Pontoon

by Garrison Keillor

  “We don’t have good coverage here,” she told him, “but if you go up the hill behind the school it helps.”

  He kept dialing as if he fully expected to get lucky. She passed him a copy of the Star Tribune and he glanced at the stock listings. She said, “Congratulations on your wedding” and he gave her the strangest look. Like he was embarrassed that she knew. “You got yourself a real nice girl,” she said. “How did you meet?” He said they were neighbors in Santa Cruz, California. “Well, whose house are you going to live in?” she said, kidding him. But he wasn’t going to be kidded.

  “We’re going to build a new one,” he said. “I think we are. It’s up to her. It’s her money.” He gave a wave of his hand, as if the whole business were up in the air at this point. And he plunked a ten on the counter and got up and walked away.

  “You forgot your change,” she said.

  “That’s for you,” he said and out the door he went. Dorothy gave the tip to Darlene who had the day off and who could use the money. “To make up for all you cheapskates,” she said.

  “Pretty well stuck on himself, like so many these days” said Rollie, and heads nodded. Myrtle had spoken to Mrs. Detmer who said that Mr. Greenwood was a wonderful young man and doing very well in the aviation business.

  “Well, she would have to say that at this point, wouldn’t she,” said LeRoy.

  “I don’t know about the real nice girl part though,” said Gary. “You could get some argument on that.”

  Dorothy said she believed in letting bygones be bygones and each to his own and live and let live. “There is too much backbiting and malicious gossip in a small town and that is the truth and everybody knows it,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt people to be a little more forgiving and tolerant. That was how Evelyn was. She used to say, ‘There’s a lot of human nature in everybody.’”

  At the mention of the deceased, the patrons got quiet for a minute or two. LeRoy said that Evelyn was the salt of the earth and a good soul and she’d done a lot of little unsung favors for kids who might’ve been headed down the wrong path and she set them right and not by preaching at them but by offering them a kind heart and a friendly ear. “Including me,” he said.

  LeRoy was from Rapid City. He worked for the post office there. One day he saw a package in the mail that he thought contained money and he took it home in his lunch bucket. It wasn’t money, it was a heating pad. The postal inspectors arrived five minutes later and he got three years in prison for a heating pad. People had heard this story before—LeRoy told it once in Men’s Bible Study—and now he got choked up as he told it again. Evelyn heard about him and campaigned to get him out of prison and then got him to Lake Wobegon and wangled the constable job.

  “She was a bulldog,” he said.

  “Well, that was right,” said Gary. “And once she got rid of that idiot Jack she was able to live her own life and get a little happiness.”

  “What do you mean, happiness?” said Dorothy.

  “Well, I think you know what I mean,” he said.

  “Raoul?” she said. He nodded.

  “Who was he?” He shrugged. “Her boyfriend,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Dorothy said and the moment she said it, she held up the palm of her hand. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know,” she said.

  *

  Thursday morning, Pastor Ingqvist called Barbara to say that some of Evelyn’s friends at church wanted to hold a little service in her memory, nothing big, not a memorial service, just a few friends gathering to remember her, and of course nobody wanted to offend Barbara—it would be a small private thing, really—“It’s Florence, isn’t it,” said Barbara. He said that a number of people had suggested it. “It’s Florence. She just can’t stand not to have her way. I don’t care. They can do whatever they like. I just wish they’d remember her as she was, but I’m not going to be there, so I don’t care.”

  So that afternoon, fifty members gathered in the basement around the piano and sang a few songs for their old pal—“When The Roll is Called Up Yonder” and “Let The Rest of the World Go By” and “I’ll Be Seeing You”—and Pastor Ingqvist, feeling a little sheepish, gave a talk about Evelyn and what a blessing she was, his eye on the stairs, waiting for Barbara to appear and read him the riot act. He was talking about what a blithe spirit Evelyn was and what joy she carried with her every day and more and more as she got older, when LaVonne appeared at the side door and motioned to him, and then motioned again with some urgency. “God bless her memory and all she meant to this church,” he said, and walked to the back of the room—“Somebody to see you,” said LaVonne and rolled her eyes to indicate Nut Case and right behind her was a man in black leather pants and an enormous black leather jacket with a dozen zippers and a lot of silver doodads. His hair was gray and he had fashioned a ponytail out of what remained of it and it hung down on his back. His face looked like an old pumpkin after a couple of hard frosts, and he took off his dark glasses and said, “This where the wedding is taking place?” His voice sounded like rough gravel in a cement mixer. “No,” said Pastor Ingqvist. “I think you want to talk to Debbie Detmer.”

  “That’s the one. So she ain’t getting married in the church?” He squinted at Pastor Ingqvist who shook his head. He explained that Debbie was making her own wedding arrangements. The man handed him a business card: AL GARBER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, PREMIER ENTERTAINMENT. “YOU’VE GOT A PAL WHEN YOU CALL AL.” He said, “If I can ever be of use, I’m in and out of this area all the time—” And then the piano struck up “Blessed Assurance” and he perked up his ears as the friends of Evelyn raised their poor quavery voices—Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, O what a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood—and the man closed his eyes and rocked back and forth with the music, his ponytail swinging back and forth—and he looked at Pastor Ingqvist and said, “My mother—” and then he couldn’t speak. Perfect submission, all is at rest, I in my Savior am happy and blest. Watching and waiting, looking above. Filled with his goodness, lost in his love. Tears rolled down his old pumpkin face and he gave Pastor Ingqvist a terrible brown grin, his teeth like a rotted log, and he exhaled a blast of beer and whiskey and cigarettes, and he said, “Is it okay if I join you?”

  “Of course,” said Pastor Ingqvist. Jesus didn’t say to check sinners for firearms, though for a moment he did flash on the shooting in Pennsylvania at the Amish school, a troubled loner with voices in his head steps into the midst of Christians and starts shouting and suddenly you’re in the news, Six Slain In Minnesota Church—he followed Leather Man, thinking Hold on just a moment. Not so eager, sir—all the ladies looking up as Leather Man walked down the aisle to the front, black leather swishing, zippers flashing, and he listened to the last chorus—This is my story, this is my song. Praising my Savior all the day long—and when the hymn ended, and it was all silent, he punched the air and said: “Yeah.”

  The Lutherans looked at the man in black, gave him their standard welcoming look—here, evidently, was one of Evelyn’s more interesting friends, come to tell about the difference she made in his life. He walked out in front of the pews and stood and chuckled. “My heart is full,” he said. “Though I sure as hell am surprised.”

  A few ladies laughed nervously and he bowed his head sheepishly and said he hadn’t set foot in a church in forty years, and he pulled out a filthy hanky and gave his nose a liquid honk and said that his mother used to sing that hymn and it tore him up to hear it again. He had drifted far from his Christian upbringing and was in the entertainment business now and living the road life estranged from his kids ever since his wife left him—and for good reasons, too—and he didn’t know if he’d ever see them again, but somehow the hymn gave him hope. Out of the blue, these old lines—born of his Spirit, washed in his blood—Oh yes, you wouldn’t know it to look at him but once he was just like you: followed the Christian path, and then got lured into show busine
ss and suddenly he was managing Muddy Waters, and then Joan Rivers, and Dinah Shore. The Beach Boys. Cliff Richards. Wonderful people and they paid him lavishly and he snorted it all up his nose. He was moving in the big leagues, Vegas, New York, Hollywood—he had Earl (Fatha) Hines, The McGuire Sisters, Joyce Brothers, The Mothers of Invention, the Boston Pops—then Alan Alda, Bob Barker, Chevy Chase, Doris Day, Gladys Knight, Dawn Upshaw, Sonny Rollins—Pastor Ingqvist was edging forward to thank the man for coming and nudge him toward the door but he was on a roll—“I tasted of every evil drug and liquor, every pill, every hallucinogen known to man—you name it, I did it twice—I had girlfriends left and right and all the desires of the flesh—I was a slave to them. I thought I was free! But I was utterly bound by my own cravings for pleasure—I needed more and more—it wasn’t enough to have everything I wanted—I craved more and more—and I signed up The Eagles, the Orioles, the Ravens, Flanders and Swann, Ethan Hawke, Rita Dove, Russell Crowe, Steve Martin, Jay Leno, Marty Robbins, the Byrds, Dan Quayle—”

  “I think it would be best if you left now,” the pastor said quietly, taking Leather Man’s great jacket by the elbow. The Lutherans perked up—their pastor was bouncing somebody out of church! He was telling a sinner to get the hell out! Bravo! He should’ve done this years ago, with some others. They could name names.

  “What’s the matter? What did I say?”

  “This is a memorial for somebody you didn’t know,” said Pastor Ingqvist. “We’re not interested in your life story. Not here. Thank you.” He took Leather Man’s arm in both hands and tried to steer him toward the door. A couple of men stood up, Clarence and Clint and Clint’s brother-in-law George, and Leather Man eyeballed them. “Where I come from, it’s not considered Christian to refuse a man who’s witnessing for the Lord, but maybe here it’s different. Okay. But don’t be surprised if Elvis pays a visit to you,” he said. And Leather Man struck a karate pose. He scowled with his pumpkin face and furrowed his big eyebrows and bared his brown teeth. “You are gonna be all shook up.” And he shook his cheeks brbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbrbr and let out a whoop and shook off the pastor’s hands and stalked out the door. They heard the roar of a motorcycle and it revved up a few times and then it raced away. Myrtle Krebsbach jumped up and said, “Let’s not get down in the dumps! Let’s sing!” Old Lutheran men looked down at their shoes—they’d have preferred to bend over and spread their cheeks to singing with Myrtle—but she was already warbling “Let me call you Sweetheart.” “Louder!” she cried, her old eyes glittering.

  The motorcycle went blasting past the Chatterbox Café at sixty miles an hour and the windows shook and people looked over at LeRoy in his constable jacket and badge and he said, “Long as he is headed out of town he is okay. I am not going to chase him down and bring him back.”

  “Probably a friend of Debbie’s going for more champagne,” said Darlene.

  Myrtle said she’d like to know how much that champagne cost that was sitting in the Detmer’s garage. Donnie saw them unloading it. Ten cases of it. French. “Don’t tell me they got that wholesale.” And somebody said there was a hundred pounds of cheese, also French. “Who is going to eat all that? I wasn’t invited, I know that. Are they flying people in from California or what?”

  “Well, I’ll bet you ten dollars they aren’t going to get married at all,” said Dorothy.

  She had just emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, her hair pasted to her forehead, two silver bracelets on each forearm with crystals in them which are supposed to help her lose weight.

  “My sister heard them last night and they were snapping at each other and he referred to her as a bitch and he was walking away and she was running after him and hissing at him, something about his whole attitude making her sick.”

  “Sounds like they already are married,” said LeRoy, ever the comedian. “Maybe they are only renewing their wedding vows before they expire.”

  “She threw the car keys at him and hit him in the head, and it was a hard throw. She told him the whole thing was a big mistake and they might as well stop right now. He was on his cell phone. He found a place next to the Unknown Norwegian where he got a pretty good signal and he was all excited and she was telling him he was the great mistake of her life.”

  They all sat stunned. LeRoy said, “Sounds like she read our thoughts.”

  But oh boy. Those poor Detmers. Ten cases of French champagne in the garage and Mr. Detmer had gotten himself a white linen suit for the occasion and now this.

  “Better to find out now that you don’t like each other than figure it out over a lifetime,” said Myrtle, looking at Florian who was digging into a slab of apple pie.

  *

  Barbara was out for a walk and passing the Lutheran church and saw all the cars in the parking lot and remembered the memorial service and put her head down and almost sprinted to the end of the block and around the corner. She did not want to be spotted. She thought of stopping at the Chatterbox for coffee and a cinnamon roll but what if some busybody said, “How come you’re not at your mother’s memorial service up to the church? Didn’t you know that was today? In fact I believe it’s starting right now.” So she started across Main Street and a blue Ford van came straight at her—it was turning onto Main Street and it swerved toward her as if intent on killing her and she shrank back and the van slammed on the brakes and she saw the assassin—a pair of sunglasses talking on a cell phone, one hand on the wheel—a screech of rubber and the van stopped and she put out her hand and touched it and he yelled, “Okay! I didn’t see her! Okay?” and then he said to the cell phone, “It’s okay. Never mind.” And then he looked at Barbara and said “Sorry” and backed up and drove away. He was yelling, “Oh so I suppose you never made a mistake in your life!” as he drove past. Barbara saw the license plate but didn’t think to remember it. She stood, stunned, frozen. The guy never got out of the van. He came within an inch of killing her. Or maybe putting her in an electric wheelchair that she’d steer with a stick held between her teeth and people’d see her go by and think There but for the grace of God and the sonovabitch never turned off the engine or got out, just muttered “Sorry” and off he went. Just like a lot of people nowadays. Barbarians. Their sense of ethics depends on who they think is watching at the time.

  Thank you, Jesus. Somebody said it out loud. It was her. She said it. Thank you that I still can walk and climb the stairs and take my own self to the bathroom.

  She did not feel up to crossing the street now, so she turned around. Her legs felt like wooden posts but she swung them, left, right, left, took three steps and got up onto the sidewalk and put out her hand and braced herself against the lightpole. Her legs were shaking. She thought she might faint, so she sat down on the pedestal of the lightpole, a narrow ledge, and then she slid down onto the sidewalk, her knees up in the air, her skirt up around her thighs, her hands on the ground. “How you doin’?” It was Mr. Hoppe, sitting tranquil as a fencepost on the bench in front of Ralph’s Grocery. He gave off a strong fragrance suggesting he had passed away several days ago. “It’s me,” he said. “I was a friend of your father’s.” She held up a hand: Peace. Thank you, Jesus. For not making me a quadraplegic. For not making Kyle have to bury me and Mother in the same week. For not leaving Kyle motherless and rudderless in the world. For letting me go on as before, except now with a grateful heart.

  And it dawned on her that if she had been struck by the van, people would’ve said Oh how horrible but they would’ve thought Well, it was Barbara and you just have to wonder if she wasn’t drunk.

  And then it dawned on her who the assassin was. Debbie Detmer’s fiancé from California. The bridegroom.

  18. SHE SENDS HIM PACKING

  Debbie Detmer was fine. She was just fine. In fact she had never felt better. She had broken up with Brent and that was that. Done. She had seen the light. It wasn’t a sudden thing. It was a number of little things. Brent was simply not ready to make a life with a bowl of goldfi
sh, let alone someone with the power of speech. Such stupidity and selfishness she had never witnessed before, it was almost incomprehensible. He told her last night: “I came here even though I didn’t want to come. I want you to know that. This is your show, not mine.” He accused her of being angry and controlling. This man who treated her mother and father like unwashed peasants and refused to engage them in conversation had accused her of anger. He said, “The whole past two weeks when I was on the road, I felt so good and then I come here and it’s like the door has slammed shut on my life and suddenly I am like a character in a movie or something and it’s not my movie!”