‘I’ll bet that old snake was sure sleeping there,’ a man said, giggling a little. ‘But it’d sure take a snake to do it. I sure wouldn’t want to be the one sleeping with you.’
‘Who the hell ever asked you to,’ the man growled.
George walked in and said good morning.
Peter came in silently, and sat. He took a pancake. The fast eater at the table had now already finished, and had pushed back his chair and was commencing to pick his teeth.
The tooth-picker, perhaps a little proud that he had again finished first, was tempted to josh Phil at being late, and opened his mouth to speak, but closed it at once at what he saw in Phil’s face. Phil had apparently not dried his face well on the roller towel in the back lavatory — or was it sweat? — and he had only inexpertly raked his fingers through his hair. He pulled out his chair and sat.
And simply sat. Mrs Lewis lumbered in with a steaming cup of coffee and set it before him. He reached out a hand, picked up the cup, and put it down again, and continued to look at his hand. He looked around the table with a curious, mild expression, pushed back his chair, rose, and left the room. He was not seen again until half an hour later when he sat in the doorway of the blacksmith shop. The sun, just risen above the sagebrush hill, was full in his face. The new frost on the ground began its retreat.
Next, Phil was seen walking with the slow, paced dignity of an old man back to the house. He went into his bedroom and closed the door. He made no sounds in there, nor did he answer when George knocked. George took a breath and did the unheard-of thing — he opened his brother’s door without an invitation. ‘I’ll run you into Herndon,’ George said.
‘All right,’ said Phil.
He had got himself arranged into his ill-fitting town suit; he had got into his shoes from the Army & Navy store. It had been long since he had sat in Whitey Potter’s chair, and his thick hair had so increased that his hat sat high and comical, like a clown’s. He seemed all angles as he walked through the living room and out the front door. Rose, at his approach, left the living room for the kitchen where she poured herself a cup of coffee with a shaking hand to give herself a more reasonable reason for having fled the room. She could not understand the yawning silence in the house, nor what was going on in it. The last she saw of Phil, he was walking across to the garage where the old Reo shot rings of exhaust smoke into the cold morning; Phil stood aside while George backed out the car. Over against the hill, all was shadow. She sipped her coffee; she had so frightened herself two days before in collapsing drunk on the bed that she had drunk nothing since, determined to be sober when George spoke to her, as he surely would. Why hadn’t he spoken yet? Why? She was crushed by the irrational notion that whatever was going on that morning was her fault. Thus does guilt smother and sicken.
The Old Lady and the Old Gent both agreed there was nothing for it but to take the next train to Herndon where George had telegraphed he would meet them.
‘No, she’s good about it,’ the Old Lady said. ‘If the tip is big enough, they’re good about it.’ She spoke of the chambermaid who was good about coming in to water the geraniums that made their hotel rooms homelike. ‘What time is it?’
The Old Gent in his vaguely Prince Albert topcoat reached into his vest pocket for his watch. ‘Exactly five thirty-seven,’ he said.
‘I hate these tiny watches,’ she said, frowning at the wee face of the jeweled one on her wrist. ‘I always have. You can’t see them and they don’t keep time. We can get something to eat on the train.’ Suddenly the Old Lady covered her face with her hands, and the Old Gent walked at once to her as if he had expected the gesture.
‘Now-now,’ he whispered.
‘I’m sorry, I’m all right now,’ she insisted. In a few minutes they left the room, closed the door behind them, and the Old Gent tried it once. They had already sent their bags down ahead into the lobby where, beyond in the dining room, a few transients, unacquainted with the rhythm of the great hotel, ate early dinners under the chandeliers.
‘No, I’m perfectly all right,’ she told the Old Gent as they followed the driver to the revolving door. ‘I’ve been braced for some such thing.’
Phil was fortunate to have his town suit with him, for it was on a Sunday night he needed his suit, although of course Mr Green of Greens would gladly have opened up, under the circumstances. The weather was fine, Indian summer, really — lazy. And lazy out in the country, the air languid and perfumed by the incense of distant forest fires. The winter chore of feeding cattle had not yet begun so people were free that Monday. There was a representative from every store where the Burbanks traded, and even from the stores where the Burbanks did not trade — they having an eye to the future. There was a group from the bank, of course. The ranchers themselves came with their wives and children, the wives — some of them — in the furs of animals their husbands had trapped and had made up as Christmas surprises at a furrier’s in the capital city — local animals, beaver, stone marten, red fox and so forth. Because the funeral was at two (the usual time in that country) they planned so they could have a nice lunch either at the Sugar Bowl or in the hotel and a nice little visit afterwards, for many never saw each other except on such pointed occasions.
To George, of course, had fallen the dismal task of choosing a coffin from among those out back in the Baker Funeral Home. But little light fell through the windows that faced the back alley; they had been purposely left dirty that loiterers might not easily look in upon the accouterments of the dead, the boxes of indifferent wood enhanced with fake silver. Here, too, was an expensive coffin of mahogany, bought perhaps with the Burbanks and two or three other such families in mind. ‘No, don’t turn on the light,’ George murmured. ‘I can see well enough.’
‘Buck up, George,’ Baker said.
‘It’s all right,’ George said. ‘I’ll take the one here.’
‘A fine piece of merchandise, George,’ Baker said. ‘Fit tribute to a fine man. I knew you’d want to do the right thing.’
The church smelled of coal smoke and old brown wood. Those who were not Episcopalians — Episcopalopians, as Phil used to call them — whispered that it was a shame that there was no eulogy. There was so much, they said, to say about Phil — so much about his intelligence, his friendliness, how common he was as an old shoe, his lack of side; and my, they did remember his banjo playing, his bright whistle, his boyishness, the works of his strong, scarred, chapped hands — the little carved chairs, the wrought iron pieces. Mrs Lewis, back at the ranch, shed a tear over a darning ball Phil had once surprised her with.
The Old Folks went directly from the grave to the railroad depot; otherwise they would have had to spend the night in Herndon. There was nothing to say to anybody, and they knew it.
‘Don’t look like that,’ the Old Lady commanded the Old Gent. ‘You had nothing, precisely nothing, to do with it. One is what one is, does what one must do, and ends as fate requires.’
‘May I remind you of the same?’ the Old Gent said softly.
‘Oh, so many flowers,’ the Old Lady remarked. Sufficient flowers to later perk up each room in the Herndon Hospital, even blooms for the charity wards.
‘I was watching,’ the Old Gent said, ‘when you kissed Rose.’
‘So now we call her Rose. You were watching? Well, of course. I hope for so much.’
‘You can, of course. That’s when I noticed you didn’t have your rings.’
‘My rings? Oh, yes.’
‘I’ve always liked your hands. You know, you never needed rings.’
‘And she least of all, I think. But sometimes they please. A symbol? But thank you, thank you kindly. I was watching how she got down from the machine, how she gave her hand to George, and suddenly looked at him. So good, both of them. So then I went to her, and I said, “Here …”’
As their accommodation was the single large drawing room on the fast olive-green train back to Salt Lake City, the Old Lady could weep a bit in private. Wh
en at last she stopped, the Old Gent rose, steadied himself as the train leaned into a swooping curve, and went and opened one of the bags and got out two monogrammed decks of playing cards and pushed the button for the porter who came and smiled and brought a table and set it up. There beside the window the Burbanks sat and played Russian Bank, and no matter how fast the car sped, the full moon floated easily beside them, a yellow balloon on a string.
‘I suppose,’ the Old Lady said, ‘that I always knew something strange would happen.’
‘… mystified. But you said you were braced. And remember you were always patient, you were always kind.’
She leaned suddenly forward in the seat, and began kneading her bare hands to stop their trembling. ‘Kindness!’ Her voice broke. ‘What else in God’s name is there?’
‘Nothing, really.’
She smiled a little, and spoke softly. ‘Do you know? We’re to spend Christmas with them. At her specific request. I used to feel so old.’
‘I swear you never looked it.’
‘Indeed? But then, I always had you. Always had you, just as she has him. She’s only thirty-seven.’
‘Sometimes you’re hard to follow.’
‘Am I — really?’ She lifted her chin and looked straight into his eyes.
Phil’s doctor, too, was mystified. On Phil’s admission to the hospital, he had taken blood samples and cultured them. The culture the samples produced — a little pale jelly in a test tube — he had already sent off to the State Hospital where they knew about such things. Phil’s final convulsion, although mercifully brief, had been truly frightful. Well, he’d know in a day or two what had gone wrong. He thought the whole business, as he remarked to a nurse, the whole business of sending the culture off was rather like locking the barn door after the horse was stolen.
The culture in the test tube would tell him what one person already knew.
Peter, waiting patiently at the ranch during the funeral, had an interesting day. One of the dogs, a half-breed collie, followed him around from the barn and played a game with itself, snapping at its reflection in one of the basement windows there at ground level. It was the first of the dogs to adore him. His first friend. When he went inside, it whined for him beyond the front door. Then he spent some time soberly thumbing through George’s pile of Saturday Evening Posts. Among them he found evidence of one of George’s little dreams, a somewhat ragged brochure for Pierce-Arrow motorcars. His face came very close to a grin for he felt a sudden warm kinship with George. Who could help but admire those magnificent machines, the insolent sweep of the fenders and the headlights set into them? Those were the vehicles of the high and mighty, and he knew that only the Locomobile (fancied by old General Pershing, among others) rivaled the Pierce.
The sun had slipped around behind, and the shadow of the house lay black across the road and crept up the face of the hill. Peter browsed among the books in the case in the living room, looking close (for the light was failing), noting the range of their contents. Here the Memoirs of the Russian Court composed by a Grand Duchess, was smack against a copy of Grasses of the Western United States, and then a modern edition of Hoyle’s Card Games, books for dreams, books for facts. And here was the Book of Common Prayer. He supposed it would be used that day in Herndon, and drew it out; it fell open to Psalms, Day 6. But this was the fourth of September, and he turned back, and since the shadow was already creeping up the face of the hill out front, he read the Psalms of Evening Prayer. The twentieth verse was weirdly appropriate, and moved him to turn to and read through The Order for the Burial of the Dead, equally appropriate, and a much shorter service than he’d imagined, hardly longer than the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony he had first read not nine months before. Not many words, he thought, to celebrate oblivion. Reading it slowly as the pale priest might, he found it took but fifteen minutes by the big clock to finish — counting appropriate pauses at the commas and periods; however, the coffin would have to be carried in and carried out, and it would be bulky. Thus, the entire service might take a good half hour.
From the windows of the neat, quiet room where he lived in Herndon he had watched a half dozen processions to the cemetery on the hill a mile away, had seen the sun fix and flash on bottles and mason jars that held the rotting stems of flowers; the hearse moved so slowly that it always took a good half hour, but in the wintertime they hurried it up a little. But this day was warm. Then there were the words ‘appointed to be read at the grave’ — about fifteen minutes’ worth (reading as the old priest might) and then the trip back with the empty hearse, a blue Buick hearse, new that year. He’d read about it in the Herndon Recorder. Baker, the undertaker, and his family had driven the old hearse out to Chicago and taken delivery of the new one and had driven it back, picnicking along the way with many little adventures that the editor wrote up with a gentle humor.
Then there would be coffee and sandwiches somewhere, and greetings and good-byes, so it would be past five before the whole thing was over, and dark.
But what enchanting words those were in the Prayer Book, what majesty, what a roll they had. How his father would have loved them, had they been said over him, but they had not been, because his father had played God and removed himself. But oh, what words they would have been to read — to sing over his father!
It was long past suppertime when his mother and George got back. The girl came in from the kitchen and had spoken to Peter with respect. ‘Do you want me to leave their places on?’
‘Please,’ he said. Then he went upstairs and washed his hands carefully, and wetted and combed his hair. Before long the dogs began their predicted barking and he combed his hair carefully and got up and opened the window and looked out. At first they were hidden in the shadow of the hill; he heard his mother’s soft voice. Then they moved slowly out into the moonlight. How lovely she looked in the moonlight, how fine that George stood still, took her, kissed her! What but for this, this playing of a scene in the moonlight that marked the true beginning of his mother’s life, what but for this had his father removed himself — sacrificed himself to lie under that other hill, in Beech, under a handful of paper flowers, faithful to his own book of dreams?
The dogs kept to the shadows, whimpered softly, then were strangely still. Peter was moved to whisper the line from Psalms that had so moved him, hours before.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My darling from the power of the dog.
He wondered if that Prayer Book were often used, if he might not snip out that bit and paste it into place in the scrapbook, a far better final entry than the rose leaves that, still red, had lost their odor. For she was delivered now — thanks to his father’s sacrifice, and to the sacrifice he himself had found it possible to make from a knowledge got from his father’s big black books. The dog was dead.
In those black books, one August afternoon, he had found that anthrax — blackleg they called it out there — was a disease of animals communicable to man, and that it finds its sure way into the human bloodstream through cuts or breaks in the skin from a man’s handling the hide of a diseased animal — as when perhaps a man with damaged hands will use a diseased hide in braiding a rope.
Afterword
by Annie Proulx
The Power of the Dog was published in 1967 by Little, Brown in Boston after Thomas Savage’s editor at Random House asked for changes that the writer refused to make. It earned extremely good reviews, stayed on the New York Times ‘New and Recommended’ list for nearly two months, was five times optioned for a film (which was never made). It is the fifth and, for some readers, including this one, the best of Savage’s thirteen novels, a psychological study freighted with drama and tension, unusual in dealing with a topic rarely discussed in that period — repressed homosexuality displayed as homophobia in the masculine ranch world. It is a brilliant and tough book and belongs on the shelf of hard-eyed western fiction along with Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s Track of the Cat, Wallace Stegner’s
The Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Katherine Anne Porter’s Noon Wine. Although Savage wrote strong and intelligent novels, some set in the east, some in the west, it is his Montana-Idaho-Utah books that ring truest and stick permanently in the mind. Something aching and lonely and terrible of the west is caught forever on his pages, and the most compelling and painful of these books is The Power of the Dog, a work of literary art.
Savage, though rarely included in the western literary lists, was one of the first of the Montana writers, an informal but famous regional concentration of writers. His novels are rich in character development, written in clear and well-balanced sentences with striking and important landscape description, imbued with a natural sense of drama and literary tension. As his writing matured it became clear he was a powerful observer of the human condition. Book critic Jonathan Yardley commented in his review of For Mary, With Love that ‘over his long and notably productive career [Savage] has shown himself to be a writer of real consequence; it is a shame, bordering on an outrage, that so few readers have discovered him.’
Most of the reviewers in the late 1960s, even if they recognized the interior tragedy of The Power of the Dog, dodged the homosexuality issue by reporting a simplistic contest of good versus evil, cruelty versus decent kindness, or ‘the wary war between compulsion and intelligence,’ whatever that means.fn1 Only one, an anonymous reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly, though squeamish about a calf castration scene on the first page, understood what The Power of the Dog was about and said so clearly:
The Power of the Dog Page 24