by Brady Udall
“What are you doing!” Ted Leo bellowed. “I get home and nobody’s there and I go driving around, worried sick—”
“I’m enjoying myself!” Huila shot back with a vigor that Golden never would have been able to conjure under the circumstances. “Where do you go? When do you come home? I never know!”
For a good two minutes they argued. Mostly it was Ted Leo complaining about Huila’s recent abdication of her wifely duties. He couldn’t understand what had gotten into her, why she felt like she had to go wandering the hills like John the Baptist, washing her clothes in mud puddles and bathing in caves when they had all the modern facilities back at the house. Most of Huila’s protests where in Spanish, so that Golden couldn’t really follow, but at some point she made mention of “putas prostitutas” and Ted Leo’s voice took on an edge of real menace. “You do not talk about them that way! Those girls buy the clothes you wear, the food you eat! Now get your behind out of there and get dressed now.”
Huila tried to tell him she’d be home soon, to go ahead without her, and Golden could hear splashing and Huila’s sharp little swear words—cabrón and mierda and huevón—as Ted Leo pulled her bodily out of the pool. The muscles in his legs clenched, and he reached around for a good-sized rock, wondering what he might do with it once he had it in his hand. There was no more splashing or talking, only the echoing tap-tap of footsteps and the small, sharp sounds of the kerosene lamps, one by one being blown out.
Golden peered over the rockfall, watched the waggling flashlight beam disappear into the passageway, listened with great interest to the ominous dungeon sound of the door clanging shut. Half crouched, he remained frozen in place, hoping that by keeping perfectly still and not breathing he could suspend this nightmare or make it go away altogether. Through the layers of rock overhead filtered the sound of a motor starting and then dwindling into nothing. He felt the cold, moist darkness being absorbed into his body, like ink into a sponge, and he began not so much to shiver as to shake, his jaw rattling.
“Hello?” he called out experimentally.
He didn’t know who he hoped would answer—maybe some kind of forest ranger or a Good Samaritan who had wandered in from an adjoining catacomb. “Anybody?”
28.
RULE NUMERO UNO
IT FELT STRANGE, CROSSING THE BORDER. SHE HAD DONE IT THREE years before, made the same passage but in the opposite direction, in search of something or someone to save her from the nasty little string of disasters her life had become. Now, moved by a similar desperation, she steered her clackity VW Rabbit down a wide, sweeping descent onto a scrubland plain as flat as the bottom of a skillet, leaving behind the glowing sunset cliffs of Utah and Arizona, her foot steady on the accelerator, both hands fixed tightly to the wheel. The sign, red and white and perforated with shotgun pellets, backlit by a theatrical sky packed with iridescent clouds, said WELCOME TO BEAUTIFUL NEVADA! It gave her a juvenile thrill, as if she had left home for the first time to arrive in the exotic, spice-scented land of her dreams.
Less than two hours ago she had been at home, getting ready for Golden’s arrival. June Haymaker was there (as she had so carefully arranged him to be) to take a look at the leak in the roof and to accept her offhand invitation (as she knew he would) to dinner. More importantly, he was there to illustrate to Golden, in the plainest way possible, that if Golden did not want to take care of her, to look after her most fundamental needs, then maybe there was someone else who would.
When Golden called to tell her, once more, that he wouldn’t be home when he promised, she had just taken the chicken out of the oven and June was in the attic, creaking and clanking like a ghost, trying to trace the water stain on the ceiling to its source in the roof. Even before she hung up, something possessed her. It wasn’t anger so much as a feeling of abandon, the hard snapping twang of release—she was letting go of all that had, for so long, been holding her back. What was it that had been holding her back? she wondered now. Why had she given in so fully to this idea of patience and long-suffering? The hell with patience. She was done with waiting, with standing around and wringing her hands.
She called June down from the attic and quickly packed overnight bags for Faye and herself. While June sat at the head of the table, befuddled, with clots of gray insulation caught in his beard, she laid out the dinner she’d prepared: ginger chicken and wild rice and sausage dumplings. She told him something had come up and she had to leave, but that he should stay and eat his fill. Then she grabbed Faye by the wrist, who was demanding to know what was wrong and where they were going, and pulled her out to the car.
After getting Faye buckled in, she went back into the house, where June seemed not to have moved a muscle, except there was now a fork in his hand where there hadn’t been one before. “I’m sorry for this,” she told him. “I’ll call you when I get back.” Realizing that this spasm of abandon might not last, she went with it. She put her hands on June’s bony shoulders, bent down, and gave him a peck on the cheek.
She drove into town and pulled up in front of the Academy of Hair Design, where, it being the first Thursday of the month, Nola spent the afternoon and sometimes the evening giving free cuts and perms to the ladies of the Snow Canyon Senior Center and Retreat. The place was half-filled with women in various stages of decline, a couple in wheelchairs, all wearing their colorful smocks and new hairdos, which had them in high spirits; they chattered and laughed—mostly to themselves, it was true—with Nola in the middle of it all, pointing and flourishing her comb and scissors like an auctioneer.
It took a few seconds, but when the women detected Trish and Faye standing in the doorway, they hushed. None of them gave Trish any notice; they all focused on the girl, as if a child were something that had not been seen or heard from in years and whose existence was now a matter of question.
A couple of the more spry ones got up to get a closer look. “Oh dear,” one said reverently, “look at this, look at this.”
Faye glared at the advancing women and said, “Don’t either of you touch me.”
“People forget how mean children are,” called one of the crones from the back.
“Ladies,” Nola said, “this is Trish and her daughter, Faye.”
Another one, who had the translucent skin and hooked claws of a wraith, commented, “Nothing better for a child than a nice juicy plum.”
Trish asked Nola if they could talk in private and Nola looked around at the women, who had already gone back to talking to themselves or were absorbed with what drama might unfold if Elenore Peele gave the girl a pat on the head, as she was so clearly angling to do. “This is about as private as it gets, don’t you think?”
“All right. I’m going somewhere and I’m wondering if you could look after Faye until tomorrow. You’re the only one she likes.”
Nola gave Trish her famous arched-eyebrows look. “You’re going somewhere.”
What was the use in hiding it? It would be widely known soon enough. “I’m going to Nevada, to see Golden.”
Nola opened her mouth wide with genuine surprise. She released a high cackle that one of the women answered reflexively, as one bird answers another. Nola said, “You’re not.”
She was. Yes, she was, though she could understand Nola’s incredulity. She was about to break, as Nola herself called it, Rule Numero Uno, which stated that the wife does not go to the husband, she must wait for the husband to come to her. While Trish wasn’t sure if it was the most important rule of plural marriage, it was a vital one; it kept the more aggressive or needy wives from making unfair demands of the husband’s time and attention, and put nearly all the burden of portioning himself—and of managing the jealousy and acrimony if he didn’t do a good job of it—on his shoulders.
Two years ago the wives had taken the drastic and, for some in the church, controversial step of scheduling Golden’s weekly sleeping arrangements, but when Trish married into the family he was still a free agent, allowed to drift from wife to wife, ho
use to house, like the town drunk bar-hopping on a Saturday night, every decision made out of convenience or faulty memory or according to some otherwise questionable whim.
Nola plied a lock of woolly hair between her fingers and snipped it off at the ends. She was swallowing a grin, enjoying in advance, Trish knew, all the talk and trouble this indiscretion of hers was bound to cause. Not only was she about to break Rule Numero Uno, but she was going to visit Golden on the job site, which had always been expressly off limits, even before he’d taken the project in Nevada; one wife bothering her husband at work was bad enough, but four wives—a workingman’s good name could never survive such an assault.
“So this expedition you’re about to take,” Nola said, “it wouldn’t have anything to do with Maureen Sinkfoyle now would it?”
“It might,” Trish said, “and it might have to do with all kinds of other things. Rose just checked herself into the hospital, Nola, and what does he do? Runs right back to Nevada as if nothing happened. And now he’s not even coming home when he’s supposed to. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Nola nodded, serious now. “Go on ahead, then, we’ll take good care of your girl, right Miss Faye? We’ll trim your bangs nice and neat, maybe give you a little bob at the back.”
Keeping Elenore Peele at bay with a malevolent glare the way a hiker might use a stick to fend off a bear, Faye said, “Oh no you won’t.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IMPOTENT
When she finally found the Airstream on top of the hill, she was nearly at her wits’ end: cranky, blinking with fatigue, and nearly out of gas. After the three-hour drive across Nevada she had spent another hour driving up and down a ten-mile stretch of Highway 19, nosing across broken-down cattle guards and investigating private driveways and dirt roads that seemed to lead nowhere. Before leaving the Academy, she had called Sister Barbara to get directions to the construction site and Sister Barbara had informed her, in a tone of polite reproach, that such information was highly confidential and to release it would require Golden’s explicit approval. Trish informed Sister Barbara, in a threatening and slightly hysterical tone that could not be construed as polite in any way, that she was Golden’s wife, and if Sister Barbara didn’t give her the information she needed she would break into the Big Indian Construction office—smash the window if she had to—and get it herself.
Sister Barbara didn’t have the exact address on hand, but knew that the site lay on the stretch of highway between Indian Wells and the interstate—it was a major construction project, gotta be bulldozers and dirt piles everywhere, she said, no way you could miss it, dear. Well, miss it Trish had, at least fifteen times passing by in one direction or the other, hidden as it was two hundred yards off the road in the half-moon dark, a dark made all the more profound by the salaciously bright lights of the PussyCat Manor so close by. The brothel, doing a brisk business at this hour, was the only sign of life she had seen since Indian Wells, and though the idea of a brothel didn’t shock her—she had spent much of her life in Reno, after all—the last thing she wanted was to have to step inside one of them to beg directions.
She was saved by a man jauntily pedaling a bicycle down the double yellow line in the middle of the highway, apparently in the direction of the PussyCat Manor. She stopped to ask if he knew where the new senior center was being built and he said, “Senior center? Around here?” Wet hair slicked back and gleaming, he had the freshly scrubbed look of someone on his way to a church service or a court proceeding.
“A big construction site,” she said, “somewhere along this highway.”
He pointed. “You mean the brothel.”
She shook her head; apparently, the brothel was the only thing on his mind. Quickly she tried to explain again and he made a broad, wide-armed shushing gesture, the kind a rock star might make to quiet down an unruly crowd. “Easy,” he said. “Slow up now. Tell me this: Are you looking for anybody in particular?”
She told him, and after the slightest hesitation he gave her the simple directions. One left, one right, and then up a little rise. “You’ll see the trailer, no problem, a light upon a hill, just like the Bible says.”
She thanked him and he gave her a smart, military-style salute before pedaling off toward the blinking fairy lights of the PussyCat Manor.
The sight of the Airstream, sitting in the middle of all that sagebrush, its windows darkened, spiked her through with a pang of guilt. All those nights alone at home she had imagined Golden living it up, eating junk food and playing cards with his hairy, good-natured construction buddies. But this sad little thing, it was no bigger than a cell in a South American prison—she couldn’t imagine how he could fit in there to sleep, much less have a meal or take a shower or host a game of rummy. She pictured him now, tucked in like a dog in a passenger crate, sleeping off a long day’s work, and she had to shake her head to keep from being waylaid by feelings of affection and sympathy. She had not come here to sympathize, she reminded herself. She had come here for answers, explanations—an apology or two at minimum. She promised herself she wasn’t going to leave until she got them.
She rapped on the flimsy door and waited. Golden was renowned for his ability to sleep, nap and doze through every sort of clamor and unrest, from the shrieking scales played by an amateur oboist to the sneak attacks of three-year-olds, so she gave the door a good pounding that somehow degenerated into a jaunty version of shave-and-a-haircut.
When no response came, she opened the door, stuck in her head and knew by the silence, the deadness of the air, that nobody was there. The trailer’s atmosphere had the musty tang of the inside of an old work hat. It smelled like belt leather and Bag Balm talcum powder—Golden’s smell. To take the full tour required only a few steps: a platform double bed with a Golden-shaped crater in the middle, an eat-in kitchen littered with tin cans and crusty Tupperware bowls; a phone-booth-sized bathroom whose floor, quite disturbingly, was covered with drifts of dark hair. Baffled, she stepped outside to stare blankly at Golden’s pickup, parked parallel to the Barge, which looked surprisingly at home out under this big night sky, in front of the blackened remains of a campfire.
Where on earth was he? She tried not to think about the PussyCat Manor, pulsing lasciviously just over the hill. Having twenty prostitutes as next-door neighbors was one of the details of his workaday life he had wisely kept to himself. She plopped herself down on the Barge, wallowed and sulked in its lumpy depths before sitting up to assume the defiant, straight-backed posture of someone braced for bad news and prepared to wait as long as it took for it to arrive.
It didn’t take long. She heard it first: the sound of something dragging itself across sand, the rattle of dry brush. She stood, straining to see into the darkness, and then came a strange, low-throated groan, which gave her the encouragement she needed to abandon her post on the Barge for the relative security of her Rabbit, where she locked the doors, snatched the ice scraper from the passenger-side floor and switched on the headlights. Caught in the beams, not fifty yards away, stumbled a pale, ghastly figure that squinted into the light and made a quick squatting motion, as if readying to flee. It took a step back, lowering its head to shield its eyes, and in that small, almost bashful gesture she recognized Golden. She had a harder time making sense of the huge body, pale and glowing, naked except for some kind of dark cloth held bunched around its hips.
She gave the horn a short beep and Golden flinched as if it were a gunshot. He called out, “Who is it?”
She turned off the headlights and got out of the car. “Golden,” she called, “it’s Trish.”
“Who?” As if this were a name he’d heard for the first time in his life.
“Trish, you idiot. Your wife.” With the headlights off she could not see him anymore, but she had no problem hearing the crashing and snapping of juniper twigs and dry sagebrush as he thrashed his way toward her. “Trish! Where are you? What happened?”
Once they located each other, she helped him
into the trailer, where the sixty-watt bulb confirmed it: except for the flannel shirt whose arms were tied at one hip in a loose knot, he was naked. The dusty, pink skin of his shoulders and forearms was painted with scrapes and scratches and his feet, never much to look at in the first place, were rough with salty grit and spotted with blood. When he moved he gave off a sulfurous brimstone smell.
In that small kitchen they shared a few moments of blinking incomprehension. And then something seemed to wake him and he began to talk: the water system in the trailer had gone on the fritz, he said, and so he had walked down to the little cow pond to bathe—he’d had a long, dirty day—and somehow had managed to drop his flashlight in the pond, which ruined it, and then he couldn’t find his clothes and shoes and got lost on the way back to the trailer. He gave a tired bleat of a laugh. “Look at me, got a few scratches here, don’t I.” He displayed his palms, which looked like they had been used to gather broken glass. “And my feet sorta hurt.”
He looked at her expectantly, and Trish knew that it was her turn to explain herself, to make some excuse for her presence, but she told herself not to give in. Tonight, she had already decided, all the explanations were going to be his.
“What—” he said, leaning against the stove, forcing a smile, straining to bring a casual air to the proceedings. “So what brings you out here?”
“I came to talk to you,” she said.
He took a breath, let it out slowly. “Okay,” he said, “what about?”