Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  “Jesus!” said the man in front, grabbing the woman. He spun back around, and I hoped that would be the end of it.

  On level ground, we passed some rock formations—cliffs that jutted out to form craggy profiles. “Some people see Abe Lincoln over there,” said the driver.

  “I see him, I see him,” squealed a little girl behind me.

  The man in front turned to us again. His beaver teeth gnawed at the air. “You two married?” he asked.

  I glanced down at my ringless left hand, in full view on my knee. “No.”

  “Oh, just up for the day? The Dells is a pretty long way to come on a date, isn’t it?”

  Was this the way it was going to be? Endless questions that produced endless lies that curved and twisted and cut back, forming a maze as jumbled as the piles of rocks all around? It seemed so hopeless. Everyone knew—they just looked at us and knew. And Elro wasn’t any help. He was still thrashing his thighs, refusing to talk. Why was it up to me?

  “We’re part of a church group that left early this morning and came on a bus,” I said. “We sang hymns all the way up.”

  “Oh.” He was quiet for a second. I was exhausted. The lie had taken all my strength.

  “What church?” he asked.

  “Methodist.”

  “Really? That’s our church. Hear that, honey?” The woman nodded her head slowly. Her tiny lips were locked in a perfect straight line. “Who’s the minister there?” the man asked. “Maybe we know him.”

  “Jeremiah P. Calhoun.”

  “Calhoun, Calhoun.” He scrunched his face to show he was thinking hard. “Don’t really know him, I guess. Calhoun. That’s funny. It sounds like a Catholic name.”

  “Oh, he’s completely Methodist.”

  “Well, I guess he has to be.”

  “Yes.” How could I stop him? What did he want? I felt too tired for this. I couldn’t go on. Better to confess it up, tell him everything. Maybe behind those shiny front teeth there’d be some compassion. Suddenly, from deep inside my weariness, a thought popped up. “Are you two here on a honeymoon?” I asked, smiling.

  He tipped his head and pretended to blush. “Hear that?” he said to the woman. “She thinks we’re on our honeymoon.” Again he shifted in his seat, turning around so he almost faced me. “We’ve been married for four years,” he said. “Actually, we’re here as a kind of reward—one I’m giving myself for some work I did in Chicago a few weeks ago. I spent four days there. Can you guess what I was doing?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, guess. Think of the newspapers. Chicago.” He jiggled in his seat. It had worked; he only wanted to talk about himself.

  “Something with money?”

  “No, no,” he said irritably. “The convention. The Democratic Convention. I was a delegate.”

  “Great.”

  He rocked back. “A delegate! Me! A baker! A delegate to the Democratic National Convention. I actually ate breakfast with Adlai Stevenson.”

  “Wow.”

  For ten minutes, while the duck bobbed along the trail, the man described how a friend had talked him into going down to his local Democratic club, how he’d run errands, walked the streets, handed out leaflets—done all the low-level jobs a beginner has to do. And then, last spring, when the president of the club died suddenly, and the vice-president went bankrupt, they’d put him on the ballot as a delegate. And he’d won!

  The man was completely turned around, kneeling on his seat. I felt safe, since he’d clearly lost interest in quizzing us, but Elro didn’t understand that. He’d slowly gone rigid as a firecracker. Only his hands and arms moved, rubbing methodically up and down his thighs.

  “Now they want me to give a speech at the high school on opening day,” the delegate said. He gripped the metal bar between us. “And you know what I’m gonna tell those kids?”

  “No.”

  “Guess.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What’s holdin’ ya back? You know?” His eyes were burning. “That’s what I’ll tell ’em: What’s holdin’ ya back?”

  With that, Elro blew. “Shut up!” he screamed, his face brilliant red. “Shut up. Just turn around and shut up!” His hands were clenched in tight fists.

  Everyone stared. A little dark-faced boy, across the aisle on his mother’s lap, put his face next to hers and clung nervously to her sleeve.

  The delegate flinched and leaned back, holding onto the bar. “You don’t need to be so touchy about it,” he said. He looked Elro over, then looked around, apparently assessing what stake he had in facing up to the challenge. When his wife pulled on his arm, he turned and settled back into his seat.

  Elro was panting, so I put my hand on his leg to calm him. His jeans were still hot where he’d been rubbing.

  We rode on quietly for another mile or so. Elro’s outburst had silenced the other tourists. Where before there’d been noisy chatter, now there were only soft murmurs and occasional glances to see how Elro was bearing up. Once again, in our eagerness for anonymity, we’d managed to draw the attention of everyone.

  Soon the woods opened up and the duck slowed to approach the edge of a large lake. We crawled down a concrete ramp that disappeared under the blue-green water. Hitting the surface of the lake, the duck was lifted gently, and we seemed to be floating in air. Then the propeller started up with a muffled roar, and we pushed on.

  Here was the real Dells—the high, red cliffs lining the lake, the rocks balanced impossibly at crazy angles, always on the verge, it seemed, of breaking loose and clattering murderously into the water far below. After the flatness around Katydid, the wide, tended stretches of green, the cliffs looked incredibly harsh and unfriendly. They were spectacular, but almost too much so, as if they were man-made or inauthentic, nature’s equivalent of a platinum dye job.

  Sitting there beside Elro, I gradually came to realize how ridiculous this was. I’d just changed my life forever, abandoned my mother, run away with a boy I didn’t even like, and now I was sailing around in a weird boat in the middle of a resort. Nothing ever turns out the way you expect. No matter how hard you think, no matter how carefully you plan, things always end up differently. There’s no imagining that works. I mean, riding a duck! That’s what it always seems to come down to.

  The boat puttered along the shore, here and there nosing into a small cove, while the driver crackled away about the sights. Compared to the constant bumping on the Duck Trail, the ride on water was pillowy. The duck moved slowly and the waves drummed rhythmically along the sides. The delegate ignored us. He said a few quiet words to his wife, but mostly he stared coldly off at the cliffs. Elro didn’t talk, but I sensed him starting to relax. His body slackened, then rocked with the regular motion of the boat. Eventually, he slumped down, put his head on my shoulder, and went to sleep.

  He woke again as we pulled into the parking lot. To avoid any confrontations, we waited to get off until everyone else had left. People filing out inspected us carefully. The delegate permitted himself one quick peek our way. The corners of his mouth were stapled tight, and he shook his head for our benefit.

  “What a bunghole,” muttered Elro.

  “Shhh,” I said, patting him on the arm.

  When we got to the pickup, the cab was filled with superheated air, and the seat was too hot to touch. I fanned the doors for a few minutes, the way I’d seen the mother do earlier, and Elro took a towel out of his suitcase for me to sit on. Finally we started off and pulled into a line of cars easing onto the road. After a few minutes of starting and stopping, a loud, insistent honking erupted behind us. I looked back. A blue convertible was trying to butt into the line of cars just in back of us. The driver hollered and honked again. It was the delegate. He’d spotted us and was trying to catch up, though parked cars were blocking his way in front, and the cars in line weren’t letting him in.

  “Hey! You!” he yelled, waving at me. “Hey! I thought you said you came on a bus?”

  He in
ched the convertible forward, but the car behind us held its ground. The delegate stood, pulling himself up by the steering wheel. He pointed toward me. “She said she came on a bus,” he yelled to the other drivers, as if that alone were reason to let him in line. Still, no one made room. So again the delegate honked, and this time he held it, sending out a long, mean howl that hung in the air.

  Again, Elro blew. He looked back wildly, his face clamped in a fierce mask. Then he rammed the gearshift into low. The pickup roared and shot out of line. It jumped a curb onto a grassy median, churned over the ground, and hopped the median at the far end. Turning and digging into the main road, the truck spit pebbles at the parking attendant, who had jumped behind a signpost. Both lanes of the road were packed with cars, but Elro headed down a shoulder, zooming past cars stuffed with faces set in wonder. After about fifty yards, he cut behind a street sign, ran over a sidewalk, and bounced onto a side street. It, too, was busy, but he stayed on the pavement, swinging into the oncoming lane to pass several cars. He went a few blocks, then cut left across traffic onto another side street and soon turned and turned again. We were in a subdivision. Small, frail summer houses were crammed side-by-side. Here and there, a thin pine jutted out of a lawn. The street was quiet, and Elro finally slowed down.

  “Fuck the duck,” he said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “What are we going to do now?”

  “Get a motel room.”

  “But, I mean, beyond that.”

  “What beyond that?”

  “You know, we can’t stay anywhere near the Dells now, and I was going to get a job as a waitress.”

  “Don’t talk about it.” Elro’s hands clutched the steering wheel. His eyes were outlined in red, as if someone had taken a crayon and run it around the edges of his lids. Another narrow country road stretched out before us, disappearing ahead into the darkness of jaggedy pine shadows. We’d arrived at this route, heading north, after winding tediously through back alleys and side streets. Now we weren’t just fugitives from Katydid, but also from the Dells, whose police were undoubtedly eager to find the hotrodder responsible for disrupting their busiest Saturday. Elro had slipped into one of his silences again; in fact, he’d already passed a few motels without even seeming to notice.

  “It’s getting late,” I said.

  A slight shrug of his heavy shoulders.

  “I’m tired,” I added.

  A grunt, perhaps an approximation of “Me, too.”

  “We’re never going to find a motel on this road.” Aside from a tractor pulling a hay wagon, we hadn’t seen a vehicle in ten minutes. Even the farms seemed forsaken. Coming over one hill, we’d driven past the crumbling remains of an enormous barn, whose rotting, caved-in sides looked skeletal, like the ribs on a huge, fallen beast.

  “We’re really in trouble,” said Elro.

  “Well, if you hadn’t panicked back there.”

  “Me? If you hadn’t lied, we’d have been all right. Why’d you have to lie to him?”

  “What was I supposed to tell him?”

  “Nuthin’.”

  “Well, you weren’t any help. You just sat there rubbing your pants.”

  “That’s better than blabbing. You’re as bad as your mother.”

  “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “She’s got a big mouth.”

  “She does not.”

  “Does too. Every time she came to school, she acted as if she owned the place.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Shut up, Elro.”

  “You shut up.”

  We swung around a sharp curve cut into the side of a hill. The pebbly, rust-colored soil had bled onto the road, leaving thin, red fingers on the concrete.

  “You know something?” I said. “I don’t really understand why you did this—why you ran away with me. I mean, I think I know why, but that doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, really, Elro. What were you thinking?”

  He shrugged. “Nuthin’.”

  “Do you know Eddie Boggs?” I asked.

  “Know who he is.”

  “Well, last week, we were out at a picnic on the Little Carp, Eddie and Bunny and I, and he tried to explain to me how he felt, and it just didn’t make any sense at all. I couldn’t understand. He ended up getting mad at me.”

  “So?”

  “Now you. I can’t figure out what you’re thinking. I mean, I’m grateful and all, but I wonder.” I started talking fast and using my hands. I was tired and suddenly I was getting too many ideas. “Are you just thinking about tonight, about doing it? But what about tomorrow or the day after that or the day after that or ten years from now? I mean, I can hardly make a move anymore without my head filling with these questions about what the move will mean for tomorrow and the future. It’s as if for every move I see these dominoes falling, and I try to follow where the last domino will drop. I don’t like it necessarily, but that’s the way I think. And the few times, the few, tiny moments, when I don’t think like that, I end up in Butcher Benedict’s bedroom. But I wonder—in those moments, am I like Eddie and you are all the time?” I paused. No response from Elro. I was talking to an ear, a big, meaty catcher’s mitt of an ear.

  “It’s so hard to figure out,” I went on, a bit more slowly. “Sometimes I think it’s as if there’s some code out there that men are following, something invisible, you know? And I can learn the rules, like football, I can learn how the game is played, but, still, overall, it doesn’t make any sense. I can’t see the purpose. You know what I mean?”

  “Nope,” said Elro, shaking his head. But he was softening. I could see the corners of his mouth slackening and his grip easing up on the steering wheel. Slowly the tension was seeping out of him. After another mile or so, he said, “I always wanted to get away from that town. I never liked that town.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. The people, I guess. And the way it looked. It always looked wrong to me. It’s like everything was there, but in the wrong place. The square, the park, the Ward’s building, the library—they were all in the wrong place. It hurt my eyes to look around. It gave me a headache.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “Ever since I can remember,” he said, “I wished I was someplace else.”

  We drove a few more miles and came to a larger road. Elro hesitated, then turned down it, following signs for a town called Fullerton. After a while, the farms along the road gave way to a nursery, an equipment store, a Ford dealership. On the left, we spotted a sign, JIM’S FLORIDA MOTEL AND MINIATURE GOLF. Elro turned into the driveway. The motel was a single, long, low building that stretched away from the road. The building was painted pink, and the front edge of the roof was decorated with blue trim cut to resemble waves. In a couple of places, the trim had broken loose, and the waves dangled down like stray curls on a girl’s forehead. The golf course curved around in back of the motel. In front was a small, battered lawn where a couple of children were playing with trucks, and a man and a woman in bathing suits were sitting out on beach chairs, taking in the sun. Elro parked down the line from the office and looked around.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  He considered for a moment. “You wait here,” he said. He climbed out of the truck and walked slowly to the front of the building, disappearing into the office through a flapping screen door. A few minutes later, he came out. He was walking fast, and when he caught my eyes, he couldn’t restrain a smile.

  “Got it,” he said at the truck window. “Get your stuff and let’s go.” He reached in back and pulled out his suitcase. Beyond him, in the window of the motel office, a face appeared. An elderly bald man was watching us closely.

  I followed Elro down the walk past each pink motel door, every one marked with a blue number: six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. At twelve, on the far end, he stopped and opened the door with a key. The shades were drawn,
and the room was dark. A damp, moldy smell hovered over the thin rug and the few pieces of dark, low furniture—two padded chairs, a bureau, a broad, undulating bed.

  “Wow!” said Elro. He put his suitcase down and walked over to the side of the bed. “Look at the size of this thing.”

  “We need some air in here and some light.” I went to the back wall and pulled aside the heavy, green curtain. Sunlight bounded around the room. The walls were actually aqua; we could have been standing in a swimming pool. I opened the window a crack, and in seconds the air and light had burned off the moldy odor and even brightened the ominous barge of a bed. But there was a problem. The miniature golf course came right up to the back of the motel. Not ten feet away sat a huge, spotted frog, each eye a red blinking light bulb. The frog’s pink tongue stretched down its front and onto the green carpet of the putting surface. While I lingered at the window, a boy about Elro’s age stood hunched over a ball. His girlfriend leaned on a putter and watched. With a quick, hard stroke, the boy sent his ball rolling up the tongue and into the hole of the frog’s mouth. Moments later, the ball popped out a small opening in back, rolled over the flat, green carpet, and plunked into the cup. The boy looked up to celebrate his hole-in-one and looked right at me. He had a crewcut and a bright, clear face, and, in a moment, he’d taken in me and all of room twelve, including Elro, now stretched out on the bed. The boy’s smile quickly twisted, as if he couldn’t quite control the muscles in his face. I pulled the curtains closed again, plunging the room back into semidarkness.

  “That’s better,” said Elro. “I like it better this way.” He had his hands behind his head, and he was staring at the ceiling. “My brother and his girl did it fourteen times the first night,” he said.

  “Who was she?” I started unbuttoning my blouse.

  “You don’t know her. She goes to the Catholic school.”