Lake Wobegon Summer 1956

by Garrison Keillor

  I almost burst into tears myself.

  The big sister sits crunching her Sugar Pops and reading a Susan Davis, Student Teacher novelette and pouting because Sugar’s phone call has taken the focus away from herself and her complaint to Mother about me typing late at night and keeping her awake. She is oblivious to the deeper things, but I am a writer and depth is a writer’s natural element. We are divers, and divers do not lounge on the beach inviting the admiration of the naïve, we plug our ears and tighten our goggles and go down below.

  Mother moves to the sink and washes her cereal bowl and Daddy looks to her for rescue as Ruth’s tiny voice gibbers in the receiver, describing the tragedy at their house. Daddy’s eyes are red, his lips purse as if he might be losing control, about to blubber at the thought of it—Ruth and Sugar’s life plunged into despair by the wild, wild ways of their only daughter—the lost lamb on the rocky steeps and the shepherd parents descending to rescue her—and what if they fail? Their hearts will be broken forever, they will turn to drink, lose their home, wind up at the county poor farm—meanwhile, the big sister is absorbed in the valiant Susan’s struggle to persuade the flinty School Board to replace the smoking furnace at Sunnyvale Elementary, and I am writing things on a napkin, and out of the blue Mother says, “I can’t get over how beautiful the lawn is.”

  “Let me have you talk to the boss,” says Daddy in a trembly voice and looks to Mother.

  She is right, our house is surrounded by the loveliest yard in town and such luxuriant turf, praise be to God.

  Why do we keep such a yard? For the love of our people, that they mayest behold it and feel uplifted by its stately quietness, Selah.

  Why do I take notes on a napkin? For the love of our people, that our joys and travails may be held up to heaven and to ourselves, that we may see what it means to be human.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to rush into anything,” says Daddy, to Ruth, and hands the phone to Mother, who shakes her head and refuses to take it.

  May the Lord bless my people at breakfast, their juice, their Post Toasties, their eyes tight and red from unshed tears over the funny pages, the cheap novel open and crumbs of toast falling into the crevice, the low rumble of the man on the radio on the counter giving the weather forecast and a joke or two, the vexations around us, the luxuriant lawn.

  And I think a thought to Kate: Do what you will, park with Roger Guppy on a lonely gravel road and the gearshift between your legs, unbutton your blouse with no bra, your small friendly animals run to greet him, open your mysteries to his throbbing manhood and so forth, come together naked and weeping and greedy in the darkest dark and thrust and pulsate, moan, throb, etc., do what you will and only let me write about it.

  I am the unseen guest, the silent listener. In my house I have many brown napkins. My ballpoint runneth over. Let me watch from the shadows, O daughter of Jerusalem, and hear you sing to your beloved, and I will take you in my own arms, all your words, your lovely visage, your everlasting soul, and bring you to my Underwood.

  “What are you staring at, stupid?” says the sister.

  Thank you, O Lord, for those who doth persecute and bite and harry, for they only do Thy Will and keep us on our toes.

  “Wake up, Shakespeare.”

  Even the sister is clear to me now—the swift avenging sword of this sanctified sourpuss—she who glories in her skill at hunting the sinner and running him naked up the tree and baying at him there cringing in the upper branches—oh, I do pity her—and may the Lord bestow such blessings and riches on her as to embarrass her poverty and meanness.

  “I’m talking to you, Mr. Toad.”

  “That’s no way to speak to your brother,” says Mother, ever hopeful that we should be a happy family like those on the radio.

  “Mr. Toad is what he calls himself in stories.”

  “I don’t care. It’s not nice.”

  Aunt Ruth’s voice is still, finally. She has told Daddy a long story, some true and most of it sheer imagination, about homes for unwed mothers operated by the Salvation Army, and women Ruth once knew who were packed off on the train to spend their confinement in long echoey rooms in musty old mansions behind iron-speared fences and give birth to their babies among rank strangers and sign the babies over to other strangers and return home to friends who now behaved like strangers and how shattering this was and so many of those unfortunate girls never recovered their poise and gumption but accepted any man who showed interest in used merchandise such as they were and thereby they landed in loveless marriages to sour old bachelors—oh, the sorrows that a young woman is susceptible to—and now, finally, Aunt Ruth is finished, and Daddy says, “We’ll just have to hope for the best and see what happens.” And says goodbye and hangs up the phone.

  And brushes the crumbs from the funny pages and starts in on L’il Iodine.

  And Mother pours him his coffee.

  The window is open to the summer breeze redolent of new-mown grass and last night’s rain and the Stenstroms’ morning glories. The dog sits by the screen door, tail thumping on the stoop. A page turns and Susan Davis, having stoked the furnace and bled the radiators, leads her third-graders through their fractions. A radio quartet sings about a cream that prevents mastitis. Mother runs the hot water and drops a blob of detergent into the stream and our nostrils twitch at the sweet astringent smell. Somewhere my cousin lies in a dim room staring at the ceiling, hearing Sugar and Ruth charging around downstairs like two spooked horses, and the cousin herself a little queasy at the thought of what life might have in store for her. She does bad things. If Grandpa and Jesus are worried about me, they must be really amazed at her. The rock is about to drop. And here, one street over, we wash dishes and attend to L’il Iodine and savor the morning coffee.

  Whatever happens, I will write it down.

  I will write no more poems to please my teachers. I will write no more of boogers and farts to curry favor among the cruel and callow. I will no longer toy with tornadoes and talking dogs and fatal blood diseases as if making a puppet show.

  I will sit at the table with my family and write down their sighs, their little pleasures, their kind hearts, their faithfulness. In the face of sin and sorrow and the shadow of death itself, they do not neglect to wash the dishes.

  I shove the napkin and pen into my pocket. I take a clean white towel out of the drawer and start drying the plates and cups. “Why, thank you,” says Mother. The big sister snorts: “Will wonders never cease!” Daddy turns the page and starts on the cross-word. Mother looks out the window over the sink toward her garden of tomatoes, peas, beets, carrots, pole beans, onions, cucumbers, red and green peppers, parsnips, Bibb lettuce, asparagus, Swiss chard, rhubarb, summer squash, resting in the blessing of bright sunshine, awaiting their death and resurrection in salads and soups.

  28

  The Principle of Separation

  That very night, around 11, Sugar spotted Roger’s Pontiac parked up the block, in front of the Fredericksons’. Sugar and Ruth had turned in at ten-fifteen, after the news, but they couldn’t sleep, so they listened to the Troubadour, and then a car came slowly up the street, the headlights in their bedroom window making a bright square drifting across the ceiling, then stopped, and the lights went out but the motor was running. Sugar dressed and went downstairs and out to the yard to investigate. He recognized the Pontiac. He approached. The rear window was steamed up. He rapped on the passenger window, and heard rustling and snickering inside, and Roger opened the door and said good evening, and both he and Kate appeared disheveled and Kate’s blouse was misbuttoned. Sugar grabbed Kate by the wrist and hauled her out kicking and yelling, and he pointed a big finger at Roger and forbade him ever to see her again. “I will not tolerate you treating my daughter like a common tramp and trollop,” he said. He towed her to the house. On the front step she called him a name he hadn’t been called since his Army days. He cocked his arm as if he might wallop her and she called him one even worse. He let go.
He cried, “Where did you ever learn words like those?”

  She said, “I learned them by living! That’s how. I actually live life. Unlike some other people around here who I could name.”

  “I forbid you to speak profanity in this house. I’m your father. And I forbid you to see that person again.”

  She said, “Well, Roger’s going to be a father too. What about him?”

  It was a restless night at their house. Kate threw some clothes in a suitcase and said she was going to run away at the first opportunity and flopped down on the couch to wait, and Ruth and Sugar made a pot of coffee and sat up until 4 A.M., weeping and reading from Scripture and arguing with her about the meaning of obedience, and Sugar even put the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the hi-fi, as if this might clarify matters. Cranked it up loud and lit several candles, and the room was full of Mormons singing “Lead, Kindly Light” and “How Great Thou Art” while Ruth started making chocolate-chip cookies, and finally, exhausted, talked out, they fell into a fitful sleep until 11 when Sugar brought Kate over to us. Ours was the only house she would consent to stay in.

  Sugar brought Kate over and she was put under house arrest in the older brother’s bedroom, among his old Science Fair projects including one about the development of the embryo chicken. Mother went upstairs to talk with her. I heard Kate crying. Daddy had stayed home from work. “I laid down the law,” Sugar said, “and she defied me and I have to kick her out of the house. What else can you do?” He looked beat-up, like he’d fallen down the stairs and had a lung removed. “I better go home and shave,” he said.

  “I thought I’d seen everything,” said Daddy, “but this takes the cake.”

  I asked him, “What’s wrong?”

  “You know perfectly well.”

  When Mother came down to the kitchen, she was a little weepy too. She said it was one of the longest days of her life and it wasn’t even noon yet. She said, “I don’t want you to talk to her. She needs to be alone.”

  —Is she sick?

  —Not exactly.

  —Is she in trouble?

  —I’ll tell you all about it someday.

  I was only trying to get Mother or Daddy to say the word pregnant out loud.

  —What’s wrong? I asked.

  —Just never you mind.

  I asked how long Kate would be staying with us, and she said, “Don’t ask so many questions.”

  Which is par for the course for this family. We believe in secrets. Aunt Eva. A big dark secret. Was she ever normal? Did she have a boyfriend? Did he promise her the Milky Way and lead her down the primrose path and then, once he got what he wanted, fly the coop and leave her to pick up the pieces? And on Mother’s side, Aunt Doe, our family martyr. Married to Rex, a florist, and then he delivered a bouquet to a Cuban woman and a week later ran away with her. Drove to Florida, intending to catch a boat to Havana, and they were coming over a hill and the tailgate came loose on a truck ahead and it dumped ten tons of bananas on the road and Rex hit the brakes, the worst thing you can do when driving on fruit, and he skidded into a palm tree and killed himself and Consuela both. Once, at supper, Doe said, “Rex really likes creamed broccoli,” as if she were expecting him for supper. It was the first time I ever heard Rex’s name mentioned in our house. Everything I knew about him I got from Kate. To Mother and Daddy, he didn’t exist anymore. Some things are better left undiscussed and Rex was one of them.

  They do not know there is now a writer in the house.

  My bedroom was next door to the brother’s, and when I put my ear to a certain spot high on my closet wall I could hear Kate’s voice. She was saying, “You never loved me. You say you do now but you never said it before, all you did was try to squeeze the life out of me, I don’t call that love. You may think it is but it’s not. Well, you won’t be seeing me again. I’m going away with Roger and have this baby, and if you don’t like it, you can stick it where the moon don’t shine. I’ll show you. I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw you again for the rest of my life.”

  And then she put her face in her hands and wept long wrenching sobs. It was hard to listen to. Maybe I should’ve gone and offered her a hug, but it didn’t seem my place to do that.

  Instead, I sat and wrote a story on my Underwood.

  Twilight in August

  It was twilight in August and the lady in the white satin dress took off her crown and set it on the bureau. Her hair was a fright, she was bushed, and there was a big grass stain on her dress from when she tripped over the shovel in the cemetery. She had traipsed from one end of town to the other, making appearances at the homes of the sick and the elderly, widows, children, blind people, backsliders, the lame and halt, the faint of heart, and her torch was all used up and so was she. She wanted to go to bed and sleep for a week. She had sung her song for every sad sack in this town and bestowed her light on them and all for what? Did anybody, anybody, get any good from it? Usually they just lay and gazed up at her with big watery eyes and winced when she blessed them and on her way out they told her to be sure to shut the door and not let the cat out.

  The only food in the house was a can of beans. She had given everything else to the poor. She felt too tired even to light a fire and heat up her humble supper.

  She sat on her front steps as the sun descended into the hills and she said, “Lord, I’ve done Your work and I’m bone-tired. I don’t know how long I can keep it up. I’m no spring chicken. Lord, I’m asking You now to give me a nice long rest.” She leaned back against the railing and put her hands in her lap and as she did she felt something kick her in the stomach. It was inside her. She held her hands over her belly and she felt the kicks again, hard ones. She asked Him for a nice long rest and He put a bun in her oven.

  She wept.

  “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered. She wondered how she should explain this miraculous event to her neighbors and then she thought, “Oh, what the hell. I’ll just go live with the blind for a while.”

  It was a beans-and-wieners night, and Mother took a plate up to Kate and the rest of us ate in the kitchen. The big sister was secretly gleeful to have a major sinner in the house. I was small fry compared with a Girl in Trouble. A virgin sullied, a soiled dove, a fallen angel. The sister feigned sorrow and concern for Kate and shook her head over the tragedy of it, a young life cast away for a moment of carnal pleasure—but it was all a big play to her. “I don’t believe God sends any tribulation except to strengthen us in our faith,” she said devoutly, chomping on a wiener.

  Mother and Daddy murmured agreement. Miss Priss was in her element. She said, “I really feel that this will draw us all closer to the Lord, especially those who may not have accepted Christ as their Saviour.” She herself had felt her own faith strengthened, she said. To see a loved one make a terrible wrong choice should confirm us all who had followed God’s Will in these matters. God has made these things clear, and God is not mocked, and those who willfully disobey must be left to God’s Mercy and to His chastening rod. It was astonishing to hear a 16-year-old girl talk like a grandpa, but this was Brethren language and we were all steeped in it. You could go around talking normal and suddenly the word vouchsafe would come out of your mouth.

  She was sailing along full-steam and then Aunt Flo and Uncle Al walked in. Our relatives didn’t knock. You heard footsteps on the porch and suddenly there they were, right next to you. Flo and Al sat down, and you could tell it was not a happy social occasion. “You’re excused now,” Mother said to me in a pointed way. LeRoy and Lois came in. Lois looked weepy, LeRoy was his usual jovial self. “Nice lawn,” he said. “How much they pay you? We’ll pay more.” Sugar and Ruth arrived, their faces pale and drawn, walking on eggshells, whispering as if in a hospital, and Mother brought in folding chairs from the living room. She told me to please go to my room. “We’re having a family meeting,” she said. The big sister smirked at me with all her might. Evidently she was allowed to stay and perhaps talk about the chastening rod.

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bsp; I went upstairs and crawled into the upstairs linen closet which was directly over the dining room. An old heating vent brought the voices up from below, like a radio show.

  They were still for a while, and then Uncle Al opened the meeting with a prayer for wisdom and the courage to follow God’s Will as Thou hast so clearly revealed it to us, which indicated that Al himself was in no doubt about what action to take.

  And then Al was talking about the principle of separation. Scripture makes clear we are to separate ourselves from evil and not let it contaminate us. Look at the Lutherans and Methodists: they tolerated false doctrine and loose behavior, like beer-drinking and smoking and card-playing and dancing and movie-going, and now they were no better than the Catholics.

  “Most people in the churches don’t have enough faith to paint their toenails with,” said Uncle Al. “They go to church and sit there in the pews, hoping something will rub off, but they don’t have Jesus in their hearts. They don’t realize that God would prefer they were out-and-out atheistic communists than be lukewarm Christians like the Laodiceans. God hates a sham. God looks on the heart. God prefers an honest sinner to a make-believe believer. If you attend church just to go through the motions, God’d rather you get you a bottle of bourbon and a whore and go to a hotel and have you a good time.” He said that we couldn’t overlook Kate’s sins or we’d be making a sham of our faith. He read a chapter from Deuteronomy, about how disobedience might cause the Lord to turn His face from you and abandon you to your enemies.