Rag sided with Bubbles in these disputes. Karla’s death upset her so that she developed a kind of talking hysteria. Although she had not been to church, except for funerals, in more than forty years, she began to read the Bible and attempted to reacquaint herself with Christian doctrine, in which she could find no mention of the souls of good women going into birds. At one point in her life her favorite song had been “The Great Speckle Bird,” but she searched in vain in the Bible itself for any mention of a great speckle bird. When the talking hysteria hit Rag she would just casually mention something she had remembered about Karla and then, unable to dam up her words, would begin to recapitulate events of her own life—her memories would pour out for hours.
When the talking hysteria took hold of Rag everyone except the two babies left the house. The school-age children poured out of the house and ran to school, often beating the tardy bell by several minutes. Rag would talk on and on for hours, often in competition with whatever happened to be on the Cartoon Channel at the time. Little Bascom and Baby Paul watched the Cartoon Channel most of the day. Since they were too young for play school no one could figure what else to do with them. Baby Paul rolled around on the floor for hours at a stretch, gumming rubber toys. Little Bascom’s favorite pursuit, other than watching cartoons, was to sneak out into the garage and pull the stuffing out of an old couch that had once been in Dickie’s room. The stuffing stuck to his clothes. Sometimes he would come back in the house looking as if he had been dipped in cotton candy.
Though Karla’s absence was felt keenly by everyone every day, somehow the household veered just short of collapse. Meals got cooked and eaten, dirty clothes eventually got washed, minor injuries got treated, and small resentments soothed.
“It makes me sad—she died away! Who’ll see me get married?” Bubbles said one morning, before bursting into tears.
Duane took the child in his lap and held her until she felt better.
“You’re right, honey,” he said. “Grandma died away too soon.”
“So did Jesus,” Willy pointed out. “He was only thirty-something.
“Get it? Thirty-something,” he said, and laughed at his own joke.
“Life goes on,” Rag said, as a familiar cloud of despondency descended over the household.
“If you say life goes on one more time I’ll strangle you,” Duane told her. “It does, but who cares?”
All the children were shocked. Their grandfather had sounded like he meant it, when he said he would strangle Rag. What if he did strangle her?
“Would that be murder, or just manslaughter?” Barbi asked. She was always interested in the technicalities.
“That would just be Rag-slaughter,” Duane said. He smiled, to show that he hadn’t meant it, though, for a moment, he had meant it.
“It was just an old saying,” Rag said, and burst into tears. In a way, Karla had been her best friend; everything was different, now that she was gone. She was just stuck there with the two babies all day. There was no one she could talk to about hairstyles, or the messy lives of movie stars, or the many catastrophes that would befall mankind once the ozone layer was finally destroyed and the rain forests cut down.
“I don’t know what will become of me,” Rag sobbed. Duane and all the children had to hug her and give her many pats of reassurance before she quieted down.
3
EVEN THOUGH HE WAS STAYING AT HOME and wishing he could be living in his cabin, Duane continued to rent the honeymoon suite at the Stingaree Courts, on the Seymour highway west of Wichita Falls. Sometimes, even after the heat came, he would bicycle over to the Stingaree Courts, pay his bill in cash, and lay in his room for a few hours, listening to the whirr of the air conditioner while watching a slow baseball game on TV. Shorty would usually be laying just outside Gay-lee’s door when Duane arrived. He would hurry over and yip at Duane a few times, to show Duane that he recognized him, but his response was not really passionate—when Duane left, a few hours later, Shorty rarely did more than lift an ear.
Usually Duane would knock on Gay-lee’s door, hoping to chat with her a few minutes. If it was late in the day she would usually be blow-drying her hair. Without makeup she looked like a teenager.
Gay-lee always seemed glad to see him, but she was a little formal with him, perhaps unsure whether to address the fact of his grief.
Sis, the maid, was more forthright.
“I done had two husbands killed off—I know how you feel,” Sis said, when Duane told her he had lost his wife. “Why do you keep coming back here, Duane? Ain’t you got no place better than this to live?”
“I guess I just got used to being at this motel,” Duane said.
Marcie Meeks asked him the same question and he gave the same reply.
“You’re an odd one,” Marcie Meeks said. “Got a big house over there in Thalia that you could live in and you’re still spending forty-eight dollars a night on our honeymoon suite.”
Marcie Meeks didn’t mince words.
“Everything doesn’t have to make sense,” Duane told her.
Marcie disagreed with that sentiment too.
“Maybe not if it’s happening to you,” she said. “But if it’s happening to me it needs to make more sense than that. Forty-eight dollars a night adds up quick, even if you are a plutocrat.
“A plutocrat. You know, like Daddy Warbucks in Little Orphan Annie,” Marcie Meeks said. “There was a comic strip of it when I was a kid.”
Duane knew that his desire to keep a room at the Stingaree Courts would seem odd to almost everyone, but having that room was part of an effort that was still important to him. Karla was dead and adjustment to that fact would have to be made, but the tragedy had not changed the fact that he wanted a different life. Perhaps he would fail and have to go back to the old life—but he was not going to do that unless he absolutely had to. He still refused to ride in motorized vehicles, he still spent time alone in his cabin, and he still drew reassurance from the knowledge that he had a room all his own at the Stingaree Courts.
Bicycling around the county—or walking, as he sometimes still did—Duane had Karla almost constantly in his mind. It troubled him that the last few months of her life had not been a very happy time for her, but of course there was no changing that now. At first what he felt most acutely was the fact that there could be no more conversation. Often, in the long spaces of their marriage, he and Karla had stopped talking to one another for long periods of time, though there would be no obvious reason for the stoppage. Sometimes they would just find themselves with nothing to say to each other.
But always, sooner or later, they would casually pick up the thread again and resume their conversation—then, for a year or more, they might be in conversation with one another several times a day, before losing interest again. Duane supposed that was just how a long marriage worked. There were lapses and interruptions of various kinds, but sooner or later the engagement kicked in again.
Now it couldn’t. Never again would he hear Karla say “Duane” in a way that meant she had something on her mind. And yet he kept expecting it, and would sometimes dream that he and Karla were talking. Waking from those dreams made him particularly sad.
The person who helped him most, in the first hot months after Karla’s death, was Ruth Popper. Ruth was almost completely blind now, but she was so familiar with her small house, from having lived in it most of her long life, that she was still able to get around and do for herself. She subscribed to the large-print editions of Time and Newsweek and peered at them through her large magnifying glass.
“I’m pissed off that Dickie fired me,” she informed Duane bluntly, a day or two after Karla’s funeral. “You know why?”
“No, why?” Duane asked.
“Because I miss the gossip,” Ruth said.
“I’d think you’d be tired of gossip,” Duane said. “I know I am.”
“Now you, you’re brokenhearted because your wife’s dead,” Ruth said. “But you’re ju
st going to have to get over it, Duane. You had a nice marriage, and everything ends.”
No one had ever put it quite that way: that he had had a nice marriage, which was certainly true.
“Now look at me,” Ruth went on. “I had ten or twelve boyfriends when I was of courting age, and some of them grew up to be nice men. But I married the worst asshole in the lot. I chose badly and I paid for it in spades. I didn’t have a nice marriage like you had. So who’s the lucky person?
“Most everybody around here gets killed on the roads, sooner or later,” she went on, without giving him time to reply. “I’m lucky I’m past the driving age. I might live another ten years, if I can just stay off the roads.”
After that conversation Duane fell into the habit of dropping by Ruth’s every day or two, to chat a few minutes and fill her in on whatever gossip he might have picked up. She had a fine sycamore tree in her backyard and liked to sit in its shade, fanning herself, on the long hot evenings when afterglow still lit the sky until nine o’clock or later.
“I’ve been living in this town for nearly ninety years,” she said, one day. “You wouldn’t think a person with brains would get stuck in a hot little hole like this for ninety years, but I did.”
Usually Duane would manage to bring the conversation around to Karla, at some point. He liked to hear other people talk about her—it made him proud, in a way, because neither Ruth nor Mildred-Jean nor Lester nor Bobby Lee had a bad word to say about her now, however much they may have quarreled with her when she was alive.
Also, hearing people talk about Karla meant that she was alive, in a way—alive, at least, in the memory of the town.
“Well, she had that energy,” Ruth said one day. “Most people get sort of ground down, you know. I was ground down myself for about twenty-five years. I didn’t have no zip—I was just going through the motions. Karla never seemed to lose her zip—that’s gotta be good genes.”
“I ran out of it,” Duane commented. “Just getting the kids off to school does me in for most of the day.”
“Yes, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Ruth said.
“About what?” Bullbats were swooping over the pond next door.
“You,” Ruth said. “Why are you raising your grandkids? It’s not your job.”
The comment took him by surprise. Most of his grandkids had lived in or near the big house their whole lives, while their parents got in and out of various kinds of trouble. Karla had just seemed to want it that way; he could not remember that it had ever been discussed. The house was large; there was room for everyone. Having the grandkids there seemed like part of the natural order.
But Ruth was right—it wasn’t part of the natural order.
“Your kids ain’t perfect but they’re healthy enough and none of them are morons,” she said. “They had those children. It’s their job to raise them, not yours.
“You ain’t a baby-sitter service,” she went on. “You’ll be needing to marry again yourself, and I doubt your bride will want all those grandkids underfoot.”
“I agree that the kids should raise the grandkids,” Duane said. “That is their job. But I won’t marry again. I can’t imagine it. Forty years is long enough to be married.”
“I know, I oughtn’t to have said that while you’re still in mourning,” Ruth said. “I ought to have said that next year, or the year after. But I’m an old woman—I may not be around next year or the year after. I have to advise you while I can, even if the advice is a little premature.”
The thought of being married to someone other than Karla was so odd that Duane could scarcely grasp it. The strange thing was that two or three days ago he had overheard Rag say the same thing; she had been talking to Julie. He had just happened to step in the door at the right moment to overhear them. Julie had been insisting that her father would never marry again—even if he wanted to, the kids wouldn’t stand for it, Julie told Rag.
“Yes, but honey, a grown man can’t live on memories forever,” Rag said. “Unless your dad’s dead as a stump he’ll marry again.”
The remark struck him with particular force because he remembered that Karla had said almost the same thing when she was complaining about their lack of a sex life.
“Sweet memories ain’t enough,” she had said.
It was odd that Ruth and Rag, who had no use for each other, would have the same thought about him.
“Ruth, why would you think that?” he asked. “Why would I want to marry again?”
But Ruth, embarrassed, refused to discuss it further.
“You’ll know when the time comes,” she said.
4
IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS Duane learned that Ruth and Rag were not alone in their speculations about his future. Everyone in town seemed to be of the same opinion, which was that in a year or two—if not sooner—he would marry again. Mildred-Jean admitted as much the next day, while she was giving him a haircut.
“Yep, there ain’t been no messy divorces lately, so you’re the main topic of conversation,” Mildred-Jean said. “Some people think you’ve got a girlfriend already.”
“They better not think it out loud in my hearing,” he told her. “Karla’s just been dead three months. What kind of man do they think I am?”
Duane was disgusted by such talk. He had been married forty years, and had loved his wife to the end, even if he had wandered off and pursued a lonely lifestyle at the end. Did they think he held her memory so cheap that he would just turn around and get married? Every day now he felt the urge to talk to Karla. Though she was dead, in some way he felt more married to her than he had when she was alive. The thought of being with another woman didn’t appeal to him at all—in fact, it repelled him. Karla was a dead wife, the only one he had ever had, the only one, he felt sure, that he would ever need.
The local speculation troubled him so much that he even managed to convene three out of his four children, in order to reassure them on that score. He didn’t want them to listen to the talk and get any silly ideas.
“People are talking about me getting married,” he said, to Dickie, Julie, and Nellie. There had been no solid reports of Jack’s whereabouts, but rumor had it that he was in South America, trying to canoe down the Amazon.
“This talk is just silly gossip,” he said. “I’m not going to get married.”
To his annoyance all his children avoided his eye. He saw that not one of them believed him, which annoyed him even more.
“We just want you to do what’s best for you, Daddy,” Nellie said.
“If you find someone you love we don’t want to stand in your way,” Julie said.
“Hell, why should you have a lonely old age just because Mom hit the milk truck?”
“What did I just say?” Duane said. “I said I wasn’t getting married. I’ve got nine grandkids and a few good friends. Why should I be worried about a lonely old age?”
No one spoke, but he saw that his children were as convinced as everyone else that he meant to marry again.
“Okay, think what you want, but from now on I’m going to be staying in the cabin at night,” he said. “You’ll have to figure out a way to raise your own kids.”
With that he left, leaving the children looking stunned. That night he sat late in front of his cabin, feeling the heat rise up from the ground. When he thought about it more calmly he realized that the speculation about his future was probably normal. For most of those doing the speculating, marriage was the norm by which all activity was measured. Just as nature abhorred a vacuum, society—at least as it was constituted in Thalia—abhorred the odd man out. Bad enough that he had given up pickups, but that one eccentricity the people might eventually accept. Giving up pickups while remaining single was more than the home folks were prepared to cope with. They needed to think Duane was going to marry again, even if in the end he never did.
The next morning Bobby Lee showed up at the cabin just as Duane was scrambling some eggs—Duane scramble
d a couple more and set his visitor a plate.
“I guess you’ve come to talk to me about my forthcoming marriage,” Duane said.
Bobby Lee looked blank. He proceeded to empty about half the pepper shaker onto his eggs.
“I like visible pepper,” he explained, when Duane raised an eyebrow. “I like visible salt too, but I’ve had to go light on the salt since I lost my ball.”
“Yes, they say a low-salt diet is good for people with one ball,” Duane said, nodding gravely.
“What’s this about getting married?” Bobby Lee asked.
“It’s the talk of the town,” Duane said. “I don’t know who I’m supposed to be marrying. I thought you might know.”
“I close my ears when there’s gossip being said,” Bobby Lee said. “I don’t care whether you marry or don’t marry—I got my own problems.”
“Good, I’m glad somebody’s neutral,” Duane said.
“If there was another room on this cabin I might just move in with you,” Bobby Lee said. “I’m sick of human society—all it does is make fun of my condition.”
“That’s the main reason I don’t have but one room—so you can’t move in,” Duane said.
“Wait a minute—something ain’t right about this situation,” Bobby Lee said. “Where’s Shorty?”
“I gave him away—he couldn’t tolerate the travel,” Duane said.
“My God, you are a lost soul,” Bobby Lee said. “I didn’t know you was so far gone that you’d give your only dog away.”
“I gave him to a whore and a black lady,” Duane admitted. “I saw him yesterday, though—he was in fine spirits.”
“Shorty may be, but Sonny Crawford ain’t,” Bobby Lee said. “They hauled him off to the hospital last night.”
“The crazy hospital, or the regular hospital?” Duane asked.
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