The Distance Home

by Paula Saunders

  As Emma read from John’s Revelation of the Apocalypse, René would gaze out her window at the silver moon suspended in the sky—its reflected light illuminating the shifting pines in eerie, dark relief. And for René, the moon became the touchstone of all the other prophecies, an outward sign she could depend on to let her know exactly when the coming dawn of horrors was upon them.

  “The signs are coming together,” Emma told her, closing the Bible. “Likely in your lifetime. But, oh my, that will be a challenging, difficult time.”

  Though she intended to shrug them off, René felt the revelations combine and compress in her, adding to an already persistent dread.

  For now, God seemed to be granting a reprieve.

  But it will happen, René thought, on the edge of sleep as Emma turned out the light. One day I’ll look to see my moon turned dark and dripping with blood.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Emma took René shopping. Leon was nowhere to be found, and Emma refused to take Jayne because Jayne was constantly running off, exploring under racks and hiding in dressing rooms.

  “She’s too much for me. She’s going to give me a heart attack,” Emma explained to Eve, who simply pinched her lips together and turned her back.

  So Emma and René headed downtown—Emma in her smart navy pantsuit with the white piping around the collar and pockets, René in the sharp floral jumper Eve had made for her—and they went from one store to the next, attracting the attention of the salesladies as they uncovered a cornucopia of pretty things just René’s size.

  “I’ll be lucky to get out of here with my teeth,” Emma joked, and the salesgirls laughed.

  They returned with their arms full of packages—entire matching outfits with new shoes to complete each one. And though Emma giggled like a naughty schoolgirl as they ran up the stairs, Eve just went on with her housework as if nothing at all out of the ordinary was happening.

  That night, Emma explained to René that the moon would likely turn to blood because of things that happened here on earth.

  “It’ll be our final warning,” she said, and René felt a compounding of the gravity of each moment, like the vacuum seal of a Mason jar taking hold. Would she be left behind in the Rapture? Would her selfishness cause Leon and Jayne to be left behind, too? Would they all end up ruled by the Beast, fooled into an eternity of damnation? And did she even believe in hell?

  The next morning, René decided to put on her new green-apple-print shorts outfit with the matching braided headband and yellow patent-leather sandals and ask around.

  Emma confirmed that she believed in hell. “For the most part. Maybe not real fire, but close.”

  Al just nodded a quick yes, then shook his head no, then laughed. He tapped René on top of her head and took off out the door.

  “I believe we live our hell on earth,” Eve said. “I don’t see why anyone should have to suffer any more than we do right here, every day.” Then René seemed to come into focus. “That’s a cute outfit,” Eve said. “I bet Jayne would like an outfit like that.”

  Night after night, Emma read from John’s Revelation, holding René’s hands or rubbing her legs as Rene dozed off. But then she went back to Fort Pierre, and René was once again on her own, gingerly selecting each foothold through the day. And at night, with the way the walls would shake and the windows rattle with “Your mother—!” and “So insulting—!” and “Goddamn right, I’m not going to take it anymore. Not for one more goddamn minute!,” it began to seem that all of Emma’s most hair-raising predictions were already coming for them, speeding straight down the pike, headed right for their front door.

  * * *

  —

  René would wake from a dream of bad weather—tornadoes, hail, hurricanes, floods—then lie in bed listening to footsteps on the stairs in the dead of night, or cracks and pops from the hallway closet, or the long scrape of something against the boards just under her windows, sounds Eve dismissed as “the house settling.”

  “Stop being such a worrywart,” Eve told her one morning when René was once again going through the list of unnerving noises.

  But that night it was Jayne who woke up. René looked over to find her shivering, blankets pulled up to her eyeballs. Jayne slid silently out of bed, crawled from the room on all fours, then tore down the hall for Eve’s room with René right on her heels, screaming like a banshee.

  “There’s a clown in my window,” Jayne cried. Their bedroom was on the second floor, but Jayne had clearly seen a painted clown peering through their darkened window. “He had orange hair, sticking up,” she moaned, “and he was knocking, trying to get in.” She buried her face in her mother’s shoulder.

  Eve said it was nothing, but René could see that Jayne wasn’t making it up.

  “Maybe it was Satan,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought!” Jayne cried.

  “Oh, René,” Eve scolded. “Just be quiet. Go back to bed. You’re scaring her so much with your stories.”

  But René shook her head. She wasn’t going anywhere. And she hadn’t been telling Jayne stories, certainly not stories about clowns.

  23

  Matilda Stripes

  Jayne dragged in every stray cat she could get her hands on. Some of them, Eve said, just couldn’t get away from her fast enough to make it back home. But the day she came through the door with her umpteenth orange tabby kitten less than eight inches long, Eve just sighed and said, “Okay. All right. You win. But just this once.”

  Eve made it clear that the cat would be Jayne’s responsibility, and Jayne was good to her word. She named her cat Matilda Stripes, and from that very first day, Matilda followed Jayne everywhere.

  Jayne would lie on the floor in the kitchen with Matilda curled on her chest, fast asleep, purring against her neck, as Eve cooked supper.

  “My goodness,” Eve would say, “somebody really loves you.” And Jayne would smile and scratch behind Matilda’s ears.

  “Maybe she wants some milk,” Jayne would say, and she’d be up at the stove, heating milk, or “Maybe she’d like to play with some yarn,” and she’d ask Matilda, “Would you like to play with some yarn?”

  “Don’t just go through my basket,” Eve would call as the two of them started for Eve’s sewing corner. “I’ve got some old yarn I’ll get out for you.”

  If Jayne wasn’t around, René would catch hold of Matilda and try to lie on the floor with her. But instead of settling in, Matilda would spring away and run into the other room.

  “She hates me,” René would say.

  “I guess she knows who she belongs to,” Eve would confirm.

  Then Jayne would come in, and Matilda would trip over her own four feet to get to her, rubbing against her legs, reaching to be picked up. And Jayne would lift Matilda, throwing the cat over her shoulder like a dishrag, and carry her outside. “Let’s go do something fun. You want to? You do? Me, too.”

  Sometimes René followed along and ended up accidentally chasing Matilda up a tree, which meant that Jayne would have to climb high into a tangle of branches, then shinny out onto a limb to rescue her little cat.

  Matilda grew, but she never got very big.

  “She must be the runt,” Eve sighed.

  “Naw.” Jayne picked up Matilda and turned her belly up, cradling her like a baby. “She’s a big, strong kitty. Aren’t you, Mati? Yes, you are.” Matilda’s legs splayed and she arched her back as Jayne scratched her neck and chest.

  When it was Jayne’s turn to say the prayer at dinner, she started adding, “God bless Matilda and keep her safe,” while the others just smiled at how crazy Jayne was about that silly little kitten.

  So Jayne decided she wanted to be a veterinarian, and René decided she should probably give up trying to force Matilda to like her. Matilda was Jayne’s cat, and it didn�
��t look like anything was going to change that.

  * * *

  —

  “What’s in Mati’s eye?” Jayne said, coming into the kitchen early one morning.

  “Just get a Kleenex and wipe it out,” Eve told her.

  But the next day Matilda’s eye was yellow-matted and crusted over worse than before. Jayne swabbed it with a little salt water, but by the time she got home from school that afternoon, it was filled with yellow-green pus all over again.

  “Give it a few days,” Eve said. “Animals know how to take care of these things.”

  So, though Jayne would wipe at it once in a while, mostly they all just forgot about it. Matilda had simply turned out to be a one-eyed cat.

  “Looks like that cat’s got a pretty bad eye infection,” Al said when he got home.

  “Well, I’m not paying good money to take some stray cat to the vet,” Eve huffed. “Are you?”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Just give it some time. Who knows?”

  They quieted when Jayne came through the kitchen, Matilda at her feet.

  Al left town, but by the time he came home again, both of Matilda’s eyes were glued shut. Jayne was at a neighbor’s house, and Mati was lazing around inside, mewing, obviously uncomfortable, essentially blind.

  “Only one thing to do, Eve,” Al said. “Might be about time.”

  Eve nodded. She knew what happened when sick strays got sicker.

  René was sitting at the table, so Al looked at her.

  “Now,” he started, “if Jayne asks what happened to that cat, you say it ran away.”

  “She,” René corrected. “And why would she run away?”

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “We’ll just say she ran away,” Eve said from where she was punching down dough for rolls.

  Al opened a can of tuna fish, scooped out all but a spoonful, then took the open can and coaxed blind Matilda outside.

  “Where’re you going?” René said, getting up.

  “You stay put.”

  But she followed after him, hanging a few paces behind. He went to his car and got his gun. She stayed with him as far as the end of the driveway, then stood and watched as he crossed the road, quickening his pace, calling, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty,” his shotgun slung over one shoulder, the tuna fish held low.

  “What’re you doing?” René called after him, raising her voice urgently as he reached the field and began to work his way through the brush.

  “You stay up by the house,” he hollered back. “Do as I say.”

  Then he disappeared into the woods, Matilda following briskly at his heels, craning up to get to the little bit of tuna fish.

  René ran and sat on the front steps, gazing into the blank canvas of tree cover across the road. There was silence, a few long moments as she waited, puzzling, too many questions coming too quickly: Was he just going hunting across the street for some reason? Maybe there was a rabid skunk or raccoon that needed killing. But why bring Matilda? And why with such a special treat? Matilda wasn’t really sick. Not really. She just needed eye cream, like Jayne when she got pinkeye.

  Then there was the single gunshot.

  Al came out of the woods with the tuna can, which he threw into the garbage, and the gun, which he put back in his car. He went to the kitchen and washed his hands.

  “That’s it,” he said to Eve.

  “Too bad,” Eve said, frowning, still fussing over her rolls. “Jayne really loved that cat.”

  “No lack of stray cats,” Al said sadly. “She’ll find another.”

  “No doubt.”

  René didn’t say a word. She didn’t hardly breathe. She’d been invited into the world of grown-ups, where you did what you had to do no matter how you felt about it. She wanted to show that she was up to the job, but she couldn’t keep from wondering why they hadn’t just taken Matilda to the vet and got her some medicine. It seemed so simple. What was she missing? It sounded like it was about money. But it was always about money. Anytime anyone needed anything at all, it was money. How could it always be money?

  * * *

  —

  When Jayne got home, she went into the kitchen, where Eve’s rolls were baking in the oven.

  “Where’s Matilda?” she asked.

  “Haven’t seen her,” Eve said casually.

  “Maybe she ran away,” René said.

  Jayne darkened, and Eve shot René a hard glance.

  “She wouldn’t run away,” Jayne said, and she searched through the house, looking behind the furniture, lifting the drapes.

  Eve rolled her eyes in dread. “Time for dinner!” she called.

  “Where can she be?” Jayne fretted when they raised their heads from the blessing.

  “Maybe she got out and tried to follow you up to the neighbor’s,” Eve suggested. “And she had that terrible eye infection, so who knows where she might have ended up?”

  Jayne looked like she’d been struck.

  “Don’t worry, honey,” Eve went on. “Wherever she is, I’m sure she’s just fine. And if she doesn’t show up, I bet you can find another kitty somewhere. Seems like you’re always finding a new little cat that needs a good home, doesn’t it?”

  But Jayne wouldn’t be soothed. She jumped up every few minutes to call out the screen door, until Al finally told her to sit down and sit still. After dinner, she went outside to search the neighborhood. She came in well after dark and ran upstairs. She threw herself on her bed next to where René was scanning the Psalms, searching for something that said something about cats, and she started to cry.

  “I know she wouldn’t run away,” Jayne said. “I just know it.”

  “Maybe she got lost.” René’s throat constricted, the lie choking her as she pictured Jayne’s dead cat, Matilda, right across the road, torn through, most likely exploded from the neck up and kicked into a pile of tangled underbrush.

  “Why would she get lost?”

  “Sometimes things get lost for no reason,” René tried, feeling the hollowness of a liar. “She was lost when you found her.” The words echoed in her chest like a BB fired into an empty rain barrel.

  Jayne looked at her, distraught.

  “You can never tell what’s going to happen,” René said, relieved to finally be saying at least one true thing.

  “I know she wouldn’t run away.”

  Tears dripped from Jayne’s stained, red cheeks, splattering her pillowcase with dark polka dots.

  “I know,” René said.

  “She loves me,” Jayne said. “I know she does.”

  “I know she does, too,” René said, nodding as Jayne melted into sobs.

  They didn’t say much after that. René just kept handing Jayne Kleenexes.

  But in bed that night, as she tried to review the Ten Commandments, René kept getting mixed up: Honor thy father and mother; Thou shalt not lie; Thou shalt not kill; But we can’t afford to be taking some stray cat to the vet; Yet not one sparrow shall fall to the ground; But there’s more where that came from; And all of the very hairs on your head are numbered; So we’ll just say she ran away; And the greatest of these is love.

  Everything was running together; things were bleeding all over each other. René was never going to be able to untangle it or figure it out. And it seemed that God didn’t really care much about any of it.

  And it was that—even more than Matilda, and Chuck, and Leon, and Eve and Al, and now Jayne—that accounted for René lying awake long after the lights had been turned out, imagining herself following the railroad tracks straight out of town—away, away to anywhere else, anywhere else at all.

  24

  The Wide, Wide World

  A rancher friend of Al’s came by for a surprise visit. He was with his two sons, who w
ere just a little older than Leon, and they all stopped in on their way home to Billings. They’d been visiting family in Pringle, they said, and the rancher couldn’t pass through Rapid without seeing his old pal.

  Al was tickled to welcome him. Eve took out the ham from last night’s dinner and started making sandwiches. She put out potato chips and some of her homemade watermelon pickles. Then Eve asked Leon to sit with them at the table, and they all had a lovely kitchen picnic. There were even lemon bars dusted with powdered sugar that Eve had made the day before. She set them out on a plate for dessert, and the boys dug in. They were polite western boys, and they complimented and thanked her as Leon watched circumspectly, keeping his head down but raising his eyes, not saying a word. The other boys were quiet, too, attending to the grown-ups.

  “Now my boy Pete here is taking care of the livestock these days, Al,” the rancher said.

  “Is that so,” Al said, acknowledging Pete.

  “Good for you,” Eve said. “It’s good to get in there and do things yourself, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Pete said. “I’m enjoying it.”

  “And James is taking over the harvesting this year, first time.”

  James nodded. “We’ll be mowing and puttin’ aside for the next three weeks or so,” the boy said, smiling.

  “Well, you’ve got some fine help there,” Al said to the rancher. “Looks like you might be fixin’ to retire.”

  They laughed.

  “That I am,” the rancher said. “Sooner the better. Right, Al?”

  Al laughed. “You got that right,” he said. “I say.”

  “Well, you got your boy there,” the rancher said, indicating Leon. “No doubt he’s getting ready to take over the trading business for you.”

  “God forbid!” Eve howled.

  “Well, yes, sir. Yes, yes,” Al said, looking to Leon, who kept his eyes on his plate and his hands in his pockets. “Get your hands out of your pockets, Leon,” Al said.