We thanked Cookie and Stretch, Gramp bunded out bis few remaining cigars, and we left the cow camp and beaded Stude toward Salt Lake City. We smelled the lake a long way off, then saw the spires of the great temple against the hot blue sky, and soon we were in the streets of Salt Lake. Gramp made no jokes about Brigham Young and his twenty-four wives and six hundred children, except to say that a good wife is like an elephant, “very interesting to look at, but who wants to own one. Imagine owning twenty-four of them… .”
“Gramp,” said Mama, in that cold voice.
And Gramp replied, “I must buy some new cigars.”
“Alter we settle at the hotel.”
We found a very good hotel, with the biggest moose in the world (his head anyway) hanging over a big fireplace in the lobby, his big glass eyes looking down sadly at us as we registered, Gramp writing our names with a big pen in a fancy hand.
We had huge rooms with high ceilings, and everything smelled of American history. The hot water dripped but would not flow. Gramp and I changed, and Mama said she would rest on her spine on a good bed and forget the bad roads.
We went to buy some cigars, and Gramp found Salt Lake didn't have any places that sold cigars: “Sorry, but the war, you know … didn't import many.” Which shows you how old that excuse is. World War I, in 1919, being in the just-gone past.
“Hell and tiddlywinks,” said Gramp, “the things they blame on wars. I bet Ajax went to the wars of Troy because he dropped in to buy a few stogies and they told him, ’Sorry, just out, this war business over a woman, you know.‘ Helen didn't launch a thousand ships, Stevie, but she most likely took a hundred good cigar brands off the market.”
“A good cigar,” I finished, “is a smoke.”
It was a mistake for Gramp to warn me. It developed in me a guilt complex, something to hide and guard. The gospel according to Freud was still very new in the republic then. But years later I figured out that was what happened—that and three servings of ice cream. For when Mama heard me muttering in my bed, she came to test my head for fever and to tuck me in, and she found me talking in my sleep about cigars and maidens.
We knew something was wrong the next morning at breakfast. We knew it was real wrong when we took off in Stude for the mountain passes. A few miles past the stinking lake Mama said. “Coventry for the next three days, Gramp.”
Gramp, a good cigar in his mouth, asked, “But why?”
“Stevie talked in his sleep last night. So I'm your new young wife.' And all your others are worn out.”
Gramp looked at me with distaste. “It wasn't that bad at all. He built it up in his little mind.”
Mama put her arms around me. “Now. baby boy. you just shew Mama all the jack rabbits.”
“You like jack rabbits, Mama?”
“A jack rabbit is only a jack rabbit, but a good cigar is a smoke.”
Gramp inhaled his cigar carefully, flicked the ash off. and said, “Please don't talk to me. I've just put you and Stevie into Coventry. Why didn't I ever think of that before?”
Mama looked at me, and I looked at Mama, and I showed her the first jack rabbit, but she didn't seem interested… .
The clerk took the gold toothpick from under his mustache and said. “Try that little shop next to the hotel. The ciders of the church buy their smokes there. He may have some old stuff in stock.”
“Thanks.”
It was a dusty little shop, but it Smelled neatly of Turkish blends and polished pipes. A little old man with a bright blue eye shook his head when Gramp asked for his favorite brand of cigars.
“The war?” Gramp asked.
“The war. And what I have, I have to keep for the elders of the church. That was a beautiful woman you had with you.”
“Oh, Sari,” said Gramp.
The little old man leaned over. “Sneaking in an extra wife?”
Gramp looked at the ceiling. “That isn't done anymore, you know—at least publicly.”
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