John's Wife: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  “No, I know after all the fights he’s got into up there he ain’t due for parole till the other side of doomsday,” Otis was barking into the phone as they brought Edna in for booking, “but I got me a goddamn crisis here, Bert, and if that hellacious butthole can help me I gotta get him down here and toot sweet, you hear?” He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece, leaned toward the hardware man’s sad dowdy wife. He saw she’d been crying. “Just set down there a minute, ma’am. We’ll try to figure out what happened, soon as I get off this call.” He glanced at the Oriental carpet his officer was showing him. Didn’t see too many of those around here. “Don’t worry, Bert, I’ll keep the sonuvabitch collared, you’ll get him back in one piece, mean as when you mailed him. Okay, call me back. But don’t let me down!” What a day. Seemed like a week. Crazy things happening. Those two on the run, tearing up jack. People lost in front of their own houses. Or acting weird, like the photographer. Or the lawyer’s wife. Picked her up in her nightgown, running around on the streets, absolutely out of her onion. She’d bashed her car into a downtown parking meter and abandoned it and was now about as coherent as a headless chicken. Wouldn’t go home. “No, no, that thing’s there!” she’d screamed. But he’d shipped her back in a squad car anyway and called the hospital where her husband was a patient. He’d checked himself out. So to speak. Anyway he was gone, nobody knew where. This restlessness: it was what most bugged Otis. He wanted to yell at everyone to stop where they were and just hold it for five minutes. And now this lady, who’d never given anybody any trouble in all her life, trying to steal a damned rug, which didn’t even look all that new, it just didn’t make sense. When he asked her why she did it, she said: “I can only say I never stole it, nor nothing else, in my whole born life. It was, well, give to me by a certain person.” Otis didn’t believe her, but something about the way she said it made the back of his neck tingle. He rang up the merchant in question and turned to one of his officers who was on the same bowling team with the woman’s husband: “See if you can find Old Hoot.” “He’s prob’ly over to John’s, Otis.” “John’s?” “You know, at the barbecue.” Otis, phone tucked between chin and shoulder, shuffled through the papers piled up on his desk, but he couldn’t find his calendar. “How come that’s going on when I got all these other problems?” The merchant, having heard John’s name mentioned, said he’d call back, and Otis told the woman to make herself comfortable until her husband got here, and did she want a cup of coffee? No answer, she was crying again. Meanwhile, phonecalls were stacked up dozens deep. A lot of them about Pauline: “Otis, I just seen something you won’t believe!” “I know, it’s a bit unusual, but we got it under control.” Sure we do. Like hell. She and the drugstore loony were on a wild crime spree and it seemed like there was nothing Otis could do to stop it. Reports would come in, Otis would chase them, see the filthy remains of their passage, but they’d be long gone. Sometimes he’d run into Cornell’s wife and sister out there and they’d berate him or get in his way or trample over the evidence; he warned them he’d book them both as accessories, but the drugstore lady had a way with her steel crutch that made it hard to reason with her. And a lot of the calls and what he found when he got there were clearly Corny’s own diversionary tactics—he was crazy maybe, but he was wily. Like those jungle weasels who’d earned Otis his Purple Heart. Sometimes it seemed almost like there were two of him. Some of the complaints were real: the stolen truck from the Ford lot, their temporary encampment out in the old airport hangar, thefts from motels and restaurants and private homes. But they didn’t add up to anything that helped him track them down. Which was why he had his call in upstate. Maybe he should be asking for the National Guard instead of Duwayne, but Otis hated to have any truck with outsiders: the town should solve its own problems, he believed that. His officers phoned in from the lawyer’s house: “Hey, Otis, this place has been ransacked. Big mess in the kitchen. Really ugly. That broad took off screaming as soon as she seen it. Should we pick her up again?” “Naw, let her go and get back down here soon as you can, we got more urgent things to worry us!” And he wasn’t talking about shoplifting, which was frankly the least of his problems. The suspect’s husband arrived in a blurred fit of rage, bewilderment, indignation, and sheer panic, spouting Biblical bombast, but Otis told him to calm down, there was probably a simple explanation, and by the way, congratulations on the new promotion, he’d heard about it from John. That helped. Floyd wiped his brow with a blue bandanna and said, thanks, he was real pleased, God be praised, and asked his wife whatever did she want such an ugly rug for anyway, she knew how he hated things with patterns on them in the house. “I didn’t want it, Floyd. It just, well, sort of turned up in my basket.” Floyd started ranting to her about the slippery road to perdition and made her get down on her knees to pray with him, which she meekly did, but then the merchant out at the mall called and said, given the parties involved, he’d just take the rug back and wouldn’t press charges, so Otis told them both to get up and go back to the party and try not to let it happen again. “God bless you, we won’t,” said Floyd solemnly, adjusting his silver bolo and buttoning his suit jacket as he rose. He was not a big man, but he was standing tall today, radiant and full of himself. He took his wife’s arm. “For as Jesus says, we must enter by the narrow gate, though the way be hard and those what find it is few. And if a person will not stop sinning, he is better out of the world than in it.” He drew himself up, stroked the fresh fuzz on his lip, and with a smug, almost beatific smile (Otis was reminded of paintings of martyred saints in his old catechism manual), turned to leave. “Say, hold on a minute, Floyd, that reminds me,” Otis called out just as he reached the door. He fumbled through the loose stacks of phone messages. “Was you ever in Santa Fe?” Floyd looked like somebody had suddenly stuck him with a pin, just between the eyebrows, and he shrank about half a foot. “Santa Fe—?” he rasped. “Santa Fe what?” “No, that’s okay, I didn’t think you was.” “But—!” “Go on now, I’ll see you directly over to the barbecue.” “Otis? Call from upstate. They’re sendin’ Duwayne down here in a prison van with a coupla escorts. And Bert says to tell you, if you lose the vicious cock-sucker, you’ll be takin’ his damned place!”

  Yea, though those who find it are few, entering through the narrow gate the hard way (never let him down yet) was Waldo’s most sacred intention and imminent prospect. As soon as he cleared out the tinhorn competition: going off to get the goods had lost him his place in line. No hurry, this make was a lock, enjoy a bit of the day’s festivities. He already had a buzz on, having sampled the merchandise, and felt very much in control of his own destiny. And hers. He chatted with Kevin at the grill while munching a steak-burger and admiring, over Kev’s shoulder, the cheeks of her little pink ass, plumped out under the ragged hems of her cutoff shorts and dazzlingly aglow in the sunshine like painted fruit. A few clumsy greenhorns around her, a teller and a shopclerk or two, the poor kid looked bored out of her gourd, seemingly amused most by old gin-soaked one-eyed Trivial Trev who could hardly keep his balance, drunk as Waldo’d ever seen him. Kevin, wearing one of the new line of pro shop shirts today as advertisement, said he was surprised that old Floyd had gotten the big transport job instead of Waldo, and Waldo said he was surprised, too, and for a minute the buzz faded and his prick went limp, but then he laughed and said that interior decorating was more in his line, if you know what I mean. Kevin laughed and said he did, leaning in to turn the dogs and burgers, and just then the little bimbo with the juicy bumbo glanced up: Waldo patted his pocket and winked, and she smiled, lifting tittering red-faced Trev’s hand off her overflowing bubby where it seemed to have fallen from out of the sky as if by accident. Waldo wiped the mustard off his mouth, asked Kevin to hold back one of those new shirts for him—“A big red one, stud!”—and walked over to ask Trevor if it was true that it was a hen that had pecked his eye out. Trev’s mood darkened and he tried to reply in kind, probably meaning to ask if Waldo’s ears had got th
at big because his wife was always pulling him around by them, as Waldo himself would have done, but what came out in a wet loose-lipped slur was ‘“Syour ear big ‘ike ‘at f’m getting it pulled off alla time?” “Well,” Waldo was able to drawl, staggering Triv with a clap to the shoulder, “pulling it off is one way to make it bigger, old son, but when you grow up I’ll show you a better one,” and Sassy Buns grinned and popped a bubble and said: “Why can’t you old guys talk like normal people? Come on, really, how did you lose it?” “Y’wood’n b’lieve me’f I tole you,” Trevor said, lifting his chin, his good eye rolling about haphazardly in its socket. He spread his arms out as far as he could reach, pitching gin at passersby. “It wuzzat big!” “What was?” He flushed and burped, wiped the drool. “You know.” He might have been trying to grin wickedly or he might have been about to throw up, it was hard to tell. “That!” he squeaked and reached round and grabbed the girl’s fanny, then keeled straight over on his face, dragging her shorts partway down as he fell. Those around her whistled and laughed and she said, snapping her rags back in place and pulling her feet out from under the fallen body: “I thought this was where the nice people were!” Waldo patted his pocket. “Some are nicer than others, pet. Ready for a cee-break?” “Yeah,” she said, with a gum-cracking glance Kev’s way. She blew a kiss at his back. “Let’s go get it on.” He’d called Dutch, it was all set, but one problem: his old beat-up wagon was gone. Lollie must have taken it. But hadn’t he just seen her a few minutes ago? Damn. Waldo figured he’d have to hit up John, risk losing momentum, maybe worse, but then he spied one of his good brother’s chariots—his famous blazing saddle—blocking the driveway, checked: the keys were inside. This was indeed a beautiful day. Even if he hadn’t gotten the promotion he so richly deserved. “Here we are,” he said, popping the doors open with a slow triumphant wink. “Wow! Cool!” He could tell the kid was really impressed by the way her unharnessed tits bounced when she hopped in and stroked the leather seats. “Okay, baby,” he growled, “get ready to fly!”

  Clarissa had been ready all afternoon. Hadn’t he promised? All she had on was a cut-off tee shirt, sandals, and her thinnest shorts, no underpants, just in case she got back on his lap again. No, not in case, but when. She’d told him she really got off on flying with the world above her head and she wanted to do that on her own and he’d smiled that tragic smile that made her feel so creamy and said next time she could. Sometimes, she’d said, she felt like she wanted to fly straight into the sun, and he said sometimes he felt that way, too. She remembered his hand lingering on her bottom as he lifted her off his lap: it was like a delicious dream and made her want to put her own hands between her legs. And his. But so far no Uncle Bruce. What was more ominous: no Jen either. When she’d asked Jen’s father, he’d said he didn’t know where she was, he’d thought she’d come here with her mom. But he was very vague and tried to change the subject and asked about her own mother and Clarissa was pretty sure he knew more than he was telling her. Jen’s mother, of course, was not merely vague, she was completely out of the human loop, and when Clarissa asked her where Jen was, she hiked up her disgustingly huge tummy with both hands and replied in her little singsong voice that we are all in the universe and the universe is in all of us. Great, thanks a lot. The Creep had not shown up, but after what had happened, no one expected him to. As for his little sister Zoe, she was as big a help as her mother. She said she’d heard Jennifer talking on the telephone to a girl. “That was me, dummy, I was talking to her on the telephone, but then what?” “I dunno. I think she took a bath.” Clarissa got angry and tried to press Zoe for something serious, but the little crybaby just puckered up and ran to her mother. It was very frustrating. When, in a casual way, she asked about Uncle Bruce while helping her father carry food and stuff out to the backyard, he’d paused to glance, unsmiling, at her costume (she was wearing as much as he was, wasn’t she?), then had said that as far as he knew Bruce was in town so he’d probably turn up sooner or later, here, princess, take this pepper mill and cold six-pack out to the guys at the grill. Out there, they were emptying the water from an ice bucket on the face of an old man with an eyepatch lying on the ground, her daddy’s spooky accountant. They were all laughing so he probably wasn’t dead. Old Hoot ‘n’ Holler, her Sunday School teacher, was praying over him just the same, while his wife stood by in her usual pathetic daze, looking like she’d swallowed something she shouldn’t have. Then her Aunt Ronnie, who wasn’t exactly her aunt, turned up in nothing but her wrinkled nightgown, completely wigged out, and when her husband tried to reason with her she started screaming bloody murder like he was trying to kill her or something. Boy, marriage, it was really great. Clarissa’s dad took charge, as he always did, and led the crazy woman upstairs, but why, she wondered, did he even have goony friends like these? Clarissa turned around and bumped into her granddad who gave her a boozy hug before she could duck it and asked her if she knew where her granny was. Clarissa said if she wasn’t here she was probably visiting Grampa Barn at the rest home. A plane flew over but it wasn’t his, it wasn’t even a jet. She was so mad she felt like hitting something, so when the banker’s wife asked her if she had enjoyed the parade today, she snapped back that parades were for little kids and mental retards. “You may be right,” the lady smiled. “Certainly they do have a lot of fun at them.” It was hopeless. She went inside and called the manse again but nobody answered. Her stupid little brother was wrapping a couple of his nerdy buddies up in sheets, no doubt for one of his sicko plays. They looked like cocoons with their heads hooded and just their hands and feet sticking out. She gave one of them a kick with the side of her sandaled foot and asked him if he could feel it. He could. He was bawling. The other one asked her not to kick him, but she did anyway. “Gotta be fair,” she said. Then her Aunt Ronnie came down the stairs on her father’s arm, dressed in one of her mom’s linen dresses, which didn’t quite fit, and looking trembly and wild-eyed, and when she saw the boys in their sheets she freaked out again. “Now there’s two of them!” she screamed and went running out through the kitchen, where there was suddenly a very loud clatter. Her father scowled darkly at all of them on his way through, and Clarissa said: “Now see what you’ve done, Mikey, you little idiot!” But he didn’t care, he never did. Still no answer at the manse. She listened to it burping away for a long time, her rage rising with every ring. If Jen had betrayed her, she’d kill her. She suddenly felt terribly lonely, her chest tight like she was about to have a heart attack. She wished she could find Nevada, but she didn’t know how, had never asked. She was the only person besides her dad she could still trust. She hated to have people see her cry, but if she was going to start, Nevada was the person she wanted to be with. She was the only one who’d understand.