by Brady Udall
“It might take a little while. Why don’t you get cleaned up first.”
He looked at his wrist and, when he did not find his wristwatch there, nodded as if that’s what he’d suspected all along. “So you’re going to—to spend the night?”
“If you don’t mind,” she said. “If you’d rather, I could sleep outside on the couch.”
“What? No. I’ll go—I’ll see if I can get the water running in here and I’ll be right with you. There might be something to drink in the fridge.” He limped into the bathroom, closed the door, and made a series of banging sounds. “Would you look at that!” he shouted. “Got the water going! Be right out!”
While he showered she tried to make the place habitable—picked clothes off the floor, swiped dirty dishes into the sink, straightened the bed. When she heard the water shut off, she shucked off her own clothes and crawled under the old quilt, pieced together from scraps by a pioneer ancestor long since forgotten, that was Golden’s favorite; for many years, until it became too much of a hassle, he had dragged it with him from house to house, marriage bed to marriage bed, unable to sleep soundly without the smell of it in his nose, the soft worn fabric tucked under his chin.
When he came out of the bathroom—now clutching a towel around his waist instead of a torn flannel shirt—he approached her warily, walking tenderly on his damaged feet. With the dust washed off, the scrapes and scratches stood out painfully bright on his pale skin, and it was difficult to resist the urge to get up and tend to him, to rustle up some band-aids and hydrogen peroxide and in the manner of a good frontier wife nurse his wounds. Instead, she calmly watched as he put on a spectacle of ridiculous modesty: he found an old pair of sweat pants in his duffel bag, turned his back to her and struggled into them while still wearing the towel, so there was no absolutely no chance of exposing himself.
He put on a clean T-shirt, filled a large glass with water from the tap, drank it down in three hard swallows. He stared into the empty glass and, after a long pause, said in a low voice, “Whatever you wanted to talk about, it must be important, coming out all this way.”
“It’s important. To me it is.”
“Where’s Faye?”
“Nola’s got her. She’s fine.”
“I’m going home tomorrow, we could have talked then.”
“I was tired of waiting for you. I don’t want to sit around anymore, waiting for you to show up.”
“I’m sorry—”
Her words had the sound of an argument rehearsed at length, of grievances nursed in the dark hours of morning: “I don’t want to hear how sorry you are. I’m sick of all the excuses. I just want things to change.”
He nodded, risked a quick glance at her, resumed the staring contest with the bottom of his glass. She lifted a corner of the quilt. “Do you want to lie down next to me? I won’t bite. I won’t even touch you if you don’t want me to.”
With his eyes downcast, his head turned to the side like a bashful toddler, he walked slowly over to the bed and eased, grimacing, under the quilt next to her. The entire trailer groaned and reballasted under this sudden weight shift.
They lay there for a few minutes, Trish pressed against the wall with its tiny window, Golden on his side, facing away from her, the quilt pulled tightly over his shoulders as if for protection from the elements.
Trish said, “I have two simple questions, and I want you to answer me as honestly as you can. I don’t care if you hurt my feelings or tell me something difficult. I just want you to tell me the truth.”
“Okay,” he whispered.
“Why have you been avoiding me? Why don’t you want to make love to me?”
“I haven’t—”
“You promised,” she cut in, “the truth. You have been avoiding me. I get to see you once every two weeks, which isn’t a whole lot less than the others, but every time you’re too tired, or there’s some excuse—” She stopped herself. She didn’t want the bitterness she felt, the anger, to scare him into silence. “It’s been so long now, Golden, a whole year we’ve been going like this. For a while afterwards, you know, I didn’t care, but now, what am I supposed to think? I don’t know how to make sense of it.”
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he said.
“Then try,” she said. “We have all night.”
“Well, it’s…”—there was a long silence in which he took two deep breaths and repositioned himself on the bed—“I’m…impotent.”
“You’re what?”
“Impotent,” he said.
“You’re important?”
“What? No. Impotent. It means—”
Something sparked in her head and she said, “Impotent. You mean you’re impotent.”
“Impotent. Yes. Isn’t that what I said?”
She choked out a laugh, which might have been the cruelest response possible under the circumstances, but she had no other way of expressing the countervailing impulses she felt: the first was relief, verging on elation, that it was not disgust or disinterest that had kept him from her, but a simple bodily breakdown, a health condition that, as far as she knew, was as common among men as dandruff or athlete’s foot. And the second impulse, which came like a cold wind on the heels of the first, was fear, that his condition might not be temporary—he was a middle-aged man, after all—and that she would remain trapped in the life she lived now, unfulfilled in every way that mattered, a woman cursed to go without in a land of so much plenty.
He turned over to look at her. “Is it funny?” He said this without bitterness or anger, but with genuine curiosity, as if he were not at all sure whether impotence, pronounced correctly or not, implied comedy or tragedy.
“No,” she said, “not at all. Just unexpected.” Maybe, she thought, it shouldn’t have been all that unexpected, not by her or anyone else. But back in the days when they were intimate, he’d never shown any signs of failure or breakdown, and she’d always assumed, without ever consciously thinking about it, that if he was having difficulties—especially those kind of difficulties—the subject would have come up, in some way or another, among the wives. Surely, at the very least, Nola would have made a comment or two.
“How long?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Kind of off and on, and lately it’s got worse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “It’s not the easiest kind of announcement to make.”
His bristly blond hair, for which he’d been named, was still wet and plastered to his forehead. Even though he had just showered she could detect a light perfume of sulfur on him, underneath which was something flowery and sweet. He looked at her earnestly, worriedly, as if waiting for her to pronounce some sort of judgment upon him. She was quiet for a while, trying to enjoy this moment while it lasted, trying not to think what it might mean for her future.
“I don’t care,” she said finally, and it had felt good, somehow, to tell this lie, to act as if she meant it. “Try not to worry about it. We’ll figure something out. It’ll be okay.” His mouth sagged open a little with relief and she kissed him. Just like that. Even gave him a little tongue, which he readily accepted. She was used to waiting on him, to seducing him into kissing her, but she had already broken Rule Numero Uno; she might as well assert herself a little.
“I’m not done with you now,” she said, pulling away. Suddenly she felt like she might begin to cry. “Still one more question to go.”
His face clouded with worry again. He said, “Shoot.”
She said, “Is it true you’re planning to marry Maureen Sinkfoyle?”
He exhaled, and shook his head energetically. “No, no, no—no way.” He put his big hand on her shoulder. “Uncle Chick brought it up with me a while ago, but I told him no, I had all I could handle already.”
“Beverly said it was already in the works.”
“Beverly’s always trying to arrange things, you know that. But believe it or not, I’m the one who has to ma
ke the decision about who I marry. And I’m done. You’re the last. After you, no one else could compare.” He blushed a little at the uncharacteristic bit of flattery, but she was so grateful for it she kissed him again.
“Just one more question, then,” she said.
“You said only two questions. This makes three.”
“Indulge me.”
“Only if I can ask you a question first.”
“Fair enough.”
“Did you call me an idiot a while ago?”
“I think I did.”
“Is that really how you feel about me?”
“Most of the time.”
For the first time that night his lips looked ready to work themselves into a smile. “Well, all right. What’s your last question?”
She looked out window. “Why would anybody want to build an old folks’ home right next to a whorehouse?”
A MAN AND HIS WIFE
He watched her sleep, wondering if he’d ever seen her this way before; he had the feeling that as long as he’d known her he’d done most of the sleeping while she’d done most of the watching. The only illumination inside the trailer came from the glowing face of the alarm clock, which cast its weak green light onto the top half of the bed and painted a dull shine on her hair, drew a soft luster from the skin of her cheeks and forehead. She was beautiful: this was his thought. She was beautiful and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d noticed.
The warm, heavy hand of exhaustion pressed down on the back of his neck, but sleep wouldn’t come. His head hurt—the lump at the back of it had contracted into a hard little stone under the skin and the scrapes and scratches on his feet itched and stung with an insistence that occasionally made him want to whimper and thrash inside the sheets like an infant.
He heard a noise outside—what sounded like the crunch of footsteps—but when he looked out the window he could see only the dark humps of sagebrush.
He squeezed shut his eyes, hoping to force himself into some passing pocket of sleep, and listened to Trish snore. Her snore, which he was sure he had never heard before, had the throaty quality of a reed instrument, an old clarinet played by someone in a secondhand shop. Her breath pulsed softly against his face and he found himself looking at her again, watching the small twitch at the corner of her lip, following the shadowed maze of her ear, and at this bitter hour, with morning beginning to harden like frost in the window, he couldn’t escape the thought that he had betrayed her. She had come to him during the worst part of his life—just when the entire family seemed to have agreed as one to end their mourning of Glory’s death, leaving Golden behind in his close-fisted sorrow. Unlike the other wives, who in their own ways urged him to move on, to return his attention to his living sons and daughters, Trish had a ready reservoir of sympathy that she could tap at any time. She didn’t judge him or require him to be strong. During the first year of their marriage she had been his only reliable source of comfort; her joy in a new pregnancy, the possibility that it offered both of them, helping to brighten his days. And then they had lost Jack, and what had he done? Run away without apology or explanation, afraid or unable to add the weight of that loss to the grief he already carried. He had abandoned her: there it was. He had let her shoulder that pain—and he knew too well the desperate, clawing ache of it—all alone.
He wanted to rest his hand against her cheek, to tell her how sorry he was, to remind himself of everything he owed her. He wanted—in the most selfish and carnal of ways—to press himself into her. He wanted to gather her against him and take comfort in the faint heat of her skin. He wanted to slip his arms around her. He wanted to touch her. He didn’t dare.
29.
THE HUNT
WHENEVER GOLDEN FINISHED A JOB, EVEN A SMALL ONE, IT WAS his habit to celebrate. He was not one for merrymaking, but when it was all over—the haggling, the unreliable subs and the thugs and ex-cons who worked for them, the rotten weather and the soil tests and the asshole inspectors with their freshly sharpened pencils, the nitpicking clients and their bounced checks and threats of litigation and late-night calls about a stain color or the price of a box of roofing nails—when all of that was over, yes, it was time to have a party. His men never failed to invite him to the bars or a kegger out in the sticks, but he always declined. Instead, he bought tubs of ice cream or maybe a case of Twinkies and brought them home, let the kids go nuts. Once, he’d loaded up the whole family and treated them to dinner at a nice sit-down Italian place in St. George called Fat and Swifty’s—a mistake he would never repeat. In the past couple of years he’d taken to celebrating by himself: he’d do some shopping—a little something for the wives—or go see an afternoon matinee, depleted and happy, dazed with relief.
Today, there would be none of that; he would go home and act as if everything were normal, as if the job were still on, and try to figure out his next move. But he couldn’t deny the relief he felt now. Driving the winding course between the ramparts of the Virgin River Gorge, the Airstream bumping unwillingly along behind the GMC, it was as if everything inside him had turned to tar. He slumped in the seat and barely had the strength to keep his foot pressed on the gas.
Early this morning, not long after Trish had left for Virgin, Ted Leo had pounded on the Airstream’s flimsy door, waking Golden from a drooling stupor. Wearing white loafers, a dark green shirt patterned with neon-pink martini glasses, and plaid polyester slacks, Ted Leo had informed Golden that they were going out to do a little coyote hunting before breakfast, and wanted Golden to come along. In contrast to his peppy getup, Ted Leo’s face showed nothing but grimness and exhaustion, and Golden was certain he could detect on the man the sour scent of booze. Golden ducked his head under the doorframe to get a look at Nelson sitting at the wheel of Ted’s pickup, staring glumly into space. In the bed of the pickup two wedge-headed dogs hung their snouts over the tailgate, watching a jackrabbit lope casually through the brush. Golden had done his best to refuse Ted’s invitation, saying he had a lot of work to get to today, but Ted Leo insisted. “We’ll have you back in an hour and a half. Get some pants on.”
On the drive into the desert there was a minimum of talk. Golden sat in the middle, trying to stay calm, as if he were perfectly happy to be going on an extemporaneous hunting trip with his two good buddies, Nelson and Ted. But it was not easy to hide the unease, percolating like swamp gas from deep in his gut. He had never seen Ted Leo like this: propped against the passenger door, head sunk down between his shoulders, his face a wooden mask, speaking not a word. Even Nelson looked a bit troubled, giving his boss the occasional sideways glance.
They circled around the western edge of a hummock topped with pitted lunar sandstone and suddenly the fence of the Test Site came into view, stretching east and west in a perfect black line like the demarcations on a compass. Golden saw in his mind the abandoned bunker Ted Leo had shown him last summer, felt the heavy, almost animate darkness of the cave he had escaped from only last night, imagined his body stuffed through the bunker’s steel hatch and interred there forever among tangles of old wire and the carcasses of dogs. A wet rag of claustrophobic panic pressed against his face and he began to squirm.
“Where we going?” he managed to say. There was no way to keep himself from asking it, just as there was no way to accept, without protest or at the very least a polite inquiry, the emerging possibility that they were all on their way to see him meet his mortal end.
Nelson looked over at Ted Leo as if he had the same question but lacked the appetite to put it into words. Ted Leo didn’t speak or move for a good ten seconds. Finally, he said, “Take us up the way, Nelson, and get the guns and dogs ready.”
They drove half a mile or so north and Nelson parked the pickup under the negligible protection of an ancient Joshua tree with two sagging arms and a fat trunk bulging with odd-shaped tumors and burls. He gave a piercing whistle, which sent the dogs leaping from the tailgate, circling and sniffing, throwing long, frenetic shadows in the earl
y morning light.
All three men got down on their bellies, the dogs hunkered next to them, and Nelson blew through a wooden cylinder to produce a plaintive, high-pitched howl, followed by a series of sharp, barking yips. Nelson and Ted scanned the hills with binoculars until the dogs began to whine and make low growling noises in their throats.
“There in that shallow draw,” said Nelson. “Male, prob’ly.”
The dogs raised their heads and both men trained their binoculars in the same direction, but Golden could see nothing.
“Do your thing, girls,” Nelson whispered, and the dogs jumped up and scrambled down the slope, ears flapping, cropped tails vibrating with excitement. At first Golden could see only the two dogs racing neck and neck, wide-eyed and grinning like two kids trying to settle a bet, but then a coyote came into view, a big shaggy gray thing with bone-white legs, going hard along the top of the ridge to cut them off. Just when it seemed their paths would intersect, the dogs veered away, weaving through the chaparral, tongues wagging, appearing to have the time of their lives. The coyote was clearly faster than the dogs, and occasionally it would put on a burst of speed, stretching out to take long leaping double-strides, and would close in to bite at their flanks as if to hamstring them. One dog would always slow to make a few slashing feints, distracting the coyote, sometimes drawing it into a spinning, growling tangle until the coyote would race away, dragging its hindquarters to protect itself, and the whole dance would start again, their long swinging shadows performing a parallel drama along the brush and sand.
While this went on, the dogs circling ever closer, luring the coyote in, Ted Leo spoke: “The coyote, he can’t help it, see. We’re upwind and he’s probably already picked up our scent, but he just can’t help himself. Those pretty dogs come racing through his line of sight, he can smell ’em, and he’s stumbling all over himself to go after ’em. He’s got a mate and probably a litter of pups up them rocks, every reason to be cautious, but it’s in his nature, his blood. He chases after what ain’t his, not paying enough attention to his own, and just you watch, he’s going to get himself killed.”