The Big Rock Candy Mountain

by Wallace Stegner

  As he passed McKenna’s store on the way to the bank another thought struck him, and he turned up the stairs to Dr. O‘Malley’s office. The doctor was in, sitting on his desk. He had a young, fresh face and an easy grin, and his sleeves, even in the chilly office, were rolled up above the elbows. Bo noticed that his arms were brown and corded with muscle. The kid was more man than he looked.

  “Want to ask you a question,” Bo said.

  “Shoot.”

  “About this flu.”

  O‘Malley’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ve been answering that one for three weeks. Stay out of drafts, avoid catching cold, don’t go outside when you’re overheated, don’t hang around in crowds or go to the picture palace.” He grinned. “And pray,” he said.

  Bo grunted. “That isn’t the question. I want to know if whiskey is good for the flu.”

  “Whiskey’s good for almost anything,” O‘Malley said. “Except d.t.’s. Why?”

  “It’s a medicine, isn’t it? You’d say it was good medicine for this influenza.”

  O‘Malley laughed. “I guess it must be medicine. The druggist’s the only person in town allowed to sell it. I’ve worn out a prescription pad helping him.”

  “That’s all I want to know. Thanks.”

  The doctor’s puzzled frown followed him to the door. With one hand on the knob Bo turned. “How’s your own stock?”

  “I haven’t got any,” O‘Malley said. “I’m not in the liquor business. Sell you some nice ipecac.”

  “I don’t want to buy any. I’m asking you if you want to buy any.” He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the dogskin. 248

  “They’ve been saying that if the flu hits here the town’ll be quarantined. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if it’s quarantined there won’t be any trains in or out.”

  “No.”

  “And if there aren’t any trains there won’t be any more supplies for Henderson.”

  “I asked him already to lay in a lot of salts and quinine and eucalyptus oil. We’ll be cut off for a while, sure.”

  “But you didn’t have him lay in any whiskey. Want me to bring you some?”

  O‘Malley sat down on the desk and slowly rolled down his sleeves, buttoning them neatly around his wrists. “It’s against the law, you know.”

  “This is an emergency,” Bo said.

  “If it weren‘t,” O’Malley said, “I wouldn’t be talking to you. How much do you want for Irish?”

  Bo guessed, guessing plenty high. “Six dollars a bottle.”

  “I’m used to paying around three and a half,” the doctor said.

  “But you haven’t been able to get any.”

  The doctor stood up and reached for his coat on the hanger. “How much for a case?”

  “Make it to you for sixty-five.”

  O‘Malley rummaged in a drawer, came out again empty-handed, and faced Bo. “All right,” he said. “Only there’s this. Are you going to Montana after it?”

  “I didn’t say.”

  The doctor’s voice sharpened. “I have to know, just the same. A lot of towns in Montana are quarantined already. I can connive to break the liquor law in an emergency, but if you’re breaking quarantines to bring this whiskey in, I’m out.”

  “You needn’t worry,” Bo said. “The place I’m getting this isn’t quarantined.”

  O‘Malley held his eyes a minute. “All right,” he said shortly. “A case of Irish, Bushmill’s or Jameson’s.”

  Bo nodded and went downstairs again, his mind jumping with figures. It was a dead immortal cinch. If he couldn’t buy a case of Irish for thirty-five at the most, he’d kiss a pig. Maybe less, if he bought a lot, ten cases or so. His mind jumped again. Ten! The old Lizzie ought to carry twelve or fifteen. Maybe get a pony cask and decant it, sell plain old corn for three bucks a bottle ...

  John Chapman was sitting alone in the bank, peeling an apple carefully, the unbroken spiral peel hanging like a shaving as he turned the fruit. Bo watched him till the peel fell into the waste-basket, watched him halve and then quarter the white meat, and then asked for his loan: two hundred dollars for two weeks.

  Chapman deliberated. There was already a mortgage on Bo’s house, and no payment on the principal for a year and a half. “What security?” he said.

  “How about my team?”

  Very tall and bulky, Chapman sat and spread his hands. “If you didn’t meet your obligation I couldn’t get two hundred for a team. I couldn’t get a hundred, this time of year.”

  “Listen,” Bo said. “This is no bread-and-butter loan, see? I’ll have that money back to you in a week, maybe less. You can have the team, the colt, two cows, and anything else you think you want if you’ll let me have two hundred right now, American money.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Chapman said.

  “It’s foolproof,” said Bo. “I don’t even give a damn what interest you charge me, because I’ll be paying this back before you know it’s out of your safe.”

  A half hour later he went home carrying a bag of American silver dollars and some bills, all the American money Chapman had.

  He kept the bag hidden under the hall seat until after supper, when the boys were sent up to bed. Even then he did not bring it out, but sat figuring. He ought to be able to get fifty dollars a case for good liquor, and if he couldn’t buy it for around twenty-five there was something wrong. He could double his money. And suppose he got a twenty-gallon keg of corn. It shouldn’t cost more than five dollars a gallon that way, and he could get three dollars a quart just like spitting in a stove door. Gold mine! he said. I hope to whisk in your piskers it’s a gold mine.

  He lifted his eyes and looked at Elsa, her head bent over her darning. “How much money have we got?”

  She smiled. “Figuring again?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with knowing where you stand. Have we got any left?”

  “I paid McKenna and the hardware store,” she said, “and I laid out what we owe Hoffman for seed. There’s not much left.”

  “Well, let’s count it up and see. The less there is the easier it is to count.”

  While she was upstairs getting her purse he slipped into the hall, got the bag, and concealed it under his chair. Elsa came down and laid the purse on the table. “There’s our worldly wealth,” she said, and laughed.

  Bo opened the purse and counted out a hundred and twenty-two dollars. The hundred he smoothed out, folded, smoothed again, and laid aside. The twenty-two he put back in the purse. Elsa watched him. He could see the curiosity and the anxiety in her face.

  “What would you say,” he said, “if I told you I could turn that hundred into two hundred and forty in three days?” He lifted the bills between his fingers, passed the other hand over them, waved his fingers. “Nothing up the sleeve,” he said. He opened his right hand. “Nothing in the hand. Presto, chango, pffft!” He palmed the bills and showed her his empty hands and grinned. “Three days from now I’ll make it return with a hundred and forty more.”

  The anxiety had not left her face. “You’ve got some deal on. What is it?”

  “Starting with three hundred dollars,” he said, “I can be worth over six hundred by the end of the week.”

  “But you haven’t got three hundred to start.”

  He reached under the chair and got the bag, set it with a metallic clump on the table, untied the neck and poured a flood of silver dollars on the cloth.

  “Well, where on earth ... !” she said.

  Expertly he stacked two piles of dollars, shuffled them, melted them into one pile with a smooth drawing motion. “We’re out of the woods,” he said.

  She was facing him with her hands on the table, as if ready to rise. “Where did you get this?”

  “Borrowed it.”

  “Who from?”

  “Chapman.”

  “But ...”

  He got up and went around to her. “This is how it is,” he said
with his hands on her shoulders. “The flu’ll hit us sure. It’s already in Regina. And when it comes there won’t be any way of getting in and out, or of bringing medicine in. So I’m going after some, to Chinook. I talked with the sawbones this afternoon.”

  “But why should you have to borrow all this money?”

  “Because I’m making the profit. You know what the best medicine for flu is?”

  “Eucalyptus oil?” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “Good old-fashioned corn whiskey. So I’m going out like an old St. Bernard with a keg around my neck.”

  He felt her stiffen under his hands, and she leaned forward. “Whiskey business!” she said.

  “It isn’t whiskey business,” he said in irritation. “Their damn fool prohibition law might kill off the whole town. Ask Doc O‘Malley. He wants a case of Irish himself.”

  She stared across the table at the stacks of dollars. “What if you get caught?”

  “Oh, caught! Who’s going to be running around that prairie trying to catch anybody? Anyway it’s a medical emergency.”

  When she said nothing for a long time he pulled her chair sideways and looked at her face. “You still don’t like it,” he said.

  “I hate to see you get into that illegal business again,” she said. “And it’s dangerous. What if a blizzard came up, or you got sick on the road?”

  “I might dislocate my jaw yawning, too,” he said. “Hell, I can drive over there and back in less than two days.”

  “I wonder,” she said. “I bet you it’s snowing right now.”

  He went to the window and looked. The yellow panes of Chance’s house, next door, were streaked with wavering white. “It isn’t even the end of October yet,” he said. “This’ll be gone by morning. Even if it isn’t I can wait a day.”

  Elsa came up and took his arm, and he looked down at her worried face. “Bo,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  For a moment he stood, almost hating her, hating the way she and the kids hung on him and held him back, loaded him with responsibilities and then hamstrung him when he tried to do anything. His teeth clicked, but he waited till the anger passed. “Look,” he said wearily. “This town’s played out. It played out two or three years ago. Do you think I’d be sticking around here if it wasn’t for you and the kids? I’d be off somewhere where there was money to be made, wouldn’t I? Well, I’m sticking here, but you can’t expect me not to make a living any way I can.”

  “You brought us up here,” she said. “You said you didn’t want to live anywhere without us. I believed you then, Bo.”

  In spite of himself he heard his voice rising, and he faced her, shaking-handed. “I’m sticking,” he shouted. “I haven’t run away, have I? I built you a house and made you a home, didn’t I? But how in hell are we going to live in it without any money?”

  Elsa looked at him, silent for a moment. “All right,” she said. “I said when I came back that I’d never try to interfere with you again. I made up my mind that I was your wife and I’d stay your wife, no matter what. But I just want you to remember, Bo, that I never asked for more than we had. I’d have been satisfied with just a bare living, if we could only keep what we’ve had up here. So don’t ever say you did this for me or them. Don’t ever forget that I was against it.”

  Their eyes held for a moment, and he turned half away to look out the window. After a minute Elsa’s hand touched his arm lightly. “Poor Bo,” she said. When he turned back her eyes were shining with tears.

  “Poor Elsa, you mean,” he said. “Oh damn it, honey, you think I like to see us down to a hundred bucks with a whole winter ahead?”

  “I know you don‘t,” she said. She moved against him and he put his arms around her. “What you don’t see,” she said, “what you’ll never see, is that there are things ten times worse than being poor.”

  “I guess I never will,” he said. “Maybe you think it would be fun to go hungry, but I don’t.”

  “So you still think you’ll go.”

  He held her tightly against him, looking over her head at the open sack of money on the table, and his mind shut hard and tight. “I’ve got to,” he said. “Whether you see it or not.”

  It still snowed in the morning, not heavily, but persistently, with a driving wind. For a few minutes Bo contemplated going away, but it was too thick, and with all the homesteaders crowded into the towns there would be no place to stop along the road if anything went wrong. So he spent the day canvassing the town discreetly, getting orders for five cases more without even proposi tioning the crowd at Anderson’s. They were bulk-rye prospects anyway.

  That afternoon he worked on the Ford in the shed. Under the seat he put a half dozen cans of canned heat, two spare sparkplugs, a couple pair of chains, and a little bottle of ether, trying to prepare for any sort of emergency. When a car wouldn’t start, he had heard, a little ether in the sparkplug wells was like turpentine on a balky mule. With all that whiskey aboard he wasn’t going to run any chance of getting stuck. He even cut up an old horse blanket, doubled it, and sewed it into a crude cover for the radiator. If the weather turned cold the radiator could freeze even with the motor running, and you wouldn’t know it till you cracked the head or did some real damage.

  There was gasoline left from the drum to fill the tank and a five gallon can. At the last minute, looking around for final preparations, Bo took out the back seat and set it against the wall. The car would hold more with the seat out.

  After supper he sat in the kitchen while Elsa fried a chicken for his box lunch. It was Hallowe‘en, and the boys were both out. Bo kept going to the door and looking out. The snow had stopped, but the ground was humped with drifts, and it was still blowing. From the direction of town he heard the distant yelling of kids.

  “If those shysters come horsing around the shed and bung up that car I’ll fill their behinds with birdshot,” he said.

  “It’s locked, isn’t it?”

  “Locks don’t stop kids when they get going on a tear.”

  “I’ll stay up and watch,” she said. “You should get to sleep early.”

  He looked at her curiously, wondering how much she still objected, how much she was swallowing. She had a habit of swallowing things, and then years later you discovered that she hadn’t forgotten them.

  The kitchen door swung open, and Chet and Bruce rushed in. Their noses were red and leaking with the cold, their eyes starting out.

  “The flu’s hit town!” they said in a breathless burst. “Old Mrs. Rieger’s got it.”

  Bo shut the door. “How do you know?”

  “Mr. McGregor said. We were out behind the Chinks‘, and he called us and said not to play any tricks because the flu was in town, and now all the kids are distributing flu masks and eucalyptus oil and we’re going back right now.”

  “No you’re not,” Bo said. He looked at Elsa. “You chase these snickelfritzes up to bed. I’m going uptown to see what’s going on.”

  “You won’t be able to go now,” she said, and the relief in her voice made him mad. “The town will be quarantined.”

  “That quarantine’s nothing but a word,” he said. “The town really needs the stuff now.”

  “Go where?” Chet said.

  His father pushed him into the dining room. “None of your beeswax. Go on up to bed, both of you.”

  An hour uptown told him nothing he didn’t know. Nobody would be allowed in or out of town, but that just made him grin. He could imagine people sitting out along the roads in the cold to warn people. Like hell. They’d be sealed up tight in their houses. At ten o‘clock he went home from the darkened and deserted main street, stoked the parlor heater for the night, and went up to bed. All the actual coming of the flu did was to make it surer that he could sell all the whiskey the Ford would carry.

  2

  In the clear, gray-and-white morning, he carried blankets and lunch box out to the shed. The snow had blown during the night, and a foot-deep drift wit
h a deep bluish hollow at its inner edge curved around the corner of the barn. The thermometer read twenty-two above zero. The Ford smelled cold; it was hard to imagine that anything so cold would ever start.

  Dumping the blankets and lunch, he went back to the house, dipped two steaming pails of water from the waterjacket of the range, and lugged them back out. They took careful pouring in the tiny hole, and he squinted in the gray indoor light, concentrating. When he had the radiator full he bent to feel the crank, engaged it, tried a half turn. It was like trying to lift the car with one hand. The cold oil gave heavily, reluctantly, to the crankshaft’s turning. Whistling through his teeth, he went around to adjust spark and gas levers and switch the key to battery. Then with one finger hooked in the choke wire he bent and heaved, fighting the stiff inwards of the motor around. On his cheek he could feel the dim warmth of the water he had poured in.

  Three minutes of laborious heaving loosened the crankshaft a little. He pulled the choke full out and threw his whole weight into the spin. After two ponderous twirls the motor coughed.

  “Ha!” he said. He spun again, and again it coughed. It was a good feeling to have that stubborn frozen block of complicated metal giving before his pressure. He felt strong, heavy, able to twist the Ford any way he wanted to. The muscles hardened in his shoulder, and he heaved.

  The motor coughed, caught, roared, died again in spite of his frantic coaxing of the choke wire. Another spin and it roared again, banging his knuckles against the mudguard. He choked it in quick bursts, laid his shoulder against the radiator to hold back the Ford’s trembling, nuzzling eagerness, and watching his chance, ran around to pull down the spark and push up the gas lever. Only a frantic grab at the choke kept it from dying, and he nursed it carefully, leaning far inside the side-curtained darkness of the front seat. The switch to magneto was crucial: she survived it. He slipped the gas lever up and down, and she roared.

  Okay, you old bugger, he said, and leaving it running, went back to the house sucking his skinned knuckles.

  The boys were up, crowding their bottoms into the oven door and regarding the preparations with blurred and wondering eyes. Bo warmed his hands briefly before pulling on the big double mitts. When he picked up the bag of money he met Elsa’s sober look.