John's Wife: A Novel

by Robert Coover

  It was the stillness that also most struck Columbia when she awoke in the first wet pallor of that dawn, still standing by the glass door of the drugstore, staring out on the empty downtown streets as though she’d never shut her eyes all night. She had, though, had slept at least, eyes open or closed, for she’d dreamt that she’d been caught out in those very streets in the storm with no clothes on (she was hunting for her pajamas, which someone, Corny maybe, had mischievously hidden out there), and was being chased by the doctor with one of Gretchen’s plastic penises and a scalpel, crying: “Nurse! Nurse! It’s time for your pharmaceuticals!” It was still raining when the dream faded and she found herself awake, but the storm was letting up, the thunder rumbling now in the far distance and a pale light rising as though from off the streaming pavement. Her legs, as they’d been in the dream, were like fat lumps of lead, she could hardly move them, so she leaned there a moment, shifting her hips slightly to restore the circulation, and while she was doing that she saw a curious thing which made her think she might still be dreaming: two people in nothing but their shirts staggering barefoot down the slippery street in the rain, holding each other up with hands clapped round on naked hips. A sight to see, even for persons in the medical profession, there was probably even a statute against it, but there was not much they could do about it. They had helped Trevor load log-sawing Marge into his car just before the storm hit, then had dashed away through the whipping gales and lightning flashes to pick up their old stationwagon, parked by the clubhouse, forgetting, having got so used to going about as they were, that they had no pockets—Waldo, yawhawing, slapped his beefy thighs—and thus no keys. They’d had a good laugh about that and, rather than break the car door and sleep under a leaky roof with more problems on the morrow, had decided to walk on home, dressed in the storm. And had had a good time doing it, pausing from time to time to rest their tender feet, and play around a bit like kids in the crashing rain, Waldo having awakened on the edge of the green in Lorraine’s arms, completely mystified, but in a jolly and appreciative mood, saying it was the best he’d ever had and he wanted more of it; it was like the old days, football weekends and beach parties and monkey business in the bushes behind the sorority house. They were met at their front door by the police who said they wanted Waldo to come with them immediately, as soon as he got some trousers on, his purple pair being presently, they reported with a knowing smirk, in police custody. The guy he’d shot, they said, was not expected to pull through, and they had to get Waldo out to the hospital while the fellow was still alive and could identify him. “Haw,” said Waldo in utter amazement. In a way, it was good they were there because they also lacked their house keys and the police helped them break in. Did they really think Waldo had done it? Lorraine couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell what Waldo was thinking either nor what the cops thought about her bare ass which they were staring at as if it were a major clue to some ghastly crime, or perhaps the crime itself, and that gave her such a tremendous sense of relief that she lay down on the floor while Waldo was still pulling his pants on and fell sound asleep. What Waldo was thinking about was how simple life was but how you could never figure it out, a paradoxical verity underscored by his visit to the hospital bedside of his old bud Dutch who was said to be barely hanging on. “He’s lost a lot of blood. And other things.” They had Waldo’s missing golf pants there and his old shotgun, and when he asked where they’d found them, they said out at the motel before it burned down and had he been in such-and-such a room last night? “I mighta been. But how did the goddamn gun get there?” Dutch, who’d already told these yo-yos when they dragged the sniveling accountant in that he’d shot himself, stirred himself enough to growl: “You loaned it to me.” “Oh yeah, right,” Waldo said. “I did—?” The meathead. “Hey, Dutchie! What’re they talking about, burned down? What the hell happened to you, old man?” Fuck off, Dutch said, or might have said, and as Otis’s cowboys took the boob next door to visit the guy they were now calling Pee Patch (“Haw! Who?”), Dutch sank back into the drugged stupor which, he supposed, was all the rest he’d know of life, and all he wanted to know. It was like he’d told John when he’d dropped by with an armload of flowers not long after his wife had been in: the last picture show was over, he was ready for the fade-out. John and his wife had been out to visit their daughter, also in the hospital for some reason. In intensive care, they told him. Sounded serious. And was. When she woke up, full of a dull leaden pain all through her body, her mother was sitting beside her. “Mom! Where have you been—?!” she cried, and realized there might not be any sound coming out. But her mother heard her somehow: “Right here beside you, sweetheart, all the time.” She thought she heard her go on to say she was a murderous little shit and her dad was thoroughly pissed off at her for what she’d done, but saw that it wasn’t her mother then but Nevada. Or else her dad, it was all a blur, who said, no, he wasn’t angry and told her to hang tough when she broke into dry tears (she could move nothing, nothing at all), adding that he loved her, though by then she’d probably passed out again. When John asked Alf what her chances were, Alf said she was a strong healthy youngster and she should pull through, but it would be painful and would take a while. There wasn’t much she hadn’t mashed or torn or broken, she’d need some repairs, now and later on, and might end up with a permanent brace. Which was what he’d told her mother as well before he sent her home to get some rest, longing for the same prescription. It had been one crisis after another, and Alf was dead tired, but then he was always dead tired at dawn, and he’d been buoyed up through the interminable night by the lifting of a great weight off his shoulders, or, rather, off his finger: that polypous lump, which in his imagination had grown larger than the body which he’d supposed contained it, clumsying him dangerously in the emergency room and making it difficult for him even to do up his fly, had suddenly vanished as lightly as did the night give way to dawn. About that same time, Clarissa’s mother had entered the intensive care center, looking worried but well, a welcome sight, and he had known then that everything would be all right, and confidently told her so, though he had no clear medical reason for saying so. She’d stayed on, watching over her daughter, while he’d attended the succession of traumatized patients who came rolling in on gurneys like floats in a nightmarish parade, and he’d felt watched over as well, more sure of himself than at any time since the war when he had Harriet at his side, and indeed he’d had the sensation that beautiful young nurse was next to him the whole night through, a remarkable experience he intended to tell Oxford about the next time they met for coffee, though he could have told him on his way home, because Oxford was already up, feeding the youngest ones and getting them dressed, coaching the older ones in their breakfast preparations and telling them all about the games they’d play together that day. One of the triplets had been awake all night with a tummyache, so he’d been up when Gretchen proudly brought his errant son home like a trophy from a hunt, and had been able to help her bandage up poor Corny’s head. “He must have taken a wallop from that big home-wrecking jezebel,” she’d explained, blushing happily as she pushed her spectacles up on her nose. “Maybe it will teach him a lesson.” Oxford had slept little, waking ahead of the children, worried about Columbia who’d never in her life stayed out so late, but she came home at dawn, a bit surly, saying she’d got caught out by the storm and had had to spend the night in the drugstore, and had Gretchen come out of her bedroom yet? Oxford said she hadn’t, and indeed, except to attend to basic human necessities, she didn’t come out for a whole week, and Oxford had to fill in for her down at the drugstore and watch the eight grandchildren, too, which in truth he enjoyed, and neither he nor anyone else was surprised when a beaming Gretchen finally came bobbing out into the kitchen one morning and, perched jauntily on her short leg, announced that she was almost surely expecting again. Which depressed Columbia no end, even though she had seen it coming, and made her want to complete her degree and become a registered nurse so
that she could take a job up in the city and leave this cruel town forever.

  By the time Gretchen emerged with the glad tidings and resumed her oversight of the downtown drugstore, the broken hardware store window around the corner had been replaced, the power had been restored out by Settler’s Woods and the phonelines repaired, most of the storm and fire damage had been assessed and insurance claims submitted, The Town Crier had reappeared, letting everyone know what had been happening recently (John’s wife contributed a touching column on “The Kiss of Life”), work had begun on removing the old humpback bridge, John having generously offered to do it at cost, the city council had met to discuss his proposal for clearing the burned-out woods for residential and commercial development, John’s daughter and the older man who’d hitched a ride with her that night were both out of intensive care and most of the others, like Pee Patch, as they were calling him, for whom Otis had felt personally responsible, were out of the hospital altogether and back to work, the motelkeeper being the most notable exception. It was still touch and go for old Dutch, and, as part of the annual blood drive chaired by John’s wife, all who were of the right blood type had been up to give the old fisherman a transfusion, Otis included, but the unhappy man had shown few signs of improving, or wanting to. The Ford-Mercury garage had not yet reopened, but there were rumors the widow might be considering marriage to the company mechanic injured in the wreck at the humpback bridge, or what was left of him anyway, a move generally perceived, since he was the only one people trusted out there, as both practical and charitable. The murder itself was still officially unsolved, but Otis had launched a nationwide search for the hardware store manager and ex-jailbird who had disappeared the night of the crime, dramatically signing his departure. At first, when they’d discovered the shattered display window, they’d supposed the store had been broken into overnight, but the door had not been forced and little seemed to be missing: a cash register handgun, a couple of tools, maybe some loose change. But then they’d found the bowling ball with the crimson fingerholes which had been thrown through the window with such force it had torn through the display partition behind and ended up down an aisle near the back of the store. When Old Hoot went, he went. The same could be said for Pauline’s old man, who was Otis’s biggest worry. That vicious psycho hadn’t been seen since the night of the fire, and the people upstate wanted to know how he’d got out of Otis’s custody. They didn’t buy the story he told them, which was nevertheless mostly true. It seemed impossible the old ranter could have survived that toss, but though the search was widening, no body had as yet been found. The joke was (Otis didn’t find it funny), he was still in orbit. “I reckon you ain’t seen the last of him,” Bert told him on the phone. “You’re the one who sent him up, ain’t you? Duwayne don’t forget things like that.” Bert, browned off over the loss of his prisoner, might only have been putting the needle in, but he had Otis looking back over his shoulder from time to time, just the same. Otis, whose sense of humor had been badly dented, had got something of a reputation since the fire at Settler’s Woods for being moody and explosively ill-tempered, not the easiest guy to work for. When, on the morning after the fire, the officer charged with ordering up autopsies on the two Country Tavern victims had confessed he’d not followed through on that one, Otis, enraged, had threatened to dock the man a month’s pay and take his badge away from him, managing only a faint unamused smile amidst the general laughter when the officer explained that “Aw, hell, Chief, Shag was just a yeller mongrel dog they kept out there, and I don’t know about Chester, but that was probably the name of that ole three-legged beer-drinkin’ alley cat out back.” Though he was maybe the best lawman the town had ever had, there was talk about his retiring from the force, especially with the threat of official charges being pressed against him for allowing Duwayne to get away and the insurance investigations into the source of the fire that had destroyed the motel and other property, for which Mayor Snuffy had chewed him out, saying, dammit, he’d let the team down. It didn’t help that John, who could usually ease problems like these, was furious with him for giving Clarissa the Porsche keys: “Bad fucking judgment, Otis.” It was, he knew it, he was unable even to think clearly anymore, and he had a permanent limp now and he was no longer certain he knew what “keeping order” meant and, well, he’d lost his best friend, so was it any wonder he’d taken to spending a lot of time locked up in his office or alone in church, and had even, hard man that he was, been seen crying from time to time, especially on his visits out to the new landfill near the airport?

  Of course, there were those who insisted that Big Pauline was still alive and running around wild and naked somewhere, that Otis’s claim to have trapped and killed her in the fire and then buried her remains in the recently dug landfill was just a police cover-up of a failed operation, flawed from the outset by exaggeration and incompetence, that more likely she’d just snuck off in the storm with her infamous father (there’d been any number of sightings), or else had peed her way out before the storm even hit, a theory generated by the admittedly delirious account of the country club golf pro, when he was rescued shortly before dawn by what remained of the police posse after the firestorm had chased most of them away. Kevin had been thought dead, possibly eaten alive, so they were surprised to come upon him in a swampy, foul-smelling, but unburnt grove in the depths of Settler’s Woods, overcome by smoke and all but unconscious, but still alive and rambling on incoherently about the way that Big Pauline had saved his heinie, an amazing story that earned him the nickname of Pee Patch for some time thereafter, later shortened to Patch, which was easier to live with once he was behind the bar at the club once more. By that time the story, in all its retellings, had begun to lose its original contours, which he himself did not remember, having to rely entirely on what the police told him he’d said when they’d found him, and had begun to resemble one of old Stu’s shaggy dog jokes, may the old champ of the nineteenth hole rest in peace. When he’d first come around in the hospital, still in a state of shock, his lungs scarred, his bandaged hand known to have at least seventeen fractures, and his head and gut wracked by a hangover of titanic proportions, Kevin had had the impression of an angelic presence at the foot of his bed and he’d thought that maybe he’d died. But then he’d seen it was only John’s wife, and then John himself had come in later with some flowers. After that: a continuous parade of country clubbers, dropping by with booze and food to hear his stories, he was something of a legend, or rather, more like a cartoon character in a dirty comicbook, but never mind, it was fun lying there, recounting his strange adventures on that dark night, as told to him by his rescuers, like old movie reruns. “What a night that must have been!” they’d laugh and slap their knees. His hand healed but he was never again able to take a proper grip on a golf club, which brought an end to his career out on the pro circuit and changed his teaching habits somewhat, though his lessons out at the club when he got back were as popular as ever.

  Lessons that Imogen took when she and Garth moved here, weekend golf being de rigueur in this town, where not much else ever happened. Tennis, swimming, bowling, workout gyms with weight machines, even squash courts and a baseball stadium were available, but John’s crowd, the men anyway, were all golfers. Golfers and drinkers. Imogen was convinced that the reason John took Garth out of small arms contracting and distribution and brought him to town to run the racetrack and related enterprises after John’s cousin got sent to prison was because Garth had beat him over eighteen holes one day down in New Orleans and John wanted to get him up here where he could have another shot at him. In fact, her husband hadn’t won a round since, learning something out there on the links about John’s fierce competitiveness, his powers of concentration, his stubborn quiet force, though he’d done well enough to earn John’s respect and friendship. She and Garth had bought a home in a new development called Settler’s Woods across from the playground in Peapatch Park, which was either where the original pioneer, whose
statue lorded over the place, had his vegetable garden or else where his wife grew sweetpeas and other flowers; this town was full of hokey stories like that. It was a friendly place, though, easy to settle into and made easier by John’s wife, who was certainly the person to know around here. She threw a big welcoming party for them, introduced them to all their friends and everyone at the church, proposed them for memberships at the country club, took Imogen shopping, helped her enroll her two girls by a previous marriage in the local schools and invited both children to her son’s birthday party, connected them to doctors, dentists, insurance agents, and bank managers, coaxed Imogen into joining the church choir and took her to her first PTA meeting (Imogen was immediately elected treasurer), and had her over for bridge nights when the men were out of town. Which was fairly often. John had inherited from a former partner some swampland in Florida and they often went off there for what they called business meetings and to do a little deep-sea fishing and sailing. Whatever else they did, Garth didn’t say, and Imogen didn’t ask. Garth could sometimes be a bit scary. Instead, whenever he was away, she amused herself as best she could, which included taking golf lessons out at the club from Patch, a middle-aging man with a damaged hand, possibly a war wound, a randy sense of humor, and an intimate teaching style that included cuddling up from the rear and reaching around to help with the grip and backswing, which took Imogen back to her days of dry-humping at high school dances. Patch would plant one foot on the outside of her front foot to hold it in place, then push at her back foot with his other one, his knee between hers, thigh bumping the cheeks of her ass apart, his calloused hands stroking hers around the stiff leathery thing in her grip, proxy for the chunkier one bumping at her butt. Patch was not exactly her type (John was), but was attractive enough in a meaty sort of way, so finally, when he proposed it, she gazed down at their four intertangled feet shuffling in the grass below them and said, Okay, but my husband will kill you if he finds out. Patch just chuckled wickedly in her hair. So what the hell. Can’t say he wasn’t warned.