The Driftless Area Read Free Page A

the drums. There was a bass with two mounted toms, a snare, a floor tom, and two cymbals, a ride and a high-hat. He began a solo that roamed around gathering volume and speed and always comingback to a series of rim shots that sounded like a machine breaking down.
    Yes, we will die—this was the message of his drumming—but until then we must make a big racket like this one. He was trying to restore the psychic balance of the party, but once people know a drum solo is under way they will usually leave the room no matter why the solo is being played, or at least that’s what happened in this case.
    The band’s drummer arrived. Pierre walked around the party with his tall glass of whiskey, listening to conversations and sometimes joining in, but he never seemed to say the right thing. It’s funny how you can become the unwelcome guest when you don’t know that many people, and should be at worst simply a stranger, but Pierre had a knack for it.
    Once, for example, he found a boy and two girls talking in an alcove between the kitchen and some other room. They had the bright quick eyes and Goodwill wardrobe of students from the junior college.
    “They told me I was supposed to take them,” said the boy. “And I did. But my ears started ringing worse than ever so I stopped.”
    “Taking what?” Pierre asked.
    “Was I talking to you?”

    “Not till now.”
    “Antidepressants.”
    “Are you sad?”
    “I’m depressed.”
    Pierre nodded and took a drink. “What’s the difference?”
    “This is just what I’m talking about,” said the boy.
    One of the girls looked flatly at Pierre and chewed on a small plastic sword. “It’s a common misunderstanding about depression that it has to do with something depressing,” she said.
    “You should try listening to music,” said Pierre. “It always makes me feel better.”
    “I’m sure it’s that simple,” said the boy.
    “The Decemberists have a good album out. Listen to ‘The Sporting Life.’ If that doesn’t make you smile, nothing will.”
    “Who are you?”
    “He’s the one that was smashing on the drums,” said the girl.
    “Oh,” said Pierre. “Did you like that?”
    “Not really. It hurt my ears.”
    So Pierre was not doing that well at the party but could not seem to help himself. And yet sometimes, just when you least deserve it, something good happens.

    Pierre was coming down the stairs and Allison Kennedy in the black fringed jacket was going up and they saw each other in the narrow stairwell and without a word began making out.
    This was the kind of thing that never happened to Pierre, and he felt that the desperate kisses were absolving him of the drum solo and of bothering the depressed student.
    Then it was over—he went down and Allison went up—but he understood that some part of the night might be salvaged, and he found his gloves and coat and went outside to take a walk and sober up a little if he could.
    He walked to a park down the street where he could look up and see if anything changed when the year gave way to another one—as if the starpaper sky might fade out and reappear in a different pattern.
    Pierre wore a herringbone overcoat of black and gray, and yellow leather gloves with straps across the back, and once he was outside of the dark-walled house he congratulated himself on moving with great coordination down the sidewalk and into the park.
    There was nothing unusual going on in the sky. He did see a falling star, but they were so common on winter nights in that place that it would have been more out of the ordinary not to see one if you looked up for any time at all.

    In the picnic shelter of the park an old man was sitting on a table with his hands in his coat pockets and black cowboy boots resting on the bench, and Pierre walked over to talk to him.
    “Happy New Year,” said Pierre.
    “And to you.”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Waiting for somebody. Almost beginning to think they made other plans.”
    Pierre