Sometimes a Great Notion Read Online Free PDF

right-wing labor-hating owners grant another two bits an hour and hospital benefits rather than risk losing the dubious affection of a senile aunt who happened to play canasta with the wife of the brother of a striking employee that the owner didn’t even know by sight or name. Love—and all its complicated ramifications, Draeger believed—actually does conquer all; Love—or the Fear of Not Having It, or the Worry about Not Having Enough of It, or the Terror of Losing It—certainly does conquer all. To Draeger this knowledge was a weapon; he had learned it young and for a quarter-century of mild-mannered wheeling and easy-going dealing he had used that weapon with enormous success, conquering a world rendered simple, precise, and predictable by his iron-hammered faith in that weapon’s power. And now some illiterate logger with a little gyppo show and not an ally in the world was trying to claim that he was invulnerable to that weapon! Christ, this blasted fever . . .
    Draeger hunches over the wheel, a man who enjoys thinking of himself as mild-mannered and under control, and watches the speed mount on the speedometer in spite of all he can do to restrain it. The big car has taken command. It has speeded up beneath him of its own accord. It rushes toward the town with an anxious, sucking hiss of wet tires. The white lines flicker by. The willows fluttering beyond the windows vibrate toward motionlessness, like spokes standing still on a careening Holly-wood wagon wheel. He runs his gloved fingers nervously over his stiff gray crew-cut, sighing, giving in to his foreboding: if what Evenwrite says is true—and why would he lie?—it means weeks more of the same enforced patience that has left him exhausted and sleepless two nights out of three for the last month. More forced smiling, more forced talking. More feigned listening. And more Desenex for a case of athlete’s foot capable of making medical history. He sighs again, resigning himself, oh what the devil, anybody is liable to call it wrong once in a while. But the car does not slow, and far down in his precise and predictable heart, where the foreboding first sprouted and where the resignation lies now like a brooding moss, another bloom is budding.
    “But if I didn’t call a wrong shot . . . if I didn’t make a miscalculation . . .”
    A different bloom. Petaled with wonder.
    “Then there may be more to this particular fool than I imagined.”
    And perhaps, therefore, more to all fools.
    He stops the car, skidding the whitewalls against the curb in front of the Sea Breeze Cafe. Through the rushing windshield he can see the whole length of Main Street. Deserted? Just rain and tomcats. He flips up his collar and steps out without taking time to put on his overcoat, hurries across to the neon-filled front of the Snag. Inside, the bar also looks deserted; the juke-box is lighted, playing softly, but there is no one in sight. Odd . . . Has the whole town driven out to stand about in the mud to be laughed at? That seems terribly —Then sees the fat and pallid stereotype of a bartender standing near the window, watching him from beneath long curling lashes.
    “Really coming down out there, isn’t it, Teddy?” There’s more to this than —
    “I suppose so, Mr. Draeger.”
    “Teddy?” Look: even this little effeminate frog of a bartender—even he knows more than I do . “Floyd Evenwrite told me I could find Hank Stamper’s wife here.”
    “Yes sir,” Draeger hears the little man tell him. “Way at the back, Mr. Draeger. In the depot section.”
    “Thank you. Oh say, Teddy; why do you think that—” That . . . what? He stands a moment, unaware that he is staring until the bartender blushes beneath the blank gaze and drops his long lashes down over his eyes. “Never mind.” Draeger turns and walks away: I can’t ask him. I mean he couldn’t tell me—even if he knew, wouldn’t tell me . . . past the juke as it clicks, whirs, introduces another