by Richard Ford
11
He stood listening to the clatter of maple leaves. He could just make out the imprint of a deer standing motionless outside the barrier of shumards and cypress spires across the lake. He moved his eyes up the bank for some clear break where Gaspareau could make the boat in, but the trees seemed to grow in a compact wall down the long twist of lake, and he couldn’t fashion how a boat could penetrate and break back into the bank.
Robard sat on his heels by the painter cleat smoking and tapping ashes in his pants cuff.
The screen slammed and Gaspareau came rolling across the yard without his shotgun, but with a little silver revolver strapped to his belt in a walnut holster. He was wearing a big straw hat with a wide green plastic brim in the front, pulled down so his face was visible only from the nose down. Robard gave a significant look, passed his eyes over Gaspareau’s pistol, and gazed expressionlessly back on the lake.
Gaspareau stumped out onto the dock, stepped down in the boat, and started jabbing intensely at the gas bulb with his toe. “Anybody need to piss?” he said, his face contorting and a peculiar scraping sound originating somewhere below his throat.
“You ready for me to untie it?” Robard said, standing at the cleat.
“Quick as this other gentleman gets in.”
“Get in, Newel,” Robard snapped.
“Where?” he said, staring at the boat blankly.
Gaspareau shoved his entire fist up to his neck and his voice seemed almost able to come out his mouth. “Just get your ass in!” he said, glaring furiously.
“Going or staying?” Robard said, and pulled the burnt end of the painter until the boat listed away from the dock, the old man sunk in the stern.
“Leave the son-of-a-bitch!” Gaspareau hollered, stropping the starter and setting the water boiling. Gaspareau fumbled into his pocket, dragged out a pair of old rubber aviator’s goggles, fitted them on his head, and set his hat back on top of them.
“Newel!” Robard yelled.
“Going.” He stepped off into the sun-warm water and squirmed over the gunwale directly in front of Gaspareau, who was revving the noise as loud as he could.
“Turn me loose, Hewes!” Gaspareau’s voice was barely distinguishable over the whine of the motor. “Turn me loose, goddamn it!”
Robard towed the boat alongside the dock and jumped in, and they took off furiously into the lake toward the wall of motionless trees.
12
Robard sat bent in the front of the boat, hunched toward the gunwale protecting his cigarette. Gaspareau twisted open the throttle and let himself slump against the motor, the pistol situated in front of his stomach, the barrel pointed between his legs. He sat gloomily in the middle, watching the deer he had seen browsing outside the trees. When the motor had begun to whine, the deer had stared a moment, then disappeared up into the timber. But when the boat departed and succeeded into the lake, the deer had reappeared, nose poised toward the boat, and trotted out into the lake, its head barely clearing the surface, striking for the other side. He watched the deer make way through the water with difficulty, keeping its head firmly up, rising and sinking regularly as if it was trying to leap toward safety. Gaspareau gave him a kick in the back and pointed at the head with his cane, gurgling something through the hole in his neck. He thought for a moment the old man was proposing they have a run at the deer, and he turned and shook his head, which only made Gaspareau repoint his cane and frown as if he wasn’t being understood. Gaspareau conned the boat closer toward the opposite bank into the corridor of water between the deer and the trees, and he decided the old man had not been intending to have after the deer, but just to point it out to the both of them. He gave Gaspareau a conciliatory look and peered back at the deer. It had swum almost to the middle of the lake, its rises and descents more regular and articulated, as if it had begun to feel out of reach of whatever had driven it off the shore. Robard pointed his flat finger at the deer, and for a time they watched it silently while the boat buzzed and buffeted, closing toward the bank well back of the deer. Until suddenly the deer disappeared. At the height of one regular ascent the deer seemed to be jerked off the surface, as if whatever had found it had moved with such awful force there hadn’t been time to breathe before going under, or as though the force had been so irresistible it had given up without a spasm, leaving the surface where it had been glistening and almost tranquil but for the soft weals of water traveling backward across the lake.
Gaspareau never stopped. He turned toward the unbroken line of trees and screwed his hat closer to his goggles and looked away.
He stared back past Gaspareau to where the deer had been swimming, as if he expected it to thrash up out of the tentacles of some beast and be dragged back, its head stretched toward the sky. But there was nothing, and as he scanned the water he began to feel uncertain where the deer had been in relation to the dock, which was now downlake and only a stitch against the bank. He worked his eyes regularly backward from the place he thought he recognized to someplace beyond it, compensating for the speed of the boat, but he could see nothing or recognize nothing about the lake. He turned and stared past Robard, who seemed unmoved, huddled in the anchor well striking a match against his belt buckle out of the wind.
Gaspareau killed the throttle and swung the bow straight toward the trees and let the wake boost the boat through the outstobs and cypress points until Robard could manage one of the tree trunks and arm the boat in. Gaspareau shut down the motor and jacked it out of the water, took a paddle off the floor, and began poling the boat one-handed. He could just detect a vaguely marked passage through the trees and farther could see the transom of another Arkansas Traveler marooned on the bank, chained to a tree stump painted red. The bank had been hacked out of the trees and extended ten yards to the foot of a low bluff, on top of which he could just see the windshield of an open jeep, backed by the woods.
Gaspareau poled the boat and Robard guided until the stern began trawling sand and Gaspareau jabbed him in the ribs with the paddle blade. “Tow us in there, Newman—you’re wet anyway. It won’t kill you.”
He climbed into the water, which was colder and deeper than it had been the other side, and led the boat forward until it caught the shoal.
“That’s enough!” Gaspareau squalled. “I’ve got to get out of here.” The old man skinned off his goggles and leered at him. “What happened to that deer?” Gaspareau said. “That was some-thin, wasn’t it?” He kneaded his eyes with his knuckles.
“What did happen?”
Gaspareau smiled. “Gar,” he said. “Alligator gar come along and sucked him. I’ve seen it before.”
“Not in his mouth,” he said incredulously. “He didn’t get him in his mouth, did he?”
“No, not in his mouth, with his mouth!” Gaspareau said. “His mouth ain’t that big. He just grabbed him by a forepaw and went to the bottom, like a bass and a tadpole. That’s why them deer don’t like to swim in there.”
He tried to think about a fish big enough to drag down a 150-pound buck like he was a tadpole, and couldn’t do it.
“When the river switched,” Gaspareau said, still grinding at his eyes, “left all them fish stranded, and the big ’uns got bigger than they ought to. People quit putting out trotlines and none of the gars got caught, and they went to eating catfish, and pretty soon they was some goddamned big gars.”
“But a deer?” he said, unable to see it at all.
“I’ve seen ’em turn over boats and do all kinds of plunder,” Gaspareau snorted. “A deer ain’t nothin.”
He stared at Gaspareau, trying to read his face for the truth.
“See that there jeep?” Gaspareau said, directing his cane up the bluff.
He looked skeptically around toward the jeep.
“That’s the old man’s. The key’s in it. If you can start it, you can drive it to the house. If you can’t, you can walk three miles. Hewes, you tell Mr. Lamb you’re the last man I’m sending. He can just as well
take you.” Robard nodded. “I don’t know what you’re going to tell him, Newman,” Gaspareau said distastefully.
“Newel,” he said.
“Whatever the shit. He’s particular who comes on the place and when they come.”
“If he doesn’t like me he can run my ass off,” he said, feeling like he’d be happy to kick Gaspareau in the mouth. “Why don’t you sputter on across your pond?”
Gaspareau let his hand fall on the handle of the pistol and grinned.
He started walking up toward the jeep away from the old man.
“Get me out of here, Hewes,” Gaspareau yelled.
Robard pushed the boat free with his foot and sent the old man sliding backward, rearranging his goggles under his hat brim. The motor fired and Gaspareau backed the boat out past the last stobs and whipped it a loop and plunged out into the lake facing the sun.
From the jeep, he watched the boat’s bow pop out of the water with the old man’s weight settled in the stern.
Robard sat down and looked at him, rubbing his hand back through his hair. “I’ll tell you,” Robard said wearily, setting his sack of clothes in the boot. “You get an old fart like that mad at you, and he’ll kill you.”
He glared at the old man skating off like a bug, the motor whining out in the distance. “He acted like I was a goddamned parvenu.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Robard said, tampering with the ignition and waggling at the starter pedal at the same time. “When the shooting starts, though, I’d as soon be some distance from where you’re at. I wouldn’t act quite right if I was dead.”
“So stay away. I don’t give a fuck,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Robard said. “I’ll do that very thing.”
13
The jeep path followed out of the willows into a saw-grass pasture, the other side of which was another belt of softwoods. The road had been wet-rutted and the tires skidded the sides and pitched the jeep sideways. The haze had burned off and the sky was white and watery, loose clouds crowding and the sun diminished and telescoped behind the trees.
Robard draped his arms over the wheel and stared across the straw field toward the woods. “I seen a thing like that deer once,” he said. “I was stood out by a lake in Lee Vining watching the fish, just standing there holding my pole, me and this other fellow. And we stood there for a while trying to figure whether to fish or not and not seeing anything working. And there wasn’t any reason in the world for the fish not to be tearing up. So old Ralph reached in his sack and took out a slice of Wonder Bread and sailed it out there and let it float. And pretty soon you could see some little fish rise to it and nibble the crust, just enough to perturb the water. And we just sat there watching because them little fish wasn’t big enough to hook, and we were waiting on a big fish. Little ones get interested before the big ones do, that’s why so many little ones get caught and so few big ones. The big ones are smarter. We stood there and watched and watched. And pretty soon an osprey come over and made a little pass on the bread, just looking at it. Then he flew around again and looked at it again. Then he flew way up and just dropped with his claws all stuck out in front of him headed right for that bread. And just the second he got there, whoosh! here was this great big rainbow struck up and took that slice out of sight in one gulp. And the osprey hit him with everything he had and got both his claws in his back and got a good hold, and that bird just went right out of sight. Cause that was a big fish.”
“You ever get anybody to believe that story?”
“Well,” Robard said, watching the woods. “I seen it. That’s about as much satisfaction as I need. Though I wouldn’t call it really satisfaction; it’s just a recollection I feel satisfied with. The situations aren’t really equal anyway. That osprey just chose more than he could chew. That little buck didn’t look to me like he had much to choose. You might say he was a victim.”
“Of what?” he muttered, grabbing onto the frame of the windshield to steady himself.
“Hisself” Robard smiled.
“What kind of sense can you make out of a story like that?”
Robard took his arms from around the steering wheel and shoved back until they were stretched straight in front of him. “I don’t know,” he said deliberately. “It was something that happened, so I suppose I made sense out of it already.”
He turned around so as to be face to face. “Does that help you?”
“Do what?” Robard said unhappily.
“Make your mind up about anything.”
“Like what?” Robard said, steering the jeep into the field to avoid a chuck hole. “I have a hard time remembering what it was exactly I did yesterday,” he said, trying to see up over the hood and get back in the gauge.
“I don’t believe that,” he said. “You let on you’re not smart so you can get the edge on people. But I know better.”
“Newel, I think we done talked enough today.”
“I don’t know,” he said, facing front again, feeling exhilarated. “You’re crafty.”
“Well, let’s just put it to you in these terms, then,” Robard said. “If I’m so goddamned smart, why am I chauffeuring you around in this jeep in the middle of someplace I hadn’t got any business being?”
“I could ask the same question,” he said.
“Then why don’t you,” Robard said, “and leave me to peace?”
“Because,” he said, “you might be my chance.”
“There’s lots of people in the world would run jump in the river if they thought I was their chance at anything. Sometimes I think I’m one of them.”
14
The road slipped out of the little grass prairie into bush poplars and pine yearlings, back into another pasture. The sun was low, sparkling through the poplars, turning the weeds gold and splintering the shadows through the woods. North of the road, a section of grass had been mowed and a trapezoid lined out in surveyor’s sticks and red bicycle reflectors. On the near side an iron stanchion was holding a gray windsock that twitched in the breeze, and at the end of the strip a lean-to shed had been built and the grass allowed to grow up around it. Crows began making a racket when the jeep broke out of the woods, and one by one they flapped out of the tall grass into the trees.
Back of the airstrip the woods opened to a more important oak break in the back shade of which was a long green-plank barracks house with a shake roof and square windows run end to end. The house was raised a man’s height off the ground on pyramided concrete spilings, with wood steps leading off either end. Three outbuildings were set off from the house; one he could make out easily as an outhouse, by itself twenty yards from the north steps. The other two were less distinguishable, though he surmised one to be a living quarters with a small breeze porch and propane tank, and the other, a corrugated metal enclosure with a lean-to ceiling, looked like a toolshed.
The road split, with one arm making a hemisphere to the left, and the other keeping straight then switching back so that both arms met beside the south steps of the house. Robard took the way that allowed him to go straight, then braked as the path turned toward the house, and let the motor idle as quietly as possible.
The sun had almost died. The pale light showed olive through the woods, with only a final narrow filament catching the house in its salient and turning the planks bright green. He felt an almost insufferable calm, as though the sun passing off had stranded the house and everything else in lush neutrality in which nothing could move until dark.
Robard shut off the jeep and filled his cheeks. “I’ll let you announce us,” he said, expelling the air.
“I’m a fucking month late,” he said. “You think that’s a good credit letter? You’ve got business. I’m just a goddamn parvenu.”
“Go on, for Jesus’ sake. You act like a fool.”
He gave Robard a grieved look and climbed out. A voice, bent on expressing extreme displeasure, came all at once from somewhere back of the house. Several waxwings began tauntin
g a blue jay up in the sycamores and went fluttering out behind the house.
“No, T.V.A.,” the voice cried imploringly. “Goddamn it, son, don’t turn the thing that way. Turn it the way I say.”
He looked over at Robard reproachfully and waited to hear a reply from whoever was doing the turning.
“Go on around there and see,” Robard said crossly, lighting a cigarette and flipping the match on the floor.
He nosed past the foot of the stairs and stopped beneath the piling and looked back into the dooryard.
A small turkey-necked old man wearing duck trousers and a yellow pajama top was standing hands on his sides beside a Negro in overalls, who was bent on all fours over a thick iron pipe protruding several inches out of the ground. Beside them, an orange and white pointer puppy was watching. The colored man had an enormous black pipe wrench he was applying to the pipe at ground level, taking it off each time he turned it half a rotation, refitting it, and twisting it again, while the old man stood supervising the whole operation. He could see that each of them was dedicating a terrific quotient of concentration to the winding process, so that each time the colored man removed the wrench to reapply it, the white man insensibly muttered “Good,” and crowded a quarter inch closer.
The dog was the first to ratify anyone else’s presence. He picked his head up and stared momentarily, flogged his tail once, then went back to observing the operations on the pipe.
He felt that he’d like to disappear altogether, but continued standing by soundlessly as the colored man grappled with the enormous wrench and the white man redeployed himself to the other side as though he wanted to beat the Negro to seeing down the hole as soon as it was opened. When the wrench was finally brought off with the entire four-foot length of pipe fastened to it like a magnet, the old man quickly dipped to his knees, pushed his face right into the hole, and held it there for several seconds while the Negro backed away a few feet and gave the goings-on a grave look.