Jim Harrison - The Ancient Minstrel

She spent a couple of days at Harold and Winnie’s, all the while staring at Tim’s place a mile down the road. She had confided in Winnie who was sympathetic. “The point is if you can afford a baby,” Winnie had said. “Why have a husband when they love to act like they don’t have wives when they’re away?” She finally called Tim early the next morning. He hadn’t answered her last two letters but she knew it was hard for him. The phone rang six times before he picked up and she thought of him shuffling to answer it on crutches. He sounded melancholy indeed but said this was a good day to visit because his parents would be away for their annual quarrel with the tax assessor.

She put on a short skirt in hopes of sexually intriguing him but then it seemed too obvious and in the end she went for a skirt that was a little longer. It was nearly a half hour walk. Her feet got wet and she had to wind her way through two thick hedges and crawl over an awkward stone wall. Their sheepdog came out halfway and happily greeted her after a single bark. He bore a striking resemblance to the dog years before who thought he was Tim’s guardian. All the way on her walk she became more and more angry about the irrationality of war. The more than eight hundred thousand casualties at Verdun. A whole generation of young French had passed on and England also came close to losing a generation. She had grown up in the shadow of the two world wars and she sometimes could not bear to read the poets. “I have a rendezvous with death” indeed. Millions died.

Tim was shy and withdrawn at first as she sat on a swing on the back porch. His arm stump fitted in a slot on the crutches and one of his legs was pegged. She sat facing him listening to the chattering birds and sipping coffee and trying to use her bare legs to advantage. He relented and they made their way into his bedroom. In the next six days they made love a couple of times a day. His parents at first pretended not to notice her presence and then welcomed her warmly. On her last day he looked at her oddly.

“You look a little smug.”

“I’m trying to get pregnant by you.” And then she confirmed everything.

“But why me? Find yourself a husband.”

“I don’t want a husband except you. I just want a baby to raise.”

He was overwhelmed and began weeping, and barely uttered, “I don’t want you to spend your life taking care of me.”

“But why, if I love you? I want to marry you this afternoon.” Her voice quivered never having said “I love you” before.

“Everybody’s sympathy wears out,” he choked.

She kissed him and walked home where she had a stiff drink of Harold’s whiskey. God damn the world and its wars, she thought. Those who start the wars never die in them. She packed hastily, had supper with Winnie and Harold, read, and went to sleep, getting up early for the drive to London. Winnie got up and made her breakfast and a sandwich for the trip. Country people everywhere were suspicious of restaurants with many stories of a fly in the soup.

When she reached London her grandmother was off shopping for dinner and her grandfather looked at her quizzically, saying, “You look blue.” It came out in a rush from her sexual abuse in the subway to Tim’s refusal to marry her. Her grandfather did the best he could to soothe her. Way back then her abuser had been a braggart and Frederick the Jamaican found out and had pushed the man in front of a train. She was stunned, wondering if the man deserved to die for his sins. She was not a vindictive person but maybe it would save other girls. She and Frederick agreed not to tell anyone else. About Tim her grandfather said, “One of the ironies of war is that it makes the severely wounded feel worthless. There is no reward for them.”

Catherine took a long walk. There was still stray rubble here and there from the Blitz but in general the city was in good shape. She loved walking along the Thames, however dirty. She noted that many of the mansions along Cheyne Walk had been totally reconditioned by the magic of lots of money. She chided herself for her hopeless guilt about war and history and being a woman not called to help or protect Tim in battle. Now they could have nothing.

Catherine was home on the farm for a month before the momentous discovery that she was pregnant. She danced and shrieked in the obstetrician’s office. The doctor was amazed and happy for Catherine.

At home although it was a cool day she danced herself into a sweat while feeding the chickens. Hud ran around barking and snapping at her heels. He clearly disapproved of this behavior that had nothing to do with him. Dogs prefer that we behave the same way every day. If we don’t, maybe we’ll forget to feed them! Even the hens scattered in alarm. She had to acknowledge it was pleasanter without the rooster.

When finished with her dancing Catherine knelt and comforted Hud and then threw the hens extra scratch for putting up with her. She took Hud for a little walk about a hundred yards behind the barn to a small pond and a bone pit where her grandfather had dragged the carcasses of dead animals, cows and pigs. Hud loved the pile of ancient bleached bones still with their scent of meat. He had also eaten a muskrat from the pond. Catherine couldn’t catch him and he wasn’t about to give up a trophy merely because she said, “Drop it.”

She had some worries about pregnancy and child care despite the stack of books she had accumulated. It was easy to recall that books and classes hadn’t helped with Hud. He would heel when they walked the gravel road and a vehicle was coming but then there was a real urgency in her voice. He greeted “come, sit, stay” with a yawn. Dogs are good judges of intention in the voice. Also he had a terrier’s bad temper and sometimes a “come” would cause him to glare at her and back into the shrubbery. Yelling didn’t help. It seemed to him to mean that he had won the round. He was a free radical, pure and simple. He was wildly appreciative when she returned from the store or wherever as if he might have been abandoned. The most effective command was “cheese” because he loved a piece of cheddar.

The idea of eggs had followed her ever since her second-grade report on chickens and not always pleasantly. Eggs were the fundamental fact among all females in the mammalian and most other species. One of hers was currently fertilized for better or worse though it was what her heart wanted. Her old school friend Laura now had three children. She had once admitted in high school to Catherine that her cousins were always screwing her. But she was rather homely and was still faking mental problems so the high school boys ignored her. The point was that cousins were better than nothing, or so she said. This appalled Catherine who was a virgin at the time. When she even touched a boy’s penis he was always shooting all over the front seat and making a mess. Laura seemed to have turned out okay, or perhaps Catherine just wanted the children her friend and her husband had, seemingly without effort.

Catherine had figured out early on that people were primitive right below the surface. She remembered Gert telling her at eleven, A man will tell any kind of lie to make love to you . She couldn’t quite figure out her mother. When Catherine was a little girl they would drive out to the farm singing songs all the way. They were truly happy which made the decline more upsetting when her mother began drinking right along with her father in the late afternoons and early evenings. While Catherine was living in England Winnie told her how happy her mother had been when they became engaged. She would finally move from crowded London to an actual farm. Winnie said Alicia had spent most of every summer with her and Harold and worked like a man. She was born to be a farm girl and when she found out that he was lying the disappointment was fatal. And now she was in Palm Beach and Oyster Bay, the least farmlike places imaginable except the heart of Calcutta. The message to Catherine had been to go it alone as much as possible. Jerry’s lavish gifts had been very helpful but he didn’t know how helpful they were. Once when passing through by chartered jet, for he refused to fly commercial except to Europe, Jerry had stopped by for lunch and suggested to Catherine that he try to buy out her blowhard Texas neighbor. She asked him to wait as she wasn’t sure she could run such a large ranch.