by Ken Kesey
"Are you kidding me, Les?" Big gripped his beer glass, feeling himself growing more angry at this blockhead than he'd thought possible. A little more and--"Listen, somebody better straighten you out before you say somethin' to him personally an' get your neck broke. Listen here: you talk about him sulling . . . ain't I spent three evenings right here in this bar entertaining you fellows by trying to make him do something along just that line? I worked him over about as terrible as a man can be worked over and still stand up--worse'n any little slappin' around--and, boy, I tell ya: if he ever sulled by god you could of fooled me!"
"Amen to that." One of the Sitkins brothers nodded knowingly. "Not Hank Stamper."
"Look here," Big continued, his voice trembling strangely. "You see where them teeth're missing? Hank slapped them out for me that Halloween night after he got up off the floor about the sixth time. If he was sullin' then, you sure coulda fooled these here teeth. I tell you what, Les; before you take on Hank, what do you say me an' you spar around some? To warm you up, sort of . . . ?"
"Ah, Big," Les said, "you know how I talk--"
"I said let's spar around some, godblessit!"
The band had stopped. Big had pushed back from the table and was rising in front of Les like a mountain. Les appeared to sink deeper into his mud.
"I said, let's get up, Gibbons! Get the fuck up!"
And the room, suddenly so quiet the deep drumming of the oil burning in the heater could be heard, felt that strange trembling fully. Waiting. Teddy swiveled softly from the laundry bag where he had just placed his dishtowel, moving carefully to keep from disturbing his specimens. Before him, the long room seemed stretched even longer by the silence, taut as a wire. But not the clenched anticipation that usually precedes a fight. Again, something different . . . what is it, this fear?
Across the turned heads Teddy saw Les Gibbons, the shabby form shrunk beneath the towering, outlandish bulk of Big Newton--a scene made even more ridiculous, even more comical, by Newton's monumental rage; look how furious he is with that pathetic Les! Big's face was blazing; his neck was corded with the bind of his shoulders; his chin quivered so that Teddy could easily see it, far away as he was. So much fury at such pathetic insignificance? It's a wonder someone doesn't break up laughing. Except--Teddy put down his polishing rag--except it isn't rage. No! Down the beautifully grained bartop, polished to an expensive luster by his years of face-watching, Teddy saw for one instant a common face--Not rage or caution either--a face he had never seen before in all his polishing years. As a collector of expressions, he thought he had seen and studied them all; it was his hobby, his business. For years of endless, outcast nights he had watched an endless sea of idiots tossed wave on wave across the beach of his bar . . . watched, and skillfully gauged every wink and grin, and carefully analyzed every fat drop of anxious sweat, every scared tremble of hand and frightened swallowing. My, yes, if anything, he knew expressions . . . but never this face, never before this expression of . . . of--
Then Rod slaps his guitar--"An-ee-time . . ."--shooting Ray a look to wake him up; ". . . you're thinkin' of me . . ." Ray joins in halfheartedly: "An-ee-time . . . you're feelin' blue . . ." And the taut wire of silence snaps, the tableau thaws. Big Newton thunders off to pee, his face once more bleak and surly. Les Gibbons laughs a blubbering laugh that sounds as though it had come up through purple clay. Mrs. Carleson's daughter begins rattling glasses in the sink. Evenwrite wanders out, looking either dazed or drunk. Jenny tugs on a drunk arm lackadaisically, her usual tenacity missing. Howie Evans contorts his unlovely back to relieve old kinks, looking for a woman. The Sitkins boys begin wordlessly razzing Les about his near-annihilation. Evenwrite starts his car and drives slowly east up Main with nine beers heavy and joyless in his belly. Old Henry shades his eyes against the May Day sun that shines through the broken green dome across a flowered meadow of months. January, nineteen-twenty-one, as I recollect, after the storm they still call the High Blow, Ben is farting around for one reason or the other down south of Florence near the mouth of the Siltcoos and he sees four whales left by the tides with the bar too low for them to swim back out to sea. And he--wait till I get that photograph--he gets a rowboat and rows out there and kills all four of them with an ax, so help me god! June bugs, hot and humming, hummmmming. No. January? Oh yeah, Ben? Well, nobody'd believe he wasn't telling a whopper till me and John borrowed a camera from Stokes and--what in thunder did I do with that picture, anyhow? Around here someplace . . . I saw last . . . let's see . . . Nov. 17: Doctor out again to see the old lady. Says she looks mainly tired is all. Says dog is good as he'll get after salmon sickness, gimpy in the hindquarters but will be fine, will be able to trail just as good as--
Nov. 19: Dog died. Old Red? Brownie? No, Old Gray . . . from eating salmon, spine bowed the wrong direction and died.
Nov. 24: Thanksgiving--a different year?--old lady died. John and me build coffin out of Idaho pine. Doctor says he don't know why. Stokes says cannot endure. Hell with that. I say she just Hank? Hank boy, oh Hank don't you know that the old lady just Hank boy you can't laid down and died boy? Hank boy if you the sun leaps springs back can't keep sun crashing on ground shadowed a thousand thousand "Hank, goddammit, straighten up there!"
"Mr. Stamper! Lie back down! Doctor . . . Doctor, a hand, please!"
"And never by god give a boogin'!" A pretty good world you keep the shadows off. Salmonberries: pale, translucent orange with a taste more delicate than the color. "Listen to me now, Hank, son, I'm talkin' to ya!" Butterflies busy as stars. "Mr. Stamper . . . calm and easy now . . ." The Walking Preacher, remember? talkin' over Mama when she died, tell that he one time baptized a fella in sour mash; a real loud, shoutin' preacher sonofabitch you could hear carryin' on a good two miles, always hungry, always digging at his big nose, always talking about Christian Charity . . . oh, those winters! "Stokes, blast you, bringing out them cast-offs!" Missionary barrels, packed by churches back East always a big hullabaloo when the barrel came in on the boat, always the buttons cut off all the donated clothes, always teeth outen the combs . . . "Stokes by god I'll wear leaves an' comb my hair with fishbones afore I'll!" The sun crashes into green shadows unlighted . . . "Before I'll give a goddam inch to your goddam!" . . . springs back, cracking through the dome. "Calm and peaceful, Mr. Stamper, there we go, now, there we go it'll just be a moment . . ." Crashing once more out of blue behind the gathering rush . . . ". . . hush, hush, hush."
"He's asleep. Thanks for the help." The milky light flutters. The nurse draws deep, cotton-soft gray curtains down over the first of May. Andy drops Hank and Viv off at the house and drives the jeep on up to the mill to row his skiff back across in the rain. Big Newton tries to compose himself on the can by scratching letters from the WASH YOUR HANDS BEFORE RETURNING TO WORK sign decaled on the toilet door, changing the first line to WAS YOU HAD and adding a question mark after WORK. Ray finally wakes up enough from the shock the silence has given him to step up the beat and the volume. Jenny, growing suddenly weary of this game of maneuvering drunks, thumps out the door, having thought of another game. Just as Simone, resigned and irreligious in lascivious scarlet, whisks in the same door and surrenders the sweet-cake naivete in her heart forever.
"Hey-hey, look who just flew in. How do, Simone; long time no see."
"Boys . . ."
"An' goodness me, all feathered out like she's right off a magazine cover!"
"Thank you; I think it is nice. It is a gift. . . ."
"Howie. Say, Howie, Simone's here; Simone's back, Howie. . . ."
"Tut. Simone's back, everybody. Who will buy me a beer, a lot of beer, please?"
"Teddy. A drink for zee little lady from Frawnce. . . . No, a drink for everybody!"
Teddy turns from the face for the glasses draining on the towel beside Mrs. Carleson's daughter--this expression. Now I know. Now I see--his plump little body still tingling with the charge of that taut instant. I thought this day, this sunshine, this well-being was sel
ling all this alcohol. I thought all my notions why people drink was all wrong when this lovely day . . . but now I see. In the falling dark his neons begin to stir. His hands come alive. Glasses tink together, the till rings. . . . It just took some time to see what was happening. I thought I had collected all the dark situations; I thought I knew them. I thought I knew all the expressions, I thought I had seen all the fears . . . while the music and laughter glorious good times blaze under his smoky ceiling . . . but never this face before; never absolute, unspeakable, supreme terror!
There occurs to me now one last anecdote, a bit long; skip it if you wish, it has nothing to do with the story. . . . I put it in because it seems to me somehow pertinent--if not to plot or parable, at least to purpose.
About a guy I met in the nuthouse, a Mr. Siggs, a nervous, quick-featured self-schooled hick who had spent all his fifty or so years except for Service time in the eastern Oregon town of his birth. A reader of encyclopedias, a memorizer of Milton, a writer of a column called "Words to Adjust By" in the Patients' Paper . . . a completely capable and sufficient person, yet this intense little self-styled scholar was perhaps the most uncomfortable man on the ward. Siggs was terribly paranoid in crowds, equally hung up in one-to-one situations, and seemed to enjoy no ease at all except by himself inside a book. And no one could have been more shocked than myself when he volunteered for the job as Ward Public Relations Director. "Masochism?" I asked him when I heard of his new position. "What do you mean?" He fidgeted, hedging away from my eyes, but I went on. "I mean this Public Relations job . . . why are you taking on this business of dealing with big groups of people when you're apparently so much more at ease alone?"
At this Mr. Siggs stopped fidgeting and looked at me; he had large, heavy-lidded eyes that could burn with sudden unblinking intensity. "Just before I came in here . . . I took a job, stock outrider. In a shack hid away outside Baker. A place a hundred miles from noplace. Nobody, nothing, far as I could see. Sweet, high country; beautiful . . . Not even a cedar tree. Took along complete set of Great Books. All the classics, ten dollars a month, book salesman took it out of my wages in Baker. Beautiful country. See a thousand miles any direction, like it was all mine. A million stars, a million sage blossoms--all mine. Yes, beautiful . . . Couldn't make it, though. Committed myself after a month and a half." His face softened and his blue stare dimmed again beneath his half-closed lids; he grinned at me; I could see him forcing himself to try to relax. "Oh, you're right. Yes, you are: I am a loner, a born one. And someday I will make it--that shack, I mean. Yes. I will, you'll see. But not like last time. Not to hide. No. Next time I try it it will be first because I choose to, then because it is where I am most comfortable. Only sensible plan; sure of it. But . . . a fellow has to get so he can deal with these Public Relations, before he can truly make it. Make it like that . . . alone . . . in some shack. A man has to know he had a choice before he can enjoy what he chose. I know now. That a human has to make it with other humans . . . before he can make it with himself."
I had a therapeutic addition to this: "And vice versa, Mr. Siggs: he has to make it with himself before branching out."
He agreed, reluctantly, but he still agreed. Because at that time we both considered this addition pretty psychologically profound and--in spite of its chicken-or-egg overtones--the very last word in "Words to Adjust By" at that time.
Recently, however, I found that there were even further additions. A few months ago I was sage-hen hunting in the Ochoco Mountains--high, spare, lonely plains country and certainly as far from noplace as any place I know--and I ran into Mr. Siggs again, a healthier, younger-looking Mr. Siggs, tanned, bearded, and calm as a lizard on a sunny stone. After overcoming our mutual surprise, we recalled our conversation after his acceptance of the Public Relations job, and I asked how his plans had worked out. Perfectly--after some successful therapy he'd been discharged with honors over a year ago, had his outriding job, his Great Books, his shack . . . loved it. But didn't he still occasionally wonder if he were really choosing his shack or still just hiding in it? Nope. Wasn't he lonely? Nope. Well wasn't he bored, then, with all this sunshine and adjustment? He shook his head. "After you get so you can make it with other people, and make it with yourself, there's still work to be done; you still have the main party to deal with . . ."
"The 'main party'?" I asked, right then starting to suspect that statement about his being discharged "with honors." "What do you mean, Mr. Siggs? The 'main party'? You mean deal with Nature? God?"
"Yes, it could be," he remarked, rolling on his rock to warm his other side and closing his eyes against the sun. "Nature or God. Or it could be Time. Or Death. Or just the stars and the sage blossoms. Don't know yet. . . ." He yawned, then raised his little head and fixed me once more with that same intense look, a demented bright-blue look galvanized by some drive beneath his leathery face that sunshine--or therapy--could never adjust. . . . "I am fifty-three," he said sharply. "Took fifty years, half a century, just to get to where I could deal with something my own size. Don't expect me to work this other thing out overnight. So long."
The eyes closed and he seemed to sleep, a skinny back-country Buddha, on a hot rock miles from noplace. I walked on, back toward camp, trying to decide if he was saner or crazier than when I last saw him.
I decided he was.
Thanksgiving morn finds the town suffering under a drizzling gray overcast and a driving black hangover, with a mouthful of yesterday's cigarettes, and thankful for nothing but the knowledge that all such mornings pass. This morning Big Newton tries to purge himself of the day before with soda and vinegar. Howie Evans uses a spoonful of Sal Hepatica and a half-bottle of French toilet water, genuine from Paris, which he steals from Simone and takes to his wife as a peace offering. Jenny uses a page from Timothy. Les Gibbons tries cold water when, running down to the riverbank, he slips while shouting to Andy rowing past; Andy heaves on downstream, toward the mill, rowing obliviously past the man floundering and cursing in the reedy shallows, as though he is rowing in his sleep. Viv brushes at her teeth with salt. Ray sits muggle-headed on the edge of the bed and tries to wash away his darker feelings with the bright memory of his success last night and the glowing prospect of his future. Simone tries to wash away similar feelings, using the Blood of the Lamb. Evenwrite uses Vicks VapoRub and the words from an old song of his father's.
. . . When that line of smoky fire is drawn
Tell me which side are you on?
... then gives up asking and falls asleep in the tub.
Jenny is more tenacious. The Bible page gone, she returns to her shack, tired but resolute. Ever since leaving the bar last night, she has been working doggedly at the old childhood ritual that was responsible for her early departure from the Snag. This is a kid's game with clam shells, recalled after all these years, a game the little girls of the tribe used to play to call up the image of the men the gods had ordained to be their mates. Across the foot of her dingy cot Jenny has arranged a white pillowcase as a background; once clean, the pillowcase now has a graying smudge in its center left by hours of casting and picking up shells. She stands above the pillowcase, bends slightly at her thick waist, moves her two clasped hands in a slow circle . . . then opens the hands, sprinkling a patter of opulent, surf-sanded shells onto the cloth. She studies them a moment, singing, "This bed is been manless too long too long, this bed is been manless too long . . ."--to the tune of "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More." She nods at what she sees and scoops the shells back into her hand to begin again: "Wah-kon-da-ah-gah hear my song . . . this bed is been manless too long too long . . ."
When Jenny was fifteen the trouble was that the bed hadn't been manless long enough; "Jenny, you too young," her brothers had tried to tell her, "to go into business. . . . What kind of business this, anyway?"
"With Father. A trade. He voted for Roosevelt."
"He's a fool. Listen, why don't you come with us? Down the coast to the place Hoover built for us. Place bett
er than this; good house, facilities inside and out . . . and we get paid for living on it down the coast there. So why don't you? . . . Mud anyway you look at it."
Jenny shook her head and turned a trim hip before the bright new house trailer that her brothers had bought for the move to the reservation; "I think I just stay if it's fine with all you." The dim aluminum image gave her a resolute nod of approval; then she lifted an orange skirt to display trim brown legs bare to the belly button. . . . "Father say the Indians come under the New Deal just the same as anybody. He say me and him got a trade if we decide we wan' to apply it. You like my legs?"
Her brothers gaped. "Jenny! My God! Put down your clothes! Father's a crazy fool. You come on down coast."
She hiked the skirt behind and turned, looking back over her shoulder at the brown spread of her mirrored ass. "He said if we stay right around here where they logging, we retire rich quick from our business. Mmm . . . how do you like orange, huh?"
Five years later her father demonstrated his crazy-foolishness by spending their savings on a new house made with sawed boards, split shingles, plastered in all the rooms . . . right next door to the Pringle mansion. That was his mistake; an Indian might have a business, he might even get by with a house with plaster rooms and shingles, but by god he oughta know better'n to put that house an' business right next door to a decent God-fearing Christian woman! especially if that woman is Pucker Pringle. The incensed citizenry burned the house before Jenny so much as spent one night under its new roof, then in a fit of righteousness drove the poor father to the hills. Jenny they allowed to remain, providing she come down in her aspirations as well as her prices, and move to a less observant neighborhood . . .
"It ain't so bad," she told her brothers when they came to repossess her. "They give me this nice cabin out here. An' I ain't lonesome. I dance in the dance hall whenever I want to dance. That's why I stay, maybe." She neglected to mention the green-eyed young logger she had vowed to trap. "Also I get fifteen, twenty dollars a week . . . what the Government give you boys?"