The Man Who Cancelled Himself (51 page)

“Oh, God. It’s the green planet pigs.”

“No, it’s Tracy.”

“Huh?”

“The baby, Clethra,” Thor explained patiently. “You mustn’t smoke that in front of the baby.”

She sighed hugely and stuffed the cigarette back in her pocket. She twirled her hair around one finger. She turned her inattention back to me. “Is there a bathroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on your right. Don’t mind the changing table—or the smell.”

“Or the
what?
”

“Never mind.”

She went flouncing off.

I turned and looked at Thor. “Nice girl.”

He looked away, unable to meet my gaze. “Damned place is like a museum, boy,” he said, running his hand over his slick dome.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I gave it as one. Damned hard to find, though.”

“That,” I explained, “is kind of the whole idea.”

Tracy began wriggling in my arms. And then she launched into her mow-girl cry, the one where she sputtered three times, caught and started wailing very much like one of the larger Toro power models. She did this one whenever she wanted to be fed. Not my department. I excused us and carried her upstairs to the buffet table. Merilee was already starting to stir there under her aunt Patience’s diamond-pattern quilt.

“One of us,” I whispered, “is hungry.”

Merilee grumbled something about having to leave an extra jar of Bosco in the trailer. She often mutters incoherently when awakened in the night. Me, I’m at my best. Slowly, she sat up, yawning and blinking from the hall light, long golden hair tousled, eyes puffy. She fumbled with her flannel nightshirt, half asleep, and then held her arms out to me, her hands clad in the white cotton gloves she wore to bed every night over a generous coating of Bag Balm, the old farmer’s unguent she applied to her paws after a long day in the garden. It was a little like going to bed with Minnie Mouse. Actually, I should warn you: This was not the same Merilee Nash. She was not the woman she’d been when we met. In those days, our sunshine days, Merilee was about diamonds and pearls and Bobby Short’s midnight show at the Cafe Carlyle. Now she was about beneficial nematodes and compost worms—and Tracy, who spent her days out there in the garden with her, swaddled in her old-fashioned Silver Cross buggy, gurgling happily.

I handed her over. Dinner was served.

“I could have sworn I heard voices,” she murmured in that feathery teenaged girl’s voice that is hers and hers alone.

“You must have been dreaming,” I said quickly. Too quickly.

She raised an eyebrow at me. “At this time of night? Who is it?”

“You don’t want to know.” I hesitated, tugging at my ear. “It’s Thor.”

She made a face. She’d backed Ruth’s mayoral campaign to the limit, and had been crushed by her narrow defeat. Ruth she adored. Thor—well, you can guess how she felt about Thor. “What does
he
want?”

“So far, he wants some eggs. I don’t know what else he wants.”

“Is
she
with him?”

“
She
is.”

Merilee gazed up at me, her green eyes shimmering. “Hoagy …”

“Don’t say it, Merilee. And don’t worry. They’ll be gone by morning.”

I took the narrow back stairs down to the big, old farm kitchen, which was probably my favorite room in the house. We’d left it pretty much as we’d found it. The gallantly hideous yellow and red linoleum on the floor. The deep double worksink of scarred white porcelain. The tin-paneled pie safe that someone long ago had painted a color not unlike belly lox. The butcher block, a massive two-foot-thick section of maple set atop short, stubby legs. We’d added the drying racks, from which Merilee’s cooking herbs hung in huge bunches, and the stove, a massive four-oven AGA cast-iron that Merilee imported from Great Britain. Martha Stewart has one. Happily, that’s the only thing Merilee and Martha Stewart have in common. Our kitchen table was a washhouse table from the Shaker colony in Mount Lebanon, New York, where the tongue and groove machine was first invented in 1828. Thor sat there with his elbows resting on it, waiting for me.

I put two skillets on the AGA and started them heating. There was a supply of single malt in the cupboard. I poured us each two fingers of the Macallan and handed him one. He added some well water to his and drank it right down, gripping it tightly. He suddenly looked tired and old and shaken. I’d never seen him look any of those things before.

He made himself another and sat with it, knuckling his deep-set blue eyes. “Clethra’s curled up before the fire. All fagged out, poor child.”

“Will she be hungry?”

“She doesn’t eat. Not meals, anyway.”

I got the slab bacon out of the refrigerator and cut four thick slices for him and put them in the skillet. As soon as I got a whiff of them sizzling I cut four more for myself and laid those in alongside his. There were some boiled new potatoes left over. I sliced them up and got them going in the other skillet with a clove of Merilee’s elephant garlic. By now Lulu was standing on my foot. She wanted an anchovy and she wanted it now. She likes them cold from the fridge. The oil clings better. I gave her one. I got the eggs out. I put on water for coffee. Like many men who had spent years at sea, Thor drank it strong and by the gallon, even right before he went to bed.

I sat, sipping my scotch. Lulu curled up at my feet under the table. “Why did you do it, Thor?”

“I’m in love, boy. It’s that simple.”

“Nothing’s that simple.”

“A man’s heart is,” he lectured, carefully stroking his luxuriant beard. He always did this when he was holding forth, whether his audience was one or one thousand. “A resolved man’s heart, that is. Man is by nature a conqueror, Hoagy. A warrior. If he sees someone he wants, he must grab hold of her. Take her and be proud.”

“You’re proud?”

“Why not?” he shot back indignantly. “Clethra’s someone very, very special. A woman worth having. And, trust me, a woman worth having almost always belongs to someone else.”

“Yes. Your wife, in this case.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, stung. “You’re not seeing my side, are you?”

I got up and turned the bacon. “I’m trying, Thor.”

“This is the child’s physical and spiritual awakening,” he explained. “Christ, better me to guide her into mature womanhood than some clumsy premature ejaculator who’ll be out the door as soon as he empties his carbine into her, some pimply hit-and-run artist who’ll make her feel shitty about herself and hateful toward the male of the species. With me she’s getting an enriching, life-affirming experience. Something beautiful.” He sighed contentedly. “Besides which, she’s a splendid young animal, eager and insatiable and—”

“I don’t need to hear this part.”

“You can’t suppress the wild man, boy,” Thor intoned. “You must celebrate him. The spirit must live.”

“And where, may I ask, is yours living?”

He sat there in heavy silence a moment, his big chest rising and falling. “Nowhere. All we have is the clothes on our backs. Not so much as a suitcase between us. We’ve been persecuted, pilloried and reviled. I am not a criminal, Hoagy. I’ve broken no laws. But the thought police have tried, convicted and sentenced me—for being incorrect. As if correctness were some sort of goal. Correctness isn’t a goal, it’s a disease that’s sapping us, depleting us, killing us all one by one by one!” His fists were clenched now, his bald dome agleam with sweat. The man did like to go on. As always, half of what he said was stimulating and challenging, and half was bullshit. As always, the trick was figuring out which half. “These are dangerous times we live in, boy. Dangerous times. Irrationality is one of man’s greatest gifts. It’s what sets us apart from machines. We should be down on our knees paying homage to it, not trying to suppress it. The single most important thing a man can do in this world is go a little bit crazy from time to time.”

“Then I guess that makes you and me a couple of pretty important guys.”

He let out a short, harsh laugh. “They’re killing me, boy.
She’s
killing me.”

“Ruth?”

He nodded. “She’s put a stop on my credit cards, frozen my assets. She’s even gotten a court order barring me from seeing my own son.”

“Surely you’re not surprised.”

“Not surprised,” he admitted. “Disappointed. I miss him. Arvin’s the very best part of me. And this is all so hard on him.” Thor folded his big scarred hands on the table, staring down at them. “She’s a stubborn woman, Ruth. A proud woman. She won’t let us be—not without a fight.”

“And to the victor goes the spoiled?”

He grinned at me, the aw-shucks, gap-toothed country boy grin. “You’ll like that girl once you break through her crust. This whole experience has made her hard on the outside. Can’t blame her. But inside she’s got a lot of Ruth in her. Helluva woman, Ruth.”

“I always thought so.”

“She always thought you were a delight.”

“She doesn’t know me very well.”

He drained his whiskey and reached for the bottle. “Is there a novel?”

I poked at the potatoes in the skillet. “I’m working every day.”

“Is it good work?”

“Only if you consider crap good.”

“I’d like to read it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

He frowned at me, considering this. “What else are you doing with yourself?”

“Doing with myself?”

“Out here, I mean. Do you hunt?”

“Don’t own a gun.”

“Why not?”

“Guns go off.”

“We should camp out, you and me. Like the old days. Howl at the moon. Talk trash. Drink mash. We should do that.”

The bacon and potatoes were done. I cracked the eggs into the pan. And said, “What are you doing here, Thor?”

He leveled his gaze at me. “They think Clethra’s a star waiting to happen.”

“Who does?”

“Her publisher.”

“Clethra has a publisher?”

“They want her to tell her story, Hoagy. Why our love happened. How it happened. Her side. Her words. They’re giving her two million dollars to tell it. More goddamned
dinero
than I’ve made in my entire career. We sure can use it, too.” He took a gulp of his drink. “You don’t seem surprised.”

“Nothing about the publishing business surprises me anymore.” I got out plates and forks. “All that matters to them is that you two are hot right now.”

“Oh, no, they’re thinking beyond right now.”

“Okay, that does surprise me.”

“They’re going to make her into the next major new voice in American feminism,” he proclaimed loftily. “She’ll be as big as Ruth ever was—if not bigger.” Thor, you should know, had never gone in for understatement. “They think her words will mean something to those millions of college girls out there who are searching for answers and for truths and for … what’s that word they use now?
Empowerment.
Which, if you ask me, is just a politically correct way of saying a good, hard dick.”

At my feet, Lulu let out a low moan of dissent.

“Will you supply those words for her, boy?” Thor asked, turning bashful. Bashful was a new one. “Will you write it with her?”

I put his food in front of him, along with a bottle of Tabasco sauce, which Thor ate on pretty much everything, including Grape-Nuts. “Why me?”

“Because a woman writer will turn it into some ballbusting feminista manifesto, that’s why,” he replied, ignoring his food.

“So why don’t
you
write it with her?”

“I’m no good at that kind of thing. Not like you are.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, too.”

“I gave it as one. It’s a genuine gift you have, boy.”

“Don’t remind me.” I sat with my own food and dug in. “I’m sorry, Thor, but I’m all grown-up now. I’ve quit the circus.”

“No one has to know you’re involved,” he persisted. “Not even Clethra’s publisher. We can pay you right out of her end.”

“I don’t want her money.”

“And this place is ideal.” He gazed out the window at the purplish pre-dawn. “Not a soul will be able to find us here.”

“Here?” I cleared my throat and tried it again, minus the surprise. “Here?”

“Why not? It’s the perfect hideout for a few weeks. And, wait, I know exactly what you’re thinking …”

“No, Thor, I don’t believe you do.”

“I’ll work hard for my keep while you two are busy writing. I’ll chop wood. I’ll clear brush. There’s no job I won’t do. And there’s nothing I can’t build or repair.” This was true. Thor had been just about everything in his time—merchant seaman, forest ranger, railroad brakeman, even an ordained minister. “How about it, boy?”

I shook my head. “Thor, it’s out of the question. That chapter of my career is over. Besides which, there’s Merilee to consider. There’s the baby …” At my feet, Lulu grunted. “… There’s Little Miss Short Legs.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

“I’ll think about it. But I’m not doing it.”

“Good man,” he exclaimed, grinning at me. “Knew I could count on you.”

“I said I’d think about it, period,” I snapped. “Now shut up and eat your eggs.”

But he kept right on grinning at me. Because I was going to say yes—and he and I both knew it. Because he was my friend. Because he needed me. And because once, twenty years ago, when I was standing at the crossroads, not sure whether to shit or go blind, Thor Gibbs had come along and changed
my
diapers.

Thorvin Alston Gibbs. Ah, me. Where to begin? He was, perhaps more than anything else, a grizzled son of the Big Sky Country. Part cowboy, part wilderness advocate, part champion hell-raiser—a bard of the barroom, through and through. And the last of the literary he-men. His autobiographical first novel,
A Montana Boyhood,
published in 1949, squared him right up against Mailer as the most gifted novelist of the post-war era. Critics even labeled him the heir apparent to Hemingway himself. Thor was, in fact, the last man to interview Papa. And the first to champion the Beat era. It was Thor Gibbs who coined the expression “beat generation.” He was a pallbearer at Kerouac’s funeral. He held Cassady’s head when the legendary hipster died by the side of the railroad tracks in Mexico. He rode the bus with Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. And he inspired a generation of young writers to dream.