T. Boyle - Riven Rock

He was reading a bit in the paper about the completion of Las Tejas, a new Montecito palace modeled after the Casino of the sixteenth-century Villa Farnese in Viterbo, Italy, when Cody Menhoff himself came bursting out of the kitchen in a white apron singing, “The War’s over! The War’s over!” Actually, the dishwasher was the first to hear of it, beating a procession of shopowners, drummers and tomato-faced drunks by a matter of minutes. He’d been out back dumping a load of trash when he heard a hoot and looked up to see a pack of boys hurtling down the alley in a scramble of legs and white-capped knees, a flag flapping behind them like wash on a line. “What’s the news?” he shouted, though he’d already guessed, and one of the boys stopped banging two trashcan lids together long enough to tell him that the Huns had made it official. He’d relayed the news to Cody, and Cody, a big Dutchman with a face like a butterchurn, roared through the place and set up drinks on the house for all comers.

Before long there was a string of cars going up and down the street honking their horns, and the front room began to fill up, wind or no wind — and this wasn’t just a capricious breeze, this was a sundowner, the dried-out breath of the season that came tearing down out of the mountains in a regular cyclone, bane to all hats and shake roofs and the brittle rasping fronds of the palm trees. But there was no wind inside Menhoff‘s, except what the crowd was generating itself. People were cheering and making toasts and speeches and then somebody sat down at the piano and struck up the National Anthem and everybody sang along in a bibulous roar, and when they’d gone through it three times they sang “God Bless America,” “Yankee Doodle” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” It was heady and glorious, and though O’Kane had planned on limiting himself to two shots only (things had been slipping away from him lately and he was trying to curb himself) there was no stopping him after that. He got into the spirit of things, slapping backs, crowing out jokes and limericks, dancing an improvised jig with Mart, who’d turned up just past nine with Roscoe and a glowing high-crowned face of victory. By ten O‘Kane was off in a corner, singing the old sad songs in a fractured moan of a voice, and when Roscoe came for him the next morning he had to vomit twice before he could get his suit on and go out to see how Mr. McCormick was receiving the news.

The celebration lasted a good six weeks, right on through Christmas. You could step into any place in town, from the lowest saloon with the pitted brass rail and the sawdust on the floor to Menhoff ’s and the dining room at the Potter, and there’d always be somebody there to raise a glass to the Armistice. And then it was Christmas, and you had to have a nip of the holiday cheer or you weren’t properly alive, and a week after that the New Year floated in on a sea of dago wine and a raft of nasty rumors about the Drys and Prohibition and the women’s vote, not to mention the influenza epidemic, and O‘Kane told himself he’d taper off as soon as the deal went through with Jim Isringhausen for the orange grove he’d been saving for all his adult life — or most of it, anyway — because he’d have to celebrate that and no two ways about it.

He never missed a single day’s work — only a drunk and an alcoholic boozer would fall down on his responsibilities like that — but he would go out to Riven Rock at eight A.M. with the fumes of his morning booster on his breath and practically beg Sam Wah to scramble him up a couple of eggs to settle his stomach. It was a bad time, his head always aching, the colors rinsed out of everything so that all the stage props of the paradise outside the door seemed faded and shabby, and he began to worry about winding up like his father, that flaming, bellicose, hamfisted lump of humanity sunk permanently into the daybed and unable to keep a job for more than two weeks at a time. He had to cut back, he really did. And throughout the winter he promised himself he would. Soon.

Mr. McCormick seemed to continue his gradual improvement during this period, though the news of the Armistice hit him hard on two accounts. For one, he could no longer follow the offensives and mark up his maps and bury his nose in five or six different newspapers each day, and that left a widening gap in his life, though Dr. Hoch tried to interest him in any number of things, from growing orchids and learning the clarinet to lawn bowling and crossword puzzles. The second thing was his wife. Now that the War was over and women on their way to getting the vote, there was no excuse for Katherine to be away from him for so long a time. She hadn’t been to Riven Rock since the previous Christmas, when he’d accused her in so many words of adultery, though she sent him weekly letters and packages of books, clothes, candies and new recordings for his Victrola. That was all right as far as it went. And Mr. McCormick appreciated it, but his wife was out there in the world and he wasn‘t, and the idea of it was a source of constant agitation, a low flame flickering under a pot and the water inside simmering to a boil.

O‘Kane was in the upper parlor with Mr. McCormick, Mart and Dr. Hoch one day three weeks after the Armistice, when a letter from Katherine arrived with the morning mail. It had been a dull morning, Hoch unusually silent and Mr. McCormick fretting round and haunting the rooms like a caged animal, and even the movie had failed to materialize because Roscoe had a touch of the grippe and hadn’t been able to make the trip into Hollywood the previous evening, and there was nothing new from Flying A, just four years ago the biggest studio in the world and now about to fold up its wings and die. The winds were still blowing, tumbleweeds rocketing down out of nowhere and accumulating against the back door and every windowsill decorated with a ruler-perfect line of pale tan dust, and that made the atmosphere all the more oppressive. O’Kane’s head was throbbing and his throat so dry it felt like a hole gouged out of the floor of Death Valley, but still he made an effort to engage Mr. McCormick in conversation and even began a much-interrupted game of chess with him. And Dr. Hoch, recognizing Mr. McCormick’s restlessness as a symptom of something worse to come, ordered the sprinklers in the trees to be turned on, but instead of the usual anodynic whisper of falling water there was nothing but a kind of distant blast as of a firehose hitting a wall and the occasional tremor of the windowpanes as the wind attempted to make the glass permeable.

All three of them — O‘Kane, Mart and Dr. Hoch — watched as Mr. McCormick accepted the mail from the butler through the iron grid of the door and dropped into an easy chair to read through it. The first two letters apparently didn’t interest him, and after examining the return addresses and sniffing at the place where the envelopes had been sealed, he let them fall carelessly to the floor. But the third one was the charm, and after examining the writing on the face of the envelope for a long moment, he slit it open with a forefinger and settled down to read in a voice that was meant to be private but which kept breaking loose in various growls and squeals and a high scolding falsetto that seemed like another person’s voice altogether. Mr. McCormick was some time over the letter, bits and pieces emerging into intelligibility now and then as his voice rose from a whisper to a shout and fell off again: Jane Roessing’s house — seven degrees above zero — you remember Milbourne — dog died — new hat — Mother down with influenza.

There was a silence when he’d finished, and into the silence Dr. Hoch projected a question: “Any news?”

Mr. McCormick looked up blankly. “It’s from K-Katherine.”