John Gardner - Nickel Mountain

Hastily, a little clumsily, the man bought a pack of Camels, threw out one last grin, and left.

“Stop by again next time you’re passing,” Henry shouted, leaning over the counter. But the poor devil was hurrying toward his idling truck, turning up his collar against the shout. The cab door slammed and the truck clanked off up the hill, the stainless steel glinting in the moonlight.

Henry bit his lip. The man had been afraid of him — like all the others, except Callie, maybe, or some old, old friend, or a drunk. That was what had sent him into his big-man act and finally pushed him out the door. People shied from you when you tried to get to them, talk of a wife’s sickness, a jackknifed truck, hoping to make them feel at home. And if they didn’t shy away right off, it was worse. He thought of old Kuzitski, how he, Henry, had ranted and raved at the poor old devil when it was all Kuzitski could do to keep upright, and then others, too, when Kuzitski hadn’t proved enough. He would laugh too loudly and maybe even get really excited and pound the counter, and sweat would shine on his forearms where the sleeves were rolled tight, and all on account of the weather or the weight-limit laws, the general stupidity of things. And then by God they would shy! — would run like somebody’d tried to rape them, and maybe not come back. Or if they came, they came back to stare one more time at all that fat or now, maybe, to flirt with Callie. Hell of a place for a girl like that, here where all she saw was truckers or drunks.

(“And what do you think he does sittin’ up in his room all night?” Willard Freund had heard the man at the feedstore say. And the man had answered himself, “Why, he boozes, man! You ever seen him drive?”

And Willard had said, looking down and cracking his knuckles, “I know it’s a stupid damn lie, Henry. I just thought you’d want to know what they’re saying.”)

Drunk. Maybe they were right. Not drunk from whiskey, but drunk from something else, maybe. Drunk from the huge, stupid Love of Man that moved through his mind on its heels, empty and meaningless as fog, a Love of Man that came down in the end to wanting the whole damn world to itself, an empty diner, sticky places on the counter stools, bolts and old wrenches, sheer pins, cotter-keys, baling wire up to your knees on the floor of the garage. Drunk with muscle and fat and padding around in circles in a grease-stinking lean-to behind a trucker’s diner. So he pounded the counter about the weather or where he’d have gone if he’d ever lit out, or he rattle-assed through the mountains in his ’39 Ford.

On a clear night you could make it to the top of Nickel Mountain and back, teetering in the square black Ford, the walls pinning you in like the sides of an upended coffin, bumping down gravel and macadam roads and over the warped planks of narrow bridges that rocked when you hit and echoed brrrack! through the hills and glens. The trees would slide into the headlight beams and the wind whipping through the open window made you feel like Jesus H. Christ charioting to heaven. Nickel Mountain! That was where the real hills were, even when you stayed on the highway. And when you came whamming down around a corner, letting her coast free as a hawk, you’d suddenly see the river hundreds of feet below, on your left. Even by daylight it was beautiful: flat, blue shale ledges, the black river, misty fields, and the cluttered, peeling brick houses of Putnam Settlement. But at night, with the ledges outlined in icy blue like glass, rippling panes of moonlight on the water — Christ! A trucker had gone off that spot once, poor devil. Bad brakes, probably. That was the funeral that had been up in Utica. It was a long time ago now. Ten years? Well, the man had chosen beautiful scenery for it. Beautiful. That was the big mistake in Henry Soames’ father’s life: to sit, waiting for it, in his bed. She’d done a job on him, all right.

He ran his hands over his chest and sides. He was still staring at the door as if to hurl angry apologies at the trucker’s blackened tailpipe. Callie stood leaning on the cutting board, her hands on her hips, looking at him. When he glanced at her, she asked, “Did that man really have a wife, Mr. Soames?”

He nodded. “Diabetes. All she can eat is Jello.” He turned heavily and put the dirty cup and spoon in the sink.

“He’s got a nerve, then, I’d say.”

Henry scowled, seeing her again with her hand on her cocked hip, smiling, playing with sex the way little boys play with flares along the railroad tracks — and seeing, too, the trucker, with a wife home dying, but for all that there he stood grinning at Callie like a sly old bull — and seeing himself, Henry Soames, reaching out like a fruit to pat the man’s shoulder. “I’m getting to be a damned old woman,” he said. He pulled at his upper lip.

She didn’t dispute it. “Well, you’re a nice old woman,” she said, not smiling. She sounded tired. She turned to look out vacantly at the darkness. He found he couldn’t make out her features distinctly. Eyes burning out like the rest of him, he thought. A sharp, brief pain came into his chest then vanished, a little like a mouse peeking out of his hole then ducking back. He heard her words again in his mind, a nice old woman, and he was touched. Touched and depressed. He leaned on the front of the sink and waited for his breathing to calm. He was always waiting, these days. For customers, for the grill to heat, for night, for morning and the tuning-up of the blasted little gray and white speckled birds outside his window. How long? he wondered. Another tentative pain. He cleared his throat.

It was four nights after the trucker came that Henry found out exactly how touchy his situation was. A Saturday. George Loomis came in drunk as a lord and said, “Henry Soames, you old somvabitch, I come to take the place of the late Kuzitski.”

Callie knew as well as Henry that that was merely George Loomis’s way, that the speech was as much an apology as anything else, however ugly; the only kind of apology George Loomis knew how to make. Or if she didn’t know, she was a fool. But she spun around when he said it and glared at him.

“What a horrible thing to say!” she said.

“Yes’m,” he said.

She said, “You’re drunk. You ought to get home to bed.”

“Now, Callie,” Henry said.

“Drink’s very wicked,” George said, nodding. “ ’S the devil’s helper. Ought to be ashamed. Come sit’n my lap here tell me ’bout Demon Drink.” He lunged over the counter suddenly, snatching at her hand, but Callie dodged him. Her face went white and she said in dead earnest, “I’ll break your brains for you, George Loomis, that’s what I’ll do.”

George sat down again, smiling as if sadly, leaning on his hand. “She’s given her heart to another,” he said, looking at Henry. He turned back to Callie, drawing himself erect. “He’s a son of a whore, Miss Wells,” he said. “I say it for your own good. He’ll get drunk every night and he’ll beat you with a stick.”

She looked as though she really would hit him — her fists clenched, her cheek muscles taut — and Henry went over to get between them.

“George, let me get you some coffee,” he said. He got out a cup and saucer.

“Don’t mean no harm,” George said. “Just trying to do the Christian thing.”

Henry nodded solemnly, filling the cup.

“Callie’s lovely girl,” George said. “Girl with real spirit. Admire her very much.”

Henry said, “Have some coffee.”

“Deeply devoted to Callie Wells. Seriously considering marriage. But at the moment—” He paused, his face gray. “At the moment, sorry to say — very sick.”