Robert Coover - John's Wife

Mad Marge may have needed a bad-humor cure on this day, the Nerd as well, but not the man they called Old Hoot, the former hardware store manager, now managing director-elect of John’s new nationwide trucking and air cargo operations, who was in such a euphoric state he looked like he might explode. The broad smile on his craggy face was almost scarier than his scowl, so unfamiliar was it (there were two teeth missing, one on each side, that no one in town had ever noticed before), but certainly none could match him for the heartfelt fervor and spirit of joyful thanksgiving with which he was celebrating this traditional day of the pioneers; he was everyone else’s therapy, a stiff one personified, and most, when they saw him, broke into broad smiles, too. A rough customer, old Floyd, folks generally thought, but hardworking and loyal, and John was now repaying that loyalty. As he always did. So no one, or almost no one, begrudged him his sudden good luck. Spiffily dressed in a new summer suit with two-toned shoes, checked shirt, and silver bootlace tie, a new moustache shadowing his lip, Floyd was himself feeling very much like a pioneer, having breached some impossible frontier and finding himself moving now into exciting new unexplored territory (genuine respectability, for starters), and he did not hesitate to let people know that he was, by the grace of God, a man reborn, his mind cleansed of all impure thoughts and his repentant heart forever devoted to this town which had raised him up from the depths of hell. When John passed by, bare-chested in his cowboy duds, Floyd raised a toast to his benefactor, thanking him for having faith in him, unworthy as he was, when most of the world did not, and asking God’s blessings upon him and all his enterprises, and John, with a faint smile, raised his can of beer in return and said simply that he considered Floyd the right man for the job. Floyd flushed and smiled and tears sprang to the corners of his eyes. “And God bless your good wife!” he added, somewhat stifling the general cheer, though no one could say exactly why. Perhaps it was because Floyd’s own wife Edna had not yet arrived, arousing some curiosity, and perplexing Floyd, too, as he said when asked. “She went buying for the new house, as I recollect. Probably just got carried away.” Not like Edna, of course, a cautious shopper to say the least, but the astonishing news had made her a bit giddy and it was true that she had gone buying, as Floyd said, and with the promised new house in mind: one, she imagined, with old trees in the yard and a big picture window and carpet on the stairs instead of rubber mats and a toilet that really worked proper, or maybe even more than one. “I cain’t believe it, Floyd,” she’d said, steadying herself against the kitchen sink when he told her, “but I do, I sincerely do believe it!” Because she could see it in his face. And so, she had gone out to the big mall on the highway where she rarely ventured so as to look for something sufficient to mark this mighty change in their lives (she could almost hear her stepmother telling her: “Edna, go fetch me a sign!”) and what she’d finally chosen, it being too early to pick out curtains or wallpapers, carpets or cabinets, since they hadn’t even gone house hunting yet, was a beautiful table lamp with a porcelain dog for a base, all curled up like it was asleep, and a red shade above it with a pretty silver border around the top and bottom, plus a red velvet cloth, the same color as the shade, for it to rest on. She’d deliberated for a long time because it was so expensive, and when she finally plunked down her credit card she felt a twinge of guilt, but she was sure in her heart that it was just the right thing and that she would love that dog for all her life. As she was wheeling it out to her car in a shopping basket, she ran into John’s wife, dressed in a lovely pioneer costume with bonnet, full skirts, and apron, who paused to admire Edna’s purchase. How nice, she said, the way the lampshade matched the little cloth, and she showed Edna the throw rug she had just bought which also had some of the same red in it, as well as colors which were similar to the silver stripe and the porcelain dog, especially the painted collar with golden studs around the dog’s neck. It was just amazing how they went together, she said, and she insisted Edna must have it. Edna protested of course, it was strictly something she never did, but John’s wife said Edna would be doing her a favor to take it, she’d picked it up by mistake but didn’t really want it, honest, and it would go so well with Edna’s new house when she had one, and certainly it was very beautiful and it really did go perfectly with the lamp and when John’s wife told her it was a prayer rug and that she wanted her to have it as a housewarming gift, how could she refuse? It seemed like God’s will. So Edna rolled it up and put it in her shopping basket with the lamp and the cloth, telling John’s wife she didn’t know how to thank her, John’s wife saying there was really no need to, it was truly a pleasure, have a good day, and then she was gone. Edna pushed her shopping basket out into the parking lot, still very happy but worrying already about how she was going to explain all this seeming extravagance to Floyd, and, as she opened up her car trunk, she was arrested for shoplifting.

“No, I know after all the fights he’s got into up there he ain’t due for parole till the other side of doomsday,” Otis was barking into the phone as they brought Edna in for booking, “but I got me a goddamn crisis here, Bert, and if that hellacious butthole can help me I gotta get him down here and toot sweet, you hear?” He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece, leaned toward the hardware man’s sad dowdy wife. He saw she’d been crying. “Just set down there a minute, ma’am. We’ll try to figure out what happened, soon as I get off this call.” He glanced at the Oriental carpet his officer was showing him. Didn’t see too many of those around here. “Don’t worry, Bert, I’ll keep the sonuvabitch collared, you’ll get him back in one piece, mean as when you mailed him. Okay, call me back. But don’t let me down!” What a day. Seemed like a week. Crazy things happening. Those two on the run, tearing up jack. People lost in front of their own houses. Or acting weird, like the photographer. Or the lawyer’s wife. Picked her up in her nightgown, running around on the streets, absolutely out of her onion. She’d bashed her car into a downtown parking meter and abandoned it and was now about as coherent as a headless chicken. Wouldn’t go home. “No, no, that thing’s there!” she’d screamed. But he’d shipped her back in a squad car anyway and called the hospital where her husband was a patient. He’d checked himself out. So to speak. Anyway he was gone, nobody knew where. This restlessness: it was what most bugged Otis. He wanted to yell at everyone to stop where they were and just hold it for five minutes. And now this lady, who’d never given anybody any trouble in all her life, trying to steal a damned rug, which didn’t even look all that new, it just didn’t make sense. When he asked her why she did it, she said: “I can only say I never stole it, nor nothing else, in my whole born life. It was, well, give to me by a certain person.” Otis didn’t believe her, but something about the way she said it made the back of his neck tingle. He rang up the merchant in question and turned to one of his officers who was on the same bowling team with the woman’s husband: “See if you can find Old Hoot.” “He’s prob’ly over to John’s, Otis.” “John’s?” “You know, at the barbecue.” Otis, phone tucked between chin and shoulder, shuffled through the papers piled up on his desk, but he couldn’t find his calendar. “How come that’s going on when I got all these other problems?” The merchant, having heard John’s name mentioned, said he’d call back, and Otis told the woman to make herself comfortable until her husband got here, and did she want a cup of coffee? No answer, she was crying again. Meanwhile, phonecalls were stacked up dozens deep. A lot of them about Pauline: “Otis, I just seen something you won’t believe!” “I know, it’s a bit unusual, but we got it under control.” Sure we do. Like hell. She and the drugstore loony were on a wild crime spree and it seemed like there was nothing Otis could do to stop it. Reports would come in, Otis would chase them, see the filthy remains of their passage, but they’d be long gone. Sometimes he’d run into Cornell’s wife and sister out there and they’d berate him or get in his way or trample over the evidence; he warned them he’d book them both as accessories, but the drugstore lady had a way with her steel crutch that made it hard to reason with her. And a lot of the calls and what he found when he got there were clearly Corny’s own diversionary tactics — he was crazy maybe, but he was wily. Like those jungle weasels who’d earned Otis his Purple Heart. Sometimes it seemed almost like there were two of him. Some of the complaints were real: the stolen truck from the Ford lot, their temporary encampment out in the old airport hangar, thefts from motels and restaurants and private homes. But they didn’t add up to anything that helped him track them down. Which was why he had his call in upstate. Maybe he should be asking for the National Guard instead of Duwayne, but Otis hated to have any truck with outsiders: the town should solve its own problems, he believed that. His officers phoned in from the lawyer’s house: “Hey, Otis, this place has been ransacked. Big mess in the kitchen. Really ugly. That broad took off screaming as soon as she seen it. Should we pick her up again?” “Naw, let her go and get back down here soon as you can, we got more urgent things to worry us!” And he wasn’t talking about shoplifting, which was frankly the least of his problems. The suspect’s husband arrived in a blurred fit of rage, bewilderment, indignation, and sheer panic, spouting Biblical bombast, but Otis told him to calm down, there was probably a simple explanation, and by the way, congratulations on the new promotion, he’d heard about it from John. That helped. Floyd wiped his brow with a blue bandanna and said, thanks, he was real pleased, God be praised, and asked his wife whatever did she want such an ugly rug for anyway, she knew how he hated things with patterns on them in the house. “I didn’t want it, Floyd. It just, well, sort of turned up in my basket.” Floyd started ranting to her about the slippery road to perdition and made her get down on her knees to pray with him, which she meekly did, but then the merchant out at the mall called and said, given the parties involved, he’d just take the rug back and wouldn’t press charges, so Otis told them both to get up and go back to the party and try not to let it happen again. “God bless you, we won’t,” said Floyd solemnly, adjusting his silver bolo and buttoning his suit jacket as he rose. He was not a big man, but he was standing tall today, radiant and full of himself. He took his wife’s arm. “For as Jesus says, we must enter by the narrow gate, though the way be hard and those what find it is few. And if a person will not stop sinning, he is better out of the world than in it.” He drew himself up, stroked the fresh fuzz on his lip, and with a smug, almost beatific smile (Otis was reminded of paintings of martyred saints in his old catechism manual), turned to leave. “Say, hold on a minute, Floyd, that reminds me,” Otis called out just as he reached the door. He fumbled through the loose stacks of phone messages. “Was you ever in Santa Fe?” Floyd looked like somebody had suddenly stuck him with a pin, just between the eyebrows, and he shrank about half a foot. “Santa Fe—?” he rasped. “Santa Fe what?” “No, that’s okay, I didn’t think you was.” “But—!” “Go on now, I’ll see you directly over to the barbecue.” “Otis? Call from upstate. They’re sendin’ Duwayne down here in a prison van with a coupla escorts. And Bert says to tell you, if you lose the vicious cock-sucker, you’ll be takin’ his damned place!”