the woodbox: tomorrow morning's kindling. He flapped his hands free of sawdust and sentiment, calluses husking against each other like wood against wood. "I believe I'll see if I can catch a few Z's; I told Joe I'd give him a hand at his place in the morning. Viv? Kitten?" He shook her shoulder; she yawned, showing a rose-petal tongue over bright white pips of teeth. "Let's head up to the sack, okay? You might as well make it too, bub."

  I shrugged. Viv slipped past, dragging the sheepskin robe and smiling sleepily. At the foot of the stairs Hank stopped; his eyes lifted to mine for an instant--"Uh . . . Lee . . ." bright, green as glass, pleading for something, before they dropped to study a broken thumbnail. "I wish I could of been there." I didn't say anything; in that quick click-and-glitter of lifted eyes I saw a hint of more than guilt, more than contrition.

  "I really wisht there'd been something I could of done." Meaning: Was there?

  "I don't know, Hank." Meaning: You did enough.

  "I always worried about her." Meaning: Was I partially to blame?

  "Yeah." Meaning: We were all to blame.

  "Yeah, well,"--looking down at the destroyed thumbnail, wanting to say more, ask more, hear more, unable to--"I guess I'll hit the hay."

  "Yeah,"--wanting everything he wanted--"me too."

  "G'night, Lee," Viv murmured from the top of the stairs.

  "Good night, Viv."

  "Night, bub."

  "Hank."

  Meaning: Good night but stay. Viv, silent and slim as a shaft of sleepy light, stay, talk more to me with your articulate eyes. Hank, forget my words behind my words, stay, say some more. This is our chance. This is my chance. Say enough more for love or hate, enough more to make me sure of one or the other. Please stay, please stay . . .

  But they left me alone. They frightened, tantalized, excited me with contact, then left me alone. And confused. I think we approached each other that night and muffed it. He didn't venture further, and I couldn't. I look back on that evening through a film of mashed blackberries, trickling juices spiny and sour, as my brother and his wife fade out up the stairs, into personal realities, to dream dreams, and I think, We almost made it that time. A little courage on someone's part and we might have made it. We were swollen and ripe for an instant together, ready for picking, offering our store to each other's hesitant fingers . . . a little tender courage at that rare right
instant, and things might well have turned out differently. . . .

  But the breath of memory still plucks such instants, setting the whole web shaking. People fade up the stairs, but to dream of each other's dreams; of days coming gone and nights past coming; of hard sun-rods crisscrossing back and forward across out-spreading circles of water, meaningless-seeming. . . .

  From the dappled surface of the river a red-gilled, blue-green-striped steelhead salmon explodes in a shimmering dance, gyrating wild in glistening suspension, falls back on its side with a blistering crack, and jumps again and falls, and jumps again--as though trying to escape some terror pursuing it beneath the water. And falls and this time darts to the bottom to lie behind a rock, with its stomach resting exhausted on the sand and the sea-lice still gnawing its fin and gills in spite of its efforts.

  Swarms of black, squawking crows harass a herd of hogs. Green beer sloughs in the throbbing stovelight. Indian Jenny's old man rises, disgusted, and tries to clear up "The Sheriff of Cochise." Molly watches her life pumping from her in clouds of white frost. Floyd Evenwrite curses himself for not having made a better impression on Jonathan B. Draeger, and curses Draeger for being so goddamned biggity and making him feel like he had to make a good impression, and curses himself for letting Draeger be so goddamned biggity as to make him feel like he had to make a good impression. . . . Willard Eggleston hopes. Simone prays. Willard Eggleston despairs. And a Diesel freight running empty to Wakonda for the last of Wakonda Pacific's stockpiled lumber at the Cascade Pacific yards honks for a crossing, low and obscene, like the rutting call of a mechanical dragon . . .

  At a scarred tabletop near the front door of the Snag, sitting with a cluster of cronies who are obviously more interested in his free beer than in his talk, old Henry jiggles his ill-fitting dentures in his cheeks and draws a deep breath. He takes another swallow from the pitcher, holding it by the handle as though it were a giant mug; whenever he filled a glass, he has noticed, one of the audience at his table drank it, so he has resigned himself to the pitcher. He is relaxed, glowing, feeling his swelling belly push for another notch in his belt. For the first time in his life the old man finds the time to pursue his pitifully neglected social obligations. Almost every afternoon since his accident he has propped his plaster frame against the same beam near the Snag's front door, where he drinks, rambles about old times, argues with Boney Stokes, and studies the way the big iridescent-green river-flies electrocute themselves on the charged screen door.