The Distance Home

by Paula Saunders

  Leon quickly withdrew his hands and set them in his lap. His eyebrows were puffs of bare flesh, his eyelashes were nonexistent, and the gleaming bald spot on top of his head was on full display, the beating clearly having made things worse instead of better.

  “Leon’s busy in school during the year,” Eve said, recovering herself, “and this summer he’s got lots of activities. Right, Leon?”

  “Why, that’s fine,” the rancher said.

  “Now, I hear you’ve been looking at buying some land out near Kadoka,” Al said, taking the conversation off in a different direction.

  The men finished their coffee, then stood up from the table, and the boys rose, as well, the two rancher-boys holding their hats. The group was moving toward the front door, to say their goodbyes, when suddenly Al and the rancher started talking about something, their heads bent close together.

  Al was saying, “Might be helpful, if you don’t mind” and “If it’s not too much trouble. Might be just the experience.”

  And the rancher said, “Not at all, Al. It’d be our pleasure. I know James would appreciate the help and the company.”

  “Why, yes, sir,” James agreed from the front walk, where the two boys were waiting on their dad, matching white cowboy hats now low on their heads.

  Leon was standing just behind Al, shifting foot to foot, hemming and hawing, trying to get a word in.

  “All right, then.” The rancher nodded.

  Al turned to Leon. “You go up and get a bag packed. Make it quick.”

  Leon started, “But, Dad—”

  Al gave him a look. “Go on, now.”

  And suddenly Leon was up the stairs, going through his drawers, throwing clothes into a duffel bag. He came down ready to go.

  “Leon’s going up to Billings for a few weeks to get some experience working with Pete and James here,” Al said to Eve when she’d finished gathering the dishes from the table and was at the door.

  She stopped, nearly knocked off her feet. “Well—” she said. “I—”

  “It’s all arranged,” Al said to quiet her.

  The rancher tipped his hat. “Thank you kindly, Eve. I’m going to have to report to Milly about those lemon bars. She just might be writing you for the recipe. And don’t you worry. We’ll take good care of him.”

  “Of course. Of course, you’re welcome,” Eve said.

  She tried to catch Leon as he passed, his bag slung over his shoulder, but he just tore his arm from her grip and went to the car. He got in the backseat with the younger son and did not wave as they pulled away.

  * * *

  —

  When Leon got home after six weeks on the ranch, he was deeply sunburned and his hands were torn and scarred, but he was “no worse for wear,” Al said. Al had been on the road and gone up to Billings to see about some cattle. He’d picked Leon up on his way home.

  “If there was one thing I never wanted to see you do,” Eve said after Al had left town again, “it’s farm work.”

  They were all at the table.

  “For heaven sakes,” she said, “I don’t know how your dad managed to arrange all that on the fly and just kick you all the way up to Montana like he did.”

  The rancher in Billings had put Leon up in a side room in the barn. Leon had a cot to sleep on, just next to the horses, and a washroom with a plastic, rust-stained shower stall. In the mornings he’d have breakfast with the family; then James would order him out to the fields and disappear. Neither of those boys lifted a finger the whole time he was there, Leon said. Most days, Leon would be all by himself, mowing or raking in some distant pasture. By the time he got back to the house, his dinner would be cold. He’d eat alone on the front steps, then head back to the barn for the night.

  Leon talked about how the ranch people would send him out to work in the fields all day with no hat, no water, no lunch, nothing. One particularly hot day it got so bad he thought he was going to die of heatstroke or dehydration, he said, so when he finally spotted a farmhouse on the far horizon, he turned his tractor and just kept driving in that general direction, through ditches and pastures, over two gravel roads, until he got to it. He knocked on the door to beg for a glass of water. The lady at the house gasped to see the state he was in. She ran to get him a cool drink, brought him a wet washcloth, and made him rest in the shade for half an hour before sending him off with an old straw hat and a canning jar full of lemonade. He said he thought that lady probably saved his life, that if she hadn’t answered the door, he might have died that day.

  “I don’t see how they could treat you like that,” Eve said. “They’re such good friends of your dad’s. I just don’t understand it.”

  “They’re business acquaintances. That’s all,” Leon said. “And I don’t think it was supposed to be a sleepover party.”

  “Well, it wasn’t supposed to be a concentration camp, either. How could your father do that to you?” Eve said. “How could he just send you off like that without even asking what you wanted, or what I thought about it?”

  Leon started to get up. “He wanted me to experience real life. That’s what he said on the way home.” He shrugged.

  “Real life, my ass,” Eve said. “That’s a load of crap. Real life doesn’t mean farm work. There’s a lot more interesting things to do than work a farm eighteen hours a day. God knows. You’ve got lots of options, Leon. It’s a big, wide world out there. You can be anything you want to be, anything you set your mind to. Remember that.”

  Leon nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to Mike’s.”

  Mike was the friend Al didn’t like most of all, because of his “Geronimo” hair and overall “wild-man” appearance. He was also the one who’d written “LeonRStoned” on the envelope René had found in Leon’s drawer.

  “The world is your oyster, Leon!” Eve called after him. “You can do whatever you put your mind to. I mean it!”

  But Leon was already out the door and on his bike. He was halfway down the block like a streak of lightning.

  * * *

  —

  Through the years, Leon collected all kinds of “nearly died” stories.

  In his twenties, he ended up by himself deep in the woods near Silver Mountain, clearing trees for the state. He’d just lifted his roaring chain saw high above his head to reach an entangled branch when the saw slipped from his grasp and fell onto the leg that was bracing him against the hillside. Still rotating, the blade cut straight through to the bone in a heartbeat. Leon ripped off his shirt, made a tourniquet to slow the bleeding, and dragged himself back to his truck, operating the clutch, gas, and brake with his one good leg until he’d got himself to the nearest gas station, twenty miles away, at which point he laid on the horn and promptly passed out. He got three layers of stitches, over a hundred and fifty in all, at the hospital. He’d missed the peroneal nerve by a fraction of a millimeter, the doctor said, shaking his head at how Leon had survived at all.

  “He might never have walked right again,” the doctor told Eve. “And that’s the least of it.”

  “I think he’s got nine lives,” Eve said.

  Then there was his story of dropping by to do a few lines of blow with some friends up in the hills above Keystone. He’d just stepped through the door when three speed freaks with semiautomatics busted in, eager to settle an unpaid debt.

  “Luckily,” Leon would say, “I’d somehow got myself an American Express card. Shit. They had us all lined up against the wall and I was waving that card around. Finally I got everybody to calm down enough so I could convince them to let me go to town and get them some cash.” He’d get to laughing. “Hell, I could do a credit card commercial,” he’d say, not missing the irony. He had unpaid bills all over town, had even spent time in jail for writing bad checks at every liquor store within fifty miles. Then, getting se
rious, he’d add, “But, Jesus, those guys were so high. And they weren’t kidding around. We could of all died that day. Easy.”

  25

  Chicken

  “Mom’s looking for you,” Leon called, coming around the corner and finding René at the back door of the Congregational church, where she was hiding out, smoking cigarettes. He was driving their VW camper around the parking lot, working the stick shift. He’d be fifteen in a few months, ready to take the test for his driver’s license. “You’d better get home,” he said.

  Since the Christ Evangelical Youth Ministry had begun to seem more and more prudish and dictatorial, and René was always on the wrong side of every topic—Indians, homosexuals, dancing—she’d slacked off and started hanging with some outliers from school. They’d meet behind the church across the street from her house and light up a cigarette, pass it around, then chew pine needles. There were three boys and two girls, so they’d come up with a lot of dare games, including one in which a boy stood behind a girl and inched his hands down into her pants until she screamed, “Chicken!” There were no winners or losers, but that didn’t mean they weren’t competitive. René never shied away from a challenge, and she and Tom held the kissing record, a timed two-minute full-tongues session in the makeshift “make-out” tent, a small pup tent one of the boys had managed to swipe from his older brother.

  Luckily, when Leon came around the corner that day, they were all just sitting on the steps, smoking cigarettes.

  “You’re gonna be in so much trouble,” Leon said, putting the VW in reverse, revving the engine and grinding the gears, then trying again and backing away like a pro.

  “What’s the matter with your brother?” Tom asked, referring to the eerie combination of Leon’s denuded face and his perennial sullen glare.

  “Nothing’s the matter with my brother,” René said bitterly. “What’s the matter with your fat mom?”

  “Jeez. Okay.”

  By the time René had chewed some needles and got back across the street, Eve was gone to the store.

  “She’s coming back,” Leon said. “Just wait.”

  So she waited in the kitchen.

  Eve finally came through the door, looking like she’d been dragged around behind the car. Her sweater was drooping off one shoulder, her hair was ratted and disheveled, and her face was pasty, bloated. She dropped the groceries onto the counter, then plucked out a carton of cigarettes and hurled it sideways as if skipping a rock. It skidded across the table, knocking René solidly in the chest.

  “Smoke ’em!” she growled.

  René figured Leon had told, but the punch of the cigarettes and the heat of Eve’s stare took her breath away. She started to cry; then Eve started to cry, not mournfully but furiously.

  “You’re gonna smoke ’em,” Eve said, coming to stand over her. “And you’re not leaving this room until that whole carton is finished. You hear me?”

  “I won’t!” René screamed. “I’m not going to. Leave me alone!”

  Eve raised a hand and slapped René across the face so hard that her jaw torqued and her ears rung. Though René understood that her mother harbored plenty against her, it was a violation of everything she imagined Eve felt about her deep down, all the love and pride she thought Eve kept secreted away, just for her. The solid, ancient hills and plains René counted on beneath her feet might as well have split apart, the ground opened up to swallow her.

  “You will,” Eve said, struggling to tear open the carton, ripping into a pack, shoving a cigarette into René’s mouth, then lighting a match. “You think you can do whatever you want and you don’t have to answer to anybody. Just like your dad. Well, I’ve had it! I’m going to stand right here and watch you smoke every last one of these goddamn cigarettes. Right now!”

  Eve had sobered, so René was the only one crying.

  “Inhale,” Eve said.

  “I did.”

  “You did not.”

  René inhaled and choked.

  “That’s right,” Eve said. “Now keep going.” She turned to put the groceries away as René smoked and cried, smoked and cried, lighting up one cigarette after the other.

  Jayne and Leon had fled just after Eve pitched the carton at her, so René was on her own.

  “Keep going,” Eve said when René began to flag. “You’re just getting started.”

  René lit up again and again, until she couldn’t do any more. Her head was spinning, and whatever had been in her stomach was on its way up. She ran to the bathroom.

  “That’s right,” Eve called after her. “Serves you right.”

  René came back dizzy, wiping her mouth.

  “Sit down,” Eve said. “You’re not done yet.”

  René sat, but she didn’t take another cigarette. She put her head on the table and didn’t move.

  “Go to your room,” Eve said finally. “And don’t come out until you can apologize. For smoking and whatever else you’ve been doing, sneaking around behind my back, lying to me. I’ve had enough of it. Now go.”

  So René climbed the stairs, doubled over, holding the rail, and fell onto her bed. Jayne came up to check on her. Leon, too.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she said, her mouth hanging open, spit dribbling onto her pillow.

  “I didn’t know she’d do that.”

  “No,” she grunted.

  When she felt up to it, René went back downstairs. She found Eve bent over her sewing machine.

  “Sorry,” she said, trying to sound sincere.

  “Not good enough,” Eve said, not even looking up.

  “Sorry for sneaking around, smoking cigarettes,” René tried.

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes.”

  Eve stopped and glared at her, skeptical.

  “Promise,” René said.

  As far as René was concerned, the kissing games were personal and none of Eve’s business. And René certainly wasn’t going to tell her that she sometimes passed around the half-empty bottle of Bacardi Eve kept for company, not if she didn’t already know.

  “I don’t want to hear about you smoking, not ever again,” Eve said. “Come here.”

  Eve didn’t get up, but she opened her arms, mechanically, almost against her will.

  “Now get yourself something to eat, and go straight to bed.” And René leaned in for a hug that felt mainly like a metal restraining device closing around her. “See you in the morning,” Eve said.

  * * *

  —

  Eve was working at a clothing store downtown in the afternoons, doing on-site alterations, and Jayne had started playing at a neighbor’s up the street, so when René got home from school, there’d be no one around. She still met her friends behind the church, but it was a while before she felt like having another cigarette.

  Then one of the boys told her that you could spray deodorant on your thumb and light it up without getting burned.

  “You could do your whole body,” he said, sounding dumbfounded by his own information. “Be, like, Fire Man.”

  “Yeah, but who wants to be a fireman?” René scoffed. “That’s a dumb name.”

  “I do,” Tom said.

  “Figures.” René laughed, and Tom started after her, chasing her through the tall grass until he finally caught her around the shoulders and rolled her to the ground, holding her in a steady embrace, tumbling her over and over.

  The next afternoon, when she was home alone, she tried it on the kitchen counter. First, she sprayed a short, straight line of deodorant, then lit one end and watched the fire zip across the countertop. It was like a miniature Evel Knievel, and nothing got charred or even discolored. Then she tried it on the refrigerator, spraying a loop and lighting the beginning, watching the flame race its course. From there, she became more con
fident, lighting up the walls and cupboards, holding a match to one end of her latest design and watching the flame ride and jump and spark as it faithfully followed the loop-de-loops and curlicues, the long, winding peaks and valleys, the spirals, corkscrews, circular mazes.

  There was never a mark, so no one ever seemed to know she’d done it, but for a while there, after coming home from letting the boys look down her shirt, René was lighting up that kitchen every day.

  * * *

  —

  Tom was short and strong, like a Russian sailor, and had scraggly yellow hair, electric-blue eyes, and deep-set dimples. He and René started riding his bike all over town—René on the back end of his banana seat, arms around his waist, as he pedaled up and down the inclines. Then one day, instead of meeting the others behind the church, Tom stopped in her driveway, and they went up to her room.

  “I’m making up dances,” she told him when he picked up the album she’d left on her bookcase. Mrs. G had given Eve a record called World’s Greatest Ballet Hits, and René had been playing it over and over, making dust motes scramble in the dim light that filtered through their living room windows as she choreographed.

  “Cool,” Tom said.

  “I could teach you.”

  “No way,” he laughed.

  “You could put on Leon’s tights,” she said, unfazed, and they snuck into Leon’s room and got out a pair of his black tights.

  Tom put them on and came out pulling down on his T-shirt, stretching it nearly to his knees.

  “What am I supposed to do in these?” he said, embarrassed, hopping one foot to the other.

  “You can be my partner,” René said.

  So they clasped hands and went downstairs. René made Tom stand behind her and put his hands on her waist. They tried a few simple steps, mostly getting caught up on each other’s feet and tumbling into the furniture or lurching sideways to catch their balance, laughing. Then René put on some music and tried a spin. She fell into Tom’s arms. And he caught her.