The Cadence of Grass

by Mcguane, Thomas

  Her door was locked. She went back to the window and thought at first to signal to the figure below but saw that there were two people dragging pieces of wood to what was now a considerable pile. The carcass of a huge, leafless cottonwood hung over the yard and the patterns of human activity below, patterns Evelyn could not begin to understand. Maybe the tree would come to life in the spring, but this did not appear likely. It looked dead, and its black trunk was textured in the seams of its bark by the flying snow that made crooked vertical lines almost up to the crown, where it turned black once again, perhaps above driven flakes, and was composed entirely of the frantic shapes of the leafless limbs. Somehow these arboreal corpses kept returning to life.

  There was nothing in the room to read except an old Norwegian Bible next to the rustic lamp. Evelyn glanced at it and then made the bed, crossing from one side to the other to pull the gray blanket until it was quite as tight as a drum. She plucked out the corner of the pillow so that everything was perfectly symmetrical and turned to the dresser and washstand where she could see herself, her face somewhat interrupted by a fading BIG BROTHER AND THE HOLDING COMPANY decal. A key lay on the dresser and when she moved it, she saw that its shape had discolored the wood beneath it in its own dark shape. There was a keyhole in the top drawer, but the key did not fit the lock. The drawer opened perfectly well without it and inside were advertising materials for a Packard automobile, a coin from Mexico and a flat carpenter’s pencil advertising a lumber company in Miles City.

  A nice room but nevertheless she was locked inside it. Possibly this was a mistake that would painfully embarrass her gracious hosts. Or maybe she was enslaved.

  Evelyn pulled a chair up beside the window, where initials were carved into the sill. Ice had formed around the upper pane in a smooth bluish arc suggesting the window of a church. The square of logs and branches had not gone further, and the people were no longer present. Into this emptiness appeared a dog whose face was divided black and white almost precisely down the middle. He had a tail that curved high over his back, and he sped around the yard sniffing the ground intently before departing from Evelyn’s view. She had begun to remember the cows, the ones in flight across the country in cattle trucks and the ones that circled her . . . when? Last night. Last night, after she’d run off the road, after the truck with the men had come up, the flash of light on opening doors. She had a great conviction that she’d been right to flee, though the flight and the sense of being overtaken by driven clouds of stinging snow, and then it all just not so gradually stopped. She had slept in a circle of cows and now she was here. Her anxiety had subsided and, hearing footsteps ascending the stairs, she became hungry, as if whoever was coming knew she needed food.

  Evelyn watched for the door to open. She stood well away from it, in front of the window, which she was imagining as an exit without expecting to need it. When the door did open, she immediately recognized one of the figures from the snowy yard, a rather short and stocky woman, with a nose in the exact center of her face, bristly hair and a small round mouth. Her face was red, probably from the cold, and she had a very direct gaze. “Well, you’re up,” she said.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “And are you rested?” she demanded.

  “I am, yes.”

  “I’m Esther.”

  “How do you do; I’m Evelyn.”

  “You’re just lucky to be alive,” the woman said. “If Torvald hadn’t gone out with his bale feeder, you’d of froze. You was near froze as it is. Most of the time Torvald just spikes a round bale, cuts the strings and rolls it down a hill about a mile away. But the weather got so fearful he says he’s worried about the cows and goes out with the feeder, only this time the block heater come unplugged and the hydraulics was kaflooie. Had to use a can of ether—smell it clear to the house—and I’m thinkin’ Torvald was liable to blow hisself up. Took half the night, but lucky for you, you wasn’t clear froze yet, no more froze than Torvald. Well, how’d did you get there?”

  “I went into the ditch. I was looking for help.”

  “Should’ve stayed with your outfit and waited for help to come along.”

  Evelyn decided not to say what it was that put her to flight and thought it was better and shorter to let Esther assume that she was foolish enough to try to cross a snowfield at night in search of rescue. No explanation for fighting a blizzard in a party dress seemed adequate. She was comfortable now and hungry and the old clothes were warm.

  “I’d better feed you,” said Esther.

  “Oh, that’s not necessary at all,” said Evelyn. “If I could impose on you for a lift into town, I’ll grab something there.”

  “Impossible. We’re snowed in.”

  “Oh.”

  “We been waitin’ for this. We been hopin’.”

  “To be snowed in?”

  “You bet. Oh, you bet.” Esther went out the door. “Your food is ready when you are.” Evelyn thought about the couple in the yard, and marveled that there were people who actually longed to be snowed in, for whom there was never enough isolation.

  Evelyn stepped tentatively out onto a landing that she could not remember and that produced an unsettling blank in her memory, which must have begun in the snowfield. Never before had she “passed out,” and the very notion made her queasy; too many friends had awakened to find some lummox toiling away over their bodies. Nevertheless, she went down the stairs she must have gone up, and on a table at the bottom found a meal prepared for her of bread and eggs and a drink, a cold liquid which referred to oranges. Esther began putting food on the table, nothing that looked particularly familiar.

  “I wonder,” Evelyn said, “—this is very nice, mm—if I could borrow the phone?”

  Esther was frowning before she’d even heard the question.

  “No phone,” she said firmly. Evelyn couldn’t tell whether that meant there was no phone or that she couldn’t use it. Esther then pointed to the meat that was part of the breakfast array with subdued glee. “Moose,” she said. Moose ’n’ eggs, thought Evelyn. I must pray for an airlift.

  The room where Evelyn sat had on one side a small kitchen and, on the other, a passageway in whose yellow, angled glow appeared a large, strangely dressed and rather shambling man, with a kind of boardinghouse anonymity and hardly a glance her way. Perhaps he, too, was snowed in. While Evelyn contemplated these things, picked at her eggs and considered creative disposal of the moose, Esther set another place beside her with a comparable meal. When Evelyn raised an inquiring and smiling gaze, Esther spat out the words, “Our son Donald!”

  Donald strode into the room, a great big man with a remarkably bushy gray beard and piercing black eyebrows. “Hullo!” he said, sitting down with such force that Evelyn was afraid his chair would break. Except that his hair was in curlers, he looked like any other rancher. Peering closely at his breakfast, he offered a great paw in Evelyn’s direction. “I apologize for appearing before you déshabillé. Normally I am zipped up in my coveralls by now and making myself useful to Papa. But we are snowed in. And this is the weekend, when I do as I please especially on these exciting Saturday nights! Chores done, cows are asleep, sheep askew and th—”

  “Donald, that’ll do!” This rough voice came from the kitchen but did not belong to Esther. Donald’s face compressed and his eyes narrowed as he took this in with unyielding fatalism.

  Evelyn craned to see where the voice came from. “Is it true we’re snowed in?”

  “Boy howdy.”

  “And the phone?”

  “Not available at this time.”

  “Oh,” said Evelyn. “And what are you building in the yard, a cabin?”

  “That’s a bonfire for Grandpa.”

  In the doorway appeared an older man with high cheekbones and small, close-set eyes, a coarse and energetic character who identified himself as Torvald Aadfield. Donald raised his dark eyebrows, darker than the wide fan of beard, and oddly peaked just over the bridge of his nose, giving th
e impression that he had never seen his father before or else had seen him but was struggling to remember anything specific about him. Mr. Aadland caught this and nodded privately, suggesting that Donald was grimly incorrigible.

  “We’re snowed in,” he said.

  “See?” said Donald.

  “How’s the moose?” Torvald asked. “Very good for you. Prepared it myself. With a seven mag.”

  “Walking food doesn’t have a long life around Dad,” Donald said.

  “I remember the lean times,” his father said. “Montana’s a boom-and-bust economy. “

  Evelyn swung her head from one speaker to another without making a contribution. Her feigned affability did little to conceal her discomfort.

  “During one of those busts,” said Donald, “I went to San Francisco for a Mott the Hoople concert. Spent six hungry months in the Haight, then almost two years in a cross-dressers’ review, very big with the tourists in a tourist’s town. I dreamed of saving enough to buy my own ranch. I thought I could hoof my way into the cattle business!”

  “You’re in the cattle business,” said Torvald.

  “Yes,” sighed Donald, “but one that can never grow. I have happy memories of those days, the gorgeous outfits so full of meaning, staying up all night with my disturbed friends, racing to the sea in the foggy morning, lumbering along in our frocks and smelling like a gym, past the Penguin’s Prayer sculpture, breaking out on Ocean Beach at dawn to storm the surfers in their wetsuits. Do I miss those days? What do you think!” He looked at his father but continued speaking to Evelyn. “He buys cheap bulls, won’t fertilize, irrigates with a shovel and doesn’t sprinkle. . . . ” Donald was agitated. The plastic cylinders festooning his head knocked against one another.

  Evelyn couldn’t make out whether this was some old routine between the two men or something specifically for her.

  Donald now was storming around so that the noise of his sandals on the floor and against the furniture was a dismaying backdrop to his remarks. “He won’t take a cheap Farm Home Loan or sign up with the Great Plains Program.”

  Torvald was shrinking with truculence and embarrassment.

  “He won’t use gated pipe because he likes to see me out there dragging mud-covered canvas, soaking wet in a cold wind. He won’t buy a calf table when—”

  “Donald’s a great roper,” his mother added. “We wouldn’t want to miss that—”

  “He’s got Mom flanking calves like she was in a rodeo. And tonight, to save a few bucks, he’s gonna cremate my grandpa.”

  The older people winced to have this stated so boldly.

  It was a good while before Torvald spoke. “Snowed in, has to be done,” he said complacently. “Lady, I don’t know what your plan was out there in my pasture, but if them cows had come to their feed like always, I’d of never found you atall.”

  “I’m very grateful. Really, there is a telephone, isn’t there?”

  “Line’s down,” he barked, the last word on that subject.

  “Home cremation’s illegal as hell,” Donald noted, “but like the man said, we’re snowed in and even minor calamity can help boom-and-busters economize. Lucky you weren’t on your feet when Dad found you. He might’ve had you popped for trespassing.”

  “I am a strong proponent of private property rights,” Torvald said, and left the room at the sight of his wife passing the doorway, pointedly ignoring the activity in the dining room but shouting as she went, “Torvald, fill the bird feeder!”

  “Donald,” he said, “we’ve got work to do.” He seemed mildly elated by this information and, rising from his chair, clapped his calloused hands together. The men left the table apparently without a thought of what Evelyn might do with herself, though it was obvious her job was to wait for the storm to pass. From a nearby room, old psychedelic music suddenly boomed. Mr. Aadfield passed the kitchen doorway, shaking his head contemptuously. Evelyn heard him go out, and shortly thereafter Donald appeared in insulated coveralls, a housebound Bohemian artifact transformed now into a rather conventional farmer. He had a war-surplus campaign coat over his arm and was gesturing for Evelyn to follow him quickly. As she crossed the kitchen behind him, he draped the coat over her shoulders and opened a narrow door into a cold storage room, reaching familiarly around the inside wall to turn on the light switch.

  “You’re safe with me,” Donald said, leading her into a room piled high with crates and rough shelves that stored canned foods. “My wan and ambiguous sexuality wouldn’t offend a gnat. And I love having a houseguest.” He went straight to the far corner, where he began removing burlap feed sacks from something leaning there, something that proved to be a corpse, rigid from cold storage. Having revealed it, Donald stepped back and bent slightly forward, hands clasped together in fascination. “Grandpa,” he said, with purring delight.

  “I’ve never seen a dead person before.” Fleetingly, she wondered about her father, but he’d been boxed. “Is that a costume?”

  “That’s his uniform from the Norwegian Navy.”

  The corpse was balanced in the corner of the concrete walls, a small old man dressed in a pristine navy blue suit complete with epaulets. “Rescued from a Norwegian lightship that got torpedoed by a German sub. Thirty years later he was a county commissioner in Montana and the uniform still fits.” Rubbing his capacious stomach ruefully, Donald said, “If Grandpa’s genes were what they’re cracked up to be, I’d be still in the chorus line. Instead I spend my days on the wrong end of a number-three irrigating shovel or hitting the zerk fittings on Dad’s front-end loader with a half-frozen grease gun!” His sob, Evelyn knew, was not genuine. Her eyes were fastened on this peculiar effigy. It was certainly not a person. Nor was it remotely horrifying, though it did produce a strong sense of the ridiculous, perhaps due to a uniform right out of Gilbert and Sullivan.

  Evelyn asked cautiously, “What’s he doing here?”

  “Oh, boy,” sighed Donald. “‘What’s he doing here?’ Well, Evelyn, we’re going to do a home burial with Gramps, oppressed by Granddad and promised themselves they wouldn’t spend two cents burying him. They told him so to his face. They said, ‘Granddad, you’ve been very cheap and mean. You never fed your cows in the winter. When you die, we’re not going to spend two cents burying you. We’re not buying you a headstone, and we’re not notifying your hometown newspaper in Trondhjem.’ My mother and father might be hard, but they’re not unkind. When Grandpa said he preferred cremation, my father said, ‘You buy the matches,’ and it was kind of a family joke—you know, a Norwegian family joke that’s not at all funny. Anyway, Grandpa bought a box of kitchen matches, and my folks still have them after about ten years. Tonight the old fellow goes up in smoke, which, given certain laws, is why we had to wait until we were snowed in to do it. We can’t get out and, except for you, they can’t get in, even if they see smoke.

  “My mother really tried to reach out to him, but it was all lost on Grandpa. Everyone on the place was half starved while he paid into a pension plan through the Odd Fellows. And he had a high-dollar pinky ring, which was totally inappropriate to begin with, and which he swallowed once he knew the end was at hand. Said we’d only use it to buy train tickets out. These were all more or less jokes, but serious enough that he actually did swallow the ring. My folks and I are just unwilling to go in and get it, even though it’s pretty obvious we could use the money. Now—” he rapped his knuckles on the corpse’s stomach “—you’d have to use a chisel or tire tool or some damn thing.”

  Evelyn, shivering from the cold, couldn’t quite keep her eyes off the corpse, and was tempted to blame it for everything. Donald said he was uncomfortable having it lean up against the wall like cordwood and put it in a small wagon, towing it around the room looking for a better place. “I remember when the damn thing was jumping around barking orders,” he said. He looked through the room for a place to park the wagon. “My dreams change every day,” Donald was saying. “For years I’ve also had a great interest
in going to Mars. It seems more and more possible. If I hang on to my share of Grandpa’s pension and invest it wisely, I could be on one of the first trips. When I heard they’d found evidence of water there, I thought, Whoa, I could have it all: a hot tub on Mars! Here, this is good, I think. . . .” He lifted the corpse out of the wagon and stood it in an upended metal stock tank, where it took on the aspect of a roadside shrine down in Mexico.

  Evelyn tried to see the merits of hot tubbing on Mars, the plains of the Red Planet all around and the troubled, complicated Earth hanging on the far edge of the void. Donald had put her in a strange mood.