Before We Sleep

by Jeffrey Lent

  She looked at Judith and said, “I don’t know. Honestly. On the one hand I think perhaps my dad was always really angry at her for what happened but covered it up to keep peace. Maybe even because he loved me. But there’s also this: The past few years my mother has not been the cheerful, sunny woman I remember as a young girl. It’s like she’d gotten pinched and mean, or maybe just unhappy with her life and doesn’t care who knows it. Nothing turned out in her life like she thought it would and she’s gotten old and bitter. Why, these last months they haven’t even shared a bed! And they never had any kids, the two of them. There was only me and all I was, clearly, was the biggest mistake of her life. It’s complicated—she fell in love with someone not quite to her family’s standard and she was hot-blooded and sure of herself and then he came home from Germany and it all fell apart as the years went on. That, honest to God is my best guess for how she became the way she is. A tired bitter woman with a wasted life.”

  Judith Potter had kept her eyes level on Katey throughout this. And held them upon her when Katey stopped. The silence in the room stretched like an old rubber band and Katey felt a headache coming on and wished she eaten something, the pit of her stomach a roil.

  Then, abruptly breaking the weight gathered within the room, Judith stood. And looked at Katey and said, “I see. Well, I can’t help you with all that. I think what you need to do just now, is walk out the front door and follow down to the barns. You’ll pass an old truck with dogboxes in the back. By the kennels. Brian will be there. Go talk to him. That’s what you need to do.”

  She turned and walked halfway to the door and paused just as Katey said, “But what do I say to him?”

  And Judith turned out of her pause and said, “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Then she was gone.

  When Katey stepped into the central hall she saw Judith at the far end by the back entrance leaning and talking to a girl, the older one in overalls and a checked shirt, Veronica. The girl who loved being with her father. Katey turned quickly and walked to the front door and let herself through the screen and down the steps to the pea-stone path.

  She walked past her truck and down the farm lane. Beyond the pond there was a big willow and then a long stretch of field. Past the tractor and alongside the row of weathered sheds. Some were open-fronted and held machinery. A couple were of a good size, of two stories and with a window set into the chinked-log walls, a slab-plank door with a wooden latch worn smooth. Behind the second was a wire pen opened out the side and back and she could smell the hogs before she saw them. Three big white- and black-spotted sows with litters of young piglets rooting in the ground, the sows in a muddy patch the far end of the pen, under the shade of tall lank trees with fine spindly leaves. One of the sows lifted its head and grunted at her and the piglets all scrambled toward their mothers. The lane curved right and the blue truck was parked along the curve. There were a few dents and scrapes in the body and the bed of the truck held wooden boxes built-in, with ventilation holes and panels cut out of the doors that faced the tailgate, the panels covered over with fine hard wire mesh. And then she saw the kennels and dog-runs. The kennels were also old squared timber buildings but had many more windows let into them and the runs were broad and long, divided into long avenues onto the grass and under the shade of more trees, these large oaks. Each run had either young dogs or a female with a litter of puppies. And to the side of that were a pair of stand-alone kennels with shorter runs that were raised a couple of feet off the ground, the flooring of the same hard mesh and in each lounged large dogs. The studs, she guessed. All of the dogs had short white coats marked with splotches and speckles of either black or liver color. But for one of the females with puppies, whose spots were more yellow, like lemon drops. Some of her pups had those spots and some were liver-splotched.

  And then she heard a door opening in the shed behind her and she turned as a man stepped out into the sun and blinked his eyes against the brightness and they stood looking at each other.

  He wore hard leather boots that laced up to just below his knee, with old khaki trousers tucked into them, neatly, so they ballooned evenly about the tops of the boots. A white shirt with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows and open at the neck. A metal whistle hung on a lanyard against his chest. He was wiry but well-muscled, the skin on his arms, neck and face weathered and sunburnt to the color of tobacco. His eyes, like hers, were deeply set and large, dark brown. And his hair was pomaded to a gentle roll off his forehead, cut short, the same thick rich honey-brown. He squinted at her.

  She said, “Hi.”

  “Well, there you are,” he said. “Heard you were coming. Then, a course, saw your truck as I came in with the dogs. Oliver and Ruth Snow’s girl.”

  This was not what she expected. She said, “That’s right.” And he sounded almost as southern as his wife, in ways more so. As if this country had rubbed into him, been absorbed through his skin and changed him.

  He said, “Mother called Judith. After you showed up there.” And speaking of his home she heard Maine. Muthuh. “I understand you’re looking for me on account of your father. That he’s been struggling again. Or something like that. I’m sorry to hear it. He was an important person to me. Saved my life. But that was a lifetime ago. I don’t see how I could help, now. I’d do what I could, of course. But,” he paused and spread his arms wide before bringing them back and crossing them over his chest, “I’ve got a pretty full plate here, what with the farm and the family and all. Mostly, life rolls on and a man rolls with it. But again, a man can’t always call what life demands of him. And so, a troubled man, one so his own daughter chases after another man down nigh half the country, needs help, you pay attention to that. So tell me. What can I do for you?”

  She looked about, as if to seek out an answer to all of this. One of the stud dogs had stood in his run and was looking at her. She looked upon the dog and saw how he was muscled and strung, relaxed and alert, all at once. And looked back at the man before her and saw he wasn’t so different. She said, “All of that was a lie. My father doesn’t need you. You know who I am.”

  He rubbed one boot against the ground and looked up at the sky as he lifted a pack of Luckies from his shirt pocket and tapped one out, stuck it in the corner of his mouth. Then his eyes came back to her as he palmed a lighter from his khakis and spun the wheel and blew smoke. He said, “That was not my proudest moment. What do you want of me?”

  “It’s a nice thing to know I’m not a proudest moment.”

  Again he looked off, smoked, then looked back. “It’s not you. I never knew about you. I was never told. Think on that. So, again I say, what do you want of me?”

  Without knowing she was doing so she looked down to the ground as he had and kicked one sneaker against the ground and then looked up at the sky and felt the heat of the day drain against her as she dropped her eyes to again meet his. She said, “Nothing.”

  “Now, that can’t be true. After all the work you went to.” And his voice was kind.

  She blinked and was near tears and she said, “I don’t want to make problems for you. Not the first one. Which I guess I already have. Your wife certainly knows who I am.”

  “But we weren’t talking about her, were we? I can handle Judith. Probably. Which is what makes life interesting, tell the truth. So, then.” He waited, eyes clear upon her.

  “All right,” she said. Took a breath and said, “What I’d like, is to know a bit about who you are. Is that crazy? I don’t even know how that could happen. And I’m really ready to just get back in my truck and drive off, I want you to know that. And I told your wife that, also.”

  “I bet you did.”

  “I did. And I meant it.”

  “I’m sure you did. What did she say?”

  “She said I should come down here and talk to you.”

  “And here you are. Talking to me. Tell you what. What say we take a ride and talk a bit. Maybe talk as I want also? How’s that, for
a start?”

  “I could do that.”

  He hitched at the waist of his pants. Then he said, “I got to fill a couple of water bowls first. And then we’ll get along.”

  “Could I see the dogs? I had a great dog, a beagle that died three years ago but he was a wonderful old guy.”

  He looked at her, again a short and dense study. He said, “Of course you can. What did you say your name was? I can’t recall, just now. I’m sure Judith has it nailed, my mother, too. But I have a hard time with names, not sure why. It works against me, the work I do. But I get around it. There’s a way to greet a man you already know, who’s about to spend good money, and not let on you can’t recall his name. And he will reveal it to you, each time. That’s the truth.” He grinned at her, a wide full smile. Then he said, “Funny thing is, I never forget a dog’s name.”

  She told him her name and then said, “What should I call you?”

  “Katey,” he said, “I think you should call me Brian. That okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Come on, then,” he said. He turned and went toward the large kennel building with all those windows cut in. There was a path around to the side and he walked there with her following, to a door. A regular door with glass windows in the upper half and flower beds either side of the path. Beside the door there hung a bell from an iron brace, the bell about half the size of a school bell or the bell in the meetinghouse at home. With a chain dangling from the clapper that if pulled side to side would set the bell to ringing. It was an old bell, dark with age, the bronze gone blue and black and a shade of green like a precious stone, jade or some sort of turquoise. She looked at it and knew she was seeing something that held an importance but didn’t know precisely what that was. A farm bell, for alarms or warnings of some kind.

  Then they were inside and it didn’t seem to be a kennel after all but some sort of office before she realized this was only the end of the building. There was a desk with a telephone and gooseneck lamp, a pair of heavy leather chairs and a leather couch. Along one wall stood a sideboard that held ranks of cut-glass decanters not so different from those at her grandmother’s house, and she guessed the cupboard below held tumblers of the same cut glass. On the interior log walls hung a pair of prints of dogs and men out in the woods, the fields, birds lofting up in spectral lovely light. A third of a log with quail lined up atop it. Feathers and bark and autumn leaves so real as to touch. The quail clearly dead. Brian Potter stepped to a rack and took down a short leather thong and bunched it in his hand and glanced at her. He said, “This is the office. Truth is, the business end of this farm is done in the house but when the gentlemen come for the hunt they like coming in here. Where they meet the dogs and we talk what we’re going to do and where. Afterward we come back here and I pour drinks and we talk about what we just did. Because,” he went on, “nothing seals a memory better than recounting it. I hope I’m not boring you. What I do is all of a piece, even if the fragments of it, some are more interesting for me than others. But I think most all of life is that way.” He lifted his hand and let dangle free the leather thong and she saw it was a short leash that forked at the end into two strips each ending with a D-ring and a small brass snap. He said, “I’m going to run that water and then we’ll take a pair of young dogs out and drive around and watch em work. Sound good?”

  She nodded, stunned and within another world and hungry for it.

  They went through another door and were in the kennel then. The dogs had heard them coming and were piled up at the pen doors, whining and wagging tails, happy dogs. Brian Potter took a coiled hose off the wall and went along the row of pens and swung out stainless-steel water pans and emptied them into a drain and used the hose to fill them and replace them. As he went, crouching and rising and crouching again, he talked.

  “They all go back to a dog named Diablo, though doubtless there was some before him. But that’s the line. And a bitch, around the same time called Blue—legend is her ticking was so light it faded into the white so it looked blue more than black. My guess is she had some setter blood in her—those days, bird dogs were bird dogs, and setters and pointers came later. This was way back before the war, you understand? My wife’s grandfather’s father, but more likely that man’s grandfather. Or more. A long time, is what I’m saying and no one knows how long before they started keeping paper records. At some point, or points, it was all in one man’s head. That’s an amazing thing. Both that it happened that way and also some one of those men figured out to start writing it all down. Knowing what he had. Now see here, these are the couple little girls I thought we’d watch work this morning.”

  He’d knelt down before a pen of young dogs and slipped open the door only enough to slowly work one, then another dog out from the scrambling mess of them all anxious and wanting to go. He ignored the two, who circled behind him and nosed up against him, as he slowly pressed the rest back and shut the door. Only then, crouched on his knees, did he swivel around and run his hands over the two freed dogs and let them bump their muzzles against him, before he clipped the leash on their collars and stood. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get these girls into the truck and go see we can find some birds.”

  When he said that final word both dogs turned and tricked up their heads and looked at him. As if he’d just made clear what the morning held. He ignored this as if it was only to be expected and motioned to Katey and they walked out another door into the yard and up the lane to his truck. He dropped the tailgate and popped open one of the doors in the boxes in the bed of the truck as he reached down and unclipped the leash and said, “Up.” But both dogs had already launched effortlessly upward into the box. He shut the door and tested the bolt and lifted the tailgate and slapped it into place and looked at Katey and said, “Shall we ride?”

  They didn’t turn and go back out to the road but instead bumped down the lane and proceeded past fields on both sides until they came to another lane that made a crossroad and turned left there and went on along. Maybe five miles an hour. He fired up another cigarette and let his right hand slop along the top of the wheel as he smoked with the left and otherwise held his hand out the window, or gestured about as he kept talking.

  He said, “It’s getting to be a little late in the morning to be doing this. A bit warm. Not for the dogs but for the coveys. It’s a lot of young birds this early in the summer and I like to leave em be once the sun is up good. We’ll ride on to a place I haven’t bothered in several days. Just so you can see it but also so the birds we trouble are cool. It’s a trick this time a year—the young dogs need the work but the birds need to be left be. But it’s also twelve hundred acres and some more and I got it all in my head. It’ll work out fine, you’ll see.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He glanced over at her. “Now listen: I can putter along and talk about all of what we’re seeing and doing because it’s second nature. You want a lesson in dogs and birds, by which I mean English pointers and bobwhite quail, I can give it. I’ve done it a thousand times. Or what all’s planted in the fields and why. Or, and you’ll see, the different pine plantations we’ll pass by and maybe a couple we’ll go through. The creeks and hardwood bottoms. Every bit of it makes money, not just for birds, but it’s also part of a plan to make a good place for birds. Which, those birds, fall to late winter, make as much money as all the rest put together. Them and the dogs, of course. Outside of Judith, which is not a clear way of speaking, those things are what brought me here and kept me here. So they’re a most central part of my life.”

  Then he paused and tightened his expression and drove and she waited, feeling the silence between them, wanting him to collect whatever he was thinking and bring it back to her. Finally he ground his smoke out on the floorboards, glanced at her and said, “I appreciate how tough it was to learn what you did and even more, take on the job of running me to earth. It doesn’t make a lick of difference that I never knew about you. The important thing here, is
you learned about me and I want to do right by you. And I won’t know what that is unless you tell me. I’m saying, you can have at it.”

  They bumped along in silence for a few minutes. Then Katey said, “Can I have one of your cigarettes?”

  “You hadn’t ought to smoke, you know that don’t you?”

  She looked at him. He then drove with his knees as he pulled out his pack, tapped one out, lighted it and handed it to her. She took it and blew toward the ceiling of the cab of the truck. He turned the wheel and they went down a rutted lane with hardwood trees tangled with vines and thick undergrowth on both sides and labored through a small muddy creek and then up the other side and out again into more fields.

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “I said you could.”

  “No. I only have one. That I have to ask.”

  “All right,” he said. “Shoot.”

  She smoked a bit more. It was hot and still, the fields, the trees, all steady, upright, no breeze to press upon them, no breeze through the open windows. Looking straight ahead she said, “I heard all the stories. As much as most would tell, at least. Including your own ‘Not your best moment.’ So,” she paused and turned on the seat to face him, to read his face as much as hear his voice. And to gird herself for his possible anger. “Did you rape my mother?”