Oh do not leave without me, woman whom I adore
Though I know about rejection, having been left many
times before,
But I am your best lover, as you have said before.
Oh take me tonight, my darling—away to the western shore.
A heroic venture, to leave his entire adult life behind all at once, but what about Irene? His lover of last night. His valiant wife tending her tomatoes, weeding, watering, smoking away the aphids, pinching off the runners, so as to put something rare and exquisite before him—a fresh, homegrown tomato, sliced, lightly salted or drizzled with oil. A man doesn’t just up and walk away from a garden in July. A garden he’s been cultivating for thirty-two years. So there’s a drought. Water as you can and wait it out. It rains here. This isn’t a desert.
21. PASTOR INGQVIST STEPS IN
A high of 78 was forecast, then revised to 84, which raised the spectre of heat prostration, so Billy P. went off to round up firemen to organize two more first-aid stations and the Catholic Knights of the Golden Nimbus went off to collect ice. “All you can get,” said Clint. “If necessary, buy it.”
The lawns and gardens of Lake Wobegon were lush from a long drenching rain on the 2nd and the morning of the 3rd, and the geraniums glittered fiercely in their pots and the flower beds shone with fresh enthusiasm. The town park alongside the lake was freshly mowed from the swimming beach to the narrow sward behind Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery and the Mercantile and the dirt alley behind them. A little boy sat in the shade of Ralph’s awning and unwrapped a Butterfinger bar with great delicacy. Wally’s pontoon boat, Agnes D., was tied to the town dock, its deck and canopy freshly washed, little flags fluttering at the stern. Hjalmar and Virginia had rented it for the day. Their daughter Corinne was coming all the way from upstate New York with her boyfriend, Leeds Cutter, whom nobody had laid eyes on but who was said to be handsome and able to jump up on a table from a standing start, just crouch and spring and there he was. Other pontoons were at the ready and runabouts and a 40-foot scow was pulled up on shore and three men in orange jumpsuits labeled AERIAL DISPLAY INC. were wheeling cartons aboard it with red labels: EXPLOSIVES—EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME, EXTREME HEAT, OR STRONG VIBRATIONS.
The Lake Wobegon patrol car (“Protect and Secure”) was parked out front of Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, and Judy Ingqvist, glancing out the parsonage window next door, thought maybe her husband the pastor had had a heart attack, but no, the constables had only come to tell him about a bilko artist named Schwab who had worked some Lutheran churches in western Minnesota, pretending to have a conversion experience and hugging people and taking their wallets.
He was thought to be the same thief known as the False Usher, who ran off with collection plates.
“Collection plates are slim pickings compared to people’s wallets,” said Pastor Ingqvist. He read the flyer the constables had printed up.
Today our town welcomes 1000’s of visitors for our Internationally Acclaimed Fourth of July. Truly it is a “red-letter day” for Lake Wobegon. As we show our warm hospitality, let us also be vigilant. Watch for strangers who appear to be nervous or agitated and glancing around. Do not hesitate to ask persons unknown to you where they hail from.
If officials determine that danger exists and an alert is needed, a public announcement will be made, as follows: “Will the winners of the rhubarb pie contest kindly report to the judges’ table?” This will notify you that an alert has been declared. If so, you should gather your family together immediately and congregate with PERSONS KNOWN TO YOU. Let your local law-enforcement officers handle any situation that may arise. They are trained and prepared. Thank you for your cooperation.
Lake Wobegon Dept. of Public Safety
“Looks like you’ve thought of everything,” said Pastor Ingqvist. He wore a seersucker jacket and white shirt and jeans and a straw boater. He was on his way to the football field to visit the horses.
Clint was back at the football field, leaning against the canteen stand, sipping coffee, watching the teamsters brushing the Percherons and putting the gilded bridles on. CNN had called. A producer named Ricky. Very excited. They were in the truck on Interstate 94 nearing St. Joseph. “Why isn’t Lake Wobegon on our map?” he said. “Long story,” said Clint. He gave them directions, offered to meet them in one of the mapped towns. “On our way!” said Ricky. “Beautiful horses,” Clint said to one man who was brushing a horse’s fetlock and he grunted and didn’t even look up. And then Mr. Griswold came bustling up, carrying a shopping bag, in white slacks and a golf shirt and a Cheap Sport Coat of Many Colors.
He grabbed Clint’s arm in a tight grip and said, “That crazy woman Georgia Brickhouse is on her way. You know that?”
Clint shook his head.
“Who invited her? She’s coming with some Christian honor guard, from Liberty Baptist High School in Paynesville—ever hear of it? Boot camp for troubled fundamentalist teens. An old turkey farm and they turned the sheds into barracks. Out in a big field behind barbed wire. Yeh yeh yeh. You never heard of it? They advertise on the Internet—if your kids don’t seem interested in the opposite sex and you think they might be homos, you can send them to Liberty to be deprogrammed. That’s what Georgia used to do, deprogram potential lesbian teenagers. And now she’s running for Congress. Can you believe it? Yeh yeh yeh.”
“I’m thinking I’m not going to run.”
“No no no, Don’t go negative on me. Lot of excitement out there. Talked to the cheerleaders and they’re on board. How about your brother introduces you? When do you want to announce? How about right after the Living Flag? We’ll get the press together and you stand up and make your announcement and everybody’s waving their flags—here,” and he handed Clint a card. “Take a few questions, and we’re off and running.”
The card read: “As an American veteran, a businessman, a father, and a proud Midwesterner, I have watched with dismay as our leaders in Washington have gotten entangled in a bitter partisan deadlock that makes it impossible to do the people’s business. There is a need for new blood with an independent vision and a willingness to work together for a stronger America. And that is why I have decided to announce . . .”
Clint shook his head.
“Change it any way you like,” said Griswold. “This Brickhouse woman and this weird cult she’s part of—we’ve got to step in and take her on. Can’t let her hog the spotlight, not even for a minute. Take my word for it. You gotta go straight at her before she convinces people she’s halfway normal.”
The man had a habit of looking off your shoulder as he talked to you, first one shoulder and then the other, as if scouting the area for intruders.
“I’m talking to the cheese producers, gonna get them on board. They’ve got a committee, Americans for Food Action. You don’t have anything against federal subsidies, do you?”
Clint guessed he didn’t.
“I got the gun guys pretty much rounded up. You’re a hunter, right?” Clint nodded. “Yeh yeh yeh. Great. You’re all set on gay marriage, right? Right to life? Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeh yeh yeh. Nobody knows. But we gotta calm those people down. You know. Brickhouse has got ’em jumping out of their underwear.”
Clint wanted to tell the man that he wasn’t so sure about running for Congress. Appreciate your enthusiasm but it’s a big step to take, and my wife is opposed. And my business is on the rocks. And I am having an affair with a 28-year-old yoga instructor. Or was, until recently.
And just then Pastor Ingqvist slipped up behind him and put a hand on his back. Clint jumped. Pastor slipped his arm around him. “Just wanted to tell you what a great job you do, Clint,” he said. He looked at the old coot in the bad sport coat. “David Ingqvist, I’m Clint’s pastor.” The man blinked. “I know,” he said. “I’ve been checking up on Clint. I know all about him. He’s going to announce for Congress today.”
“Actually
, I’m not—” Clint said.
“That’s great.” Pastor Ingqvist slapped him on the shoulder. “You got my vote. When’s the big rally?”
“Today,” said Mr. Sport Coat.
“Not going to happen,” said Clint. “Irene doesn’t want me to.”
Griswold clapped him on the shoulder. “Grab the bull by the tail. Strike while the iron is hot. No time like the present. Electing you would be like selling air to a drowning man. People are waiting for somebody like you.”
He stepped away, headed uptown.
Clint felt the light spray of the horseman’s hose and stepped back. “What’s going on with you?” said Pastor Ingqvist. Griswold stopped twenty feet away as if he had one more thing to say and then walked on. “Not all that much,” said Clint. The horsemen were sweating, stripped to the waist. They wore bandannas around their heads.
“I’m listening.”
Clint looked around and leaned closer. “I’ve committed homicide,” he said. “I choked a man with my own bare hands. Choked him and then I threw his body in a ditch and I pissed on it.”
“You didn’t either.”
“Did. This morning. I killed Berge. Had all of him I could take and then he gets right up in my face and gives me more and I just reached over and strangled the son of a bitch.”
“This isn’t funny—”
“According to Scripture, if you contemplate murder in your heart, it’s the same as if you actually do it. So why didn’t I do it?
That’s what I’m asking myself. No jury in this county would have—” But Pastor Ingqvist was having none of it. “If you want to talk, I’m here to listen,” he said. “I’m not here to judge you. And it isn’t about Berge, it’s about a woman. According to what I hear.”
“David—”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I’m not your judge. There isn’t anything you’ve done that I haven’t contemplated a hundred times. We’re all in the same boat. But what are you hoping to get from this?”
There was silence all around them, everything seemed to have gone dead.
“Put the Seventh Commandment aside for a moment. What’s your reasoning here? How is this supposed to make anybody happier?”
“But she does. She makes me happy. That’s the point.”
“So can Irene. Give her a chance. Don’t throw away forty years.”
“Thirty-two years.”
Ingqvist didn’t smile. “Sin is confusion and it causes terrible pain. You’re too old to go through all that.”
And then who should appear but the murder victim himself, looming up like death on toast with a peace offering, a bottle of Powers whiskey.
“How about some flavoring for that coffee?” he said.
“No thanks. I’m busy, Berge. Beat it.”
“Helps keep the flies off you.”
“It’s not even noon.”
“So?” Berge put the bottle to his lips and took a long draw, swallowed, and smacked his lips. “Good Irish whiskey. You know, it was Saint Patrick who drove the Norwegians out of Ireland. He did the snakes and then the Norwegians. He poisoned their fish with lye, but the Norwegians they just called it lutefisk and thought it was wonderful. So he pissed on their potatoes but they just made lefse from it and thought that was quite a treat. So Saint Patrick said, ‘This isn’t worth my time; they can go to hell.’ And that’s how the Norwegians got to Minnesota.”
He told this to Clint, his red pocky face six inches away breathing whiskey and coffee on him, and Clint turned away.
“I went to school with you. You got no right to look down on me.” Berge backed off, in search of shade, muttering to himself. He was used to being ignored.
“Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” said Ingqvist.
“If I’m here tomorrow.”
He was sitting next to Irene in church one Sunday weeks before and Ingqvist was droning from the pulpit about how God meets our every need—a sermon called “God, I’m Starved”—and then something snapped at him, and it was Irene. He’d fallen asleep and started snoring and she poked him in the ribs. Rather hard, he thought. You could wake a man up without leaving a bruise, couldn’t you? He sat up straight and in that moment he realized that his funeral would likely take place in this very room and his body would lie in a casket at the head of the aisle, maybe a flag on it, honoring the old Navy vet, and he remembered San Diego drenched in sunlight and the tacquería at the beach and the month of training at the Presidio in San Francisco. He’d gone into the Navy a virgin and finally, at age twenty-two, in a bordello on Lincoln Boulevard, that lovely Chinese woman showed him the basics. Cheyenne. So sweet. Genuinely kind. His earliest instruction in sexual matters came from a book, Marital Hygiene , that his brother handed to him when he was fifteen and said, “Mother wants you to read this,” and turned away, beet red. The book had a few illustrations of male and female anatomy, and its thrust was clear: If you have sex without God’s blessing, you will catch an unspeakable disease that eats your brain and you wind up an idiot in a bathrobe with pee running down your leg, so you wait until you meet the Right One and have a sacramental marriage and everything is fine.
Meanwhile, he wanted to get laid as soon as possible. This was terrifying. Mom gave him special elastic underwear with a note: “This will help you subdue any carnal impulses, my darling. I am praying for you.” So he wore it and it had the opposite effect. He fantasized about girls’ bosoms and the mysterious intersection of their legs, which Marital Hygiene represented as a cavern leading to an underground chamber where babies hatched.
But what he had imagined to be a harrowing descent into the bat cave of self-destruction turned out to be an elegant little dance no more mysterious than a two-step, with various interesting twists and decorations, and what worked well, Cheyenne showed him, was kindness and delicacy in bed. Take it easy. Don’t grab. Let the drama build. And it will. And now, sitting in church, thinking about her slight body, her elegant little breasts, her black bush, he began to rise in his pants, just as it was time to go forward for Communion. He sat with his legs crossed and motioned for Irene to go ahead. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. He shook his head. Nothing. Just the old business about the flesh. I’ll get over it when I’m dead.
22. COULD’VE
Q: So where had he gone wrong?
A: When he came back to Minnesota and, in a weak moment, sacrificed his interests for (what he thought were) the interests of others. The undoing of his liberty. And that was the making of a libertarian: a wrong turn toward inside-out sacrificialism that twists your life like a pretzel.
He could’ve moved to California when he was 23. He
was already in California, in the Navy, all he had to do was stay. He planned to go to art school on the G.I. Bill and he went home to Lake Wobegon to tell them his plans and say good-bye and his old girlfriend Irene Rasmussen sent word via girlfriends that she never wanted to lay eyes on him again because he had broken her heart. So he drove out to see her. They sat under the cottonwoods and she said, “Why didn’t you write to me more? I wrote to you. Long letters. You sent me postcards.” He told her he had been busy having a great time in California and there was too much to write about, he didn’t know where to begin. She said, “Well maybe I wish I had been having a great time too instead of sitting here and waiting for you.” He said he was sorry. She said, “You aren’t, not really. You are completely selfish. I don’t know what I ever saw in you. California changed you completely. I hardly recognize the Clint Bunsen I went to school with. You got all stuck on yourself. It’s tragic!” And she wept. And so he put an arm around her. Then both arms.
Irene had a lot of class, she was no dummy. She preferred classical music to country-western and she read Jane Austen instead of romances and she didn’t overeat the way other girls did. She intended to stay lean. She could shoot baskets. She beat him once playing Horse. She could play a couple pieces at the piano: one was by Chopin and the other by somebody else. She had a lot
going for her. But he didn’t love her. He realized that now, looking back. He’d been too busy all these years to think about his feelings and now maybe it was too late. Because back then, when she accused him of selfishness, to show he was not, he said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Show me you care.”
“I do care.”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“I want you to make love to me,” she said.
Well, what could he say? “No, thank you very much, I’d like to but I promised my mother I’d be home early”? He was sorry she felt neglected; he thought she was dating Joe. “Not really,” she said. “We went to movies and he wanted to go further but I told him I was waiting for you.”
No girl had ever offered herself to him; he didn’t know what to say. “Are you sure?” he said.
“Of course,” she said. So he took her up to his uncles’ hunting shack near Cloquet and there under the glassy gaze of a deer and a cougar they made love very sweetly and in the midst of her passion, she cried out, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you! I can tell! I knew it! I was waiting for you and you were out there fooling around!” He lied and told her she was the first he ever loved. He was naked, lying atop her, easing himself into her. Over and over he whispered that he loved her. They lay in each other’s arms afterward and fell asleep and the next day her father had a talk with Daddy and Daddy spoke to Clinton. “You can’t take liberties with a young lady, Clinton, unless your intentions are honorable. I trust that your intentions were honorable.”
Daddy stood at the porch screen, looking out at the green grass, his back to his son.
“I was planning to go back to California, Dad. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Honest. It was her idea.” He was teary-eyed at the thought of not going to art school and taking a course in sculpture, which he was good at.
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