Something to Be Desired Read Free

in the ditch back of the house, his mother cried out, “Feesh! Eees good!”
    Lucien suspected that his mother was as much on his father’s mind as she was on his own. It was his father’s quietness as he made his way across the river bridge, then the railroad tracks. Maybe Lucien’s mother should have thrown his father out; but when she did, she threw everything out and maybe she shouldn’t have done that. Who would ever know? Nobody. It infected everything from daybreak to baseball. It infected all things. It was a pestilence.
    They drove into Deadrock. They were traveling light. The town crouched in front of the terrific mountains tothe south, great wildly irregular peaks that seemed to say to the little town, Don’t try anything. No one strolled the streets as Lucien and his father sat in the parked rental car. There were plenty of people visible but they just emerged from one store or bar and darted into another, short sudden arcs, escaping the same general gaze. This irresolute air suited Lucien and his father perfectly. The day felt too early and too late. Before the divorce, this had been his father’s hometown too.
    “We better get a room,” his father said.
    He restarted the car and began to hunt for a place. There were a couple of satisfactory hotels which they cruised past at very low speed. His father looked at them critically, then leaned out into the warm air to crane up at their higher stories either to evaluate their height and substance or to hope for an anomalous penthouse, more satisfactory than the lower rooms, rooms to which Lucien was sure his father referred when he uttered the single word “dandruff.”
    Then impatiently he gunned out onto Parkway and found Deadrock’s only motel, a new place. In 1958 a motel was a pretty exciting thing, comfort and life alongside your car. Now Lucien saw that his father was okay once again, that there was volition and not a mind wandering through things spoilt. And the reproachful presence of your own child. Yes, Lucien felt that now.
    Lucien’s father went inside to get them a room. He came out with a ballpoint, wrote down the license number and went back inside. Then he came back and jumped in the car heartily. “Fifteen B, I love it! ‘B’! They only have one floor! You ought to see the owner. Get the feeling you don’t take a room and the bank pounces on him.” His father smiled wide with charity. Lucienglanced over and saw the motel lady, drawing back the venetian blinds, caught. He waved a little.
    The room was another world: up-to-date, lightless. There were little things on the bedspread you could pick at. Lucien’s father made his way sideways to each reproduction on the wall, thrummed his fingers on top of the TV, counted out ten dollars and weighted them with an ashtray. “I’m going out for a belt. I’m late and you get hungry, here’s ten bucks.” He was gone in a shudder of daylight.
    Lucien read the welcome to Big Sky and thumbed the motel Bible. Kukla, Fran and Ollie wouldn’t be on television for a while. He pulled the curtain and saw their car was gone: he’d never heard it start up. He wondered if anyone would get some use out of their tent; maybe the owner of that horse—it would make a good combination for a man wanting to travel out in all those hills and mountains. He lay down for a moment trying to get control of himself. Very soon he wasn’t moving.
    He woke up in the middle of the night. His father was standing bolt upright in his shorts, arm outstretched, finger pointing, a dynamo of rejection, a god casting someone out. “Go!” he roared.
    Indeed, someone was being cast out; but she felt very strongly that she had not been given time to dress. She complained with acid bitterness as she crawled through her own clothing, holding individual articles up toward the bathroom light for rough identification.
    “
Go
!” roared his father.
    “I’m
gone
,” she whined. “But not like this.”
    She struggled a bit