by Ken Kesey
She jerks again at the zipper, smiling: "But I do remember this part real clear: that the man I marry is going to have to agree to me cutting my hair short. That was one of the first things, the hair, I remember . . ."
Suddenly she feels that she wants to cry, but that she has been robbed of her tears somewhere along the way. She hunches down inside the poncho, like a snail . . .
"I remember . . . I promised me--her--that I would never marry a man who made me keep my hair long. I--she trusted me to keep that promise. She trusted me to get my hair cut short . . ." A skinny child looks up from the task of picking cockleburs out of her hair and watches Viv with curious eyes; after a moment she speaks. "You were going to have a boy and a girl and two more boys. Nelson, Neatha, Clark, and William after little Willy, the rope doll?"
"That's right. You're right . . ."
The little girl reaches a slim hand to touch Viv's cheek. "And a piano. We were going to get him to buy us a piano, don't you remember? And teach the kids to sing? Kids and a piano, and teach them all the songs Mama and Daddy sang, who studied at Juilliard . . . remember, Vivvy?"
She moves nearer, looking up into Viv's face.
"And a canary. Two canaries, we would call them Bill and Coo. Real German rollers that could sing as good as the ones in the United Motor Parts and Radio Repair . . . Weren't we going to have two canaries?"
Viv looks past the child to the present, down at the photograph in her hand. She examines the face in the picture: the eyes direct and powerful, the hands folded, the shadow, the little boy standing there so serious in glasses . . . back to the girl's face, and the smile that laughs at her through the hair, the tossed swoop of hair out over her left shoulder like a glossy black wing fixed in time . . .
"And most of all, Vivvy, that Someone, remember? He was to be Someone who wanted the real us, me, who wanted--truly--what I am--was. Yes. Not a Someone who just wanted what they needed me to be . . ."
She turns the picture over and brings it closer to her face: Rubber-stamped on the back was the studio name, "MODERN'S . . . Eugene, Oregon," and the date, "Sept. 1945." She hears Hank now for the first time, trying to tell her, and Lee, finally hears them, and sees for herself how they had all been cheated . . .
"I love them, I do. I truly can love. I have that . . ."
But this minute, for this woman, this dead image, she feels a hatred that sings in her ears like steam. This woman has been like a dark fire, a cold fire, that melted them all almost beyond recognition. Burned them until they barely knew themselves or each other.
"But I won't let her use me any longer. I love them but I cannot give myself for them. Not my whole self. I have no right to do that."
She slips the picture inside the shoebox and picks up the bus ticket Lee has left lying on the table.
The rain drives against the earth; the river swells, glutted and still hungry. Hank leaps from the yard over the berry vine, one foot striking the bank, one on the overturned boathouse, and on into the back of the tug; he is surprised to see Lee, but his hand covers his smile . . . "Can you swim, bub? You may have to do a little swimming, you know . . ."
Jenny casts her shells.
Evenwrite charges about the bank among the gathering loggers, outraged and righteous and sweating in his underwear. "Just where does this big-ass Stamper think he gets off?"--and still smelling of gasoline.
"Just you?"
"Just me . . ."
Teddy watches Draeger hurry from his car toward the Snag's front door. There are bigger forces, Mr. Draeger. I don't know what they are but they got ours whipped sometimes. I don't know what they are but I know they aren't making me a dime.
And Draeger, walking past the gently throbbing glow of the jukebox, the shuffleboard, through the partitioned gloom of empty booths--I want to know what happened, and why--finally finds the slim blond girl. By herself. With a beer glass. Her pale hands resting on a large maroon album. Waiting to tell him:
"You must go through a winter to get some notion . . ."
Viv closes the large book. For some time now she has been turning the pages in silence as Draeger watches, entranced by the flow of faces. "So," she says, smiling. Draeger starts, his head coming up. "I still don't understand what happened," he says after a moment.
"Maybe that's because it's still happening," Viv says. She gathers the strewn papers and photos into a neat pile on the table, laying that picture of the dark-haired woman and boy on top. "Anyway . . . I think I hear my bus now. So. It's been nice running through the family history with you, Mr. Draeger, but now--as soon as I . . ."
Viv borrows a knife from Teddy and frees her snagged hair in time to board the bus. Just she and the driver and a gum-chewing child. "I'm going to Corvallis to visit my grandmother and grandfather and their horses," the child informs Viv. "Where are you going?"
"Who knows?" Viv answers. "I'm just going."
"Just you?"
"Just me."
Draeger sits his term at that table. The juke bubbles. The whistle buoy moans in the bay. Cables ravel. Johnny Redfeather sings "Swanee." The tug heaves against its load.
The booms begin to move, groaning, behind the chugging wake of the tug; Hank and Lee hurry to secure the couplings between the great carpets of logs. "Keep on the bounce," is Hank's advice, "or they'll go to rollin' under you. It maybe don't look it, but it's safest to keep on the bounce."
The bus hisses through the swirling rain; Viv takes a Kleenex from her pocket to wipe the fog from the window to get a look at the two tiny figures leaping foolishly from log to log. She rubs and rubs, but the mist just doesn't seem to clear.
"They're nincompoops!" Gibbons proclaims. "They cain't make it in this water . . ."
On the boat Andy repeats over and over to himself, in spite of Hank's admission of worry before going out onto the booms, "Nothin' to sweat, nothin' to sweat . . ."
Evenwrite calls a group into the garage near the landing. "We got some things to work out, boys . . . in case they do make it."
Big Newton, still belching, begins doing push-ups on the living-room rug.
The arm, dangling in front of the dogs, twists and slowly untwists in the billowing rain.
Jenny steps back from the face before her, dropping her eyes.
"Jenny . . . is that your name, Jenny?"
"Yeah. Not really. People just allus call me Jenny."
"And your real name?"
"Leahnoomish. Means Brown Fern."
"Lee-ah-noomish . . . Brown Fern. That is very pretty."
"Yeah. Look here. You think I have a pretty legs?"
"Very pretty. And the skirt also. Very very pretty . . . little Brown Fern."
"Haw," Jenny says triumphantly, lifting the mud-hemmed garment on off over her head.
1 Courtesy of Ken Babbs