Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

An hour later, Saul’s Etta James CD was playing, and Saul himself was standing upright in the middle of the living room, a bottle of Chablis in one hand, a cigarette in the other (he was not a smoker, but he was smoking — Saul insisted he could not be identified by the acts he occasionally performed). He was singing loudly, an unpracticed baritone. There was some muted applause and encouragement as Mad Dog appeared at one side of the room with another joint, and Toby appeared at the other, his clothes soaking wet. He was demanding cash.

“You needed a witness!” Mad Dog said. “For all we know, you went out there and wet yourself down with a garden hose.”

“It’s not connected,” Toby said. “I tried it.”

“Well, you got wet once,” Saul said. “Get wet again. What’s the difference? We’ll watch you this time.”

“Yeah,” Mad Dog said. “That’s right. We’ll watch you jump in.”

The entire party left the house and stumbled down the hillside steps, Mad Dog shushing them, until they reached the river. Half of them stood in a clump on Mad Dog’s dock, while the rest gathered in the weeds and high grass just behind a small patch of sand. Toby was standing at the end of the dock, complaining of friends who doubted one’s word, friends who had not taken his measure as a man and as vice-president of the Five Oaks teachers’ union.

As he talked, Patsy nudged Saul in the ribs. “What about the current?” she whispered. “What about the current in the damn river?”

Saul offered the bottle of Chablis to Patsy. She shook her head. “I asked you about the current.”

Just as Toby jumped in, Saul said, “If he can survive the cold, he can survive the current.” Upon hitting the water, Toby’s bulk threw up a splash in all directions, wetting down those spectators on the dock. Patsy felt several drops of water in her eyes, and as she wiped them away, she said, “Where is he? Where’s Toby?”

“He’s there.” Saul pointed. “Look.”

Toby stood waist deep in the Tittebawasee River, bowing to a broken round of applause. The lower buttons of his shirt had loosened, and the rolls of fat around his midsection glowed porcelain white in the darkness. Someone threw him a dollar bill, which floated in front of him and then began drifting downstream.

“I was worried,” Patsy said, turning back toward the hillside. “I thought he might drown or something.”

Back in the house, someone had put on a band called The School of Velocity, and then someone else played Magnetic Fields. There was an argument about what time it was. Toby was stuffing his soaked trousers with dollar bills scattered on the floor near the kitchen, and then Saul was demonstrating how to do the tango with Patsy, and as they time-stepped across the living room, they knocked over an ashtray. People were applauding and laughing; someone — Mad Dog said it was Karla — was throwing up in the bathroom, and then the CD player was playing a rap artist, Dr. Dogg E.

Then it was two o’clock, and Saul and Patsy were at the door, Patsy’s hand on Mad Dog’s shoulder.

“Mad Dog,” Patsy said, “you are one hundred and seventy pounds of brain death.”

Mad Dog held up his index finger. “One hundred seventy-five pounds.” He laughed. “Don’t knock brain death until you’ve tried it.”

“I’ve tried it,” Saul said, searching the darkness for their car. “And I love it. Thanks, buddy. Tell Karla thanks, when she’s cooled down. Great hot dish. Great party. See you Monday.”

The two of them staggered off toward the unappeasable dark. Mud stuck to the soles of their shoes. At the car, Saul fiddled with his keys, trying to get at least one of them into the door lock. “You know, Patsy,” he said, “I do love this place sometimes. I love these people.”

“I know,” Patsy said, leaning against the car, waiting for him, her eyes already closed. “I know.”

And then they were in the car, strapped in, and the car was heading south on State Highway 14, and Patsy was asleep beside Saul. Saul leaned back and pressed the cruise-control button. He did not even realize that he was shutting his eyes. How drowsy he suddenly felt! It was the effect of the insomnia. It turned waking life into a dream. He was dreaming of Patsy, sleeping within arm’s reach: Patsy, whom he loved all the way down to the root. If anything happened to her, he would surely die. He thought of his mother. Then he was dreaming of Mrs. O’Neill, carrying a gigantic plate of chocolate chip cookies. And Bart Connell and the barber, Harold, asleep on their feet. Then he thought of an aging African-American man with a goatee playing the guitar and singing the blues on an otherwise empty stage, in a single spotlight, to a sparse, unbluesy audience at Holbein College. He loved that man, the blues and the dignity. The two red taillights of Saul and Patsy’s car went around a corner that wasn’t there; then one of them moved up directly above the other. It came down again hard, on the wrong side, and began blinking.

A smell of spilled gasoline: when Saul opened his eyes, he was still strapped in behind his lap-and-shoulder belt, but the car he sat in was upside down and in a field of some sort. The car’s headlights illuminated a sky of dirt, and, in the distance, a tree growing downward from that same sky. Perhaps he had awakened out of sleep into another dream. “Patsy?” he said, turning with difficulty toward his wife strapped in on the passenger side, her hair hanging down from her scalp, but, from Saul’s perspective, standing up. She was still sleeping; she was always a sound sleeper; she could sleep upside down and was doing so now. The car’s radio was playing Ray Charles’s “Unchain My Heart,” and Saul said aloud, “You know, I’ve always liked that song.” His voice was thick from beer, Chablis — whatever they had had to drink — and cigarettes, and he knew from the smell of the beer that this was no dream because he had never been able to imagine concrete details like that. No: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, driven off the road, and rolled the car. Here he was now, awake but unsober. At least this road was remote and unpatrolled. A thought passed through him in an unpleasant slow-motion way that the car was upended and that the ignition was still on. He switched it off and felt intelligent for three seconds until the lap belt began to hurt him and he felt stupid again. No ignition, no Ray Charles. His mind, which had eased itself into oblivion for Mad Dog’s party, returned to a sort of homeroom anxiety, as it moved slowly down a dark narrow alley-way cluttered with alcohol, fatigue, and the first onset of shock. Probably the car would blow up, and the only satisfaction his mother would receive from this accident would come years from now, when she would tell people, at the point when they were all through reminiscing about Saul, “I told him not to drink. I told him about drinking and driving. But he never listened to me. Never.”

“Patsy.” He reached out and gave her a little shake.

“What?” She opened her eyes.

“Wake up. I rolled the car. Patsy, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why, Saul?” She looked at him with displeasure.

“Because we have to. Patsy, we’re not at home. We’re in the car. And we’re upside down. Come on, honey, wake up. Please. This is serious.”

“I am awake.” She blinked, twisted her head, then looked calm. Her opal earring glittered in the light of the dashboard. The earring made Saul think of stability and a possible future life, if only he would normalize himself. Patsy smiled. Saul thought that this smile had something to do with guardian angels who, judging from the evidence, flew invisibly around her head, beaming down benevolence. “Well, Saul,” she said, turning to look at him carefully, “are you all right?”