In Open Spaces

by Russell Rowland

  We continued playing, watching this scene with amusement. Except for Muriel, who was not happy to see her husband in such a state. She became distracted from the game.

  I had my eye on Jack, who hadn’t said a word. I had yet to see him drunk since his return, but I couldn’t read his condition. He appeared a little slow, but it was the kind of look that could mean he was tired, or bored. Across the table from me, Rita kept him under close scrutiny herself.

  “Did we go out again?” I asked Dad.

  “No. You have four seventy-five.” He laid the pencil across the score pad, and started to shuffle the cards. “You want to call it quits after this game?”

  “No,” George quickly said.

  “Well, let’s see how it goes,” Dad said.

  “I’ve about had it,” Rita said.

  “At least we had a close game in there,” Muriel said. “It was a lot more fun at our table.”

  “You saying you got a better partner than you did last time?” Dad kidded her. He had been her partner the night before.

  “I believe so,” Muriel joked. “I believe that was the problem last night. I didn’t have a good partner.”

  “Well, if that’s the way this game works, Blake has the best partner in the history of the county,” Dad said.

  “Who’s Blake’s partner?” Stan asked.

  “Well, look at the table, you big dummy,” Muriel said.

  Stan squeezed his eyes together and held his hand above his eyes, as if he was searching for something a long ways off. “Is that you, Rita? Are you Blake’s partner?” he asked.

  “Sure am,” Rita replied.

  “And a damn good one,” I added.

  “And not the first time she’s been your partner, huh?”

  The moment these bitter words left Jack’s lips, the atmosphere of the whole room chilled. It became obvious to me that Jack was not drunk. His eyes were wide. His cheeks flushed. Even his neck had turned red. But his eyes were sky-blue clear, and his voice did not waver. He was completely sober, and for the second time that day, his presence commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

  “Oh Jesus,” Dad murmured.

  “Yeah, we’ve been partners before,” I said, hoping the question was this simple.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jack said, his voice brittle, cold.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  He snorted through his nose and looked around the room, at everyone, as if the answer was so clear he couldn’t believe I didn’t know.

  Dad jumped in, his voice low and shaking. “Whatever it is you’ve got on your mind, Jack, you best keep it to yourself, especially in front of these boys.”

  “Why should I?” Jack asked, leaning forward from his sitting position. “Everyone in the county knows about it. Everyone but me knew about it until Steve Glasser let me in on the goddam secret.”

  “Get that son of a bitch out of here,” Rita muttered, her teeth clenched.

  Muriel started crying, quietly, holding a handkerchief to her eyes.

  As Jack’s accusation sunk in, and as I saw what it did to Rita, I lost my head. I didn’t think, but acted completely on impulse. In one motion, I threw down my cards, tipped my chair to the floor and stood over Jack, my hands and knees trembling.

  “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, you better get the hell out of this house before I pound you right through that couch and into the floor.”

  I would have been on top of him if Stan hadn’t jumped up and grabbed me, wrapping his arm across my chest. Dad also came up from behind, holding me around the waist.

  “Easy, Blake. Step back and take it easy for a second,” commanded Stan, who was suddenly sober.

  Jack stared up at me with a stony, mistrustful gaze that turned my heart cold.

  “After all you’ve put this family through, you accuse your wife of that!” I was yelling, in a voice that didn’t sound or feel like my own. My legs felt like water, and the shouting echoed in my ears, as though I was in a metal building.

  “You know where that rumor came from.” Rita now stood next to me, her fists clenched at her sides, her voice shaking, her whole body quaking. “You know who started it, and you know why.” She looked directly at Jack, but pointed off in the direction of Bob and Helen’s house. “And if you’re going to sit there and tell us you’d believe that…that witch before you’d believe me or your brother here, who took care of your children while you were off doing whatever is such a secret you can’t even tell your own family…” She couldn’t finish, and she wept, her eyes spilling onto her cheeks. “Ask your children,” she screamed, pointing to Teddy, who was also crying. “Ask your children, Jack Arbuckle. They were there.”

  Jack’s neck stiffened. His hands, which had been clenched, holding tightly to his thighs, loosened their grip and fell between his knees, hanging. But his face remained impassive, his eyes unbelieving. He looked as defiant and righteous as ever.

  I wrenched loose from Stan’s grip and bent down, pushing my chin up against Jack’s. Stan tried to grab my arm, but I jerked it from his grip. Our chins touched. I pushed against him, feeling the soft breath from his nose.

  “Do you realize how much you’ve put this woman through? Do you have any idea?”

  Before Jack had a chance to respond, I felt someone shove me from behind, throwing me to one side. I fell, and looking up from the floor, I watched George dive into his father’s torso. George’s head landed against Jack’s chest like a hammer, prompting a grunt from Jack, who lost his wind. Then George’s right elbow flew up behind him, and his arm started a pistonlike pounding, thrusting his fist into his father’s midsection. Stan and Dad both tried to restrain George, but besides being stronger than he looked, his rage was so intense that they couldn’t contain him. Except for holding his arms up to his face, Jack made little effort to defend himself.

  “She never did nothing to you,” I heard George say through sobs. “She waited for you, and she never did nothing. And you left. You left us.”

  I scooted over between the forest of legs gathered around Jack, and wrapped my arms around George’s knees. I pulled him to the ground. Then I crawled up his torso so that I could hold his arms.

  “Calm down, George,” I whispered in his ear.

  “No.” I was shocked by the force of George’s reply. He struggled to break free of my grasp, but I held him firmly against the floor. The rest of the room was completely silent.

  “Let me up, Uncle Blake,” George muttered between his teeth.

  I turned my head and looked up at Jack, whose face was bloody, although he didn’t appear to be seriously hurt.

  “Let him up,” he said passively. Jack looked right at me. And it appeared from his expression that this attack from George had reached inside and struck something in my brother. It appeared that his son had touched a spot none of the rest of us had ever been able to approach. His eyes, for the first time that I could remember, looked to be free of their hooded suspicion. Instead, they showed an immense sorrow. A reflection of a pure emotion.

  The look penetrated my own shield, and my arms suddenly went weak. George started to wriggle in my grasp again. I let him go, and he staggered to his feet, and backed up, staring at his father.

  “How can you possibly even think you have any right to accuse me of that?” Rita asked Jack.

  Jack turned his head and breathed deep, as if he was too tired to defend himself. He shook his head, a motion that slowly transformed into a nod, an acknowledgment.

  And it was odd how dramatically the atmosphere shifted. This small crack in Jack’s façade had split the tension in the room open like a needle breaking open a swollen blister. And the anger had been replaced by a somber, pervasive sadness.

  “Why did you come back here?” George asked softly. “Why didn’t you just stay away?”

  Jack’s eyes met George’s, and they came as close to pleading as I’ve ever seen them. “This is my home,” he sai
d.

  George just shook his head, then stalked out. I looked over at Teddy, and saw the face of a boy whose youthful idealism had just been shattered. He looked as if he could easily break into tears if he would allow himself to let go. But he dropped his head and squeezed his lips together.

  Jack stood up slowly, deliberately, and left through the front door, wiping the blood from his face.

  I went back to my chair, slumping into it with the kind of defeated feeling I always feel after a confrontation. I always seem to find myself wondering what I could have done to prevent these situations, or handle them differently somehow. There’s no logic to this, of course. But I was sitting there, thinking that I should have seen that Jack’s silence was foreboding, sitting there on the couch. The rest of the family also sat with sad, stunned expressions.

  When we heard footsteps on the front porch, I thought to myself that we really couldn’t handle any more, that it was too much for one day. The door swung open, and Jack entered, and I tensed, my muscles preparing for anything, even the possibility that Jack had retrieved a weapon and come back to use it. He walked right up to me, and I sat bolt-upright, and felt everyone around me do the same. But Jack stood right there in front of me, and held out his hand, inviting me to shake it. I looked at it, and thought for a moment, and I did. I shook it. I stood up and shook his hand.

  That night I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, my hands nestled into the pillow behind my head. My stomach was wound as tight as a ball of dried leather as I lay quietly thinking, and listening to the rustle of others in the house getting ready for bed. I couldn’t remember coming any closer to wanting to kill somebody as I had been just a few hours before. I still felt a slight tremor in my arms.

  Jack’s accusation had led me to a nauseating realization. I now pieced it together that Helen’s rumor had spread across the entire county. And I realized at last what spurred the reaction from Mom the night she kicked Bob and Helen out of the house. Helen must have suggested the possibility that Rita and I were having an affair. The depth and width of the lie, of the betrayal, seemed so immense that it filled me with a churning sickness. Not so much because of what people would think, although that did bother me some. But more because I couldn’t imagine how Helen could be so heartless. It seemed that every time I convinced myself that I knew her limitations, she showed a color that was darker, more ominous.

  That night, the mysteries of love seemed more mysterious than ever to me. How could a man who had shown no interest in his wife, in his family, for so many years, feel betrayed by a rumor, even if it was true? Would it really have surprised him if his wife sought comfort from someone else during the course of those ten years? It seemed even more surprising that she hadn’t. And would it be that unusual if that person happened to be someone she saw every day, someone she was close to already? Who the hell was Jack to be jealous, especially after his display at the Roundup just months before? The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go find Jack and pound on him. But I also felt an overwhelming urge to go to Rita, to provide some comfort from this latest stunt. I felt very protective of her that night. All these emotions eventually wore me out. Fortunately, before I acted on any of them, I fell asleep.

  16

  fall 1944

  “Blake!” Rita’s call from around the corner of the house echoed across the open space behind me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have some paint to spare?”

  “Oh, yeah. I have plenty. Come on over.” I dipped my brush into the five-gallon can hanging by a hook from my extension ladder. We had nearly finished spreading the third coat of paint over the big house. With nearly everyone in the family taking up a brush in the evenings and on Sundays, the job had still taken over a month. The weathered, gray wood had been so dry that the first coat soaked in like water. The change in color was barely noticeable. Even now, the gray showed through in many spots. But we were running out of paint, patience, and most important, warm weather.

  Rita rounded the corner, carrying a gallon bucket in her paintspotted hand. She wore overalls with a men’s undershirt, all covered with spatterings of white. She had her hair, nearly all gray now, tied up with a kerchief.

  “How’s it going over on your side?” I asked.

  “Getting there,” she answered.

  “How about Jack?” Jack worked on the opposite side of the house.

  “I don’t know. Last time I looked, he was moving right along.”

  It was warm, early fall, when the days are almost as hot as summer but the chill of evening calls for at least a jacket. I also wore overalls and an undershirt, and I was too hot. If I hadn’t been so worried about burning the top of my head, I would have taken my hat off. I climbed down and poured paint into Rita’s can, then clambered back to my perch.

  Life was good. Five years of better-than-average moisture. From the ladder, I could look in every direction and see meadows thick with grass grown back since our second cutting, in July. Although the color was fading, the green that shaded the yellowing fields was still brilliant for this late in this season. Each spring, we wondered if it would end. Was it going to be like the teens—so many good years followed by so much hell? We knew the shift could happen at any moment, and each wet year was greeted with a sigh of relief.

  There was a soft, steady clicking in the air—the last of the locusts, which were now no more of a problem than the usual summer swarm of flies or mosquitoes. And the smells were strong, unlike the thirties, when the dust muted even the odors. I could smell the sagebrush, alfalfa, the livestock, even the air, and it all smelled clean and good, fresh.

  I reached out as far to my right as I could and covered the dry wood, pulling the brush across each strip of siding, then back again to even out the paint. Inside the house, I heard the phone ring—two longs and a short.

  “Is that Glassers’?” I yelled to Rita.

  “I think so,” she shouted back.

  The county had installed our phone system that spring. It was a complicated setup—a party line, of course. We could make local calls by ringing the coded signals assigned to each neighbor. But if we wanted to call anyone outside of the direct area, anything more than fifteen miles away, we had to ring the switchboard operator in Capitol. A blind man by the name of Reeves ran the switchboard, and once he connected you with your party, you had to tell him what to say. He would pass on your message, then relay their reply. They hadn’t been able to afford a system that connected you directly to the outside party, and because of Reeves’s handicap, he couldn’t write anything down. So it was important to keep your message short and simple. A phone call sometimes lasted an hour, with constant interruptions by neighbors trying to make their own calls.

  The system provided a new form of entertainment, as many folks listened in on other calls. I have to admit I enjoyed picking up the line now and then myself. I wouldn’t doubt that some calls had an audience of over twenty-five people. Some neighbors’ calls were more entertaining than others, of course. Helen was always good for a few stories, and if you managed to catch Lonnie Roberts on the line, you always heard stifled laughter in the background.

  A few days after the system was installed, our phone began ringing, time after time, one code then another, and another, and more, until I had to pick it up to see what the hell was happening, even though our code of three shorts hadn’t rung yet. The line was filled with people: “Hello, hello”; “Who the hell is calling?”; “Is this some kind of joke?”

  The phone continued ringing and ringing, until there were at least twenty people on the line trying to figure out what was going on. I assumed there must be an emergency—a fire or something—and that somebody was trying to alert the community. But finally a loud, confused voice came on the line.

  “Hello? Oh, is this thing turned on?”

  “Yes, it’s turned on. Who the hell is this?”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I was just practicing,” the voice said, without identifying h
imself. Then he hung up. The whole county got a good laugh out of this incident, and for months after, there were several rumors about who would need to practice. There was some speculation that it was the ghost of Art Walters.

  I climbed down from under the eave, lugging my paint with me, and moved the ladder over ten feet. About then, Teddy and George came up the path from their house. Pup followed behind, as did a bum lamb. Teddy still carried out the task of feeding the orphaned lambs, a job he did not enjoy but which he performed with his usual good-natured sense of responsibility. But as a sign of the good times, he only had one lamb to take care of that season. The lamb had become quite attached to Teddy, and because Pup also followed Teddy wherever he went, the lamb had decided that he too was a dog. When we herded sheep, he followed Pup into the fields, never making the connection that the flock we were herding was made up of his own kind. He stuck right with Pup while the dog nipped at the heels of the other sheep. George, in one of his more brilliant moments, had dubbed the lamb Mutt, short for mutton.

  “Where are you guys headed?” I asked.

  “We’re going out to the north pasture to check on the cattle,” George said.

  “You need the pickup?”

  “No, we’re gonna ride,” George answered. “Make a day of it.”

  “Today’s the day to do that,” I said.

  “It’s nice, all right,” Teddy said, smiling.

  Teddy was home from Belle Fourche for the weekend. He had started his sophomore year, and had been talking about college, if the war was over by the time he graduated. He roomed with the next generation of the same family in Belle Fourche that I had stayed with.

  George had tried to enlist in January, but when they did the physical evaluation, they had discovered an irregular heartbeat. After so many months of agonizing about whether to take this step, his disappointment had been profound. For a couple of weeks, getting him to do anything was a waste of breath, and not just in the area of work. He hardly ate, or bothered to take a bath.