Robert Coover: John's Wife

By the time Gretchen emerged with the glad tidings and resumed her oversight of the downtown drugstore, the broken hardware store window around the corner had been replaced, the power had been restored out by Settler’s Woods and the phonelines repaired, most of the storm and fire damage had been assessed and insurance claims submitted, The Town Crier had reappeared, letting everyone know what had been happening recently (John’s wife contributed a touching column on “The Kiss of Life”), work had begun on removing the old humpback bridge, John having generously offered to do it at cost, the city council had met to discuss his proposal for clearing the burned-out woods for residential and commercial development, John’s daughter and the older man who’d hitched a ride with her that night were both out of intensive care and most of the others, like Pee Patch, as they were calling him, for whom Otis had felt personally responsible, were out of the hospital altogether and back to work, the motelkeeper being the most notable exception. It was still touch and go for old Dutch, and, as part of the annual blood drive chaired by John’s wife, all who were of the right blood type had been up to give the old fisherman a transfusion, Otis included, but the unhappy man had shown few signs of improving, or wanting to. The Ford-Mercury garage had not yet reopened, but there were rumors the widow might be considering marriage to the company mechanic injured in the wreck at the humpback bridge, or what was left of him anyway, a move generally perceived, since he was the only one people trusted out there, as both practical and charitable. The murder itself was still officially unsolved, but Otis had launched a nationwide search for the hardware store manager and ex-jailbird who had disappeared the night of the crime, dramatically signing his departure. At first, when they’d discovered the shattered display window, they’d supposed the store had been broken into overnight, but the door had not been forced and little seemed to be missing: a cash register handgun, a couple of tools, maybe some loose change. But then they’d found the bowling ball with the crimson fingerholes which had been thrown through the window with such force it had torn through the display partition behind and ended up down an aisle near the back of the store. When Old Hoot went, he went. The same could be said for Pauline’s old man, who was Otis’s biggest worry. That vicious psycho hadn’t been seen since the night of the fire, and the people upstate wanted to know how he’d got out of Otis’s custody. They didn’t buy the story he told them, which was nevertheless mostly true. It seemed impossible the old ranter could have survived that toss, but though the search was widening, no body had as yet been found. The joke was (Otis didn’t find it funny), he was still in orbit. “I reckon you ain’t seen the last of him,” Bert told him on the phone. “You’re the one who sent him up, ain’t you? Duwayne don’t forget things like that.” Bert, browned off over the loss of his prisoner, might only have been putting the needle in, but he had Otis looking back over his shoulder from time to time, just the same. Otis, whose sense of humor had been badly dented, had got something of a reputation since the fire at Settler’s Woods for being moody and explosively ill-tempered, not the easiest guy to work for. When, on the morning after the fire, the officer charged with ordering up autopsies on the two Country Tavern victims had confessed he’d not followed through on that one, Otis, enraged, had threatened to dock the man a month’s pay and take his badge away from him, managing only a faint unamused smile amidst the general laughter when the officer explained that “Aw, hell, Chief, Shag was just a yeller mongrel dog they kept out there, and I don’t know about Chester, but that was probably the name of that ole three-legged beer-drinkin’ alley cat out back.” Though he was maybe the best lawman the town had ever had, there was talk about his retiring from the force, especially with the threat of official charges being pressed against him for allowing Duwayne to get away and the insurance investigations into the source of the fire that had destroyed the motel and other property, for which Mayor Snuffy had chewed him out, saying, dammit, he’d let the team down. It didn’t help that John, who could usually ease problems like these, was furious with him for giving Clarissa the Porsche keys: “Bad fucking judgment, Otis.” It was, he knew it, he was unable even to think clearly anymore, and he had a permanent limp now and he was no longer certain he knew what “keeping order” meant and, well, he’d lost his best friend, so was it any wonder he’d taken to spending a lot of time locked up in his office or alone in church, and had even, hard man that he was, been seen crying from time to time, especially on his visits out to the new landfill near the airport?

Of course, there were those who insisted that Big Pauline was still alive and running around wild and naked somewhere, that Otis’s claim to have trapped and killed her in the fire and then buried her remains in the recently dug landfill was just a police cover-up of a failed operation, flawed from the outset by exaggeration and incompetence, that more likely she’d just snuck off in the storm with her infamous father (there’d been any number of sightings), or else had peed her way out before the storm even hit, a theory generated by the admittedly delirious account of the country club golf pro, when he was rescued shortly before dawn by what remained of the police posse after the firestorm had chased most of them away. Kevin had been thought dead, possibly eaten alive, so they were surprised to come upon him in a swampy, foul-smelling, but unburnt grove in the depths of Settler’s Woods, overcome by smoke and all but unconscious, but still alive and rambling on incoherently about the way that Big Pauline had saved his heinie, an amazing story that earned him the nickname of Pee Patch for some time thereafter, later shortened to Patch, which was easier to live with once he was behind the bar at the club once more. By that time the story, in all its retellings, had begun to lose its original contours, which he himself did not remember, having to rely entirely on what the police told him he’d said when they’d found him, and had begun to resemble one of old Stu’s shaggy dog jokes, may the old champ of the nineteenth hole rest in peace. When he’d first come around in the hospital, still in a state of shock, his lungs scarred, his bandaged hand known to have at least seventeen fractures, and his head and gut wracked by a hangover of titanic proportions, Kevin had had the impression of an angelic presence at the foot of his bed and he’d thought that maybe he’d died. But then he’d seen it was only John’s wife, and then John himself had come in later with some flowers. After that: a continuous parade of country clubbers, dropping by with booze and food to hear his stories, he was something of a legend, or rather, more like a cartoon character in a dirty comicbook, but never mind, it was fun lying there, recounting his strange adventures on that dark night, as told to him by his rescuers, like old movie reruns. “What a night that must have been!” they’d laugh and slap their knees. His hand healed but he was never again able to take a proper grip on a golf club, which brought an end to his career out on the pro circuit and changed his teaching habits somewhat, though his lessons out at the club when he got back were as popular as ever.

Lessons that Imogen took when she and Garth moved here, weekend golf being de rigueur in this town, where not much else ever happened. Tennis, swimming, bowling, workout gyms with weight machines, even squash courts and a baseball stadium were available, but John’s crowd, the men anyway, were all golfers. Golfers and drinkers. Imogen was convinced that the reason John took Garth out of small arms contracting and distribution and brought him to town to run the racetrack and related enterprises after John’s cousin got sent to prison was because Garth had beat him over eighteen holes one day down in New Orleans and John wanted to get him up here where he could have another shot at him. In fact, her husband hadn’t won a round since, learning something out there on the links about John’s fierce competitiveness, his powers of concentration, his stubborn quiet force, though he’d done well enough to earn John’s respect and friendship. She and Garth had bought a home in a new development called Settler’s Woods across from the playground in Peapatch Park, which was either where the original pioneer, whose statue lorded over the place, had his vegetable garden or else where his wife grew sweetpeas and other flowers; this town was full of hokey stories like that. It was a friendly place, though, easy to settle into and made easier by John’s wife, who was certainly the person to know around here. She threw a big welcoming party for them, introduced them to all their friends and everyone at the church, proposed them for memberships at the country club, took Imogen shopping, helped her enroll her two girls by a previous marriage in the local schools and invited both children to her son’s birthday party, connected them to doctors, dentists, insurance agents, and bank managers, coaxed Imogen into joining the church choir and took her to her first PTA meeting (Imogen was immediately elected treasurer), and had her over for bridge nights when the men were out of town. Which was fairly often. John had inherited from a former partner some swampland in Florida and they often went off there for what they called business meetings and to do a little deep-sea fishing and sailing. Whatever else they did, Garth didn’t say, and Imogen didn’t ask. Garth could sometimes be a bit scary. Instead, whenever he was away, she amused herself as best she could, which included taking golf lessons out at the club from Patch, a middle-aging man with a damaged hand, possibly a war wound, a randy sense of humor, and an intimate teaching style that included cuddling up from the rear and reaching around to help with the grip and backswing, which took Imogen back to her days of dry-humping at high school dances. Patch would plant one foot on the outside of her front foot to hold it in place, then push at her back foot with his other one, his knee between hers, thigh bumping the cheeks of her ass apart, his calloused hands stroking hers around the stiff leathery thing in her grip, proxy for the chunkier one bumping at her butt. Patch was not exactly her type (John was), but was attractive enough in a meaty sort of way, so finally, when he proposed it, she gazed down at their four intertangled feet shuffling in the grass below them and said, Okay, but my husband will kill you if he finds out. Patch just chuckled wickedly in her hair. So what the hell. Can’t say he wasn’t warned.