by Larry Watson
You’ve been investigating on your own . . .
And the attendant gave me directions. Can’t miss it, he said. It’s right under the new water tower.
Margaret cocks her head and reads aloud the tiny numbers and letters printed in George’s careful hand. Eight twenty-four Wilbur Avenue. Who said there wouldn’t be a map to show us the way! She laughs. Thank you, George. She slides across the seat to kiss him on the cheek, its gray bristles as rough on her lips as a rasp. Just for that I’m going to buy you the biggest breakfast you can eat.
George drives away from the Mobil station and steers the Hudson down the four wide lanes of Humboldt Avenue, but just in case someone might be tempted to drive cows rather than cars down the street, the lanes soon narrow to two, funneling drivers into the heart of Gladstone commerce.
This town is like the Blackledges’, only with brighter colored signs and two of everything Dalton has one of. Both a Chevy and a Ford dealer. A Sears and a Montgomery Ward. Burch’s Fine Furniture and Sunvold’s Home and Appliance Center. Red Owl and Lamont Wholesale Grocery. The Exchange State Bank and the First National. The Stockman’s Hotel and the Prairie Rose Inn. Enough churches to answer any prayer and enough bars to satisfy any thirst.
Margaret points to a café next to Woolworth’s. Let’s give The Mint a try.
Because the cars and trucks are parked parallel to the curb rather than diagonally, George drives a block farther to find extra space to fit the Hudson into.
The breakfast crowd has thinned out at The Mint. Once again George and Margaret take a booth at the window, where they have a view of the street.
The waitress pours coffee, dark as molasses, into heavy crockery cups. This meal will have to do the work of two, so they order fried-egg sandwiches with thick slices of ham and fried potatoes.
After the meal, when George has lit his cigarette and they’re both on a second cup of coffee, Margaret asks, Who did you say is from Gladstone? Del?
That’s right.
And? Did he talk much about growing up here?
Said it was pretty rough-and-tumble. Farmers, ranchers. Railroaders. Now the oilmen, of course. All coming together here and not having much use for each other. But it looks to me like that’s mostly changed now. And the businessmen have won the battle.
George signals the waitress for more coffee, and when she comes over with the pot, Margaret covers her cup with her palm. Any more and I’ll get the jitters, whispers Margaret. Even worse than usual.
Once the waitress leaves, George continues. The way Del tells it, Gladstone used to have the biggest whorehouse between Minneapolis and Denver. Bigger than anything in Billings, though I’m sure that city had more than one. Anyway, the madam running the place was a real character. Rode around in a fancy horse and buggy. And if any of her customers wasn’t paying his bill, she’d go park in front of his house and just sit there. And since everyone knew whose rig it was, you can bet she didn’t have to wait too long for that debt to come off the books.
She sounds like a savvy businesswoman. Then Margaret reaches across the table and playfully nudges her husband’s hand. But how about you, George? Didn’t you and Harry Dwyer come right through here when you were trailing horses for Bob Paskow? Did you pay any visits to that woman’s bawdy house? Did you, George?
Her husband’s face flushes to the color of red brick. You know better than to ask me something like that.
Oh come on, George. A man has his needs. I know that.
So does a woman, he says and quickly turns toward the window as if he doesn’t want to look at his wife’s face in the wake of that remark.
Margaret reaches farther across the table, but George has pulled back. Isn’t it time you took your own advice, George? Isn’t it time you let some things go?
He slides out of the booth. I’ll get the thermos, he says. See if we can get it filled.
Don’t, George. Don’t walk away . . . But he’s already gone, leaving Margaret stretched across the table with nothing to grab hold of but her husband’s empty cup.
13.
THE ROUTE GEORGE AND MARGARET TAKE ISN’T THE most direct, but by a process of one- and two-block steps and by keeping the water tower always in sight—its great steel ball clearly visible even against the leaden sky—they find their way to Wilbur Avenue. Although the house wears no number, the dwelling that must be 824 is the oldest and smallest on the block. If the day were sunny, the house would be completely overshadowed by the water tower, and if the reservoir were ever to give way, 824 Wilbur Avenue would be washed away like a child’s stack of sticks. The house is an unadorned box painted two shades of blue with a cement block for a front step and a lawn that’s more dirt and weeds than grass, and that unmown for weeks.
George pulls to the curb near a man who is vigorously raking leaves and twigs out of the gutter and into the street. When George cuts the Hudson’s engine, the man stops raking and approaches the car. He doesn’t walk to either George or Margaret’s side, however. He stands right in front of the car as if he’s trying to line himself up with the winged woman on the Hudson’s hood.
Margaret is the first one out of the car, and the man leans on his rake and asks, What can I do you for?
Mr. Weboy? Margaret asks.
Who’s asking?
She smiles and steps forward with her hand extended. George, however, hangs back, buttoning his coat and turning up its collar, though the man in the street is in shirtsleeves. But then George’s action has nothing to do with temperature.
Margaret Blackledge, she says, shaking the man’s hand. She looks back to make sure George is keeping up. And my husband, George. If you’re a Weboy, she adds, we’re family. After a fashion.
How do you figure that? He shakes George’s hand hastily, then turns his hungry attention back to Margaret. He must approve of what he sees because he smiles and relaxes his caution. Bill Weboy, he says. A cousin, are you?
Not cousins exactly. Our former daughter-in-law married Donnie. So he’s stepdad to our grandson. That’s pretty tangled up, isn’t it?
Like family usually is.
The squinty, heavy-lidded eyes, the broken, misshapen nose, the cocked grin, the massive chin cleft off-center—Bill Weboy should not be a handsome man. But he is.
We thought we’d pay a visit, George says. Since we were in the neighborhood.
Since you’re in the neighborhood, Bill Weboy says, his grin growing wider, and since you didn’t find them up in Bentrock.
Maybe handsome has nothing to do with it. Maybe there’s just something in the way a big man pushes out that barrel chest, rolls those wide shoulders, and works that jaw that looks powerful enough to bite through bone, maybe there’s something in all that confidence and power that makes women curious and men jealous.
You heard we were coming, did you? asks Margaret.
A little birdie flew down here ahead of you. He pinches the air to make a beak. Cheep, cheep.
George asks, Will this trip be for nothing too? Or will we get to see the boy?
Is he always like this? Bill Weboy asks Margaret. In a hurry?
The older I get, says George, the more impatient I get.
My husband, Margaret says, likes to get down to business.
A hell of a lot of men are like that. Weboy moves his jaw as if words could be chewed. Can’t wait to get to where they’re going. Women, in my experience, would as soon take their time. Enjoy the ride, so to speak.
If the two of you are through discussing the male character . . .
Tell you what, Bill Weboy says, let’s go inside and give the ranch a call. See if anybody’s home. Hell, maybe you can drive out there this morning and see that precious grandson of yours.
He is that to us, Mr. Weboy. Precious.
Doesn’t even need to be said, Mrs. Blackledge. No one doubts it for a moment. Bill Weboy starts for his house. Halfway there he stops and flings his rake onto what passes for a yard. He turns around to face the street once again. Lorna say
s she lived for a time with you two in a little town over in North Dakota. You run into problems like I got here? This was a dirt road up until two years ago, and it drained just fine. Then the city paved it, put in sidewalks, and those goddamn gutters and sewer grates. Which keep filling up with leaves and twigs. And ice. Then we’ve got to get out here and work to keep them clear or the goddamn street floods. And did we ever get to vote whether we wanted it paved or not? Hell no.
That’s civilization for you, Margaret says brightly.
Didn’t you used to be a public official? Weboy accuses George.
Used to be.
But you weren’t in charge of paving the streets, were you?
I didn’t much give a damn whether the streets were dirt or concrete. I was concerned with who walked or rode on them.
Bill Weboy’s grin rivals Margaret’s for its suddenness and its shine. Fair enough, he says. Follow me.
...
His home looks like a furniture store’s idea of a home. All the pieces are in place. The comfortable stuffed chair and the maple rocker. The floor lamp and the coffee table. The davenport with the reproduction of an English countryside above it. The ceramic figure of the terrier. The woven rug, the needlepoint pillow. But not a sign of a pleasure or a habit, good or bad.
Had your coffee yet? Bill Weboy asks. I could put the pot on.
We’re fine, Margaret replies. Thank you.
Well, make yourself at home. I’ll call out to the ranch and see what their schedule is like.
Bill Weboy walks out to the kitchen and soon he can be heard loudly asking the operator to connect him to a number.
Margaret whispers to George, No Mrs. Weboy?
George shrugs.
Can’t be, she says and sits on the davenport. George joins her. For a moment Margaret’s energy dips, and her eyes close longer than she’d like them to. When she opens them it’s to a man sitting blankly beside her as if he were waiting for the doctor to come in and say whether or not the cancer could be cut out.
What? Margaret whispers. What is it?
George gives his head a shake so slight you’d have to be his wife to catch it.
What? She puts her hand on his wrist.
You don’t want this man’s help, he says softly.
I need someone’s help. We can’t do this on our own.
George Blackledge turns a slow, cool look on his wife but there are no words behind this expression.
Bill Weboy reenters the room, rolling the knuckles of one hand in the palm of the other. You two have plans for supper?
We surely don’t.
How would you like to be guests of the Weboy clan out at the ranch?
We don’t want to be any trouble, answers George.
No trouble at all. My sister-in-law wants to meet you. Says you can swap grandpa-and-grandma stories. And just between me and you, she’s a hell of a cook. Wouldn’t be surprised but that she’s already got her hands in the flour, starting on a pie.
You’d have to give us directions. Margaret says this to Bill Weboy but she looks expectantly at her husband as she speaks.
Weboy shakes his head. Not a chance. I could be the best damn direction-giver in the world and you still wouldn’t find it. You’d be out there on Four Bridges Road and notice that not only do you not see four bridges, you don’t see a single one. And Ditch Trail is so named because that’s exactly where it ends—in a damn ditch. And you wouldn’t want to take County K, even if it gets you there, because it’d take you twice as long. No, you make your way back here at four o’clock and you can follow me.
The sun finds a gap in the clouds and a way around the water tower, and light momentarily enters Bill Weboy’s living room and shines on the faces of the aging man and woman on the couch. Light and shadow make them look as timeworn, riven, and hard as the bluffs hovering over this town. But in another moment the clouds shift again, the sharp light vanishes in favor of a general shadow, and a softness returns to Margaret Blackledge’s features. Thank you, she says. We’ll come back. We’ll follow you.
14.
BACK IN THE HUDSON, GEORGE SAYS, I’VE GOT NO USE FOR that man.
I told you, George. We need him.
What the hell for? Now we know Donnie’s people are here. We could ask around and see if we can get directions to the place.
Be sensible. We don’t know our way around this part of the world. We could crisscross the prairie for days and not find them.
George says nothing but shakes his head slowly. He turns the key in the ignition and, though the engine catches immediately, he keeps turning and lets the gnashing and growling of steel and grinding gears make an argument for him.
Find me a drugstore, Margaret says. If we’re going to be guests of the Weboys for supper, I need a few supplies.
Before he drives away, George Blackledge casts a long look back at Bill Weboy’s house. The skies have shifted once again, and a flash of sunlight turns all the house’s windows into mirrors. It’s impossible to determine whether that’s a man staring out from the kitchen or just a cloud shape reflected in the glass.
...
Margaret Blackledge paces back and forth in front of the cosmetic counter of Shaw’s Rexall, Gladstone’s Finest Pharmacy and Sundries, as if its display of creams, powders, lipsticks, and rouges is a puzzlement placed before her to test her knowledge of womanhood and self. A mirror on the counter invites customers to renew their commitment to illusion. This section of the store is redolent with perfume, floral, sweet, and pungent as the air can be only where it is closed in with walls and roof.
A clerk, an older woman as thin as an axe handle and with a similar curve to her spine, spots Margaret’s quandary and hurries over to help.
Meanwhile, in the back part of the store, George wanders among the belts and trusses, the hot-water bottles and the enema bags, the shelves of Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Kaopectate, Bromo-Seltzer, Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia, of Cloverine and Rosebud salves. He seems not in the least mystified by this array but moves among the products as if he were there simply to total up the indignities that can be visited upon a human body.
After she has made her purchases, Margaret retrieves her husband and they walk back out onto the streets of Gladstone.
My goodness, she says. I guess it’s been a while since I shopped for such things. I think I gave the clerk fits. What shade are you looking for? she asked me. Red, I just want red. But which red? she wanted to know. Margaret holds up her small bag as though it contained something foul. Maybe I should just gnaw my lips and pinch my cheeks and bring up a little color that way.
You don’t need the help, George says. Never did.
Well, I guess I fooled you into thinking so.
On their way to the car they walk past a man who slows down and scrutinizes the Blackledges carefully as they pass. The man wears a rust-colored suede coat, polished hand-stitched boots, and a white Stetson. He has a moustache waxed and trimmed to arrows that point in opposite directions. Once they are twenty yards beyond him, Margaret wonders aloud, What was troubling Mr. Fancy Hat?
He spotted us for strangers, George replies. He’d like to know what our business is in Gladstone. I couldn’t count how many times someone would call or come into the office to let me know there was a stranger in town.
But that was Dalton. In a city this size?
Stop me if I’ve told you this little tale before. I don’t want to turn into one of those old men who can’t go anywhere in his talk but where he’s already been. After the armistice had been signed, our company had weeks in London waiting for room on a ship to take us home. I went out for a walk one day and I wasn’t wearing my uniform. I never opened my mouth or did a damn thing that showed me for a Yank. At least I didn’t think so. But damned if those English folk didn’t take me for a stranger right away. I knew the look even then. And that was London. A million people probably. A town full of strangers, you might say. Yet when they saw me, they knew. I wasn’t one of them.
Let’s head back out to the campsite, Margaret suggests. Where we won’t have anybody staring holes in us.
George and Margaret Blackledge continue down the sidewalk, making their way past stores and businesses whose windows mirror a sky that has less luster than glass. With sidelong glances the Blackledges check their own reflections, watching themselves as another might for any sign that says they do not belong here.
15.
WITH SO MUCH UNKNOWN IN THIS LIFE, HOW LITTLE IT takes for a face, a grove of trees, an outcropping of stone to become familiar. And how powerful is the lure of the familiar. Propelled by something close to instinct, George and Margaret head back to their campsite to wait out the hours until they are led to their grandson.
On the way out of Gladstone, George asks Margaret, Maybe we should look into checking in to a hotel or motel?
Now? When we’re looking at the possibility that we might be heading home soon? With Jimmy?
The knuckles of both hands gripping the steering wheel are chapped, cracked, and have bled a little, something that happens to George every year when the cold weather comes. They’ll be like this until spring, spotted, flecked, and lined with blood that dries black and looks like dots and dashes of Morse code. He wears gloves when he works outside and he uses Bag Balm—Margaret has said, Soften up those hands, mister, if you want to put them on me—but no amount of protection or emollient can keep his hands from drying out like an animal’s hide staked in the sun. George takes a hand from the wheel as if to keep it from her sight.
Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself? he asks. You haven’t seen the boy or talked to his mother.
Ahead of myself . . . what a strange sight that would be.
This is something you do, Margaret. Count a thing as done because you want it so.
And what do you think gets something done, George? Doubt? Worry? Hesitation? For God’s sake, you don’t get across the river standing on the bank wondering if you can do it. You get wet.