As I Walked Out One Evening Read online

  As I Walked Out One Evening

  Donald Wetzel

  New York

  To the memory of my mother

  Marion Stocum

  Book One

  I am a very foolish fond old man …

  And to deal plainly,

  I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

  King Lear, act IV

  Chapter 1

  The question is: is this old guy really losing it?

  This old guy, in truth, is me, none other, the writer, an honestly truly 74 year old man—not old as God but old enough—and I will say further about time’s particular way with me at this point and the consequent question of is the old boy losing it or not, it is not a question I the writer have invented or imagined or even a real one that I might sneakily embellish for literary purposes or to entertain or such as that; no indeed not perish the thought, believe me, it is all too real a question, a most honest and urgent question, posed with all candor and quite at the heart of just about everything I think about and do these days and not least of all—as may or may not be apparent by this point—is ever present—I would say is an inescapable presence—even as I write. Take my maybe/crazy word for it.

  Okay, the more specific thing, the incident, the story if you will, the happening and such consequent developments as may be seen as following from that event and so forth, the thing that I am writing about and which is what most of this will be about or will spring from or be centered around happened a long time ago. Or it seems like a long time ago. Seven years, actually. Which isn’t much say when you are seventeen or twenty-seven or forty-seven even, but which is truly an impressive and vast hunk of time and one of almost certain surprises and awesome alterations when you are say either seven on the one hand or seventy on the other, which is to say when you are just starting to gather your brains and sort things out or when you are starting to ungather your brains and slow or fast are beginning to forget what if anything you have so far learned—in short when you are young enough or old enough; when time—in either instance—moves along with a certain jerkiness and novelty unique to that circumstance, and so for instance last Tuesday, to either innocent boy or grizzled ancient, can seem a long long time ago, depending.

  And so with that understood let it be assumed that what follows happened a long time ago, to my mind if to no other.

  Or maybe I should say—it would be more accurate to say—simply that it started way back then; I mean God knows it is still going on. You can count on that for sure. It is not over and done with yet by a long shot, believe me I know of what I speak, there is more still to come, I mean the moving finger keeps on moving, fidgets, fools around, surprises, who knows how? Not me. Not you. Not until with luck we get to the denouement.

  So not to head for the exits.

  Try to think of it as exciting.

  Being old, I mean, and maybe losing it.

  Lend an ear. Like what’s to lose?

  Okay?

  Some background: My view from here, as I write, my immediate geographical view that is, faces west-southwest and is of below and near at hand a canyon and its ribbon road twisting one way upward toward a mountain pass and the other way downward east-southeast and on through town and out of here, and is in Cochise county Arizona, in the village of Bisbee, (the place I’ve called home for some twenty years now) in a small yellow house more than slightly atilt on the mountain side—built on fill some forty years ago the house has settled considerably over time which makes looking down at the canyon below a matter now of simply looking out the window—beyond which, not actually seen of course but remembered well, heading east-southeast on out of here and toward Alabama if that happens to be what you have in mind and on toward New Mexico on the two lane twisting highway that goes on for some ninety miles or so and then at a place called Road Forks picks up the federal highway system’s I-10, which leads on through Lordsburg and a number of other similar western railroad towns—at which one has to wonder, why here? because of the railroad, it must be; why else? where no sane Native American would think to pitch a tent or Mormon pilgrim pause to pray let alone to build a temple—(always each time on my way to or from Alabama I would have to wonder at this, who lived in such sad dreary towns set down in the middle of nowhere like this? gathered there beside the railroad track as though for Gods sake they thought it was a river? how the hell could they? live there I mean)—and then on into El Paso and up Eight Mile Hill and the van running hot and then down again and the great sweeps and dips of west Texas and on through San Antonio and Houston with your life on the line boxed in by eighteen wheelers going through Houston even at three a.m. in the morning and then spared again and down at last into the good green of grass and green leaved trees reaching tall and spreading wide and great patches of shade to either side and swamps even, and mosquitoes in the motel room at night and the way young southern girls mature so fast so young so damn alive, the way they walk bless their hearts and to hell with the mosquitoes and on into Mobile and across the ridiculous endless causeway, built monstrously strong, so it’s said, so as to be able to support with ease monstrously huge and heavy vehicular military hardware of one crazy kind or another, in case of war, of course, going where for God’s sake? pursuing or being chased by whom? but no matter. Anyhow so it is that in my mind’s eye then on goes I-10 across the multi-million dollar causeway just waiting, there for a war like the pyramids of Egypt built to last forever with no good stink yet of the mudflats or sweet whiff of sea wind off the bay, not until the turn is made at last off the interstate and the four lane drops down to two lane and goes on then some thirty or forty country miles more (not to be too precise about this or even which way, north or south, was the turn made off the interstate as I have kin still living in Fairfield, (not the real name of the place of course) and even kin can hit you with a slander suit if you happen to cut too close to the bone so call it Fairfield, which is the place at last, journey’s end, the place that ends this view of it all—and not a word too soon—from my window.

  Fairfield, sixteen hundred miles from Bisbee, the place where seven years ago the story starts, so to speak.

  Yes, and one more thing; Westchester County New York also figures in this account, but not much, and except for Bedford Hills itself, the one small village there where I lived until my thirteenth year—a village and time which I remember mostly for its hills and woods and fields that took me in and the wonder of seasons, the way snow seemed a birth and as much a marvel as suddenly flowers and the brooks all made noisy again, and remembered most of all for my mother, who just at dusk one evening in my thirteenth year was struck and killed by a car on the busy highway that ran before our house—for the rest of it now, the whole damn eastern seaboard, Westchester county included, like California you can have it.

  Believe it or not though I still miss my mother. Something stays incomplete, unfinished between us; something that got brutally stopped before its time, and which hangs on as a kind of presence, a remembering, a kind of waiting, a waiting for something, some simple thing, as though—a stupid phrase but the best I can do—for the other shoe to fall. As though it was only yesterday, indeed, that I moved through the crowd and found her shoe—a single one of the pair of blue dress shoes she wore to work—by the side of the road and held it in my hands and looked at it long and knew; and knew all I would ever after need to know of life’s mortality.

  Why should it seem odd to anyone that I miss her still?

  But enough.

  And so, Fairfield, a long time ago, the way it was that day, back when it all started:

  Chapter 2

  I tried to remember during the drive from Fairfield to Larson—by way of Karlsville which is the simples
t if I remember right—when it was I had last seen Cousin Mattie and I wondered was she lovely still and were her teeth still her own—she would be going on sixty now if I figured it right—and was it possible that she still had that wonderfully sexy overbite that used to drive me nuts the way her lips somehow because of it I guess never really quite closed all the way even when she was truly pissed about something—this is back when we were kids—when even so there would seem to be this invitation in the way her mouth if you will would seem to still hang just a little open, I mean what with her lips still parted because of that over-bite probably, I guess it took a real special effort to altogether keep her mouth shut not as in not speaking but as in bringing the top lip firmly down upon the bottom lip, and for whatever reason anyhow her lips for the most part always remained somewhat and somehow deliciously parted.

  Probably even in her sleep.

  As a matter of fact, yes, even in her sleep, in the moonlight camping way up on Little Star Creek with all of us spread around just sleeping on the ground the way it used to be and I was near to Mattie and I remember off and on that night waking up and seeing the glint of moonlight on her teeth. Her upper teeth. The overbite teeth. Like jewels. Like she was smiling in a dream or was whispering something in her sleep.

  I wanted to taste her. I was crazy. All night long I chewed on my own stupid lip. The lower one. In the morning it was sore as a boil.

  You remember something like that.

  It makes you wonder.

  But well, anyhow, the road between Fairfield and Karlsville follows one damn section line after another straight as a preachers dick the whole thirty miles and varies only as does the up and down of the terrain—the very last of the Appalachians, I am told—the road with here and there a sorry little hill up and a sorry little hill down and the whole thing more apt to put a person to sleep; and my brains went numb it seems and I could hardly so much as call up a clear picture of Mattie right then let alone remember when it last was that I saw her.

  Which I think most likely must have been the time when I came back to the farm what was left of it anyhow for my father’s funeral, or back to Larson I should say or more accurately back to Mattie’s place because that was in truth all that was left of the farm anymore, just her fenced in acre and the house. Anyhow my father was buried there not least of all as a convenience and an economy as there was a place for him waiting in the family plot so why not and actually it was pretty neat as I remember it, all kinds of kin I had forgot I knew coming in from here and there around the county and I got to meet with them again and it was all very country and American and very decent and family and somehow right and to be honest I was moved by it more than I thought I would be. Probably as close as I ever felt to my father.

  Anyhow by the time I got to Larson and pulled in over the cattle guard at Mattie’s place it was like it always had been whether I had remembered everything right or not. It seems I had forgot—I had not expected—the cattle guard, an anachronism in fact, the way the small farm itself is an anachronism and I guess my father’s funeral in its way was an anachronism too the farm gone and my father an architect laid to rest in a country graveyard at the side of his father a farmer, while I have opted myself for ashes at the end, to anywhere earth wind or water, and so our little histories are anachronisms too I suppose if we are talking about recording them in country churchyards and with markers in stone, places to which we return and leave behind us some visible sign in this chosen place of who we were and by whom were we neighbor and known perhaps whereas now for the most of us and for the most part there is no real “keeping place” at the end for those we have loved and who have died no place but such love as we hold in memory while we live of those we loved and who have died and such love as is held of us by others when we too are dead; and that’s it, I believe. Love, someone has said, is the only permanent thing, and whoever said it may be right at that. (It was Joyce Carey who said it I think, but I’m not sure.)

  But anyhow be that as it may and speaking of histories there is a history existed and still exists between Mattie and me which I will characterize to start with here as intimate and which could have developed into Southern Gothic intimate I suppose but which didn’t, but intimate happenings were happening all the same, intimate enough going on between the two of us and witnessed if at all (although suspicioned by some, most of all by Mattie’s mother, a cool sort of lady for her day, no dummy at all, but what could she do?) witnessed I say only by such birds and beasts of woodland and river bank native to the area as may have passed our way at such happening times—the sort of thing that was much too risky around the place believe me—and in all candor the only reason there is not—was not—more of an interesting and southern novel type family thing history between us in the end is only because we were second cousins and afraid of making idiots. Oh we were wise to be so fearful I suppose, little Mattie especially to be so passionate so young, so plain hot southern horny, but smart enough to scare us both with talk done half in jest but all the same it worked; what if we did it all the way what then good cousin what then if nine months hence there issued forth a kid with two huge heads one eye in each and mouths that ceaselessly drooled, our own two-headed calf, so to speak, what then dear cousin, what then for us but to blow both their drooling one-eyed heads off or blow off both our own; and so we fooled around and did just about everything but go for the two-headed calf so to speak and kept a kind of innocence through it all, or so it seemed, even as we burned. Which is to say that we were good or good enough anyhow to make me really wonder since—and Mattie too who has said as much—why in God’s name were we so good?

  I have thought about it some.

  I believe it was mostly the fact—the actual reality—of kinship itself, too much a closeness in the blood, an actual irrefutable oneness, a scary thing somehow; just too damn real.

  But I’m only guessing here of course.

  Anyhow speaking of histories and things remembered and things forgot ours was a history I was and am in no way apt ever to forget unless indeed all memory goes from me complete, (as well it may; and don’t think that is something I don’t worry about; that is about all I worry about any more) not ever forgot until then at least, the details or the way Mattie looked back then when we were young, back when she was still more child than woman and I a man or almost man, older by seven years anyhow and taller and could look down and see her more than budding boobs real boobs and way too full for a kid that young, pendulous even, Mattie coming close and smiling up at me with her boobs looking up past me at the stars, I mean little hard round nipples showing through and pointing I swear not out but up, an exuberance a kind of titied eagerness, a lilting and lifting up of boobs and nipples as with laughter, something altogether and only Mattie, maybe even peculiarly Mattie, come to think of it, nipples looking up and all, but not so to me not then or since not though even now—five infants having one by one tugged and sucked and bit and fed there at their full—those one time bright uprisen nipples, like the blossom end of fruit come ripe, for sure look down now at the ground unseeing and unseen.

  But with Mattie lovely still, bless her heart; such is now my certainty, if ever I do in fact forget.

  And so I rattled in over the cattle guard and sure enough before I had hardly got to kill the engine here came Mattie slamming out the door and bouncing down off the porch screaming I knowed it was you, lapsing into the vernacular for old times sake I guess, and before I had hardly got on my feet she was up against me with a bosom now as big as her belly and shaped like it by the feel and up against me with her belly too and banging my lips with that same old brutal wonderful overbite bless her heart with a kiss fall on the mouth and bless her heart again a kiss that she hung onto just long enough and hard enough to be way too long and hard for just your usual kissin’ kin.

  And damned if I didn’t take note of it in my groin.

  And so we broke it up and wandered around talking about time and this and that—a great deal ab
out her children of course and grand children more or less just names to me and how they all had got spread about throughout the forty-eight contiguous not all of them of course but north south east and west as though by the wind—and remembering between us how so much had changed including us and how some things even so had stayed the same, as with the old live oak in front with a swing still hanging from the place on the limb where the old one had hung, which the both of us had swung on—when she was little Mattie used to swing up high and every now and then for reasons of her own call out like a rooster—she really caught the feeling of it—naturally she gave it up well before puberty however, crowing I mean not swinging—so we ended up finally down by the hog lot where the hogs were gone of course but the wallow was still there and the shed with the roof caved in like an old man’s mouth sucked in by time and we got quiet for a time and then Mattie reached up—she is still smaller than me, shorter anyhow—and stroked my beard ran her fingers into it and took hold and gave a tug, jerked my head down to her. You old sweet thing she said sometimes I’ve wondered if you ever really loved me at all.

  And so by way of comment I kissed the webb of wrinkles at the corner of her eye and the two deep worry lines above her nose and even kissed the top of her head the way I used to do when she was not yet old enough really to be kissed.

  I’m big around enough now to use that wallow Mattie said. Tell me I’m not.

  You’re not I said.

  And she pulled my head back down and and we closed and kissed and this time the fit the way we came together seemed altogether natural, or easier anyhow, almost surprisingly familiar, considering how long it had been and how much we both had changed.

  And so anyhow there by the broken down shed and the old pig wallow we more or less picked up where we had long ago left off.