Wonderland Page 6

  Cold driving snow, no longer hail; it strikes against his warm face like a blow. A command. Leaving the high school, he senses himself floating, free, abandoned, strangely adult. He runs the several blocks to Harder’s store, where a truck is already parked and Jimmy, a boy of sixteen who has quit school, is helping unload. Jesse runs up to him. “I got out of school early,” he says breathlessly. “You want me to help?”

  Jimmy works with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He stares at Jesse as if there is something odd about Jesse’s face.

  “Sure. Go tell him you’re here.”

  So he begins work early, not certain of the exact time. Work. He will work hard. He has been working at Harder’s three days a week after school since September, and he is proud of being able to work as hard and as long as Jimmy. They are unloading cases of tinned goods. Case after case … his arms ache in their sockets, his shoulders ache with a sharp, sweet sensation … as long as he works he does not have to think, his mind is too pressed upon by the heavy cases, too burdened. Snow flies against his face and numbs it. Good. The sensation is good. He needs the empty white cold of the snow to heal his face.

  Inside, they work a little more slowly, stacking the shelves. Perhaps they work slower because their hands feel swollen with the relative heat—the fingers bulky and clumsy. Jesse has the idea that someone is watching him. But when he looks around he sees no one special, just a woman shopper at the end of the aisle. Where is Mr. Harder? Up front at the cash register. Jesse drops a can on the floor and it rolls down against Jimmy’s feet. Jimmy kicks it back toward him.

  “Hey, you sick or something? You look sick,” Jimmy says.

  He is a short, squat, muscular boy with a ruddy face.

  “I’m all right,” Jesse says.

  “Yeah, you look like hell.”

  Jesse finds himself staring at a can; its label has peeled off. Just a blank—all surface—a mystery. It has come out of a case of canned corn, so probably it’s corn, but still he stares at it, turning it slowly. Jimmy reaches over and grabs it away from him and puts it on the shelf.

  At three o’clock Jesse is finished with this chore; now he is sweeping the floor at the back. The broom is very big, a man’s broom, not like the small frayed broom his mother uses at home. With this he can stride across the floor and push dirt and papers ahead of him in massive strokes. He is working fast, nervously. From time to time a prickling at the back of his head makes him think someone is watching him, but he does not turn around. Women are shopping in the store, their children are running around, but no one is watching him. He keeps seeing more dirt, loose dirt. It has collected in corners, in the aisles beneath the counters, in places that are difficult to get at. A cousin of his mother’s comes in—a heavy, beet-faced woman who nods briefly at him. Unfriendly, that side of the family. There was the argument over money, the choosing of sides between Jesse’s father and Grandpa Vogel when the motorcycle race turned into a fistfight, and other things, other squabbles. Anyway, his mother is not friendly with her relatives. Too many of them, she says; it’s like seeing yourself come around every corner.

  He turns suddenly and there is his father, watching him.

  They both start, as if unprepared for this. His father is standing in the aisle, between shelves of cans, his fists stuck in the pockets of his navy jacket. He stares at Jesse. He has not shaved for two or three days. His eyes seem very white above the dark, shadowy beard; a limp strand of hair has fallen onto his forehead.

  He takes the broom from Jesse, finishes the stroke Jesse has begun, and sets the broom aside.

  2

  “Get your jacket,” his father says.

  “But—”

  “Come on, get your jacket. We’re going home.”

  “But why did you … why did you drive in?”

  “Just tell Harder you’re leaving. Come on.”

  “But Pa …”

  His father stuffs his hands back in the pockets of the old jacket, so that his arms stick out jauntily on either side. His face is pale, his teeth almost chattering with cold. The whites of his eyes are almost luminous. Jesse looks at him and begins to protest, but his facial muscles go slack. He wants to tell his father how wrong this is—why should he leave his job early? Why? He is confused and embarrassed, his heart is pounding tightly with embarrassment because Mr. Harder is watching them and his father is standing there, just standing there, in his soiled old jacket, his trousers worn and shiny and stained, probably with grease, his boots stained with something dark and moist, probably oil that has soaked into the leather. The lower part of his face is shaded, shadowy. His jaw moves sideways, the teeth grinding together silently. Jesse can sill taste the vomit in the very back of his mouth, as if there is a permanent stain there.

  “But Pa, Walter Hill will come to pick me up at five.…”

  “I’ll see to that.”

  “But why did you drive in to get me? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  His father’s jaw moves again, almost imperceptibly. Jesse sometimes hears his father grind his teeth at night—that eerie, light sound, as of charms being rolled about gently in the palm of a hand, charms from a gum-ball machine. How strange, how intimate, to hear that sound at night and to picture his father finally asleep, his father’s big arm flung across his face as if he is ashamed, even in sleep, of being so open, so innocent! There is always a shame beginning deep in his father’s face, a dark blood-red glow that creeps up from his throat.

  “Do I have to leave right now?” Jesse persists.

  “I told you.”

  His father doesn’t wait for him but leaves the store. Jesse goes to get his jacket, goes to explain to Mr. Harder that he must leave early.

  “Is something wrong at home?” Mr. Harder says.

  “No,” says Jesse.

  He hurries to catch up with his father. His father is walking ahead, to the car. He walks quickly, striding along, and there is something jerky and mechanical about his walk. Is he drunk? Jesse can’t tell. The battered old car is parked in front of the Five Bridges Tavern, but maybe this is just a coincidence. Somehow there is an air of formality about Jesse’s father this afternoon, not that smiling, boyish, arrogant tilt to his shoulders that comes from drinking. When a little drunk he sways to one side, as if to emphasize his playfulness; when he is very drunk he is mean, short-tempered, it’s better to avoid him; when sober, he is himself, clear-eyed and impatient, eager to make jokes, restlessly slapping the palms of his hands together or against his thighs, humming under his breath, singing snatches of nonsense syllables under his breath. But now, today, he is different, he seems altogether different. Jesse runs after him and gets in the car. There is no figuring this out, he thinks.

  “Is Ma sick?” he asks.

  His father jabs the key toward the ignition, missing the first time, leaning over the steering wheel and breathing heavily. A fine cloud of steam forms at his mouth. His nostrils expand darkly with the effort of putting the key in the ignition.

  “Ma’s sick?” Jesse says, frightened.

  He stares at his father. Nothing. That blunt, hawkish profile, that bush of hair, the eyes rather heavy-lidded as if with concentration, weighed down with concentration on the task before him.… Jesse remembers the night his mother had Bob, how his father drove her to the Yewville Hospital and was away all night, and Jesse and Jean and Shirley stayed up, together, sitting around the radio, listening to distant stations and giggling crazily, ready to jump up and turn off the radio and the lights if their father’s car turned in the driveway. They had stayed up all night, unsupervised, night was turned into day, everything upside down, and in the morning Shirley had begun to cry, a baby herself. Jesse thinks of his mother’s stomach, that swollen stomach, the baby coiled up wetly inside.… He has never allowed himself to have this thought before, but now it flashes to him clearly, coldly.

  “Is Ma sick from the baby?” he asks.

  “She’s all right.”


  “Where is she?”

  “I said she’s all right.”

  “Is she at home?”

  “Yes. Home.”

  Jesse’s father has started the car but waits for a few seconds, his eyes roaming the street and the sidewalk as if freed from the tension inside this car. Jesse tries to see what interests him so much. Nothing? Is nothing out there? There is a strange abruptness about his father, a mechanical urgency and then a slackness, an alternating of tension and relaxation, that Jesse cannot recognize and that frightens him. No, his father has not been drinking. He can’t smell that comfortable, pleasant odor of beer or whiskey on his father’s breath, so it isn’t that. There is another odor. It is indefinable, it puts Jesse in mind of that lavatory at the high school, an acrid, impersonal, gray odor, an odor of fear.…

  Jesse’s father frowns. His entire face seems to contract. A man is passing on the sidewalk—McPherson—who once lent his father money, so Jesse has been told, and now, in overalls, he is walking toward the car with one of his grown sons. The two of them seem to be arguing about something. They don’t notice the Harte car, both of them are staring stonily at the sidewalk, arguing, and so they pass by without even glancing up.

  “Somebody’s getting bawled out,” Jesse says, trying to laugh.

  His father doesn’t reply. He has dismissed the McPhersons and shifts the car into first now, forcing the shift into place. Jesse folds his arms, sits back. The car is very cold. The windshield wipers work slowly to clear the windshield of a coating of very white flaky snow. They move like old men. On the Main Street other cars pass slowly, their windshield wipers moving without grace, back and forth stupidly inside a fanlike shape; the faces inside the cars are all familiar, nameless faces Jesse has been seeing for years in Yewville. They glance at him unseeingly.

  Jesse’s father is impatient to get started, but when a farmer’s pickup truck blocks his way he sits back, oddly patient, his bare hands firmly on the steering wheel, gripping the soiled red covering. He checks his wristwatch. Out on the street are boys from school. They are tossing snowballs at one another. Jesse hopes they won’t look his way, then he hopes they will; he is proud of being seen with his father. His father owns motorcycles, sells and trades and repairs them; his father drives a motorcycle and has won races. But the other boys don’t notice him. Traffic begins to move again and Jesse feels giddy, intoxicated by the whirling snow and the lights and the bells, the figures of Santa Claus that bob everywhere in the wind, the fat red body, the white trim of the suit, the white beard, the plump cherry-cheeked face. What does that mean, that figure? Jesse stares at it, waiting to be coaxed into smiling, into trust. The figure of Santa Claus seems to be flying through the closed-in air of the store window, with his reindeer and sleigh, bundled with presents, one hand lifted in a merry salute. Everywhere there is real snow, and everywhere powdery fake snow, glistening and perfect. It is urgent to get to Christmas morning, Jesse thinks. Everyone is hurrying in the bitter wind this afternoon in preparation for that morning; it is sacred; it is like a darkness you must push yourself through to get to; grimly, with vomit at the back of his mouth, Jesse thinks of that morning and how it must be reached, it must be reached.… Now his father is doing something strange: he is parking in front of Montgomery Ward.

  “Are we going in here? To get some presents?” Jesse says, brightening.

  “You stay in the car.”

  “Why?”

  “Stay here.”

  Jesse waits until his father is inside the store, then he gets out. He goes to look in the crowded display window. A galaxy of gifts, with ribbons around them, radios, bicycles, sets of china, hairbrushes, lamps, rifles, shotguns, boxes of ribbon candy opened to show the sharp red and green twists of candy, small plastic Santa Clauses and reindeer on a field of tinselly white. There is a village you can buy, tiny cardboard houses on a white board, with a church at its center. Jesse’s mother wanted one of these but they were too expensive. Everything is too expensive this year. Last year. The year before that: everything too expensive. They have no money.… Jesse’s eye fastens upon the hunting equipment at the rear of the display. He wants a shotgun but there is no chance of getting it. No, no chance. There is no money. His brain boggles at the display of things—shotguns, rifles, a red hunting cap, a fishing rod, a tackle box open like the candy box to show the bright-feathered lures inside. Who can afford such things? Where are the people who can afford such things?

  Jesse’s father comes out in a few minutes; Jesse is already safe in the car, waiting. His father is carrying a single paper bag. Jesse wonders eagerly what is in the bag …? But his father says only, “Now for Walter Hill.” He checks his wristwatch again. He sounds buoyant, eager. Something sly and flushed about his face, as if he has a surprise for Jesse. Is it in the bag? Now he is talking rapidly: “I’ll stop and you run in and tell Walter you’re going home with me. Tell him you’re taking Christmas vacation early. What the hell, he should walk out himself. He’s crazy to work there. Tell him I said so. Working in the machine shop! He can have it, he’s crazy.… Tell him you don’t need a ride home with him tonight or any other night. Tell him you’re quitting. Tell him he should quit himself, I said so, I said so, only a stupid son of a bitch would keep working in that place.…”

  Jesse isn’t allowed in the factory, so he leaves word with the plant guard to give Walter Hill the message.

  And now the ride home.

  Always he is riding home, beside his father, in that car. A 1930 Ford. Mud-splattered, rusty, rattling. A good old car. Sometimes it is real, sometimes it is a phantom car, a car of lurches and squeaks and the pocket of very damp, freezing air that is carried inside it, unwarmed, in which he and his father seem to sit permanently, forever. They are a few feet apart, permanently. Riding home. Gliding home. Jesse sees himself outside in the snowy fields, gliding, his feet skimming the grass, going home, running desperately home, gasping for breath, his face pale and slack and stupid with the need to get home, to get home.… They are driving into dusk, passing apple and cherry and pear orchards, the many acres of fruit trees, passing farms, ruined old barns and newer barns, with that Mail Pouch sign in black and yellow everywhere, and silos thick and fuzzy in the gathering mist, and fields filling up with snow and time. There are animals in the fields, stray horses that lift their heads at the sound of the car, but stupidly, massively, without sight. They pass the canning factory where Jesse’s mother once worked years ago. It is closed now for winter. They pass more orchards, fruit orchards, farms. On this highway a few cars pass them; it is dark enough now for headlights because of the storm that is on its way, and lights from oncoming traffic shine into Jesse’s father’s face, making him squint.

  They turn onto the Moran Creek Road and now they are nearly home. Things move toward them quickly and silently. A wilderness of trees, unrestrained shapes, and then a sudden opening, a break in the thicket, and there is pastureland around a sharply meandering creek, where in better weather cows graze, stupid as the horses. The creek has meandered so that it resembles a series of S’s, one fixed onto another, a child’s scrawling. Logs protrude through its ice. Jesse has fished and waded in this creek for the past several years, but today it seems distant, snaking away into the dusk while he is being carried home in the opposite direction.

  His father sniffs suddenly. A snorting, angry noise as he tries to clear his head.

  And now they are nearly home. Over one of the bridges … the clapping of the boards beneath the car … the Snyder farm, with its gaunt, ugly, exposed house on a hill … and now the gas station is suddenly in sight, and it is really boarded up. Closed. And the field of junked cars and motorcycles is really behind it, as always. Jesse is being brought home. What is the secret of this scene? The look of the gas pumps and their hoses thick as arms, thickly looped? Behind everything is the gauzy late afternoon sky, wintry and evil, and there is nothing in that sky to give a form to the day, nothing permanent, nothing to be outlined with the eye
. It is all a blur, shapeless, a dimension of fog and space, like the future itself. Jesse stares at it and as he stares he is being driven into it relentlessly.

  Dear God, Jesse thinks.…

  His father turns up the driveway joltingly. He shuts off the ignition.

  “Go in the house,” he says.