The Road to Wellville by T.C. Boyle

Author:T.C. Boyle [Boyle, T. Coraghessan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101640265
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1994-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Kellogg’s Kink

Will had been hung over before—in fact, given the slow spiritual death of his managerial position at his father’s plant, combined with Eleanor’s descent into the morass of vegetarianism, neurasthenia, frigidity and quackery, he’d been crapulous the better part of the past five years. But never like this. This was different, a scourge that assaulted him from both ends, as if he’d drunk hydrochloric acid instead of whiskey, eaten iron filings in place of beef, bun and pickle. He vomited for two days, a thin sour mash tinged red with blood. A watery gruel cascaded from the other end, and it was red, too. His fingertips tingled, his feet were blocks of ice, his tongue sprouted a new coat. He lay there on the rack of his physiologic bed, praying for equilibrium, and when he caught his breath to hold the pain in place for ten seconds at a time, he was sure he’d swallowed a long snaking strand of molten wire.

He didn’t know how he’d got back to the San or how he’d found his bed and crashed through the wall of consciousness into oblivion. All he knew was the next morning, Christmas morning, and the old pain, recidivist, glowering, reborn like an avenging demon: all he knew was the toilet and the sink. That first day, he had only two visitors—Nurse Bloethal and Eleanor. Gauging his condition at a glance, Nurse Bloethal mercifully set aside her hot wax and whey culture and canceled his morning regimen of Swedish Manual Movements, laughing exercises and the sinusoidal bath. If she knew anything of Homer Praetz and the previous day’s events, she didn’t let on. Will vomited and shat and trembled. He said nothing of having left the San, of Charlie Ossining, pickled eggs or the Red Onion, though the nurse could count up the milk feedings he’d missed and make her own nearest guess.

Eleanor appeared at nine, irate and red about the ears and nostrils. Where had he been? She’d looked all over for him before giving it up and going off to Frank’s party on her own—or with Mrs. Rumstedt, rather, for appearance’s sake. But Will didn’t seem to care much for appearances, did he? Her own husband! And on Christmas Eve, no less! Well? And where had he been?

“I’m sick,” he croaked. Outside the window it was as gray as the grave, the very clouds fallen from the sky to press down on the earth as if there were no intermediate plane, no trees, no buildings, no life.

Eleanor stalked across the room and flung her handbag down on the table. She was dressed in green and red, festive for the season. “I’m sick, too,” she cried as the handbag found its mark with the harsh killing thump of the blackjack or cudgel. “Sick to death of this, this attitude of yours. And where were you? Answer me!”

Where was he? Where had he been? Even as she asked, even as she demanded an answer, a vivid, if

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