COLLECTED STORIES
By Charles Deemer
Copyright 2011 by Charles Deemer
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Contact Charles Deemer at: cdeemer at yahoo dot com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Man Who Shot Elvis (1977)
Lessons from the Cockroach Graveyard (1991)
The First Stoplight in Wallowa County (1988)
The Epistemological Uncle (1994)
Prey (1973)
The Scrapbook (1968)
The MLA Style Sheet (1970)
The Thing at 34-03-15N, 118-15-23W (1969)
The Sentence (1973)
The Teacher (1969)
What They Did (1973)
The Sextant (1970)
Presenting the Annual Interracial Pig Roast (1971)
The Idaho Jacket (1973)
The Wallowa County Who-Who (2000)
Death Is A Paper Tiger (1974)
Threesomes, Foursomes, and the Like (1975)
The Man Who Grew A Beard (1971)
The Liberation (1971)
Teddy at the Pool (1976)
A Whiter Shade of Fear (1975)
Fragments Before the Fall (1971)
THE MAN WHO SHOT ELVIS
Prism International (Fall, 1977)
SO HERE HE WAS, in the casino with hundreds of other tourists, waiting in line two hours before showtime, bored, drink in hand, watching his wife shoot craps. Mary was losing and angry but all the more striking for it, her blue eyes intense as she shook the dice in a fist near one ear. She brushed aside a strand of blonde hair that had fallen across her face, still shaking the dice, softly demanding of them five, five — she reminded him of a mad Scandinavian queen who had one roll to win or lose a kingdom. For a moment, he looked away, attracted by the ringing payoff of a slot machine, and when he turned back the blonde queen was coming toward him, dethroned and pouting.
"I hate that game, I just hate it," Mary said.
"You love it," said Lester.
"I don't have the luck I have on the machines." She took a sip of his drink. "If you'd loan me five dollars ..."
He gave her twenty, and she was off to get change. It was true, her luck on the dollar slots was phenomenal, more than once her winnings had paid for their weekend in Las Vegas. The only reason she had gone to the craps table at all was because their place in line had brought them next to it. As a businessman, Lester admired the savvy of the hotel's management: make the customers line up for the show in the casino, where they would have things to do while passing time and would spend money passing it. The line stretched past slot machines, twisted around roulette tables to games of craps and twenty-one, then extended back across the red carpet to the slots, a long traffic jam whose little order was imposed by three young hotel employees, who reminded people that they were in line and therefore should have someone keep their place before drifting away to gamble. Lester was spending money without gambling, on dollar-and-a-quarter drinks before the show began and the price went up to five dollars. More savvy: admission was disguised as a two-drink minimum.
He lost Mary in the crowd. Everywhere he looked — hanging from the ceiling, posted on walls and pillars — were photographs of Elvis and banners with his name. It had been Lester's idea to spend the weekend in Las Vegas, Mary's to see the show at the International Hotel.
THEY ESPECIALLY NEEDED this vacation since the night he had been robbed. This had happened two months ago, in the parking lot of the bank as Lester walked to his car. He was tired after working late and oblivious to the shadows in the still night. Someone was suddenly in his way, a gun-like protrusion pointing from a pocket, and Lester heard, "Your wallet, man.” It was that simple. "Your wallet, man," no more. Lester was about to reply with something automatic, "Good evening," when the sight of the pistol, out of the pocket and real, made him understand what was happening. He quickly handed over his wallet, his gaze never leaving the gun, the authority of which was absolute although the pistol itself seemed fragile in the way it reflected light from a streetlamp. When the man ran off, Lester got in his car and drove home. He had two drinks before telling Mary, who could not understand why he wouldn't call the police. "I had less than twenty dollars on me," Lester explained. "I'll notify the credit card people tomorrow. I won't be liable. Maybe he needed the money. He was black. If he'd been white, I don't think I'd have given him a dime. He would've had to shoot me first. But he was black."
He could not forget the absolute authority of the gun. A few days after the robbery he went into a pawn shop and purchased a pistol and shoulder holster, which he began to wear everywhere. He felt unmolestable with a weapon. He would feel its weight near his heart and think, I am safe.
THEY CHOSE A MOTEL on the strip. As Lester mixed drinks in their room, Mary looked through the brochures and coupons which the woman at the front desk had given them. They had the weekend to relax and see a show or two. Mainly they wanted to escape Los Angeles with its robberies.
Mary said excitedly, "Elvis is at the International!"
"Who?" Lester's back was to her, hiding a grin.
"Who! Elvis Presley, you nerd."
"Oh, him. I think B. B. King is supposed to be in town, too. Where's B. B. playing at?"
He turned and gave Mary her drink.
"I simply have to see Elvis while we're here."
"You've already seen him."
"But that was, god, how long ago?"
In 1956 or thereabouts, as Lester recalled the story. Mary, fifteen, had waited in line for five hours to get a front seat in a Miami moviehouse. She had screamed through the entire show, almost close enough to touch him.
Mary said, "I can go alone tomorrow and we can meet afterwards for dinner."
"If you really want to see that clown, I'll take you myself."
"We can see him, really?"
"There's probably nothing more amusing in town."
"Oh you," and she threw one arm around him, almost spilling their drinks. He could feel the pistol between them, and so could Mary.
"I'm going to take that off," she said.
"Don't stop there," said Lester.
LESTER LOOKED AROUND for a waiter from whom to order another drink. Unable to find one, he began to stare at Mary, hoping to catch her eye and beckon her over to save their place in line while he went to the bar. Mary was playing three slot machines simultaneously, engrossed.
"Can I get you a drink?"
It was the man in line behind him. Earlier he had nodded at Lester, who had nodded back; his wife had smiled and Lester had smiled in return. He was expecting them to start a conversation.
"I'm going to the bar anyway," the man told him.
"Thanks," said Lester, reaching for his wallet. "Scotch and water."
"Let me buy." The man had turned to go before Lester could pretend to object.
The woman introduced herself.
"I'm Nancy Waterby. My husband's name is Ralph. We drove down from Medford just to see Elvis."
"Medford."
"It's in Oregon."
She offered her hand, and Lester gently shook it.
"I'm Lester Williams, and that blonde fanatic over there, the one hogging the winning machines, is Mary, who belongs to me."
The woman smiled. Lester wondered at which moviehouse she had seen Elvis in the fifties.
"This is an unbelievable crowd, isn't it?” Nancy said. "I wish we'd gotten in line much earlier. I don't think we'll be seated on the main floor."
"The dude's not hurting for fans," Lester agreed.
He turned away, pretending to be interested in the craps game. Ralph Waterby returned with the drinks.
"I forgot to ask if your wife wanted anything," Ralph said.
"Oh, I more or less do it heavy for both of us."
Ralph laughed. Nancy laughed. Lester looked at his watch and, as if on command, someone across the casino shouted, "We're moving in!" Lester called Mary, who brought news that she was twenty-four dollars ahead. Their cover-charge was covered, Lester noted. Counting Mary's drinks, he would have four to get him through the show. He was no longer sure he'd be able to handle that many.
THEY WERE SEATED at a long table in the first balcony with the Waterbys and two couples who were together and remained aloof. Mary was very excited, squeezing Lester's arm and standing up from the table to get a better view of the massive ballroom into which her idol would descend, perhaps from heaven itself. Lester, too, was impressed: the stage covered the entire width of the ballroom, and a golden curtain just as wide dropped in front of the stage from a height above the second balcony. Naked cherubs flew among clouds on the side walls, above paintings of Greek ruins and imposing figures from some forgotten French court. A waitress handed Lester a souvenir menu with Elvis' photograph on the cover and informed him that the minimum number of drinks had to be ordered at once. Soon there were four glasses lined up in front of him.
Ralph was telling him what a great show it would be.
"What a fantastic comeback he made! After all those lousy movies, what? about three a year through the sixties?, and now this, it's just spectacular. That curtain alone must be worth thousands. This show will be unbelievable. I wonder when it starts. How can they expect us to sit here waiting?"
Business savvy, Lester knew. And just as he expected, not Elvis but a comedian opened the show, doing his routine in front of the golden curtain. "Folks, they gave me this job tonight because Colonel Parker figured the show needed a sex symbol." The crowd laughed and waited for Elvis. But when the curtain finally rose, the stage revealed a trio of black women, The Sweet Inspirations, who sang a medley of Aretha Franklin songs as photographs of Aretha flashed onto a screen behind them. Yes, somebody sure knows what they're doing, Lester thought. The delay only increased the excitement, and Mary couldn't stop squeezing his arm. Lester slid away one empty glass and moved three full glasses forward, one by one, like customers advancing to his window at the bank. Since being robbed, he greeted customers with an apprehensive glance, trying to discern their motives.
When the curtain dropped again, the crowd hushed. "Oh God, this is it," Mary whispered to him. Without introduction an orchestra began to play, and Lester recognized the theme from the movie, 2001. The music seemed to come out of every wall. Scattered cheers and shrieks identified those who were no longer able to contain themselves; "This is it!" Mary said again. The movie theme was picked up by a chorus, which like the orchestra was hidden behind the golden curtain unless the voices belonged to cherubs, to French royalty. The crowd floated like a frail bubble. Then the curtain began to rise slowly, the bubble was burst by the quick rhythm of a drum, by heartbeats, and Mary began to scream. Elvis ran onto the stage and came forward to the very edge of it, arms outstretched to his fans as he walked up and down the width of the ballroom for everyone to see. He was dressed entirely in white, his clothes sparkling with jewels. What can that dude be thinking now? Lester wondered. I am Elvis, this is my body.
WHEN LESTER WAS SIXTEEN, he decided to become a rhythm-n-blues star. Three friends agreed that this was a great idea, and they immediately formed a group called The Woodpeckers. They spent most of the summer learning songs, rehearsing, building a repertoire, and by the time school started they could imitate a number of popular groups, singing "Sincerely" like The Moonglows and "Gee" like The Crows, "Earth Angel" like The Penguins and "Sh-Boom" like The Chords. They changed their name to The Blackbirds and began to sing at high school dances and talked of cutting a record soon. Lester wrote a song called "Shoo-Do-Be, You Need Me," which everyone agreed was their best number. They recorded this song and a few others on tape, which they left with the secretary of a record company. They would hear from the company soon, they were told.
The record company never contacted them, and graduation ended their dream. One of The Blackbirds went to college on a track scholarship, another joined the Army to flee a pregnant girlfriend, a third disappeared from the neighborhood. Lester, who had kept remarkably good grades for the little time he spent studying, enrolled in Los Angeles Junior College.
Two years later he heard "Shoo-Do-Be, You Need Me" on the radio, sung by a group called The O'Brien Sisters. He knew he had been robbed but it didn't matter, his dream now was to make money in business. He wanted to make a lot of money because his father, a mailman, earned barely enough to support a wife and six children. Lester was determined to do better than this. For a beginning, he wouldn't make the mistake of having a large family.
He graduated from Junior College and transferred to Business School at UCLA, supporting himself with a night janitorial job. He met Mary in his senior year, and they fell quickly in love and were secretly engaged. Anticipating the objections of both sets of parents, they stretched their secret to include marriage in Las Vegas as soon as Mary came of age. Lester still planned to make a lot of money in business, but while waiting for more specific intentions to occur to him he decided to get his Army obligation out of the way. Mary accompanied him overseas, and from Germany she wrote her parents that she had decided not to be an airline stewardess after all, as a matter of fact she had gotten married instead, and she and her husband were in the Army now, an ocean's length from home. She was sorry to be so sudden and late with the announcement but she knew they would understand and would like Lester because she loved him very much and had never been happier.
IT OCCURRED TO LESTER that it would be the easiest thing in the world to shoot Elvis Presley through the head. He saw no visible security precautions. If an assassin were willing to wait four hours in line instead of two, a front table would put the target within easy range. Even from the first balcony, even from the second, Elvis was closer than President Kennedy had been to that window in the warehouse.
But shooting from a balcony, an assassin would have to be an excellent shot because Elvis never kept still. He sang while doing splits and leaps and karate chops. Using the whole stage, Elvis worked himself into such a sweat that he had to stop after several songs to wipe himself dry with a red silk scarf, which he then threw to the screaming crowd. A flunky brought Elvis a blue scarf, and after three or four songs it, too, was thrown to the fans, and the flunky raced forward with a purple. Lester wondered, What is that man's salary?
He pictured Elvis writhing in pain. Elvis was singing a hit, "Hound Dog" or "Heartbreak Hotel," when the bullet struck him below the navel, above the thigh. He grabbed himself like a man with a hernia, sinking to his knees when he knew he should be making a flying leap, rolling onto his side as the drummer awaited a karate chop to punctuate, blood flowing readily but soaking only the crotch of his white pants before the advancing crowd, panicked and furious, had them pulled off, then his diamond-studded shirt torn to shreds, his hair portioned out from the roots. Lester quietly slipped out an exit, unnoticed. He waited for the press in the casino but the reporters were skeptical. "I tell you, I did it! I did it because a long time ago they stole my song. They stole my song. It would have been a hit for me but it was a hit for them instead. They stole it."
HE WORKED IN PAYROLL in the Army and this, with his degree, landed him a job with a Los Angeles bank after discharge. Lester was soon well-liked as one who paid attention to details: he changed his white shirt daily, he wore only black socks, he never wore a loud tie, when there was extra work to do he worked nights without having to be asked, he learned the first names of the right customers and was formal with the right customers. After two years Lester felt secure in the job, and only then did he tell Mary that she could look for a house to buy. By 1967 no one could say Lester was not a success. He was even successful enough to exercise some independence, wearing wide and colorful ties before his boss began to wear them. At a party his boss told him, in the presence of others, "Lester, you wouldn't have gotten away with dressing like that before you became such a credit to the bank." Lester shocked everyone by replying, "Don't ever call me a credit to anything again. I do my job, period."
AS ELVIS SANG "Love Me Tender," Mary softly wept.
Ralph asked Lester, "Why doesn't he play the guitar?" After the first two songs, the flunky had taken the instrument away. "I wanted to hear him play some more. Play your guitar, Elvis!"
Lester stared at the last drink in front of him. It was going to be a horse race.
BEFORE LEAVING THE MOTEL to see Elvis (and she had insisted they go early), Mary called her sister in Los Angeles to check on the children. They had waited six years before starting a family, and Krista, the oldest, was now five. Krista wanted to speak to her daddy on the phone.
"What's up, sugar?" Lester asked. "You behaving yourself?"
"Yes. Will you bring me a pitchur."
"What kind of picture? Want a pretty postcard?"
"A pitchur of Elvis."
"Elvis! Where'd you find out about Elvis?"
"Mommy said you are going to see Elvis. I want a pitchur."
"Okay, sweetheart."
As soon as Mary had hung up, he asked, "How did she find out about Elvis?"
"We listen to him all the time."
"You do?"
"Well, you ought to know that."
"Stop brain-washing my daughter."
"Don't be silly. We listen to your records, too."
HE WAS SO DRUNK that he had missed everything, and Mary had to explain.
"There were two of them," she said. "They just jumped up onto the stage and ran at Elvis and before you knew it, pow!, he did a couple karate chops on them. It was fantastic. Police came out from everywhere and hauled the guys off."
Lester, moving along with the crowd, felt like a leaf floating down the gutter. He couldn't remember finishing the last drink or seeing the end of the show.
"At least they didn't try it earlier. Elvis was doing his last song, so nobody missed anything. I don't think that'll be tried again once people find out he can do karate. It was fantastic."
They emerged from the ballroom, and Lester stopped to take a deep breath.
"Are you okay?" Mary asked.
"I just need a minute. Little dizzy."
"You didn't have to drink mine. We could have left them."
"I'll be okay in a minute."
He concentrated on breathing until his head began to clear.
"I'm exhausted," said Mary. "I've never been to a show like that in my life. I'm just exhausted."
"Yeah, you scream a lot."
"Oh, you. Are you sure you're alright?"
"Much better. Let's go."
But he had to stop again outside on the sidewalk. A universe of blue lights towered above them, silhouetting the International Hotel against the desert sky. He recognized the Waterbys coming toward them.
"Would you folks join us for a nightcap?" Ralph asked.
Lester said, "I've had it."
Nancy suggested coffee.
"We have an early start in the morning," said Lester, stretching the truth.
"Well, it's been great," said Ralph. "What a great show. Here, I'd like to give you my card. If you're ever in Medford, look us up."
"We'd be so delighted," said Nancy.
Ralph said, "I don't quite know how to say this but Medford, you see, is a little backward in some ways and we've never had the opportunity or pleasure before to — well, what I mean, what I'm trying to say is, we enjoyed being with you. You're excellent company."
"You mean I'm a credit to my race," said Lester.
"Now I didn't mean to —"
"Then I'm not a credit to my race."
"You are! I mean, I didn't think of it that way."
Lester slapped him on the arm.
"We had a ball," he told the Waterbys. "Have a safe trip home."
"You, too," said Ralph.
The two couples shook hands before walking off in opposite directions. At the car, Lester asked Mary to drive.
THE MORNING NEWSPAPER explained that the two men merely had wanted to shake Elvis' hand. They were unarmed and a little drunk and intended to shake hands on a bet. Elvis wasn't pressing charges, so the police let the men go.
Getting into the car after breakfast, Lester asked Mary if she believed that's all the men wanted to do.
"I think so. Why?"
"Because it would've been easy if they'd wanted to shoot him."
"What kind of hypothetical situation is that?"
"It's not so hypothetical."
"Who would want to shoot Elvis in the first place?"
"Lots of people."
As the car idled, Lester looked for something to play on the tape deck.
"Who?" Mary wanted to know.
"Jealous husbands."
"Oh God, Les, you're not going to tell me you were jealous last night."
"Because you turned into a thirty-two-year-old teenager? Not me, baby."
"You're being stupid. Nobody wants to shoot Elvis."
"It would be easy to do. I had a gun in there, didn't I? Who would've stopped me?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
He put on a tape of old rhythm-n-blues songs and turned the car toward Los Angeles. He sped across the desert at ninety miles an hour, listening to his music as Mary slept, and Elvis was not mentioned again until they were home and Krista ran to him for her pitchur.
LESSONS FROM THE COCKROACH GRAVEYARD
Expression (Volume Three, 1991)
THE OLDER I GET, the less I understand women. Their sense of cause and effect, for example. I am opening a beer in the kitchen, prior to preparing tonight's stir-fry, and as I do a cockroach appears on the wall over the faucet. I see it, I probably even see it first, but for the moment I do nothing because the critter is still too close to the faucet to ambush — one move by me and it'll be scurrying into the plumbing. I know this because I've tried it before: cause and effect. And Maggie was there when I tried it, too, screaming as if she'd just spotted a ten-pound rat.
This evening she doesn't scream. When she sees the cockroach, she says, "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"
"What?" I reply.
"You know what. Jesus."
Even though my back is to her, I can sense Maggie moving slowly toward the refrigerator, reaching for the can of Raid we keep up there. I buy Raid because it was the great poet Lew Welch who wrote, "Raid Kills Bugs Dead!" I raise the bottle of Full Sail and tip my head back, drinking deeply, taking in a third of the brew. Then I belch.
"Ahhhh!" screams Maggie, charging forward like a mad bee, spraying Raid at me and the cockroach, though I'm not sure which of us is the primary target. I cuss under my breath and get the hell out of the kitchen, grabbing a full beer from the fridge on my way.
In a couple minutes Maggie joins me in the studio's largest space, the bed-living-dining-room. She looks exhausted. She is as dark as a Mediterranean gypsy but is proud to be Irish and doesn't like it when I start talking about gypsies in the woodpile.
"Any luck?" I ask.
"He got away into the plumbing." She always refers to cockroaches in the masculine.
I don't get it. Will my beer bottle hit the ceiling if I drop it? Don't women know anything?
EVENING. The stir-fry was average, conversation at dinner non-existent. We've been living together almost three years and haven't talked of marriage for the last two. We still have sex, which is about all we have.
I'm still drinking beer, Maggie has poured another glass of Chablis, and we stare silently at the small black-and-white TV that sits on my trunk. It's one of those television magazine shows, full of scandal and gossip.
My mind is adrift, trying to remember the closing lines of Lew Welch's "Chicago Poem," which for some reason has been on my mind lately. I no longer have a book of Welch's poems. I no longer have books. I met Maggie three years ago after a bad divorce and have been traveling light ever since.
Trying to recall Welch's lines, I don't see it at first. But Maggie does. She has eyes like a hawk. Suddenly she throws her wine glass against the wall, and I jump.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" I ask.
"You drive me crazy, pretending you don't see it."
"See what?"
"On the screen!"
She's on her feet, going for the Raid, when I see the dark speck moving across the belly of a woman in her underwear. At first I'm confused, wondering what scandal I've missed, but then I understand that it's a Maidenform ad.
Maggie is a wasteful cockroach hunter, she's spraying the Raid when she's still six feet from the screen, not only wasting spray but warning the cockroach, which now hurries down a thigh to try and escape under a tuning panel. But Maggie is on the critter before it gets to the woman's foot, spraying like crazy, until the room is filled with a mist of Raid.
"All right already!" I shout, standing up. "You don't have to waste the whole can on the thing."
Maggie stops spraying. She turns to me and gently, like a father pitching the first softball to his son, tosses me the can of Raid. Then she grabs her coat and leaves.
I fetch another beer, sit down, stare at the television and try to remember Welch's lines. "Chicago Poem" is a wonderful poem about Welch finally refusing to contribute anything more to the stinking polluted mess that is Chicago. But I can't remember his phrasing.
I'M IN BED when Maggie gets home. She's brought her girlfriend, Martha, to help her move out.
At first I pretend to be sleeping. I'm not surprised, really, I'm just angry she chose to do it this way, at this hour. I keep my eyes closed under the bare lightbulb and listen to them gathering her things in the closet, taking her spices from the kitchen, sorting through the mess that is everywhere for what belongs to her. It's all as clear as day, even with my eyes closed.
Then there is a silence that confuses me. Facing the wall, I open my eyes and see a cockroach not two feet from my nose. I slowly, quietly, roll over and can make out whispered conversation at the small table off the kitchen. I reach for my robe on the floor, slip it on and make my appearance.
Martha quickly gets up and says to Maggie, "I'll wait in the car." Passing me, she gives me a stare that would give Raid competition.
I sit down and Maggie pours another glass of wine.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I just can't take it any more."
"Take what?"
"Oh, Raymond."
"You could have warned me," I say.
"I don't believe you haven't seen this coming."
"We could've talked about it."
"You don't talk, that's part of the problem. Maybe that's all of the problem. You stopped talking when you stopped playing."
I play jazz guitar, or used to. Everything left me about a year after my divorce. You don't explain these things, you just go with the flow. If a riff doesn't occur to you, it doesn't occur to you.
"For the past year, even longer, we've both just been going through the motions," Maggie says. "I need more than that. So do you."
"Don't tell me what I need," I mumble.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Maggie drinks her wine and stands up. She starts toward the door.
"What if we talk more?" I ask.
She turns long enough to say, "Oh, Raymond," then moves toward the door again. I stand up and follow her.
When she opens the door, I say, "I don't get it. I don't understand you. No warning, nothing."
Maggie turns and starts to say something but stops. She's looking at the wall near the door, where the cockroach I saw earlier is hovering near the mattress on the floor.
When I understand what is happening, I say, "Want me to get you the Raid? One last shot?"
"That's not funny. This is as hard for me as it is for you."
"Is it?"
"Yes, it is!"
I feel bad for making her angry. Maggie takes a deep breath, starts to go, and changes her mind. She takes one step into the room.
"I don't know what you're going to do about it," she begins, "but I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just going to walk away from it. Maybe some of it will die if I'm not around feeding it any more. Lew Welch, remember?"
I correct her paraphrasing of "Chicago Poem," saying, "Maybe a small part of it will die. Small part."
"Goodbye, Raymond." She turns and gently closes the door behind her.
I look at the wall. The cockroach is still, as if daring me to go for the Raid.
WE MAKE an undeclared pact, the cockroaches and I. I lay off the Raid, and they don't show up as often any more. I even come to admire them in a way. Somewhere I read that cockroaches would be the sole survivors of a nuclear war. A guy could have a worse role model, if he's interested in surviving.
A couple weeks later I run into Maggie in a bar. She's leaning over a small table, leering at a guy who dresses like a banker. I can't believe it. I can't resist going to the table either.
"Well, looky here," I say.
Maggie sits up stiffly. "Hello, Raymond," she says. "Harold, this is Raymond."
"Hi, Harry!"
Maggie gives me the smile that says, Go away! I grab a chair from the next table but before I sit down an amazing thing happens, Maggie brings out a can of Raid from her purse and points it at me. I start laughing. Then she starts spraying.
I squint, moving forward to grab the can away from her. The banker, Harold, is on his feet, ready to protect the fair maiden or something.
"You can't do that to me," I tell Maggie.
"Raymond, you're even bringing them in on your clothes now. Look, he's dead on the table."
Sure enough, there's a dead cockroach next to the ashtray. I glance at Maggie, who looks as if she's about to cry. I turn and go.
NOW IT’S all-out war. I complain to the manager and tell him if he doesn't get the building sprayed I'm moving, which is a lie, there isn't a cheaper studio in the city.
So I have to do it myself. Me and Welch. I buy cans of Raid a half dozen at a time, attack the critters with a can in each hand, going for broke. I wear a red bandanna over the lower half of my face, looking like a bank robber, spraying behind the refrigerator, spraying under the sink, spraying where the pipes come out of the wall, spraying around the toilet and tub.
The more I spray, the more of them that appear. Finally, I run out of Raid. Then I run out of money.
IT’S A DUMB GIG, playing popular songs in a seafood restaurant, accompanying a bad pianist, but it pays the rent, it pays for the Raid. Then one night Maggie wanders in. She's alone, which surprises me. She looks great, which doesn't.
I try not to look at her but during the break the cocktail waitress tells me that the pretty girl with the dark features has bought me a drink.
"Long time," I say, sitting down.
"Yes, it has been."
"So how are you doing?"
"Terrible. I miss you."
This takes me by surprise, and I almost choke on my beer.
"Didn't you get my letters?" she asks.
There were three of them, long handwritten analyses of our relationship, the pros and cons, and an indirect inquiry if I'd be interested in sitting down across the table from her to analyze the relationship together. I never answered one. I didn't know what to say.
I reply, "Of course, I got them."
"Had nothing to say, right?"
I shrug.
"I've forgotten how well you play."
I force a smile. "It's embarrassing to be here, really."
"No, I think it's good for you to be here. It's better than not playing at all."
Actually she's right, but I don't respond.
"I've got to get back to work," I say and finish the beer in a long gulp.
THROUGH THE LAST SET, I can't help but wonder why she's still hanging around. Is she trying to tell me something? Maybe she's horny. We managed to do that right most of the time. But as it turns out, she still wants to sit across the table from me.
"I think in a different context we can be very good for one another," she says. "I know that I love you."
Love. Do I love her? The Greeks had three words for it, eros, fidelia and agape. We'd had the first from the beginning, the second most of the time — and the third? I'm not sure if I could love a woman the way I love my music.
"I've learned a lot from living alone," she says. "I think I can bend for you if you can bend for me. I realize how important your music is to you. Not just as a profession, but as a way to communicate. When we fight in the future, I think you should start whistling jazz to me."
I have to laugh, and as I do she reaches across the table and takes my hand.
"Can you bend at all, Raymond? I don't think I'm asking for much."
"I never did understand what you were asking for," I admit.
"Respect."
The word astonishes me because I've always respected her.
"That surprises you, doesn't it?"
"Frankly, yes."
"I can't live in a hovel," Maggie says. "I'm affected too much by my environment. I know you thought it was all we could afford, since you were out of work, but we could've cut corners and rented a better place, a cleaner place."
"No cockroaches? Good luck. Not in this city."
"Someplace where they spray the building regularly. It's important to do things like that on schedule, you know? Just like it's important to do the dishes every day before they start piling up in the sink. If you ignore little things like that, before you know it everything gets out of hand. Then it's a major project to clean up. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Neither one of us are great housekeepers."
"I'm not saying it's all your fault. I'm saying your environment can affect how you feel, how you behave, your attitude, everything. I never want to live in a place like that again."
I admit that I've been looking around for another place, now that I have a regular paycheck again.
"Maybe we can talk about your moving in with me," she says. "I have a one bedroom."
I say, "Maybe we can go there tonight."
She squeezes my hand, lets it go and smiles.
"Not tonight. I don't want us to get back together for the wrong reasons. I love you, Raymond. I want us to work. I want us to sit down soon and talk about the things that went wrong. And why."
"I was hoping you were ..." I finish the sentence by raising my eyebrows in the way that once was a signal between us.
"I am, Raymond, believe me." She stands up. "I don't know what you're going to do about it, but I know what I'm going to do about it."
She comes around the table, bends down and kisses me on the lips.
"I'll call you tomorrow morning, okay?" she says.
"I'd like that."
"Oh, Raymond."
I don't even close down the bar. Even with money in my pocket I don't buy a new can of Raid. Something has changed. I'm hearing riffs again. I celebrate by taking a cab, not the bus, to a hotel and renting a room. By the time a lone cockroach crawls out from the bathroom plumbing, the room is dark and I'm enjoying the soundest sleep I've had in months.
THE FIRST STOPLIGHT IN WALLOWA COUNTY
FLETCH HAD WOKEN UP without an alarm clock at 5:30 a.m., give or take ten minutes, for so many years that neither Sunday off nor a bad hangover could keep him in bed past six. On this Sunday the hangover was worse than usual because he had been lucky playing cards last night at Mel's Tavern, putting together a rare string of winning poker strategies. Twice he drew successfully to an inside straight. At stud, in the largest pot of the evening, he bluffed Jensen into folding three visible kings in deference to his own two aces up, even though he had only a junk deuce down. And more often than not, he folded the two pairs on which he habitually raised — and lost. When the game was over, Fletch walked away from the table almost $50 richer, most of which he spent setting up whiskey at the Cowboy Bar down Main Street.
Fletch rarely drank hard liquor, which made his first gesture this morning tentative — but right on time. Or so he thought.
The first hint that something was wrong was that the clock read four, not five-thirty. The second was that he could read the time at all. His Big Ben came from a preluminous era when clocks had big hands and little hands instead of radiant numerical displays. Fletch's big hand had not reached the bed lamp yet, and so he shouldn't have been able to read the time. But read it he did.
Fletch's room was located above the selfsame Mel's Tavern responsible for his hangover — or at least that had financed it. Looking out the window to Main Street, Fletch saw the one thing in the world that should not have been there: a stoplight. A genuine traffic light, swinging lightly in the summer breeze, showing him a devilish green even as it showed Swede's Tavern across the corner a diabolical red. As anyone in northeastern Oregon could tell you, there wasn't a single stoplight in all Wallowa County. Since Joseph was in the county, Fletch must be looking at some alcohol-induced mirage.
Moving in the green glow to the window, he leaned on the windowsill and stared out at the light. He scratched his belly and stared for a long time — until suddenly, impossibly, the green light turned yellow, and the yellow light turned red.
Fletch moved quickly then. He hurried back to bed and pulled the single sheet up over his head. He swore to quit whiskey forever, even to give up drinking beer — and this time for real.
NOT AN HOUR had passed before Renford was shaking him. Fletch never locked his door — in Joseph, locked doors were as rare as stoplights.
"You're not gonna believe this," Renford began.
By his usual waking time, Fletch had followed Renford into a growing crowd of men on Main Street, each man staring up at the stoplight with something between outrage and wonder. These were the early risers who started off the day with coffee at Tony's Cafe when it opened at six, workday or not. Each turned silent, as if standing before an inexplicable disaster. The speculation didn't begin until Tony's opened, where coffee cleared the mind.
"It's gotta be Divorak who done it," Fletch suggested, referring to the mayor.
In Joseph, being mayor is not really a job — at least not a full-time, paying one — and in the most recent election Divorak had won easily by garnering the write-in, sympathy vote. Election Day fell a few weeks after his stroke, and everyone knew that only makeshift work such as politics could keep Divorak out of the fields and away from the hard work now forbidden by his doctor.
To everyone's surprise, Divorak took an immediate liking to the job. He started hanging around City Hall even when there was nothing to do, which was most of the time. Moreover, lately he had been ending rare meetings of city business by yelping like a coyote, as if aiming to outdo the infamous "whoop whoop!" of Portland's mayor, Bud Clark. While no one actually believed that Divorak was trying to get on the Johnny Carson show, as Clark had done, nonetheless a man who yelped like a coyote wasn't entirely to be trusted.
Divorak, for example, stood fully behind the summer re-enactment of the Great Joseph Bank Robbery. At first, this idea for luring tourists from the Wallowa Lake campgrounds into town had been scoffed at, almost universally. The very idea that working farmers and ranchers would volunteer an hour or more in the middle of the day to playact at robbing the First State Bank building, long home to the historic museum, was ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that no one was quite sure how such an idea had actually come to pass, so that all summer — on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays — grown men quit work to dress up like cowboy outlaws, much to the delight of hundreds of tourists (during Chief Joseph Days, thousands) who lined Main Street to watch the five-minute performance. The Great Joseph Bank Robbery was the promotional coup of the summer, and Mayor Divorak had been behind it from the beginning. Such a man was fully capable of putting up a traffic light for the tourists as well.
Such was Fletch's reasoning, and he was close to calling for a vigilante march on City Hall when someone pointed out that City Hall was rarely open — and never on Sunday. Before a consensus was reached on an alternative plan, the mayor himself walked into the cafe, beet-red and looking like another stroke was in progress.
Everyone started talking at once. The mayor was getting redder and redder, and Fletch worried that soon he would be yelping like a coyote, so he yelled for the crowd to give Divorak its full attention.
The mayor explained that he knew no more about the origin of the stoplight than anyone else. In fact, he had rousted his son-in-law, who worked for Power and Light, to get his truck over here right away so they could take the damn thing down. His son-in-law pointed out that it might be the county's doing, in which case the mayor of Joseph was powerless. Because it was Sunday, there was nothing to do but wait until morning, call the county, and find out what was going on. There followed considerable discussion about proper governmental chains of command, all of it speculative.
Fletch was never a man to trade action for discussion, and so he put his own plan to work. Gradually, with knowing nods, men began to slip out of the cafe, climbing into their pickups and driving home. Thirty minutes later the mayor was still holding court, mainly to tourists who eavesdropped over their breakfasts and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Suddenly a gunshot was heard — but too loud and resonant to have come from a single weapon. Mayor Divorak, Peg the waitress, Jimbo the cook, a handful of residents and a multitude of tourists, all rushed out onto Main Street to see what had happened.
Although the early morning breeze had died down, the stoplight was swinging wildly, all of its signals shattered. Below it a large crowd had formed; women stood beside their children, and in front of them was a foreboding circle of men, Fletch and Renford among them — men who, except for the different colors of their billed caps, could not have been told apart, they looked so much alike, cradling their smoking rifles and sporting their wide grins.
IT TOOK THREE red beers before Fletch figured out what had happened. Without a hangover, he would have figured it our immediately; under this morning's affliction, he couldn't think clearly until Vitamin C was back in his system.
"Renford," he said from a bar stool at Swede's. "You know who was responsible for that? Enterprise."
Of course! Having heard it, no one doubted it. No one doubted in at Swede's, or later across the street at Mel's, or at the Cowboy Bar, or at Tony's, where the dinner special was chicken-fried steak. It had to be Enterprise, the county seat, and the motive had to be jealousy.
The Great Joseph Bank Robbery must have had something to do with it as well. The re-enactment was based on an actual robbery on October 1, 1896, when three men held up the Old Joseph Bank. The leader of the gang had escaped with $2,000, but one compatriot had been killed and the other, a local boy named Tucker, had been captured and sent to prison. After getting out, Tucker returned to Joseph to become a successful sheep rancher and, eventually, vice-president of the very same bank he had helped rob. Of such stuff the West was made, and Enterprise had no story — not even a lie — that could match it.
If this were not humiliating enough, it was the year of two local centennials, and Joseph had raised its blue city banners three days before Enterprise had raised the red county ones. Rivalry between the two towns, which were only six miles apart, was always fierce, but this summer, with all the additional tourists coming for the centennial activities, competition was especially aggressive. Because Joseph clearly was winning the tourist sweepstakes, it would be just like someone from Enterprise to try and downplay the victory by creating a diversion. No one wanted to be stuck with the first stoplight in Wallowa County.
By evening, Fletch had sworn in a posse of sorts to take responsibility for the retaliation. They all agreed they would have to erect a stoplight in Enterprise — and that very night. The trouble began over where to put it.
Fletch wanted to erect it at the corner by the courthouse, across from where all the fancy new shops had gone in. Enterprise had become so gentrified that one could buy a cup of espresso, a cone of frozen yogurt, a scented candle, computer software, a salad with sprouts, a bamboo beach mat, any number of ridiculous T-shirts and strange greeting cards, and who knew what else, all without walking two blocks.
Renford wanted to attack more directly. He had a cousin camping at the lake, he explained, a cousin from California. Let his cousin hang around the taverns in Enterprise for a few days and learn who did it.
"We'll string the stoplight over his driveway," said Renford.
No, no, insisted a sheepman named Hancock. What is it that really separates Enterprise from Joseph? What most symbolizes Enterprise's departure from Wallowa traditions in order to enter the mainstream of progress? Clearly one thing. Enterprise has a Safeway store. Put the damn thing up in front of Safeway, was Hancock's idea.
Too much beer had brought out the intransigence in Fletch's posse, and for the next several hours little progress was made. In fact, they didn't get back on track until the bartender at the Cowboy Bar yelled last call. Then they quickly decided to draw straws among the six sites that had been suggested, and Fletch was drawing up the slips when Mayor Divorak walked in for a nightcap.
"Can you believe these tourists?" the mayor said, grinning. "As soon as my son-in-law got that stoplight down, some joker in a Winnebago pulled over and offered 50 bucks for it. He said his son wanted to put it up in his dorm room back in Portland."
If there was one place worse than Enterprise, it was Portland. By the time the bartender had shooed Fletch and his posse out onto Main Street, the focus of their insults had changed considerably.
"Look at Portland's crime rate," said Fletch. "You can't leave home without locking your door."
"They got drugs worse than L.A.," said Renford.
"Streets full of whores and winos," said the mayor, and he yelped like a coyote.
Others pointed out the lack of mountain-clear water and clean air in Portland, no fresh beef available, all that big city red tape, new freeways opening all the time, traffic you wouldn't believe, and no real beauty, certainly nothing like the Wallowas. Portland was a city that commissioned Beauty and got Portlandia, a copper statue of a scantily-clad lady holding a pitchfork.
They continued the litany of insults while ambling to their separate pickups. Compared to Portland, Enterprise was downright appealing, and so no one objected when Fletch suggested the six-mile drive to Toma's Restaurant, the only place short of La Grande where a fellow could get breakfast on a Sunday night.
The next morning, a working day, Fletch woke up at 5:30 on the money, rolled over and switched on the bed lamp. He was at Tony's shortly after 6, where he joined a table with Renford and others, and over many cups of coffee not one word was spoken about the strange and short life of the first stoplight in Wallowa County.
THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL UNCLE
IN THE CAREFREE IDYLL of my youth, when Appletons twenty strong gathered at my grandparents' house each Thanksgiving Day, Uncle Buck always drank too much and never failed to do something that would embarrass Aunt Betty. He would return from the bathroom with his fly open, or belch during grace, or tell a very dirty story, or dribble giblet gravy on the tie he wore only on holidays, before grumbling, "I knew the goddamn thing was good for something. Kept the shirt clean, didn't it?"
Aunt Betty, who was my mother's sister, would begin the process of coaxing him home then, and she usually succeeded before the pumpkin and mincemeat and apple and pecan pies were passed around the table.
A bit later, after grandfather began to fidget prior to suggesting that the men retire to the basement, where whiskey and cigars awaited them, the loud backfiring of Uncle Buck's ancient pickup could be heard outside and soon thereafter the slamming of the pickup door in the driveway and then the idiosyncratic howling that was my uncle's habit whenever he had too much to drink, which was often:
"Do you really knoooooooooow?," he howled.
Everyone knew that Uncle Buck was back.
After shooting a stern glance at me and my cousins, daring us to laugh out loud (though cousin Judy, Buck's daughter, always looked close to tears), grandfather would ask grandmother if there were clean sheets in the guest room, knowing full well that she never let anyone in the front door unless there were fresh sheets in all the bedrooms and fresh towels in all the bathrooms.
As Uncle Buck continued to howl outside, grandfather would make the habitual suggestion to retire, and so the men would rise in unison to head for the stairs to the basement, where they would let Uncle Buck in through the outside entrance.
Before long Uncle Buck wouldn't be the only intoxicated relative in the house, nor the only one howling.
This routine was so attached to Thanksgiving that I looked forward to it and was disappointed to learn, the holiday of my freshman year in high school, that Uncle Buck had stopped drinking.
Sober, he proved to be as quiet as a zombie. Although he didn't do anything to embarrass Aunt Betty, he also failed to entertain me and my cousins, who didn't realize how much we enjoyed Uncle Buck's antics until we were deprived of them. As far as we were concerned, he had been the life of the holiday.
Cousin Judy was the exception to our disappointment: her father's new silence seemed to give her a feminine radiance I'd never noticed before. She was, I decided, the most beautiful relative I had.
FOUR YEARS PASSED before Uncle Buck started howling again. It was near the end of summer, and I was getting nervous about going off to college.
One afternoon, cousin Judy phoned and told me, "Dad's drinking and being crazy again. Can you come over? He's howling in the back yard right now."
Judy and I were the same age but had ignored one another until high school. About the time I discovered she was beautiful, we discovered together that we could be good friends. Soon we were calling ourselves Mutually Adopted Siblings, since neither of us had one still at home. We delighted in the fact that most of our classmates didn't know what we were talking about, "sibling" being no part of standard teenage vocabulary in the small farming town of Adam in the Idaho Palousse.
I told her I was on my way.
Judy was outside waiting for me and quickly led me to the backyard. In the distance was the barn, which had seen better days, and acres of grainland stretched around us to every horizon.
Uncle Buck was clearly drunk, staggering around and groping at a pile of canvas that, in steadier hands, would easily have risen to form a tent. With every yank, he had a bigger mess and harder task than ever, which frustrated him into loud swearing at the universe in general. Empty beer cans were scattered across the lawn, and a pint whiskey bottle stuck out of the back pocket of his coveralls.
"Mom said she wouldn't stay in the house as long as he's drinking," Judy explained. "She went to spend the night with Aunt Milly, and Dad came out here. He says if she doesn't want him in the house, he'll just spend the rest of his life in a tent."
"Not by the looks of it," I said. "Should we help him?"
"I don't know what to do. He started drinking this morning, Mom said."
I touched Judy's arm and gave her a squeeze, then moved across the lawn.
"You want some help, Uncle Buck?," I called on my way.
He swore without turning around, another obscene remark for the universe at large.
I reached him as he was pulling the bottle from his pocket.
"I wish you wouldn't drink any more," I said.
I reached him and stopped. Uncle Buck took a swig without acknowledging my presence.
"What are you going to accomplish by drinking?," I asked.
When he turned my way, I held out my hand for the bottle. He glared at me before saying gruffly, "Accomplish! What the hell do you think you're accomplishing by minding other people's business, Mr. Wise Ass?"
Uncle Buck took a step backward, almost falling over. Then he cocked his head to the sky and bellowed, "Do you really knoooooooooow?" Finally losing his balance from the exertion, he fell flat on his back.
Judy screamed and came racing across the lawn. I was already on my knees beside him when she arrived.
"Is he all right?"
"He's breathing," I said. "I think he passed out."
"We can't leave him out here."
Uncle Buck was a big man, and I wasn't sure we could handle him by ourselves. Judy had the same notion.
"He's too heavy for the two of us," she said. "Would your dad help us?"
"Maybe it'd be good for him if he woke up out here," I suggested.
I spotted a wheel barrow near the fence that defined where lawn ended and farmland began. Without saying a word, I moved off toward it.
"Why did he have to start drinking again?," Judy asked, catching up with me.
I hesitated before replying, "I don't know." I'd come close to saying, "Do you really knoooooooooow?"
It took some effort for the two of us to get Uncle Buck into the wheel barrow. He was as heavy as a sack of potatoes and just as awkward to handle. We wheeled him to the back door before realizing that our problems were just beginning.
"Mom would have a cow if we tracked up the carpet," said Judy.
"How about making a bed for him on the patio?”
Patio was an exaggeration: a small square of concrete, just big enough for the gas barbecue set, stood alongside the house like an ambitious project long abandoned.
"I think we should put him in the tent," said Judy. "He was going to sleep outside anyway."
We left Uncle Buck sprawled awkwardly in and on top of the wheel barrow while we set up the tent. Then we wheeled him back across the lawn, dumping him, as gently as possible, inside before folding down the canvas door flap.
Moving to return to the house, we both turned into one another, brushing slightly together, chest to chest. I could smell her perfume and felt a sudden urge to kiss her, which she must have realized, maybe even feeling a similar urge herself, because she blushed blood red.