She answered some way he couldn’t make out, in a whisper, a country whisper of thanks good beyond form. This whole exchange would not have been possible even three months ago, when in his mind he would have been teaching her the needs of his famished world, her body a naked whirlwind of willing orifices, smiling all the while like the prince of liars at her.
The whisper too had fetched back for him his old mighty friend Drum, lately a suicide. Drum was a practicing Christian, one of maybe four selfless men Ned Maxy had known in life, brought low by pain and anxiety after a heart attack. He was cut off from good work and high spirits and could not go on, they said. Drum was the only whispering drunkard Maxy knew. Through all thunders and the ’70s, he had never raised his voice.
He killed himself in the bathroom of a double-wide mobile home he rented from a preacher who lamented to the police: Now poor Drum can’t ever go to heaven. But he had been tidy in the bathtub there with the large-caliber pistol, much appreciated.
His drinking buddy Drum’s whispers of encouragement, his pleading to Maxy that he was a man who must respect himself, that he must work hard, that he must not waste the precious days or the gifts poured on him by nature — Ned Maxy would take that whisper with him until his own heart stopped too and he knew this.
The whisper of the paramedic country girl was there for him now too. He did not want to make too much out of it. Thousands must have been given this gift. He didn’t want to be only another kind of fool, a sort of peeping Tom of charity.
But he was a new fool. Some big quiet thing had fallen down and locked into place, like a whisper of some weight. He had been granted contact with paradise. Something tired and battered and loud had just thrown in the towel. Ned Maxy could hardly believe the lack of noise. His awful ’70s decade had gone past twenty years. Finally they were over.
The next day, Maxy in a daze got his rushed suit out of the cleaners and attended the wedding of the woman paramedic at a country church down between Water Valley and Coffeeville. He shook hands with the bride and groom, then stood out of the pounding heat under the shade of a tall brothering sycamore.
Nobody ever figured out quite who he was. Their faces were full of baffled felicity, as if each one was whispering: Well howdy, stranger, I guess.
Through Sunset into the Raccoon Night
YOU GET ON, AND ONE DAY IT OCCURS TO YOU YOU MIGHT BE doing something rather important for the last time. There is a bit of terror in this, but also an unexpected balm. Believe me, this thing can happen even when you still feel new as an eighteen-year-old.
Well she was long in the leg, well dressed, I mean a nice cut above what was called for in this small city. She was in her heels and silks even in the heart of July, waiting there in the bad air conditioning of her black Audi. I could see and feel her in her silk, with the sweat on her brow and her waist at panty-line, wearing her garter that said I WANT IT EVERY DAY. The city awaited her but she was waiting on me, hovering there against the curb in great patience. Because she said what I had was priceless. Her husband was a dumb mean doctor but she was splitting from him. Somehow I heard it that they had not touched each other in four years. Some interior decorator will charge in somebody’s house and tell them things like this where we live, although since there’s not a great deal to be gained hereabouts, the gossip tends to be more factual rather than vicious.
“So she’s a pretty little thing,” said Mary, a tiny woman, to me one day. But my woman was not little and off the point of pretty. “She’s one of those who’s been waiting too long for something, and doesn’t know what it is now. She’s a person who, I’ll bet, says no a lot.”
“You women are such experts on each other,” I said.
“Yes, well, men pretend not to know things because they think it’s manly. Raised in manly dumbness, even smart ones.”
“You’re just rude and hasty.”
“You’d like to get your piece of her, then judge her. I know you. You’ve never looked at me the same since you had some of me.”
“Nevertheless, she’s something different.”
“You mean a little difficult. Which really excites you.”
“I like the way she calls me a real man, compared to her former mate, the surgeon. Very much. Yes.”
“Oh boy, the double whammy. You get to go to bed with his fame and her body. You can’t fool me. You like the way she waits on you, I mean lingers for you, around different places. That’s important to you. I wouldn’t, and now you’ve got a volunteer.”
“No. You and I are just friends, big friends. Sometimes friends have to sleep together.”
“Friends. I recall you were more ravenous than that.”
“Ravished by loneliness at the time. That’s what I remember. And I thank you.”
“You were pathetic. Pretty good. But pathetic.”
I have, like every man, seen all through my life lovely women waiting for someone somewhere. I always get involved, I mean in my head. These women, each wonderful, have elicited fine raptures and dreams. Waiting women, each postured in a special way, each in her separate nook of perfect waiting, a gallery that does not belong to me. They are prepared, sharpened, in their dresses and heels — or in their jeans and sandals, their brave halter tops — all open to the great psychological moment of some man’s arrival. Negligence really is out of the question, with the right ones. And I have been that man over and over, besuiting myself for the expectant tastes of these lingering, watchful women. I imagine pleasing each one according to her most curious and valiant wants. The world for a few moments becomes wide and happy, not low and cramped. Even voluptuous. I bring extraordinary gifts to these patient women, thinking all day about them. So it is that I have made love to these women of my heady tableaux and been briefly a happier man for it. I hear the women speak softly, delighted by my presence. This is very good, since nobody else on the real earth truly needs me, not even the surgeon’s wife Jane in the Audi out there as my business closes, soon. For the world I am impertinent and a malingerer.
I’ve never found anything I was good at worthy to do here. I surely don’t blame the world for that. Through me runs an inveterate refractoriness, almost a will to lose. Really, a choice for the whining and pining, at ease in the infantry of unremarkable losers on the lower end of mobility. What I admire is anguish, casual faith, clothes, poise, and minor disaster, or the promise of it. I like the nose lifted a little. The pride of exemption, yet terror in solitude. This is a busy concept. Perhaps too busy.
“You drive her around as if she can’t drive, in her car. What does this mean, exactly?” asked Mary, who always chuckled a little when she was being sincere.
“Because …” I don’t know. “Because she is somewhat American YesterWorld, and I imagine it gives her the sense that fate now is out of her hands.”
“But you simply go buy things together, little and big and far and near, like every other dull American couple, like old marrieds already.”
This was true. And another thing was, there are a number of drugs in this country that, the way we are pitched, make you go buy things. Speed and broncho-dilators, Valium and booze, even Sudafed, make you want to gallop down and get some suddenly urgent thing. Marijuana, they say, is the king. Weed people hit one A.M. bargain barns like battlefield jackals. Zombies who buy have promoted me to the middle class just by accident. I have simply memorized a fair number of automobiles and have the parts ready for them almost by the time five words are out of their mouth. Yet I keep buying myself back down toward the lower class, as if with unconscious nostalgia. Towns you pass through around here often exist only to supply automobiles parts and service for people who have absolutely nowhere to go. The people keep hoisting me back up to the great bourgeoisie, over and over. I can’t fail, my God, America! Show me some more oily jean cash, dirty pelt, warm lucre, young man! Put your hand in your pants and show me your dollars. Reach in your brassiere, O my sovereign nymphs and clayhill babushkas. This may be work but I doubt it.