As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

  But that is another story.

  I left the march in Gothenburg Nebraska a great little town …

  One last thing about F.D.; his favorite novelist is Celine which I know for a fact whom he admires not so much for the vigor the richness and power of the writing impressive as it is but for Celine’s unrelenting and truly monstrous portrayal of humankind at it’s vilest.

  He laughs, F.D. does—I have seen him—as he reads the man.

  Still and all F.D. loves cats and dogs and a few people and for better or worse is one of our brightest and best informed citizens and to such as know him well is a good and loyal friend.

  Well, in truth in all candor I must add at this juncture that it was in no way my intention this morning to write of Bisbee or insultingly of the Irish or foolishly which is to say not wisely in regard to the possible consequence of writing with such candor of he whom I have so cleverly named F.D.—okay, so I am not yet fully awake and anyhow I am old so indulge me F.D. is as clever as I can get right now—but so it appears have I indeed writ and so be it.

  (After all when I write in these pages about events occuring seven years ago back in Alabama what have you got? you have got two old men; and that can get dull pretty quick if I the author am not careful, what with the two old men mostly just driving along on a stretch of farm-to-market country road laid out back in the thirties on a section line and surrounded now by nothing more on either side but lousy bean fields.)

  Anyhow I woke up this morning thinking about some of my more accomplished fellow citizens as mentioned earlier good friends for the most part variously warm and bright and witty worthy compatriots under any flag the friends and acquaintances anyhow who along with the geography of the place have made Bisbee home to me dear to me and thinking how our ranks have been and continue to be thinned those of my generation anyhow—removed by death or silenced by strokes—so that one (meaning I) can walk the streets some evenings now knowing how a ghost must feel—anyhow for whatever the reason I woke up this morning thinking of F.D. mostly I guess because he is still alive and started writing about him—as why not?—with a pretty neat opening line I believe which I will now repeat as you may not have noticed it the first time as follows: He carries a gun and the name of an animal …

  With a start like that why stop?

  I mean I am not often that succinct.

  Well I have introduced the man at least which was all—at most—I had intended at this point and with luck if I remember it I will get back with him again down the road a piece as we rural folk say …

  Chapter 20

  So for awhile I tried to believe or to act as though I believed that the business of driving a van down this long straight stretch of two lane macadam through a wasteland of beanfields required my full my most absolute attention—I mean how silly can we be at this sort of thing?—which is to say that I shut my eyes to everything but the road ahead, taking such comfort as I could from its emptiness its tediousness its elemental straight-line evidence of the human presence at its dullest of humankind at its most simple-minded, letting the matter of if or not old Lucian shook himself to death at this point or was somewhere down the road to emerge instead at peace again and still alive was a matter best left to the workings out—independently or between them—of Lucian’s demons and my mother’s angels so to speak—combatants and a contest well beyond my ken—which is to say—and to say it much simpler—that I drove and watched the road and left it up to fate if you will—and not for me to guess at even—if the old man simply had the shakes or was he busy there beside me at his dying?

  And if that sounds distant that’s the way I wanted it right then.

  I mean I hardly knew the man.

  And I had other things to think about.

  Mattie.

  Lisa.

  And for some reason my father.

  From the corner of my eye I watched the shadow of the van run broken at my side.

  And thought of my father.

  The way his mind worked at the end.

  Broken.

  The impossible pursuit.

  And I thought—and wondered at it—of the pain of it for me back then of being witness to it even though I had long ago ceased to love the man or believed I had.

  And then of course I remembered how it was that this was the road that led one way north to Mattie’s place and the other way south to my father’s to the house I had helped him to build there in the woods by the river where he went—to which he came so boldly at the end, the last of his vanities—bravely to live alone—to live of and to and by himself alone—truly alone at last …

  … and which I had grudgingly admired at first—the courage of it I suppose—I had even sensed a quality of penance in it an atonement—quite wrongly no doubt—even as I knew of the foolishness of such a choice for him how unlike him it was to choose this way this seeming act of abnegation of exile of social expatriation to take to the woods to get true and right with nature anyhow with the sky and the trees and the earth here at the end if not with his fellow human kind and kin …

  … a test a trial of the soul of the spirit so to speak one hardly—at least in my view at the time—hardly apt to end in much of a victory even had his brains held fast …

  … which they hadn’t of course …

  Anyhow he went forward with it hung a modest sign at roadside directing the passers-by to Walden South and saw no impertinence in this as though the sign—being small—spoke merely to a modest truth as with I suppose—to his way of thinking or at least to mine—as with one of those greasy-spoon or fly-palace restaurant signs inviting one simply to EAT; or as though by simply hanging out a shingle saying so one immediately becomes a Thoreau or—even more pitiful to my mind—as though having chosen to become an iconoclast wilderness recluse one immediately posts bills to that effect …

  … I am being petty no question of it …

  But anyhow the way it went the passers-by continued passing by—they were not enticed not the wilderness types I’m afraid—and so it came to pass—as they say in more serious literature than this when the probable outcome to the issue at question has already been pretty well established in advance—so it came to pass that my father’s Walden South was Funny Farm South in no time at all.

  My father blamed it on the squirrels.

  I tried to see it that way myself at first, that it was the unforeseen daily antics of the squirrels their daybreak dance of life the celebratory patter of their little squirrel feet like the sounds of intermittent hail each daybreak on his cabin roof, that it was this that galled him stuck so finally in his craw when in fact it was not the squirrels it was my father going squirrely the first real sign of it …

  … but at first I had also thought it was the squirrels that it had to be—and reasonably so, come to think of it, here in the silence the isolation a small annoyance that had got large—and nothing amiss with the old man at all other than this problem of his with the squirrels the irritation of it the way each day they woke him cavorting about on his cabin roof even sometimes throwing pine cones down upon it …

  (At certain times of the year in the fall I think squirrels may be seen eating pine cone seeds right off the cone holding it in their little paws much in the way we eat corn on the cob only not as messy and more fun to watch.)

  … and it was these empty pine cones most likely that were those thrown down from the nearby trees on my father’s cabin roof—if any were at all, although even my father—gaga as he finally got—never really quite believed it was done by the squirrels deliberately and for spite …

  … or so he said; although in time indeed there were moments—to which I was witness—when it seemed that in fact he suspected nothing less than malice—some actual malicious intent on the part of the squirrels—as they awakened him each dawn to his growing craziness his loneliness, to this new strangeness …

  (How much was he aware of it back then—or later—or ever? and when did he first give it (to himself)
a name?)

  (He was never one to speak from the inner man about anything.)

  For myself I have this notion that if somewhere along the way we start going seriously adrift we will—most of us anyhow—go on around the bend if we do in somewhat the manner the form—the style you might say—that got us there; even indeed if quite out of our gourd as we come crookedly ashore—to mix a metaphor—I suspect we remain in some way similar still to the person we were to start with, the one that was visible even in the child, the child that became the youth that became the man that became the crazy.

  Maybe this seldom happens quite that way of course.

  But sometimes it does.

  I remember how my father would glance up at the ceiling and give his head a jerk a private negative emphatic jerk at the sound of the squirrels on his cabin roof at the wrong of it the same as when myself in kindergarten and the alphabet a mystery to me still he would shake his head the same—the very same and in silence—when I could not identify the indicated letter there on the chalk board before us (and the pointer would swiftly strike the palm my palm held open to receive it to leave me once again more burdened with incredulity than with pain that he still couldn’t see it that I was petrified that I couldn’t have called the letter had I known it) he would give his head a quick hard jerk of disbelief that I could be so dumb that things could be that wrong that much against all reason his notion of the way things were …

  … the same with me as with the squirrels …

  … only one the father, one time’s fool …

  … familiar pieces of the man that was.

  And so for myself anyhow it pleases me to think that if at this late juncture I were somehow to venture out—dumbly in my father’s footsteps as it were—or—more fancily imagined—at the instruction of that brain nibbling mouse in my skull blood brother to my father’s—blood being thicker than water as they say—(certainly not the most cheerful of fancies but with fancies one never knows) if by chance that is if something anyhow had me to venture out into the woods and to go crazy there alone and frisky squirrels were regularly to be heard gambling about on the cabin roof I do believe—I am almost certain of it—I would come to hear it as a kind of merriment; I might suppose for instance that the squirrels were telling one another jokes and then cracking up and running around all over the rooftop laughing.

  That would be like me.

  Or I believe it would.

  I hope it would.

  Beside me startling me Lucian laughed.

  He he.

  A private joke of some sort.

  It had to be.

  Not a word had been spoken.

  In fact I had flat forgot that he was there.

  To die or not to die.

  No wonder he startled me.

  He laughed again he he.

  His shakes had ceased.

  Maybe that was why he laughed I thought that he was still alive that he lived that he hadn’t died.

  Could be I thought.

  Sweet Jesus I thought.

  It was something Lucian might have said.

  I merely thought it.

  I have no idea what I meant by it.

  Not an inkling.

  Chapter 21

  It was bean fields still to either side and straight ahead although off to the south on the horizon there was a low green cloud that I knew to be piney woods and knew as well that it would not be all that much further now until the road would ease on into a long slow curve heading south toward the river—no rightangle section line dog-leg jog this time—but a falling away a long slow swinging arc that after so much straight line dullsville time could seem almost cosmic in its easeful alteration its gentleness its elemental lightness—as though somewhere a baby sighed and smiled and the road just had to curve—okay enough but if you have ever traveled a two-lane arrow-straight highway mile after mile through the Kansas wheat fields say or found yourself on a similar trajectory through the head-high corn fields of Nebraska—I mean Baldwin County Alabama is not alone in this shortest distance from nowhere to nowhere nonsense—I mean think about it; what is all the hurry anyhow?—just look at it this way is what I am suggesting and you will see I think no exaggeration—although perhaps some poetic license but not much—in the way I have written of it here, of the true and natural and understandable awakening the pleasure one can know just that the long straight road has eased at last into a curve a bend has placed you once again more properly on your rightful human way in the larger swing of things …

  … well anyhow …

  … okay so it well may be that all I have accomplished here is to remark on a very simple thing at way too great a length; but what the hell having done it I will let it stand …

  … after all it is the stuff of memory from which I write …

  … and memory comes alive I think as much in ambiance as in particulars …

  … and thus it is (I cop a plea) that my words perhaps sometimes suggest a manzanita thicket …

  … but even so henceforth all memory will be heard by me …

  … at this late date indeed will I listen even through the pauses …

  … so long as memory lasts I will summons it …

  … I will bend to hear it even if it whispers …

  … Hemingway said it: What is a writer without memory?

  What is anyone?

  But enough.

  You all right? I asked Lucian.

  I could mightily use a drink he said.

  You often get the shakes like that? I said.

  Only when I’m drunk he said.

  He sounded halfway sober—not humble or contrite—just thoughtful more or less.

  The bean fields were thinning out and here and there there were farms that looked to me like farms.

  You ever notice Lucian said the way there is mail boxes now painted black?—never used to be—always used to be the natural color of the tin—maybe rusted some but never black as I can recollect—now half of them is black it looks like—you ever notice?

  No I said.

  It’s Christians he said.

  I nodded and waited to see how it was that it was Christians.

  Can’t wait to die Lucian said—sit around up in heaven—rejoicing—what they say.

  I slowed and stopped at a four way intersection and sure enough some of the mail boxes clustered at a corner there were black the newer ones especially.

  Look like little coffins don’t they? Lucian said.

  Now that you mention it I said.

  You a Christian? Lucian said.

  No I said.

  Christians don’t hold with drinking Lucian said—dying’s okay but not drinking—strange now ain’t it?

  I nodded; put like that you could say it was strange.

  Sit around under ground is what they do Lucian said—don’t never quit drinking—you understand?

  I drink I said I just don’t get the shakes.

  And then the road began its long slow swing to the south toward the river just the way I had remembered it; maybe half way to Mattie’s place or my father’s either one I figured and for some reason—maybe just from being out in the country or away from Fairfield and Lisa and my dubious domestic duties there—anyhow I got thinking about being a kid myself in this same part of the country back when it was country still coming down from upscale Westchester County New York down into the red clay dirt road rural south and how it was that except for missing my mother it hadn’t actually been all that bad—better everything being new I guess than just the newness of my mother’s death—in Alabama it had come easier for me to say it finally say the single simple truth of it that my mother was dead as though that explained why I was in Alabama and anything else about me that the kids at school might want to know—which it really did I suppose, explain it to them I mean—what kid with a mother still alive would need much more of an explanation than that?—and the truth is that I actually liked the school at Larson or the schoolhouse anyhow right fr
om the start something about the way it echoed like a barn and had large round wood-burning stoves in every room and floors that creaked when this one particular big dumb kid walked out of the room each day on his way to the john—I can almost remember his name—he would come in from recess or lunch and wait until the class got settled down and all quiet and then raise his hand and ask to be excused—to go he always said—I remember thinking that there had to be something else he could do to get our attention but I couldn’t think what—and the johns were outdoors two of them one for boys and one for girls at opposite ends of the lot with an opening up under the eves so you could stand on the seats and look out and watch for teachers while you smoked—I didn’t smoke at first but soon I did—and watch the girls come and go across the way—in winter you could be seated on the john with the rain blowing in on your head and a cold wind blowing up your butt you wouldn’t believe—and even that seemed pretty neat to me at the time like it was part of the business of growing up a man.

  I used to wonder about the girls though what they thought about it; probably not much.

  I kept noticing posters along the road saying Burkhard for county commissioner and the name Burkhard on mail boxes and I remembered that I had gone to school with a kid named Burkhard—that was later at the high school at Karlsville—a short thick-necked kid who had boils a lot and was usually looking for a fight—could have been the boils I suppose—or something in his diet or anyhow something had set his teeth on edge and we all knew it and gave him all the space he wanted.

  One day a kid on our bus—not the bus that this Burkhard kid rode—ventured the opinion which he undoubtedly had got from his folks that the trouble with this particular Burkhard kid as with much of that line of Burkhards was a matter of their being born of bad seed and nothing much to be done about it.

  Seemed a reasonable theory to me at the time and still does somewhat.

  I went to school here with a Burkhard I said to Lucian; can’t remember his name.