In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

  I woke up an hour later, and I rolled out of the bed, sweating and nearly choking on my twisted dress clothes. I wondered why I hadn’t taken them off before I lay down. I quickly changed into dungarees and a work shirt.

  Drifting into the dining room, I sat down with a deck of cards, laying out a game of solitaire. It seemed that every adult in the house had been napping, as they emerged one by one from their rooms, hair mussed, yawning and scratching. All except Jack and Dad.

  “Anybody seen Jack?” I asked.

  “He’s down at his house,” Teddy said.

  I nodded. “What about your grandpa?”

  They all shrugged and shook their heads. “Haven’t seen him.”

  “I think he’s sleeping, too,” Rita said. “I heard snoring from that direction.”

  The kids laughed.

  “Well, I suppose we should get something going for dinner,” I said. “We have a bumper crop of food here.”

  Rita, Muriel, and I went to the kitchen and surveyed the icebox.

  “This looks good,” Muriel said, pulling the lid off a beef casserole. Her spirits seemed to have improved with a little sleep.

  “I think all we need to do is warm up a few of these dishes,” Rita said.

  We filled the oven with the casserole, some scalloped potatoes, and a vegetable dish. We also found a beautiful chocolate cake and set it aside for dessert.

  We sat down to eat. Teddy ran to the old house to get Jack, but Dad had still not come out of his room.

  “He probably needs sleep more than he needs food,” Stan said.

  “This all looks so good,” Muriel said.

  “It certainly does,” Rita agreed. “It would be nice to eat like this all the time without doing any of the work.”

  Stan had a good “Ha” for that one.

  There was a strange sort of giddiness to our mood, as if we had forgotten for the moment that we had just buried our mother that morning. Or as though we were all relieved to have some of the secrets out in the open after so many years trying to protect each other from them.

  Teddy came huffing into the house, probably having sprinted the whole way. “Dad says he ain’t hungry.”

  “Ain’t?” Rita said.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” Teddy said.

  “Ain’t?” Rita repeated.

  “It means the same thing as isn’t,” George said in his droll, low voice.

  Rita’s eyes flashed, but she couldn’t help smiling. “You, young man, are a smart aleck,” she said to George, grabbing for his ear.

  George smiled into his shirt. We were still laughing when Dad emerged from the bedroom, rubbing the back of his head with his knuckles. He passed right by us as if we weren’t there, and our laughter died a quick death. We all turned our attention to our food, not looking at each other. Dad rummaged around in the kitchen.

  “Dad, do you need help finding something?” Rita called.

  “I’m all right,” he answered. We heard water running, filling a glass. Then Dad appeared in the doorway.

  We were stricken with rusty joints, all of us at once. We moved slowly, cutting and lifting our food as if each forkful weighed several pounds. None of us looked directly at Dad, but you can bet we had him in the edge of our vision.

  He walked into the room, straight over to Muriel, tipping the glass of water to his mouth as he walked. He bent at the waist and whispered something into Muriel’s ear, then gave her a peck on the side of her head, right in her hair. And she burst into tears and threw her arms around his waist, nearly knocking him over.

  15

  winter 1943

  In the corner of the living room, a fresh pine stood thick and shining green, strung with popcorn, cranberries, candles, and the gleaming colored balls that Muriel and Stan bought in Billings. The radio played Christmas carols softly, so that we could still talk at normal volume. The smells of pine, wax, and a raging fire filled the house. The bottom three-quarters of the windows sported an intricate frost, with an arc in the icy coating. And small glass and paper figurines littered the mantel, shelves, and tables. Since Mom’s death, Rita’s decorative eye had transformed our once-functional house. Her touch made the house seem more like a home, and I was pleased with how much more comfortable, relaxing, it felt. The decor helped compensate for the absence.

  Toys lay like battle victims across the floor—a red metal car with rubber wheels, a doll with wiry blond hair and a hole in her mouth for her plastic bottle, a wooden train, each car painted a different, bright color. Dad slept in his overstuffed chair, snoring lightly, a pair of new wool socks resting in his lap. Stan, George, and I had just come in from feeding. We gathered the wrapping paper, which we used to feed the fireplace. The women created the aroma of Christmas, working their magic in the kitchen, and the kids had been sent upstairs to play, where they wouldn’t disturb Grandpa (or at least that’s what we told them).

  “Well, did you get what you wanted?” Stan asked me.

  “Santa was very good to me,” I answered.

  “Ha.” Stan balled up a wad of wrapping paper and tossed it into the fire. “I didn’t know you still believed in Santa, Blake.”

  I held a finger to my lips. “Quiet, Stan. You don’t want to disillusion young George here.”

  “What, you mean there’s no such thing as Santa?” George adopted a shocked, hurt expression, and Stan and I laughed.

  Just two months past his eighteenth birthday, George was trying to decide whether to join the army. Rita jumped on any and every opportunity to talk him out of it, showing him articles in the newspapers that gave casualty totals, and telling him that he probably wouldn’t even get to fight, but would end up like his father, stationed somewhere in the states, shuffling papers around. “I wouldn’t mind,” he’d say. “I just think it’s my responsibility.”

  But I think he was more drawn to the glory of fighting than he let on. When his mother wasn’t around, he pored over the descriptions of battles, or read books like A Farewell to Arms. It was easy to imagine him putting himself in the place of Hemingway’s wounded soldier, being tended by a beautiful, sympathetic nurse. And as much as I also hoped that he wouldn’t enlist, I could understand the romantic allure.

  “Well, whatever they’re cooking in there sure smells good,” Stan said.

  “Sure does,” I agreed. “And I’m getting hungry. Seems like breakfast was yesterday.”

  We had just sat down to Christmas dinner, said grace at Muriel’s request, and begun to pass the food around the table, when the sound of stomping echoed from the back porch. A pocket of cold air blew through the house. Jack entered the dining room from the kitchen. He cupped his raw hands up to his mouth, and his shoulders hunched up around his neck. I was sitting at the head of the table, a position I had taken since Mom died. One evening, I came to the dinner table and found Dad sitting in my chair. He nodded toward his, indicating that I should sit there. I never asked why. But it had been that way ever since. And now, everyone looked at me after seeing who it was.

  I noticed that Stan had been dipping rather more frequently into the egg nog than he usually did, and when Jack appeared, Stan bellowed, “Merry Christmas, Jack.”

  Jack grinned slightly and said thanks before looking down at his boots. None of the rest of us said anything, and Stan looked around at everyone, trying to understand the silence.

  The cause this time was an incident that occurred the previous summer, at the Belle Fourche Roundup on the Fourth of July. Before that, Jack and Rita had shown signs of renewing their romance. He had begun shyly courting her, and had somehow managed to overcome a healthy skepticism on her part. And to everyone’s surprise, and my dismay, they spent several evenings a week strolling out into a grove of trees behind the old house, where they would sit and talk for an hour or so. I have to confess that I spied on them from time to time, feeling sick to my stomach as I wondered each time whether I would find them wrapped in each other’s arms, or locked in a passionate kiss. But
Rita apparently wasn’t ready for that.

  But at the Roundup, Jack showed up parading around with another woman. This blatant disregard for Rita destroyed whatever goodwill he had developed among his family. Rita filed for divorce, and he didn’t fight it, although that evening was the only time we saw the mystery woman, who we later found out was from Sundance, Wyoming. It was almost as if Jack wanted it to happen. He had the opportunity to renew what had been a pretty good life, and he threw it away for one day with some woman that apparently wasn’t even that important to him.

  To further his exile, Jack had moved out of the old homestead house, asking the boys to help him clean out the little cabin he and Rita had first lived in. The cats that once swarmed the house were long dead, but nobody had ever had any reason to clean them out. So according to Teddy, “the place smelled worse than a chicken coop.” But Jack moved in, and we hardly saw him other than out in the fields. He focused on his dirt work, erecting a series of dikes and ditches that allowed us to flood our meadows, and he finished building two reservoirs, damming the creeks so we could use those two pastures for summer grazing. He had also hired out to the neighbors on the weekends. But this time, he was careful not to take time away from the ranch.

  And in one final stroke of defiance, Jack had begun to spend a lot of time at Bob and Helen’s. To me, this was the most confusing part of his arrival that morning. We just assumed he would be spending the day with them.

  “What is it?” Dad asked, not bothering to look at Jack.

  Jack shrugged. “I thought I might be welcome to spend Christmas with my family, at least for dinner.”

  Dad looked at Rita, whose mouth was a straight line, with little creases above the top lip. “You’ve got some nerve, Jack Arbuckle,” she muttered, but her tone was fairly indifferent.

  “Oh, come on, everybody,” Stan said, his palms smacking the table on each side of his plate. The silverware shook and rattled. “You can let things be for just one day, can’t you? Every man should be able to spend this day with their children, if they’ve been blessed with any.”

  “Every man who gives a damn about ’em,” George muttered.

  This comment stung Jack, I could tell, and he looked suddenly pathetic and lonely to me. Although I didn’t want him there, it seemed obvious that he hadn’t come to cause any trouble. “Sit down, Jack,” I said.

  “What?” Dad said.

  “Ah, let him eat, at least,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Stan agreed.

  I looked at Rita, who gave a curt nod.

  Because nobody wanted the situation to turn into a conflict, there were no protests. But the silence had the feel of unhappy submission, and as Jack took off his coat, went to the kitchen for a plate, and pulled an extra chair up to the table, between Teddy and Stan, the tension was impossible to ignore.

  As dinner progressed, I began to wish I had kept my mouth shut. Jack’s presence sucked the festive spirit out of the gathering like a tube siphoning gas. Everyone ate as though they couldn’t wait to finish and move on to the next thing. There was almost no conversation, and if Stan hadn’t been at the table, there might not have been any.

  “So how’s the mining business, Stan?” I asked.

  “Better all the time.” Stan finished chewing before continuing. “Of course, the war doesn’t hurt us any.”

  “Ah, yes. The war.” I nodded. “I’ve heard something about a war going on.”

  “I wish that wasn’t the reason business was better,” Muriel lamented.

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t start the war,” Stan said.

  “Of course not,” Muriel said, “I just wish nobody had. It never solves anything.”

  Talk of the war made me think about the last time the subject had come up in Jack’s presence, and I studied him. He looked placid, not really interested in what was being said. His face was drawn, and I wondered whether he’d been eating enough.

  “Well, I think Hitler is going to self-destruct,” Stan said. “He’s trying to do too much. Even with help from the Italians and Japs, he’s taking on too much.”

  “Let’s just hope to God you’re right.” Muriel raised her glass to her husband.

  “George, you’re about that age. Are you thinking about enlisting?” Stan asked.

  This brought the first reaction from Jack, who looked up from his plate in alarm, fixing his eyes on his oldest son. It looked as if it had never occurred to him that his son had grown up.

  “He is,” Rita said. “And any help in talking him out of it would be appreciated.”

  “George, I hope you decide not to join,” Muriel said. “You just don’t know what can happen.” She shook her head.

  “The boy has to decide for himself,” Stan said.

  “Leave the boy alone,” Dad grumbled.

  “We’re discussing,” Stan said. “We’re not riding the boy.”

  “It’s all right, Grandpa,” George said. “For one thing, everybody stop calling me boy. I’m not a boy anymore. I don’t have to listen to what they say.”

  “Well!” Muriel said.

  “He didn’t mean it that way,” Rita said to Muriel.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Rita agreed.

  “No,” George said. “No, I want to talk about this. I think I have the right to make up my own mind. And if I want to join the army, I shouldn’t have to worry about whether my family is never going to talk to me again if I do.”

  Rita looked stricken. “Son, who do you think wouldn’t talk to you? Why would you say something like that?”

  George sighed, shaking his head with an expression of someone carrying a much bigger load than he had any business taking on. “Maybe we should drop it. I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I’m just saying that it’s about time somebody realized I’m a grown-up now.”

  Rita looked down at her plate, her face slightly older. But I thought George made a good point—it occurred to me that maybe Jack wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been paying attention, that maybe we had all been so wrapped up in our own lives that we hadn’t noticed that he was a man now.

  We talked about less controversial topics as we finished our main course and went on to dessert. Jack never did speak, and by the time we finished eating, his presence had lost its power. I could feel the room slowly relax.

  After dinner, we decided to play cards. Between the adults and George and Teddy, we had eight people, so Rita and I sat down in the living room, teaming up against George and Dad. In the dining room, Muriel and Jack paired up against Teddy and Stan, who continued to indulge in his share of eggnog. The candles on the tree had long burnt down to nothing, the wax coating the pine branches, and the fire had to be fed to keep it from dying to a smoldering pile of ash. A chill filled the air even with the fire as the light outside began to fade. And as the temperature dropped, the cold air leaked in through the cracks under the doors, and around the windows. It soaked into the wood floors and walls. We all put on sweaters before we sat down.

  “Blake, I don’t know what you’re trying to do to me, but these cards are terrible,” Dad said.

  “I don’t feel bad at all,” I answered, smiling.

  “Well, you could have dealt your partner a decent hand,” Rita said.

  “Looks like George and Blake have the cards this time around,” Dad said.

  “Don’t look at me,” George argued. “I couldn’t win Old Maid with this hand.”

  Indeed, I had an incredible hand—three aces, and a string of seven hearts including the ace, king, jack, and ten. I took the bid easily, at eight hearts, and ran the table, taking every trick. This was the beginning of a streak of luck that I’ve never known in all my years of playing cards. I ended up with at least two aces in nearly every hand, and if I didn’t have a strong suit, I seemed to have just the right cards to complement Rita’s hand. Dad got so disgusted, he asked if anyone at the other table wanted to switch partners. But there were no takers.

&nb
sp; “Blake, what are you doing to those poor folks over there?” Muriel asked.

  “I’m not too sure what’s going on here,” I said. “Living right, I guess. The cards are definitely falling my way tonight.”

  “Well, you take it easy on my nephew,” Muriel shouted.

  “Hey, if I get the hands, I have to play ’em,” I said.

  “You’re coldhearted,” Dad said, shaking his head. “Cruel and cold-hearted.”

  Over the course of the evening, as we played game after game of five hundred, the conversation from the dining room got louder a little at a time. And due to his overindulgence, Stan’s voice dominated, along with much laughter.

  “Hey, how much longer you guys gonna play in there?” Stan’s voice boomed from the dining room. “We’re about ready to quit in here. You gonna play all night?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna play all night,” I yelled.

  “Yeah, Blake is gonna play all night. But he’ll be playin’ solitaire before too much longer,” Dad shouted.

  I laughed. “Dad, I never knew you were such a sore loser.”

  “I never lost this bad before.”

  “Well, if you guys aren’t gonna quit, we’re just gonna have to come in there and bother you,” Stan shouted.

  A few minutes later, Stan weaved through the door, with Jack, Teddy, and Muriel following. Stan held his arms straight out at his sides and bowed his head slightly. “Here we are!” he announced. He had a glass in one hand, half filled with eggnog, tipping precariously, and a big smile on his face, with deep creases on each side of his mouth. His cheeks were red right up to his eyes. Jack lingered behind him, his face giving no sign of his condition.

  “Here we are,” Stan repeated, then started giggling, which sounded strange coming from him.

  Stan and Jack made their way to the couch, which they caved into. And Teddy and Muriel settled into the easy chairs.

  “All right,” Stan said. He turned to Jack and made like a whisper, holding his hand on one side of his mouth. “We gotta be quiet. They’re playin’ cards. Gotta keep it down.” Stan laughed conspiratorially holding his hand against his stomach. “Besides,” he continued, “Blake’s on a roll over here. We don’t want to ruin his lucky streak.”