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BOOK EIGHTEEN: SOYBEANS

162. At five minutes past noon. . . .

            At five minutes past noon on Wednesday the tenth of June, I walked out of the downtown police station for the last time. The gloomy old brickpile was already half abandoned, slated to be torn down, and if I ever got arrested in Lincoln again—I fully intended not to—I’d be taken to the new building and booked in among cheerily painted concrete slabs. I avoided Casey’s, since I didn’t want beer on my breath while I looked for work, and walked instead to the street in front of my apartment; I got into my truck without going inside—Grace’s Falcon, I noticed, was gone—and drove to the little cafe under the grain elevators on South Street, where I ordered a chicken-fried steak and hash browns, my first paid-for meal in the free industrial air. When the blonde hippie waitress brought my food, I stared at her hungrily. “Hey, Ace,” she said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

            “I had mono,” I said. “I’ve been out of circulation.”

            “Looks like you’re recovered,” she said. “Maybe a little pale, is all.”

            “I feel fine,” I said. “I have to find a job. Any ideas?”

            “Not unless you want to wash dishes,” she said. “Pays three and a quarter an hour, plus all the stale pie you can eat.” I slathered sauce on my chicken-fried. The meat was tough and the breading greasy, but the food was hot, and it was what I ordered, not what some police cadet chose for me. When I’d finished, I ordered sour-cream-and-raisin pie and tilted back to consider my options.

            I could always go home to Palemon and drive for the old man. I ruled that out immediately; I’d end up getting married out of desperation and then drinking myself to death out of necessity. I could move to El Paso or Tucson and fly dope over the border, but dealing with those crooks you’d never know whether you were going to be paid or shot. I could go to Alaska to work on the pipeline; they’d surely need some flying fuckwads to airlift supplies. But I’d heard rumors there were no available women in Alaska.

            I could beg my profs for Incompletes in my courses and goof off one more semester at the University. But Deaner would see to it that I didn’t get another teaching assistantship, and I wouldn’t have enough beer money on my VA check alone. Besides, it was clear that my future didn’t lie in that direction, and Selva Andersen would be in Boston. Nothing for me in graduate school without Selva. I caught the waitress’s eye and gestured for her to refill my coffee.

            I could get a job, any stupid job, and work until a better idea came to me. As if reading my mind, the blonde waitress brought over the Lincoln Star. I read the funny paper—the Star always put the comics with the advertising section, to cheer you up before you took the plunge—and then skipped over to the help-wanteds. There was no listing for “drunks” under the Professionals section, so I looked under Employment—General. The soybean factory north of Havelock was hiring; “all categories,” it said. I wondered how many categories of soybean-factory work there might be.

(blank line)

163. The production engineer. . . .

            The production engineer wore a string tie under the open collar of a checked, short-sleeved shirt. He leaned his hairy forearms above photographs of grinning men holding up thigh-sized trout; from the spruce forest in the background, I guessed the photos were from Canada. “We have openings,” he allowed. “What can you do?”

            “I have a bachelor’s degree in English and Military Science,” I said. “I drove a semi from the time I was sixteen; I know every feedlot and house of prostitution in Iowa. I’m a licensed pilot, multi-engine certified. I can do algebra and trigonometry, forecast the weather, and navigate by the stars. Show me an opening,” I said, “and I can fit myself into it.”

            He seemed fascinated by my beard. “Are you familiar with the operation of the Mexican dragline?”

            “I am.”

            “Then I think we have the right position for you.” The plant boss got up from his desk and led me out along a dock, down some concrete steps, down more steps, and along a railroad siding in the shadow of the grain tanks to a covered stairwell that led below ground. He turned to me. “This is daylight,” he quipped, raising his voice above the roar of drying fans. “Take a good look at it.” I drew back from the stairwell and looked up. Above me, a row of paired silos stretched to the sky, the head house visible among clouds; pigeons spiraled in the bright sunlight, their white wings gleaming as they turned. A grain spout leaned away like an atrophied arm. The effect was of a line of giant torsos, capped by a single head, buried in the ground up to their hips.

            I looked at the plant foreman and nodded; we passed beneath the concrete awning and down the stairs. The air took on a spermy alfalfa-sprout smell of soil life and stubborn fermentation. “Hot down here,” I commented. It grew quieter as we descended. A short, low-ceilinged passage led deeper under the factory.

            “It stays about ninety-eight degrees,” he said. “A lot of men can’t take it at all. White guys usually last half a day; blacks and Hispanics do better. The best man we ever had down here was Chinese.”

            “What happened to him?”

            “He stuck his foot in an auger. You never want to do that.”

            “I already know about augers,” I said. “What will I be doing?”

            “Shoveling,” he said. “You’ll dig till you hit concrete, then move to the next pile.” He opened a fire door and propped it with a brick. “This door should be permanently closed,” he said apologetically, “but you’ll need the air.”

            “What’s the chances of me being trapped down here?”

            “No chance,” he said. “No earthquakes in Nebraska. If a tornado comes, you’ll be the safest man in Lincoln.” He threw a switch, and a dim light filled the cavern. “Here’s your office.”

            The ceiling was reinforced concrete, massively crossbeamed and low, just six feet, so that I had to stoop to peer away into the gloom. Broad-based mounds of bean crumbs stretched before me in a double line, corresponding, I supposed, to the double line of grain tanks above ground. My new boss reached into a locker and handed me a hard hat with a miner’s light on it. “When the power goes off, it’s like the inside of a cow down here,” he said. “You’ll need this to find your way out.”

            “I could strike a match.”

            “Unh-unh,” he said. “Let me see your matches.”

            I slapped my pockets. “Actually, I’m not carrying any,” I admitted.

            “That’s good,” he said. “Don’t. There’s no smoking inside this plant. Ever. Instant pink slip. You got that?”

            “Grain dust?”

            “That’s right.” He reached into the locker again and brought out an aluminum scoop. “When this wears out, we’ll get you another,” he said. “If you’re still here.” He turned to a bank of switches. “Power to the auger is here,” he said. “The big one, that is. The little one’s switch is on the motor.”

            “Where’s the dust go after I shovel it?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s gone.” He pressed a red button and a wheezing whine started up. Then he led me to an ordinary farm-type auger half-buried in bean dust. “It’s already positioned to deliver stuff to the grate,” he said. “You’ll have to move it from time to time. This is the bear that ate the Chinese guy’s foot.”

            “How’d you get it down here?”

            “Same way we got him out: in pieces. You may as well start humping. I’ll give you credit for four hours today, even though it’s nearly two o’clock. You get a fifteen-minute break at three; you’ll hear the buzzer. There’s a water hydrant by the door; a gallon jar of salt tablets is there also. Here’s what I expect of you. Wear the hard hat at all times. Don’t get a heat stroke. Don’t smoke. Stay clear of the auger. It would be nice if some of this shit goes away, because that’s what we’re paying you for. If I come down here and it doesn’t look like you’ve gained any, I’ll hire a new man tomorrow.”

            “Sounds simple enough,” I said.

            “That’s it,” he said. “Simple.” He turned to go. “Oh, yeah,” he said, turning back. “Three beeps on the buzzer, repeated, means leave the building. Eeh-eeh-eeh, eeh-eeh-eeh, like that. You’ll crawl over dead men’s bodies if you have to.”

            “No dead men down here,” I said.

            “You don’t know what’s under those piles,” he said. “Happy shoveling.”

            I began by clearing the dust around the portable auger, so that I could re-position it if I wanted to. Dust is a misnomer for the stuff I was dealing with; coarse soybean flour mixed with crumbs, very dirty and stale, it had grown a crust on top that varied in thickness from nothing to two or three inches. My method of shoveling was to place the handle against my pubis, and to bend double and walk slowly forward, plowing crud into the mouth of the portable auger. That auger, in turn, carried the junk up a tube and dropped it into a grate that fed a much larger machine, invisible to me. Occasionally I would straighten fully without thinking, knocking my hard hat into the ceiling beams with a crash that compressed the bones of my neck. The heat felt like being back in Southeast Asia; I paced myself, took short breaks frequently, drank plenty of water and ate some salt. Though not in condition, I found the work less difficult than expected, merely repetitive. Despite the presence of the foot-eating auger, I let my mind wander.

            Selva Andersen, of course, was the item of unfinished business. Well, she was engaged, and the date of her wedding was advancing rapidly. Still, there was time to do something. I could meet her at Barrymore’s, try to get her to make love to me. Wasn’t I, after all, a patently better man than Adrian Fisher? All he had was sophistication, looks, and money, while I had— What? A certain cheesy insouciance? Anyway I could dream. I imagined undressing her in my apartment. What wonders would I find? It seemed incongruous that I’d fucked Selva but had never seen her nude. I began with the long-sleeved blouse she wore even in summer.

            My shovel touched the blades of the auger: Brr-ratt! When I jerked it back, a chunk of the aluminum was missing. “Damn! Have to watch that.” I turned and walked back up the canyon I’d made, to the only clear spot near the door. That’s when I heard a soft rustle behind me and whirled around to see the landscape changed. My new canyon had vanished, and, once again, yellow bean dust covered the auger’s wheels. A trickle of dust slid down the face of the pile.

            The soybean grit was unstable. I felt suddenly cold as I realized what had missed me. A man could get himself buried down here. The piles weren’t tall—only six feet high or less, lower than the ceiling—but if you got knocked off your feet, the stuff could smother you. The next shit-shoveler would find you, partly eaten by rats.

            Also, the descending flour could push you into the auger, which probably was what had happened to the Chinese man. Asian people aren’t careless the way Americans are, thanks to the refining power of Darwinism in a continent with a hundred species of cobras. I leaned my nipped shovel against the doorframe and went outside the building to get some air.

(blank line)

164. After navigating the five-o’clock jam. . . .

            After navigating the five-o’clock jam on Cornhusker Highway, I pulled up in front of my apartment to see Julia Stein’s station wagon parked facing me on the opposite side of the street. I got wearily out of the truck and went inside, feeling angrier with each step down the dismal staircase. I’d asked her to keep an eye on the place, not move into it.

            “Julia?” I pushed open the flimsy door. Someone had patched the fist- and bullet-holes with quarter-inch plywood, and repainted it a milky pale-green color. “Julia?” A light was on in the kitchen; I heard water running in the shower. A sack of groceries from Russ’s IGA stood on the counter. I looked inside; it was full of bread and vegetables.

            I removed a bunch of radishes, examined them and put them back. The counter had been scrubbed; my boots did not stick to the linoleum. I surveyed the living room, where a beige slipcover hid the scratchy broken-down sofa. A floral pillow took up half the sofa, and a tooled leather purse leaned against one arm; there was hardly room to sit. “Damn you, Julia!” I went to the bathroom door and was reaching for the knob when it opened. There stood Julia in an oversized bath towel, the wet dark hair pulled back on her roundish head. Without its dramatic make-up, her face looked pale and ordinary, just a startled girl with a slightly prominent nose. “There you are,” I said, looking her up and down. My knees started to quiver.

            “Jonas! I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. “My! You’re covered with some horrible type of crud. Do you want to shower?”

            “Give me that goddam towel,” I said roughly. I reached out to grip it where it tightened above her breasts; she placed her hand on mine, her eyes widening.

            “Jonas, if you’ll—”

            “Give me! Ah,” I gasped, snatching the towel away from her. Her great breasts quivered in the light; vainly she tried to cover them with her hands. “Those,” I said hoarsely. “Those things.”

            “Jonas, honey, take it a little easy.”

            “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I cried. I fell to my knees and pitched against her, my mouth pressed into the coarse hair of her snatch. “Oh, God!” Something plastic fell to the floor.

            Above me, Julia laughed. “Relax, Jonas,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.” She held my head against her, her fingers twining in my hair. “What is this dust that’s all over you?” she asked. “Is it plaster?”

            “It’s soybean crap,” I said. “Oh, God, get down here, will you?”

            “Sure,” she said. “I’m all yours, big fella. Let me get the bath mat so you won’t take my skin off against that carpet.”

            I stood up, my head reeling with vertigo, and began tearing at my clothes. Julia retreated into the bathroom and came out with a thick mat woven of soft cotton; she laid it on the floor in front of the sofa as I hopped on one foot, trying to take my jeans off over my boots. Finally I toppled onto my back and held one foot up to her. “Help,” I said.

            “Goodness,” she said, easing the boot and slipping it off. “We certainly are in a state today, aren’t we?” She pulled my jeans off over my socks; change fell jingling from the pockets. “Phew, you smell funky.”

            “It’s the soybeans,” I said. “Either that or I came already.”

            “I think you’d know,” she said. “Well, look at you, you old beanpole.”

            “Look at you.” She stood above me, feet slightly apart, her hands on her hips; the pink Julia-buds between her thighs were showing themselves, and my mouth filled with saliva. “Oh, Lord,” I said, “I hope you’re ready to help me fuck my brains out.”

            “I’ll do whatever your heart desires,” she said. “Only nothing that would hurt a baby. Not until I decide.”

            “There is no baby,” I said. “That thing in there’s no bigger than a wad of chewing gum; you’ll get rid of it anyway. Now, get down here because I worked all day and I’m too weak to stand up.”

            She dropped to her knees, her breasts bobbling wonderfully, and slid her hand along my flaming cock. “You do seem a little quavery,” she said, smiling. “But you’re up, all right.”

            In Lincoln, Nebraska, in June, the sun doesn’t fall below the horizon until ten p.m. The sky was black when we came up the stairs, with a wash of indigo lingering in the northwest. We were going to the nearest Domino’s to get a pizza, having fucked more or less continually the whole time. Julia drove. “Feeling better?” she asked.

            I felt abuzz from knees to navel. “Much better,” I replied. “I’m going to want you again by the time we get back.”

            “Do me with your tongue,” she said. “It’s exciting.”

            “I will,” I said. “But first I need to wrap it around some pizza.”

            “Lucky pizza,” she said. I moved across the seat and reached under her miniskirt, touching those remarkable labia-petals. “Mmm,” she said. “That isn’t going to help my driving.”

            “I planned to yell at you for moving into my apartment,” I said. “I guess it’ll wait till tomorrow.”

            “Tomorrow’s a busy day at work,” Julia said; she was working the check-out register at the Hinky Dinky on South Street. “Friday’s worse. If we need to have a fight, let’s have it Saturday.”

            “Saturday,” I agreed. “What happened to Grace’s car? I was going to sell it.”

            “Towed.”

(blank line)

165. The plant boss looked up.

            The plant boss looked up. “Did you come for your time?” he asked. “Four hours, like I told you.”

            “No,” I said. “I just wanted you to see me. I’m here. I’m going to work now.”

            “Fine,” he said. He looked me over, for the first time, really. “You can punch out whenever you feel like it. I usually get guys from Manpower to do that job. Maybe I can find something else for you.”

            “I like it,” I said. “Quiet down there.” When I walked back onto the dock, I could still feel the morning sunshine. Because the railroad line ran northeast and southwest, the double column of grain tanks would soon obscure the sun; at midafternoon, when it was hottest, it would emerge from behind the head house to reflect from the concrete tanks and scald the parking lot. I said goodbye to it and descended the steps to my private corner of the underworld. If I’d brought along a bowl of blood, I thought, I could talk to the dead while I shoveled soybean drizzle.

            Whenever I found the work too tiring, I compared it to a morning of grading Comp papers. The stuff I shoveled was far less noxious than undeveloped paragraphs of scared, butt-kissing prose; the chance of being suffocated under bean dust was not as terrifying as the thought of a new assignment due and two dozen three-page essays coming in. In all, I didn’t mind the exchange except to know that, once I made shoveling my career, I’d drive used pickup trucks all my life and drink Schmidt and Old Style and Blatz and Buckhorn beer. By midmorning I had cleared the auger once again. This gave me the option of moving it closer to one of the piles, so that, with very little effort, I could dislodge avalanches into the machine. As I worked through the pile in this way, I found the stuff to be layered, showing me that it hadn’t been shifted recently. I was doing soybean archaeology.

            Coincident with shoveling, my sperm-banks were replenishing themselves, and the mental smog produced by this glandular factory overtime rose up as images of Selva Andersen. (Since I’d fucked poor sleepy Julia long past midnight, until I heard her snoring in my arms, I thought that first day that I might be suffering from priapism. Later, I got used to this phenomenon.) I saw Selva primly taking notes, raising her arms to adjust her hair, turning up the collar of her blouse; I saw her pushing her cart of books and offering a bemused marijuana smile to the bookworms haunting the stacks of Love Library. I met her descending the metal stairs, me going up, and took her down as I had once done, helpless to do otherwise; I replayed this scene again and again, shoveling like a madman, until I was startled by a hand on my elbow. It was the checkerboard-shirted plant boss, carrying a white-bread sandwich with a bite missing. “You can knock off,” he said. “Didn’t you hear the buzzer? Time for lunch.”

            “I didn’t bring anything,” I said. “I was a little late getting out of bed.”

            “There’s a couple of cafes in Havelock,” he said. “The single guys go over there. Looks like you’ve actually been working. I haven’t seen this much concrete in months.”

            “I have not yet begun to fight,” I said nobly, quoting John Paul Jones. “No kidding, is it noon? I didn’t even get a coffee break.”

            “Go to lunch,” he ordered. “Drink plenty of liquids but stay away from beer. I don’t want you passing out down here. We fire you if we find you sleeping. Company policy.”

            “Does that apply to executives?”

            “Executives never sleep,” he said. “Go to lunch. Take an extra fifteen minutes; you look puny.”

            “I’m gone.”

            It was already past one when I drove into Havelock. I thought I knew the restaurants—ordinary, ordinary—but across from the bank I found a new place, a Mexican restaurant that had just opened. Delighted, I went in and sat facing an advertisement for Dos Equis. The girl who wrote up my order was dark-haired and brown; for a moment, she took my mind off Selva Andersen. “I’ll have the huevos rancheros,” I said, “y una cerveza. Dos Equis, de favor.” The engineer had advised against it, but then, engineers don’t drink.

            The waitress left a big glass of ice water, which I downed immediately. I noticed my dirty hands, and got up to go to the restroom; that was when the light choked down to a tilted tunnel, and I had to put my hand on the counter to keep from falling. The blackness took a while to clear up, and when it did I found the girl looking up at me. “Are you all right, mister?” she asked. She had no trace of an accent.

            “I’ll be fine once I get that beer,” I said. I hoped it was true. On the way to the restroom I felt my legs cramping, and by the time I got back to my seat I was trembling. I had taken a seat at the counter, but when the waitress came by again I told her I was moving to a booth. She brought my water and silverware; as I watched her leave, I thought ruefully of Grace Kuzak and our little truancies in the back booth of Lederer’s. I was in no shape, though, even to be thinking about sex. Strangely, I’d felt fine until I’d drunk the ice water. I sipped more carefully after that, waiting for my Dos Equis.

            I ended up not returning to work that day. Instead I drove back across town to my apartment, took a long, hot, soapy shower, and went to bed. I awoke to see Julia standing beside me. “Jonas, it’s eight o’clock,” she said. “I’m making dinner, OK?”

            “Dinner can wait,” I said, reaching for her. “Come here.”

            At 7:56 the next morning I put my head in the production manager’s office again. The plant boss was checking a column of figures against slips of paper that looked to be scale tickets.  “You’re back,” he said.

            “I had to go home yesterday,” I admitted. “But today I’m definitely staying the full eight hours.”

            “Every man I put down there walks off the job sooner or later.”

            “Everyone except the Chinese guy,” I said.

            “That’s right. We carried him.”

            “If there ever really was such a person,” I said. “You’re sure you’re not pulling my leg about that Chinese guy?”

            The man in the checkerboard shirt looked up. “If that was a joke, I don’t have time for it,” he snapped. “Either get to work or get off the property.” I backed out onto the dock, my ears burning. The more I thought about it, the more the plant boss reminded me of Denny Deaner.

            The only thing that got me through that miserable Friday was the anticipation of a paycheck. When I picked it up—he’d credited me with eighteen hours, which was generous—the amount after deductions came to fifty-six dollars. Jesus Christ, I said when I saw it. When I showed it to Julia, she put on a sour face. “At that rate,” she said, “you’ll need to rob a gas station at the end of every month to pay your rent on the first.”

            “Maybe you could kick in something,” I suggested.

            “I paid for the month you were in jail,” Julia said. “I had to do some fast talking, too. Your landlord wanted to know why our band stuff was blocking the furnace room. Which speaking of,” she added, “we have our gig. We’re still pulling in a crowd at the Green Frog.”

            “Fuck. I can’t move.” I looked up ruefully; newly showered, I was slumped over an ice-cold Falstaff at the kitchen table. “I don’t think I can even get a hard on after a day like this one.”

            “You don’t need a hard on,” Julia said. “All you have to do is wear your black hat and look decadent. You can look decadent, can’t you?”

            “I’ll fall asleep,” I complained. “What have we got in the drug cabinet? I haven’t had a riff in six weeks. I can’t even remember what marijuana smells like.”

            “Nothing,” Julia said. “We have no dope. Someone at the Frog will pass a joint. You can get a fifteen-minute nap while I boil some hot dogs.”

            “What about you? You’re tired, too.”

            “Show biz,” Julia said. “Go lie down. And, for once, don’t ask me to come in there with you, OK, Mr. Sex-on-the-brain?”

            I finished the last of my beer and stood. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m a freshly-cut capitalist castrato. I shoveled my nuts into the auger at 5 p.m.”

            “And brought home a paycheck, too,” Julia added brightly. “This is Real Life, Jonas. You’ve escaped the Stifling Corridors of Academe. Do you love it?”

            There was nothing to say to that. I took the fifteen-minute nap she offered me and dreamed I was being walked on by elephants.

(blank line)

166. The banner above the stage. . . .

            The banner above the stage said, WELCOME BACK, ACE! Pink balloons and streamers of pink and black crepe paper were tied to the microphones, and the drum layout, already set up, was decorated with crepe-paper bows. I turned to Julia. “When did you have time to do this?” I asked.

            She laughed. “I took a half-day off from work this morning. The boys helped. Looks good, don’t you think?”

            “Nice color scheme,” I said. “Like something from Rosemary’s Baby.”

            “I took it from a ‘56 Mercury my parents used to drive,” Julia said. “It does look mildly hellish, in a junior-prom sort of way. Did you see the flyer?”

            “You put out flyers? Without asking me? What if I’m not in the mood for this much attention?”

            “You’re a cultural icon,” she said. “We’re hoping to use your release to make some money. Act a little savage, will you?”

            “Aaarrggh.”

            “That’s not quite it,” she said. “You’ve got forty-five minutes to practice.”

            I went to the bar and got myself a shot and a beer. The pocked bartender was as unfriendly as before. “Nice place you’ve got here,” I said to her. “Want to sell it?”

            “Talk to the owner,” she said. “If you can find him.”

            I downed the tiny glass of bad whiskey and turned to survey the gloom. Same metal folding chairs, same leaning tables. Our tenure as house band had failed to bring the Green Frog visible prosperity. “Reminds me of the bingo hall up in Parmelee, South Dakota,” I said to her. “I’m sure the Salvation Army would be glad to know that they’ve supplied the furnishings for such a noble enterprise.”

            “You don’t like the surroundings, you can kiss my ass,” the witty bartender replied.

            “I wouldn’t,” I said. “I bet it’s dirty.” I pushed the shot glass back across the bar. “Refill that, won’t you? Unless you want me to turn you in to the Liquor Control Board. That wasn’t even five-eighths of an ounce.”

            The pock-marked woman flushed. “You’d better not make any trouble,” she said. “I can pull the plug on this party right now if I want to.” She got out the bottle and poured a refill. “There,” she said. “Don’t ask for any free drinks tonight.”

            “Thank you,” I said. “Salud.”

            Dexter Coffey came in. “Hey, Dex!” I said. “Nice to see you.”

            He came up to the bar and gravely shook my hand. “Where’s our lead singer?” he asked.

            “Around,” I said. “She probably went to the ladies’ to finish putting on her Captain Julia drag. Do you want something? I’m buying; I made fifty-six dollars this week.”

            “No, thanks,” he said. “Are you enjoying life in the fresh air?”

            “Not much fresh air so far,” I said. “Plenty of sex, though.”

            He gave me a dark look. “That’s something, isn’t it? Has Julia made up her mind about the termination?”

            “Made up her mind?” I put down my glass. “What do you mean, made up her mind? I’ll make up her mind if there’s any doubt about it.”

            “I didn’t mean anything,” Dexter said. “She seemed a little iffy the last time I talked with her, that’s all.”

            “Iffy!” I glowered in the direction of the toilets. “Why should she raise Jerome’s kid?”

            “Are you sure it’s Jerome’s?”

            “Of course it’s his,” I said. “If I thought it was mine, I’d shoot her in the belly myself.”

            “Done any practicing?” he asked, changing the subject.

            “Drums? I’m no good anyway. Practice won’t help.”

            Mark McKinley came in. “Hello, Jonas,” he said. “Are you ready to play the Ace again?”

            “Getting ready,” I said. “A little stimulant would help. Got any?”

            “Weed? No,” McKinley said, glancing around the room. “Have you seen my roommate?”

            “I thought you two were Siamese twins.”

            “Hardly,” Mark Mckinley said. “We’re economically linked, for better or for worse. Like two good Catholics in a bad marriage. Dexter, I have a question for you. Does a subconscious agenda completely rule our lives, or is there a role for randomness and stupidity?”

            “I vote randomness and stupidity,” I said. “Lightning, for instance.”

            Dexter frowned. “I assume you mean where intention is involved,” he said. “Such as in choosing a person to fall in love with?” McKinley nodded. “No one living is permitted to know much about love,” Dexter said. “That way ten million poets can keep busy writing about it.”

            “Whom would you ask among the dead?” I put in. “Since I happen to be working in their neighborhood.”

            “Tiresias tried it both ways,” Dexter said. “King Solomon married five hundred wives and wrote that all is vanity. Ask them.”

            “What I want to know,” Mark McKinley said, “is why certain people punish themselves by falling in love with unattainable subjects.”

            “You mean objects,” I said. “English is a subject.”

            “Jonas,” Mark Mckinley said angrily, “shut the fuck up.”

            While I studied my beer, Dexter took a moment to ruminate. “In Chekhov’s play The Seagull,” he said finally, “each character is in love with someone who’s in love with someone else, who’s in love with someone else, and so on. Except for one old man who’s in love with Moscow. This goes on until one of them shoots himself. According to Chekhov, it’s intended to be lighthearted and funny.”

            “So?” Mark McKinley and I asked in unison. Even the pocked bartender appeared to be listening.

            “It proves the Russian intelligentsia used hashish,” Dexter said calmly. “Further, affiant sayeth not.”

            Little Robert Shemansky came in the door fast, as if he wanted to duck past us, but a customer blocked his way. “Hey, it’s my former office partner,” I said. “Look at me, I’m out of jail.” Shemansky’s eyes were red, and he smelled deliciously of marijuana. His face, however, bore no trace of a smile, illegal or otherwise; in fact, he looked as if he was about to cry.

            “Look at you,” he said dully. “Hello, Mark. Hi, Dex.”

            “Don’t just stand there,” I said. “Buy me a drink or something. Preferably something. Got any on you?”

            “I don’t,” he said. “Let me by, OK?” He squeezed past and hurried toward the back, leaving me to stare after him.

            “Fuck,” I said. “What kind of blues band is it where nobody has any drugs?”

            “It’s summer,” Mark McKinley said. “All the campus dealers have gone home.”

            “I know one,” I said. “Dexter, count the till at the first break. I’ll take our half and step out and score us some weed. I’ll be back by the time we start the second set.”

            “Oh, no, you don’t,” said the bartender, who’d been listening. “No drugs in here.”

            “Lady,” I said, “you haven’t been paying attention. We only need a little for our personal use. How do you expect us to imitate black people? You just get with Dex, here, at half-time, and we’ll divvy up early. It makes no difference in the total, and it’ll make me happy.”

            “What about the fifty-six dollars you said you made?” Dexter asked.

            “Oh, hell,” I said. “Julia took that.”

            In a few minutes I was back behind the drums, driving the band while Julia sang He keeps everything in the barnyard upset in every way. As I looked out over the crowd, a small man caught my eye. He seemed neat and joyless and out of place, nursing his gin-and-tonic at a side table. His face was familiar but I couldn’t fit him among my campus acquaintances, or among Grace’s friends, the few of them I’d met. The dogs begin to bark, Julia sang; The hounds begin to howl. I dismissed him from my mind and slipped wearily into the rhythm of the evening.

(blank line)

167. Nobody in Lincoln dances. . . .

            Nobody in Lincoln dances the first set. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody; once in a while some weird and lonely woman will get up in front of the band and twirl all by herself. Couples don’t dance. They think they aren’t drunk enough yet. They imagine that they have inhibitions.

            I took advantage of their inhibitedness to sneak through the first set without performing a solo. We shifted out of blues time and played the brief polka that signaled our break, and I was free to make a run for dope. Dexter had the cash ready and I was on my way out the front door when Julia grabbed me. “Where do you think you’re going with our money?” she demanded.

            Other people were standing there. I waved the bills. “Going to get some, you know,” I said. “Boogie medicine.”

            “Jonas! You’ve still got charges pending. Do you want to go back to jail? Give me that!” When she reached to take the money, I slipped from her grasp and skipped off down the sidewalk. “Jonas!” she cried. “Damn you!”

            “Damn you, honey,” I called back. “See you in ten.”

            “I’ll kill you if you spend that on marijuana,” she shrilled after me. I looked around uneasily. People were smiling but no one appeared to be shocked. I angled across the intersection at 12th and P, heading in the direction of the radio station where my favorite FM disk jockey plied his trade, and had crossed the street and was passing a doorway when a familiar-sounding whisper froze me in my tracks.

            “Sss! Stop a minute, Jonas Smith.”

            I felt my skin crawl. “Mattie! What are you doing— I mean, when were you released?”

            She leaned toward me so that her face was half revealed. “Same day you were,” she said, looking up into my eyes. “He gave us identical sentences; don’t you remember?”

            “I remember,” I said. “But—”

            “You’ve heard of bail,” she said sarcastically. “Some members of my congregation still have faith in me. I’m a free woman until my trial. Aren’t you pleased?”

            “But, Mattie! Um—” I licked my dry lips. “Not to put too fine a point on it, you’re just slightly nuts. Aren’t you afraid you might shoot more people?”

            “I don’t have to worry about that,” she said. “You can worry about it if you want to.”

            I regarded her warily. “You do look pretty good,” I admitted finally. “You look more together. Like you’ve gotten past your Volkswagen hobo phase.”

            Her face took on a guarded, haughty expression. “You were on your way somewhere,” she said.

            “Yes, I was going to buy some dope. The band has run out of weed, and the crowd always wants a solo. You can’t imagine how boring that is. It helps to be stoned.”

            “I wouldn’t buy marijuana if I were you,” she said. “The police are watching you.”

            “They always do,” I said. “The blues make ‘em nervous.”

            “This time it’s two squad cars,” she said. “Four cops in each. They come around the block every thirty minutes.”

            “No shit.” I glanced back toward the Frog. “I guess that means a raid. I wonder what time it’ll go down.”

            “They’re probably waiting for a signal,” she said.

            Suddenly I identified the little man I’d noticed sitting by himself; he was the Italian-looking cop who’d heckled me through the bars, when he thought the protesters at the ROTC building were about to be crunched. “They do have a man inside,” I said. “I saw him. What do you think we should do?”

            “Don’t go back,” she whispered. “Come away with me.”

            “What?” I was appalled. “Mattie!” I said. “I remember what happens to your lovers. I’d rather be arrested than shot.”

            Her eyes glittered from the shadows. “You’re really asking for it, aren’t you, Bub.”

            “I know you,” I said. “You’ll go crazy again. It’s a cycle. Something to do with the moon.”

            “I was only offering you shelter for one night.”

            “I’ll take my chances in the open.” I turned. “Thanks for the warning,” I said. “I’d better go tell my friends.”

            “I suppose you’re sleeping with the fat bitch now,” Mattie said.

            “Yeah,” I said. “She’s pregnant. Shoot Julia and you get two for one.”

            Mattie was silent, except that I could hear her breathing. “Ted,” she said hoarsely.

            “Nah,” I said. “It’s either Jerome Weld’s or it’s mine. Old Teddy wasn’t in it then.”

            “Go,” she said. “I don’t want to see you.”

            “Fine, Mattie,” I said. “You know, you should be on medication.”

            “Don’t tell me what to swallow,” she said as I turned away. “Male chauvinist asshole.”

            I loped back across the intersection, still clutching the drug money, and crashed rudely through the crowd in front of the door. “Dex!” I whispered hurriedly. “Dex, I just saw Mattie. We’re going to be raided.”

            “Wait,” he said, looking up from his change box. “That’s two items. My aging brain can only handle one thing at a time.” He glanced disapprovingly at the wad of loose bills in my hand. “Slow down,” he said. “Tell me again.”

            “I ran into Mattie Halliday hiding in a doorway,” I said. “Her friends put up bail and she’s out on the street. She’s been watching us. She said two cars full of cops have been circling the block. I didn’t get any dope.” I looked around frantically. “Shit, man,” I moaned. “I really don’t want to go back to jail.”

            “Julia will be glad you didn’t make a purchase,” he said dryly. “She’s back there somewhere crying her eyes out.”

            “Dexter!” I said anxiously, kicking his table. “The hell with Julia! Tell me what to do?”

            “First, take a deep breath,” he ordered. I complied. “Second,” he said, “go tell Julia that you didn’t score any weed. I don’t think you need to spring Mattie Halliday on her. Third, quit worrying. You’re clean; the band is clean. Just don’t let anyone pass you a joint. You’re fine as long as the cops don’t catch you holding.”

            “The Nerd Brothers are gonna be pissed,” I said. “If there’s no dope, what should I do with the money?”

            “Pocket it,” he said. “It’s counted and it’s ours. The police might confiscate the till.”

            “This sucks,” I said. “I’ll have to play my solo without the benefit of THC.”

            “Look on the bright side,” he said. “If they come in soon enough, you won’t have to play it at all.”

(blank line)

168. We began the second set. . . .

            We began the second set with our knowledge of the coming raid hanging over us like a leaking water balloon. I’d barely had time to find Julia and give her the word; Shemansky and McKinley’d been at opposite ends of the alley and had refused to be brought together to confer. We had no plan and couldn’t even decide whether to inform the audience. Meanwhile people were lighting up all over the place. The odor of reefer permeated the room, and twice someone came up with a joint for us, which Julia waved nervously away. I watched the little cop taking notes on the action, and waited for the moment when he’d get up and start for the door. I did not know what I would do then. Meanwhile the audience came out of their trance; they jumped, they hooted, they drank and puffed and grinned and got themselves thoroughly and expansively ripped. They were headed for a grand time down at the police station.

            Julia did her best to drop a few hints. She sang a Bessie Smith number, “The FBI is Follerin’ Me;” she held her soda glass against the top of her head, wiggling her finger to imitate an animated spray can, and leaned above Shemansky, saying “Fsst! Fsst!” The crowd thought it hilarious. The room was packed beyond its legal capacity, and if anyone had outright yelled “Raid,” or “Fire” or “Free pussy in the back room,” dead citizens would’ve been piled in front of the doorway. The inside cop must’ve sensed the possibility of a crush, because he sat tight through a lot of illegality. Things went on pretty much as usual until it came time for me to solo.

            Like most bands, we’d evolved a procedure. Blues tempo doesn’t lend itself to fancy drumming, so we gradually played faster numbers, leading into a speeded-up version of “I’m a Long Tall Texan” (don’t ask me why we chose that) from which I would clatter off into a load of horsefart drumthumping while the panting dancers waited, glassy-eyed, for the music to settle and the rhythm to make sense again. It had become a ritual for our fans and an ordeal for the band, since none of us believed (me least of any) that I had powerful insights to express. This time, after Julia sang, “See a man a-comin’, comin’ with a gun, he knows I can’t, be, BEAT!” —I balked. I tucked my sticks up under my armpits and the room fell silent.

            I glared at the dizzy, about-to-be-arrested audience. Finally, someone back near the door started a chant: “So-lo!” (Clap, clap.) “So-lo!” (Clap, clap.) The audience picked it up. “So-lo!”

            I leaned up to the drum mike. “Hell, no!” I replied. “Hell, no!”

            “So-lo!”

            “Hell, no!”

            “So-lo!”

            “Hell, no!”

            The cop began to twitch. Shemansky turned to face me and took up their chant with his harmonica: Wonk, wonk, hell, no, wonk wonk, hell no. I looked at him, his pale, earnest, stoned elf’s face—he’d gotten a hit of marijuana sometime that evening—and threw a drumstick, knocking the harmonica into his elf teeth.

            The chant stopped. Shemansky, his mouth starting to bleed, flung the harmonica, missing me. “Fuck you, Smith!” he said, the words coming out over the sound system. “Just fuck you, OK?” Scattered laughs rose from a few fools, but a watchful silence began to rule the room. “Fuck you all,” Shemansky cried, looking from me to McKinley to Julia with tears in his eyes. “You’re nothing but a bunch of amateurs.” He raised his arm stiffly, middle finger extended, and turned and made his way to the front door. “Fuck you!” he screamed one last time, and disappeared.

            Mark McKinley stepped cautiously up to the mike. “Whoa,” he said, poker-faced. “Did anyone see a livid midget with a rigid digit?” His joke brought nervous giggles, the audience unsure if all this was part of our act. I stood and leaned forward, speaking into the drum mike. “Set’s over, folks,” I said. “Sorry about the temper tantrum, but I’ve lost my stick.”

            Julia removed her microphone from its stand. “While I have your attention,” she added apologetically, “I want to suggest that you leave in an orderly manner, those nearest the door going first. I ask you to do this because— well,” she glanced at the inside cop, heading for the exit, “I happen to have heard a rumor that we’ll be having visitors.” She replaced the mike in its stand; I started for the back door, McKinley and Julia following, while a mutter of cognition rose behind us. We’d emerged into the air of the pee-smelling alley and walked a few steps in the direction of Tenth Street when we met four cops marching stiff-leggedly Frogward, shoulder to shoulder. Miraculously, they passed us.

            Feeling safer now, I turned to watch the scuffle, but Julia took my arm. “Come, Jonas,” she said. “It’ll do no good to hang around. We’ll be lucky if they don’t take us, too.”

            “But I wanted to watch the raid,” I said. “And what about Dexter?”

            “Dex has a cool head,” Mark McKinley said. “Life is long, Jonas, and you’re exceptionally skilled at finding trouble. There’ll be other raids. Let’s locate my buddy.”

            “Leave Robert alone,” Julia said. “I think he has a broken heart, or something.”

            “Or a chipped tooth,” Mark Mckinley said. We reached the end of the alley and came out onto the lighted sidewalk. “I’m going to look for him, anyway. Maybe I’ll check on Dexter, too. Is anyone coming with me?”

            Julia and I glanced at one another. “Nah,” I said. “Don’t think so. We’re too pooped.”

(blank line)

169. We went home and slept.

            We went home and slept. In the morning, Julia woke me. “Jonas,” she cried excitedly. “Jonas, I didn’t puke!”

            “Oof,” I said, opening my eyes grudgingly. “That’s some exciting news.”

            “Well, it’s the first time in ages.” She laughed. “How do you feel?”

            I sat up painfully and swung my legs over the bed. “As if I’d been beaten with a soybean shovel,” I said. “So; who’s our little Shemansky fucking, anyway?”

            “Someone you know,” Julia said. “I feel like cooking. What do you want for breakfast?”

            “Coffee. Eggs. Bacon. Toast.”

            “Too easy. Too much grease. What about coffee cake?”

            “Takes too long,” I said. “We have to go to the Frog and see about our stuff.”

            Julia made a brave try, but soon after she’d watched the bacon sizzle and cracked two eggs, she was in the bathroom upchucking. I finished scrambling the eggs and burnt her a slice of toast, and we ate breakfast, silently observing one another’s table manners. She got the toast down without gagging; I rinsed the frying pan, and we took her station wagon uptown. “So,” I said again, parking behind a rusty panel truck. “Who is it?”

            Just then two men carried a table out of the Green Frog while a freckled, skinny, purple-nosed geezer held the door; they pulled open the back of the panel truck, revealing a stack of folding chairs. “It’s the Irishman,” Julia gasped incredulously. “He’s taking the furniture!”

            “Shemansky is fucking the Irishman? Give me a break.”

            Julia laughed nervously. “Oh, that. Selva Andersen,” she said. “Jonas, what do you suppose is going on here?”

            I struck the wheel with my fist. “Selva Andersen! God damn her, she’s supposed to be engaged!”

            “Well,” Julia said, “aren’t you the moralist. Jonas, will you pay attention? They’re closing the Green Frog.”

            “I don’t care if they’re closing the Capitol Building! Selva Andersen!” I got out and slammed the door, giving it a kick for good measure; I walked up to the drunken old leprechaun who owned the building. “Just what in the God-damned hell do you think you’re doing?” I screamed.

            “Jonas!” Julia called behind me. “Jonas, calm down.”

            “I think I’m narrowing me loss margin,” the old Irishman quipped. “And what’s it to you if I do, bucko? Did you hope to own this fine bar one day?”

            My beautiful Selva, balling a freak neurasthenic loser the size of a border collie, and this man wanted to make jokes. “You can’t shut it down!” I screeched. “Our band plays here!”

            “Don’t lay the blame for shutting it down on me,” the Irishman said, gesturing toward a yellow cardboard sign Scotch-taped to the glass. I hesitated in my wrath and shut the door part way so I could read it. BY ORDER OF THE LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD, STATE OF NEBRASKA, it said, THE LICENSED ESTABLISHMENT KNOWN AS— (here a line was left blank)— IS CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. MYRON T. CERV, COMMISSIONER. “Ain’t it the bleeding shits,” the Irishman added sympathetically.

            I suddenly felt like weeping, so I sat down in the doorway. “You can’t do this,” I whimpered. “You can’t just haul their furniture away without due process.”

            “Don’t I know due process,” the Irishman said wearily. “They haven’t paid me a penny rent since Christmas. You’ll catch your death of the hemorrhoids sitting on that concrete, son. Me own brother died from sleeping in doorways. Terminal protuberation of the digestive apparatus.”

            The men who’d carried out the table came to stand on either side of me. “Jonas,” Julia said, “they’re bulkier than you. Stop clowning; you’ll get us both in trouble.”

            “Who’s clowning?” I said tearily, my voice gathering sorrowful determination. “I’m starting my own sit-in. No more closing bars without a vote of the people.”

            “Come on!”

            “Nope.” I curled myself into the martyr position and locked my fingers behind my neck. “Carry me away.”

            “Step over him, boys,” said the Irishman. “Use his head for a doorstop, and the work’ll go the quicker.”

            I lay in the doorway and envisioned Selva Andersen panting in the spaghetti arms of that goggling dwarf Shemansky, while Julia kvetched and fidgeted until one of the helpers emerged carrying a microphone on its chrome stand. “Hey!” she said angrily, dropping her plaintive tone. “That’s ours!”

            I sat up straight and snuffled up a load of tears and snot. “Hold it,” I said. “You can’t have that.”

            The second helper followed carrying the high-hat and drum mike. “Hey, Sobstory,” he said, glancing down at me. “Out of the road, OK?”

            “No,” I said. “Not OK. Get the Irishman; he knows those things belong to us.”

            “He says you didn’t pay.”

            “We paid!” Julia cried. “You gave him a check, didn’t you, Jonas?”

            “Got a receipt?”

            “To hell with a receipt,” I said. “Where is that old jackass?” I got up, spat a mouthful of crud onto the sidewalk, and pushed past the second helper, who gave way grudgingly, eyeing me.

            The Irish pawnbroker stood behind the bar, counting liquor bottles and making notes in a pocket ledger. He gave me an amused look. “It’s the lachrymose patriot,” he said. “How goes the war, patriot?”

            “Never mind the war,” I said. “Why’d you tell your guys to take our stuff? You know damn well I paid you for it.”

            “Did you now.” He slid his glasses to the far end of his nose and held the ledger at arm’s length. “Here,” he said, turning back a few pages. “Would that have been January sixteenth? You paid two hundred cash for one duplex amplifier, two microphones with stands, two bass speakers, two combination midrange and treble, eight coaxial cables, one power cable, one extension cable with circuit breaker and outlet box. No drums.”

            “I’m remembering we got the drums later.”

            He turned a couple of pages. “Drums,” he said. “Here we are: February fourteenth. Your lady friend bought four drums, one cymbal with cymbal stand, one high-hat, two microphones with stands, two co-ax cables, one foot pedal and one stool, all on credit. She put fifty dollars down, with a hundred and seventy to be paid off in six monthly installments.” He looked at me across the rims of his glasses. “I don’t see where I’ve marked off any monthly installments.”

            I turned. “Julia. Julia!” The helpers had vanished from the entrance, taking the disputed equipment with them. I went to the door and looked out; Julia was in the street, pulling at one of the microphone stands, while someone inside the panel truck held the other end. As I watched, the mike stand parted in the middle and Julia sat down hard, holding the mike. The Irishman came and stood by my elbow. “Och, aye,” he said admiringly. “She’s a scrappy one, isn’t she now?”

            “Julia,” I called out. “He says you never paid the installments on the drum set.”

            “I’ll pay them,” she said. “I forgot, that’s all. Jonas, help me! They’re taking everything!”

            Ah, how I would have galloped to the rescue had it been Selva calling! Instead I limped reluctantly, remembering my nerve-weakened arm. Grudgingly I reached down to help poor Julia to her feet, and just then the genius inside the panel wagon saw fit to nudge me with the base of the microphone stand.

            If his intention was to send me off balance, he succeeded completely. In two seconds I was up inside the panel truck; I had taken the first helper by the shirt and was flinging him from side to side against the walls of the truck. When the undershirt he was wearing gave way, I grabbed him by the throat and began pounding his head against the base of the table. His tongue came out and his eyes bulged and he fought to loosen my grip, but I kept on choking him even as my feet were dragged from under me and I was pulled backwards into the street. It took the second helper and the Irishman working together to pry my fingers off his neck, while someone heavy sat in the middle of my back. All the while I could hear a strange, high voice screaming curses; when my hands were empty and I was lying spent, face down in the gutter of P Street, I realized that the high voice screaming had been me.

            I turned to see who was sitting on me. Astride my buttocks, framed against the sky, with the morning sun coming over her shoulder, sat Julia, her dark eyes wide with concern. “Jonas, are you all right?” she asked.

            “Hell if I know,” I said. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

            “Yours,” she said. “Honey, it’s not necessary to kill the man, OK?”

            “OK,” I said angrily. “Get off me. You weigh a ton.”

            Julia let me up, and I sulked beside our station wagon, examining the scrapes on my elbows, while she and the Irishman negotiated in the doorway. From time to time I glanced menacingly at the two helpers, who watched me from their spot beside the panel truck. The first one kept uneasily touching his neck; he lowered his gaze when I looked at him, but the second glared back as if he’d like to try his luck. At last Julia came over. “He’s right; we didn’t pay for the drums,” she said. “Jonas, do you remember getting our money from the till last night? It was before the police came in. You were going to buy marijuana.”

            I dug deep inside the pocket of my jeans and produced a folded stack of five- and ten-dollar bills. “This was our share as of ten o’clock,” I said, handing it to her. “It should be split with the Bobbsey Twins, with a cut taken for Dex.”

            “Gosh, we did good,” Julia said as she counted the bills. “Too bad we don’t get to keep it.”

            “Keep it!” I said. “Fuck the Irishman and his goddam drums. It looks to me like we’re going out of business, Julia.”

            “We’ve still got a gig next weekend,” she said. “We have to play for Adrian and Selva’s wedding.”

            “You might be playing for it,” I said. “I’m not. And I bet Shemansky won’t, either.”

            “What’s the matter, Jonas? Are you still under the illusion that you have this huge crush on Selva?”

            “I just don’t like them,” I replied sullenly.

            I investigated a rip in the knee of my Levis while Julia made a payment to the Irishman. Then we loaded our drums, mikes and amplifiers while the pawnbroker and his helpers cleaned off the shelves. As we left, we passed the Irishman tipping up a pint of lime vodka. “Here’s to the police. Never here when you want ‘em,” he said, handing the bottle of vile green liquid to me.

            “To the police,” I replied. “Sometimes they’re not here when you don’t.”

            “I’ll drink to that,” Julia said, taking her turn at the bottle. “Jonas, keeping you out of jail is going to be a full-time job for me.”

            From the way Julia batted her lashes during the drive to our apartment, I knew I was in for some fucking. I felt uncharacteristically reluctant—I was upset over Selva and Shemansky—but nevertheless I rose to the occasion and rutted against her pillowy parts until lunchtime came and I fell asleep nested in her biceps. When I awoke again in late afternoon, my muscles ached as if I had the flu.

(blank line)

170. Julia made a quick call to Brenda. . . .

            Julia made a quick call to Brenda, then drove to Omaha to pass the remaining hours of Shabbas with her family. She left me fifteen dollars and a couple of tuna sandwiches; I ate the sandwiches, cracked a beer, and searched the kitchen for chips. I turned up nothing in that department, so I fried some raw potatoes and opened a twelve-ounce can of mixed fruit that had sat in the cupboard since the week after I moved in. It tasted like it always does, the white grapes plangent but insipid, the lone half of Maraschino cherry a little splash of fructose in an ocean of corn syrup. When I’d finished eating I drank the juice and considered how to spend my workman’s Saturday night in downtown Lincoln. I would have to visit Barrymore’s, to confront Selva Andersen about her affair with Shemansky, but I hoped I’d soon get that over with, since the fifteen bucks would go farther elsewhere. The cheapest place to drink was the Skylane out on Cornhusker, but it was close enough to get a whiff of the soya factory. Besides, I wasn’t welcome there. I decided I might as well finish out the evening in Casey’s. I showered long and hard, did a little pruning on my whiskers, and found a clean tee shirt and a pair of jeans.

            Summer had arrived with its warm and fragrant evenings, and the walk toward town was a joy, mixed with dread at my coming encounter with the woman I loved. I had approximately the feeling I used to get walking from base headquarters down to the flight line. As I drew closer to downtown, I realized I would need some Dutch courage. I directed my steps to Duffy’s, where I thought I could count on seeing no one I knew, but when I went to the bar to place my order, someone laid a friendly hand on my shoulder, and I was swamped by a familiar lion-cage-and-cigar-smoke brume. It was Lewis Rey. “Ah, Jones-Smith,” he said jovially. “How’ve you been? We’ve missed you around the Department.”

            “You have?”

            He collected two drinks, a Scotch on ice and a gin-and-tonic. I glanced over my shoulder to see Barbara Justman seated at one of the booths. “We have indeed,” he said. “You gave us something to talk about. Gossip-wise, it’s been rather dull lately. You’ll join us, of course. Bartender, a Scotch for this young gentleman. Rocks? Or do you prefer bourbon?”

            “Scotch is fine,” I said. Rey led the way to the booth, where the head librarian greeted him with a weary frown. “Hello, Dr. Justman,” I said. “I’m not intruding, am I?”

            “Lewis and I have business to discuss,” she replied, “but it can wait. Do please sit down.”

            I took the seat next to her, while Rey sat opposite. “I was just saying how much we’ve missed him,” Lewis Rey said to her.

            “That’s right,” she said, regarding me calmly. “There’s no one to unbraid our rugs. Are you going to attempt to salvage your credits, Mr. Smith, or do you consider yourself finished at this University?”

            “Finished,” I said. “I’m a soybean shoveler now. If I shovel good, I might get to drive a fork-lift one day.”

            “That’s a shame,” she said. “My husband thought you had potential.”

            “Did he?” I said. “Which husband, present or former?”

            “Oh, both of them,” she said. “Both of them.”

            “We’re working on our divorce,” Lewis Rey volunteered. “A delicate thing, a divorce. Takes a fair bit of maintenance.”

            “I’ve never had a divorce,” I said. “Or a marriage either.”

            “Marriages are temporary,” Lewis Rey said. “A divorce lasts forever. Also, you can marry only one woman at a time, but you can be divorced from as many as you like. It’s extravagant financially, but it does have certain advantages.”

            “Name one,” Barbara Justman said.

            “Well,” he said, “if you drink too much, instead of going home, you can go to your former wife’s house and sleep on the sofa.”

            “Tell me something,” I said, sipping my businessman’s drink. “Were you two ever passionately in love?”

            “Oh, passionately,” Barbara Justman said.

            “That’s probably why we’re divorced,” Lewis Rey said. “We’re merely fond of one another now. Fondness is much kinder, don’t you think, dear?”

            “It doesn’t lead to bloodshed,” she agreed. She turned to me. “Were you going to bring up the subject of Selva Andersen, Mr. Smith?”

            “I was,” I said. “She’s to be married one week from today.”

            “We know,” Barbara Justman said. “We’re both invited.”

            “It’s a marriage based on fondness,” Lewis Rey said. “I think we approve. Do we approve, Barbara?”

            “With qualifications,” Barbara Justman said. “Are you still in love with her, Smith?”

            “I am,” I said.

            “One week is not much time,” Barbara Justman said.

            “I was on my way to try to see her,” I said. “I only got out of jail on Wednesday.”

            The three of us fell silent. It was true that I missed these difficult people; my brain had begun to feel its idleness below the bean tanks. But I couldn’t see a life ahead of me that would lead back to the University, unless I went as janitor. “Tell me something else, Dr. Rey,” I said finally. “Are you a World War Two vet?”

            “I am,” he said. “As a young artillery officer, I helped reduce the Church of San Remo to rubble, even though I could see that our shelling had no military value. It was a marble church built in the eleventh century, and as far as I know it has never been restored.”

            “How do you justify that to yourself?”

            He shrugged. “What was I supposed to do, aim to miss?”

            “I am opposed to war,” Barbara Justman said. “I’m a Jewish Quaker.”

            “Did you lose relatives in the Holocaust?” I asked.

            “Yes,” she said. “Many.”

            “I don’t know what to think of war, myself,” I said. “I certainly picked a stupid one to get involved in.”

            “You don’t pick a war,” Lewis Rey said. “Your war picks you. Unless you’re a refusenik.”

            “I don’t have that much courage,” I said. “Dr. Justman, I admire you. I wish I had some convictions.”

            “I also wish you had them,” she said. “The anti-war movement needs men like you.”

            “But you said I was an informer.”

            “Ah.” She put down her drink. “I owe you an apology. In discussing the matter, we realized that our informer is someone much farther up the pyramid. Rad Langdon says it’s always one of the leaders. So, I’m sorry that I denounced you. I’ll repair the damage to your reputation as best I can.”

            “Save your convictions for literature,” Lewis Rey advised. “Or soybeans,” he added.

            “Here’s to soybeans,” I said. “God damn, I screwed up, didn’t I?”

            “All is not lost,” Barbara Justman said. “Go see her, Mr. Smith.”

            “Selva? She’s too far above me.”

            “You’re projecting a stereotype,” Barbara Justman said. “She’s very young and mortal, is Ms. Andersen.”

            “Mortal and full of mistakes,” Lewis Rey added. “Maybe you can get her to make one with you.”

(blank line)

171. After two of the Chairman’s drinks. . . .

            After two of the Chairman’s drinks, I was affably dismissed to get on with the terrifying business of pursuit. Barrymore’s was less than two blocks away, so that no matter how I shambled and delayed, I arrived at the entrance too soon. I sighed and yanked the door open with a flourish, just as a theater-going couple came out. They stared at me in silence and hurried past.

            Selva was chatting animatedly with the female bartender, but when she caught sight of me, she said something sharp and turned away. I slipped by her with nothing more than a glance, then took a seat at the darkest vacant table. After a while she came over. “What’ll you have, Mr. Smith?” she asked, her cold green eyes focused on the wall above my head.

            “You’re getting married in a week,” I said.

            “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I’ll be guilty of some bizarre behavior. If you come, it’ll be even more bizarre. What would you like to drink?”

            “Don’t marry him if you don’t want to.”

            “Mind your own business. Order a drink, please.”

            I asked for a Manhattan; she rolled her eyes and left. When she brought the drink, she flitted by the table and set it down so fast that I didn’t have time to clear my throat, much less think of something clever and sociable. To get her to come back, I could drink up quickly, but that, I saw, was a strategy that would defeat itself. I nursed the sweetened bourbon and looked around me. Other couples were having drinks and dialogue, their gestures weaving the come-and-go of romance. At the bar were the usual bank vice-presidents talking golf scores and football, nodding and amiable as feedlot steers at the trough.

            Selva approached my table again. “I said that I wasn’t going to talk to you, but I suppose you intend to sit here like a lump until I do,” she said. “So talk.”

            “Can you sit down?”

            She jerked out a chair and sat. “I’m warning you, if you have plans to rape me in a doorway or something, I’ll call the police this time. I’m not your puppet, Mr. Smith.”

            “Puppet? What a thing to say.” I sipped my drink and put it down. “Suppose I was dressed like those men at the bar. Could we have a civil conversation then? Because I have some things to tell you.”

            “Maybe I don’t want to hear them,” she said.

            “First, I apologize that I didn’t meet you at Larry Whyffe’s class,” I said. “I was unavoidably detained.”

            “By whom?”

            “By a man named Dan Kroger. Someone as different from those bankers over there as— Well, as different as a grizzly bear from a kitten. Someone who would have cut my throat.”

            “Fine,” she said. “You were detained. What else?”

            “I love you. I worship you.”

            “You worship me, but you fuck Julia,” she said. “I talked to her in the supermarket. She said if she had any more sex with you, her clitoris would start to glow in the dark.”

            “I couldn’t help that,” I said. “That was the result of deprivation and proximity.”

            “Just a victim of circumstances,” she said mockingly. “Where were you when you were supposed to be in jail, Jonas Smith? Adrian and several more of the men were jailed at the same time you were, and they didn’t see you.”

            “I was at the new jail,” I said. “They put me there to see if it’d hold anyone. I guess they thought I was harmless.”

            “I don’t think you’re harmless,” she said. “I think you’re a son of a bitch.”

            “Well,” I said, “I like that better than if you didn’t think of me at all.”

            Selva looked wounded. “I am,” she said, “absolutely, unqualifiedly, through with men like you.”  She took a ragged breath. “I am going to be a married woman if it kills me. God damn you, don’t you even have a cigarette to offer me?”

            I got up and practically ran to the bar; I fumbled out some change and bought a pack of Marlboros. When I got back to the table, she was already smoking. “Here,” I said, putting the pack down beside her. “Maybe I’ll have one, too.”

            “Jonas,” she said, “you are such an idiot.”

            Selva stubbed out the cigarette and started to laugh; I began by laughing, too, and then ended up crying helplessly, my face in my hands. Still, somehow, I felt unaccountably happy. “Marry me,” I said. “Marry me, and we’ll live on— soybeans.”

            “I can’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t if I could.”

            “Oh, Selva!” I looked at her and smiled. “My heart is breaking now.”

            “You’ll get over it,” she said. She leaned back and shook her hair free, raising her arms. “I’m going to be rich, Jonas! Can you imagine it? Living in Boston, with Cape Cod right across the bay? Two hours by train from the lights of Broadway?”

            “You’ll never get out of the house,” I said. “You’ll be June Cleaver with a couple of preppy kids. You’ll be more of a prisoner that I ever was.”

            “Not me,” she said. “I’m not their type.”

            “They’ll make you their type. They know how to do it. What do you think makes Julia so squirrely? She’s battling to the death to avoid her fate. What scares her is the exact same thing you’re rushing to achieve.”

            “What about you?” Selva asked. “Are you battling to avoid your fate?”

            I had to swallow hard. “No,” I admitted. “Looks like I’ve given up.”

            “What would be my fate as the wife of a bean shoveler?”

            “We’ll do something different,” I said bravely. “We’ll rob banks together.”

            “Now, that,” she said, “if only I believed you, might appeal to me.”

            The conversation was exhausted. Still, we sat. “I wish I had met you some other time,” I said.

            “Some other way,” she said. “Besides falling asleep during my library spiel. Oh, I could tell you were fascinated with me, all right.”

            “I was,” I said. “I am. I’ll love you till I die.”

            “Or until I die,” she said. “That’s what’s scary about you obsessive types.”

            “Come for a ride with me.”

            “Absolutely not.”

            Never had I wanted her more. She looked back at me warily and smiled. “You wouldn’t like it, Jonas,” she said. “I’m peculiar.”

            “I already liked it,” I said. “Shemansky liked it, too.”

            I should’ve bitten my tongue off. Selva’s white skin grew whiter, and she rose as if stung. “Shit!” she said. “Why did I waste ten minutes of my break talking to you? Get out of here, Jonas Smith! Get out, or I’ll call the police and tell them you’ve been following me!”

            “But—” I looked around; the well-groomed couples were arousing themselves from their trance of seduction. “I didn’t mean—”

            “Out!” She stalked angrily to the bar, holding her hips stiff, and reached across it to pick up the telephone. The lithe blonde bartender looked toward me, her eyes wide, her lips formed into a sweet pout of disdain. The bank vice-presidents swiveled their ponderous attention.

            I stood up, leaving a two-dollar tip, and walked out past a gauntlet of suspicious beef. “Sorry,” I announced to all present. “Wrong bar. I’m supposed to be in Bertie’s.”

(blank line)

172. When Julia got back. . . .

            When Julia got back from Omaha on Sunday, she found me in a trembling, red-eyed state. “Looks like you got our money’s worth,” she said dryly. “Anything left?”

            “No,” I said. “Did you decide about the abortion?”

            “No,” she said.

(blank line)

173. The Pyramids. . . .

            The Pyramids, those stinking heaps of grit beneath the far-shining towers, were waiting for me when I arrived at work on Monday. Late that morning, the checker-shirted plant boss, whom I’d nicknamed Augie Stables, came down to look at my work. “You keep showing up,” he said.

            I shrugged. “I’m an obsessive type,” I said. “So I’m told. Why don’t you put a Bobcat down here? A little skid-loader could do in a day what I’ll do in a month.”

            “The exhaust would kill you.”

            “Nah. You’d run it on propane. Put two fans in the door, one blowing in and one blowing out. Get some air circulating. It’d be a piece of cake.”

            “The door’s not big enough. You couldn’t get a loader down the stairs.”

            “You’d have to take it apart and reassemble it,” I said. “Any idiot could do that. There’s not much to a Bobcat.”

            “You don’t know,” he said, “some of the idiots we’ve got around here. Do you need anything?”

            “I could use a greater variety of shovels,” I said. “How about one of those snow blades that the downtown storekeepers push to clear snow from in front of their businesses? That would come in handy at times.”

            “I’ll look around the garage,” he said. “I don’t know where I can buy one this time of year.”

            “Otherwise I’m fine,” I said. “You could get me two fans to set in the door. Here’s another thing: how about putting me on graveyard? I don’t sleep anyway, and it’s the coolest time.”

            “It wouldn’t make any difference,” he said. “It’s hot down here year round; it’s the same temperature in January as in July. I’m not speaking of you, but the next man is more likely to come in sober at 8 a.m.”

            “What next man?” I said, gesturing grandly. “This is my permanent career.”

            “Not if I see you smoking, it isn’t,” he said. “I don’t just mean tobacco, either. One spark could put us out of business here.”

            “It’s the farthest thing from my mind,” I said.

            That night I asked Julia if she’d bake marijuana brownies. The question was moot for the time being, since we had no money to buy marijuana, but better times could conceivably lie ahead. She said she wouldn’t mind taking one to her job at Hinky Dinky. “About the Fisher-Andersen wedding,” she said. “It’ll be an open-air dance. We’ll need the drums.”

            “Get Greg or one of his friends,” I said. “I’m going up to Palemon for the weekend.”

            “You can’t stand it, can you,” Julia said. “You really are in love with her. Too bad.”

            “If I want a psychiatrist,” I said, “tomorrow when I’m down in Hades, I’ll call up Freud.”

(blank line)

174. The week passed miserably.

            The week passed miserably. By Friday night I was bone-tired, too weary even to go out drinking. McKinley and Shemansky, having healed their differences, came over for a conference with Julia; Dexter showed up, too, and while the rest were talking, he and I drank beer and started a game of Scrabble. Dex was a good-enough match for me, but Grace Kuzak would’ve wiped the floor with him.

            “Have you ever been to Parade?” I asked. “It’s not much of a place.”

            Dex glanced at me. “I was raised in Kentucky,” he said. “I only moved to Nebraska to go to grad school.”

            “Have you noticed,” I said, “how often, when you ask someone a direct question, they don’t answer you?”

            “I have,” he said. “When were you in Parade?”

            “I used to do a lot of trucking,” I said. “I guess I’ve been about everywhere in Nebraska.”

            “Little Robert is handling it well, with a lot of sympathy from Julia,” he observed after a time. “She’s an uncut gem,” he added respectfully. “A highly unusual woman.”

            “Yeah,” I replied, pain constricting my voice. “That Selva is some beauty, all right. I wonder what she saw in the Mansk?”

            “Always that damned Andersen,” Dexter groused. “I was speaking of Julia. By the way, what are your plans?”

            “I told you, I’m going up to Palemon in the morning.”

            “That’s not what I meant at all,” Dexter said carefully. “There will be a child.”

            “Oh, that,” I said. “Talk to Julia. I can’t get her to do a thing. I guess the procedure is not that complicated, once she decides.”

            “Time passes,” Dexter said. “If you wait five more months, the procedure becomes extremely complicated.”

            The thing about Julia was that she didn’t look pregnant. Because of morning sickness, she’d lost ten or fifteen pounds, yet she looked ruddy and strong and fit to lift horses out of the mud. Her belly had firmed and flattened; her breasts had hardened and become sensitive. When she entered the kitchen with McKinley and the forlorn Shemansky—they’d studied the highway map and had stumbled quietly through “Here Comes the Bride”—I was able to see that she was an attractive woman in a Middle European way. Still, she wasn’t Selva. “Hello,” I said. “You sound as good as the average wedding organist.”

            “Thanks, Jonas,” Julia replied. “Are you sure you won’t come with us? We’re terrified we’re going to get lost and scalped in Nebraska.”

            “Julia, you were born in Nebraska.”

            She shuddered. “Not that Nebraska,” she said. “Have you two drunk all the beer, or is there some for us?”

            Julia, Dexter, and McKinley finished the Scrabble game, with Julia and McKinley putting their heads together to beat Dex handily. I and Robert Shemansky sat opposite one another, each suffering in his own way. There was still no dope in the apartment, and money was short all around; instead of telephoning for pizza, Julia toasted cheese sandwiches in the oven. I went to bed shortly afterward, lying awake and eavesdropping on their chat. Later, when Julia crawled in and threw a leg over mine, I pretended to be asleep.

(blank line)

175. After a terrible night. . . .

            After a terrible night in which my mind roiled around the fact of Selva Andersen’s wedding the way a mountain stream roils around a boulder, I slipped out of bed without waking Julia and left the apartment a little after 4 a.m. The quarter moon stood right overhead; storm clouds flickered in the southeast. I got into my pickup and drove down into the industrial slum that lay between Ninth Street and the trainyards to the west. I was looking for Grace’s Falcon; a vacant lot there owned by the city was where all of Lincoln’s abandoned cars were towed. I owned a flat, five-gallon “Jerry can” and a length of hose, and I planned to take whatever gas was in the Falcon’s tank so I wouldn’t have to spend extra money on the trip home. The cars were protected by a chain-link fence, but I figured that the midnight-auto-supply boys would’ve made themselves an opening, and I was not wrong; the bottom of the fence was detached at the corner nearest the tracks. I shut off my truck, got the empty can from the box, and rummaged behind the seat for the piece of hose. The tire wrench was back there, too, and I took it along in case of surprises.

            Grace’s Falcon was squeezed between a rusted ‘61 Pontiac and a sweet old ‘54 Dodge that looked as if it’d arrived there by mistake. I took a few moments to admire the Dodge, then located the Falcon’s fuel tank and got the siphon started without getting too much gas in my mouth. I was gawking around in the moonlight, waiting for the can to fill and picturing Selva in her wedding dress, when a man sat up in the back seat. I jumped a mile. At first I thought it was Don Stinns, then I thought it was a cop lying in wait for parts thieves. Then a rusty voice came from the car. “Yo, buddy,” it said. “Whataya think y’ doin?”

            “Taking some gas,” I said. “This is my car. The woman who used to own it gave it to me.”

            “That’s my gas,” the aggrieved voice said. “You oughta pay me for it. You got a dollar?”

            “Not for you,” I said. “Not today. Where you from, bo?”

            “Memphis,” he said. “Tryin’ t’ get t’ Memphis. Gimme a dollar for that gas.”

            “Forget it,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

            The hobo laid back down; the siphon gurgled and quit. I had about four gallons, enough to finish the trip. I screwed the noisy lid back on the Jerry can, drained the hose into the tank, and replaced the gas cap. I stood, hefting the gas can in my left hand, the hose coiled around my left wrist, and carrying the tire wrench in my right. Then I heard a weary sigh and a rustle. The hobo was trying to open the door on the other side. “God dammit,” he said with a sob in his voice. “God dammit.”

            “Better stay put,” I warned him. “I haven’t got a dollar for you.”

            “I’m tired of bein’ pushed around,” he said. “Oh, God dammit.” He finally got the door open, thumping it against the hulk of the flat-tailed Pontiac, and lurched out into the open air.

            I could see he was just a little guy. “Mister,” I told him, “this is just a dream, OK? You dreamed somebody took your gas. Now go back to sleep.”

            “A man’s got to stick up for his rights,” he whined. “I seen this car first, an’ possession is nine points of the law. You got to pay me for that gas you stole. I only want one dollar.” He wavered unsteadily between the two cars, digging for something in his pants pocket. Then I saw that he was unfolding a tiny knife.

            “You’re hallucinating, pal,” I said calmly. “Put that knife away and get back in the car.”

            “I ain’t,” he said. “Not till you pay me.” He staggered toward me, waving the penknife awkwardly; one of his shoes trailed a yard of duct tape. I backed up, centering myself in the clear space between rows of cars, and showed him the wrench.

            “Look out, old-timer,” I said, my mouth dry. “I’m going to pop you in a minute.”

            “Business is business,” he insisted drunkenly. “I been pushed around all my life. You got two dollars’ worth of gas there easy. Gimme a dollar.”

            Maybe his slight stature made me think of Shemansky. When he stepped forward again, I closed the distance and hit him with a roundhouse swing just above the ear. I hit him as hard as I ever hit anything in my life. The hollow klop—a sound like boulders breaking under the surface of a river—echoed guiltily among the sagging cars; a drop of something struck my lip, and he collapsed like a string-cut marionette and lay vibrating on the puncture-vine-laced asphalt. I put down the gas can and stood amazed, my right arm tingling, until somewhere a dog barked, rousing me from my trance.

            “Hey, old man, old buddy. Wake up, wake up. I didn’t mean it.”

I lifted the thin old hobo in my arms and laid him gently in front seat of the Falcon. His flesh was hot and his eyelids were closed and trembling; he smelled powerfully of tobacco and urine. His head ran with blood where I’d hit him, and when I touched the wound I felt a jagged edge of bone. For just one second, his stubbly face transformed under the dim light, and I believed that I was lifting my own father.

            After I settled him in the seat, I retrieved the can of gas and staggered toward the fence, my heart fighting to outrun my body, which seemed to have lost contact with the ground. I somehow made it to the truck before my knees turned to rubber; I hoisted the can up into the box and then sat down on the running board and vomited between my boots.

(blank line)

176. It only lacked one day. . . .

            It only lacked one day of being the summer solstice, so the night sky was already paling to the northeast. I stopped at the gas-station side of Lederer’s—I didn’t go near the cafe—and dialed the Lincoln police from a pay phone. “Get a pencil. I’m only going to say this once,” I commanded, my unsteady voice belying the toughness of my words. “There’s a man lying in a blue Falcon in your abandoned-car lot down on Sixth. He has a fractured skull and needs taken to the hospital right away.” I hung up the receiver, cutting off the spluttering desk cop’s voice, and looked around. No one in the sleepy station appeared to have noticed me. I used the restroom sink to wash the gas off my hands; I dared not look in the mirror for fear that I would see the face of a murderer. I bought myself a large sack of chips as I left the station. When I paid for them, I noticed that the attendant couldn’t take her eyes off my chest.

Outside, I jiggled the Jerry can in its corner of the box and checked the bungee that held it upright; I opened the door of my pickup, tossed the chips onto the seat, and got in and started the engine. I knew I should drive to the impound lot and be sure the old hobo got taken care of, but to do that meant going back to jail, most likely. I headed west instead.