Wild Nights!

by Joyce Carol Oates

  To get to Ketchum you drove north from Twin Falls. You drove north on Route 75 through Shoshone Falls and beyond the Mammoth Caves and the Shoshone Ice Caves. Beyond Magic City, Bellvue, Hailey and Triumph. Into the foothills of the Sawtooth Range you drove. In this range there was Castle Peak at nearly twelve thousand feet. There was Mt. Greyrock barely visible on misty days. There was Rainbow Peak. Not far from his sprawling property was the Lost River Range. There were such settlements as Rocky Bar, Featherville, Blizzard, Chilly, Corral, Yellow Pine, Salmon River, Warm Lake, Crouch, Garden Valley. There was Black Canyon Dam, there was Mud Lake, Horseshoe Bend, Sunbeam, Mountain Home and Bonanza. There was the Salmon River and there was the Lost River. There was also the Big Lost River. The cities were Little Falls, Butte City, Boise. Mornings when work did not come to him he uttered these place-names aloud and slowly as if the sounds were a mysterious poetry, or prayer. He studied local maps, some of them dating back to the 1890s. Nothing gave him more happiness.

  Mornings when work does not come are long mornings.

  You do not give up until 1 P.M. at the earliest.

  From the window of his second-floor workroom facing the Sawtooth Mountains he was watching a young stag at the edge of the woods, that was behaving strangely. He’d been watching the young stag for some minutes. Like a drunken creature it stumbled in one direction, then reversed course abruptly and stumbled in another. The stag was perhaps one hundred feet from the house. He could not work with such a distraction within his view. He could not hope to concentrate. He went downstairs. The woman had driven into Little Falls, no one would call after him. His skin was heated, he had no need for a coat but he pulled a hat onto his head for his thinning hair left his scalp sensitive to cold. He did not take his gloves which was a mistake but outside as he approached the young stag at the edge of the clearing he did not want to turn back. Softly he called to the stricken creature as you might speak to a horse, to calm it. He approached the stag cautiously. His breath steamed. His feet (he was wearing bedroom slippers with woolen socks, he’d forgotten and hurried outside without boots) broke through a dry crust of snow on the grassy slope. The stag was so young, its body lacked the muscular thickness of the older stags and its antlers were miniature antlers covered in velvety down. When he was about fifteen feet from the struggling stag he saw that it had caught the miniature antlers in a wicked strip of barbed wire. The wire had cut into the stag’s head and into its slender neck. Blood glistened on the stag’s dun-colored winter coat and was splattered on the trampled snow. The stag shook its head violently trying to dislodge the wire that seemed to be cutting into its flesh ever more deeply. The stag’s eyes rolled white above the rim of the iris and frothy liquid shone at its muzzle. It was panting loudly, snorting and stamping the ground. He knew: you did not ever approach a mature stag or even a mature doe for their hooves were sharp and ideally suited for stomping an adversary to death, should the adversary make the blunder of being knocked to the ground. Once down, the adversary would very likely not get up again. A deer’s teeth were also very sharp, like a horse’s teeth. Yet he continued to approach the young stag, extending his hand, making a rhythmic clicking sound with his mouth meant to command calm. For he could not bear to turn aside from the beautiful struggling creature, that was bleeding, and terrified, and in danger of dying of shock. It was heartrending to see a short distance away, partly hidden in the woods, a ragtag herd of deer, some of them with ribs showing through their coarse winter coats, watching the young stag in distress. The closest was a mature doe, very likely the stag’s mother. Cautiously he continued to approach the stag. He was a stubborn old man, he would not give up easily. His heart pumped so he could feel it in his chest. This was not an unpleasant sensation, you only just hoped the heartbeat would not kick into tachycardia. The last time, the woman had had to call an ambulance to take him to the ER at Little Falls where they’d managed to bring the heartbeat down with a powerful dosage of liquid quinidine into his bloodstream but the woman was not here now and he had no idea when she would return. Damn, to come outdoors in bedroom slippers! He did not so much mind the cold, which was a dry mineral cold, that cleared the head. He was warm with excitement, heat on his skin. The stag had seen him by now, and had smelled him. The stag was making a panting-snorting noise which was a noise of warning. The stag staggered backward, its hooves slipped, it fell heavily to the ground. Immediately it scrambled to get to its feet but he was too quick, crouched over it, cursing and grabbing at the threshing neck, the antlers. Something pierced the fleshy base of his thumb, sharp as a razor blade. He cursed, but did not release the panicked stag. He saw that it was bleeding from several wounds including a deep gash beneath its chin, which could not have been far from a major artery. Another time he cursed the young stag as it kicked at him. Its eyes rolled back in its head, the snorting was loud and quickened as a bellows. Yet he’d managed to get behind the creature, out of range of its flailing hooves and bared teeth. His hands were bleeding. God damn, he cursed the young stag, which would not surrender sensibly to let him help it. Skeins of frothy saliva flew into his face, his hands were cut again, after what seemed like a very long time he managed to tear away the damned barbed wire, that had gotten twisted around the antlers. He threw it away, and released the stag that leapt up immediately making a moaning-whinnying noise like a horse. At the edge of the clearing, the mature doe had come closer and had been snorting and stomping as well but as soon as the young stag broke free, the doe backed off. God damn, he’d been knocked back onto his buttocks. On his bony old-man ass in the snow and one of the bedroom slippers was missing. His heart continued to pound in angry rebuke of such folly. He knew better, of course he knew better, his heart was leaky and had become his adversary in recent years. His body was now his adversary, his father’s cast-off body. Yet he watched anxiously as the young stag teetered away, still shaking its head, glistening blood, and another time slipped, and he prayed that the stag would not fall because if it fell hard, if it could not right itself, it would soon die of shock, or cardiac arrest; but the stag managed to right itself, and at last trotted away into the woods. The rest of the ragtag herd had vanished. Except for the hoof-trampled snow, and the blood on the snow, and the old man on his ass in the snow wiping deer-blood and deer-spittle on his trousers, you would not have guessed that there had been any deer at all.

  Mornings when work does not come.

  Mummy had been Mrs. Hemingstein, sometimes just Mrs. Stein he’d called Mummy for any Jew-name was a joke between them. He himself had numerous school nicknames including Hem, Hemmie, Nesto, Butch. His own favorite was Hemingstein, sometimes just Stein. Mornings when work did not come that final winter he heard Hemingstein, Stein faint and teasing in a husky female voice that made his lips twitch in a smile of childish pleasure or in an adult grimace of pain he did not know.

  Sirens.

  In Ketchum, Idaho, he came to know sirens.

  Emergency Rescue van. Ambulance. Police siren. Fire department. Vehicles speeding on Route 75 out from Ketchum, careening past slower traffic. In this place you became a connoisseur of sirens: broken and looping and breathless-sounding it’s the Camas County Emergency Rescue van. Higher-pitched, it’s the Ketchum Medical Clinic ambulance or private-owned Holland Ambulance. Frantic-beeping siren, sheer belligerent fury like a shrieking elephant, it’s the Camas County Sheriff ’s Department. A lower-pitched whooping shriek punctuated by a rapid wheezing noise like a horn, it’s the Ketchum Volunteer Firemen.

  At first the siren is distant. The siren could be moving in any direction. Gradually, the volume increases. The siren is headed in your direction. The siren is turning off the road and into your driveway and up the hill emerging from a dense clotted woods and the siren is inside your skull, the siren is you.

  Maybe he’d been drinking and smoking sprawled on the leather sofa downstairs, TV on but sound muted and maybe a shower of sparks had fallen from his cigarette, he’d brushed away with his hand not notici
ng where and next thing he knew, smoke, stinking smoke, and the woman in nightclothes screaming at him from the stairs. Or maybe he’d fallen on an icy step at the back of the house, rifle in hand (he’d been alerted to someone or something at the shadowy edge of the woods) and the rifle had gone off and next thing he knew he’d cracked his head and was bleeding so badly the woman thought he might have been shot. Or, fell on the stairs, broke his left foot howling in pain like a wounded monkey. Or dizzy in the tepid bathwater, Seconal and whiskey, his heavy Papa-head slumped forward as if he were broke-necked and the woman could not revive him. Or, middle of the night, how many nights, hadn’t been able to breathe. Or, chest pains. Or, abdominal pain. Kidney stone? Appendicitis? Stroke? Internal hemorrhage? Or, what the woman would report to the medics as “suicidal ravings”—“suicidal threats.” Or, Papa had threatened her. (Had he? Papa denied it vehemently. In the midst of collapse and spiritual wreckage, face gnarled and twisted as if in a vise, Papa was yet eloquent, convincing.) The woman dared to struggle with him for the shotgun shells that went rolling and skittering across the floor, and for the heavy Mannlicher shotgun. Get away! Don’t touch! Papa could not bear to be touched and so he shoved the woman away, stumbled from the room and locked himself in a bathroom pounding his fists against the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet, broke the mirror, lacerated his hands, and out of spite the woman dialed emergency and yet another time—how many times!—a siren began to be heard in the distance, one of the looping wails, furious shrieks like a wounded charging beast, how many times careening up the hill to Papa’s house in its remote and desolate promontory and the woman outside in the driveway disheveled and lacking in all wifely restraint and dignity crying Please help us! Help us!

  Papa had to laugh: us.

  Especially if you married them, they began to think us.

  As if the world gave a shit about us. It was Papa who mattered, not us.

  This one, he’d married. The one he’d loved most, the most beautiful of his women, Papa had not married for she’d been married to another man. But this one he’d married, the fourth of Papa’s wives and his widow-to-be. A female is essentially a cunt, the pure purpose of the female is cunt, but a woman, a wife, is a cunt with a mouth, a man has to reckon with. It’s a sobering fact: you start off with cunt, you wind up with mouth. You wind up with your widow-to-be.

  He limped out to the grave site. Always there was the faint anxiety that somehow it would not be there. The rocks would have been dislodged. The pine trees would be missing. The trail would be so overgrown, he would lose his way. The idea of outdoors is so very different from outdoors. For the idea is a way of speaking but the outdoors has no speech. You are often startled by the sky. Your eyes glance upward, quizzical and hopeful. God damn, the left foot dragged. Swollen feet, ankles. He was using a cane. He would not use the crutches. He inhaled the odor of pine needles. It was a sharp clear odor. It was an odor to clear the head. It was an odor you could not quite imagine until you smelled it. And there was the sky, shifting cloud-vapor. His weak eyes squinted but could perceive nothing beyond the cloud-vapor. The anxiety was returning, a sensation like quick sharp needles. And in the armpits, an outbreak of sweat. Why, he did not know. The grave site was a place of solitude and beauty. The grave site was a place of peace. The grave site was at the top of a high hill amid pine trees facing the Sawtooth Mountains to the west. Papa was particular about this grave site, you did not wish to excite him. He had positioned rocks to mark the grave site and on each of his walks he took the identical route up the hill from the house and along the ridge at the edge of the woods and he paused at the grave site to lean on his cane and catch his breath. His weak eyes squinted at the mountains in the distance. For he was a vain old man, he detested glasses. Papa had never been a man to wear glasses unless the dark-tinted glasses of an aviator. Here at the grave site he breathed deeply and deliberately. His lungs had been damaged from smoking and so he could not breathe so deeply as he had once breathed. At the grave site his agitated thoughts were flattened and lulling as a lapping surf. At this site he was at peace, or nearly. Promise me. You will bury me here. Exactly here. Reluctantly the woman had promised. The woman did not like him to speak of dying, death, burial. It was the woman’s pretense that Papa was yet a young vigorous man with his best work ahead of him not a sick broken-down old drunk with quivering eyelids, palsied hands, swollen ankles and feet, a liver so swollen it stood out from his body like a long fat leech. It was the woman’s pretense that they were yet a romantic couple, a happily married couple and such talk of death was just silly. Like a bat out of Hell I will return to torment you, if you betray me. This before witnesses. The woman had laughed, or tried to. He wasn’t sure if he could trust her. Most people, you can’t trust. God damn he’d meant to include an item regarding the burial site in his will.

  At the burial site he remained for some minutes, breathing deeply and deliberately. He did not believe in eternity and yet: in this place, in such solitude, amid such beauty and calmness, almost you could believe that there were eternal things. There was a hell of a lot more than just Papa and the interior of Papa’s brain churning like maggots in a ripe corpse. You knew.

  (Maggots in corpses. He’d seen. Whitely churning, in the mouths of dead soldiers, where their noses had been, their ears and blasted-away jaws. Most of the soldiers had been men as young as he himself had been. Italians fallen after the Austrian offensive of 1918. You do not forget such sights. You do not un-see such sights. He himself had been wounded, but he had not died. The distinction was profound. Between what lived and what died the distinction was profound. Yet it remained mysterious, elusive. You did not wish to speak of it. Especially you did not wish to pray about it, to beg God to spare you. For it disgusted him to think of God. It disgusted him to think of prayers to such a God. Fumbling his big, bare toe against the trigger of the shotgun he was damned if he would think, in the last quivering moment of his life, of God.)

  That summer he’d turned eighteen. That summer in northern Michigan at the summer place at the lake. He’d known, then.

  Observing his father through the shotgun scope. Observing the turnip-head through the scope and his finger on the trigger. His young heartbeat quickened. There was a warm-thrumming stirring in his groin. His lips parted, parched. His mouth was very dry. Do it! And it will be done.

  Early on, you know to love your gun. Your gun is your friend. Your gun is your companion. Your gun is your solace. Your gun is your soul. Your gun is God’s wrath. Your gun is your (secret, delicious) wrath. This was his first shotgun, he would never forget. Twelve-gauge, double-barreled Winchester. There was nothing distinctive about the secondhand shotgun but he would remember it through his life with a throb of excitement. His birthday was in July. He’d only just turned eighteen. They were at the summerhouse: “Windemere.” This was Mummy’s name. Most names were Mummy’s names. He avoided Mummy, he was eighteen and did not wish to be touched. Mummy was fleshy-solid with big droopy breasts and a balloon belly even a whalebone corset could not restrain. Mummy had been his first love but no longer. He had no love now. He wanted no love now. He would fuck any girl he could fuck but that was not love. He liked it that he was unobserved by his father as he was observing his father as you observe a hunted creature through the scope of your gun and the creature has no awareness of you until the shot rings out.

  The old man, weeding in the tomato patch. Still, stale heat of July. The old man oblivious of the son’s finger on the trigger. The son’s excitement. The old man stooped amid tomato plants he’d tied upright to sticks. Squatting awkwardly on his heels. He wore a straw hat, that Mummy sometimes wore. Against the fabric of his shirt his bony shoulder blades stood out like broken-off wings. His head was bowed as if reverently. His jowls were fatty ridges of flesh. His skin was weak like melted-away wax. In the shed at the foot of the garden the son observed the father calmly and objectively. Very much he liked the firm weight of the gun’s stock against his shoulder. The s
train of the heavy double barrels against his forearms that nonetheless held steady. The delicious sensation of his finger teasing the trigger. The delicious sensation in the region of his heart, and in the region of his groin. The father’s lips twitched and moved as if the father was speaking with someone. Smiling, coy. The father was winning an argument. The father moved along the row of tomato plants on his heels. The father’s shoulders were hunched. The father’s chin had melted away like wax. Like a turnip such a head could be blown away very easily. For where a man was weak, a woman has unmanned him. It would be a mercy to blow such a man away.

  His finger against the trigger, teasing. His breath so quick and shallow, almost he felt he would faint.

  That summer he’d turned eighteen, he ceased being a Christian. He ceased attending church. Mummy prayed for his soul. The father, too. May the Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from the other.

  From father to son, the gun would pass.

  Not the Winchester shotgun but the Civil War Smith & Wesson “Long John” revolver the father used to kill himself eleven years later in his home in Oak Park. When the son was twenty-nine, long married and himself a father and a quite famous writer and living far from the old man and Mummy and rarely inclined to visit. Profoundly shocked he’d been, impressed, astonished, the weak-chinned old man had had the guts to do it.