by Annie Proulx
When he had to get out of the oppressive rooms, when he needed things in town—beer and groceries, haircuts—he pushed himself out to the highway in the wheelchair and stuck his thumb out. Pickup trucks were the only ones that could give him a ride, and the driver had to get out, help him into the cab, put the heavy chair in the bed of the truck, get back in, drive to town, then the whole business had to be repeated in reverse. Not many bothered to stop and he could sit out there for hours, shivering and cursing, before someone pulled over. His strong, muscled torso fattened from lack of exercise and the fried pork, peanut butter sandwiches and beer he consumed. He became a familiar figure on the Random highway, slouched in his wheelchair, long black hair straggling down, raising his gloved hand in supplication as trucks came in sight, and when they didn’t slow sometimes yelling words that could not be heard but were easily guessed, accompanied by an upflung finger.
Only once did the Dentist come on an errand of mercy, kegged and roaring lumbering songs, with a six-pack in each hand, telling lugubrious tales of mishaps in the woods of the horsepower generation.
“Here, ya little bastard,” he shouted, “have one.” He got the accordion out of its case, dumped it in Dolor’s lap. There was nothing wrong with his arms except a minor shooting pain, but even with three or four beers he couldn’t play. It was not just that Wilf was dead, but he kept hearing the formidable virtuosi of Montmagny, kept thinking of the unknown player who had possessed the green accordion before him.
“You ain’t a lot of fun,” said the Dentist.
A lost chord
One afternoon when the door opened it was not Mrs. Pelky with her sauerkraut ragout, but Emma.
“Mrs. Pelky said you wasn’t doin that good,” she said, looking around the stinking room. She’d never seen it, and he was ashamed of the dust and empty beer cans, the dirty clothes in the corner and the crusted dishes in the sink which waited sometimes for days before Mrs. Pelky could get to them. Emma went straight to the sink and the hot water gushed over the greasy plates. He was excited, suddenly happy and maneuvered the wheelchair to the sink where he could watch her lashing the suds up. She looked fine to him and all at once he guessed why she had come. He blushed, ready to cry from excitement. Emma!
“How’d you get down here?”
“Come down with my folks. There’s a wedding, one of my cousins, Marie-Rose, and they asked Dad to play for the dance after. He’s going to play some of that old music. I thought it was a good chance to see you, see if you want to hear it. I remember how crazy you was to hear the old music.”
“Look at how I am! Can I go to a dance? I can’t even get to the V.A. Hospital once a month without half an army to move me.”
“Dad’s comin over with Emil in his pickup truck. They’ll put the chair in the back, you in the front. There’s gonna be a real good accordionist there.” She laughed slyly. “You got good clothes you can wear?”
“Yeah, yeah. How you doin up there? The kid OK? Who’s Emil?”
“I’m doin real good. I got a job, just on the line at the toy factory. The kid’s growin big—you won’t hardly recognize him—and I get to bring him home free toys, that’s a benefit. Emil is—it’s not only my cousin, it’s in the air—next month we’re gettin married, me and Emil. He’s a nice guy and he likes the kid. They need a father, you know kids need a father. He works at the toy factory, too, in fact he’s the foreman. You’ll like him. He’s the one that plays the accordion. I wasn’t gonna tell you, it was gonna be a surprise, but I guess I told you.”
“Guess you did.” It was only a few minutes since she had come in but he had soared high and plunged into the abyss since she walked through the door. He wanted to yell at her, it’s only eight months he’s been dead, and what about me, I been crazy about you forever. The dishes were shining in the drain rack, she was polishing the faucets and talking to him. He remembered her dress very well, the cadence of her sentences. He couldn’t say a thing.
The wedding reception was at the V.F.W. hall, and a big crowd shuffled along the buffet, paper plates bending as they heaped on sliced ham and turkey, potato salad, the peppermint chip chiffon cake and orange Jell-O molded desserts. Children ran back and forth, crawled under the chrome-legged Formica tables, bawled in corners, pushed and howled. He sat at a long table covered with paper printed with a design of silver wedding bells. The napkins carried the names of the bride and groom, Marie-Rose & Darryl. He sat between Emma’s father and Emil, didn’t know many of the others. Emma’s pale yellow bridesmaid dress made her look sallow and tired. At the bottom of the table sat a fat man with a black eye who kept telling Frenchie jokes in a broken dialect, who winked and said he got his black eye when he walked into a door.
Before the dancing began, Emma’s father announced, “We’re gonna play a little bit of the old music, mostly for the older people in the crowd, not too much though, I know you younger ones don’t go for it. But you know, it’s good music, you can’t listen to it without tapping your toe and feeling good. Myself, I regret we don’t hear it so much no more.”
Dolor was disappointed in the music. He remembered vividly what he had heard in the north beside the great river. Perhaps it was because the first tune Emma’s father and Emil tried after the falsely enthusiastic announcement “Here’s one for the old-timers!” was one he had heard the stiff-faced man play in Montmagny, the “Quadrille du loup-garou,” the “Werewolf Quadrille.” Even with two accordions Emma’s father and Emil skimped on the runs, lost notes, played at a dragging tempo and cut the complex piece short, wheeled immediately into “Blueberry Hill,” and then the wedding guests danced, the men sweating in dark suits, their oiled hair breaking loose and flapping against their foreheads, the women’s skirts belling around their nylon legs.
They tried a fast gigue that brought an old man onto the floor, clacking and kicking with stiff legs, only an echo of the youthful dancer he must have been, keeping it up even when Emma’s father forgot the tune and quit playing, though Emil plunged on, his solo and abbreviated playing far short of the intricacies of the St. Lawrence valley, but spirited enough to keep the old man dancing, an animated skeleton. At the end Emma’s father leaned into the microphone and said, “well, that was some pretty fine dancing by Charley Humm, and that’s it for the old stuff. You know, you get a certain age in your life and you forget some of the tunes you used to know and I apologize for that. Now here’s a little haymaker music, Maine’s own Hal Lone Pine’s ‘Cryin’ Cowboy.’ I heard Hal and Betty Cody do this over in Machias years ago in a thunderstorm, the lights all went out, their sound system died, but they sang and played in the dark with the lightnin flashin outside. Now that’s a real performer for you. So here we go, all you country fans,” and applause and cries of ya-hoo filled the room. This was Emma’s father’s territory. He wrung heartbreak and yodeling and wailing harmonies from his fiddle and Dolor had to admit he was good. As for Emil, he played well enough, but he was grade C, like everything else in Random.
An aunt of the bride loomed behind him suddenly, sat in Emil’s empty chair, smiled, drank from a smeary glass, coughed in his face as she lit a cigarette—one of those wiry Frenchie women who’d buried two or three husbands.
“They tell me your name is Gagnon.”
Emma leaned forward. “Dolor, this is Delphine Barbeau from Providence, Marie-Rose’s aunt, her father’s sister. Delphine and Tootie gave Marie-Rose the fold-up TV tray-tables. Delphine, you know me and Emil is next. So you better stay right here and you don’t have to come up again in a couple of weeks.”
The woman drew on her cigarette, coughed. “I shouldn’t even be up here now. I had pneumonia. Me and Tootie was drivin along and the car broke down and we had to walk for miles and miles. Oh, I was soaked, and the wind just chilled me to the bone. So I got sick. They told me at the clinic, don’t travel, no excitement, don’t go to work. I was out of work three weeks. I work at Ferris Combs, they make the hairbrushes, combs that glow in the dark. You work there
long enough you start to glow just like one of them combs. So here I am. Yeah, those TV trays are cute. I don’t know if they eat those TV dinners. If you’re gonna get married next I might get you the Toastmaster Hospitality Set, it’s a toaster and these snack trays.” She laughed. Her voice was flat and loud as though they were in a room full of machinery. Dolor thought she might be drunk.
She leaned closer to him, cut Emma off. “You from around here?”
“Well, I was born here, but I grew up somewhere else. Old Rattle Falls.”
“Uh-huh. How come you’re in a wheelchair? You always been like that?”
“They don’t know. Just something wrong with my legs. It just started this year.”
“Delphine! Come on, we’re going! Come on, it’s nine hours’ driving. I ain’t waitin.” It was Tootie, the fat man, the front of his shirt marked with a triangle of sweat, his matted hair straggled over his brow.
“OK, here I am.” To Dolor she said “glad to met you,” got up and cut through the dancers to the fat man.
Then Emil was back, pulling Emma out onto the floor, and he was alone, looking at the litter of crumpled napkins and rinds of ham fat on the mustard-smeared plates around him.
“Hello, Frank. I’ve been looking for you.” It was Emma’s sister, Anne-Marie, who called herself Mitzi, with her charming little stutter, her scent of lily-of-the-valley, a silver cross lying against her bridesmaid breast, a fluffy skirt of tulle, yellow satin slippers with Cuban heels. She was not pretty, did not have Emma’s robust vigor, but there was a delicacy about her, a tenderness that flattered him, a private and restrained tone in her voice when she spoke. Each time he had seen her she seemed deeply interested in how he felt, what he thought. Wilf had told her about the name Frank back at Birdnest and she always used it.
“Having fun?”
She looked at him. “Dead on my feet. These shoes are pretty but they hurt. They didn’t send my size, five and a half, so I had to wear these fives.” She sighed, drank a little from her glass of wine. “Frank, can I ask you a personal question?”
He knew what it was going to be. “Sure.”
“What happened to your legs?”
Christ, maybe he should make up a printed pamphlet. “Nothing happened. Just something went wrong. They don’t know what. I was OK until a couple of months after Wilf—Emma’s—after it happened, then I just woke up one morning and boom! There I was. They don’t have no idea of what it is.”
She nodded as if he had explained cause and effect. “I brought you something,” and she handed him a tiny metal figure.
“What is it?” He turned it over. It was a silver leg, less than an inch long, with a hole pierced at the hip.
“It’s an ex-voto, a votive offering? You offer it to Christ or to a saint and pray that your legs will be cured. See, you can put a pin through the hole? To pin on the saint. You know something, you ought to go to the shrine over at Lake Picklecake, the shrine of St. Jude. He’s the most American saint, he’s the one who looks out for the impossible cases, the ones that baffle the doctors. Before that we went once to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré up in Québec, but there was gypsies there, hundreds of them. I got a girlfriend, she had terrible headaches, a spike being pounded into her head with a hammer, they didn’t know what caused it, but she went to this shrine of St. Jude and she did the stations of the cross and prayed for deliverance from her suffering and gave St. Jude a little silver head and after that she—she never had another headache. This was two years ago. I went with her.”
“Is it Catholic?” he said in a low voice.
She looked at him pityingly.
“Do you remember last year when Mother and Dad”—Emma said “Mamam et Père”—“were trying to sell their house and nobody even came to look at it?”
“A little,” he lied.
“Well, they had it on the market for a year and nothing happened so they went up to the shrine and prayed and asked St. Jude for help and left like a little house Dad made out of a bottle cap, he flattened it out and cut it with the edge of a chisel, it’s all straight lines. They drove home and walked in the house and the phone was ringing. It was a woman from New York who saw the FOR SALE sign last summer when she was driving through, wrote it down. She said she had been looking in her purse that afternoon and found the address and remembered the house and was it still for sale, and of course Dad says yes, and you know the rest. It was St. Jude that interceded for them and made it happen.”
Dolor vaguely remembered Emma saying that her parents had sold their old log house on Honk Lake to someone from out of state and built a new ranch next to the high school baseball field.
St. Jude
It was two hundred miles and more to the shrine, all the way across the state, then over a bridge and onto the island. She drove him there in her little Volkswagen, a good driver, steady and not too fast so they could see everything. The land was flat and swampy, then it rose a little. All along the lakeshore were empty summer camps painted cherry, chocolate, lemon, vanilla. The wind riffed and slapped up whitecaps; he squinted at massing clouds like twisted wet sheets.
“It’s going to rain.”
“What difference does that make? It’s to test you.”
They crossed a pistachio green bridge to the island, turned onto a mud road. A sign pointing vaguely toward the water said only “St. Jude.” The rain started, fine drops needling the windshield. She pulled into the gravel turnaround. There were no other cars. The rain came in gusts and the wind tore at their hair and snapped the nylon fabric of her pink jacket. She wrestled his wheelchair out of the back seat and helped him into it, began pushing it toward the lake, toward a small corrugated-metal shed. The wheels gnawed through the gravel.
The shed faced the lake and the front was open to the westward weather. On a wooden bench at the back stood a carved figure, a lumpy wooden St. Jude with a face like a beagle, black with rain. Once it had been brightly painted, but years of lake squalls and driving sleet, reflected sunlight and seasonal roasting and freezing had scoured away the pigment, and mildew mottled the figure. Mitzi pointed at the dozens of ex-votos pinned and nailed to the wall behind the saint: the miniature house her father had made from a St. Pauli Girl bottle cap, arms, legs, lungs, kidneys, trucks, a tiny chain saw painted on a scrap of plywood, an eye, part of a report card, a fishhook. A second, weatherproof plastic representation of the saint, only a foot high, stood in a hollowed-out television set. The knobs were gone and there was no maker’s mark, but Dolor thought it was a Philco sixteen-inch. The mahogany veneer had buckled.
The rain slammed sidewise into the shed, and through his wet eyelashes Dolor saw the drops bouncing up from his wheelchair arms. His jacket and pants were sodden. The water was pouring from his hair, running down his neck and into his clothes, runneling St. Jude’s ruined visage. He could not see Mitzi behind him but heard her voice, serious, intense, believing. The lake was hammered white by rain. The world seemed compressed in a bare sumac branch. He leaned forward, pressed the pin into the wet wood. The tiny silver leg glinted. Some unknown sensation—was it faith?—stirred in him and he thought, no, he was sure he heard a holy voice.
All the way to the motel, as she drove through the belting rain and the car windows steamed over from the moisture in their wet clothes and hair, he felt his legs growing strong. Their rooms were side by side and she pulled the car up in front of his door.
“Don’t get the wheelchair,” he said in a low voice. “Just come around to my side.” As she walked around the car he opened the door, shifted over, swiveled his legs out and, grasping the top of the door, stood up. She stared at him, her face clenched. He stepped forward on trembling legs, and when he had to let go of the car door, he put his arm over her shoulder and shuffled eight steps to the motel door. Inside the room he kissed her, the salty tears in their swollen mouths, his shaking legs moving them to the stiff white bed.
“No,” she said. “After we get married. I made a promise to God,” she s
aid.
The wedding guest
He recovered very quickly, such is the power of miracles. They were married a month later, the bridegroom eager for connubial bliss, but they spent the honeymoon in Providence for the funeral of the bride’s aunt Delphine Barbeau, who had been a death’s-head at the wedding, at the reception choking and gagging from her cancerous throat but still demanding cigarettes and still swallowing brandy and asking those around her if they watched that chimp on TV. She croaked demands to fat Tootie who carried her in and wrapped a blanket around her.
He came over to Dolor, lighting a cigarette, his oily forelock dangling.
“She wants to see you,” he said, pulling at his sleeve. Dolor bent over the waxy face, trying not to shrink from the fetor issuing from the black hole of the mouth. The woman crooked her finger.
“Tell you. Now you married your cousin. You fool.”
“What do you mean? I don’t have any cousins.”
“Wife,” she said accusingly, “you married your wife,” and coughed and coughed, racked with coughing until the fat man carried her out.
Ex-voto
“Frank,” she whispered, rolled fast in his arms, looking at him from the distance of a few inches, the waxy curve of his eyelashes, the dark stubbled chin and jaw, his red mouth and the wet teeth disclosed when he smiled at the sound of her voice. “I dreamed we went on a boat and the boat sank and everybody drowned but us and we just floated on the water like soap and we couldn’t sink because we were saying Hail Marys and that’s what kept us up. Frank, I dreamed that you promised to give up playing the accordion for God and St. Jude who restored your legs, I dreamed that we moved away from here to Portland or Boston and our lives were so different, so beautiful and happy and successful.”
She told him what was wrong with the place. Random was a twilight place that made people moody, tripped the switch for tears, boiled up a sense of loss and the feeling that the good things were out of reach. Men rushed into hopeless situations. Women threw themselves away on roughnecks who beat them and made them suffer, men with faces pitted and blackened like aluminum pots, who humiliated them and showed them the worst of everything. It was a place that pulled you down, that made it so you could never get ahead, just trapped in some halfway life that nobody but those ensnared recognized. It was because everybody in Random was French but nobody was French—they weren’t anything; they were caught between being French and being American. Those who went away had a chance; they became true Americans, changed their names and escaped the woods. She asked him what he thought of the name Gaines to replace Gagnon.