A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell by Padgett Powell Page A

operate.
    I suddenly saw that Mary had truly acted according to
the constants and coefficients and activities and affinities of the
whole series of reactions around me defining this odd interlude. She
"left me" with no more wrongful or sorrowful moment than an
atom leaves another, than blood becomes iron and oxygen. And I was
the evolving product, now in a fish-camp retort with a new reagent
not unlike--in fact, startlingly similar to--the last. Who governed
these combinations? How could it all be a random walk?
    Down near the water was a large kid. He got in one of
the sunken boats and started bailing with a cutout Clorox-bottle
scoop tied to his wrist.
    " Do we rent those boats to customers?"
    She had arranged the darts into a neat parallel
arsenal on the bar and lit a cigarette and sat up close on the other
side on a stool. She put her beer on a cardboard coaster and passed
me one.
    " If somebody ever wants a boat, mister, you take
their money and drive to Sears and make the down payment on a
johnboat. Then, if somebody else wants one, we'll rent a boat."
She took a giant drag on her cigarette, blowing smoke to the ceiling,
in a spreading roil.
    At the boats, the kid was bailing away.
    " Or let Bonaparte go to Sears," she said.
"That kid can drive ."
She leaned a bit to one side and got a look of concentration on her
face. I thought she was straining to see Bonaparte. I heard an odd,
small, mewing noise. "Hope you don't mind gas," she said.
    " It's two things he does. Drive and bail. It
would be Christmas if he got to drive and get a dry boat."
    Bonaparte was sitting almost chest deep, scooping the
water near him and pouring it out at arm's length.
    " Bonaparte," I said.
    " That might be cruel," she said. "That
might be cruel." She threw the ribbed rag at a big sink behind
the bar.
    " They told me he had a bone apart in his head to
explain his condition. That's how they said it, too. Well, we weren't
too excited about it. We weren't too excited about it and got drunk,
and next thing we're calling him Bonaparte. Is that cruel?"
    " I don't know," I said.
    " You ready?"
    Before I could gesture, another beer slid to within
an inch of the one I was on. Bonaparte, steadily working, seemed to
pause and listen to something between pours of his scoop. He was not
more than a head and an arm bailing in a blinding disk of sun on
water.
    " He gives me the vim to go on," she said. I
noticed him again pause as if listening to distant signals. "So,
where'd you leave your clubs, Arnie?" She laughed at herself.
    " Let's get you some khakis and tell all the
customers you're the fish guide. Can you see the expression on their
face when you wade into one of them wrecks with a Lorance under your
arm?" She started wheezing with laughter. Recovering, she said,
"That is some suit."
    We drank, looking at Bonaparte bail.
    " You wasn't . . . golfing ,
was you?"
    " No," I said.
    " You a darts man?"
    " Might be."
    She marched over, lined up, wound up, and
delivered--the dart went a half inch into the wall with a gratifying
thuuung. On my turn, I missed the whole target, but I hit the wall
and I hit it very hard, and she watched me like a spring-training
scout, arms folded.
    "You catch on fast," she said.
    We played a game. In the
late going--innings, I guess--she'd actually paw the floor as if
grooving the mound, and grunt when she released. I had never seen
better form. Not a customer came.
    * * *
    The fish-camp position made my time at Mary's seem an
apprenticeship. Or it may be that Mary had me so well trained that
certain early mistakes were avoided at the camp. Her name was Wallace
("That's cruel, too. Don't call me Wa1ly"), she played no
roles other than the main one, and I mistook her for none else. You
don't see a woman like her in a Sunday supplement. I did see her
frequently in the regional fishing weekly, The
Glade Wader . She'd create accounts of
boatloads of fish brought in at our nameless camp (in the paper she
called us Bonaparte's) and