by Annie Proulx
In his youth Bulas had studied literature, but when he emigrated to America the only work he could find was in the steel mills where, after six years of work, he was burned and discharged with a small settlement. His right arm was puckered its length like the skin on hot milk, his shoulder was withered and shining with scar tissue, but he was the leader of singing and knew the hymns, scores of them all written down in his spiewnik, a thick, handmade book wrapped in black cloth.
“Important!” he said. “Important because now they are saying the mass in English. A tragedy.” He, at least, knew the poetry of incantatory words and the power of secrecy.
He came to the funeral home at dusk with men from the Polish Club, the good singers. Hieronim, soaped and shaved and dressed in a sharkskin suit, lay in his walnut case like a polished knife in a silver chest. The singers filed in and stood along the wall. To their left was a small table covered with a white cloth and on it a dish of peppermints and a saucer of cloves. The hymns and the prayers began, Hail Marys, hymns to the Mother of God, to the saints, then, after an hour, the men went out to the parking lot and drank beer and whiskey to intensify their grief, while the women said the rosary, voices elongating, drawing out the ancient words. The men filed in again with flushed faces, belching and hiking at their belts, stood once more along the wall. Darker and more morbid became the hymns, groaning pleas to God to remove the singers from the misery of the body—I am lost, I am damned, I have sinned. They sang of the damp grave, the final hour, and of sinful humans’ vain pleas for mercy: “The clock strikes one, the thread of life slips from my grasp, the clock strikes two …” There was a midnight supper of black coffee, bananas and cold pork. All through the night the singing went on, Old Man Bulas’s voice cracking and shrill under the strain, and at dawn they said the last prayers for the dead and Old Man Bulas started the Angelus, I now bid you farewell. At seven the undertaker’s men loaded Hieronim into the hearse and the singers followed in cars with the windows rolled down even though it was a raw morning, the men still singing, seeing the cold sweat of the grass, their heads aching and vocal cords so strained they sang with a kind of breathless roar.
The next day the two sons had a ferocious battle for Hieronim’s accordion, Rajmund crying out and dramatically striking his chest like Tarzan, and screaming that Joey was tearing the bonds of family apart, that their father had promised it to him, that their father would twist in his grave like a worm. It was an unfortunate simile; Dorothy shrieked and Joey cursed. It was all show, for in his heart Rajmund was indifferent to the accordion.
Haste to the wedding
With such a funeral, thought Sonia, no wedding, not even a Polish wedding, could compete.
She was wrong. Old Man Bulas, galvanized by an atavistic need for ceremony, slept for eighteen hours after the wake, rose, made a list and sent his grandson as messenger to the parents of the bride and the widowed mother of the groom and to many others. He told his wife it was necessary to balance the solemn death rites of Hieronim with as much of the old wesele style as possible, although the bride and groom had sent invitations by mail instead of calling on the hoped-for guests to invite them personally or sending a druzba. Since the freshly buried father of the groom had been a part-time musician, and the groom himself played semiprofessionally, there had to be a good showing of musicians, beginning with a fiddler to play “Be Seated in the Wagon, O Loved One,” as Sonia left her parents’ house. “Ah,” said Old Man Bulas. “I remember as a boy all the men shooting off their pistols and the bride-to-be getting on the wagon all covered with ribbons. It was too bad. By accident someone shot her in the heart—an accident. So the wedding became a funeral.”
Three polka bands pledged their services for the reception, planned for a small room in the Wenceslas Hotel, shifted to the Polish Club’s modest ballroom. Bulas announced that he and Mrs. Bulas would act as the starosta and staroscina, guiding everyone through the unfamiliar old ceremony. It went well enough at first, the bread and salt, but the musicians were impatient with the Grand March which had to be started over and over when new guests came in, then, during the interminable dinner, Old Bulas jumped up every second to make speeches and propose toasts, tongue-tangled and lost in the memory of another ill-fated wedding in Poland he remembered, a wedding ruined by a harried baker who rush-rush, mixed the batter, had to do something, rushed back and forth, poured the batter into the pan, shoved the pan in the oven, later frosted and decorated the fine cake, and when the moment came for the bride to cut it, her knife felt a resistance, he said, and as she fumbled out a slice, there was disclosed a rat, a rat in the cake, dead of course, but the tail flopped out when she cut the slice and they could see the feet sticking out and my god, she vomited and the wedding guests saw this and they vomited, oh it was terrible, they were all full of wine and rich food and vomiting everywhere. He sang, “Czarne buty do roboty, czerwone do tanca.”
When the moment came for the changing of the veils, Sonia and her bridesmaids lined up, but one of the bridesmaids, perhaps thinking over Old Bulas’s story, shrieked and fell in a fit. Half an hour later, the revived woman sitting on the sidelines, they tried again. Sonia’s mother, hands unsteady, lifted the orange-blossom wreath and veil from her daughter’s pale hair, damp with sweat, and put it on the maid of honor, and the rich, sad voices lifted and filled the ballroom, today you cease to be a maiden and become a woman, when the fire alarm went off. A few minutes later Joey led his bride onto the dance floor, spun on a carelessly applied blob of wax and lurched to one knee. He flushed, cursed loudly and went straight to the bar, leaving Sonia to follow or not. Slowly, after an announcement to send Polish polka tapes to GIs in Vietnam to cheer them up, the real dancing began, sedate at first, but picking up until a manic dance fever infected them all, not just the old polka one-two-three-four, but the chicken hop, the Siwy Kon, the Silver Slipper and other furious new steps, and it went on until the next morning, the musicians crying for mercy, collapsed dancers rolled against the wall, sleeping in their finery. Among them was Old Man Bulas, not sleeping but in the coma from which he never roused until the day of his death a week later when he opened his eyes and said, “let those I have sung for sing now for me,” and his family wailed, for surely he was calling up a chorus of the dead.
Joey and Sonia
“I sure as hell guess we got married,” said Joey in the motel, yawning until his jaw cracked. Sonia smiled.
“Here’s to a long and happy life together,” he said, clicking his glass of sour champagne against hers. “How much money did you get?”
“I don’t know.” She went into the bathroom with her case.
He plunged his hand into the satin bag and pulled out a wad of bills, started to count, but she was standing on the bed and wearing a short nylon nightie, flimsy, pale blue and edged with lace, and he looked up from the money. He could see the dark circles of her nipples, the triangle, her swelling calves and white ankles. She began to jump a little, the bed quivering, her feet lost in the thick duvet. He let the money fall, rushed at her the way a diver on the high board hurtles toward the blue. All she could think of as he rammed into her was the first time she had seen his penis, years earlier; she was thirteen, swimming with her girlfriends Nancy and Mildred at the municipal pool, dark heads in the water like floating bread, hundreds of people standing, walking on the wet concrete around the pool, the girls pulling at their bathing suits. She knew Joey by sight, a big boy, two classes ahead of her in school. He stood on the verge of the pool, his toes hooked over the edge, looking down at them floating on their backs, their legs yellow and wavery under the water, seeming broken and flat in the refraction. He reached up into his baggy trunks, letting them see him getting at whatever was up there. He moved to stand directly in front of them.
“He’s lookin to see if he lost somethin.” Nancy tittered.
“If he ever had something.”
“Maybe it came loose.”
“Oh jeez, ugly!”
He had
the head of it out, poking it at them, and then he began to piss, the stream splattering inches in front of them. They screamed and backstroked, still watching him, but he dove in under the water, coming up between Sonia and Nancy, thrusting his hand into the crotch of Sonia’s bathing suit, and she went under water and came up choking and crying.
Pie
It could have happened when they stopped to get the coffee.
He was groggy and his hands were numb. He’d be better off getting a Coke, she said in her hoarse voice, it had more caffeine, and while he got it she’d clean up the kids in the rest room. Artie had diarrhea and the car stank from his dirty diapers which she changed by kneeling on the front seat and bending over into the back. Whatever it was, it was catching and Florry had it too, felt feverish. It would have to happen now. The good thing about that was it made both kids listless and they slept which was better than having them jump all over the car, yelling and bawling. And he’d gone in to get his coffee and she’d followed with the kids, cleaned up Artie in the grimy sink, stuffed the stinking diapers in the tiny rest room’s wastebasket, the smell filling the closet-sized room, looked in the mirror at her grey cheeks, wet a paper towel that went slimy the instant water touched it, but at least the water was hot and it felt wonderful after the cold car, the heater on the blink again, why couldn’t he ever fix anything so it stayed fixed, the kids on the dirty rest room floor, but not crying, thank god. She’d get them some ginger ale. She had four dollars, and she could at least get the damn kids some ginger ale.
She came out and he was hunched at the counter drinking coffee instead of getting a takeout, and he had a wedge of cherry pie in front of him, wolfing it down, hoping to finish it before she came out and saw it, after yelling the whole way how they barely had enough money for gas and would have to hold on until after the contest. After they won, after they had the prize money he’d buy each one of them a steak as thick as his leg, even Artie who had only four teeth. She looked at him hulked over the pie; her stomach rumbled as she imagined the tart sweetness, the warm sugary crust. And they had a little fight right there when she walked up behind him and said in a low voice, will we have enough money for gas?
“Look, I got to have the energy to drive, don’t I?”
“What about me? I don’t count. Supposed to take care of the kids, get your clothes nice, take care of all that stuff, get up there and perform on an empty stomach. It’s OK for me, huh?”
“OK,” he said, very exaggerated, letting her know she was pushing him too far. “Miss, we need another piece of pie here. And make it a big one.”
“I don’t want it, I don’t want your goddamn pie, see?” She was so angry she started to weep. “It’s the way you treat me, not the pie. I don’t want it,” she said to the waitress who shrugged and shoved the precut slice—they were all the same size—back into the case. The other customers stared at them. A guy who looked like a truckdriver, cowboy boots and trucker’s cap, had a big plate of toast and scrambled eggs and a slice of ham, the works, in front of him. The smell of the food got to her.
“OK,” she said. “I changed my mind. I’ll have the pie.” Ashamed but hungry. The waitress yanked the pie out of the case and put it in front of her, slapped down a fork and a napkin, poured a glass of water.
She sat on the stool next to Joey, both the kids in her lap, holding one in each arm. There was no way she could pick up the fork. Joey stared straight ahead. She wedged Artie between her stomach and the counter, held Florry with her left arm. Gave Florry the first bite though she’d probably throw up later. She ate fast, drank the water and was done, heading for the door, before Joey finished his coffee. He was spinning it out, smoking a cigarette now, probably enjoying the warmth after the cold car. (By then it probably had already happened.)
She stepped out into the grainy wind—it was cold enough to snow and that would be the icing on the cake—lugged the kids toward the car, god what a beat-up wreck. The parking lot was empty. The car still smelled bad, but it was so cold she didn’t want to hold the door open. She got the kids laid down on the back seat and put the blankets over them, then remembered the ginger ale. She could see into the diner, Joey still at the counter. There was a vending machine next to the pay phone.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Florry and ran back to the diner. There wasn’t any ginger ale, so she got 7UP and hoped it didn’t have caffeine in it. Joey was paying for the pie and coffee, counting out a handful of pennies, the waitress watching his fingers pick the linty coins out of the wad of gas receipts and folded wire, knobs of string, with exaggerated patience. She wasn’t getting any tip from this bozo. Dumped the pennies in the cash register without looking at him.
“Aren’t you going to say ‘come again’?” he asked in his mean voice. She gave the trucker a look that said, this is what we get in here now, and kept to herself what she knew—that the guy was paying her out because the wife had had the pie.
He started the car, said, it stinks in here, what’d the little bastard do, die in the back seat?
She was getting interested in the scenery, if that’s what you called the thickening city, the road widening into multiple lanes, four, then six, the traffic thickening and low-slung bars and tire warehouses, railroad switchyards piling up and the buildings piling up too, higher and tight together, buses and trucks, the trucks mobbed the roads. It was like Chicago, yet unlike. They were going through the ragged part where there were a lot of black people. She was nervous when he stopped at the lights and dirty black guys with huge mouths and rolling walks came insolently up to the windshield and started to rub with wadded newspaper, but then they saw Joey’s face, his heavy-lidded eyes and his big head and his slab of face set in the I’d-love-to-kill-you-give-me-an-excuse expression, and veered off to another sucker’s tinted glass.
“How do you know where to go?” She tried to make her voice light, show that as far as she was concerned the fight was over, they should get in a decent mood before the contest. He didn’t say anything.
“It’ll be nice to get in a motel, take a shower.”
He’d set that up, made reservations at a motel about two blocks away from the hall, he said, and paid in advance. The motel was a cheap place, nothing much, he said, but it was a room, it would be warm, with a TV and a bed and a crib for Artie. He knew about it from last year when he’d been driving the truck and had laid over there sometimes. Florry could sleep with them, it was just for one night, but she’d put her on the outside, remembering where Joey’s hand had been the last time they’d put the kid in bed with them. He was asleep so she couldn’t blame him for it. How men were. See an empty bottle he’d stick his finger in it.
“At least we’re getting here plenty early,” he said. “It’s what, almost three-thirty, it don’t start until eight. Plenty of time to clean up. I’m gonna get a little sleep, have a couple of beers, then we can run through the numbers, practice the routine.” She relaxed. The fight was over. They had a good routine, though it was a little risky. First he came out onstage alone, but kind of reluctant, looking back offstage, dressed in his sky blue satin suit, carrying the purple glitter accordion, then he’d turn a little and the line of blue sequins she’d sewed up the pants seams flashed. He’d frown and look worried, look offstage, shake his head. Nothing obvious, just really look worried. Wait. Then, just when the judges started whispering to each other, gonna have to move on to the next one, she’d come running out in her purple satin suit with the sky blue accordion and the audience would give them a big hand even before they played a note, just glad she hadn’t loused it up for him. On their side. If he was feeling frisky he might knock out a breaker and pick up a laugh. Then they’d play and knock their fuckin socks off.
“That’s it,” he said.
“Where?” She didn’t see any motel. Crumbling sidewalks, a white Pabst truck unloading, bar signs, a bakery, P.R.C.U. Club, a butcher shop, sausage strings hanging down, an old man shuffling along, arms bent outward, hands lik
e potato forks, two men eating hoagies in a torn-up section of street, wiping their mouths on the backs of their hands.
“Right here, dammit, you blind? Want me to get you a pair of glasses?” He pulled into an alley, forced the car around to the back of a grimy brick building, nudged a garbage can which scraped against the car. HOTEL POLONIA MOTEL. There were seven or eight orange doors with numbers, a hand-lettered sign in a window spelling “Office.” A couple came out of number five, the woman young, wearing black slacks and a fake fur coat, some kind of orange fur, supposed to be fox, she guessed, the man middle-aged and heavy, smoothing at his hair. He didn’t look at the woman, but walked past her, heading for a parked delivery van, “Lakeshore Officeland Everything for Your Office.” The woman spat on the ground, got a cigarette out of her purse and lit up, headed for the street.
“It’s a hot-bed motel.”
“So what? It’s cheap.” He went into the office for a key, left the car running. She watched through the windshield, saw a few hard flakes of snow come down, saw him inside laughing and nodding at someone invisible, a gesture with his head, nodding again. He came out and pulled the car up in front of number one, next to the office.
“Margie’s gonna keep an eye on the kids tonight. She’s the manager. She’ll be right there in the office, and if one of them starts to cry or anything, she’ll come in and fix them up.”
“Is there a crib? Did they provide the crib?” She knew there wouldn’t be a crib, they’d all have to sleep in the same bed, Artie shitting his way across the world.
“Yes, there’s a crib. Jesus, take a look first before you start in on me, will you?” He got out and unlocked the door, threw it open and extended his hand elegantly toward her. She hoped at least there was a shower. Florry called from the car.
“Mama. My stomach hurts.”