Beyond the Bedroom Wall

by Larry Woiwode

  Jones said, "Show me a Catholic, and I'll show you a hypocrite! They're the most sanctimonious band of—"

  Were they drunk? He coughed and cleared his throat again, and kicked his toes against the floor as if they were freezing. There was a rise of volume in Jones's voice. "They'll trample or maim a man and call it divine, because they're the chosen and doing what's right. They've got a direct line to the Almighty, you see, and we don't, and I'll tell you why; it's because of the beads!"

  Mrs. Jones got up from the table and said, "Excuse me." She paused with her hand on the door and turned on him the vague and glazed eyes of a convalescent. "Excuse him," she said, and went as though to put a stop to this, he thought, but her footsteps carried on beyond the men to her bedroom, and then bang.

  "The daughter here is going with one, you know," Jones said, and now his tone was conspiratorial. "Oh, he's all right by me, he's a fine boy, upstanding, upright —polite, too!—but someday, if she doesn't watch it, I say"—more volume and a change in tone, as though he'd lifted his face toward her bedroom—"I say, ‘Alpha! One of these days you're going to have a dozen kids in the same room with you, all of them swinging those rosaries like lassos, and yelling. Yippee! Whoopee, Ma! Let's go to church!'"

  On trembling legs Martin made it out the door, out the back porch, and down to the water tank. He pumped water over his head and wiped the back of his neck and the insides of his wrists with a wet handkerchief, and then got into the Model A. Alpha came out at last, flushed and tearful, and said, "I just gave him, hell. He's never said any such foolishness to me in my life, although now I've heard it, of course. I'm leaving home no later than a week from now."

  "Oh, Alpha!"

  She slumped in the seat, her face pale and empty of expression, and stared at a kerchief she kept wadding and squeezing in her lap. As they got close to town, he wished he would have said to the men, "If either of you pipsqueaks in there has anything you really want to say to me, then why don't you say it out here, where I can see if you really intend to make a joke of it." He felt the weakness and trembling in him solidify and become his mother's moral outrage and all-inclusive indignation, but when he tried to speak of it to Alpha, she said, "No. Please. Don't. He's been even worse to Mama about her religion, especially recently. It's because of Jerome. Also because your mother never comes to talk. Yesterday he said—" She stopped as though a hand were at her throat.

  "What?"

  "He said, 'If there was a God, I'd wring His neck, the bastard.' "

  There was a sound of logs rumbling down a wooden runway, or else another part of his dream was rising through this one. He slipped out of half sleep into a skin cold and oily from sleeping in his clothes. He opened an eye to the darkness under the quilt. Where was he now? There was whispering in the kitchen, and now it was real, unattached to the luxurious tangle he could weave of it in dreams, and then the back door banged, utensils were moved, a liquid was poured, and the wet bottom of a kettle started stuttering on the stove top. He strained to hear overhead, but the floorboards were silent, and then the back door opened and closed, and footsteps came across the kitchen, snow creaking under them against the cold linoleum.

  "Where are you going?" Mrs. Jones asked in a whisper.

  "Right here," the voice of Lionell said.

  "In the middle of the room? Look what you're tracking in."

  There were creaking sounds around a small area. "It stuck to my boots. It always does."

  "Why do you think I ask you to sweep them off?"

  "It's on them the next day, too."

  "Ouf! You."

  The creaking sounds came closer and Mrs. Jones whispered, "Don't you dare go in there!"

  "Is he asleep?"

  "Yes."

  "Still asleep?"

  "That's what I said."

  "How come?"

  "I imagine he's tired."

  "Why?"

  "He stayed up late."

  "I didn't stay up late, did I?"

  "No, son."

  "Are you ever tired, Mom?"

  "Of course."

  "You don't sleep like him, do you?"

  "I go to bed earlier."

  "Because he's a man and you're a woman."

  "That has nothing to do with it. Here, have this to nibble on."

  There was a long silence, and then Lionel said in a changed voice, "Did you stay awake and see the New Year, Mama?"

  "Yes."

  "Was he wearing diapers like I did once?"

  "That's from those foolish picture magazines!"

  "But I'm getting bigger and bigger. I'm bigger now today."

  "I guess."

  "My hands are bigger. See?"

  "They look about the same to me. Did you wash them last night?"

  "For forty-fifty minutes."

  "Oh, go on with you! What's Daddy doing?"

  "Lots of stuff."

  "What?"

  "He broke his ax, and he spilled some milk out there, and he still can't get that car to work, so he called it bad names."

  "I mean—"

  The back door opened, admitting more chill, and heavier steps came creaking across the kitchen.

  "Ed!" Mrs. Jones whispered and her whisper could pierce tin.

  "Yes yes yes, sweet love."

  "What are you doing?"

  "What does it look like? I'm taking this in there."

  "No, you aren't."

  "You mean this stuff?" Jones said, and there was an altered angle to his whisper. "What the hell. It's clean snow."

  "You'll wake him."

  "He's got to get up and get out of here, by Jesus!"

  "But that's so rude!"

  The footsteps came into the room, bringing along an aroma of the outdoor cold on foreign clothes, and then kindling tumbled into a woodbox so close Martin felt it had fallen on his head, and had a flash of termites in the woodbox. Termites? There was a hissing of clothes, the crack of a stiff joint, newspaper being ripped and wadded, and then some pieces of wood clunked into the stove. He lay in suspension, expecting a fire to rise, and started to drift asleep again.

  "Hey, boy, aren't you awake yet?"

  There was no recourse; he uncovered his head. "Yes. Good morning." He could see his own breath out in their world.

  "Good morning, hell!" Jones frowned in the dimness of the blanket-draped room. A fur cap was pulled down to his flaring eyebrows and a horsehair coat nearly touched the toes of his gray-felt boots. He kept frowning, with eyes that touched the cold in Martin's bones, and didn't turn to the stove. Alpha must be waiting upstairs for a fire, too, and meanwhile freezing.

  "Well, I finally got that windmill shut off before it rattled its goddamn brains out," Jones said. "The wind quit at four and I ran out then. I don't suppose I woke you."

  "No."

  "I figured not. It's a good thing you're going into education, is what I say. You don't have what it takes to make a dirt grubber, boy. What time do you teachers have to get up? It's nine o'clock now."

  "Oh."

  "You're damn tootin'! And it's thirty below out."

  "Oh."

  "Oh, oh. Didn't you hear what I said?"

  "Yes. I mean, what that you said?"

  "I said it was nine o'clock, boy."

  Of what importance was time on this particular morning, on the new day of the New Year, snowed in by the blizzard, when he was looking forward to helping Jones with the chores, and having leftovers from last night, and more quiet card games and genial talk; and was hoping for the chance, after another tête-à-tête with Alpha (if she'd said yes and would agree), to announce their marriage to her parents first, on the occasion of this day.

  Jones moved closer, his black eyelashes fringed with big beads of ice that were beginning to melt and run down beside his nose, and screwed up his face in a scowl. "Hey, boy, what the hell is it with you?"

  "The cattle," Martin said, and shoved off the quilt and sat.

  "Cattle, hell. They've been taken care of hours ago."<
br />
  Martin slipped his stockinged feet into the cold sheaths of his shoes and bent to lace them and, Oooo, his bladder was as big as a pumpkin. Ooooo, two shoes!

  "I tried cranking your Model A for a quarter hour and couldn't even make it go poot. How do you adjust your spark?"

  "All the way down."

  There was a ringing laugh from the kitchen, and Mrs. Jones said, "That's what I suggested to the old fool all along!"

  Martin started trembling and not from the cold. They were turning him out on purpose before Alpha was up. They'd worked up this plot together, for some reason, and were delirious with the way it was moving ahead of him. Jones acted drunk. He scoured his leather mittens together and gave them a clap close to Martin's head, showed his teeth in a fake smile, or so it seemed, and strode into the kitchen like a martinet.

  He followed, and saw Lionell at the table in a yellow snowsuit, red-cheeked and round-eyed, with a pile of pastry crumbs on a plate beside him. Mrs. Jones was at the cookstove stirring a steaming pot. She turned and gave him the merriest smile he'd ever seen from her, and said, "Good morning, at last. Sorry you can't have breakfast.”

  She'd heard him propose.

  She pulled his coat from the cookstove shelf, shook it out, and held it for him by the shoulders, and he turned, his lips beginning to tremble, and saw Lionell taking this moment in with the all-seeing eyes of a four-and-a-half-year-old, and felt his coat, heated from the stove, slip up his arms.

  I’ll be reasonable, he thought.

  "Jesus, boy, you look like the soup's been sucked out of your bones," Jones said.

  The coat held warm comfort around him and he turned to thank Mrs. Jones but hardly got it out before she plopped his cap on his head, and said, "There's no need for thanks. Goodbye, Martin. My best to you."

  Jones grabbed his elbow, opened the kitchen door, pulled him onto the back porch, and kicked the door shut. The windows of the porch were covered with tar paper and it was so dark he felt he'd stepped into night again. "My overboots," he said.

  "Right beside the separator there."

  They were stiff from the cold, difficult to get on, and felt like ice water around his ankles. His fingertip froze to a buckle. He jerked it loose, leaving a wedge of skin, pulled out his gloves and yanked them on. How could he be so naive as to miss the point of all this?

  Jones clucked his tongue and said, "You're so bass-ackwards and slow and sheepish this morning, boy, I'd say it was because you haven't taken your leak yet."

  He straightened, standing tall above Jones, and decided now was the moment to have his say about this, but Jones hit the outside door and two shafts of pain, like flying icicles, were driven home above his eyes. When he finished blinking and his vision cleared and became grayly chromatic, he saw the Model A stranded in a drift up above its running board. A team of black Percherons, stomping and nodding against the traces and blowing blossomy plumes from their frost-ringed nostrils, stood at the front of the car, hitched to its bumper with logging chains and eveners, their heads stamped upon the morning with a permanence that made them shine.

  The white day was still as death. Jones took his arm and started dragging him through drifts, through deep trails left by the horses' big hooves. "I know it looks pretty bad, but I walked out to the main road and it's already been traveled, so there won't be any trouble once we get that far, or if there is I'll pull you all the way on into town. And there, by Jesus, is the team that can do it." Jones turned to him with a smile of pride, but it changed into consternation. "I'll be go to hell," he said. "A tie."

  "A tie?" Martin said.

  Jones dipped back and his sea-green eyes, more striking in the sunlight, narrowed down on him. "Aren't you well, boy, or didn't you sleep last night either, or what? I'm not up on all your rigamarole, but I know today is a holy day of consecration, or whatever, and you've got to get to church. Now, do you want to borrow a tie from me?"

  "Oh, no. I have one in my pocket. I—" He started to pull it out.

  "My first wife was a Catholic, you know, so I'm up on a few of the ins and outs of your Church. That first marriage was so unfortunate, I can't begin to tell you how. We had to get married, knocked up. I've got another daughter roaming the world somewhere, though nobody knows about it but Ma—not even Alpha, and Alpha better not hear about it until I'm ready to tell her, or I'll know where it came from. I didn't even tell Ma herself until a few years back—I was afraid she wouldn't have me if she knew that—and then when I finally did, to explain why this girl kept writing me, she got so out of hand I had to say, 'Well, dammit. Ma, the girl was a Catholic! What did you expect?'

  "And now it seems imprudent of me to have said that. It rankled Ma more than ever about that marriage, and sure as hell didn't do you any good. Ma was a regular churchgoer once, too, you know, so she understands how important this is for you, and she's been after me all morning to get you to town by ten, when your Mass is. There at the first, when you first showed an interest in Alpha, I suppose Ma figured you were just out to give her the dong and then run off, and I must admit, because of my experience"—Jones looked up at him from under the flaring eyebrows—"I thought the same thing. But I knew you were serious about her from the way you took her in hand after Jerome— When— After that, I didn't think I could keep myself together if she went off and left us too, but of course I can. I'm going to stop trying to scare you off now. That's my New Year's resolution. Well, it's one of them."

  Jones winked an ice-fringed eye at him.

  "I must say, though, I do feel a lot better, now that you've gone and proposed. Easy, now. I know all about it, and I'll always be able to say I was one of the first to know. The old lady— Oh, Jesus, why do we call them that when we never think of them that way, especially in bed. The wife, Mrs. Jones, overheard you and Alpha talking last night. She wasn't snooping. She's not a snooper. She just happened to hear, and when she came in to bed she told me. Didn't you hear us? We were up half the night. Can you imagine me a grandfather? Jesus!

  "And then Alpha couldn't sleep with the excitement of it, so she came down around five, after I got the gag on that windmill, and told me to my face, and I had to pretend it was the first I'd heard of it, and go through the hugging and kissing and try to shed a tear.

  "It's too bad you sleep so late and we're so rushed, because the wife and I wanted you to know how much we wish you well." Jones grabbed Martin's hand and gripped it through mitten and glove. "Do you want to know something else, boy?"

  Martin nodded, which was all he could do.

  "Well, with all the churchgoing and whatnot the wife has had, it really pleased me that I was the one, not her, who knew about this holy day and how you had to be to church on it—which I wouldn't have known, by heaven, if I hadn't been married to a Catholic once, and, Jesus! doesn't it amaze you the way the world goes round?"

  *

  Less than a half hour later, Martin was kneeling in the furnace-heated warmth of St. Boniface Church in Wimbledon, asking God if Alpha could be his wife.

  3

  JOB APPLICATION

  THE QUALIFICATIONS OF

  MARTIN NEUMILLER

  PERSONAL DATA ... I am twenty-three years of age, six feet tall, and weigh 185 pounds. My physical condition is excellent. I am a Catholic, but have lived all my life in a Protestant community, and so I can be at ease among Protestants as well as Catholics. In 1931 I was graduated from Courtenay High School. I attended the State University at Grand Forks for one semester in the school year of 1931-32, and in 1933 enrolled at Valley City. From the State Teachers College I have received my Standard Certificate and will receive my degree in May, thus completing my work on the Secondary Degree Curriculum.

  SCHOLASTIC RECORD . . . The titles of the courses of interest I have had in college are: Literature, Drama, Grammar, Rhetoric, Dramatics, Forensic, Speech, Shakespeare, Poetry, Language Methods, German, Political Parties, English History, European Governments, Economics, Vocational Guidance, Child Psychology, A
dolescent Psychology, Educational Psychology, Physics, Botany, Crop Botany, Journalism, General Science, Music Appreciation, Educational Sociology, Introduction to Education, Education in the United States, Social Problems, Baseball and Track, Principles of Secondary Education, Community Life, Algebra, Observation, Teaching, Literature, and Hygiene. My major is English, and my minors are German and History.

  EXPERIENCE . . . My teaching experience consists of nine months' work in the Training School of the Valley City State Teachers College under excellent supervision. My teaching here was in History and Speech.

  FORENSIC EXPERIENCE ... In high school I participated in dramatics, readings, and oratory. In my junior and senior years I was fortunate in being a member of the one-act play cast that took county honors. In my senior year I had the good fortune to be selected as the best actor in Stutsman County. At this same time I won first place in dramatic readings and also in oratory. At college I continued my work in these fields, and have also had one year's work in debate. In dramatics I have been in the eight major productions given at the college since I enrolled. In addition to this, I have helped put on programs at various churches, club meetings, and gatherings, in and about Valley City, whenever called upon. Last year I won the college oratorical contest. Broadcasts over KOVC have also given me valuable experience.

  ATHLETIC EXPERIENCE ... I participated in both basketball and baseball in high school. I pitched two fairly successful seasons for the Courtenay High School in the years 1930-3 L Last summer I coached a Junior League baseball team at Courtenay. In college I participated in inter-society basketball. In the spring of 1935 I had charge of the state Kiwanis tennis tournament in Valley City. The fact that I was working my way through school limited my participations in athletics.

  CAMPUS AFFILIATIONS . . . While at college I was a member of the Student Union, International Relations Club, Viking Yearbook Staff, Budget Staff, Tau Lambda Sigma, Newman Club, Dramatic Club, and the Alpha Phi division of the Alpha Psi Omega, a national dramatic fraternity. I have held various offices in these organizations during my enrollment here. PREFERRED SUBJECTS ... I prefer to teach English, History, German, and General Science, but am willing and feel qualified to teach, in addition, Physics, Psychology, Algebra, and Botany.