As Good As Gone

by Larry Watson

  “You want me to tuck them in at night?”

  “Ann and Will don’t need that kind of treatment,” Bill says brusquely. “But if there’s anything else, you damn well better provide it.”

  His father’s smile widens, but not one extra ounce of mirth enters the room. “What are you trying to do, son—threaten me into loving those children?”

  “If I thought I could, that’s exactly what I’d do.”

  His father says nothing but turns back to the contents of his suitcase.

  “But we both know it doesn’t work that way, don’t we, Dad?”

  Calvin Sidey looks up as if he hasn’t heard any of the words whose saying required so much of his son’s courage. “You have packing of your own to do, don’t you?”

  The smell of mildew hangs in the air. Since both father and son have made their home here, it’s an odor familiar to both men, and as it enters their nostrils, it evokes memory, as smells almost invariably do. But neither Calvin nor Bill Sidey can find the other often enough in remembrance, and they stand in this concrete room with a suitcase yawning open between them, a distance that might as well be as wide as a canyon.

  ONCE HE CAN BE certain that his son has reached the top of the stairs and won’t be coming back with another warning or piece of advice, Calvin proceeds with his unpacking.

  Into the dresser’s deep second drawer, Calvin stacks his four shirts and two pair of Levi’s. He hangs his black suit from a nail. And why the hell, he wonders, did he bother bringing a suit? Maybe he packed it simply because a funeral occasioned his last trip to Gladstone, so that’s what the town has turned into—the place where his few remaining friends are likely to drop dead and Calvin might be called upon to tote another coffin. His toilet kit and his copy of Catullus he sets on top of the dresser. Into the top drawer he puts his kerchiefs and his pocket watch. Only a few items remain in the suitcase, and he takes them out and tucks them under the T-­shirts in the top drawer, where he expects them to remain, unused, strictly in case of emergency: an unopened pint of Canadian Club whiskey, a box of ammunition, and a Colt .45 semiautomatic, the sidearm issued to soldiers in the First World War.

  Calvin closes the empty suitcase, clasps the latches, and slides it under the bed. He smooths the bedspread, his index finger catching on a loose tuft . . . He’d had pneumonia as a child, stricken with the disease during a particularly frigid winter. His parents’ bedroom, now the room with the air-­conditioning unit that cools his son and daughter-­in-­law, was the warmest in the house, and young Calvin was put to bed in there. His parents had a chenille bedcovering, like this one, and when Calvin’s recovery was almost complete, he relieved his boredom by plucking out one tuft after another. When his mother caught him in the midst of this activity, she asked him an unanswerable question: “Does destruction give you pleasure?”

  Calvin’s son has placed a wooden chair next to the bed to serve as a nightstand, and on the chair seat is a tin ashtray and a wind-­up alarm clock. Next to them Calvin puts his tin of Sir Walter Raleigh, a packet of rolling papers, and a box of matches.

  He walks over to the stairs but without the intention of ascending. Linoleum covers the basement floor, and Calvin lifts the linoleum and rolls it back to reveal the cement underneath.

  Pauline asked him to come down into the basement. That too was during the winter, but if Calvin recalls correctly, it was one of the mild years, an open winter. He’d been busy with something, real estate paperwork probably, since so many evenings seemed filled with it, and he resented being called away from his desk. But Pauline told him that Bill asked for them, so Calvin followed her down the stairs.

  Bill couldn’t have been more than five or six, and he was astride the stick horse that seemed to accompany him everywhere but to school and church.

  “See how fast I go,” Bill said, and began to gallop around the circumference of the room.

  After four circuits, Bill stopped in front of his parents and breathlessly asked, “How fast?”

  Pauline clapped her hands enthusiastically and said, “Oh fast! Very, very fast!”

  “But how fast?” Bill insisted on knowing.

  Calvin caught on before his wife did. The previous summer the family had attended the Florence County Fair, which featured horse races. The Sideys had seats in the grandstand right next to old Doc Vincent, an area veterinarian, who had a stop watch he was using to time the winning horses. What Bill was asking for when he galloped around the basement was an official time.

  Calvin took out his pocket watch and commanded his son, “Around the track again.” Only then did Calvin notice that there really was a track. With chalk Bill had drawn a wavering, lopsided oval on the basement floor. And around it he raced again, slapping his own haunches as he ran, his shoes clap-­clapping on the cement.

  There’s not a trace of that chalk line under the linoleum now, but Calvin has a troubling suspicion that his son still wastes his time running in circles.

  EIGHT

  Because of the long drive ahead of them, Bill and Marjorie Sidey attend the first service instead of the second at Gladstone’s Olivet Lutheran Church. Their presence, along with their children’s, causes a minor disruption in the church. The Sideys sit in their usual pew, failing to realize that in doing so they’re taking the place of the Hurds, the family that always occupies that space at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. The Hurds, unwilling to say anything but mildly flustered, slide into the pew where the Froelichs usually sit. Fortunately, this ripple of confusion and displacement goes no further. Diane Froelich simply smiles and waves at the Sideys and the Hurds, then leads her husband and three daughters to a pew at the back of the church, a space generally reserved for irregular attendees, late arrivals, or wives who have not been able to persuade spouses or children to accompany them.

  EARLIER IN THE SUMMER, Will Sidey got into trouble for fidgeting and kicking the pew in front of him during the service. In the midst of his father’s lecture on piety and respect, Will blurted out, “Dad, I didn’t even know I was doing it!” At that, his father’s heart seemed to soften, and he told Will that he realized sitting still for an hour could be difficult. When the boredom gets to be too much for you, Bill Sidey told his son, “Go ahead and tune Pastor Sodegard out for a while. Let your mind roam a bit.” He leaned forward and confided to his son, “I’ve often planned out my whole week during one of his sermons.”

  This Sunday, Will Sidey plans out a good deal more than a week. Sometime during his grandfather’s visit, Will is going to ask him what it will take for Will to become a cowboy. Maybe he’ll ask his grandfather if, when Will’s parents return from Missoula, he can go live with his grandfather for the rest of the summer. After the latest trip down to the river with his friends, Will feels he has to get out of Gladstone.

  The beer that Will stole never got very cold, and when Will took his turn sipping from the can, the warm, bitter foam bubbled astringently back into his throat and he began to cough.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Stuart said, “whiskey’s supposed to do that to you, not beer!”

  When they lit fat, cigar-­sized chunks of driftwood and attempted to smoke them, Will had to puff while trying—impossibly—not to breathe through his nose. If dog shit could be set on fire, it would smell, Will was certain, like burning driftwood. They waded through a waist-­high channel—shrieking when the icy water hit their genitals—hoping to get to the very edge of a sandbar where they could cast their lures into the river’s main current. Before they reached their destination, however, they came upon a pothole teeming with frogs.

  The hole, shallow and not much bigger around than a kitchen table, must have been created when the river shrugged and left a tiny pond behind. A good rain upriver would probably allow its warm, stagnant water to join the rest of the river, but for now it—and its frogs—had nothing to do but steam under the summer sun.

  Will wasn’t sure whose idea it was or if it even began with an idea, but soon they were pickin
g up lengths of driftwood and killing frogs. Someone flipped a frog in the air with a stick, someone else took a baseball swing at a flying or leaping frog, and soon dead or dying amphibians were everywhere, the pink loops of their intestines littering the sand and their blood swirling in the water. Will didn’t actually kill any frogs himself; when he pretended to spear them with the forked end of his stick, he was actually prodding them toward the water, the sanctuary most of them seemed to seek. But this ruse didn’t work for long. Bobby Mueller started beating the pond’s surface, yelling, “Frog soup! Frog soup!” as he flailed away. At that point, Will simply backed away from the boys. They didn’t even notice he was no longer with them.

  And yet it was not until after all this—the taste of warm beer, the stench of burning driftwood, the sight of the blood-­slaughter of frogs—not until they were walking their bikes through the soft sand on the way back up to River Road, that Will’s disgust with those boys, boys he couldn’t find a way not to call his friends, became so great that he determined there was no other solution for him but to leave the place where he had lived all his life.

  Stuart turned his bike around from the head of the line and came back to Will. “Hey, Sidey,” Stuart said, “have you come up with some kind of deal so’s we can spy on your sister?”

  “Deal . . . ?”

  “You know. So’s we can watch her naked in her bedroom or in the biffy even.”

  “Biffy?”

  “I got to tell you, the bathroom would be cool because when I was jerking off last night that’s what I was thinking about. I was in your bathroom with the shower curtain closed almost all the way, but when your sister came in and started to strip I was watching her the whole time. Then she opened the curtain and seen me there, and she wanted it bad as me, so I fucked her right there, the both of us slipping around like . . . like . . .”

  “Like frogs?”

  “Frogs! Shit, Sidey, what’s with you? Frogs . . . Hell no, not frogs. Do you even know what people look like when they screw?”

  “We don’t have a shower curtain,” Will said. “We have a sliding door.”

  “A sliding door? A sliding door? Jesus Christ, I was just saying that because . . . Fuck it. Forget the bathroom. It doesn’t have to be the bathroom. How about her bedroom? You know Billy Doyne, don’t you? His sister? With the big knockers? She was a basketball cheerleader last year. My brother said they used to spy on her all the time. They stood on a box outside her bedroom window. He said they used to watch her squeeze her pimples. She’d be naked and turning all around trying to squeeze pimples on her back. Jesus! What I’d give to see that!”

  “Billy too? Was he watching?”

  “Shit yes, Billy too!”

  “My sister doesn’t have pimples . . .”

  Although they had come to the black-­topped road, Stuart did not get on his bicycle and start to pedal off with the other boys. Instead, he stared at Will so long that Will began to contemplate the empty spaces between the freckles dotting Stuart’s face. And then Stuart began to laugh.

  “You’re a nut, Sidey. You know that—a fucking nut! No pimples. No shower curtain!” When his laughter subsided, Stuart swung onto his bike.

  Will couldn’t bear the thought of remaining in Stuart Kinder’s company any longer. He slapped dramatically at the back of his jeans. “Oh no! Oh shit!” Will said.

  “What?”

  “I lost my billfold. I bet it came out when we took our pants off to cross the deep water. Damn it! I gotta go back.”

  Stuart looked questioningly at him.

  “That’s okay. You go ahead. I’ll go back and find it. I’m pretty sure I know where it fell out.”

  “What the hell were you doing with a billfold?”

  “I thought maybe we were going to stop at Holt’s Confectionary.”

  “Yeah, maybe we should’ve.” Stuart stood up on his pedals and began to pump, but within twenty yards he jammed on his brakes. Over his shoulder he shouted another question. “How do you know your sister ain’t got pimples?”

  And then Stuart was off, the cackle of his laughter mingling with the rattle of his bicycle chain.

  When he returned home, Will had to answer to his mother’s interrogation. Where were you, she wanted to know; she had seen Glen go by on his bike over an hour before. Only recently Will had discovered that his ability to lie to his parents had become so well honed that it was no longer necessary to prepare a fabrication in advance; he could concoct a serviceable lie when the moment demanded. He didn’t come back with the other boys because his favorite fishing lure got caught in a bush, and it took Will some time to untangle his line and retrieve his spinner. His friends were jerks sometimes; they wouldn’t help him or wait for him.

  And that addendum to his lie Will was able to deliver with absolute conviction. On the long, solitary bicycle ride back from the river, Will made a decision: He had to get away from his friends, and he had to do it soon before they started skulking outside his house to get a look at Ann.

  It seems to Will that he has no alternative but to run away from home, yet as he becomes less and less interested in the world his friends inhabit, home is increasingly where he wants to be. Going off to live with his grandfather is hardly the ideal solution, but Will can’t think of a better one.

  MRS. BISHOP PASSES THEIR pew, and Ann lowers her head. Penney’s has installed new cash registers, and some of the employees, including Mrs. Bishop, who has worked at the store since it opened twenty years ago, have been having trouble learning how to operate the new machines. The store’s solution has been to team the slow learners with the employees who quickly got the knack of the new system. Ann and Mrs. Bishop both work in the Boys’ Department, and Ann was assigned to oversee the older woman to make certain she rang up her sales correctly.

  For reasons Ann can’t imagine, Mrs. Bishop dislikes her—perhaps the older woman thinks that Ann wants to take over Mrs. Bishop’s basement domain—and the business with the new registers has smelted that dislike into white hot hate. And Ann has discovered what an obstacle to learning hate can be. The more Mrs. Bishop fumed, the more frequent were her mistakes on the machines. Transaction after transaction had to be voided, and at times Mrs. Bishop seemed to have totally lost the ability to make change. And though the older woman would not look at or speak to Ann unless absolutely necessary, Ann found Mrs. Bishop merely pitiful. And then two days ago, Mr. Van Vliet, the store manager, came through the basement just as Mrs. Bishop was attempting to ring up a sale with Ann watching over her shoulder.

  “How are we doing here?” Mr. Van Vliet asked. He seldom left his office, and most of the day-­to-­day operations of the store were handled by two assistant managers.

  Mrs. Bishop stepped aside and motioned for Ann to take over on the register.

  “She had a little trouble at first,” Mrs. Bishop said, “but she’s getting the hang of it.”

  Ann certainly couldn’t contradict Mrs. Bishop in front of a customer, a woman who already seemed embarrassed by the packs of Towncraft briefs she was buying for her son.

  “There’s always a period of adjustment learning a new system,” Mr. Van Vliet said to the little assemblage of women. To Ann, he added confidentially, “You couldn’t have a better teacher.”

  Ann expected Mrs. Bishop to scurry off when Mr. Van Vliet and the woman with the underwear left, but the old woman held her ground. Not only that, she glared at Ann, daring her to say the first word.

  Ann wished she could have thought of something better than “Ring up your own sales.”

  Two pews ahead of Ann, Mrs. Bishop slides into place. Ann stares at the back of the woman’s head and imagines that the ornate pattern of curls and waves represents a maze, and if Ann can find the right whorl to enter with a wish, it might weave its way to the old woman’s brain. I wish Mrs. Bishop would quit Penney’s . . .

  Ann stops herself. Church is the place for prayers, not selfish wishes, and Ann has already started petitioning God to
watch over her mother during her upcoming operation. Not that Ann truly believes in the power of prayer. Too many have gone unanswered over the course of her life—especially during that night in March—for Ann to think that God intercedes in human affairs. Prayers make about as much sense as trying to push a wish through another person’s skull.

  FOR ALL THE WRONG reasons, Bill is eager to leave Gladstone. On Friday afternoon, he mailed a notice to a renter that she would have to be out of the house by August 1. She’s three months behind in rent, she seldom mows the lawn, and the last time Bill drove by, it looked as though someone kicked through the front screen door. There are frequently so many cars parked in the driveway or in the side yard that Bill is certain that it’s not only Brenda Cady and her two children who are living in the house.

  Evictions are always unpleasant, but in this instance Bill would have to hear I-­told-­you-­sos from Tom Gates and Don Luckshaw, the two agents who work for Bill. Tom and Don had warned him not to rent to Brenda.

  “You know who the father of one of her kids is, don’t you?”

  “She didn’t say anything about a man, just her and the two boys,” Bill said.

  Don leaned across Bill’s desk and said, “Lonnie Black Pipe.” Then he stood and crossed his arms, as though that name summed up everything to be said on the matter.

  “You’ll have half the goddamn reservation living in that house,” Tom added.

  “Lon’s not from the reservation,” Bill said. It was the best argument he could muster.

  Lon Black Pipe is, in the phrase that Tom and Don and many of the citizens of Gladstone would use, a bad Indian, which not only means that he’s not meek and deferential but that he’s downright difficult. Lon has served at least two terms in Deer Lodge State Prison, one for assault (he beat up a young cowboy so severely in a bar fight that there was serious doubt whether the cowboy would live), and one for grand theft auto. And those are only the crimes he’s been convicted of; he’s been suspected of committing many others in Gladstone and the surrounding region.