Sometimes a Great Notion Read Free Page B

whimpering and barking at an object that dangles out of their reach, over the water, twisting and untwisting, swaying stiffly at the end of a line tied to the tip of a large fir pole . . . jutting out of a top-story window.
    Twisting and stopping and slowly untwisting in the gusting rain, eight or ten feet above the flood’s current, a human arm, tied at the wrist, (just the arm; look) disappearing downward at the frayed shoulder where an invisible dancer performs twisting pirouettes for an enthralled audience (just the arm, turning there, above the water) . . . for the dogs on the bank, for the blinking rain, for the smoke, the house, the trees, and the crowd calling angrily from across the river, “Stammmper! Hey, goddam you anyhow, Hank Stammmmmper!”
    And for anyone else who might care to look.
     
    East, back up the highway still in the mountain pass where the branches and creeks still crash and roar, the union president, Jonathan Bailey Draeger, drives from Eugene toward the coast. He is in a strange mood—owing, largely, he knows, to a fever picked up with his touch of influenza—and feels at once oddly deranged and still quite clear-headed. Also, he looks forward to the day both with pleasure and dismay—pleasure because he will soon be leaving this waterlogged mud wallow, dismay because he has promised to have Thanksgiving dinner in Wakonda with the local representative, Floyd Evenwrite. Draeger does not anticipate a very enjoyable afternoon at the Evenwrite household—the few times he had occasion to meet with Evenwrite at his home during this Stamper business, those times were certainly no joy—but he is in a good humor nevertheless: this will be the last of the Stamper business, the last of this whole Northwest business for a good long time, knock wood. After today he can get back down south and let some of that good old California Vitamin D dry up this blasted skin rash. Always get skin rash up here. And athlete’s foot all the way to the ankle. The moisture. It’s certainly no wonder that this area has two or three natives a month take that one-way dip—it’s either drown your blasted self or rot.
    Yet, actually—he watches the scenery swim past his windshield—it doesn’t seem such an unpleasant land, for all the rainfall. It seems rather nice and peaceful, rather easy. Not as nice as California, God knows, but the weather is certainly far nicer than weather back East or in the Middle West. It’s a bountiful land, too, so it’s easy as far as survival goes. Even that slow, musical Indian name is easy: Wakonda Auga. Wah-kon-dah-ah-gah-h-h. And those homes built along the shoreline, some next to the highway and some across—those are very nice homes and not at all the sort one would imagine housing a terrible depression. ( Homes of retired pharmacists and hardware-men, Mr. Draeger. ) All this complaining about the terrible hardship brought on by the strike . . . these homes seem a far cry from terrible hardship. ( Homes of weekend tourists and summertime residents who winter over in the Valley and make enough to take it comfy near the up-river salmon run in the fall. ) And quite modern, too, to find in a country one might think of as somewhat primitive. Nice little places. Modern, but tastefully so. In the ranch-style motif. With enough yard between the house and the river to allow for additions. ( With enough yard, Mr. Draeger, between the house and the river to allow for the yearly six inches the Wakonda Auga takes as its yearly toll. ) It has always seemed odd, though: no houses at all on the bank—or no houses at all on the bank if one excludes the blasted Stamper home. One would think that some houses would be built on the bank for convenience’s sake. That has always seemed peculiar about this area. . . .
    Draeger bends his big Pontiac around the riverside curves, feeling feverish and mellow and well fed, with a sense of recent accomplishments, listlessly musing about a peculiarity that