Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [266]
I watched Willie Stargell come to the plate, reverse his bat, and knock dirt out of his spikes with the little end (baseball is like ballet, it is full of traditional movements). The camera was on Perry, pitching from the stretch. He leaned, got the signal, straightened, stretched his arms over his head, brought them down. His head turned; he glared at second base. Then his gloved right hand went wide, his long left arm went back, he threw. Stargell hit it over the right centerfield fence, and the television roared at us with a sound like a bathtub filling. Ed held his nose, Al Sutton laid the wart between his lips as if he were spitting out a seed. I sat there alert to my once-wife, intensely, acutely aware of her body, her feet, her knees, her white summer handbag like a white kitten in her lap, and wondered why she was there, what I could do, how I could escape, and with both hands I pressed on my stump the way a boy might hold onto his tumescent organ, gritting his teeth with emotions he is not prepared for and cannot cope with.
Quite suddenly Ed stood up. “It ain’t our day. I might as well go take down those dead pines. You want ’em sawed into fireplace lengths?”
He is a remarkable man, Ed Hawkes. He understands a lot without having to be told. In one simple question he made up for the over-protectiveness of our women; he let me recover from my uncontrollable stump and the nervousness of those pills; he gave me the chance to say casually, “Sure, we can use a good woodpile this winter.”
With a working of the eyebrows at me, a pleasant little nod at Ellen, he went out. Ellen hardly noticed his going. Her eyes were on me, so that I turned myself a little away, absorbed in the ballgame. Outside I heard Ed moving the sprinkler and then running hard to get away from its moving arc. After a couple of minutes his pickup started and went out the drive.
I moved my body, for pain was working up the sawed-off bone clear into my hip joint, and as I turned, there was Ellen still watching me like the lady that’s known as Lou, like a leopard in a tree, like a gun on the wall.
“You’re staying on through the winter, then,” she said.
“Of course.”
“I understood there was some . . .”
“Question?” I said. “None that I ever heard of.”
But of course I don’t talk to Rodman, or that doctor, as you do. And don’t drop your eyes to poor old Ada’s crippled claws, or listen to her wheeze. She’s as strong as a horse, she’s good for a lot longer than I am.
My attention had wandered. I saw that my adherents and protectors were on their feet, the whole bunch of them–Shelly with a decisive bounce, Al nimbly, not to be caught seated while a lady stood, Ada groaning up onto her bunion-bulged carpet slippers. She looked at Ellen Ward with dislike and resentment. “I guess them dishes won’t do themselves. Shelly, you want to help?”
“I was thinking I’d better go sort out letters.”
“What letters?” I said. “What dishes? Sit down, both of you. It’s Saturday afternoon. Stick around.”
“I’ve got fifteen years of Grass Valley letters still to put in order, and there isn’t a lot of time,” Shelly said.
“Isn’t a lot of time before what?” I said.
“School starts in ten days.”
“I thought you weren’t . . .”
Smiling, she frowned a warning: not in front of Mom. I shut up, but she made me mad, talking about breakups just when all our conversation should emphasize the comfort and security of routine.
“Don’t let all those Grass Valley things weigh on you,” I said. “They’re not important. All that is after.”
“After what?”
“After everything’s happened,” I said crossly. “After I’ve lost interest.”
“Didn’t they put up a lot of refugees from the San Francisco fire and earthquake up here? I’ve just glanced through them, I thought I saw something about that.”
“Yes,” I said. “Who cares? Sit down. Watch the ballgame.”
But she ignored my desperation, that insolent wench. She looked at me with her head on one side and said that if I didn’t need her to work she guessed she’d go wash her hair. Brown-legged in her shorts, filling her cotton jersey, she smiled at Ellen, murmured a good-bye, and left.