‘They give some of their earthly goods to their wiv
es.’
‘I should think so!’
‘And some to their friends –’
‘I’ll argue that!’
‘And some to their friends. Then they paddle their canoes off into the sunset and never return.’
His wife looked high up along him as if he were timber ripe for cutting. ‘Desertion!’ she said.
‘No, no, Mildred; death, pure and simple. The Time of Going Away, they call it.’
‘Did anyone ever charter a canoe and follow to see what those fools were up to?’
‘Of course not,’ said the old man, mildly irritated. ‘That would spoil everything.’
‘You mean they had other wives and pretty friends off on another island?’
‘No, no, it’s just a man needs aloneness, serenity, when his juices turn cold.’
‘If you could prove those fools really died, I’d shut up.’ His wife squinted one eye. ‘Anyone ever find their bones on those far islands?’
‘The fact is that they just sail into the sunset like animals who sense the Great Time at hand. Beyond that, I don’t wish to know.’
‘Well, I know,’ said the old woman. ‘You been reading more articles in the National Geographic about the Elephant Bone-yard.’
‘Graveyard, not Boneyard!’ he shouted.
‘Graveyard, Boneyard. I thought I burned those magazines; you got some hid?’
‘Look here, Mildred,’ he said severely, seizing the suitcase again. ‘My mind points north; nothing you say can head me south. I’m tuned to the infinite secret wellspring of the primitive soul.’
‘You’re tuned to whatever you read last in that bog-trotters’ gazette!’ She pointed a finger at him. ‘You think I got no memory?’
His shoulders fell. ‘Let’s not go through the list again, please.’
‘What about the Hairy Mammoth episode?’ she asked. ‘When they found that frozen elephant in the Russian tundra thirty years back? You and Sam Hertz, that old fool, with your fine idea of running off to Siberia to corner the world market in canned edible hairy mammoth? You think I don’t still hear you saying, “Imagine the prices members of the National Geographic Society will pay to have the tender meat of the Siberian hairy mammoth, ten thousand years old, ten thousand years extinct, right in their homes!” You think; my scars have healed from that?’
‘I see them clearly,’ he said.
‘You think I’ve forgotten the time you went out to find the Lost Tribe of the Osseos, or whatever, in Wisconsin some place where you could dogtrot to town Saturday nights and tank up, and fell in that quarry and broke your leg and laid there three nights?’
‘Your recall,’ he said, ‘is total.’
‘Then what’s this about pagan natives and the Time of Going Away? I’ll tell you what it is – it’s the Time of Staying at Home! It’s the time when fruit don’t fall off the trees into your hand, you got to walk to the store for it. And why do we walk to the store for it? Someone in this house, I’ll name no names, took the car apart like a clock some years back and left it strewn all down the yard. I’ve raised auto parts in my garden ten years come Thursday. Ten more years and all that’s left of our car is little heaps of rust. Look out that window! It’s leaf-raking-and-burning time. It’s chopping-trees-and-sawing-wood-for-the-fire time. It’s clean-out-stoves-and-hang-storm-doors-and-windows time. It’s shingle-the-roof time, that’s what it is, and if you think you’re out to escape it, think again!’
He placed his hand to his chest. ‘It pains me you have so little trust in my natural sensitivity to oncoming Doom.’
‘It pains me that National Geographies fall in the hands of crazy old men. I see you read those pages then fall into those dreams I always have to sweep up after. Those Geographic and Popular Mechanics publishers should be forced to see all the half-finished rowboats, helicopters, and one-man batwing gliders in our attic, garage, and cellar. Not only see, but cart them home!’
‘Chatter on,’ he said. ‘I stand before you, a white stone sinking in the tides of Oblivion. For God’s sake, woman, can’t I drag myself off to die in peace?’
‘Plenty of time for Oblivion when I find you stone cold across the kindling pile.’
‘Jesting Pilate!’ he said. ‘Is recognition of one’s own mortality nothing but vanity?’