by Larry Watson
Len returned home just before dawn. He was not so drunk that he couldn’t pause for a moment outside his back door and listen to his favorite birds. Somewhere up there in the branches crowding the eaves, mourning doves were cooing their questions at the lightening sky. He couldn’t see them, but their call always seemed to come from another place, echoes without a source.
Daisy had baked a pie, and it sat in the center of the kitchen table. Her note said, “Made your favorite,” which meant the pie was rhubarb. He cut a generous slice and lifted it carefully to the plate, performing the motion in the slow and deliberate way that he habitually used so his hands would not give away his condition.
Before he ate, Len went to the sink to wash his hands one more time. When he spilled Bennett’s hair tonic he got some of the oil on his hands, and he could not get rid of the heavy, sweet smell. Over at the jail he had scoured his hands with the lye soap they used for disinfecting certain prisoners. His hands were red from scrubbing, yet the odor remained. He did not want to lift a forkful of Daisy’s pie to his mouth and smell Bennett’s hair.
In a small dish beside the kitchen sink Daisy kept the chips and slivers of bar soap that were too small to be of use in the bath but which she could not bring herself to throw away. Len kept picking up piece after piece of soap, scrubbing frantically until the fragments melted or slipped away in his furious lathering. Neither could he wash away this drunken thought: what if someone smelled Bennett’s scent on Len’s hand—they might think he had his hand on the southerner’s head.
When Gail Hayden crossed the street from her house to her office in the Mercer County Courthouse, Len McAuley was not at his window watching her. He was passed out at the kitchen table, his cheek pressed against the oilcloth. His hand rested between the upper and lower crusts of a wedge of pie, exactly where he had thrust it in the hope that the odor of sweetened, spiced, baked rhubarb would replace the smell of Pinaud’s Hair Tonic.
The Sheriff’s Wife
(1937)
GAIL Hayden finally allowed the thought that she had pushed away for months to take hold: perhaps she had made a mistake in marrying this man.
She was sitting in a car parked along U.S. Highway Three ten miles outside Bentrock, Montana. It was January 1937, and in the past two days fifteen inches of snow had fallen in their part of the state. After the snow had stopped, she had ridden with her husband, the sheriff of Mercer County, out here to investigate a report of motorists stranded on the highway. They had followed behind the snowplow as it scraped away a single lane of traffic. The snow on either side of the highway was piled so high it felt as if they were driving through a tunnel of white walls. Then the road would take a turn, the wind couldn’t find a place to stack the snow, and they would be out in the open, the highway so bare it looked as if it had been scoured clean.
She watched her husband walk toward the car in the ditch. He was wearing the huge buffalo coat that his father had given him. God, how she hated that coat! It stank so bad she made him hang it in the garage, and every time she went out there, it startled her, hanging on the wall like a great beast poised to leap at her.
He had insisted that she remain behind, not knowing what he might find in the car in the ditch. It could be a family, every one of them frozen to death. Or perhaps it was only the driver, a salesman who was caught in the storm and ran the heater as long as he could to keep warm while the snow drifted higher and higher, covering the car’s tailpipe until carbon monoxide backed up into the car.
But if she was supposed to wait in the car, why had he asked her to come with him? It wasn’t what she expected of him. He only asked her to accompany him on official duties when he was chaperoning dances out in the country—occasions that were more fun than work. Otherwise he kept the details of his work from her, even when she wished he’d share them with her.
Last summer, for example, when everyone in town was buzzing about the double murder out at the Gardner farm—Mr. and Mrs. Gardner killed in their bed by someone with an axe—he had known all along that it was Bobby Gardner, that pathetic fat boy who had been hearing voices, the voices, he said, of gangsters in Chicago, telling him to kill his parents. Bobby was arrested, tried, and hustled off to the state mental hospital before anyone in town had time to stir up any outrage that he was not put to death or imprisoned for life.
Or last fall when someone was killed out on the Soo Line tracks, and the newspaper said the body couldn’t be identified. “Who do you suppose it could be?” she asked a few days after the accident. “It was Randall Loves Bear,” he said quietly. Alongside the tracks he had found the burlap sack that Randall always carried, filled with scraps of food, old magazines and newspapers, and empty whiskey bottles. Her husband wouldn’t release the information until Randall’s family was notified.
And when he took that length of iron pipe from the basement he let her believe that he was going to help someone with their plumbing, but in fact he was going out to the Bliss farm to arrest Clarence Bliss for stealing feed from his neighbors. Clarence was a big man, known for his quick temper, and he had been arrested on two other occasions for brawling. Wesley brought the pipe for protection.
Perhaps he needed her now to help carry someone from the car, someone frozen too stiff—dead or alive—for one person to manage. But why her? Why hadn’t he brought Len McAuley, his deputy, or one of those men who was always hanging around the jail or the courthouse?
Was there something he wanted her to see? To know? Was there something about him that she couldn’t understand until she saw him immediately after he had looked at a dead body? Did he want her to see one too—was that the only way they could finally be one, as a husband and wife were supposed to be?
If that was true, she wasn’t sure, she just wasn’t sure....
He had not been a sheriff when they met. Then he had been Wesley Hayden, student of law at the University of North Dakota, and she had been the secretary at Kramer’s Chiropractic Clinic, where he came for treatment for his bad back. The way he limped when he walked in, even she knew his problem wasn’t his back; it was his bad leg. After he had come in a few times, she finally asked what had happened to his leg.
“A horse kicked me,” he answered. “Broke my knee like it was a dish plate.”
“I bet that’s your problem,” she said. “Not your back. The way you walk twists your spine.”
He smiled for the first time in all his visits. “I thought you were the secretary.”
“It’s just common sense,” she said.
“Maybe if I had talked to you earlier I could have saved myself some money.”
She shrugged modestly, but that was exactly what she had been thinking.
He kept on coming to the clinic, though she wasn’t sure whether he came because Dr. Kramer was actually helping him or to see her. Finally he said he wanted to ask her out on a date but not before she told him about herself. That made her angry—as if he didn’t know her well enough already—but she looked him right in the eye and said she was Gail Berdahl, the only daughter of Carl and Anna Berdahl of Kettleton, North Dakota. Her parents owned a farm in the Red River valley, but she wanted to get away. Not only was she the first member of her family to graduate from high school, but she had gone on to secretarial school as well. She had been working for Dr. Kramer for a year and a half. She attended services every Sunday at Faith Lutheran Church, and taught Sunday School to first-graders. She smoked cigarettes, had nothing against dancing, and even took a drink of whiskey from time to time. And he, she said, reminded her of every university student she had met—so full of himself it was leaking out the top. If he hadn’t blushed, she probably would not have gone out with him. She certainly wouldn’t have fallen in love with him.
They were married as soon as he finished law school, and their plan was to move to his hometown of Bentrock, in northeastern Montana. His father had indicated that he could guide some business his son’s way and help him get his law practice off the ground. That was
all Wesley needed to hear. He decided that it was important to him, after all, to return to the place he came from. Gail simply wanted to see more of the world, even if it was another part of the Great Plains, a small town in Montana.
At first things worked out according to their design. They lived in a small apartment above a bar, and though their place smelled of stale beer and cigar smoke, they suffered through it without complaint because Wesley’s father owned the building, and they were able to live there rent-free. In spite of his father’s promises, Wesley’s practice didn’t earn much money initially—he was as likely to be paid with canned goods, homegrown vegetables, or a newly slaughtered chicken as with money—but Gail said nothing. She knew how important it was for him to acquire clients, whether they could pay or not. And one woman was so grateful for Wesley’s handling of her husband’s estate that she gave them a hand-sewn quilt that kept them warm through their first winter. Besides, Gail had been able to find work as a secretary in the Register of Deeds office. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor either, and they knew their livelihood would improve.
In fact, Gail was surprised to find out how much she loved Montana. Her infatuation began the day of her very first visit when they drove toward Bentrock at the end of the day, just as the sun was setting over the prairie. The colors! Pinks fading into shades of purple, violet, and lavender—all merging into deep blue. She had seen sunsets before. What she had never seen, since she came from a region that was flat as a tabletop, was the way those colors crept out of the hollows of the darkening hills and the hues of the land seemed to match the sky.
She grew to love the hills too, the way some of them were nothing more than a gradual swell of grassland, as if the earth was simply drawing a breath, and then others were sudden eruptions, rocks breaking angrily through the prairie.
Just east of Bentrock was a hill she liked to climb, and from its height she could look down at the town, the straight lines and right angles of telephone wires and streets interrupted by intermittent bursts of trees in leaf. My town, she would say to herself; this is the town where I will make my life.
True, it was not as prosperous as the communities in her native Red River valley, but the people were for the most part like the people she had grown up around, simple, hardworking, quiet, God-fearing—Swedes and Norwegians mostly, just as in her home county, though here there were a few more Germans and Russians. And Indians. Mercer County was next to the Fort Murdoch Reservation, and its residents, Blackfeet mostly as well as a few Cheyenne and Chippewa, often came into Bentrock. Some Bentrock residents, her brother-in-law especially, tried to frighten her with stories about wild drunken Indians, but Gail saw the truth. When they came to town they tried hard not to be noticed. In this way they were no different than those solitary ranchers and sheepherders from the outlying regions who, when they had to come to town, acted as though they were in a foreign country and wanted to get back home as quickly as possible.
Gail also made friends soon after moving to Bentrock. The woman who worked right across the hall from her in the courthouse was only a year older than Gail. This woman—Beverly Hilland—was from Alabama and absolutely confounded by her new state and its residents. As Gail tried to explain the ways of these northern plains people to Beverly, Gail came to feel as though she was something of a native herself.
She also made friends with Daisy McAuley, an older woman who was the deputy sheriff’s wife. Daisy lived right across the street from the jail and the courthouse, and she often came over to have coffee with Gail and Beverly. Daisy always brought something freshly baked—cinnamon rolls or cookies or coffee cake—and with the pastries she also brought whispered tales about whose farm or business was going to be foreclosed upon, who was planning to go to Great Falls to have her gall bladder removed, or who was having trouble controlling his drinking. Between Daisy’s gossip and Wesley’s stories about his clients, Gail soon felt as though she knew as much about Bentrock and its citizens as people who had lived there all their lives.
She had no doubt that she and Wesley would live the rest of their lives in Bentrock, and that fact did not disturb her in the least. She knew who and what she was—a small-town girl with simple tastes and modest ambitions. If she could move into a house large enough to raise a family in, she would be happy.
Then something happened that threatened to change everything.
Julian Hayden, the sheriff and her father-in-law, decided that his son should succeed him in office. Julian’s plan was that Wesley would hold the post for a term, and then Julian or Len McCauley would take over again. There was no question that Wesley would be elected; the Hayden name carried more weight than any other in the county, and the last two times Julian ran for office he didn’t even have an opponent.
And there was no question that Wesley would do what his father asked. Wesley and his brother were not simply polite and obedient where their father was concerned; they were completely submissive, just as their mother was. Enid Hayden was a meek, high-strung woman for whom even normal conversation required great effort. “Enid’s nerves are bad,” people said. Even the simple acts of day-to-day living, such as preparing a meal or going to the store or arranging a visit to the hairdresser, often seemed too much for her. Gail knew Enid was like that at least in part because she was married to Julian Hayden. Julian so completely dominated and browbeat his wife that at the sound of his voice she jumped as if a door had slammed. And when Mrs. Hayden entered a room, Wesley and his brother didn’t even look up; when their father entered they automatically fell silent and often stood. Where Gail was from it was understood that children would behave respectfully toward their parents, but this went beyond anything she had seen. The way the boys behaved around their father reminded her of the way some Catholics in her hometown acted toward the old priest.
The simple fact of Wesley being sheriff—that didn’t concern Gail. She feared that once he put on that badge he would become like his father.
She treated Julian Hayden politely—she didn’t know any other way—but she could never like the man, never, never. He was everything she was brought up to believe a man should not be. He bullied his wife and sons and anyone who showed him deference. He talked too loud and he cursed in the presence of women. He was arrogant. When he showed generosity toward others he made certain it became known. He flattered and he boasted. Worst of all, he was charming. And he knew it.
Shortly after she came to Bentrock, Gail witnessed a scene that revealed Julian Hayden both as a man and as a law officer.
Around noon one day her father-in-law appeared out in front of the jail with a prisoner in tow. The prisoner was a tall, shabbily dressed man who was so thin it looked as though he might literally be starving. Julian brought this prisoner out by the collar and proceeded to haul the man down the steps of the courthouse. Right out there where everyone could see, the sheriff marched the man the few blocks to the center of town. The sight was so unusual that townspeople came out from their homes and businesses and followed Julian Hayden down the street. Gail and Beverly went along with everyone else. The little parade finally stopped at the train depot, where the 12:20 train was loading and would soon leave for Havre, Shelby, Cut Bank, and points west.
There, in front of all those witnesses, Julian Hayden bought his prisoner a one-way ticket to Spokane. The sheriff almost lifted the man onto the train, and once he was on, Julian said to him, in a voice so loud everyone could hear, “And if you come back here and try to pull any of those shenanigans again I’ll do worse than boot your ass out of town. We don’t need your kind around here.” The train began to pull out, and as it did, Julian reached into his coat pocket and brought out a revolver. He held it aloft and shouted again at the man on the train (though perhaps the man could no longer hear him): “And don’t be getting any ideas about coming back for this. You’ll play hell trying to get it back from me.”
The entire scene was so dramatic that a few people actually applauded their sheriff. Julian,
however, gave no sign of having noticed the crowd. He pushed past the bystanders and their questions about what the man had done and how the sheriff had caught him, and walked directly back to the courthouse.
That night Gail told Wesley what she had seen his father do. As she finished her story Wesley began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Dad,” he said, shaking his head.
“What? What did he do?”
“That ‘criminal’ he put on the train was nothing but an old bum who came into the jail the night before last, drunk and with no place to stay. I know, I was there when he came in. He asked Dad if he could sleep the night in the jail. Now he’s Spokane’s problem.”
“Why did your father send him there?”
“Damned if I know. Maybe he’s got family there. Wouldn’t be the first time Dad has reached into his own pocket to buy someone a ticket home.”
Gail thought she already knew the answer to her next question, but she asked anyway. “What about the gun?”
Wesley shrugged. “Probably some rusty old pistol Dad had lying around the office.”
It was clear to Gail that Wesley admired his father for what he had done, for his generosity as well as his cleverness and his showmanship, but for her part Gail felt ashamed that she had even been on the street during her father-in-law’s little show.
Right after the election, Julian resigned so Wesley could take over right away. Julian and his wife moved out of their house across from the courthouse and back to the family ranch. Wesley and Gail were to move into the vacant house, a two-story white frame house with a huge backyard. The house was lovely—spacious and clean and newly painted inside and out—and to go to work all she had to do was walk across the street. Nevertheless, she did not feel right about the house. Moving into it meant taking one more step away from their own lives.