Kent Haruf - The Tie That Binds

“About five dollars’ worth,” Wenzel said. “And that wasn’t near long enough.”

Because, according to Wenzel, after Lyman had won the first five hands of poker he played, it began to appear that he was getting bored. It was as if he was saying to himself, So this here is the game of poker that I been hearing so much about all these years. Well, shoot now, it ain’t so much. It ain’t a tall what it’s cracked up to be. So I reckon I’ll just see what else there is to do on a Saturday night. And what Lyman did was, he stood up in the middle of a hand that had already been dealt and he went over to one of the waitresses. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him that the men in the booth were trying to play cards and that Harry Barnes had finally managed to deal himself three aces and a king of spades. Because when Harry called him back, asked him where in the hell he thought he was going, all Lyman said was, “Oh. You want your money back. Here, you can have it. I don’t want it none.”

“So he give it all back,” my dad said.

“Every dime,” Wenzel said. “Dumped it all out on the table.”

“Well, it ain’t like planting corn or stacking hay,” my dad said. “He hadn’t sweat enough for it.”

“Sure,” Wenzel said. “Only you ain’t played poker with Harry Barnes.”

“Just once,” my dad said. “I could see it wasn’t gambling. But then you was saying how Lyman went over to some waitress.”

“Agnes Wilson,” Wenzel said. “He went over to Agnes Wilson, that big hefty gal with pink hair and them big legs that some boys claim is soft as pillows. Anyway, she ain’t been working at the tavern long — come over here from Norka when her husband run off to Denver with some telephone operator. She’s got that kid that got hisself kicked out of school for playing with ladies’ corsets.”

Then for the first time that afternoon I said something. I had been listening to them talk and watching Wenzel spit tobacco, but now they were talking about something I knew about. I said, “No, Mr. Gerdts, I believe it was garter belts.”

Wenzel Gerdts looked at me as if he was shocked, as if someone had come up behind him and buzzed him with a cow prodder. He seemed to have forgotten that all that time I had been standing there with them in front of Wandorf’s Hardware Store. It was as if I was a stray calf that had suddenly decided to speak, even if all I had to say was: “Garter belts.”

“Was it?” Wenzel said, looking at me. “I heard it was corsets.”

“No, I believe it was garter belts all right,” I said. “He was making slingshots with them and selling them to kids for a nickel, three for a dime.”

“Did you buy one?” my dad said.

“No, sir,” I said. “The elastic was all pooped out. It was too stretched.”

My dad started laughing then, and Wenzel Gerdts choked a little on his Red Man chewing tobacco. I didn’t know what I had said that was funny, but I grinned and felt pleased that I had been able to make my dad laugh. He didn’t laugh much, not openly or loudly. The amusement would show in his eyes, but I don’t remember him laughing very often. He laughed that time, though, and maybe because I was the cause of it is the reason why I remember that afternoon so well.

Anyway, when Wenzel stopped choking, he took a silver half-dollar out of his overall pocket and gave it to me. My dad said I could keep it, and Wenzel said, “Now you can buy you a slingshot that ain’t already had the stretch pooped out of it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “But not right now. I want to stay here.”

“That’s right, son,” my dad said. “I believe Wenzel’s about done storytelling anyway.”

“Sure,” Wenzel said. “There ain’t much more to tell.”

But before Wenzel Gerdts went on, he stood there and chewed a while. All along Main Street men were still talking in groups, and here and there a woman was carrying a box of groceries out to a car parked diagonally at the curb. While we waited for Wenzel to continue, a yellow dog came sniffing along the cars, wetting hubcaps and tires, until a man in a straw hat yelled at it, then the dog looked up and trotted across the street and began to work its way back up the block towards the railroad tracks, wetting wheels as it went.

Anyway, after a minute or two Wenzel seemed to have worked his wad to the right pitch and he went on. He told us that when Lyman stood up from the booth where he had been drinking their beer and taking their money, he walked over and stood directly in front of Agnes Wilson. He didn’t say anything to her, though. He just stood there hang faced and bashful. Of course he still had that yellow tie on and that black Sunday suit, so the only change in him from when he first put foot inside the tavern door was that his eyes had turned to glass marbles, or more like bloody egg yolks now, because by this time he had drunk more than just three beers. But again, it was as if he was starting over; he didn’t know what to do with himself after he had somehow made the first effort. But that didn’t seem to matter this time either: Agnes Wilson figured it out for both of them. She said something to him and he nodded, then she set her bar tray down and took his hands and showed him where to put them, one on her soft waist and the other in her white hand, and they began to dance.

“That is,” Wenzel said, “if you can call what Lyman was doing with her dancing.”

“Why?” my dad said. “Couldn’t Harry Barnes write that down for him too? How to dance, I mean.”

“I suppose Harry could,” Wenzel said. “But Harry didn’t need to. Agnes was doing everything anybody needed to do. She had him sucked up against her like he was a fifty-dollar bill.”

So Lyman must have felt that he had arrived in heaven. He was on the dance floor at the Holt Tavern with his face hidden in Agnes Wilson’s pink hair. Her full, ripe body was pressing him all along his own, and he had dispensed with holding her hand. Both of his middle-aged bachelor arms were wrapped around her so that his white Sunday shirt cuffs showed bright against the black of her waitress dress where his hands rode snug above her heavy buttocks. When the dance band started up another song Agnes would shuffle Lyman around a little bit on the dance floor, but between songs they just stood there, waiting, not moving at all, while Lyman maintained the same clenching hold on her, like he didn’t dare let go.

“Like they was two dogs that was locked,” Wenzel said. “You should of saw it.”

“How long did it go on?” my dad said.

“I wasn’t counting the dances,” Wenzel said. “And I don’t guess Lyman was neither. He was too satisfied to do something like count.”

But it must have gone on long enough that an hour or two passed. Agnes Wilson didn’t seem to mind it, though. Occasionally she patted him on the head or tickled a finger in his ear, and now and then she winked at the other people in the tavern, who didn’t seem to mind it either; they were all going up to the bar to get their own drinks. They were slapping one another on the back and congratulating themselves as if they were all in attendance at some significant event. I suppose it was an event too: Lyman Goodnough was enjoying himself.

“Until, bang,” Wenzel said. “All in a sudden, he’s gone. He’s took off.”

“Wait a minute,” my dad said. “You mean he got bored with that too? That don’t leave him much to graze on. He’s already used up beer and poker and women.”

“No,” Wenzel said. “No, I don’t guess you could say bored exactly. He just stopped squeezing Agnes and left.”

“How come?”

“That’s what we wanted to know,” Wenzel said.

So after Lyman took off, Wenzel told us that Harry Barnes called Agnes over to their booth where, between poker hands, they had been watching it all. Agnes came over and leaned against the table. She held the bar tray behind her and pushed her ample front out towards the men in the booth.