Nickel Mountain (17 page)

When he finished at the Grant Hotel, at seven in the morning, Simon Bale would put on his old brownish coat and nod goodbye to Bill Hough, who clerked days, and go out to his old gray Chevy and drive himself the half-mile home to his black-shingle house just beyond the city limits. His wife would have his toast and eggs ready, and he'd eat his breakfast without a word, leaning far down over his plate and sliding in the food with his fork turned upside down, and then he'd shave himself with his electric razor and take off all but his underwear (loose jockey shorts and an undershirt with straps which he changed not more than once a month) and go to bed. He'd sleep five hours, then get up and go out on the porch with his Bible, and he'd sit there reading or meditating or dozing, or maybe watching crows making circles high above him, bringing to mind the circle in the fire, or he'd look at the mountain that rose up, awesome as Judgment Day, at the end of the valley, or at the oak tree in his yard. In August he would watch Ed Dart and his boys across the road combining wheat, which reminded Simon Bale of Christ, as did they, who were in a sense Plowmen, or Harvesters of the First Fruit, and he would smell the sweetness of the air, which bespoke in Simon's hairy nostrils the boundless mercy of God. Around his yard there was a weathered snow fence and there were chickens in the yard, and in these too there were lessons. It was this way of seeing, above all, that made his mission hopeless. Going out on his calls on Sunday morning (his son, before the time of this story, sitting humble and surly in the car beside him, Simon himself a little on edge for lack of sleep), Simon might as well have talked ancient Hebrew to the people he called on. In a sense, he did.

One night, long after his daughter Sarah had run off (had married a Trail ways bus driver who'd gotten her pregnant, not without coaxing on her part, a girl of fifteen with the figure of a full-grown woman and a mind arrested at seven or eight, a face as long and blank as a cannister, given to hallucinations, pursued by demons, fond to the point of lunacy of charm bracelets, pins, brooches, anklets, dime-store rings) and a short while after his son Bradley had moved out to run, with monstrous tyranny, a household of his own, Simon Bale (his thin, brownish hair now beginning to turn gray around his ears) got a phone call at the Grant Hotel. Old Chester Kittle was there and saw it all. Simon stood very still, the Bible open on the counter, the dirty red ribbon dangling out over the edge, and the tic-smile came and went again and again, in shadow now, because the dim lamp over the desk stood diagonally behind him. He looked like a man being scolded harshly—for the leaflets on the counter, perhaps, or for a pious message left by some prankster on one of the old iron beds. No one would have thought it could be anything more; nothing of much significance could be expected to happen in the life of Simon Bale. But appearances fail us. Simon Bale's house was on fire (someone had set it, but the troopers didn't know that yet), and his wife was in the hospital probably dying. Simon hung up the telephone and turned to the Bible and hung onto it with both hands as if it was the only thing steady in the whole dark room. Still smiling—on, off, like a face in the funhouse at the county fair—Simon started to cry, a kind of howling noise that didn't sound like crying or laughing either but was the kind of noise a hound might make, and old Chester jumped up and went over to him, his heart and brains in a turmoil.

2

Simon Bale had no friends. He was not only an idealist but an ascetic as well, both by conviction and by temperament, and the death of his wife (she died early the following morning) meant the end of all ordinary contact with humanity—or would have except for Henry Soames.

Simon was at her bedside when she died. He'd gone there at once (abandoning his desk to old Chester Kittle, who after ten minutes' wine-befogged consideration locked the door and went to bed) and he'd sat there all night long wringing his hands and praying and weeping, in his heart knowing her lost already because of the bandages covering most of her head and because of, worse, the tubes taped to her body and rising, at the foot of the bed, to a glass bottle hanging upside down. When the doctor told him she was dead, Simon was through for now with his weeping, though not through with his grief, and he merely nodded and stood up and went out, none of them knew where. He stood on the front steps of the hospital for a long time, his hat dangling from the end of his right arm (it was spring, and the trees were green with new leaves) and then like a man in a daze he wandered across the lawn in the general direction of where his car was parked. He wandered up and down the sidewalk, still quiet and empty at six in the morning, passing and repassing the car, maybe unwilling to leave the place, maybe simply in a mental fog, unable to recognize his car when he saw it. He stopped right beside the car, at last, and stared at it for a long time, his face as white and soft as bread dough, his mouth collapsed like the mouth of a dime-store goldfish, and finally he went over to it and got in and drove back to the hotel. He let himself in by the door at the side and went to the first empty room he found and stretched out on the bed and slept. For hours he slept like a dead man. Then he dreamed his wife was alive, sewed up from one end to the other with green thread, and tranquilly glad to see him, and he woke up. It was late afternoon.

He didn't notice he was hungry and unshaven. He drove to the remains of his house, where everything he owned was now smoke and ashes, including his money, since Simon had never trusted banks, and he stood beside what was left of the snow fence as he'd stood this morning in front of the hospital, looking at the place as the others did—curiosity seekers, neighbors, farmers who'd happened along on their way into town to the movies or the Silver Slipper. Finally somebody recognized him and they all gathered around him to console him and ask him questions and, in general, torment him, all of which he met with a lunatic, apologetic-looking smile that made people wonder (not for the first time) if he'd set it himself. Now and then he'd bring out a stammered word that only those nearest to him caught (“Forgive,” he was saying, “Lord forgive”) and then, suddenly, he sank to his knees and fainted. They called the police. But it was not there that the troopers found him; they found him at Henry Soames'.

It was still early, a little after eight. Henry's little boy Jimmy was in bed; Henry's wife was in the diner taking care of the last of the supper customers, and Henry stood in the living room in the house jutting out behind the diner, the room almost dark, only the floorlamp in the corner turned on, Simon Bale in the armchair below it, staring at the carpet as if in a daze. Standing enormous and solemn at the living room window, Henry looked out past the end of the diner at the highway and the woods beyond. He could see, past where the woods dropped away, the crests of the mountains on the far side of the valley. It was a time of day he especially liked. The mountains looked closer when the light was dimming from the sky and the clouds were red, and sounds were clearer now than they were at other times—milking machine compressors in the valley, cows mooing, a rooster's call, a semi coming down the hill to the right with its lights on. It was as if one had slipped back into the comfortable world pictured in old engravings—in old geography books, say, or old books of maps in a law office. (The world would seem small and close when dark came, too—sounds would seem to come from close at hand and the mountains ten miles away seemed almost on top of you—but in the dark he would not feel himself a part of it; the trees and hills were like something alive, not threatening, exactly, because Henry had known them all his life, but not friendly, either: hostile, but not in any hurry, conscious that time was on their side: they would bury him, for all his size and for all his undeniable harmlessness, and even his own troublesome, alien kind would soon forget him, and the mountains would bury them too.) In his present mood, watching sunset come on, he felt at one with the blue-treed mountains, and at one, equally, with the man in the dimness behind him. He saw again in his mind the charred boards, ashes, dirty bubbles of melted glass, and he recalled the intense acrid smell that had filled the air for a mile around.
Poor devil,
he thought. He had never known Simon Bale, had hardly seen him before, but at a time like this that was hardly important. A man did what he could.

Perhaps it was the way the light slanted in, or the way the long silver truck rolled past and went out of his hearing: Something came to him. He knew as if by inspiration how it was that a man like Bale saw the world. For an instant he too saw it: dark trees, a luminous sky, three swallows flying, all portentous. Henry half-turned, covering his mouth with his hand, and studied the man. The brown shoelace on Simon's black right shoe (directly in the floorlamp's beam) had been broken and knotted together again in twenty places.

Then the troopers came. Henry wouldn't hear of their talking to Simon until the following day, after he'd rested a little and pulled himself together. They might have insisted, but Doc Cathey came in while they were talking and took one look at Simon Bale and said, “This man's in shock,” and, soon after, the troopers left. Henry put Simon in the bedroom off the kitchen, and Doc Cathey stayed with him a while, fussing and muttering to himself, and then Doc came out and closed the door and they sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Callie was with them by now.

“What in hell do they want to be pestering him for, in his condition?” Henry said. Putting the question in words made him feel an indignation he hadn't felt until this moment.

“Because they think somebody set the fire on purpose,” Doc said, “and most likely they're right.”

“But what would Simon know about it?” Callie said. She asked it a little too calmly, with too much detachment. Henry didn't notice it, but Doc Cathey did.

“He'd know if he set it himself,” Doc said, and he laughed, as sharp as acid.

“That's crazy,” Henry said. His hands started shaking. He said, “His
wife
died in that fire. It's right in the paper.”

“You don't know these people,” Doc Cathey said. “I do. You watch.”

Henry leaned over the table toward him, and his face went dark red. “You're a vicious old fool,” he said. “I could—” But he couldn't think what it was he could do, or rather he knew all too well what he could do—he could knock Doc Cathey through a wall—and his realization of how angry he was checked him.

Doc Cathey clamped his mouth shut and got hold of himself. “We'll see,” he said. “Don't you go havin' a heart attack over
him.”

It was then that Callie Soames stood up, and both of them looked at her. “I don't want him in my house,” she said. “I want him out, tonight.”

Henry went as red as before. He fumbled for the pills in the bottle in his shirt pocket, and he took one out and went over to the sink for water. He stood motionless for a long time after he'd drunk, leaning on the sink, and his wife and old Doc Cathey were as quiet as rocks. Henry said, “He's staying.”

She said very quietly, “Then I'm leaving.”

“Go on,” he said.

Her look clouded a little, and she didn't move.

3

Henry Soames was up at dawn. It was like Easter morning: The sun hit the late May dew like music, and the trees across the road were all silver and gold, still and breathless. He stood at the open kitchen window breathing in the cool, clean air, and all his body seemed more awake than it had ever felt before. He could hear farmers' milkers running, infinitely far away in the valley, and he heard a truck start up, the milk truck, probably, down around Lou or Jim Millet's. The thought of Simon came into his mind and partly saddened him, partly made him nervous. Callie hadn't said another word last night, and, even though he knew he was right, Henry had felt and still felt guilty. He thought of putting breakfast on, but there was no way of knowing when the others would wake up, so he let it go. He put on his wool-lined frock, frowning, and went out in back to look at the garden. He saw at once that more of the lettuce shoots had been nibbled off even with the ground. Then he saw there were three young rabbits on the grass to the left of the garden, lying with their legs out behind them like dogs. “Shoo!” he said, waving but keeping his voice down, letting the house behind him sleep on. The rabbits jumped up and bounded off like deer. Henry stood still again, slipping his hands into the pockets in the sides of his frock. It was colder than he'd thought. The ground was soft under his feet and clung to his shoes. He ought to shoot those rabbits probably; but he probably wouldn't do it, because of Jimmy. There was a good deal a man with a family couldn't do—Jimmy, Callie, Callie's folks. It was lucky it was more or less worth it.

It was a good little garden. He'd put in most of the vegetables only this past two weeks, three-foot rows of amazingly delicate-looking radishes and beets and garden lettuce and onions. To the right of those, toward the mountainside and the trees, was the rectangular patch where he planned to put in tomatoes and pumpkins and corn. Beyond the rows and curving out to the left a little lay the square he'd put in, mostly last year, mainly flowers, the crocuses and the tulips around the birdbath already in bloom—yellow, red, blue. He had three rose bushes and, around the border, honeysuckle, already in leaf, and to the right, where the mountain began to climb, a lilac bush. They would sit there on the white-painted bench, evenings last summer, he and sometimes Callie too, when Callie's mother ran the diner for them, and they'd watch little Jimmy crawl around in the dirt, drooling and laughing and talking to himself. It was heaven out there on a cool summer evening. Sometimes they wouldn't go in till long after dark.

He straightened up and, after a moment, went over to the slat and iron bench to sit down. In two minutes he was asleep, sitting with his head tipped down and his hands over his belly like a bear in clothes.