Florian and Myrtle Krebsbach left
for Minneapolis on Tuesday, a long haul for them. They're no
spring chickens, and it was cold and raining, and he hates to drive
anyway. His eyesight is poor and
his '66 Chev only has 47,000 miles on her, just like new, and he's
proud of it. But Myrtle had to go
down for a checkup. She can't get one from Dr. DeHaven of the doctors
in St. Cloud because she's had
checkups from them recently and they say she is all right. She is
pretty sure she might have cancer.She
reads "Questions and Answers on Cancer" in the paper and has seen
symptoms there that sound
familiar, so when she found a lump on the back of her head last week
and noticed blood on her
toothbrush, she called a clinic in Minneapolis, made an appointment,
and off they went. He put on his
good carcoat and a clean Pioneer Seed Corn cap, Myrtle wore a red dress
so she would be safe in
Minneapolis traffic. He got on Interstate 94 in Avon and headed south
at forty miles an hour, hugging
the right side, her clutching her purse, peering out of her thick
glasses, semis blasting past them, both
of them upset and scared, her about brain tumours, him about semis.
Normally she narrates a car trip,
reading billboards, pointing out interesting sights, but not now. When
they got beyond the range of the
"Rise 'N Shine" show, just as Bea and Bob were coming to the "Swap "N
Shop" feature, a show they've
heard every morning for thirty years, they felt awful, and Florian
said, "If it was up to me, I'd just as
soon turn around and go home."
It was the wrong thing to say, with her in the mood she was in,
and she was expecting him to say it
and had worked up a speech in her mind in case he did. "Well, of
course. I'm sure you would rather
turn around. You don't care. You don't care one tiny bit, and you never
had, so I'm not surprised that
you don't now. You don't care if I live or die. You'd probably just as
soon I died right now. That'd make
you happy, wouldn't it? You'd just clap your hands if I did. Then you'd
be free of me, wouldn't you --
then you'd be free to go off and do your dirty business, wouldn't you."
Florian, with his '66 Chev with 47, 003 miles on it, wouldn't
strike most people as a candidate for
playboyhood, but it made sense to her -- forty-eight years of marriage
and she had finally figured him
out, the rascal. She wept. She blew her nose.
He said, "I would too care if you died."
She said, "Oh yeah, how much? You tell me."
Florian isn't good at theoretical questions. After a couple of
minutes she said, "Well, I guess that
answers my question. The answer is, you don't care a bit."
It was his idea to stop at the truckstop, he thought coffee would
calm him down, and they sat and
drank a couple cups apiece, and then the pie looked good so they had
some, banana cream and lemon
meringue, and more coffee. They sat by the window, not a word between
them, watching the rain fall on
the gas pumps. They stood up and went and got in the car, then he
decided to use the men's room. While
he was gone, she went to the ladies' room. And while she was gone, he
got in behind the wheel, started
the car, checked the side mirror, and headed out on the freeway. Who
knows how this sort of thing
happens, he just didn't notice, his mind was on other things, and
Florian is a man who thinks slowly so
he won't have to go back and think it over again. He was still thinking
about how much he'd miss her if
she was gone, how awful he'd feel, how empty the house would be with
him lying alone in bed at night,
and all those times when you want to turn to someone and say, "You
won't believe whathappened to
me," or "Did you read this story in the newspaper about the elk in
Oregon?" or "Boy, Johnny Carson is
looking old, ain't he? And Ed too," and she wouldn't be there for him
to point this out to -- and he
turned to tell her how much he'd miss her and she wasn't there. The
seat was empty. You could have
knocked him over with a stick.
He took his foot off the gas and coasted to a stop. He hadn't
noticed her crawl into the backseat, but
he looked and she wasn't there. She hadn't jumped -- he would've
noticed that. (Wouldn't he?) It
couldn't've been angels taking her away. He thought of the truckstop.
He was a good ways from there,
he knew that. He must've gone twenty miles. Then, when he made a
U-turn, he noticed he wasn't on the
freeway anymore. There was no median strip. He was on Highway 14,
whatever that was.
He drove a few miles and came to a town named Bolivia. He never
knew there was a Bolivia,
Minnesota, but there it was. Went to a Pure Oil station, an old man was
reading a Donald Duck comic
book. Florian asked, "How far to the Interstate?" He didn't look up
from his comic book. A pickup came
in, the bell dinged, the old man kept reading. Florian went down the
street into a cafe, Yaklich's Cafe,
and asked the woman where the Interstate was. She said, "Oh, that's
nowheres around here.""Well, it
must be," he said, "I was just on it. I just came from there."
"Oh," she says, "that's a good ten miles from here."
"Which way?"
"East, I think."
"Which way's east?"
"What way you come in?"
"That way!"
"That way is northeast. You want to go that way and then a little
southeast when you get to the Y in
the road. Then keep to your left. It's about two miles the other side
of that old barn with Red Man on the
side. Red Man Chewing Tobacco. On your left. You'll see it."
There was a funny look about her: her eyes bulged, and her lips
were purplish. Her directions weren't
good either. He drove that way and never saw the barn, so he turned
around and came back and looked
for a barn on the right side, but no barn, so he headed back to
Bolivia, but Bolivia wasn't there
anymore. It was getting on toward noon.
It was four o'clock before he ever found the truckstop. He had a
long time to think up something to tell
Myrtle, but he still had no idea what to say. But she wasn't there
anymore. The waitress said, "You
mean the lady in the blue coat?" Florian didn't remember what color
Myrtle's coat was. He wasn't sure
exactly how to describe her except as real mad, probably. "Ja, that's
the lady in the blue coat," she said.
"Oh, she left here hours ago. Her son come to get her."
Florian sat and had a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie. "Can
you tell me the quickest way to get
to Lake Wobegon from here?" he asked. "Lake what?" she said. "I never
heard of it. It can't be around
here."
But it was, not too far away, and once he got off the freeway he
found his way straight home,
although it was dark by then. He stopped at the Sidetrack for a quick
bump. He felt he owed it tohimself
after all he'd been through and what with what he was about to go
through. "Where's the old lady?"
asked Wally. "Home, waiting for me," he said.
He headed south and saw his house, and kept going. Carl's pickup
was in the driveway and he
couldn't see facing the both of them. He parked on the crossroad and
sat, just beyond Roger Hedlund's
farm, where he could watch his house. It was dark except a light was on
in the kitchen and one in the
bathroom. Roger's house was lit up. What if Roger should see him and
come out to investigate? Out
here in the county, a parked car stands out more than a little bit, you
might as well be towing
asearchlight behind you. It's considered unusual for a man to sit in
his car in the evening on a
crossroad an eighth of a mile from his house, just sit there. If Roger
came out, Florian thought
he'dexplain that he was listening to the radio and it was a Lutheran
show so the old lady wouldn't have
it in the house -- Roger was a Lutheran, he'd like that.
He ducked down as a car came slowly past, its headlight on high
beam. The preacher on the radio
might be Lutheran, he didn't know. It sure wasn't the Rosary. The man
was talking about sinners who
had wandered away from the path, and it seemed to Florian to fit the
situation. "Broad is the road that
leadeth to destruction, and narrow is the path of righteousness" --
that seemed to be true too, from what
he knew of freeways. The preacher mentioned forgiveness, but Florian
wasn't sure about that. He
wondered what this preacher would do if he had forgotten his wife at a
truckstop and gotten lost; the
preacher knew a lot about forgiveness theoretically but what would he
do in Florian's situation? A
woman sang, "Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and
for me. See by the portals
he'swaiting and watching. Calling, O sinner come home."
Come home, come home --
Ye who are weary come home.
Florian felt weary. Seventy-two is old to get yourself in such a
ridiculous situation. He waited as long
as he could for Carl to leave, and then the coffee inside him reached
the point of no return and he
started the engine. Taking a leak in another man's field: he drew the
line at that. He turned on his
headlights, and right when he did he saw Carl's headlights far away
light up and the beams swung
around across the yard and Carl headed back toward town.
Florian coasted up his driveway with the headlights out. He still
did not have a speech ready. He was
afraid. He also had to pee. Outside, on the porch, he smelled supper:
breaded fish fillets. He was
surprised that the door was unlocked -- they never have locked it but
he thought she might if she
thought he was coming.
He hung up his coat in the mud room and looked around the corner.
Whe was at the stove, her back to
him, stirring something in a pan. He cleared his throat. She turned.
She said, "Oh thank God." She
dropped the spoon on the floor and ran to him on her old legs and said,
"Oh Daddy, I was so scared.
Oh Daddy, don't ever leave me again. I'm sorry I said what I did. I
didn't mean it. I didn't mean to make
you so angry at me. Don't leave me again like that."
Tears came to his eyes. To be so welcome -- in his own home. He
was about to tell her that he hadn't
left her, he'd forgotten her; then she said, "I love you, Daddy. You
know that."
He was going to tell her, but he didn't. It occurred to him that
leaving her on account of passionate
anger might be better than forgetting her because of being just plain
dumb. There wasn't time to think
this through clearly. He squeezed her and whispered, "I'm sorry. I was
wrong. I promise you that I'll
never do a dumb thing like that again."
She felt good at supper and put on the radio; she turned it up
when she heard "The Saint Cloud
Waltz." Sometimes I dream of a mansion afar but there's no place so
lovely as right where we are, here
on a planet that's almost a star, we dance to the Saint Cloud Waltz.
That night he lay awake,
incredulous. That she thought he was capable of running away, like a
John Barrymore or something.
Seventy-two years old, married forty-eight years, and she thought that
maybe it hadn't worked out and
he might fly the coop like people do in songs? Amazing woman. He got up
at six o'clock, made
scrambled eggs and sausage and toast, and felt like a new guy. She felt
better too. The lump on her
head felt like all the other lumps and there was no blood on her
toothbrush. She said, "I wonder if I
hadn't ought to call down there about that appointment." "Oh," he said,
"I think by now they must know
you're all right."
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women
are strong, all the men are
good-looking and all the kids are above average.
