The Lives of Edie Pritchard

by Larry Watson

  Mrs. Linderman points to the room’s window, where a box fan sits on the ledge of the frame. “Your dad,” she says, “put that there. Should keep the room cool at night.”

  Mr. Linderman says, “Not that we’ll have that many more warm nights.”

  “Well, just in case,” she says.

  Not a picture, not a sampler, not a mirror, not a crucifix hangs anywhere in the room, yet the three Lindermans look from one wall to another, and while they do a dog wriggles out from under the bed.

  “Hey, Rusty,” says Roy.

  The dog, a beagle-Lab mix not much bigger than a coyote, slinks tentatively toward Roy and begins to sniff his cast. Roy removes the crutches below his armpits, balances on one leg, and reaches down to scratch the dog’s head. Rusty flinches away from his touch.

  “Don’t tell me,” Roy says, “you’ve forgotten me?”

  After a moment of cowering, Rusty pushes his graying muzzle into Roy’s open hand.

  “He’s been hiding out in here lately,” says Mr. Linderman.

  “Am I putting you out of your room, Rusty? I don’t mind if you bunk down in here.”

  “Remember that big old tom,” Mrs. Linderman says, “that used to crawl in bed with you and Dean?”

  “With Dean,” says Roy. “He always slept on Dean’s side of the bed we shared for years at the ranch.”

  “Well, that ain’t how I recall it.” Mrs. Linderman reaches down and smooths the bedspread, which doesn’t need smoothing.

  Roy hops over to the bed on one leg and pulls back the spread to expose a pillow that’s almost as flat as a creature run over on the highway. “You got an extra pillow?” he asks his mother. “I like to put my leg up when I can.”

  “I reckon I can scrounge one up,” she says. “You feel like laying down now, or you want to sit up awhile?”

  Roy turns to his father. “You have any cold beer?”

  DEAN LINDERMAN EXITS Cheyenne Sporting Goods by way of the back door, stepping into the alley that runs from Winchester Avenue on the north end to Merchants’ Avenue on the south. And when he steps out of that brick canyon, deep in shadow and barely wide enough for a car to drive through, he runs right into sunlight . . . and his mother.

  “They keep you late?” she asks. “Seems like every other store’s cleared out already.”

  Dean shakes his head. “My turn to help total out the registers.”

  “Can I buy you a piece of pie?” she asks, nodding in the direction of the Mint, the café across the street.

  “No thanks. Too close to supper for me.”

  “Come watch me eat then.”

  Dean looks apprehensively up and down the street.

  “What the hell,” his mother says. “It’s not like Edie’s got supper on the table.”

  At this hour the Mint’s only customers are the men and women who have no one at home to prepare their meals or to prepare meals for. They hunch over the hot roast beef sandwich or the Swiss steak, and they turn the pages of the Gladstone Gazette as they lift forkfuls to their mouths. Two of these solitary diners are present when Dean Linderman and his mother enter. Mrs. Linderman says hello to Doris Carroll, who has finished her day of work at Shaw’s Rexall, and Dean nods at old Earl Dunbar, who no longer sells shoes at Harmon’s Bootery but still walks downtown and takes his meals at the Mint.

  Dean and his mother sit at a booth by the window. “Busy day?” Mrs. Linderman asks.

  “Not particularly,” Dean says. “A few high school boys coming in to get fitted for their football cleats.”

  The waitress, a lean woman with her gray hair caught up in a net, walks over with her pencil and pad poised. “You see the specials?” she asks, pointing toward a small chalkboard leaning against the cash register.

  Mrs. Linderman squints at the handwritten sign. “I couldn’t read that little writing if I had my nose right up against it. What kind of pie you got back there?”

  “Apple, rhubarb, and banana cream.”

  “I’ll have a slice of the apple. With ice cream. And coffee.”

  “How about you?” the waitress asks Dean.

  “A glass of water, please.”

  “Oh come on,” his mother says.

  “A glass of water,” he repeats.

  The waitress walks away, and Mrs. Linderman says, “Well, we got your brother settled in.”

  Dean turns his gaze to something outside on the street, but unless you count the way late afternoon sunlight glints off store windows and windshields, there’s nothing out there to lay particular claim to his attention. “How’s that going?” he asks.

  “He ain’t interested in doing much of anything but drinking beer and watching television.”

  “Not much else he can do, is there?”

  “He could call around. See if he could get something lined up for when he’s back on his feet.”

  Dean shrugs.

  “He’s let his apartment go,” she says. “Did you know that?”

  “Not much sense in paying rent on that place if he’s staying with you. Who moved him out—you and Dad?”

  “Your father mostly,” she says. “We put all his belongings in a few boxes, and now they’re stacked up in that little bedroom.”

  “You should have said something. I’d have done that for you.”

  “Not much to do,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t know how a man accumulates so few goods.”

  “He trades them away, that’s how.”

  “You get any takers on the car?”

  “Lookers but no buyers. One fellow took it for a test-drive. Maybe it’s me. Roy would probably have sealed the deal by now.”

  “I can’t get used to seeing him with them new teeth. They’re just too damn big and bright or something.”

  The waitress brings the apple pie and coffee, and sets them on the table. Mrs. Linderman lifts the plate and touches its bottom. “I thought maybe they might heat the pie.”

  “It’s hot when it comes out of the oven,” the waitress says. “That’s the last time.”

  Mrs. Linderman picks up her fork, and that’s all the answer the waitress needs. She walks back over to her stool by the cash register.

  Neither mother nor son says a word until Mrs. Linderman finishes her pie. “Nobody can make a decent piecrust nowadays,” she says. She pushes her plate aside. “You could come over. Talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “Maybe he could show a little interest in something other than a six-pack of Schlitz and a rerun of Gunsmoke.”

  “Nothing I could say you haven’t said already.”

  “But it’d be coming from his brother.”

  “Roy and I have never been much for telling the other how to live. You never noticed that before?”

  Mrs. Linderman scrapes her fork through the crumbs on her plate. “It’s because no one uses lard anymore. You can’t make a good piecrust without lard.”

  OCTOBER IS A little late in the year for a party down by the river, but a gathering to celebrate Roy coming home from the hospital had to wait until he actually came home. And the party has been a good one. A warm day. Plenty of food and beer, and a great turnout of friends and relatives.

  But it’s winding down now. Most of the older folks have gone home, and a few of them took grandchildren with them. Mrs. Linderman, Mrs. Pritchard, and Mrs. Anderson remain, and they’re cleaning and packing up, rounding up paper plates and cups, empty beer cans and soda bottles, and putting the leftover potato salad, baked beans, chips, and chocolate cake back in the coolers until the picnic area is as tidy as their kitchens.

  The football and the Frisbee both sit on a picnic table. The men who had been out in the parking lot looking under the hood of Butch Field’s new GTO have returned to their wives and girlfriends. The jackets and sweatshirts have come out. A fire has been lit, and the remaining partygoers bring their chairs and blankets close to the flames and the heat. The guest of honor basks in the fire’s glow, his leg in its cast stretched ou
t straight on the webbing of a lawn chair. His crutches lie in the grass next to him. Dean sits at Roy’s right side, Edie on his left. Someone—Jerry Krueger? Big Bill Den Dooven?—has uncapped a bottle of Southern Comfort, and it’s going around the circle.

  “Hey,” Big Bill says, “whose idea was this shindig?”

  “Edie,” says Dean. “This was Edie’s idea. It was all Edie.”

  The gibbous moon hangs in the evening sky like a bent pie tin. The fire’s sparks rise as if they want to take their place among the first stars. And between these flickering luminosities, a flock of ducks flies—no doubt looking for some quiet backwater of the river to settle on for the night. One of the men in the group raises an imaginary shotgun and leads one of the ducks as if he intends to blast it from the sky.

  “How’d you decide who to invite?” Bunny Hildebrand asks Edie.

  “It looks,” says Larry Kraft, “like she just opened the phone book and started dialing.”

  “The hard part,” Edie says, “was making sure everyone understood it was a surprise.”

  “And was it, Roy?” asks Bunny. “Was it a surprise?”

  “Didn’t you see me? I damn near dropped my crutches.”

  Mary Jo Shewmake asks Edie, “Is it true you invited his doctor?”

  “I invited every one of his nurses too!” Edie says, and only now is it plain she’s had too much to drink. “Hell, I damn near called Bentrock and invited the Bauer brothers.”

  “Who? Bauer?” The question comes out of more than one mouth.

  “Oh, those two assholes who ran us out of Bentrock—” Edie says.

  “Hey,” says Roy.

  “Who said Roy cheated them on the truck. But it was fair and square, wasn’t it?” Edie asks.

  “They ran you out of town?” says Big Bill. “The hell.”

  Bunny asks, “Is that how the accident happened?”

  Roy slumps back in his chair.

  The alcohol, the crackle of burning wood, the wind, the noise of too many questions going in too many directions. And then Jerry Krueger’s voice rises above the confusion to make what almost immediately becomes an official announcement: “Those fuckers caused Roy’s accident!”

  And that’s that. Like a fire that jumps its boundaries or a river that breaks its channel, this news will now find its own way: the Bauer brothers ran Roy off the road.

  They think they can get away with that?” says Big Bill. “That’s bullshit.”

  Bunny says, “I can’t believe anybody would actually do something like that. Like in the movies.”

  “We should go up there.” This is a new voice—Roger Reichert, who graduated with Roy and Dean and Edie and Jerry and Bunny and Big Bill. But Roger went straight from Gladstone High to the state prison in Deer Lodge, where he spent three years for breaking into an auto parts store. “Show those sons of bitches,” Roger says, “what’s what.”

  From somewhere in the circle comes the metallic crunch of a beer can being crushed.

  “Put together what’s left of the old football team and drive up there,” Jerry Kreuger suggests.

  It’s a woman’s voice that says, “Oh please.”

  “What’s the name again?” asks Butch Field. “Bauer?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to find them,” Larry Kraft says. “I got cousins up there. Bentrock’s your original one-horse town—”

  “And the horse died!” shouts Jerry.

  Roy and Dean are twins. Of course they are. What other explanation could there be for the identical look they both turn on Edie, a look that flares with shock, anger, disappointment, and perhaps even sadness as both think: Edie, Edie. What have you done?

  “I GET THAT you’re pissed off at me,” Edie says to Dean. “Are you trying to kill us both to make your point?”

  They’re in the Volkswagen, speeding along River Road, away from Frontier Park and the site of Roy’s party.

  “And why the hell are you mad?” Edie asks. “It was Roy who asked me not to say anything about the Bauer brothers. Is this another one of those goddamn twin things that nobody knows anything about it until it’s too late? I swear to God, you two ought to come with an instruction manual or something.”

  The road is unpaved; its rises, dips, and curves are unannounced, and Dean leans out over the steering wheel as if he’s trying to see beyond the reach of the headlights.

  “Just slow down,” Edie says. “Please.”

  Dean ignores his wife’s plea, and when it becomes apparent that he’s not going to slow down, Edie turns her head from the road ahead and stares instead at the darkness of the trees streaming past. “Fine. Kill us both. I don’t give a damn.”

  And then the narrow road widens enough for Dean to pull over without the Volkswagen slipping into the ditch. The car has barely come to a stop when Edie has her door open, and she gets out and starts walking back the way they came.

  “Hey!” Dean calls after her, his shout echoing down the long corridor of towering ash and cottonwood trees. “Hey!”

  Edie doesn’t slow. She’s wearing the same flimsy footwear she was wearing that night she rescued Roy, and the sandals are no better suited for walking the gravel of River Road than for running through the sagebrush.

  For a long time Dean watches his wife’s figure recede. Does she intend to walk all the way back to Gladstone? It’s at least five miles. When she has all but vanished into the night, Dean says, “Oh hell,” and he gets out of the car and starts after her.

  In the years since high school, Dean hasn’t run any farther than across a street, but he still has the miler’s easy distance-eating stride—and it doesn’t take long for him to draw alongside his wife. But Edie doesn’t stop walking. Dean grabs her arm, but she shrugs out of his grip and keeps going.

  “God damn it, Edie. Stop.”

  She obeys, halting abruptly but staring straight ahead.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Really? You didn’t say a goddamn word in the car.”

  A car is approaching, its hum and whine becoming louder. Dean has no choice but to step away from the middle of the road and stand at his wife’s side on the shoulder. Then the car’s headlights blind them, and they turn away as the car speeds past.

  For a moment neither of them speaks, both keeping their mouths closed until the dust cloud settles. “All right,” says Edie. She has pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and her arms are folded against the cold. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Here?”

  “We’re here.”

  “When did you run into those brothers—the Bauers?”

  “We were having supper and they came into the restaurant.”

  “And? Big guys? Tough guys? What?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Yeah, I suppose. One of them anyway. He looked creepy. But I never saw them again after we left the restaurant. So if something happened with them and Roy on the road, I wasn’t around.”

  Dean backs out into the middle of the road again. “And why, Edie—why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

  “Roy asked me not to say anything.”

  For a long moment neither Dean nor Edie Linderman speaks. Is that the sound of another car approaching or simply the wind moving in the tops of the trees?

  “And supper in the restaurant?” Dean finally asks. “Did he ask you not to say anything about that too?”

  “Can we get back in the car? I’m freezing.”

  “Did he tell you not to say anything about the Bauers? Or the restaurant? What?”

  “Please, Dean.”

  “And when he asked you not to say anything, you decided that meant me too? You decided that extended to your fucking husband?”

  The chill has found its way into Edie’s voice. “I’m not sure,” she says, “I can always tell you two apart.”

  In an instant Dean grabs his wife’s narrow shoulders. “Don’t say that.” He shakes her hard. “Don’t ever fucking say that.”

 
She doesn’t resist him in any way, and her passivity must be like a reproach to him. He releases her suddenly.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, backing away from her. “The keys are in the car. I’ll walk back.”

  But he doesn’t walk. He begins to run, and the pace that moments ago carried him to Edie’s side now carries him away.

  THREE DAYS BEFORE Halloween a snowstorm drops half a foot on Gladstone. And trailing right behind the snow is air cold enough to keep that snow on the ground until spring. Up and down the streets there’s a chorus of grumbling: “Winter in Montana—Chee-rist!” And the remembering: “Back in ’47 we got snow in September and it lasted to May, eight goddamn months of winter!”

  Dean has been moving Roy’s Impala around to various locations in the city. High-visibility residential streets. In front of the post office. In parking lots—at the Red Owl, at the Conoco station on Main Street, at the Northern Pacific Depot.

  Today the car’s on a street behind the high school, and Dean no sooner has it swept free of snow than the fellow who has looked at it on two other occasions drives up and, without getting out of his own car, rolls down the window and makes an offer.

  “Mister,” says Dean, “that’s a hundred fifty dollars lower than what we’re asking. And we’re not asking much.”

  Louis Florent is a short, stocky fellow with black hair so oily it looks as though he just stepped out of the shower. “Or best offer,” Florent says. “That’s what your own sign says. Or best offer.”

  “I have to talk to my brother about this,” says Dean.

  “You do that,” Florent says. “You get his permission. Then call me and tell me when I can come pick up my fucking car. I’ll bring a check. And you know what the amount will be.”

  ROY RAPS ON his cast and makes a sound like knocking on a hollow log. “I don’t recommend a broken leg to anyone,” he says, “but it gets a man out of shoveling snow. You want a beer?”

  “Little early in the day for me,” says Dean.

  “Yeah? What’s your start-up hour?”

  “Not before noon.”

  “Well, clocks and calendars don’t mean what they used to for me.”