Duane's Depressed (22 page)

Of course, three bad dreams didn’t necessarily mean that he was in a big depression. He had heard—or perhaps had read somewhere—that dreams might actually be a mechanism for getting rid of depression. The source of that theory, once he thought about it, was Mildred-Jean Ennis, who cut men’s hair as well as women’s. Sometimes when Duane felt shaggy he would go in and let Mildred-Jean cut his hair.

“Yep, that’s the way dreams work,” she assured him. “The worse the dream, the better you feel the next day. Dreams are God’s way of helping you get rid of feelings you don’t need to be carrying around.”

“If that’s true, then I wish he would send me a dream that would help me get rid of the feeling that I’m going broke,” Duane said. “I’ve been carrying that feeling around for a good many years. If I could have a dream that would help me get rid of it I’d be inclined to put a twenty-dollar bill in the collection plate.”

The main disadvantage to getting haircuts at Mildred-Jean’s was her perfume, which she splashed liberally over her large person. Sometimes the perfume was so strong that Duane got a sore throat just from smelling it, but, otherwise, he liked Mildred-Jean.

“It don’t work to ask God to get too specific when he’s helping you to get rid of bad feelings,” she told him. “Some of those bad feelings are put there to help you be a better person, Duane. If God helped you get rid of them too soon you might just go right on in the same old sinful ways.”

“I don’t think I’d be any more sinful than I am if I could relax about going broke,” Duane said.

Then he went to the café and had a cheeseburger. He wasn’t particularly hungry but the smell of grease cooking helped counteract the lingering odor of Mildred-Jean’s perfume.

The one good thing about the roping dream, Duane considered, was that it would give him a good place to start if he did get an appointment with Honor Carmichael. He could tell her how he felt after waking from the dream and she could tell him what she thought about it.

His main worry, when he thought of going to a psychiatrist, was that he’d just sit there and not be able to think of anything to say. After all, he had been brought up
not
to talk about his troubles, which were nobody’s business but his. And he never
had
talked about them much. He might get in the doctor’s office and find that he was unable to shrug off a lifetime of reticence.

But there were other problems that had to be surmounted before he could even get to that one—how to get to Wichita Falls being the first one. From where he sat in his cabin, it was
probably seventeen or eighteen miles to Wichita Falls. He felt sure he could walk it comfortably enough, one way, but what about getting back? Even though he was in good walking trim, thirty-six miles or so was probably too far to walk in one day. If his appointment was in the afternoon it would take him most of the night to get home.

Another problem was Shorty, who would be certain to follow him unless he were restrained in some fashion. No matter how loud Duane yelled at him or how firmly he told him to go home, Shorty would still slink along behind him. Then, once they got to Wichita, he would either get run over or get in all kinds of fights with the local dogs.

“Shorty, you’re an impediment to long distance travel,” Duane told him. The dog, feeling vaguely guilty, laid back his ears.

Apart from the problem of Shorty, there was the question of hitchhiking itself. Was it against his rules, or wasn’t it? Of course, the rules themselves were not written in granite anywhere. One of the main points about his new life was that he got to make up his own rules as he went along. If he decided that hitchhiking was an acceptable form of travel, then he was free to hitchhike.

Duane was still weighing his options when it occurred to him that he didn’t have to make the whole thirty-six-mile round trip in one day. There were motels in Wichita Falls. He could walk in one day, spend the night, and walk back the next day. If he chose a low-end motel, which was his inclination anyway, they probably wouldn’t object if he had a pet.

He decided to walk, let Shorty accompany him, stay overnight, and not hitchhike. He would then walk both ways—it would be a way to test his seriousness about the whole business of walking everywhere. Thirty-six miles was a substantial walk. If he did it and liked it, it would sort of confirm his instinct that walking was how he wanted to travel from then on. He couldn’t walk to Egypt, of course, but he
could
walk to the airport in Wichita Falls and fly the rest of the way. No automobiles need be involved.

By the time Duane had worked through the options in his mind and made his decision, it was already too late in the day to
set out for Wichita Falls. For such a long walk he would need to get an early start; otherwise the doctor’s office would be closed before he got there.

Duane felt restless, though. He was primed to walk somewhere, didn’t want it to be Thalia, and considered just walking the perimeter of his property, something he had never actually done. He could just follow his own fence, which would mean walking eight miles. Three different creeks crossed the land at various points. If he were lucky he might stumble upon a bee tree; having a source of wild honey would be a welcome thing. One of the few memories he had of his father, who had been killed in a rig explosion when he was five, was of watching his father cut into a bee tree on a property his grandparents had owned. Duane remembered how calm his father had been, as the bees swarmed around him, and how strong the wild honey tasted, so strong that when his father gave him a taste it burned his tongue and he tried to spit it out.

He stepped out to walk his property line, noticed that it was drizzling slightly, and went back in to get his waterproof jacket. Instead of walking his fence he headed for the Corners. He thought he might enjoy a half hour’s conversation with Jody Carmichael—he thought he might even tell Jody that he was considering making an appointment with his daughter.

The eight-mile walk seemed to take no time. Except for startling the same two herons out of the same bog, the walk just passed. Before he was really ready to be there he saw the Corners ahead. Three pickups were parked in front of it, which was a little discouraging. Duane had hoped to find Jody alone but seemed to have arrived simultaneously with a large hungry crew, all of whom were inside fueling up on cheap junk foods. He jumped the fence and sat on a big stump for a few minutes—before long, as he had hoped, the crew began to file out. The pickups filled up with dirty, shaggy men and drove away. As they passed, Duane realized that it was one of his own crews—or, rather, one of Dickie’s crews. He was glad they didn’t notice him, sitting on the stump in the drizzle, which had gotten heavier.

“Why, you just missed your own help,” Jody said, when
Duane walked in. “Just as well you missed them, they’d have probably beaten you up. They weren’t in much of a mood.”

“They’re never in a good mood,” Duane said. “Roughnecking’s not a good mood kind of job. But I don’t know why they would want to beat me up.”

“Oh, for turning them over to your son,” Jody said. “I guess young Dickie caught a couple of them smoking dope when he got to work this morning. He fired the pot smokers and gave everyone else on the crew a good cussing out.”

“Good for him,” Duane said. “That’s how I was hoping he’d behave.”

“I guess if you made Dickie boss that means it’s all off between you and the oil business,” Jody said.

“Right, all off,” Duane said. “I’ve got places to walk to now. I’ve been trying to find that Thoreau book you mentioned, but Karla lost ours. I guess I’ll have to walk to Wichita and buy it, unless you’ve got one you could lend me.”

“Me, read a book?” Jody said—his TV was tuned, as usual, to a soccer match somewhere in the world, and his computer screen had a line of figures on it. “Nope, I don’t have time to read books. The racing form’s on-line now, so I can read that right off my computer, and when I ain’t reading the form I’ve got these Portuguese soccer magazines to study. I hear they’re publishing a good soccer magazine in Prague now, too—learned about it from my E-mail. I’ve sent off for it but it ain’t shown up yet.”

“Who do you E-mail about stuff like that?” Duane asked. E-mail was a complete puzzle to him.

“Oh, this fellow who told me about the Czech magazine lives up in Siskatoon, B.C.,” Jody said. “He’s a worse soccer nut than me—he even tries to keep up with Communist soccer, or what used to be Communist soccer. I like South American soccer better myself, but then, to each his own. The point is that between soccer and horse racing I don’t have time to sit around reading Yankee assholes like Thoreau.”

“I didn’t know he was an asshole,” Duane said. “Maybe I won’t walk all that way to buy it, after all.”

“Being an asshole don’t mean he wasn’t smart, though,”
Jody pointed out. He was eating Fritos at the time, keeping one eye on the soccer match. “You ought to walk on into town and get his book. He did the same thing you’re doing, and he did it over a hundred years ago. He might have figured out a few things you need to know.”

“I was thinking of making an appointment with your daughter while I’m in town,” Duane said. He had not really meant to tell Jody that, or anyone that, but then he did. Jody would undoubtedly mention it to some roughneck, who would mention it to Bobby Lee, who would mention it to Karla. Before he could even reach Wichita and make an appointment everyone in the county would know he was seeing a psychiatrist.

“Want me to call her for you?” Jody asked. “If you call her you’ll be lucky to get an appointment before April or May or sometime—that’s how busy she is,” Jody said. “She might not even take you, if you just call in cold.”

“If she’s a psychiatrist, why wouldn’t she?” Duane asked.

“Because she’s full up with crazies and nuts as it is,” Jody said. “There ain’t many shrinks in Wichita Falls and all the nuts know that my girl’s the best.”

“I haven’t noticed that many crazies and nuts in this part of the world,” Duane said. “There’s not really that much population.”

“No, but about ninety percent of what population there is is crazy to some degree,” Jody said. “Of course, most of them are
poor
and crazy. They can’t afford one hundred and ninety dollars an hour to let Honor help them with their problems.”

Duane knew psychiatrists were expensive, but he had no idea they were
that
expensive. The news took him aback.

“If that’s what she costs I don’t know that I can afford it, either,” Duane said. “It’d be cheaper just to shoot myself.”

“No, you’re not the suicide type, Duane,” Jody informed him. “Besides, you got all those kids and grandkids. You’d be leaving too much grief behind. Better let me call Honor and see if she can slip you into the rotation sometime soon.”

“Well, if it’s no bother,” Duane said. “I’d prefer the afternoon. I’d like to walk over to town.”

Jody chuckled. “That’ll interest Honor,” he said. “I’ll tell her
she’s got a bad case of pedestrianism to deal with. Honor walks herself—that’ll be one thing you two have in common.”

“Mind if I go look at the hardware while you make the call?” Duane asked. “I need a good wire cutter.”

Jody handed him the padlock key and picked up the telephone.

Duane lingered for nearly an hour in the small shed where the hardware was. He had always appreciated hardware, but now he liked it more than ever. Jody—or his daughter, Honor—had managed to cram an amazing array of tools into a small space. Duane knew what most of the tools were used for, but there were a few that puzzled him until he examined them closely. One of the nice things about being allowed to brood amid the hardware was that he could look at the tools and reason from them to a future. He had always admired fine woodwork, but had never himself done any woodworking. He considered himself handy with tools, and had always made simple repairs, both at home and in the oil fields. But he had never sat down with a few good tools and made something fine, like a cabinet, or a wood carving of an animal or something. He considered that he had a good many years of his life left, during which he would need to occupy himself. It occurred to him that woodworking might be something he could learn.

Poking around in Jody’s hardware room, Duane indulged in a pleasant daydream. If he wanted to attempt to master woodworking he would need a workroom in which to do it. The cabin itself wasn’t large enough. He would need to build a good strong table to work on; building a little workroom would be his first task and constructing a solid table his second. The thought of having such a room and such a table was very comforting to him. Of course he would have to have the lumber trucked in. He couldn’t carry it home. He would need to buy a fair number of tools as well; he would need some sawhorses and a variety of saws and drills. For a moment he considered avoiding power tools, but rejected that notion as silly. He didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Power tools had been available most of his life; if he rejected them he might as well reject electricity and live by candlelight.

Thinking of his room and his table and his woodwork was such a satisfying reverie that it was with reluctance that Duane finally emerged from Jody’s hardware room and put the padlock back on the door. Good tools offered one a great deal to look forward to, after all. The prospect of making something appealing was very comforting—it made the whole enterprise that he had embarked on seem less negative. It wasn’t merely a walking away that he was involved in. He might also be walking toward a new life—or, at least, acquiring a new attitude. The only sad element in the picture was that he hadn’t done it years sooner.

When he walked back into the store Jody was typing on his computer at great speed.

“Hold on, got to get a few bets in, the horses are at the gate,” Jody said. Duane bought a package of peanut butter crackers while Jody clicked away at the computer. As soon as he finished he stood up.

“I like to make about fifty bets a day—it’s my organizing principle,” Jody said. “I guess walking all over the county is
your
organizing principle.”