The Tie That Binds

by Kent Haruf

  So Wenzel said he waved Lyman over to the booth where he was sitting with Harry Barnes and a couple of other men, playing poker and drinking tap beer from a pitcher. They poured Lyman a beer and he tasted it, but he apparently didn’t like the taste of it much, because he set the glass down and looked around at the faces watching him as if he was a kid at school and they were waiting to see whether he could detect the dog manure they had put in his buttermilk.

  “He probably hadn’t never tasted beer before,” my dad said.

  “Most likely,” Wenzel said. “It ain’t like drinking orange soda pop.”

  But Lyman drank his glass of beer finally, without tasting it any more than necessary, just throwing it down quick like he was taking cod liver oil or prune juice. Wenzel Gerdts poured him another glassful, and Lyman drank it the same way, with both hands on the glass.

  “But he ain’t no kid,” Wenzel said. “And I ain’t no nursemaid, neither.”

  So Wenzel poured him one more. He threw that one down too, with his Adam’s apple snapping hard above the yellow tie. So by this time Lyman had drunk three of their beers, and about all the profit they had to show for it was that Lyman’s eyes had begun to look like they were glass marbles.

  But glass marbles must have been enough for Harry Barnes, a bald-headed man of fifty-some and the best poker player in Holt County. Harry studied Lyman’s eyes for a minute, and then said, “Boys, I believe Lyman’s ready. Deal him in.”

  “But he didn’t know how to play poker, did he?” my dad said.

  “No,” Wenzel said. “I had to show him.”

  “Then he got a good taste of that too,” my dad said. “How much money did you and Harry Barnes take off him?”

  “Now wait a minute,” Wenzel said. He shot that quick neat spurt of his over into the gutter and licked the drop off. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “Sure we was playing for money—a nickel ante with a dime bump—because Harry Barnes ain’t going to play for matchsticks, is he?”

  “Not unless they’re gold matchsticks,” my dad said.

  “Sure,” Wenzel said. “But it wasn’t like you think it was. I tried to explain it to him—what a ace is and about pairs and full houses and straight flushes. But goddamn it, he just don’t get it.”

  “So what you’re saying is,” my dad said, and I could see he was smiling in his eyes. “You’re saying you ain’t going to tell us how much money you took off him.”

  “Now, damn it,” Wenzel said. “That ain’t either what I’m saying. I’m saying I tried to explain it to him but he just don’t get it. He keeps asking me things like how come a flush’ll take a straight, or how come three deuces is better than four cards even when them four cards is two aces and two kings. What in hell was I supposed to tell him then? If I started talking percentages, we was going to be there all night and never get no cards played. Let alone get any money to change hands.”

  “Okay,” my dad said. “So what’d you do? Because you already said how he played poker.”

  “That’s right,” Wenzel said. “Lyman played poker. He played poker all right. And that’s just the damn hell of it. Call it just a middle-aged farm boy’s dumb luck that never had time to play cards before, or say it’s because Harry Barnes finally wrote it down for him on one of them bar-room napkins. Because that’s what Harry done: he wrote it all down for him, all that poker knowledge down there in black ink on a paper napkin. Why hell, even somebody that never played poker before in his life, let alone a hand of whist or old maids, even somebody as green as Lyman is is bound to win if he can just manage to get Harry Barnes to write it all down for him on a Holt Tavern napkin. And the only thing that seemed to bother him was he hadn’t drawed no royal flush yet.”

  “You mean he won some money then,” my dad said.

  “Won hell,” Wenzel said. “Won hell—he won the first five hands he played and he was still drinking our beer.”

  “Well sir,” my dad said. “I guess old Roy Goodnough did you and Harry Barnes a favor keeping Lyman buried out there all these years. You might have to stay home at nights.”

  “It might be less taxing,” Wenzel said. “It surely might.” Then he laughed and spat into the gutter again but didn’t snap it off clean enough, so that a brown spit string hung from his bottom lip. He wiped it off with his hand and smeared it onto his pants cuff.

  “But how long’d Lyman stay there?” my dad said. “How long did you and Harry Barnes let him pocket your nickles?”

  “About five dollars’ worth,” Wenzel said. “And that wasn’t near long enough.”

  Because, according to Wenzel, after Lyman had won the first five hands of poker he played, it began to appear that he was getting bored. It was as if he was saying to himself, So this here is the game of poker that I been hearing so much about all these years. Well, shoot now, it ain’t so much. It ain’t a tall what it’s cracked up to be. So I reckon I’ll just see what else there is to do on a Saturday night. And what Lyman did was, he stood up in the middle of a hand that had already been dealt and he went over to one of the waitresses. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him that the men in the booth were trying to play cards and that Harry Barnes had finally managed to deal himself three aces and a king of spades. Because when Harry called him back, asked him where in the hell he thought he was going, all Lyman said was, “Oh. You want your money back. Here, you can have it. I don’t want it none.”

  “So he give it all back,” my dad said.

  “Every dime,” Wenzel said. “Dumped it all out on the table.”

  “Well, it ain’t like planting corn or stacking hay,” my dad said. “He hadn’t sweat enough for it.”

  “Sure,” Wenzel said. “Only you ain’t played poker with Harry Barnes.”

  “Just once,” my dad said. “I could see it wasn’t gambling. But then you was saying how Lyman went over to some waitress.”

  “Agnes Wilson,” Wenzel said. “He went over to Agnes Wilson, that big hefty gal with pink hair and them big legs that some boys claim is soft as pillows. Anyway, she ain’t been working at the tavern long—come over here from Norka when her husband run off to Denver with some telephone operator. She’s got that kid that got hisself kicked out of school for playing with ladies’ corsets.”

  Then for the first time that afternoon I said something. I had been listening to them talk and watching Wenzel spit tobacco, but now they were talking about something I knew about. I said, “No, Mr. Gerdts, I believe it was garter belts.”

  Wenzel Gerdts looked at me as if he was shocked, as if someone had come up behind him and buzzed him with a cow prodder. He seemed to have forgotten that all that time I had been standing there with them in front of Wandorf’s Hardware Store. It was as if I was a stray calf that had suddenly decided to speak, even if all I had to say was: “Garter belts.”

  “Was it?” Wenzel said, looking at me. “I heard it was corsets.”

  “No, I believe it was garter belts all right,” I said. “He was making slingshots with them and selling them to kids for a nickel, three for a dime.”

  “Did you buy one?” my dad said.

  “No, sir,” I said. “The elastic was all pooped out. It was too stretched.”

  My dad started laughing then, and Wenzel Gerdts choked a little on his Red Man chewing tobacco. I didn’t know what I had said that was funny, but I grinned and felt pleased that I had been able to make my dad laugh. He didn’t laugh much, not openly or loudly. The amusement would show in his eyes, but I don’t remember him laughing very often. He laughed that time, though, and maybe because I was the cause of it is the reason why I remember that afternoon so well.

  Anyway, when Wenzel stopped choking, he took a silver half-dollar out of his overall pocket and gave it to me. My dad said I could keep it, and Wenzel said, “Now you can buy you a slingshot that ain’t already had the stretch pooped out of it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But not right now. I want to stay here.”

  “That’s r
ight, son,” my dad said. “I believe Wenzel’s about done storytelling anyway.”

  “Sure,” Wenzel said. “There ain’t much more to tell.”

  But before Wenzel Gerdts went on, he stood there and chewed a while. All along Main Street men were still talking in groups, and here and there a woman was carrying a box of groceries out to a car parked diagonally at the curb. While we waited for Wenzel to continue, a yellow dog came sniffing along the cars, wetting hubcaps and tires, until a man in a straw hat yelled at it, then the dog looked up and trotted across the street and began to work its way back up the block towards the railroad tracks, wetting wheels as it went.

  Anyway, after a minute or two Wenzel seemed to have worked his wad to the right pitch and he went on. He told us that when Lyman stood up from the booth where he had been drinking their beer and taking their money, he walked over and stood directly in front of Agnes Wilson. He didn’t say anything to her, though. He just stood there hang faced and bashful. Of course he still had that yellow tie on and that black Sunday suit, so the only change in him from when he first put foot inside the tavern door was that his eyes had turned to glass marbles, or more like bloody egg yolks now, because by this time he had drunk more than just three beers. But again, it was as if he was starting over; he didn’t know what to do with himself after he had somehow made the first effort. But that didn’t seem to matter this time either: Agnes Wilson figured it out for both of them. She said something to him and he nodded, then she set her bar tray down and took his hands and showed him where to put them, one on her soft waist and the other in her white hand, and they began to dance.

  “That is,” Wenzel said, “if you can call what Lyman was doing with her dancing.”

  “Why?” my dad said. “Couldn’t Harry Barnes write that down for him too? How to dance, I mean.”

  “I suppose Harry could,” Wenzel said. “But Harry didn’t need to. Agnes was doing everything anybody needed to do. She had him sucked up against her like he was a fifty-dollar bill.”

  So Lyman must have felt that he had arrived in heaven. He was on the dance floor at the Holt Tavern with his face hidden in Agnes Wilson’s pink hair. Her full, ripe body was pressing him all along his own, and he had dispensed with holding her hand. Both of his middle-aged bachelor arms were wrapped around her so that his white Sunday shirt cuffs showed bright against the black of her waitress dress where his hands rode snug above her heavy buttocks. When the dance band started up another song Agnes would shuffle Lyman around a little bit on the dance floor, but between songs they just stood there, waiting, not moving at all, while Lyman maintained the same clenching hold on her, like he didn’t dare let go.

  “Like they was two dogs that was locked,” Wenzel said. “You should of saw it.”

  “How long did it go on?” my dad said.

  “I wasn’t counting the dances,” Wenzel said. “And I don’t guess Lyman was neither. He was too satisfied to do something like count.”

  But it must have gone on long enough that an hour or two passed. Agnes Wilson didn’t seem to mind it, though. Occasionally she patted him on the head or tickled a finger in his ear, and now and then she winked at the other people in the tavern, who didn’t seem to mind it either; they were all going up to the bar to get their own drinks. They were slapping one another on the back and congratulating themselves as if they were all in attendance at some significant event. I suppose it was an event too: Lyman Goodnough was enjoying himself.

  “Until, bang,” Wenzel said. “All in a sudden, he’s gone. He’s took off.”

  “Wait a minute,” my dad said. “You mean he got bored with that too? That don’t leave him much to graze on. He’s already used up beer and poker and women.”

  “No,” Wenzel said. “No, I don’t guess you could say bored exactly. He just stopped squeezing Agnes and left.”

  “How come?”

  “That’s what we wanted to know,” Wenzel said.

  So after Lyman took off, Wenzel told us that Harry Barnes called Agnes over to their booth where, between poker hands, they had been watching it all. Agnes came over and leaned against the table. She held the bar tray behind her and pushed her ample front out towards the men in the booth.

  “What become of your boyfriend?” Harry said.

  “Ain’t he cute?” Agnes said.

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “He’s cute. But what happened to him?”

  “Darned if I know,” Agnes said. “All I know is, after that last song he asks me what the time is, and I tell him, ‘Honey, it’s early yet. Only a quarter of eleven.’ And then he says to me, ‘What time do you lock up?’ And I say, ‘Not till midnight, honey. We got lots of time left.’ And then he says something strange, he says, ‘No, we don’t. I can’t wait no longer.’”

  “And that’s when he took off?” Harry said.

  “That’s it,” Agnes said. “Right then he left, without so much as good-bye or thank you, kindly.”

  “Well,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t take it too personal. You was doing everything you could.”

  “I know it,” Agnes said. “But wasn’t he cute?”

  Then Wenzel Gerdts stopped talking. He removed the tobacco from his cheek and examined it as if there was something there that might explain Lyman’s leaving. The wad of Red Man was white and stringy looking, used up. He tossed it into the gutter, where it sopped up the brown puddle like a sponge. Across the street I could see my mother come out of a store with a hatbox under her arm.

  “So you don’t know why he left so sudden,” my dad said.

  “No, sir,” Wenzel said. “We never found out. I guess he just had to take himself a pee and he couldn’t hold it no longer.”

  WELL, I don’t know that Lyman Goodnough was ever in his life what you might call cute. At least by 1940 he was not. By then, he was a gaunt middle-aged farmer, a little stooped over, and his hair was going. But of course it wasn’t his physical appearance that Agnes Wilson was talking about, and as for Wenzel Gerdts’s explanation of his sudden exit from the tavern that night, I don’t believe either that it was just a matter of Lyman’s having to relieve a full bladder. I think it was more that Lyman knew— and was able to remember despite the beer (he had certainly lived enough years in that house with his father to know very well and to remember too)—that when he got home there was going to be hell to pay, and the longer he stayed out the more of it there was going to be.

  So he must have paid for it. Maybe not that night when he drove their old car into the yard and parked it in front of the picket fence, but at least the next morning during breakfast, since even Roy must have felt differently about waiting for a forty-one-year-old boy to come home from the tavern than he did about waiting for a twenty-five-year-old girl to return from a night at the movies. It wasn’t quite so urgent; he could wait till morning to give Lyman hell. But in the morning, then, Lyman must have had to sit there with his head pounding and his mouth tasting something that resembled pig slop, while the old man, his father, drank and in between drinks said something mean and crazy like, “So you ain’t learned yet.”

  “Learned what?”

  “That if you’re ever going to mount to a goddamn, you can’t stay out all Saturday night diddling.”

  •6•

  BUT AT LEAST Lyman had accomplished that first trial run. He had sampled beer and women and he had had his first real taste of escape. It must have been heady stuff to him. In the tavern that night he had actually done those things himself that before he had only heard about other men doing. Even his father’s ridiculous breakfast sermon the next morning must have been satisfying to him: it tied the knot; it closed the circle; it made everything seem bigger and better. To have to endure a lecture about diddling away a Saturday night at a time when his head was still pounding from the beer he had drunk the night before and while the fried eggs he had just managed to get down were threatening to come back up again—it made it all worth it; it was how you paid for having a good time. At forty-one Lyman w
as like a middle-aged teenager savoring his first hangover. But he didn’t make another attempt to escape right away. Instead he went for more than a year on the memory of that first time. He went on working.

  Then in the following year on a Sunday morning in December another outside event occurred that made it possible for Lyman to take off and not come back at all. Thousands of miles away something happened that was so explosive that it not only sank ships and killed men in the Pacific, it blew the door off the hinges of the Goodnough barn in Holt County, Colorado. I’m talking of course about Pearl Harbor.

  Pearl Harbor was hell and tragedy for most Americans, but it was what Lyman Goodnough was waiting for. Now I don’t mean that he would ever have hoped for something that murderous—he was desperate, damned desperate, but he wasn’t bloodthirsty—and I’m not saying that he had any idea in the world that the thing he was waiting for, the thing he hoped would happen, would ever take the form it did, because he sure as hell wasn’t any prophet either. Still it is true that he seemed to recognize almost immediately that Pearl Harbor was his ticket out, his open barn door. It was like the explosion in the waters of Hawaii was the pop of a starter’s gun in a track meet. Lyman heard it, he was ready, and he took off running. He began a race that he wouldn’t stop running until almost twenty years had passed and until he had seen half the cities in this country. My dad helped him.

  In the middle of the night my dad put him on a train that was headed west. But that was later. That December Sunday in 1941, after morning chores, my dad and I sat at this same kitchen table and listened to the radio. It was exciting and it was awful. My dad said it was hell. But my mother went to church as usual. She put on a navy-blue dress and drove off in her new car to sing hymns and Christmas carols and to put her folded offering into the felt-muted plate that a gray usher passed among the pews. She prayed and afterwards she returned home to cook us a Sunday dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes as if nothing was wrong. I believe she spent the afternoon reading in the living room in a stuffed chair.