At the height of Landon’s problems, with not enough money even to pay for his kids’ soccer registration, he had asked for a loan. Henry took care of the soccer registration and made sure the family had food and weren’t foreclosed on, but he wouldn’t loan Landon any extra cash because he feared his son would gamble it away. Landon said he had to have it. Henry told him he should have thought of that before. One night two men came to Landon’s house, and unlike in the movies when they might have hit him across the kneecaps with a crowbar, these “associates” calmly requested Landon, in front of his wife, Linda, sign over the title to his Ford truck. It was either that or they’d take Landon and do to him what did happen to such people in movies.
Somehow, with the help of an ex-cop he knew, Landon got the gorillas off his back, because he still owed them far more than his truck was worth. But he also never forgave Henry for not loaning him the money when it could have stopped the men from stripping him of his truck and his dignity in front of Linda. He blamed Henry for that humiliation and for Linda’s leaving him. But Henry had not made Landon gamble for days at a time and show up sleepless in front of his worried family. Henry was not the one who lost money at casinos in retooled Colorado mining towns—savings that Linda had put away for the kids’ educations.
Meg had prevailed upon Henry to please, for the sake of family peace, make a good-faith gesture of giving him a loan. She called it a symbolic act, if nothing else. Henry refused; he was adamant in his opposition; he didn’t believe in symbolic acts that had no force behind them; it was time for Landon to face facts. Meg wanted the loan to come directly from Henry, but eventually she gave the money to Landon herself. It was too late by that point to save the marriage or get back his truck. For all Henry knew he had gambled away that money too. What he did know for certain was that Landon had not used the word “Dad” once, or even addressed Henry by name, for over four years, ever since his divorce. He was just “you.”
The hole, finished now, had a mound of dirt beside it. Landon got down from his machine and came over to where Henry and the sisters were standing. “She’s too big for me to get inside the loader, so I’m going to have to push her in. You good with that?”
“We’re okay with it,” Esther said. “But we don’t want to watch you pile dirt on top of her. We’re not delicate about it. We just want to remember her all clean.”
“Fair enough,” said Landon and climbed back up. He turned the equipment around to use the front loader. Lulu lay about five feet from the pit. Landon inched the loader forward, slowly nudging the animal until he pushed her into the grave. She landed with a thump on her right side, her legs sticking up at a slight angle against the south wall.
The sisters came over to Henry with a paper grocery bag they’d been holding. “Here you are,” they said, handing him the sack. Inside were a bouquet of daisies and a legal-size envelope with Lulu’s name printed in blue marker on the front. He looked at the hole, he looked at the horse that now filled it, he looked at the sisters. He realized they wanted him to somehow get down in the ten-foot hole and respectfully place the letter and flowers on top of Lulu. “We’d be so grateful,” Esther said.
“Landon,” Henry called up to his son, who was waiting for the sisters to walk off so he could start filling in the grave.
“What?”
“Come down here.”
“Why?”
“Please.”
Landon shut off the motor and lumbered down from the cab.
“Excuse us a moment,” Henry said to the sisters, whose firm smiles clearly indicated their expectation that the bouquet and letter would be laid by a kind and tender hand on Lulu.
Henry guided Landon a few feet away from the sisters. Holding the daisies and the note, he felt as if he might be courting someone rather than burying a dead horse.
“What’s wrong?” Landon asked. “I’ve got to get back soon.”
“Listen, they want us to put these with Lulu.”
“So throw them in there.”
“That’s disrespectful. I think it’s really important to them.”
Landon glanced over at the sisters. They had turned their attention to the grave and were peering down at Lulu in her final resting place.
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Landon asked. How he wished his son could say one sentence to him without contempt.
“I’ll have to get down there,” Henry explained.
Landon looked away. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. His son wasn’t a drinker, never had been. He’d gotten so drunk one time when he was sixteen that he’d wound up with alcohol poisoning and never touched liquor again. Instead he’d turned to gambling, telling Henry two years later when it came time for college and he refused to go that he wanted to be a professional poker player. Henry had ridiculed the idea, which he dearly regretted, because his scorn infuriated the boy and only made him more determined to prove Henry wrong. Well, he hadn’t been wrong, just tactless, and now his six-foot-three, two-hundred-fifty-pound son spent most of his days squeezing his frame into a cab meant for a man half his size. “I’ll lower you down there. It’s the fastest way. We can’t walk a mile back and get a ladder,” Landon said.
Henry looked at the front loader. His bones ached at the thought of getting inside the bucket. “Okay,” he agreed.
They walked over to tell the sisters.
“We hope it’s not putting you out too much,” said Esther, pulling at the cuffs of her jacket, its suede collar worn with holes.
“No trouble at all,” said Henry, thinking how could he say otherwise to these two?
Landon got back up in the cab and Henry lay down in the bucket, folding his arms across his chest like a dead man. On his way down to a dead horse. “Careful now—”
Landon jerked the bucket up, rolling Henry toward the back. Henry closed his eyes, fully expecting Landon to drop him from an unnatural height, but his son lowered him smoothly as far as the loader could reach. He had to jump down a couple feet to the ground.
He squeezed in between the horse’s back and the right wall of the grave, then placed the flowers and envelope on the horse’s neck, giving the stiff creature a pat. “Done!” he shouted up.
And here, when he tried to turn around to walk back to the loader, is where he slipped and felt something pop. He fell flat upon the horse’s neck.
Landon called down. “You okay?”
“I don’t think so,” said Henry. He was unable to move. The horse smelled of rot. Flies buzzed Henry’s face. Coarse hairs from the animal’s mane probed his nostrils like toothpicks.
“What’s wrong?”
“I—I can’t move.” He had to save his breath. Even talking was painful.
“Get back in the bucket,” Landon said.
“I can’t,” Henry protested. “Have the sisters call for help.”
“They left,” Landon said.
“Left?”
“They didn’t want to see the dirt piled on. Listen, just drag yourself into the bucket, and I’ll get you out of there, okay?”
“You don’t understand, Landon. I can’t move.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want to; his will had nothing to do with it.
“You sure?”
“For God’s sake, I’m certain.”
“Okay, then,” Landon said.
“Okay what? ”
And then Henry heard Landon raising the loader’s bucket up. What was he doing? Leaving him here?
Then he knew. Of course. What else would he expect? It was very simple—he would tell anyone who would listen. It was clear as day once you thought about it. You didn’t have to be a psychologist. You just had to know what it meant to be a father, and how you could love your son but let crap get in the way of that. Those little moments when your son failed a test and you rejected his miserable excuses for not trying harder. Or when he left your tools outside in the rain to rust, and you made him carry them (and a brick too, just to make the point) back and forth from sc
hool to teach him a lesson. Or after he came to you in tears at ten years old, so young then, saying that the kids at camp had ridiculed him about his milky white skin and girlish breasts. He tried to tell you about it, but all you could say was go talk to your mother, to hide your own disgust. Was it any wonder, Henry would ask himself when the ground turned hard with the first frost and the sisters died within months of each other and their land was sold off after a contentious probate hearing involving dubious relations who claimed to have known them, was it any wonder that he would look up and see the bucket above him ready to deposit its payload? Clods of dirt escaped from its teeth, raining down on him like baptismal fire, stinging him with their spite, dusting his eyes and pillorying his mouth, until he screamed for mercy and his son said, “It’s okay, Dad. Just a little more.”
Navajo Café
They had left the Grand Canyon early in the morning and driven onto the Navajo Indian reservation in search of a Navajo taco. A friend of Owen’s had urged him to make sure he stopped out West for a Navajo taco: a large wheel of fried dough, like a popover, smothered in beans, green chiles, lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese. Except that Devra, Owen’s ten-year-old daughter, refused to touch her smaller child’s portion, now that it had finally arrived. She said it looked like a cow pie. It did look like a cow pie, Owen agreed, only a good cow pie. Still, she’d gone into a sulk, stubbornly refusing to eat or even talk to him.
She had grown increasingly pouty and uncooperative on the trip. Last year’s vacation had been so easy that he should have known not to expect the same results this year. But he thought she would be old enough for a cross-country trip (they lived in Connecticut) to see the West: the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, Monument Valley, Yellowstone, the Rockies, Carlsbad Caverns, Stuckey’s. They’d planned a mule ride into the Grand Canyon, down the Bright Angel Trail. At the last moment Devra became frightened and wouldn’t stay on her mule, kicking at the indifferent animal, who was evidently used to temperamental children and just continued urinating without pause. Finally, Owen had to lift her off; they were holding up the mule train. He settled for a cup of hot chocolate and an “I Hiked the Canyon” T-shirt in the visitors’ lodge.
She had been hysterical like this once before, two years ago, when the sock incident happened. It was the anniversary of her mother’s death. Owen had been walking by Devra’s bedroom when he overheard her say to her friend CeeCee, who was spending the night, “I’ll trade you one divorcée and one old maid for a widower and an adulteress.” Her friend had asked, “What’s the adult dress look like?”
Where did she learn these things? Owen had wondered. He carefully supervised her TV watching. He could understand the widower—Owen had been referred to as that—but the divorcée, the adulteress? “Deal,” CeeCee agreed, and then there was so much squealing and giggling and howling that he opened the door to see what was going on. They’d stuffed socks with toilet paper and put rubber bands around the toes to make heads. About thirty sock dolls were on either side of the bed. In the middle was a Dutch oven filled with steaming water. One drenched sock doll tied to a stick was being dunked in the water. “What are you doing?” Owen asked, more incredulous than angry. But they took his tone for a scolding and both burst into tears, cowering together in the corner as if they’d committed the most shameful act possible. “You didn’t knock, Daddy! You didn’t knock first!” Devra screamed out through her tears, shaking all over, this one pitiful comment her only defense against a torturous punishment she seemed to believe would result from the evil deed. Her little friend was so frightened she began hiccupping, choking on her tears. “It’s okay,” Owen reassured them. “It’s all right to play. Go back to playing. I was just wondering if you wanted some popcorn. I didn’t mean to barge in,” and he left the room quickly.
Downstairs, the image of all those puff-headed sock dolls, with wadded up toilet paper and rubber bands twisted around their necks, stayed with him. He put some oil in a pan for popcorn. Suddenly CeeCee ran down the stairs, grabbed the front doorknob with both hands, and dashed out before he could catch her. Owen went back upstairs, as nonthreatening as he could make himself, picking up a plant from the hallway so it would look as though he were on his way to water it. He knocked on her door. No answer. He opened it and came in with the fern. She was already in bed with her pajamas on, the light turned off. Two hours before her bedtime, it was only seven-thirty. She kept her face pressed into the pillow, still trembling, and pretending to be asleep in the midst of her violent shivering. He stroked her hair, which had always calmed her before, but now only made her dig her face harder into the pillow, filling him with pity and sadness and a terrible helplessness at not knowing what to do. He sat with her for an hour. Even after she was asleep he had to unclench her fingers from his pant leg. On the way out, he picked up one of the sock dolls.
He examined it carefully, unable to see why she had been so terrified at being caught; it wasn’t the first time she’d been a little mischievous…a couple of rolls of toilet paper gone, but no big deal. Then he suddenly saw that these weren’t the socks he washed every week at all; these were Amanda’s socks, her mother’s. Devra had taken them from one of the trunks Owen had packed after the accident. She’d opened the trunk, and made puppets from her dead mother’s socks, meaning to punish and drown them in hot water. No wonder the poor child was frightened. Caught playing a harmless game, in her mind she must have connected it with all sorts of horrible malevolence. Owen went back upstairs and sat by her bed so he’d be there if she woke up, wondering if the game were some unconscious anger Devra needed to express against her mother for abandoning her.
“I heard a story about a little boy who also wouldn’t eat his food,” Owen told her now, trying to get her to take a bite. Devra was watching some Indian children at a table on the other side of the café. They were sipping Cokes and eating hamburgers. In fact, he saw no one else eating Navajo tacos. An old Navajo woman came in wearing a squash-blossom necklace against a blue velveteen blouse, and long, flowing skirts. “That’s a traditional Indian outfit,” Owen pointed out to Devra. A Navajo man in the booth ahead glanced around at Owen. He looked young, educated. Owen thought perhaps his remark had been patronizing, but he didn’t see any harm in identifying the way a different culture dressed. It wasn’t as though everyone in here looked the same. Their waitress, for instance, appeared a typical enough American teenager—her hair layered fashionably on the sides, and she wore a gold chain instead of Indian jewelry around her neck.
“There’s this little boy named Stanley,” explained Owen, hoping the story would distract her enough to eat. “Stanley is five years old and has never said a single word.” Devra, in spite of herself, turned toward him with interest. “One day he’s sitting at the breakfast table and he says out of the clear blue, ‘The oatmeal is lumpy.’ His parents are very very happy. ‘Stanley,’ his mom says, ‘you spoke, darling! Your first words! We’re so pleased!’ After the excitement dies down a little, Dad leans over and asks, ‘How did this happen, son? I mean, you haven’t spoken a word for five years and suddenly you talk. Not that we’re finding fault, but why is that, son?’ And Stanley looks at them with a very serious face and says, ‘Up until now things have been just fine.’ ”
Devra stared at him.
“Well, I thought it was funny,” said Owen, not knowing whether she didn’t get it or she just had better taste than he did. “Okay, Miss Silent Puss, I think we’ll call it a day since you insist on being such bad company. I’m not going to waste my breath trying to get you to eat—or talk. You have no reason to behave this way.”
“I do, too.”
Her first words in an hour. “And what is that?”
She didn’t answer him. She continued sitting with folded arms. Her hair was too long and he wished she’d agree to have it cut. One day some demonic meatball would yank it back on the playground and she’d be in a wheelchair the rest of her life. She was small and thin for her age, with green eyes that
could be impenetrable or determined, as they were now, or so glassy and ethereal that he worried where her mind went. She was at a stage where she wouldn’t let herself be seen undressed, or wear shorts unless she had tights underneath. When he asked her why not—she had such cute legs—she broke into tears and said they were ugly green celery sticks and not part of this world. They belonged to Udau, a mythical playmate she used to blame everything on, whom she hadn’t mentioned in years.
He asked the waitress for the check. “She had a big breakfast,” Owen said, excusing Devra’s untouched meal. “You don’t have to wrap it,” he added, although the girl hadn’t given any indication of doing so. While she went to make change, the Indian in the booth in front, who had glanced at him, stood up and stretched. He wore a leather vest over a faded pink union shirt, wraparound sunglasses, and on his wrist a heavy silver bracelet embedded with a fat piece of turquoise. He kept nodding at Owen. It was peculiar. None of the other Indians gave him a second look, while this one seemed ready to dance with him. Finally Owen felt uncomfortable enough to say something. “Excuse me, do you know how far we are from Flagstaff?” The Indian just stared at him uncomprehendingly, rolling his shoulders back. His neck was muscular and loose, cracking freely. Owen listened to the bones popping, the Indian sucking air through his teeth—his thumbs hooked at the waist around empty belt loops. “Flagstaff, Arizona?” Owen repeated. Maybe he didn’t understand English. Or was slow. Or on drugs.
The Indian came over to their table. He squatted down so his chin was even with the edge. He took off his sunglasses, looked deeply at Owen, then at Devra, then back at Owen, and then sang in a warbling voice:
“I got those walking talking crying Yiddish blues. Oh, baby, ain’t I so low. I got me backaches and sideaches and bellyaches and heartaches. I got me the way way way way down walking talking crying Yiddish blues. I got the meanest old mean, I got the hurtest old hurt, I got the troublest old trouble, I got me those walking talking crying Yiddish blues.”
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