Loon Lake

by E. L. Doctorow

  As the drama crackled through the night the husband displayed enlightenment as to how the sound effects were made.

  Someone kicked down a door. “They don’t really wreck a door,” he said. “’At’s just a ordinary vegetable crate they stomp on. Splinters real good.”

  A horse-drawn carriage. “Shucks, them’s coconut shells rapped on the table.”

  “Hush, Loll,” his wife said. “I cain’t hear!”

  After the program was over he lectured on how they made houses burn, typhoons blow, trees come down. He had us close our eyes and did these things up against our ears to get the effect of amplification. He was good, too, insane, I began to realize, once people got through their courtesy it was their madness they shared.

  He had heard some Arabian Nights drama about a desert chieftain who skinned his victims alive.

  “Ah don’t wanna hear this, Loll,” his wife said.

  “Hold on, honey—see, Joe, I couldn’t figger it out, Ah thought and thought, it was the damnedest thing! But I got it now, close your eyes a minute, this’ll turn your hair white.”

  I hear a piteous wail, screams, sinister laughter and the unmistakable stripping off of human skin inch by inch. I have to look. Off my left ear he was tearing a piece of adhesive tape down the middle.

  No, not exactly my type, I would not under ordinary circumstances choose to associate with Lyle Red James, but I knew when we walked off to work together in the morning Clara would have coffee with his wife, maybe during the day they’d go to the grocery store together I saw the child given from one pair of arms to the other—I would listen to a hundred nights of radio for that.

  And at the front gates of the plant every morning a car or two of cops parked there, just happening to be there. Not that I thought they were looking for me but if they were I imagined Red James as my disguise. If the cops were looking at all, it was for a man walking by himself—that was my reasoning. And anyway, what they would have to accomplish to get to this point wasn’t very likely. They would have first of all to locate Mrs. Lucinda Bennett’s car in Dayton, the guy wasn’t that stupid that he wouldn’t paint it. But even if they did, they would know only that they were looking for a wooden station wagon registered to clever Joseph Bennett Jr. But even then, how did that get them to Jacksontown, Indiana? But supposing they were here, they wouldn’t find it anyway, it was parked off the street behind a garage and under a ton of snow. I probably couldn’t find it myself. But supposing they found it, they’d be on the lookout for a hobo boy, a loner walking by himself to work in the morning and not Mr. Joe Paterson loping along step for step with the world’s biggest fucking hayseed.

  It always proved out to my satisfaction if I thought about it but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it again each morning going to the punch clocks under the thousand fists like rifle fire we are going into the trenches and over the top in the barrage of time clocks, I always checked my position before I went down there.

  I sought disguise, every change in Clara and me a disguise, nobody who knew Clara Lukaćs and was in his right mind would look for her on Railroad Street. I liked us having neighbors, yes, and living to the life the same as everyone else, living married, looking like an automobile worker’s family for life, appearing to these people next door as mirrors of themselves, shining in their eyes so they couldn’t even describe us after we’d gone.

  I remember the way Red James walked. He wasn’t especially tall but he took long stiff-kneed strides, loping along there in the freezing morning while everyone else was hunched up, head bent in the wind, it was something you had to tear to get through, but here was Red, shoulders back, head up out of his collar, the long neck bobbing, and he chattered constantly, made jokes, told stories.

  “A smart man’ll put beans in his mule’s feedbag. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Doubles the rate of progress.”

  “Come on.”

  “’Strue! The fartin moves ’em along. Clocked a mule once sixty miles a hour on a handful of dry beans. Fastern’ ’ese here cars.”

  That was the kind of thing. He held out his arms; the snow driving thick like white sheets flapping in your eyes, yelling “Toughen me up, God, usen me up to it!”

  And he sang, too, always some damn hillbilly song in that adenoidal tenor of his kind as we went down toward the plant one point of raw color bobbing crowing

  Hear the mighty eng-ine

  Hear the lonesome hobos squall

  … A-goin through the jungle

  On the Warbash Cannonball!

  And at work I found myself hearing his voice in the machines, in the rhythm of the racket, without even knowing it, doing headlight after headlight, I would sing to myself in Red James’ tenor: keeping time to the pounding racket, I would hear the mighty eng-ine, hear the lonesome hobos squall, a-goin through the jungle, on the Warbash Cannonball.

  ——

  One evening I came out of the gate and somebody tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, no one was there. When I turned back, Red James was grinning at me.

  “You comin to the meetin, ain’t ya?”

  “What meeting?”

  “Union meetin.”

  “Well, I’m not a member, Red.”

  “I know you ain’t. This is a recruitin meetin, anyone’s got the balls.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I never told Clara I wouldn’t be home.”

  “Boy, the little woman sure has a holt a you. She’s with Sandy anyways, you come on with me, they’ll figger it out.”

  So I went along with him to this meeting in some decrepit fraternal lodge a few blocks from the plant. It was up a couple of flights, fifty or so men sitting on camp chairs in a badly lighted room. I recognized a few faces from the line, we smiled, catching each other out. I thought, Look, if you’re doing the life, do it. I took a seat in the last row. Red had disappeared. The people running the meeting sat at a table in front of the room. I couldn’t see all of them but they looked like Paterson toughs, they wore buttons or had their union cards stuck in the bands of their hats. I thought as Mr. Bennett was spread out and made into a corporation he may have enlarged, but so did the response, I couldn’t see anyone in his personal service wearing his green putting a union button on their collar.

  The meeting began with the pledge of allegiance and then the president rapped the gavel and called on the secretary to read the minutes.

  Lyle Red James stood up and cleared his throat. “Herewith the o-fishul minutes a the last meetin,” he said in a most formal manner. “As taken by yo Sec’tary Loll Jimes, Bennett Local Seventeen, union card number three six six oh eight?”

  This called up a cheer and a burst of applause from the audience.

  “Just read the damn minutes, James,” the president said.

  I hadn’t known he was a union official, he had sprung it on me, it was queer, the faintest misgiving, I had thought the deception in our friendship was mine. I tried to think that whole meeting why I was bothered, I knew he was a damn clown I hadn’t understood I was his audience.

  I wanted to talk to Clara about it when I got home. Anyway, she’d be interested to know why I was late—but something else was on her mind entirely.

  “Did you know,” she said to me, “Sandy James is all of fifteen years old? Did you know that? She got married at thirteen. Can you beat that? And she does everything, she goes to the store she knows what’s good and what isn’t, she takes care of that kid like royalty, feeds that stupid hick better than he deserves, washes, shops, cleans, Jesus! The only thing I haven’t seen her do is sew the American flag!”

  What kind of time was this, a matter of a few weeks, a couple of days, minutes, and this other couple was in us, through us, I couldn’t remember when we hadn’t known them and lived next door.

  In the second war we used to jam each other’s radio signals, occupy the frequency, fill it with power.

  Clara didn’t think much of Red James but she never sa
id no to one of their invitations, she had fixed on young Sandy, in that way she attached to people who interested her, locking on her with all her senses. I sometimes became jealous, actually jealous, I felt ashamed, stupid it was the diversion I had hoped for, it was just what I had counted on, I jammed myself when I saw the way Clara looked at Sandy, watched every move she made. Worrying about survival was something new to her and she was engaged by it, as by the little baby, the smell of milk and throwup, a bath in a galvanized-tin tub with water made hot on a coal stove, and all the ordinary outcomes of domestic life which presented themselves to her as adventure—how could I feel anything except gratitude! I thought every minute with Sandy James put Clara’s old life further behind us, I felt each day working for my benefit I was a banker compounding his interest.

  In the James kitchen Clara watches Sandy James dry the baby after her bath, the baby in towels on the kitchen table, two lovely heads together and laughing at the small outstretched arms, the gurgling infant, the women laughing with pleasure. I am noticed in the doorway, the heads conspire, the flushed faces, some not quite legible comment between them as they turn and look at me, smiling and giggling in what they know and what I don’t.

  I liked Sandy myself, I thought of her as my ally, the chaperone of my love, this child! I found her attractive especially in the occasional surprised look she gave me, as if she were an aspect of Clara and the current of attraction was stepped up by that.

  “She was made to have babies,” Clara said to me. “You can’t see how strong she is because she doesn’t know anything about clothes, all her things are too big for her, I don’t know where she got them, but when she doesn’t have anything on you can see how well built she is in the thighs and hips.”

  Clara’s attentiveness to his wife did not go unnoticed by Red James, when we were all together he did what he could to affirm the universal order of things. One night he brought out his infant girl from their bedroom. Baby Sandy had no diaper or shirt. He held her up in his hand and said, “Looky here, Joe, you see this little darlin between her legs? You ever see them pitchers of gourami fish in the National Geographical? You know, them kissin fish? Ain’t I right? Now I got two of em, two lovin women with poontangs just like that!”

  This made Sandy James stare at the floor, her face reddening to the roots of her hair. “Lookit!” he said, laughing. “Colors up like the evenin sun!”

  Clara sighed, stubbed out her cigarette and took Sandy and the baby into the other room.

  He one night pours two shot glasses of Old Turkey I don’t know what we’re celebrating does he see Clara’s hand touch Sandy’s hair?

  He says, “Hey, y’ll see this here little girl, I kin make her do what I want, laugh, cry, anythang, watch.” He begins to laugh, a silly high-pitched little laugh. Sandy ignores him, he jumps around to get in front of her puts his hand over his mouth, tries to keep from laughing, after a minute of his pyrotechnics she can’t help herself, begins to laugh, protesting too of course, “Shh, shh, your gonna wake her Loll, shhh, you’re wakin her up!,” but he’s really funny and she is laughing now, a child laughing, and in fact I’m laughing too at the mindlessness of the thing and suddenly he stops, face blank, staring at her puzzled his mouth turns down at the corners a sob comes out of him, he puts his arm up to his eyes, cries pitifully, we know what he is doing so does Sandy but she goes very quiet and asks him quietly to stop, he ignores her, keeps it up, crying to break your heart. “Oh Loll darlin’,” she says, “you know I cain’t tol’rate that,” and then her eyes screw up, her lower lip protrudes, she is reduced, begins bawling, arm up, fist rubbing her eyes, she has a hole in the underarm of her dress, her red hair.

  “What I tell you!” Red James says, laughing. “This li’l ole thang, look there she’s a-just cryin her heart out!” and she is, she can’t stop, he goes to her to comfort her maybe a bit sorry now that he’s done this but she’s furious. He tries to put his arms around her, she brings her leg up sharply, knees him in the groin, stalks off. Red James has to sit down, he takes a deep whistling breath.

  And that’s when Clara began to laugh.

  In a great dramatic scrawl, full of flourishes:

  To Joe—

  Herein all my papers, copies of chapbooks, letters, pensées, journals, night thoughts—all that is left of me. Dear Libby is to keep them for your return. And you will return, I have no doubt about it. I have thought a good deal about you. You are what I would want my son to be. More’s the pity. But who can tell, perhaps we all reappear, perhaps all our lives are impositions one on another.

  w.p.

  Loon Lake

  Oct 24 1937

  Three little words. Suree rittu waruz. The girls had voices like cheap violins and they kept their wavery pitch as the car careened around abrupt corners, horns blasting, peddlers and old monks falling out of the way. It was three o’clock in the morning and the shopkeepers were already unrolling their mats heaving the flimsy boxes of fresh wet seagreens from the beds of trucks pitch-black the Tokyo sky above, Warren looked up as if to pray like a seasick sailor keeping his eye on a fixed point a light in the Oriental heavens channeled by tile roofs the heavens flowing in an orderly manner unlike the progress of the Cord, its headlights flashing the startled faces of the poor Japanese street class taking their morning fish soup hunkering beside small fires in metal drums. White-gowned attendants at the Shinto shrines sprinkled the cobblestoned courts with handfuls of water. Suree rittu waruz.

  The car braked to a halt and Warren and the ladies pitched forward over each other hysteric laughter they all climbed down where are we he said and they led him triumphantly to the next bistro of the infinite night this one a mirikubawa. A what? Warren kept saying as they were led in through the smoke up on the platform three black musicians were playing jazzu and a waitress got to the little table almost before they sat down and they all watched the expression on Warren’s face as the drinks were ordered and then the rollicking hysterico laughter as he tasted the white substance in the sake cup mirik it was milk this was a milk bar and their civilization had triumphed again in producing for the American their friend the one substance they never drank and were astonished that anyone could, cow’s milk, the very sort of thing that made the Westerners smell that characteristic way from their consumption from birth of the squirted churned curded and boiled issue issyouee of the ridiculous cow. They did not like the smell of course and only one garu from whom he learned the Chiara-stun and what merriment that was that they had to teach him his dance, a bold brown-eyed bow-legged thing with her bobbed hair and low-waisted dress pleated to flare out above the knees had the nerve in the intimacy of his room one dawn to hold her fingers squeezing her own nostrils while he fucked her looking down over the upraised knees upon which he rested his bulk she was lying there holding her nose and squeezing her eyes shut but making the sounds of pleasure too how odd and later he said do I smell so bad do I need to bathe no no she said with moga merriment you can never washu away you it is ura smerr, you smena butta Penfield-san a whore tubba butta

  They were his friends his introduction to the world of flappers I had to come seven thousand miles from home to meet a flapper he thought and all the things he had read in the papers at home about the new people their jazz their late nights their haircuts and merry step up from provincialism he found there in Japan how odd they were relentless and because he was American he was an authority they came to him for authenticity and all the protests he made were regarded with approval as ritual modesty the kind of social grace they thought only they had so he was an ideal teacher they thought he understood the Japanese way so humble he fit right in and he learned to make decisions simply because he was their authority. I’m from the working class he had announced when he first arrived with his introductions from his Seattle labor movement friends but something was misinterpreted here or there the upper class liberals the modern boys and girls rebels of the loins of the Meiji the mobo and the moga they took him up and he was for
ced to have cards printed in the Japanese way everywhere you went you presented your card or received someone’s card on a salver a lacquered salver Mr. Warren Penfield Teacher of Western Customs ordinarily this consisted in not much more than appearing somewhere and allowing yourself to be observed your dark suit and rolled umbrella, one man to his embarrassment asked him to disrobe in front of the whole family to his boxer shorts so the women could see the undergarments and sock garters and make them on their own for the father the brother. Mr. Warren Penfield slowly learning the contact language by which he could communicate The Handshake lesson one The Tip of the Hat lesson two The Stroll with the Umbrella lesson three Helping Ladies Across the Street very difficurr resson four the deference shown to women the most genuinely unpleasant of the customs but they did it he looked at the jazzu pianist and the jazzu pianist looked at him and smiled and shook his head here they were together in service the smile said the frank and somewhat contemptuous self-awareness mirrored in the other doing the same thing what are we doing here man I mean I got an excuse what’s yours that look of economically dependent expatriate we really down the ladder man to be stuck on this island making nigger faces for these little yellow men.

  But one day Warren’s reputation was made when a low-level official of the American embassy called and asked him to come by for a chat and it was to see if he would consent to offer his services to certain Japanese diplomats preparing themselves to sail to Washington, D.C., for an international naval conference cutaway striped coats gray trousers top hats I don’t know anything Warren said my father mined coal I was a corporal in the Signal Corps what do I know but the embassy man said we have no choice you’re up on the latest fashions everybody else has been here too long our faces are turning yellow yours is still pink and white like a cherry blossom he laughed and so Warren gave a lecture in recent cultural history in America about which he thought he knew nothing but which from having observed the Japanese he knew by refraction. There is a great liberalizing trend he said because of the Great War and internationalization of taste a sense the old ways must be overthrown and the old beliefs and restrictions are absurd. Young men and women marry because they fall in love and sometimes when they fall in love they don’t even marry they live together in defiance of propriety half the point to the way they live is to insult propriety. People generally expect more, I think that is what you can say about us at this modern age of the 1920s, more love more money more freedom more dancing Chiara-stun jazzu men and women hold each other to dance in public and there is a music industry that produces their dance music for them and wickedness is a form of grace, transgression is seen as the liberation of the individual spirit but, he said, looking with alarm on the impassive frowns of his distinguished audience, you won’t find any of that in Washington, D.C. Washington under Mr. Harding is the soul of propriety, he spoke slowly so the translators could keep up one word was equivalent to three or four sentences before the word, the word, after the word, the three little words blossomed like a bowl of chrysanthemums Mr. Harding himself is devoted to Bach and Boccherini especially the andantes, and the distinguished audience leaned back in its chairs and the look of impassive disapproval was replaced by the look of impassive approval. Afterward there was a reception and he found himself bowing it was easy quite easy and the embassy man said you missed your calling you should have come into State and he bowed to him too. A junior Japanese diplomat said he had studied at Harvard University. A blond young woman glanced at him. A Japanese publisher asked him if he did any writing. The same young woman glanced at him. She had a ring on her finger eventually they spoke she spoke of the entire Japanese nation as if they were all servants, making remarks about their character and reliability, she was married to one of the embassy staff. They became friends, Warren had now established within himself those women he was prone to love and those with whom he was most intimate in conversation two separate classes and always he recognized them when they appeared, this young woman was of the second class. Her husband was always busy but they were totally married in spirit in purpose in confidence so that all possibly naughty emanations from her were totally muffled in marriagehood, that was more than all right with Warren they became devoted friends she was a Midwesterner not that smart but in some blind instinctive way constantly putting him in touch with just the experiences that provoked his deepest response which then expressed what she might have felt had she been that articulate or generally sensitive to the meanings of things. She knew he was a poet. She was a prim neat young woman with a slender figure and the most appalling provincial drawbacks she had even found herself a Methodist congregation for Sunday mornings but she methodically introduced him to Japanese civilization. She knew the secret restaurants where you could get the best raw sea bream or salted baby eggplant or bean paste flavored with thrush liver or chrysanthemum petals dipped in lemon vinegar, they went to the shrines he sat in rooms perfectly furnished with no furniture slowly very slowly the authority on Western manners customs and English speech began to see things with a Japanese eye to cherish small things a lovely comb a lacquered bowl a shallow pond with fat orange carp the way some trees looked in their foliage as if tormented by wind or a madwoman having just extended her hair with the pads of her fingers. The young Midwestern wife became the audience for the drama of his life if she had not been there watching and finding it important he might never have changed but found his period with the irreverent flappers or lapsed into the paternal delusions of the foreign diplomatic community enjoying with a smirk the Japanese discovery of besbol the humor of Adolph Menjou Lillian Gish speaking in ideograms. Instead he began his withdrawal first from the Americans then from the Japanese trying to be like the Americans then from the wide streets of the city in which he shuddered to see men in derbies and rolled umbrellas riding in bicycle cabs, he grew thin and ate no meat he turned sallow and began to look actively for a style of expiation he could manage without self-consciousness but he couldn’t have been that brave unless someone like the young wife from Minneapolis was there to pay attention.