Robert Coover: John's Wife

Ellsworth, reporting in the revived Town Crier on the funeral of the popular owner of the Ford-Mercury dealership, whose life had come to such a cruel and senseless end, took note of the minister’s tribute to the dear departed’s renowned sense of humor, which had provided so much strength and consolation for others in the community in the past, adding, in his own words, that death may carry away the person, but the stories, like rocks dropped in a stream, remain. This relative immortality of the stories vis-à-vis their actors and tellers had been much on Ellsworth’s mind of late as he emerged from what he thought of as his “long dark night of the soul” to engage with the human world once more, this world of rock-hard stories and transient lives to which, as chronicler, he’d been so long devoted, but which, in his absence, had passed without report, a delinquency he deeply regretted and said so in the double issue that marked the Crier’s return, promising to fill in all the missing news items by way of “I Remember” columns from his readers, which he solicited in his apology and also in person wherever he went, at the car dealer’s funeral, for example. He reported on that funeral, and on the annual Pioneers Day parade (for which he found few reliable witnesses, but his files were full of suitable archival material), and on the burning of Settler’s Woods, which he’d observed at a distance from his own second-floor window (a shocking moment as light bloomed suddenly in the impenetrable night: where was he—?!), and the casualties ensuing therefrom, including the town photographer’s wife, who was also his professional assistant, a tragedy of immense proportions, which was all he would say about it, and on the deplorable accident at the humpback bridge (in a separate editorial he appealed, once again, for the removal of that perilous structure), and in short, on all the old news that he could gather in, catching up as best he could on all the deaths and births, the marriages and engagements, burglaries, accidents, operations, golden anniversaries, arrests, birthdays, Little League and bowling team scores, church attendance figures. What he couldn’t report on was where he’d been exactly or how long he’d been there, for, returning as though from another dimension as the fire rose and fell on the horizon and the terrible thunderstorm crackled and boomed around him, he did not know himself. Something had passed, but it hadn’t felt like time, and in a place that was more than a place and yet no place at all. After the storm had exhausted itself, he had, as though compelled, gone out to Settler’s Woods to gaze, aghast, upon a charred and misty dreamscape which seemed to have sprung directly from the dark abyss of his own imagination. He’d remembered something Kate the librarian had once said to him about this seeming interplay of art and life: the formal resonances between them, she’d said, suggest that both are organic human enterprises, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they sometimes seem to live inside each other. But he was surprised, and had felt dreadfully empowered and hopelessly vulnerable at the same time, and not just a little disoriented by his recent adventures. He had half expected to find the Stalker wandering there, blind and reproachful, but had discovered instead his old friend Gordon, standing alone in the mud at the edge of the smoldering woods, soaked through and staring blankly into the black wet heart of the devastation. “Are you all right?” he asked. Gordon, unshaven, hands in his pockets, continued to stare straight ahead. “The stillness …,” he said. There was a deep quiet all about. Of course the birds had fled. There were, here and there, a few deep green patches spared by the fire, but most of the treetops and foliage had been burned out, leaving only the blackened trunks and naked branches like scorched arms reaching up out of the earth in anguished horror. Nothing moved except the gray wisps of smoke snaking upward through the dripping branches. “It’s over,” Ellsworth said, with a finality that surprised even himself, and his friend somberly nodded.

It was the stillness that also most struck Columbia when she awoke in the first wet pallor of that dawn, still standing by the glass door of the drugstore, staring out on the empty downtown streets as though she’d never shut her eyes all night. She had, though, had slept at least, eyes open or closed, for she’d dreamt that she’d been caught out in those very streets in the storm with no clothes on (she was hunting for her pajamas, which someone, Corny maybe, had mischievously hidden out there), and was being chased by the doctor with one of Gretchen’s plastic penises and a scalpel, crying: “Nurse! Nurse! It’s time for your pharmaceuticals!” It was still raining when the dream faded and she found herself awake, but the storm was letting up, the thunder rumbling now in the far distance and a pale light rising as though from off the streaming pavement. Her legs, as they’d been in the dream, were like fat lumps of lead, she could hardly move them, so she leaned there a moment, shifting her hips slightly to restore the circulation, and while she was doing that she saw a curious thing which made her think she might still be dreaming: two people in nothing but their shirts staggering barefoot down the slippery street in the rain, holding each other up with hands clapped round on naked hips. A sight to see, even for persons in the medical profession, there was probably even a statute against it, but there was not much they could do about it. They had helped Trevor load log-sawing Marge into his car just before the storm hit, then had dashed away through the whipping gales and lightning flashes to pick up their old stationwagon, parked by the clubhouse, forgetting, having got so used to going about as they were, that they had no pockets — Waldo, yawhawing, slapped his beefy thighs — and thus no keys. They’d had a good laugh about that and, rather than break the car door and sleep under a leaky roof with more problems on the morrow, had decided to walk on home, dressed in the storm. And had had a good time doing it, pausing from time to time to rest their tender feet, and play around a bit like kids in the crashing rain, Waldo having awakened on the edge of the green in Lorraine’s arms, completely mystified, but in a jolly and appreciative mood, saying it was the best he’d ever had and he wanted more of it; it was like the old days, football weekends and beach parties and monkey business in the bushes behind the sorority house. They were met at their front door by the police who said they wanted Waldo to come with them immediately, as soon as he got some trousers on, his purple pair being presently, they reported with a knowing smirk, in police custody. The guy he’d shot, they said, was not expected to pull through, and they had to get Waldo out to the hospital while the fellow was still alive and could identify him. “Haw,” said Waldo in utter amazement. In a way, it was good they were there because they also lacked their house keys and the police helped them break in. Did they really think Waldo had done it? Lorraine couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell what Waldo was thinking either nor what the cops thought about her bare ass which they were staring at as if it were a major clue to some ghastly crime, or perhaps the crime itself, and that gave her such a tremendous sense of relief that she lay down on the floor while Waldo was still pulling his pants on and fell sound asleep. What Waldo was thinking about was how simple life was but how you could never figure it out, a paradoxical verity underscored by his visit to the hospital bedside of his old bud Dutch who was said to be barely hanging on. “He’s lost a lot of blood. And other things.” They had Waldo’s missing golf pants there and his old shotgun, and when he asked where they’d found them, they said out at the motel before it burned down and had he been in such-and-such a room last night? “I mighta been. But how did the goddamn gun get there?” Dutch, who’d already told these yo-yos when they dragged the sniveling accountant in that he’d shot himself, stirred himself enough to growl: “You loaned it to me.” “Oh yeah, right,” Waldo said. “I did—?” The meathead. “Hey, Dutchie! What’re they talking about, burned down? What the hell happened to you, old man?” Fuck off, Dutch said, or might have said, and as Otis’s cowboys took the boob next door to visit the guy they were now calling Pee Patch (“Haw! Who?”), Dutch sank back into the drugged stupor which, he supposed, was all the rest he’d know of life, and all he wanted to know. It was like he’d told John when he’d dropped by with an armload of flowers not long after his wife had been in: the last picture show was over, he was ready for the fade-out. John and his wife had been out to visit their daughter, also in the hospital for some reason. In intensive care, they told him. Sounded serious. And was. When she woke up, full of a dull leaden pain all through her body, her mother was sitting beside her. “Mom! Where have you been —?!” she cried, and realized there might not be any sound coming out. But her mother heard her somehow: “Right here beside you, sweetheart, all the time.” She thought she heard her go on to say she was a murderous little shit and her dad was thoroughly pissed off at her for what she’d done, but saw that it wasn’t her mother then but Nevada. Or else her dad, it was all a blur, who said, no, he wasn’t angry and told her to hang tough when she broke into dry tears (she could move nothing, nothing at all), adding that he loved her, though by then she’d probably passed out again. When John asked Alf what her chances were, Alf said she was a strong healthy youngster and she should pull through, but it would be painful and would take a while. There wasn’t much she hadn’t mashed or torn or broken, she’d need some repairs, now and later on, and might end up with a permanent brace. Which was what he’d told her mother as well before he sent her home to get some rest, longing for the same prescription. It had been one crisis after another, and Alf was dead tired, but then he was always dead tired at dawn, and he’d been buoyed up through the interminable night by the lifting of a great weight off his shoulders, or, rather, off his finger: that polypous lump, which in his imagination had grown larger than the body which he’d supposed contained it, clumsying him dangerously in the emergency room and making it difficult for him even to do up his fly, had suddenly vanished as lightly as did the night give way to dawn. About that same time, Clarissa’s mother had entered the intensive care center, looking worried but well, a welcome sight, and he had known then that everything would be all right, and confidently told her so, though he had no clear medical reason for saying so. She’d stayed on, watching over her daughter, while he’d attended the succession of traumatized patients who came rolling in on gurneys like floats in a nightmarish parade, and he’d felt watched over as well, more sure of himself than at any time since the war when he had Harriet at his side, and indeed he’d had the sensation that beautiful young nurse was next to him the whole night through, a remarkable experience he intended to tell Oxford about the next time they met for coffee, though he could have told him on his way home, because Oxford was already up, feeding the youngest ones and getting them dressed, coaching the older ones in their breakfast preparations and telling them all about the games they’d play together that day. One of the triplets had been awake all night with a tummyache, so he’d been up when Gretchen proudly brought his errant son home like a trophy from a hunt, and had been able to help her bandage up poor Corny’s head. “He must have taken a wallop from that big home-wrecking jezebel,” she’d explained, blushing happily as she pushed her spectacles up on her nose. “Maybe it will teach him a lesson.” Oxford had slept little, waking ahead of the children, worried about Columbia who’d never in her life stayed out so late, but she came home at dawn, a bit surly, saying she’d got caught out by the storm and had had to spend the night in the drugstore, and had Gretchen come out of her bedroom yet? Oxford said she hadn’t, and indeed, except to attend to basic human necessities, she didn’t come out for a whole week, and Oxford had to fill in for her down at the drugstore and watch the eight grandchildren, too, which in truth he enjoyed, and neither he nor anyone else was surprised when a beaming Gretchen finally came bobbing out into the kitchen one morning and, perched jauntily on her short leg, announced that she was almost surely expecting again. Which depressed Columbia no end, even though she had seen it coming, and made her want to complete her degree and become a registered nurse so that she could take a job up in the city and leave this cruel town forever.