a bitch at his core, that was the bald truth of it. And even though Jack later began drinking in a way that made refusing a single beer seem silly, he didn’t regret refusing it, because it had been a clear choice. And after Jack’s parents died and Heber’s mother had taken Henry and absconded, leaving Heber alone with his father, and Jack started drinking with Heber, and then began drinking more alone—that surging, muddled time when he hid bottles of whiskey in his closet even though neither Adelaide nor Blair would ever climb the stairs to his room, had sat on his narrow bed every night he was not still sick from drinking the night before, pulling long from the bottle’s bitter mouth or taking shots from a plastic cup until he was reeling, alone, once or twice waking in cold urine to having pissed the bed blindly—that had been a choice, and it had been his, not because some bigmouth in a red checked flannel jacket, mayor of this puny town, said it was time, and he had made the choice on his own timetable. No one but Heber seemed sorry when the elder Rafuse was found in the river, not far from this spot, not a stone’s throw, but it had worked a dark spell over the town and transfixed them all for some time. A ragged and frayed man he had been, unable to exist in his own skin. Heber put it that he couldn’t manage the flame and it had spread forth and burned him up. He was always talking about that flame like he was always saying there were other women. Jack had seen Heber’s father slap him once, soon after they’d been left. The man had slapped him, openhanded, like a woman would. And somehow that, the sound of it, was worse than if he would have struck him outright with a closed fist. Sometime after that Heber had set fire to the old paintless barn behind the Rafuse house. It was said that he would be shipped off, but there wasn’t enough money. Jack had not witnessed that blaze, but it must have been something to see the barn burn. He had always wanted to see a barn burn.
Heber’s pole dipped and his taut line swam in the water. He watched its movement carefully, his cigarette spent and forgotten, his eyes probing the river, sounding its depths and contents. He reeled in, let off, reeled, tested the weight of his catch, and finally the dirty snout of a carp broke the water. He reached out and grabbed the line, dropped his pole, and used both hands to haul the fish to shore where it flopped heavily in the grass. Then he wet his hands in the river and returned to the fish and spoke to it softly. He grunted as he pushed the hook, reversing it out of the flesh with an audible tear that echoed in the fish’s open mouth. It was nearly two feet long and its yellow brown scales writhed and shone in the late sun. Its gills worked slowly. He walked to the edge of the river and tossed it in like a stone, then he dropped down to the sandy shore and bent over the moving water.
—This damned river, he was saying. It don’t always make sense where it’s going but it always gets to the right place, ain’t it?
Jack lay in the grass, staring up at the deep sky, the smell of cooking hamburger and onions coming from the fire. Heber came to sit crosslegged, smoking a cigarette thoughtfully, as if it were a new thing, smiling faintly and watching the river like he was contemplating its age and creation. He said, You remember that time Dad brought me, you, and Henry down here to fish? He loved this river. He’d go up and down it in his motorboat, trolling, ruin the engine on the hidden sandbars. It’s good to have a river running through your town. This town wouldn’t be here, would it, without the river.
When Jack didn’t answer, Heber said, I miss drinking with you. I never thought you’d stop like you did. It’s not much fun getting drunk alone. He paused. Are you happy with your life?
—Not everyone wants to be happy, said Jack.
—Not everyone wants to be happy, said Heber. But you strive for it, don’t you? And feel it come close at times? Tell me, are we meant to eat in sorrow all the days of our lives, or do we exist that we might have joy? And is that joy found in righteousness or in sin? Is it a balance between the two? I would that every person did according to his own conscience, sought his own joy, whatever that is to him, so long as it doesn’t harm others or himself. Who is anyone to take my brand of joy away from me, to tell me it is a false joy, when my experience shows otherwise? Some of us don’t want safety and peace, which is born from willful ignorance anyway, or we find a wiser peace in natural courses and from experience refuse to believe that there is no peace to the wicked, such as they are defined. A balance, then, an opposition in all things, a perpetual cycle. Each force needs the other, and each man needs both forces to work upon his life if he is to be satisfied. The ancient Greeks used to have pools of hot and cold water. They’d jump into the hot to open their pores, then into the cold to close them, and do it again and again, but it was the shock of the contrast that was invigorating. God bless the culture of morality. Without it, the primitive instinctual life would become common. It wouldn’t hold the mystery and satisfaction it does. It’s only when we resist it that sin becomes so delicious. But if you believe happiness lies only through some traditional brand of righteousness then you must sacrifice the full enjoyment of what that brand calls sin and in its place experience perpetual guilt at perpetual failure. Is that happiness?
—Only fools and the simpleminded are happy, said Jack. But even a good man does wrong throughout his life. He doesn’t have to seek it out.
—But it’s not enough to be always resisting, said Heber. That’s an imbalance. He must give in once in a while. Let it go. Pick one urge, a good one, and yield. The man who is faithful to one woman despite the allure of another will not allow himself the thrill of falling in love with the other, of taking her as a lover, of having her for a time, of freshening his soul that way. He won’t feel the burden of an unreasonable task leave his shoulders, even for a season, but will toil beneath it for whatever reward he envisions in some life to come. He will not be happy so long as he holds himself to the standards humankind has given him in the name of God. He must redraw those lines once in a while, and he does. He must keep a little vice in his life if he is to be healthy in body and spirit. If he doesn’t find a balance his ability and desire to rejoice and live free will always be impeded by a heavy heart because he knows he’s never truly beaten his own nature, wretched man that he is. God’s path to happiness often stands in its own way. It is a snake eating its own tail.
—If God exists, then he’d know best, said Jack.
—A man can believe in God and still not know what he’s up to, said Heber. Who he is. Read the scriptures. This is a god of a thousand faces, and an intelligent and good man can’t agree with what this god’s done while wearing some of them. We can’t begin to know even ourselves, how can we pretend to know God? I suppose we all face our own times of crisis, but you’re a grown man. A man needs things beyond farm work and loose promises.
—You mean a wife? said Jack.
—I mean a woman. A man needs a woman, or he might go to cows and work unseemly things. How long’s it been since you had a girl around?
—A few months, said Jack.
—It’s been over a year, said Heber.
—What am I supposed to do about that? This place ain’t a capital for eligible women.
—Then search elsewhere. You never go with me to town anymore.
—I got tired of it. There was no substance to it.
—And that’s the cycle, said Heber. You needed a change, sure. But the cycle must continue, like a boy climbing all his father’s trees, swinging back down, and his father’s trees are endless. You want to live a life of no regrets and you’re setting yourself up for a glut of them. You’re missing a large part of what it means to be a young man in this rich world. Nearly all the things I regret are things I never did. Experience teaches me this, against the empty rhetoric that is its fabricated counter. It’s rarely what I’ve done that brings remorse, it’s what I’ve failed to do.
—It depends on how you define regrets, said Jack. One man’s satisfaction is another man’s regret.
—Well said, said Heber. That is well said, damn it.
—What about Geneva?
—If she comes back it’s a temporary remedy. I haven’t met the woman yet who can be the end of everything and I doubt she exists. Monogamy is a compromise on both parts, a paradox acceptable to most. But until I get there I must take what each woman