Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey Read Free Book Online

when no one could come up with a good reason the practical men gave a stiff nod and thumped a worn boot against the flatiron land: “All right. Then this is the whole shebang, boys, right here underfoot. Give up and admit it.”
    To begin devoting their restless energies to pursuits more tangible than wandering, more practical than walking, pursuits like business and community and church. They acquired bank accounts, positions in local government, and even, sometimes, these stringy-muscled men, potbellies. Pictures of these men found in boxes in attics: black suits poised with rigid determination before a photographer’s mural, mouths grim and resolute. Letters: “. . . we have come far enough.”
    And they folded up in leather chairs like jackknives closing and climbing into scabbards. They bought family plots in cemeteries in Lincoln and Des Moines and Kansas City, these pragmatic men, and mail-ordered huge cushiony maroon chesterfields for their living rooms.
    “Ah boy. Yes sir. This is the life. It’s about time.”
    Only to be set in motion again by the first young wildeye able to sucker the old man into listening to his dreams. Admit; you knew that look even then ; by the first frog-voiced young foot-itcher able to get Pop to believing that they could outdo this sticker patch by moving farther west. Be all set in plodding, restless motion again, you knew that look and could have saved us the heartache . . . like animals driven by a drought, by an unquenchable thirst— but you didn’t —driven by a dream of a place where the water tastes like wine:
     
    This Springfield water tastes like turpentine,
I’m goin’ down . . . that long dusty road.
     
    Going until at last the whole family, the whole clan, reached the salty wall of the Pacific.
    “Where from here? ”
    “Beats the piss outa me; all I know’s this don’t taste much like wine.”
    “Where from here?”
    “I don’t know.” Then desperately: “But some place, some place else!” With a desperate and cornered grin. “Someplace else, I can tell ya.” Not accepting God’s intended lot, Jonas says under his breath, driven by a curse. You could have saved them the trouble of looking for that someplace. You know now that all is vanity and vexation of the spirit. Could you only of mustered the courage when you first saw that devil’s leer shining through Henry’s grin there at the train station, you could of stopped it and saved us all the trouble. He turns his back on his son and lifts his hand to the flock of cousins and brothers who walk alongside the slowly moving train.
    “Mind, Jonas, you be thoughtful; don’t be too stiff on Mary Ann or th’ boys. It’s a hard new country.”
    “I won’t, Nathan.”
    “And mind, Jonas, them bad old Oregon bears and Indians, hee hee hee.”
    “Pshaw, now, Louise.”
    “Write, now, soon’s you get settled. Old Kansas is looking gosh-awful flat.”
    “We’ll do that.” You could of stopped it then, could you of only mustered the courage . “We’ll write and advise you all.”
    “Yessir; those bears and Indians, Jonas, don’t let such as them get you all.”
    The Oregon bears, Jonas Stamper found, were well fed on clams and berries, and fat and lazy as old house cats. The Indians, nourished on the same two limitless sources of food, were even fatter and a damn sight lazier than the bears. Yes. They were peaceful enough. So were the bears. In fact the whole country was more peaceful than he had expected. But there was this odd . . . volatile feeling about the new country that struck him the very day he arrived, struck him and stuck, and never left him all the three years he lived in Oregon. “What’s so hard about this country?” Jonas wondered when they arrived. “All it needs is somebody to whip it into shape.”
    No, it wasn’t such as bears or Indians that got stern and stoic Jonas Stamper.
    “But I wonder how come it’s still as unsettled as it is?” Jonas wondered when he arrived;