Of course, on this occasion it would have been a lot cozier to drowse on the couch if her husband, Duane, had been asleep in the bedroom, where he usually was when she turned on the Weather Channel. Of course, he was only six miles away: he wasn’t experiencing terrible weather in Missouri or California, but he wasn’t where he belonged, either. Where he belonged was in their bed.
Despite two healthy slugs of tequila, Karla didn’t feel relaxed enough to drowse, didn’t feel interested in flipping through catalogues, and, for once, didn’t feel soothed by the sight of a storm front moving in on Detroit. Despite the tequila, the weather, and her daughter’s safe return, Karla could not seem to settle down in her mind—and she couldn’t understand why. Duane had always needed to be by himself from time to time; there was really nothing new about that. The thought occurred to her that it might be no more than that. Their house, admittedly, was a noisy place—it would be perfectly normal for a man to want to be someplace where it was quiet for a day or two. Earlier in their marriage Duane had spent a good deal of his time in a boat fishing, for the same reason. Sitting in a cabin on a hill and sitting in a boat fishing were not such radically different things; Karla could not get a clear fix on why the former bothered her while the latter didn’t.
All she knew was that the two things felt totally different. Lots of men fished, some of them probably for no better reason than that it gave them an opportunity to escape their domestic lives, or whatever. That was perfectly normal—she herself had taken many a soothing shopping trip to Dallas for essentially the same reasons. Getting away from it all was a motive she certainly understood—it was Duane’s decision to walk away from it all that threw the whole picture out of kilter and caused her to feel that she was dealing with a whole new phenomenon. Very few men of her acquaintance had ever walked six miles for any reason whatever, and very few would choose to sit by themselves in a bare little cabin that didn’t offer much in the way of creature comforts—not when they could have been staying in what was, by common consent, the most comfortable house in Thalia.
In her gut, Karla knew something had changed. This wasn’t a mood she was dealing with: this was something more fundamental. Why it had struck just when it had, she had no idea. But there it was, like a pregnancy: something new had started growing and she had no choice but to deal with it.
A little before dawn she threw on a robe, took her car keys off a peg by the door, and whipped her BMW out of the driveway. In a minute she was on the dark road that led to Duane’s cabin. In five minutes she was parked on a hill with a view of the cabin, her lights off, her motor idling. In case Duane’s craziness took the form of walking around before it was light, she didn’t want him to see her. If he thought she was snooping he would be twice as difficult. There were a lot of things Duane liked about her—forty years of marriage had convinced her of that—but one thing he definitely didn’t like was her determined snooping. Karla wanted to know everything that was going on, always had, always would. If Duane wanted to keep something from her he had to be pretty sly to do it—and he knew this. Over the four decades they had been together each had honed their skills—snooping and antisnooping—to a fine degree. Karla’s ambition was to snoop so skillfully that she left no track—several times she supposed she had done just that, only to have Duane, through the exercise of some sixth sense, find her out. It was a game they both continued to play. Several times Karla had promised him she would never snoop again, only to break her promise immediately. Duane expected her to snoop, which didn’t mean he wanted her to. Their cat-and-mouse games had always been serious and still were.
“Duane, I have to snoop,” Karla told him many times. “It’s a matter of survival. If I didn’t snoop and find out things you try to hide from me I wouldn’t know anything about you at all, and what kind of marriage would that be, where the wife don’t know nothing about the husband?”
“Better than what we’ve got, from my point of view,” Duane said. “Why can’t you just give privacy a chance?”
“I just can’t,” Karla admitted.
This morning, particularly, she didn’t want Duane to find out that she had been snooping around the road that led to his cabin. She cut her lights before she even rounded the last bend in the road, so as not to flash even the most distant light on the hill where her husband was sleeping. Fortunately the BMW was a quiet-running car—a kind of stealth car compared to the rattly pickups that made up most of the traffic along that route. The road was a faint white track ahead of her; she purred along it slowly and stopped at a point where she was fairly sure she could see the light in Duane’s cabin when it came on; there she paused. Duane had good hearing. If she turned the motor off he might hear it when she turned it back on to leave, so she left it running. She got out of the car and listened—even from twenty yards away she could barely hear the motor running, and the cabin was several hundred yards away, up across the hill. There was no likelihood that Duane was going to detect her snooping this time, not unless he did it by ESP.
Karla got back in the car, rolled one of the windows down, and sat and waited. She felt a little silly and even a little guilty. Why couldn’t she just let her husband have a little time to himself? Living with her and most of the kids and all the grandkids could have just been a little bit more than he bargained for. Snooping on him in the middle of the night smacked of paranoia, or whatever. It was pretty unlikely that he had a girlfriend tucked away in the little cabin, which had no TV and only a single bed with an old sleeping bag for a comforter. Of course some women would put up with less than that in order to have an affair with Duane, but Karla felt pretty sure that he was past the girlfriend stage—perhaps a little too far past it. A man who had reached the point in his life where he would rather walk than have sex was a man who needed counseling, Karla felt, even if the propaganda in her health magazines about eighty-five-year-olds screwing constantly wasn’t strictly a true thing.
Then, just as Karla resigned herself to a long wait, a miracle happened. The light came on in Duane’s cabin—it was just a tiny yellow spot in the darkness but the sight of it brought an immediate relief—deep relief. Duane was right there in the cabin, where Bobby Lee said he was; all the walking wasn’t simply a complicated dodge to throw her off the track of a love affair or something. Duane was in his cabin—he was probably about to make himself some coffee. Bobby Lee had assured her that there seemed to be plenty of coffee.
Once she saw the light and knew her husband was all right, Karla immediately turned the BMW around in the narrow road. She had to back and turn, back and turn, two or three times before she got headed back toward town. She crept back along the same dark road, careful not to turn her lights on until she had rounded the first bend.
As she turned into Thalia she saw the lights of the Dairy Queen wink on: it was 6 A.M. She hesitated a moment, torn between the mood for company and the desire to catch a few more winks of sleep before Little Bascom and Baby Paul woke up and began to demand attention.
The desire for company won—she could always lock herself in the big bedroom and let the kids pound on the door and scream until they gave up and crawled away. After all, Rag could tend to them, not to mention their mothers.
By the time she drove the half mile to the Dairy Queen there were already six pickups parked in front of it. A cluster of oilmen, wanting to postpone their day’s work as long as possible, sat at the long table in the rear of the room. Karla rarely hit the Dairy Queen that early—when she swept in, in her bathrobe, several of the oilmen looked at her askance.
“What’s the matter, J.T., never seen a woman in a bathrobe?” she asked one who was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
J.T., disturbed enough at the mere sight of Karla, was more disturbed at being asked a direct question.
“Scared I’ll bite, or what?” Karla inquired.
“I’m divorced, remember?” J.T. reminded her. “I have seen a woman in a bathrobe, but not in a while.”
“I ain’
t either seen one and it’s not a pleasant sight,” Dan Connor informed her. Dan fancied himself the leader of whatever pack he was with—he had always had a smart lip.
“You could have combed your hair,” he added.
“Well, I would have if I had known you were going to be here, Dan,” Karla said. “Mind if I sit down?”
The request took the six men aback. Though most of them had known Karla for much of their lives the thought of having her right there in their midst was more than they were prepared to deal with at such an early hour.
“Ha, ha, just kidding,” Karla said. “I didn’t mean to paralyze you.”
“You talk too fast, that’s the only thing,” J.T. said. He liked Karla, but had not been prepared for her early arrival. Now he faced the problem of how to strike a balance between being friendly and being too friendly.
“We might want to talk about men stuff; you might be embarrassed,” Dan Connor informed her.
“I haven’t been embarrassed in ten years,” Karla said. “Maybe it would be a thrill.”
She took her coffee and walked over to a booth by the window, as far as she could get from the men. She hadn’t really wanted to sit down with them—she had just invited herself in order to see them flinch.
Outside there was a screech of air brakes. Two eighteen-wheelers had just pulled off the highway. Soon three cowboys, wearing chaps and spurs, came crowding in behind the two truckers, both of whom were broad in the beam. The cowboys had several horses in one of the long horse trailers that had become popular in the last few years. It was cold out—Karla could see the horses’ breath condensing in great puffs of steam over the long horse trailer. It was a gray day. When Nellie woke up she would be despondent, not only because she was in a place where there was no beach but because she was in a place where there was no hint of sun.
Before she finished her coffee all the oilmen got up and trailed out. A couple of them smiled at her and nodded as they left.
“Bye, boys,” she said, watching as, one by one, they got in their muddy pickups and drove away.
17
WHEN DUANE FIRST STEPPED out of the cabin to stretch and assess the weather he saw a spot of red back down the road. Then he saw it again, twice more. It looked like a brake light: somebody was turning a car around on the road west of his hill. His first thought was that it might be a deer poacher. But if someone had shot a deer he would have heard the shot, and Shorty would have barked.
His second, more accurate thought was that it was his wife, unable to resist the temptation to snoop yet again. Probably she had been sitting in the road for an hour, determined to find out if he was really in the cabin. In a way it was annoying, and, in another way, kind of touching. Even though Bobby Lee had probably given her a full report, it wasn’t good enough for Karla. She had to see something with her own eyes before she would believe it.
Later in the morning, once he had walked into town to pick up the file and a few groceries, he couldn’t resist mentioning it to Karla, who was working in the little greenhouse they had built behind the garage, the main point of which was to grow winter tomatoes.
“I saw you on the road this morning—couldn’t resist checking on me, could you?” he said.
It was a wild shot—after all, it could have been a deer poacher with a silencer whose taillights he had seen.
Karla was amused and even a little relieved that Duane brought it up. If he still objected to her snooping, then that was something, at least.
“How’d you know it was me?” she asked. “I was in my stealth car.”
“Because your stealth car has brake lights,” he said. “I saw you when you turned around in the road.”
“If that road had been wider, so I wouldn’t have had to back up to get turned, you would never have known I was there, would you?” she asked.
“Nope,” Duane said. “How’s everything?”
“Why would you need to know? You left,” Karla said. “Dan Connor insulted me in the Dairy Queen. Next time you run into him I hope you’ll knock him on his fat ass.”
“I doubt he meant to insult you,” Duane said. “He’s just awkward with women.”
“Okay, don’t knock him on his fat butt if you don’t believe me,” she said. Paradoxically, after spending most of the night wishing Duane would show up, she found that she was a little annoyed now that he had. Working with her tomato plants put her in a good mood. The fact that her husband had left her had ceased to seem like such a big deal. But now, there he stood, looking annoyingly healthy and fit. It was just like a man—now that she was getting used to the fact that he was gone, there he was again, not gone, expecting her to get used to the fact that he was back.
“What brings you to town, Mr. Hermit?” she asked.
“I needed to get my file—the axe is dull,” Duane said. “I wouldn’t mind a few tomatoes, either, if you’ve got some that are ripe.”
Karla handed him a tomato that was no larger than a pecan.
“These tomatoes ain’t even as big as nuts,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong. It was a sunny winter too.”
Duane wished he had just dug the file out of his toolbox and left. He had actually been glad to see Karla—for almost his entire life he had been glad to see Karla. He liked her energy, always had. But now, after only a minute’s conversation, it seemed as if the tentacles of habit were snaking out toward him like a vine. Here they were talking about the fact that their winter tomatoes were stunted. It was a subject that came up year after year.
Karla seemed to feel the same way. She had stopped poking amid the vines and just sat, hugging her knees and looking at him.
“What’s the deal? Just tell me,” she said. “Are we over, or what?”
Duane had been about to leave, but he stayed where he was for a minute. His wife had just asked him a serious question—he felt he ought to make her some kind of answer.
“That’s way too big a question—I just came to pick up my file,” he said. “I want to stay in the cabin for a while. I’d just as soon pass on the big questions until I’ve done some walking, if you don’t mind.”
“I wish I knew what it was about, this walking,” Karla said. “That’s the most worrisome part.”
“It’s just so interesting,” Duane said. “When you ride in a pickup you don’t really see anything but the pickup—and I’ve done that nearly all my life.”
“I know you’re trying to make it clearer, but you’re not making it clearer,” Karla said. “You must be real depressed. What if you tried acupuncture? That’s a remedy that’s thousands of years old.”
“Try it for what?” Duane asked.
“Or you could just try plain old counseling,” she said. “Right now you’re in denial.”
“Oh, bullshit, I’m not either,” he said mildly. “I’ll see you in a day or two. I’m going back to the cabin.”
“At least go in and kiss Nellie—she got back last night and she’ll be real upset if you go off without kissing her.”
Duane felt the tentacles of the vine snaking toward him again.
“What time did she get home?” he asked.
“It was late—she broke up with Tommy and had to take a taxi all this way,” Karla admitted.
She walked into the garage with him and waited until he got his file, a pair of pliers, and a small set of wrenches out of his toolbox.
Shorty, the blue heeler, was waiting patiently by the back steps. His intent was to go right in the house and herd Little Bascom—all he needed was for someone to open the door. When he saw Karla he hunkered down. Karla was the harshest critic of his efforts to keep Little Bascom in the playroom, where all the toys were. She had administered several harsh scoldings and had been the one to pitch him in the car and haul him off to the camp of Juan, Jesus, and Rafael.
“What’s that dog doing here?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken up with that dog again.”
“He’s just sitting there, honey,” Duane said. “H
e came to the cabin and I let him stay. What I like about Shorty is that he don’t make any demands.”
“Oh great, so now I’m too demanding,” Karla said.
“Not particularly, but any human being is more demanding than Shorty,” Duane said. “It’s snaky on that hill. When it gets warm he can find the snakes before I step on them.”
At that Karla looked sad. She shook her head a few times, as if in bewilderment.
“The snakes won’t be out for a couple of months, Duane,” she said.
“Well, or six weeks, if it warms up quick,” he said, realizing his mistake.
“Six weeks, two months, I don’t care,” Karla said. “It just sounds to me like you mean to make that cabin your permanent home. Is that correct?”
“I can’t say,” Duane replied. “I don’t have any timetables. Timetables is another thing I’m tired of, like pickups and the oil business and a few other things.”
“Would family life be one of the few other things?” Karla asked. “This is beginning to sound serious.”
“It doesn’t feel that serious,” he said. “It just feels like something I need to do.”
Karla shook her head again.
“You may not even know how serious it is,” she said. “You may be right in the midst of a complete nervous breakdown—only you’re so quiet about everything that it just doesn’t show.
“You’ve always been able to fool most people, Duane,” she went on. “Everybody thinks you’re the most normal man in town, but you aren’t.”
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