Chapter 5

Town in that part of the country wasn't much more than a single street stretched along the spur-line of the railroad, a post office at one end of the street and a warehouse at the other. In between were one-story buildings the pioneers had thrown up in the hopes that a lot of people would be attracted by the architecture or something, and make Tongue River a real thriving community, an economic and cultural center. Well, that didn't happen, but the buildings were taken up by a grocery store, a clothing store, a restaurant, a bar, and a few residences. On a rise above the town a solitary motel consisted of eight separate cottages, each with its own little kitchen.

The motel owner was a heavy woman named Mrs. Davis who grunted as she walked. "I'm fifty," she said, "if it interests you. I come down here from Portland to get away from the people."

"Can you get away from people when you own a motel?"

"In Tongue River, you can."

I was her only guest. A logger and his wife lived more or less permanently in the last cottage in the row, so she no longer considered them guests since it seemed that they owned the cottage and were her neighbors instead of being rentors.

I pulled the car right up to the front of my cottage. The logger's wife looked out her window when she heard my car and she kept watching me until I carried my suitcase inside my own place.

The room was nice. It had a double bed with a sort of Mexican spread laying across it. Next to the bed was a nightstand with a lamp, and across the room was a desk with deep drawers for my clothes. There was some paper in the desk drawer with a picture of the motel on the top, as if I were in a Howard Johnson's someplace in downtown LA. The trees around the motel in the photograph were all young though, and when I looked out the screen door to make sure I was in the same place I saw that all the trees had grown up.

Mrs. Davis was coming across the grassy parking lot toward my cabin. She was a hefty woman, with a nice face framed with dyed-blonde hair in curls.

"Nice little place, isn't it," she said when she was almost to my door.

"It's going to be all right," I said.

It was the first time I'd ever had a place to myself. On school trips, I had always been in a room with a classmate or in a dormitory, and on vacations with the folks we had all stayed in huge, sprawling motel rooms. I was glad to be in a cottage by myself and I thought that Tongue River could be a nice vacation spot.

"Too bad," I said, "that you don't have a little lake right here. I'd take a swim before supper."

"No lake," she said in her cheery voice, "but nothing wrong with the river. It's a little cold, but at least it's clean. That's more than you can say for a lot of places."

I started to say something in agreement, but she didn't need any encouragement.

"My family used to swim in the Columbia up to Portland. That was long before your time, when I was a girl. Don't look at me like that. I did used to be a girl, I wasn't always like this. We swam up there right in the river. Can't do it anymore. Nobody swims in the river up there anymore. Everybody dumps their sewers into it. Did you know there's a river back east that caught on fire? That's right. Just caught on fire, there was so much garbage and sewers and oil in the river. Imagine that. A river burning."

She was inside the cabin, checking that I'd emptied my suitcase and hung my shirts up properly. She walked into the small kitchen in the back of the cabin and called back to me, "You cook?" I can.

"If you have to."

"Yeah."

"Well, don't worry about it. How long you say you'll be here? If you want breakfast, I'll provide it in the office. Nothing imagine, I ain't running a restaurant, but I'd be glad to furnish you breakfast for a slight increase, save you from having to cook yourself and maybe burning down my cabin and save you from going without anything to eat. No suppers, though, don't count on my furnishing supper, not even for an increase. There's a good restaurant in town, just down the road, and there's a drive-in cafe just out past the post office. You can get a hamburger there but I wouldn't recommend it since that ain't much of a supper, you eat in the good restaurant since your company's paying for it. They are, ain't they? You on an expense account?"

"Yeah," I said, not wanting to encourage her to say anything more but not knowing how to stop her. Also, I had had good upbringing that had taught me to speak when spoken to.

"Well, you're a young man, it's nice that you're on an expense account, but don't forget breakfast, it's easy for me to cook an extra plate of eggs. You can get it anytime, let's say, between seven and eight.

You going to spend most of your time in the warehouse or out buying pears."

"A little of both."

"Your company sent another man up last year. Funny guy. He had one of them campers on the back of a pick-up truck. He stayed in it, parked right up the road off my property, then when he was through with his business here in town he stopped by my place and wanted me to write him out a phony bill so he could collect on his expense account."

"Did you do it?"

"I did not. I come down here to get away from phony sons of bitches. I don't want to encourage them to come poking around my place. I like you, even if you are just a kid."

"Thanks." I was taller than she was, but skinnier.

"No offense meant, nothing wrong with being a kid. Lot right with it, in fact. Wish I was one again. You'll get over it as you get older, then you'll wish you hadn't."

"Not much I can do about that, is there."

"Nothing," she said, beginning to laugh for the first time since she'd come in to pester me.

I think she only came in to see if I could take her, to perform some kind of verbal combat with me, since if we were going to be neighbors and possibly breakfast-mates for three weeks we should find out right away if we liked each other or not.

I wasn't sure what she decided, but when she left she banged the screen door behind her and said back toward my general direction, "See you at breakfast. You want me to ring a bell?"

I yelled at her through the screen, "No bell."

It was only mid-afternoon when I finished getting my clothes unpacked and had my little house in order. I decided to drive to the warehouse and find the manager to start right out in the morning buying pears.

On the way I took a slow cruise down Main Street. The Blue Sky Cafe was tucked between a grocery store and the dry goods emporium. It didn't look exciting, but it did look like it served good pie, so I decided to try it for supper. But now I had to get to work.

The warehouse was the last building before the country became woods again. On one side of it was a pair of weedy, rusty-looking railroad tracks, and on the other side the narrow highway that lead eventually down the Tongue River and to civilization.

A man stood on the loading dock and watched as I parked my car. He was dressed in khaki pants and shirt. A tan baseball cap was pulled down to shade his eyes. He had a thin reed-like piece of pine in his hand, like I imagined swagger sticks used to look like.

He transferred the stick to his left hand as I walked up the short flight of stairs to the dock. He held out his right hand. "I'm Lou Carson. Are you Mr. Stewart from the Exchange?"

"Yes." We shook hands and I felt already that he was trying to get ahead of me, put me in my place.

"They told me you would probably come by today. They called from down below, you know. Long distance."

Right away I didn't like him. He kept up that kind of chatter for a few more minutes while we stood there. Finally he got to what really irked him.

"You're new with the company, aren't you?"

"This is my second year with them."

"You must have started pretty young."

That was what was on his mind. I said, "You don't have to be old to know a good pear."

He got defensive. "No, I didn't mean you were too young, I just meant that you'll be dealing with a lot of different growers. Well, I think maybe a more mature man might have been able to work with them a little better. Some of them can be pretty strange characters."

"My father's a farmer, Mr. Carson. I grew up with farmers."

He hemmed and hawed, swapped his stick from one hand to the other, and finally gave up with his nonsense and led me into the office at the end of the loading dock.

A woman wearing glasses, with her hair curled around her head much like Mrs. Davis wore hers, sat at the desk. She stood up and shook hands with me like a man, but Carson only introduced her as, "This is my wife."

We smiled at each other, then Carson handed me a list of growers who would probably market their fruit through the Exchange. Carson stood to make a good profit for his warehouse and that was why he had hoped the company would send an older man, maybe somebody a little tougher, who could have urged even more growers into selling to the Exchange and using Carson's warehouse facilities for storage and handling. The Exchange was paying enough money per ton this year, so I did not expect to have to wheedle any farmer. Besides, having grown up with farmers I knew that they already knew themselves what they wanted to do with their crops; any of them who wanted to gamble on the fresh market was free to do so, as far as I was concerned: a farmer purchases the right to go broke along with the title to his farm.

Carson was urging me out of the office, so I gave his wife another little smile. She nodded to me perfunctorily. It was not uncommon for warehousemen to have their wives on the payrolls as bookkeepers, and usually the wives did a damn good job, but it was unusual for him to treat her with even less respect than he'd have given the janitor.

He gave me a tour of his packing shed and sorting room, the unloading facilities, showed me his three forklifts that could all be used at the same time for unloading tote bins full of pears, and the cold-storage shed. It was a good size, about a hundred feet long, forty wide, and twenty high. He had the temperature down to forty degrees and said, "It'll be down to thirty-four tomorrow and it'll stay there as long as the Exchange has any pears in storage here."

"That's fine," I said. "Have you made provision for when the hot pears are brought in, and when the doors have to be opened and closed for the forklifts? I don't want the temperature going too much above thirty-five just because more pears than you expected were brought in one afternoon."

"No problem, Giff." He had become friendly, which put me more at ease. If I had had real problems with him, the three weeks could have been hell. There was no other warehouse within fifty miles."

"We've been storing Exchange pears for eleven years and no problems yet."

"I hope we don't have any this year, just because I'm a kid." He laughed. "We won't."

I tucked his list of growers into my pocket. He leaned on a forklift to draw me a crude map of how to reach some of the ranches in the back canyons.

That night I had supper at the Blue Sky. Their special was chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes. I had it, and some pie. I was right about the place. They were short of class, but they did make good pie.

I watched the waitress's legs all during supper. She was a pert, smart-mouthed brunette with chubby hips, but she was still cute and I was working up my courage to make some kind of smart remark to find out just how pert she really was when a big bastard of a logger came in, clopped across the floor in calked boots and pegged pants, said, "Bring me my supper, honey," and patted her on the ass. She brought me my pie before she gave him his supper and I wondered if she still felt his hand on her ass. Maybe the image of her ass made my pie taste better.

I left her a big tip because I wanted her to remember me as a traveling man for the Exchange who wouldn't be around too long and she had better make good use out of me while I was here. But I didn't expect her to fall for such a stupid ploy. She was too stuck on that big logger.

While I was going out the door I snuck a look back and saw her scoop my big tip off the counter without even looking at it. She dropped it all into her apron pocket with all the other nickels and dimes and quarters that guys had left her through the day in the hope that she might give them more attention the next time. With her apron jingling, she sat down in the booth with her logger friend and lit a cigarette.

She saw me looking back and cafled, "Come back soon, honey?"

I said, as great as I could, "See you tomorrow."

I didn't have any great choice, since I knew the drive-in would not have such good pie as the Blue Sky.

A different car was pulled up to another of Mrs. Davis' cottages when I got back. She was having a boom in business. I waved to the logger's wife on my way to my own cottage, but she just sat there like before, looking out at something, me or the sky or the trees or space.

I lay down on the bed and plotted out where I would go in the next few days buying pears. Once I had done that, and figured out on Carson's map how to get to those places and back, I had very little to do. My mind began wandering and it went on almost a straight line to the old dilapidated farm I shared with Lisa. I hit the pillow with my fist.

There was an old radio on the desk, so I put a dime in its slot and listened to a Klamath Falls station for half an hour, until-the dime ran out. That should suffice for an idea of how old the motel was, and how recently it had been remodeled and brought up to date.

I walked outside. The air was mountain cool, and stars were as clear as crystal. I went to Mrs. Davis's office to see if she had anything to read.

Her new guest was leaning on her glass counter talking to her. They both looked up when I came in and said, "Hello." I mumbled something, and thought I had interrupted a little rendezvous. Mrs. Davis introduced me to the man, who was a middle-aged salesman pushing a line of tennis shoes to the emporium "downtown". He visited Tongue River twice a year and Mrs. Davis obviously knew him quite well.

I took a handful of old Lifes and Looks and said, "Good night."

I wasn't halfway to my cabin when the guy caught up to me and said, "How about joining me for a drink? Not much goes on in Tongue River after dark."

"Not much in the daytime, either," I said, not in any hurry to get back to my cottage to read twenty-year-old magazines.

"My name is Howard Jimson," he said. "Come on."

"Okay. Giff Stewart. Glad to meet you."

He was only staying the one night so had not unpacked his suitcase. What he had done however was to set a bottle of bourbon on the lamp table beside the bed.

He had carried in a small pan full of ice, evidently what he had visited Mrs. Davis for. He put ice in two glasses and poured in the bourbon. "Here's to small towns everywhere," he said, downing his. Mine went a little slower. I sat in the easy chair beside the bed as he sat on the bed itself. He seemed eager to pour me another drink, so I let him.

After we talked about our mutual ills of being trapped in Tongue River, he went after the town with a different slant. "You know, it's not hard to find women in a town like this. A stranger can very often make out very well, since nobody knows him and he's usually leaving the next day anyway so he won't be around long enough for the women to feel guilty. These women are really virtuous, but they like to play around as much as women anywhere. They just don't get much of an opportunity. But with us in our position we can give them that opportunity."

"I've been here a day already," I said, "and none are knocking on my door yet."

"Give them time," he said. "I'll bet you'd like to give some of them the opportunity they want. I'll bet you would, young as you are, I'll bet you're just full of spunk and sperm."

His hand wavered around and landed on my knee as if it had no other place to light. He did it so casually, so much in a spirit of comradeship, that I didn't think much of it, was sort of agreeing with him that I was indeed full of spunk and sperm. Then he moved his hand from my knee up along the top of my leg, sliding toward my crotch.

I stood up like he was wired for electricity and had just blown a fuse.

"Giff," he said, at last coming out with it, "I'm just like those women locked up around here. I want it, and there's no one who can give it to me. You can. Will your

"No," I said. I wasn't sure exactly what I was turning down, but I was damn sure I didn't want any of it. "You'll find it somewhere."

He stood up. Some of his drink spilled on the bed. "You can give it to me now. There's nothing wrong with it, if you just give it to me now."

"Sorry, can't. Just don't want to."

"A fuck's a fuck. What do you care where you put it, as long as you get your rocks off."

"I do care, I guess. No thanks, Mr. Jimson." I put down my drink and walked to his door.

"God damn it," he said, his voice low so he would not attract either Mrs. Davis or the logger's wife.

"Good night," I said.

"There's never been anybody else at this motel when I stayed here, and now that there is somebody here it turns out to be a goddam country cherry. You bastards don't know anything about fucking. God damn you and your kind." His voice began to rise in a shriek so I got out fast. 'You sons of bitches," I heard him say as I crossed the grass, through the clean dark, under the clear faraway stars, to my own cottage.

In the morning, with my toast and eggs, Mrs. Davis asked me, "How did you like your drink last night?"

"Wasn't my brand," I said, watching her face to see if she knew what I was talking about. When she laughed, I asked her, "Did you know about him?"

"Sure. He's just a guy. Comes here twice a year so he isn't so bad."

"Maybe not for you. You might have warned me."

"How's your breakfast?"

"Fine."

"You like your eggs over easy like that."

"Yes, I do."

"My husband taught me to cook them like that. What would I have warned you for. You got out okay, didn't you?"

"Would you have come and rescued me if I hadn't gotten out okay."

"No."

"Then you might have warned me."

"You'll learn."