What he did think of, as he sat there in his new day waiting for someone to come along, was the two questions he hadn’t asked himself, not for a second, during all those terrible hours:
Why had he jumped?
Why had he climbed?
Just sitting here, watching the sun come up—that was all the answer he needed for the second one.
And the first one just didn’t matter any more. Right? he asked himself. “Right,” he said.
Uncle Fremmis
“My God!” I cried, “it’s … it can’t be.” Then, a little awed by the fact that my voice didn’t echo in those wide endless corridors—well hell, they had carpeting an inch and a half thick—I added almost shyly, “Uncle Fremmis?”
“Shore is, son,” he said.
I must say, I was shocked.
Uncle Fremmis—actually he was my mother’s uncle—was a hard-bitten, easy-laughing, gray-headed man when I was merely toddling. When I was grown, and before I left the Lake country (there’s mostly hills there, but they call it the Lake country) Uncle Fremmis was still a hard-bitten, easy-laughing gray-headed man. He lived pretty much by himself at one end of a hogback with a kind of pond—what it was was a crooked wide place in a creek—on one side and a deep foggy valley on the other. It was a valley nobody wanted, I guess—even now it’s the same way it always was, and Uncle Fremmis used to like to watch the light come before the sun did, and the rabbits and all, and squirrels red and gray and bobolinks and the deer that would graze on the steep grass until the sun burned the mist away. He used to hang around town a lot and was a very popular man although as far as I know he was never really close to anybody. When he needed staples he’d turn his hand to everything—splitting wood with a go-devil, or digging wells, or swamping (which means anything you want it to mean) around the lumber mill. Flour and salt and needles—that’s the kind of stuff he’d buy. Yellow soap and Levis and every few years a bucket and an ax, a whetstone, a pitcher.
He made enemies; they were always the same kind of man.
The first one that I remember was a blacksmith. He rightly hated Uncle Fremmis, and came up to him on the street one day with his hand out, and Uncle Fremmis grinned his quick grin and took it, and the blacksmith snatched him off his feet and stomped him, which didn’t do either one of them any good because folks stopped dealing with him pretty much except when they had to, and when folks like that want to get along without having to, they can go a long way. I recall one farmer used a one-wheeled hay rake for close to three years rather than have that smith fix a busted axle cap. The right side of the rake rode on a skid like a travois, that the farmer made out of old spring leaves. Uncle Fremmis never did anything to get back at the blacksmith except to stand in the middle of the street laughing the day the smith nailed up the FOR SALE sign on his shop.
The years rolled by slower in that country, somehow, than other places, but they brought new things all the same. The workhorses went the way of the buggy horses and everybody had a tractor, and it was old Pidgeon, that owned the gas station, who got to bad-mouthing Uncle Fremmis so much. Uncle Fremmis paid that no mind at all until Pidgeon bought into the general store and tried to stop Uncle Fremmis’ credit, because things were up and down with Uncle Fremmis and when they were down the credit made a lot of difference, and never once in his life did he leave a bill unpaid (nor run up more than maybe forty dollars worth of them). When word got around about that, business fell off so bad at the gas station and the tractor shop that was part of it that old Pidgeon was hard put to it to pay his bills. Tractors just didn’t hardly break down any more and when they did, somehow there was always a neighbor to borrow one from, and some of the horses still left around came out of pasture and went back to work again. Before you know it old Pidgeon had to sell out his piece of the general store and then Uncle Fremmis had his credit back again. That gas station and the repair shop never did do real well until old Pidgeon sold out, either.
And when I was in the high school there was a wall-eyed young man name of Skutch who opened up an electric and radio place. He did real good until the second time he tried to hurt Uncle Fremmis. The first time he said it was an accident, when he hired him to help out one afternoon and told him to hold onto a wire and then did something that gave Uncle Fremmis such a shock it laid him out and he swallowed his tongue, he really did, and that would have been all for Uncle Fremmis if Dr. Weiss hadn’t happened by and hooked the tongue back with his finger and brought him around. The second time Skutch went after Uncle Fremmis with his Essex Terraplane automobile; he said that was an accident too, but if it was it was an accident that went a quarter mile along Beasley Road and out into Roudenbush’s cornfield with Uncle Fremmis jumping and ducking like a jackrabbit until Skutch saw Roudenbush sitting there on his tractor watching, so he quit. After that Skutch’s trade fell off real bad and if you had a business in town and you bought from Skutch, somehow your business would fall off too, so Skutch didn’t last long.
Whenever Uncle Fremmis needed more than just his staples, he would dowse. He was a waterfinder; he’d whittle you a piece of apple (some dowsers use willow, but Uncle Fremmis always cut a little Y off a green apple tree) and walk around with it in his hands, and where it bent down sharp he’d say dig, and there was your well. He only did this three times that I can remember, and it cost five hundred dollars a time, and he got it because his deal was real straight: if he said dig and there was no water, you didn’t pay him. (The price of the digging was your gamble.) All those three times he was right and got his money. He got kind of famous around there for that and had all the offers he could have wanted, but he didn’t want them. He didn’t believe in the income tax and never would earn more than five hundred dollars in a year.
He never did marry that I know of. He visited around a little, and it’s a measure of where he stood in the Lake country that although they like to gossip as much as anybody anywhere, they let Uncle Fremmis’ business be his business, except maybe one or another of the ladies would nudge the latest one a little and slip her a wink and make her blush. So all in all he didn’t need much more than he made helping out here and there, except for something special, or to catch up on the store account after a bed spell.
One of the something specials was a Model I-NC quarter ton panel truck. You probably don’t remember the I-NC. It was the last four-cylinder wheels that Henry ever made. (I don’t count the Jeep because that wasn’t Henry’s to begin with.) The truck had this funny little corn popper up front and right behind it the biggest four-speed gearbox you ever saw, so that in low-low it would walk up the side of a billboard if you could find some way to make it stick on. The speedometer only went up to sixty which if you ever drove a I-NC is just childish, like little kids betting a million; downhill, flat out, and with a following wind a I-NC could maybe go forty-three. Anyway Uncle Fremmis fell in love with one and found water for some dude over in Clearwater and took the money and bought the truck. He got Ed Varney to take out the corn-popper and put in a rebuilt V-8 from Sears and Roebuck, and a two-speed rear axle off a Reo. He got Ed to do it because with mechanical things Uncle Fremmis was the best water dowser and well digger around, if you see what I mean. Anyway that old I-NC, peeling green paint and rust spots and all, turned into something like a buzz bomb with the wings chopped. Riding in it with Uncle Fremmis was a real hairy experience. The speedo needle would go right away up to the sixty and hit a pin there, and after that you could see it bend. The suspension was narrow-gauge and the tires were 6-15’s and the shocks were long gone and pure decoration. The body was very high and narrow and kind of humped and when it got to swaying a bit it would pick up both left wheels and then both right wheels and you wouldn’t know what that thumping was until you asked Uncle Fremmis and he told you. On the other hand, no matter how useless Uncle Fremmis was with a wrench, he was a fine artist with the wheel and he never did flip that thing. Nobody ever knew how fast it would go. He let it out on the State highway one afternoon and a state p
atrolman on a hog chased him a ways and then let him go because he was afraid to catch him; he said later that what was sure to happen he just couldn’t bear to see, but anyway he clocked him at eighty-seven and caught him on the way back. Uncle Fremmis, because he was Uncle Fremmis, wound up without a ticket and, for an hour and a half, with the policeman’s head under the hood and down under, looking up at that monstrous rear axle. That cop later won a NASCAR finals, and used to tell about Uncle Fremmis and how he started him on the hot wheels, but that’s another story. Anyway it was that truck that led me to understand about Uncle Fremmis.
I had a girl, I mean I meant to have her, who had a mother who had a cow who had a calf who didn’t like me, I mean the mother; and I knew I’d never so much as get up to the barricades, let alone cross them, unless I could make the mother glad at me. Well she sold this calf to a farmer over to West Fork who wouldn’t come for it and she wouldn’t bring it without two dollars extra, so there it stood, her wanting the money and him wanting the calf and her saying to come for it and him saying bring it and her saying for two dollars and him saying no, so I borrowed the truck.
I borrowed Uncle Fremmis’ truck, and you know I never did get that calf over to West Fork. I never got the calf. I didn’t get but halfway to her mother’s place and then turned that thing around somehow and got it back to Uncle Fremmis. You see, it had a gas pedal on it that was hinged at the back, down on the floor, and the pin had long ago worked out of the hinge. With a working hinge the pedal would push a wire which would feed the gas. With the pin out the pedal would layover sideways every time you put your foot down, and if you were in anything higher than low gear, the motor would stall. You’ve balanced a broom on the end of your finger—everybody has. Well that’s what you had to do with your foot on that gas pedal, except you don’t move your foot around with the precision of a finger. It might seem like a small thing the way I say it, but you just try it with a big V-8 up front and a 2-speed axle behind and a banging, swaying zombie (remember a zombie is the walking dead) of an obsolete panel truck all around you, and your head full of plans about doing the calf bit and collecting your just reward. I was like frustrated.
Uncle Fremmis just laughed a lot. But I began to realize what I guess I had known for a long time—Uncle Fremmis was not like other people. I mean he didn’t even have a lock on that truck, just a toggle switch. He just had a—
He had a way of making things work.
Don’t think that means he could fix things. It doesn’t mean that. He couldn’t fix anything but dinner. Well, here’s what I mean: he had an old radio in the house, a car radio he ran off a spare battery he would switch every now and then with the one in the truck. Sometimes the radio would hang onto a station all right but something had got old in its guts, and it would drop down to a whisper and then when you turned it up so you could hear it, it would suddenly cut in so loud it would make you bite your tongue. Uncle Fremmis would run his hand over it, back and forth and up and back again, and then the hand would stop, and maybe move over a quarter inch, and then whammo, he’d fetch it a stinging blow with the heel of his hand, and it would be all right again for a month.
Which is also why he had so many friends, and a number of real bad enemies. Uncle Fremmis was just not quite like other people.
It was around this time—the girl with the mother and the cow and the calf and all that—that I started to get into trouble. Life was so simple and good then that I didn’t know how simple and good it was. I guess it began when I borrowed twenty dollars from Sam Pritchard and promised to pay him in two weeks and couldn’t. I borrowed thirty from old Joe at the barbershop so I could pay Sam, but I had to have a little for myself. When it came time to pay Joe, I went to Sam again. He was willing, but he only had twenty, so I was ten short. I needed a little for myself so I borrowed twenty from Hank Johanssen, and about then things began to get complicated. I somehow got Sam and Joe down to thirty apiece after a while, and carried it back and forth between them for about six weeks. Then I couldn’t pay Hank and he got real mad at me and told Joe to watch out for me, so the next time I asked Joe for twenty he just said no. I thought that over for a while and then had a bright idea, and I still think it was a good one: I said to Joe he should give Sam thirty dollars, and in two weeks Sam could give him thirty dollars, and I’d just be out of it and could concentrate on Hank. And he threw me out of the barbershop.
So then I thought of Uncle Fremmis, and I thought this: (a) there was no way of knowing how much Uncle Fremmis had, so maybe he would have fifty bucks; (b) he didn’t really need anything, so it would probably be all right if he didn’t get it back; and (c) he’d lent me his truck once, hadn’t he, so why wouldn’t he lend me money? I went straight up to the hogback and the pole-and-shake house made of one hundred percent repairs on a tar-paper lean-to from thirty years ago, and it was there all right but he wasn’t, and neither was the I-NC. I asked around and found he’d left in it and nobody knew where, and he never came back at all that I know of. I remember feeling real mad at Uncle Fremmis, deserting me like that.
I was around town for a while after that but things got much too complicated. I never could figure out how it all happened, but it got so I couldn’t borrow anything anymore, and if I couldn’t borrow, how was I going to pay anyone? It was a lot simpler to go to the city and let them all work it out for themselves.
I did much better in the city, by which I mean in three years I owed about twelve thousand. I kept thinking about the guy who founded one of the most successful motel chains in the United States. When he was a teenager he made up his mind to owe a million by the time he was twenty-five. He made it and became a big wheel. I guess I just didn’t have his class. It was taking me a lot longer and the world seems to be kind of intolerant of guys who take long.
So I was at a party, brought there by a chick who thought some other people might think I was funny (because you can’t get the country out of the boy) and I zeroed in on a guy in a silk suit who had an office in this skyscraper. It was in the part of a skyscraper they call Towers, which is up on top where they have these thick carpets in all the hallways and you have to change elevators before you get there and the Tower elevator has a plug-ugly running it and you better have a reason. I had a reason but I also had Silk Suit’s card which I hoped he was still drunk enough to remember how drunk he was when he gave it to me, and I got into his office and hit him for half a G, and when he asked me what for, I couldn’t think of a good enough reason so he threw me out. Which was what was happening and why I was there when I ran into Uncle Fremmis. “What,” I said to him, “the hell are you doing here, Uncle Fremmis?” He was dressed in blue Lee work pants and shirt with keys on a belt clip. He wasn’t carrying a broom or wheeling a waxing machine but he might as well. But it really was Uncle Fremmis, all those miles and years away from the hogback, the valley full of morning mist, the crooked pond; most of all away from town where all those people used to like him so much. Need him.
“Don’t have time to tell you, son,” he said. “Come along and I’ll show you.”
He hurried me along the corridor. His hand on my arm was rock-hard and his movements quick and definite; the years hadn’t changed him one bit. I don’t mean the years since he had left town; I mean the years since I first toddled up to his kneecap and I looked up at that quick smile.
We passed doors with polite little names on them—most of them I’d seen in the papers at one time or another, you know, dollar-a-year men called in to advise the President, men’s names that have become trademarks like Eveready or Birdseye, and then the ones I hadn’t seen before doubtless because of my own ignorance or because they were so big and powerful nobody even knew they existed—they just ran things. One name I did know, though, and it stopped me cold and I said “Wow.” Semlar E. Warburg, M.D., A.P.A. “Wow. He’s the one who—”
“That’s the one,” said Uncle Fremmis. We were talking about the most famous psychiatrist in the whole entire world, a shrink wh
o had written books and who had a “school” —that means a special way of doing his thing where whole colleges full of graduates go out and hang up shingles and do the same—or try to. Years back he would be called once in a while in law cases; he was far above that now, you might as well call in the Pope or J. Edgar. Uncle Fremmis unhooked his keys and turned those bright eyes on me: you could feel it when he did that, they like had points like a fence staple. “Now you listen to me, son,” he said, in the way that made you listen to him, “what you’re goin’ to see you keep to yourself, right? And if you have to talk, keep your voice down.”
I said I would, and he unlocked a narrow door next one down from Dr. Warburg’s. I thought it was a broom closet until we were inside and he reached past me and closed the door. It locked with a heavy click. It was dark as the inside of a coal miner’s lunch box. “Wait a bit until you can see,” he said quietly, and I did, and sure enough, pretty soon I could make out that we were in a dark narrow corridor with what felt like foam rubber underfoot. “Wait now,” he said when I was about to ask a question; he seemed to know it.
Suddenly there was a blaze of light a few feet ahead. It made me jump. Uncle Fremmis said, “As the cigar said to the cigarette, son, we got here just in the nicotine.” He nudged me painfully in the ribs and then said, “No foolin’, I cut that too fine. He likes me to be here a half hour ahead.” He waved me toward the light.
It looked like a square window of plate glass set in the wall.
Through it I saw a woman seated in an armless easy chair, half-turned toward me, and not three feet away. I couldn’t help myself, I ducked back out of the way before she could see me. Uncle Fremmis chuckled quietly. “Don’t let that worry you, son. That there’s one of those one-way mirrors. Long as it’s dark in here it looks like a mirror in there. She can’t see you.” Reassured, I looked again.
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