Justice

by Larry Watson

  And though she had no memory of what frightened her that day, Enid did see things. She could close her eyes at any time, day or night, and within minutes a form or shape would emerge from the darkness. The image never lasted long. She could seldom catch more than a glimpse of it, as if she were looking from the window of a fast-moving train. The import of these visions was even hazier. It was up to her father to interpret exactly what they meant and what actions should be taken on the basis of what Enid saw. In fact, her father played such an important role in this process that by the time Enid was in her early teens she wondered if she ever saw anything on her own or if she merely reproduced what her father implanted.

  Perhaps the gift was not hers but her father’s—he could make people see something that wasn’t there. Nevertheless, every plan he undertook, every move the family made—to Minnesota to try wheat farming, to South Dakota to try gold mining, to Wyoming to try marketing a friend’s newly invented windmill pump, or to North Dakota to try capturing and selling wild horses—came only after Enid had a vision—of a patch of green grass, of water running down a rocky slope, of a man and woman standing in the shadow of a stone tower. Enid was secretly pleased whenever her father had a plan that required him to leave his family for any length of time, because it meant that the swarm of whirling images in her brain would temporarily subside.

  Enid’s mother tried to find ways to free Enid from her father’s domination and to allow her the life that other girls had. Mrs. Garling made certain that her daughter was always enrolled in school, even though Enid was so shy that any occasion requiring her to leave the house caused her so much distress she became physically ill. Mrs. Garling was not deterred; if she had to walk her weeping daughter to the schoolhouse, then so be it. Since Enid had difficulty making friends, her mother signed her up for membership in clubs and organizations. Mrs. Garling made it a point to befriend women who had daughters near Enid’s age. Yet her efforts did little to transform Enid from the strange, fearful, reclusive child she had been since infancy. As part of her efforts on Enid’s behalf, Mrs. Garling signed Enid up for piano and singing lessons, and it became apparent that Enid had gifts of a more conventional nature than vague visions of the future.

  She took to the piano instantly, and could play almost any tune by ear. She had as well a lovely, delicate soprano voice, as pure and effortless as rushing water. Whenever they moved into a new community, Mrs. Garling advertised her daughter’s talents, and Enid was often asked to perform at civic, school, and church functions.

  It was at one of those affairs, the weekly Friday night Wild Rose Dance Club meeting, that Julian Hayden first saw Enid Garling and heard her sing. This was August 1905 and Julian and Len McAuley had come from Montana to buy cattle from a North Dakota rancher.

  The night was hot and damp, and the dance club was meeting, as it did throughout the summer, under a large canvas tent staked out in the school yard. A platform of planks was laid for dancing, and benches were set up in the tent and in the yard for rest and refreshment. During the band’s intermission, Enid Garling, accompanying herself on the piano, entertained the crowd. Julian heard her sing “In the Gloaming.”

  Julian Hayden was not the first man to be attracted to Enid Garling. She had pale, luminous skin, large brown eyes, finely sculpted features, and a trim figure. She wore her luxurious dark brown hair swept up into a pompadour held in place with tortoiseshell combs. She accentuated the grace of her long neck with high-collared blouses and high-necked dresses.

  But men drawn to Enid Garling’s beauty always backed away. They saw that agitation shimmered in the very air around her, that she trembled her way through the most ordinary exchange of small talk, that her eyelids fluttered as though she were always on the verge of fainting.

  And here was another suitor. A tall, sunburnt, wide-shouldered cowboy who was probably Enid’s age but who tried to look older by sporting a dark, drooping moustache. He didn’t say a word but leaned on the piano and listened, never taking his eyes from her, never ceasing his smile.

  His presence made it difficult for her to sing. She tried to concentrate on the lyrics but then she worried that he might believe she was singing those words especially for him. She stopped singing altogether and simply played the piano, but he stayed where he was. When the song was finished, he applauded her so loudly that his hands clapping together sounded like gunshots. She wanted to cover her ears but instead merely bowed her head. Then he said something she had never heard said about her singing or playing: “Civilizing. Very civilizing.” And he walked away.

  In the next few months Enid came to understand what Julian Hayden meant by his remark. He came to Wild Rose at every opportunity, sometimes arriving in the middle of the night and sleeping in his wagon in their yard. Enid wondered whether she finally weakened in her resistance to his affection because he so often simply appeared—there, under the willow tree when she looked out her bedroom window; there, in front of the mercantile when she exited the store; there, alongside the railroad tracks where Enid walked on her way to the post office or butcher shop—like a figure in one of her visions. From the very first time he came to call, Julian Hayden made his intentions clear: he wanted Enid to marry him, to marry him and return with him to his home near Bentrock, Montana. There, her delicacy, her fine manners, her music would help to soften and civilize that rough, wild region. She would give it beauty. He repeated this argument so often that she began to wonder if he wanted her for his state’s sake or his own.

  She learned that he was indeed very close to her age—twenty-four. In fact, he was seven months younger than she. He owned a small ranch that he was working hard to enlarge. His father was no longer alive, but he supported his mother, who lived in a rented room in Bentrock; life on the ranch was too hard for her. He was determined, ambitious, confident—so many things she was not. And he was persistent.

  He loved to talk about horses and his skill in breaking them. From a boy new to Montana who couldn’t even sit on a horse correctly he had become, in his opinion, the best bronco buster in his part of the state. Life had no satisfaction, he said, like getting a horse to walk how and when you wanted him to walk. His secret, as he told Enid many times, was discovering how a horse thinks. “Now a horse, he’s got no sense of time,” Julian would say. “It doesn’t mean anything to him that you’ve been climbing up on him for four or five hours. He doesn’t know that by now he’s supposed to be getting the idea that you’re in charge. He doesn’t care if it’s ten o‘clock or two o’clock. All he knows is one thing: he’s either got the energy to rear up and throw you off or he doesn’t. Time makes people give up. They say, ‘I guess I won’t be riding that horse. I’ve been at it for hours and he still hasn’t settled down.’ But there’s only one thing to do. Get back on. And keep getting back on. Plenty of fellows can stay in the saddle longer than I can, but nobody’s better at dusting himself off and getting back on. Nobody. Like that horse, I just forget about what time it is, and I keep at him. And I haven’t come across a horse yet that won’t give up before I do.” He would talk about saddles and one-ear bridles and Spanish bits, about how to keep a horse from fighting the reins all day, how to cinch him so he’ll carry you fifty miles if need be, how to make sure you train a cow horse to be ground tied.

  But Enid couldn’t keep from her mind what he said about breaking horses. She had the uneasy feeling that he was practicing the same technique on her, that she could put him off for any number of days, weeks, months, years, and Julian Hayden would keep coming back.

  He had her mother’s help. As if she had her own visions of the future, Mrs. Garling told her daughter over and over what her life would be like if she rejected this young man’s suit. Soon her father would return, but then he would be off again—up to Saskatchewan to work in an oil field, or down to Medora to be a partner in a slaughterhouse, or out to the Judith Mountains to raise sheep, or back to Wisconsin to run freight on the river. He’d always have another scheme, and he’d ba
dger Enid until she told him what he wanted to hear—that this time he couldn’t miss; this time he’d become a success. If Enid didn’t take this opportunity to get out, she’d end up traipsing around the country with her momma and daddy forever, and the closest she would come to pleasure in this life would be singing and playing the piano at other women’s weddings. Give yourself a chance, Mrs. Garling said to her daughter; give yourself a chance to know and love a man, to settle down and to know and love a place.

  When Enid Garling told Julian Hayden she would marry him, he gave no sign of rejoicing. He didn’t laugh or weep with happiness. He didn’t throw his hat in the air or sweep Enid into his arms as she hoped he might. He said simply and solemnly, “This is right.”

  Enid did not reveal to Julian that her father believed she was capable of prophetic visions, but she did tell him that her father was certain to oppose the marriage. Her father had pampered her, she said, and he would not want her living on a ranch in Montana. He had always tried to protect his daughter, and he would not want her living in a region that he thought rough, crude, and untamed.

  She hoped that when she told Julian about her father, Julian would say, “Well, from now on I’ll be the one protecting you.”

  He did not. He threw his head back and laughed. Then he said, “Your father’s a smart man. He’s absolutely right. It’s the Wild West!” Then he looked at her with an expression she hadn’t seen before. He squinted his eyes as though he were trying to make out her features in a darkened room. “He’ll play hell trying to take you away from me.”

  He was so sure of himself that she searched for something to say that would take him down a notch. “Don’t underestimate Papa. Ask my mother. She’ll tell you.”

  He only laughed again.

  Julian Hayden brought Enid to Montana two days before the wedding. He wanted to show her his ranch and the town of Bentrock, and he wanted her to meet his mother.

  He had never represented his ranch to her as anything but a hardscrabble spread, so Enid was not shocked or disappointed to see it. The ranch lay in a little valley—hardly a valley at all—a wrinkle, a fold in the earth, marked white by an alkali bed. Running through the valley was a stream whose span Enid could step across and whose flow she could outcrawl. There was a horse barn and corral, and an open cattle shed. There was a shack that had been the original building on the homestead, and growing out from that tiny shack was the beginning of a new two-story house. The house was framed up, and the first floor was finished, but the second floor was nothing but studs and rafters. A ranch wagon and two buggies cluttered the yard, and harness and tack hung from the barn wall and corral posts. The outhouse stood on a small rise about sixty feet from the house’s back door. Julian said that since a blizzard two winters ago he kept a rope strung between the house and the privy, so you could be sure of finding your way out and back again. None of the buildings was painted, and their wood had weathered to a windburned gray. Vegetation consisted of a few patches of coarse grass in front of the house, and a stand of five or six spindly cottonwoods growing along the banks of the tiny creek. Otherwise there was nothing but rocks, sandy soil, and sagebrush. Yet Julian pointed to every broken wagon wheel and rusting barrel ring with such pride that Enid felt she must try hard to match his enthusiasm for what would be her new home. Before they left for Bentrock he waved his hand around the ranch and said, “And if you give me enough sons, we can make this place into something that will have them all whistling with envy.”

  Enough sons, Enid wondered. How many sons would be enough?

  Julian’s mother lived in a cramped apartment above a bakery in Bentrock. The aroma of baking bread rose from the ovens below and filled the three tiny rooms day and night with a heavy, warm, yeasty smell that settled on your tongue as well as in your nostrils. Enid would stay there with Mrs. Hayden until the wedding, an arrangement that Enid thought would give her an opportunity to find out more about her husband-to-be. Who would know him better than his mother? But Mrs. Hayden was not at all what Enid had expected.

  She was a remote, somber woman who had none of her son’s vitality or good humor. She dressed in black and Enid’s first impression was of a woman in mourning. She spent most of her time sitting in a rocking chair staring down at the street below. To virtually every question Enid put to her, whether about Julian or the community or herself, Mrs. Hayden simply turned a squinted eye in Enid’s direction and offered a brief, cryptic answer. Enid asked her if she liked Montana, and Mrs. Hayden said, “This is my home.” Enid suggested that their first days on the homestead must have been very difficult, and Mrs. Hayden said, “Harder than some. Not all.” Enid tried to find out what the people of Bentrock were like, and Mrs. Hayden pointed out the window and said, “They’re out there. Not much point in me telling you.” And when Enid said that Julian seemed an ambitious man who was certain to go far, Mrs. Hayden clacked her teeth a few times before replying, “Not far from his mother, that’s sure.”

  Enid had hoped to tell Mrs. Hayden something of her own life, of the many places she had lived, of the occupations her father had tried, of her concerns about living a settled life, but since Julian’s mother asked her no questions, Enid felt uncomfortable volunteering information. Instead Enid thought she might win Mrs. Hayden’s favor by working around the apartment, by dusting the furniture, sweeping the carpet, and by scouring the kitchen and bathroom fixtures. Mrs. Hayden didn’t acknowledge Enid’s efforts but continued rocking in her chair while Enid worked.

  Strangest of all were the meals Julian’s mother prepared for Enid and herself. Mrs. Hayden served oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but supplemented the mush at noon with sliced stale bread (no butter or jam to moisten it), and at the evening meal she fried a few slices of side pork. Buttermilk was the drink at every meal. Obviously Mrs. Hayden saw nothing unusual about this fare, for she did not apologize nor comment on it. She set the portions before Enid and took the dishes away when they were empty.

  Mrs. Hayden retired early and for that Enid was grateful. As soon as she heard her snores, Enid rose from her own bed—she was to sleep on the hard horsehair couch—and took up Mrs. Hayden’s post by the window. What did she find to look at all day? What would the night disclose?

  Enid directed her gaze first in one direction and then the other. A U.S. Land Office. The Merland Brothers General Store—Dry Goods and Groceries. The Stockman’s Bank of Montana with its stone eagle above the double doors and in its upper windows a sign advertising Rasmussen and Son, Attorneys at Law and Notary Public. Whirtle’s Confectionary. The Austin House Hotel. The Royal Theater. The Silver Dollar Bar and Billiards. If she leaned out the window she might be able to see the cupola of the courthouse where she and Julian were issued their marriage license, and beyond the courthouse’s dome the spire of the church where she would be married.

  Bentrock resembled other towns she had lived in or near all her life. The wooden walkways. The dusty streets. The gaslights. The dogs barking back and forth in the distance. She was certain that after only a few moments at the window she could close her eyes and in her mind reproduce every business, every store, every gilt-painted sign in every darkened window.

  When she heard footsteps, she opened her eyes. A man was leaving the bar and his boots beat a slow rhythm on the sidewalk’s planks. The night was so still Enid could close her eyes again and plot his progress by ear. She tapped her finger on the windowsill in time with his steps. The rhythm reminded her of a song, and she softly hummed its melody.

  She became suddenly self-conscious, and this time when she opened her eyes she saw someone she was certain hadn’t been there before.

  Directly across from her, sitting on a barrel in front of Merland Brothers, was an Indian. The evening was cool, and he was wrapped in a blanket so mottled it could have been a dirty, moth-eaten patchwork of fabric or fur. He was hatless and his long hair hung in lanky strands, partially covering his face. Nevertheless, Enid could see that he was old, and by the w
ay he wavered back and forth on the barrel she concluded that he was either drunk or fighting to stay awake. While she watched him, his face turned upward and he seemed to be staring at her. His gaze was so blank she wondered if he saw her. Was he in a trance? Was he looking past her, at something in the night sky that commanded his attention?

  Enid slipped from the window and back to her bed on the couch. She lay awake for a long time, fighting the impulse to go to the window again to see if the Indian was still out there. At some point she thought she could feel that he was no longer there, and she soon fell asleep.

  In one of her dreams she was at the window again, but she did not look out on a street deserted and dark but lit by high noon’s sunlight. And she was not looking for an old Indian sitting on a barrel but for her father, who was, she was certain, about to appear on Bentrock’s Main Street.

  While she watched he actually appeared, charging down from the east in a whirlwind of dust. He drove up and down the street in a rickety buckboard pulled by an entire herd of animals—cows, horses, sheep, deer, antelope. Even in the dream she thought she would have to ask her father how he managed to hitch so many animals of so many kinds to a wagon. Julian would want to know, she thought; this information would be useful for her husband to have for his ranch. Then she realized that the wagon and team were her father’s latest scheme: he had invented a way to make these animals work together and pull a wagon. At last, she thought, he had hit upon something that might make him rich.

  She was sure that her father had come for her, yet he showed no sign that he was looking for her or even that he knew she was in town. He didn’t stop in front of the bakery and climb the narrow stairs to the apartment. He didn’t stand on the seat of his buckboard and bellow her name until she answered. He didn’t stop anyone on the street and demand his daughter’s whereabouts or ask where he could find the man who was going to marry her. Soon Enid realized that he wasn’t there for her at all; he was simply advertising his new invention—this team of animals and the elaborate system of ropes, harnesses, webs, and pulleys by which he kept them all together. Then this dream flowed into the next. A driverless motorcar drove down Main Street, and her father and his team weren’t there at all. There was only the motorcar, spinning in a tight circle as if it were a horse tethered to a snubbing post, and while it churned up a cloud of choking dust, Enid forgot about her father and wondered—could a motorcar actually do that?