Once, when we'd run out of food, and David and I tried to make a trip to the grocery store, he began to tremble so when we got into town that he had to pull off the road and let me drive. Over dinner that night he started talking about forgetting the whole deal, saying he'd been an idiot to think something like this would ever work for us and that because he was involved something was bound to go wrong. He called himself a "jinx on us." He said we should just pack up and move away, try to start out new. Which touched off Marie like I'd never seen before.
Holding a skillet in her hand she screamed at him for a fool and a coward, saying he'd put us all in jeopardy and now he'd just have to find the guts to go on with it. The sounds of mockery and challenge were in her voice.
"There's something wrong with you, David," she said. "You're lacking something that the rest of us have got inside somewhere."
He sat there and took it, staring at the floor like he was being whipped, until finally he said, "I don't intend to ever see the inside of a prison again, for you or anybody else."
"I hope you're right," she said. "But it's a little late to be worrying about that. What are we supposed to live on, David?"
Just then, in that moment of silence, there came a knock on the front door. A ripple of panic moved over each of us. It might have been the sheriff for all we knew at that point. The faces above the table were ragged and blanched. Then David did something strange. It was something that, when I remember this well, it was what changed everything; it made everything turn and veer off in a different direction. David's whole body was trembling when he leaned over and said gently, "Crissy, sweetheart, would you go see who it is and ask them to wait?"
Crissy gave him a sweet smile and started to leave, but Marie grabbed her by the shoulder and put her back in her chair.
"I'll get it," I said.
"No," said Marie. "David'll get it. Won't you, David?"
"Let him alone, Marie."
"Quiet," she said. "This has to do with more than just answering the door. This has to do with the past, doesn't it, David? This has to do with everything, doesn't it, David?"
"Shut up, Marie," he said softly, but she didn't listen.
"This has to do with sending other people to do your own nasty business, doesn't it, David? That you've been doing all your life and you're still trying to do it. Isn't that right, David?" She paused, breathing hard, and I watched him wither and writhe on his chair as she continued. "I may not be much to speak of, but I finish what I start and I don't send little girls, or young boys either for that matter you know what I'm talking about, David?I don't send other people to do what I ought to do myself so as to put them in danger. And I'm just a woman." She snorted a mean laugh then, the kind of laugh you hate to hear in a woman who's your sister. "Come on, David."
"Let it go, Marie," I said.
"No, it's too late for that. We can't let it go anymore."
The knock came again.
"Get up, David," she said. "Or I'll leave this house right now and you'll never see me again as long as you live."
At that she fell into her chair and stared at him like she was trying to force him to look up and meet her eyes.
"Do you hear me, David?"
David lifted his heavy body. There was something fierce but weary-looking about his face. For a moment he just stood there, straddling the chair, gazing at the top of the table. And all of a sudden he marched out of the kitchen. We heard his footsteps on the floor of the living room and then the front door opened. He returned in less than a minute, a good sign. Glancing at me, he nodded once and then moved around the kitchen in a panicky haste. He tossed down his beer and chased it with a gulp of Old Crow and then opened another beer. He said, "Don't leave the house," and he started out again. Marie called to him to wait a minute, but I told her to shut up and be still and I got up to follow him. In the dark living room he stopped me. He said he'd changed his mind and that I should stay with Marie and Crissy. He said he'd be back inside of three hours. He said, "Take care" Then he smiled at me oddly like he wanted to mention something else but it wouldn't gel in his mind. So he shook my hand, once, firmly, and he was out the door before I could speak or move.
That was the last time I saw the man I call David Smith. And to this day I don't know exactly what happened up there in the mountains when he went to collect our share. What I remember of that night is how long it was, and quiet, and still the sort of quiet, the sort of stillness you associate with a vigil and how cold it was in the house.
We waited for him all through the wee hours. Then about sun-up a truck pulled into the yard. I peeked out the window, hoping, but it turned out to be the rancher's son standing on the porch. He looked awful. His freckled face was frightened and tired and dirty under his dirty cowboy hat. I stepped out and followed him to his truck where two canvas tote bags were waiting for me. He said, "I'm awful sorry about this, mister." When he looked up I knew. From his eyes, I suppose. There was something missing in them, like the eyes of men I'd seen in the war.
"There was a crash," he said. "We don't know what went wrong. The weather was clear, the plane sounded fine. But soon as he cleared the ground that old rig went right for this hill up there."
He kept glancing around as he talked, as if something huge and horrible were lurking in the desert. It was quite a risk, his coming back down there to bring us what was ours. None of this was a part of the plan and he had his own problems now and he wanted to be gone from there as soon as possible.
"Right before he took off he must have heaved these two sacks out the window. That's how he'd asked for it: 'Split up the money two ways,' he told us. There's enough in there for you and your sister to get away and start out new somewheres. That's what I'd suggest. And you better hurry. We all better hurry."
The rancher's son got in his truck then and drove off into the pretty sunrise as I turned for the house, thinking of Marie and Crissy, and trying to figure how I was going to say it to her, how I would have to state the simple facts coldly and call it an accident. I thought about the trouble we were in. I thought about running. There was Marie on the porch in her robe and furry slippers, a cigarette in her mouth, her arms holding herself just below her breasts. At that moment she looked weathered and worn out, like some old gal you might find behind the counter of an all-night truck stop in a worthless town such as Gallup, New Mexico. She said, "It's all over, isn't it."
III
Shame, in my book, works like this. Once you've done a rotten thing, once you've turned on somebody that once was yours, once you've let good sense or courage or whatever push loyalty to some deep dungeon in your gut, some place that you'll never find it again well, once you've done this you've set yourself a new path in life and you have no choice but to go on down it.
By the time we settled everything that day, packed what was necessary, retrieved the truck from the airport and got out of town on a back road, it was late afternoon. At Van Horn, a dusty little stop up on I-10, we took a room at an old motor court called The Sands. Back of the motel was a weedy lot where we parked the truck and the cycle so they couldn't be seen, and then I walked up Business 10 to a Church's Chicken place and brought home supper. After we ate, Marie put Crissy to bed and then the dog let it be known that he needed a walk to relieve himself. Marie followed me when I went out with him and in the lot behind the motel we sat on the tailgate of the truck while the dog was searching around for a place to make his mark. Marie hadn't opened her mouth for hours, but suddenly she said, "You know what I wish?" and I looked at her, ready to listen.
"This has been on my mind all day for some reason," she said. She pulled up her sweater against the night air and she looked at the starry sky and she seemed almost to be reading something up there, she paused so long. Then she said, "I wish I owned a pair of white sandals, with little straps across the back and with low, pointed heels. Like some I saw on a woman once."
"At this time of year?" I said and she smiled at me shyly.
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p; "And I wish I had a little white dress with one tiny rose embroidered right over my breast here." She gently touched her breast as if imagining what the rose would feel like. "I wish it was summertime and that I was in the Rocky Mountains of Canada, at some lodge or resort. My only thought would be what to eat for supper and then whether to go dancing or sightseeing or just go to bed in the nice clean sheets."
She said, "You've never been to Canada, have you."
I told her no, though I've been there since.
"It's real pretty country," she said. "Nothing like this around here. I went once with a man I knew. A pilot, of course. Sort of a vacation. This was before I met David and I left Crissy with some people in Corpus, good people that would baby-sit for me. They were neighbors of mine who went to church and everything, and they would take Crissy with them, and they were always after me to go too. Can you imagine that? Me in church?"
I said, "Yes, I can imagine that," which caused her to smile and to look at me as if I were too naive to understand anything.
"Anyway," she said, "we stayed at a place on Lake Louise, and for two weeks we did nothing but play and make love. He was a nice man, as I remember, even though it didn't work out for us. Nothing ever works out, I guess. But for two weeks it was good and fun, and I thought maybe I was in love with the man. For a while I thought about not coming home at all. I thought about just living there with him and leaving Crissy with those people." She said, "That's awful, isn't it, to think such a thing?"
I said something about it depending on circumstances, but she wasn't listening. She said, "There were even times when she was a baby that I actually thought of leaving her on somebody's doorstep, figuring she'd be better off with anybody but me. There were times when I thought about just getting rid of her."
Shepherd Fred had returned by now and he was sitting at our feet grinning up at us. It was perhaps nine o'clock. I was starting to think again about what was up ahead, about what it meant to be on the run and that we would have to find a newspaper in the morning to see if there was a report on us, and that we would have to decide what to do if there was, or even if there wasn't. This was my family, what was left of it, and I wanted to do my best by them. I wanted to talk to Marie about it, though I knew she was still in shock, as she had a certain wisdom in such matters and since I was thinking I wanted us to face it together.
"Listen, Marie," I began, but she interrupted me.
"No, don't," she said. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't. I suppose you think I'm a pretty worthless human being, don't you, after what I did to David. And maybe it would be better just not to talk about it. Most worthless things are better left alone."
"I don't think any such thing, Marie."
"Well, I do. What I did was a rotten thing, as rotten as it gets. It was not something a woman should ever do to a man she loves. And I want you to know I'll never do it again."
The dog made a whining sound at that moment and Marie looked at him with affection. She reached down and scratched his ears and he thumped his tail in appreciation, staring up at her as if she were the center of the universe. "Do whatever you think is best, Johnny," she said, giving me a look direct as any I've ever seen. When she seemed satisfied with what she saw, she told the dog to come and together they went off slowly to the room, leaving me there to think.
After a while, once I'd sorted it out as best I could, I went into the room myself. Before sleep came, as I lay exhausted under my covers, I could hear Marie humming some tune and hear her muttering the words a lullaby or a hymn perhaps. She was sitting on their bed, sort of petting Crissy and old Fred, first one then the other, looking down at them both as they slept, sweet as anything. I don't know how long this went on, or whether she slept at all, because in the morning Marie wasn't around to talk about it. The motorcycle was missing and she had put all but a couple hundred dollars of our take into my bag before she left. I should have seen this coming, but a mind can take in only so much and mine was worn out with worry. It was many years before I got rid of the worry, and even today there remains a lingering feel of it in my blood. I haven't seen my sister, the woman I call Marie Smith, since that night, in that cheap motel room, with the neon light of the sign out front glowing through the window curtain. It's an image of her that has always stayed with me: Marie on the bed, bent over, humming to herself, touching her loved ones for the last time.
In An Arid Land Page 20