Robert Coover - John's Wife

Mitch, driving in from the airport in one of John’s cars, picked him up on the road out there as he came stumbling breathlessly out of the trees just past the humpback bridge, looking more like beast than man, teeth bared, eyes beady, and jowls dark, and dressed up like a circus animal. John’s punishment had been hard on the poor fellow. Mitch was glad it was over, for his nephew’s sake. In truth, Mitch had rather admired the daring of Barnaby’s and Maynard’s attempted raid, and he supposed that John, who always relished a bruising battle, especially when he won, probably did, too, though he couldn’t say so. When Mitch pulled over and shoved the door open, Maynard shrank back in terror and threw his hands up in front of his face. Whew, the sonuvabitch was really in bad shape. “It’s all right, son,” Mitch said, leaning across the passenger seat toward him and extending his hand. “It’s just me, your uncle Mitch. Come on, get in.” Maynard hesitated, then seemed to collect himself. “Sorry,” he said, the glittery panic in his eyes fading to a dull stare. “I’m — I’ve not been feeling well.” He shook Mitch’s hand briefly (no more than a second or two, but Mitch could feel the trembling) and, head ducked, dropped heavily into the seat, pulled the door to, and after a nervous glance over his shoulders into the woods, sat slumped there, stubbly fat chin on his chest, gloomily contemplating his muddy knees. When Mitch, relighting his cigar from the car lighter, asked him if he’d spoken to John lately, he got a barked “No!” making it clear John had not yet sprung his surprise on him. Maybe his son had changed his mind. More likely he’d just been too busy. “It’s high time you did,” Mitch said, but got no response. Probably he had taken too many hits and was wary. Or maybe there was something else. As they rolled on into town, Mitch asked him if everything was all right at home. “I mean, you know, your wife’s been a bit funny lately.” Completely off her trolley, more like it, the crazy twat. “She been giving you trouble?” “No, it’s not that.” Maynard seemed to be struggling for some way to talk about it, whatever it was. His clothes were a mess and he smelled pretty funky but he could clean up at John’s. A full and immediate rehab was in order and, by the looks of it, it shouldn’t wait another day. “It’s just that I lost something. Something important. And—” “Oh yeah. Your son, you mean.” “What?” His nephew peered dimly up at him for a moment, then looked back down at his filthy hands, dangling limply between his knees, turning them palms up as though there might be messages scrawled there. Christ, he was an ugly bastard. “That’s right. We haven’t heard a thing.” “That’s tough,” Mitch said. “Only son and all, I know how you feel.” He knew better than to ask about his brother-in-law, Maynard’s old man, who was going gaga. Pretty depressing. All of us headed that way. Don’t think about it. So instead Mitch told him about the hippies who’d camped out in the old hangar out at the airport. “Left a helluva mess. Fucking garbage everywhere. The crews out there never saw them, just some kid in a truck the manager took a pop at as he tore out of there, but they must have been a whole damn gypsy caravan. Where in God’s name do these people come from?” When he’d asked the mechanic who’d shown him into the hangar where the manager was now and what he was doing about it, he’d replied: “You mean Snuffy? I don’t know, ain’t he the mayor now?” So now Mitch asked: “What do you think of the new mayor?” Maynard didn’t know there was one. His nephew was silent for a time, reading his hands, and then he raised his head and looked around him and said: “How long has this day been going on?” Jesus, no answer to that one. Mitch, chewing his cigar, shook his head and said: “Looks like the whole damned town’s here.” The street outside John’s house was parked bumper-to-bumper and the drive was full too, so Mitch pulled into the space in front of the drive, leaving the keys in the ignition. Maynard seemed alarmed that Mitch wanted him to join the party, but Mitch insisted that he and his wife had been invited, his son had told him so personally, and that in fact John, he knew, had a surprise in store for him, something great, let’s go see him now. “You know John. A rough customer in a brawl, but never one to hold a grudge, and in the end he always sticks with family.” When Maynard held back, Mitch bit down on his cigar and told him this was his chance to get his life back in order and he shouldn’t fuck it up. He should also pay more attention in the future to his dress and to his personal hygiene, goddamn it, but today it didn’t much matter, this was an informal party, so let’s hit the head for a quick wash and shave and get with the pioneer spirit. Or spirits. “God knows I could use a stiff one and so could you. So, come on, son! Move your butt!”

Needing a stiff one was but one of many such remarks that passed for wit or wisdom at John’s annual Pioneers Day barbecues, that particular mot (as Ellsworth, absent today, would say) repeated at this one, with a wink and a wistful grin, by Waldo, the paint-and-wallpaper man, in cordial conversation with the gum-snapper his wife called Sweet Abandon, and no doubt employed by others this day as well; there were only so many such lines in town and they had to be shared around. “I know what you mean,” most would say, returning the wink, though Sweet Abandon, perhaps, so young, still not adept at what Kate the late lamented librarian used to call the community codes, did not. What she said, popping a bubble, was: “No shit. Listen, you got any blow on you?” Waldo’s grin vanished for a moment, then spread easily across his flexible jowls again. “I can get some,” he said. This willingness to be of service to one another, for whatever reason, was characteristic of most of the guests in John’s congested backyard: this was a friendly town, and for all that it had grown in the last decade or two, still a town, just as in the days of the pioneers, where most people knew each other and even knew what their jobs and hobbies were and where they went to church, and where common courtesy, without frills, was the daily norm. “Can I help?” “Let me refresh that for you. What’s your poison?” “Drop by the shop tomorrow, I’ve got just what you need.” “Listen, what I need, nobody’s got.” “I know what you mean.” Humor, courteous neighborliness, now and then a gentle ribbing, these were forms of local discourse that were at the same time declarations of affection and togetherness. Thus, there was no malice intended, or at least very little, when Maynard stepped out on the deck in the smiling company of John’s cigar-chewing father, indicating that his long painful exile was over, and was applauded by everybody in the backyard for having the best costume at the party: a golf shirt tucked in tailor-made business pants with muddy knees, the pioneer’s dream. When the preacher’s wife passed by the barbecue grill, holding her tummy up in front of her with both hands, one of her husband’s parishioners, wielding tongs like forceps, called out: “I’ve heard of a bun in the oven, Beatrice, but that one takes the cake!” and others, playing joke-tag, one of the town’s favorite pastimes, especially at parties and during happy hour (what old Stu, also not yet here today, liked to call “Can You Tup This?”), added: “Maybe somebody forgot to set the timer,” and “If it’s the pastor’s wife, it must be a hot cross bun,” and “Looks more like a baker’s dozen!”—“Or else a dozen bakers!” someone laughed — and none of these remarks were meant in any disparaging or disrespectful way, or to call into question the Reverend’s paternity or to suggest inadequate precautions taken, not seriously anyway, but all were at heart expressions of sympathy and sodality, and were taken as such by those at whom they were directed, except for this or that individual with a fragile ego or an underdeveloped sense of humor. These persons, whose lives, though proud, were lonelier than most, set apart as they were even at amiable gatherings like John’s backyard barbecues, were often as not dubbed by the townsfolk with accordant nicknames — and though they did not always appreciate them as such, these were also a form of inclusion and friendship, a kind of community embrace of its unembraceables — like the Nerd or Old Hoot or Mad Marge. Who now, having abandoned her mayoral campaign (the general opinion seemed to be that John’s flunky was already the mayor, she must have missed something), and being overdressed for this vacuous lawn party which mocked the day it supposedly celebrated (pioneers didn’t have lawns!), decided it was time to butt out and cool off with a round of golf. But she lacked both car and partner. She knew where her car was, parked many blocks away where she’d been canvassing with her clubs in the back, but where the hell, now that she needed her, was Lollie? The banker’s wife explained, in what was probably an expurgated quote, that Lorraine had left in somewhat of a tizzy, saying that when she came back, look out, there’d be the dickens to pay. Marge’s husband Trevor, sporting his new black eyepatch like a codpiece (Lorraine had used the image earlier and, annoyingly enough, it was true) and tipsier than Marge had ever seen him, also refused to leave with her when she asked, wanting to know why she always tried to spoil it whenever he was having a little fun. “What—?! You call this fun—?!” Feeling betrayed and furious with them both, Marge stormed away, shouting out her disapproval of the ecological insanity of all this wasteful suburban sprawl and arrogant overconsumption as she went (“Happy Profiteers Day!” she yelled), no doubt eliciting, somewhere amongst the revelers, yet another repetition of “There’s someone who could use a stiff one.” “I know what you mean.”