Nickel Mountain

by John Gardner

  “I ought to come see you sooner,” Old Man Judkins said. “Folks get out of touch.”

  “My fault as much as yours,” George said.

  Not speculating, on principle, raising no questions, making no suggestions, Old Man Judkins watched the picture on the television, wondered vaguely what was happening, and finished his glass of milk. Out of a clean, cool waterfall came a pack of cigarettes. At last he stood up. “Long time, George,” he said.

  “Too long,” George said. He stretched out his hand and the old man took it.

  Then Fred Judkins went home.

  In his room, sitting down in front of his turned-off coal-oil heater, the window-fan roaring, Old Man Judkins got out his pipe, cleaned it, stoked it. He knew that from time to time he would wonder again why the Goat Lady’s cart was up in George’s shed; he knew that despite his principles he’d be molested from time to time by doubts. Maybe the answer would come up some time in a conversation, or maybe someone else would stumble onto it, some loudmouth gossip or righteous fool from town, and he would find out. But probably not. No matter.

  After a time he said, pointing his pipe at the reflection of himself looking in, dubious, through the nearer window, “Maybe there’s such a thing as a heaven and hell. If there is, a man has a right to go where he’s contracted for. I wouldn’t mind going to hell if I thought I’d earned it. Better than getting a last-minute pardon, as if everything you did was no account, any more than a joke.”

  He glanced over his shoulder as if thinking he might have been overheard. The room was empty. “There is no heaven or hell,” he said. “That’s a scientific fact, and there’s the end of it.”

  He set his teeth down firmly on the pipe stem.

  7

  He lay in bed on his back in the muggy night heat, his hand under his head, smoking without ever touching the cigarette except to change it for a new one, the radio on the commode playing the American Airlines all-night concert, far away and tinny, interrupted once every hour for news, the same news over and over, the same voice: Albany. Tonight eight counties have been officially declared disaster areas. In his press conference this evening, Governor Harriman said—

  There were flies in the room, the screens all shot. Beside the radio, a stack of paperback books, the loaded ash tray.

  George Loomis lay perfectly still, as if tranquil. He was clean-shaven and combed, and the sheet was drawn over his bad foot, the good foot lying in the open, as though in this isolated mountain house he expected some visitor. But his mind was in a turmoil, struggling against thought.

  “There are no disasters,” his grandfather had said, “God moves in strange ways.” But his mother was dying, so he’d gotten home from Korea on leave, shocked to find himself moved by her dying. He’d been young then, a romantic. Her face was sunken, and she drooled now, an effect of the stroke, and her ugliness made him see that she had been beautiful once and that he’d loved her. When she died his father said, “What shall we do?” and he had said nothing. Bury the dead. When she was embalmed, though, her face filled out and she wasn’t as bad as she’d been before, almost beautiful in the casket with its ridiculous window for the worms to look through. In carne corruptible incorruptionem He had not wept or wanted to, even at the graveside, but afterward he had gotten drunk, or rather sick, and had stood on a table at the Silver Slipper intoning Ovid:

  Exitus auspicio gravior: nam nupta per herbas. …

  For in those days there was still poetry. Still music, too. You would listen all night to the music your friendly American Airlines brought to you for your listening pleasure, and you would be pleased. Yet it was sound, even now; more comforting than silence. God bless you, friendly American Airlines. Into your hands I commend myself.

  Then the memory flushed through him again, his headlights dipping over the crest of the hill as they’d done without harm ten thousand times, the incredible circus cart there in his road, straddling the crown, and again in his mind he hit the brakes with all his might and yanked at the wheel and heard the noise resounding like thunder through the glens. When that memory was over he saw Fred Judkins at his door again, nodding, sucking on the pipe, and after a minute the old man took off his hat. (But too late now to tell anyone, and no doubt too late from the beginning. An accident, one in an infinite chain.)

  The American Airlines had chosen Scheherazade for him. He tried to listen, or rather he pretended to try to listen, consciously playing an empty role … no emptier, he thought, than others.

  He ground out the last of his cigarettes and snapped out the light. In the darkness the music, like the heat, drew nearer, coming from all parts of the room at once. He rolled over on his stomach, the side of his head on his hand now, and closed his eyes. There had been birds circling above the back ravine. He’d been alarmed, seeing them, wondering who else might be seeing. Before that he’d been alarmed by the knock of the Watkins Man. But all this would pass.

  (At the Dairy Queen in Slater there had been two young girls, strangers to him. One of them had smiled. She had long hair—both of them had long hair, one blonde, one dark, and they wore no lipstick. They were pretty, poised between child and woman, so pretty his heartbeat had quickened a little, and he’d imagined how they would look in those pictures you could buy in Japan, coarse rope cutting their wrists and breasts and thighs. The instant he thought it, his stomach went sour. They were young, pure: beautiful with innocence, yet corruptible. The one who smiled invited it. She was hungry for it. Serpentis dente.)

  He twisted onto his back suddenly and sat up, soaking in sweat. “Please us,” he whispered. He could feel the memory of the accident coming over him, and he got up to look for a smokable butt in an ash tray, and some bourbon.

  8

  They’d all heard somehow (this was three nights later) of Nick Blue’s prediction. There was no more sign of rain now than there’d been all day: The clouds were piled up like tumbling mountains, blocking out the stars, but the dry breeze still blew, light. If the crickets were still it meant only that all signs fail. They talked though about how Nick Blue had a kind of sense (Nick Blue wasn’t there), and about how he’d known three weeks beforehand when the blizzard was coming, the year before last. If he’d said the rain would come tonight, then it was coming. Eight-thirty passed, and then nine-thirty, and the talk went on, more tense now—sharp against the dull moan of the fans—as though they were talking to keep themselves from noticing. Around ten-thirty George Loomis came in, and as he came over to the counter, the brace clumping on the wooden floor, the empty sleeve hanging free, they said, “Well, what you think, George?” “I didn’t throw on no raincoat,” he said. “That ought to bring it,” Jim Millet said. George said, “I’ll tell you one thing for certain: if it comes it’ll hit every farm in this country but mine.” They laughed—howled like wolves—though each of them had said the same thing in one way or another, taking pride in his singular bad luck—and they went back to their talk of Nick Blue and the blizzard two years ago and then to the time when it didn’t rain till the middle of September, in 1937. The talk got louder and at eleven-thirty the breeze was still blowing. Then Lou Millet said, “Henry, you old devil.”

  Callie looked up. He was standing in the doorway, filling it, able to pass through it all, it seemed, only by a trick of her vision. Jimmy came out from behind his father’s right leg and around the counter, and she picked him up and put him on the stool by the cash register. “What are you doing up this time of night?” she said. But she kissed his cheek, holding his head to keep from pulling away.

  “Daddy let me,” he said.

  “Henry, you ought to be ashamed,” she said. But she dropped it. He was looking out into the darkness, and she knew why he was here. Nick Blue had been wrong, and they’d all believed him, and when the disappointment, embarrassment came, Henry wanted to be here. Because they’re neighbors, she thought. All at once she knew how it was going to be when they realized what fools they’d been. She understood for the first time
(but wordlessly) Henry’s rage: It was not a little thing they’d come here expecting, and not something unduly fine, either (“No chance any more of winning,” Old Man Judkins had said. “They just try and survive”). That much, surely, they had a right to expect. And so they’d come here with high spirits, expecting not salvation but merely rain to recover the corn and a little of the hay; but they were going to see they’d made fools of themselves, that any dignity they thought they had was a word, empty air, and to act on the assumption that they had any rights in this world whatever, even the rights of a spider, to survive, was to turn themselves into circus clowns, creatures stuffed with old rags and straw who absurdly struggled to behave like human beings and who, whether or not they succeeded, were ridiculous. All this Callie knew, not in words but in the lines of Henry’s face, and she wanted to leave so she wouldn’t have to watch it when it happened.

  It was quarter-to-twelve. Emery Jones’ hired man lit up, his buck-teeth gleaming, and he said: “Nick said it would come today. That means it’s going to be here in fifteen minutes.” He seemed to have no inkling of what a crazy thing it was to say. But they did. Old Man Judkins looked at his empty cup as though he’d just noticed a bug in it, and Jim Millet put his hat on and stood up. Ben Worthington, Jr., laid down the punchkey he was playing with and calmly, thoughtfully, pushed his fist through the board, then drew out his wallet. It was bulging with the money he’d gotten for his wheat and would be needing all this winter. “I’d like to buy that clock,” he said.

  “Ben, that’s crazy,” Callie said. “Forget it. We’ll tell them it was an accident. Please.”

  But he shook his head. He threw the coat he had no need for over his shoulder and went to the register. Callie stood helpless a minute, then pulled the square, green check-pad from her belt and leaned on the counter to figure how much it came to, and then Henry was standing at her elbow. “Let it go, Callie,” he said. Then, with a grim laugh, “It’s on the house, Ben.”

  Ben glared as though it wasn’t August he hated after all, but Henry Soames, as if Henry had denied him the vote.

  Henry was saying, “The same for all of you. Tonight it’s all on me.”

  “Some other time, Henry,” Lou Millet said.

  But Henry was possessed, dangerous. “I mean it,” he said. “Tonight we’re not taking a dime.” He hit his chest three times with his thumb, his face incredibly serious; none of them laughed. “I mean it,” he said again. “Today’s my birthday.” He yelled it as though he were angry. “Truth. Callie, give everybody cake.”

  “Hear, O Israel,” George Loomis said, “today is the day he takes upon himself. …” But Henry’s face was dark red, and George shut up.

  “We’re going to sing ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Henry’,” Henry roared, not smiling at all, forgetting to smile, his fat fists clenched, and Callie was saying in a whisper that cut through Henry’s roar, “Henry, stop it!”

  “All together,” he yelled, putting a cookie in his mouth, raising his arms.

  And all at once, probably out of pure shock at first, they were doing it, cold sober as they were. And then a vast and meaningless grief replaced the shock. Tears streamed down Lou Millet’s face, and he was choked up so badly he couldn’t bring out more than every fourth word. In the beginning there were only three voices—Henry’s, Old Man Judkins’, Jim Millet’s—then more: Emery Jones’ hired man singing tenor, almost soprano but in harmony; Ben Worthington, Jr., whining out baritone, sweat running down his throat; even George Loomis more or less singing, with a pained expression, droning like the bad note on a banjo. Lou Millet stood up. They were singing it through again, but it seemed to have come to him that he had to get home, it was foolishness sitting here half the night, his wife at home alone with the kids. He left, hurrying, and after a minute Ben Worthington, Jr., picked up his wallet and followed him out. Old Man Judkins stood up after that, and then Jesse Behmer. Henry stood in the middle of the floor like a giant, slowly bobbing up and down waving his arms. His forehead shone and the belly of his shirt was pasted to his skin.

  Behind him, his face as solemn as his father’s—but solemn without weight, like a serious toy—Jimmy bobbed up and down too, quickly and lightly, waving his arms.

  When midnight came, only George Loomis was still there. Henry sat down, panting, sucking air in and out through his mouth. Callie brought him a pill. “Well!” he said. He tried to laugh, but he couldn’t get his breath.

  For a long time after that nobody spoke. Finally George Loomis said solemnly, “Whooey.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Henry said.

  George Loomis looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

  Then George said: “But I’ll tell you something. I’m beginning to believe in the Goat Lady.” He said it lightly, but a hint of uneasiness came over him as soon as it was out.

  “You saw her, didn’t you,” Callie said at once, knowing the direct accusation would shock him but suddenly not caring.

  George went white.

  “What happened?” Callie said.

  They sat like people precariously balanced over a chasm, and everything depended on what George decided. Henry sat blankly, pulling at the fat below his chin, not eating the cookie he held in his left hand. George Loomis stared at his cigarette. He could tell them and be free (she saw what he was thinking) but then he would never be free again, because then there would be somebody who knew his guilt, shame, embarrassment, whatever it was. Except that maybe that was what it was to be free: to abandon all shame, all dignity, real or imagined. She remembered the funeral for George’s mother, how they’d lowered the coffin carefully as if to preserve even in death her decorous, more than bodily virginity, and how they’d put the dirt in gently to avoid cracking the window through which the blind earth stared at her face.

  At last George said, “No. I never saw her.” He stood up.

  Henry looked at him, pitying him, George Loomis no more free than a river or a wind, and, as if unaware that he was doing it, Henry broke the cookie in his hand and let the pieces fall. She realized with a start that it was final: George had saved them after all. She felt herself going weightless, as though she were fainting. And something said in her mind, as though someone stood behind her, whispering hurriedly in her ear: Nevertheless, all shall be saved. She thought: What? And again: All. Everything. Even the sticks and stones. Nothing is lost. She thought: How? Why should sticks and stones be saved? But the waking dream was passing quickly, a thing so fragile that she would not even remember tomorrow that she’d had it. The room was suddenly filled with ghosts, not only Simon, but Henry’s father, huge as a mountain and gentle as a flower, and Callie’s great-great-grandfather, with his arm suspenders, an almanac closed over one finger, and Old Man Kuzitski, drunk as a lord, and Mrs. Stamp, irascible and pretty, with a blue-black umbrella, and arthritic, bushy-browed old Uncle John, and there were more, a hundred more she didn’t know, solemn and full of triumphant joy; and the space in front of the diner was filled, from the door to the highway to the edge of the woods, and the woods were full, an enormous multitude solemn and triumphant, and she saw in the great crowd the pink and purple (transformed, magnificent, regally solemn) of the Goat Lady’s cart. They vanished. Henry stood out by the gas pumps now, gray-looking and old in the pinkish glow of the neon. She saw the lights of George Loomis’s truck go on and watched him back down toward the road, then pull forward, turning. She watched his taillights move up the hill and, dipping over the top, snap out. Henry came back.

  “What did happen?” she asked in the amazing stillness.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Do you think the Goat Lady—?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jimmy lay asleep below the cash register, like something (a bag of potatoes) turned in as a trade. Henry lifted him gently, without waking him, while Callie locked the door and turned out the lights.

  Sometime during the night, while they all slept, missing it, or missing
anyway the spectacular beginning that they’d surely earned the right to see (but the dog saw it, rising slowly to his feet and tilting his gray, giant head), thunder cracked, shaking the mountains, and it rained.

  VII

  THE MEETING

  1

  It wasn’t until he was already aboard and looking around him in the twilight of the coach that Willard Freund realized he’d forgotten to wire ahead to tell them which train he’d be on. The ticket had taken almost all the money he’d had, all but two dollars. If he had to spend the night in Utica it would have to be on one of the wooden benches at the station. But there was nothing he could do about it now. He took a seat near the rear of the half-empty car and settled himself for the trip. A red-headed old Welshman in a thin, threadbare coat with the collar turned up watched him with dim, angry eyes from across the aisle. One of the two middle-aged women talking about the blizzard and the lateness of the train, a few seats ahead of him, craned her neck around the side, like a chicken, to look at him. He pretended to stare through her.