Pontoon

by Garrison Keillor

  But he didn’t. He wrote the lines: “Dark shadows hover near, unseen. Men cannot fathom what they mean. They are the shadows of the wings of that dark visitor who brings Death to you and also me, despite all electricity. No device, however grand, can halt his step or stay his hand—Not light nor warmth nor radio wave can slow our progress to the grave.” There his epic ended.

  The next morning he tuned in Waiting for the Call on which Pastor Lyman found warnings in Jeremiah against the Internet and Mr. Detmer, having worked all his life to bring cheap electricity to Lake Wobegon, felt he had done the devil’s work.

  “You did good for us all,” said Mrs. Detmer, ever the optimist, but six months later he was still feeling the imminence of the End. People who said hello to him in the Chatterbox and asked him how he was were given a gospel tract “THIS DAY MAY BE YOUR LAST,” which discouraged friendly conversation. “Hey, good to see you again,” they said as they walked away.

  Mr. Detmer knew he had lost traction upstairs. The Lord had shown him the Truth, but the Lord had also taken away some marbles. Crossword puzzles were beyond him. He talked to Debbie on the phone and stared at the 3x5 index card on which Mrs. Detmer had carefully printed:

  DEBBIE. YOUR DAUGHTER. IN CALIFORNIA.

  SHE LOVES YOU, WALTER.

  Walter was 72, Lutheran, Lake Wobegon-born and bred, a graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead. He had never experienced mystical visions in his life and now he was seeing one a minute. Men in black whispering, “Don’t believe them. Don’t you see how it all hangs together?” He didn’t like this. After thinking it through, which took several hours, he decided to remove himself from the picture by taking pills. He had forty of them he had pilfered from Mrs. Detmer’s prescription and they were stashed in a manila envelope on which he wrote “Declaration of Independence.” It was in his desk at the office. He would do it, he thought, on a Monday, when his secretary Phyllis came in at noon. That would give him three hours to get the job done.

  He was ready to go but first he needed to write a letter to his family and, in his present condition, that was hard. Dear Wife, he wrote. I am gone. It was time to go so I took the quickest route. These are the Last Days and I had to get out. We had a good life with no more troubles than most people and I am glad for all our good years together. I have left you enough money to get along on and I hope you have a very nice life. But it won’t last long because God is moving on the waters. I will see you very soon. Your loving husband.

  Mrs. Detmer told Debbie she doubted very much that he would ever be himself again. “This is as much of him as we are ever going to get,” she said. “Aside from his references to the end of the world and the seven-headed angel and the blood covering the moon, he is pleasant and not much trouble, really. I just hope I can keep him at home for another year or two. Then we’ll move into assisted living, which I dread but what can you do?”

  12. ATHEISM DISCOVERED

  The news spread quickly on Saturday evening, and yet on Sunday morning, during the 10 a.m. service, when Pastor Ingqvist announced Evelyn’s death there were gasps and tears. Only thirty-four people in the pews and they had been pummeled hard by the substitute organist, Tibby Marklund having gone to Vermont for three weeks. Her sub was a pale thin man with colorless hair who liked to put the pedal to the metal so the prelude was like an artillery barrage before the invasion, and the opening hymn was one nobody had ever sung before in their lives, a 15th Century English plainsong, a hairshirt of a hymn, and it sounded like a fishing village keening for its dead.

  The pastor came down into the congregation for the announcements, pale and blue-eyed in his big white tablecloth vestments. “We’ve had bad news. Our sister Evelyn Peterson passed away late Friday at home and I know this comes as a shock to many of you,” he said, hearing the communal intake of breath, seeing heads turn toward Barbara’s empty seat in the fourth row from the back. Mute shock. Their expressions said: why didn’t Barbara call and tell me? I was one of Evelyn’s best friends, doggone it. Evelyn gone. One more tall tree, fallen. The world we knew, turned sideways again. What happened? Was she sick? She sure didn’t look sick a couple of days ago. Judy Ingqvist put her head in her hands and cried, though she’d known since Saturday afternoon. Evelyn shouldn’t die. She was healthy. A brisk walker. Every day. From her house down to Main Street in her trademark tomboy stride and then south past the Knutes temple and the Statue of the Unknown Norwegian and out of town past the Farmers Co-op grain elevator and the slough and over the hill beyond the town dump and then east along the lake shore and over Trott Brook and past the Magendanz place to the Indian mound where she would stand facing the water and look for the loon couple who dwelt there. The amorous cries of this faithful pair were thrilling to her. There she did her stretches, knee bends, jumping jacks, sit-ups, the whole routine, and then hiked back. Sometimes Judy joined her. They talked about everything under the sun. Evelyn was omnivorous. And now that quick mind, that long stride, that live wire—is dead? What a dismal thought. “All of us extend our love and support and prayers to the Peterson family and to all of Evelyn’s friends, which I guess includes everyone here”—he chuckled—“so what I’m saying is that we extend our love to ourselves, which I’m sure Evelyn would approve of. And of course we’ll announce the funeral arrangements as those are decided.”

  Actually Barbara had told him on Saturday night: the arrangements had been decided. They would cremate her and put her ashes into the bowling ball and plop her into the lake. No eulogy. No hymns.

  Florence and Al were not in church that morning. She had consulted with Al’s nephew, a lawyer, about challenging Evelyn’s letter (unsigned, unwitnessed) in court but as he described the procedures, the petition, the hearing, the affidavits, Florence waved her hand and said, “We’ll think about it” and that was that. “I don’t care anymore,” she said to Al. “What will be will be.”

  “We could go to Chicago next weekend and visit Tom and Sue,” said Al.

  “I am not going to be run out of town just because they want to put my sister into a bowling ball and drop her from a kite,” said Florence. “I will attend her service and I will hold my head high. I just wish she could see what she’s done to me.”

  After church, Pastor Ingqvist called Barbara and said, “I just want you to know that we’re all in shock and thinking about you and sometimes it’s hard to reach out when we need help, but whatever you need, I want you to call me, okay? And I’m here if you want to talk.” It sounded to her like pastor mode. Unctuous. A script from the handbook on bereavement. And she said, “It’s all set. Mother made her wishes clear so there’s really nothing to talk about.”

  “As I say, I’m here if you need me,” he said.

  “And vice versa,” she said. Mother was clear: no eulogy, no public prayers and “Moon River” the only music. Period. Over and out.

  She didn’t go to church because it was a nice day and also she didn’t need all those clammy hands patting her on the back. All the weepy condolences. She had no desire to get splattered with sympathy. People trying to be comforting can be weird. After church her phone rang and rang and she didn’t pick up the receiver. She could hear their voices: “So sorry. Such a shock. She was such a trouper. I know how you must feel …” She put on a big straw hat and dark glasses and headed out for a hike along Mother’s route around the lake. Dogs lay in the shade and watched her. A dog lay at the end of his chain, his chin on the ground, pawing at the grass in front of a bathub half-buried vertically in the ground, the half above ground forming a little grotto for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, arms outstretched, pity in her blank eyes. He had pawed a bare spot at her feet. A dog’s homage. A car went by with two teenage boys slumped down in the front seat. Summer insects chittering and a lawn mower started up and then coughed and died and a model airplane whined, circling high in the sky. A child cried “Boogers on you” and ran behind a house with a mosaic of petunias in front. A sign was pounded into the lawn, “Garage Sale,�
� and there in the driveway on card tables were stacks of books and encyclopedias, deer antlers, a mandolin, some golf clubs, boxes of sheet music, squirrel traps and a box of shoe trees, a chafing dish, a jigsaw puzzle of the 1965 Minnesota Twins, a Hamm’s beer serving tray, a set of six maroon goblets with painted flowers ugly as sin, a framed poster of the Northern Pacific Vista Dome crossing the Rockies.

  She thought she might like to buy that. Put something new on the wall. She’d dreamed of riding the Vista Dome when she was a kid, watching the mountains slide by, enjoying a nice lunch in the dining car served by old black men who call you Darling, your daddy sitting across from you in his nice wool suit and tie, except she didn’t have that kind of daddy. She could hear the jump-rope girls out in the alley behind the garage and it sounded like—

  Betty, Betty

  Are you ready?

  Spill your guts like hot spaghetti.

  Who’d you kiss?

  Was he sweet?

  Make your heart skip a beat?

  You’re so cool

  Got your groove

  How much clothing did he remove?

  One, two, three, four, five …

  A heavy air of Sunday boredom. Benign, indifferent, dozy. Main Street was deserted except for five cars angled in at the Chatterbox Café. In Skoglund’s Five&Dime, a window display of party decorations, crepe paper, favors, balloons, festive placemats with faces of clowns. A sign in the door of Jim’s Barbershop, CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. He’d had a stroke, poor man. The King of the Crewcut, fading. A ballgame was on the radio, heard from an open window above the Mercantile: the crowd quiet, the southern drawl of the announcer, Herb Carneal, sounded like a string of taffy, stretching. Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery, the door propped open. A stack of Sunday papers in the rack, the top one fluttering in the breeze, restless. A woman gazing out the front window, over the TOILET PAPER 2 FOR $1 sign. Her old classmate, Marcy. She’d had some sort of operation. Maybe a hysterectomy. She waved and Barbara waved back. They hadn’t been friends for years, since Barbara overheard her using the words “weird” and “schizo” and realized that she, Barbara, was the subject. Now, after Mother’s death, maybe she wanted to make up and be friends. She was one of those mean women who develop hugging tendencies late in life as if that made up for everything. Well, nuts to her. Some insults aren’t forgiven. Go suck your tongue, Marcy.

  Barbara walked down the street past the Mercantile, the elderly manikins in their green playsuits gazing down at her, historic costumes from an old beach movie, and the hardware store where Old Man Ziegler used to stand, glowering, at the counter—all the stock was in the back room—and you had to tell him what you wanted, and if you didn’t know the name of it, a chamfer or a gimlet or a reamer, with a quarter-inch burr or the ⅜ or the ¾, he rolled his eyes and groaned. An autocrat of hardware and then he died of pneumonia and his son Johnny made the store self-service. A mercy to everyone. The monument to the Unknown Norwegian. The great stone figure pointed toward the west, though all that lay west was the flat prairie, where Norwegians tended to turn mean or else go berserk, and sometimes both. There was Lundberg’s Drugs that once boasted a soda fountain, where boys in starched shirts built sundaes and banana splits, but no more. One more sweet detail gone forever. And Krebsbach Chev where the old clickety-clack gas pumps were replaced and the new ones beep and are self-service so there is one less person to ask you “How are you today?” and “What do you think about this weather?” On the sidewalk the words EAT SHIT that somebody had tried to smudge out. She stopped and scraped it with her shoe, hard, with little effect. On the light pole was taped a poster for the Gornick & Berg carnival coming Labor Day, Ferris wheel and Kiddie Tilt-a-Whirl and games of chance. A poster for the FOURTH OF JULY DOUBLEHEADER, Whippets vs. Avon Bards—4 p.m. Wally (Old Hard Hands) Bunsen Memorial Park—which the Whippets had already lost. Skunked, twice. Barbara had dated Ronnie the centerfielder after Lloyd left. He told her a story about how he caught a 16-lb. walleye in Lake Wobegon and let him go free. “Just like I wish I were free,” Ronnie said. They made love that night. She slept with him a few times, a real case of impaired judgment, then he tried to avoid her, not easy in a town this size. He’d found a new girlfriend, Janine, a perkier one, and he quit going to the Sidetrack Tap after games and switched to the Sidewinder outside of Millet, a rock’n’roll bar where the music is loud enough to keep the drunks upright, and Barbara cornered him there and he tried to hide in the men’s room and she opened the door and called him names and the bartender escorted her out and then asked her for a date. She said, “No thanks.” He had tattoos on his neck, not a good sign.

  She’d attended that doubleheader with Mother. She ate two bratwursts and a fudge bar, downed a cold beer and talked about going to Italy in the fall. Ronnie made two errors in the first game, let a single scoot through his legs for a double and then overthrew third base by twenty feet, allowing the runner to score. And in the second game, when he chased a deep fly ball and ran into the fence and the ball hit him in the back, Barbara felt gloriously vindicated. The little bastard lay sprawled in the grass and when eventually he managed to totter to his feet, the crowd cheered, and Barbara thought, Hope that clears up your premature ejaculation problem.

  The glimmer of sun on the water through the trees. An outboard motor in the distance.

  A few pale blobs lay on the beach, nobody venturing in the water due to rumors of swimmer’s itch: a parasite in bird droppings causes an itchy rash like chicken pox. So they lay in the sun getting redder and redder. She and Lloyd once went skinny-dipping there and afterward lay on the cool sand and he put his hand between her legs and she said, “Don’t.” But he still did. Back in the days when he couldn’t keep his hands off her.

  In the winter, she and Lloyd used to skate here side by side, hands crossed, and he’d swing out in front and turn and they’d skate backward holding hands and she’d lift her back leg and strike a pose and he’d turn her and they’d both skate backward in a figure 8, gliding around and around. Such a lovely feeling. People watching said, “You should enter a contest,” but what’s the point of that? You work your tail off and then you feel bad when you don’t win.

  *

  They got married in 1976. He seemed quite plausible—who could gauge the loser in him though the slope shoulders maybe were a clue—he was a good workmanlike lover who got to the point and stuck with the job until it was done. They were in a big rush and they dashed out of the church and had sex four times a day for about three weeks and then lo and behold a baby came along and by the time they woke up and realized what they’d done, their lovely romance was over. Fatherhood hit Lloyd like a two-by-four. He never got over it. He was born to be sorry and when Muffy was born brain-damaged, half-strangled on the cord, it knocked the wind right out of him. He took it as a judgment on him for not being a good person. He sank into depression and ate nothing but cornflakes for weeks. Cornflakes and anchovies and brown beans. The little girl didn’t walk until she was almost two or talk until she was three. She liked school okay until third grade, then hit a wall—Oh God, what a time. The crème de cacao set in. And Lloyd couldn’t bear to look at Muffy without weeping. They never made love after that. She tried to get him to go to Antigua to relight the romance. “Why Antigua? Florida’s cheaper.” But he didn’t want Florida either. No fare was cheap enough. Who would shovel their driveway if they weren’t there? “Why shovel it if we aren’t here?” she said. “I just want to go where it’s warm.” “So put on a sweater,” he said.

  Barbara got to know a lovely man, a priest. Kyle came along afterward and Lloyd accepted him, asked no questions. Oh God, she thought, I am just about to start bawling. Why go over the past? Much too painful. Think about the future.

  *

  Now she had Oliver whose passion was slow to mount but once lit he got more and more excited, his great bulk trembling, and he held her close and moaned and whispered, and finally rose to engage, a great bull walrus in heat crouc
hing behind her in the dark, his shirttails on her buns, exerting heroically, thrusting with unabashed vigor, delirious, almost out of his mind until in full passion he removed his shirt and his great belly slapped her butt whap whap whap whap he got panting and wheezing so she was afraid his heart would burst and he would topple onto her dead or dying, but no, he only rolled over exhausted and let her climb up and ride him while he rested, and then he was ready to go again. And when he spent, it was with a long low cry out of an ancient warrior throat, a primeval cry that made her almost weep that she could give so much pleasure to another. And then suddenly he was shy again, covering himself, slipping into the big shirt, the elephantine pants, the placid moon face. He was Lutheran, like her, brought up modest. Nowadays young girls acted as lewd as possible. Tiny tank tops, short shorts, their pretty little boobs pushed up, their cracks on display for boys to ponder. Wenching around in swimsuits made of three tiny triangles and a few feet of fishing line. A wonder they aren’t all pregnant by the age of fifteen. Don’t go for the charmers, girls. Pick the smart oddball, the shy but steady one grateful for your attention. Go for loyalty.

  A boat buzzed past on the lake, towing a tall blond girl on water skis, followed by a pontoon boat with a big family standing as if riding a float in a parade and they were the winning team. She counted six fishing boats anchored at this end of the lake, each with two men, bow man and stern man, poles in hand. Catholics, probably. They got church out of the way on Saturday. In and out. Up, down, say you’re sorry, pay your fine, out in time. Lloyd was Catholic. Her dad was far from devout but he got upset when she brought Lloyd home, and angry when she married him, but Lloyd switched right over to Lutheran and trotted along, it made no never mind to him. He was a churchgoer, period. Because if you weren’t, it raised questions and made problems, so he went along. Clip clop, clip clop. Blessed are the meek for they shall stay out of trouble.