American Boy

by Larry Watson

  Every Sunday I gave the waitress the same order: orange juice, scrambled eggs, a side order of ham, hash brown potatoes, a cinnamon roll, and coffee with cream and sugar. And each time I placed my order, Dr. Dunbar followed it by remarking, “Is that all for you, Matt, or will you be sharing it with the battalion?” It was my favorite meal, but more than the food, I loved sitting at the Dunbar table on Sunday mornings, letting everyone see me there.

  Since becoming part of the Dunbar household, Louisa had also been attending First Presbyterian Church with the family, which meant she also joined us on Sunday mornings at the Heritage House. She sat so quietly at the table that anyone who’d heard rumors of her previous wild life would have had to reassess them in light of this demure, respectable presence. Oatmeal, she would order; oatmeal and tea. It was exactly what Mrs. Dunbar ordered.

  On the February morning after our night drinking at Merchants clubhouse, I watched Louisa for some indication that whatever she felt for me before had changed. But I didn’t see a single sign, unless you counted the faintest of smiles that crossed her face when Johnny said he wasn’t hungry and ordered only coffee.

  The twins were trying to persuade Louisa to judge a contest they were having over who had made the best bookmark of a Bible verse that morning in Sunday school. Louisa ignored them until Julia stood up, walked behind Louisa, and tilted her head down so she had to see the strips of cardboard the twins had placed in front of her. “Which one?” Julia demanded. Louisa hastily pointed to one of the bookmarks, and even though her judgment was halfhearted, Julia whooped in triumph. Had I been inclined to give Louisa a word of advice at that moment, I would have told her not to be so obvious in her observation of Dr. Dunbar, and to pay attention to his daughters as well. But I didn’t say a thing, and not surprisingly, Janet did not take Louisa’s judgment gracefully. She glared at Louisa, to which Louisa seemed oblivious. Then Julia raised her first-place bookmark high overhead, waved it back and forth, and circled the table as if she were competing in the school carnival cakewalk. Janet slumped in her chair and sulked.

  Meanwhile, the good doctor was part of a group—the wing tip, dark-suit, Vitalis crowd—who were gathered near the cash register, arguing over whether Willow Falls should build a new elementary school on the west end of town, in order to accommodate the population growth in that direction.

  While the men settled nothing, Mrs. Dunbar looked nervously out the window. Snow had begun falling shortly after sunrise, increasing in intensity with each passing hour. Its descent now was nearly horizontal, and the wind blew so hard that the restaurant’s plate glass window hummed and rattled in its frame. The street in front of the hotel was already drifted over in places, and it was clear that some of the cars parked on the west side of the street would have to be dug out.

  “This is a blizzard,” Mrs. Dunbar said more than once, “a real blizzard.” Tornadoes in summer, blizzards in winter—Mrs. Dunbar had storm fear, an affliction not uncommon among residents of the Midwest.

  As if he felt his wife’s anxiety from across the room, Dr. Dunbar stepped away from the power brokers and returned to the table.

  “I wonder if we should get going,” said Mrs. Dunbar. She brought her napkin up from her lap and dropped it on the table, an action to be taken only at the end of a meal. Louisa did the same. The twins had stopped eating, and though I’d had more food in front of me than anyone, I was the first to finish.

  Dr. Dunbar leaned toward the window as if he hadn’t noticed earlier what was happening out there. “By God, it is coming down, isn’t it?”

  “We should get going,” Mrs. Dunbar repeated.

  “Right you are,” said the doctor, and we all rose as if on command and began to put on our coats. Before we could move toward the door, however, Anna McDonough hurried over to our table. Anna was the wife of Dale McDonough, the owner of the hotel. They were a stylish and well-respected couple in their sixties, and they had both resided in Willow Falls their entire lives.

  “Whoa, slow down, Anna,” Dr. Dunbar said. “I have no intention of leaving without paying the bill.” Although the doctor was making a joke, neither of the McDonoughs would have cared if Rex Dunbar never paid for a meal, so long as he continued to visit their establishment.

  “Dale can’t talk,” she said breathlessly. She pointed to the far end of the dining room, where Mr. McDonough was sitting on a high stool, as he so often did, surveying the restaurant’s operations. Like Phil Palmer, the McDonoughs were highly visible owners, doing everything from frying eggs in the kitchen to checking guests in and out of their hotel.

  Still in a jocular mood, Dr. Dunbar said, “I’m sure Alice would like to hear how you managed that.”

  “No, I mean he’s trying, but—” She was interrupted by a commotion across the room, and we all turned in time to see Dale McDonough topple from his stool and crash to the floor. While everyone in the restaurant stood to see what had happened, Dr. Dunbar took off at a sprint. Anna McDonough trailed behind him, her high heels clacking on the hotel floor.

  Janet and Julia started to follow their father, but Mrs. Dunbar restrained them. “Sit,” she said. “Whatever is going on, your assistance is not needed.”

  A ring of bystanders had quickly gathered around the fallen hotel owner, making it impossible to see what Mr. McDonough’s condition was or how Dr. Dunbar was ministering to him. Earlier it had seemed as if Dr. Dunbar was among equals as he stood around with the other men, joking and discussing the issues of the day. But now those other men looked passive, weak, and ineffectual alongside the doctor, with his expertise and ability to act in the face of crisis.

  While we waited for the doctor to make a diagnosis, I gauged the worsening of the storm by concentrating on the building across the street from the hotel. Frawley’s Office Supplies had its name stenciled on the window in large black letters. Blowing snow whitened the words to gray, but when the wind gusted harder they faded away completely.

  Fewer than ten minutes had passed before Dr. Dunbar returned to the table, his expression grave. “Dale has had a neurological episode.” He spoke to his wife, but he made no effort to prevent the rest of us from hearing. “A severe stroke, probably. And his condition is worsening by the minute. Apparently he’d been complaining of headaches and dizziness recently, and just before he lost the power of speech, he said something about blurry vision. He’s paralyzed on one side already, and has limited motor control on the other side. I can’t do much for him. If he’s going to have a chance, I have to get him to the hospital in Bellamy as soon as possible.” Bellamy, Minnesota, was fifty miles to the northwest, and once the doctor left Willow Falls and its valley he’d find himself on open prairie for the duration of the trip, with barely a tree or foothill to block the wind.

  Dr. Dunbar looked around the table, just as he had on Thanksgiving Day, after the deputy told him there’d been a shooting and he had to decide whether to join the search party or wait for the victim to be brought to him. The only difference was that now Louisa Lindahl was sitting with the family. And it was upon her that the doctor fixed his gaze. “I’m leaving right away. I hate like hell to ask this, but I need someone to ride along to monitor his condition. Louisa, would you be willing?”

  It was all I could do not to jump to my feet and shout No! He couldn’t ask someone else to do what Johnny and I had been trained to do! We were the doctor’s boys—how could he forget that?

  Louisa didn’t say a word. But she stood immediately—the good soldier ready to do her duty. The only thing missing was a salute.

  “Good. Thank you,” said the doctor. “Alice, Mrs. McDonough will take you and the kids home. Louisa, you go over with Mr. McDonough and wait. I’ll bring the car around to the back alley. Some of the men will help us get him out to the car.”

  Mrs. Dunbar reached a hand toward her husband, but stopped short of touching him. “But Rex ... this storm.”

  The doctor bent toward his wife, his expression stern. “I have to do this, Ali
ce. Do you understand? Dale’s life depends on him getting to a hospital as soon as possible. I can’t ask someone else to make that trip.” Then the movie-star smile returned. “Besides, you know very well that this is the tail end of the storm. It wasn’t even predicted.”

  “It will be worse out in the open. You know that.”

  His look hardened again. “I don’t have a choice here, Alice. Don’t make this harder.”

  Louisa had been edging away from the table during this exchange, and now the doctor looked her way and nodded, a signal so subtle that you had to wonder about other communications that might have passed between them without anyone noticing. Louisa hurried off toward Dale McDonough.

  “With any luck at all,” Dr. Dunbar said to his wife, “I’ll be home before dark.” But when he bent down for a farewell kiss, she offered her cheek rather than her lips.

  The way the snow was swirling and billowing in clouds, it looked as if darkness might fall by noon.

  16.

  HOURS PASSED WITH NO LETUP in the storm, and no word from Dr. Dunbar and Louisa. Mrs. Dunbar chain-smoked and paced from room to room, looking out one window and then another as if the blizzard might show a milder face if examined from the south side of the house instead of the north. The twins worked on a jigsaw puzzle and quarreled ceaselessly about whether the other was deliberately hiding pieces. Johnny and I tried to study for a history test.

  Of course, with the possible exception of the twins, we were all doing math computations. Bellamy was fifty miles away, an hour’s drive at most in ideal conditions. But in this storm, Dr. Dunbar’s travel time might double. That said, he still should have arrived by now. Even granting an extra hour to assist the doctors with Dale McDonough, we should have heard from him by now. Why, we all wondered, hadn’t the phone rung? Or, for that matter, why weren’t the doctor and Louisa home already?

  For the third time that afternoon, Julia went to the telephone, dialed zero, and—though she was in a house full of clocks—asked the operator for the correct time. “Stop calling,” Mrs. Dunbar snapped at her daughter. “I don’t want you tying up the line.”

  “It only takes a second,” said Julia.

  “Not even for a second!”

  The wind whistled around the house’s turrets and cornices, and the snow swept along the wide porch and hissed at the front door. Johnny’s mother backed into the middle of the room as if she feared the walls might blow in. She put her palms to her ears. “This country!” she said, a comment to which she expected no response. I couldn’t help but wonder whether Mrs. Dunbar was more worried about her husband being out in a blizzard, or that he was in the company of Louisa Lindahl.

  I leaned across the dining room table and whispered to Johnny, “Let’s go upstairs to Louisa’s room.”

  Had I suggested that he and I take off our clothes and run out into the storm, Johnny could not have looked more dumbfounded. Nevertheless, he closed his history book and got up from the table. He didn’t say anything until we had climbed the three flights of stairs and stood outside the closed door leading to Louisa’s room.

  Johnny put his hand on the doorknob, but didn’t turn it. With his arm stretched across the doorway, he said softly, “Hey, Matt. What’s going on with you anyway?”

  “I thought this would be a good opportunity to have a look around.”

  “For what? What the hell do you expect to find?”

  “Nothing in particular. But maybe something that would—”

  “Would what?”

  “I don’t know.” I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat. “Something that will let us in on her secrets and mysteries.”

  He twisted the knob and pushed the door open. “Jesus. You got it bad.”

  Louisa’s room looked barely lived in. An iron-framed twin bed covered with a white chenille spread. A three drawer dresser that had a mirror attached to its back. A sagging, overstuffed chair that had once been in the Dunbars’ parlor. A bedside table. A lamp with a tasseled shade. Lace doilies on the dresser, under the bedside lamp, and on the back of the chair. A framed reproduction of a woodland scene.

  Johnny opened a curtain on a window facing north, and the light that entered the room was milky and soft. He stood at the window as if he were keeping watch.

  I opened the closet. Louisa’s canvas shoes and slippers were on the floor. Three cotton print dresses and that familiar oversize sweater hung from carefully spaced hangers. Her robe hung from a hook on the back of the door. A chipboard suitcase rested on an overhead shelf. Whatever I hoped to find wasn’t in the closet.

  I moved to the dresser and opened the top drawer. On one side were three pairs of white cotton underpants—I recognized the torn elastic waistband of the pair Louisa revealed when she lifted her dress in front of Johnny and me. One brassiere, its strap attached to the cup with a safety pin. I ran my fingertip around the inside of the cup, and my fingernail snagged on the fraying nylon.

  Then I found it. There was a stenographic pad under a slip yellowed with age. I took the pad out and opened it to a page of writing I assumed to be Louisa’s. On the top line of the very first page, written in pencil and in the hand of someone who pressed too hard and formed large, childlike letters, were the words, Mrs. Dunbar. On the lines below, in the same handwriting, was a list:Crosses ankles

  Never chews gum

  Favors Julia

  Always leaves food on her plate. Never seconds.

  Brushes hair first thing

  Always wears heels

  Never Kleenex, but always has handkerchief

  Blots lipstick

  Always uses cup and saucer

  Never smokes cigarettes down to filter

  Doesn’t go out with her hair up

  Doesn’t curse or swear

  Won’t do what a man wants/likes— this is how I steal him away!

  I scanned the remaining pages, but they were all blank. Johnny wouldn’t want to know what was on that list, and I had to keep him from reading it. I replaced the pad and closed the drawer. Johnny continued to stare out at the storm.

  “Okay,” I said, backing away from the dresser. “Not much here.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I told you. I don’t even know what I was looking for. But I’d know it if I saw it.”

  Johnny shook his head in disgust and closed the curtains.

  In truth, I’d discovered something far more exciting, far more intimate, than Louisa’s undergarments. Her list reminded me of a folded sheet of notebook paper in the top drawer of my own dresser. On it, I’d printed my self-improvement list for the month of February: Begin day with 50 pushups, 50 situps, 200 jumping jacks. End day with 3 rounds of shadow boxing. Memorize 5 Latin vocabulary words. No soft drinks. No cigarettes before noon. No chocolate. How could she not see how much we had in common?

  “Any other place in the house you’d like to snoop around?” Johnny asked. His tone was angry, and while I felt as if our friendship depended on my answer, that relationship wasn’t especially important to me at the moment.

  “Why? Do you know where the secrets are hidden?”

  “What secrets?”

  “I don’t know, man. That’s what makes them secrets.”

  Johnny shook his head again. “You’re in sad shape, you know that?”

  “And you sound like your old man. Is the lecture over?”

  “Does it matter? You aren’t listening to what I say anyway.” We stared at each other across Louisa Lindahl’s room.

  We were on our way back downstairs when we heard Johnny’s mother calling for him. She met us on the landing between the second and first floors.

  “Take my car.” She had the keys to the Valiant in her hand, and she thrust them at Johnny. “Go find your father.” Before Johnny could question or protest, she turned and went back downstairs. “The snow’s letting up,” she said over her shoulder.

  We both turned and looked out the window. If anything, the strength of t
he storm had increased. Snow crackled against the glass, and the massive elms bordering the Dunbars’ property were nothing but shadows amid the swirling white.

  “Mom,” said Johnny, hurrying after his mother’s fleeing form. “Wait ... I don’t think . . .”

  She stopped at the front door, almost as if she were going to open it and stand exposed to the storm. One hand clutched at the open collar of her blouse, the other was clamped tight over her mouth.

  “Did you try calling—?” Johnny asked.

  “They left the hospital close to two hours ago. So keep your eyes open on the road, in case they’re stuck in a ditch somewhere. Or in case you pass right by them.”

  “They left the hospital ... ?”

  “Did you hear me?” she said sharply. “That’s my husband out there! If you can’t do this for me...”

  Johnny replied feebly. “It’ll be dark soon—”

  But before he could finish his protest Mrs. Dunbar interrupted, “So get going!” Her voice hit a pitch just this side of a scream, and Johnny clamped his jaw and walked away.

  For a moment I considered taking up the argument on his behalf, but Mrs. Dunbar’s half-wild look stopped me. Here was another item for Louisa’s list: Mrs. Dunbar will endanger her son in order to keep her husband from another woman’s company.

  I caught up to Johnny as he was buckling his overshoes.

  I started putting on my own boots. “Should we take a thermos of coffee?” I asked. “Maybe a couple apples or candy bars? That way we won’t starve if we get stuck and have to wait out the storm. And we should take a few blankets, too. We don’t want to freeze to death.”

  “What’s this ‘we’ shit?”

  “I thought I’d ride along. Just to criticize your driving.”

  “Don’t be stupid. No sense both of us going out in a fucking blizzard.”

  “Sunday afternoon,” I said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”