Free Nickel Mountain by John Gardner Page A

Henry had said formally, holding her hand, “Mr. Wells, I’d like your permission to marry your daughter.” Callie had glanced up at him sideways and had seen again, as if it were a new discovery, how much she truly admired him, comical as he might seem to some, and she’d felt awe that he should be going through all this for her. He was painfully embarrassed, and scared as well, though he was older than her father. He was feeling, no doubt, as ridiculous as he looked—a great fat creature in steel-rimmed glasses, his ears pressed flat to his head as though he’d spent his whole life in a tight-fitting cap.
    Her father said, “At two A.M. in the morning? You crazy?”
    â€œI’m serious, Frank,” Henry said. All the house and the surrounding night seemed to echo his earnestness. He’s serious.
    She’d broken in quickly, holding Henry’s hand more tightly, “Daddy, I’m going to have a child.”
    His face went white, then red. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him, angry enough to murder Henry (but Henry could break her father in half as easily as Prince snapped hambones between his teeth). Her father began swearing but she broke in again, “Not by Henry, Daddy. By somebody else.” He just stared at her then, and then at Henry. Then he pulled out the chair from the kitchen table and sat down. His stubbly cheeks were hollow and there were shadows between his ribs. He chewed his lip and wrung his hands, tears washing down his nose and whiskers. After a minute he called her mother, and she came in at once—she’d been standing just behind the door—her plump white hands catching the bathrobe together.
    She said, “Mother, we’re going to be married.”
    Her mother’s face squeezed into a grimace and she started crying with a great whoop, splashing up her hands and running to her, falling on her, hugging her tightly and sobbing. “Oh, Callie! My poor baby! We’ve failed you!” Immediately Callie was crying too, sobbing her heart out. It must have been two minutes they cried like that. Then it came to her that Henry was there, and that they didn’t understand at all.
    â€œMother,” she said, “I love Henry. I’m happy.”
    â€œChild. My child!” her mother said, and a new burst of sobbing overwhelmed her.
    She felt a strange sensation: as if the floor were moving, shifting gently, carrying her somewhere, as in the old story, and telling her something. She accepted her mother’s tight embrace but felt unresponsive, separated in a way that in a moment there would be no repairing. Her mother felt it too, or realized that Callie was not crying now, that something had changed.
    â€œMother,” she said again, “I love him.”
    After a moment her mother drew back to look at her, trying to read her face like a word left by Indians. She said, “Love, Callie! You’re only seventeen years old.”
    Callie said nothing.
    Her mother was baffled; grieved and frightened, but more than that, filled with an emotion too deep for separation into grief and fear: as though Callie had gone down to a small boat at night, and her mother stood on a towering ship that was drawing away and could never turn back. Without words, Callie knew—with a sinking feeling—that her mother could never know for sure—anymore than she could know of her mother—that she was happy. For the first time now, her eyes still baffled, Callie’s mother turned to look at Henry. She stared as if she’d never really noticed, in all her years, that he was grotesque. He endured the look in patience like an elephant’s, an enormous hulk of misery, his hands folded behind his back, huge belly thrown forward, his head slightly tipped and drawn back a little. (Could she see that, inside that suit like a mortician’s, he was a gentle man, and a good man besides?)
    Her father said, “This