Robert Coover - John's Wife

The Reverend’s oldest son Philip, often called Fish, and known also, to a certain beloved but unloving party, as the Creep, the possible — no, probable — circumstances of whose conception his father had just detailed during the recounting of his life story, was badly in need of a pal. His father’s narrative had been loosely based upon the heroic quest motif, and this motif, had he known of it, might have served his son as well as a way of understanding his own present ordeal, since being the butt of a popular joke was something he shared with many of those household names of the ancient past, most of whom were at least granted the company of a boon companion upon whom they could unload their woes when fate was knocking them around. But Fish’s best buddy had run away and, really, there was no one else, the only other person to whom he might turn for sympathy holding him in withering and unremitting contempt. She would be at the barbecue of course, it was at her house, but he was afraid to go there and take the heat. “Aw, go on, superstar!” his sister Jen had taunted. “You’re famous! Or anyhow your ugly duff is! You can open up a booth out in the gazebo: cut a flap in the seat of your pants and charge a buck a peek, two bucks to pop a pimple, you’ll make a fortune!” Of course, Jennifer was trying to keep him at home, she didn’t want him to see Clarissa today, she was afraid he’d tell. What he’d overheard. On the extension phone. And he would. Rejected as a lover, maybe he could at least become a trusted friend, and if that meant ratting on his sister, hey, easiest thing in the world. It would be less easy to explain to Clarissa what had really happened in the car dealer’s house, but Fish wanted to talk about that, too. With somebody. He could see what everybody was laughing about, but they didn’t know the real story, it wasn’t just a joke. He’d finally decided to call up the police and tell them what he knew, but when he’d refused to tell them who he was, the policeman had shouted at him, “We’ve had enough of this crap! Get off the line, sonny, or we’ll trace this call and have you arrested!” When he hung up, he felt he had to get out of the manse. Just in case they did trace the call. Not much hope, but he went over to Turtle’s house anyway. Turtle’s mom peeked out at him when he rang the bell, her eyes buggy like she was watching a horror movie, then she whipped the door open and yanked him inside by his shirt collar. She was always very nervous and bossy, but today she was out of control. She was still in her housecoat, her face was pale and wrinkled without any makeup on, and her hair was sticking out in all directions like something had scared her and made it all stand on end. “I really can’t stay,” Fish apologized, his voice squeaking a bit. “I was just wondering if maybe your son came back, but—” “He’s behind the refrigerator again!” she cried, sounding more like a squawking bird. “He is—?” “You’ve got to help me!” She dragged him toward the kitchen. He tried to hold back, but she really had her claws in him. “Maybe I could just come back a little later—” She pushed him in ahead of her, then shrank back, chewing her nails in the doorway, waiting to see what he’d do. The kitchen was a crazy scene, the floor smeared all over with some kind of sticky gunk, pots and pans flung everywhere, and half the furniture in the house piled up against the space between the refrigerator and the wall. “He’s back there! Please! Get him out of here!” “Uh, I don’t know, maybe your husband—” “My husband? My husband? He’d kill me if he knew!” Fish had no idea why this might be so, but certainly Turtle’s dad could be pretty nasty if his dander was up, which it often was. A man on a short fuse. “If I only knew where his father was!” “Who?” “It’s his fault! He should have to get rid of it!” All this talk about husbands and fathers seemed pretty mixed up, but Fish agreed with her: “Yes’m, that’s right. He’s probably at the barbecue.” “Barbecue—?” “You know, Pioneers Day, over at—” “Oh my God! Is that today—?!” And she was out of there, the front door banging open and her feet, still in bedroom slippers, slapping down off the porch. The house was suddenly very quiet. Fish hesitated. He could hear something moving behind the barricade, or thought he could. “Turtle? Is that you?” Nothing. “Turtle—?” Just a kind of squishy sound. Whoo. Time to go, man. He unstuck his shoes from the floor and took off, and as he reached the street a truck pulled up and the driver leaned out and asked: “Anybody home here?” “Nah. Everybody in this house is out to lunch!” He saw that the guy, that video games freak from the drugstore, was going in anyway, so he turned around and shouted: “Hey, while you’re in there, take the pet for a walk! Behind the fridge!” Fish longed to see Clarissa more than ever now and, determined to tough it out, he headed toward her house, come on, chicken, let it happen, but he lost his nerve a block later and turned homeward. Life was a bummer, it really was, no pun intended. You are what you get born with. Period. You don’t like it? Tough titty. And as for women, well, they weren’t at all like he’d thought they were, his father’s books didn’t show half of it. The manse was empty when he got back, everyone else at the barbecue. Except Jen, away on plans of her own. Nothing to do but beat off, Fish thought glumly, heading for his father’s library. The phone rang. A hollow unsettling sound in the echoey manse, but he let it ring. Then he thought it might be Clarissa trying to find out where Jen was, so he picked it up. “Hello, Philip?” Not Clarissa, but he knew who. He’d heard her voice earlier: silky yet firm with just a touch of a soft chummy twang. He figured it belonged to the woman he’d seen sitting with Jen and Clarissa sometimes at the mall. “Hey, this is a friend of your sister’s.” “I know.” “Your sister’s in a bit of trouble, Philip, and I need your help.” “I don’t think so,” he said. No more older women, that was one of his new rules, not even to say hello and goodbye. “Clarissa needs your help, too, Philip. Believe me.” “Well, but, I was just about to, uh—” “Are you alone?” “Sure, everybody’s gone to the—” “Stay right there, Philip. This is important. I’m coming over.”

Turtle’s father, the nasty man with the short fuse, who Fish supposed must be at John’s barbecue like everybody else in town except himself, was in fact back in Settler’s Woods again, pawing frantically through the weeds and litter, in fruitless search for that which, now lost, he held — except for the leg it came from — most dear in the world, his dander up all right, but directed wholly against his own criminally negligent self: how could he possibly have let it, when for almost twenty years it had never been, out of his grasp? He’d awakened in the hospital, not knowing where he was at first, plugged up to various devices, remembering only a kind of dream he’d had about walking in the woods and seeing John’s wife bicycling by in her tennis clothes. Had she fallen? Or had he fallen? Had he used the frayed garter as a bandage of sorts? He couldn’t recall, but (he was off the cot and searching desperately through his pants pockets) he definitely no longer had his most precious possession. But where—?! How—?! In a panic (he’d felt like screaming!) he’d hauled on the pinstripe suit pants, tucked in his golf shirt, pulled his tennis shoes on over bare feet, and, head ducked, had bulled his way down the pale corridors and out of the building, responding to no one when they shouted at him: let the sonuvabitches try to stop him, it was his fucking heart, he had his rights! The hospital was on the edge of town, not far from the highway and the woods (it was not a dream, he’d been there, he was sure of it), it was a doable walk, or jog, rather, he was on the move, piecing together, as he galumphed along, what remained in his loss-stunned memory of his earlier trek out here: the ravine, right, he’d been taking a piss at the fucking ravine! So he started there, kicking through the thorny underbrush, poking around in the damp leaves and suffering all over again the terrible chagrin he’d felt when, all aglow, she cycled by. It had to be here! But it wasn’t. He retraced his steps, working his way inch by inch from the ravine back to the first place he could remember being and then again back to the ravine. Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh shit. It was gone. Gone—! But what the hell had he been doing out here in the first place? That’s right, he’d been hunting for his truant son, he’d nearly forgotten about him, the irresponsible little sonuvabitch, it was his fault this had happened. He was furious with him, but at the same time he loved him of course and he realized that, down deep, he’d been missing his boy sorely all the while. It was what had been keeping him up nights. That and, well, some other things. He wanted to blister the kid’s backside for running off, bringing this catastrophe upon him, but he wanted to hug him, too, and be hugged by him, and to teach him what the world was like (goddamn it, you don’t just go running off into it, son) and to protect him from the worst of it, his only child, next of the Maynards. Well, maybe he was right to go. Escape the fucking curse. Which he, Maynard II, could not, could never. With an aching heart (yes, it was damaged all right, irreparably), he sank to his knees near where he’d peed, or had started to before she passed by, and began turning the leaves over one by one, tugging away the thornier plants, tossing aside the sticks and twigs, the beer cans and cigarette butts, scratching at the ground around, feeling (pinstriped trousers notwithstanding) like some sort of prehistoric man squatting miserably in the dawn of time, trying to understand by touch alone who and what the unfathomable Other was. And what he touched was hard and stony but smooth in the way that bone was smooth and was indeed bone, and as he dug the earth away around it, he saw that it was a skull. His son’s? He shuddered and tears came to his eyes and he forgave the boy with all his heart and he dug deeper and discovered that there was a big hole in the middle where the nose should be, as though … He really didn’t want to know any more. He covered it up hastily and stood, looking around him, his hand scrabbling about in his empty pocket. He thought he saw something moving and the heavy silence was broken suddenly by some violent thrashing about deep in the woods like some huge wild animal was loose — and it sounded like it was coming closer!