The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

‘I’m sorry. I guess she misses Trudel . . . we all do.’ Mr Flaherty’s eyes, narrowed and unblinking, focused mercilessly on Spencer, who felt acutely uncomfortable.

  ‘Some more than others. Huh, young man?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Flaherty took a step closer, a whisker too close for comfort. Spencer could see a red fleck on his chin where he’d nicked himself with the razor, and see a couple of long wiry grey hairs curling in his nostrils. He gave off the sweet-sour smell of the saddlery.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anything about all this, would you?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About my daughter being in the family way.’

  ‘My daughter’ – not ‘our’ daughter. Man to man. A challenge. Spencer had never been so scared.

  ‘No, sir!’

  Flaherty raised a callused finger between their faces. His eyes burned ice-cold. ‘She wouldn’t say anything about anyone. Said it was her fault. Went off to stay with her auntie in Chicago. But it takes two to tango and you’ve been round here like a stray dog these last months. I’m not stupid, McColl—’

  ‘I know that, sir—’

  ‘Shut up. I’m not stupid and I’m not blind and I know my daughter liked male company. She’s a fine looking girl.’ He paused as if waiting for an endorsement which Spencer was by now far too terrified to give. ‘But if – when – I find out who the little bastard was who did this to her, and who thinks he’s got away with it because she’s too dam’ proud to sneak – when I find out who he is, his life won’t be worth living. Understand?’

  Spencer nodded. Flaherty held his gaze for a couple more interminable seconds and then went stumping back up the path and closed the door behind him.

  Spencer only just reached the end of the fence before opening his pants and pissing a flood. His knees were trembling so much that he splashed himself. To give time for his pants to dry and to get his head straight he walked down to the creek and sat hunched over, shaken and miserable, on the bank. The resident muskrat plied back and forth about his business, trailing a spreading chevron of ripples in his wake. What the hell did he care? Spencer picked up a lump of earth and lobbed it at the rat, who submerged with a ‘gloop’.

  It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, they’d both been so careful about using the rubbers. Even when he’d been too excited to give a damn, Trudel had seen to it. She even made a point of testing the supply because she said it was well known there was always one with a hole for playing Russian roulette with . . .

  He realised he didn’t know whether Trudel was going to have the baby, or if she was ever coming back. He didn’t even know her address, for God’s sake, apart from Chicago, and that was an enormous city. But old man Flaherty had served notice – Spencer’s life, if it was him, wouldn’t be worth living.

  And then a strange thing happened. As he sat there he began to feel the stirrings of something other than shame, bewilderment and terror. He started to feel a spark of pride, and with it, anger. Damn it, if he was the father he’d marry Trudel and show them he loved her and could look after her! Perhaps after everything she’d said to him about being special she’d engineered the whole thing – perhaps she’d wanted his baby, and it was all meant to be, in which case he wasn’t going to be made to feel it was some sort of crime, even by old man Flaherty. All of a sudden he could picture himself and Trudel, a young married couple, heads held high, wheeling their baby out on fine afternoons, just as they’d used to play at it with the Lowe kids. The picture was a pretty one, happy and strong and right.

  But first he had to know. And to know he had to get in touch with her.

  Spencer waited a couple of days till it was Monday and Trudel’s father was at the saddlery. He took his own lunch break early, and even took a peek to make sure Mr Flaherty was where he should be, working away with his sharp, stubby little knife, before going round to their house.

  Mrs Flaherty was just as direct as her husband, though the burden of her song could not have been more different. She was a big, rolling woman who seemed to be melting with melancholy.

  ‘Oh, Spencer, what are we going to do? Come in, come in, you might as well . . .’

  She seemed both to presuppose his involvement, and to invite his collusion. She was certainly not hostile, quite the opposite, as she escorted him into the parlour and plumped a cushion for him to lean on.

  ‘Would you like coffee? A piece of cake?’

  Since it was evident she’d been consuming both herself, he accepted the coffee, though not the cake, in the cause of solidarity.

  ‘How is Trudel, Mrs Flaherty?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘She wrote me that she’s well, but what should I think?’ The vestigial German inflection in Mrs Flaherty’s voice gave her plaints an operatic quality.

  ‘You don’t believe her?’ asked Spencer.

  ‘She’s so far away. A daughter should be with her mother at this time!’

  It was on the tip of Spencer’s tongue to ask why, in that case, she wasn’t. But he restrained himself.

  ‘I’m sure she’s telling the truth,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve heard from her?’ enquired Mrs Flaherty with a sudden hint of sharpness.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head emphatically and thinking of Mr Flaherty gouging away with his knife, added: ‘Why would she write to me?’

  ‘Because you were her special friend. She thought the world of you ...’

  Spencer’s heart swelled. ‘I’m glad about that. And I’d like to send her a letter. Could you let me have her address?’

  ‘Well . . . I don’t know about . . . Mr Flaherty wouldn’t like it. I mean he doesn’t want anyone knowing about this, and he thinks you may have been responsible—’

  Until he knew for sure. Spencer thought complete denial was the simplest thing. ‘It wasn’t me,’ he said with all the firmness he could muster. ‘It couldn’t have been.’

  Mrs Flaherty looked even more mournful. ‘Sure it could have been, as much as anyone else.’

  Spencer, mortified, drew a deep breath and declared himself. ‘I loved her, I took care of her. That’s what I want to do now – let me write to her Mrs Flaherty.’

  ‘I don’t know. My husband would be so mad. It doesn’t bear thinking about!’ She shook her head, closing her eyes and turning her mouth down in a tragi-comic expression like a clown’s.

  ‘Please.’ He tried another tack. ‘It would do her good to hear from a friend – to know we’re thinking of her.’

  ‘Maybe . . . Maybe you’re right.’

  ‘I’m sure I am.’

  ‘Very well.’ She got up and waddled massively to the bureau, coming back with a notepad and paper. Then she wrote down the address in her deliberate, florid hand, and passed it to him with a sigh. ‘There you are, God forgive me.’

  Fine sentiment was one thing, but to express it truthfully and well quite another, as Spencer was to discover. He threw away innumerable attempts at the letter because they appeared either cloying or sententious. There was also the simple fact that he, like everyone else, did not know the identity of the baby’s father. To claim that it was his would be an arrogant and, given Mr Flaherty’s attitude, possibly dangerous assumption; but to write as though it wasn’t would seem cold and cowardly.

  In the end he stuck to a sturdy message of love and concern, and a promise of support. It was a little drier in tone than he would have wished, but it was the best he could do given that he wanted to sound manly and mature. By the time he posted the letter, his brain was scrambled – he was unable to tell whether he’d struck the right note or not, and there was no one to whom he could turn for advice.

  A couple of days after he’d sent it he met Bobby Forrest in the Diamond Diner. Or more accurately Bobby came up to Spencer when he was at the counter drinking a club soda with Aaron and Joel.

  ‘Hey, Spencer McColl, howya doing?’

  Spencer winced at the feel of Bobby’s hand on his shoulder, like that of an arresting
officer.

  ‘Hi there.’

  ‘Seen anything of Trudel lately?’

  This casual enquiry surprised Spencer. For one thing Bobby seemed to take for granted that he ‘saw’ Trudel regularly; for another, he appeared to have no idea that she’d gone away.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor me. Where’d she get to?’

  ‘She’s gone to stay with her aunt in Chicago.’

  ‘Lucky Chicago.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Funny she just upped and went, and never said nothing. She okay?’

  Spencer deliberated for a split second before opting for the truth, if not the whole truth.

  He shrugged, a man not overly concerned. ‘Far as I know.’

  When Bobby had gone, Aaron pulled a jokily admiring face. ‘Well I’ll be! So you’re like that with Apples, and Bobby Forrest doesn’t care . . .?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Spencer, ‘he just knows when he’s beat.’ He might have acted casual, but there was no denying the strangeness of the exchange. In one way it had been flattering to be deferred to by Bobby. In another the whole incident seemed to confirm Trudel’s status as a girl who didn’t say no, and about whose movements there was consequently no shame in admitting ignorance. It also reminded him that the baby could be Bobby’s.

  Spencer was uneasy. Much, he felt, depended on the tenor of Trudel’s reply to his letter. He allowed two days for it to get there, a further two – no, three – for her to absorb its message and compose her own, and two more for hers to reach him. Once that week had passed he started waiting in earnest.

  No letter ever came.

  The pain and frustration settled down into a dull anxiety. He didn’t like to go round to the Flaherty place again, and no news was forthcoming. Bobby took up with another girl, red-haired Minna Goldie, and among Spencer’s contemporaries it began to be generally accepted that Apples had finally got unlucky in some unspecified way that they could nonetheless guess at. No more suspicion fell on Spencer than anyone else and the matter was let lie there because of a tacit understanding that too many people had too much to lose. After two or three months Trudel as a subject for discussion was dropped altogether. Out of sight was out of mind.

  She remained on Spencer’s mind, but life went on. He was heartily sick of working for Mack, and they were starting to get on each other’s nerves, so it was a good thing all round when he landed a job out at Buck’s. The job itself was humble, no more than a handyman to begin with, but at least he had the satisfaction of belonging to an organisation whose associations reached well beyond Moose Draw and its small-town preoccupations. He lived in the bunkhouse and learned to fit in. In spite of his worry about Trudel, he enjoyed the work, and being with older men who treated him like one of the guys. He learned that the writer was in poor health these days and hadn’t been at the ranch for a couple of years. Tallulah was still there, but old and fat, disinclined to do much of anything but lie on the front porch of the main house and snooze. A couple of crazy golden retrievers had taken her place. Spencer kept his eyes open for the little mare who hadn’t really wanted to escape, but never saw her, and when he asked the foreman about her – mentioning the famous writer – he was told she’d most likely been helped on her way, they couldn’t afford to keep horses past their best.

  The horses were the motor of the whole place, its pulse and its heartbeat, and Spencer grew to love them in an inexpert, wholehearted kind of way. He’d never have made a cowboy, he was too squeamish and introspective for that, but he learned to ride and help out, and most of all to get to know the animals he’d admired from a safe distance for so long. In time he was to realise how wise and generous, in their stern way, were the Buck’s cowboys. They may have engaged in a little gentle teasing – there was one incident with whisky, and another with chewing tobacco – but they never mocked his townie’s view of the horses, nor his initial nervousness and ineptitude, and though they were tough and uncompromising they were not intolerant. These were men of deep and closely guarded feelings. The way they loved the horses wasn’t so different from his – they were just as susceptible to the passion, but it was something that came to them second, that dawned on them after decades of riding and saddle-breaking, herding, branding and shoeing. The magic slipped in beneath their guard when they were doing this stuff, and took root. In spite, or because of the necessary shooting, Spencer was respectful of the fact that you couldn’t really say you knew horses until you’d had to put one down: something he was never obliged nor called upon to do – the cowboys knew his limitations as well as he did.

  He didn’t accompany guests on week-long treks, but watched wistfully, broom in hand, as they set out loaded with packs and canvas tents and duffels. He did eventually get time off his usual chores to stand in for someone else on half-day and one-hour rides in the area around the creek. Occasionally for the same reason he was allowed to help turn the horses out at night, driving them two or three miles up from the ranch, proud of the show they put on for the guests who stood on their verandahs and porches, the kids in nightclothes, watching with shining eyes. It was even headier if they had to drive horses through town, with the shudder of hooves on tarmacadam, the bobbing, tossing mass of sorrel and roan and chestnut and black and grey and two-tone, and the dull old cars crawling behind because they had to. He never got over that, the thrill of being in charge of the horses in Wyoming where they had right of way ...

  In the morning, before six, they drove the horses back down, gathering up the different groups and their leaders. The leaders wore copper bells strapped close to their throats, and each bell was pitched a bit differently so they made a clangorous counterpoint to the bumpy rush of the horses’ feet charging back down the valley.

  In the autumn the horses’ shoes came off and they were turned out on the high slopes to fend for themselves. They went feral, mixing with the wild horses and hearing the call of their ancestors. Rounding them up in the spring was a scary business, even the cowboys said so – the union between man and horse was stretched rag-thin, and the animals as they came back to Buck’s were proud and flittery, and smelled brackish. Their manes and tail were burred and matted and the guard hairs stood out like metal wires over their long coats.

  The horse Spencer rode stayed home. He was called Jim, generally recognised as a couch with hooves, perfect for kids and novices but Spencer was eternally grateful for Jim’s plodding patience. It was through Jim’s forbearance that he learned the hard, heavy work involved in cleaning tack and shoeing and grooming and feeding, the sheer weight of horses and everything that went with them, the way your sweat mixed with theirs and their smell became your smell, and your puny muscles ached in keeping up your end of the bargain. ‘Tough love’ was a phrase whose currency was decades away, but that was what it was, and Spencer thought he never wanted any other kind.

  * * * * *

  A long way second to the horses came the people who stayed at Buck’s. It took him longer to get a handle on them. It was weird – these gilded beings with their sleek, grinning automobiles and smart clothes, expansive manners and confident voices, formed the shifting population of Buck’s Creek for months every year, and yet their presence barely impinged on the rest of the community. They were like some rare, sparsely documented tribe who existed beyond the margins of Moose Draw, but occupied an important place in the town’s collective imagination.

  Still, the reality did not disappoint. Because of his youth and his lowly status he was most of the time amiably ignored as he went about his weeding, mowing, fetching, carrying and fixing, and so was able to observe unobserved. The most remarkable thing about the Buck’s guests was their dedication to the idea of fun. In the experience of Spencer and most of the people he knew, there was work, and there was time off – even leisure would have been too strong a word. The time off was generally accompanied by mild boredom and discontent, occasioned by the knowledge that given the money and the opportunity, better things were to be had.

&nbs
p; The Buck’s guests had the cash, and all the time in the world. They were in no hurry. It fascinated Spencer the way they could lounge around for hours outside their cabins, endlessly smoking and drinking, talking vivaciously, breaking into great bursts of laughter. They came all this way and paid hundreds of dollars to pretend to be cowboys, but having done so they weren’t going to be pushed around. They brought gramophones and played music, and on those occasions when Spencer stayed over to help with a barbecue he was astonished at the free and easiness of it all. There was no getting away from it: sex was in the air.

  And not just in the air, but in the way these people talked and danced and laughed and dressed. It was in the way the women crossed their legs, and blew their cigarette smoke, in the way the men proffered lighters and poured drinks and told confiding, humorous stories. It was in the women’s scent and the men’s cigars. In the dark interiors of the long, parked cars, and in the twilit avenues of trees at the mouth of the canyon. Spencer kept his head down, his eyes and ears open, and his mouth shut.

  There was one young woman there, not much more than a girl really, in her early twenties, whom he reckoned must be just like Lottie, whom the writer had loved and lost. This girl was not quite beautiful, nor even pretty, she was better than both – slim as a whippet, sharp as a tack, bright-eyed, fierce and quick. She came with a group of friends who seemed a little older than her, but she seemed not specially attached to any of them. Almost uniquely among the guests she’d throw a ‘Hi’ or ‘Morning!’ to Spencer when she passed. She drove fast in a white coupé, could ride and shoot, and entered into everything with concentration and energy. One evening,from the twilight sidelines of glass-clearing and ashtray-emptying, he saw her bebop like a dervish so that the floor cleared and everyone became a hollering audience for her and her partner. Sometimes, though, she just spent the day on the verandah, half-smoking endless cigarettes, with her feet on the rail and her nose in a book. He never knew her name, but years later when he heard the song ‘That’s Why the Lady is a Tramp’ he was reminded of her. Only the rich could afford not to give a damn.