RAYMOND CARVIR "CATHEDRAL contains astonishing achievements, which bespeak a writer expanding his range and intentions." - BOSTON GLOBE "A dozen stories that overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life... writers of our time —of any Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and time." -PHILADELPHIA honesty...his eye set only on describing and INQUIRER revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart." -JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD "A few of Mr. Carver's stories can already be counted among the masterpieces of American fiction... .Cathedral shows a gifted writer struggling For a larger scope oF reference, a finer touch of nuance." -IRVIN G HOWE, front page, • / THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Clear, hard language so right that we shiver at the knowledge we gain from it." -THOMAS WILLIAMS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE BOOK WORLD "Carver is more than a realist; there is, in some of his stories, a strangeness, the husk of a myth." - LOS " " U.S. $12.00 ISB-N-0-67': Can. $16.95 iderson n Ettlintje 22 101 51 200> CATHEDRAL/CAR 01/02 9"780679"723691 « N T A E ISBN D CONTEMPORARIES RAYMOND CARVER'S CATHEDRAL "An important book in a unique career." — The New York Review of Books "Like Edward Hopper, whose landscape his characters inhabit, Carver depicts a frozen world, blue-shadowed, where time is the betrayer of lives." — Vogue "It's impossible to ignore Carver's immense talent... In Cathedral he succeeds, seemingly without effort, in weaving the illusion that his characters are not only real but representative." — David Lehman, Newsweek "Carver's cadence is his own, but it stirs memories of Ernest Hemingway at his best." — The Seattle Post Intelligencer "Fully expressive of what we think of as the Carver vision yet so expansive in its concerns and achievements that it creates the poten­ tial for a new phase in what is already a significant body of work." — The Houston Chronicle "Carver's minimal art achieves maximal effects... .In the paradoxi­ cally lyric way of the minimalist writer, Carver has not only made sense of this world, he has given it value." — The Boston Review "Written in the simplest of styles, mirroring the language of every­ day, [these stories] possess an awesome mesmerizing power. Out of the moments when good luck runs out, Carver makes the highest art." — Dan Cryer, Newsday BOOKS BY RAYMOND CARVER FICTION Where I'm Calling From Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Furious Seasons What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Cathedral POETRY A New Path to the Waterfall Winter Insomnia At Night the Salmon Move Where Water Comes Together with Other Water Ultramarine PROSE AND POETRY No Heroics, Please Fires CATHEDRAL • RAYMOND CARVER CATHEDRAL STORIES VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES • VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC. • NEW YORK FOR TESS GALLAGHER AND IN MEMORY OF JOHN GARDNER VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JUNE 1989 Copyright © 1981, 1982, 1983 by Raymond Carver All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven­ tions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1983 and in softcover by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1984. Some of the stories in this collection originally appeared in the following maga­ zines: Antaeus, The Antioch Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, GrandStreet, TheNorth American Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares. "The Bridle," "Chefs House," and "Where I'm Calling From" originally appeared in The New Yorker. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. I. Title. CPS3553.A7894C3 1984} 813'54 84-40009 ISBN 0-679-72369-2 (pbk.) Display typography by Stephanie Bart-Horvath Manufactured in the United States of America 579C86 CONTENTS FEATHERS 3 CHEF'S HOUSE 27 PRESERVATION 35 THE COMPARTMENT 47 A SMALL, GOOD THING 59 VITAMINS 91 CAREFUL 111 WHERE I'M CALLING FROM 127 THE TRAIN 147 FEVER 157 THE BRIDLE 187 CATHEDRAL 20 9 ^ FEATHERS THIS friend of mine from work, Bud, he asked Fran and me to supper. I didn't know his wife and he didn't know Fran. That made us even. But Bud and I were friends. And I knew there was a little baby at Bud's house. That baby must have been eight months old when Bud asked us to supper. Where'd those eight months go? Hell, where's the time gone since? I remember the day Bud came to work with a box of cigars. He handed them out in the lunchroom. They were drugstore ci­ gars. Dutch Masters. But each cigar had a red sticker on it and a wrapper that said IT'S A BOY! I didn't smoke cigars, but I took one anyway. "Take a couple," Bud said. He shook the box. "I don't like cigars either. This is her idea." He was talking about his wife. Olla. I'd never met Bud's wife, but once I'd heard her voice over the telephone. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I didn't have FEATHERS anything I wanted to do. So I called Bud to see if he wanted to do anything. This woman picked up the phone and said, "Hello." I blanked and couldn't remember her name. Bud's wife. Bud had said her name to me any number of times. But it went in one ear and out the other. "Hello!" the woman said again. I could hear a TV going. Then the woman said, "Who is this?" I heard a baby start up. "Bud!" the woman called. "What?" I heard Bud say. I still couldn't remember her name. So I hung up. The next time I saw Bud at work I sure as hell didn't tell him I'd called. But I made a point of getting him to mention his wife's name. "Olla," he said. Olla, I said to myself. Olla. "No big deal," Bud said. We were in the lunchroom drink­ ing coffee. "Just the four of us. You and your missus, and me and Olla. Nothing fancy. Come around seven. She feeds the baby at six. She'll put him down after that, and then we'll eat. Our place isn't hard to find. But here's a map." He gave me a sheet of paper with all kinds of lines indicating major and minor roads, lanes and such, with arrows pointing to the four poles of the compass. A large X marked the location of his house. I said, "We're looking forward to it." But Fran wasn't too thrilled. That evening, watching TV, I asked her if we should take anything to Bud's. "Like what?" Fran said. "Did he say to bring something? How should I know? I don't have any idea." She shrugged and gave me this look. She'd heard me before on the subject of Bud. But she didn't know him and she wasn't interested in knowing him. "We could take a bottle of wine," she said. "But I don't care. Why don't you take some wine?" She shook her head. Her long hair swung back and forth over her shoul­ ders. Why do we need other people? she seemed to be saying. We have each other. "Come here," I said. She moved a little closer so I could hug her. Fran's a big tall drink of water. She has this blond hair that hangs down her back. I picked up some of her hair and sniffed it. I wound my hand in her hair. She let me hug her. I put my face right up in her hair and hugged her some more. Sometimes when her hair gets in her way she has to pick it up and push it over her shoulder. She gets mad at it. "This hair," she says. "Nothing but trouble." Fran works in a cream­ ery and has to wear her hair up when she goes to work. She has to wash it every night and take a brush to it when we're sitting in front of the TV. Now and then she threatens to cut it off. But I don't think she'd do that. She knows I like it too much. She knows I'm crazy about it. I tell her I fell in love with her because of her hair. I tell her I might stop loving her if she cut it. Sometimes I call her "Swede." She could pass for a Swede. Those times together in the evening she'd brush her hair and we'd wish out loud for things we didn't have. We wished for a new car, that's one of the things we wished for. And we wished we could spend a couple of weeks in Canada. But one thing we didn't wish for was kids. The reason we didn't have kids was that we didn't want kids. Maybe sometime, we said to each other. But right then, we were waiting. We thought we might keep on waiting. Some nights we went to a movie. Other nights we just stayed in and watched TV. Sometimes Fran baked things for me and we'd eat what­ ever it was all in a sitting. "Maybe they don't drink wine," I said. "Take some wine anyway," Fran said. "If they don't drink it, we'll drink it." "White or red?" I said.