Beginners Page 18

  Orin Marshall and Danny Owens and I bicycled the five or six miles out to Dummy’s one Saturday morning a week later. We parked the bicycles off the road before we got there and walked across pastureland that bordered Dummy’s property.

  It was a damp, blustery day, the clouds dark and broken, moving fast across the gray sky. The ground was soppy wet and we kept coming to puddles in the thick grass that we couldn’t go around and so waded through. Danny was just learning how to cuss and filled the air with a wild string of profanities every time he stepped in over his shoes. We could see the swollen river at the end of the pasture, the water still high and out of its channel, surging around the trunks of trees and eating away at the edge of the land. Out toward the middle, the water moved heavily and swiftly, and now and then a bush floated by, or a tree with its branches sticking up.

  We came to Dummy’s fence and found a cow wedged in against the wire. She was bloated and her skin was slick-looking and gray. It was the first dead thing of any size any of us had seen. Orin took a stick and touched the open jelly eyes, then raised the tail and touched here and there with the stick.

  We moved on down the fence, toward the river. We were afraid to touch the wire because we thought it might still carry an electric shock. But at the edge of what looked like a deep canal, the fence came to an abrupt end. The ground had simply dropped into the water here, and this part of the fence as well. We crossed through the wire and followed the swift channel that cut directly into Dummy’s land and headed straight for his pond. Coming closer we saw that the channel had cut lengthwise into the pond, forced an outlet for itself at the other end, then twisted and turned several times, and rejoined the river a quarter of a mile away. The pond itself now looked like a part of the main river, broad and turbulent. There was no doubt that most of Dummy’s fish had been carried away, and those that might remain would be free to come and go as they pleased when the water dropped.

  Then I caught sight of Dummy. It scared me, seeing him, and I motioned to the other guys and we all got down. He was standing at the far side of the pond, near where the water rushed out, gazing into the rapids. In a while he looked up and saw us. We broke suddenly and fled the way we’d come, running like frightened rabbits.

  “I can’t help but feel sorry for old Dummy, though,” Father said at dinner one night a few weeks later. “Things are going all to hell for him, that’s for sure. He brought it on himself, but you can’t help feeling sorry for him anyway.”

  Father went on to say George Laycock saw Dummy’s wife sitting in the Sportsman’s Club with a big Mexican fellow last Friday night. “And that ain’t the half of it—”

  Mother looked up at him sharply and then at me, but I just went on eating like I hadn’t heard anything.

  “Damn it to hell, Bea, the boy’s old enough to know the facts of life! Anyway,” he said after a minute, to no one in particular, “there’s liable to be some trouble there.”

  He’d changed a lot, Dummy had. He was never around any of the men now, if he could help it. He didn’t take his breaks at the same time, nor did he eat his lunch with them anymore. No one felt like joking with him any longer, either, since he chased Carl Lowe with a two-by-four stud after Carl knocked his hat off. He was missing a day or two a week from work on the average, and there was some talk of his being laid off.

  “He’s going off the deep end,” Father said. “Clear crazy if he don’t watch out.”

  Then on a Sunday afternoon in May, just before my birthday, Father and I were cleaning the garage. It was a warm, still day and the dust hung in the air in the garage. Mother came to the back door and said, “Del, there’s a call for you. I think it’s Vern.”

  I followed him inside to wash up, and I heard him take the phone and say, “Vern? How are you? What? Don’t tell me that, Vern. No! God, that ain’t true, Vern. All right. Yes. Good-bye.”

  He put the phone down and turned to us. His face was pale and he put his hand on the table.

  “Some bad news…It’s Dummy. He drowned himself last night and killed his wife with a hammer. Vern just heard it on the radio.”

  We drove out there an hour later. Cars were parked in front of the house, and between the house and the pasture. Two or three sheriff’s cars, a highway patrol car, and several other cars. The gate to the pasture stood open, and I could see tire marks that led toward the pond.

  The screen door was propped open with a box, and a thin, pock-faced man in slacks and sports shirt and wearing a shoulder holster stood in the doorway. He watched us get out of the station wagon.

  “What happened?” Father asked.

  The man shook his head. “Have to read about it in the paper tomorrow night.”

  “Did they…find him?”

  “Not yet. They’re still dragging.”

  “All right if we walk down? I knew him pretty well.”

  “Don’t matter to me. They might chase you off down there, though.”

  “You want to stay here, Jack?” Father asked.

  “No,” I said, “I guess I’ll go along.”

  We walked across the pasture, following the tire marks, taking pretty much the same route as we had the summer before.

  As we got closer we could hear the motorboats, could see the dirty fluffs of exhaust smoke hanging over the pond. There was only a small trickle of water coming in and leaving the pond now, though you could see where the high water had cut away the ground and carried off rocks and trees. Two small boats with two uniformed men in each cruised slowly back and forth over the water. One man steered from the front, and the other man sat in the back, handling the rope for the hooks.

  An ambulance was parked on the gravel beach where we’d fished that evening so long ago, and two men in white lounged against the back, smoking cigarettes.

  The door was open on the sheriff’s car parked a few feet the other side of the ambulance, and I could hear a loud crackling voice coming over the speaker.

  “What happened?” Father asked the deputy, who was standing near the water, hands on hips, watching one of the boats. “I knew him pretty well,” he added. “We worked together.”

  “Murder and suicide, it appears,” the man said, taking an unlit cigar from his mouth. He looked us over and then looked back at the boat again.

  “How’d it happen?” Father persisted.

  The deputy hooked his fingers under his belt, shifted the large revolver a little more comfortably on his broad hip. He spoke from the side of his mouth, around his cigar.

  “He took the wife out of a bar last night and beat her to death in the truck with a hammer. There was witnesses. Then…whatever his name is…he drove to this here pond with the woman in the truck still, and just jumped in over his head. Beats all. I don’t know, couldn’t swim, I guess, but I don’t know that…But they say it’s hard for a man to drown himself, just give up and drown without even trying, if he knows how to swim. A fellow named Garcy or Garcia followed them home. Had been chasing after the woman, from what we gather, but he claims he saw the man jump in from off that rock pile, and then he found the woman in the truck, dead.” He spat. “A hell of a mix-up, ain’t it?”

  One of the motors suddenly cut. We all looked up. The man in back of one of the boats stood up, began pulling heavily on his rope.

  “Let’s hope they got him,” the deputy said. “I’d like to get home.”

  In a minute or two I saw an arm emerge out of the water; the hooks had evidently struck him in the side, or the back. The arm submerged a minute later and then reappeared, along with a shapeless bundle of something. It’s not him, I thought for an instant, it’s something else that has been in the pond for months.

  The man in the front of the boat moved to the back, and together they hauled the dripping bundle over the side.

  I looked at Father, who’d turned away, lips trembling. His face was lined, set. He looked older, suddenly, and terrified. He turned to me and said, “Women! That’s what the wrong kind of woman can do for you,
Jack.”

  But he stammered when he said it and moved his feet uncomfortably, and I don’t think he really believed it. He just didn’t know what else to say at the time. I’m not sure what he believed, I only know he was frightened with the sight, as I was. But it seemed to me life became more difficult for him after that, that he was never able to act happy and carefree anymore. Not like he used to act, anyway. For myself, I knew I wouldn’t forget the sight of that arm emerging out of the water. Like some kind of mysterious and terrible signal, it seemed to herald the misfortune that dogged our family in the coming years.

  But that was an impressionable period, from twelve to twenty. Now that I’m older, as old as my father was then, have lived awhile in the world—been around some, as they say—I know it now for what it was, that arm. Simply, the arm of a drowned man. I have seen others.

  “Let’s go home,” my father said.

  Pie

  HER car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks for that. He pulled into the drive and stopped beside the pie he’d dropped last night. It was still there, the aluminum pan upside down, the pumpkin splattered on the pavement. It was Friday, almost noon, the day after Christmas.

  He’d come on Christmas Day to visit his wife and children. But Vera told him before he came that he had to be gone before six o’clock when her friend and his children were coming for dinner. They had sat in the living room and solemnly opened the presents he had brought. The lights on the Christmas tree blinked. Packages wrapped in shiny paper and secured with ribbons and bows lay stuffed under the tree waiting for six o’clock. He watched the children, Terri and Jack, open their gifts. He waited while Vera’s fingers carefully undid the ribbon and tape on her present. She unwrapped the paper. She opened the box and took out a beige cashmere sweater.

  “It’s nice,” she said. “Thank you, Burt.”

  “Try it on,” Terri said to her mother.

  “Put it on, Mom,” Jack said. “All right, Dad.”

  Burt looked at his son, grateful for this show of support. He could ask Jack to ride his bicycle over some morning during these holidays and they’d go out for breakfast.

  She did try it on. She went into the bedroom and came out running her hands up and down the front of the sweater. “It’s nice,” she said.

  “It looks great on you,” Burt said and felt a welling in his chest.

  He opened his gifts: from Vera a certificate for twenty dollars at Sondheim’s men’s store; a matching comb and brush set from Terri; handkerchiefs, three pair of socks, and a ballpoint pen from Jack. He and Vera drank rum and Coke. It grew dark outside and became five-thirty. Terri looked at her mother and got up and began to set the dining room table. Jack went to his room. Burt liked it where he was, in front of the fireplace, a glass in his hand, the smell of turkey in the air. Vera went into the kitchen. Burt leaned back on the sofa. Christmas carols came to him from the radio in Vera’s bedroom. From time to time Terri walked into the dining room with something for the table. Burt watched as she placed linen napkins in the wine glasses. A slender vase with a single red rose appeared. Then Vera and Terri began talking in low voices in the kitchen. He finished his drink. A little wax and sawdust log burned on the grate, giving off red, blue, and green flames. He got up from the sofa and put eight logs, the entire carton, into the fireplace. He watched until they began to flame. Then, making for the patio door, he caught sight of the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them up in his arms; there were five of them, pumpkin and mincemeat—she must think she was feeding a soccer team. He got out of the house with the pies. But in the drive, in the dark, he’d dropped a pie as he fumbled with the car door.

  Now he walked around the broken pie and headed for the patio door. The front door was permanently closed since that night his key had broken off inside the lock. It was an overcast day, the air damp and sharp. Vera was saying he’d tried to burn the house down last night. That’s what she’d told the children, what Terri had repeated to him when he called the house this morning to apologize. “Mom said you tried to burn the house down last night,” Terri had said and laughed. He wanted to set the record straight. He also wanted to talk about things in general.

  There was a wreath made out of pinecones on the patio door. He rapped on the glass. Vera looked out at him and frowned. She was in her bathrobe. She opened the door a little.

  “Vera, I want to apologize for last night,” he said. “I’m sorry I did what I did. It was stupid. I want to apologize to the kids, too.”

  “They’re not here,” she said. “Terri is off with her boyfriend, that son of a bitch and his motorcycle, and Jack is playing football.” She stood in the doorway and he stood on the patio next to the philodendron plant. He pulled at some lint on his coat sleeve. “I can’t take any more scenes after last night,” she said. “I’ve had it, Burt. You literally tried to burn the house down last night.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did. Everybody here was a witness. You ought to see the fireplace. You almost caught the wall on fire.”

  “Can I come in for a minute and talk about it?” he said. “Vera?”

  She looked at him. She pulled the robe together at her throat and moved back inside.

  “Come in,” she said. “But I have to go somewhere in an hour. And please try to restrain yourself. Don’t pull anything again, Burt. Don’t for God’s sake try to burn my house down again.”

  “Vera, for heaven’s sake.”

  “It’s true.”

  He didn’t answer. He looked around. The Christmas tree lights blinked off and on. There was a pile of soft tissue papers and empty boxes at the end of the sofa. A turkey carcass filled a platter in the center of the dining room table. The bones were picked clean and the leathery remains sat upright in a bed of parsley as if in a kind of horrible nest. The napkins were soiled and had been dropped here and there on the table. Some of the dishes were stacked, and the cups and wine glasses had been moved to one end of the table, as if someone had started to clean up but thought better of it. It was true, the fireplace had black smoke stains reaching up the bricks toward the mantel. A mound of ash filled the fireplace, along with an empty Shasta cola can.

  “Come out to the kitchen,” Vera said. “I’ll make some coffee. But I have to leave pretty soon.”

  “What time did your friend leave last night?”

  “If you’re going to start that you can go right now.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  He pulled a chair out and sat down at the kitchen table in front of the big ashtray. He closed his eyes and opened them. He moved the curtain aside and looked out at the backyard. A bicycle without a front wheel rested on its handlebars and seat. Weeds grew along the redwood fence.

  “Thanksgiving?” she said. She ran water into a saucepan. “Do you remember Thanksgiving? I said then that was the last holiday you’d ever ruin for us. Eating bacon and eggs instead of turkey at ten o’clock at night. People can’t live like that, Burt.”

  “I know it. I said I’m sorry, Vera. I meant it.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough anymore. It just isn’t.”

  The pilot light was out again. She was at the stove trying to light the gas burner under the pan of water. “Don’t burn yourself,” he said. “Don’t catch yourself on fire.”

  She didn’t answer. She lit the ring.

  He could imagine her robe catching fire and himself jumping up from the table, throwing her down onto the floor and rolling her over and over into the living room where he would cover her with his own body. Or should he run to the bedroom first for a blanket to throw over her?

  “Vera?”

  She looked at him.

  “Do you have anything to drink around the house? Any of that rum left? I could use a drink this morning. Take the chill off.”

  “There’s some vodka in the freezer, and there is rum around here somewhere, if the kids didn’t drink it up.”

  “When did you start keeping vodka in the freezer?”<
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  “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  He took the vodka from the freezer, looked for a glass, then poured some into a cup he found on the counter.

  “Are you just going to drink it like that, out of a cup? Jesus, Burt. What’d you want to talk about, anyway? I told you I have someplace to go. I have a flute lesson at one o’clock. What is it you want, Burt?”

  “Are you still taking flute?”

  “I just said so. What is it? Tell me what’s on your mind, and then I have to get ready.”

  “I just wanted to say I was sorry about last night, for one thing. I was upset. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re always upset at something. You were just drunk and wanted to take it out on us.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Why’d you come over here then, when you knew we had plans? You could have come the night before. I told you about the dinner I planned yesterday.”

  “It was Christmas. I wanted to drop off my gifts. You’re still my family.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I think you’re right about this vodka,” he said. “If you have any juice I’ll mix this with some juice.”

  She opened the refrigerator and moved things around. “There’s cran-apple juice, that’s all.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. He got up and poured cran-apple juice into his cup, added more vodka, and stirred the drink with his little finger.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Just a minute.”

  He drank the cup of cran-apple juice and vodka and felt better. He lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the big ashtray. The bottom of the ashtray was covered with cigarette stubs and a layer of ash. He recognized Vera’s brand, but there were some unfiltered cigarettes as well, and another brand—lavender-colored stubs heavy with lipstick. He got up and dumped the mess into the sack under the sink. The ashtray was a heavy piece of blue stoneware with raised edges they’d bought from a bearded potter on the mall in Santa Cruz. It was as big as a plate and maybe that’s what it’d been intended for, a plate or a serving dish of some sort, but they’d immediately started using it as an ashtray. He put it back on the table and ground out his cigarette in it.