Arjuna’s glower darkened. He said, “You’ll be the girl, if ya keep eatin’ meat!”
Hemingway’s sneer faded. He scratched his head. What was this freak talking about? He didn’t make good sense. Trying to stick to the more comprehensible issue, he said, “You’re the girl, Girl!”
Arjuna shot him a condescending smile. Smug as a Witless, he made this pronouncement: “My dad says that meat gots hornmones in it that turns men into women, Girl!”
Hemingway was flummoxed, but he forged on ahead, snarling, “Betty didn’t got no horn-worms in him! And your dad’s the girl, Girl!”
Arjuna flinched at this shot. “My dad ain’t no girl!” he hissed—but then he too started to feel confused. He scratched his ear. “Who’s Betty?”
Hemingway pointed at the meat in his sandwich. “Betty was our steer.”
“Oh,” said Arjuna, pondering. “But ain’t steers men-cows?”
“Yeah,” Hemingway nodded. “I thought he was a girl ’fore he was born so I named him Betty but he came out backwards but we left his name that way anyhow, like Charles the Second, ’cause Pop said we was gonna castrate him sooner or later so he might as well be a Betty.”
“Oh,” said Arjuna, utterly bemuddled. “Who’s Charles-a-second?”
“She’s our goat.”
Arjuna just shook his head. Hemingway watched his braid swing from side to side, trying not to admire it but privately wondering how he’d look with one.
“What’s castrate?” Arjuna asked.
“That’s when Pop cuts their balls off,” said Hemingway offhandedly.
Arjuna gaped. “He cuts off their balls—like, their nuts?!” He couldn’t believe his ears.
“Sure,” said Hemingway. “Makes ’em fatter and taste better. But what’s horn-worms?”
“Hornmones,” Arjuna corrected. “They’re stuff in your blood: boys got boy-hornmones and girls got girl-hornmones, but cattle blood gots girl-hornmones that makes boys into girls when boys eat cattles.”
Now Hemingway was gaping. “I don’t believe it!”
“Why not?” roared Arjuna. “You cut off their balls!”
Hemingway tried to sort this one out as he eyed the stranger’s white clothes and braid, but there was too much for sorting: five minutes of talk with this city-bred hippie and he was no longer sure of the difference between a boy and a girl!
They sighed and sat at the lunch table there, each kind of admiring the other’s rugged, cocksure style, but each kind of wondering what planet the other came from. Finally Arjuna remembered their unfinished business. He said, “You called me a girl.”
Hemingway tried to refocus. “Oh. Yeah. You called me one, too, cause of, um…” (he dropped his voice in case he got it wrong) “…’cause of Betty’s whore-gnomes.…”
“Well,” said Arjuna, trying to simplify matters, “wanna fight?”
Hemingway thought it over, shrugged, said “Sure,” and without further ado punched Arjuna smack in the nose. It was a gusher, but Arjuna showed what he was made of, coming back with a left that knocked three of Hemingway’s teeth through his lip. They then proceeded to beat the shit not only out of each other but out of the matronly teacher who tried to break them up.
When the teacher stopped crying and the pair of them stopped bleeding they returned to the lunch table, shook hands, and traded sandwiches—affording Arjuna his first taste of Wonder Bread and beef, and Hemingway his first eight-grained bread, avocado, and sprouts. Thus was formed an awesome alliance that remains unbroken to this day.
We sat on the hay bales while the stump burned, the teenagers streamed from barn to barn, and the parents flashlighted for fornicators. “Stupid party!” said Arjuna. “Ugly pigs!” snorted Hemingway, nodding toward two of his sisters. Then the pair of them hockered in the flames.
I asked where Rama was. Arjuna said, “Home. He’s sick.”
“Uh-oh. What’s wrong?”
“Chicken pops,” he said grimly. “He’s gotta take sweat baths an’ enemas. Momma makes him.”
“Bummer,” I said.
“What’s enemas?” asked Hemingway.
“That’s when they shoot water up your butthole,” said Arjuna.
“Naw!”
“Sure it is,” Arjuna insisted. “Huh, Gus.”
I nodded.
“Gosh!” said Hemingway. “Poor Rama!”
“Better’n gettin’ your nuts cut off like Betty,” Arjuna observed.
“But Betty was a steer,” said Hemingway.
“That’s so,” said Arjuna.
“Leastwise he ain’t at this stupid party,” Hemingway pointed out.
Arjuna and I nodded and we all hockered in the fire.
After a time, Hemingway asked, “You got any invisible friends, Gus?”
Half-drunk though I was, the question startled me. “Wha-what do you mean?”
Arjuna said, “You know, friends people can’t see except you…”
“Yeah,” Hemingway cut in. “Me an’ Arjuna both got these invisible friends…”
“Yeah,” Arjuna said. “An’ they do stuff for us.”
“Yeah,” Hemingway added. “They’re always there when ya really need ’em.”
I was flabbergasted. It seemed the search for a spirit-helper wasn’t so rare a thing… but wait a minute. “What sort of, uh, invisible friends’re you guys talkin’ about?”
“Mine’s Googler,” said Hemingway, his face grimly serious.
“Mine’s Mangler,” said Arjuna, just as solemn.
“Hnnh?” I said.
“Googler and Mangler,” said Hemingway. “That’s their names.”
“I see,” I said, and began to get the feeling that we were dealing with something a little less rarefied than sacred powers and spirits. “So, uh, what sort of stuff do these guys do for you?”
“Oh, like Mangler squashes green peas against the dining-room wall ’cause he knows I don’t like ’em,” Arjuna began. “And he flushes cauliflower down the toilet.”
I nodded, struggling to straighten my face. “How ’bout Goggler, Hemingway?”
“Googler!” they corrected.
“Sorry.”
“He unrolls the toilet paper onto the bathroom floor.…”
I snorted, but covered my lapse by hocking in the fire. “What else?”
“Well,” said Hemingway, “Googler knows I hate zucchini. I hate its guts! So once he let Charles the Third eat Mom’s squarsh patch, but Mom said I did it and gave me a whippin’! She don’t believe in Googler. She’s a Atheist!”
“What’s a Atheist?” Arjuna asked.
“Somebody that don’t believe in nothin’ like Googler an’ Mangler,” Hemingway said.
“Oh,” said Arjuna, and he and I hockered in the flames.
“Googler’s green and purple, and he’s skinny, and real tall,” Hemingway said.
“Mangler’s spotted—orange and brown. He’s fat, with long teeth,” said Arjuna.
“I see,” I said.
“Mangler busts windows sometimes, or makes me hit Rama,” said Arjuna. “And once he used some of Dad’s candles t’make some rainbow floor wax for the kitchen.”
“I see,” I said.
“Googler carved up Marlene’s and Charlene’s Barbie dolls when they wouldn’t let me watch the World Series,” said Hemingway. “And when Kernie pushed me down in the mud, Googler stole his football and burned it in the woodstove.”
“I see,” I said.
“And once,” Arjuna added, “Googler helped me—I mean helped Mangler—start a slash fire and a helicopter had to come bomb it.”
“Yeah,” said Hemingway. “They did that. We tried to stop ’em.”
“Yeah, we tried.” Arjuna nodded.
“I see,” I said, and we all hockered in the fire.
After I went home that night Googler and Mangler had apparently gotten busy; at least I later learned that one of the entries in the Pie-Eating Contest had consisted of fresh manure covered
with Cool Whip. The hypercompetitive Bernie, pumped up and primed to out-eat all comers, devoured eight or ten mouthfuls before he recognized the flavor he was dealing with. He then blew breakfast, lunch, and dinner all over the table, the contestants, and the barn. The contest’s winner ate just one slice of genuine pie… no one else could stomach any. Arjuna, Hemingway, and Rama gorged on the surplus for the next week and a half.
As for Bernie, he was in misery till somebody suggested phoning Maggie Eaton; at this idea he groaned so pitifully that Ernie Senior stepped in with his personal cure-all—a fifth of Old Crow. Questionable medicine, but a rare honor and a generous dose. Somehow it seemed to restore Bernie’s spirits.
Meanwhile, Emma caught Arjuna and Hemingway guzzling a couple of Ernie Senior’s Burgies out in the wood-rick. When accused of thievery—under cover of the cow-pie commotion—they adamantly denied it, claiming the beers were delivered to them by green and purple and orange and brown creatures who Atheists could not perceive. For Googler’s deeds Hemingway was whipped with a balloon stick; for Mangler’s, Arjuna was given an hour-long lecture from Steve on the repercussions of bad karma and overly yang behavior. They afterward agreed that Hemingway got off far easier. For my part, I was impressed by the importance of choosiness in picking invisible friends, and a little relieved that my Friend remained so elusive.
The walk home was cold, and knowing I’d left no fire or light to return to made it colder. The moon was nearly full but a high fog obscured it so that its light illumined nothing, only turned things pallid. The wine had worn off, a headache in its place. A raw wind arose, rattling the skeleton trees. The jack-o-lanterns had kicked-in faces. I felt so lonely as I turned down into the blackness of the cedar grove that I’d have welcomed ghost or banshee, Googler or Mangler, anyone or anything but the cold, silent, empty cabin. But rounding the last bend in the driveway I froze:
there was smoke spiraling from the chimney; there was the soft light of lanterns glowing in every window; there was a Volkswagen bus parked beside my pickup. I circled to the cabin’s side, peeked in a window, and staggered back, disbelieving. Sitting on the hearthstones before a flickering fire was the hook, line, and sinker of my dreams. Keeping to the shadows, I shook my head, drew a deep breath, and looked again: she was really there! It was Eddy it was Eddy it was Eddy, alone in my cabin, waiting, for me.
7
Trick or Treat
Socrates: Will the art of the fisherman or of the rhapsode be better able to judge whether these lines are rightly expressed?
Ion: Clearly, Socrates, the art of the fisherman.
—Plato
She wore faded blue jeans and an indigo flannel shirt, and her feet were bare in brown sandals. An aureole shone round her fire-lit hair, and her face was pale, apprehensive, and far more beautiful than I’d been able to remember or dream it. I rushed around to the door, then stopped, took a breath, and made my most dignified entry.…
She rose, looked me up and down—and not till she grinned did I remember the old hobo coat and trousers I was wearing. All I could think to do was hold up my frowsy coat pocket like a Halloween bag and say “Trick or Treat.” The sound of my voice amazed me: I sounded like a trick-or-treater, about three years old—terrified as the door swings open, half-choked as strange eyes take in mask and disguise, hopeful but doubtful as he waits to see what he’ll be given.… And into the brown paper bag of my heart Eddy slipped a smile.
Stunned, I looked away—but the fire had turned so fiery, the wood of the walls so luminous, the very air so fragrant and strange that I thought I’d walked into her cabin, and blushed, thinking I’d better leave.
She wasn’t watching, thank God. She was pulling things from a handbag on the hearth. She turned, held up a newspaper, and I recognized the Dutchman’s Twinkie column. She said, “Antoine Chapeau, I presume?”
I nodded.
She said, “I’m the trick-or-treater. You owe me a fish and a pole.”
I nodded again, threw off my hobo coat, jumped onto the couch, swung up into the rafters, and lowered down the fourteen-foot hazel, the twin I’d made, the bamboo pole, and the belly reel; then I jumped down on the couch, bounced high, and landed at her feet. She held an orange squirt-gun and Dutch’s column in my face; I read Bring a loaded gun.… She said, “I followed your advice to the letter.”
I nodded, then dashed into the kitchen and down to the cellar, returning with the two Siletz steelhead, wrapped in foil and hickory smoked. She kept the gun on me. And she looked nervous. She said, “One fish, one pole—that’s all you owe me. What’s this other stuff?”
Trying for a tone like the manager’s at the Benjamin Franklin, I said, “Interest on your investment. Thank you for banking at Tamanawis National—we’re the trout-tongued people.”
Eddy didn’t smile. She looked me in the eye and asked, “What made you think I’d ever come for them?”
I exploded with laughter—but stopped when I heard how hysterical it sounded. “Everything,” I croaked, “everything on earth made me think you’d never, ever come for them!” My head felt strange. I flopped down on the hearth. Next I knew, she was sitting beside me with a half-filled glass and a bottle of my wine.
“You all right?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“You look kind of white.”
“Yeah, well my dad’s Indian—Winnebago. But Ma, she’s pretty pale.”
Eddy smiled. “I’m a Hesychast Wishram bhakti WASP myself.”
I nodded, though “Wishram” was the only word I knew, unless “wasp” referred to her waist—but I kept my thoughts away from her waist, knowing it could turn my brain to mush. “Wishram,” I said. “Isn’t that the tribe that fished Celilo Falls?”
“One of ’em.”
“Ever see ’em? The Falls, I mean.”
“When I was four.…” She sighed. “Just before they drowned. And that night Elvis Presley sang ‘Nuthin’ But a Hound Dog’ on Ed Sullivan. Worst day of my life!” She sipped a little wine, then passed the glass. “Felt jumpy busting in here so I helped myself. Hope you don’t mind.”
I looked up at Rodney. “She hopes I don’t mind!”
Eddy looked up too. “Who’re you talking to?”
“My flyrod. Rodney, Eddy. Eddy, Rodney.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” she said, then she nodded toward the split-bamboo pole. “Does that one have a name?”
I said, “It’s yours. You name it.”
She frowned. “I don’t see why you, why it ought to be mine.”
“Call it a token of my depreciation,” I said.
No reaction… I said, “It’s an apology is all—because I scared you on the Siletz. The belly reel goes with it.”
She glanced at the belly reel, but she’d gotten skittery—I didn’t know why. She put the pole down, sat on the very edge of the rocker, fiddled with her squirt gun, then asked, “So how come two fish? I only caught one.”
I tried to emanate calm as my head filled with amazingly discalming pictures of what I’d seen on the Siletz. I said, “Well, after you ran off I caught your pole, and the fish was still on it—that’s one. And you had another already—that’s two.”
She gave me a quick, searching look, then turned to the fire. “There’s something I should tell you about that day.…” (I waited.) “Pass the wine, please.” I passed the glass. She drained it, then said, “I never ran.”
“Huh?”
“I never ran away. I was barefoot; I’d been camped just upstream for three days; I wanted my pole and fish back; so I just hid in the woods.” She paused, letting these resounding facts resound. “You left, and I heard a truck or car drive away, so I went looking for my pole. But it took me forever to find it, and just when I was wading out to grab it I heard somebody crashing down the canyon, so…”
“So what?”
“So I snuck up through the brush and spied.”
“On me?”
She nodded. “God you were a mess!”
>
Now I nodded. “Sounds like me all right.” I groped on the mantel for cigarettes, offered her one, almost burnt her nose lighting it, got to thinking how her nose gave me the same feeling a baby cottontail rabbit’s nose gave me, got to thinking simultaneously about her spying—what I must have looked like, and acted like, and said; then I lit the filter of my cigarette and went on smoking it a while just as Bernie, at about that moment, was continuing to eat the cow-pie pie; then I broke off the filter, relit the torn end, slumped in the other rocker, turned crimson, and managed to mutter, “So. What sort of mess?”
Eddy winced. “The sort that’s covered with blood and mud and cuts and scratches. The sort that shivers and sweats and sighs and talks to himself, curses himself, groans to himself. The sort that says.…” She looked away and mumbled, “the sort that says ‘Eddy, Eddy, Eddy’ over and over and over.”
“You were close enough to hear that?”
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” she said.
“Pass the wine.…”
She passed it. “Then you poked along the riverbank saying stuff like ‘Gog O Gog I gotta find sumthin!’ But all you found was my first steelhead. Then you climbed up the alder where I hooked it.”
“You hooked it in that alder?” I exclaimed—proud of myself for remembering to play dumb.
She shot me a look. “Yes. And isn’t it a coincidence that you climbed the same tree and looked all around in it.”
“Oh, I was just looking for your pole out on the river,” I lied.
She smiled sideways. “Whatever. Anyhow you finally settled down up there and started mumbling and sighing and punching yourself in the head.…” She staved off a grin. “And when you finally stood up and jumped in the river I thought you were trying to kill yourself… then I saw you could swim. Sort of.” Now she laughed outright. “I saw you were after my pole, so I ducked and followed, and when you finally caught it the steelhead was about gone, and so were you, and you and it and the pole together looked like a lampoon cover for a Field and Stream, and I started feeling sorry, and started toward you, but—”
The River Why Page 33