Nickel Mountain

by John Gardner

  It was two in the afternoon when she reached the diner. The sun was a white ball of fire, and across from it the moon hung clear as could be. Callie Soames stared at the woman’s rig as people had been doing now for twenty-four days, watching the woman pull up to the pumps, bells clattering, as if to gas up her goats, then on second thought turn short and pull her pink and purple wagon over to the door, blocking it neatly, as if by plan. Starlings careened in the baked sky. In the dust below there were sparrows and cow-birds by the hundreds, picking up grain truck spill. The Goat Lady got down and came over to the window and pressed her face to the screen, shielding both sides of her face with hands as gritty as a miner’s. Then she came to the door and peered through the screen as she’d peered through the window. Finally she came in. Prince lifted one ear, then drifted back into sleep. There was oat chaff on the woman’s hat and shoulders from fields where combines were at work. “Hi,” she said. She stood four-feet-tall, with her big square brown fists on her hips—legs wide apart, mouth widely grinning, her nose like an elbow coming out of her face—so pleased to be here that for a moment Callie was sure the woman was someone she ought to recognize and struggled in her mind to place her.

  “Honey,” the woman said, “I was wondering if you happen to sell ice cream.”

  “Oh,” Callie said. As if the words hadn’t sunk in, she looked over at Henry where he sat in the corner booth picking at a piece of apple pie. (Jimmy was back in the house, taking his nap.) The woman turned, following Callie’s glance, and Callie looked back at her quickly. The woman was still smiling. She was fat, in an unhealthy, poor woman’s way, especially below the belt. It was possible that she was pregnant.

  Henry said very solemnly, like a minister, “We do have ice cream. Yes’m.”

  “Why, that’s your hubby,” the woman said, delighted—even proud, one would have thought, as if she’d mistaken Callie for one of her own. When she laughed, her mouth seemed to slip right up behind her nose. “He’s sure nice and plump!”

  Henry scowled.

  The goat smell and the stench of her sweat were everywhere, and Callie had to concentrate to keep from being sick.

  “Apple pie!” The woman rolled her eyes at Callie, suddenly coy as a schoolgirl. “I ain’t et apple pie in years. When I was six years old I was out in the orchid one time where my daddy was picking—my true daddy: he was a deputy sheriff—and you’ll never guess!”

  Callie waited.

  She leaned far toward Callie, leering. “I set down on a bushel crate and wee-weed all over ’em!” She wrung her hands and drew her tan, flat face back and sideways, giggling, and above the motionless, patient-looking layers of clothing the fat, cracked and shiny flesh of her throat rippled. Tears washed down her cheeks and into the curls sticking out in front of her bonnet and then, when she threw her head forward in her ecstasy, rolled down her nose and hung in a great gray drop at the end, like a pearl. Henry leaned his forehead onto the heel of his hand.

  “What kind of ice cream did you want?” Callie said.

  The woman climbed up on the counter stool, still giggling, turning again, after she was settled, to look over at Henry as before. She got herself into control and looked up at the ice cream flavors sign hungrily, sniffing, wiping the tears from her eyes with the backs of both hands, then went off on a giggling fit worse than the last. “I wish you could of seen his face,” she said. She turned again to giggle at Henry. Again she got herself in control. “I’ll have choc’late,” she said. The decision appeared to surprise and please her. Callie turned away.

  “Honey,” the woman said behind her, coy again now, “did you ever hear the name of Buddy Blatt?” She was lighting a cigarette.

  Callie hesitated, the goat smell and cigarette smell mingling unpleasantly with the ice cream smell in the freezer.

  “Buddy Blatt’s my boy,” the woman said. “I been looking for him.”

  Callie put the scoop back carefully, as though it might blow up in her hand if she jarred it, and covered the freezer again. She slid the dish of ice cream onto the counter-top, along with a napkin and spoon, then remembered to fill a water glass. “I don’t think I’ve heard that name,” she said, and after a minute, “Henry?”

  Henry shook his head and looked out the window.

  “He sent for me,” she said. She coughed, and smashed out the cigarette almost untouched. She dipped her spoon into the ice cream and lifted her lips away from her teeth, then sucked a little off the spoon and let the rest slide back for the next bite. “Mmmm!” she said. She reached down inside her collar and half-scratched, half-rubbed. Callie listened to the fans. No air stirred.

  Then for the hundredth time, because like everyone she met they were the kind of people that would understand a mother’s feelings, she told her story. Old Man Judkins came in in time to hear the last of it. It was the second time around for him. He’d heard it secondhand from Bill Llewellyn in New Carthage less than an hour ago. But it was only this time, hearing it from her own mouth, that he believed it.

  “They all been real kind,” she said. She tucked her chin in and giggled. “Down in Olean the police helped me strip out my goats.”

  “The police?” Henry said. It was the first sign he’d shown that he was listening.

  “They was a green place right in the middle of the city, it was just as green as anything, with flowers in the middle, and I pulled up there. It was milking time. And the p’lice come over and talked awhile and then helped me.”

  Henry looked out the window again, and Old Man Judkins picked his teeth.

  “I got the cart fixed up so I can sleep in it, but I ain’t had to yet,” she said. “Every night but one I’ve slept in somebody’s house, and the one night I didn’t was because down in Endicott they let me sleep in the jail. They been very kind.”

  Callie said matter-of-factly, “And you really think you’ll find him.” She wondered whether the woman would pay for her ice cream.

  The Goat Lady smiled, her upper lip vanishing again, her few teeth jagged and yellow in her black mouth. “It’s a small world,” she said. Perhaps the question made her nervous, or perhaps it merely reminded her of her business. She got down off the stool and gave a grotesquely formal little bow, smiling again. “I surely appreciate your kindness.” Then, to Henry: “It’s been real nice talking to you.”

  Henry turned, covering his mouth with his hand, studying her. At last he nodded. He said, “Good luck.” It was as if for him she was gone already.

  Callie stood at the door with Old Man Judkins, watching her climb up into her seat and start up the goats. She didn’t pay, she realized at last. The cart was halfway up the hill by now, the clank of the bells far away enough to be pleasant.

  Old Man Judkins said solemnly, tipping his head to one side, “It’s like a pilgrimage. A mother in search of her son.” He pulled at his ear.

  Callie said, “I better go see if Jimmy’s awake from his nap.”

  4

  That was the last Henry Soames ever saw of the Goat Lady, though it wasn’t by any means the last he heard. She was gone from the county the following day: some people said she’d moved on north; some said they’d seen her heading east, toward the resorts where the Jews were. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone completely; it was as if she’d been swallowed up by a mountain, like any other gnome. Lou Millet wondered if maybe she hadn’t run into foul play, and they speculated on that for a time; but after a week certain word came, by way of a letter George Loomis said he’d gotten from a relative, that she’d been given money by the Methodist Church in Remsen.

  For a week more people swapped stories about her when they came to the diner. But gradually the talk died out.

  Henry Soames was the first. He would go whole days without saying a word about the Goat Lady or anything else to anyone, even Callie. Often he wouldn’t bother to get up in the morning. Doc Cathey would find him propped up on six pillows, in his undershirt, his eyes shut behind the steel-rimmed glasses, and his hair,
what there was left of it, pasted to his scalp with sweat. If his mouth was closed and he wasn’t snoring, it was hard to tell at first glance if he was living or dead. On the spindly table between his bed and the glass-knobbed dresser he had a red plastic glass of water and his little white pills. Beside him on the bed he had Oreo cookies.

  “Are you trying to die?” Doc Cathey said. (Despite the weather he wore the black suit he always wore, his neck and head rising out of his collar like a brown, withered stalk.)

  “No,” Henry said. He was grumpy as a bear these days. It was pretty near worth your hide to ask him the time, Doc Cathey said. Henry said, “Something’s wrong, that’s all. I’m all right. Just leave me alone.”

  Doc said, staring fiercely down into the clutter of his medical bag, “My advice to you is, see a psychiatrist.” He’d said it twenty times before, after Callie’s mother had nagged him into believing that was the only hope, and once he’d shoved a pamphlet at Henry about mental illness; but mostly Doc kept off the subject for fear of starting an attack.

  “I know what’s wrong with me,” Henry said. “I just need to work it out.”

  Callie said another time, unnaturally sweet, putting her hand on Henry’s forehead, “Doc says it might be something chemical, Henry. He says there might be some pill you could take.”

  “No,” Henry said. He sat forward to say it, as if trying to drive it through Callie’s skull by physical force, and she looked at the curtains and drew her hand away.

  It wasn’t that he wanted to be contrary or that his sickness had made him a different man—irascible and spiteful—and certainly, despite their settled opinion, it wasn’t that he was afraid of hospitals, doctors, pills—or afraid, even, of whatever more severe treatments the pills might give way to. He didn’t like hospitals, true enough, but he would do more for the sake of his wife and son than any of them guessed. It was one of the few things he knew about himself for certain. He’d be willing to shoot himself for them if he had to. But this was something else. Neither was it that he didn’t believe what Doc Cathey said. It was probably true that something went wrong with your chemistry and if you took some pill you’d be able to work the thing out calmly, the problem still there but not white-hot in your mind: manageable. But true or not, he had to do it his own way. He couldn’t explain it because there was no explanation. About this, though, he was wrong. George Loomis could explain it.

  Henry was sitting in the chair he had out by the gas pumps islands for hot summer nights, and George was sitting down on the curb of the island, smoking cigarettes, as always, one after another. There were rainclouds in the sky and the leaves had their backs turned and the wind was coming from the south gently, but the thermometer stood at ninety-four and they knew there would be no rain. Callie was leaning on the ethyl pump watching the drab, quiet sunset, not seeming to listen to their talk. The dog lay across the doorway to the diner, asleep.

  Henry said:

  “I keep seeing it over and over, George. I see it clearer even than it was, slowed down, like a movie. I see that look on his face, and me moving toward him, shouting at him, and it seems to me I have a choice, whether to keep on shouting or not, and I choose, I keep shouting, and then all at once he falls.” The muscles in Henry’s face were all out of control, and again, as before, his arm was rising uncontrollably to hide his eyes and he was twisting away a little in his chair to block the vision that stood before him closing out the hard reality of highway, trees, blue mountains in the distance. But George Loomis was looking at the asphalt, not noticing his face.

  Henry said:

  “I hear his head crack, George. And then I see him lying there jerking like a chicken. Jimmy didn’t see it, I don’t think, but I saw it. I sit up in bed and try to think of something else, but right away it comes back, the whole thing over again. You double up against it and go through all the movements as if your whole body was thinking it, and you see that choice coming and you can’t change it, and then there’s that movement of his feet toward the stairs, no way to stop it under heaven, like the movement of a train.” He felt tense all over, as if for a long time now he’d been holding his breath. “It’s like drowning,” he said. “I feel as if anybody comes into the room it will be just too much, I feel like I need to be somewhere out in the middle of a field, in the dark.” He was quiet a moment, sweating big drops. Suddenly he said: “We’re riding in the car on a narrow road and it comes to me in a sort of daydream I could reach out and slam my head against the truck we’re meeting, or I could reach out my hand, and then all at once there it is again, Simon Bale and me at the top of the stairs, and I’m shouting at him, and my hands tighten up on the steering wheel—it’s like a wound in your soul.” Again the memory was upon him, and he clamped his eyes shut, concentrating on thinking nothing, but it was useless and he waited for the memory to be over. When he opened his eyes again George was looking at him, distant. Henry fumbled for the cheese crackers he’d brought with him, somewhere down under his chair.

  George Loomis said, “You need some kind of a pill.”

  “Hell!” It came out like the bellow of a bull. “I know I need a pill.”

  Still Callie pretended to be paying no attention, vaguely watching the sparrows on the highway, but she stiffened, making the others be still. Jimmy came around the corner of the diner on his tricycle, red-faced, vrooming the motor quietly. He glanced at them shyly, as if conscious of the dividing line between himself and them, then looked back at his handlebars. He came over toward the gas island and at the last moment veered away and headed back where he’d come from. Where the asphalt ended the dirt was cracked in small squares and as hard as cement.

  “But pills are beneath your dignity,” George said.

  “No,” Henry said, quietly this time, not expecting them to believe it, not asking even George Loomis to understand how he felt. Callie looked at the birds.

  But George said, “Yes, they are.” He was nodding to himself as if he not only saw how it was but partly agreed. “The trouble with taking a pill is, you might feel better. That would be the worst thing could happen. You wouldn’t be human any more.”

  “Crap!” Callie said fiercely.

  It was the first time Henry had ever heard her say it, and when he looked up, he saw that her lips were shaking.

  George reached over, not even looking up, and put his hand on her shoe. “No, wait,” he said. “It’s true. He says he made a choice, the choice to go on yelling, which makes him to blame for Simon Bale’s dying. But he knows that’s only word games. He didn’t know Simon would fall downstairs, and even if he did, it’s one time in a thousand you kill yourself that way. It was an accident, Henry was the accidental instrument, a pawn, a robot labeled Property of Chance. That’s intolerable, a man should be more than that; and that’s what Henry’s suffering from—not guilt. However painful it may be, in fact even if it kills him, horror’s the only dignity he’s got.”

  “That’s stupid,” Callie said vehemently. But Henry saw she’d understood.

  “Right,” George said. He looked at her, expressionless, and for a long moment they watched each other. Callie looked away first. She scowled at the woods across the road (the starlings were settling in the trees now) and she fiddled with her belt buckle, tightening it. She said:

  “Why do men think they have to have dignity?”

  “A word, an empty word,” George agreed.

  Henry said: “Why can’t we just be like the Goat Lady?” He laughed.

  He wasn’t prepared for the way it shocked George. Callie looked disgusted, but George Loomis blushed dark red. Henry looked down, away from George, at once. After a minute he said, “I didn’t know you even saw her, George.”

  “I didn’t,” George said. “I only heard about her.”

  Callie too saw that something was wrong. She said, “I’d better get Jimmy inside. It’ll be dark soon.” She left them quickly.

  Henry and George sat there by the island for another ten minutes, b
ut neither of them said a word. After-chores customers began to arrive. In the gray of dusk the figures of Henry and George grew less substantial, it seemed to Callie, watching from the diner. At last Henry pushed up out of his chair slowly and came in.

  5

  They came to the diner night after night when the chores were done, and sometimes they talked about the drought and the heat, sometimes they merely sat, quiet, preoccupied-looking, like men listening for something in the back of their minds: some voice out of dried-up hills, a sound of water moving down under the ground. Sometimes they played cards; other times they did nothing at all. Ben Worthington, Jr., would stand by the counter drinking his beer and studying the punchboard for hours at a time, as if the whole secret of the universe lay under one of those dots. Once as Callie was passing him with a tray he caught her arm and said, as if continuing an old conversation, “There’s got to be a way to figure it.” He pointed at the punchboard with the top of his bottle. “There’s a way to figure everything.”

  Callie pulled away. “You tell me when you figure it out,” she said.

  Old Man Judkins said, “All the same, I can tell you where the clock is.”

  “The hell,” Ben Worthington, Jr., said.

  Old Man Judkins tipped his head back, so he could look through his glasses, and pointed at one of the dots without a moment’s hesitation. It was as if he could see through the paper.