Sometimes a Great Notion

by Ken Kesey

  "Oh yeah, but Hank, it's night out there, with stumps big as elephants floating around--"

  "I believe he can handle it," Hank repeated with bored nonchalance; he fished the key from his pocket and tossed it to me and tipped the chair forward again to his plate. I told him thanks, and outside on the docks silently thanked him again for understanding, and for having faith enough in his literate little brother's illiterate make-do to back up that understanding.

  Dancing light in my stocking feet, I whizzed across the grass to the ringing reassurance of a full house of stars and down the plank in two springing leaps as the moon gave a bracing nod of encouragement--they were rooting for me all the way. I hadn't touched the boat's controls since my first bumbling attempt, but I had watched. I had taken notes. Stiff-lipped and set-jawed, grim and gritty as they come, I was ready for another go at making-do.

  And the boat started with the first yank--as fir trees leaped cheering and stood waving madly with the warm chinook wind.

  And the moon beamed like a junior-high-school coach.

  I guided the boat skillfully across the spangled water, never brushing any of the mammoth-sized stumps the whole trip, aware of my audience, pleased with my performance under pressure, and proud of myself. How rare and beautiful in this day and age, I thought, is that simple combination of words--proud of myself . . .

  In a pool of frozen gold Molly the dog recalls through a haze the scaling excitement she felt hours earlier when she first realized that the only voice baying was her own, and the only pawbeats behind the crashing bear the sound of her own lonely crashing; warms herself for a moment at the memory. In her bed deep and soft and white as sifted flour, Simone sleeps with a stomach full of esteem and dignity; she has not sold herself for meat and potatoes; she has not eaten all day; she fed her children with the last of the ham-hock soup and saved none for herself, and tomorrow she will drive into Eugene to seek a steady job; she has not weakened; and she has kept her promise to herself and her little carved Virgin. In his room Lee writes: ". . . I humiliate myself even to admit it, Peters, but for a brief time I actually felt my activities here praiseworthy." And in the garage by the landing old Henry is chided by a much soberer young Henry: "Stand up straight here, you old sot! Stop that infernal wobbling! You used to be able to down a quart of Ben's white dynamite and never bat an eye." "That's th' truth," old Henry remembers proudly, "I whupped it." And draws himself stiffly erect to go meet the boat . . .

  When I reached the opposite shore I found our premonitions justified; the old man had obviously been enjoying the balm of Gilead for a good many hours, and had even been so thoughtfully kind as to bring a bottle of it home. He was a sight to behold. Like a victor he returned, singing, clumping, thrashing willy-nilly with his cane at the serfdom of dogs which clamored at his feet at the dock; like a Norse hero he entered his hall, glorified by scars and a nose red as the baked apples which graced his board; like a conquering warrior he bore the spoils of his campaign before him and called for glasses all around, kiddies too; then, like a venerable old warrior, he seated himself; loosed great blastings of wind from either end, sighed a well-deserved sigh, unhitched his belt, cursed the plaster armor that encased his right side, drew his teeth from a crumpled newspaper, and, adjusting same between his gums with the air of a dandy adjusting his foulard, asked when the goddam hell do we eat!

  I was glad I had gone on first; his would have been a tough act to follow. He was in peak condition. The rest of us remained at the table while he ate the piece of deer liver Viv fried for him, laughing till we choked at his stories of the oldtime logging days, of bull-logging and horse-logging, of the year he had spent in Canada learning the trade in a camp forty thousand miles from noplace and where men were Men, goddammit, and women were the knotholes in slippery-elm logs! By the time he finished the last of the deer liver, the apples were warmed again and Viv gave them to us in Pyrex dishes and sent us from the kitchen so she could clear away the table.

  In the living room Hank and I sat spooning cream into the hot, bubbling apples while old Henry continued his monologue. The twins sat at the old man's stockinged feet, eyes as round and wonderstruck as the white plastic disks of the pacifiers waggling in their mouths. Jan diapered the baby and Joe Ben stuffed Squeaky into flannel sleepers. The bottle of bourbon worked its way around the room, filling the corners and warming the cold little lonely shadows that hid in regions remote from the tasseled lamp. This lamp stood between Henry's thronelike armchair and the big woodstove, and the little area made up by these three--the chair, the lamp, and the stove--comprised the cultural center of the enormous room, and as the old man talked the rest of us pressed in from the yawning hinterlands to be nearer to this center.

  Most nights Henry ranted about politics or economics, space travel or integration--and while his attacks on foreign policy were pure noise, his reminiscings were well worth listening to.

  "We did it, we," he cried, warming up to his subject. "Me and the donkey. We whupped it, the swamp, the woods, all. Damn tootin'." The words rattled like wet dice among the loose dentures. He paused to arrange his teeth and his cast more comfortably. Chalk, I thought to myself happily, as the liquor rose to my eyes and brought him into looming focus, chalk, limestone, and ivory. Teeth, limbs, and head; he's turning directly from flesh legend to statue in one move, thereby cutting some park-commissioned sculptor out of a job . . .

  "Let me tell you, me an' the donk--ah . . . What was I saying? Oh, about them oldtime tales where we greased the skids and drove the ox and all that noise? Let me see now. . . ." He concentrated, zeroing in on the past. "Oh, I recall oncet about forty years ago: we had this slide, ya see, like a big greasy trough running from the hill down to the river, an' we was easin' the logs into the slide. Zoom! Hunnert mile an hour down to the river like a damn rocketship! Zoom! Kersplash. Float it down t' the mill, zoom, kersplash. So oncet we'd just got this one big bastard of a fir eased into the trough and she's just commencin' to start inchin' down before the big steep, an' I look an' here come that boogin' mailboat! Boy, howdy! I see we got a dead-center bead on her. That log'll break her clean in half. Oh mother, let me think: who was it run that boat? The Pierce boys, I think, or was it Eggleston an' his kid? Ah? Anyhow this is the picture; that log, it just cannot be stopped! All right, amen to that. Cannot be stopped, but maybe slowed. So I quick as a flash pick up a water bucket and scoop it fulla dirt an' gravel an' I jump on that big devil before she gets up too momentium. And I ride her down, sprinklin' that dirt ahead of us in the skid trough to slow her. And sure it slowed her, you bet it did; maybe one gnat hair it slowed her down. Next thing I'm blazin' down that hill with Ben and Aaron hollerin' somewhere behind me, hollerin' 'Jump, you dumb nigger, jump!' I don't say nothin'--I'm hangin' on with teeth, toenails an' all--but if I could of I'd of told them You get on this here log goin' so fast everything's a blur an' let's see you jump! Yeah. See anybody nuts enough to jump, by god."

  He paused to take the bottle from Hank. He tipped it to his indrawn lips and swallowed with an impressive gurgling; when he brought it down he held it to the lamp, making it slyly obvious that he had drunk a good two inches without wincing. "You boys like a little nip too?"--offering the bottle and making his challenge implicit by the bright green glitter in his old satyr's eye. "No? Reckon not? Well, don't say I didn't make the gesture." And started to tip the bottle again.

  "But--but go on, Uncle Henry!" Squeaky could endure the old man's theatrics no longer.

  "Go on? I'm goin' somewheres?"

  "What happened?" Squeaky cried, and the twins echoed her plea. "What happened--happened?"

  And little Leland Stanford, agog as any, soundlessly urged, Go on, Father, what happened . . . ?

  "Happened?" He craned his neck about to check. "Happened where? I don't see a thing." Face as innocent as a billygoat's.

  "About the log! the log!"

  "Oh yeah, that log. Lemee see, by gosh. You mean, don't you, that log I was ridin' lickety-brint
le down the slide trough to certain disaster? Hmm, let me see." He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his hooked nose in deep thought; even the apathetic shadows perked up and moved in closer to hear. "Well then, right at the last I come up with me a idea; I thought I'd try throwin' the bucket underneath the bastard. I pitched it up ahead in the trough, but the log shoved it rattlin' an' clatterin' along in front for a piece like that ol' bucket was a horse-fly it was tryin' to brush aside--hey! sonofagun, that makes me think: have you boys checked that outfit Teddy's got goin' at the Snag for killin' bugs? Slickest-workin' piece of machinery I ever--"

  "The log! The log!" cried the children.

  The log, echoed the child in me.

  "Hm? Ah. Yessir. Right at the last I saw there weren't nothin' for me to do but dive. So I give a jump. But lo an' behol', my gallusses is catched onto a stob! an' me an' that fir went shootin' off into the wild blue yonder, aimin' to tear hell out of the side of that mailboat--did, too, if you got to know; so me up there tryin' to be the big hero with the bucket was all just so much yellin' at the wind, 'cause it did! hit that boat and split it to kingdom come, letters flyin' in all directions like somebody'd set off a blizzard: letters, nuts, bolts, steamfittin's, kin'lin' wood, an' that boy steerin' it flung straight in the air--an' it was the Pierce boy, too, come to think of it, because I recall he 'n' his brother allus useta trade off makin' the runs and the one off duty got mighty sore about havin' to pilot full-time after his brother was drownt--"

  "But what about you?"

  "Me? Lord love us, Squeaky, honey, I thought you knew. Why, your ol' Uncle Henry was killed! You didn't think a man could survive a fall like that, now did you? I was killed!"

  His head fell back. His mouth gaped in death agony. The children looked on, stunned to horrified silence, until his belly began to shake with amusement. "Henry, you!" shouted the twins, and each breathed a disappointed "Ahhh." Squeaky reacted with a hiss of outrage and fell to kicking at his cast with blue-flanneled feet. Henry laughed until tears poured down his gullied cheeks.

  "Killed, didn't y'know? Killed yeee hee haw, dead YEE hee hee haw!"

  "Henry, someday when I'm bigger you'll be sorry!"

  "YEEE haw haw haw!"

  Hank turned aside--"Lord; just look at him carry on"--to laugh into his band. "The balm of Gilead is cooked his brains out." And Joe Ben lapsed into a coughing fit that took five minutes and a spoonful of molasses to subdue.

  When Joe could breathe again Viv came from the kitchen, carrying a pot and cups on a tray. "Coffee?" Steam fell in an ermine mantle about her shoulders and when she turned her back to me I saw it was braided into her hair and tied at the bottom with a ribbon of silk. Her jeans were rolled to the swell of her calf; she bent to put the tray on the table, and a brass brad gave me a lewd wink; she straightened and a slight bind of denim made an interesting star of wrinkles. "Who likes sugar, anybody?"

  I spoke not a word aloud, but could feel my mouth begin to water as she offered the cups around. "You, Lee?"--turning, with those feather-light tennis shoes sighing at her feet.

  "Sugar?"

  "It's fine, Viv, thanks--"

  "I'll get it for you?"

  "Well . . . all right then."

  Just to watch that brass brad wink its way back to the kitchen.

  Hank poured bourbon into his coffee. Henry had a drink straight from the bottle to regain his strength after his untimely demise. Jan took Joe Ben's hand and looked at his wristwatch and announced it was time, past time for the kids to be in bed.

  Viv returned with a cup of sugar, licking the back of her hand. "Got my thumb in it. One or two spoons?"

  Joe Ben roused himself. "Okay, kids, move. Up them stairs."

  "Three." I never took sugar in my coffee, never before or since.

  "Three? Such a sweet tooth?" She stirred in one. "Try it like this first. I have very powerful sugar."

  Hank sipped his drink, eyes closed, peaceful, tame. The kids trooped upstairs in a surly pack. Henry yawned. "Yessir . . . killed me dead." At the top of the steps Squeaky stopped and turned slowly and deliberately with her hands on her hips. "Okay for you, Uncle Henry. You know what,"--and walked on, leaving the air behind her pervaded with some awful fate meaningful only to her and the old man, whose eyes bulged wide in shammed terror.

  Viv carried Johnny, tickling him with fuzzy breath down the back of his neck.

  Joe held the twins by fat hands, patient with their one-step, step, one-step, step to the top of the stairs.

  Jan snuggled the baby over her shoulder.

  And I swelled, threatening to burst in an explosion of hearts, flowers, and frustration; love, beauty, and jealousy.

  "Nigh'-nigh'." The baby waved.

  "Night-night."

  "Night-night."

  Night-night, said a small voice inside, waiting to be cuddled upstairs. Frustration and jealousy. I blush to admit it. But as I watched that last pampered bundle disappear up the stairwell I could not help feeling a twinge of envy. "Twinge?" the moon mocked me through a dirty windowpane. "Looks to me more like a hammerblow."

  "Yeah, but they are living the life I should have lived."

  "Just little kids. Shame on you."

  "Thieves! Stealing my home and my parental affection. Enjoying my unused paths and climbing my apple trees."

  "A while ago," the moon reminded me, "you were blaming all your elders, now it's the children . . ."

  "Thieves"--I tried to ignore that moon--"little fuzzy thieves, growing up in my lost childhood."

  "How," the moon whispered, "can you be sure it is lost? Until you try to find it?"

  I sat stunned by the insinuation.

  "Go on," it nudged, "give it a whirl. Show them you still want it. Let them know."

  So, with the kids gone and the old man nodding, I searched the room for a sign. My attention was caught by the sound of the dogs beneath the floor. Well, I'd made it with the cream, I'd made it with the boat . . . why not go the whole route? I swallowed hard, shut my eyes, and asked if they still used the hounds for hunting, still, you know, went on hunts--like they used to?

  "Now and then," Hank answered. "Why d'ya ask?"

  "I'd like to go sometime. With you . . . all . . . if you don't mind?"

  It was said. Hank nodded slowly, rolling a hot spoonful of apple on his tongue. "All right."

  A silence followed, identical to the one that had followed my offer to pick up Henry in the boat--only longer and stronger, because as a boy my aversion to hunting had been the most vociferous of all my aversions--and I once again reacted to my embarrassment at this silence with a flustered attempt at sophistication. "It's only that one should"--I shrugged, studying the cover of a National Geographic with bored authority--"know something of the area . . . besides, I've read all the decent paperbacks offered by Grissom's drugstore, and I saw Summer and Smoke on stage, so--"

  "Where! Where!" Henry lurched to his feet like an old fire-horse jumping to the bell, brandishing his cane and sniffing about for the flames. Viv uncoiled swiftly from the foot of Hank's chair and crossed to take his arm and ease him down again.

  "The movie-picture show, Henry," she said in a voice that would have calmed Vesuvius. "Just the movie-picture show."

  "What was I sayin'? Ah." He picked up the thread as though it had never broken. "About the old times. Say, them oldtime tales where we greased the skids and rode the oxen and all that noise? Hm? Them oldtime jacks in mustaches and ten-gallon hats carryin' a misery whip over their shoulders, you seen them pictures, ain't you? Lookin' all dashin' an' romantic? Well, them boys are good pictures in The Pioneer magazine, but I tell you now an' you can mark 'er down: they weren't the ones! that really rolled the logs. No. No sir. It was boys like me and Ben and Aaron, boys what not only had the grit but what had the sense to get hold of a machine. You're godblessed right! Let me say . . . hm, well now, roads? We didn't have roads worth sour apples, sure, but what did I tell 'em? Roads or no boogin' roads, I say, I'll take this he
re donkey machine any place you can take one them worthless tow-oxen of yours! Shoot; all I got to do is run a little piece of line up to a stump somewheres and pour it to 'er. Reel myself right up to where I want, then run a line to the next stump. Jumpin' the donk, we called it; cookin' with steam. Yessir, steam, steam, that's the business. You feed them animals of yourn bale of hay every other day at eighty, ninety cents a bale, and you know what I'm feedin' mine? Wood chips, and slashin', and scrub oak, and any other damn thing layin' around handy for the burnin'. Steam! gasoline! now Diesel! Yessir, that's the ticket. You can't whup the swamps with a animal. A animal is on the other side! You can't take much shade offn the ground with nutted ox an' a whittlin' knife! You got to have a machine. "

  His eyes brightened as he warmed again to his subject. He jerked upright in his chair and hooked a long bony hand in the invisible strap hanging before him. He dragged his body standing, a rickety stack of limbs and joints, teetering precariously on the edge of eighty and looking like the slightest breeze would turn it into a pile of rubble.

  "The trucks! The cats! The yarders! I say more power to 'em. Booger these peckerwoods always talkin' about the good old days. Let me tell you there weren't nothin' good about the good old days but for free Indian nooky. An' that was all. Far as workin', loggin', it was bust your bleedin' ass from dark to dark an' maybe you fall three trees. Three trees! An' any snotnosed kid nowdays could lop all three of 'em over in half an hour with a Homelite. No sir. Good old days the booger! The good old days didn't hardly make a dent in the shade. If you want to cut you a piece you can see out in these goddam hills you better get out there with the best thing man can make. Listen: Evenwrite an' all his crap about automation . . . he talk like you gotta go easy on this stuff. I know better. I seen it. I cut it down an' it's comin' back up. It'll always be comin' back up. It'll outlast anything skin an' bone. You need to get in there with some machines an' tear hell out of it!"

  He lurched violently across the room, clearing his throat, wiping at the long cornstarch hair worrying his eyes, working his mouth in a grimacing mixture of anger and exuberance, of fury practically, of drunken, dedicated fury; he turned and came thundering back.