Duane's Depressed (30 page)

He had run a fair distance south before he realized the car wasn’t Karla, and was trudging back, carrying the bicycle—he was afraid to roll it for fear of puncturing a tire on some small cactus—when he saw another flash of light cross the hill. He looked and saw that another car was approaching, this one from the south.

“That’ll be Karla,” he said, out loud, but he didn’t turn back and he didn’t hurry. If it was Karla, let her come, and come she
did. She had beat him to the cabin and gone inside and switched on the light before Duane arrived.

In the course of his bathing he had used up every towel in the cabin. When he propped his bike against the wall of the cabin and went inside, Karla was standing by the table, looking at the pile of damp towels.

“Hi,” he said. “I’ve been trying out my new bike.”

If the fact that he was in biking garb surprised Karla, she didn’t show it, though her glance did take him in from head to foot.

“I don’t get it about the towels,” she said. “Did you just get real dirty, or what?”

“Not real dirty—real crazy,” Duane said.

14

“I’
M GOING TO MAKE COFFEE
,” Duane said. “Would you like some?”

Karla shrugged and sat down at the table.

“What I’d like to know is, what the hell is going on with you?” she said. “I went to that scumbag motel where you’re staying. I know there’s no Four Seasons in Wichita Falls, but you could do a lot better than that motel. I saw a hooker and a drug dealer before I’d been there five minutes.”

“I know,” Duane said. “I think there’s a fish in my water bed, too.”

“Then why are you there?” Karla asked.

“When I walked in to my appointment it was the first motel I came to,” he explained. “Then once I started therapy I was too tired to move.”

Karla stepped out the door and looked around. He thought she might be admiring his new bicycle—she had had a bicycle phase herself—but in a moment she came back in and didn’t comment on the bike.

“I’m getting convinced there’s a girlfriend,” she said. “This room looks like a room looks when you fuck all day.”

“I didn’t fuck all day,” Duane said. “I felt like I was vanishing—the only thing that helped was to take a lot of baths.”

Karla shook her head.

“I never would have thought that my own husband would lose his marbles to this extent,” she said. “Is the doctor pretty?”

“She’s pleasant looking,” Duane said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s just a thing I wanted to know,” Karla said. “Why’d you buy the bike?”

“The therapy makes me real, real tired,” Duane said. “I could barely even walk back to that crappy motel. I was too tired even to buy new clothes. I finally had to call Bobby and ask him to bring me some.”

“I know,” Karla said. “Then the little prick didn’t want to tell me where you were staying. I practically had to beat it out of him.”

“He never should have told you,” Duane said. “I’ve kept plenty of his secrets, over the years.”

“Why does therapy make you tired?” Karla asked. “If it’ll put you to sleep I better try some. I haven’t slept through the night since you left home.”

“I don’t understand it,” Duane said. “Dr. Carmichael says it makes the past kind of fall in on you. I guess I must have had a pretty heavy past. When I come out of that office I can barely pick up my feet.”

Karla suddenly began to cry. Duane patted her on the shoulder a few times, awkwardly, and then sat across from her and drank his coffee while she had her cry, one of hundreds he had witnessed during the years of their marriage.

“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said, when she had finished and was drying her eyes on a napkin. “I wish I understood why I feel this way, but I don’t. That’s why I’m going to the doctor.”

“The school board was real upset that you resigned,” Karla said. “So was the Chamber of Commerce. You’ve got the whole damn town feeling guilty. They all think it must be their fault. Elmer Kunkel had the worst idea yet.”

Elmer Kunkel was president of the Chamber of Commerce.

“Uh-oh,” Duane said.

“Elmer thinks the reason you’re walking around like a crazy man is because you hate your pickup but can’t afford to trade it in for a new one.”

“There’s some truth in that but it’s not Elmer’s problem,” Duane said.

“He thinks it is,” Karla said. “He don’t think a leading citizen ought to be walking around on foot, so he wants to take up a collection from all over the county and buy you a new pickup and then have a big ceremony and give it to you.”

“Oh my lord, that’s terrible,” Duane said. “I’ve got to stop him. I don’t want a new pickup—he’s got to return the money, if he’s collected any.”

“He’s collected a bunch,” Karla said. “Couldn’t you just take the new pickup and let Dickie use it? He needs a new pickup.”

“No, he doesn’t, let him use mine,” Duane said. “I left the keys in that old cracked cup in the cabinet.”

“Oh, I found the keys and let him use your pickup, but he’s already broke an axle,” Karla said. “See how out of touch you get when you don’t come home for a week?”

“He broke an axle?” Duane said. “I know he’s always been hard on cars, but that pickup was nearly brand new. How could he break an axle?”

“By being in too big a hurry,” Karla said. “He tried to drive off the hill over by that west lease.”

“
That
hill?” Duane said. “But that’s insane!”

“No, staying in a motel where there’s a fish in the water bed is insane,” Karla said. “What Dickie done was just stupid.”

“I guess being a boss hasn’t made him less reckless,” Duane said. The hill in question was strewn with boulders. He couldn’t imagine why his son would have tried to drive down it.

“No, but he’s not on drugs,” Karla said. “Let’s count our blessings.”

“I don’t have a session tomorrow,” Duane said. “I might pedal home and see the grandkids—see if they remember me.”

“Don’t do us any favors,” Karla said.

Then she went to the door.

“I know you’re out there, you little whore!” she screamed into the darkness.

“Karla, there’s no one out there,” Duane said, as she was getting into her car.

“Bye, Duane,” Karla said.

15

T
HAT NIGHT
D
UANE COULDN’T SLEEP
. He knew Karla was shifting from concern to anger. Rather than believe that he was in a shaky mental state she had chosen to believe that he was up to something with a woman—possibly his psychiatrist. For some time she had been complaining that they never talked, husband-to-wife, anymore. But now he was talking regularly to another woman—his doctor. He knew Karla well enough to know that the fact that Honor was a woman would soon come to outweigh the fact that she was a doctor. In Karla’s mind he was already giving another woman something he was increasingly reluctant to give her: his attention. That was bound to rankle. He didn’t know exactly what Karla might do—but she would do something. Karla wasn’t passive. Sooner or later she would come out fighting. It worried him. After tossing and turning for a while, unable to sleep, he decided to phone her at home—but then remembered that he was in his cabin, and had no phone.

Toward morning he did sleep for an hour or two, long enough to have his old calf-roping dream, or at least a snatch of it. The calf was only briefly in the dream. It left the chute and vanished. Duane raced up the length of the arena, swinging his rope. But he never threw it, he just swung it. Then he dismounted and kept swinging his rope. Suddenly there were calves all over the arena, scores of calves. Then the calves turned into jackrabbits and hundreds of children poured out of the
stands, to chase the rabbits. Some of the children had tiny ropes. Then the jackrabbits changed into grasshoppers, and the grass-hoppers into a flock of egrets, which rose over the bleachers in a white cloud and flew away.

This time when Duane awoke he didn’t feel sad. It was a beautiful, crisp day—sunlight beamed into the cabin from every window. He went outside into the sunlight—there was no trace of the vanishing feeling left, but he
was
hungry and Rag and her gourmet cooking was only six miles away. He got into his biking clothes and sped down the road, stopping only at the bridge where the battery and the car seat had been dumped. The river flowed cleanly this time; the litter consisted only of two beer bottles. He didn’t want to get his biking shoes muddy, so he decided to leave the beer bottles until he was crossing the bridge in his walking shoes.

“Oh lord, it’s Jean-Claude Van Damme, winner of the Tour de France,” Rag said, when Duane came in wearing his biking clothes.

“Jean-Claude Van Damme is an actor,” Duane pointed out. “What makes you think he won the Tour de France?”

“Because he’s got those nice strong thighs, like winners have,” Rag said.

Baby Paul, who was teething and fretful, immediately stopped fretting when Duane lifted him out of his high chair. He began to burble, spewing out carroty baby food.

Little Bascom, wildly excited, started climbing up Duane’s leg.

There was a rapid spillage of grandchildren into the room. Loni, Barbi, and Sami came running in from the yard, all of them yelling “Pa-Pa,” arousing Willy and Bubbles, who stumbled in rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Soon they all clustered around their grandfather, ignoring their breakfast. Several had points they wanted to make, and make immediately.

“I put a spell on Willy and Bubbles and Loni and Sami, so they’ll all get F’s in school, because I want them to flunk out,” Barbi said.

“You shut up, you ugly witch,” Bubbles said.

“Shut up, or we’ll beat you to a pulp,” Willy added. He had in
fact got an F in his math class but had successfully concealed his report card so the news hadn’t spread. Now his cousin was spreading it, and to his grandfather at that. His grandfather was the family member who took the most interest in report cards.

“Now, now, let’s not beat anybody to a pulp,” Duane said. “I was hoping we could enjoy a peaceful breakfast.”

Rag went around the table, ladling a thick glutinous gray mass into the children’s bowls.

“What’s that—it looks like you could pave a road with it,” Duane said.

All of the children burst into fits of giggling, including Baby Paul and Little Bascom, neither of whom knew why they were laughing. The oldest children loved it when their grandfather stood up to Rag, a petty tyrant who caused them much aggravation.

“It’s Scottish porridge, which is a roughage, which is what causes people to have good, regular bowel movements,” Rag said. “Pour some of this maple syrup on it and it will taste just like ambrosia.”

“I never ate ambrosia so I wouldn’t know about that,” Duane said. “If it don’t taste good I guess we can pave the driveway with it.”

“Is this
real
maple syrup?” Barbi asked. She had developed an acute product pickiness.

“Sure it’s real maple syrup,” Rag said. “It says so right on the bottle. It came right out of a maple tree.”

“Show me the bottle,” Barbi requested. “I want to read about it.”

“Shut up, you talk too much, Barbi—I’m getting a headache,” Willy said. He wanted to sit by his grandfather and enjoy the good feeling he got when his grandfather was around, but he couldn’t concentrate on the good feeling with Barbi chattering away.

Julie drifted in and gave her father a big hug. She had just washed her face and hair, which made her look about fifteen, too young to be the mother of Willy and Bubbles, though she was. Julie still smelled like a teenager, to Duane. Her smell brought a moment of nostalgia.

“I hear you’re working hard at the bank,” Duane said. “I’m proud of you.”

Julie beamed. “Leon says I can be an officer at the bank if I go on and finish up my degree,” she said.

“Then do it,” Duane said. “Who’s Leon?”

“Her regional supervisor,” Karla said, entering from the yard. “He’s the latest nerd to get a crush on Julie, which is why he’s so anxious to promote her. I wonder, if I left home for a few weeks and ignored all my responsibilities, if everyone would adore me when I showed up again.”

“No, Granny, we wouldn’t, because you’re too cranky,” Sami said. The comment floored everybody; Sami rarely spoke.

Karla took the comment gracefully. “Sami’s had it in for me ever since I spanked his little butt for trying to run over the cat with his tricycle,” she said. “Anyway I know I could never be as popular as Grandpa Duane.”

“This oatmeal sucks,” Willy said. “It makes my teeth stick together.”

“What if it made pavement in your mouth?” Bubbles said, giggling.

“What if it plugged you up so you could never do number two again?” Barbi said. “Then you’d swell up and burst.”

“Everybody better shut up about my Scottish porridge,” Rag said. “It’s one of the healthiest foods in the world. The whole Scottish nation has lived off it for centuries.”

All the children ignored the comment, and the Scottish porridge too.

“Tardy bell, tardy bell!” Rag warned. “We need to beat that tardy bell.”

There was the usual mad scramble as the children tried to find book bags, homework, Crayolas, and lunch pails. Bubbles insisted that her mother pin up her hair, although the tardy bell was imminent and all the other children already in the car. Baby Paul began to fret again, biting the tray of his high chair to ease the pain of his emerging teeth.

Duane scraped most of the porridge into the disposal before frying himself three eggs and some bacon.

“If you’re going to eat that many eggs you should eat the whites and leave the yolks,” Karla suggested.

“But the yolks are the good part,” he reminded her. “Besides, didn’t you know there’s a theory that eating egg whites makes you go blind?”

Rag came back in good spirits.

“Just beat the tardy bell,” she said.

“If you’re mad at me why bother warning me about egg yolks?” Duane asked.

Karla lit a cigarette.

“I had quit smoking for almost a month before you pulled this stunt,” she reminded him.

“It’s not a stunt, it’s a new way of life,” Duane said. “I think Rag understands that, don’t you, Rag?”