Robert Coover - John's Wife

Wife theft of course was an old joke, as old as wives, but as Stu would say if he had any spit left to say with, it’s not the theft but how you steal it. Rex, now tucking his old boss and rival in for the long night out at the Ford-Mercury car lot, using methods more direct, less consoling than those Barnaby presently enjoyed, had figured all the angles and knew nothing could go wrong now from here to the tagline. Rex had had a lot of jobs in his life — stockboy, fridge and TV repairman, taxi driver, deliveryman, mechanic, gigolo — but for this gig he’d cut his chops killing pigs for bacon-makers. Probably the spot in his life, short though the run was, that had given him the most satisfaction. Not all that easy on the old olfactories, but at least at the end of the day you felt you’d accomplished something. Which was how he felt now, cooled out at last after an edgy time. Rex had been noodling along without direction for too long, trying to think his way through every move, every bar, like a goddamned greenhorn, but now that he was onstage at last he found himself relaxing into his own sense of time, on top of the beat and ready for his break when it came, knowing that it would all happen as it had to happen so long as he kept to the score. At the same time, he was able to let in a lot more space, to stretch it out just for the pleasure of it, to enjoy, in a word, the telling, and for openers, there was Stu’s record collection which the old jughead beamed out over the lot most days and which sorely offended Rex, twangy whining country and western shit for the most part. He ordered Stu to take them out of their jackets and hold them for him while, one by one, he dug deep raw X’s into them with a screwdriver. The old shitkicker, sneezing explosively, gave it his best attention, probably hoping that was the worst that was going to happen to him, and when Rex spared a couple of classic rockabilly discs Stu’s eyes lit up there in the dimness and a grin twitched on his loose lips. “Reminds me of the one about the old boy,” he wheezed, “who was chawin’ tobacca in church one day when the preacher’s missus come in and—” Rex poked the barrel of the rifle into his flapping jaws, chipping a couple of crooked teeth, told the dumbfuck to chaw on that awhile, and then laid out for him his plans for a long creamy set with his own fat missus, now waiting for him back at Stu’s crib. Not too long a set: he loathed the boozy bitch and her big spongy ass, but he didn’t say so. One lick at a time. He emptied the chamber of the garage handgun and gave it to Stu to hold while he still sweated fingerprints, planning to reload it afterwards and fire off a couple of rounds, turn the old yuck into a heroic defender of the fort, if a dead one. Okay, time for the main theme: stay inside, follow the chart, and take it out. At the last second, the old used-car shark tried to pull the cornball someone-behind-you dodge—“Winnie—?” he gasped — but Rex only grinned and, straightahead, no frills, completed his closing rip. But when he turned around, there in the shadows: there was someone! He panicked for a moment, thinking: setup! But wait: wasn’t that the thin streak of piss who stole the truck? Perfect! He eased up, feeling the beat again. Not the tag expected, but he could play it. You’re all right, my man, if you just keep listening.

There was something very big lurking at the shadowy edge of the woods out back and the reformed motelkeeper, holding down the fort but still far too sober to play the hero, heaved his beercan at it, then ducked inside and locked all the doors and windows and pulled the blinds and, rubbing his sore arm (used to be able to throw a ball as far as most guys could hit one — now he probably couldn’t get it back to the pitcher), went back to the bar for another beer. Or more than one, some resolutions would have to wait. “Otis? Are you there? Can you hear me? Otis?” Nothing but static. At first he’d thought it might just be squirrels or raccoons rooting around in the garbage and he’d gone out back to shoo them away. But then he’d heard a branch come down and could swear he saw something peeking out at him over the treetops, and what might have been a flexed knee sticking out, catching the parking lot light, at least ten feet off the ground. Shit. “Otis, do you read me? This is Dutch! I got a major problem here!” Fucking useless. The fat-necked sonuvabitch was probably home in bed. Or playing poker somewhere with Dutch’s bartender and the rest of the staff that he’d volunteered away, leaving Dutch alone on the front line and the whole damned motel to run. Luckily it was all but empty tonight, most of John’s barbecue guests staying out at their new hotel on the interstate, the barbecue itself having sucked up the Getaway’s ordinary evening trade, but that was no real consolation, Dutch could use some company. He thought about rousting out Waldo and his milky-breasted bimbo, but supposed they’d both be bombed out of their minds by now and more trouble to him than help. He turned on the TV over the bar and watched a baseball game for a while and, after an inning or two and a few more beers, began to doubt what he thought he’d seen and was even glad he hadn’t got ahold of Otis and his boys after all and dragged them over here, they might have thought he was off his rocker, and what was worse, they might have been right. Dutch had not been sleeping well and sometimes it felt like he wasn’t sleeping at all, even in the middle of what had to be nightmares. He knew what his problem was. Oh, not too much pud pulling: hell, if anything, keeping his hand on his rod and his mind on both kept all three out of worse, an old sportsman’s dictum. No, it was that mirror. That dicked him. It was living too close for too long to that borderline between what was real and what, like a movie, for example, even if made out of real stuff, wasn’t. And it wasn’t really a line so much as a kind of thin film, and when it dissolved: well, you were fucked, buddy. “I got the bad, bad Back Room Blues!” he growled to the tune of an advertising jingle between innings on the TV, and poured himself another beer. So he was closing it down. He should probably dismantle it altogether, but he thought he might need it again some day more desperate than this one, or John might for other ends. Dutch was tempted, feeling so lonely, to take in one last farewell performance, but beefy old Waldo looked out of his depth tonight so it could be a pretty depressing show. Like watching sick carp in an oily pond. Stick with the baseball. That’s what he was thinking (top of the eighth, tying run on first, nobody out) when Waldo’s harpy of a spouse came rocketing in, stuck a shotgun up his nose, and demanded the key to her husband’s room. Dutch gave it to her, figuring on maybe giving Waldo a warning call, but she spun around at the door, swinging the gun his way, and yelled: “Don’t even think about it, fatso!” Whereupon Dutch decided this drear night might have something to offer after all and went back to his old movie seat to watch the action.

Thanks to the daylong rumors and sightings, Otis’s stirring twilight speech in John’s backyard, and the fleeing Country Tavern patrons surging back into town, news about the big thing in the woods was getting around. In fact, as always happened, people were seeing big things everywhere, and Otis had to field a lot of nuisance calls, as when someone called to say the big thing had got into their basement and blown all the fuses, please help for god’s sake, while others claimed to have seen it hiding behind the darkened mall or in the deep end of the civic center swimming pool or under the humpback bridge, and everywhere it went, people said, it was leaving a mucky smear. There was even a report that the stolen truck had been seen heading north out of town without a driver and with two big feet sticking out the back. Shackled in the backseat of the patrol car, Duwayne cackled at all these calls coming in and said it sounded like the great Whore of Babylon had this fiendish sinkhole of iniquity by its diabolicals and wouldn’t let go till the Day of Rupture come to kick ass and send them all to hell and perdition, praise the Rod of Wrath and His Holy Spirits, go git me a drink, Otis. In spite of Duwayne’s crazed running commentary, Otis took all the callers seriously and had their stories checked out, as he always did, but he had his own sights set now on Settler’s Woods. He’d been narrowing their escape options all day and he knew that was where they’d have to go. Before leaving the barbecue, he got the doctors present to put the hospital on alert, deputized a dozen or so of the younger fellows, sending those without weapons of their own to the airport with Mayor Snuffy who had the keys to John’s gun cabinet, and told the others to meet up out at the Country Tavern in an hour’s time. He talked with old Oxford about his simple son’s shenanigans and the deep trouble he was in right now, and then fended off as best he could Oxford’s clubfooted daughter-in-law, who came bobbing violently out of the night and attacked him again with her steel crutch, this time for partying it up instead of keeping the public order as he was paid to do. When she found out he was recruiting for an armed posse to try to capture the two bandits, she insisted on being deputized in spite of her obvious disabilities, which included being blind as a bat. He told her it was against the law to use relatives of the accused, though he didn’t know whether it was or not, but in any case it didn’t snuff her wick, she got more fired up than ever. He figured, for her own safety, he ought to lock her up for the night, but he didn’t know which of his men would be willing to take her on and he was not keen to. Finally, Oxford’s heavyset daughter, who had the most influence on her, was able to persuade her to back off, though Otis supposed he’d see them both again before the night was over. He tried to reach the motelkeeper out on the highway next to the woods to warn him that the two they were looking for might be in his neighborhood, but he got no answer. The Country Tavern, having taken casualties, seemed to have shut down as well. This was it then. He could feel it, like atmosphere: Last quarter. Last big play, game on the line. Before he could break away to join Mayor Snuffy and the boys at the airport, though, old Stu’s wife grabbed his arm. She said she thought Stu was about to get hurt, hurt really bad, he should get out to the car lot as soon as possible and try to stop it, but when he impatiently asked, stop what? she couldn’t say. Almost too drunk to stand. “Hell, I don’t know, honey, just something he, you know, had to do before coming.”